Good morning and welcome to Briefing Room with today's guest, Minister for Equity, Social Justice and Empowerment, Honourable Leonard Spider-Wantoot. Welcome Minister and thank you very much for being with us here today. Let me also welcome members of the media and of course welcome to the public who are listening to us live on NTN and following us on YouTube and on Facebook. I just wanted to give people an idea of what Briefing Room is really about. This is a setting in which we allow policymakers and heads of departments to come forward before the media and the public and answer specific questions or update on certain issues within their ministries, their portfolios. I want to start by asking the minister first to take us through his three main portfolios as you would know he is part of a cluster ministry and then also we will touch on activities happening in the constituency of Grozily which the minister is also a representative for. So minister we will start with just go through the portfolios for equity, empowerment and social justice. Thank you, Nicole. As you have indicated I mean part of a cluster ministry is comprised of three departments first of all equity, social justice and empowerment and we have youth development and sports as a second and culture, local government and creative industries as the other. But with regard to my portfolios I am responsible for equity, social justice, empowerment and human services and under those portfolios we do a number of things. I mean while you have the youth development department we also deal with issues that touch on concern young people. We deal with the poor and vulnerable and generally you know organize social programs at the community level that would impact not just family life but all aspects of social life. In terms of empowerment what goes on there as well? Well in terms of empowerment what we do is we make interventions for example in education we provide both skills, we provide training, we provide assistance in that regard, we provide psychosocial support for families who need it, we provide housing as well for some families and so that portfolio works hand in hand with agencies such as the SSDF which is also an agent statutory body that is under my ministry and we try as much as possible to collaborate and to maximize you know the impact that we have as far as it relates to poverty reduction and dealing with vulnerability. The Prime Minister has spoken a lot about the essential nature of your ministry especially in terms of dealing with issues of crime, issues of you know changing some of the social ills that exist within our country. Does that mean you work very closely with the Ministry of Security? Most definitely. I am actually in consultation with the Minister of Home Affairs and National Security and we are looking at programs you know and projects with a view to addressing the crime situation and while I will not join the bandwagon to say that we have an increase in crime like many are saying right now, we certainly have a spike in homicides and that is very disconcerting, it is a major concern to us because as you would appreciate the majority of the victims are young people, the perpetrators are also young people and as far as I am concerned you have two victims, two sets of victims both the perpetrators and the people who suffer the consequences of crime and of course the family and all of that and so while we have to look at crime fighting we also come in as a ministry when we have to look at prevention of crime and so we believe that tackling crime is multifaceted and you have to look at it from a variety of angles, not just social but economic and all of that and so we tend to put some programs in place, we devise programs that not necessarily directly relates to crime but hopefully they can impact the community and the individuals in such a way that they do their engagement and indulgence in crime so for example we have the after school program, the after school program is meant to target students who would otherwise be on their own given the fact that most parents sometimes both parents work and there is no supervision, no one at home between the time that the children get out of school and the parents leave work and we want to know that those students who do not have the facilities to go to after school programs that are paid for that we provide community programs for them so that they could be productively engaged and when we talk about programs not necessarily solely academic programs they may get assistance with their homework and so on, extra lessons for those who need it but we are looking at other extracurricular programs like sports, like ICT, music, the creative arts and so on to engage them, to expose them, more engage them and to ensure that they develop not just academically but whole somewhere as productive citizens for the future. I will now turn over to the media to see if you have any questions with regard to any of the issues we have just raised, especially in terms of crime, I know that this is a hot topic right now. Just introduce yourself, I mean. Why has the government not come out with a definitive statement seeking to assure solutions and send a clear message to the criminals? Well you see there's no one definitive statement that you can make to address the issue of crime. You will hear the minister of national security speak on what he is doing from his end with the police. When I speak, I speak of social programs and other such interventions. Ministry of Education has a part to play at the school level and there are many other agencies who have to come and I want to also point out that while we have to take the responsibility as government to do what we must do to fight the crime situation, it is not solely a responsibility of government, it's a societal problem and it's a societal responsibility and by that I mean all institutions in society have to play a role, not just the schools but churches, NGOs, the family and even as an individual we have a responsibility as well to play our part in terms of the crime fighting effort because as hard as you may try, as best as you may do, I mean there are situations that you cannot have control over. I mean take for example, homicides. When you have domestic violence taking place, there's hardly anything you can do except for if there is a report and you act on it and so on but very often these are matters that take place in the home between two individuals and so on and you can only react to it. But I believe that if there are programs where we intervene sufficiently early to teach people how to resolve conflict, how to interpersonal relationships, how to deal with that and so on, that in itself is a skill, a life skill that is required to teach you how to deal with problems that will inevitably arise in life and how to handle conflict and not resort to violence as a solution to the problem. So yes we have a responsibility and we are not going to shook that responsibility in any way but we are saying we want all partners to be on board because it is a national responsibility as far as I'm concerned. During George's MVC, Minister Montu, there's been no call as of late for capital punishment. We heard Minister Humangill Francis said recently that he also would be visiting the gallows to and determine what's going to follow next. What is your take on capital punishment? Well, you asked me for my take, I'll give you my personal position, not necessarily my government's position. I happen to be one who do not believe that capital punishment is a deterrent. However, it is our law that the consequence of certain actions could be imprisonment, hanging and so on. I believe that if it is a law, the laws should be enforced. However, I would feel a lot more comfortable if we find other avenues to deal with perpetrators of crime other than the gallows. That's my personal position as far as that is concerned because even beating children at school for instance, I don't know, that will provide better results than taking a different approach. I believe empowering them with the knowledge, with the understanding, with responsibility I think is a far better solution to dealing with deviant behavior and crime than capital punishment. At the end of the day, we will never have sufficient police if all your punitive measures are of a capital nature, we will never have sufficient police to monitor and police people. I would like to believe that we can develop the attitude changes that are necessary for us without anyone with a big stick on our backs to do what is right. And so I rather the approach of dealing with the problem in a different manner. Another one for me. Can you give us an update as to the juvenile justice reform project and its position right now? Well, the juvenile justice, the juvenile reform justice program is in its second phase right now. And in this phase, I am very excited about what we are about to do. It involves intervention with young people at the community level and what we are going to look at is diversions and so on, other programs that we can engage them in which will entail training. And well, it's cliche, yes, but I mean it is often said that idle hands is the devil's workshop. I believe if you have people gainfully, productively engaged, it is less likely that they would resort to deviant behavior and criminal activity. And very often, people engage in crime out of need. Now if they are empowered with a skill, for example, they can go out and get a job and that would negate the need to engage in crime, like for example theft and so on. So I'm very excited about that program and I'm particularly happy that when you look at the communities that are targeted, some of the inner city communities and so on, there you have some of the hotspots as far as crime is concerned. And so we're going to tackle those areas, but not just the city, but we have some other areas in the outskirts where we're going to look at as well, because quite apart from criminal activity, we're looking at vulnerability as well. And so I'm hoping that this program will go a long way in tackling that problem. There's no one program that will bring about the solution, but I think it's chipping at it bit by bit and ensuring that all hands on deck and all approaches are covered, so at the end of the day, we'll get the impact that we want. If I may, Minister, I know you'll have some other questions, but on a recent program, I was asked about the Boys Training Center, which is in your constituency, some of the issues we have had there historically. And what are the plans going forward for, since we're on the issue of juvenile justice, the Boys Training Center? I know that there have been some upgrades there as well. Well, currently there is an upgrade taking place, because you would appreciate that we have two categories of young boys at the center.  