 Well, hello, and thank you for coming to this discussion about my five-year journey as a regenerative explorer. When I got the call from Michelle at EHF and she said, hey, Adam, we'd like you to talk about some of the work you've been doing, I wasn't sure exactly how to approach it because it had been a few years since I'd given a public discussion and with what I've been going through in my mental development, I wasn't sure exactly how I wanted to give this. What I decided to do was frame it in two halves, kind of the first half is the journey that I've been on, and the second half I've decided to focus on three different companies, one in the US, one in Canada, one in New Zealand, and talk about what they're doing and how that relates to regenerative built environment. So I'm coming to you today from Toronto. In Mohawk it's known as the Toronto. It means the land with trees with their feet in the water. And it's been the home of many, many people, the Haudenosaunee, the Wendat, the Anishinaabe, most recently the Mississaugas of the New Credit. This is the area of the dish with one spoon wampum or treaty. This is a treaty that was set by the Haudenosaunee, the Anishinaabe, and the Mississaugas. And the idea was, the Toronto area was meant to be shared by all, and the dish with one spoon was the idea that it was an abundant area that was to be sustainably managed by all the groups so that they all shared in the diversity of the area and what it brought to them. Now, since then, since this group came, there's also been other groups that have come to Canada that we have to acknowledge. The enslaved peoples that came here against their will. We have many, many groups of immigrants who came and helped build this country and were treated abominably. We need to keep our minds around all this as we start to reconcile and look at what is the future of Canada. And so it's with this kind of concept that the dish with one spoon wampum is meant to go from now, from when it was signed or when it was agreed, to as long as the sun shines and the grasses grow and the rivers flow. So the treaty is still in effect as far as I'm concerned, and I think trying to live by that treaty in Takaranto is an important thing for us. When I came to New Zealand in 2018, I was honestly not feeling real great about human species. I was feeling pretty much we were going downhill pretty fast, and the outlook was not good. I just want to share this video that I did just before coming to New Zealand for the induction and give you a little feeling of what I was feeling before coming there. As you can see from the video, I wasn't real like positive. But then I came to New Zealand and I met these amazing people, amazing, amazing EHF fellows that were brilliant and young and doing both heart and head stuff together that just blew me away. So this was the beginning of the change of my entire life was this experience in EHF. For those of you that remember my talk in 2018 at New Frontiers when I was first inducted, I expressed this to you that coming to New Zealand, my mind was this big. And leaving New Zealand, my mind was this big and expanded. It was probably the most growing I did in a short amount of time ever in my entire life. So what happened to me was I went from a point of a dried, shriveled, dark heart to the fellows I met at EHF put a little spark in that heart. And what I did was took that tinder and gently blew on it until I could create a flame. And I am so grateful to my EHF fellows for giving me back hope. So now we come to the first milestone in this journey, big milestone for me, which was meeting a mentor of mine, Famuina Tephanai. She's an amazing Samoan woman who we were sitting in the induction the very first day in about three quarters of the way through the day. Famuina raised her hand and said something along the lines of, you know, being in this group, I no longer feel like I'm the only weirdo in the room. And that's when I knew, oh my God, this sister has got my heart, you know, and I was just drawn to her. And it turns out that Famuina is, besides being brilliant, also incredibly giving and incredibly open to helping. And she helped me using her methodology of Pacifica Wayfinding, which she teaches to corporations and groups and individuals of how to untangle the unknown and go from where you are now, which is I want to do something that I have no idea how to do to actually getting it done and her kindness and sharing to me with me of this concept is what actually allowed me to take this journey on in the first place. So what I learned from Famuina and Famuina, if you're watching, thank you very much, was this values compass needed to be really core principles of what I was trying to find out. So on my values compass, there's three points. The first point is regeneration. And when I say regeneration, it's becoming kind of like one of those useless words like green architecture, right? Regenerative to me, whenever I'm speaking about it means healing. And that's as simple as is. You can always pull it back to that anchor of healing, whether it's hearing a healing of self, healing of relationship, healing of place, but it's healing. So regeneration, regenerative thinking, that was one point on my compass. The second point of my compass was the economic system. And the economic system that I was looking for was one based on abundance rather than scarcity. And for us Westerners and settlers of Pakiha, we don't understand that the concept of an economy based on abundance comes with a corollary concept of enough. And if you don't have the idea of enough, you're not going to understand the concept of abundance. And when Westerners think about abundance, they think, oh, so everybody gets a gold toilet bowl. That's not the way it works. So we've got regeneration. We've got an economy based on abundance. The last piece is kindness. And when I say kindness, I don't mean like filial kindness or romantic kindness or that type of love. What I'm talking about is the kind of kindness that Martin Luther King talked about when he talked about building the beloved community. And this commitment to human species, humankind, and to the connections that we all make and to the direction we're all going. This is what I'm talking about. And so these are the three points on my compass to employ this values