I'm just waiting for the recording to start. Okay, recording started. Good morning and welcome everybody to the class today on Urban Church Planting. And let's just begin with a word of prayer. Let's see, Kannan, is your phone okay? Or are you able to pray? Or... Yeah, you can hear me. You can hear me or not? It's a lot of noise, Kannan. Okay, no mind. I can hear some buzzing sound on back. Yeah, okay, no mind, Kannan. Let's have somebody else pray. Okay, yeah, so, Kannan, where did you pray? And then we will start. Sure, Master. We pray. Lord, thank you for this day, Lord, for this amazing meeting, Lord. What else are we going to learn about the practical aspect about the church planting, Lord, Father? We know that, Lord, Father, it's not easy to start a church. But, Lord, Father, if you are with us, Lord, everything is possible, so Lord. Father, I pray for all the students to open up our hearts, open up our eyes, Lord, Father, to know, to know your word, Peter, Lord, Father. And, Lord, Father, I pray that, Lord, Father, as we join in with this weapon church planting, Lord, Father, give us the blueprint and help us to know your timing, Lord, Father. So, Lord, I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen, thank you, thank you. All right, so thank you for being part of the class. We're going to continue from where we paused yesterday. I'm just going to share the PDF for all of us. Okay, so we started talking about some of the practical aspects of church planting or getting a ministry, a Christian ministry, started in an urban context in a city, a metropolitan area where it's complex, a lot of people are there and so on. So I'm just, we're just going through some, different things to think about. So first thing we spoke yesterday was about the, and the core theme, the importance of having a group of people who are length-minded, who are committed, who will be able to work towards establishing a new church or the ministry that you desire to start in the city. Then we talked about preparing from a distance where even before you actually get on the ground, you can start preparing, and something I'd encourage each of you to start thinking about even for your own ministry. Like we said, next year you're going to be graduating. And so it's good to start thinking, what are you going to do? And if the Lord is leading you to go to a city, go to some place and start a ministry, it's good to start preparing even from a distance, start thinking about it, doing the research, like we said, writing down, praying about it, writing down what God is speaking to you and prepared from a distance. And the third point that we covered yesterday where we stopped was about relocating to be on site. So at the right timing, you move into that place or you move into that ministry that God is leading you to do, to plan the church or to start the Christian work there. And then, so as part of that, you begin to go about doing the survey phase and the preparation, the launch phase, which we will be talking about. All right, so we're going to go move forward from there and feel free to ask questions anytime or even type your questions in the chat and we will take it up. I will try to keep some time for questions before we close today. So another important part, especially for those of us who are starting out in church planting or starting out a new ministry in the city, the very important question is about finances. You know, how are we going to get the money to do this? Now, there are several options. If you are being sent by a church to go and start, to go and plant a church, very often the mother church, so to speak, or the church that is sending you will help you financially, at least for a period of time to get started and so on. So that happens in some cases where the sending church will, you know, will support you or in some cases people use their own personal finances to, if they already have had some savings, they will do that. They'll use their own money to go and get a church started or a ministry started. But in addition to that, which is an option, the finances can come from the sending church personal finances. You know, I want us to be open to the idea that sometimes you may work for a period of time. So you may work professionally for a period of time while you are in parallel planting the church. So maybe some of the team members, let's say if two or three people are going or three families are going, they may say, they may discuss and say, okay, you know, for the initial period, each one of us will have a job. We will work and then, you know, we will take care of our families and then we will also start the church. And maybe, you know, at some point of the church has enough finances to pay for the people. Then, you know, people can transition to becoming salaried staff, so on. So there is nothing wrong in taking this approach. I, and like I mentioned yesterday, we see in scripture that even the apostle Paul and his team members in different cities at Corinth, at Ephesians, at Thessalonica, they worked and what we can understand from scripture is they were tent makers. They actually made tents and they sold the tents to people. So they made tents, they sold them, they earned money and it took care of their own personal needs, the needs of the team members, while they worked at the same time in planting or establishing a church in a city. So that is an option. But we have to admit that it is a challenging option. It's not very easy.  Or in some cases, people continue to work professionally, you know, and they have other people who will serve full-time in the church plant. That is also an option. So the important thing is to know what has God called you to do? And what has God called you to do? How does God want you to organize the finances for the work you are doing? There is no set way. There is no, it's not like there's only one way you can do it. There are many, many options. But you need to think about this and you need to, you know, do what God wants you to do. You don't have to necessarily copy somebody else, you know, just do it the way God wants you to do it, right? Whatever you feel in your heart to do. I can speak for our own selves, you know, when we were leaving the US and moving back to India to start the church here in Bangalore, there was many, many options. A lot of people were giving us, you know, different people, I would say, sorry, different people are giving us different kinds of advice on how to go about it.  Why did you get green card? Why did you become citizens in America?  So some people were talking about that kind of an option. But then there was someone else who introduced us to a very large church and that church was willing to fund us with a certain amount.  But then in our hearts, one of the things we felt was we, when we come to India, when we do our work in India, we want to do it as a purely indigenous work because, you know, through the years I had seen in India a problem. The problem was people had the wrong notion that if you're going to start a work, you need money from outside India. Or if you're going to, you know, do a ministry, you had to be funded from outside India. People had the wrong idea. So in my heart, I felt, look, I want my life to be an example. Through my example, I want to make it clear to people, we don't have to depend on money from outside India to do the work in India, right? So even though there were these options, you know, we had a big church in the US who were willing to make us their missionaries and fund us, take care of us. We said politely, we said, thank you very much, but you know, this is not what God's calling us to do. So we declined their offer. The other idea about, you know, staying in America, getting a green card, we declined that. We said, no, we're just going to India. We want to do an indigenous work. So when we came back to India, the plan was I will work professionally for the initial period of time, as long as I felt I needed to do it and simultaneously start the church. So that's what we did. So when I came back, of course, because of, you know, God just orchestrating things, I was able to start a business. So I wasn't working for anybody else. I had my own, and of course, started with just one person myself. I was just doing software development work. And at the same time, we started the church. And so we did like, did it like that for 14 years. So from 13 years, I guess, from 2001 to 2014, that's how it went. We were doing the church work. At the same time, doing the business. Now, things were growing, you know? And I could say, looking back at those 13 years, it was not easy. There was a lot of tension both sides, the business side, because, you know, I was running my own company, which means I was accountable to all