So I wanted to pick up on the discussion from last week and I'll share this, actually go ahead and share it right now. It's a book by the same author of the previous Halaqa where we were talking about Bidr-ul-Walidain, the rights of parents, and so this book is called Maharrim-ul-Lisan, The Prohibitions of the Tongue. I'll share this as the series of Halaqa, at least up into Ramadan. I think we have about five more sessions. And this book was actually a book that I studied during Ramadan as well. Right before Ramadan, I was studying, at the time I was studying fiqh, like shari'a, sacred law, the legal rulings. But then one of my shuyukh asked me, he said, Rami, what are you going to do during Ramadan? This is in West Africa and Mauritania, and I said, I'm going to continue studying. He said, no, Ramadan is a time for introspection, Ramadan is a time to look inwards and to not just fast, you know, the goal is not fasting, it is a goal, but it's also a tool. The fasting is going to give us the strength that we can focus on other things. We know we get more focused, we get more connected to the Qur'an, we get more connected to the Masajid, we focus more on our ibadah and it's the fasting that allows us to be able to do that. So the fasting at one level is a goal, is the ends, but in another aspect, the fasting is a means as well that we can work on other things, namely ourselves. So he said, I asked him, I said, what's your suggestion? And this is one of the edab of being with a teacher is that you look out for their suggestions. And this is whether we're studying the deen or even if we study the dunya. For those of us who went through public school here in the U.S. and maybe in other countries as well, and definitely in universities, they have academic counselors, right? Or when you go to the professor, even within that subject, if you ask the professor, if he's a professor of anthropology, you're not going to come to him and say, hey, I studied this, this, this and this, let's have a conversation. What would be more proper, the edab, the etiquette, would be to say, you are the expert in the field, what should I study? Any links, any books, any suggestions? What are your suggestions? So that's part of the edab of seeking knowledge is to ask the suggestions. So I asked my sheikh, Murabat Muhammad Alameen, what do you suggest? He said, have you studied the maharam in Lisan, the prohibitions of the tongue? I said, I hadn't. He said, focus on that in Ramadan and memorization of the Quran. And so that's what happens in the school, in the Mahdara's in West Africa. You will have people studying various subjects. They'll be studying usul, foundational understanding of where we derive the laws of Islam. Grammar, nahu, there will be sarf, morphology, tafsir, all of these different subjects. But then in Ramadan, it all focuses on the Quran and purification of ourselves. And one of the main areas that we need to purify, especially in Ramadan, is our tongues. And work on making sure that just like we're not putting any food into our mouths during Ramadan, that we're not actually eating things or putting into our mouths using our tongue speech that is that is improper. And we know there's even a hadith. And when I read this hadith, it was it was very, very, it's very vivid. And it really impacted me. So the hadith is there's two, there was two ladies amongst the Sahaba who had fasted, but they didn't have any food. And so one of the things that the Sahaba would do if they needed food or money, where would they go to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam? Because either he had something to give them or he would encourage other people in the community to give them or he would have something in bayt al-baal. But he was always the person who was giving. He was the most generous of people and he was most generous during Ramadan. This wasn't during the month of Ramadan. They were fasting and nafila fast and they came to him with a bowl. And they wanted some food to break their fast on. And he said, well, you've already eaten. I see the trait. They said, we're fasting. We haven't eaten anything. He said, then why do I see the traces of meat in between your teeth? So we know when we eat meat, sometimes the meat gets stuck in between our teeth. And they said, wallahi, we have not eaten anything. We're coming to get food from you and we've been fasting.  And they threw up, they started throwing up meat and they said, they were amazed too. They didn't know when this came from. And he said, but didn't you, before this, before you came here, you were talking about so-and-so and talking about so-and-so, you were doing riba, backbiting. And he would know this, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, because he has wahi, he has revelation. Like in the Qur'an in Surah Tahrim, there was some of, two of his wives wanted to, or it's a long story, but they made up a story and he was able to tell them the truth of what happened there. And they said, how do you know this? He said, nabbani al-alim al-khabir, that I was given this, the revelation. So I know what is going on even if I wasn't there. He is constantly getting revelation. So he knew that these ladies, what these sahabi'at had done, which is also a reminder to us that even the greatest of people, these are people who were companions of the Prophet, and about all of them, including these two ladies, what do we say about them? رضي الله عنهم, may Allah be pleased with them. But even these, the greatest of people, sometimes they slip, sometimes they trip, sometimes they fall. He's teaching us a lesson, he's teaching them a lesson, and it doesn't detract from their status completely. So he told them, he said, you were talking about so-and-so, and what does Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala tell us in the Qur'an about Ghiba, ayyuhibbu ahadukum ayyakula lahma akhihi mayyita, that do you want to eat the flesh of your brother who's dead? It's a very vivid picture. It's not just eating the flesh. So in English we even say backbiting, right? So it's eating the flesh of your brother who's dead. And in the tafsid it says, it mentions that why Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala said, you know, he didn't just say, it's gross enough to eat the flesh of another person, cannibalism. Human beings where we have an aversion to it. And even in the extreme situations where it does happen, there's diseases that are occurred by cannibalism, there's psychological issues that are caused by people who eat other human beings, even in times of needs like the soccer players who crashed in the Andes or the Donner Party here in California, they have psychological trauma because of that.  So why does Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala say dead? Why would you think like in addition to eat the flesh of your brother or sister for that matter, if it's backbiting against a woman, why does he say mejita? Why does he say dead? Okay, because the person's not there physically. The meat is just cane, okay, so it's grosser. So let's think about this, imagine you tried to eat the flesh of your living brother. What would happen? He'll slap you, he's going to fight back, right? Man, in fact the other day we were at the aquarium, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and my daughter, she came up and she kind of like, you know, she snuck up on me and she scared me.  I thought I was going to have to get in a fight right here in the aquarium, you know. That's what human beings do, they're going to, you know, defend themselves. It's a natural, it's part of what's built into us, we're going to defend ourselves. And so if the person is dead, then they cannot defend themselves. So think about Riba, when we speak about another person. They're not there to defend themselves.  Well, why is that? Why is it that we're more inclined to speak about that person when they're not there? Well, there's a couple things they can defend themselves. There's also the humanity of it, right?  And when you see them in person, it's, you know, you get, you get, this is a living human being. It's the humanity is restored. And it's very interesting, like last week we were talking about narratives and stories and making sure that we're telling true stories and that we're not covering truth with falsehood. Well, names is very, very, is a very, very powerful element to humanity. I'll give you another in this ayah, which is Surah al-Hujrat. So Ramadan is a long month. We have work, kids have school. If you can't focus on learning all of the Quran, focus on Surah al-Hujrat. Surah al-Hujrat has a lot of the, it's the rooms or the chambers. It has a lot of focus on character and the, the, the specific rulings about developing your character. So another name that the, that the Surah goes by is Surah al-Akhlaq, the chapter of character. And in there, in addition to saying, don't do ghiba, don't backbite, it also says, Don't call each other by nicknames. And this is not talking about nicknames that are for endearing a person. Like one time Ali, radiallahu anhu, he's married to the daughter of the prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, Fatima al-Zahra, radiallahu anha. And they both worked. And this is a reminder to us, the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is instilling in people, even those closest to him, Fatima, who he said is a part of me. He's instilling in her a strong work ethic because they needed income. So what did Fatima al-Zahra do? What was her job? Does anybody know? She used to grind corn on the mills and they still use them in West Africa and Mauritania. Has anybody ever seen these, the two rocks, they'll be like the circle one. You can go even to here and at least in Fremont and I'm sure some of the other historical farms, if you ever take your kids to them, they have the old mills. So they'll take two stones and they'll have a place where they'll put the corn or whatever else and they'll turn the stones. It's a very ancient technology and used up until very recently and in Mauritania they still use it. They take two stones, they etch out one side of it so it looks like a grinder and then there will be a little hole to where they'll feed the corn into and then they'll have another stick that they can put into another hole that's been drilled out and they'll turn it. Well what do you think happens after hours and hours of milling the grains with that? Your hands are going to get callous. So that's what Fatima Tuzzara, imagine this, the daughter of the messenger of Allah is doing this work and then Ali, what is he doing in terms of his work? One of his many jobs, he was pulling water from the well. So here he is, you know, it's a strong work ethic. Well, the Fatima had told her, or Ali had told Fatima, go ask your father and see if he can find us a servant, give us a servant. So she told him that and then in the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam went to find Ali and where did he find him? In the masjid and when he found him in the masjid he was laying down and he came up to him and in the hadith it's so clear Ali says he stood so close to me I could feel the coolness of his feet. You know when you get close to somebody, if their skin is hot you can feel it even before touching or if their skin is cool you can start feeling the coolness. He said I could feel the coolness of his feet.  