Now, for all intents and purposes, you cannot treat the two groups the same. While we do not want to segregate, because there may be benefits that would be derived from having them intermingle, but that you have to monitor and manage. And so we want to ensure that we have separate quarters for the boys who are there for care and protection, as opposed to those who are there for deviant behavior. And so as well, we want to ensure that we have the appropriate conditions for staff. Because if you're doing counseling, for example, you require the right environment for counseling to take place. I mean, apart from quiet, there's a privacy issue and all of that. And so we are looking at infrastructure at Boys Training Center right now with a view to alleviating the environment that exists there, hopefully to make it a more comfortable, more suitable place for the boys, and a better place for the staff. On the issue of crime, do you feel as a minister of social justice and social equity that the gap between the have and the have not is increasing and is a cause for a significant increase in the level of crime we are witnessing today with 52 on the side so far? Well, first of all, I don't have any scientific data on the gap that you're talking about. There is no question about the fact that there are halves and we have have nots as to whether it is increasing. I know in recent time, for example, the information that I've gotten from the Department of Statistics is that we have a slight reduction in unemployment. And I mean, that is not to say that it is significant enough to my mind for us to be satisfied with, but it clearly says that we are heading in the right direction. At the end of the day, to say that that is responsible, and you keep saying the spike in crime, like I said, I do not know that we have statistics to suggest that there's a spike in crime. There is an increase in homicide and that is one aspect of criminal activity. Let's get that straight. But of course, it is very disturbing because you're talking about loss of life. And to suggest that that gap between the rich and the poor is responsible for it, I cannot simply say so. I think it is far more complex than that. Because at the end of the day, you have gang violence that results in homicide, you have domestic violence, sorry, that results in homicide, you have other kinds of disputes that give rise to that situation. And so it is difficult to just make a blanket statement and say that any one situation is responsible for crime. But like I said, it's multifaceted in nature. And there are multiple reasons that gives rise to it. Do you mind, Sheffield, if I just kind of add it onto your question, because what struck me as you were asking the question was, I know a lot of young people that feel like they are part of the have-nots, and they would see crime as something they would turn to in order to get certain things to live a certain lifestyle. How do we get our young people to see that they can achieve, that they can reach? Because that's part of what your ministry is supposed to do as well, get our young people to feel more empowered that they can reach a certain point in their life. I think first and foremost is that you have to ensure that you provide hope. Because if someone has no hope, then you have a disaster on your hands. Apart from providing hope, there must be opportunity, opportunity that is accessible to them. And at the end of the day, you have them to set their goals and work towards it. Of course, you may, for example, have a young person who set their goal to becoming a university graduate in a particular field, which is a very expensive undertaking. I think it is the responsibility of the state to make provisions to provide assistance to people who are in that situation. We do, to a great extent, but of course, it is never adequate. I'm hoping that in situations such as this, not just for scholarships, but in terms of supporting skill training programs, apprenticeship programs, and so on, I'm hoping that the private sector will recognize that it is also in their interest to partner with us and make their contribution as far as that is concerned. That is not to say that they are not private sector entities that are making their contribution, but I'm saying I would like to see an increase in that kind of involvement by the corporate entities that we have in this country. And it's actually Global Entrepreneurship Week right now, so I definitely think we need to create that environment where, especially when it comes to our young people, they can think instead of going and work for someone, how can they get encouragement or support from the government in terms of starting their own businesses, is that something that your ministry would assist with as well? Well, definitely. For that matter, like you said, it is Global Entrepreneurship Week and just yesterday, we launched the bell fund, which is another statutory body under my ministry. We launched an entrepreneurship workshop for 20 young people who have business ideas, who have certain skills that they want to perhaps sell, so this is what they want to provide, but are not necessarily trained in business. And we know that there are many factors involved in running a successful business, so they want to get training in marketing and accounting and record keeping and customer relations and all of those areas that are important for the success of a business. And so we are doing our part as far as that is concerned. Of course, 20 is a meager figure, but I think we have to start somewhere. There are other agencies who put on those kinds of programs as well. And at the end of the day, we're hoping that those people will not just be sitting and waiting for a government job. The public service, it is always said, is bursting at its seams with too many public servants, which build public services already as high as it could be. And I believe we are better off when we develop small businesses, which would make a difference as far as our economy is concerned, because those people, if they are successful, not only would they have provided employment for themselves, but the more successful they become, they can expand and provide opportunities for other young people as well. So we want to encourage that and we want to provide the environment for people to think along those lines. But I think a lot of sorry, Sheffield, I know. A lot of young people don't feel like they can get access to those funds. How difficult or easy is it to get? If you have a business idea, I mean, the marketing side of things has gotten easier with social media. I mean, people basically just advertise businesses only online now. How difficult is it to access some of the funds in those groupings like Bell Fund? Well, until now, I think it is a little too cumbersome and appears to be complicated. Even if I black myself and I look at it. And that can be a deterrent. But what is happening right now, with the cluster of ministries that we have, we are seeking to have harmonization and collaboration among the various departments. And so you have social transmission officers who are actually on the ground in the community. What we want to do is, while they do not work for Bell Fund or the SSDF, they have to familiarize themselves with the programs of the SSDF and Bell Fund. So when they come to you, in your community, you have this problem or that problem, you have that intention, that ambition and so on. They can direct you and say, OK, you interested in business, here's what you do. You go to Bell Fund. And not just direct you solely, but some people may not have the capacity. Guide you along, assist you. If they do not have that capacity themselves, bring it to get the help that is required and so on. And that is what we want to see happen, so that people don't just feel, if I may use the term Boa Kase, and they just give up because boy, it is beyond them or anything like that. It has to be inclusive. It has to be inviting. And it has to be embracing. And so these are the kinds of programs that we want to, because at the end of the day, we spend the resources, but I'm not satisfied that we make maximum use in terms of the impact that we get, because there is not sufficient collaboration. We work sometimes at cross purposes, overlaps take place unnecessarily where resources are wasted. And so I think we can become more efficacious by collaborating, harmonizing and ensuring that we know what can be done for each other. Okay, I was just building on your question. So go ahead. I have a question for me. Given the present economic situation we're facing and cries for jobs, with the Christmas season around the corner, will the government have any economic stimulus work program, like what was formerly stepped? I can say to you, most definitely, because that is another program that is considered to be a social program. And so it comes under the Ministry of Social Justice, implemented by the St. Lucia Social Development Fund, the SSDF. And so in about the next week or two, we'll be rolling out the Christmas stimulus, where we'll be providing small contracts to individuals to do the bushing and beautification and so on at the community level. I'm also pleased to say, well, that is not part of my portfolio, but I'm also pleased to say to that, we are at the point where we're about to roll out our 2017 CDP program, that is the Community Development Projects that is funded by the Taiwanese government. And so that in itself will provide an injection of some much needed cash in our economy. And I am sure that we'll go a long way in ensuring that at the community level, we have more people who will have a good Christmas. How do you feel about implementing a program that was heavily criticized when the UWP was in opposition? Which program is that? The stimulus economic program. Well, you see in some, well, I have criticized the STEP program because the STEP program cannot be seen as an employment program. That is temporary, that is a social program that is used as a stopgap measure to facilitate people. There are times when you need an extra injection of cash, for example, at the reopening of school. Even some parents who work, but their wages are menial, they are very low, need that little extra bit of cash to top up and so on, that facilitates them. But when we talk about economic activity, when we talk about job creation, I'm certainly not thinking of those short term jobs that are in effect dead-end jobs, that's not the kind of jobs you want for young people. At the end of the day, you want jobs where they can grow. You want a job where they've been in a position to qualify for a loan and get higher purchase and so on, and that they can develop themselves and own property, for example. I mean, the STEP program certainly will not provide that. And so when we talk about the STEP program, it's not to say as if it should not exist, but I mean, my position is that that should not be the start and end of what we do to provide opportunities for our young people. So moving away from the discussion on STEP, the whole social aspect of looking after our citizenry and everything, one of the things that I see every day as we go covering stories, the city of castries is the homeless, just lying there, some naked, some clothed. What are your government's plans to at least see the homeless off the streets of castries? Now, I'm hoping in the coming years, I mean, as a minister responsible for social justice and equity, I'm hoping that in the coming years, we're going to get more and more resources because I'm hearing the comments that are being made about how important my portfolio is. I'm hoping that the requisite support will be there to demonstrate that we recognize the importance of our ministry. But let me just say that, for example, SSDF is embarking on housing programs where we build like what we call plywood houses, two-bedroom plywood houses with toilet and so on. That would cost less than $20,000. But it is a start, it is a facility that you could provide to people who are homeless and so on. We're just in the process of providing, I think 16 of them. Now, I know you'll quickly tell me that we only scratch in the surface, but as time goes on, we're hoping we can, you know. Another thing is we welcome the various homes that have been established, where shelters where people could go, people who are homeless could go and so on. I also want to appeal to families who are able, who have relatives out there on the streets and so on that they rise to the occasion and play a role.   