the customers and, you know, all those things, a lot of work, pressure. And then at the same time, there was the church. And the church was also slowly and steadily growing. It was a lot of, it was a lot to handle. And then in 2014 is when I transitioned fully to focus on the church. But it also had a lot of advantages. The advantage was, of course, money, especially in the early years, we were able to put a lot of money into the church from the business to get things started. So that was a big advantage. The other advantage was, and I could manage my own time. So if I needed to, you know, take a day to focus completely on church work, I could do it, you know, in the same office space. I would spend time handling business. And then I could, you know, take an hour off to meet with people or do any kind of church work. So it gave that kind of flexibility, which was very, very good, very advantageous. So there were the benefits. So doing that kind of work. And I'm just showing that personal testimony, just to show you that, look, there are many different ways that you can go about this and you feel you do what God is leading you to do. The only thing I would definitely say is, be very, very careful if you're also working because you can easily get pulled into that and forget about the main cause, which is the church plant or the ministry you're starting. If you're not a person who can balance, you know how to, you know, manage things well, then don't do it. Just focus on the church work. Because I know of cases where, you know, people start out saying, okay, I will do both. And they just get fully caught up in the business side or in the work side. And they forget about, they just cannot handle doing the church side or the ministry side. And so then it doesn't take off. So if you're not able to manage it, then don't get involved in the work at all. Just concentrate on the church plan to focus only on the church and just work on that along those lines. So I would just say, you need to do what God needs you to do. God leads you to do as far as this area of finances is concerned, but please think about it. Have a clear plan and go on. The other thing also, you need to keep in mind and we will talk more about this in the last section is there are other personal needs. There are, of course, the needs of family members and there may be special needs, you know, family members who might be, if they're coming with you. There may be, you know, in the workplace, if you're employed or self-employed. This is a big difference. If you're employed in an organization, then you have to give those eight to 10 hours to the employer. You cannot use that time to do ministry. Whereas if you're self-employed, you're more flexible. They don't think about schooling for children. You know, that is an expense then you need to think about all those things. So when you're looking ahead, you're planning, keep these things in mind, you know, family members, your workplace, your schooling. Think through all these things before you go ahead and get started. Another important thing is, as part of the preparation, is to plan for the legal, the administrative and regulatory matters. You see, even though, so you're going to go start a church or you're going to start a Christian ministry, at some point, you will have to create it as a legal entity. And we are talking about this in the other course that we're doing on church administration, that you will have to form it as a legal entity. You can't just run it as a home church for a long time. I mean, if you want to do a home church with few people, okay, but if you want a growing church with lots of people or a growing ministry that's going to rent space and have a lot of things, it has to be a legal entity. You will have to have other things in place, like banking, finance, local government regulations, filing the professional tax, income tax, all those kinds of things. So it's good to just become familiar with this, okay, how are you going to handle it?  You know, it's very, the best thing to do is to find a good accountant and a legal person who can help you, can do this work for you. So it's good to get their help and say, please help us in registering the church or the ministry and helping us with the accounting and other regulatory matters. So that's the best thing to do. So when you go into a city, go somewhere, get the help of a good accountant or if you have a believer who's an accountant, he will understand these things and will be able to help you. But think about it and prepare for it even before you start, okay? Let me pause here, any questions before I jump into the next topic? Any questions so far? So let's just move forward. I don't see any questions.  Take time to survey the place, right? Take time to, let me see, I thought I heard a question. Let me go back here. Yes, Dave, what's your question, please? It's not the question, sir. Actually, we see that he's waiting for coming, so I'll... Oh, sorry. Okay, sure, you can come in. Yeah, because if I'm on the PDF, this auto-admin feature doesn't work. All right, let's wait, okay. So I'll just wait a minute or two before I switch to the PDF. So what I was saying is, so once you're on the ground, it is useful to survey the place physically. Now, you may even do the survey phase a little earlier, like you make one visit or two visits, survey the place, do all the preparation and then come, then officially launch. So there is no set way of how you would survey the place. One of the things we do tell our Bible college students, especially if they are planning to start a ministry in their own, in a certain area, a certain place, we tell them during this final year, go and survey that place. Meaning, look at it with these guidelines that we're telling you about. Think about, just go about that place and I will share some guidelines. What are some of the things you need to look for while you are surveying the area, surveying the place where you're going to start the work? So I will share with you a little survey that was done for Bangalore City. I will upload that into the coursework thing so you get an idea of what a survey looks like. So let me just go back to the PDF. All right, so take time to survey the city. So basically try to understand at a physical level. What is happening in the city? Now, many interesting things can happen during your survey phase. For instance, if you go to Act 16, let's read that because I think that's a very interesting passage. Act 16, 11 to 15. Can somebody read that for us? Act 16, 11 to 15, please. Act 16, 11 through 15. Therefore, losing from thruas, we came with a straight course to Samotharasiya and the next day to Nepalis and from Thames to Philip, which is the chief city of the heart of Macedonia and the colony and we went in the city abiding certain days and on the Saturday, we went out of the city by a river side where fear was won to be made and we sat down and spoke onto the woman who resorted, writer and a certain woman named Lydia, a seller, a propel of city of Hyathria, Hyathria, which forces God heard us, which heard the Lord open that she attended onto the things which were spoken of Paul and when she was baptized and her household, she besought us saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and abide there and she constrained us. Okay, thank you. So it's kind of interesting, it's even Paul and Paul and Silas and they are along with Luke. So they came, they crossed, they went out from, this was like they crossing over into Europe. So they go across the agency, they come into this whole district of Macedonia and the first city they go to is Philippi. So it's really interesting, it says in verse 12, so once they reach Philippi, they just, they were staying in the city certain days for some days. So we don't know whether it's three days, five days or how many days it was, but they were just soaking in the city, so to speak. They were in the city going around just soaking in what's happening. So you can say in some way, they were surveying the city, they were getting a feel of that city. They were in that city for certain days and then verse 13 says on the Sabbath day, they went out of the city. Now, why do they go out of the city? Because they would have heard, hey, on the Sabbath day, there's a prayer meeting that's happening by the river side. So although it doesn't state here, I'm just trying to infer certain things from this passage. Paul and his team, they must have been spoken to people in the city. Is there any prayer happening? What's going on? Then they've mentioned every Sabbath day, you go by the river, there are people who pray there. So he says on verse 13, on the Sabbath day, they intentionally went out of the city, they went to the river side where they met this group that was meeting there for prayer. It was a women's group and they were meeting by the river side for prayer. And so they, you know, Paul and Silas and Luke and Timothy, I think, was with them at this time as well.  