eing probably an important way of getting into the sort of detail that you were discussing about the allied services for the multi-agency crime prevention community justice approaches to actually be brought to the table and chewed over properly within the broad area we've highlighted housing and employability as remaining with local government but we also have significant powers in terms of contracts awards and trying to make sure that those are inclusive and help people being recruited who are in danger of re-offending we also have welfare benefits roles access to resources as well as obviously the education area on top of that so there's complexities to this but again just going back to the principles we are actively involved in national strategy for community justice we want to see it delivered we want to actually concentrate on what is trying to be done by way of a change so that the original observations from the police that we over over imprisoning people is starting to be dealt with rather than concentrating on structural reform I appreciate that you're speaking for COSLA and you because we don't have any detail it's very difficult for you to respond but if the model was a commissioning model and the response bill to it was taken away from local government so therefore local government would have to enter into a tendering exercise do you think there's a risk that local government or some councils may not get involved in that I just come in and just ask gently if witnesses can just keep answers as succinct as possible it just allows us to ask as many questions as we can thank you we would need to ask I mean I'm aware that in the employability area when councils chose to put in tenders for delivery of services some chose not to some were successful as well the diversity will be there and we'd need to consult and could I maybe just ask unison to come in on those points in terms of what they feel are the major problems at the moment in the sector and you know obviously reflecting on the comments made by other witnesses very much I mean the major problems in the sector that our members are telling about is a lack of funding there's no doubt about that workers are talking about having to work huge amounts of overtime just to deliver a service overtime that never gets repaid it's not like that everywhere but there are real major pressures on the system and mal is very low and as I've already touched on it's very difficult to recruit but more importantly to retain social work staff so those are the kind of issues that we think need to be addressed before we're trying anything else in relation to what you're saying about the potential for this bill it does pave the way for extensive outsourcing and privatisation there's no doubt about that it enables that to go ahead and what it really says if that happens then criminal justice social workers and other social workers for that matter could have a change of employer every three years when services are tendered for now whilst there's already huge pressures on the system creating that uncertainty and upheaval in addition to that is not helpful at all in terms of the people trying to deliver the service now I do just want to touch on the fact that social work would be included late to this party and it has made our members feel very demoralised and devalued really that they were suddenly popped into that without any discussion about what it is that they actually do leaving them feeling that maybe that's not properly recognised so I mean I do think that the lack of detail is really concerning but actually the potential that the bill leaves is even more worrying for privatisation and outsourcing I appreciate the points you're making about tendering and obviously unison's got a huge amount of experience in the past from these kinds of outsourcing and tendering processes that have not been positive in terms of conditions but the point that was made by Lindsay Smith was in relation to consistency of service and I wondered if you had any thoughts in relation to that about an inconsistent service across Scotland and whether you see that as a major concern and how that might be addressed if it is a concern There's a lot of talk about a postcode lottery but actually because services are currently able to meet local need that is going to create differences and I think what Anil said was that the differences are maybe an input rather than output it's obviously an area that would want to be looked at as part of a consultation but as I've said many times and we'll see again that consultation should happen before this bill is approved that needs to be a clean sheet and that is something that obviously needs to be looked at but I don't think we should be through and babies out with bathwaters here because meeting local need is absolutely essential to social work that's what we're about Thanks very much Okay, we're going to bring in Jamie Greene and then Russell Burnley Jamie Thank you and good afternoon to our guests So just listening to that last exchange this wasn't going to be my question but I think it maybe should be Given that at the moment local authorities have statutory duties to perform these functions in another model where a centralised nationalised service either provides that service directly by employing people becomes an employer of choice or by some form of tendering or outsourcing or even direct awarding to preferred suppliers through a national contract or otherwise it does sound to me a little bit like the end scenario may be some form of privatisation of services which are currently delivered by the public service which sounds great if you're just about to buy shares in a private company who profits on that type of service but it doesn't sound so great for those currently working in the service So I guess my first question is that a genuine risk or just a perceived one and secondly can I ask what representations you will be making next to the Scottish Government given all the concerns that you voiced today and before and I'll maybe start with unison first if that's okay and then perhaps ask Coslyn and Social Work Scotland to respond briefly I'm a social worker as well as a unison representative I work in children families and children's rights and that is a very good question about how statutory duties and responsibilities will be managed under a new system and what I have to say to you is it's yet another thing that we just don't know and it's another thing that creates quite a lot of stress and anxiety for our members because we don't know how that's going to be managed at all I mean we don't even know how our pensions are going to be managed if we're taken out of local government so you know there's so many unknowns and that's just another one my colleagues might be able to say a bit more about it in terms of representation I mean we do engage at every opportunity with the Scottish Government unison does to make the points that we've made here today on behalf of our members because we do see it as such a fundamental change and such a threat to social work because it's been implemented without doing the groundwork without properly engaging with the stakeholders as I've said before so we will be continuing to make those arguments and I hope as a committee you go do that too Does that answer? It certainly does very honest answer thank you Anil, do you have any comments on that? I suppose an observation more than anything else is that commissioning and a commissioning approach locks in your current service provision it actually locks in all what you currently have your strengths and your weaknesses whereas having something that is managed more locally allows you to be much more responsive to what is going on so it solidifies things in my mind and prevents you from revisiting your contracts every until your contracts are coming up for re-tendering again so it will create some degree of stasis in the whole system at a point when we are trying to see some fairly significant changes both in services and in public attitudes another issue that will then come up is who then will represent the workers and deal with the issues that they are facing in delivering policies so you'll get the trades union side but we as local government that currently working with the Scottish Government and the UK Government on matters around for instance fires of the violence sex offenders register and access to information how data is shared and so forth these are all fairly significant service matters which I would find difficult from where I stand at the moment to understand how these will actually work in practice the other bit that is also sort of I think still needing some elucidation is the notion of the national social work agency it isn't something we'd necessarily oppose something that is trying to develop as in terms of training standards registration and the like but we don't see how this all fits in because again that lack of detail Lindsay, would you like to comment? Taking the cue from the convener I won't speak a lot about it but certainly we are raising these issues continually with the Scottish Government they've set up a group they're procuring the research at the moment and we will be part of the panel who will assure the research and the evidence as it comes through so Anil's part of that group as is a number of justice stakeholders so yes all those issues that we have raised today are being continued to be raised with the Scottish Government but I guess my direct question to you would be that does it feel like we're using a bit of a sledgehammer to crack it up because you talked about weaknesses and strengths in the system would it not be better to address those weaknesses directly get to some of the core roots of some of the problems that social work and criminal justice social work is facing before introducing a new level of tier of management into the process which may inevitably take work from lookerforries and then give it back to them anyway so it seems like an unnecessary perhaps or cumbersome step in the process I think there's a huge argument to work with the system the structure the set of governance arrangements that are in place just now so yes I think there is an argument to do that yes and I think as part of as the research and the evidence comes in and evolves then we probably will be better to place ourselves in whether we think that's the preferred option rather than justice being included in the national care service okay and that was going to be my final question and this could be a simple A, B or C I guess would it be your preference that the bill in its entirety is paused to go back and perform some of that much needed consultation that you spoke of or be to scrap it completely because you think the whole idea is completely bonkers or C simply remove the criminal justice elements from the bill and let the rest of it proceed as normal and I guess all those options are open to government as it chooses I'll do it in the same order perhaps okay first sorry we can't hear you and yeah you're okay now yep can you hear me yep yep yeah I was saying that unisons in support of a national care service but you know we have a very clear idea of what that should be and that is about social care about providing status and better pay for social care workers federal bargaining et cetera I don't think this bill does any of the things that we want it to do so you know I think unisons preference would be to withdraw the bill and start from scratch looking at look you know building on the kind of good work that's already being done in relation to fair work which we are very involved with and very positive about in relation to social care but really starting from scratch in terms of our engagement with with social work and with our members and social work and with the other stakeholders so I can't remember what option that was but you know that would that would be unison's position somewhere between A and B but that thank you very much for that Cosola do you have a view I think we would be in favour of a fairly radical return to what Fili was talking about rather than the pented and slightly less coherent one which pulls significant elements of social work into it so yes we are equally