As-salamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh Alhamdulillahi wa s-salatu wa s-salamu ala Rasulillah wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa man walah amma ba'd What are people going to say about you and about me? The day that the news reaches them, that we are no longer alive That's a reality that we all experience But we will not be here when it is experienced on our behalf We see and we hear others pass away all the time And we know our own reactions, but very few of us think about the reactions when we will pass away Almost on a daily basis, somebody, a friend, an acquaintance, a relative, passes on And the closer they were to us, obviously, the more painful it is That's human nature And the first things that happen in our own minds are the memories of the times we spent with those actual people A friend, I was just with him two weeks ago An acquaintance, oh my God, he seemed just coming to work every second or whatever A relative obviously closer And we always think of the impact they had on our lives And the legacy that they leave behind after they're gone Now, the true mu'min will be pre-planning his own or her own legacy before people are talking about it And this is in fact an Islamic commandment and reality The Prophet Ibrahim made dua to Allah And one of the interpretations of what Lisan al-Sidqin means is Oh, Allah, leave my memory to be a good one in the later generations The legacy I leave behind, I want people to think of me in the best of manners Of the Quranic du'az which we made for the righteous imam Make us role models for the believers So the Prophet Ibrahim is making dua to Allah That, oh Allah, make my legacy a positive one And subhanallah, no human being is more universally admired Across all faiths than the Prophet Ibrahim al-Salam We call them the Abrahamic faiths even Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentions in the Quran That he is going to record We will record all that they will send forward and the legacy they will leave behind Whatever you've sent forward, your good deeds, your sadaqa jadia, your hasanat And what you have left behind a thar literally means your remnants Literally we will record that which they send ahead And that which they have left behind which is their legacy When they've left this dunya what remains that people will remember them by That's called a thar What are the remnants that the people have of them And Allah is saying we shall record those remnants What will my remnants be and what will your remnants be What will my legacy be and what will your legacy be We want to have the best of legacies And not because we want fame for the sake of fame No, but because we want to maximize our good deeds And the way you maximize your good deeds is you expand your influence And the way you expand your influence you have the maximum impact In a positive manner on the most number of people Both quality and quantity if possible And if not possible then quality obviously over quantity Just look at the legacies of our great ulama that came before us Sometimes I just wonder people like Where do we begin? Imam al-Bukhari You cannot give an Islamic lecture without giving some good deeds to Imam al-Bukhari You cannot give a khutba, a dars, a halaqa You cannot give a khatira, chances are Except that you're going to be quoting something That Imam al-Bukhari spent time compiling, registering, recording And when you quote that hadith and say Bukhari narrates A little bit of good deed is being added to Imam al-Bukhari He only lived 60 odd years, that's it But the legacy that he left behind is truly phenomenal And that's just again, so many examples can be given So in today's short lecture that I have I want to remind myself and all of you About three practical steps that we need to undertake In order to maximize our legacy And insha'Allah those three also explain Why certain people Allah has blessed over others Even when they're alive, it's pretty clear that they're going to leave A large legacy when they leave The first of these three, and without a doubt the most important Is ikhlas or sincerity If you want to leave a legacy Then your niyah has to be not for the people But for the creator of the people Your niyah has to be to please Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala And that's why some people get a little bit confused At the Quranic dua that I just quoted We're jalna al-muttaqina imama Oh Allah make us an imam for the believers And people say wait, hold on a sec I thought we're not supposed to seek fame You're right, you're not supposed to seek fame The Quran is not saying make me famous The Quran is saying make me a true leader For the righteous people Look at me as a role model As an exemplary person For the muttaqeen I want to be the imam The imam here doesn't mean the guy who leads you in salah No, the imam here means the role model imam Oh Allah make me a role model For the people of taqwa Yes, we want to have that level And that's why we ask Allah for that level We don't ask the people We ask Allah to give us that level of ikhlas Of true sincerity Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentions When he talks about Yusuf alayhi as-salam And how he goes from the well to the jail To become the minister in Egypt The raising of the ranks And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the qira of nafih Inna hu kaan min ibadina al-mukh li-sine With a kasra Yusuf was of our servants who had ikhlas In explaining how he rose up in ranks In explaining how he went from one daraja to another to another Why did he end up where he ended up Inna hu kaan min ibadina al-mukh li-sine He was of our servants who had sincerity And that's why the level of ihsan Which is the highest level of our religion It only deals with sincerity As Hassan al-Basri said Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, radiallahu anhu Did not excel over you Simply in the quantity of his raka'at And then the number of days he fasted Pause here, full stop here Put a footnote He's talking to the tabi'un He's not talking to me and you Abu Bakr excelled over us Yes, in the quantity of salawat Yes, in the quantity of zakat Yes, in the quantity of siyam But Hassan al-Basri is talking to the tabi'un And the tabi'un Look, again a bit of a tangent here But how many raka'at can you pray in a day? How often can you fast? Monday and Thursday And then the three days of the month And then Ramadan And then there's just a set number Now, most of us I know myself we haven't even reached that level yet Obviously And that is the difference between Islam and iman Muslim and mu'min Generally speaking It's the increase of rituals But the real difference between The mu'min and the muhsin Is not in the quantity of rituals After a while you will max out From the sunnah Otherwise you're becoming excessive After a while you will max out Or else you will be like the three people Who think that the process is not doing enough I can do more than him After a while you'll max out Our Prophet says some quick quiz question How many raka'at did he pray On an average daily basis when he wasn't traveling? Quick quiz How many raka'at would he pray? All 24 hours 50 raka'at 50 raka'at a day Why? Because when he went up to Islam and Miraj Allah swt said 50 Then he went back down Up, back down, up And then finally he said For your ummah five And I'll write 50 for them But for him When the 50 command was given That was his regular lifestyle Calculated out The wajibat, the sunnah muqadah And the tahajud Exact 50 That was his daily routine 50 raka'at So it would take up three, four, five hours Of the day How much would he on average fast On average it was Monday, Thursday The three days of the month And then the extra The tent of Muharram and what not That's the average sunnah of the process Once in a while he'd do more than that So Islam to iman It's that quantity But iman to ihsan It is the quality Iman to ihsan It is a change in your ikhlas Going back to what Hassan al-Basli said Abu Bakr al-Siddiq did not go ahead of you Simply by the kathara The extra salah And a sayam But rather it was something that was in his heart It was something that was in his heart That was then manifested in his amal His heart had something that you guys don't have And that is the level of ikhlas Iman to wakku Iman Malik Ibn Anas The famous scholar of Medina He was the first person ever in the history of Islam To compile a book of hadith Meant for the other people And he called it al-Mu'ta Now you know the first person who ever does something Immediately there's copycats Immediately everybody else follows That's the nature of human society And it's always the first person who goes down As the one who does it Then a lot of people follow on Sometimes those who follow on do a better job Than the first person Actually usually that is what happens In terms of technology and writing and what not Generally the first person writes a book Is not necessarily the best one Then people build on that So Iman Malik wrote al-Mu'ta In his own lifetime People began writing other books Called the Mu'ta and this and that One of his students came and said And the student assumed Through a cursory reading That some of those other Mu'ta So he said O Iman Malik What are you going to do now There are so many Mu'ta So many Mu'tas out there What's going to happen to your Mu'ta Iman Malik said What was done For the sake of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala That Mu'ta will remain And if I now say Mu'ta That Mu'ta Say Mu'ta Every Muslim on the planet Immediately jumps to Mu'ta Iman Malik Nobody's even heard Of the Mu'ta at written After Iman Malik This is what Iqlased us Sincerity You don't do it for the sake of the people You don't do it for fame You don't do it for anything Other than the pleasure of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala That's why the smallest Of deeds can become magnificent If done for the sake of Allah Of the first Quranic revelations We're giving you this food And they give their food to the poor To the orphan, to the prisoner And they say Don't even thank us Don't even thank us We don't want your thanks We are feeding you For the sake of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala It is reported that One of the Sahaba would send Food to the poor And he would tell his servant Listen to whatever they say And any dua they make for me afterwards Then the servant would come and say Oh he made dua for you, said this, this, this Then he would repeat Exactly the same dua And give it back to him basically And then hope that Allah and Allah alone Award him for the food I don't even want your jaza Or your shukur for giving this food Don't want anything back from you I feed you for the sake of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala And that's why again We have in the tradition Sometimes the smallest of deeds Become the most magnificent of deeds In the famous story of the Lady of Il Repute who fed that dog water Nobody Saw what she did Not a single human witnessed it But Allah witnessed it And Allah knows how many centuries later Our procession Because you know this story happened in the past Before our procession It's not a Muslim story per se Meaning of the Ummah of the procession It's a pre-Islamic story Nobody even saw this incident Of this lady feeding that dog water I hope you all know this story Nobody heard, nobody saw this lady do it But Allah Azza wa Jalsa And the fact that this story Has been preserved On the tongue of the most Blessed human being who ever walked the face of this earth This hadith is reported in Bukhari Ahan Muslim Mutafaq Ali It is one of the most popular hadith heard So her action was recorded by Allah And manifested in broadcast To all of mankind And all of the Ummah to benefit from Allah Azza wa Jal knew In the battle of Tabuk Our prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam Mentioned that You know in the battle of Tabuk A lot of Sahaba were not able to go financially They couldn't afford it And the books of Seerah mentioned That the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam said When they were coming back from Tabuk One of the most difficult expeditions In the history of the Seerah Read and study that One