The great searcher out to you by Digikey. And thanks to Digikey every single week, later to use the power of engineering, help you find things that you want on digikey.com. Later, what are you looking for this week on digikey.com? Well, what I thought I would show off was actually just 10 micro farad capacitors. So if you go back to the overhead, you know, just showing off a project why I replaced, well, this, you know, I've got 10 micro farad capacitors here and here. This is a little buck at that boost converter to 12 volts. So I've got these two big caps here or 10 micro farads. And then over on this board, you know, I've got just, you know, all of these are 10 micro farads, all these chonkers over here. This was a design where I had 200 micro farads, turns out too big, one victim back to 10. And I realized I haven't done a great search where I talk about getting just jellybean 10 micro farad caps. And we use a lot of 10 micro farad caps.  You get your 10 micro farad, your one micro farad, and then a 0.1 micro farad. You put them together, you've got a full decade, you know, coverage for high frequency and like bulk capacitance. And we, you know, sometimes we use electrolytics. And there's times to use electrolytics. So for example, when you need high voltage, a lot of bulk capacitance, this is 47, 25 volt. For the pricing, you just go to electrolytic, but there's still a lot of 10 micro farads. Why 10 micro farad electrolytics? Ceramics. Ceramic capacitors are inexpensive, easy to pick in place. They're small. They're very low ESR, which means that they'll perform fairly well at reducing high frequency noise. But mostly they're just like really easy to pick in place and small. I mean, like tantalum is like a rare earth metal that a lot of people, you know, it's complicated to make sure that you're getting it like ethically sourced and also they're much more expensive. So I don't really use tantalum kind of at all. I don't think I've like use it all. I basically just use electrolytics when I need 47 and above. And for anything below, I use ceramics. And there's only one time I'll say that you should not use ceramics. And there are some power supply chips that need high ESR for stability because they use that the series resistance of the capacitor to stabilize the feedback. I think the MIC 5205 are like, I don't remember exactly the part number, but I remember seeing once, you know, I tried making a power supply with an older chip. It was an old 1117 or something. And I tried building on a PCB with ceramics. It actually wasn't stable. I saw like it was kind of oscillating. When I put on the same capacitance, but electrolytic, it stabilized. So, you know, it happens. Okay, so let's go to the computer. There's like some peanut food stuff in this photo. That's kind of cool. Okay, so your standard 10 microfarad ceramic capacitor is lovely. And there's lots. Don't forget, there's dark mode. But I think it's easier to read the video in light mode. So I'm going to just continue in light mode. So first off, we want only active 10 microfarad, of course. And then let's just do, you know, in stock and exclude marketplace just to look at what's in stock right now at Digikey and sold from Digikey.  Okay, so now we can actually start, you know, there's still a thousand options just for the 10 microfarad caps. So the next thing I like to look at is tolerance. And the tolerance is actually related to the, actually, sorry, let's do surface mount. Also avoid, although there's many through whole ceramic capacitors. Okay. So when you look at the tolerances, much like resistors, capacitors have tolerance and the tolerance is going to be related to the temperature coefficient, which is also used as it's at the dielectric. And sometimes you'll see this X5R, X7R, Y5V. So Y5V is going to be like the cheapest one. And that's the one that's plus minus 20%. But like these days, you don't have to go with like it's, I don't really use the Y5V anymore because you get much better performance from like X5R, X7R, X7R and X5R I think are slightly different temperature. Like one is industrial and one's commercial. So I look for like 10, 20% is kind of what I go with. A reasonable price and also like doesn't, it's not like too wobbly when it comes to the consistency.  So in general, you would, you want to use the lowest voltage rating for your situation. So if you're, you know, it's a 5V power supply, use 6.3V. 9V, 8V power supply, 10V, 12V, 16V. You always go a couple volts up and then that's your voltage rating. However, I don't want to stock like 5 different voltages for different use cases because a lot of my stuff is 3V or 5V. So if you get 6.3V, well, you saw that little boost converter goes into 12V. I don't want to have to pick like, oh, that one cap is a 16 and that one's a, so I pretty much always pick 16 to 25. I feel like that really covers a lot. Honestly, I tend to use 16, but like depending on your use cases, maybe you need that extra boost for 25, go for it. Okay. And that actually cuts it down a lot. So it's like now 350 options. So next is the package case. So, you know, without going into like, you know, like a 30 minute discussion, there's a lot of videos about it. The bigger the package, the more, so the bigger the package and the coefficient, depending on the coefficient, you're going to have less DC bias loss of your bulb capacitance. What do I mean? So electrolytic capacitors are actually kind of nice in that when you put 16 volts across them, 47 microfarad, you're going to actually get 47 microfarad of capacitance. That's not true of ceramics. The DC voltage across them actually greatly reduces like easily 50% or more the capacitance rating. So you buy a 10 microfarad capacitor, you put six volts across it or five volts across it, now it's at 4.7, which is fine. You just add, you know, that's why I put lots of them on there. There will be like a penny or two a piece, but it's something to think about. So if you're like, I mean, I wouldn't design these into filters. I think if you're doing filters, you're going to use smaller capacitors and you'll use COG, C0G, which is a dielectric that doesn't lose the bulb capacitance. But let's just look at the data sheet here. Actually, I don't know if it's in the data sheet. It might be in the spec sheet. Yeah, okay. Voltage-D rating. So there's temperature-D rating as they get hotter. They also lose up to 60%. So watch for that. But the one that is voltage, hold on, it might not be in this D rating. Okay, this is only temperature-D rating. Applied voltage. It doesn't have the graph. Okay, hold on, one second. If you go to the product page, because I saw this earlier, characteristics. So this has fairly good temperature characteristics. That's good. But the DC bias characteristics you can see here, as we go from zero to like five, you've lost 50%.  And that is a 0805. If you go to, hold on, got mixed up.  So let's look at this 1206 capacitor and look at this specifications. Hopefully it's in this document. I probably should have, I probably should have pulled these up. Ah, here you go. J rating. DC bias. Okay. So this is still the X5R. This is not the specific one. One moment. Did I click on the spec? Let me find one that has, I may not be able to find it. But basically the larger it is, maybe TDK has characteristic. Okay. So for this one, the 1206 instead of the 0805, you'll notice at the five volt, you lose 15%. Or as you remember, on the 0805, we lost 50%. So the bigger the physically larger the capacitor in general, check the spec sheet. Like you see, sometimes you have to like look around. It's going to de-rate, but the de-rating will vary. And the de-rating also varies by the dielectric. And the, so it's like Y5, X5R, X7R, C0G, small. Obviously for like, if you're getting your like 22 picofarad capacitors, those are not going to be de-rating as much because you're going to get ones that are that have a high quality dielectric. But when you're talking about the bulk capacitance, it does matter. So you just put like twice as many on. I don't know. They're like a penny or two a piece. So let's go back. I will, I tend to use 0805s to be honest. So let's look at 0805. It's about 100 options. And there's a couple of different ones. Again, different voltages, what you're going to be paying for. I mean, you're like, what's the difference? All these Ys are 100. So they're different heights and sizes. Some are different temperature gradings. And some are just different tape and reel sizes. So like there's the, this one, like I think is, you know, I don't know, the G maybe is like the reel is bigger. When you get it, there's like a 3000. Yeah, it's like a 2000 tape reel, 3000, 4000, 10,000. That's another thing. If you're getting these caps by the reel, because you're in a picking place, the 10 K piece reels are awesome because you load them once you forget them, but your feeder has to support that size reel. Something which I learned once when I accident was like, oh, let's buy the 10,000 and then we got this like 13 inch reel and I realized it wouldn't go on the picking place machine. But if you're just buying these generically, this one is super cool, the CL21A106 CoQ NNE 10 microfarad Samsung generic cap. I use these by like the bazillion. We literally sell like a million a year through all of our components that go to our products. So that's my pick for the research. That's great search.


