Hello, and good afternoon to you all. I'm Carl Adam, the moderator for this panel on creating academic partnerships with African universities. We have a real treat today with three experts, with relevance in recent experience on creating these partnerships. First, I would like to welcome Dr. Kyle Farmbury. He's now the president of Guilford College and he participated in a university partnership initiative program in South Africa when he was at Rutgers University. He worked with the University of Pretoria and the University of Venda to promote exchange opportunities and research. Now in phase two, the partnership is expanding efforts to encourage student reconciliation, to increase student opportunities for refugees, and to increase the number of female faculty. Next, I'd like to welcome Dr. Ahmed Logruy. He's the provost and the vice president for academic affairs at the International University of Grand Bassam in Cote d'Ivoire, Ivory Coast. He has experienced working with numerous academic institutions in the United States and through the UPI program who partnered with the University of Georgia in Athens, UGA, to facilitate the U.S. accreditation of the IUGB, also to develop the STEM curriculum to promote regional employment and promote U.S. style learning at the university. Finally, Mr. Mark Weinberg. He worked to develop the UPI partnership with Dr. Logruy and the IUGB and is currently the acting director for Southern African Affairs at the State Department. Prior to that, he served as the public affairs officer in Cote d'Ivoire, South Sudan, and Montenegro. He's also served as regional refugee coordinator in Kenya and Nepal, as well as postings in Sudan, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. Mark is passionate about higher education partnerships in Africa and the role they play in diplomacy and achieving the goals of not only institutions, but countries. He's currently the acting deputy assistant secretary for Southern African Affairs at the State Department. So let's get this started with our first question and we'll start with Dr. Farmbry, the same question for Dr. Logruy, and then for Mr. Weinberg. Could you briefly describe your experience with academic partnerships between American and African higher education institutions? So, Kyle, if you could please kick us off. Sure, sure. I'm actually going to start with a bit of a mark or on a date. It's now 2022. My first trip to South Africa, which is a place that I had long wanted to go, was in 2002, so it's been about 20 years since I've been going back and forth between the US and South Africa. And a lot of my work has been in the area of partnership building between different higher education institutions. I started first going to conferences and meetings and then exchanges. And then a few years ago, I had an opportunity, leveraged actually from a meeting at the South African Embassy in Washington, DC, to begin to build something called the US South African Higher Education Network. We received some funding from the Department of Higher Education and Training in South Africa to basically build a doctoral pipeline to try to work on increasing the number of South Africans with their PhDs in collaboration with US institutions. And then over time, the US Embassy provided some funding for some exchanges in areas of collaboration in sort of technology transfer and commercialization. And then finally, about a year later, the US Embassy in South Africa provided the partnership that Carl mentioned between the University of Pretoria, Rutgers University, where I was at the time, and the University of Benda to work on a four-part initiative focusing on building partnerships between US and South African Higher Education institutions. In a snapshot, and I'll just keep this brief because I know that we've got some other people introductory comments, the experience of learning about how to grow with these different partnerships and build them has been really wonderful. There are lots of lessons that we've learned, but I think also some great opportunities to look at long-term impact in some of the intercultural exchanges that we've been able to build over time. And I'll say bugger comments for later. Great, thank you so much, Kyle. Ahmed, over to you. What's, how would you describe your experience with academic partnerships between African and American Higher Education institutions? I'm afraid you're still on mute, Ahmed. Okay. Thank you very much, Carl. I would say that they have a little bit more than 27 years of experience working with the partnerships with the United States. I worked for 20 years for an independent US-style university in Morocco, Al-Akhawan University, and they joined the International University of Gran Basam in 2015, and it is also a US-style independent university in Cote d'Ivoire. In these universities, we developed a lot of partnerships with US institutions covering different joint activities. Students and faculty exchange joint research programs, conferences, joint degree programs, and mainly benchmarking. Both Morocco and Cote d'Ivoire are not English-speaking countries. Cote d'Ivoire is a French-speaking country. Morocco is an Arab country, but actually, French is commonly used in different sectors, including education. At IUGB, the International University of Gran Basam, we're pleased today with the University Partnership Initiative, UPI, and we are grateful actually for the financial support of the Department of State and the engagement of our colleagues from the University of Georgia in Athens, UGA. We have already started harvesting some low-hanging fruits in the different areas of the program, one, for example, preparation of IUGB for US accreditation, and we received experts from UGA who did a mock visit and produced a very nice report with a lot of recommendations we are implementing today. The second point we're working on with the UGA is strategic planning, and we had actually a week-long workshop in Athens, and it's allowed for us to gain better insight into strategic planning, elaboration, and implementation, and we're in the process of developing our third strategic plan. The third point, academic program development. We will do work on different programs with some focus on STEM programs, and a program today is under construction. And then the last point, the fourth point, last but not least is faculty and staff development. We have identified already two IUGB faculty who are expected to start their PhD programs at UGA in the form, and then four faculty members plus four staff members will benefit from mentorship by their UGA colleagues. This is the start, actually. We expect this very important partnership to continue beyond the UPI, and we agreed on that with our friends from UGA, and we hope that you'll be long-lasting and fruitful. I want to mention also that we are trying to join actually university networks. We are now part of the Global Liberal Arts Alliance, which is an association of liberal arts colleges and universities from the US and from outside the US. We are members of the American Library Association and the American Association of Collegiate Registration and Admissions Officers, to show that the partnership we seek is really, we want it to be diverse and enrich us, especially that, as I said earlier, we live in an environment which is not used to the US style of higher education. And we have actually some keen interest in HBCUs, which is a subject of this conference, because actually we want to offer one day, in addition to a global partnership, some summer programs on African history, culture, business, and so on. And we signed a memorandum of understanding with Clark Atlanta University, and we visited for benchmarking Alabama State University, Tuskegee University and Thaladega College. So I'll stop at this level and thank you. Well, sounds like we already have a lot to discuss between Kyle and Ahmed, or Kyle and Ahmed, but I want to give, of course, over to Mark. Not an academic, but certainly engaged in higher education in many places all over the world. So Mark, over to you. Could you describe your experience with building these kinds of partnerships? Sure, thank you. And I'm really excited to be here, as you noted. I'm a huge fan of this. And I think I'll speak from the US government perspective of why are these partnerships so important and why and how can we work on expanding them and developing them? I mean, I think first, as a public affairs officer, as an embassy staffer, a representative of the US government overseas, these kinds of partnerships are what I like to call sort of a win, win, win. I mean, they are such an obvious opportunity that we can do more. Through these kinds of partnerships, we are able to provide concrete support in developing countries to their education systems and to really help those universities develop the youth of Africa, which is the majority of the population to develop them for their economic future, for their political future, to help be contributing members of their societies. Second, I think there are real huge benefits for the US universities and students in this. These kinds of partnerships provide research opportunities for American students and scholars. It provides experience overseas that helps develop American students to be competitive in a global world. And that's a huge win for those American universities. And finally, I admit selfishly, as the US government, I think these kinds of partnerships are also just a great public diplomacy win. It shows our engagement. It tells a positive story about American engagement and connection. It builds those people to people ties that we are seeking. So, I think all those reasons, they are something that's, every PD shop across the continent is really excited about. And I'll say, you know, my experience is, it's been a challenge. It's easy to identify the needs. You talk to counterparts like Dr. Liguri at IUGB. I've talked to universities in other countries in Africa. They see the need, they see that. And as an America, I can go, oh, yeah, there are American universities who absolutely have students, faculty who are working on these fields. But because our higher education system is so decentralized, it's very hard to make those connections. And so that's where I'm really excited about UPI. I was so excited to be a part of it in Cote d'Ivoire, where we had the chance to make that connection. You know, we had a chance to work with IUGB. And I'll admit to the auspices of the Andrew Young Foundation and former ambassador Young, who had great connections in Georgia to help make some of those connections. We were able to build that partnership. And I think it's a model as are the other UPI programs that took place in Senegal and South Africa and Botswana, where how can we as the U.S. government play a broker? How can we broker and build some of these relationships, create some of these connections, introduce people who can then take advantage of partnerships that are just so hugely beneficial to both sides? Thanks so much, Mark. So Kyle, would you be able to describe what brought you to South Africa? Why were you interested in pursuing a partnership? And why would other institutions, particularly HBCUs, why might they be interested? Sure. So first of all, my relationship with South Africa probably started when I was a high school student back in the 1980s. And that was of course, during the time that South Africa was going through a lot of its apartheid era challenges. And we had a number of protests and lots of civil action that ultimately led to a change in government there that became an inclusive government, one that created opportunities for all the people in the country. And having watched from the sidelines here in the U.S., I