It started. We've got the slim crew here today. Diane had to step away for an all day meeting. So, and jump right into our agenda. And it looks like actually, I can take time. Brian Michael Bruce, can you put your name in the in the document here? Okay, you want to put the document in a chat just so they don't have to go and find it. Yeah. And Mike is not here to talk about this transition of the guide transition. Let me see if there's anything in PR. Oh, yes, actually. So Diane merged it 14 days ago. It looks like they did get the last little bit squared away. And so the guides now are merged into the okd.io. So we can actually list that one as completed. Okay, I had questions about the charter update and placement that I was going to ask Diane, but since she's not here, we. Updates to the okd.io banner. I did make the change to get rid of the recipes link. So now it is all just what is okd installation documentation blog and community. And why don't we actually, this seems like a good place to actually move and put Brian's stuff. I'm going to move our agenda around here because actually now would be a great time for Brian to give us an update on the beta site. If there is any updates. Yeah, unmute myself. So that always helps. Yeah, there is. Easy about doing this. Yeah, go ahead and show your screen if you want. Hopefully you can now see that. Yes, we can. Thank you. Ridiculously small. Okay, so I've actually created the beta on the okd.io. And this now does contain the site. If you look at the gate of actions are there and when you push, it actually runs the action. And that action will go into a spell check. It'll actually check all links. So just a warning whenever you do an update to the site, you're also responsible for fixing any broken links. So it checks all the links in the site and will tell you there any broken links. And then it'll obviously publish. Now the one issue I have is I don't have access to the settings. So if I go to mine, I have access to settings, which allows me to go into pages and configure. To source GitHub pages from the GH pages branch. So we need that setting made because at the minute. The GitHub pages site is not active. But I actually don't have access to the page. So if you look, we actually are creating the. There's a lot of branches in here. We are actually creating the GitHub pages site. So this is the source of the beta site. So it's all there. It's all working. But obviously until we turn on GitHub pages for this project. We don't get to see it. So I don't know whether you have access Jamie. I just looked and I do not. So let's add that actually as a to do. So we'll need to get whoever read had access to this to go and turn that on. Just then again, we can actually send them a screenshot of this page if you want. We just need the source to be GitHub pages branch. And we want the root and nothing else we can enforce HTTPS. And that's it. So in the pages section on the settings, just those two settings. And that will turn on the beta site. And then it'll also give us the URL. So that's probably just going to be the open shift dash CS GitHub.io. And then it'll be OKD.io would be the URL. So that's actually getting the site there. So every time we push code to the beta branch. It doesn't touch the main branch or the master branch as it's defined here. It's just this beta branch will actually kick off the GitHub action. To actually do that. So if I go back to my site that I sort of tried all this out. We do have some decisions to make. So this is what it looks like at the minute. Now I think we need to change this. I want to make this much, much simpler. This also uses bootstrap framework, which causes some issues. So if I shrink this, you notice that it doesn't necessarily work very well. The menu just doesn't work because the bootstrap is interfering with the underlying MP docs framework. So there are some issues in terms of just getting that reactive sort of content working. So we do need to work out what we want on the simple site. And then also, are these colours OK? I mean, I just picked from the home, I just picked these two colours. But I don't know whether this is what we want the rest of the site to look at. Do we want it to be different colours? I'm using red as the active highlight. So there are a lot of style issues. I've actually picked up the font and the styling from what we have on the current site. So I've actually adopted the same fonts as the old site uses. But again, there's a lot of sort of style issues that we need to discuss. And then obviously we just need to make sure we move the content across. Because obviously what you've just done, I mean, I didn't put the recipes there anyway, but the guides, which I sort of suggested belong here under the getting started instead of a separate thing. There's all sorts of things we need to. So I don't know whether we want to do it in these meetings, have a working group, a work session where we just go and get it agreed and sorted. Or whether you're just happy for me to come up with something, make it up as I go along and present it and say, do we like this? They go. So, well, let's see. I'm, I'm a little bit pressed for time myself or other meetings for like other meetings in addition to what I have Bruce. What's your time. Okay. You're okay. Yeah, I'm okay. Okay. The only thing that I know of that was important to Diane is to maintain at the bottom or to include at the bottom of whatever we did. The end user community part and the commons part is to have that featured. I don't know if it's necessary to be on the same. Front page to be on the front page the same as it is now, but it was important for Diane to have that to list those partners and list the community commons as something that people can dissipate in. So, well, yeah, seems that Diane, like this seems to be from Diane's standpoint, a dual purpose site with one of the significant purposes being marketing. In other words, a, like some new potential user sort of sitting around.   And they should be incentivized to want to install okay D.  And so, and then promoting it to the world. Right. And I can see that right yet. I'm not the person to advise on that side at all. Right. My interest is more on what's useful.  They will very quickly get annoyed by the marketing bump. And if there's not useful stuff, then they're not going to go back. It just makes sense to have it be a sub menu under community. Maybe the last item under community or something like. Yeah, I don't have a problem with the, with the homepage being marketing bump as long as it's sort of clear what you click on to get the good stuff. Right. I don't know, I guess we'll have to save that for Diane to see what she's partial to in terms of format and stuff. But I would say the rest of it, Brian, what are you most comfortable since you're sort of leading this effort? Do you want to do it in these meetings? Do you want to wrangle people for a separate meeting? I'll hand that to you and you can run with it. Yeah, I mean, I think the big thing is just to get a consensus on dialing color, the colors to use and do we want it. I mean, there is an option where we could have a dark mode and a light mode with a toggle switch. It'll pick up your browser's preferences if we want that. So these are all things that we can turn on. And it's a configuration thing. So it's not anything to do with writing the content because you write content in markdown. And whatever we decide is a styling will get applied to that. So it's not as if the decisions we make. I'm aware this. This is our community presence on the web. So I'm a fairly new member. I'm happy to go and sort of start throwing things up and letting people shoot me down and saying that's terrible and go do better. Yeah, I like that. Maybe we need a different color here. But if people want to have a say, I'm equally as happy to have a say and however people want to do it. At some point you're doing stuff that makes you a valued member. Yeah, there you go. Well, does it make sense? So, I mean, I don't know who else is going to be coming to these meetings right now. Folks are like really busy. And in the past, we've had like basically it's it's plus Mike and then plus. Muhammad Reza and then Michael and that's basically been it. And then. Drity. So really it's been this core group of people. Does it make sense Bruce and Brian for you folks to go off and and work and then just bring something back. So the larger group. Because there's going to be stuff coming up in these meetings that we're going to have to address in terms of some of the other documentation. Installation documentation and things like that. So maybe in terms of the design stuff. If you folks go off and figure out what works best and bring it back to the group and chances are unless. American time zone brand. I'm UK based. Okay, so that so that gets a little bit trickier to find a common time. What time zone are you in? Are you East Central? I'm a Pacific. So that's even worse. So let's go just like Diane. So eight hours apart. Okay. So yeah. I mean, what I can do is I can do things and put a comment in the slack channel or wherever and say, I've made a change. Go say on a and we can take it from there and I can, we can do it incrementally on ask people to the comment. I mean, the problems is people tend not to comment. And then when it goes live, there'll be an outcry of who did this. I don't like this. But I think I think that that you're the optional dark mode, light mode is good. Yeah. Accessibility reasons for accessibility reasons. Okay, I actually have. Oh, let me just check one thing with Bruce. Bruce, do you seem to spend a lot of time in the channel though?  Yeah. Most of them useless. Does it make more sense, Brian, for you to use the Google group and put something in the Google group when you make a change? Yeah, I can use a Google group if people want me to do that. That might be better because that's easier for people to retrieve if they can't look right at that moment. Okay. There's at least a trail that's easier to follow this. And my email is actually like my work email is public. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I can do that. So the one question I have and maybe Michael can tell me. I'm assuming I've got to remove this. Because if we're going to be GitHub pages driven, we're no longer going to be powered by Red Hat on OpenShift online. I'm guessing that would have to be removed. I know that any legal things that we need to put in like license or copyright or any of this sort of stuff that we need to be aware of. Because Michael doesn't know who do we ask to know about that. Yeah, there is no copyright or anything on here and most communities have a some licensing or copyright stuff in here. And I say, I guess I've got to remove that. Yeah, we'll have to figure that part out. And so do those, let's see, we've got the Twitter. Where does the Twitter go by the way? Does that go to the OpenShift Twitter? So that's the same as exactly what's up. That's the same as what's exactly on OKD.io now. It's the same. Yeah. But what does it go into? Yeah. It goes to OpenShift. Okay. Oh, and it goes to OpenShift Origin for GitHub. I just noticed that there's actually a link on the front page that goes to Origin instead of OKD in the community section. I just noticed that a little bit of go. Which one was it? And again, we go to the OpenShift Facebook page. So to say that we are a community driven project, we seem to be sending everyone to OpenShift. Oh, you know what? It's the Fork the Repository link that actually goes to the old Origin. Okay, so we need to change those. Yeah, that needs to go to the OKD. Yeah, because this talks about like 4.6 and above and... Okay. Oh, interesting. As of July 2020, the purpose and maintenance strategy of the repo varies by branch. Apparently Origin is used to sort of a jumping, well, I don't want to say dumping ground, but a jumping off point. So yeah, we definitely want to instead drop people into the OKD one. Yep. All right. And so yeah, we'll put that on the list just to find out about legal stuff. If Michael doesn't know, like what do we need to have in terms of any type of, you know, insignia for copyright or anything like that. I do not. I could look at what OpenShift has. I'm sure Diane actually knows someone that can give us an answer. So let's put it in that in the to do... Much safer. Yeah. And I guess just to go looking down further the agenda, when we actually do the switch, we can probably handle the inclusive language update at the same time. That's probably a good time to do that. All right. Okay, so I have a next item in terms of this, which is priority. What do we think is priority to move to the beta so that we can move the beta over sooner than later? Like, because there's a lot of sort of sort of crufty type stuff. What would be helpful to move to move into the beta so that we get a good sense of navigation, appearance, and functionality? The way I was planning is to get the beta to the state that we'd want the production to be at, and then simply just do a pull request to push the beta into the main branch. No, but I mean, in terms of moving content over, because we're not just going to... I mean, are we just going to take everything that's on the current site and dump it into the beta? Potentially, yes, with a sort of... Because I mean, we sort of have already gone through the site and said, well, we need to get rid of this stuff. So we looked at the recipes and said, well, that's going, that's old. So there isn't a lot on the site, to be honest. Yeah, I guess that's true. Well, I'll move the blogs across, I'll move the guides across. I think because obviously they went on since I did the fork. I know I rebased the fork on today, but I actually did the fork a month ago. So I haven't put any content that's recently been changed. So I'll try and pull all the content that's currently on the site into the beta. As you see, I've already sort of suggested new locations. I'll put the guides within the Getting Started section. And my idea is to get the styling, the colors and the content to be the state that we want it in production. And then when we all agree that it's at that point, I think we switch. Right, so should we put, so are we in agreement then that nothing new should be put in the current repository. I made that one change to the header, but nothing else. Are we good or is there any anything else that is an immediate thing to change until we're ready to go live with the beta. Yeah, so I actually rebased the beta after your changes. So if you look, I rebased the beta changes. There is no, there are no changes from where I did the rebase. So we should be able to merge the beta onto the master without any conflicts today. So ideally it would be good if we could not do huge amounts of change. Right. I don't know that we need to change anything else right now. My sense is that the people who wrote the guides aren't going to be coming back in the near future to update those. Well, I'm hoping that it's going to be a matter of maybe a couple of weeks, maybe at next docs, we can ask for approval time type timeframe. I'm not expecting this to be going on for months. Yeah, I think that we could conceivably have content changes. And that I don't think we've really looked at it to see. Okay, like all the information that people want to access frequently. Is it easily accessible. Like I will occasionally find new stuff popping up when I do a Google search. That I didn't even know existed, which is really, and some of it is stuff that Vadim did and put in markdown. This, you know, somewhere in the, you know, like. You know, the, the, the GitHub slash install slash.  Yes, document. There's actually a build document about that's buried. That's about like how to build. Yeah, so like someone said, and I noticed like, like, whenever I'm on a different machine, I need to find the status page with the updates. I have to poke around. Right. And so, so things like that would be, I think are generally useful enough. They'd be nice. Like, if you go install, then there's a link right to it with a meaningful. Name so that you know what you're clicking on. I mean, the hope, the hope is that once this goes live, making updates to the dock site is trivial. Right. And anyone should be able to do a pull request without needing to understand middleman and how to do a full page web development. It's just going to be a simple markdown file. So my hope is that once this goes live, the changes to the dock site become much more frequent and we're much more responsive about saying, we should really add this to the docks or even to the point of there's a release that's got an issue, a known issue. Let's put that up as a known issue or release for a point X. And we can actually start making the site the go to place to find stuff and find the latest information rather than. I mean, looking back at the history. Okay, the I hasn't really changed a huge amount for quite some time. We're not using it as the, as the place where we post up to date information. Right. And it would be really useful to have such a place. I think, but I mean, I think, but again, I wouldn't throw in too many factors at once. Is there like, I think your plan is a good one, which is get what we have now rebased. And then we can look at the making changes to make it more serviceable. One thing I do have. Yeah. And one thing I do have Bruce to your point about very documents is. And I can actually modify the agenda to reflect this is further down we had an ongoing item. That was the name and scope of install that MD and read me that MD, because those are the ones where you want to get to the install that MD because that has the link to releases. And there's all that navigation stuff. I want to have that conversation with Vadim since Vadim created those two pages. Where are those pages. So, if you go to okd.io. Or sorry, if you go to the okd code repository. So, github. Okay, so it's not the documentation. Right. And this has been sort of an ongoing confusing thing is if you go to, yeah, it's slash open shift slash okd is the. Yeah, okay. Yeah. And actually there's some stuff that needs to get pulled out of there like those guides need to get deleted because those are the old ones. There. There's the troubleshooting stuff. Which talks about log bundles. There's the contributing page which talks about actually building okd. Like, I feel like contributing needs to actually get changed to like building okd is contributing in terms of the group can mean a lot of different things. Right. And, you know, known issues he actually has been updating known issues with known issues for builds and stuff like that. So my take is that this repo all of this content should go to okd.io. It, it deals that way because there's really nothing here that's like scripts or anything like that. I think the the guides might have a couple of scripts or something like that. But no, there's no it's all content. So my sense is that yeah I mean it should go like yeah even navigating through here I'm not seeing anything that isn't just some flat pages. Yeah, I think so. Where is the installed or md or is that in the. So it's if you go to, is it install md or what is it let's see hold on. We find it it's. The same page.  So if you go to the getting started part. And then there's releases that goes to the long release page. Which, where is that in. Is he updating that in real time the releases page. The releases pages auto generated right. That's generated by the system. Yeah okay so the releases pages the is the GitHub releases tags so it's it's the yeah it's the right project releases rather than a content page. Right, so for stuff like that, does it make sense to keep it. That's got to stay there because that is effectively a CI. Not a documentation feature. Right. Let's see the nightlies page. But all the stuff in the read me. It's mixed. Yeah, it's like all over the place. Yeah, a lot of I think we need to refactor this ideally and put it within okay. So it's, it's organized and it's, it's easy to follow. Same with things like the FAQ. Yeah, I think that should be a feature of all kitty.io. And then obviously the. The log information. And then the contributing as you say it is a good source of information that should be there. This should be part of our documentation. So should we have a just sort of throwing this out should contributing be its own link up at the top, or should it be under community. Like where ultimately would we want contributing to be because it is different than installing right. I mean at the minute I sort of put it sort of into community. And then it's a, it's a sub menu in community. Does that make sense. That work for folks. Make sense to me. Yeah. Okay. Anything else on this topic. Oh, delineation of resources for work group and okay users. Diane was going to look into the working group guidelines and conflict resolution. I think we can post something. She's can't respond to that. Diane did want us to provide text for what to put in the Google. Description and to for what to ultimately put in the chat channel so that they don't like cross reference each other. Because actually the chat I think says to go to the Google group. It's mixed. I mean I think eventually if we can get the community page on okay d.io. Then that will be a good place to send everybody to because that will then in a more of a both way be able to say, are you an end user? Or do you want to contribute and these are the differences and this is where you go to do that function that's where you go to that function. But until we get that page. Stable I mean the current community page. Well right now the link goes to the discussion directly. So I would say that's probably the best place to send everybody to until we can. By the way, I did notice that Vadim is now actually closing down. Issues. That are not true. Val, you know, verified his issues and directing them to the discussion, which is, is great. Yeah. Yeah. I would support sending everybody to the discussions page. All right, that covers all of that. So, Brian, in terms of inclusive language update, did, is there anything on that ticket from those three folks that were assigned to it. Yeah. I haven't been notified of any changes. Let's see if there's nothing. No, those folks are still assigned to it 28 days ago. Response. So I would say in how long do you want to wait Brian before we ping them again. If we're going to move across to the new site, I can fix everything as part of that. And then as we transition from the current scheme to the GitHub actions, they're going to have to turn off whatever automation they have. And at that point we can just rename the master domain, which is the primary action on on that. I think when we do that transition, we close this ticket down. Okay. Alright, that's easy enough. Okay, and now we're up to Michael's first draft of the docs on. Submitting an issue on the docs Michael, do you want to walk us through a little bit shows we got. I mean, sure. I just started in Google docs. But unfortunately it's a red hat only Google doc, unless I explicitly invite you all in. I can find it. You see it.  