Okay, let's start. I'm Alex from Evernim. I'm a software engineer at Evernim. And also, I'm a maintainer of Hyperledger Indie project. And today I'm going to tell you about one of the sub-projects of Indie. This is Indie Distributed Ledger. So, what do you know about Indie? For most people, Indie is all about identity. That's true. And not everyone actually realized that Indie has its own Distributed Ledger, and it has its own implementation of Distributed Ledger. And this implementation is not dependent on any other blockchain platforms, any other blockchain systems. This is really one of the Distributed Ledgers, which is part of Hyperledger. And what is important, this is BFT, PBFT-like implementation of a consensus protocol. Moreover, this implementation is in production. It's part of Sovereign Network for more than two years. And also, Indie is one of active Hyperledger projects. I mentioned Sovereign Foundation and Sovereign Networks, but there are also other deployments of Indie Network, of Indie Ledger, such as FinDi, Kiva, and so on. So, it's working for more than two years in production and has real customers and real applications working on top of this. Okay, so what we are going to discuss today. The first fall, we are going to understand why we need a public blockchain in self-sustaining identity. So, why we need a blockchain in these kind of identity solutions. Then we are going to consider what projects Hyperledger Indie Ledger consists of. And we are going to discuss the architecture of Indie Ledger, how the actual databases look like. And of course, deal with the consensus protocol. What consensus protocol Indie implements and what is specific of this protocol. Okay, so self-sustaining identity. There are other great topics describing what is areas, what is Indie, what is verifiable credentials. This is also just a very quick overview that in order to have a verifiable credentials, the issuer usually creates the issuer's claim which is signed by him. And it's issued in the form of a digital verifiable credential which is stored on the Prover's wallet and then can be presented to a verifier in an SS0 knowledge proof form. So, the question is why do we need a blockchain here, actually. But you can see some errors. And we need the blockchain because of multiple reasons. The first reason is that we need a schema for these credentials. We need to know how it looks like. We need to know what is the public key of the issuer to be used for signing this credential. We need to know whether this credential is revoked or not. We need to have a list of revocation entries, the revocation registry. So, but in general, why we need the blockchain here, why not just a database. And the answer is that we need a decentralized source of trust. And also, we would like the ledger to be public so that it means that anyone in the ecosystem, anyone in the world, should be able to read this data for identity use cases. And it's pretty important to understand what data in Indian verifiable credentials workflow is on the blockchain and what data is considered to be private and never goes to the blockchain. And again, here you all know about GDPR, about the laws in California and so on. So, the rule of thumb here that no private data is ever written to the blockchain in the ledger. But what is written then? Some public DIDs, public decentralized identifiers and the corresponding DID documents, it can be written to the blockchain, issuer's public keys, which will be used for verification of credentials. It goes to the blockchain, credential schema, and information about revocation. That's usually what we can see in the blockchain. And what is never written to the blockchain is pairwise DIDs, this peer-to-peer communication that Daniel Harman was telling about credentials itself proves it never goes to the blockchain. And of course, private keys. Okay, so in the ledger, in the distributed ledger, it consists of two projects in Hyperledger. This is IndiePlanum and IndieNode. What is the difference? IndiePlanum is a kind of general purpose project related to implementation of the consensus protocol, the ledger database, state, and so on. And IndieNode, it's built on top of this, on top of IndiePlanum. And it introduces and implements identity-related stuff, identity-related transactions. For example, if you would like to know how the schema transaction or credential definition transactions from the Indie world look like, you should go to IndieNode. But if you're interested in consensus protocols and this stuff, then you should go to IndiePlanum. In general, Indie is a ledger purpose built for identity. But from my previous explanation, it follows that, in principle, it can be used as a general purpose ledger. So, Planum is a core stuff. And you can extend Planum, implementing custom transactions because we have so-called concept of pluggable request handlers. And you can even implement your own plugins. That's actually what IndieNode does. So, it extends pluggable request handlers interfaces and implements identity-related stuff on top of the common logic within IndiePlanum. So, it's pretty important to understand that, in general, IndiePlanum can be used as a general purpose ledger. So, a brief overview of IndiePlanum and Node. It's written in Python. It depends on ZMMQ, IndieCryptor, and currently we're migrating to Ursa. And Lipsodium. It follows a modular architecture and message doing behavior. And we've been working on improving this. And also, we do care about tests in Indies. So, it has extensive test coverage. It tries to follow TDD. It has a lot of unit tests, integration tests. And also, simulation tests property-based testing is pretty important for distributed ledger and BFT-like consensus protocol. Also, we have a number of system tests and a lot of tests. And it's important to mention that we do test on real deployments of 25 Node spools which are distributed in different parts of the world, in AWS, for example. So, Plenum and the Node ledger is really tested at scale and in real environment. So, IndieLedger can be considered as a public permissioned one. So, you know, Bitcoin is about decentralized money. Ethereum is mostly about decentralized applications. And Indie is about decentralized identity. And so, why is it public? It's public because anyone can read from the ledger. And why it's permissioned? Because it's not like Bitcoin or Ethereum that anyone can, you know, join the network and participate in processing transactions. In Indie, only the specific stewards can join the network and can own and has a node which validates transactions. And also, right access to the ledger is permissioned that we have some policies strict in this. So, in the heart, we have the validator pool consisting of nodes. And this is more or less fixed number of nodes, well-defined nodes. Of course, it needs to be distributed. It needs to be owned by different so-called stewards who has a private key for this node, who does the maintenance of this node, makes sure that it's connected to all other nodes in the pool, and so on. And this validator pool, it's responsible for actual processing for requests and ordering them as part of consensus protocol. In addition to the validator pool, we may have so-called observer pool. And this is the nodes which can process read requests. The number of validator pool nodes in a validator pool is usually quite, it's not infinite because of the consensus protocol that we use. The current sovereign networks usually have about 25 nodes there. But the number of observer pools can be, we may have much more nodes there. So, the validators, as I said, they have consensus logic implemented there.  