 OK, so I think we're ready to start. I'm very happy that some of you made it to this room today and this session, despite it being one of the last ones of the conference. My name is Maria Vaghetto. I'm the Business Development and Marketing Team of Cloud and Heat Technologies. We are a provider of cloud services and cloud technologies in Dresden in Germany. And our solutions are based on a technology stack that goes from the physical infrastructure with cooling solutions and through the software stack for clouds. And we are very much focused on energy efficiency and also on digital sovereignty. And it's precisely about digital sovereignty that I want to talk about today. I'm actually here representing Alaska. It's an organization, an association that has been founded very recently. So we are active since 2023. And it's been founded by seven members in Europe with the goal of fostering digital sovereignty. So Alaska stands for Alliance for Sovereign Cloud Infrastructure. So the C in Alaska, we write it with a C instead of with a K is for cloud. That's the reason for the title of this presentation. So I want to talk today about why we founded Alaska and the activities that we have in the association. And before I talk to you about what we do, I would just like to briefly explain the situation that we started with and why we decided to found Alaska. So I think I do not need to convince you that the potential of cloud technologies is massive. And every day, more and more things are happening in the cloud. Every day, more and more organizations are moving to the cloud. And it is not free of challenge for everyone. So often, organizations are experiencing that moving to the cloud implies accepting a certain dependence from some firms, some technologies, and even sometimes of specific geographic regions where some firms are active. So for example, from the European perspective, we know that if an organization chooses to rely on the services of companies that are in the USA, for example, then the cloud act might overrule some of the data protection laws that we have in Europe. And not everyone is fine with that. So what we want to do or where we see a problem is sometimes the lack of alternatives or the lack of alternatives that are easy to implement or that are easily to rely on in the cloud. So this is one of the issues that we saw before starting the organization, the association. And then another issue or maybe more of a catalyzer to the foundation of the organization was an open source project that we had. So it's called Yauk. Maybe some of you attended the presentation today earlier on by Stefan and Robert. And it's an open source project that was started by Stack It and Cloud and Heat in 2020 and it's open source since 2021, I believe. And basically I won't say too much about the project. It's a Kubernetes-based lifecycle management tool for open stack clouds. And we had this question of how do we guarantee a governance model for the project that is open and that guarantees that it will be developed further? And this was a catalyzer for the creation of Alaska, which is an association for operational open cloud infrastructures. You see here the EV, that's the German legal form for our registered association, which guarantee that we had a sort of legal form in which we could find a governance model for Yauk and also to do some of the activities that we thought would be necessary to continue contributing to digital sovereignty in Europe. So what we did was, there was an assembly in September 2022 between the seven members of Alaska. Here you can see the list of the founding members. It's in alphabetical order, Cloud and Heat, Cyprus, D3TN, D-Nation, Secunet, Secustack and Stack It. And the seven members met in Dresden in the headquarters of Cloud and Heat in September and decided to join forces to pursue these objectives together. And so this organization, sorry, are sometimes competitors in specific areas, but despite this, we decided that it would be, it's necessary and it's a good thing to join forces and to continue pursuing this way. So a little bit of bureaucracy after, so German bureaucracy is not the easiest one. The association was finally founded in December 2022 and officially active since January this year. And the vision of the association is to achieve digital sovereignty for Europe. And I've written here beyond because we are very much coming at it from an European focus, so taking into account the European values, the European legislation, the concerns of European organizations, but of course we are more than happy if what we do for Europe has an impact beyond Europe as well, so it's not close. It's just more of the focus on where we're coming from with this association. And yeah, I think the past years have shown that dependencies are not good. So we've seen with war on Ukraine, for example, dependencies from gas from Russia and so on. So if we are not, or if we see that that's a problem, then it's also a problem maybe to have dependencies in other sectors that are very much dependent on the cloud such as healthcare, finance, and public administration. So basically everything, every sector is affected by this. So it's not about really demonizing hyperscalers or their offers that they have, it's just about making sure that we promote or we enable and we facilitate other alternatives so that there is a freedom of choice. So that companies have a freedom of choice when they want to use cloud services. So these are the pillars of Alaska's mission. So we have three main pillars. One of them is to contribute to the development of open source technologies and also to promote their use. So develop them and also make sure that they're really as much used as possible. Then the contribution to education, both professional and more in a wider sense, and the creation of an open and inclusive community. So now I would like to walk you through each of these missions and show you what activities we have already started and those that are planned for the future or that we are thinking about for the next months. In terms of open source technologies, well we want to support the development of open source. We focus very strongly on what we've called irreoperability, so making these technologies as ready to use as possible so that they can have a wide acceptance in the community. And of course to provide also a framework to guide the development of these technologies and to offer some guidance into how to govern them and to continue improving them. And now we are focused on Yauq, which is the first project of the association and as I mentioned one of the catalyzers of its creation. But in the future we would like to onboard new projects. So now we're working on defining this process for onboarding new projects. So how would projects be submitted? How would they be evaluated? We want to be able to cover a broad set of projects so maybe different maturity levels. Maybe projects even that are not open source yet but want to make a move into the open source. So we're working on that