in favour of some of the the Fili recommendations overall but I don't think we would go much further on how the Scottish Government wishes to respond to the evidence sessions that have been underway is obviously going to be up to them but it will help us to know more about their positionings once we get to the end of stage one and then we will probably be in a better position to say whether we are four or again at the moment it's too theoretical still only if you want to no I would agree I think we've got a framework bill just now I think what we would be arguing is that you know the co-design needs to happen first so yes we would not be in favour of the bill continuing I think the co-design needs to happen first so that we can form any future legislative process thank you and good afternoon to you all from what we've heard today it sounds like the Scottish Government have not asked some pretty big questions have sometimes asked the wrong questions and provided answers to some questions which can best be described as questionable I find it perplexing that just as social work was not properly consulted on this and given the fundamental and pretty serious concerns you've all articulated we are pretty clear on what you want to see happening in answer to Jamie Greene but I suppose I want to take it a step back and perhaps ask why do we know why Scottish Government chose not to listen to those who know best and do you have confidence given what you've said today that they will now do so and you can answer that in any particular order so I have confidence in the process that's been put in place just now I think we are being meaningfully engaged around about the research and we've helped shape the proposal that's been procured in relation to setting the questions that we want answered but we're at the start of this process I think that's a question that I probably could answer with more confidence six months hence 12 months hence but certainly you cannot get away from the fact that we covered off earlier on that it feels like an afterthought it feels as if we absolutely can see what happened with Faley and the thinking behind that and I think it's right to then consider social work and the totality including children and families social work and justice social work and I think we are where we are but at the moment we have felt engaged to the point at the moment we've challenged that we have questioned why we weren't included we've made it very clear that we do feel as if it's an afterthought so I will leave it at that yes and then Kate the evidential base is not there and that we were making the point earlier on in the round of the consultation what Lindsay has says is absolutely true we think that the research that is being currently undertaken which we are participating in is helpful is useful but it's the wrong time to be doing it it should have happened the other way round and been contemporaneous with Faley and also the work that's under going around the promise and then you get into the restructuring issues but not this way round so yeah I think that's enough I can't speak for the Scottish Government obviously but so I don't know why I mean I suspect it's what Lindsay says that we were said what we social work was suddenly included at the last minute but I really do think they have to start listening now because if I don't know if you've had the opportunity to look at the responses to the national case care service bill but all the issues that we have raised here today have been raised by many in any other other respondents to that and you know I really think that they have done it back to front and they now need to pull it back and do it the right way around and have the proper consultation now with social workers and service users and communities at the centre and hold the bill until that's been done because the bill might look completely different after that That's very helpful thank you very much Gios Thank you very much Rona Mackay do you like to come in? Thank you and convener yeah I mean first of all just to say I think we've heard some very valid points from all our witnesses today and I think the one thing we'd probably agree on is there's a consensus for change because I think everybody agrees there are huge issues with the current system I do think it's a mistake to think that the government aren't listening to your concerns I think they are and I think from what you're saying the issue is around timing and you know I get that but I don't think there's any value in trying to backtrack and say well you know I mean we are where we are now I don't think there's a possibility of the bill being rushed through and your concerns being ignored and always bearing in mind this is a framework bill to allow the government to start the process of change and the co-design part of it is where you come in and I get your point about timing I'm not disputing that so really I mean most of you know you've answered a lot of things and a lot of questions so my question would really be if more consultation engagement was offered to you at this stage would that allay some of your concerns and could you would it allay some of the concerns of for instance your members Kate or yours Lindsay and Cosla basically I mean that's just been realistic at the point we're at start with Lindsay yes it would yes I think it would give folk time to start to think through the implications the opportunities that the kind of positive and negative so yes to answer it yes I think it would offer a degree of comfort it would offer folk would then feel their voice was being heard there would be part of a process so yes I'm not sure it would offer our members any comfort at all because the trouble with an enabling bill is that it then leaves it totally in the hands of ministers doesn't it to determine what they do then so consultation co-design they're good words but there's no obligation on Scottish ministers to then take them into account there's no obligation on them to to listen to the concerns and act on them they're just going to be able to do whatever they then think is the best thing for them so I think that's my problem if the bill goes through that actually we're not going to have enough of a say on how it's going to look or we don't they don't need to give us enough of a say that's the problem because at the end of the day the Scottish ministers will have all the power over that so you know unison you know we'll have to look I mean we will want to engage obviously but we would prefer to do it without the bill going through because then we'll feel that it's genuine consultation that they would be genuinely listening to our voices and that that would be included in the final outcome in the way that the independent care review took all of that into account I'm just struggling to to sort of understand why it would be in the government's interests not not just to do their own thing and not to listen to you because I don't think that's what's intended because you know that doesn't make much sense that they wouldn't take into account what you're saying and I go back to the issue of timing which we can't really do anything about just now but but thanks anyway I mean you make good points Can I just say that they could pause the bill even if they didn't withdraw it they could pause it that's what people are calling for and they're not listening to that so it doesn't give us a lot of confidence that they would listen to other things Thanks, Anil do you have a comment? We're not sceptical about the willingness of those within the Scottish Government to listen to our concerns about criminal justice and community justice the consultation sorry the research work that is going on and hopefully the consultation after will hopefully provide very useful material for us but we do have shared competency in this area and the fact is that the bill as it's currently raised doesn't acknowledge that it leaves to ministers the decision over where it goes the best that we've been able to get and I think it's still useful is for the research findings to be presented jointly to both Scottish and local government I think the real issue though for yourself as a committee is whether you'd be satisfied with the degree of scrutiny of the process that you will have available to you should it go through as it's currently framed because you will just have the second re-legislation without the financial memorandum attached to it so your commitment and interest I assume is same as ours to improving and transforming community justice but a major factor in this will not have the degree of scrutiny that you would probably wish to have okay thank you and for what it's worth I think your idea of workshops is a very good one ask me okay thank you very much and Collette hi there um thanks very much convener um we I actually asked earlier if the minister for mental health could come forward and give evidence and scrutinise them based on the national health service review and I know he's been on other committees but for this particular area you know in criminal social work criminal justice and community justice as well can I just ask what key questions this committee could ask of the minister based on what you've told us today and I'll start by asking Lindsay that question that's a good question um yes again it's difficult because it feels as if you know that this abstract so you're almost what are you so I would be asking the minister about how he would see the vision for justice being delivered if there's opportunities that he would see in an NCS structure that are not currently existing within local authorities um I think you can't get away from the the finance and the and the resource issues that we're facing I would be wanting to for him to consider what opportunities he might see in relation to resources and the funding of justice social work within a national care service so certainly there's two two big areas that I would I would be asking him can I pass it on to Anil Israil please thanks um I'm not very ofei with the mental health area to be honest but what I think we would be doing is reflecting some of the other questions that have been raised which is is it best to spend the resources on restructuring or on services we'll start okay thank you and you want to bring Kate in yes sorry it's just disappeared Kate would you like to come in very briefly yeah I mean I think we would agree with that I mean we know that mental health is a big issue and a lack of mental health services is endemic across um across the country so you know again I think we'd probably be wanting to ask whether it would be better to put resources into front line services and developing those rather than putting money into this huge potentially huge restructure and so yeah just to echo the other the other two thank you no further questions okay thank you thank you thank you we're just slightly over time so I think Fulton you want to come in very very briefly and if we can ask for succinct responses as well I can help you out convener it was actually just to make a point rather than seeking any response it was on the back of my colleague Collette's question in there I chair the cross-party group in social work in this parliament and about I think about a month ago we did have Kevin Stewart the minister in front of us for a very good session I have to say on the national care service and he took a whole range of questions from people excited and anxious about the proposals across the social work sector so at URM up to yourself convener but I can make the minutes of that whether they're available anyway but I can make the minutes available to committee members and panellists today if it's helpful I think we would welcome that opportunity just to hear a little bit more about what was discussed so thank you very much I'm going to have to bring this session to a close because we're just running over time so I'd like to thank all our witnesses for joining us today and just to advise you that we'll summarise the views that have been shared this morning and send them in a letter to the health social care and sport committee who are the lead committee for this bill so our next meeting will be on Wednesday 7 December when we'll hear from the cabinet secretary for justice and veterans on the UK government's Northern Ireland troubles legislation and reconciliation bill and as previously agreed we'll now move into private session thank you


