Contributors:
Rick Bell - Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University
Dan Formosa - Designer at Dan Formosa!, Co-founder at 4B
Ophenia Liang - Director & Co-founder at Digital Crew
Julie Ockerby - Creative Director & Principle at Meli Studio Australia
Ronnie Peters - Creative Director at Hyperloop Transportation Technologies
Karin Soukup - Managing Partner at COLLINS
Jay Valgora - Principal at STUDIO V Architecture
Jon Winebrenner - Creative Director at Sonn Technology
Resources:
In Your Shoes with Mauro Porcini - Episode 5: With Ravi Naidoo
Quotes:
Dan Formosa
design can have a huge effect on behavior
Karin Soukup
everybody's trying to be more flexible and adaptable to the conditions of work
we're seeing a lot of those companies decide to maybe go fully remote into the future, or relinquish their headquarters altogether
companies are kind of taking initiatives in their own hand
the idea of wonder and provocation and magnetism can go miles with regards to starting the conversation.
I find a lot of inspiration in the younger generation who's demanding change number one, and not looking up for answers, but looking down in a way
[the younger generation] have avenues for communication, they have a voice, they have a platform, they have visibility, so I think by speaking to that generation more clearly, you can go miles
we do need optimism, it is a momentous force, but it needs to come with a pragmatism
Ophenia Liang
China is a market that we need to crack... and is actually the only market, that is growing
Jay Valgora
[on NYC] we're taking back our streets and transforming the city
there's going to be a new creative surge in New York, which I think is a fantastic thing
we're seeing new neighborhoods emerge... we're going to be changing the way we live and work... we've all gotten a graduate degree in remote working... I would have never believed it a year ago
as I look forward to hiring in the new year, I'm thinking that that's an opportunity to get talent that might not even be here in the city
cities are our greatest devices for greater sustainability, greater equity, higher levels of education, bettering people
I think some of our greatest expressions of optimism and hope come from some of the most challenging times
Rick Bell
what is the new possible? I'd like to change the discourse to what is the new plausible, or maybe the new probable
the outdoors is being animated by design
[on the Town Hall] This is virtual travel - We have Vancouver and Sydney and Melbourne and San Francisco. So many cities represented... the change in technology that allows us to be places that we are not physically, that is very, very exciting
put all the metaphysical stuff aside and deal with how you improve, how you make things grow, how you make things change
Jon Winebrenner
some of the most creative moments that I've had in my life have come out of some of the darker periods of my life
challenges seem to drive human nature and creativity in a lot of ways
Ronnie Peters
the fact that we can have these conversations and share and do this globally and amongst each other, that alone is just such a huge boost
Mark Bergin
For the country to accelerate into the future and get through the pandemic, it's actually the people who are not aligned, who aren't already on the bus, that are the challenge
we're Next People... We're probably more in love with status next, than we are with status quo
to make America great again you have to get in love with the future
Transcript:
Mark Bergin 00:01
Hi, everybody, I'm Mark Bergin, the founder of DRIVENxDESIGN and the Design Exec Club. You're listening to a Design Exec Club Town Hall. This is number 31 and we're focusing in on the US market. I'm really fortunate here to have eight of the smartest people that I know who are actually focusing on what's going on here. What I do want to do, though, is actually refer to we are missing one of our Indians who fell off today, which is Melissa Collins, and she fell off for a very common reason, which is her son was unwell. And therefore she's having to do the carrying role. And across the world, as we do these Town Halls, we see that it's the prevalence of the female participants being interrupted, they were scheduled to be on the calls, but they actually weren't there. And I still think that's something we haven't worked out how to deal with. The next time we go do another round of these, we're going to focus on that inclusion and equity and how do we go solve some of that, because we've got to make sure that everyone's minds in these discussions. Dan Formosa, I want to go across to you and I want to go talk about the new normal, returning to normal, whatever the hell normal is. I know in the States in the last couple of weeks, the idea of returning to normal transmission from a government perspective seems to have changed around a bit. But we know this pandemic is with us for quite a period of time. What do you think the new normal or coping with this will be?
Dan Formosa 01:22
Yeah, well, it's crazy here in the US, you know. If you turn on the news in here, how many people literally died today and yesterday and the day before? This would have been outrageously shocking months ago. Now, it's kind of oh, it happened again, you know. Not that it's acceptable, but the new normal has turned a bit into the normal. So I think we are learning to live or, I don't want to say accept because that sounds like we're complacent, but I think we're willing to accept the fact that this may go on for a while with or without the vaccine. The interesting things to watch will be what sort of innovations of different techniques of how changes in lifestyle will adapt or emerge.
Mark Bergin 02:20
And I think there Dan what I've noticed is, in the last month, you've gone in the US from having around 50,000 infections a day, up to over 190,000 (seems like 150,000 is the average at the moment). So there's a tripling in a month that's in there, which is mind boggling. But then if you go look at the deaths, and there's always a little bit of a lag between the infection and the death event, but it's gone from early in the pandemic, when New York first got it, it was close to 4% of people were dying from COVID. Now it's under 1%. So the innovation, the learnings from the medical care is definitely there. But the innovations and learning from how do you put a mask on? How do you prevent it from happening, that part hasn't happened, the social distancing, those protocols that happen at a public level? So I find that really interesting that you've got in highly controlled scientifically based environments, as medicine is that we're seeing innovation accelerating. When we get down into the political culture wars perspective, we're actually seeing going in the opposite direction. And that's going to be interesting to work out how does the messaging go through to arrest that? Because I think in a little while Julie Ockerby is going to talk about the case in Australia. And then the case in Melbourne where I am, we've gone from having a runaway COVID outbreak as a second outbreak. And we're down now to, I think we're up to about 20 days of zero infections in a row, which means you can arrest it if you bring in those social behaviors. But that's interesting to work out, how do you bring that in?
Dan Formosa 03:59
Yeah, well, you know, behavior, the topic of design and behavior, and healthcare and behavior, energy efficiency and behavior, it's always been frontier land for a long time, because we don't know enough about how to control behavior or how to influence behavior. We know that design can have a huge effect on behavior. We need to know more and more and more about it. I would watch that percentage of mortality, because what's happening as the number of cases explode, is the hospitals are getting overloaded. So while they are getting better at treating COVID, they may just not have the bandwidth to treat all cases of COVID. So if that spikes up a little bit, it may not be a surprise. Also, as vaccines are starting to be introduced. of course, not everyone's going to get one. There's going to be resistance to the vaccines. So I think we're going to see this roller coaster ride of cases for a while. Hopefully a diminishing roller coaster ride, and hopefully new strains of the virus won't, you know, emerge as those things tend to do, you know, stronger strains of the virus. It's interesting to take a look at what used to be strange is now acceptable. The new normal is now the normal.
