I'm particularly grateful to the Executive Board of the Association for Higher Studies for asking me to speak here because I probably wouldn't have come anywhere near this part of the world if there hadn't been this possibility for us to use up a little bit of the holiday we had left from last year to attend this conference. It's the first conference of the Association for Higher Studies that I've ever attended in any part of the world, and only the second time I've been able to come to the Western Hemisphere. Last time was in January 1977 when I went for a week to see the Councillors and the National Assembly of the United States and also given me a chance to come with my dear wife and visit the Masha Glasgow with her on the way back to Haifa. And this conference itself I found has been such a joy. So many friends in various parts of the world around here involved in the Higher Studies and such an atmosphere of happiness and unity and thought and searching that I found here. So that's just my initial gratitude to you all for allowing me to come here. Now I was asked to speak on the subject of the conference towards a spiritual civilization. Again, sorry, excuse me, change glasses in the middle of the screen. So I was asked to speak on the theme of the conference and of course in a sense everything that is being discussed relates to this goal of towards a spiritual civilization. And this morning I'd like to examine briefly three principle methods which are being used to achieve Bahá'u'lláh's purpose for the spiritualization of humankind. Now the proper use of each method depends on our knowledge of the faith. While conversely the process of acting upon these methods deepens our knowledge. The high scholarship in its many levels and aspects is a thread which runs to them all. And as Bahá'u'lláh says in the third tajalli as Dr. Andrews quoted this morning, in truth knowledge is a veritable treasure for man and a sort of glory of bounty, of joy of exaltation, of cheer and gladness unto him. Knowledge is not just something in the mind, it's a very vital element of our whole life. Now these three methods, the first is the perpetual striving of each Bahá'u'lláh to draw closer to God in mind, action and spirit. The second is the persistent and fundamental work of teaching his message and building his administrative order. The third is the participation of Bahá'u'lláh's in humanitarian service and the betterment of the life of society. And then after touching on these three methods I want finally to consider the nature of the goal towards which all this is leading because having the goal clear in our minds helps illuminate the stages that leads towards it. Now I've used the words first, second and third because such a priorities can be seen both in the strength with which the earlier gives to the later and in the experience of the Bahá'u'lláh community. We shouldn't forget that in the earliest years of the dispensation the love and obedience to God and his manifestation in the heart of each believer was almost all there was. The scriptures themselves were only then being revealed. There was no community structure as such. And collaboration with other people and advancing the life of society was impossible. The Bahá'u'lláhs were being crushed or the Barbies were being crushed in those days. So I said I've spoken of one, two, three because in a sense it's the order of the development of the Bahá'u'lláh community. But at the present time all three are being fully utilized and they reinforce and supplement each other. So I'm going to talk of them in a mixed up way. You won't hear one, two, three, they'll keep coming in at various times during the talk. Now Ashokia Fendi who taught us how to build systematically using plans to focus our endeavors so that we don't dissipate our time and energy. When the Bahá'u'lláh community was small the plans could be simple. Our growth has led to the opening of new possibilities and an increase in complexity. The progressive decentralization of the work which this requires does not lessen the importance of planning and collaboration. We're still in the condition in which as Abdu'l-Bahá'u explained the important often has to be sacrificed so that the most important can be achieved. Now over the decades and especially in recent years Bahá'u'lláhs have been learning to think in terms of process, of attuning their activities to the current stage in any particular process. This requires a breadth of vision both in space and time. One needs to evaluate experiences of past events, understand the implications of current actions for future developments and measure the interaction of current actions with other activities being pursued at the same time. Now such a method of planning and working is in the long run far more productive than pursuing successive isolated bright ideas, the immediate effect of which may be striking but can soon die away without enduring benefit to the work as a whole. This is why I think the pattern of pursuing sudden bright ideas has enabled us to surge forward in various parts of the world but so often the sudden surge forward has been followed by a dying away. It's the learning of process and systemization is enabling us to have surges forward which then continue and that's what's going to happen in all our work throughout the world and future. Now nevertheless it is vital that creative individuals continue to have bright ideas and one of the skills which Baha'i communities and Baha'i institutions are learning is how to evaluate and encourage these ideas and relate them to the work as a whole so that they will contribute to the overall progress rather than be mere diversions. Now this resultant interplay of united action and individual initiative is an enrichment of Baha'i community life. It is especially noticeable in the field of social and economic development. We not only have Baha'i projects directed by spiritual assemblies but also many activities which are characterized as Baha'i inspired projects. Now while under the overall aegis of a spiritual assembly such projects are largely independent. Do not need detailed guidance by the institutions of the faith or not to drain on the limited Baha'i funds and often being designed for general humanitarian purposes can make use of funds allocated by non-Baha'i foundations and institutions. They are also perfect vehicles for collaboration with non-Baha'i individuals and agencies who have similar humanitarian aims. You know one of the major functions that the Baha'i community has been able to exercise in these past I think couple of decades is acting as a catalyst between other bodies who have similar ideas which we do not normally get on very well together. We are able to draw them together into unified activity. Now although pursuit of social and economic development can draw people to the faith and so indirectly support