Podcast appearances and mentions of martin well

Matters of life and death Australia’s death care and funeral industry is big business. We meet death doula Dr Annetta Mallon and funeral industry adviser Martin Tobin, two caring and passionate business owners supporting you and your loved ones through the last step on life’s journey. About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors. Join James Valentine for the sixth season of Life’s Booming: Dying to Know, our most unflinching yet. We’ll have the conversations that are hardest to have, ask the questions that are easy to ignore, and hear stories that will make you think differently about the one thing we’re all guaranteed to experience: Death. Featuring interviews with famous faces as well as experts in the space, we uncover what they know about what we can expect. There are hard truths, surprising discoveries, tears and even laughs. Nothing about death is off the table. Dr Annetta Mallon is an end-of-life consultant, doula and educator and grief psychotherapist based in Tasmania. With decades of experience in trauma recovery and personal growth, Annetta helps people understand their rights and options at the end of life – especially those without a strong support network. Martin Tobin is a recognised family name in the funeral business. He is founder of Funeral Direction, a consultancy supporting funeral homes and cemeteries across Australia and New Zealand. A former solicitor, Martin brings legal, strategic and business insight, and is focused on helping the industry evolve through innovation, education and long-term planning. If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note – lifesbooming@seniors.com.au Watch Life’s Booming on YouTube Listen to Life's Booming on Apple Podcasts Listen to Life's Booming on Spotify For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency, in conjunction with Ampel at Myrtle & Pine Studios -- Disclaimer: Please be advised that this episode contains discussions about death, which may be triggering or upsetting for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. If you are struggling with the loss of a loved one, please know that you are not alone and there are resources available. For additional support please contact Lifeline on 131 114 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636. TRANSCRIPT: S06EP03_Matters of Life and Death James: Hello, and welcome to Life's Booming. I'm James Valentine, and this season, we're talking about death. In this episode, we're talking about matters of life and death, well, the final matter, how we say goodbye. Death is big business, and Australia's death care and funeral industry is worth more than $2 billion. And with us are two entrepreneurs, two people who work in this area, supporting you and your loved ones through the last step on life’s journey. We're joined by Dr. Annetta Mallon, an end of life consultant, an educator, and also known as a death doula. And Martin Tobin is a recognised family name in the funeral business and is now an expert adviser on the global funeral industry. Annetta, Martin, welcome to Life's Booming. So many places to start. I'm excited. And Martin, I'll start with you. What's it like when the family business is death? Martin: Yeah, well, it's all I've ever known. When I was, you know, when I was born and grew up, I, we actually lived in a funeral parlour. Um, so when I was, for the first two or three years of my life, uh, the funeral parlour was downstairs. We lived upstairs. So when it's all you've known, you don't think anything different of it. And I suppose all of my friends and sort of social groups when I was young and a teenager thought it was pretty quirky and funny, but for me, it was what I knew. My grandfather and his brother started our family business in the thirties. And by the time I came along, it was well, well and truly established. I didn't really work directly in it straight away after leaving school, but it was always in the background. And so I've always been comfortable with it. James: Yeah. But such an interesting thing. Like what's, what's the dinner time conversation. Did you have a good day, darling? Good deaths? Some good deaths? Martin: Well, all of that. You know, I think that's the stereotype, isn't it, that funeral directors are a bit, sort of weird and severe and a bit morbid, but, but it's, it's far from the truth. You know, I think most people who work in funeral service, and the work that Annetta does, are really warm and loving and gregarious people because you have to have those qualities to really survive and thrive in, in what we do in that space. James: You kind of got to love life, Annetta. Annetta: Absolutely. We are fiercely alive until we are dead. And I think that. Whether it's from the professional funeral side of things or more from consumer advocate and personal support side of things, coming in with a joke – why do we screw the coffin lids down so hard to keep the oncologist out. Great icebreaker: show up with cake. Make jokes, because most of us have a lot of laughter and love in our lives and it's important to leaven sorrow and, and grief. Martin: Yeah. Don't let death just drown out the… James: What's the undertaker's joke? Martin: Oh, there's so many. I mean, everyone used to, I used to get called Stiffy Tobin, that sort of stuff. James: Stiffy, Tobin… Martin: …you know, a bit. So a lot of funeral directors get called Stiffy. Annetta: …that's a 1930s cartoon character, isn't it? James: It's like, it's the, the Millers, the Millers and bakers are Dusty. You know, it's that, it's that era, isn't it? Annetta: You're a Tintin character. James: Yeah, exactly. Martin: Yeah. Luckily I wasn't, you know, I don't fit the stereotype of tall and gray. I'm sort of fairly short and not gray. And so when I joined our family business, I was quite young. So I was lucky I sort of didn't fit that stereotype. And back in the early 90s, there was very few women, very few people, young people, very few people from, from diverse backgrounds. So it's changed a lot really for the better in that sense. So there's no stereotypical funeral director now it's, it's a really, really diverse. James: What's a, what's a doula? Annetta: Well, a doula is someone who supports life's transitions. So I've been a birth doula, and it's a very powerful energy when someone comes into the world, but it's really not my jam. I like the other transition, and I'm better at it. I provide an awful lot of information for people who have questions like, what is this going to feel like? Should I be at home or should I be in the hospital? And the point of a lot of my conversations is not to provide answers, but to support people into recognising what's best for them, which I suspect is actually quite a lot of what Martin does, with the way that you work with businesses. James: When do you turn up? Annetta: A piece of string question. I can turn up pre-need, so there's no terminal or life limiting diagnosis. There's a bit of a myth that we turn up magically, like a fairy, in the last 24 hours of life. That's not really great or optimal. James: So, do some people get you, even if, well, I don't have a diagnosis, but I want to start working with a doula? Annetta: If you're a doula like me who does planning and can answer questions and help people prepare their documentation and their wishes, because that's not anything you want to be doing at the last minute and in cases where there's dementia and cognitive decline. It's too late then to get your planning in place. So I also help to support and foster family-wide and network-wide conversations so that everyone understands if someone's interested in assisted dying, let's talk about that. Does anyone have questions, for example. Or have you considered your pets in your planning? Are you including your grandchildren or just your children? Would you prefer to die in a medicalised environment, ideally, or in a home like environment? James: So you can, yeah, so you're there at any point and really every circumstance is entirely different. Annetta: It is, it's unique every single time. James: Same for funerals? Martin: Yeah, I mean, a funeral really should be a reflection of the person's life and interests and values and philosophies, and sometimes, you know, historically, traditionally, in say the last couple of hundred years that, that often revolved around their, their faith. So these days funerals are quite sort of open-ended, quite, quite unstructured, quite celebratory and people are trying to find some ritual in that and some meaning in that and, and that's the, that's the real change that's happening in funeral service. You know, funerals have been going on for thousands of years. They're one of the early rituals of human, human existence. So, and they emanate from the human need to stop when someone from among us leaves us, and reflect on that person's life, to typically grieve that person, if they meant something to us. So that is, you know, invariably people feel sad, not always, but typically. And people have to then say, well, how do we, how do we move forward without this person? And then for a lot of people, that's incredibly difficult. Grief, grief is just our response to loss. You can't control it. You can't make it go away. So if you suppress it in the early days, it comes back to bite you later. So a funeral is a chance to gather, reflect, embrace the reality of the death and embrace the early stages of the grief, the pain that you'll often experience, and to receive support from your community and to let go of that person because they go from being with you to being a memory. James: It's interesting the way you phrased it or the point of view you expressed there was to me it was the person closest to whoever's died, it's for them. And then it's for the community. It's not for us. Funeral's not for the guy that died. The funeral's for us. Martin: Yep, that's right. And we're finding a lot of people now trying to sort of orchestrate their own celebration and say, this is what I want. I want this to happen, that to happen. And that's, that's got a place, but it's really for the living, for the, for those that are left behind. And, you know, the dead, the dead can't tell the living what, how to feel. But they can give guidance and direction, but I think it's really important that the funerals, funerals are done the way that the survivors feel they need, need to do it so that they, that helps them get back into life afterwards. James: Yeah. Yeah. Would you agree? What's a funeral for? Annetta: I think a funeral is an opportunity to remember why your person was so important to you. One of the big changes that I think we're going to see more and more of in Australia now, with assisted dying nationally available, is a fabulous ‘going away party’, as I call them. So people who attend their own funerals, because basically, especially if you're in a hospital, you know when your time is coming. So there's almost like a bookending effect where we have a celebration with the person and they get to say goodbyes and explain to people why they were important and hear all the good stuff. Then there's probably going to be a gathering of some kind afterwards, possibly ham rolls and whisky will play a part, because, as Martin has said, we need to commemorate the fact that this aspect of our lives is now irrevocably changed. I think for a lot of us, the relationship goes on, but it's very different. I still talk to my mother and my grandmother, both of whom are dead. I don't expect them to respond. But there's still kind of… James: …I think that's the sane way to do it. If you expect them to respond, I don't… Annetta: That's a different conversation. James: That's different. Yeah. We're doing another whole episode on that. Martin: Different podcast. Annetta: Different podcast. James: From Beyond the Grave. Welcome. So again, the funeral's not really for the dead person. Annetta: I've never thought a funeral is for the dead person. It is to really bring us out of the immense shock of the raw grief that – and this is a generalisation – is about 72 hours. And that's not a sustainable emotional state. We get to come together. We get to shift from intense grief, the personal experience of loss and that response – because grief is love with no place left to be put – into mourning, which is a more shared communal public sense of loss, which is a really important transitional period in accepting a death, coming to terms with a death, acknowledging a death. And the funeral makes a space that I think is important, not just for the closest people, but for friends, work colleagues, community members. So there is a space that can be welcoming for a variety of community members, which is also really important. Community can be quite intimate and small, it can be broader and more encompassing. Martin: Yeah, look, I think it does need to, I think a good funeral will reflect the person's life. If, if it's, if it's not authentic, if you go to that funeral and you say, Gee, that wasn't about Fred, then clearly the family have got it wrong. So there has to, they have to be the central character, and that has to, you know, has to really reflect who they were, ideally. But if Fred starts micromanaging his service, his celebration, then I think we're missing the point because it really is for, for those left behind to say, what's going to be meaningful for me to help me, you know, take stock of my life now that Fred's, Fred's gone. A good example is, you know, sometimes people these days will often say, look, let's not go to the fuss of a funeral. Let's, let's have a private cremation or burial and we'll have a memorial service, which is fine. And a lot of people choose that. But if Fred's not there, you know, the emotions around how people feel about Fred and the stories about him aren't really aren't heightened enough for people to really feel what they should feel at a funeral. It's hard to sort of get started with your grief, is sort of the perspective I have… James: …But I suppose there's often that, that's often thought of, we're going to do this in a few days, but the memorials in two weeks… Annetta: I think it's individual. And I also think it is broader culture. So for example, in some cultures, from Eastern Europe, there are marker days. So you will have the funeral on a particular day and then you might do something 10 days later. And then the 40th day might be, for example, in the Macedonian community… I still pay attention to ‘death-aversaries’ and I pay attention to it because it's going to affect my mood and the way I go throughout the day because I will be thinking about that person. And ideally, you have had the opportunity to spend time with your person, whether that's in a hospital room. For example, I did that when my mother died. We were allowed to have the room for as long as we wanted with her. Or at home, and you might keep your person at home for a day or two and sing to them, wash them, sit in silence, cry with them, laugh with them. That's, that can be part of the saying goodbye, which the funeral then when it's done properly and appropriately, I think sort of wraps everything up and ties it as neatly together as you can so that you can move into all of the afters of grief. James: Martin, let's talk about the, the business of funerals. It's a big business, isn't it? Martin: Well, it's, it became an industry a hundred plus years ago, something that people started outsourcing to, you know. And initially it was outsourced to cabinet makers who made the coffin. And then they, the cabinet maker said, well I can, not only can I make the coffin, but I can transfer the body from the place of death and… And over a period of time it became an industry. So, it is there, so it is an organised industry in most, most countries around the world. And so the, the organised funeral director will provide a range of services to, you know, support people who've lost, lost someone. In Australia, it's primarily, historically, made up of family owned private businesses that are multi generational family businesses. But about 25 years or so ago, a lot of the well known family businesses were purchased by larger groups. But certainly they're at, in my view, they're at a competitive disadvantage to a generally family owned local community based, family owned business, because they just don't have that essence. James: Yeah. Is it a strange thing? I mean, you've talked very compassionately about grief and about the humanity of what's involved about the moment of death and what people are dealing with. Yet this is something that you'll make profit from, that the company is going to make profit from. Is that a strange, is there a conflict there? Martin: There isn't really. I mean, you know, sometimes I think a lot of the people who are attracted to the industry, yeah, they're talking to a family and they've gone through a loss and there's a lot of grief and pain and there might be, there might be some challenging financial circumstances too that they glean from the conversation. And yeah, that people feel, feel, Oh, gee, how can we add pain to them, or, you know, add, you know, send them an invoice for $10,000, whatever it might be on top of what they're already experiencing. So yeah, it is a little bit uncomfortable, but I think if, if the business has integrity around its pricing and there's, there's genuine options and, and you know, they're not sort of forced into any sort of uncomfortable decisions, then, you know, most people recognise that a funeral, if it, you know, needs to be done in a certain way, there's going to be a cost to that. James: And do you find that, you know, the, the rise of doulas, the presence of doulas, the change… the way in which there seems to be a lot of, a lot of alternatives to those bigger companies or that standard sort of the mahogany casket approach. Is that in a reaction to this sort of somewhat, you know, industrialisation of, of the process? Annetta: Partially, yes, and from my perspective, I think we can, Okay, Boomer, let's give you a big vote of thanks, because at every stage of life, the Boomer generation, it's a cliche for a reason, they've demanded information and choice, and they want things on their terms far more than we'd seen in the silent generation, certainly, and previous generations. So, what are my rights, options, and choices at end of life? What can we do better and differently? It's made space for things like Daisybox Caskets Australia. I'm not affiliated with them, but they offer a lower and a high quality product, but it's less expensive than mahogany, which you mentioned. Not a bad option for families on a budget, not a bad option for cremations. I think, as we are in such an almost overwhelm of information age, people do want to know what's possible and we can readily see that, for example, in the USA, we've got Katrina Spade, who started with the urban death project. James: What’s that? Annetta: The urban death project was an architectural hypothetical exercise. How can we offer a space for respectful memorialisation and body disposition that is not taking up valuable land. And from this, then we have, recompose, which is natural, organic reduction, nor human composting. In Tasmania, we've got the very first water based cremation service. James: What is that? Because I mean, cremation implies fire to me, not water. Annetta: Yes. So it's alkaline hydrolysis. It's a high temperature, high alkaline process of dissolving everything, which at the end you get a product that instead of gray ashes, white, you get a completely sterile liquid, that I personally don't see why we can't use on green spaces, urban green spaces, but it can go down the drain. James: Just water me in the park. Just go water the flowers with me. Annetta: I quite like that. Martin: Splash me into the ocean. James: Splash me into the ocean. Annetta: There we go. And it's, it's about a seventh of the environmental footprint of a flame cremation. Costs about the same, maybe a little bit more, but we also have a team that will transport statewide. We don't do natural burial, we don't have dedicated natural burial, um, spaces in Australia. The UK does it really well. James: Again, what’s natural burial? Annetta: Okay, so instead of going down six feet, like into colder ground, which is anaerobic, there's frequently a lot of concrete involved, you're in essentially like a hotter ground. You've got more microbes and oxygen, you're going to break down faster. And in the UK, the multipurpose spaces where you might be running, sheep, for example, or growing wildflowers or food. In the USA, when you have the composted remains of people, which turns out to be quite a lot, large in volume, they work with a national park, and it actually goes to beautify hiking trails and to recondition public spaces. James: I like all these. Annetta: I like it too. James: They're kind of positive, aren't they? Annetta: There's options for everybody. So it's opening up spaces for non medical community based people like myself. It also means that there's new and exciting ways for funeral directors to then work with people to make the meaningful, personalised, ritual and ceremony and funeral experience. So, thank you, Boomers. We've got a lot of change. James: Yeah.. And is, are the traditional companies, are they embracing this? Are they seeing the need to embrace this? [00:19:15] Martin: The traditional funeral of being in a church and sort of straight to the cemetery with, with everything sort of reasonably structured, that pattern has definitely broken. We're seeing two things in the Australian industry, that is people trending or consumers saying That doesn't do it for me anymore, I'm either going to go for something very simple that's, like, low cost and, you know, where there's not much of a fuss; or people are saying, I want something highly customised, highly celebratory, highly innovative. And the companies that have stayed quite traditional and conservative are actually losing relevance. And so the funeral directors who are seeing those Baby Boomer-led changes, and are responding construct-- who are responding or actually leading the way themselves and coming up with some of those ideas themselves, they're the ones that are becoming or staying relevant and are thriving. You know, there's a funeral company called Tender Funerals who, whose focus and philosophy is that the family are much more involved in the actual funeral, which is, which is a great thing, which is how it should have, how it used to be. You know, the family themselves would… James: So what might take place? What do they, what do they do? Martin: Well, they might wash and dress the body as, as Annetta said, you know, they might, they might carry the coffin in some of the steps that normally the funeral director would, would only do. There's subtle differences and I don't, I don't profess to know a lot about what they do, but, but philosophically their, their message is let's do funerals the way they used to be done, and not outsource everything to the funeral director. So that's a challenge for the organised industry, because people are responding to that, and because people are saying, Yeah, actually, that's how we did use to do it. And I think the work that doulas are doing is getting people comfortable with the conversation, you know, the fact that we all die and that… Annetta: We've checked, everyone dies. Yeah. Martin: Yeah, we worked that out before. Annetta: Spoiler alert. James: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Martin: So, you know, the organised industry has to realise that with education and Boomer-led sort of innovation, there's a lot more, you know, sort of change and sort of innovation they have to embrace, otherwise they will become irrelevant. Annetta: Whether you're coming from a more business-like perspective or something that's more community led, we all offer skills and services that have value. People train to be funeral directors and celebrants. People train to be morticians, people train to be doulas. And there's an awful lot of ongoing research and continuing education because the legislation is changing very quickly, in terms of documentation, where it's stored, how it's processed. Assisted dying is constantly changing, as we review the laws. And there is a value to that. I'm not a charity. I like to eat meals and sleep under a roof. So, I think one of the unexpected benefits of having more open conversations, generally, is people can recognise, Oh, well, maybe this much for a funeral seems too much, but this is a reasonable sum and I'm happy to pay that sum because we're getting something of value, in the end. That may be more personalised, maybe more ritualised and traditional, but then we have an exchange of something for something. James: But also those pro, the kind of, you know, those newer processes you were describing, even of how we dispose of the body, a more sustainable approach, is going to reflect a lot of people's values, you know, in a way that a traditional cask of being buried at a six feet under. Martin: Funerals don't operate in a vacuum. You know, they're part of the broader society. James: Yeah. Why do you like working in the area of death? Martin: It's a real privilege to, to work with, I mean, you know, the work that Annetta does is amazing. Like to have an open conversation with someone who is facing their own mortality, must, every day, must be an amazing privilege. And the work that I've done historically is after that. So it's, it's not as, it's not as confronting, because it's happened, but it's just really satisfying work to help people, you know, when they are at a low point to do something for them that's valuable, that's meaningful, and to help them with the long-term journey they're about to embark on. A funeral is just one of the first steps in their, their overall journey without that person. And if you can get them off to a good start with a good, you know, this notion of a good funeral, then, you know, then it's incredibly satisfying work. The vast majority of the people that work in funeral service, and I'm sure in the work that you do, are there for the right reasons. They're there because they, they are people-driven people, they love helping. They want to make a difference for people. So, it's a very satisfying industry. But most of what we have, the stereotype of we're all a bit weird and that it's far, it's almost the opposite. James: Annetta, why do you like it? You said you were better than this. You'd been a birth doula but you said ‘I'm better at death’. Annetta: I am better at death. I like puppies, not children, which probably explains a lot. I'm a good story keeper. And someone who is at end of life or is coming to terms with a life-limiting or terminal diagnosis – maybe a slower decline or more rapid decline – there is still an essence of themselves that they would like to have preserved, which I think feeds into this idea of the meaningful, purposeful funeral. The meaningful, purposeful end-of-life, with quality of life until we die, and then trying to offer a quality of life to people as they come to terms with the death of their person, is values driven, I think, in terms of planning. And also, for me, it's about honoring that person and trying to empower them with as much information as appropriate so that they can make informed decisions. I think there's nothing more empowering. When I've done my job really right, I'm not even involved when someone dies. Sometimes I'm in the room and that's okay, but often I will hear from families afterwards. And there's wonderful stories about the time that was spent while their person was dying, caring for their person's body after death, how the family and the friends came together to facilitate all of that, and then how that relationship of community changes, or stays the same, following that. So people then find meaning in their own life, get more excited about planning. The death literacy snowball is a wonderful thing to watch in action. That's my jam. I really love it. James: What do they do? What, what have people told you about death? Annetta: Interestingly enough, for a lot of people, it's not about death itself. It's about being frightened of dying. My pain threshold's in the basement, I don't want to be in pain. That bothers me far more than my moment of death. The people they loved know that they're loved… James: They want that, they want them to know? Annetta: … They want that. They want to know that love has been expressed, which I think is possibly why we're seeing that uptick, too, and people saying, I'd like this playlist at my funeral. I always start with a playlist with planning, you know, control it, be the DJ. Could we talk about this? I'd like these elements. Because it's a way of caretaking in a sense, the people that they're going to leave behind. The messages that people leave are messages of love. I think that's something the film Love Actually got really right, in the beginning. How do I convey that? How can I try and make that my legacy? So we're seeing it arise in, life writing, the narrative of someone's life so that there might be a digital book or voice recordings. We're seeing that with social media platforms where social accounts can be turned into memorial accounts. But I think also we need to prepare ourselves for the fact that sometimes that is all yanked away with no warning, sometimes, by family members who think that that's the right thing to do. And that can leave people devastated. So I think we're all kind of jogging along together, trying to come to terms with all the changes and make them a good fit for individuals. James: Martin, what do you hear? What do hear people say about death? Martin: Most people dread the day, you know, they're dreading the day, they have to get it, get up there in front of all those people, walk through the gathering and everyone's looking at them. And so there's a, there's a lot of dread. People will say, can we just get over and done with? Can we do it tomorrow? You know, when the death's been today, or whatever. So there is that sense that it's going to be an ordeal. So if, after it's happened and you, the feedback is all the conversations you hear are, Oh, that was really special and it went well and, and what a tribute we paid to Dad or Mum, you know, you know, he would have loved it or whatever. You know, that you've lifted all that dread away, and then they move ahead. So they're off to a good start. Otherwise, if we just die and we, we pause for a few minutes and we get back on the bike and start living again, well, you know, that person, all their, what they meant to us and all their stories and history and what they wanted to be said about them just gets shuffled aside and we get on with life again. So I think we, I think most of us deserve a bit better than that. And a funeral is a really good opportunity to just stop the clock for a while. You know, we don't have to wallow in it for weeks. And some cultures do, they actually, they put a real ritual around it. But as a minimum, just have some, some chance where we can say, his life mattered. I think that's, I think that's really good. Annetta: Yeah. James: This has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much, Annetta. Thank you. Annetta: Thank you for having me, James. It's been a pleasure. James: Martin, thank you. Martin: I enjoyed it. James: Terrific. Thanks to our guests, Dr. Annetta Mallon and Martin Tobin. You've been listening to Season 6 of Life's Booming, Dying to Know, brought to you by Australian Seniors. Please, leave a review or tell someone about it. Head to seniors.com.au/podcast for more episodes. May your life be booming. I'm James Valentine.