Thanks, Ryan. Have a wonderful day. You too.  And so as I said, Bobby's not going to be able to join us today. But she did post a framework that we could maybe take a look at today and then we can also talk about the mentorships that have been submitted last week and go through that if you'd like. So let's go ahead and first I'll pull up the, and I would assume we're talking about onboarding this week, you know, after last week we kind of got out of sync. So David, what are your thoughts around which portion we're covering this week? Yeah, I'd definitely like to talk about the onboarding, especially because there's a mentorship proposal on there and I had some thoughts on that. So yeah, and then if you want to use the second half of the call for the documentation stuff, feel free. Great, let's do that then. That sounds perfect. Okay, so I'm just going to pull this up here on the right tab here, onboarding task force. Here I have a couple links I can drop if these are what you're looking for. Here's the mentorship, excuse me, yeah, thanks. Yeah, so here I'll drop the links. These were the two things I saw. One was the mentorship proposal and the other was what Bobby had posted on the wiki. Yeah, so let's look at Bobby's first. Let me try one more time here because it seemed like it cut out my mic when I shared it. Let me try one more time. Does that bring me back in the audio now? Yeah, I hear you. Okay, great. Yeah, I just had to do that setting to put it back through there. Okay, great. Now we're good. Okay, so we can kind of just look at this here. And this is a run through of kind of what the agenda should be for today as far as the onboarding process. And then I will say that last week I did submit to the mentorship program my take on what we should look at for the onboarding documentation. And I'd like to go through that as well. David, I know I posted it, but I don't know the link. So maybe if you could pull that up, I would go. Yeah, I dropped the link in the chat. That's the first link I put in there. Okay, perfect. So here are the tasks that we should look at for the onboarding process. And let's just make sure we're in agreement that these look like there's other tasks we want to accomplish by this task force. So basically, okay, go ahead, David. Sorry, I didn't mean to go. So basically we want to look at what is the current onboarding process and make sure that, you know, the existing process is, you know, as clean as possible. And look at what documentation and tutorials and resources we have for people to disjoin the community. So that's something that, you know, I'm glad to engage with. And I don't know if Jim Soldin is going to join the call today, but, you know, he indicated he had an interest in working on the onboarding process as well. And then, Peter, what are your thoughts around going through and doing kind of an assessment of what we have today? And Peter might be just on mute here. So I'm going to keep going. But Peter, if you come off mute, feel free to join in. And Elizabeth, you're welcome to join in, too, if you want to go through and do an assessment of the current onboarding process, if that's of interest to you. For me, as a human factors engineer, I can say that the last time I checked the average compensation rate for completing a survey or completing a survey or interview by a user and user experience testing was $70 minimum and $110 per hour. So I wonder if Linux Foundation or Hyperlegion Foundation is going to be paying that to the participants. I don't have any thoughts that Hyperlegion is going to be paying for anyone here that's part of this group to, you know, review and do anything with respect to the documentation. And the only thing that would be available is if the mentorship program is accepted by the Hyperlegion TOC. I know that there is a stipend for ones that are accepted fully into the mentorship program. But, you know, I wouldn't view this as any type of item that's going to be, you know, highly compensated for trying to work on this documentation. I think that's fair. The mentorship program is paid. But yeah, in general, I think, you know, just taking part in the task force and stuff wouldn't be. And in general, I think assessing is great. I mean, that's what I think the task force should be doing. You know, in some ways, I think that assessment process, we don't know what that necessarily looks like. So I think all these other tasks out here are maybe depending on what comes up with the assessment, these other tasks may look different. And I think it's an interesting example of how we've had these different approaches to onboarding in the past. And I was really hoping that we could get some people from Start Here involved, because they have a very different take on the different tasks that they think are needed. And that was what I was hoping to do instead of doing things separately, kind of in parallel. Like my understanding from what Start Here is trying to do is not necessarily to create more content or create more guides, but to aggregate what's out there so it's easier to find, you know, so they have just, I think, a different approach. And so, you know, I think that was one feedback I had on this. Like, I know they had a mentorship program project accepted last year. And I didn't see them listed as a mentor on this one. So I think it's, personally, I think it's critical if we do another mentorship one this year to not again do it separately from them. But I don't know if they're interested in being a mentor as well on this, so we can kind of combine efforts. And again, I think their approach last year was very different. They had a developer, instead of having somebody develop or create documentation, they had more of a coder come in. Like Start Here is all about aggregating what's already in the community. So there's one place to go. And so I think, again, that's just a different approach. Like what I read here, when Bobby has put some thought in here, it sounds like she's talking about creating a lot of new content. But in some sense, I personally think a lot of that content already exists. Like each project, for example, has a contributing guide. I think it's just hard for people to find them, right? Like, to get from the hyperledger homepage or the wiki homepage to like the cacti, you know, contributor guide, it's several clicks, right? Like, so I think it's more of a workflow or a traffic flow diagram. I think I'd said this on a last call. Like I don't think we necessarily need to make new guides. I think we need to make it easier to find the guides that are there. So again, that I think that speaks to we, we as a group haven't come together and assess the current situation and created like a recommendation for what to do. So I mean, I think it's great that Bobby put this in place as a kind of a pass at what she recommends. But I think different people maybe have different views on what's needed. So that was my one of my main concerns about the mentorship thing is I just don't know what we're asking that person to do yet because I don't think we as a task force have landed on, hey, this is the set of things we think need to get done with onboarding, right? Because again, start here has a different approach. Bobby has this approach. I maybe have a different approach around the traffic. You know, I think it's all about just kind of traffic diagramming and kind of tweaking the flow of traffic. So that was my main thought. Like it's, I don't think we as a group have necessarily landed on what the tasks should be because we haven't done this first task, the assess. Okay, now that's a very clear and articulate observation, David. And I concur with you. So let's take a look at what I submitted to the mentorship program. And then maybe that'll give us more clarity on talking about what we're looking at here. So basically, David, I think I took more of an approach similar to what you are talking about here with consolidating the existing resources and making them easy to discover within the start here framework. And so that's kind of what I put in the description here. And the way I looked at this going forward. And when you talk about a coder, are you talking about more of a UI UX coder? Or are you talking about, you know, a different type of coder for the mentorship program? Well, again, that's why I think it would be great to have somebody involved and start here to speak about what they've done. And I guess we could pull up their proposal, their project from last year, if I could find it. But yeah, my understanding is they had like a UX person doing stuff, like I met with them a couple of times, and kind of got a sense of what they're doing. And it was, yeah, they did, they were working on mockups. And I don't know, well, we really need a rune or somebody from start here to tell us what they ended up doing.  So I think it was really taking those mockups and like coding them into the site. So that's why I was thinking it's not for their point of view, it's not necessarily a documentation project, but a coding project. But I mean, maybe that was my that was my main thought, like, I would say we need, if we're doing something, a mentorship project that involves start here, we really need somebody from start here to also be a mentor would be my I agree. 100%. David. And I couldn't agree with you more. I did reach out to a room about start here. They did great. And I did not hear back from him. But I am glad to reach out to him again to see if he would like to collaborate. Does that make sense? Great. And I can ping him to you know, maybe that's an action we can both take. I'll ping him, you ping him. Because maybe there's still time for him to, you know, join as a mentor or find somebody else to join as a mentor and give some thoughts on what that, you know, mentee should do. Yeah. And the thing is, David, you know, I'm glad to keep moving this forward. We ran up against a hard deadline. No, of course, of course. I'm a guy that just, you know, no matter what, I hit the deadline for any project that has to go out the door by deadline, rather than be the guy that comes in after the deadline as well. I'd really like to be a part of this. And you missed it. You know, missed the deadline. So, you know, I'm deadline driven. And I, you know, didn't get any feedback on what I had written up here for moving this project forward. But I knew it was critical that we move the project forward. So what I could, based on only one person's vision of what we need to do to move forward. Yeah, 100%. No, and I think that was the right approach. And thank you for doing that. Like you said, at least, at least we're there by the deadline versus us talking today and saying, oh, maybe we wouldn't be great if we'd got it in by the deadline. So this is perfect. And Min has said that there's time to, you know, add mentors and tweak and stuff before the TSC reviews. I think now is the perfect time. So yeah, I'll reach out to Arun. You reach out to Arun. And hopefully we get him to take a look at it and, you know, give us his feedback. Okay, great. Yeah, that sounds good. I'll reach out to him after we wrap up this call. And I'll send him a copy of what we put together here. And, you know, what I really try to do is just say, okay, what we're going to focus on is the start here. Because I know, David, that's, you know, where we're going to get the most value. And there's the most development already in place for that, you know, framework on the Hyperledger website. And then, you know, try to give some learning objectives for whoever's going to be involved in this mentorship program. And really, I think it's a great opportunity for them to get introduced to a lot of people in the community and really to build their skill sets. I didn't put a lot in here about UX and UI development, but I will be more than glad to add that in. Yeah, and maybe that work's already done from last year. I mean, this is where I don't, this is where I don't know enough about where that mentorship project last year ended. Maybe they have it all and they don't need to do more of that. And it's really just something else. So yeah, I mean, I would think Arun hopefully can take a look at it and get back to us. Yeah. And part of that design I put down is number three, where we talked about personas.  And then, you know, look at process flow diagrams as well. So basically, you know, saying, okay, well, here's our existing UI, you know, does it flow and is it easy to discover things? Just like you talked about three clicks to get down into some of the documentation.  