So he has dirt on his body and then he tells him I'll give you something that's even better than a servant. And he said after every, you know, to say subhanallah and he gave him the dua of what to say subhanallah and alhamdulillah sorry subhanallah and alhamdulillah wallahu akbar to say those and then that would be better for them than to have a servant. So he's reinforcing to them again the strong work ethic but the reason I mentioned this story there's many benefits we can get from that story but he called him endearingly abaturab and then that actually became a beloved nickname to him because it was given to him by the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and we have this in our families we have nicknames for maybe for our spouse for our children for our friends and so the Quran is not telling us don't do nicknames completely the nicknames are the mockery nicknames the nicknames that and think about what it does one of the first things that invading armies do and this has been recorded more recently in this century is they give names to the people that they've invaded so the United States we don't even have to mention the names when they invaded the Vietnam what did they think about those names that they started calling the Vietnamese people when they invaded the Muslim lands Iraq and Afghanistan as occupying forces as invaders what did they used to does anybody and I mean that's our people we can they're talking about us does anybody know the names they used to call people in Iraq or Afghanistan the Muslims well in addition to terrorists it's actually you know which is another name you know that they all here in our terrorist I've been called terrorist a couple times once in Ramadan on one of the streets and I wanted to say something back to the person but it was Ramadan and if somebody picks a fight with you in Ramadan what do you say you know I'm fasting so what did I do I waved at him and wallah al-Azim you know what he did he waved back and it's almost like I was like salallahu alaihi wa salam like it weren't it actually works he said hey man you know I'm used to a bad word you know he says you know you beep beep terrorist and I looked at him and I was in my car and he was walking across the street you know if you're going to pick a fight with somebody and you're walking and somebody's in a three thousand pound you know hunk of metal like that's not an even fight but anyway he said so I just I waved at him I didn't say anything I waved at him and he waved right back and it's like human nature like he just he didn't know you know hi how are you doing so yeah they call terrorist but what do they call the the army the soldiers to the Muslims in those countries towel heads rag heads but they had some other ones too moujiz in Afghanistan they would call them moujiz which they get it from Mujahideen they'd also call them hajis hajis now what does that do what it what it does is for the invading army when they do that and they give them nicknames this is no longer Benny Adam a human being all that's just a haji or a mouj or a terrorist or a towel head or rag head or whatever it is it removes the humanity so when Allah is telling us subhanahu wa ta'ala when he's telling us in the Quran don't call people by nicknames it's a very powerful lesson it's don't remove people's humanities they don't remove their humanity even for parents or or teachers one of the things now in modern parenting what they're they tell people and this reinforces for us it's it's the lesson in the Quran they say say a child does something um uh... does something do you say you're a bad child or what you did or your decision or your action was bad which one do you do you talk about the decision you talk about the action because once you especially for a child once you say something like you know your bad for doing like maybe in the parents you know they're true that what they mean is that action that you did right there that was a bad decision and that was a bad action but when we say when it translates into saying you're bad in the child's mind they they're they're they're very absolutist they're black and white thinkers they can't think abstractly especially even before twelve years old children have a hard time thinking abstractly it's very concrete so if a parent tells them you're bad we're saying you're completely bad so it's so then the and and what is that in the process when we say you're bad you know say his name is you know i'm not you know he he's no longer i'm not he's no longer human being he's no longer son all of these honorific titles of what he has well i could come to be any adam we have in noble the son of adam now he's i'm bad and so so so to me when i when i when i see that literature i said well this is a lot of told us that don't call people by nicknames and it removes their humanity so the same thing happens in reba when we backbite people and that's what when people start mocking the uh... each other or other people one of the first things they do is they start making names about them they start you know they'll call them there was actually one student in the school where i studied uh... this was very inappropriate very hard on for the students to have done but the student came and well i'll tell you two stories so once uh... brother who he heard about the school from west africa from article that myself and my friend nabil afifi wrote and when he traveled to the school uh... this brother was his father's libyan his mother's egyptian he was born in oklahoma raised in in in canada so he has uh... a very diverse experience but he spoke arabic growing up so he came to moritania knowing arabic when he's traveling through the desert and it's really interesting you know to see the wildlife they see a hawk now hawk in arabic is sakar or uh... bas there's different names you know for hawks or falcons and so the the moritania who was traveling with them he said all i thought it was a do you know what this is had a lot of food this is a lot of food what is a lot of food in arabic it's a little bird right a little bird and so he started cracking up because he the moritania was trying to like thought he didn't really speak arabic he was trying to explain it like bring it down to him like a little kid you might say all that's a bird well you don't say that's a little bird you know to to an adult like that's a hawk that's a predatory bird you know falcon whatever it was so uh... so then my friend he started for the rest of his stay there he started calling the the guy osvur bird and the kid the guy liked it because it was a kind of inside joke you know and say hey osvur how are you doing so that was okay but then there was another story where students were traveling into the village and one had come into the village with a servant with a person who was known as a hadem and over there actually moritania they they they use hadem to refer to uh... a woman who's like a female a female servant household servant and so forth she happened to be in the group that came into the village they noticed this student had come in with that person so they started calling him hadem and he's like i don't like that but they called him that name so much he actually left the school so this is a school where they're studying Quran and hadith and fiqh and so forth but the power of a nickname or uh... uh... you know it's very it can really affect the person so riba takes away people's humanities nicknames take people away people's humanities and in the story that i started off with the two sahabi at they regurgitated this meat which was actually it was like a physical manifestation of the spiritual the spiritual interaction that had taken place so when we do riba we're not actually eating the meat of another person but spiritually that's what we're doing and in this situation with other sahaba around the sahaba were able to see a physical manifestation as a miracle from the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam of the spiritual interaction that they had so it's very important for us to protect our tongues and there's many hadith about the importance of protecting our tongues and being careful of our tongues um... and uh... it's the it's the it's the thing that gets us in trouble the most and the thing that that causes us that we're we're quickest to to make a mistake is our tongues uh... it's even if it's it's we will make mistakes with our tongues quicker than with our eyes or even with our hearts so when people when we start thinking about uh... purifying our souls and purifying our hearts before we even start looking at the root diseases one of the main things that we need to get a hold of is the tongue is is is preserving the tongue and the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam mentioned this in many many hadith in a lot of the hadith collections they'll have a section on the preservation of the tongue if you go to iqya ulum ad-din there's a uh... the the revival of the religious sciences by imam al ghazali there's a whole section just on the tongue if you have that book it's available online read through it during ramadan the adhkar of imam al-nawi imam al-nawi has a number of of books and i'll tell you a funny story about imam al-nawi noah is the name of the town or the village where he's from in iraq uh... sorry in uh... syria and so he's noawi noawi well there's another modern usage of the word noawi which means what in arabic nuclear so there was an imam who was giving a khutbah in arabic and he mentioned al-imam al-nawi imam noawi the imam yahya al-nawi who's from the village of noa uh... you know that's his title so the translator said and so the sheikh says the nuclear imam sometimes things get lost in translation uh... in fact somebody recently there was a hadith allahumma inni a'udhu bikim an adhzi wal kassan there's a hadith the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam taught and somebody had run it through google translate and it was just hilarious what google translate had come up with but imam noawi has a lot of different collections he has the forty hadith which most people are familiar with if you don't have