Good morning and welcome back to Y254 in the morning. My name is Faith Msoley. If you're just joining us, it's Wednesday. And if it's Wednesday, you know it's WCW. On this segment, we celebrate the strength of a woman. You can catch us across all our social media platforms at Y254 channel. Engage me at Faith Msoley. And so many times women go through so many sleepless nights because of skin care issues. And today we talk about beauty and skin care.   And then it doesn't just work for you. You again, your friend tells you you can use charcoal, just unakoroga charcoal, apply it on your face, doesn't work for you. We even go to an extent of using raw eggs. So today in studio, we just want to find some solutions that cover skin care. And in studio today, we're speaking to Miss Grant International. She's the ambassador. She doubles up as an ambassador to flatna skin care. Her name is Irene Ngendo. It's a pleasure having you this morning. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here.  And so to me, when I was growing up, I had this fallacy that for you to be a model, you just need to have a slender body. Now that I was slender, tiny growing up. And then again, along the way, I realized that it was met with kids. So tell us who is Irene Ngendo, what do you do? Okay, I like what you're talking about, the misconceptions that are actually in modeling, because they are quite a lot. We're told that you have to be slender, you have to be really tall, but what people don't know, they are different segments of modeling. So for me, the segment that I've done actually all, but the segment that I kind of specialize in is pageantry. This is the Miss World, Miss Africa, Miss What. All of these Miss pageants where girls are competing, that's the kind of thing that I specialize in. So Irene Ngendo is a pageant queen. She's someone who loves the idea and the platform of pageantry, especially because in pageantry, it's not just about walking on a runway. It's you being able to take up a leadership position and being able to do some good in the community, in your community. So that's one of the main reasons I actually entered into pageantry. Minus that, I'm a student, of course, I'm at JCOAT, I'm pursuing Mathematics and Computer Science. And right now, being here, I'm a flatna skin care ambassador. So that's actually the capacity I've come for this interview in. So where can people find you in social media? In social media you can find me at Rene Queen when you search it's R-E-W-N-I-E underscore Q-U-I-N. If you search that, or if you just write Miss Grand Kenya, it'll be able to show up and you'll see Rene Queen account. So many people might be aware of Miss Kenya, Miss Kisumu County for example, but they might not be so much aware of Miss Grand International. So enlighten us. There are so many pageants, honestly, there are so many, so many pageants in the world. There are countless, there are so many. So one of them, the big five pageants, the two main ones that people know in the world is Miss World and Miss Universe, everyone kind of knows of that. But there are five main pageants that are found on the high end of pageantry and from Miss Grand and Miss Universe you'll then have something like Miss International, then you'll see Miss Grand and you'll have Miss Supra National, those are the five big pageants. So Miss Grand International is actually amongst the five big pageants in the world and I was able to represent my country So what prize comes with Miss Grand International Kenya? Miss Grand International Kenya actually, now here's the thing, I was actually the one who reached out to Miss Grand International, the organization, so that I could represent Kenya because sadly there is not yet an organization here in Kenya, like the way there is Miss World Kenya that is running it. So it was actually my own initiative so there was not necessarily a prize for being the Kenyan Queen minus the representation of course which for me meant a lot. So in your own opinion growing up modeling rather beauty pageantry was something that was so glamorous it would be like when we having Miss World Kenya it would be something aired on television live but now today do you think that the industry is dying because do you think that it's losing the glam that it used to have before? It's a good question actually because as I said there are only two pageants known here in Kenya but that's Miss World Kenya and Miss Universe Kenya and Miss World Kenya is I think the one that's really known here in Kenya and as you're saying in recent times it would even be aired on television and such and I think it still actually is it was actually the competition as recent and we had Sharon Obara who won and we've seen her doing TV interviews so here in Kenya Miss World and Miss Universe Kenya is quite big but I don't think Kenya has really embraced pageantry the way it should be because when you go out to other countries and you're competing with other countries like the Philippines especially Asian countries even the Americas you find that they have such a value for pageantry that the organization will invest a lot even the government itself is involved in pageants which is not the same case here in Kenya so in Kenya it's yet to catch up pick up that pace but having girls like me who can go out of the way to represent that country and then show people that we can actually place will give that confidence to organizations, to the government to actually join in and help out in pageantry because really it's a big opportunity in other countries it's a billion dollar industry why do you think the sponsors are not just coming up to support the industry in Kenya I think because without many pageants here and seeing that girls here when sometimes they go and they don't place people lose that value so really it's for the girls themselves to decide let's first invest in ourselves and training in taking a chance on ourselves because before someone can take a chance on you you have to take a chance on yourself and show them that hi I believe in myself and I'm able to put myself out there and actually a merge top because right now beginning my pageantry career I actually had almost zero supporters because no one really knew about me no one really knew a lot about pageantry but from the wad go and I started from Miss Jqach to Miss Progress to Miss Africa and then to Miss Grand as I was building up I've gotten so much more support I even have people designers different organizations that are ready to work with me now so if you didn't take me taking a chance on myself and putting myself out there who would actually come onto the table and say okay let me add onto what you have so I think it's really for the girls to train themselves so that when they go out there they can place highly yeah okay so there are so many misconceptions that come with being a model in particular you find that in most cases you've gone for a competition but someone wants to wants you expect you to pull down your pants before you get what you're looking for have you encountered such? I haven't encountered such so to say but I think it's not just even in modeling I think being a model is difficult people are expecting favors before they can see you as a professional person pursuing a career so it's for you to be able to have just like in any other career for you to be able to have your own boundaries and to decide I'm not going to cross this lines I'm going to work around them if I have to and I'm not going to cross this lines I'm going to make sure that I am professional in everything I do so you find that there are girls who yes will succumb to such things but those girls if we're being honest never really go far so if you're looking to go far in your pageantry career it takes more of that moral responsibility on your own so that you can go find people can take you seriously right so speaking of professionalism every pageant that wins like let's say for example Miss Kenya Miss Grant like you so do you think that it's usually fair do they win fairly or it's all about opinion and whom you like you know that's a thing exactly in pageantry we'll have like a panel of judges and different people will have different opinions of who they think is representing themselves well so pageantry yes is usually that tricky you never know who the judge maybe the people sitting there what they think about what's the kind of personality that maybe impresses them because that's true of everyone everyone has that different personality that will impress them maybe you something else will impress you in someone and something else will impress me differently in someone that's why it's usually good to have a long panel of judges and not just three it's good to have around seven so that at least when you have majority of them being impressed by one person maybe you win but as you're saying sometimes you do find that pageantry can end up being unfair but that's not always the case what I always tell myself is instead of thinking that it's going to be unfair I want to win someone else will win over me I need to think that I'm the winner already because if I am convinced I'm the winner I can convince the judges I'm the winner and if I'm able to sit to present myself on the show day and make sure that I am so exceptional that even if they had someone they wanted to win they wanted this person to win but because of how exceptional I am even the stage everyone watching knows this is the winner they can't because they don't also want to have that bad publicity they'll have to choose you because you did a good job so instead of looking at challenges as something to kind of tell yourself I'm not going to participate in this pageant take it up as a challenge and say then it means I need to be the utmost best so that they do not take that opportunity away from me and so let's talk flat skin care when I was introducing the show I mentioned some fallacies or rather not really fallacies because to some people it works for them you find that someone has skin breakout and it's not just finding that solution to has skin problem so help such like a person just talk first of all tell us what flat skin care is all about ok so as I said I'm coming here in the capacity of the brand ambassador for flat na Africa it's actually my modelling career that has led me to be the brand ambassador here because you find that in pageantry even in just modelling in general good skin is one of the things that you would need so people can consider you to maybe do jobs here and there and such so because of that my pursuit for maybe healthy skin glowing skin I actually joined flat na ambassador competition which is actually called flat na face but flat na Africa is basically a skin care brand and they sell different lines of skin care and one of the good things that you're saying when you're talking about all the negative information people have and they're looking for something that's working and it's not working for them with flat na when you're going to buy they're not just selling your product because they want the cash out of it they actually want something that will work for your skin so you can even come back with a good review and you know refine your friends make sure to bring dermatologist online so when you're actually looking to what do I need for my skin whether you know anything or nothing about skin care you have a dermatologist to actually lead you to know this is the right skin care who will tell you you have oily skin or dry skin exactly so that's one of the main advantages of flat na yes so you are on a media tour to encourage young ladies and gents to join flat na for mostly upcoming content creators so what will for these guys who will take part in the competitions what will they what do they need to have so the requirements to actually join flat na face is for you to just have skin and everyone has skin so as long as you feel like you are creative because especially right now the youth are really joining into content creation you feel like you are creative and you have nice skin let me cut you short so speaking of as long as you have skin do you mean that if you have a flawless skin no no no just a skin oily dry any type of skin whether you have the worst breakouts and you want to try out because that's one of the reasons some people do join flat na face they really feel like they have