So, can we start? Ah, great. Well, thanks everyone for coming. I'm rather really happy that we have the opportunity to have a second BoF workshop meeting. The sound is not working? Have I turned it off? No. Okay. Yeah, I think most of you have been in the first BoF on this topic, on the team package maintenance. So I won't have to spend much time for starting and introducing myself. I'm still regular for those who don't know me. Yeah, I've been thinking a bit yesterday what we can do today. And my ideas were that I'd like to continue working on the ideas we've collected. We found several issues on Thursday that might be interesting to look into more deeply. Maybe we can manage to come up with some concrete detailed proposals, at least for one or two of them. We don't have too much time. And I'd also like to have some kind of roadmap, time structure, whatever, to see how we can move on with these issues. By the way, Tim has agreed again to take some notes. They were perfect the last time, so thanks a lot. So we will have a nice protocol, a nice minutes again from this session. Okay, what can we talk about? I'd first like to well pose a meta question to all of you about what are the best communication channels for this kind of meta discussion around teams, so which don't know mailing lists, IC channels, whatever should we use after we leave Madelblada tomorrow. Then we have several topics where we can choose from, and at the end I'd like to, as I've said before, come up with some assignments to look who is going to do what. Is that okay? So the first topic, I've posted the minutes of the last meeting to the DebConf discuss mailing list because we are at DebConf and the minutes related to a meeting at DebConf, but in general what do you think would be appropriate places for sending minutes or for putting documentation like this collection of tools we've been talking about? Well, I think for results this might work, but for work in progress, for putting proposals. Yeah, okay. Yeah, right. And is the mailing list you think would be appropriate for discussing these issues? Is this a QA issue? Is this something else? Okay. I find that to be a problem. It's cool because it's fast, but nothing gets documented. Right. When you come to the mailing list, you can go and search the documentation by yourself because you can take your time to read the mailing list and search. That's why I made the list. Yeah, me too. I have an idea for ILC. I also don't like ILC, but there is a good habit of making ILC meetings for specific day, once a month, or once a week, whatever is necessary, and gather people for one hour and make a meeting with a fixed agenda in minutes of the meeting and notice that if there are new people, say, well, if there's nobody volunteers for minutes, we don't make any meeting. I don't know what strict you should do it, but this is a kind of an effective way to use ILC instead of like to introduce this. Okay. I guess ILC is very useful when you are, with good time, for example, a release or a release of the system, or for example, that happens to the local team in the last two weeks, ILC was the bad thing because it was as fast as we need to do some things that need to be done very fast. And I guess with software, it happens the same way. Without mic. No, no, we can't do mic robot. Yeah, just a few. I think one issue with ILC is the lack of data after discussions. Do you know of any good software for ILC logs or for publishing them as web pages that will be away for minutes? Yes. We use it for the rest of the outcome because it's actually running on there, and it comes out. The only problem is that we need someone to do as a chair meeting, but it's actually pretty good for us to make IHT and all the notes and everything. So it works for a meeting, but I was thinking of logging everything? Well, it could be used to that. Perhaps we need some modifications to allow it to be organized, but it's actually working pretty fine for us. Okay. For what you proposed, I have organized a semi-distance conference, and yes, most of our talks during the sessions are via ILC. So, well, almost any client logs ILC, but what we have found to create usable minutes or usable colleague proceedings, if you wish, is the ILC format is very good for following a conversation, but it's not a good format for documenting, not a good format for transmitting, because it's not ordered and it's full of not important expressions. So in the end, we always have the role of a human in rewriting what was said. It's a relator. Okay, so to sum it up, that was just the introductory meta question of me. We can use the Debian Development mailing list as it should be of general interest. We can use the Viki for work in progress, and if we come up with something stable, we should aim to get it into the developer's reference. That's okay? Okay. So, back one slide. These were more or less the four broad issues we had last time. I have one slide for each of them with the main results from Thursday. Yeah, which one would you like to start with? Tim suggests maintain and upload us? Yeah, because that was... I'm going to stop dying for a moment. Yeah, I had a thought about this the other day, just after meeting, and that's that I think it would be better to standardize having the mailing list in the maintenance field, because the bug reports will automatically go to the whole group, and not just to the core maintenance. Actually, I think I found the Viki list itself really soon. As soon as back, it does its own work. Well, actually, as soon as Lucas changed to the Viki, it will go to the base. Yeah, you can do that as well. One problem with the mailing list in the maintenance field is actually that the mailing list of all your stuff will figure it in thousands of different ways, and most of the time, you get moderated and it tends to be really annoying. So, yeah, it's a technical problem, but it's annoying. Yeah, someone should talk to me as your admin is about that, so we have a comment configuration. For example, we put a low-send mail without... I'm not sure that... I think when you cut your bus, you will see optionally both of the bugs for which you are uploaded, but I'm not sure that the last complete point which was more about receiving mail is right. And I think that actually having standardized to add the mailing list in Montana would be good, but the last time we tried to do that on Deben de Val, maybe two years ago, something like that, there was no consensus about it. So... Actually, the whole issue of receiving mail about stuff in Debian is a mess because you get sometimes things three times because you are the maintainer of the package and you subscribe for it on the PTS because you want to care about something that is not provided elsewhere, and then you get them through the mailing list of your teams, so you get them three times. I get the test immigration emails three times each time. So maybe... Well, that's really long-term and hard to solve, but someone should... Well, nice to have it in the notes, at least it's a message that should be fixed at some point in the long-term future for the COV-12 or... So, okay, if... Yeah, if the group is in the uploader's field, then it must be assured that the bug reports also go to the uploader's field, otherwise it's rather difficult. Yeah, I think that the only team that tasks the main responsible person, the maintainer and team in the uploader's team is the rabbit team. And what we do is that we subscribe the mailing list to the PTS, so we get the bug reports. Yeah, but the more general question is in the first line, someone I don't remember who it was, I think Zach, said it would be good to standardize on these definitions what should be in the maintainer field and what should be in the uploader's field for group-maintained packages. So, yes, do we want it? And if yes, how could this standard really look like? But we could standardize on the two different ways to do that, one way is... Maintainer is mailing list, uploaders is active people in the teams working on the package, and the other way is main responsible person in the uploader's team plus also responsible person in the team in the uploader's, I think. Well, you got my point. I think for the second one, what would have a real quality in the... Why? Because in the past, in the rabbit team, we had maintainer set to the team and we are not... I think that was the second line, what you said. And what happened is that nobody cared about some package and that was really annoying. So, at least if you have one person that is supposed to feel responsible, then... If you have my policy, that one person should be at least an uploader, then all the group gets the main without having to subscribe without getting clutches. Yes, if you are not in the main in those fields, you get no mails about this product or whatever, and it's better that more people with sizes and in the mailing list, everybody else would have to subscribe or we just change this policy and the uploaders is also included in every... Yeah, that's what I've been talking about before. If the group is in the uploaders, then uploaders must receive emails. The team tasks... Yeah. They generate to the last two person. Well, if... If someone that you can blame or not take it... Well, that's the change for that. I think the point of maintainer is the contact point for the users, because if you want to blame or praise, okay, let's do it in two possible ways, you always have the change on it. Also, one of the things that we have seen in the Perl Group is that, fortunately, it's not very often, but when somebody leaves the group, he doesn't have to orphan his packages. He will still be listed, and if he wants to be delisted, somebody else will have to take them, of course, but it's... I know it's just a psychological difference, but for me, touching any package in the Perl Group makes me add myself as an uploader and then become responsible for it, while as if it were taking maintainership, it's a bit more of... I mean, because it's not that I am the main maintainer for it. For example, this package I just took in the Ruby Group. Well, I took it because it was basically orphan, but not because I use it. I think, for Frederick, Mr. Nexplan... It was almost to say the same, is that in the case of the first option, you have the names of the responsible persons in the uploader's field, so I don't see the problem at all. If you have five people in the uploader's field, if you have five people in the uploader's field, will you know which one is to blame if it doesn't take care of the package? All of them? Yeah. But sometimes I'd like to make a change to all the packages in the Ruby team without having to feel responsible about all those packages for six months or... But if you're really looking for blaming or blaming people, you should really look at changes. It's not the usual use case. The use case is, oh, I have to contact about the impact. Well, the other problem is... Or who should take a look at spots? But in the end, if we are group maintaining, the spots should be the responsibility of everybody. Yeah. Well, the other problem is will we manage to standardize on maintainer is the team? Because we are... Yeah, maybe... I could change it for the Ruby team. I'm not really strongly opposed to that, especially if we switch to the GNOME thing where you automatically get active people in uploader's. But that doesn't