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this episode, my guests are Martin Lena and Linda Poppe of Survival International. They join me to discuss “fortress conservation” in the Congo, the issues facing Kahuzi-Biega National Park, and the recent victories of Survival International there. Linda is a political scientist and director of the Berlin office of Survival International, the global movement for Indigenous peoples' rights. She is also part of Survival's campaign to Decolonize Conservation, which supports Indigenous peoples, who continue to suffer land theft and human rights abuses in the name of conservation.Martin is an advocacy officer for Survival International. He primarily works on Survival's campaign to Decolonize Conservation and has collected testimonies directly from communities facing violations of their rights in the name of conservation. Show Notes:What Conservation Looks like in the Democratic Republic of the CongoThe Evictions of the BatwaSafari Tourism in DRC ConflictThe Militarization of Conservation in Kahuzi-Biega National ParkLand Guards vs Land GuardiansOrganizing Victory! Scrapping French Involvement in Kahuze-BiegaThe German Government Continues to Fund the ParkSolidarity: How to Respond / Act in ConcertHomework:Survival International: French government scraps funding plan for Kahuzi-Biega National Park, citing human rights concernsSurvival International Decolonize Conservation CampaignBalancing Act: The Imperative of Social and Ecological Justice in Kahuzi-BiegaTranscript:Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome to the End of Tourism Podcast, Martin and Linda. I'd love it if I could start by asking you two to explain to our listeners where you two find yourselves today and what the world looks like there for you. Linda: Well, hi everyone. My name is Linda. I work for Survival International and I'm in Berlin. I'm at home, actually, and I look forward to talking to you and chatting with you.It's dark outside already, but, well, that's, I guess, the time of the year. Martin: And I'm based in Paris, also at home, but I work at Survival's French office. And how does the world feel right now? It feels a bit too warm for October, but other than that. Chris: Well, thank you both for for joining me today. I'd like to begin by reminiscing on the season three interview that I had with your colleague Fiore Longo, entitled "Decolonizing Conservation in Africa and Beyond."And in that interview, we discussed the history [00:01:00] of conservation as colonization in the context of Tanzania and the national parks that were built there and the indigenous lands that were stolen in order to do so. I'm curious if you two could offer a bit of background for our listeners in terms of the history of conservation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and especially in regards to the Batwa people and the Kahuzi Biega National Park.Linda: We were quite you know, astonished of the colonial history that, we find in the park where we're here to discuss today. Well, the Congo, obviously, you know, was a colony. And I think in this context, we also need to look at the conservation that is happening in the DRC today.And a lot of the things that you have discussed with our colleague, feel very true for the DRC as well. And the, the park that we're going to look at today, I think it's probably [00:02:00] also the best example to start to explain a little bit what conservation looks like in DRC. It's an older park, so it was created a longer time ago, and it was always regarded as something that is there to protect precious nature for people to look at and not for people to go and live in.And this is exactly what the problem is today, which we see continues, that the people that used to live on this land are being pushed outside violently, separated from the land which they call home, which is everything for them, the supermarket, the church, the school, just in the name of conserving supposed nature.And unfortunately, this is something that we see all over the DRC and different protected areas that exist there, that we still follow this colonial idea of mostly European [00:03:00] conservationists in history and also currently that claim that they're protecting nature, often in tandem with international conservation NGOs.In the park we look at today, it's the Wildlife Conservation Society, and they're, yeah, trying to get rid of the original inhabitants that have guarded these spaces for such a long time. Martin: To build on that, in our campaign to decolonize conservation and survival, we often say that fortress conservation has deep colonial roots and you can definitely see that with the the actual history of the of Kahuzi Biega National Park because it started as a reserve that was created by the Belgian colonial government in 1937 and It was transformed into a national park after independence.So in the 70s, but it was still designated as such following the lobbying of a Belgian conservationist. So it's really the continuation the Western and the European will to keep controlling the, [00:04:00] the independent territories. And that in Africa oftentimes was done through conservation.Linda: And it also has this idea of, I think a lot of the conservation projects that we see, Martin just said it, there was also this post independence push on creating national parks, which was obviously related to the idea that Europeans might lose hold of control in certain areas, so they were pushing for the creation of national parks like the Kahuzi Biega National Park.And that is the setting that we're talking about, basically, something that has very colonial roots and has been pushed into the post colonial era, but in a way which is actually very colonial. Chris: Thank you both for that brief, brief history and introduction into what we'll be speaking about today, Linda, you mentioned that so many of the circumstances around the creation of these national parks includes the exclusion and [00:05:00] displacement of the original inhabitants.And in this case, among others, this includes the Batwa people. And so I'd like to just give our listeners a little bit of a context for what's happened to the Batwa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And so the statistics tell us that "over 90 percent of the 87, 000 indigenous Batwa people in the park have lost legal access to their native territory, turned into conservation areas, and who are desperately poor," according to a 2009 United Nations report.Now, in a recent Reuters article, it's written that, quote, "Local human rights and environmental experts say that the authorities failure to fulfill promises to the Batwa has undermined efforts to protect the forest and its endangered species, including some of the last populations of eastern lowland gorilla.Some of the Batwa around the [00:06:00] park participate in the illegal poaching, mining, and logging that are destroying the gorilla's globally significant habitat. As a result, the conservation outlook for the park is critical, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature." The article goes further and says that "the Batwa have no choice because they are poverty stricken, according to Josue Aruna, president of the province's environmental civil society group, who does community outreach for the Batwa." It seems in this way that the land rights and traditional lifestyles of the Batwa are intimately tied to the health and survival of the ecosystems within the national park, which they've been excluded from, and that their poverty is a consequence of their displacement. Do you think that the issue is as simple as that? Martin: It's always interesting to read these reports from the conservationists, whether it's the IUCN or the NGOs, because the problem is always "the local people. So they are poor and they [00:07:00] have no choice. They participate in poaching." and it's always their fault.Like you were saying, if they end up being poor it's because they were evicted from the land. And as Linda was saying earlier, the forest and the land more generally is everything to them or was everything to them. So it's not only the place where they get food, it's also the whole basis of their identity and their way of life.So once they lose that, they end up in our world, capitalist system, but at the lowest possible level. So, that's why they end up in poverty. But it's a problem that was created by the conservationists themselves. And even when you read Their discourse or their position about trying to improve the situation for the Batwa, it's always about generating revenue ,lifting them out of poverty, developing alternative livelihoods. But what we are campaigning for is not some alternative to the loss of their rights. It's Their land rights themselves. And to go to your other question [00:08:00] about the fact that the loss of their land rights has led to a degrading in the health of the ecosystem.I think, yes, for sure. That has been the case, and it's what we're seeing all around the world in these protected areas that are supposed to protect nature. But actually, once you evict the best conservationists and the people that were taking care of the land for decades, then there is room for all kinds of exploitation whether it be mass tourism or luxury safaris or even mining and logging concessions.So it's not a coincidence if 80 percent of the biodiversity on the planet is located in indigenous territories. It's because they have lived in the land. It's not wild nature. They have lived there for generations. They have protected it and they have shaped it through their practices. So, to us, the best way to protect this ecosystem is to ensure that their land rights are respected and blaming them for poaching or putting that on the fact that they are poor, it's just [00:09:00] dishonest and ignoring the basis of the problem.Linda: Yeah. I agree. And when you just read out these sentences, I noted down like the way it was formulated, as a result, the park is threatened. It's again, just focusing on the local people as being the problem. Like the protected areas, they are to protect an area from the local people, which I think becomes very clear in the way you explained it. And also, like, Martin, I'm quite struck by the idea that they talk about poor people, but ignoring that, you know, their actions that of the Batwa have also caused this poverty. So it's, in a way, you know, first you make people poor and then you kind of insult them almost for being poor and then, you know, acting accordingly.I think that is quite, you know, ignoring what has happened. And I think it's the same with [00:10:00] the general model of conservation. Like the sentences you read, I mean, there is some sympathy in it, you know, it sounds like, "oh, these poor people," you know, "in a way we regret what has happened and that they were evicted."But it's like "those poor people," they don't really look at, you know, why were they evicted and what are the consequences for our kind of conservation today? Like the consequence could be that the Batwa can return to their land because they are the best guardians and because it would give them a base to, to live, not in poverty.So that consequence, they don't see it's because they ignore all the things that have caused the supposed poverty and have caused this kind of conservation that we see. So, don't think about what we've done in the past, we'll just go on, but that is a problem because they don't learn any lessons from what has happened and that land rights should be so important.Chris: Yeah, I think that it definitely points towards this notion that I think a lot of people are becoming apt to in our [00:11:00] times in these days, which is the general kind of approach to the dilemmas in these contexts are to look at the symptoms of the dilemma and not the causes.And in the context of the eviction and exile, displacement of the Batwa people, one of the articles mentions that "one of the consequences of the induced poverty includes the endangering and further endangering of the eastern lowland gorilla." And I mention this because in my research leading up to this interview, this conversation, I looked into the tourism offerings in Kahuzi Biega, in the National Park, and I found the following.I'm just gonna read off a list of what I did find. " Gorilla safaris, or trekking. Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Center tours. Camping safaris. Cultural tours. Bird [00:12:00] watching. Hiking. Climbing and boat cruises." And so my next question is this. To what extent does the safari tourism in the national park play a part in this conflict?Linda: Oh, that's a super interesting question. I mean, it obviously depends on the specific park that you look at. But I think I would say in almost any national park that we look at in Survival, there is some kind of idea that this park needs to have tourists. Tourists need to come and go and see the beauty of nature, ideally Western tourists, so that they become involved in conservation and donate money, and also in a way that tourism would be a way to pay for services that are related to maintaining the park.So it's something that usually always pops up. It's kind of, it's like twins a little bit. And, you know, I, I work on, on [00:13:00] mostly German politics and how they relate to this conservation. And it's something that you can't really separate where you read about conservation projects that the German government funds, you will always also read about tourism.So they're very interlinked. In some parks, you know, there isn't a lot of tourism because the situation is not very attractive to western tourists, but the idea is always there. And then the extent to which tourism actually happens obviously differs and then has different effects. In some parks that we work on, There's a lot of tourism, there's a lot of creation of infrastructure for tourists, hotels, for roads, for tourist vehicles to go places.Then it obviously has a much stronger impact on the area and also on the people that live there. If there are less tourists, then the actual effect of tourism is, of course, a little bit less than it might sound in these proposals to have tourists there at all.Chris: In the [00:14:00] context of conflict zones, which from what I understand this particular park in the Congo is a conflict zone, or at least parts of it, that tourism can act as a kind of barrier between local populations or local ecologies and the consequences of those conflict zones, right? But it doesn't necessarily stop the conflict. It just turns it underground, it turns a kind of blind eye to it, waiting, in most instances that I know of, until the organized crime in the area ends up getting, you know, their hands into the economy of, of the tourism itself.Martin: Yeah, I mean, I agree with Linda that it's always there and it's always under the discourse and it's never only about conservation, there's always tourism. And often the national parks are created for this purpose. If you read the UNESCO definition or the IUCN definition of what a national park is, it says it's also for [00:15:00] recreation.So these places are built for tourists. against the locals. So, yeah, it's always there and it's even in the definition.Linda: So yeah, when you said tourism is a barrier in some cases tourism can amplify the problems that are there because there is more eviction or there's more interest of, for example, governments to evict people, to create this great picture of nature, which is so attractive to tourists.So I think, I would find it as something that can really worsen the situation. I think from what I've seen, you know. We sometimes talk about sustainable tourism or respectful tourism, but in the terms of conservation projects, my impression really is that it's been harmful.And the indigenous populations that work in tourism, which is one of the things that funders of conservation projects often [00:16:00] say, that they can find jobs in tourism. A lot of these jobs are not very good. And I would argue that a lot of times people need to take these jobs because they have lost the choice to not take a job and live from the forest.Chris: Yeah, it's an interesting thing to wonder about in the little research that I did around what's happening in this particular park in the Congo, that there are rebel groups. It is a conflict zone, and yet there are these tourism offerings, right? And that surely, the champions of the National Park and conservation and in many areas would say, "well, you know, the more, the more tourism we can get in here the more we can undermine at least the economic causes if not the political ones that are contributing to the violence," when in fact, from what I can understand from Survival's work, that this is just deepens the causes that produced that conflict and that exile in the first place.Linda: Yeah. And I think there's also [00:17:00] perception of injustice, which we shouldn't underestimate. I mean, if you're an indigenous person that has been violently evicted or whose family has been violently evicted from a certain area, and then you see, Western tourists mostly, which are rich, you know, pay a lot of money for these trips, are allowed to go in and use that area in a way. I think that also creates, yeah, a sense of injustice, which is also, yeah, it's quite, quite sad. Chris: Mm hmm. Definitely. And then that's certainly what we see in over touristed places around the world and in places that are just starting to become over touristed, this kind of deep resentment amongst locals for the inequalities, the growing inequalities and yeah, as well, the injustices that these industries bring.And so on that point of conflict zones, especially in and around Kahuzi Biega. I wanted to ask you both a question around the militarization of conservation. So, [00:18:00] some people believe that militarized park police, which is what exists in this park, are a necessary evil.Officially, at least, "the guards protect the park from armed militias or rebel groups in the area, ensuring that they stay out of the park." Of course, those who they confront and sometimes attack also include the indigenous people, the Batwa in this case, who are trying to retake and reclaim their ancestral lands.And the argument is that without the guards, the land would fall into the hands of much more malevolent groups or forces. And so how do you think the presence of armed conflict as well as militarized conservation guards complicates the issue? Linda: That's a tough question. Well, maybe I can just give like a little anecdote.It was actually about this park, the [00:19:00] Kahuzi Biega National Park, and we were talking to German politicians and government officials about the problem of conflict and about the problem that these park rangers you know, are trained and have a lot of weapons, which seems very militant. And they, they were seeing the problem.They were seeing that this is probably not the best thing they should do, support security forces in an area which is already so problematic. But their thinking was, if we don't give them the money, now we have created this this force, basically. We have hired people, we have trained them.Now, if we stop supporting them, what are they going to do? You know, they're gonna maybe take the training and their weapons and make it even worse. So in a way, I mean, this was off record, right? They were just kind of thinking out loud. But in a way, they were seeing that the projects that they have supported have created structures which [00:20:00] very likely will increase conflict.And it seems quite obvious also because you see all these conflicts with indigenous peoples. So, I'm not going to say that it's a very peaceful area and there is not a need maybe for people to defend themselves. But in a way, the structures that we have in militarized conservation are not the solution.You know, they make the situation much more complicated than it initially was. And now, like, in this park, we're in a situation where we witness terrible human rights abuses, and everyone's scared to act and do something because it could get even worse. And it's, yeah, it doesn't seem like a very good solution.I think we need another way. We can't just stick our head, and say, oh, you know, we just go on, we'll just go on and then let someone else deal with it in a few years. I don't think that's a very good solution. Very good example.Martin: And it's questionable also to what extent do these these guards, these armed [00:21:00] rangers actually protect the, the parks and the species because they are here supposedly to fight against illegal wildlife trade and poaching and everything.But what studies have shown is that the root cause of of poaching and of the, of the illegal wildlife trade is mostly the demand for such products that comes from industrialized countries or at least other parts of the world and the system is made for the guards to take action against the local population and not against the actual criminal networks that lead to illegal wildlife trade and poaching.They get money for people they arrest and the easiest people to find are the locals that are trying to get to their ancestral lands. And there's also sometimes the park management involved in these criminal networks. So, you pretend to put in place a system to fight against illegal wildlife trade, but there ends up being no choice but [00:22:00] for the guards to, to take on the local people. Linda: Maybe we should also think about the indigenous populations as guards, or maybe guardians is the better word, of this area. And if we zoom out of the DRC and look at South America, where we have much stronger land rights... it's not perfect, but of course, better for indigenous people.They often act as guardians or guards of these territories, even though they're also confronted with illegal logging, quite brutal illegal logging, for example. But in a way, they are there and they, of course, are supported by authorities ideally, in defending these territories, but you see a less violent or militarized conflict because you have the indigenous guardians, as opposed to starting out with their protected [00:23:00] areas and armed guards, which are not just there to defend themselves, but have extensive rights of use of violence, and they don't have to fear any repercussions if something goes wrong and they kill, for example, an indigenous person.I mean, that's what we've seen in this park, that they can basically act with impunity. Chris: And thank you, Linda, for offering that example of the difference or the contrast between places like the Kahuzi Biega National Park and the DRC and other places in South America, for example, where there is this inherited intergenerational understanding of guardianship and while there's only maybe a half a century of conservation industry in these places, of course, they're an extension of the colonial project or projects that were undertaken much further back in time in places like Africa and places like the DRC before it was known as such.And then what happens, you know, after X amount of [00:24:00] generations after this kind of exile and displacement, that there is no lived memory anymore of what it means to be a guardian of your place. And I don't just mean as a title, but in terms of how you guard that place, as an indigenous person.We might be able to say that the Western world or the modern world that that's very much what we've become is people who are unable to remember or have a lived memory of what it's like to adequately stand as guardians for a place. You know, I think with the work that you two in Survival International are doing, there's a path forward towards that.And I'd like to remind our listeners that we're also here speaking today in part because there was a victory that was won by Survival International on behalf of the Batwa people and activists like yourself. And so I'd like to just read very briefly from [00:25:00] July 2023 press release from Survival International, in which it is said that, quote, "in a landmark decision, the French government has scrapped its plan to fund the controversial Kahuzi Biega National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo."France's Minister of State for Development, francophonie and International Partnerships, Chrysoula Zacharopoulou, confirmed that the plan to begin financing the Kahuzi Biega National Park has been scrapped. Ms. Zacharopoulou said, quote, "It has been abandoned, in line with our requirement for the respect of human rights."So first of all, I'd like to say congratulations to you both and to your teams at Survival for for getting this this victory and for doing the work you need to do in order to get there. And I'd like to [00:26:00] ask about the strategies that were employed in order to revoke French support for the park. You know, so many of these efforts and victories are either ignored in the context of the endless dilemmas or they're celebrated kind of superficially without considering the work it took to organize such campaigns.And so my question is, how has this campaign been organized by Survival International? Martin: Well, to give a bit of context the first time we heard about the French Development Agency planning on