was very excited around the changes. So finally, when I had an opportunity to first go to South Africa in 2002, it was an opportunity I had been looking forward to for a very, very long time. And I landed and honestly just all over the country and met lots of really wonderful people. Lots of them were affiliated higher education institutions, lots of students who were still involved with advocating for different types of change. And over time, I realized that there were a lot of similar lessons from sort of the U.S. experience sort of the civil rights and post-civil rights era and then of course in the apartheid and post-apartheid era in South Africa. And as an African-American felt that I was drawn to wanting to learn about some of this complexity. Right now, I'm at a college in a town of the city of Greensboro, North Carolina where a number of years ago, many of the protests of the civil rights era were launched, famous war demonstrations. And when you sort of think about the experiences in this town, many of which were led by students at HBCs and parallel those with the experiences of many of the students in South Africa, which were pretty dramatic change. I think that they're just lots of lesson and lots of ways to reflect on the creative experiences and common hall or changes that our students and students in South Africa have experienced. And so much of why I'm drawn there, much of why I think that universities, HBCUs, I'm a president of a college that's not an HBCU, so I would say HBCUs and non-HBCUs. Tremendous lessons and tremendous partnerships from just some of the learning that's occurred in both of our countries in the higher ed institutions around change and social equity. Well, I wanna study in South Africa. So let's look at the other side then. Ahmed, why were you interested in partnering with American universities? I mean, you're currently sitting in Morocco. You're at the university at Cote d'Ivoire. I'm sure you've studied all over the world. In fact, I know you have, looking at your bio. Why were you interested in working with US universities when you have so many options? And you're on mute again, I'm sorry. Sorry. Thanks. My interest actually started by an interest from the late King, has in the second of Morocco, who visited the United States and apparently he visited some university in the United States and he even received an honorary doctorate from George Washington University. And he's seen actually universities in the US in sometimes in small towns. He came back to Morocco and Morocco was as is the case today, always trying to find the best way to manage its higher education area. So he decided to launch a university based on US style and use English as a language instruction work. And he established this university in a small town, Ephraim, South of Fess. And then since I studied in the UK and speak English, I applied to the university and then I ended up being admitted there and I spent 20 years there as a professor, associate dean, dean and vice prince for academic affairs. The interest actually to work with US institutions in the two cases, in the case of Morocco and Côte d'Ivoire, it's not a choice. We need actually to build partnerships with American universities since the founders of these two institutions in both countries decided for them to follow the US style of higher education and use English as the language of instruction work. Now, I know also because we have a lot of partners in Africa and they worked also for a public university in Morocco, that actually institutions in Africa are interested to build partnership with US institutions. Of course, there are several reasons. One of them is the fact that US institutions are the best in the world. If we consider most, if not all of the international university rankings, US colleges and universities produce top-notch research, both theoretical and applied and train excellent graduates, some of whom became famous and rich. Another important factor is the flexibility of the system. And you know that actually the world is following today. The great system has gained a lot of grants in Europe and throughout the world. And this system allows for students to validate credits from anywhere and gain credits also from abroad, allowing for them to benefit from the international experience. Mobility is another factor which is allowed by the system. And the two universities in Morocco and in Côte d'Ivoire were established to train leaders who would contribute to the development of their countries, Africa and the world. And it is clear that actually embarking on partnerships with US institutions is beneficial. And I would like to recognize here my colleague, Kyle actually, who talked about the benefits for the US. And there are also benefits for Africa. And of course, everywhere in Africa, we see today the emergence of institutions that are based on US style and use English. And I looked at the Institute of International Education. It's reported that 560 master's programs were taught entirely in English in 2002. They moved to 1500 in 2008 and then to 3700 in 2011. And there are further 963 programs that include English as one of their languages instruction. So we see actually the importance of US style higher education. I simply hope and I heard also Mark about the UPI that it will be continued enforced in order to allow for more exchanges and collaboration between US and African universities. As you know, sometimes financial resources are a barrier and we need to find the means because we need mobility in order to have actually operational partnerships. Thank you so much, Thomas. That's a great segue over to Mark. The State Department continues to invest a lot of resources in the higher education partnerships in Africa, that USAID as well. But why is this important to the American government? Why are my taxpayer dollars going to these kinds of cooperation? What do you see as the advantages here in these partnerships? Sure, I mean, I think partnerships with African universities after higher education institutions really provide an opportunity for us to address a number of different policy goals. I mean, first, as I mentioned, it allows us to help African higher education institutions play a direct role in the economic and social development of their own countries. We can provide and share expertise to help those universities become the training grounds for prosperous, stable, democratic societies. That is a US policy goal. That is what we are aiming to work for in countries around the world, frankly, not just in Africa, but certainly in Africa as well. And so I think that's an important direct contribution, right? If we can help universities be the engines of growth, be the engines of economic prosperity, that's a huge benefit. Two, I think our connection into these universities and I think IUGB is a great example of this. It's an American style university, which of necessity means that as students are getting an education in whatever field, business, science, history, they're also getting exposed to American ways of thinking, American ways of working, American values. And that remains an important policy goal for the United States and it's what all of our public diplomacy engagement around the world is built on. It's about promoting American values, promoting an understanding of America. And I think in my experience, the more students, the more people grow up having an appreciation and understanding of the US, the more open they'll be to our viewpoints. I will make as a side comment, over the course of my career, I've interviewed many, many young Africans for participation in exchange programs to the United States, not just academic ones. And the difference between students who have been educated or exposed to an American style university and others is just amazing. You can tell almost right off the bat, it's a confidence, it's a way they speak. And so that's because I'm American, right? So I recognize those modes of communication, but I think that opens doors for those students around the world, frankly. And finally, I think as a policy matter, as I said before too, it's a way for us to show positive engagement. Many foreign audiences, and this is not unique to African audiences certainly, their experience of the United States is popular culture. It's movies, it's TV. And in an era of growing misinformation and disinformation, it's very easy people, oh, I know America because I've seen it on this TV show or I've read about it on this website. I've seen something on social media, but being able to connect African audiences directly to Americans is such a powerful tool. So many people I have met across the country, they do not have the opportunity to directly engage with Americans. So the more we can use that mobility that Dr. Fagoria was talking about and have young Africans interacting directly with young Americans, talking about their lives, sharing experiences, having faculty do the same thing, that's a really powerful tool and really advances US policies and US goals. Great, thanks so much, Mark. This next question is for Kyle and Frothmid. You've both set up these partnerships in the recent past. So this is challenging. There's bumps, there's some difficult parts along the way. And even more so than say in the United States setting up a partnership or even in other continents. So what challenges, what difficulties did you encounter and what best practices could you share with our audience about how you might be able to overcome these? Kyle, if you could start us off, please. Sure, so to give you a little bit of a timeline, our award from the Embassy in the State Department or the US South African Higher Education Network was made in September of 2020. So we had put in our application back in, I think, December of 2019. Of course, at that, no, I'm sorry, in February, like early February of 2019. Of course, at that point in time, we had no idea that the world would go into shutdown. So we were in the situation of beginning to implement a partnership that was really based on the idea of having a lot of mutual travel and people going back and forth between our two countries at a point in time when we weren't able to. And we're still obviously facing some limitations in terms of how and when we can travel in a number of protocols. So I think that that was a complicated factor that we hadn't anticipated. Some of those that we hadn't anticipated, I think we still saw, just sort of realizing that we were trying to build partnerships between different systems and different higher education realities. And there are some significant differences between higher education systems in the U.S. and between those in South Africa and then also within each of the countries. So in South Africa, you're talking about 26 public institutions and then there's some privates. And the U.S. are talking about 4,000 higher education institutions. So just sort of challenges in understanding the realities of 26 public institutions, many of which had been funded previously under sort of a mechanism that during the apartheid years, sort of the government, the apartheid or government sort of purposefully underfunded a lot of institutions that are still very much in place and are growing. But there's some historic inequities that sort of lead to some of the challenges. And that's a lot of what we're doing in our partnership, trying to find ways that we can work with many of our South African partners to make sure that there's some equity between the different institutions. So understanding the underground realities, complicated by that dynamic of COVID, that's been a big part of it. We have been able to continue on. We have some great partnerships. We had to do a lot more virtually than