the teaching work we must always be careful to observe a clear distinction between the two. Our humanitarian work must be seen both by Baha'is and by others as a bona fide contribution to the betterment of life and not to be a front for teaching the faith. At the same time whatever we do in this area must not be in conflict with the teachings and principles of the faith. For example here as in all our activities we must guard against involvement in partisan politics. Now this is an important thing for the friends to understand because often people who get very enthusiastic in a particular activity or are worried about a particular problem in mankind are tempted to forget Baha'i principles for the sake of achieving that goal. And there was a very interesting comment made by the Guardian at one time of the importance of principle in the faith says we must never sacrifice principle even for the benefit of the faith. It says the Baha'i faith was created to establish principles in the world. If you sacrifice principle for the faith you are sacrificing the end for the means. Now this illustrates the vital need for every believer to acquire a sound and penetrating knowledge of the teachings. This is essential not only to ensure that we act in accordance with the principles of the faith but also of course for the spiritual development of our own souls. And this too depends our ability to teach the faith to others which is the ultimate source of all well-being for ourselves and for those to whom we convey the message. But all of us are still learning and are imperfect in our understanding of the faith. If one thinks of this faith as here for thousands of years how can we all really understand the teachings? All as it were in the kindergarten stage of learning the revelation of Baha'u'llah. And because of this imperfect knowledge we inevitably make mistakes. And this shows how important the development of the administrative order and the evolution of national and local institutions is. The consultation employed by these institutions and the authority they exercise in guiding the believers help to avoid the ill effects of unwisdom or lack of knowledge on the part of individuals. Thus no matter how important is the work in the area of social and economic development this is always simply a compliment to the work of directly teaching the faith and establishing its institutions on a sound basis. It can never take the place of teaching. There are two different things but they are complementary things. Now one area in which there's an increasing activity on the part of both Baha'i institutions and of Baha'i inspired projects at the present time is that of moral education. Governments and educational institutions in many parts of the world are coming to recognize the pressing need for moral and even spiritual education if their societies are not to decline and still further into crime, anarchy and chaos. And many of them have been turning to the Baha'is to fill this gap. It is in such activities that Baha'is and Baha'i institutions can fulfill Baha'u ala's injunction to associate with all the peoples and kindries of the earth with joy and radiance.  Now this is I think particularly important in relationship between the Baha'i community and other religions. You see if we pursue our relationship with other religions, simply on the level of talking religion together, we inevitably will get ourselves into a situation of conflict. Because what in fact is Baha'u ala say? He's come to say that all the religions of the world must unite and they must unite in the Baha'i faith. Why is there difference between the religions at the present time? It's because they were revealed in different ages for different needs and have been encrusted with human errors. If Baha'is begin discussing the question of the unity of religions with the followers of other religions, nearly all of us will arouse the response. But that isn't what we believe. If you talk to a Buddhist about God, they say we don't believe in God. So the only Baha'i answer is, well sorry you've forgotten it, you did originally. Which is not a very sort of, you know, what a way to make friends and influence people, you might say. This happens with any religion you deal with, on the level of theology. Now it happens only at certain levels, because I remember once I went to the first Baha'i youth school in Echtlach in Luxembourg many years ago. And the hand of the cause, Hermann Grossmann was there. And being an exhibit board member at the time, I was privileged to attend a meeting between Dr. Grossmann and one of the leaders of the Catholic seminary, I think, in that town. And they began to discuss the nature of mankind and the relationship to God. And because both of them were profoundly steeped in the understanding of their religions. They both were passed by all the superficial disagreements between, you may say, the two religions, and plunged right into the spiritual depths of what the nature of God and mankind is. And they were talking on the same wavelength. But that doesn't always happen. If you start discussing religion with followers of other religions, one can get into a condition of conflict. But if we are working with other religions, the followers of other religions, on a common humanitarian problem, we are not, as it were, looking face to face. We're jointly looking at a third thing. We are concerned with the well-being of mankind, of those things which are common in religion, moral standards, spirituality. And then we work in harmony with the followers of other religions and don't have to start discussing where they went off the rails. Now, I'd like to give a specific example to be helpful in understanding how difficult problems can be solved by the application of wisdom, breadth of vision, and clear understanding. And in this, we have to understand that a clear distinction must be made between the standard that Bahá'í is uphold on the one hand and what we can expect of other people on the other. Now, this happened in one African country. AIDS is a scourge in Africa. The degree to which it's harrowing the African continent throws into complete obscurity the problem of AIDS in the Western Hemisphere. My statistics may be an error, but I remember reading quite recently of one African country where 60% of the population is HIV positive. They have a tremendous problem in one part of Africa because they found a drug which can be given to mothers who are HIV positive to enable them not to pass it on to their children. And the governments have this tremendous dilemma. Should they provide this drug? It costs a lot of money, and they're very short of money for their health things.  