Oct 27 - Victorian police have questioned Australia's most senior Catholic cleric, Cardinal George Pell, as they investigate allegations of historical sexual abuse made against him.
Oct 30 – (Review) The rock musical Godspell opened off-Broadway in 1971 and later that year at Playbox Theatre in Melbourne, where it ran for 504 performances.
Oct 30 - The Church of Scientology has defended the use of NSW schoolchildren in an ad promoting the church, as the self-described "advanced organisation" goes on a marketing drive following the opening of its $37 million Asia-Pacific headquarters on Sydney's north shore.
Oct 26 - The ashes of cremated Catholics must be buried and should not be scattered on land, at sea or be kept at home, the Vatican has announced in new guidelines.
Oct 25 - India's Muslim men can still unilaterally divorce their wives simply by saying so.
Oct 26 - For years Sakdiyah Ma'ruf snuck around behind her parents' backs.
Oct 30 – (Opinion: Alex Ryvchin) I found indifference in the Ukrainian capital to victims of the horrific massacre at Babi Yar.
Oct 26 - AS the battle rages on to retake Mosul from ISIS one civilian, who was forced to evacuate, has detailed why he enjoyed his life under ISIS rule.
Oct 27 - Islamic State (IS) fighters have kept up their fierce defence of the southern approaches to Mosul, which has held up Iraqi troops there and forced an elite army unit east of the city to put a more rapid advance on hold.
Oct 27 - At a checkpoint near Makhmour in northern Iraq, Khalil Ibrahim shows his papers to Kurdish soldiers. This is the moment he's been waiting for, and feared may never come. After more than 12 long months, he can finally go home.
Oct 27 - ISIS yesterday claimed three of its fighters had conducted the attack on a Pakistani police academy.
Oct 27 - Gunmen rounded up and shot dozens of civilians in a remote part of Afghanistan, UN officials have said, in an attack that prompted angry protests from residents about the government's failure to protect them.
Oct 28 - The Iraqi army is trying to reach a town south of Mosul where Islamic State militants have been reportedly executing dozens of people to deter the population from any attempt to support the US-led offensive on the jihadists' last major city stronghold in Iraq.
Oct 28 - Islamic State fighters celebrated their surprise attack, but it quickly failed because of Sunni Arabs.
Oct 30 - ISLAMIC State has claimed an attack in Hamburg where a 16-year-old boy was brutally stabbed to death and a girl thrown in a river was an act of one of its 'soldiers'.
Oct 30 - Iraqi Shia militias have launched an offensive to the west of Mosul in an operation intended to tighten the noose around Islamic State's Iraq stronghold.
Oct 30 - The teddy bear, garish but cuddly, is propped on top of the explosives it was designed to hide and detonate.
Oct 30 – (Opinion: Hassan Hassan) Islamic State's doctrine of survival is based on a simple notion: defeat on the battlefield must always leave behind the seeds for a comeback.
Oct 26 - Jack T Chick, the cartoonist and evangelist, died on Sunday at the age of 92.
Oct 28 - The tomb in which Jesus's body is believed to have been laid after his crucifixion has been exposed by conservationists for the first time in centuries.
Oct 30 - A simple act, it was the work of a few moments, but it triggered an epic era of political and religious convulsions that changed the shape of Europe.
Oct 26 - Seldom does a magistrate use the phrase "you f---ing beauty" in a judgment, or reflect on whether the word "f---" is part of a child's vocabulary.


This past Friday, in an event that featured the famous Pineapple Willy's BBQ and inspiring blues from the acclaimed Johnnie Marshall Band, Panama City Beach officials and library supporters danced the night away as they raised money to help furnish the son-to-open new public library. A plate-style fundraiser in the form of a BBQ buffet, dozen showed and purchased a plate and enjoyed the live music, all-in-all totaling $3500.
Groundbreaking on the new library site, on the corner of Hutchinson Boulevard and Lyndell Lane, was in April with a completion date set tentatively for February 2010, but a speedy development could push that date up. The new library will cost just over 2 million dollars and was funded by impact fees and donations through donor recognition programs.
Earlier this year, Pineapple Willy's raised over $60,000 for local charities that included the Humane Society, PCB Paws and Claw and Beach Care Services. In continuing efforts, Pineapple Willy's has discounted its menu for locals during the off-season. So, if you don't already frequent P. Willy's, it is one of the few places that not only provides excellent service but deserves local support.
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Dans le domaine de la biochimie et de la biologie moléculaire, la pégylation (Pegylation ou PEGylation) désigne un type de réaction organique d'éthoxylation.

Le procédé, surtout utilisé depuis les années 1990consiste à attacher (conjuguer) des chaînes de polyéthylène glycol à des molécules biologiquement actives(y compris complexes telles que des protéines ou médicaments peptidiques) pour augmenter la masse moléculaire des protéines et des peptides, leur solubilité et ainsi mieux les "protéger" des enzymes protéolytiques. La pégylation d'une protéine peut aussi diminuer ses propriétés allergènes. Le procédé peut inactiver de certaines enzymes face à un produit pégylé, mais il peut aussi allonger la durée de présence d'une enzyme si cette dernières est une molécule qui a été pégylée puis injectée dans l'organisme.

Protéomique
De nombreuses molécules protéiques et peptidiques intéressent le domaine de la médecine, de la chimie, de la pharmacochimie, des pesticides, des biotechnologies, mais dans les organismes, elles sont perçues comme des corps étrangers et souvent rapidement isolées, dégradées par le système immunitaire à l'aide d'enzymes (c'est la protéolyse), ou parfois rapidement éliminées par les reins, quand elles ne génèrent pas d'anticorps neutralisants avec des risques allergiques.
La pegylation est une manipulation post-traductionnelle des protéines de manière totalement artificielle ; cette technique permet de moduler le profil pharmacocinétique d'une protéine utilisée en thérapeutique car sa demi-vie circulante peut être trop courte, ce qui ne lui permet pas d'avoir une activité biologique maximale.

La pégylation permet :
 Une augmentation de la solubilité (favorisant ainsi certaine voie d'administration qui nécessite une solubilisation du composé ou bien favorisant la distribution dans le compartiment sanguin d'un organisme et sa stabilité)
 D'un certain point de vue, permet d'augmenter la biocompatibilité. Par exemple, en pégylant des sites de fixations  aux enzymes protéolytiques. La pégylation de certains sites sur la protéine bloque la fixation d'enzyme de dégradation ce qui bloque l'action de dégradation via un encombrement stérique  (il s'agit d'une protection d'un contact direct avec les enzymes).) La pégylation permet aussi d'effectuer un masquage face au système immunitaire en repoussant ainsi les anticorps neutralisant localisés au niveau de la circulation général dans le cas d'une administration en intraveineuse à des fins thérapeutiques
 Une diminution de la clairance rénale par augmentation de la masse moléculaire (Si on arrive a obtenir une protéine avec une masse moléculaire supérieur à 70 000 dalton, soit la masse moléculaire de l'albumine, on peut diminuer le passage de la protéine pégylée au travers du glomérule rénal par conséquent maintenir la protéine dans le compartiment sanguin)

Dans le domaine de la pharmacocinétique
La pégylation permet d'augmenter la demi-vie de présence active d'une molécule thérapeutique en la liant au polyéthylène glycol (PEG), soluble dans l'eau, rapidement éliminé de l'organisme et non toxique. Par exemple :
 L'interféron alpha pégylé est utilisé dans le traitement d'hépatites chroniques comme celles dues aux virus HCV ou HBV. Il a dans cette indication un but de stimulation de l'activité antivirale cellulaire du système immunitaire de l'hôte.
 G-CSF pegylé
 EPO pegylé

La pégylation peut également modifier l'espace de diffusion de la molécule : la naloxone pégylée (sous le nome de naloxégol) ne passe pas dans le système nerveux central et n'antagonise pas en particulier l'effet antalgique des morphiniques. Son action reste périphérique permettant d'éviter certains effets secondaires telles que la constipation.
L'immunothérapie peut aussi bénéficier de la pégylation.

Limites et difficultés
Les principaux problèmes sont
 les difficultés de contrôle de la conjugaison ;
 la difficulté à évaluation le nombre de chaînes de PEG effectivement liées à la molécule cible ;
 la bonne localisation du site de conjugaison ;
 la pégylation change les propriétés de la protéine pégylée dans l'organisme, ce qui peut poser problème quand une même protéine a plusieurs fonctions ;
 le fait que des molécules toxiques ou médicaments toxiques ainsi conjugés puissent être plus difficilement éliminés ou dégradés par l'organisme ;
Des méthodes plus précises dont de pégylation réversible, utilisant des réactifs de réticulation ou d'autres alternatives à la pégylation telle que l'utilisation de nouveaux polymères monofunctionnels de conjugaison de protéines, qui font l'objet de recherches actives.

