Podcasts about national technical university

Harilaos N. Psaraftis is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Technology, Management and Economics at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). His areas of interest are maritime logistics, intermodal logistics, port logistics, and green logistics. He has a PhD from MIT, where he was a faculty member from 1979 to 1989, receiving tenure in 1985. He was a Professor at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) from 1989 to 2013 and at DTU from 2013 to 2023. He also served as CEO of the port of Piraeus from 1996 to 2002. He has published extensively and has received several academic and industry awards. His latest book is entitled “Sustainable Shipping: A Cross-Disciplinary View”, Springer (2019).

Manos Kalaitzoglou is the co-founder and CEO of Arcweave and is a Greek founder originally from Crete, Greece. Before becoming a founder, Manos studied architecture in the National Technical University of Athens, then switched to becoming a web designer as he was always fascinated by design, tech and storytelling. He worked with various startups in design lead and consultancy roles, which eventually led him to realise he and his teams were not efficient with the existing collaboration tools for interactive experiences. He founded Arcweave to help lower the bar of game design and development and allow everyone to take their first steps in this fascinating industry. 

Hello and welcome to episode three of the Project EDWARD 2023 Podcast. My role in the Safe System. My name is James Luckhurst and today I'm in Liverpool with Dr. Adam Snow from Liverpool, John Moores University. Adam is going to be reflecting on the penalty points system for drivers, the totting up rules and whether anything has changed in terms of reported abuse of the exceptional hardship plea opportunity.We'll also be considering the latest thinking on distractions in the company of Dr. George Yanis, who's a professor in traffic and safety engineering and director of the Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering at the School of Civil Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens.

Sit with Jennifer Didier and Jean Anne Booth as they discuss the world of Venture Capital.  After a great career and millions of dollars made, Jean Anne Booth come out of retirement for a corporate adventure that would change the life of loved one and those like her.  As a serial entrepreneur, Jean Anne Booth has 30 years of experience in high technology. Her background spans from P&L business unit management to marketing; product definition; systems, software, and applications engineering; silicon development engineering; and operations and product engineering. Jean Anne was the founder of Luminary Micro, the creators of the Stellaris® microcontroller (MCU) platform and the first to market with ARM® Cortex™-M3-based microcontroller solutions. Luminary Micro was purchased by Texas Instruments in May 2009. Jean Anne left TI in November 2011 after serving as the General Manager for TI's Stellaris family of products. Early in her career, Jean Anne worked with AMD's embedded microprocessor products for 10 years in a number of management, marketing and engineering roles. Jean Anne holds a BSEE from the University of Texas and an MSCE degree from National Technical University. Reach her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanannebooth/ Website: https://www.unaliwear.com/

On this episode of the pod, my guest is Penny Travlou, a Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor in Cultural Geography and Theory (Edinburgh School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture, Edinburgh College of Art/University of Edinburgh). Her research focuses on social justice, the commons, collaborative practices, intangible cultural heritage and ethnography. She has been involved in international research projects funded by the EU and UK Research Councils. For the past eight years, she has been working with independent art organisations in Colombia and most recently in the African continent to understand the commons from a decolonial perspective and to look at commoning practices within artistic forms while understanding the specificities of the commons rooted in various socio-cultural and geographical contexts. As an activist, she has been involved in a number of grassroots and self-organised initiatives on housing and refugees' rights in Greece.Show NotesGreek Elections and the Rise of the Ultra-RightExarcheia and the Student Uprisings of 1974An Olympic Tourism Plan for AthensMass Tourism Consumption in ExarcheiaGovernment Plans to Dismantle Local Social MovementsThe Greek Golden VisaAARG and Community Action Against GentrificationFortress EuropeWhen Will the Bubble Burst?Advice for Tourists; Advice for OrganizingHomeworkPenny Travlou University of Edinburgh WebsiteAARG! AthensPenny's TwitterTranscript[00:00:00] Chris: Good morning, Penny, from Oaxaca. How are you today? [00:00:04] Penny: Very good. Good afternoon from Athens, Chris. [00:00:07] Chris: So perhaps you could share with me and our listeners a little bit more about where you find yourself today in Athens and what life looks like for you there. You mentioned that you had local elections yesterday.