of the most difficult expeditions When they were coming back The prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam said There are a group of you sitting in Medina Allah knows who they are Every single step that you took They got your Ajr along with you Even though they're not with you Because they couldn't make it They wanted to make it They had the Niyah to make it They had the Ikhlas to make it Their names are not known In the books of Seerah We don't even know their names But Allah Azza wa Jal knows their names That's what you call Ikhlas You do it and you do it For the sake of Allah You don't care whether the limelight Is on you or not It's not even relevant to you How many people are there or not Your deeds and your Ikhlas Shall be the same wherever you are That's the number one criterion Of success in leaving a legacy Number two Number two You want to leave a legacy You have to erase The ego and pride and kibir And embrace Humility Humbleness True leaders Are humble people True leaders that are genuinely respected By the ummah And in fact it's not even just the ummah These are human characteristics Human It doesn't even matter obviously we're talking about within The paradigm of Islam But the fact of the matter is these three criterion They actually transcend Islam You want to see a successful leader Inside of the faith community You will find the three things going to say In them as well And I'll give you one example It's fresh in my mind because I just came from South Africa Two weeks ago And I visited Nelson Mandela's cell On Robin Island Truly a mesmerizing experience If you follow me on Facebook I have a video of it which I was on the island for three hours It's really just I don't even know how to explain The cell, no exaggeration It's basically smaller than this area Over here for twenty years He's confined to that cell His restroom is a bucket in the corner That he has to empty himself The bed is basically some Old carpet on the floor Just twenty years living in that And in his own way Obviously He had ikhlas to his cause And it was a good cause He had humility You cannot be a respected leader Without genuinely Being that humble person To hear the stories that we heard And many of you don't know this By the way, you don't have time to go into there But on that island, Robin Island There is actually a musallah And the grave of one of the first Muslim prisoners Robin Island was known For housing Muslim prisoners Who fought jihad against the Dutch These were prisoners from Indonesia Yemen from other places And as soon as you enter the island And from the cell of Nelson Mandel Nelson Mandel actually writes about this In his autobiography The walk of something The long walk to freedom He actually writes about this That the Muslims Who fought against the Dutch They actually gave him That hope and encouragement That we are walking on the right path Human beings cannot live As slaves Human beings cannot live As second, third, fourth class citizens Anyway, the point being These three characteristics I said Transcend any faith community And the second characteristic is Humility, humbleness Not a sense of ego Not a sense of deserving something Without having given back to the community There's a beautiful hadith In Sunan al-Nisa'i Our prophet was standing on the minbar And he was actually the best And the most eloquent speaker And he used tactics that would bring The attention of the people So I asked you to look at me I'm going to do exactly what he did Our prophet was giving me the khutba And he raised his left hand And he said Man tawadah alillah Then he took the right hand Rafa'ahullah He literally used both of his hands To get the point across Whatever humbles himself For the sake of Allah Allah will raise his ranks up You want to leave a legacy? You want to be a leader? A real leader Not the leader that's in the limelight The leader that the people think is a leader A leader of the imam of the mutaqeen Then you're going to have to eliminate The arrogance The self entitlement The glory and fame The desire to want to be served Khidmah And that's why every great leader Is a servant Of his people And not somebody who pretends Or acts as if he's some pompous arrogant You know person Even if and here's the iron I don't want to mention any names But there are politicians in this world They surround themselves with those yes men They surround themselves with people Whose izzah is purchased with money So they delude themselves Into thinking that we are respected And they might even Get away with that delusion in their lifetimes Because they're paying Their izzah is purchased It's not real izzah And this is of the ironies True glory Is given to those who do not seek it One of the most ironic realities Of human existence And explicitly mentioned in the hadith True glory Is given to those who don't seek it You don't want to become famous You don't want the people to know you You humble yourself For the sake of Allah And guess what The people will love you Not that you want, that's the point You don't want it You don't desire it But it is a blessing that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gives And that's why In that famous hadith Of hadith khudsi and sahib bukhari That The prophet sasim told us That when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala Loves someone He announces to the angels I love so and so By name, he announces to the angels I love so and so So you love him o jibreel So immediately jibreel loves the person Then jibreel goes down To the heavens, throughout the heavens And jibreel announces That angels Know that Allah has said Love so and so So you love him as well So all of the angels love this person Then our prophet sasim said What a beautiful conclusion He said, when the inhabitants of the heavens Love the person Then those walking on this earth Will also love him When those up there Love that person Then those down here Will also love him And that is why Respect that comes That is a gift from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala Humility and ikhlas Bring that about You and I do not control those who we look up to Think about it Their reputations in our hearts Is something that is a mystery Why do we respect certain people In our community and not others Even though their resumes might be the same Their degrees might be the same They might have studied the same institutions They might have attempted to do the same things And yet for reasons we cannot Explain and understand Certain people are beloved and others aren't This is Allah's blessing That he gives to certain people Where does it come from? It comes from that love That Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has It is Allah's blessings So the second ingredient For success, for a legacy For leaving Is humility for the sake Of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala Humbleness Don't expect that people will serve you You need to serve them And that is why the definition of ihsan As you all know ihsan Is the highest level And ihsan Is a very very rare Trait that exists One of the earliest scholars Of the Arabic language He wrote a book called Mufradats Al Quran Al Karim And he died, don't quote me Around 440-450 Hijrah So a thousand years ago One of the earliest Dictionaries Of the Quran And it is a beautiful book And in it, he says The definition of ihsan Is that you give More than what is required For you to give And you are content with receiving Less than what you should be receiving Think about that The definition of ihsan You give more than what is In any situation, in any situation There is a protocol Somebody does something for you You give something back to them How you conduct yourself There is a certain protocol A minimal that is accepted Below the minimal which is not accepted More than what the situation calls for And You are content to receive less Than your haq, your due This is how he defines ihsan Which if you think about it Is essentially humility That is what humility is So that is the second characteristic Of the three Obviously this is an exhaustive talk The third characteristic Is Sabr, patience Patience You will not leave a legacy In a millisecond You will not leave a legacy Because you were religious and zealous for one day That is not leaving a legacy A fad Will never leave a legacy A temporary enthusiasm Is not Legacy building material You want to leave a legacy You have to get down in the trenches And dig and dig and dig And then continue to dig And when you are tired of digging Take a rest and then dig again Consistency Over a long period of time That requires patience In all that you do Allah says in the Quran We made from amongst them Role model leaders We made from amongst them Those imams So when the Quran uses imam It does mean the prayer leader as I said When the Quran uses imam Allah is talking about A role model figure A true leader A legacy builder And we made from amongst them imams Why? What was their characteristic? When they demonstrated their sabr You will never become an imam And by imam again We mean that legacy builder That leader without that patience Systematic Continuous Perseverance For a higher cause The pleasure of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala And of course the blessings of sabr Are too many to mention Of them the famous verse in the Quran That the angels are going to be entering upon them And the angels are going to enter upon them From every door Beautiful that Allah talks about The people in the gardens of heaven And in fact in this particular verse Allah says that we shall combine them With their fathers and their sons And their spouses and their families All of them will be together Families will be together in jannah If they were righteous may Allah unite us And reunite us with our families So families will be together Allah says in the Quran You will be with those that have gone on And those beneath you in genealogy Your children and your forefathers will be together And the angels will be coming in From every door And they will say to you Salamun aleykum because you were patient So sabr is a necessary Ingredient To bring about that success That legacy And I want to now bring it To one of the causes Why we are here today and that is to talk about And to honor Imam Siraj and others Of that generation Some of whom have gone on And some of whom still remain And If you look at these three characteristics And you see Those pioneers Of American Islam Who laid the foundations Of these very masjid There is hardly a state and a city Except that Imam Siraj And others have traveled and fundraised For the masjid in the schools of those cities You look at these three things Number one Iqlas Let me say this We have a problem right now Big problem We seek Allah's refuge Sometimes I feel myself and others of our generation Are part of the problem may Allah forgive us And that problem What we call it is called celebrity sheikh culture Let me just be honest with you When I was growing up I mean I grew up in the 80s Born in the 70s When I was growing up There was no National Islamic figure That we looked up to I'm just being brutally honest Early 80s, no one That we really and genuinely The way that some of us look up to others Of our generation There were some people that we knew But there was no one of that caliber There was no one Who Was Mesmerizing the entire nation There was no one Who made a career Out of preaching and teaching We had du'at Who were engineers And they loved Islam They'd give da'wah Who were professors of economics And they loved Islam So they traveled to teach and preach We didn't have full time preachers We didn't I mean that's just a fact Look at those early people Who were they? People like Ahmad Sakr, may Allah bless him And bless his soul People like Jamal Badawi May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala bless him For the remainder of his life I'll be brutally honest here I have a sense of jealousy For that generation Positive jealousy You're allowed to be jealous for positive reason You should know Because Whatever you want to say about them You can never doubt their ikhlas Whatever you say about them You can never Double guess Why they did what they did Never! In Islam You didn't