funding Kahuzi Biega, it was in the exact same time period as the publication of a report by Minority Rights Group International detailing brutal waves of violence in 2019 and until 2020 of appalling human rights abuses. So, atrocities that including murder, torture, rape [00:27:00] the burning alive of children, the burning of villages. So, we are, in this context, where we are reading the minority rights group report and understanding the scale of these waves of violence against the Batwa.And around the same period, we see that the French Development Agency has been a delegation, including the director, has been to the park and plans on funding it. So, of course we are appalled and and decide to write to the French Development Agency, but also to the to the ministry that has oversight.So, one of them is the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. And then we wait. And then we also got the support of a senator who also sent a letter and asked a question in Parliament to the government about their plan to fund this park in the context of these human rights violations.And so in July 2022, so last year, they decided to suspend temporarily the project. It was also in the context of an internal scandal because there was an expert[00:28:00] in the field and contracted by the French development agency to carry out a feasibility study. And he was basically saying around, and it can be heard in recordings saying that basically the study is just a formality and that the decision to fund the park has already been made.So there's both scandals. An internal scandal about the due diligence apparently being considered a formality on the field and the scandal of the very detailed report that had just gone out about the atrocities. So, that led to a temporary suspension. And they said that they would conclude the study and look into the abuses into social aspects.And then a year passed and we kept sending letters, of course, and doing some public campaigning about it on social media, et cetera. And then the senator asked again a question in July this year, and that's when we learned that the project was cancelled. So, of course, it's a victory, and it shows that sometimes the government actually does have the oversight[00:29:00] on the development agencies and takes the right decisions.But, of course, it's just the whole model still needs to be challenged and the park still has many international backers, even in the context of the atrocities that we that we know about. Chris: Mm. So the senator that asked about the status of the funding and found out that it was in fact scrapped, the scrapping of the funding was never made public until that point?Or there was never any press release saying so? Martin: No, they made it public, In the answer to the question, orally, in, in commission in Parliament. Chris: Mm. And would there be no way that the French public, for example, would be able to find out about this otherwise?Martin: I don't think so. And to be honest, I'm not even sure the decision had been taken before. I think they looked into it again because the senator asked a question again, but that's just speculation. Chris: And you spoke about writing letters, obviously to politicians and to the ministries [00:30:00] and also social media campaigns. Do you think there was more of an effect on the scrapping of the funding because of the public campaign, the social media campaign? Martin: Yeah, I think and that's basically the whole premise on which our campaigns are based is that an efficient mobilization of the public opinion will lead and the fact that the public cares and is informed will lead to a more efficient lobbying and advocacy of the governments and, and other government agencies. So yeah, I think one can't go without the other. And I don't know what would have happened if only the Senator had asked the questions or if only the Senator had asked a question or if we had only sent a letter and no public campaigning at all, or no press release, or no social media, I don't know. So I think, yeah, both go hand in hand.Chris: Mm hmm.So do you think that without the report from the Minority Rights Group, that the funding would have gone ahead, regardless of what was actually happening there? Martin: It's possible because we know that the funders were aware for years and [00:31:00] years of the human rights violations. And even before the waves of violence that are described in the report, we know that they were aware of that risk of violence at that time and of the human rights violation in the whole context of the militarized park.So, I think it could have very well gone ahead, because the other funders knew and kept funding it. And yeah, it's very important to get that kind of report with very detailed testimonies and information from the ground, and really documenting these atrocities. Otherwise, it's just business as usual.Chris: And the original proposal for the funding at least by the French government or the ministries involved, they were basically just promoting conservation in the way that it typically is. That's what the funding was for? Martin: Well, it's hard to know because they never published anything and actually, they never actually started funding it.It was just, just a project. Like I said, they went on a visit there and started making [00:32:00] promise to the local conservation agencies and to the local authorities. It's not clear to this day what exactly they were planning on funding, but it was clearly stated that there were planning on supporting the park itself, but I don't know for which kind of activities, but still, funding the same structure that that has been responsible for these abuses is still unacceptable.Chris: Mm hmm sounds "sketchy," as we say in English. And and so for our listeners, just a little bit of further context while France simply abandoned plans, the country had not yet made, or the government had not yet made, Germany continues to finance the park despite France's, however, subtle acknowledgment of human rights violations.And so, Linda, my question for you is, first of all, why is Germany funding a national park in the DRC to begin with? And, if you know, [00:33:00] how does that money get spent? Linda: Well, I guess the, the German interest in this park is pretty old, so the German government started funding the park already in the 80s.And there were some other projects even before that, supposedly. But it's considered to be a very, well, it obviously is a very long running project financed by the German government. And some local people call it the German park, because they assume that without the German funding, it wouldn't even exist. Like the kind of money that has been given over decades and the kind of things that have been funded, the infrastructure, the Congolese conservation authorities, the park rangers, you know, all the things that were funded basically crucial for the park to function. So yeah, it is a very German funded project. And also the German government has for very, a very long time looked at it as being a prestigious [00:34:00] project.You know, it was this great park, the gorillas, you already mentioned it, you know, and the Germans been funding it, which when you know a bit about German history, post World War II, there was a lot of interest in biodiversity and conservation funding because it was a good thing to do, which gave Germany a little bit of a different international picture than it had after the war.So there was a lot of interest in funding projects, and they were perceived as being fantastic, and they were shown to be these great projects that Germany is supporting internationally. And then, obviously, it isn't, but the German government has been very, very good at denying that there are these problems, and the role that it has had in facilitating these horrific human rights abuses. Mm. Chris: And how, if at all, has the German government responded to the [00:35:00] scrapping of the French funding? Linda: Very good timing, because I just got a response today, actually from the German government. Mm. 'cause we did point out to them that the French government has decided to not fund the park because of the violations of indigenous people's rights and because of human rights concerns. So we pointed this out to the ministry again, just in case, they would not have learned about this themselves. But the reply basically doesn't address this at all. You know, this was what we wrote the letter about and the replies about all the great things that the German government keeps funding and the improvements it is supposedly seeing on the ground and these improvements justifying their continued support.So it's just a letter explaining why they continue funding it and not addressing why maybe partners like the French government have decided not to fund it. And it's something that we have seen over the years. I think [00:36:00] survival first raised human rights violations in the Kahuzi Biega National Park in actually 2017, so that's quite a few years ago.There was a Batwa family. A father with his son, a teenage son. They were going into the park to collect herbs for medicine because another son of the family was sick. They encountered park rangers who killed the teenager and hurt wounded the father. So it was quite a terrible incident.And the father wrote to the German government, to the funders, and he complained about these human rights violations and the fact that the Batwa had lost access to the park and to their livelihood because of the German funding. The German government just said, "well, you know, there's not much we can do about it, basically."They tried to pay some money, but then really nothing, nothing else happened. And over the years, the situation hasn't improved. It has [00:37:00] gotten worse. But the German government keeps saying that they have faith in the Congolese conservation authorities and they do not see grounds to stop the funding or the project.They keep saying that they see progress. And things will get better. And we know it hasn't gone better. Chris: I'd like to return anyways to this this question around tactics and strategies and organizing. It seems that activists and those not directly involved in social movements struggle with the weight of our times.I mean, it's you know, kind of hard to ignore these days. And so, given that the German government, I imagine, is the obvious next target in the campaign to defund Kahuzi Biega, or at least the conservation authorities and programs there, what tactics, what strategies are being employed by Survival in your campaigns, [00:38:00] and how might our listeners in Germany, France, Europe, and, and beyond, how might they participate?Linda: That's a very good question, because, as I said, you know, Survival has been working on this for a few years, and there's a little bit of frustration, of course, that not much is happening in the terms of acknowledging the problem of funding this park. I think what Survival, what we're thinking is, quite important in this issue of conservation is making sure that donors in the West understand that this is a very symptomatic problem.So, a lot of conservation projects function like this and it is because there is this underlying problem with them, that they do not acknowledge land rights. But they continue to say that certain government authorities or certain conservation organizations are best put to run these places. It's the same with the [00:39:00] Kahuzi Biega National Park.The German government now says, "well, we know there are problems, so we pull in the WCS. They're the conservation organization and everything will be better. But it won't because they also have a record of not respecting indigenous people's rights. So, we need to make them understand that there is this underlying issue of not acknowledging indigenous people's land rights.And we try to do this by pointing out that this is a problem which is happening in a lot of national parks. So, protected areas that Survival has looked at in Africa and Asia, almost all of them, even the ones that we were told were good examples, have these problems. And we try to show that to the donors that have such big impact on these conservation projects and make them rethink what they're doing.It's a very difficult process, of course, because they've always done it in a different way. And now it's hard for them to think [00:40:00] about, you know, giving control and power to local people, which until now they've always said is a threat to conservation. It's like a total turn of what they assumed so far.But for us, it seems like that's the thing that we have to do for them to actually acknowledge the problem, because otherwise all the solutions that they come up with are not real solutions. They put people like the WCS in power, which is also not going to respect the Batwas' rights. Chris: Yeah, I think one of the critiques around development is in the context of these industries, especially things like conservation, volunteerism is another one that as industries, you would imagine that they would have in their mission statement, or vision, or ten-year plan, the slow and intentional disappearance of their own industry, right? Because if what they were [00:41:00] doing was working, we would need less of them. And there would be less of them, but here we are, right? And it's just, of course, a massively growing industry, both conservation and volunteerism. Martin: Yeah, it's true that our key targets are the donors, because like many of the issues that indigenous peoples are facing across the world, the root of the problem and the funding for these problems come from the West and our societies. So that's going to remain one of our targets and key part of the strategy. I think we are starting to see a shift in the discourse, in France, at least. And when we talk to the politicians, we also see that shift, that shift in the discourse of the conservation NGOs, but it's still as harmful. So instead of saying that these places are wild and empty and that the local artists are destroying it or encroaching, well, they still say it, but they also say that what we were saying before about the poverty issue and that [00:42:00] they will generate new projects and new activities and development basically.So, I think that they are starting to acknowledge the presence of these people. They couldn't be further from recognizing their land rights because, like you said, otherwise it means their own disappearance, and they're not built for that. Linda: Yeah, so it's a difficult, it's a difficult thing. I mean, I think we try to talk to people that are more inclined to understand the importance of indigenous people's rights so that we can have a base of people that support our campaigning, which is very important for us.And then we select our targets and try to engage the people that support us in convincing these targets to change projects or change their minds. And sometimes, you know, that can just be it a tweet that texts someone who we know makes decisions about certain [00:43:00] projects, try to raise awareness that there is concern about this project, that some people disagree, that this doesn't comply with human rights, that this doesn't comply with, agreements or treaties they're supporting for indigenous people's rights.And sometimes it's a more complex lobbying strategy. So there are different things we try to do and sometimes, like we saw with the example of the French government, sometimes it works because there's timing, there's different things coming together. But obviously, even though we have a lot of strategies, it's always difficult to know what will work in the end.So we try different things and try to engage with people that will help us spread the word about the need to decolonize conservation and do it differently and acknowledge land rights. And sometimes it's little things that really change a lot. Sometimes we work on something for a long time and it wasn't the right strategy and we need to change.[00:44:00] Chris: Well, speaking of how might our listeners find out more about Survival International and the decolonize conservation campaigns and especially around the work that you two are doing. Martin: Well, I strongly encourage people to read more of our campaigns on the website, on social media, also to subscribe to our newsletter, because that's where we mostly share our urgent actions.So which are one of our tools to put pressure on the targets. So, mass emails basically sent by our supporters to the targets about specific projects. And we also publish some video, direct video testimonies in our tribal voice projects, as we call it.So if they want to listen to, to the victims explaining the problems they are facing, but also the way of life that they have lost or sometimes more inspiring things about the resistance and and the fight. I think it's also very interesting to hear directly from the people affected.But yeah, I strongly encourage people to join the movement by [00:45:00] any means possible. And sometimes as Linda said, just small actions like a tweet or sending an email through these campaigns can be can really make an impact and and it does help ensure that the advocacy and the lobbying is effective.Linda: Yeah, and I think it's also a nice way to picture that you're showing solidarity with, for example, the Batwa, who often perceive the Western donors as being the cause of their problem. And I think for them, it's nice to see that there are also people in the countries that, where the problems originate that are standing up for their rights and supporting them.And I think it's probably the least we can do also, because we're so obsessed with African nature that I think it would be a very good step for us to think about the people that live in these places.Chris: Yeah, absolutely. And maybe not immediately or superficially in part because of the inundations and the dilemmas in our times, but that kind of [00:46:00] solidarity can begin to break down as well, the largely like unconscious nationalist tendencies we have when we think of other people in other countries, we always associate those people with their governments, right?Which is just like, absolutely ridiculous when anyone thinks of themselves in relation to their own government, right? But these are two faces, two voices of the resistance that are working on behalf of many others.And so I just wanted to reiterate that we're here today just to have the chance to be able to speak about a little bit about this this small victory that all willing will lead to many more to much bigger ones in regards to the Decolonize Conservation campaign of Survival International.It takes work and I'm grateful to be able to speak with you both today and to have you share some of your work and your dedication with our listeners and I will make sure that all of those links that you mentioned, Martin, will be on the End of Tourism website and available for our [00:47:00] listeners to sign up to the newsletter and follow on social media and of course participate if they so wish.Thank you both. Linda: Thanks. Martin: Thank you.​ Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

Sheltering from the rain under a yew tree in a Shrewsbury churchyard, we chat to 'Tree Pilgrim' Martin Hügi, the Trust's outreach manager in the South East. He's taken a four-month sabbatical to walk from Land's End to John O'Groats and visit thousands of incredible trees along the way. Hear Martin on awe-inspiring trees that have rendered him speechless, the vital Ancient Tree Inventory that helped plan the route, the value of ‘plugging in' to nature and what's in his kit bag! We also hear from Adele, who explains that old trees like those on Martin's pilgrimage are not protected or prioritised like our built heritage. Find out what you can do to help. Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk Transcript You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people, for wildlife.  Adam: Today I am off to meet the Tree Pilgrim, which is the moniker of Martin Hugi, who is doing a proper marathon pilgrimage from Land's End to John O'Groats using the Woodland Trust's Ancient Tree Inventory, so you're gonna visit a huge number of ancient and veteran trees, something like 6,500 of them he's expecting along his walk and I caught up with him in Shrewsbury in Shropshire, which is just on the River Severn about 150 miles or thereabouts, north, north west of London, and I caught up with him at a rather rainy churchyard. This is very unusual because normally I join people on walks, but actually you've been walking for what, what day is it?  Martin: I'm on day... 79 today   Adam: You had to think about that!  Martin: I had to think about that.  Adam: Yeah. So this is so you've actually taken a break and you've come into Shrewsbury and we're, we're we are in a green space in a churchyard where, now we're we're here for a special reason. Why?  Martin: So last night I was giving a talk, talking about ancient trees and the the need for greater protection and just telling my story of what I've been up to.  Adam: Right, well, first of all tell me a bit about this pilgrimage you're going on.  Martin: Yeah. So I'm calling it an ancient tree pilgrimage and it is a walk from Land's End to John O'Groats and I spent 12 months planning meticulously a route between some of the most amazing trees that I could fit into a north-south route and working out the detail of how I wassgoing to get to those trees via other trees on the Ancient Tree Inventory.  Adam: So the Land's End to John O'Groats, which that walk, famous sort of trip which is called LEGO for short, is it?  Martin: LEJOG, or JOGLE if you go the other way.  Adam: LEJOG, right OK, LEJOG.  Martin: Land's End to John O'Groats.  Adam: OK. It's long if you do it straight, but you've gone, gone a sort of wiggly woggly way, haven't you? Because you're going actually via interesting trees. So how many miles is that gonna be?  Martin: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Well, it's if you're going to go a sort of more classic route, it would be something like 1,080 or 1,100 sort of miles. The route that I've planned is 2,077 miles.  Adam: Wow.  Martin: So it's double.  Adam: 2,077 mile walk.  Martin: Yeah, I had estimated doing 18 miles a day. That would be, that was my average. I'd sort of planned rough stops where I thought I might be able to get to. I'm more doing about 13 miles a day, which is not a lot less, but it's, I'm spending more time with the trees. And I, we also we lost our our dog on the day that I was setting off. We went down to Penzance to start and we took our our old family dog with us and he was very old and and elderly and he actually died on the morning that I was going to set off. So we just drove back home and didn't fancy starting again for another couple of weeks. So if you can be behind on a pilgrimage, I was already 2 weeks behind, but actually, I'm on a pilgrimage, so it's it's it's about the journey.   Adam: Would you say you're a religious person?  Martin: Not in the classic sense of an organised religion, but I, I do have a spiritual side to me for sure. Yeah.   Adam: And what difference then, you you talk about this tree pilgrimage and it not being about the distance, it's about the journey, which, you know, one often hears. What, if anything, have you learnt about your feelings for the natural world, or what you think it can offer you, or what you can offer it during this journey so far?  Martin: Yeah, I think I'm learning about my connection with nature and ancient trees and the sites that they sit in as being good places to access that connection. So one of the stories that I tell is about meeting the Majesty Oak in Fredville Park in Kent. And we went with a conservation trip with work and it's just such an incredible tree at it's 12.5 metre girth and a maiden oak. And it just goes straight up and it's just it's, it's, it's bulk, it's sheer dominance and size literally blew my mind to the point where I was speechless for a couple of minutes and I wasn't the only one, and because I think it it just it takes you out of the ordinary state of ‘this is what a tree is' and it put me into a state of, this is something different, and it was a a real feeling of awe and I get that from ancient trees, I sometimes I will feel awe and that's a a rare feeling in my life and potentially a lot of people's lives. And I think that's well, that's what I'm seeking, I suppose, but it's almost like a gateway feeling for other potential feelings that you can cultivate around nature and trees. Just things like respect and gratitude, and I've actually found myself thanking some of the trees because of, they're just full, so full of life and and they're persisting and the resilience and feeling actual gratitude that they persist and doing what they do.  Adam: And you must meet a lot of people on your walk. 70 odd days in so far, they must ask you what on Earth you're doing and must give you some sort of response. What, have people been surprised, shocked, do they think you're nuts? Do they go ‘can I join you'? What's been the response?  Martin: All of those things, I suppose. Yeah, I'll, I'll sort of tell them what I'm doing and and as soon as I get to Ancient Tree Inventory, I get a blank look.   Adam: OK. Well, you say lots of people don't know about this, let's talk about this. First of all, what is it, and then how do people get involved?  Martin: Yes. So it is a citizen science project, it's an open publicly accessible data set of ancient trees across the UK.  Adam: And so I could, I mean, for instance, today if we think we found this ancient tree, we would go on the register and go, here it is, we think it's a, you know, a an ancient oak or what whatever it is and we measure its girth, its its width at about do you do it about 3 metres high? Is that what you meant to do?  Martin: It's 1.5 metres.  Adam: So only twice wrong *laughs* there we are, well a good margin of error. Yeah, 3 metres is too high. No, I'm short as it is, overblown idea of how tall I am. So 1.5 metres high you sort of take a tape measure and you measure it and you say you you think you you know what it is, you give it a good go and there's lots of online apps you can help you. And you sort of make comments about the tree. You sort of say it's in this sort of condition, but you don't have to be an expert, it is just fine to give it give it a go.   Martin: Absolutely and and actually you don't need a tape measure, you can you can make an estimate and if you don't know what the tree is exactly or don't know what it is at all, you can still add it to the inventory and it will, it won't appear as a public facing record at that point, but it will show up to an ancient tree verifier, a volunteer ancient tree verifier. It will show up as an unverified tree and and I I am an ancient tree verifier, since 2008, and I'll be able to see that there's an unverified tree here and I can go along, I can say, well, it is an oak and I can measure it if I can measure it, if it's possible. And I can record other details about the tree like its veteran characteristics.  Adam: So already, I mean I don't get too bogged down into all of this, but I get notable trees like an event has happened under them, and there's lots of amazing trees where the Magna Carta was signed under one the Tolpuddle Martyr, the first ever union was created under a tree, so there's lots of historically important trees like that. But the the difference between veteran and ancient, is there a clear distinction between those?  Martin: No, in a way it's a subjective thing, but there is guidelines. There are, for different species, there are graphs saying if it's over this sort of girth you you would, it would be erring into an ancient tree. And and different species and different growth rates so there'll be different sizes. My, so a sort of colloquial definition is it's a tree that makes you go wow, would be an ancient tree and be that awe inspiring sort of feeling. But then also an ancient tree is one where you can see that it's been through multiple stages of growth, and what you'd say as a development phase for a tree, so an oak tree for example, you'd be able to see that it's it's, it's gone up and it's done it's mature oak, it's lost limbs and then it's shrunk back down again and then it's gone back up again and then it's come back down again and it's gone back up again and you can see that history in the shape and form of an ancient tree. So an ancient tree is a veteran tree. It's just that it's been a veteran multiple times and it's gone through them.  