Good evening everyone. My name is Adrienne Martins. I'm the Chief Communications and Intergovernmental Relations Officer for the City of Santa Rosa. Thank you for taking time to be here with us tonight. This meeting is to provide you with more information on the settlement funds the city has received from PG&E. The funds are a result of the claim the city filed with PG&E to recoup the city's damages and costs from the 2017 wildfires. So tonight you will have a chance to ask more questions about the settlement funds as well as our status and recovery and rebuilding. And also equally important to provide your input on how you think the Santa Rosa City Council should prioritize use of the funds. So for the agenda this evening I am going to go through a few housekeeping items. I will introduce our panelists and then I'm going to turn it over for the background presentation that will provide more information on the settlement funds. We'll provide a status update on our recovery and rebuilding projects, including the ones that remain unfunded. And we'll also give a quick overview of the additional unmet needs that have been identified in Santa Rosa. So for housekeeping items, as community members do join this meeting, you will be participating as an attendee. Your microphone and your camera are both off and muted. Only today's panelists will be viewed during the meeting. If you are calling in from a telephone for privacy concerns, the host will be renaming your viewable phone number to citizen and only the last four digits will show on the screen. Once our presentation of the background information concludes, we will open for Q&A and for input. At that time I will ask you to raise your hand and zoom. And our zoom host who I will introduce in just a moment will move one by one down the list of attendees with their hands raised. And once you have asked your question and shared your input, the zoom host will lower your hand. So now I'll introduce our staff that are participating this evening. So first we have Alan Alton, our interim chief financial officer from our finance department. Alan will be providing the background presentation. Then we have our assistant city manager and director of transportation and public works, Jason Nutt.  And then from our housing and community services department, we have our director Dave Guine. And then our two hosts who are assisting us tonight, our zoom host, our Tricia Mason, who will coordinate the question and answer part and public input part of the meeting. And then we have Elisa Rawson who is taking all of the notes and collecting the input that is provided tonight. So without further ado, I will turn it over to Alan to begin his presentation. And I will now host just a moment to do that transition. Thanks Adrian. All right, so welcome everybody who is here. This is our first community meeting. And a kickoff of our collecting public input on the use of our settlement money from PG&E. So the next slide please. So as you know, the, the city filed a claim with the, with PG&E, and we were awarded $95 million of settlement funds relating to the 2017 fire. We've set that money aside. So that's what we use for really any purpose. You can go on to the next slide please. There are no restrictions and, and really above all the city council wants to hear from the community on how to use it. So again, with no restrictions that that leaves a lot open, but clearly building up our fire resiliency is a direct nexus to the why we receive the funds. And there are a number of unmet needs that are in that area. And so the next slide we'll get into those. And one more please. So, so there's a number of projects that are currently unfunded we, they were either applied for and denied by FEMA, or still in the appeal process with FEMA. And just to set context on that, FEMA has a number of rules that they go by when we actually start setting up projects to have them approve. You know, and this isn't a knock on them, but they are very good at responding to hurricanes or floods. But wild, wildland urban fires they are not, and it's new to them. So they, they're, they're trying to adapt rules to, to this and, and we struggled with it with this fire hopefully in the future they'll be able to change their, their rules but right now we're dealing with what, with what we with their current rules and we were denied some projects the fire station, five is one that's currently on our second appeal. The idea is to move the fire station to a different area that would be more hardened against and, and safe I guess against forest fires in the area and yet still provide protection to the areas where the old fire station five was that we did receive some insurance money on this. But the remainder of the cost, we're estimating around $14.5 million to rebuild. Next slide. There were a number of roads that were damaged during the debris mission, and those were denied by FEMA. So we're looking at a total of about $24 million for those. Excellent. Also we have, we had fire damage or sidewalk repairs that needed. We're estimating that right now at about 4.1 million. Again, these are, these are estimates. But it gives you kind of an idea of the cost magnitude that we're looking at for each of these. Excellent. Also, there are hazardous trees and we're looking at the whole tree removal and mission, and we're estimating around $5.1 million to either do that or support that program. So for the next one, please. So those are some examples of very specific areas within the fire rebuild or projects within the fire rebuild that we can address. Currently do not have funding sources for them other than the PG&E funds. So those are there for your information. But there are a number of other ones. There are areas within the community that are outside of the burn zone that would greatly benefit from this type of funding. Vegetation management and fuel reduction is one of them. Evacuation routes and improvements in the way is another one in and on down the line. And there's also a more community base. The way that that we look at this is that, yes, there was a very direct tie to the, to the burn areas that should be addressed but the fire affected the community as a whole. So we're looking for that type of input. And so, such as using some money to jumpstart affordable housing or, or other housing opportunities. And looking at infrastructure throughout the city with generators and dealing with the emergencies that we have now. The SPS is our becoming a regular event and to be able to have the generators to be able to make a quick transition when the power goes off is an important thing. We're looking at, there's the possibility of supporting businesses and workforce recovery through business loans or grant programs. There are community assets that are needed such as libraries and, and community centers. There are homeless services, road repairs that are outside of the recovery area and park improvements and broadband internet all of those types of things are meeting a number of community needs as as well as the fire area needs. Nothing that is that's provided here is, you know, set in stone, all of these categories or types of projects are just there that their ideas they give the council a direction of which to go so our job in here is to answer as many questions as we can have me fumble through some slides. And then collect all the information that we can to bring back to the council so we, we have two meetings coming up that will do that we have a long term financial policy and audit subcommittee we meet there on Thursday, October 8, where we will present. This information will have the digital survey results by then we will have finished all of our community meetings. So we'll be able to provide that information to the subcommittee, the subcommittee is made up of three council members. They are public meetings. And then on the 27 will be in front of the full council with probably a more detailed report out on all of this information. So with that the next slide. I said, we need input. And that's why we're all here. So that I think I'm ready to turn that back over to Adrian. Thanks Alan. And so Alan did mention a digital survey so I'll just say about that. In addition to this community meeting and two others that we have planned for next week. We are running a digital survey to collect input from the community. And I'll share that URL for that at the end. So I think we all gave staff the direction to go out and collect input. They did note that it was really important to them that we did hear that they were able to hear directly from our fire survivor community, especially one of the reasons we set up tonight's meeting and we've been doing special targeted outreach to make sure we we do reach our fire survivors specifically in addition to all of the community. So I'll just note that before we open it up for Q&A and input. And I'm going to give Trisha a chance now to get us transitioned into that portion of the meeting. But this is a time to ask any questions we've asked all the panelists that are here to participate tonight should should there be questions for their areas. And this is also a time to voice your input and how you feel council should prioritize funding. You know, talk about specific projects or ideas that you have. And again, we have one of our zoom co host Lisa taking notes on everything that you'll be sharing with us so that we can compile those into our report for council. All right, so Trisha I'll let you take it from here. The next speaker will be Ann Barber. I'm going to allow you to speak please unmute your microphone and identify yourself for public record. My name is Annie Barber and I am the vice president of coffee strong. A couple things to say real quick. I'll try to be as quick as possible. We did our own survey at one point we for Coffee Park, and we came up with the hopper corridor, needing to be done road slurries. There's a creek that needs to be taken care of sidewalks and curbs. I think those were the four major was one more in there. I have no pro I understand that the city is in a deep hole, and that they need to use some of this money and I really don't personally have an issue with that. As long as we can make sure that we have as much firehardiness as we can, and that we can at least touch, touch based on some of the things that each community meaning fountain grow us hidden valley needs. The question I would have would be to Paul Lowenthal, and I would like to know what he feels like needs to be done within the next, say 24 months to make us a more more adept at handling these fires and, and how much resources we need for that. So the question I'm sure is you and a number of other members from coffee strong or aware, we did just complete the community wildfire protection plan. That was a project that fire marshal moon had initiated. We're lucky that that was a grant that we did receive funding for, and we were able to bring that back to council and get that approved last month. The goal now is to start implementing a lot of the activities that have been identified in the plan. We're looking very closely at the priorities and the scope different scopes of work that are consultants that I put the plan together identified. Right now, a couple of the key elements that we're looking at are referred to as hardening our evacuation routes so looking at fuel reduction programs throughout multiple large evacuation routes, both in and outside the wildlife interface. We're looking at vegetation management projects within our wildland urban interface, both in open space and on private property, where people can work on mitigating their threat and risk of wildfire around their immediate residents and the biggest and largest most complex issue is going to be actually mitigating and reducing fuels both in the city limits and outside the city limits and the plan identifies a number of what are referred to as compartments and the compartments are located across the city. And so moving forward on implementing those different compartment fuel reduction programs is also going to be a critical element. Through the plan we identified the biggest and largest threat to our community right now is the unburned fuels between the nuns and the tubs. So kind of it would be to the north and northeast of rink and valley and skyhawk. So that's going to be an area that we're going to look very closely at for kind of priorities for fuel reduction. Because that is right now what we identify as the, the one of the greatest threats to our community right now. So there's a lot of work that's to be done. So Chief Moon and myself will be presenting to the public safety committee meeting tomorrow on our vision of a five year plan. And that will outline kind of what we see as the needs moving forward over the at least the next five years. That's the dirt the life of the community wildfire protection plan that we have right now. And hopefully in five years we'll be able to have knocked out as many of the kind of 48 