[00:00:19] Penny: Yes, I am located in the neighborhood of Exarcheia but towards the borders of it to a hill, Lycabettus Hill. And I am originally from Athens, from Greece, but I've been away for about 20 years, studying and then working in the UK and more specifically in Scotland.So the last eight years, since 2015, I've been coming and going between the two places, which I consider both home. And yes, yesterday we had the elections for the government. So we basically got, again, reelected the conservatives, which are called New Democracy, which is a neoliberal party, but also government also with patriotic, let's say, crescendos and anti-immigration agenda.And at the same time, we have first time, a majority in parliament of the, not even the central, but the right wing, in the Parliament. So it's 40%, this party and another three which are considered basically different forms of ultra- right. And one of them is a new conglomeration, from the previous, maybe, you know, or your audience Golden Dawn, which is a neo- Nazi party, which was basically banned and it's members went to us to prison as members of a gang, basically.But now through, I don't want to go into much detail, managed to get a new party called the Spartans, which obviously you can think what that means, plus two more parties, smaller parties, which are inclined towards very fundamentally religiously and ethnic focus, meaning, you know, anti immigration.And then it's the almost like the complete collapse of the radical left that is represented by Syriza. The Communist Party is always stable. You know, it's the fourth party. So anyway, we, it's a bit of a shock right now. I haven't spoken with comrades. Not that we are supporters of Syriza, but definitely change the picture of what we're doing as social movements and what it means to be part of a social movement right now.So there will be lots of things happening for sure in the next four years with this new not government. The government is not new cause it's the current one, just being reelected, but the new situation in the Parliament. [00:03:02] Chris: Hmm. Wow. Wow. Well, perhaps it's a moment like in so many places, to begin anew, organizing on the grassroots level.You know, there's so many instances around the world and certainly in Southern Europe where we're constantly reminded of the context in which local governments and top-down decision makings simply no longer works.And that we need to organize on a grassroots level. And so I'm really grateful that you've been willing to speak with us today and speak with us to some of these social movements that have arisen in Athens and Greece, in Exarcheia around the notions of immigration as well as tourism.And so to begin, you mentioned that you've been traveling for the last half decade or so back and forth and I'd like to ask you first of all, what have your travels taught you about the world, taught you about how you find yourself in the world?[00:04:02] Penny: Very good question. Thank so much for raising it because I won't say about my personal history, but my father was, actually passed away a couple of years ago, was a captain in the merchant Navy. So for me, the idea of travel is very much within my family. So, the idea of having a parent travel, receiving letters before emails from far away places was always kind of the almost like the imagination of the other places, but also reality.So, when myself become an adult and moved to the UK specifically, to study and then work. This became my own work and my own life reality because I had dramatically to live between two places. So, it was almost this idea of not belonging and belonging. This concept from in both places, but also the specific type of research, because, I haven't mentioned that my day job is an academic. I am currently, equivalent in the United States will be associate professor in geography, but in the school of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. But the type of research I do request me to travel a lot. I'm looking on the idea of collaborative practices in emerging networks of artists, digital artists, specifically activists and trans-local migrants.So what it means actually to connect and to collaborate and to share knowledge and co-produce knowledges. Actually knowledge travels. So everything in my life, in the last two decades is around this, let alone that my own PhD was about tourism. I was looking on tourist images and myths, myths in metaphorically speaking of representations of Athens before the Olympic Games of 2004.So the journey and the travel and tourism is very much part of what I do in my day job, but also on other things I do personally. So what I learned through this is, first of all, maybe it's very common to say that without travel, knowledge doesn't travel.So, how we basically do things and flourish and develop ideas is through the sharing and sharing travels very much. So, movement is totally important. [00:06:37] Chris: I think that, for so many of us who have taken a critical eye and, and looked to the critical eyes around tourism and over tourism in the tourism industry, that there is this sense that things can be different and things must be different.To find a way to look towards, as you said, some sense of collaboration, some sense of interculturality, some sense of working together so that our earthly movements can produce honorable connections and meetings as opposed to just this kind of flippant and flacid kind of turns style travel.And so, I've invited you on the pod, in part, today, to speak about this neighborhood that you're in Exarcheia in Athens, in Greece. And you know, I imagine that many of our listeners have never heard of this, this neighborhood before, but many in Greece and many, many in Athens have, certainly. And