This document discusses the Philadelphia Medical Reserve Corps Virtual Operations Support Team (VOST). It provides background on incident command systems and how VOST fits within the public information structure. It describes how social media was used during past disasters like the Haiti earthquake and US Airways Flight 1549 crash. It outlines the need for VOST to monitor social media during emergencies and support official response efforts. Finally, it describes how the Philadelphia MRC VOST would be organized, what tools it would use, and what forms members would fill out to track communications and activities.
My slides for the talk I was giving for the leadership seminar that I ended up not being able to attend. The video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5kVk0wLfL0&feature=youtu.be
Too often we label software "done" when it’s not tested, only partially documented and only half ready for release. We produce no business value, we pile on technical debt, and stakeholders have no confidence in our status reports. This presentation explores how you can use Burndown charts to improve your process.
How to Have Difficult Conversations With Confidence - MTP Digital 2020Denise Jacobs
Sometimes it’s difficult to have the self-assurance needed to tackle having some of the difficult conversations that are part and parcel of your work – particularly with the high level of Impostor syndrome that many product managers experience.
It turns out that silencing the inner critic is part of the foundation for cultivating the courage needed to have difficult conversations with more confidence. As a bonus, getting rid of the mean inner voice additionally enhances creative problem-solving, innovative thinking, and collaboration skills – three items that Product Managers have to use everyday.
In this session, we’ll first identify the ways in which the inner critic weakens our nerve to tackle head-on the conversations that we need to have. Then, we’ll explore powerful mental reframes and tools for reducing self-doubt, dealing with impostor syndrome, and recognizing cognitive distortions. Finally, we’ll address some of the most common difficult conversations such as giving and receiving feedback, getting teams in alignment with each other, dealing with execs, and saying no, and tools to facilitate each.
There are certain conversations that will always provoke anxiety. However, the tools and practices shared in this session will put you on the path to honing interpersonal skills, developing resilience, and increased self-awareness.
A presentation from the JISC conference New Strategies for Digital Content, 18 March 2011, London
By Andy MacGregor
http://digitisation.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2010/12/09
A short presentation to introduce the key elements needed for a successful crowdfunding campaign.
See more here: https://www.fundsurfer.com/help/how-to-crowdfund-successfully
My slides for the talk I was giving for the leadership seminar that I ended up not being able to attend. The video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5kVk0wLfL0&feature=youtu.be
Too often we label software "done" when it’s not tested, only partially documented and only half ready for release. We produce no business value, we pile on technical debt, and stakeholders have no confidence in our status reports. This presentation explores how you can use Burndown charts to improve your process.
How to Have Difficult Conversations With Confidence - MTP Digital 2020Denise Jacobs
Sometimes it’s difficult to have the self-assurance needed to tackle having some of the difficult conversations that are part and parcel of your work – particularly with the high level of Impostor syndrome that many product managers experience.
It turns out that silencing the inner critic is part of the foundation for cultivating the courage needed to have difficult conversations with more confidence. As a bonus, getting rid of the mean inner voice additionally enhances creative problem-solving, innovative thinking, and collaboration skills – three items that Product Managers have to use everyday.
In this session, we’ll first identify the ways in which the inner critic weakens our nerve to tackle head-on the conversations that we need to have. Then, we’ll explore powerful mental reframes and tools for reducing self-doubt, dealing with impostor syndrome, and recognizing cognitive distortions. Finally, we’ll address some of the most common difficult conversations such as giving and receiving feedback, getting teams in alignment with each other, dealing with execs, and saying no, and tools to facilitate each.
There are certain conversations that will always provoke anxiety. However, the tools and practices shared in this session will put you on the path to honing interpersonal skills, developing resilience, and increased self-awareness.
A presentation from the JISC conference New Strategies for Digital Content, 18 March 2011, London
By Andy MacGregor
http://digitisation.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2010/12/09
A short presentation to introduce the key elements needed for a successful crowdfunding campaign.
