I'm John Cline and I'm the Voluntary Service Director of D&B. Welcome to the Commision 100 D&B Convention. I'd like to introduce some folks up here on the stage with me. We have Jim Shuey. He's the Intermospital Voluntary Services Committee Chair. Don't be afraid! Michael Elmore is on the committee as well from Missouri. He's a member of the Voluntary Network in Attenbury House. He's not a member of this today, but he's at another meeting from West Virginia. Am I right? Assistant Voluntary Services Director Ron Minner? Not Shane Leary. This is not Shane Leary. Alright, I hope you guys are having a great conference. It's great to see so many people. We'll go ahead and get started. Alright, that's my father's only profile pick up there. Of course, you got Ron. That's his post office munch-shot. Katie Deschler, the Voluntary Services Manager. She's been to a couple of conventions. She's been with the department going on in years. We have Ashley Shedler. She's a temp employee right now. She's currently serving as my assistant and Ron's assistant. She's doing a great job. Amanda Wynne. She's our winter adaptive sports planning liaison. She handles all the winter sports planning, golf planning sponsorships. So if you're a department or a chapter or unit that sponsors one of those events, you may have an interaction with Amanda. Connie Kinney. I bet everybody in this room knows Connie Kinney. We have a training protection network. Connie is the lead for all of our vehicles.  She's been with us for quite a while. Shelby Butler. She's one of our Voluntary Service Specialists. She specializes in reaching out to you guys to get reports so we can get into the system and get an accurate accounting of what we have going on. Pam Hink. She's responsible for our transportation network and hospital service coordinator directories. So you have interactions with her if you want to change your HFC and change your contact information. Tina Wardorf. Another Voluntary Service Specialist. She's responsible for getting your reports and getting everything input into our system. So we have an accurate reflection of what you're doing in your communities. Terry Isbell does the same thing. She's no Voluntary Service Specialist. We have a great team. You can do a lot with 11 folks. Last year, in 2021, DAP Dedicator was almost $23 billion for our Voluntary Service initiatives. That's an absolutely remarkable amount of support. Volunteerforveterans.org. We were talking about that a few years ago and we've currently gone through and revamped it. It's an umbrella. It talks about everything DAP Voluntary Service related. So if you go to volunteerforveterans.org, you can sign up. You can volunteer. You can let us know if you need. It's a whole cache of the DAP resources that we have to offer the men and women who serve. Our scholarship program. We'll talk about it a little bit further down in all these other programs that we have to bullet in. All your app that you have in your phone right now, if you want, it's one of those little banners at the bottom of the app. There's 10 of them. One of those is sign up to volunteer or tell us about your needs. If you click on that, you can become a registered DAP volunteer by doing that from this app on this little banner here at the bottom. It scrolls. It changes all those 10 of them. So if you're not registered volunteer for DAP, please do so while you're here. And if you have a need or know somebody with a need, put that need in there. We want to help them, okay? This is what it looks like when you go to the volunteerforveterans.org website. I need help. I want to help. If you know somebody who has a need, I encourage and I implore you, build profile form, let us know so we can find a volunteer to help meet that need. It's only going to ask for a little bit of information. They can ask seven questions. It's pretty much all we're asking for so we can get a hold of somebody, okay? This is the Shiny Star DAP and I want to congratulate everybody in here. Over the last 12 months, we exceeded 1.6 million L back hours in the last year. I want to be standing up here saying we need to go back, continue doing the good work that you're doing hours. You're doing a great job. I want the top five every year since we started that award, these guys have got it. South Carolina, does this count? Absolutely it does. If you're doing something serving better to their family and community, it counts.  These are just a few examples of things that you can do. How many chapter department service officers do I have in the department? Are you compensated? That's why you haven't reported your hours. We just forgot to report. Don't be embarrassed. I understand life is busy. If you forget or if you think it's not important, it's very, very important. First, when you went through your training, your certification, right? Same question, how many did you? You can report those hours, that training. All that stuff is important. So, just think about it like that. Again, it's easy to do not be anybody else, but just think about it. There's a lot of hands that are still in the air. Think about how many hours you did and how many you missed out on, okay? B-A-B-S, how many volunteers do I have in the hospital in a room? If you've been to one B-A-S, you've been to one B-A-S. It's a challenging process. Bear with us, we'll continue to work with you B-A-S if you run into certain issues. Think of the phone call with all myself, anybody on your team. We might be able to elaborate and dig in a little bit more. Hopefully, you find us as a valuable tool and a resource, and we can help get you where you need to be. So, thank you for what you're doing inside the hospital, okay? Here's a few pictures of some of our outstanding volunteers who have won awards in the past, but these are just some of the assignments that might occur inside the hospitals. How many hospice volunteers do I have in here? Any hospice volunteers? That's a tough job, and I was going to say, thank you for doing what you do. It's a very difficult job. I'd like to be a hospice volunteer. I just have to sign up for this. Talk to your chief or your CDC director, whatever they're going by nowadays, and let them know you're interested, okay? They're always looking for hospice volunteers. Thank you for that. Transportation, how many volunteer drivers do I have in the room? Drivers sticking with it. You guys provided more than 163,000 rides last year, but it's absolutely remarkable knowing the hurdles and the issues that we continue to face day in and day out as a result of coding. So proud of you guys. Thank you so much. How many people know that we have resources and availability to help you recruit new drivers? We've got a whole bunch of that great stuff. We have a product that works. Anybody in Minnesota? I've been with you guys a few years ago. We've got new new drivers in Minnesota. That's the kind of success we can have. We work with your local media. We'll work with the HSC. We'll schedule a ride-along, get a news crew, ride in a vehicle with you while you're transporting a bearing. What a sexy story that sells itself, right? If that doesn't motivate people to become a driver, nothing will. Thank you for what you do. We have that availability, okay? We expect this upcoming year to be one of our largest orders in our transportation network's history because of how few vehicles we've ordered over the last few years as a result of the limited use of COVID. So I tell you right now, and I say that, I want to tell you that right now because we need to go back and start looking and thinking how many vehicles you're going to want to order because when that order sheet comes out, we're going to be stuck on a tight, tight deadline to get those back in, get them ordered so we can get those vehicles on time. I know you probably drive by car lots right now and you see no vehicles on them. We've got a Toyota dealership in Florence that doesn't have a single truck signal here. We're going to continue to fix that issue for a few years. They anticipate that open 2024. Go back and start your planning now. I bet some of you guys are going to order 10 or 15 vehicles. Pennsylvania, where are you at? You're probably going to order a lot of vehicles. You've always been on Montana. You're probably going to order quite a few as well. So just think about that. Make sure you have to start talking with the people in your life that you're going to need to work with to work that out early, okay? Right now, I could also pick on Oklahoma. They've got a great on-boarding, the Drive a Hero program. If you haven't talked with Danny Oliver, he's got this thing worked out with the VA Medical Center. They come to the Department Convention and they onboard all their drivers right there. He does that prior proper planning. He's got a great recipe. I want to take a talk with Danny. If you haven't done it, I'd love to tell you about it. What do you do? I would. Thank you, brother. We've purchased this 1987. Isn't that remarkable? That's DABs and yours that are committed to the men and women of Georgia's country. Great, great, great guys. Keep up the great work. It came from the Senators, John Tester, Margaret, Asan, and Tom Tillis. All that's a result of the great state of Manhattan. So where are you guys at? Volunteers. Why does it take so long? I applaud you guys for your staunch advocacy and being in that squeaky wheel.  We're not going to make a difference. You're wrong.  