I'm wondering if you could offer our listeners a little bit of background in regards to why Exarcheia is such a unique place and why it attracts so much attention politically in terms of social movements and also with tourists.Mm-hmm. [00:07:53] Penny: The history of Exarcheia is quite long in the sense with where it is in the very center of Athens. So if somebody basically get the Google map, you will see that the neighborhood is in walking distance from the Greek parliament. And Syntagma Square, which is another important square with regards to movements.It became very known in later years in the 2010s due to not only riots demonstrations that happened in what we now call the square movement. It started from Spain, to put it this way, and then to Greece, as well, in Athens. So Exarcheia is very central, but also it was since, postwar, it was a bohemic neighborhood.Lots of artists related to the left or at that point to communist party, et cetera, were living here, but also there were theaters, independent theaters, the printing houses. So we have a number still of Publishing houses that they are located in various parts of the Exarcheia neighborhood. So it has put its imprint into the Athenian urban history for quite a number of decades. And when I say Communist party, the communist Party was not legal at the time, when we say postwar. But, we had people inclined towards the left, like intellectuals, et cetera.Then with the dictatorship that happened in 1967-19 74, that's when first time really it gets, it's a real place in the political side of not only of the left, but also generally speaking of the political milieu and situation in Greece and abroad, and became very known due to the uprising, the student uprising against the dictatorship or otherwise, as we call it, junta in 1974, where here in Exarcheia is also the National Technical University of Athens, which is known also as a Polytechnic, where it was basically the uprising against the dictatorship with students basically rioting, but also died. So, it became an iconic part of the student movements since then in Greece. So, since the seventies.People can Google search or YouTube. They will see various documentaries dedicated specifically to that student uprising. And through that, after the dictatorship, one thing which was added in the Constitution and now has changed with this current government is that for a number of decades, it was what we call the asylum.That the police or the army cannot enter the university premises, and that's across Greece. So, students can occupy buildings. They can have, their own strikes, et cetera, without the police and or army entering. However, the Constitution changed a year ago. During the COVID period with the current government, the conservatives were basically they're not only say the police can enter if there is antisocial behavior happens within the university premises, but also that they will basically would like to have a police dedicated to university premises. Anyway, things are changing, but if we go back to Exarcheia and to your question, so since then the seventies, it became the neighborhood hub for the left and particularly for the radical left to congregate, to meet, to have social spaces.And also that a lot of demonstrations start from this neighborhood. And also since late eighties, became also the center of the anarchist and anti authoritarian movement. Since 2015, it was also a hub for those let's say groups, initiatives dedicated to offer solidarity to the newly arrived refugees in Greece and Athens due to the Syrian conflict. Yeah. So there is lots of facts related to why Exarchia has become iconic neighborhood with regards to social movements and definitely since 2015. The year of the election of the radical left as said, Syriza government at the time were attracted also more attention from abroad, from journalists and "solidarians," comrades, from international or transnational, social movements to come to Greece to see what was happening, to take part into the local movements and initiatives.But also it was the deep time of the austerity crisis. So, we have austerity crisis and refugee crisis at the time, ...and tourism! How did that happen?I was at that point here in 2015 is when I started coming in Athens and spending more time. And it was much more obvious that, first of all, before Athens, it was a completely different story with regards to tourism and specifically even before the Olympic games of 2004. People from abroad were coming, spending one or two days, nothing, just to visit the Acropolis and the other historical sites and museums and go to the islands. Was not basically considered as a beautiful city, as an interesting city. Or even as a modern city.So if somebody wants to see, let's say, "Rough Guides" of that period, the way the city was described was, I remember very well, I think it was a rough guide, "a cacophony." That it was extremely ugly. 2004 basically is the first time that there is a definitely dedicated clear plan from the top, from the government and local authorities to think of Athens as a tourist product.And they made some major plans. One is obviously that it's not about tourists, but it relates to tourism. It's the metro and it's the unification of the archeological sites and creating pedestrian zones, which makes it easier for people to walk through the different places. So slowly, we saw tourism getting, numbers like higher and higher.Interestingly, the austerity crisis that you expected there will be a "no" for