mean that everybody will agree in Debian. And it will be really hard, I think, to push because there are many different cases. And currently, which teams are represented actually here? That's Ruby Extras? Okay. So you are in the group of group maintainer groups? Yes. We can try it, but it doesn't mean that we manage to standardize on that. No, sure. But if we say we do it this way and give an example and make this available for other groups, as a model of good practice. This is something that will be interesting to check. Okay, but then what we should really have easily available is the GNOME thing that automatically extracts the change log and hits the app with us. This is a question. Why don't we put something that should be created for tools or dash scripts? Yeah, dash scripts, I don't think so. I think that's in the next slide. But before we actually switch to that, so something like what the GNOME team does with this automatically generating uploaders, is this something we all think is reasonable and we want to try out? So I'm not sure that everybody will agree on using it. I actually don't think that everybody agrees on it, but for the people who want to do something like that, it should be available and easy to use. Okay. Yeah, sounds reasonable too for me. Okay, thanks and thanks for the keyword, for the transition to the next slide. Yeah, we've been talking about tools, about the question that you've raised again now. Do we need a package for common tools? Should we put them in an existing package after we have collected them, which is the task before, or after we have written them? There was also the question about tools for changing all packages in a team. So what are their opinions on this issue? Dev Scripts for that, because Dev Scripts has tons of dependencies, many parallels I think. So... They recommend. Well, so that would work. But I think Dev Scripts is quite big and I'm not sure, but this package will be used as a build dependencies for many packages, so it's important to have something that is easy to install. Actually, its total size is the one megabyte and an half. Yeah, that's big. Depends on PPDG depth, span and PTC. Well, one megabyte and an half is big if you just want to store a few CDBS rules or... Well, you are assuming that the tool is to build a build, because it would still be... Yeah, it would be... It depends in depth. I think it depends. Well, the other thing is that, we are using PCH to play with the chainsaw. Yeah. I think there are two possibilities. The one is having scripts you use for manipulating the package, manually, automatic, whatever, but then you don't have it as a build dependency or to have some magic going on automatic during the build. I think that it just said dash i in the control file. What is it doing? I think it said build time in a CDBS rule, but I'm not sure now. So if you have just this tool, it's not worth to have a package. What is the question? Do we have actually any other tools used for team maintenance that we want to identify with a package? I think there might be some tools. I mean, I only know the Perl group, and we have some, I don't know, four or five shell scripts that of course everyone can write in half an hour, but still, if we collect them, they might be useful for others. We don't have such stuff, too, and this, well, could be collected and could be maybe merged together and, well, there have been ways to have it in a package, so maybe we should put it into a package. No, it is not. And then we switch it out, because changing it out might be a problem. It is not allowed? Okay. So, for example, we are used to use it in the camel group, and then we switch off of it. There is just one package remaining, which actually needs it, because the architecture is dynamically computed, and that is done before creating the source package. The release team was complaining about that, because it breaks in some weird ways. Elsie Bag. Well, another tool which we need, and we have discussed in the part of the booth, is to do actions in batch mode in several packages, and this is a good candidate to be put in such a package, actually. It is something which will need, like, awareness of various possible subversion layouts and do stuff in all of the packages. Well, I think we should do... Well, at the beginning, probably we will just have the subversion specific, but I really hope to extend to other VCS, so it is probably worth keeping a separate package. It doesn't really fit in this topic, but we have to remember, whenever we do repository-wide changes with such tools, well, those are known to kill Alliot as a whole. It was you who did it, or Tincho, who did a mass... Well, a series of commits, which triggered a series of post-commit hooks, which killed Alliot. Yeah. And it was a problem in the post-commit hook. Okay, so we have some ideas about which scripts could be there. I hope we decided if this should be, I don't know, a dev script for teams package, or if this should be a build dependency yet? Well, actually probably the best idea is to add stuff to dev scripts and have a separate binary package. And? Have a separate binary package. Ah, okay. That's probably the best idea. Mm-hmm. That's called dev scripts teams or whatever. Yeah, sounds like we could add here. Dev script is quite open to contribution, so it won't really be a problem. Yeah, yeah. They are adding a lot of fancy stuff. Okay. Is this all about tools? We have to discuss now? Totally, well. Yeah.  Completely. Well, it's a reference between Ruby, so it's an improvement compared to you. I think what also belongs to this topic is this whole web application stuff. Maybe we can spend a few minutes on that. There are quite a few things out there. So on one end, the other day I thought about including stuff like pet in such a package, but on the other end it would be better to have it installed in a central place and just have one code base. Yeah, it doesn't help on the desktop machine. I have no idea if there are other web-based tools which would make sense to have in the package. Yeah, for sure, some things in the dev-in-science and mid-community, which might be worth merging. Yeah, and we've been also talking about DDPO yesterday at the bar, and there's this whole issue with, how is it called, D-E-H-S, those watch file stuff, which is a bit separate, too. I don't know if there's some decision yet on that. The thing is, all of those tools, it will depend on how UDD works out. If UDD becomes the standard place to get such information about packages, then writing tools like DDPO will be really easy. And I think that one milestone that we should target for UDD, for those who work on UDD, is be able to do DDPO in just one SQL query. And that would be quite well, just in a few SQL queries, and have all the information in UDD. And we are not quite far from that, actually. We might reach that in a few weeks. So then at this point, writing something like DDPO, rewriting DDPO from scratch will be really easy. It's only a matter of presenting data, and that's quite funny. Yeah, it's a bit over-focusing. About what? I think we solved all the print performance problems in UDD now. It works quite well. The last queries I made were all working instantaneously. Well, just a lucky good-bye query. Maybe they're better optimized. UDD is currently running on DOMU in a not-so-fast DOMU with not much RAM. Moving it to another machine would really help if you can get a 4GB RAM on this machine. That would be much faster. Well, I have to admit that I actually like the idea of having essential storage with us talking yesterday about adding the information from the version control systems to UDD, because that's what PET uses, heavily relies on. And if that simply works, then have it all in one database and produce different outputs seems like a better idea than storing data here and there where and twice and stuff. Well, the real point is determining what are the current tools in use by all the teams. So we need a list of features that each tool does. And then we can see how we can get all of those features into UDD. For example, if you only use the changelog, for example, it's the only file from the VCS that you use is the changelog. It's easy to import changelogs into UDD and then do some funny stuff with comparing version from the changelog in the VCS with the version in the archive. That's not really hard to do. Someone just have to write the script. And you are the contact person for UDD at the moment? Well, you can contact Digian QA in general, I think. Okay. Good. Anything else on the tools? Except that I'd like to remind you to send pointers to me. Those who have not done yet. I have a question. Does anybody know about Tinsho's use-can-ng and plan to write the watch file format or whatever? It results with what DPKG does. And it found bugs in Tinsho's code because apparently Tinsho brought it from policy. And there are several implementations of version comparison, of Debian versions comparison that all are basically the same code just translated from C to Python, Perl, Ruby. And wait, yeah, that's all. So there was already a Perl implementation that works in the BTS and it didn't use it. And I think it's just because you don't talk to people before writing that. Use-can-ng is totally counter-productive because it doesn't replace use-can. Use-can is not really nice code and it could replace use-can and it doesn't need to be called use-can-ng or to be packaged separately. That's wrong. Okay, so are we finished with tools? Good. We are missing just the roadmap. So who does what? Like should we start assembling tools from different places and submit them as bug reports against dev scripts or what? Well, what I still can offer is to do the first compilation of existing tools. Yeah, existing tools. Both web stuff and local tools. Local scripts just by teams. Yeah. Can you just send a mail to DDA about the report of this meeting and then ask people to send you a short report. Oh, maybe you could ask. I'm not sure that Steve asked about that in his team summary. No, don't think so. Send a mail to DDA with a report from these buffs and then ask people to send you a short report about each team and what specific tools they use. Yeah. So you have a global picture. Mm-hmm. So... I suggest you use the QA to discuss the further actions. Yeah, yeah. I'm even subscribed. We don't have poison with people there. Okay. Good. And then we had this point about documenting the workflows of different tools where there were the proposals of using Rhythmisaurus of using the Vicky team's pages and also this idea of the abstraction package per team that also contains some documentation about the team. Should we look at this a little further? I think it came out of this. It's difficult to know how different teams work and stuff like that. I think that's just stated and I think we don't have much to argue on this topic. We just have to do it and it's something that each group should do according to its rules. Yeah, but if each group does it differently than where we are now. No, but as it stated we should document what each group is doing. Rhythmisaurus is only used where standard when there are patches or strange building things which even in a group can happen in different ways although we try not to have it. And well, yes, explaining I think both in the group's page in Alliot and in the Vicky explaining in a human-readable way. But besides