So, my name is Ines, I do indeed work at WooCommerce as a happiness engineer, which means that I spent the majority of my time thinking about how I can improve my communication with our users and of course answering tickets. I used to do this even before I started working at automatic because I am a volunteer at the WordPress.org forums. And I used to work as a freelance support engineer giving developers the opportunity to hire someone without actually having an employee. And support is really something that I am passionate about and I am really excited to be able to tell you something about this today. So, let's get started. Let's say that you are a developer. Let's say that you have created a product, maybe a plugin. You've spent weeks, months, maybe working on this.  You've bug hunted, you've done everything that you should have and then finally the moment arrives. You get to release your product and it's amazing people are starting to use it and they're starting to buy your license and you're making money. That's nice, right? And then the emails start coming in. And these are the emails that are going to happen. It doesn't matter how great your product is, it doesn't matter how much time you spent making sure that there are no errors. These emails come from customers who are missing functionalities within your product. They are looking for customizations. They found problems that you might not even have thought of when you were actually making the product. And this is the moment where a lot of people think and realize that they've actually missed a step in their whole process of releasing their product. They spent so much time and energy on creating a product and not that much time and energy on actually thinking about answering this question. How are we going to communicate with our users? So by a show of hands, can I just ask who actually sat down before releasing their product and thought of this question? That's not a lot. So promise me this then, please. That before you release anything else, sit down by yourself or with your team and think of this question. How are we going to communicate with our users? So let me tell you why this is an important thing to do. The graphic designers amongst us here will agree with me that for a brand to work, everything has to look synchronous across all platforms. You have to use your logos everywhere, the same colors on your website as you do in your newsletter, etc. That's the way you make impact, right? So it stands to reason that you do the same thing with your communication. Your communication needs to be synchronous across all platforms. So think about what language are we going to use? What is our tone of voice going to be? How are we going to deal with angry customers? Will we give discounts or give free licenses to people like nonprofits? It basically comes down to three different areas. These are tone of voice, the platform that you're using, and your rules of engagement. So let's just go through these one by one, right? Your tone of voice is not so much about what you're saying. It's about how you're saying it. It's the same as using your logo everywhere and using the same colors. If you keep communicating in the same tone of voice over and over and over again, people are going to appreciate this. People are going to respond to this. As a human, I am a creature of habit. I like things to be the same every time. So if you as a company have a tone of voice that I can recognize, and I know that I'm talking to you specifically, it makes it easier for me to say, okay, I'm going to ask for help when I need it. Creating a tone of voice that fits doesn't have to be hard. There are a few things that you can ask yourself when deciding on one. Sorry. Are we formal or informal in the way that we talk to our users? Which words suit us and which don't? Do we use humor or do we not? And do we use long sentences or short ones? There's a long list of things that you can actually think of when deciding on your tone of voice. And one company doing tone of voice really well is Milchimp. They actually set up a site that is specifically catered towards their tone of voice. It is open to anyone and it's located at voiceentone.com. I suggest you take a look because it's awesome. So onto platform. And by this, I do not mean the platform that you use to sell your product. It's not the newsletter that you send out to get more sales. Those belong squarely into your tone of voice. What I am talking about is the software that you use to deal with incoming tickets. Well, you could use something like Gmail. You do have to keep in mind what scalability issues are going to be like for you. If you want to grow your company, you need a platform that supports the ability for multiple people to work in the same place. Gmail does not allow for that. So make a choice. These are the ones that I personally work with. You'll see Slack in there. Not because it's a platform that deals with ticketing. But with WordPress products, you have a lot of different areas where tickets might come in. And it's nice to have your emails and your WordPress.org open tickets come into the same stream. This is why I put it in there. Slack supports this. And there's a lot of different choices out there. You should really take a look at what these different platforms can do for you and try them out. Help Scout Kiyako and Zendesk are all very solid choices, but there are more of them out there. You should really take a look. So the third area that I wanted to touch upon was rules of engagement. And this covers pretty much everything from how do we engage angry customers, right? What do we say when they ask for too much? What happens then? Do we give stuff away? Or do we say no when they ask for free stuff? Having a plan to fall back on is a really great thing. Giving thought to these questions will spare you the difficulty to having to decide how to respond when big emotions come into play. I can promise you that there will come a time where you get frustrated or even very angry at your customers. And having a plan to fall back on really helps in that case.  I've seen this happen.  And having this backup plan, it really helps you to take a step back and take a deep breath and say, okay, I got this. And then you check your tone of voice guide and you say, okay, this is the way that we should be replying to these customers. And then you get to reply to an angry customer the same way that you reply to someone who is friendly. This is not easy to do. In fact, it is the absolute worst thing about doing support. It is the hardest thing you will ever have to do when supporting your product. But do not get discouraged. Look at your backup plan, take a deep breath and move forward. Thank you. If there are any questions, I am happy to answer them. As you said, you're introducing a product and you're so excited about it. Could you move a little closer to the mic, please? I think I'm too short. Great product, you introduced it. How do you feel about, I realize people can set up forums for your product independent of you, but being proactive about that and providing openly available user forums? Do you have an opinion on that? I do. So, forums are great and not great. It really, really depends on your product. And it depends on how many people do you have to manage that forum. Because you cannot just open a forum and say, have fun. I'm not going to deal with this. You actually need people to moderate your forum. And if you do not have those people, you are better off taking it through the platform that you're using. Does that answer your question? Thank you. Thank you for the great talk. My question is about, again, the support. Sometimes it happens that we have a product and my product, my product is a pretty much a bigger product. And it deals with a lot of aspects of a website in terms of HTML, back end, front end, database. So, it happens sometimes that my product is perfectly all right. But the customer's website is customized in a way that my product doesn't complains with that and start working well. In that scenario, customer comes back to us and even they screwed us in the rating and they yell on us. Sometimes they try to blackmail us and we have to go extra mile to resolve their issues and we even burn ourselves for that. How to deal with this situation or is there any conflict resolution policy or procedure on the WordPress forum so that we can deal with this thing? So, if this is in the WordPress forums itself, there are a lot of people working in the support team who are very willing to hammer the hell out of very negative replies that do not have a solid foundation. So, you're going to have negative replies regardless of how great your product is, all right? That's going to happen. You're not going to be able to 100% satisfy everyone. But if you need help, go to the Slack channel in Make WordPress and talk to one of the volunteers there and say, listen, this is my problem and I think we have to deal with this. Can you please help me? That's the way that we can help you with situations like this. Now, the other thing, the policy that you asked for is something that really falls under your rules of engagement that I talked about.  How do we respond? Do we have rules for this? Within your own company? That's up to you. You know, you can put this in your terms and agreement file on your website and you can point to that and say, listen, I'm sorry that you're having problems and I feel for you, but we cannot help you because of reason. Does that answer your question? Cool. Hello. Thank you for the presentation. I have a question about the platforms that you use to provide support. You mentioned HelpScout, Zendes, Kayako, could you share your experience using them and when would you choose one over the other? I would love to answer that question, I think, outside. Not because I don't want to answer it here, but because it's a long story. Is that all right? Cool. Hi. Hi. My question is this, when you have limited time and have an open source piece of software out there, how do you communicate with the audience that you have that you can only answer questions, I don't know, let's say Monday and Tuesday of every week or every other week. Is that something that you should be putting somewhere or somehow? This is about WordPress.org, the free plugins. I would definitely put it on your page just to say, listen, I've got limited resources to help you out. I do want to support you and give you the best help that I can, but I only have time to do this at these specific times. That's perfectly fine. People will know what to expect from you. Thank you. You're welcome. Hi. Thank you. Thanks for your support. You're often the front lines for receiving requests, potentially related to feature changes and major platform updates. What would you recommend or what are best practices around how customer support can actually feedback to the development team or work with designers? What does that type of collaboration look like? How often should it happen? How do you communicate with a customer that those types of things are taking place? That's a lot of questions. Is it a question? Communicating back to your developers is really, really important because they do not hear the things that you hear as a customer support app. The way that I'm used to doing this is to open a new issue on GitHub. For example, just explain this is what the user asked for. I think it's a solid idea. Maybe we should implement it. And then if the developer needs more information, they can ask you what you've heard. I think that's a very solid way to keep in touch with your developer. And that should happen. In my opinion, I'm sure that there's going to be other opinions out there. In my opinion, this should happen as soon as that request comes in. And as soon as you go into meetings and say, we're going to talk about this once a week, a lot will get lost in the noise. Thank you. This is a little short. So thank you for the talk. I have a service that's coming up that has not launched yet, but it is going to be providing agencies a white label option. Do you have any advice or experience working with those types of services that you could recommend that would be helpful? I kind of miss what kind of service that