get rich being a preacher There was no limelight No stage where 10,000 people were watching you This is a fitna of our generation May Allah forgive us Imam Jamal Badawi I Spoke with him A while back And asked him to tell us some stories From the early 60s About his And going around in America and what not And honestly My jaw just dropped Listening to some of the stuff that he would tell us He said that At times When he was a grad student They would take the greyhound bus Into A city Into a place And sometimes they wouldn't even know Any particular Muslim over there So they'd open up the yellow pages And look up The name Muhammad or the name Khan Or in some other name Khan is also very common at that stage Okay And they would just random Cold call Are there any other Muslims? Or is there some place we can go and have a Gathering or what not The MSA conventions There was no isna back in the 60s The only thing was the MSA The MSA conventions would take place In graduate student houses The halaqas Would take place in the living room Of the same place where they'd sleep That night 10, 15, 20 people crammed together The notion, the concept Of grandiose banquet halls Of Tens of thousands of people I mean he told me if we got 20 people we would think this is Amazing, unbelievable There was no money To be made They'd have to pay their own money to go There was no fame What fame is there? There's no internet, no YouTube, nothing They did what they did For the sake of Allah And the brutal fact of the matter Let me say this bluntly Perhaps after them People came that have a longer CV That have more degrees From Islamic university That have memorized more mutun At that stage it doesn't exist anymore The sheer blessings Of those people and what they Accomplished We seek Allah's refuge It's not there May Allah forgive us I speak for myself I don't take the greyhound When I land at the airport Somebody picks me up in a fancy car I go to a hotel To stay the night And yes this is a career for me Because of income And I do get paid for many times that I go Today I'm not getting paid by the way don't worry But sometimes I'll be honest here Usually I get paid So yes I am guilty It is my career now By the way we need full time imams and that I mean that's the problem here We need people to have a full time career In this regard we cannot have part time But see when you have the fame The limelight The money, the fat Don't be surprised When you're going to find a type of corruption There were no Munafiqun in Makkah Why did they start in Medina There were no Munafiqun in Makkah Why? Not a single Sahabi of Makkah Was even, I mean there's just no question There was nothing to be gained By being a Muslim in Makkah You were a Muslim because you wanted to be a Muslim In the 70s, in the 80s In much of the 90s There was no fame Or glory or money And I caught that era I know this well and I'm not Astaghfirullah bragging or boasting I'm just telling you how it was I applied to Medina in 1994 And even in 1994 There was no Career to be made Out of Islam I literally thought I would come back And continue I have a degree in chemical engineering I worked at Dow Chemical I thought that I'll go to Medina for four years Five years and then come back and continue a career I had no clue No understanding that A full-time career can be made And that has pros and cons Let's be honest here Has major pros and cons When we look at Imam Siraj When we look at that generation There is no nifak in that generation Inshallah In that time frame They did it for the sake of Allah Humility Look at that humility Sleeping in the dorms With 20 other students Traveling greyhounds City to city Coming back Sunday night To go to work 40-50 hours a week Of a job that has nothing to do with Islam And that is their career What is his career as a professor? Those other people They have careers They have to live like all of us are living 40-50 hours a week And on top of that, they did what they did I once asked my father My father was one of the early pioneers In 1963 He came to Houston I asked him about those days Inviting speakers and preachers and what not And He hosted Ahmad Sakr In Houston In their annual convention Of 1971 They had an annual convention in Texas A grand total A massive number of 50 people came For the Texas MSA Think about that 50 people and they were ecstatic And they invited Ahmad Sakr To come And he told me That we all slept In the apartment complexes we lived in All of the people that came And Ahmad Sakr was hosted in the apartment complex I was born in 1971 I'm that old But the house that my parents lived in at that time They lived over there And then my dad told me point blank Because he knows I have a career in this My dad told me point blank In those days We didn't give honorariums We didn't give honorariums The concept of paying somebody to come Wasn't there Perhaps that is why Those people accomplished what They cannot accomplish May Allah forgive us for that And I said You didn't even used to give hotel rooms For the speakers And he thought for a while He said the first hotel room we ever got For a speaker was 1973 Or 1974 We invited Sheikh Qardawi to come From overseas so we thought we should At least get some money for him But no honorarium International speaker Which was a big deal For them But see Humility And patience That is how you achieve that legacy My time is up I'll conclude very simply I'm talking about big names, preachers, speakers Please don't lose Don't lose yourself In that large picture Allah does not care About how many followers you have About how many people know Your name in this world That's the whole point Of ikhlas and humility and sabr It's irrelevant Your fame in this dunya If you Manage to be sincere to Allah And consistent in your good deeds Serve the people That's all that is required And your daraja in jannah Can be much higher than many of the famous people out there Allah doesn't care about that fame And I'll conclude with that Hadith of the lady Who used to clean and sweep the masjid Those are the three characteristics In her We don't even know her name Do you know that? We do not even know her name The lady who used to clean the masjid Of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam And the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam And the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam noticed the masjid was dirty and what not Where's that lady? Oh she passed away She passed away, why didn't you tell me Ya Rasulullah she died at night We didn't want to disturb you Who knows who she is, we just buried her at night Tell me where her grave is So he walked from the masjid to baqir The only time in his entire life That we know of The only incident that we know of Where he walked from the masjid to baqir Because he hadn't prayed janaza Over that person And she becomes the only person In Islamic history That we hear of The prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam Left the masjid to the graveyard To visit her grave And to make special dua for her Because he didn't pray janaza over her What was she doing, we don't even know her name But Iqlas, humility And patience and sabr She used to clean the masjid For the sake of Allah Her name is not known to me or you But it is known to him And that's what matters And he says They are dark for their people Until dua is made And Allah gives light to them So he made special dua for her So her grave is now a grave of light That special dua She cleaned the masjid in the dark Nobody saw her Because of that Allah gave her that light in the grave May Allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala Allow us to purify our hearts Of any nifah, any hypocrisy May Allah cleanse our hearts of any evil Of any sincerity May Allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala Make us humble, truly wanting to benefit others Without expecting benefit back from them May Allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala Grant us sabr and iman And Iqlas and Tawakkur and Yaqeen May Allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala Allow our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wassalam To be our one and only role model May he bless us to walk in his footsteps May Allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala Grant us the shafa'a Of the Habib al-Mustafa sallallahu alayhi wassalam May he allow us to enter jannah with him And be a companion with him May Allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala bless us To say La ilaha illa Allah Muhammadur Rasulullah as the final breath When we leave this earth May Allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala cause us to live as Muslims To die as mu'mins And to be resurrected with the prophets And the companions and what a noble companionship they are We jazakum Allahu khayran Wassalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuhu


Hello everyone. Good morning from Japan and greetings to everyone around the world joining in. In this talk, I want to guide you and introduce you to SUSE AI, a privacy aware smart assistant. Let's first start with a short self-introduction. I'm by education and I'm a mathematical logician and theoretical computer scientist. While doing many well-plogics proof series, but I won't bother you with proof series. I guess most of you would run away. In my real life, I'm currently working at Accelia, a Japanese company doing security, machine learning, blockchain, formal verification of protocols, this kind of stuff. In my spare time and open source activity, I'm the main developer of TechLife. So the big tech type setting system developed by Don Knuth back quite some years. So I wrote the TechLife manager, the whole infrastructure doing a lot for Japanese support since I live in Japan. And besides Tech, I'm also a TVM developer. I'm currently responsible for quite a lot of stuff including the AMD Rock'em stack, the Julia programming language, all the tech packages, KDE and Cinnamon desktop environments and quite a lot of other stuff. And if I'm free and I usually bring clients into the mountains, I'm also a professional mountain guide. I'm a member of the Japanese Mountain Guide Association Board and doing whatever comes up. So first of all, I want to thank my company Accelia who allows me first to do a lot of open source stuff and community stuff and who supports me in this area. I'm very grateful. We are doing a lot of CDN security, web services, virtual reality and services for engineers, mostly in Japan, of course. I also want to introduce you to the FOSS Asia community with whom we are developing this smart speaker, the Susie AI. I think the FOSS Asia community is one of the biggest open source community in Asia. So our aim here is really to bring together a community across all borders. So we have members from practically all Asian countries and many more countries, not only Asian countries, but mostly, and not only across borders, also across genders, across ages. I think it's the most, I mean, I've seen a lot of development communities and I think it's the most diverse community I've ever participated in. If you look at the photos, you will probably guess what I mean. Okay, so FOSS Asia is not only doing this. We are doing a lot of big events and a lot of small and several big events for our engineers and developers. We have the FOSS Asia Summit once a year with a few thousand participants and hundreds of lectures in Singapore and further coding events, competitions, a lot of stuff going on. At the same time, of course, we're working with the top-class open source, free and open source hardware and software companies and communities developing by ourselves open hardware and open software a lot. And I think above all is that we are trying really to incubate and accelerate acceptance, employment and development of free and open source, not only in the main countries where we are from, like Singapore, Japan, India, but all around the Asian continent, which spans quite a lot. So here in the background you see a few of where our members and our projects are running from. So let's go to smart speakers, the current topic. I cannot really ask now, live, who actually has one of these devices at home, but I guess with a bit of