that book get that book it's a the forty hadith collections there's a hadith and it's a weak hadith that says if a person preserves or memorizes forty hadith they will get a reward i believe i can't remember the exact but they would have a uh... a reward of jannah or you know there's a huge reward in that the hadith is da'if is weak but many scholars made action implemented this hadith and so they would start collecting forty hadith collections so you'll find forty hadith collections on sadaqa forty hadith collections on bitalwali dayn respect to the parents any of the topics that are in our faith in our dean you'll find forty hadith collections about it and people are still collecting those hadith let's say okay let's just collect a forty hadith collection recently uh... sheikh tamim the imam at masjid al-huda in union city he put together a book it's called forty hadith on the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam dealing with tribulations so all of the hadith you know and just put them together so if a person is going through tribulations it's good to read this collection you can see oh it gives you a good comprehensive view of all of the hadith to talk about tribulations but there's forty hadith about preservation of the tongue or forty hadith well imam know he says i want to do a forty hadith collection that basically instead of summarizing subjects summarizes islam so that was his goal with the forty hadith and that's why it's been so prolific studied all over the umma that if somebody goes through the forty hadith you get a very good comprehensive overview of the teachings and the messages uh... and the message of islam that's why it's really good to have that book available now that there's these apps and so forth you can download the apps there's online commentaries of the forty hadith so the forty hadith is good another book that imam know he has is the adhkar all of the hadith that you say you know we have those little vicar uh... uh... collections what to say when you come to the house what to say when you leave the house on a trip you know usually they're little little books right imam know his book is thick hundreds of pages all of the hadith about what you say at this situation what you say when there's a strong wind what you say when the roosters grow what you say when you know and very very specific it's called kitab al-adhkar and alhamdulillah it's been translated to english so if you uh... if you want to get a book that gives you vicar to do various points of your life uh... that's a great uh... book to have well in that section is a section on uh... the preservation of the tongue so again the point is that a lot of the books that they have are on preservation of the tongue just to mention some that shaykh muhammad bulud mentions that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam he said that if a person preserves what's between his jaws meaning his tongue and what's between his thighs meaning the privates i will guarantee for you paradise the two things so those are the two areas that people get in trouble the most what's between the thighs and what's between the the the jaws and even in this we see the the the etiquette in the sophistication of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam that he didn't refer to things uh... sariah like uh... what's a good word like explicitly so he said what's between the thighs you know we get the idea but it's a very sophisticated way of saying it and then he said what's between the tongue recently i conducted a nikah over last summer and i was reviewing the the hadith the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam says that marriage is half of our dean is half of our dean and so we usually say it's half our dean half our dean half our dean well what's the other half anybody know what's that cleanliness yes there's and there is that had it as well too and you can actually have multiple hadith that says cleanliness is half of faith and marriage is half of faith and we get a couple more there's another one too it's half of faith well that's you can't have three halves or four halves so it's it's just it's really to emphasize the importance of that but in this hadith specifically that says marriage is half of faith in the tafsir they say oh to understand this hadith that marriage is half of faith you have to know this other hadith that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam talked about that whoever preserves for me what is between his jaws meaning the tongue and what's between his thighs i guarantee for him uh... paradise so what is marriage preserves for us what's between the thighs so now the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said you worked for that you didn't go the haram route you with the halal route now work just preserve you know the other half and uh... uh... and it is subhanallah you can see the the the the hikmah and in understanding the wisdom of of all of these hadith together and uh... a number of times people before they get married they come up to me they say oh i want to take a class on marriage in islam and the rights and the responsibilities of marriage and the thick of marriage before i go into marriage well the thick of marriage mostly deals with how to have the contract what are the basics of a marriage in terms of what both have to do and then divorce custody is the basic things that most people don't deal with on a daily basis right you do the aqa most people one time in their life maybe two uh... most people don't deal with the divorce the rules of divorce and custody some people do and they're there for us to know them but for most people we don't have we don't run our marriages by the thick of marriage so what i advise people saying what really the majority of interaction between a husband and wife is is is communication and that's really what what tests us you know before we're married uh... we we have a certain way of interacting and communicating with other people but once we're married now we have somebody every day that we're having conversations with that we're building a relationship with that we have to we have to compromise on certain situations we have to push back on certain situations we have to learn how to communicate now you're forced to learn how to communicate and so what i tell them i said what's more important then learning the thick of marriage to prepare for marriage is to learn the rules the sunnah the coran and sunnah teachings about how to preserve our tongue and what is proper what is improper and that's the the the and then especially then once you have children as well so the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said whoever protects the two matters uh... also he mentioned there's many a hadith about the harms of the tongue there's one hadith that that's all i always think about he said that uh... that that a person will speak a word say something not even give it a second thought and it will drive him or her into the depths of jihannam the hellfire a distance of a journey of five hundred years and that's for something we said they didn't even give it thought maybe it was an intentional how many times have we have we've been hurt by somebody they said something and it was just in passing and then we look back and the person were like they don't even realize what they said and here now that pain stings us and probably now if you think about it it's it's still stinging you and that person doesn't even remember saying it and there's sometimes that maybe we said something maybe we said something to somebody and this especially you learn this lesson if you have kids because our kids will remind us of things that we said right as the parents as dads that we don't even remember saying they're like and it and it hurt them so we really have to be careful of what we say especially around our uh... i mean uh... around anybody but especially our our family so it's it's very important uh... to purify there's also a hadith that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said the easiest of worship is silence so right now the majority of people here that listen you're not talking and you could actually be getting reward for that when you don't talk because your tongue has the ability to speak the haram it also has the ability to speak the halal or just in not speaking the haram is a form of worship but you have to consciously you know think about that so it's not just just by being silent you you get reward because the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said actions are by their intentions binyat well silence is an action because you're keeping your mouth but you have to have an intention so if you if you think you know if like you sit down for halafa or you sit down you know for some quiet reflection and you say you know what I actually now have the ability to use my tongue for the haram to speak the haram but I'm consciously choosing not to now at that point that all that silent session you're getting reward for it and what do you have to do nothing easy that's why the hadith says the easiest of worship is silence so there's all these hadith about the harms of the tongue there's many hadith about the benefits of of of silence many of the benefits that they mention Muhammad Malud mentions he says there's there's nine things I won't go we're running out of time but he says one of the benefits of silence you give a break to your noble scribes kiraman kattibin right every single one of us has two angels writing down our good deeds and writing down our evil deeds and when we're silent we give them a break they don't have to because when at every word I'm saying is being written down every word every action and when we're silent we give them a break and the other thing is that when we say things or when we do things that are that are foul or that are evil that are haram we're doing it in front of two noble angels that are sinless like think of the most righteous person and I'm thinking about people that I've met in my life think about the most righteous person that you've ever met in your life just take a moment to think that one person might be a man might be a woman might be a man and a woman if it was a couple of people you're thinking that most righteous person would you do some of the things that you have done would you do that in front of them and think of two righteous people think of the two most righteous people that you've been around when you get around them don't they remind you to kind of like they help us balance ourselves Hassan al-Basri Sayyid al-Tabi'in the Sayyid of the of the of the next generation after the Sahaba when he would walk into the marketplace and people would see him you know what they would do they would say Allahu Akbar