[Applause]
let’s talk about disruption now when a
computer scientist stands up and says
let’s talk about disruption they usually
mean a disruptive technology but I want
to talk about a different kind of
disruption I want to talk about what
happens when families get disrupted my
family was disrupted I was born in
Russia but my family wasn’t doing well
there my dad needed to get us out and so
he decided to leave my mom and me living
with extended family while he went
abroad to find work in the United States
between the ages of 8 and 10 I saw very
little of my dad we called but it was so
hard for me to connect that disconnected
disembodied voice at the end of the line
with the affection the hugs and just
being with my dad I didn’t really want
to talk on the phone but I also felt
really guilty about it I also
experienced disruption from the other
side my little brother is 12 years
younger than me we were close and I
stayed in state for college so that I
could watch him grow up but when it came
time to go to grad school I had to move
away and leave him behind we tried so
hard to stay in touch we had the phone
we had texts we had internet but yet
somehow we still sort of had nothing to
talk about when we tried to use these
technologies it was I felt so frustrated
we live in the most connected age ever
why couldn’t we stay close family
disruption is more common than most
people think 30 percent of marriages end
before the children have a chance to
grow up a full third of children in the
United States just that live with one
adult and 12% of children the United
staes spend more than a month living
away from their primary caregiver in my
case with my dad this was because of
immigration but there at least two other
very common reasons in the United States
and those include incarceration and
military deployment and even if none of
the above apply it’s becoming more and
more common for extended families to
live hundreds of miles apart as was the
case of my brother
now I guarantee you that even if your
family has never been disrupted by
distance somebody sitting next to you
has and now one would think that
technology should be able to help but as
I looked into it I found that lots of
families were having experiences similar
to mine they thought that communication
technology was inauthentic it wasn’t
really a deep communication and it was
kind of boring so if you read about
technology you know that maybe not the
first one to think that technology is
not actually delivering on this promise
of connecting us
there are countless articles studies
videos and books about just this topic
there are so many ways to get it wrong I
want it to do better there are lots of
ways that communication technology can
go wrong but this is one story of what
it took to get it right the first step
to getting it right was starting with
real people’s stories and experiences
using the other instead of the eye
rather than guessing at what the
technology needed to do so I started by
interviewing people I talked I spent
hours talking to 24 families where
parents and children lived apart
I talked to kids between the ages of 7
and 14 and we didn’t just talk I also
asked them to draw I asked them to draw
a magical solution to the hardest part
of staying in touch with their parents
but first let me start by telling you
something that every single parent said
about talking on the phone they
described an almost identical
conversation so we get on the telephone
hi son how are you good what do you do
today good I’ve got hearing good and
responds to what you do today that’s
even worse than nothing or I don’t know
it’s not even listening to the question
and it’s it’s clear why when I ask the
kids about conversations like this they
said this is boring for both of us so
when they drew solutions to the hardest
parts of connecting they do things like
this magical door that lets a parent in
bedtime to read a bedtime story it’s not
about talking it’s about that routine of
reading together but even when families
found some engaging topics to talk about
boys only communication was actually
really problematic especially for the
younger children young kids are still
developing these communicational
competencies to understand the finer
points of language like irony humor
fantasy now in person you get all of
these visual cues to help you but on the
phone as one parent said I can’t even
joke with him unless I started with I
have a joke for you I have a good one
for you a lot is lost in the expression
translation as the parent put it now
kids also thought that voice only it was
pretty limited so when they drew
solutions they do things like this 3d
holographic projection for the living
room so that their parent could be 3d
and life-size and playing alongside with
them now finally there were also some
difficulties that only kids from
divorced families really picked up on
they were actually real really aware of
the competition between their parents
over their time and affection honestly
even if the parents really tried to hide
it one of the kids said that the hardest
part about calling his dad was that when
he asked to call his dad his mom uses
that voice we all know that voice saying
oh so you’re calling him and that’s hard
so kids do things like this robot
something that could carry secret
messages and keep contact with one
parent as private from the other parent
as possible to reduce that tension
between their parents so the bottom line
here is not that we need to build robots
or magic doors but rather what I see is
the three main design insights from all
of these conversations first visual
communication is critical especially for
young children second for parents and
children their connection is not about
talking to each other it’s about doing
things together talking is boring and
lastly kids really need to be empowered