You're proud volunteers. You want to continue this legacy of service that we've done for over 100 years. Stay vocal. Stay involved. It's important. They're making progress. Super proud of those guys at the house. All of you. Stay in it, okay? Don't give up. Scholarship program. This is Ron's baby right here. He's made a significant change. He worked with DAB leadership and had gotten more money for this program. We now have more than 10 scholarships valued at $110,000. $110,000? Exciting. All right, excuse me. These days we're only going to go to the leader. Wow. We also sent each of your departments and chapters letters letting you know that they aren't database. John C. Smith is still eligible for the scholarship. Reach out to him. Encourage him. You sent letters to all the individuals in our system that are still 21 years younger and eligible to meet the criteria for the scholarship. Encourage him to apply. Last year we only had 76 applications. We just sent out 97 letters to people that we didn't have email for. If you know a young animal who was volunteering their time and had 100 hours in the name of P&E, nominate them yourself. You can do that. Talk to them. Say, hey guys, you know 30,000 dollars can be paid for a whole education. Encourage them to do that. I'm asking them. I'm challenging each of you to get at least one person to nominate themselves for the scholarship. Retreats. Another one of Ron's great programs that he's working with at the Gary St. East Foundation on, we do five of these retreats a year. One of them, DAB solely funds specific for women veterans. Is Carmen McGinnis in the room? Carmen's a national area supervisor in Denver. She'll be going to the retreat this October to serve as a leading mentor. She's a remarkable individual, probably seeing her in one of our PSAs. Retreat is probably not a great word for her. It's a very intense therapy that focuses on post-traumatic growth. And I know you've heard that term. I've seen her in a few seminars. Very, very holistic. I've been to about eight of those retreats. They're very intense. And I'm always all, when I hear what individuals have gone through in their lives. What are sports playing? Thank God we had that again this year. Two years we haven't had the again. I was so glad to be back just to romance. We had 147 veterans. 130 veterans for this bank this year. Very reduced. We had a lot of, a very strict COVID protocol we had to follow in order to have the event. We'll have the same COVID protocol that we had at the Winter Sports Clinic at the Gulf Clinic next month. But we had veterans on the mountain doing what we did best. Folks on rehabilitation. We're very proud to co-present that with our partners at the VA. And we're looking forward to a full event in 2023. The Gulf Clinic, our newest adaptive sports program. I haven't had the opportunity to, I didn't ask you but, so it was three days. It used to be called the T Touring. We now have all the National Central Veterans Gulf Clinic break. Nice new logo here. But I think it more accurately depicts what the event is about. In other words, tournament, you think, I have to be a great golfer to go do this. You don't. So clinic to change. It's been a very great, welcome change. We're going to have 143 veterans at this event this year. We'll probably lose a few more as we get closer. But it takes place September 11th through 17th in Iowa City, Iowa. Do I have any for the Department of Iowa? Woo! Thank you for your continued support of that. You guys have a wonderful job there. Something to be very proud of. Most of those veterans I've participated in are visually impaired.  A wonderful event. They also have other activities such as adapting cycling, fishing, air rifles, so on as a forklift. Absolutely remarkable event. I want to thank everybody who supports it. Primarily most of you, Jack, for your support to ensure a primary source of sponsorship. Thank you for your continued commitment to helping us put on wonderful events.  And I need each one of you in this room to consider becoming a D&D volunteer if you're not already a volunteer. How many of you are going to sign up to become a volunteer with your app and you can mention that? Got any hands? I appreciate that. Contact information. Anytime you need something from us, email, vps, or db.org. Because we're on or out on the road, somebody else is on the road, but every one of the team members up there has access to that email box. Anything, any resources you have, you can contact us. I get called all the time, a little more all the time. I still help.


we can now start. Hello everyone. My name is Alexei. I'm working in Adyax and this presentation is about how to create a mutable infrastructure for continuous delivery. So we are going to start with Alexander who is the second speaker. I'm going to discuss with you about some theory and then we will go in to show you some examples and if we will have time Alexander can do a live demo about what exactly is all about. So let me again introduce myself. I'm a program manager in Adyax so I'm managing different kind of projects and one of the scopes of my tasks are also the continuous integration, continuous delivery for some of the largest corporate accounts. So what we are presenting here is actually we are doing day-to-day life. Okay so let's start with some theory. Hopefully after lunch people are not so sleepy. So what exactly are we speaking about? We are speaking about the infrastructure as the code. This is as you can see this is an approach to define the infrastructure using the normal paradigm of developer. So this is something that most of the developers are getting into right now because the projects are becoming bigger. Lots of people starting to think out of the box. It's not only Drupal out there. We have lots of different things around. So and this is very familiar approach for the developers. So developer is getting used to write some code and lots of people are trying to stop using Bash because this is like the worst way of configuring stuff on the server. So why infrastructure is a code? That's quite obvious. Most of the people want actually to restart and recreate your infrastructure from scratch whenever they want. So when, for example, you have a problem somewhere and you for example, you got hacked and you need to restart directly. You can do it all wipe out of the system and that's kind of a core value of all of that. So you know that everything you do can be easily automated. We prefer to use Git as a single source of truth. So everything, you will see that in the presentation later, but everything we do is always in Git. Why? Because it's kind of a standard now, right? We are trying to save everything, code of the projects, the code of the system and the whole infrastructure is also in Git. As developers, we like to treat everything as a code. That's like, that's how our head works. And again, we want to replicate the component whenever we want. This is quite useful in our scope because we are a digital agency and we do some repeatable work for different clients. So this is how we save time. So what are the goals of the infrastructure? We want people to change a lot and improve the system a lot. We want them to not have a stress, don't be stressed about that. Most of the people want to deploy on Fridays. Most of the people want to change everything right now, not waiting for some release window which happens in two weeks. And you want your developers to be more autonomous, more proactive in all the things which are the projects you are working on. So we actually don't really like when developer is blocked by something, by the environment which is not working, by everything like that. This is not cool. We think that this is also part of the developer time. So what are the challenges right now? This is actually one of the first world problems. Right now, everything is so easy. You can start a droplet in digital ocean, Amazon web services, Microsoft Azure, everything is so available.  And now a team can start, create servers, start environment, et cetera. But the problem is that it's too fast. You cannot control it anymore. And you need to make sure that your infrastructure stays the same, that it's still secure, that people can use it over time. That's one of the problems you probably are already aware. So when, at some point of time, your server, your infrastructure have some configuration done and it's working. You know, most of the people say if it's working, do not touch it. You probably started already with some automation. You have some Chef, Recype, or Ansible script, whatever. And at some point, someone decided to do a hot fix. Something is broken on the production environment. And he writes directly on the server, change it. And now your automation is gone. So this is configuration drift. You cannot see the difference. The snowflake servers. This one is quite problematic because this is, again, it's the same problem. People don't want to touch what's working. And sometimes, why we say snowflake? Because there is no snowflake alike. So every server is different. And we don't want that. And the fragile infrastructure. This one is kind of a usual problem for over busy people. Because they think that infrastructure is something that is like water. You don't have to do anything. It just works. But it's not. And there are a lot of stories about that. Some companies, one of the companies, they had a server somewhere in the corner running something nobody actually knows what's there. And in two or three years, people starting to ask, what is the server actually doing? Because most of the people who are working on that, they are not in the company anymore. So they decided to test and just unplugged it and whole infrastructure crashed. So they plugged it in again and never touched it again. So this is like the main problem. You want to understand what's happening. This is why we say you must use Git for everything. You have history in Git. You know exactly what's happening. If someone is changing the server, just force them to use the version control for all the configuration everywhere. And again, this is what I'm just talking and speaking about. When your server is inconsistent, you have this kind of a circle which never ends. You don't know what to do. You have to use the same. If you now launch your Ansible script, it will probably break something or not. You don't know. So you don't touch it anymore. That's a challenge. And of course, the entropy erosion. Why? When, let's say, let's give you a quick example. You speak about Jenkins. Jenkins is something that we use a lot. We think that's a great and powerful tool. But if at some point you forgot to upgrade it in two years, it's impossible to do anything because it goes so fast. You need to do it much, much more in a much more consistent way and regularly. So what are the principles of the infrastructure in the code? Demanding systems can be easily reproduced.  It's in the code. It's in the history. You can launch it and you have your system exactly as you want it. You can dispose of every system. This is very important. We think this is, this is most of the people, most of the people are scared about that.  