I assume people know what to do, know how to do these things. I just wanted to start by mentioning that the okay docs are built off the open shift docs. So any actions they want to take go against that repo and not the okay D repo. And folks need to file a PR. Directly against the documentation. I got a link that goes over to here and use. Is that the wrong page? What's the new button there? What is that? You can look into that. Or you can file an issue that should go right to an issue template. Sorry, this is our template. You create issues. And we discussed this I think last meeting. What types of changes we wanted to see listed expressly errors typos missing information product names, the operating system, blah, blah, blah. And if you do file a jeer issue here, the information to really home what the problem is or what your concern is and how to tag it so that it gets our attention directly. So tag me, sign it to me and Diane. And if you have permissions to label through the kind documentation label and that will get our immediate attention. Excellent. It's great work. And I'm assuming if people want to create a PR, I'm assuming they know how to do that and they know how to fork the repo. Sure. It might be helpful.  Yeah, I'm sure we have something in our training docs that I can grab and throw in here. I'm even a link to some external resource. Yeah, I'm guessing this is eventually going to end upon okd.io. Yeah. That's pretty much it. Very cool. Any other feedback for Michael. No, just thank you. I think it's needed that documentation is what we need. Right. Excellent. All right. Create a build doc outline for Vadim. Brian and I have not had any communication about that. We'll do that this coming week. I've been just really overwhelmed with other stuff, but I'm being able a little more time to break away from that. And then so Brian and I are going to create sort of a set of questions and things that will form the outline that we want Vadim to fill in the blanks on or to point us to filling in the blanks on it. Well, I think we should actually combine that with the name and scope of install and read me. Yeah, some of that is some information already and some of it's filling in the blanks from there. So I think I think these two things go together very well. Yeah, I will do that in the agenda and go. And that actually brings us to we have any new businesses or anything else that's popped up that folks want to talk about in terms of docs anything else you've noticed that needs to be addressed or you'd like to see addressed or anything else that we should know about. I guess is just make sure that the C or C stuff is recorded. I'm hoping to apply, but I've got social plans on Friday evening and I may have to leave that C of C thing early if it goes on for the full two hours. Because I'm guessing again we want to write that up and get that into okd.io. The outcome of that. And again if somebody wants to do that, if not, I'll do that after the fact that if somebody wanted to document and write that up during the event and. But I just think we need to make sure that we do have an action to convert that video session into useful documentation going forward. And then as we do the automation post that event again that's then fully documented and yeah. Yeah, and I think it would be nice if we created a page that is a listing of all of these external events that we've had as opposed to hoping that someone sees it in the all of the listing of blog posts. It'd be nice to have something that's, you know, like, I don't know what we would call it, but something that has links to the videos for all of these things we've been doing, you know, for the past year and a half or whatever. I mean ideally we want to we want to YouTube group or whatever wherever we actually put them and actually have a playlist so we can point people at the playlist. So we do have an OK D playlist on the open shift. Diane gave me access so I actually have access to that's all the OK D meetings are under that OK D playlist so we can put our recordings under that. It'd be nice if we had another one specifically for somebody doesn't want to wade through the weekly. Good point. Like, why don't I change that then the OK D work group meetings and then just OK D like general stuff right just OK D OK D work group meetings and OK. Yeah, because that means we can then have like a resources page or a resources link. And then we can point at that that YouTube playlist. And then they can go and self discover all of the events that we've actually recorded. Perfect, I like it. Right, I will add that as an item for myself to do. Business. Change playlist name. The group. I think there is a group and create new playlist. And OK D. All right. Anything else anything else that we need to cover. We've got 15 minutes left. If there's nothing else then we can break early sounds like we're good. Let me know if you can't make the next meeting. Since we're running a little bit thin, I don't I don't want to get less than like. 3 people at a meeting, you know what I mean so if folks can't make it. Let me know ahead of time because then maybe we can reschedule or skip or something like that. Just we don't have everyone or 2 or 3 people sitting here waiting. You know, if we don't have a or basically it should be like, I guess, for people. This is probably the smallest we would want it. Yeah, I'm OK for the next stocks 1 I've got. A big academic kickoff meeting. Next week. So I'm going to see I don't know if I can come to the regular working group meeting but depends on if I can bug out of the other one. There you go. Oh, and Brian we are going to be recording the CRC and I'm hoping it only takes an hour. There's really. I don't know that you could take 2 hours with it because it is pretty basic, but Diane did carve out the time in case it does go. Yeah, I mean, if it's an hour, I can stay but. I am going to have to sort of after an hour drop out so. Yeah, I'm quite looking forward to that one. I think the interesting thing is. How do we actually. I've not really seen how we actually do work. Outside of the meetings, what is the mechanism of actually collaborating outside the meetings. Because we actually want to create an automation sort of project. As a result of this one, so I'm quite interested to see how that pans out how much interest and also how we're actually going to organize it. Yeah, yeah, I think it will probably be. I don't know. We'll see. It'll be interesting. So, but I'm definitely doing interested in helping with the automation. I know a couple folks are. I know you are so let's. Yeah, we'll probably tackle that probably at the main meeting the next main meeting. So probably next week's main. Probably talk about that with the demons. All right. Well, thank you everyone for showing up. I'm going to go ahead and stop recording here. All right, folks, I'll talk to you next time.


So I'm Raquel from the University of Valladolid and I want to discuss some ideas, they're not very well developed, but some of the ideas I've been having were working in some outreach and educational projects regarding music archaeology. As any other social science, music archaeology proposes particular narratives about human cultures, which often project onto the past modern musical identities and concepts that legitimate contemporary social and political agendas. This transmission not only affects how we understand past music, but also how we comprehend human societies and their histories as a whole. These narratives about past music have been transferred to the general audience since the first attempts to write a history of the origins and evolution of music in 19th century Europe, which were as the rest of the social sciences of the time, evolutionistic, orientalist, racist, profoundly etnocentric, eager to find nationalistic traits and totally oblivious of social organizations other than the gender binary heteropatriarchy. This transmission was not exclusively done from academic literature and the more general volumes on music history, but also from opera and since the 20th century from peplum movies to other audiovisual products and later on from historical renaissance. I will show you a little bit of this orientalistic approach to ancient music. I think that's enough there to get an idea of it. These visions, sorry, not yet. These visions are reinforced by a surprise surprisingly widely spread concept of music, which understands it as a universal language and not as the cultural one that it is. Music had a physical and universal truth behind it than Western classical musical harmony and aesthetics would have unveiled its deepest secrets. This could situate Western classical traditions at the top of an imaginary evolutionary musical pyramid which would have started with less complex and nonharmonic non-Western traditions. However, a new psychology shows to what extent this is a false premise. Music is a universal cultural behavior, but it is a culturally conditioned language. Also, hunted gathers such as the picnic or the bushmen show some of the most complex musical structures in the world. And we all know as well how incredibly developed are the musical concepts and aesthetics of the Caluli drumming in Papua and Ovarinea. None of these musics and many others in the world show any less musical complexity, conceptual depth and aesthetic awareness than European classical traditions. At the same time that change and progress is deeply embedded in the Western conception of musicality, another essential aspect is the idea of continuity from a distant past which legitimates modern ideological and political agendas. We have to remember that music has been a key part of all the folkloristic revivals and nationalistic moments born on the 19th century Europe. The quest for national music and its origins lasted for at least 100 years, as little is comparable on how powerful music is to strengthen feelings of identity and group cohesion. These evolutionistic and nationalistic conceptions of music come often also with assumptions about race and gender roles. Very often, past European music is assumed to have been invented, performed or developed by men in fairly distant past musical cultures we don't have any gender information whatsoever. And indeed, these concepts are still well engraved in the general public idea of finishing music. I was recently interviewed by the Spanish National Radio about music archaeology and some of the earliest evidences of musical behaviors. This program has a final section where the audience leaves messages commented on the subject discussed. To my surprise, the comments of the audience show the bias of 19th century approaches to past and non-Western music. One woman assured that all Basque musical instruments came from Paleolithic times. This idea is based on all comparisons between the 25,000-year-old student flutes with the beautiful traditional Basque flute called the Chistu. A man said that Paleolithic humans probably made music by hitting themselves and making noises and single-tone melodies. However, we have many proofs on how complex Paleolithic musical instruments and how many notes they could play. Finally, a third person suggested that the first music was probably a primordial lullaby sung by a mother to her offspring. I'm aware that I may be stretching a little bit the argument, but it is helpful to show how our conceptions of gender roles are falsely believed to be universal. It is true that music archaeology is a relatively new as a discipline, and certain decades old theoretical discussions that have challenged the endocentric visions of Western academia have not been intensively developed, such as post-colonial theory, queer theory, or gender studies. However, in this presentation, I don't pretend to introduce these theoretical