techie community, within the techie community, I guess most people will have either a Google Home, Echo or some other smart speaker from Apple, whatever. I mean, there are a lot of smart speakers nowadays on the market and more or less with the same functionality and the same problem. So I mean, they are very handy, I have to say. Personally I use them a lot, mostly actually for playing music, I have to say. If I want to know the weather, I just look outside and the news I check other ways, but still, I mean, okay, it's handy. There's only one problem and I think most people will be aware of it and that is, well, security-wise, these speakers are, well, the best up is more. Hopefully they are changing, but over the years there have been many, many cases of, in particularly unauthorized voice recording, transfers of recordings to other customers, translation. It is simply necessary for the companies because they want to improve their voice recognition. So their main aim is the voice recognition needs to be really good. That is one of the biggest problems, especially with background noise, with music playing. And there you need to check whether the recorded voice and the automatically translated voice, well, whether this agrees somehow, and this is mostly done by humans. So there are humans sitting there listening to what was actually recorded and what the computer spit out and that gives, well, that gives all those people doing this kind of job access to, often, how to say, private communication of, well, whatever client was using the device at the moment. So there are a few headlines over the last years that, well, mostly about the voice history. I recently, very popular, became the Ring, Ring devices, where a lot of cases, well, IoT security, and it was open and other people could actually peep into other people's rooms. So that makes it quite scary. And, I mean, we don't know how far smart speakers are open to IoT attacks. Maybe some bad actor is actually listening to what is going on. So these are our reasons why we actually intervene in the forced Asia community. I think that is not something we really want. And we don't think that is something we want to propose to friends, to the community, to the population that they should do. And, of course, well, our answer is Susie AI. It's a completely different approach. Well, not completely different, but different from a company. So what is this Susie AI? Well, it's a personal smart assistant. It's not surprising, right? It's very similar to Siri, Google, whatever their names might be. But it is built from the very beginning on, or to be privacy aware, has offline capability. So in principle, what our aim is that you can get one of these hardware devices, a smart speaker, and it can actually run offline. Well, of course, some things will not work offline if you ask whether about some remote place that will not work offline. But actually, if I consider my own personal usage, most of the personal usage is, of course, music streaming. But if I put, for example, a smart device into my home and I have all my music onto a Blackstream server, I actually don't need internet access. I need access to my home network and nothing else. So this is something where we really would like that as much functionality as possible to be available offline and without server access, without, well, yeah, a central server being connected. And one more thing that is of interest, because that is something we see in the big two or three, is the development of skills is rather closed. So there are APIs, but it's not really easy for a beginner to start developing their own skills, right?  So we developed a skill language that is easy to learn, something like you can do in the Wikipedia, we will see this later on. And last but not least, our main aim is that it's aiming, it's a completely open source, and it's also a completely open ecosystem. So we are completely fine with people just writing further frontends, further backends, further skills, using it in whatever way. That's the good thing of open source. So that's what sets it apart from most of the other smart speaker systems. Just for a bit of background, so what is the origin of this? It started actually with the search engine, with a distributed search engine, and Yasi, and a tweet search engine. So that is still a lot of luck. So these two were developed by me and Christian, one of the main developers in our group. And so out from there, we had discussions back then, actually I wasn't part when it originally started back then, about why not making a smart speaker or a personal assistant of this. If you can ask already things like tweets about something and it searches for you and to have a distributed search system, then kind of these things were the starting point, and they are still traces, for example, in the code just for those interested. Okay, one of the other things we really try right from the beginning was to get a lot of community involvement. So for us, it's important to have a lot of people interested in investing their time. And hopefully so we have participated in several Google, some of codes and Google code in events. Sometimes, as far as I remember, sometimes the first Asia was actually the biggest participant in Google, some of course. We are doing a lot of workshops. The most recent was at the Ars Electronica, a very famous, well, electronic art event in Linz in Austria. There are several other workshops that happened this year. Some of them online, some of them offline. Some with artists, we had several installation workshops to get things running on different software, different operating systems. So that's a lot of going on. Then the first Asia community has their own code heat contest. So a contest where people can contribute. It's not only to Susie Eiter, whatever project the first Asia community does. And there are prizes to participate in the next, for free participate in the next big conference and this kind of stuff. And we have a lot of GitHub channels where most of the communication is going on. So all of this is open to everyone. So there is no formal membership to force Asia or something whoever wants to do. It's about doing stuff and being there, of being a member. So let's go to a bit to the components of Susie Eiter. So what makes Susie Eiter? There are basically three parts of it. The one is the brain. The brain of the Susie Eiter is the Susie server. I will go into details of each of those one later on. Then there are the skills I already mentioned them. There are skills, but I'm not mentioned. So can they actually develop in a wiki style ways with a wiki front end for skill development, for this language is rather simple. And there's a large community. And then there are front ends, various front ends that communicate both with the brain and the skills for all kind of operating system and devices. So let's go first to the brain, the Susie server. So that's the core. It is the interpreter of the skill language, right? So what it does is it receives questions and does natural language processing on them. So analyzing the questions for, well, singular plural for analyzing of, well, natural language process. Then interpret then the question within the skill language. So whether a skill matches or not. So there are further properties of the Susie server. This is like reflection and introspection. That means that it can actually look back at the history of questions asked before, the history of questions and of users. So this is something where in principle, it is not used by now, but long-term introspection can be handled in principle. Other things that are rather on the technical side from the necessary side is user and device management. So you can register, you can use it anonymously. You can use register as user. You can register your devices. This is all optional in fact. So there are several deployments of this. So as I mentioned before, we are for privacy first. We have a deployment on the web. This is Susie.ai, the website down here. That is of course run on one of our servers, right? If you connect there, then, well, what you ask will be somehow, we don't save the logs for long, but I mean, at least it has to be evaluated. But the point is that it is easy to make a local installation. And actually we suggest everyone to do a local installation. The thing is that you have at the end a local Susie server running either on a little device. It's not so hard to run it, or like for example on the Raspberry Pi, that runs for you in your home.  You don't need to contact any server for getting answers. So local installations are definitely possible and this is what we also suggest. And while we have typically on our hardware device, I will speak further on which is a Raspberry. So there we also have a Susie server running. So this is about the Susie server. It's written in Java. It is quite an extensive code base with considering that it has to do the full skill language. It has some skills built in also, but most part is the evaluation of the language reflection and user management advisement. These are the main parts. So the skills. So these are the skills, actually other smart speakers also call them skills. So these are typically question-answer stuff. So there's a huge collection, I mean really huge collection of user-contributed stuff. Unfortunately, I have to say there are also because, well, I guess you have seen also very badly written Wikis articles. The problem is everyone can create their own skills. So there is quite a variety as a quality in the skills. And this has to be, of course, vetted skills or system skills. That's the reason why we have system skills and quite reduced set by default. But in principle, there are a lot of skills out there. These skills also allow for API usage. Of course, at the moment you start using external APIs, your privacy will be compromised in some way because, well, there is a connection from an IP that is somewhere near to you, to a whatever server. But it's useful, right? If you want to query questions about the weather, about the exchange rate or whatever comes to your mind. So these skills have, we have a big, you can write it by hand, you can, whatever editor. There's a Wikis style editing support on the web. There's testing environment. So there's quite a lot of stuff. The skill language itself, it's, well, pattern matching to question answers and API calls. I won't go into details. It's not a workshop about writing skills. But yeah, so this is principle, the skills. So just to give you an idea, the skills are here on this website. These are the skills that our people have uploaded there. You can, as I mentioned before, if you have your own server at home, you can also have your own skills. There's no need that you publish anything. You can do all this kind of stuff on your local network, on your local server, a Susie server, and have all your local skills also there only. So these are skills that have been developed by the community. Some are rather trivial. Some are a bit nicer. Yeah, if you're interested, just look around. Okay, and then the third part, this is about front ends. Front ends, there are quite a lot. So we have one for Android that is running. That's actually also has the ability to configure it our smart speaker device. I speak about later. There is an iOS version in the works. I'm not sure how far this is, because this is not what I'm managing. We have a desktop version. At the moment, it runs on Linux and partly on Mac. We have tested a bit on Mac already. We haven't tested it on Windows till now, mostly because a lot of Python models have to be installed. You see here an application window, but of course there's also the option to run it in the background, like Quartana or whatever integration of a voice assistant. So you would have an icon in the notification area that tells where you can turn on and off the recognition. And integration into the desktop is something that we will talk later. This is on the to-do list. And we have a web front end. You can just chat on the website suzi.ai with the suzi server, with the chatbot there and ask him some questions. So this is what I did yesterday. Well, of course, you have to be aware that if you use the Android version or