actionable items that were identified for the community and kind of go from there. So that's a really long answer but there's there's a lot of work that needs to be done. The kind of the biggest takeaway that we've come that's come from this that we want to make sure our community knows is that we're we have not just been sitting back and waiting for these funds to see how they're going to play out. The city has for the last number of years, both before and primarily after the Tubbs fire put together multiple grant applications at both the state and federal level. And believe it or not, the only grant that we've actually received in the last four or five years was in 2015 was for the development of a educational program that we were awarded in 2016 and rolled out some vegetation management education before the 17 fires. Since the 17 fires the only grant that we've had approved is the development of the community wildfire protection plan. We've been unsuccessful at both the state and federal level for for funds to jumpstart a program here locally. It's a little disappointing. You would think that Santa Rosa being kind of the home of the largest what the most destructive wildfire at this of the state at the time would have been a prime recipient format. But we have not had much luck, regardless, even as we're having these community meetings, we did just submit for additional notice of interests for both federal and state funding for some of the programs that we just discussed. So are you are we still are you needing some of this money to fortify our situation. Yeah, what we've learned through the grant process is that it's definitely not a guarantee that's that is that is our takeaway is that although we do continue to apply for grants. They're not a guarantee. And we've now waited a number of years to try and push a program forward and we're to the point now where we can't continue to wait the plan has been approved and the plan is only good for five years. Well, like I said, at the same time as we're, you know, efforts going into figure out how to disperse these funds, we're going to continue to apply for for grants but we need money to get to get going. And this could be a collective thing between the city and the county, correct. For fuel reduction. Yeah, for the finances coming from both sections to say yes so yes so the county is also determining how to spend their money correct. So the work that we've identified in our plan that would rely on county cooperation so there will be work that needs to be done, both through our community wildfire protection plan and the work that we need to be done. The county's also in the middle of putting together their community wildfire protection plan, and they will see some of the things the same things we've seen so there's going to be some a need for some shared shared costs for some of those areas that impact both the city and county. Great. Thank you very much. Jeff, I'm going, you're going to be the next speaker followed by Steve, please unmute your microphone and identify yourself for public record. Yeah, my name is Jeff O'Crecky, living coffee park of the founder of coffee strong. Thank you guys for taking this, taking your time to hear us out and ask us our opinions that actually means a lot to be involved in a process like this. So to kind of piggyback off of what any had said the things that were important to us and important to our community. We did receive hundreds of responses to the survey that we put out and it was a part of the communication we sent into council members and to city staff. I'm sure you could probably dig that up word for word if you if you guys wanted to but some of the major things that we wanted to do where we're hopper corridor, redo that miscellaneous street repairs. We did because of the burns cars and even without the burn scars, the PCI status of those it's fairly low over in coffee park and then you put burns cars on top of it, and it, it, it not only looks horrible but it's not great condition either. So, want to do the miscellaneous curb repair from wherever FEMA or whoever else drove over something and broke it. Possibly, we had discussions about some sort of reimbursement process for those that did want to wait is three years now, but took money out of their out of their insurance to repair their sidewalks and streets for stuff that was already damaged. And also, Piner Creek mitigation. It's pretty bad pretty overgrown. We would like to see some of that, you know, reduced down as it's the closest, you know, I guess would be kind of fuels to us but it borders the entire east side of our of our neighborhood. So, if we could get something like that going that'd be great. You know, I'm all for the evac routes and the tree mitigation and take out the trees and the vegetation management. I think that's all great stuff. But my overarching concern is, you know, in these in this presentation that we just had was I appreciate is, you know, safer and more resilient community, but to get safer from something you have to start at a net zero.  You got to get to a net zero and then move forward to make it safer and make it whole and that's what I would copy strong and myself want us to do is try to fix these things that are still outstanding and also use the funds to help make us safer and stronger going forward. Okay, Steve, I'm giving allowing you to talk please unmute your microphone and identify yourself for public record. Hi, my name is Steve wrong. I am current the current president of coffee strong and been lived in Coffee Park for off non for 20 years. My main purpose for speaking today is just to recognize that. However, there's a lot of things in the city that needs to be funded. Everything from homelessness to mental illness to wildfire hardening. I feel like the unmet that these funds are for the unmet needs due to the fire, and that I would like to see those funds be used for those issues or those needs. I think that was the first before we spend it on the other items. I think that there's sufficient money to provide. As Jeff said, you know, Pioneer Creek is a big issue and could be potentially be a problem. The hopper corridor with the sidewalks and trees that we used to have the sidewalk and curb replacement. But, you know, as being a member of this organization, you know, in the wonderful community that we have is that, you know, we all gave, you know, we've, we've received monies through grants, we've helped get our park built, we've helped raise money, and we just want to be whole. And to be whole. We just need the city to finish that last, last mile. And I think that we're out of the overall funds I put some budgets together. You know, with 1422 coffee park homes. You know, I, I looked at the budgets of what it would take to repair those things and it feels like, you know, coffee park is only 10% of the overall money. And if we could get whole, you know, those other funds could be used for the, the amazing effort that all the city workers have to figure out to spend that money. Everything from general fund, like I said, the city expenses. So, I just wanted to speak my mind as far as that. That's all I got. Thank you, Steve. At this time, if you have any questions or comments, please raise your hand. I am seeing no hands raised at this time. Okay. Brian, I'm going to allow you to talk please unmute your microphone and identify yourself for public record. I just got a microphone. Can you hear me. Yes, I can hear you. Thank you. I'm Brian Bouchon. I'm a homeowner stakeholder here in coffee park. I've been working on a few projects. And the only one I'm really going to discuss is the sidewalk on San Miguel. I'd work with Jason nut and he put me in touch with Rob sprinkle on that. And I appreciate that Jason thank you. Last year, we're able to do the north side of San Miguel and fix those berms and get that safe for the students to travel to Schaefer school. The south side where everyone actually walks is currently still undone. They have firms that have been pushed by various trucks, FEMA trucks and all that, making it unsafe on the south side for kids and pedestrians of all sorts to walk to school, walk down to the school to use the fields there. I'd like to see maybe a sidewalk put in over there and over. I know the creek was talked about the creek there is a mess on that south side. If we can turn that right where passes over the creek into a small pedestrian bridge for a little more safety. One example is I watched elderly gentlemen walking across that area, which the walkway is about a foot and a half to walk. And one of the larger trucks mirror hit them in the back of the head. So it's really not a safe area for pedestrians much less our children walking to school. Does that be a good thing I think to get addressed as well as fixing up a coffee creek. It looks horrible. And Paul you just talked about fuel reduction. Well, that's a mess of weeds it's not being addressed and burn trees all the way down. I don't really have anything else, but thank you for your time today. And thank you for putting this on. Thank you, Brian. At this time I see no hands raised. So if you have any last questions or comments, please raise your hand. If not, I will turn that back over to Adrian. This time there's no hands raised. Well, I want to thank everyone for taking time tonight to tune in and thank you to our panelists for being present and participating for questions. I do want to actually bring up the survey link screen if we could Trisha just so we have that posted for everyone to see. So this is actually a URL to our project information page so you can get more background information on the settlement funds. The presentation that Alan provided is also available on that website and on this website you can access the survey. I encourage all of you to take it if you haven't please share it with your neighbors and others so that they can also take it to you have until a through October 4 to complete the survey and after that we'll be closing it so we can spend time compiling all of the results and putting the data together into a report for council. I also want to mention those two upcoming public meetings where city council members will be considering all of the input received the first again was on October 8 that's the long term financial policy and audit council subcommittee meeting and then the October 27 council meeting and information on both of those meetings is also posted on that website. And that's all I have so I just want to thank everyone again for joining us and we will have the information posted sometime in October all of the survey data once it's made public so you can do that as well. Thank you for your time. Okay. I'm sorry. One person is raising their hand now. All right. I will allow you to talk and if you could unmute your microphone. I just wanted to say that it is coffee strong we really appreciate the fact that you made sure that we knew about this meeting. Almost embarrassed that nobody else took an interest. But if there's any meetings in the future we still would like to hear from you and we appreciate all of your time that you're putting into this. Thank you. No problem. And thank you for that comment. And just to say, because there isn't representation here tonight doesn't mean. And people haven't participated in the survey we are actually seeing really good participation. And we have a few thousand survey responses. And so they and certainly coffee park and residents are represented in that. So an agent now Pamela has raised her hand. Okay. So I will allow you to talk Pamela if he could unmute your microphone and identify yourself for public record. My name is Pamela and health some and I'm from coffee park. And I, I apologize because I had to listen to this at the same time as my child's back to school meeting, which was also at six o'clock. Of course that's very important. So I hope it's being I see that it's being recorded and I would like to review it. But maybe I'm being repetitive of someone else's comment. I don't know, but I just want to urge our city to just do everything in its power with these funds that we don't burn down again. I just think that's the bottom line for me. We just cannot burn down again. So if that means beefing up our fire, fire force, if that means every bit of fire. We just have to make sure that there's enough mitigation by taking down weeds or, you know, making sure there's enough water, whatever, whatever it is. We just have to make it so our, it's not constantly at threat of being burned down. As simple as that. Thank you Pamela. Any other hands Trisha. No, at this time there are no more hands. I want to thank Pamela for reminding me we are recording this meeting and it will be made available on that website URL up on the screen. Probably in the next day. So that others can do it if they weren't able to catch the whole thing or miss tonight's meeting. All right, so if there are no more hands, we will adjourn the meeting. Thank you everybody. Good night.