that this is geared towards explaining to other humans and I don't think there's much guidelines to agree completely often. About how to encourage teams that do not have yet an entry and slash teams to have one. They are just not aware of the impact. This is something that should be written in developer reference or whatever. If you have a team developing stuff or packaging stuff please add your entry under slash teams. Yeah. Do you remember about that and your idea you made? I was just thinking about directly contacting teams but we don't really know which teams and how many teams we have. And also there's a very wide definition of teams. We are packaging teams. That narrows the things. For example, I don't see anybody here from KDE. I know they are a well-known team or the games team. But formally every commentated package is maintained by a team. There's someone who did a kind of script to extract the maintainer which matches some concept of team. It's a link.txt file named teams of 2007. But there is no script. We used to do that. That's interesting. Good. Try to remember the others that they should use the wiki slash teams to make it easier for others to find out how the team works. That's it. Okay. Two, we have something else. While I've also put this non-technical stuff about the new members. Oh, we have ten minutes left. About the new members here, I'm not sure if it's of general interest but I admit that I am interested in social things. That's why I propose to spend a few minutes on it again. Well, these are the things more or less that we have collected on Thursday. Is there... Well, now the pre-ultimate one, encouraging Amps to join teams was more an idea of me. I don't know if it's useful or not. How can this be done? Well, there are several problems here. The first problem is get people interested into Debian development and then get them into teams for different issues. And I think that many people just don't realize that it could contribute to Debian development by joining a team and helping the team. And that was actually my case for years. I was a user of Debian and just couldn't see why Debian needed my help. And we really need to focus on sending this message that if you are interested in Debian development you don't need to have someone, something that you want to package. You can just come, join teams and help with the existing package. That's not a message that is really well given out. Well, I will speak as a user trying to have a group. I was trying to join a group in Debian. I am trying to not say which group of course. But the first thing I did was to login in the IRC which in the web page they said that's the best thing to do. So I did that. I asked, okay, I'm new here in which way I can learn and help. And they told me start closing bags. Okay. Yes, I read the documentation in the web page which is helpful but not a lot. It's a collection of separate things that you have to mix and try to understand. And then you have to wonder if this group contains a big thing actually it's the KDE group being the QT KDE group. And what do I do? I have to start wondering all those bags for all those packages I can understand that the people in the group are working the bags and perhaps they're not thinking about training someone to do it because when you're working you're trying to close bags and get things done which is what most of us try to do but I found quite a problem to start doing it because I don't really know how to do it. What steps should I take? Perhaps I closer for example my first bags and I wasn't sure I was really doing it fine, I asked in the mail and they said you forgot this thing okay. And that's everything but nothing that you did well perhaps I'm missing some part of it. So actually this is a bit of getting a bit of topic but this is exactly what are the gift tags which look as a proposal actually so if you're part of a team or even a single maintainer and would like to mentor someone which is new to Debian in doing stuff you can just tag your bags with a gift and then they will show up in the PTS and the idea is that if you tag a bag gift you're willing to mentor the interested guy in entering Debian. So going back to the relationship between NM and teams I think it's a really good idea actually because usually in team it's easier to contribute smaller part than with just going and creating bags or fixing bags or whatever but this brings us back to how to know which teams do we have in Debian which is really not formalized and but if teams if we know which teams do we have and if teams follow the template actually in that template there's even a list of things the team is in need of so in theory newcomers can just go to the wiki page of a team and look at what they need and then join, contact them and start to work on the to-do items Yeah I think if the wiki page is complete and that's a good point interesting thing is how to get the people there to make them aware of as Lukas has said you don't have to package new stuff, just come a team and help out and then, oh five minutes left and then as Nisandre has said you need to be welcomed and inducted, mentored whatever in the group and maybe I'm wrong but I don't think that there are a lot of concepts in the group how to deal with new members in a systematic way might be interesting too to your point I think you could be more self-confident people are sometimes a little bit grumpy and will not reward your work but normally they do I don't say this good but we try to invite people and be friendly to them this is one point another point is to maintain a wiki which lists something which can be done by developers and by users we divide this but are there any experiences how it's possible to maintain that a wiki is really up to date it is so nice and so good to have a wiki somebody has an inspiring idea and puts it on a wiki and three years later it's always there, perhaps some other ideas but are there any experiences mine are always quite bad not everyone at the same time please I have the same experience here okay so that's an open task let's go to the last slide which just says who does what until when well so what have we got that has to be done Tim has right nice minutes I will take a look at them and and send them out in yeah that's my job and I think I should that gets done today yeah then we have this collection of the tools offline and online should we have a deadline for people sending the pointers to me what would be a reasonable deadline for that yeah one more question did you got the nice stuff which Sledge got according to his request for how groups work together so is there any possibility it was private so okay thank you okay so I will also look into my own calendar the deadline in well probably in September usually people respond to email in a timely manner and the problem is if you set a deadline people which will wait until the last one reply to the mail if you said no deadline I think they have to reply no that can happen too yeah okay anything else that needs to be done in the near future anything this because it was really great for well thanks you all for the great cooperation and I really like to work in teams and also like to work in this kind of meta team and yeah I hope we can continue this well maybe we could have well I won't be able to attend but we could have a meeting in extra Madura or a meeting at first them about that maybe and because then we'd be better because it's also really appropriate for the QM meeting actually so another open topic for which we have no solution actually as far as I understand is how to list all the team we have yeah so I think this is really important for various reasons for example if you have the list you can automatically retrieve the list of to-do for the teams and show them in suitable places and this will diminish the probability that they get out of date so we should really think how to standardize, formalize which teams do we have stuff like that okay so I think that's it thank you all


Zato, kaj smo prišličili, da sem tudi prišličen, ki so vse zelo vse, in ki so vse zelo vse, začelično, kvalitivno, početno. Zato, začel, ko sem prišličen, kako se prišli, je to vse izgledanje in izgledanje in tako. Všeč, kako smo izgledali na to, kako smo izgledali nekaj. Tako, izgledanje pri mene, nekaj z taj nekaj izgledanje prišli do taj, kako se prišli, kako se prišli, kako se prišli, vseč na bolje, da je tudi tradiacija terapija. To, ko sevedaja, če biš možete vzveči všeč nekičči o toh. Zdaj, da v apartmenti tezvorejte, da biš načo in počut, da nekaj sevedajte. V tako kliniku je začina ta nekaj umreženje in da je srečen, nekaj je loviti o toh, maybe you don't care about it, or somebody told you that you have to prepare a new type of treatment or an inspection, perhaps. Anybody of you made an error in your career in radiation therapy? One, two, three, four, five, come on, don't be shy. Five, okay. And the rest, you just don't want to admit to it, or you didn't do it long enough. Or maybe in your hospital, your chief of the hospital, the medical director, your boss, or somebody else, and says, well, we heard that something like this happened somewhere and it better not happen to you. Any of you had something like this happen to you? No, yeah? No. Or we were told that and so on. So there is a number of reasons why we are talking about this, basically. And each one of us may have one or two main motivations to discuss this. So I want to tell you a story, okay? Maybe a couple of stories, basically. Once upon a time, radiotherapy accidents or incidents were so rare and far between that we basically didn't hear about them. And when we heard about anything happening somewhere in the world, okay, we always thought that, well, is that all far away? I mean, except for Santiago that knows that this is in La Pampa, in Argentina, I mean, for you it may be like on the other side of the globe altogether. And usually, the circumstances were very unique, something very special that happened. I mean, so we were very surprised about what happened. But we say, well, that doesn't apply to us. I mean, in our circumstances, this is not going to happen, okay? Except that, in reality, that was rarely the truth. Because they were usually, for every accident that we know about, they had been something similar happened either somewhere else or even in the same place many times. And so, why do we talk about this now? Why should we talk about this now and not, you know, long time ago? Well, in many, for many years, medical physicists were working in Cognito. Hardly anybody knew about what medical physicists, even people in our hospitals didn't know what medical physicists do. Is that right? And all of a sudden, I mean, a few years ago, not too long ago, we became famous. I mean, the lights turn on, shining on us.  Why? Because there was a series of articles in the New York Times, started in the New York Times in 2010, so it's only about five years ago. And this, Vald Bogdanovich, is an excellent reporter, and he did a series of articles in the New York Times that became national attention, not only in the United States, but everywhere in the world, basically. Any of you didn't hear about this? This series of articles? Really?  