This is Dennis McMahon and welcome to Positively Vermont and today We are going to be exploring something very new and very innovative in our state. It's called a steamfest and With me is Kristen Humberger Humberger The founder of the Essex hub And Julie Miller Johnson the managing director of the steamfest Welcome. Thank you. Thank you And this is going to be an art and innovation festival that will be taking place in Essex Junction September 29th and September 30th, and we're going to go into it And it sounds like a very exciting event And just tell us first a little bit about each one of you Kristen you want to start? Sure. I'm Kristen Humberger. I'm the founder of Essex hub and the creative director of steamfest And I've lived in Vermont for about 20 years My background is in art making and also positive organizational development And so I sort of blend those two worlds and the work that I do at Essex hub and also with The work that we're doing together with steamfest Tell us a little bit about yourself So I'm Julie Miller Johnson and I've lived in Essex Junction for 13 years and I came here from Atlanta, Georgia where I worked in marketing and media management and Most recently I was the market manager for the farmers market the five corners farmers market in Essex Junction And I currently sit on the economic development commission for the town of Essex So My my role in this market sort of comes this Festival comes from those two places. That's great. Well, tell us about this unusual name steamfest They understand it means science technology engineering arts and math. Tell us what it means That's what it means. So steamfest oftentimes you'll hear the The acronym stem to refer to the science technology engineering and math fields And when you add the arts into it, it becomes steam So there's a conversation around the stem fields and their relationship to art which makes it steam And so we decided that we would explore this in a much more broad way and help people Have an experience through understanding arts and aesthetics and as they're related to the stem fields And to pull all this together in a way that might actually help disrupt people's understanding Of what that relationship is. So that's how we came to steamfest In creating a two-day event for people to sort of explore these things in a new and interesting way That's great And it's called an art and innovation festival. What exactly is that going to entail? So steamfest is celebrating sort of the makers and and creators and in innovation so by having By having people who are both artists and People who are sort of inventors. We can show the cycle of innovation through this festival so it's um sort of a festival of process and product and creators and makers so having both makers who sometimes come through the Through the fields of stem and artists sort of exploring some of the Issues in the stem fields And what does that look like when we put them all together in the same space And speaking of space, where is this exactly going to be taking place? So steamfest is a two-day festival that's going to take place in downtown a six-junction and um the first day will be In all of the streets of the the core downtown of s-extinction. So we'll have events on each of four of the five Streets of the village. So that's pearl park maple, no not maple pearl park main and Lincoln Lincoln Street So that's friday night, and then saturday is just railroad avenue Wow, that's amazing and How many people are involved in this? There's there is five core volunteers who have been driving the organization And there are I don't know 20 artists Vendors who will be at the artist market on saturday There are at this point some unknown number of makers who will be participating in the maker fair and I think we have 15 plus artists and five or six bands and musicians who will all be participating in the event as well And I would expect at least 25 to 30 volunteers to help us pull the whole thing off And this is the first one of its kind that's taking place here. It is the first one. Yeah, how'd you come up with this idea? um Well, it's sort of a combination of a lot of different things As I said earlier my background is all in in the arts or much of it is And I was having a conversation actually with a A woman who will be exhibiting a film in this event Around arts and it's it's interaction with engineering and machine art and technology and all of these things and It was just a really generative conversation and After that a conversation I Came to julie and I said hey, I have this idea for Maybe a festival that we should be doing around the STEM fields and art making and artists and artisans and I can see what this is going to look like and I know that you have the capacity to make that happen and as the market manager for the farmers market and sort of the evolution of that it was sort of a perfect timing and a perfect sort of intersection of vision and action that we were able to sort of Engage each other and what do we call it sort of like when crazy meets crazy That's great stuff. Well, it seems that a lot of planning went in this but how did you get the artist and how did that all work out? Like I know the submissions. Was there a deadline or something like that? We put a call to artist out Goodness at the beginning of the summer probably in May with a deadline for late august early september. Um, so We distributed through that network and your own artist network We put a call out to vendors for the for the market on saturday makers It's all we put everything out through whatever means possible social media ads in the newspaper Yeah, and you know what was really interesting is we also had a lot of cooperation with other Um Other people who are involved in other festivals. So art hop was really helpful in helping us kind of Look at what are the logistics of doing something like this and also sent our calls out to the people that they Are calling and we sent it out to the Vermont arts council And so we really tried to tap into the other organizations that have some experience with pulling something like this off So Tell us what feels a lot is going to be covered by this Oh Well, we have People who do very traditional work Drawing and painting we have people who are three-dimensional sculptures We have filmmakers and photographers people working in the the sort of new fields of 3d printing and technology Glass making glass making or glass fusing glass Um, so it really covers a lot of a lot of areas, you know It's either people who are exploring the stem fields through traditional means or using What would be traditionally thought of materials in? Industry in an artful way Or just really using technology to create things or to do things creatively That Haven't quite been done in the same way before so It's really, you know, it's really as blended as the steamfest name is So it's not just the subject matter of science and technology It's the mechanics the the use of that in making art. It is in some ways. Yeah, it's definitely A way of helping people understand that artists oftentimes are really deeply thinking and Creating meaning out of what they know Within science or technology or math or you know, a lot of art making is actually engineering I sometimes refer to myself as an artist who should have been an engineer My background was in metal smithing and also sound and video installation. So It's really seeing from A different perspective a through a different lens of what actually is art making about and what actually is Looking at science about from the lens of scientists or engineers So there's really a lot of crossover and creativity Which we traditionally I think in some real ways seem to compartmentalize out And so what we really want to do is pull this back in together So that people can see In a different way what they may think don't necessarily go together We'll be active exhibits people demonstrating things tell us about that So the vermont art teachers association will be meeting in s6 junction on the friday of this festival And at the conclusion of their workshops, they're going to do a demonstration or a setup an exhibit which is Which is an interactive sort of band. I think it's the best way to describe it. They call it magical music And it's something that they will have coded to enable Children or anybody who visits it to create music by touching different objects in this exhibit We'll also have A light up wearable station For people can create their own sort of wearable wear it through the village As they go to the festival wearing these sort of led light things We have the EVM's college of Science and engineering will have set up their fab lab or a little mini fab lab example so that they can demonstrate How art can be created through science specifically And technology We're actually going to have five steam pods. I think I should let you talk about the steam pods Fascinating or dangerous, I don't know So the steam pods are Five Inflatables there are 10 by 10 rooms that inflate That will have some sort of interactive in each one Each one represents one letter of steam So we have an amazing art teacher who or math teacher I should say Who has who teaches a curriculum art through math? At the sx elementary school. I think it's sx elementary and she's Creating a whole set of tessellations for people to be able to use inside the pods to To create a tessellated interior of this pod, which is Geometric shapes that fit together with with no gaps And you sort of rotate them around very mc. Escher If you know who mc. Escher is And then we'll have an engineering pod which is sort of an interior structure Which will be built by people who enter the pod We have a science pod which we believe is going to end up being related to the science of emotions and chemistry and The art pod will be art in conversation. So really asking a lot of questions around What does a more creative sx look like because sx is our is our home? And the technology pod we have An idea around what that's going to look like in terms of Having groups of people activate technology together to create to produce a result So the steam pods are really a way to experience the steam fields in a way that You wouldn't normally think of so it's it's an experience. Where are they going to be? There's an empty storefront on Park street in the four pearl street building and we're going to set them up inside that building It's a big open space right on the street and they'll all be lit up from From in so they'll be sort of a glowing orbs. That's that's amazing stuff. I mean, it's Just the scope of this thing really sounds huge. It's pretty cool Well, I understand that's going to be there's a beautiful website that you have really well done and it carries if people could see it It carries us through all the different things that the people going to be performing and and the various types of exhibits, but For our viewers, could you just carry us through? This entire fest starting with the beginning and when is it going to begin and what's going to happen on the first day and what's going to happen the second day all right, so the festival starts at four o'clock on friday afternoon And September 29th, so that's friday afternoon The exhibits the all of the art will be up at that time So people can start to walk around the village and see the different art exhibits at five o'clock That will be when our first band plays. That's going to be billy august. He's a singer songwriter Sort of folk musician. He'll be playing in front of the nest bakery and cafe And so he's going to start the music off and we're hoping people will go from there After that music ends to walk towards, you know, stop and look at some art along the way to the next band Which is set up at six o'clock and that will be sputula And he'll be playing outside or sort of in the garage space of maclaurs moving in storage Which is a really unconventional place for a band. His kind of music is like garage funk So I think it's kind of a fun location for him I think he and his band so we're literally going to roll up the You know enter the code like you're into going into your mini storage unit Roll up the garage doors and there'll be twinkle light setup inside there And so he can then he'll play for 45 minutes and then at seven o'clock the band. Oh, there's another actually 6 30 Yeah, 6 30. We have um matt larochet who is laroka. Sorry larochet Who is a musician filmmaker and he is going to be presenting his music film um In a sort of crossover art performance