tourism became actually an attraction for tourism, first, because things were getting cheaper. And the crisis created this, actually, this opportunity in that sense. And secondly, that even the radical left government, Syriza thought that tourism is an industry that can top up the economic issues related or the economic, the financial deficiencies of the country.So it created a series of possibilities for investment from people from abroad to invest in real estate that was matched with the beginnings of the short-let accommodation businesses, Airbnb and equivalent. So all these started slowly creating a fertile land of the right conditions for the tourist economy to flourish further. And to get tourist numbers up in such an extreme that in 2019, we reach full capacity in regards to accommodation. And I don't remember now that in numbers of millions of tourists who visited the country. So there's lots of factors which brought Athens to experience.And of course, Exarcheia, specifically mass touristification, because Exarcheia is in the center of Athens. Very easy to come. Secondly, attractive because it's a vibrant neighborhood, not only because of social movements, because the tourists who come are not all interested in the political scene of the area, but mostly it's about consuming this very vibrant nightlife economy.It's the art economy, which is related with the street art and basically night economy because it has a lot of cafes which have doubled. Nowadays is one of the most populated with Airbnb accommodation. Wow. [00:16:56] Chris: Wow, what a history. It seems, from what I've read, from what I've seen, that Exarcheia was, perhaps summarize it in a single word, a kind of sanctuary for many people over the decades.And and you mentioned the Olympics too, but certainly Barcelona as well had the Olympic Games in the last 30 years, and then you tend to see this similar result or effect or consequence after the Olympic Games in which the cities themselves in some cases are either abandoned in terms of infrastructure.And so all of the billions of dollars that went into them seems to have been only for that month of the Olympic Games or in the case of Athens or, or Barcelona, perhaps, that it's created this unbelievable kind of spiraling out of, of economic growth, if you wanna call it that.But certainly of gentrification, of exile and the increase in cost of living. Mm. And so in that regard, Penny, I'm curious, what have you seen in regards to the growth of tourism in Athens? How has it affected the people, the culture, and the cost of living there?Hmm. What have you seen on that kind of street level? Cause we can talk about it on an economic level, right? Where we're kind of removed from the daily lives of the people, but what do you see in regards to your neighbors, your family, your friends that live in that neighborhood with you?[00:18:18] Penny: Okay. I mean, first of all, I mean there is a lot of things that happen in Exarcheia and now it's clear there is also a strategy to completely dismantle the social movements. It's not like extreme to say that, but it's very clear and that's what the discussions now are focusing. And it's important to say that because in order to do that, one of the ways is to basically disrupt the spaces, disrupt the space that this happens. And Exarcheia is not metaphorically the location that the social movements and initiatives are and happen,but it is the first time that we see a plan, a strategy that if there is a future here, that through not anymore tactics, but strategies from the government and the local authorities, which also are conservative, in one sense.So, to give you an example, Exarcheia neighborhood is identified by its square. The square. When we talk about Exarcheia, we talk about the Exarcheia Square, specifically, when you want to talk about movements. Not the things were happening on the square, but it's identification of the movements.So, the government with the municipality decide that the new metro station in the Exarcheia neighborhood will happen on this square. So, through this, they block completely, they fence the square, so there's no activity in the square. So, this completely changes the landscape.To put it this way, the imaginary of this landscape for the local residents, but also visitors. So, if you check the images, you will see, which is a reality, is a five meter fence. So it's definitely changes. So, I'm saying that cause somebody from the audience say, but "yes, it's for the metro. It's for the benefit of the people."Of course it's for the benefit. But there were also Plan B and Plan C that was submitted by a group of architects and some of them academics from the university here to suggest that they are better locations in the area for the metro for various reasons. "No, the metro will def will happen in the Exarcheia Square."And there is now a number of initiatives that they were dedicated to solidarity to refugees now are moving towards struggles and resistance against the metro. Mm, wow. And how tourism comes in, because you have the blocking of a central square, for a neighborhood, which is its center and then you see slowly, more and more businesses opening, pushing out or closing down all the more traditional local businesses, for opening businesses more related to tourism, like restaurants that they have a particular clientele, you know, of the food they promote, et cetera, which definitely dedicated to this particular clientele, which is basically foreigners.The second thing that