Welcome. This is Jenkins documentation office hours Europe Action items that I've got on the agenda for today Action items Jenkins elections end of December newsletter Actually, and I guess we should note November newsletter Because that's a good one to highlight end of December newsletter LTS 2375 dot one Thanksgiving blog post retrospective and I put interesting documentation poll requests and topics Anything else that needs to go on the agenda Bruno? Nothing I can think of thank you mark Okay, all right So let's talk about action items first then Archive the website component on JIRA so that we can focus on GitHub issues Alex Brandes has submitted a not a submitted. I think it was a ticket submitted to The help desk to the infra help desk So and I'll get that archive very included here. He put it in and I made a mistake of clearing his suggestion Here it is. Oh, why does it say rejected that was silly? Hmm, okay, I'll have to look it up separately. Sorry about that Okay, so the other Kevin archived the Docs mailing list so that one still in progress One that has made good progress not because of anything I did but because of what Basel did a poll request documenting the web application server support policy and It's a really nice piece of work that he's done if we look at it what you'll see is on The installing Jenkins page it now talks about the server container policy. Oh nice Included here and if I open up war files for instance a place where server container policy can be quite important Whereas before it only had Java web browser windows and Linux it now also includes a link to the servlet container support policy Okay, well though And it describes things as they are currently now in addition to what Basel did there he's also implemented tests to Check for regressions in case the known working service servlet containers were to somehow stop working. Oh So he's created automated tests that perform checks of wild thought wild fly version 26 and Tomcat version 9 I Think it's 9 Yeah, Tomcat 9 and wild fly 26 So deeply grateful to Basel for that work. It's not just that we've documented what the reality is He's also made it so that if we were inadvertently to regress We should detect have a better chance of detecting it. Yeah, that's great Fantastic, so That covered that one then anything else on action items No, no, thank you. Okay, Jenkins elections have been announced and the transition has started Alex and Uli Attended the last governance board meeting And they start we start on December 3rd. Am I right? That's correct December 3 2022 starts their term of service Officers and board members. Yes, exactly Great now the November so anything else on elections No, except congratulations for being elected Yes, congratulations to Kevin, that's good, I like also. Yeah Alright, so November newsletter Basel, thank you very much. So Alissa has gathered the content, right? Yeah, and I'm sorry Bruno, you have said the wrong yeah, that's okay It is so much of course when you think of something done, it may be basil. It must be basil. No, not this time Sorry, I did it It's not finished. She has a PR has been created and I have a few things to To change for example the highlights section, but almost done I think I'll be able to get it reviewed. Maybe tomorrow And so my goal is to have it published next Monday, so December's office Great, congratulations. Thank you very much. Thank you and thanks a lot to all the submitters who made Their section and you made two I think so Congrats on that too Yeah, I like the I like the exercise I was able to reuse content in both cases. It felt really great cool Anything else on November newsletter? No, thank you Okay, next was the end of December newsletter And what I had suggested to Alissa and she thought it was an okay idea checking with you as well was What if we made the December newsletter a look back at 12 months rather than just a one-month thing? I think that's great. That's a very good idea and we have so much to say we'll have to widely choose the subjects but You know, I'm not a long-time user long-time Jenkins user, but I've seen so many changes during that It's even not a year because I have seen changes from April I think but from April to now the changes are already major, you know going to GDK 11 then 17 even some part 19 and the UI UX has changed Quite a lot and some plugins are back from the dead Yeah, it's amazing all what has changed. So I won't How do we say that you know spoil? It's ember newsletter, but we have lots of things to say Good. Yeah. Well, and and let's see. Okay. So I've got I've got some for to include here. So Documentation site search improvement. Oh, yes, right. Just just one example and it's really thanks to Algolia and Gavin Morgan That the search engine works much better. I was should we phrase it finally works No, that's no it works before it had aged and it's no longer aged And it's now got a nice attractive experience. So yeah, they've they thanks to Gavin and to to Algolia very very much and Yeah, so we've got More topics, let's see So if if any if any come to mind by all means suggest them or propose them It would be a great thing for Alyssa or you and Alyssa or others to have to choose Which things they want to include in news that are based on highest value highest priority I see. Okay, we'll do Anything else on that that idea. Are you okay with that idea? I'm totally okay. I think it's a great idea. So yeah, let's go for it. All right so next piece was LTS 2.375.1 has been released and Now one of the the oops is here for us as adopts SIG was we had to revise the upgrade guide after release and what happened was I missed I Didn't do a thorough enough review of the source material of we had winstone 6.4 in the Baseline, but I believe then we did a back port of winstone 6.6 and That removed some additional Command line arguments and it was it's a really good thing because the the removed arguments had been deprecated for many years and It was certainly time enough to get rid of them with the transition to the new version of winstone Okay, so it's done that the arguments have changed name for example the Jaws They just disappeared. Yeah, right. That's cool Right and if you read the upgrade guide, you'll see the the description it talks about hey this one This one was these two were taken away and he do this one instead Or these were taken away. They previously did nothing and now they they still do nothing But they do nothing they fail because you can't use illegal arguments Okay, this case less is more cool, right exactly less truly is more The other is on a positive side 27 positive reviews on the ratings and no no I had issues and no rollback So that's good. Now we got a while to get before we get to 330 Yeah, yeah, of course Mark sorry to add that stupid question, but how do we enter? feedback for You know a new LTS version Because it's nice to see people are happy, but how does it tell us that they are happy or unhappy with the reads? So they click this link. Oh this image. It's a simple at that. Well, it is except Okay, so when I click the image it says thanks, right? Now I'm gonna go back because I don't want to disturb the measurements. I have installed 375 dot 1 So I happily can say yes, I've been pleased with it If I were to go back though and say oh, I want to report an issue that I found on 346 dot 1 so I could click the cloud and it asks for an issue number Okay, and for instance the you you'll see here. There are some issue numbers that are clearly invalid 1234 and 12 Are all invalid That's because we don't bother to attempt to filter Okay And you just entered one two, okay, right? So so and that's that's what's happened here, right? Someone said oh, I'm going to just play with this I'll click it and type in a number one two Jenkins one two three Okay, but that's nice It is the scoring the rating system is Is a sincerely a very valuable for people who are trying to choose more particularly trying to choose the next LTS baseline? because what we will do is we'll look at the ratings for the weekly releases and If the ratings are particularly bad okay, 380 is one that hey it had some really rough times and You see there's one bug that got 16 reports, and if we look at it It's this it's a performance issue that was just detected Okay, so that helps because we know okay if if 2.380 were chosen as a future LTS baseline We would absolutely want to be sure that the fix for this one was backboarded Mmm Okay, I was wondering for the previous month How do they know the health of a future candidate to be an LTS or not now? I understand. Thank you Right. Yeah, so the trick is we look backwards in time, right? So if we look at 2.375 Here's this one. This was the baseline for for the current LTS and we see All right, there are a few bug reports here, and I hope if we open some of them We'll see that it's fixed in This one doesn't tell me if it was fixed in oh Oh, this one is a complicated one. That's why okay, but we could we could try others And I suspect we'll see where it will tell us either. Oh, it was chill out chosen as a release as a Release candidate or nope. It was not selected and So this was oh, this was a change in In a plug-in. So that's another challenge is sometimes bug reports will be list bug IDs will be listed here That are for bugs that are not actually in core and therefore a core change can't fix it cool So did that did that help you see the the pattern how crystal clear thanks a lot for taking time to explain. All right Good So next next piece then I wanted to take a few minutes. We may want to delay this one week until Kevin's available because Very grateful for his work and Alyssa's work and air V's work And I think your work is well Bruno on getting the Thanksgiving blog post out I thought it was a good idea. I think it really was a good idea but it was Very rushed and it meant that we had two people in the US who are working on Thanksgiving Day a day that's supposed to be a Holiday, yeah, if I get that blog post out and and so it's just a reminder There's something to improve there, but I'd propose we just carry it forward into next next meeting And we'll do it when Kevin's here. Yeah, we'd be better Then the next piece was I proposed this was a an idea. I had just today Topics that we might consider for just highlight interesting things that are happening in documentation The November newsletter, thank you very much Bruno You're welcome. I also submitted a proposal as a poll request to change election rules for board board members The idea of things a discussion. Yeah, go ahead. No, no, that's that's oh, yes, and Discussion in Jenkins in the developers mailing list Then there was a new change that with the release of two dot three seventy five dot one That means two dot three sixty one dot four the preceding end LTS is now Second to life is is is penultimate, right? It's second to last and That means it becomes a recommended version for choosing your your Jenkins baseline and therefore there are changes in the documentation to do that and Changes are ongoing changes are ongoing in the in the Jenkins development tool chain to make two dot three sixty one dot four default Or two dot three sixty one dot X and what that means is Java 11. I see and Regarding the documentation it has to be Made by the human being the modifications or can it be scripted with update plea or whatever or Does it even make sense to have a robot? Change that in the documentation. Do we have absolutely to get it reviewed by a human being and no actually our robot Already does a significant portion of it and let's let's look at the portion the robot does Because I think what the robot does is actually really really a great idea that I think Daniel Beck started this idea But let's let's look at what the robot does so choosing Choosing a Jenkins baseline Here we go choosing a Jenkins version to build against So what we see here is currently recommended versions and what it suggests is two dot three forty six dot three and two dot three sixty one dot four make good core dependencies and Then here it inserts the value two dot three sixty one dot four in the recommended code in the In the set of code Well the way it computes those if I click this improve this page It'll take me to the to the the page and then when I look for Jenkins version Let's keep the placeholder. Okay Yeah, oh there it is. Yes, exactly placeholder recent LTS point high and The build process that constructs the website will replace that placeholder text with the actual value extracted from the Jenkins update center, okay, perfect and It's it's things like this one has the same behavior Placeholder latest split each of these is provided by this tooling That I believe Daniel wrote that reads the Jenkins updates and or read some other location Gets these numbers and provides them as text strings. Oh, so there is no GitHub action or whatever When those website is built it gets correct version number from another website Exactly, right, so it's it's just as just as the change logs are data-driven Change logs are data-driven from a data file that provides the definition in this case These numbers are data-driven, but they're taken from data that's downloaded from an external from another URL And then that data is fed into the process. I see so Nice nice result.  No, thank you. All right, then I propose let's call today's session done