If you enable these mothers to have their children, it's a blessing in one sense, but what you're also doing is creating a vast number of orphans in a country which is already riddled by not only AIDS but other diseases. But can you withhold it? These are the sort of problems these poor countries are facing. Now, in this particular country I'm talking about at the moment, the government was a sensible government, unlike some of the governments which deny the reality of the problem. It was very eager to do what it could to safeguard its people against the ravage of AIDS. And it had a program for encouraging the population to make use of condoms. And it approached the religious leaders in the country to help in this campaign.  So the National Assembly wrote to the House of Justice, and said, what do we do? And the House of Justice wrote back, and the bicycade was this, that the Assembly should follow two courses. Within the Bahá'í community, it should increase the intensity of educating the believers in Bahá'í moral standards, including complete abstinence from sex outside the marriage bond. Now, the friends in duty to God should uphold this standard. And at the same time, it would be their best protection against infection.  It's the best protection for the friends against the infection of AIDS. Now, in relation to people outside the Bahá'í community, however, the House of Justice said, the Assembly should recognize and should also explain to the believers that the majority of the people are not Bahá'ís. They're not subject to Bahá'í law.  And in order to at least do something to help combat this tragedy, the National Assembly should actively support the government's campaign of getting the people to use condoms. Now, this is a very important balance that Bahá'ís must have. We can't always apply to other people the standards we uphold ourselves. Now, this distinction is found in many areas of moral education and social interaction. It's in relation to such situations that one can appreciate the force of Bahá'u'lláh's words in the Loche Maxude, the heaven of true understanding, shanith resplendent with the delight of two luminaries, tolerance and righteousness. And again in the Tablet of Tarazat, he wrote, this wronged one exhorted the peoples of the world to observe tolerance and righteousness, which are two lights amidst the darkness of the world and two educators for the edification of mankind. Happy are they who have attained their tool and will betide the heedless. Now, this is very, very important. This balancing all the time of tolerance and righteousness. There's a human tendency always to try and make everybody else do what we believe is right. Now, one does that by teaching the faith, not by banging them over the head and taking them to do it. We have a problem with the high children. The society in which our children are growing up is a society of very different standards from those of the faith. And there's a tremendous pressure on children from their peers. And it can be very hard to resist this pressure. So I think one thing we have to teach behind children quite early on is there are things as Baha'is which they must not do and other things which they must do. But they shouldn't necessarily expect their playmates to uphold the same standards. They should not get down on their playmates for doing things that the Baha'is are not doing. And they shouldn't criticize them for not being virtuous in the ways that Baha'is are virtuous. They have different standards. This combination of tolerance and righteousness has to be learned from a very young age. Now, it works. I remember when I was in the army, it was before I was a Baha'i.  There's all sorts of standards in the army. But I'd be brought up among other things not to swear. And my father was a mother of my Presbyterians. And so I sort of didn't swear and didn't use bad language.  But they didn't. It was just accepted that I didn't swear and so on. Nobody else stopped swearing. I didn't say nothing to them because they were swearing. I just didn't swear. And people generally can be very tolerant if you aren't always banging them over the head and saying how they should behave. But I think the Baha'is, by their own standard of behavior, have a profound influence on the society around them without having to always press other people to do the same thing. Now, children have to learn this. Otherwise, their lives will be a misery. Or they will drift away from the standards that we face. Now, beyond the need for moral education, there is also a growing thirst for spirituality in people at large. And this is one reason why the House of Justice had encouraged Baha'i communities to hold gatherings for prayer, meditation, and the reading of the writings. These not only helped to raise a level of spirituality among the Baha'is themselves, but helped spiritually thirsty non-Baha'is to enrich their lives and learn of the teachings of Baha'u'llah. Now, while pursuing all our activities in the Baha'i community, with duvigar and commitments, means to recognize, nevertheless, that whatever we do in humanitarian service, the conveying of moral standards and the encouragement of spirituality, and indeed, in the teaching of the faith itself, these can have only a limited effect, unless and until people fully accept the claim of Baha'u'llah. These activities that the faith is engaged in are part of a process and are not complete or adequate in themselves. One finds, for example, that some seekers have a kind of buffet attitude to religion. Indeed, this attitude can be found even among registered Baha'is who, after having accepted the faith, have failed to deepen their understanding of it. They are interested only in what they feel they need to themselves. So they take a little of this and a little of that and leave all the rest. So increasing the spirituality and merely exposing them to the teachings of Baha'u'llah may not be sufficient to lead to a complete acceptance of his message. But we must understand what this completeness is. There's a well-known passage from section 121 of Gleaning's, which is frequently quoted. The well-being of mankind, its peace and security are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established. I think all of us know this, probably off our heart. And some understand this means that all that's necessary is to attain the unity of which Baha'u'llah writes is to establish a general attitude of tolerance among all people, accepting that every ideal teaching and program is as valid as any other. But if we really wish to understand how to establish unity, we should remember that this quotation continues. It says at the beginning, the well-being of mankind, its peace and security are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established. And then this unity can never be achieved so long as the councils which the pen of the most high has revealed are suffered to pass unheeded. There's a great deal more to unity than just being happy together. So far, we have been considering three ways in which the Baha'i community