This is my first talk on DevCon, this is my second time I'm attending DevCon, first time presenting and English is also not my native language, okay. So I would like to share my story about how I got into tech, how I got here to present here. I'm a former Outreach intern from the past winter and current junior software developer in cancer research. Well I would like to cover what did I learn as an Outreach intern, what I found particularly useful for finding a job, how did it feel to go through a job interview and how it actually felt to start as a fresh junior. So first I would like to introduce myself. I come from the non-tech background, I come from the research in life sciences chemistry. My first contact with programming was when I was making my PhD thesis. I did all my statistics in R, which discouraged me from programming for quite a while. Well then I started family as you can see on the picture. This was me already doing the PhD thesis and then you know to provide a little more context I come from Czech and we historically stay quite a long time with the kids at home after three years for every child. This is something what people out of Czech Republic might not know. So there was when I had the first child I started to think what I'm gonna do because that's a long time and I couldn't work in the lab. So well coding is something what you can do even with a child from the sofa from home. So I started. I picked Python because that's the most easy language I learned that there is. I was piling up courses here's a picture of me and my second child holding the cable of the headphones like an umbilical cord so she was happy. I had some time to calmly do the courses. Well after some time I just felt that I'm piling up courses and not getting anywhere. I was just doing my pet projects and I was thinking where when when I'm gonna do something real like I just didn't see any perspective anymore after after two years of doing courses. Then I learned about how to teach it and that meant going from my pet projects to something what does the working on a software which had community which had its maintainers and which has its own processes. It was finally something real. Well how many of you is familiar with outreach is and how many of you are interns past or current and how many of you are mentors? Good. So everybody quite knows what outreach is. We just like to say that outreach is interns with mentors and mentors from free and open source communities and provides a support for the project. After registration and passing the eligibility check I could see all the projects. There's actually a lot of projects one can easily get lost in it. There are some low level, there are some high level. You can physically pick whatever from programming, documentation, translations. Well and I picked my project was to make a command line interface tool for Pagur. How many of you is familiar with what Pagur is? About half. So Pagur is, well this is the definition which didn't tell me much. I would describe it as something like GitHub but it's a completely open source. It's written in Python and it's operated in the open. That means that you can see all the issues. You can see the pull requests. You can see the discussions on the public IRC channels. You can see the developers talking, discussing the features and approach. You can actually see sometimes that they are not sure about something. Sometimes even the most senior people can struggle and can reach out to ask others for help. This is something very encouraging for somebody who is just a beginner because if you see advanced people asking, then you as a beginner, you're even more encouraged to do so. Well, yeah. Actually this is not what happened in my project. In my project in Pagur everybody was very decent and nicely discussing. Well with this, my project was named CRANK, the common line interface tool. I also wanted to say that I would really provide some travel allowance which allows you to go to some conferences and to meet the people which you just know from the IRC forums which you know just like a nickname. See them in person to talk with them, not only of your projects but of the neighboring projects which are part of the larger community. You can finally put a face into Anonymous nickname on the IRC channel. Well, without Richie, what was the main takeaway is that I developed a strong attitude towards free and open source software which I'm advocating since and also learned that you're expected not only to contribute to your project but with your project you usually influence, you need to adjust maybe some other dependencies, some other libraries. You expect to also contribute to those if you can like for example by report in a bug or even creating a pull request or starting the discussion or offer a code review or verify or test somebody else bug fix. Well the carrot is there because I usually name my testing projects after vegetable. So I just immediately know that it's a testing project if it's some kind of carrot or leak or something like that. Well and then slowly when I was done with out Richie I knew what the next logical step is that was finding a job. I was not sure whether I'm ready to do so already. Well and I would say that the key here which helped me the most was to find my local coding communities in my in my city. Well in my case living in Barcelona there's a lot of different communities. There is a wide range but every programming language has its own meetups there and I picked by ladies with which I had already experienced here from Bruno done by really amazing people and they define themselves as international mentorship group with a focus on helping more women become active participants and leaders in the Python open source community. Well there's a quite different approach between the communities. For example here in Bruno and I think whole Czech