issues in the music archaeology theoretical panorama, but following my experience with two different exhibitions, the Ake Musika one from the IMAP, and another one that is currently going on in the Numanthi Museum of Soria. And the project, that five years old project that deals with dissemination in music archaeology, this IMAP, European Music Archaeology Project, I would like to share some ideas about how we can escape these harmful narratives. How we can carry a discussion later on on how best to approach these problems while still trying to offer products that are artistically relevant and still significant for the general public. And luckily, evolutionary conceptions of past music and culture are often seen in contemporary reenactments of ancient music. For instance, many groups propose music with very simplistic musical structures and ideas, reinforcing the evolutionary conceptions for the general audience. If all the music that is going to be performing more the reconstructions of ancient music in a way of ancient instruments is at the end of the day contemporary music, there is no need for pretending simple music was enough in the past. We have experienced, and so I deeply believe that the more developed musical thought in contemporary reenactments makes this music more artistically interesting and far more appealing to the general audience. And I think we have achieved this in some of the EMA performances. For instance, with Arquistena, with Maribel, this wonderful performance you have here or in the Krunan also performance that was part of this project. Also, when seven years ago a group of ten European institutions applied for funding for a music archaeology exhibition, this one I was talking about, we convinced the European agency that we were going to reinforce European identity and common roots. We were very guilty of that. The European Commission was eager to fund our project which had the best evaluation ever for a project in that particular strand of the cultural program. However, in the archaeo music exhibition even if we mainly showed remains from the European continent as we were asked to do, we did not overlook the connections and derivations from other areas such as the Middle East or Northern Africa. For instance, I showed you some photos of our exhibition. We also included Islamic medieval remains from Spain and Portugal trying to avoid a narrative where the Pagan, Roman and Christian past were the single background of European culture. Ever since Said wrote his revolutionary essay, Orientalism, the academia has been aware of the harmful depictions of the exotic oriental and how they have legitimized colonialism and imperialism. So it is very important that we avoid any orientalistic depictions of the past no matter how appealing they can be for the general audiences when we perform music. And luckily, there is a strong tendency in reenactment groups to go Oriental when performing and composing ancient music. For instance, us in the children book of the IMA project which I co-authored with Cai Zalun that is present here, Alandelo's music culture was included, but we avoided the problematic topics that Western representation usually proposes as appealing as they can be for our Western tastes such as sensual belly dancers or exotic settings in the Alhambra Palace or in the Hamam. On another topic, most of the time model concepts about race and gender roles are clearly present in the reconstructions of past music. For instance, when illustrations of performances show music in Paleolithic times they always depict white male playing or building the instruments. That it was white males who did it seems to be understood as the more logical hypothesis but we don't have proof of that whatsoever. There is no data or indication that this was the case so probably it would be about time to introduce women or non-binary individuals playing and making instruments in Paleolithic and Neolithic times. This is not truer than the other depictions but it is also not any less true and it would help changing our contemporary understanding of the world. Also DNA studies are pointing to the fact that Paleolithic European populations were not white.  How strong this narrative change would be in the world that we live in? This, of course, does not mean that we must depile women at all costs even when the archaeological or philological information is telling us otherwise. For instance, in the exhibition I created for the Archaeological Museum of Soria I chose to represent male characters playing the trumpets as my sources pointed to that cultural description but I wanted to show women so I showed women decorating trumpets. We don't know who did it but in many ethnographic cultures the women are in charge of the pottery decorations. Calciberian women are almost never represented in Calciberian settings doing anything other than working in the loom and cooking so I made a conscious choice of having them doing something else in a public museum challenging the narrative of the numantine genius male painters. I am aware that public engagement can only be achieved by a certain degree of negotiation between these scientific and theoretical approaches and the artistic and entertainment expectations of the audiences. However, I propose that the music archaeology community, researchers, artists and musicians actively engage in this type of discussions and that we could even suggest an ethical manifesto for the representations of past music cultures. And thanks for listening.


Alright, so if you have your Bibles, please turn to Mark chapter 8. This is going to be maybe a familiar passage for some of you, for others it might be new, but either way we're going to look at the living Word of God. In Mark chapter 8 verse 1, it says in those days the multitude being very great and having nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples to him. Now we'll stop just right there for a second. I can only imagine the look on the disciples' faces when Jesus called them over to him again. And you might ask, well, what do you mean? Well, sometimes the Lord will allow us to be in situations that really stretch our faith. And not only do they really stretch our faith, they extremely test our character and we can be revisited by those same type of situations. And this evening's text is one of those types of scenarios. For those of you that have studied the Gospel of Mark, you remember back in chapter 6 when there was a quote-unquote large crowd that needed food, and I'll read it. It's Mark 6 verse 34. If you like, you can turn back there. It says in Jesus when he came out, he saw a great multitude and was moved with compassion for them because they were like sheep, not having a shepherd. So he began to teach them many things. And when the day was now far spent, verse 35, Mark 6, his disciples came to him and said, this is a deserted place and already the hour is late. Send them away that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy themselves bread for they have nothing to eat. And then here's the key in Mark 6, verse 37. But Jesus answered them and said, you give them something to eat. Now let me ask you this question. Have, and you don't need to raise your hand, just more for you to think about.  Maybe for you as a guy, you're dating this girl and she's just out of your league.  And she loves Jesus and she's a millionaire and she's a doctor and she likes Lord of the Rings. And she apparently likes you for some reason. I mean, does that mean that there's something wrong with her? I don't know. That's probably yet to be determined. But how about financially? The mortgage for your house or sending your kids to college or even to private elementary schools these days or credit card day. Maybe you've been overwhelmed by school or by work. You know, this class or those of you that are students, this class is just over my head. This job is too demanding. What they're telling me to do is impossible. Maybe you've been challenged physically with an illness or a handicap where you're hindered or incapacitated in some manner. Maybe you've been battling substance abuse, drugs, alcohol or some other addiction.  You feel that God's calling you to do something that's beyond your own ability. Where you maybe have even cried out to God and said, there is no way in this world that I can do that. See, Jesus asked his disciples to do something that was beyond their ability to do. He says, you give them something to eat. They just said, we're in a deserted place. Send these guys away so they can go get some food.  You give them some food. That's when you say, this is crazy. I can't do this. This is impossible for anybody to do. Oh, right there. You said it. You said it's absolutely impossible for you to do. That's absolutely true.  And see, Jesus knew it was impossible for the disciples to feed the multitudes back in Mark chapter six, but nonetheless, he still said, you give them something to eat. So Jesus commanded, Jesus called his disciples to do something, listen to this, that was absolutely impossible for them to do without him. Even as tonight, you might have shown up here on the night before Thanksgiving and thinking, man, this is crazy. What's going on with my life or my family or any of the things that I mentioned already. And you might feel so stretched that you're at the end of your rope. You're at the edge of the cliff. You don't know where to go, what to do, or how it's going to work out. And you say it is absolutely impossible for me to do. Well, then let's add the addendum at the end where it is absolutely, yes, impossible for you to do without Jesus Christ. It's the same with us today. In 2nd Corinthians three, verse five, it says not that we are sufficient of ourselves as to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God. So many times, even as Christians, we'll find ourselves saying, yes, Lord, I know you've done it before, but I don't know if you'll be able to come through for me again. Lord, I know you did it last time, but this time it's way different. Lord, I know you provided last time, but what about now? And so we'll see in Mark eight how the disciples are revisited by a very familiar and formidable situation, which leads us now to verse one, Mark chapter eight. It says in those days, the multitude being very great and having nothing to eat. Jesus called his disciples to him and said to them, I have compassion on the multitude because they have now continued with me three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their own houses, then they will faint on the way for some of them have come from afar. Jesus was concerned with the people. He saw them as sheep without a shepherd. He was moved with compassion. Compassion really can be defined as a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune. But not only that, that feeling is accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate that suffering. Now compassion wasn't something that the people were accustomed to in that day, because they were definitely not going to find compassion from the Roman government. Even the own religious leaders saw the people as a means for their own gain. Yet Jesus had compassion, but had compassion for the multitude, which was comprised of just normal people, normal people. Now we don't have a whole lot of normal people in Orange County. I don't know about you guys out here. But the everyday person, same struggles, family, work, job, etc. Jesus isn't like some people today that have ulterior selfish motives for helping people. You know, I really have compassion on the good looking people. It must be so hard for them. I want to minister to those people. I want to minister to the celebrities, you know, the wealthy, the famous, the powerful. I want to minister to those type of people. And those are the people that seek to associate themselves with particular individuals so that they can profit from it. Jesus wasn't like that. Jesus isn't like that. And 1 Peter 5, verse 7, it says, Cast all your care upon Him for He cares for you. And in Matthew 6, 8, it says, For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. Before you even ask God knows. Now prayer is a very interesting thing. I mean, it's our direct connection to God, where we can open our mouths and we can even in our hearts and our minds pray to the God of the universe. But so often we pray for things in such a selfish way. You know, I remember at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, we used to have a prayer line. I think you guys have one here as well. But people would call up and they would get prayer. And one particular, I think it was a morning, I was working the prayer line and it was, Oh, good morning. This is Calvary Chapel prayer line. How can I pray for you? And this girl calls and she says, You know, I am in this relationship with this guy, my boyfriend. And would you just pray that everything works out with him and that, you know, our relationship really matures and grows.  