 I'm Ezra Okenda. I'm one of the ambassadors, Iparaja ambassadors in Africa. We are trying to build an Iparaja community in Africa where we can share knowledge in and around the Iparaja ecosystem, the products it has to offer. So I'm glad you are here. Let's move for the introduction. You can mention your name, where you are from, your interests and what you expect from the community. Let's start off with Job. Well, thank you Okenda. Once again, I'm Job and I'm from East Africa. I love saying that because I just envision it as just one state. I'm from East Africa. I was born in Rwanda, raised in Uganda and I ventured into the blockchain space way back in 2020. I've been indulging in different aspects of blockchain and one of the specifics that I'm a blockchain educator and I've contributed to different protocols in different countries, speaking of Zambia, speaking of Kenya, Rwanda, Rwanda and Uganda. I'm glad that I began this journey with Iparaja and I've done something already with the Rwanda community. Last weekend, we had a small meet-up which was about the introductory part of Iparaja and blockchain to be specific and it was a successful one. So I'm glad that I'm on this one here as well and yeah, we can move it from here. Thank you. Yes, thank you so much, Job. Alvin, you can introduce yourself, say where you are from, what you expect from the community and stuff. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you, Kriali. Yes, we can hear you, Kriali. So I'm Alvin Kamera, I'm based in Kenya. I'm fairly new to the blockchain and Iparaja community. I'm still a student, so I don't know as much. So yeah, I'm very happy to be here. I'm glad to also be knowing that there are other people who are interested in the framework, in the Iparaja framework. But I'm very, to be fair, I'm very new, I'm fairly new. So I'm here to learn, I'm here to understand and indulge the rest of you guys and I'm proud to be here. Thank you. Thank you so much, Alvin. Welcome. I hope you have a chance to learn from those who have experience and also explore the Iparaja projects. They're quite a number, so feel at home and welcome. Akinde, you can introduce yourself. Hello everyone, my name is Yidu Akinde, but you can all call me ID, everyone calls me ID. I am based in Nigeria. I do have two decades of general software development experience and a little bit of blockchain experience until the end of that. We used to run I and a few other people, some of them from East Africa, West Africa, South Africa, used to run this Africa chapter previously, but it was shut down for some reasons that are in the past now. I'm happy to see this resurgence, this new renewed interest in having Iparaja activities in Africa because I believe that a good number of the automation and technological development opportunities in Africa might as well be done right. I think we have a unique advantage on the continent in the sense that if the other continents that have been properly industrialized could go back, if they were not industrialized like we are today, they would definitely be doing things the way we have an opportunity to do them now, rather than build a lot of centralized databases, they will be building a lot of decentralized databases, and so I feel that this is the opportunity for Africa. Iparaja also is probably the best position for business on the continent when you take out the obsession around crypto. I'm all for the adoption and the widespread education of Iparaja on the continent. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Aidee. Thank you for your wise words. So let's proceed. You can introduce yourself, where you are from, then we proceed. Awesome, thanks. Could you hear me? Really? Yeah, I'm Asante joining you from San Ibarajalam, Tanzania, and I have a significant background in blockchain technologies. I do a lot of community work here in Tanzania, and I'm very excited to see what everyone has planned for Iparaja in Africa. Thanks. Welcome. Thank you so much. Welcome. Sizwe, forgive me if I pronounce the names correctly. Sizwe, if you can hear me, you can introduce yourself, tell us where you are from. Yeah, sure. Hello, everyone. My name is Sizwe. I'm from South Africa. Yes, you have pronounced it correctly. I am a student. I'm doing research that involves blockchain. So that is why I'm also here because hence I was looking for blockchain-related topics or articles, anything, community, and then I came across this one. The main interest for me here in this community is that it is talking about hyperledger because when I was reading some of the articles, I've noticed that hyperledger is preferred if you want to develop maybe a private blockchain for an organization. So my area of research will be the pharmaceutical supply chain. So I would like to implement it on the pharmaceutical supply chain. So that is the main reason why I have joined this, so that I can get to understand who are other people who are working within the hyperledger. And I'm still new on this blockchain thing. I just got interested on it. So now I'm also keen to learn from you guys based on my topic. Thank you. Thank you so much. Welcome. I think I haven't left anyone out. So I think David can do a quick run-up of what hyperledger does, what the community is expected to do. Then from there, I can have a preface. Then we can proceed from there with questions and chat with forward. That's great. Well, thank you for that. And thank you for inviting me to this conversation. I've been looking forward to it. Let me show my screen really quick. Are you able to see my screen? Yeah. So as you said, Ezra, I'll do a little, a couple minutes on just what a hyperledger is. And then we can dive into what the topic is today. How do we restart activities, community activities in Africa? We could do, as ID said, there has been some past activities. I can review those quickly. And then we can talk about what the group may want to do going forward. But just as an introduction to hyperledger, it sounds like there's some people who are relatively new. So just to say a few words. The Hyperledger Foundation is part of the Linux Foundation. The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit organization that hosts open source communities. There's hundreds of communities that they host. You're probably familiar with some of them such as Linux itself or Kubernetes. The focus of Hyperledger is enterprise grade blockchain solutions. I'm showing here that some of the different projects on the website. As an open source community, everything is free, free to use, free to modify, free to contribute to. And that's the mission of the Linux Foundation. We want to make sure that important technologies are available for people all around the world to use and adapt, however, makes sense for them. So you can see, you may be familiar with some of these projects. Fabric is the oldest project. Pretty widely adopted. Bezu, a little bit newer than Fabric, but also we're seeing a lot of adoption. So this is part of what happens in the community. They're developers from all around the world who come together and work on different software projects as open source. But that's just part of what goes on. I mean, I heard there was a comment before about, hey, how are people using this? I'm interested in using this in pharmaceuticals, for example, or I'm interested in using this for supply chain. So another part of the community that we have activity around are people who are taking the software and trying to adopt it in a given industry. So these are our special interest groups. You can see we have a number of special interest groups around a number of different topics, healthcare being one supply