They come to a consensus, what is the sequence number of these requests? In what order it should be written to the ledger? By ledger here, I mean like ledger database. So, each node replicates these databases. So, it has the same information, the same data on every node. And, yes, any other PBFT-like protocol, we have n nodes, which is equal to 3f plus 1, where f is the maximum number of crashed or unavailable or malicious nodes. And we use 0mq as a secure transport. It's TCP-based protocol. It uses authenticated encryption instead of digital signatures. And BLS signatures. It's also part of consensus protocol to be able to verify the data written to the ledger. I'm going to tell you about BLS signatures a bit more in the next slides. Okay, so let's consider how write and read requests are processed by the ledger. Write requests. So, the ledger is permissioned. So, any write request must be signed or multi-signed by the users. And we use ed255x9 digital signature here. And write request is sent to all nodes in the system, all nodes from the validator pool. And we expect to get f plus 1 equal replies to be sure that it's actually written. As for the read requests, we have only one error here. It's sufficient to send a read request to one node only, to a single node only. And the user can trust the result, the reply, because of the BLS aggregated signatures and because of the state proofs. So, we are going to talk about this in more details. And no signatures are required there. So, the ledger is public from the read request point of view. Let's talk about authentication and authorization. So, authentication as well as authorization is based on the information present on the ledger. So, as I said, every write request must be signed. And the signature is very fine against the public key, which is also present on the ledger. This public key is put there as part of DID doc or kind of information associated with the DID of the user, of the sender of the transaction, so that all the nodes can get a request and can get the associated public key from the ledger and verify the signature. And for read requests, we don't require any authentication. Anyone can read. As for authorization about whether a person is allowed to do this particular action, this is also based on the information present toward on the ledger. And we are using a role-based approach here, where for every DID, we have an associated role and also have a concept of configurable rules so that we can set for every action how many signatures of a particular role are required. And we can use or and expressions in order to set this. And this is the authorization policy which is stored in a config ledger. Read request, again, no authorization is required. Okay, now let's talk about the ledger itself as a database, which is replicated on every node. So the ledger consists of transaction log, and this is just an ordered list of all the transactions which are written to the pool. And we have a Merkle tree for the whole ledger attached. And the Merkle tree, you know, it's kind of a common structure in all the blockchains. And we have actually three databases associated with every ledger, transaction log itself, and two databases for Merkle leaves and Merkle nodes. We use TroxDB as a key value storage to store every of these data structures. And also it's worth mentioning that we have a so-called catch-up process so that if a node is lagging behind or is just started, I need to get the information, missing information to have the equal representation, the equal ledger. And this is what catch-up procedure does. All other information, all other state of the node, can be restored from the ledger. So as I mentioned, we use Merkle trees and we use consistency check just by verifying that two Merkle trees root hashes are equal, and it's a very fast and convenient way to see that two ledgers are equal during part of our consensus protocol. Also, we use state proofs or inclusion proofs to verify the results of get transaction. So if you ask for a transaction, you can verify that this data is really actually part of this Merkle tree. And it's also used during the catch-up procedure when you get the missing information from other nodes. Okay, Indy has multiple ledgers. It's not just one. So we have so-called audit ledger, and this is the ledger which actually introduces the order, ordering across all the ledgers, all other ledgers. So it can be considered as a source of blocks. Also, we have a pool ledger, and this is a ledger consisting information about the current state of the pool, what nodes are in the pool, what are the public keys, and so on. We have config ledger, and this is a ledger containing some information about, for example, validation of transactions, authorization policies, some config which all the nodes need to come to consensus. And the main ledger. The main ledger is the main ledger containing application-specific or identity-specific data. So if we consider Indy and identity use cases, then all the transactions, such as schema, cred depth, revocation, it's all part of the domain ledger. And it's worth mentioning that plugins can add new ledgers, can register and add new ledgers for their purposes. So pool ledger, in general, the current configuration of the pool consists of a block of Genesis transactions and a number of so-called node transactions associated with every node in the pool. And you can use this node transaction, for example, to add a new node or to remove a node from the pool or to edit information about this node, for example, rotate its keys. And on this example, you can see that from these four Genesis transactions and these five node transactions, you can get the current state of the pool. So it contains actually four nodes in this case. Audit ledger. So the main purpose of audit ledger is to introduce synchronization and ordering between all other ledgers. And also it can be used for external audit of data, written in multiple ledgers. Audit transaction, every audit transaction can be considered as a block associated with a sequence number and also having references to miracle tree root hashes of every ledger that it has. So just by following audit ledger, you can restore the real ordering of all the transactions and what ledger it belongs to. And also audit ledger can be used a lot in the general consensus protocol verification. It's used in restoring current primaries, for example, and some state, internal state of every node. State. So in addition to ledger, ledger database on every node, you have a concept of state. This is kind of a snapshot of the current ledger. So each ledger except audit has a state and in principle, this is a Patricia Merkel tree, very similar to how it's used in Ethereum. It's a combination of radix tree, like a keyword storage, and a Merkel tree. In other words, state maps the ordered list of transactions stored in the ledger to the current state as a dictionary, like current snapshot. We use ROXDB as a keyword storage here as well. So while it's needed, for example, we have a DID, and we have a key associated with the DID, and we can rotate this key. We can change the value. So the state will be just the current value of this key for a particular DID. So it can allow you to get the current state, which is very, which is really actually used when you process read requests, when you return replies to the clients, and when you do some verification of the data to be stored on the ledger. Now let's move to consensus protocol. As I mentioned before, India has its own implementation of a consensus protocol, and this is business default tolerant protocol. So in general, we have two types of consensus protocols. This is CFT crashful tolerant and BFT business default tolerant. In a CFT world, the nodes can be unavailable, can crash, and the protocol will still come to consensus if no more than particular number of such nodes are unavailable. But in BFT world, it's even more. The nodes can be available, but it may just behave maliciously. They can send some arbitrary data to different nodes. But if the number of these nodes is less than f, where the total number of nodes is 3f plus 1, then the protocol can still come to consensus. And you may have heard the famous story about business generals and where it came from. Okay, so Plenum, India Plenum, it has the implementation of a protocol which is called RBFT, and this is a PBFT-like consensus protocol. So you know, PBFT was probably the first practical business default tolerant protocol created in 1999 by Mikhail Kastron and Barbara Liskov. And you can consider RBFT as a multiple instances of PBFT running at the same time. And it helps to notice some malicious behavior in the network better. We are going to discuss it on the next slides. In general, PBFT-like protocols, they have better throughput and low latency than proof of work. That's why they are so good in permissioned networks. So any PBFT protocol consists of three main phases, which is called three-phase commit. And the first phase there is when a primary, and this is a leader-based, a primary-based protocol, where a primary proposes the next set of transactions to be ordered. And the primary sends a so-called prep-repair message. On other nodes, they come to agreement using prepare and commit messages. And after they got a quorum of commit messages, the transaction is considered to be ordered. It's written to the ledger and reply sent to a client. Why we have actually two phases, prepare and commit, not just one. This is because the primary can be malicious. The protocol is leader-based, and the primary can be malicious in different ways. It can be just