And I said, okay. And so I jotted, you know, jotted her name down here and we started to pray. And I said, dear Lord, I just pray for this person so and so on for this relationship that she has with this other guy here. And Lord, I just pray for your will to be done in their relationship. And as I'm praying, she completely interrupts me. And she says, I didn't ask you to pray for God's will. I asked you to pray that we would get together and stay together and grow and mature in our relationship. And I said, excuse me? I said, are you serious?   Actually, I didn't say that. I felt like saying that. But we'll pray for things and we'll not be seeking the heart of the Lord. And like, Lord, what's your will for me? And what am I supposed to learn? And what am I supposed to, you know, get from this? As was mentioned already too, two years ago, so I had my last Monday night service at Calvary Coastal Mason in December of 2013. January of 2014, we planted a church called Vision City Church. It's a Calvary Chapel network church. And for that first year of ministry, I don't have any other way to really explain it, but as a pastor, I absolutely got my clock cleaned. And I seriously had experienced some of the most difficult things I've ever experienced in my life. Now, I'm married. I've been married for eight years. I have two little children, one son, who's Hudson, seven, and a daughter, Eva, who's five. And as we were planting our church, I don't know if any of you guys might be able to relate to this, but you can just think about it as I share. The spiritual attack was so intense that first year that it was so clearly starting and so clearly, you know, stomping and seguing into the next thing that actually delineated it on a timeline. And for the first four months, I battled with severe anxiety. Now, some people battle with that all the time and my heart goes out to you because I've never struggled with that before.  You don't know how you're going to take care of your family and then you don't know how to take care of the church. You don't know how you're going to pay these bills and all this kind of stuff. And I had battled with that for seriously, intensely. Four months out of that first year was just bam.    And anything that you thought that you could feel good about yourself was completely shattered. And finally, the night before our first service of 2015, I had told my wife Ruth and I said, I have no idea what's going on with me. I'll wake up with this feeling and I'll go to bed with it and it doesn't go away. And I wasn't an unrepentant, habitual sin.  I was like, I had no idea what was going on. And finally, it was 10 o'clock at night. And I told Ruth, I said, sweetie, I got to just go for a drive, clear my head, pray, because I don't even know how I'm going to teach our service tomorrow. And I called a friend of mine who was always outside of my circle like a mentor. And I just told him, I said, this is what I've been dealing with these last 12 months. And I don't know what to do. And I couldn't even speak. Like I couldn't even talk. And he just said this, he was a man of few words, but what he told me was this. He said, the Lord is going to continue to allow these things to happen in your life until he has his perfect work accomplished in you. And at that very moment, it was literally like there was a gorilla off my back that instantaneously, I was free because I felt like God showed me that this wasn't judgmental. This wasn't something that, you know, you were paying the price for whatever. The Lord was actually using these things that would in the flesh cause anxiety, in the flesh cause fear, and in the flesh just cause this demoralization. And I looked back on that 12 month period and I thought, anxiety, how many times have I taught from the pulpit? The Lord's your provider. He takes care of you. How many times when I was battling with the fear of failure have I said, the Lord hasn't given you a spirit of fear, but of love and power and of a sound mind? Fear not, I'll never leave you. I'll never forsake you. Perfect love casts away all fear. I learned God hasn't brought me that far to let me fail. And then the demoralization aspect where you think that your self worth or prides based on something that can be taken away, it's like we really truly, I learned my identities in Christ regardless of what kind of leader or pastor or father or man that I am. And hopefully we'd strive to be holy as the Lord is holy and to be a good example and to do our best with what God has given us. But our identity needs to be in Jesus. And we need to know that tonight, if you're hurting or struggling or strained or whatever it might be, that the Lord is going to allow these things to happen in your life until he has his perfect work accomplished in you. And first Peter 5.7 again, cast all your care upon him for he cares for you. And your father knows the things you have need of before you ask him. And verse 4 Mark 8 says, Then his disciples answered him, How can one satisfy these people with bread here in the wilderness?  And then they're like, Oh, how are we going to do it again? Lord, how are you going to do it again? Lord, I don't know about this time. And the word wilderness there and the Greek literally means an uninhabited region or wasteland.  I mean, this is like way worse than even that. You're out in the boonies and there is nowhere to get food. It says, How can one satisfy these people? Listen to that question again. How can one satisfy these people with bread here in this wasteland? The world is a wasteland when it comes to satisfaction. How can Jesus satisfy people's hunger when there's nothing in this world that can satisfy them?  Maybe you've been eating it. See, we as human beings will feed on the things that bring some sort of fulfillment. But those things, quote, are temporal at best. You know, I thought I'd be satisfied if I got that job or ran my own business or dated or married that person or own that home or that boat or that car or those clothes or ate at that restaurant or stayed at that resort or went on that cruise or had enough drugs or big enough parties et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And though we may have fond memories of certain events in our lives, the fulfillment doesn't last. It's temporal. There has to be something more out there. You know how frustrating it is for me when I walk into Costco? I don't know about you if you ever get like this. I love the TV section. There are any other guys that like the TV section at Costco? Yeah, I don't know why. I mean, I don't need a TV, but I'm always telling my wife, hey, I'm going to go look at the TVs. And I just go right there. And they're always right by the entrance too, you know? And so she'll go off and I'll be like, hey, I'll catch up with you at the, you know, whatever aisle that is over there. I'll see you in a minute. You know, and you get this TV and, man, it's great and it's clear. You know, it has 120 megahertz refresh rate. It's clean. And then like the next week, they get something bigger. And then the problem is, is that you get your 55 inch TV home and then you go back to Costco the next week and then they have like a 90 inch.  You ever see them like subframe the 55 inch inside the 90 inch?  It says, yeah, that Pee Wee little frame is yours that you just brought home. And now look at this one. You know, it's on to something new.  You know, I should have got the 6 plus. You know, I just got this processor on my computer and then the one that doubled the speed comes out next. You know, it's amazing how Apple does it. You know, we got the iPad Air, which was a good size, but then we shrink it and we go down to the iPad Mini. And then all of a sudden you got the iPad Pro that's like carrying a 32 inch TV screen around with you and you're like, this is what you want now. First it was small and now it's large. There's always something new.  It's like Fergie Ferd said back in the day. And so we'll strive and we'll work and seek to obtain something that we hope to derive some level of fulfillment, satisfaction, or pleasure from. Though ultimately eventually it leaves us hungry for something more. And it's in every sphere of life. That's why Jesus said in John 6, 27, do not labor for the food which perishes but for the food which endures to everlasting life. Which the Son of Man will give you because God the Father has set his seal on him. Don't strive for things that don't last because there is a hunger that goes deeper than your stomach. And in light of tomorrow's festivities we wonder what could that be? I don't know. But there is a hunger in your soul and nothing physical can fill it. Jesus said in John 6, 35, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger and he who believes in me shall never thirst. To have the insatiable thirst inside quench, that hunger filled, it can only be through mama's stuffing. No, it's through Jesus Christ. That's it. That's it. And you guys know that I'm speaking the truth because we all understand the realities of life. And so verse 5, Mark 8 as we continue on, he asked them, how many loaves do you have? And they said seven. So he commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground and he took the seven loaves and gave thanks, broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before them. Then they set before the multitude the fish. And they also had, excuse me, the bread and they also had a few small fish, verse 7, and having blessed them he said to them also, he set them also before them. Verse 8, So they ate and were filled and took up seven large baskets of leftover fragments. That word basket is the same basket, word for basket used in Acts 925, which would be large enough to put a person in, like a big old basket. Like the basket that Paul was in as he went over the side of the wall so you could fit a person inside of it. The word for baskets in Mark 6 was a satchel, like a little carrying bag. So we see that the Lord does this work again but then blesses it even more. And it says that those who had eaten were about 4,000 and he sent them away. So here's the multitude of people who have been following Jesus for three days. And they're a prime example of God's promise, God's promise in effect in Jesus. And he said it in Matthew chapter 6, beginning in verse 30, he said, Now if God so clothes the