Once again, good morning, and our first panel that we have, we have substituted our moderator and rare Admiral Lars Sons graciously took the helm and decided to be our moderator until we have Dr. Burbick who comes from the gate. So, without further ado, I will provide a brief intro to Admiral. Admiral Sons is a professor and CNO distinguished international fellow at the US Naval War College as chief of the Royal Naval Norwegian Navy from 2014 to 2017. He is retired now as the chief of the Royal Norwegian Navy. And in August 2017 he returned to the Naval War College where he graduated in 2004. His role as professor and CNO distinguished fellow includes co-leading the Newport Arctic Scholar Initiative. Admiral, we welcome you in your panel. Thank you. Thank you so much and welcome to all of you today. You have such an exciting panel today and it sort of make me, you know, honored to be able to step in for my friend Walter. But also because I've been engaged in strategic planning and military operations as J7 at the National Headquarter, but also at the chief of defense staff as part of my career. And just to give you an example, so our head of operation division in my country is Admiral Sulwe Kray. She was the first submarine commanding officer in the Norwegian Navy. So it's kind of a thing when we have gone through and made plan for participating in UN operations in Afghanistan with our NATO allies or supporting EU in anti-piracy operations. Part of the planning is always to also look at the gender perspective. When we look at the SOAR or the resources to use, we really see the effect that Sayra was presenting this morning. But today you will have the opportunity to get the experience from esteemed panelists. You will find their bio in the program and I will encourage you to read that. But we will start looking at the Russia-Ukraine war and gendered approach to strategic competition by Dr. Olga Shiriak from the Joint Special Operations University, and Lieutenant Colonel Jahara Matissek from the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Naval War College. And I will introduce the panelists as they take the podium. The floor is yours. Thank you Admiral. Thank you. Good morning everyone. I'm sorry I couldn't be there. I'm actually in a senior working continuing to work on this research. Thank you for the introduction and thank you to Dr. Yamin and the Naval War College for putting this together. We have to do it every year and the more often, the better. So I'll get straight to the point. I know we're short on time. And before I start, I just want to say that both my co-author and myself, I hope we hope that you receive this as rather directions for constructive discussion and analysis because it's a very complex topic. And I also hope that it will contribute substantially to mainstreaming women, peace and security. So to the article, we've tried to explore the Russo-Ukrainian conflict through the gender lens, specifically how gender was actually weaponized in the global information war against Ukraine and NATO by Russia. Implicitly, this affects strategic competition, the strategic competition taking place not only between the U.S. and Russia but also China. Our methodology combines fieldwork. We've both done in territory interviews in Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, as well as analysis of Russian media, both conventional and social media. Next slide, please. So I'll quickly go over four dimensions that I think are important. It's a very complex paper, so I hope you'll enjoy reading it. And then my co-author will go over our recommendations and conclusions. So the first I mentioned of our analysis was culture and the vital distinction between culture and ideology. If you follow Russian discourse, they frame this conflict in Ukraine as an ideology conflict as a cultural clash between what they call the collective West. And they portray themselves and they perceive themselves rather as defending Eastern Orthodoxy, Christianity and traditional values versus the immoral West. So in this frame, the West, I think it's important to note that it's not just a geographical space. I think it's more important to underline that it is the ideational space. It's manifested through rules, norms and institutions. And at the core, we have the universal human rights but also political rights like the right to vote, the right to free speech, social rights like equal access to education and healthcare and workers' rights. So if we look at the whole situation in this lens, then we can conclude actually that Russia lost the war already because in Ukraine, the large majority of the population have clearly chosen to join the West, whether they're Ukrainian speaking or Russian speaking, Romanian speaking, Georgian speaking, all ethnicities because Ukraine is a very diverse country. The best way to actually see that they've chosen that is to look at their armed forces. I think at the number 60,000 women in the Ukrainian military, that amounts to 22% of the forces, 5,000 serve in active combat versus 41% women in the Russian military, which is just about 4%. And I think this is the perfect example where institutions, the Ukrainian people have chosen to join the West institutions. There's been a lot of institutional change all the while nurturing and maintaining Ukrainian culture. There's actually a paradox because if you look at history and at the USSR during World War I, the Soviet Army, which included Russians and non-Russians. Or two rather, I'm sorry, there was 800,000 women who served, including in combat, the famous bomber pilots and female snipers. They were actually, they gained a lot of notoriety for outstanding performance on the battlefield. 41% of the doctors on the front line during World War II on the Soviet side were women and 100% of nursing staff. And if we think back back then in the West, not many Western countries had the right to vote for women. Not many women were able to pursue a career like medicine. So in this whole frame, Russia actually went a little bit backwards and I think we need to be cognizant of that and to understand it in order to leverage that in our strategic competition. Next slide, please. The second dimension that we looked at was the difference in battle space and we took a closer look at how that affects resilience, both individual but mostly societal resilience. So old versus new battle spaces. And one of the conclusions that we've come to is that in spite of tremendous technological advances, human security and people are still at the core of everything. So human security is a prerequisite for societal resilience, relationships like informal security force assistance, NGOs, civil society, volunteers, NAFU, all that contribute tremendously to fostering societal resilience. Next slide, please. So the third dimension we looked at was at the intersection of narratives and information warfare. And our analysis was multi-dimensional, not just the technological side, not just the cyber operations and information warfare, misinformation and disinformation. But also the narratives as they apply to human cognition, development of the brain, the way that we're socialized in our early years, our traditions, our values, the way that impacts the way we perceive the world and what effect that has on resilience, societal resilience and how that is applied in the battle space. Because narratives are foundational to how individuals and individuals understand and perceive their environment, as well as their personal experiences, they make a huge difference. I quote, I'm not going to go over all the definitions, but the key I think is in this quote that it is the foundational framing of human ways of world making. Russians call that making meaning, so different wording, same thing. Next slide, please. The final dimension was refugees. This is also a very complex thing. And yesterday, I was going to talk a little bit about trauma and violence and how that informs post-conflict societies and how we should be more cognizant of that. But yesterday, Dr. Yamin talked about naysayers and how she often gets the question, why should we talk about women? Well, I looked up the UN statistics and I'm just going to leave a few statistics up there. Maybe that will help us to think why. So 70% of the world's refugees are from five countries, Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine, Afghanistan and South Sudan. 36.5 million of these are children. 69% of these refugees are housed by their neighboring states, not by the US and not by the wealthier western states. So these are just statistics, food for thought, put them into the context that I talked about earlier. And out of the though, in conflict, post-conflict women are both subjects and agents of change. So I'll let Frankie go over the conclusions and the recommendations. Thank you again very much. Big picture of what's going on here is we have to be willing to engage but also reject a lot of the Russian narratives about them being sort of the ideological defenders of Christianity. And that means, you know, getting the western media and governments to be more explicit in calling out a lot of the Russian propaganda because, you know, unfortunately in many ways, Russia is a dying country. I also wanted to call attention to a phenomenon that some people may not be aware of. If you've ever heard of NAFO. It's like an internet joke trend about these Shibu dogs, the upper right hand corner people engaged in getting a profile picture and basically pushing back against Russian propaganda. And what I think is actually really sort of a good sign that there is an interest in pushing back against Russian narratives is that this is very much an organic response. And it is almost like the counter trolling to Russian propaganda and masculinity because NAFO is welcome to all and encourages everyone to, you know, define Western values as inclusive. So in that frame, I think there's still a lot to be done about this. And as we think about future conflicts and crises, military planners are going to have to think more explicitly about the sort of domestic regional and international narratives that an adversary may try to exploit and thinking through about having a diverse enough team to think through the consequences of how do you compete against that. And, you know, from a Western perspective, transparency is usually the best aim, any kind of future conflict or crisis. So thinking through that, and what it actually means and how to actually translate that into actionable objectives, I think it is going to be a crucial element for a future crisis. Thank you. Thank you so much to Dr. Shiriak and Lieutenant Colonel Matissek. And just for the online or Zoom audience as a preparation for the Q&A session, you can actually post question. I think there's some chat already on chat. And so we can take that up in the Q&A. And also a pleasure now to introduce Captain Almont. Christa, she is bringing women to the helm of strategic plans and operations in the US Navy. Good luck. Oh, thanks. First of all, I want to start with a disclaimer that I've been told to say that all of these things I'm about to say are my opinions and I don't represent the DOD or the Navy, although they shall also be at the opinions of the DOD and the Navy. In my opinion. I also want to thank the War College for putting this on. And especially for the audience that's avoiding the front seats like the plague I think this message is extraordinarily important for you guys and I'll get into why a little bit later. I did my first tour here in the Navy in 1994 at the Naval Academy Prep School across the river so it's pretty amazing to be back I also met my husband here about a decade later. So far so good on both fronts. We'll see. So the guys in the audience.  