For sure. For sure. And to go back to what Bobby's document says, I mean, I think everything on there is great. Like I think if there's missing guides, I mean, if some of that content is missing, let's certainly work on it. But yeah, I think until we do the assessment, it's hard to know what's missing yet. So I don't think we necessarily, we may or may not need to create a bunch of new content. It might just be more aggregating. I guess that was my main thought on what she put together. But everything she mentions here is great. Like, we should do all these things. But I think some of these may already be in place. Yeah. And the thing is, David, I do not want to reinvent the wheel when there's been a lot of hard work and effort and quality work put in. I just want to make things easily discoverable to the new person, to the community. Yeah, I agree. I think that's a challenge. Yeah, there's hyperlators big and confusing for a new person. And if we do find holes in what, you know, should be out there over time, then let's go ahead and fill those holes. But I view those holes as small, not anything substantial that we would have to create. That makes sense. Yeah, for sure. Okay.   And, you know, here's some more of this content and graphics. I think that's more UI stuff again. And then mentee skills. So this might be needing to be updated as well, David. So, you know, strong UA UX coding experience. And I think what we should do is pull up last year to start here mentorship program because, you know, we want to move some of that content over here as well. Yeah, that's a good point. I was kind of scanning through the 2022 ones. Let me see if I can find it. And then when you find that, then we can pull it up. But and then right now, you know, mentors names and contact information, I only put myself down because I didn't receive feedback from anyone. So I didn't want to commit them to it. Yeah, I wish, you know, I wish we had had a response. But yeah, I mean, we can still add them. There's certainly still time. So not a problem. So what I'm saying, David, is, you know, that's an open ended mentorship list. So anybody on this call, or anybody else from the community who wants to join is be part of this mentorship. I'm all in favor of adding them to names for the mentorship. And you hear me now? Maybe I hear you now. Yes. Sorry. Linux microphone drivers are bad. I was listening. And things one, yes, I will be happy to join as a mentor there. Oh, great. I'm hosting the daily pair programming calls for cacti anyway, which is a quick 15 minute meeting that goes every weekday morning. And I am thinking for the mentorship, any any mentorship projects that where I am a mentor, I will just tell the mentees that they can come in because that pair programming call is more like an open office kind of thing that teachers do in school where you can just come in with any sort of question that you have. So I'm happy to contribute that time of mine, for example. And then the other thing I wanted to say is regarding what David was saying about the number of clicks it takes to get to certain specific things, I can volunteer to do some analysis on how many clicks does it take from hyperledger.org to get to each projects, each top little projects, contributing guide and getting started guide. Yeah, that could be really useful. Yeah. And then the objective metric of the task of the mentee would be reduce those number of clicks by whatever. Sure. Yeah, I think that yeah, I mean that could be something that could be really useful as document and that I guess would be the assessment document for Project X it took X many clicks and so the question I have for you David is are we free to edit what was submitted on the 15th at this point or how is that viewed at this point? My understanding is there is some time, a little bit of time. I think and again I'm not 100% sure I'd have to go with double check with the email that men sent me. I think the TOC has two weeks to review and I don't think they're due to complete the review by the third until the 30th I think. It is deferative. I know because I'm on that committee as well. Oh great, great. So I think as long as we give the TOC members a heads up that maybe if they've already looked at it, hey we just updated it look again. So I think I would say we have a small window to update it and then I think if we do it by sometime this week they would still have next week to review and we can just give people a heads up like hey we made some changes just so they know. Okay that's perfect so. The men definitely did say it's okay to add mentors and I think we can tweak. Yeah no problem David and you know I just want to do everything in line with expectation and what's proper and fitting. Peter would you want to go in and just edit this page and add any additional content that you think is relevant? Add your name to the list and then would you notify the TOC that we're making some tweaks to it this week and it's going to be done within the next couple days? Yes, I will add the table with the number of clicks for each top level project and then that way we can clarify for the mentee that that's what needs to be optimized. Yeah and that could even be something the mentee does if you just do one project as an example maybe expanding on that is something the mentee could do but yeah if you have that data for all of them that's great but I think that's a very tangible thing and then maybe that speaks to what John you were saying about the skills maybe we can say in there somebody who's familiar with you know you know website usability or whatever they kind of speak to how do we tweak and optimize the flow of the web you know the different websites. Right yeah I definitely you know made them lower level here but I can definitely add in you know UI UX experience and things like that you know I want to make sure that we got a good skilled person to work on this but I also want to make it you know open so we get somebody to join up as well you know don't be overly restrictive on it. That's great yeah and if that would that would be a very real tangible thing if they could shave off one or two clicks for each of the projects that would be really valuable. Oh I agree David yeah and if we can make the bottom of the funnel that closer to the top of the funnel I'm all for it. Nice. Okay let's take a look maybe at the last year's mentorship that Arun was a part of. Sorry Elizabeth what? Before you leave this page where it says I think it's supposed to say any skills around research and documentation. It's one of the purposes to make the onboarding skill for mentees the application form more let's see so that they like I said the last time I was on this call so that somebody applying for it to be a mentee would know exactly what would be so you don't get 3,000 applications for the same thing and knowing that only you know 10 of them actually see it says no experience required that's sort unrealistic. Yeah what I'm saying is they have to be an open source contributor prior to today so if we have somebody who may be a college student and they've never done anything in the open source community I didn't want that to be a barrier to someone joining the project that makes sense and David if I'm wrong in my couching of that framework let me know. No I think that sounds fine to me. Yeah if they haven't done anything in the open source community they can still join up and we'll welcome them in. Okay so am I too being led to expect that if someone applied for this position and they do have skill any skills is that supposed to be any skills around research and documentation and if those skills did include the ability to write documentation content and design and develop explainer graphs would they for sure get a mentorship stipend or would they be in the pool for a then that that would be they would be chosen because there are only a certain number of stipends available. Yeah there's only a certain number I mean that's gotta be that's gotta be told up front because there are people who are going to apply thinking that they'll get it because they meet the internal qualifications not knowing that there's a number that they're they're competing they're not collaborating. Yeah I mean that information's on when people apply that information is there on there's a hole here that I can get the link there's the whole section about four applicants. Okay I'm gonna stop sharing David before you can show. I just dropped the link and unfortunately I'm gonna have to drop in two minutes anyway but just on the wiki there is a section so when somebody shows up as wanting to be an applicant they can they can get all those details. Okay I'm gonna go ahead and just grab that link and I'm gonna share it instead. So it's like two years ago when I first found out about hyperlogic it was through Sai Chen on a collabathon called the open climate collabathon and I just thought that finally a company that has this one of its core values collaboration instead of competition. I mean the one thing that we do say to all applicants is that the paid mentorship does have only a certain limited slots because we only have a certain budget but it's wide open. I mean everybody who wants experience in the open source community certainly can. I mean there's no there's no limit on the number of people who can show up and contribute and get experience that way. So I mean it is an open door to everybody but the paid part is where we have just limited budgets in here just before I drop really quick. It sounds like Peter has to drop as well David. So I think you know is this the internship program from 2022 that you shared there? Yeah so maybe yeah if you want to take a look there's yeah you can see actually there's a fair amount of detail there's even a final project presentation here I would say this would be a good thing to like look through to see what was created by this person. Yeah this has the like the mock-ups and everything he did. I do have to drop now but maybe this is something we can review at the next next Monday on the next onboarding call to see like maybe what's existing that we can build off of. I like the skill sets that's been in this presentation so I guess what I'll do David is I'll just go ahead and move some of these skills over to the other program that we put for 2023 and then I'll reach out to Runef we hang up here on this call and move on there. Okay that sounds good okay well I'm sorry I have to drop but yeah thanks thanks everyone. Okay have a wonderful day. Thank you bye bye. Okay Elizabeth well I think I'm going to go ahead and move some of this stuff over there and be ready for the next mentorship program. All right thanks for organizing. Okay wonderful to catch up with you and reach out the email if you have any questions between now and next call. All right see you. All right take care bye.


It looks like our museum archivist was a bit messy. He accidentally misplaced two Monet's masterpieces in the archive. I have a catalogue of all the paintings in the archive and luckily I managed to find one Monet's painting. But I'm still missing the second one and I would like to find it based on the known similarity to the first painting. Can I somehow convince Orange to help me find it? Indeed I can. I will load my catalogue of 15 paintings with import images. My images are stored locally but you can download them with the link provided in the description. I will have a quick glance at the paintings with Imature Widget. Okay, my archive has loaded successfully. As I have mentioned before, we need a numeric description of these paintings so Orange can quantify their similarities. This time we will not use Inception Version 3 but the Painters Embedder which was trained particularly to distinguish between different artistic styles. Next, we will use Neighbor's Widget which for now can be found in the Prototypes add-on. This widget finds the most similar data instances to the reference data instance we provide. First, some settings are required. The distance measure we will be using is cosine since it works best on images. Second, we will not exclude the reference so our first painting will also appear in the results. Finally, we will only look for two neighbors. One will be our reference image and the other, hopefully the remaining money. These last settings are there only for visualization purposes. You can still keep the default and only change Euclidean to cosine distance. Our reference image is money's painting we have already managed to find in our small art collection. We will use Data Table to select this painting from the list. Then we will feed this reference to neighbors. This widget will now go through all our paintings in the collection and find the one that is the most similar to our reference. Ideally, this would be the other money. Let us check the results in Image Viewer. Fantastic! Orange indeed managed to find my remaining painting. Now I have to put it away somewhere safe so my archivist doesn't lose it again. Well, if he does, now I have a quick and easy way to find similar images in a collection.