disconnected or stopped, or it can intentionally degrade performance, or it may send some inconsistent data. In all of these cases, if other nodes notice that the primary is malicious, they need to change the primary. And this is a process which is called a view change. So in every view, we have a different primary. When we change the primary, we go to the next view. And in general, we change in plan with implemented in the same way as in original PBFT paper. We use a variant without digital signatures. And that's actually why we have multiple instances of the PBFT protocol in RBFT. That every instance has its own primary, and they all execute at the same time, calculate throughput, latency, and compare performance. And if other instances back up instances sees that the master protocol instance, which is actually the one which executes the real transactions, degrades performance, they do a view change. They change the primary. This is the reason why RBFT is better in catching this kind of behavior. In general, the view change protocol on PBFT, well, the main thing here is to make sure that all transactions that could be potentially ordered on at least one correct node should eventually be ordered on all the nodes. And this is done by letting the next primary in a new view kind of reorder all these kind of transactions, which could be potentially ordered. Okay, so the plan has a number of features which worth mentioning. The first one that every request, every transaction is ordered not one by one, because you can see that this is quite heavy process of through phase commit. And this is n square asymptotics there. So we can order a batch of transactions at once in one prep repair message, which of course improves performance a lot. And usually this is a trade-off between throughput and latency, depending on how many transactions you include in one prep repair. Also as part of our consensus protocol, we check for data consistency. So we apply all the transactions optimistically in uncommitted state, and we're making sure that the data on our node is equal to the data on the primary. If yes, we continue to order this transaction. If not, we do the view change and change the primary. And, well, in addition to just applying the data, we do this dynamic validation. For example, we validate that data is immutable, or this is a really, the user has a permission to do this action, something like this. And this verification is done against the current uncommitted state. So we apply every transaction one by one and do this verification. Also it's worth mentioning that Plenum can have multiple batches, multiple prep repairs in flight. So it can process like 10 prep repairs. But all prep repairs must be applied sequentially. So if we don't have prep repair number 12, then we need to wait or request it from other nodes before we can go further. And maybe the last important thing, last feature in Plenum, it's BLS aggregated signature. So, as I mentioned before, it's sufficient to send read requests to a single node only. And why the client can trust this data? It can trust because of two things. The first thing that in every reply to a read request, we return a proof that this request belongs to a Merkle tree, to the Patricia Merkle tree on the node. That's fine. The client can verify that this data is on this Merkle tree. But the next question is how would you know that this Merkle tree is really the same as on other nodes? Because it can be that this node just created a fake Merkle tree and returned this data to the user. And the answer to this question is that every node during consensus protocol, they sign, they cryptographically sign the root hashes of the state. So that also in addition to the state proof, we return this signature. So the client can verify the signature, can verify the root of the Merkle tree and trust the data. So, yeah, during the commit phase, every node signs the ledger Merkle root hash, the state Merkle root hash, the current timestamp, so that we have this so-called aggregated BLS multi-signature to be verified by the client. Okay, well, so as a summary, ledger, indie ledger is a ledger purpose built for identity. But on the other hand, it can be used as a general purpose ledger. Indie has its own implementation of consensus protocol, business default-tolerant-like consensus protocol. In Indie, we have multiple ledgers. Every ledger has a state, a Patricia Merkle tree state as a snapshot and has a Merkle tree. Authentication, authorization, it's all based on the information present on the ledger. And one of the features of important features of Indie is efficient reads. You can read just from one node. You don't need to download the whole blockchain, the whole ledger. You can just send a read request and verify it with a small amount of time and date required. And, yeah, this is very pretty important for public permissioned ledger use cases. So there are some links to our code, to the RBFT paper, to PBFT paper. And thank you. Any questions? This feature is considered to be partially implemented. We already have the key things for this feature. And actually, one of the key things for this feature is this one, PLS aggregated signatures and to be able to transfer data from one node only. And also, we have observer interfaces. But we don't have any real observer nodes in production. And I believe there is also some, a couple of things that needs to be finished before it can go there. So it's partially implemented and we don't have real examples in soaring. But I think it could be a great contribution from community. And it would not be so hard to do this and, yeah, have observer nodes in production. I believe you need to maybe implement a couple of things in order how you can, you know, register this node and so on. But in general, I think you can try to do this and it should mostly work. Yeah. Not necessary. We're considering some strategies where observer nodes could replace validators. For example, if validators behave maliciously or the other way around. But in general, observer nodes don't need to be a validator node. In terms of the code, it can run the same code, the same Indian node or sovereign code. But it just depends on the role that we assign for this particular node. Yeah. It's the problem. Yeah. It's the problem in any blockchain that it's immutable storage ever growing. Actually, the information in audio transaction is not as big because it doesn't contain real data. It contains only like hashes or fruit hashes. So it's not a lot of data, but yeah, it's immutable. Yeah. So we use RocksDB as a persistent storage for this data for any, every ledger, every state. I've used RocksDB. So it's not in RAM. It's not in memory. It's actually persisted. RocksDB has, of course, some, you know, optimizations that for frequently used data it uses some in memory accesses. But in general, it can be persisted. And in general, we can scale it on this level. So we can create multiple, you know, databases. And so of course, it's usually a trade-off between, you know, how to access the data, which is frequently accessed, being accessed, versus, like the disk space. But yeah, it's possible to do this. Yeah. You know, that we have a NIM transaction, which is, can be used to store DID and the persisted public keys. But we don't have a request to just return a DID doc. This is kind of one of the features which is in our backlog. So you can just, you know, process the data on the client site and form the DID doc in a way it's defined by W3C. And in order to how to store other information required for DID doc, such as service endpoints, you know, these controllers, we have a special transaction which is called a trip attribute, where you can put any data associated with the DID. So you can use this transaction to store a DID doc. But in general, we have plans for a real DID doc support, more convenient for end users. So you can just request it and get back in a, you know, interoperable form. Any other questions? I really feel a bit out of time. So I can stay here and everyone has any questions, so I'll be happy to answer.


Robinson Crusoe is an example of a late 19th century hinge book or flap book, one of the simplest mechanical structures and earliest examples of mechanical books aimed at children. I do want them to keep in mind that it's a reproduction, it's not the original from the 19th century, but it represents exactly what those books looked like and the experience of reading and moving them would have been like for people at the time. The Robinson Crusoe is in the collection because it provides an example of that early movable structure geared particularly at children.