This is incredibly important for you to hear and for you to take on because you're the key to all of this you're the key to women being included in military service. You're the key to women feeling like they belong in military service, and you're the key to your daughter's ability to succeed and achieve whatever goals she has set for herself. I know there's going to have one role, but you guys as you raise their children and as you move on into the careers where we serve alongside you. You're the, you're the main force behind us. First of all, thank you second of all. There's some of you that need some, some re keying and I hope that your neighbors and your colleagues next to you can do that as we move on, but I'm not going to tell me see stories until the very end. So Dr. Mariano said, Master Chief why are you laughing already. Oh, I get that. So Dr. Mariano said yesterday that in his opening remarks that inclusion is not just a leadership issue it's a parenting issue. And that's why I alluded to earlier he's exactly, exactly correct, because at home is where a young boy learns that he needs to respect and include women that he needs to value them and a young girl learns at home that she needs to respect herself and value herself. So please please take that on board. And that's exactly why I'm so grateful to have you in the audience to have the opportunity to tell you not only that you are a young woman's greatest champion. But you are the Navy's culture. We talk about Navy culture as if it's some cloud above us and it just happens. It's not true. The culture is the human beings that are sitting amongst us right now you are the culture. If it's bad, we're bad. So we can fix that very easily by fixing ourselves and adjusting our attitudes and how we treat one another whether it's men or women it doesn't matter. So like I said you ensure the inclusion of women. At every rank. And that's especially true about the eight to 10 year mark in our careers because frankly we start to thin out pretty dramatically. The average woman doesn't want to put on combat boots she wants to be a mother. That's just, it's nature you can't fight against it you can be offended by it if you want can't be, you know, it's a fact. I remember many times in my career where people say they couldn't understand how a woman's mind works when she could trade a family for the military, which is interesting because I've never heard a man be accused of trading his family for the military it's just the women. But it's, it's something that basically weeds us out by ourselves and there's nothing at all wrong with it's fantastic. I don't have kids and by the way that's also fantastic so either way is worse. As we start to leave the ranks we no longer have the support mechanism of one another and we certainly don't have very many female mentors at the higher ranks. So we do rely very, very heavily on you. And the inclusion of women in any organization isn't about replacement it's not emasculating to the organization is, as I've seen in the media recently incorrectly. The inclusion is about building a combat force from your entire field of candidates. It's 100% of the field of candidates being drawn upon to build the military service, not 47% of it or 48% of it. And that's what makes us are very strong. It's not because there's a woman in it I don't make a meeting better or an organization better because I come in as a pants suit. I make it better because I come in with X number of years of experience in different locations in different failures and different leadership roles and different mentorship roles. That's what makes the team stronger. Not what I put on in the morning or, or what kind of bra I have to wear when I get up dressed. So what I see around the globe is pretty bad.  So, people are concerned about the inclusion of women because they say well it's not really suited to warfare and we talked yesterday about the changing art of warfare and Gus you mentioned that well warfare in the future is in space it's in air air power which I choke on a little bit as a surface warfare officer, but it's true. And women can play those roles every bit as well as a man can it's not about your gender it's just about your own capability. So the application of strategic planning of adapting problem solving skills to get at the Navy's missions. Strategic challenges of the Navy are completely without gender. So why are we concerned that a gender inclusion process would be threatening to us. That's a rhetorical question just something I'll ask you to think on. So the field of the leaders of the Navy the field that we have to draw on to bring leaders to the forefront of the Navy should be as broad as possible as we do face that future it's a very bizarre future we got coming along. So that's an interesting example of going back to an older style of war older I'll say style of warfare but as we look at great power competition is that we look at near peer threats. Those aren't ground wars. It's not a joke that if you're fighting a land war in Asia you got a major problem. It's that's why it's going to happen in cyber it's why it's going to happen in space. And again, leadership of those is critical. The best possible leadership pool is critical. So the culture you create guys, the culture you create either ensures or eliminates the Navy's options for leadership for leaders. The women have a little bit of a role but you have a much bigger role we have to be competent we have to be professional and we have to be confident in ourselves. And that's that onus is on us but you accepting including us that onus is on you frankly. So, I can tell you in this culture to be successful and competent and confident as a woman it's not easy. It takes a little bit of stamina. Not only are we our own greatest critics. We face the headwinds of a civilian culture and the questions of why are you in the military what does your husband think of that what does your father think of that why don't you have children when are you getting married. Just a very very very small number of the questions will face.  It's the same exact problems it's the same exact loss of time with family it's the same exact time away from something else that you might want to do it's the long hours. Those are just inherent to what we do. And then the women have the added fun of stressors among shipmates and detractors among shipmates, and that's where one of the difficulties comes in that I keep harping on, and coming back to you about at 27 that's when someone asked me, you know, I, he said I don't understand the mind of a woman who can, who can serve in a navy and abandoned her family. I wasn't married yet. And by the way, my mother said nice girls don't join the military. My father said that's exactly why she should go in so I had that. I had that even at home that's, that's absolutely true. He was all for the military my mother was absolutely dead set against it. But then my dad told him I was told my brothers I was the son he always wanted so that's the kind of, that's the kind of girl I was. But to the women I put it this way, if you can weather all the stressors you place on yourself all the stressors that community puts on you and then of your shipmates and of service, then you'll come out the other end.  And that's a very important thing for females to remember because we really are our own worst detractors. So I'll paraphrase something that Dr. Rome said yesterday because we have made so many vital policy changes over the years it's been fantastic couple hundred years outdated but they've been amazing and dire in dire need of them she said culture. Again I'm paraphrasing culture eats policy for breakfast. And that's exactly true so you can make as many nice little Congress congressional notes and as many GAO reports as you want but if the culture doesn't change. Your military isn't going to change based on policy that's that is entirely up to us to do it so this is why you guys are the key to it.  That helps us all that requires us all to fulfill the oath that we have all taken to serve. You didn't swear an oath every time you enlist or every time you're promoted you don't swear an oath to the servant, or to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic and exclusive of the teammates around you because they don't look like you or they aren't like you or they don't come from your background. It covers every gamut you simply serve the Constitution and you simply protect the Constitution, and you should be able to do so very comfortably alongside whoever is next to you. I've never had a female mentor. It just didn't didn't come up and I can tell you the men who've mentored me, either by slamming the door and screaming at me because I might have deserved or not, or grabbing me by the collar or giving me quiet cultural career advice. One of them told me I needed to relax, he was wrong but the rest have been fantastic. I have relied on men entirely for my career to be the guy that I needed. I mean it was very very strong but they also said don't ever come home I was the youngest of six. So when they got rid of me it was it was open season at the house for my parents. So they say go out and have an adventure in your life and never come home do the most difficult things you can and do it as far away from support as you can because I'll make you stronger. And so I turned to the military and the people around me to make me stronger and the good ones did it and the bad ones did it. It's been a learning experience all of the way. But to the women in the audience. The right to lead the accomplishments you can make the opportunity to serve. And the, the once in a while when someone looks over at you and says I want to be like you you inspire me that's worth everything you can possibly face when you serve in military that's worth all of the enemies for an end domestic that you can find. That's a fantastic feeling. And men will contribute to that all along the way please look to them please look for their guidance don't just seek out women and guys please seek out the young women around you. To be their guide and their mentor, I had a couple of bosses who would send me was I was in my department head roles. There's a female crying in the state room please go talk to her. And the first time I did it. And the second time I said no. The second time I said you've got to you know you're my X O I wasn't I was the department head. I said you got to go face this. She's crying over something you know you have done, frankly, and you need to go talk to her about it. And it was interesting. I've seen more than one man refused to talk to a crying woman but I can tell you I've talked to crying men in my in my career. So please reach across. It's scary when a woman starts to cry but please reach across and talk to them. And so for the women again, take detractors with a grain of salt. Take attackers by the throat or wherever and press forward. It's really really worth it each step of the way and leadership isn't at the highest ranks leadership is at every possible rank it's one of the great things about the military. An ensign is a leader a JG is a leader. So every step that you make every step that you progress it's absolutely worth it. Just push forward. It sounds. It sounds a little aggressive and it sounds like you're pushing aside some of the things but that's where the grabbing by the throat comes in. So I did I spared you almost all my C stories but I'm going to share one and because it's very important about the culture and where the Navy has come since I started serving in 1994 and that's the command Master Chief. And I had to look up your name because all I can remember was broken Joe after those ladies yesterday who who ruined your name for me. Master Chief Ferney made probably the best in presentation I've ever seen about inclusion and women that I've in the Navy we don't see a lot of them so far as low. But he made a spectacular brief yesterday and I wanted to thank you and this is why when I checked on board my first ship and I think I was 23 years old. My command Master Chief came up to me on a pre deployment picnic on the flight deck, and he said I think we should have women on ships at sea, and then he proceeded to tell me why he thought women would be useful on ships at sea and it wasn't because we contributed to the mission it was very vulgar and it was very direct. And now my command Master Chiefs I see around me are like you, and I can't thank you enough, because, again, you are the culture, you have you are what has changed.  