It's a very unusual thing. Men attending a women's prayer meeting. But they introduced themselves and they get to meet this leader of this group, Lydia. And so obviously, they take the time to share the gospel with her and it says in verse 14, the Lord opened her heart. So you can see, you know, through their surveying, just moving around in the city, God has set up a connection. God has set up somebody in that city who would receive them, who would welcome them with whom they could share the gospel. And so this woman, Lydia, she is baptized. That means she has received the message of Jesus Christ and she's baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. So while they were already a prayerful group, now they have become a believing group, a group of people who believed in Jesus. And, you know, and from then on the ministry begins. So notice, they didn't meet Lydia on the first day they arrived at Philippi. Now, sometimes God does that. He may supernaturally orchestrate a meeting on the very first day.  And then he opens somebody's heart. And that's what happened in this case. So I think it's a beautiful example of, you know, just getting a feel of the city or getting a feel of the part of the city where you're going to do the ministry, just being there, just meeting the people, getting to know the people. And in the process, God can open up somebody's heart. He can open up a door of opportunity. The same thing happens in Athens. Again, it's a very interesting passage to read in Acts 17, verses 16 to 23. You know, I know it's a rather lengthy passage, but maybe let's just read verses 16 and 17, just two verses. Acts the 17th chapter, verses 16 and 17. Somebody could read that please. Now when Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked. Within him, when he saw that the city was given over to the idols. Therefore, he reasoned in the synagogue with the Gentile worshippers and in the marketplace, dealt with those who happened to be there. Then certain Epiuchian and Stoic philosophers countered him and some said, what does this new Babbler want to say? Others said, he seems to be a proclamer of foreign gods because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection. Thank you. So, you know, Paul comes to Athens. And like we've said earlier, Athens was an intellectual capital. It was a great place where many of these great Greek philosophers had come out of. So this was a place where people like to hear and discuss things. And Paul goes, you know, he goes into the marketplace. Notice verse 17. He comes to the marketplace every day. So what's he doing? He's there in Athens. He's trying to get a feel of the city, right? He's seeing what's going on in the city. He sees the city. A lot of idolatry is happening here. The city is given to idols. Then he comes to the marketplace. He sees people worshiping. He sees the Jews in the synagogue. And he also runs into these philosophers. Verse 18. People who like to discuss things. So, you know, Paul is just moving in the city. He's getting a feel. Okay. He's, you know, and, and, and, and of course, Luke is with him. And so Luke is, maybe Luke is not there as yet. So they're, they're on the ring. Silas Timothy are on the ring. And Luke is reporting this. What happened? So Paul is getting a feel the city and he's realizing, you know, there's, there's a lot of idolatry here. Oh, there are some Jews here. They worship in the synagogue. There are Gentile worshipers who also joining them. And then there are all these philosophers who like to discuss things. And so, and then he starts engaging with these philosophers. And, you know, and through that discussion with them, they invite him. They eventually get him a hearing at Eropagus, which is the on Mars Hill, which is, you know, the intellectuals in that city. So that's how the work gets started in Athens. But in both these examples, you know, we see how Paul went about things like when he comes into a new city, he takes the time to get a feel of the city, to survey the city. And so it is just a good model to follow. I'm not saying this is the rule and everything has to happen like this, but I'm just saying, you know, here are some guidelines. Here are some ways to go about starting a work in a city. You know, get to the survey, get a feel of the city. Another important thing. So the next thing is this is you need to select the launch area, meaning the place where you're going to start the work. Right. Now, if it's a church plant or if it's a ministry, you know, where are you going to begin the launch? Right. Now, you may be able to identify this before you even get into the city. Like, you know, maybe you're doing a survey through Google maps and you say, well, you know, I am starting a youth ministry. So I want to be near some colleges. And so you may find an area where there are, you know, three or four colleges. It's okay. That's a good place to start. Why? Because there are colleges there and I'm trying to reach the youth. You know, so like this, you could, you could identify this launcher even if you come to the city or when you are on site and you're surveying the city, you know, based on the information you find, you can make your decision or sometimes God may just direct you to a particular area where you should start your work. Right. So whatever it is, you know, your goal is to impact the city or your goal is to impact that part of the city. And, you know, you could eventually reach out to the whole city, but be sensitive to, to what God is leading you to do. Some other guidelines we give you is be sensitive to what God is already doing in the city. Don't do anything that would adversely affect other ministries that are already working in the city. You know, so if possible, avoid an area where that already has a church or many churches, at least there's got to be something different about you and other churches working. Maybe it's a language difference. You know, if there are regional language churches in that area and you're studying an English language, okay, it's fine. But don't get it, go don't do something that competes with some other church in the same area. So be a little sensitive to those kinds of things, you know, and like we also said, a good thing to do when you're about to start a ministry or a church in a city is to go meet some of the past and, past and leaders of existing churches and Christian organizations, introduce yourself, build friendships with them, share with them your plan, you know, see if you can learn something from them and also, you know, dispel any fear of competition or sheep stealing, you know, let them know, look, I'm here, I'm not to come here, not to compete with you. I'm just here to, you know, bless the city and do what God's called me to do. So all these things can be done when you are strategically deciding which part of the city to start the church. Right. So be sensitive. And just in our own experience when we came to Bangalore, like I said, I went around looking, you know, so we came here in December, end of December 2000. So the latter part of December, early part of January, I went around looking in Bangalore to find a place to start. Where should I start? And I really couldn't find anything, you know, and I didn't know enough about the city and things like that. So I remember towards the latter part of January, I was praying, I said, God, you know, I really don't know how are we going to start? And I've gone and seen all these places and how do I start? Based on the advice given to me by other pastors, I went to those areas where they said, you know, you should start an event and look, they couldn't find a place. But what do I do? And I remember, you know, God just spoke to me one morning as I was praying, he just said, start with what you have. So start with what I have. What do I have? Well, at that point, we were living in my father's house, my dad's house, in a certain part of Bangalore. And I said, okay, just start at home. Fine. So I went and asked my dad, I said, would it be okay if we just start right here in our home? Now I didn't tell him, God told me to say, God told me, start with what you have. I didn't say that. You know, I was acting upon what I knew God had put in my heart, but I need to, you know, just talk to him. And he said, yeah, perfectly fine. You can start here. So that's how we started. We just started in the living room of my father's, my dad's house with a very small group about 12 people or so were there. That's how we started. But then we did some work. Initially, I looked around many