Hello, I am Dr. Devananda, Head of the Department of Cardiac Surgery at Manipal Hospitals. I have been practicing cardiac surgery for the last 18 years. The success of mitral valve repair depends on two things. One, timing of surgery and expertise of the treating team. Now, timing of surgery, yes, when I am looking from the repair point of view, it's better to intervene little early before the ventricles start disfunctioning or the mitral valve pathology progresses from bad to worse. The repairability chances will become less if the valve itself gets damaged more and more. So, it's better to intervene little early compared to when I plan for a replacement. Number two, the experience of the team. Now, larger team who are dealing with these repairs in all age groups probably have better outcome because we do understand how these repairs work, what are the different approaches we need to follow, what suits a particular patient the best and the overall expertise of the team in terms of preoperative evaluation, preoperative techniques and postoperative care. This certainly would give a better result. So, I think centres with lots of experience with mitral valve probably are best suited for repair, especially as the repair becomes more and more complicated.


Hi guys, so today I want to do a video of my advice from nurses to doctors, or my advice as a nurse to doctors, because I think it's important to understand all perspectives of the healthcare realm, and just like I like to talk to CNAs about how I can be a better nurse or talk to doctors about how I can be a better nurse, I also think that it's great for nurses to give advice to doctors, so if you're a doctor watching this video or a future doctor or whatever, I hope you enjoy this little tidbit of advice. My favorite thing that doctors do for nurses is when they are open to questions and open to educating nurses, and I think that sometimes doctors get frustrated doing this because they've done it for so long, and so maybe they get burnt out on it, but I love love love when I can go to a physician and I say, hey, why is it that when you're sodium is this, and then you redraw your labs because you're trying to correct your sodium and it's this, but it over corrected too much, why do we go backwards, why don't we just stay at where we're at, and then the physician, the renal doctor, whoever breaks it all down and writes it out and explains it, and I'm like, oh my gosh, that makes so much sense, now I know, now I'm a better nurse to my patients, I'm a better nurse to my co-workers, and I'm not going to be asking you that question again because now I know. So I love when doctors educate their nurses and are open to when they ask questions and will explain things. A lot of times you just go up to doctor and you say, hey, I've got this, this, and this going on, and they say, okay, we'll order this, and not all the time are they maybe explaining their thought process behind why they're doing that, so I think it's awesome when doctors do. My second piece of advice to doctors is to be respectful, and this should go without being said, but I think sometimes it gets lost and forgotten. A lot of times doctors have this higher power mentality, like I'm above everyone, and although your education is above everyone, we really rely on the whole healthcare team to really make a difference in our patients' care, and it takes a village, it takes a group of people, it takes a team to do everything that is needed in the healthcare world, and so even if your education is higher, still be respectful to those who would be considered beneath or below you and look at them more as team members, co-workers, rather than like, I'm in charge, I'm the boss, I'm above you. My last piece of advice to doctors is to be social. I don't know, this is kind of a weird thing, but I love that when I can get to know my doctors that I work with, physicians that I work with, and not necessarily like on a personal level, because depending on where you're at, maybe that's not accepted, I don't know, but I love when I can say like, hey how's your family doing, or hey how was your weekend, and we can kind of just generally talk briefly, even if it's not like, I'm not saying take 20 minutes with every single nurse or every single person and socialize, but it's nice when your unit or the the people that you work with can feel more like close friends and co-workers rather than just like, this is all business. I hope you guys enjoy that advice. I'm sure that lots of nurses have more advice down below, so I wanted to keep this short and sweet, and I wanted to open up to all other people. If you have any advice for doctors, leave it down below. Obviously keep it very respectful, and I hope this was helpful if it is or not, I don't know, whatever, but give this video a thumbs up regardless, and make sure you subscribe to my channel, and I'll see you guys next time. Bye!


I'm sure you recognize this. A client says to you, we want to become more customer-centered. We want to work in a different way. We want to put the customer at it, the heart of everything you do. And then the next day, they just go back to business as usual, doing the things that they've always been doing. And then that's a big challenge for us who are trying to change companies, change organizations for the better. So how do you help people to open up their minds, their time, their resources to actually do stuff differently? That's a question that I got from Margo and here's my take. I'm really inspired by the idea of limelight thinking introduced by Dave Gray. And from what I understand from that, in order to change people's behavior, you need to, that's built upon certain beliefs, beliefs that you've built up throughout your life and you build up those beliefs through experiences that you go through. And yeah, it takes your whole life. So in order to change behavior, you need to change beliefs. And in order to change beliefs, you need to let people go through experiences. What does this mean for us as a service design community? Well, it's a huge opportunity because you can think of experiences through experiments that allow people to do different things and change. They're thinking in a safe environment. So what does this mean? Let me give you a practical example that I hope a lot of you already know. The Marshmallow Challenge. If you want to get somebody to see the value of prototyping in 18 minutes through the Marshmallow Challenge, if you let them do the Marshmallow Challenge and even if they are not participating but just watching and seeing what happens, they have gone through an experience and after these 18 minutes, their mind at least has changed about what this mean and what this can do. So I think we as service designers are really good at coming up with small activities in a small, in a safe space that allow people to experience new things. Those new things, those experiences change beliefs and that changes behavior. So that's the way I think we can actually change organizations. Is it a fast route? No, it takes time, but it takes time to develop new belief systems. If you want to know how to create so these experiments because I think we're really good at it, in this video, I talk about some of the ideas and some of the ways you can actually come up with these experiments that help you to change people and change organizations. So click this video and I'll see you over there.