breakouts and they want an opportunity to learn more about their skin and how to go about it so it's not about flawless skin here one of the things that flat na we stand for is destroying that myth of for you to you have to have flawless skin for you to do anything as a brand ambassador for skin care no but how can I be a brand ambassador over skin care company but my face is so broken out if you come now can you see how much more of a sale it is if you come with your broken skin and in your one year of working with flat na you find that your skin has actually gotten better don't you want to tell me it's more believable for someone to say you know I believe in these products I can actually buy into these products that's exactly what we're trying to show that it's for anyone because many people have that they don't trust skin care brands because they're always seeing people with perfect skin so they think no you just took someone with perfect skin and we want to kill that myth when it comes to flat na Africa so you come there and see it for yourself come as you are see it for yourself try it for yourself and you'll see it works and you'll see the results so what are some of the products that you people deal in they are very different many lines actually in flat na again as I said it's according to your specification and your skin type especially for people with oily skin with breakouts even patches for when you have a breakout especially women we get hormonal breakouts when we are around that time of the month you get a breakout so we have some patches that you can put and they can easily deal with that instead of kwa mka and then you pack a cold gate so something that actually works and the good thing again about skin care is that about flat na skin care is actually organic it's something that's not at the chemicals nimi it's something taken from nature most of our products are extracts from nature so they ok they will not have side effects of course skin is different so something that will work for oily skin will not necessarily work for dry skin so you may find that maybe your skin is suffering when you're trying to use something someone else is using and again as I said that's why we also have on board to tell you your skin is oily try this your skin is dry try this yours is normal try this so that's why you also it's a good thing to try and do it with flat na because you'll have advice not just someone telling you buy these products how costly are the products it depends actually with what you're looking for because sometimes depending on the level of damage of your skin you need to actually invest more and sometimes maybe your skin is in a good situation constant care here and there so it's very different there are things that do range from 4000 to 6000 there are others that range from even 900 to 2000 so it's not something that can be too expensive depending on what it is you need so I guess that as a company as a brand ambassador there are some challenges that you have gone through your experience during your reign and I think before I get into the challenges I can even just first of all get into what flat na face is about because the company is called flat na africa but we have flat na face so flat na face is basically a brand ambassador competition that we are calling all creatives to join in and maybe can I say register or apply then when you register and apply and they're shortlisted we'll have finalists who will go into one whole year of skin care they'll get skin care products for free every month how can I how can they register yes let me actually get to that so how you can register is actually if you have your 2500 buy some products in flat na with your 2500 and then you'll take a photo post whatever is your means of creativity whether it's tiktok instagram facebook just make a post with the products and maybe giving a review of how you've used them so far whether you've just used them for a week and how you're feeling about them and maybe talk about your skin care whether you're beginning whether you're trying out something new whether you've had breakouts just talk about your skin care in your post and then when you go to the flat na website you'll see a form and that form you'll fill out your information and you link the post that you put up there so once you link that post that is officially it you're now registered into flat na face and now from there they'll go on and 3 rounds they'll cut down people to have 12 finalists so these 12 finalists are the ones who are going to go into the next year 2022 all throughout the year they're going to be doing different challenges and they'll be finally at the end of the year one overall winner and that one overall winner gets to go home with 200,000 Kenya shillings and not only that actually if you are amongst the finalist all throughout the year you'll be receiving packages skin care packages for 2500 each and every month you'll be receiving skin care packages so it's a good opportunity for someone who's looking to learn more about skin care or help their skin become better to get that opportunity to do it kind of for free that's one of the advantages I've been able to have there and the last addition to it is that every three months of the year you'll have the people competing at that point whoever is ahead in the challenges will actually get 25,000 Kenya shillings so every three months there's 25,000 Kenya shillings to be won so even if you're not the overall winner how to go home with that and then finally up as the overall winner you'll walk away with your 200,000 Kenya shillings so any challenges that you first so my challenges I think getting into this was I actually did not know anything about skin care I was so honest with them even when I was entering I told them I'm entering to learn more about my skin and more about skin care so I didn't know anything about skin care so it was more of a very heavy learning experience for me because I had to now find out what is my skin type what do I need for my skin when I have a breakout what do I do but with the kind of knowledge I have now I'm like it's been a good year clearly because now I can say I know how to kind of take care of my skin of course I'm not yet there like a skin guru anything but I'm getting there so that has been one of my main challenges wow is it why on our personal note is it why you're keeping the natural skin yeah you know that's actually one of the reasons I did it because as a pageant queen I think where most times you see us in makeup that one can be damaging to your skin and to also to your confidence because when you take out your makeup maybe you don't feel as beautiful without your makeup and I wanted to change that narrative I wanted to show people that you can be a pageant queen and feel beautiful in your own skin so I decided let me join a brand that believes in the same thing believes in natural skin care and natural beauty and learn from them and see what I can get from them and I have to say I've learnt a lot so you mentioned that the winner will have a monthly supply of products it's actually not the only winner it's for the 12 finalists who will get into the year so that whole year they'll have a supply of products monthly so as much as you're a participant yes exactly it's a nice deal it's a win-win so anyone who is willing to participate must he or she be a content creator? not necessarily but in the span of that year you will be creating content to put out there so it would be an advantage if you are but you can also kind of learn on the job and you don't have to feel limited by maybe your age or something we actually had our previous winner was a mum with a kid so that's why I was saying it's for anyone as long as you have skin because you can be in whatever age bracket you can be male or female you can have dry or only skin whichever age anyone is qualified to participate but of course if you are under age under 18 you need consent from your parents of course but when we talk of skin issues and skin care many people will not just like finding a dermatologist you tell someone you have to come see a dermatologist find it so costly in a way so this person who has a skin breakout and wants to use flatness skin care but he feels like I can't afford to pay for this dermatologist for this dermatologist to tell me your skin is oily or your skin is dry can the same person access flatness skin care products exactly that's why I'm here to promote the flatness face because that's an opportunity to get all these things that would otherwise be very costly kind of for free just by registering and investing this 2500 that you have which is exactly what I did and I've been able to get skin care which is to get the skin care products themselves all throughout this course of one year and I've been able to get it technically for free because the only investment I did make was the 2500 and of course now my time when it comes to content creation and even finding out more about skin care so this is a good opportunity for you who feels that maybe you're not financially capable to do that yet but you would like to pursue skin care and find out more about your skin this is the opportunity for that so I'm sure that someone out there who's watching you this morning na akona zile pimples these ones have been a big toll on me I guess if finding a solution this morning it is not just going to continue with the egg whatever or the avocado and whatever on the skin so flatness skin care you guys deal in beauty products your company where is it can someone just walk in and buy the product or must this person make online flatness is mainly an online thing but there are direct deliveries to your home or even to town like CBD and you can get deliveries from there and right now we've actually just recently opened and now a point where you can actually go see some products it's kind of like a shop but not really because it's not necessarily fully ours it's more like a rental so that's what we have as of now so that you can go and be able to see but mainly it's online so you can peruse through and I think the good thing with online is you're able to do all your research on the products there and you don't have the pressure of having to pick things immediately there because you find that online so you can look at a product it has all its ingredients all the directions on how to use it its advantages the kind of skin type it's for and then you're able to choose whether I want this or I don't want this so it's a walk in so you have got a walk in somewhere right now yes I don't remember the exact location I think it's somewhere in is it Karen or Kitosuru I'm not sure I'd need to confirm that from the heads we do have a walk in location and maybe if you want to see that just right now you can look at Fletna Africa on Instagram and from there you'll see the details on where our walk in is so what are your future plans with oh sorry before I go to the future plans what has been the feedback from people who have been using Fletna skin care products so far I think so far so good maybe the feedbacks sometimes you'll have is maybe for people who are struggling to get it they may feel that maybe it's expensive especially the ones who have extreme skin care conditions and they are not yet financially able to do it and that's why we open up opportunities like this and even if you follow up with our Instagram you will see that we actually do giveaways here and there especially on days like maybe Valentine's Mother's Day you know such things we actually do have giveaways here and there able to purchase them you can look for such opportunities or opportunities where there are discounts so that's one of the things that I think Fletna works for people so as an individual what future plans do you have as a beauty pageant I think right now I'm in school as I said so I'm finishing out my final year in school and I'm also continuing to pursue the IT department I'm actually going to continue to be kind of interning at Fletna when it comes now to IT not just the beauty and skin care part of it and then from there I think with my beauty pageant career I want to go ahead and compete for other pageants so I'll continue with my research see what pageant I will invest in next and compete for it of course yeah those are technically my plans but I always leave space for God to