Mark Bergin 05:26
And that I think we've seen in a range of ways, that acceleration of something that used to be abnormal, becoming either through frequency of engagement or adoption, that people are saying, well, that's now become the normal. And there's going be some of those things that we want to move away from. We know that social media and mobile device addiction, we've actually seen some of that change quite a bit. And there are a couple of events, whether it's Cambridge or analytic or a few other events, maybe Kanye said something. But you know, people have changed their behaviors. How are we going to go see this happen?
Dan Formosa 06:04
I'll tell you one thing, I'm very curious to watch is, one of the issues that masks have is fogging. And as the weather gets colder, they're just going to, you know, they'll fog glasses much more much quicker. So it'll be interesting to see how, even if you are trying to be compliant, you need to somehow cope with the fact that you can't see, in some cases. So the weather is going to have an effect on just the protective equipment that we're going to be wearing, that would be interesting to watch.
Mark Bergin 06:40
And so we had when we went into the severe lockdown in Melbourne, that they allowed people to wear bandanas, they allowed them to wear face shields, it was like you just had to have some mask covering. And then they changed that. But now what's happening is that people believe it's acceptable to wear the mask just over your mouth, not your nose. Apparently, your nose doesn't actually transmit the virus!! And I go that's interesting. And generally people with glasses who aren't wearing them because it's not going to fog up then. So I think you're absolutely right there, when hopefully we see somebody who comes up with something that solves it. I want to go across now we're going to go to Vancouver to you, Jon. Your world is similar to what we've got. It isn't the United States, it's almost the United States.
Jon Winebrenner 07:27
Definitely, we're influenced by it. There's no question about it.
Mark Bergin 07:30
Yeah. But your world is actually, in the pre conversation, you talked about the confusion and the clarity aspects of what's going on. And I'm really interested about that. Because if there's confusion, there's an opportunity for clarity. And that comes down to people understanding and then saying, Well, we've diagnose where the confusion is, how do we do a rapid intervention to create that clarity? Has that phase began? Or is it still just the confusion of chaos that you've got?
Jon Winebrenner 08:00
Ah, that's a very interesting question, because it's very specific to a conversation that I was having today around the confusion in particular, as we talked about before this all started, the creative, in particular, the dance industry. So if you look at open spaces, like a dance studio, and you have children coming in, it's different, it's similar to a school, but it's considered an exercise, so they're being closed down. So where the problems coming in is from the government level. They've shut them down and said, You come to us with your reopening plan, and we will approve them as they come along, as we get to them. Now, you're hearing one group in North Vancouver that's been able to open up but another group in Coquitlam, which is 20 kilometers east of Vancouver, they can't open up the studios. And the town that I live in, which is called Richmond, hasn't been open. There's just, it's very disjointed. So there's a lot of confusion and frustration happening. But also what you're starting to see is, as day by day goes on, and all of these reopening plans are being submitted to the government, the government is tuning their message. And it seems like they're cherry picking information and doing almost like a social experiment of taking information from different groups and then re-implementing it as it goes forward. And that's my hypothesis of what's going on. It's just a really interesting observation.
Mark Bergin 09:47
And I think when we head across in a moment and we go talk with Karin, that the type of work that we get major branding and communication agencies to do is to work out what are those messages? And what are the troubles that we need to predict. And it seems like we're actually reacting there rather than turning around and being proactive. So what I do want to do is before we go across and we talk deeper about that, I want to go and talk to you Julie Ockerby, because, you know, you're almost in the Australian context. You've had a cruise ship that came in with a fat 7-800 people who there was infection amongst them, who all got off the cruise ship, and then were in the Sydney population. You've had the state of Victoria have a large outbreak, and then there's circulation between the cities. But Sydney seems to be able to work out how to go and live with very low infection transmission rates. But I don't think you're wearing masks as a state yet, is that optional or mandatory?
Julie Ockerby 10:55
It's optional. A few months ago, it was suggested that it was a good idea to wear masks on public transport. But you know, really, the mask wearing was probably 30%. Having said that, not a lot of people took public transport anyway. Look, we are in comparison to the US, by far very lucky, very lucky. One, we don't have the population numbers that you do. And our rate hasn't been that high in comparison. But for us, for example, where Mark is in Victoria and Melbourne, they've just come out of four months of lockdown and pretty harsh lockdown too. I think what's proven there, is lockdown actually does work, as harsh as it is, it does work. And this week, we've had one of our other states, South Australia, overnight, has gone into six days, six nights worth of lockdown and very harsh lockdown as well - Like pretty much Stage 4. And what they found is this COVID down in South Australia is a very short term living strain. And basically it's a new strain of COVID, which I find quite frightening because we kind of get on top of what was the old strain to start off with. But in New South Wales, I think our biggest hurdles have been that certain borders domestically for us have been closed to us. A few weeks ago we had sort of a little bit of a cluster, but not a huge community transmission. And most of the numbers we are getting are from hotel quarantines. So we're learning to live with it, you know? Our restaurants, our schools, everything, we're just learning to live with it. We're forming new habits. We're keeping our economy going as best as possible. And I think we're trying to have an outlook beyond COVID. But I think similarly to what Dan was saying, the notion of COVID being a very temporary situation is not the case, I think it's going to hit Bell Curves, it's going to hit peaks and troughs. And our country's showing that it is, you know, we're one moment everyone is open to go to South Australia. And as of this week, everyone's virtually blocked their way to South Australia and back. So it causes havic for this nation down the bottom of the earth here. But we do look at our peers in Europe and certainly in your country. And you know, we do feel very lucky here in comparison. But we're learning as we go. We're no different to anyone else in the world. You know what works here may not work there. What works there may not work here. It's just we're learning. And I think our policies and procedures are evolving as it goes along. And our biggest challenges now is keeping our economy going. I don't think we will feel the impact until next year, when the majority of our government support ceases in March. I think next year is when we really will feel the recession. Commercially buildings, I find it very tough. Because what I think, Jay will touch on this a bit later, is people have learned to live and work remotely. And so they're choosing the lifestyle over, you know, transporting themselves into the city and being amongst it all. So there's pros and cons of this whole life that we've lived this year and certainly I think real estate, residentially have gone straight up along the beautiful beach areas because people are opting to buy and live there and work from there rather than commuting into the city.