Adam: And presumably it's different for different species, because I mean, we're looking at a couple of yews, I mean, a yew tree can last 2,000 years. So what might be old for a yew tree is very different, might be old for a cherry tree, for instance. So you you can't apply the same rule for all trees, presumably.  Martin: You can apply that same thinking and principle to all trees that, has it been through multiple stages of life and development. Yew trees for sure are some of the oldest living trees. Something that's really stood out to me in Powys, in Wales and, is how they will put roots down into the inside of their decaying stems. Roots go down, they're called adventitious roots, and it's literally feeding off of the decaying body of itself and then those adventitious roots become stems, and I've seen this over and over, and again in some of the oldest yews that, the internal stems are adventitious roots and the outside of the tree is decayed and and hollow and and so in theory a yew tree is potentially immortal. You know, they just go on and on because you you can see some of these big stems that will have adventitious roots inside them, but that big stem might have been an adventitious route originally, so they're just incredible trees and and all trees will do that.  Adam: And so why is it important that this thing exists? I mean, why why make a register of ancient trees, apart from the fact you might want like quite like an excuse to go around the country listing them, which I I get that might be fun, but why is it important?  Martin: I think there are, there's there's several reasons, really. I mean, apart from, I mean a simple one would be cultural and social history and the heritage as part of our our common collective heritage. But then there's also from a some more sort of biological view, they are old genetics, they're old genes that have persisted, so they're adapted to their conditions, who knows how many offspring they've generated and the genetics that that tree came from, you know, going back into millennia, so I think they're an important reserve of genetic history. They're also nodes of undisturbed soils, so they obviously clearly have been there such a long time that the roots and the mycorrhizal associations under the ground and the complexity of life that is in that area, it's like a node of of life and of part of our landscape that hasn't changed and that is an incredibly important place, akin to ancient woodland soils.  Adam: And the whole the whole idea about ancient woodland itself is that you can't replace tree for tree, you can't knock down an ancient tree and and put in a new tree and it be as environmentally beneficial, so it's surely it's important because if we know about how to modify our landscape, if we're, whether where we should build new homes or or or anything, then actually it's important to know what we're disturbing, you can only do that if you know what's there.  Martin: Absolutely, yeah and I mean *church bells ring* sorry that's just distracted me *laughs*.  Adam: That's fine, distracted, distracted, slightly by the the ominous bells of the church in whose yard we are sitting in at the moment. So, you know, we're we're under a beech, you might hear the rain. We're cowering from sort of fairly light rain and in this churchyard and just listening to those those bells, anyway, they've they've gone, they've gone so.  Martin: It's where Charles Darwin was baptised.  Adam: In this church? Charles Darwin? Well, that, that raises a really interesting point, because also I know the local community were trying to protect an oak. And they called it the Charles Darwin Oak. You know, it's always good to have a name, isn't it? And they called it that because they think, well, you know, Charles Darwin could legitimately have played under this oak. It's old enough, and it's where he was baptised and everything. And it raises this issue, doesn't it, about people's connections to trees and local communities' connections to trees and it, I mean, I, from, as an outsider, it feels that that is becoming more a thing more a thing that people talk about, just regular people do feel it's important to have this connection.  Martin: I I think it's it's it really is yeah. I think people are now realising much more how the trees and the ecosystems around them actually provide us with the atmosphere and the our ability to live on this planet. It really is such a fundamental part of being human and survival to look after these green spaces that it's it's, you know, people are, people do realise that I think people do recognise that.  Adam: It it brings us on to the debate about the environment and protection. It was interesting, on the way here, I was reading an article by Jonathan Friedland, the great writer, who was talking about the ecological debate, saying they've said the the ecological sort of lobby group have the argument right, but they're using the wrong words and and he was saying that you know that that their argument isn't framed in the right way, but it feels like this is a super important moment, maybe a flex point, one doesn't want to overemphasise these things, sort of, but does feel that, I mean, right this week we are seeing heatwaves, I mean sort of properly dangerous heatwaves in southern Europe. Flooding, there was flooding on the motorway as I came here, so we have extremes of weather which feel very unusual for this sort of early summery type period. How worried are you about the environment and our ability to actually do something to protect it and our place in it?  Martin: I am confident that we have the know-how and the ability as humans to change our ways to a more sustainable way of living in harmony. I think that is changing. I think the economics has got to be part of this debate and the conversation, I I read a fantastic book in 2008 by Eric Beinhocker, The Origin of Wealth. I don't know if you've heard of this and looking at the environment as complex adaptive systems, but he was also saying how the economy is a complex adaptive system and evolution of economy, evolution is a, you you can't predict a thing what's going to happen sometimes and  Adam: No, I understand. And that's interesting to the, that the economy is itself an ecology and it adapts to the environment that it's facing. And I agree, I used to do a series for the BBC called Horizons when we travelled the world looking at technology. And I tend to the panicky, I have to say, and I thought this wouldn't be good for me when I'm looking at big challenges facing the world. And actually, I was really drawn to the fact that there are tech solutions to all sorts of issues, and it's often the money that's preventing, you go, ‘we can fix it, it's just not commercially viable'. No one wants to pay to do this at the moment, but if oil prices went through the roof, suddenly this alternative would be commercially viable. So it was, we talk a lot about technology, sometimes it is the economics of it which are preventing us from doing things and the economics change, don't they? So that that might be.  Martin: They do and it's something that is not predictable because there's so many moving components, there's so many interactions, there's so many feedback loops that, I mean, that's something that intrigues me about complex systems is that, the more complexity you have, the more feedback loops, the more agents that are interacting with each other in a system, the more resilient it is to change, but it can shift if if you if you get some events that are just too too much or you you degrade the amount of complexity then that system becomes less stable and that's the, that's the danger with, potentially what we're doing with trees and our environment, our, if you like a tree is an emergent property of the soil, it's it's an expression of of of what, of plant life and it's it started as algae coming out of warm freshwater, sea, freshwater in, 600 million years ago and and partnering with fungi to make, to have lichens. And then you get soil and then other things, other more complex plants evolve and then we've ended up with trees and they're like the, an emergent property of complex systems of the soil.  Adam: So we're talking about people's interaction with the environment. I should explain some of the symphony of sound we're hearing. So we we had the church bells, we had the rain above us. And I think there is a charity Race for Life with, thousands of people have emerged, in in a bit of green land we were going to actually walk through. And I think there's a sort of charity run going on, which is why you might hear, some big blaring music in the background, which is not as quiet a spot as we thought we might have ended up with, but does show the amenity value of these open green spaces. It's just rather a lot of people have chosen to use it on, on this particular day. One of the other things I just want to talk to you about as well while we're talking about this debate, and I know you talk on on behalf of yourself, not the Trust, and you're taking a sabbatical so these are your views, but given the debate we're all having, it feels to me that we talk a lot about armageddon. And I know from talking to people, you know, my family, they they sort of just disengage with after a while it just becomes background noise. And I wonder if you have an idea or an insight into how to talk about these issues to explain that they are potentially the difference between humans surviving and not surviving and yet not just sound like, some crazy guy screaming into the wind and also to stop people going ‘well, if that's the way it is then you know what am I gonna do I, I just better carry on because I can't do anything about it'. Is there a key that we're missing you feel, or an emphasis that we have wrong in engaging with this topic?  Martin: I don't know if I would say I have an answer to whether it's wrong or not, or the way we engage with it, but I think for me the the key is connection to nature and encouraging people and you've got to start young, I think, getting children through forest school perhaps, getting them out outside and experiencing nature because that's where nature connection comes from. And you don't need a, you don't need an ancient tree to to give you a sense of awe. I mean you I I can and ppeople can find awe in a tiny flower, but it's just a case of looking and spending time plugging in if you like.  Adam: You're right. I mean, I'm not sure I'd quite describe it as awe, but I often have in my car like a a little bit of a berry or an acorn and and you know, sometimes, it's going to sound weird now I'm describing it *laughs* but if I'm in a traffic jam or something and I look at those things and go actually, do you know what, if that was a piece of jewellery that was designed almost identical, we'd pay a lot of money for it and we'd go, ‘isn't that beautiful?' And you'd hang it around your neck in a way that you probably wouldn't hang an acorn around your neck or most people wouldn't. And yet you look at it and you go, it's quite extraordinary when you take time to look at these things a leaf or something, and I don't want to sound, you know, too Mother Earthy about it and people to, turn people off about that. But taking the time just to look, sometimes, you go, the wonder is in the detail. It is there actually it's quite fun and it's free.  Martin: Yeah and and I think when we when we go into a potentially, you know an undisturbed habitat like an ancient woodland where there is complexity and and you you immerse yourself in those areas, that's that's where you you you you can see, you can feel life.  Adam: Let me take you back to your walk, because, from which I have dragged you. A hundred odd days planned on the road, carrying all your own stuff. That means you have to find a place to sleep. Wash every now and then. I mean you you smell beautiful so I'm I'm assuming you've found some magic trick or you are washing and carrying clothes. What, just what is the trick for doing that? Because sometimes I go away for the weekend and I feel I'm already carrying far too much. How are you doing a hundred odd day walk carrying everything. What's the trick, what's your sort of kit list?  Martin: Yeah, I I did spend about two years actually building up different kits and trying different things to be as lightweight as possible. But that's in a way that, the whole having to find somewhere to camp, having to find water, these are basic simple things that take you away from all the other stuff that is going on you know, in my life sort of thing so I can actually immerse myself into the flow of of that journey.  Adam: So, but just because you, look, you're wearing a lightweight top, it's it's raining. No coat at the moment, I mean, but sort of how much clothes are you taking? And you know, yeah, how many, how, how many shirts? How many socks? How many pairs of pants? I've never asked this of another man before *laughs* How many pairs of pants do you have?   Martin: Right. Well, I can answer that *laughs* I have five pairs of pants, five pairs of socks, three pairs, three shirts, three T-shirts and just one top that I'm wearing now, a rainjacket and some waterproof trousers and some walking trousers and a pair of shorts. That is actually my clothing list. The the socks, the pants and the T-shirts are all merino wool essentially so they're very lightweight, they're very thin, very lightweight. Don't, merino wool or wool doesn't pick up smells and odours readily. The socks have got silver woven into them, so they're antifungal, antibacterial, and they're pretty amazing socks, actually. And they they dry as well. So the T-shirts are very thin merino wool T-shirts. I can wash them and they'll be dry in a few hours, especially with the hot weather that I was having in May and June.  Adam: Not, not the rain, nothing's gonna dry in this rain, although this tree is providing some amazing cover for us. So look, you've come into Shrewsbury to to to meet me to have a look at this ancient tree, which I I might leave you to measure yourself given the the increasing amount of rain that is pouring down on us. And I stupidly did not bring a coat because I just thought it was such nice weather when I left. Anyway, what is, when I leave you, where are you off to? Where is the next sort of part of this walk taking you?  Martin: Well, I am, will be taken back to my tent, which I've left at a campsite in, near Brecon and and then I am heading north to some yew trees and then to, up to Welshpool and Oswestry and then across into, towards in between Liverpool and Manchester and then north, Cumbria, Scotland. We'll see how, how, how far we get.  Adam: I know you thought the first bit of the trip you've you've not been on pace to actually complete it, but you never know, it, you might pick up, it might might get easier going.  Martin: I've actually slowed down and I thought I would speed up as I went along and as I got fitter and stronger I thought I would speed up but actually I've started to slow down and go at the pace, at a pace that my body wants to go at as well as the time and mental space that I wanted to to have from this trip. Yeah.  Adam: That's the difference in us. You're you're going to go off and measure a tree, and I'm going to find a coffee *laughs* some, somewhere dry. Look, best of luck, an amazing journey. Thank you very much. Thank you. And if you've been inspired by Martin's journey and want to help protect veteran and ancient trees but don't want to take a marathon walk the length of the country, there is still something you can do from the comfort of your armchair.  Adele: So, I'm Adele Benson, I'm a campaigner at the Woodland Trust.  Adam: So what can people do to actually help?  Adele: We're running currently the Living Legends campaign to secure better legal protection for our oldest and most special trees. Because ultimately we are seeing some of our oldest trees with, you know, immense ecological wildlife and historic value being felled, or the value of them is not being fully appreciated in law. We've got a petition with almost 50,000 signatures and and we're trying to ultimately get to 100,000.  Adam: So if anyone is interested, they can search the Woodland Trust's Living Legends campaign on their computer and you can sign that online. Great, great stuff. I I think people might be surprised to learn that buildings often, or perhaps most of the time, get better legal protection than trees, even if the trees are older and actually more significant than the built structure next to it.  Adele: Yeah. So in Hampstead Heath, there's a, it's approximately 300 year old beech tree. And and it was planted next to a fence that had just been erected so think back 300 years ago. Now this fence has a Grade II listing on it, but the beech tree doesn't have any legal protection at all. So when they were found that the roots of the beech tree and the trunk was sort of impacting quite heavily on the fence, they were very, they wanted to essentially cut down this tree and remove it. However, that's not now happened luckily, but it's essentially having that equivalent of protection that is so desperately needed because we're valuing this this built heritage but we're not valuing this natural heritage that we have such a wealth of in the UK. The Woodland Trust celebrated its 50th anniversary last year and in that time, it's been working considerably to protect some of our oldest and most special trees and woodland, and ultimately I think it's now a time for action.  Adam: So let's just remind everyone that is the Living Legends campaign, which you can search for online if you want to sign that petition. And if you just want to find a woodland near you to walk in, just go to the Woodland Trust website, type in, find a wood that will come up with a whole range of places near you that you can visit. Until next time, happy wandering.  Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks with Adam Shaw. Join us next month, when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers. Don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you're listening to us and do give us a review and a rating. And why not send us a recording of your favourite woodland walk to be included in a future podcast? Keep it to a maximum of five minutes and please tell us what makes your woodland walk special or send us an e-mail with details of your favourite walk and what makes it special to you. Send any audio files to podcast@woodlandtrust.org.uk. We look forward to hearing from you. 

Hello everyone! This is part of todays LIVE on IG...if you want to join in please follow me on all my platforms https://linktr.ee/simplyjewel This way you will know what is going on. Also to wish Martin Well as he is in his soccer season and will come on from time to time. Lets keep thriving and lets keep supporting as many are now seeing healthy choices are needed to help be our best selves. Stay encourage and connect with like minds to make sure you thrive. Simply Jewel says, "Smooches" --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/simply-jewel-health0/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/simply-jewel-health0/support

Binge Reading Giveaway for January 2022 Before we get to the Top Ten–we've got a Giveaway draw for January–three E book copies every week of my Three Holiday Novellas Book Bundle–A mix of mystery and Christmas romance set in historic New York, Hawaii and California, Books #4 #6 and #8 in the Of Gold & Blood historic mystery series. Enter the draw on our website, the joys of binge reading.com and be in to one of three copies going to lucky readers every week in January. Offer closes January 31. Be in the draw to win one of three E Book copies of Three Holiday Novellas - Offer closes January 31. ENTER HOLIDAY NOVELLA DRAW Martin Walker's - Bruno The Perigord Police Chief Introducing the Best of All Time - The top rating Ten Most Popular Episodes out of the first 200 Martin Walker's Bruno, the French police chief at the heart of his best-selling Perigord mystery series, is everyone's ideal cop – as well as the town's most eligible bachelor and a talented host with an international award-winning cookbook in his name . . . . But before he turned to fiction, Martin had a stellar career in journalism, haunting the world's corridors of power reporting from Moscow during Perestroika and President Bill Clinton's Washington for top newspapers. He's hugely popular in Germany, where a German TV series about Bruno is in production and where he regularly pre pandemic - went on book tours. Here he is talking about his international audience: Martin: Well, I've got this absolutely stupendously good German publisher Diogenes, and when they first decided that they would take on my novels, I was invited to dinner with the founder of the company, an old man called Daniel Keel. His son Phillip has now taken over, and Daniel at dinner said, well, Martin, we're going to be behind you, but you have to be behind us. And that means I'd like you to promise me this evening, you will do at least two weeks book tour every year in Germany. And I said, well, okay, but why is that so important? He said, because in Germany, they don't just want to read, they want to see, they want to smell it and want to really feel what an author is like. And it turns out that in Germany, there is this huge tradition of author's readings. And partly because they have fixed prices on all book sales, every small town in Germany has its own bookstore, and it acts like a kind of a cultural settlement. Bruno the French policeman popular in Germany It brings in authors on a regular basis for readings. And so this last tour I did in October, I actually did my 500th reading in German language countries, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and we've worked out something like over 40,000 people have actually attended these live events and that an extraordinary kind of loyalty base. I rather enjoy it, partly because I believe we should all have fun. So sometimes I will sing and so on and try and make a bit of a show of it for them. I mean, whenever there's a song taking place in the book, I will sing the song. Jenny: I asked Martin if he was comfortable in the German language. My German is a lot better than it was. I always start off giving a talk in German and then there'll always be a German actor to do the German bits. I will read in English. Then we'll do Q and A in German. I've learned more about Germany, thanks to Bruno, in these last few years, and indeed I've seen more Germany than most Germans. Jenny: I was surprised and moved by Martin's answer when I asked him the classic question I ask most authors - looking back over your writing life at the stage of your career, if you were doing it all again, is there anything that you would change? And if so, what? What Martin would change if he could... Martin: Well, I'd endeavor to meet my wife earlier and have been married to her for longer, I guess. Other than that, no, not really. I just think that like so many people of my generation who were born in World War II,

[קישור לקובץ mp3]שלום וברוכים הבאים לפודקאסט מספר 421 של רברס עם פלטפורמה, והיום הולך להיות פרק מעניין ומיוחד - באנגלית. Hello and welcome to Reversim! This is episode number 421, and today we're delighted to host Martin Casado. We also have Nati Shalom with us, and we're going to speak with Martin about a topic we actually previously covered in our Podcast [though in Hebrew - 418 Carboretor 31 Cost of cloud paradox] - “The Cloud Paradox” or “The Trillion Dollar Paradox” article by Martin and Sarah Wang.(Ran) So - welcome, Martin, we're delighted to have you here. Let's have a quick introduction and get to meet you . . .(Martin) Sure - so, the quick introduction:I did my PhD in Computer Science at Stanford, and I focused on Systems and Infrastructure.From there, I started a company called Nicira, where we worked on building out software networking in data centers, working with large Clouds so we were very, in the early days, close to Google, with Rackspace, had lots of conversations with Amazon . . . That [Nicira] was acquired by VMware, and I ran all the Network and Security for VMware, where I sold into the data centers.I did that for about 4 years, I ran the business; When I left it was about $600M/year businessRight now it's about $2B/year business . . . .And for the last five years I've been at Andreessen-Horowitz, where I'm an investor and I focus on infrastructure and in particular, you know - Cloud infrastructure.(Ran) Thank you. So, as mentioned, this is a continuation-episode to a previous episode that we recorded about your blog post, and now we'll have a chance to dive deeper.So Nati - you want to take the lead on that?(Nati) Yes, thanks so much again, Martin, for accepting this call. I know that you've been very busy, probably not just around this topic - and I wanted to maybe kind of start the discussion with background, like - what brought you to this topic?I looked at your blog-post, and it looks like you've been talking about this cost-efficiency - or the lack of cost-efficiency, to be more specific - in a couple of . . . I'll say in the past.So it looks like this is a hot topic for you and not a new one - maybe you could walk us through the background?(Martin) So yeah, listen - I've been in Cloud infrastructure and data centers infrastructure for a very long time, and what's very interesting about the shift to Cloud is that you go from, you know - from the perspective of a business - you go from being a Software business, where you're shipping software, to basically being a Services business, where you're offering a service and the economics of these businesses just look different - and we're still kind of coming to grips with what that means.Now listen - I'm an investor, and I sit on a lot of Boards . . . - and as investors, we have to become students of business models, I mean - that's what we do.And so I sat on all these boards, and I noticed that the economics were quite different for these companies that were born in the Cloud and the folks on the Cloud, and so, you know - a lot of this was just born out of trying to understand what the economics were, or what the economics are - as opposed to traditional software companies, where you basically ship the software and it runs on somebody else's infrastructure, so you're not kind of syncing that, and it comes from a deep background in Cloud and data center infrastructure - and being an investor sitting on the boards and then trying to understand these new businesses.(Nati) Excellent. So I think one of the things that comes out of this analysis is that there is a gap here, in terms of . . . between, you know, the trajectory to velocity versus efficiency - and that kind of led to this paradox that you were referring to.Maybe you can walk us through this paradox - what is that specific paradox and why do you think, you know, companies that get to that at scale and not before or not . . .?(Martin) So here's the paradox - the paradox is if you're small or doing a new project, it only makes sense to use the Cloud.Why? because you don't have to deal with infrastructureYou don't have to deal with the talent of the infrastructure and so all of that you can outsource, right?And so any startup that doesn't start using the Cloud, like, had better have a really good reason . . .I would say the vast-vast-vast majority of any company should start just by using the Cloud.and that's, you know, is just a reality.Another thing about one-year-small-company is that margins don't really matter because, you know, you're really focused on growth, really focus on innovation - and why worry about margins if you don't even have Product-Market fit, right?And this is something you worry about much later.On the other hand, once companies start getting larger, a number of things happen:One of them is that you have more specialized talent.Another thing that happens is that you have more predictable workloads - or at least you understand what your workloads look like.And it turns out - we looked at, and we can go through the actual study -we looked at 50 public companies . . .These are relatively new companies, you know, more than 70% of them had IPO in the last six years.And across those 50 companies, if you look at their COGS - their Cost of Goods [Sold] - on average, 50% of those were the Cloud.And so if you're a very large company and you care about increasing your share price, the share price of your company, what you normally do is you look at what line-items can you reduceand the the most significant one is Cloud and it's actually, in this case, in these companies - it's depressive, you know . . .that line item - if you could reduce it, it would increase your share price by a whole bunch.So now they have this paradox - which is early on, it makes a lot of sense to use the Cloud, but in some cases later on, that's the number one impact to your share price . . .And so the question is, you know - what do you do?