surprise me because you never know what God's plans are with you so how do you balance the two I think it's deciding sometimes to prioritize one over the other when there is that urgency and when there is that space to balance you will now balance but you'll find sometimes maybe exam time at that time you can necessarily deeply invest in something like when you're doing your my skin care my brand ambassador things my queenly things I can't do them at that time when I'm having exams in a competition and I'm traveling out of the country to compete like for misgran it was in Thailand when I'm traveling out I can't necessarily at that time be in school so it's just finding checking your priority at a moment and making sure you kind of balance them out when it's time to prioritize this one you prioritize it so a young girl out there who is watching you this morning wants to be a beauty pageant she says I want to be like Kari Rin what can you tell her I can tell her to start investing herself at Akama is not financially she can try and YouTube is our friend you can try and go to YouTube and research on maybe your work how to walk and talk like a beauty queen you can invest in your public speaking skills so you can even join clubs in school for example that aren't public speaking usually have like something like debate clubs and such even in universities you have public speaking clubs so you can join something like that so you can better your public speaking and for your work and if you're in university actually the best way to start is the Miss University whether it's Miss JQW Miss KU whatever you just join that one it's the best way to start because you kind of get free training especially in walks and such so I think that's where someone should begin speaking of YouTube how has social media impacted on your career I think it has impacted my career very powerfully because it's sometimes people like to kind of say social media and say it's bad but it's how you decide to use it because really social media you haven't been bullied yet not yet I'm hoping it doesn't happen I'm hoping it doesn't happen I'm not even talking about necessarily the bullying I'm talking about how you use social media on a daily instead of having it being somewhere you're always obsessed you can have it because there's a lot of content to learn from even financial content on social media there is so much that you can use to learn from social media so that's kind of what I would advise people to do use social media as a learning platform because you're getting kind of advice people's experiences their lessons their failures for free and you can learn so that you also don't feel the same way but in terms of my own social media and its growth of course as I have continued in the pageantry industry I think so far so good Sijapata any trolls online or anything but it's because I also try to have friendly content and I think what you expect and what you give is what will come back to you and if that doesn't happen sometimes you just need to ignore the haters and keep up with the people who are actually supporting you so talk to someone or rather let me put it as a question that there is this misconception that for you to be a model you have to starve yourself and just wake up and take warm water with lemon are you starving yourself yourself? do I look starved? I think I'm looking very healthy no it's actually not true and you'll find that for beauty pageants actually it's quite discouraged because if they find you maybe you're starving yourself or there are girls who even try to force themselves to puke when they eat and such things they actually you might find it may cost you the crown because they don't want someone who that's how you're managing your fitness you can actually go in the fitness way go to the gym try and maybe eat healthy and do all these things and get that body that you're proud of whether it looks like these are persons or not get the body you're proud of and be able to showcase it to the world like this is a healthy body you find that they don't want someone who is doing all these things because it would be very bad publicity to them if it's found out that their queen is you know starving themselves making themselves puke eating and all these things it can be very bad publicity so it's something that pageants actually shy away from it's something they don't actually want and if you're watching pageantry of recent they're actually embracing fuller bodies even the african kind of body they're embracing that because you find pageants like Miss South Africa even Miss Wilde the current Miss South Africa who is going to Miss Wilde is actually a very like cave woman she's beautiful nowadays we have the plus size model yes exactly so it's not necessarily I think that was a past notion so right now women are breaking barriers and saying you cannot define us by how small we are and yet I have a lot to offer as a leader so no I don't think that's something happening right now you're not starving so would you eat it when because there is someone watching you and it's like I just want to be like I read so it's like ok you're not starving yourself what are you eating for breakfast for lunch for supper for you to look like this to glow like this I think I try to eat healthy so try and avoid junk food not that I don't indulge in that I won't lie to people but I do indulge in that but I make sure that most of my intake is actually healthy produce and then from there also try to make sure I'm walking out I'm taking care of water all these things added together is what will bring that whole package not just one thing to starve yourself because even if you do that you wouldn't necessarily be strong enough to do things yeah so walking out is one of the major things that I do and again as I said YouTube is your friend you can even have home workout if you're not able to be home workout you walk out at home that's how I started with my workout walking out at home you end up eating now that's where it comes discipline comes in you just learn slowly to discipline yourself and if you have such a hard time with discipline in yourself you can also look for personal trainers personal trainers do exist for this reasons and there are some that come at a good price like for example I work with a personal trainer at main fitness and it works well for me yeah wow that's you so moving on there is a time Miss World Kenya 2016 her crown was revoked you remember because allegedly she behaved in a way that is a way that did not conform to the rules and regulations of Miss Kenya so what do you think or how you as a person as a model, as Miss Grant International are the ways that a model should behave to keep that good public image I think that's what I was saying you find pageantry is different the normal stereotypes we will have about modeling because there are also stereotypes like people think modeling is technically prostitution so you find for pageantry you see you can even behave badly and be taken off your crown for pageantry it's quite quite different it's changing that narrative of what what modeling is and I think the right way to behave as a beauty queen first of all is to understand that you are in the public eye that's the first thing you need to understand and also understand that you are a leader that as a beauty queen there are a lot of young people looking up to you and that means that even if you would like to indulge here and there you want to go out in this club or you want to do this you might have to either limit it or make sure that you are doing it in a more civilized manner these are one of the things that can actually cost someone their crown because they see the way you are indulging and yet this is probably a child who is 10 years old and you know Africa is very conservative so you don't expect to be always out clubbing and then there's a 10 year old looking at you and that it would look bad to a parent maybe outside where it's not that serious they kind of see it as something that you do at that age and that's fine but here you have to be more sensitive to the people that are actually looking at you because you're in the public eye so I think that's one of the main things that you want to do and always when you're looking for an organization make sure that their values and your lifestyle they align so you don't feel like you're forcing yourself to be someone you're not so when you find an organization where your lifestyle and their values align they won't have a problem with you because how you live is how they kind of want to promote their queen so let me jump back to skincare so someone is watching you this morning but he or she can't afford what can you tell her that she can just do at home home remedy for that breakout that is never just going away I think as I said I'm still also coming up with my in my skincare journey so maybe I might not know everything that a professional would necessarily know but what I can advise is when you're looking for skincare whether it's flat now or it's not flat now there are things that you want to look out for you want to take something that doesn't have you know the strong smells you don't want something like that where the main ingredient of what you're using has these strong smells that's something that will cause breakout on your skin so when you're looking for skincare products you need to look for something like that and for a home remedy you need to make sure that there are steps that you follow every morning and night because you need to take care of your skin morning and night you need to take care of your skin in the morning and night but then when you think about it all throughout the day your skin has been gathering so much that and then you sleep in that that it's going to cause breakouts so make sure you're washing your face you're cleansing your face morning and night if you don't feel like you're in a position to get heavy skincare you can just get a nice bath soap I would recommend a black soap they usually call that black soap so I'd recommend black soap you use that for your skin morning and night to cleanse it and then just look for a nice moisturizer again just make sure it doesn't have like a strong fragrance because such things they cause a lot of breakouts and test it out and see if it works for you and that's the thing with skincare it's consistency mainly that works it's making sure that you're doing it in the morning and the night and then another home remedy that people don't want to hear is drink water because when you work out your pores clear out as you're sweating so that's one of the things you can do and also there's this thing where women do and they steam their face you can also do something like that those are just some of the few remedies you can try there are people who think makeup is skin remedy makeup is not skin remedy and really good makeup if you have good skin your makeup even looks nice when you put it on because it's not necessarily okay so I'm jumping from skincare to beauty pageantry here back to beauty pageantry so when we were speaking earlier I asked you a question on why you think if you think that the industry is dying out and sponsors are not coming in you as a person if you were to call out on the government to just come out and give that attention that you models need what would you say I think I would call out the government to join in especially the tourism board because you find that most times on those girls are going out there for even me we find that that's what we are promoting we are talking about our country the beautiful scenery that are here that's the first thing people think about when they think about Kenya safaris and such so we are promoting that already so we need to have that the government is partnering with us so when we are going there we are promoting it in a better way because when we are able financially we can also show people that there is so much more that Kenya has to offer but not only that you find even for organizations themselves especially the fashion industry big fashion brands here in Kenya I think designers should partner with models because they are going out there and they are there for a month you can dress them for that month so that people are seeing your products people are seeing Kenyans supporting Kenyans they are seeing the Kitenge they are seeing such things that can actually promote not only the industry but also our culture you are parting short to a girl or a boy out there who has skin breakout and has never just found solution for it can talk to that camera I think if you have skin breakouts and you don't feel like you have found a solution for it try out the basic steps that I did mention before walking out drinking taking in a lot of water and of course trying the little little remedies I gave earlier but I would advise you this is an opportunity you have to actually join Flatnaface because it's an opportunity you will get to get all these solutions for you for free so join Flatnaface by making sure to go to our Instagram page and check out we'll have a link in the description exactly how you need to join Flatnaface and it's not only going to be good for your skin but also for your wallet it was nice having you thank you thank you for coming and this is a good conversation that would wish to have more and more because skin care it's something that is not ending right now because breakouts today you have a good skin tomorrow you wake up your face is pimpled so thank you for coming here to 854 we celebrate you thank you so much for having me it's been an honor wow what a conversation I guess you've gotten one or two things and as you start your morning I wish that you put hard work in whatever that you do keep doing what you're doing with diligence don't listen to the negative voices that you can't do it when you put when you're diligent at whatever you do at the end of the day when you ignore the voices of the haters and the doubters you find that at that time when you excel even the haters and the doubters will come out as your greatest supporters because excellence has so many mothers but failure is an often kaisu is up next with girl's talk thank you for watching