music at the dark room gallery in in On main street, and then some more tones. Yes, exactly seven o'clock and eight o'clock. They'll be seven o'clock would be warm water who's a jazz soul singer and then eight o'clock is Guthrie Galileo He's kind of r&b. They'll both be playing in the The center bay of the s-extinction fire station Which again is a really fun location for a band And i'm really really very thankful and grateful for the s-extinction fire department to be so up for this idea They're really excited about it and super supportive So they're going to help us set it up with the twinkle lights and everything And then the last band will come back around at nine o'clock to nest and it will be inside And that group is the leather leather bound books And I would like to say that all of these musicians are They're all Performing their own music. They are all like they written their own music And it's all been organized by a woman named hannah houseman Who is herself a singer in warm water and this has sort of been her curation of music in and of itself So in the middle of all of that is 21 different stops of art the art and food that people can go to Anywhere from earth logic to the s-ext hub location and furl for pearl and And then we'll also have the exhibits of the big picture The fab lab The steam pods the magical music this the button making at the library and the blinky wearables at seven and nine main street and I think those are all the oh and the pin the pinball The pinbox 3000 arcade will be set up at triple loop arcade A triple loop costume shop on railroad avenue. So there's literally There's that's all just friday. And I think that we before we stop there We have to we have to say that steam fest continues into saturday and it's totally in a totally different way um, you know and the common theme is really like making and creating or Process and product. So saturday is a different execution of that but saturday is exclusively on railroad avenue also in the village And that will be made up of 20 artists and artisans who will be selling their work in sort of an art market Format we'll have a performance stage in the middle of the street And then on the other end of railroad avenue will be our very first s-ext mini maker fair and the s-ext mini maker fair is Is sort of a A local outcropping of big champlain mini maker fair which happens at children farms But the champlain mini maker fair people have been growing their franchise across the state and When they heard what we were doing with steam fest They were really excited and saw the alignment of what this program was about and they said that they wanted to They would be interested in being a part of it. And so that's really a big part of why they're with us um, and so that's going to include Um locals as well as sort of people who were sort of do the maker fair circuit But we'll also have a young student from s-ext high school Who's coming in to show his sort of lego robot hand that he's created and he's bringing in some of his other friends from the s-ext robotics club And then we also have a really enthusiastic group from the s-ext high school maker space So it operates out of the high school library there And they're going to be showing some of the things that they do in that maker space So the s-ext mini maker fair is really um, what I call sort of like show and tell meets science fair It's really for people who are into whatever it is that they have created or they're trying to create or they're tinkering It's all about process You know that the street becomes like really like this manifestation like the mini maker fair is about process And the artisans market is about product and the in between the performance stage will have um We'll have two bands from 10 to 12 will be um Oh my gosh the um smokey newfield project which is um a band that uh often performed at the five corners farmers market And they play a lot of local folk music and um and then From 12 to 2 will be um a community coffee house where we're inviting performers from student performers from all around the region to come and play a song or two Or sing perform dance whatever between in that window and then from two to four will be a big band called shake And shake um is made up of some students who recently graduated from high school. They're all playing at farmers markets and Charities and weddings all around the state. So they play a cover band. They're going to really kick up the energy in the afternoon Yeah Yeah, it sounds really fun. How many people you think are going to attend? as many as We can hold It sounds busy in a very good way. Yeah, there is I think that's a really important thing I mean that's part of what we're doing with the art of disruption is to bring this kind of energy to essics That um, maybe hasn't been there in the past. Yeah Yeah, I mean part of the art of disruption is really to show People what essics has the potential to be in a lot of ways or what is already happening there Well, I don't think a lot of people really know much about the art scene even statewide sometimes But is is this going to make sort of this is junction and essics an artist kind of mecca or is it perfect segue? That's our goal um, yeah, one of the things actually um that we've been working on Sort of in conjunction, but separately at the same time uh with the steam fest is The essics hub has opened a secondary space. So essics hub is a co-working space for a sort of more traditional businesses Innovation businesses It's on pearl street, right and we've opened a second location, which is the Main street studio, which is right on main street, which is now a co-creative space for Artists artisans makers. We have four studio spaces there And we keep getting this question. Are there studio spaces in essics? Are there studio spaces in essics and I? a glutton for finding underutilized spaces and turning them into Spaces that people can really engage in whatever it is that they want to do there. So we're really hoping that We can begin to showcase Essex as a creative economy Space, you know a and we're also remarkably The end of the Train line from new york city So we frequently have artists that are coming up from new york who are stopping right in essics and then going on to the Johnson studio center To do residencies up there So we're starting to sort of think about how can essics really be positioned as a creative community and Out of that in the creative economy Everything from you know, web production and development design to fine arts and fine craft and Innovation and making so and we have all of the learning and resource and opportunities there with the tech center and with the VTC is not very far away and a lot of local manufacturers who are really interested in prototyping and that kind of thing So we can kind of bring all this stuff together in a way that makes it bigger than just This two-day event which we hope is sort of a generative spark for all of this great stuff that can happen in essics Let me ask you this Without Worrying about being inclusive or exclusive. Yeah, tell us about your sponsors. Who's helping? Oh, yeah So there's a list on the side. I know you're worried about leaving somebody out Tell us who's all participating in it So i'll tell you that the first person the first group we went to was the village The village of essics junction and we you know, we told them what we wanted to do and very bravely asked them for their support and They all jumped right on board and so they have been a financial sponsor for us and then I don't know how you pronounce the other one. Yeah, so yeah, so yeah, it's a local engineering firm Which is really about innovation and prototyping and creating new things We also have a new organization in essics that is part of An educational institution. I think that comes out of shellburn, which their new School that they're opening in essics is called steamworks and they're they're a sponsor We also have vada, which is the vermont arts teachers association When they found out we were doing the steam fest. They decided to have their Annual annual conference in conjunction with steam fest. So that's good. We have northfield savings bank Who who supported us and then earth logic and earth logic is a new company. I've seen their building. What do they do? They're they're a web design and and production marketing company That's actually made up of a number of artists and the person who made our poster for this event is the creative director at earth logic and He actually has done a lot of the posters for the first night So we approached them and they so Jeff did our poster and we're featuring some of their their employees work in The show in the in the art walk. Yeah, and then of course the essics hub is Interesting in and of itself. Yeah, so essics hub is a co-working space Our primary demographic is women though. We call ourselves a community of women and friends So we really are inclusive and the people that we Invite into our space. We provide Very economical space for people to have a home base for their business While they grow or while they begin So that they can become sustaining enough that they can move out into their own space And co-working spaces are not particularly new to The working world, but they have sort of become a Presence in vermont and the essics hub is currently the only co-working space in essics and so we really Are lucky in the fact that We're Generating a lot of interest and a lot of people come to our space and love our space and that we've Been able to really expand out now into this secondary workspace with the main street studio. So That's kind of what the essics hub is about. Excellent. Well, tell us now This is seems like a huge event and Other opportunities or needs for volunteers Yes, we will not turn a volunteer away. We can definitely use more help We have a we have a link on our website to invite people to sign up to volunteer We're going to need lots of help setting up and a lot of help breaking down Both friday and saturday as well as seen and maybe some attendance to monitor our art Make sure it's safe Yeah, so anybody who wants to volunteer and sort of be part of it and be able to sort of Walk around the town and talk to people about work You know can move from location to location as volunteers if they'd like to But just the setup itself sounds interesting The way it's going to be getting together that day or so before It's going to be a bit of a sprint. Yeah, that's great Luckily, we've had a lot of artist drop work off already So we're in the process of hanging work and and putting work in place So that we're we're ready to go And I would like to say that some of our locations where we're hosting art are also People who are sponsoring us. So nest has been a sponsor and they're hosting art and music and villado wells and company has also A sponsor and pork and pickles is a sponsor. I'm trying to make sure we haven't missed anybody harley davidson Really? Yeah. Yeah, they're not really participating in the event itself But they really believed in what we were doing and they offered some sponsorship to us. So it's great And there'll be opportunities for food and things like socializing around the restaurants are participating Yes, there's many restaurants are going to have a steamfest special for the night So rather than bring in outside food trucks for the event for friday We want people to to stop into all of our existing local restaurants and grab a bite grab a drink And then walk on to the next place It's great. That sounds like a wonderful combination of things community and art and Economic development and promotion of a very wonderful place. That's exemption So I want to uh Let people refer to that website. It's it's got all the sponsors. It's got all the events a very well done website By the way, thank you and uh, we're going to uh Conclude now and I want to thank christin humbarger and julie miller johnson For being with us on positively vermont talking about steamfest Thank you for watching


Tell us like, it could be one or two of one of your favorite memories with Eda. I know y'all got mad stories. One for me when I crashed his car. You crashed his car?   So what happened? Y'all was in the rush, y'all was going somewhere, or you was just sad? Tell us what happened. I can't really say too much. We was doing a lot, we was hot doing too much. What's one more? It could be a party, it could be in the studio, it could be...  So we was all in the house like having a Nerf war.  Type of shit? Yeah.