They know that, oh, what's wrong? So yeah, systems can be disposable. You can destroy it and launch it again. It's not a problem. We will show it later. If you are using, we are using Docker a lot. We can destroy containers, start containers again. We have that data storage just for the data. So we don't, we don't really care about the server. The server is something that, that exists for 10 minutes or for 10 days. We don't care. Systems are consistent. You are, everything is inside the code. So it should be consistent. And the processes are repeatable. Again, this is like, like very important for, there are many, very important principles of the code.  So we don't configure anything manually on the servers. I think last time we configured something on the server was probably two or three years ago. Everything is automated and inside unseable or some, something like that. And the changes are welcome. So what are the, what are the general practices of infrastructure as a code? Most of the time, you want some kind of a definition somewhere. So this is what you store in the code, are definition, definition files. We'll speak with about the tools later. For example, the Terraform, which we are using a lot, stores configuration in the files. So there is kind of a definition which explains what is going to be installed. We use Git. Whenever you do something, we actually encourage everyone to use the continuous integration, continuous delivery system. Changes are very frequent. You want people to be able to deploy whenever they want. You don't want to be locked on some particular knowledge of some, some particular guy in your company. So you want, you must, must make sure that everything is continuously integrated and delivered. So incremental changes. Some people prefer to create a big batch of something and then deploy it. And most of the corporate clients actually work on, work only like that because they want it to be predictable. Which is good from one, one, one side, but from another side, you can break things. And we actually encourage people to do incremental updates.  And the continuous improvement. You must regularly update Jenkins. You must regularly update the tools you use. You must regularly think about what you are actually doing with your system. How it's deployed. Try to store, save some KPIs. How much, how many deployments you do per day? How many developers are working with your system? What is the average time of deployment? Everything like that must be analyzed. And it must be continuously improved. If you see at some point that people do not use the system as a design, why, why you build it? So that's the list of tools. We use a lot. And this, a big part of the presentation for, for Alexander. We use all of that. I'm not going to explain about all of them. The main thing that Jenkins, we think that is very powerful. It's, it's going fast. It has now a very beautiful new blue ocean interface. So if you never looked at that, have a look. We use GitLab. Because GitLab, we think it's an amazing piece of software. It's, it goes very fast. It's, it allows you to install it on your server and you do whatever you want with it. But it can be of course anything like that. GitHub, Bitbucket. Whenever there are the way of setting up a hook in Git, you can use that. And of course Docker. Because we want everything to be disposable and, and launched whenever we want that. We are big fans of using HashiCorp tools. They have, they have an amazing list of things.  The Terraform. This is the biggest part of the, of the whole structure. Because this is exactly where you describe your infrastructure in, in the way of code. And the console, because you need, you need to do a service discovery. You need to define your services to make sure that all of them are working in the way you want. Uncivil. And I think 2017, lots of people know already about that. That's the way to automate things, to launch server provisioning. The Kubernetes because we don't, we don't have only one, one Docker image. We have lots of them. And we want to make sure that for all, any amount of, of containers we can manage and orchestrate them. And the helm, that's a package manager for Kubernetes. So now we are going to this, to, to, to show you how to actually write and build the delivery pipelines. Because we all, we actually think that you have, you want your websites or whatever application you're working on to be, to be continuously delivered. And, but what about the continuous delivery of the continuous delivery tool you use? This is most of the time people don't think really about that. And in a lot of examples, when you are working with different clients, they have some kind of a tool. They have a continuous integration system with Jenkins, with some code inside. But the whole, the actual system which, which delivers things is a snowflake server. No one actually knows what's happening there. It's Jenkins, some, some manually created jobs, some manually created pipelines. And the guy who was actually configuring them left already the company. So no one knows what's happening. So we want to do the whole system starting from the application to this, to the continuous delivery tool to be inside the code. And I leave Alexander to continue the presentation. Thank you, Alexei. My name is Alexander. Hello everybody. Welcome to our practical part of the presentation. The biggest issue with this presentation was how to choose the right material because we wanted to show too many things and it's not likely to be going, go well with the format of this presentation. So I'm going to go into the core issue of what Alexei already mentioned of continuous delivering, the continuous delivery system itself. To, I want to go to what his continuous delivery is very quickly. It's a software engineer approach in which things produce software in short circles, ensuring that the software can be reliably released at any time. Fast releases, testing and reducing the cost time and the risk of delivering changes because updates are incremental. Our continuous delivery system. We have the system to handle lots of different projects. We have many instances of this continuous delivery system and some of them are installed on the client side. And we want to apply the same principles that we use to deliver projects to clients, to deliver our system to the servers we use. And how we do it? Who will continue to deliver the continuous delivery system? Because why this question appeared? Because at some point we can create continuous delivery systems that will create our continuous delivery system. But who will create this new continuous delivery system? This is Anders Sokol and we came to the idea of, be aware, here be dragons, of our boros. Our boros is an ancient symbol showing the serpent or dragon that eats its own tail. It is a symbol of infinity and infinity is our continuous delivery. And the natural end of creation, we create resource, for example on terraform and destruction. Systems are disposable and we can destruct any component at any time. So I'm going to go to the practical part now and show how we create our continuous delivery system from the scratch. And we have a milestone zero where we have nothing except our local environment and some repository on GitHub. And now we're going to create everything. I'll be switching to console now to make sure that we have nothing. I'll go to the Kubernetes and we'll create the root environment and Kubernetes. I'm going to check that I don't have continuous delivery system installed. I'm checking and only have the console. Console also should be managed, but it will be not shown in this presentation how we create it. But it's very simple. You see the step one where I execute, create the Kubernetes cluster. I will skip this one because it takes too much time. Then I create the secrets. Secrets are just some passwords or tokens or ideas or keys to keep them secret, of course. And I need to create them first before I can pull some repo and execute some steps because we need the secrets to access our external resources. I'll call the repo. I can share the repo after the presentation if anybody interested. And I executed the install command for Helm. Helm is a deployment manager for Kubernetes. It makes life so simpler because I can do whole Kubernetes deployments with one command. Now I'm going to wait a bit and while it's creating, we can check it on Kubernetes dashboard what's happening. We can see that some red messages appeared and it's because some resources are not visible to each other yet and it will be okay. So I can show the Helm config while it creates something like that. I have one file to define the chart with name and version and then it have config map where it basically defines some files that will be used to create Jenkins in our case and some init scripts and property files that will be used to provide Jenkins with its variables and properties. Okay, common is finished and we can see that we have some information here and I want to check the logs what was created. For this I execute the describe pods command and check the name then check the logs for what is this name. I can see that something is happening now. In its scripts for Jenkins are executed. Some tokens created, SSHK copied into the workspace and now it says that Jenkins is fully up and running so we can check if it actually works. I run the status command to check the services IP address external so I can access the Jenkins. This is newly created Jenkins but it already have our LDAP working so I will authenticate with our LDAP and now we are at milestone one, the seed where Jenkins is created and we're ready to create a jobs inside the Jenkins. For this step we have a concept of mothership seed job. Mothership means it can create many projects and jobs for these projects and it depends on some example where we define how this project looks. Now I'm going to execute this mothership job and it will create the projects. This step should be automated too because we want to automate everything we do but for this presentation we keep it as it is because otherwise it will already created everything and I wanted to show you the process itself. While working I'll show you the mothership config how the main file config is a list of projects and for this project we use only one CICD because we want to create only CICD based jobs on this Jenkins. Let's check the job is finished and I can see that new folder appeared with the name of our project and there is a seed job inside this project as well and this seed job will create the project jobs and for every project we will have the same seed job that will create everything every job related for this