Mark Bergin 14:46
And so what I found interesting as we've been talking about there contextually for people in the US, the idea of hotel quarantine. Now, that's not happening in the US. If you fly into the US, you're not being locked in a hotel for two weeks as mandatory detention until you've worked out do you have the disease or not? That's what's happening here. If you want to move between the states and the states are locked down, if you're coming from an infected state, and you want to go to a non infected state you have a two week quarantine in a hotel. And you can only go through major ports, airport, so you can't actually go across road borders. So it's really interesting that difference there. But the other thing I found really interesting was, you were talking about government support, and in the US there's been very little government support that's been going out to help. And if I go look throughout Europe, there's been government supported help. In Hong Kong, there's been government support. In mainland China, there's been support. So these are all different conditions that force people to say, Well, my COVID experience and my normal has shifted, and therefore I need to do some things. Karin, I want to go and have a talk to you, because you're on the west coast in San Francisco, where we can see that beautiful sunset, just happening there behind you. But your organization, you've got east coast offices, you've got west coast offices, and I think in your east coast office that you've actually been working at Do you re-lease the building? Or do you actually look at the different topology of having micro studios closer to where people are living rather than having a mega studio, where your corporate clients might come in and be impressed by the foyer?
Karin Soukup 16:29
Sure. I mean, I think everybody's trying to be more flexible and adaptable to the conditions of work, generally speaking. I know out of our east coast office, you know, we just reassessed whether that footprint was necessary at all. And then over the course of last year, have decided to kind of relocate and do exactly as you just said, kind of a micro office approach. And I think on the west coast, we're kind of hunkering down. It was already a smaller office in the first place, but really watching the trends. (dogs come on screen) Sorry ....
Mark Bergin 16:59
Oh, no, no. That's fantastic. We've got two unexpected guests here. And who are your unexpected guests? Help us out? We're humans and they're dogs.
Karin Soukup 17:10
Free holing Bean and Casper, the friendly ghost?
Mark Bergin 17:15
Well, they're more than welcome to interrupt us. Keep going.
Karin Soukup 17:22
Anyway, west coast, I think we're really paying attention to our client base in terms of how they're responding early on. We work with a lot of software companies out of San Francisco, as you might expect. And I think they took quite conservative measures to kind of have their employees work from home, which they often already do, at least one day a week, if not two. And so I think we quickly were able to pivot and follow suit to their practices. And as I'm sure many folks on the call already know, we're seeing a lot of those companies decide to maybe go fully remote into the future, or kind of relinquish their headquarters altogether. So I think there's a lot of opportunities that come from that. But I think a trend that I see from that more holistically, in terms of what we're seeing with our work is, you know, the fact that companies are kind of taking initiatives in their own hand. I think to some of what you were talking about Jon, this kind of disruption of leadership and kind of lack of leadership and confusion that comes with that. It feels a little Lord of the Flies, to be honest. And I don't recommend anybody watch the 19, I think 63 or 53 version. But it's terrifying if you go and re watch it. Now anyway, you know, I think there's a lot of themes there that hold true, which is like, Who are we following? You know, what are the powers of persuasion? Which from a branding and communications perspective, is very much kind of playing a role in everything from COVID efficacy to how we kind of, you know, vote and who we follow and what we believe in. But I think we're seeing corporations as a whole, really think about their power, you know, or those that are disenfranchised within corporations and in the world and reassess their role in terms of creating equality. And I think even employees are trying to do more to apply pressures within the infrastructure of corporations then corporations doing that, you know, for us. Even with our partners, we're asking new questions around, you know, what we're all working in service of, and how we can kind of advance it within an organizational level, at the very least.
Mark Bergin 19:22
And one of the things I've observed is that globally, before we started the pandemic, which sounds like we all turned it on doesn't? Before the pandemic started, it was the economy, the extraction and the creation of wealth what was driving our narrative. There was a little bit about should we be thinking about social equity and there was a little bit about the environment, but they were like secondary considerations. It now feels like there's three primary leaders. One is, we've got to make sure that we're accelerating social equity, and Black Lives Matter has helped go bring that to the fore. We've also got to make sure we actually got sustainably environment. And we've also got a thriving economy and all three have to work together in there. And so that's gonna be interesting, because if I go back to the Federation's which Julie was talking about, the States of Australia, well, that was federated to solve a problem with taxation and border crossings about 100 or 120 years ago. And so what we've realized is we solved the taxation challenge of 100 years ago, but we didn't talk about how does the free movement work from economics across the country. The moment a challenge came up we blocked the borders. I think if I look at the United States, you've got this tremendous capacity as a country to go and actually scale just about anything. And I'm going to come and talk about Twitch and ask you some Twitch questions in a moment. Because if I go look at how Twitch has been able to go scale, that's because they got simple messaging, they thought of the challenges that would come through to their public, they got their framing right and they've been able to accelerate, which is exactly what Jon was talking about the governments aren't doing. Governments aren't getting the pre planning time, they're not going through the strategy, they're not going through the user centered design. They've done very little that is actually on the front foot. They're actually being reactive. And then if I go look at the American electoral system, it shows that the Federation that you've got as a federal government, has this idea that there's determination at a very micro level down at states and counties, which means the electoral system is really ineffective, and there's no best practice and there isn't scale in there. How do you then take that across into, then there's public health, which is at similar government levels delivered at that lower level. Yet, you've got organizations like Facebook and Twitter and Twitch, who have worked out how to get infinite scale there. So the knowledge exists in the country. It's actually our electoral systems and our government systems that seem to be holding it back. So I want to just ask there about Twitch, because I know at the beginning of the pandemic, Collins had done some great work on the rebranding for Twitch. But then, last time we were in the Town Hall, Brian Collins was rolling off all of the It's the biggest platform for this sort of streaming, the biggest platform for this streaming. And it's been through a phenominal growth. That growth doesn't happen if you didn't think about a framing that would allow it to happen. Is that your assumption?
Karin Soukup 22:26
I mean, I think that sure, framing plays a role in everything. And this story has to be appealing and attractive and connect with your audiences. I think Twitch is also in a very favorable position to some of the other trends that panelists here are talking about, which is kind of the virtualization, increased virtualization of experience and really kind of caters to a younger audience in terms of how they relate to each other, and how they can connect to each other. And so I think it's that combination of story in place, you know, a new type of place, really, that are enabling it to scale and in many ways upset, as you know, a more traditional version of social media that we might identify with.