I think we had ever anticipated. And we're looking forward to having a lot more of the in-person exchanges that we really set out to do in the start of this. Thanks so much, Kyle. Very interesting. So Ahmed, same question for you. Working with the United States, working with the United States University, also not easy. What challenges did you encounter? And how would you be able to advise our audience? If they're thinking about this, what should they be looking out for? I believe you're on mute. Okay. So I would start actually from where actually Kyle left it in terms of understanding the environments. And it is more complicated for us living in a Francophone country. At least in South Africa, they speak English. In Côte d'Ivoire, they don't speak English. And you know, the resistance to change. I heard actually people both in Côte d'Ivoire and Morocco who were against having US side university in the country. So, and we heard this sometimes from the administration or people in the higher education administration. So the context is completely different. So the first challenge is actually finding institutions to benchmark with. And we're happy that we were able to, I mean, convince some colleagues in the United States, convince actually Mark and his colleagues and the State Department to give us some funds. And convince also Georgia State University to start with to establish a strong partnership with Côte d'Ivoire to launch IUGB, to launch the International University Grand Passant. So the first challenge, as I said, is actually the benchmarking. And we don't have actually a serious institutions to benchmark with in the country. And that's why it is important to liaise actually with the universities in the U.S. Another challenge actually here in Côte d'Ivoire, like in Morocco, is the immediate response to the job market. People bring their kids, we know that some institutions actually don't have this problem, especially the liberal arts institutions in the U.S. because everybody understands the system and understands the added value of liberal arts and the technical colleges and so on. In Côte d'Ivoire, people do not understand this kind of things. And people in Côte d'Ivoire are used to free higher education. And here we ask people to pay, although we have a scholarship system. And when people invest, they want to see the return on investment immediately. So of course, our graduates need to not only find out but find good jobs and we hope that some of them will be able to create even their own business. Therefore, internally here, we need to do a lot of things and use best practices coming from the system. And I think that I would simply second what Mark said earlier about the difference between students who went through the U.S. style of higher education, maybe went to the United States on exchange or to study there, and those who finished their education in our countries, especially that we are still on the old-fashioned, I would say, French system because France itself today has moved forward and is now using, I mean, the French are now using best practices in higher education. So the many, we use actually a lot of, I would say, successful stories. I mean, we have some success stories, best practices. One of them is to involve actually companies in whatever we do. And we have an office that liaise actually with the industry in Cote d'Ivoire and also train students, prepare students for the job market. Second benchmark, with U.S. institutions is the, to bring in institutions from the U.S., our first bachelor degree programs actually were designed with support from Georgia State University and the University of Houston. And today, and we've developed, since then we've developed actually almost 15 partnerships with the institutions in the U.S. and today we're happening with the U.S. and today we're happy with our partnerships with the University of Georgia in Athens. The third best practice is to respond to one of our mission statements, which is to contribute to the development of Cote d'Ivoire and West Africa. And I always say that we need to adopt best practices from the U.S. and elsewhere, but adapt them to our contexts and realities. And of course, whatever we do, we need to take into consideration the development of the country and the sub-region, since IUGB is a sub-regional university. And the fourth and last best practice is the participatory approach. And we do involve actually faculty and anyone who would bring some added value to whatever we do, especially when we design new programs. And we do this actually, and then we follow the consultations process with the social professional world before we submit whatever we have to the academic council of the university, the university president and the board of directors. So quickly, here are actually some challenges and some best practices we gained actually from our partnerships with U.S. institutions. Fantastic. Very interesting that you're developing business connections in Cote d'Ivoire to facilitate the partnership with the United States. I'd love to learn more about that later. So finally over to Mark, different question. So you've described how education partnerships are important to our foreign policy and for the American people. But what support were you able to offer yourself to facilitate these partnerships when you were in Cote d'Ivoire serving at the embassy? And could you talk a little bit more about how a U.S. higher education institution should approach working with African institutions? And what kind of support should they look for from U.S. embassies and the state departments in creating these kinds of partnerships? Lots of questions in there. So over to you, Mark. Yeah, great question. I'm just going to be really with a rubber-hits-the-road of how could we do more of this? We all understand why it's so valuable, but how do we practically make it happen? And a couple of thoughts. I mean, the University Partnerships Initiative, UPI program we've discussed, was an amazing innovation in the last administration that I know we're looking to carry on and figuring out what format that will take. And that program provided direct grant support to American universities to conduct partnership projects with African universities, and hopefully some form of that will continue. So keep an eye out for what those are. But I think I want to highlight maybe two other ways to engage and I think ways to open those doors. First is to take advantage of the long-standing academic exchange programs that the U.S. State Department has run for 75 years at this point. Everyone knows about the Fulbright program, hopefully, which is great. I think maybe not everyone knows the Fulbright program. Everyone's familiar with Fulbright scholars and students going overseas to study for a year, or Fulbright scholars and students coming from overseas to study for a year or two years at U.S. universities. And by all means, please apply for those, participate. Those are great opportunities. And frankly, many of the partnerships I think we see and that many of the partnerships that were funded through UPI existed because a Fulbright scholar was the only one that was funded by the State Department or the other way back to their home university and maintained those links and connections. So it's a really powerful way to start building those connections. But there's more. I mean, there's the Fulbright specialist program that people don't necessarily know about that can bring American academic experts to a foreign country for anywhere from one to three months, usually funded by the State Department. Those programs are often, you know, they're driven by the host university looking for it, but those are much easier to get in the sense that there's not a company. If the embassy finds it, we'll go out and say, okay, we need to find an American university or scholar or academic who has this specific skill set or academic background. So that's another way to participate in the Fulbright program. There are other academic exchange programs. To keep in mind, there's the English language specialist program for those who are working on English as a second language programs. There are other academic exchanges that go on. Those are ways to build links to take advantage of those existing programs. And then last, but most definitely not least and perhaps most is just reach us, contact embassies. I can't tell you how many times as a public affairs officer at an embassy overseas, I would get essentially a cold call email from an American scholar who said, oh, by the way, I'm coming to town to do research. Do you know something? Or our consular section colleagues would alert us that, you know, an American academic, American student had entered into the US travel.state.gov system. Oh, they were coming to the country. We will work with you. Public affairs section can help you make connections, right? Is our job to understand the academic background of the countries in which we are serving? And so we can make those connections to local universities. We are happy. We have platforms which have you do speeches to set you up to talk to local audiences to make connections. So I think that it's an underutilized resource.  So from state.gov, you can find the web pages for all of our embassies around the world. And the contact information is right there. So just reach out to us. We will be so excited.  I'm not in Africa, but I got a blind email from an American scholar archeologist at the University of Michigan saying, oh, I'm coming to town to continue work that my, you know, graduate school mentor had started there on some neolithic site in the country that I didn't even know existed. And through that, we were able to build a partnership, connect them to other academics in Montenegro that they didn't already know. We were actually then looking to pursue support for their project under the Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation that might have funded future research by the University of Michigan in Montenegro and funding bringing students over every summer, you know, for a couple of years. That opportunity never would have happened if that scholar hadn't just blindly sent an email to the U.S. Embassy in Montenegro. And I can think of other examples like that. So I think please reach out to us. I mean, this is the point, and I know this administration we talked about, we need to have a foreign policy for all Americans. But it's true. We, the embassy, we are your representative overseas. This is what we do for a living. This is our job. We want to represent all of America. And when you reach out to us, we will absolutely be excited to meet with you, excited to create and set up opportunities for you to speak to meet with people in country to advance and expand the connections you're already making. Thanks so much, Mark. Yes, happy to help. So I have one final question for any wrap-up comments from our panel. But in the meantime, if our audience, if you have questions, if you could please start typing away in the chat, I understand. And from there, our team of technical experts in the back will be feeding those questions into us. So I open it up to the three of you. Mark, Ahmed, Kyle, any closing remarks you'd like to say, which we haven't covered already? Kyle, I see you're unmuted. Please go away. Sure. Please go ahead. Thank you. So one thought that I had is that the partnerships at the State Department and the embassies have helped to facilitate have been really, really wonderful. And one of the things I would encourage many of my colleagues at institutions to think about is these and other sort of funded partnerships as leveraging opportunities, realizing that within each of our institutions are often ways that