you're offering. Sorry, setting up a service that's white labeled to other web agencies? I'm not exactly sure what that means. I'm sorry. Basically, a web agency would use our service, but use their own branding. Oh, right, right, right. I have to honestly admit that I have not had any experience in this field, so I wouldn't be able to give you any other advice than what I just did, but you're welcome to tweet at me or write me a message, and I'm happy to look into more details for you. Great, thank you. You're welcome. Thanks for your talk. My question is, besides the tone of voice link that you gave, do you have any other resources that we might look to in order to help us form a plan, a backup plan? So HelpScout is actually, they have a blog and a massive amount of resources freely available to anyone who needs it. That is my number one go-to page if I need kind of a reference point for doing certain things. They have templates that you can use. They have, you know, comparison between these are bad emails and these are right emails, and I would really suggest taking a look at the HelpScout resources for sure. Thanks, that's exactly what I wanted. Okay, you're welcome. Hi, Ness. Hi, Beth. So a lot of us, when we're starting out, we've launched a thing, and we're the ones doing the support initially. At some point, if things go well, we'll want to transition into having other people help us with that support. So can you talk a little bit about what are some good signs for knowing when to start thinking about that, and then like making that transition, like for somebody like me who has some like control issues, and I want to make sure that, you know, those support people are maintaining tone, but also dealing with the, I mean, just talk a little bit about how that transition works. Right. So I've seen this happen personally where a developer creates a really beautiful product and then gets so many tickets coming in that they lose the time to actually do any development. And I would say if you're looking to pinpoint a moment where you say, okay, now we need someone else to do this, is when you honestly do not have the time anymore to do both development and support. If you follow the things that I laid out just now, if you think about these steps, these three steps in advance, during the product development, basically, it's quite easy to say, okay, this is what I have documented. Here you go, and we can train and talk and make sure that, you know, this is your following these outlines. And what we personally do is do ticket reviews, peer ticket reviews, so you can sit together and say this had a bat rating, and what can we do in the future to make sure that that doesn't happen anymore. That would be one of the key elements of making sure that everyone stays on track. Just to have that open discussion, does that answer your question fully? Hey, great talk. The question I have is you have basically preparing process for how to engage users for support in various different scenarios. Have you had in your experience to deal with the break glass scenario when you had a customer or user who just couldn't be placated or satisfied? So that's a good question, by the way. It is perfectly fine to say no to users. If at some point you've outlined your steps, you've outlined your terms, you've outlined whatever was needed to make sure that they got the help that I needed, and they're still not responsive, it's perfectly fine to say, okay, listen, I'm willing to help you, I'm willing to work with you, but if we continue this way, there's no more that I can do for you, so I would have to stop helping you, and that's a very difficult thing to do and a very delicate thing to do, but it's still okay to say no in those cases. Thank you. Hi, so thank you for the great discussion. I'm wondering if you take over support for an already established product, but there's a heavy developmental side to it, and you're not the developer? Not a developer. What would you find beyond having copious amounts of well-documented, not only code, but actual documentation, what would you say would be one or two additional ways that you can help further support the support person if there's a highly technical amount of support work that might need to be done, like you might need to know different server information or different operating environments and such. Can you clarify for me who the person is that supporting the support person? Well, in our case, it would be a member of the agency, but not the person who helped develop the code, so it's not somebody who, say, understands, I can read all the functions, but I don't know what all of them do, and I don't know all of the different dependencies, so I don't always understand, and so there's sometimes a delay while I'm waiting for a developer to be able to get back with me with where to look for more information. Communicate with your user and say, listen, honesty is always going to get you more brownie points than just staying silent, so just tell them, listen, I do not know the answer to this 100% right now. I want to make sure that I give you the best answer possible. Please hold on for a moment while I go and talk to my developer and make sure that you get the best answer.  Your user knows that there is a reason for you not to reply as fast as possible, and they're going to be happy with the fact that you were honest, right? So it is perfectly fine to be honest about this and just tell your user and make sure you communicate. Thanks. You're welcome. I think that's it with the questions. Thank you so much.


All right, so we have a new segment, talk of the town today. We got a special guest there, honey. Who are you mama? So people want to know why hundreds and not millions?  So it's like, either way, the hundreds will always be there, like, you know, like. Either way, it's money.  Okay. Yeah. So, for good, I don't know, where you from? I'm from motherfucking, Karnashi, you get me? But was also raised in Brownsville. So, you know. So how did your rap name come about? Well, I watched a lot of mob movies and stuff.  So Danny come from that.  So, had to put the hundreds behind it, you know. I'm gonna have to come right now. You know. So, when did music come? Or when did you find a love for music or? After poetry, you know. Me and my friends. Did you write poems? Yes. I used to get in trouble at my mom used to me. Let me have a quick look. No, I can't do it. I'm washed.  But I used to get in trouble. Loads of rap, lots of brood type shit? Yeah. No, way beyond that. Like I used to have to. Are you a DMD? Yeah, I started to make poems, write poems to make sense and really like, it's crazy. Don't get in trouble, kids. So, from poetry to music, how did the music? Well, so yeah, you know. Started off with poetry. Which is about the rap of poem. Yeah. It was like, you know, like, I don't know, always flow with it and stuff. It was just like the flow of poetry. So like one day, freestyle with my friends.  Like, where? Like yeah, let's try it. So what was your first song you ever made? My first song I ever made was a Earl Swatch shirt remix. Donax. Are you into it or something like that? Donax, please Donax. But yeah, that was, it's on SoundCloud, I think under the Ilias. I think so under the Ilias. Oh shit, yeah, I gotta check that out, y'all. You giving it a job? I think Tehancho or something. Yeah. So yeah, a fake name on it? Uh, yeah, that was one of my Ilias from back then. I'm dead. So how do you feel like you improved musically from then to now? Well, a lot, well, flow. Where you in? Low sound. Yeah, the flow, the sound, I had a better character. I found myself like before with free styling. Like, you know, you can tell I was like still trying to figure things out and stuff.   So you bust a mean freestyle? I bust a mean freestyle. So are we gonna see you do some free styles for the next one? Oh man, yeah, yeah, couple of them, couple of them. Okay, okay. So what is some artist you was listening to early on? You know, Earl Sweatshirt. Shit, Earl Sweatshirt.  Tyler, the creator, Frank Ocean. That's the creative stuff. So how, I was like, so.  Yo, nobody said Cassidy in a really long time. Yeah, I fucking, what? I used to be obsessed with Cassidy music. The problem versus the hustler, you know? But yeah, Jay-Z, Biggie, Nas. Oh, those type of people. So how did you, I wanna say develop your sound. What kind of sound would you say you make? I don't think it's really drill, but I don't think it's not drill. I don't know. It's like a mixture.  I could give you pop, I could give you, I could give you rap, I could give you rock and roll, it don't matter. It's everything I want. So it's called what the fuck?  I think you should change that. I'm crying while you. But you can do a little bit of everything. So what's your favorite to do? Like, favorite hobby? Favorite genre? Oh, my favorite genre is rap. I love rap, man. You just said you could do a little bit of everything. Yeah, that's my favorite one to do out of everything. Everything? Yeah, that's right. But I can do a little bit of everything. Okay. You know? I said it right. Okay, okay. So, what inspired your song, Two Sturdy? Oh God. What, do you feel like you're Two Sturdy? Like, what inspired that? Tiktok. Tiktok? Jersey, New York, they always want to know who the sturdy is and stuff like that. So I do, you know? Tell Jersey, like, yeah, we're sturdy, you know? Cause you know Jersey, they got their little weird dances. You know? You're going to Tiktok right now, they always saying who's sturdy and stuff like that, yeah? So you're gonna start busting dance moves or not?  I mean, That's true. Shout out Jersey, man. Shout out New York, you know? Shout out the state. So in your previous interview with other side, it was like, oh God, why is it, oh God, it's nothing bad. It was just a rubber bite.  It was like your shout out to Sissy cause he started that whole, well, the tool, whatever it was. Shout out. Shout out. It was fake, a shout out. Shout out. Hell no. I just stated a fact. That was it. Wait, what? Shout out. Damn, I was like maybe a collab coming one day. What?   But yeah, never ever. No, okay, well.  I would not take that from him. Okay, but you just good? Yeah, I'm good. Okay, all right, wow. Okay, so what's your favorite song that you released so far? That would have to be Shake It Baby cause I had the most fun with that. Let's get into Shake It Baby. So, million streams, almost a million views. How do you feel like how that song rolled out was? How you feel about the turnout? The turnout could have been 10 times better. Like, you know, that's it.  A great experience, you know? Kick open the door for me and stuff for a lot of places, you know? Got me stamped, you know? And everything like that. Like Shake It Baby was a change. It was a change in fact of my life and stuff like that. Major Boy, you know? From a tier three player to, you know, tier one. Like, ah, yeah, that boy could be a whole star. Like, you know? Okay, a lot of people say that you're slept on. What do you have to say about that? I gotta wake the people up soon. I gotta wake, I gotta wake that. So you agree? Yes, yes. Why do you feel like you're slept on though? I gotta be more consistent. The people see me, the people know I'm there, the people know I got it, you know? That's that. But I just gotta be more consistent and stuff like that. I gotta generate, I gotta keep the people, cause the people would look, but the people would turn and they had it like this. You know, so it's like, you know, I gotta keep the people towards me. Watch me people. I'm hot.  Mm-hmm. Okay, so the song called Lista. Why'd you call it that? Like I said, you know, I'm big on mob movies and stuff like that. So like, I felt like that was like a mob name.  But like, yeah, if you understand what I'm talking about in Lista and the song, Lista and everything, you know, I just feel like it just needs to be named Lista. So what's your process like in the studio session? How did you come up with these concepts? Oh man, let my team tell it, you know?   Boy, y'all be too tired? Like what? Nah, yeah, that too and stuff, you know? But like, you know, I be wanting everything perfect on top of that. Plus I just be messing up. Cause you know, be natural with it. Like, so it's like, you know, like all my songs is natural like this. Is it me? So you don't write?  