Well, I mean, the story is that in an institution, only a subway ride away from where I live, very respectable institution with a lot of medical physicists, board certified and so on, they had an accident where this man was being treated for head and neck cancer, and basically a terrible accident happened, and he was killed, basically, by this. They were treating him with IMRT. They left the MLCs open. There was a problem in the QA. They changed the plan. They didn't do the QA immediately. They didn't turn out right. They said, well, we'll do it next day. It was the end of the week. So they said, well, we'll repeat it on Monday. When they repeated, the results were bad. They said, well, we'll look into that further. By the time they looked into that again and found that there was a problem, the patient was treated three fractions, supposedly IMRT, but the MLCs were totally open. So they give ten times the dose in an area much bigger than intended. The result is that the patient died sometime later. So this is what started it. But two days after the first article, he writes another article in The New York Times, and he talks about medical physicists. They check the equipment, but who checks on them? Who knows what they are doing? Maybe they just don't know what they are doing. Well, it turns out that the medical physicists involved were very serious medical physicists, well-trained, very responsible, but there were a series of circumstances where this happened. As part of that series, Walt Bogdanic went into the state records of New York state and put a series of reports or took some information about different cases that happened in New York state.  And this is the title of the article on January 24. New York state, the most stringent regulator of radioactive medical devices in the United States. That's his statement. And he looked at the records in the state records of accidents and events that were reported to the state for a period from 2001 to 2009, about eight years, and he started reporting what were the things that were reported to the state. Well, let's go over a few of them just so you get an idea. Proced gland misidentified. That's one of the cases. What happens? The ultrasound machine that they used for the ultrasound implants, the ultrasound guided implants, was not performing very well. The vendor, they didn't have a consulting physicist to check the machine. The therapist that was helping the physician won the physician that something doesn't look right about the shape of the prostate or something. As a result, they place seeds, not in the prostate, or mostly not in the prostate. A patient treats a therapist, treats a patient on alternate dates, and it has to give two different treatments on alternate dates. He made the mistake. Two different treatments. The upper lung received one tenth of the prescribed dose, and the mediacenium goes ten times the prescribed dose. Big mistake, yeah? Well, the patient died sometime later. Radiative seed implanted in the wrong location, similar to that one. What was the thing? They didn't interpret correctly the CT scan to verify where the seeds were located after the implant. That's typically part of the process. You implant them on the ultrasound, and then you take a CT to verify the position. A patient receives the wrong treatment. Instead of treating patient A, they call patient B, maybe a similar last name. I don't know the circumstances. The dose that was supposed to be going to patient A was given to patient B. Radiative seeds measured incorrectly. They made a mistake in measuring the activity of the seeds. The physicist and the radiation oncologist, they had not done a treatment plan in six years for Iridium 192. They didn't have cases. In six years, they have a case. They do it, they make a big mistake. They miscalibrate or misinterpret the calibration of the seeds. They irradiate the wrong part of the body. They had body marks on the patient. The therapist had some parameters how to go perhaps from the marks to the correct place. You have the shift. Many of you do that. Misinterpreted probably there was a couch readout. The computer says, well, it's wrong. He says, don't mean. I know what I'm doing. Just override it. Anybody heard about that? Happened to you? A computer is over reading again. Oh, I'm sorry, that's the same slide. Wrong body part being irradiated. The setup notes that were on the computer correspond to the setup notes that were written on the chart. The radiation therapy had downloaded an older photograph where that patient was treated in the previous occasion. They put the wrong picture of the treated site in the computer, made a mistake. Errors of radiation overdoses. A therapist forgot to put a wedge on the machine. They treated without the wedge. They had some monitoring device, but they ignored the readout on the monitoring device. The therapist didn't inform neither the physician or the physicists that were involved. Why? Well, they didn't have a physicist full time. The physicist was maybe one day a week, 20% of his time. The physicist will tell him maybe next week or not. A patient was treated for breast cancer and it got 50% over those, over 10 treatments. Again, they left the wedge out. The physicist didn't do the first weekly check. The hospital had problems with staffing. Temporary works were coming, covering for others. They were not familiar with the treatment, routines, procedures. Error. Again, a wrong patient treated. I'm going to just go to that, because a lot of these, as you can see, are very repeated events, similar events. An old man was treated for the esophagus, was supposed to be treated twice daily. Physics, dosimetry, and the therapist, they all failed to catch an error. The state inspection came after the fact, because they had to report it to the state. They say it inspects and inspectors to investigate. Well, they were understaffed. There was not enough staff to cover everything. A computer error was not spotted. Look at the, read what this says. This is from the official record. A patient in his forties got massive overdose of radiation to his brain, because the device that shaped and modulated the beam was mistakenly left open. A physicist didn't have a check until the treatment, and the error was displayed on the treatment screen. But two therapists didn't notice it. What do you read from this? This is the case. This is this case. From reading that, I would never imagine that this was the case involved. You cannot understand what that report means, really. Correct? Well, more cases. Again, a wedge was left out. The therapist didn't notice the computer showed that the wedge was missing. They overrode the great things. The summary of what came out from this article on New York state mistakes, and over this period of nine years, or eight years, there were 621 radiation mistakes reported. It's interesting to notice that there were a total of, these are the different causes. I mean, after every case that is reported, we try to identify what were the problems, what were the reasons, and there is essentially double the number of reasons than the number of mistakes. So, on average, there is at least two reasons for any mistake that happened. Well, this is New York state. Now, New York state, in 2001, enacted a law that requires every medical physicist to have a license to practice medical physics, the same thing as a radiation therapist or a doctor. And this is one of four states in all the United States that requires a license. I don't know about any country that requires a license. There are some regulations that say, in order to do A, B, and C, you have to have board certification, you have to pass a course, et cetera. But to have a license means that if you do malpractice and do something which is against the code of ethics of your profession, your license can be taken away.  You cannot drive anymore, or you cannot drive for five years or something. In the real state, in that particular period of time, probably have more reported cases than many other places where you are not licensed. I know that if I had something happen to us, I would make sure that I report it, because if they find that I didn't report it, I lost my license, I lost my job. So let's talk about a couple of conceptual beliefs. I'm not saying that usually accidents in radiotherapy are very rare, and I think they are rare. It's perhaps true. People think that the majority happened long time ago in the developing world, in the under developing world. Any excuse, all kinds of reasons. And sometimes people say, well, it's linked for the low technology equipment. It's not sophisticated enough. Others say, well, it's the high technology equipment that causes the accident. It's too complicated. People don't know how to use it. Well, I want to go back, because I have a series of articles that appeared in the Ohio plane dealer. It's a paper, not as famous as the New York Times, but in 1992, how many years that is, it's almost 10 years before the New York Times. No, I'm sorry, almost 20 years in the series of New York Times. The plane dealer published a series of accidents 20 years before. There was a big uproar, and look at the titles. Dangerous medicine, deadly mistakes. People were killed. So very high profile report. I want to just go to a couple of these, because these are the subtitles on the different parts. 40 people killed, doesn't know it. NRC is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the United States. It regulates radioactive materials, cobalt units, HDRs, LDRs, et cetera. Doesn't regulate linear accelerators. It's a federal agency. The linear accelerators are regulated by the states, some more, some less. So there were a couple of things published in that series, and look at the subtitles. Human tragedies, the officials cover up. The government is not doing their job, et cetera. Lies, people are convicted or are not convicted, and nobody goes to jail. And there were hearings in Congress. After this series, people were in Congress saying, well, something has to be done. And there were decisions. We'll set up a commission. We'll do this. Exactly the same after the New York Times. Well, I want to just cover two accidents that were reported in that series. Does any of you heard, because I'm sure that most of us were not even born in 1974, at least the majority of us, of an accident in Riverside, Ohio. They are Ohio plane dealers. I mean, wanted to obviously cover that accident. That was, goes back to 74 years before I even went into medical physics. I think you probably didn't go into medical physics. Don't do that. Oh, my God. OK. So what was the accident in Riverside, Ohio? OK, first of all, don't expect to see anything fancy or something like that. It happened with a cobalt unit. You saw this picture on Monday, OK?  You know, the dosimetry we went through that on Monday. What happens with that cobalt unit? They had a physicist for many years there. Old timer, he knew these routines, he had his own equipment, etc. No administration came. They decided to bring a new physicist on board. They hired a physicist Joel Axt, which had a PhD in physics and they had a small amount of training I think in California. They brought him to Ohio. He's the new guy on the block because they were going to install a linear accelerator. One of the earliest ones. And the previously medical physicist George Kalendine. George Kalendine, was it? George, yeah. He had a long reputation, but apparently there was not good communication between the two. The new one came to basically take his job away. So cobalt unit, this is the dosimetry planning system if you want. We have this on Monday. Everything depends on this output. The output 100 centigrade per or how many centigrade per minute you get from the machine. So everything revolves around that number and that number obviously will change with the half life of the cobalt unit.  