And so again, I'm saying we have a responsibility that is primarily our responsibility, but we are appealing and expecting the support of the wider community as well in terms of dealing with such situations. We've had a number of instances where, well, a number of reports where individuals made reports to the police, social services, social service agencies, and you know, other, how would I put it, law enforcement agencies, as it relates to whether it be physical abuse, sexual abuse or maybe minors, that sort of thing. And you hear them, you hear, they coming back saying that you know, the police not taking them serious, the social agencies not taking them serious, the Ministry of Education not taking them serious. How can we, how can your Ministry ensure that those reports are taken serious and that they are addressed? Well, first of all, let me just say that again, there are many reasons why this happens. And of course, my Ministry has no jurisdiction over the police, but let me just say, you spoke of social workers and all of that. And it's very easy to bash the employees and to say that they're in their election of duty and so on. But I mean, if you look at it closely, very often it is a human resource issue. Some of our departments are woefully understaffed. You have one, sometimes one social worker who has to deal with so many cases that it's just humanly impossible for them to be able to meet the demands that are placed on them. So that is one aspect that we have to address in terms of providing the necessary resources so that we can have the numbers as far as staffing is concerned. When it comes to the police and so on, in some cases it may also be a case of manpower, but in some cases, do not forget in every organization, in every institution, you have people who will not live up to their responsibilities. That is one, that is another one. As well, let us not forget, there's a cultural factor too. When you talk about sexual abuse and domestic violence and so on, there's some thinking, especially on the part of our males, as far as those things are concerned, where I may just look at you and say to you, well, you know, the man is your husband, he has a right to do certain things to you and with you, and that kind of thing. Then there is also the Wajma phenomenon. Very often the social workers and the law enforcement officers respond, but along the way, the matter is dropped because there's some personal outside arrangement that is taken and the people patch up without any serious consequences to the perpetrator. So we have all of those factors to take into consideration, so there's education, there is increase in provision of the requisite resources, and there is the management aspect as well to ensure that people who are supposed, and accountability, people who are supposed to do what they ought to do, actually do it. So you said, in my opinion, that's a poor excuse. It's not an excuse. I give you the reasons why those things happen. It's not an excuse. I mean, at the end of the day, understand too that very often people point fingers at politicians, at ministers of government, and it is not to duck our responsibility, but understand that we are policy makers and the public knows that very well when it suits them. And I will tell you about your interference on occasions, we don't run the departments of government. Every, while the politician and the minister has to play his part, the worker, the government employee has to play his part as well. So let's not forget that. So it's not about making excuses. I'm just telling you like it is. Do you know? Do you have another question in that vein, Sheffield? Oh, okay. The minister mentioned human resource being a constraint. And earlier you alluded to the government being more or less over staffed and being at its maximum with salaries. How do you see that situation being remedied? Well, I'm not one to advocate retrenchment after all of my politicians. But I believe through attrition, we should allow the public service to be reduced. There are some positions I think we can do without. I will not point out any to you for fear of offending anyone, but there are some positions if you get rid of them and you do not announce it, no one will know. So it tells you that you can do without it. I think redeployment is also important. There are people who are underutilized while there are people who are overabundant. I think redeployment of staff, I don't send people home, have them more productively engaged and I think a lot more can be achieved through that. That would be my approach. And I think that is our government's approach. I really wanted to touch on minister before we get to discussing issues within your constituency. Youth development and then specifically as it relates to sports. I mean, we have some great athletes in San Lucia. We have some great, I see some upcoming athletes in terms of sports like football and cricket. What are we doing in terms of developing that a little more because we know especially when it comes to football, it is such a growing sport. And I can see we have such rising stars in those departments. What, I know we're looking at the school. Can you give us an idea about what happened there? As you have already mentioned, there are a number of initiatives that we're looking at. We are looking at the Center for Excellence for Sports where we're going to look at the cream of the crop, the elites and channel them through that center where they're going to get specialized attention and training that is scientific for their development. We have the community programs where we're going to look at increasing the number of coaches that we have in the ministry of youth development and sports will be at the community level working with those individuals because very often what you have after people have left school, there's very little in by way of structure at the community level for them to continue engagement and engagement in sports for instance. I'm also hoping that we can look at scholarships and whether or not those people go on to become world beaters and elite athletes and so on, they would have at least gotten an education which would be well worth it. And so I'm also one who advocates that it should not only be about competitive sports but I want to see that we begin to use the Department of Youth Development and Sports for health, for community development, for socialization and all of those things because again, people say that I always like to quote the saying that prevention is better than cure. I also want to add to it that prevention is cheaper than cure. So if you have a good community program in terms of health and fitness, I like to use the word physical activity because what people my age, the term sports and fitness and exercise are a little scary. But when we talk about physical activity, it doesn't necessarily have to be sports, it could be dancing, it could be hiking, it could be many other. If we get our people moving, then we will address many of our problems, family problems because when you have a high incidence of diabetes, hypertension, you know, heart diseases and so on, you not only have to increase your health bill, but you have family problems as well.  It is expensive to take care of those conditions as well. So if we can prevent it in the first place, I think we'll be far better off. I mean, look at the number of amputees we have, the number of cases of people who are in dialysis, that's on, that is taking a toll on the country's resources. And of course, by the same token, you have people who can be more productive to the country who are in a sense draining the country. Okay, we have a question? Yes, going back to domestic violence, you mentioned earlier about watchers and the police not being able to do their work properly. How should legislation be amended to ensure that the police pursue a case? What are reported on that? Well, I would support that strongly. I have heard the discussion along those lines but I do not know that anything tangible has taken place but I would certainly support legislation that after the discovery is made of a situation that it is pursued irrespective of your cooperation or not, that the law enforcement agencies can pursue it and ensure that the perpetrator is punished but to justice rather. On that same vein, Minister, we've heard of women dropping cases or saying that they're no longer interested in pursuing a case, especially where domestic violence is concerned, we heard of the last homicide in the library and the circumstances surrounding that. In that regard, would you recommend legislation that says if there's enough evidence that those cases not have the permission to be released by the victim? Most definitely, but at the same time, I think as a state we have a responsibility to provide the avenues for that person to be safe because very often it's an economic issue or a safety issue, why they give in and just drop the matter. So if the person has to pursue that matter, you may very well be living with that man. You will have to find somewhere else to live while the matter has been pursued. I think the state should step in there. When it comes to safety, I think the state should ensure that they provide the protection that that individual requires along with the law. Okay, a hot topic right now is the St. Jude Hospital. I know it's not directly under, I know I'm not one introducing these questions, but I think it's important that we get an idea from you. In terms of healthcare overall, because we would want and we campaign for solutions to have healthcare, support healthcare insurance, how far are we along with that? Is it something you support as well? Most definitely, I believe in health access for all, whether or not you can afford it. Of course, those who can afford it should pay for it. I personally believe that, we are working on it. I understand that the report is to be presented to cabinet very soon on the idea of health insurance. And I'm hoping that that can be implemented in a way so that, I mean, well, we will not be able to cover all aspects of health, but that generally speaking, the basic health services are provided to all citizens of St. Lucia. I think we should look at collaborations with neighboring countries as well, where we can provide more specialized services for our people. But again, I go back to prevention. If we minimize the cases of serious health problems, then we will be in a better position to afford the healthcare that we have to provide. I mean, St. Jude's has become a real hot issue, a political issue. I recall as minister of youth development and sports almost eight years ago, being told that I should give the people back their stadium. You know, that was after one year of the fire. And I would have thought that the people who were calling for that having been given about five years would have given the people back their stadium. Right now we have the stadium that is derelict right now. If you remove the hospital, that doesn't mean that you can use the stadium as it is. So, I mean, while we're talking about building the new hospital, the St. Jude's hospital, we have to talk about some serious rehabilitation of the stadium in view for it as well. And that brings me to another issue, and I think even myself, I can take some of the blame and partly guilty of that. We have limited resources, but I don't think we are sufficiently creative and thoughtful in terms of what we do. We saw the stadium deteriorate as a result of C-blast. We are an island, we're close to the sea. The salt damage the material. And you know, we repair it with the same material. We'll need to see five years later that we have the same problem. I mean, why can't we stop and think? And what substitute can we use that will be more durable, more resistant to the environmental conditions and so on? So these are the kinds of things I want to see us do. I mean, I'm hoping our technocrats can begin to think along those lines and it's not just business as usual, routine and so on. I am also calling for a lot more research to be done. I mean, as a policy maker, I'm called upon to create policy many times without information. How can that be done? I mean, I may sit here and say to you that you need 10 dialysis machines when I do not know how many people have kidney failure. I'm just using that as an example.   