I still mess up. Okay. Yeah? So it's okay for artists to mess up.   Yo, start that over, do that over. Let me, you know? So you definitely in tune to like, what the engineer be doing, like y'all. Yes, yes, shout out everybody who ever recorded me, but my main, you know, Craig the engineer and Rich right now, Rich working with me and stuff. Rich is doing this thing and stuff. We've been locked in the studio and stuff. Okay. A lot of people should work with him. So it's a lot of artists come from Canarsie? Yes. Do you feel like Canarsie's on the run right now? Canarsie's the new Atlanta. She's like all the way straight. Canarsie's the new Atlanta. So y'all support each other like Atlanta and all that? We got no choice to elders, you know?  You know? Canarsie's the new Atlanta. Yes. Canarsie's the new Atlanta, I said it first people. Okay. So do you have any future collabs on the way? Yes. I have collabs with like the battle rapper Cortez. Okay. You know? Yeah, I'm in so. Yes. I have Tay Flos, I got Quelly Wu, Tida Wu Sly, you know? Tida Wu Sly. I'm like, what you think? Me and Eli Flos just talking to get him on a remix of Damn. He liked that song a lot. After you told us? Mm-hmm. Exclusive, exclusive. He liked that song a lot and everything. But yeah, I got a couple of, yeah, a couple of artists. I mean, by myself, I make a lot of songs by myself and stuff, but yeah, that's a few names to name. I can't name everybody right now. That's cool. So what does Wu, your mama mean? What does that mean?  Like, I feel good. Like, you know, I just make 10,000 dollars. Like, I got 10, you know? Like, I just make 20, I just make the Wu, your mama. Like, you know? Like that's a high allure for a Wu nigger. Like, you for me, that's a high allure for a Wu nigger.  Okay. Yo, you so animated. I'm just saying people. So is that just a slogan? That's, that's, that's, that's whatever you wanted to be. Like, as long as you know it's mine.   But that's, that's, that's everything. So you got that copyright and all that.  Like, that's me, that's me. Wu, your mama mean? I've been in two cities. Wu, I'm simply important to the ladies. You get me? That's the full thing. But Wu, your mama, you know? Wu, your mama is just like, that's, you're in a great spirit. Like, nothing can take you down. Like the top of the world. Okay.  Oh God, man. You got producers or? Yes, I personal producers and management. Like we sit down, you know, I nag, I cry, I scratch. I want this beat. You know, sometimes there, no, this beat, yeah. You know? Very much in tune with the beats. Yes, everything, everything is with drops next. Like what's hot with the sale and the D&B, where we gonna go with the beat. We got a, we got a build it, like, you know, but yes. Shout out to everybody who, you know, all my producers, shout out to L.S. Shout out to Z1K who sparked it. You feel me? Shout out to my boy once again, Richwell. Shout out to Benji Roy. Shout out to Boris, you know? So, yeah. All right, so in the song, Dan, the labels say I'm next. Well, you're next. So how, what, like, so what's going on? Um, yeah, you know, I got some calls.  Dude, wanna sign labels or you wanna be independent? I wanna own everything. I wanna, I wanna have me, I got a family to feed, like, you know, like, I wanna show them, like. You could feed your family and still be signed. Yeah, you could, but like. I wanna have, like, that Michael Jackson career without the hassle of the labels and shit, you know? I wanna be the greatest of all time and, like, really own my master's. Oh, damn. Also, when you saw Dan, you was being spicy.  So, like, people copying your waves.  So, how do you feel about that?  Just look at the work. People copying your wave. Yeah, look at the work, check the dates, you know? Check the dates. Check the dates. Nobody specific. Just whoever it fits for. Yeah, you know, we check niggas' catalogs, you know?  Niggas can search up who they wanna search up, you know?  That's just that, you know? So, how do you feel about that?    Okay, so what's next for you 2021? Halfway to the next? Shit, hits. I got some hits in the making, man. I got some hits in the cut. Got some hits in the making. Got some great collabs.  That's next, you know? Maybe? Yeah. Movie? Mm-hmm. Movies? Mm-hmm. So tell the people where to find you and where to find your music and what's out and all that good stuff. Well, the hair comes to the cocky part, people. You can actually Google me, you know, Danny hundreds. Everything pops up, boom. I don't wanna be like, yo, you gotta go on Instagram, man.  Everything pops up right there. Blah, go Google band, everything. You can spot everything, everything you need.  Google, Danny hundreds.


ICT is cross-cutting, so if you're in ICT you can work in medicine, you can also do agriculture, you can also do health, so it is cross-cutting, it has a developmental aspect on it, it has entertainment aspect on it, so those are really very exciting. I was choosing a career, I mean a course, I was into medicine, but for some reason or another I went into engineering. At first I did not really know why I took engineering, but when years passed by I really enjoyed, I really enjoyed subjects that are being taught, and after that I went to academia and thought electronics engineering, and then I found it really very fulfilling because I have so many students about the course, and after teaching I went to work with the Ministry, Department of Transportation Communications, and looking after policies, policies, telecom policies and strategies, that was really very challenging because in my country we did the policies and strategies to open the market competition. After working with the Ministry I went into, I went to work with the International Telecommunications Union and now the challenge became bigger, even bigger. Be part of Girls in ICT Day 2016.


From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of AWS Public Sector Online. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. Hello, and welcome back to the coverage of AWS Public Sector Summit virtual. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here in theCUBE Studios, quarantine crew here talking to all the guests remotely. And it's part of our virtual coverage of AWS Public Sector. So I've got a great guest here talking about data science, weather, predictions, accurate climate modeling, really digging into how cloud is helping science. Dr. Shell, gentleman who's a senior scientist at Farrellon Institute, is my guest. Shell, thank you for joining me. Thank you. So tell us a little bit about your research. It's fascinating how, you know, I've always joked on a lot of my interviews and, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago, you need supercomputers to do all these calculations. But now with cloud computing, it opens up so much more on the research side and the impact is significant. You're at an awesome institute, the Farrellon Institute, doing a lot of stuff in the sea and the ocean and lavaria things. What's your focus? I study the ocean from space. And about 71% was covered by ocean, 40% of our population in the globe actually lives within 100 kilometers of the coast. The ocean influences our weather, it influences climate, and it also provides fisheries and recreational opportunities for people. So it's a really important part of the Earth's system. And I've been focused on using satellites, so from space, trying to understand how the ocean influences weather and climate. And how new is this in terms of just state-of-the-art? Fairly new, been around for a while. What's some of the progress in the state-of-the-art that you're involved in? I started working on satellite data in the 90s during school. And I liked the satellite data because it's the interface of applied math, computer science, and physics. The state-of-the-art is that we've really had remote sensing around for about 20, 30 years. But things are changing because right now we're having more sensors and different types of instruments up there and trying to combine that data is really challenging. To use it, our brain is really good in two and three dimensions, but once you get past that, it's really difficult for the human brain to try and interpret the data. And that's what scientists do, is they try and take all these multidimensional datasets and try to build some understanding of the physics of what's going on. And what's really interesting is how cloud computing is impacting that. It sounds so exciting, the confidence of multiple disciplines kind of all right there, had a geek out big time. So I got to ask you, do you have the public dataset program? Are you involved in that? Do you take advantage of that research? How are some of the things that AWS is doing help you and is that public dataset part of it? It's a big part of it now. I've helped to deploy some of the ocean temperature datasets on the cloud. And the way that AWS public datasets has potential to transform science is the way that we've been doing science, the way that I was trained in science was that you would go and download the data. And most of these big institutions that do research, you start to create these dark repositories where the institutions or someone in your group has downloaded datasets. And then you're trying to do science with these data, you're not sure if it's the most recent version. It makes it really hard to do reproducible science because if you wanna share your code, somebody also has to access that data and download it. And these are really big datasets. So downloading it could take quite a long time. It's not very transparent, it's not very open. So when you move to a public dataset program like AWS, you just take all of that download out of the equation. And instantly when I share my code now, people can run the code and just build on it and go right from there, or they can add to it or suggest changes. That's a really big advantage for trying to do open science. You know, I had a dinner with Theresa Carlson who is awesome, she runs the public sector at Summit for AWS. And I remember this is years ago and we were dreaming about a future where we would have national parks in the cloud or this concept of, you know, Summit is a beautiful treasure, physical place, you go there. And we were kind of dreaming that, wouldn't it be great to have like these datasets or supercomputer public commons? It sounds like that's kind of the vibe here where it's shareable. And it's almost like a digital national park or something. It's a shared resource. Is that kind of happening? First of all, what do you react to that and what's your thoughts around that dream? And is this kind of tied to that? Yeah, I think it ties directly to that. When I think about how science is still being done and has been done for the past sort of 20 years, we had a real change about 20 years ago when a lot of the government agencies started requiring their data to be public. And that was a big change. So then we actually had public datasets to work with. So more people started getting involved in science. Now, I see it as sort of this fortress of data that in some ways had prevented scientists from really moving rapidly forward. But with moving onto the cloud and bringing your ideas and your compute to the dataset, it opens up this entire Pandora's box, this beautiful world of how you can do science. You're no longer restricted to what you have downloaded or what you're able to do because you have this unlimited compute. You don't have to be at a big institution with massive supercomputers. I've been running hundreds of workers analyzing in my RAM over 200 or 300 gigabytes of data on a $36 Raspberry Pi that I was playing around with that was my kids. That's transformative. That allows anyone to access data. And if you think about what it would have to do to do that in the old days, stack and spike servers, call. First of all, you got to get the cash, buy servers, rack them, stack them, connect to a downward nightmare. So I got to ask you now with all this capability, first of all, you're talking to someone who loves the cloud. So I'm pretty biased. What are you doing now with the cloud that you couldn't do before? So certainly the old way from a provisioning standpoint, check done, innovation, bars raised. Now you're creative, you're looking at solutions, you're building a enabling device like a Raspberry Pi, almost like a switch or an initiation point. How has the creativity changed? What can you do now? What are some of the things that are possible that you're doing? I think that you can point to within some of the data sets that have already gone on the cloud are being used in these really new different ways. And it again, it points to this, when you don't have access to the data, just simply because you have to download it. So downloading the data and figuring out how to use it and figuring out how to store it is a big barrier for people. But when things like the HF Radar data set went online, within a couple of months there was a paper where people were using it to monitor bird migration in ways that they'd never been able to do before because they simply hadn't been able to get the data. There's other research being done where they've put whale recordings on the cloud and they're using AI to actually identify different whales. There's all, it's using one data set but it's also the ability to combine all these different data sets and have access to them at the same time and not be limited by your computer anymore. Which for a lot of science, we've been limited by our access to compute. And that, when you take away that, it just, it opens all these new doors into doing different types of research with new types of data.  