We're going to modify that LAMP stack for cloud and make sure we're a big part of this 400 million servers that are coming soon. And so to talk about what one of these users is actually doing, we've got Time Warner Cable. They were a Super User Finalist in our Vancouver Summit. And they are now running OpenStack for quite some time and doing some interesting things beyond OpenStack. So to talk us through it, we've got the engineering director of application services, Tim Pletcher. Hey, Mark. Welcome, Tim. Thank you. All right. So what's your role at Time Warner Cable? So I lead a team that has recently stood up to provide a general purpose multi-tenant container runtime for the engineering groups and then also point services like Elastic Surge, Kafka, Cassandra, things like that. Very cool. So talking a bit this morning about what's in different stacks. So what's in your stack? Well, as far as that goes, basically it's Mesos. And we came to that decision after a fairly decent review. OK. And what's Mesos running on? Or what happens below that? So yeah, so the good part about what we have going for us is IAS. And so we came in to and stood up the team able to take advantage of the work that Jason Rualt and his group had done over the past 18, 24 months to get IAS in place. And as you know, if you go do physical provisioning in a large organization, it can be a fairly long process. So yeah. So we were able to kickstart and get going in the way we went. Cool. So how long did it take? And how did your team kind of get mobilized? Yeah, so that's actually one of the cool things about it. We have a very small team. It's four engineers. And we had the team fully populated internally mid-January and started to work. And then we'll turn on in production in two regions at the end of May. Well, so January of this year? Yes. OK, so four or five months, you're already rolling into production? Yeah, absolutely. That's amazing. So how did you pull that off with a small team? Well, it was a matter of folks that had open stack experience and came from high velocity shops. I brought some folks with me from previous gig where we had a fairly sizable platform. And it just all came together. And having all the plumbing of the IS side with the network and everything else made it go pretty fast. So we were pretty pleased. Cool. So in terms of that plumbing, what's your wish list for that team that's running your open stack cloud? How can they serve you better for what you want to do with the app side? Yeah, so with Mesos, you'd probably prefer to run it on bare metal, which is the more common implementation mode. And so I nag Jason on about a weekly basis for Ironic at this point. So that's the next big thing from the open stack side that we're looking for. Cool. So Jason, wherever you are, give him his Ironic. The Ironic team will be happy about that as well. I'm sure you can meet the PTL while you're here if you haven't already. So you're combining different technologies. I mean, what's the kind of philosophy behind that?  So we ended up with Mesosphere as an add-on. And we're actually our primary Mesos provider. And then also AVI Networks and CoreOS. And so that allowed us to pick and choose. So you're going to find that some things fit better for your team and your maturity level and how you want to work. And you can pick and choose on that and have a lot of success. OK, so you're working with different partners and looking for the ones that are willing to plug and play with other companies and that. Well, to your point when you're talking, I mean, it is the reality that you can find really great tooling, and you'll find things that really work for a scenario that you have. And the ability to be that modular in your approach is really critical. Cool, thank you, Tim. Thanks, Marty, for the update. Hey, yeah, have a good one, if you hear it.


Jnanam Sukadham Marnamkar Milanam Smarnamkar Shadeha Sakalamkar Samayad Patakilamkar Good evening, good evening everyone. I said good evening. I thought you are not in talking terms with me already. Good evening everyone, welcome to visionary women.  And now you see by the video that he's known for his mountain biking. This humanitarian doesn't concern with my diet, okay? Well, and he's also known for his incredible sense of humor, his warmth. Like vegetarian, non-vegetarian, humanitarian. I hope people don't misunderstand that. But most impressive, I have to say, is my husband and I were at your ashram probably two years ago and we got a first glimpse at what you do in rural areas by uplifting them from poverty from the huge schools that you run. And we at visionary women feel that it's a huge honor to have you here tonight. So we can discuss a few things that is of importance to us as well. So welcome to our community at visionary women. And the purpose, I'm so sorry, I feel that maybe I'm looking back at people, but the purpose of our salon series is to create experiences of learning, meaning and belonging for our members and for those who soon will be our members, right? Yes. And as I was talking to just a little bit earlier before the event, what we see in the national conversation this past year is that people are trying to refigure how men and women should interact with each other. And I thought that it would be very appropriate for tonight to also invite men in our forum, given that we're a women's organization, we're very well aware, not only our board, but our whole membership, that in order to have true understanding we need to be talking about these conversations allowed collectively and most importantly with an open heart. And men are our partners, our brothers, our fathers, our husbands and our allies. And we wanted to start off first really talking about maybe the whole idea of consciousness, what it means. For those of you who haven't watched Saad Guru, there are hundreds of YouTube videos and other teachings and there was one at MIT that you were talking about consciousness that I thought would be very interesting for our audience to really get the definition of what it means. See what is a man and what is a woman is a small difference that nature has introduced into a species just to address a certain aspect of our life. Essentially to address the reproductive aspect. When I say reproductive aspect, we all exist because somebody reproduced. Hello? Is it okay? If nobody was drawn to anybody, if nobody felt a bit horny, we wouldn't exist. Is this a guru speaking? We wouldn't exist, isn't it? Let's come to terms with this. We don't exist because out of the love for children they produced, no, they felt horny. And here we are. There is no need to make our biology either filthy or raise it to another level. We just have to look at it for what it is. We have to come to terms with our biology first of all. It's the most rudimentary thing but unfortunately that's not happened to most human societies that we have not come to terms with our biology. Body parts are ruling our minds. Yes? So it's from that context that you see this problem evolving, how to work together. I'm saying, please, if you find some gap in what I'm saying, because in a brief little bit of time we're trying to say some profound things, if you find a gap you must ask a question you must not conclude against me, okay? I can fill those gaps but I'll create some gaps because to go quickly. Essentially why should that matter to you? Whether you… right now you're a man or a woman, why should it matter to me? These things matter only in bathrooms and bedrooms. Why right now it should matter to me whether you're a man or a woman? Why can't I just treat you as just one more person? Hello? This is not against anybody because we have made human biology so big in our minds. It's become so big because we have not accepted the fundamental biological difference. Yes? Because for thousands of years religions and philosophies have been telling you what's wrong about your biology. How the fundamentals of your biology is not okay. How the fundamentals of your biology is sin. Because of this we came to a certain level of resistance about human biology, particularly a woman's biology.  Right now if I tell you as an experiment, next ten seconds nobody should think of monkeys. Try please. You will only be thinking of monkeys.  We have made human biology into such a big thing, a small difference. Between man and woman we made it into such a big thing in our minds, we can't keep it down for a moment. Everywhere, wherever you are you have to be conscious about somebody's body parts. Why? I can understand a fourteen, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen year old boy, when you know when you were ten, eleven everything was fine.  And after that you just look like this. Every little bump on somebody's body looked like a word by itself. Till then you were quite okay. I think that happens at a certain point. Well at least by twenty you must fix yourself. Again you must become normal, you must be able to look at a human body just as it is without giving it all kinds of meanings. This is what consciousness means because consciousness is an intelligence beyond your physiological and psychological structure. See when we sit here, your body is your body, my body is my body. No way these two things can be one. People try hard but it never becomes one. Only when we are buried we become one. In the soil we become one. But as long as you and me exist here, that's your body, this is my body, very clear. That's your mind, this is my mind, very clear.  But there is no such thing as my life and your life. This is a living cosmos. You have captured some, I have captured some, that's about it.  This got nothing to do with anybody's biology. Biology is just a small physical difference. Just to facilitate one aspect, continuation of human race, isn't it? Otherwise we could all be made one way. If there was no need, if some seeds fell out of your ears and children would come out, then we wouldn't need this difference. So this difference is to accommodate one aspect of life. If you and me are not connected in that aspect of life, I have no business what you got on your body. Yes?  