15 years in politics made me a better developer

This talk explores how experiences in politics can enhance skills in software development. The speaker, a developer with a background in Kotlin and a member of the Norwegian Welfare Administration, draws parallels between effective communication in politics and software development. He emphasizes the importance of conveying messages in an understandable manner, which can vary greatly depending on the audience's background and expertise. The speaker also discusses the significance of framing problems, prioritizing issues, and the necessity for empathy in interactions among colleagues. He offers insights into team dynamics, encouraging developers to build trust and communicate effectively to foster collaboration and drive progress.

[music] >> All right. So, 15 years in politics have made me a a better developer. That's the claim of this talk. That's what I'm going to go through for the next 30-something minutes. So, who am I to claim this? Well, first of all, I've been a developer in my everyday job. I work Kotlin in back in back in development for the Norwegian Welfare Administration. I also give

talks at conferences, typically about about code or development. as you can see, familiar things here like MicroProfile, Jakarta EE, but also other other Java-related topics. I'm an IBM Champion, Oracle Ace Pro, so and I work for a Norwegian consultancy company called Computas. So, this is what I'm paid to do. In my spare time, this is also me doing different part of politics work. I'm out meeting voters,

sitting in meetings, deciding things, being part of the leadership of the party in Oslo, where I live. I've been for some years. I live in Norway, by the way. So, this is the Red Party. We're quite similar to PvdA here in Belgium or Die Linke in Germany. But, this is not I'm not trying to convince you to become socialist. That's just so you know where I come

from. And my claim is that there is a link between this. There are things you can learn both ways. And what is that? So, that could also be the could could also have been the title of this talk. It's like, how can politics help you become a better developer? That's what I'm trying to answer right now. So, just a disclaimer cuz this could have been a 4-hour

talk, but I focus on the politics part because I assume that you already know some things about software. I hope so. So, I focus on the politics part, but you you can try to make like the the connections yourself and link it to your your experiences. Shouldn't be That should be doable. So, let's go. So, every time you see this type of slide, it means a slight

change of change of topic. I think I have seven topics that we're going going through, so time is probably going to fly, but that's that's life. So, start with a message. So, what are you actually trying to say? Like, because Okay, let me start there. Like, yes, as a developer, as a as a programmer, I typically write code, like, but every day you communicate with someone. You

communicate with your colleagues, your manager, your testers, your domain experts, your customers, whoever it might be, you still communicate with someone. And whenever you communicate with someone, it's important that you speak words they can understand. If you speak If you are a developer, speak to a fellow developer, you can use one type of language, one type of words, and they will understand you. But, if you talk

to your lawyer or like your project manager, then you probably should use other words because they don't have the same deep knowledge about programming terms as developers do. This is a This may may sound basic, but I've seen so many developers like assume the domain experts know so many technical terms. So, be aware of that. The other one is like people have lots of things going on

in their lives, right? You might have might have a good day or you might have a bad day. You might have slept well and feel healthy and ener- energetic and ready to start a new day or you might feel like, well, I didn't sleep until 4:00 a.m. this night this morning and my child was screaming again at 6:00 a.m. yeah, I kind of hate my life right

now. Right? So, so when you you communicate with someone, you you like use use empathy and like see how is the peer How is the person responding? How are How are they today in a sense? And that should also be like Well, you know, take me as an example. When I'm tired, I'm less less patient with frustrating people. I see some of you are laughing. It's not

only me, but I That's also like remember that or like if you're talking to someone and you see that they are like then you probably should reconsider or take that into account when communicating further. So, I'm going to talk a little about communication, but communication is important in development as well. Yeah, you're computing computing competing for their attention. By that, I mean that Well, maybe if that

person didn't sleep well, that's one thing, but like maybe their child is sick or maybe they're taking care of someone or maybe Yeah, maybe they're waiting for someone to call them back or they are just simply working on their stuff, which is important to them. Like, if you have an important task that is due in 2 hours and a colleague comes to talk to you, then you

might be less open to that than if you don't have that important task right up-coming, right? So, you're competing for someone's and time. So, respect that. as a consequence of these previous slides, you can say that what is your most important message or question. You should know that before before going to talk ask someone about something. It's like, what is the most important thing like I know

that we can discuss these 11 topics in great length because if we are share common interests or knowledge or so on, but sometimes it's You got to know what is the most important thing you need to know right Or the most important message you want to give. Like, if you give seven messages say a kid, but also a colleague or your spouse or whoever, it's like they

won't probably won't get all seven of them. Right? So, focus on the most important Okay, so that is the message. So, and the message is important, but you also need to deliver And message could be a broad It's a broad thing, right? You get it. It can be all from discussions to yeah, actually message to questions to whatever it is. So, first, don't make them feel stupid.