But that's the kind of thing that wouldn't be possible for because you'd have to get the data set, do some math. I mean, this is cool stuff with the ocean. I mean, can you just take a minute to share some, give people an insight into some of the cool projects that are being either thought up or dreamed up or initiated or done or in process or in flight. Because obviously there's so much data in the ocean, so much things to do. It's very dynamic. There's a lot of data, obviously. Shares for the folks that might not have a knowledge of what goes on, what are you guys thinking about? A lot of what we're thinking about is how to have societal impact. So as a scientist, you want your work to be relevant, right? And one of the things that we found is that the ocean really impacts weather at scales that we simply can't measure right now. So we're really trying to push forward with space instrumentation so that we can monitor the ocean in new ways at new resolutions. And the reason that we want to do that is because the ocean impacts long-term predictability into weather forecasts. So a lot of weather forecasts now, if you look out, you can download, you can go on to weather underground or whatever weather site you want. And you'll see the forecast goes out 10 days and that's because there's not a lot of accuracy after that. So a lot of research is going into, how do we extend into seasonal forecasts? I'm from Santa Rosa, California. We've been massively impacted by wildfires and being able to understand how to prepare for the coming season is incredibly important. And surprisingly, if you think to a lot of people, the ocean plays a big role in that. The ocean can impact how much storm systems, how they grow, how they evolve, how much water they actually are moisture they pick up from the ocean and then transport over land. So if you want to talk about, it's really interesting to talk about how the ocean impacts our weather and our seasonal weather. So that's an area where people are doing a lot of research. And again, you're talking about different data sets and being able to work together in a collaborative environment on the cloud is really what's starting to transform how people are working together, how they're communicating and how they're sharing their science. I just opens up so many possibilities. I want to get your vision of what you think the breakthroughs might be possible with cloud for research computing because you have kind of old school, a new school, Amazon CEO Andy Jessica is an old guard, new guard. The new guard is really more looking for self provisioning, auto scaling, all that super computer on demand, all that stuff at your fingertips. Great, love that. But is there any opportunity for institutional change within the scientific community? What's your vision around the impact? Because it's not just scientific, it also can go to government for societal impact. So you start to see this modernization trend. How, what's your vision on the impact of the scientific community with cloud? I think that the way the scientific community has been organized for a long time is that scientists are at Institute and a lot of the research has been siloed. And it's siloed in part because of the way the funding mechanism works. But that inhibits creativity and inhibits collaboration and inhibits the advancement of science because if you hold on to data, if you hold on to code, you're not allowing other people to work on it and to build on what you do. The traditional way that scientists have moved forward is you make a discovery, you write up a paper, you describe it in a journal article, and then you publish that. Then if someone wants to build on your research, they get your journal article, they read it, then they try to understand what you did, they maybe recode all of your analysis. So they're redoing the work that you did, which is simply not efficient. Then they have to download the data sets that you access. This slows down all of science and it also inhibits bringing in new data sets again because you don't have access to them. So one of the things I'm really excited about with cloud computing is that by bringing our scientific ideas and our compute to the data, it allows us to break out of these silos and collaborate with people outside of our institution, outside of our country and bring new ideas and new voices and elevate everyone's ideas to another level. It brings the talent and the ideas together and now you have digital and virtual worlds because where you've been virtualized with COVID-19, you can create content as a community building capability or your work can create a network effect with other peers and is a flash mobbing effect of potential collaboration. So work, workforces, workplaces, workloads, workflows, kind of interesting or kind of being changed in real time. You just talked about speed, agility. These are technical concepts being applied to kind of real world scenarios. I mean, your thoughts on that. Yeah, I mean, I now work with people like right now, I'm working with students in Denmark, Oman, India, France and the US. That just wasn't possible 10 years ago and we're able to bring all these different voices together which it really frees up science and it frees up who can participate in science which is really fun. I mean, I'm a scientist, I do it because it's really, really fun and I love working with other people. So this new ability that I've gained in the last couple of years by moving onto the cloud has really accelerated all the different types of collaborations I'm involved with and hopefully accelerating science as a whole. You know, I love this topic. It's one of my passion, passion areas where and it's an issue I've been scratching for over a decade too is that content and your work is an enabler for community engagement because you don't need to publish it to a journal. It's like waterfall mentality. It's like you do it but if you can publish something or create something and show it, demo it or illustrate it that's better than a paper, right? If you're on a video you can talk about it's going to attract other people like-minded peers can come together. That's going to create more collaboration data. That's going to create more solidarity around topics and accelerate the breakthroughs. For our last paper we actually published all the software with it. We got a digital buyer for the software, published the software and then containerized it so that when you read our paper at the bottom of the paper you get a link, you go to that link, you click on a button and you're instantly in our compute environment you can reproduce all of our results do the error propagation analysis that we did and then if you don't like something go ahead and change it or add onto it or ask us some questions. That's just magical. Yeah, it really is. And you know, Amazon has been a real investor and I got to give props to Theresa Carlson and her team and Andy Jassy, the CEO because they've been investing in credits and collaborating with groups like Jet Propulsion Lab, you guys, everyone else, just space has been a big part of that. I'll see Bezos loves space. So they've been investing in that and bringing that resource to the table. So you got to give Amazon some props to that. But great work that you're doing. I'm fascinated. I think it's one of those examples where it's a moonshot but it's doable. It's like, you can get there. Yeah, and it's just so exciting. Like I'm working, I'm the lead on a proposal for a new science mission to NASA and we are going all in with the cloud computing. So we're going to do all the processing on the cloud. We want to do the entire science team on the cloud and create a science data platform where we're all working together. That's just never happened before. And I think that by doing this we multiply the benefits of all of our analysis. We make it faster and we make it better and we make it more collaborative. So everyone wins. Shell, you're an inspiration to many. I'm so excited to do this interview with you. I love what you said earlier at the beginning about your focus of being computer science, physics, space. That confidence is multiple disciplines. Not everyone can have that. Some people just get a computer science degree.  This notion of multiple disciplines coming together is really what society needs now is we're converging or virtualizing or becoming a global society. And that brings up, you know, my final question and something that I know that you're passionate about creating a more inclusive scientific community because you don't have to be the just the computer science major.  But you don't have to be something to get into this new world because if you have certain disciplines or that's math, maybe you don't have computer science but it's quick to learn, the framework's out there. No code, low code. So cloud computing supports this. What's your vision and what's your opinion of how more inclusivity can come into the scientific community? I think that when you're at an institution or at a commercial company or a nonprofit, if you're at some sort of organized institution, you have access to things that not everyone has access to. And in a lot of the world, there's trouble with internet connectivity. There is, you know, trouble downloading data. They simply don't have the ability to download large data sets. So I'm passionate about inclusivity because I think that until we include global voices in science, we're not going to see these global results that we need to. We need to be more interdisciplinary and that means with working with different scientists in different fields. And if we can all work together on the same platform, that really helps explode interdisciplinary science and what can be done. A lot of science has been quite siloed because you work at an institution so you talk to the people one door down or two doors down or on the same floor. But when you start working in this international community and people don't have to be online all the time, they can write code and then just jump on and upload it. You don't need to have these big powerful resources or institutions behind you. And that gives a platform for all types of scientists and all types of levels to start working with everyone. This is why I love the idea of the content in the community being horizontally scalable because if you're stuck around a physical institution or space, you kind of have group think or maybe have the same kind of idea being talked about. But here when you pull back the remote work with COVID-19 as an example, it highlights it, the remote scientists could be anywhere. So that's going to increase access. What can we do to accept those voices? Is there a way or an idea or formula that you see that people