happens and has to do, of course, with gentrification. In the high rank of gentrification, we're experiencing aggressive gentrification, fast and changing the look and the everydayness of the neighborhood, is that since the Syriza, they make things much easier for foreign investors through what is called golden visa.Mm-hmm. The golden visa is that in order for a non-European, non-EU national to be in Europe. And you need a specific visa, otherwise you can be only with the tourist visa for three months. In order to obtain a longer term visa of five years, 10 years, is this we call Golden Visa, where you can invest in the local economy, like in London, I don't know, in Paris. Greece has the cheapest Golden Visa, which is until recently up to 250,000 euros. So imagine it's not a lot of money if you want to invest. So, people will start getting this visa by buying property, and obviously they want to make more money by converting these places into Airbnbs.Mm-hmm. They started with individuals like, let's say me that I decide to buy a property in Paris, but now we have international real estate developers, like from China, Israel, Russia, Turkey to say a few and Germany, where they buy whole buildings, right. And they convert them to Airbnbs, not only for tourists, but also for digital nomads. So, for your audience, for example, yesterday I was at an event and I was speaking to a young artist and the discussion moved, I don't know how to, "where do you live?" I said, "I live Exarcheia." He said, "I live in Exarcheia. I asked, "Where?" And he told me, "I live there. But I have big problems, because although I own the place through inheritance, I would like to move out to sell it, because the whole building, apart from my flat and another one has been bought by an international company and now my neighbors are digital nomads, which means I dunno who these people are, because every couple of weeks it changes. It's fully dirty. Huge problem with noise. Lots of parties. It's extremely difficult."So, imagine that this changed. There are stories of this, a lot. The other thing that has happened in Exarcheia is young people, in particular, are being pushed out because the rents, as you understand, if somebody who wants to rent it for Airbnb then thinks in this mindset and something that was until recently, 300 euros. A one bedroom flat. Now it ends up in 500, 600 euros, where still the minimum sa salary is less than 700 Euros. Wow. So people are being pushed out. I have lots of examples of people, and when I say young, not young in the sense of 20s, but also people in their forties that they are being pushed out. They cannot rent anymore, let alone to buy. To buy, it's almost impossible. Yeah. [00:25:04] Chris: Yeah. Almost everyone I talk to, doesn't matter where they live these days and not just for the podcast, but in my personal life, and of course with the people who I interview on the podcast, they say the same thing. This housing crisis, if you wanna call it that, because I don't know if it's an issue of housing, as such, but an issue of regulation, an issue of the lack of regulation around these things. And it's clear that so much of the issues around tourism have to do with hyper mobility and and housing. Yes. Or at least that's what it's become in part. Mm-hmm. And so I'd like to ask you, Penny, I know you're also part of an organization named AARG! (Action Against Regeneration and Gentrification) in Athens. Mm-hmm. And so participating in the resistance against these consequences.So I'd love it if you could explain a little bit about the organization, its principles and what it does to try to combat gentrification and of course the government and police tactics that you mentioned previously. [00:26:12] Penny: Well, now we are in a turning point because obviously what are we going to do? It's like "day zero."But we started in 2019. It's not an organization. It's an activist initiative. So, we don't have any legal status as an activist group, but came out of a then source of free space called Nosotros, which was located, and I explain why I use the past tense. It was located in the very center of Exarcheia, in Exarcheia Square, basically, in a neoclassic building since 2005, if I'm right. And it was really like taking part in all the different events since then with regards to, you know, things were happening in Athens in particular, and the square movement later on during the austerity crisis years.And it is also part of the anti-authoritarian movement. So, in 2019 a number of comrades from Nosotros and other initiatives in Exarcheia Square came together through recognizing that, definitely, since 2015 started slowly seeing a change in the neighborhood. On the one hand, we were seeing higher numbers of comrades coming from abroad to be with us in different projects with the refugees, but at the same time, as I said earlier, an attraction by tourism. And gentrification was definitely happening in the neighborhood; at that time, in slow pace. So it was easy for us to recognize it and to see it, and also to have discussions and assemblies to think how we can act against it.What kind of actions can we take, first of all, to make neighbors aware of what was happening in the neighborhood, and secondly, to act against Airbnbs, but not only, because the issue was not just the Airbnbs. So in 2019 we started, we had a series of assemblies. We had events. We invited comrades from abroad to, to share with us their own experiences of similar situation, like for instance, in