So actually, I'm a bit of a fraud here. So this is as you see, this is not my talk. This is boobly's talk Standing in for her. We got enough Expertise we got enough contributors to that particular feature here in the room. So please just shout and interrupt if I am talking nonsense or if you want to amend or just Expand on anything I'm saying So let's start This is about the KDE the newest KDE support in LibreOffice that has been coming For a bit of a longer time work. I think started something like two years ago And an earnest in spring last year It's been quite a bit of work Almost all of that has been funded by City of Munich. So many things for that But there's a pretty long list of luminaries I'd like to read That's my wife boobly. This is Jan Marek formerly City of Munich. This is a million from KDAP This is Samuel Michael Wigghorn from City of Munich Alexei and Vera from Altlinux, I think It's the company This is Cisco from TDF and I suppose quite a bit of spare time there This is Roman and Michael Stahl also from CIB So many things wouldn't have been possible without all of you and I think it's a great success story in terms of Getting community engaged and sharing the work here That's the talk outline. Let's not bore you with that and jump straight into That one here. So Linux as we all know, that's all about choice. So you got to pick your desktop environment. You got to compile your kernel and You can run liberal office and with the back end of your choice, which can be at least for Linux There is there used to be something like Six if I'm not mistaken or five. So that was the the old KDE 3.1. That was KDE 4. There was some old TDE that was I think a re-run of the KDE 3 Back end that we had some stage kicked out as GTK 2 and 3 and then there's a very or there used to be very plain old generic X11 Nothing fancy looks like when those 95 everything rendered with rectangles and VCL Back end as a fallback So there was a bit of cleanup recently There's more cleanup coming up with a great and kicking out GTK 2 So Yeah, the What when this started there was there was no KF 5. There was no cute 5. So with KDE 4 Slowly aging and distros largely only shipping the libraries because of liberal office It was about time to do something there and that was On top of that there was the issue with Wayland. So KDE 4 had no veil Wayland support because it was exposing too much of X11 So the only way to be future proof really with native KDE was to write or extend That back end So for VCL, well, that's um, it's anyone's guess. What's the actual acronyms meaning? So that's five examples pick one that you like. I like the last one very much It's but it's this one But you knew that I guess So that's essentially that the GUI abstraction or most of the GUI abstraction from liberal office with several back-end implementations for the major platforms and With so-called plugs for for linux so that you can at run time more or less or during bootstrapping liberal office choose which of those Desktop environments or plugs you want to run And attending everything from from windows over menus to printing And also file dialogues but more boring details for those of you who are not aware of it there's one Saal instance, which is the the let's say the the one Singleton that you that you get that you create yourself when you want to run a GUI application And that's a factory for for giving you everything else that you need from from Windows on the screen to file pickers And like any sort of graphical thing and then from the window on the screen you get something that you can Call like draw circle or draw rectangle on Which is the cell frame so that's the actual system window So did the actual thing that whatever is on your system is putting pixel on your on your display That includes menus anything that is floating tooltips Popups so anything that is really not Within the the document area so that can go beyond that or or dialogues And also the list books toolbox drop downs So that's just a bit more Graphical how that relates I'm very much like to selly instance For a bit of more diversity in the and the naming compared to Saal instance Yeah So obviously The Saal instance That's what you get from your plug and then from that factory you're getting all this. This is all like virtual classes, so you that's like an abstract class and you're getting an instance of that that's done a GTK frame or acute frame or X11 frame Which then actually knows what to do how to how to display things how to create system-level objects How to react on events and also how to create and return Child objects of that for example the Saal graphics, which is the implement or the the interface to use When you want to draw something visual And also actually also the the abstraction for the native widgets Which I will get to a bit later So that's the graphics for that So how how was that done it was one obvious way would have been to take the KDE for back-end and Just reuse that improve that changed a few things in the API that have that needed Modification and then run with that and retire KDE for and just use the newer stuff What that's what not what happened so what actually happened is the more or lesser writing a plugin from scratch By the way GTK 2 GTK 3 that was mostly reused by Well actually including that reusable code By preprocessor and then adding whatever changes were necessary on top so that that was considered but then deemed not Possible And I will tell you why Yeah, I mentioned that Katie for was on the way out so to stay relevant there There were two options either retire KDE support native KDE support and completely Or to do something more modern But also more effort Katie for was essentially a quick quick hack Just a thin layer around like the most minimal thing you could do a thin layer around the existing x11 plugin just whatever you needed to make KDE Config and theming accessible that was done there everything else was just reused from the x11 plugin With a bit of like some some tricks like for the native look of the widgets that was just calling some theming API with a here's some Here's some pics map or here's some Well in this case actually Yeah, well it was a Q pics maps it was so from that you could get a Actual x11 pics map and that you can just split on screen, but all of that was exposing x11 implementation details and had a lot of drawbacks among them that it wasn't really and it was showing on Any number of places no real KDE application We're on top of that slow painting no no proper caching etc. So that's that's how that went So you you had some just this cute style thing that was rendering Into the button into an image Which was backed by by a pics map so from the pics map You could then just split that on screen and there was the button Also, it was reusing obviously because it didn't have any any own event loop the xlib event loop with another set of drawbacks Coming out of that which for example meant that there were no real KDE or cute style native Model dialogues possible. So if you if you who's using KDE is there desktop One two at least three Four great. So I mean the model dialogue and a KDE application that kind of really Dims the the background window makes it inaccessible and Obviously like very obviously puts that that the dialogue this okay or cancel button or something in in the foreground and It's a very obvious thing that's very visible and very nice and if an application does not do that It's it's a bit like on on Mac. It feels a bit alien Yes, obviously no wayland support because with all this x11 or at least no direct wayland support You can of course use some x wayland Emulation but no native wayland for because of rendering and because of events so Direct port not possible because all that API was no longer available or is no longer available in k5 So that was essentially what we were looking at All the best intentions opening the door and there we go, okay Challenges So we can't use obviously we can't use x11 windows. What else to do? Well, we can go and write some abstraction ourselves like x11 if We run on x11 or wayland compositor if we run there, but it's a bit But what makes things even harder? So why not use qt 5 that has all this nice abstraction already built in And that would mean also using q windows the the the cute events With all this nice in this case Nice side effects of getting native modal dialogues and native menu support With this q-window and q-widget We were prototyping or pondering two options there like to sub Options one would be because if you one obvious way then is to use a cute and and swallow that Line hook and sinker which also means that you need to run the application Which is that the writer impress renders the application content and you also need to somehow bridge that Vcl output device API to whatever Or in this case style graphic API to whatever cute offers Which we discovered is not that hard for with the exception of the font Stuff font selection font layout thing which was at least There was no way to estimate how much effort that would possibly be and with the with the with the Lot very likely outcome that there would be no end of tiny little differences like not getting the same font and the writer would The the the layout team would be slightly off than the document would look slightly like 10 pages longer with all this Knock on effect, so we thought that's a bit too much of a risk forgetting that ready to be to be used in real production, so we went for a variant two which is a Bit of a it took a bit of an inspiration from the earlier KDE for implementation In a sense that there is a backing Score or or a background image That gets the entire window content including the controls like document content and controls and That was still available, so we could get some Cairo surface Handed over to cute and let cute and get a cute image for that and the cute painter and get this This then handed over to the theming API and that could then render the button into that and we could then blip that on to the screen And we already had that because we have this headless tile graphics, which is actually what what's a GTK 3? using as well To render all this stuff, so that was a bit of existing technology existing Machinery we could build on top and we had the The safety in that we could that was exactly the same fund layout in fund selection chain as before so No, no risk of regressions or of different behavior there so That's how it looks not So so that part is exactly a how how cute 3 sorry GTK 3 is doing that and Kind of inspired by but is this earlier hacks with a KD for Yeah, event handling So no more Xlip event handling, so we now needed to implement cute event handling And we also needed to somehow map user events into that framework So we had to essentially write a cute main loop Connector and also use the signal slots stuff whenever we needed to know something about Events like anything from redraw to Dialogue closed or or other Things so with that all in place As mentioned earlier there was suddenly a native menu support available which for KDE means this global menu like You might know that from that's one option that that's optional, but as you know that from from OS X Because it was all kind of I mean that's Once you are