Astaghfirullah Astaghfirullah is it because they think he's Allah? no of course not but when they see a man of Allah a person who's close to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala spiritually he reminds them of Allah and then it causes them to say Astaghfirullah you know it reminds them of Allah and that's one of the signs of the people of Allah that when you see them you remember Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala so now imagine those two people when they're in front of you those people that remind you of Allah would we do some of the things would we say some of the things that we do in front of them most of us wouldn't we all wouldn't so they said think about that you have two righteous angels with you all the time that when we do or say things we're forcing them to witness what we do or say and they have to actually write it down so one of the benefits of silence is giving them a break I'll end right there we'll pick up next week I won't be able to go through the entire text but I've shared it with you you can read through it I also have some audio recordings of the entire text but I'll try to begin the series and just encourage us to read that hadith about that to start preparing for Ramadan by being conscious about our tongue we know that hadith where the Prophet SAW said that in Ramadan if a person leaves off food but still talks about people does ghiba they've broken their fast now does it literally mean that they broke their fast and this is important to know so if somebody doesn't do ghiba they're like oh well I broke my fast so bismillah you know let me just go ahead and eat that's not what it means it means the spiritual aspect of the fast has been broken we still have to keep the physical aspect of the fast we ask Allah SWT to give us the Tawfiq to give us success to prepare for Ramadan and to welcome Ramadan the Messenger of Allah SAW at every month when he would see the new moon how many people saw the moon of Rajab did anybody notice the moon of Rajab last couple of nights when he would see the new moon he would actually speak to the moon and make dua at that time Allahumma ahallahu alayna bil amni wal iman wa salamati wal islam wa tawfiq ilimatu hib wa tarda rabbuna wa rabbuka Allah our Lord and your Lord is Allah SWT and then he would say praise be to Allah who has taken away the previous month and he would name the month wa ja'a bi shahri keda like now and brought to us this month Allahumma ballighna Ramadan O Allah make us reach Ramadan so at the beginning of each month he's reminding himself SAW like we're preparing for Ramadan so we have these two months the blessed month of Rajab and then the blessed month of Sha'ban and then to prepare for Ramadan and to start getting into the mode once when we do that Ramadan you know sometimes creeps up on us but if we start preparing it's not just with the extra fast but that's good but it's to start being at the masjid more reciting the Quran more being aware of our actions more thinking about our actions more we ask Allah SWT to give us the tawfiq to do what he pleases


Next, Jonathan will build off of Colin's presentation, and we'll talk about developing technical solutions to facilitate genomic data access. Thanks, Elena, and thank you, Colin. As Elena said, I'd like to dive into what we've been working on at the Broad to think about how we might handle data access. Once participants have consented for their data to be shared, what can we do with the downstream processes to really facilitate data sharing? As many of you know, the amount of data access requests are likely to increase significantly. The more genomic data becomes available, the more that tools are easily available to analyze it, and the more that individuals are trained to do so, it's very likely that the demand for that data is going to increase significantly and likely exponentially. With that, that's going to put a significant demand on the signing officials and the data access committees that are required to review data access requests before researchers are granted access to that data. While some DAX, and particularly those at NIH, do a great job of turning around data access requests in a timely manner, as more and more research teams throughout the world find themselves in the positions of becoming data access committees themselves, this is an increasing burden and likely to become a bottleneck that will slow research down while we're working in so many other ways to expedite it. Just to dive in, I want to just look at the data access request process as it stands here on the top and compare it to what we hope to do. First, going from the left of the top diagram, we know that data in its future use is governed by the data use permissions that are put in consent forms. That data use is then aligned with that data wherever it's stored in a repository so that a DAC can help manage data access decisions on that data. As they come in from what we see over here on the right, researchers who submit a data access request that they write out, usually in narrative form, have it approved by their signing official and then it's submitted to the DAC who has to make that decision. Now, what's complicated about that is that, first of all, signing officials need to review every single one of these data access requests and then the DAC is really dealing with comparing consent forms, data use terms, which may be a bit complicated, and then also with a narrative description of research that wasn't written to be easily comparable with those data use terms, making that decision a bit difficult. What we'd like to do is really talk about ways we can bring in, particularly machine readable or computable structures to help with the data use terms and consent forms and with data access requests, how we can help get the signing official really continuing to give them the authority that they need, but in a more efficient way in enabling DACs to make better decisions faster. Just to start out, on consent forms, what we're doing is we've been working with the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health where I serve on their data use team to develop the data use ontology, and that data use ontology is just a structured machine readable vocabulary to describe different types of common permitted data uses that you might find in the consent form. Putting these terms and definitions in an ontology then lets them be machine readable, which means they could be easily stored in a database right alongside the data that they represent and then also could be easily searched or even computed upon. For anyone interested in those, I would just call out that the Global Alliance has a nice guidance on how to use these data use ontology terms in your consent form on their website. The other thing I mentioned is helping these signing officials maintain the level of influence that they'd like in authorizing their researchers, but making the process a bit more efficient for them and for their researchers who are seeking to access data. Now, as I said, signing officials need to review every single data access request that goes to each unique deck and then usually in that process are involved potentially in the negotiation of and at least the signing of unique data access agreements with each of those data access committees in their host institution. What we are proposing and what we've been working on, especially with folks at NHGRI and throughout NIH, is this idea of a library card agreement where signing officials can pre-authorize researchers to then submit data access requests directly to the deck, thereby taking themselves out of that process in each case, but still giving them the authority to issue permissions to certain researchers and perhaps not to others. A further thought, which we've been discussing a bit in the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health Circles, is this idea of a master library card agreement or a global one that maybe many institutions would agree to, but would just call that as something if you're interested in to pay attention to via some GA4GH channels or we could talk about in the questions. As I also said, another thing we really want to work on is helping the data access committee with their decision. One thing we're doing, particularly at the Broads, we've developed a software called DUOS, the Data Use Oversight System. And what DUOS intends to do is you can see that same process I showed earlier, is to take the data use ontology and to code the data use terms in the consent forms and the data access requests, both with data use ontology terms, such that they can be easily in kind of an apples to apples way compared by the data access committee. And that's what the DUOS software really allows us to do. And then on top of that, what we're also able to do, since those data use terms and data access requests are both in the same language and it's a computer readable language, we have a DUOS matching algorithm which then provides a suggested decision on the data access request to the data access committee, which they're welcome to use or not to use and we're continuing to iterate that as we pilot DUOS, both at the Broad and then also with NHGRI and again a number of colleagues throughout NIH. And so in that pilot, just to call out what we're really looking into, we want to ask ourselves, first of all, are we accurately translating what is in consent forms right now into coded data use terms? And then are we also accurately able to do the same when a researcher writes a narrative research use statement? Are we able to actually structure that with those data use ontology codes accurately? And then ultimately, once we have those computable versions, does our matching algorithm in the data access committee comprised of human data access committee members end up making the same decision? And it's this process that we're going through iteratively, again, internally at the Broad with our own data access committee and also with a growing number of NIH DAX. And just to kind of give an overview of where this has been and where it's been going, is that really we started DUOS in 2018 at the Broad with a pilot data access committee. Then last year in 2019, we had two NIH DAX, NHGRI and NHLBI. There's some internal testing and piloting, some previous requests. And then this year, I've had some great opportunities to work with driver projects at GA4GH, other DAX at NIH, and a huge increase in volume at the Broad as well. And really excited to say we're going to be moving forward with an official NIH pilot of DUOS for up to six DAX coming up in 2021. So happy to share more and talk more and you're welcome to visit duos.broadinstitute.org if you'd like to play around with the software. And that's it for me.


