I'm Shane Ud. I work at Kong on Kubernetes Networking. I'm a chair of SIG Network and a maintainer of Gateway API. I'm Surya, and I'm an engineer working on the Red Hat OpenShift networking team. I mostly work on SIGnet policy API working group, and together with Shane and Antonio, we're going to give the SIG network intro and updates. So welcome all, and let's get started with our agenda today. So we'll first look at the APIs that the networking team gives in Kubernetes that we're responsible for, more or less. The services in point slices, Gateway API, Network Policy API, Admin Network Policy API, and also what's new in the 127 release, right? So that's some of the things that we look at. And over to Shane, we'll talk about the Gateway Pits. Yeah. So first, we'll talk about service. This is commonly one of the first APIs somebody will run into. Like when they set up a deployment, they might first have gotten a service for your deployment when you run kubectl expose. It enables grouping pods together and exposing them as a networking service. They're given an IP address they can be reached on, and requests can be routed to one of the associated endpoints. Endpoints track IPs and ports for pods. We used to have, I still have, endpoints, which had some limitations. You could only get up to 1,000 pods per service. And more recently, have endpoint slices, which is its successor. It shards the endpoints, and it's much more scalable. Endpoint slices also allowed us to do things in dual stack, topology, and terminating endpoints. Next, in building on top of that, we have the Ingress API, which is very common. Most people are aware of it. It's been around for five-plus years. It does basic host and path matching, TLS configuration, and it is simply and broadly implemented. There's 20-plus implementations of Ingress. You can kind of find it everywhere. There are some limitations with Ingress that we ran into in the last few years. There's many non-portable extensions. What we ended up with was kind of this annotations Wild West, where basically, for everything that an Ingress controller or something would want to do, you'd end up with a custom annotation for it, and it just kind of kept going until the situation we have today is no two Ingresses do anything remotely similar to each other. It had an insufficient permission model, and it mainly focused on HTTP traffic. Also, and we'll get to this in a couple of slides here, it was limited to North and South traffic, which led us into the Gateway API. So Gateway API is the next generation on top of this, rather as an alternative, and handles routing and load balancing in a similar way, but with way more features than what Ingress provided. It's expressive, extensible, it's role-oriented, so as you can see over here, we have Gateway class, Gateway HTTP route. HTTP route is the closest thing you have to Ingress. Gateway class is kind of similar to Ingress class, if you're familiar with it, but an admin might create a gateway, but a developer might create an HTTP route. We'll talk a little bit more about that too. There are beyond 20 implementations and a few integrations with it today, despite it still being in beta, so it's very popular and there's a lot of people implementing it for their solutions. We graduated to beta last year, and our intention, we'll see how it goes, is to try to GA before Chicago this year. To give a little bit more view as to how far we go beyond Ingress, so we talked about Ingress only doing like HTTP traffic, we do HTTP, GRPC, TCP, UDP, and TLS, we also have non-route types which you saw like Gateway class and Gateway. I'll talk a little bit more about those and reference grant, which is kind of a special one. I'll talk a little bit about that one.  This effectively is just a resource like Ingress class that lets the resources that belong to it kind of understand what controller is responsible for provisioning those resources and handling their life cycle. So in this case, the ACME controller would be responsible for any gateways that are associated with it. So we have a Gateway, this is a very simple Gateway that just listens on port 80 for HTTP traffic and you can see from the red ACME, it's associated with the Gateway class we showed on the previous slide. So it's attached to that and then you can attach routes and the most common route right now, the one that's heading for GA and the most mature one is HTTP route which is the parallel to Ingress. It gives you the ability, you have another attachment here, parent refs allow you to attach to gateways. Unlike the gateway, you can actually, or sorry, the parent refs have multiple parent refs that you can actually do for a route so you can actually attach to multiple gateways. And then it's pretty simple and I think I put, yeah, a comparison, so like on the right there is an HTTP route and on the left there is an Ingress that does relatively the same thing, but the right side is way more extensible, we have a lot more fields available and you can kind of find that if you dig in a little bit deeper, this doesn't go super deep. And that's kind of how it looks, we have all these different routes can attach to gateways, all the different types theoretically, if a gateway supports them, gateways can theoretically be multiple gateways and you can attach different routes, they may have any combination, some may only do UDP, for instance. And then this is one of the non-route APIs which we won't go into too much depth on, but one of the problems we ran into in gateway APIs we wanted the ability to be able to have an HTTP route or any route, be able to reach like a service in another namespace. And so that's a boundary with some security concerns there. So we came up with reference grant which is basically a two-way handshake where the actual namespace, you see on the left the HTTP route wants to go to that service in that backend namespace from the store namespace, it needs a reference grant, somebody with our back permissions in that other namespace needs to say, yeah, that's fine, and allow it back to the controller to say, okay, and then it starts forwarding the traffic to that. That is a very cursory overview of these APIs, but I have a link in a minute here that can kind of get you to the next steps because gateway API is very big, so. So that covered, we covered service which is kind of like where a lot of people start with just getting traffic into their applications ingress which is kind of the stable existing thing for HTTP traffic and then gateway which covers the gamut of everything else. We are working on service mesh, this is kind of a newer thing that's happened like within the last year with what's called the gamma project. So that is actually right now nestled under gateway API, so it's a sub project of that sub project. Gamma stands for gateway API for mesh management and administration. So you can use it basically like HCP routes in theory in the future GRPC routes and all that for East-West traffic instead of just North-South traffic. And there's six plus implementations, these are the ones that I was able to get a hold of that do it and there's conformance tests, we just, I merged it like days ago. So there's conformance tests that are actually in there now which these implementations are starting to try to get working and like set up. So it's starting to gather a lot of steam. So if you're interested in service mesh, the gamma project is a good place to hone in on. Because gateway API is so vast and there were I think eight plus talks at this conference alone about it, I only scratch the surface. Please do go to our website, check it out. We're also at that channel, signetwork gateway API in the Kubernetes Slack and then that's our repository if you just wanna go straight to the repo. Network policies is another subgroup within signetwork. Can we have a show of hands if you've used network policies before? That makes my job way easier then. It's a core V1 stable entry API that we've had for over five years now. So it was designed with tenant owners or namespace owners in mind. So for the app developers, if you wanna secure your workloads and define rules on how you wanna enforce your layer three or layer four traffic to flow between your pods, between your namespaces and one such use case for example is what you see here. You wanna be able to say, I want my backend pods to receive traffic only from my front end pods, right? That's a simple use case and you can enforce that using network policies. And that's how a sample YAML would look like. You can use, well, namespace policies are, network policies are namespace scoped. So if you define a policy within a namespace, it's usually if you don't mention selectors in the subject of the namespace network policy like using pod selectors, it will select all the pods within that namespace, right? But you can use pod selectors on the spec to select a subset of pods within a namespace. And peers is what you define to construct your relationship on who you should talk to or who you don't wanna talk to. And the rules are of two types, ingress rules or egress rules depending on what traffic flow you wanna control. So you can have peers that are either other namespaces or pods within the same namespace, right? So that's what a sample YAML would look like and kind is ingress or egress. Note that the ingress and egress are explicit and they complement each other. So basically when you create network policy, right? Everything works until you create the policy. But as soon as you create the policy, everything stops working. So there's this default deny that you create and on top of that you have these allow rules that you create. If you are creating only an ingress policy, egress is allowed by default and vice versa. So that's something to take care of. The API design is a bit implicit in nature because you don't really expect that default deny to be set in place because you just basically said what you wanna allow, right? You never said deny everything else, but that's what you get as a gift with the allow. And I think I will recover the implicit part of it. And let's talk a bit about the peers in the network policy API group. So you can express peers as pods, namespaces. That covers the East-West traffic scenarios. But if you wanna let's say also talk restrict traffic to northbound. So egress outside the cluster from your pods, you can also use something called an IP block on your API in the spec part. You can define it and that helps you define the set of ciders that you wanna restrict or allow traffic to from. And you might think, well, all this is there for the developers, but what can administrators in a cluster do to enforce more stricter rules that are non-overrideable by the policies that are defined by the