The question is if we're doing something together, well, do you make sense? How do I make sense to you? That's about it. But biology has become a very big thing. One reason in the work, working spaces and, you know, work areas, I think this is only in America, maybe this is the second generation of women. Or really I can say this is really the first generation of women who really stepped out to work in every arena of life. That's so almost everywhere in the world. In India also it's very new which in the last twenty-five years that women are really stepping out to work. This has happened not because of some liberal revolution that happened. This has happened simply because of technology. Technology has taken out the significance of man's brawn. When there was no technology almost everything was done with human muscle. When that was so naturally man dominated because of the muscular force. Domination also was only in the survival aspects of life. There were other aspects of life where the woman always played a significant role. We were not born to men, I was not at least. So they always played a significant role but roles were divided because economic aspect of life was largely muscle powered. So men dominated. Now with technology muscle is of no great significance in today's world. So naturally women are coming into this space. This should happen very as simple evolution. No fight is needed, no revolution is needed. Once you see muscle is not significant, women will fill those spaces. It's anyway happening. There is no need to make a big thing about it. Exploitation, if you're talking about exploitation I want you to understand. Still we are in, as a civilization, we are still in that level of crudeness of mind. It's not just women, anything weaker than us we exploit. Yes or no? Every creature on the planet we're exploiting, aren't we? Hello? Not just women, children are beaten why? Just because they're small. Hello? Why do you think children are beaten by a lot of people? Simply because they're smaller than you.  So exploitative nature of who we are exists in all aspects of life. When it comes to women, probably that exploitation turns into a sexual… takes on a sexual tone. But fundamentally what needs to go is this urge to exploit anything and everything which is little weaker than me. That should go. If that doesn't go, people will find devious ways to do the same damn thing. You can do as much as you want, you can fight as much as you want, but people will find devious ways to do the same thing, isn't it? So this urge, if somebody is little less stronger than me, I have to mess them in some way. This has to go. If this has to go, the most fundamental thing is just this. Because today it's about consciousness. What consciousness means is, see you have a body. Your body is just a heap of food that you've gathered over a period of time. Yes? What was soil became food, what was food became flesh and blood. Here we are, most people don't get this till you bury them.  Otherwise, one day anyway we'll get it from the Magots, but that's late. So what you accumulate can be yours, cannot be you, isn't it? Hello? Whatever we accumulate, we can say this belongs to me. You cannot say it's me, isn't it? So similarly, whatever the content of your mind is also accumulated from the impressions that we have taken in. So this is also an accumulation, this is also an accumulation. These things are two basic faculties we have. Right now, unfortunately we are so barely identified with these two things that we can't use them as we should, but they are the source of a lot of mess in the world. So when you say consciousness, you're talking about a dimension of intelligence which is neither of the body, which is neither of your mind, but it is the source of both the body and the mind.  Hello? Happening, right? If I take a piece of bread in my hands right here and turn it into a human body, who would you think I am? Huh? Magician? Did you see a magician making a baby? Who would you think I am? Creator himself, isn't it? But every day you are doing this.  Within a few hours you make it into human body. The most complex machine on the planet you manufacture with all kinds of trash in Los Angeles. Aren't you doing it? So when this dimension of intelligence exists within you, if you touch the dimension naturally your identity will be with that dimension. Right now the only problem is human experience is limited to their biology and their psychological structure. Physiological and psychological structures are the only two things you have experienced. Because of this your identities are there. Because of this, this body part difference between the same species has become such a big deal. But do you feel that men and women have different essences? Do they have… there's a… you've talked about the masculine and the feminine principle. Could you tell us a little bit about that? See we should not misunderstand masculine with male and feminine with female. Female and male is a manifestation. Masculine and feminine are two fundamental qualities in nature. Because physical nature in the universe happens between polarities. So one dimension of polarity is masculine and feminine. You may be a woman but you may have more masculine in you than a man. You may be a man, you may have much more feminine in you than most women. So the question is not about being male or female. Being male or female is just a biological manifestation. Masculine and feminine is the basic polarities which is the basis of physical creation here. So if you want to be a complete human being, it is very important both masculine and feminine are there within you in equal proportion. Only then you are a full-fledged human being.  In this skew, you will misunderstand everything. In this skew, you will become a very limited possibility of life. If you… you might have seen these images probably because of the yoga studios and other things in California, you will see in India Adiyogi or he's known as Shiva, he's seen as a ultimate man. He's the ultimate man not because he's a super macho. He's ultimate man because one half of him is a woman. Have you seen these images? One half is a very athletic man, another half is a full-fledged woman. So his body itself is one half man and one half woman. In yoga, this called as pingala and ida, two dimensions of your energy within you. Only when these two things are in balance, you have a proper perspective of life. Otherwise, you have become a very biological entity. Biology is a basis. Biology cannot be the peak of who we are. So I… I do know that you have a quote that says that whether you're male or female, if you're not in touch with the feminine, you don't enjoy the finer things in life. So is the feminine principle things that are more receptive? See, when we say masculine, this is… there are two fundamental forces working within us all the time. One is our instinct of survival. We want to survive. We can take survival to different levels, but essentially the instinct of survival is this one wants to… this limited entity wants to survive and do well. This instinct is there in all of us, it's there in every creature in the world. Another dimension is there is something within you which always wants to expand. When you are in a survival mode, you want to build walls around yourself. Boundaries are important. If you let your dog loose on the street, you will see he goes on peeing all over the place. Not because he has some urinary problem, I'm sorry I'm not able to look at you. Not because he has some urinary problem, he's building his peaking dome. He's setting his boundaries. It's a natural instinct. He is trying to set his own boundary all the time. This is survival instinct in all of us that we want to build a wall, protection, self-preservation. But there's another dimension which wants to expand. If you don't empower that, if you just empower only your instinct of survival, then you will build a wall of self-preservation and after some time you realize walls of self-preservation are also of self-imprisonment after some time. Yes? If you build a wall today, today you see an enemy outside and you build a wall.  Somebody else put you into prison, that's bad. But you yourself put you into a prison, that's horror. Yes? So the instinct of self-preservation has to be consciously balanced. Otherwise we'll build a... we'll end up building walls and walls. Oh, I'm in California. This is so funny. No, no, I was not making a political statement. No, I just did. So inevitably when we feel unsafe, we'll build a wall. So the instinct of self-preservation cannot be ignored. It is there, obviously, isn't it? Obviously it is there in all of us. Walls are not always of brick and mortar, they are variety of walls we set up. But the longing to expand is also there. How much expansion do you want if you sincerely look at this?  If you're there, you want to be little bigger. But suppose I make you the queen of this planet, hello? Don't look at me, hopefully, yeah?  Suppose I make you the queen of this planet. Will you be fulfilled? No. You will look at the moon. Why not that? If I give you the moon, will you keep quiet? You will look at the next galaxy. If I give you one galaxy, will you keep quiet? You will look at the other galaxies. So there is something within you which wants to expand. How much expansion do you believe will settle you? If you really look at it, you want to expand boundlessly. There is something within you which does not like boundaries. Please look at this. If I impression you right now in a five by five cubicle, you'll feel horrible. So tomorrow we'll announce your liberation and liberate you into a ten by ten cubicle. No, you will feel wonderful for a day. And then you will feel horrible in the ten by ten cubicle. We will liberate you into a hundred by hundred cubicle. You will feel really great for three days. Again you'll feel the same thing. It doesn't matter where I set the boundary. The moment you can feel the boundary, you want to break it, isn't it? So there is something within you which does not like boundaries. So if there is something within you which does not like boundaries, it simply means it is longing to become boundless. You cannot become boundless through physical means, isn't it? Physicality means the fundamentals of physicality is a defined boundary. Without a defined boundary, there is no physical body. Suppose there were no boundaries to my body. Where would I be? Here or there or where? Only because this is… has a boundary, it is here. Your body has a boundary, so it's there. But there is something within us which longs to be boundless. If we do not empower this, there will be no balance between masculine and feminine. That is why ultimate liberation, both for men and women, it's not to see one cannot be liberated from the other. Both have to be liberated. From what? From this bondage of being stuck in our own bodies and identified with little bodily changes that we have between us and go on endlessly about the same debate. No. Unless we become free from the identification of our own physical form, there is really no freedom. This is what consciousness means. An intelligence which creates this body. Today, there's a whole lot of interest in the western world about the brain. In the yogic sciences, we do not attach much significance to the brain because we think through the entire body. This is the way of women for a long time. They thought with their body. They did not have all those complicated thoughts that men were struggling with, but they simply knew what to do, what not to do. Because they thought with their entire body because their body was doing things which no brain can do. Even now if I ask you, what you call as intelligence in modern terms, in today's educated world, what people think is mind is a combination of memory and intelligence. Isn't it so? Memory and your ability to concoct something out of what you remember, the data that you have and what you make out of it and use it. Now you're considered smart, isn't it? Let's start with memory. See, if I ask you ten generations ago how your grandmothers look like, do you remember? No. Do you remember? No.  