Nobody stops to ask why. It even escapes us that it is concentrated in an area. I mean, I have an area in my constituency where I notice there seem to be a very high incidence of mental illness. Why, you know? I mean, we need to do a lot more research. We have sufficiently, sufficient numbers in terms of educated people who studied sociology who into statistics and to research and so on to be able to utilize them to do those things. And I'm hoping that even when we have things like stimulus, we're not only called grass and so on but we can do other useful projects such as getting information that can be of utility to us in terms of our nation's development and planning. Yeah, yeah. Christian, are you okay? Okay, I want to move on because we only have a little time left to your constituency and you've been repeating prevention is better than cure. And I want to talk about something specifically before I throw it to the media. The road issue, the traffic issue. I mean, we could have seen this coming a long time ago. What are we gonna, a lot of it is concentrated in the grossly area. We're happy for the economic activity there but the traffic is a problem. What say you on this issue? Not just a problem, it's a growing problem. I think we need to begin to address it now. It is a very expensive undertaking to address it. I mean, I have the unenviable distinction of having a constituency of over 200 rules. And I would venture to say at least 80% of those rules are in poor condition. That, the number of residential developments in my constituency has partly given rise to that situation because again, someone feel in carrying out their responsibility. You should not allow a developer to give you a substandard infrastructure and accept that that infrastructure, that development could be handled over the government because the problem and the expense becomes that of government. And I have a lot of situations like that in my constituency. The traffic situation, I mean. Could you just explain that more specifically for us? You're saying that plan developments that were handled by a developer were done poorly. Poorly. For example, the roads were not done up to the required standards and so in no time, they deteriorate. And it becomes my responsibility as parliamentary representative to address it. And I'm happy to know that our government is planning to go ahead with the development of the following highway to Grosjele. But what I have requested is that even before that undertaking, we upgrade the back roads. The bypass roads. When I say upgrade, not just in terms of improving the surface, but extending some of those routes. Because during that time, if now we have that nightmare, could you imagine while construction is taking place, what it would be like? Not everybody can drive the back roads. Stick to their side, yeah. And of course not to mention, that will provide a golden opportunity for me to have some of my roads upgraded. Do we have any specific questions on anything to do in the constituency? Have there been any major developments in your constituency that you want to speak about? Well, we are nearing completion of the HRDC, the Human Resource Development Center in Grosjele. I've always said that has to be the new model, the new standard. Because we have a theater, we have a conference room, we have a training room, we have an exhibition room, and of course a restaurant at that center. I mean it's very imposing and beautiful and so on, but that is not what I am looking at. I'm hoping that it will not just become a whatever color elephant, but that it is actually going to be a hub of activities. A place that is utilized and contribute to the development of, especially our young people in the community, because I mean we're going to provide the facilities and we want to ensure that we want to make use of it. I think that will be a big game changer as far as culture is concerned. You know, as far as skills training and all of those things. And so that is important. I am in the process of reopening at least six ICT centers around the constituency in Labon, Deramur, Lafay, Riviameter, Gran Riviera, and the town of Grosjele. The reason for this is because the use of the computer is inescapable now.  And when I talk about computer, I include phones in that. And so we want to ensure that we provide access to every citizen because that's not fool ourselves. People regard my constituency as an affluent constituency. Yes, I represent Kappa State, Bonte and Rodney Bay, but I also represent Moshi and Labon, Deramur, and those areas that are not as affluent. And there are people who do not have access to such essential equipment. And so we're going to provide it for them, provide internet access. Hopefully in the immediate vicinity of those ICT centers, we're going to have free Wi-Fi. Fortunately, in two of the cases, we have parks, community parks that are nearby. So we want to know if people can come to the park and consider how we socialize so much online now. I think that would be a welcome initiative for the residents. We want to have training programs, not just for young people in the use of computers. Older people who didn't grow up being exposed to computers and so on, at least in the basic use of it, where they can go on Skype and IMO and whatever, talk to their grandchildren in the United States like the UK and so on. The basic use and function of the computer, we want to teach that to those people. We won't be having any illiteracy workshop. We're not going to call it that. Because if you tell me that there's anything illiteracy you have, I will not come. So we're going to have developmental programs for adults as well, where they can develop themselves in a number of scales. And so that's in the immediate future. We want to have those centers and so on up now and to refurbish one or two of the parks, establish a park in Grand Riviera because I think open space is becoming more and more important, especially given the fact that people can be so isolated now if they don't realize it. At least give people a place to go to hang out and so on, not only the malls, but a healthy environment that is a green space where they can go and socialize as well. And roads. I mean, the Ministry of Infrastructure, they have a limited budget. And the budget is not four grossly, this one entire island. They will address my primary and secondary roads. But the smaller back roads, the little community roads, the little roads in the development and so on, I have to find a way of addressing them. I have to juggle and deal with essential community projects, but at the same time try to take a little out of it my community development projects to do road repairs and rehabilitation. And so it's a real juggling act I have by far. In terms of not in terms of geographical space, but other biggest population, but it is almost as if I have the biggest constituency as well because you go to a constituency like Swazel and you perhaps drive for five miles and you don't see a house. But every square foot of grossly is developed and that means infrastructure that has to be maintained and so on. But unfortunately, I get the same allocation as everyone else, you know. As Minister of Equity, I would just like to say that that is not on. Loud and clear, I think you've been heard. We have a final question before you wrap up. Yeah, I couldn't let that one slip in my arm, being from the constituency of grossly. I just want to revisit the whole question of the fall in highway. And earlier on you spoke about, as a minister sometimes, having to put forward policy without the necessary research and the background information. That having been said, have your government revisited the feasibility study that went into the fall in highway? Because to my mind to go into a fall in highway in isolation without looking at what is actually causing the traffic. Well, a bigger highway is a congestion in the next five, 10 years. Are we looking at housing opportunities away from the grossly community? Are we looking at job opportunities away from the grossly community? Because as far as I see right now, just going ahead and building a fall in highway alone in isolation of all the other issues is not going to be the solution. Honestly, that's the kind of thinking we want in government and at the policymaking level. Most definitely, I mean, we depend on the Ministry of Infrastructure to provide us guidance as far as what you're talking about in terms of the feasibility and the background information. And having revisited it, they are looking at also roundabouts in certain areas and things. Other aspects of road development that will ease the congestion, not just the fall in highway. Housing, I've made it very clear that I want no more government housing development in my constituency for two reasons. It is a burden because of the cost. Secondly, I already have over 20,000 voters in my constituency, and there are constituencies with just about 6,000 voters. I have said that there are one or two housing developments that are already on stream. I'm advocating that those properties are made available to young people, particularly in the constituency. And let's develop, like you said, let's develop economic activity strategically so that people can remain in their communities that they don't have to migrate to other communities for job opportunities. I've even suggested that in the interim, while we take the necessary measures, which in some cases will take time, we start at the hours of work. Why does everyone have to go to work at 8 o'clock? That's part of the problem, you know? And I'm thinking there's... Do you mean 7 a.m. or 6 a.m.?  And I could say that not costly. I mean, depending on the business, it has to be standard, but there are other businesses that could open, like you said, at 6 in the morning or at 9 in the morning, and that would not affect their bottom line. And so these are the kind of things that I want to see happen. But sometimes you see those things, you know, and it is not consistent with the norm and people just dismiss it. But I think, again, and I'm very happy to hear you raise those kinds of questions, that is the way we need to begin to think as a government. I usually go to the minister of finance to make requests for my constituency. I usually have a solution, you know, because I always try to identify source for revenue for the suggestions that I make. I mean, I have plans for the development of the Grossly Waterfront. But when you look at the Grossly Bay, especially at certain times of the year, there are over 100 yachts anchored there. That's our Bay. We benefit nothing from that. I'm saying the yachts, yachts men and women or yachties, whatever you want to call them, who are out there who do not want to pay IGY what they may consider to be exorbitant, who they anchor there. We not charge them as much as IGY, but we charge them a fee. We put down moorings, charge them a fee, and that is resources that you're going to be generating for the community development programs that you have, our jetty and so on. We have matnik just next door. We can throw a stone from Grossly to matnik. But we're not capitalizing on the fact that that's a ready market that we have. People with spending power, because one euro is three-something. When they come to Grossly, they spend 100 euro, that's nothing, but that's over $300. And that's how I think we need to begin to think to ensure that we make the most.  Okay, thank you so much, honorable minister. I think that we've had some very exciting plans, especially for your constituency and in terms of youth. And we look forward to seeing some of the programs that you have to alleviate crime, bearing some fruit going forward. Thank you very much for being with us today. We hope to see you back in Briefing Room as often as possible. Thank you very much to the members of the media for your great questions today. And thank you to the audience listening to us on NTN YouTube and Facebook. That's a wrap, thank you very much.