project. This just I just executed these steps. Again seed pipeline means that it creates another jobs and pipelines. Now when the job will be finished we will be at milestone to the root. We call this Jenkins server that we just created the root environment because it will create other infrastructure elements other Jenkins servers etc. Let's check what's happening here. Okay job is finished and when we return to the folder we can see that some new folders and jobs were created. If we check some of them we'll see that it has inside some jobs like applied destroying plan. It corresponds to the terraform actions that could be performed with the infrastructure. At this point we can actually see how we can do updates to the our infrastructure and how it will be handled by the root Jenkins server. It will create all the needed infrastructure components needed. Let me show it. At this point I want to push some commit to our infrastructure repo and then create a metric quest in GitLab for this commit. I assigned it to me and submit metric quest. At this point our new Jenkins server is already able to pick up this event from the GitLab because when we created the Jenkins it already provides and created webhooks on the GitLab site that triggers on every event like pushes metric quest etc. triggers jobs on the Jenkins server. And now we can see that match request applied job is in progress. I believe I'll switch to video format now because it takes some time to finish. I believe we can do it faster with video. You can see that pipeline job was launched for the metric quest for new metric quest and it executes some actions inside like installing Jenkins server after we provide the configuration server with Terraform. You can see now the Ansible tasks executed and you can see that pipeline itself defined on the screen and it will go to the Ansible configuration. So you can see the steps that you form. You can see the Docker compose file used with data volume and master image. You can see the Docker file for this image that we use is based on the Alpine Jenkins fast forward a bit and at this point the Jenkins is installed with Ansible and Docker on the metric quest disposable environment. I just can copy this address and check if the new server was actually created. Now you see the brand new Jenkins server created only for testing the metric quest I just created and perform the same steps to login because every Jenkins server is configured the same way and we can see that some jobs are already executed and this execution was triggered from our root Jenkins environment. I will fast forward a bit. Now we can see the actual actions performed during our pipeline build. It's our custom system based on the yaw configuration format. We call it zebra inside and now you see the github repo that has all the actions all the actions logic inside it's open source so you can check how it works. I'm going to return to our presentation now. We just saw how these steps were performed and I'll just recap the steps because it was a bit messy. We created a metric quest for master branch in our infrastructure repo in github and then it triggered through the github webhook our metric quest applied job on nth environment root and the first step was tear from apply that created our master and save Jenkins servers for metric quest environment. Here you can see the pipeline defined with the blocks and these blocks are the main stages of the pipeline. This is the definition of the block. As you can see we use the docker images for each block and each block is executed in its own container. Each block has some stages defined with some actions inside each stage and there you can see the actual logic how action is executed. Here you can see some terraform config. Here we have a provider. We use console as the external storage of data because we want to be able to execute terraform commands from any Jenkins or from local PC and it will not recreate the same environment each time so we needed some external database and we use console for that as the remote state storage and you can see that we have two resources here for master Jenkins and for save Jenkins. It uses the pre-baked droplets on the digital ocean and these pre-baked droplets were created with the packer that Alexey already mentioned today. It packs the only needed software into the image and then it could could be easily and faster reused. Next steps Jenkins was installed with Ansible and then we performed some automated tested on Jenkins to make sure it works with the new changes. For now tests consist of two steps mother ship set job creation and project ship job creation. After that we accept automatically the merge request on the Git website and after that we destroy our disposable environment, merge request environment. We have automatically updated our master branch with the merge request accepted and the new stable take created to make sure we can follow the history of the releases and when stable take is created it triggers the same API job but it's this time for preprot environment that already should be run and it's just the same and use same process. They are for all applied Jenkins install if needed and Jenkins tests. Now we have a milestone three called the tree where we have a tree of Jenkins servers as much as we needed and each of them could have its own environments like dev stage preprot-prot for the actions. If you remember I started with question who will create the delivery system itself and I created from my local environment with some comments. At this point we want to move these actions into the pipeline itself and make sure it could be executed from any Jenkins server that we already created and when we perform it we have a milestone final our final milestone the circle when the circle is completed and we can create the Jenkins server for any environment from any Jenkins server and we cannot hear other different actions like be able to perform a health checks for the infrastructure etc and we can add it these steps as needed. I believe I can skip the technical details of for example Packer configuration or Terraform configuration because everything is available on the internet on Google it can be easily googled and I wanted to share our experience how we integrate these technologies and tools to have what we have. Again the core idea of the system is to have everything encode and we have mothership configurable that contains links to some projects and every project have a link on project triple and each project triple defines its pipelines and configuration and everything is created in hierarchy from top level and this changing to our levels. This is some high level overview of pipelines we already see some parts of that and main idea here that we have pipelines for each environment and everything is shared through the console and Packer provides images for Terraform. I believe we can skip this part so I believe we can answer some questions if you have some. We have some time left. Just to finish it you know it was quite technical for you guys I see that not not not everyone understands exactly what's happening but what's important here is that in the end for the business it's very important because when you want when you can just create a system which is which is which is disposable so you can basically set it up in different instances whenever you want so you can set up the system on the client side on your side on another client side and we are actually we actually had the challenge not saying Drupal during this presentation because Drupal is one of the things we deploy using using this using that and Alexander mentioned that when everything is in the code it becomes very it becomes simple because even developer can understand what's happening and on our side when we create and just when we're working on Drupal project we have lots of them in IDX so each project itself defines its deployment pipelines so each developer can actually access and write what happening when my project is deployed it's probably just clearing caches or probably launching some important in complex operation and everything as you said starts from the top to the bottom so everything is in the code the system itself is in the code and each project itself explains itself in the code so if there are no questions we can understand yeah yeah that's we usually we usually do this we can as Jenkins is running inside the container we the whole the part which is data in Jenkins is in separate data container so we can actually destroy Jenkins whenever we want to address it up it again with the new version and then of course it will going to launch the upgrade process of Jenkins so when when when everything is separated properly you can you can store your important data in one place and your configuration your infrastructure is in another place that's like a main idea of the system to be able to destroy it and then set it up again without losing your data because of course you want to have your logs in Jenkins you want to know what actually happened what are the where are the logs etc but that's it can be automated yes but we prefer it to do it manually because of how to how to say that we are in open source world right Drupal itself when you update it from 8.2 to 8.3 if your project is complicated it can create troubles right so I see most of the people here already encountered that so it's kind of the same so we are able to have to make that on the system level but we consider it too dangerous to do this kind of thing yeah in the end that's you need to start it somewhere so you create a route and then if you want to dispose it you don't need it anymore because you can set it up on other servers that's that's a good question the backups can yeah one one of the one of the projects we actually store it in the Amazon S3 we create backups of the data containers and store it there it's something that we we're not doing it a lot because as we said that's mostly the system is quite complicated so the it's for the corporate lines and they have their own usually system of backing up things so we try to plug it plug in external external system of backup and if we do it by ourselves we do we use our muscle nursery any question okay so thank you very much guys