could, assuming there's access, which I would say yes, what do we do? What do you do? I think you have to be open and you have to listen because if I ask a question into the room where my colleagues work, we're gonna come up with an answer but we're gonna come up with an answer that's informed by how we were trained in science and what fields we know. So when you open up this box and you allow other voices to participate in science, you're gonna get new and different answers. And as a scientist, you need to be open to allowing those voices to be heard and to acting on them and including them in your research results and thinking about how they may change what you think and bring you to new conclusions. Machine learning has been a part, I know you have your work in the past, obviously Cloud, you're a big fan, I can tell, proponent of it. Machine learning and AI can be a big part of this too, both on not only sourcing new voices and identifying what's contextually relevant at any given time, but also on the science side, machine learning, because if we can take a minute to give your thoughts on the importance and relevance of machine learning and AI because you still got the humans and you got machines augmenting each other, that relationship is going to be a constant conversation point going forward, you know, is there data about the data and what's the machines doing? What's your thoughts on all of this? Machine learning AI is an impact. Well, it's funny you say impact. So I work with this NASA impact project, which is this interdisciplinary team that tries to advance science and it's really into machine learning and AI. One of the difficulties when you start to do science is you have an idea like, okay, I want to study tropical storms and then you have to go and wade through all these different types of data to identify when events happened and then gather all the data from those different events and start to try and do some analysis. They're working and they've been really successful in using AI to actually do this sort of event identification, so what's interesting and how can we use AI and machine learning to identify those interesting events and then gather everything together for scientists to then try and bring more analysis. So AI is being used in a lot of different ways in science. It's being used to look at these multi-dimensional problems that are just a little bit too big for our brains to try and understand, but if we can use AI and machine learning to gather insights into certain aspects of them, it starts to lead to new conclusions and it starts to allow us to see new connections. So AI and machine learning has this potential to transform how we do science and a lot of cloud computing is part of that because we have access to so much more data now. Yeah, it's a real enabling technology and when you have enabling technology, the power is in the hands of the creative minds and it's really what you can think up and what you can dream up and that's going to come from people. Yeah, phenomenal. Final question for you. Just to kind of end on a light note, Dr. Schell, gentlemen here, senior scientist at the Feralon Institute, you're doing a lot of work on the ocean, space, ocean, interaction. What's the coolest thing you're working on right now or you've worked on that you think would be worth sharing? There's a couple of things I have to think about. What's the most fun? Right now I'm working on doing some analysis with data. We had a big, huge international field campaign this winter off of Barbados. There were research vessels and aircraft. There were sail drones involved, which are these autonomous robotic vehicles that go along the ocean surface and measure air sea interactions. And we're looking to right now, we're working on analyzing that data. So we have all of this ground truth data. We're bringing in all the satellite observations to see how we can better understand the earth system in that region with a specific focus on air sea interactions over the ocean where we have, where when it rains, you get the salinity stratification where there's strong solar, you get diurnal stratification. So you have upper ocean stratification and heat and salinity and how those impact the fluxes and how the ocean impacts the heat and moisture transport into the atmosphere which then affects the weather. So again, this is this multi-dimensional data set with all these different types of both ground truth data, satellite data that we're trying to bring together and it's really exciting. It could shape policy, it could shape society, maybe have a real input into global warming, our behaviors in the world, sounds awesome. Plus, I love the ground truth and the observational and it sounds like our media business algorithm. We got to get the observation, get the truth, report it. Sounds like there's something in there that we could learn from. Yeah, it's very interesting because you often find what you see from a distance is not quite true of flux. I can tell you that as a media, as a media is we do a lot of investigative journalism. So we appreciate that. Dr. Schell, gentlemen, seeing your science at the Farrell Island Institute here as part of AWS Public Sector Summit, thank you so much for your time. What a great story. We'll keep in touch, love the sales drone, we interview them, great innovation and continue the good work. I look forward to checking in later. Thanks for joining. Thanks so much, it was nice talking to you. Okay, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. We're here in our studios covering the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit virtual. This is theCUBE virtual, bringing you all the coverage with Amazon and theCUBE. Thanks for watching.


Good evening everybody. Welcome to the community construction meeting for the TCU area letter placement and infrastructure improvement project. Before we start the meeting, please make sure you have yourself muted. So we don't have a lot of background noise. And we don't hear if your daughter is playing Sesame Street in the background. We had that at one meeting. If you have any questions, please post them in the chat. You'll see a chat link at the bottom right hand corner of your screen. We'll answer those chat questions following the presentation. If you're a call-in user and cannot use the chat feature, we will unmute you one by one so you can ask your questions. This meeting is recorded. A link to the video will be posted to the city website project page by November 17th. If you are a board member of the Wedgwood Square, University West, University Place, Blue Bonnet Hills, or Frisco Heights neighborhood associations, I'll email that video link and meeting summary to you to share with your neighbors and association members. And I do want to welcome Council 9, Council District 9, Council Member Ann Zeta, and Council District 6, District Director Tara Holt to the meeting. And now I'm going to pass the meeting over to our professional engineer, Subhi Varagese, who is our project manager. Good evening, all of you. My name is Subhi Varagese. I'm the project manager managing this project. The agenda is introductions, project overview, project area. Why are we doing this project? Let's service lines. When does construction start? Your TCU area lead team includes project manager Subhi Varagese. My contact number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. My email address is sudy.verughefe.gov. Inspector is Daniel Roy. His contact number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. And his email address is daniel.ry at Fort Worth, Texas.gov. Contractor is graphics utilities. Engineering design consultant with container engineering. Project overview. Water mains and river mains will be rehabilitated on 8th Street and in two alleys. All city-owned land services will be replaced with this Fort Worth Capital Improvement project. After the water and river mains are installed, the streets will be refaved with asphalt. Project is in Council District 9 and Council District 6 project area. Mudflation Avenue from Laboc Avenue to Saundage Avenue, water line will be replaced. Laboc Avenue from Mudflation Avenue to West Saundage Street, water and river will be replaced. Merida Avenue from Mudflation Avenue to West Saundage Street, water line will be replaced. Alley between Merida Avenue and Saundage Avenue from West Saundage Street to Mudflation Avenue, river line will be replaced. Alley between Princeton Street and West Saundage Street from Greeny Avenue to Palmer Avenue, river line will be replaced. West Bowie Street from Merida Avenue to Saundage Avenue, water line will be replaced. Wabash Avenue from Park Hill Drive to West County Street, water line will be replaced. Lemesha Place from Benbrook Boulevard to Rogers Avenue, water and river line will be replaced. Rogers Avenue from Benbrook Boulevard, West British Street, water line will be replaced. Shirley Avenue from Kingswood Drive to Wallingford Drive, water and river line will be replaced. Why are we doing this project? Replacing city owned lead services lines is the primary reason for undertaking this project. We are only replacing lead services on the city side of water line. Photovolts, prioritizers, water and river line replacements based on the available data which includes the water main, brake history, leak history, CCTV inspection, age of the line, line material and whether there are lead service lines. All city owned lead services will be replaced. There are a total of 64 identified lead service lines in this project. Customers affected by the lead service lines were notified by later in December 2019 and again in October 2020. What part of the water line is lead? The city side of the service line starts at water main in the middle of the street and goes to the customer's meter. The city side of the service line is lead. The customer side of the service goes from the meter to the house and includes all plumbing inside the house. It is possible that other plumbing materials like solder, gas fittings or fixtures inside the house may contain lead. Property owners may need to hire a plumber to determine if there are lead plumbing materials inside the house. Where can I get more information? The Fort Worth Water Department offers a free test to determine lead levels in your drinking water. You can call at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Additional information is available on new city website at www.fortworthtexas.gov slash departments slash water slash lead. Is the street closed during construction? If we use open cut method, the customers will see an open trench that is 3-4 feet wide in the middle of the street. The trench will be covered when the crews are not working on the line. One lane will be open for traffic during construction. You will have access to your home with minimal disruption. Will our water be turned off? A temporary water line will be installed so customers will continue to have water. The water will be turned off for 15-30 minutes when service is transferred from the existing line to a temporary water line and when the service is transferred from temporary to the new water line. Will our sewer service be disrupted? The sewer service will not be interrupted. New sewer clean-outs will be installed at the temporary line. The sewer clean-outs provide close easy access if a backup or blockage occurs. Timeline. The construction begins Monday, November 16th. Shortly or near is the first street phase one on the schedule. The project end date is June 2022. The contractor will put door harness on your front door seven days before and one day prior to the start of construction. Contact. Project manager. My phone number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. My email address is suby.verughece.gov. Instruction name is Daniel Roy. His contact number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. His email address is daniel.ry at Fort Worth, Texas.gov. Emergency contacts. If there are any water main breaks, sewer backup, you can contact<PHONE_NUMBER> and select option one. For non-emergency contacts, 7AM to 7PM Monday through Friday, you can contact<PHONE_NUMBER> and close down city holidays. Thank you. If you have any questions, please post them in the chat. We will