compass technique and this way finding technique. What I did was I employed a methodology that I started using in 2012 called re evolution. It's a theory of mine that societies can evolve or devolve. And when they evolve, they kind of move forward in a way that is progressive in terms of how they're treating their society. But it's oftentimes without a lot of forethought and devolving is very simply what happens when regressive stuff goes on society. If we kind of look at the United States today in 2023, we can say it's maybe devolving a bit, right? Well, re evolution is not evolution or devolution. What it is, is looking back at history, at the things that you had thrown out before as, as eschewed and as bad or not relative to irrelevant to what we're doing or not based in the sciences that we have, have believed in or whatever it is and looking back at history to try to re evolve ourselves with intent and bringing back into our re evolution thoughts of our ancestors that we had given up many, many, many years ago. So the way that I did this was a thought experiment and the thought experiment was fairly simple. I imagined the world and its history and imagine this history as not being written in words, but written in fabric on a weaving and I could see on this fabric weaving the textures and the patterns and the colors of history throughout the ages. And I could see on the loom where it's being woven right now is today and I could see everything yet to be woven is tomorrow. So what I did was I said, well, if I do a completely theoretical thought experiment and I un stitch that tapestry of human history back to a certain point, then I could theoretically re stitch it together to have a different now. And so what I did was I just made one change. I said, go back to 1500 and just imagine that the endemic diseases that were brought from Europe to the Americas were actually the other way around. They were they were endemic in the Americas and they were brought to Europe. So what we do then is we scroll forward 100 years to 1600. And by 1600, we have 70% of Europe being severely compromised by disease. So that then allows me to completely restitch the history of the human species based on my historical studies that I'm going to be doing and have been doing and based on this values compass to guide me what this new today could look like. So thus far, in the five years I've been employing this methodology, I've come to three realizations or truth so far that I've been using to guide my actions in the projects that I work with. The first is decommodification of land. I believe that in a regenerative society that an individual would no more be able to own a piece of land than a sparrow or a tree can in today's Western society, that in a regenerative society, housing is part of the cultural commitment to each other. And that in a regenerative society, everybody gets a nest, but everybody doesn't get a nest egg. Right? That's a big difference. The second thing is that a regenerative society, I believe would have an economy basis in abundance, the gift economy abundance, etc. So this is a really hard concept for Westerners to get their minds around because it just goes against everything that we've learned for hundreds of years. But it's important when you're doing this kind of research and thinking to go as deep as you can. The last piece of the last realization that I have about a regenerative economy has to do with intellectual property. And in intellectual property, I don't believe that would be commodified either. I believe in a regenerative society, intellectual property would be shared to allow for leapfrogging and for increased faster growth and innovation. So these are some really pretty big differences between the way we think about economics today and the way we think about business today and the way we think about ownership today and the way that that I'm actually pursuing it in the regenerative explorer. So keep this in mind as we go forward. So the way I did this was starting with education simply by reading histories. And the first histories that I read were all New Zealand histories because I was an Edmund Hillary fellow and I wanted to learn about New Zealand and about the indigenous of New Zealand and the Pakeha New Zealand and the whole culture of New Zealand. And so that's what I did. And it's at this point where we meet a second milestone of mentors. And that's Huyelambi. Huyelambi was one of the Maori elders that was helping EHF get their fellowship together. And I met her during the induction through our getting to know each other. I just realized she was really wise and she gave me a lot of really, really good advice over the course of time. She was the one who told me at no certain terms before I even recognize it that I'm a visual thinker that I'm thinking pictures. And I was like, yeah, I do. How did you know? And she knew and it was amazing. And so Huyelambi had helped me through several different stages of this. And I called Huyelambi and I said, you know, Huyelambi, I'm getting I've read a ton of histories and I'm getting a lot of information, but I feel like I need some personal touch and I need to be able to ask questions I need to be able to interact with something beyond just books. And that's when Huyelambi just blew me away with the best advice I could ever imagine. Although at the time I didn't know what to do. And she said, you know, Adam, I'm really happy that you're interested in learning about New Zealand and multicultural, etc. But you live in Toronto. We're currently in COVID, you're going to be in Toronto for a long time. Why don't you learn about the people of your own land? That's really what you should be doing. You should be talking to those people and men doing that learning. And I was like, of course, of course, that's brilliant. So what I did was taking Huyelambi's advice. I just started reading everything I could about the history of the land that I was in and the people of the land I was in. So at this point, I started looking for a local mentor. And one just showed up on my doorstep. It was funny because I was at a choir gathering with some of my friends. And I met somebody named D.M. LaFortune, who was introducing me to my friend Monica and D.M. had a course that she called Decolonizing the Heart, which teaches you how to think