world. that's actually pretty scary. >> said the artwork is kept itself fixed in the past, which is disappointing when you expect our two latest into the future. >> good question. one more question. >> mary houston speaking here. listening to all of you as entertainers in your fields and also very aware of the interdisciplinary nature of your discipline, as someone having a 15-year-old son who is in the digital world, often times i worry not only for myself, there's a lot of noise.

so as people we need to figure out what is the most important part to listen to. the streaming was talked about. changing kind of the venue of museums and making them participatory, unveiling the snobbery, making it a conversation in politics and journalism, talking, you seem to people, your listeners asked messengers really. but how do you view the creation of classic journalism? i mean, what is going to live on in your lifetime? which pieces?

>> the story. especially being part of the world we always focus on the story. it doesn't matter if you read a book or you ready to eat, if it is not something one way or another it's not going to stick around anywhere. i always tell my fighters that whatever you do, make sure you able to stand by it and say this is the best thing i was able to do in whatever form your eye. so going on twitter and facebook, i don't fire things off randomly. and make sure everything i do precisely. there's twitter where you have 140 characters or something where you can make your own video or take a picture. as a reporter, you have to make sure. you have to trust in what you're going to do that is going to grab you. really you jump into -- you just jump into the abyss and hope for

the past. >> i was going to invoke our mutual friend again who wrote this great post actually impart a response, where he sighed the master of media metaphors of our time in stock and vote, which he appropriated from economics. in a new media environment we find ourselves constantly and flow and the real challenge is how to figure out the goods and stories. second, everything you said about the real challenge is frankly it's not easy and it's very much in comments on a been a survey responsibility. there's different ways of going about it. the shortcuts may be finding people who cover issues that you care about and think are important and you trust their analysis? and they become in ways your world. there's no easy solution. >> i just like to say thank you

for creating the intro this morning. birkeland to talk about bad at kinds of answers or six-year question the sense that the point of that story as he is saying you can't always be inside of the flow of that digital overload. you have to only step out to be a creator of this status and you have to find the balance between those things. so i think that

this is an hour. >> and waited to say anything until the microphones come on. okay, we are going. greetings, everyone. please take your seats and give some of your lunch. we have a very interesting hour discussion ahead of s. i miss james fallows, writer for "the atlantic" magazine. very excited to be back here again. i'm excited about this session we have ahead of us. we have the president and ceo of wal-mart international, which has 5000 stores around the world and how many associates they are quite >> with about 2.2 million associates come over 10,000 stores around the world and only my grandmother calls we douglas. >> i will call you dug from now on. i'm getting old in many ways. so the category of your grandmother is one i will avoid

from now on. you were the later sam's club for three years. he started wal-mart almost 20 years ago. >> first the company as a teenager, unloading one of our warehouses and getting into management training programs and then became a buyer in 1991 and moved into our home office. >> my observation is that if they typical story for a lot of leadership come is in a quick it is. the career path is a big deal. as you know, we've grown our business but beaters and its most productive and effective defined within her own drinks a develop our talents. >> so the context of our discussion as a number of programs in this ideas festival about addressing the 9 billion, the world's population goes up as cities and environmental pressures grow, food pressures grow, social changes emerge come as women take on a different role and minorities are integrated in different ways

around the world. we look at the institutions that address that. and you could make the case that if any institution in the united states, wal-mart plays a bigger role in sealing with the outside world than any other. the u.s. military would probably be the second in a different interaction with the world. but in april was wal-mart international you see the ways in which people see habits changing, you seem to grow the company has in the environment. the last two years i've been living in china, they dramatically impressed by the impact of wal-mart and a forceful or environmental good about the world. we had an article indialantic about exactly that point about changes in your supply chain had been fairly radically affect data and reducing pollution and worker safety issues, et cetera in china. things like that will affect the united states. let's start with two topical questions for you and i'll tell everybody here will talk for maybe half the amount of time and turn it to you in the audience for questions.

first is as you know two hours ago, three hours ago the supreme court gave its relatively surprising ruling on the obama health care proposal. health care and its costs are enormous issues for corporations. they been about controversial issues for wal-mart. does anything about this really make life different for you quite >> yes, you think a desperate week is surely on in the health care debate occurring and recognize we need to have a voice in the subject, mainly because the system we had was not sustainable. it was sustainable for associates, employees, not employers must not sustainable from a competitive point of view for the country. so we support change and the one piece of work that we think still needs to be a key area of focus is cost management, sustainability of the issues. as with every other business, we've been planning an ersatz to execute. >> as you plan for the upcoming

new patch or different plans,a, b. and c., is this some more of us to structure for yet another alternative to mistake the mandate had been overturned. >> probably on the left side. this will adjust the marketplace and we will adjust with it. >> headline here is wal-mart endorses obamacare. >> thank you very much. you had to say that. >> i was in the joshi mode. the other topical issue any to ask you about is much more directly centered the last couple of months as a number of stories for "the new york times," wal-mart's problems in mexico and with bribery accusations in mexico, how should we think about these revelations, how you think they have been, what are companies doing about them now? >> is obviously a serious issue and we treated as such we will tolerate compliance anywhere in the world are an example of the

company. the investigation going on this independent and it will take time. we are dedicated to making sure that the best possible investigation and that is independent. if the facts are clear given the allegations out there, we will deal with them in the public about this action says it can be public about them. as the leader of wal-mart, one of the things i get to do is make sure we take advantage of the environment to get even stronger across the board in the area specifically, not only in mexico, but other markets we been strengthening our processes to change some things about how we ought it. there's been a lot of training for thousands of people all over again. we've created an attorney in mexico that supports record of corporate, not to summon a mexico. so we try to demonstrate directions that her intentions are and deliver against what is required.

but compliance is a big issue. the company in 27 countries to deliver fire safety to tcp in china and other markets that we try to do now is make sure all of our training and processes and other things in place are as strong as they can possibly be. >> just to follow-up, sometimes when there is a scandal of some sort or a violation of covered in any part of the world, people see it as a stand-alone operation and think how could that have happened. on the other hand with the recent scandals in china, people say this is the tip of the iceberg and the unveiled one, there's a lot more to be found. within the company, one of the reasons that would make you think it's a stand-alone case in mexico? other circumstances that would make this more likely they are than other parts of the world? >> baster with organizational culture. we talk about the culture of academic institutions. culture matters. our purpose is to save people money so they can live better.

our culture is on core values make a bet to sam walton. bummer croucher gets talked about. we take a run and explain my perspective. there are four core values. we expect the individual can't strive for excellence and serve on a foundation of integrity. we think about why values mattered our business. how do you want to be treated by an associate of one of our stores? you want to respected, have a service mentality and our founders, sam walton understood that if he didn't have those behaviors come associates wouldn't have those behaviors that is true for the leaders of the company today. so what i can tell you for my position is our culture is strong. we have a very strong organizational culture. it is so strong today and were making it even stronger, reaching 2.2 million people requires repetition. it requires work and were focused on that. as i travel around the world am

i spend a lot of time talking about organizational culture. so will there be issues that pop up? i'm sure they will. how we handled them is that i'm focused on. >> a word about wal-mart culture. a chance, one of our family son spent about a year in bentonville, went down to see some of the saturday meeting to wal-mart and was a very, very impressive culture that i think you should make more and more people available to see those meetings. >> communication is supported in a people business like ours and sam started saturday morning meeting and he felt like if the stores are up in a saturday and were cannot saturday, the management team should work on saturday. they show up early in the morning, talk about business and items, merchandising and if there's time left over, the suits would unload trucks at our warehouse, which is at the home office till noon.

today i do want to unload trucks, but should understand the spirit. we studied together on saturday mornings and have similar meetings that are fun, give them a lot of discussion and we try to perpetuate culture. it's a big part of what we talk about on saturdays. >> i want to talk about the connection between wal-mart. and your spread around the world. when i was living in china is impressed by a vocalist of wal-mart stores. their carcasses hanging hanging from the roof and the rest. i'm wondering how you have managed to have the sort of split consciousness of an american brand, american practices and things could about wal-marts identity and the localization necessary in europe or latin america or far east to be successful. >> is a big heart of leadership

challenge. to think about what people want to buy in shanghai, it's different than what they buy in oklahoma. we have local teams making decisions. chinese fires for cheney's customers and most of what by his local and most of our markets, maybe all is the percentage repurchases 90% local. we could better the times, products were relevant. so you have this natural occurrence. but we try to work through as we want to have something comment. but when a common purpose and we have fixed, and operating principles we want every one of our stores and everyone of her businesses around the world to operate with. beyond that they have a lot of freedom. this one and this brittanica pictures from mexico from a supercenter in mexico city and they were showing as the items they were featuring and how many they were selling. but there were different than the items in china when i'm there in a few months. >> what would you say this as work best in terms of the sweet spot of american identity and local culture and were you still

have the greatest challenges? >> most customers have the same -- we share a lot in common. and i travel a lot. we have stores all over the place. sometimes going to their homes, sometimes talk to them in the store and what i hear about our common things like making things better and save enough money so i can take a vacation, common things like that. but what they want to buy can be different by area. and i think the supercenters are way to think about the commonality to answer your question directly. we have similar look and feels in brazil, mexico and china. that's where we've been able to apply the processes inside the commonality. other instances we have lots of stores. in fact, more than 10 different formats. you might not recognize him and markets because they're smaller,

might have cement floor, summary or condition because they are meeting the need of a different demographic. they leverage some of the things they mentioned, but they are neat in the way they approach their customers. >> maybe we should do a poll here. this is the aspen ideas festival demographic doesn't overlap exactly with the normal wal-mart purchasing demographic here but how many people at a wal-mart in the last week? how many in the last month? and so, for people who are not familiar, raise your hand. >> i'm glad they been in our stores. >> spend 30 seconds explaining exactly what a supercenter is. if you go around the world and see these as we have in china, australia, what other distinctive mark is? >> well, a supercenter is meant to be a stock up tripe.