Thanks Captain El Monte and it's great seeing you again and then that's for me personally speaking that's a you're very inspiring, and you are a great leader and I like to now transition and turn it over to first lieutenant Morgan Fleming, who, who's with us, who she helps she served in task force bliss and helped Afghan refugees and provided housing and immigration services to them, and actually started the first domestic a female engagement team here with in the US for the US Army so without further ado, over to you thank you. Good morning and happy Friday to everybody I hope you're all excited to be here I most definitely am. Thank you Dr Birbuk for the introduction as he said I am first lieutenant Morgan Fleming I'm with the US Army. I'm here to talk to you today about my time with the female engagement team and operation allies welcome. Before I start just a couple thank yous want to say thank you to my parents, my friend Wyatt will always keeps me going I would have loved to join us today. Dr you mean for guiding me through this process and answering every last minute question that I had. First thank you to miss Tiffany Phillips, without whose guidance and relationships I would not be here in front of you today. And then of course thank you to everybody here in the audience, both physically and virtually it's always very affirming to be invited to speak somewhere and then to have people show up and know that they are interested in what you have to say. So, with that, I've already met so many great people here and so many important people in just every kind of mission. So many people working at the operational level so the joint staff DoD State Department. My operation that I'll speak to you about today is a little bit smaller it's more at the tactical level really the smallest unit size that we can implement WPS structure in I hope to give you kind of a general working knowledge of at least my experience you could easily ask somebody who is at the operational level and operation allies welcome and they may have seen something drastically different than I did but from the tactical level I'll talk to you about the challenges and some ideas and suggestions that I have about moving forward and if you'd like to implement female engagement teams in your own units and practice so I'd like to begin with a story and as all good military to start. No kidding there I was. We were about three months into operation allies welcome we had just finished our command and staff sync for the day out at the Donna Anna village which is where we are housing refugees. We were going around the room, everybody from rank of specialist to commanding Colonel was in the room and as is normal for the end of those meetings the commander said okay we're going to go around the room I'm going to ask if anybody has any questions or anything that they would like to bring up and so I said sir I do. We have about three very pregnant female Afghan refugees here at the camp. This was met with silence. I said so I would like to get some sort of midwife and or labor and delivery nurse or somebody to assist to be on site for when it comes time for those women. This was met with more silence. One of the other young male lieutenants in the room spoke up and he said, well, we could just have everybody practice catching football. God be about the same right. So, I tell you that story, not as a slight at all on the team that I worked with at operation allies welcome which was an amazing team but to demonstrate how when we enter these operations that are rapidly changing and often a type of crisis management, women's issues and other marginalized groups issues are so often the first priority to go, and thus the last thing to be thought of, if we even have time to think about them at all. So to give you a little bit of a history on female engagement teams they have been utilized for over a decade. The Marine Corps was the first branch to be able to implement these. In fact, the female engagement teams in the Marine Corps are more operationalized, they're more permanent organizations and they have more formalized models of structure than we do in the army and compared to the army and many of our FETs are ad hoc. They're a little less permanent and they dissolve quickly after very specific missions such as operation allies welcome. We as the FET service about 10,000 guests for just over six months in 2021. We worked at the Donna Anna range in New Mexico which was about 45 minutes away from Fort Bliss in El Paso. I had a team of 50 females and at our highest strength in numbers we had five female lieutenants as our leadership so that was the team that I commanded to make or have enough people for these teams we had to pull from several different periods because they're just not very many women in brigade combat teams. And our goal was to gather atmospherics from our population, and we constantly man so 24 hours a day, seven days a week for this operation. Of course this came with many challenges. First of all, as I said we struggled to find personnel and so that cross unit coordination that you see up there that became challenging because as the highest ranking leader on that team. We had to kind of navigate and negotiate with company commanders of all of the women from across different decades on what responsibility I was taking over these women and what responsibility, they still had over their soldiers. So that communication did get a little bit sticky and we never quite got to hash out you know exactly who belonged to who who is op con who is take on that kind of thing. We also had a gap in mentorship and that was through nobody's fault but you know what is a mentor will mentor is someone with more experience and something than you. Simply by nature of everyone's gender in my unit the highest ranking combat arms female was myself, just a lieutenant. I had never been on a female engagement team before and so I had a lot of great and strong leaders but none of them had been female engagement team leaders because they were all men so we didn't have that to fall back on in this unprecedented mission. Personality this was a big one the army has something called KSVP which stands for knowledge skills behaviors and preferences it's something that we're trying to utilize to determine whether or not potential people would be a good fit for their job. So, just to give you an example some of the qualities that are listed for the armor branch if you want to be a tanker are physically fit, mentally tough, hard working, ambitious and enforcing standards. And these are all great and needed skills, but which one of these truly helps with the empathetic communication of a population. What are our blind spots. What was our purpose now the original female engagement teams that the Marines used were a solution to the culturally sensitive body searches that needs to be performed to ensure everyone's safety overseas but in our domestic operation. There was no need for that and what that also meant was that there was no natural opportunity for us to be alone with the female population and so those natural conversations really didn't start so we really had to transition our focus and training and moving relationships and gathering Intel rather than that crisis management and emergency mode. So, addressing these problems in the future and moving forward. How to solve these things in the future first of all knowing your audience is critical. And this is two fold. So, first, what I talked about earlier what was the nature of our mission for an operation allies welcome. It was a domestic mission so again it's more about communication gathering Intel than it was about crisis management. And secondly, how to pick the soldiers that are going to be on your female engagement team or simply engagement team. As I talked about those KSB PS, we know that women are usually more relational and pathetic and nurturing, but women in combat arms are unusual. So, if you are already for a reason, most women that are interested in joining a combat arms unit did not expect relational communication to be at the forefront of the job that they're doing. So, if you are trying to erect a FET in a VCT may need some training that you didn't expect to need because communications is is not where we strive we strive in standards discipline and directive and so that relational cyclical reflective communication is something that we could use assistance with often consider personalities consider giving pre test to soldiers that you want to potentially be on your team. And if nothing else. Please include men on the team males need engagement as well. And how can we possibly expect men or anybody for that matter to understand if the engagement team expressly excludes them. If they're not involved, they have to be doing the same things in my personal experience at operation allies welcome we struggled because my female soldiers were taken away from their regular units just to work on the female engagement team. All of their male soldiers did not see them, sometimes for days at a time so they weren't aware of what we were doing and the information that the FET was gathering never got down to that lowest level of those, you know, specialist male soldiers and so their impression was well the female engagement team isn't doing anything my leaders aren't doing anything because I don't see them. So that's why we have to involve men and especially men at the lowest level. Also, if this symposium is any indicator, we have men in the military with fantastic communication skills, we have to recognize those and teams such as engagement teams are a great way to do that in the military. We talked about doctrine, we talked about how there was lack of mentorship experience earlier and what do we do in the army. When we don't know what to do and we need to say standard, we fall back on doctrine. So there needs to be some and it needs to be readily available. Additionally doctrine and standardization is the language of the army and it is what is impressionable on many people of high ranks within the military and is what they respond to it is their language and so we need to have that standardization to some degree for female engagement teams. We're implementing female engagement teams permanently so not just interaction with foreign allies, there are many people to engage with domestically as well so just like the family readiness group programs and the single soldier boss programs. That's something that can be on a slide and every weekly command and staff meeting the female engagement team does not need to be dissolved after missions like this we can kind of build that base knowledge so that when something like operation allies welcome we have the team available and they're ready and practice and they know what they're going to do. Additionally, the knowledge share systems to widely have that available it is something that we can't assume that new soldiers and new NCOs have the research skills, the educational background to be able to dig deep enough to find good engagement team resources as they stand now and connections to other army personnel and resources as they're just setting out their career but it is feasible to expect that they have been through basic training and a it and they know to fall back on doctrine and everybody knows army pubs.com. So we should have something on that website. And the last thing that I will talk to you about is the transition