Detroit, that at that time we thought that it was the extreme situation on what happened with the economic crisis in US and the collapse of the car industry, not only with the impact in Detroit and in Berlin, which again, at the time, still in 2019, we felt that Berlin was experiencing gentrification very far beyond what was happening in Athens and specifically in Exarcheia.So, that's in 2019. We had also actions that we start mapping the neighborhood to understand where Airbnbs were kind of mushrooming, where were the issues, but also in cases, because the other thing that was start becoming an issue was the eviction. At that time was still not as, for example, we were reading 2019 and before in Berlin, for example, or in Spain, like in Barcelona or Madrid...but there were cases, so we experienced the case of a elderly neighbor with her son who is a person with disabilities who were basically forced through eviction from the place they were renting, for almost two decades, by the new owners, who were real estate developer agency from abroad, who bought the whole building basically, and to convert it to Airbnb, basically. So we did this. Let's say this started in January 2019, where we just have elections and it's the first time we get this government, not first time, but it's the first time we have conservatives being elected and start saying dramatically and aggressively neighborhood with basically the eviction almost of all the housing spot for refugees in the area, apart from one, which still is here.All the others were basically evicted violently with the refugees, were taken by police vans to refugee camps. Those who had already got the papers were basically evicted and sent as homeless in the streets, not even in camps. So, we basically moved our actions towards this as well.And then Covid. So during Covid we created a new initiative were called Kropotkin-19, which was a mutual aid, offering assistance to people in need through the collection of food and things that they need, urgently, in the area, in the neighborhood, and the nearby neighborhood and refugee comes outside Athens.So, AARG! Has basically shifted their actions towards what was actually the urgency of the moment. So, and what happened in all this is that we lost the building through the exact example of gentrification, touristification. The owners took it because obviously it's next to the square where it's actually the metro and the think, they say future thinking, that they will sell it with very good money, to the millions, basically.So Nosotros and us as AARG! were basically now currently homeless. We don't have a real location because the building was basically taken back by the owners, and we were evicted right from the building. [00:32:14] Chris: Well, this context that you just provided for me, it kind of deeply roots together, these two notions of tourists and refugees of tourism and exile.In southern Europe, it's fairly common to see graffiti that says "migrants welcome, tourism go home." And in this context of that building, in that relative homelessness, it seems that, in a place that would house refugees, in a place that would house locals even, that this gentrification can produce this kind of exile that turns local people as well as, you know, the people who would be given refuge, given sanctuary also into refugees in their own places.And I'm wondering if there's anything else you'd like to unpack around this notion of the border crises in Greece and Southern Europe. I know that it's still very much in the news around this fishing vessel that collapsed with some seven to 800 people on it, off the coast of Greece.And certainly this is nothing new in that region. And I'm just wondering if there's anything more you'd like to unpack or to offer our listeners in regards to what's happening in Greece in regards to the border crises there. Mm. [00:33:36] Penny: Okay. I mean, the border crisis, is Greece and it's Europe. So when you speak about national policies or border policy, you need also to think of what we call fortress Europe, because this is it. So Greece is in the borders and it's actually policing the borders. And, there's lots of reports even recently that quite a lot of illegal pushbacks are happening from Greece back to Turkey or in the case of this current situation with a boat with more than 500 people.I think it's almost like to the 700. That's the case. So this current government it was for four years, we've seen that it has definitely an anti-immigration policy agenda, definitely backed up by European policies as well.But now being reelected is going to be harder and this is a big worry for, because still we have conflicts nearby. We need to consider environmental crisis that it creates in various parts for sure, like refugees, and we have conflicts.We have Ukraine, et cetera. Although also there is discussion of thinking of refugees in two ways: those that they come from, let's say, Ukraine, which they look like us and those who do not look like us. And this obviously brings questions of racism and discrimination as well.So borders and tourism also. It is really interesting because these two are interlinked. We cannot see them, but they're interlinked. And even we can think in the widest, let's say, metaphor of this, that at the same week, let's say 10 days that we had this major loss of lives in the Greek Sea.At the same time we have the submarine with the millionaires or billionaires, which almost is a kind of a more like upmarket tourism because also we need to think