so it's in a serpent at everyday low prices. it's a bigger store, larger than 120,000 square feet away ballade over the u.s. what we purchase businesses over the years that is much smaller store footprint. some of our stores are a lot bigger than me be two times and have a much smaller assortment and maybe in a different market with a lower income level than a supercenter could ever be. as a portfolio management job and replace different stores. we actually have over 50 different retail brand names around the world and outside the u.s. we do a lot of business, the majority of our business under brand names that are not wal-mart, some of that because of acquisitions we've made. >> give this a few demonstrations. >> we purchased a business pickup meters ago in chile in the format would be like a supercenter is the leader. matteo quick story here for fun

after we made the acquisition i went down to chile and was talking to a customer in the grocery side of the store and she had a child come a little girl in her shopping cart and i walked up with someone assuming we would need to speak spanish and i don't speak spanish. i said we do ask her what she likes and what she doesn't like. and she turned to me in perfect english and said don't mess the store out. i said what do you mean? she said i live here, but a senior supercenters in florida and i like the food in the store better than the food in the supercenter in florida. a sample that's great, but i don't see a nonfood or general merchandise apparel. do you buy your electronics? toys? apparel? no, no. we will leave food allowed to book a work on the other side of the story make it better. what do you think? she said that's a good idea. sure enough two years later a business on a nonfood site is

great and the food business a couple weeks ago was even better. so the brand name under some, but really what matters to customers as they want value, they want in stock and someone to serve them with respect and that's true everywhere. >> so turning to her topic of the 9 billion emerging world population, wal-mart i think it's again uniquely positioned to know about the income characteristics can misspending preference is. as the united states and around the world are people who aren't always covered by the news media. from your international operations, what can you tell us about what you're saying about the emerging middle class, upper working class or whatever icc in china, sec and latin america, middle east. do you see more and more prosperity coming? what you know about your customers overseas? >> as many people know growth in

the middle income in emerging markets is phenomenal and over the next decade a lot of divers get talked about, but the one i remember is 320 million new and middle in china, india, brazil and the other emerging markets. we are positioned for stores to service customers as they grow. it is stories like in india, a mom who was in one of our stores and why to buy bedding. she needed an additional bedding set, because they just moved into a new apartment, got an extra bedroom and her two sons would now have separate rooms, which meant a lot to her. what was interesting that she was excited about two bedrooms for the kids because they would be able to study in peace. and really what she wanted with a better education, but she was moving up beyond just buying food and thing she had to have into some more discretionary staff as she looked around the store. so that kind of customers happening around the world. we have to deliver on a lot of

fronts. we have to deliver as a business financially, but we have to deliver socially and environmentally to make sure that people like her can experience what they want to experience. i mean today with a 7 billion number population, so many people around the world both mobile and other things now how people in aspen are living. they want to live more like that than they are today. to make that possible, we have to another businesses have to engage with ngos and in some cases governments to create a more sustainable environment socially and environmentally wicked talk about that's more if you want to. >> will get that any second. a customer base question for you. and outside the united states that politicians if they are sure you pay close attention to the certifying behavior of the wal-mart population because it's an important barometer of consumer confidence in where people cut back, where they start to spend more.

as he used as a barometer, looking at parts of the world better in the news now, for example the middle eastern countries which it is so much turmoil or in china we have all those concerned about growing economic extremes. are there any insights you have that would augment what we read in them is about the stability or non-stability of some of these places? >> you might be surprised to know just how much our business is still done with cash that there's a lot of customers to shop in our stores. any cache environment, gas prices are the number one discretionary spending in our stores here. and we know that when casket to the 350 range that we see different behavior. to write out being around $3 we feel a little relief. there would be a bit more discretionary purchases. in recent months, i would say pre-easter, we were still seeing pressure where people were buying smaller sizes because they have a lower price point.

so something that might have a higher value per ounce, they buy a smaller size because they have the 1 dollar or $5 or though the region by a product ran because they don't think they can afford the brand here in this country. it's very different by marka appeared in the u.k. right now, people feel a kind of pressure. the austerity measures and the euro are creating pressure. china recently has flowed in terms of consumption and consumer growth. currently we see a robust new year. in january or february. we did not see that this year. but we hear from our team there isn't some ways chinese customers now have more information about what is happening around the world, including europe, so their conservatism is at least somewhat a reflection of what they hear about the world, not just what is happening on the ground in china. so the gdp expectations for some markets have changed in the last

12 or 24 months and we see that play out in terms of consumer behavior. >> that's an interesting point. one of many interesting points you make. there's a great debate about the livability of chinese statistics and economic progress, so people look for the unthinkable things like the number of ships still sitting in hong kong harbor and the piles of coal. and i would think there were stores would be another one of those true barometer is that you can't fake other ways. let's talk about the social and environmental effect of wal-mart around the world. you are well aware and i imagine we'll have some questions afterward. the expansion of wal-mart inside the united states has been a continuation of a centuries long debate in the united states about the economic efficiency versus traditional values of one kind or another. back in the 1920s and 1930s, and there were emergents who are

being distracted and of course the other side is the benefits that come with fewer jobs and lower prices than all the rest. as you look at the effect of wal-mart overseas, are there similar debates about its social effect? what is either the other day and cc were the case to make about positive or even negative effects of wal-mart's expansion in other countries? >> there are definitely debates about it. right now donate a lot in india about foreign direct investment, multibrand retailed is an ongoing debate. millions of shopkeepers, farmers really want to reduce the amount of waste on fruits and vegetables, for example, which is supposedly in the 40% range and they want to make more for fruits and vegetables and whole changing invested in. so it's a very active debate in most markets and around the

world. one of the things we point to is mexico. if you will be entered in mexico in 1891, how much of the business was done in the informal market as opposed to modern retail. it hasn't changed very much. there's still over 40% of the retail sales in mexico is done in an informal market. in many instances where there's no tax collection, meaning no infrastructure is developed, et cetera. so it is a debate and we obviously feel we demonstrate to the actions we have that we are good for communities and societies and worked to prevent to be sure all the time. >> how about your role as employer oversees. not having so much about the supply chain obviously wal-mart purchasers have such a huge effect in china and other places, but i save retailed for us in the stores. how is that different from your preexisting employment opportunities? what changes have you seen based on not? >> let me tell you a quick story

about brazil. a young lady named adriana i met a couple years ago and she was inducted into something called the social retail school. she qualified to kind to learn about business than about retail. she was a very young person in an impoverished area, didn't have a lot of career opportunities and by entering the social retail school, she did well in that school of, got an opportunity to become an associate and is off to a fantastic start and her career as she refers to it in her opportunity to now go to school and what she is of health care benefits is different than it would have banned if it weren't for the retail school and for our business. another story out of india a young lady that i met a few years ago and it toppled amorous bill and the northwest part of indiana. if she were here, she would tell you she was in a situation where she would have to get married early would have a life working in the crops in a small farm.