Coming up on Homeland Responder. This is the untold story over here. Devastation as far as the eye can see. Absolutely nothing, nothing but a concrete slab. It's tales of survival and lessons learned in Gulfport, Mississippi. I don't think any of us had in mind the magnitude, the destruction, the level of destruction that we were going to suffer. Also on the program. You know, I don't lost everything. Evacuees find a world of difference between the Superdome and the Astrodome. Once you get a job assignment, you're done with it. Come back over here if you want another one. It's a volunteer success story. It's amazing that they did it. And a reason to take a closer look at how one organization did everything right. They were so appreciative. It was, I couldn't believe it. All that coming up on Homeland Responder. To this edition of Homeland Responder, I'm John Eastman. Through the reach of the Homeland Security Training Network, this program comes to all kinds of people, from local, state and federal first responders, to ordinary citizens who someday might find themselves in extraordinary situations. That someday has already come for the people of our Gulf Coast states. It came with the killer winds and high waters of Hurricane Katrina. We begin in Gulfport, Mississippi, a place that didn't receive much media coverage, but did receive the worst of Katrina's muscle. It was a storm surge that washed this old tug-of-shore 36 years ago, and it's here that she's sat ever since. A landmark and a reminder of the power of Camille. There's the aftermath of Camille. That's the yacht harbor right there. It probably looks like that now. For years, citizens of past Christiane, Mississippi have remembered Camille as the mother of monster storms, the benchmark of how bad a hurricane could get. But in the ruins of the old community antique store, it's Katrina, not Camille, which now sets the benchmark and the watermark. This is the top of the stench, and I'm not sure what these ceilings are. They're probably what, 12, 14 feet? The storm surge of Katrina did what Camille couldn't do, destroy the town of past Christiane. In a nearby neighborhood, homeowners Alex and Blair Lambert are trying to move forward. On this day, university students from Ohio are helping the Lamberts with the demolition and cleanup. They're just doing it with love in their heart, and they're just helping us gut the house. Take down the sheet rock, take down the insulation. The winds of Katrina barely touched this house. It was the water. When we walked in, we had a water line of about, I guess, seven feet. But my next to a neighbor who rode the storm out told me that at one point the water was over the roof. As bad as the damage is here, imagine being this shop owner. When Jean Hines McDaniel returned from evacuation, she found her store the knitting nook reduced to a concrete slab. Oh, my goodness, it's gone. As for what happened to her inventory, take a closer look at any of the debris piles lining the streets. You can see up and down the city is the storm, because there's yarn on everything, but we couldn't, there was nothing salvaged. Then there's Jamie Jenkins, another property owner who came home to find nothing but ruin. Look, here's the Amp to Brooks guitar. That little guitar of hers. Jenkins finds a few treasures in the rubble, but the rest is just a broken reminder of what was. Had a carport that extended off to the north side, which you can still see some of the remains from the timbers that are still standing from the house, which essentially is the only thing that really survived the hurricane. It would be understandable if Jenkins became wrapped up in his own tragedy. All that hard work of prepping those walls and painting them all gone in a matter of seconds. But for better or worse, Jenkins hasn't had much time for self-pity. I just kind of had to leave that behind. I had to take care of my duties here. And it was difficult here the first, probably, week. Yes, in addition to being a man who's lost most of his material possessions, Jenkins is a firefighter. And in the nearby Gulfport Fire Department, there are many just like him. I had 25 firefighters lose everything they own. And, you know, when 25 firefighters lose everything they own, not only are you talking about total devastation of your community and all of the infrastructure in your community, but the personal impact that it has on each and every one of your firefighters. A seasoned veteran of numerous storms, Chief Pat Sullivan thought he knew what to expect. How could anything be worse than Camille? I don't think any of us had in mind the magnitude, the destruction, the level of destruction that we were going to suffer. Gulfport's Katrina response is a tale of duty, sacrifice, and lessons learned. We'll have more on that when we return to our story. But first, we'd like to take a moment to honor the heroes who watch over us every day. The following tribute comes from the files of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. We hope that in sharing this story, you'll do your part to honor the courage of those who knowingly put themselves in harm's way. When Captain John Taylor saw that his fellow firefighter Ray Rubio was entangled and trapped in a burning basement, he didn't run. Taylor called a May Day and then stayed, trying against all odds to free Rubio. Because of the wreckage in the basement, rescuers arrived too late. In submitting her husband's name to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, Charlene Taylor remembers her husband as someone who won the Heroism Award during his 32 years on the Philadelphia Fire Department. He served in the Army Reserves and was a humble man. He will always be remembered by all who knew him. John had a great heart. And so it is that Homeland Responder joins the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation in remembering Captain John D. Taylor Jr., Engine 28, Philadelphia Fire Department. A humble man and a heroic firefighter whose concept of sacrifice knew no bounds. Captain Taylor was just one of the firefighters to be honored at the recent National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Weekend in Emmitsburg, Maryland. We'll have a full look at that event later in the program. But first, it's time for a Homeland Challenge. Incidents such as Hurricane Katrina test our responder's readiness. Part of that readiness hinges on knowledge and use of the National Incident Management System, or NIMS. Are you NIMS knowledgeable? Let's find out with the first of our challenge questions. Borrowed directly from the NIMS Study Guide, prepared by FEMA. Ready? Here goes. A series of tornadoes has struck in the Midwest, causing a path of destruction across several jurisdictions in one state. Most mutual aid agreements cannot be activated because all available resources are being used for the response. Attaining and allocating outside resources to support the incidents would be coordinated best by using A. Local EOCs. B. An area command. C. A multi-agency coordination entity. The answer. C. Multi-agency coordination agencies are a combination of resources that are integrated into a common framework for coordinating and supporting domestic incident management activities. If you did okay with that one, maybe you're ready for a tougher one. The incident command system, or ICS, requires that each individual involved in incident operations be assigned only one supervisor. Is this an example of A. Manageable span of control. B. Integrated communications. Or C. Accountability. The correct answer? C. For effective accountability, ICS requires that each individual involved in incident operations be assigned only one supervisor. This concept is also known by the term unity of command. If you had trouble with any of these questions, maybe it's time to do a refresher. The NIM self-study guide is available on FEMA's website. Go to training.fema.gov. We'll have more Homeland Responder challenges later in the show. Now it's time to return to the storm-ruined region of Gulfport, Mississippi. You've already seen the magnitude of the impact in Gulfport and the surrounding areas. Now it's time to see how a fire department working in the most challenging conditions tries to keep it together while everything around them falls apart. When devastation is this complete, it goes far beyond the sense of sight. The smell, you just can't imagine the smell because it was rotting and it was dying. The it that Fire Chief Pat Sullivan refers to is poultry, hundreds of thousands of chickens that came crashing in with all the rest of the cargo. You see where it's great? That was these containers that we think were bobbing in the water. We think that they were hitting against the tree, so that gives you an idea of how high the water actually got. Rotting poultry, open sewage, every hazardous material you can think of, all floating around on top of what were people's homes. What you don't see here is the five houses that are on this block right here. What you see is pile of debris and you see where they've cleaned it up. You see where it's gone. But you don't see different individual houses. True, it's hard to imagine the idyllic seaside community that was here just a few weeks ago. Just like it must have been hard for Chief Sullivan to imagine what was coming his way. You know, I told you that we're ready for it and that I think we're as ready as any community could be. This area's disaster preparedness plan was probably better than most communities. After all, it had been tested and refined in numerous storms, going all the way back to the infamous Camille. You don't have an event this size and be prepared for it. District Chief Jamie Jenkins, who you met earlier, describes the days following the storm. It was difficult. Early on our objectives weren't real clear.  We knew we had to get the roads cleared, but I don't think we really knew what the effect of the infrastructure for this area was at that point. The most important part of that infrastructure, communications. We didn't prepare for a total loss of communications. As with this hazardous materials response, communications play a vital role. We've got another bottle here, plastic container that looks like about two gallons. It's communications that ensure adherence to the incident command structure without communications. Everything that you can think of that makes you a good communicator, we lost. We didn't have it. Two-way radios, cell phones, pagers, fax machines, all down. I wasn't able to get to the people that I needed to communicate with, and subsequently there were guys out there that didn't have the direction that they needed. The only way that they were really able to activate us is if they saw us out on the road and were able to summons us, or if they had a police officer that was out and about and they could get us activated or called some way like that. Had it been just the communications failures, that would have been enough. But when your deputy chief that you had planned on being there and that you would have faith-to-faith communication, when his house has blown up because of a tornado and he's not here, and the next deputy chief that you're depending on who would be the secondary one that you would be communicating with, his house is flooded and he's not here. And the mutual aid that you're counting on from other departments, it's not there. Every community that we depended on from mutual aid was affected as much as we were affected, if not greater. Yet despite all the obstacles, firefighters were able to bring aid and relief to countless victims. We had a lot of work to do. We were out working with chainsaws, 8, 10, 12 hours a day, clearing roads, clearing debris, making sure we could get our vehicles to places. We had guys that knew that their homes were destroyed. There wasn't any question. But they've lost everything. They didn't go leave and start digging through their debris. What they did was they stayed and worked and said, you know, there'll be a time when I can deal with that right now. The people out there need me more than anything I can do at my own home. So they stayed and did that. Perhaps it's that spirit of sacrifice and dedication that now has Chief