what the submarine represents symbolically to the life we are creating, worldwide.And I'm saying worldwide because I was currently, and I think I talked with you, Chris, about it, in Latin America and specifically in Medellin, which is a city known mostly abroad for not good reasons, basically for the drug trafficking. But one of the things, definitely post pandemic that the city's experiencing is massive gentrification and massive touristification due to economic policies that allow specific type of tourism to flourish through digital nomads having real opportunities there for very cheap lifestyles. Very good technology infrastructure, but other issues that bring mass tourism that in this case is also sex tourism and underage sex tourism, which is really, really problematic. But going back to Athens and Exarcheia in particular, the issue, it's very obvious. We are even now discussing that this thing is a bubble and sooner or later we will see that bursting because tourism is a product. Tourist locations are products and they have a lifespan.And it's particularly when there's no sustainable planning strategy. And an example in Greece, which is recently been heard a lot, is Mykonos Island. The Mykonos Island was known as this like hedonistic economy, up market, et cetera.But right now it is the first year that they've seen losses, economic losses, that it doesn't do well on the number of tourists coming. So, there are these things that we will see. Still, Athens is in its peak and they're expecting big numbers still because we are not even in July. I live now what most of us would say, we don't want to be in Exarcheia for going out because it doesn't anymore looks as a space we knew, for various reasons. But still there is movement. As I said the metro now is the center of the resistance. And also the other thing that I forgot to say that it's actually from the municipality coming in is that they are closing down and closed down basically green areas in the area, like Strefi Hill, and the nearby park for supposedly to regenerate it and to ensure that it's up in the level that it needs to be. But at the same time, they are leasing it into corporate private businesses to run. [00:38:43] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. And just for our listeners, whether this is the intention of local governments or not the closure or at least suspension of these places such as parks or local squares is the refusal to allow people to use public lands or to operate on what are traditionally understood as the commons, right? Mm-hmm. And these are traditionally places that people would use to organize. And so whether this is a part of the government's plans or not this is the consequence, right?And this tends to happen more and more and more as tourism and development reaches its apex in a place. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And Penny, I have a question that was actually written in by a friend of mine who lives there in Athens and his name is Alex who I had the pleasure of meeting last year there.And Alex talks about how everyone in Greece seems to be involved in tourism in some manner or another, that it's according to him "the country's biggest industry and how all of us are bound and tied to it," he said. Mm-hmm. And Alex wonders what alternatives and perhaps worthy alternatives do you think there might be to tourist economies?[00:39:59] Penny: Well, I mean, the issue is not, I mean, tourism is a type of model of tourism as well. I mean and it is also kind of percentages. So if we have more tourists than locals, then there is a question here, what exactly is happening when particular neighborhoods are turned to theme parks?Then again, it's an issue of what exactly offered locals, because okay, it could be good for businesses, but as I said, where is the sustainability in these projects and these models? Because if it's five year plan, then after the five year plan, all these people who are involved in tourism, what are they going to do?The other thing is what kinda tourism we're talking about and what kind services, because if we're all tangled or related with a tourist product, but what we do is servicing, meaning that even very few people will make money because most of us, we will be employees. And saying that is also about labor rights.So this is actually not regulated. There is no real regulation to various levels. Housing, for example, that you touched upon, earlier on in the conversation... In Greece doesn't have a dedicated law. So housing comes in various different parts of law, but it doesn't have a dedicated one.That's another reason why things are very unruly, unregulated. And the other thing is that in Greece, one thing that is unique, in comparison to all the countries, is that after the second World War, there was this idea of small ownership; that the dream is to own a small place, and to give it to your kids, et cetera.So it is very, very complex in that sense. And also as a tenant, it's very difficult to basically to have rights as well. Likewise, when we talk about labor, there's lots of things which are not regulated. So people who work in the tourist industry... it's almost like slavery.Quite a lot of people do not want to work right now in the tourism industry because they know that it's really unregulated and where that ends. So go back to what your friend asked, I'm not an economist and it's not an easy, and it's not, I'm not using it as an easy way to escape from giving a reply, but it's not about how to replace