(Nati) In that context, again, when you gather this information and all these analysis, I saw a lot of discussion about the methodology and the data itself.So you mentioned that you gathered information about 50 companies that are at scale and the analysis that you've done, I think, was interesting, from the fact that you . . . you know, normally when we do the comparison of the efficiency, we compare how much hardware costs outside the Cloud and how much it costs in the Cloud - and you kind of turn it to be a measure of valuation.So it's interesting how you came about this methodology and what was the methodology . . . .(Martin) This is a great question, which is like . . . normally, the way people do this analysis is well - you can buy a server for 5,000 bucks where you can rent one in the Cloud for this much money, you know - and they compare that.and that makes sense in the “old world” - so what was the “old world”?I grew up in “the First Cloud Wars” - it was the Cloud versus internal IT, and internal IT is not part of COGS, right? it's a back-office function so in the old Cloud Wars - let's say between 2005 and 2015 - the entire argument was exactly that - You said you're comparing against servers and then, you know - it's pretty easy to make the argument that you go to the Cloud so you don't have to buy servers.But that argument doesn't make any sense, or that cost analysis doesn't make any sense, to a SaaS company - and the reason is because the infrastructure is part of COGS, and COGS impacts share price . . .and so it's not meaningful to say like “Oh, we saved 5 Bucks!” . . . what is meaningful to say is "We can increase our share price by a billion dollars”.And so I view this almost as the “Cloud Wars 2.0”, which is as software companies move to SaaS, Cloud becomes part of COGS.Again, this is a very recent phenomenon and so then you ask the question: how does that impact the share price? which of course - share price is everything:It's how we recruit, it's how we get debt . . . that flows over to cash.and so, you know, It's just a new question and it's worth asking - and it turns out that it dramatically impacts COGS and I want to say one more thing, 'cause you set up before, which is - people have said “well, why would you worry about COGS, when you should be worrying about growth?”That's actually a meaningless statement because, if you have an extra billion dollars in share price, you can invest in a ton of growth . . .so this isn't about like efficiency versus growth - this is literally about giving away margins to another company.(Nati) That's a very nice argument about this measurement, and again - if I go back to the discussion around this and what I heard from . . . you know, I had a couple of discussions after that with multiple engineering people, and they said “but it's not necessarily related to Public Cloud versus on-Prem” - and it looks like you made a lot of references to Dropbox and to Repatriation as a way of optimization, and that kind of steered the discussion, in my view, in the wrong way.So, first of all, why did you find Dropbox so interesting and why do you think it's a reference? because it sounds very unique, in the lens . . .(Martin) You know what's actually unique about Dropbox? it's that they're public about it . . .So, you know, we weren't even going to talk about repatriation - this is the irony of this whole thing.Like, the point of the piece was just to look at the impact of Cloud on COGS . . . like, when we started, it had nothing to do with repatriation.But it's interesting, because we talked to all of these companies - and let's say we talked, I don't know how many . . . let's say a dozen companies, where we actually talked to the architectsand almost every one of them had either were penciling out a repatriation, planning on repatriation - or had done a repatriation, right?and now listen - by repatriate, it doesn't mean they take all the workloads off the Cloud, that's silly, doesn't make sense for anybody to do that. But if you're very large, you know, it may make sense for some core workloads.So it . . . the Dropbox thing is in no way like an anomaly or unique - but what is very unique about it is that they were so public and they published this study to show the impact.so we used that study as an illustration - it didn't have anything to do with the analysis, by the way, and so in all of the discussion around the . . . I think it's actually worth saying: in all of the discussion around the piece which there's been so muchI mean, there's been dozens of follow-on pieces . . .In all of the analysis, nobody has disagreed with the numbers - and instead, you know, people say “well, you know, like, oh, you should have used Dropbox as an example . . .”which, again, had nothing to do with the analysis or they will go to these “Cloud 1.0” arguments - the old arguments, which have also nothing to do with the piece . . . The pieces is about SaaS companies . . . Impact margin and share price and so.I actually think this is a new result, and I think it's a new discussion point, and I think it's a very interesting one, and I'm hoping that the discourse will evolve, so we're actually talking about the problem at hand and not kind of dredging up, you know, these kind of stale arguments that don't really apply.(Nati) Right . . . so Repatriation, if I summarize it - Repatriation is (1) not that rare , it was a good example to latch on, based on your analysis.And (2) - would you agree that when we talk about this efficiency, it doesn't have to be Repatriation, it could be anything . . . even with optimization within the Cloud - it's just that you have to be more aware and put the right resources into that cross-park . . . (Martin) Well, let's just go through what the results actually said . . . let me just state very clearly what the results - what the analysis was and what were the results. So the analysis was first - if you look at modern SaaS companies, what percentage of their COGS is Cloud? We did that by looking through S-1'sThe result was that, on average, 50% of their COGS was Cloud - that's a HUGE number, OK? so that was the 1st result - 50% of COGS is Cloud for these top-companies.Then the 2nd result is - we asked the question: if you reduce that by a factor of two, what is the impact to share price?And of the 50 companies we analyzed, the impact of share price was, you know, over $100 Billion . . . meaning, if those 50 companies reduced their Cloud costs by a factor of 2, their share price would increase by $100 Billion - and the number is actually probably more like 200, we were very conservative . . .So that's the results of the paper, that's it - Beginning and End.And those numbers . . . You know, I very much stand by, I mean - like make the data public, like whatever.So then the question is - what are the implications?Well, a very clear implication is that if you're one of these companies, you should find a way to reduce your Cloud costs, right? . . . . it's a very clear implication . . . and a way to reduce your Cloud costs, as [there are] many of them, to your point, right?So you could just focus on Software optimizationYou could buy a 3rd-party tool which helps you with Software Optimization,or - you could consider Repatriating . . .And when we spoke to practitioners - and remember, you know, I used to run a very large data center business, so this is not like, you know, like some business-guy just like looking at this - I mean, I used to run this business.They talked to practitioners - and they employ all three of them . . .Some will . . . you know, some ignore margins, some focus on just optimizing their code, some work with 3rd-party systems and some have actually pulled workloads off the Cloud.Not all of them - normally just some subset of workloads, increased costs.And that's really, to me, the kind of, you know, the “So what?” or the “What can you do about the results?”Is that you can consider one of these three things.(Nati) So in your view, why are we in that stage? I mean, I'm assuming that those companies are not stupid, they look at the numbers and they see the numbers that you're seeing . . .Why haven't then got to the same conclusion before? why haven't they got to the point where 50% of their cost is Cloud-cost?(Martin) Yeah, so this is a great question . . . so I've got 2 answers - Well, I've got 3 answers for that -The first one [is that] this is actually a relatively new phenomenon - It's just that we don't have a lot of maturity with SaaS business models . . . like, we've been talking about SaaS forever, but there hasn't been a lot of SaaS infrastructure, there hasn't been a lot of Cloud companies that have been fully on the Cloud that are public - this is a new thing.So the first one is just [that] I don't think people have been looking at it.The second one is - companies, early on, get private funding from people like me - and we just don't care about margins as much, because we're just interested in seeing if, like, the product will work, or if people will buy it, right?And so, you're not investing in efficiency, and you're not investing in COGS - you're just investing in software growth.So the second one is that the private markets don't look at itAnd then the third one is - even the public markets these days, because cash has been so cheap - like, debt is basically free - they're just investing in growth rather than efficiency, because that's what the public markets say . . .Now, the question we should all ask ourselves is “listen - we looked at 50 companies, 70% of them had IPO in the last six years, they're all growing 'cause that's relatively new - what happens when (A) they slow-down growing or (B) the market starts to value margins - What happens then?”You know, and the reality is . . . the impact that the Cloud has on the share prices can be even more dramatic, right? Instead of $100 billion or $200 billion, it could be, you know, $400 billion . . .And so - if you extrapolate our results to the industry, you could estimate 500-billion-to-a-trillion dollars of share prices being impacted. You could estimate that, you know, I mean just to . . . just look at this, you know, the total number of similar companies,that's a lot of money that's being impacted, and so I suspect we're going to see a pretty dramatic shift to address this.I don't know what it's going to look like, but I suspect something will happen.(Nati) So if I summarize what you just said, which is again very interesting - you basically point out, rightfully so in my view, to the maturity of the market, to the maturity of investors that are, you know, running those new companies, their new growth companies - the investors obviously measure things that are not necessarily related to efficiency, but related to growth, and that's why companies are very much optimized towards that.And similarly, if we look at the companies themselves - they're also being measured at growth, so that's how they optimize themselves.There's also the movement between what you said - the “Cloud Wars 1.02” to “Cloud Wars 2.0”, which is part of that maturity in which we kind of think that moving to Cloud and Cloud native automatically give us that efficiency - and we don't necessarily look into what is efficiency within the Cloud . . .So we think that people using the Cloud in itself - in it by itself - it gives us that efficiency, and I think clearly, from your study, there are today many options in the Cloud that wouldn't necessarily fit into that definition. So is that a good summary?(Martin) Yeah, I think that's a great summaryAnd again - I just think it's very important to whoever is listening . . . I think a lot of feedback on the the post presents a false dichotomy between efficiency and growth.They're saying like “why do you care about efficiency, when you should be focused on growth?” - but it's a false dichotomy.The reality is - if you have more money, you can grow fasterSo, like - if your share price is being knocked down by a billion dollars, you can't invest in growth as much, and so you know . . .Again, I think that people don't understand that we're in a quite a new world with companies in SaaS, and we need to all sit back and reevaluate it, and think of what it means.And listen - I'm an investor now, right? And so, like - I don't care what the answer is . . . I don't care if it's Cloud, I don't care but . . . I don't care.I just want to know what the economics are, so I can invest my money, right?I mean it's, you know, like - I'm totally neutral in all this.(Nati) So one comment that I heard about this argument from another large public company, who has the same problem - they said that it's not necessarily related to the efficiency, the way that you kind of articulated it . . . it basically a reference to the fact that in SaaS business model, you're almost forced to deliver more value - and when you're asked to deliver more value, for the same price, your margins are going to be marginalized and the cost of infrastructure, which by definition will grow . . .So is it the problem with the SaaS business model, where people are, you know, kind of . . . when I'm saying “people” it's mostly customers - are expecting to see more and more value for the same cost, and therefore there is some anomaly here? you're not necessarily going to be able to match the cost of the value that you are continuously generating . . . (Martin) Yeah, I just . . . I don't understand the argument, like - I mean, you've got great SaaS companies like Datadog, with amazing margins, and then they innovate and . . . I don't understand how SaaS has anything to do with your inability to add value.(Nati) OK, so I think that's a short answer to a long question, which is always great . . I think you're right in the sense that when we look only at SaaS - clearly SaaS companies are able to generate more value - and let's talk about those public companies.I'm curious what was their reaction? - you mentioned, you know, their names, you mentioned the names publicly - you talked about Datadog, you talked about Dropbox, Asana . . . what was their reaction to all that?(Martin) Yeah, I mean . . . honestly, I haven't heard anything from Datadog or Asana, so . . . The reason that we chose Datadog, by the way, in the post, the reason that we did is . . . it's actually like the most conservative case, because like, you know, very very few companies grow at the pace that they grow - at the size that they are. In the history of infrastructure, very few companies have been over a billion dollars and are still growing in . . . yeah, I think they're 60% or whateverand so - to make the argument for Datadog is like choosing kind of the worst example, which is exactly what we wanted to demonstrate, right?we didn't want to cherry-pick a great example of a company that's already slowing downwe're like - this is a very fast growing company that's at scale, and even then - there's billions of dollars they can save, right? Now, does it matter to them? You know, that's probably 7% of their share price - maybe or maybe not - but like it's still a billion dollars, right?and there's a lot you can do with that and so - that's the specific reason we chose Datadog - it's just 'cause it's, like - it's the worst case of our argument, and still I think it's compelling.(Nati) And so - in your view, let's take again, let's pick on Datadog for a second - if you were in Datadog and you were reading your article again, what would you do differently, today?(Martin) I actually think these big companies are largely already doing it . . . I actually think the best example is Spotify - Spotify has been tremendously prescient on this, so Spotify . . .I you know, it's . . . I'm gonna answer you by talking about what Spotify is doing, and if our data dug-up . . . you do with Spotify, and I presume that they are.So Spotify has actually made Cloud costs a first - like a first-class primitive that is visible all the way down to the developers, and so they've got, you know, an internal project that's a dashboard - that shows for anything that you build, what the actual cost is.And that level of visibility is going to produce, you know, much better developer behavior, that's going to consider cost.And in the results - they have a great blog post about that, where they actually talk about that and why they did it is for this reasonAnd I compare that to not . . . this is another public company I spoke to, I'm not gonna mention the name, but it's kind of a large, you know, infrastructure company where they have multiple product lines - that have zero-percent margin, because that they use the Cloud, right?This clearly, like - if you don't control this problem, you can end up basically just reselling the Cloud . . .And so you have to do something like what Spotify is doing - and you probably have to do it early in order to rate-in this cost.I mean, they're . . . there are honest to goodness companies today, that their new products have no margins because they haven't addressed this problem early enough.(Nati) So let's talk about Spotify again, as a reference - I think you mentioned it and I think it's a good reference - so you mentioned that they made the efficiency and the cost-efficiency, First-class-citizen and . . . meaning that, at least in my words, they look at that as just another feature, and they incentivize their development team to actually optimize, by making the cost visible to the developers, if I got your point correctly - can you elaborate what that actually means?(Martin) Yeah, well no no . . . I mean, it's actually very interesting, right? I mean [that] the macro trend . . . the macro drop - backdrop - to all of this is the move from software to SaaS, right?it used to be the case “I would write software, it's running on somebody else's' machine so all I cared about was performance” - I didn't care about cost, right?And so, like, that's just not part of the developer' culture . . .Nowadays, if you're writing software and it's sub-optimize, it actually impacts the margins to the company that you work for, and you know it turns out - to a large degree.So what Spotify has done is they say “OK, if you're developing a microservice, like if you're developing a service, what we're going to do is when we show you that service ,we're going to show you the “Health Score” like - what's the availability? what's the up-time? what's the latency?but we're also going to show the cost. And by doing that, at least you know if that's going to dramatically increase or not, And because Cloud cost is such a significant part of COGS, controlling that, you know, as we've been mentioning, is a priority for the business, So I would recommend anybody listening to this - that is, doing a Cloud service - to think, you know, as your developers are building, you hold them up to a set of standards, you know - Number of bugs, whatever it is . . . Performance, Documentation . . . Cost absolutely should be one of those - there are things you should be tracking.Now, it's up to you whether you care, right? You may decide that you're in a growth phase and you don't care.You may decide that you've raised a bunch of money from Andreessen Horowitz - and you don't care, But at least you want the visibility - so when you do care, you can change it, right?I mean, that's basically the core of the argument here - you need to be in a position that once you care, you can do something about it.(Nati) So that makes me 2 follow-up questions on that regard: one of them is related to the development team itself and how they structure it, because a lot of the listeners for Reversim - the Podcast that Ran is running on and we're working sometimes together on that - is that Startups that are looking for, you know, those tools and usually what we find is that a lot of those tools (1) have, you know . . . need a lot of rights, and they're basically exposing a lot of information, and it's very hard to know, as a developer, what that actually means.So as part of the shift-left, we're starting to see a trend towards FinOps, like a recognition that we need specialized tools that would do cost analysis - not for IT but for developers, and that needs to be part of the DevOps cycle and part of the development cycle . . . So is there . . . are there any tools already that is, you know, providing the cost-analysis for developers, that is different than, I would say, cost-analysis for “general IT”?(Martin) Yeah, I mean - there's actually, a bunch of them . . . They developed . . . They developed their own, but it's open source and it's available and they've got cost insights, which is a plug in.So if you go to like, you know, Backstage.io - there's a blog post called New Cost Insights plugin: The engineer's solution to taming cloud costs, which does exactly that.[also - backstage/backstage]You know, we're investors in a company called Vantage, which does exactly this . . .So there's a lot of companies and a lot of products out there which help you understand the Cloud costs.Track them over time and then, you know - provide some guidance on how you want to reduce them.And again - I do think, from the listener standpoint, the point is not that you should drain your Cloud cost.That is a business decision - and I have no opinion on whether it makes sense for youbut I do know that it's quite likely, over time, that it will matter - and when that happens, hopefully you're going to be in a position to do something about it.And as part of that, you know, making, you know . . . pulling these tools into your normal developer workflow - I think it's very important.(Nati) And in that context, do you think that we're expecting to see these FinOps now growing, very similar to the way the DevSecOps, you know, kind of started to merge?(Martin) I mean, yeah . . . so I, you know, I don't know the answer to that. I do know that like basically API catalogs, microService catalogs, you know, dashboards that show kind of performance and costs, I mean - they're just going to continue to increase in popularity.And the thing for me with FinOps is like . . . I just feel like the definition has become so muddy that I don't know, but I think we can all say tooling that allows for the visibility and display of efficiencies and costs to all parts of the business, from the CFO down to the engineer, are going to continue to grow in popularity - and they should, that I'm very confidence.(Nati) My next question would be on kind of connecting . . . Yeah, I'm saying that the other question that I have is kind of taking on the fact that you're covering both Andreessen-Horowitz as an investor and you've been an entrepreneur before - so you kind of see both sides . . .And the question was what should change in the investor side, in your view?(Martin) Well, that's what I'm trying to find out . . . No, I mean it's, you know . . . I mean you cannot . . . it's what I'm trying to find out.You could argue that this actually . . . this has nothing to do with me, because this is a public-company-problem and I'm a private investorand by time the the company's public, you know, I don't have any exposure to it and so, you know, I definitely think it means that there's a lot of opportunity to invest in Cloud tooling.I do think, you know, if we want to hold long positions for companies at scale, like as a board member, I do think that it provides some guidance on how you instruct the companybut for me, the big thing is just trying to find big shifts in the industry, And you know what's interesting about this? this is my favorite thing about this entire study, and it's the following - So I was involved in the time in history when the Cloud service providers had this exact same dilemma - and then I saw what happened, so let me just walk through that, and this is the irony of this whole thing . . .The irony of the whole thing is, like, this exact same thing happened to the Cloud service providers back in, you know, the late 2000s . . . so, you know, let's say Google and Amazon and Microsoft, you know - they were building their own Cloud services, right?I even have the slide, it's kind of funny . . . if you look at the slides from, like, 2010 - they're saying “OK, well, we've got AWS, and then they did a cost analysis of their COGS . . .Because now the infrastructure is COGS and they found, I guess . . . guess how much of their COGS was servers?Turns out it was 50% . . . just like the Cloud is, right?So they looked at their COGS and like “Oh, goodness!”, right? . . . “they're like 50% of our COGS as servers!”So what did they do? they totally disrupted the server supply-chain, right? . . .And at the time, you're like “these guys - they're crazy!”, because these are servers, this is a software company - how are you going to go against HP and Dell?And like, you know, - there's no possible way . . . what do you know about, like, you know . . .And yet, the economic argument was so compelling that they did it, right?So we've got this historical-analog, you know, that I think is coming up again. So as soon as you look at your COGS and you're like 50% as a single line-item - you disrupt that line-item . . . And so what I'm very interested in is - OK, so you've got all these SaaS companies, they have a single line-item - what are they going to do?and if they do something dramatic, the industry changes . . .and I think it's very interesting to think through what that industry change might be, right?It could be that they prop-up like a “Generic Cloud”, right?That's what happened in Pharma - if you look at Big Pharma, like, what happened is the buyers propped up Dr. Reddy's, which was a generic drug producer in India.Maybe someone will prop-up a generic Cloud?Maybe they'll repatriate some workloads, you know?Maybe you'll see special-purposes Clouds?Maybe they'll find a way to get the Cloud providers to erode margins . . . I don't know what's gonna happen, but I know there's a trillion dollars in the balance - and so there's gonna be some big shift . . . I just don't know what it is yet - which is why I'm glad we're having this discussion 'cause it helps me think it through.(Nati) True, yeah . . . so basically, what you're saying is that we need to apply supply-chain methodology into how we run SaaS business, rather than, if you'd like, just think about it as someone else' problem . . .And that means that the whole idea of outsourcing your entire infrastructure should be questioned, again . . . because you - by definition - going to limit how much you're going to optimize that supply chain.Again, if you . . . and the example that you gave about the Cloud providers and the 50% and the “Aha! moment” for them, I think, should happen to a lot of SaaS companies.And I think that, you know, makes repatriation an interesting option, because it's, in a way, the same kind of move that the Cloud providers have done when they disrupted the server market, in some sense at least.But it makes it at least more logical than, I think, some people who are kind of still in the transition to Cloud, and all of a sudden someone tells them “repatriate!” . . . we kind of look at that as a crazy idea . . . But I think when you think about it from a supply chain perspective - and in supply chains you basically look at the chunks of . . . you know, supply and the cost per each item - and if there's a, you know, an item that is a big chunk of your supply, you automatically look at how you optimize it, and that's a different kind of way to look into this.So I think that's a very good analogy . . . kind of looking into the transformation that happened in Cloud to get them to that point, and I think that's maybe one lesson . . .(Ran) So, with that, we'll wrap up.I thank you again very much, Martin, and thank you Nati - it's been a pleasure talking to you. So thank you for your time - and hope to talk to you again.(Martin) Wonderful - thank you so much, it was a real pleasure.Thank you, cheers. האזנה נעימה ותודה רבה לעופר פורר על התמלול!