Sullivan so determined. I'm not going to allow this to defeat me in order to defeat this department or defeat this city. Which brings us to station number 7, or what used to be station 7. I've got at least three fire stations that may be completely destroyed. One that is completely destroyed, there's nothing left of it of course. And then two others that are so heavily damaged that I probably won't, we'll probably end up tearing them down. When the rebuilding is done, Sullivan wants to make sure the response plans are as new and strong as the stations themselves. That means improving the lines of communications, especially when technology fails. What do I do if I've lost all my phones? How do I do runners when I'm not used to doing runners? It also means making sure the lower ranks are ready to make their own decisions when they're cut off from central command. And it can't be just the fire chief making those calls because there's no way in a disaster this large that he can oversee it all. Sullivan plans to beef up his department's use of the National Incident Management System. NIMS helps first responders stay coordinated and connected. I think that you've got, the NIMS has to fall in every facet of it. It has to be at every level. It can't be we do it on just the big events or just the huge events or just a small event. It has to be at all events. And finally comes the issue of how to deal with ordinary people who suddenly find themselves in the role of first responders. They knew they had to help their neighbor and they were going to help their neighbor. And if they're going to do that anyways, then we in the fire service and we in public safety need to help them do it the right way. And they'll teach them how to do it the right way and then utilize them, put them to work. Sullivan plans to redouble his department's efforts to train and utilize volunteers in the style of the National Citizens Board Program. There are times when you physically can't get to the people that need the help and that when it boils down to it, the citizens have to take care of themselves. Coming up, we'll take a look at how the school system played a vital part in the Katrina response and recovery. But first, it's time for our Homeland Who's Who. In this edition of Homeland Who's Who, we take a look at someone who began his career as a rescue firefighter. He rose through the ranks of the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, first as a rescue firefighter, then as a rescue lieutenant, then battalion commander, division chief and several other executive roles before finally serving as chief of the entire department. As chief, he oversaw the response to major events such as Hurricane Andrew and the crash of ValueJet Flight 592. Since then, this person has risen to a role of national prominence as a U.S. Fire Administrator. Just recently, he's taken on an even larger role. Can you guess who we're talking about? Times up, our Homeland Who's Who is our David Paulisen, Administrator for the United States Fire Administration since 2001, and now the Acting Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. President Bush asked Paulisen to step into the role after Michael Brown resigned amidst dissatisfaction with the Hurricane Katrina response. If you correctly guess the Homeland Who's Who, now it's time to really test your responder IQ with another Homeland Responder Challenge. In Homeland Responders' look at the impact of Hurricane Katrina, the Fire Chief of Gulfport, Mississippi, cited one principal weakness in their response and recovery. We didn't prepare for a total loss of communication. Their communications were down. Our communications were down. I don't think we have enough time to put all my thoughts down on communications. Katrina wiped out all of the Fire Department's communications platforms. Here's the question, true or false? A better understanding of NIMS could have helped the department with their communications woes. The answer? False. NIMS recognizes that technology standards are key to facilitating interoperability and compatibility of major systems. It's all about integration. However, when those communication systems are down altogether, there's not much left to integrate. Kudos to the Gulfport Fire Department for doing the best they could in the worst of circumstances. Next question. The response to Katrina put a national spotlight on exactly who is responsible for our preparedness in the face of disaster. To find the answer, one need look no further than the NIMS guidelines. If you're familiar with what NIMS says, you should be able to fill in the blank. Preparedness is the responsibility of blank, which are responsible for coordinating their activities among all preparedness stakeholders. Is the answer, A, federal agencies, B, state governments, C, individual jurisdictions? If you answered A or B, you need to do some reading. NIMS says preparedness is the responsibility of individual jurisdictions. State and federal agencies are supposed to provide assistance and resources, and that's the way it worked in Gulfport. It's always, how can we work together? How can we coordinate together? What do you need from us? And that's it for this segment of Homeland Responder Challenge. When disaster strikes, many of our nation's schools play a double role. They serve as evacuation shelters for those who couldn't or wouldn't leave the area. In the following segment, we return to the Gulfport area to see how one school system received a crash course in survival. Okay, safe metric system from the Guilmerville-Middle School. As a teacher at the Guilmerville-Middle School, Kathy Gilmour is in her element. She attended the same school many years ago, back when she was a student. And then I became a teacher, and I've been teaching at that school for 32 years. This would be just like any other day at the Iberville-Middle, except for one small matter. This isn't the Iberville-Middle School. This is. At one point, the school was covered by 8 feet of water. After Katrina, the school is just a shell. There's nothing there but concrete floors and concrete walls. Everything's gone. Every teaching supply, every television, everything that we had is gone. The bookshelves, the walls are stripped down to the bare walls. No bulletin boards. Nothing is there. How are you supposed to convert from, say, kilometers to hectometers? And so, Kathy Gilmour's class is now temporarily relocated and attending on a split shift. The same is true for many other schools in Harrison County. This is a map of Harrison County, the whole county, and the colored area is a map of Harrison County School District. School Superintendent Henry Arledge gives us a laser-guided tour of the impact of Katrina. This is Pineville Elementary School. It had two feet of water in it during Katrina. Window walls blown out. Covering 451 square miles, Harrison County School District is the fourth largest in Mississippi. Before the storm, we had 13,300 students. After the storm, we now have 10,900 and some odd number of students. Of that 10,900, we have 465 students that are new to the area. Arledge estimates he's still got about 2,900 students who are displaced and attending schools in other areas. He's also got employees to worry about, 1,700 of them. We have 284 school employees that lost their home. We have 36 that don't have a site to put a trailer on if they had a trailer. Henry Arledge, yes, okay. Arledge is working to get financial relief for impacted employees and to fast track the enrollment of students no matter where they come from. This is the recovery mode, but only a few weeks ago, Arledge and the district were in disaster mode with 15 of the schools functioning as emergency shelters. We've gone through emergency crisis training with the State Department of Education. The district had also sponsored FEMA training. Most of the training was for the principals who are required to manage their schools turned shelters. If you're going to ask them to leave their families, to leave their homes, to come to a shelter that's unbearable conditions after a hurricane, then you need to do everything you can to help them, to train them, to pay them, to turn the time in for FEMA, to do everything you possibly can for those employees. Arledge also took the unusual measure of inviting the National Guard to come stay at the shelters instead of setting up camp. I've got military units to come in. Number one, they protect your property. Nobody's going to bother you if you've got a military unit there. And they go out of their way to assist and to help you. The shelter system worked, but Arledge admits the school system learned some lessons along the way. Potable water is a problem. Drinking water is a problem. Food is a problem. That needs to be pre-stored at these sites. In the future, Arledge wants more on-site rations and emergency generators for when the shelters go dark. In the meantime, the focus is on some return to life as it was before Katrina. We expect the DIY middle school probably to be nine or ten months reconstructing at the minimum. Hopefully we'll have it back online by next August when schools start. And that will be a welcome day for Cathy Gilmore, her students, and all the other people who look to the schools as a safe haven. Raise your hand if you know what DECA means, numerically speaking. So far, we've shown you how a disaster can test a region's ability to prepare, endure, and recover. When we return, we'll show you how that same disaster tested a program that may become a model for the rest of the nation. But first, here's a look at what's coming up on the Homeland Responder calendar. This is the Homeland Responder calendar events. The Government Video Expo takes place at Washington D.C.'s Convention Center November 30th through December 1st. If you create video training for your department, this show will bring you up to speed on the latest media gadgets. The National Association of Health data organizations will hold their 20th anniversary meeting December 5th through the 6th at the Fairmont Hotel in Washington D.C. On December 6th and 7th, the International Association of Fire Chiefs and Microsoft will team up for a fire service technology symposium. The event will be held at the Microsoft Conference Center in Redmond, Washington. The American Public Health Association will be holding their 133rd annual meeting and exposition December 10th through the 14th at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. The American Correctional Association will be holding its annual Winter Conference January 8th through the 12th. The theme of this year's meeting, Corrections, Contributions to a Safer World. And finally, the Firehouse World Exposition and Conference is set for February 19th through the 23rd at the San Diego Convention Center. The show bills itself as five days of education to train and educate fire, rescue and EMS professionals. This has been the Homeland Responder calendar of events. If you have an item for the calendar, please send them to info at homelandresponder.org. We've all seen the images, busloads of New Orleans evacuees escaping the horrible conditions of the Superdome and making their exodus to the relative comfort and safety of Houston's Astrodome. But now, Homeland Responder is going to go beyond those images and share the story you don't know. It's a story of dedication, foresight and of a program that may become a model for the rest of the nation. First, Sylvia Celestine had to face the misery of Katrina. You know, I lost everything. Then, she and her family had to face the misery of the Superdome. We went to the Superdome and the Superdome was the worst, nastiest place I've ever seen in my life. I would never ever want to go there again. Now, under the bright lights of Houston's Astrodome, Sylvia and her family have finally found a moment's peace. God is good and I'm here. I just have to move my head. I'm not sleeping outside. If you watch the regular news reports, you know some of the story. You know that more than 30,000 evacuees fled the chaos of New Orleans and arrived in Houston by busloads. But ask yourself this. How did Houston do it? How did they absorb a small city of people literally overnight? I'm going to get out of here by 4 tomorrow.  