Actor Scalice Johansson has joined the criticism of the body behind the Gordon Globe Award over how it plans to tackle discrimination. Gordon Globe organizes the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. HFPA has been accused of a lack of diversity and shuddery workings. Earlier this week the body voted in reforms to widen its membership. But Ms Johansson is among stars and industry figures who say it still needs fundamental reform. The Gordon Globes are second only to the Oscars in terms of profile. But organizers have been accused of discriminatory practices, except in freebies and other ethical lapses. In February an expose in the Los Angeles Times revealed there were no black people among the organization's 87 members who vote for the awards. This week the HFPA outlined a package of reforms to how it works in a bid to make the organization more inclusive.


On the ST stand here at Embedded World, my guest now is Karim Ramsey and we're looking at ST innovation in the world of positioning chips. I think your team's got something new. Yes, a lot of our customers are our geniuses positioning chips, typically used for automated applications. Now we are here with the new generation, third generation, with that bring more accuracy and reduced power consumption. So are we talking about purely automotive applications here? Not at all. The ZO Leaf 3 module is designed with focus on PVT provisioning velocity and timing to serve the mass market. Actually what is interesting is that module and associated software and hardware is designed to be used as just about any application that need that data positioning like drone, good tracking, tooling, insurance in the application that needs precise positioning. But do I need to be an expert on satellites to get this support? Not at all. Our module is used only to facilitate the design and you are not obligated to be an expert on satellites. Now Karim in your demo here, you can illustrate the extraordinary constellation of international satellites that customers have access to. Let's have a look. Customers have access to all constellations available on the world. We can have here GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, Baidu and Japanese concentration because of this. Customers have the possibility also to flash the memory through our TZU suite applications. Easy access to our update firmware and also flexibility due to our GNSS library. Customer will find out all our best in class software in our st.com. st.com forward slash GNSS modules. There you go. Or just follow the description in this YouTube link. Thank you very much indeed Karim.


Good morning everyone. My name is Akon Aguengong and I'm the host of this program today. Let me take this opportunity to thank Channel 17 for hosting this show today and joining me today is Abram Akenya Wollich. Akenya Wollich is a co-founder of the People Coalition for Civil Action, PCCA, and also the signatory to the PCCA declaration that happened this year. A Wollich is a former director of the Saad Institute, the only highly ranked think tank in South Sudan, and he's also a former coordinator of the South Sudan National Dialogue secretariat. He is also a former head of the secretariat for the government negotiation team in Rome, when the government delegation was negotiating with some rebel groups, and he's also a former board member of the South Sudan National Revenue Authority. Also in his credential he is also a former duke director for policy planning at South Sudan Ministry of Defense, and he's also a former chairman of the Sudanese community in Vermont, our community here in Vermont, and he's a founding board member of the Association of African Living in Vermont, also a non-profit organization here in Wellington, Vermont. And the president of Sudan Development Foundation is a non-profit organization that does offer services in South Sudan, and he's also a former president of Aliyab community here in the United States, so a lot of leadership experience. Abram is here to brief the Burman audience, American audience, and audience around the world about the situation in South Sudan, and also about his organization that he has founded, the People's Coalition for Civilation, and the declaration that they have met recently. So, Mr. Awolec, welcome to the show, and the floor is yours. Thank you so much, brother Akal, for an introduction. Just one quick clarification. Obviously, I was a deputy coordinator for the South Sudan National Dialogue Secretariat. Dr. Lawlai Chweg was the coordinator. I am delighted to be here to brief the people of Vermont on matters related to South Sudan. It has been now a practice when I come here. I usually love to brief the people of Vermont on what is going on in South Sudan. And if the people in Vermont can remember, when we came here in 2001, formerly as Lost Boys, we told the story of what was going on in the Sudan. The civil war that took place, that led to massive displacement of people, particularly the young and accompanied minors, that later on became the Lost Boys. That civil war was the longest ongoing civil war in Africa at the time. And we were resettled here by the United States after we have spent considerable number of years, over a decade, in refugee camps. And when we came, we were resettled across the United States. And we told our story of the horrific events that were happening in the Sudan at the time. And based on that story that we told, the American people overwhelmingly wrote to their representatives across the United States to plead with the government of the United States to take action on the Sudan. And at that time, President George W. Bush had just taken office and he immediately went to action. And so on the 6th of September 2001, he appointed the former Senator for Missouri, Senator John Denforth as a special envoy to Sudan. And his mission was to try to find a way to resolve that conflict. And Senator Denforth did very well. He went and put the team together, brought the parties to the negotiation table, and secured an agreement that would allow humanitarian aid to go to places that were denied and that would secure ceasefire and commit the parties to the negotiations. And he followed this with the passage, despite the fact that America was involved in a war on terrorism after September 11 attack on the United States. President Bush still found time and interest to pursue the peace process in the Sudan. And so in October 2002, the Sudan Peace Act was passed. And that act was an act of Congress that outlined clearly what the parties should do to secure peace in the Sudan and what the United States could do if the parties fail. And it committed $100 million per year to support the peace process. So that process culminated with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, which ended the longest civil war in Africa. And in the agreement, there was an important provision, which was that the people of South Sudan would be given an opportunity to vote in a referendum to decide whether to become an independent state or to be part of the unity of Sudan. And that was a significant achievement with the support of the United States and our support, having awakened the American people to the events that were happening in the Sudan. And President Obama then came into office and found that the peace agreement was being implemented. And there was a possibility that the referendum might not take place. And so in September 2010, he convened jointly with the former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon a conference on the Sudan, with the focus on the need to implement the peace agreement and to make sure that the referendum took place on time. And so on January 9th, 2011, the people of South Sudan voted on that referendum. Many of us here in the United States participated in that election in that referendum, which was supported then by IOM here in the United States and other places. And our people voted overwhelmingly when the results were announced on the 31st of January, 2011. It was overwhelming support for the independence of South Sudan. And that is what happened. South Sudan became an independent country. Now, after South Sudan became an independent country, many of us who came to the United States had the opportunity to be educated, felt that we needed to return home to help with the building of our country. And I was one of those people who made that decision. And I returned to South Sudan in May 2011, two months before independence. And I got involved in the activities which my colleague, Carl, has just introduced, working initially for the Ministry of Defense on the policy planning side, and later on working with the SET Institute, which is also a policy institution to try to help the government to institute policies that will make South Sudan a stable and prosperous society. Now, in 2013, December 2013, there was a violent conflict that broke out between the leaders of South Sudan. The violence was essentially a power struggle within the ruling party, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, SPLM. And that power struggle saw the president and his former deputy president, vice president fighting. And that fighting essentially led to massive displacement of people and a lot of destruction of property and killing of people. And since then, South Sudan has not been a very stable country. There has been a lot of humanitarian crisis, a lot of human right abuses, a lot of suffering from poverty-related causes, as well as internal conflicts among communities, fuel also by this same political violence. And so efforts have been made by the international community and the regional bodies, specifically the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, EGOT, with the support of the African Union and the United Nations to try to secure peace. And so in 2015, there was a peace agreement which was signed, which led to the creation of a government of national unity. That peace agreement broke down in 2016. And the country returned to war. And that violence episode created massive divisions within the country and threatened to break down the whole country with the possibility of genocide. And so a number of us who were very concerned about these events proposed to the government the desire to have a national dialogue. And by December 2016, President Salva Keel initiated the South Sudan national dialogue to try to pull the people of South Sudan together to unite and to end the violence. That dialogue has been ongoing for four years. And it ended in November 2020. And it came out with very solid and strong resolutions that will enable the people of South Sudan to unite and to build a prosperous country. However, in those recommendations, there were some controversial recommendations based on the analysis of the people and their feelings. It was recommended that the president and his duty are the source of conflict and divisions within the country. And so when they have created a political stalemate, created a lot of paralysis within the system of government. So to move South Sudan out of crisis, there's these two people should step aside and allow the country to have democracy, to have elections, and to have new leaders. So these resolutions and recommendations were immediately rejected by President Salva Keelmeyadid and dismissed. So this is one of the issues that must be noted. Two, there is, in 2018, the party has made an agreement, a new agreement to form a government of national unity that will see the unification of armies so that South