So in order to save time he was just plotting the output of the machine every month as a function of the date on a semi-lock paper. It's a straight line on a semi-lock paper. But then after he got to July 73, he ran out of semi-lock paper and he continued his plot on linear paper. Well, at the beginning nothing happens because the change is so slow that it doesn't quite make a difference. But after several months or after a year the two curves started diverging. So his output was calculated to be so much, but in reality was increasing and increasing and increasing in relation to his calculation. Well, the physician that was relatively new came to the hospital because they were about to install a linear accelerator and they started looking. I mean they were still doing mostly of the patient's cobalt and he felt that he was getting too many side effects for his patients. Too many complications. At the beginning I mean there was nothing to be allowed and Axe because he was so busy trying to plan for the accelerator and his cobalt was something so simple so trivial that he just forgot or didn't forget but he didn't do his monthly output checks. So he was just relying on that graph paper. Just that. Well, for about 27 months more than two years he didn't put a chamber to check his output. Initially he says he had the higher priority to put a new linear accelerator and look into all the things and it was new technology. So when the physician started seeing that there were clinical problems with his patients he confronts Axe and says are you sure that the output is okay? So he gave some excuse. Finally he got very upset. He says I want you to put a meter under the machine to verify the output. Okay? He put the meter, it turns out that the machine was producing about 30% more than calculated. Or something like that. Initially he didn't, but at the end when he was confronted he admitted that not only he made a mistake but he also covered it up. He was not honest about it. There were reports, they had to report it to the authorities, it was cobalt accelerator, the NRC needed to be notified and they just issue a fine. Nobody was given a big trouble, I don't remember what the fine was, but the director of the radiation oncology group the new physician that had to face all this inquiry from his hospital, from the NRC and so on. The day that he reported he died of a heart attack, he was 37 year old. Full coincidence, I don't think it's all related at all. Okay? It's possible that it's nothing to relate, but I mean so this is the case that when they looked into that they found that there were 28 patients that died of overdoses over the period of years. Some of them were not reported as a consequence of the overdose. For instance, a woman had a problem in her shoulder, she got her shoulder almost frozen, she was driving she got into a car accident after the treatments, maybe a year or two years after the treatment. She didn't die from overdose, she died from a car accident so it wasn't reported as a result of an overdose. Okay? So there were a number of cases these reporters went there and looked at this under the nuclear regulatory commission reports, there were only two people that were reported as dying from that accident. These reporters find about 26. So who was at fault here at Riverside? Okay? Asked? The new physicist? It's obvious, yeah? You all agree? He was really at fault. However, this was not his own fault, only fault. There was a team effort that made this happen. A lot of people contributed to that. The administration hired unqualified staff because he was not really qualified to do radiation therapy. There were conflicting priorities on the workload, the new Linux versus the routine work, the stuff that it's not so important. Okay? There were not enough staff, obviously, to do everything, to do one and the other. There were no external audits. There was nobody checking that the output of the machine independently was checked. There were no internal audits and there were no external audits. And there were no external audits about the complications, the clinical complication, not only about the dosimetry. And there were no review or peer review of the mortalities of the complications until something really got out of hand. And, obviously, there was not a very good quality control program because they were not using redundancy methods to check things. What would be the redundancy method in the case of the machine output? Speak up. Well, either two people to check the output of the calculation instead of with a graph paper or somebody or just putting the chamber. That's a redundancy method. You calculate and you measure. All right? The physician also ignored clinical science until it really became obvious. This was one case in that series of reports. There is another case in which I want to just spend a little bit of time. How much time do I have? That's all. OK. Time flies. OK. Well, I'll try to go over this relatively quickly. A center in Tyler in Texas there were four centers in Texas, in Georgia, in Canada and in Washington state. Diverse places in the United States were using a Terak 25 linear accelerator. Any of you heard about the Terak 25 accident? Colin heard. I heard. No? Well, I'm surprised because the Terak 25 accident became a poster case for bad engineering process, not bad engineering, the bad engineering process. As a matter of fact, all this that I'm going to tell you about is published and you can download it for free. I mean there is a woman in Boston, I believe, either at MIT or some race, published a big report on all the process, all the things that happened there, what happened, what didn't happen, what should have been happening in the design and the fabrication of this linear accelerator. The company that fabricated this machine is ACA, Atomic Energy of Canada and now it's been privatized, but at the time it was one of the most advanced linear accelerator designs. It was a high energy machine independent joes with electrons, photons you could do a lot of things with it. I worked with the Terak 20, which was before this computerized design so it was semi-computerized. But there were six massive overdoses over a period of more than two years. More than two years. And it was considered the worst radiation accidents in the history of medical accelerators until that point. You can look at that, this is one of the cases reported, is a series of articles, the IAA has published accident reports for many years. This is one of them and it's included, I believe I'm sorry, I think this is not in this one, but you can download it, it's a case study of major accidental exposures and you can go to this site and download it. But basically what happens is the following. In the head of this linear accelerator you have for photons you have the target, under the target you have a flattening filter, now you have some machines that are flattening filter free but that's much, much more modern. And then you have the primary collimator and you have the Jaws. When you try to treat with electrons you have the bending magnet, but the target, which is here is taken away and instead of that you have a monitoring chamber and you have the diaphragm and basically the collimator trimmers to fix the field close to the patient. In the design of the machine there is what's called the carousel. It's like a plate that has either the flattening filter or a scattering foil or other devices that will move around depending on what mode of treatment you select. If you treat electrons, if you treat photons for electrons you will have different scattering foils for even for photons you may have different flattening filters. And there is some mechanism that will tell you is the correct piece in the right place before you can treat. Now you have to remember what is the electron beam current on the target in relation to the electron beam current when you treat with electrons. Any idea? I mean you have the answer there. For photons you use almost a thousand times more electrons hitting the target. And you know the reason. First of all a lot of that the generation of photons is not very efficient and second you have then underneath that it's going to attenuate the beam before it comes out. So you have to produce all this many more electrons hitting the target than you would use if you just didn't have the target and you treat with electrons per se.  Ok, well even the technologies that went to the room fell that the area which was treated was warm was too warm. Now if any of you is trying to boil water for tea in a linear accelerator you would know that a linear accelerator on radiation is very inefficient heating device. So for something to raise the temperature of the tissue so it can be felt you know you are talking about at least several 5-10 degrees which is many many times more than what you would get the heat deposited in an absorber. So there was a line of events because the first time that this happened they didn't know what happened. They knew that something strange would happen but they couldn't reproduce it. It went on and there were different communications between their staff with the company ACL they reported we had a problem the answer from the company was no it's not possible never happened it's designed that you cannot it's impossible what you described is impossible. Since they were not required that was in Texas and this was an accelerator not in a radioactive machine they didn't have to report it to the NRC so there was no report they didn't report it to the state to the federal government sometime later in Ontario Canada they had another overdose with the same type of machine and then they were suspecting that maybe a micro switch that tells where the carousel is failed so they replace the micro switch they say well that everything is fine now then there was a lawsuit against the ACL in december we are talking about half a year later they had a abnormal skin reaction severe skin reaction and they reported that they tried to think they contacted the ACL impossible and no other accident like this occurred so the company didn't even make connect the two cases just to make the things short there was a malfunction error appearing on the computer malfunction 54 nobody understood what that meant nobody went to the books to try to interpret what malfunction 54 is and ACL claim that it's impossible they never had something like this they put back the machine in service they had another overdose and the physicist and the therapist managed to reproduce the error what it involved is that the physicist and I particularly I'm not in the computer era so I'm not too fast with my fingers I would have gone and find the keys and so on the therapist were so familiar with the machine they were doing the things very very fast like blind typing and when they were going from one mode photons to electrons they were typing and they selected the energy there were two energies that had the same number I think it was 16 MV and 16 MV and they changed from one to another too fast for the computer and the machine to react to that so the machine went into an unknown