answer that question. Thank you. Okay. We don't have any questions in chat yet. Do you have questions about how this is going to affect your street, your access to your street, the length of the contract, anything like that? Post them in chat. Okay. If you want to ask a question, you can unmute yourself one by one, please. Hello. This is BJ Weber from University West. I'm on a phone right now, but I didn't hear exactly when this project should start. Can you say that date again? It starts on November 16th. November 16th? Yeah. Like a few months. Okay. That's on Bishop Avenue. That's the first phase. Okay. And so you said there will be door hangers hung seven days before? Yes. Are we already past due on that? Yes. You will get a door hangers seven days and one day before the construction starts. Is the construction going to be lasting the entire year and a half? Can you say it again? I believe you said the end date was June 21. So I'm sorry. That would be about six months or so. Here properly. I was, I was asking, is it going to be, I mean, a certain area like let's say the University West neighborhood will only be affected for a portion of that time. And as you guys move down the, down the road, is that correct? Yes. The construction will be on phases. The first phase starts on the Shetley Avenue. The construction will last for four to five months. So you won't affect the entire 18 months or 19 months. The entire project. You won't, you won't affect that the entire project here. Usually the construction three to four months in each phases. Okay. Thank you. Okay. We do have some chat questions. The first is, will city services like trash pickup continue uninterrupted? The trash will pick up here. It won't interrupt it. Okay. And the next one is, will this be a reconstruction of streets as well or just water pipe replacement? At the least will the streets be resurfaced to be smooth? I think we said we were doing. We were resurfacing. Yes. We are doing the resurfacing. That is great. Then the state will be repaired after water and sewer installation. Okay. Okay. Someone else has a question and wants to unmute themselves. One by one. This is BJ Weber again from University West. Another quick question. How, how much will the weather effect construction plans? If, if we have a lot of rain or, or a long drought with that. Yeah, will that stretch things out or it is intolerant to weather? You are the temporary water line will be installed during the construction. So your water line will not interrupt only 30 to 15 to 30 minutes. You know, the, when the water line transferring from the temporary water line to a permanent water line and the 15 to 30 minutes, it will be interrupted. I understand that I, my question may not been phrased. Well, I was looking at how long will construction gets stretched out. If we have rain or, or drought. Will that, will that disrupt and start inserting the new pipes or will it be pretty intolerant to any weather delays? It's made the construction may depends, may depends upon the weather. It may the construction usually three to four months, but it may. The weather may affect. It may extend that construction. Okay, thank you. Do you have any other questions about the project that starts on Monday? Several of you were on the Park Hill meeting that we had Monday. So you've heard a lot of these answers already. I'm sorry, where are the maps and timeline available? Martha, are you a board member of one of the associations? If you're a board member of one of the associations, I'm going to email the project mask out to you. We will have the this video attached to the project website page probably by the 17th. If you want to type in or email me, but if you want to type in your email address, I can email that to you as well. You have to type it in the chat. Subi, do you want to talk about what the next street might be? After Chedley. Yeah, the first street is surely avenue. It starts on November 16. And the next street. Let me stop please. And we'll have a show in you. It starts on February. 2021. Okay. That's the second phase. And all timelines are subject to change. Right. Right. Yeah. Subject to change. This is a tentative schedule. Are we out of questions? I don't see anything more. We'll get that to you probably the 17th. If anybody else wants me to email it, please let me know again. If you're a board member of one of those associations, you'll get that. Already. Okay. Well, we want to thank everybody for attending the meeting. You have Subi's contact information. You also have the contact information for Daniel Roy. Who is our inspector. This last slide that see the left up shows the numbers. You can also call to report emergencies, which is 817. 392. 4477. And that's a 24 hour hotline. We appreciate you all coming. Thank you. Thank you.


The President of the Retired Military Veterans January 1973 intakes of the Nigerian Defense Academy, General Abdul Malik Hadi Dugiwa, has expressed gratitude to President Mohamed Buhari for his timely responses and execution of the right and entitlements as retired military personnel. Hadi Dugiwa spoke during the annual general meeting of NDA73 intakes held on Friday at the Nigerian Armed Forces Resettlement Centre, Oshodi, plus TV Africa's correspondent Destiny Momoa reports. Seeing these retired personnel, one could not help but wonder how they have managed to be integrated into civil life after 35 years of commitment to the military lifestyle. President of the 1973 January intakes of the Nigerian Defense Academy expresses satisfaction to President Mahmoud Buhari as a veteran that did not disappoint his fellow veterans. President, for his approval of our SDA, recently announced and that will be done in two branches. So, there has been argument on whether I should be four branches, but I think we are now talking about put their feet down and say, look, let's have it in two branches. And you know this very President, being a veteran himself has gladly approved which every member, even those in service, are very happy about it. Thank you so much. The veterans, among other things, spoke under 2023 general elections, urging the populace to be intentional in choosing their leaders. So this time around, my own advice is that people should know what they want and vote according to their will. It's all this money buying, you know, give you five talent for stomach infrastructure and then you'll suffer for so many more years. I don't believe in that. I've spoken about it. My name is Fadasi Ndile, I've spoken about it. In international precedence, I've spoken about it. Obama specifically has spoken about it. The British Prime Minister has spoken about it. So what I would say specifically is that, lady, people decide, the election should be without any rank or any hastening, any political turbulence, but it should be free, fair, with equity and justice. Back to 49 rap a day and you will have wasted your votes on somebody who is not suitable to govern you. Let the electorate, let them think real hard, let them think beyond the hardships of today. If you think beyond today's hardship, you vote for the right person that will put you in better state. The advice that Nigeria be placed first above regional and sectional sentiments. Dustin Marmo, Plus TV News. And don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


esteemed faculty of the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Did you attend the student research day slam last spring? Maybe you tuned in for the live streamed psychom science slam just this past August. And you've been wondering as a faculty member, when is it my turn to slam? When's it my turn? Q Ariel from The Little Mermaid singing part of that world. Well, folks, I'm here to tell you, Jocelyn Bosley, research impact coordinator for the Office of Research and Economic Development here, that it's finally your turn because the faculty research slam is nearly upon us. It will take place as part of Nebraska Research Days this November 15th, and we invite you to apply to share your research scholarship or creative activity with peers across the boundaries of expertise and discipline. And this is really what makes the slam event unique and exciting. You have the opportunity to share your work in short engaging creative presentations, no PowerPoint allowed. So we're really testing your boundaries here. And it's always a good time. As part of the slam experience, we ask you to address a particular prompt to sort of encourage you to think maybe a little bit differently about the work that you do and how it could be of interest to others, not only within, but also outside your field of expertise. And so no doubt you've noticed that I have the N 2025 strategic plan aims strategically placed in the corner of the screen here. And that's because this year's prompt, I think it really gets at an element that is common to all of these aims. So when I read over them, innovative student experiences, impactful research and creative activity, interdisciplinary endeavors to solve critical challenges, broadening engagement, inclusive excellence in diversity and participation in professional development. Every single one of these involves sharing the work that we do. And that may seem obvious. And it may seem like at times sharing your work is something that you do primarily for others. Like writing thank you notes, for example, something that you do because it's a good thing to do. It's philanthropic, it benefits others. But I think if you reflect on it, you'll realize how much sharing your work also benefits you as a researcher and as a scholar, as a creator. And so that's what this year's prompt is really encouraging you to do and to think about. Specifically, we ask you to address the prompt, what is the most important thing you've learned if you're sharing your research, scholarship or creative activity with others? So these others that you share your work with could be sort of the usual suspects. They could be your colleagues in your department and other departments through professional societies, conferences, publications. Some of the things you usually think of when you think about ways of communicating your work and putting it out there. But I would encourage you to think bigger than that. The others with whom you share your work could be your five-year-old who asked you a question like what do you do all day? Something that just cuts straight to the heart of the matter as five-year-olds tend to do that made you consider your work in a completely different way or from a completely different perspective. So I encourage you to think very broadly about what sharing your work means, who the people are with which you've shared it and tell us about an experience that you had that really benefited not just the audience for your work, not just the person or people with whom you were sharing your work, but you as a researcher, as a scholar and as a creator. And if you think about it, if you imagine spending a day in the lab with a field or the art studio or your office and coming through with some big amazing breakthrough in your field and then going home and sitting down in chips and not telling anybody about it, that'd be a pretty empty day, it'd be a pretty sad day. So sharing our work really is what makes it meaningful, not just to others, but to us. And I'm looking forward to hearing your examples of how that's been the case for you. So the SLAM is happening November 15th. Your application will be in the form of a 60-second video trailer submitted via Flip. Super easy to use. I'm using it right now to record this video and naturally gave myself longer than 60 seconds because I don't have to follow the rules in the SLAM. I'm not a slammer. I'm just here, I'm just the messenger. So you'll submit a 60-second video trailer of your proposed SLAM talk. If you're selected as a semi-finalist, you will be invited to participate in an exclusive media skills training session, which is a fantastic opportunity. And those selected as finalists will have the opportunity to give their five-minute SLAM talks at the SLAM on November 15th for the audience. We'll vote to decide the winner. So I'm looking forward to seeing your creative and thoughtful responses to this year's question. And I will see you at the SLAM.