and we hope to publish this as soon as possible. And this is something that we are planning for the future. Then the next area of Alaska's mission is education. So what's clear is that the use of open source technologies and the technologies that we think can foster digital sovereignty is very much linked to the ability of individuals and organizations to implement them. So that's why we want to have an impact here too and create a room for opportunities for organizations and for individuals to learn more about these technologies. We want to cater to people with different levels of knowledge. So not only the experts in IT open source, so maybe also people that have no previous experience with open source or maybe people that have different technical levels but might be also interested in understanding how these technologies might affect to their lives and digital sovereignty as a whole. So we have our current activity now. It's the Alaska Tech Talks. I will let you know a little bit more of this in the next slide. And in the future, we would like to expand a range of activities to cover other groups. So for example, the Tech Talks are very focused on people that have a good technical background and are usually very knowledgeable on open source and so on. So we want to expand this with other offers. And we also want to offer certification services. So to make sure that for the technologies that are part of Alaska, like Yaouk right now, that we offer the opportunity for people to get certified and therefore to have a better understanding of technologies and be able to prove that they know this. So that's some of the activities that we have plans in this area. And now I would like to share a little bit more in the Alaska Tech Talks, because this is maybe something that could be interesting for some of you. The Alaska Tech Talks are a platform that we initiated in January 2023 with the idea that it would be good to have just a room to share and to discuss about experiences that people have, the organizations have with implementation of specific tools or maybe projects that they've started or ideas that they have to solve some of the challenges that we have in the cloud. So within the scope of Alaska, so everything that contributes to openness, to sovereignty and to performance of God infrastructures, we want to hear those projects. And these meetings are held on the last Thursday of every month in the afternoon in the Central European time. And they're open for everyone. So everyone can join us as an audience. They're just very easy to join. And we also want them to be open to everyone who wants to present something. So of course we will take a look at the project and see if it fits the scope of Alaska. But we want this to be an open room for discussion and to learn more about technologies. We've had five Tech Talks so far since January and we've covered different topics. Some of the talks were held by people that are members of the Alaska Association. Some of them were done by other participants or other organizations in the extended Alaska community. We've had talks on Yahoo! We've had talks, for example, on the sovereign cloud stack. We've had talks on network topics, on cluster API, for example. The last one was on XOS and how it can contribute to cloud. So a wide range of topics. And so if you think this is maybe interesting to you, then what we do always is we record these talks and we upload them on the YouTube channel of Alaska so you can have a look at that and maybe watch other talks and see if it's interesting for you. We also have a calendar on the Alaska website so that you can stay informed of future Tech Talks. And yeah, finally, we have another pillar which is community. And we want to be able to build a community that's open and inclusive and this means several things. So for instance, it means building a strong network between the members of Alaska but not only between the members of Alaska also between the contributors to the different projects that are hosted by Alaska and also once we have more projects in the future between those projects that are part of the organization. That's one part of it. So it's more of the internal communication and community, but then we also want to be in touch with the rest of the open source community. So that's why I'm here today presenting this at the Open Infra Summit and we want to be in contact with all the organizations, all the foundations that are working in the same areas and also the organizations that are contributing to open source that have maybe similar projects and they are working on moving forward digital sovereignty too. And we have different activities here so as I said before we are very much focused now on the communication so we are started with newsletters for the members and so on and also sharing beyond the borders of Alaska. We want also to lower entry barriers to the association and to the project. So we want to make sure that for example new contributors to the projects are easily onboarded, that the entry barriers are not so high and also that people that maybe are not so experts in specific fields or the open source world in general can find a way to us and can also find support from us. And to another activity that we have for example is we are planning a round table at the end of June with representatives from public administrations and from private companies and we want to discuss digital sovereignty. So this is a bit in line also with the other missions that we were discussing before so raising awareness for the importance of digital sovereignty and so on. And in the future we would like to organize other events too for example like hackathons or maybe small conferences and so what people can meet and share. We also want to create working groups for technical aspects but also for aspects that are not technical so everything else that's needed for the community to thrive and grow. I've seen in many of the discussions that have been held this week here that this is a concern for many of us and we also want to contribute to that and to provide more resources and information so that people can be informed and can have access to the kind of information that they need to move more into the open source area maybe or to continue their path there. So with this I'm almost finished. I just have a slide here to maybe share with you some ideas on what your role in Alaska might be if you're interested. So if you're a little bit curious of what we're doing then the first thing is to do is to visit our website and to visit maybe our LinkedIn account and follow us so there you can find more information about what we're doing and stay tuned to what we're going to do in the future. You can also take a look at our YouTube channel. So as I said before we upload there all the tech talks that's for the time being the content that we have on YouTube but it might be interesting for you too to see what we're doing and you're also very welcome to join the next tech talk which is on June 29th and StackIt will be presenting