And we typically don't see DJ LeMay who show much emotion at all on the field was he just frustrated there with getting hit by Graveman or is there more of a history between the two of them. I think Graveman was just kind of staring him down right away and continued it after the double play as he was running across the field so. With Gilbert really kept the offense at bay. What made him so tough on you guys. Well strike throwing obviously he you know throws hard and kind of that cross body so delivery you know I thought he mixed in a secondary stuff to to keep you off the the fastball enough which kind of played up a little bit I thought just with that kind of big slow delivery across the body throwing strikes we I thought we had some chances. On some ballsy left there that we couldn't quite the second inning we had something going where I thought we had our. You know probably our best at bats against him where G gets a double. You know Gleiber gets him over with a just miss a fly ball to center and then I thought Guardi had a really good at that where Crawford made a good play on him so. But after that you know he really he we obviously did not mount much against him. You look at the first two games it looked like the offense was certainly trending in the right direction. Frustrating to get again take another step back. Yeah I mean obviously a great opportunity today with with the chance to sweep a series and you know frustrating that we got held down but you know also credit credit to Gilbert you know he was he was tough and on his game today we just obviously couldn't mount anything against him so certainly frustrating. In the next for Randy Miller. Aaron you saying you're looking to get find ways to get Chapman into the game did you consider bring him in into the eighth there. I consider yes but didn't feel like I wanted to do it there. You know I would use them in a safe situation today. You know staying away from from lower greening. So I was more in a safe situation where we able to mount something. And what do you see from Gary's a bats he's in a long stretch with no hits but he had some long bats today hitting the ball hard. Does that get in your head when you've had struggles in the past and you're not having success but he's certainly having that. I think in your question you nailed it like it's different. Right. It's he hasn't gotten a hit in a few days but it's different than when we've seen him struggle over the last couple years of time. It's I mean it's you know he probably had our best at bats overall today. You know just missed a couple of balls where he had got really good swings off on where he flew out to left and popped up. You know his last at bat you know really good at bat where he smokes the ball to shortstop. That's what he is now when he's not getting his hits. It's just he's in such a better place. He's mixing in the walk. And again I thought obviously nothing to show for today but but maybe our best at bats of the day by him. Thank you. You know next to Dan Martin. This is going to be your first trip to Houston since the playoffs of 2019. Any any thoughts about going back there any memories of you know just of what you guys have been through in the playoffs against that team. Especially considering you know what's come to light in the last year. Well I mean last time we were there the ultimate heartbreak. I mean that's amazing battles. I guess thoughts of going there. You know we need to go play well. I mean that's that's my thoughts is we need to try and we need to try and win some ball games to get ourselves in position going into the break to make a run. And so these are really important games for us obviously against a really good team that's playing well. So that's the focus.


Welcome to the Okta Workforce Identity Developer Podcast. This month I'm joined by Dan Marma, who's a Product Acceleration Principal Architect at Okta. Welcome, Dan. Thank you for having me out to the podcast. I'm looking forward to this. Yeah, and I've been looking forward to chatting with you about the work that you do. So for our listeners, what does a Product Acceleration Principal Architect do? In the title, obviously, we talk about taking products and making them roll out faster, cleaner, and really focused on a few different products right now. Myself, I'm focused on the Okta Identity Engine. We have a classic engine and we've made significant upgrades. And I'm working on making sure folks have a seamless transition to be able to adapt to the new technologies. But our team also works with a lot of new products and innovations and getting them out and up and running for customers. Yeah, so if I'm a developer who's trying to deploy workforce identity, I might work with somebody like you. Absolutely. Our focus is on the workforce identity side. However, there are significant folks that have some of our legacy platform or classic platform that needs to upgrade as well. But our primary focus is on making sure that everybody can get access. Yeah, and you gave a fantastic talk earlier this month at Dev Day 23 about the Enterprise MVP. And when we talk about developers, we're talking about a person who uses Okta's APIs and tools to manage their own work. But we're also talking about people who build the software that they provide to Okta customers, the software as a service that they sell to these enterprises. And so in your talk that Enterprise MVP, what is that MVP? Yeah, that was a great time to fly out to San Francisco as we all love to actually travel and get to meet people in real life again. But my key focus was around two main components. One was having internal continuity inside of your application. We all build applications and really building everything as futile. At the end of the day, you have your monolith in your application and you have other silos of everything from support to CRM to learning systems and whatnot. They need to integrate and have continuity as you move across so you can have a really nice application. So that was the first component that we really need to make sure you have that experience. You give the best experience. Plus it also gives your developers or yourselves that ability to focus on your application. You don't need to worry about the operational side of things. So you can use Best of Breed, you can use SaaS providers and cherry pick through the providers that are out there. The second piece of it was, was that an experience on being able to offer inbound federation or federation into your platform from the Enterprise? Because they've made heavy investments into the security architecture from identity and access management to having IDPs and maybe they have compliance and all types of requirements that are required for their business. And they've implemented and spent a lot of time and money on making it all work. And then if they turn around and your app only offers a user ID and password, it seems like more work for them to manage and more complexity and surface talk area at the end of the day. So really the two main things I spoke about were that continuity and that inbound federation becoming table stakes and making sure that you can address that enterprise. Absolutely. And if the enterprise has their own policies, whether it's their internal security team says we need this or whether it's external regulations that they are bound by because of the business that they do. If you don't offer appropriate security, they may just not be able to buy your app at all. Yeah, and it's I even use the example. There's been times when I've chosen an app or I've said, hey, we have a choice between a few apps. And then just had enough friction for me to not be able to log in or have to reset my password so often or I just moved on. And it seems very petty at the end of the day. But if you have that friction and you don't make it easy for your customers to get to it, that's at the end of the day how I say getting customers to love your application is get them in there and use the application, not try to figure out how to get to it. You're not going to get people there. Yeah, can you give an example of what the flow might look like for a new customer in an app that doesn't offer federation like this. You think about that, that if you don't offer that federation, you've been onboarded, you bring your brand new to the company. And you get handed about 1520 apps for you to get logged into between your email, your countering your. Hey, here's your Jira here's GitHub and all these these apps suddenly multiply. And then there's this other thing that everybody says hey this is the best at performing let's say it's a project management tool. And you get all of your, your, your stuff, your work orders, if you will, from that. And it's convoluted process to get you logged in for you to go about your business, you may not log into it all the time or needless to say, or is you just have that friction that that really makes it a pain, and you're not going to go and update you're not going to keep it current you're not going to use that into your daily tasks because it's just, it's pain, a huge pain point. And then you don't log into it maybe freak that frequently. You don't remember what your password was, you know, I, is it my first born. My second born was at a new pet, you know what I have to change my password so often and then you have to call help desk. It's, it really drives it drives you away from just getting in there and doing things, especially if you I needed to post something or do do something critical and now I forgot what it was because I just spent the last half hour trying to figure out what I had to get in there. It doesn't make any sense. It's a terrible experience for the user. If the company even buys those apps. Can you speak to what it looks for from the side of a company who's deciding whether or not they even want to purchase the software as a service at all. If it doesn't offer good federation. Yeah, one of my coworkers John actually spoke in detail about this, the buying patterns for him for how he surveys applications for octa, we'll call octa on octa for octa. Right. And in any case he he sits there and he'll make that that assessment I've heard it other times before and outside organizations even at our octane event where customers and administrators inside of the business technology team will only purchase products that they see that have a attract for integration because it becomes seamless it becomes almost mindless to getting folks into the system. They just need to add you to a group on application icon gets added to your dashboard and the way they go. They don't need to sit here and and pull out the instruction manual and try to figure out how the integration works. And it also just kind of gives a great. Partnership sign to your customer base that if you have this freely available.  Oh, you wanted to have the windows on your house. You want to have your doors on your house. Yeah, we needed those. You know, think of it as a door to the to the business to that application making it freely and easy. So from a technical perspective, what standards is somebody going to be looking at when they're looking at implementing these federation capabilities. Well, if you haven't done it already 100% look at the OADC. And it is by far the easiest one to implement. We have lots of documentation on our site, but even on the internet on how to implement that. It's a very seamless approach and it's very consistent, especially when you're going from a web app. Maybe you're going to a mobile or native app. It can supply you with the right tools to be able to accommodate all those those experiences. And they also heard of the legacy SAML approach SAML right in that that approaches is been around for decades. It's very effective. However, there's a lot more involved with getting the implementation.  You may hear also there's a SAML assertion that comes through and that's really like a header based approach where you get the all the information about the user inside the header, but now there's certificates and different endpoints that you need to support. And it's a little bit more complex to start especially since most of the the software packages have on the OADC package already sitting there waiting for you. Yeah, so if you're working Greenfield, you want to start with OADC. But if you're working on something legacy that's already using SAML, you're pretty okay to stick with it for now. Right. Yeah, I wouldn't say hey, let's go eradicate SAML from from the industry. But if you do have a cycle, it will simplify your life because now you have a much more consistent approach across all of your different applications. And maybe you. Centering into your application. It can also be used for authenticating against APIs. It could use from machine to machine. It, it's very versatile and it's a great evolution to the industry. Yeah. And so when you're selling to enterprises like this, one of the things that you're doing to make it really easy for someone to test out your application is offering it on an identity providers marketplace.  