I've also seen and probably done as well, I have to admit, this mistake a lot of time from especially from developers, which is like It goes back to what where I started, that people have different backgrounds, different areas of expertise, they know different things, right? Which is why which is that's how it is. It's totally fair. But, that also means that if you come up to a

domain expert using programming terms, they will either be like I don't get anything or they will be like, well, I feel really stupid, but I I guess since Mats is talking to me this way, I should know this. So, I'm feeling a bit stupid, but I'm trying to trying to follow up. So, but that feeling is not good. It's not good to be when you're talking to

someone have feeling that, wow, does everyone know this? Am I stupid for not for not knowing these terms for not knowing what he's talking about? So, don't do that. Use words or explanations that make it possible for one for the one who you're talking with to understand what you're talking about. And as I'm saying this, it feels like, well, this is really basic stuff, but like it's

not obviously not basic for everyone because I've seen so many times it it's not. a concept from politics is framing. And framing is you have a problem, but you can describe that problem in several ways. So, say that kind of the problem description. So, one way of framing a problem is to say that we need to cut costs. Another way of framing the same concept is we

need to increase income. if you choose that the problem is to get that the costs are too high, then you focus like on how can we get lower costs, then you do you do stuff to to reduce the costs, right? But, if you are focusing that saying that, well, the problem is that we don't earn enough money, that we don't get enough money in, then you do

other things to increase the amount of money money coming in. So, how you frame the problem also Yeah, it also determines what you what kind of changes you make, where you end up. And this one might sound counterintuitive to some of you. It did It did to me like the first four times I heard it. But, which topics you talk about is more important than what you

actually say about them. And by that, I mean that if you come up and talk to your product manager and say that we should switch into Kubernetes because Kubernetes is flexible and robust and great and cheap and blah blah blah blah blah blah, chances are they might might not remember much of what I said, but they remember may remember that I came to them to talk about

Kubernetes. So, the the idea the concept of Kubernetes sticks in their mind. and hopefully I'm so positive that what sticks to them is like Kubernetes and something positive. And that makes them think like Kubernetes is a positive topic. We should that whenever someone comes to talk to me about Kubernetes, that's good. Uh and Kubernetes is important. That's probably what sticks. And this is why you can see

in political election campaigns, you can see that the different parties talk about different one party might talk about the same topic over and over and over again. And that is in general, it's like the left parties tend to talk about welfare uh well welfare state and so on. The right-wing parties tend to talk about immigration uh and patriotism and so on. And why do they do that?

Yes, because it's important. Important areas for each party, but also because that is a field where that party has a strong standing. And it resonates with surprisingly many people. Uh so and if you get the discussion to to go about the topic that is generally good for then you're on a good path uh as a political party. But I said that they talk about the political parties

talk about this over And that's because yeah, you need to repeat it for it to stick, especially if it's a new and radical idea. they might need time and maturation I mean you might need to talk about it over and over again. So I said that your manager will remember Kubernetes, probably. But if you talk about Kubernetes every single week for a year, they definitely will remember

it. Right? So uh yeah, if you repeat it, talk about it over and over again, you might also switch I like you may might get the impression to slide from this is totally not doable into well, we can do this. Or like it gets more and more relevant. Of course there's a limit to this as well. Like if you come in every day, every single day, every

moment talk about the same thing, people might get tired of you. But like use some social intelligence and that's not a big deal. who do you need to convince? Often it's a few key people. So let's say I'm taking this Kubernetes as an example. Uh like I guess most people are already on Kubernetes today, but yeah. Um just for a simple not that very controversial example, I'm

using Kubernetes. So say that I want my team to go from on uh on physical hardware running stuff into Kubernetes. Okay, who do I need to convince to that? Say that we are a team of 20 people. I like we in this room, we uh are the team. So who do I need to convince for us us to switch to Kubernetes? I probably won't have to talk