Voir aussi

Articles connexes

 Éthoxylation
 Alkylation
 Acylation

Références

Réaction organique

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Q: Surface Pro Reinstall Always Ends up as Education Edition I have a surface pro 7+ supplied by my uni. As default it came with windows 10 Education, which forces me to link it to my Uni account. However by doing this, it becomes unusable off campus - it retains loads of links to uni servers etc, which aren't accessible off site, which leads to constant pauses while those connections time out.
No problem, I thought I'd just reinstall vanilla windows - according to ShowKey the machine has an OEM windows 10 Pro license. I grabbed the win 10 media creation tool, created a USB key, and installed - but still ended up with the education edition after install. I then added ei.cfg, and set it up as:
[Channel]
_Default
[VL]
0
This time I was prompted to choose the edition during setup. I chose pro, but I still ended up with the education edition. I then set up ei.cfg as:
[EditionID]
Professional
[Channel]
OEM
[VL]
0
And also created a PID.txt with the product code that ShowKey tells me is my OEM Windows 10 Pro key, but again I ended up with the Education edition.
So where is this decision to install the education version coming from? Why when I explicitly select Pro, do I always end up with Education?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Subject: Dow Jones Industrial Average Pops 45 Points as Markets Eye August Jobs Report
URL: https://mney.co/2Nnavhy
Follow Morning Market Alert
Stocks: ADP, FB, GS, NKE, TWTR
Profit Alerts: Morning Market Alert
Dow Jones Industrial Average Pops 45 Points as Markets Eye August Jobs Report
By Garrett Baldwin, Behavioral Trading Specialist, Money Morning • September 6, 2018
nine + = 11
The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 45 points in pre-market trading after Advanced Data Processing announced the United States added 146,000 new jobs during the month of August. The report shows that even though private sector job growth has tailed off a bit, the employment market is extremely strong.
Tomorrow, the U.S. Labor Department will issue the official jobs report and unemployment rate for the United States. However, the U.S. Federal Reserve may count these gains for nothing…
Here are the numbers from Wednesday for the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq:
Index Previous Close Point Change Percentage Change
Dow Jones 25,974.99 22.51 0.09%
Now here's a closer look at today's Money Morning insight, the most important market events, and stocks to watch.
How to Profit off This $11.1 Billion Money Pool: By following a few simple steps, one IRS directive could help set you up to receive checks of up to $1,795 every single month thanks to a genius investment. Learn more…
The Top Stock Market Stories for Thursday
Trade is back in focus. The United States may impose tariffs on another $200 billion of Chinese goods starting on Friday. This would mean that the U.S. is hitting about half of all Chinese imports entering the United States. The U.S. is currently placing tariffs on about $50 billion worth of Chinese goods. The Chinese government has placed similar levies on U.S. goods in retaliation.
The price of Bitcoin plunged about $1,000 after Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) said it is rolling back plans to launch a cryptocurrency desk. Bitcoin was off about 10% this morning, while Ethereum fell roughly 13%. A story on Business Insider said that Goldman is increasingly uncertain about the potential regulatory landscape for the cryptocurrency industry. The decision walks back a path the company had considered back in October 2017 just before the frenzy began and pushed Bitcoin to nearly $20,000 per coin. Since then, Bitcoin prices have pulled back sharply.
Money Morning Insight of the Day
We are deep in earnings season. And if you're looking to make real money, the time to get started is now. Money Morning Quantitative Specialist Chris Johnson argues that the markets are at a tipping point. And with just a few smart plays in today's classic stock picker's market… you can pull in triple-digit gains with just a small investment. Read those picks right here.
Get an exclusive look at what's going on in the markets at the start of each day.
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Stocks to Watch Today: TWTR, FB, NKE
Tech stocks are facing pressures on concerns that Congress may hit the sector with privacy regulations. This week, Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook Inc. (Nasdaq: FB) executive Sheryl Sandberg testified before Congress on the efforts of foreign nations to influence the U.S. midterm elections in November. Shares of tech stocks have been sliding in the wake of Congressional scrutiny.
Shares of Nike Inc. (NYSE: NKE) will be in focus on Thursday as the NFL season kicks off this evening. The company will air a new commercial featuring Colin Kaepernick during tonight's prime time game between the Atlanta Falcons and the Philadelphia Eagles. The new "Just Do It" campaign references Kaepernick's decision to kneel during the national anthem to protest police brutality in America, a decision that has effectively ended his NFL career.
Look for earnings reports from Broadcom Inc. (Nasdaq: AVGO), Palo Alto Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: PANW), GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME), Barnes & Noble Inc. (NYSE: BKS), Five Below Inc. (Nasdaq: FIVE), Finisar Corp. (Nasdaq: FNSR), and Malibu Boats Inc. (Nasdaq: MBUU).
Follow Money Morning on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Browse Garrett's articles | View Garrett's research services
Garrett Baldwin is a globally recognized research economist, financial writer, and consultant with degrees from Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Purdue, and Indiana University. He is a seasoned financial and political risk analyst, with a focus on stocks, hedge funds, private equity, blockchain, and housing policy. He has conducted risk assessment projects for clients in 27 countries, and consulted on policy and financial operations for some of the nation's largest financial institutions, including a $1.5 trillion credit fund, a $43 billion credit and auto loan giant, as well as two of the largest Wall Street banks by assets under management.
Garrett joined Money Map Press as an economist and researcher in 2011, specializing in alternative strategies with an emphasis on fundamental and technical analysis.
Tags: dow jones today
+ three = seven
Morning Market Alert (this article)
ADP 0.56 (0.35%) 164.44
GS 3.73 (1.76%) 215.31
TWTR 0.32 (0.83%) 38.36
FB 0.46 (0.23%) 204.37
NKE 0.32 (0.36%) 89.16

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


pH of 1 % solution = 2.9.
Maximum solubility at 30C = 2.0%.
Contains 55% stabilizer (by weight).
75 mm (3") diameter 200-gram tablets.
Stabilised chlorine is not lost to the UV rays of the sun.
Slow-dissolving for steady release of chlorinating product.
Can be used in automatic feeders and floaters for constant chlorination.
Sizes and containers are available for all types of pool applications.
Balance and stabilise pool according to label directions.
Add tablets to chlorinator and adjust flow rate to maintain 1.5 - 3.0 ppm of chlorine residual.
NOTE: Avoid physical contact with product. Follow safety information on label Instructions. Open in a well ventilated area. Avoid breathing fumes. Store in a cool, dry place. Keep out of the reach of children.