namespace owners? And that's why we have this new policy, the admin network policy API in SIG network in the network policy API working group. It's a relatively new one. It's been around for almost just a year. They kept merged a year ago and we have the API repo that lives out of tree. So it's still in the early phases of it. So we are a V1, Alpha one API and we welcome contribution. So let's take a look at what that API entails, right? If you are an administrator for cluster and you wanna be able to express cluster scoped rules for regulating traffic, like let's say you wanna say that the sensitive namespace in your cluster should not be able to receive traffic from any of the namespaces in your cluster. You can put rules that can express such scenarios easily using an admin network policy. The API defines two kinds of CRDs. One is an admin network policy. The other one is a baseline admin network policy. And the structure kind of looks like that, the precedents let's say. So if you have admin network policy defined in your cluster those are the rules that get evaluated first and they have a higher precedents. If there is no match found there then you would fall down to the network policies. And if there's no match found there then as an administrator you still wanna say I wanna have a default guard rail across my cluster that can help secure the workloads. And that's where a baseline admin network policy comes into play. And you can have at most just one baseline admin network policy. It's just like a default fallback that you want to put in place. The API design is explicit in nature. We tried to learn from our network policy design and then we have done hopefully better. We welcome feedback. So as you can see the sample YAML how that looks like we have a new field called priority which is not there in the network policies that lets you, it's powerful. It lets you set what precedents you want your rules to be in in case you have overlapping subjects and peers that you're defining. And we also have the explicit deny action or an allow action that you can specify instead of it being an implicit deny. So you get what you ask for, right? There's no implicitness here and it kind of mimics the traditional firewall that operators and administrators are used to. Like I said, it's an Aviva and Alpha one version of API. We support East-West only. We are in talks for having support for Northbound and to support more use cases there. Hopefully in the next version of the API we have that. And peers over here in this case is just pods and namespaces as of now. We are aiming for beta by the end of this year. Let's see. So the current status is that we're having some implementations in progress. We're getting some feedback and based on that we're changing some parts of our API and seeing what's feasible and what's not. So if you are in the networking ecosystem, if you have use cases that you want to secure your workloads across your cluster, you want to try out this, please reach out to us. We are more than welcome to see if we can accommodate your use cases, right? So feedback appreciated. And in addition to implementations, we're also looking into how we can have conformance testing and we're trying to follow patterns that are similar to the gateway API working group so that we can have the CNI plugins implemented in a seamless way and then just report the results back to us such that we can save their conformance or not to the API. We have a subgroup within the SIGNET which is called the SIG Network Policy API. There's the Slack channel on Kubernetes where you can find us. We also have bi-monthly meetings on Tuesdays at 6 p.m. European time. So please do join us if you're interested. We have a lot going on and we would welcome all kinds of contributions. Moving on to the networking components. We have a proxy that is the default implementation of service proxying in Kubernetes. It's called Kube Proxy. It's been around again for a really long time and I think you heard what Shane spoke about services and endpoint slices. So what Kube Proxy does is it converts these Kubernetes API objects into networking rules and we have two backends that we support as of today. One is the IP tables backend which is the default one. So IP table rules are created for every service and endpoint slice, right? And then the other one is the IPBS backend and moving forward, we actually have a new cap there which I've linked on the slide which is gonna support a new backend based on NF tables. IP tables has been around for a really long time and it has been the default packet processing filtering system in the next corner. It's, I hear it's getting deprecated. We have done in the audience if you have questions, please do reach out to him but it has some disadvantages, right? Like it does not really, there's absence of incremental updates, for example. It does not scale well as the cluster sizes increase if you have a large number of services, takes a lot of time for the rules to sync. And we also, well, the larger issue over here is of course the deprecation and we wanna prepare for the move towards successor NF tables which is more performant efficient and it solves some of these issues with IP tables and also all the new features are going into NF tables and not IP tables. So eventually we do wanna move to NF tables. So that's something that we have in store and it's being discussed and there's a cap out there if you're interested, please do reach out, comment on the cap. And I'll give it off to Antonio who will talk about the new things that we have. So, okay. Well, what to do will be wondering what these people is doing, right? So, we try to adapt. We have different requests for new features. We have to deal with technical debt. We have to do a lot of things, right? As Surya said before, we have to fix Q-proxy. You have two caps there that are going on with Q-proxy and this is mostly done with support that is here. So, if you have bugs or something, go to him at the red tree, okay? But, well, the state is, well, you can track, we have a project. You are curious, you can go there, you can track. We try to keep it updated and you can see what we are doing, right? We have these Q-proxy things. Well, we lately started to implement and you can see with Gateway API. Gateway API says GA there, right? But it's not a really GA. What we say is this group show a path to other projects to be able to deliver a quick value, right? If everybody wants to merge and the fit in in Kubernetes core, it's very slow.  And what Gateway API demonstrated is that you can create a working group, work with CRDs and get things working and in a faster way that with Kubernetes. So, we have all these working groups, network admin policies, another good example, right? And we have a working group now that is being working, I think that for more than six months, but this multi-network that a lot of people will be interested in that. We really don't know. They are targeting to implementing in core, but we really don't know. Right now, it's inception, incubation, okay? We have also another call kept that are going in APIs. So, we realize that we don't have a clear concept of definition of the network in the cluster, okay? And we want to provide a better experience for users. So, to be able to define their, or to expand their cluster network, pod network or the separate network. So, this multiple cluster side and multiple service side, there are two kept that are in alpha, but we are still discussing how can we provide the better user experience for all of you. We have another, it's more feature that allows to people to reserve the lower ban of the node port. So, imagine that you have a node port and you want it to be used for an application beforehand, right? And then, if you choose a random value, some other service in the cluster can get it. With this, similar to another feature that we did with the cluster API, you can reserve the lower value of the node port. So, dynamic port will never look at it for that range. This is a very useful, a small and useful feature for people. And in addition, the other more important kept that we are doing is the top only our routing that I'm going to speak soon later. We have the expanded DNS configuration. This is a funny one. You know that with libc, you can, I don't remember exactly the number. You can only configure the name servers. Well, this is seen several years. You can have, I think that until six or more name servers. So, we had to wait two, three years to implement in the container runtime, to cascade to support all the new versions and to finally people be able to use six name servers in the result.com. That's an example of things take a lot of time to know where people. So, far, and I don't think, okay. And for graduation, we had the two, one feature that was very important for zero downtime deployment. That's the terminator in points feature. Then, what is the other one? Sorry, I don't see it. Service traffic policy. This was a funny one. We have a lot of discussion because we have another feature that is topology, our routing and this call line. So, basically, what we decided is service traffic policy, decide if the traffic is internal. Oh, I don't know. It's internal and the traffic is local. It only is able to reach the pods or the points that are in the same node. Okay? So, it's mimicking the external traffic policy for service, but for internal. To span on a bit more in one of these features, what I was trying to say before. Right now, we don't have a clear definition of what are the networks in the, well, we may have a definition, but we don't have a full agreement on what are the networks in a cluster, okay? We simplify the networks to a pod network, a node network and a server network. Everything is configured beforehand. So, you are installing whatever configure the flags. We tend to come up with a better design that allow people to modify and manipulate these networks and recite these networks without having to recreate the cluster or tend to have the goal will be to have zero disruption and be able to add service network or add new pod networks so you can grow and resize your clusters independently of the network. The other feature that I mentioned it before, and this took a long time to get implemented in QPROC and that was implemented recently in 126 for beta, is the terminating in points. The key of this feature is that until now, the points had only a binary state, right? So, the point only know if the pod is ready or the pod, if the pod is already, it was in present. With this feature that what we have is the lifecycle of the pod in the employment slice. So, the implementations are able to track if the pod is ready, if the pod is not ready but is terminating and is able to