she got an opportunity because we open a store in her neighborhood, and caching query store. we had a smaller come to similar school there peers she made it to the school, got a job and it's not taking her mba online. so her life systematically different. there are large numbers of people experiencing. we will grow over the next five years to the point we need to employ another 500,000 people. a lot of them international, most in stores and we welcome all trained people in the stores when make investments to try and create that environment. >> i'm fascinated all these interesting anecdotes you've told so far involve women. i know that wal-mart has probably not known by the general public one of its missions is opportunities for women. can you say more about that? >> sure. i think that her deal was here earlier. care is one of the organization has helped or goodness. wal-mart went through transition

a few years ago. we believed in the very beginning as you would expect that customers and associates were two key stakeholders. did we care about shareholders quite sure. any business cares about shareholders. if you focus on associate and they're happy and have opportunities and the customers are happy sounds good. when we became bed can we do did not get the memo on the moment that occurred. but when we became big, societal expectations were higher than what i just described. so starting to listen more to people like dr. gail and others to say you need to think differently about the environment and social issues has led us to a point where we are today. we are still maturing, but we have a different point of view. one of those areas is in the area of women. so we know that women are disproportionately impoverished, disproportionally literate. they have a hard time as

entrepreneurs gain access to capital. we know what women spend many oncoming typically children an education and health care than the guys may spend money on. that matters. i was in a meeting not to lie to where someone called investment like a global stimulus package. there is some truth in that, so we made some commitments about a resource good, what we expect from service providers as it relates to female representation. we made a commitment to train 200,000 women to answer the workforce and retail at some of the young ladies i just mentioned and they believe that's an investment. we see what other companies see that representation of the top has progressed. we have a ton of representation in the large numbers of wal-mart and then we've got middle-management where we figure out how to break down barriers so the whole thing works organizationally and that is one of the areas of focus we have. >> let me ask you one cultural point. i know everyone of wal-mart is

religiously disciplined about saying associate rather than employee. can you explain the whole connotation of that? >> it goes back to sam walton and someone that works for you is your partner are part of the company. so many other people i could tell you that started in the hourly ranks. 70% of managers started as cashier, pushing carts. so it's really about were all missing together. that is the point of why we use that term. >> and other international question not strictly related to your responsibility, but i'm sure you know about it. over the last you were to, global supply chain issues have become more and more prominent question. the designer from apple was saying people should get to know the insides of their machines. apple is suffered a lot of bad press in the last year in china. can you tell us whether you think, number one, why wal-mart

has gotten involved in issues of environmentalism and supply-chain safety, especially in china, where you think you've been successful and were you haven't. what you should know to improve the supply-chain use that as a lever on environmental issues. >> well, i think it starts with the idea of transparency and i'm going to be proud to work at wal-mart. i do want to sit in front of you that goes to the factories in every country where resource. we have standards for retailers have standards. one of the things that we have seen the past as there is a standard for wal-mart and the standard for retailera, b., c., d. and you're kind of pulling your hair out. some of the things that's happened is more industry simplification which i think is how can the area of execution. we believe suppliers to do the best job on compliance, paying overtime bonito over time are also the people that live

runtime in the best quality. we are really entries that in quality selection. we changed the risk. if you ask which he not do well, keeping ni on how many suppliers we have been with you was coming on board, not giving up on a factory when they have a shortcoming. one of the mistakes of the past of people is made as if you have a factory that you don't have a long-standing relationship with then you have some sort of infraction you've got two choices. pull out of the factory or engage and help train them and teach them. that is a constant battle is figuring out whether you're red, yellow and green and how much tolerance to get an intense on the issue and how many fences, et cetera. were trying to improve the overall supply-chain process. and with the idea eventually everyone will know everything. if you want to shine a light on any place in our supply-chain, we want you to which you find. i want to like what i find. so that's the way we approach

it. >> are the illustrations you can get us where there's been a difference in the kind of toxic pollutants in southern china or stories you are aware of where you're able to switch to a better or safer part of supply-chain? >> i think we've had success for removing toxins. if i think a sustainable act -- food is so much a part of this. we don't believe in the 9 billion number if you doubt believe in farm holders in the right way. we did a great job of embracing all farmers. they help them learn how to use water, have used pesticides, get to market faster, make a more efficient and they transported everywhere. so i've been on farms in china, costa rica, africa, similarly small farms, almost garden like if you want to think about what it looks like to you.

and helping them figure out how to get to market, make 10% to 15% more than data to the store faster, customer gets a better product from a local products, there's a winning equation there. on the factory side, as i said before, we try to do a better job of selecting quality suppliers and will use something called sustainable value networks on different subjects to try and work with ngos and government to set policies well. when we engage the sustainability in a different way, there's packaging. and corn and you do this for packaging but with better, ethanol, et cetera. we don't know that's a peer for retailers. we've had to open a through sustainable value networks, let people influence us, use good judgment set policies then it's those policies that make a difference. >> one of those that i saw in

china and have it seen as much is the change in the packaging through the supply-chain. can you say about the targets you are giving to get the amount of repackaging used? >> was started sustainability efforts we set three vehicles. we wanted to sell more sustainable projects and more sustainable packaging and have zero race. so we're making progress on zero waste and energy. breezing led lighting in stores and in some countries are up to 80%, 90% of the removal in the landfills come as a waste a big area of focus. we have a packaging scorecard with expectations to reduce the packaging by certain percentages, sometimes by category. but we have learned is the connection, the overlap in via the sustainable availability is a sweet spot that takes cost out of the economy. if some of our suppliers would

like to have a huge package that takes up a lot of space on the show because they want you to see their brand, so it's not very efficient. we have been setting expectations in getting some of that stuff tightened up, even the medal ties that drive you crazy in the toy department because when you add that stuff if it's a significant negative from a carbon point of view. so those decisions and policy are both were focused on. >> i have one more question in my own and then i'll about it, to the microphone. this is not so much international is back to wal-mart's observations in the united states. the trans-we've been discussing can always be inserted two contradictory economic phenomenon around the world. there was this growing, global middle class which is part of your customer base around the world, but also in every other country in the words come in the distribution has been getting more unequal. you have the countries as a whole are getting rich, but on nfs go to the very top and

people in the bottom half and third are under increasing pressure. that's been a phenomenon in the united states. a richer country, but the median income more or less flat. wal-mart is in a unique position to observe this because often the pressures on the lower half of the american income distribution company or customers, will they buy more of, less of, who enters your customer base if you haven't been there before. what do you know about the distribution of income in america now, the sense of opportunity for people at the moment who are feeling left out come the ways in which the american socioeconomic system is different now from when he started with the company in the 1980s? >> in the u.s. there was a bit of an inflection point. our research shows we would define a lower income in the united states at $35,000 or

below. our research shows that around easter time there was a level of optimism that changed either know how much is related to gas prices were other factors, the lower income customers have felt better the late and we have seen that show up in purchasing. but there's a lot of americans struggling to put food on the table were trying to do the best job we can observe in them. some of them may be on government assistance programs and programs get activated. at midnight the cache is placed and we see most of them shopping at midnight. some may be in there buying baby formula at 12:01 and we can see that in our transactions. so back to her purpose, we save people money so they can live better. when i talked to my children about my job and career, that's a sense of pride for me that we fight for the people who need to be 54 as it relates to price. we want our to be well-paid. in the u.s. we pay more than $5 on the average associate about minimum wage. we have a health care where you

get $15 a month to get health care peer which i can make health care affordable. we want great jobs, career opportunities, but our purpose is false to save people money. thus we do for customers that their proposition and i'm proud of that. >> at more questions, but i give you a chance. yes, a microphone. would you identify yourself, please. >> bikepath, thank you for being here. great presentation. you come up with ideas. i was here a couple years ago at another event and we started talking about health care and the moderator for the person on stage goes, i have an idea. what if wal-mart put a center -- a medical center, not an urgent care, but a clinic in each of their stories, located

throughout the area that would accommodate people of the navy could not health care. i am not taking a open heart surgeries, but the monda comes in with the ear infection or the kid with a sprained ankle. i think that would be a tremendous relief for the centers in the hospital throughout the country. hedges wondered since you're here if you have any thoughts on that. >> yeah, it is a good idea and we and others have been doing it. we've got some clinic center stores now we've had success with it. finding the right providers to provide the service on the hours, et cetera has been one of the things they been working through. not only wal-mart, but there is an article in "the new york times" about the breeze to create those clinics and even more stores. would like to do it in our customers value it. we just want to make sure when we do it that we do it really

well. >> yes, over here, shelley. >> banks, shelley boris, first allowed to commend wal-mart for your leadership in supplier diversity not only here in the united states getting them in the global supply chain, but also other countries. youth supplied as an certified women-owned businesses to enter global supply chain. in fact, we have our first contracts with wal-mart.com. thank you. that said, the need is tremendous. a question for you is how can we sell at great integration, small lunch granaries beyond that women are cheaper knowers into global supply chain given how fast an impact really wal-mart has globally. >> there is an opportunity and also just collaboration across entities. this talking to dana powell at goldman sachs and other program

they have and she is identified entrepreneurs we need to be buying from. when a particular we talked about last night in indiana. our job is to make sure we continue to tell people where accessible and interested it with other organizations continue to communicate and sometimes as specific as there is this person in the deli make in this item, will you buy it and create an environment where buyers are incentive to do that and accessible is one once again focused on. thank you. >> hi, you represent your company so well. >> would you identify? [inaudible] >> make me wants to buy more of your stock. in any case, some of us that the last panel on the arabs burned talked about the role of business in social and economic entrepreneurship in egypt and try to influence in a positive way trade and hope.