able to to put the menu into into cute The rest is handled by the platform for you What's what what of great help there the the earlier work? That I think was that canonical funding that with the yeah for the For the unity desktop with a separate menu, so it was already infrastructure in place to have an abstract menu with pushing the menus and sub menus and items Like the menu structure over some some abstract API and so we were just just implementing that Same story for native theming So that was works for notebook bar and tap dialogue so that Looks almost like the real thing It's it's always like for everything in LibreOffice It's all always only or almost only the look and not to feel except for the For the welded stuff that the quail in a stewing since a while Said I wouldn't see we also be possible for for that here, but let's not get overboard for the moment So that's that's on the on the same level now as it is for for OS X or for Windows Yeah, another interesting challenge was file pickers There as well some some background. So this is also abstracted away And the solid stem so you get you can get native file pickers Created there. It's kind of optional. So you can also kind of change the option and get the old Like built-in LibreOffice controls file picker stuff, but it's well, yeah, that's but ugly So that was certainly also possible and we wanted to do that That's how it works. Give me your file picker then you get this thing It has a bit of API so you can actually modify how that looks you can add and remove Some controls like this those checkboxes now You can like not only put them there you can also disable them or enable them you can select pre-select them deselect them and that's for this password and GPG and a file name extension or something and also for I think for The image thing. There's also some preview option there So then we did that in two steps. So we we wanted Something right so there was there was another intermediate step there, which is using the GTK 3 block But with the KDE theming so GTK 3 detects I'm running on a KDE desktop and then adjust the theming appropriately so that almost looks like The real thing the only thing that was obviously not looking like the real thing with the file pickers So that was this intermediate step that first as the first thing Beyond using GTK 3 also on KDE Was to implement the file pickers and if you don't want to get the cute event loop and all all the other stuff with that Piggy backing That would there was the need to do that out of process So there was a separate binary that was linking to a cute and KDE libraries That was communicating with the main developers process by IPC but essentially pipes and getting some parameters and Giving something back and the when the user That's some activity there Yeah, and it was there was something like 90% of the functionality, but it was an intermediate step So that that was how that look before which is kind of Windows 95 again, and that's the native K5 Set up there. So Well with that that that was the first step that would act that was actually rolled out and was was used or is still used But we didn't stop there because it was We could we could do more.  So but the other thing like for anybody who's really using that on a daily basis it's just it's just too obvious and So we went further And That's what was I was mentioning and now comes the stuff that we actually Discovered when we did all of that and thought we were ready and done and it would all be wonderful and fine in shipping and 6.2 But there actually that was a bit more That we discovered then That needed doing As always when you go into production So copy and paste Let's quickly go through that this is essentially just describing how it's how it's how it's set up and liberal for so there's this Internal copy paste as this within the same window. There's between liberal for this application But still the same process and then there's the system clipboard And it's all slightly different How that is handled? Then there's this very funny x11 clipboard or Quite I think an infinite number of x11 clipboards that you can use if you want to Yeah, and that's this is all abstracted away behind you know API Which is a theory nice and practice sometimes a bit hard to Follow the the code path now Same story with drag-and-drop Also like internal external inside the same frame and between frames Yes, so all of that needed with the native Queue windows that needed a native a mapping to the native queued Implementation to be able to work either just using it when it supported all the features or Tunneling some handle through that and then taking it out on the other hand and discovering that Aha, I know this and then taking the data straight away from the other side Interesting aspect that also we largely only discovered in production was Extensions, especially Java extensions have this this very nasty habit of calling back into your so you call them with an event And then they call you back but from another threat which is Most of the time that's fine, but it's kind of sucks when you then need to do anything with the UI like open a dialogue open a window create a control because some Widget Libraries and queued as one of them really don't like that when you do anything with widgets outside the main thread So that needed some Some surgery there and you find a number of extra places now with this is main thread run in main thread code that is actually a method on the solid instance Where you can just say okay? I'm getting a call, but I'm not I can't call this function now So I'm just posting a message message to the main thread and then the main thread loop is still kind of spinning and then it takes the message and calls the method and Since either sends a message back if there's a return value or keeps spinning and the other code runs keeps running as well And we use that for example in a slightly different flavor on windows as well because that it's not that you must use it Call it in the main thread, but you must call when you it's called threat affinity So you do something you create a window in one thread and any further action with that window that involves that windows Message loop also have to has to be performed in that thread. Usually it's the main thread. What doesn't have to be Yes, and then all the like the long long tail of things that you discover and Didn't think about that initially Like native tooltips All this update glitches like off by one errors clipping not not precisely said This this funny tools rectangle that always surprises you with a way that it calculates width and height Floating toolbars Like that those I think some five or ten Different issues there to get that to dog and undock also not only on x11, but also on Wayland Getting presets right like UI fonts and getting open GL right for the slight transitions CJK I am e support which no one really from us knew anything about at least I can say that and Learn something in the process Accessibility which turned out to be actually not so bad. That was some there was Moderately good support in in cute if we would have done that a year earlier would have been much worse So there was a bit of a sweet spot that when we started Jewel screen or we found a great bug there that was dual screen that is now fixed and in the latest Cute updates, but not what is on mainstream desktop operation system. So if you really need your KDE desktop and Libra office to do something like this like present your slides Then maybe you should use the GTK 3 Back end at least for that day Because there's a bug that makes dual screen or multi-screen support a bit flaky And yeah crashes polishing rough edges, etc. Etc So that gets me to the end and So the status right now is it's It's in six two most of the fixes and changes is also backported to six two, but not everything so the Really the the full glory is in six three if you're building that yourself Do that with the Neville cute and enable K5. Oh, yeah, we also renamed that because somebody told us that KDE is not the right name Kde five. It's K5 and we should be shamed and embarrassed to Not have it have it named properly in the first place Yeah, and it's enabled for daily builds. So if you got Linux dailies, it should be there the plug-in And it's now so I would say it's on the level of GTK 3 now At least if you count the open bugs So I think everything that you I mean there's always Never nothing is really ever buck-free, but but you can now actually product if you work with it and people do that All right, that is some pretty much the end of the talk and the end of the time Any questions the extensions and the the interesting bit with the threat affinity and they're Messing that up the two things. So first, how did it work in the past and second? What happens if the if the extension expects? Synchronicity in in the order of things as in if you return before the thing that they invoked actually finishes You might mess up their expectation Maybe you can yeah, but I Should probably not just saying here So yeah, that actually works because the The run in main thread blocks usually until the the main thread is done And it used to work in the past because X 11 you can you can do X 11 stuff from from whatever Threat you'd like to just accidentally worked Okay, maybe one last question. Then I think we really are out of time anybody three to Use the microphone. So I repeat the question 10. Can we use that without the cave 5? Yes, yes with the Qt file enabled switch Absolutely, yeah, great for I mean we didn't kill GTK 3 or Well, I think X 11 is also Is it so I think GTK 2 is essentially I mean just somebody needs to push that patch Yeah, right now the GTK 2 one has a patch to remove us in Garrett and the generic one is In that intended to be touched for the moment Microsoft is a very good argument that it's good to have one back end That is guaranteed to work when you're doing bisecting regardless of what kind of versions of stuff you've got installed So JDK 2 would probably go away and I'm not going to do anything about generic one myself Great, thanks a lot then


The Iroquois Seventh Generation Principle is an extension of Maqasid-e-Sharia. In a conceptual, you can see the parallel there, the Maqasid-e-Sharia, which are six. The preservation of religion, the preservation of life, the preservation of the intellect, the preservation of property, lineage, and honor, right? For seven generations. For seven generations. That's what we know are reminded of at this Thanksgiving, this Thanksgiving. We thank the Iroquois for infusing our considerations and our decisions with the Seventh Generation Principle, because it's there. It's not mentioned. How is it mentioned in the Sharia and the Maqasid? Through the word hifth, through the word preservation, right? And preservation does not have a shelf life of two weeks or even two years. Preservation means for all time and for all places that every single ruling of the Sharia will have the color and the hue of these Maqasid, of these objectives, and these objectives are what give this religion permanence and what allows it to adapt based on its very own principles, right? That are unchanging. The principles are unchanging, although the rulings themselves may take various forms.