Mark Bergin 23:06
What I do want to do is go across to Ophenia. Ophenia, your expertise is focusing on Chinese brands, both brands going into China, and also brands who are trying to get their voice out of China. One of the biggest retail days in the world has just happened, which was the Singles Day, the 11th of the 11th. I think it was like 30% growth. Is that right?
Ophenia Liang 23:30
Yeah, absolutely. So it was when the whole majority of the world is trying to cope with their minus GDP growth and cope with the pandemic, China, it's already projecting a positive GDP growth. And the Singles Day that the W11 just happened last week, it's just a glimpse into the consumption power that they have. And the gross merchandise sales was about $116 billion US dollars. And among all the countries that are exporting into China, that US is top two just after Japan. So when we're dealing with a lot of American brands, and we see in the beginning of the pandemic, that they all got a bit scared and kind of less of the business confidence. But then since the last quarter, and especially this quarter, we are seeing a lot of confidence that yes, China is a market that we need to crack and we are putting resources, and is actually the only market, that is growing. So they're putting in resource. And so this is not just in the FMCG sector, also in the B2B sectors as well. So it's pretty amazing. And I live in the world that I'm talking to business owners or brand owners in the Western world where they are concerned and they are working from home, they are trying to deal with this pandemic and family life, and the balance of it. When I'm working with my China team, and we actually opened up a new office in Shanghai this year as well, everything is fine. And we just had the biggest national holiday weekend - everybody went traveling and at the best time of the year. And it's just this massive different experience, I am dealing with on two sides of the world.
Mark Bergin 25:22
And it is interesting how, you know, if I think back 18 months ago, dealing with companies in China, there was so much more formality with it. Last week, I was launching the boat that I sail on. So all of you know, I'm a tragic sailor. And so we're launching this wooden boat. But I've got to stop launching the boat because there's a Zoom call which is coming in from the west coast of the States, it's coming in from China, and it's in Australia with me. I'm sitting on a breakwater amongst these rocks, having the Zoom call with a lady in China who won't turn her camera on because it's too early in the morning, which I thought was just so cute. And then we've got a mum in on the west coast of the US who has not her dogs but their kids running through the call, because the kids are hungry. And we all accepted that what we were trying to do was get our minds to meet, but the pretense of that we didn't have another life that was able to be taken away. The quality of the call, the business that we discussed, was equal, as if we had have pretended to turn up to an office and be all wearing our business clothes, and being in you know, in a central location. So that was very interesting, just to have that snapshot moment. We decided to move the follow-up call two hours later, because it'd be really nice to go see the lady in China. And she agreed that that would be the time that she would be acceptable to in front of the camera and that it wasn't too late for the mum in San Francisco. And you go, isn't it interesting the things that we can talk about of how business works. But I think the big thing is that there's a lot of US brands which are still going across into Mainland China, because some of the people who have got the deepest pockets at the moment, are the mainland Chinese who are hungry for US brands. It just is, don't try to sell them a cow because there's trade tariffs on that. Don't try to sell them coal because there's trade tariffs on that. And we found that with rock lobster. So apparently, to make up for some of the trade tariffs that came into the US, there was a deal done with the US where American rock lobster would be allowed to go into China, but Australian rock lobster isn't. So we've got all these rock lobster farmers who are saying we're not catching any rock lobster at the moment. And I go, geopolitics is really interesting. But if you havn't got rock lobster, you haven't got cows, and you haven't got iron ore, you pretty well have a good trade route that's going on there, which is fantastic. So I want to continue on here and I want to then go across to my next person who is Jay. I want to go talk about the optimism you've got. As a leading architect who works both in New York, you've also got projects, throughout Asia, and you've got a particular project in Buffalo that I want to touch on as well there. You've got optimism about what's going to come out in the next 12 months.
Jay Valgora 28:12
I think that you know, in some ways Mark, the last six months have been devastating, because in some ways, you know, it's interesting as a contrast for me, because we've seen how we ignored all the opportunities or really missed all the opportunities to deal with a surge that's happening now. And being from New York having my studio here, it's interesting to me that New York was one of the first earliest hotspots and dealt with it early. But then watching you know, the pandemic spread across the rest of the country and surge today really is devastating. But I am really optimistic about the future. And in some ways, short term and in other ways long term. Here in New York City, my friends call me and they say, you know, are you okay? It seems like New York is crazy. And I'm thinking at the end of the summer, it was kind of wonderful watching the city start to bounce back, watching people be excited about the results of the election, watching people spread into a vibrant outdoor dining scene where we're taking back our streets and transforming the city not only this summer, but really in ways that I think are going to be transformative going forward. I'm also seeing things like new businesses emerging where there was already pressure on street level retail. And now I think there's going to be new opportunities for creativity where maker spaces, small industries, people making things are going to be starting to take over more retail spaces. I think there's going to, we're going to be seeing legislation where they're going to be pushing people to open up retail stores, where in the past developers would actually keep them closed until they could wait even a few years in order to get the rents they want. And I think there's going to be pressure to reopen those spaces. And that's going to lead to a new creative surge in New York, which I think is a fantastic thing. I see Ronnie nodding because he has a ground floor gallery in his building. So like those are the things that should be on those ground floor retail spaces and new creative things. And finally, I think there's longer term changes, where we're seeing new neighborhoods emerge. And we're really, I think, going to be changing the way we live and work. There is going to be some kind of a balance. And while I desperately miss working with my creative teams, I still come into my studio because I walk, you know, three minutes to work from my loft to my studio. I feel very lucky in that way. But I miss working with all of our creative teams. But we've all gotten a graduate degree in remote working, that would have been, I would have never believed it a year ago. And I have to tell you, it's so effective. I'm so proud of our teams. I was terrified as the owner of a firm - how was this going to work. And I have to say, they were working harder than I ever thought. Then I had to go to my staff and say, you guys have to take some time off, you have to strike some life balance, because everyone was working so hard. But I think going forward, we're going to find a balance where we're going to continue to work partly remotely and partly in person. We do have to bring back all the social and creative aspects of working together, which will happen with the vaccines coming out over time. But even then, in the future, I think we're still going to be continuing to work partly from home. People are going to be living in new neighborhoods. That's why we're doing projects in Coney Island, which is becoming a residential area. Now we're doing it in Jamaica, Queens. Long Island City continues to expand. So I think that you're going to see more neighborhoods emerging. And even, I'll say this now, smaller cities in the US that in some cases, you know we're struggling before, are going to come back where you're going to see small towns and small cities where people are going to split their time between the big coasts and the big cities, and smaller towns for that kind of small town experience. I'm even thinking about hiring staff that have moved out of New York that I really like and bringing them back in because I could hire them remotely now. I would have never considered that a year ago. And as I look forward to hiring in the new year, I'm thinking that that's an opportunity to get talent that might not even be here in the city, or that wants to split their time.