is helping humankind to raise the standards of morality and spirituality and well-being in society and conveying to all people the message of Baha'u'llah. But as he wrote in the Loh-e-Maksud, Baha'u'llah wrote, it is that the outset of every endeavor, it is incumbent to look to the end of it. What do we have in mind as the attainment of spiritual civilization? Surely not within our own community and in our personal lives strive towards a far greater realization of the meaning of true spirituality than we can expect of the world at large. This is both dependent upon full recognition of Baha'u'llah as the manifestation of God for this age. And it's also a principal means whereby we attain to such full recognition. In the last extract quoted in tablets of Baha'u'llah as this passage, the supreme cause for creating the world and all that is therein is for man to know God. In this day, whosoever is guided by the fragrance of the raiment of his mercy to gain admittance into the pristine abode, which is a station of recognizing the source of divine commandments and the dayspring of his revelation have everlastingly attained unto all good. Having reached this lofty station, a two-fold obligation rested upon everyone, upon every soul. One is to be steadfast in the cause with such a steadfastness that were all the peoples of the world to attempt to prevent him from turning to the source of revelation, they would be powerless to do so. The other is observance of the divine ordinances which have streamed forth from the wellspring of his heavenly propelled pen. For man's knowledge of God cannot develop fully and adequately, save by observing whatsoever hath been ordained by him and is set forth in his heavenly book. Now the recognition of Baha'u'llah established a personal relationship and connection between the manifestation of God and the believer. As we study the attitudes towards Baha'u'llah evinced by Abdul Baha and Shogir Fendi, and above all, as we study the writings of Baha'u'llah himself and use his prayers, we become profoundly aware of the fact that in all things, we are but willing instruments in his hand, that he can achieve things which we could never dream of attempting on our own strength. With closeness to Baha'u'llah, one learns to rely with confidence on his help and guidance in all that happens. Now, I'd like to tell you three stories, and I'm relating them from my own faulty memory, but I think I'm reasonably accurate, and they demonstrate a truth which hundreds and thousands of pioneers and other Baha'is can testify to from their own experience. If one does all that one can to serve the purpose of Baha'u'llah, he will do the rest. Now, the first relates to a Baha'i who had a shop in Aqa during the lifetime of Baha'u'llah, and one day, Abdul Baha came to this man and told him that Baha'u'llah wished him to go immediately to Jeddah, the Jeddah's the port and the Red Sea which leads to Aqa. The man promptly shut up his shop and asked if he might go to Bachi to take farewell of Baha'u'llah. Abdul Baha said, no, there was no time. He must take the ship for Jeddah immediately. So the Baha'i went. And in the Red Sea there was a storm and the sailors were scared stiff because it's quite a bad storm and they thought they were going to sink and the Baha'i thought, no, if Baha'u'llah wants me to go to Jeddah then I'm not going to drown in the day. It's the Red Sea. So he was quite calm in this boat and arrived at Jeddah and, of course, he realized that he'd come away at such haste that he'd forgotten to ask why he was to go to Jeddah. And then he thought, well, it doesn't matter if Baha'u'llah wanted me to come here. He'll show me what to do. And walking in the street, he suddenly met Hajji Mezahedar Ali. Many of you may know this story already. And he realized that Baha'u'llah had sent him there because he thought, by the way, at this time, he still thought that Hajji Mezahedar Ali was a prisoner in Khartoum, in Sudan. But he realized that Baha'u'llah must have wanted him to go to Jeddah to bring Hajji Mezahedar Ali back to Akka. So he brought him back to Akka and took him to Baha'u'llah. And in the meeting, apparently, Baha'u'llah said to him, we were with you in that storm on the Red Sea.  I think it's about level with the north of Greenland. There's an archipelago called Spitzbergen. And this was one of the goals of the Tenya Crusade. And there were a number of Baha'is eagerly trying to to become Knights of Baha'u'llah there. By the time the Guardian passed away, it was still unopened. And it is a very difficult place to get to. To start with, the only transport in those days was by a ship. And the last ship went in October, after which the whole place was frozen in. And there was no other ship connection until the following May. And the only occupations you could have there were as a hunter or as a coal miner, because there were big coal mines in Spitzbergen. That's why anybody bothered to live there. And there were both Russians and Norwegians living in Spitzbergen. It's Norwegian territory. And one of the Baha'is who was hoping to get there was a young Englishman called Paul Adams. So all the various people who wanted to go were applying for jobs, and Paul was doing the same. And then one boy that Paul thought to himself, look, I'm not getting any results from this. Is there anything else I can do to help to get there? And he thought, well, I can get geographically nearer. I'm only in London. So he went to a town in the north of Norway called Tronsø, which is, in fact, it's not really a very sensible thing to do. The message was going to come back to me in London if he got a job. But it was something more he could do. He could at least get closer. So he went to Tronsø. And there he learned that there was an old hunter, Hilmanøys, who needed an apprentice, a companion to go with him to Svalbard that winter. So Paul got the job and went as a hunter to Svalbard and became the knight of Baha'i after Spitzbergen. He's never met the hunter in London, I assure you. Then the third is a similar story from another walk of life. This is a secretary of one of the National Assemblies in Europe. There was a time when I think it was the president of one of the Arab countries or Muslim countries was in Europe, and the House of Justice was very eager to get a letter to this president. So it wrote to the National Assembly and said, please get an appointment through the ambassador with this president so you can hand over this letter to him. It sent the letter to this National Assembly. And the secretary got in touch with the embassy who were very pleasant, very nice, and said, yes, by all means we'll arrange an appointment. Nothing happened. He touched them again. Still nothing happened. They were still very pleasant. And he realized they were just dodging the issue. They weren't going to do anything. And like Paul, he