a topic there related to Kubernetes, Gardner Kubernetes. So please feel free to join if, well depending on where you're based this might be difficult for you or not. So we started at 2 p.m. Central European Time so if you live in Vancouver that would be maybe a hard time but yeah you're welcome to join us. And then if you are a little bit more than a little bit curious then maybe some things that you might consider to would be to present your project in the next tech talks. So just send us an email and we will make sure that we find a slot for you to present your project. We're also open for new members. We have currently seven members, the seven founding members but we have already received from other organizations letters to join the organization, so the association. So please feel free to check whether it's interesting for you to become a member and what you have to do that's in our website. If you're unsure just send us an email. And if you have an open source project and you need some form of support with that please let us know too. So we still are working on the process for onboarding new projects but we are happy to hear from your projects if you have anything in mind. So here you can find all the contact details of our organization, our association. Alaska.cloud is a website and this is the email address is hello at Alaska.cloud. We're very happy to hear from you really. We're open to anything that you have to say and share with us. So please feel free to do so and as I said before follow us and link it in and watch the YouTube. And with this I'm finished and I am very, very happy when you have questions. Yes. Thanks for the presentation. I'm actually from Alaska so it's interesting to see this organization. But the, a lot of the European initiatives around personal data, right? GDPR case in point. They're groundbreaking, right? But they have international implications, right? There's the requirements that the European Union has put upon developing countries to pass a legislation similar to GDPR in order to continue trading with the Europeans. And in those cases they, you're talking about countries with really underdeveloped infrastructure that don't allow people to exercise their GDPR rights. Review, come take down for GDP forgot whatever the 14 or 16 rights are. So in effect when Europe takes a lead on things it has very strong international reverberations and echoes in places where effectively those, the copycat laws that you're out like African countries passed they introduced digital inequalities in those societies. And it's not intentional, right? I think the justification was like well at least they have the law in the books. But if for 10 years, 15 years their level of internet access is not gonna reach the level of Europe then there's 10 or 15 years of precedent of digital inequalities like rights on paper but rights you can't actually exercise. So I just wanna like understanding why Europe wants to have digital sovereignty. But by the way it's another precedent that authoritarian countries use to, they argue it's for digital sovereignty but they actually want to be able to control and have visibility on the data of citizens to act in more authoritarian ways. So like it's another unintended consequence of that. So I wonder if the orientation of the organization should maybe if you would deprioritize technical solutions and prioritize non-technical solutions. I mean you mentioned them but it seems like you talked about a prototype with a sled dog. Yeah, yeah. So I just wonder if like as a European based organization you might consider adopting the non-technological best practice stuff much more significantly than the technological solutions because you play such a leading role in these issues. Yeah, well thank you very much for the suggestion and the comments. So I think of course that's something that the technological part is only a part of it and I know it sounds like it's very important and we think it is. So it's important because we need this technical solutions to be able to offer alternative so that we can guarantee this freedom of choice. So that's a bit of the logic behind it but we're of course we're also going to be working on other things and are currently working on other things that are not so much or so technical. And what I think it's very interesting that your comment because we tend to look at the other regions of the world that maybe are exerting sort of a dominance from Europe but maybe there's the other side of the coin like what Europe is doing to other areas that we're not so much focused on. So that's an interesting point and I think that's something that it's worth taking into account especially when we even if we have this strong European focus we also try to see that the effect that we have is also beneficial to other areas. I want to understand, I see some overlap maybe with the Open Infra Foundation especially with the opening of the Open Infra Foundation in Europe, the European hub. And so maybe for the things like the big politics are more related to Europe and specifically I can understand the point what I don't really understand is like the hosting of projects like Yahoo! And I asked a similar question in the Yahoo! talk earlier like why is Yahoo! not like hosted as part of the OpenStack projects within the Open Infra Foundation where they already all the tooling and all the legal framework and so on I think. So why do you want to have yet another foundation to host open source and cloud related projects when there is already like an open foundation for example? Yeah, so before we founded Alaska there were talks with the Open Infrastructure Foundation to host Yahoo! And there were some mismatch between the expectations of both sides. So it's not like it wasn't considered it was just the alignment wasn't good there. I wasn't involved in those discussions because it was before I joined so I cannot tell you specifics on that but it was something that we checked at the time and it didn't come to a good at the end and also an advantage that Alaska has it's I mean of course what you said and what I've said before so it's this European focus and it's very lean so it's now very easy to us also to implement certain activities that we have. So it has also this sort of lean structure that helps us to canalize some of the energy that we have and some of the ideas that we have and it's very easy to do that. So it's both parts I mean it's also it's not and we are very happy to be here. Many of the members of Alaska or some members of the Open Infrastructure Foundation so it's many of the objectives are aligned so there's no question on that. It's just another vehicle maybe that's maybe closer to our everyday lives and our everyday sort of scope where we move that allows us to be more active in this area. Are there any other questions? Okay so if you have any questions afterwards then just come to talk to me or to us and we're happy to provide you with more information and thank you very much for being here and for listening thanks.