in a regenerative way and how to process the ideas of decolonization into your core self. Well, taking this course with D.M. just combined with the histories I was reading just launched me into a whole different orbit. It was amazing. And I am incredibly grateful for her guidance and knowledge that she passed on to me in this process. So while I was doing my research, I wasn't only reading histories, I was also reading other things and three books that really, really focused my attention and got me kind of aligned to really get my mind around this were pretty significant for me. The first book is Robin Wall Kimmer's Braiding Sweetgrass. Robin Wall Kimmer, if you don't know her, she's Indigenous. She's also a PhD biologist. And her explanation of how the two worlds are melded in her just spoke to me. It's an amazing book. If you haven't read it, please read it. The second book I read that really moved me was Charles Eisenstein's Sacred Economics, which talks about the gift economy and ways to implement on a large scale different ideas about different economic systems. Then the third book that really helped me get this, you know, really solidified in my mind was Mark Carney's Values, where he talks about society's values, culture's values, and human kinds values and how that all works into economic systems. So all these readings that I were doing were way out here, right? They're way up here. They're esoteric. They're big picture thinking, nothing that I could grab on to as a builder. But as a builder, always want to take these big ideas, right? Like this big idea and then push it down to something concrete, right? I want to make something happen in the real world, right? And so I started asking myself, how can I take these concepts and bring them down into the real world? And as we can see later on, I'll show you some companies that have been doing that. I'm also will tell you that my wife and I have been using the same kind of concepts in our businesses that we are currently in and we're reworking everything we're doing around trying to implement in the real world these very fuzzy concepts that are out there in these books. So something else happened to me as I was going through this process. I was realizing that something was going on within me internally within my psyche. And that was, I was changing. All of a sudden, I was through self care and reflective meditation and learning. I was starting to change my core on the inside in a regenerative way that really started to just make me walk around every day like a black lab with my tail wagging and my tongue hanging out. And I was just in an amazing mood because I was regenerating myself at the same time I was learning about what a regenerative economy meant. And what happened was this regenerative energy started bursting out of me in ways that it involved my partner and my family and my community. And everything I was doing was aligning with this regenerative concept. So what I did, what did I do? Well, the first thing I did when I realized how much I was changing, and this was two years or so into the process of learning and doing the regenerative exploratory thing and trying to figure out where I was, I was realizing all this change. And so I got in touch with my buddy, Bill Reed, who's been a mentor for me for quite a while. We were both on the board at yesterday morning of design build school. That's where I met him. He and I, he introduced me to regenerative thinking in 2015 to the point where when he did that it just blew my mind and I said, Oh, I can't even believe like this is real. I can't believe people really do this because I was so ensconced in the world of, you know, just design and construction. I didn't, I hadn't opened my mind yet. So I called Bill, I said, Bill, this craziness is going on with me and it's going on with me. I'm changing myself. What's going on? And this is what he told me. Have you found similar things within yourself? I mean, when you started getting deeply into this, I mean, are you fine? Did it change you on an inside level? Like I feel like it's doing to me. Yeah. Profoundly. And it has to or else it's not regenerative. So because it's a it's a whole system, right? Right. It's a nested system. So there are no boundaries in that change. So the thing that I learned through this process of exploration and regenerative thinking was that everything lives in these nested systems, that everything's connected. What I do as an individual, the way I walk in the world, what I do professionally, what I do with my friends, what I do with my family, what I do with my society, these are all connected. And so I started applying these lessons to the built environment and to housing and looking at housing as part of a regenerative system. And I started pulling apart the pieces to find that what I was talking about in housing prior to this was just a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little piece of what the system of housing actually was. So as I started exploring this systems thinking and nested systems thinking, what I finally found was this concept of donut economics. For those of you who are not familiar, I'm not going to go into a lot of detail. This drawing here does represent what what it is. But basically, the center of the donut are the stuff that society provides for all and that we all have to make sure we complete that before we start getting to the outside of the donut. And so this idea of donut economics is what I used to start thinking about housing as a center of the donut item. And it's what I used to start looking around for what other people were doing as I started putting this presentation together to be able to let you know about what some of these other groups are doing. So I want to do here for just a second is to drop back and tell you one of the things that happened to me as I started thinking about what I was finding in the EHF fellowship and that even though we need large systems change, we need large change, obvious, right? It's obvious we need this. We're not going to get that. I don't think I don't expect we have the political will. We don't have the money behind us. I doubt we're going to get all that. What I started conceptualizing and realizing through working with all these EHF fellows is that what we're doing is we're creating tiny little