How do you know this is Ashley with Oxford Toyota? I wanted to send you over a quick video greeting that way you can see who you've been working with Thank you for speaking with me earlier about your credit application and your interest in a new 2016 Sienna One ahead and scheduled your appointment for this evening around six o'clock When you get in please remember to ask for me that way we can pull up your file and get you helped out If you need anything in the meantime, feel free to give me a call. My number is five zero two two one four seven one six six Thanks. Bye


So welcome everyone. I think it's time to start back. So how can diploma students efficiently navigate their careers after graduation? Apart from hard-working, rich soft skill are needed. This roundtable today aims at providing hints and recipes to answer this question. So welcome, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for connecting from all around the world. My name is Stefan Kedemoy, a 2011 alumni in Konezmata Physics. I come from Cameroon, and I'm presently postdoc at the University of Duisburg Esen in Germany. To chair this roundtable today, I'm not alone. I'm with a great lady, a great networker, the one who initiated all what we have been living since yesterday. Nushka, can you complete your introduction? Thanks, Stefan. That's very kind of you. Yeah, as Stefan said, I'm Nushka Chamba. I'm a graduate of the high-energy physics program in 2017. Right now I'm a postdoc of astronomy at Stockholm University in Sweden. And as Stefan said, we are your hosts for this roundtable, and we are very happy that all of you are here, and we believe that the panelists we have gathered are representative of ICTP alumni from various, who have taken various career parts, and we know that no matter where they're gone, they continue to impact society. Stefan? Yeah, so I'll continue by saying that sharing scientific knowledge is the common heritage of mankind. These are the words that fed the spirit of Prof Salam throughout the struggle to find ICTP. Today, this was in the early 60s. This was the spirit of unity and sharing that gathers us today on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the diploma program. For 30 years now, many have been privileged to come to ICTP, to access part of the heritage in the fields of mathematics and physics, and use it to develop various areas, from academia to industry, politics via economy or banking. Today, we are honored to evidence ICTP's contributions in building excellence in the world, with the panel made up of former diploma students, with inspiring career paths, and who are impacting the society in various parts of the world, and in various disciplines. Thanks, Stefan. And with that, I'd like to welcome our panelists. We welcome Dr. Ron Giuttiana Barry Malala. She's a graduate of the Earth Systems Physics Program in 2007, and now she's a researcher from the Department of Oceanography in the University of Cape Town in South Africa. She is actively involved in CLIVAR, which is a project of the World Climate Research Program, and she is also one of the lead authors in the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the IPCC report on climate change. Thank you for taking me, Andrea. Sorry, Stefan. Go ahead. No, no, go ahead. So, can I continue? Go ahead. I continue with a very bright mind, a very sharp scientist. We have with us Professor Fredy Cachazo, originally from Venezuela, who graduated from iEnergy Physics, or HEP, Diploma Program in 1997. He's now the holder of the prestigious Freeman Dyson Chair of Theoretical Physics at the Perimeter Institute in Canada. He's the winner of several prestigious prizes for his profound work on quantum field theory and string theory, including the New Horizon Prize in 2014. Thank you so much, Fredy, for connecting. And it is also my pleasure to introduce Dr. Mboba Jain from Senegal. He's a graduate of the Mathematics Program in 1998 in ICTP, and now he is the Vice President in Finance and Corporate Services in ECOWAS, which is a bank for investment and development. And after more than 20 years of experience in directing and leading several projects, literally around the African continent. Thank you also for connecting, Dr. Thank you. Another good spot that we got today. Decision-making is one of the main factors of the scientific lack that we observe in the developing world. So this is why we are so honored and pleased to have Professor Rapapa today. He graduated in Koneswata Physics in 1995 and is now a member of the Senate and a former Education Minister in Lesotho. He has many years of experience as a professor of physics and chief executive officer to Lesotho Water and Electricity Authority. Thank you, Professor, with such an honor. Thank you very much. Finally, and of course, last but not least, I introduce Professor Rena Bell Reyes. She's a graduate of the High Energy Physics Program in 2006, and now she's in the Philippines, and she's working at the National Institute of Physics, but also a chief technical advisor at Pinting Lab. And this is a United Nations Development Program, and his goal is to support the government and the recovery of the COVID-19 pandemic and other crisis situations through data analysis. And like Stefan, my co-host, she's also a host of a local TV show called Sciences. We are very delighted that all of you are here with us. This is how it's going to work today. So we plan one hour for a general discussion. So it's already, let's say, 52 minutes left, and then this will be followed by a separate breakout rooms for each of our panelists where audience members can ask their individual questions. So pray that you fall in the breakout room of the panelists that you target. Thank you, Stefan. And without further delay, let's begin our discussion. As we mentioned earlier, we have gathered five alumni, and they've all built very diverse careers after the diploma program. So in two or three minutes, we'd like you to tell us how ICTP shaped your career and what impact it had in your Directional Outlook. I would like to invite Professor Rapapa to answer first, and then we will ask each panelist in turn. Professor Rapapa, you have the floor. Very much. I really want to thank ICTP Director and Management for this opportunity. I must admit that now I'm the member of SINE, which is the upper house of Parliament in the SUTU. I have been a Minister of Energy. I had been a Minister of Education, been chief executive of a regulator. I've been a professor of physics at the university, but all of these things are because I was a diploma student condensed metaphysics 1994-95. I was only a degree holder amongst my colleagues. They all had honors degrees in physics or mathematics, or even some had MSc degrees, but I managed to survive although it was a little bit more hard. ICTP instilled in me the hard work, dedication, to remain focused. A lot of discipline, and it also pushed me into reading a lot of books different from science, management, and all other books, and also teamwork because you wouldn't survive the program without teamwork. So I did rise academically within the National University of SUTU to the level of professor in physics simply because I started at ICTP. From ICTP, I went and did a PhD without masters in between because the ICT program, the University of Manchester, when it assessed it, it found that it was adequate that you could go into a PhD program directly. And that hard work and discipline, I've been a member of different governing board of different institutions. Some of them academic, some of them government institutions, some of them private. So all in all, the discipline within the program and the hard work that you have to go through has made me who I am today. I'm now the member of CNAID, which is the upper house of parliament in the soup. And my aspiration now is to also become a member of parliament elected in 2022. And I hope that after 2022, I will still come back to you to tell you that because of the diploma program, I am a member of parliament now. But all in all, really, the program has made me who I am today. A person who can meaning to contribute to society will continue to do that. I have other community outreach programs that I'm doing because to me, ICTP has been my second home away from home, even if I'm no longer in the academia. ICTP is always a foundation for my life. And I would really appreciate that all other students can go to different career programs. In the end, it will make meaningful contribution in all life that they do. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks, professor. Anyone, Rondro, Freddie, for wanting to follow? First of all, thanks, ICTP, for organizing this special thanks to Nushka and Stefan. So I'm going to start with I wouldn't be where I am now, and I wouldn't be doing what I do today, which I'm enjoying a lot if I was not by ICTP. And of course, I'm still a mid-career scientist, but every step I've gone through so far, it has a blueprint of ICTP. So ICTP was actually a turning point for my career, due to not only the help and support provided by the institute and the scientists, but also because of a high level scientific environment that we get to be exposed when we are in Trieste. So I was one of the first Earth System physics students when it started in 2006. I graduated in physics and geophysics in Madagascar, but three months after we after restarted the diploma course, I made up my mind and shifted into climate science and physical oceanography. And I received a lot of support and encouragement from the Earth System physics group, which I really appreciate. Then I continued my PhD at the University of Trieste with a collaboration with ICTP. And here I am today, conducting research on African climate at the University of Cape Town. So if I am to give credits to those who significantly influenced my career path, it will go to ICTP and your system physics group. Thanks. Thank you, Rondra, for your answer. Freddie, would you like to say a few words? Yeah, sure, sure, sure. In fact, if you don't mind, is it possible to share my screen? I think, do you have permissions to do that? Can you try? I have permission to do that. Okay, great. I mean, the reason I want to do it is that since we were asked the question of how the ICTP influenced our careers, so I decided to just show very quickly what my career looked like. So I started in 1991 at the University of Mont Bolivar in Venezuela, then went to the ICTP, then I did my PhD at Harvard, I did a postdoc at the IAS in Princeton, and then since 2005, I've been a faculty member at Torimeton Institute. And as I said, the only reason I wanted to show this is