chain, another one. You can see a number of different topics here, climate, public sector, et cetera. Just to click into one of those to show you, these are people who have an interest, a shared common interest who want to get together and collaborate around a theme. In this case, the theme being around adopting these tools in a given industry. But I think for our discussion today, we could look at this but just with a theme that's relevant for you. As an open source community, we really want people with shared interests to come together and choose to collaborate if they want to do that. And then my role as a staff member is to support those people who are collaborating. So if you want to come together and collaborate around a theme of regional adoption, instead of industry adoption, we could look at regional adoption, for example, how is this being adopted in Africa? That is certainly something that we could support you with. And that's something that we've seen. Let me show another link. And we've seen that happen in other parts of the world. What I'm showing right now is a map of the different hyperledger meetup groups in the world. You can see we have over 180 groups in over 80 countries. And in many cases, different parts of, you know, in different regions of the world, we have people choosing to come together and collaborate. So we have a very active community in Brazil, for example, they meet regularly. They, you know, the community members there prefer to have conversations in Portuguese, which makes sense. So they have, you know, they have this whole infrastructure that supports the people there to collaborate in ways that they want to collaborate. So they have regular discussions in Portuguese, events in Portuguese, both virtual and in person. And then they, you know, that's how they choose to collaborate. And we've also seen that sort of regional collaboration in India and Japan and other parts of the world. And, and as ID said, we had in the past, an active hyperledger chapter in Africa, where you could see the different, we have a number of meetup groups in different countries in Africa. And there was a time when we had people in each of those groups choosing to come together and collaborate on a regional level. But you can see this hasn't had recent activity. This was last updated in 2022. So I think for a variety of reasons, as ID said, you know, this group hasn't been that active recently. I think a big reason was the pandemic. We've seen a lot of hyperledger meetup groups all around the world go inactive because in the pandemic, you know, before the pandemic, a lot of these activities were in person. Obviously during the pandemic, we couldn't do that. So we saw a lot of meetup groups shut down. And now that we're kind of past that, it's really great to have conversations like this with people like you who are wanting to restart activities. So like I said, looking forward to this conversation, you know, you know, I think the situation that we see in Africa is really something we see across the world. There are a lot of meetup groups all over that are inactive that, you know, I would like to see restart. And it's really, you know, what makes a community work, what makes one of these meetups work are people like you who show up and say, Hey, I want to want to do an activity, I want to do a thing, I want to collaborate with others. So I'm really interested in hearing what your interests are, what you want to do with the community in Africa. If we restart things, what can I do to support you? So, you know, but that's my role. That's the community. You know, there are some pieces in place that we could use if we want to. So this is I'm showing the Hyperledger Wiki right now. This is a space in here. I'll drop the link so everybody can get to it. You know, you could see what's been done in the past, for example, and we could use this as a platform going forward. There's also, if we want to use it, we set up a mailing list for the Africa chapter a while back. Again, it hasn't been active recently, but, you know, it's something we could do. The community also uses Discord for real-time chat discussions if we want to use that. You know, this is all to say there's a lot of tools and support available that you can start using. So again, but I think it all starts with what are you trying to achieve? And then I could talk about what, you know, what's available to help you with that. So that's kind of a quick introduction. If you have any questions about Hyperledger general or about what's happened in the past or what other regional communities are doing, we could take a deeper dive into maybe what Brazil or India are doing. But, you know, I think there's some really good models that you could look at that you may want to consider for any activities you may be interested. But with that, I'll pause. Are there any questions or comments about any of that? And as I see that a couple of people may have joined recently if we want to invite them to, you know, introduce themselves, we certainly could. But I am, like I said, I'm just here to support. I'm really interested to hear what each of you want to do this year. And then we could talk about, you know, how I could help you with that. Yeah, yeah, sure. So I think we are going to keep the conversation open. So everyone feel free. So I think we are going to have a round again, where you can share what you think, what you have in mind. Then for those who didn't introduce themselves, when it's your time, you can introduce yourself. Let us know where you are from, what you expect from the Perigia community, or what you, any ideas you have in mind, then we can see. I think we can have a round that anyone can start then. From there, we can also take questions if you have any, then we can keep the conversation going. Yeah, that sounds great. If I have to say something, Ezra, is it fine for me to say something like a question or address some question? Yeah, please. Well, I'm here once again, and I'm glad up here. And I love the fact that David, you're here as well. So speaking of hyper ledger, like I said earlier, I had a meter plus weekend and was successful. And one important thing to note was for my community, because, you know, committees differ depending on where you are at. So for the Rwanda community, people are interested in blockchain to be specific, the entire blockchain as it is, it is something that is just coming up. Not so many people are so acquainted with it. And so different tags with that some different aspects of life are being looked at in different ways. So when we speak of hyper ledger to be specific, I found out that it is it is an interesting take that everyone would really want to work around with. So my question is, as I and Ezra say that we are ambassadors and represent hyper ledger to our communities. One of the questions that I had to address was job. If I'm to be spending time learning about hyper ledger, it calls me for a meet up and base. What is it going to happen after? What do I have to do? Why do I picture myself with hyper ledger? Why should I add this knowledge of hyper ledger to what I already know? Because the biggest number of those people who are Dave's work today is here. So my question is, so you David, if we were to form the hyper ledger communities, I understand that blockchain is really what you bring to table. It is a next change of value. You have to sit down, come up with something given your leverage and the power that the question is, are there any structures that you have as a hyper ledger foundation that are going to support these young communities that are going to be coming up? Are there some like mentorship programs