I would like to introduce our first speaker, Francesca Cortufo, professor and associate head in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and senior scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at the Colorado State University. The title of her talk is Carbon Sequestration in Soils. Over to you, Francesca. Thank you, Sarah, and everybody for being here today. As we heard yesterday, humanity is really facing a significant challenge with having to reduce carbon emissions from about 40 gigaton per year we are having today to zero and also have a method to drill down CO2 from the atmosphere actually to below zero in order to stabilize the climate. And we need to do that at a time when the global population is still rising and therefore their demand for energy, water, land, and food is rising as well. We will hear today a lot of different solutions. And my goal is to drive you to one of the possible player in this fight against climate change that we have, which is soil. Soils really have an important role because they lie at the nexus of these challenges because of the many ecosystem services they provide with carbon sequestration actually being one of them. And the reason why soils are so important for carbon sequestration is that they actually store an immense amount of carbon, which we used to say the standard is always the higher than the atmosphere and vegetation combined. Even in ecosystem like forests that have high vegetation, the carbon stocks are always very, very high. And so on one hand we need to remember to actually protect that carbon from accelerated decomposition due to warming and disturbances so that we don't further exacerbate climate change. As well as manage our soils to also add more carbon in them. The reason why this might be possible is that actually during the history of our use of land, we have exploited our soils in a way that actually Jonathan Sunderman recently estimated we have eroded about 120 per gram of carbon from the cropland and grazing land. And then in a way it gives us an opportunity to change the way in which we manage those land in order to accrue the carbon back. And there has been a lot of studies pointing to the ways to do this. And this from both the others is actually one of, possibly one of the most recent, that I like a variety of approaches we can use on land to either add more carbon or, and that's important to make a distinction, avoid emission from carbon. But as Chris said yesterday, this avoided emission. We need to be careful not to double counting them. This is carbon that is currently in the soil. We just have to make sure that it doesn't go into the atmosphere. Those soil carbon sequestration strategies have several pros. In particularly, most of them are relatively low cost. We know the technology that can be implemented with several common benefit to hair, biodiversity, water, food has pointed in this figure. And also, at least for what the concern of the cultural land, they don't really need more land. It's just a change of management in the land that is already under other culture. There are several limits or cons or things that we need to be careful about when we look at carbon sequestration. And those are in particularly the difficulties to quantify the amounts and the longevity. With those being the potential, there has been a lot of hype with doing it, but also a lot of criticism for whether those potential can actually be met. And what I like to do with you today is go down what I think is a road map that can help us meet those potential. And that involved, first of all, starting from the science and the biophysical soil carbon sequestration, use that understanding to have accurate maps of where carbon is in which foods are vulnerable it is so that we can target our investment. And also design specific targeted management strategies for the different contexts. But also we need to develop accurate low cost and high throughput quantification method. And in interface, our measurements with models that can use those measurements for actual verification. And then include those models in decision support tool that stakeholders and farmers and industries can use to make those decisions. And the most important point is that we need to work together. And that's why I'm very excited to be talking to these audience today because we do need to work with industry, our consultant, farmer, arrangers, policymaker, to get the infrastructure and incentive and extension that can allow to scale up those processes. And finally, I also think that we need to do research to find more innovative solutions. And so this road map is also somewhat the outline of my talk. So let's start from the biophysics. The very simple biophysics is that if you want more carbon in soil, you have to increase inputs. You have to decrease outputs. And possibly you can work with the efficiency in which carbon is converted and increase that efficiency. We have a number of approaches that we can use to both increase inputs and decrease outputs. And some of them are very well known and can be implemented immediately. Other are more in the face of research, and particularly increasing efficiencies more in the face of research. But there is some very interesting work that show that we can do that by improving the relationship between plant and microbiome, or also the nitrogen management. But what I want to do with you today is actually stress the point that this biophysics is too simple. And as a soil carbon scientist, I'm not going to tell you about the complexity and all the difficulties of studying soils, but allow me to say that we do need to make one step forward. And a knowledge that not all soil carbon is equal. And the most simplistic, the next most simple approach that we can take and can bring a way to a way better stage is to actually separate carbon at the minimum in the two most distinct fraction, which are the particulate organic matter and the mineral associated organic matter. The reason why we need to do that is because those two fractions are created by different process. And so different management respond to. They will respond differently to management. They have a different permanence with the particular being much having a much faster turnover, whether the mineral associated can actually stay in the soil for several years. And the other difference is the different in nutrition and nutrient demand. I don't have the time to go into that today. But for sure, the nitrogen demand of carbon sophistication is an important point. And mineral associated require actually more nitrogen than the particulate. The particulate is formed mostly from plant debris and structural material, where the mineral associated is formed from the soluble accident through microbial transformation. So why is it important to separate those two? First of all, palm is by far more vulnerable than man to decomposition, both to warming. And so when I was saying that we need to be to steward the existing carbon in soil, we mostly have to steward the palm carbon. But also they have a different vulnerability to management with actually the man being by far more stable and the palm being the one that we lose to the point that we have actually very little palm in agricultural soil. The other thing that is important, and we touched on it yesterday, is the concept of saturation. Since man require mineral to stabilize, its saturate and its saturation level depend on the amount and type of mineral in the soil. Whereas the palm on this other graph will not saturate. The good news here is that the majority of the soil are far below the saturation level. And these are actually grassland and forest soils in Europe. The agricultural soils are typically down here. And so we do have a high potential for sequestration. And right now, we don't have to worry about saturation that much. In particular, if we focus on carbon sequestration in the deep soil. And the best map of carbon we have for the US is this, the steel highlight areas with high potential for carbon sequestration, highlight areas where we really need to steward the land to avoid carbon emissions. But we don't have an accurate distinction between those carbon forms that can further drive management. And that's something I'm trying to do in collaboration with DNRCS and Neon. We are working on making a map of my own carbon and palm carbon. And with those understanding, we can best drive management solution. Now, the silver line here that I'm very excited about is actually we do know how to inform users about what they should do on land in order to increase carbon. And we know from a scientific perspective like this decision tree that was published a few years back. And this is actually very similar to what the practitioner like understanding of and people like Gay Brown that has learned from his experience what he needs to do on his land to sequester carbon. They are coming together. And that to me is really highly motivating and exciting. And they both come to the point that carbon sequestration is context-dependent, which means again that we need to have the background understanding. But we also need to work with farmers who educate them and give them the right decision tree. So what are those practices that we can do? There has been a lot of work, a lot of meta-analysis. Maybe what rise to the top says in this meta-analysis is the conservation pillage in agricultural land has a solid benefit for carbon sequestration, in particularly on the top soil. Pillage doesn't increase carbon at that. Same goes for cover crop. Cover crop are really great at increasing carbon and improving its quality, mostly effective in the top soil. Biochar come to a different scale because basically it's an addition of carbon-dense material in the soil that is recalcitrant and about 70% to 80% of what you put in is going to stay for centuries. But the problem with biochar is that we can't count from the moment we put it in. We need to count the life cycle of biochar from the feedstock to the moment in which we put it on land. And so depending on that, the carbon benefit can actually not be at eye. Also, grasslands can play an important role in carbon sequestration and they also receive the significant attention and the rich pond and others have done studies pointing to the potential, how different changes in management can increase carbon in grasslands. We just completed the study in grasslands in the south of the United States where we did the quantification but also the separation of mailman palm. And here I point out that by changing management to adapt to multi-pandemic, for example, we could demonstrate that not only they increased about nine tons per liter over a period of about 10 years, but also the majority of the carbon was occurred in mailman, so it was mostly. But of course, not everything is so easy and carbon sequestration might lead to end-to-war emissions. And I know that David will talk more about that later, but that's something that we need to be aware of. And this is actually a meta-analysis that hasn't come out yet in global chain biology, but it will soon. And it shows that for example, for some of the carbon sequestration for the practice that the crude carbon they might release end-to-war. And so that is something to watch out. All of these studies, or the majority of them have been done mostly as independent studies on experimental stations and some on-farm work. But what we really need to be effective is to move to a larger scale. And I am very excited about the fact that industries are actually jumping into this and helping us to move to a different scale. Indigo is playing a big role in this work and they have launched an initiative for which they are monitoring carbon sequestration in a variety of farmland all across the mid-U.S. But other similar initiatives are currently being done and supported by General Mills, McDonald's, TNC and so forth. So that's really exciting. But the moment