to initiate conversation because it’s so
uncomfortable and awkward to go to their
dad and ask them to connect with their
mom or vice versa
that tension needed to be reduced so
that our second step was actually taking
these ideas and trying to design
something new really thinking out of the
box and when I say out of the box I mean
thinking broadly about the kinds of
technologies and the kinds of solutions
that we consider I really think that
it’s a mistake to just start and ask
okay well what kind of an app should be
built to fix this or what kind of a
website should we design it really
constrains us to old ways of thinking
when we really need something new and so
my team thought broadly okay what is the
thing that can experience in kids is
something that they wear or what if it’s
a bracelet or a toy or a series of toys
and what if it’s a tent we went through
several rounds of sketching and getting
feedback from families and we decided to
go with a piece of furniture we call it
the share table system and here’s how it
works
so when my table rings to answer it all
I do is open the set of cabinet doors
now this starts the video chat so we can
see and hear each other but it also does
something else it turns on the camera
and a projector above my table it
captures anything that’s happening on
one table sends it to the other table
and projects it on top and vice versa so
what you’re seeing here is us drawing a
picture together with just dry erase
markers on the surface of the table now
one thing about the system is that it
doesn’t have any buttons it doesn’t have
a keyboard it doesn’t have a mouse it
doesn’t have any of that so it doesn’t
really feel like a technology it’s it’s
basically a table with some magic now
the idea sounds really simple but it
actually lets you do surprising variety
of things so let’s say you got a
worksheet at school and you want help
with it just put it on the table you
want to read a book together put it on
the table we can both see it and we can
both see where we’re pointing on the
book or the worksheet you want to have a
tea party
grab some cups from the kitchen you want
to play a board game as long as it’s a
board game where we can find something
to use as dice on two sides and some
tokens we can play together while the
idea is quite simple the execution ended
up being much more complicated than just
building a program though so first of
all we needed resources like hardware
and to get those resources we needed to
show that this idea
potentially maybe work and the first
version of the system was built with
borrowed computers borrowed projectors
borrowed camcorders that are literally
held onto the ceiling with tape and
fishing wire we are lucky that nobody
died but it worked well enough to help
us get the buy-in and the resources to
start actually building the real
prototype the real furniture now I had
to learn some things that I did not
think we’re in a purview of a computer
scientist so I had to learn it to make
these custom door sensors I had to learn
carpentry I used a lot of power tools is
actually pretty cool but there are also
lots of other issues there were some
hardware issues we faced that we could
address with software so one of these
was that the camera and the projector
are not seeing the exact same thing
they’re in different places but we
needed to have them to have an identical
field of view and so what we had to do
is build a custom piece of software that
would calibrate the system using this
kind of checkerboard pattern there were
also some software issues that we were
able to address with clever hardware
solutions one example is visual echo so
visual echo is what happens in the
system like this if you recapture
something that you’ve already projected
so your hand from this side gets
projected on my side but then my camera
captures that and projects it back on
your side and it’s an infinite loop and
so what you’d see if you were moving in
hand is like this trail of hands
following you
so we couldn’t have that we needed some
way of preventing the projected items
from being recaptured by the cameras so
the solution we ended up using is
actually the same technology that you
wear when you go to 3d movies polarized
lenses we created these custom sleeves
to attach pull different polarized
lenses to the camera and the projector
it worked but even that took some
iteration we found that the projector
was actually so hot that it burned holes
through the polarizations on the lenses
and so we had to add a heat shield to
protect the lens so all in all there
were many issues beyond just writing
code and just putting all of this
together was pretty complicated like
look at that mess of cables behind that
box is crazy there were a lot of things
that could go wrong there were a lot of
late nights and all in all this actually
took several years to get it working as
well as we want
to work but we couldn’t stop there it
doesn’t really matter if it works
perfectly for us in the lab what matters
is whether it works for real families in
the real world so that was our next step
we recruited for divorced households and
we asked them to keep Diaries of their
communication practices then we left the
share table with them for a month and
asked them to use it the system records
video anytime a communication session is
initiated but of course we also wanted
to protect the privacy of our
participants so all the names you see
are pseudonyms all the faces will be
blurred out and actually the parents
could mark any videos for deletion
before we saw them though that was
pretty rare and mostly in cases where
kids were a little bit too comfortable
around nudity in the house and they
didn’t want us to see that so we’re
thankful for that so I want to focus on
just one family for this talk let me
tell you a little bit about them and
then I’ll show you some of their videos