Hi, my name is Bruce Ashfield, and I am talking today about binary artifacts and the ease of use on ramp for the Octo project. I have done this present parts of this presentation in the past with Mark Hatley. So I want to give credit to the inputs that he's given to that we just weren't quite organized enough to do to get both of us presenting this time around. A little bit about myself, I am one of the maintainers of the Octo project through various components. I take care of the reference kernel, as well as the meta virtualization, which is containerization and traditional virtualization technologies. I've been around for about 10 years. And recently I've been doing more work around the binary outputs of the Octo project and trying to make things a little bit more reusable and work on that on ramp that is mentioned in my title. So what I want to cover today is, you know, I'll do in a level set. I'll talk about the use cases that we are trying to solve. I will go over some of the technology that underpins the ability to do binary outputs and binary artifacts in the Octo project. I won't go into a lot of detail on each one of those because there's other talks that have been done in the past that cover them in much better detail by people that probably know them better. And then I'll do some examples, a quick demo and future work. So what I'd like everybody to get out of this presentation is to understand and get an introduction to the various binary artifacts produced by the Octo project and open embedded. I want to just do that exploration so you'll know what to look for in the plumbing of the binary outputs of the project. And I want to show how ease of use and open embedded in the Octo project are not mutually exclusive. So, first of all, I like to start with a little level set on the definitions because everybody has something different in mind when they hear binary artifacts and ease of use. So for our purposes in this presentation, when I say binary artifacts, I'm talking about the outputs of a defined build that can be used or installed on a running target or to construct a target image. The architecture, the optimization and different settings like that are defined by the build parameters and can impact the level of reusability. In particular, we work with that Xilinx, a lot of ARM platforms, so they have some different challenges in that, you know, the instruction and optimization techniques can vary between platforms, and that a level of optimization does conflict if you have a high priority goal of running common or generic binaries. So that's binary artifacts. Ease of use in the sense it should be obvious and clear how to complete at least the initial steps towards a goal. Meaning you want to build an image you want to boot an image you want to update a package it should be pretty obvious how to do that. And if it isn't well then you've you've got a barrier to entry and that's what we're looking to address. Details of you know how to do those things can vary by the use case. Also for ease of use, we've thrown in that transitioning between use cases is supported and documented and you'll see in some of my slides later why that's an important addition to ease of use and the scenario. So I always do a little talk about, you know, some common questions and comments that we get when talking about open embedded and the Octo project things like, you know, our binary packages supported. Do you always have to start building from source, you know, are these binary outputs that you finally produced are they compatible with third party packages. Whether it be from another distribution or some other build or some other process, you know, are they fully optimized for platform X or software stack why, you know, and then after you get into it it's a little bit of you want to pull the curtain to find out you know what is behind the binary artifacts, you know, and what does that. You know, we'll point out here that it's you know open embedded core in the ecosystem metadata, the recipes in the configuration that is behind those binary outputs. And it's not the sources of other distributions or base binary package feeds from other distributions so in this sense you know what I'm talking about our binary artifacts that are built from open embedded and its ecosystem not grafting in from other sources. Another question that we get or you know can I apt DNF update my target. Can things like Docker build work against these outputs, you know, and of course a big one is why would I use the Octo project party artifacts versus distro X. And there's many more I don't plan on answering all of these questions. During this presentation, but I wanted to throw these are some of the concepts and the ideas that are where I'm looking to explain an answer. In particular that last one it really is you know why would you use the Octo project binary artifacts versus distro X that really does come down to a lot of different reasons and there's been other presentations on just this topic at past embedded Linux conferences and various other forums. I tried to throw together a little bit of a sort of chart representation of these sliding scales of difficulty. It's not completely perfect as I like it but what this is trying to show you is, you know whether you are building from source on the the bottom. Or binaries on the top and then this left and right axis it's sort of easier and harder so you know it depending on again it matters you know what's your point of view are you a developer. Are you a user. Are you trying to do production and commercially supported products. So what your use cases are vary by your point of view. And then they will have a sliding scale of whether maybe binaries are easier place to start sources easier place to start and then how hard or easy they are. And of course there's. These are not precise there's all kinds of different shades of of gray that aren't shown on this slide so for example you know, if you want to do extended or SDK or produce SDKs. Maybe that's easier if you start from source than if you're going from binaries license compliance again might be easier if you start from source and build from sources rather than starting from binaries but you'll see later on in my presentation we're doing work around binaries and license compliance that are built from the active project to hopefully, you know make that a little bit easier anyway so I won't go through all these but you know optimization level container builds reuse it all. Depending on what you are where what what your point of view is and what you're trying to produce. The difficulty will slide around on the scale between binary and source based builds. Another question or represent attempt to represent the same sort of concepts or decision points is you know this slide about is a binary distribution appropriate can you reuse parts of other builds directly without needing to start your own builds. So, you know, in this case, these are the different points of view right you're an it or an application developer in the green box on the lower left, and you're doing a customized optimized device specific distribution in the top right. And in the middle, you're obviously you're somewhere in the middle between the two. So, in the green you know if you're doing an application developer or sort of a traditional enterprise deployment you know really you can use a binary distribution because you are not modifying the base parts of the operating system and the distribution at the level. If you do a partial customization, you might be able to use a binary distribution or you might be able to use parts of a binary distribution, as long as the tooling has a way for you to craft your own customizations into that binary distribution starting point. And of course if you are doing a customized optimized device specifics, then really you can't particularly use somebody else's binary distribution you could certainly create your own and the overlap in the square shows that of course there are areas of gray or decision points where yeah you might be able to use parts, and you could slide between the different use cases. And at that point at this point you know what we've established is there's, you know, various use cases and points of view for binary artifacts, you might, and you might not be able to reuse somebody else's binary build. And the question is okay so what would we consider our binary artifacts out of the Octo project so open embedded and the Octo project has a long history with my artifacts, maybe a lot of people don't know or maybe a lot do. But the point is that they have been part of the project for a significant amount of time and some of the example binary artifacts would be either the build appliance images, or some of the containers that are able to do builds, and that are output from the Octo project, the build tools, which is an SDK to augment older hosts, we have tool chains, and of course what everybody normally thinks about when they talk about body artifacts which is the BSB and machine artifacts whether it be device tree blobs, bootloader kernel images, and these different things for testing these are things that are produced that are available today from various Octo project servers and components. And so what the binary artifacts in the Octo project are designed to you they're designed to support either complete reuse, a bit of customization or total customization, and you should be able to slide between these different scenarios. One thing that I'll point out is and I'll talk about a little bit more before I close the presentation is that, you know, a work in progress that we're looking at right now is sort of a reference binary feed for those that do not need to customize the base or the standard packages, or I guess as well for anybody who wants to embrace and extend some of the base packages so a sort of tested reference set of feeds that we know will work, and that they can be reused by those that want to get a quicker start. So, that's great with the, you know, those are the components that are sort of output as binary artifacts from the Octo project. So the inputs, so how do you, you know, that can make them different or make them vary that you have to pay attention to of course is the build configuration. So that would mean some of the local settings, the layers that you use which makes different sets of packages and different packages and configurations available, as well as your site and local configuration so that would mean your distribution of your