points of light. I conceptualize the world that we live in now and the world we inhabit as the gray world. We live in a very gray world and the world that I see us creating is this world of light. But we're not going to create it in one fell swoop. It's going to be a bunch of small micro actions by a bunch of different people reaching out until we can reach a congealing point where we start to push aside this world of gray. And it's our own individual actions, the way we walk, the way we talk, the way we interact professionally, personally that will make that difference. And that for me was one of the biggest kind of realizations of this whole thing was that instead of being sad like that video I showed you at the beginning because we're in such a bad place, I realized that we could create light. And that's what I've been trying to do for the last five years. So my personal interest is in small entrepreneurs and in builders and designers, right? So that's that's my personal interest. And so as I started looking around and seeing who was doing what and where they were doing it. And I started looking around going, OK, well, well, who who is doing this work? One of the things that I knew for sure is that things like building passive house or low energy buildings, building emissions sequestering buildings or these are these are buildings that capture emissions rather than then then get rid of emissions that then produce emissions. We can already do that. A modular construction, a prefabricated modular construction is also a very key part of this kind of creating of these of these high performance, low energy, carbon sequestering buildings. And for me, these all were baseline items. This is not the aspirational stuff. This is the stuff like if you're not doing this, you're not even close to starting to be able to open the eye your mind to the idea of regenerative thinking, feeling and doing because you haven't even made the tiny little piece, which is your construction, come up to that level. So what I was looking for was people that had already done all this and were moving on to kind of the next level and really looking at the systems that they were embedded in within their housing. So the physical bones of the building are just that they're the bones. It's a skeleton. And the important thing about regenerative thinking is understanding that what goes on inside the building, the relationships that's built between the people that are in that building is what that housing is actually all about. It's not the bones of the building. With that, I want to go on to these three groups that I'm going to now talk about the work they're doing. So one of the interesting things about all three of these groups is they've gone way beyond where you and I would consider housing and they're thinking in systems. They're thinking in nested systems. They're inviting in or working with people who had traditionally been left out of the building process, the design process, the whole housing process. They have realized that for them, these small entrepreneurs, my peers, for them, money is no longer the object of what they are about. But money is an interchangeable form of energy that they can use to create change in the world. And by putting some of their privileged resources to work in making this change, they are now creating this nested system vision that that will start to make the world a better place. So with no further ado, we'll go on to the first group. The first group is new frameworks from Vermont in the United States. They are already an amazing group. They're a worker owned cooperative. They're doing modular, panelized emissions, sequestering passive house building already. And when they started looking around their region of Burlington, Vermont, they realized that for them to go take kind of the next step as a company, they wanted to do something with housing. So they started looking into housing for immigrants, refugees, and they also started realizing that there were people in the community that were not being served or not be even being asked to work on this kind of stuff. And so they made a commitment to go out and actively seek to hire immigrants, refugees. They also, within their group, decided that they would, in doing this, commit to making their company a bilingual company. Right? So everybody who is in the business now speaking in English is learning to speak Spanish. So the kind of commitments that new frameworks is making towards change, where they're saying, you know, we're putting our money and our thoughts and our actions upfront and we are making change in the world today. This is the kind of forward thinking that when I met these guys 15 years ago, maybe it wasn't quite 15, maybe it was 12. I don't remember exactly. But it was a long time ago. They were already way out in front of everybody else and they continue to be and I laud them for what they do. So the next group that we're going to talk to you about is from Canada. They are from Huntsville, Ontario, and it's took tree homes. Took tree homes is already a manufacturer of modular, mission sequesting, panelized passive house buildings. They have also made efforts in their local community. They've built affordable houses themselves. They've been working to figure out ways to make and bring housing to to their local community. But what's really exciting is they've partnered with a Indigenous women's collective that does construction in Northern Ontario, and they've brought them into their factory. They've taught them how to use the tools and use the factory. They have created a house. They're piloting this house. But the idea is that they are going to be using this women's construction group to create a a factory in closer to their region so that as they scale, they're able to create not only good jobs, but also good housing for the Indigenous community. And here I want to read just a short statement. It's very important, I think, when working with Indigenous communities to to to be able to give a accurate representation of what is being done. And so I had asked them specifically, can you send me something that I could actually say what it is, how you'd like to express it? And so I'm going to read that for you now. Tooktree has partnered with Keepers of the Circle, an Indigenous, not for profit, that trains women