the web version, both of them connect to the suzi server on the web and does not to your local because you don't have one. The desktop client will try a local one first if there is one and is detected. Otherwise, it will connect to the suzi on the background. Of course, you can block this also. These are the front ends. They are probably some more in development. I'm mostly responsible for the whole system and for the desktop clients since I'm not very much in Android development. So what does it mean is privacy aware? I mentioned already, mostly, I mean, first we try not to send anything out, but speech to text. That's the biggest problem, I guess, because translating speech to text is challenging. And if you look at what good speech to text systems use for resources is surprising. We use, by default, deep speech, a project by the Mozilla Foundation that actually also works also on the Raspberry Pi. So on a small recipe, based on the recipe before. On the desktop works excellent. We don't have a lot of language models by now, unfortunately. I hope this might improve in the future, but the future of the project itself is a bit critical. I also have to say, if you don't mind, you can, of course, choose to use Google Speech to Text or Bing or Watson Speech to Text. These are configuration options. They, of course, provide much higher, still much higher accuracy than deep speech. Google is actually very good for Bing and Watson. You have to log in and you have to have some subscription, as far as I remember. For the Google Speech to Text is free, you can, at the moment, you'd never know with Google, right? You can use it freely. That works quite well, as long as you have internet connection and trust that your stuff is not a hold forever. For text to speech, we use, again, by default on device, the F-Lite system, which is okay. You understand the answer. It's not the best pronunciation, I would say, but mine is also not that good. Of course, again, the option is here. If you don't mind, you can use alternatives like Google or Watson. It's just a configuration setting. For those who are less concerned about this stuff, it's rather easy to switch to Google. Of course, it depends also on your usage of the device, whether information about yourself turns out. If you connect to a lot of APIs, then, well, a lot of information will also go out to do this stuff. Well, the server, as I said, we have the server deployed on the web, that is for everyone to use, which suggests to use your private installation, because then you're quite sure about your privacy, the stuff, the questions you asked and the answers to come and the log files and everything is not available to anyone else but yourself. For those interested in the development, everything is open source. You can get it on GitHub under the FossAsia organization. Practically, all the projects have started with Susie somehow. Susie in Starla is, so to say, the binds everything together. It installs on to a variety of Linux systems. At the moment, we support Debian to the Fedora Mint. I don't know quite some purpose, whatever it is. It's not everything because we have to install quite a lot of stuff, but it tries to be as resilient as possible. The Susie server itself is the development in Java of the Susie server. There are also deployment branches with the ready-compiled Java file and startup scripts that can be used. Susie Python is the interface library to talk with the Susie server and interpret the answers and, well, rebuild it into some Python objects that are used. Susie Linux is the client for Linux but also for the Raspberry Pi. It's used across all systems. It is written in Python. It has the voice recognition. There is the communication with the server via Susie Python. Lots of other features like alarms and this kind of stuff. Susie.ai is the web interface that is available post on the web. Susie.ai, you can see there. There is even more advanced version on the Raspberry Pi where you can register and control your device. This is developed. There are many other repositories in within the first Asia project because we have a lot of other projects, too. For example, one of the important ones is the fork of the speech recognition Python model, which unfortunately seems to be up and down. I have implemented support for deep speech within this project so that, well, we can use deep speech and Google and all the other TTS and STT services supported by speech recognition. If you look around, I'm happy to answer your questions. That's all for normal computers, desktops, whatever, but that's not all. We have actually been together, stuck together, still a rather rough device, I have to say, but a smart speaker built with the Susie.ai system. What we are using is... These are these devices. I actually have three or four here next to me. These are Raspberry Pi-based. I think the first version was running on Raspberry Pi 2. Nowadays, with deep speech, that doesn't work out. Raspberry Pi 3 Plus or 4 would be much better. We used the receipt head for the microphone and, well, for the audio output, it's at the same time, but that could be done differently. Just for the nice, we have this 3D-printed cover with Susie.ai on it. Just to put it all together, I have the loudspeaker. All the components I mentioned before, so these are the server, the Linux front, and the voice recognition. Everything runs on the Raspberry Pi.  It starts normally by default. After a factory, it sets up like a Wi-Fi hotspot that allows you to set up the Wi-Fi password so you don't need any cable. After that, it connects, but you can leave it off because it works, as I said before, right out of the box, completely offline. Just the last thing. I think two days ago I read an article that finally on the Google area devices, you can schedule actions. I didn't know that wasn't possible till now because actually we have worked on this and have not complete, of course, but we have some support for time functionality, delayed functionality. So that is something you typically see. Well, as I said, with my Google or Alexa, usually you just play only music. We try to have functionality that supports and supersedes stuff that other companies are doing. So we had times for quite some time now. Okay, nothing goes without hurdles. This is not only the coronavirus we had to succeed. You can imagine that such a huge project has quite some complication and I think it's quite interesting to know also what are these problems. So first of all, it's a huge area, right? We are covering from back-end, front-end, speech recognition, machine learning, all kind of stuff, and everything is covered by volunteers, right? So that is something that, of course, reduces development speeds. Then a lot of the development that has gone on was with coding programs, like Google Summer of Code, in our own coding projects, and participants come from a huge, widely diverse background and they are, of course, cultural but also development skills diversity. So we have deal with these problems and that also makes the code base quite interesting because it's a wide mixture, right? You have a student with full requests from students all around, some of them are excellent, some of them are good but not excellent and not all of them have 100% the same coding standards. Of course, we have requirements and coding standards but everyone working in real life is probably aware of these problems. And one of the big problems, actually, is short versus long-term involvement, right? Most of the participants stay only for these coding programs. I mean, many of them want to have a certificate that they have done with Google Summer of Code or coding our own projects, code heat. Some of them stay and we are happy, of course, and they enjoy doing this development but getting really good people for long-term involvement is really difficult. There are also other questions. These are more on the technical side. Popularity of coding languages is a huge problem recently. Also Java is still one of the most requested one. Popularity-wise, we don't get many students wanting doing Java stuff while a huge amount is doing JavaScript and Python stuff. So development on the server side is a bit slower, quite much slower than changes going on on the front-end side and the Linux side. Well, then there is the running target Python. This is really a problem because every new version breaks half of the system because out of binary incompatibilities everything has to be newly installed. So that is really somehow a problem. And then recently, we have used Deep Speech a lot. Unfortunately, some of you might note, Mozilla has decided to scale down a lot of development efforts and one of these projects will be Deep Speech. So it is not completely clear what the future of Deep Speech is. We will hope that there is a future because we think it's a great project. Mozilla has done a lot of work on the open language connecting spoken words for speech-to-text recognition. So that would be great if there is some continuation. Okay, so what's our roadmap that's coming up? Well, very easy, right? One through the eye for each household. That is our dream, right? Because we are still a bit far from that, but long-term that would be nice. So currently, we are really working on to have this development device really like working just like out of the box, right? I mean, if our developers have this device and installed it and something does not work immediately, they can fix it, right? That's easy, but that is not what we want to give out to other people. Everyone can try it out. It's not a problem. It's everything documented. We publish also already Raspberry Pi-ready images. You just dump on the SD card. They should work, but we want to make it easier also for people to get the device and play with it. Then what I'm also currently working on is desktop integration. So I want, as I mentioned before, a nice application item down there that you can turn on and off voice recognition and integrate it with actions of the desktop environment like KDA or GNOME or Cinnamon or whatever comes up, but that would be nice. Skill management, as I said before, there are a lot of skills. There are some system skills and some we have worked it or there are good skills. So what would be really nice would be a management that you can activate skills on certain criteria management only a very restricted set or some all skills if you want to just be explorative and try all of the skills or just those vetted by our main developers. So there is something to do here. Server mesh, as I said, we really want people to install their own servers. We don't want them to use because out of privacy reasons. And then it's getting interesting with user registration and the server mesh. So I imagine you have your smart speaker or maybe two or three, like I have two or three devices of the smart speakers, each one runs its own Susie server and then you have maybe a Susie server running on your mass storage or whatever for the rest. So here it would be nice to have a server mesh so transmitting which is the main server. There is one main server into the household and this one is used and registration of usernames and devices of the family members also is done only there. So this is something we would like. And last but not least a steady development, right? I mean, since we're all volunteers and working with projects while real life, getting bread or rice on the table, it's not that easy to have steady development but that is something we hope to do. So if you want to get into contact with us, the best way is probably the Gitter channels. And there's the main for Asia slash for Asia, which is just a catch all for whatever questions you ask. You might be, please ask here or there, just also about for Asia in general, announcements and stuff. And then there are a lot of for Asia slash Susie, whatever, according to the name channel. We are at times is very high activity about development, of course, depending also on the inputs. And of course, whenever you want, you can contact me personally at one of these emails. And yeah, that's all from my side. Thanks everyone for your attention and for joining in. And I'm open now for question and answers. Okay, thanks everyone.