local.conf where you can change the attributes of the build which can produce different types of or modifications to the output packages so in particular in site and local configuration if you are looking to generate a reusable binary feed of some sort you need to minimize the types of configurations you do there to make them more broadly usable and hence more appropriate for sharing. So what you get for outputs, you know, some of them some of the binary artifacts, you might not even be able to see their internal to the bill they're internal to the process they're internal to advance configurations and others they are user visible in this list. One thing that we would that I would consider a minor artifact would be the shared state, which you can think of as a build cash. You can use hash equivalency, which works with shared state in order to promote cash reuse by calculating hashes on the inputs to know if an existing estate object can be used to accelerate a build. There is the PR service which is the package revision service, and that is available it works in coordination with all the rest of these components to manage your package upgrades by producing an autoincremented package, and hence you'll have a linear lead increasing package number and your package manager can see a newly modified built updated package as a new upgrade and pull it in that way. We have, and those are all largely behind the scenes now we get into some of the more visible ones which would be, you know, the package feed, which would be could be the package manager of your choice to whatever be the RPM IPK, and of course non o f components boot loaders DTB firmware can all be built from the same bill the doctor project. We have, you know, you might have pre build images which would be starting points for somebody which would be downloaded run, and something that we work on in meta virtualization would be OCI images which are open container initiative images. And run and deploy those types of those outputs in artifacts as well. An example of what you know the different users of open embedded and the doctor project in the ecosystem, where I work at Xilinx, you know what we provide would be some of these binary distribution artifacts of part of our build and release process which would be, you know, we release the system configuration which is the build scripts the layers and components like that that are used for setup. We also have intermediate artifacts which would be the shared state and the various other components to allow build on top of what we've done. We release DTB we have WIC images, and the scripts that create them. And of course we also produce SD card images, ESTK and SDK so we provide SD card images so you can get started and boot quickly, and we provide SDK so you can either build applications or you can customize those base images. And none of these are perfect, but it shows that you know there's various levels of leveraging and reuse of the binary distribution capabilities of the doctor project, depending on what part of the ecosystem, and what vendor you're working with. One thing that you know since I've been contributing and working on the doctor project and others have seen as well, is that the use cases of building embedded quote unquote embedded Linux have changed over time. And one of the things is we are running into more generic images, more application developers, more software stacks that are deeper and don't need that visibility into the lowest levels of the operating system at the beginning. So the big thing is in that case with involving use cases like that is we want to hide the learning and complexity curve until it's needed. You know the there's things behind the scenes that are solving problems you might not know you have yet when you're deploying a node JS application, or you're doing a go build for example there's dependencies there's reproducible builds there's licensing, but you don't really need to see that immediately, just to get started. We're also running into heterogeneous systems so we are running into more systems that have a mix of Linux. Our tosses they have firmware they have MC use and to have we need to have the ability to build for those types of systems. Also, we're there's more and more demand for more than just images that you can flash onto an SD card and boot. So we have things like containers in binary deltas which I'm implying there are be the various different types of over the year updates and management of a target. So we have deeper software stacks, we have multiple flavors of Kubernetes, you know, full Kubernetes K3S available that you can deploy software that way. And of course, building really small microservices with the octa project so you can deploy them that way. We're also running into that merging and blending of embedded Linux, increasing in complexity and enterprise Linux distributions coming down to maybe smaller slash, you know, edge system so you end up with blended features from the two. So you want more than a package installer. You want accelerated containers that can make use of hardware assist to do AI image processing, different things like that we want potentially safe and secure containers through technologies like run x leveraging and a componentized system. We want low footprint run times on both as an example so we can bring up the density of the services on a smaller device. And, you know, we want more maintenance and in service upgrades versus again, back to more than just a flashed image. So the big thing is between these different use cases is the mobility between them is important. You know, is there a defined and structured way to change your use case so the way that these are enabled needs to be the same for all the different use cases that are not yet is available only when you need it you shouldn't have to dive into multi config to do your heterogeneous system until you know you need it, for example. Another important thing and this goes to the hidden capabilities that are that you shouldn't have to worry about until you need them so you know beyond packages things to consider. So you need to do reproducibility reproducible builds. This is a core yachto project capability, and you can check out the details at reproducible builds.org. And it turns out that a lot of the work that has been done for reproducibility of course also leads into more efficient binary artifact building with hash estate reuse and different components like that licensing S bomb. Also, are you know that you may need to do to consider more than just producing by binary packages so that is also a core capability. And there's multiple ways if you've built from open embedded core the yachto project that you can consume those outputs and accompany it in a company your binary deliveries customization. You need to how would you if you need to modify package some way is there a streamlined way besides pulling the source on to your target configuring and building how do you customize the target what level of customization. So will you get support from the ecosystem. If you've modified extended or use them directly you know what is, what is the way that you can get help whether it be in the community or commercially if you modified or extended packages. How can you extend a platform is it possible, or do you have to start from scratch. And also be considering both application and system developers don't if you cater to uniquely one or the other you'll either be too simple or too complex and having a system that can support moving between the two is absolutely important. And then of course the typical, what are you going to do for support maintenance and updates once you've done your first binary build or reuse the binary package feed from somebody else. Over the years one of the things that we've noticed that when you you when you add some of these capabilities or these concerns to your traditional distros or enterprise distros you know it can be a little bit ad hoc, or maybe you don't follow the guides directly, and it can result in something that's potentially less structured than what you get out of the yachto project. So at that point. If you look at the learning and complexity curves, they're roughly similar so the, the, the comment that the yachto project in open embedded is hard or is complex. It tends to blur so you need to view the complexity through the things that you need to consider after you've built the packages. So what I wanted to do for about the next five, five or 10 minutes would be to go over and do a little bit of a demo image with a package feed. There's been other demonstrations of this in the past, but I wanted to throw it in here to show that the stuff that I'm talking about is is available, and it does works. I wanted to do most of it fully live because the build server that have available can take two to three minutes per some of the operations so it takes a little bit too long to fit into our a lot of time. But what I would like to cover first is that you know what I've done. The package build is is is cloned. The octave project or Pocky reference distribution. I'm using the minimal the minimal image that is part of a week or flash, you know Pocky and I've done I've configured that image for package management system D, and I'm using it for the base, the base image. I wanted to show package management DNF in this case because we're building the default which is RPMs commands on target. I will show how you know we can add packages to the feed after you've done your initial build, how we can install and upgrade those same packages on the target. This is something new that's maybe not quite as commonly demonstrated. I'll show a little bit about our capabilities with meta virtualization and those types of binary outputs and show how I can on that same running image I can add Docker. You can use pod man or some of the other available runtimes that we have. We can add those dependencies onto the target. I will show how we can create a simple base container image. We can add that image to a registry and then pull and run that same image onto the target. So I've captured in the slides, an abbreviated set of details so they could sort of be used as a reference, because it's hard to show it all in the demo. So, you know, here's a little bit how what I cloned and a little bit of the configuration that I mentioned in my summary I've enabled system D. We have an SSH so I can get into the target. I've also added a little bit of extra space because Docker and some of the other builds will be doing actually need a fair bit of storage. The only other things of interest in this configuration you can see where I have set the package feed URI to which is the IP address of my build host in this case. You would set that to whatever your build or you could actually set it on the target after you've booted. Also, there's other various configurations where you can use a remote or a shared package feed coupled with shared estate PR server and hash equivalency. There's lots of complex and different types of configurations you can do. I'm using basically the simplest. So in order to, you know, to get this started, I bit bake core image minimal on my builder it takes a little while so we're not going to do that. I already have it this base image with what is in core image minimal built, and then you bit bake package image. Sorry package index, and that goes through and it creates what is needed by the whatever your packaging system is in order to create the binary feed to be served to the system. And then you need to have some sort of HTTP front end to serve those packages so on in my example I'm just using the built in Python web server and I've gone to temp deploy and started that server. And then booting the target. Once the target is up and running. You can see that it's a it's a recent build from last week of five dot 13 dot 12, and that we initialize DNF by running DNF make cash. And that goes through it will contact the package server it will create the you know the default database, and then we can search to see what is available on the target. And in my example I've gone through I've searched for busy box, you can see that it is available there's different versions it's installed and all of the different utilities. And I searched for Docker in this example and it is not currently even available in the package feed so