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After 50 years of Earth Day, ASU environmental experts see shift to grassroots activism
Mary Beth Faller
In the 50 years since the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, the United States has moved from a focus on pollution to a broader awareness of how the ecosystem needs to be nurtured. And politics has shaped the way the country responds.
Two Arizona State University professors have been involved in environmentalism for decades: Joni Adamson, President's Professor of Environmental Humanities in the Department of English and director of the Environmental Humanities Initiative at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, and Paul Hirt, a professor of history specializing in the American West, environmental history and policy and sustainability studies.
They shared their thoughts on how the country's attitudes toward saving the planet have changed over the past five decades.
Adamson: Earth Day was catalyzed by the Santa Barbara oil spill and the Cuyahoga River, which caught on fire. Those two events really put nationwide attention on environmental problems. In Santa Barbara, over 10,000 animals died. It's like now in Australia, where a billion and a half animals are said to have perished in the wildfires. A lot of times, when animals die, that gets people's attention.
Joni Adamson. Photo by Deanna Dent/ASU Now
Hirt: There was the great cultural shift in the late 1960s and early '70s. It was, "We don't have to accept a filthy, unhealthy environment to have jobs and prosperity." People were saying that they weren't willing to accept that tradeoff any more.
And there was a bipartisan consensus that we needed federal and state action at the policy level to solve these intractable environmental problems.
A shift in the 1980s
Hirt: In the 1980s under Ronald Reagan, we had a new philosophy begin to take over the Republican Party that said that government was the problem, not the solution. The Democratic Party remained committed to legislation and regulation as a tool for problem solving, but the Republican Party rapidly shifted to thinking that the best way to a create prosperous economy was to unfetter big business.
Adamson: I started my master's degree in the late '80s and continued my PhD at the University of Arizona, where I became involved in indigenous perspectives of the environment, which were different from mainstream environmentalists. Native peoples were concerned about toxins and pollutants and uranium contamination and coal tailings. Some environmentalists were more concerned with conservation and preservation of pristine forests.
Here in Arizona, among the indigenous people, there was a concern about environmental justice, balancing goods with risks. The indigenous people were saying that their resources were being taken and they were not getting a proportionate benefit, but the toxins are left. The benefit of electricity was going to Phoenix and Tucson and they were left with the coal tailings.
Environmentalism in Arizona
Hirt: From a historical perspective, I would say that Arizona has followed the trends of the rest of the United States.
In the 1970s, we were focused on natural resource conservation, sustainable land management and we were pretty strongly committed to adopting policies to push society in that direction. The 1980 Groundwater Management Act was a really comprehensive, important state law to get to sustainable water management. It was a sign of the times.
After 1980, it's significant that no new water conservation laws have been passed except laws to weaken that one. That was the end of the period in which we believed in policy action, new laws and regulation to protect the environment.
And since then we went through a long period of trying to weaken government agencies and deregulate and make market transactions the tool we rely on to solve problems. I think we've all learned that just like policy tools are limited and sometimes have unintended consequences, market-based tools are limited and have unintended consequences.
Then climate change became a big focus in the '90s. And then suddenly it became politicized and, just like the rest of the nation, Arizona faced the conundrum of having one political party denying it was happening and not wanting to do anything about it and the other political party insisting it was happening and that we do something about it.
Adamson: I've been here since 1987. You can ask people who have been here at least 20 years if they've noticed a difference in the weather and most of us remember the summer monsoon coming on a regular basis from July to October. And most of us have noticed that we don't get that anymore.
Even if you're talking to a person who may not passionately believe in climate change, you can talk to them about things like the weather and they will agree that we're not getting as much rain and the temperatures seem even hotter.
There's an increase of awareness in Arizona around differences in the weather that are impacting us and will have an impact on the future.
Corporations step up
Adamson: When Walmart shifts to less packaging, which it has done, it reduces transportation costs and it impacts everybody in its supply chain around the world. Somebody making a toy in China has to reduce packaging. Walmart also has made steps in the right direction in food waste, which accounts for 8% of our greenhouse gases. We need more of that corporate accountability.
Paul Hirt
Hirt: My philosophy has always been that we need to use every tool in the toolbox and we need all hands on deck.
You're not going to solve all the problems with policies and you're not going to solve all the problems with moral suasion and education. You're not going to solve all the problems by appealing to consumers and the individual to behave properly. And you're not going to solve all the problems by encouraging corporations to be responsible and sustainable.
They're all pieces of a larger puzzle that have to work together and you need everybody — everybody — with the capacity to make better choices to get committed to doing that.
Grassroots activism
Hirt: One of the consequences of legislative gridlock is that you can't turn to the political arena to solve problems. You can't get bills through or the bills that get through are so compromised they don't do anything.
And that's when we start turning to the local level and to the corporate level, and (nonprofits), saying, "If we can't turn to the state legislatures or our U.S. Congress to solve these problems, we won't wait on them, we'll just do what we can." It might be a bunch of students or a nonprofit organization that decides to engage in education or a corporation like Microsoft or Intel or Apple saying, "We're going to adopt 100% renewable energy over the next 10 years."
Adamson: When you look across the nation, some of the most innovative response to climate change is happening in the cities. For example, in Miami, where they cannot deny climate change because the ocean is rising and they're seeing sunny-day flooding, we're seeing a lot of innovative policy and infrastructure changes.
Hirt: The last really significant reform period in American history was at the turn of the 20th century, called the Progressive Era. We had a Republican president, Teddy Roosevelt, in charge and that's when the philosophy of conservation was invented and promoted globally.
But there was still a general sense in America that the federal government should be weaker than the state government and that local action was better than national action. So it was difficult for Teddy Roosevelt to really generate a national movement. He did a lot but there was a lot of pushback.
When historians went back and looked at the Progressive Era, they said, "Where did that reform impulse come from?" And if you look closely at all the evidence, it turns out that all of that reform started at the city level. Progressive Era reform bubbled up from the grassroots, and we had the first progressive policy adopted at the city level and then it graduated to the state level and then it became a national phenomenon. But in American history we tend to look at the most famous people and the top of the food chain, the president and legislators.
Adamson: And we're seeing this again. I think the current administration has catalyzed a lot of local action because when the U.S. pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement, there was a lot of disappointment. And people realized that we need to act now and this will have to happen from the ground up
The promise of technology
Hirt: We're in a period of rapid economic and technological change so we're seeing reform being generated by technological innovation, such as Tesla and the improvement in battery technology leading to a mass-market electric car that's affordable and fun to drive.
The same thing with solar. We did enough mass production and technological innovation in solar and wind energy to drive the costs down to the point where clean energy is now cheaper than dirty energy.
But Americans didn't ask thorough questions very often before the 1960s to say, "Is endless growth something we really want?" It's the same thing with innovation. Not every new technology is one we want to embrace and produce at scale.
Adamson: This is this great thing about 50 years of Earth Day is that we've seen the movement from sustainable development, which was oriented toward business, to this huge idea that our planet is a system and we have to be concerned with the way humans and animals and plants interconnect. It's an ecosystem.
On being optimistic
Hirt: I struggle with optimism and pessimism but I am strategically optimistic.
If you can't give your students examples of problems being solved, you can't inspire and empower them to become problem solvers. For every time I teach about how we screwed something up I concertedly come up with an example of how we fixed something.
Whenever I hear somebody say, "The end is nigh," I remember all the times in history that has been said with great conviction and they were wrong. The future will be what we make it.
Adamson: When you walk into a classroom how can you not be optimistic? How will you get the next generation passionate and involved? I teach them about food systems and food waste, where they can really make a difference. We can turn this around in this decade. You have to have faith that this is the generation to make a difference.
Top image by Pixabay