For Mark Sloane, time with the family has been almost nonexisted. He names the moment that started it all. When the governor's office of emergency management said Harris County is now taking the lead to receive 25,000 citizens of New Orleans that are located in the Superdome and we're going to build a city and be ready for them in eight hours. Turning Houston's Reliance Center into Reliance City meant finding people to run the city. And finding people to run the city meant turning to Mark Sloane, the coordinator of Harris County's Citizen Corps. We put together an email that asked, please respond, how many can we get? It was a lesson learned because when I hit send I was receiving 1,000 emails an hour and crashed my email system, took out the website which is not the intention. What does it take to crash a server? How about a ready made army of thousands of volunteers well trained and just waiting to lend a helping hand? We had received an email from the White House shortly after September 11th, USA Freedom Corps initiative in President Bush's efforts to create a spirit of volunteerism in America where every citizen would be asked to contribute 4,000 hours, two years of their life to service to others. As the executive head of Harris County, Judge Robert Eccles' office took the challenge seriously. Harris County's commitment to the Citizen Corps concept meant they were ready to roll as the buses rolled in. It was about 10 o'clock on the first night we were waiting for the first bus that we realized that there were not just a couple but 60 or more buses that were going to be coming in and we only had about 70 volunteers. But the number of volunteers quickly mushroomed thanks to people like Bill Clements. Well, I responded over the weekend because it was a weekend and I had the opportunity and the time to put in. Clements' action isn't as impulsive as it sounds. Long before Katrina he trained as part of the Citizens Emergency Response Team, or CERT. CERT is an important arm of Citizen Corps. It's the CERT training that prepared Clements to handle just about any situation. Everybody's eating. Having volunteers is one thing. Knowing what to do with those volunteers is another story. When volunteers first began arriving on the scene when I was here, when I first became involved, the volunteers would come in and say, I have a skill to do this or I can do that or I just want to do something. And we just simply said go over here and start doing it. That was only a few days ago. Now the machine is well oiled and growing by the minute. Alright, good. So far we've been able to process through 37,372 volunteers since this operation started. At meetings like this one, the job is to make sure that all the Citizen Corps parts are working as a whole, even as the needs keep changing. Are we starting? Five a.m. We've got to be open. Well, because 5.30 we can't do anything. So we want to tell all of our volunteers that they can get in at five o'clock. Yes, sir. I need a logistic paper. Okay. Two. You want two? Preferably four. Okay. For night shift. This walk-in request is typical of an environment that deals in unpredictable demands. Good logistics are vital. What we do is we ensure logistically that everything gets to the location it has to get to. No matter what item somebody needs, whether it be a volunteer or it needs to be a cot or it needs to be a generator, it can be so many different items, we ensure that it gets to the right location. To better understand how needs and volunteers are brought together, perhaps it's best to see the whole thing through the eyes of an inductee. Volunteer Tori Williams agreed to let us shadow her through the process. I'm here to volunteer. Volunteer here before? No. Okay. Picture ID. First of all, when they enter the door, we ask them to sign in. They have to show an ID. They have to be over 18. From that point they go to orientation. Hi, my name is Todd Miner.  At orientation, Tori spies a friend. Both she and Jen receive a crash course in Life at Reliant City. Once you get a job assignment, you're done with it. Come back over here if you want another one. After orientation, it's on to the staging area. Okay. I need 10 people to give out water for the elderly people. And now it's like waiting for the right partner at the dance. How long will it take for Tori and Jen to find a job that suits their interest and abilities? Okay, I need 10 volunteers that are administrative types with the ability to walk a lot. We'll find out how Tori and Jen fare in a moment. And we'll learn more detail about how the Harris County Citizen Corps might serve as a national model. But first, an update on a story we brought you in the last edition of Homeland Responder. During our look at Disaster Preparedness Month, we brought you the story of Pods, an on-demand storage company that found it was vulnerable in times of crisis. The question that we all ask ourselves is, would we be prepared if a hurricane hit this part of the country? Pods management empowered their staff to come up with a Disaster Preparedness Plan. As part of this process, we've put together a rapid response team where we can deploy people from all over the country, into a community to quickly distribute Pods to those people that need them. And then along came Katrina. To see how the preparedness plan worked, we visited a franchisee whose warehouse and inventory were devastated by the storm. Pods rapid response stepped in, supplied me with trucks, started shipping Pods to us just as quick as they could from Florida, Peoria, Illinois. The company also filled in the communications void, bringing a mobile command post complete with wireless laptop. Which was a godsend. I mean, we would never have done anything if it hadn't been for that. Which leaves this business in the position of scheduling a large number of new customers at a time when other businesses have shut their doors entirely. Earlier in the program, we shared the story of a Philadelphia firefighter who died in the line of duty. In truth, his is just one of many tales of sacrifice and valor from 2004. We now take you to Emmitsburg, Maryland, where every year the nation's fire service honors all their fallen heroes. The memorial weekend is so many things. A chance to meet other survivors. A chance to get back just a little of what was lost. A chance to grieve alongside people who understand what those tears really mean. A chance to sit down with groups of people and discuss the grief that they're feeling. And that there are other people who've experienced it and understand where they are. This is extremely important for the families to be here. And also the families that come from the past. Every year we have families who lost firefighters years ago come back to help those new families coming in. And it's almost like a regeneration. It helps them get through that. They understand there's other people who have gone through the same type of thing. It's part of the healing process, so I think it's extremely important that they be here. And yet, this weekend requires incredible bravery. Consider that each one of these luminaries is created by the child of a fallen firefighter. Imagine having to go up and light that candle. Jared Michael Moore, Fair Mountain Township Fire Department.  Each family has given an American flag that flew over the United States Capitol and the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial. And a red rose signifying the relationship with the foundation also signifying the importance of the relationship with their lost firefighter. This year, the same walk will be repeated 107 times. Daniel E. Elkins, Los Angeles County Fire Department. The service won't make all the pain go away.  But is it? Not with their loved one gone, it's not. But it will answer the one question that few would ask out loud. Does the loss of my loved one, my husband, my daughter, my wife, my nephew, my son, did it really count? Does anybody notice? My community did, but who else? These firefighters have given their lives protecting this country. It's extremely important that we come here to support those families and give them the honor they're due. In addition to paying tribute to fallen heroes, the hope is that this weekend will also raise awareness of a broader issue. How do we stop these firefighter fatalities from happening? The 16 initiatives we put in under the Everyone Goes Home campaign is vitally important for every fire department to look very carefully at those and see what they can do in their town to protect their firefighters. The dream is, is that this would become a memory, that we didn't have to do this anymore. Now it's time to go back to the Lone Star State, where a true shining star is emerging, in the form of Harris County's Citizen Corps program. After a few false starts... Everybody, come to food, car, baggage, whatever. Tori and Jen have found a volunteer assignment that seems to fit. Pick up ten volunteers please. In the staging area, we pretty much take the ones who've been there the longest for the next assignment if they're able to do it. What we're doing is all along the wall is we're closed, it's been sorted by size, girls, boys, you know, men's, women's, small, medium, large, extra large. Our two volunteers will be doing duty in the donations and distribution warehouse. We are going through about 40 or 50 cases of diapers twice a day. We are going through clothes at an unbelievable rate. We are receiving clothes at an unbelievable rate and they're not building up. Today, the big item is 4,000 pairs of back-to-school shoes. Now it's a matter of dividing them up, putting them on a truck to the other shelters and passing them out. You know how you're going to do it? I have not a clue, but I will in a couple hours. As a matter of policy, the Red Cross doesn't normally accept or manage donated goods. So why does this warehouse exist? Because this room was set up by three ladies. Unbeknown to anyone, Red Cross, the city of Houston County, Harris County, they went ahead and started taking donations and set this whole room up. And so, the Red Cross assumed operation of what turned out to be a high functioning and much needed enterprise. And it's amazing. They did it and I don't know what their background is, but they do a great job, whatever it is. The Red Cross, an established organization and Citizen Corps, the new kids on the block, coexist and benefit from each other by design. We didn't start a new entity. We brought in the United Way and the Red Cross and the Salvation Army and the school superintendents and the police and firefighters. What we found when we started to establish the initiative itself was that although the different member agencies thought that we all knew which agency was charged with what responsibility both in preparation during and after disaster, in fact what we found is that there wasn't as much clarity as we would have liked. Which means that the smooth operation you see here might not have existed had it not been for the Citizen Corps style of inclusion and preparation. But this resource was built over years. It just doesn't happen because you have an impact. We planned way back in 2003 to put together a website that would allow people to log in, to learn how to be better prepared, more aware, link them to the appropriate sites through FEMA to the National Citizen Corps and a variety of other organizations that already exist. Each of these entities of course has their own policies and procedures for what they're responsible for during a disaster. But to be able to share that and to meet and greet each other on a regular basis so you're establishing those relationships with all of the entities that may be involved in a disaster such as this was crucial. It's that spirit of pre-planning and partnership that allows immediate mobilization in times of crisis and the continuous influx of volunteers like Tori Williams. This is men small? No, I think those are children. Like little boys. Multiplied Tori Williams by 40,000 others just like her and you begin to get a feel for the size of this volunteer effort. In a matter of 18 hours we were able to go from nothing to being up with a shelter that ultimately held 30,000 people. Few of those 30,000 probably know much about Citizen Corps but they do know gratitude. Gratitude for all the strangers who've been so willing to lend a hand. Oh, they're so sweet, they're lovely, they are good. They ask you do you need anything? You say yes, they go get it.  