that there is one I saw? I don't know, but it sounds like there is a criteria. I saw someone posting a meet up for that is going to talk about different mentorships. Perhaps you'll talk to us about that later. What are the benefits? Because many times people do get benefits. Unfortunately, to me, that's what it is like in my community. So I would love you to give us an introduction, okay, a talk that really gives us an in-depth understanding of the benefits of having these communities coming up in Africa. Because it is true, we are going to leverage it. Of course, we are going to use it. But if I should use the word intimate, intimate engagement with hyper ledger specific, thank you. Well, I think that's a very good question. And I think that's what makes a community work. This is entirely optional and something that people could choose to do or not. So my view on this is that people would choose to get involved in any community, not just an open source software related community, but any community, because there's a reason and a shared interest and shared goals there. So again, that's why for me, it really comes back to what are you trying to achieve? What are your needs? What are your goals? And then we could talk about how that aligns with other things that are happening in hyper ledger or other things that we could do to support you. But in general, I mean, I can talk about some of the support that's available. And we could see if that does map to things that are helpful and useful for you and things that you want to achieve. And we can talk about that now. But again, maybe we can also revisit that later. I am curious to hear what people are interested in here and what you are trying to achieve. And then after maybe we do a round of that, we could kind of go back and talk about, you know, other support. But in general, you mentioned, for example, a mentorship program, and that is something that hyper ledger does each year. I put a link to this meetup in the zoom chat. So every year there is a paid mentorship program. This is something where it's important to us, we want to make sure that people have an opportunity to learn how to contribute to open source. So this is a way where we take existing hyper ledger community members who are running a project or running a lab or running a group, for example, who want to work with somebody new to the community and help them learn about what's going on and have them do some work. So that is coming up. It is paid. There's a, you know, a stipend that's associated with this. And so if you want to learn more about that, you're welcome to join this meetup that's coming up in April, the application. If you want to take part in the program as a mentee, the application for that opens in early April. Right now we're in the process of having mentors who, you know, want to work with a mentee apply. So we add, we go out to people who are running projects or running a lab or running a group and say, Hey, if you want to be a mentor, and you have a project in mind, submit that. So we're in the process of doing right now. So I don't know what projects will be part of this year's mentorship program yet. But by the time we get to April, we'll have all that information. So if you're interested in that, certainly come to this event. Other sorts of support that's available, I put a link to this in the Zoom chat as well. But specifically for meetup organizers, what, you know, what we had talked about here about how there's meetups all across Africa and all across the world, we do have this meetup organizers guide. It speaks to the support that's available. A number of things that we can do, for example, you know, if you want to look through this, you certainly can. This is public, it's on the wiki, I dropped a link to it. So please, it's long. So I won't go through all of it right now, for example, but I'll touch on some of the points on this, you know, there are a lot of things that we could do. One, I think one of the biggest things we can do is really amplify what's going on, you know, if you want a platform to talk about what's going on, your expertise, your understanding, your knowledge, what you're trying to do, you know, Hyperledger does have, you know, a fairly large community where we can really get that out in front of people. You can see here, for example, our meetup community has over 100,000 people in it. If you look at, you know, what's going on on Twitter, we have, I can't remember the exact number, but, you know, tens of thousands, yeah, you can see here almost 80,000 followers. So I think that's one thing, you know, we can really amplify and get your voice out in front of a lot of people. When we've seen that for a lot of meetup organizers, that's been a big benefit, you know, they've really been seen as an expert in their region or as an expert in a certain topic. If they organize, you know, events and activities around a certain topic, you know, that really demonstrates that they have that knowledge, they have that expertise. So I think that is a big reason why a lot of people do run activities, not necessarily only meetups, you know, there's other things that we could do, you know, which speaks to, again, maybe what this group would like to do, you know, meetups is one thing that this community could do, workshops or hackathons are another training, you know, I'll give you one example. For example, the Latino America chapter did training in Spanish, because that's what they felt like was important for their community, you know, a lot of hyperledger activity happens in English and some parts of the world, that's not the preferred way of communicating, or that's not their preferred way of having information. So we saw that Latino America chapter come together and create training material in Spanish, and then they delivered that in a series of courses. So, you know, again, this really speaks to whatever it is that you're trying to achieve. You know, we could support you in different ways, but this is some general information about benefits and support that's available. I don't know if that answered your question fully, but that was some information. Thank you, David. Thank you so much. And again, if we want to go around in a circle, and I mean, I'll make some notes and share some things as I hear what people are interested in. But yeah, definitely curious to hear, I mean, what are your reasons for, you know, if you wanted to get involved in the community, what are you hoping to achieve by doing that? What are you wanting to accomplish? Yeah, I think we can do a go round, job went fast, as until you can go next. Then in that order, then after everyone has spoken, we can take them, then we'll be answered. Okay. Mine, I think, is actually something that's, you know, pointed out to be obvious. I feel there's, there's a lot of space for like capacity building. When it comes to like these technologies, it's relatively new. And there are also not very many people that even could develop it. So if we have more workshops and hackathons for people to get like, nice to do this, I feel that's something that we could have a lot of focus, you know. And for me, one of the things that's plus for me is, if I was to take part in this community, is to continue to learn. Learning is pretty fun to do. And when you're learning about cool stuff, relatively complex stuff like these UK groups and stuff. Yeah, I think capacity building is great. You know, I think that's, again, something we can certainly talk about. If you're telling me that capacity building is a goal for you this year, yeah, I think there are certainly things that we could do. We could, if there's a specific topic that you're interested