Will OADC only get you into octas or will it get you into other places as well? It gets into all of them. Right. Obviously, if your, your customer has a great make some great buying decisions, they may use octa as their framework. But they can also use Microsoft. There's just systems or legacy companies that have Oracle. And other providers that are out there that they may have this stuff laying around. You know, because that's the, the fabric that's been moving into their company over the years. But using an approach of the OADC or using that Federation model, you should be able to get into virtually any of them. Yeah. And one thing that if you happen to be selling to customers who are already on octa, that you can let them build on top of your app with is octa workflows. Could you speak to what you have to do to support these workflows? What they gain for your customer? Absolutely. Let's worry that that follow on after the MVP, you know, taking to that next level. We did have some Aaron, our own Aaron Pricky actually got to speak, speak to that. And there's a, there's a few different components that think about externalizing some APIs to doing your common tasks, everyday tasks, maybe even beyond creating users, creating groups, updating users, removing them as they move along. There's standards for that. We can talk about the, the skim or, you know, the system for cross domain identity management. Again, we have some great documentation on that. And then there's other APIs that you may make available that are very specific to your daily duties as a, as a provider to be created. Let's say if it's creating different groups or work orders or onboarding customers or profiles or what, what have you, you know, the world is your oyster and what, what your application does, but providing those, those APIs and those, those functions that need to occur on a regular basis, you can expose them as APIs and those APIs can be triggered by workflows. What workflows is, is a no code or drag and drop type technology that we use that would bring your, your application not only into an SSO, but having some of those, those flows onboarding tasks that may need to happen. For example, I, I, I am bored Emily, I'm bored you today as a new hire. Not only do I need to, to say, hey, here's your email address and we're doing that Federation. Maybe there, there's an approval process for governance. Like I, you're a part of our developer team. You need to have access to, to GitHub and our access to GitHub is bound by you taking some compliance software, making sure that you're doing all this other stuff. And we can trigger that workflow to make sure that you, you onboard and you get the appropriate accreditation back, not even background checks, but more of that. Hey, did you take the training? Did you, did you follow the, the rules and fill out this form and all that stuff can be triggered on the back end, making it very seamless to you as, as that new, new resource to our pool. It's a great foundation. And from the developer perspective by exposing these workflow APIs, you can sort of sidestep a lot of really custom feature requests that if there's this one off thing that this one customer wants to do with your tool, suddenly you can say, here's how you can do that yourself. Instead of, oh no, now I have to build this thing that only one word will ever use. Absolutely. And that is, I almost put workflows into the utility bill of putty. Right. Where, like, like you said, you can make a flow that's isolated to a particular group user use case. And then you can, if you ever do need to reuse it, it's great. You've, you pull out, make a copy and pull it into, into, into a view. And then you don't have to manage the infrastructure for it either. We, we manage the workflow environment and it's, it's a great add on. Also, we have that workflow builder that you could create, you know, more consistent tiles, if you will, that you can reuse instead of just having a sub, sub functions. It's a very, very powerful platform for being able to move some, these one off custom codes or these very lightweight things that revolve around that friction, if you will. Yeah. So that's really advanced. That's kind of late in the journey as you're getting standards compliant, you're really making it easy for customers to use the tool that you provide and really enjoy it and potentially even get really locked into it. Go, no, the hassle of switching to something else that has less features that I can do less with would not be worth it. But early on in the journey, are there common reasons that you see places saying, oh, we don't, we don't really need to do standards compatibility. We should do this custom. We should build this in house instead. Absolutely. You look at that cost perspective, hey, I can build a user ID and password. I think it's one of the first things we do as a new developer, like you, yeah, you make the hello world and the next thing you know, you need to make sure that only certain people can get to hello world. So enter in a password, you know, enter some sort of identifier, are you allowed to do this and you bounce it off a database. And that gets you pretty far.  They're going to try to do a bit more and maybe they use your password service, you know, user ID and password as a service to vet out passwords or they also can knock you down from a denial of service. Or you realize that people from outside of your customer zone, you know, you only have a certain region that you've sold to and next, you know, maybe overseas or some parts of the world that you want to start blocking out. And you start to think about that telemetry that you need to build and you start to build it out and all this stuff. And then another app comes along and you got to build it out again or it just becomes a force multiplier. And in that evolution, you start to realize, wait a second, if I can outsource that that sign in, I can push it off to somebody else that has that telemetry built in. It becomes policy. I can just say, hey, I only want folks in on the East Coast to access this application, whatever, for whatever reason, or you know, you only want folks that are in, you know, England or Canada because it's a Canadian app or, you know, you don't have to sit here and build all that logic into it.  They forget them. They want to use something that's passed with us. And again, you need to go and figure all this stuff out. So what the idea here is, if you can advocate for that externalizing that session or announcing, hey, I know this is going to come. This is where the industry is going. We're going to need to have this telemetry and we need to be able to add policies. We want to lower the friction on the users if they're logging into the same device again and again. Hey, why do we have to make it? Let's have a longer session. You know, maybe it's a new device. We challenge them for passwords. So we can start to make that really enhance that experience. Getting ahead of that with an identity provider gives you that, affords you that framework that you don't have to build. You build your app. That's what you're here to build. You're not here to build logins. You're not here to build telemetry.  You're here to build your app that does these great things. Yeah. It really reminds me of the parallels of the shift from on-prem servers to cloud where why would you have a branch of your company focused entirely on running your servers for most organizations most of the time? What's in a blue moon? There will be a time where it actually does make sense to own a physical server in a rack instead of rent it from someone else. Are there similar times where it might make sense to DIY all or part of your identity solution? Those weird edge cases? Well, those weird edge cases are the reasons for it. So because you have that legacy system that's on-prem, right?  Usually it's a compliance reason. Usually it's an access. You don't want to pay the premium for that level of FedRAMP infrastructure because you already made the investment into your data center. So it does make sense to have it in those scenarios. But even then, having that identity provider provide you that front door, the Federation member talked about OADC and OAuth, you can still make those connections to those systems. You just need, instead of having to build a custom framework, federate with it. All the way down to the command line, you can have these people accessing the right things. Yeah, and when you do this through a product that's actually someone's full-time job instead of your side hustle trying to put out the fires in your homegrown solution, then you suddenly start getting all these neat features like auditability and telemetry that you were talking about. Absolutely, that is 100% the evolution, right? You started off, we had an app, we had 50 users, we had a user ID and password. That was great. We built it out to thousands, hundreds of thousands of users. And then the other competitors are doing the same thing and makes you know people are using your service as a test bed and your wheels are starting to fall off the metaphorical bus. Whereas you can push that front door to the walls of your identity provider. At that point, they will take the brunt of the attacks. There's people that are sitting there 24-7 waiting for the market to change and to make the appropriate adjustments. So one other thing I'd like to chat with you about is you have this really unique perspective into these customer stories. Could you tell me about some of the more extreme uses of workforce identity that you've seen out in the field? Basically, open up indoors box. What's extreme to me at this point is there's not much I haven't seen already. Everything from military submarines where identity needs to be brought into their environments and then they drop down for a month or two and they come back up. So they're completely disconnected to the identity where the company not only builds their infrastructure for their medical services as far as making sure all the patients have the connectivity for their EMRs. But also down to they built their own apps to manage the MRs that can be rolled around to the bedsides. And how do we make sure that those applications have the right level of access to the right person? And by doing so they have either smart cards around their neck or they have a biometric on their body or they have their phone being able to offer that type of service down to this offline application that can do some validation. But those are the really not hard to believe, but they're harder to implement strategies. So for the first example, we have a system that's going to essentially be air-gapped and offline for several months and people need to do their jobs while they're offline and then it comes back and needs to sync with the world. What's the architecture of the solution to that for identity going to be shaped like? I probably shouldn't have mentioned that one because it incorporates a little bit of everything as far as while you're online and connect to the centralized identity provider it needs to be able to connect and verify that everything's there. So we have all the services that will synchronize the directories down to those systems. And then while one disconnected, we have a gateway that sits there and then uses basically an offline directory that would now fail over to, you know, becomes a primary at that point.  