@MartinGinnane from  @ginnaneassociates is an expert advisor on #retaildevelopment #placemaking and #brandactivation. He's worked with international cities and regional towns on major #investmentattraction #regionalrenewal and #retailrenewal projects. He was the #vicgov first retail industry specialist, is a member of the @victoriangovernment #SmallBusinessMinisterialCouncil and had senior roles at the #vicgov #DepartmentofBusinessandInnovation and was #DeputyManagingDirector of #DowntownDutyFree. The following quote from his website sums up his philosophy and approach to the work he does."Global Cities of significance all have one thing in common, a strong and vibrant, culturally diverse heart that encourages people to live, experience, participate and claim ownership of their location. At the heart of these cities, is a unique offering that makes them stand out from the sameness that is making so many cities bland and boring. Retail strength, placemaking and events are the economic backbone of all successful global cities and large residential developments." He's currently working on a major retail renewal project with the @cityofwarrnambool and in the discussion we cover;bringing his experience with major city #investmentattraction to regional townsthe exciting opportunities ahead for #regionaltownsavoiding the 'sameness' that is making so many cities bland and boring, the #oversuccess of big citieshow #Covid19 fast-tracked problems in the retail sectorwhere and how #prestige  has lost out to #masstige  and why "luxury is about where you found it rather where you bought it"#liebigstreet #warrnambool the critical role of #localgovernment   #restorationgrants  #landlords #localcouncilthe component pieces in a vibrant and vital #retailstrip#treechange and the influence of these younger people when they return to the towns they were born in#foodandbeverage #whiskybars #goodbottleshop  #ginbars #goodpizzabuilding #sustainable #businessmodel from services and products that appeals to #locals and #visitors #smallbusiness an #employmentgenerator in #regionaltownswww.kerrcapital.com.auA full transcript of the interview is below. Michael Kerr: Hi, it's Michael Kerr here presenting Small Business Banter.A healthy micro and small business sector means a successful economy and a more vibrant society. Small Business Banter is about helping regional business owners better prepare for current challenges, but also for the next stage of business success. I'm Michael Kerr, founder of Kerr Capital, advisors to business owners.Each week I interview a fellow small business owner or an expert and they share their stories, their life experiences, the wins and the losses, and their best advice to help you, the listener, get the most you can from your own business. Small Business Banter is brought to you from the studios of 104.7 Gippsland FM and is heard across Australia on the Community Radio Network. Thanks also to Kerr Capital supporters of the show.Okay, welcome to another edition of Small Business Banter. Really pleased to have in today with us, Martin Ginnane, from Ginnane & Associates. Martin will tell you a lot more about what he's done in a few minutes, but I just wanted to cover off some of the highlights. He's principally responsible for advising on retail development, place making and brand activation. He's done a lot of work in both big cities and regional areas. He's a member of the Small Business Ministerial Council, and he's really a Retail Industry Specialist here in Victoria. And prior to that, he was the Deputy Managing Director of Downtown Duty-Free. Firstly, welcome in today, Martin. Martin Ginnane: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. Michael: And for today's discussion with Martin, we're going to be talking about regional renewal, making the most of retail, attracting investment, and lessons learned from some of the major initiatives. Martin was involved in Melbourne and now has been working with regional Victoria locations in Camperdown Warrnambool and Ballarat. So we're looking forward to that. But Martin, if you could, just give us a couple of minutes in your background so the listeners are in sync with where you come from and what you do. Over to you.Martin: Thank you, Michael. I'm fortunate enough to have had a very varied background, but all around the retail sector. Born in Melbourne many, many years ago. I was raised in Melbourne. I spent 20 years in Sydney where I started my retail career with companies such as Angus and Coote, The Jeweler's and Diamond Traders, which was part of then of the Hooker Corporation owned by the illustrious George Herscu. And then was poached to join Downtown Duty Free in the days when Duty Free was a big business. We had Melbourne Airport, Brisbane Airport, Sydney Airport, and about 15 off-airport stores. So, at about 6,000 staff in those days. I joined there as Deputy Managing Director. And after six years, we were taken over by Swiss Air Company. I was retrenched and thought, well, I'll come back home to Melbourne. I came back to Melbourne and was appointed as the Victorian government's first Retail Industry Specialist at a time when Melbourne in particular had vacancy rates as high as 17 to 18%. I was appointed under the Kennett government for 12 months and ended up staying there for 17 years. And during that period, I work mainly on investment attraction for the CBD, an original advisor on the Melbourne Fashion Festival for the state government up until I departed 10 years ago to establish my own business, Ginnane & Associates.Michael: Excellent. So, from that background, you know a lot about foot traffic. So I'm looking forward to exploring the work that you've been doing. I mean, drawing on that rich experience, but also relating it to what you've been doing in some of the regional parts of Victoria. So, I just wanted to start off with a quote from your website, "Global Cities of significance all have one thing in common, a strong and vibrant, culturally diverse heart that encourages people to live, experience, participate and claim ownership of their location. At the heart of these cities, is a unique offering that makes them stand out from the sameness that is making so many cities bland and boring. Retail strength, placemaking and events are the economic backbone of all successful global cities and large residential developments." That's straight from your website. It was very powerful. I'm going to ask you about how regional towns and regional cities in Australia can take something from that. I'm assuming it applies across towns as well as cities.Martin: Most definitely, Michael, it does. It's a big statement, and it's a strong statement and it's one that I'm thinking actually of using on every single presentation that I do to whether be commercial or private government, particularly in this day and age. It came from the fact that a lot of things were happening in the retail sector prior to COVID. We can all say that COVID caused it, but there are massive changes happening prior. One of the things that was driving this belief that I have in that statement is that sameness was happening all around the world. So you could walk down in Collins Street, you could walk down all the major cities, and they were taken over now by the mega giants, the Louis Vuitton's, the Gucci's, the Prada's, who roll out their international branding twice a year.So, you can walk down these streets and look in the windows and you'll see the same thing. The only time that you'll notice if you'll look up and you'll see St Paul or St Patrick's Cathedral or Notre Dame and you'll think I'm not in Melbourne, I'm in Paris. So seriously, that's how bad retail was getting.Michael: They'd taken that McDonald's consistency of product just a little bit too far with their retail.Martin: Yeah, and I call it masstige rather than prestige. It has got to the point where the big players are having to buy smaller boutique operations now to make themselves unique and so-called exclusive again because of the success and over success of some of those global brands.Michael: Too much commoditization of a once glorious brand. Martin: Exactly. So, one of the things that comes out of this is the desire to experience something that is different and unique. One of my other sayings is, "luxury to me is about someone says where did you find that as opposed to where did you buy it." Because you can buy anything these days. If you've got the money, you can buy something at the top. When within 18 months it'll be at H&M or probably far less than that, or how you can buy the copy of it. But the wonderful discovery, finding something, whether it's a great old book or pre-love tie or whatever the case may be. So, jumping back into your question. This is where retail cities and towns across Australia had the upper hand. It is really, really their opportunity to shine. We can discuss that as we go along. Michael: Yeah. Look, I think we ought to jump straight into that. The renewal or the potential renewal of the local shopping strip. I mean, you're doing some work recently, I think, in Ballarat, which got some magnificent real estate and grand streets. But what would you take to those places to make that local shopping strip vital and exciting for the locals? I'm assuming we're not going to have potentially some of those big international luxury brands.Martin: Nor do you want them. But Michael, what I think is the scenario is that it's going to be driven by two things. You've got to have an appetite by the local government. You've got to have an appetite by the council. For example, I just almost finished four years work with the City of Warrnambool on the redevelopment of Liebig Street. So they had a counselor at the time who had a vision to say to themselves and their constituents, "If we don't do something with this beautiful old big wide street, it is falling into such disrepair that we are losing out to the new shopping centers that are opening and almost circling like a western movie with the wagon train circling the town." Michael: Right. And choking it off.Martin: And choking it off. Now, this scenario with success for any regional town or major strip is to make sure that they are no longer just selling stuff. I use the difference between a product and an NSA stuff. This is not being derogatory to any of the brands that are in the shopping centers around regional cities. And those shopping centers do offer convenience. If it's pouring with rain, a young mother can drive in or a young father can drive in. Unload the baby. It's dry. They are not going to get wet. But although found in those shopping centers is stuff. They'll find inexpensive football socks for the kids which they need because they grow so quickly. They'll find a dress. They might find a cheap, inexpensive set of cabinets or something for their bedroom. That's fine.When they come into Warrnambool or when they come into Ballarat or when they come in to Camperdown, it's about wanting to come into town because that is where they are going to experience and find things that are different and unique. They are going to be able to engage with the community in a much nicer environment, wider footpaths, planting, better awnings, easier parking. All those things make for an environment that will make regional cities and towns continue to thrive.Michael: Right. So Warrnambool, Ballarat, other regional towns around Australia, the history is there. But you talked about having local councilors being a big part of the equation they need to support. What about landlords? I mean, some of these buildings are grand and make for beautiful retail or food or whatever. But the older they get, the harder they are to maintain, or the costly they are to maintain.Martin: You can see examples not just in regional towns. You can see examples on Chapel Street under the Council of Stonnington on Glenferrie Road in many, many areas. One of the advantages that live shopping centers have is that every so many years, your store must be refurbished. You must meet the guidelines of the shopping center and so forth. So while that creates a great Disneyland feel and a very, very nice, safe environment and a pleasurable environment where we're almost craving. Well, we are craving something that's a bit more earthy and a bit more real.Warrnambool, and I know the City of Ballarat as well. Warrnambool successfully offered restoration grants for property owners during the redevelopment program. The City of Warrnambool got that funding from federal state and from their own coffers. So three lots of funding. I believe the City of Ballarat has done the same for the renewal of the mall. I believe both cities are offering grants and financial assistance to restore and renew these heritage buildings.Michael: Right. So assuming the landlord takes advantage, then it does really open up the opportunities for smaller retail operators, whether they be food or whether they are quirky retail, to start something.Martin: Michael, the exciting thing is when you walk down the streets of these areas now is that you are seeing young people. You are seeing in Warrnambool there's, I think, three whiskey bars. There's a gin bar. These are all being run by young people who were born and raised in Warrnambool. Evidently, you do need to either be born there or marry somebody. And if you marry somebody, you need to be married for 20 years before you are classed as a true business owner.Michael: Before you get your stamp. Yeah.Martin: Even though I've been there a lot, I still don't think I'm a local. But they are coming back to town. They are seeing opportunities to come back to their town and make a living for themselves and their families. There's new housing estates being built in big numbers around these large and medium-sized regional cities. And these people come in many ways, quite often from urban environments, and they still want to live the same way. They want to be able to go out to a whiskey bar. Well, they want to be out to buy some nice cheese and some nice bread. Michael: Yeah. And in today's edition of Small Business Banter, I'm talking with Martin Ginnane from Ginnane & Associates. Yeah, that's a trend that we talk about all the time on Small Business Banter. The movement back from CBD areas, whether it be Sydney or other states and capitals, and this reinvigoration of towns and those people bringing with them some of their experiences. There's no question me, Melbourne and Sydney and Brisbane and Adelaide have some incredible innovation in food, but it seems to be transplanting now in these regional locations. Is that a result of people just having enough of the city being too expensive to run businesses? What are your thoughts on why this is happening?Martin: I think, Michael, you are spot on it. But it's a combination of all those things. It's a combination of perhaps the over success that large cities have had in terms of urbanization, particularly Melbourne, in the last eight to ten years. Massive increase of student population, which we see the massive contribution they've given to the economy, particularly as I haven't been here for the last 12 months. It's a combination of all those things. People want to not necessarily escape, they just want to experience something, whether they are moving permanently or whether they are visiting. The other thing that's happening, of course, is that the ability. I know someone in particular who's going to be working. He stays in Ballarat but is working from Melbourne firm, and then you need to go to Melbourne that twice a week. So all that flexibility is something five years ago we didn't have.Michael: Yeah, I think you made a comment earlier about not what you bought, where you bought it or you found it. You know, I live down the Bellarine Peninsula. My office is in Queenscliff. Well, it's fascinating every day to walk through that street and what it might be and see the gin bars and the distilleries. Not so much in Queenscliff, but certainly in other places, it's booming. It's a combination of that vigor and energy. If you were to take a view of what the next town that wants to reinvigorate their retail strip, the historical retail strip, what are the key that we've talked about to support to restore buildings? I guess we need landlords to come onboard and buy into the vision, and the small business operators. What else or who else is needed to really kick start getting these places? Because people are traveling more and more through regional Australia because you can't go elsewhere. So the opportunities would seem to be there if you've got an interesting offer.Martin: The LGA, the Local Government Authority, has to have the passion. And the counselors, the CEO, have to have a dream of what that town could be. In many eyes, retail doesn't play a part. Retail services and hospitality don't really play a part in local government plans. They may have a four-year strategy for economic development, but retail and services don't normally play a big part in it. So, in order for what you've just said, the other players, the landlords, the small business operators, the potential investors. You have to know that you are moving into an area or considering to move into an area where a council is hungry for your business and is keen to get it.I'm just about to deliver an investment attraction to the opportunity in Warrnambool where we are inviting some of the big commercial real estate agents down to have a look at what the area has to offer. How it's grown, how it's changed. Not necessarily to get any big players down but for them to be able to put Warrnambool in their head for property investors, but also for businesses that might be looking to expand. Michael: So you're saying that retail and retail services aren't really a driver for the LGAs. Is that it?Martin: No. I'm not saying that with all of them, but with a lot of them it's very much... When I started originally with the state capital which was over 20 years ago. I remember having a director said to me, "But Martin, why are we even playing in this space? One shop closes, another shop opens." It's not as simple as that. It's a scenario where council needs to lead the way in a vision of what they want the city to be. And when I say retailer, not necessarily just talking about selling more stuff. A good regional town, a good regional city, should attract people. It should attract its own people. It should attract visitors. But it should attract them for a multitude of reasons. Retail, food, beverage is one of the biggest drivers in today's market.Michael: Absolutely. It is. And it's certainly an area for further discussion. But if you look around, I spend a lot of time in traveling in regional Victoria. I go a long way for a good bakery, a good beer, a good pizza. So, what are the components for a good contemporary retail strip in any given town? What must you have to get people to choose that town over another town? Martin: You have to have two things. You have to have a business model that appeals to the locals, and you also have to have a business model that will appeal to the visitors. Now, I spent a lot of time as a young boy, which was a long time ago in Daylesford and Hepburn Springs, and I remember how it was and I see how it is now. However, for all the success, Daylesford in particular is still very much a weakened economy. Because driven by everything that appeals to the tourist. You must maintain an offering that appeals to your local residents as well. So you need, as you just said, a good pizza joint which Warrnambool has about two and Ballarat has about six. You need a really good bottle shop. You need a couple of good pubs. You need a pub that has good live music. You need a good delicatessen. You know, there's one in Warrnambool called Darriwill Farm. It was a retail released by a woman by the name of Lisa Pitkethly. It's the most amazing business. It's got absolutely everything.Michael: I also tried some stores in the city. I didn't know that.Martin: They had one in [inaudible] and they had one in Albert Park, I think, but I think that both are gone. Lisa's got bought out her own business now. But it's that sort of business where you just go there. It's almost like a small Ikea for food and delicatessen. You just go in. You pick up a basket and you buy. The other thing is, do these towns need this as they get to and need to have the services as well? So there's a good banking infrastructure. There's two insurance brokers. There're things like that that help the community.Michael: Yeah. And those communities would think on across the board of growing. So you've got a bigger and more permanent base to build a business around. This idea of investment attraction, it's still a viable model for local government to think about, local councils. It's not just for big cities. Martin: It's essential because big cities have been so badly hurt. The big cities that have relied particularly on government employees, in a big, big way, and international students. I think of Victoria's wonderful campaign they had many years ago with the jigsaw puzzle. And the course CBD of Melbourne, which I'm actively involved in working on their precincts, review work at the moment. But the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fall on that. So, the students are falling off the table. The tourists are falling off the table. The public servants in town.Michael: I get it. In that investment attraction, I just want to get your thoughts quickly. There's quite a difference between attracting big employers versus attracting new business operators. I'm very passionate about seeing more small business owners. So it's a balance between getting a bigger organization that can employ 20, 50, or 100 people. But also, I think, sometimes the opportunities to attract new and innovative small business operators. We had Carly Flecknoe from the Made the Grampians Way. She's a classic tree changer. This is maybe 30 episodes back. But that's the kind of energy and vigor that I think we need as well as obviously attracting... Not everyone wants to be a business owner, so we need to have a balance. But I sometimes wonder whether small business might get underappreciated as an employment generator. Martin: They certainly never get underappreciated if I'm involved in anything. I've been in small business in different ways on and off for so many years and I know the difficulties of it, but I am so passionate about believing that this is their time to rise. This is really, really their time to rise. They've got access to so much now in terms of they don't need to pay for big advertising. They've got Instagram. They've got everything at their fingertips to grow their business. Michael: Yeah. They got something that's interesting, quirky. They can get people to the destination.Martin: Exactly.Michael: They can build it and they will come. Maybe that's going to come true for some. Martin: Well, that's why we're doing the investment attraction work. It's certainly not to when under no idea that we will attract big brands, but it's about putting the city of Warrnambool and other cities in investors' minds. Michael: Yeah, and really building on the natural advantage, the heritage, the proximity to food, beverage, produce. Martin: And a wonderful life.Michael: And a wonderful life. Yeah. Hey Martin, that is, unfortunately, time up for us today. But that was a really great chat. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences and your energy and passion for that reinvigoration and renewal. Keep up the great work and perhaps we will chat another time, but go well.Martin: Thank you, Michael.Michael: Thanks, Martin Ginnane.So that is all for today's episode of Small Business Banter. I continue to be inspired, bringing you small business experts and other small business owners and hearing their stories. Do you want to listen to any past episodes? Jump onto your podcast platform of choice and search Small Business Banter. There, you will find a diverse and fascinating collection of small business owners and experts openly discussing and sharing their experiences. For any of the links, resources, or information we've talked about on the show today or to contact me, please head over to smallbusinessbanter.com, or you can find us on Facebook and Instagram. It would be great to have you tune in the same time next week for another episode of Small Business Banter.[END]

Martin Jennings statues have been commissioned by the UK's greatest institutions: the National Portrait Gallery, St Paul's Cathedral, the Palace of Westminster, the University of Oxford, and many others. His statue of John Betjeman, the driving force behind the saving of St. Pancras station in the 1960s, welcomes visitors from all over the world to the capital city. He won the Public Monuments and Statue Associations Marsh Award for Public Sculpture in 2017. Join us for a new episode and BE INSPIRED BY SCULPTURE. You can find images of Martin Jennings work and a transcription of the interview at SCULPTURE VULTURE If you are looking for a new book, the novel mentioned in this interview is currently available free from Sculpture Vulture. This podcast was brought to you by Antique Bronze Snippet from the interview: Lucy: Today, I began our chat by asking him if he'd always been creative. Martin: Well, that's a big, open question. I think we all are from birth, and I have, I suppose, been so in different ways. I went to university, studied English literature, and looked at art literature, as it were, from the outside before I went to art school to start making things myself. Lucy: And so, it was books and literature, words, that drew you before the form and fine arts? Martin: Yes, it was. I come from a very artistic family. My mother was a painter, and I have several brothers who are writers and journalists, and also painters and good at drawing and that sort of thing, and calligraphy. In fact, what I first studied at art school was calligraphy and lettering. But I came to it rather late in my 20s. So I'd struggled with playing the piano at school, and, as I said, most of my exposure to the arts was through books and reading. But as a visual artist, well, I didn't really start till I was in my early 20s. But it has gone on continuously since then. Lucy: Was it somebody that influenced the moving towards sculpture, or did it just feel like a very natural progression? Martin: there was a moment at school I remember, I went into the art teacher's sculpture studio. And as soon as I saw the working life he had, you know, surrounded with blocks of stone, and with dusty books on the bookshelves, and just, sort of, dust everywhere, I came to the conclusion that this was the life for me. I'd never have to put a tie on ever again. But I then went to university, and it took me until after I left university before I really approached it seriously. Lucy: With my own children, we have a studio at home, and there's all sorts of projects all the way around them, but because it's so familiar to them, they kind of go against that. They want to do the opposite of what I'm interested in. But for you, I suppose, the familiarity of having your mum painting, and the materials, and those things at home, just felt much more natural to you? Martin: It certainly seemed like an occupation that could command respect, insofar as my parents were forever talking about art and artists, mainly painters. So where other people

Martin Walker's Bruno, the French police chief at the heart of his best-selling Perigord mystery series, is everyone's ideal cop – as well as the town's most eligible bachelor and a talented host with an international award-winning cook book in his name . . . . Hi there, I'm your host Jenny Wheeler and today Martin Walker talks about French charm, his passion for the Perigord, and his years as a diplomatic correspondent in Gorbachev's Moscow and Clinton's Washington. Six things you'll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: Why Martin's wife Julia is his most important assetThe freedom of writing novelsHob nobbing with world leadersBruno's passion for good foodCharmed by cave dweller sensibilitiesPerigord food and wine ambassador Where to find Martin Walker:  Website: http://www.brunochiefofpolice.com/ Facebook: @BrunoChiefOfPolice What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. Jenny: But now, here's Martin.  Hello there Martin and welcome to the show, it's great to have you with us. Martin: Hello Jenny.  I don't think I've ever had an interview from such a long distance before! Author Martin Walker - Bruno Chief of Police mysteries and former diplomatic correspondent Jenny: Yes. It's wonderful what modern technology can do. You're in Washington DC and I'm an Auckland New Zealand, and that's really fun.  You've had a distinguished career as a journalist with top newspapers, including as diplomatic correspondence for The Guardian in London. What made you switch to fiction? Martin: When we were based in Brussels, my wife decided that we'd been foreign correspondents for all of our lives and our children needed a place to be rooted. She decided we should get a house in the Perigord, which we'd visited from time to time because  we have some friends who were there. Remarkable prehistoric caves Caves of Perigord - where it all began. Martin Walker's first novel I became increasingly fascinated by the Perigord, particularly by the prehistory, the prehistoric caves, like Lascaux. I remember the shock when I first saw it and thought, my God, these people were in no sense primitive.  We've been quite wrong about this. I mean, the artistic sensibility, it was like our own. And so I began researching, interviewing the archeologists and reading books and visiting all the caves. And I wrote my novel, The Caves of Perigord, which is still in print, I'm proud to say, which is really about what kind of human society that could have produced at Lascaux. Before that, my books were pretty conventionally journalistic -  a history of the cold war, a  book about Gorbachev in Peristroika. A book about modern America and the history of America and so on and a book about the National Front in England. So the sense of liberation in writing this novel about the Perigord, got me even more locked into the fascination with this part of France. Art work from the prehistoric Lascaux caves - setting for Martin Walker's first novel. Moving into Bruno mysteries Jenny: That's fantastic. So you moved on to the mystery genre and a French police chief called Bruno. How did you make the choice of genre? You've explained the setting, but why did you go to mysteries? Martin: Well, because in our village in France,  I became friends with a local neighbor who took me down to the  tennis club and rugby club. And I began playing on Friday mornings when I was there, in a little foursome of three local people and me. Of course, it was a very gentle game of tennis from about 10 30 till about midday. And then we went into the tennis club, which being France has a wonderful kitchen, and we made ourselves a pretty spectacular lunch. And one of the four people I played with was a man who have been in the French army for 10 years and spend his spare time teaching the local kids to play tennis and rugby.