It's real good, you know.  They're trying to do the best, they do the comfort us. Evacuese are touched by the presence of the volunteers and vice versa. They're kids. The kids are the most amazing thing that's out there. They come up and they'll say thank you, they'll hug you. You can see in their eyes that it's in the past but it's still fresh in their memory. To say that the volunteers are hooked is an understatement. It hadn't been like they get here and work a couple hours and leave. I mean, they just don't want to leave because they come back and ask for another assignment.  Well, I'll just fold clothes, I'll do something easy. You know, I know they need me, they just don't want to leave. Where are you from? Seattle, fantastic, thanks for coming down. Of course, the goal in all this is to transition the evacuees out of Reliant City and back into a more stable existence. But even as the operation begins to wind down, thoughts are already turning to what this all meant. To judge Robert Eccles, it proves that Citizen Corps does make a difference. But the beauty of it is every city can do what they want. But what they might look at is say, at this program and say, you know, what would have happened had New Orleans had a active, involved Citizen Corps to help identify people, get them out of their homes. To Mark Sloan, it means that you can make a difference. You can do something. You can help in any way that you can. All you have to do is understand what your own capabilities, your own abilities are. And if you do that, you can benefit. To Tori Williams, it means she did make a difference. They were so appreciative. It was, I couldn't believe it. And to the evacuees, the difference means everything. I'll say God bless them and God bless me and appreciate everything that they did for me. Many of the volunteers we talked to during our Houston visit described the Citizen Corps effort as one of the best things that's ever happened to them. Our hope is that people just like you will be inspired to action and might share that same inspiration with others. If you need a little jumpstart, here's information on how to order your own copy of today's program. For more information on how you can receive Homeland Responder for Educational Use, visit the Homeland Responder website. As you've seen so far in the program, no matter how prepared you think you are, you can always do better. It's in that spirit we offer our final Homeland Responder Challenge. Are you ready? Our final Homeland Responder Challenge centers on Citizen Corps. We've shown you how the formation of a high functioning Citizen Corps program made all the difference in Houston, Texas. Had it not been for that program, volunteers wouldn't have been able to mobilize us quickly and efficiently to absorb all the evacuees from New Orleans. Here's the question. In what percentage of emergencies is a firefighter, EMT, or police officer the first person to respond? Here are your choices. A. 95% B. 46% C. 32% D. 5% The answer? First responders can't be everywhere. And we're finding that our statistics say that 95% of all emergencies, they're at the bystander or the victim himself, is the first person to respond. That puts the answer for traditional first responders at D. 5%. Which leads to our next question. Vips is one of the key partners of Citizen Corps. Vips stands for A. Volunteers in Police Service B. Vanderbilt Institute of Policy Standards C. Voters involved in Policy Standards D. Volunteers in Public Service The answer? A. Volunteers in Police Service The goal of Vips is to enhance the capacity of state and local law enforcement to utilize volunteers. To find out more about Vips, go to policevolunteers.org It seems that our first responders are in a perpetual race to outthink the bad guys and to stay one step ahead of what nature can throw their way. To do that, they need an edge. And that edge comes in the form of technology. Here's an insider's glimpse at some of the latest gadgets. What's new in the world of law enforcement technology? Let's shine a little light on the subject. This is our M2 flash cam. It's a flashlight that records audio, video, infrared, and takes up to 2700 snapshots. This gadget isn't just a cool idea. It was born from real world needs. I was a police officer for five years myself. And we always are looking for new technology. And when I was in law enforcement, I thought it would be great to have a product that we could go to a domestic with a bar fight and accident and be able to take video and audio and everything along with having the flashlight with us. The M2's thermal imaging feature allows the officer to spot a possible suspect no matter how dark it is. The camera can record an hour and 20 minutes of high resolution video or produce still images. We have a little camera up in the top left, which means if I hit the select button, we just captured an image. And with the image being captured, it stamps the serial number of the flashlight and the date and time that the picture was taken. The officer benefits from a digitally recorded record of everything that took place. A lot of people say, Jesus, this is one of the most revolutionary products that law enforcement has ever seen, which is very gratifying for us to hear that, especially myself as being one of the people that came up with the idea. Next stop, how about a product with a new twist? Literally. This is a video prop 300, where it does a handheld unit. This probe system not only allows officers to look inside tight spaces, the operator can manipulate a joystick to hook and twist the end of the probe, allowing officers an amazing range of vision. One peek under the door, and the SWAT team knows how many people are inside and the number and location of the weapons. In cases of suspected explosives, the probe is ideal. For the safety of the officers to pull it out, now they know that they have explosives, now they're going to make the decision either to try to take it apart or to dispose by putting it in the tank and blow it up. The probe includes a wireless transmitter with a range of 14 miles. The last stop on our technology tour finds an item that may not be as showy as the others, but it's just plain smart. Okay, what we have here is a mobile command post. It's a command post that you can basically collapse down into something that's extremely portable. It could be thrown in any truck of any vehicle. Setting up the mobile command post is similar to setting up a folding cardboard table and just as fast. The case is watertight. Inside you'll find a battery powered light, a magnetic dry erase board and a liftable desktop with storage underneath. The unit is priced under $1,000, a fraction of the cost of a traditional field command post. Our thoughts were we wanted to put everything into one small package that anybody could afford. As you've seen in this program, disaster can strike in even the most peaceful of places and test the preparedness of those who think they've already seen the worst. Homeland Responder hopes you're never put to the test, but if you are, we're there with you to get you ready before disaster strikes. For all of us here at Homeland Responder, I'm John Eastman saying thanks for watching and reminding you that we're all Homeland Responders. So be involved and be safe. So long.


Now what is your Instagram profile? It is basically the bio section that includes all the general details that your customers get to see when they land on your Instagram profile. For example, they might have questions about who you are, what you do, what you offer, how do they even buy from you, et cetera, et cetera. Now, why is this super important? Because it is the first impression of your brand. People only have two seconds to see basically every question that they have and it has to be answered because if it is not answered and if they're confused, then most likely they'll just scroll off because they can't be bothered to continue digging. And that's how short the attention span is for your customers nowadays. So if you don't want to lose a sale, you need to make sure you pay attention in this lesson. And it also allows your account to be much more discoverable by other people who haven't landed on your account yet. So for example, if they're searching for a specific keyword, let's say if they're looking for the best hot dog in Vancouver and if it is in your keyword, then you're going to pop up and you will likely get a sale or at least you have potential to get a sale because you're discovered by your customers. Now, the five essentials for your Instagram profile. First up, your name, next up category of your business, location, website link and bio description. And we're going to be diving deep into each of these essentials right now. Let's dive into name. With your name, it needs to include your company name and also the keyword that describes what you're selling because when people are looking at Bulbasaur and this is a case study that we created specifically to show you how to do this. So with the brand name Bulbasaur, people have no clue what we're selling. They're going to be thinking that we're selling Pokemon cards, for example. And that's the reason why we need to have the keyword that tells them what we're selling, we're selling bubble tea kits. Having a keyword beside the name exposes your brand to people who are searching for bubble tea kit as well. Right here, when people are searching for bubble tea kits, we pop up as one of the top four, even though we're brand new, because a lot of people do not optimize the feature of the keywords. And that's the reason why you need to be able to do that. So when people are searching for bubble tea kits, they're going to be able to find you. Now a pro tip is you're going to be asking yourself, what is a keyword that I'm going to use for my business? Well, ask yourself for your product. What is the most common way people describe what you sell? For example, it could be Ube cookies, it could be hot sauce, it could be bubble tea kit. A very, very easy example is to ask your friends and family how they would describe your creation. And as you ask enough of your friends and family, let's say five to ten of them, you're going to be able to see a pattern erupt. You're going to see that. Oh, everyone's describing my my my bubble tea drink as a bubble tea kit. Now that's how you're going to know what keyword to use for your Instagram bio. Next up, the category of your business. Tell your customer what type of business that you are. And right here, it's food and biz, a food and beverage. And make sure to select it when you are creating your Instagram profile. Don't leave this area blank. Next up is your location. Allows your customers to see where you're from and what you're located. And make sure to include the big city and the province that you're in. And don't skip out on this section as well, because it's very important for people to understand where you are, because if they were to buy from you, they want to be able to buy from somewhat local. Next up, your website link. There are two options for this area. And this should have been done in the last module, module five. We talked about creating your website and a or a order form. If you're not aware of that, please jump back to module five, less than 2.1 and 2.2. And that's where you put it in. Make sure you put in your either your website or your order form. I see a lot of different Instagram accounts do not utilize this specific feature. And if you lose out on this feature, you're basically losing out on a very, very important call to action. So make sure you guys put this in. OK. And lastly, your bio description. There's only 150 characters for this whole section. And we're going to be able to optimize this whole section and answer as many questions as possible. And that's the reason why it's super important for us to take note. And we're going to break it down into four different questions that you