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Barclays Eagle Labs
Business of Marketing
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CIPR Influence
The Practical Futurist Podcast – Episode 9: The Future of Open Banking with James Varga
Home / podcast / The Practical Futurist Podcast – Episode 9: The Future of Open Banking with James Varga
By Andrew Grill
In podcast, practical futurist podcast
The Practical Futurist Podcast – Episode 9: The Future of Open Banking with James Varga2019-09-092020-01-11https://cdn.andrew.london/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/andrewdot-london-logo-head.pngAndrew Grill - Trusted Board-level Advisor & Futurist Keynote Speakerhttps://andrew.london/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ep-9-james-varga-510x510.png200px200px
In Episode 9 we speak with James Varga, who co-founded The ID Co in 2011 with a mission to create convenience allowing consumers to sign up to new products and services in seconds.
He is active in a number of local and global efforts to help people do more online, including the Fintech Delivery Panel, the Open Banking Excellence where he is Co-founder and Trust In Digital Life.
You can listen to the podcast above, or via your favourite podcast app. Links to the most popular ones are below. For a comprehensive list click here or simply search for "Practical Futurist Podcast" in your favourite podcast app.
As one of the first to call for Open Banking in the UK, James has a wealth of experience in this space. Having previously built a personal finance management and aggregation service, he has a unique perspective that highlights the importance of customer convenience in the overall success and adoption of Open Banking.
Among other things we discussed:
What is Open Banking?
Applications for Open Banking
The identity challenges
Matching the right person to the right product
GDPR and Open Banking
Data ownership is key
2018 – the year of regulated disruption
Giving the consumer back control
Why has Open Banking been slow to take off?
Is Open Banking good for banks?
The real opportunity for Open Banking
What's the Open Banking silver bullet?
Account aggregation is just the start
Using data for customer onboarding
Consumer behavioural change
The balance between convenience and reward
Banks are bad at using data
Being a B2C Fintech isn't easy
Monzo's IFTTT integration
Consumer data ownership is key
We need to give consumers an incentive to use Open Banking
Instant loans – 45% revenue increase & 7% fraud reduction
The Australian Open Banking scene
The open data approach is a risk
Getting the regulators involved
3 things for next week
For more on Andrew – what he speaks about and replays of recent talks, please visit futurist.london or follow @andrewgrill
Episode Chapters
01:30 What is Open Banking?
02:58 Applications for Open Banking
03:28 The identity challenges
03:57 Matching the right person to the right product
05:00 GDPR and Open Banking
05:23 Data ownership is key
05:34 2018 – the year of regulated disruption
06:08 Giving the consumer back control
06:39 Why has Open Banking been slow to take off?
07:35 Is Open Banking good for banks?
08:34 Bank data is a leaking bucket
09:08 The real opportunity
09:33 What's the Open Banking silver bullet?
10:42 Account aggregation is just the start
11:12 Using data for customer onboarding
11:49 Consumer behavioural change
14:01 The balance between convenience and reward
15:16 We don't want the car loan – we want the car
15:56 The bigs banks try to innovate
16:08 Go build something in a WeWork
16:31 Banks are bad at using data
16:57 Being a B2C Fintech isn't easy
17:36 Monzo's IFTTT integration
17:53 Consumer data ownership is key
19:24 We need to give consumers an incentive to use Open Banking
19:42 Instant loans – 45% revenue increase & fraud reduction
21:39 Better managing a risk portfolio
22:20 The Australian Open Banking scene
23:34 The open data approach is a risk
24:48 Getting the regulators involved
26:30 3 things for next week
26:40 Think about the data
27:56 Find out more about James
More about Lynn
Twitter: @JamesVarga
Company: The ID Co
LinkedIn: James Varga
Intro: 00:03 Welcome to the Practical Futurist Podcast, a bi-weekly show all about the near term future with practical advice from a range of global experts to help you stay ahead of the curve. Every episode answers the question, what's the future of … ? with voices and opinions that need to be heard. Your host is international keynote speaker and Practical Futurist, Andrew Grill.
Andrew Grill: 00:29 Welcome to episode nine of the Practical Futurist Podcast. My guest today is James Varga, who founded the id Co in 2011 with a mission to create convenience, allowing consumers to sign up to new products and services in seconds. He is active in a number of local and global efforts to help people do more online, including the Fintech delivery panel, the open banking excellence, where he is co-founder and trust in digital life. As one of the first to call for open banking in the UK, James has a wealth of experience in this space, having previously built a personal finance, management and aggregation service, he has a unique perspective that highlights the importance of customer convenience in the overall success and adoption of open banking. Welcome James.
James Varga: 01:10 Thank you very much.
Andrew Grill: 01:11 You know, I speak a lot about open banking and opportunities it opens up for consumers in all of my keynotes, but more than a year since launch,. when I ask for show of hands as to who's heard of it, the number is so woefully low. Can you tell us exactly what is open banking and why consumers and businesses should actually care?
James Varga: 01:28 I guess it depends on your perspective. Open banking in the UK is based on PSD2 which has two big components. The first one is all around providing access to your bank account data or more accurately I think sharing your bank data as consumers, being able to leverage that and share that with other people. And the second component, which is more PSD2, is being able to pay from your bank account, but it's account information, which is where we started the conversation from is how to leverage that identity and data that you've built up in your bank account to be able to do things online. How can we use the sharing of that data with the consumer's consent to go and do more things online? So for me, open banking just now in the industry is really around financial data. Open banking is sharing that data and there's a huge amount of value in that.
James Varga: 02:18 When I talk to people, I get them just to think about what their bank statement would tell you about the person as a way of personalising it, as understanding it because I think that's the real challenge with open banking is – it is fairly new. The use of bank data has been around for a long time. We've always given bank statements to get mortgages, this is nothing new in a lot of regards, but using the data in a digital format is, and you have to personalise it, you have to think about what your bank statement would tell somebody about you and where you could use that information to make your life a bit better.
Andrew Grill: 02:50 I've always thought if I gave my bank data to someone who was a bit smarter than my bank, no disrespect HSBC and Nationwide, but a Fintech in Shoreditch, or your company could actually tell me how to save better or look at the things I'm spending, or give me an indication, as if I had a personal banker looking at every transaction that I did.
James Varga: 03:07 Potentially, absolutely. You know, if you look at my bank statement, you know, I live in Musselburgh, which is just outside of Edinburgh. You know, I go to Edinburgh every day at during the week, you know, I spend a couple of days down in London. That footprint, that financial behavior about me is, is really, really important. Especially when so many things that we try to do online are predicated by knowing the individual. You know, this is the identity challenges – are you who you say you are. First of all, on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog is the really old, I'm dating myself now. But also is how do we give you the products or the services appropriate? Are you the right person for this loan or credit card or mortgage or you know, first of all, should we give you a different product or when we do give you that product, and this is an area I think has huge potential in open banking just now today, is are you the right person for that product? Can you afford it? Can you make the payments? When we do go to get the payments from you, are we taking them on the right day? Is there a reason why that you're asking for this? That isn't the reason why we want to give you the loan. It's trying to match those products with the consumer and personalise that experience.
Andrew Grill: 04:15 And the personalisation thing is important. We'll talk about this in a moment, but I think consumers until now haven't realized that they can actually use their own data that they own to give it to someone else to say – hey, what do you think of this? Until now, you'd literally have to give them physical or PDF copies of your statements. And it's very difficult to make sense of that.
James Varga: 04:32 And even with that, the business can't rely on that data. You know, if you print out your bank statement as a PDF and send that in the post, first of all, that gives me the cringes, you know, sending my things to them.
Andrew Grill: 04:42 Hang on, you'd send a PDF in the post? That's an oxymoron.
James Varga: 04:45 Exactly, or you go into your bank branch, you get it notarized, so it's validated by someone and then you send it. I mean, all of that is just ludicrous in this world where, you know, as consumers we're really motivated by one thing and that's convenience. We're all lazy, right? I think GDPR is also really come into open banking at the same time as open banking is developed and has helped clarify issues around who owns the data and the transparency and being able to leverage that as individuals. When we started 10 years ago talking about this subject a long time ago, again, dating myself, you know, that was a foreign concept to a lot of banks. They felt that they still owned the data, but we've been able to clarify that it's your data. You should be able to use it and we should be able to find uses that actually have that benefit.
Andrew Grill: 05:29 I'm smiling here because you must have seen my presentations or if you haven't we're psychic, because I talk about 2018 being the year of "regulated disruption". The two things are GDPR and open banking. GDPR cleans up the data protection act to allow consumers to have some level of control and open banking or open utilities or open telco, we'll talk about that in a moment. It allows that data to be portable and I think we're having a watershed moment where consumers are now saying, you mean I can extract some value out my own data. Wow! what a revolution.
James Varga: 05:58 And it's just the tip of the iceberg, you know I think that's the other really exciting thing about what we're seeing now with open banking is it's a really valuable bit of data that I guess brings into focus the potential of putting this control back into the consumer of letting them do things with the data they own. There's much further we can take that whole topic, but open banking is in a lot of ways pioneering that mindset for an industry around this sort of data that's never been used before.
Andrew Grill: 06:26 So when I was back at IBM, I asked a couple of the big banks as they were working on their open banking projects, and I understand there are hundreds of people at each bank working on this. Would you have done it if you hadn't been mandated? And they said, of course not, it's expensive, but why do you think the adoption has been slow to take off and what will accelerate open banking and drive real adoption into this year and next?
James Varga: 06:45 It's interesting. Banks have put a lot of effort. I think the UK has probably spent about a billion pounds on providing access to data. And maybe as a little anecdote, I know one of those top few banks, there's nine in the CMA nine as they're called, and one of the bigger ones has a team of about 300 people working on providing data into the market and it's all they do for two and a half years. They've sat in rooms and tried to put together some APIs for about 500 million pounds in cost, you know, so that's a huge amount of resource and energy and I was asked to come in and do a little talk to them, a showcase and they have an annual group meeting for that part of the business, and someone before me asked the question, and I think this is really reflective of where the industry still is today. They asked, is this good or bad for the bank? And what do you think the result was?
Andrew Grill: 07:39 Well, if I was someone in senior management about to retire or move on, I would go – I don't care, I'm a prayer, I just pray it's going to go away. I think if I was someone younger in the bank and saw that we were investing for the future and had a more of a futuristic approach, I think they would say it's excellent, but I'm sure the shareholders wonder why they're pumping all this money into a project that actually returns essentially nothing. Day One.
James Varga: 07:59 And even a year ago I was in board meetings of some of those, maybe not the bigger banks, but the smaller ones and absolutely there were people going, this will never happen. A year, maybe just over a year ago, halfway through the regulations.
Andrew Grill: 08:13 Are these the same people that said automatic teller machines will never take off?
James Varga: 08:16 Probably, or "cash is still king". The really interesting bit was about 70% about three quarters of the people in the audience thought it was a bad thing for the bank.
Andrew Grill: 08:25 Because they couldn't say the payback, because they were looking short term. That year's bonus and whether they get, the EBITDA
James Varga: 08:27 I think even more so, and they got to this point was the general view is that it's still banks giving away all this valuable data, the data they used to own or they used to be able to say they owned, you know, as a leaking bucket. And actually the point that he was making was was actually yeah, that is the way that we've seen it traditionally, but we have to plug the holes in the bucket and start filling it in. And that's really where I think open banking is today. We've spent a huge amount of effort in the UK providing access to data PSD2 is now rolling out as of mid September through Europe, 11, 12 countries around the world have all launched open banking programs. But that's a means to an end. The real opportunity is even for those bigger banks as much as Fintechs and anybody else in the industry is how do you consume this data and what pains do you solve from it?
Andrew Grill: 09:17 So I'm seeing ads at the moment in mainstream press for account aggregation. I've seen both Natwest and Barclays that basically had their competitors in there as well. That seems like a really easy thing to do, but I'm not sure how many people have multiple banks. What's the next use case? What's the silver bullet for open banking? Or isn't there one yet?
James Varga: 09:35 Is there a silver bullet is a really interesting question. I don't think that exists. You know, in any walk of life, there's never a a golden egg, if you would, with account aggregation, that's how we've always used bank data. Personal finance management or PFM, account aggregation has been around in the UK for 15 years. It's what drove the agenda in the UK to take PSD2 and account aggregation and make it something more, was the idea that people could use this data to help manage their finances as wealth management, personal dashboard, all the rest of it. I think there's, there's a real challenge in that and even looking at some of the US examples like mint.com and even the adoption rates in the Lloyds money manager, the Monzos of the world or whatever is where's the value to the consumer? And I think a lot of those apps still miss that. I don't know about you, I don't actively manage my finances and I don't think most people do.
Andrew Grill: 10:23 But I would pay for an AI device to do it for me and tell me what I should be doing. I mean, that's the value I think sort of set and forget, tell me what I should be doing differently.
James Varga: 10:32 Absolutely. I agree with that. But the idea that people are going to log into an app, manage their money every day to kind of control how much they've spent on Starbucks or versus Costa [coffee]. Account aggregation is used to gather some more information, but it's the conversational banking is the predictive insights around wealth and investment. There's more interest there, but that's predicated on the fact that consumers are really lazy, right? You've said it yourself, you don't want to go and do something, you want it to do it for you, and I think that's the root of where the successful use cases that we see and open banking and bank data. One of the things that we focus on, as a sector that we focus on today is customer onboarding. Using bank data for customer onboarding and think of it as getting a loan or mortgage or credit card or applying for a new job, even renting an apartment. You have to prove your income.
Andrew Grill: 11:23 So there is an API for that.
James Varga: 11:25 Exactly. Well there is now, but that income verification even as a small simple use case has real benefit to me as a consumer because I can do that with convenience.
Andrew Grill: 11:35 If I say I earn $100,000 the API says $100,000 and it really is $100,000
James Varga: 11:39 And then the business can rely on that and the impact, if we can look for use cases that have both the benefit to the business, I'll expand on that in a second, but most importantly a behavioral change for consumers and impact to the consumer, that's based around convenience, not privacy or security, I mean that's nice as as as a group of people in the industry, that's the sort of things that we talk about, but it's not what the average person on the street talks about. It has to be around convenience. So the closest I think we'll get to a golden egg or something like that is use cases that generate that experience for consumers. I've challenged for a long time, why have a personal finance management app? Why not just connect my bank accounts to something, have something, summarise it, and then email me a report every day. Do I even need an app? I don't want an app, actually, I just want the answers.
Andrew Grill: 12:29 I talk about digital agents more broadly in managing our minutiae of life because they'll find knows everything, but I can see a time where rather than me having to look at the statement and say I should be putting some money there, I trust my AI to do it for me as if I had a personal banker who just did nothing else but sat there all day and looked at my money management. I think that when they see the benefit and they go, oh, I've got another hundred pounds in the account that I didn't have yesterday because the AI has gone and invested in the short term money market. I just thought of an idea then when the Government here said it's going to cost you 5 pence for a plastic bag, guess what? People including me brought their bags in because they didn't want to pay even 5 pence and they've removed something like 80 billion bags.