Republic it's taken more like courses for beginners which are led by already professionals while in Barcelona and in many other cities it's done either it's a meetups and workshops already for professionals but beginners are also invited but they obviously are the smaller part of the community. They meet once a month and after the meetups and the talks there's some socializing there's usually some free food and you can just make your local network. The other local coding community I was attending was code bar which defines themselves as a non-profit initiative that facilitates the growth of diverse tech community by running regular programming workshops. How it works they meet every second week and I was quite surprised by the approach because they take a little bit differently. It's very much focused on networking that means that we make a circle and everybody introduces it himself or herself and you're supposed to say what you want to learn or what are you able to teach. After that the study groups form usually it's like one coach on one student sometimes two students so it's really personal experience and you can either follow their prepared tutorials or you can come up with your own project and this is really great because you have somebody who is there two hours for you just solving your stuff which is what I never experienced before and I found it really helpful and what is really great on this is that the meetups happen every time in a different tech company so you go to that company you see the surroundings and the people from that company are always involved in the meetup that means that you can get them as coaches and you can network with them you finally end up after several weeks visiting several companies you end up here and there knowing people personally and they also end up knowing you and there is another thing which I found really awesome is that they kind of it's not only one closed community in the city they tends to visit each other from different cities so sometimes we get to visit them from Norway or from another country and that's very enriching because we see how it works in a different city in a different continent that's really great and also when you're traveling and you see that hey in this in this city there is a code bar session maybe I can go there and you have already somebody to talk to to socialize and that was really great these are some pictures from code bar and in this meetups also I found I met a lot of women in different stages of their career from very different backgrounds and I could network with them and I saw and I heard stories which I found very useful well after and the most important thing of this meetups is that they usually have no mailing lists where people are posting job offers whether I was and I was not really sure if I'm already ready to apply but I was reading them just to know what is usually required from a junior from senior well I was just checking the junior ones but like if I'm missing something from the knowledge or from the skills which are usually required and one day I just saw such a job offer which played on my soft spot to the research and I decided that I'll take that little step and I will for me it was big step for me it was a huge leap and I'll try to apply mainly because I don't really believe that it would work I just wanted to start practicing interviews because that is something what you can practice a lot and the bit and the personal experience is the best so I was preparing for my for the worst option that could have happened that was a whiteboard interview I started with kind of questions there could be and so on finally it was not that difficult I went through two turns of interviews one was just a compatibility check with the boss and with the team members where we were just testing if we can if we can communicate if there is the if it works if we are of the similar mindset and the second one was tech interview where I was supposed to solve a simple programming challenge and to create an image and build a container and docker I think and it worked and I wanted my first job as a junior software developer at Institute for Research in biomedicine in Barcelona and in its biomedical genomics lab this is us you can see that there's more women than men and it's a research group dedicated computational study of cancer at the genomic level and I learned that some of them actually quite quite more of my colleagues are either organizers or active participants of some python python but Barcelona meetups that's probably how it got to the mailing list well here I thought that I actually wanted no I had a job that was like this was actually the hardest part of it all like there was very few things I knew and a whole library of things I needed to know and I got yeah there was a who knows how what what do you need for bioinformatics so there is a lot of pandas there's a lot of singularity there is a lot of obscure bioinformatical tools and even we're there file formats which you're supposed to deal with and I was just going to the work and sleeping and I had completely zero personal life this is me every afternoon taking the kids to the playground where they were full of energy and I just couldn't anymore well but after weeks and some months the pieces started slowly to fall in place and I was slowly started to be able to contribute and the good thing I saw happening here was that I brought the good stuff which I learned participating in the open source project to my work and I was able to propose changes and bring the good practices I learned and I started finally to feel useful that's all but we have a little bit of time so if you came here to actually learn something about cancer research and you're disappointed that you didn't learn anything so I prepared this is the project I'm working on it's called cancer genome interpreted I'm working on a