and gender diverse peoples in construction with the hope to share the advances that they have made in building highly efficient sustainably sourced passive modular homes. Together, they have piloted a first house that was designed by an elder and a young Indigenous woman and then built by five Indigenous women. Acknowledging the housing injustices that have been inflicted on Indigenous communities through the colonization in Canada, this partnership and is an example of a pathway to support localized capacity building to enable Indigenous women to be able to provide their own communities with healthier and more resilient housing. So thank you, Tooktree Homes. Thank you, Keepers of the Circle. I think this is truly an important example to the Canadian culture. So one of the really cool things about this whole Tooktree Keepers of the Circle thing is they're employing one of my basic tenants about the decommodification of intellectual property and they are helping to leapfrog Keepers of the Circle into business by not being so concerned that money is the end of the road, more that money is a form of energy that we can employ to have the outcomes that we're looking for. And that's what they're doing. This is why it's so exciting to me. The last group that I want to talk about is Nadi Toa, an Iwi group in the North Island from the North Island. And this group is making huge, huge moves towards a regenerative housing model. And they are not only doing housing and land ownership, but they also have regenerative concepts around the ownership of the land, the stewardship of the land, the financing of the land, the profit that you can take on the land. It's an incredibly interwoven and well thought through process of regenerative housing. So what I want to do is explain the concepts that we've been talking about with Nadi Toa. And this drawing represents the thought process. And if you can see the background of the drawing goes from gray to light, gray to yellow. That's going from the gray world to the world of light. And you can see right in the center is this big circle that says gray world interface. That big circle is the Iwi. Okay. And you see over here on the far side, these small little pieces, those are small Iwi builders. And over here on the other side in the world of light are EHF fellows. And I believe working together we can get a system going that would actually take us way farther out of the greater world than than anybody could do kind of individually by themselves. And so the idea is that actually seeing regenerative thinking in practice, what what what what got me really looking at Nadi Toa and and and New Zealand in particular was the fact that the Maori already have the concept of decommodification of land. They already have a concept of economic abundance in their in their innate indigenous culture. The overlay of the Western culture on top of it can has distorted this, but it also is being stripped away. And the exciting thing about the Maori kind of concept here is that this large centerpiece that interfaces with the gray world is actually where most of the sausage will get made. Right. So it's because trying to bring a world of light into the gray world can be quite messy. So the idea is by having this iwi collective in the center that's made up of multiple iwi, that that will handle a lot of the things like financing, design and permitting and any kind of interface with the governmental entities, the regulatory entities, so that the small builders who are building this actually don't have to do a lot of this kind of front end big work that can be captured much more collectively under this bigger iwi umbrella so that the small builders out implementing in the regions don't have to worry about that. That's all being taken care of in the larger collective. And this idea I think is really amazing because what it does is starts to look at how do we allow the people that are building the housing that we need to actually get out and do the work we need to building and how do we bring the intellectual work or the regulatory work or the financing or how do we bring that under an umbrella, a social enterprise that will protect everybody but still give us the freedom to actually go out and build houses and when you're trying to get financing and regulatory, etc. as small builders, it can be a lot more difficult. So whether this will work or not, I don't know where this is early in the process and we'll see. OK, now I want to get into a bit more detail about housing and Nattoa. So what we're basing some of this concept on is the Build Smart concept that I had developed years ago around passive house manufacturing. And the idea was that we created me and a fellow in Australia, Harley Trong, a system for building modularized emission sequestering, building panels using a very simple set of jigs. And those jigs literally can be in a 400 square foot garage and you can build the entire building in that garage with those jigs. And this is one of the things that's in our concept is that we see in this larger central evenly collective, a vertically integrated material, building materials collective. And we also see a central processing plant, both on the North Island and the South Island, that will precut all the pieces and parts that go into this house, but then can be shipped on a very small truck out to the regions to then be put into the jigs and built by the local folks that are there. One of the other concepts here is that this collective will find, train and help to put in business, muddy subcontractors, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, drywall, etc, etc. So the concept here is to leverage this ewe collective, the larger ewe collective to be able to help housing become a system. And the idea that I've been talking about is, well, do we want to think about housing systems that talk about the maintenance and upkeep of the houses as part of this long term relationship that the builders will have with their houses. So this is one piece of the discussion that's going on there. Another piece of the discussion that's going on is about using this software here that I show you real quickly. I just took off the shelf components of software and created a way to take a house and just grab out all the bits and pieces and it'll spit out a materials list. And