grass of the field which today is and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you or you of little faith? Therefore do not worry saying what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear for after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. I mean when you think about bare necessities, it's like food and clothing, shelter. But Jesus said, Matthew 6, 33, he said, But you seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these other things shall be added unto you. And so after Jesus sent the multitude away, it says in verse 10, immediately got into the boat with his disciples and came to the region of Dalmanutha. In verse 11, then the Pharisees came out and began to dispute with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven, testing him. You know Jesus wasn't a performer doing magic tricks and testing literally means tempting. And Jesus didn't use his power to put on a show. He used his power to help those who were in need. In verse 12, it says, But he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, Why does this generation seek a sign? Assuredly I say to you, no sign shall be given to this generation. And then he left them and getting into the boat again, departed to the other side. Now we know that blessed are those who believe without seeing. And being people, it's like, Hey, I want to see it. I want to touch it. Show me the proof. Show me how it's going to happen. Because right now I don't see how anything is going to make this situation better. I don't know what God could even do. This is such a tangled web of a situation. I don't know how God's going to work it out. Now I had mentioned to you that I have two kids, Hudson seven and Ava's five. Ava was born with special needs. My daughter and beautiful, beautiful little girl. And for the first year of her life, she she had a really extremely hard time. And literally she would only sleep two hours every day. Two hours. Like that's it. You know, and we know babies don't sleep that much, but two hours a day. Man, come on, seriously. And she would never sleep more than 20 minutes at a time. And the hardest part was especially that 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift where she just would be up all night. But it wasn't even that she was up. She was crying in pain. And we had no idea what was wrong with her. No idea.  And then if I was going to have another son, I felt like I could do a better job because I already made some mistakes with this one. And I can be a better dad to a son. But when I had a girl, I was just absolutely shattered. And not in a bad way, just humble, like scared. Like, wow, the enormity of the situation of being a dad for a daughter.   What?  You know, as you're going like that. And but nothing would ever stop it. And I couldn't get her to stop crying. And finally, the doctor said, your job isn't to stop her crying. Your job is to comfort her through the pain. And so one year turned into two years. Two years turned into three years. We had every single test known to man run. On paper, Eva was absolutely normal. But that's not the way she was in reality. From brain scans to DNA testing, chromosomal testing, gastroenterologists, everything. You know, we did the whole gamut. We ran the whole gamut of testing. And it was one of those things where one night, being on staff at Calvary, I came down. It was like three in the morning. And I played basketball in high school. I got a scholarship. I played in college. I had a really bad temper. And I used to have a really foul mouth, sorry to say. And all of a sudden, I remember going a year and a half to yours, and I seriously hadn't slept. My wife hadn't slept. And just every amount of pressure that you could feel just internally, externally was happening. And I came downstairs because I felt all of this things that I thought I had dealt with when I recommitted my life to the Lord and when I decided to follow Him. Like my temper was gone and all those things were gone. But all of a sudden, I felt like it was going, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. I was about to just be like, I was about to lose it. And it was so discouraging to me too, because to be a Christian and to be a pastor and to have those things start to fill your mind again. And even the deepest part of who you were, you didn't even know that those things were there anymore. You thought you had dealt with them. And a lot of times in the Scriptures, you'll hear how God's refining process is like a goldsmith, right? Where you put the gold with all its impurities into that cauldron and then you heat it up to the right temperature. And then what ends up happening is what they call the impurities is dross. And it starts percolating to the top, bloop, bloop, bloop. And then the goldsmith will scoop out the impurities, throw that in the trash, and he'll keep doing that. As the heat gets hotter, the dross comes up and that's how they would purify gold. And that's what was absolutely happening to me, where the heat was getting turned up in the kitchen, so to speak. And those things that were in the innermost recesses of my heart and the things which are in the innermost recesses of your heart have now been able to start coming to the surface and maybe things that are absolutely surprising you, like, why am I feeling frustrated? Why do I feel these emotions? Why do I want to do that? Why do I want to do this? And you'll start to see that circumstances will actually be used by the Lord to refine you and to help you be a better man and to be a better woman. And that heat gets turned up just enough so all these things start percolating to the top so that the Lord can remove them and refine you and increase his work in your life. And so, one year turned into two years and I cried out to the Lord, I said, Lord, I don't even know these things were there. Please take them from me, Lord. I don't want them. And two years turned into three years. Three years turned into four years where my daughter couldn't speak and she couldn't walk. No one could tell us what was even wrong with her.  And this other doctor, my wife's just like on this roller coaster all the time and we're going, what in the world? And then being a man, I think it's one of those things where you feel absolutely helpless. Because guys like to fix stuff, right? Like we like to fix it. Our wives want us to listen, we want to fix it. You know what I mean? Tell me your problem. I'll take care of that guy right now or whatever it might be. And no, just listen. My wife always tells me, she's like, just listen. I just want to talk to you. And so I couldn't fix the situation. And so we were praying, Lord, please help us. Please help our daughter. Please be with our family. And it's like the more we prayed, the worse things seemed to get. Talk about irony. We would try to go to bed to sleep real quick and Ruth and I would pray for the kids. Hudson would have a nightmare. Ava would start screaming. And we're like, what in the world? Finally, a doctor gave a kind of an umbrella diagnosis that my daughter had cerebral palsy. Now there's two ends of cerebral palsy, the ends of the spectrum that is where there's hypertonic where you have people that are in a wheelchair that they're restricted and they have like a wheelchair and a little ball to help them move or hypotonic, which is loose muscle tone, which everything's just underdeveloped. So come to find out, our daughter did have hypotonia, which is an underdeveloped nervous system. So the reason why she was crying for all those years and we didn't know is because she had ulcers lying in her esophagus because her internal organs and then the valve that separated her stomach from her esophagus hadn't developed yet.  You just don't even know what to do. And I'm with family too. It's especially hard, I think. And so like I said, three years turns into four years. Four years turns into five years. This September she turned five. And we were praying and we were just like, Lord, please show us what to do. And last February, we moved from Costa Mesa to Irvine where our church is. And the first night that we spent in our new house, Ava slept through the night for the first time. Slept through the night. And then that February, she took seven steps out of the blue. You know, she has to wear her ankle brace. So it was this February. And then she took 14 steps. And then she took 29 steps. And then she took 60 steps a few months ago. And my neighbor, really strange, comes out of her house when I'm playing football with the kids, my son and some other boys on the street were playing football on the street. And she comes up and says, can I speak to you? And I said, yeah, sure. And she was really kind of nervous. And she said, well, you know, I've never done anything like this before. And I just needed to tell you something. And I was like, okay. And I was like, you know, and I'm just kidding. And so she says, I don't know what this is. Take it for whatever you think it is, whatever it means to you. But I felt like God told me to tell you that it's in his strength, whatever. She's like, I don't know what that means. But I just felt like God told me that I needed to tell you. And I don't even know what her relationship with God is at all. But she just comes and says, I want you to know that it's in God's strength. And then that day Ava set a personal record on walking. Unbelievable. Until two months ago, we're at Ikea. And you know, I'm Swedish, so I like Ikea more than most people. But Ikea really likes to complicate things too. Everything has to be Swedish. You just can't call it a stool. It's a stool in Magullin or whatever. You know what I'm saying? And so we're up at Ikea in Costa Mesa. And you can use that one later. So we're upstairs and we're at the cafe. And I drove from Irvine real quick on the 405. It's really bad traffic anytime between like one and seven. But we hopped north. And to get something for my daughter to come back, I had an appointment that evening for a premarital for a wedding I was doing. And so we get there. And then my son Hudson, being the growing boy that he is, he's like, I'm starving. I want some meatballs and ribs and whatever, all this other stuff.    