of the female engagement teams as we transition from counterinsurgency operations to large scale combat operations. We know that as our operation scale gets larger. So then will the number of women that these operations directly affect the need for engagement will never go away. In fact, into pay calm has many collective as societies. We as America are the most individualistic society on the planet. So we think very eye oriented. We take care of ourselves and our immediate families. We value individual achievement standing out and independence. We value the societies value the we the in group is everything and a person views themselves as part of a unit. The most important thing that you can learn is not independence but respect. So, imagine, if you will, how important engaging a population that is so deeply embedded in such a unified community could be in gathering intelligence, understanding how our adversaries think, and thus, giving our soldiers and leaders. And the communication skills to make accurate decisions based off that knowledge to win our nation's wars. Thank you. Thanks to us end up climbing. And I'd like to now turn it over to Mr. Jody Prescott of the University of Vermont it was retired us army judge advocate is going to talk to us today about the role and influence of gender and kinetic operations. Good morning everyone. From the perspective of operational risk that is risk to mission accomplishment gender is not always relevant in military operations as a way to illustrate this let's consider a recent study on humanitarian demining operations. Humanitarian demining is very dangerous and to be done effectively personnel need to be well trained and have proper equipment. Based on the study conducted by one Canadian NGO in 2019. The global workforce involved in demining appears to be about 80% men, about 20% women, using the metric of square meters cleared of mines per day. A later study evaluated the operational efficiency of women versus men. Statistically, there was no meaningful difference between the two sexes stated differently. There was no operational risk to mind clearing accomplishment posed by gender. It was not relevant. Likewise, in the military context. I believe that gender is not relevant from the perspective of operational risk and equipment heavy force on force engagements. Outside the presence of civilians whose perceptions, attitudes and behaviors have a role to play and whether operations like counter insurgency or stability are going to be successful in the end. On the other hand, when you get to the other end of the operational perspective, the other end of the operational spectrum. I believe gender is especially relevant in civilian centric operation where the important terrain does include the attitudes perceptions and behaviors of people, roughly half of whom are women and girls. I believe that it's relevant not just because there are civilian women around. I believe gender is relevant from the perspective of operational risk, because the success of these missions likely depends on understanding that the population is gendered, and that different genders can have different security needs. If in one of these civilian centric operations, you are not addressing different people's different security needs, you are not doing a very good job of understanding your environment. This presents a threat to your mission. To be most actionable, however, these gender considerations need to be normed in the currency of operational risk to the mission, just as other threats are. Gender is not something special in this regard. Gender is not something precious. The implementation of the Women, Peace and Security Act of 2017 sets out these three primary objectives that DOD reports against when it makes its reports up in terms of how the implementation of the WPS strategy is going. These are good things. Looking to improve gender equality in our own force and the forces of our partners, and helping our partners militaries do a better job of protecting women and girls and their defense and security sectors. From my perspective, however, they are woefully incomplete. The Women, Peace and Security Act of 2017 focuses on increasing women's role in preventing deadly conflict and on women's role in helping resolve deadly conflict when it's over. It does not focus on the situation of women in the deadly parts of deadly armed conflict, particularly when we're talking about the application of deadly US force. Going back to basics, UN Security Council Resolution 1325 called on the member nations to work with the entire range of the law of armed conflict in finding ways to better protect women and girls from the gender differentiated harms of armed conflict. Now, when we say low act, we're not just talking about the Geneva strand of low act, right, protection of victims of armed conflict. We're also talking about the Hague strand, the conduct of armed conflicts. The Women, Peace and Security Act of 2017 basically avoids dealing with this. And it appears to me that the implementation plan hues closely to the legal authority. The attorney and me says, thank you for following your legal advisors advice. The feminist in me says, maybe we need to reconsider this a little bit, because in doing so, it sidesteps the application of gender considerations to the low act principle of proportionality. So for example, it should be a surprise to know one that when you look at the very recent NATO joint targeting doctrine, the US reservation finds no meaningful role for the gender advisor in the execution of joint targeting under US doctrine and practice. Instead, it appears the US would rely on low act and are we in civilian centric operations like stability encounter insurgency. When we conduct strikes that go awry. When we end up killing people who are protected persons under low act. We damage our security efforts on the ground. We turn people against us on the larger stage of public perception of our efforts. And our commitment to low act as part of the rule of law. Now, I did not realize this until my tour in Afghanistan 2008 2009, but strikes can have gender differentiated harms that create friction against lines of effort to build stability in a war torn nation. You might characterize these harms as second or third order effects, which quite frankly are not the things that we are generally taught to consider when conducting or explaining a proportionality analysis under the law of armed conflict. I think it's fair to say that our ordinary approach has been to lump all civilians together in doing so, and to consider only immediate casualties. In some senses, a civilian is a civilian is a civilian. In 2022, however, DoD issued an ambitious plan to reduce the harm our strikes cause to civilians and to respond to instances of harm by affirmatively making reparations. The civilian harm and mitigation response action plan, which I now know from attending this conference apparently is called chimera. As I read it, the plan calls for steps to gather and analyze more and better data about what it terms the civilian environment and to provide this to operators in the field to reduce casualties. For me, one of the most important parts of the action plan is this expanded notion of what constitutes the civilian environment that which requires protection and repair. This makes it go quite far beyond just civilians and their property, and to start considering second and third order effects of our kinetic actions on civilians. To me, this provides an opportunity to start including gender differentiated harms in our planning and conduct of kinetic operations, thereby addressing this current gap in the coverage of DoD's women peace and security strategy efforts. The ChimRap contains a disclaimer that it goes beyond that which is required by LOAC. I would argue for a different approach. I say that gender differentiated and more severe harms of armed conflict to women and girls need to be explicitly tackled in our operational understandings and applications of the principle of proportionality. If I could ask those of you in the audience, please give me a raise of hands. Who have we got out there that has done target hearing and weapon hearing? Thank you. What I'm also talking about, and you know this from your experience, it's not just LOAC, it's not just ROE. It's the shadow ROE that we have in our SOPs. This is where we can truly make a difference. Thank you very much. Jodi, and what I'll do right now is just kind of stitch together a few different key points I think that the panel really drew out and then we'll transition to Q&A, both folks that are here present and also those joining us virtually. So, you know, our first two speakers really remind us of the impacts of how crises and conflict can increase gender-based violence. And Russia's invasion of Ukraine has forced millions of women and children to flee their country overnight and has put them at increased risks of trafficking and other forms of exploitation. In Syria, in Afghanistan, throughout the world, all of these conflicts women face additional threats to their bodies, their livelihoods, their safety, and as we know for every woman who reports these horrific crimes, there's so many more out there that remain silent. And that are many incidents that are unreported. And as we know, right, women kind of make up half if not more than the total population for each of their communities. Women are, in many cases, essential caretakers for their families. And so excluding them impacts not just their family but everyone. And all of our panelists remind us that women are also warfighters, right? At the tactical level, Lieutenant Fleming reminds us of the rise of female engagement teams, of cultural support teams, gender support advisers, gender field advisers. Together, these teams have improved situational awareness, have helped us gather intelligence. And by engaging local women, these teams have empowered local women to take advantage or to seize the opportunity and improve their own situations and to improve their own communities. But if we're being honest, right, I mean, these ad hoc female engagement teams, these gender advisers and promoting women just to prove a point, just simply won't cut it. And as Captain Almonte reminds us, right, true gender equality, fully integrating women into strategic plans and military operations requires a culture change, right? I believe women don't need to change but the culture needs to change. And it's a heck of a lot easier to change that culture from the beginning on the on the outset than waiting for it to be well established and entrenched. And if we want to, you know, if we want to strive towards gender balance teams, and if we want to fully integrate women into the strategic plans and military operations, right, we need to adapt this culture from the from the very first moment right from recruiting to retention to promotion to all the way to the end to retirement and when we say culture right it's the words and actions that we take but it's also the norms and tools that Mr. Prescott mentioned as well. And this this this change is hard right it takes time. But it also takes courage and it takes leadership and inspiring leadership and leader in leading by example. And I believe it that leadership right it comes from the top, and it requires a strong effort in a persistent effort but it also requires us to align senior so that they understand the need for change but they also have a shared vision on on how to implement it. And then finally it really requires all of us to, to hold our leaders accountable right and to hold each other accountable so that we can see the progress and we can adapt and continue to align so all of our panelists really highlighted all all the great progress that we've made which surely we have a lot of work to do and and I appreciate all the all the all the hard work and and thinking that went into this.