you can see here from this video how this is a very simple thing. I mean, literally it's off the shelf stuff that that was less than 500 bucks to create this. And the idea was all this intelligence would live in that ewe collective, right? Now, the other piece is the part over here, the part of the EHF fellows. And this is where I'm talking to you folks, the EHF fellows. This is the true world of light stuff. This is the stuff that me as an old guy who barely understands some of the concepts that these brilliant young fellows are having. This is where I think that the EHF fellows could really help to take this to the next level because the work that people are doing on distributed autonomous organizations and gift economies and different types of what they call smart contracts. These types of things that I'm barely actually really know what I'm talking about because I'm old. These guys know lots. You fellows have amazing stuff. So what I'm hoping is that we will get to a process of inviting in fellows to help think through and conceptualize way to take this to the next level. Okay, well, whether this goes somewhere doesn't go somewhere. I don't know. These are ideas. These are concepts. These are things that are being done. Hopefully it has inspired you somewhat to hear some of the stuff going on. If you're interested in learning more about what I've been doing, my learnings, the businesses I'm in, just contact me directly. I'll be happy to tell you all about that. But for this presentation here, I've invited three, all three of the groups to come here and I'm free to take questions now from the group and we're going to answer them for you. Thank you. Bye bye. That was amazing. Can we go just do like a little silent clap to Adam because that was really, really good. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your journey and showing us the what got you there and where you are right now. I feel really inspired to have been a little bit part of that journey of yours when you first came to New Zealand in 2018. And I have a few questions. There was at least one question in the chat that I want to bring to you. And for the rest of the people there, if you have more questions, please add them to the chat. But Adam, I want to know that I guess you've been through this video over and over through the addition and creating it. Is there anything that you want to share with us before we go to the questions? Anything else that you want to add? Well, there's this video could have been eight hours long. So of course, there's there's so much more depth. I mean, you could do you could do a whole hour just on any one of those companies and the stuff that they're doing. I mean, it's also amazing. So no, that's 37 minutes was as quiet as short as I can get it. And there's ton lets to say. But I'd love to hear questions or comments from people. We've got I don't know if helmet is here. I didn't see him in the list, but we've got someone from we've got Rick Zatorik here from took tree. We've got Jacob Bakuzin here from New Frameworks. We've got Harley Trong here who helped me with Bill Smart Rob Leonard. So we've got lots of resources if people have questions. And I'm happy to answer anything. I I so Brian had a question. And if you want to, Brian, you want to do it in life. But your question early on the video was why did you choose the movement movement of diseases as a starting point of the thought experiment? That that was that's simple. That was I had to start somewhere. And I figured at that point, you had you had economic, social, cultural, technological contact between the entire world that then allows for spread for ideas. So concepts around technology, etc, can be exchanged. But the only difference there is now that we have this exchange of contacts rather than those those contacts overwhelming the Western world, that by by switching that disease going to the going back to to Europe, it allowed me to rewrite that history completely and to go into the known histories of the local Haudenosaunee who I've been that's where I really been learning and trying to project forward. What you looking at what they were doing at contacted in the 1415 hundreds, what their societies were like projecting forward what those histories to get these these realizations and and, you know, it was basically just a point where the cultures mesh. The truth, honest truth about it is that this is just the thought experiment. But in this thought experiment, I what I've realized is you probably have to go back farther than a few hundred years to make this actually work. But it worked for the purpose of this. I hope that answered it, Briar. Thank you. Frank, Rofor, you have a question. Do you want to speak to it? Or you want me to read it? You can unmute yourself. OK, I will read it and then if you have any follow ups, you just unmute yourself. So Frank said like lack lack of capacity appears to be a big issue with prefabrication of building elements. What options or techniques or processes have you found to help increase capacity? Super simple. So when we did the build smart concept, what we did was we started from the point of bootstrap. So what we created was a system that can be scaled from the small garage builder with two or three people up to as big as build capacity. What the biggest problem with prefabrication in my mind, especially in markets like Canada and New Zealand, unless you locate a factory very close to a major metropolitan area, you know, because we have so much spread out in the regions in both places that it's just not very efficient to do that. So if you find a way where you can take the factory to the place where they need to be, which is those small jigs that are very simple and standardized, that basically moves the factory to wherever you need to be. And then all you have to do is ship the sticks and then put it together. So the idea is you build capacity by building by building knowledge and making simple systems. The the thing is if you go out to the regions and you look in multi housing, you might have it at region and they they're not they don't have the resources or the capacity to build more than you know, maybe 10 houses in that year, right? Well, you're not going to set up a whole factory for 10 houses, but you certainly could have a jig that could be that kind of the