that's something that I'm in the demonstration that we can go back to our build host added to the package feed and it will appear. Here's an example as well, something even simpler than adding Docker because it builds quite a bit more dependencies is that say we wanted to add them to core image minimal because it's not available or they it's got the built in busy box. Vi and you want something a little bit more elaborate so we can go back to the build host we could bit big them, it will build them and all these fantasies and then re bit big the package index. On the target, you would refresh your caches, you can search for them, see that it's available. dnf install them and as you'd expect, we get about 23 megabytes of downloaded packages, and them is now available in your package feed and it is installed on your target. The transition to make that permanently part of any new images you would go through and do the normal define a distro and an image and you could make it always built and installed in the future if that's that's what you want to do but I my demos are all about adding packages to a running image without needing to reflash and restart the entire image. This this part of the demo is showing how we can use the PR service to trigger a package upgrade on the target so in this case I'm trying to run expand which is not available in this busy box based image. So we get command not found. So if we go to the build host, and we add config expand to the busy box configuration, we would do a bit bake on busy box, and the, as mentioned the estate, the hash equivalency and the PR server would figure out the features, see that this is a new configuration the package and it would produce an updated revision to the package, so that it would be available as an upgrade so once a bit big busy box and redo the package index, you can see that I now have a busy box and dot dash are zero dot three, I had a couple of iterations, the dot X is what is increasing by the PR service so we now have a zero dot three RPM available. If we redo the make cash to check with that package feed I can do a DNF upgrade on busy box, it sees that zero dot three is available. I install it and of course now I have expand available. So that was all managed through all the plumbing that you don't need to know about it immediately but you know that if you do customize the base image, you can have it flow into the package feed. So that same theory holds if you're using a base package feed from somewhere else but you have access to a shared PR server estate and various of the internal artifacts, you could rebuild busy box and have your own extended binary show up in the package feed as a newer version and supersede what you're initially handed in that base image or package feed. So this demo is again a little bit more complex, and I didn't build it because there is a little bit more to the rebuild in this case I've added meta virtualization, meta security and meta open embedded to my build. I've added the virtualization and set comp feature to the distro and that triggers a bit more of a rebuild and then we have time to sit through. And I've, and once all that is configured and then I've baked the Moby version of Docker that is available. And a note that I'll put here is this actually rebuilds the kernel because of the virtualization features. It adds some of the different configurations that you would need for proper Docker Docker operation on the target. So you're either going to need to do a DNF kernel update, which is one of the things we're looking at it still may or may not have issues or you may you will need to rebuild the whole image and start over. So you bit big Docker Moby, the kernel, all this dependencies get built. And again, as I've been doing all the way through this, we bit bake package image. And then you have the two options. Are you going to rebake core image minimal or option B that I did is I did a DNF upgrade on the kernel, it pulled in the new kernel and the dependencies for headers and various things. And then I shut down QEMU to make sure that we reboot with the with the new kernel. So in this case, I think I might actually attempt to show some of this live. If it fails, we will go back to the reference slides. So in this case, I have the build that I've been doing that I've been using to do to capture the upper for these sites. So if I do the run QEMU that you see on the captured versions were booting that same image. So this is, you know, one that was built on Monday, August 23rd. And we don't have, we don't have Docker available. So using the package feed and the various components that I just built, we can do a DNF install Docker Moby. Actually, before I do that one thing that is interested to see is that so we can show the difference if we do a DNF. If we do a DNF list installed kernel star. And we see how many there are for kernel packages on the target. You'll see that we have four. And so after we do a DNF install Docker Moby. We're going to download 236 package 51 megabytes and add to so 200 and some megabytes to my image so we get all of the IP tables dependency modules we get a bunch of kernel modules. And in this case we are going to get some util Linux individual packages to supersede the busy box built in components. So you'd expect it's contacted the the package server. It's pulled in those possibilities. It's running their install scripts on the target and so in this case we're taking care of everything from it's installing the package. It's running update alternatives to make sure these are pointed to instead of the busy box alternatives. And you know generally making the packages available. So it's you know we're, again, I'm throttled by the speed of my build server. Versus how long this would take this would vary based on your and of course as these kernel modules installed we're also getting debt mod and other installation post installation. So we're going to run to make sure it's available. And one of the things that we're looking at, and I'll talk about briefly in a minute is we're looking at making sure that those post install scripts and installation steps are tested and and working consistently such that you can count on your package feeds being able to do things like this so there we're finally now to the point we are where we are installing Docker Moby. And we should be done very soon. All right we are complete. So now if I rerun DNF list installed kernel there's now 33 kernel package that available so you could see it wasn't just Docker, we got a lot of the Docker components installed. So a system control stop Docker, and we will then start the Docker demon, and due to the networking configuration of my build server this can actually take up the two minutes to get sort of things started so I will switch back to the slides while while Docker is busy starting up. So I capture these commands we don't need to go over them we're starting and so in this example you could see, you know, once Docker is up and running on the target, we can see that it's 20.10.8 it was built recently, and that we can do a Docker poll on busy box which is the standard reference container from Docker hub, and that I can run that busy box target. Sorry, container on our target without needing to do any modifications. Now that's great that we can run a reference images from from Docker hub, but you might be more interested in being able to run your own container so in this in this example it's again a very simple example. There's something called container base and meta virtualization that's we're working on making more useful. If I bit big container base that is the minimal sort of configure container configuration it skips a kernel and some dependencies and puts a shell into the entry point. And it uses the image OCI back in a meta virtualization, and it creates an OCI container in temp deploy. So you know you bit the container base it builds a container builds the components or reuses them in this case. And then from our build host we can use gopio to copy it to in this example, my Docker hub. And we can, it's something called container base, and then back on the target I can do a Docker poll container base, and it brings in the artifacts that I just built, and I can run it just fine I can drop into that container, and it works just the same. You know, as the busy box reference and it was completely built from open embedded the octa project and of course you now have the associated licensing and source information behind that container if that's we're using because you can now use that as a base container for for other Docker builds and other reuse scenarios. Quickly check to see if Docker wanted to start. And if not, we won't okay so it is up and running so we can do a Docker version. And we can do that Docker poll on on. We can do a Docker poll on Iran you can see using tag latest. Pulls the layer, and so I can do Docker run. And we drop into the container, and it's just exactly what you would expect. And then of course you at that point you're free to do whatever you want you can keep and do you can retag push and use a sort of a typical workflow to pull and update the container in closing. To the presentation I want to introduce this binary artifacts working group that I'm helping to drive as part of sort of the medium to long term planning in the the octa project right now through the summer it's been on about a monthly sync meeting. It will get hopefully a little bit more. So that's what if needed, going through the fall, and that is a focus on code and tangible outputs it's not just planning. The goal is to actually to produce reusable parts of the ecosystem. So, in particular, we're looking at making sure the components that have always existed, making sure that there's good documentation around them that the guides are easy to find they're easy to follow, and that we're looking at it consistently to put some QA and some structure around that binary infrastructure. So we can test improve and know that it's working on sort of a nightly base basis. We want to create a place for collaboration and technology sharing. It's all about the Xprate embrace and extend we are not trying to implement anything that we don't have to whether it be configuration and set up whether it be testing whether it be the base configuration with the package feeds is not about creating everything from scratch. It is the overarching goal is to address that ease of use and on ramp questions how do you get started more quickly. And also to unlock, you know, the full potential. And also to produce sort of this tested reference binary feed. As I mentioned when I was going through my demo with attention to some of the upgrade paths and package management issues with the sharing of a state PR server to making sure that they both scale and work consistency, and to produce some eventually some maybe some reference containers and different types of binary artifacts that so people can test and use them quickly on different types of systems, whether they have or haven't been built from open embedded and I will point out that the non goal of the working group is to create a commercial and supported binary distribution, or to replace existing open embedded based binary distributions. It's all about creating that reference and making sure that the underpinnings that are available to both doctor project members and open embedded community members are working consistently and working, you know, as advertised. If you're interested in binary artifacts, or helping out in this effort, you know, you can join the join open embedded, or the doctor project and help us unlock the potential of binary artifacts and these types of scenarios. And my final thing is I will close with sort of this future work slide. It's not it's sort of what you would expect is to get up and running the reference distributions there may or may not be that first package feed available by the time. This presentation is viewed as part of embedded Linux, but it won't be too far after. We would like to produce some maybe some pre built images for, or at least advertise the existing pre built images out of the the auto builder, or different infrastructures that are available. And I said auto builder but this is not tied into your project infrastructure it should be working on GitLab and various other CI pipelines, we could potentially have some sort of installer. Go back to my we're not looking to reinvent. Another thing would be to extend those reference feeds outside of our core because a lot of the interesting packages and things that people would like to do are part of the Yachto project and open embedded ecosystem whether it be open open and meta open embedded or meta virtualization security, some of the different layers. And of course, as I mentioned something that I'm working on in particular is reference based containers, both the pre built variants, and the recipes and base definitions to produce those containers so somebody can do it on their own. And that is it for my presentation. I'm now available for questions. If we have anything that we'd like to adjust. Thank you very much for your time. I hope everybody got something out of the quickly presented and broad ranging material that I had.