subunit 2.3 approaches to teamwork. So the goal of developing a team is to create a culture of collaboration by explicitly rewarding collaboration traits. So you've all been part of a team at some point and you know, you're always looking for developing a team where people can be honest with each other, receptive to other people's ideas, there's integrity where everyone can be trusted, consistency in how messaging is done between leaders and people on the team, sharing between team members and respect. And that's really, you know, a key to good system engineering is kind of encouraging those attributes. So teamwork principles, adapting team principles will help build a more productive and positive experience. So using those things we just talked about and making sure they're part of your team, it's not only going to make sure that everyone on the team feels like they've been recognized for their contribution, but also that, again, your goal as system engineers you're trying to make sure that that final product is gonna be coming together on time and on budget. I think a project team can be successful if the people trust one another. And whether we trust one another depends a lot on history, whether we've worked together successfully before, also in how our management structure is set up so that we know that our management will support us working together constructively. So that's why good contracts and good working relationships are so important. I think in our team for the James Webb Telescope, the working level engineers and scientists work beautifully together because we trust each other to do the right thing if we can. And you see this develop in a meeting when people come forward and say, well, I think I could solve that problem or alternatively the scientists will say, I don't think you had to solve that problem. How about we think of it a different way? So we earn our trust with each other by doing things together. And pretty important part of the process. So some of the principles, these teamwork principles include creating an atmosphere of professional expectations, trust and mutual respect, staffing leadership positions with team players. So this is again leadership being system engineers and project managers and roles like that, focusing on outcomes, making sure that everyone is looking towards that final goal and focused on the same outcomes, cooperating with each other, making sure that everyone's working together, healthy teaming that defines roles and responsibilities where there's no conflicts where maybe two or three groups are doing the same thing because they haven't been given clear direction and ensures that teams are properly sized for the task or for the project. I've seen both teams that are undersized where people get frustrated with the amount of work required and the lack of people to be able to accomplish it. And I've seen oversized teams where people don't feel like they've all been given clear roles and maybe don't feel like they're able to contribute as they would want. My most challenging teamwork situation has been the James Webb Space Telescope. Between all the US contractors involved, the complexity of the mission itself are foreign teammates. Between that diversity and the mission and the technology itself, that has, this has been the most complex and the most challenging and the most rewarding. I wanted to do a mission like this since I was six years old. So this ain't a complaint. I think it's a hard thing to think about what is the most challenging teamwork situation. I think the ones that cause distress are the ones where we see that people are unable to work together in a cooperative way. And so I don't really want to tell stories about those historical events, but I know once in a while we find a group that just basically refuses to work with another group. And sometimes that's very upsetting because you say, well, they could have worked so well together if they would try. But that's the category of things that bother me and why I say, well, if that's happening, maybe we just have to have another path to get what we need to do because you can't compel people to be different from the way they are. So if you're the manager or the lead scientist, you have to say, well, okay, if that's a problem, I've got to find another path. Now click on the icon to read what is your Myers-Briggs type indicator? Making sure to complete the Cogniz style inventory at the end so you'll be prepared for the next subunit.


When you made that song, I heard you say your brother, had he just passed when you did that first? My dog? Yeah. In my brother's 8th ball, we flipped 5 times in the car. He flew out the windshield. I was in the backseat. And that's what True Miracles got. He spared your life. But then your brother passed. Did he have any kids? No. He was 29, about to be 30 that next month. Let's talk about it, man. So I know you got plenty of questions. We waited for the mode 3 questions with you. Like you said that you cried off a T-Rail song. Yeah, that's what tricked me out about this. I said, T-Rail company said I cried off this. Because you got to remember my partner Black that died. Man, we were just together that night before he died. Yeah. And so I got that phone call at 6 o'clock in the morning. And then I was like, damn. Then he made this song, like, bro, just put me back in that same mode. Damn. Like, you just don't know what to do at times. Like, bro, when I heard the song, I ain't listen to no more of your song, bro. Listen to no more? No, because I felt it too much. I felt it too much. I'm like, bro, I can't listen to no more, bro. See how you can touch people's music, man? Every time I listen, I get that same feeling, like every single time. So it was hard on you when I told you you had to research T-Rail today? No, I had to. I ain't listen to that song, though. I put that song. I thought it was already new. I already listened to it.  You just drop a tear or something like that, bro. What you think in that mode? Like, you got a south side. Yeah, so when you made that song, I heard you say your brother, had he just passed when you did that first? My dog? Yeah. Yeah, my brother ate ball. We flipped five times in the car. He flew out the windshield. I was in the backseat. I just want to pour another drink with my dog.  And that's what true Malcolm's got. He spared your life. But then your brother, did he have any kids? No, he was 29, he about to be 30 that next month. Probably like two weeks, he died two weeks before his birthday. Wow. And that night, were y'all traveling because of music? Yeah, I actually had a show here in Dallas. And I went to church that next morning with DJ Merck. And then I left here. We got in a wreck in Oklahoma City. Okay, okay, I know exactly where you at. On 35? Yeah, headed towards Kansas. Yeah, wow, man. That had to be tough, man. And that was y'all at the same mom? No, it's just my dog. He was my brother. Yeah, yeah, I get it. Man, it's crazy how they blacked out. It was most likely going the highway. Yeah. They get shot. They get shot.  Yeah. That's what makes you feel the more. Yeah, DRS was on here. And when he was on here, the guy was saying, my homies. You know, the gangstaling. So the relationship that you and Mode 3 built, we'll go to that. You know, how was it just, because I never got to meet him. But everybody been on this show talking about it. Because I came out right, you know, kind of after that. You know, and I couldn't do this show without bringing his name of his legacy, the way he left this whole situation musically. Him and C-strugs, R-P to C-strugs, too. Just certain ones. I gave them different people. I've been trying to get on. I want to interview Mode 3 mom back. I just want to just show her love, you know. But I know already how people be trying to come at people like that. And I don't want to be that guy, even if I could just do it behind the scene, you know. But it's just, it's something about these people who paved the way for a lot of us to be even doing this. You know what I mean? The legacies that they left, the way that they paved, you know, the work that they're doing. It's more, but I'm just saying, he one of those guys, man. His subjects, people talk about him all the time.  Do you even, do you know his kids or anything like that? No. Me and Mode 3 were friends musically. Okay. Musically. And I used to tour with them a lot.  And just clown each other all the time. So somebody I grew close with being on the road a lot. And I never really came to Dallas and really hang out with them in Dallas. It was more of a, on the road, hanging out all the time, being in the studio. And he was with Bootsie a lot. I was with Bootsie a lot and somebody I really connected with. And I really respond to real. He got a big heart too. He do. When I was, remember I was talking about my son and I was, I didn't know about music and I kind of messed my buns up. Mode 3 let me go on tour with him. Do song. He'll bring me out. He landed a hand. I think he was trying to figure out what the road did. Cause remember the road did him the same way. Yeah. He was, come on.   Come on. That's him.  I'm already rocking. And it helped me out. Wow. Helped me out a lot. Doing tours when I'm like that. And I appreciate it every day. He was doing something like that. He might miss a show. I could see T-Ray down there. He mentioned my name. He was scared to do songs with me. Matter of fact, I talked to him the day before he passed. Wow. He was going to the studio the day I, the day after. He was going to go to the studio the next day. He was going to knock a feature from me. I finally sent him a song that was fast.