we can also encourage and facilitate exchanges. So when I was a graduate school dean, I was actually at one point very concerned because I looked around our sort of population of international students. And I saw that there were very few international students from the continent of Africa. And we had, I would say, over-representations from other parts of the world. And I remember sitting down with a number of my colleagues and asking, well, why don't we have students from, or many students from Ghana or South Africa or Namibia or pick the country? And finding that I was making the argument often of, well, we're often looking all over the world for brilliant students in coming for doctoral programs or for other types of exchanges. Let's make sure that we are looking at partnership building on the African continent. And I made a point of taking some of the resources that I had access to and bringing over several students from different countries that had been underrepresented. So we now have one student from Namibia who's finishing up her doctorate. She's actually working on her dissertation final edits right now. One student came over and did her master's program from South Africa. We facilitated some exchanges that we were able to leverage from our side for our students going over. And I think that did several things. One is that built some confidence internally on some things that we could do. And then, of course, it helped us to also work or engage in a different set of conversations with people from the different embassies because they also saw that we were willing partners and very interested partners were able to and interested in putting some of our own resources on. So I think that meeting all of the great work and all of the commitments that the embassies have been making around this university partnership initiative, it's important. There's some great signals that are being sent and there are great resources that are available. But I think that there's also some work that all of us who are in a higher education institution who are in positions to be able to create opportunities to also go ahead and to meet others. Thanks so much, Kyle. Mark, I met any final thoughts? Ahmed, please. Thank you. I would like first actually to thank the State Department for this opportunity to contribute to this very important conference. From our side here in Africa, especially in Francophone Africa. Yes, we are a U.S. university that will be seeking U.S. accreditation in the near future. And partnerships with U.S. institutions are key elements for our success. So we need them. As I said earlier, we need them for benchmarking and we need them also for the day-to-day operations so that actually we'll be able to receive both institutional and program accreditations from the U.S. I must say that our experience has been enriched with relations with our partners, particularly those sabbaticals. I worked with several colleagues from the United States who received sabbatical leave from the institutions. They enrich the institution they visit and I'm calling on anyone who wants to come our way, they're welcome. Those people, they leave pressure at home and they come afresh. They contribute to courses and they contribute also to the nice atmosphere in the institution. The Fulbrighters, I am a Fulbrighter myself. So I received a Fulbrighter in 1992. And I think that also we received a lot of Fulbright specialists at IUGB and they were great. And we'd love to do more. We received also several ELF, English language paddles. We have one currently whose term is about to finish, but she received an extra year because she was doing a great job here at IUGB and in Côte d'Ivoire in general. And of course, the nice UPI program. I mean, it's great to have it and I hope that all these programs will be reinforced. You know that our financial resources like any other institutions in the world, but we are actually poorer. I think that some of the US institutions, our financial resources are not unlimited and we have problems sometimes finding enough money to do what we plan to do with our partners in the US. All these programs are instrumental and excellent opportunities for everyone concerned for us and for our partners in the United States. Some of them allow also for financial resources that facilitate human capital mobility. Thank you. Mark, any closing thoughts? Sure. I mean, I think I'll try to close with an encouragement to do this, but also to acknowledge that if this was easy, we'd all be doing this already. I mean, this is why this session and this broader HBCU conference is so exciting. You know, I think it's an area many of us have long recognized as something that was needed and trying to figure out how to make it happen is not always easy. I mean, I will say, you know, the tips and how to make this work. Flexibility is important. You know, as I think Dr. Liguri Zakerman said, you know, things don't always work the same way in academic institutions in Africa. So, you know, that culture clash will happen and be ready for that. I think it can be enriching for both sides, but that sort of flexibility is needed. But what I'd say, I think to the American, our American University counterparts who are on this session today is it's remarkable how much can be gotten from fairly small gains. You know, we are putting some money into things like the UPI program, which is great, but a lot of this personal relationships, meeting someone, just making those connections between people that you then take back and you know, oh, I have this research project or question. Oh, I know someone there who can do that. Oh, I have a student working on this thing. I have a connection overseas and that goes both ways. And investing time into making those relationships isn't necessarily expensive. It takes the investment of our time, but I think that's something that's so key. And that's a place where I think embassies are uniquely well suited to help be that matchmaker to make those connections. You know, if you reach out to us from the American side, we can say, oh yeah, I know someone working in that space or oh yeah, I know a university who has that department and we can start making those connections. And I think through those relatively small investments of time and effort, that's where it grows. And then you start figuring out how to fund larger partnerships and whether that's grants from the State Department or other grants that build into those larger programs. But I think it all starts with what can be relatively small investments of time and effort to build the connections and just make links. Fantastic. I know that, at least in the State Department, we've talked a lot about public-private partnerships bringing in kind of corporate partners in Cote d'Ivoire. I've never been to Cote d'Ivoire. I assume there's Coca-Cola, right? In South Africa, there's all kinds of technology, American technology companies like Microsoft, Google, they're all there. Have any of you had any experience working with a business partner to develop a program to develop some sort of partnership, kind of bridging cultures and bridging institutions? So we've been exploring some corporate partnerships and even small business partnerships. One of the initiatives that we have is, we're testing right now a virtual incubator where we're trying to get individuals and institutions in the U.S. to work with individuals and institutions in South Africa to sort of coach along a cohort of right now, I think we've got 40 university students going through a business incubator and we're hoping to engage more partners and mentors and add some interest expressed. We're waiting for sort of the signed deals to bring in the partners fully. We did have a partnership a few years ago that was funded through the Kresge Foundation, which is very active in South Africa. I know Ford Foundation, other philanthropic partners have been very involved and we've had discussions with some of them as well. But there's an interest and I think it's just a matter of making the case and bringing it to the table. Great, thanks. I don't want to cut off more remarks, but we do have a good question from the audience. Good afternoon from Fort Valley State University. This is from Stacy Barrett. I'm from Fort Valley, Georgia, and we're a sister institution to University of Georgia and Georgia State University. I'm a faculty member and I'd like to know more about these partnerships and how we may be able to tap into what you're doing with them and or create our own program. What do you think, how would we best respond to that? I certainly welcome all of my colleagues. I will note that in creating the partnership between IUGB and the University of Georgia, there are actually explicit discussions with the Andrew Young Foundation about including the wider University of Georgia system. So other public schools, other public universities and colleges in Georgia. So I think opportunities absolutely exist. I know Brian Watkins, the University of Georgia lead was definitely interested in bringing experts in from other schools within the broader public education, public university system in Georgia to participate in some of the mock accreditation teams or other things. I think there absolutely are opportunities there. I don't know the best way to say directly to connect within the University of Georgia system. I don't know if Ahmed has those ideas, but it was definitely something that was envisioned was how to bring in more than just the University of Georgia through sort of the broader University of Georgia system, if you will. Thanks Brian. Please, Kyle. I can speak from perspective of the U.S. South African Higher Education Network. I think the easiest way to get involved is just drop me an email. It's really easy. If you send it to Kay Farnbury. So first initial first name and then last name at Guilford. G-U-I-L-F-O-R-D. E-D-U. I'd be happy to have a conversation with you or others who would be interested in being part of this. We have been really building this U.S. South African Higher Education Network with the goal of it being an inclusive network. And we'd like to have as many higher education institutions as possible involved with it. So just reach out and I'd be happy to talk with you further. Thanks so much for the generous offer, Kyle. Ahmed. I also would like actually to share my e-mail address. And the easiest one is my family name TheGrooryGmail.com. And I'll be happy actually to investigate with the colleagues possibility of collaboration. We're open and as Mark said we are adopting the U.S. style and we need benchmarking and we need to work with colleagues. I already invited actually anyone who is interested to come our way on sabbatical leave or fall bright and I'll be happy actually to send letters of invitation and make their stay both actually enjoyable and fruitful. So and we'd love actually to do several things actually. Especially you know that institutional accreditations cover the wide spectrum covers all the activities of the university. So we're open and we'll be happy actually to communicate with our colleague and see what we can do together. Fantastic. Thank you so much Ahmed. I think that is all for the questions that I'm seeing. We've had our final remarks. I think we can wrap this up. Gentlemen it has been a real pleasure speaking with all of you getting your perspectives and of course to our audience thank you for listening in. You have our contact information for follow-up. If you have any questions please let us know. Happy to facilitate. And with that thank you so much. Have a great afternoon. This is President's Day weekends and best of luck in pursuing academic partnerships with African institutions. Take care. Goodbye.