Good morning. I'm speaking on behalf of my colleagues at the Genome Institute, Rick Wilson, Elaine Martis, and my colleagues in our genomics of AML-PPG, but I also will give you a brief update at the end about kind of the scorecard of the AML project at TCGA. So with AML, not advancing. Okay. A few brief words about this disease and its genomics. So we don't know much about it in terms of initiating mutations except for patients who have canonical mutations that I'll show you in just a minute. For most patients with this disease, when we started this project, very, very little was known about initiating mutations. One very nice feature of the disease is that the oncologist control the samples. The tumor tissue is very easy to access and access repeatedly, and most of the samples are relatively free of contaminating normal cells without any additional purification. Another feature that we loved as we started sequencing whole genomes was the fact that many of these genomes are diploid. And also riffing on lessons of the past, low-resolution genomic screening that is cytogenetics has been used for 30 years to classify these patients and to make treatment decisions. And all of us as clinicians who take care of these patients use this idea. It's a very important idea that favorable risk cases who have these canonical mutations, at least three of them, can be treated lightly up front, and they're going to do relatively well. By that, I mean five-year survival is a 50 percent. That some patients with complex cytogenetics have adverse risk.  And unfortunately, about two-thirds of our cases have intermediate risk. And these patients we don't know what to do with, we don't necessarily need new drugs for these cases, but we need to know what to do with them. So we need better classification markers, biomarkers, if you will, to separate these people into good and poor risk. And the first AML genome we sequenced, we found the major classifier of intermediate risk, which is mutations in a gene called DNMT3A. So I'm not going to talk about that because the data has now been validated by many, many centers and it is the most important classifier as a single gene of intermediate risk and it tells us, I think, who to transplant. But I will tell you about some of the conundrums we faced as we sequenced these genomes. In the first couple of genomes that were done, we encountered what I will call the founding conundrum. And that is there are hundreds of mutations per AML genome and because we validated all of them with deep-digital sequencing, we found out that all the mutations are in all the cells. That's a problem. It suggests that they may have all risen simultaneously or that if they are important for the tumor, if they arose because they're all needed, that you would have to have hundreds of relevant mutations per case. Both of those seem impossible. So how does it happen? This is the model that we prefer and it's experimentally tractable and I think it's now been proven. So the idea is that hematopoietic stem cells, the cell of origin for this tumor, is a cell that lives for your entire life. But it spends most of your life in G0. Divides perhaps once a week, once every few weeks. You only have about 100,000 of these in your body. These cells accumulate about 14 mutations per year. So as you age, a number of random innocuous mutations accumulate in these cells until one fateful day when a true initiating mutation causes a cell to have an advantage, probably a very small one. That cell then begins to experiment with other mutations, progression mutations. Then once in a while, unfortunately, a progression mutation cooperates with this initiating mutation and causes the head. This actually explains most of our data. It explains why all the mutations have the same recount frequency, why they're all in the same cells, because they're simply captured by the act of cloning. The initiating event clones that critical cell and then all the mutations come forward. So when you sequence this genome, not only do you sequence the two relevant mutations, four and five, but the hundreds of mutations that are previously accumulated in that cell prior to its transformation. So there's a central question, of course, in this disease in most cancers. How many mutations does it take to cause the disease? So our approach to this was to take 24 genomes and sequence them completely. But we selected these cases to be of two different types. One the M3 subtype of ML, which is initiated by a very well-known fusion protein created by a translocation called PML-R-R-Alpha versus cases with undifferentiated M1-AML that have normal carry types. We know little or nothing about these cases. So the idea is very simple. We have one that is caused by a very well-defined initiating mutation, and we know it's initiating because you can put it in a mouse and it causes a phenocopy of the disease and one where you know nothing. So based on this prediction that I just made about how the mutations would arise, we predicted that the total mutations per genome would be the same because most of them arose before the initiating event. There are simply background benign mutations that are present in the stem cell. That most of the mutations would be random and irrelevant. But the M1 cases would have null mutations that would never be seen in M3 and that the cases would have common mutations, which would be relevant for progression. Makes sense? So what are we fine? The key, how many recurring mutations per genome? That should give us the answer about how many mutations are needed to initiate M1 and how many are needed to progress. You can think about your predictions in the next few minutes and I'll show you the answer at the end. 24 genome pairs completely sequenced, 10,000 mutations total found, average of 421 per genome, 308 mutations and 286 unique genes, about 10 per genome with translational consequences, about 10 in the exome in each case. We looked at these mutations in 66 additional M1 and 43 additional M3 cases. There are 21 recurrently mutated genes. In M3, there was only one, PMLRR alpha. In M1, we found 10 recurrent mutations and I'll show you what they are in a minute. And 11 mutations were common to the two subsets. The total number of mutations by tier fit the prediction. They're exactly the same in tier 1, the coding region, exactly the same for the two subtypes in tier 2, the conserved region of the genome with potential regulatory function, exactly the same in tier 3 and exactly the same for total numbers of mutations, fits the predictions that they had to arise prior to initiation. If you plot them by genome space, they fit exactly as random events that occurred in genome space in tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3. The R value for the M1 and M3 cases are both exactly one. These are random mutations that occurred prior to transformation in the stem cells. One thing we learned with deep-digital sequencing is that this disease is clonal. Every AML case, I'll show you more about this at the very end, have founding clones where all the mutations occur in every cell and many cases have subclones that are derived from the founding clone and this is very, very important as we begin to think about studying relapse AML and the number of clones in each of the cases is basically identical. Here are the recurrently mutated genes that you all are accustomed to seeing. This is the bookkeeping. These are the M3 cases, that's PMLR alpha on top, here it is cooperating with flip 3 mutations. These are the M1 cases. So you can see that there are a large number of mutations, these are the ones I spoke of, the 10 that occur only in the M1 cases are very, very rarely in M3 and then these are the mutations that occur basically in both subsets, the so-called progression mutations that can cooperate with the founding or initiating mutations. One interesting hit that we got from this analysis was finding that all four members of the cohesin complex are recurrently mutated in AML. This complex is important for holding sister chromatid together, sister chromatid together as to organize during S phase and every gene that's a member of this complex is recurrently mutated in AML, only in the M1 variety. So how many mutations? As I told you, there are the same number of Tier 1 mutations in these two kinds of genomes. If you look at the recurrent mutations with translational consequences in the 24 fully sequence cases, the number is 0 to 6 for M1 and 1 or 2 for PMLR alpha and we extend this to an additional 107 cases, the number stays 0 to 7 and 1 to 3. That's how many mutations it takes to cause these diseases. So in summary, for this part of the talk, PMLR alpha is the initiating mutation for all of these M3 cases that are sequenced. There are cluster of mutations that tend to occur together in PM1, DNMT3A, this classifying mutation I told you about, and IDH1, and then these are the other mutations that appear to contribute to initiation of M1. There are 10 mutations that are held in common in these two subtypes and these are clearly mutations that are important, not for defining the subtype, but important for progression. So I just wanted to give a brief scorecard on the AML project that is being done by TCGA. This is just bookkeeping, but there are some very interesting things that are about to come forward and there's an incredibly rich database that is about to be explored experimentally. So we have 50 whole genome sequence cases that are complete and completely validated, the ones I just told you about, and another 26 with normal karyotype AML from any FAB subtype of the disease. Another 150 cases had exome pair sequence at the Brode, transcriptomes were sequenced from these same cases in British Columbia by Mark O'Mara's group, and 192 