Hello. So, I'm Lori. Most people know me as Lori Shepard. I did get married. So, I'm also Lori Kern. So, I go by either I've been part of the bio conductor core team for several years now. And as mentioned, I'm going to talk about the annotation hub and experiment hub, some key infrastructure pieces available for use to the community. So, throughout the presentation, I hope to cover what the annotation hub and experiment hub are, how you would find resources as a user to use. And then some common misconceptions regarding the hubs, and then get more into from the maintainer and package developer side, how you would contribute or add data to the hubs, and then common pitfalls when you're submitting data.  There's not a lot of it. But for those of you in the audience here, sorry, can't get to you virtual people. But how many of you have used the hubs before? Okay, good. So, what do you think the hubs are just in a general concept? So, in the heart data, the annotation hub and experiment hub is basically a database of pointers or database of basically resources and metadata about different resources. Most importantly, where the data can be downloaded from. So it's kind of like just a database of information that you can use inquiry to find resources of interest for you to using your packages or using your resources or in your research. Okay.  And the metadata is given by a contributor at the time of inclusion into the database that then you can query against. And most importantly, again, is where you can download the data from. So, files are stored remotely instead of in a package or somewhere, and then they're only downloaded as needed or as requested. If a contributor doesn't have a location to store that data, Bioconductor provides a default location currently be Microsoft Azure Data Lake resource, but they can be stored elsewhere on institutional servers and auto publicly accessible server. So they're stored remotely and then downloaded as needed and then they're cashed locally. So there's an expensive download once. And then if you try to call that resource again on your local machine, it'll be really fast because it'll find that locally downloaded resource. So the main functions that you're going to use to find resources are query and subset. Most people will find query the most useful and the recommended the subset is kind of more of an exact search and is a priority knowledge. And again, this is all against the metadata in the database. So what kind of metadata are we talking about. So when resources submitted we get information that must be provided and these are the required deals so a title data class species taxonomy ID prepare a class which in general it's a little miss screen but the prepare class is the package name so when a person submits data you have to have a package to submit data so it would be like the package name and other useful information that will get into in a little bit. So kind of as an example code example here. Sorry it's not interactive but we'll use annotation hub to start so we load annotation hub, we create the annotation hub object, and I created this slide as of July 6 so as of July 6 we had 65,055 records in the annotation field that could be queried and found and used in data. And it kind of gives you a snapshot, a snapshot here of difference metadata fields and what is available. So again to reemphasize that difference columns in the database and in that object, you can query against the title you can query against maintainer source type. So, for instance, if we had species. If we looked at unique species we have 2557 unique species available in some form of data in the annotation hub. And we can just kind of get a snapshot of the different species. And then similarly there's the our data class so our data class in this instance is what type of object when you load or read that remote file into our what kind of file are you going to get to work with or what kind of object are you going to get to work with so are you going to get a two bit file or you're going to get a g range object or you're going to get a summarized experiment object. So you can also kind of query for objects that you're used to using or familiar with using. So, as a further example of query sorry all you cat people I'm a dog person so we're going to use dog and on my land so I'm not going to try to pronounce it. But, so if we just did a query against the hub for dog, we would get back another hub record and kind of pairing down, but you see we still have 223 records here, so still kind of a lot. So, maybe we like g range objects so if we did a query then with dog and g range objects, get a little bit better we're down to 125. So you can kind of see where we're going the more specific you can get. You kind of get more specialized results so if any of you are in James McDonald's annotation workshop I think he kind of equates it to like a Google search right it's kind of hit or miss you might have to massage the query a little bit to kind of find what you want, but you can kind of pair it down and try to get objects of interest. Once you kind of have it in a more paired down list you can really dig into the metadata columns. So with a single sub single bracket with a given annotation have ID, you can get that metadata column and get more specific information on a particular resource to know if you really want to download it or not. To download the resource then you use a double bracket, and then you would actually download the resource locally and it would be cached. And kind of as a proof of principle if we did it again this like my art code so the first time we're downloading we get the long download it might take a minute or two depending on how the file size, and then it loads it in our and we have our g range objects. But then if we tried the double square bracket again to download it would skip that download step and just directly load it from your local cash. So kind of a time saver. Kind of continuing on because I came from the annotation workshop. Maybe in the end we like g range objects but we're really looking for a text DB object. We take that g range object that we had just loaded in our, we can load our genomic features and there's this make txtb from g range function, and we can get our txtb objects. And if we did that we can see that we actually had a lot more options and some more recent builds. So again kind of proving the point of you might want to play around with your queries. And there may be some ways to get different objects depending on how well you form your queries. Don't know why I went backwards experiment hub works the same way. Main distinctions annotation is for annotation data some sort of mapping from one source to another where annotate or experiment hub is for experiment data experiment packages. Right now bioconductor doesn't allow large data inside a package for submission so we'll say if you wanted to include experiment data with your package for principle or more detailed than yet. We would ask you to put it in experiment hub and then download it from there, which we'll get into in a little bit to the experiment hub works the exact same way. Same constructor. Again same date as July 6 but this time we have 6,332 records in the experiment hub. And again we can perform queries the exact same way kind of pare down. Again I talked about this prepare a class so especially with experiment hub. Maybe you know the package that had the data in it you could actually search for the package name to get all the data that was given with a particular package of interest. And just as a different principle with different metadata we can search for the genome and see what what particular genomes those objects came back. I did mention subset. So as a subset example subset is an exact match again requires a priori knowledge. So with subset you're giving the hub the objects and you're giving an exact match of a particular metadata column. So, again that's why most people find query a little bit more useful, especially if you don't exactly know what you're looking for. I guess before we get into misconceptions and everything. Is there any questions about like using finding data. We have any questions so far. Not right now we haven't defined an exact limit I would say if your data is extremely large reach out on the bioc mailing list we generally asked like to reach out there if there would be some sort of size limit but right now we haven't limited sizes. This one. And so query will search all fields. There is I think an additional argument where you could like limit what columns it searches for. But otherwise it will do it across all columns by default so you kind of get a more broad search to try to catch all fields of interest. And it would be believing and search. So, instead of an or. It could be, and we can kind of get into that when people are submitting data. The real limiting factor would be like getting it into our loading our but there's no reason why it couldn't be images and whoever submits those we would probably recommend using the generic file path. Load method which we'll get into in the second. Possibly. Sorry about that. So common misconceptions before we get into contributing data that the bioconductor provides all of these resources is actually very. Not true actually we rely on the community to provide resources to us so bioconductor will provide by default. So that's a few annotations at release time and when there's new ensemble releases, but other than that everything that's in the hub is user contributed. So we really rely on the community to help each other to contribute and be able to distribute resources of interest to community. Another one is that we update the data. So again, kind of along with that once it's in there we don't update it. So that's why we asked for a maintainer and why we started associating data with a package because if people are interested in a more updated version. They could reach out to the maintainer since they had provided and curated and are more familiar with generating it that they could probably provide an update and then put it in the hub again. And then one another one is that all data is hosted by bioconductor. Again, you can host it on your institutional server or something like a publicly really accessible server like snowdo. The only thing that we don't ask is that it can't be like on a personal level like a get hub or a drop box so we want it to be more public more stable. But again, if you don't have access to that resource that we could provide our bioconductor Microsoft deal like that Microsoft is so graciously giving us and helping us with to host your resources. So contributing getting a little bit more into contributing rather than using hum since we just talked about how most of the resources are user contributed. So starting with their, their package base so that we can track them so that hopefully to help you to if you have a script or something that has done the curation that has done a generation if you wanted to regenerate or do another version another subset of resources that the code is there and easily reproducible traceable. Again, if there's a problem with the resource hopefully someone from the community could reach out to you with questions. We do have a helper package the bioconductor package hub hub has been created. It takes advantage of Leo's bio see this package to create a template. And then it also has a lot of helper functions that will help you create the necessary files for a hub package. And a lot of that information is also in the vietnam yet create a hub in the hub hub package. So really what makes a hub contributed package different than normal package is very few things. So all bioconductor packages require a biocuse term in the description. But if you're going to use the hubs we asked that you put in the appropriate either experiment hub annotation hub experiment hub software annotation hub software keyword so that we can track it as a hub package. So instead of the data being directly in your package since I briefly mentioned but we don't allow large data files, especially with get that they're not allowed in the package so we would encourage you to use and distribute through the experiment hub. So those data would not be in the package itself, we would instead in the instant directory in the x data