Sudan has one army. And that agreement is being implemented now, but it has stalled as well, because there is no political will. The government and the president are not willing to cede power and they are not willing to be held accountable. So they have refused to unify the army and they have refused to implement key provisions of the peace agreement. So in July this year, South Sudan ten years, it became a decade since South Sudan declared independence. We have never had an election, and we have only seen violence. So a group of us, members of civil society, made a declaration on the 30th of July, outlining what has been going wrong in the country for the last ten years, and charting a way forward how South Sudan should spend the next decade. And we noted that if we follow the current trajectory, South Sudan will fall apart within the next decade. And so we issued this declaration calling for the people of South Sudan to be more involved in the affairs of their country and to bring pressure to bear on the current leaders to accept the recommendation of the National Dialogue for President Selva Kirma Yadid and Riyadh Macha to step aside. And so in response, the government immediately took action to try to arrest us. So one of our colleagues, Quila Gurukul, was arrested. He's now in jail. He was arrested on the 2nd of August. He has not been taken to court or been charged formally. He has been now over 100 days since he was arrested. And the rest of us, arrest warrants, were issued. And so we went into a hiding until we managed, I managed in particular to sneak out of the country. And so I'm here now to inform the rest of the world that South Sudan has technically become a dictatorship and that the leaders of South Sudan are causing a lot of harm to the people of South Sudan, brutalizing them the same way they were treated by the Sudan government. And so we have decided to stand up to oppose this. And that is why the government want to silence us. So I think that is enough of a briefing for now. Thank you very much. Too much information. Thank you. Thank you so much, Abram, a wallet for your briefing today. Now, first of all, let me make two things. Let me make two more updates, if you will. One is if Channel 17 is happy to interview anybody, including somebody from the side of South Sudan government, if they want to come here to share their views. I need to put that out there. Second, I forgot to mention Abram Wollich, academic credentials. He has to be traced back to Burma here. Abram Wollich is a graduate of the University of Burma. He got a degree in anthropology and business. And then he also went to graduate school at Maxwell's School of Citizenship and got a master's degree in public administration, the number one MPA program in the world. So he's a student of government. I thought I would mention that. So let me go into questions. What does people's coalition for civil actions intend to accomplish? What is your goal and how is PCCA different from other movements, if you will, or from other organizations that have tried to affect changes in South Sudan before? Well, the people's coalition for civil action has the objective of mobilizing the people of South Sudan to take peaceful democratic action to effect change. And the reason why we believe that change is only possible with the mobilization of citizens is that the parties that have been involved in the struggle over power have been unable to mobilize citizens and they have been able to use force to try to bring change. And this has been very destructive to our country. So we believe that the most positive change that could happen in South Sudan is to mobilize all the citizens of South Sudan across different divides of the society, ethnic, regional, religious and political affiliations to join forces to call for a new day in South Sudan using peaceful means, peaceful means of resistance. For example, uprising, popular uprising, or let's say popular protests or boycotting or sit-in to essentially put pressure on the government to accept democratic transformation and to accept elections and to accept the fact that the country really needs new leadership. So the difference between us and the other parties, we are nonviolent entity and we reach across all the divides. The parties that have been there in South Sudan have been able to mobilize their supporters along ethnic lines, which has actually bitterly divided the country. And so we think that achieving democracy involves building movements from the grassroots up across all the divides. And if you did that, then you are achieving two things. You are achieving political change, but you are also building the nation that you need to build, a nation that has been torn apart by the current political ambitions and political leadership in the country. So that needs to be rebuilt again. You need to build a sense of a nation by focusing on issues, issues that affect the society instead of focusing on personalities and on issues of leadership only. You have to focus on issues that matter to the people of South Sudan, many of which have been outlined in the South Sudan national dialogue resolutions. And if the government were to take that document and implement it, then the reforms that are needed and the change that is desired could have been achieved by now. So it is the resistance of the leadership to these proposed changes by ordinary citizens that made us to believe that the only way the citizens can impose their will on the leaders is to mobilize and rise up and to challenge status quo. Thank you. Thank you. Good. So following on that is is how widely is PCCA supported by the South Sudan population? Is your organization popular? And and and that's that's it. Is your message being received by the citizenry?  Absolutely. We have an overwhelming support among the people at the grassroots in South Sudan. Among the political elites, we have a lot of support. Within the armed forces, we have a lot of support. Among the people in diaspora, we have a lot of support. Even these political organizations who have been opposed to the government, but they are using violent means to pursue change, they are very supportive of our approach. And many of them have told us that this is the right way to to to bring change in a state of destroying the country through violence. We should have a conversation in the state. And so we tested this popularity on the 30th of August when we set the 30th of August this year as a day of national awakening. And throughout the cities and towns of South Sudan, people were preparing, planning to come out in mass numbers to to express their support for the agenda that we have put forward. And so in response, the government massively deployed soldiers and threatened to kill civilians. And so the civilians decided to protest in a state by not showing up to work for a number of days. So so that was that was how we test our popularity. And I think the way the government responded and the way people responded shows that we have made an impact on the ground and and our message is being well received. Furthermore, there have been a number of protests or strikes that took place, which have never been experienced before in South Sudan. For example, the oil workers in a unity state, they went on a strike demanding that they would be treated fairly for the first time. And recently, they went again on the strike for the second time, as well as doctors, doctors and medical professionals have been on the strike a number of times. And so so that there is there is a new environment now as a result of what we are trying to do. People are beginning to speak out non violently. And that seemed to resonate very well with what we are saying. Thank you. Thank you. Now, I will get to the economy very briefly, but but let's let pursue this a little bit. You and I probably believe that we were we were brought up in the SPLM SPLA that was the system we believe in as as as young people. And so with your near model of PCCA, you are essentially saying we have to to effect changes in South Sudan outside the SPLM SPLA or outside the SPLM. What happened to SPLM? Is SPLM in charge? Can can the changes that you hope to accomplish through your government? Can those changes not be effected through the SPLM being the body that liberated South Sudan? Thank you very much. That is a very important question. Definitely, we are in our DNA. We are SPLM. We are we are people that were programmed by the SPLM to take the mantle after the liberation struggle. And and so we're brought up thinking that the SPLM was the right movement to bring change in the in South Sudan. Now, where is the SPLM? It is sad to say and to inform our colleagues wherever they are that the SPLM is dead. The SPLM is no longer in charge. President Selva Kirma, he added as effectively killed the SPLM and supplanted with with the National Congress Party, the NCP. All the SPLM leaders that you know, those of Daniel Awed, Kuala Manang, James Waniga, and other members of political bureau, those of Manga, Poj, and others have been completely sidelined. The SPLM political bureau doesn't make decisions anymore. So, so, so the SPLM is effectively dead and that is actually one of our grievances. Because how do you control power as a citizen? You control power through your political party, political party championing your ideas, your aspirations, and you have to be active in the party to pursue those. So, if you no longer have that party, then you have lost one way of controlling power as a citizen. Second, the other way you control power is through your parliament. We know that we no longer elect our MPs. They are appointed and so they are not loyal to us anymore. And the party, the parliament is not independent. It it serves at the behest of the president. And so, neither the SPLM nor the citizens control the party, the parliament. And so we have lost that. The other way you can secure your interest as a citizen is to have a professional independent army that has also been effectively undermined by the president. And his personal militia has been empowered to protect his seat. And so it is it is terrible news to deliver to our colleagues who are sitting here, that they are somehow members of the SPLM. When SPLM has long been relegated, and it is in a dustbin as we speak, it is somebody called Tood Kew and his colleagues from the former NCP who have taken over South Sudan. And they are wearing an SPLM clothes, but inside they are not SPLM. They are implementing the NCP. So technically, NCP runs South Sudan and also it runs the Sudan as we speak. So that is the bad news that I have to deliver. Yes, I could pursue that, but we are running short on time. But let me let me let me go better quickly about the economy. South Sudan seemed to be a country that is endowed with oil, with arable lands, and a lot of oil money over the past many years, since the signature of CPA to present a lot of resources. Oil money has been funneled into South Sudan. Has that money been used to develop the country? And if not, what happened to those resources? That is also another bad news that I have to deliver that South Sudan is is highly corrupt as a country. The money has all been squandered. The 20 billion that we got from 2005 to 2011 is gone without a trace. There are no roads. There is no running water in Cuba right now. And there has not been electricity. Except for this past year is when we first have electricity in Cuba, which is still being generated through generators. And there are no hospitals or modern schools. So the money has vanished. It has been it has been squandered. And from 2011, after independence to now, the oil money is gone. It has disappeared. It has been being used by individuals who have been chosen by the state and rewarded with that money so that they can continue to support the government.  