methylation rates have been done from this set by Peter Larratt and Tim Trish at USC. We've also just finished sequencing from among this set, the 50 cases that have primary refractory or early relapse disease, which will add richly to our understanding of this worst of the worst subset of the patients. The cases that we chose represent AML as a disease. As I told you, about half the cases have these intermediate risk findings. About 20% have translocations associated with good risk, and about 20% have these poor risk cytogenic abnormalities. So it's a fair sample of this disease as it occurs in the real world. These are just the data on tier one, two, and three mutations in the patients with normal karyotype AML versus the APL or the M3 subtype. You can see, as I told you, the numbers of mutations are about the same. The thing that determines the total number of mutations per genome, you should be able to predict age. There are a number of new recurrently mutated genes. This is a partial list of the recurrent mutations that are present in up to 3% of cases. Many of the names of these genes are new. Not all of them are completely validated. This work will be done within about a month. And then you can see that there are patterns that begin to develop in terms of mutual exclusivity that are being explored by Ben Rafael. And now I'll put a plug-in for his talk this afternoon, who will be showing you data about patterns of exclusivity. There are beautiful data that have come from Vancouver, where they've used RNA-seq to find a number of well-known translocations for this disease. And remarkably, a number of private translocations that create novel fusion proteins in many genes that are well-known to us, but have not been previously identified as translocation partners in AML. Many of these are in-frame fusions that create novel proteins with novel functions, and many of them in genes that have never been seen before mutated in AML, like, for example, DNMT3B. Finally, in work that Tim Trish and Peter Laird have done, they've done a beautiful job of assembling the methylome data for these on the Illumina 450K array. With 192 cases, you can see these gorgeous patterns that seem to privatize individual groups of AML cases. I think all of us predicted that there will be very, very significant mutations that would predict these individual patterns of methylation. And, in fact, that DNMT3A would be the primary predictor, along with the mutations Peter spoke about in IDH1 and 2 and TET2, which occur in about a quarter of cases of AML. As we went and looked at the classifying mutations, basically none of them classify these methylation phenotypes. There's one cluster of mutations that occurs together with DNMT3A, foot 3, IDH1 and 2 and TET2. The common mutations here with a hypo-methylation phenotype, but if you look up this line, all of these mutations occur in combinations, and none of them predicts this phenotype. So there's much to learn. The last thing I want to say is that there's much more to the digital bookkeeping that exists when you look at this kind of data. Deep digital sequencing is a clinical tool. It tells us a great amount about the biology of this disease. By looking at deep digital data, we've been able to deduce the clonal evolution of AML at relapse. As I told you, many of these mutations occur in the cell that is transformed. Mutations in many genes contribute to the initiation and progression. And then subclones arise from these founding clones in most cases of AML. These subclones have different mutations and different behaviors after therapy. Some of them completely disappear with therapy. Others come forward, achieving quantal bursts of mutations that clearly contribute to relapse. Understanding this clonal behavior at relapse will be extremely important in terms of predicting responses to drugs in patients and, of course, defining new therapeutic approaches because what we have to do in this disease is remove the founding clone to cure the patients because every time we look, the founding clone reemerges. I just want to thank our patients. Without them, there is no study. Our funders, including Al Sightman, who funded the sequencing of the first cancer genome when no one else was very interested. And finally, Rick, Elaine, and Lee Ding, who lead the work in the Genome Institute at Wash U, and my colleagues on the Genomics of AML program project grant, most particularly John DePersio, who leads our oncology group. Thank you. Thank you, Tim. We have time for a few questions. Eric. Great, great talk. Just fantastic. I had two specific technical questions. When you say you know how many mutations there are, you mean you have a lower bound. Yes, exactly. There could be more. There could be more. The number that have been looked at so far. But this sets the floor. This sets the floor. Good. I want to check. And the other was just a tiny thing. I couldn't help but noticing on the list, the Cuban sushi domain protein and the musins come up. That's right. And both of those are in this class of late replicating probably fish and cheese. Absolutely. Yep. Absolutely correct. But there are many more that aren't. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. They're all over the place. And so is Titan, right? What is odd though, that if you simply apply a significantly mutated test for these genes which is very rigorous in terms of things in taking size into account, they don't go away. So I think the reason I leave them on these slides even though my informatics colleagues tell me take them off, they're not significant, is I have an open mind. They don't occur in every case. They should based on their size. They sure as hell don't. A lot of small genes are currently mutated and they show up again and again and a lot of big genes like olfactory receptors never show up in these cases. So it's hard to know what it all means. A lot of big families, that's what I meant to say, big, big gene families that you might expect to be recurrently mutated don't show up at all. Matthew? Great. Great talk. Great talk. I was struck by the PML RAR alpha co-mutation with FLIT3 and wondering about the FLIT3 wild type set, whether from gene expression or other evidence, you can get any clue for what might be a parallel driver mutation to FLIT3? Critical question. We've looked very carefully, thinking that there must be other tyrosine kinases that substitute for FLIT3 in these cases, since the combination is so common, does not exist. There are clearly other co-operating mutations in these cases that aren't a member of this class, so there's distinct heterogeneity even among PML RAR alpha, but it does not explain outcomes. We don't have the answer, but it's an important question. Okay. Thank you, Tim. We have 15 short minutes for coffee break. Thank you. Thank you.


Everybody for a syrup in a box of twenty two twenty three impeccable basketball first off the line for Jennifer L That's a bug Jennifer Bodle see a silver bar, and we're gonna see one maybe two Do I just one? There are as always the hobby one and one of the boxes so and one and one of the boxes for you get two for keys That makes any sense Wait to a little box. Yeah One every photo case has two bars Okay, because you get the guaranteed One-per-box you also get the guarantee one per case as well. Oh, I see. Okay, I see Statement stars is Kevin Durant's 30 out of 75 I'm not sure if it's possible to pull a gold in and first off the line Because I think it's a guaranteed silver bar I guess you could pull it if it's in one of the like it's the hobby version, but there's always that that's gonna be a silver Bar to eight KD there to 75 There's a Devon Vaselle out of 75 Quentin Grimes to 49 22 49. I think in basketball. There's no auto bars. I think it's all just all Non-auto I believe I believe Hey a nice Jill and Doran rookie five of 99 Jalen Duran Okay redemption my big redemption Is it was my jang stainless stars autograph? Rookie for the Thunder it was my jang miles Turner 12 of 99 extravagance auto about kilometers Turner Malachi Brannum stainless stars rookie auto that one's 61 of 75 Rookie auto Dyson Daniels 25 of 25 silver Good stuff too finishing strong in the before we get to the bar here Duran then Daniels and now a Jaden Ivy stainless stars rookie auto With the blue color match 50 of 75 Jaden Ivy Anthony Edwards three of eight NBA logo Troy ounce of fine silver Great hit on the ant Edwards. Congrats Jennifer. So nice love impeccable Perfect top corner up here, but the bar card is so thick kind of kind of happens every now and then That will do it Jennifer. Thank you very much. We'll get it out to you


So I think the best way to stop doing Christianity is just to quit. Don't consult with a pastor or ask them theological questions or anything like that. Like if you have doubts and disbelief about anything, anything that they're going to try to tell you isn't going to make you really think anymore. It's just going to be a waste of time. This is some of the worst advice I've ever heard. Isolating yourself when you have doubts and questions is probably the worst thing you could ever do. You will not find the answers that you're looking for within yourself. And running away when things get hard and when doubts creep in is the mentality of a child. But we run away because of our pride. We can't admit that we don't know something. And we also see this as an opportunity to escape accountability. At the end of the day, it's more often not about the answers that were given, but rather whether we're ready to hear them or not. Perhaps our self-obsession has gotten the way of us hearing the hard truths of the Bible, the truth that we are all sinful, that we are all in need of saving, and that Jesus is that Savior, and that we need to put our faith in Him.