thought to himself, what do I do? What else can I do? I'm in touch with the embassy. I've got this letter. What do I do? They thought, well, I'm in this city here. I can go at least to the capital where the embassy is. That's at least a bit nearer. So he took the letter and set off for the capital and got there and approached the embassy of this country. And as he was walking up to the gate of the embassy, there was a lady coming the other way. Also, obviously, to go in the gate. So he stepped back to let her go through and she smiled and said to him, can I help you? He said, yes, I have a very important letter to take to the ambassador. She said, don't come with me. I'm his secretary. Now, you see, these are things you can't plan. But you can do the most you can. And then Baha'u'llah cooks up the rest. And this happens in all sort of walks of life, not just only when serving the faith. It happens again and again. I don't relate these stories as evidences of miracles. It's a natural phenomenon. It's a natural spiritual phenomenon. God and his manifestation are not just satisfying philosophical concepts. They are the most fundamental realities of our lives whose purpose and presence should always be in our thoughts. None of us will ever really understand the station of a manifestation of God. But we know from his own writings that he is the vehicle of the message and power of God sent to the world to take it to the next stage in its evolution. And we must bow to the fact that whatever we learn and understand about him is but a shadow of the reality. The essence of true spirituality, therefore, is the close relationship which grows between a believer and the manifestation of God and therefore with God which enables the believer to pass through the vicissitudes of this life in confidence and serenity and achieve things which he knows are far beyond his own capacity. Moreover, the more we can attain to that spirituality, the more we can awaken it in the hearts of others. Bahá'u'lláh wrote, Piety and detachment are even as two most great luminaries in the heaven of teaching. Blessed the one who hath attained unto the supreme station this habitation of transcendent holiness and sublimity. So it isn't by getting, let's say, getting like other people that we will attract them to the cause, but by getting more like Abdu'l-Bahá that we will draw the love and attention of people to the face. Now this understanding of individual spirituality should indicate to us the characteristics of a spiritual civilization. It is not just a society in which the people engage in prayer and meditation and are aware of the spiritual things of life such as beauty, harmony and kindness. It is a society which lives and functions in accordance with the will of God and then the consciousness of his guiding hand and spirit. To describe such a civilization and how we will move towards it, I can do no better than to read the closing paragraphs of The Promised Day as come. Now you certainly are all very familiar with this passage, but I think it bears reading and rereading as we struggle with the problems and sufferings and the looming disasters of the present period of human history. Guardian wrote, to the general character, the implications and features of this world commonwealth destined to emerge sooner or later out of the carnage, agony and havoc of this great world convulsion, I have already referred in my previous communications. Suffice it to say that this consummation will by its very nature be a gradual process and must, as Bahá'u'lláh has himself anticipated, lead at first to the establishment of that lesser peace which the nations of the earth as yet unconscious of his revelation and yet unwittingly enforcing the general principles which he has annunciated will themselves establish. This momentous and historic step involving the reconstruction of mankind as a result of the universal recognition of its oneness and wholeness will bring in its wake the spiritualization of the masses consequent to the recognition of the character and the acknowledgement of the claims of the faith of Bahá'u'lláh, the essential condition to that ultimate fusion of all races, creeds, classes and nations which must signalize the emergence of his new world order. Then will the coming of age of the entire human race be proclaimed and celebrated by all the peoples and nations of the earth. Then will the banner of the most great peace be hoisted. Then will the worldwide sovereignty of Bahá'u'lláh the establisher of the kingdom of the Father foretold by the Son and anticipated by the prophets of God before him and after him be recognized, acclaimed and firmly established. Then will a world civilization be born, flourish and perpetuate itself. A civilization with a fullness of life such as the world has never seen nor can as yet conceive. Then will the everlasting covenant be fulfilled in its completeness. Then will the promise enshrined in all the books of God be redeemed and all the prophecies uttered by the prophets of old come to pass and the vision of seers and poets be realized. Then will the planet galvanized through the universal belief of its dwellers in one God and their allegiance to one common revelation mirror within the limitations imposed upon it the effulgent glories of the sovereignty of Bahá'u'lláh shining in the plenitude of its splendor in the Abha paradise and be made the footstool of his throne on high and acclaimed as the earthly heaven capable of fulfilling that ineffable destiny fixed for it from time immemorial by the love and wisdom of its creator. Not ours, puny mortals that we are to attempt at so critical a stage in the long and checkered history of mankind to arrive at a precise and satisfactory understanding of the steps which must successively lead a bleeding humanity wretchedly oblivious of its God and careless of Bahá'u'lláh from its calvary to its ultimate resurrection. Not ours, the living witnesses of the all-subduing potency of his faith to question for a moment and however dark the misery that enshrouds the world the ability of Bahá'u'lláh to forge with a hammer of his will and through the fire of tribulation upon the anvil of this travelling age and in the particular shape his mind has envisioned the scattered and mutually destructive fragments into which a perverse world has fallen into one single unit, solid and indivisible able to execute his design for the children of men ours rather the duty however confused the scene however dismal the present outlook however circumscribed the resources we dispose of to label serenely, labor serenely, confidently and unremittingly to lend our share of assistance in whichever way circumstances may enable us to the operation of the forces which, as marshaled and directed by Bahá'u'lláh are leading humanity out of the valley of misery and shame to the loftiest summits of power and glory.