Your body remembers or no? Your body remembers or no? How your skin tone was a million years ago for your forefathers, your body still remembers? Yes or no? So in terms of memory, what your body carries is trillions of times more than what your brain can ever carry. Yes or no? The complexity of activity that are happening in a single molecule of DNA with all your brains, you can't figure it. Yes or no? More complicated activity is happening here than here. Yes? So this is a body of intelligence. The question is, can you employ it or do you just run on one thing? In the yogic sciences, we look at human intelligence as sixteen parts. So this is like a sixteen-wheeled truck, but you choose to drive it on one wheel. Very strenuous. So you will see educated people are the most stressful people on the planet because they're driving a sixteen-wheeled truck on one wheel, very difficult. Their intellect, their thought is the only damn thing they're trying to use and it's very difficult. You don't have to think through everything. You know my… can I just tell a small story? Yes please. My great-grandmother lived to be one-one-three. Wow. That's not only achievement she had. She got married when she was fourteen and those days in India, an unmarried girl cannot use tobacco. But once she is married, she is free to use tobacco. So on the first day she exercised her right to use tobacco and she lived in a certain way. People started saying, she's a devil of a woman. Not because she did any harm to anybody, simply because if she laughed, the whole street shook. Like that she laughed. Those days in those societies, women were not supposed to laugh loudly. They're supposed to laugh in a controlled way. Only street women laughed loudly. Family women laughed very… At least when men were there, they did not laugh. Because there was nothing to laugh about. But she laughed in such a way that the whole street would shake if she laughed. So people said she laughed like a devil. Always, unfortunately, this is the whole thing. The devil is a laughing one. God is a dead, serious one. It's your choice. So she lived wild. Wild means at the age of sixty, seven or sixty-eight, she lost her husband and then she decided. This is a very large land-owning family. So she moved out from the family and built a small temple with her own hands. In somebody else's land. Somebody else means another family's land, not without permission, with their permission.   And she built a temple, not for any God. She sat there. She's the main piece. No God, she just sat there and people started visiting her and slowly, you know, this following group for her and she'll just live there. When we went there for vacation, she would come to see us. She was an incredible woman. She just captured me in a certain way, simply because one thing she laughed. Another thing, when I met her, she was over a hundred years of age and her hair, full hair below her knees. You know, she would leave her hair loose and dance like that. So I just liked… she was freaky. With her, you could do anything, nothing was wrong. With everybody else, she's constantly trying to tell you what's right, what's wrong, what's right, what's wrong. With this one woman, you could do what you want and she was fine. And sometimes, you know, she would… she would be crying and laughing at the same time. And I was, what's happening with you?  Everybody says you're crazy. Why are you crying and laughing at the same time? She would just burst into a hoot of laughter and say, someday you will know and she would laugh. And I would see her like this. If they give her breakfast, she first goes and feeds the ants, then the sparrows, then the squirrels. Most of her breakfast is over in this.  All these advisors died, but she lived and lived. She buried her husband, her children, her grandchildren, some of her great-grandchildren, but she lived on. And many times I've seen her, after having fed the ants and everything, she would simply sit there, not even eating this little breakfast she has. Tears flowing down her cheeks. And I would ask her, what's wrong with you? Because you know, I thought she's very emotional about the ants, because I was five, six years of age. I was going, stamping the ants and she was so emotional. She never stopped me from even killing the ants, though she was feeding them. And then I'll ask, what's wrong with you? Why? She said, she would say, I'm full.  It took me another 20 years to realize what she was talking about. So for me, she became the symbol of feminism for me. She was the ultimate woman, because she fulfilled everything that she's expected to fulfill, but she was never a part of that nonsense. She was always beyond that. And this is because not you have great thoughts. Thoughts are very rudimentary stuff in human life. This must be understood, I'm sorry, because I'm being introduced as a thought leader, I'm getting scared of that. See, thought is happening only from the limited data that you have gathered in your head, isn't it so? But there is something more phenomenal happening all across, isn't it? Hello? The intelligence of the creation is functioning right now here, is it or not? If you can transform a piece of bread into a human being, that means the very intelligence of the source of creation is throbbing within you right now. Instead of identifying with that, we're unfortunately getting identified with what we accumulate, with the car we have, with the house we have, with the relationships we have, with the body we have, with the accumulated knowledge that we have. We have gotten identified with things that we have acquired, rather than being identified with the source of who we are. So this is what consciousness means, but this will not come by thinking differently. You must touch that dimension beyond physiological and psychological process. This is something that must happen. When that happens, there will be no problem about who is a man, who is a woman. Could you please tell us how we can touch that dimension? We can start with a very simple process, which today tens of millions of people are practicing across the world. I brought this out because you know when I was just about maybe two-and-a-half, or yeah around two-and-a-half years of age, my mother, her health was not good. So they sent me to my aunt's place who lived in my grandfather's house. My aunt was just married and she was only eighteen years of age. She was that bubbly, joyful, loving human being that you can't stop her for a moment. And she took me in as her own and we became great friends. I was there for nearly two years maybe, but after that I came back to my parents, but I always developed that close relationship with her, not of an aunt, but we became buddies right through our life. Then a time came and her life went on like normal, you know, marriage good, children cute and the boy got educated and went somewhere and the girl got married as she wished and grandchildren came, everything wonderful. Then she got some ailment. Then she knew in the next two years she's going to die, next two years. Then I saw this wonderful human being deteriorating into nothing. Total mess she became. This such a loving, joyful, exuberant human being that nobody could stop suddenly became a wreck. I just looked at her. I was into too much travels here and there, I tried to catch up with her, but nothing much could be done with her because she just shattered. I just looked at her and saw the only problem with her is she knew two things, her physiological structure and her psychological structure. She managed it well and kept her kept herself loving, joyful, wonderful, everything. The moment she realized these two things are going to end, she's finished. She's just finished.  At that time I thought, this is something that needs to happen. So we started what is called as in Tamil Nadu we started this. This means one drop spirituality. Everybody must have at least a drop, a drop of something which is beyond your body, which is beyond your mind. Something within you which is not a concoction of your mind. A place to stand beyond physiological and psychological process must be there in every life. As a part of this we launched what is called today being practiced by many people. Is anybody practicing Isha Kriya? This is a simple process. Initially it looks like a psychological process because people can't keep their mind aside. They have to use it in some way. So we are going through the psychological process but if you go deep enough into it, if you sit here, your body will be here, your mind will be there. What is you is little away from that. Once there is a little distance between you and your body, between you and your mind, this is the end of suffering because human suffering happens only on two different levels. Physiological suffering, psychological suffering. Do you know any other kind of suffering? Hello? Physical suffering, mental suffering, this is all. Once there is a distance between you and your body, between you and your mind, this is the end of suffering. This must happen to you not at the end of your life, at the very beginning of your life because the fear of suffering is what has crippled humanity. A human being has not explored the full depth and dimension of who they are simply because of fear of suffering. What will happen to me, what will happen to me is always the concern, isn't it?  If this assurance and ease came into your life, then you would explore life in many more ways than you are doing it right now, isn't it so? This needs to happen. If we want to unleash human genius on this planet, the fear of suffering has to go. For that to go, you must know something beyond your physiological and psychological structures. Dr. Prakash Gautam Absolutely. Do you feel that... First of all, I wanted to ask you, can you define... What is the difference between meditation and prayer? Oh, you're trying to get me into trouble. Dr. Prakash Gautam Yes. No, because some people say my prayer is like meditation. Dr. Prakash Gautam Could be. Dr. Prakash Gautam It could be. But probably meditation is more of a form of listening, I would imagine. Dr. Prakash Gautam See, there is something called as organized prayer. And there is something that all of us may experience at some point, you don't have to be religious for this, sometimes you become prayerful. You saw a glorious sunset, you just sat there without knowing why. You're not saying anything to the sun, after all he's going. Simply, just the beauty and the magnificent nature of what it is, maybe your hands came together like this, like this, something you did. It happens, right? So you're prayerful. To be prayerful is a fantastic place to be. Now somebody created systems to make you prayerful, but unfortunately that just became prayer for a lot of people. Prayer means you're talking to somebody, a long-distance talk. And unfortunately, if you look at the prayers on the planet, I would say 95% of the prayers on the planet, whatever kind of religion they belong to, is just about, Dear God, give me this, give me that, save me, protect me. Is that so? So, give me this, give me that, save me, protect me. Does it seem like a divine process to you, or does it seem like survival process outsourced? So, outsourcing your survival is not an efficient way to survive. To survive on this planet, you don't need any divine help.  That's all you need to survive. You don't need any other forces to come and cooperate with you for survival. Only when your life is beyond survival, you're looking for other dimensions of existence, then you may need the cooperation of other forces. For survival, when a worm can survive, an insect can survive, a bird can survive, an animal can survive.  What is this? The only problem maybe you want to survive like somebody else, that is a problem. That's not going to be ever achieved, because somebody else will always be doing something different or better or whatever you think it is. So, prayer as a process unfortunately has become talking process. If you are prayerful, it's fantastic. So, being in meditation, see the English word meditation is not specific to anything. It's a general term. If somebody sits here with eyes closed, we say they are meditating. But with eyes closed, you can do many things. You can do japa, tapha, dharana, dhyana, samadhi, shonyas, samyama. There are many, many things you can do. Or you might have just mastered the art of sleeping in vertical postures. That is also an art. So, the word, English word meditation is not describing anything specific. But as you said one word, listening. Listening is a dangerous thing. Because if you start listening, people will think listen to what? Listen to God. All those people, I'm saying with all your respect, so those who are devout, those who are prayerful, that's a different matter. But people who claimed they heard God speaking, they did the most terrible things on this planet. Yes or no?   