in which we change scale, it means that we need to start analyzing thousands of soils. And so that's, I have a lab in which analyze soils and the moment in which I'm telling you that you not only have 25 carbon, but you have 25 carbon in mailman form, I also understand the importance of providing a solution for high-truth analysis. And that's something we are doing in CSU where we are working with engineers to design instrument that can automatize the, for example, the soil organic matter fractionation in mailman form and couple those analysis with the infrared spectroscopy and other methods that can analyze with a high-truth put in low-cost high number of soils. And then we need to work with the continental scale database and statistical approaches like machine learning to really get to those maps. So that's something that I'm very excited and we are working on in my lab. Finally, these kind of models that need to enter decision support tools, as for example, the already great tool like Comet Farm, Comet Planet that need to be available to the stakeholders to drive their decision. But ultimately really what we need to do and again I stress how great it is this meeting is we need to work better. A couple of weeks ago, I'm collaborating with General Mills on a project on grain farms in Kansas and we hope to expand it to Oklahoma and Nebraska. And it was great to work alongside consultants and farmers to really see and demonstrate on the land those regenerative practices and how they can again be a win-win not just for the soil health and ecosystem health but really for the economics of the farmers. Finally, we need to still move the research forward because as I stress multiple times that we do have to know how to start today, we also have to keep doing research so that we can find innovative solution that can potentially sequester even more carbon or increase the permanence of the carbon we sequester. And so for example, CSU, Matt Balliston and others are working in collaboration which is industry of all kinds to for example, study how lactobionate might have a role in carbon sequestration and you can imagine many other side product that could have similar effect. The other thing that I mentioned at the beginning that I think it can be important is improving the connection between plant and soil and microbiome to increase that efficiency and that can also be important in increasing the tightness between the nitrogen and the carbon cycle and make a carbon sequestration more effective also in terms of not using the nitrogen. And some of you might have seen a film, I don't know now that I told my lost track of time I think it was a month ago that came out in major paper from a British group that showed how we can actually sequester carbon by adding possibly silica rocks to agricultural soils. And so this is just to give an idea but for sure we still need to support research in a way that we can find a normative solution. So in conclusion, I want to stress again once more I really love the fact that we keep stressing this is that by no means what we are saying has to take away from the need to decyberize the energy sector. So that soil carbon sequestration can play an important role to help throwing CO2 down in particularly because we have that very short time scale and also because carbon sequestration has a ton of core benefits and can increase soil health and improve sustainability or resilience of agricultural soil. I think the implemented soil carbon sequestration scale is actually doable despite all the skepticism in this field and I hope I have illustrated you what we should be doing or we can do in order to meet the most of those potentials. But we do need to work together and we do need to have again, collaborative between industries, practitioners, scientists and so forth. I do like to stress and I know that I'm fight back on that because people say cost too much, the truth is low, but it is important that we move not just to consider carbon one thing and we might put dollars on carbon that stays in the soil only for a few years. It is important that we separate the carbon that might stay for longer and have a different function from the carbon that stays for a limited amount of time. I'm very excited that the Colorado State University we are actually enacting on this roadmap and creating a soil carbon solution center to exactly create those collaboratives and start working on making those solutions in reality. With that, I like to thank all my group and great collaborators and all my funders and of course all of you for your attention. Thanks. Thank you, Francesca. Great to see all that you're working on at Colorado State. I'd like to turn it over to Jenny who is running the Q&A this morning. I can see we already have a number of questions that have come in. Please use the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen and continue putting them in and Jenny will call on some folks to ask their questions now. Thanks Sarah. Thank you Francesca. It was a lovely, wonderful, informative talk. We have a couple of great questions here. Laurie Wayburn, would you like to unmute yourself when you're able to and ask a question? One of the things I would be curious about is it does sound like organic farming and holistic range management approaches are really superior methods for enhancing soil carbon. Both they have lower inputs in terms of petroleum based fertilizers, pesticides, et cetera and they have enhanced soil organism populations as contrasted with somewhat more intensive agriculture. What does your research show about this and do you have any thoughts about impediments to broader implementation of that kind of approach? Yeah, I think you're perfectly right. And actually, we have been thinking about the fact that you need to diversify the rotation and increase the nitrogen input from legumes, but when we work at grain rotation, so without all the holistic regenerative approach that you mentioned and just maintain the continuous cropping and introduce legumes in the crop rotation, we actually didn't have the same results as the holistic approach. And that's I think is because for example, the legume have low productivity has used as a grain like if you have a pea crop doesn't actually have the same amount of input and also the stage of the introducing perennial stages and diversify the root inputs. Those are all great things that only the holistic management and the introduction of animals in the rotation really move the system to a different level. So I do start to believe that to have the very announced responses and not just move the needle to a little bit, the most successful also for the economics of the farmer is to go into the holistic. How much that match the economy of agriculture today it's hard to say and maybe that's something that Dave can speak to better. But from a soil standpoint, the holistic management is the best. Thank you. We'll take another question from the audience. Jessica, would you like to unmute yourself when you're able to and ask your question? Sure, can you hear me? Yeah, thanks. Great, yeah, that was a really, really great presentation. Thank you so much. I found the map of the European palm and ma'am really fascinating and in particular, the fact that there's this abundance of palm in coniferous forests for example and in thinking about implementing nature-based solutions and considering that many of the common pathways are in the forestry space. I was wondering what your opinion is of possible amendments to forest soils to either increase the ma'am concentration or somehow increase the recalcitrance of palm in forest litter and soils? So it also depended on the soils of course and one thing I want to make sure is that we are talking about the mineral soils not the organic layer because on top of that, there is a huge amount of organic material that is even more vulnerable. The point to consider is that at least in Europe, forests, given the long history of land use, forests are on the most sandy and acidic soils of Europe and so there is this connection between the land use and the soils and how much you can do with that. And the other thing is that conifers only associate to ectomycorrhizal that also are prone to form more palm rather than ma'am. So there is an inherent limitation on how much ma'am you can sequester in forest. You can work with, again, trying to diversify the forest because for example, the deciduous forest, are actually much more similar to the grasslands than they are to the conifers and some deciduous mixed deciduous forest can also have an ectomycorrhizal that can promote ma'am formation. And so I think that for established conifers forest, there is so much you can do. If you are regenerating forests and are foresting, it's important to understand what's your soil, what's the potential and design a forest that possibly is a mixture so that you can accrue also ma'am to having more deciduous and to have more ectomycorrhizal trees. Thank you. I'm hoping we have time for one more question. We have a lot of questions that we probably won't get to, unfortunately. So Christian Davis, would you like to go ahead and ask your question once you're able to unmute yourself? Yeah. Hey, Francesca. Thank you for a really brilliant presentation. I think a lot of the work you have done and are still doing in terms of mechanistic understanding of how soil carbon accumulates is really kind of pushing the boundaries of the field. So thank you for doing that. Do you have some idea on how far away we're actually gonna be able to, how far away we are from being able to manipulate the processes to drive and increase carbon stocks? And do you think in the future we may be able to get to a point where we can just analyze a sample and kind of propose a tailored solution to farmers in the future? Yeah, so I'm actually not a strong believer of the... So I do think that my groups are the engine that really drive how much stays and how much goes and how much form is formed, how much mayhem is formed. But they respond to the management and to the plan. And so in my opinion, again, actually going back to the holistic method, I think that we are not far from creating a very integrated plant-microbe relationship. And you can get that by basically having the mutualism that we see natural system where the fungi bring, the microbes bring the nitrogen either by fixation or by scavenging to the plant and the carbon and the plant provide the carbon. So if we stop fertilizing, we start promoting that plant-microbial interactions, we are a long way there. The other thing we need to do is to have more roots and deeper roots. Plant breeding has been done so that our crops have an absurd shoot to root ratio with roots that are unexistent. And so we need to change that and we need to have crops that have bigger and deeper roots so that you can put that carbon in the soil and you can start that relationship between microbes and plants. And we know that. So I think that as long as we decide that that's what we want to address and we put the money in addressing it, it's not actually hard to do that. From the measurement standpoint, I also think we are not far out. Again, it's mostly a matter of investment. But one thing that I don't believe is that we can get accurate, we can get the type of carbon measurement that we need from throughput directly in the soil. But what we can do is to have great models that are fed by continuous water sensing data, MPP sensing data from remote sensing, temperature sensing. So once you have a good model that you can initialize with measured data and you have good sensing, continuous sensing data that's fitted, you can actually have and you can have, for example, at the tower that continuously verify the outcome. You can actually have pretty accurate carbon estimates without having to be ulting all your farms. And so we know what we need to do. If we get the investments to do it, I think we are not far out.