to you each and every one of you and convince you. I might need to convince like maybe her and him and her. And if they three are on board, the rest of you will listen to them. This is often how organizations and groups of people actually work. So think of that. Like if you want to switch want want to make a change or to keep something also,

then who need to who do you need to convince to go there to get there? And who should pitch the message? That's if me and Fay if me and Maclay Rustam uh wants to change something, sometimes it might be smart that I am the one trying to pitch it. Sometimes it's better that he does it. I know that we agree, so um yeah, I can let him

do it. This is also in most organizations and most settings, there are someone that is always skeptical to everything. Like whenever management says something, that that one guy, it's typically a guy, uh they say no. This is a bad idea. It's better the way we did before, Yeah, you're nodding, so you recognize this. But there's also someone in most organizations or groups that don't say that much.

That I yeah, few are that I said named it here. And often when they say something, people listen much more to that because they know that well, that guy complains to uh about everything all the time anyway, so like no one is listening to him so to say. Um so be aware of this. It's like who should pitch message? And this is more like from political perspective.

Like if uh yeah, if someone I like should the minority uh people themselves pitch the message or should someone that agree with them but belong to the majority pitch the message? So a typical example here could be like well, if someone is saying bad things about gay people, should the gay people themselves feel the need to to stand up to that or should like uh non non-gay

people respond to that message, right? Or trans people, which is a big deal Should the trans people stand up or should we assist people instead to yeah, take the battle with them? And this this might depend on the context. yeah, I see that time is flying. I've got a lot of a lot of things to say and to say as well, but uh that's life. So next

topic, direction. And what do I mean by this? I mean first of all, pick your battles. there are some decisions that are in software development and in politics and everywhere else. Like whether you should use say uh Java or C# in your project, that's that's an important big decision. Whether you should use Maven or Gradle, less important. Whether you should use tabs versus spaces, uh that's not

the battle I would choose. But like the more battle the more battles you take, the more yeah, I like to say the other way. The le- if if you choose your battles, then you have a bigger chance of winning them. And don't panic, prioritize. Looks like what's what are the most important things? Which battles do I need really want to win? And which ones can I let

go without being a real big deal? I would just want to remind you of this every decision has downsides. Some examples, uh less coal, that's obviously good for the climate and for the local environment as well. But it also means that coal miners, they need an- another job. And microservices are great in the sense that in in many senses, but it also means that you get a

lot of moving parts. There are many things that can go wrong. on the flip side, there there's also lots of bad things about uh monoliths, right? There are downsides with everything. This is like this is a basic architecture concept, I would say. With software architectures, that every decision has a downside and hopefully upsides. So you have to it's a trade-off. that's how it is. But let's just

be reminded like don't don't say that this is the perfect solution because it's like it might be the right solutions, but it's nothing in software is perfect. So uh you can see that compromise on tools, velocity and so on, but not And don't win too hard. And by that I mean like even if you are say that you're trying to you're starting a project, you you you're

trying to decide like should we do Java or C#? Right? Which might happen. Like if like those of you that want Java and those of you that want C# would still work together afterwards. You would still be colleagues. You would still be on the same team. You you would still be working on the same issues. With you've been you would need to work together. And if the

Java side wins so that the project goes with Java, the Java people should be kind and considerate and nice to the people that originally wanted C#. Don't win too hard. Don't be like a bad winner. Don't Be nice. But that also means that in like less decisive choices, you can like you can say that well, I have the major majority on my side, so I want everything

my way. Or you can say like well, I have the majority on my side, so the majority of things go my way, but I'll give some I'll give something to those that lose as well, so they don't feel that bad. Often that might be smart. And sometimes yeah, and to continue that, sometimes you should let them win. say that we had that discussion in the team where

me and you constantly disagreed and for like seven different issues. And then comes up like an eighth eighth issue which which I know that that one's important to you, but it's not important to me. Then it could be like yeah. Okay, I trust your choice here. We go for your we'll we'll go for your solution. Gives you goodwill. Makes the one that gets the that small or

big victory, more happy. Everyone's better off. So, remember, who do you do things for? Why are you there? Cuz we are in in a software team, we are there for to produce a produce something that someone needs, right? We are not there for because we think it's fun to write code or whatever. That's obviously nice as well, but that's not why we are there. So, remember, why