See more here: https://www.fundsurfer.com/help/how-to-crowdfund-successfully
Mid-Atlantic Region Libraries of Medicine BoostBox webinar delivered in May 2014. Discussed social media apps, statistics. Had a section on ephemeral apps like Snapchat and Tinder and another section on digital engagement.
A tale of scale & speed: How the US Navy is enabling software delivery from l...sonjaschweigert1
Rapid and secure feature delivery is a goal across every application team and every branch of the DoD. The Navy’s DevSecOps platform, Party Barge, has achieved:
- Reduction in onboarding time from 5 weeks to 1 day
- Improved developer experience and productivity through actionable findings and reduction of false positives
- Maintenance of superior security standards and inherent policy enforcement with Authorization to Operate (ATO)
Development teams can ship efficiently and ensure applications are cyber ready for Navy Authorizing Officials (AOs). In this webinar, Sigma Defense and Anchore will give attendees a look behind the scenes and demo secure pipeline automation and security artifacts that speed up application ATO and time to production.
We will cover:
- How to remove silos in DevSecOps
- How to build efficient development pipeline roles and component templates
- How to deliver security artifacts that matter for ATO’s (SBOMs, vulnerability reports, and policy evidence)
- How to streamline operations with automated policy checks on container images
Mid-Atlantic Region Libraries of Medicine BoostBox webinar delivered in May 2014. Discussed social media apps, statistics. Had a section on ephemeral apps like Snapchat and Tinder and another section on digital engagement.
A tale of scale & speed: How the US Navy is enabling software delivery from l...sonjaschweigert1
Rapid and secure feature delivery is a goal across every application team and every branch of the DoD. The Navy’s DevSecOps platform, Party Barge, has achieved:
- Reduction in onboarding time from 5 weeks to 1 day
- Improved developer experience and productivity through actionable findings and reduction of false positives
- Maintenance of superior security standards and inherent policy enforcement with Authorization to Operate (ATO)
Development teams can ship efficiently and ensure applications are cyber ready for Navy Authorizing Officials (AOs). In this webinar, Sigma Defense and Anchore will give attendees a look behind the scenes and demo secure pipeline automation and security artifacts that speed up application ATO and time to production.
We will cover:
- How to remove silos in DevSecOps
- How to build efficient development pipeline roles and component templates
- How to deliver security artifacts that matter for ATO’s (SBOMs, vulnerability reports, and policy evidence)
- How to streamline operations with automated policy checks on container images
Enhancing Performance with Globus and the Science DMZGlobus
ESnet has led the way in helping national facilities—and many other institutions in the research community—configure Science DMZs and troubleshoot network issues to maximize data transfer performance. In this talk we will present a summary of approaches and tips for getting the most out of your network infrastructure using Globus Connect Server.
In his public lecture, Christian Timmerer provides insights into the fascinating history of video streaming, starting from its humble beginnings before YouTube to the groundbreaking technologies that now dominate platforms like Netflix and ORF ON. Timmerer also presents provocative contributions of his own that have significantly influenced the industry. He concludes by looking at future challenges and invites the audience to join in a discussion.
Observability Concepts EVERY Developer Should Know -- DeveloperWeek Europe.pdfPaige Cruz
Monitoring and observability aren’t traditionally found in software curriculums and many of us cobble this knowledge together from whatever vendor or ecosystem we were first introduced to and whatever is a part of your current company’s observability stack.
While the dev and ops silo continues to crumble….many organizations still relegate monitoring & observability as the purview of ops, infra and SRE teams. This is a mistake - achieving a highly observable system requires collaboration up and down the stack.
I, a former op, would like to extend an invitation to all application developers to join the observability party will share these foundational concepts to build on:
zkStudyClub - Reef: Fast Succinct Non-Interactive Zero-Knowledge Regex ProofsAlex Pruden
This paper presents Reef, a system for generating publicly verifiable succinct non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs that a committed document matches or does not match a regular expression. We describe applications such as proving the strength of passwords, the provenance of email despite redactions, the validity of oblivious DNS queries, and the existence of mutations in DNA. Reef supports the Perl Compatible Regular Expression syntax, including wildcards, alternation, ranges, capture groups, Kleene star, negations, and lookarounds. Reef introduces a new type of automata, Skipping Alternating Finite Automata (SAFA), that skips irrelevant parts of a document when producing proofs without undermining soundness, and instantiates SAFA with a lookup argument. Our experimental evaluation confirms that Reef can generate proofs for documents with 32M characters; the proofs are small and cheap to verify (under a second).