Hi, everyone. How you all doing? Okay, we are at the first ever SF queer comics fest pride and panels. How are you all doing? Thank you, welcome welcome everyone My name is Christina Mitra Pronoun she her idea and I am the program manager here at the Hormel LGBTQIA Center of San Francisco Public Library I am so thrilled that you're here that everyone out there is enjoying themselves and that we're doing this this is Honestly one huge experiment and so far. I think it's working. So thank you for being part of this experiment Thank you for being part of the community here the Hormel LGBTQIA Center was the very first Center of its kind in a municipal public building so for a government building to have a place for our community in 1996 was groundbreaking and at this point right now as far as I can tell You're welcome to correct me. We're the only urban public library anywhere in the United States I have venture to say even the world that has a center like ours. So I'm very very proud of the work we do. I Don't want us to be the first and I don't well. I don't want us to be the only I want there to be centers like this in every part of the country in the world in small towns and Suburbans towns and so I hope that that won't be the case for forever But for now we are and we're unique in that way and I welcome you to learn more about us and explore what we have for you Which is an array of queer and trans books We've got incredible archives documenting the queer history of San Francisco If you have any questions about any of that our tables out there We've got the purple tablecloth number 24 and we'd love to answer your questions So if you're I continue on I do want to go ahead and Make sure that we acknowledge the land that we are on Let's see trying to get a slide here There we go So the San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatush Ohlone peoples who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula We recognize that the Ramatush Ohlone understand the interconnectedness of all things and have maintained harmony with nature for millennia We honor the Ramatush Ohlone peoples for their enduring commitment to Mother Earth as Indigenous protectors of this land and in accordance with their traditions the Ramatush Ohlone have never ceded Lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this place as well for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland as uninvited guests we affirm their sovereignty as First peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors elders and relatives of the Ramatush Ohlone people We recognize and respectfully honor that in order to respectfully honor and embrace the Ramatush people We must collaborate meaningfully with them to record indigenous knowledge and how we care for San Francisco and all its people So let that be both an acknowledgement and also a call to action for all of us to build Relationships with our local indigenous communities. Thank you Without further ado, I want to welcome up our amazing all ages panel coming up Right here. Oh Our clicker is having some fun times with us today Media services team if there's any support you can offer me that would be awesome. Thank you While they're doing that I do want to give a shout out to our incredible media services team They're making sure that we have sound and audio and the recording this so that people can see it in the future So I want to give it a big shout out to them And also to our custodial team who set up all the tables and chairs outside and are going to do the cleanup Afterwards we thank them and also the friends of the San Francisco Public Library without whom none of this could have been possible Thank you. All right, let's bring it up. Let's give it up for our panel here. Think of the children queer all ages comics I want to welcome our moderator Laura gow. Can we give Laura some love? And we've got our incredible panel here today I'm gonna go ahead and say their names. I want man's please come on up Woo Kyla Aiko Smith Samadrita Sam gosh And Amanda Castillo, please welcome them all warmly Thank y'all Hello Okay, thank y'all so much for coming out. I'm so so stoked to have this wonderful group of panelists My name is Laura gal pronouns are she and they I'm a local the area based comic artist and writer Who writes primarily for young adults and children's so it is in my passion to be able to connect with all of y'all? Amazing artists and writers who also write for all ages So I'm going to do a very quick intro of each of y'all and then they will have a couple of slides about their wonderful work to share with y'all will have a short Q&A about Everything your work writing for kids drawing for kids and then lastly in the five minutes Y'all will get an opportunity to ask them any question you want So keep that in mind, you know write all your questions down get ready for that But make sure to just leave your questions until the very end. All right, so let's go ahead and get started so First here on my left is a one man's a one is a professor of African American literature at Mills College in Oakland, California a Life-long artist and writer a one has participated in solo and group exhibitions as well as comic and zine fest From the Bay Area all the way to Brooklyn and our illustration in comics a one uses humor and bright colors to explore race gender power and The people and places in which they intersect. Thank you so much for being here Thank you. Awesome. Next we have Kyla Ico Kyla Ico is a cartoonist and editor who's always looking for good soup noodle recommendation You'll have to give us them later on and the spicier the better She's currently working on Fox light her debut middle grade graphic novel about a lost fox spirit and the non-binary noodle maker who helps him find his way home Yeah, cute. Yes. Please. Please ask Kyla about it after All right. Next we have Sam also known as tickle Tickle is an illustrator from India learning about comics at CCA in San Francisco Her favorite thing to draw is casual intimacy between characters She likes to capture a comfy loving vibe with her illustrations and when not drawing She's usually having an existential revelation same and Or petting her dog. Very cute. What kind of dog? She's a mixed breed mixed breed. Okay favor and German Spitz. Oh Adorable. Okay. I hope you put pictures in your slides. All right last and at least Amanda Castillo Amanda is a cartoonist and illustrator who loves to share memorable and heartfelt stories through drawings words or both They are the illustrator and co-author of the middle grade graphic novel trilogy map makers that you've brought here And are cooking up their next comics to one day share with y'all. So one round of applause for all of our panelists All right. So first we have a wand sharing about her work And can you hear me? Great my comics and I should also mention that I am a visiting professor of illustration at CCA and Sam is my amazing TA in our queer illustration course I am my comics. I wanted to show a few images. I Started doing comics in 2014 mostly autobiographical with a twist. I can't time travel, but I can in my comics And gender studies is the collection that my is officially out on March 4th But I that I have with me today and it looks back on Some funny and interesting moments from my life college and backwards those moments in which being a genderqueer black nerd makes things extra funny or awkward or interesting and Drawings of you know, I'm kids and childhood plays an important role in me telling these stories For example, this these are some images from a story in which I look back on probably the first genderqueer person I ever met when I was in second grade a student I will refer to as Tiffany Banks the notion of Black women's hair and how my own hair journey played an interesting and important role in my evolution as a genderqueer person and also the journey of my niece as You know Dealing with three and four year olds as they're trying to figure out questions of gender. I love comic strips I think it's a beautiful wonderful form And so I've also explored the three and four panel comic strip in comics called check all that apply black nerd stories And yeah, that's me Hi, I'm Kyla Aiko. I use she and they pronouns. This is just my icon So what I'm here to talk about mostly is I'm the author and Artist of a series or a book called Fox site coming out from fee one friends Macmillan I'm in 2027 and so these are some earlier Illustrations from my pitch and from the announcement a lot of stuff I'm working on a secret, but hopefully I can share more in the near future I'm also one of five artists on the Freddie Mercury shadows illuminated Comic from Z2 comics We had some amazing artists I'm in the company of and two writers and it was just a really cool project to be a part of especially Just being able to work on our Freddie Mercury comic I'm also one of 29 on trans and non-binary creators in the outside Which is a collection of short comics about autobiographical comics about being trans and non-binary I also letter manga monho and Western comics like jungle juice Dandan and everything is fine So these are some comics I've worked on and it's also really fun and fulfilling in different ways to connect In like children's media in different ways Finally, I'm also one of the members of uttot comics uttot means fart into Golug and it's a group of comic creators who realized we weren't spending enough time making short comics just for our own enjoyment Whether it be day jobs or just other work that was kind of not letting us be as creative as we wanted to So we work on comic sprints and just encourage each other to just make comics. Oh My name is Sam and if you're aware of me on the internet, you probably know me as ticklil I am illustrator wrist pain haver former insomniac and all these things that I'm mentioning here Usually I started so I started my art journey with in the world of illustration and This is some of the examples like I have a series of illustrations that I have here with me today And as you can see I like working with lights and creating a mood using like environment surroundings and just Stuff like that sometimes I also do fan art This is some of my recent fan art where as I said in my intro, I like to explore casual intimacy between characters that is usually because I am an asexual person and Right now in my comics journey. I'm trying to like explore some more of that So casual intimacy really plays a huge role in that so I'm trying to Have more of my work echo that sentiment So if you're interested in any of that, you should totally come by my table and check