second version of it and it's basically open platform designed to support the identification of tumor alterations that drive the disease and detect those that may be of therapeutical relevance how does it work we well somebody somebody in the lab sequences of tumor that provides us a file with a lot of mutations well every tumor has a thousands but many mutations but not all of them are actually relevant major it actually is not more than 9 of 10 of these mutations are of unknown significance and we have tools which which we're able with which we're able to distinguish which of the mutations are drivers that means that they can drive the tumor egenic activity they can start cancer and which of them are just passengers or something between or they are of they are weak predicted and this leads the husband like a personalized drug prescription was a colleague our the cancer genome interpreted is used either by a clinical oncologist or by researchers that just by running this analysis they get a list of of the breath of prescription of drugs which work on those particular mutations which are identified as drivers in that particular tumor and that makes the the decision much faster well in the database we have more than well almost 800 cancer genes and 5600 validated oncogenic mutations there would be much more of them identified if there would be more money in the research usually driven by the government so they are doing what they can and there is more than now there is more than 246 cancer cancer types and if you want to hear some some cancer facts which I found really interesting is that there is about 1000 mutations which happen in a cell every day which is not much and there are some repair mechanisms but if you multiply it by the amount of cells in the body that makes the risk of you getting cancer much higher but it's like it's basically like rolling the dice you never know where the mutation is gonna fall and the more the more times you're rolling the dice the more likely the in the bigger danger you are that the mutations will fall in the bad places like one mutation is not gonna cause anything probably but three already can and three is quite low number to start something something like this well and yeah if you're interested even more so sometimes I learn about even things which I didn't want to learn you can read it yourself which questions do you have am I what I think we're on quite we're on the high highest capacity like our lab is able to have people but I don't know I'm not a hiring manager like we recently hired like three or five people so I think we're on the ceiling now not sure if I heard it properly like if the people from our lab would not be to support this if I if I went to crazy my discourage okay thank you for attention


Hi there. Blossom. How you doing? Take care now. Take care. He bear has got a pal who is always on the prowl. Would he is his name? You know he's the anti-pollution owl. Why would the owl? What's new with you? Do I detect a frown or two? Hi there, Mr. Music. You know I've just been enjoying our beautiful forest and I've been wondering how we can keep it this way. Pollution is a terrible problem and it's really destroying our country. I know it is and I'm here to say that I'll help you in any way. Well, thanks a lot, Mr. Music. I sure could use some help. I wish people everywhere would do their part. Would the owl has got a home on the big branch of a tree? When he looks from left to right town and for it he can see. Give a hoot. Don't salute your good outdoor manner show. Leave a trail that's nice and clean wherever you may go. Give a hoot. Don't salute. Would the owl know what it's best? Help him check pollution in the north, south, east and west. You know this great country is our own and it's up to us to care. Now would the owl will lead the way? So come on, let's do our share. Give a hoot. Don't salute your good outdoor manner show. Leave a trail that's nice and clean wherever you may go. Give a hoot. Don't salute. Would the owl know what it's best? Help him check pollution in the north, south, east and west. No way, not would he. He's out asking people to give a hoot. Don't salute. I might be able to arrange it. I'll go find him. I know he's near. Come with me. I've got some friends for you to see. Okay, okay. Be right with you. Is this yours, young fella? I'm here to ask you for some help. You see, I want you to help keep our forests and cities clean and beautiful. Now I know it's a mighty big job, but what do you say, fellas? You want to help? But, would the you need not fear? You've got some darn good help right here. Where do we start, Woodsy? Come on, I'll show you. What do you suppose we can do about that? Sand it down with sandpaper. Let's go root with soap and water. Or paint remover. Why not paint it all over? So it looks like it did before someone wrote on it. Yeah, that's right. Any of those ideas will work, but let's think about it. What's the best solution? Not try it on the rocks, at all. Right! Right!  Let's get busy and clean up our rocks. Mother Nature sure paints them better than anyone else ever could. What's next, Woodsy? Well, come on, kids, and I'll show you. Now I can remember when this was clear. Looks like some dirty birds were here. Looks like somebody dumped oil into the stream. Someone through paper cuts me to it too. Why do people do this, Woodsy? Well, Greg, they just don't think. They forget to be careful. But that's how we can help. Now, if we see a mess, help clean it up. But most important, don't make a mess in the first place. Come on, kids, let's get busy. Help Woodsy spread the word.  No matter where you go, you can let some people know too. Give a hoot, don't pollute.  In the snow or on the sand, don't keep America looking, Greg. Oh, help Woodsy spread the word.  No matter where you go, you can let some people know too. Give a hoot, don't pollute.  