are why are why are they paying you? Why are you there? And what is the most useful thing you can do right now? That's not not always the thing that's what is the funniest thing I could do right now, but like what's the most important thing? What's the most useful thing for the team? For the greater good, so to say. Yeah, bear in mind alignment with bigger

goal. So, political examples. I want to go out and talk to voters, but someone must send that email about the catering for the meeting next week, right? Or I want to have a beer and chat with friends, but we need to find the key to the locked door for the meeting where the that meeting should start soon. Yes, been there, done that. Or in a software context,

like like fix flaky tests. That's not fun, but flaky tests are not good for any software any software, anything. Um Or like if your colleague just gave you a huge review a pull request to review. It might not be the one thing that you want to do right now, but might be the thing that you should do right now. Or answer that customer's complaints. Or yeah, you

know, there's always some tasks that aren't funny, but it's they are important as well. After that, have a well-deserved cup of coffee. I'm sorry that you can't right now. This is true. I Has everyone Has anyone in this room been into an office where the coffee has been good? Wow, I'm impressed. Uh where it has been great. Okay, I I'll just this one to next conference, but

I Okay, the coffee at political parties' don't don't don't go there. It's It's coffee. Um that's the best thing I say. Okay, should be halfway through. Um Oops. Yep. That's Okay, uh team. We need to talk about team. I'm speaking about I'm speaking about teams already, but it's important. So, working together, being doing something together, creating something, changing spending time doing an an effort together builds unity,

it brings a can-do can build unity, strong relations, and a sense of community, which is good. But remember a couple of things. So, first, be kind, be nice. I already spoke about that, but it's true in our context, like even if you're a bit tired or even if you had a bad day, like it's not your colleague's colleague's fault, it's not your co-worker's fault, hopefully. It's not

that's another issue, of course. Um but be be kind to everyone. Even when they frustrate you, which they do, of course. So, you have a bias, I have a bias, in the sense that I tend to like things or proposals or uh ideas or whatever it is from people I like more than from people I don't like. But people I don't like might still have good ideas.

And you need to trust each other in a team. Like if you're working together, if you're seeing a political debate on TV, there is one people from each party sitting there, but there are so many people in a team around that's been preparing them for that debate, like communication people, PR people, but also experts on different issues. All the people working around to get that thing one

person there. Kind of like the same as we saw with the Formula 1 yesterday. So, you need to trust each other in the team, right? like if the if the party leader doesn't trust her PR advisers, that's not going to end good. Don't second-guess your colleagues all the time. Sometimes it might be good, like for important issues or important choices and so on, but like if you're

second-guessing your colleagues' choices all the time, doesn't really build trust. Yeah, trust, don't misuse it. As you all probably heard lots of times before, building trust takes time, losing it is fast. It's done fast. So, communication and feedback. Everything is communication, but like to this specifically. How you ask, like how you structure and how you present what you're asking feedback for determines what feedback you get, what

kind of feedback you get, and what you get feedback on. Uh double up. Uh like and what do you ask, open or closed questions, right? Like And the more details you give, the more things you can get feedback on, which might be good, might be bad. We like sometimes you want detailed feedback feedback on like everything, but other times you just need like I want to to

I have a suggestion that we switch from Java to Kotlin. What do you think my boss would say about that? It's a totally different question to ask than well, I have a suggestion that we and we should look into Java or Kotlin version this and this and maybe have a look into Ktor and these different aspects of Kotlin, blah blah blah blah blah. Then you might get

different kind of feedback, right? So, and the context determines what you need what you want here. and that's like positive feedback in a sense, but criticism happens. And understand it. By that I mean, listen, but don't follow blindly. So, like when someone comes up to you has a feedback, say negative feedback, you should listen to them, but don't follow it blindly. well, and also try to try

try to answer this question. Where does the criticism criticism come from? Is it a good place? Like I know you are a good person and I want you to improve on this part. Or is it like a bad place? Um often most often, I would say, it's a good place, and then you should listen. If it comes from a bad, yeah. And learn listen and learn from

it as But if it comes from a bad place, haters going to hate, right? But like if everything you show them is Java code and like, well, Java is crap, you should rewrite into it into Go or Rust or whatever. It's like, come on. That does not come either that that probably doesn't come from good place. Like I can show you the best Java code ever, but