All right, folks, welcome today to all aboard the CAN bus or motorcycle. Two wires, two wheels, bikes can do CAN too. In today's talk, we will cover who am I, a little bit about myself, the bike and brand I feel to completely understand the essence of this project, the bikes a little bit on the rarer side. So we'll cover a little bit about that, why the project inspiration and purpose, some of the hurdles that came into play when working with the motorcycle as opposed to a car. And then the project begins, what I used, what I built, the hardware involved with the project. I built an engine simulation, and I did quite a bit of CSV parsing and data analyzing with a Python script I made. And then we'll talk a little bit about what's the future of the project. So who am I? I'm Derek. I've been riding motorcycles for about 10 years. I've been a developer and infosect hobbyist for about 15 years. I currently work as director of IT for a food and beverage automation company. If you're interested in continuing to follow this project after this talk, you can follow me on Twitter, canbusdutch. If you have any questions that aren't answered or you don't get a chance to ask them at the end of the talk, you can email me at canbusdutchgmail.com and all the code talked about can be found at my github, github.com, slash circuitworks1. So this is my bike, an EBR 1190RX. Those of you not familiar with EBR or the Buel brand, Eric Buel, the founder, was a Harley engineer who liked racing motorcycles. They make the only, or they, yeah, they're the only production sport bike made and designed in the USA. They're the only American-made motorcycle to ever score points on a world superbike. And they won the 2009 Daytona superbike championship without a single DNF, those not into power sports that stands for did not finish, which means no engine failures and more importantly no accidents. They manufactured nearly 140,000 motorcycles in 15 years when acting as a Harley subsidiary. And in 2009, after Harley-Davidson axed Buel, they came back as Eric Buel racing and sold 65 bikes in 18 months, garnering $3 million in revenue as a startup. And sadly, now it's a company teetering on the edge of existence. So here's a few Buels and EBRs, some a face only a mom could love. But that top bike there in the top left is the bikes that help them fund EBR. It's the EBR 1190 RS. And then you'll see the same bike I have, the EBR 1190 RX. And then the EBR 1190 SX, which is the same as the RX just in a different trim. And then down here we take a look at the Buel XB9S, which utilizes a Harley-Davidson Sportster power plant. And then the EBR XB9R, sorry, the Buel XB9R, and then finally the Buel 1125R. And we can't forget that is the 2010 Buel Blast, which is kind of an inside joke amongst the Buel community. So now let's get into it. So after about six months of owning my EBR 1190 RX, I was on a large group ride where I did about 100 miles in a day. And on my way back home, my dash fell apart. Luckily, I didn't lose anything. My screen there held on by the ribbon to the rest of the display. And when I got back home, I reassembled it. But sadly, I started receiving a comm error. And after about a few months of surfing around the Buel Facebook groups and forums, I started to realize I wasn't the only one. There was this guy, and this guy, and this guy, and this guy, well, you get the point. So sadly, apart from these comm errors, there was also individuals who had their dash rattle the pieces just as mine did. And at the time, the future of EBR was being decided by the courts as they had filed for receivership, which is a similar process to bankruptcy. And there was zero parts availability.  And that's when I realized it probably wouldn't be as easy as I thought. The main issue I ran into is that there is no diagnostics standard in the motorcycle industry. OBD2 is kind of a large plug, hard to fit on a small vehicle and not really ideal for motorcycles. Although we will see the OBD2 standard is used on a few manufacturers. And from what I've been told that it is becoming a standard in Europe. So there are universal diagnostic tools, although the bite offset scaling factor, all that good stuff is different for every manufacturer. And in order for these universal tools to obtain that information, the manufacturers charge a lot of money. So these tools are very expensive, not only that, but the likelihood of finding a universal diagnostics tool that works with a bike with only about a thousand of them manufactured in the world is slim to not. You aren't going to find. So let's take a look at the, we'll take a peek into the motorcycle diagnostics port world. In this slide alone, we have two Kawasaki, two Hondas, two Suzuki connectors. And there we go. There we have a four pin Harley diagnostics cable and we can see there that Piagio triumph in victory all use the vehicle standard OBD2. And then here we see another Kawasaki connector. And here we have the, the Buell diagnostics port. And then we have another Kawasaki cable. And this is one of my favorites. So this envy Augusta four pin cable down here is actually the same connector used on Hondas, but it has a separate pin out. So if you accidentally use the envy Augusta connector on your Honda, you will fry your ECM. And then here's another one that kind of grabs my attention down in the left hand corner there. We have the Harley Davidson can six pin cable. If you remember, I just mentioned they had a four pin diagnostics cable in a six pin can cable. And as we all know, can is a two wire signal. So why couldn't they have just jammed the diagnostics in can into one cable? Who knows. And last but not least, we have the Benelli cable there, but overall that's 37 different connectors for about 25 different manufacturers, kind of a headache. But luckily we have can. Most European and Japanese manufacturers began implementing a can bus system on their bikes around 2003. This includes to Kati, BMW, Honda, Kawasaki, and the American manufacturers as with most things when it comes to automotive were a little bit late to the can party. Buell first implemented a can system on the 2008 release of their 1125 and Harley's first can based bike wasn't until 2011 and it wasn't until 2014 that all Harleys were equipped with can bus information was a little bit lacking when it came to the Polaris brands Indian in the now defunct victory. But I believe they started using can around 2013. So let's hop into what exactly my ECM comprises of the microcontroller is a micro technology pick device. The diagnostics protocol is a single while wire variable pulse with J1850 and the can protocol is 500 kilobits a second, 11 bit IDs, 20 ohm termination and least significant bit first. When it came to hardware for my project, I started out with this seed studio device. But after the second one failed me, I navigated over to using the the cannibal device which was much more reliable. And software wise, I started off using the seed studio software but ended up converting over to bus master after I purchased the cannibal device. So after doing quite a few can capture sessions and figuring out some of the can definitions from reading can packets directly from the bike, I was kind of over the idea of spending hours in the heart hot garage huffing exhaust fumes. So I thought, why not try some engine simulation. The most important part for my bike when simulating the engine sensor data is the crankshaft sensor outputs. The ECM won't really acknowledge some of the other data if the crankshaft sensor outputs is not reading correctly. On my bike crankshaft sensor produces two waves 180 degrees at a phase with each other. The wave is generated using a hull sensor and a stepped rotor tonering surrounding the stator magneto there are 34 steps in a timing gap the equivalent to two wavelengths or two steps. So it's essentially 36 steps and there we have a picture of it. You can see the timing gap there pretty common. And now let's take a look at it and there we go a few oscilloscope readings of the output so I know exactly what I'm recreating. And so how do we simulate it. There's 36 steps one full step every 10 degrees 360 degrees in a circle with pick an RPM for Matt's sake we'll do 6000 RPMs. And then since we all know RPM is a measurement of minutes and Hertz is a measurement by seconds. We'll have a math equation that looks something like the following RPM divided by 60 seconds times 36 steps and we get a wavelength of 3.6 kilohertz to simulate the 6000 RPMs. So the code what we do is we take the frequency input by the user through the serial monitor. I did all this using a Arduino teensy and we calculate the time to execute both a 34 wave cycle and a 36 wave cycle in microseconds. So we set our variables there RPM time and RPM restart and then our code logic looks something like this. If the wave start time is greater than RPM time, then we stop the wave. And if waves start time greater than RPM restart we restart the wave. So basically what's happening here is we produce a wave for 34 seconds. And then once the time hits greater than 34 seconds we stop it. And then we turn it back on once the time hits greater than 36 seconds. So we have those 34 steps with a two step pause. And now let's take a look at what we got. There's our oscilloscope output. We got 34 steps and then the blank spot the equivalent two steps. Now we'll look into doing the mile per hour, the speed. The speed sensor simulation is a bit more basic because there's no timing gap. So simulate our speed sensor. We will take a given frequency that was input by the user again through the serial monitor. And we'll turn on and off one of the pins rapidly to generate a square wave. So we first calculate the period to complete one wave cycle in microseconds. And then we divide that by two to find out how long the pin needs to stay in each state to complete the entire waveform. And we control it with a non-blocking delay here. So you can see there, if the delay timer is less than the speed time divided by two, pin off. And if it's greater, then pin on. And if it's greater than, and once we created two, which will cause a full wave form there, then we restart the timer and go to town again. So there we have it. And again, this code for the TNC can all be found in my GitHub repository that I gave at the beginning of the talk. So now that we got our two waves looking good, we'll play with it a little bit. So aside from the speed in RPM, I also programmed in a few switches so that I could pop back forth the things such as the neutral switch and the gas light and a few other things. So we'll watch it and give it a try here. So oil pressure true. And you could see up there, sorry, I forgot to point it out, but the oil pressure light went there. And now we'll change our neutral switch to false, boom. And then low fuel set to true. And one thing about the low fuel, as it says right here, it has to remain true for 20 seconds before the ECM flips the low fuel bit to true. So it'll pop on any second there. And there we go. Low fuel, you see the fuel trip flipped over there. And here's the fun part. In frequency 1,001, and we got a little bit of RPM going there and speed frequency 300. And now we got a little bit of speed going there. And if you'll notice in a second, the fuel trip odometer goes up to one, the end. So success, oops, it happened here. Okay, so let me switch back into presentation mode. So I, once I did that, I started capturing sessions like crazy, I was capturing everything to a CSV, and, you know, clearly, they, you know, all this data and only one set of eyes, you know, you don't want to go through all that without some software analyzing it. So I created a Python script that compares to CSVs that were created using the can software. In the example I'm about to show, I have two CSVs. One is where I set the oil pressure to true. And the second is where I set the oil pressure to false. So oops. So a little bit about my parser here, my Python script. Out of the 15 populated columns used by my software, we only use nine of them. It's the frame ID and then the 8 bytes. So basically what the Python script does is it looks at the number of times each ID appears and the number of times the hex value appears in each given ID, and then compares that to allow us to have in our outputs the difference in hex value appearances, the increase and decrease percentage of hex value appearances, and