OK, and now we have Christian, who's going to talk about Python page pages. You there, Christian? Yeah, I'm here. Can you hear me? Yes, yes, I can. Loudly clear. Go ahead.  Awesome. Just to be clear, this is not about snakes, right? No, not this time. But something completely different. So I'm not presenting any cool library or the great talk now on Kubernetes on a very technical level. It's more on an ORFU, a managerial level. So it's a bit of a different talk. So here we go. I'll leave it to you then, Christian. Yeah, thank you. To be with me, I hope it's interesting. So first of all, I want to say that Treyport, again, is very proud to be a sponsor three times in a row now of EuroPython. We feel this is very important to be part of the Python community to contribute and also use the Python community, of course. So to the title of my talk, why should you consider, or why might you may consider getting a Python pet project? So this is basically something that came out of my own experience. So the sample size is n equals 1. However, I would like to share some of my experiences here. So of course, our legal department also wants to have a slide. So maybe skipping over this. Yeah, who am I? Who is giving you the talk? My name is Christian Burger. I'm heading the development department in Austria for Treyport. And I also have a developer background. However, I started probably in the middle, in the dark ages. In 1997, there's a CC++ program in a telecom company, a telecom provider company. And yeah, worked all kinds of positions nationally, internationally in China, in the US, in Germany, Switzerland, and of course, in my beloved Austria. Yeah, I've been working in team leadership, project leadership roles since 2006, becoming department head in 2017. While I started my career, everything was waterfall. At least in companies I was working on, so a lot of four projects. I was really excited to jump aboard the HR bandwagon in the mid-2000s. And ever since, I really like doing this and also like to have my teams at best, self-empowered, of course. Yeah, maybe to the title again. Oh, nice and dandy. But let's focus on the title at hand. So initially, with a pet project, there are some negative connotations, obviously. If you look at the, at least that's the definition I found. It's not very positive. A project activity or goal pursued as a personal favorite rather than because it's generally accepted as necessary or important. And this is a stock picture. It's not a picture from our company. In the past, probably everybody has run across something like that when your boss, your department head, your whatever is really excited about a project, but you really think it's actually not really necessary and only distracts you from your work. So I don't want to talk about these pet projects, but maybe give you a little bit insight on how I came across this. So the problem statement, at least for me, was being promoted to a leadership position or in our case, entered the company in the development managerial position to managing several teams, but also having a deaf and tech background. So I'm really excited about new technologies playing around with them, toying around with them and also be conscious of that we do have, of course, any company tight deadlines have to be really quality conscious and as a manager coming from a tech background, the urge is really strong to be actively involved and then go into the code and help your team. While this is all fine, this might lead to problems. There might be some negative side effects. I'm not saying it's generally a bad practice, but it might have some negative side effects, at least some that I encountered over the course of my career. When you do get involved into the protocol, there will be a set of tight deadlines. There might be an urgent support case or why you think it's an urgent support case. There will be a strong urge to work basically around the rules.  However, in a managerial position, you might have the possibility to work around that and that's not very good, of course. So this will set a very bad precedent because then the rules should apply to everybody, not that there are a set of rules applying to different set of people. That's not a good precedent basically that you would set here. Also because you're probably not paid to work in a managerial position in order to code, but more to work on a strategic level. So we will have to, in essence, have two masters then which would lead to a high amount of stress on your end and stress level or not development managerial level is quite high from the beginning. So that would really add up to it. So that's also something maybe to avoid and pitfall to avoid. Also, I mean, in the end, you hired developers and testers to develop and test and usually they should be better than you in doing so. If not, then you might have a very big ego or you're actually better than you should invest into recruitment and training of your developers and testers, of course. UX engineers and so on are also included in this. The loss of vocals is also quite likely because you're all caught up in technical discussions. You also might be the final decision maker in all these, in a lot of technical decisions. And that's actually something that can be quite disenchanting or hurtful to your lead engineers or your engineers because they are the ones that should be the ones that are in charge of these decisions. Moving on, this is maybe, but you still want to have an outlet for all your ideas and creativity and also want to contribute maybe. So maybe a pet project could be for you in order to, for example, experiment with new ideas. So for example, in my case, it was behavioral testing. Behavioral testing, that is something that I was very curious about. But I didn't want to put this into the product code right away, but I had basically my playing field where I did this just to get a feel on how this would work and how it would work in practice. Also, in order to feel the processes yourself. Mindful of the daily. Feel the processes yourself. I mean, it's all nice that you have to create the most ingenious review process. However, it's really taking up a necessary amount of times maybe, or it's really great and then you should also feel it basically. That means writing something on paper is one thing. On the other hand, just experiencing it yourself. And not the least, for purely selfish reason, you want to remain technically savvy at least on the, maybe not on the level that your team can be, but at least that you can know what's, what are the latest and greatest packages. Know the programming languages, know the problems of your team and also retain your own knowledge and maybe even expand it. In my case, using a Python project, it really expanded my knowledge because Python was very new to me when I started in my current position. Yeah, moving on, not too much. No, that's the right one.  