i was wondering, when you see world events, do you target a particular country because you know there's a all you can play in assisting? t. work with the government? what are your thoughts about helping an arab spring so it's not an error pointer? that's my first question. there was a wonderful film last year in the film fussed about how giving farmers in africa and fisherman cell phones allows them to compete more aggressively in the marketplace and to help them individually. thank you. >> thank you. we don't currently have any stories in egypt for the middle east. typically our sourcing follows our stores. so someday we may be there but we don't have any short-term plans to be there. we tried strategic for us and i wouldn't rule it out. if there's a great supplier would want to take a look at them, but we don't actively engage in that. we are more local in nature. a quick story in the second part

of your question. last year to zambia in a small farm and there is a guy named dale lewis who works for an ngo called the mako that he founded. he was there to save elephants commercially but he founded he couldn't stop poaching unless poaching had higher income levels. so we taught them how to farm and the next level they needed this communication by farmers said they could get information, et cetera. so we helped with some radios, to help with communication to buy product and get in some of our stores. so we love those kind of stories and examples. ..

comparison with out of market except all of the united states. and then second question is what is the most concerned issue for [inaudible] market? thank you. >> we have a great team in china. we started there with one store in 1996, i believe it was. and have now a lot of experience people there and they're very good item merchants. what that means to us when the stores there, our associates will grab me by the arm and take me over and show an item and

telling me how they're selling more of the item. they have taken to walmart culture in an effective way. my biggest opportunity in walmart china, disadvantage. prewto we were required to one store per city. it spread us out. it is a logistical disadvantage for us. china is going through centralizing which will help with food safety and other issues. it's too complex and too distributed, and so not only walmart but suppliers in china are thinking about how can we make improvements in the supply chain to deliver things on food safety and instock because of supply chain. it goes through another phase of change largely geographic. >> a brief followup, walmart is second to care for as a big

retail. is that a unique chinese situation or does that have happen in other praise -- places. we were urm one in the united states in 1970. our focus is one great store at the time and one great customer at the time. it's more about being the best. there are markets where we are not the largest, which is fine. >> yes, sir, over here. yes, sir? >> hi, [inaudible] with the competitor store. and [inaudible] national retail federation, we note that one in four american workers are work in retrail, and one in eight of those actually work for walmart which is amazing and i think wonderful. kind of excluding mexico and china, what country do so you have the deepest penetration with and why? and what is that number, would you estimate in china or mexico if that's the one so you the

next deepest penetration for. i'm working for the indian or poland and why do you think that is? >> our numbers outside the u.s. would be a lot smaller than they are here. and in general, what we have been longer we look more like that have penetration and et. cetera. we have been mexico and canada for longer. we have more developments there and they're great. the ones to watch out for, the ones that are grow and be more important over time start with china and brazil and also personally i'm excited about what's happening in of a cap. the investment we made last year almost a year ago now of a company called mass mart which was a multicountry in twelve different countries in africa multiple format retailers. they had do-it-yourself. they have lows or home depot. they have food stores or discount stores. it's going to be increasingly over the next five, ten, and

twenty years for the number of reasons. i think that's an area from an investment point of view to keep an eye on. as it remits to africa, in particular. >> question from the same table? >> gordon, how do you look at the amazon threat in terms of what they're able to do in getting into much more commodity products they started with. now they are delivering more commodities without sales tax and certainly free delivery. how does that impact walmart? what steps are you taking to address amazon. >> it's a mistake to go by without talking about the internet. it's changing everything with speed. there they're terrific competitor. there are other terrific competitors especially when you look at internationally and some of the fastest growth rates are

coming out of. we made investment but have been making more. the capability of being able to serve the customer online difficultly in a multichannel where they can order online, pick up in the store, the use of mobile, if you haven't tried the ipad take. take a look at the walmart ipad app. those things are hugely important. we make ak scwitions as it relates to other digital capabilities to try and catch up and quickly become more effective as it relates to selling merchandise online. there are opportunities for leverage or existings a sets in this country and others. and it's very different around the world. the u.s. is in one position, but china from an internet point of vow is an incredible story of growth and we have a minority investment there today in a companied called [inaudible] we have asked for government approval to buy a majority stake in.

so we're focused on and our primary focus more than being on what competition is doing, which we have in the side vision is what does the customer want us to do and how do we do it more effectively? it is a transformational change for us and other retailers. it's a big deal. >> we have the lady in the black in the far back and the gentleman here. could you wait a second for the microphone? thank you. >> my name is [inaudible] i'm from australia. it seems to me one of the biggest [inaudible] demand for product is access to a simple, cheap contraception which can be sold over-the-counter. i was wondering if this is something where walmart would take a lead? >> that's the first time i've ever been asked that question. [laughter] >> i might just say the distribution of contraceptives

left a message of innovation through a very, good but don't have -- [inaudible] has. >> it's an idea festival. you gave me one. let us go back and think about what we can do there. i appreciate you bringing it up. [applause] >> the gentleman there. and wait for the microphone, please. >> hi i'm john rogers from san francisco. i want to circle back to your programs for education nam programs for associate. can you articulate for us how much about is recruitment versus retention and advance. how much you think about insourcing that and outsources that. you think about buying an university and announced partnership with american public. can you summarize what your

approach is and your goals are. >> i'll try to do it briefly. this is a lot going on and it varies a lot by question geography. primarily around a recruitment and development. as i messagessed earlier we want our leaders to come from inside the company as we can. in some cases india is the first place to comes to mind. it's true in other places too. there's literally not a customer service work force waiting to be employed. so we have to start at hello. and if you went through the materials, our curriculum in india and look at the basic business education we're doing in the markets it would demonstrate for you how much opportunity there is to cause people to understand. they can have a different kind of career with a company like walmart. they don't have to be in a formal market or working on the farm. i mentioned the social retail school in brazil.

we have the venture partnership with folks in india. we have things underway in china with the university. we have the programs you mentioned in the united states, and what we're trying to do is to make sure that we're ready to to hire and retrain 500,000 people. within the 2.2 population we have 300,000 people that have been with the company for more than ten years. we would like to see the number go. we need a 0 lot of talent in the area of technology and internet. we're working the advanced level and the large population of people with those kinds of programs. if you have any great ideas what we can do better. please grab me afterwards and let me know. >> time for one or two more questions. over here. >> my name is -- [inaudible] and i'm from mexico. so i understand that after the bribery scandal, the company was -- [inaudible] in increasing compliance and et.

cetera, i wonder what walmart did community wise. >> we have a very well developed foundation in mexico. they engage on everything from sources to daterble give -- charitable giving. the u.s. the last year with cash and kind gifts, our charitable giving number was close to $1 billion with about $400 million of that being in cash. mexico in or portion of terms is about the same, if i recall. there is a well established charitable giving in mexico. it's one of the best examples of foundation giving outside the united states. >> yes? >> thank you. johnathan with designing sustainability. i want to like walmart and i don't at least not yet. so here are the two concerns. one is that in the effort to save money, walmart may not only drive down costs, but may push

them out into the future so that cost end up getting paid by the kids and grand kids. because they're not materialized now. second is related to the comment about the african small landowner, and saving of 10 to 150% by eliminating the middlemen. middle men are -- nobody likes to with them. in the kind of situation, if that farmer has no option to sell to anybody else, you can then have a lot of market power in determining the price you pay. there's nobody left they can sell to other than you. >> i don't know if you're -- i can keep telling you the truth and decide for yourself. relative to small farmers eliminating the middle men is not something we control exclusively. i think china is a good example. we're working with farmers and cooops. what we're trying to establish is a storage facility for them near their farms or coo yops so

their goods continue go to waste. the other method of distribution they can use because the middlemen exist, there are props going to market our share is not that high. or not as e fish yent. like of a market like inn ya. 40% of fruits and vegetables are going to waste. walmart can't solve that problem. modern retail can't solve that problem. we can make a difference. i would argue that walmart's impact in that respect is more positive than the old way of doing business or the informal market. i feel the same way about sustainability. wall smart not sustainable yet. we will keep haveing big goals. we will try to make progress. ives in the u.k. friday. our fry was excited to show we have a wine pouch. we have a bottling facility in u.k. the wine pouch has an 80%

smaller carbon footprint. the smaller retailers in some markets are not working on that. and we are. so when i look at it, we are not perfect, we have a force for good. things are better because we're there. that's what we're working to dry to demonstrate to the customers and to people like you. i'd keep working on. >> we have time for one short last question. that will be here. wait for the microphone. >> [inaudible conversations] >> microphone? [inaudible] >> wait a second, please. >> your supply chain uses an awful lot of water. an awful lot of water. are you tracking it? and what are you doing about? you can throw energy into that if you want to also. i'd like to hear one thing you don't like about walmart. what are you not doing well? >> okay. >> most of those get written about in the paper. you hear about those. [laughter] on the water side, from a

sustain ability point of view, in the straightforward manners i can describe it. we're not as good at water yet. our policies and thinking is not as vadvances. we're better at energy. building stores that are more efficient than the stores before, for example. so we need to improve in that area. and i walked around a super center not long ago and looked how much water is in the product. you may or not know they were at an effort to take water out of detergent. it became more concentrated they lead that effort and the whole industry moved. it's an example where scale can be used for good. it wouldn't have happened if we said we're going to make it happen. there was a risk associated with it because of customer perception of value. there was lots of other products in the stores i was looking the spray cleaners. we were trying to develop how you develop a concentrate plug