Let's get started. Good afternoon. Thanks for coming to this part. My name is Yang Tang, I'm a maintainer and a CIGI lead for TensorFlow project. My co-speaker, Yuan, he is a member of Kubeflow and a approver and a reviewer for Kubeflow's MPI operator. He's also maintainer of several open source projects as well. Fortunately, Yuan is not able to attend this talk because of the schedule conflict, so I'm going to cover his part as well. In today's talk, I'm going to discuss about large-scale distributed learning Kubernetes clusters. I'm going to briefly discuss about TensorFlow, discuss about Kubernetes operators, and also discuss about Kubeflow, which is the main focus of this talk because the operator, we talk about the TF operator, high-torch operator, and the MPI operator all belong to Kubeflow app. So let's get started. So before we jump into the deep learning or transition, I want to briefly discuss about the background of TensorFlow. As many of you already know, TensorFlow is one of the most popular open source frameworks for machine learning. It was originally developed by Google. It has been open source since 2015. Since then, TensorFlow has seen quite exclusive growth both in open source and machine learning community. At the moment, the most stable version of TensorFlow is 1.14, which was released several days ago, but the TensorFlow 2.0 is actually up and coming and will be released soon. I want to discuss about the sum of the change in TensorFlow 2.0 because a lot of things has changed and that's actually a quite an impact to many areas we'll discuss in this talk. In TensorFlow 2.0, the biggest change is obviously is the eager execution. Back in TensorFlow 1.x, the static graph was executed, which means if you are going to run a program, instead of running it in an imperative way, you have to construct your graph and wait for the graph to be deployed. And once it's finished, you get the result. This is obviously very good for production deployment, but it also has a disadvantage in that if you try to debug, it's very hard to debug because you will not get the result immediately. So in TensorFlow 2.0, the biggest change with the execution model is that eager execution has been enabled. You can just run TensorFlow like just like a Python program very natively. Another big change in TensorFlow 2.0 is that currency essentially is recommended high-level API and our other model building APIs are pretty much dropped. In TensorFlow 1.x, people have seen, criticized the 1.x in that for high-level model building, you'll have several different ways. You can use TF estimator, you can use TF carriers, you can use TF layers, you also have the TF3. There are four different ways to build models. In TensorFlow 2.0, the decision was that TF carriers will be the recommended API and moving forward, our other method will be deprecated pretty soon. If you look into the TensorFlow 2.0's workflow, you can notice that everything started with data input and preprocessing, which is handled by TF data. TF data is a pipeline to take the data from other sources and import that into TensorFlow's graph. This is one of the most important steps and this will be one of the focus of this talk because the data processing is very much tied to the alteration of the deep learning. The second step after the data has been imported into TensorFlow's graph is a model building. Obviously, we talk about TF carriers and TF estimator, although TF carriers is a recommended way. For training, now you'll have the eager execution. Also, you could use the TF function to define, to pre-define a small graph so that the execution can be speed up. And finally, for training on the inference, you can use save the model to save the model build and reload the back. So that's TensorFlow 2.0 workflow. If you look into that, you'll notice that data input of preprocess and model building probably are the steps that's going to be needed before you do the training. So people always ask the question, I'll say, okay, what's so special about the data input model building how to apply that when you have a big cluster. So let's come up with a topic of alteration for deep learning. When we talk about alteration, we actually talk in deep learning, it has a very special meaning. Most importantly, alteration for deep learning is always tied to the TPO. We all know if you want to run a deep learning task, you're going to deal with IO, which could be input output. And most likely it's going to be network input because the data will be loaded from disk to memory pretty easily. Then the second piece is a CPO. CPO is pretty much still needed for deep learning because not all the operations are feasible for a CPO. There are some operations just naturally not a good fit for a CPO. So you still need a CPO for certain operations. And also, CPO is typically the way to interact with IO. And finally, you have a CPO, that's a heavy lifting piece to be done. But if you look into that, the biggest problem is that CPO is the most expensive one. And you're appropriately, if you're going to run your alteration, you'll notice that if the deep learning is not scheduled very nicely, you're going to waste a lot of GPO. And that's a big waste for your investment. If you look into the diagram shown in the slide on the top, you could see that you do a batch processing. You take the data from the input. It passed to CPO for pre-processing. The next step is a pass to GPO for training and inference. As you can see, until data is reached to a GPO, your GPO is going to be idle and you waste a lot of resources. On the bottom, that's the optimization of your alteration and the scheduling. In this case, you'll try to build an IO pipeline such that the data will be delivered to GPO as soon as possible. And once it's in GPO, most of the time, you can do the training and do the IO in parallel such that your folder utilize your GPO. And that's the efficiency we talked about for alteration. There are several different ways for deep learning alteration. The most common way is a so-called pyramid server model. And for TensorFlow, that has been in place since almost the beginning. The pyramid server model essentially defines a pyramid server which could be a subset of servers that's dedicated for saving parameters. You also have work node, which is the GPO heavy. The workflow for a pyramid server model is that which work node, it's going to collect a subset of data and it's going to calculate, it's going to calculate the grading. The partial grading will be passed to the parameter server. When parameter server collects all the grading, it will do the calculation, gets the weight. And the weight will be further fitted back into the work node to do the update. This process will continue. Pyramid server, like I mentioned, has been pretty much in place for quite several years and people invest a lot of money, invest a lot of resources to improve that. But there are some debating about whether pyramid server is the best way to handle deep learning alteration. The biggest concern is that there are some people, there are some discussion about pyramid server, probably best, pyramid server model probably best fitted for scenarios where you have your computer power all seated on the same machine so that your memory are shared by different GPOs. But in case of distributed deep learning, your GPOs actually scatter the wrong. They could be on different hosts and they had to talk to a pyramid server. When they talk to a pyramid server, they had to go through a network transfer and their huge amount of data are transferred back and forth between pyramid server and the work node that could be a really big burden to your training. But anyway, in the old days in TensorFlow, pyramid server is pretty much the only potential model you can run for distributed deep learning. Recently, people have been talking about if we can use some other ways to do the distributed deep learning. Most people actually come to, most people actually resort to the MPI model. MPI distributed parallel processing has been resolved in a way for a long time and there are several ways to do the, there are several ways in MPI to do the calculation. In MPI, there are several models for reduce operation. One is the reduce, another is our reduce. So I'm going to show example of the reduce. So what is the reduce?  When you do the summation, you start with a bottom node, you do the calculation, do the summation and at each node, you're going to sum up the feature step, you do a reduce once until you reach the root node. So if you show it that indirectly, it's going to be like that. So the final step is that you reach to the root node, which is the summation of our node, that's 28. That's reduce. MPI also have other, another of so-called our reduce. So what is our reduce? Our reduce is essentially same as the reduce except when the summation has been calculated, reach to the root node, instead of just stop here, you're going back and broadcast back to every node. So every node knows your result. So if you're looking this way, you try to do the summation, you start with a bottom node, one and a two, that's three, and a plus five, that's eight. You do another summation, that's another node update. And another summation, you reach the root node. Once you reach the root node, the result 28 will be broadcasted to every node. So it's going to be like that. So that's a so-called our reduce. So to sum up, the our reduce is a reduce plus broadcast and for many people, familiar with MPI, they believe that's a more efficient way of doing distributed calculations. So let's go back to revisit parameter server because like I said, in TensorFlow for a long time, parameter server model is a standard way of doing distributed deep learning. The debating is about parallelize our machine and parallelize in a cluster might be different things. Many people believe that parameter server model is only suitable for parallelize our machine. It's not suitable to parallelize task in a cluster. And it's kind of controversy. The biggest burden for parameter server is that the cross-device communication cost is very high. But unfortunately, a huge effort has been invested over the years. So you'll probably can only take that. I spend a lot of time discuss about parameter server mostly because if you talk about all the existing machine learning or tradition frameworks, they actually have the assumption that they use parameter server and that's not necessarily the best approach. So that's kind of like making the decision of which choosing the best so-called deep learning for deep learning authorization frameworks kind of difficult, because whatever framework you try to choose, it may not exactly fit the scenario you want to achieve because in this field, a lot of things are changing very frequently. So many of the frameworks you feel, for example, you feel some more framework, you probably notice that they cannot even run with new version of TensorFlow. So that's going to be a big issue. Anyway, if we look into the authorization for deep learning, we notice there are several things. If we summarize the past diagram we mentioned about the parameter server model about the reduce and out-reduce model, they all require stateful metadata and they also require lifecycle management which come up to the situation where we feel like we probably can use Kubernetes for our tradition. And also when we talk about our Kubernetes, we also think it probably makes sense to have Kubernetes operators for machine learning