places. I couldn't, at that point, I didn't, because I didn't know much about the city. I couldn't, you know, find a suitable place. So we just started at home. We went around in the neighborhood inviting people and we started like that. But one of the things we made very sure throughout our journey was not to position our congregation. Close to another church where there would be any conflict, you know, if you want to be in a place where even if there is another church in the same area, there's a difference, meaning that may be a different denomination or it may be a different language church. So there is no, you know, conflict between them, people who go there and people who would come to the work we're doing. So be a little sensitive in these things. And when you're looking at where you are going to start your work, right? So once you've decided on your launch area, spend some time understanding it. So even, and then we started, this was long in 20 years ago, you know, we went house to house. We put flyers and of course I knew that my immediate area a little bit. So I knew, okay, this predominantly a non-Christian area. There's nothing much happening in terms of Christian work. So we just had to go house to house and inviting people and so on. So do some work in your launch area. Some of the things that, you know, you would think about is, you know, see where are the schools, where are the colleges, where are the malls, where are the pubs, where are the coffee shops, where are the other NGOs that are working, what are the businesses that are there, you know, because all of this would give you a part on, you know, where are the places you could evangelize, where are the places you could reach out to people and so on. So you have a general idea about the area in which you're going to be doing your work, right? This is your launch area. And of course as the work grows, you will be reaching much more in the city, right? Keep also in mind the kind of people you want to reach. Keep in mind the demographics. That means, are you reaching young people? Well, would these young people have their own transport? Or would they be dependent on public transport? If they're going to be dependent on public transport, then it's good to find a place where it's easily accessible to public transport. If they're going to bring, using their own transport, is there enough parking for them? You know, can they park their vehicles? So you'd think along those lines. If you're going to, you know, you're thinking about a place where you're going to have worship. So think about all those things.  You know, if you make a lot of noise when we sing, is it going to be disturbing others? So even when we started in our living room, we were there for a very short time, then very quickly we moved to a rented space in kind of a resort nearby. They had an open space. So, you know, we moved the congregation there. So we were not disturbing anybody. So you have to be sensitive to these kinds of things as you decide on the launch phase. Okay. Any questions so far? Let me just pause and see any questions. Okay. Any questions? Anybody? Okay. Your fault in so far. Okay. And some of you may understand from your experience as well. You know, most of these things that we're talking about. All right. So once you've gone through the launch phase, let us start off on the preparation phase. I know we have less than 10 minutes, but let's just do some of these things. So part of the preparation. If you've decided on your launch area, your launch site where you're going to get started, then you're thinking about the preparation. What are some of the things you need to do before you stop? Right. So sometimes some people have pre-launch meetings. Now, we, you know, only, I would say only in, you know, when we started the work in Malaysia, which is the East part of Bangalore, did we do pre-launch meetings? But in all the other situations, we just started, but this is becoming a trend. And so I'm just sharing that with you is that how many people do pre-launch meetings? That means in the area where they are, they want to start the work. They may have some initial outreaches or meetings or seminars or different things that engage with the community before they officially launch. So we call them as pre-launch meetings. So sometimes they may have, you know, prayer meetings. Sometimes they may just have times of worship, you know, things like that. And I have observed that these pre-launch meetings can happen from three months to six months. And I know one team that did pre-launch, I think for one year or so. So it really depends. There's no set things. But so that means before they officially launch, they're just, you know, getting to interact with people in some informal ways without calling themselves a church or a ministry. They're just doing some initial things. You know, it could be, you know, breakfast meetings, lunch meetings, different things, you know, people can think of maybe they have a series of movies and they could do a series of worship evenings, prayer meetings, different things. But these are just things they're doing in that area as a pre-launch. And people would spend time in worship and prayer during the pre-launch meetings. So, you know, some groups would just say, okay, we're just going to spend the next six months just worship and prayer in this area before we officially start. Or they might say, okay, our team is going to spend one year, the next one year, next 12 months. And before we start the church, we're just going to be here and in worship and prayer as a pre-launch.  So this is something that could be done. Again, it's not mandatory, but just an idea if the Lord leads you to do that. And also as part of your preparation, as I mentioned, identify your primary target audience and then the other extended audience. So, example, are you reaching young English-speaking professionals? Does it include young English-speaking married couples? What age range? You're looking from 18 to 35. That would be a core. It doesn't mean you're not going to reach others, but this would be a main core. So if that's going to be a core, then you need to know their needs. What are their needs? How will you connect with them?  You know, what are the ways you can serve them? So, for example, when APC started, when we started, our target audience was young working professionals. So, English-speaking working professionals in the city. You know, God always gives us a grace to reach certain people. Now, whoever. Some people may be sent to work with those who are in slums. Some people may be sent to work with children, or some may be even with destitute children, orphan children. Some may be with a certain language group. You know, you work with people who speak a certain language.  You need to understand your target audience, right? Because the kinds of ministries you do should serve your target audience. No point in saying, oh, I'm reaching young professionals. But, you know, the ministry you're doing actually is meant for some other language group. Then there's a disconnect. You won't be able to reach your target audience. Okay. I will share more about this and how, you know, how this will affect, you know, what we do next week. Okay. But understand, study your target audience and share some more thoughts on that. We're going to pause here today and we will take a few moments. Any questions so far? Okay. Let's close in prayer. And I will pick up on the same point of the target audience next week and give some further thoughts on that. Okay. Let's wrap up in prayer. Yeah. Who wants to pray? All right. I'm just trying to pick somebody. Dave, why didn't you close in prayer, please? Sure. Thank you, Father. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Thank you. You are our God. You are so merciful. You are so great. Thank you, Father, for your love. Thank you, Father, for your grace. And thank you, Father, for this day and for the class that we have been through, Lord Jesus. Thank you. Thank you. You are with us. You have been so faithful and you have always been there for us, Lord Jesus. As you learn, Lord God, just planting and as you learn it, Lord Jesus, help each one of us to visualize where you want us to go for your kingdom, Lord Jesus, give us the vision, Lord God, and help each one of us to have that complete vision so that we can do what you want us to do, Lord Jesus. Thank you, Father, for the class. Thank you, Father, for Pastor. And thank you, Father, for everyone, Lord Jesus. We thank you, Lord. Be with us throughout the day and we thank you once again, Lord. In the mighty name of Jesus, I pray, amen. Amen, amen. Thank you, Father. Thank you, everyone. Have a good afternoon. Enjoy the rest of your day. I'll see you again soon. Thank you.