Wow, being a doctor is a difficult job, and it seems so obvious saying that. I mean, you have to go through so many years of education, nine in my particular case, in one of the most difficult degrees possible, medicine, and then once you graduate, you spend day in and day out seeing and managing some of the most unwell people, both mentally and physically. You're often dealing with life-threatening emergencies, having difficult conversations with family and loved ones, and even dealing with death on a regular basis. That's a lot for any one person to go through. I really think that those of us who work in healthcare are exposed to a truly unique set of emotional challenges and stressors that most people in, quote unquote, normal jobs don't really have to deal with. My name is Nasser. I'm a doctor living and working in London, and we're actually joined by my lovely, lovely cat, Mish Mish. And in today's video, I wanna talk about medicine and mental health and why they're so intricately linked and difficult, as well as what I do in order to try and keep my mental health in check to stay happy, active, and positive in my life. So what makes this career so difficult? I think one of the biggest factors for me is the aspect of medicine where you're dealing with people. You know, I've talked about this many times before, but I think being a doctor is an incredibly social job. You spend most of your day talking to other people, a lot of which you've never met before where you're dealing with for the first time, and managing their anger, frustrations, and emotions can be a particularly difficult thing to do. For all the aspects of the job that I love for how social it is, and how much true, deep, and meaningful human interaction you have with others, it can be really, really draining. I usually notice this when I'm hanging out with my sister or my friends after work, and they ask me how my day was, and you know, a lot of the time I just say, yeah, everything was fine, but really my social battery is just completely depleted. I've often spent the vast majority of my day talking to patients, families, and colleagues, and so by the time I get home, I just don't have the energy or the headspace to jump into another social conversation. On top of that, there's a lot of times in medicine where you have to have conversations where you can't fully express yourself or truly say how you feel, and that means that you have a lot of this emotional bottling or harboring of your feelings that you can't necessarily display to the patients and the people in front of you. So just for example, if a patient is venting to me about how upset they are about the wait times, or the care that they've received, or something that's horrible going on in their life, as the professional in the situation providing the service, you kinda need to sit there and really listen to, and take in what the person is saying, show empathy and support, while also maintaining that professionalism, that professional boundary, the respectful boundary, and also trying to do your job of trying to figure out what the problem is, and provide them with adequate treatment, management, and care. And then you have conversations that are specifically difficult to engage in and talk about, things like talking to patients who are actively suicidal, and expressing these thoughts to you, or talking to family members about their loved ones who are actively dying, or have already died, breaking bad news to patients about scan results or findings that are gonna have very significant impacts on their life. I mean, these are conversations that are just plain hard, and there's no way around it. And as someone who really prides myself on taking my time with patients, really listening to them, and showing them that I care, and providing that empathy, it's very hard to brush off these conversations, and feelings without giving them the time, and investment that they deserve. All of this to say, I'm not entirely sure what to call it, but I feel like there's a lot of trauma, or emotional dumping that healthcare workers get, which I don't think you get in a lot of other jobs. I don't think the usual kind of office chit chat consists of any of the above, hopefully not anyway. But yeah, being a doctor involves a lot of regulation of both your own emotions, but also the emotion of the person in front of you, and kind of managing that, dealing with it and navigating it on a day to day basis, can sometimes be really draining and really challenging. I was originally gonna make this video by talking about all the difficult parts of mental health and medicine, and then talk about all the different ways that I deal with it, and my sort of coping mechanisms, and the things that I do to help manage those difficulties. But I think I'm just gonna switch them. We'll do one and one, one difficult thing about mental health and medicine, and then one technique or mechanism of how I cope with it. So let's talk about therapy and meditation. Therapy is something that you've heard me talk about plenty in the past. I've been doing it now for a few years on and off, and I just find it incredibly helpful. Just the ability to talk to someone else about your issues, your worries, feelings, and then receiving, you know, well catered feedback and advice, or just even words of support can make a really big difference. And there's certain things that I don't really wanna talk about with my friends or family or even colleagues. And for me, that's where therapy comes in. I think talking to another person is an incredibly powerful thing to do. And there's so much stigma around therapy, particularly in my family and in my culture about the idea that if you need therapy or if you're going to therapy, there must be something wrong with you. Which I think is absolutely untrue, and I've talked about this many times before. I think it's a very, very helpful exercise in maintaining your mental health. And kind of like I go to a doctor to take care of my physical health, I go to my therapist to take care of my mental health. So if anyone's watching this video and you're kind of on the fence about therapy or if you think it's a weird thing to do or something like that, please let me be the person to say that it's absolutely not. It's a fantastic way to kind of learn how to be more emotional and in touch with your feelings and thoughts and process those feelings and thoughts in a way that I just simply never used to do before. I would highly, highly recommend it. Another method of dealing with all the stress and mental toll that comes along with being a doctor is with meditation, which I do using Headspace, who are very kindly sponsoring this video. So Headspace is a mindfulness and meditation app that I absolutely love. What I think is particularly great about it is just the absolute variety in different types of mindfulness and meditation activities that it has. So if you want, you can listen to guided meditation where you focus on breathing exercises and someone is talking to you. Hi, this is Dora. Today, we'll be trying the grounding technique to help settle your mind and body and rediscover a sense of balance whenever you need it most. About how to let go of things from your day or how to note on particular thoughts and feelings that you had throughout your day. Or if you want, they have different soundscapes of all kinds of relaxing, calming settings and noises, things like being in a laundromat, being by a river or a creek, being by the sea, wind on top of a mountain, thunderstorms, you know, everything in between. They've also got podcasts. And each day, it kind of gives you a recommendation of different mindfulness and meditation activities that you can do to start your day, things you can do in the afternoon and then at night before you sleep. So I feel like it has you covered from the start of your day right until the end. As I've discussed at length in a lot of other videos, being a doctor comes with quite a few challenges and stressors. And as part of me trying to keep on top of my mental health, I've taken up meditation with head space. Before I go to bed, I just try and spend 20 minutes to just focus on myself. I sit down and I journal for about 10 minutes, which gets me remembering about what happened in my day, how I felt, et cetera.  Hello, it's Eve here. After I've written them down, I sit down and I try and process those feelings and think through those feelings and what it meant to me and how I felt, et cetera. I found this so incredibly helpful. I've said a few times before on this channel that I'm not really a reflective person and I didn't used to think about my actions or feelings very much, but my God, meditation has been really, really great. As you begin to let go of any worries, it moves up into the upper half of the legs. I know this sounds so silly to say out loud, but like I actually think about my life now. I used to be on this kind of treadmill where I would just do activity one, then activity two, then activity three, and I won't really think about what those activities meant to me or how I felt about them, but now I actually take the time to do that and it's been fantastic. I think it's made me a better person, a more emotionally intelligent person, and I find myself being more empathetic with my friends, my family, and even my patients. I really like meditation because it just gives me so much internal peace. Sitting there with my own thoughts and my own mind, actually trying to listen to myself and trying to feel my emotions instead of just surprising them, not thinking about them or distracting myself by being on my phone or watching a video or listening to music, has been a particularly cathartic experience and I would highly recommend it. If you want to see how Headspace might be helpful for you, you can try it out completely free for 60 days. All you have to do is click the link that's in the description down below or on screen here or scan the QR code that I'll put up here on the screen. I think it would also be a really helpful exercise to let me know in the comments section what you guys do for your own self-care, how do you take care of your mental health. I'm always looking for new things to try out. Thank you so much to Headspace for sponsoring this video. Check them out if you think you might enjoy it as well and let's get back to it. Okay, so this is a tough one and it's effectively baked into the job of a doctor. We're chronically understaffed, overworked and feeling tired. Some specialties are better than others but all of them, especially when you're more junior, involve lots of on-call shifts, lots of weekends and lots of nights.   Like when I'm on my night shifts, I literally cannot do anything else in my life.  I'm literally just gonna be at work for 13 hours a day and then come home, quickly eat something and go back to sleep ready to do it all over again. You spend so much time preparing for, getting to the hospital, being at the hospital, then getting back from the hospital, unwinding and then that's it. Like your entire day is gone. There's no time for the gym, no time for socializing, no time for hobbies like this YouTube channel or your other passion projects you might have in your life.  Having a schedule like this makes it really hard to have regular activities in your life. For example, going to the gym three to five times a week, attending your weekly basketball game on a Saturday or attending friends' birthdays, dinners and social events. Every week is different and every week changes the types of shift you have, whether they're at night or during the day or whether they're on the weekend or during the week. So it makes it quite difficult to plan things long term or even have something steady ongoing in your life.  