Andrew Grill: 13:08 So I think it is a real change in consumer behavior, but because it's about money, show me that I can make more money or save more money by something doing it for me and the set and forget. You're probably like me, probably one of your first friends have a mobile phone. When I got mine probably 20 years ago, cost me $1,000. I was a student. Everyone said, why have you got one of those? Slowly they saw that I was getting more jobs, I was easier to contact and slowly my friends said maybe I should get one. So I think it is like you and I probably the early adopters given where you work and where I worked, we're trying these new things and even the apple card and those sort of things coming out are challenging the market and the new digital banks. I'm hearing more people say, oh you've signed up for Monzo or Starling or N26 what's it all about? I think people are experimenting but they will only stay if they go, I've made some money because people are a bit greedy when it comes to money. Don't you think?
James Varga: 14:00 In the balance there isn't it, you know, between the sort of convenience and benefit and reward and and that behavioral change that you have to go through. We support about 35 customers on the platform. We've may be worked with 80 to 100 companies over the 10 years. It's been a long journey and there is some really exciting ones. And one of the areas, I think there's a good adaptation of account aggregation is the roundup type propositions. Because to your point, that does have that financial reward with the convenience. You set it, you forget about it and it just does it for you.
Andrew Grill: 14:34 And the 16 pence that I would have got in change, that all adds up and then magically you have another 50 quid that month. Wow. That's pretty cool. I'll keep doing that.
James Varga: 14:43 Absolutely. And whether that's to get the financial benefit or is to feel good. One of the customers we've worked with sustainably is about rounding up and then giving to charity. There's another one that's about rounding up, giving pensions and investments. I like those models because you don't have to actively engage with them. I really struggled with the other end of the scale where really just table stakes is put all your finances in one place. We want to connect this data so that we can understand our customers better. It has nothing for me as a consumer, we're motivated to spend money. Most people I know work to spend money and we don't want the car loan, we want the car as the saying goes, right? I mean that's where as an industry we need to look for these use cases that we can take a first principles approach, go down to the really behavioral challenge, the need of the situation, not even the consumer but the need of the situation and then build propositions from that.
Andrew Grill: 15:32 So who's doing that? I'm going to be a bit harsh on the banks saying they're probably not doing that because they're too busy building the plumbing. Is it the startups in Shoreditch? Is it the startups in New York? Is it your company? Who is out there testing these new use cases and trying them out and saying now we've got the plumbing for open banking in the sandboxes, we can try these out. Or is it going to be left to the digital first banks to to get first to market?
James Varga: 15:56 It's really difficult. We see a lot of the banks try to innovate around this space, try to understand but are still hampered either by their own risk aversion, or inability to develop things. A conversation I had just yesterday with somebody who works with one of the banks who's taken like 200 people that couldn't actually do anything within the framework of the bank, thrown them in a WeWork and said go build something. You know, because just being in that environment itself, which is pretty extreme being in that environment itself hampers any sort of lateral thinking any sort of blue skying about what the problem is. Banks also are very bad at using data. They have a huge amount of data and a lot of them would say that they're really good at data, but actually using that data even for themselves, even their own data for themselves.
James Varga: 16:42 If they did or they were good at that, we would have seen a huge shift in the market already. So it's going to be down to the industry is going to be down to the Fintechs to build propositions that solve some of these pains. But that in itself is a huge challenge. You know, being a Fintech isn't an easy feat, especially as a B2C proposition with the cost of acquiring customers and all the rest of it. It's a huge challenge. B2B Fintech, slightly easier for generating that adoption, but direct to consumer, incredibly, incredibly difficult. So then what you're left with is the ones in the middle, the Monzos and the Starlings and N26, the Revoluts of the world that have big enough balance sheets that they can afford to build those big things and they're all competing with each other, so it's a lot of, well, they do it, so I'll do it type situation. No different than the banks and everyone's following and everyone's not breaking away. I think Monzo has been doing good at breaking away. One of the the best innovations I saw at Monzo was if this then that (IFTTT) I thought was brilliant. If you could script your own stuff, that would be fantastic, but my wife or anybody I know wouldn't be interested in that.
Andrew Grill: 17:48 They wouldn't know what If This Then That was and how to use it. So I'm a big believer that open banking is actually a watershed when it comes to consumer data that the data has value. The fundamental premise of open banking is the data the bank holds on the customer belongs to the customer, not the bank. Is this the way you see it and is that what's, what's going to drive the innovation?
James Varga: 18:07 It's absolutely the way we say it. We've always put the consumer at the middle of this equation. Whether that's from an identity point of view and trying to onboard customers or it's just that data control. I think we've seen time and time again where whether it's Capital One or Visa or whoever it is, the idea that as an industry we can manage this for individuals is fundamentally flawed. People do too many different things for me to control your data. I just can't do that. I've been in these conversations where where people go, well we need better governance and regulation and security services, authentication, whatever. It's not that at all. There's just no way to manage this for the population. The only way for us to solve it is to find ways to put consumers in the middle of that. So everything that we do and everything that we believe in is about being consumer centric.
James Varga: 18:54 And it's been great to see with the GDPR perspective, our hat on and having seen open banking grow up from a sort of explicit consent perspective that it, that it is about the consumer controlling it. There's still a lot of misconceptions around that. I think that's one of the challenges, Open banking, I still get asked all the time, so there's a big database that we can go and access all this information. No, you need to engage the consumer. That provides a bit of a challenge to these use cases and these, these Fintechs. We have to find reasons to get consumers to connect their bank account.
Andrew Grill: 19:28 You want for them to give consent because they realise the value exchange is there.
James Varga: 19:31 And the value exchange is huge. One of our customers is a big consumer lender in the states. We're very fortunate and they share a lot of data with us and results. They've been using us for about three years. They've taken a process that was seven days down to about 30 seconds. So now consumers can get instant loans, instant decisioning, but the benefit to the business has been about a 40-45% increase in conversion, that's almost 50% if I exaggerate, slightly increase in revenue while reducing their fraud, 7.5%.
Andrew Grill: 20:09 There's a driver there. Someone on the board says, we drop fraud by 7.5%, That's, that's billions of pounds or dollars.
James Varga: 20:14 At that meeting with the bank a couple of months ago, and my joke went, if I could save you seven and a half billion pounds, I could buy a small island and retire in The Bahamas. You know what I mean? There's a huge amount of impact, especially when fraud and risk keeps going up every year.
Andrew Grill: 20:28 Fraud is not just the financial thing of fraud. It is having to insure against that. So there's a double hit that if you reduce fraud exponentially, you can reduce the exposure to the bank.
James Varga: 20:36 This is where I hope that open banking will get to, not only can the data be used on a personal level, credit risk is an obvious low hanging fruit, especially in this world, where in order to get credit, you have to have had credit. If we can enable those students and new to countries and people that have just never had credit. I've talked to very, very wealthy people trying to buy a house but have never had a mortgage and are unable to so they just pay cash. You know, I myself went into an Apple store to buy a phone about eight months ago. I like telling everybody this and I applied for it on financing because I wanted the Apple care and all the rest of it. Thousand pound loan essentially, and I failed the financing.
Andrew Grill: 21:14 Because they didn't have enough data. You knew you were a good credit risk, but you failed some hurdle.
Andrew Grill: 21:18 It wasn't my credit score because I have an almost perfect credit score. So something about them understanding me just wasn't there. But if we can start to roll that up on a portfolio level and understand groups of consumers, think of how more effective a business, a bank or a financial services company could be, but all the way up to that level as you say, what if we could reduce the capital requirements of these digital banks by better risk managing their portfolio and what could they do with that money? You know, wealth management is a really interesting sort of conundrum for me and the amount of money it takes to set up these PFM products and the amount of money it takes to acquire customers and all the rest of it.
James Varga: 21:58 I think you can almost employ wealth managers to manually go through bank accounts and provide a couple of snippets or tips every month and actually get a better, more personalised results. So it's about changing the dynamics of some of these situations.
Andrew Grill: 22:12 So because I'm Australian, I look at what's happening back in my own market and it's probably interesting parallel because as you said, there are open banking programs around the world. The first iteration of Australia's consumer data right or CDR went live from July 1, 2019 and this is the first step towards their own Aussie open banking regime, which is touted as allowing individuals to own their data by granting them open access, etc. They are going to go beyond that though, not just banking, they're looking at energy, phone, Internet transactions. What advice would you have for your Australian counterparts with what you know with open banking here in the UK and Europe?
James Varga: 22:43 Oh, that's a tough question, isn't it? The UK has been extremely successful at pioneering open banking it is referred to a lot around the world and a lot of these programs look towards open banking in the UK as a bit of a template. I think always being aware of the challenges now that open banking is going through some of the operational challenges or challenges that the business the industry is facing as they start to consume this data. Whether that's 90 day reauthentication, or strong customer authentication. There's still these little niggles that stop open banking really working for all the use cases. And I think the fundamental flaw there was maybe not focusing enough on the actual use cases. Not, not going down to brass tacks if you would.
James Varga: 23:29 Looking at the exact situation and then building up data from there and trying to do too much too early. It's igreat great to see Australia do an open data approach, not just finance but utilities, insurance, pensions, everything else. Healthcare data I think is even wrapped in some of that, but you're trying boil the ocean that has a risk that too many parties get involved. It becomes too complicated. You cater too much towards the industry and not to, to the actual use case of this data. You know, you try to protect that industry too much. And even in Australia, there's, I think from what I understand a bit of a bubbling ocean right now between a few tech companies and a few industry organisations and the Payments Council and all the rest of it vying to control this network because it is such a hugely valuable thing, you know, by going that far beyond what it was, it's like the California Privacy Act goes beyond GDPR. Does it become too much of a risk? I don't know.
Andrew Grill: 24:23 It's back to the consumers, I mean, at least here, because it started with banking and you can understand that and you understand the security things. If I then moved to Telco or Utilities, I'm less worried because the security, I don't really care if you know how much energy I've consumed, but I do care what's in my bank account. Maybe the Australian model because they're trying to, as you say, boil the ocean. The consumers go, I don't get the benefit, but if what they're doing here is they start with one industry. Just a side question while I think about it, so where does the regulator sit here? I speak to a lot of companies and I say, look, you need to go and talk to the regulator and when I get a chance to sit in front of regulators, I say you need to think like a disrupter and you need to understand why they need to change the laws. Where have you seen the regulator get involved, roll their sleeves up and understand how they need to change legislation. I understand also the sandbox concept. You can actually do things that are illegal to test the market.
James Varga: 25:11 Absolutely. The FCA has, I think, been on a bit of a journey itself. As this whole fintech movement has started over the last few years as this disruption, as big data, as machine learning, and let's not refer to AI or blockchain or anything else,
Andrew Grill: 25:26 You said the "B word" [blockchain]
James Varga: 25:29 I think they've realized that they've lived in a world where regulation has always followed the use case and now they're trying to understand the use case or they're trying to get up to speed. The sandbox has been brilliant. The innovation team within the FCA has been great. Even in Fintech Scotland up in Scotland, the FCA has seconded. somebody into that group and Nicola has been great. She's out talking to more of the Fintechs, but there's still a chasm of knowledge and awareness that is still out there. You know, and I think to your point, that's a mindset difference. Traditionally risk adverse, only do what everyone else has always done. It's the same challenge we see in banks themselves and credit risk underwriters or risk managers or whoever it is, they've always done the same thing, and you don't get fired for doing the same thing. What we're asking the industry to do, the banks to do, and everybody else, the regulators is to do things that they've never done before, and that's extremely scary.
Andrew Grill: 26:25 And to this with other people's money. That's a really risky proposition. Absolutely. So this is the Practical Futurist Podcast, so I'm going to hold your feet to the fire. What are three things our listeners should do next week to understand the opportunities to be realised from open banking?
James Varga: 26:41 Think about the data. First of all. For me always like to personalise things. If I can understand the benefit or the impact to me as an individual, that's why I used the apple financing sort of story. I just went and paid cash for it in the end, but I still wanted to pay interest and finance it, right? Yeah. So I think, you know, related to yourself, think about the data and look at how you could use those situations to make an impact, and change. It's too easy sometimes to boil the ocean or it's too easy to think too grand. It doesn't have to be. It can be really simple solutions like setting up an account aggregation facility that just emailed me a summary of my financial behavior. Like why do I need to categorize everything? Why do I need to worry about budgets and this and that?
James Varga: 27:25 And the other thing, is there something that you can use this data for? And most importantly, what is the impact of that? If we can target the convenience behavior, the requirements of consumers. First of all, that's a big tick and people will go through the process. We see as many as 80% of people connect their bank accounts where there's that really clear call to action around convenience. So people will do it. We just have to find the use cases for it, and open banking is just data. It's how you use it that counts, so let's start from that point of view. Let's figure out what we can do with the data.
Andrew Grill: 27:55 So James, how can people find out more about you and your work?
James Varga: 27:58 You can come along to theIDcode.com you can come to Twitter (@JamesVarga) Linkedin – James Varga. You could just Google for James Varga, and I think I still come up on most of the front page.
Andrew Grill: 28:09 I've learned a lot today, I hope our listeners have as well. Thank you so much for being on the show.
James Varga: 28:13 I appreciate it.
Outro: 28:19 Thank you for listening to the Practical Futurist Podcast. You can find all of our previous shows at futurist.london, and if you like what you've heard on the show, please consider subscribing via your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. You can find out more about Andrew and how he helps corporates navigate a disruptive digital world with keynote speeches and c-suite workshops futurist.london. Until next time, this has been the Practical Futurist Podcast.
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Andrew's presentation was excellent and very well received.
Atradius CollectionsGlobal HR Manager
The reason we hired Andrew was because he's great to work with, he's very professional, and he adapted his talk to exactly what we wanted. I'd highly recommend him for any keynote speeches you're thinking about.
Jim HodgsonProject Manager - Business West
From the very first communication with Andrew, there was no doubt that he was the right choice to launch our inaugural Digital City Scale up program.
David DixonInvestment Manager - University of Teesside
Andrew was a fantastic keynote speaker to open our Biennial Conference with an international audience of 350 insurance CEO/C-suite delegates.
Ben TelferVice-President, Business Intelligence - International Mutual and Cooperative Insurance Federation
Speaking next at ...
08:30 Apperio Expo – ALX London 2021 –... @ Landing Forty Two
Apperio Expo – ALX London 2021 –... @ Landing Forty Two
ALX London: A 2021 vision for tomorrow's lawyer. Andrew will be delivering the opening keynote on future trends in the workplace and how tech will disrupt the legal sector. The in-house lawyer of the future
Connect with Andrew