have a metadata file so kind of the fields that we just talked about the titles the descriptions. So there's a lot of information about the resource that's provided in a metadata CSV file that then could be inputted into the database so it would be there and queryable. Additionally, then we would have an in script folder that gives information on how the resources were generated kind of like a how to so if a user did want to recreate your data objects they would be able to. It could be code pseudocode text just some sort of indication, most importantly if there's any sort of source information or licensing that should be aware of for the resources that it would be included there. Everything else is the same as a normal package submission and you would submit it to the new package submission tracker for review and go on as normal. Again the metadata file is the biggest thing so I just kind of wanted to take a little bit of time and break down the different metadata fields. Really briefly, since that's the main difference and the important part because that's what people will be querying against in the database. So the required columns of the metadata file are a title. In experiment hub there is the option to create these accessor functions for a specific resource so if you titled it lori v2. Once you use this accessor function you could actually have a function in the package that automatically gets created so it's the same as the title so if a user calls that with parentheses it would automatically load in our. So if you use that we do tell you to try to avoid spaces and punctuations for obvious reasons so it can convert into that nice function name that the user could call. Description again kind of like an abstract for your resource a little bit more thorough description of what the resource is. We asked to avoid special characters just since it's going into an SQLite database doesn't always like special characters so we ask you to try to avoid them, if at all possible. And then the bioc version. So the bioc version should be the bioconductor version that the resource will be first available. So most often than not it's going to be the current develop version of bioconductor where that version is going in so it would be the current bioconductor develop version so if you submitted one before the next release probably 316 right now. For genome species taxonomy ID and coordinate one base system we realize these are more geared towards like annotation data but we do ask for it for experiment data resources to so they all can be any if it's not appropriate for the data. We do have some helper functions to to make sure that it's kind of consistent as far as capitalization and punctuation since ours case sensitive. So, we have helper functions like get species list invalid species to help kind of make it consistent. We do have a validation function for the taxonomy ID based on a given species with that matches against the genome info dp low taxonomy to be so you can always look at that for validation. So for any one based just for annotation based to know if you're 01 based since some platforms index differently it's important to know for annotation purposes. So the next three kind of deal with the original source of the data so source type so the format of the original data, and we do have a helper function for get valid source types. If you don't find a valid source type that you think is appropriate for your data you can always request it to be added through the biocdevelop mailing list, or the hubs at bioconductor.org email. And if your data is truly simulated. We asked we do have a type of simulated that is an acceptable type that we would ask you to put source URL would be the original location of the data files sometimes it's a combines multiple sources. And if you have multiple sources we asked that it's a single string separated by comma comma. And again, if the data is simulated we recommend either then putting your lab is a source URL, or be anticipated by a conductor package short link would also be a good or acceptable option as well there then source version. So if there's a given source version or date of data, we would recommend putting that there, and data provider so where did the data come from CSC ensemble, your lab, some indication of where it came from. I kind of briefly mentioned it so the our data class would be the type of objects that you get back to work with in our. So am I getting back a G range object a summarized experiment object or range summarized experiment object a single cell object. So people kind of get an idea of what they would be expected to work with, or can transition to. And dispatch class. So this can be a little tricky for submitters, and this could be where we get into like reading and loading. So a dispatch class determines how annotation have our experiment hub will load the remote file after it's downloaded. So it will use some predefined dispatch classes to automatically load file and are for immediate use. So, examples if you use like the generic save the dispatch class would be RDA so that would use that load method. So this is created with save RDS you would use RDS so it knows to use the read RDS read RDS load RDS, blinking at the moment, but kind of get the idea there. And there are a number of available ones and annotation hub has a helper class of dispatch class list. So when in doubt, if you don't know what to use we recommend the file path which is kind of a catch all. So this is where it would download and then, instead of trying to load it back into our for you. It will give you the local path where it cashed in on your system. So then you can use that path and whatever appropriate load or read method so if you had even some specialized read method because it was some object or specialized object that you were using or creating something new. That way you could load it in yourself. And then probably the most important columns are this location prefix column column and the our data path column. So these are the two that will define where that remote file is and should be downloaded from. So location prefix if you're using the bio conductor default location you would actually skip this column because we'll populate it for you. But if you're using your own server, it would be the base URL to that server. And then should have the trailing slash, and then the our data path would be the remainder of the resource. So when you're using a default bio conductor one, we ask you upload it in a directory the same name as the package. And then you could have any number of sub directories underneath it but it would be the name of the package and then your file or the name of the package and subdirectory and file that includes the resource name and the extension. So you can kind of think of these two is if you took the location prefix and our data path and can't need it together. It should be the complete URL of that downloaded resource, like if you clicked on it, you would start the automatic download and your web browser type thing. It should be that complete download URL. And again I know this can and we've gotten a lot of questions on it in the past so just to kind of emphasize a couple of different examples here so if you wanted to upload a directory. And you're uploading your package and you're using the bio conductor default storage location, and you have a subdirectory. Sub directory one and subdirectory two and each of those directories has two files, and we'll say, well, one of the files has a CSV and extension and one of them has an RDA extension. Your metadata would have something like this where there would not be a location prefix column, but you would have an our data path column, and it would be your package name subdirectory one with file one dot CVS, and your package name subdirectory one file to RDA, etc. So here's a second example say you're hosting it on some institutional level server. And let's say you had two files, and your past looks something like this to complete path download. It might look something like the following where your location prefix then becomes the base URL to the path, and then your RDA path would be the completion of it. So you see that we have there my institutional website and data server with the trailing slash and then the our data becomes the rest of the URL path. In truth, data server could probably be included in the our data path. I guess it kind of this is a little discretion as you're contributing so I would say the base pass should be the limited pass so if eventually you would submit other data sets. I would say use the smallest path that would be repeatable is like the location prefix path because then that stays consistent, even if you're adding more data and then the unique part would be in your data path section. That makes sense. Last two fields in the metadata column that are required is maintainer. So again, we asked to check so that if there's an issue with a resource if someone reports an issue with a resource. They can either contact us and we can contact you or they could contact you directly and is a name and email address, and then tags. So tags could be anything that you think relevant to the resource and additional that people could query against. We've seen multiple tags. We asked that it be a single string and then separated by a colon, and we do grab any unique biosc views or specialized biosc views and automatically put them in a static so like every resource isn't going to have the annotation that we just asked you to put in as a biosc views tag. But if you look into the biosc views it can get more specific to single cell type data or a specific platform. So you can put those in your biosc views and they'll be automatically applied to all the resources where this could be a little bit more specialized per resource as far as tagging a resource for querying. You can include any other sort of columns in your metadata column or in your metadata file. They'll just be ignored by us and won't be included in the database. But if you wanted to include additional columns for your own purposes or if you're going to use that file in your code in some other way you can include as many as you'd like we just won't use them and we'll ignore them. Any questions thus far? So there's a question in the chat from Mandy Griswold. Is there an upside to uploading data to the hub rather than hosting data on a separate server and then accessing it through bio file cache? I would say probably the visibility and getting it more exposed because then you have it in a multitude of ways because like biosc file cache is its own semi-contained self and it would be only discoverable through your package where experiment hub and annotation hub didn't put it in this presentation to but there's also shiny versions and web app versions so people could find your data then and possibly use it in different ways that you didn't even think possible or collaborative research wise that it could be exposed and distributed in other ways. Any other questions? So thinking of just sort of places where people dump data, I don't know whether it's Zendo or Dataverse or something like that. Is there any of them that make it better? Or is there any that you'd say oh this is a one that we've had problems or this is a one that you definitely recommend that works really well? I would say not offhand. I would say I pointed out it as a main misconception because most people think they have to and normally just upload to Bioconductor where we've had people being like oh well I have it on this server can you upload it for us here and we're like you can keep it there it's okay. So we haven't run into those sort of issues. I would say when in doubt you could always shoot the Bioc mailing list a question or the hubs at Bioconductor.org a question and I guess I would put it back out to the community to let us know if they're experiencing or if they've experienced any slow download times I guess to let us know because then we could be aware of it to tell people to avoid hosting it there. But we haven't seen any large drawbacks from any of the ones that have currently been used outside of us. I would say using the Bioconductor default one kind of guarantees it to work and you know that we're probably going to secure it and keep it around I guess is one of the plus sides because