And I really do try to keep up with all of my outside of work activities as much as possible. But even for someone like me, sure you've seen on this YouTube channel in particular, I just can't upload nearly as frequently as I used to before because I'm just so drained from work and there's a lot of other things going on in my life, social life, gym, food and friends, all of that that just have to take priority. So I'm doing my absolute best anytime that I can. I'm sitting down to film these videos, but it's just, it's really tough. Okay, I have got so many good things to say about exercise. You know, until you're a person who exercises regularly, you just can't quite understand the feeling and that itch that you get to go back into the gym and lift some weights or put on your shoes and go running outside, even if it's cold, raining or snowing, it's just this incredible feeling of euphoria and relief that you get. It just helps shed all of this weight and stress that you have on your shoulders when you go and you exercise. No one has ever left the gym and thought to themselves, God, I hated that so much. I'm never gonna go again. You always feel leaving better.  I've talked about exercise for years on this channel and I'll continue to talk about it probably forever because I think there's really no replacement for it. Going to the gym or exercising in general, however you wanna do it, walks or runs, cardio, swimming, whatever it is, it just works wonders for your mental health and your physical health in a way that nothing else really can. I truly feel like I'm sweating out my stress when I go to the gym and it's just an hour, an hour and a half where I kind of forget about the world. I forget about my life and all the responsibilities that I have and what I'm doing, the bigger picture, I just get to go and focus on myself and do something for me and just really enjoy that time with myself. Personally, I often go through phases of wanting to run a lot and then wanting to go to the gym a lot. So I'll get into a running routine for something like six months to a year then I'll realize I've lost all of my muscle mass and I'm getting a bit bored of running.  I'm currently in my gym phase. But honestly, whatever exercise you do, it honestly doesn't matter. It can be just yoga or Pilates on a foam, what are they called? They're little foam things in your house. The mat, the foam mat. You can just have a foam mat and follow a YouTube video online for any kind of workout. You can go to the gym, you can run, you can go swimming, you can go for walks in your neighborhood, runs in the park, whatever it is, just any form of exercise. The best thing in the world. God, yeah, this is one of the hardest parts of being a doctor. I feel like there's really nothing quite like having a patient die that you've known, that you've spoken to, where you've been involved in their care for days or for weeks. Sometimes you've met all of their family and you give them updates on a regular basis. They know you, when they see you in the morning, they're all excited and say hi and then when you go see them with the patient, ah man, it's just, it's really, really tough when a patient dies. You'll almost feel like you know this person and in a lot of ways you do, depending on how involved you've been in their care and how long you've actually been seeing them and know them for, you really know this person and you know their family and then just one day they're not there anymore.  You are there with the patient after they've passed away. You often speak to the families, offering them some consolation, some information about what might have happened if they weren't there. And it's just, it's a lot, it's a lot. Having to call families overnight when I'm in the hospital to let them know that their loved ones are really unwell or are likely in their last few hours before they pass away and seeing them when they come in and managing the very emotional states that people are in around situations like this is really, really tough. And I feel like it doesn't get easier. Like it somehow gets easier with time but not for the reasons you might think. So it's not one of those things where you see it so often that you become desensitized to it. Cause I think each patient death is different and each one is kind of meaningful in its own way. But you learn a little bit better how to manage your emotions around it or how to cope with these types of feelings and deal with the family members in a better way than you maybe did before.  And when I left in the morning even when I was at handover handing over to the day team I was really like shook. I found it hard to talk about them and what had happened and explain in the handover kind of the medical aspect of everything that was going on and why they passed away. And it's just a lot of patient deaths are associated with a decent amount of trauma. You know, you have family members crying, screaming to do something or depending on how much they know how on board they are with the medical plan and things like that it can be really, really traumatic. And also just caring for the patient in that time when you can see they're really unwell trying to make them comfortable trying to improve them or be there for them if you can it's a really difficult thing to go through. And it's hard to explain I'm not great at explaining these things anyway but this in particular is quite difficult to get across I think. And then having to do this depending on the specialty you're in on a weekly basis more than a weekly basis it can be a lot. I feel like any one person you can't experience this full on sadness and emotional hurt and pain every single time one of your patients dies you eventually I think put up some kind of walls or defenses to just better manage that situation for yourself really if for nothing else. If you actually think about what's happening every time and take in everything that's happening from the patient and the family that's a huge emotional burden I think a huge toll that it takes on you personally. And so I think over time you probably start to develop better and better ways of dealing with it. I think something that's incredibly helpful is debriefing with colleagues. This is really useful actually. So a lot of the times when someone passes away the senior who's around often has a debrief with the colleagues who are looking after that patient oftentimes with the junior colleagues so like myself, F1 and F2 doctors you just kind of go to a separate room you talk about what happened what you think went well what you think maybe didn't go so well how you're feeling and these kinds of things it just helps to talk them out sometimes with a senior doctor who's been involved in that patient's care who kind of understands what you went through and what you were dealing with or managing as well but not everyone does that.  We often get called for crash calls so very unwell patients who need immediate medical help and management. We go see that patient a lot of the times we do everything that we can do but the patient dies anyway and then after that someone types up the notes everyone goes back to the respective ward or Amy or wherever they were and you just move on and you have to do the remaining jobs for the day see the next patient, et cetera so it's quite tough to kind of just flip and move on and doing things like journaling and meditating and therapy have been incredibly helpful for me to kind of get these feelings out there and work through them in a meaningful way which I didn't necessarily do before. Pretty dark topic overall. Think, let's go into the next chapter to talk about a way that I deal with this and that hopefully makes me a better person through it. I wanna end this video on a high note and talk about journaling. So this is something that I only started doing recently after a trip to New York a few weeks ago. I'm actually on day 20 or so right now so haven't been doing this for months or anything like that but oh my goodness I've been really enjoying it and I definitely wanna keep this up for a while moving forward. I try to make journaling as easy of a habit as possible. So instead of writing things down with a pen and paper which would take a very long time and probably make my hand tired I've just got a note on my laptop and I just type it out instead. The faster I can get my thoughts out of my head and onto a paper, the better I'll be. So I've actually just set a reminder on my calendar to ring at 10 p.m. every day and it just says go journal and it's just a reminder for me to before I sleep when I get into bed with my laptop just pull it out, open this note and I just start typing. Like I don't really think too hard about it I just get everything out onto the paper of what's happened in my day. It's more of a kind of factual representation of what's happened in my day and then I try to do a little bit of thinking and feelings and kind of what's been going on from the mental point of view but most of that I do with the meditation like I talked about before. That's when I like really try and think about the feelings and the emotions and process what happened during the day but journaling lets me write down what happened in the day in a really interesting way and then scrolling back up and having a read through what I was thinking about or what I was feeling or what I did a few days ago is a really interesting thing because I would otherwise never ever do that. Have a think about the last time you thought about how you felt one week ago. You probably never did that, right? I feel like without writing things down like this without journaling I would never be able to think back and ask myself how did I feel last Saturday after I left my friend's house party and during that day I'd had a difficult time at work. I would probably just think to myself I felt fine but when I go back and I read my journal and it's broken down into different things that happened that day and I talk about how I felt about this, how I felt about that. It's just a completely new experience for me that I haven't done before and in doing this I found that I've really unlocked some skills that I didn't realize that I had. I spend a lot of time reflecting now looking at what I wrote a few days ago and thinking to myself that really didn't work out how I thought it would or thinking yeah that was a good idea, like I need to do more of that. I'm finding myself much better at understanding myself as a person and realizing why I'm doing the things that I'm doing or how I'm feeling about the things that I'm doing but through journaling and through meditation I've actually found that it's a very valuable exercise. Thinking about why you do the things you do is extremely valuable and I haven't really placed enough emphasis and value on that in the past but it's a habit that I've really, really been enjoying and I wanna keep up for a long time. All right, and that brings us to the end of this video. I know that I've been a little bit more vulnerable and open than I maybe usually am in my videos but it's a topic that I think has become more and more important to me personally as time has gone on working as a doctor and I think it's important to speak about to open the door for others who may not do this or think that it's valuable or think that it's not cool or something like that because I know I used to be one of those people and only through listening to my friends talk about their mental health and how they deal with it and watching other people on YouTube talk about how they deal with their mental health. That's what got me into thinking about my mental health which I otherwise never would have done so hopefully this video does that for at least a few people who are watching and if all of the methods and techniques that I talked about in this video don't work for you you know, you can always get a cat. Cats are a 10 out of 10 mental health and stress reliever. Isn't that right, Mishie? No, isn't that right? Yes it is, yes it is so right. Right, baby, yes it is. Hello, hello. Do you want to say hi to the camera? Yeah.