state that's what's called computer design and undefined state and it was able to so they were able to reproduce the error they just found the dose that they measured they put the dosimeter they put the dose that measured 4,000 times more than what they expected and truly that was because the dosimeter under responded because it was saturated ok so bottom line is that this case went on and until they pulled up that machine of service in the old world I mean they said drawing board but it took about two years to get this thing resolved two years so these are the characteristics of the report the carousel rotation, malfunction code you can read all of that and I suggest if you want to read a novel go read this because this is really important ok so who was at fault here any idea whose fault was it the manufacturer that's good you probably saw my presentation before so ACL obviously was at fault because they designed a machine that was capable of doing something like this however again this was a team effort ok the patient complaints were not investigated thoroughly thoroughly they were investigated they say well ok we don't know the clinical outcome didn't trigger a thorough investigation and inquiry three of the four clinics failed to investigate really until they found the problem and the facility didn't assume the responsibility for what happened they say well we call ACL they need to know there were not regulations for reporting this type of error and there was no communication between user groups ok I'm not going to go to all the rest of the things because these are another series of cases in that article but the mistakes were at institutions were small, large rural, academic then the biggest thing was who reports and who doesn't report and again most of the cases were not accelerators because the NRC doesn't require them now the key thing is these are the three reporters that wrote that series so how difficult was for these reporters to find out about these cases ok well they filed more than 100 requests under the freedom of information act this is a federal law that allows you as a private citizen to request from the government that they open a file on something that you are trying to get in information they filed more than 100 requests to get these things opened and they analyze like a million and a half NRC records ok these are other cases which are not in that series cases that you may have heard the IAA has given a lot of reports these are cases that reported in the IAA Oregon in Spain Costa Rica Panama France anywhere you want and these are the places where reports came out so it obviously it's a global issue and both the IAA and other world organizations have taken this very seriously and there is a publication on prevention accidental exposure in radiotherapy but the IAA I would like you to download that and read it and the World Health Organization recognizes that it's not just in radiation therapy these are accidents in medicine are relatively common so this is in accidents in general not just in medicine the IAA also publish this analysis of the causes and contributing factors so what did we learn from all this first of all that accidents happen ok when they happen there is more than one factor more than one reasoning in the thing and the other thing which we didn't learn from here but I will try to demonstrate that or show an indication of that that there is more in most accidents than the real ones that get published there is probably many many many more and there are some common factors some of them are related to training communications both internal within the institution external between institutions there are barriers there are questions of authority who can question what is being done or what happens or perhaps the lack of authority the lack of redundancies distractions numerous questions you can read all of that and the lack of clarity and the analysis on reporting of what happened because if we want to learn of what happened as you saw from even that new york state report on the accident you cannot learn anything from that report I mean that's almost useless for somebody else to learn the thing so coming soon to this theater in the next hour what can we do about this ok so we have coffee now and I continue after that or you continue ok alright so thank you for now


Thank you, Mr. Chair. Since I'm the only one who works in public sector, I would like to focus my presentation on President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from Paris Agreement and its impact in relation to the G20 leaders' discussions on climate change in Hamburg this July. Since I'm the G20 chef of Korea who prepared the G20 summit in Hamburg this July, I would like to talk a little bit on the Hamburg G20 leaders' declaration related to climate change and I would like to make my presentation on the impact of U.S. decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. First of all, on the left-hand side, the language agreed that G7 in May in Italy and right-hand side is a language agreed among the G20 leaders in Hamburg this July. The language of Hamburg leaders' declaration is compromised between the U.S. and the rest of G20 members. German presidency showed its leadership persuading the reluctant leaders, not only Donald Trump but also the Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia to join the consensus minus one. As the G20 accounts for more than 80 percent of current global greenhouse gas emissions, the declaration demonstrates to the world and business community that the efforts for the implementation of Paris Agreement will continue despite the Trump administration's decision to withdraw from the agreement. In fact, the G7 is much easier to get the consensus because other than United States, the six countries have the same page and they have the same philosophy and same policy so it is not so difficult to draw the consensus but the G20 is different. Russia has not yet ratified the Paris Agreement and Turkey is very reluctant to accept the implement obligation of G20, Saudi Arabia, you know why. So it's a huge task for the German presidency to draw consensus except the United States but they did it. I think they made very good efforts to convince the world and especially the business community that we will continue to go despite the U.S. So I'll move to the second question. What is the impact of U.S. decision to withdraw? In June 1st, as you are well aware, Trump declared that his administration will seize implementation of Paris Agreement but explore linearization of the deal to seek better terms. I think it's very important. He said he will withdraw but he want to have linearization. Previously in March, he exacted Clean Power Plan which sets emission reduction requirements for each of U.S. state but allows them flexibility in how to achieve them. In addition, he overturned the moratorium on coal development on federal levels and ordered a review of emission restrictions for oil and gas wells. These measures sharply decrease the likelihood that U.S. would have met its Paris Agreement. What would be the impact? I think already several experts around the table mentioned there would be no real impact. But I think definitely U.S. decision would weaken the enforcement measures of the Paris Agreement and undermine the resolve of other countries to make their own reductions in view of the U.S. leadership role in this important global agenda in addition to the fact that U.S. contributes about more than 16 percent of our emissions. It's the second largest emitter after China. However, as we have already heard, many experts estimate its impact is more symbolic than substantial because first from the procedure viewpoint, the only possible effective withdrawal date of U.S. would be November 4, 2020 in accordance with Article 28 of the agreement, which enters into force November 4 last year. A member may withdraw from three years after entering the force of agreement and withdraw take effects after one year. That means there are still four years for the U.S. to completely withdraw from the Paris Agreement and nobody knows what may happen in four years' time. The second, I can find there is an appetite for the reduction of carbon emissions independently of the Paris Agreement. I know particularly the China and U.S. cities and states continuously stressed importance of fight against climate change. Thirty-four U.S. states led by California and New York have undertaken their own ambitious carbon reduction plan despite the federal government decisions. The U.S. private companies have found that going green can reap financial rewards like cost savings and transitional, transnational companies have to meet the regulating requirements in foreign country anywhere. So I can say there are three important reasons why the businesses and U.S. state will go as if nothing had happened. Having said that, however, I think there would be a significant negative impact in particularly on climate finance. The advanced countries committed to generate 100 billion U.S. dollars annually until 2020 to help the mitigation and adaptation efforts of the developing countries and for that purpose the green climate fund was established in 2010. In announcing his decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, President Trump also said that U.S. would stop contributing to the green climate fund. The U.S. has pledged by far three billion U.S. dollars to the green climate fund which is the biggest and twice that of the second-largest pleasure of Japan. In fact, Barack Obama authorized transferring a second 500 million U.S. dollars installment to the GCF just three days before he leaves office, leaving 2 billion U.S. dollars owing. Session fund for global clean energy innovation efforts would hamper significantly efforts to develop and deploy new carbon-reducing technologies that would likely be the central to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. My conclusions, the first is as the developing countries led by India and Turkey in particular stressed the importance of parallel implementation of the obligations of the Paris Agreement which is mitigation, adaptation, and climate financing. Therefore, U.S. decision will negatively affect the smooth implementation of the agreement in the years to come. Second, in view of the importance of the issue of the climate change, however, U.S. cannot stay outside in the subsequent negotiation process for the Paris Work Program despite its decision to withdraw. The participation of high-level officials from White House, the NEC deputy director, in the ministerial meeting on climate action to advance discussions on the full implementation of the Paris Agreement and demonstrate continued political commitment to global action held in September in Montreal this year is a good example. They continue to participate. I'm sure that U.S. will actively participate as well in the COP23 which will take place in Bonn next week. The ongoing more concrete rules, negotiations of Paris Agreement should be wrapped up by COP24 at the end of next year, therefore next week meeting of COP23 is very important meeting and U.S. send the delegation and actively participate in deliberations. Finally, as the G20 leaders declared at the Hamburg Summit, the Paris Agreement is irreversible and the global community will move forward to its implementation, though the load ahead would be very bumpy. Thank you.


