 Please join me in welcoming to the stage, Douglas Atkin. Thank you. Hi. Thanks very much for having me. So, despite some who think otherwise, notably some politicians, not David Chu, and some incumbent industry lobbyists, we at Airbnb and Piers think the sharing economy or pit-a-pit economy is a jolly good thing. We think it's such a good thing, in fact, that it probably will and it certainly should become a dominant global economic model. And the reason why is because the last economic model, the production and consumption one, promised much but chronically under-delivered. It promised economic independence. It promised freedom. It promised self-actualization. And yes, even happiness. And I know this personally because I'm the devil, actually. I worked in advertising for decades in London and New York and I helped tell millions of consumers, which is a word I've always hated, that happiness can be found in a credit card, a car or a condom. Well, actually, maybe it can be found in a condom, but not always. But not really in a credit card and a car. The sharing or peer-to-peer economy deserves to succeed, I believe, because the very things that became the casualties of the old economy, the last economy, things like community, things like control and economic independence are actually built into the very infrastructure of this new economy. You can't do this new economy without creating community, without buyers and sellers meeting each other, without hosts and guests engaging with each other. It's part of the very fabric of the economy. Yet in the last one, especially when I was in advertising, I would see surveys every year depressingly track people saying, I wish I could spend more time with my neighbors. I wish I could spend more time with my family. And as commute times increased, the amount of socialization and community decreased. So here's a short video I'm going to show you. It's about two minutes long of some workshops and focus groups I did about a year and a half ago now in San Francisco and New York, where I talked to some hosts and guests of Airbnb. So it's not representative, I know, but it is indicative. And the common themes you'll hear in this, and we hear all the time, is from hosts stories of transformation. This economic independence has enabled them to basically have a regular income that labels them to do the things they always wish they could have done. You know, write that book or start that business or like Rob in New York. He's a real estate agent, hates it. Now he shares his spare room, he's able to focus, go to school for acting, for example, which is something he always wanted to do. He's happier. And also from, you'll hear from guests as well. What we hear all the time from guests, and this is sort of the idea really, is that they now feel that they can belong anywhere. That they're almost like the world's local because they're living with locals and living neighborhoods and small businesses that they would never do if they were in the centre of town staying in a hotel. They feel at home wherever they go basically. So let me just play you the short video. In my life before Airbnb, I always felt very beholden. I felt very beholden to the company that I was working for. And now I just feel completely free. It's my husband and I, and we're running this business. I get a lot of personal joy out of hosting. It's my favourite thing to do. All of a sudden I feel like human again. I feel like more of like myself. This has allowed me to just welcome like that traveller feeling into my home. I'm definitely a lot more just at ease with myself and I'm definitely more optimistic about like approaching people. And now I live with a roommate from Airbnb and he's really one of the coolest people I've met. So this allowed me to have the life with that. I knew that I was capable of, that I knew that I wanted. I just couldn't figure out financially. It has also motivated me and my personal service to get my contractors licensed and start building tree houses. I also have a picture of my 12 year old son and he's benefitting from meeting all these people. By discovering Airbnb we learn what it was like to really be a local. Actually it kind of unleashed this adventure in me that I didn't know existed. Can you give me two words of what you were like before and two words of now? Shy and a follower. And what about now? Outgoing and fun. And this has been probably the most thrilling thing that I've done. I'm actually doing something that I've been wanting to do for a long time. I'm taking printmaking classes. I tend to host a lot of people in the arts community. It's been a really nice influence on me having confidence to do this kind of thing. This bracelet is from a friend I met on Airbnb. This sweater is from Stoneman. I was there because I didn't know about it. I really don't know about it. It's just, I guess who I am. It's a few words. Who would you describe how you are now? I am me. So I'm sorry about that music in the background. It kind of was a bit sloppy. I think you get the idea that we hear literally all the time these stories of transformation. It's very, very encouraging. So the reason why I think we're beginning to hear these things is that there's a decentralization of wealth and control and power. And that's at the heart of why the peer-to-peer economy is better than the pure production consumption economy where wealth, control and power were absolutely centralized. That's why