I should have just said a hoot, a hoot, you know, or whatever. But anyway, he's sitting there. And then Ava's in the shopping cart and Ruth's standing here. I'm sitting here, Hudson's here. And there's the walkway. And about 40, 50 people are just, you know, have walked by. And my daughter, if you know her, she doesn't talk and she can't walk. And she reaches out just randomly. There's this guy, he's in his 70s. And he's walking by with his wife. They're probably both in their mid-70s. And she grabs him by the shirt. Just this random guy. Like she's never done this before. And yanks him over to her where she's sitting in the cart. And the guy's shirt was like tucked in too. You know, he's like grabs it and pulls him in. Come to find out. This guy is one of the leading pediatric physicians from Chicago who happened to be at Ikea at that same time that we're there. And of all the people that Ava could have grabbed, she grabs this guy. And right there in her Ikea shopping cart, he gives her a full evaluation. He says, okay, if she had this test, have you guys had run this test, have you had this? Well, what did they say about this? Well, did she see an entourage? Did she see this? And all these things were like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And then he's like, well, look at her right there. See how she engages and how she wants to connect with you? She's not autistic. A lot of families, they wonder if their child has autism or whatever. And so this goes on for about 35 minutes right there in Ikea. And then finally he says, we've seen a lot of children like Ava where they don't know why she's the way she is. She's just delayed. She's a slow developer. And as he's walking away, he's just a lovely guy, him and his wife, just beautiful couple. And as he's walking away, he looks, he stops and he looks at Ruth and he says, mark my words. You need to be patient, but mark my words. By the time she's nine, she'll be okay. She'll be completely caught up. And Ruth almost starts like balling there in Ikea because just the day before, she had prayed specifically to the Lord and said, Lord, would you please send me some encouragement from my daughter because I'm not feeling, I'm feeling really, really heartbroken over this. And she didn't even tell me this until afterwards. And the very next day Ava randomly grabs this guy and pulls her down. And then the doctor says, mark my words. You be patient. Wait, by the time she's nine, she'll be okay. And ironically, listen to this. Three years prior, a physician from India visited my father-in-law's church in Cardiff, Wales. John Vickery planted the first Calvary Chapel in Wales from the UK. And my father-in-law was telling the physician about Ava and the physician told my father-in-law, he said, no, we've seen children like that. Well, you just don't have any medical explanation for, you know, why they're the way that they are. But he said, mark my words. By the time she's nine, she'll be okay. So we have one doctor randomly flying in from India to the UK and then doctor of Ikea over here both saying, by the time she's nine, she'll be okay. I mean, talk about something sent from the Lord where for the last five years, my wife and I have been stretched beyond our own abilities. And everything that we have been through has been absolutely impossible for us to do without Jesus. Without Jesus. And so tonight, I can say how truly thankful I am that we have a God who has compassion on us.  The Lord is going to show himself strong on your behalf and he's going to continue to allow you to go through these things until his perfect work is accomplished in you. Do you ask for these things?  Absolutely not. I mean, if you do, I will be available for prayer over here afterwards. But we don't do that. But the Lord will use all things working together for the good. Because we love him and we're called according to his purposes. And so be encouraged tonight, guys. And even having a special needs daughter and going to therapy, I became thankful for the way Ava was in her condition because there were children that were far worse off. We have so much to be thankful for. And if you feel like God's asking you or calling you or you're in the middle of doing something that you feel is absolutely impossible for you to do, know that it is impossible for you to do. But you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength.


You just have to say that you're fine when you're not really fine, but you just can't get into it because they would never understand.


Hello everyone, and welcome. Welcome to the MicroMaster in Supply Chain Management completion celebration event. Today, it's my pleasure to convene the staff who make this program possible, and also my pleasure to congratulate you, the 462 new credential holders. Thank you that just completed last November the comprehensive final exam and the entire MicroMaster program. You are now part of a growing community of learners. Almost 500,000 unique learners, about one million of class enrollments in 65 supply chain course runs on 3435 credential holders, and you are now part of this elite group of credential holders.  So let me start the event. Thank you, the staff, the staff who make this program possible. I want to say that this team is truly a passionate and committed team. These are the persons that are behind the scenes making this program possible. I'm referring to our passionate and committed course leads. I'm referring to Ima, to Dave, to Laura, to Kelly, and to Paolo. I also want to say thank you to those who are answering your emails and are behind the screens, like Betri and Arthur and Connor, and our amazing teaching assistants, the former teaching assistant and the current teaching assistant we have here Riley, David Park, and also Chen, and many others, many others that are working in the world now. So thank you to all of them. And of course, I want also to thank our alma mater and director of the program, Chris Kaplis. So now you are going to hear directly from Chris to congratulate you and to learn a little bit more about this program. So Chris, the floor is yours. All right, thanks Ava. Thank you everyone. Congratulations you guys for finishing and completing the CFX. I'm really impressed with you guys. When I started filming the first videos SC1X week five was the first videos I created, I guess it's week four now. In the summer of 2014, I was hoping to get, you know, 1000 or two people to take the course. Mainly just because I've been teaching it at that point for about 10, 15 years and I thought it'd be good to share with the world. And when we got 30,000 people to register for the first time, mostly as audit, not too many verified the first time. We saw that we had something. And so then we started creating additional courses, but it wasn't until 2015, when President Rafael Reif started the micro masters and we were the very first one we were the guinea pigs, and we volunteered to do that. And so then we created three more courses in under 18 months, which is pretty unprecedented, and we're able to expand the team. So it moved from being just a one two person thing, because the first course that was run was me and a half time TA so the team has gotten much better stronger and bigger since then of course. And then when Ava came on board in 2016, things really picked up speed. And so the team you see now is what it takes to run these courses and it's so impressive to see what happens. While I might be on all the videos. I'm just a small player in the effort that it takes to create these courses to make sure that you're getting the engagement that you're wanting, and you're learning. It takes more effort I think what you guys have done to achieve and finish the micro masters, then the effort we put into create them. And so again hats off to you guys. Congratulations. I also have to thank our team members at edX, and who's the platform that we've been using and MIT x specifically Dana Doyle who's been there since the very first lesson, sheer fruit men who started without choose our first course she ran was SC one X at that time, a David Chotin who still is heavily involved in what we're doing and Lana Scott whose response for all the video preparation that we've done over the last seven years. So again, congratulations to you guys congratulations for the team Ava, your team is fantastic for getting this and making this ninth cohort of CFX micro masters and credential holders out.  And once the coven crisis starts settling down and start traveling again. I'm looking forward to get across the world of meeting with everyone in person, as we move across. So with that, I'm going to hand it back over to you, Ava to talk about some of the statistics and put things into perspective. Congrats again guys. Thank you, Chris. You're an inspiration for the entire team. Thank you for that. Okay, so now let's have a look to the to the statistics because, as we said, first, this take a village that you are now part of a big community of learners. So we have about 500,000 unique learners enroll in at least one of our supply chain courses from these learners that are enrolled about 40,000 are verified learners from these 40,000 learners that are verified out 17,000 learners earn a certificate. These are unique learners. And now let's have a look to this part. This is where you are now part of you are part of an elite group of micro masters credential holders 3435 credential holders, those who have completed with us the five courses and the comprehensive and final exam at the end of the journey. So this is the group you are part of. Let's have a look now to the a how how young these people are so you are part of a really a young group of people.  I'm also happy to see that the percentage of females is growing. And now we have about 20% of our credential holders are female. So I'm happy to see this percentage growing and growing. I also encourage more females and women to join the program and complete the program. So let's have a look now to our professionals because most of our credential holders are professionals, more than 80% of the credential holders are working in many different companies. We have here professionals working at Amazon, at Unilever, Proctor and Gamble and DHL, Ernst and Jaune and many other different companies. And the role that our professionals and our credential holders have in those companies, mainly they are managers or directors or living groups, individual contributors. And when we asked our credential holders why you decided to take this program and complete it, most of them, most of you told us because you want to have a promotion because you want to apply to a job in this very amazing and exciting field that is supply chain management. That is a field that is more important now than ever. We are in the news almost every single day. So it's a great moment to join this field and also to contribute to this field with the knowledge you get through this program. So in terms of the, let's go to the next slide, in terms of where are you from is amazing for us to see that you are part of a truly global community of learners. We have here more than 190 countries represented with our credential holders from many different countries. We have of course a professional and credential holders from the United States. We have many from India, from China, from Europe, but also for small countries across the world. So it's truly great to see that you are almost from any part of the world. I think that the only continent that is not represented here is Antarctica, but the rest definitely we have some credential holders from those different continents. So this is a great to see. So with that, I also want to highlight the multicultural thing of this program, a multi language thing. Most of our credential holders speak English for of course you take the program in English. Most of them are also Spanish speakers, but we have credential holders that speak many different languages, Mandarin, French, Dutch, Hindu, and many other Russian and many other languages. And this is great definitely we did the effort to start translating some of our transcript in the first course to Chinese and to Spanish, and hopefully we are going to move into adding more languages to our program. It's truly amazing to see this multicultural and multi language community of credential holders. Okay, so with that, what I want to do now is to turn it over to the staff members. I want them to congratulate you and to share with you some of the fun things that happen when they are running the program. I want to start giving the floor to Dr. Emma Borrella. Emma is one of our most experienced course lead. She joined the program in September 2017 and has been contributing in many ways. So, Emma, the floor is yours. Thank you, Eva. So first off, congratulations to all the credential holders who just finished. We are so proud of you. Really, I have seen an amazing commitment from learners to finish the program. We know that it takes a lot, particularly when it comes to the comprehensive final exam. So it's been great to teach you and support you