serve traffic or if the pod is totally terminated. The way to use it and the problem that it solves is to have zero downtime on rolling updates. So, you just see the graph and you have a load balancer. The, when you use external traffic policy local the load balancer pulls the nodes to know in which node you have a pod. The moment that a pod is a deployment rollout, the pod start terminating. That's important that your application can do the system signal. So, it can still process traffic. So, during the period that the health check start to fail, it is still going to serve traffic. Before, because we didn't have this state in the employment slice object, the QProsy automatically remove the pod. So, all the traffic was recorded. With this, the QProsy know, okay, this is the only pod alive. I know that it's terminating and it's able to handle traffic. So, let this pod keep serving traffic. But the health check is a load balancer don't send me new traffic here, right? So, this way, when you roll out, you have a zero downtime. It looks simple, but it took a lot of work to get this working correctly. So, and the least, the last thing that I want to talk is about topology, the world routing. And this is a very demanded feature, for several reasons, right? People that use crowd mainly, want to keep this traffic in the same zone, right? And just not most economic, but you know, you have performance and latency benefits. And you, some of you may have seen discussions on issues and we always say I'm trying to push back, but not push back for, we don't want to do it. Pushing back because one thing is what you say or what another thing is what happened, right? When we implement this, okay? You have a perfect symmetry and okay, everything goes to the place that it has to go. But when you are in reality, you don't have any control on the client, okay? So, what happens when, I don't know, your scheduler sends 100 pods to the one zone and those pods are the one reaching the service, okay? They are going to overload the service and maybe you have two other pods either in another zone and you are not sending traffic. The thing is that we don't have a really, realable way to say, okay, this pod is overloaded, just overflow to another place. And this is one, well, this is the main thing while we are trying to get this right because if we offer this tool to the people and people say, okay, I have preferred zone and then, okay, I have preferred zone and you are giving me an outage and it's even worse that paying for the interzone traffic. So, what are you doing? You are doing everything wrong. So, the other point is, and this is another observation that we have. The network is not a workaround for the scheduler. Once you deploy something, you need to take a really good scheduling strategy. So, with this feature, we just need to cover different ledges. We need to cover the scheduling of the endpoints of the pod and we need to cover how to handle the traffic of the clients, you know? We need to do these two dimensions and this is the thing that I personally am going to work during this cycle to see if we can get this right or to see if we can, I don't know, write some best practices or something so we can have this feature and users can use it then without black hole in traffic. And that's it. I don't know if you have any questions. Feel free to ask. I'm going to turn in the status of endpoints sizes. Okay, if you don't mind because I just fixed that incident two weeks ago, okay? So, this is a problem that we have in Cineco, right? It's what, I don't know, we talked before in the other talk is what is reference architecture? What is the reference implementation and how do we inform behavior? We have this program that is conformance test but this doesn't really fit our needs and I know that Shane touches on the Gateway API. What we are trying to do is we have this E2E test. So, when somebody has a feature, that's an E2E test and then that E2E test defines the behavior. But what we realize is that we are not promoting this well. I went to Syrian and I thought, why are you not running this E2E test? Oh, we are running the E2E test. The ones that say conformance, okay, it's all right. That's the problem. We are not promoting that the implementations of Kuprox Heli things need to run E2E test that may be not conformance but are Kuprox Heli conformance. It's our fault in Cineco to not make it clear to implementation. We define the API, we define the behavior. Please run the test. Is it the responsibility to CNI plugins to implement that behavior? We are trying to make it a little bit better where we can implement more of the behavior in a core component that other proxy implementations can build on top of, but we don't have anything yet. Nobody? It's HTTP was the most stable of the gateway API. Yes. How about the others, what's the state? So GRPC route is moving really fast. We've got a lot of conformance going for that quickly. So that's actually tracking really good. TCP and UDP route are ones that I'm personally wearing on. I kind of focused a little bit more on the layer four side of things. And they've had some trouble getting, we have people that are doing them but like getting the conformance going and stuff has been difficult. It's kind of a weird space. So we have a project and gateway API right now called Bleakst, which is a reference and testing implementation of gateway API that we are kind of porting in to be like our CI testing tool, but also it's a layer four implementation. So like TCP and UDP route specifically using EVPF for the data plane and that's going to help drive forward the conformance. So we should have conformance. I'm literally right now working on getting to the point where that conformance has started because conformance is at the core of how you graduate or go anywhere in gateway API. So they're in alpha today. In theory, we're trying to get them into when the GA happens and HTTP route and gateway and gateway class reach V1 at hopefully Chicago. Hopefully at the exact same time we have betas for TCP and UDP route. On TLS route, I'm not really sure yet. That one's kind of even in a weirder space. We do have some conformance tests and stuff like that but we're kind of have to see how that one goes and play it by ear a little bit. You want to add on that, Nick? TLS route needs, we've got some conformance like a fair amount of it is coming with many way implementations that are off the set of non-conformance tests and then you've got to have a certain number of documentation to pass it. Yeah. We do have some conformance tests, it's not for exercising the links so it's more conformance tests but we also need applications to pass the conformance test but it's not that far away, it's not that much better. We think the shape of the API is pretty good since we've done it. So, same for TCP route, we don't think there's any major in the API there. Yeah, they're pretty simple APIs. And it's possible but I don't know if we'll have the priority for it or not but it is possible potentially that our reference implementation might be able to help push that one along too but again, it's kind of, we're playing it by ear, we're waiting for people to jump on it. Any other questions? Go for it. Is that our last slide actually? I thought we had, okay. Oh, yeah, go ahead. I heard you said it's still, you know, early days and I'm also new to seeing that work so, maybe it's just a matter of whether I connect with that or, but I'm wondering if you're thinking about a feedback with good scheduling because it's easy to imagine use cases where, you know, I heard you kind of say, you've got to take responsibility for not creating these wildly out of balance situations but it's sometimes you can imagine like an HBC cluster that kind of wants that but maybe, you know, you can also see it just having a runaway of that with the thunder and hurt effects, obviously having one cell in there, you don't want that. So I'm just really interested in how you're thinking about creating that feedback with scheduling. I don't know, Robert, if you want to come up. This is, come here, I can start. This is the problem of Kubernetes, you know, you have different type of users.  But then we can throw this and we can create all that is. We don't want this for that, you know. And there are multiple problems, multiple solutions and we are going to try to get the solution. Rob, please. He was thinking much more than me on this. You can blame me for it. Yeah, so Antonio's been working with me on it. You know, topology is really hard to get right. We've gotten it wrong more than we've gotten it right maybe, I don't know. What I'll say is we've been trying to take little baby steps towards something that's better. I think we all agree the feedback loop is the end destination that we want to get to. But that's just a massive project with the, you know, capabilities we have today. I don't know of a way to do that with IP tables, for example. Maybe there's other technologies that, but you know, these are all huge projects in of themselves. So the first thing we started was hints like, okay, we'll just try and proportionally allocate end points. That felt a little too magic to a number of people. And so now we're starting to look at well, we'll give you the dangerous thing. It will work for some cases, but have to like just plaster warning labels all over it. But it will unlock some real use cases. So we want to at least let that exist, but be aware that until we have a feedback loop where, you know, it comes with some danger as Antonio was saying. But I'll give it back to you. Yeah. Basically, we're going to implement it on top of it. Okay, I was just going to say before everybody goes, please do check that out. So that's our readme. It has a ton of stuff in it. We'd love to have you join the SIG Network channel and just a lot of people come into SIG Network like wanting to get involved and stuff like that, but don't know where to start. We are happy to help guide you. And the readme includes all of our different meetings for various groups. So find something that like you like or that gets your attention. Join it. We have meetings all throughout every week. Thank you for coming.


The blessings that Allah blesses us with are banat. They are an intense test just as the difficulties are a test as well. And in fact, the difficulties are much easier test than the easy matters. But the difficulty, anyone of even a little intelligence would realize that all you can do is turn to Allah. The true test is a test of blessing because still, even from the intelligence, happy enough insight to recognize that in the blessing, you have to turn in thankfulness to the bestower and not be busy by the blessing away from the one who blessed you with it.