So technically, the resources that we have have disappeared. We have nothing to show for them. And the country has been in public now. And one of the statistics that you should know is that when poverty was being assessed in 2009, it was found that half of our population was below the poverty line. As we speak now, the population below the poverty line is close to 90 percent of the population. So we are a lot poorer as a country than we were before we were a country. And that is a very, very unfortunate statistic to share. This doesn't mean that everybody in South Sudan is poor. There are those who are extremely rich. They have a lot of money. They have mansions everywhere. They have cars.  But majority of citizens right in Cuba are in dire poverty, as we speak, including some of the generals and even ministers. They are very, very poor. And so there is no economy to speak of. We have no plan. Economic planning doesn't exist. There is no public budget. Budgets are made, and then they are basically shelf. And it is the president and those around him who distribute money. They choose who gets money, which institution gets money. And money goes to those institutions that are intended to support the president's stay in power. All other institutions that are meant to say public interest are staff of cash. They don't get any cash. So essentially, you could technically say South Sudan is essentially an enterprise of the president right now. It's not a public entity. That's what I can tell you about the economy. Now, so thank you. I will quit this. This question is, you mentioned the president, Salpa Kier. You mentioned General Kuala Manang Yook. You mentioned General Awed. I would add General Wani Yiga. And many other senior members of the SPLM. You are telling them to go home. That's basically what you say. And they would come back and say, we spent 21 years of our lives liberating this country. So we never supported ourselves. We never planned for the retirement. And you young people are asking us to go home. Is that a fair ask for our generation to tell them to go home when they spend their entire lives or their young, their formative life liberating this country? Well, you know, that's a fair question. And in all honesty, you know that we have a lot of respect for these men. They liberated our country. We don't question how they became leaders. And we don't even question that they should continue to be leaders. The problem, what bring the challenge we have with them is that they are unable to deliver. And you don't liberate a country and then you impoverish it. You liberate a country so that you can make it prosperous. You can make it just. You don't liberate a country and subject it to the same treatment from which you liberated people. People were liberated because they were subjected to being treated as second or third class citizens in their own country. They were not given opportunities to prosper economically. They were not allowed to participate, meaningfully, in political affairs of their country. We are doing exactly just that. So would it be a contradiction on our part if we were able to oppose Sudanese government on the same conditions and allow our own leaders to do exactly the same and we keep quiet? It would be a total contradiction. And so what we should say is that we have given them 16 years to prove themselves and to make themselves rich, which they have done. They have handsomely paid themselves. And so what we are saying is, instead of you doing it so that the whole thing collapse completely, why don't you give it to us now so that we can erect it? Otherwise, if they continue at the same rate, the whole thing will just collapse on our head. And that is what we are trying to prevent. And so if there was a possibility that they could reform, which is what the National Dialogue was trying to do, is to say, okay, this is what we want. Can you do it? They don't want to do it. The agreement also said, okay, this is what would be good for the people of South Sudan. Can you do it? They don't want to do it. And so they just make it so hard for us to be quiet, even as we respect them. I think enough is enough. The time has come for them to see that they are actually, they are doing more harm to the country they liberated than they actually think. They are causing so much harm to us, to our children, and to themselves, including their own legacy. So this is what prompted us. Otherwise, if they are willing to change and they are willing to work with us so that the country can be brought out of the current crisis and so that justice is served, then we can work with them until they reach that time where they can no longer serve and they can face out and then we come in. But they are not allowing us to do that. So it is the fear that the whole thing would collapse on our head that prompted us to ask for them to step aside right now. Okay. Thank you. Again, Ibrahim, we are running short on time. I wish that we could have more. So I will wrap things into one question so that you can make your concluding statement. And so two things that come up, and this is it. I'm not going to ask another question after these years. There is a criticism that you have been in the government for 10 years. You could make an argument that you were outside the government working for the think tank. So you have been in the system for that long time. So why did it take you so long to take this action now? So that's one. The second that you would add to this eventually is what do you want to accomplish coming to the U.S. here? What are you looking for from the U.S. government or from the diaspora or from Vermont as your home state? So that would be something you could add. So address that criticism and then come to the point of why are you, what do you want to accomplish for your organization? Thank you. These are beautiful questions. Thank you very much for that. And obviously it is a relevant and legitimate question. I have been working in South Sudan for the last 10 years. And whether I like it or not, my organization, the Set Institute is there to advise the government on public policy. And so you could argue that, yes, I have been part of the system. I cannot deny that. But while being part of that system, I have been working on the public side, the demand side, demanding that things are done. We have made a lot of policy proposals and our institution has published over 200 articles as policy advice to the government. We have held over 200 public events where we have policy dialogue with the government and civil society and citizens. And we have made numerous recommendations on how things can be improved. So that is one track that we have been following. We hit the wall because we have found that there is no political will to move the country forward. Every single suggestion that we have made, some of it has been accepted and implemented. Some of it has been neglected. And so then we came up with other innovative ideas, including the national dialogue, which I have said the last four years of my stay in South Sudan have been spent on this. And we made a lot of policy recommendations, suggestions, and they have not been accepted. As well, as I have mentioned, I was part of the government delegation trying to negotiate with the whole out groups so that they can join the peace so that we can develop our country. And through all those efforts, there is one silver lining. And that is there is lack of political will to move the country forward. And that is directly coming from the President himself. President Salva Kirmayad, it is unwilling to move South Sudan forward. And so it took me this long because I had always hoped that changes can be affected through the system. But I have been proven wrong, especially with the last event of the national dialogue being rejected after we have invested massive amount of resources, human man hours, and financial capital. And people of South Sudan really honestly assessed the state of affairs in their country and made proposals, meaningful proposals to be implemented. And the peace agreement also took too much resources and effort, all to see them not being implemented. And so, yes, it takes you that long to realize that these are all these efforts that you have hoped would lead to change have hit a wall. And so what do you do?  Or do you say, folks, something fundamentally is wrong? We are not going anywhere. And so this is what I have done. I have come to the realization that all these efforts that I have made using different mechanisms, the reform I tried to effect through the National Revenue Authority could not go anywhere. I had to, we were kicked out because the reforms that we initiated were to the public interest, but those who did not want public interest resisted and the president did not stand with us. He stood with those who want to keep the status quo. And so I have tried in my personal capacity, in my institutional capacity to try to effect change internally. But I have hit a wall because there is lack of political will. So that is why I'm speaking out now. On the second question, which is, what do I want? It is an important question. Three things that I want to achieve with my visit here in the United States and in Burma in particular. One, I want to raise awareness that the country that the United States supported and the country for which the lost boys, many of us have worked countless hours to raise awareness among the American people to get their government to act, has failed us, has failed both the American people and the people of South Sudan. It has failed to implement the democratic vision that was set forth, the development vision that was set forth, the unity vision that was set forth. And so people need to know that that what we had worked together on has failed and it has failed because its leadership has different ideas. President Salva Kirwan has established, technically established a dictatorship in South Sudan, which is inconsistent with the values that we have learned here and with the values that we learned through our culture. Our society is a democratic society, is an open society. And so creating a dictatorship is totally something that doesn't go in line with what we believe. And it is exactly what we oppose with the Sudan government. So people need to know that too. Now that it has become a dictatorship and it has become authoritarian and is not serving the interests of the people of South Sudan, what do we do? For my fellow South Sudanese, we have to speak out. We have to fight for the right of our people to realize their democratic aspirations. And the people of South Sudan who live here in diaspora, particularly the lost boys, they have power. They can speak with one voice to demand change in South Sudan. They can also speak with one voice to demand a new policy direction from the United States. And we are asking the United States government to pay more attention to South Sudan. South Sudan is slipping away. South Sudan is collapsing. South Sudan is becoming authoritarian. And so the policy should not continue as that of saying, let them do their own thing. No, South Sudan cannot do its own thing. South Sudan needs support. The people of South Sudan need support. And the leaders need to be put under pressure to do the right thing, either to step aside or to allow an election to take place. And lastly, when you create a civil right movement, a pro-democracy movement in places like South Sudan, where all the resources, anybody who has resources in South Sudan is linked to the government, you are a staff. You cannot get any financial support to build that movement, to build that democratic movement and to exercise the right of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. And so I have also come here to mobilize support, both financial and political support among the people of South Sudan who are here and also among the American people and among the American leaders across the country.  