throughout your micro masters journey. Today I would like to recognize the amazing job that our community teaching assistants doing supporting the program. CTAs are micro masters learners from all around the world who volunteer to help us moderate the forums and answer all of your questions, even the toughest ones. Sometimes, as you know, the edX platform does not work properly and our CTAs just go section by section in every course just clicking on each forum box looking for new questions or follow up questions. And this shows how committed they are to helping you. CTAs are the backbone of our students support system and the program would not be the same with our selflessness, their dedication and their unique contribution to thank you all of them. Dave, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Ema. I echo everything Ema said about our CTAs. We are all so happy for for you all the learners and the CTAs. Thank you for your help. But I want to take one second to be happy for another group too. We know how much time you spend to complete this program to get this far in your journey, something like 10 to 15 hours every week. We still have other obligations in life to family members, parents, children, loved ones, pets, and for you to give us 10 to 15 hours per week means that they didn't get that time with you and you didn't get that time with them. So I want to make sure we take a pause to recognize that this is a project bigger than all of us. And the achievement is yours, but it was not achieved solely by you, you had a lot of people making that space in your schedule, so that you could do it with us. Thank you to your families that were part of this achievement that we're all celebrating today. I'd like to go next to Laura. Thank you, Dave, and hi everyone. I'm so happy to see you all here today. And again, proud of you. We know most of you were not only micro master students along this journey, but you were also full time workers. And that's a combination that requires a huge level of effort and commitment. Thanks for trusting us with your lifelong learning goals. We often get contact by credential holders, sharing how they succeeded in their latest interview you do their new supply chain management toolbox, or how they got the promotion they were aiming to get. We're really proud of your achievements, and we're so glad we get to be part of your stories of success. Please stay connected applied to be a CTA to share your experience with current micro master learners and enjoying part of this growing community of credential holders.  Again, and we'll never get tired of saying this. Congratulations. And Kelly, I'd like to hear from you. Well hello and congratulations credential holders. So as Dave and Laura said we know many of you have families who support you on your journey. And you have full time jobs, and many have other goals and commitments outside of your micro masters coursework. So knowing that I wanted to share a few numbers that reflect the determination and the effort you put into this program. Each course is 13 weeks long. And on average, learners tell us they spend 10 to 15 hours per week on a course. That's over 100 to 150 hours for each course. We're up to 780 hours total invested in the full micro masters program including the comprehensive exam. And along the way countless videos, practice problems, greatest assignments, exams, and so many other activities. That is amazing accomplishment showing determination and commitment. Now you are officially credential holders. Take a rest. And congratulations. And on to you, Paulo. Thanks, Callan. And congratulations credential holders. The credential we just achieved will surely open new opportunities for you. And one of them is the possibility to apply for MIT's blended supply chain management master's program in Cambridge. I am one of those who were able to graduate from MIT master's program through the micro masters pathway. And if you are considering that I definitely encourage you to go for it. Congratulations once more, and all of the best. Bedri, can you tell us about this ninth CFX? Thanks, Paulo. Hearty congratulations to all of you. From the beginning to the end, we know you have overcome all the challenges that came your way in terms of schoolwork, family, and COVID-19 related issues. Being proctored at the CFX was a huge challenge itself, yet even that time we had fun all together, for example, one of you didn't realize it and your exam was reviewed because your computer was mining Bitcoin in the background. We appreciate the apology and are glad we got it straightened out. Someone else flagged the proctoring because they were talking to themselves in frustration with one of the questions. We are glad the CFX was a challenge, but yeah, this didn't flag you did in the proctoring software. And of course we don't have to say what we heard here. So thank you again for all the efforts that you put on this journey, and now you are a part of this, part of this big community. We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors. The CFX was so much information on data. Here is Kanur to share more about the data. For those of you guys that don't know me, my name is Kanur Murkowski. I often work behind the scenes. And I just want to recognize some of the work that the team does behind the scenes with data. As a team, we're actively using data to improve your course experience. We're analyzing email response times, we're looking at grade distribution. We explore problems that might be unfair, even predict students likely drop out. As you can see here there, we actually have these weekly dashboards. That's what you're looking at here. We use these every week and we're always working as a team to really improve your course experience. The whole team pitches in, we give presentations every week. We're always working for you guys. So I want to take a half off for a second to say, hey, the team is amazing. They're always working for you guys and I just love to work with them. Anyway, we do have a lot of data. Every course run that comes in, we collect massive amounts of data. As an example, an SC1X in 2020, every day we're collecting about a half a gigabyte of data from you guys. We try to mine that for different things in order to help you guys. But even if we just find one thing that we can help one learner, I tend to find that to be worth it. Anyway, I've been around this program for a long time and actually before it was even a MicroMasters. To be honest, I really don't think it should be called MicroMasters. There's really nothing to micro about it. It's comprehensive and challenging. Chris brings the heat every week. The course leads are always having good challenging problems. The exams are difficult and you guys work your... Well, you just work really hard to get it done. I just want to congratulate you guys. You guys are fantastic and you guys deserve this. Welcome to the MicroMasters credential holding. Welcome to being MicroMasters credential holders. I want to pass it off to the CTA so they can actually talk about what they do in the background. Great. Our first CTA is sent us a recording. Felicitas Pam sent us a recording and thanks to Felicitas for being a CTA. So I will play that now. Hi everyone. I am Felicitas and I am one of the community teaching assistants. So congratulations to all of you for completing this MicroMasters. It really takes a lot of discipline, dedication and motivation. So you can really be proud of yourself and your accomplishment. I love to see this diverse group of new credential holders and this is actually one of the coolest parts of being a CTA for me. Reading all the welcome posts during week zero and getting to know you from where you are, what your background is and what your motivation is for this MicroMasters. It's always inspiring that there are moms getting back on track professionally, business owners looking to improve their operations or professionals redirecting their career. This diversity really shows that supply chain management is affecting a lot of our daily lives personally and professionally. So it's really great to have a new batch of credential holders out there that are equipped to help with better and more resilient supply chains for the future.  This celebration is yours. Hi everyone. I am Matthias and you may already know me also from the discussion forums as one of the other CTAs. Congratulations. You made it. It is amazing to finally see you having accomplished your MicroMasters credential.  I've been talking about it for a long time and I came to the conclusion. It is not about single fund stories. It is one overall fun story, starting from you in the forum, asking questions, challenging ones. Those have always been a highlight. Not only for me. They are the reason there was no course run of the many I was a CTA and where I did not learn something new. This year, the story culminates in you earning your credential. Congratulations again. Thank you. And Arthur, the stage is yours. So it's time for me so welcome everyone congratulations as everyone has said, I just wanted to welcome you to a growing and diverse community as has been said before. Most half a million people have enrolled in courses and more than 36,000 certificates have been earned by 17,000 people. And you can get an idea of the distribution here I did this distribution yesterday we have people in pit care and people who are claiming to be from Greenland and the Arctic Circle so I don't know if those are just the way people are VPNing in or there are actually people in those locations who are taking the courses but pretty much every island and every location that I had ever heard of, had somebody taking one of our courses so quite fascinating there. I just wanted to mention also as I have said in emails before we have a LinkedIn community we have a Facebook community and MIT X has created MIT open which is a community specifically for credential holders and people within the courses so it's MIT is the only place where we know who you are and you know who we are. The other two communities are pretty much open to the public but I'd like to invite you all to join the conversation there keep in touch. It's one way for you to keep in touch with the course team and with each other. And with that. Well, one last piece. I encourage anyone whenever you can if you want to to create your own meet up groups so using the Facebook group we have people create meet up groups and I can help press buttons and support those groups but we get people meeting up together in various locations around the world. Back to you Eva. Thank you Arthur and thank you Felicitas and Matias and the entire community of teaching assistant that we have helping our learners. I can also know I can't be more proud also of the micro master team for all of your efforts. Thank you for that. Thank you all for helping our learners. And now let's go back to the celebration. We are going to focus on the 462 of you that just completed the entire program and become a new credential holder. This is the largest CFX cohort since we started in 2017. And now what we are going to do is to go through the reel of scrolling names and congratulate by name, each of you. So let's go to see that before we wrap up this event. Absolutely and it goes really fast so everybody needs to make sure your bandwidth is high and pay attention. Congratulations once more to everyone. Keep up the good work. Be always curious. Be always open to learn new things. Best of luck on your new endeavors. Thank you everyone and congratulations once more. Thank you. Congratulations everyone. Stop by MIT when you get a chance. Take your mask.