This is Witchspace news for Friday the 3rd of November 2023. I'm CMDR Buur. In Elite Dangerous News this week we have an efficient method for gathering ship engineering materials that you may have missed, there's a spectacular collection of 3D printed professionally painted Elite Dangerous ships and Senior Community Manager Sally Morgan Moore is leaving Frontier. If you enjoy our videos please do hit the like button and if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and ding the bell so you don't miss any of our Elite Dangerous content and if you'd like to help directly support the Buur Pit you can also join our Patreon links to that and everything else are below. First up this week I wanted to give a shout out to CMDR E Android and their excellent tutorial on the efficient collection of raw materials for ship based engineering. I knew this kind of collection was eminently possible but I've not yet seen it explained in video form as succinctly and clearly as CMDR Android has managed to do. In simple terms the process essentially involves using flak launchers or mine launchers to dislodge the materials from a surface POI and then using collector limpets to pick them up much faster than you could ever do in an SRV. The core trick after dislodging the mats from something like a brain tree or a crystal shard is then moving your hovering ship back just far enough from the surface so that the growth despawns but it leaves the mats in place allowing your limpets to scoop them up largely unhindered. The good commander has also included a recommended crate based ship build as part of the guide in the description of the video and you'll find their video linked below this one. If you're into 3D prints of elite dangerous ships then this next item is definitely for you. Silencer555 on twitter has previously posted images of a giant thargoid medusa facing off against an anaconda both beautifully painted and with working led lighting. The commander has now added to the burgeoning large scale collection with the addition of a chieftain beluga type 10 and corvette all similarly professionally painted and with led strobe and navigation lights added. The paint jobs were added by an etsy based artist called winged wolf minis and silencer has since added the leds. There's a picture set and a quick video tour all of which you'll find linked below together with a link to the etsy store that created them. It's seriously impressive stuff ever so slightly jealousy inducing and comes with a side order of wallet emptying. Don't say we didn't warn you. After a collective six years spent at Frontier both in production and public facing roles the time has come for elites senior community manager Sally Morgan Moore to bid a fond farewell to the Cambridge based developers and to the game that she is rightly most associated with at Frontier Elite Dangerous. Sally started at Frontier in 2016 as an assistant producer on Elite Dangerous later becoming a product manager for the game. Some of her biggest influences on the game are the ubiquitous camera suite that is such a huge part of many commander's Elite Dangerous experience and the stygian paint jobs that are a highlight of the ed yearly calendar both of which she helped create. It was during this period that Sally became best known to the community as a semi-regular on the Elite Dangerous live streams alongside her friend the then lead community manager Will Flanagan. Their joint live streams and the shenanigans therein became the stuff of Elite Dangerous community legend. After a spell away from fdev at no breaks games based in Tenor Reef working on human full flat Sally returned to the fdev fold in April of 2021 as a community manager on Elite Dangerous that timing meant she was there to help the community and the game through the turbulent early days of Odyssey's launch just one month later. In August 2022 Sally became the senior community manager on Elite Dangerous and her presence has prevailed on every social media outlet that the game utilizes her gentle but firm guidance grace and humour will be particularly missed on twitter and on the official forums. Her legendary patch and update notes alone have become a much anticipated community highlight and updates to the game will never feel quite the same from here on. In the last couple of years Sally's appearances on the Elite Dangerous live streams alongside Arthur Tolme have become regular highlights in the games monthly calendar and her presence on the streams without a shadow of a doubt will be keenly missed by both the viewing community and by the team at frontier. Where Sally lands next and what she's doing we can't yet say. All Sally has said on the forum post announcing her departure is that as you can imagine she's very excited for the role she's been offered and it is a truly meaningful move for her. It's great to see that Sally has managed to land herself a plum role especially in the midst of such challenging times for the games industry as a whole. Fdev itself in particular has not been immune to those challenges as we reported recently. Frontier's loss is undoubtedly going to be a huge gain to wherever Sally is headed to next and we know she will continue to shine like the bright star that she is in her new role. On a personal note for us here at the Burpit Homestead and our own community as a whole it's difficult to overstate our gratitude for everything Sally has done for Elite Dangerous. Her help, advice, guidance and attendance of this year's pitcon event in particular will always be something that Rene and I will look back on very fondly. Of course Arthur and I are still very bitter about the cheating during the sci-fi movie quiz at the show but let's not dwell on that. Sally is going to leave some big shoes to be filled but from every single member of the Burpit we would like to wish you the most wonderful onward journey with all the successes and happiness you truly deserve. 07 Sally Do you own any 3D printed Elite ships? Are you emptying your bank account looking at the ones in today's show? Are you now raw material gathering from inside your ship? Let us know in the comments below. That's it for now. Thanks very much for watching. We'll be back later this week with more videos. Until then, 07 Commanders, follow the Greens on the way out and do keep clear of the toast rack. We very much look forward to seeing you next time.