Okay? So, listening is a dangerous word. The moment you say listen, people will start listening to all kinds of conversations that are happening. But to become listening is a wonderful thing. If you take these words literally, prayer, listening, all these things can become ugly because people always have this thing about what is my experience of life. I translate everything according to that, isn't it? Whatever is told to me, I will translate it within the limitations of my experience of life. With this, if you say listen, they must listen to somebody, whom should I listen to? God or devil, please listen to God. Then he starts talking. So, listening is a quality. In yoga, we call this being a sati. Oh, that's very wonderful because sati also means a woman. Sati also means a wife. So, we call this sattipattana. Have you heard this word? Ana prana sati yoga. This means just to wait upon something. Because they saw in ancient societies, women had a certain quality of waiting which made them very special. Because it's not like today, if a man goes out every seven minutes, you can keep track of him. You can put a GPS tag on him. Where is he going? What is he doing? Every seven minutes, he has to message back where he is. Those days, either on business or war or expedition, they went out. You never know whether they're going to come back or not come back.  It's always possible he won't come back. But they waited. That waiting had a very special quality because in waiting there is an eternal quality. In doing, all doing has a beginning and an end, isn't it? Waiting has an eternal quality. So this quality in the yoga we refer to as sati. Sati means wife and a woman. The feminine is called sati and this is the quality of waiting. In a way, it's listening.  You understand it's not all about messing with it. There are some things we do and rest we wait. It's like pregnancy. Some things you did, rest you wait. Life happens. I'm going to ask one last question and I'll turn it over to our audience for questions. But you were talking about willingness and visionary women is a volunteer run organization. And I know that every single person who is here is giving their time to one organization or another. And the fact that you have nine million volunteers and you were talking about the relationship between volunteerism and willingness. And that it's through willingness that you uplift your consciousness if I'm quoting you correctly or I'm understanding it.  See, before we come to women, first thing is visionary. What a vision means is, say everybody has desires. Desire is an incremental way of enhancing our life.  These are incremental ways of arranging and rearranging our lives, which are needed to do a few things. When you say I'm a visionary, what you're saying is, I have a larger desire, which is not about just incremental improvement of my life. Desire is about me always. Vision is an all in all inclusive process. So this itself is a phenomenal thing. If people instead of having desires, if they have a vision, vision is always all inclusive. Desire is personal. Desire leads to incremental changes and improvements. Vision can transform the whole situation. I like music.  A volunteer means somebody who is doing something willingly, right? There's no other compulsion. There are no financial compulsions. There are no social compulsions. There is no something else. You want to do something willingly.   Oh, thank you. Because I've spoken to conscripted people also. I've spoken in the prisons, I've spoken in many places. So you're here willingly. You're doing something willingly is the fundamental of your joy, isn't it so? Hello?  Isn't it so? Hello? The difference between heaven and hell is just this. You're doing something willingly, that's your heaven.  We have already taken on attitudes, what we like and what we don't like.  Now with this person, I will do things willingly. With this person, I'll do things unwillingly. This may be two people, two aspects of life, two communities, two nations, two many things. This I will do willingly, this I do unwillingly. This means I've decided in my mind, this is good, this is bad. When I hear even on national news channels, good guys and bad guys, it just once you have this kind of thing, you are going to be disastrous to the planet. It's just a question of time. The moment you decide this is a good person, this is a bad person, this is a bad person, this has gone deep into American society. No, there are no good people and bad people. Everybody is oscillating between the two. If you create a very pleasant, wonderful atmosphere, everybody behaves wonderfully. If you create an unpleasant atmosphere, a whole lot of people act nasty. Yes or no? There are joyful people and miserable people, but there are no good people and bad people. The moment we think we are good, we are entitled to destroy the bad, isn't it? Oh, we've been destroying a lot of people for a long time. Time to stop that because human beings are in different levels of experience and understanding, variety of people.  Isn't it so? Those who are not like me must be bad people because the basis of goodness and what you think is goodness is decided by you. No, you have no business to do that. Willing means this, I'm just willing. I'm a hundred percent yes to life. I am not yes to this one, no to this one. No, I am just yes and yes to life.  You have become a willing life. You have become so willing that you have no will of your own. People ask me, Sathguru, how do you operate with all these people? All kinds of horrible questions they're asking, they're doing this, they're doing that. I said my life is not about them, it's about me. It's about how I am. It's about me. It doesn't matter how they are, that's their choice. But how I am is my choice, this is my way. No matter what they do, I'm like this. Because I have not given that freedom to anybody that somebody can freak me, somebody can make me angry, somebody can make me happy, somebody can make me unhappy. These privileges I kept to myself. It's time you do that too because if somebody else can decide what can happen within you right now, isn't this the ultimate slavery? Isn't this? Someone else can decide what should happen within you. What happens around you, of course so many people decide. What happens around us is not hundred percent ours, but what happens within me must be my making, isn't it? Right now just about anybody can freak anybody because they're not volunteers, they're unwilling. Volunteering means you have no will of your own. You can do whatever is needed.  This means all kinds of people. Most of them are not qualified for the jobs that they're doing. And I cannot fire them because they're volunteers. I can't work with this person, she's so horrible, I can't do it. I tell them see in this world, this is the sort of people who exist like this, like this, like this, like this. This is the kind of people there are. But if you want to work with ideal people, you must go to heaven and today. But if you think what you're doing is very significant, you must learn to work with all these horrible people. This is how the world is. If you think what you're doing is very significant, you learn to work with all kinds of people. You will see horrible people will do wonderful things. Yes? But if you want to work with ideal people, you won't find any. I haven't found one yet. All kinds of mixed bags. But if you are willing that you are not yes and no, yes to one, no to another, you're simply one big yes, you will find a way. Thank you so much. That I always say that it's the resistance to life. Question, since the early 20th century, physicists have been like Max Planck and Einstein and any number of physicists have been positing that consciousness is causative of physical reality. That consciousness comes first before physical reality has been manifested. I'd like to hear if you have any comment about that. I'll need a few minutes for this question. I'm sure at least when you were in school, you blew some soap bubbles, did you? So bubbles?  Same soap, if you give it to two people, one person blows that big bubble, another person gets only this big bubble. Isn't it happened? Yes, because something so simple as blowing a bubble needs a certain dimension of attention.  Those who don't have, they get these tiny bubbles going. Something's that simple, same soap. So when my bubble is floating and your bubble is floating, that's my bubble, this is your bubble, clearly there. Then of course, after sometime it goes poop. When it goes poop, there is no such thing as my air and your air. But when it was encased in the bubble, 100% my bubble and your bubble, just like that, this bubble and that bubble.  The scale, scope and profoundness of your life simply depends on how much life you captured.  Consciousness is a highly corrupted word, particularly in California, because people are using that for just about everything. But they will continue to use that word because I'm trying to reclaim it. We can call it life also because the only reason, right now, are you alive? Hello, all of you. Some of you are not saying anything, I'm asking. Are you alive? Yes. How do you know you're alive?  So how do you know you're alive? You're conscious, isn't it? Suppose you became unconscious, would you know you're alive? No.  So what you call is consciousness or what you call as life or not two separate things. So I did not know about physics, talking about consciousness. I knew Einstein said something, vaguely, because I'm... You know, as you see, I am unschooled. So I did not go as far as Einstein to study physics, but I paid attention to this piece of life. I paid attention in such a way, as I paid more and more attention, I realized that the problem is in the nature of our faculties. See right now, if I show you my hand, if you see this part of my hand, you cannot see this part of my hand, isn't it so? If you're hearing sound, you cannot sense the silence. If you're in silence, you cannot feel the sound. If you're in light, you cannot feel the darkness. If you're in darkness, you cannot feel the light. The human faculty of sense perception, of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching, this is how you know life. All these things are always happening in comparison with something else. Comparison means... What you know by comparison is good enough for survival, but not good enough for knowing the nature of what it is. This is the problem that modern science is struggling with and will continue to struggle with unless... I'm... I'm very glad to hear that early 20th century, they said consciousness is the basis, but still we're in early 21st century, but still we have not moved towards consciousness, we are still studying physical things forever. People are studying the brain. I was with that European project called Blue Brain and I was... They were still... They're building a huge massive computer brain, which is like about three times this hall full of computers and they had built some eighteen percent of the human brain. I said, see, I got all packed here. You guys...  