that so in order to explain the importance of the ICTP, we can ask, well, what would have happened if I hadn't gone to the ICTP? And I think it's fair to say, and I'm almost 100% sure, that most of what happened after wouldn't have happened. So the ICTP was actually the key to connecting me from my undergraduate to the rest of my career. And why is it true? I think it's very easy to explain. And in fact, here, I'm talking to an audience where most of us have experienced this. So I'm basically repeating something that we have all lived. When we came to the ICTP for the first time, for most of us, it was our first experience going outside of our countries, in my case, Venezuela. And I have to say that in 1996, the internet wasn't as developed as it is now. So I didn't even speak English very well. In fact, my English was very, very basic. So when people, when I tell people that they have to forgive a little bit how my accent is, is that I say that I went to Italy to learn English. So they have to, they have to be patient with me a little bit. But of course, we went to learn, I went to learn English and physics. But not only that, I mean, the ICTP was the place where people would believe in you. It's the place where you realize that you belong to a community or that you started to belong to a community that was incredibly vast and that involved people from all over the world. And I think there is something very nice that I like, that Jeff Harvey, a professor at Princeton in Chicago, said not long ago. He said that he realized that people in physics, and I saw it when I met my, when I got to meet my classmates, that we belong to a community where we feel closer to each other than even to people who are from our own countries and say people that I've met in Venezuela. So and, and we feel closer to people that are even from, from cultures that are very different from ours. And this is something that was life changing. The experience at the ICTP was something completely amazing. And not only that, of course, also the physics that we learned, the program, we all know this is a very tough program. So it's a boot camp that ended up giving us the confidence that we could do anything else in the world. I mean, even when I went to Harvard, I knew that many of my classmates at Harvard were very brilliant students and so on. But, but I knew that the preparation that I had from the diploma, well, I didn't know it at the time, but now in retrospect, I know that the diploma was a big boost and, and it was actually spectacular for me to come with this preparation. And I have to thank everyone at the ICTP and, and especially Professor Sarmardi, who is not with us anymore, for actually believing in, in all of us and, and helping us reach or try to achieve our potential. So that's, so I'll stop sharing now on my screen. Thank you. Thanks a lot. So, Dr. Evar Eklund of the University of Paris-Dauphin, and I will tell you why, and Professor Ambrositi, because they supported me and a colleague of mine called Professor Ndala Jitay today, who is in the University of Gaston-Berge. We came to ICTP for a three-day conference, and they supported us, give us an opportunity to be in the 1997, 1998 diploma course of mathematics. And I really want to take this opportunity to thank them, because without ICTP, I will not take the carries that I have taken, and I will tell you, and I will elaborate why and how. Before that, I would like to tell to the students and alumni that ICTP does not only produce scientists, and when I came, I was very fond of doing mathematics and physics, but I was also extremely keen to be an investment banker. From ICTP, I had the opportunity to join, to go to Germany, to redo a master in financial mathematics, to do a PhD in financial mathematics, with specializations in artificial neural networks and financial risk management. And during when I was completing my PhD thesis, I was hired by Commence Bank in Germany, and Resner Bank, and follow a banking carrier in corporate investment banking, spent six years till I became a director in Germany, and I moved to London to become a corporate investment banker with credit suites for seven and a half years, before moving back to, in Africa, with Barclay as regional managing director for corporate investment banking, in order to play more in developmental impact in the continent. Example of transactions we have done, Mozambique, $4.6 billion oil and gas deal, Sechel, $97 million telecom company deal, Madagascar, $12 million, but with a huge impact, because it was a pre-export financial deal, where more than 4,000 small-scale farmers was involved, and a very recent 20 megawatt solar power deal in Sierra Leone, and over these 20 odd years of banking carrier, I have also relatively my life, to create some companies, more than six companies, turning over a couple of million dollars a year, creating more than 150 jobs, permanent jobs in my hometown, and producing a couple of millions of chicken every year. I take this opportunity to thank ICTP, not only for making me, enabling me to be who I am today, but giving me the opportunity to have to play a developmental impact into the continent, and I would like to ask the alumni that ICTP is offering more than just be a scientist, it's unlocking people's potential in order to basically follow your career dream, because I'm struggling to believe that once you know and you can do mathematics and physics, you can learn anything, and I would like to thank ICTP for giving me this opportunity to become who I am today, till my country trusted me, till the 15 countries of the ECOS region trusted me to become the finance vice president of the development bank of ECOS. Thank you. Thank you so much, Doctor, for your words. I resonate so much with what you said that ICTP does not create only scientists, but I mean, really if you think about it, change makers and learners and leaders, and I mean, already we've heard a little bit from our panel and we, you know, I'm completely blown away by all of your words. And we also now, we have to hear from Reina if she would like to share her experience. Sure, thank you. It's wonderful to be here. It's really amazing to be in the same virtual room with fellow alumni and so many people that ICTP lives have touched. Yeah, and in a way our stories are very different, but also the same. When I went to ICTP, I was straight from finishing college, very young, young then. It was my first time to be, to be independent, to be far away from home and know even the, you have to take care of yourself. So that's really memorable time for me and for all of us. The good thing is that you're not alone. You're in the same boat as these other classmates and I reconnected with some of them here tonight and it's been great as was mentioned. It's like you feel this bond even after so many years, you know, that bond is still there and it's great that hopefully with this we get to reconnect and get to regularly interact again with each other now that we have our own careers and now our progeny, our students would also now work together maybe. And so we're making this community grow even more and grow stronger. So yeah, that for me was also life-changing, being able to meet people from different countries, cultures, and being friends with them and finding out that also we're not alone. The plight of scientists in my country is shared by them as well. And for me, I think for many of us, it was just a treat. Like for me it was like I actually get paid a stipend to learn, to do what I love, to study physics and that's like a really amazing opportunity. And then of course became the foundation of continuing my career to PhD in Astro Physics at Princeton University to a postdoc in cosmology at Cabin Institute of Cosmological Physics in the University of Chicago and then decided to come back to the Philippines and contribute to the community here as well. Maybe just to share right now, actually in addition to being a professor of faculty at the University of the Philippines, I also consult for as mentioned UNDT analytics lab and also do science communication work and science outreach. And one program is actually a physics meetup that's supported by ICPP's Physics Without Frontiers. So I think these different roles I could also trace back to my experience in ICPP that it's not just about the science, not just about learning the formulas and discovering new things in the science realm, but it's also about the society and the community that we're part of and that we want to contribute to. So I think that now looking back, having that like both halves can be traced back to my ICPP days and sort of having these roles to play as well today. Thank you. Thank you. So it's nice about hearing about the building capacity and science communication. It's so exciting. So now we continue in the field of building capacities. So we now talk about technical skills to spread the spirit of Salam. That's actually because Abdul Salam and vision diploma students would return to their home countries to spread the knowledge and skill they had learned at ICPP. So can any of you tell us what do you see as the best way to build capacity in your region, wherever you are, and independently of the fact that you are physically present or not. So let's keep the time now because we now we are just left with 30 minutes. It would be nice to be very straight and do it in one minute. Look, I don't know if you guys remember the program called TOCTEM. UNDP has a program called TOCTEM. It's transfer of know-how to expatriate nationals. And people like myself, we went back home and while being a corporate investment banker, we were also teaching at the university. We started the finance program of ICTP the finance program of the University of Gaston-Berger and where another alumni even of ICTP, Dr. Professor Galadita and another alumni of ICTP, Dr. Dibri Fal, all those things are coming from ICTP and we went back home and basically transferred some of the know-how that we have got across our career. This would be another way of going back home, you know, sharing the knowledge, but also the food, the financial foods of the money we earn in our international career, reinvesting it back into ASC. Thank you so much, Dr. Galadita. You're so inspiring. Anyone else? Can I come in? Yeah, go ahead. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. I also believe in the best way that we can build scientific capacity in our region or particularly in our countries. The first thing that I always believe in is that ICTP should always continue to link with the universities, research institutions and scientists throughout all countries and all regions. I think you are doing that but maybe need to increase the level at which you are doing. One other thing is that all ICTP participants, whether they come to workshops, they come through ICTP programs, as long as you are a friend to ICTP, you have to always engage in mentoring science students right from the high school up to the university level. I think all participants should be encouraged and they should also feel part of ICTP in ensuring that they mentor students from high school to the TESHA. If you have one or two or three students, in that case, you are making a meaningful contribution. So maybe annually or by annually, each participant can report back to ICTP on what they have done over the past year or two in ensuring that the spirit of science spreads across small levels in our different countries. In doing so, I always believe, like Dr. Stead, that whatever we do back to our country, whether we are in the country or outside, as far as science is concerned, we should always make sure that we provide an assistance in science development in our country. And I think most of the ICTP diploma graduate are exactly doing that. It's just that sometimes it's not well-documented. If it's well-documented, it also encourages other students to participate in ICTP programs. Thank you very much. Yeah. I mean, this is an issue that was brought up multiple times during the regional meetings on how to better share our expertise and also communicate with other alumni. So I'm pretty sure that people from the regional networking are working on this. And that's certainly part of the reason why this alumni reunion was connected. So thank you very much. Is there anyone else in the panel who would like to add? And then we'll have to move one, sadly. But if there's anyone else who would like to add to this question, it would be great. Reina. I could add something very quickly. Okay. So as I said in the answer to the previous question, in the 90s, the internet wasn't very well developed. But now in 2019, it was very well developed. But we didn't know the full power of the internet. But after thanks to COVID-19, if there is anything good that came out of it, is that now we know the full power of the internet. And the reason I mentioned in this is that so following up the dream of Salam, the idea of creating the diploma program was precisely to create, to help to help populate back the scientific community in developing countries. So if we were able, but we can ask, I mean, as we know very well, it takes many resources to fund students at the ICTP and to bring students to Italy. But now with the internet, we have been given this experience over this year to be able to reach out and to even have this meeting that we're having now and to connect to people remotely. So perhaps it's time to think how the diploma program can be multiplied and made to reach many, many more students around the world. And of course, I mean, you might say that one of the main advantages of the diploma program was that we have research dissertations that we had to do and we had supervisors and so on. And then how can we find so many supervisors? Well, but the answer is the same one. Now the ICTP is 30 years old and we have a big alumni base and we have tons of people who could be supervisors now. And if we all connect and we try to do our part and help the ICTP, maybe the diploma program is something that can be multiplied several faults. So that's one way of building capacity. I think that it's an opportunity that just a year and a half ago, I wouldn't have thought about it because I thought I would have thought that it was impossible to have a meeting online like we're doing now. Thanks. That's a really great point, Freddy, because it is true that now we're in the second year of the pandemic and it has really taught us how to connect with researchers all over the world. And I mean, when we proposed this meeting two years ago or like almost two years ago, we envisioned it to be an in-person meeting. But I'm completely happy in the way in which that this meeting is going online. So thanks a lot for making that point. Reina or Rondra, would you like to add a last comment on this and then we can move on? Can I comment quickly? Sure, go ahead. I think I just want to add that the ability of linking science to the country's need is also a good way to build science capacity. Because usually when we talk about physics and mathematics, people have this idea that we are completely outside of the world and we are not linked to the community. And it's like it doesn't become in the list of priority of most countries, at least in Africa, science. So like our ability to link science to the country's need, it keeps people to be interested, curious and then get involved in science capacity building. And that's one important thing that I learned at our CGP, that even if we learn the theories, we get to know the real meaning of these theories and where to apply them. Thanks. Thank you, Rondra. Reina, do you have any last few words for this question? Yeah, sure. Just quickly, I think along the same lines of what Rondra said, as a group of us are actually thinking about advocating for science, technology, research and development in the country. So we can actually do research to learn about the ways that we can improve the environment, the research and development environment for young scientists who are actually scientists throughout their careers in the country because that's really a way to keep to grow the community and keep people here and interested and also make a bigger impact to the country at large. So bringing the social sciences and the physical sciences together and policy research to make things happen. Reina, your answer leads super well to what I want to ask the panelists next and you next, which is about in each of your careers you've had to work with different cultures and different people with different priorities. So can you tell us what is it like to work with people from these communities and also from people outside of academia and how do you think your scientific background influenced what you bring to those communities? Reina, you're nodding along so maybe you can... No, yeah it's a great segue right because I think that's a big part of what I enjoy in my career now is collaborating with different people, different themes from different backgrounds like the development sector and the policy research groups, communication groups, like you work with a writer, a director and it's really humbling because then you realize there's so much you don't know but also I think the trick also is the openness and the fulfillment in learning something new every time and also recognizing that you can do things together that you wouldn't be able to do alone. So in this case I would be bringing something new to the table like I would see data, I would fresh ice because I don't have the same training as them and that makes the team stronger. So really yeah the collaborative aspect of working with different themes gives you an added dimension and still bringing the like the scientist hat wherever you go, my experience. Rondra you probably have something to add to this because you also work with policymakers right in your work. Rondra can you unmute yourself if you can? Yeah great. Well I think nowadays with this requirement of co-production, transdisciplinary, multi-disciplinary ways of working we really have to adapt and take it up and I must say it's challenging because we in academia we most often use our languages that the other communities can't really understand and we have to find ways to pass the message to the communities without altering the scientific value of what we did. So you mentioned about the report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change so I think I'm going to take a quick example of that. So that report is based on pure scientific research but it targets policy and decision makers. So one part of the report was particularly dedicated to the summary for policy makers so it's like the science was put in language that everyone could understand and they might be able to take action and I think another advocate of that here is Stefan I guess with a science TV show, science TV series going on in West Africa. Stefan where are you? Yeah I'm here. Okay. So I mean I will continue because I have a question for the decision makers in the room. So Professor Rapapa and Dr. Babuba. So they say strict I mean a linear relation between scientific development, technological growth and then economic progress and then why are developing countries not developing? Why is it so difficult to say Professor Rapapa if you are with the president of your country that Mr. President we know since 40 years that we need to invest only 1% of the gross domestic product for research. Why Dr. Babuba? Why is it difficult? So difficult that you just be addressed at the bank. Why is it so difficult to decide that okay let's put money to give some loans to university to make research. Where is the difficulty coming from?  