Hello everyone, my name is as you can see my name is Mohammed Sheik and today I present to you with Hangol that shop but before I start I just want to ask a quick question you can answer by raising your hands how many African stores are there in Minnesota do you think and have you ever shopped from many of them? One? Alright so so this is the problem that I'm trying to tackle here we have almost yeah we have there are 250 African stores in Minnesota alone in the Twin Cities and Minneapolis and Saint Paul and some of them in Brooklyn Park so we have almost 250 African stores but we never heard of them how come they're part of us their success is our success their failure is our failure because we live together so there is a Jeff he's from Ghana I met him at the festivals of nation in Saint Paul he has a booth he has four different booths over there he has one is Wisconsin one in Shakopee and two in the Twin Cities one in Saint Paul and one in Minneapolis so this guy goes from all over the place setting renting booth to booth to set the to set his his items and we have actual stores that are located in the mall in the Twin Cities and they also don't get a lot of customers care so here I when I was talking to Jeff he said I have to sell my items very quickly so some of these items are very expensive they cost $34 some of them are costing $50 if you go to Amazon but then he said for $15 he said $5 so he can sell them very quickly so there is a big gap here if they are in a store they don't get much customer and if they go to booth and rent a booth they would they have to sell their items very quickly so to solve this problem I came up with Hangol the show I don't know why the image is not showing here supposed to be image of the background so hangol the job is a website platform to help this immigrant sellers sell their products online with no rush taking their time taking their own time it will take their time and with that the value of their product not with very less amount of money they have this beautiful items that you won't find anywhere else but then the Russian they're selling or sometimes they don't even get customers if you're a fashion if you're a fashion person feel like fashion you would want this items you would want to get those items but then the only way to find this by going there or by finding at a booth so in order to make that easy hangol just you would go to the website and you would buy from there and then we ship it to you very quickly so for this one this one's different so in order to get this wedding dress right here which is becoming very popular where wedding dress these days you can see in proms of high schools but it's it's very expensive but then at some time to get that one you will have to go to the twin city and make an appointment and then after that you have to come back we're a week later to get it so in order to make all of this easier you would go to hangol that come you would order it online and would be delivered to your house with less than a week so if you live in Texas let's say and you want this item what you need to do is you have to come to twin city you have to come to Minneapolis or Saint Paul in order to get it but with hangol you would just have to type on gold a shop ordered online and would be there in your house in your four steps with no type with no type none of these items are available online right now it's unfortunate they're beautiful I like them they should be they should get the time they deserve to be online so the goal of hangol is to take this products online to help the sellers sell and maintain their lifestyle they are they have side jobs they do work at the airport but then at the same time they do some side jobs and I believe that they deserve some time and in wide range of in front of wide range of customers so to find this online if you're a fashion person or if you're African person who wants to find some African boots so you can be proud of you would go to the shop so you there is a competition anywhere you go so basically you could say you the itzy of Africa I'm not you go to hang all to sell bet so to celebrate your heritage to celebrate the beauty you would fall in love once you go to hang on it's very beautiful and it's it has 1.8 million sellers they sell all kinds of things but I have unique very unique items and go so this is the financial projections I was out I missed I'm about to start with five stores and each of them in 2017 we'll start with five stores and then by the end of 2020 we would have almost 300 stores because I would give opportunity to non-African entrepreneurs to sell the products and go so that the total revenue and the total operating expense the difference is the profit that I'm gaining which would be six hundred seventy thousand dollars by the end of 2020 but really what matters is not the money what matters the help that I'm giving to this community because they deserve some help so the process is very easy at hang all you sign up I would be helping them to sign up because this sellers don't have any experience with the Internet they list their product I have experience of working in Amazon and eBay as a seller so I would help them list their products and then I would sell and then they would sell through hang all so the question is how would you help on goal achieve its goal thank you very much what is the platform you're using and you developed it or yeah it's a website a huge website it can have many sellers or you can have less errors or you can have one so yeah so it's a website platform that looks like Etsy have you know it or Amazon is this like a third party that you've I mean a lot of this stuff now is off the shelf so you were able to pull it all together with off the shelf components yes yes that's right what what are the economics look like for the the stores that you work with what are their numbers how much do they get they rely on people that people come people that that come to their stores that get their products sometimes they don't even get customers at a day because there's a lot of them at the same area in the same one and they also have the same thing so it's hard it's very hard for them to make money even if they get customers which they don't even get because all of us don't even know about with hang all what what share do they get with hang all but with hang all we would be able to reach a lot of customers wide range of customers that have different backgrounds but a specific but more of the majority of being Africans there are almost three million Africans in the United States and hang all would make easier for this for the sellers to reach all of those customers so the customer that's going to buy in the wedding dress for $100 today how much will they pay for it and hang all and how much will hang all get of that under dollars they would pay they would bring my pay 150 for that and hang all would get 2% of that but then at the same time they would have to pay the shipping cost because this item you won't find anywhere else so so hang up 3% did you say yes oh I forgot to to tell you so for this one when I was talking to Jeff this one was $30 he has to sell this one for $30 but if you go actual store in Brooklyn Park you would get by $75 so they have to get rid of this beautiful items and jewelries very quickly in order to get profit they're renting the booth for $1,000 for almost $1,000 so they send beautiful items for very cheap price so the goal of them goal is make sure that they don't do that let's hear it for


Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for your patience. We know that there's been some technical difficulties, and we will continue to share the link in the chat for assistance. My name is Danielle Brinson, and I'm delighted to join you today. As a moderator and a Fulbright program officer at the United States Department of States Bureau of educational and cultural affairs. I am also both a proud graduate of Spellman College and a former administrator there where I let alumni affairs for more than a decade. I want to tell you a bit about the full bike program. It is the flagship international exchange program sponsored by the US government. And this panel will be focused on being black abroad in the full bright program. The full bright program has fostered mutual understanding between US citizens and the citizens of other countries for 76 years. Each year the full bright program supports around 8000 students scholars artists teachers and professionals from the United States and 160 countries all around the world. Since 1946 over 400,000 people of all backgrounds have received full bright grants. Earlier last summer, Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona released a joint statement of principles in support of international education, which outlines the many benefits of international education and the need for all Americans to be equipped with global and cultural competencies. The conference supports and contributes to the goals of the joint statement from the State Department and Department of Education, especially the principle that US participants in international exchanges must reflect the diversity of the United States. Last year we celebrated the full bright program 75th anniversary, which gave us an important opportunity to reflect on the enduring impact of these exchanges, as well as the impressive diversity, innovation and creativity of full brighters. Secretary Blinken also touted the many contributions of the program when he said members of the full bright community are change makers who care deeply about the problems facing our world today from stopping coven 19 to countering threats to democracy. And through full bright, they help strengthen our world from classrooms, villages, universities and cities across the globe. Regarding HBCUs in particular last spring we recognize 20 HBCUs as full bright HBCU institutional leaders for their noteworthy engagement with the program and held a HBCU symposium featuring remarks by Fulbright alum, Dr. Ruth Simmons, the president of Prairie View A&M University. In the chat, please share and shout out where you're coming from and what HBCU or other college or university you represent. As we look at the 76 years of the program, the strength of Fulbright is in its alumni who include current or former heads of state or government, Nobel laureates, Pulitzer prize recipients and alumni like renowned poet and activist Dr. Maya Angelou, and computer scientist Joy Blumwini featured in Coded Bias, a documentary now streaming on Netflix and thousands of other alumni both in and out of the academic world making impacts on campuses, societies and the world. We're excited to host today's full bright panel and encourage all of you to apply to the program to benefit from global engagement, campus internationalization and mutual understanding. I would like to thank one of our implementing partners, the Institute for International Education or IIE for its long standing partnership with us in managing the Fulbright program and specifically the student program. And with that, I have the pleasure of handing over the reins to Mr. Lee Rivers, IIE's US student program outreach specialist to share information about the Fulbright US student program and different opportunities for US students to venture abroad. And following that, we will have our alumni panel. The next voice you will hear is Lee Rivers. Thank you so much, I really appreciate the introduction and welcome everyone. As I said my name is Lee Rivers. I'm an outreach and recruitment specialist at the Institute of International Education. I've been with the organization for a while since 2008. And I work on the Fulbright US student program to establish some credibility I always like to share that as an undergraduate student I was a Gilman scholar to Australia, as well as a full bright hands in the air and whenever I reflect back on those experiences and my career. It's easy to see how my experiences back then really led me to where I am today and it's safe to say that I wouldn't be here talking to you today about this program. If it wasn't for those experiences that I had so I'm very grateful to the Gilman scholarship program as well as the full bright program for those opportunities. Before we begin talking a little bit more details about the full bright US student program I just wanted to quickly roll through why specifically why those that are coming from HPC use should be or maybe thinking about the full bright program and looking into the opportunities. First and foremost, if everybody could mute themselves that would be amazing. One more important than that is HPC use our priority for the State Department. I know you've already heard that but I just want you to know it's not a passing craze. We have a long term commitment to HPC use international education is also an institutional priority. Many campuses have mission statements teaching objectives as well as larger institutional goals at HPC use that align with the full bright program so just one example comes from all corn state. The foreign strives to repair students to be well rounded future leaders of high character, and to be successful in the global marketplace of the 21st century. So becoming a more globally engaged citizen is an advantage. Also career preparation, developing academically, as well as professional skills, gaining exposure to new research to educational systems to teaching methods is a strong reason why you should look at the full bright program.  