material shift and you could build those 10 houses. And when you get to the point where you're building 100 houses or 200 housing, you get that financing, then you can start, you know, either making more or start automating. Either way can work. But for for a lot of the problems in New Zealand and Canada, where we have such a large amount of mass of area and such few people. This was like the best solution I could think of to get us into far full in places that really need the housing. You know, I'm not worried about housing in Auckland or in Toronto, you know, but housing in Northern Ontario and and and and and and on the East Coast, you know, there aren't big cities there to put big factories in and who's going to go put 25 million dollars in a factory that's only going to produce 100 half houses in a year. It just doesn't work. So that's why that's great. It's great to see that we engage and doing those that the work that needs to happen, localize to to spread the word and support each other's as community. Rick, do you have a question? It was more a comment supporting that. There is maybe a lack of capacity, but with the same number of resources in a factory doing prefab, we can we can enclose more buildings faster than the same people out doing stick building on the on the site. So it's a another form of building that takes advantage of the capacity of a factory to create the elements that go together and put are put together like legal. And then, of course, you need more factories and they don't have to have that many people in them as Adam is saying. Yeah. Thank you for that insight, Rick. And. Briar, you have a question. Adam, do you want to respond? It says, do I have any? Do you have any realizations about new ways to service the housing water, wastewater, stormwater energy? Yes, absolutely. Well, first off, wastewater, we ought to have a system, right? We ought to be using composting toilets, collecting the waste, recirculating it, making that a zero waste system that actually adds a symbiotically to our food security. So, you know, it's basically just once again, going back and re-evolving, going back and learning about nightdirt in China and bringing that forward to the modern age, we could have jobs and whole industry around wastewater. As far as stormwater, yes. But the stormwater is really a much more expensive way to do it, but it's basically returning what we have been missing, which is wetlands and doing natural tertiary treatments on stormwater. And as far as energy, yeah, obviously, we're talking about renewables, et cetera. But the thing that's really super cool about building a passive house is that when you build a passive house, you're talking about an energy system that's tiny. You know, we can do it when we do a 2,000 square foot passive house, we can we can get that to net zero with a three and a half kilowatt system, which is nothing. So, so there's there's a lot of aspects around this that all are very detailed and go deep. So it's not a simple quick question because they, you know, it's it's a lot of you could spend days talking about each one. Hope that answered it, Briar. Thank you, Tiago, you want to speak to your questions? Yes. Thanks, Adam, very, very inspiring. I'd like to understand if you envision something for the function of this dollar, which would be the the asset and what would it govern? I don't know if Adam's still there. Yeah, I'm still here. Yeah, no, I'm not exactly sure. But I would think that within this gift economy, there would be ways to account for intention and actions, but beyond just building so that you can capture this organization that it's going to be. I'm not, you know, this is where this is where the the young, brilliant EHFers like you know the stuff like I only know that that you have systems that will record and and and even out I don't even know about it. Resources, you know, that are that are highly distributed. I talked to Shiva about this, who's got a system like this that he's working with small entrepreneurs in India. And, you know, I really don't know that I mean, I was absolutely 100% honest when I said I really don't know what I'm talking about, but you do. And that's the point where I think that EHFers can engage with this discussion and, you know, beyond this old guy just going, yeah, there's something out there called this and that and they will, you know, a smart contract. So you don't have to negotiate everything just clicks together. I got I mean, I don't know. That's where where I encourage you to get in touch and start working in that area and try to figure out how you can enjoy that. Yeah, awesome. I'll study the video and I'll contact you. Good. Yes, love that. That's the beauty of EHF, the mix of knowledge, expert and and industries in one place tackling the same problems, right? So yes, to connect you to. We have five minutes left. Probably time for two more questions. Before I go into some that I have. Anyone in the room? Harley, yeah. Hi, yeah. Adam, so. I mean, you're you've you've worked, you lived in the US in Canada and probably other places in the world. You've been in New Zealand. Are there are there challenges that are unique to New Zealand in respect to housing? And are there are there things that you've seen in other parts of the world that that you think could could could help with these these issues or other other challenges that you're facing in New Zealand? Are they are they the same problems around the world? And is this a massive problem? It is. That's a great question, Harley first. Thank you. It is a massive problem. There are very similar problems in like I can look at Canada and New Zealand and there are a lot of very similarities in terms of just the way the business works. We are not but in New Zealand there are some very New Zealand specific problems that have to be dealt with in that context. But there are also New Zealand specific opportunities that can be dealt with within the New Zealand. That's one of the coolest things, for example. Big problem in New Zealand is the monopoly duopoly that are that we experience around building components, right? You guys in New Zealand, we pay way more money than than we should for plywood and dry wall and insulation and a lot of other products just because the government put people in business and then protected those