Paper: https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1886
Accelerate your Kubernetes clusters with Varnish CachingThijs Feryn
A presentation about the usage and availability of Varnish on Kubernetes. This talk explores the capabilities of Varnish caching and shows how to use the Varnish Helm chart to deploy it to Kubernetes.
This presentation was delivered at K8SUG Singapore. See https://feryn.eu/presentations/accelerate-your-kubernetes-clusters-with-varnish-caching-k8sug-singapore-28-2024 for more details.
Elevating Tactical DDD Patterns Through Object CalisthenicsDorra BARTAGUIZ
After immersing yourself in the blue book and its red counterpart, attending DDD-focused conferences, and applying tactical patterns, you're left with a crucial question: How do I ensure my design is effective? Tactical patterns within Domain-Driven Design (DDD) serve as guiding principles for creating clear and manageable domain models. However, achieving success with these patterns requires additional guidance. Interestingly, we've observed that a set of constraints initially designed for training purposes remarkably aligns with effective pattern implementation, offering a more ‘mechanical’ approach. Let's explore together how Object Calisthenics can elevate the design of your tactical DDD patterns, offering concrete help for those venturing into DDD for the first time!
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 4DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 4. In this session, we will cover Test Manager overview along with SAP heatmap.
The UiPath Test Manager overview with SAP heatmap webinar offers a concise yet comprehensive exploration of the role of a Test Manager within SAP environments, coupled with the utilization of heatmaps for effective testing strategies.
Participants will gain insights into the responsibilities, challenges, and best practices associated with test management in SAP projects. Additionally, the webinar delves into the significance of heatmaps as a visual aid for identifying testing priorities, areas of risk, and resource allocation within SAP landscapes. Through this session, attendees can expect to enhance their understanding of test management principles while learning practical approaches to optimize testing processes in SAP environments using heatmap visualization techniques
What will you get from this session?
1. Insights into SAP testing best practices
2. Heatmap utilization for testing
3. Optimization of testing processes
4. Demo
Topics covered:
Execution from the test manager
Orchestrator execution result
Defect reporting
SAP heatmap example with demo
Speaker:
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
Welcome to the first live UiPath Community Day Dubai! Join us for this unique occasion to meet our local and global UiPath Community and leaders. You will get a full view of the MEA region's automation landscape and the AI Powered automation technology capabilities of UiPath. Also, hosted by our local partners Marc Ellis, you will enjoy a half-day packed with industry insights and automation peers networking.
📕 Curious on our agenda? Wait no more!
10:00 Welcome note - UiPath Community in Dubai
Lovely Sinha, UiPath Community Chapter Leader, UiPath MVPx3, Hyper-automation Consultant, First Abu Dhabi Bank
10:20 A UiPath cross-region MEA overview
Ashraf El Zarka, VP and Managing Director MEA, UiPath
10:35: Customer Success Journey
Deepthi Deepak, Head of Intelligent Automation CoE, First Abu Dhabi Bank
11:15 The UiPath approach to GenAI with our three principles: improve accuracy, supercharge productivity, and automate more
Boris Krumrey, Global VP, Automation Innovation, UiPath
12:15 To discover how Marc Ellis leverages tech-driven solutions in recruitment and managed services.
Brendan Lingam, Director of Sales and Business Development, Marc Ellis
Le nuove frontiere dell'AI nell'RPA con UiPath Autopilot™UiPathCommunity
In questo evento online gratuito, organizzato dalla Community Italiana di UiPath, potrai esplorare le nuove funzionalità di Autopilot, il tool che integra l'Intelligenza Artificiale nei processi di sviluppo e utilizzo delle Automazioni.