In the city or in the woods, help keep America looking, Greg. I have this dance, Ms. Parker? Why, thank you, Woodsy. I'd love to.  No matter where you go, you can let some people know too. Give a hoot, don't pollute.  In the snow or on the sand, don't keep America looking, Greg. Oh, help Woodsy spread the word.  No matter where you go, give a hoot, don't pollute.  In the city or in the woods, help keep America looking. I want to show you something else that's pretty bad. Isn't that awful? Come on, let's go down there and see for ourselves. Air pollution, site pollution, noise pollution, and litter everywhere. This is where litter belongs. I know, I know. Pretty sad, isn't it? Listen, what are you hearing? That's much too loud and hurt your ears. I hear a motorbike. That's right. If that was your motorbike, what would you do about the noise? I'd have the garage make it more quiet. Oh, I'd ride my bike. That's a great idea. I hear a radio that's tuned out. I'd turn it down if it was mine. Good girl, Mary Ann. I hear a car with a broken muffler, like my dad. Now, tell me, Mom, can you do anything about that? Sure. I'd ask my dad to have it fixed. Well, I know that would help. Every little bit we can do to stop pollution certainly does help. The main thing is that we all try. Look here, Woodsy. Someone carved up the picnic table. It can be fit, can't it, Woodsy? With some brushes and paint and a little wood putty, this table could be mighty pretty. Mr. Music is right. People would only keep it that way. Well, help, Woodsy. Tell your friends about it, too, so they will know what not to do. Come follow me and you will see what can happen to a beautiful tree. It hurts a tree just like a cut hurts you. How can we fix this, Woodsy? Well, I'm sorry to say, Greg, there are some things we just can't fix. You know, this tree will always carry these scars. Sometimes this can even make a tree die. That's why it's important. You can see why no one should ever carve a tree. You're so right, Mr. Music. It's important for all of us to think before we do something, especially something that can't be changed. Every little bit that we do to stop pollution will help. Well, no, Woodsy. Uh-huh. And we can all help spread the word, too.  We'll help stop pollution, Woodsy. All kinds. And we'll get our parents to help, too. Yeah.  Every one of you. Just think about what you can do to stop pollution. In your own backyards, at school, or, well, just anywhere you go. Hey, come on, kids. There's a place I know. Let's have some fun before we go. All right. Now, kids, don't forget. I'm counting on you. Okay, Woodsy. So long, kid. We spread the word.  No matter where you go, you can let some people know, too. Give a hoot. Don't pollute.  In the snow or on the sand, we'll keep America looking grand. The help, Woodsy, spread the word.  No matter where you go, you can let some people know, too. Give a hoot. Don't pollute.  In the city or in the woods, we'll keep America looking good. Good. Now you've got it. Here's your music. See you later. I've got to go now, and I'm flying high, so hurry back, and you know why. Give a hoot. Don't pollute.


Honorable Minister, respected Maxine Henry Wilson, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to send greetings from the Commonwealth of Learning on the occasion of the launch of the National Qualifications Framework. This is an important milestone in enhancing the quality and relevance of tertiary education in Jamaica, and Kaul is honored to have been part of this journey. Kaul is an inter-governmental organization with the mandate to work in 52 countries out of which 30 are small states. Ministers of Education had directed Kaul to establish a virtual university for the small states of the Commonwealth for strengthening existing tertiary institutions for human resource development. This was done over 10 years ago and is now a thriving network with Jamaica as an active member. Not only did the small states work together to develop needs-based courses, but they also developed a transnational qualifications framework to enable the movement of credits and qualified people across national borders. The objective of the TQF is to support the development, international recognition and comparability of courses offered within the virtual university context. National institutions from small states that wish to offer educational programs that are co-branded with BUSC are required to have these programs approved by the institution, the national qualifications authority, and where applicable the regional qualifications body. Programs of institutions in countries which do not have qualifications authorities can also be considered for registration on the TQF, provided that the qualifications are quality assured in their country of origin. By referencing and registering programs on the TQF, national qualifications can have a Commonwealth wide acceptance. Jamaica played a key role in the development and implementation of the TQF and was ably representative on the TQF management committee by Dr. Evenet Marshall. Jamaica was also instrumental in referencing the CARICOM qualifications framework against the TQF. With so much experience and expertise in designing qualifications frameworks, the Jamaican national qualifications framework is bound to be a model for those still grappling with this issue. We are very grateful to Jamaica Honourable Minister for its financial and intellectual contributions. As the former chair of CALL's International Board of Governors, the Honourable Birchell Whiteman always inspired and encouraged us to make a difference to the life of the last person in the queue. I would like to congratulate Maxine Henry-Billson, a well-known stalwart of tertiary education in the region, for leading this initiative and to say how much we value our partnership. Thank you very much and good luck.