I look 55. Oedrych chi ddeith� cous deaf Oedrych chi ddeith� cous deaf I look 55. Oedrych chi ddeithaszaw I look 55. Oedrych chi ddeith Bism郎 Os y day ybod thanks abandoned Cir رmouth Cir rhannus Cir rhannus Cir rhannus er mwyn yn ddigwelio dim enwedig yn gyda'r Gwyrddon. Rydyn ni'n mwyn, Cyfnodd MacDonald, mae gennych i chi i'ch gael eich ddweud, ddim iawn i gwaith eu gymhneid rydyn ni'n bridegareddol hefyd? Felly niech chi'n sgwm yn gwneud. Rydyn ni'n gwneud feddwl ar y gallu'r galyddol achos y chyfgrifennidó i fod ei gwyllgor yr arloedd i chi agfod ar gael. Felly pob ddim mwyllfa mwneud am gweithio gallu ei gyn conscience i ddamiaith y tro. Dad's Ock was formed in 2012 in my constituency and before we recognised the achievement of this small charity we need to understand why it was necessary for it starting in the first place. In Scotland, more and more fathers are sharing or fulfilling the primary care role, resulting in a groundswell in recognition of the importance of working with dads to allow them to spend more time with their kids. The organisation working families said that fathers want to spend more time with their children and are doing more of the direct care for them. Research suggests that this desire for more time with their family is widespread, with 82 per cent of full-time working men saying they would like this. The fatherhood institute said that a substantial number of fathers are now full or part-time home dads, with 21 per cent of fathers of children under five, solely responsible for childcare at some point during the working week, and 43 per cent of fathers of school-age children providing care before or after school. In a recent study by the Equality and Human Rights Commission found that 60 per cent of parents said that fathers should spend more time with their children. The research shows that higher direct involvement from dads leads to a more positive outcome for our children. That is just some of the background to why Dad's Ock was founded by two Edinburgh fathers who came together wanting to start something to help others and have fun with their kids at the same time. There was no equivalent service in Edinburgh offered by the local council for fathers. Dad's Ock was started to fill that gap and is now the only free weekend service that makes space for all sorts of dads, grandads and male carers to come and play with their children and develop a network of support from other fathers. The founders had a good understanding of what dads wanted being dads themselves, and they came up with a winning combination, a free musical play group feeding into many people's love of music, allowing dads to know that this common bond would make it an inviting place to come without judgment or pressure. Over time, the Dad's Ock team found that dads wanted more outings with their children, so they have increased the number of free outings, giving dads the confidence to discover new places such as the national galleries or a city centre farm in a relaxed way to have fun with their kids and speak to other dads. Dad's Ock has now been going for two years. It's amazing to see the need for such an organisation grow, and they have recently been able to launch a Glasgow play group to enable them to support more families. They are working in partnership with the award-winning peak project in Glasgow, which provides vital street play for children. Dad's Ock has also built formal and informal relationships with a wide variety of organisations such as Fife Gingerbread, local midwifery and social work teams, Pilton Community Health Project, One Parent Family Support, Stepping Stones Edinburgh, the Broomhouse Centre, the Violence Reduction Unit and Whale Arts, to name but a few. They have also reached out to local schools and nurseries, have had referrals from several social work teams, and have been working with local health agencies to deliver specific messages on male health. The feedback from all this activity clearly indicates that their service has had a positive impact on parents from both a resilient point of view, improving attachments between children and parents, and expanding their social circle to allow new families. Dad's Ock is about promoting positive images of fathers and highlighting that dads want to be seen as being just as vital to their children's upbringing. In order to get that message across, they have built relationships with local councillors, MSPs and the Scottish Government, and their influence is such that even the Minister for Children and Young People herself opened one of their play groups. Dad's Ock has become advocates for dads and families and helped them to have a voice at local and national level. They now sit on the Scottish Government's fathers advisory panel, as well as their young father panel and the Edinburgh Council play forum. Through their success, they have become advocates for others to refer to. For example, the Scottish Government, the Scottish Book Trust and the MSPs have all approached Dad's Ock asking for assistance in engaging with dads. This level of engagement and development of the charity resulted in 2013, when families voted for Dad's Ock to win a local parenting magazine award called the Parents' Choice Award. Then, in June of this year, the Dad's Ock team were nominated for two national awards, organised by What's On for Little Ones. Those were the most outstanding toddler group and one for the most outstanding volunteer. Over 90,000 votes were cast for all the nominees and Dad's Ock were up against well-known national organisations. Despite that, they became the only dads group through to the final and one of the few representing Scotland. One of their volunteers, Steve Leslie, had been nominated by local dads for the most outstanding volunteer. Every week, he gave us time free of charge to set up the play group and pack everything away at the end of a hectic session. Served on the board of Dad's Ock produced CDs of the Dad's Ock members singing with their kids and generally helping out where necessary. The Dad's Ock delegates attending the event were astounded to win in both categories and in true Dad's Ock style, they led 150 strong attendees and a sing song of We Will Rock You. So, congratulations to the Dad's Ock team for all their hard work and thanks to the families who voted for them, but especially thanks to the dads and their children who have made Dad's Ock the success that it is. Many thanks. I now call on Cara Hilton to be followed by Christian Allard. I begin by thanking Gordon MacDonald on securing this debate today. I hope that it is going to be less controversial than our discussions earlier this afternoon. I was delighted to hear that Dad's Ock has won an award for the most outstanding baby and toddler group. It is hard to believe that Dad's Ock was only established just two and a half years ago, yet already it is an international award winner. It is great to see some of Dad's Ock people here in the gallery today. I would like to extend my congratulations to all those involved in getting Dad's Ock off the ground and ensuring its huge success as it expands its network of free musical playgroups across Scotland and more dads and more children have access to the Dad's Ock experience. I first came across Dad's Ock myself when the contact made to help with their search for a playgroup venue in Dunfermline. The Dunfermline group started up in June 2013, and I persuaded my husband to go along with my two youngest children. I have to admit that he was really reluctant to go along. I virtually had to push him through the door, but he must have enjoyed it because he's been going along ever since. My four-year-old son delights in singing the Dad's Ock signature tune, We Will Rock You, at the top of his voice all the time. The Dunfermline group has since been facilitated by Dad's Ock five co-ordinator Bruce Henderson, who has done a really fantastic job working with Dad's Ock Edinburgh and getting the group off the ground, reaching out to dads from all backgrounds and keeping the children entertained. Bruce has now moved on to facilitate Dad's Ock in Buckhaven and is working on launching a new group in Abbey View next month, hopefully. The dads who met Dad's Ock Dunfermline have now started their own free playgroup, Dunfermline Dads, and, like Dad's Ock, it's going from strength to strength. More dads are attending every week, and they've even started up their own five-a-side football team as well. For most mums, having a baby opens up by a new social circle, from the buggy walks to baby massage, from playgroups to book bug sessions, there's lots of opportunities for mums to make new friends and meet other mums going through the same experiences. However, as Gordon MacDonald has already highlighted, becoming a dad for the first time can often be difficult, especially for younger dads and those without family support, and the increasing number of stay-at-home dads with primary care responsibilities. Many dads simplified the whole experience quite isolating, and that's where Dad's Ock comes in. It's more than just a playgroup. It's a unique place where dads can speak to other dads about dad things, where dads can find invaluable peer support while playing with their children, where dads can be supported to be the best parents that they can be. In Fife, 5th gingerbread has successfully used the Dad's Ock model to work with teenagers and more vulnerable parents, and this work is especially beneficial in extending further support to dads outwith the formal playgroup setting. It's more costly but it does offer huge rewards, and it's absolutely vital that this work continues to be supported. Longer term funding is absolutely crucial if new groups are to be developed in the Dad's Ock models to be extended into more communities to reach more dads, grandads and male carers. Culture is also a challenge, and the project workers that I've spoken to in the ground tell me that in many of our communities, dads can be a bit reluctant to come forward, and when they do, it takes them a week while to get involved in the storytelling and especially in the singing. Reaching out to more vulnerable dads is especially challenging, and this can particularly be the case where dads have had a difficult time when they were young or where other personal challenges make it difficult to develop secure bonds and relationships with their children. That's why the partnership work is so vital in breaking this mould, encouraging positive interactions and relationships between dads and their children, given dads the extra support they need and recognising that dads are central to the family equation and play a vital role in the upbringing of their children. The result is more creative play, better relationships and a better, happier future for both dad and child, both in the preschool years, when children start school and when children become parents themselves. Can I conclude by once again congratulating dads rock on their achievements so far? I hope that they continue their brilliant work in reaching out to more dads from all backgrounds across all our communities, helping to ensure that we really do get it right for every single child and helping in the goal that we all have across the chamber of building a better and brighter future for children, dads and families right across Scotland. Thank you very much. I now call on Christian Alard to be followed by Mary Scanlon. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I would like to thank Gordon Macdonald to bring this debate to the chamber today. It's very, very important that we celebrate what fathers are today in the 21st century. I do know a bit of dads rock. One of the reasons I do know a bit of dads rock is because they came to our committee, to the Equal Opportunities Committee, when we had an inquiry on fathers and parenting. I was very pleased to be part of that inquiry and did share some of my experiences with some people of dads rock, some of the members of dads rock. I've got to declare an interest as well. I was a single father for more than 10 years and this great support that groups like dads rock are providing now for people like myself where single parents and let's not forget that more than 3 million children living in a single parent household and 23% of them have dependent children and around 8% of single parents, 136,000 are fathers so I was not on my own and dads single fathers are definitely not on their own. But more than that what so impressed me about dads rock and is the reason I'm so delighted to celebrate it today is that dads rock is so much in advance compared to other groups. We did visited other groups and I went to see one of the group in Aberdeen in the region I represent where maybe more focused on parents fathers who had some other problems than looking after their children. And what I recognize very much is that the approach that dads rock took and particularly the name you choose not only your t-shirts I think your t-shirts are fantastic and look great but the name you took dads rock and what I mean by this I think and you said it yourself in some of the evidence you give us. It's the idea that dads in families are the rock as perceived as a rock but in fact dads and I know that for myself fathers just like mothers I've got time when we need supports we are no more rocks than mothers are and it's very, very important that we recognize in the 21st century in this society in modern Scotland that fathers need help as well and it has maximum support and mothers do. And what I want to add by this is I want to say that fathers, particularly fathers in today's society when gender is still very much stereotyped, fathers not only need all that kind of support but they need to come out of the darkness. I mean by this they are not visible, fathers are not seen as mothers and it's very, very important that we change the attitudes of people around us and dad rocks are doing a fantastic, a refer again to the t-shirts I think it's that visual effect, that effect of saying we are dads and we are proud to be fathers and we want to be seen just like mothers. And that vulnerability which is important is that we may be seen as rock inside as a family, as a big part of the family but that rock is fragile as well and needs as much help as possible and this is a fantastic idea and this idea that we have more and more of this group growing all across Scotland makes me very, very proud to be in this debate today and to celebrate the fact that we are fathers. One thing we celebrate enough is the role of fathers today. We need to celebrate a lot more. I do remember that at school, mother's days was always a special day and somehow father's day was a lesser day. We need to address this. We need to shout to the rooftop the contribution that fathers are doing today. As I said again, I'm delighted to be here today and to speak about the role of fathers in society today because, believe me, just like mothers, fathers need support, all the support they can get and I recognise dad rocks but you're encouraging fathers to be all that they can be. Thank you. Mary Scanlon, after which I'll move to the closing speech to the minister. I would also like to thank Gordon MacDonald for this debate and the dads to their gallery today, T-shirts and all. That's rock deserves commendation on their group award for the most outstanding baby and toddler group, as well as board member Steve Leslie's individual award, most outstanding community group volunteer for children or families. This is a very impressive hall, given that the awards celebrate the best of children's activities and classes from across the UK, Ireland and Australia. We are decided, as Gordon MacDonald said, after a massive 90,000 votes were cast. Black groups have a special and important role for early childhood education. Many provide a wider range of equipment and activities than some may have access to at home, such as sand, water play, arts and crafts and, of course, the making and listening to music. Like many other groups, dad's rock is free, which allows the service to be accessed by many families. Dad's rock is able to provide the service free because of its own fundraising efforts. I'm pleased to say that, even last Saturday, it raised £1400 at its annual fundraiser. In addition to its Saturday play sessions, the rock academy allows children and dads to learn musical instruments. Together, it demonstrates their understanding of the importance of parents interacting with their children's first learning experiences. We've heard so much from the previous chief medical officer about early attachment between parents and child and how beneficial that is. Attending a play group has multiple benefits for children but also for parents. For children, the exposure to new experiences and the emphasis on learning through play encourages them to develop skills such as interacting confidently with other children, learning to explore the world around them and to problem solve. For parents, those groups allow them to meet other parents, participate in their child's early education and a place to discuss concerns, experiences and development. Parent-led play groups are invaluable in confirming their role parents have in their child's education. As others have said, dad's rock was founded by two fathers who understood the importance that play groups have in supporting parents and allowing parents and children to learn together but who were dismayed that there existed no groups run by dads for dads in Edinburgh. As a representative from the Highlands and Islands, I have to say you're far ahead of anything that's there and I would like to think that maybe you could come up to Inverness and beyond and show how it's done because if there's a need here, there's a need in every part of Scotland. However, the ambition for Scotland where dads are seen as being equally valuable and vital is great. However, it must be said that it's disappointing that it's not always the case and whilst it's for another debate for another day, I hope that dad's access to their children following the separation of parents is something that can be looked at more sympathetically in future than it is at the present time. I can honestly say that there's not a weak passes but I hear from a dad somewhere in the Highlands and Islands. Please, can you do something to let me see my child? Of course, very rarely I can't do anything. When equal opportunities committee were taking evidence in March, there were several submissions. One particular, Alan Reddick, a dad of two, spoke about taking his daughter to activities, including dance classes. He commented, while nobody speaks to the only dad in the room, dads feel out of place and I think that I shouldn't be here, this isn't for me. Dr Claptain, Gary Claptain of Edinburgh University, submitted his research talking of the positively involved fathering as incontestable and proven. In summing up, I would like to say, Presiding Officer, I speak from personal experience as Christian Ballard did when I say how much children need fathers and how difficult and often impossible it is for a single mum to fill that gap. Dad's Rock deserves praise for their commitment to learning through play and parent-child interaction and the support that they provide for fathers. I thank you to Gordon MacDonald and I wish that Dad's Rock will all through Scotland and not just in Edinburgh. I also thank those members who have stayed here to show their support for Dad's Rock. It's nice to be able to welcome Dad's Rock to the Parliament again. I've been personally delighted to hear of their success and I'd like to add my own congratulations to them in winning those internationally recognised awards. Thomas and David, who created Dad's Rock, as Gordon MacDonald outlined back in 2011 because they strongly believed then, as they do now, that dads can and do play a vital role in the upbringing of their children. I wholeheartedly support that belief and I know that most dads want to be fully involved in their children's lives from day one. I also know that, at times, some organisations in some sectors, including schools, GPs, playgroups and parent and toddler groups, can unintentionally make dads feel unwelcome or excluded. As I'm sure Dad's Rock would advocate, it's time that this changed. We can all see more and more dads taking a principal role when it comes to raising their wee ones, often supported by organisations like Dad's Rock. Indeed, my own personal experience reflects that given that I'm lucky enough to have such unwavering support from my own husband when it comes to caring for and raising our wee boy Angus. I no doubt when the next one comes along because I can confirm that this bump is a baby and not the result of a poor campaign diet. We know instinctively that fathers can and do play an extremely important role in their children's upbringing. We need to do all that we can to support and encourage their involvement right from the very start, from pregnancy to birth through the early years and beyond. Indeed, when I was at a Sense Scotland conference earlier this year, one of the most beautiful things I heard was how a father's voice can get through to the womb much more easily because of the deep bassy tones. That was a lovely way in which a father can have a real involvement during their partner's pregnancy. We need to make sure that we do everything we can to involve particularly dads from the start of pregnancy into the child's upbringing. During our wide-ranging consultations with fathers and professionals across Scotland during the development of our national parenting strategy, we heard how many fathers didn't feel engaged, valued or encouraged to be active and involved parents.  