we like to ensure data reproducibility so we're going to try within our power to make sure that it never goes away. I have a question. What kind of data objects do you typically find are the most commonly uploaded and that you can download directly in the cell experiments in your examples. I would say probably the recent pushes summarized experiments and single cell experiments just because they're kind of the hot thing and the most widely used right now. Awesome. I would say an annotation hub to every ensemble release. There's the Hanna strainers. He provides I can't remember exactly what type of object but every ensemble release there's you know harnesses versions of them and we also include two bits and G range versions of all the ensemble releases that they provide. So that would be another big one that's popular and annotation hub at least. So any other questions. So I did harp on metadata files so just about the file itself because that was all about like the contents of the metadata file. So it should be in the x data directory of a package and it should have an accompanying in script file that describes how those resources were generated again it could be code pseudo code text we just kind of want like a little bit of a how to how it was generated so if people wanted to they could produce an object of the same or at least know how it was formed and most importantly if there's any sort of source information and licensing information that should be included there so we know that it could be distributed and that it's appropriate to include in the hubs. It has to be the CSV file with all the required columns that we just went over in detail. And we've been referring well I've been referring to it as metadata dot CSV but it can be called anything you want as long as it's a CSV file so it could be resources dot CSV it could be subset data one dot CSV as long as it's a CSV file. And there can be more than one. So, a lot of data submitters that do a repeat or additional data will often included as a separate metadata files so that they know when or have some sort of distinction of versions. It's totally acceptable when you submit it or request additional data to be added just let us know what the name of that file is, but it can be called anything and you can have multiple versions if it's easier for you to maintain. Based on those differences and as far as the submission process. Basically, you would recreate your template package with the needed bio CPUs and that metadata file. And you would shoot off an email to hubs at bio conductor.org. Don't know where I really put maintainer bio conductor.org the main one is hubs at bio conductor.org and give us the link to the package so that we know where to find it. And if you're using the bio conductor storage you request access because we have to give you specialized keys in order to upload the data. And we would give you a temporary access code so that you could upload the data to a staging site that we would move over into the location. Once that's available, we will let you know that's available in the database and then you could alter your package then to use the hub interfaces to download the data in your package or to make people aware and finish off your package documentation. And then you would submit it to the new submission tracker just like a regular package. So, fairly straightforward as far as submitting. There could be a little bit of back and forth with getting the data into the database. That's, oh, okay. I guess before I go into that. There's the hub package I mentioned before Kayla from the core team has kind of developed it and utilizes some of Leo's bio see this to create a template package, and then has a lot of helper functions to help add the data to the metadata file try to get in the right format and has a lot of validation so that hopefully it can be more straightforward and less pickups when submitting the data to us to get it into the database. She has a great package vignette to use those helper functions and then the create a hub package vignette is available for converting an existing package to a hub package if there's an existing package that you wanted to transition over or creating a hub package from scratch. Some common pitfalls and just some of the things that sometimes we go back and forth on with getting the data into the database. ours case sensitive. You didn't know it's case sensitive it is. So it does make a difference, especially with that download location. If it doesn't match and doesn't match exactly with case there would be download issues. And going along with that, just general typos be careful that what you upload to your server is the actual location path in your metadata file we get a lot of just random typos. Some of the other things is that like the number of uploads to match metadata we normally give you permission, especially if you're on a bio conductor server to check the downloads for the uploads. So in general, they should match. I say in general because there are exceptions, because there are specialized cases with like annotations that you can upload, like the BAM and the BAM index file where they're associated together so then your uploads aren't going to match because that would be associated with with one but in general, your upload should match the number of rows in your metadata column. So it's clear that there's at least two unique tags per resource. So either with biocviews or using that tags column there has to be two unique or two valid tags per resource. Again I kind of mentioned it with the description of the metadata columns but we try to avoid special characters because the database doesn't always like them. So that's it, just some things that we normally go back and forth on and comes back. And we do have validation functions in Annotation Hub and Experiment Hub called Make Annotation Hub Metadata and Make Experiment Hub Metadata. We run these to get it into the database. So if you run it and you get an error, we're going to run it and we're going to get an error and it's not going to get in the database. So we really recommend running these before trying to send us it. And if you're getting an error or can't understand why there's an error, reach out to us because we're more than happy to help figure out why or what we need to do to make it valid. So I'd like to acknowledge our grant funding for Bioconductor and the ITCR that funds all of our research with Bioconductor and specifically the hubs. Core team throughout the years, I didn't start the hubs, it was created by other core team members and we've had many contributors with package code and contributions and recipes to get the data in that we do for default and the maintenance and the infrastructure behind it. And then again, since it's user contributed, it wouldn't really be popular without you guys contributing resources to the hubs and using it. So all of you. And if there are any more questions, that's all the slides I had. So I'd be happy to take more questions. Yeah, so I feel like I have a lot of edge questions, I mean, edge cases or cases that can break it. And maybe we need to talk about them more. But one of them comes to mind is like Recountree, which now that I know that data can be hosted elsewhere, that's more than like, maybe a million files. Maybe that's too much. And then the other one is a family of questions related to the spatial transcriptomics where about like what resolution should be uploading. And then, like, should we upload like the data that it's easier reading to our should we upload also the data that is part of the raw data that then gets process that then can be easily ready to our should we upload the actual our data but like that package for example special experiment has had a lot of breaking changes. Like even even within a major version of by conductor like the data can become unusable, because the package will change. So, I don't know. And then, I don't know you have one that you want to get more into and or the ones we could. We definitely should talk because we definitely should try to expand it make it more robust, make it more usable and would say millions probably a little bit of an overload for the current implementation of the hubs. I didn't really get into the future and what we plan to revamp the hubs but we did want to look at ways to move. Because right now, when you use the annotation hub and experiment hub everyone that calls the constructor will download a copy of the database and then it gets queried locally. We want to try to revamp that over the next year to move it to a cloud hosted database and only download is necessary and still have some work grounds to be able to use it and download parts of it locally if necessary but that moving towards that seems like that would be kind of more of a solution where as long as it can get into the database and have those point references and that would make that closer to being able to be possible. As far as raw data versus process data and where to go. I would say, we're probably not the expert with that probably would want to kind of get a feel from other areas and researchers in the field to know if having that raw data and working from that point if they would have other use cases for it, that then more of the raw data should go in if it thinks it could be expanded out in different ways than your specific or objects. If it's more specialized or specialized use case in a package or increases functionality or productivity of your individual package then I would say maybe getting more into the process or object would probably be a better way to go. But that's my own personal thought I'm sure that other people and probably other technical advisory people would probably argue one way or the other so I would say kind of more feel it out for your audience. And you prefer to have those discussions on the mailing list or you have issues. Either might be good to have it on the mailing list because then gets more of the community involved and since it would kind of move towards a community feel and know where people want to go with it that probably I would probably encourage it there. I'm probably going to get a lot of heat on there but yeah, I would say probably the mailing list because it would be good to get other people's opinions. Awesome thank you. The next of my input to you, Leonardo is that if your package, have it go from the raw data. If, because if someone's learning how to use a package and they would have the raw data and then all of a sudden you're like okay we'll just upload this already processed data object that's already in our format you need that's not helpful for the user. If that's part of your package does not somewhere else. I think in general we recommend as well as possible unless there's like efficiency benefits to it. Thank you for you Laurie are these slides going to be available somewhere and can we link Tim from the website. Yes, I believe on all of the conference material will eventually be up on the website somewhere if not I can always send you a copy, but almost all the conference material gets posted somewhere post to the people in person if you say your name before you answer the question that the online people can probably participate. This is from Marvin Vansler from from for annotation data should variants be submitted as separate packages for example an annotation pipeline that generates different outputs depending on gencode versions. My good says yes. Again, I'm kind of not. I just say I'm not the expert in the field but I would say getting a feel for what people use more often would probably be the more appropriate way to go and again asking on the mailing list what people think should be included in getting. I guess people that would be using it more which is more useful would probably be my best answer. It's not really a question but more of a comment in response to Leo's question based on my experience using the hugs. And I've developed the current at TCJ data so my advice would be to use like a data frame and then construct your class based on those basic data types, because that would allow for any new versions of classes to be constructed on the fly rather than having them break if there is a major change to those. Thank you so much for joining me. Grab me for a cup of coffee slack me I'm always around. Thank you.