So we are welcoming Elena of Valhalla, who will talk about the activity pub, so activity pub, peer tube, Mastodon, the future, so she will tell us more. Thank you. So I think that a number of people here probably care a bit about free software and that some or at least some of you care also of the more general problems of freedom in computing, not just the software that runs on one's computer but also when interacting with other platforms and where our data goes when we do something online, etc. And there are lots of problems that are around this area. Only few of which can be fully solved by only running free software on our own computers because nowadays we are spending lots of time in dealing with other people's computers and giving them the control of what is happening, even if on our side everything is free software. There is one specific problem in this area, which is social networks. So humans are social beings, so they like to have platforms that allow them to talk to each other, share things and whatever they want to share with other people. But most of the social networks nowadays are in the hands of a few companies that have shown many times that they can't be trusted with our data. Their main aim is to collect as much data as possible in order to sell it to advertisers. And they give us a service in exchange, so it's not a complete one-sided relationship. But they've shown that they are not able to give the data we are giving them the right care. So one thing that I recommend reading about this is the empire of oily regs by Curry Doctor who explains how big data from social companies are like a company that is collecting oily regs, squeezing out the oil and selling it. But of course this is an expensive project where they don't get as much money from each bit of oil they managed to squeeze out. So it only works if they can just put all the regs somewhere and if it takes fire it's somebody else's problem, which is what social network companies are basically doing with our data. There is a solution, well there is one solution which is avoiding social networks and it's not really a solution that a lot of people can actually use. There are some people who have family pressure to be able to share pictures of their children with their grandparents or anything. And there are also people who need this social interaction to be happy. So saying okay just avoid it is not a good solution. But there is another solution which is taking back social networks and bring it bring it back to being somebody by the people who use it use them for the people who use them. At least to some extent. This is something that has been happening for quite a long time. This is the first post on identica and it happened in 2008. So it's 10 years of free software social networks. It was based on free software. It could be installed by multiple people and all instances could talk with each other. This worked quite fine. Of course it was new software and it had problems. But the biggest problem was that it was a great play that the Fediverse or the universe of all platforms that allow to have a social network presence on your own server that federates, so talks with other people's servers. And it was a great place to talk about federated social networks and a tiny bit about free software. And that was it. The amount of people who were using this was quite little. It was a fun place to be if you were interested in federated social networks. And I have good time met a number of people. But if you had any other interest, you were just looking at something that weren't available for you. So it existed but it didn't solve most people problems. But at least it grew. It grew. And new projects were launched. There was Identica. There was Frendica. The Aspera were the early projects. Of course, they didn't talk with each other. So if you were on Identica, you could only talk with people on Identica. If you were on the Aspera, you could only talk with people on the Aspera. And if you were on Frendica, you could talk with other people as long as this was explicitly supported in Frendica. And as long as it didn't break, which happened quite often. Then time passed. And there were a few things that happened.  And that helped a lot of getting new users. Because those new users created their own federated social network instance. And they also started to talk about other topics. So it wasn't just federated social network and porn, but it started to become federated social network, cat picture, or memes or anything else. And a bit of porn, but it's easy to filter it out. As you can see, the platform that was used a lot for this was Mastodon. And Mastodon came with content warning, the ability to prevent showing content if you don't want to see it, which helped with having an influx of people who wanted porn, but didn't take over the platform. Another thing that Mastodon had was the ability to pay somebody to host your own instance. Because one big problem that Identica had was that everybody was going on the Identica server. So there wasn't a real federated ecosystem. Everybody was just using one server. With Mastodon, a lot of people are using the main server, Mastodon.social. But there are also a lot of other instances. Some of them are big and created for some specific topic. Some are just a few people who decide, okay, we want to have our own social network instance. So we are not IT people, we are not CIS admin. We can pay somebody to do the CIS admin work and they just do the social administrator work, so banning people, listening to people's complaints, et cetera. The other good thing that happened was the activity pub specification, which is at least a standard that allows multiple platforms to talk to each other. It has some problems, but it has a huge advantage, which is it exists. And there are a few big platforms that already talk activity pub, mostly Mastodon. Then there were a number of smaller projects born especially last summer. It was called the summer of activity pub. And there were projects like pixel fed, well, a few others, which took activity pub and decided, okay, I want to make something that is useful, well, basically, I want to make Instagram free, free as in freedom, or I want to make a blog that talks activity pub and other projects like this. There is still one thing that is missing, and it is that activity pub as a protocol allows you to use as a client to server part and the server to server part. Most of the projects are implementing the server to server part. One thing that would be good to see, it started to have clients talking client to server that could use different servers that are maybe useful for microblogging or pictures or blogging, et cetera. Instead of having to have an account on Mastodon, if you want to do microblogging, on pixel fed, if you want to do, to publish photos, et cetera, if you want to have a blog or something else. So we have a number of projects. Some of them are already talking activity pub. Some are older and they are implementing it. Some are still using other protocols. Diaspora is still using the Diaspora protocol and as far as I know, they don't intend to migrate. But at least as far as projects are available, it's a good situation. It's quite active. People are starting to think about doing things that a commercial entity wouldn't be doing. And it's starting to grow something more. But there is quite a big problem that is that self hosting such projects is not easy. Some of them are meant for big-ish instances. So they