Welcome to Further, Faster, in association with Montane. Presented by Daniel Neilson. In this episode, we talk to the legend that is Martin Hartley. Martin could be described as a professional extreme photographer. But that doesn’t do him justice. He could be described as a polar explorer, but again, that doesn’t really cover what he does. His photos have appeared in The New York Times and Outside magazine, he’s had exhibitions at Christie’s, Royal Geographic Society and the Scott Polar Research Institute, and he is the Director of Photography for the iconic Sidetracked Magazine. He is a veteran of 20 polar expeditions, including trips working with the European Space Agency and NASA. And in 2009, he was named as one of Time magazine's most prestigious Heroes of the Environment. But he describes his proudest moment when his polar images were exhibited at the United Nations’ climate change conference in Copenhagen. Here his photography helped to influence the future of our planet on the most important stage of all. And that’s perhaps the key defining message throughout his work. More than most people on this planet, he’s seen how climate change is affecting the polar regions. He also once took the FA Cup to the South Pole, but that’s a story for another day. In this podcast, we talk about his enduring love of the Arctic Ocean, how he keeps trudging on after months on the ice, and the terrible effects of climate change he’s observed in the 16 years he’s been visiting the Arctic, as well as hearing about cutting-edge technology that could help the effects. So how to describe Martin? Well, listen in to this incredible, fun and insightful conversation we had with him and you’ll be a little nearer the mark. You can follow Martin on Instagram: @MartinRHartley or check out his website: www.martinhartley.com

Daniel, Matt, and Michael are back from the dead to give us their thoughts on Madden, Hearthstone, and Yakuza Kiwami. Matt gives us four things to make Lawbreakers a more advanced Meta. Rebekah has your Pokemon rants... and Martin? Well, he just laughs one more time at Xbox for postponing Crackdown 3 to make a bad game run slightly better. Today's Guests: Martin - @gotmab21 on Twitter, @screenlookerpod on Twitch Daniel George - @itsdanielgeorge on Twitter, @Dgenerator on Twitch Rebekah Valentine - @duckvalentine on Twitter Matt Becker - @HulkCrouton (Twitter and Twitch) Michael Owens - @realmikeowens Intro x Starlight Buffalo - Starlightbuffalo – https://soundcloud.com/starlightbuffalo/twirl-me-you-fool-then-its Follow the show @screenlookerpod on Twitter or find us at Screen Looker Podcast on Facebook. Don't forget to Like, Rate, Share, and Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, and Soundcloud! Leave us your feedback or questions at screenlookerspod@gmail.com and we will read it on the sh

Kelly Coughlin: Greetings, this is Kelly Coughlin. The Blind Hen. A Hen who had lost her sight and was accustomed to scratching up the earth in search of food, although blind, still continued to scratch away most diligently.  Another sharp-sighted hen who spared her tender feet, never moved from her side and enjoyed, without scratching, the fruit of the other’s labor.  For as often as the blind hen scratched up a barley corn, her watchful companion devoured it.    Announcer: Kelly Coughlin, CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping banks C-level offices, navigate risks, and discover reward. He’s the host of the syndicated audio podcast bankbosun.com.  Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyd’s Bank, and Merrill Lynch.  On the podcast Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C-suite offices risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discovery reward.  Now your host, Kelly Coughlin.    Kelly Coughlin: Greetings.  This is part two of my interview with Kris St. Martin, a bank cyber security expert at CBIZ.  In part two, we will talk more about what drives premium costs and once a bank experiences a cyber intrusion, then what are the actual types of costs the bank can insure and how to make sure these costs are recoverable in an insurance claim.  I finished part one by asking Kris about how a bank should go about determining the maximum claim liability.  Is it based on records, revenues, business lines, and ultimately, what can a bank do to manage and reduce the premium costs with good internal cyber risk management controls implemented and utilized at the bank.  Here is what Kris had to say about that in part two.   Kris St. Martin: Because of the number of records, you can fairly well quantify the physical costs to deal with a breach. Those types of costs, if you’re hit with a breach, time really is of the essence.  You want to be able to get as much good, accurate information as to what happened, did it trigger your state data breach law as quickly as possible because if you go back to Target again, one of the things that they learned in the litigation and heavily criticized for reputation.  In fact, my family, we all have debit cards at our local bank and we have a Target about three blocks away.  So I always remember these dates, because it affected us.  They really came out public and our bank had offered debit cards two days before this special breach happened and they identified it because in early November.  So they took well over a month to month-and-a-half, to actually notify the world that there was a breach.  Looking at the costs, the cost part of a breach is going to be the initial forensics, legal consultation, so if initial forensics say this was indeed a breach, then you go to your legal representation, did this breach trigger the state’s data breach laws?  Everybody’s a little bit different.  They’re all state driven, but more similar than different.   The second part is you go to your attorney and you say here’s our data, here’s what happened, did that trigger the breach?  Well, these are expenses that are accumulating.  Then, if it does, you need to notify in writing and send compliance letter for all the people involved.  Then, you need to handle their calls and inquiries along the way.  They’re going to call in from that letter and either you do it in house or you set up a data center for that, train the people in the data center for those phones or your own employees, and then you need to offer one year of credit monitoring, and there’s a cost for that.  That’s kind of all your costs that are generally, somewhere, at least $30 per record and often times I’ve seen other studies saying going up to $100 per record.  That’s fairly quantifiable, based on how many records you have.  What’s much more tough on the limits is going to be, based on the data that’s been breach, who’s going to sue you and why, and what harm are they going to say you have caused. That becomes more much difficult to quantify.  Along those lines we deal with banks all over the country and as we’ve been renewing cyber policies, this has now become a regulator/board-driven type of thing.    We’re routinely having banks come to us at renewal time and saying we want more liability just because of the unknowns out there.  So, what’ a good number?  It’s really hard to say.  There’s peer numbers that different services put out including Travelers puts out peer numbers for cyber liability.  We’ll throw our customers a couple of what their peers for the different pricings will be as a point of reference and then try to have a discussion on what type of information do you hold in the bank and how is it held, and start talking through kind of worse cast scenarios, if they lost some of that information, and who would be armed the most.  You try to massage the peer numbers from there, but like I think anything in risk and insurance, you really—you can’t necessarily observe for the absolute worst scenario, but you try and pick a number that will largely cover most of the occurrences along the way on a probability basis.   Kelly Coughlin: Kris, you mentioned earlier that theft of funds gets covered by another type of risk mitigation tool and then you also mentioned that business interruption for a bank isn’t very high, because it’s not like there’s a bunch of transactions that come in if there’s interruption of service.  So what are the main costs drivers a bank can look at in determining how much coverage they need?   Kris St. Martin: That’s a very good question and on the cyber side, certainly the number of records.  That’s going to be the biggest driver to look at on the cyber side.  We have banks that are also involved with card programs.  There can be other services that they provide very actively that involves the flow of personal information and vendor partner information.  That can provide another element of risk there versus the standard just checking and savings accounts and loans, and CDs type of business.  It could be a smaller bank that do very large wire transactions.  Another thing to look at is the size of transactions that you’re doing electronically.  There’s other banks that might be bigger that just do a series of very small transactions.  They may not need as big of a theft limit.  Those are things that underwriters as far as pricing a policy, are going to be looking at too; size of transactions, third-party vendors that you might be associated with, with special programs with the added element of risk of other people holding your data.   Kelly Coughlin: When a bank experiences a breach, what are the costs that the bank has to absorb?  You mentioned the theft of funds, that’s covered by a bond.  There’s probably no business interruption costs or very minimal.  What costs normally accompany a cyber breach?   Kris St. Martin: Well, in a cyber breach, let me kind of walk through what happens.  Somebody in IT is going to come to a CFO or some C-level executive and say, “Hey, something happened, we’re not quite sure what it is, but we’re concerned and we need to dig into this thing.”  The first thing you would do is try to go with an outside forensic partner who specializes in this type of thing and start digging it in with your IT group, and say, “Okay, exactly what was breached and is there a pretty high probability that all or some of our records are involved with that?  There’s a cost for that, for your forensics.  Once you get through that, you would bring that information to an attorney and I would highly recommend somebody who specializes in data breach law.  Say here’s the facts of what happened and how does that relate to our state’s data breach law, did it trigger that law, do we now have to go down the steps of notification and all the remedies that are built into that law.  There’s legal fees there.  Then, if the attorney says you did breach the law then you’re going to have to do a letter or a series of letters, emails, so on, out to your clients notifying them of a breach and then in there is going to be an offer of call us for more information.  Many times, it’s a separate call center service used.  There are those that specialize in data breach call centers and there’s an expense for that.  Also, most states, if not all, are going to require, if you did trigger a data breach law, that all of the people affected are going to be offered credit monitoring for one year and there’s a cost to the credit monitoring.    This type of expense can be around $30 to $100 per record.  Banks may choose to do some sort of PR campaign, which often times happens with breaches in many industries.  There’s expenses of hey, we need to do some local newspaper advertisement.  We need to do some more letters to our clients.  We need to get on local TV or advertisements.  Basically, they put a message out there that this happened, we’re sorry, we’re on top of it, and we’re going to be better because of it.  Whatever your PR message is that you’re going to want to try and mitigate the damage under your brand.  Those are additional expenses that can come along the way before you even get to the liability side of who’s going to sue us.    Kelly Coughlin: Okay.  I’m going to list those again.  You’ve got: 1. A forensic partner; 2. Attorney costs; 3. Notification costs, notification of customers; 4. Maybe a call center; 5. Credit monitoring; 6. Reputation remediation. Are all of those insurable?   Kris St. Martin: Yes and that’s part of making sure your insurance policy contains all that on the front side.  There’s really kind of a couple of ways that the breach expenses can be handled.  One that’s just more common is you’ve got a million dollar limit to handle A, B, C and D, and you’ve got to go out and find your partners, and you’re on your own, and we’ll reimburse you.  What we’re seeing is more and more of these insurance carriers providing some sort of data breach service as part of the policy and that’s been very well received in the banking world.  Now, you have to kind of wind through scenario again.  Instead of calling an outside forensics person, your first call under one of the policies that’s very common out there, is to call the insurance underwriter data breach manager and he assigns a case manager to it, and they start—that case manager stays with you through the whole time of the process.  They either have in-house services or they have third-party partners that they can immediately get you to.   The value of that versus a limit, one of the things, going back to the regulators, the regulators are all over the concept of what’s your—they’ve always been good on disaster recovery, the regulators, or at least asking what your disaster overall recovery plan for the bank. Now they’re getting all over where is your disaster recovery plan in the event of a data breach.  Again, you want to make quick access decisions and mitigate the reputational risks that you sat on this information, and get through it quickly and well-organized.  The regulators really like if you just do all those services under your limit then you better show them who your contracted third-party providers are going to be for those services, they’re lined up, they’re ready to go, they can work quickly, and you’ve thought through that whole process of who’s going to do that for you.  There are other policies that you call them and they start walking you through that, and provide a forensic person, they provide an attorney, they can help with the PR, all of that kind of built into the policy itself.    Kelly Coughlin: What advice would you give policy holders when completing their applications for cyber insurance?  Any unique tips, any special tips you’d give them?   Kris St. Martin: Yeah, one very important is to be accurate.  Sometimes these things are onerous and they’re many pages long, but take the time to be very accurate, because if you put a number down, if they’re asking for a number or you answer something that you think, where that could come back to haunt you is at claim time.  They can pull up that application and say you answered it this way, we may not have even given you a policy.  What they’re going to do at claim time, they’re going to look and see if there’s anything, any speedbumps, that would take you out of getting the claim paid.  I’d also say be aware of warranty statements.  This is true, very true for cyber policies as well as all policies.  You need to be aware, often times in the applications themselves, they will say some statement like is there anybody in your organization aware of any circumstances that could lead to a claim under our coverage? If you have 500 employees, there’s no way you can say yes to that with any assurances and again, it could come back and haunt you at the claim investigation time.  So pay attention to warranty statements.  There are ways to modify those statements or eliminate them.  Then again, I mentioned this before, but pay attention to the thought behind the question on the application.  There are good reasons for asking for them and use that as maybe an excuse to go back and review your own procedures.   Kelly Coughlin: Okay. I know you’ve been in this business a long time and you have a terrific reputation, so congratulations on that.  Is it fair to say that your objective is to help your bank clients get the coverage and not trying to help the insurance carrier avoid a claim?   Kris St. Martin: Right.  Right.  What I always tell my clients is we’re going to sell the best, but accurate story to the insurance underwriter.  We’re not going to hide anything.  We’re going to give them accurate information and then they make their decision whether to insure or not.  From that point, when it comes to claim time, there’s two parts on the claim.  One is on the front end of it, when we give all the information to the insurance underwriter, they’re going to come back and say here’s our offer.  A good insurance agent, a producer out there, and there’s lots of great ones, you’re going to dive into that.  For example, we’ve developed a 40-point checklist with cyber over years of working with this.  We start, you know, producers should check a number of things in the offer so that when you do come to claim time, you don’t have these speedbumps.  Then there’s just a number of things that you can modify in the wording with the negotiation with the underwriter.  When it comes to claim time, whoever you’re working with for an agency, can be a great advocate for you on claim time.  You’re going to initially put the claim in as a customer copy or agent, but the agent should be in the loop the whole time, and aware of any objections that the claims adjuster is going to have, when it comes to the client. The agent has a really usual business dual role. They have a legal obligation both to the carrier and to the client, but they’re different obligations to each.  Claims is one where we really work with the client just to make sure they’re well advised on whether or not that’s a reasonable denial, if it’s a denial, or it might be something that they should talk to their attorney about and do a little bit more legal research on.   Kelly Coughlin: Let’s talk about pricing a bit.  How flexible and negotiable are the terms of a cyber policy?   Kris St. Martin: Like any policy, there are certain things that are just absolutely industry things.  But there are a number of things that are different and negotiable in a cyber contract.  Just a couple of quick examples, data breach on loss of information in one policy can be defined, for example, as electronic information loss.  What you want in the contract is paper information or electronic.  These things are negotiable with the carrier, often times.  A number of fine-print type of things.  Another example is some policies will pay on a ransom letter, for example, and then the definition will say we’ll pay out in US dollars.  Most ransom letters are requesting bitcoins.  Another dot that’s on our checklist is going to be make sure that the wording says US dollars or bitcoins that they can be paid out in.  Most of these types of things, the carriers are fairly flexible, but some cases, they’re not going to proactively do that.  They give you often times, the standard type of contract form and approval.  There’s room to be negotiating a premium.  We’re talking maybe 10% latitude, if it’s a good agent can build a case for the risk.  There’s some room in premiums, but a lot of room in the terms and conditions.    Kelly Coughlin: Back to that internal control continuum of one being nothing, five being great internal controls, is there negotiable room if the bank can build the case saying hey, look, our internal controls are four and five, you shouldn’t be pricing this at a three. Is that an area that’s negotiable?   Kris St. Martin: Absolutely.  Absolutely.  It’s all claims related.  Example is like worker’s comp insurance, there’s a lot of loss prevention that carriers very proactively get involved with, with certain industries if there’s a lot of injuries.  If there’s a lot of claims in the cyber area, you can count on the carrier getting much more proactive in not only just asking the questions, but it might dig a whole lot deeper.   Kelly Coughlin: One final question I have is, any tips, tricks, or traps when making a claim that we should be aware of?   Kris St. Martin: Well, I’d say first when you’re looking at how claims are going to be handled, you want to do as much work as you can before you have a claim. We’re big proponents of things we’ve talked about here with procedures and all the preventive types of things.  In the insurance world, the preventive type of thing is one, make sure you pick a carrier that has a great reputation in the area of insurance that you’re talking about. That’s important because they’ve been there for a while and have a good claims paying history, and just a general reputation.  Secondarily in the prevention on the insurance side is make sure your policy is looked at by somebody who writes a lot of cyber insurance in this particular case, and knows the speedbumps that you’ve got to address, that are going to give you a problem at claims history.  Some of the wording, the definition, those types of things.  Lastly, you want to make sure that you have your agents intimately involved with that, because they’re going to be a strong advocate of you when it does come to claims time.   Kelly Coughlin: Great.  That’s perfect. I will say, this podcast isn’t designed to be an infomercial for you or for CBIZ, but I am going to put a plug in, because I have some experience with you guys and some of your carriers, and I’ve been so impressed with how you are working with the community banking and regional banking market that I think the service is terrific.  I’m totally committed to helping banks manage this cyber risk because as I started it out, I think it’s a problem.  Community banks are in the crosshairs of these bad-guy cyber pirates and they need all the help they can get in preventing attacks and breaches. I applaud you for your great work.  I think I’ve finished the questions that I had, Kris.  Is there anything else you wanted to add that we didn’t get?   Kris St. Martin: You know, only that another big topic out there is this third-party vendor. That’s probably a subject for a whole different thing that the regulators and just good business practice is really pushing hard down the road of okay, so your data processor is Fiserv, what do you really know about them?  Or your IT guy is XYZ, what do you really know about them, their procedures, their insurance?  It’s a whole other kind of layer to this that’s opening up as a third-party vendor that you as a business or bank are using.  Besides that, no, I just wanted to thank you a lot of the opportunity.  It was fun to do and really honored that you thought enough of us to pull us into one of your podcasts.    Kelly Coughlin: Well, yeah, I appreciate it.  I would like to follow up with another podcast on third-party vendors and the due diligence required.  Let’s put that on the calendar.  Kris, I really enjoyed it.  I wish you the best.  Keep up the good work.  Enjoyed talking to you.   Kris St. Martin: Thanks, Kelly.  Thanks so much.  Talk to you soon.   Announcer: We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program bankbosun.com.  The audio content is produced and syndicated by Seth Green, market domination with the help of Kevin Boyle.  Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle.  Voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfil. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin.  If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it.  Now, some disclaimers.  Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant.  The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any way, represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, lender, or supplier.

