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IEEE SA interview questions
What is the problem or issue you are seeing in your field and region that ties back to the mission of “Connecting the Unconnected”? (3 minutes)
The challenge is to enable rural data participants to take data ownership for themselves while adapting ever evolving Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). As computing and communication infrastructures become cheap enough, rural residents, such as farmers and villagers, need to operate these “cheap enough” technologies for themselves as they acquire more data in the process. In other words, bootstrapping rural communities to become self-sufficient ICT-empowered communities is the objective. In contrast to this objective, data created in rural areas by farmers and villagers who do not participate actively in industrial world might have their data taken from them and being utilized to primarily profit data technology operators. In designing a solution for them, I formulate the project as a knowledge-transfer process. I also realized that it needs to go beyond technologies. I am tackling this issue by providing a tailor-made software solution( based on MediaWiki), and the digital knowledge content specifically designed to facilitate the use of the technical solution, MediaWiki as a Knowledge Container.
I came to Bali, Indonesia, in 2020, for setting up a new university campus that helps enable digital transformation in South East Asia. Bali’s ICT infrastructures is not superb, and should qualify as a rural area. I observed a strong demand of ICT for local farmers and villagers. In Bali, access to smart phones and 4G+ connectivity is available across most of the island. There are areas that have weak signal coverage, but it can be complemented by Wifi Mesh network when necessary. Therefore, the connectivity issue is not about signal delivery, but in terms of technical content knowledge. For example, locally organized community programs, such as farmer cooperatives that delivers food to low income people, and “Plastic Exchange”, which mobilize villagers to clean up plastic for exchange of rice purchased from philanthropical donations have already had significant momentum.
Local community organizers, through existing cultural and administrative network, called the Banjar system, are very skillful in mobilizing their community. These organizers know the importance of using smartphone could help them scale-up logistics problems. The general population in Indonesia has been exposed to local versions of Amazon/Alibaba, as Gojek and Grab. The locals already use Gojek and Grab smartphone apps to delivery food, sell globally sourced goods, and even provide transportation services. However, these apps are closed, they cannot be opened up to support community efforts that do not involve “profit-oriented transactions”. Therefore, even local people already knew the need to use ICT, they cannot afford a technology development team to tailor-make solutions that will address their local needs. Even after they have organized a significant community program, in hundreds of farms and thousands of families, all their operational data are stilled collected by hand. The lack of a systematical approach to collect and present their operational records reduces their operational capabilities to scale up and present their cases for social benefits.
The organizers of these social programs already know that they need data/ICT solutions to manage their program logistics. Although, these programs don’t require sophisticated ICT infrastructures, having people who can deliver a generally applicable solutions that has a low-entry barrier for many of these programs to is not readily available. Moreover, without ICT-enabled data infrastructure, the program coordination and scalability will be limited by their ability to present their overall impact. On top of these functional concerns, these data infrastructure are all based on grass-root efforts, there, they need to demonstrate data trust-worthiness, so that they can justify the credibility of the accomplishments.
How long have you been involved in this area/industry/focus and what role do you play in IEEE SA programs/activities (if any)? (3 minutes)
I have been working on this particular technical solution in Bali for about 4 months. Initially, I was trying to work with IEEE SA to organizing some “hackathon-like” events to develop certain solutions. I soon realized that I must first provide a technical infrastructure and an online-platform to get everything moving. Otherwise, volunteered participants would not have sufficient guidance to identify ways to contribution. Therefore, I decided to develop the foundational software, based on MediaWiki and Docker to kickoff the project. Overtime, I also found some Web-based QR code solutions can be combined to deliver an initial proof of concept. I also had been coordinating with the local community organizers to understand their functional requirements.
As I talk to these local communities, I realize that the same problem exists for almost all non-profit organizations, including regular educational institutions that need open source technologies to package and deploy their own data assets. Therefore, the MediaWiki-based solution can cover a very significant use case. That means, it is possible to create a generally applicable solution platform that would support many social functions without having these organizations to reinvent the wheels from scratch. After doing similar work in the educational arena, I realized that just using existing open source solutions is not sufficient, because the main features of these open sourced solution may not have a direct or explicit guideline to enable its users to be aware of these solutions. On other hand, how to have a highly concise, yet easily adapted to many fields of applications would greatly expand the impact of existing solutions.
I have been talking to IEEE SA personnel about what I am doing here. I also talked to Indonesian’s central government about the need to leverage the expat talent and global technical supply chain to enable solutions to be delivered to these local communities. In fact, a program dedicated to create a Future Center of Knowledge of Indonesia is being presented to Indonesian President’s office. The goal is to co-host the Center of Future Knowledge with IEEE SA’s special office in Bali. We hope that this office of IEEE SA would be able to introduce global talents and technology solutions to this part of the world.