So what would be a good idea to consider is of course this project should have some sort of benefit not only to you, but maybe also to others, maybe even ideally offload your developers from menial tasks and automation could be, tools could be a good venue for that. You should be a role model. So I mean, if you expect your team to live up to certain standards, you should also do so. Otherwise, it will be kind of, yeah, would be not setting a good precedent. You have to set the right priorities because you might be drawn away from it. At any time you may be drawn in a meeting, you will have, of course, you should, the main focus is giving the right tools and resources to a team. So this always takes precedent, of course, and also then you have to be, of course, as a manager also aware of what your product is doing, what is the business impact and so on. This, of course, has to be priorities because you might be pulled, you might want to over prioritize your side project. So actually, this is something you have to continuously watch yourself that this is not the case. Also, what's not, what's quite an anti-pattern is, you might have a graded year for a side project and then you lose interest and you dump it on an engineer's desk. That's also not gonna make you very popular. It will basically make you very unpopular and will not help you usually. You can, of course, if you're really convinced and about the benefit of your side project, this is something you, over time, you can add other people to it so at least they know what it's doing. Yeah, of course, cat pictures. How did I end up with a pet project? How did I come across it? So, I mean, there were some of the ideas that are already outlined. Most struck me the similarity to how I ended up with two cats or our pets. So first, our kids, they wanted to have one cat to play and cuddle and they were really, if you have kids and you know how insistive they can be. They did one year of a bedroom, bickering my wife and me and then finally, after one year we gave in, we say, okay, that's, we give up, we buy your cat. We got wild promises, they will always be cleaned, they will always be fed, we will do everything, we go to the vet and whatnot. So, going to the vet, he told us okay, one cat is maybe good, but it should have two, we should rather have two cats, so they have company. So then we buy two cats and yeah, if you can imagine, so after about a half year, the cats are taken care of almost exclusively by my wife and me and so the kids can focus on cuddling and making cute cat pictures like the one on this slide. Nonetheless, I'm very happy to have the pets, of course. So, it kind of reminded me on how I ended up with a pet project. So, in the company before we were bought by Traypod, we introduced back then a new ticketing systems and also the grand expectations and what we can achieve with it. Then of course, I had to batch, in this case, I had to do it with the other departments to okay, we really need this and we need this and that expectation, we need this and that functionality and people were sold and we found that of course, just using the ticketing system itself will not solve everything, so on top with our consultants, they told us now you need this and that plug-in and integrations, yeah, and then since I wanted really this approach to succeed and it was my first project here was to, I started writing one integration, two integrations and this basically continues on its own and for me it was really a good introduction to using Python and I really appreciate having done that. Yeah, so again, situation when I started, I was fairly new to, completely new to energy trading. I was fairly new to Python at one very small project before I joined, I knew the ticket systems in question, at least as a user level, but I was acutely aware of how much automation can help us, especially when you're a small team, I mean, the more you do manually, this also applies to the bigger teams, that's usually not something you want to do, you want to have to automate as much as possible so that people can focus on what they hear to do to create cool new products and not spend time on menial tasks. Yeah, some constraints that I set myself when picking this up of course, some of the same that I outlined before is that I want to use, if I'm doing something like that, first of course, I need to be aware that I have to always be able to drop it when the need comes. We, I wanted to use the same tools and very similar tech stack from what our products implementations doing just because I wanted to be able to basically experience firsthand what it means to use this or that product that is in that library. I also wanted to run the same processes, so that means MergeQuests, reviews, tests, unit tests and so on, not exemplify it and try to be a role model basically also to, for example, to our engineers on new hires. Of course, one of the ideas was to make this ticket to introduction successful. And of course, when I'm not writing this on my own, is there's also other people, some things that helped us getting this off the ground. So, but I still wanted to make a contribution and create automations that make our lives easier and not necessarily harder. That's very important and very easy to miss. Some, and I think that almost concludes my talk. Some of the lessons I learned along the way. For me, it was really deep appreciation of Python. Coming from background C, C++, a little bit of Java and that's being years ago. I really appreciated how fast this, how easy it is actually to set up and get a complex task done using Python. And that's really awesome. I may be skipping head here to this line flask and requests that really helped me getting the application out very fast and running an HTTP server with a little effort. Also appreciation for what it means for unit testing and the creation testing, especially in a management position you've always been asked here, why is this feature taking this so that long why is this effort so high? One of the reasons is of course you want to guarantee a certain quality level and this you can, it's not the only way but one of the ways to do it is of course to have good and solid unit tests and integration tests and other test stages as much as possible and those working and those can be a lot of work. It can also needs upkeep, it needs improvements. So there is a lot of work for that but the benefit of course, odd ways to cost usually. For me it was also using the project as a test bed for new tools and processes. So before basically other people suffer my ideas, I wanted to see how do they look like, how do they feel like in one of these small tool projects. Also, I mean this is quite obvious probably to most of you but however, I really felt that spending some time to create automatic deployments really, really pays off over time because you then basically essentially have only to worry