in inspect you add the water at home and stop shipping around the water. we look for praises -- places like the laundry deter janet. what do i not like about walmart? we work really hard, and things aren't perfect. and i don't mean to them sit here and sound like they are perfect. i'm not trying to sell you anything except for maybe the share price. making sure 2.12 million people is a big part of the challenge. one story to tell you the example, we were in the u.k. on friday. every market around the world is focused on appliances. they took a coke can and put it in the atrium of the home office. so if you walked in the front door of the home office in england there's an open area with stairwells and they took a

can of coke and put on the floor and then they had a hidden camera to see how long it took for someone to pick it up. they called it the adult walk by program. if you see something wrong say something about it. the clock runs to 7:20, and you see peek walk "issue" walk by this. dozens of people. one person stops, looks a the the can and walks away. the coke can doesn't get picked up until 7:20, you agree is a a guy in the suit walk in. he picks up, and walked over to the recycling area. drops it, the he goes on to work. the person who picked up was the ceo. [laughter] he didn't know the test was going on. but what i worry about is why did it take twenty minutes why did it take the ceo to pick up the coke can? so, you know, to make sure that

everyone all the time when no one is looking is doing the right thing. >> we're going to end this with a shorthand poll. we believe in qawntd fying things. we're going to do it here. the three choices, you think better of walmart now. you think worse of walmart, or you think the same. >> you didn't tell me. >> i just thought it up. >> close your eyes for one minute. how many people think better of walmart now. how many people think worse than they did an hour ago. how many people are unchanged? i think there's been a successful worthwhile hour in many ways. please join me in thanks doug mcmill less than. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

hour. ms. tischler: good afternoon a thank you for coming. welcome to the panel on "visualizing ou through the lens of big data." and i assume if you took the time to come here right after lunch that you are a big data freak just like me. it's my new passion. and i really got the lucky card in the moderator swe because i have the chance to meet this morning with three amazing guys, who are doing just phenomenal stuff in this area. they are going to show you some really great data visualizations that will blow your mind. but before we jump into that, i think -- first, i want to let you know who they are and then we are going to do a lighting round about like: what is big data anyway? so first off, ed parsons. ed is th technologist at google, and his responsibility is for evangelizing google's mission to organize the world's information using geography and

tools that includes google maps, good earth -- and google maps for mobile. and anybody who's clicked on google maps and hovered over their house will know just how exciting that little bit of technology is. at google earth, he told me, he's essentially building a telescope for the planet, which is a really great idea if you try to get your head around it. know, we've always seen sort of the sky from earth but, you know, we've never seen earth from the sky except for that great blue marble picture from space. and his mission is to make -- to bring some emotion into that, that task and maybe make you cry when you see a map would be the ultimate resolution of those two conflicting thing next up, we have david mcconville. david is the president of the buckminster fuller institute, where his passion is linking art, design and science in the pursuit of

-- to complete global -- to address global challenges. and i would have to say probably his motto is "it's the system, stupid." right? (laughter) mr. mcconville: fair enough, but -- ms. tischler: because that's what bucky was all about. david is also co-founder of the elumenati design and engineering firm and he's creative director of the worldviews network, which is a collaboration of artists, scientists and educators using storytelling, dialogue around the -- around community resilience in science centers across the united states. finally, we have kenji williams. kenji is a founder and director of bella gaia, an amazing film. an award-winning filmmaker, music producer, theatrical show director and a classically trained violinist, on top of all that. he also is linking art and science. so you can see a theme shaping up here. he works with people as diverse as nasa deepak chopra, really bringing

those two sort of right brain, left brain functions together. bella gaia has already had shows, toured countries, reached some , people in person and about million through online and tv. and we are going to be lucky enough to have a performance of bella gaia here the aspen institute this week. mr. williams: tomorrow at : e? o'clock at paepcke. ms. tischler: tomorrow, : o'clock, be there. so before we launch into their presentations, ed, what is big data? mr. parsons: a very good question. i think i we're brutally honest, it's a bit of a marketing term at this point in time. it's an opportunity for companies to sell you stuff. but there is -- there is an underlying change

afoot in the volumes of data that we are generating ourselves and that have been generated by remote sensing satellites in measuring the world is increasing enormously. and perhaps, within the next years, it will increase by two orders of magnitude. so there's going to be much more data to deal with, much of it generated by machines that are measuring things in a much more automated fashion than today. and big data is about analyzing that huge volume of data in -- approaching real time. and obviously, from an environmental point of view, there are huge benefits in us being able to measure the environment better. ms. tischler: david, what would you like to add to that? mr. mcconville: he's right. ms. tischler: he's right? (laughte mr. mcconville: i mean -- and a but i think humans as longs at we've been around have been trying to find clever ways to understand and interpret all of this information we get going through life. big data is the latest with that in the power to understand this. >> cool. where did you see yourself sitting in on this? >> i think what i bring to the

table i'm an artist and i bring all you visual experiences enhancing the data, and i'm here to talk about importance of the emotional and personal connection and story telling of the data and information we are. >> sounds great. let's see what it looks like. you can't talk data visuallation without visualizing the stuff. ed, take it away. >> when we first started doing this making up no slides it's going to make it difficult. one fortunate i we can't have some slides. >> visualization is difficult to talk about without imams. this is an image you will see numerous times from me in the next hour but potentially many times over the next few days here. it's the famous blue marble, that image of the earth in space that become so familiar to us and has motivated many environmental organizations around the world. it's entered our consciousness.

it's something we'll dwroa up being familiar with. what is interesting, something that been seen actually by people with their own eyes relatively recently. it's only been seen by approximately twenty people. it's the astronaut that travel beyond the earth so sorry if you're in the international space station. it you don't see the blue marble. you have to go out to the monoand look back to be able to see the blue sphere. these are the first people to see in apollo eighth in ?aix. you produced the famous authorized picture. but of course this is become very familiar to us now because through visualization, through technology, this has become more excessive. it's become more assessableble because we get access to information about our planet about the visualization of the information. actual what you're looking at there was the blue marble as seen true through google earth.

and google effort is an amazing tool. we designed it initially as a experiment as a bunch of computer engineers just to see how well the latest for the generation of computergraphic technology could operate. we are looking for a problem to pose. and visualizing the earth data, the many scales of information was one of those. we had no idea at the time of the actual environment for the emotional impact it will have on society. very small things that we can change can have a big impact. there you'll you're sighing google earth with the natural boundaries. you can switch them on and off. they pose huge challenges as on organization trying to get different nations to agree where boundaries are in some part of the world. it's hugely complex.

drawing the globe without brown drinks itself is incredibly powerful. it's powerful because it's something as i said exeabl to people now. just a show of hands how many people have not used google earth? >> a few change people in the audience. yes, very few. google earth has been downloaded by 1 tbl users. i'm still shocked by that figure. 1 billion users is approximately equivalent to the number of people that use facebook and twitter combined. so in terms of a social networking, people using google earth viewing the whole planet is as big of a community as those famous social networks. we all approach google earth in the same way. we start by zooming in to our home. we identify the part of the world we know really well.

and we thought internally. we say, okay that's where i live. that's where i might go shopping. that's my route to work. that's where my kids go to school. we develop a relationship with the information because it's familiar to us. it's something that we have direct experience of even though we're looking at imagery that may have been acquired through -- more likely from aerial photography. that relationship is really important because when we go to the part of the world we have never visited, we may never visit when we look at an art can, or the rain forest, we're using the tool we already know and understand and trust because we have used it in places that we recognize. and it also visualizes information we're familiar with. i'm a agreographer by training. i understand maps. i can read maps.

i don't have too many problems. many people struggle with maps as way of visualizing information. in the broader things we see carefully as scientist or environmentalists or as policy makers how do we visualize? what tools do we use to tell the story to provide narrative that is important to us? how how do we see the world? i want to carry out a experiment with you. after lunch, this could be dangerous. i'll explain why. i wanted you to think of in this case, a location. i want do you close your eyes, everybody, even my colleagues on the stage. close your eyes and think of the city of sidney australia ya, okay. have that in your mind's eyes. open your eyes. how many people saw this? amazing. how many people saw that?