must answer for questions. First up, what is so special about what you sell? How can your customers stalk you or give you shout outs and recognition? When can our when are we available to answer questions and when can we pick up? And lastly, OK, now I'm ready to place an order. How do I place an order? Your bio needs to answer all four of these pressing questions in 150 characters. And that's it. Definitely a challenge, which is the reason why we're going to dive in strict about what these questions mean and how you can answer them. First up, what is so special about what you sell? For us, it's a DIY bubble tea kit for the home, Boba Rista, make brown sugar boba in five minutes. This could be your mission statement, and this is just an example of what this is. For example, if you're serving vegan chocolate cookies, right? Then you can put down the first vegan chocolate cookies in the Bay area. And so then people know exactly what you're selling and what is so special about you that they can't go to the local corner store to get that cookie, right? Give them a reason to buy from you. And this is the reason where you put that you put in your description. Next up, how can your customers stalk you or give you shout outs and recognition? And this is something that we called branded hashtags, OK? And a hashtag is a unique way to categorize your business and to log your business. And this is what we encourage to our customers when they are sharing our product and we every time we have a campaign, we encourage people to use that hashtag and more on hashtags later on in the following lessons. But nonetheless, know for a fact that you need to give people a way to stalk you. People are a way to give you shout outs. As you can see right here, this is 720 sweets. Our ice cream shop previously, right? Once you click into this tag, you're going to see more than 5000 people talking about our ice cream. And these are all people tagging 720 sweets.  Is this brand good? How are people consuming it? What are their like famous items? Then once you click into the hashtag, people would be able to see other people enjoying your products, and thus they're going to have much more. You're going to have much more credibility and authority to sell to your customers. And that's the reason why you need to start right away for us. This 5000 post did not come right away. It came over time. We built this over time. And that's the reason why you need to start that in the from the get go. It could be your company name or it could be your hashtag tagline for 720 sweets. We use 720 switch, which is our ice cream shop name. And for Bulbasaur, we just use Bulbasaur dot Y VR. And that's the reason why it's right here. Have that in your bio. So then that way people know how to give you shout outs and give you recognition. Now, when are you available for me if I have questions? And oh, by the way, one more thing, when you're talking about branded hashtags, use the same one all the time because you do not want to have multiple different hashtags because it just dilutes the effort. When your customers are typing in hashtags, they just need to remember one hashtag that resembles your brand because if they have multiple hashtags, then you're going to lose them because there's just too many for people to remember. They wouldn't know which one to type in and it is just very, very confusing. So go with one hashtag that resembles your brand for us. This is our brand name for this one. Same thing using our brand name. Next, logistics. We talked about this in detail in module five. So if you're not aware of that or if you skipped it, definitely go back. In this area, you need to allow your customers to know when are the cutoff times and when are dates for delivery, whether it's pickup or delivery, fulfillment details in this section as well. Now you are you're ready to place an order. I want to place an order. How do I place an order, guys? This is a key, key place where you need to allow people to know where to order. It is a call to action button. So always, always ask and yourself, am I giving my customers a channel to order for me and make sure you include it in your bio? It directs people to take an action that you want them to take, whether it is the current promotion, buy one, get one free or new product available or order now or DMS for inquiries. Regardless of whatever it is, you must have a call to action. You must force, not force. You must promote your customers to take an action. Otherwise, they won't take an action. If you have all this great stuff doing all the laying all the foundations of a good profile, but if you don't have a call to action, which I see a lot of people miss, then people are not going to be able to order from you because they just don't know. And once again, if they're confused, they're just going to scroll off or they're going to be like, hey, you know what, I'm just going to buy tomorrow. And when they do that, most likely or not, they're going to forget and you're going to lose the sale. So pro tip emojis. OK, as you can see right here, we use a lot of emojis because it's a new thing. It's much more engaging and it also makes it much more fun. And that's the reason why we encourage you to use emojis. So if you're using your laptop to create an account for your business and you're not going to be able to find emojis, that's the reason why you should go and check out this link. Once you click on this link, you're going to see a ton of different emojis, which you can just copy and put it in your bio. Also ensure your bio is well-formatted and legible. So if we're looking at this one, it's very, very difficult to read all this kind of mumble jumble, whereas if you're looking at this one, you're answering all these questions very, very quick, simple, because it's structured and formatted correctly. So make sure your bio is structured like this and not like this. Four answers you must have for your profile. These are the four and make sure you guys take note of this and make sure you guys ask yourself, am I answering these questions for my customers? Now it is your turn. Personalize your Instagram profile and your bio. Use 20 of the Instagram accounts in the link below for your resource to get more inspiration.


We begin by praising Allah. We praise Him, we ask for His help, and we seek His forgiveness. And we declare that nobody deserves to be worshipped in any way, shape, or form, besides Allah, the One and only True God. And we declare that Muhammad was the last and final messenger sent for our guidance and for the guidance of all humanity. Brothers and sisters, in the Quran, Allah has mentioned many prophets. And some of the stories of those prophets are very brief. You see only one scene or two scenes from their life. And some of them are much longer. And one of the longest, if not the longest story of a prophet in the Quran is the story of Prophet Musa, peace and blessings be upon him.  So I did a very quick count myself. This is before AI came out. And I counted at least 454 verses in the Quran about Prophet Musa. So I want to just reflect today about some aspects of the life story of Prophet Musa and how it relates particularly today to oppression that is taking place in different parts of the world, but particularly in Gaza and in Palestine. So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentions about the oppression that was taking place in ancient Egypt at the time. And he mentions he says that he elevated himself in the land, meaning that he became the supreme ruler of ancient Egypt. And if you think about it for a moment, ancient Egypt was one of the superpowers, if not the most powerful nation in the world at the time. You can imagine for a moment that they had the most advanced technology, they had the most advanced army, they had the most advanced weapons. They, you could say their annual military budget was probably the highest or one of the highest in the entire world. So this is the scenario that Allah is describing to us to learn some lessons and then he says and what did he do? He took the people and he divided them into two groups, two different groups. And what that means is that he put one people or the Egyptians, they're going to have a special laws, they're going to have special treatment, they're going to have special rights, and there's going to be another group of people. And this group of people are known as the Israelites or the Bunny Israel, the children of Israel. These are the people who are following the religion, these are the early Muslims, these are the Muslims before the Quran was revealed. And there are the descendants of Prophet Yaqub because Prophet Yaqub, Prophet Jacob is nicknamed with Israel or Israel. So what happens is that these people are being oppressed and they're in the second group. They're in the group that doesn't have rights. They're in the group that's basically living inside of an open air prison.  They're living exactly in the situation that the people in Gaza are living. And this is kind of the context here. If we really read carefully, we can see exactly a parallel that's taking place today. So Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala mentions this point. And when you have two separate rules or two separate people based on their ethnicity, what happens? This is defined in modern terms as apartheid. Now apartheid is a modern term. This is not something that was defined in the past. But apartheid, the technical definition came from South Africa. And it says that when you basically have a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on the grounds of race or ethnicity, it's called apartheid. It's unacceptable in the supposedly modern, civilized, supposedly civilized world. So this is exactly what was taking place. And then Allah continued the description of what's happening. He says, one of them was deemed and considered to be the weaker group. So the Israelites, the children of Israel are considered to be weak. And he says, what happened was they were slaughtering the sons, killing the babies and the children of the children of Israel, the males, and they were letting the females live. And what's interesting is this child killing is infanticide. These are little kids being murdered right when they're born. And there was a reasoning behind why it was happening. So the scholars of Tafsir, the historians, they explained the reason why, said because he was told by some fortune teller or somebody informed him that there's going to be a child that is going to be born and that child is going to grow up and going to destroy your kingdom. So therefore, in order to prevent this, the solution that Pharaoh came up with was we're going to start taking out their children so that this doesn't happen. Look at the mentality. The mentality of a zalim, of an oppressor, it doesn't change. The mentality of the oppressor throughout history, it remains constant. The characteristics are the same. The same story continues to repeat itself over and over again in different ways and in different lands and in different countries. And that's why Allah gives us these stories, because history tends to repeat itself.  I'm doing this for the defense of our country. Ancient Egypt has a right to exist. And if these kids grow up, one of them, they don't want ancient Egypt to exist. So therefore, we need to put a stop to it. Twisted mentality, same mentality repeats over and over again. And then Allah says, He was indeed one of the corrupt people. And then fast forward a little bit. Prophet Musa grows up. He flees Egypt. He is coming back to Egypt. And now he was accused of a crime and he fled. He's coming back and some of you know the story, remember the story. He's coming back and he's not a prophet yet.  And I'm giving you a mission. You have a job, you have a responsibility. What is your responsibility? Go to Pharaoh, go to Pharaoh, because he has trans, he's gone beyond all the limits. He's gone beyond limits of decency in his arrogance and in the way he's oppressing people and all of these things. And you're going to say to him, are you willing to purify yourself?  