think that you're going to have 100 or 1,000 users at least. If you have just four users, you can do it. But it's not really a good match. Then there are all web projects with lots of dependencies. And it can be hard to install and maintain them in time without breaking. So it would be nice having them in Debian. But as far as I know, of the one that talk activity pub, none of them are available. All of those RFPs are just RFPs, except for the friendica one who was an ITP but was forgotten. I don't know if they're still working. I asked probably too late to have an answer today. So I think it would be nice maybe to bring, to do some effort on that part. But it's something that is going to be hard because packaging web projects is hard. And I have to admit that I looked at them and I decided to do the wrong thing and write my own activity pub server, which probably will never work. But if it will, it will be easy to host. So I should have worked more on packaging. But sometimes people do what is fun rather than what is useful. So if you have any questions, if you want to, if you consider this important and want to help, thank you. Now there is a question. Okay. Hello.  In the Debian Publicity team publishes the small news via micronews.Debian.org. But these systems creates a Tom feed that can be pushed to different social networks. So for the networks that Elena explained, some people, members of the Debian Publicity team, care about the Debian profile in a certain social network. So we are in Mastodon. It's in the profilisdebian.at Fostodon.org. And we are also in Pampayo with Debian at Irentica. We are still keeping that account. And some other people ask about having a Debian profiling other networks, for example, the Aspora. It depends on somebody wanting to maintain the account and to keep that the feed is working and replying if there is any mention or everything. We try to focus in the micronews so the content is there at the correct time. And then we invite anybody that wants to maintain a Debian account in any federated social network to talk with us and to join the Publicity team. And that's all. Thank you. This was quite important to say. We wanted to do both tomorrow. So if somebody is interested in talking about activity pub, so we can find a place for you and you can discuss all together during the lightning talks or a little bit after. So don't hesitate to go and see Elena if you want to do this. You asked who is interested and would like to, ah, you asked who is interested and would like to help. I am, only I don't have time so that's a third item missing. But maybe someday. Do you happen to know because I managed to get rid of all the big social networks. The only thing I can't get rid of is Twitter because there are too many interesting things that I don't know how to get from other sources. Is there anything, any one of those networks that can just mirror all the stuff from mirror that I can say, monitor those Twitter feeds and show them and I don't want you to give any data to Twitter from me? Well, I don't think so. There are a few people on Twitter who also post on Masum. They're growing a bit more, of course in the context of software, technological things at the most. I don't think there is something automatic that takes things from Twitter and downloads it. Because that would require somebody to maintain it while Twitter changes the conditions, the API. I think that something has been tried and mostly failed. Exactly because you are working with somebody who doesn't want their content to go outside. So you should expect the APIs to change your application to be blocked. It may work for some time. You can also try to tell people who you are interested in. Well, why don't you also post on something else? Mostly in that case it would be Mastodon. For microblogging it's the biggest one. There are also tools to post both on Twitter and Mastodon at the same time. There are a number of accounts that use them and some of them aren't great accounts because on Mastodon they are mostly read-only, but at least the original posts are available. But, yeah, it's a hard problem because you are dealing with somebody who can be working against you, so Twitter. Yeah, especially I'm following the ongoing stuff with Fridays for Future and Climate Strike and it makes me very sad that especially those people, you send proprietary networks, proprietary chat infrastructure, everything proprietary. You may also tell them that on Mastodon there is quite a big community of people who are into those problems, those issues. There is a big community of self-sufficiently eco-anarchists or things like that. There are interesting communities on Mastodon from a social point of view. And then you had five requests for packaging some bugs there for the different systems. And have you made a list which of those might be the easiest to package or which are the problems to package so that if somebody has time, it knows, okay, where were the hurdles which is the most promising to start? Well, I think that Franbika may be good because it's PHP and as far as I know there aren't that many dependencies but then you have to maintain a PHP program. I wouldn't recommend Pampa.io because I don't know how much development it is anymore. Plurama is also promising as long as you know the language is written in it, which is Erlang I think. Okay, great. So as soon as you have time, you have a volunteer. Last question, is there any place in the Dabian wiki for example where I find this list of five ERPs and maybe anything else around Activity Pop and Dabian? I don't think so but I can make one this afternoon. Well, maybe tomorrow during the buff or at most in the next few days. Can I ask you a question? You mentioned, you almost mentioned this idea but so when I try to convince people using alternative social network, until now I recommended diaspora because some instances have this feature that when you post to diaspora, it can also post to a Twitter account that you linked and a Facebook account that you linked. But diaspora is not going to have Activity Pop soon. So do you know Activity Pop social networks who have this feature for forwarding posts to link the account on other social network or do you know external tools who can post to proprietary social network and also Activity Pop based social networks? I know that they exist but I don't know which one they are because I've never used them and they are the ones that post on Twitter and Mastodon at the same time. But I'm only on the receiving part seeing the posts on Mastodon so I don't know what the name of the tool is but I'm sure it exists because I'm seeing it used. So we have two more minutes if somebody else has questions. Thank you Elena. There is another kind of social network that uses Activity Pop, it's called Fankwale, I guess the right name. It's an alternative replacement for Groove Shark. I don't know if it's dead or if it's just proprietary but it's dead. But we would have liked to have the main author of the software but he's not here today but he's using Activity Pop and it can be blended with the rest of the community. Great, I didn't know about it. So his name is Elliot Berryot and Fankwale is like peer tube but for music. It's exactly the same idea and it's using Activity Pop and since September this developer is on his own, he left his job to develop full-time Fankwale so go and look at his project and he's on opencollectives.com so you can fund his job, his work if you want. So thank you Elena. Thank you.