Another great infographic from mbaonline.
Wired described an interesting way to fix the patent mess - make applicants submit models of their inventions, which was the norm until 1880. It would reduce the inflow of patents, make it easier on the examiners, you can't build a model of something vague, and you can't build a model out of ideas, like software or business processes. Which is perfect - creative works have plenty of protection under copyright laws in a way that doesn't cater to trolls.


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CPA Advisory Services
Why small CPA firms should care about fraud
With the recent rash of public company fraud issues that were missed both internally and by external auditors, there has been a lot of negative news coverage for the accounting industry. But what does this mean for small CPA firms who don't perform audits?
In this episode of Pulse of Practice "Should a Small Firm Care?", Paul Miller, CPA from Business by Design, and I are joined by Brian Fox, Founder of Confirmation, part of Thomson Reuters. Together, we dive into the perception of accounting firms considering some auditing struggles and the reasons why even small, non-audit firms need to be concerned with fraud.
How public company fraud affects the small CPA firm
We often talk about how important reputation is in a client-focused business such as accounting. With recent fraudulent activities from companies such as Wirecard, integrity concerns are rising among clients about accounting firms in general.
"In a word, I think we are getting trashed," notes Brian. "Just google 'CPA firm auditor', and the headlines around auditors and the press is not very good for our profession right now globally."
Paul's company is a small firm of 15 staff members. They don't typically deal with anything related to audit because the small business owner clients don't seem to need it, and if they do, he can refer them to another, specialized firm. So, why should the audit world be relevant to this small CPA firm?
"It's relevant because we're CPAs," says Brian. "The brand that CPA stands for, in my opinion, has historically been an honorable profession, and it's one that upholds the public good. I constantly remind people that the 'P' in CPA stands for public. We are there to stand in and think about the work that we do on behalf of the public."
This means when we have a body of work that is losing the public's trust in our brand, that permeates every individual in our profession, not just the auditors. Tax professionals, anybody with CPA after their name, are getting thrown under the bus. It is going to tarnish the reputation that those before us have worked hard to build.
"There was a point in time when somebody must have said this is too hard and finding fraud is not our job," adds Brian. "I've always argued that material misstatement, regardless of whether it is due to error or fraud, is our responsibility."
Non-audit firms can still employ best practices through their advisory services
When you're a firm centered on advisory, you sell a relationship not a service. That rings true in these situations of fraud, because part of your relationship with the client is to question how you can help. Whether that is a formal audit or not is irrelevant at a small firm level, because there are things you can do to help protect your client. How can you identify things in advance to help them move forward? Do you see poor internal controls? Do you see a lack of record keeping that could give somebody an opportunity to commit fraud?
"Non-audit firms can employ some of these [best practices] during your advisory services, because if you can catch an employee who has set up a fake vendor and has been paying themselves $25,000 a year, you've paid for your services," notes Brian. "That client is going to not only thank you, but they're going to recommend your firm to a whole host of friends and neighbors.
"I know if I'm a business owner and you caught somebody on my team doing something like that, I'm going to be with you for the long haul. It builds on that relationship."
Clients are expecting their accountant to protect them from fraud
Put yourself in the client's shoes and understand what is in their mindset. They've seen the same negative articles on fraud, and it is probably sitting in the back of their mind as they come to you. You must realize, even as a small firm, that there is a concern about bad behavior and quality. Clients are wanting to protect themselves.
"As the accountant, you have to have that inquisitive mind," says Paul. "That inquisitive nature should be there to question if something makes sense. Those skill sets are valuable to bring to the table, and that is what clients really expect from us whether they verbally say it or not."
In a small business setting, they may not voice their concerns. However, it's still important to be aware of what may be in your client's mind, as you are serving this client and building a relationship.
"I've seen this with mergers and acquisitions," adds Brian. "A lot of smaller businesses who don't have audits will go through being acquired, and they're going to ask your accounting firm to look over the numbers of the other company."
You'll have to do some level of due diligence. Asking those questions and having those audit tools in your pocket, whether it's confirmation.com for validation, will be key.
"My brother and I used to ride around the backyard in my mom's police uniform with her bobby stick, chasing the bad guys in our heads," says Brian. "He went into law enforcement, and for me, this was my way to help. What I always say is, help the good guys catch the bad guys."
Listen to the "Should a Small Firm Care?" episode of the Pulse of the Practice podcast on your preferred platform (Apple, Spotify, Stitcher) or here.
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Poooey.. If you thought all dog poo stunk, you are in for a surprise. This poo is scented as warm vanilla sugar. Great for a vegetarian, dog walker, kids, gardners, lanscapers, or anyone you would like to surprise.