📕 Vedremo insieme alcuni esempi dell'utilizzo di Autopilot in diversi tool della Suite UiPath:
Autopilot per Studio Web
Autopilot per Studio
Autopilot per Apps
Clipboard AI
GenAI applicata alla Document Understanding
👨🏫👨💻 Speakers:
Stefano Negro, UiPath MVPx3, RPA Tech Lead @ BSP Consultant
Flavio Martinelli, UiPath MVP 2023, Technical Account Manager @UiPath
Andrei Tasca, RPA Solutions Team Lead @NTT Data
DevOps and Testing slides at DASA ConnectKari Kakkonen
My and Rik Marselis slides at 30.5.2024 DASA Connect conference. We discuss about what is testing, then what is agile testing and finally what is Testing in DevOps. Finally we had lovely workshop with the participants trying to find out different ways to think about quality and testing in different parts of the DevOps infinity loop.
Generative AI Deep Dive: Advancing from Proof of Concept to ProductionAggregage
Join Maher Hanafi, VP of Engineering at Betterworks, in this new session where he'll share a practical framework to transform Gen AI prototypes into impactful products! He'll delve into the complexities of data collection and management, model selection and optimization, and ensuring security, scalability, and responsible use.
12. Take Off
3:25
Image posted Image posted
Crash landing First Tweet
to Twitter to Flickr
3:31 3:33
3:36 3:39
Untimed Mass Media Reports
FlightStats not Google Trends
updated not updated
4:31 5:00+
24. Shadow Lake Wildland Fire
"One of those trucks went across the bridge!" she told me.
"Wow. Even the school bus doesn't cross that bridge. It's not designed for large trucks.
When we saw them going up that road, we wanted to run out and
wave our hands, yelling wrong way, wrong way!“
-hinessight.blogs.com
29. Operations
• Check in on Google Doc
– Virtual Status Board
• Work with Team Leader to divide up work
– Identify keywords
– Identify social networks
– Identify “super-sharers”
• Monitor, track and respond
– As appropriate
– ONLY with approved facts
30. Tools
• Depends on skillset and comfort of activated
• Maintain expertise between activations
• Start with the big guys
– Twitter
– Facebook
– Picfog
– Topsy
– YouTube
– Ustream
31. Forms
• VOST-modified ICS Form 205A
– Communications List
– How to keep track of everyone
• VOST-modified ICS Form 214
– Activity Log
– How to keep track of everything you’ve done
Incident Command System set up in response to wildland fires in 1970’s because too many chiefs all wanting control. Adopted by US govt as standard for response post-9/11. Command staff does strategic thinking about overall response, while General staff does operational thinking and implementation.
Public information officers are the ones that issue press statements, get subject matter experts ready for interviews, and write press releases and other public information products.
Given the heavy burden placed on PIOs, the concept of a JIS has arisen. The JIS (or JIC, if co-located) allows the PIO to delegate a number of responsibilities that others can handle. Focus on Information Gathering, (creating) Information Products and Information Dissemination.
Most people, because of the abject poverty and absolute lack of infrastructure in Haiti, would think that social media would play a big role in emergency response post-earthquake, but they’d be wrong.
Ushahidi is a crisismapping tool that was developed in response to election violence in East Africa, and called for people to anonymously witness, or testify about that violence. Volunteers in the US and abroad stood up a Ushahidi instance in response to the earthquake and got the word out to have people text information on the disaster and response on their mobile phones.
Each of those text automatically populated an open-source map showing the places where help was most needed. Volunteers from around the globe worked to standardize the incoming information (multiple texts about the same thing can provide a significant amount of information) and forward that information to response organizations in the field.
Patrick Meier, the head of Ushahidi, found that the very best in the world found the work these volunteers were doing was making a difference, and at times, found the Ushahidi maps to be the most effective triage tool they had.
This is the timeline for reporting on the crash-landing of Flight 1549. Two minutes after the plane touched down, there was a mention of it on Twitter. Three minutes later, the first image of the crash (on the previous slide) was posted. In the same minute, FDNY launched their first response vehicle, a boat to assist with passengers. Three minutes later, the iconic photo above was posted to Flickr. After that, the mass media began to report on the crash. The FlightStats website, which purports to show where planes are in their flight paths, didn’t update until more than an hour post-crash, showing the plane somewhere over southern Virginia. Google Trends, a supposedly real-time search tool, didn’t have a single mention of the crash, which was dominating mass and social media until after 5pm, an hour and a half post-crash.