Welcome to the latest episode of the Columbia Economic Development Rethink Business Podcast. My name is Ryan Coleman, Director of Economic Development for the City of Columbia. And this morning I am excited to have Stephanie Engels here with Dayton Rogers. They are a local metal fabrication company here in Columbia, South Carolina. And so we're going to talk with her a little bit, hear more about what they've got going on locally and she can tell us about the business. So good morning and thanks for being here. Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity. Awesome. So for those out there who don't know about Dayton Rogers, tell us a little bit about the background of the company and what y'all do here in the Columbia area. Sure. So we were founded in 1929 by a gentleman named Dayton Rogers. We've expanded locally. We have locations in Ohio, Texas, Minnesota and here in South Carolina. And my role is the plant manager. So I'm recently new to the role, but we're growing and we're expanding and it's all good things. Okay. And what do y'all do here in Columbia? What do y'all produce specifically? So we don't have one set product line. Everything that we do is completely contract sheet metal manufacturing. So basically if you can make it out of sheet metal, we'll try it. We have tons of different customers from all different industries. So our niche is short sheet metal stampings and fabricating. And y'all are fairly new to Columbia. Y'all just moved here around 2011, 2012? 2013. Okay. So of course. Yep, you were close. I actually moved here in 2013. The company first opened its doors. We're right off of Bluff Street, if you know where that's at. You're in the industrial part. In the industrial part. Yes, exactly. And we opened in January of 2014 for the first time. Okay. Yeah. So from your perspective as somebody who's not originally from South Carolina, you're from Minnesota, right? Correct, yes. What do you like most about living and working here? I mean, if you can put the summers aside, what else is good about the area? Well, I mean, definitely the weather is a big selling point for me. I was trying to get away from the snow. But also just the environment. So you can be in the big city, but also kind of be in the rural areas. And it's all fairly close. You can go to those little shops, the mom and pop shops. And you can also go to a big concert. So I really like living in this downtown area. It's nice. Yeah. It's pretty accessible. And it seems like there's more and more stuff we were talking about this earlier going on to do in the evenings and weekends. Exactly, yeah. There's always something going on, which is nice. So when we met a month ago, y'all were talking about, y'all just got recertified, your ISO recertification? Yes. And it sounded like y'all had a lot of fun doing that, kind of a very detailed process. Definitely. So what is the ISO certification? What does that mean for the business that y'all do? And how difficult was that process? It sounded pretty thorough. Yeah. So a lot of the customers that we're currently doing business with require that to continue doing business. The process is thorough. It used to be a certification that was more geared towards quality standards. It has since evolved to almost a business plan. So what happens is an auditor comes in and they certify you against all the ISO standards. It took a long, long team of people searching through all of our stuff, making sure everything was up to par. And they came in, it was a week-long certification. So we spent a whole week with our auditor and did a full certification and passed with flying colors, came out with no majors, a couple things to fix. They always have to find a couple things, but it was really good. So we passed, and you know, on to the next. So every couple of years it's kind of like a spot check, a re-certification, but this one was the one where they actually come in and do a detailed one. Full system audit, yes. So every three years you get a surveillance audit.  This audit was a full system audit. So it was everything, the full gamut. That sounds like you'll have a great week. Yeah, it was a long week, but it was worth it. You know, it was good. It was good to see that we're actually doing the things that we're supposed to be doing, you know, and get that validation from it. So it was good, it was good. So aside from running the location here in Columbia, you're also very involved in the precision metal forming. Yes, yes. PMA for short. Yeah, because that's a mouthful. So PMA, I'm the Vice Chair of the Southeastern District. PMA is a metal forming association for really any company that does any kind of metal forming. So we have all different kinds of companies that have joined in. I think the last time I checked we were up to about 350 companies throughout the US and we're gathered together to learn from each other, to help each other grow. We have lots of events. We actually have one coming up at Newcore and our speaker is coming from the House of Senate. So we're bringing them in to talk more about the trades, the tariffs, all of the issues that we're starting to experience because of all of the things that our administration is doing. That lines up perfectly with the next question that I was going to ask. So international trade is definitely a very hot topic discussion right now. Because of all the things happening, not just here domestically, but the conversations abroad. What does that mean for y'all's business and what y'all do? Is it helpful? Is it harmful? How is this impacting everything that you're doing on a day to day basis? Absolutely. So we have seen the cost of material