Hi Sophie, how are you? I'm good, how are you? Yeah, not too bad. We'll just wait a couple minutes, the students are just in the waiting room now. That's totally fine. I'm just, I was running a little late, so I'm just pulling up my stuff anyway. No worries, you can try out your presentation or anything if you need to before the session starts. Yeah, maybe let me see. I can share my screen. Let me just open the present. You can see that right? Yeah. How many students are in the waiting room? Six so far, or seven now. I'll just give it like one or two more minutes and then I'll let them in. Sure. All right, I'm just going to let them all in now. Hi to everyone that's joined. Welcome to the gender study session. My name is Amani. I'm part of the recruitment team and I'll just be helping facilitate this session. We are joined by Sophie who is the academic in the gender studies department who's just going to take you through a little presentation about the program. If you would like to ask any questions you can do so. There is a couple of ways to do that. We have the chat function which you can find at the bottom of your screen. And you can put a question in throughout the presentation or at the end, there is a dedicated Q&A session. If you would also like to, you can raise your hand and unmute yourself, turn on your camera if you wish. If you'd like to ask any questions, just know that this presentation is being recorded. So if you do want to do that, just know that you will be recorded as well. So without further ado, I'm going to hand over to Sophie. Thanks so much Amani. Welcome everybody. My name is Dr. Sophie Shamas and I'm a lecturer in gender studies within the School of Law, Gender and Media, and I'm going to be walking you through our degree offerings today. So let me start off by introducing our degree programs. So we've got a number of degrees on offer, the MA Gender Studies, MA Gender Studies Middle East Pathway, MA Transnational Queer Feminist Politics, MA Transnational Queer Feminist Politics Middle East Pathway, MA Gender Studies and Law, and we also have a distance learning or purely online program, the MA Gender Sexuality in Global Politics. You can do any of our master's programs with the exception of the distance learning one either full time or part time over the course of two or three years. Now our degree programs really in sort of, you know, the thing that connects all of them is that they allow students to draw on the expertise of staff across SOAS to develop a bespoke degree on the specialized study of gender in relation to Asian African and Middle Eastern cultures and societies. And in terms of who our programs will appeal to, they can really appeal to students with a variety of backgrounds and objectives. For example, women's women's studies or gender studies students who wish to engage more deeply with gender theory in relation to regional specialization. So especially but not exclusively the societies of Asia African Middle East, like I said. Those coming from Asian African or Middle Eastern studies who wish to incorporate the study of gender into their own areas of expertise would also benefit from our programs. Those who have previously trained in specific disciplines so anthropology, cultural and media studies, religious studies, complete history, politics, sociology, but are looking for, you know, to kind of really develop a gender angle or to kind of engage in a more interdisciplinary degree program this would be a good fit for you. And of course our program is also geared towards professionals who have been working in the field of gender and sexuality, but would like to acquire the critical thinking skills needed to work through the experiences they faced in these sectors. Now, to break down each of our degrees, they're essentially distinguished by the kinds of courses that you're required to take when enrolled onto them. So our most general degree is the MA in gender studies and it's also our most flexible degree. So it only you're only required to take two core modules when you're on this degree, and the rest of your modules you can choose from a list of professional modules that include both gender studies offerings but also a variety of courses from across the university. So this is really the degree that that kind of allows you to tailor, tailor it along the lines of what your own interests are so the core modules that you have to take and students across our degrees have to take our gender theory and the study of Asia Africa and the Middle East. This is a year long module. It's the module that really introduces you to the core theories that are relevant to the study of gender and sexuality at the intersection of post-colonial studies. And then the other required module you would take is dissertation methods for gender studies. This usually takes place in term two. It's the module that prepares you to write your dissertation. So that's the third requirement across all our degrees that you would have to write a 12,000 word dissertation. So in the case of this degree would have a total of 75 credits left to take from optional modules from across the university. So like I said quite flexible. In terms of what distinguishes the core teaching on this program, the MA gender studies moves attention away from Western gender theory by exposing students to scholarship from across the global south in order to help expand how you conceptualize gender. So really the objective is to broaden your understanding of gender relations in Asia Africa and the Middle East, and to encourage you to interrogate the power relations that shape how we understand gender and non-Western societies. Now, in terms of the MA and gender studies with special reference to the Middle East, as the name suggests this program comes with a regional specialization, and it requires that you take our Middle East focused modules, which essentially critically examine and discusses on gender and sexuality in the Middle East and provide an alternative approach to the study of gender and sexuality in a region that is quite misunderstood and maligned. So in addition to gender theory and dissertation methods, you would be required to take gender in the Middle East, as well as queer politics in Asia Africa and the Middle East. And the courses that are specific to this program draw on the rich and diverse body of work from from the Middle East, or about the Middle East that are invested in offering nuanced historical and contemporary accounts of gender and sexuality in the region. Now, in terms of our MA transnational queer feminist politics, the modules required for this program really focus on getting you to critically investigate the relationship between area studies and queer theory. So in addition to gender theory and dissertation methods, you would have the option of taking either transnational queer trans and disability studies or queer politics in Asia Africa and the Middle East. Of course, you can also take both of these courses if you want and they were just the second would fall under your optional module offerings. So the courses specific to this program, introduce you to the literature on transnational feminism, queer diasporas and queer of color critique, and the important theoretical and political interventions that they've made. Not only in the realms of women's and LGBT rights advocacy, but also more broadly in terms of how we imagine emancipatory politics on a larger scale.  Again, this comes with a regional specialization. And this program applies the theoretical and methodological frameworks that distinguish the general TQFP degree to the study of the Middle East. So here again you're required to take our Middle East offerings, but with more of an emphasis on queer theory rather than just gender studies. So this is our least flexible degree. Again, in addition to gender theory and dissertation methods you would be required to take gender in the Middle East, queer politics in Asia Africa and the Middle East and transnationalizing queer trans and disability studies. You would be left with 30 credits from optional modules. So that would either mean 130 credit module or to 15 credit modules. You know, in terms of the specificity of the Middle East, the core modules on this program examine how gender and sexuality are lived and negotiated in the, in the Middle East and elsewhere with a particular emphasis on the ways in which people in or from the region grapple with how to live a non or an anti normative life. And importantly, these modules approach the Middle East as a transnational rather than a bounded space. So a space to which and from which discourses people and commodities move. And we invite students to think through what this might mean for the study of gender and sexuality in the region. Now, our MA gender studies and law and law offers a specialized study of gender and law in relation to the cultures of Asia Africa and the Middle East. So the program really focuses on enabling students to study gender issues in relation to a particular regional or disciplinary specialization, alongside the acquisition of knowledge of feminist legal theories and a study of a legal discipline. So in addition to the core modules, you would be required to take gender sexuality and law theories and methodologies. And the 60 credits of optional modules would come from a list provided by the law department. We have a background in law to take this particular program. The law department has an LLM gender and gender and law which is geared towards people who have a background in law for this one, you only really need an interest in law in order to take it. So as I mentioned, we also have a distance learning or online degree which we began running last year. The degree runs over two years and it can be done. It's meant to be done remotely, and it works really well both for people who have very heavy workloads in terms of their professional life and also people who are outside of the UK, and want a degree from a UK based university but either don't want to move here or don't have the capacity to move here. So the teaching takes place through an online discussion forum where students interact with each other and their teachers and are also given access to material that's uploaded onto a designated site for students to engage with. So readings and guiding questions and recorded lectures and that type of thing. Finally, we also have an MFIL and PhD and gender studies members of the of the Center and current research students who work, work on an exceptionally wide range of topics both theoretical and empirical. So if you're interested in a PhD here we really invite students with interest in researching gender or gender and sexuality in relation to the subspecialisms of security, law, migration and diasporas social movements, queer theory, transgender studies, critical race theory, transnational feminism, queer or trans of color critique and decolonial epistemologies. Now what I want to do is move on to telling you in a bit more detail about what distinguishes us from other gender studies centers in the UK. I quite like this quote from a former graduates from a former graduate of ours, where she said, the Center for Gender Studies bridges academia and activism combines feminist theory with practice challenges the idea of knowledge production and encourages critical thinking all the while creating a safe, open and kind space. So the spirit in that quote I think really describes the, you know, the, the, the culture that animates our center as a whole and that links our diverse programs together. So each of our programs offer something specific as I mentioned, but now I want to talk to you about their commonalities and what it means to be a member of the Center for Gender Studies rather than just a student enrolled on one of our degree programs. So if I break down the quote that I shared the student had said that cgs bridges academia and activism and combines feminist theory and practice. So what does this mean and how do we achieve this. These cgs programs and curricula will introduce you to alternative feminisms. So to decolonial intersectional and transnational feminisms that really can help us to imagine how to cultivate solidarity with all who are exploited and oppressed. And that don't dissolve the experiences of people inhabiting diverse parts of the world into one another, but embrace and attempt to learn from these differences. So if you're taking a critical approach to knowledge production. So as the strength and particularity derives from combining traditional academic disciplines with a focus on the study of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. In line with this at cgs, you will not only learn gender and queer theory, but you will learn about these bodies of knowledge in relation to these geographic regions. And in the end, you will think about what it means to adopt a decolonial approach to knowledge acquisition and production when it comes to gender and sexuality. So really looking beyond the Western canon for theories and methodologies. You learn then to contextualize the region, country, city and community whose gendered relations you are analyzing. You learn to approach gender not in isolation but intersectionally examining the numerous other dynamics that intersect with it, and that shape it and which it shapes. cgs is also a place for taking people seriously on their own terms for listening to what they say about themselves and their lives, and for thinking critically about encountering the silencing of people in the non Western world within the academy more broadly. We look at ourselves on looking into what activists are doing on the ground in the regions we study for example, you know when we're studying feminist movements in different contexts, and really more than just learning to represent particular parts of the world. At cgs we encourage you to treat Asia Africa and the Middle East as zones of theoretical production as well. So as spaces that can help us theorize about the world we live in. The study of gender and feminist theory we're also we're committed to approaching queerness as a mode of critique. So the term queer as it was originally reimagined is meant to signify an oppositional stance to whatever is considered normative at a given point in time. And so political orientation and an action, and to queer or to engage in queering as it relates to knowledge production is to radically