so let me explain their arrangement so
David and Kelly we’re married and they
had two kids Taylor who was 11 at the
time of the study and Kennedy who was 7
a few years before they met them they
actually got divorced
Kennedy lives primarily with her mom
what all Taylor lists primarily with his
dad
and they actually had this idea that the
kids always spend the weekends together
so every other weekend the kids switch
houses so basically you can imagine this
so if your parent every other Friday you
get you’re the kid that lives with you
and you drive them over an hour through
traffic city traffic to the other side
of the city where you drop them off and
then you do it them up again on Sunday
it’s pretty complicated and also of
course families are more likely to be
blended so Kelly actually had a new
partner Jason who was also living with
them in Kennedy the sounds really
complicated but actually these kinds of
arrangements the kind of complex
arrangements are pretty common in
divorced families they do what they have
to to make their family work so let’s
watch two of their videos so the first
one highlights a common issue with being
a kid from a divorced family so you have
two homes and all your stuff is divided
between these two homes including your
mail so in this case the dad got a
gaming magazine and he really wanted to
show it
hailer because it was kind of the
holidays were coming up so there’s a
little science time-sensitive I think he
wanted to get a sense of which games to
get us gifts and in the meantime
Taylor’s friend for mom’s house is also
there so let’s see what happens I don’t
know what’s your gamertag you guys never
added me d see I don’t have you guys let
me write on here and I can write down my
gamertag wait if you write on here can
you see it
yeah so far okay here’s my gamertag
alright so there’s two things I like
about this video so first it is how
quickly kids get used to new technology
if I write all you can see it yeah of
course why wouldn’t I be able to
that’s the years of my life teams of
students but on a more serious note the
second is the idea of the table as
bringing together multiple people so in
a divorced family it’s quite common that
kids have like mom’s house friends and
dad’s house friends and here you see an
opportunity for dad to get to know a
friend from Mom’s house so they exchange
gamertags
the assumption is that they will play
together so Taylor’s world is becoming
more interconnected more integrative and
that’s really important now this next
video I want to show you something that
was a little bit surprising to us as
they use so we made this table thinking
it was going to be used for things like
helping with homework reading together
and drawing together and we did see all
of these things but here you’ll see a
little bit more unusual over use to
communicate emotional comfort so in this
video Taylor’s on the other side and
he’s not feeling well and so his mom and
his sister are calling him now it’s a
little hard to see but look at what she
does with her hand now some of you are
going to want to hear quantitative
metrics and there were some the amount
of communication more than doubled for
these families these children were
initiating more than half of the
conversations were as with the previous
technology was basically none and the
relationship between the parents and the
children improved but to me it was not
about the numbers it was really seeing
that video that made all of the late
nights worth it
it was hearing a dad say there’s
something about it when you put your
hand on the table and your daughter puts
her hand
top where it feels like you’re almost
touching so to me that was the real
success of the share table now of course
we can’t stop there in my recent work
I’m working with a great team of
students at University of Minnesota and
we’re scaling up these ideas because we
really have to be able to deploy with
more than four households so it needs to
be not just something that we can deploy
with some of them yeah so we’ve
transitioned to a much more robust
system with a built in camera and
projector we actually have to redesign
our software from ground up in order to
do this and we’re now working to address
new interesting challenges and new
interesting context of separation but
with all this optimism I think it is
really important to remember technology
won’t fix families technology can be
misused any technology can be used to
connect or disconnect but I think this
is not an excuse for computer scientists
to step back I think it’s actually a
call for technologists to engage more
and I don’t mean engage more with the
technology I mean engage with real
stories real experiences take risks in
the design and actually see what happens
when what you build is used in the real
world I coughed it for technologists to
step up to the challenge and do the work
to design for real human needs yes
families get disrupted and there’s so
many reasons for that but there are also
ways to get reconnected I know in my own
life I had plenty of happy endings my
dad was eventually able to bring my mom
and me to the United States and we were
able to connect again my brother he grew
up and we have lots of ways of
connecting now and we take plenty of
opportunities to visit each other in
person in fact he flew here from
Maryland to be here for my talk today
but I’m
[Applause]
I’m not gonna embarrass him by making
him wave but you’ll probably see him at
the after party he’s six foot four
so he’s hot cartoonist but for other
families it may not be enough to wait
until they’re together in person there
need to be other tools and other ways of
connecting and other ways of finding
their happy endings and I really hope
that my word gets this just one step
closer to that and so I dedicate this
talk to more happy endings
[Applause]
let’s talk about disruption now when a