change rapidly. I think most manufacturers have felt it a little bit. It's to the point where we aren't able to hold a quote price for more than a day because of the volatile cost of the material. So we can get a material quote and it's only good for the rest of the day. And then tomorrow we've got to start all over. And it does and could fluctuate quite a bit. So we're seeing a lot of price increases because of it. We're seeing a lot of people that aren't willing to hold pricing. We can't buy a lot sizes on material anymore because of it. Everything is made to order. So it makes it difficult to plan ahead. And for us, for contract manufacturing, that's all we can do is plan ahead. So you're probably bringing in a lot of supplies from abroad, doing your process here, and then I guess most of where you sell is domestically. So it really does affect the input. Absolutely. And so what did you all's group talk about? Are there any solutions to that? Or is it one of those things where we're trying to figure out how to work through the politics of it at the national level? It just seems like a very big issue to tackle. Yeah. So the group that's coming to speak at this new core event, they're called the Franklin Partnership. And what they do is they go and they lobby for us in Washington. So they take all of the input from the PMA groups that come in and talk and they go into Washington and lobby for us, you know, pro-manufacturing and trying to get the costs of these trade deals to lessen the impact on manufacturing. So I think that, you know, the overall solution is a little bit out of our hands. It's a little bit bigger than... It's always the best place to be, putting the faith in the national politicians. Right. Right. You know, but to the extent we can, we're really trying hard to make them aware of the struggles that they're causing us. Make them aware of what we need and what we want to make sure manufacturing stays in America and continues to grow, you know? So as far as solutions, you know, just having a voice, having somebody that's telling them the impact that it's having.  So even though, you know, some of the companies within this PMA group are technically competitors, we are still coming together and volleying ideas back and forth and trying to bounce things off of each other.  And I found a lot of value in having those kind of connections. Yeah. It certainly sounds like those discussions have kind of been a mixed bag. And so where, you know, some folks have seen some benefit from the trade talks. It does oftentimes come at the expense of other companies. Right. Yeah. Yeah. On a more positive note, I think the last time we talked, you said you were looking at expanding some of your capacity here in the Columbia area. So how are y'all growing, you know, amidst all of these other things going on? Yeah.  We're focusing on the ones that we know we can grow with, taking care of those customers. It's also allowing us to take a look at some of the operations that we offer. Our most used outside vending operations talking about bringing some of those in-house so then that way we don't have to outsource those, you know, overall affecting the cost of doing business. It kind of forces you to, you know, look at your internal processes and see where you can be more lean and efficient on your own. Exactly. Yep. Which I think most U.S. companies already do a pretty good job of. Right. But it's always rooting for improvement, I guess. Exactly. So how many new people do you think you might add if y'all continue to grow?  Well, it depends on the role. But I mean, if we're recruiting, we will always take anybody that has a good attitude and is willing to learn. We do a lot of training onsite. We actually have a program set up with Midlands Tech, which I know we're going to talk about in a second. But I mean, basically for a press room operator, which is somebody that would come in on more of an entry level position, you know, it's just somebody that has some mechanical aptitude and is willing to learn. If you've, you know, ever worked in a warehouse before, if you like working with your hands, you know, those kinds of skills we will take and develop you and teach you, you know, you just have to be willing to learn. Yeah. Any, like, certifications? I know a lot of folks do, like, work keys and things like that. Is that- Work keys is great. Yeah. If you can find people that are- Absolutely. Work keys is great. The kind of post-secondary education is great.  It translates directly into what we're doing. So it's a foundation of building. Absolutely. And you mentioned the program at Midlands Tech, which, you know, every- They do such a great job of supporting all of our local businesses around here. Yeah. And I can't say that enough. But what program have y'all initiated with them? So we took a look at their, their machining program, and I wanted to mimic some of the classes from that program. So what we did is I met with the continuing education side of Midlands Tech, and they're fantastic to work with. They've done a great job. I can't say enough about them. They actually come into our building and they teach our employees four key classes. So we have basic shop math, basic blueprint, basic measuring, and GD&T. So those are the four kind of key classes that we teach. We actually pay our employees to attend the classes. And then if they pass all four classes, we give them an increase at the end of it. So- And you put some of your longest-time employees back through some of those classes. We did. Which was fun. Yeah. Did they enjoy the reeducation? Yeah. I mean, for them to go through the classes, they kind of laughed