And I'm going to continue to go around the country to engage policy makers. And so for Vermont in particular, this is my base. This is the South Sudanese community here, the Africans and the people of Vermont statewide. This is my base. I need their support. I'm threatened as an individual.  And so I need to take a particular this moment to actually thank you, Akal and George Cross and Senator Lee, who stood up during the hide of the crisis I was in to speak and demand that the government of South Sudan doesn't cause harm to me and the colleagues that were there with me. And that support was tremendous and it has enabled me to come out and that's why I'm here now. Otherwise, I would have been in harm's way. So I want to thank Senator Lee and his staff, Catherine Long and Amalia and Tim Risser and others who stood up during that time to support me. I still need that support from the people of Vermont so that we can propagate the same freedom, the same democracy that is here. We need to bring that home. And that is what I'm doing. Thank you very much. Thank you, Abraham. What a great interview. One last thing. Revolution is risky, as you have shared. Your career being a managing director for the side is gone. You resign.  You are engaged in this revolutionary or civil action effort to try to bring democratic unions to Sudan. Why does it have to be you? Do you regret taking this risk? Absolutely not. I would do it again. I have, as a young person and you are part of this story called, we were part of the revolution. We were part of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, the SPLM. And we had to give up our childhood for the cause. And we had to live in his quality conditions in refugee camps for the cause. And when we came here in the United States, we did not spare a minute to tell the world what was going on in our country. And so we have directly contributed to the liberation of our country. And we are founders of South Sudan. And so it would be a great contradiction if I were to be silent or be afraid or care about my career when things are going wrong in our country, the country that caused us so much in lives and in opportunities. And so I don't regret at all. I would do it again and again if opportunities, if events like this continue to occur. And so I'm willing to make sacrifices, painful as they may be, and bad for my family as they may be. Who else could do this? If it wasn't me or I'm pretty sure if you were in Dubai, you would do exactly what I'm doing right now. You would do exactly what I'm doing right now. And you have done that already. You were among the first people who came out and demand that I must not be harmed. And so technically you are a revolutionary and you're alright for that. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you, Megan, for extending time for us to complete this interview because it is very important for Burmaan audience to know this. Abram will be here for another weeks and he will be traveling around the U.S., engaging people, meeting policymakers, meeting the diaspora community. So for Burmaan audience who would like to chat with Abram, he's going to, he's still going to be in town for another week. He will be driving around the city, trying to reconnect with the area. So thank you so much, Channel 17. Thank you, Megan, for this opportunity for Abram to address Burmaan test and American Today on Channel 17. My name is Akon Agwekngong and I'm the host of this show for today. So we will wrap it up and the conversation will continue another time. Thank you. Thank you very much, Daniel. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Bye.


Hi, welcome back. I'm Jeff Kelly with Wikibon. For those of you that have been tuned in, you've been watching our coverage of HBase conference from San Francisco. John Furrier, our colleague from SiliconANGLE, is there covering all the action. So this ties in very well with what we're about to talk about, kicking off our big data and data science focus for the day. So I'm joined today by Anika Jimenez, who is the Senior Director of Analytics Solutions at Green Plum, and Kashik Das, Principal Data Scientist with Green Plum. Welcome. Thank you. First time on theCUBE. Thank you. As Dave, our CEO always says, the first time it will go very gently on you. Yes, thank you. Thanks for being here. As we get started, why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourselves and kind of your role at Green Plum? Sure, yeah. So at Green Plum, I started about a year ago, actually coming off of a fairly extended tenure at Yahoo, and started at Green Plum really to help kind of build out data science as a service to our customers. And that meant starting to work with really great, existing people on the team, like Kashik, our principal data scientist who've been spending a lot of time thinking about how to really build predictive models on top of the Green Plum stack. And have done a lot of work to scale up the team, productize services, think about solutions delivery, all around much more advanced forms of analytics than what you would typically see in BI, right? Right. So I've been with Green Plum for a couple of years. That's when Green Plum realized that they have a really nice tool for dealing with big data. But you just can't give someone who's used to working with a nice power tool and expect them to suddenly start using it, right? It could be a little dangerous in that, exactly. So that's where the data scientists like me come in. So because using Green Plum with big data is not just about answering your questions faster and better, but actually being able to ask new questions. Right. And that's where we come in, because we see this happening across different customers and different verticals. So we are able to work with the customers and actually help them ask the right questions and solve those and give them the right answers. Right. So you mentioned, yeah, it's about asking questions versus kind of, you mentioned the more traditional BI approach. Contrast that a little bit. From my perspective, the more traditional approach to BI was much more looking back. Why did something happen over the last several months or several weeks or however long? And there's been talk for years in the BI industry about moving to predictive analytics, but it hasn't really happened in the traditional world. So how does the mindset differ? And how is the approach different from your traditional BI environment? So I'll take a first crack and then you can jump in. And I think what we find is customers have been, obviously like you said, been thinking about BI for a very long period of time. And they've primarily manifested BI through some sort of reporting layer with usually a set of analysts that can then take some of the more custom and queries against the data warehouse to go a little bit deeper against some core questions. And I think a lot of our customers are realizing that they could take and leverage the data assets that they have within the company in a much more profound way than through simple reporting solutions. And that starts introducing into the equation a completely different paradigm of compute and distributed computing requirements to support that, especially when you're entering into the bigger data realms when you have terabytes and petabyte scale data stores and you're actually trying to do very meaningful predictive analytics on top of that data that then introduces a need to start thinking about a completely different paradigm when it comes to actual execution. So it's a very different kind of workload than what you would see in a more operationalized process around supporting BI. It's development-like, it's exploratory, we're going in and working with the data, asking and answering questions and maybe going further, all while trying to yield what ultimately is a model that can actually be put into production, right? Again, some top priority business use case. And of course, like Kaushik said, there are just untold numbers of ways that you could apply the data from a marketing perspective all the way through to risk modeling, IT related analytics, et cetera. So one way of thinking about it is that it's not just asking what happened at a very deep level of detail. It's actually going beyond that and asking why did it happen. And then once you know that, then you can answer the question, how do I prevent that from happening again? Or how do I make it happen more? Yeah, yeah. Depending on the case. So you mentioned, you know, your role as kind of data science as a service was just really intriguing to me because we hear a lot about the kind of dearth of data scientists out there on the market.  And how does that work when you're, I'm guessing in a lot of cases, engaging with customers that don't have their own data scientists on staff? Yeah, so it's an interesting, we're at this really just fascinating period of time, right? Because I think across all industry or verticals, if you want to think about the vertical markets, retail, finance, healthcare, energy, et cetera, we're finding that our customers are just awakening to this understanding of kind of this, there is opportunity and value in the data that they've been cultivating maybe over years. And they're realizing that again, with the right harnessing at the compute layer, they can actually extract much more value out of that data than they have in the past. So we very frequently get involved early in the process with the customer. They've come to enough of a realization that they want to at least reach out to Green Plum, but very frequently that quickly turns into a situation where we actually have to walk them through almost like a analytical brainstorming session, right? So we actually bring stakeholders to the table. We come to them with a vision for how they could leverage their data. We talk about use cases across the stakeholder communities that they're working with, and we actively work with them to prioritize and assess value of those use cases. And so we do all of that in an actual engagement that customers kind of urgently need that kind of support and help. And then of course, once we've done that, they're then ready to start thinking about execution and then we're there to help them with that as well. So is that an onsite process or do you guys do that? No, yeah, we actually remote in remote VPN into their Green Plum environment. Of course, once it stood up in their on-premise in their data center, then the whole team can kind of do a lot of the work. And of course the paradigm is we're moving from kind of desktop based analytics to in database analytics, right? And so that's where we're able to leverage the billions of rows of data in this terabyte, petabyte scale warehouse to yield much higher degrees of accuracy and predictive power than ever before. So Kishok, are you trying to, when you go into a typical customer engagement, are you trying to essentially, in addition to helping your customers kind of get off the ground with their first implementation, are you also trying to train them to be self-sufficient or is this more of a long-term engagement where you're looking to build a long-term consulting relationship with the customer? No, and as I was, that's actually a really good question. And as I was thinking a little while ago, our goal is definitely to teach our customers how to fish rather than continue to be their fish catcher, so to speak. So and continuing what Annika said, to add a little bit to that, framing the right questions is really very important and getting all the stakeholders in the company together is also very important. And once that happens, what we do is actually teaching the technology, which actually is not really the most difficult part because it's actually a very intuitive technology. So to give you an example, analysts do logistic regression all the time and they're used to doing it on the desktop and something that would take 20 hours maybe before.  