question established assumptions, and the ways of thinking that we take for granted. And that's a key part of what we do here at cgs. Lastly, the quote I shared with you mentioned cgs is a space for cultivating community. We like to think of ourselves as a brave space which is a term that I borrow from from a from a number of feminist activists. So it's space for questioning for rethinking for moving beyond the taken for granted and leading into unknown territory with people who have committed to cultivating inclusivity to calling each other in rather than out to educating one another, and to approaching difficult topics with respect and sensitivity for one another. So we try to do this, not only in our classrooms, but through the public seminars we organize, which provide platforms, not only for academics, doing important work around questions of gender and sexuality, but to activists and artists as well. We try to maintain our brave space by also offering our students. I'm just admitting someone from the meeting. And we try to maintain a brief space by offering our students the opportunity to cultivate their own feminist praxis outside the classroom. So inviting them to take the lead and organizing their own radical self care events, for example, and offering them the space and the funding needed to do that. In terms of career opportunities after completing such a degree gender studies is widely regarded by a range of employers as an excellent training, excellent training space. So really equipping holders of the degree with a range of relevant employable skills. And I mean, you can, you know, the knowledge that you gain on such degrees can be applied to work in public policy, the NGO sector think tanks research organizations, journalism and the media more broadly the cultural sphere, government ministries and programs, advocacy, you know, in the end, all aspects of our life are touched by gender, and, you know, gender is something that needs to be factored in when we're thinking about politics when we're thinking about the economy when we're thinking about a variety of spheres and so there are multiple ways in which you can imagine these types of degrees essentially being relevant to a variety of fields. Yeah, so I'll leave it there and open it up to questions. Amazing. Thank you so much, Sophie. Like I've said before, if you have any questions, whether it be about the program life and life as a loss in general, or sort of about the admissions process. It's great to put it in the chat box, or if you'd like to raise your hand and unmute yourself to ask the question. We've got one person that's raised their hand. So I'd like to ask you if you want to ask your question. Hello, hi. Yeah, I was wondering about requirements, because I come from an art background, and I've never done any theory based courses. So I'm just wondering how that would work. Yeah, so we have, you know, our students come from a, you know, a variety of backgrounds in terms of what they've studied or what they've worked in we have a lot of people have no background in the humanities and social sciences who come into these programs, and we factor that into how we teach so we don't usually assume knowledge on the part of our students in gender studies or in critical theory. What I would say is in terms of applying. We really want to focus your energy on that personal statement. So really telling us why this program is the right fit for you, really personalizing it so taking the personal and personal statement seriously you know why is this the right fit for you. What are the courses that excite you what do you imagine you can get out of them, you know be specific who do you want to study under who you're looking forward to getting to know as a lecturer, and what also do you bring to this program right in terms of your arts background, and the work that you've you've done, or the things that you've studied that can really allow you to thrive. And to contribute to these degrees if that makes sense so it's really just about making the case rather than, you know, you know, sort of ticking boxes just really making the case in your personal statement for why this is the right program for you, and not being kind of a general about, I'm interested in gender studies but really telling us why you're interested in this gender studies program. Thank you that's really helpful. We've had a question come in, and the chat box that says roughly how much time is spent on campus versus self study for the full time and part time, two and three year programs. So it's somewhat of a difficult question to answer, given that we're currently in a blended learning environment because of COVID. I mean I would say that on a, you know, part people on part time degrees take less courses per term than people on full time degrees right so people on full time degrees will have a number of contact hours with lectures during the week so sometimes you have people taking three courses a term sometimes you have people taking five courses a term. So there is a lot of time spent for people in full time degrees in lectures or in tutorials or in seminars, less so for part time students who tend to take one to two classes a term for example. In terms of being on campus. Again, somewhat difficult to answer right now. It depends how the pandemic goes along right now all of our lectures are online, large seminars are online, but smaller classes and tutorials have been in many cases running on campus. So, you know, yeah, so I can't really say much more about that but I can just say that you do have I will be taking a lot of classes. You know your classes can be in the morning or they can be around. There are classes that run from five to 7pm. Not much not later than that though. I actually don't know what the limit for the personal statement is Amani do you know. Yeah, so it's 1000 words is the limit. I believe there's a sort of guide on our website. Let me see if I can find it for you about what we look for in a personal statement. Let me see if I can send you the link for that. I've just popped that in there so it's no more than 1000 words and in general we look for sort of the reasons why you're interested in the program and then sort of highlight your relevant experience and suitability for the program as well as mentioned if you've got any future plans as to what you want to use your degree for in the future and what career you want to go into then I would suggest including that as well. Yeah, that's a really good point. I think talking about what you want to do with this experience and this degree. If you do have any more questions feel free to pop them in the chat box or raise your hand if you'd like to unmute yourself as well. Yep. Okay, so I had a question because I'm, I'm applying for a session next year, hopefully fall and I'm also an applicant for the shoving scholarships. So I was wondering. Currently I'm having an issue with my passport. I mean I just need to renew it. But if I have to if I attach my passport the photocopy. It will expire next year February. However, I'll get it renewed this year. So will that be a problem like if I attach the one with the expiring date. The expiring date is next year. That should be fine if you're making an application now you can put in your, your passport that's expiring in February and then once you do receive your new one. All you have to do is just email it to our admissions office a scan of it, and they can just update that in your file. In terms of the question in the chat are cohort. I don't, to my knowledge I don't think we have a cap on how many we admit but our cohort is usually around 50 students. That's usually what we're the numbers that we we we get in gender studies in terms of how many we end up with. But how many we admit will depend on how many people apply and the quality of those applications in the end. Yes, across all degrees and gender studies. But again this is just an average of the numbers we've had in the last couple of years rather than a limit. We have a lot of international students it's a real mix I'd say between between home and international but we get a significant number of international students. So just a personal statement. I would recommend keeping it to 1000 words, just for our, it's just our guidelines that our admissions team have set. So if you are able to just get it down to 1000 words, then that's good. I had another question. How much time do we get to complete the dissertation. So that's a bit of time so you would start working on your dissertation in term three. That's around April and then it's it's due in September. So the entirety of term three, and then the summer, really. Okay. So till fall till till September, September eighth usually is around the deadline. But yeah I guess fall. Yeah.  So if we can't any more questions. We can probably wrap up the session I just want to say if you have any sort of admissions questions before applying. Oh we do have one more question that's coming. Do you need to have a degree in gender studies in order to apply for a PhD. No you don't. Of course it works in your favor to have a degree in gender studies, but it's not a requirement. And I wanted to ask another question was, let's say for instance if a student gets selected for disheveling scholarships. And at the same time they've also applied to us for to start the session in the next year. So how soon do you let the student know if they're if they're selected or not for the program. Particularly. But what I can do is, I will put my email in the chat box if you want to send me the just an email about it I can follow it up for you and get back to you with a response. Should I send my email. I put my email in if you want to send me an email about the two minutes scholarship then I will follow up and get back to you regarding that. Thank you so much. No problem. So for references references especially for PhD applications should be academic but they should also be academic for masters I'd say if you've been working for a while then and for it's for masters and you know maybe one professional one academic dissertation topics to be honest is very, very, very broad. So I'm, I hesitate to give an example, because I feel like that then, you know, makes it seem narrower than it is but, you know, we have had students, you know, work on and your dissertation we've had students write more experimental dissertations we've had students write dissertations based on their own experiences and putting that in conversation with theory. We've had interview based dissertations so really you know things on activism in a particular region, really a variety of variety of topics. Okay, I think if there are no more questions then. Oh, we do have a question that says come in. Matt, do you want to unmute yourself. Sorry. But I was wondering, so I, if I understood correctly, we can apply to two different programs at the same time right like put a preference and then a second preference. Is that correct. Yes, you can't have two separate applications in the same academic year but what you can do is put down your first choice program and your second choice program. And so you'd only be considered for your second choice if your first choice is unsuccessful. And can those two options be in two different departments. And if so, is the personal statement one for both or will it be one for each. Yeah, so you can put in so your first choice and your second choice can be from two different departments. I would write your personal statement for your first choice program. And if you are then going to be considered for your second choice program what it would be is that our admissions team would likely contact you to ask for a personal statement, or a source supporting statement for your second choice program. Okay, thank you so much. In terms of the questions in the chat. Yes, the the ages of our students do vary so we do get students who are fresh out of their undergrad we do have students who've been working for you know a number of years. We have mature students as well so it does definitely vary for the, you know I think money for the question on decisions that's. Yeah, so our team usually look for a sort of complete application they look to make a decision within around four weeks. But if there are missing parts of your application and they will get in contact with you for you to supply those pieces of information that are missing in your application and then make a decision on that. And in terms of Jitna's question. Yes, you can take language courses as part of your optional credits. You should be able to be the optional credits on the course pages yes. Just keep in mind that not all the courses listed there will necessarily be on offer. Following on from that all the optional modules for the ones that are sort of part of the department that you're in will be on the page but there is also another link that takes you to the open option modules. So if it's part of your course structure, you're able to take modules from other departments, and those will be listed and they're all on a PDF and there will be a link on the structure page that will take you to that as well. So if there's an optional module that you want to take that's not given as an option for your degree, you can speak to your program convener and they can, they can approve it for you basically if they feel like they understand the reason why you want to take that class so don't, don't worry too much if there's a module you really want to take that's not listed there. Often they're not we'd approve that sort of thing. I just wanted to ask before we sort of wrap up if you have any admissions questions. Before you make your application or while you're making your application. You can contact study at sas.ac.uk. And I've just put that in the chat and they will be able to get back to absorb the application process if you do have any questions on that. I think we can wrap up the session if there are no more questions. Like I've said before, if you want to contact study at sas or any academics as well if you have any questions regarding specific modules that they're the convener's on their details are all listed on the website. I want to say a big thank you to Sophie for the session today it's really insightful and I hope you will have a lovely rest of your day. I'm really very much hoping to see some of your applications come in and have a great day. Thanks so much. Thank you.