Tuberculosis has been there for over 140 years. So many people try to find ways to eliminate tuberculosis, but so far we haven't been able to do it. Every year, about 10 million people on Earth suffering from tuberculosis. So why we cannot eliminate tuberculosis? This is a big question that I want to answer. We have around 200,000 TB patients a year. Only 60% were diagnosed and 40% do not know that they have the disease. In the middle of 2019, I was informed that I have tuberculosis. I had to say that when I received that information, I was not a doctor. I feel like I was a patient. The nurse was afraid of me because of my disease. After I experienced the whole treatment period, which lasted for six months, I had a lot of thoughts about how the patient would cope with the whole process. I thought that I'm a doctor and it's already difficult. My name is Greg Fox. I'm a professor of respiratory medicine at the University of Sydney and a research leader at the Bullcock Institute of Medical Research. I moved over to Vietnam in 2009 to undertake a PhD looking at tuberculosis transmission. I moved across there with very little knowledge of Vietnamese culture and language and began working with our partners who became long-standing collaborators at the National Lung Hospital in Hanoi. It was quite an overwhelming experience. Thanks to the grace and the patience of my collaborators, we were able to start up this study of TB screening in... We started a research project in Ca Mau province, the most southern part of Vietnam. And what's interesting and very surprising for us is the TB prevalence declined by 40% in the intervention arm within three years only, which is a very remarkable achievement because we haven't seen such reduction in such short period in another setting. We found that we could reduce mortality by around a half, which was a pretty remarkable effect. We have seen many patients in our program who really hide from us whenever we go to their house and knock the door, they disappear because they don't want to be seen as TB patients. Historically, one of the explanations for tuberculosis was that there was some sort of weakness in the family and that would be a reason to conceal that from your community. People who live with TB were seen as those who are weak, those who are poor and those who can transfer the disease to the next generation. So it's highly stigmatized disease in Vietnam. And that can be quite counterproductive because it can prevent people from coming forward for screening and mean that people might conceal that they have TB and might not want to go and receive the full treatment. COVID appeared in Vietnam first in 23rd of January 2020. I still remember that day that there was such a chaos in our country and we have gone through four waves of the COVID outbreak in Vietnam and it's really difficult for us because we have to work with patients who have respiratory symptoms who are likely to have the COVID. And in our work we have to conduct several tests such as to ask patients to produce wisdom or to blow strongly to our machine which may spread the virus if they have COVID-19. So it's very dangerous because of COVID we have to stop our study activities and only maintain the care and support for patients who were already on our program. I think COVID has taught us how we can be much more ambitious about efforts to combat tuberculosis. Within Vietnam you've seen a very strong national approach to prevent COVID transmission. In contrast, tuberculosis is largely accepted as a part of life. In order to stop TB for everybody we need to be really proactive in trying to screen for and treat TB. One of the challenges is though that that requires addressing this major problem of stigma and in order to address the problem of stigma it requires people to see the disease not as being something that they should be blamed for but something that they can be cured from because we have effective treatments. If we can take the same approach and the same proactive effort with tuberculosis then it may be possible to bring down the rates of TB very rapidly. I hope that if the country could do a massive screening and treatment countrywide then even in the next 20 years maybe our new generation even do not know what tuberculosis is because we could be able to eliminate the disease.


Opponents of Enbridge Energy's Plan Line 3 replacement are asking the Minnesota Court of Appeals to declare that the environmental review for the controversial project fails to meet the legal requirements and needs to be redone. The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission approved the project in June, giving Enbridge a green light to replace its aging Line 3 crude oil pipeline across Minnesota. The PUC declined to reconsider its approval of the review, but the indigenous environmental group Honor the Earth says its filing Wednesday could throw that approval into question, since an adequate environmental review is required for approval and construction. The appeal argues that the Line 3 review failed to adequately analyze the potential impacts of oil spills along the route or the potential harm to tribal resources. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


Welcome. It's my pleasure to welcome you to Greater Portland Landmarks 54th annual meeting and 2018 presentation of our preservation awards Tonight we're in this beautiful building known as the mother house. This was built in and you probably have heard this already before now But built in 1909 and it was called the St. Joseph's convent back then. It's a very significant architectural landmark and during center designed by the Boston architectural firm known as chickering and O'Connell They were one of the New England's Pre-Amen design firms for religious buildings for almost a hundred years This building was home to the Sisters of Mercy until it closed in 2005 You'll hear more about the adaptive reuse project in just a few minutes We have some special people to recognize before we hold a very brief annual meeting tonight After that we'll present our awards followed by a reception in the side chapel right over here And then you'll have a chance to meet and congratulate the award winners tonight And I'd like to invite Hilary Bassett the executive director of Greater Portland Landmarks to recognize a few of those special people and share some highlights with you Hilary, great. This is so exciting. We have new technology at Landmarks So I'm so thrilled. Can you hear me? Great. All right First of all, I'd like to welcome all of you on behalf of Landmarks and to thank John Wassilaske Matt Tier and the team at Seacoast Management as well as Kevin Bunker for allowing us to be in the building today I know it was kind of wild and crazy to have one more thing as you're finishing up the project So we very much Appreciate the access to this beautiful space. This is the last opportunity to see the building prior to its occupancy So I'm so glad so many people are here to be able to do that I also want to thank Ed Gardner from and his Sponsorship through Oceangate Realty for sponsoring our gathering tonight and the Portland Media Center Which is CTN Channel 5 you may remember Which is filming the awards. It'll be shown on public access TV Now Landmarks has just finished an amazing and exciting year We have successfully advocated for a new city council approved conservation overlay zone and Demolition delay to protect the historic buildings on Montjoy Hill. This was a very Intense project. We work closely with the city the Montjoy Hill neighborhood association the grassroots Montjoy Hill conservation collaborative neighbors and friends to get this passed And we're following up right now with a more detailed survey of the area so the city can pursue a potential historic district We hosted four graduate student interns and they surveyed nearly a thousand buildings in the Deering area of Portland and Peaks Island and the their findings are going to be on Delivered and three neighborhood talks coming up in October given by our wonderful Julie Larry Who is our director of advocacy? We've also experienced a record breaking season at the observatory Over 16,000 visitors and we actually are broke last year's record just last week So we'll see how we turn out the end of the season We have been doing a lot with the observatory We commissioned a study of the views from the observatory to see how the zoning affects those What can be built and how those views will be affected and it's a digital model So we've given the copy to the city so they can analyze future city planning efforts using that tool And then we've also received a major grant from the National Park Service to update the exhibits in the Portland Observatory That is a very exciting project. We're just in the beginning stages of so now I'm going to turn it back to Ed Thank you Another exciting project we've done for this year is what we call a strategic research initiative This is to help us to be most effective as possible in the community So far to date we've had five focus groups within Greater Portland And we're reaching out to a broad base of constituents for their feedback as well But I'd invite you to go to Portland landmarks org to take the survey if you can because we really need your help on this one And finally with Hillary's retirement in June of 2019 We've established a transition committee and this will be searching for a new executive director We'll use the information we get from the research project to hear about our thinking About this particular role and the position announcement will be posted this coming January So there's a lot going on here at greater Portland landmarks So with that I'd like to start the annual meeting We just have three quick business items to attend to tonight. So if you can we'll start the meeting now First in your handout you have the minutes from our last annual meeting which can be found in your program If you can look at them, maybe you already have I need a motion to approve the minutes From anyone. All right. I got one second All right any discussion all in favor And the opposed All right motion carries. Thank you. Next. I'd like to turn it over to Bruce Roulard. He's the landmarks treasurer for this year For just a brief financial report Thank you Ed if you have your annual report if you turn to page 6 that'll have the financial performance for this past fiscal year I Am reporting on the fiscal year beginning June July 1 17 ending June 30th of 2018 Greater Portland landmarks has had another productive year with a number of successes We ended our fiscal year June 30 in a good financial position We completed several grant funded projects Including our new walking tour