computer scientist stands up and says
let’s talk about disruption they usually
mean a disruptive technology but I want
to talk about a different kind of
disruption I want to talk about what
happens when families get disrupted my
family was disrupted I was born in
Russia but my family wasn’t doing well
there my dad needed to get us out and so
he decided to leave my mom and me living
with extended family while he went
abroad to find work in the United States
between the ages of 8 and 10 I saw very
little of my dad we called but it was so
hard for me to connect that disconnected
disembodied voice at the end of the line
with the affection the hugs and just
being with my dad I didn’t really want
to talk on the phone but I also felt
really guilty about it I also
experienced disruption from the other
side my little brother is 12 years
younger than me we were close and I
stayed in state for college so that I
could watch him grow up but when it came
time to go to grad school I had to move
away and leave him behind we tried so
hard to stay in touch we had the phone
we had texts we had internet but yet
somehow we still sort of had nothing to
talk about when we tried to use these
technologies it was I felt so frustrated
we live in the most connected age ever
why couldn’t we stay close family
disruption is more common than most
people think 30 percent of marriages end
before the children have a chance to
grow up a full third of children in the
United States just that live with one
adult and 12% of children the United
staes spend more than a month living
away from their primary caregiver in my
case with my dad this was because of
immigration but there at least two other
very common reasons in the United States
and those include incarceration and
military deployment and even if none of
the above apply it’s becoming more and
more common for extended families to
live hundreds of miles apart as was the
case of my brother
now I guarantee you that even if your
family has never been disrupted by
distance somebody sitting next to you
has and now one would think that
technology should be able to help but as
I looked into it I found that lots of
families were having experiences similar
to mine they thought that communication
technology was inauthentic it wasn’t
really a deep communication and it was
kind of boring so if you read about
technology you know that maybe not the
first one to think that technology is
not actually delivering on this promise
of connecting us
there are countless articles studies
videos and books about just this topic
there are so many ways to get it wrong I
want it to do better there are lots of
ways that communication technology can
go wrong but this is one story of what
it took to get it right the first step
to getting it right was starting with
real people’s stories and experiences
using the other instead of the eye
rather than guessing at what the
technology needed to do so I started by
interviewing people I talked I spent
hours talking to 24 families where
parents and children lived apart
I talked to kids between the ages of 7
and 14 and we didn’t just talk I also
asked them to draw I asked them to draw
a magical solution to the hardest part
of staying in touch with their parents
but first let me start by telling you
something that every single parent said
about talking on the phone they
described an almost identical
conversation so we get on the telephone
hi son how are you good what do you do
today good I’ve got hearing good and
responds to what you do today that’s
even worse than nothing or I don’t know
it’s not even listening to the question
and it’s it’s clear why when I ask the
kids about conversations like this they
said this is boring for both of us so
when they drew solutions to the hardest
parts of connecting they do things like
this magical door that lets a parent in
bedtime to read a bedtime story it’s not
about talking it’s about that routine of
reading together but even when families
found some engaging topics to talk about
boys only communication was actually
really problematic especially for the
younger children young kids are still
developing these communicational
competencies to understand the finer
points of language like irony humor
fantasy now in person you get all of
these visual cues to help you but on the
phone as one parent said I can’t even
joke with him unless I started with I
have a joke for you I have a good one
for you a lot is lost in the expression
translation as the parent put it now
kids also thought that voice only it was
pretty limited so when they drew
solutions they do things like this 3d
holographic projection for the living
room so that their parent could be 3d
and life-size and playing alongside with
them now finally there were also some
difficulties that only kids from
divorced families really picked up on
they were actually real really aware of
the competition between their parents
over their time and affection honestly
even if the parents really tried to hide
it one of the kids said that the hardest
part about calling his dad was that when
he asked to call his dad his mom uses
that voice we all know that voice saying
oh so you’re calling him and that’s hard
so kids do things like this robot
something that could carry secret
messages and keep contact with one
parent as private from the other parent
as possible to reduce that tension
between their parents so the bottom line
here is not that we need to build robots
or magic doors but rather what I see is
the three main design insights from all
of these conversations first visual
communication is critical especially for
young children second for parents and
children their connection is not about
talking to each other it’s about doing
things together talking is boring and
lastly kids really need to be empowered
to initiate conversation because it’s so