- How can IEEE SA support to address these challenges in connecting/broadening availability/access?(e.g. awareness of issues, development of Infrastructure, new policies, resources, etc.) What SA programs/activities support work in this field? (3 minutes)
As I investigate the needs from a rural data sharing and presentation viewpoint, I realized that existing technical terminology used by software engineers and technology standards bodies may not be understandable by rural area people. I invented a new set of vocabulary to explain why “Data is the Asset” to local people. I classified data assets into three categories, Page, File, and Services, as the three types of building blocks that enable local communities to share their data assets. Web Pages are managed by MediaWiki for presentation, version controlled Files are time-stamped Data Containers, and online Web Services can be monitored using local or global networked monitoring tools to assess the quality of services (QoS). By explaining these ideas to local community leaders, they seems to be able to accept these terms and start recognizing the value of their own data in these terms. These building blocks would be understandable by average community organizers, and technically meaningful to software developers and service providers. I believe that IEEE SA can help organize a concise technical vocabulary that is understandable by lay-man, so that we can use this to broaden ICT awareness and offer a globally accepted conceptual framework to disseminate data and knowledge containers using open source technologies and interfaces.
In other words, I believe that IEEE SA could lend significant amount of credibility and global influence to help rural communities to engage in this global data sharing and management movement. By organizing short, recorded seminars and tutorials to set up operationally useful software and succinct, intuitive vocabulary that relates to their daily data exchange activities. At the same time, identify secure, yet user-friendly solutions to ensure data privacy and data security. These are the intellectual infrastructure issues that could be supported by IEEE SA.
By having various online and offline examination or review boards to “certify” or to “test” the data security and service reliability claims of these data providers would also be a possible service that IEEE SA could help in the domain of policy enforcement and resource verification/validation.
How can folks get engaged in your IEEE SA projects/activities? (1 minute)
As an instructor in a university, setting up a new kind of institution in the era of the pandemic, I believe that the world would need a new way to enable all people to learn about data technologies. Having habit of sharing data through trust-worthy Pages, Files, and Self-Provisioned Services, could be a necessary skill set. Therefore, to get engaged with my work in onboarding people to this rural data movement, I suggest everyone to study the design rationale of Wiki, and how MediaWiki, Wikipedia, and many other Wiki derived artifacts and organizations inspires many modern data sharing movements around the world. I am also inviting everyone to join force with me to develop the tutorials and software packages, to be hosted on http://thewiki.live, so that installing and managing a personally operated knowledge container would be as easy as possible.
EuMuse – Mindful Music Listening Program
The two most prominent tools that we have as conscious beings – our attention and our intention, combined determine the quality of our listening experience. There is no listening in the future and there is no listening in the past thus mindful listening helps us to consciously accumulate present moment awareness.
Listening is an active response to the phenomena of sound; it focuses in on certain sounds to the exclusion of others. It involves the will as well as a neurological process. Conscious application of music - mindful music listening i.e. having music in our life by choice and design is a skill attained through the same deliberate practice as any other pursuit of human excellence.
How to Listen Mindfully?
It is simple to do and does not require much effort on your part, even if you practice it for just 5 to 10 minutes a day. Here are few tips to help you listen with focused mind:
- Dedicate time to listen: Usually the act of listening music is accompanied by other tasks like driving, cooking, cleaning, talking to friends, reading a book, etc. But just like meditation, mindful listening would require you to create space for the act of listening, dropping all the other things. A silent place or a place where you will not be disturbed, is preferable. If there are external sounds, it is okay, stay calm and focused.
- Witness: Often we miss the real essence of listening to music and slip into the semi conscious world of listening. In this step we will stop and witness the music composition, paying attention to the melody, rhythm, dynamics, emotions, and/or memories that music triggers in us.
- Notice your emotions: Notice how you breathe. Notice the movement in your body. Notice your feelings – are you feeling happy, sad, excited? Are you feeling the urge to listen more?
Process:
- calm down your mind and body – come to quiet for a minute
- be (remain) perceptive to new impression
- feel the music – surrender to the music – be open - let it surprise you
EuMuse Music Modules
- Relax
- Energize
- Focus-Learn
- Create-Reflect
- Exercise
- Uplift-Change your Mood
- Strengthen the Healing Process
- For Babies and Expecting Mothers
- Expand your Sonic Horizon
Extension:EmbedVideo[2]
Note that using the '#ev' tag, one may specify 'start' and 'stop' time points. {{#ev:youtube|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cPchmU-pB4%7C%7C%7C%7C%7Cstart=200&end=215}}
Using the '#evt' tag, specify the dimensions of the video. {{#evt: service=youtube |id=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAORm-8b1Eg |dimensions=200 }}
Math Typesetting
3D Data in json format
DynamicPageList
[3] :
Locating the Table of Content (ToC) using the Magic word
References
- ↑ Anonymous MediaWiki Manual Editors, Manual:Extensions, Last Access: March 27, 2021, https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Extensions
- ↑ Alexia E. Smith (Alexia E. Smith), Andrew Whitworth (Whiteknight), Jim R. Wilson (Jimbojw), and Mohammad Derakhshani (Mderakhs), Extension:EmbedVideo, Latest version 2.9.0 (2020-10-14), Wikimedia, https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:EmbedVideo
- ↑ IlyaHaykinson and Amgine, Extension:DynamicPageList, Wikimedia, last accessed: March 27, 2021, URL:https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:DynamicPageList_(Wikimedia)