[laughter] we don't think in temples of maps. maps are abstract. maps are useful if you're carrying out specific task. you want to get from the hotel you're staying at. that's not the way we visualize the world. we visualize the world in three dimension. we visualize it standing on a street corner. recognize the fact and people different that visualize the world and connect and have devil levels of con in addition with different types of visuallation is very important. we recently announced an upgrade to google earth that takes the three d visuallation to the next level. this is model. we're combining the contentses of irial photography missions together and seeing the world pretty much as if you were flying it over in an helicopter. this is powerful technology.

what's really i think interesting from a technology point of view this is something we developed from the get go to work on mobile devices. this is something featured pc to run. it runs on the mobile phone or the tablet device. a game making, if you think about it, probably over twenty bytes of information assessable to you on your mobile phone whenever you might be. now people started to use this technology to try to visualize, trying to represent more complex environmental data than what does the world look like. i did a couple of projects a few years ago with the center which is part of the -- u.k. government agency responsible for measuring climate change, and they produced this visualization of the temperature change estimated to be the case over the next fifty years.

enthey brought up the youtube videos and scientist talk about what will be the particular impact of climb change or water availability. and it was great, and, you know, we got to stand on the stage with the prime minister and we got, you know, kind of press coverage but actually not many people visited this site. most people that visited the site really didn't connect with it. they didn't understand what was going on. most people didn't understand how it would impact on them. this was all very well, very abstract and -- we have to think kind of jond traditional data visualization. we need to think about how do we connect more with the communities of people that are now getting access to states in is a nice example, this is a website put together by some computer enthusiast. it allows you to visualize the

location of every aircraft flying over in real time combined with a 3d mobile effect. this is something that actually very few governments have the capability to do. a bunch of guys working out of the bedrooms connecting a networking of radios to pick up a particular laid owe transmission or airline to be able to visualize air traffic anywhere around the world. moving beyond visual lyings recognizing the fact -- is more powerful than the brain when we want to drive home the message. following me would drive that home more so than i can. limited experience and it is limited is things like this. this is a website we built very quickly after the tsunami and events happened in japan. makes you serve street view. our ability to capture the

photography. we identified the particular parts of japan that had been impacted by the tsunami, and literally did before or after. so this was the imagery of the particular village prethe tsunami -- [inaudible] something ?rar we. we might have viewed this in our own neighborhood. whey wanted to drive home is the actual impact of the tsunami. if we click to the post tsunami of the same area, this really drives home the impact of the disaster. by being in the same place or having the same tools, that level of trust, of understanding we can actually portray quite a powerful message using that technology that is now assessable to us. but i leave you with a challenge. this is a challenge you have heard. this is i continually ask my colleagues. we need to get better at this.

when did a map last make you cry? we see -- if you -- [inaudible] there's bad maps in the world that may make you cry. but in terms of a media, a way of communicating information, of course books makes cry, tv shows, movies do. they tug after the heart strings. maybe it's the case the technology is too new. we haven't learned how to use these tools in that narrative sense to draw home messages. hopefully today we'll learn more about the directions we're going on. i'd love to carry-on the conversation with you. this is where i am on mine. thank you very much for listening. [applause] >> david? >> i'd like to learn about problem solving today. i got through through a crazy

route. my current trajectory of visualizing big data began with a burning man installation a decade ago. a friend of mine is the lead astrovisualizer wanted to take the plantarian. my company was making the hardware in the comes but he worked with the engineers and scientists and artists from all over the world to create the incredible visualization platform inspired by the charles power of nubble and they were collecting the new model of the universe that by a back of the napkin sketch it represented of $10 billion of data of astronomical observation. it was a big hit my company decided to go mobile with it we created the inflatable structure and take them all over the world. they're installed all over the place. universities, elementary schools and the idea is to be able to use perceptual emergence to em

hers people in maps to help people people cry with maps because we can't have the profound experiences. i've been fortunate to be able to use these tools for the past number of years. i've been working with a number of scientist and educators in science centers in the project called the world view networking funded by nova. we're pry mily with museums. we have them in the cities here. we have been fortunate to be able to present in a wide number of places. our strategy is really to use big d.a. to demonstrate the -- across cosmic global regional scales. we combine system thinking, and design thinking to encourage communities to participate in dialogues about how our collective actions shape the future of the planet. i'm not going to show any of this because ken city going to be showing us loverly

demonstration. but since i've been able to give the presentation to a wide number of audiences, i have noticed something common amongst all of them. for the most part, the universe is made of stories not at toms. this is an observation of the poted. this is wild. no matter how much data you have. if you don't have a compelling story. it's meaning less. something else i noticed is that i was surprised bier this. is that a lot of people have a very old model of their universe in their head that they really think of the closet moe in the heck nistic way that things are casual. this an idea that emerged in the 19th century after first scientific revolution and the story, very predictable and believed if we gather enough data we can predict everything. well, in the 20th century we actually had another scientific revolution and it's still ongoing. and our idea of the universe is

e evolving and understanding it's a series of complex systems that the sun atomic scalings were witnessing called a break down of stable systems often result in new forms of organization. we're recognizing the patterns across the different scales. perhaps most importantly. scientists don't discover that in every scale of reality from the cozzic everything actually is interconnected. and the most profound example of this is the life support systemmings of the own planet. so this realization of a paradigm of interconnected complexity is challenging many of the outdated assumptions that explain the way things work. and it's causing quite a bit of cognitive dissonance. it's particularly true with the economic right now because the knew owe classical foundation of our economic systems are based on the 19th century story. we have been externalizing cost,

ignoring the true impact of the scales. but today some economists like this view the visualization from the world economic forum a really trying to connect all of the these wicked problems that we're trying to address. and that our ability to predict the future is really only a certain as risk arises and how far out we're going paint that. and this economy we're discovering is really a holy own subsidiary of the biosphere. it's not only way around. in the words of the stockholm data center they're using this to looked at the global question mom that. we're tipping toward the unknown in the high stakes of game of crossing the boundaries. and big data is starting to help us understand this. but there's a bigger problem here. the challenge to think globally is not something we're evolutionarily prepared to do. that we haven't effective e volved the strategies yet in my

experience scientific visuallations can be extremely useful for providing context across many disciplines in order help develop innovative approach to problem solving in my research in this and trying to understand how we can wrap our heads around, i began looking into the work of mr. fuller. and many decades ago, he started to realize the potential of story telling in data visualization. we spent much of the 20th century slaying the groundwork for the development of new conceptual tools that would increases understanding from a global perspective. this was kind a natural undertaking. he refined the approaches to a half long century experience to see what the single individual could do to benefit humidity in the process he wrote 23 brooks about poet, geometry. was granted 28 patents from everything from automobiles to art. it's estimated he was actually

the most documented human in history probably of course prior to the facebook and twitter. he kepted a detailed log of his life. until he died. it's an incredible archive at stanford that is housed at. 00 volumes. you get -- a lot of people know him as the dome guy. even the goal was an example of one of the many attempts to identify nature's paternal principles to define artbles with less. this is the recurring theme throughout the life. we humans have the ability to recognize the principles and constantly -- [inaudible] technology. we comore and more withless and less. we go better and better by less and less. by straiting the approach to problem solving. we anticipate problems coming and db now throughout the life,

he maintained the biggest challenge facing him was that overspecialization and failure to see the possibility of the big picture was really one of the things that stopping us from breaking through with massive innovation and there was also an idea that emerged from the 19th century assumption the best way to understand reality was by reducing it to the component parts. reduction of it. get it? okay. [laughter] so he also -- the global economic system was based on the same outdated story. right. the assumption of scarcity was embedded with the dominant neoclassical economic paradigm it was based on the belief the exponential population growth would e virtually cause a catastrophic crisis. as a result he claimed the modern society assumed it's impossible to fulfill the needs of everyone. this of course lead to the notion of the survival of the

fittest which was an appropriately adopted theory to justify all kinds of social economic policies based on struggle and scarcity. by believing the stories they actually become self-fulfilling prophesies. we challenge the notions. he began envisioning ways in which the global future of humidity could look to innovations to solve multiple problems simultaneously. by accelerating the problem he -- it was in the long-term interest of all of us at the species. to make the case he started developing numerous approaches to do what we called making invisible visible. he was trying to help world communities and leaders find new ways to realize instead of extracted economic approaches we can be regenerative inspect is a 18956 drawing what he called miniearth he proposed to place outside the united nations as a constant reminder to the

delegates we share one planet. he also wanted to be able to see the whole earth in an undissorted way on flat maps. it made it huge and distorts everything. he developed this to visualize the exat the present time to which land masses are one island and the ocean is one big ocean. to make the stools useful, he collected data to keep tract of global trends over many decades. right. this is a particular one he did that is a graph of mans increased travel of commune indication speeds around the global. it was essentially shrinking or planets for the past 500 years. this is the same year of gordon. he took all of the observations and work with students to develop the first comprehensive inventory what they call the world resource human trend and needs in 1965. they attempted to define what they call bear maximums of food,

water, energy, housing, and transportation and other areas to enable torch realize the full potential. quite change. right. we don't hear a lot of people envisioning that. we hear a lot about the futures. what does it mean to provide for everyone? this was e haven'tly brought together in a project called the world games. that was intended to help players understand the planet through the lens of the bilge data he'd been collected in order to design a work that works for 100% of humanitarian. like what we're doing now with the software tools he worked to property type the displays with teams so he can visualize globes around the planet. this is a 1970 map. and these are energy hot spots around the planet. he also developed a property type for world resource simulation center they could see an overview of the global metabolic flows and phenomena. the idea was to have them as ed