And finally, in my opinion, and this hopefully is shared by many of you on the call. I believe that HPC use do mentorship better than any other institutions out there, and mentorship is a key. So working through your full bright application sort of walking through that process. And so those are just some reasons why you should be thinking about or looking into the full bright program. So I'm going to cover a little bit of the history. I think the nail did a great job of sort of setting the stage here. Full bright is the flagship educational and cultural exchange program of the US government. Our goal as outlined here is to foster mutual understanding to build relationships between people here in the United States and individuals abroad. And the way that we accomplish that are through these different educational activities. So the program as the nail mentioned that we're working with a lot of different people over 8000 individuals each year so it's a very large complex and dynamic program. I like to look at as the as sort of a four way intersection where there are US students as well as scholars that are going abroad to do research to study to teach, but there are also foreign students and scholars that are coming here to the United States to do those things. Obviously today we're going to be focusing on the full bright US student program and those objectives. I also think it's important to note, not only who our sponsors are, you know, at the at the State Department the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and the fact that I is at the privilege of administering this program for its 76 year but we also have by national partners that help with the program design and administration of the full bright program. And so overseas we partner with what we call full bright commissions, and we also partner with us embassies. In fact, they're the ones that help us design the country summaries that are listed on the on the website. And so one of the first important things are to note about you know these partnerships and all these players that are involved is that every country is different from the next. We're working with over 140 different countries, and it's going to be really important as you are looking into this opportunity that you are matching sort of who you are as an individual what it is that you want to accomplish with the goals that are outlined by that specific country, making sure that you match your preference, their preferences, expectations and qualities with with those that you possess. So, at the end of the day, full bright is a prestigious award it is an elite, but not elitist award, but the main difference between this opportunity and many other prestigious awards out there is that goal, where we're working on building a fostering mutual understanding building relationships, and it really kind of comes down to people to people diplomacy. Now really quickly, I mean we are doing this session. Oh, lost my mouse. We are doing this session for HPC use and so I think it's important to highlight our focus on diversity and inclusion. I understand that there is not one type of American, nor is there one type of American experience. And so our program is designed to reach individuals geographic locations and institutions that have been historically underrepresented in the program.  So, I just want you to know that you are welcome in this program, regardless of where you're coming from, and what your background is. So, quick, just want to jump into some of the eligibility requirements with the Fulbright US student program. It is open to all fields of studies disciplines area interests from the hard scientists says, all the way to those that are in the creative and performing applicants must through the Fulbright US student program must be US citizens at the time of application, and they must have a conferred bachelor degree, or equivalent before the start of the grant. Another point here is that you cannot have a PhD at the time of application. So the way that I like to describe this is, these are two life events here, earning a bachelor's degree and earning a PhD. And any time between those two life events, one is eligible to apply for the Fulbright US student program, regardless of whether you are enrolled in an Institute of higher ed or not. We have many graduating seniors that choose to engage and participate in the Fulbright US student program. A lot of folks at the graduate level as well. But just as many folks outside of academia are applying for the Fulbright US student program and having success. So as long as you have that bachelor's degree and don't have a PhD at the time of application, then you are eligible to apply for the Fulbright US student program. And then the last point there, I already kind of talked about this, we're working with 140 different countries and so what you're going to find is that every country is a little bit different so be sure to match who you are with what that country is looking for. Okay, well let's talk a little bit about some of the big picture statistics here, as well as the two grant types that are available through the student program. Big picture, we award about 2200 awards each year to those 140 different countries. As you can see here we have two different types of awards to sort of overarching grant categories. And I'm going to keep things at a very high level today, because we are so limited on time but I will share with you some resources that you can tap into as you are going along this journey of gathering information about the program. So the first opportunity is what we call study research awards. These are an opportunity to build your own adventure, right so candidates for open study or research. These include proposing independent study or research abroad, you may be doing independent research while auditing or taking courses as a non degree seeking student at a foreign university, or you may be directly enrolled in a graduate program abroad. So with the independent research, Emmanuel is going to talk a little bit about about this as well as the graduate study. This is where you are basically proposing an intellectually compelling and feasible project. So you're deciding the who, what, where, when and how of your project. You're coming up with that proposal, and that's what you're submitting and then if accepted doing while you're in the host country. So again, this is open to all fields of studies and disciplines. And if something hasn't been done in the past, we're excited to see you do it. Graduate degree enrollment is sort of that second option that falls underneath that study research umbrella. Keep in mind that you are only allowed to apply for one type of grants so you're either choosing a study research grant, or you're choosing the second type of English teaching scholarship. But this graduate degree enrollment, this is where your primary activity is going to be enrolling in a master's degree program abroad. And so you're taking courses while abroad. In the proposal you're talking about why you're going to that specific country, why you're enlisting in that specific university and that specific program. And then coming up with an academic sort of an academic question that you want answered through the coursework that you're going to be engaging in. Sort of the third path I touched on briefly before sort of a hybrid between those two, where you are engaging in research an independent research project, but while you're doing that you may be auditing courses as a non degree seeking student at a foreign university. So what we've seen in the past is people may be taking methodology classes language classes, maybe a history of course. These courses are directly tied to the research project or giving you further insight into what it is that you're researching on on the day to day level. And the last option is for those that are in the creative and performing arts. Again, this falls under that category of study research awards, and this is for those that may be coming from a set design background, or you may be a musician, or anything else that kind of falls under the creative and performing arts category creative writer. This is where you're able to take your skills to the next level in an international context. Moving forward, let's talk a little bit about the English teaching assistantships. This is the fastest growing area of the Fulbright program. And we've got two alumni that are going to be talking a bit more about their experiences ETA is I'm really excited to hear from them a bit later. So this is where you are helping non native English speakers learn the English language, as well as teaching them about us culture from your perspective. All right, so with this opportunity placements are being made by the countries that one is applying to we have over 70 countries, 75 countries that one may apply to, and these placements can be it K through 12 institutions, or they may be at colleges or universities. Again, it's a it's a large dynamic program where more information is fleshed out about the country opportunities on our webpage us dot full bright online.org. So let me quickly talk a little bit about some of the benefits. Maybe some of our alumni may touch on this a bit, but just know that round trip airfare, a monthly stipend is included. Depending upon the country that you're going to and the cost of living in that host country. Some other benefits include accident and sickness benefits. And then there's a list here of other possible benefits depending on the country and the award that that you're engaging some of those may include research allowance. Some may include tuition support for dependents or enhancement activities. And then we always like to stress the benefit that is provided for those that have disabilities, both visible and invisible disabilities. As I said before, it's our goal to make sure that these programs represent the diversity that makes up the United States. And so we are all about providing resources support for those that do have disabilities and one of our major partners in this effort is mobility International USA, as they have a lot of resources to help students through the application process as well as provide support while in country. Some of the