Mark Bergin 31:54
Yeah. And I think, you know, we're seeing the idea of where people are, has changed so much. That example I gave about the call, we didn't have to be in the office. And so you're going to find that there's talent, which are in many, many varied places. You've got a project that's happening, or is in the early stages in Buffalo. Is that still on the go?
Jay Valgora 32:18
No, very much. And I should have brought that up. So we're working on Silo City, which is an incredible project in Buffalo, New York. And that's really part of the idea of the resurgence of, you know, Buffalo is certainly a bigger city, but small compared to New York, and it's really my hometown. So matter of fact, the project is really remarkable. It's taking the grain elevators of Buffalo. It's the largest collection of grain elevators in the world. And there's an entire industrial section. And we have an incredible client, Rick Smith, an individual who purchased the largest collection of grain elevators in the world right next to the downtown. And he has a vision for turning it into a new arts and cultural center that includes development with residential hotels, but also museums, doing events. And he's organically been doing events between the grain elevators. But we've created a masterplan for him. We just won the AIA New York State Award, the AIA Film Award. The project is now starting to get a lot of notoriety and attention. And I'm happy to say that the first building just went under construction last week, which is the American Mill and Warehouse, which is the first structure that's actually beginning with a developer he's partnered with, for the first phase, which is generation development. So I'm really excited to see where this goes. And the idea of reinventing our cities, reinventing secondary cities like Buffalo and even taking industrial artifacts from our past and giving them new uses and creating new kinds of innovative and creative spaces. I think is going to be part of the future of our cities.
Mark Bergin 33:46
Yeah. And you know, if we go think of the project that we saw in South Africa that Thomas Heatherwick went and did with the grain elevators there. They are incredible volumes to go work with. So we really look forward to see what you come up with there. I'm also going to put in to the show notes, I'll put a link to Mauro Porcini from PepsiCo, his 'In Your Shoes' talk about that project, because it digs into how the placemaking works. How does the funding come together? And I think that's really important that people get some of that knowledge. Because as we saw around the High Line, it was actually the surrounds of the High Line where the economic uplift was, not so much the High Line itself. And that's what I think we're gonna go see with your project there. Rick, Bell, I want to go across to you and I want to go talk about, you've had a couple of things that have happened in the last few months. You've had the New York Architectural Biennial that came out of nowhere, which was great to go see. We've also seen that Paris as part of the mayoral elections in the last nine months that we saw that the 15 minute city was a priority there. And now because of COVID, the 15 minute city is becoming a reality for a lot of people. But New York's also got this indoor outdoor phase that's going through. What have you been seeing as those new possibilities?
Rick Bell 35:12
Thanks for asking. I think if we talk about what is the new possible, I'd like to change the discourse to what is the new plausible, or maybe the new probable? What's likely to happen interpolating from where we are now, and the things that have been said that, you know, starting with Dan, that this isn't over. And, you know, quoting a Canadian, Leonard Conan 'It may never end' a perpetual pandemic. If this is the normalcy, what are we doing to make it tolerable? And being outside, you know, a 15 minutes city means being able to go somewhere in 15 minutes, and having a different experience, then might have been normal, if that's the word a couple of years ago, or last year. Spending much more time outside. You know, Jay talked about that as a summertime phenomenon. And he said as well, Jay, you said that that could extend. I'd like to think that is transformational. And it's not just because of global warming. We've always had a tradition in New York and in Paris, and many other cities of things happening outside - theater, concerts, particularly when the weather was warm. But it doesn't have to be that way. I mean, we're seeing not just retractable roofs on athletic facilities, but we're seeing all sorts of ways where the outdoors is animated by design. And that's a new, plausible, a new probable. Bringing nature into the city is something that seems like it's a new idea. You know, when you talk about a million trees in New York under Bloomberg or Paris springing ere Ashkelon to the city. But it's not new. I mean, whether it's the Prominade Plantee, or the High Line or any number of imitators, the idea of being able to go for a stroll, being able to go for a walk outdoors. I was on the High Line a couple of weeks ago, and it was pretty deserted, but not because of the pandemic, it was pouring rain. You know, it was wonderful being on the High Line when there was nobody in there. But there will be people there. And there'll be more New Yorkers. Tourism has changed significantly. And someone mentioned, Jay or Ronnie mentioned that we won't be seeing as much air travel. We'll certainly be seeing many more new means of intercity travel. Hyperloop at the top of the list. But within the city, we'll be seeing other ways that people will get around. You know, that could be autonomous vehicles to give people a sense of security that they're on their own. But I'd like to think that there are more call it public means of transit that will be animated by concern about isolation and safety, that might be just smaller scale than we've seen before - water taxis, ferries, jitneys. Things that haven't particularly taken off in New York before, will. Yeah, I'm going to miss travel. You know, I haven't been anywhere. Mark, I think you said last time that you're not going anywhere, anytime soon. This is virtual travel. And this is it. You know, here we are. Look who's on the screen. We have Vancouver and Sydney and Melbourne and San Francisco. So many cities represented. We could go to these cities, not just by this conversation, but by other means. And that change in technology that allows us to be places that we are not physically, that is very, very exciting. New York's tourism, it was reported in a New York Times article this week, won't recover for four years. What does that mean? You know, what's the line from Voltaire and Candide, 'cultivez votre propre jardin' - we should cultivate our own garden. And you can interpret that as being xenophobic or isolationist, but it's not. It's really you put all the metaphysical stuff aside and deal with how you improve, how you make things grow, how you make things change. So I share some of Jay's optimism. You know, concurrently with saying that, while one could be optimistic about the distribution of vaccine, you know, the psychology of acceptance of people wanting to be vaccinated is still to be determined. You know, the logistics of distribution are hard enough. The mindset is bedeviling. And if, I forget the number it was in an article recently, if 80% of the population in a given place called the US don't accept the idea that the vaccination is essential, there's a loss of effectiveness. So I think that is a very, very important criterion. But with or without the vaccine, as others have said, I think we will be adopting to a changed lifestyle that won't necessarily be worse. We'll look at time in a different way, we'll slow down, we have slowed down. We'll look at communications in a different way. Here we are, you know, it's not so bad. You know, people talk about Zoom burnout. I think Zoom is amazing. You know, here we are. And for those who aren't even on the screen, here you are, you know. Communications that wouldn't have been possible, lectures of people who couldn't afford to travel before because of the economics of it, not just because of the environmental devastation. All sorts of things are changing that are probable, possible. And yeah, maybe it won't be so bad.