was pointing out stand up and get a sense of the elusion of the spaceness that is forced on us by the political boundaries. by 1972, he do you remembered because of the ever increasing technological ability to do more with less and our understanding of the extreme efficiency of the ecological systems for the first time in history was actually possible to take care of everybody at the higher standard of living that anybody had known. and all humid had the option to be endurely successful. it might sound hopelessly e taupe began. he wasn't poly anish about the perspectives. he stated it bluntly. he insisted everything is touch and go. our only options are oblivion. it's everybody or nobody. so the a lot it wasn't realized in lifetime. he predicted it wouldn't be happening for another fifty years or so. a lot of predictions are on time. the full scope wasn't realized

in his lifetime. the 50-year experiment demonstrated the profound capacity what one individual can do on the planet. he insisted the best way to predict the future was to design it. even on a tom stone he gives us the primary design metaphor when you understand complex systems you find the trim tab which is a small rutter on the plan or the boat that shifts the whole trajectory. we're using a capacity to understand complex systems we can find the leverage points. and so a lot of what we do on the -- what look for the projects that are solving multiple problems simultaneously instead of using specialize strategy we try to understand the intesh connected challenging so we can work more efficiently with the complex system. i've been inspired by this. i've help to run the organization for the past five years we've been running the challenge program to find out what the project look like

today. they are fine and good. you need see embodiment. we're looking for the whole systems of approach the that are revealing what i would suggest was the new stories of humidity. moving from scarcity to extransaction. going forward abundance, restoration and regeneration. the yearly $100,000 prize is a awarding after we put out the call for projects that are designed to make the world work for 100% of human beings in the shortest possible time through spobt use corporation with the disadvantage of anyone. right. we kind of set the bar a little bit high. [laughter] just to see what comes back, you know, we had no idea what was going to happen when we first started doing this. but we're getting a number of submissions every year that are great. we have a incredible jury. a lot of people recognize the minds. we have the moas amazing signs. -- i find with my work these projects are the stories that we

need to be telling. it's fine and good to talk to us about big picture. people have to see what people are doing. they have to see what is possible. and so we have been asking people to be able to publish the projects on what we call the idea index. we have a number of these online. i invite you to go on and check them out. we're starting to explore the way we can combine these and see more synergies emerging from different projects as an example kind of to get to the concrete in the away from the abstract. one of the winners, for instance, this was a project called the challenge of biology named john who is developed the living machines that he uses to row move intox ins from water naturally. he's been doing it for about forty years. he has a proposal of what actually do with west virginia. i'm from north carolina. i live in southern appalachia. they are being decimate bid the coal industry.

the mown -- huge lakes of toxic foods are. it's the deor ituating the condition for a lot of communities. john has a strategy for how to go about sorting to restore the state. it's unprecedented. when people talk about it they are brisessed. we have to start thinking about historically. the myth cities group developed this trappings system that is using the man system for electricity cars and systems. and allen is regrowing grasslands using cattle. there's projects projects projects in madagascar. it's unbelievable what's going on out there. we have to focus attention on this and tell others these stories. at one point fuller argued that, you know, you can't fight existing reality. unless you start to build new models. i would say the same is true of stories. we need new stories. we need new models. the old reality isn't functioning anymore.

and ultimately the boils down to a simple story. i would change all you to consider to adopt it. thank you. [applause] [inaudible] >> goorve. any good afternoon. i'm here to talk about bringing the heart into data visualization and using beautiful earth is a project i'm working on as an camp and elaborating on the saying that perhaps it's not what you say but how you say it.

it's a brief background on how it happened and perhaps reintegrated some of the images and stories that have been spoken. i met a nasa astronaut several years ago and he told me of the story how he rocked out the window at the space station and had the complete transformation he saw the earth from space. and i was so inspired by his story that it got me thinking about how could i bring the transformative experience to those who can't go do space? and the project was born. and the term for it called the overview effect many astronauts have this transformingtive experience seeing the earth from space. this quote by -- [inaudible] undermining the point that i'm trying to make is that we are awash in the information, and but we need to bring message in the heart and bring the subject of objects together. some of the favors that we all

know about dwaight study on the general public only 4% responded potentially to the word of climate change or global warming. there's a huge disconnect with the distraction of the global changes. so going beyond the naked eye of what astronauts can see through data visualization, you can see things we cannot see with the naked eye. and this is an camp of a comparing one type of data can is the -- a photoof active fires. and perhaps if we can use some different too manies and some music, we can really bring it into a different experience. i don't know if we have audio

here. ♪ this clip actually profoundly effects people during the performance. and talking about crying about maps in one may bees everybody cry. this is another example of one from an information. it's a bar graph of oil consumption by country. and here is a depiction of it in the project. ♪ using actual a google earth map geographically on to a image of the planet. ♪ ♪ so a study i think there's increasing research about how the brain works and how we learn

and how really we learn from memorable experience and a study by antonio deimagine owe and mary ellen found it results from complex brain dynamics that allow people to interpret their experiences in way that make mining and words we live and e hers within. video, music, and voice recruits the emotional brain that serves as a -- higher cognizant activity was of the neocortex. ..

>> how are people reacting to this? i have four astronauts that went to space, including the head of nasa, that this makes them feel in space. we have real astronauts vouching for the experience. bell la gaia exists with various musicians, and this shows large scale screens we've performed on. we perform at conferences, schools, and universities, art theaters. we just performed in houston at a 5,000 person outdoor event. we do have a culture component too. i think personalizing

information, zooming in countries, having a cultural experience, drawing a connection between our cultural heritage and natural heritage and how our destinies are really one thing. there just has been so many, many people coming up to me in tears after the show, and i'm always just incredibly moved by their feedback of the project. 80% of the audience members say they experience a profound shift in perspective of our planet as well as global cultures. nasa recently funded us, awarded us a grant to use bella gaia in an education program for k-12 kids, and we first used the art to hook them and engage them in the science, and then we follow that with both western sign tisk

workshops as well as indigenous wisdom workshops. another amazing feedback i got from kids was that they said, oh, i've seen the gulf oil spill on the news, but seeing it like this is a completely different experience, and we had no idea it was like this. that's another story that i've heard of the real difference in how you tell the story. i might add also that the first female astronaut who shot the imax footage for the film, when she came back from space, she expected to have the imaxim imagine to feel back in space, but when she saw the raw footage, it didn't make her feel like that. it was only when the orchestra was scoring the music for the

film, and she was sitting there experiencing it with music that tears came to her eyes and she felt like she was right back in space. as they say in film, 80% of the experience is the music and audio. i'd like to close with tomorrow, 4 p.m., we have a 60-minute show at the auditorium, and i am going to give you a little sample performance, a nine minute thing for you now to get a little experience of it. thank you, all, so much. [applause] ♪

>> it's a beautiful, beautiful view predominantly blue background, and very, very beautiful. ♪

>> first time in my life, i saw the horizon as a curved line. for centuries, i have seen the light or absence. this was not what i told it was so many times in my life. i was terrifyied. ♪

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♪ [applause] >> thank you. >> thank you. that really was a map that could make you cry. there's so many questions that i have, but time is very short so i think i'm going to throw it, instead, out to the audience, because i want you to have the

maximum amount of time we have to ask. there's microphone runners who will be coming around. raise your hand if you have a question, somebody gets to you, stand up, give your name, direct question to a panelist, and we'll get through as many as we can in a limited time still available. anybody like to lead this off? yes. >> a wonderful presentation. i'm robin, and i'm with the legacy foundation, and actually, in the room, there's a map that makes you sad. we use data visualization to talk about our work and tobacco prevention and sensation, and there's a map of the u.s. showing tobacco statistics and effects on the health and economy of the in addition. ed, do you know of any other significant examples of companies or organizations that are using data visualization to talk about their missions?

>> there are many. i think one of the favorites, and actually, it relates to the point that david was making about appalachia, there's appalachian voices, and they take the mountain top removal, and the scale of the removal is hidden from people because it happens on the top of the wooden mountain. you don't see the scale of it. they traced the area of these mountain top removal mine sites, and then displaced that, and would say, okay, type in your post code or zipp code, and overlay that in the area you're familiar with. you end up with a mine the size of manhattan if you lived in manhattan. it draws over the whole of the island. where i lived in the u.k.,-southern england. that brings home to you the scale of the problems by connecting it to your own local environmentment i think that's where these new technologies have become really powerful

because shading in a map in different pretty colors is abstract to people. you know, yellow means it warmer than orange or i'm not quite sure. actually, bringing home information and portraying it in a sense that's perm to people i think -- personal to people is powerful. it's still something we're learning how to do. that's a good one to check, appalachian voices. >> great. next question. yes, please. okay. i'll throw it out quickly -- there's one? where? in the back? okay. a microphone is coming for you now. >> from wushz dc, used to work on a cop l of sat -- couple of satellite launch control centers. my question is are there astronauts listening to music when they are up there, and what kind of music? [laughter] >> i know that they do.