Like, this is an opportunity. You need to stop doing what you're doing. You know, and I imagine Prophet Musa, one person by himself needs to walk into the court in the palace of this powerful, tyrannical leader and he needs to go and tell him, you know what, you need to stop doing this. Do you think Musa was afraid? Of course. You know how difficult it was? So this is really important because what happens is that in our context today, sometimes we end up becoming so afraid that we're not going to do anything at all. And of course, whenever you act, you should act with wisdom. It's very important for Muslims to act with wisdom. But it also means that while you have wisdom, you have courage. And wisdom and courage need to be combined together. Because what we have taking place, especially when it comes to our brothers and sisters in Palestine and the issue that's taking place right now, the genocide that is taking place right now, is specifically we have a censorship taking place in companies, in universities, in media, that's well known. So many other things. The Jewish Voice for Peace, it's a Jewish organization. It's banned from some of the Ivy League schools, students for justice in Palestine, banned. So so many organizations are being banned. People are being blacklisted. If you say one comment, we will make sure that you never get hired by any of these companies. This type of mentality is a mentality that has existed exactly in the time of Prophet Musa. And despite that, Prophet Musa's responsibility, Allah tested him and said, you need to go. Was he afraid? Of course he was afraid. But if you look at what he had to go through versus the little amount of courage, maybe when it's the right time in the right place to go through, it's actually, we're not really being asked to do that much. We have a role model in Prophet Musa and in other people. So it's a very interesting, Allah says that. But then when he goes and he tells Firaun this, look at the response of Firaun. It's very telling. There's so many lessons in every one of these conversations. So Allah put this in as well. The response of Firaun, initial response to Musa was Allah, didn't we raise you as a child among us? Because Musa, he was the one child that ended up getting saved that year. And he ended up growing up in the palace and kind of like being an adopted child of Firaun and his wife. So he grew up in the palace and Firaun is calling him and insulting him. And basically his response to him was, you ungrateful person. We raised you up in the palace, didn't we raise you up?  So the personal attack is one of the primary strategies of an oppressor. They will go and they'll attack you and say, what about that? What about this thing we did for you? What about that thing we did with Firaun? To try to undermine your credibility so that whatever you're trying to say, even if it's correct, it's going to be a distraction for everybody else because these are public gatherings. This was the response of Firaun. But Prophet Musa was clever. He was wise. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala chose him for a reason. So his response was, the gist of this, I'm not going to translate exactly. He's saying, you know, you bringing me up without enslaving me the way that you enslaved all my people because he's from the children of Israel. You doing that for me is the favor that you're reminding me of? Like seriously? He's saying, basically, I would have had a mom and a dad.   You were oppressing my people. That's why I ended up in your house. So you're going to go and you're going to tell me that you did me an amazing favor by doing this for me. The only reason I ended up with you was because of what you were doing to my family and what you did to my people. So a beautiful response. And the reminder is that an oppressor at a level who has this level of arrogance like Firaun, who has this level of just humanity is just missing, the fit going away from the natural disposition that Allah created us upon, they will always try to justify their actions. Sometimes they're just going to lie completely. We didn't bomb their hospital. They bombed their own hospital. Sometimes they're going to use twisted logic like this. They're going to try and twist things around and people who are not that clever, they can't see. They don't think very well. They can't properly see it. But it's our job and our responsibility to teach people who have some position of authority or have some say or some influence to be able to read through the propaganda that oppressors are pushing out in society because public opinion matters, particularly in our world today. And then it continued. The story continues for a little bit and he starts telling Prophet Musa says, you know what?  We're going to do something to you. You have political ambitions and you want to do this and you want to do it. He started making all these other threats. But we'll look at the last two parts. There are two groups of Muslims who are experiencing oppression. What is the reaction of these groups of Muslims? And we're going to contrast and juxtapose the reactions of these two groups while this is taking place. The first one is the Egyptians, the magicians. So Pharaoh, Prophet Musa was given a miracle that he could take his staff and he could throw it onto the ground. It turns into a serpent. It turns into a snake. Many of you know the story. And this is from Allah. And Allah told him to go and challenge Pharaoh and say, this is a proof that I'm being sent by Allah and I'm a messenger. So he goes and he shows them the thing and Pharaoh's response is, we got some magicians in Egypt too. We're very powerful. We have some people who can do good tricks. So he goes and he hires all these people and he says, brings the best magicians and say, you guys can do some stuff like this too. Go and publicly challenge Musa and do it. And when they did it, Prophet Musa's staff turned into a snake and ate up all the other snakes and fake magic that they were doing because this was a real miracle from Allah. But then what happened is something that nobody expected and Pharaoh never expected that the magicians who he hired, who were on his payroll, who worked for the government, they flipped against Pharaoh and they believed in Prophet Musa. They say, we accept this. The people within his own administration or within his own team flipped on him. And then what was his response? The response of Pharaoh was, for the sake of time, I'm just going to summarize it for you. He said, how dare you believe in him until I've given you permission? That's how arrogant he was. You have no right, you have no right to even accept Prophet Musa until, you know, until I allow you to do so. And because of this, you're going to see what I do to you. I'm going to punish you guys. I'm going to really mess you guys up.    I'm going to make you a public spectacle for everybody else to see. Now imagine being threatened like that. What was the response of these new Muslims who just recently accepted Islam? Their response was they said, if you do that, then we're going to return back to our Lord. We're going back to Allah. And we accept and we know that this is the truth and we know Allah is going to reward us for this oppression that we're going through. All this injustice that we're going through, we have our trust in Allah and we're okay with that. We know that this is our test from Allah and we're fine with it. So this was their response, right? And the response of the Muslims is very powerful. Not only we're going to return back to Allah, but you have no control over my thoughts. If they're like, I control you, you're not even allowed to believe. So that's what you think. You can control my body, but you cannot control my heart and you cannot control my thoughts. I will believe what I believe. You want to harm us because we accepted the truth. One response of Muslims, but then there's a second group of Muslims who, Prophet Musa, comes back to them and this is the children of Israel. These other ones were just converts. It goes back to the children of Israel who are the Muslims at the time, who are the followers of Prophet Musa. They accept Prophet Musa as well, so they're the old Muslims at the time. And what is their response? So Musa is giving a lecture to them. He's like giving a khutbah to them and he's saying, seek help with Allah and you have to be patient. You're going to get success. You have to be patient for now. I know the situation is really bad, but don't lose hope in Allah. This is Allah testing us. And what was their response? Their response was They're telling Musa, they said, we've always been oppressed. Before you came to us and after you came to us, we've been oppressed. They're complaining. They're basically saying Musa, what did you do for us? You've accomplished nothing. We want to see the results right now. If you're a true prophet and if Islam is true, then we should be out of this oppression right now because the Quran is highlighting the underlying psychology of the response. Their response is, we're not going to tolerate this anymore. And if you're really who you're claimed to be, and if this religion is really true, then we should get out of this immediately. We should basically, if we're on the right religion, we should be going into our golden age immediately. And this is the mentality of some Muslims. Say, you know what, if this is true, why are we behind in the world? And why are we at most advanced civilization? And why doesn't Allah and why doesn't this and why doesn't that? It's all complaints. Look at the difference between the two people. The one group said, we're ready to die for Allah. We accept the will of Allah. The second group, you didn't do anything. Nothing's happening. What's going on? Why is it taking so long? Allah has his plan. Allah has his time. But what did Prophet Musa respond? Prophet Musa's response, he ignored what they said, and he said something else. Just for the sake of time, I'll translate.  This is a very interesting response from Prophet Musa. What is he saying to this group of children of Israel?  I'm telling you to be patient and put your trust in Allah and you're sitting there saying, no, we want results right now. He says, if this is the problem in your hearts at the moment right now, then you know what? If you end up being in a position of power in a position of authority, you might end up doing similar or the same as the other tyrants and oppressors are doing because something is wrong with your hearts. And that's a very important lesson. The lesson here is that we have two responsibilities simultaneously. Number one, like Prophet Musa, we have to combat oppression when we see it taking place. But simultaneously, we need to make sure that we're purifying our hearts at the same time so that we don't end up becoming one of those people who's put in a position of authority and power. And because we were focusing so much on removing this person from power and then getting back into a position of power, we end up doing the exact same mistakes that those people were doing. We ask Allah to give us a deep and comprehensive understanding of the Quran. We ask Allah to remove the tyranny and oppression that's taking place. Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah wa salatu wa salam wa ala Rasulillah wa ba'at. Inshallah, we'll conclude with a dua. O Allah, help those people who are going through difficulties and oppression throughout the world. O Allah, help our brothers and sisters in Ghazan and Palestine. O Allah, help our brothers and sisters in all parts of the world who are going through any type of wrongdoing or any type of being wronged or being oppressed.  O Allah, help those people who are struggling whether it's physically or whether it's psychologically. O Allah, help us to understand your religion in a true and comprehensive way and help us to become better Muslims. O Allah, help us to have patience and understand what true patience means. O Allah, help us to be among those who put our trust in your promise and never question the things that you do. O Allah, show us the truth is truth and let us follow it. Show us the false is false and keep us away from it. Ameen. Subhana rabbika rabbil a'izati yama yasifoon wa salaamun a'la al-mursaleen walhamdulillahi rabbil a'alameen waqim as-salam