uncomfortable and awkward to go to their
dad and ask them to connect with their
mom or vice versa
that tension needed to be reduced so
that our second step was actually taking
these ideas and trying to design
something new really thinking out of the
box and when I say out of the box I mean
thinking broadly about the kinds of
technologies and the kinds of solutions
that we consider I really think that
it’s a mistake to just start and ask
okay well what kind of an app should be
built to fix this or what kind of a
website should we design it really
constrains us to old ways of thinking
when we really need something new and so
my team thought broadly okay what is the
thing that can experience in kids is
something that they wear or what if it’s
a bracelet or a toy or a series of toys
and what if it’s a tent we went through
several rounds of sketching and getting
feedback from families and we decided to
go with a piece of furniture we call it
the share table system and here’s how it
works
so when my table rings to answer it all
I do is open the set of cabinet doors
now this starts the video chat so we can
see and hear each other but it also does
something else it turns on the camera
and a projector above my table it
captures anything that’s happening on
one table sends it to the other table
and projects it on top and vice versa so
what you’re seeing here is us drawing a
picture together with just dry erase
markers on the surface of the table now
one thing about the system is that it
doesn’t have any buttons it doesn’t have
a keyboard it doesn’t have a mouse it
doesn’t have any of that so it doesn’t
really feel like a technology it’s it’s
basically a table with some magic now
the idea sounds really simple but it
actually lets you do surprising variety
of things so let’s say you got a
worksheet at school and you want help
with it just put it on the table you
want to read a book together put it on
the table we can both see it and we can
both see where we’re pointing on the
book or the worksheet you want to have a
tea party
grab some cups from the kitchen you want
to play a board game as long as it’s a
board game where we can find something
to use as dice on two sides and some
tokens we can play together while the
idea is quite simple the execution ended
up being much more complicated than just
building a program though so first of
all we needed resources like hardware
and to get those resources we needed to
show that this idea
potentially maybe work and the first
version of the system was built with
borrowed computers borrowed projectors
borrowed camcorders that are literally
held onto the ceiling with tape and
fishing wire we are lucky that nobody
died but it worked well enough to help
us get the buy-in and the resources to
start actually building the real
prototype the real furniture now I had
to learn some things that I did not
think we’re in a purview of a computer
scientist so I had to learn it to make
these custom door sensors I had to learn
carpentry I used a lot of power tools is
actually pretty cool but there are also
lots of other issues there were some
hardware issues we faced that we could
address with software so one of these
was that the camera and the projector
are not seeing the exact same thing
they’re in different places but we
needed to have them to have an identical
field of view and so what we had to do
is build a custom piece of software that
would calibrate the system using this
kind of checkerboard pattern there were
also some software issues that we were
able to address with clever hardware
solutions one example is visual echo so
visual echo is what happens in the
system like this if you recapture
something that you’ve already projected
so your hand from this side gets
projected on my side but then my camera
captures that and projects it back on
your side and it’s an infinite loop and
so what you’d see if you were moving in
hand is like this trail of hands
following you
so we couldn’t have that we needed some
way of preventing the projected items
from being recaptured by the cameras so
the solution we ended up using is
actually the same technology that you
wear when you go to 3d movies polarized
lenses we created these custom sleeves
to attach pull different polarized
lenses to the camera and the projector
it worked but even that took some
iteration we found that the projector
was actually so hot that it burned holes
through the polarizations on the lenses
and so we had to add a heat shield to
protect the lens so all in all there
were many issues beyond just writing
code and just putting all of this
together was pretty complicated like
look at that mess of cables behind that
box is crazy there were a lot of things
that could go wrong there were a lot of
late nights and all in all this actually
took several years to get it working as
well as we want
to work but we couldn’t stop there it
doesn’t really matter if it works
perfectly for us in the lab what matters
is whether it works for real families in
the real world so that was our next step
we recruited for divorced households and
we asked them to keep Diaries of their
communication practices then we left the
share table with them for a month and
asked them to use it the system records
video anytime a communication session is
initiated but of course we also wanted
to protect the privacy of our
participants so all the names you see
are pseudonyms all the faces will be
blurred out and actually the parents
could mark any videos for deletion
before we saw them though that was
pretty rare and mostly in cases where
kids were a little bit too comfortable
around nudity in the house and they
didn’t want us to see that so we’re
thankful for that so I want to focus on
just one family for this talk let me
tell you a little bit about them and
then I’ll show you some of their videos
so let me explain their arrangement so