you would like, it would be better in Rust. Or like for me from a a left-wing party, like blah blah blah, Stalin, whatever It's like, come on, that's that's not a a proper reply when I'm talking about better infrastructure for for electricity. And don't waste time and energy on haters going to hate. And they show up typically show up in in comment fields on the internet, but

also also other places. Don't waste time and energy. Speaking of don't waste time and energy, we need a little talk about meetings. So, um this is a claim as well. Meetings are always too long. Okay, there are exceptions. I've been to a few meetings that haven't been too long. A few. I've been to quite a many that could have been shorter. Let's put it that way. And

yeah, there are some people in this world and some people in it feels like every single group that talk and talk and talk until someone stops them. Um it might be you. Like I'm not accusing anyone for everything anything, but like uh notice the fact that yeah, some people need talk a lot. Um and someone needs to stop them sometimes. Uh and talking about stopping people, it's

like you need an agenda. Every meeting needs an agenda. If the meeting doesn't have an agenda, no reason for you like no stated reason for being there, then why should you be there? Say no and go somewhere else. or ask for it. That would be probably be kinder. But like, why are we having this this meeting? What are we trying to accomplish? Which issues are we going

to talk about? Should be basic. And you need guidelines and you need culture. You need both. So, what do I mean by guidelines? It could be as simple as when someone is talking, someone else is talking, you are not talking. It could be like, don't talk for hours. Or like or like, don't talk very long. Could be like, and um be there on time. Could be like,

they could be very simple guidelines. But you also need a culture that the the chatty person is talking and talking and talking, someone needs to say that, well, uh thank you. I I think it's time for the next one to talk now. Or like if you have guidelines and no one is following them, then hardly any use anyway. So, you need both. And yes, I had a

meeting yesterday uh at the political party myself that were like, yes, these slides are still So, yeah. So, I tried to keep the section the section on meetings short. Just for the sake sake of it. So, expectations. Um we expect things from each other, right? I expect you to do a good job. You expect me to do what I what I said I should do. But also

uh when you are on the street for a political party, talking to people, talking to voters, being visible, like trying to make trying to make connections with people, trying to get uh into communication, talking to talking about them, like what is important to you, what issues are important for you. Uh people expect you that, well, since you are here representing the party, you should know everything. You

are here like for the party, you Uh and like what are your opinions on uh the situation in Fiji? Like as a question I got once was like what is your stance on importing snakes to Norway? And I was like well I mean like to like change the make sure that everyone has food and safe income and so on. Uh I don't really know what I think

about importing snakes to Norway. but people expect you to have opinions on everything. That's like as a software architect as well. Uh it's the same There are lots of big and small decisions to take all the time and people expect that you have opinions. Or that you know about everything. There are so many things. So many things in the world and so many things in software world.

Yeah. not to be positive, but it's never good enough. It will never be good enough. Whatever you do uh in politics or at work, it will never be good enough. Sorry to say to you. But by that I mean, you can always do more. That's the more positive way of saying it. It's like there's always always another door to knock, another call to make, another meeting to

prepare, another voter to meet and so on. And in software as well, like there's always some technical debt somewhere. You can always improve the documentation. You can always fix some more bugs and so however much work you do, you can always But you need to be able to say that, I've done a great job. We did a great campaign. Now election night is here. We are happy

with the work we have done. Yes, we did sleep at night. Yes, we did spend hours uh at work not doing campaigning stuff. you should be happy yourself even though you could always do more. But if you've done a lot more than expected, then you should be happy yourself. there also Yeah, this one is kind of a pet peeve to me. It's like people notice many tasks

only if no one does them or know if no one does them properly. The typical example of this is from the soccer field where if you have what's it called in English? A a judge. like if two teams are playing uh a soccer match and no one is steering them, there is no one on field. then then you notice it. Or like if the one team gets

a penalty which they shouldn't have, then they get then it's noticed. But if no one notices anything that's a good sign, right? And it's the same it's kind of the same in in political organizations as well, like if you go to a meeting and there is no coffee, people notice it. If there is coffee, no one would think about it. But someone was there to and made

that coffee earlier that day. Spent their time on that. And there are lots of tasks in software as well, typically done by women that no one observes unless they aren't done. So, to try to summarize I think this is these are probably the three most important I hope that you remember from this talk is like number one, prioritize. Uh number two, adjust the message to the context