other benefits are listed on the screen here but as I said before, really the number one benefit of becoming a full brighter is becoming part of this elite, but not elitist network of scholars worldwide. And there are ways to stay connected with the community once, once you return from your experience abroad. That could be through full bright associations. We, the State Department has opportunities and has a website to help alumni stay engaged with the program. And then I always like mentioning the NCE the the non competitive eligibility that one gets by becoming a full brighter, which can help those that want to fast track into perhaps jobs at the State Department or on a federal level, help you get into those positions. So I know that I'm moving through this quickly and there's obviously a lot more information that's out there. And if you are interested in learning more about the program. We're going to have some opportunities coming up here in the very near future for you to get more of the details that are out there so we've got a few webinars that are coming up. We posted here for those that can't. Our first webinar is going to be on March 29 at 2pm Eastern Standard Time. This is going to be sort of a general overview of the full bright program. And then we have another getting started selecting the right award type. That's going to take place on April 12 at 3pm Eastern Standard Time. I think it's also very important to note that our application is not currently open for this next cycle, our next application cycle for the 2324 fiscal year, our final year is going to be on March 31. And so you still have a little bit of time before the application opens. And I recommend spending this time going through the website and learning more about the opportunities that exist. Going to the country summaries pages and and really kind of learning what those countries are looking for in applicants. Bear in mind that what you're going to be seeing is from the last application cycle. All of that information is going to be updated come March 31. Another thing that I want to point out is that we have a vast network of what we call full bright program advisors FPAs for short across. I think 1300 institutions in the United States, and these advisors are tasked with doing outreach and recruitment on their campus, as well as in more importantly, advising students through the application process so holding students through the application process and and really being a resource for them as they're as they're going through the application. So if you are an alum of an HBC you or you're an early career professional, I recommend that you reach out to your most recent institution and and identify who that full bright program advisor is by going to our website under full bright program advisor you can do a search by institution, and I recommend reaching out to them just shooting a quick message, letting them know you're interested in the program. That way they can be in touch with you to talk about the next steps. Speaking of next steps. Let's just wanted to highlight a few more resources that are available. We're, we're all over social media, whether it is YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, you name it. You can find tons of great information out there about the full bright US student program and and also hear from individuals like the alumni that we're about to hear from shortly about how they were able to navigate the the application process, as well as navigate their their time in the host country. So I highly recommend that you you connect with us. You follow us you engage with us in the social media sphere to learn more about the program and stay connected with us. The last thing that I that I want to, I guess share with you before, before I hand it over to our panelists is that, you know, when our panelists were sitting in your shoes when they were gathering information about the program. I just want to let you know that they had they had fears. They had doubts. They had questions. They had uncertainty. They may not have had, you know, their parents or their friends backing them 100% as they were pursuing these opportunities. But they took the time to reflect about, you know, reflect on who they who they are and what types of goals they wanted to accomplish and came to the conclusion that full bright would be a good match for them and could give them opportunities that they may not have otherwise. So you're no different than anyone else that has gone through this process before. What I recommend doing is connecting with your full right program advisors on campus, reaching out to an alum like the ones that you're about to hear from. And just understanding that this is a process. It's a journey. As of today, you are probably not full brightable. I just kind of making up words. It's going to be a process it's going to take time it's going to take numerous drafts of your application before you can get to that point where you are worthy if you will, of being considered a full brighter. So with that, I'm done and I would like to just pass it on to our next speaker. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you very, very much, Lee. We appreciate you. And Lee will be plugging links in the chat about the program as well, so that you can refer to that. I want to shift to our panel today, which features three full bright alumni who are also HBC alumni. So we're going to discuss their international exchange experiences with the full bright program. At this time I have the distinct pleasure of welcoming Ashley Cheyenne and Emmanuel. As you will unmute to join the conversation I'd like to ask Ashley to start us off by introducing yourself and sharing your HBC connections and full bright program involvement. Hi, everyone. My name is Ashley Brown Greer. I am a current PhD student at Howard University in the higher education leadership and policy studies program. I am a two time HBC graduate Talady good college for undergrad and Morgan State University and I'll finish it off at Howard and hopefully this year sometime. I was a full bright English teaching assistant to Malaysia in 2017. I recently reapplied. So my fingers are crossed for research to South Africa. And my experience as a full bright as a full brighter highlighted a disparity amongst HBC students who participate in government funded international exchange programs. And to, you know, help spread this knowledge to HBC students both undergraduate and graduate as well as fellowship advisors. I created international HBC you exchange which partners with born full bright Gilman and critical language scholarship as well as the State Department. Thank you Ashley Cheyenne. Absolutely. Thank you to mail thank you everybody for allowing me to join today. Everyone who knows me knows that I love talking about my full bright experience so thank you guys for the opportunity to share. Again, my name is Cheyenne voice my pronouns are she her I'm located in Washington DC, although I'm originally from Detroit Michigan. I attended Spelman College for undergrad where I studied international studies and Japanese studies and then I moved to DC. Well actually, then I did my full bright, which I will talk about and then I came to DC, where I attended American University for my masters which was an international peace and conflict resolution. I was an English teaching assistant like Ashley to Malaysia in 2015. It was an amazing experience that honestly, it has such a meaningful impact personally but then it also really shaped the trajectory of my career so everything that I ended up doing after my full bright was very much based on the experience that I had while I was in country. I'm very passionate about education and creating access opportunities for people that are traditionally underrepresented in spaces.  But now I've actually taken that passion for creating access opportunities to the tech industry. I'm now in the strategic partnerships manager for the education partner program and HubSpot, where I essentially work with educators at HBCUs and Hispanic serving institutions and other MSIs to help create career readiness and workforce development programming.  So again, thank you guys for having me and I'm excited to share my experience. Thank you Cheyenne and I'll pass it to Emmanuel. Alright, hello everyone and thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. And my name is Emmanuel Johnson, I am currently based in Los Angeles, California, where I am a postdoc at USC. And my research looks at using artificial intelligence to essentially teach social skills. And I did my full bright at the University of Birmingham in 2013. And I won the full bright study awards for pursuit of masters in robotics. Prior to that I graduated from North Carolina and T Aggie pride. And yeah I think beyond what I do academically as opposed like I've also been a full bright alumni ambassador. I've always enjoyed speaking about full bright as the other panelists on here and also encouraging more specifically encouraging HBCU students to pursue the award for bright has made me a celebrity. I've met quite a few people who've seen my picture on the website. So thank you for that full bright and I look forward to this conversation with you all today. You're welcome Emmanuel. And all of all of these alumni and others are on our full bright 75.org website. So you can learn more about our full bright alums and as full bright alums today, we want to get your insight on your experience and experiences. And so I want to start with some questions and then we will leave time for q amp a from the audience we promise and you can put your questions in the chat. We will be pulling them now and asking them in just a little bit. I'm going to start with Emmanuel. Please speak broadly to share a high level summary of your full bright experience. What was it like being in the UK and just expound on your full bright experience. As I stated earlier pursued masters in robotics at the University of Birmingham in 2013. And I mean I think the experience was amazing. As a student and I hadn't traveled abroad. And so, for me that was my first time going to the UK. And from the day I stuff foot in the country to the day I left, I was mind blown, just the diversity of cultures and the amount of people who come from various parts of the world in the UK was amazing. The food that they brought in also I think having a cohort me through full bright that were based in different parts of the country also offered opportunity to travel in and connect with with students as well. I also volunteered at a local middle school. So I was helping students with math and science courses. And then also towards the end of my time in the UK full brain vitamin to this thing tank. And so we went to this location for about four or five days to discuss a variety of different topics. Interestingly, the question that was asked then was can governments keep up with the digital revolution and it's interesting to watch how all of that has played. So I think overall I enjoyed my full bright experience and it really sort of left that that bug in me to want to travel abroad. And so since then I've traveled to India Brazil, Japan, and a number of other countries. So that is awesome. And speaking of technology that might be a little bit of a delay so apologies if that is the case. Do you want to share your experience. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's funny because when I think about my, I think about my experience in Malaysia but I also think about the experience leading up to actually getting to Malaysia and so full bright was always something that I kind of heard of Spelman produces a lot of four writers and so I knew a lot of cool people who did for us I too wanted to be cool like them. And so it's something that I started considering you know very early on in my college experience one of the things that I also usually share is that I applied and I was an alternate so I am a living case of a baby can turn into a yes I was fully on my way to American to start graduate school when I got the call in like September or August of that you know I had a spot for me and if I wanted it I could go to Malaysia and so all of it was just a whirlwind you know getting getting to that point. But once I got to Malaysia I was actually placed in sick could I Malaysia, which is on the northern peninsula of Malaysia. It is very rural. As I mentioned I'm from Detroit, I went to school in Atlanta, I live in Washington DC. So I was not used to a rural environment necessarily, but it ended up being amazing and exactly what I needed at that time in my life. I was at a secondary school where I worked with students 13 to 18 about 300 students per week teaching just going in and out of different classes. I was very lucky and that the English department the teachers there in Malaysia, they were a bit younger, they were very open to new ideas and things like that and so that meant that I was able. I was kind of there to make English fun and exciting and be cool and talk to students and sort of just make English like a really exciting and enjoyable thing and so the thing that I do really like about the English teaching assistantship grant is that it allows you to bring what you're interested in to your space at least in Malaysia. So I, for example, am a musician really enjoy music and so I created a boy band and I had students singing and doing presentations all around, you know, throughout the year. I really love travel and so one of the biggest projects that I did was actually taking my students on designing and taking my students on a cultural exchange trip from Kedah to Kultukana Balusaba because I wanted my students to be able to have the experience of leaving the very homogenous state of Kedah and experiencing and learning about their own country and so these were all ideas that I came up with while I was on the grant and I did the work and I talked to the people and I got all of the permission that I needed to really be able to run these projects and make them a great experience for my students and so when I think back on it, I really see my whole experience is just the time where I was able to learn more about myself, learn more about the culture that I was in and everything that I did was about creating those connections because I said by the time I leave here, I want the people that I've come into contact with to know about me, understand what my experience as an American is and really, you know, think positively about the program and myself and so yeah it ended up being a great experience like I said and I learned a lot along the way. Thank you Cheyenne, they were lucky to have you as a teacher. Ashley, what was your experience like?  I was amongst the oldest in my cohort, I was 28 at the time, and I was concerned that my, you know, teachers and students would be like oh no no ma'am you're too old, but they really embraced me, I was placed in rural Morang Terenganu, a really beautiful city, small city, and I really engaged with my school and the teachers, I have kind of an old soul so I know my teachers really, you know, they really embraced me and you know tried to get me acclimated to the host community. And then some of the projects that I did with my students, now anyone, I am a picky eater, and so I came up with this great idea to create a poetry recipe book, because I was just so amazed by the foods that I probably never tried, but I felt the need to share not only just the Malaysian food culture with the Americans, but to also partner with schools in America to share their favorite recipes. And so they wrote poems about their favorite foods and shared recipes and macaroni and cheese was the favorite recipe. Another thing that I did with my students was we visited the US Embassy in Malaysia as well as the Fulbright Commission, and so that was really exciting for my students because some of them had never been on an airplane before. And so it was just a really amazing experience to just take them to KL but to also introduce them to the staff at the Embassy so that they could learn more about the American culture and why they're placed in Malaysia. Thank you, Ashley. I wanted to ask the next question to ask about what factored into your decision to go abroad with the Fulbright program and specifically why you chose the country that you did and what you wanted to do, whether it was teaching English or research and I'll start with Cheyenne. Sure. So right before I was applying for the Fulbright, I actually spent my junior year at Spelman abroad in Japan. And so that was a full year being an exchange student. And so for me, that really ignited the fire of me wanting to travel and be abroad and also be a part of creating connections between cultures. And so I came back to Spelman for my senior year, sort of ready to just hit the ground running on whatever was going to help me continue to further that desire. And so a big part of applying for Fulbright, of course, was the professional development experience of it all, the network. I knew that this was a field I wanted to be in and I wanted to take advantage of those opportunities. But what I'll also say is what was really important for me was being able to be a part of representing the United States and showing what the United States looked like. I remembered when I went abroad for the first time, which was when I was in high school in Japan, nobody around me was doing that. Nobody knew about like, you know, studying abroad. That was just not an option really, you know, where I was at. And so I had always had this really deep desire to want to be a part of showing what the US looked like. And it really happened. When I arrived in Malaysia, they did not think that they were going to be getting a black girl from Detroit, you know, to be the English teaching assistant. And it became this experience of me learning from them, but then also, you know, members of my community learning from me. And it was like, well, we're all here together. So we might as well, you know, do the best we can with this. And so I was able to do a lot of programming that reflected my culture and things that were very important to me while also being very open to learning. So I went to all the weddings, I went to all the holidays, I went to every anything that my students and teachers invited me to, you know, I made sure that I was open to that. And in general, I think also for me, it was an opportunity to again, just continue to be abroad. I, like I said, I spent time in East Asia, I knew I wanted to be in Southeast Asia. I knew I wanted to continue studying these areas and graduate school. So I'll, I think my decision was part strategic, but then also just following my heart and doing what I wanted to do. I wanted to go back abroad. And so, you know, I made sure that it was something that I would work really hard to try to achieve. So I'm going to be shy and I think that's very insightful and I'll turn it to Emmanuel and then Ashley to talk about what factored into your decision to go abroad. Yeah, I think in undergrad I spent most of my summers in research labs. And at the time, there weren't many programs that exposed students to robotics. So graduate when I was graduating, I was looking for master's program, but I didn't want to just pursue a degree. I also want to be exposed to different cultures and different people. Now, the only problem is, I only speak English. And so I realized it may be a little challenging to go to a country where I'm picking up the language, trying to pursue a technical master's. This all happened at the UK had a program in robotics. And then also, the UK has a long history of producing some of the early pioneers in computer science and as well as robotics and artificial intelligence. So to me, it just felt like a very nice fit. And so that's what led me to pursue my Fulbright in the UK. So at the time that I applied to Fulbright, I actually had no clue about the program. I was sitting in my GA ship office one day. And I was like, I think I'm interested in teaching abroad. I was in a master's of arts and teaching program at Morgan. And I was like, that would make sense. And my previous exchange or study abroad opportunity, I studied Italian opera in Pisa, Italy. And I was like, okay, I got a taste of this travel bug. I want to try to apply for Fulbright. So I actually applied twice to the ETA program the first time to Vietnam. And I made it to this in my finalist round. And I took that same application and submitted it for Malaysia the following year and was successful. And kind of like what Emmanuel said, I had, I took Spanish in college, I took French, but no one said, hey, pick one language and stick with it. So I took both and really didn't retain anything. And so when I was selecting countries, of course I had to choose one that where I could speak English and so Vietnam and Malaysia were both perfect. And so good thing everyone in Malaysia, well, not everyone, you know, English is a popular language in Malaysia or not popular, but it's a spoken language in Malaysia, and I picked up some Bahasa Malayu. So. And that's what these experiences are all about. I want to move us into being conscious of our time. And we have a few questions from the audience but first I'll ask, do you have advice for students interested in applying for the Fulbright program and where and how they should start. And I will begin with Emmanuel. I think it's interesting. So many of the points that I had I think Lee mentioned earlier so I really want to reiterate. One, reach out to your school's FPA, as well as just the General International Office because they've been doing this for a while. And they will be a good fit. I'm not from the school who've participated in different programs, even if it's not necessarily the one that you're applying for. I think generally people have insights on what to think how to approach these opportunities. Let's say your school doesn't have an international office or you're unable to find an alumni because similar to, similarly in my case, we had an international office at ANT, but we hadn't had a Fulbright awardee. And so in that case, I would suggest reaching out to Fulbright ambassadors. I've been an ambassador. And I think ambassadors are very open to talking to students. We're here to help you. We're here to provide guidance. And so that would be the best individuals to contact. Beyond that, I will definitely and highly encourage that you start early. You're going to go through multiple drafts because what you find is that as you start to write these essays and try to pitch yourself, you're also discovering who you are. You know, because I think as you're going through undergrad, you're not thinking about all those amazing experiences that you're having. And so when you get to writing your essays, you start realizing like, wow, I've done a lot. Before I condense it all to one or two pages.  