appearance of a new hex value in a given ID. And I also programmed it to convert the hex value to binary. So if we take a look here, this output shows the number of times a hex value appears in a given ID. If its appearance account was zero in either of the canned capture session, the line will be highlighted in red. So the line will be highlighted in red if the number of hex value appearances is equal to the number of appearances of its given ID. So meaning that in one canned capture session, the hex value appeared zero times and in the other one it appeared 100% of the time. So if we take a look here, we have that happen four times in this one. There is hex value 19 and 99 which appeared in ID 202 100% of the time while appearing in one canned capture session while appearing zero times in the other one. And then we have down here hex value 20 and hex value 60 which appeared in ID 451 100% of the time in one file and 0% of the time in the other. And I can confirm that after you know, figuring this out, I was able to verify that an ID 202 byte A bit 7 is the low oil warning light and ID 451 byte H bit 6 is an oil pressure true false bit. So we can see so once again this, which we call it this this Python script is available at my GitHub account to take a look at and analyze your own CSVs. And now we'll look now that I have the now that I've reversed a whole bunch using the Python script and you know, I was able to trigger all types of ECM settings to reverse. I developed my first prototype here. This project was used with a, I'll wait and let it go. So that was developed using a Nextion display and a ESP32 with some with a can input on it. And you know, originally I was going to make this from the ground up, but I don't know I just decided when everything's exposed to the elements like on a motorcycle. It probably wasn't the best route to go. So I ended up purchasing a in aim MXS 1.2 strata, which so far I've loved and highly recommend. I haven't actually put it on the bike yet, but here's a little video of what I got going. We're going to let the bike warm up. You'll see the light over here for the engine temperature will go from blue to green when the engine is warm. And then I'll I give it a few revs to show off. All right, there we go. So what's next for the project aside from finishing the development of the dash? You know, I'd really like to stretch my Python script a little bit further right now. All the IDs to my bike are hard programmed into the Python script. Ideally, you know, this Python script will be able to look at the ID column, grab all the individual IDs that are in it, and then start analyzing then, you know, I spent a lot of time as a front end developer. And I'd also like to make Python script output a little bit prettier. I think some data visualization that I've started playing with, you know, would really spice things up a bit and kind of make things easier to point out some bite annotation. Right now, the Python script only parses data based on the hex values in the ID. So you could end up with some some confusion on, you know, if you're getting hex value changes in different bytes in the same ID and stuff like that. And then I also like to implement some bit flip search, which, you know, would help things with like the ground triggers and or ground switches and stuff like that, that's are in the ash and stuff. So you know, so anyways, that's about it. You know, I want to give some shout outs and some thanks. Thanks to the Buell community. There's really nothing like it. Thanks to the man, the myth, the legend himself, Eric Buell, and those involved with Buell motorcycles and EBR. And you know, even though you guys probably hate me, I want to say thanks to Tim Blumenberg at IDS, who is the company that developed the ECM and Bill Melvin who currently owns EBR. And then some of my gearhead friends that I wouldn't have been able to do this without Jacob, Zach, Rob Weaver, Laylin. You know, it couldn't have been done without everyone. Thanks.


Meeting partners, you are this close to a signed contract and confirming the business. The only thing left is the site inspection of the hotel. Are you ready for it? Today I'm outlining 10 tips for you to remember the next time you're hosting a client on a site inspection. Stick around. Hey friends, it's Leanne and over the years I have been on hundreds of hotel site inspections. In fact, I probably have some stories that would make you cringe about the things that I have been shown or in some cases not shown on a hotel site inspection. But that's not what this post is about today. Today we're talking about tips that are going to make you shine when you're hosting a site inspection. So I've compiled a checklist of sorts of things for you to remember when you're hosting a site inspection. But before I begin, don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel and click on that little bell to be notified of new content each week. I post videos relevant to the meetings industry each Wednesday and I don't want you to miss a thing. Thanks. Okay, let's launch into these 10 tips for when you're hosting a site inspection. Tip number one, focus on what is important to the planner. Now this is a recurring theme in all of my content and it's getting back to what the planner wants, not necessarily what we want as their partner in the process. So go back to the planners goals and objectives. Go back to the things that are really important to them and make sure that they're highlighted on the site inspection. Conversely, things that are not important to the planner, those are things that you want to trim from the site inspection so the planner has time to focus on all the good stuff that you've shown them. Make sense? To uncover gems about what's important to the planner, you can do one of three things. You can go back to the RFP itself and uncover the goals and objectives there. You can schedule a pre-site visit meeting with the planner to find out what's important to them that way. Or maybe it's as simple as sending out a pre-site visit questionnaire or survey with five or six questions that they can answer really quickly and get back to you. Site inspection tip number two, offer a complimentary room night or offer it as a concession. Now some hotels may not be able to offer a complimentary night, the night of the site inspection itself, but it's important for that planner to go through the delegate experience. So if you're able to offer a complimentary night in the hotel or even offer it as a concession if they have to pay a reduced rate and the concession would be that it's credited back to them if they book your hotel for the program. Tip number three, try to host your site inspection when you have some meeting space available to show or if you can get permission from the groups in-house to show the space while they're in program. Some meeting planners actually prefer this method and to see the space in action if you will. So make sure your space is either available for viewing when it's empty or if it's full make sure you have permission from the group in-house and then show them how the space looks when it's full of energy and full of creativity and full of people. Tip number four, introduce the planner when they're on site to other key members of your team. Most hotels do this really well so it becomes a glaring omission if you forget to do this. If you can ensure that you're DOS, perhaps even your general manager, the food and beverage manager and or chef and a Navy technician is available for questions that the meeting planner may ask. If those people aren't available, find someone who can field those questions or get answers to them very quickly on the fly. Tip number five, offer some food and beverage from the catering menus. Hotels love to dazzle meeting planners with all of these creative concoctions and confectionaries but if they're not on the delegates catering menus then there's a disconnect between what they're experiencing at the site inspection and potentially what their delegate is experiencing on site. So if at all possible, ensure that the food and beverage offerings are at least similar in nature or similar in preparedness so that they can get the delegate experience again. Tip number six, the guest room showcase. Okay, so there's a lot to talk about when we're talking about showing our planners guest rooms. For starters, make sure that you're only showing them guest rooms that they would actually use. If they're a budget conscious group, showing them all the elevated room categories is not going to be a good use of that planner's time. So stick to the standard or run of house categories for that particular site inspection. In addition, make sure you point out things that are very unique about your guest room. So this is not about the flat screen TV that every single hotel room in the world now has but rather the unique things that set you apart from your comp set. Even maybe point out the square footage if you feel your rooms are above average in square footage compared to the hotels in your neighborhood. Other unique factors you may want to point out is if the hotel has a presidential suite or something that can be used as a hospitality suite for that particular group. Or if you have a club floor, something that maybe delegates can pay a little bit extra more and get some additional amenities on that floor. Tip number seven, the meeting space showcase. All right, more to talk about here. Ensure that you're only showing meeting space that's relevant to that particular program, especially if it's a small board meeting, showing them all the ballroom space is going to overwhelm your planner with information. Just show them the meeting space that works for their program and maybe a few alternate spaces if they're asking for different spaces in lieu of the ones that have been proposed on. For larger programs, you'll want to focus on the ceiling height as well. They may be bringing in a lot of AV that requires rigging, so they'll want to know what the ceiling height is. For programs that have a trade show component, don't forget about your loading docks. They're going to be looking for that as well. And finally, in the meeting space, if they are using rooms that have air walls, show where the air walls are dividing up the space so they can get a visual picture of how that's going to look like when their breakouts are in play. Tip number eight, don't forget to show them where they're going to set up their registration, be it on the lobby level or on the meeting space level in the foyer. Don't forget to point that out to them. Tip number nine, and this is often forgotten, but don't forget to show that planner how their group is going to interact with other groups that are on property. What is their flow of the delegates from the elevator to the meeting space and what other meeting spaces or groups may they pass on their way there? So kind of give the planner a sense of the flow with other groups in-house so they know how they'll interact with one another. And finally, tip 10, don't forget about your amenities and your outlets, especially the lobby bar if you have a group that requires a lot of great networking spaces. The lobby lounge is a great place for delegates to connect so ensure that your planner sees that as a plus for your hotel. And the bonus tip for this video, give a shout out to your neighbors. If you are near a vibrant restaurant and pub district or you have a lot of great amenities nearby that delegates can sneak too late at night to get a bite to eat or to have a late night cocktail, point that out to the planner. That could be the deciding factor on where to host their program is if their delegates have places to go after hours. Okay, partners, I hope these tips will help you with your next site inspection, but always curious to hear from you guys. Is there something that I missed and something you want to share with the community about how to host the perfect site inspection? Please comment below this video and pass it along to your peers. For more sales tips and inspiration, don't forget to head on over to my website at liankulderwood.com. There you can download the very popular how to get a meeting planner's attention worksheet. And don't forget to check out all my videos about sales and service that you can find right here. Thanks for watching this week's video and we'll see you next time. Bye for now.