So you don't have to worry about that. And when you resurface and you come back to port, it would synchronize, hey, this is, you know, password's changed. You know, a lot of times it's a lot of training, you know, while you're looking for things to do, you can play cards or learn more. And at that point, they get access and they've grown as an individual and they come back and everything will come back online. That one was a fun expedition. There's all the variations of that one as well. I can't get into, but in any case. I mean, I'm imagining applications in, for instance, space exploration, you're going to be putting folks on a ship and having a really long delay for any comms. So that that kind of architecture would probably come in handy for similar cases of that situation. And then if you were architecting something like that where you needed to handle permission changes while it was offline, would that replica then just be able to take updates from people with a sufficient level of terms and then sync those updates when they got back to connectivity? Yeah, that would be the whole premise of that. Of those orchestrations, they would be queued up to make sure they sync back up to the metaphorical mothership of the identity provider in the infrastructure. But we, in those cases, we do have appropriately matched sessions. We have the appropriately matched directories that will come down. And even like our access gateway would be able to handle some of those legacy applications. A lot of those applications that are offline are, let's just not say they're not all bound to the internet. There's also physical systems where you might need to be air gapped for some reason and yet still manage identity on it. And I take it's going to be roughly the same set of considerations for getting your updates. Absolutely. One of the interesting parts to our solution at Akta is we can consume and just use a directory service like an LDAP or an active directory. But we can also push things down into them and being able to bridge that without having to have that same level of VPN and two-way trusts and stuff. We can essentially become the catalyst for synchronizing over into those just isolated environments. Yeah. Obviously, that's what you would normally develop. You can develop those things, but why when it can become a configuration? For sure. And if you're providing an app to a customer that's in one of those really unique situations, why not offload the worst of the identity problem onto another provider? Absolutely. We deal with it day in and day out, literally far as Australia to all ends of the earth on trying to help folks get through those interesting situations. Yeah. And then for the medical scenario, when we have portable terminals and people circulating around and lots of people each needing to do very secure off because it's very private information that's stored here and possibly for some but not all medical devices, it could be life threatening if actions aren't taken in a really timely manner. What's the architecture for solving that shaped like? It actually aligns with the OADC spec, but they actually have an extension to it that has a smart on fire component.  So think of the one of the old hospital rules where we had multiple beds and then there's two different doctors for that. They can look at the chart for the bed on the left and that doctor has access to that record. If they go over to the bed on the right, they can't get in or see anything because that doesn't apply to them. Same thing for the nursing and all the other staff from food and food services and such. So there's a spec that's designed that's an extension to that OADC spec. So again, hint, hint, if you were using OAuth, it's not a big jump to start using that framework to get to those other systems. Yeah, and then you have the tech with, let's say, an x-ray that comes into the room and needs to upload those files to the right patients record. So having it done to a spec that's been tested where you can test your software is going to be a huge win. Absolutely. And it's going to afford your scalability at the end of the day. You're not going to have to say, I have a custom way to upload these records and custom way to get access to it and isolate it to the right people. This stuff has been laid down. Let's leverage those frameworks. Yeah, and speaking of scale, what's the biggest scale that you've seen identity solutions pushed to? Billions, billions of users. So we have a high volume, we have customers that quite literally have very cyclical access to certain points of the year and they can actually point down to the hours and minutes that are large scale. And you're going to see influxes of hundreds to hundreds of thousands of users a minute accessing the system. And then other parts of time that you're that same customer may be down to just to the thousands, right, depending on what it is. And it goes on with various things from sporting events to times that you're shopping. There's even got to learn a lot about different cultures on the hiring and firing procedures where folks are on boarded and off boarded at exponential rates very, very quickly.  It's like culturally assuming, oh, well, I just have a given job. I'll just take a holiday and then come back to the same job isn't necessarily an assumption that applies worldwide, is it? No, absolutely not. And we've grown over the years to learn those patterns and your application may be one of those target applications that we're helping get the right people to over time. Make sure that you align with the standards and then you can be part of that mix. And these aren't small organizations. We're talking hundreds of thousands of people that are on board and off boarded in a matter of days. So if your system is already designed to work with that federation model, it could be another component to solving those problems. Yeah, for sure. And so if I'm selling an app to some organization that's doing this super bulk onboarding and off boarding, even if that organization is already using an identity provider to handle the worst of it. What concerns should I have on the app back end to make sure that it can stand up to syncing this kind of bulk sudden identity data change? Well, part of that spec can either be handled to two ways, right? You can do a just in time provisioning. So as the users get granted access to the application, instead of you trying to synchronize in the background, you know, 10,000 or 100,000 users, it could be as they come to the front door. It's not a situation where 10,000 users log in simultaneously if they get added to your system. So maybe a just in time provisioning model may work for you. So if there is something that needs to be done where you need that back end process, part of that skim interface will essentially churn on that data. It may take a little bit of time, but you would know that somebody is going to start work in a few hours or a day or something. It's not like they show up for the job and start going. That's where the just in time comes in. I do have the hybrid approach that which I find very effective is being able to supply that just in time that that federation model and or an API model in addition to the skim. The idea here is you would get that immediate access straight away, right? You need to get in there. I think of a quick service type scenario. You get hired in the morning to hand you a t-shirt.  For sure, somebody needs to enter in your data just for you to log in. Yeah, you need to have enough of an account that we know, yeah, you took the training. Yeah, this person took the training. Now there's a follow up to the next day. Maybe there's some additional information we needed. Maybe the mailing address to make sure we knew where to send your paycheck to because the first check is going to come in the mail. Things like that doesn't necessarily mean for need for the day to day identity piece. But from a compliance standpoint, you need to know, hey, this person is part of this county. They need this. What have you? There's some rules and regulations about things that they need to be put into play. That process that runs in the background will update and persist that information. So now when the HR record comes along, it'll pick up, hey, I'm only started this morning. She took her training. She got her t-shirt. She's watching the folks do the work. The next day, you're going to see the rest of your profile kick in because you are a full-time employee. You have these benefits. You can go and log in and get your discounts. All those other things come along for the ride later. We don't want to add that friction at the beginning to get you going, but we want to make sure the long haul, all the data is there so you get your full package. Yeah, it's kind of a sequential stepped onboarding where you do the pieces as they're needed and break up the work that way. Yeah, absolutely. And having the identity and access management framework in place with the workflows, with the ties into the HR systems, the ties into the directories and all that, you don't need to build those. One of my favorite solutions was one where the business analyst was able to create the dashboards. Hey, here's the information. And then there's other dynamics database where all this information was held. They also used Salesforce Canvas as the framework as our customers that provided these dashboards to our customers. So the analyst was able to create these beautiful charts inside of Azure, said from Dynamics, presented through Salesforce. And Akka was able to, because, you know, if it was on a legacy monolith system, they would all have to talk to each other. But because Akka was federating with those different cloud providers, we just provided, hey, this user is coming into this report with this context, and it's presented it. So it was literally an iframe of different services, completely segmented and had no idea that each other existed. But because we were able to federate them in, they had complete interoperability across platforms, across platforms. Because when everything's integrated with a single identity provider, you can then go through that identity provider and treat the whole system like one system, instead of like a whole bunch of little parts that need to be glued together because the glue is already there. Yes, exactly. That federation and that standard will pull it all into one purview. Man, I can only imagine the value add that would be perceived by having the right graphs across an entire infrastructure. Like, here's the insight that you were looking for, boss. Absolutely. And the best part is, management is going to change our mind on our platform. We're going to evolve. We're going to start off with a homegrown learning system portal. It may move on to an open source. It may become a commercial based. Then you decide to get a better price at the next place. Instead of you trying to integrate each one of those into your platform, you can just change the federation direction. Oh, yeah. Tell me about it. I've had roles where the first half of my time there was, oh, no, we need to get off of platform A and on to platform B. And the second half was, whoopsie daisy, we need to get off of platform B and on to platform A. And I mean, there's good reasons in each direction, but which reasons are at the top will change constantly. So it's always that change. Yeah. And again, you want to get back to making a delightful user experience and you want to focus on adding value to your customers, not sitting here and necessarily tying all these systems together. By tying them together, you federate. They know they have access to that system. It is so cool when we can build on the bare bones of we need to be more secure. We need people to not get their accounts compromised and turn that into, hey, you can be more secure and have an improved experience. Yeah. Yes, especially across completely disparate platforms. Yeah. And so thank you so much for your time today. Looking ahead, just to wrap up, are there any upcoming changes in the security and identity space that you think will really surprise or strongly impact the developers that you work with? Really not a jolting change to the infrastructure. I think it's more of the expansion of more services and partnerships that you can bring together and making sure that you start to leverage those best-of-breed partners. Being able to leverage the different systems so you can make a holistic change. I'm assuming the overall direction is moving away from passwords. I'll make that one as an assumption that we're already leaning away from these things we know and move on to the things that we, who we are and how to make sure we identify it properly. I think that would probably be the brace for the impact of the change in the way people authenticate, but the frameworks and infrastructures and all that stuff. I don't think that's going to change other than what we already see going to cloud, going to those SaaS services. Yeah, for sure. I personally think that there will always be a place for some no factor to make sure that, because getting physical possession of a piece of hardware is simple enough and a no factor signifies intent to take the action in a way that an R factor might not, but definitely reducing that single-minded reliance on a no factor is just huge for humans using computers. Yeah, for sure. That definitely would be the pattern. Thank you so much for joining me. It's been delightful to chat with you. This is great. Thank you for having me. I love this. I look forward to having some more over as we see some of these future technologies unwind. And for the listeners, we'll have a comment thread on the Developer Forum if you'd like to discuss the podcast or share ideas on what you'd like to hear about in the future. And if you'd like to learn about any of these technologies that we've been chatting about, I'll provide links so that you can dive more deeply into them. So thank you for listening.