as well because it's just a natural fit to manage stateful data and to manage a lifecycle. So let's go to Kubernetes operators. In this talk, I'm going to just briefly cover several operators and these Kubeflow organization, the TF operator, PyTorch operator, and MxPi operators. PyTorch is, it probably has a focus on PyTorch which may have some competition with TensorFlow but I want to cover this part as well. TF operator, that's obviously it's tied to TensorFlow. It supports TensorFlow. It also supports TensorFlow TF distributes strategy. So this one has a slightly better in that TF distributes. It's relatively new and TF distributes actually support a different strategies and the background like MPI and CCO, permanent server and TPO model. The TPO is the chip set, the chip designed by Google, that's TensorFlow processor unit. PyTorch operator has a focus on towards distribute module. It also has support for MPI and the CCO. Horror World, that's developed by Uber. Horror World actually has a wider support for different frameworks but I want to point out that some of the distribution strategies that probably not exactly, not exactly fit for a new version of TensorFlow. But anyway, we'll just show those TF operators and MPI operators to be deployed on QuickFlow. So as you could see, they are pretty much very similar. The difference is that the first of all you have a different kind of job that's the TF job and the MPI job. The spec is either TF replica spec or MPI replica spec. The command line is slightly different but other than that, it's pretty much the same. So the container image are the same. So let's look at, if you have a TensorFlow, let's start with TensorFlow program. So how do we draw a TensorFlow program? You install TensorFlow and you can also install TensorFlow I.O. which give you the TF dataset support. So the first line, of course, is to load the data into dataset. That's the first line of what dataset equals the MNIST dataset. The dataset will do some transformation which is necessary because you need to do some pre-processing so that your dataset is in flow 32 data types. You also do a batch of 1000 because batch is the way to help you for your data to fit into a GPO in one process. If you pass the data one by one, it may not be very efficient because the data transfer from CPO or from memory to GPO is also very expensive. So next is the model building. As we mentioned now, in TensorFlow 2.0, everything has been consolidated into curves. So you try to build a model. That's going to be a sequential model.  Dense layer is standard layer. The next layer is a dropout. Dropout is a technique to prevent overfitting. Essentially, if you define a dropout with... In this model, you have a dropout with a rate of 20%. That essentially means during each phase of the training, for every node, the chance this node will be dropped and this chance is 20%. This will help prevent overfitting problem you'll normally encounter when you build a new network. The last layer is a dense layer as well. So as we can see in TensorFlow 2.0, everything is being simplified. So if you build a model, the next step is to compile the model. That's one line. After that, it's a model.fit. Essentially, give you the training. The data set has been passed in. The last line, as you can see, that's evaluated. That's actually the inference phase. You can do that, or you can optionally skip this step if you're only focusing on training. So this program, we are talking about just build a model and run it on TensorFlow. Now we talk about distribution. Of course, that's a focus of this talk. So how do we do distributed training? So there are several strategies. One strategy in TensorFlow now has mirror strategy. It's actually consolidated a lot with mirror strategy. All you need to do is just define scope of with mirroredstrategy.scope. The model compile can be done automatically, which seems to be nice, right? We talk about the mirror strategy. You also want to mention that in the old days, you have, when you do distributed training, you have other tools available that can help you. For example, like Hoverlord. If you combine TensorFlow with Hoverlord, it's pretty much similar except that you'll have to pass different options and use callbacks to achieve the result. One thing I want to point out is, in this example, you have TF train, but TF train has been deprecated in TensorFlow 2.0 as well. So it's kind of, unfortunately, like I said, there are a lot of things in TensorFlow 2.0, so which actually makes things a little bit messy. But that's also, that's also a good thing because it's actually giving you a brief idea of how fast this area is moving forward every day. Like if you talk about 1.0, just like how long that can go, like one or two years ago. And all of a sudden, we jump into 2.0. A lot of things change, like a parameter server model, like TF train has been replaced, that deprecated even TF estimator, which used to be the default way of building a model for many programs, now all has been gone in 2.0. Let's do a comparison. But anyway, let's do a comparison. So as you can see in TensorFlow 2.0 versus HowlRode, they're pretty much the same. You'll build a similar model when you do the distribution because it's in Python, so a lot of details has been abstracted and hiding. So you can see it trying to make your life easier. We also try to cover a little bit of PyTorch plus HowlRode. Because HowlRode, one thing with HowlRode is that even if it's not exactly a thing for TensorFlow 2.0, it still has some usage with MPI and with PyTorch. So you can see they behave slightly differently, but they are pretty much similar as well. So that's one of the positive side of a different, of a framework that can support different open source software. Let's just go back to TFR operator versus MPI operator. They are pretty much very similar as well. As you can see, they abstract all the details. So now you can see that even the YAML specification for running your Kubernetes operators are very much similar except for the last command line that's slightly different. So as we discussed, this field is too fast in moving forward. Every day, a lot of things change. I mean, actually, if you try to install, for example, TensorFlow and you try to install Night Lane, and you probably notice that whatever you're trying to run may not work after like a month. And within several months, TensorFlow 2.0 will be released and there will be further change. So it's really hard to conclude what's the best solution for you to select a moment because whatever that is, you'll have to make sure your authorization framework can support the best software with the latest version that's stable, right? So what's the conclusion coming up with to this state? The conclusion is that if you want to focus on deep learning alteration, first of all, you have to focus on trying to follow your GPO because that's the essential piece. Otherwise, deep learning alteration, it's probably not worth a lot of effort to waste time on that. Another piece is if you try to, people tend to this debating about if you want to find a framework that's going to support our platform or our frameworks or you want to find a framework that's going to dedicate for something. It's really hard to say. Like I said, initially TensorFlow only have a permitt server for distributed TensorFlow. And later on, we have the mirror stretching. We also have our reduced stretching introduced in TensorFlow TF for distributed. That actually simplify a lot of things. I think that's something you want to take into consideration when you'll try to come up with a solution that's going to build for so-called AI ops or so-called machine learning Kubernetes because whatever you're trying to build, it may not be feasible after maybe just several months. I see a lot of people just smiling, just think, okay, what exactly are you trying to deliver? Unfortunately, I think that's a static call for the current state of distributed machine learning field. It's too tight to distribute framework and it's probably hard to come with a stable solution at the moment. If you try to come with state solution, I'm sorry, probably in several months, you'll probably realize it's cannot even run some of the latest version. But one thing I would like to recommend is a lot of people mentioned, so what exactly are you going to do? I think a Kubeflow could be a framework that you can try. There are several reasons. First of all, Kubeflow is a very actively developed, which means the final framework will try to catch up as soon as possible. Secondly, Kubeflow has a very big community. As far as I know, Kubeflow has a lot of developers actually countering to that. They try to make an adjustment as soon as possible. So if the upstream framework, like TensorFlow, make a change, Kubeflow tend to catch up very soon. Yeah, I think that's pretty much for today's talk. Another thing I want to mention is that Kubeflow also has several shared API and basic practices. They have a common standardized API spec. They have a base job controller interface. They consolidate all that in one repo, but they have different issues. Okay, they consolidate those common API spec, common utility functions into one repo, but they have different ways of deploying different frameworks, like they have TF operator, PyTorch operator, and they also have MPR operators. That's pretty much for today's talk. Any question? Regarding model serving, what's your recommended technology, Seldon or others? Okay, that's another interesting topic.  TF serving is one that's coming out for Google as well, but I think they're also falling behind with $2,000. Falling behind? Yes, it's... It's not compatible with 2.0 models? In $2,000, a lot of things have changed. Remember, in TensorFlow $2,000, first of all, you have an eager execution enabled by default. Secondly, so when people use, in the past when 1.0, 1.x, a lot of the frameworks use TF estimator as a default framework. Now this framework is being phased out. Of course, TensorFlow is still supported TF estimator, but that doesn't mean it's a first class system anymore, to be honest. So I can only say a lot of things will change pretty soon for TF serving as well. And also in TensorFlow 2.0, another concept is a so-called TF function. TF function essentially is a small subgraph to help you to optimize. Remember in 2.0, a static graph has been replaced by an eager execution. In eager execution, every step, it can run impartially. This actually slows down the speed of training dramatically. So one way to improve that is you can define a small function. A small function is essentially a subgraph or a small graph. This graph you can apply. So that gives you the advantage of graph optimization.  So with TF function, if you try to write a, if you try to, let's say you try to write a model, you can come with a, you can write it in an eager mode. And if you're stabilized and decided, say, your model is pretty much free, you can convert that into TF function to speed up. So that's another thing that's going to help you. Like I said, a lot of things are in the change in 2.0. But I think that's our good change because like I mentioned, for model building, you'll have a curse consolidated. You don't need to think about which is the best way to build a model among the four different ways of building that. And also with eager execution, that's really helps a lot for debugging purposes. Any other questions? Okay, thanks everyone for coming here. I have one more day.