As a result of what we heard during that consultation, the parenting strategy that we launched in October 2012 recognises that fathers should undeniably be closely involved in their children's lives at every single stage. As we continue to move forward with implementation of the strategy, we are working with a number of our partners to look at how we can make services relevant and better able to involve fathers more positively in the upbringing of their children. We are looking at how the strategy fits for fathers and what we really need to do to listen effectively and respond positively to what dads really want and need. I know that that is of particular interest to Christian Allard, given his own personal interests, but also because of the work that he carried out on the Equal Opportunities Committee. Through that work, we plan to continue to ensure that services such as health education and the third sector make dads feel welcome and included. For example, we are currently working alongside children in Scotland to look at ways in which our public bodies can ensure more equal treatment of dads when it comes to parenting responsibilities. We are funding organisations such as Fathers Network Scotland to deliver practical support to people and organisations at the front line who work every day with fathers and families in Scotland. We are working closely with Fathers Network Scotland to co-chair the National Fathers advisory panel, which meets throughout the year to consider how fathers can contribute to policy and practice development right across Government. We are constantly looking at how we can better engage dads and, most recently, members of the panel have been helping us to restyle our play-talk reads and family information service websites to ensure that they work in a way that speaks directly to dads. That work is all very positive and there are many people and organisations working really hard to meet the changing needs of families and fathers in Scotland, but we need to go further. We all need to think more broadly about how we portray fathers and how we can improve our interactions with them and how we celebrate them as Christian talked about in his speech. Positive messaging about fathers is critical in that process. The media, marketing, social norms, public attitudes and public services all have a role to play. As Gordon, Mary and Christian have all said, good relationships and positive social networks are equally as important for fathers as they are for mothers. I just heard today of a dad who has set up a new dad and toddler group in Barhead, supported by the early years' collaborative in East Renfrewshire, because he really wanted to provide an opportunity for local dads there and their children to meet up, to socialise, to make new pals and to support one another. Cara Hilton spoke of potential projects in Fife, and who knows, perhaps Highlands will be the next step on the map, as Mary Scanlon hoped that it would be in her speech. We need to see more initiatives such as supporting Scotland's fathers and their children, and we will continue to work with members of the Fathers advisory panel, including Dad's Rock and Fathers Network Scotland, over the next few months to map the delivery of support groups for dads right across the country. That will mean that we will better understand the provision and consider what else needs to be done to fill the gaps to encourage participation and to widen access. Tonight is about congratulating and celebrating Dad's Rock on winning the most outstanding baby and toddler group category at the international Watsonford junior awards. That is a great and much-deserved achievement for such a young charity. I think that the point that Cara made in just the two short years to be able to have those achievements is quite incredible. But now, in the eighth year, the awards celebrate the best activities, the best classes and party providers from all over the UK, as nominated and voted for by some 90,000 parents and carers. And congratulations also goes to Steve Leslie for winning the most outstanding community group volunteer for children and young families. What a complete inspiration Steve is for us all, so across the Parliament we want to say to Steve, well done and very well done indeed. Now, as Gordon noted, I have had the pleasure of visiting Dad's Rock and was fortunate to attend the opening of their grant and project. I was also really struck by their sense of fun and their dedication to promoting positive images of fatherhood. It was set up by dads for dads, as others have said. Their playgroup are positive, enjoyable and rocking places to be on a Saturday morning. Like Cara Hilton, my husband and my wee boy enjoyed themselves when they came with me to visit the project in Granton. I am glad and I was relieved. I do not know if Cara had a chance to sing We Will Rock You, but I was glad that the boys were singing out, droned out my poor attempts at joining in with the singing as well. It certainly was incredibly fun and my husband and wee boy loved their time there, albeit just a short time on a Saturday morning. Dad's Rock has also taken part in the second learning session of the earlier's collaborative in the SCCC in May of last year. That was a memorable occasion, not least because they had 800 people on their feet singing and if you are happy and you know it, clap your hands. There was also a serious side to their participation as they shared how they uniquely in Scotland bring fathers and children together for fun, for music, for messiness, but most importantly for bonding and attachment as well. Do not just take my word for it feedback from the dads themselves is much more worthy of mention when they have said Saturday mornings are always about Dad's Rock, Saturday mornings are now about Daddy and Daughter Day and I look forward to Saturday so I can catch up with the other dads and I can feel comfortable speaking about dad and male issues with others. When I asked to sum up Dad's Rock in a few words, Dad said, a one off, there is nothing else like it. It's unique, good laugh, good guys, great kids and of course somebody else said it was simply rocking. I would like to thank Gordon MacDonald once again and the others who have contributed to tonight's debate. I would also like to warmly thank Thomas, David, Steve and the rest of the team at Dad's Rock for their continued and instincting commitment to Scotland's children and their fathers and I wish them every success for the future.


So let's introduce a completely useless way to solve equations. Why would we introduce something that's completely useless? Because in mathematics, as in life, it's the journey, not the destination. So let's see if we can find a formula for the solutions to a system of equations. And we can do this by reducing the augmented coefficient matrix. Our row echelon form will give us the system of equations, and provided this coefficient of x2 is not equal to zero, we can divide by it and get our solution for x2, and then use back substitution to find x1. And this gives us a set of formulas for x1 and x2 in terms of the coefficients and constant of the original equations. And this result illustrates something about the nature of time. If you'd done this 300 years ago, people today would be talking about your rule. But since you didn't do this 300 years ago, people are talking about Kramer's rule. And this is because a Swiss mathematician by the name of Gabriel Kramer gave the first generalized statement of this form. And he essentially said the solutions to this system of linear equations are going to be this. And Kramer didn't include the proviso that the denominator can't be equal to zero. It was implied from the formulas. Kramer went on to give a similar rule for solving systems with three equations and three unknowns. And, as stated by Kramer, these rules are rather horrific-looking formulas. But let's see if we can simplify them a little bit. So a little analysis goes a long way. And in this case, two important pieces of analysis are, what do these formulas have in common, and where have I seen this before? And the first thing we might notice is both of these formulas have as denominator this expression. And, well, I have no idea where I've seen this before, but I do know that these are going to come from the solution to the system of equations. So maybe I'll write down my system of equations and get the coefficient matrix. And if we look at the determinant of our coefficient matrix, we get exactly the denominators of our two solutions. What shall we do next? As a general rule, figuring out the next step is a matter of intuition and insight, most of which are gained through having solved many, many, many problems. But there are some ways of gaining that insight and intuition without having solved quite so many problems. And here's a case where mathematics diverges from the real world. In the real world, wishing it were so doesn't work. In mathematics, it's sometimes useful. But you have to make the right wish. In general, the wish that works in mathematics is wishing things were more consistent. In this particular case, our denominator is a determinant, so we might wish that our numerators were also determinants. So if we look at our numerator for x1, we see that it has the factors a22 and a12. So we'll want to keep that. And it also has these factors b1 and b2, which seem to have replaced the a11 and the a12. Well, if I just replace them, then I find that the determinant of this matrix, which is the coefficient matrix with the first column replaced by the constant column, is going to give us the numerator of x1. And we make the same wish. I wish that the numerator of x2 was also a determinant. And wishing will make it so, provided we do a little bit of work. We're not quite so divergent from the real world in that respect. We see that if we replace our second column with the column of constants, then the determinant of the resulting matrix will in fact be the numerator of the fraction that gives us x2. We can generalize this result for any system of equations. So let a be the coefficient matrix of a system of equations, and axi be the coefficient matrix where the i-th column, corresponding to the coefficients of the variable xi, has been replaced by the constant vector. Provided our determinant is not equal to zero, then xi is going to be the quotient of the determinant of this axi matrix divided by the determinant of a. So let's say I want to solve the system of equations using Kramer's rule. So I need to find a bunch of determinants. So first, I have my matrix of coefficients, and we'll find that determinant. Next, we'll replace the first column with the column of constants and find the determinant, and that'll give us negative 22. Next, we'll take our coefficient matrix and replace the second column with our column of constants, and the resulting matrix has determinant 7. And we can substitute these values into Kramer's rule and find the solutions for x1 and x2. Now on the surface, Kramer's rule seems to be a great thing. Here's a way that we can solve a system of equations very easily. The problem is that when we actually try to implement it, we find it's actually very difficult to implement because we have to find all of these determinants. So in practice, nobody uses Kramer's rule to solve anything more complicated than a 2x2 equation. However, the generalization of Kramer's rule does give us a very important result. If the determinant of A is not equal to zero, then our xi's have unique solutions because the determinants have unique values. And the real importance is the journey, not the destination. And in this particular case, the journey tells us the following. Let A be the coefficient matrix for a system of equations. If the determinant of A is not equal to zero, then the system of equations will have a unique solution. On the other hand, if the determinant of A is equal to zero or fails to exist because our coefficient matrix might not have a determinant, then the system of equations will not have a unique solution. And there are two possibilities at this point. Either the system of equations has infinitely many solutions or the system of equations might have no solutions at all.