at me, you know, because we're talking about people that have been here in this industry for 10, 20 years. But they went through the classes, and at the end of it, they came out and they said, Stephanie, you know, that was nice. I'd forgotten all about how to do that, you know. So I mean, we're finding value at every level, you know, which is, which is you can't ask for more than that. Yeah. So- Yes. Sometimes you get, you know, working in your role enough. You kind of step back and look at how things are being done nowadays. Right. Yeah. Exactly. Cool. Yeah. It's been great. So having, having come here from the outside, now you've been here for a few years, y'all are continuing to be successful here. But from your business standpoint, and I guess from the broader community standpoint, you know, what's your vision for Columbia and its growth, and you know, where do you see our region going over, over the next few years? Well- Or what would you like to see? I would love to see Columbia grow to, you know, a Minneapolis size. That's what I would love to see. Just a couple, a couple million more people in this ad. Well, definitely need to expand things a little bit. But in all seriousness, I see it as the next Greenville, you know, we're starting to see a lot of manufacturers come in here. We're starting to see more secondary type operations to support the manufacturing side come into Columbia. And that's fantastic. The city has done a great job of recruiting manufacturers to come in. It's going to create more jobs. It's going to create, you know, the need for more outside sources, you know, restaurants, little shops, things like that. You know, so I really do see Columbia growing. I think Columbia is going to be the next Greenville and then hopefully move up from there. I think they'll surpass Greenville shortly, in my opinion. Don't tell the folks in Greenville yet. Well, and, you know, certainly the past few years, we've kind of increased the economic development activity going on right here. I think we're doing a better job of not just having the right assets for companies, but I think we're doing a better job of selling ourselves nowadays, too. And it seems like, you know, there seems to be more optimism in general with the businesses and citizens in the area. And I think that's the attitude you won't kind of continue to permeate. Absolutely. Well, and I mean, unemployment's down. I mean, everything about Columbia makes for good business.  We certainly think so. We certainly think so. Yeah. So that's all I have. But we appreciate you coming on and getting in front of the camera for us. Yeah, no problem. Thank you. Just excited to hear about y'all continuing to grow and develop here in Columbia. And thank you for being a part of the podcast. Yeah, thank you for having me. You're welcome.


The federal government has flagged off the Capacity Building Project on Emotional Intelligence aimed at increasing self-management, social awareness, and relationship management for improved service delivery by the rank and file of the Nigerian Police Force NPF. The opening ceremony of the one-day sensitization workshop on Capacity Building was graced by the Minister of Police Affairs Mohamed Meghari Dengiadi at the Mortala Nyako Multipurpose Hall in Yola, Adamawa State. The minister in his speech pointed out that due to the demanding nature of police duties, a police officer is exposed to stress and anxiety which could be transferred to the members of the public resulting in infractions.


This challenge from Ryan Nicholson CTF is called findtheflag.text again. So kind of a redux on a previous challenge that we did in the advanced category. All we again have to do is find the flag.text file, and that will simply give us the flag if we can cat it out. So we can log in here, gives us the credentials that we actually want to access the server with, and we can try and run things, but it doesn't look like anything's particularly happening. I can LS-TAC-A and LS-TAC-L, but it's not giving me any results that I would normally expect. So I thought that was weird, and I wanted to check out, well, what's going on with my custom aliases in Bash? Are they trying to nerf anything that I particularly want to use? And as it turns out, they are. They're setting LS to true, which does nothing, right? That command literally doesn't do anything. Same thing with find and same thing with grep. So they're trying to nerf or really just make all the commands that I want a dud. So I figured, all right, whatever, I'll set LS to its own, you know, been LS just as before, and I'll set find to back to what it should be, is user bin find. So now I can successfully run the find command, and now I can run, okay, find from the root directory, anything with the name flag.text, and we found it. Cool. So I can just copy this if I wanted to. And then cat out that file. And there we've got the flag. So cool. That was a simple challenge. The note thing here is that you want to keep in mind if you are in a shell or any kind of terminal or any kind of console in a CTF, check what your aliases are set to because they may be trying to nerf or simply just put away the commands that you would expect to use or want to use. Cool. We can take note of this in our own notes and then mark this challenge as complete. Cool. I want to give a special shout out to the people that support me on Patreon.  If you did like this video, please do press that like button. Maybe leave me a comment if you're willing and subscribe if you want to. That'd be awesome. Hey, check us out on Discord. Link in the description. And if you're willing to, support me on Patreon. See you soon.