in, we could collaborate to organize a workshop or, or, you know, there's a number of different things I think we could certainly do. So I think capacity building is, you know, I think a good topic to explore more. And if people are curious here, I'll drop a link to this as well. This is the list of past and upcoming workshops. You can see here, we've done a number so far in the past, and there's a couple coming up, but more planned. But if that's, again, if there are specific topics that you think it would be really relevant for you and the community there, you know, we can certainly talk more. Yeah, I think ID can go next, then we, that order ID. Okay, thank you, Ezra. I was actually going to raise my hand to say that, to add something to the comments about capacity development. So in addition to helping members, people who are on this call, and perhaps on future calls, people who are registered members of the community, right, the African Hyperledger community, in addition to helping those members increase their capacity, you know, help them acquire new certifications, new knowledge and certifications, I think that capacity development can also be an attraction, something that sells Hyperledger as a community to the rest of the general African community and helps to bring in more members. So I just want to drop that point in there. I think that it can be something that if perhaps there is an annual hackathon, okay, or a innovation challenge around blockchain, and the winning team of maybe maximum two or three gets, now I'm going on a limb here, David, please tell me what's possible and what's not possible. If all members of the winning team get some kind of full scholarship to get the, to get some kind of, you know, certification, both the education, both the classes and the certification fees for Hyperledger fabric, the zoo, you know, and any of the others, that sounds like something that we could really, really market, right? We could really, really sell that and say, guys, come participate, come participate, we could, all of us could go into the different campuses, university, and college campuses in our countries and make noise and people will come because there is the possibility to win a prize. So I wanted to drop that, but the other points I wanted to drop was I'm heavy into technology and talent development here in Lagos, Nigeria. I do a lot of work with young people, help them build skills and software development skills. So the idea of hackathons and innovation challenges, you know, just fitting to, fitting to how I would, I would like to see the community progress. Thank you very much. I see you open something, David, let's go ahead. Yeah, and I'll drop the link to this in the Zoom chat as well. But yeah, I agree with you. And this is an example of something that was organized by some of the regional chapters a couple years ago that you can see this is the Hyperledger Challenge 2022. This was organized in part by a number of different parts of the community. The India chapter leaders really drove this, they collaborated with a number of the chairs of some of the different specialist groups and you can dive in and kind of look through and see how they organized it and, you know, what was how it was structured and what came out of it. But yes, I mean, to your point, ID, this was very much an innovation challenge. And then there was a couple of rounds and then the winners. Yeah, we did. Absolutely. We, here, let me pull up the training page. We did provide information. Excuse me, let me get this for you too. We did provide some certificates, the opportunities to take, you know, some courses for free and take our certificates for free just to go through this quickly. We have many free offerings on our training page to start with. So this is if you drop the link, you can go to our website. There's a number of free online courses already. There are a couple of paid options, specifically there's an advanced course that has a small fee and then there's this certification. Currently, we have a certification for fabric and then we're putting together a certification for Bezu and those have small fees associated with them, mostly because there's some manual involvement. You know, we there's some costs associated with having somebody proctor those. So we just need to cover those costs. But yeah, so we gave some opportunities to take these exams for free to the winners, you know, and I think that was something that was really interesting to people and of value. And so that's certainly something we could do again, if that's of interest. Yeah, I think it's one of the things that our community is trying to support those who are joining, those who want to get knowledge in and around the appraiser and other appraiser products. So I think we can proceed to Alvin. Are you there? Alvin can put out a word. Yeah, I'm here. Am I audible? Yes, we can hear you. Yes. So for me, I can only speak in my capacity as a student. So as David was asking, maybe one of us would share why they would want to know Hyperledger. For me, I can speak as a student. During one of my final projects, I came across a challenge and I was supposed to come up with a system that, for example, in Kenya, there's an issue with land grabbing and those kind of issues where certificates are forged and you end up finding that a lot of you guys are doing, having the same certificates as pertaining land. And I came across Hyperledger and I tried to do, I tried to learn and build a project around it, but I was not successful. I found a lot of challenges. So I kept on trying and I remember if I'm not wrong, I messaged Ezra on LinkedIn asking for mentorship because I felt like I don't know, I don't see the learning process wasn't good enough, but I found challenges, especially with the Hyperledger fabric. So that's what I wanted to measure on. So that is why I want to learn Hyperledger because I feel like that's exactly, that project in itself would allow me to exploit that niche and help Kenyans. Let me say that quote-unquote, but yeah. So that's all I can say. Maybe I would like a better learning way where you get a hands-on. I don't know if the certification gives you that, but I would have preferred if there were like someone doing it, doing it from the start, from the get go, introducing you to Hyperledger fabric, more of like a teacher. Let me say that more of like a teacher and teach you how to do it. So yeah, that's all. Yeah, that's helpful. Thank you for sharing that. I mean, a couple thoughts come to mind and here I shared a link to the case studies. I mean, the good news is you're coming. The community is eight years old now. We just recently had an anniversary. So I think you have the benefit of learning about everything that's come, that's been done so far. So for example, if you have a specific use in mind, like I heard you say with land registry, you can come to our case study library. For example, look through all the different topics that already exist. There is one around land registry. For example, I think you can just learn a lot as a starting point about what somebody else has done, like that had a similar goal in mind. You can see these are in depth examples of what got built, why they built it this certain way, what benefits this group had and kind of that's a starting point on learning how to do a thing. But what I also heard you say is it's useful to have a teacher. So, you know, and we can do that. I think that's what our workshops are, you know, for example, but you know, and some of the trainings aren't that, you know, some of the many of the trainings we have are online self-paced. You kind of go through information on your own. I