No, we're studying. That is fine. You are very excited about the intelligence and the million functions that are happening in your brain. But even the brain was created from within, from the bread that you eat, isn't it so? Hello? Even the brain, why are you not interested in that which creates the body and the brain? Definitely it's more intelligent than the brain, isn't it? So if you want to put a label on that, we can call it consciousness. I generally just call it life. Or if you want to call it God, you can call it. You want to call it the creator, you can call it. Because today there are gender issues, we will stick to life. So, life is not... As I already... We went through this. There's... When it comes to body and mind, there is you and me. When it comes to life, there is no you and me. This is a living space. We just captured a little bit. So this is going on. If we lose this ability to hold it, even if everything... All the organs in your body are functioning, still you will not live, isn't it? People do die of old age, even if they don't have any disease or ailment. Because life chooses to leave for whatever reason. So, what you're referring to as consciousness is definitely the basis of all physical existence. Well, modern physicists have gone on to say that over 99.999, whatever number of nines in an atom is empty. It's empty space. Only a minuscule is physical. This is the same proportion approximately even in the cosmos that over 99% plus is empty. Only physical manifestation is very small. If you look up in the sky and the night, because your visual apparatus are in a certain way, which are very deceptive, it makes you think, oh my god, millions of stars. But actually, the largest thing out there is empty space, isn't it? Most people will never see that because our visual apparatus are tuned to see physical matter. You can only see that which stops light. Please look at this carefully. You can see my hand right now only because it stops light, isn't it? If my hand allowed light to pass through, you wouldn't see. Right now, there is something here very vital for your life that you're not seeing, which is the air that you breathe. You cannot see. But isn't that more important than my hand? Hello? So there is a living cosmos which is the basis of everything. It's just thrown out a little bit of physical matter, including your little body. But we have gotten so identified with this physicality, its form and its shape, and now the gender of it has become a big deal. Because of that, we are seeing life in a very small way. The 99.9% is that life or the 0.1% is life. Please tell me. The bigger thing, isn't it? This is just a small manifestation, but we are still very juvenile as a species. In the sense, we are still, when I say juvenile, when we are what adolescent, body parts are important. Yes or no? We are still, as a humanity, we are still in that condition. Body parts are super important. This is why spiritual process is important. When I say spiritual, once again, this is another most corrupted word on the planet. If I say spiritual, people are thinking, looking up, looking down, looking at heaven, whatever, no. Spiritual means your experience of life has transcended the limitations of physiological and psychological process, which is what you are saying the physicist also said. That's very wise of them, that without experience, with inference they are saying that we acknowledge their intelligence, but after one century, we are still not there as a race, as a human species. But one thing I must share with you here is, I was just telling Nicholas, which came back to me because you asked some question, see, when I started doing this work, thirty-six, thirty-seven years ago, what I found was, when I conducted events and programs, over eighty-two to eighty-five percent of the people came because of physical ailments, because they knew this will give relief. Only twelve to fifteen percent of the people came there want to know something, experience something. But today, over eighty-seven, eighty-eight percent of the people come because they want to know something, experience something. Only ten to twelve percent of the people come for ailments, which is a phenomenal shift in the human society. Can we have one question from that side of the room? Good evening. Welcome to Los Angeles. Thank you for your time. The question I had was, you mentioned to be free, you have to be stepping outside of the body and the consciousness. How do you achieve that, to have that freedom? That was my question. But how do you achieve that separation when you step out of the basically physical body and the consciousness? If you want to make a small attempt, there is Isha Kriya, you can just download this app free. It's a free app, you can download this with headphones, you can daily practice this for some time. If you do it for thirty-forty days, then you can do it without any headphone just by yourself. Initially, you take support, after that you do it by yourself. This is a simple way to do it. If you are willing to commit thirty to thirty-two hours, about thirty-two hours of focused time, then we have a more powerful and effective process, which is called as Inner Engineering, which is offered in daily classes or also preparatory part of it as online and the final part of finishing part of it, which is direct. It is a transmission of a certain dimension of practice. We must understand this because with all due respect, they've done what they have done. But the way yoga is happening generally, not everybody, generally the way it's happening, it's a bit scary to me because when you when you make a very profound process into just an exercise mechanism or just a breathing exercise, you want to exercise your body, exercise your breathing, exercise everything, that's not the way it works. Even the physical dimension of yoga, see of over two hundred sutras that Patanjali gave, only one sutra talks about the physicality of yoga, tiram sukham asana. This means a posture which is comfortable and stable is your asana. To get to this people do many twists and turns, that's okay. But only one, nobody bothers what is there remaining two hundred and odd things that he's spoken. So the physical aspect has come to the west and that's become big. It's good, it creates health, well-being. But I want you to understand, there are more people on this planet who are healthy and miserable than unhealthy and miserable. Those who have ill health, at least they have a good reason. They have a good excuse. Healthy and miserable, you have no reason. No excuse to fall back on. So it is important that you understand yogic practices are not practices. They are live forms that it is made into a seed form and given to you. You're supposed to hold it that way, so that the seed sprouts and grows and becomes something phenomenal within you. It just takes away your backache, your headache, your something else. This is not of great significance. Why I understand, if your backache is aching right now, that is the biggest thing in the universe. Yes or no? Right now your headache, if God appeared, what would you ask? Headache must go. That looks like the biggest thing, isn't it? So I understand, when body is in trouble, keeping the body's well is important because even if your little finger is hurting right now, this little finger will become the center of the universe. Yes or no? When it is fine, you can just ignore this body and simply sit here and talk about other things.  Little finger will become the center of the universe. So keeping the body well is important for that reason, so that you can keep it aside. If it's very well and no issue, you can just keep it aside and look at other dimensions of life. If this is trouble, our entire focus will remain on this, isn't it? So inner engineering is that kind of a process. There is a powerful system called Shambhavi where it is given in a seed form. It is a planting that you do and slowly evolves within you. Millions of people, this is something, this is one thing I'm proud of in my life is today there are millions of people, men and women. In the morning, if they close their eyes, tears of ecstasy are flowing. I think this is fantastic. People ask me, Sathgu, what's the greatest thing you've done? I said, tears. Tears of love and ecstasy are flowing. That's a great quote. Thank you so much. I think our time is up, but Sathgu, we want to thank you for this evening. On behalf of visionary women, we also want to donate to the Girl Child Project of Isha Foundation. And if you have two minutes to talk about what you're doing to help the status of girls, young girls in India, we would very much appreciate it. And Shelly, I'm going to put my shoes on and please join us. I think a small, a little bit of video was there in the introductory video about the rural India, the programs that are happening. I don't know if you saw that like a 70-year-old woman is playing a game. You saw that she's throwing a ball or something. So this is the moment we started about 17, 18 years ago. And today the next event is coming on 9th of December. I'm there for that event and over 10,636 men and women are participating in the event. That is as players. Over 150 to 200,000 people will be their spectators.  After they're probably seven, eight years of age, they never played a game. But now they're coming out in participating in a public tournament in front of everybody. It's on the television and ministers and celebrities are coming there to give prizes for them. It's an accelerating experience for them. One thing it did was it leveled out many differences of lines of religion, caste, creed. Kind of we leveled it out with these simple games. And in our schools in rural India, in very remote places, we have schools where at least 43, 44 percent of the students are first generation going to school. In this right now the average school going children about 61 percent are girls. Because in our schools we have made sure the girls are safe. There are proper bathrooms for them. And there is a culture where they're respected and not made one off. And you know, there are small things about biology which are, which is the basis of our birth but unfortunately we think it's some kind of funny thing. These things we have leveled out. We've created different culture in the schools. So people feel, the parents feel very comfortable. They're grown up girls going to school in this kind of school where the atmosphere is healthy. So this we are trying to bring and we've created 12 schools where we incubate teachers and we've adopted over 4,600 schools, government schools and we are operating in them. This is making a big difference for the girl child because one first thing I do is we make our people committed volunteers to go and visit the bathrooms. How are the bathrooms kept? Because bathroom decides whether the girl goes to school on particular days of the month or not. You know, the quality of the bathroom decides whether she goes to school or not. And if she doesn't go to school on those few days, next day when she goes, it's a kind of a joke all over the place. It's like it's very unfortunate, but this happens. So first thing is when we adopt a school, first thing is I send most important people in the organization to go visit the bathroom. I don't care how the classroom is, how is the bathroom? It is important. As simple as it seems, when you don't have it, it becomes so important, you know? These are simple things, but when they... when they don't exist, how significant they become, whether that particular girl goes far in her life or just gets trapped in some limited situation is determined by the quality of the bathroom we provide there. So this is the kind of change. There's a lot more to be done, but with whatever resources we have, I'm keeping the volunteers. I'm... I'm not just a guru, I'm a slave driver. Well, we've been delighted and honored to have you with us this evening and we want everyone in the audience to know that the proceeds from tonight's event are going to the Girl Trial Program that we are delighted to be able to support. Hi. Could you give me a minute? So we must understand this. What we call as human life is just a certain amount of time and energy. As we sit here, since the time you came in, all of us are two hours closer to our graves. Yes, time is... It's not time ticking away, it's our life ticking away. Yes? We are mortal life, limited amount of time. This is our time on this planet. We are a generation of people who are empowered like never before. No generation ever in the history of humanity was empowered the way we are empowered. Our ability to communicate, our ability to do things in the world. So we have the possibility that we could become the greatest generation ever or we just sit by and let it flow because if you sit, also time goes. If you sleep, also time goes. If you create something wonderful, time goes. If you don't do anything, time goes. That's right. Yes? Time is not stopping, nor can we roll it back, nor can we slow it down, nothing. Our life is just going away. This is our time on the planet. We must make this the best generation ever. For this we need consciousness. We need to identify with something bigger than our body and our brains. Only then we will do something fantastic because we have the necessary tools of technology in our hands. Today if we speak here, we can speak to the entire world, which was never before possible. Please let's make it happen.