United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Chairman today is missing because her daughter just had an operation yesterday. So I'd like to move forward and ask our secretary, Abby, to call the roll for the meeting. So if you're muted, please unmute so you can respond. Pull the mic down, Abby. Sorry, I just need one second. It's not pulling up my agenda for some reason. I had it up and I accidentally closed it. Apologies, I don't understand. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, apologies about that. Michelle Gentine, Lisa Merrick, Lisa. Okay, Karen Houston. Here. Michelle Warner. Here. Betty Ackley is absent. Bill Bussert, Nicole Bredesen. Nicole, Mike Heimbach. Here. Kate Hodges. Kate. Here. And Christine Potter. Christine? She waived. Okay, thank you. Okay, we should note that Gretchen Houston has joined our group. Gretchen is filling in for Caring Houston today. And we look forward to having her added to our group. Next is to a motion to approve the minutes of the July 29th meeting. Wanna move? I'll move to approve the minutes. Is there a second to that motion? I need a second.  Okay, very good. All those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Now, because our chairman isn't here, we put a note here to elect a vice chairman for the group. Just wondering if anybody would like to volunteer for that role. I'll volunteer. Mike Heimbach. Mike, thank you very much. Would someone like to make a motion to approve Mike Heimbach as the vice chair of the organization? Okay, I have a motion to approve. Is there a second? Thank you, Michelle. All those in favor of approving Mike Heimbach as vice chairperson, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Mike, I'll turn over the microphone to you for the rest of the meeting. Thank you, Mayor. The next item on our agenda is the update from the survey subcommittee. Is somebody ready to report on that? Okay, then we'll table that for now. All right, well, let's move on to the next item then and that was an update from the online assessment subcommittee. Kate, do you wanna go ahead?  These are my birds in the background, but I believe Gabby and I met and we had gone through the Better Cities for PES assessment. And one thing we did find is that we do need a little bit more survey information to proceed with some of the answers.  How about that first piece that you mentioned? The whole idea, are we a good city for PES? As a whole, I feel like we're moving in the correct direction. I think one of the biggest obstacles that we found is obviously in housing, also in how well our city works with our shelter. Our shelter has a lot of programs in place and ready to go, but when it asks, does your city have certain things? The answer has been no quite often. So I think partnering the shelter in a city would be incredibly beneficial for everyone, especially our PES and PED owners. I think an outreach program that the city backed to help people be more educated would be a wonderful idea. I think that one of the things we were looking over were are our businesses, especially downtown, where there are more people, are they pet friendly? And we do have a ton of information about that, but we did notice that quite a few of the newer developments are increasing in pet friendliness in that area. So I think we're moving in the right direction, but I think there's definitely some things that we could work on, and we have a little list going of that, too. And then I would just add, so as part of the survey committee, if we could work with you and putting together some of the questions that maybe we don't have the easiest access to those answers, that would be really helpful. Trying to think if there's anything else. Can you send those proposed questions on to that committee then? That'd be great. Any other insights you'd like to share about the assessment so far? I think it'll be interesting to see what people come back with in terms of what businesses are you able to bring your pets to work with you, what establishments allow you to bring your pets in. I think some of that anecdotally we know, but I think a lot of that'll come from the community. So I'm curious to see what I don't know about in terms of pet friendliness. Reaching out to other stakeholders, other shelters, other rescues. Yeah, it should be interesting. Thank you, Abby. Anyone else have any other insights they'd like to share? Yes, go ahead. It's when you were talking about businesses, what businesses allow pets. You're talking about bringing your pets to work businesses, are you talking about businesses where you would go to do retail businesses, where you would go to do shopping and bring your pets in with you? I'm not clear on that. All of you both. So one of the pages is estimated number of pet focused businesses in your area. So like do we have pet daycares, we have pet stores, and then it's local restaurants that are pet friendly, and then local restaurants or retailers that are pet friendly, and then hotels that are pet friendly. Like how many hotels do we have that allow pets? We don't actually have that answer. I mean, workplaces that allow pets at the office. That's a big one, I think. I think when some people are dealing with like separation anxiety, and that's the big reason that we see a lot of animals at the shelter is they're turned in because they can't spend that much time away from their owner, towards a really long process to get used to. So I think that one thing that we could kind of like, and there's a question about do you have incentives for workplaces allowing pets in the area? So, and I know that there are some businesses that don't even allow pets on the property. Like when we have events or to get an okay to bring them there in person. So I think it's a wide range of who allows pets and who doesn't. Okay. Good question. Good question, Christine. Thank you for the information, Kate. Well, if you're ready, let's move on to the next item on the agenda, and that's the review of pet ordinances. I'll take that one, Mike. I think that part of the process that we're going through, we should take a look at all the ordinances that have been passed and are active right now and the city ordinances that deal with pets. So I'll be preparing a file with all of those ordinances for you to review. And then we may want to have a separate subcommittee or schedule some discussion on these and see if there's any changes that we feel we need to bring to the council for approval to again, meet our goals to be a pet friendly community. So that's something that'll be coming up at a future meeting. Thank you, Mayor. Well, I'm looking at our agenda and that's the last item that I see for today's meeting. I'm looking that our next meeting is on September 30th. And if there are no other questions, first I'd like to thank you all for attending. This is a wonderful thing that we're doing. And I'm saying that from a selfish perspective because I have two corgis at home and as of this Saturday, we're gonna have number three. So we'll have three corgis. All right. God help us all. Well, at this time, I guess let's move for adjournment. I wanna make a motion. One of you, please make a motion to adjourn. Abby. So moved. A second. Our meeting will be adjourned then. Thank you very much for attending and hope to see you in person soon.


Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go. All right now we're fusing our rails with Mike 7-8-2, with the Mike 11-22 concrete rail. Anytime you want to fuse a rail, right? So I have my number one, I have my number one man to fuse the rails, he twizzes it all the way, I'm gonna hand tighten it, he cranks it back, I have it turned to the left, and then he's tightening it all the way down with his M18 fuse center. So that's what he's doing right now. We have six rails fused on the ready rack to be fired.