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lyrics & charts
worship album reviews by zac
zac's bio
about unbudding fig music
the hymns movement
(Go here for lead sheets and chord charts.)
Angels, from the realms of glory,
Wing your flight o'er all the earth;
You who sang creation's story,
Now proclaim Messiah's birth.
Shepherds, in the fields abiding,
Watching o'er your flocks by night,
God with man is now residing,
Yonder shines the infant Light:
Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King!
Saints, before the altar bending,
Watching long in hope and fear;
Suddenly the Lord, descending,
In His temple shall appear:
All creation, join in praising
God the Father, Spirit, Son;
Evermore your voices raising
To th'eternal Three in One:
Lift up your heads, you mighty gates;
Be lifted up, you ancient doors.
That the King of Glory may come in,
Let the King of Glory now come in.
All hail! All hail King Jesus!
All hail! All hail Immanuel!
All hail! All hail the Prince of Peace!
Words: James Montgomery, 1816; Zac Hicks, 2009 (add'l lyrics adapted from Psalm 24)
Music: Zac Hicks, 2009
©2011 Unbudding Fig Music (ASCAP)
Video Tutorial: How to Play "Angels from the Realms of Glory"
For those who worship in more liturgically-oriented contexts, you're probably familiar with the fact that the Christian "new year" doesn't line up with our calendar's new year. Our new year happens a month earlier than January 1, when we begin the season of Advent. Advent is a season of hope, fostering faith by looking back (to Christ's first coming) and looking forward (to Christ's second coming). It is at once historical and eschatological. "Angels from the Realms of Glory" is a hymn that perfectly fits this paradigm. In fact, the first verse paints a beautiful picture of how the angels themselves share in history's timeline:
Angels, from the realms of glory
You, who sang creation's story,
The entire hymn is a series of direct addresses, summoning the four corners of the world to come and worship Christ, the newborn King. Each verse crescendos from the previous–angels, shepherds, saints, all creation–summoning heaven and earth to herald the arrival of our great King.
Musically, if there's any time of year in which modern churches become a bit more "traditional," it's during the Advent/Christmas season. My worship leader friends who serve in modern worship contexts have a love-hate relationship with this period, because it often means departing (at least a bit) from their musical standard fare. "Angels from the Realms of Glory" was written to help mitigate this tension. While I hope that the Church in any age utilizes music in its worship from every age, I also recognize that, in an effort to build bridges for this to happen, it's a worthy endeavor to contextualize texts into modern musical idioms. "Angels" is perhaps the best illustration on Without Our Aid of this endeavor. It is our most aggressive song, set in a driving, "semi-punk" style. This particular musical setting is fitting, because it captures the joy and frivolity of the hymn text. It's sure to offend lovers of the traditional tune and accompaniment ("Regent Square," written by Henry Smart in 1867), but our target for this song is not that crowd. Our goal is to invite listeners who have never heard this glorious hymn to enjoy its rich poetry and pregnant meanings for the first time. Hopefully, this setting can be a "gateway drug" toward appreciating its original music, as well.
The Worship Pastor Audiobook is Here! June 23, 2020
The Big Idea of Lent: Jesus Did What I Couldn't Do (Repost) March 11, 2019
Abandoning "Surrender" Language in Worship Songs January 29, 2018
One Reason to Add a Chorus to a Hymn July 19, 2017
What I'm Up To These Days July 15, 2017
Posts By Topic Select Category Album Reviews (33) Art and Worship (23) Book Reviews (7) Church & Ecclesiology (22) Convergence of Old and New in Worship (64) Culture (26) History of Worship and Church Music (67) Hymns Movement News & Reviews (34) Personal Stories & Testimonies (44) Songwriting (40) Sound and Audio (5) Uncategorized (125) Worship & Mission (9) Worship and Pastoral Ministry (68) Worship Leading Tips (37) Worship Pastoring (6) Worship Resources (65) Worship Style (34) Worship Technology (6) Worship Theology & Thought (243)
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© TWENTY SEVENTEEN | ZAC HICKS | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.