out some of my stuff Today mostly I'll be talking about my work on night owls and summer skies Which was a webtoon original series that aired in? 2022 It is about let's be an icon Emma Emma Lynn Who gets unceremoniously dumped into a summer camp against her wishes, but wait a second the counselor is kind of hot We are gonna probably hopefully talk about that a little bit more in the panel, so I hope you're looking forward to that This is them This this should give you an idea of what what the whole five was like and With that here is everywhere you can find me and those me Sam. Thank you for visiting Hello, everyone. My name is Amanda Castillo. I am a cartoonist and illustrator born and raised here in the Bay Area I am the artist and co-author on the children's book series Mapmakers from Random House Graphic, which is what I've been working on for like the past four or five years or so And previously I had work published with boom studios lined forage and college humor So mapmakers is a series about a young girl who finds a lost map in her hometown and She finds out that her land was once glorious and beautiful and is now desolate And so she sets out on the journey while meeting other kids just like her To restore their land to what it once was after or before it was taken over by a group called the night coats And so the first two books are out and the last book is set to release in April this year And I always like to show. Oh wait Hold on. I was just I'm just the Illustrator on that one and so Now that I'm done with that project I'm sort of barreling into working on my own stuff and so this is just a little bit of an excerpt from a pitch that I'm working on for a graphic novel aimed at teens and I can't say too too much yet since it's still in the works but it will be one that explores how discovering identity as like cultural identity kind of intersects with Queer identity and how they kind of interplay with each other and Inform each other and one's existence. But yeah, thank you. Thank you so much So I think one thing that's very clear from hearing about all y'all introduce your works is that y'all have all come from such diverse backgrounds of how you got into comics and how you started making all-ages comics too like we have folks like tickle who Mainly did like web comics and web tunes all the way to a one who's probably our most seasoned like veteran in the comics industry Here with so many books, right? So I'd love to just go down the road Maybe just start from Amanda first and then come down since you're fresh off the mic Why don't you just quickly introduce sort of your comics journey?  So I went to school out on the East Coast I went to the Maryland Institute College of Art and I Didn't really know that I wanted to do comics until I got there and the reason why I kind of got into comics is because there's like a lot of like small press shows out on the East Coast and that's sort of how I got like Like the our department was generous enough to fund a table for students, which I'm extremely thankful for So then I kind of just use that opportunity to start making I've always had characters in my head And so I started putting them into comics And so a lot of those kind of because I was young at the time. Well, I mean I still am young But a lot of them kind of coincided with like my own experiences so that fell more in line with like teenagers younger kids just what I knew and so then that's sort of where like the The kind of comics that I was making so about like friendship about like growing up And I've always kind of been a sucker for coming of age So I kind of feel like it kind of just natural. I like naturally fell into that spot But then the more when I started getting smaller jobs I Realized that I enjoyed Seeing how kids would react to these comics and it kind of mirrored the same way that I would feel as a kid Reading a lot of comics. I read a lot of manga and like the Sunday like sillies and stuff and I just like there was just something so Like enticing and magical about that Because it was just there the joy that kids have for comics is like so like pure and like passion-filled And I just I wanted to be able to be someone who can make something for Because as like a queer kid, I didn't know like there wasn't as much stuff or it was harder to find stuff that like I could relate to so I wanted to be Someone who like helped like create stuff like that. Um, so that's kind of just like how I fell into it Thank you. No, I totally agree. Like, yeah, thank you so much Feel like a lot of folks no matter what generation you are right like growing up You probably didn't have as much and now we have so many amazing creators. So yeah All right, Sam, right. So I'm pretty new to the world of comics like all my life I have mostly been Like an artist and an illustrator animator for a short period of time But growing up. I definitely remember being like very distinctly Inspired by the Tintin comics, especially like the clean line style and As a kid who relied a lot on line art. I really sort of fell into that I was like, what if I try to you know make comics that uses lines like that and that went on to Like inform my art style later in life like even even now I rely like on my line art and I'm like really proud of my line art So that I would say it was my biggest inspiration The other one would be being an Indian and Bengali kid I don't know how many of you know Satyajit Ray The famous Indian film director and he's like my biggest inspiration because he he made films He illustrated his own stories. He wrote he did graphic design. He was he did it all So I was like very very inspired by comic adaptations of his his detective short story series Feluda and As a kid, I remember I'd like make Fan art comics of my favorite anime Where I was acutely aware of the Begdal test as a kid where I was like, hey the girls never talked to each other What's going on? So I would make like fan art comics and put all the girls together and you know send them on a beach holiday or something So I would be like, yeah, I'm living my dreams Like I'll make all the Disney princesses interact and all the female ninja from Naruto They would all have a fun time like no men in sight. I would do that so yeah, that's kind of how I grew up with comics and Yeah, right now it's mostly webtoons And I'm learning more about the world of comics at CCA because my way of getting into things for the first time is doing a Master's degree in it. So here I am learning every day. Thank you Yeah, I can also relate for I feel like a lot of us the first queer content were just like fan art or fan fiction Written by other queer folks, right of like, oh like they have chemistry Like let's just make them be friends and more than friends and like have a good time, right? So I can totally relate how many of y'all like read queer fan art fan fiction Okay. Yeah. Yeah, so a lot of y'all know right that's that's where our people are at Kyla, so I got started with art and comics. Um, I guess I grew up reading the Sunday funnies in the paper I really like pickles. I'd call it the grandma grandpa comic Like that's that's not queer. It's just something I enjoyed And then I didn't really like have a concept of oh people like are actually cartoonist people do this for their job Until like kind of recently, but I also grew up reading like a lot of manga. I was really into bleach I have a lot of notebooks of pages of like Panels from bleach that I copied just like the pages and I was like that kid during read I just like trace over it I was like, I love this comic so much and I think that Influenced me to be like I know people enjoy comics like what it's like. It would be really cool to Writing and drawing into something like that like what a far-off dream But like I think a lot of my comic work kind of started during the pandemic I had a friend named Sam Nakahiro who reached out on Instagram and she was going to The Center for Cartoon Studies and they do a project where they make an anthology and she said would you like to contribute a comic? And I said oh sure, but in my head. I was like I haven't really made comics like ever so like oh Okay But I did then I really enjoyed it and being in the company of other cartoonists in that anthology Kind of encourage me to look more into like what does it take to make comics? What does it take to get published or even just do things more consistently? And I think that's kind of how I've gotten to this point. Yeah, just the support of friends and like encouragement Thank you so much And I think for me it's the encouragement of the comics and zine community That have really open comics the door for comics. I've been doing art with intention Since about 1996 I started out as a painter doing a lot of acrylic on canvas and paper and then Took a turn towards illustration in 2010 when I started doing a series of a thousand and one portraits of black men and Bundling certain, you know, I take 30 here 10 there and bundle them and sell them as zines and it's really Through zine making that I encountered some of the people who are here today Like at loose and John Macy is going to be speaking a V Jeter I don't think is here, but does an amazing comic about zombies in downtown Oakland and our organizer Justin Hall and and I always I loved comics love and rockets was probably the The gateway drug for me in terms of comics that really got me into just Obsessing and walking 45 minutes each way to buy a love and rockets every six weeks when I was in college But it looked like too much work to me And you know, but meeting people who made comics gave me a sense Really made me want to try to make my own and so now I do I have My feet firmly planted in illustration and writing I have a couple of illustrated books and but I also have my first collection of comics gender studies autobiographical comics and And you know, I don't think of an age when I create them, but the audience has found me Awesome. Thank you so much. One thing I really want to dive into is speaking of Queer comics and queer content, but another subsect that Amanda you kind of called to is the intersection of how cultural identity and different types of our own backgrounds intersect with Queerness and I think one thing I'm also very proud of is that we're a panel of all like folks of color too Which is great and I want to be able to highlight those experiences. So for each of y'all While there's for your own work or like Sam you had mentioned some changes you made in adapted works How do you try to bring? Unique experiences of your life into your works so we can start off with a while now