Mark Bergin 40:47
So Rick, I think everybody on this call by their nature is actually we're next people, you know. We're probably more in love with status next, than we are with status quo. So when we're talking about people with Zoom burnout, a Zoom burnout is often because people are wanting to get back to status quo, which is what we used to call normal. And, they've been shifted from something and they didn't actually want to be shifted, they were very happy with what was going on. And, so there's a part of the population which is in a hurry to get to next, there's another part that was so comfortable with now. And some of them are actually even wanting to get back into the past. You know, if I go and think of, to me, the greatest challenge that I see in the US is you've got over 70 million people who would like to go back in time, so that they can be like their grandfathers. But their grandfathers were actually progressive people who were trying to get into the future. And again, so that, to me, is an interesting communication dilemma of, to make America great again, might be that you have to get in love with the future.
Rick Bell 41:51
I think you've raised the issue between the lines of political polarization. You know, it's not that everybody's grandfather was living in a blue state and everybody's great grandfather was living in a red state. I think the political distinctions that we're seeing between people who could accept change and people who are nostalgic for the past that may or may not have ever existed, or if it did exist, it wasn't very equitable, or just a place to live in. That's not going to go away. You know, the the new normal post Trump is that Trump isn't going away. You know, he may be out of office, he may be in jail. But, oh, the popularity that propelled him into the presidency isn't going away. It's a perpetual pandemic worse than COVID, in some ways. It probably will go off on a tangent. What does that mean for how people come together and form consensus? I think that, you know, as communications have changed between us, you know Mark, it's been a real pleasure greeting you in Brooklyn, greeting you in New York and having a drink together. But it's almost as good, maybe it's even better to actually talk this way, with lots of other people participating in the conversation, who could not have previously been able to do that. I think we'll be seeing the kind of phenomenon of town halls, propelling a political reawakening with a President like Biden fueling it, that was not able to be anticipated, even under the halcyon days, and the hopes and aspirations of Obama.
Mark Bergin 43:39
So what I do want to do is, Ronnie we're going to pause for a moment. I was going to throw to you. But there was something that Rick brought up, which I thought was really interesting, which is, and Karin, I'd like you to actually dig in here, and also Dan. There's a large number of people in the States who may not be on the journey as far as the thinking about the future, and they may not be on the journey when it comes to the vaccine. From a behavioral point of view, from a communications point of view, how do you actually change their imagination so they see that that's the path forward? How do you shine a spotlight to, hope is down this path rather than maybe where they're currently focusing on hope. That to me is, that if the country is going to accelerate into the future and get through the pandemic, it's actually the people who are not aligned, who aren't already on the bus. That's the challenge. It isn't, because Ronnie and I are going to talk a bit about the logistics of the people are on the bus. How do we go do that? I'm going to work out how do we get more people on the bus? Dan, your world has always been about how do you get people who may not have immediately had the behavior to get the behavior. Have you got some insight there?
Dan Formosa 44:59
I work in a lot of different categories. But I work a lot in pharmaceuticals and medical devices and equipment. And one thing that I've found over the years is that, well, first of all compliance pre COVID, compliance of medications or pharmaceuticals was just terrible. It's, you know, 30 to 40% of people do not take the medications they are supposed to be taking. A fear of death is not a motivator. What is a motivator in cases is that when you feel the effect the next day. So for instance, if you're taking medication for migraine headaches, or if you're taking medication for arthritis, you feel the effects. If you're taking a medication for cholesterol, or blood pressure, you don't feel any different than next day. So treating those different types, you know, approaching those different types of patients is quite different. You know, how do you motivate, encourage and change that behavior. And it's not an easy, it's not an easy task. It's a challenge. It's a challenge to do that. Education can help. Coaching helps, you know, reminders, you know, encouragement helps. But boy, there's going to be a segment of the population that is just either is not going to be motivated at all, or literally doesn't like the idea of this bizarre drug going into the body.
Mark Bergin 46:27
So then Karin, I want to throw across to you. And Collins has just received a brief from the CDC, can you help us get 70 million people to actually be enamored by the vaccine? Is that something where you turn around and go, whoa, we'll actually send that one across the pentagram? Or is that something that you actually dig into and say, I think we can have a crack at this?
Karin Soukup 46:52
Oh yes. I mean, everybody would love to take a crack at that, right? I mean, Coms I think in many ways, is always thinking about, you know, what's the heart of the message. But more importantly, how do we kind of wrap it in a way that is compelling and oftentimes compelling, as simple as you know, fun and colorful. Not to say that it's as simple as that, but the Exploratorium, who's a client of ours, they did an amazing job with that with science. Is like, we don't need to kind of read down, you know, be pedantic in how we teach science, we just have to make it seem wonderful. And that is something that can draw people in to actually start to ask questions. And so I think, the idea of wonder and provocation and kind of magnetism, can go miles with regards to starting the conversation. I've also been thinking about two other tactics and one came out of a conversation with somebody about education the other day, which is, you know, really distancing the conversation in a way trying to abstract it from anything personal. For instance, when you're trying to find common ground around folks, maybe in urban or rural areas, talking about history might be an easier way in so it doesn't feel like it's attacking the present. And so how might abstracting the conversation or distancing it from the self be a way to ease somebody into the conversation. And thirdly, I was thinking about, again, the Founder of Moss, who's a human rights activist, and works on behalf of students to get financial aid. I really love something she said in an interview I had with her the other day, which is like, kids these days aren't looking up to anybody. They're so disenfranchised with institutions, with corporations, with governance, and actually where they're most inspired is by themselves. They're happy to look in the mirror and be satisfied with themselves and even people younger than them. And so when we talk about maybe a lot of people, you know, of our ilk who might be kind of averse to change, I find a lot of inspiration in the younger generation who's demanding change number one, and not looking up for answers, but looking down in a way. And so I've been thinking about that as a point of inspiration and, you know, time, they have avenues for communication, they have a voice, they have a platform, they have visibility. So I think speaking to that generation more clearly, you know, can go miles.