So with our platform that comes down to minutes, like a couple of minutes, and that really expands the amount of things that you can do, right? And so it's kind of a, it's a revolution, right? It's not just a matter of degree and therefore it's very useful for us to come in and it's sort of, it's more of getting people used to a new way of thinking about their problems and their data. So we have some customers that are actually asking us to not just come in, so, you know, the short answer is we want to teach them how to fish, right? So we want to do the knowledge transfer that's required to fully kind of leverage this, this kind of strong horsepower that they're getting in green plum. The, and very frequently what we're seeing now is we have customers that in essence are saying they're committed to data, they're committed to data science and predictive analytics. They realize that they have gaps internally which we're beginning to help themself for, but they want to get to the point where they actually have what they might call their own data science center of excellence. And very frequently they need ongoing help from us to kind of help build and operate and then ultimately we hope kind of transfer ownership back over to the customer. Okay, so let's dig into some real use case, some examples of some customers you've worked with. What are some of the more interesting kind of engagements you've had that you could share with our audience? So, like I said, we have use cases across sectors and they can range from kind of what is, for people who are actually in Silicon Valley are very used to hearing about data usage in the digital media space, right? So it can be working with digital ad performance data, user level ad interaction with web contents to do profiling of users to inform behavioral targeting. Those are very common use cases. But it goes much further than that, extends immediately into some of the newer areas where each of the sectors have their own kind of mini data revolution emerging in terms of some sort of ubiquitous nature of data. So you have healthcare where you have a regulatory environment that's changing incentives to now start thinking about much more meaningful outcome-based analytics. Looking at treatment of patients through treatment pathways and understanding if their progress through those pathways is anomalous of some sort or not. Which of course then starts enabling you to optimize pathway traversal, identify fraudulent activity, et cetera. We were going to talk a little bit about one specifically within the utility sector, which is also really interesting. So in the utility sector, we are working with several cases, particularly there is one customer of our Silver Spring who are one of the builders of the smart grid, and therefore they have access to all this data, every household and business, you know how much power they're using every 30 minutes or every 15 minutes. So what you get essentially is a pulse of economic activity across a city or a region. And that is very exciting, but going beyond that, now you can answer questions like, how do I prevent a blackout? And it's not just how the blackout happened, where the grid started tripping, but it's also what were the sequence of events that happened before the blackout? And then going beyond that, you can now set up predictive warnings. Like if that sequence of even seems like it's happening, again, let's set up a warning, let's take action before it can happen and prevent that. And that sort of thing is very exciting. And there are lots of cases like that, it's not just blackouts, it's about theft prevention. Or if a tree falls, and then you want to know really quickly what has happened so that you can take action, you can send out the crew, and before this would take a long time to do, and it would be very costly and inconvenient for people as well. But now all that goes away. All right, that's some great examples of new use cases that you couldn't do in the traditional BI world where you'd be looking back and you might say, oh, we recognize that this customer basically stole from us two months ago. Well, guess what? He's long gone. He's long gone. They usually took a BI analyst weeks to get access to the data. They're running some analysis on their desktop, and maybe a month or six weeks later, they're saying, ah, we found some theft. As opposed to actually getting much earlier in the curve and identifying it, maybe even in the terms of an outage before it actually happens, right? So that's, it's very exciting, that kind of pattern recognition and anomaly detection, which has applications to a lot of different kind of actual use cases like theft detection, outage prediction, treatment optimization, et cetera, is endemic, it's happening across all the verticals. There's an opportunity to apply this notion of pattern recognition across all the different verticals, across different types of data. It's all very exciting. In terms of, so certainly across verticals, but are you seeing a lot of interest from maybe the smaller and mid-sized organizations versus the large enterprise? We hear a lot about large enterprises who have the resources and a lot of data, but SMBs also have a lot of data. They may not have a lot of staff or revenue, but they certainly have a lot of data and could benefit from some of these approaches. So you're seeing what's the level of interaction or engagement from that, the SMB community and where do you see that going? So I guess I would say, you know, even at the large enterprise level, the data science revolution is really just starting. So remember I told you a little bit about how we come in and kind of help them establish a vision. I think we are needed for that support because they're really just awakening to the possibilities that are on the table for them. What we're finding is that there are some companies that play very pivotal roles in support of the SMB community that are themselves thinking about how to build analytics as a service to the SMB community. So you have, for example, credit card transaction firms, firms that kind of are managing the processing of credit card transactions. You can imagine that that data is very valuable because it gives insight down to user level transactions across any sort of retail location, and that can scale in size from very, very small to much larger, right? Those transactors, those companies that kind of manage the process of approvals and doniles, et cetera, of credit card transactions are in a very interesting position to take that data and add analytics on top of it that's very supportive and helpful to the small and mid-sized business community. So I think that's where I would see the next logical step. I don't know that I'm seeing a lot of readiness to think about advanced analytics from the SMB community, per se. So I think in terms of the SMB community, what needs to happen first is getting just the access to all the data, and it's not just the data that they have which can often be big data, but also data that's available out there which is accessible to them. For instance, for a small retailer, I mean, even for a medium-sized retailer, not Walmart, there is still a lot of information in just the US Census data, for instance, and people are still not using that, but this is what we feel strongly is going to happen very shortly because technology like ours makes it very easy to access the data, but people are still thinking of the situation a few years ago when it was a lot of work and expense even to get that data and look at it, but that is no longer the case. Yeah. And so do you find yourself doing a lot of education in that regard? Yeah. Explaining some of the possibilities and now the new tools and hardware, et cetera, advances that can now allow you, much easier access to storage and compute, et cetera, to start performing some of these big data and older. Absolutely, and that's why the brainstorming session that Annika referred to, which often starts our engagement is really important because people might have heard of big data or they might have one felt need, but they often don't realize the whole universe of information and insight that's awaiting them, right? So I guess it's really interesting, we actually had a graphic, I don't know if they're able to highlight it right now, but the idea of this graphic is simply that it is illustrating that big data analytics, we're at this period of opportunity now in the market where anyone enterprise can much more centrally harness big data analytics. And the use cases are, like I said, kind of ubiquitous across stakeholders. So yes, you have the CMO with marketing analytics and related kind of adjacent air opportunities, which is very traditionally understood, but you also now have the CIO thinking about how to mine IT logs. You have the CFO thinking about risk and compliance and much more robust models for risk than they've ever been able to achieve in the past. You have the COO thinking about call center optimization and prediction of the nature of incoming calls and routing them appropriately to minimize resource constraints, right? So I think the ubiquity of use cases against available data has grown to the point where the opportunity for a company is to actually use data as a source of competitive advantage. And when we're having conversations with companies in this brainstorming session, or even just casually, in the past year, there's been numerous situations where you can almost physically see the light bulbs going off in their heads, you know? When- Yeah, it's like, it's what makes our job really fun, because we're actually trying to be a little bit of the catalyst to that, but it's definitely happening more and more. And, you know, the most important ingredient really is the willingness on part of the organization to believe that they want to make their organizations ready for predictive analytics. And if that willingness is there, then the rest, everything falls into place because all the other pieces are already available. Exactly, yeah. Some great advice, some great insight. Appreciate you guys joining us here on theCUBE. I thank you so much. Thank you for your pleasure. So we'll be right back in just a few moments with more big data and data science coverage here, live from EMC World on theCUBE, and we'll have more coverage also from HBase a little later on in the day.