and go down the overwhelming majority of my work is about Black people black experiences black community African-American, but also Afro diasporic two out of every ten black people in America are Afro-Caribbean Afro-European African or the children of African immigrants and so you know that really becomes my lens and my goal is to And I think part of it is you know, maybe because I have the privilege of doing so But I'm not really interested in creating the ideal role model of black experience black life I'm just interested in showing how it looks to me how I experience it More voices more representation more images of You know, I don't want us to be my my job as an artist and comic creator is to make sure that I don't leave people out simply because They are living more complicated lives than role modeling would suggest matter So that has always been my challenge And my work is very much informed by that I love doing comics about those moments when I am incredibly awkward or ridiculous And you know just want to show you know, it's it's a privilege to be human And I feel like that's my work is to humanize on our good days and our bad days and everything in between Thank you so much I think I I'm inspired a lot by my friends and like relationships, and I think I just wanted to bring some of that to the page I think it's just um, I feel like a lot of advice given for people who want to write is like Well, sometimes I hear oh right what you know or sometimes that I've also heard that a lot of work that you do will turn out to be autobiographical even if you don't necessarily mean it to be that way and Not necessarily in the sense that that's bad or good Just that a lot of people write from their experiences and that finds its way into their work whether on purpose or not so I think that I think that's true for me especially and for my middle grade comic I just really wanted to write for I don't know like the Asian kids who like didn't see a lot of themselves in books growing up Yeah, thank you So for me It's a little bit different because I did grow up in India as an Indian so So for me it was very much like I was part of the mainstream culture So I would say I had the privilege to look sort of outside of myself and my culture when I wanted to think of my art Right now The the most important part of my culture that I'm thinking of bringing into my work especially my comics work is my experiences with traveling with family because as a Bengali kid an Indian and Bengali kid Travel forms like a really really integral part of our childhood and family dynamics because like every holidays You'll have like families from all over the city packing up going to the mountains or to the to the ocean or to the forest somewhere and They're they're gonna be in in one space for like a week and seeing only each other's faces quarantine anyone and it Brings up a lot of these interesting family dynamics and Also, I feel like as a child going on these family trips looking at nature being encouraged to Appreciate a place and culture for what it is forms a really core part of my identity So I think that's something I really am trying to bring into my work like How do we as tourists see Places that we visit For what they are like be it the nature be it the people the food just like a holistic experience of space and and I feel like In a weird way that is tied to my cultural identity as a Bengali person so right now I'm working on my thesis for my masters and it's about a family trip and I'm trying to really Include more like what those subtle experiences so that if a Bengali person were to pick up the book They would immediately see themselves in it. So that's me Thank you And I think for me like ideal my work deals a lot with identity like my own personal written work not just in the queer aspect, but I'm Filipino and Mexican and I feel like growing up there was sort of like a weird straddle thing Internally where I just didn't feel like I was completely one or the other like make mixed-kid things but in the sense that like because neither was Neither part of my ethnic identity wasn't white. It was much harder for me to find Like media to relate to in that sense. So a lot of what I write now deals with just the What's the word like the the internal conflict with oneself of trying to figure out how to Navigate like these different aspects of your identity when you don't fool like fully feel a part of it and Then how like I said before how that informs Like queerness so all pretty much all of my characters are queer and so I think for me my own personal journey of like Stepping into something that was a little bit more comfortable came along with starting to understand like the Filipino aspect of myself and so I think understanding like that portion of you like one portion of your identity it just serves to inform and Like other portions of your identity because it's just all intersected in you And so that's really something that I try to get across and pretty much like all the work that they do Thank you so much see so we Have about like seven minutes left for the rest of this before we open it up So just a quick reminder to keep the questions in your head. I know this is going by so quickly But I want to spend this time now to kind of dig a little deeper into each of y'all's books and works and careers I've read a lot of y'all stuff huge huge fan So I'll start off with Kyla I know you are working on Fox site and you said it's coming out in like a couple of years, right? Okay, but you while you're working on this you also as you've shown here have Collab on so many cool anthologies and like other types of books and Comics so I love to ask you for the audience How do you decide sort of which projects to take on and then how does one even get published? So first question, how do I decide what projects to take on? I think specifically for lettering work right now a lot of it is Really who you know, it's a lot of connections, but what I did was I Sometimes I get in a mood where I'm like, oh, what if I did this and I just go What if I think like What if I think like with the confidence of a white man Open up my email I go into a state and I just go okay. I'm gonna write a cold email So that's what happened for working with Viz Media on manga So you just called emailed I just emailed like one editor and he was checking his emails that day So he gave me a lettering test and I turned it back in and they said great We'll put you on your roster And then he for Viz Media, they do this thing called simo pubs where? On different days of the week, but let's take the Sunday weekly shown in Jump Magazine So there are a ton of series that come out in Japan and what Viz Media does in America is they Publish those Series at the same time as they do in Japan So you're on like a tight schedule and they said let's put you on this to like Test out if you're like good to work with and I was like sure and they said let's put you on this thing called super smartphone it has 300 lines of text per chapter and the turn around is 24 hours and you have to retouch screen tone and Cell phones and now I never want to work another cell phone manga, but yeah now. I'm like oh a technology my phone girl But yeah from manga it's a lot of you get assigned things and you do have some flexibility in turning things down or asking Oh, I've heard of this thing if you see it. I'd be interested in it and for other projects like The Freddie Mercury one and the outside I was reached out to and I was really grateful for those opportunities to just work with a Lot of cool artists and like creators And then all the small stuff like my mini comics most of them came out of Utaught comics where my friends are just like you should make comics I'm gonna text you until you make a comic So yeah, that's kind of that. Could you repeat your second question? Oh Just like how you get published for getting published. I think I was on Twitter a lot in 2020 and I thought oh like I Was just like really into like oh, how do you? Like publish a book like what goes into that and what kind of work do you need to do? I think I took like a couple classes in like high school that were kind of Creative writing classes and we talked a little bit about the publishing process So I just like thought back at that and I was like, what if I do that? Well, I'm in limbo with jobs and like internships because I had just graduated and was waiting to hear back on things that Never materialized so I was like, oh, I'll just put all my efforts into like book publishing Which is not a great gamble, but it worked out and I'm grateful for that Awesome. Thank you Next I want to jump over to Sam Also, we have like two minutes for the three of y'all Let's get like the TLDR answers But for Sam You also worked on webtoons. You worked on night owls and summer skies and I think one thing we've talked about between the two of us was like how you When it was at an adaptation, right of like a famous novel novel. Yeah a famous novel and you kind of put your own Culture into some of the characters and you like switch it up a little bit, right? Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so in the novel all the characters are American But they were like since so the team at webtoon was like since food and family and culture is really important to the story and You're an Indian artist. So what do you think of making this one character Indian? So we can include more of the food and like the culture and stuff like that. So I was like, yeah, let's do it Which was really special because like I was reached out to by webtoon to do this project So in a sense it could have been anyone But it is kind of comforting for me to know that It is a specific thing and it's different because it was me like not like if it was another artist It would have been their culture So it's like there is this that this really like personal touch that I was able to give to the comic Which I'm like really happy about. Yeah. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's like I am the artist I'm gonna take it all and make it my I love that Amanda so for map makers you said you were the main artist and then you also co-wrote. Is that correct? I didn't write anything, but I was listed as a co-author. Okay, cool. All right extra credit So you mainly did the so you did the art primarily and then you worked with another writer, right? Yeah I love for you to talk about How is it like Working as a writer I know some folks might really specialize in just one or the other And then now that you're kind of pitching something that you are also both writing and drawing Can you let us know sort of the differences and maybe even the challenges of both? Yeah, for sure I think with being just the artist it It's easier in terms of like for ideation Because when I'm I'm a writer now that I'm writing and like doing my own thing It is a lot of like sitting down hunkering down really getting those ideas out Um But as just an artist I also enjoy like I I enjoy telling my own stories But there's something really nice about being telling the story as the artist because with graphic novels It's just a lot of the storytelling is going to be in the images So it's really fun collaborating with the writer In building this world So he didn't really have like an idea of what he wanted these characters to look like so then he like is He's like an absolute sweetheart. And so he gave me so much room to kind of develop The characters how I want to see them how I would want to see these characters out in the book And like the world as well And so there's just a lot of going back and forth fun like fun and trust between us in kind of crafting this and What makes it really fun as well is that we come up with ideas that like we couldn't have thought of ourselves And so that yeah, it's very different from just working on stuff on your own But the positive to it as well working on stuff on my own is that I do I am allowed to be Much more like intimate with like the ideas and like the themes and all of that stuff Coming directly from me Which I really enjoy because that's something that I've always enjoyed as an artist. Um, but yeah Awesome. Thank you. Okay. And then last but not least for awan. Um, we did get the green lights for A few more minutes, but for you You've made so many books your professor Yeah, the list just goes on and on right, but I would love to ask If kid you was here right now like in the audience, you know, and it's like looking at this panel How would kid you react like what would you want to tell kid you and what would kid you say to you right now? It's an interesting question because um I my path has been circuitous into art I could tell kid you um, you can actually take art classes in college and you won't melt Go ahead and do that Because it was a huge missed opportunity to not um take To even pursue art studies in as an undergraduate But it would have changed my path and I'm really pleased with where I how I got there. Um, I think kid you would be really amused and really amazed and um And would say what are you waiting for do more do more? And um, you know, I did a children's book in november My first children's book came out and I think kid you would love that because I kind of fell in love with art and with writing through children's books Back in the 1970s when I was a kid So No, I love that. I think every time I need inspiration or anytime I'm like, oh man Like I don't know if I can keep drawing anymore.  Like what are you doing? Stop hesitating, right? Yeah. Yeah Awesome. Well, thank you all so much a quick round of applause for everyone Cool. So we have time for a few questions. Please raise your hand and we'll get the mic to you Please don't shout anything out Wait until you have the mic to ask the question. So raise your hand Hi, I'm proud Oh, you got one over here When you're uh, when you're making a story for kids or for middle schoolers or high schoolers Does that affect how you think about the way you approach the art? Like the way you might lay out a page or the way the way that you might want to Graphically represent a story idea that you have Versus the way you would do it if you were making for an adult audience Question is this for everyone or for a specific person? Yeah for anyone who finds that interesting enough to answer All right Fight fight fight Um, I think personally for me Not so much but maybe so in how like I choose to convey expressions And like highlight like what I choose to highlight I feel like when like now that I've So I did like middle grade For map makers and then now that I'm working on stuff for teens the teen stuff tends to like lean a little bit quieter A little bit more contemplative And I think that's just that comes with like the nature of a lot of the themes that are in like teenage books So Yeah, I would say yeah like I would say yeah like I think there is like an energy that I really enjoy like putting Into like kids books because a lot of them. Um, there's like a lot of adventure There's a lot of like friendship and I think that does kind of inform how the panels are laid out how the characters express But yeah Thank you Awesome. Any more questions? One over here Hello, can you guys hear me? Okay, so um, I guess I was wondering about I a lot of like queer comics and cartoons that I watched I noticed that Homophobia isn't like always written into the stories that much and I'm what I'm wondering Sorry is or isn't it isn't like there's a lot of times where the story it's it's like all Rainbows and smiles. There's not really like they're not really talking about like the struggles There's representation, but it's not necessarily speaking about What it's like, so I'm just wondering. Um, do you think it's important to put that into stories and why or like Do you notice that or Okay, so in night owls and summer skies specifically there is homophobia But there is also like sort of the flip side of everything sunshine and rainbows um, I feel like uh Especially for all ages and uh comics aimed at a younger audience We need a healthy mix of both because when kids are growing up and they see Uh Something that is normalized in in the media that they're consuming They're like they they will internalize the fact that oh, it's normal And uh in my opinion we can we can like maybe push the homophobia like to like later stages of age Then you can be like, okay. Now we're coming to reality a little bit But inside me my base has already formed that being queer is normal so like That is kind of where I committed at it from uh, like Queer media also deserves uh, representation where it is not uh, like Necessary for it to touch on um prejudice So that's me You know, I was thinking I think similarly, um, you know, um It's kind of like, uh, you know, if I you do a book about say a black Experience and it's not most of black life isn't defined by The experiences the way that people who are not black perceive black people, which is essentially what racism is And in some ways homophobia is the way that people who are not queer trans non-binary perceive that community But most of um, I feel like it becomes a really great way of centering Queer folks and trans and non-binary folks to not necessarily center homophobia Accept in those instances in which it's very salient and very relevant. Um, but um, you know, I it feels like in some ways it feels like a power move You know, so yeah Yeah, I'll quickly add my two cents that um, I'm not like I'm like 28 I feel like I'm kind of in between a lot of different generations here, but uh growing up I feel like a lot of the media I saw had a ton of homophobia Whereas it was almost as if every gay story was a sad sob story, you know And I remember talking to other creators and be like, oh man, where are our happy stories? You know, like why Always just be sad and mopey about like no one accepting us Um, so I think it's actually refreshing to hear that there's people out there who they've only consumed very happy Queer stories and I'm glad that there's now both sides of the spectrum You know, you can have whatever you want based on what mood you're feeling So yeah, thank you so much for asking that question Awesome. Um, we have two minutes left. Anyone have a quick question they want to ask All right. Oh, okay here very quick because we we do have to kick everyone out for the next panel soon Which unless y'all stay for it is queer horror. It will be a wonderful panel as well Hi, um real quick. Do you have any um messages or themes that you think um Queer and trans kids need to hear from uh, the media and are those things Are any of those things that you have put into your own work? for anyone I have my two cents especially, um, uh, like I cannot speak for uh, trans experiences specifically but for me, I am an asexual person and aspects are notoriously very, um Like the representation is kind of sad like it's very hard to find stories, uh Centering asexual aromantic a platonic people and I feel like, uh, I would say that We are such a small part of the population that I want every aspect kid Especially to know that they are not alone Because anytime I publish a comic talking about my experiences I will invariably get responses like I thought I was alone I didn't know I didn't know this had a name and it is so so so uncommon to come across another aspect person just in the wild That I feel like, uh, I I really want to tell them that there are other people like you and your experiences are not Like you're not an island or weird So I guess that kind of extends to like the whole lgbtqi plus community Um, I also feel like as someone who is non-binary themselves, um, I I I enjoy like the like stories about trans and non-binary experiences. Um And it's so hard to like capture Like this like whole experience that Is so varied, um in a single piece of media But what I really do enjoy when I see it um is the idea that's explored that I mean like none of it is concrete like all of it is like a lot of it is fluid for some people it is concrete But it is more fluid than you think and I think I see a lot of that a lot more of that now like over the past like few years. Um, but Personally, that's something that I would like to see a lot more like it's okay that You explore one like aspect of yourself and then you find out like maybe two years later that it's not really working for you And I think sort of incorporating that a little bit more Is something personally I would want to see because I think that kind of just like feeds into the fact that like We're all just people we're all just human. Um, and we're always learning and changing so Yeah, thank you so much. Um, let's give a final round of applause to our panel Thank y'all so much again, um Please if y'all would like stay for the next panel, which is queer horror But if not, please check out all of their wonderful works out on the tables right outside the auditorium Thank you all so much


The charge stems from a delivery of heroin, which is a controlled substance. And there's an allegation that he even helped one of the victims shoot up with the heroin. One died there at the scene. One was taken to the hospital, lived I think approximately 10 days, and died in intensive care both due to overdose.