and to whoever you're talking to. And number three, work together. in professional software life, you are not doing things all you by your own. At least you're making something for someone, right? You have a customer or an end user or someone that needs your work. Uh and probably you have colleagues as well, your teammates. You have all the other people around you that you need to work

together with to get even further. So, uh actually we have a few minutes, I think. Uh does anyone have any questions, by the way? Yeah, you in the back. Do we have a microphone? Yes. Um what would you say your biggest perspective change was or learning from politics back to software? Like if there was one thing you had to be like I never realized this before. What

what would that one thing be? >> [snorts] >> Ooh. the most Yeah, I think that's where I started in the sense that often don't grab grasp everything you So, that's I used to do that when I was like um yeah, early on in my career. I used to like come come up to my one of my colleagues and say that, well, I have this uh suggestion about

this and this. And then I was talking for like 5 minutes, like this is a good idea. Uh like this is a good product because of this and this and this and this and this and this and and so on. Uh and then then we'll be like afterwards realize that, well, they didn't really grasp like a tenth of what I said. So, things like the Yeah, um

might be another way to prioritize, but it's more specific. But I would say that I've learned. Cheers. But that's a great question. Uh and Yeah, now let's stick to that for now. I'll let you go by here. uh are there more questions? Before starting. I have some bonus slides. So, I'm going to go fast through this because this is like also or interesting, I would say, analogies.

So, uh election campaigns are quite similar to trying to win a procurement. A procurement is like where the government says that we need someone to help us build the health care system uh for this hospital. And then it's like, well, um we want to choose between one of the the consultant consultant companies that do that. And how how come that these are similar? several organizations spend lots

of resources. Like election campaigns are expensive, but also like trying to win that procurement means that you need to answer this and this and this and this and this and so on. Uh lots of hours of work. Someone wins. Most of the time someone ends up losing. So, all that work is for kind of nothing. You still learn I mean some things about along the process uh

shortly put Focus trying away from day-to-day work, right? Because election campaigns even though there are election campaigns, there are still like the normal political day-to-day life is going on. So, you need to still do the your duties in the parliament or the government or the city council or where wherever it is. Even though you're trying to win the next election. Same things with trying to win the

procurement, you still need to do what you are actually doing right now. And you might promise too much. That can be hard to deliver later on. Been there, done that both in political and software settings. Polling uh like who is winning this election? Uh we ask some voters. Quite similar to estimation. both are best guesses with lots of uncertainty. I would could also say throwing the dice

sometime, but that's not kind to say, so it's best guess. So, let's finish up with some rants. If time and says five Yeah. Good. Okay. Beware of focus thieves. if you have seen I think you you especially see this in politics. You see it with uh female candidates. You saw it with Hillary Clinton. You saw it saw it with Kamala Harris and so on. There's so much

focus on the suits. Uh no, sorry. The the dresses uh I mean. Like there's so much focus on how are they dressed. how are they standing during the debate? well, did they sound like how did he sound today? Uh all these it's also the the spelling mistake in your UI. I guess like the red e s on the on this slide disturbs a lot of you. Right?

And there's like uh beware of them. And words may be confusing. Like Agile. What is Agile? Um or Scrum, which also has turned out to mean a lot of different things for different people. no fly zone. Does anyone in the room know what a no fly zone is? No, I said that's what we we called it or we uh the media and political politicians called it when

we bombed Libya in 2011. That was a no fly zone. Uh special military operation, that's a Russian term for what's going on in for the war in Ukraine right now. Or working capital. Which is like that typically stocks. 98% at least Norway 98% of what is called working capital is stocks. And uh making decisions can be hard, right? Sometimes you have different options of which all are

good or all are bad. You need to sweep to choose between them. If you don't choose, that's also making Not making decision is also making a Sometimes it might be the right one. You say like, we don't need to solve this problem yet. It might be a better solution coming up in half a year. Typically AI sphere these days. But it's also decision. Yeah. Uh don't remove

features your users need. Um I'm one of those people that used Google Reader a lot until Google decided that well, we don't do that anymore and shut it down. Thank you very much. Um and don't shut down people's local school. They won't They won't be happy. Yeah, same TLDR. was my talk for today. So, thank you very much everyone for attending. Um I'll be here the rest

of the conference, so please come talk to me if you have questions or opinions or anything. Uh it's been a pleasure. Thank you very >> [applause]