this economy is a better economy in my view. When I worked at Meetup, I became a huge fan of self-organization and decentralization. Given the tools we saw, people do amazing things when they self-organize together. So Airbnb, of course, and most of the other platforms is a decentralized marketplace where most of the wealth is made and most of the community is self-organized. We took this a step further a year ago, well, actually about six months ago. And we also decentralized the community platform and self-organized it on Airbnb. So I just want to actually do a quick romp through this to show you how that's working. So we launched this platform about six months ago and it's where our hosts start, run and join their own communities. We don't moderate them. They're not our communities. They're our host communities. Totally owned by them. So just to give you an idea, this is a random selection of communities that emerged in New York. So there's Brooklyn Host Collective. There's even the New York City Sharing Economy group. There's hyperlocalized ones. There's legalized sharing in New York. This is Evelyn here and Chris, who I think are here in the audience somewhere. Awesome hosts who started that. This is the one in Barcelona. They're all over the world. So there's ones about hosting, and there's also ones like this one here, which is totally focused on laws and taxes. And this one is about taking political action, the one at the top in the middle there. And this is kind of what the homepage looks like, basically. This is one of them called the New Host Forum. It has 5,396 members. And we're here to learn from each other through supportive and effective feedback, online coaching and membership. So far about 60,000 hosts have joined these and there's about 50,000 posts. But the most gratifying thing is that, and this is a key indicator I've learned of any successful community, is that you can tell you've got a successful community when there's lots of mutual support, when the members are helping each other because they feel a mutual responsibility and affinity and a relationship with each other. So we see this in things like, this was from yesterday, I think, three days ago, my latest good idea where people putting up good ideas and commenting, but they're also giving each other practical help about things like the dark and curlies. It's an inevitable consequence of hosting and it has to be discussed thankfully there and not with us. It's very illuminating, actually, reading these posts. So another way that, oh, and this is, you can form meetups on this platform. So this is one that was just posted recently. This is a volunteering meetup to help paint, I think it's a school, yes, a school, run by Elle in New York. So they're using this to help their local community. Our community is helping its local community. And here's the other great thing about decentralized and self-organized communities is that they are massive innovators. This is Maria. She started this because she basically wants to start a peer-to-peer lending platform. We didn't do this. She did this. She's amazing. So she wants to take some of the money she's earned and lend it at really, really below bank rate levels to help people buy that lampshade or that bed and start hosting, which is just awesome, I think. The other interesting way that self-organization happens is, and this is something I really, really love, is that basically what we're seeing here is this new model of decentralized power. It's a decentralized power model. And people are using their communities now to take political action. This is Peter Kwan's group. It has 821 members. Home Shows of San Francisco. It's a nonprofit community group basically totally focused on passing fair laws and figuring out the taxes. And, for example, it's funny that David was just here. He's organizing on May 14th. A review of David Chu's proposed legislation, which is awesome. He's got loads of people showing up here, as you can see. The other thing that's happening, which is also fantastic, and this is happening in Barcelona and New York and other cities around the world on the platform, is that people are self-organizing into local neighborhood groups. And so this is a local neighborhood group. I'm not sure where this one is, but it met just a few weeks ago, or a few days ago, actually. And then, because this organization is being created, when necessary and when they feel under threat, they can take overt political action. So a couple of weeks ago, maybe some of you were there, outside City Hall, when some politicians wanted to propose a ballot initiative that would have seriously threatened our hosts, business and guests staying in the city. So I'm just showing you a couple of pictures here. It was very well done. There was about 150, 200 people in attendance. People gave speeches. They had great posters like Make It Fair to Share. That's Peter Kwon giving interviews to the press. These are some of my favorite posters. Let It Be, Airbnb. This one I love here. Home Sharing. I host you, babe. It's South San Francisco. I love it. So anyway, I just wanted to share with you some of these few examples, because to me it's gratifying to see that in this peer-to-peer sharing economy, which is totally about decentralization and self-organization, people are also self-organizing in ways to help themselves, including taking political action where necessary. So thank you very much for your time.