guide and annual contributions and revenue from programs Including the observatory the observatory was strong Preliminary numbers in the current fiscal year continue to show the observatory generating attendance and revenues at or above budget as We do every year. We went through a formal audit this year Which was very clean and is a distinct vote of confidence in our procedures and record keeping Thank you Bruce At this time I'd like to recognize our past officers and one of our retiring trustees Bruce Moyer our former treasurer. You can just stand up be recognized. Thank you Bruce for your service Jane Betzel. Where are you? Jane Betzel come on up here. So Jane has worked tirelessly as our President of Greater Portland landmarks for the past two years he's attended hours and hours and countless committee meetings and all kinds of things helping the board and the staff to Do what we do even better and she's been a huge inspiration to me Thank you very much for your service for for us for all of us here And we'd like to give you just a little something I don't know is Tom Dowd here I didn't see Tom What? All right, so Tom is one of our most dedicated trustees being with on the board of trustees for the past nine years He's finishing up his third term on the board. He's currently leading the exercise For the exciting strategic research initiative for us Tom in recognition of your service wherever you are tonight We'd like to present you with the certificate of our appreciation and we'll do that when we see him back at landmarks But let's give him a round of applause. He's worked really hard as we do with every annual meeting I'd like to open it up for any new business if there's any Buddy that needs to say anything or would like to share their thoughts with us All right looking around I see none. We'll close the new business portion I'd like to invite Carol DeTine who has served as chair of the governance committee for the fiscal year 2017 and 18 to present the Proposed changes to the bylaws and the slate of nominees to the board for fiscal year 2018 2019 Carol Yes, the board approved is that right the board approved two changes to the bylaws one is a clarification to our conflict of interest policy and the other is a change in the structure to our executive committee and Those changes were available in the materials. They were also they've been online for anyone who loves to read Distinct detail And so we would like our membership to ratify that for us. In fact, we need you to I'd entertain a motion to approve the bylaws changes Thank you a second. All right Mac any Discussion hey all in favor. Thank you any opposed abstain Okay, the motion passes and then we have as Ed said our nominees To the board of trustees we have two nominees for the first three-year term on the board They are Jay Norris and Rachel Ambrose and if you would please stand for us People can say hello. All right Very nice. Hi there. Welcome and Returning for a second three-year term and please everyone stand as I say your name Jane Briggs Patty Butler Jane Hurd and George Reiki All right and returning for a third three-year term Carol DeTine Candice Thornton Lee Pat Moran and Nate Stevens Candice is there. I'm Carol may I have a motion to approve the slate? Thank you and a second All right, very good We're getting into a roll now, right? Okay. Is there any discussion? All in favor Any opposed? Abstentions seeing none the motion passes. Thank you very much Oops. Oh, I've got one more Yeah, thank you. Yes, I would also entertain a motion to approve the slate of advisory trustees And that is in the handout also that you have so I won't read those names, but may I have a motion? Thank you and a second Okay, any discussion Right all in favor Any opposed? Be quick abstentions Thank you very much the motion passes and now I'm done Thank you Carol Let's call for another motion to adjourn the annual meeting Can I get one? Yeah second Thank you Thank you again for all of your involvement and support for a greater Portland landmarks We always appreciate it, but I'd also like to Recognize the staff and if they could stand up as well because they work much harder than What everybody thinks they do but Julie Larry? She's our director of advocacy You can find her at City Hall several times a night and doing neighborhood talks all over greater Portland Alessa Wiley director of education Alessa with her Staff of docents run the observatory like no other she's fabulous for us to the melon in the back there development assistant and Last but not least the glue that holds landmarks together is Chloe Martin director of communication Back to you Hillary So thank you everybody for your involvement and all your hard work and your passion and your support for Preservation that means a great deal to us We are now going to go on to our awards portion of the meeting and we're going to start with Mary Ann Chapman Who I know is here So hopefully she can come up Mary Ann is the kind of person who steps in when she sees a need and she doesn't let it go The Grand Trunk Cemetery in Portland's East Steering neighborhood goes back to the 1730s and 40s and made it into the 1930s with 1997 grave markers surviving but through weather vandalism and neglect it was down to only eight markers by the year 2010 Enter Mary Ann who has a Girl Scout troop leader Marshaled the community to be to begin the recognition and rehabilitation that the historic cemetery deserved She started a friends group organized cleanups enlisted support from the Veterans Administration Administration and raised funds and awareness of the cemetery Through her work with the Friends of Grand Trunk Cemetery Mary Ann's vigilance passion and leadership are protecting and enhancing the historic cemetery and Inspiring future generations to appreciate its fascinating story So we'd like to give you a plaque She's one of our rock stars. Thank you Mary Ann next Troy Bennett Troy is here if you can come up as well if the picture is worth a thousand words as the saying goes What is a video worth from February to December? 2017 Bangor Daily News photographer Troy Bennett published a weekly series of videos and blog spots called this week in Portland history Troy illuminated stories as varied as the time that Portland swallowed a neighboring city to steal its votes Yep About annexing of Deering actually how a Portland drugist built an empire on hand cream About a landmark manufacturing building on Forest Avenue and the lighthouse shaped building that is definitely not a lighthouse About the observatory Although he ended each episode with a disclaimer that is not a historian Troy's natural gift for storytelling and his multimedia Journalism captivated audiences with the stories of people and places that make greater Portland unique Spoken like a true preservationist Troy Bennett So the the next one is the Conant-Pason block at 30 exchange Street in Portland Built immediately following the great fire of 1866 in the Italian 8th style by Alva Conant a merchant and Henry M. Payson a broker the Conant-Pason built block had suffered from 150 years of exposure to Maine's harsh climate in 2016 the building's owners agreed that they wanted to restore the building's facade to its original glory They hired expert contractors to repoint and clean the masonry Restore the ornate cast iron capitals Replicate the distinctive windows and paint the trim details Fortunately the owners had saved the original parts and materials That made it possible to repair and recast the cast iron Details and replicate the windows to bring the building back to its original appearance through careful restoration techniques and the passion of the building's owners and the amazing contractors including the cast iron Experts who are here the project bolsters the strong architectural character of exchange Street one of the old port's most distinctive streetscapes and I invite the representatives of the Conant-Pason block especially David and Randy Harrigan Sylvie Montello and Tim Green Could you step forward so I can and Gretchen come on up so we can recognize you All right, Mike. All right, I think you all know the state theater building at 609 Congress Street in Portland But the state theater built in 1929 is Portland's only surviving movie palace from the earlier 20th century and his design is a designated landmark It played some of the first silent films and talkies in the city and operated as a first-run movie house until the late 1960s the theaters three-story entrance on Congress Street has always featured a large marquee But the original was removed decades ago Using photographs from the 1930s the marquee has been faithfully reconstructed It is illuminated like the original its lettering and scroll work have been replicated and the original supporting chains have been reused Funding for the city facade improvement grant and Executed in the close collaboration with the city's historic preservation program The project is a great example of public-private partnership to enhance the theater and rejuvenate Congress Street Historic district and the arts district corridor. We thank Scott Simons Scott Simons architect and Justin Dexter trader For this work and if you can come on up. Thank you If you haven't been down Congress Street to see it it's like a landing strip now on Congress Street. It's pretty cool So our next award goes to the Grand Trunk office building at one India Street in Portland The office at the corner of Indian Commercial Street is all that survives from the extensive Grand Trunk Railroad complex in Portland Built in 1903 it served as offices for the railroad and for the transatlantic steamship operators that use their wharves and sheds In 2012 it was vacant and deteriorating and landmarks named at a place in peril Gorham Savings Bank decided to restore the building and take advantage of historic tax credits on the exterior Masonry walls were rebuilt and repointed the massive copper cornice was restored and replaced and A new roof was installed Inside elements of the original architecture were revealed including 14-foot ceilings original hardwood floors and structural timbers The whole process was filmed in a documentary video Today the beautifully restored building celebrates the gateway to the India Street neighborhood and do we have a representative from Gorham Savings? Sorry And I'd like to invite I think Kevin Bunker as well And is Kevin here? Yes Yes, let's bring our team up from uh for the one India Street So Kevin Bunker and David Lloyd You're gonna see Kevin up here a couple more times tonight. He's a busy guy brick south Thompson's Point Portland When it was built in 1904 brick south at Thompson's Point was part of a state of the art