No, absolutely. I think uh, I mean it's accuracy is really there But I mean being a left-handed quarterback we practice all the time like you know matching the hands in the pocket It's always you know the left hand the left hand But now it's gonna be to have to be the right hand and it's crazy because I mean even though the guy's only six foot tall He doesn't have a lot of bad at balls They only got one bad at ball this year and I know Jeff Danico and those guys really pride themselves on doing that So I know there's something to be working on a lot this week Yeah, it's been very impressive obviously Dane is a big-body guy. He's got a place I mean he has a lot of speed good play strength And I know I mean just us safety is in our room me Dane and obviously hooker You know we look at these top tight ends We take a lot of pride saying that we got those guys matched up one-on-one We want to stop those guys and I think Obviously Dane being that position where he's kind of playing that On that third down being able to cover these tight ends. He's doing a great job He did a great job early in the year against Kelsey So obviously all last we kind of talked about, you know, he knew he was gonna be on kiddo a lot So I think he's been doing a good job Say 61 Yeah, I don't know man, I just That's the crazy stat right now. I didn't know that but um, you know, I think just Proving that, you know, John and we're brave to have done with this team and the roster and just the culture that we have So winning culture and I think you see where as far as freeages They want to be a part of that and I think this is something that we continue to preach and it's definitely something awesome To be in a position to win a division, but you know, we have to finish I mean, obviously the coach they're still winning that plan really well And we had to focus on this game against Miami because this is gonna be a tough opponent This is not like we're going to here thinking hey We're gonna go ahead and win a division and we're gonna walk in Nissan Stadium and win No, this is a really great team and we've got to make sure that we handle our business so we can be division champions


My name is Xibin Lu, I'm from HPC4house. I'm a system administrator at HPC4house. I also do data analysis for next-gen sequencing data analysis. I also work part-time under Francis at OSR to maintain AWS for CVW workshops. Again, this slide was created by Francis Olade. And you feel free to use any of the slide. But if we believe in open source, if you use any of the slide, we ask you to open your slide also. Today, I'm going to briefly talk about the cloud computing and guide you guys to log into our Amazon instance. So first question is, why cloud computing? I think the main reason is we are dealing huge amount of data. Our data set are reaching pet-based scale. For example, for a typical Illumina high-seq pair and run, you really get about 500 gigabytes raw data. So it's kind of challenge to transfer, store, and process this huge amount of data. The data will not be on your local laptop or desktop. It will be somewhere on the network. So compared to the raw data set, it is smaller. Your software or tools to handle this data is kind of small. So it's easier to move your software or tools to the data than the other way. So when I learned how to program, I was told the general procedure is you have your data and then you load this data into memory. You start in a real hash table. You process your data. And after you finish processing your data, you can output your result to a file or print on screen. But now we are dealing huge amount of data. Maybe we need to think to process streaming data. A very simple example is if you want to do a summarization for numbers, you can load all those numbers into memory and then you add them one by one. And you may think another way, you can just load one number at a time and add up into a variable or something. So when dealing a huge amount of data, you need to think memory is always an issue. So this graph was created by Dr. Lincoln Starr who is a scientific director of OICR. And this yellow line shows how many base pairs we can get with $1. This is before next in sequencing. And this blue line shows how many storage we can purchase with $1. So the storage will be cheaper than the sequencing. So we have no problem to start our sequencing result. But this was before next in sequencing. So when next in the generated sequencing came up, things changed. So the sequencing cost becomes cheaper and cheaper. So this red line shows us how many base pairs we can get with next in sequencing with $1. So the sequencing will be cheaper. So in some day, we will auto-storage. We cannot start all the sequencing results. So we now have about 1,000 genome. But when we talk about cost, we need to also think about the storage, think about how much does it cost to process the data. And the doubling time of reduction of sequencing in cost is in many months range. And doubling time of storage and network bandwidth is a very small number of years range. And doubling time of CPU speed is about 18 months. So the cost of sequencing a base pair will equal the cost of storing a base pair in the next very small number of years. So there's always a question, do we want to start our sequencing results, or we just re-sequence our sample when necessary? So we are dealing a lot of data. And usually, the IT infrastructure in the institute in the hospital is quite poor. So what can we do? We can definitely need more money to buy bigger hardware. All you can look into Sky. And there might be some solution over there. That is the cloud computing. So this is a typical pipeline for cloud computing. Use cloud computing to process your sequencing data.  And then you sequence your sample in a genomic center. You got your sequencing result. And then you shape or transfer your data to a cloud computing platform like Amazon. And then you do all the heavy duty work over there. Cloud computing is not new to us. If you ever use Google Doc, or Jalbox, or watch Muay from Netflix, and you are using cloud computing. And recently, Illumina just joined cloud computing family. Amazon AWS, which is Amazon Web Services, is a cloud computing platform to make up on-demand compute platform. They have a lot of services, but the most important two are storage and high performance computing. The storage at Amazon is called Simple Storage Services, also called S3. And this is the object storage. If you have an Amazon account, if you have enough money, the storage is infinite. And AWS also provide elastic cloud computing. It's called EC2. This high HPC computing is charged per hour. So the high performance computing is already over there, if you have an Amazon account. And Amazon has this multiple football field size HPC throughout the world. I think they have 12 regions currently. And this infrastructure is very easy to extend. They have this huge container. We just plug in the power. It's ready to expand. When we do cloud computing, there are some challenges. So first, they are not cheap. While using M3 X large instance in this workshop, it costs us about $0.30 per hour. It seems not so expensive, but you also need to consider the memory, not the storage, and also the network transferring. And if you add times 24 hours per day, several days and 30 students, it's end up a big number. In fact, when we first use Amazon cloud computing, after the workshop, we've got to shut down all the instance, and at the end of the month, we receive a very big number bill. That was the first mistake when we use Amazon cloud. Because we are dealing huge amount of data, transfer data is a challenge. How do you transfer your data to the Amazon cloud and transfer the result back? You need to think about that. And Amazon makes it free for you to transfer data to Amazon cloud, but when you download data, you need to pay. So this may not be the best solution for everybody. For example, if you are hosting a website on Amazon cloud, the more people access your website, the more you need to pay. So another problem is the cloud computer has no standard. So if you have instance in Amazon, it's not easy to transfer to other cloud computing providers. A big challenge for us is when you're dealing patient data, you need to think about security, because Amazon is in cloud, and you want to make sure your hospital allows you to upload data into Amazon. And Amazon is a US company. If you want to use Amazon cloud, you want to make sure you are comfortable with US government has ability to look into your data. But we have some advantage to use cloud computing. That's why we use Amazon cloud for this workshop every year. We received a grant from Amazon. So this workshop is supported by AWS Research Grant Award. And in this class, we give everybody a separate instance. So if you mess up your own instance, nobody will know. So we can just give you another one. And as I said, the better way to transfer large files to Amazon, is to make it free to upload data. And if you have huge amount of data, you can contact them directly. Sometimes you can even ship your hard drive to Amazon with FedEx or something. The next day, they plug in your hard drive and your data is ready to use. And a lot of data types already on AWS, Amazon cloud computing becomes more and more popular. So a lot of people are using and sharing data at AWS. For example, 1,000-genome data is already there. And some of the ICTCD data is already there. And there are many useful biopharmatic AMIs, AMIs, Amazon machine images. You can launch your instance based on these images. And all the biopharmatic tools are already installed for you. You can just start using Amazon Cloud. For example, they have CloudBioLinux as an AMI, and they have CloudMap, which is a Galaxy. Amazon Machine Image, you can just launch this one and ready to use at Galaxy at AWS. We talk about AWS, but Amazon is not the only one who provides cloud computing. We have other providers to choose. For example, Google, Microsoft are all providing cloud computing. So in this workshop, you will have some tools on your computer. You have tools on the web. You also have tools on the cloud. When you work with your data, you need to think about which working environment is better for you. We will help you to transfer among these various spaces. At the end of the workshop, you can make your own decision which platform you are going to use. And there are different ways to use Amazon Cloud. The general way is use command line, just like you use your powerful Unix box or HPC cluster. Some AMIs do provide a web interface. For example, Galaxy, you can use web browser to access the cloud computing platform. When we talk about big data, big data is really relative to terms. In 1956, this is the five megabytes hard drive looks like. And now we have an external hard drive with five terabytes storage capacity, which is one million times more than just this size.