>> what do they like? what's on the play list? >> well, i heard mike listened to enya. >> massage music. [laughter] >> yes, sir? >> [inaudible] >> privacy, google, ed? >> privacy question. i think this is something that we as the rest of the industry are learning as we move along. you know, i think we were having the discussion earlier about street view and how street view was launched here in the united states, a few years ago now, with little fuss or problems, and we thought that would be the case around the world, and actually, different cultures, different nations have different views of privacy. they have different cultural

constraints. the example i'd like to use is in the united states and in europe when we design a street view car, we put the camera a meter above the roof so you can see over parked cars, and you can see, you know, buildings and shop fronts and so on. in japan, the cultural norm is to have a large wall in front of your house. you don't want to have people see the front door, and having cameras on top of big posts was a big issue for them, and so we had to redesign the system, move the camera lower, so you see what someone sees walking on the street. we need to better understand what people's own level of willingness to share is and get people much more granular control saying i'll share my location for you and in return get these services, but if i choose not to, it should be easy to make the choice and visible

and transparent. i think that's where we come to. well, we need to be visible, say, well, we use this information you've begin us, and this is what we use it for, but if you don't like it, there's the switch that stops you from being able to do that. i think it's something that will get better at over time. >> ed, one of the big complaints, of course, is street view in germany was you picked up wifi signals and got all kinds of data data that google t mention they were picking up. >> yeah, that was a huge, huge mistake. we had -- the idea was to pick up signals because that's a good way of locating where you are, but one of the engineers made a mistake as well as picking up the identity of each transmitter and picked up the payload and messages going across unencrypted networks. >> is that still happening? >> no, no, no, no, no, no, no. >> same in connecticut. >> not happening. >> okay.

we got your word. >> yeah. >> yes, sir? >> ron simms from los angeles. can you just comment on if there's x amount of data today in the future with all of this new data. what is the growth in your storage of all the data? >> good question. think of your pc at home, and think of how that's grown in the last few years. that would be an indication. when we first bought pcs, we were not storing photos on them, downloading movies, tv programs, and the rest. if we follow that sort of pattern, well, you see that's doubling every few years. unfortunately, it's worse than that. this concept of the internet of things, machine-to-machine communication. it's going to be a number of magnitude, thousands of times greater within just the next few years as these devices come

online, collect more thftion. it's an ever-increasing hay stack that we need to try to identify the needle in. >> could i ask one question here of all of the panelists? anybody feel free to jump in. i think, you know, watching this, it makes you want to do something, and i think about, you know, every time i recycle my water bottle, and then i think about air-conditions in mumbai or the fires, i mean, where can an individual be on this? >> sure. >> i'm talking to you. [laughter] >> it is that kind of thing -- i think there's tendency, especially within education to segment out the way that we're looking at the issues, and so we tend to think of the smallest possible things in the case of recycling water bottles, and sometimes it is a little bit like, you know, having an ore on the giant qe2, and you're, you

know, trying to steer the ship, and i think the real opportunity that we have is to start looking at our education systems, think about how we use a lot of the interactive capacities and data collection we have to commit lives to redesigning civilization in a sense. i mean, it calls for nothing less. it's not the personal behavior changes that are not critical, connect with the large larger cycles of life, but that shouldn't assume guilt or frustration, but it's a matter of shifting the qais -- ways in which we think about ourselves and society with logical systems, and once you see that and you see the brilliance that people are really capable of exhibiting when they design and innovate with that knowledge, it's profoundly inspiring, and i think the more we can use our tools to be able to help people to see the big picture and make connections, the more we are doing our job. >> clearly, if you're at aspen,

you are evan gelizing. how do you get information if you're not tuned into every tweet? >> i forgot the mention in the presentation that i had an experience on the washington mall, and i was just setting up to perform, and this man was strolling through, and he started talking with me, and we got into a heated discussion about climate change, and after several minutes where it was going nowhere, i just asked him to take a seat, and so he watched the show, and afterwards, he came up to me and says i think you changedded my mind, and he walked away. you really have to become more creative in the way that we present information and don't under estimate the way we feel.

humans act on how we feel, not think. >> your grant from nasa for was k-12 education. is the hope with the younger ho horse? >> well, i'm taking an everything approach. yes, the education is specifically for k-12. obviously, kids are the next generation, and kids can affect parents too, but this show appeals to all generations and all families and a lot of our entertainment shows are for families, and our goal with this is to make a broadway blue man group type of fixed theater where it can be an activity for tourists to go see. i think there's a real want and need for it. >> david? >> just on that note, a lot of the presentations i give, when we encounter people, every strata, and i think the problem is we've become so convinced that we're separate from the

broader non-human world that climate change is a political strawman, and as soon as you say it, you biforkate the audience, and i don't care if you believe in climate change or not. are aware of what's going on with the ocean, land use, soil around the planet. there's huge planetary possibilities for recognizing boundaries, and the minute you walk horns over the contentious issue, you lose a lot of possibility for creative engagement, and i don't think there's a lot of people on the planet that want to take down the biosphere or make it possible to do business on the planet. we need ways of moving beyond the bipartisan dueling approach to help people to recognize there's a lot of stuff going on, and if climate change is not your thing, maybe you care water reserves are tapping out in the world. we have to see it systemically. >> the ceo of wal-mart talked about what they were doing to

affect things, things like shrinking the laundry detergent bottles so you are not trucking water around the globe. where do you think the major points of leverage are? corporations? ceos, kids? i mean, where is that? >> i think the individual on their own, and this goes beyond recycling their blase tick bottles, the individual needs to understand their impact, what they can do, and realistically what impact that has and if they worked with their neighbors, town, and city, what impact does that have? that comes back to the idea of the data and visualization. you are slowly seeing people making use of smart meters and visualizing how much energy they are using, and how by altering the lifestyle they reduce the amount of energy, and you're seeing small sorts of social networks building with people who have meters combining

efforts and sharing, okay, i go out during the day, i'm not using electricity while i'm working. you make use of it. when you have that insight through the information that you're gathering, and you can visualize that information in a way that people can understand, then they can start to make differences. it's got to be more than just me as an individual. >> uh-huh. >> i think it's culture. i think mary evelyn tucker said we need culture of ecology. there's no greater change agent than when something is habitual in a culture and understanding and interacting and socializing with the data and translating that into action, i think that's really where the leverage will happen, but certainly, i believe in all approaches, political, business as well as bottom-up culture to the masses. >> i think some of the problems are so intense at the moment, we don't have time to wait for the

kids. there's a tendency to say have the kids fix everything, but it's the responsibility of everybody here to figure out, especially within the corporate world, how to work with these things. one of my favorite insights of fuller was that we really shouldn't try to seek to reform men and human beings. we'll be frustrated. if we reform the environment so that we're living in integrity with the capacity of the planet to support life, then it becomes easier for us from a design perspective to help people to do the right thing, and right now, we are trying to reform human beings by depending on politicians to do everything. >> saw where that went. >> these are design issues. stop leaning on the politicians to do everything. we have to be the creative ones to figure out how to go about it. >> another question here. >> i think bella gaia is wonderful. do you have other areas to look beyond the earth?

>> certainly. we have the sun as part of it. the new fdo mission of nasa is capturing amazing images of the sun. i don't know if you saw the sphere protecting the earth from our solar wind, but it's a beautiful, beautiful visualization, but, yes. bella gaia is part of the universe. i'm trying to bring context to the human world by giving that larger perspective, and certainly, why not bring that context even larger as the earth and our universe, and in this living universe. our universe is so creative and so alive, and it is not set apart. the earth is one expression of that. humans are just one expression of that. >> all right. i just wanted you to go smaller,

look at brain science and images coming from human health and the body, coming from within the body going back out would be very exciting. >> absolutely. i would love to do that. it's all the same. it's all the same thing. >> as we wrap this up, one -- end on a hopeful note. is there a project that you can hope for and think of real quick? >> mine's pragmatic. i have a smart phone and choose to be tracked, and that data is used by google to give you driving directions to avoid congestion, and therefore, you use less gas, create less emissions. simple thing, but as david said it's engineered as a solution. i think there are many more opportunities like that. >> david? >> i'm actually excited about the new science standards coming out from the national academy of

sciences next year. it really emphasizing looking at cost cutting con cements across -- concepts across disciplines and engineering as much as the concepts. there's an opportunity to help especially students to start recognizing what it looks like to apply our capacity as humans to recognize patterns and design things in a much more interesting way. >> get a holistic sharing of information. >> absolutely. >> want to close it out here? >> i'm hopeful for really striving to create a culture of ecology, to reinvent a global ritual that connects humans to nature. we have the olympics, but we need something equivalent for establishing perm connections with our -- personal connections with our earth, and we are beginning to realize that and have the information, the technology to do it. we just need to implement it. >> well, this has been really amazing.

thank you so much. be sure to stop in and see the full performance at four o'clock tomorrowççsç