H1N1 was the first time that the federal government really embraced social media as a huge piece of it’s public information campaigns, especially around a health topic. The Twitter account, BirdFluGov, was the primary (as in first, not most important) way breaking news was disseminated. But the really cool thing was the use of YouTube by the CDC. They posted videos of every press conference, every interview. They posted videos with talking heads (like this one) about the virus, about prevention, about care. They posted videos on the correct way to don and doff an N95 mask.
Ushahidi was also used for the earthquake in Japan. You can see the difference in the huge number of reports, compared to the Haiti response, presumably because of the much better connected populace. The middle chart demonstrates the insane amount of posts on the earthquake. The darker shaded area, right at the spike, is the earthquake. While it was happening, 12% of all tweets in the world were coming from Japan, presumably about the earthquake. Communications were so affected in the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami and meltdown that the State Department was reduced to communicating with US citizens in Japan via social media and other tech tools.
See second movie on http://blog.twitter.com/2011/06/global-pulse.html
The very definition of how information flows in an emergency has fundamentally changed. No longer does something blow up and we, as responders, craft a response then tell the media about it for distribution to the public. Now, the first people who learn of a disaster is the public. They tell us about it. And the media and each other. Generally at the same time. It is impossible for us to control any disaster story anymore. By the time we’ve found out that something has happened, the media is already crafting a story, based upon how the public is talking about it.
A growing number of emergency managers are realizing that social media can be a significant impediment to our response efforts. They understand that we control what happens inside of that red circle, but everything else outside keeps spinning. People video the disaster and response, they create conventional wisdom and circulate it to their friends and families, all outside of our control. But if we could monitor those conversations, keep tabs on what’s happening, without adding to the burden our poor PIO already has, we could help to correct that conventional wisdom, drive stories and stop problems before they get out of control.
The first test of this concept was conducted at the 2011 National Emergency Managers Association Mid-year Conference. This group of emergency managers organized a one-day event that was all about introducing social media to the emergency managers at the Conference. To support the effort, both technologically (making sure that the Skype and other live-streaming video and audio stayed up throughout) and in terms of monitoring the online conversation around the world.
More about barcamps, crowd-driven, etc.
But the big test of VOST came last summer, when a wildland fire started up by Shadow Lake, on Mount Washington, in Oregon. While the fire was of little danger of affecting the public, it rapidly grew out of control. The federal Incident Management Team’s PIO wanted to keep an eye on social media, so she activated the nascent VOST to support the official response. 15 emergency managers from around the world conducted targeted searches and monitoring around the Shadow Lake wildland fire and reported back to the PIO on what the internet was saying, providing situational awareness to the Incident Commander.
At one point, the VOST found a tiny little blog had posted a blog post on the ORFire teams using a tiny little bridge to get to an area to stage resources. The blogger snapped some photos of the trucks, and complained that, while the truckers were placing themselves in danger from using this historical, rickety bridge, they risked damaging a key thoroughfare that the local used. In hours, the VOST identified the blogger, and connected them with the IMT PIO, who coordinated with the Operations and Planning Sections to ensure that no more trucks used that bridge. While this situation may have stopped at this tiny, completely unheard of blog, the complaints may very well have gone viral and generated significant public outcry directed at the response for their tone-deafness and heavy-handed approach. Being forced to deal with this outcry would have undoubtedly taken the IC and PIO away from their primary goal, fighting the fire.
When you can’t handle the crushing overwhelmingness of social media in a disaster, you succeed by activating VOST.
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyMdOT8YJgY
This is the newly minted PDPH joint information system. You’ll notice here that fulfilling the Information Gathering role is the PMRC-VOST team. Once constituted, they will provide all media monitoring for the official response, and report directly to the JIS. The designated Team Leader will function as the Assistant PIO.