about doing this once, investing time in Docker and Docker files and also can help here and also make you more independent so you don't have to worry about deployments anymore or environmental issues. It makes me, it made me really appreciate good documentation and I think it's a good documentation takes its time. That's I think the most, the best takeaway I got from that. And last but not least for me was staying humble myself and learn to trust my team and maybe it may also help you to trust your team with their decisions. And I think that's all I had. So looking forward to questions. Thank you so much, Christian. Would you have a few questions? So first of all, how long do you spend writing codes versus non-coding work as a tech lead? That's a difficult question. I think it depends. So it depends on what are the immediate thing to do. And sometimes I would also take, maybe in the evening take some time if the things have quieted down to write some code. It's very hard to give a number, I must say because it fluctuates. Sure. But if you want to know more details, of course you can visit our booth and we can maybe direct message me. Cool. What kind of pet projects do you recommend for someone without much time? Now, I found, it's also very hard to give a general answer. But I found automations, for example, of office processes quite handy because this is something that usually has immediate benefits so somebody, some repetitive work will be replaced with something that's good. And usually those are not big tasks. So it means you can drop it. This is basically the main constraints. You must be able to drop it and not having people wait for it. Yeah, again, it's hard to make a generalization but in my case it just landed itself because there was not somebody immediately waiting for it because anyway, the team working it but I made some add-ons basically and data being used. So, yeah, for example, and what's not good if there's, for example, your dev team waiting on something like that or you have, you're blocking somebody, I would definitely exclude, I would say, in a negative way. You talk about like usual things that you have to do but you can automate in the meantime so you can still do them manually even though you haven't automated them yet, right? Yes, yeah, something like that, yeah, something like that. Cool. In your role, does a tech lead need two codes to be a good tech lead? I'm not sure, I think not really. I don't think so but I think you should have an understanding so of what your people are doing and basically have a respect for what your people are doing and for me, it's coming from a deaf role. It kind of meant that, okay, I wanted to feel this, I wanted to feel I contribute but I don't think it's a necessity. So if you think it's, the necessity is basically that you are able to trust the teams with their decisions and appreciate what they're doing. Cool. Thank you. That's all the questions we have. So thank you so much for the talking and question. You're welcome.


Meanwhile, residents who refused to leave one of the villages in the Red Zone have been recounting their experience. More in this report. The action of this dog paints a bleak picture of the situation in Oria, which is one of the communities in the Red Zone on the windward side of the island, devastated by the eruption of La Sofreya volcano. The owner of the dog returned to the community for the first time on Sunday since the eruption started, and when it was time to leave, the dog jumped into the water and swam towards the boat. We are taking it, we are taking it. The dog just can't take the pressure. Just can't take the pressure. There is total destructive transformation of Oria with a number of buildings destroyed including churches and the entire village covered with several inches of volcanic ash. New beaches were also formed at a new waterfall developed from the destruction of the main bridge connecting Fancy to Oria. The riverbed of the Oria Big River has been totally transformed with these huge boulders coming from the mountain slope. Dale Medica, who stayed behind, heard when it all happened. It was like over a thousand yards away, hardly rumbling, but I didn't make it here because it was coming. This is a new river fall in Oria. This was born on the 13th of April 2001. Some areas in the community reaped of the scent of dead animals. This elderly resident, Grafton Caesar, is one of the men who did not evacuate. He said although they were able to save some animals, they could not save all. When the river comes down, sheep and goats and pigs wash into, when they wash goat and sheep inside the water, don't even see water right there. Just like a waft on the real sheep and goat and dogs because they have no shelter place to shelter. So in the river, they have cave with the animal to go and shelter, but they don't know because they don't have the opportunity like we human beings. So we have to take them and carry them away. The resident known as Jombie said at this time, Oria is inhabitable as there is a constant sandstorm. He said it will take a long time before Oria returns to anything close to normal. When you look at it, it's like a desert, we say you have to be good for living in a desert. The situation here is a farming thing going on and the people cannot come back in this village because up at the water situation, real bad, real difficult to put back pipe, have to run real years before, when we say 20 years but it will take a time. Due to the weight of volcanic ash which has formed like cement, some roofs are caving in. The remaining Oria residents and those who have been watching videos and pictures of their houses from a distance are praying for rain to keep the dust down and wash away the dirt off their houses and crops which for many are the livelihood.


I mean all the players said after the game something needs to change something needs to be done They just didn't bring that level of defensive intensity competitiveness. Just was not there I think there needs to be some level of incentive on the game And I don't know if you go with what the baseball model is, you know East versus West Do you give whichever side wins home court advantage? I think guys would play hard for home court advantage in the NBA found especially guys that have a chance to compete Which every year there's seems to be more parody right you look at this playoff run that we're gonna have here There's probably eight teams nine teams that think they have a chance to win a championship, right? Like some realistic some not but they feel like they can do it So those players at least would play hard and it would make this salvageable But on the other end Damian Lillard, I will say despite the lack of defense His shooting his dominance. I don't think it was predicated off the lack of defense. He was just shooting absolute heaves from I don't from Chicago like his shots were from half court