businesses so that they could protect their profits. So breaking that monopoly and my greatest vision for New Zealand is I know that New Zealand will be really making the next step when we start engaging with like with the Fletchers of the world in terms of regenerative economics and how to start thinking about equity and justice in their in their dealings in New Zealand and how to start looking at at those kind of things. Now those are those are some of the problems are there's a whole paper out from the community housing group in New Zealand that give you 26 problems with New Zealand. But let me tell you the opportunity in New Zealand, which is so amazing because the Maudi already had co-owned co-stewarded land within their culture. When the colonizers came in, their Western system of separation to commodification of lamb and chopping things up created a situation where the titles to these lands were jointly owned by large communities, right? So in in places like on the East Coast where where they you know they can have five, six hundred people owning a piece of land. It's it's been tough for them in terms of how they deal with it on the on the Western side. But in today's world, it's kept a lot of the land closer together, right? Because of the title. Now it's also allowed for a lot of typical horrible feeling of land through, you know, getting people who couldn't really represent signing. I mean, there's all these stories. But the cool thing is written into New Zealand's regulations already is the recognition recognition, recognition recognition of of this kind of common ownership. And because of that, there are rules written into the building regulations. There's rules in the financing. This piece of co ownership is already kind of ahead of the curve compared to the US and Canada because of the traditional ownership structure of the Maori. And so in a way, the New Zealand can can lead the way and show us how this can be how how how co ownership or stewardship can work in real time. And so, you know, yes, there are huge problems Harley in New Zealand, just like there are in Australia, just like there are in Canada, just like there are in the US. Some of them are very similar to us and we would all recognize and some of our specific to those those areas. But there are also huge opportunities, you know. And the other thing that's really cool about New Zealand is that unlike Canada, where the reconciliation process is just kind of barely starting and the truth process is just starting, you know, the fact that New Zealand has been through this kind of truth and reconciliation process for 40 years since the 70 or almost 50 years. It's it's it's led us to this point where where where there's been enough both societal acceptance and political acceptance that that the New Zealand we are now on an individual level on group by group level, having these settlements with the government that are our one time settlements that allow them to to kind of get what we would call what will we call that in in the United States? We call that reparations, you know, I don't know exactly what you but but the we are looking at it, you know, we got this pot of money and we wanted to be we want to plan for 500 years, right? And the cool part is when they're planning these housing in this whole system, they're thinking generations down the line and how to steward this through generations. They're not thinking of short term gain short. I mean, all of this is is around creating housing and creating opportunity into the long term for generations to generation and those kind of examples and where you actually have the resources not only the ideas because there's plenty of of indigenous folks in Canada would love to have the resources and the freedom to do it. But in Canada, unfortunately, the government still treats indigenous people like children and they don't allow them to to to kind of do things that are indigenous led. I mean, they're starting to very small, but it's not like it is in in in New Zealand. I'm really hoping that the New Zealand community can be an example to the Canadian community of what can happen when the when the society and the government start getting on the same page around reconciliation. Now, that's not to say that everything's perfect because it isn't. There's a I mean, we're maybe 20 percent of the way to 100 percent of a reconciled bi-cultural society. But that's way more than Canada, you know, and the US and and Australia. I mean, we're in Canada. We're at like 2 percent in the US and in Australia. It's hovering around zero. Thank you, Adam. It's great to see the reconciliation that is happening across the world. Like we're coming back to the land and coming back to to to to looking at our indigenous people and lots to learn, lots to do still. But I think we're towards the same goal. So it's it's good to see that you'll be working with them and also supporting them and learning from each other on that process. I want to acknowledge that we're on time and past the hour. So I want to honor your time. Thank you so much for joining us today. Adam, do you want to add your information to the chat and for anybody else in this call? Do you want to add your information to the chat in case you want to get in touch with each other with other people in the chat, but also with Adam? I'm going to be closing this session soon with the Karakia, which is blessing just to finish our time together. But I'm sharing the chat right now. They're recording the link to the the recording that Adam did in case you want to see it later. But we will also be adding the recording of this session and the Q&A to our website this week. So have a look there and thank you so much for coming and joining us today. Thank you, Adam, for being so amazing for showing us your mahi, for teaching us and sharing your journey and experience with us. It's really a pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much. Thanks for everybody for coming. Thanks for taking your time out and coming, guys. Thank you. So I'm going to do a closing Karakia now. Uno Gia, Uno Gia. Uno Gia, Kite Uru, Tapunui. Kiawatiya, Kiamama, Tenako, Tinnana, Tewairua, Itteara, Takata. Koyara, Erongo, Pakairia, Akekironga. Kiatina, Tina, Humehue, Taikie. Thank you, everybody. Adios. Ka kite. Can you stay for one second, Paula? Yes.