think a couple of things come to mind. Again, if there are specific topics that it would be useful to have more of a hands-on teacher-led experience, we could certainly talk about how do we work with you and the community in Africa to organize one or more workshops this year around a certain theme. Maybe it's land registry, maybe it's something else, you know, it's really up for the community to decide what would be valuable. Another thing that I've seen other parts of the community do is something that they've called a study circle, which is getting people together and it's more of a collaborative peer-led teaching experience instead of going through previous workshops or trainings or other material or tutorials on your own. It's really a group of people coming together and doing that together because there is a lot of material out there, for example. I mean, we do have all these past workshops. There are a bunch of tutorials. There are these learning, you know, those are these courses. So there's a lot of learning material there. But again, it might not be something that you want to do on your own. So that would be another thing for this community to consider. Like maybe you want to have a study circle where you invite people to come in together and learn collaboratively, you know, that's more peer-led versus teacher-led. So yes, there's a lot of things we could do. But those are some examples that I've seen happen in the past from other parts of the community that I think might be useful. Thank you so much. And I think next we can go to Cisway. Thanks, Ezra. Can you hear me? Am I audible? Yes. Am I audible? Yeah, I can hear you. Yeah. Okay, thanks. I would also like to also compare with Elvin. He was also a student who was attracted in blockchain. And then when I got interested, in fact, I learned about blockchain through cryptocurrencies. But then here in South Africa, I noticed that there were a lot of scams when it comes to cryptocurrencies in such a way that even blockchain, people don't understand it. When you talk about blockchain or anything that relates to Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies, they think that you are scamming them. So I had to come up with a way of understanding blockchain without involving cryptocurrencies. That's why now I told myself that I will have to do research that will relate or that will include blockchain. So that's where now when I was reading different articles, then I came across different blockchain applications whereby I also learned that there's hyperledger, then there's all this basal, the fabric, and different types of hyperledgers. So as I was also trying to get to understand this technology, I was struggling to get information that would enable me to develop maybe a blockchain app or anything that can be developed through blockchain. So that's where now I was looking for hyperledger causes. Then I came across this So what I'm expecting to learn, even though I'm not sure if this is what you are also expecting from us, but then for me, I was thinking that if I attend this, I will be able to connect with different people. I will be able to be guided in terms of where can I go if I want to develop what material do I need to learn. But I'm also getting that this is community. So I'm still I'm also still trying to think on how can I also contribute in this community because I have noticed that initially I was coming with a mind of coming and taking, because if I would come and learn, it's just for my personal gain for my study. But then I also noticed that in Africa this counterfeit of drugs is a real problem. So now I'm also thinking that how can I also expand beyond my studies, beyond just getting a qualification to also now contribute to African community because if this can help someone in South Africa, it means that it can also help someone in Tanzania or in Nigeria or any part of Africa. So that's where I'm still coming from for now, but then I'm still trying to learn this technology. I'm not a developer. I come from communication networks, but this is one technology that I have interest in. I can do anything to learn how to do coding or to do anything that relates to blockchain. Thank you. Well, that's great. Well, I mean, you said a number of things in there that I would like to respond to. I guess the first one being at the end, you said you're not a developer and I'm not really a developer either, and that's totally fine. There's all sorts of ways to participate in the community. Coding and being a developer is one of those ways, but there's many other ways. So for example, if you want to be somebody who organizes an event, you don't need to be a developer to do that. There's a lot of different ways to contribute in the community that doesn't involve being a developer. So that certainly is all sorts of skills and all sorts of interests. There are things that people can do in the community. Another thing to share is about telling the story. If you want to go out there and tell people the story about what hyperledger is, what blockchain is, how it's different from cryptocurrency, for example, we can help you with that. I mean, that's another way we can support you. If you want to go talk to a campus with students or if you want to go talk to an organization or if you want to go talk to whoever it may be, we have a lot of that material that we've created because we have to tell that story as well. So you could say, hey, I'm trying to have this conversation about this topic. Is there any material that already exists that we could make use of? And so yeah, absolutely. We have high-level presentations that talk about what blockchain is, what hyperledger is, how it's different from cryptocurrency, for example. So again, that's something that we could help you with as well. And then lastly, you would say, yes, absolutely. This is a community. You certainly, as an open source project, you certainly can show up and just use the code or use what's available. That's there. You can certainly use and consume that material. But I think to get the most out of this, I think collaborating and contributing would certainly help you get the most out of what you want. Because again, you could shape the community to do what you need. I think that's the beauty of an open source community and why it works for people. You can show up. A community is whatever the community members do. So if you want it, if you want the community to do a certain set of things, you could show up and make that happen. None of these projects that we looked at, the hyperledger staff doesn't tell developers what to do. Developers show up and say, hey, I want to work on this, or I want to work on that. And we support them, right? And the same with the activities. The staff doesn't tell anybody what to do and our role is to support. So when people show up and want the community to do a certain set of things, it's really those community members who are determining those activities, right? So I think that's how you get the most out of this. If you want the community to go in a certain direction, will you show up and move it in that direction, right? I think, I hope your questions are answered. Fadir, you can introduce yourself. I think you joined later. Then you can say what you do. Yes, yes. Hi. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, Fadir, we can hear you. You can introduce yourself. Okay. Tell us what you expect from the community and yeah, feel free. Okay. So hi, I'm Fadir, Adam Lina, and let's say I'm a blockchain developer, but currently I'm more focused on the community aspect in blockchain, web three specifically. So I'm in uni still, but apart from uni, I do keep myself out there attending various blockchain events and web three events generally. So as per now, what I can see this year, we are very much bullish. We are very much bullish on the blockchain technology as like, I can see like a much, much advanced since like last year, the blockchain, last year and before the years before the blockchain, the blockchain space and the blockchain community was still subtle and was slowly, was slowly, was slowly, was slowly growing. So yeah, but this year, we are expecting as in more developers and more people can come into the three space. So hyper leisure being in the blockchain space specifically. And I really wanted to be maybe recognized as the developers and maybe communities on as to how people can come and also build with hyper leisure, these frameworks and maybe they can come and bring a project that will impact the environment and the people at large. So yeah, one of the ways I see like we can maybe take, maybe you can maybe make hyper leisure vibrant in Africa for this case Kenya. Recently, as I've said, I've been involved in several events. So one of the ways is through maybe, maybe events, maybe hackathons, ideathons, just build a sessions. I think that will, it will be a little, it will be a little better and it will be it will bring about to a wider adoption in Kenya specifically. So yeah, so I expect or what I do believe can we can do maybe to leverage that maybe if you can host some several events, either virtually or preferably physically. Yeah, I think that will be, it will be, I think that will, it will be another way in which you can maybe grow the hyper leisure community in Africa is African Kenyac large. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And I agree. I mean, you know, I mean, a lot of what we've been talking about so far are things that are happening virtually. So for example, those workshops that I shared this meeting, this meetup itself is all virtual. So you're right, I think there is this mix in the community between the virtual online activities and in person activities and the group can certainly do both or really focus on one, you know, we see different regions and different groups focus in different ways. I mean, if they're, if the preference is to do in person activities, that's certainly great. You know, it's really again, up to you about what you think is giving me most effective. But you know, in terms of what's available, yeah, you'll see there is this mix of between kind of some virtual offerings and some in person offerings. Yes. I think we can go to John. John, are you in a position to speak? Yes. Hi, can you hear me clearly? Yeah, we can hear you. Okay, great. So maybe I'll just start by introducing myself. My name is Joanne, Jerry. I am a software engineer, but not a blockchain developer, but I'm looking to be one. So how I landed in Hyperledger is through the LFX mentorship program, which actually Hyperledger is part of and I participated in the last cohort. So it is a very good program. And honestly, I think all of us should apply to do one of those Hyperledger or even just any open source project under the LFX mentorship program. So the project I participated in is called Pablo. It's a project under the Hyperledger labs. It's basically a tool that operates Hyperledger fabric deployments. We do a lot of benchmarking using the Hyperledger bevel project as well. So that's how I ended up with Hyperledger. So for me, it was a very steep learning curve because I had to learn about Hyperledger fabric. I had never even used it before. I just knew there was something like Hyperledger fabric. But now, having to work on this project, I've had to actually really learn it. And even now, I feel like I don't really know it clearly because it's a very complex blockchain, according to me. So and I feel like a lot of us who have spoken, have talked about the need for capacity building and learning and all that. So because honestly, even my mentor was like, I know this is a complex thing, but let's just go step by step. And he was really, really helpful. And for that, I'm very grateful. But also in the mentorship program, we encourage to create more content like blogs, to speak at events, conferences and all that. And I feel like that's one of the things that could be very helpful in this community. If, okay, I came in late, I didn't hear everything, but I feel like there's a thing about us being ambassadors. And I feel like one of the things that we can do is create more content, maybe organize, speak at more events. If we can organize even physical meetups, whether for Kenyans, South Africans, wherever you are, even if it's like five people, it really helps with just building the community and getting to know each other. And also just sharing challenges and learnings and all that. So that's all the things I think can be helpful in the community. And then I like what one of us talked about innovation challenge or hackathons or something like that. I think that's a good idea as well. Considering we have students here in this, in this forum right now, I didn't actually know that students were interested in hyperleisure because I've gone for meetups for blockchain and web three. And most of the people I found who knew about hyperleisure are like people who are already in the industry, they're working. And I was like, why don't you guys use hyperleisure? And I feel like most of them were like, we gave up on it, it's too hard to learn. I even tried to bring the certification and I failed and I just gave up on it. So I figured I think a lot of people are giving up on hyperleisure because they're having difficulties learning it. So obviously now one of the things that I think should be focused is creating a strategy for more people to learn easily and even just have an easy, how do you put it, get to work on it easily. So I have a few ideas that I don't know if the hyperleisure foundation can support us. So something like the hyperleisure, what is it called? Hyperleisure Global Forum? Yeah. So I know the LFX, the Linux Foundation gives scholarships for people to attend, you know, the next foundation events. But I feel like it would be more useful if the hyperleisure foundation can maybe sponsor one person from the African community to attend one of these events, the international events. So we can also have someone coming back to teach us who is one of our own on what they learned, what is going on out there. But sometimes I feel like there's nothing much going on in terms of hyperleisure in Kenya or in Africa generally. Yeah. And also just for us who are here and those people who are interested in hyperleisure community, maybe we can find ways in which we can volunteer in different capacities to grow the community, whether it's organizing events, people creating content, people making noise on social media about hyperleisure, sharing case studies, any important things. I think that would be useful. Yeah. Also, I'm not sure if there's a platform like Slack or Discord that brings the hyperleisure Africa community together. If there's one, I'd love to know about it. But so far, I don't know. So I think it would be useful if we had that space so that we can have consistent communication on matters of hyperleisure within the community. Yeah. Thank you. Absolutely. Noah, thank you for that. I mean, there's a number of things you mentioned that I want to respond to. One, I'm glad you had a positive experience with the mentorship program. For anybody who didn't see this earlier, we talked about it at the beginning of the call, but I'll drop this again. We are doing our mentorship program again this year if you want to learn more about how to apply. This