David and Kelly we’re married and they
had two kids Taylor who was 11 at the
time of the study and Kennedy who was 7
a few years before they met them they
actually got divorced
Kennedy lives primarily with her mom
what all Taylor lists primarily with his
dad
and they actually had this idea that the
kids always spend the weekends together
so every other weekend the kids switch
houses so basically you can imagine this
so if your parent every other Friday you
get you’re the kid that lives with you
and you drive them over an hour through
traffic city traffic to the other side
of the city where you drop them off and
then you do it them up again on Sunday
it’s pretty complicated and also of
course families are more likely to be
blended so Kelly actually had a new
partner Jason who was also living with
them in Kennedy the sounds really
complicated but actually these kinds of
arrangements the kind of complex
arrangements are pretty common in
divorced families they do what they have
to to make their family work so let’s
watch two of their videos so the first
one highlights a common issue with being
a kid from a divorced family so you have
two homes and all your stuff is divided
between these two homes including your
mail so in this case the dad got a
gaming magazine and he really wanted to
show it
hailer because it was kind of the
holidays were coming up so there’s a
little science time-sensitive I think he
wanted to get a sense of which games to
get us gifts and in the meantime
Taylor’s friend for mom’s house is also
there so let’s see what happens I don’t
know what’s your gamertag you guys never
added me d see I don’t have you guys let
me write on here and I can write down my
gamertag wait if you write on here can
you see it
yeah so far okay here’s my gamertag
alright so there’s two things I like
about this video so first it is how
quickly kids get used to new technology
if I write all you can see it yeah of
course why wouldn’t I be able to
that’s the years of my life teams of
students but on a more serious note the
second is the idea of the table as
bringing together multiple people so in
a divorced family it’s quite common that
kids have like mom’s house friends and
dad’s house friends and here you see an
opportunity for dad to get to know a
friend from Mom’s house so they exchange
gamertags
the assumption is that they will play
together so Taylor’s world is becoming
more interconnected more integrative and
that’s really important now this next
video I want to show you something that
was a little bit surprising to us as
they use so we made this table thinking
it was going to be used for things like
helping with homework reading together
and drawing together and we did see all
of these things but here you’ll see a
little bit more unusual over use to
communicate emotional comfort so in this
video Taylor’s on the other side and
he’s not feeling well and so his mom and
his sister are calling him now it’s a
little hard to see but look at what she
does with her hand now some of you are
going to want to hear quantitative
metrics and there were some the amount
of communication more than doubled for
these families these children were
initiating more than half of the
conversations were as with the previous
technology was basically none and the
relationship between the parents and the
children improved but to me it was not
about the numbers it was really seeing
that video that made all of the late
nights worth it
it was hearing a dad say there’s
something about it when you put your
hand on the table and your daughter puts
her hand
top where it feels like you’re almost
touching so to me that was the real
success of the share table now of course
we can’t stop there in my recent work
I’m working with a great team of
students at University of Minnesota and
we’re scaling up these ideas because we
really have to be able to deploy with
more than four households so it needs to
be not just something that we can deploy
with some of them yeah so we’ve
transitioned to a much more robust
system with a built in camera and
projector we actually have to redesign
our software from ground up in order to
do this and we’re now working to address
new interesting challenges and new
interesting context of separation but
with all this optimism I think it is
really important to remember technology
won’t fix families technology can be
misused any technology can be used to
connect or disconnect but I think this
is not an excuse for computer scientists
to step back I think it’s actually a
call for technologists to engage more
and I don’t mean engage more with the
technology I mean engage with real
stories real experiences take risks in
the design and actually see what happens
when what you build is used in the real
world I coughed it for technologists to
step up to the challenge and do the work
to design for real human needs yes
families get disrupted and there’s so
many reasons for that but there are also
ways to get reconnected I know in my own
life I had plenty of happy endings my
dad was eventually able to bring my mom
and me to the United States and we were
able to connect again my brother he grew
up and we have lots of ways of
connecting now and we take plenty of
opportunities to visit each other in
person in fact he flew here from
Maryland to be here for my talk today
but I’m
[Applause]
I’m not gonna embarrass him by making
him wave but you’ll probably see him at
the after party he’s six foot four
so he’s hot cartoonist but for other
families it may not be enough to wait
until they’re together in person there
need to be other tools and other ways of
connecting and other ways of finding
their happy endings and I really hope
that my word gets this just one step
closer to that and so I dedicate this
talk to more happy endings
[Applause]
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