Look at those drafts and provide feedback and time for you to submit a stellar application. Thank you. And FPA for those who may not know, we have a lot of acronyms in the government, Fulbright program advisor. Most campuses will have them. Some may not, but there's someone on your campus professors who can help you. And Lee, my colleague Lee will put those links in the chat again for the student program and he mentioned the FPA connections and I will pass it to Cheyenne to share your advice on how and where to start. Yeah, I mean, I echo everything that Emmanuel already said the top advice that I had number one was definitely start thinking about it early and for a little context for me as someone who applied in my senior year of undergrad. As I mentioned before, I was abroad in my junior year. So that's whole summer before my senior year I was still abroad and when I came back in September, I was already behind the folks that have been thinking about it, you know, over the summer and in their junior year. And so it's something that you want to start thinking about really want to start connecting with FPAs alumni from your institution, alumni ambassadors, I'm an alumni ambassador as well. You want to really start thinking about it. And the only other piece that I'll kind of share is that when you're writing your essays. Be true to yourself and who you are because I think that you are the only person that could convince the screening committees and the different groups of people who read the applications that you are the best choice. It's really about pitching you and and what you're going to bring to the program and what you're going to get out of it in my application I wrote, you know about I'm somebody who dreams big. I don't really know what I want to do with my career I'm figuring it out but I'm going to make a difference in the world and so here we are. And I think that being really true to yourself and just making sure that you articulate what the value was going to be in the range is really important. So yeah those are just the tips that I would add but yeah you can do it so apply anybody out there thinking about applying apply. We just encourage all of you to apply and get all the help that you need ask for the help use the student use the program office hours for the US student program, use your professors, alumni, all the resources. I want to share a question from the audience, and then we will close out the panel. And thank you all for for staying with us as we had the technical issues in the beginning. We have a question from Nicole Halat, and I hope I pronounced your name correctly. Ashley partly inspired my proposal, my, excuse me my proposed dissertation research, which has to do with the identity negotiation process for Fulbrighters from minoritized backgrounds. Ashley given what can often be a complicated even fraught relationship with majority culture of the US. How did you navigate suddenly being in a position where you're an official representative of the United States. Sorry, can you repeat the question sorry. I can. And if anyone else wants to answer as well please. Can everyone hear me okay. Perfect from Nicole Halat, Ashley partly inspired my proposed dissertation research, which has to do with the identity negotiation process for Fulbrighters from minoritized backgrounds. Ashley given what what can often be a complicated even fraught relationship with the majority culture of the US. How did you navigate suddenly being in a position where you're an official representative of the United States. That's a great question so I think for me. While I was in Malaysia I came to this realization like you're American but you're also a black American. And so that's what my students got that's what my community got and so I thought, you know, that's my life. Let me share what I can and so being black in Malaysia was very different because in my small community, they, many people had never seen a black American before and so I was always just identified as being African and so I would have to say, you know, I've never been to the continent. My family has never been I am as American as American can come. And so I think having those conversations really helped the people in my community and just the people I came into contact with even an Uber rides or grab rides, you know, really help them to understand about America and the different and the diversity that we have in the country. Thank you Ashley. Does anyone else want to respond before we close. Yeah, I'll just add a quick point and I think Ashley and I had similar experiences in Malaysia so I echo everything that she said but what I'll also just add is that at no point that I feel that the full bright program was asking me to be what a version of American they wanted. And I think by sending me they actually got kind of a lot out of this deal, because my first month in, in my school, it was February because the program starts in January so I did black history month programming all month because that's what I knew I was in a new place and I could I was figuring out things and getting my bearings. And so you know that's what I did and I think it was a great benefit for me and then also my students and so also within the community bringing my experience and being authentic about who I am was I think it was really crucial to making my experience what it was if I had been trying to navigate in a way that I thought, you know, the State Department or four bar wanted me to then I probably would have gotten stuck in trying to achieve something that, you know, wouldn't I wouldn't be able to be who I am so I do think that that's something that you not to say that I didn't have challenges while I was in Malaysia I definitely be it with folks in Malaysia but then also members of my cohort, but I think that that is the experience of exchange and so being willing to be in those situations and bring your authentic self is actually how we help ourselves move to a better place so. And thank you all, Emmanuel Ashley Cheyenne for being your authentic selves today and sharing your time and talents. And we certainly wish you the best as you continue in your endeavors as we wish the audience. This has been a really great conversation and opportunity to learn from you about the full bright program and there will be two more full bright panels this afternoon intersectionality as a black full brighter abroad at 4pm. And we'll discuss the full bright US scholar program for faculty administrators at 5pm this afternoon. Before we come to a close we encourage all of you again please apply to the full bright program and thank you for spending your time with the State Department today have an excellent afternoon.


Swin and town away this weekend. What memories do you have of playing there? few We had I think I think I've scored a goal there Few seasons ago, but Yeah, but some good good memories there because I think we did we won on penalties to go into the Johnson's paint trophy final There so so some good memories. Yeah Swin and town this weekend as I say, what are you expecting from them this weekend?  So I don't I don't think he'll make a difference to us


Hello people of the internet, my name is Johnny and welcome back to Ultimate Nintendo Night 2, the special demo. Now, I didn't miss something as it turns out, I knew this would happen but thankfully maybe told me like, hey, you missed this. But apparently it was a small little glitch in the game so that's now been fixed, thanks Babs for fixing that. And she mentioned this about buffing the puff that she was going to buff puff but I don't know if she did because again, she did fix it pretty fast so hopefully she didn't so all I have to do is finish this again.  I'm pretty sure that's what we have to do and because that's so little content, I'm not sure how long this video is going to be and maybe like 30 minutes, I don't know. Hopefully Jigglypuff comes because again, I played through this game, this little section of the game two or three times I think it might have been and I did not see them once so yeah. Babs did say that they will be buffing the puff so yeah, when this game does fully release, look forward to that. Oh, I just noticed the little starter Pokemon for Sword and Shield. Hey, that releases in like two days, doesn't it? So now we should get a cutscene, right? Maybe? Here we go.  I think they're gone now. Huh? What the? A card? Perhaps I can use it on a PC or something? I actually got that six-packed brick, brick, brick, brick, brick brain, God. R slash how to stroke am I right gamers? Relatable. Alright, let's just head back to the PC. Really, really simple stuff. I believe it's out here and then down here, right? Yes, okay. Now, here we go. Oh, the door previously closes open. That might be important. Wait, so how do I get out of here? Oh, exit, of course. So, there's a lot more to this demo than I first initially thought. Oh my God, okay, so what's that? Did I ever read this note? Where the beast inside these holes? She's not the one responsible for this. The character emulation has gone wrong. She wants everyone to herself to do her bidding. She is a copy of me. If you are reading this, please reverse it all. Ribbon did this. He must find the dimensional machine, which is what made us here the location to begin with. Yeah, I definitely did not read that. So, I gotta find a door that has opened. No clue where that could be. Awesome. I left this note here before I retire tomorrow. I heard, though, there was some unwanted entity that exists out there due to the character emulation device's faulty quality tool. I hope whatever it is has hopefully been tracked down by now. I hear the name is Ribbon a lot, but honestly, it isn't my problem anymore. So, Ribbon isn't a character. They're just an entity. Interesting. Alright, I still have no clue where this door is. Oh wait, maybe I do. Yes! Demo? Oh, well. Is there a way I can just glitch through it? Maybe I can just squeak? I don't know that I could do that. That's kind of neat. Well, I guess that is the end of the demo. So, this video is gonna be like three minutes. Yeah, I think this really is the end of the demo, which is really sad. But again, pretty glad that I came back to really finish it this time because for one, we did probably finish it. And we also got some new lore on what's happening, who Ribbon is. I still don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. Hopefully I am. And we saw the little select screen that we get now. So, I might actually return back to that because based on that, we can try and figure out just how many levels there are and how the levels and scenarios are going to play out. At least we can take a good shot at it. So, let's go do that quickly. Oh, okay. Welcome to the Game Boy UNN. This PC application will fast travel you to any stage you unlock, as well as any extras. However, if you do so, we'll miss. Oh god, I gotta turn this down actually. However, if you do so, you will miss out on the items and secrets that are all in the hub world in various areas. So, if you're not in the mood for some scares, try some exploration. You may also view your tasks here. Okay, collection. What have you picked up? I have not picked up anything, though that just gave me flashbacks to the Custom Night Grid for UCN, and I did not like it. Okay, not available in here. So, I really like this mechanic.  Okay, so this is the select stage, and I really like how it's a Game Boy. Do I still have mine? Yeah. It's back there. You can barely see it, but it's right there in front of the cereal box. So, you can, I'm guessing in the future, select the different chapters and then select the different stages, which I really, really like that. That's a good, again, fast travel method. And so, I'm guessing if I click this, yeah, I can just go right back to musical encounters. If I go back, then, okay. I really, really like that. Baby, that's a really nice touch, and I really, really hope... I'm sure it's gotta go through to the release game, which I'm just, again, really looking forward to. 2020, no exact release date yet. Just 2020, though. You know, we are approaching 2020, but I highly doubt it's gonna release, you know, January 1st. So, again, starting to look out for that. Bab's new game releases in, like, nine days, I think so. Gonna do a few videos on that, because that looks cool. I made live stream it. I haven't really decided yet. But this is officially the end of the special demo for Ultimate Nintendo Night 2. Again, thank you, baby, for sending me the copy of this. I just thank you so much. That's absolutely incredible, and so nice of you to do. So, again, thank you.  And I'll see you all on the flip side. Goodbye.