The Superintendant of the Lower Merion School District -- where parents have initiated a class action suit over the covert use of students' laptops to surveil them in school and at home -- has sent a letter to parents with more information about the spying. The school admits that there was spyware installed on students laptops that allowed for remote, covert activation of their webcams, but maintains that the measure was only to be used in the event of theft of the machine (some had speculated that the school was only able to surveil students' hard drives, and that the images of a student engaged in "misconduct" in his home that a vice-principal confronted the student with had been taken by the student, intentionally, and stored on the laptop's hard-drive, from which it was retrieved by the school administration -- this now seems not to have been the case). The school also claims that the system can only capture still images, not audio or video. They have disabled the system for now and deny that it was misused.
· Immediate disabling of the security-tracking program.
· A thorough review of the existing policies for student laptop use.
· A review of security procedures to help safeguard the protection of privacy; including a review of the instances in which the security software was activated. We want to ensure that any affected students and families are made aware of the outcome of laptop recovery investigations.
· A review of any other technology areas in which the intersection of privacy and security may come into play.


Uñas para el dia de tu boda. Nails for your wedding day .
¡Ya está aquí! El domingo es el Día del padre en muchos países, así que si sois de los que lo habéis dejado para el último momento, aquí tenéis algunas ideas para elaborar tarjetas.
1960s (2) – A modern interpretation of the 1960s look but one that still follows the common themes. Blues and greys are used on the lids of the eyes but the emphasis still remains on the lashes and heavily lined eyes. Lips are kept pale to not draw attention away from the eyes which are the main focus. Pale turquoise nails!
Essential Oil Detox Bath lavender essential oil, lemon essential oil, peppermint essential oil, epsom salt, could add baking soda as well. Great for after dry brushing your skin.


A moral hazard exists when it is prohibitively costly for a principal (such as a law department lawyer) to directly monitor the efforts of an agent (such as the law firm partner who has been hired for a matter).
It is manifestly difficult for the in-houser to observe – let alone direct – how much time the partner spends on the matter, how skillful the performance, and how intense the effort. Opportunities for malingering, inefficiency and opacity lurk everywhere. To pay the partner by the hour exacerbates the moral hazard.
Please note: I believe that nearly all lawyers retained by law departments are highly ethical and both work and bill to the best of their abilities on behalf of their clients. Still, out of the imbalance of knowledge lurks moral hazard. This risk, inherent wherever the interests and knowledge of service providers and purchasers diverge creates several related issues (See my post of Dec. 23, 2005 on information asymmetry; Jan.16, 2006 on the principal-agent problem; and May 1, 2005on the dark side of partnering.). To be sure, moral hazard lurks in many places other than the example given.


Exquisite custom built home made to resemble and feel like a chateau right in the heart of beautiful Trenton! This 3 bedroom, 3.5 bathroom ENERGY EFFICIENT home is rich with detail and sits on 9.25 acres of countryside property. Home features 3 oversized master suites (two downstairs and left/suite on level two), Chef's kitchen with stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, magnificent knotty alder wood cabinetry and eat in kitchen nook, spacious living room with gas fireplace, proper formal dining room, library, study, two car garage and large outside back porch area. QUALITY built home by local builder Mike Graham completed with crown molding throughout, a beautiful grand staircase made from amazing knotty alder wood and wrought iron spindels, 10' ceilings, custom woodwork throughout, extra insulation, insulated garage door and foot thick walls. Other details include 3 tankless water heaters, 2 septic tanks, well, generator hookup, alarm system and lovely landscaping surrounding the property. LOW property taxes! 35 minutes from Gainesville and close to Downtown Trenton. Don't miss out on this amazing luxury find. Welcome home!


>> Either way it will probably be committed next week..
> don't. Please make up your mind.
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Though Design school is simple and it looks at internal and external environments there are a lot of drawbacks associated with it. Strategy formulation does not include any other member of the organization. Hence many of the problems which are experienced by sales advisors through customer interaction are not taken in to consideration. Thus strategy may fail to improve on some weaknesses. As per design school, structure follows strategy, but it is not always necessary that such ploys are successful. Structure can be molded at times according to the strategy. But it is.
StrategicManagementIKEACaseStudy Table of Contents Introduction Page 3 IKEA Strategy Description: Porter's Generic Strategy Options Page 4 IKEA Strategy Description: Ansoff Matrix Page 7 IKEA Strategy Evaluation: Suitability Page 9 IKEA Strategy Evaluation: Porter's 5 Forces Page 9 IKEA Strategy.
Introduction This paper analyzes the case article entitled "IKEA . Design and Pricing". It aims to analyze IKEA's business strategy of introducing its "good quality at low price" products in North America and identify the factors and strategies that IKEA must consider and apply to ensure its success. IKEA's Challenge: Products Success in North America IKEA is known for its product strategy of providing low cost household items.
application consolidation, the operations of McDonalds in India is greatly improved. Also, just-in-time order and delivery is done over the internet and TV, social media and radio are used to advertise the products and maintain customer relationship management . 3.5 Environmental factor There is a growing concern about environmental issues associated with fast food consumption in India (Times Magazines, 2011). For example, fast food is said to be one of the largest.
STRATEGICMANAGEMENTCASESTUDY SOUTHWEST AIRLINES SÜLEYMAN SİNAN ÖZTÜRK EBS 5103 STRATEGICMANAGEMENT INSTRUCTOR: DR. AHMET BEŞKESE BAHÇEŞEHİR UNIVERSITY May 2013 Contents CONTENTS. 2 INTRODUCTION.
 PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT UNIT 3 CASESTUDY JANINE EASTEP COLUMBIA SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY It has come to my attention as CEO of Donaldson's clothing store that sales have been steadily declining in the last quarter. There is a growing list of competitors in the area who are offering lower.
implementation of StrategicManagement has the capacity to become a functioning, financially viable institute with a sizable market share in the arts education industry. The strategicmanagement process is a philosophical approach to business and can be characterised through establishing a mission, creating objectives, and devising strategies, then through external and internal assessment creating strategy which is then implemented and.
INTRODUCTION Operations management is defined as "the activity of managing the resources which produce and deliver products and services" (Slack et al. 2010 p4). This encompasses the entire activity carried out within the organization. With increasing pressure on organizations to deliver optimally at reduced cost, the role of operations has been transformed from that of strategy implementer to one of strategy driver. Operations strategy looks at the patterns of.
Mintzberg definition of strategy indicates that strategy is a process or system build overtime in contrast with Mckeown. Strategy are varies in nature depends on different perspective as analyzed by expert in each study . This is in line with (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel, 1998) study in their book of Strategy Safari which divides strategy in 10 school of thoughts. Three out of these schools are perspectives and 7 are descriptive in nature. Prescriptive.


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text:
Brandon Perez
Brandon Perez is a Business Development Representative at Delta Risk. His focus is building relationships with SMB and Enterprise organizations to help meet their cyber security requirements and challenges. Before joining Delta Risk, he served as an Account Executive at Pycube Inc., where he worked with hospitals and healthcare systems integrating RTLS, RFID, and Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS). He also worked as an Account Executive for Pycube Inc. and as a Business Development Representative for memoryBlue. Brandon holds a Bachelor of Arts in Peace, War, and Defense from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While at UNC-CH, Brandon participated in several student organizations including the Delta Sigma Phi National Fraternity and the Pacific Islander Student Association. He is an active member of the Gracie Jiu Jitsu combative program in Leesburg, Virginia.
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Woolworths has announced it will donate all profits from fresh food sales this Saturday to support drought-affected farmers. The funds will be donated to Rural Aid's Buy a Bale appeal. Woolworths Forbes has committed to supporting the local community through a donation of a major item for the Farm Rescue fundraiser auction tonight. They are also asking for the community's help to fill two trolleys full of non perishable items to donate to local farmers in need. Woolworths Forbes Store Manager, Noel Reardon said they are doing this to help support the local community and the more they can get, the better.
Kathryn Merritt and Kim Acret were operating the raffle ticket and donation desk down at Woolworths.
Woolworths has announced it will donate all profits from fresh food sales this Saturday to support drought-affected farmers.
The funds will be donated to Rural Aid's Buy a Bale appeal.
Woolworths Forbes has committed to supporting the local community through a donation of a major item for the Farm Rescue fundraiser auction tonight.
They are also asking for the community's help to fill two trolleys full of non perishable items to donate to local farmers in need.
Woolworths Forbes Store Manager, Noel Reardon said they are doing this to help support the local community and the more they can get, the better.