facility for the Portland terminal companies locomotive repair shops It served the trains traveled through a union station and boasted mains first electric crane As rail shipping declined it had other industrial uses A steel storage site for construction of Liberty ships during world war two And later as a factory that made cardboard boxes Finally the 25 000 square foot building became vacant and extensively damaged by water infiltration Fortunately forefront partners who began redeveloping Thompson's Point in 2009 Had a new vision for brick south today It is a 2,500 person event center with a new roof New utilities a new kitchen and restrooms and with award-winning lead design Sustainable features Sustainability features It recalls its industrial past and a use that creatively serves today's needs So i'd like to invite for that project chris thompson Jeb Trobe Landry french construction Machias savings bank And david loyd Yeah, and david loyd you got to come back up too Thank you very much back to you We're now recognizing plumber senior living in foulmouth The colonial revival samson d plumber school was built in 1931 To a design by the portland architect john p. Thomas It served as foulmouth's first high school And then it was a junior high school and then finally ended up as an elementary school With an addition in 1936 the building represents the change in main's education curriculum away from classical studies To manual and practical studies The developers rigorously followed preservation standards to qualify for historic tax credits They restored original windows plaster hardwood floors Slate roof and the iconic clock tower They added storm windows for energy efficiency and creatively repurposed the former gym as a shared common area for all the residents This project successfully converted the school to moderate income senior apartments while preserving one of the town's most beloved landmarks And I'd like to invite representatives from sea coast management john wassyleski and kevin bunker david loyd as well to come and join us to collect a certificate Scott hanson, why don't you join us up here as well? Last award. I think it yeah, I think it is our last award tonight Is just where we are right now at the motherhouse at backs to woods at 605 stevens have And kevin, I don't know if you want to come up here with me as I talk about this spectacular place The st. Joseph's convent known as the motherhouse was designed by the boston architectural firm checkering an old O'Connell one of new england's ecclesiastical design firms It was the principal residents for the sisters of mercy until it closed in 2005 While the sisters had maintained the 116,000 square foot building and it is big The project to repurpose its 88 units of senior housing was an architectural and financial puzzle Modern apartments were created by combining rooms and reorganizing spaces Financing was secured from historic tax credits and other sources Utilities and wiring were updated While preserving architectural details Grand staircases stained glass windows and the three-story chapel that we're in right now And its organ were brought back to their former glory The development team successfully preserved an iconic local landmark while creating much needed affordable senior housing for the city And with that we'd like to congratulate john foslowski from sea coast management Matt tear if you want to come up and join along with kevin bunker from developers collaborative I'd like to especially thank John matt and kevin for making it possible to be here this evening. Thank you So a few years ago when kevin started this project There was a few tours that he graciously gave greater Portland landmarks people And we came through and toured it and it was an amazing place then Um the history of it, but I think maybe kevin you have some more stories you might want to chat about Okay, well that could go in a number of directions for anyone who's followed the news read the papers read the read the court results or any of that but um As far as as far as this project, obviously it's a huge one for us very complex Um David Lloyd is in the audience here and he asked me to correct that he did was not actually the architect of the plumber school So I know we all kind of just decide it's david that did it these days Whether it's new construction or historic, but it wasn't david But he did do the mother house and it was very complex. There was a lot to it And one of the many challenges of the mother house was getting the unit count as high as possible So the project would work financially and david is I gave two tours the other day And I kept pointing out the the genius that david has at doing that and there are some really interesting units I hope some of you got to go on the tour and see some of the the ways that Spaces that are not residential are now residential. Um, it's very very interesting. So kudos to david for that um, certainly my partner john and my partner my Former partner john and my current partner matt to put this whole deal together It was extraordinarily complex took a lot of work took a lot of money And it took a lot of help and in terms of war stories How many minutes Three minutes, okay So, uh, john and matt have been working on this for a very very long time The sisters in rfp many many years ago They were selected but the project went in fits and starts for many years until they they unveiled a a development plan right around the time of the recession so That that wasn't able to go anywhere But the what we did learn through that time and I started to consult a bit with them on it Was that the mother house was the key to the whole project at the time? The the the sisters were sort of deciding they were getting out of the real estate business And the mokali school at the time was still going strong But the the site at from that point started to the history of it started the future started to be up in the air And the mother house was always the linchpin because it's the biggest most iconic piece of this whole site For the same time it's the most difficult It's uh, it's a beautiful building. It has to be saved. But how do you save it? How do you make it work financially? And the answer is in a seven layer cake of financing that we're able to put together Involving housing tax credits state historic federal historic city home fed home funds Tiff funds developer fee we had to put back in and Actual must pay debt and oh and some subsidies. I think that's seven layers. But each one of those funding requirements has different Different things attached to it different things you can and cannot do and the challenges to get them to all Play nice with each other and that's uh, that's a complicated thing physically. It's a complicated thing financially It's a complicated thing legally And then let's throw on top of that A uh a neighborhood that was Kind of whipped into a bit of a frenzy over some stuff that Probably could have gone a different way if it was handled a different way. But anyway, it got it got into a big neighborhood process that Ended the way it had to end. It was unfortunate, but we ended up Being able to close in the mother house once that sorted itself out And we're looking forward to the future now obviously in the last few weeks the The girl school closed suddenly on us, which we were hoping would never happen, but It has so now we're Just beginning to grapple with what that means and what that building will be We don't know but the the future of the campus is bright because there's a lot of Exciting things to to do there But this this piece is always going to continue to be the lynchpin And so it's kind of interesting when we're all we're all here we're all interested in historic buildings and and what they mean and We talk about how they're important pieces of congress street or important pieces of exchange street. Well This this building is a whole thing that makes this this whole thing possible So without being able to figure out this building and those historic tax credits that made it happen this whole thing might sit here for a long long time and maybe that Maybe that would be great for some people and and you know if the athletic fields state athletic fields forever that wouldn't Probably have been the worst outcome in the world but what would have been a really bad outcome is if this building was unable to get any investment and That's what we're able to do so Whenever we do these historic buildings and we make the little speech we often hear or say I'm a steward of become a steward of this building and it's a great responsibility that's been entrusted to me And I take it very seriously and I'm glad to have been able to do something And that's it's always true But it's palpable here The sense of responsibility when you walk around this building of treating it well and doing it right is It's a big deal. I'm glad to have been able to do my part and continue to do my part We've got some some new stuff coming online kind of looking forward to getting the certificate of occupancy getting people moved in activating this building and then Figuring out what the next pieces are figuring out what the next phase of new construction is We've got some some condos on the boards that are just about to go and we're we're looking forward to Telling the community about that soon and This is going to be this is a vibrant neighborhood now without us and we're hoping to make it a more vibrant neighborhood with us so I appreciate you all coming here tonight and Thanks for your support and thank you ed and hillary Talk about having the right people at the right table at the right time. Thank you kevin for finding this property and saving it and revitalizing the neighborhood I think we're going to see quite a Steven square campus here evolve here in the next few years So yeah, I'd like to also underline that these projects take a lot of courage and creativity and It's really terrific to be in a room full of preservationists who appreciate that and people who take on projects that are They're not easy, but there's they're so important So I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone in this room And all the award winners all their teams All the people who are members and supporters of landmarks all the people who care about how The city of portland and greater portland area evolves going forward using our Incredible legacy of historic buildings, but looking to the future as well So thank you everyone for that support And I'd like to also invite you to let's talk some more about it We've got some nice refreshments up front Please please join us and let's let's have some more conversation about What a beautiful place this is. Thanks again