A fiery horse with a speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a hearty hyosilver! The Lone Ranger! Before this exciting adventure, a word from our sponsor. General Mills, makers of Cheerios, the ready-to-eat oat cereal that gives you go-power, and Wheaties, the breakfast of champions, present by special recording, The Lone Ranger! Now you can... Rise, rise, rise, with The Lone Ranger! Yes, you can act like The Lone Ranger, think like The Lone Ranger in genuine Western adventures! Exciting Lone Ranger mysteries! Now on the backs of these popular General Mills Cheerios, Cheerios, Wheaties, Kicks, Sugar Jets, and Cricks. There are eleven of these thrilling mysteries, one to a package, and you'll want to solve them all! Here's a sample. One mystery is called the Guilty Stranger. A stagecoach is robbed, and there are two suspects. Which one is Guilty? The Lone Ranger finds out. Can you? To help you, there's an invisible writing clue inside the package. Dip this amazing clue in water, and writing appears like magic! What's more, the back of the clue tells you how you can become an official Lone Ranger deputy, with mask, badge, identification card, and hollow silver-colored bullet. Look for the Lone Ranger mystery adventures, now on specially marked packages of Cheerios, Wheaties, Kicks, Sugar Jets, and Cricks. Gather them all and ride with the Lone Ranger! With his faithful Indian companion title, the daring and resourceful Masked Writer of the Plains led the fight for law and order in the early western United States. Nowhere in the pages of history can one find a greater champion of justice. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. From out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse, Silver! The Lone Ranger rides again! Come on, Silver! Let's go be close! I am Silver! The Lone Ranger and his Indian companion title rode along the trail near Red Rock. They were heading southward toward the mission to visit their friend, the Padre, who had sent them a message through friendly Indians, asking them to come. It was late afternoon when the Lone Ranger and Tonto reached the mission and came to a stop in the courtyard. Welcome, my friends. I have been watching for you. It's good to see you again, Padre. Your arm is bandaged, Tonto. We ran into some trouble on the way here. Someone shot at us from ambush and one of the bullets grazed Tonto's arm. You're most fortunate, my friends. You might have been killed. We realize that. Come inside and we'll talk. I prepared some food. Oh, thank you, Padre. A few minutes later inside the mission they sat down to discuss matters. After the Lone Ranger had told the details of what had happened on the trail, he asked, And now, Padre, what did you send for Tonto and me? The settlers who have small farms in Green Valley are having trouble. Many of them are thinking of leaving the territory because of it. Well, what trouble do they have? Mysterious fires have broken out along their buildings at times. Also, some of their livestock have been poisoned on several occasions and their fences have been torn down allowing their few cattle to wander. How long has that been going on, Padre? For about a month, I believe. Hank Jarrell, who owns the only large ranch in that valley, has organized his men and tried to run down the culprits. But they avoid capture. Oh, I see. Jarrell is the man who asked me to send for you, my friend. It seems one of the settlers who knew about you and knew of our friendship mentioned it to Jarrell. Jarrell came to the mission himself? See, several days ago. I promised to ask your help. Of course we'll do all we can. I wonder how many in the valley knew he was asking for our help. Jarrell told me no one knew except the man who had told him about you. They decided to keep the matter quiet. Good. Tonto will ride on to Green Valley now. We should reach there by sundown. It isn't far from here. That's true. I know you'll do all you can. But be careful, Amigo. Clever men must be at work in that valley. That's right. We'll be careful. Come, Tonto, we'll go now. Adios, Padre. Adios, my friends. May the Lord protect you. As the long ranger and Tonto checked their riding gear before mounting to leave the mission, they discussed what they'd heard. Steady scouts. Steady from them. Timo Sambi, you think someone from Green Valley tried to stop us from getting to mission? I thought of that, Tonto. But the Padre said he was told no one knew we'd been sent for except Hank Jarrell and one of the settlers. It's possible if the news got out somehow. The men responsible for spreading terror in the valley may have heard it. That's right. They may camp near Green Valley. After dark, we go to Jarrell's ranch. I'll wait in the shadows while you get him to come out to talk to me. All right, let's go. Let's go. It was after supper time when Hank Jarrell and his wife, Sarah, heard a knock at the ranch house door. Well, then, say, I wonder who that is. Well, I'll answer it, Hank. Maybe more trouble in the valley. Is Hank in, ma'am? Oh, it's you, Mr. Mullins. Well, do come right in. Maybe they have a chair, sir. Make yourself comfortable. I'll just go along into the kitchen while you men talk. Sit right there, Sam. I don't mind if I do. I was wondering if there's any news of that mask man yet that you asked a part-rater, Sam. There he is, sign of him. I have my doubts if he'll show up at all. I think we're up against something nobody can fight, Sam.  You would? Of course, the settlers don't have much to leave so they could easily go somewhere else. I almost wish I was one of them right now. You sure do sound discouraged, Hank. Some settlers are already thinking of clearing out, but I persuaded them to stay a while longer. Well, I reckon I'll get on back to my place now. I don't like to be riding around alone too late at night. Never know what's gonna happen. He says he's ready. If that mask gon' be used up, I'll get word to you, Sam. I'll see you tomorrow. Good night, Hank. Good night. To the house. An Indian. Holy smoke, Hank. Hey, you! Come here! Huh? Me, come see. Thank God. Is he with you? I'm not sad. It's the mask man. The part-rater says he rides with an Indian named Tondo. Me, Tondo. I knew it, I knew it. I'm Sam Mullins. I told Gerald about the mask man. Then you come talk to Lone Ranger. Him see Gerald later. Kim Asabi. Oh, is that Hank Gerald? No, I'm Sam Mullins, a settler. I told Hank about you. Oh, I see. You and Hank are the only ones who know I was sent for? That's right. Hank didn't think you'd show up. He was downright discouraging about it a few minutes ago. But I was sure you'd get here. Why did Gerald think we wouldn't arrive? Don't know. He said we all ought to leave the valley. He doesn't think anyone can do anything. Said he'd go. If he didn't have so much to leave behind, better come and see Hank. He'll be surprised. I'll see him later, Sam. Not right now. But I thought the Indian was heading to the ranch house to get Hank when he ran into me. That's right. I've changed my mind. In fact, Sam, I'd rather you don't tell Gerald we're here yet. Well, you must have your reasons. But it sure surprises me you don't want to see him right away. Don't worry about it, Sam. We're here to help. But we must do it in our own way. All right, Mr. Whatever you say. Were you heading for home? Yeah. But now that you're here, I'm going to write up the valley and talk to some of the settlers. Encourage him some. Then I'll head back for home. Where do you live? Third place, south of here. We'll talk to you later. All right, I'll be waiting. Good night. Keep going, Gerald. I came out to talk to you now, Toto. I'll wait here. Uh-huh. A few moments later, Hank Gerald came out with Toto and met the Lone Ranger. You're the Lone Ranger, eh? I'm sure surprised to see you here, Miss T. Why, Mr. Gerald? Well, I didn't expect you to come. Now that you're here, I hope you can do something about what's been going on. We'll try our best.  Well, we came straight here. I'll leave it to you to tell Mullins we've arrived. Yeah, sure. Eh, where are your camping keys? I want to get in touch with you. We're, uh, camping the grove about half a mile down the trails. You'd better keep your eyes open. Well? The varmints who were causing the trouble seem to have a way of finding out everything. Well, thanks for the warning. We'll leave now. Easy said, a big fella. Miss Toto, easy. Good night. Good night, Miss T. I'll come. I'll come. Late that night, the lone ranger and Toto were rolled into their blankets at the camp. Suddenly the Great Horse Silver raised his head and wettled as he gazed across the small moonlight clearing into the shadows. Toto, Silver's giving a warning. Uh, him look cross and... Quick, we'll slide out of our blankets and crawl into the shadows. Let's go and hurry. We'll continue our lone ranger adventure in just a moment. All over the country, in every direction. How you, how you do it is a question. And here's one that happy people have to pay. Even though we didn't plan to do, do, do an OK. OK. That goes for the star wherever you are. Take Barbara Ann Scott, figure skating champion from the Northland. Watch her on this one. Barbara Ann's good. Now there is a champ who's a real Wheaties fan. Sure helps to keep a gal up on her toes. A guy too. Take Bob Lemon who pitches a lot of balls for the Cleveland Indians. Lemon knows what champions know. Wheaties for breakfast away you go. Gosh, no wonder the champs of tomorrow are eating Wheaties today. There's a whole kernel of wheat in every Wheaties' flake. Keep on eating your Wheaties. Then you'll be do, do, do an OK. OK. Now to continue. Awakened by a warning when he from silver, the lone ranger and Tato quickly slid from their blankets. Just as a fuselada bullet swept the clearing, the two men lay prone in the shadows. And as Tato started to reach for his gun, the lone ranger touched his arm to restrain him. The Indian and masked man waited, tense and quiet. Then they heard voices back in the grove. It looks like we caught him by surprise. He's coming. Get away from me. Quick, come on. Get out of here. They're leaving now. Someone else is coming. Have your gun ready this time, Tato? No. You see the writer now. He's turning in from cradle. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Sam Mullins, who had gone to talk to some of the settlers, was returning to his own place when he heard the shooting. He rolled blankets cautiously. Then seeing silver and scout, he stopped in surprise. Holy mackerel, I recognize those horses. Somebody must have killed the lone ranger in the Indian. Oh, Mullins. Ah. Oh, man alive. I heard shooting, and then when I saw those blankets rolled up there, looking like somebody was still in the way. We slid out of them, left them that way purposely. We had warning of what was to happen just in time. It's those mystery men again. But how they find out you were here and where your camp is? I have an idea how they found out. First we'll pick up their trail and see where it leads us. Then we'll make plans, Sam. Let's get going. Though the gunmen had tried to cover their tracks, the lone ranger and Tato managed to keep on the trail. Finally, they arrived with Sam Mullins at the rear of Gerald's ranch. Where they stopped in the shadows. Oh, it's the lone ranger. No, he's right now. He's the lone ranger. Hey, Gally, I don't figure this at all. You will be for long, Sam. There's a light in the ranch house. I suggest you go in. See you as with Gerald and ask him if he's heard from me. All right. Don't let him know you've seen us. Just as you say, mister. Come back and tell us what he says and what you find out. I don't know. I'll be waiting at the front gate. Sure. I'll ride around at the front right now. Well, now, you see, get up there. A few minutes later, Sam Mullins stood knocking on the ranch house door. Sam Mullins again, eh? Come on in, Sam. Oh, thanks, thanks. You know my two cow folks sleeping in bags. Oh, yeah, sure. How are you, fellas? Hi, Sam. What brought you back at this hour, Sam? It's almost midnight. I know. But you see, Hank, I couldn't wait to find out if that mask man has showed up yet. You're lucky. I told you he wouldn't show up, didn't I? In fact, Sleepy and Max came here to tell me some bad news about the mask man in the Indian. Yeah, that's right. Bad news. What do you mean? Sleepy, tell us, Sam. Well, Max and I were coming in from the range when we heard shooting. Yeah, it was about a half a mile from here. That's right. We headed for the place where the shots came from and found a camp and a grove. It was a mask man in Indian rolled up in a blanket. Both dead. Dead. Great day. We came right to the house to tell the boss. And he says they were the armbraise you've been expecting. Yep. I knew it was too good to be true that they'd be able to help us. The varmints who do damage in the valley are mighty smart. Smarter even than the lone rangers, it turns out.  We sure are upset in all of it. Yep, sure is. Well, so long, fellas. I'll be getting on over. We'd better steer clear of that grove for a while. There's something else I want to do first anyway. What's that? Convince Sam Mullins he'd better leave the valley with the others. We arrived to his place first, then we arrived back by the grove and see how things are there. After leaving the ranch house, Sam Mullins met Toto and the lone ranger and told them all that had been said. The lone ranger spoke. Sleepy and Max must have been the men who tried to kill us, Toto. This proves that Hank Jarrow and his men are the ones causing all the trouble in the valley. Nobody's ever believed that. Even though I know now it must be true. Since they want you to get the other settlers together in the morning, I wouldn't be surprised if they caused more trouble tonight just to impress the settlers. Maybe they'll do something in effect. We'll watch the ranch house and bunk house tonight. They ride out, we'll follow. Half an hour later, the lone ranger, Toto and Sam Mullins watched as three horsemen rode from the Jarrow Ranch. The masked man and his companions were hidden in among the trees so that they couldn't be seen, so the moonlight was bright. Hey, sir, you will burn him out. Then he'll stop persuading the others to stay. He doesn't, he doesn't. Hank Jarrow must have been talking about you, Sam. Then you think they're heading for my place now? Yes, Toto, I'll follow. We'll go around up some of the other settlers and hurry. I sure hope we catch them red-handed. That's a general idea. Get going, Sam. Easy, boy. Get up there. All right, Toto. Now we'll follow Hank and his crooked cowpokes. Is that a big fella? Easy. Come on, easy fella. Come on, soldier, come on, stop. Come on, soldier, come on, stop. The masked man and Indian left their horses in the shadows and cautiously approached the rear of Sam Mullins' barn where the other three men had stopped and dismounted. They're taking their time, Toto. Of course they know they can't be seen from the house. Uh, them show plain moonlight. One father went in the barn. The other two are waiting for him. There he comes now. Yeah, find a hole in a carousel. Spread it against the side of the barn. Then we'll touch a man's throat and get out of here for a night. Yeah, all right. The can's empty now. I have some matches. All right, we'll let him and get the fire started. Come on, Toto, this is the showdown. Cautiously, the masked man and Indian eased around the corner of the barn with guns ready. Then the Lone Ranger spoke sharply. Reach all of you and pass. The Lone Ranger and Toto were partially protected by the corner of the building as the bullets from Sleepy and Max's guns flying toward them. The two crooks ran toward the open barn doors. They fired. Several more minutes went by. Then the Lone Ranger and Toto cautiously moved around the corner of the barn and approached the doorway. Just as Sleepy's hand appeared holding a gun. Toto quickly moved forward and picked up the guns the crooks had dropped. It was then that Sam Mullins, who had gone to round up the settlers, approached the scene with several men. Here come the settlers, Toto. Let's turn these crooks over to them to take to jail. Help! Help us! Gun down these settlers. Don't listen to him. Are you alright, mister? Yes, Sam. Me? That man is spending the Indian are the ones who caused all the trouble. I don't know how he all this. Looks like he wounded. Man, I told you what you'd find here. I know for a fact that Hank Jarrow, those two cowpokes of his, Sleepy and Max are to blame for all that's happened. But why would Hank do that? Hank, Gerald wants to see all of you leave this valley. That's why he and his men created terror among you.  Sam Mones told him Todd and I might come here to help you. Hank acted as if he wanted us to come. Well, he did. But only so that he and his gunmen could murder us. They tried that but failed. And I'm sure now they tried to ambush us this morning. You can't prove that, Mr. You were the only man who knew where we were camping. They spread kerosene on the side of Sam's barn a while ago. They were about to set it afire when we interfered. Sleepy and Max will go to jail for attempted murder. Hey, you can't do that to us. We work for Hank, Gerald. We do what we're told. He always told us what trouble has started. That's right. Hank wanted the settlers to get out.  I reckon you've heard enough, men. We sure have, Sam. By thunder we'll take the three of them to the share and tell them everything. There are enough of you to take charge of these men. Todd and I are glad you have been of help. We'll leave now, knowing that Green Valley is no longer a valley of terror. That's right. Adios, everybody. Adios. Thank you. I will banage your wounds and take you to town, Hank. Remember what you said about the varmints who caused the trouble in the valley being smarter even than the Lone Ranger?  Hey, Sam. Is that who the mask man is? Yep. That's who he is, all right? Well, I'll be dogged gone. Imagine that. The Lone Ranger. A copyrighted feature of the Lone Ranger Incorporated is produced by Trenzel Campbell Muir Incorporated. A part of the Lone Ranger is played by Brace Beamer, your announcer, Fred Foy. Listen to the Lone Ranger brought to you by Special Recording Mondays through Fridays at this same time.


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This study investigated the clinical and molecular characteristics of early-stage lung adenocarcinoma, LUAD. It found that somatic mutations in both the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes were present in LUAD and detected these mutations in circulating free DNA, CFDNA, had good diagnostic performance. Additionally, it discovered that detecting mutations in the mitochondrion could be more effective than other methods at diagnosing early-stage LUAD. This article was offered by Ichu and Shu, Yongyang, Ichao Wang, and others.