Mark Bergin 49:19
Yeah, I think that's it. And I appreciate that. Ronnie, we're going to go across and we're going to be talking about a couple of really important things here. The biggest logistics exercise ever in the history of the United States. Yeah? Trying to get a vaccine, which at the moment .... How cold does the vaccine have to be when it has to travel?
Ronnie Peters 49:41
The Pfizer one, this thing has to be transported at negative 70 Celsius which is minus 93 Fahrenheit. The Moderna one is minus 20 Celsius. So still, one is really deep cold storage distribution and the other one is cold storage, but still completely enveloped in the cold chain distribution network, which is going to prove to be a massive logistical issue. Yeah, Pfizer has two locations where they make it. And it'll last 10 days in a container that can only be opened twice a day.
Mark Bergin 50:19
So it sounds like a reality TV challenge. You've got to keep it cold. And you've got 10 days, and how do you get it to as many people as possible? You know, like, that's a game show just waiting. You wouldn't happen to have somebody who could host that game show hanging around would you? I know someone who used to have another job, maybe give him a new job. Okay, so that's tricky. But, so you've got there that that's interesting, and your world of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies. And I must say to all of the people involved with Hyperloop Transportation, it's a great week to go see that there's actually been some humans transported not just dogs or not just packages. So that's good to see that that, you know, has been breached. So you're trying to get this operation going? Is there capacity in the system to actually be diverted for this purpose? Is there priority and inclination? Or is that something that still needs to be messaged through to people who are involved with logistics and transport?
Ronnie Peters 51:20
No, I would think, well, FedEx and UPS are the two companies that are taking this on with Pfizer apparently. So I imagine that they're just all over this. But I think it's just the scale of this, and how it's going to happen, and how that will unfold the next six months, the next year, I think it's just going to be fascinating to see. I wish it was on Hyperloop, as he said, the first passengers have ridden in Hyperloop. That's not going to happen just yet. But it's really well on the way now. And the two other big things, they're just getting government recognition so we're underneath the rail transport division of government, and it's also received safety guidelines. So it's really becoming a thing. And it's just a matter of time now, before someone takes the leap and does a Hyperloop installation city to city, downtown to downtown. I wanted to point out a couple of other things and just from this conversation, Rick, some of the things you've been pointing out. I just went to Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water last weekend, and I'm doing things like that are within driving range of New York City that I've just never done before. You know, I'd make trips to Europe but I wouldn't go and see the amazing things that are actually on our doorstep, you know. And Jay, looking forward to going up to Buffalo and seeing what you're doing there. And just expanding my circle, you know, within the area here. I went to Staten Island the other day and went to this fabulous Sri Lankan restaurant. So I'm just sort of like looking for things that I can do within the realm within the sort of area that I actually have available to me without having to get on a plane, or put myself into that scenario in that situation. We just relaunched Beat the Virus with MIT and New America. So that's beatthevirus.org. This is all about factual information. And we're expanding that rapidly over the coming weeks. Also working with MIT on Health Pulse, which is improving public health and communication through science and media analysis. So some really big data analytics going on there to help quell misinformation. So, Karin, you know, yes, we don't have the emotional side, but this is all about just raw data, raw facts and raw information. And hopefully, that's going to help people to just have a cool head, look at what the facts are, and engage and go out and get vaccinated when this becomes available. So I think, you know, that's sort of the other end of the spectrum playing out there, I think, it's just being able to give people cool, factual data, and not getting, you know, they're getting so much misinformation. So just give it to them as it is. So those are some of the main things going on.
Mark Bergin 54:20
So I wanted to just throw across to Jon. Jon, you've just sent through a message here on the chat, which was posing the question about where the optimism is coming from across the board here. Because there's a very optimistic base. Is it based in evidence, or is it based in supposition, people's feeling? Or is it their hope? I suppose that's the angle that we're trying to work out there, isn't it?
Jon Winebrenner 54:46
Yeah. So where my question kind of comes from is, I think it stems back to, I think you said earlier that this is a group of people that seem to work in the status 'next', and there has to be an inherent optimism in that mentality. So I've personally had a year, you know, that most people like you hear about in hyperbolic terms, you know, 2020 has been the worst year of my life, or, you know, it's just been a, you know, a continual punch in the face. You know, I feel like I'm coming out of that from lots of different things that have been happening. But it's definitely been a very difficult year. So it's, hard for that optimism to be maintained. And then if you look at it from the standpoint of what I was talking about earlier, it's the difficulties of getting your business up and going, especially as a small business owner, when you're fighting to get your business open. But you're seeing large corporations that are just being handed the opportunities of having people elbow to elbow like in Costco, and just these disparities that you see that are difficult to digest. So my question just comes from is the optimism that I'm hearing from Jay and Rick and Ronnie and, you know, is that based on a choice of your personality? Is it based on what you're seeing around you? Where does this optimism come from? For you guys that are dealing with these larger corporations as opposed to myself who's dealing with more of like just the bootstrap? You know, guys pulling them up?
Jay Valgora 56:33
Well I'm happy to jump in on that. First of all, I think that, you know, on a personal note, you know, since I've lived in New York, and you know, I feel I now can call myself a New Yorker having lived here 28 years, but you know, we experienced a terrorist attack, we experienced a massive flood where everything below my house like I was the last block, and life was in darkness and flooded. We experienced, you know, the greatest recession since the Great Depression. And now we've gone through, you know, a worldwide pandemic and social unrest. The city has always come back. And I'm not saying that, just like I've experienced that. So to answer your question, that to me, is an experience. And after every one of those events, people said, you know, this is it, the city is not coming back. And it has and the city is really our most resilient device. I don't mean this even as boosterism, I mean it as you know, cities are our greatest devices for greater sustainability, greater equity, higher levels of education, bettering people, despite all their flaws, despite all the terrible things that cities can do, despite all of the tragedy that can occur within our city. They're our best invention yet for improving people's lives. Goes all the way back to Aristotle: What is the city, the city is the place where one finds the good life. And then maybe going back a little bit, you know, to Ancient Greece to or maybe Rome, actually. You know, at the moments of people's greatest tragedy, you know, Virgilius wrote the Georgics at the time of the greatest civil war that was destroying that of Caesar when the entire world was up ended and the returning Romans took over his family farm. And at that time he wrote the Georgics, which was a statement of incredible optimism about the future of humanity. Or Whitman, you know, wrote the Leaves of Grass and continued to write it during the American Civil War, when he wrote about the great experiment at the time, when it seemed like that experiment was at an end, and he was, you know, volunteering, you know, in the fields with dying soldiers. I think some of our greatest expressions of optimism and hope come from some of the most challenging times. I think that's who we are as people. And I think that's our potential.