meetup that's coming up in early April will be a good place to learn more. If you can't make that meetup, again, the recording will be on YouTube. You could view it there. There's also information on the wiki about that. So yeah, everybody is certainly welcome to apply to that. You did mention about communication channels. Absolutely. I think that is a good next step for all of us to discuss, hey, if we want to continue the discussion after this event, where do you go? So there is this mailing list that was set up years ago. That may be something the group chooses to use again. So just be aware that's there. We do also use Discord in the community. Here, I'll get the link for where you can go to learn more about that. Here, sorry. If we want to use Discord, sorry. Let me go to the wiki. Sorry about that. I'll get the link here in a minute. But yes, there's a Discord. We do use Discord in the community. You're certainly welcome to, I think there's a, I'll double check. I think there's a channel there, an Africa chapter channel, but we can certainly use that. Here's the link. If you want to get on to a Discord server, this is the link you can use to get an invitation. And then once you're on there, you can talk to people across the community. There are channels for different projects. There's channels for different groups. You can certainly reach out to people. So if what I can do is to everybody who signed up to this event afterwards, I can send the link to the recording and then I'll also send a link to the Discord channel. And if this group wants to meet there and continue to the discussion, I think that would be great. And I think another point you had is around being able to travel to events, such as global forum. Yes, that's certainly something we can look at as well. What we do for all of our major events is offer some amount of travel support to people in the community so they can attend. We could potentially look at doing that as part of a challenge. You know, I shared earlier that the community has organized challenges in the past and part of the prizes has involved, for example, the opportunity to take an exam for a certification exam for free. We could also look to see if it's possible to have part of the prize be travel support to the next global forum. So those are all things we could certainly talk about. Thank you so much, John, for your question. David, much appreciated for your contribution. Ronek, you can go next. Ronek, are you there? Oh, yes. Yeah, I'm here. I hope you can be able to hear me. Yeah, who can hear you? Yes, my name is Rony Chimbugwe. I am from Kampala, Uganda. And just to give a brief about my journey with Hyperledger. So I get to find out about Hyperledger around, I think it was a year and almost a year and a half back. So basically, I'm in the blockchain space. I work for a company called CryptoSavana Limited. It's based in Uganda, Kampala. We are part of a group called Savana Group Africa. We deal, yeah, basically, we do blockchain, but through blockchain, we're able to do, there's an identity, traceability, and other things. So we were on, we're just challenged, that was a project that we're doing and we were challenged to come up with traceability solutions. But then we, there was, I started getting interested in private blockchain and one thing led to another, I found out about Hyperledger. So I learned, I read everything that I could. I think I've gone through most of the Hyperledger courses on Udemy. I don't know if it's me or not. Ronnie, I think you may have frozen. I don't know if other people are able to hear you. I think, I think it's Netwakish. I don't know. I think we can, Ronnie, we can't hear you. Ronnie, we can't hear you. Yeah, maybe, yeah, did we lose him? Maybe. Yeah, look how he dropped. So Adeolu, you can go next. Hi, everyone. Hi. Adeolu is my name, joining from Nigeria. I'm not new to Hyperledger and I'm not new to blockchain. So, but I have been tracking everything, blockchain Africa, everything that has to do with blockchain Africa for several years. I happen to be one of the pioneers of blockchain awareness in Nigeria, one of the leaders of the blockchain ecosystem in Nigeria. I am actually the chairman of the Blockchain Coordinating Committee of Nigeria. Coincidentally, I also work for the Central Bank of Nigeria and I was early in the research on blockchain and part of my effort to push for mainstream adoption of blockchain led me to Hyperledger. Sometimes in earlier in 2020, I think before COVID, when things were very much in the early stage and that's the 1920, 1920. So I've been following Hyperledger for a long time. I was even able to I was able to do some early research that made my organization to adopt the use of Hyperledger. So if you have been following the trend on the Central Bank digital currency, you will know that Nigeria is one of the few countries that has launched a Central Bank digital currency. And I mean, and also it's also interesting to know that the underlying technology we we employed a fabric, Hyperledger fabric is one of the the technology that CBDC writes on. So I've been very passionate about blockchain for so long. I happen to even be a cryptographer. I mean, my professional background is in cryptography. So I am very interested in the deep technical stuff. So but talking about blockchain in Africa, yes, I have participated in a lot of blockchain ecosystem. I mean, in both wrapping the Ethereum ecosystem in Nigeria and even several other public blockchain ecosystem. So but also being one of the few that has been exposed to the enterprise blockchain ecosystem like Hyperledger, I've been working with David here, trying to Did we lose him too? I think we lost him. And the order if you can hear us, we can't hear you. Yeah, I think David, you can answer. You can put context to what you're trying to say then. Probably you can proceed. Yeah, it looks like he did drop, unfortunately. Yeah, I mean, as he said, we have had some conversations. You know, they are, you know, he mentioned Central Bank digital currencies. Again, that's a topic of that. If the group is really interested in learning more, we could certainly look at that. Maybe we could do a workshop around what the Central Bank or Nigeria is doing, for example. You know, that's helpful. So I don't know what he was going to follow up with. I don't know if he was going to have any suggestions or anything to follow up with. But I think this points to how we want to really keep the discussion going. If people want to use Discord, for example, I think that's definitely move, you know, let's continue the conversation here. I think hopefully this is just an introduction to everybody and that will continue, you know, keep the conversation going and continue. And I see that Adulo did have a chance to rejoin us. Sorry, I'm not sure where I got disconnected. Yeah, no worries. I'm glad you could join again. And thank you for joining the call. Yeah, you dropped maybe a minute or two ago. Okay, I'm not sure what I said last, but I think I'm just happy to join. I mean, knowing that we have people from other parts of Africa that are also interested in this technology, I'll be glad to work with everyone and take things forward. I mean, all the conversations we've been having in making this happen in Africa. Thank you. That's great. Well, thank you for that. And yeah, when you dropped, we were talking about how I think it is really encouraging to see that a lot of people are interested, you know, different from different groups are interested in collaborating. So I think we definitely want to keep the discussion going. If discord works for you, we were just saying that perhaps we can move the