Hi, Cube Nation, I'm Sam Cahane with Stu Miniman. Stu, thanks for joining us today. Glad to join you, Sam. And welcome to the OpenStack Summit 15 pre-show coming to you in Vancouver, brought to you by The Cube. Five years ago in Austin, Texas, NASA and Rackspace came together and created the OpenStack project. They open sourced it and it launched the OpenStack era. It's now five years later. Stu, what's changed in the past five years? What's different today? All right, Sam. Well, unfortunately, we don't have a couple of hours to go through everything that's changed, but real quick summary, and by the way, check out the really phenomenal post that Steve Chambers from Wikibon UK wrote about open source entering its second epic. So really what we said is it was really a lot of startups that came in, contributed to it. Developers and people helping to build what really is, people are saying, OpenStack, what is it? Is it a product? Is it a solution? And really it's a whole bunch of projects that fit under the umbrella of OpenStack. They release it every six months. The Kilo release just got released. Liberty's going to be the next one. That'll be in six months. And the community gets together every six months right after the release to talk about where things happen, to get the update from the OpenStack Foundation itself. And what we really think a big trend is, first of all, some of the big players are really involved and some big users are really using it. We've got companies like Walmart made a big splash saying that Walmart Labs is going in with OpenStack. They've got like 3,600 engineers working on this stuff. And I mean, talk about a global enterprise.  Absolutely. So you started to mention, you know, the big players. So who are the other big players in this field? And can you tell us a little bit about the ecosystem? Yeah, sure, Sam. So it's, I mean, it's a huge ecosystem.  Nebula unfortunately is no longer in business as of earlier this year. And there were a whole lot of acquisitions. I mean, talk about kind of the hot M&A season that we saw last year, you know, HP big move in the space, you know, purchased Eucalyptus.  We remember back when they put a billion dollars into Linux, it was really one of the things that helped bring that to the enterprise. They're trying to do the same thing with the open stack to really bring kind of the almost the Linux of the data center, that full stack that IBM will help bringing Red Hat. You know, who's going to be the Red Hat of the open stack distribution? Well, hey, maybe Red Hat can be there. You've got Morantis, who was an early leader in this space that is adjusted with the times. They're, you know, still very active, of course, in open stack. They're working with Cloud Foundry. They're working in a lot of environments.  So, you know, Cisco's got a big play to make sure that as things pivot to this new infrastructure to service offering that they are still relevant in this space. So, boy, you know, everybody that cares about infrastructure and cloud or might be leveraging big data are there, so it's really one of those kind of pivotal moments for our community to come together around this growing and still maturing technology space. Absolutely. And you mentioned M&A, and, you know, I want to hear your bold predictions. Coming up, do you think there's going to be any big acquisitions, any mergers this year? What do you see on the horizon? Yeah, Sam is a great question. So, first of all, you know, a lot of acquisitions were done. We think there's still room for plenty of them. There's more VCs, you know, putting money into this space. So, there are a number of startups left that have some really smart people, some of the ones that, you know, came from NASA, came from Rackspace, helping to grow that space. And as you look at the companies that are trying to become, you know, larger players in the cloud marketplace, you know, they need to work with OpenStack. One of the big things I look at is it's not that saying, hey, I've got an OpenStack solution. It's, I've got a solution that's powered with OpenStack. And there's actually some things that are going to happen from the federations to how do I make sure what is OpenStack? Because as I said, there's all of these sub-projects underneath. And do I have to have all of them? Or what pieces do I have? What makes an OpenStack solution? And we're starting to really understand that in the market today. And absolutely, I think some of the big guys are going to find opportunities where they can make an acquisition. You know, we mentioned our friends at IBM. You know, perhaps they would build that out. They had the huge soft-layer acquisition. They've been very active in the big data space. You know, wouldn't be surprised if they did almost like an Aqua Hire, which is to, you know, buy a company to get some really good people. I look at what's happening in the cloud founder ecosystem, where both, you know, Pivotal and HP and IBM are very active in this space as they build out what they're doing. You know, boy, there's so much activity. Absolutely. I think there'll be more M&A coming on here. And there's a lot more revenue flowing into the space now, too, which just breeds more people coming in. Absolutely. It's a growing space and, you know, it's always changing. Coming into this conference, what are you the most excited to learn? You know, what excites you? So last year, some of the things I wanted to learn at the Atlanta show was, you know, really, where were we with the maturity? And some of the pieces were really mature. So if you look at kind of the core compute, the core storage projects there seem to be in pretty good shape. Customers are deploying them. The two, one, networking the neutron, you know, component. I want to see how far that's come in the last year to mature it. And secondly, you know, who's really got a good job to put together the solution because absolutely customers can take OpenStack either from working through a partner or spending a lot of time to pull it all together. They can build solutions based on OpenStack, but it's still tough. So that management and orchestration layer, you know, is one that we think there's a lot of potential to move forward with. So I want to see the state of that. And boy, there's some really good players in this thing.  So as we said, some of the bigger players are really heavily involved. Got two major headline sponsors. One is a joint sponsorship actually highlighting how Cisco and Red Hat are working together to the inner cloud and ACI from Cisco, along with everything that Red Hat is doing to bring their expertise in open source and building solutions together. EMC is the other anchor sponsor from the headline standpoint. And EMC made the acquisition. It was, you know, Randy buys a team in cloud scaling. So expect to see Randy's always a guest on are going back to our earliest shows that we talked about cloud. And I believe he's actually going to be our first guest of the show in Vancouver this year. And additionally, HP, the Helion Group and Brocade, also, you know, giving us an additional sponsor. Big big thank you for the sponsors there for helping us so that we can bring, you know, to this, you know, very important event to our community.  We've got the kind of the Docker, Kubernetes, you know, cloud foundry space and what Cloud Foundry is doing with Lattice. We'll be teasing some of that out at this show and some of the other shows we've got in the spring. So, you know, I've got our top guest from last year, you know, Mark Shuttleworth is going to be back, you know, always exciting to be able to talk to him and other luminaries in the space. So, you know, way more guests than I can talk about. Three days, wall-to-wall coverage that we'll be doing.  I'm excited. It's actually, I think the first time we're broadcasting live of the Cube from Canada and, you know, Vancouver is going to be an awesome place to do it. Absolutely. Exciting times for the Cube. And as you said, you know, we have all these great shows. Three days of action. What is the best way for our viewers to follow us, Stu? Yeah. So, first of all, those people that are coming to the event itself, we're going to be in a very public place. If you walk just past the registration area on level one, right between rooms 108 and 109, we'll be in the hallway there. Please stop on by. Take a look, you know, definitely chat with John Furrier and myself during the breaks. If you're watching on live, just go to siliconangle.tv, which is where you can see all our shows. Of course, go to wikibond.com for all the latest reachers at research that we have in this space. You know, hit me and the Cube team up and Furrier up on Twitter if you've got questions. I've got a couple of slots left on the Cube. If there's some key practitioners or contributors that you think we should be interviewing, you know, always looking for those guests. So, you know, that's our digits. Great. We're running out of time here. Stu, any last words? So just, you know, Sam, you know, it's open stack has come a long way. It's still real early. I mean, with that cadence of releasing every six months, you know, we're looking to show, you know, where it has come so far and where it needs to go from here. Absolutely.  But, you know, there's still plenty of room for growth and plenty of maturity. And there's always the big looming giants of Amazon and the like. You know, we just had the recent earnings report. So trying to help customers reconcile really what their multi cloud strategy is and definitely open stack is going to play a significant piece in that strategy overall. So looking forward to digging into it. Thank you, Stu. Please, please follow us. Follow all the action. Watch it live at siliconangle.tv. Follow us on Twitter. Stu is Stu's Twitter name. Mine Sam underscore Kahane. Follow the cube, Wiccabon, Silicon Angle. CubeNation. Thank you for joining and we'll see you next time.