Mark Bergin 58:35
Sorry, Jon?
Jon Winebrenner 58:36
Yeah. Well, I was just gonna expand slightly on that. I do have to say that my personal experience over time that some of the most creative moments that I've had in my life, have come out of some of the darker periods of my life. You know, I recently wrote a book that is a fiction novel that came out of a dark period of my life. I go back to university, I was a comic strip artist. And, you know, some of the best comics that I wrote came out of hangovers. It's not necessarily that that's dark depression, but it's just those challenges seem to drive I think, human nature and creativity in a lot of ways. So, this is just a topic that's close to mind for me right now. And I'm glad we're kind of touching on it.
Mark Bergin 59:23
And Jon, I'll talk a little bit there. So for myself, I found after about three months, I was working in six time zones, my bedroom is five meters away, I'm here and connected to the world. There was no relief. And I think Jay, you were talking about that as well. I went out and I bought a van. I've done a van conversion and for the last hundred odd days I've been out taking sunrise photos. I'll share the link it's @vanbergin on Instagram. And what was interesting was, I started off as a photographer but I haven't shot something that has meaning to me and distributed it for over 30 years. It's been lovely to go do that. There's a renaissance there. But the most important thing is, it gave me connection to people, which was a positive conversation. It also gave me the practice where I now had to get out of bed before dawn every day, which was useful in its utility. And last weekend, I was having dinner with a psychiatrist friend, and she was like, you've done the textbook - How do you build a practice that's actually going to give you well being and mental health. Because by 20 minutes past sunrise, I've already achieved something in the day. I've posted something. It's gone down. And we know the speed of social sharing, it's got likes, and I'm getting dopamine hits andI'm heading off to go get an espresso coffee. My days already kicked off. So there's those sorts of things. But I'd have to say, I was also very fortunate that revenue in the business has held up. And if the revenue hadn't been there, I would have had 99 problems that were all associated with money. And if you've got 99 problems associated with money, then you can't have an upbeat manner. But still, we've had good revenue. I've got this practice. We've experienced the Rona Coaster. And as a team we've worked on how do you deal with a Rona Coaster, which is sometimes your up and other times you just crash down. We introduced a thing as an interchange bench. So that I just said to the team, just tell me if you're not on today. Just tell me if you're in the saddle, or you're not in the settle. Are you on the field, or you're not on the field. We know how to cover for each other, but we need to communicate that. And by bringing that in, we were then able to go kick the momentum, the delivery. But there was also dignity around people who were having a tough day. And then we could check in with them in a non work sense and see what was happening with them. It's really important that we're open about some of those mental health challenges that are there because it is debilitating to everybody. And some of the people who are late to go speak up, wind up being a lot further from getting some support than they otherwise could be.
Rick Bell 1:02:10
Mark, not to over simplify, but I think what I hear you saying is that optimism versus pessimism is really a function of where you stand socio economically. And the issues that were raised previously, I think by Julie, about social equity are very paramount now. Government has a clear role in assuring everybody, not just in the US, but in Australia and British Columbia and Canada, that nobody's left behind, and because of the economic gratifications of the pandemic. And that may not make people feel real good, or real optimistic, but it'll help people survive.
Karin Soukup 1:02:50
And I want to build on that because I was looking up some of Jenny Holzer's work yesterday, and one of them said, you know, blind idealism is deadly. And I agree with that. You know we do need optimism. It is a momentous force. But you know, to both your point, Rick and Ronnie, I think that, you know, it needs to come with a pragmatism, a very open mindedness and visibility into one, systemic inequities - what's going on? And thinking about that outside of your own perspective in a way that can kind of both, give people information, provide solutions, and further momentum, ideally. But all those things need to be working in conjunction.
Ronnie Peters 1:03:34
Yeah. And I think Rick, to your point earlier, the fact that we can have these conversations and share and do this globally and amongst each other, that alone is just such a huge boost and to listen in on other people having these kinds of conversations. And being able to have this technology then to also the joy of living vicariously through others. So I too am a sailor and just love boat building and everything. Leo is building Tallyho in British Columbia. It's this 1913 boat that he's rebuilding from scratch. And he's got this massive following, and they put up a video every two weeks. And you're living through this guy, who's just the joy of boat building and just experiencing and watching that. I never would have done that, you know. And technology is allowing those kind of things to happen.
Mark Bergin 1:04:25
Yeah. And so it's interesting. I think social media where last year it had kind of fallen in a bit of a hole because we understood it wasn't everything that we imagined it to be. And it was a bit disappointing. Now we're finding out it's a great way to go connect with family, to go or connect to projects that might give you inspiration and might surprise you. And thank God everybody's travel photos have stopped because all of, you know that FOMO that you had of everyone who was telling you they were traveling everywhere. So we've got a very different expression that's coming up there. Team, we need to wrap up here because we're over 65 minutes. This has been a phenomenal conversation with the pace that it's had in there. Are there any final comments that you've got that are coming out and you're saying, I've got to go mention this. I think Karin, your expression about the pragmatism for the younger generation and them looking down rather than necessarily looking up. I think that's such an important thing. And it behoves us to actually consider if we're looking at a better future for future generations, maybe we should contextualize it on them rather than our own spot. That's that we and me moment, isn't that there? Anybody else? I feel like and auctioneer .... You're all silent. You'r all done. Oh, ok. Look, that's brilliam. Because it's hard to know where you finish these things off, where you don't finish off. I'm always humbled to have everyone's attention. Next week, we're heading off to Asia, which is I do recommend that you tune into that and have a look at the episode because you see a totally different context. That's the beauty about going between the US market, the Asian market, Europe, the UK and Australia. What we're doing is giving an insight to how different people are thinking, how they're solving and how they're imagining that better future. Panelists, as always I'm humbled to go have your presence here, to be able to share some of your mind space. And I do hope that you can imagine a Better Future. Thank you very much for your time.
Jon Winebrenner 1:06:27
Thanks, Mark.
Mark Bergin 1:06:27
That was perfect. Thank you dogs. Thanks, everyone.
Transcript by Otter AI
Hosted by: Mark Bergin
Podcast Production: Pat Daly
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