Okay. Go ahead. Thank you very much sir. One thing that I can say is we as scientists we need to think differently when we come to policymakers. We need to participate more in the governance of our countries. Absolutely. Two of us need to aspire to become ministers, member of parliament. Of course there are challenges when you want to become a member of parliament but eventually if you are part of the decision making process you will make a difference. I for one I've been a minister of energy and I've been a minister of education and most of the decisions that we have made we have always put times ahead of what we are thinking and ahead of what we are doing but if you have one or two or three people with science backgrounds at that level that will help you because sometimes when you are alone as a scientist among people who are thinking otherwise then it becomes a challenge. I think the challenge for us is to be part of the system rather than to be outside the system and that is the advice that I can give to some of the people because if you are outside people don't understand what you are saying but once you are inside people who always understand and I'm proud to say that during my time as a minister of education and as a minister of energy there are certain key decisions that the government of Lusuit have made which will have a long impact and we are going to achieve more because of that but if I had not been there and scientists are outside that thinking tank for the country then we will have this problem so I always think that slowly scientists are moving towards saying we have to be part of the system and then people will understand what we are talking about and I think we will eventually get there is to participate be among the key decision makers or at least be at the advisory level of the cabinet ministers or the president or the prime minister that's the case maybe thank you very much. Thank you so much yeah on my side I just want to add a few comments first of all a country like Rwanda has shown that it's possible in the space of less than 15 years the country has moved from being a genocide country to one of the very economically developed nation leadership is one of them but let me also comment how people like us who get the opportunity to join institutions like ICTP could contribute in shaping the development in their countries the honorable minister has taken let's say the more government type role but people like myself have taken more a private sector type of role and created more than hundreds of jobs in the last 25 years in our home countries while being a banker being the top among the top five poetry producers in my country creating hundreds of jobs for youth and women is also a way where scientists and ICTP alumni could contribute to the development of their country and there is a tendency that I see more and more what I call global applicants it's African who went abroad studied abroad worked abroad had accumulated a little bit of cash coming back to their home country investing in their home country that's also another way of impacting development and the tendencies that I am seeing is those young global African when they come excuse me the words they are less corrupt they want to do well by doing good and they are they have they really want to do the right things in the right way and more and more if we see this tendency I still gonna change and this is basically the way I I see things and the honorable minister said something very very important that educated people like us should get into politics but it's not an easy game right people like myself kind of do politics and I wish that I would never do politics but I want to contribute to the development of my country by creating jobs you know by stimulating and investing in the private sector I hope that this will respond to your question yes so do you dream one day to give let's say to give a loan for one million francs here for one billion francs here for to the University of Dhaka to Professor Wage for example to perform research of optics these are the type of thing that I mentioned now let me tell you something when you go private sector put things millions of dollars in silicon valley because they have the return what scientists must learn doing research for the sake of doing research those days are over they must do research for tangible economic outcomes and now when you link especially in the developing world when you link how much increase of maize yield should we grow should we consider you will see that the private sector people will be more interesting in financing the research and I give you another example there is one alumni of ICTP Dr. Gibril Fahal who is an accurate bio profession because we are in the poultry commercial industrial poultry sector we asked him to do some research to tailor made an insurance product for the industrial poultry and when this kind of practical research are seeing more and more the private sector may be willing to put money in the research I don't know if you are you're pulling what I'm trying to say yes doctor but I have the feeling that you are you are you are taking away what actually the person that you are you are taking away basic science because the way you are talking about practical things is like basic science has no place so I hope you are still around we can continue maybe in the breakout rooms so okay thank you yes yeah so Nuskia something to add I just had a quick comment for Professor Aksish maybe Sandro Scandolo and Paolo so we have seen from Professor Professor Rafaaba and Dr. Babuba that soft skill for leadership or management are very important for ICTP students these are things that we don't get when good ICTP and when you go to developing country communication skill leadership or management skill are very very important I have never seen it in ICTP even when you come there and then you apply for such thing is always yeah people who do top science think that we should only do excellence in science this is not what we need what is needed is also this kind of skills so thanks these were my comments for you the decision makers including Aksish thank you thank you also this is really a very rich discussion and I really do hope we can continue it in the breakout rooms but to to wrap up this session I would like the panelists to share in 30 seconds what was your favorite memory during your time at ICTP Freddy would you like to to say something yeah sure so only 30 seconds so very quickly I'm sure we all shared that experience at some point but the experience was one day waking up and realizing that the people in my classroom were not classmates anymore I mean they were becoming actually part of my family I mean it seemed and my favorite memory I have to say is when one of our classmates Shweb he brought his I mean later in the program he was able to bring his wife and his daughter and I think we all became uncles and aunts of the of Oshiki of his daughter and and and it was amazing to to develop this this this connection and I really wish I mean I could see Shiki now I mean it would be she she was I think she was five years old at the time so she was running with us all all over the place all over the ICTP okay it's very sweet Rondra do you have your memory yeah my favorite memory would be running to catch the last bus every night to catch the bus the last bus every night like the midnight bus every night oh that's a good one yeah we've all been there oh that's hilarious Reina do you have your memory to share yeah on that I actually am one of the only ones who didn't live in the in the city so I actually lived right next to the to the to ICTP and I have to walk up the hill every night but they are really memorable you know like those nights that are cold and the full moon and and overlooking the Adriatic Sea cool that is beautiful dr. Mahboba hello I asked my good memories few of them were when I come to ICTP it was my first time to be in a plane so when the plane landed oh it was the biggest feeling of my life I do remember that secondly he like it has been highlighted before my classmates really become the pillars of strength for me and the second family in ICTP finally um we had one colleague all of them were important one colleague was from Teke and we were asking how do you say excuse me when you are in a packed bus uh and the the the colleagues who knew Italian they said to us just say Tiamo so our friend said Tiamo to one girl in the bus and the girl was few years so it was something that we never forgot thank you very much oh that's hilarious Professor Mahboba oh my um and dr. Mahboba look my my my my memory in ICTP right you know when you come from your country and you think that you are very smart and you you you get selected and you land it with very international smart people than you you get very quickly very humbled and I and I remember when I was sitting in the library and I say and sorry to to use that word am I not stupid I I always had best grade and now here I come I am almost the bottom of the of the group and I remember there was a lady from Madagascar her name was Lava and there is the guy that is from India I saw his name Gansambatta another guy William Oogaldi very very smart guy they always have top grades and you get humbled and you you burn a lot of candles in the in hours in the library and they always get ahead and it just tells you that you know when you compete you compete internationally and this you know ICTP has given me the the the the memory that the competition is not here right and by the way Gansambatta was from Nepal he's just correcting me in the chat and and and it just gave me some tremendous you know memory about how excellence is relative now I I I also miss the pasta that we used to have during the during the during the lunch that great oh this was such a lovely discussion I wish we we had more time but Ateesh you wanted to say a few words to the panelists yeah now before we break out into breakout rooms I just wanted to thank you all again it's it's been really one it's really heartwarming to see you know all these memories coming back I'm sure and it shows how people really feel connected to ICTP I think it's this is something that you cannot you know there must be something that really connects you to ICTP and we are very proud of this community it's a family as you said it's a big family so thank you very much for your inputs and your sharing and we will continue this connection I think this is not the last meeting just to make you feel more nostalgic I will tell you that it's a very beautiful day outside it's sunny Adriatic sea is nearby and I really miss I think while it is true that we can do many things online it would have been wonderful to really have you over on the terrace and we could have a nice coffee or something or a pizza in the city but next time maybe next year when we have the real reunion I hope some of you can make it thank you very much thank you so much thank you thank you to Nushka and Stefano I think they have done a great job and for their enthusiasm to really carry this this was a such a great interview and we very thanks for this we asked the panelists to and the participants to remain in in this room because we're going to create a 30 minutes breakout room for individual individually for the panelists where the participants can then continue the discussion or ask their questions directly to the to the panelists I mean obviously there were I mean there were so many so many things in in the responses of the panelists that we couldn't address so I hope we can continue that lively discussion in the separate breakout rooms so I think I