discussion there. So I'll send an email around to everybody who signed up after this event ends today and talk about how we can keep discussion going on discord if that works for everybody. But yeah, thanks again for joining. And if you have specific suggestions or ideas, certainly please do share. And Ezra, I don't know, have we, is there anybody left who hasn't had a chance to speak yet? I think everyone has spoken. Yeah, I think everyone has spoken. I will speak then we can, you can speak, then we can unwind. Yeah. So thank you so much for everyone for joining. I think the community has been around for a while, just that we, we haven't been that active. And the first thing I want to put across is that it's an open community, meaning anyone can join, you can come with your ideas, you can share it with David and I, we are available for that. Again, again, also we last year, around last year, we, we, I think in 2022, we had training sessions where we were training on the introductory topics, which had a good turn up. To be honest, to say the run-cuff for the IPaRage ecosystem is in that easy because it combines a lot of programming languages, a lot of technologies which some, which some are new and you have to have like a background knowledge of, of a programming background knowledge for you to do the technical stuff. But they're also like, they're communities that are into ideation where you can meet very cooperative people, you can meet people who are willing to teach you to show you the way. As for me, I joined I think in 2021, where we, we, I was part of a team. I worked with guys, I was with the guys who worked with BESU. Also last year, I was with guys who are working with anonymous credentials, which is, which is a, which is a team that works with zero knowledge proofs. I think there are people who are in these projects who are willing to show you the way. With the resources staff, I think they are limited and I know the community is working so hard. I think one of the projects that I saw that are putting themselves forward is a project that looks to document their paregia ecosystem and try to put out their knowledge basis that can help new learners to learn, to, to interact with the community, with the ecosystem. And I think as time goes, as you can see now we have started, we will keep the momentum. We are going to have like training sessions where we can train, where we can train the ambassadors, the ambassadors can go out there and train their community members. Also, the, for countries that I think Rwanda, I don't know if Rwanda has a meetup group, I think you can, you can talk to, David can set you up, then you are able to create your community. Also about the physical meetups, I think there, we, we, we try to do a lot of effort to put together a virtual community because it's through the virtual community that you can have a physical meetup. So I think if you stay active and we, we, we are able to plan something, we can, we can plan that also. Yeah, I think for the start this is great and I'm happy that we, we are able to share our ideas. Looking forward to taking it to another level. Also feel free to join the Discord channel. We have an African chatter channel which is open to everyone who can join there. We, a lot of information is shared there. Also the upcoming mentorship program, say tuned, I think we will have a run up, a run up guide to, to the mentorship program because last year I was there. So if I take you through that and also you can have prior knowledge of what is expected from you because you are going to undergo a process for you to qualify for that. It's, it has limited slots, but also there's another program which is the internship program where you can join a project and you can also learn from there. David, I think one proceed. Yeah, so thank you for that. I mean, I'll just add a couple of additional thoughts before we wrap up. I mean, one, I've heard people talk about how these tools are complex and that's entire, that is true. But I would say if you haven't, if you looked at, for example, fabric or another tool in the past, you know, be aware that we've had a lot of growth in the community, especially around tools that make using the base platforms easier. So for example, the newest project that came into Hyperledger just earlier this year is called Web 3J. It's all about making Ethereum development much easier. There's other tools, Bevel makes deploying fabric easier, Firefly, for example, makes using, you know, the different platforms easier. So that could be an interesting to look at, you know, how to, we could have a whole event, perhaps around how do you reduce complexity around these systems, right? That's just, just throughout an idea, because I heard people talking about the complexity. But I would just say if you've looked at fabric in the past or Bayes in the past, and it felt like it was complex, take a look at the newest, take a look at this, you know, the website and see that there are some new, some more recent tools that have come in that you might find useful. And maybe we could do a whole, you know, learning session around those, you know, supporting tools, for example. And then I see on a different topic, I see Ronnie. Thanks, Ronnie, for being able to join us again. I see you talking about perhaps setting up a WhatsApp group, you know, if that's what the group wants, that's certainly, you know, something that you can do, you know, you may, you may have dropped when we were talking about it. The Hyperledger community does use Discord, you know, what I will do is I'll send an email around with the link to the Discord channel. You could use Discord if you want. If the group prefers WhatsApp, you could certainly do that. We see, you know, I think we want to support the group of whatever is going to be easiest for you. We see other parts of the community use WhatsApp. For example, the Brazil chapter is on WhatsApp. So it's really up to you. I would encourage you to consider using Discord though, because that's going to be your best opportunity to interact with other parts of the community, because most of the community members are on Discord. But yes, it's really up to you. You know, I would love to see the people on the call today continue the discussion. So it's really up to you how you want to do that. But I will send a link around to the Discord server after this. I'll send a link to the YouTube channel and some of the older information from the Africa chapter as well, the Wiki page and the mailing list, just so everybody has it. But it's really up to you to decide what you'd like to do going forward. So yeah, do reach out to me or Azra though as well if you have questions or suggestions. And we would love to keep talking to you. Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much. I think anyone with a question before we wind up and finish, if there's no one, I think I will take this time to thank everyone for joining. Thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate for, I think, yeah. I don't know if that's a question or just background noise. Is there a question? I don't think, I think. Yeah, that might just be background noise. Yeah, yeah. Thanks so much for being here. I think try to make sure you can join, if you're able to join the Discord channel, you can keep the conversation going. Again, for those who are willing to get more information about the ecosystem, I think there are variable materials, some have been shared in the chat and also I believe this meeting, the video shared for those who want to catch up again. So feel free to reach out. We are here to support you and looking forward to talking soon. David, close the meeting then.