Kelly Coughlin: Greetings, this is Kelly Coughlin. A pack of wolves lurked near the sheep at pasture, but the dogs kept them all at a respectful distance and the sheep grazed in perfect safety. But now, the wolves thought of a plan to trick the sheep.  “Why is there always this hostility between us,” they said.  “If it were not for those dogs who are always stirring up trouble, I’m sure we should get along beautifully.  Send them away and you will see what good friends we shall become.”  The sheep were easily fooled.  They persuaded the dogs to go away and that very evening, the wolves had the grandest feast of their lives.    Announcer: Kelly Coughlin, CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping banks C-level offices, navigate risks, and discover reward. He’s the host of the syndicated audio podcast bankbosun.com.  Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyd’s Bank, and Merrill Lynch.  On the podcast Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C-suite offices risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discovery reward.  Now your host, Kelly Coughlin.    Kelly Coughlin: Hello everybody, this is Kelly Coughlin, CEO of BankBosun, helping C-suite bank executives navigate risks and discover reward.  Today is the first in a series of five podcasts on the subject of cyber security and banking.  Cyber hackers today rob banks much more sophisticated than the days of say Jesse James.  And certainly, they’re much more intelligent than Isaac Davis who committed the very first bank robbery in the US in the year 1798.  Davis robbed the Bank of Pennsylvania at Carpenters Hall in Philadelphia, PA.  He was apparently so stupid that he robbed the bank of over $162,000 and then deposited the funds in his own account at the same bank.  Not very smart. He got busted.    Today’s cyber pirates aren’t that stupid.  They attack the bank’s web application.  They shut down their site for ransom with denial of service attacks. They skim credit and debit cards. They engage in privilege misuse, crime ware, just to name a few.  It’s a huge threat to banks. And the reason I’m putting so much attention and focus to it at BankBosun is the expectation is that more bad guy resources will be directed to community and regional banks in the future for two primary reasons.  Number one, the Willie Sutton factor.  When he was asked by the FBI, “Hey Willie, why do you rob banks?”  He replied, “Because that’s where the money is.”  Then, a second reason, insufficient resources to prevent and detect.  If lower net interest margins and higher regulatory burden weren’t enough, then the additional expense required for cyber security risk management is enough to put you over the top.    So that leads me to my guest for today.  His name is Kris St. Martin.  He’s vice president bank services program direction for CBIZ with over 100 offices and 4,000 associates in most of the major metropolitan and suburban areas throughout the US.  CBIZ delivers financial and employee business services to many organizations of all sizes as well as individual clients by providing national expertise combined with highly personalized services.  CBIZ is a leader in cyber risk including cyber insurance, IT audit, penetration testing, mobile application assessment, digital forensics, cyber risk management, and Kris is a cyber insurance expert, and is a member of the CBIZ national cyber risk management team.  He has more than 23 years of direct bank experience and he’s held many positions in banking.  He’s been providing risk mitigation services since 2009.  So, with that introduction, Kris, are you on the line there?   Kris St. Martin: I am.  Thank you very much for that introduction, Kelly.    Kelly Coughlin: Did I cover all the relevant points in your bio, Kris?   Kris St. Martin: You were very, very thorough.   Kelly Coughlin: Excellent, I like being thorough.  Now, I didn’t include any personal background in there.  Do you want to start off with telling us who you are, family, where you live, that sort of thing?   Kris St. Martin: Sure, absolutely.  As you mentioned, I was in banking for over 20 years.  I live in Plymouth, Minnesota, a suburb just west of Minneapolis.  In my banking days, I was involved in community banking in Plymouth for 20 plus years.  I worked First Bank Systems, which later became US Bank.  I was very familiar with a regional bank becoming a large national bank.  Went to a very small community bank, worked there for four years in my hometown, opened up a branch for them for a couple of years, and then became part of the de novo bank experience in 1999.  We opened up the bank in 2000.  Lived in the same community, Plymouth, for 20 plus years.  Wife of almost 26 years.  Three kids, one is a wildland firefighter; one’s a senior at the University of Minnesota going on to the law school next year; and my daughter has graduated with a marketing degree recently, and works for a hotel chain in the twin city.   Kelly Coughlin: That’s terrific.  Let’s dig right into it, Kris.  Subject today is cyber risk, cyber risk management in the banking ecosystem.  Let me just start out with a very general question here.  From your perspective, what are the cyber risks facing banks today?  What are the key risks that you see they face today?   Kris St. Martin: Well, Kelly, you mentioned a number of them in your introduction and they include probably the largest frequency risk today is the ransomware by cyber extortion.  For the last few years, that was not as prevalent in the financial institution world, because financial institutions were deemed as a little better at backup than other industries such as retail and medical.  The very nature of those are locking up your information and if you haven’t backed up for a few days, that could be very, very costly. So they paused on the banking world for a couple of years, and now it’s getting hit very, very hard.  The other industries have tightened up on their backup procedures.  They tend to be smaller amounts; anywhere from $500 to $50,000.  They can be larger.  They tend to be quick hits, lock up your system.  Data breach is obviously a big one in the banking world, because obviously banks hold a great deal of data. Theft of money is always a big one.    We’ve seen several cases recently where there was some type of hack leading up to obtaining passwords and wiring money out.  In addition to the types of things that are happening, banks are having to deal with, as you mentioned, the regulatory aspect of that.  The regulators are all over this topic and have great expectations when they’re coming in for exams.  Cyber insurance is part of that, where they really didn’t look at that too much in the last couple of years before that.  Now, they’re wanting to know what type of cyber coverage and all your cyber procedures are so it’s put a great deal of burden on them.  The reputation risk for having your information active is enormous to both your reputation, your brand, and litigation from a number of sources if you could have your data breached can be from clients who’ve had their data breached and it could be as more of like a class action if you had 50,000 records breached.  They could all ban together and sue, but it could also be if you’ve lost one really critical piece of data.    Let’s say it was a critical business plan of one of your clients that you obtained in conjunction with a loan request.  Who knows what kind of harm that could cause, if that got in the hand of a competitor?  There’s also some litigation based on what is showing on social media.  Banks often encourage their employees to be on LinkedIn and other social medias to increase the bank’s presence.  There are other things that bankers are on that are not necessarily done with bank approval like Facebook.  So, somebody could be on Facebook and note on there, they’re an employee of XYZ bank and put something disparaging about one of the competitors on there.  It wasn’t necessarily a bank approved type of a thing, but they can be pulled into the litigation because of the reference to the bank.  So there’s a wide variety of cyber risk and financial risk for banks out there right now.   Kelly Coughlin: Now that social media example, that isn’t part of cyber security risk. That’s more reputational risk, other financial risk, but a bank’s employee participating in Facebook for instance, that doesn’t open up risks for cyber-attack, correct?   Kris St. Martin: Not from a cyber-attack, but it can be part of your cyber risk management program.  There’s great expectations from regulators that you are training your employees because there’s a financial risk that can come back to the bank.  So it’s part of your cyber risk management program at the bank not necessarily directly from a hacker.          Kelly Coughlin: Okay.  You guys are in the business of helping banks insure the risk.  In the event of a cyber-attack, they buy an insurance policy that covers their financial risk in the event of some sort of cyber-attack, correct?   Kris St. Martin: Yeah.    Kelly Coughlin: Now, is it fair to say that four years ago cyber risk management was more or less a footnote of a P&C policy or an E&O, D&O type policy?   Kris St. Martin: Right and there’s just only a few remnants of that.  So, for example, in your general liability policy there were many areas in there that could have provided coverage 10 years ago under what’s happening in today’s environment.  Over the years, the carriers have been excluding on your D&O policies, directors and officers liability policies, your professional services policies as well as your general liability policies, anything that’s related to cyber risk.  So today, most directors and officers policies and general liabilities policies exclude anything related to cyber risk.  They push everything towards a cyber policy with only a few exceptions.  The exception to that is in their directors and officers policy, if you look at what happened to Target, the Target breach about three or four years ago, after the smoke cleared the directors and officers were sued for lack of oversight of the cyber risk management program.  That’s where kind of a cyber-related type of thing can still be pulled into a D&O policy, but specifically if officers and directors are named based on decisions made by those directors and officers.  The D&O policy is not going to pay for anything that’s related to your expenses associated with the breach.  In the case of theft of money through hackers, where there is a theft of money, that’s treated under a crime bond policy. So the other exception is if you had a hacker come in, obtain codes to malware or whatever they use, eventually wire money out that’s not retrievable, that actual cash loss, whether it’s the bank or your client, is treated and handled under the bond.  So those are kind of the two remaining policies where there is some related coverage.    Kelly Coughlin: Okay, but business interruption, for instance, let’s say it’s denial of service, which is business interruption, would that be specifically excluded from the other P&C policy that would cover interruption from fire or water, that sort of thing?  Is that specifically excluded?    Kris St. Martin: Yes and with other causes of business interruption, that is included in your traditional package policies.  That has historically been part of those policies, but with a cyber interruption, again, those policies now exclude the business interruption reimbursement and pushed it back to the cyber policy.  If you’re a retailer selling products online and your website goes down for three weeks, it’s very easy to document the lost sales based on a history there.  In the banking world, your primary revenue is going to be your net interest margin, so your loan income is still coming in regardless if your system is down or not.  So the classic business interruption policy is going to pay for the lost income. It’s good to have it in your policy because you never know, but there’s not a lot of claims in there in the banking world because it’s difficult to demonstrate you actually lost income.   Kelly Coughlin: Yeah, I suppose it’s mainly reputational damage, if people go to the site and they can’t access it, and the media gets wind of it, then that’s more harmful than loss of any sales on any given day, correct?   Kris St. Martin: Yes, that is correct.   Kelly Coughlin: So this is a whole new policy that banks now have to include in their portfolio of insurance policies.  That’s good for you in that it’s another policy that you can earn fees on.  Bad for them, it’s another policy that they have to pay fees on, but that’s the brave new world.  Is it fair to say that regulators today are looking for and demanding specific policies related to cyber insurance?    Kris St. Martin: Yeah, it’s interesting from the regulators.  They will come in and they will look at your insurance policies, but there’s very little that they absolutely require on insurance.  The way the regulations are written under there is you don’t necessarily have to have insurance, but you’ve got to convince us that you have a way of self-insuring, or what your plan is.  A bank that’s extremely well capitalized can go in without any insurance policies if they want and say we’re going to self-insure for those.  That’s not very common. So the regulators would come in, they don’t require it, but they will look through the insurance policies and it could be a critical comment, if you didn’t have insurance.  When the regulators come in and look at the cyber program and IT in general right now, the insurances went from low business access loss to a very important part of your cyber risk management and how your IT exam is going to come out.  Again, it’s not a requirement, but it’s going to fall into how you’re rated and the components of the rating for that whole area.  They know that if you do have a cyber breach and you’re making decisions, and you need to make fairly timely decisions, because the harm for not acting quickly exponentially get worse.  Not only financially and reputation wise, so it’s good to know that you would have an insurance available to help you make good, accurate, quick, timely decisions and not make bad decisions based on we don’t have a funding mechanism outside of our own capital.  It’s a very distinct part of that exam, but not required.   Kelly Coughlin: Okay.  If I go back to my consulting days of internal controls, you’ve got three categories of controls; prevention, detection, and correction.  Insurance has been more or less in the correction category.  It’s a way to make people whole, make the company whole.  It really doesn’t prevent and detect things.  Those are internal controls that the company has to adopt and use insurance on the correction side.  As part of the insurance underwriting process, is there any sort of work or effort being done by insurance carriers that helps banks on the prevention and detection side in terms of adopting best practices among the industry?  Do they give discounts in premiums if they have best practices, or not?   Kris St. Martin: I think it’s fairly early on in that world with carriers right now, but if you look at an application from a carrier and try to say okay, why are they asking that, a lot of it gets at the best practices that they’re asking.  They’re going down that path and by the way Kelly, the cyber policies today are not viably priced as of yet in the banking industry.  If you’re a community bank under let’s say a half billion, you can probably get a $3 million limit cyber policy.  Now, there’s going to be different bells and whistles there, but you can probably get something in that range for $8 to $12,000 in that range, for $3 million.  We’ve got small little banks that they’re buying them for million dollar coverage for $3,000.  They’re a pretty good robust policy.  Where underwriters are looking at pricing, they can fairly quantify, if a data breach happens based on a number of records, personal data records that you have, there’s different published amounts of somewhere around $30 per record is going to be what your cost is out of pocket.  They can fairly well quantify the costs to immediately get through the data breach part of it and the carriers are fairly comfortable with the pricing on that.  Where it really gets difficult, is more on the liability side; who’s going to end up suing you; what regulatory body is going to put a fine on you; and that is a really ever-evolving market.    As an example, going back to the critical piece of data, if you lost somebody’s business plan, it gets into the wrong hands, that’s hard to quantify.  It all depends on the circumstances.  It could be a half-million dollar lawsuit, it can be a $10 million lawsuit.  So that’s evolving.  Getting back to kind of your question on the underwriting, the first two things that a cyber underwriter will look at in the big picture of things is number of records that you have.  Records are generally defined on the consumer side, if there’s a social security number associated with a name of loss, that’s automatically going to qualify as triggering a data breach for that particular record.  So you look at the number of records both personal and business, that you hold, and that will be on the application and that will be probably the biggest thing that will set the pricing.  A bank may have 100,000 accounts, either accounts that are closed or current ones, but they may have 25,000 individual individuals who opened all of those accounts.  So the number of records would be the individuals with their social security number and how many of those do you have at the bank.  Historically, if you are retaining that information in current accounts, that’s the primary driver with the cost of cyber insurance right now.    They’re going to look at the annual revenue of the company just to give them a scope of the size and breadth of the company.  It’s not perfect, but it gives them an idea of obviously a bigger company versus a smaller organization, because it’s got more things going.  They have more contracts.  They have more data.  In general, more stuff going on that could potentially fall into the cyber world.  Then, you look at a typical application and look at some of the questions that they’re asking.  Some of them would be maybe a complete take out of hey, we don’t want to write this policy.  Some of them are going to be a little much less alarming, if you had answered no. But if you look at it, there’s a reason they’re asking those questions.  It’s the overall risk to the insurance company.  Same thing for the bank.    For example, one question that’s on many applications and I’ll read one, “Does the applicant restrict employee access to personally identify information on a business need to know basis?”  That’s a pretty general question and most banks are going to say, yes, we make sure, we try to make sure that people can have access to different areas on the computer network based on what they need it for, kind of a need to know type.  That question, I think most banks are going to say yes to that.  Who wouldn’t say that?  But they always want you to kind of think that through and really go back and review that.  Hopefully, if I’m looking at that, not only am I going to say well yeah, but hopefully that causes you to go back and really review that because they’re asking that for a very good reason.  There’s claims history behind those questions.   Kelly Coughlin: Back to my prevention, detection, correction internal control model. On the prevention and detection internal controls, what I think I hear you say, let’s say we have a continuum of one being no internal controls and five being terrific internal controls.  In the underwriting process, if the bank comes in at a one or a two, they’re going to get rejected.  If the bank comes in at a four or a five, they’ll get accepted, but they’re not going to get any discounts. They’re not going to get rewarded for their superior internal control structure, but they’ll get accepted.  So if they’re a 3, 4, 5, then they get lumped in terms of the same pricing, but they won’t get rejected.   Kris St. Martin: Yeah, I think that’s a fair statement.  What will happen over time as there is more and more claims history with these carriers, they’re going to be able to get even more defined on that type of thought process.  If they know that, in my example that I talked about under being able to restrict your employees to only certain applications within your system. If that became more and more of a claim problem for carriers, they’re probably going to dig deeper into that and actually ask more and more questions beyond that and have you document that and also base the pricing on that more and more.  So yes, there is definitely some underwriting based on your current procedures in place.  I think just based on where claims are going, there’s going to be more and more of that.   Kelly Coughlin: What’s your expectation in terms of likelihood on the pricing part?  Do you think they’re going to increase or decrease, or stay the same over the next 12 months and then even farther out from that?   Kris St. Martin: Yeah, I think it’s going to be a little bit like the hurricane effect in general P&C insurance.  Whenever there’s a big hurricane, that’s going to affect everybody’s homeowner policy for a couple of years.  Everybody will see the cost of premiums will spread out a little bit.  I think you’re going to see that in cyber.  Right now, there are a number of claims out there, but it’s not to the point where I don’t think that the premiums the carriers are changing isn’t supporting it.  The carriers are a profit business like anybody else. They try not to pay out more than 50% of what they charge in premiums on claims, kind of a rule of thumb and then the other 50% is profit and paying for the rest of your operation. When you see that pay out starting to exceed that kind of industry percentage, that’s when you start seeing the premiums go up. That would just take enormous breaches or volume of community bank breaches, then it’s going to be all claims related.    So, as of right now, based on what the pattern of claims are, it should be pretty steady, but with a caveat that it wouldn’t take much if there’s a couple of alarge financial institutions or a bunch of smaller ones, you’re starting to get into hundreds of millions of dollars of claims, that could push prices up in a hurry.  The other part to that is there’s also a future expectation of risk of what’s going on, they can push it up also.  Even if the claims haven’t quite hit yet, if there is a more and more devious way to harm banks than before and that comes out, and there’s a fear of that, you may see some underwriters starting to push the premiums up in anticipation of that.  They don’t have any reason to believe right now, based on what’s been happening, that we’re going to see premiums drastically increase in 12 months.   Kelly Coughlin: Well, that’s it for part one of my interview with Kris St. Martin, a bank cyber security expert at CBIZ.  In part two, we’ll talk more about what drives premium costs and once a bank experiences a cyber intrusion then what are the actual types of costs the bank can insure, and how to make sure that these costs are recoverable in an insurance claim.    Announcer: We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program bankbosun.com.  The audio content is produced and syndicated by Seth Green, market domination with the help of Kevin Boyle.  Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle.  Voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfil. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin.  If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it.  Now, some disclaimers.  Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant.  The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any way, represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, lender, or supplier. 

Lights! Camera! Action! We’re off to the movies. Learn how to talk about seeing a good film in this episode. Slow dialogue: 0:57 Explanations: 2:37 Fast dialogue: 15:35 Martin: What did you think of that movie? Joanna: It was okay, but I’m not really into big-budget movies with a lot of special effects and big-name stars. Martin: Oh, you’re a film snob. I bet you only watch indie films made on a shoestring budget with low production values. Joanna: No, that’s not true. I just don’t like crowd-pleasers that are predictable. I like movies that stretch the imagination and have some artistic value. Martin: You mean you like those weird movies with no plot and a lot of strange characters. They’re artsy, but leave you totally confused. Joanna: I don’t mind some ambiguity, if that’s what you mean. Martin: Well, I’m going to see the new Spiderboy movie next week. I don’t suppose you want to come? Joanna: Spiderboy? I’ve been looking forward to seeing that movie. Martin: But it’s a big-budget blockbuster. Joanna: I can’t watch artsy films all the time. Variety is the spice of life, don’t you think? Script by Dr. Lucy Tse