tourism, but it's actually what kind of a tourist model we bringing in because it's the same thing that I brought.So in Greece what exactly are we actually looking as a model to bring things that we saw in other places, didn't work?And they've seen the aftermaths of it. So this is something we need to be very, very serious about. Because at the moment, I think it's a five year plan with no future-thinking further because imagine a scenario that if tourism collapse, and we have all these businesses dedicated to tourism in one single neighborhood. We have urban Airbnb everywhere. What all these privately owned premises going to do? What kind of alternative you they're gonna have? [00:43:27] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. You used the word " replace," to replace tourism and I'm a big fan of etymology of the study of the roots of words and in English, the word replace in its deepest meaning could mean "to place, again." Right. And if we understood the word place as a verb, and not just as a noun, not just as a thing, but as something we do, what would it look like to place again, to consider our place not just as a thing, but as a process, as a process through time.And what would that mean to re-place ourselves. To re-place the time we're in. And it brings me to my next question, which is around solidarity and mm-hmm. I'm wondering in this regard, what kind of advice might you have both for tourists, for individuals, and also for people looking to organize their own communities in solidarity with, for example, the movements, the collectives, the residents of places like Exarcheia. What advice would you have for those people who wish to act and live in solidarity with the collectives that are undertaking these battles in places like Exarcheia?[00:44:51] Penny: Okay. If I remember well, the initiative against the Metro has created an open letter which will be for also address to tourists. So to make them aware, you know, you are here, you are welcome, but be aware that this is happening in this neighborhood, that the neighborhood is not just a product for consumption, but they are us, that we live here and we have been hugely affected by policies against us.It's not a blame to the tourists because we've been tourists and we are tourists ourselves. We go somewhere else. It's a matter to how you are respectful and understanding of what happens in local level and that there are people leaving not only the people who make money out of offering you services, but basically every people who have an everydayness in these areas and they need to be respected as well. And even understand where and what may happen to them. I mean, obviously we hear, and there are people who think, okay, we rather prefer to stay in hotels instead of AIrbnbs because this will basically support further this economy, which is platform capitalism because again, at the end, who makes more money, are the people who own those platforms.So it's about to be conscious and to be open and to see around you. And I'm saying that, and I can give you an example because for me, it definitely summarizes what I want to say. Okay, last summer, I was out with friends in Exarcheia, near Exarcheia Square to have a drink with friends who were visiting. No, no one visiting. One is from here. And in another table comes a seller, a migrant from East Asia to sell something and stop in my table. We discuss something with him and behind him, a couple of tourists with a dog passed by. The dog stops, probably afraid of something and kind of barks and bites the seller, the guy who was actually the vendor.So, the vendor gets really panicked and we say what happened to him? The two people with the dog, say, don't actually listen to him. He's lying. He's trying to get money out of us. And this is a story I mean, of understanding, of two people, you know, coming here not understanding at all and having completely this idea, but at the same time trying to consume what Exarcheia is offering. Is a story that to me can say a lot, actually. Mm, [00:47:23] Chris: yeah. Deep imposition. [00:47:25] Penny: Exactly. Exactly. I mean, as tourists, we need to be more conscious of the places we go. We need to understand and to listen and to hear.It is difficult to do otherwise because I mean, when you go back to solidarity, I mean, this is another thing because we don't expect people who come for couple of days to go to different, let's say, collectives, initiatives and take part.But at the same time, people who come and they want to spend time, in the sense of being part, again, one thing you do is not only you consume experiences, you take the experience and you look something abroad. You share the experience and we need that as well. Hmm. [00:48:16] Chris: Wow. And what would you say to people, for example, in places like Oaxaca, where there's been a tourist economy for the last 10, 20 years, steadily growing, and then after the lockdowns has become a destination like cities in Southern Europe, for digital nomads, for quote unquote expatriates, where now the consequences of the tourist economy are reaching a boiling point a kind of crisis moment, and where people are experiencing a great deal of resentment and backlash against the tourist, but who want to find some kind of way of organizing together in order to lessen or undermine or subvert the tourist economies.What advice would you have for those people maybe looking to places like Exarcheia, places like Southern Europe, where people have begun to organize for many years? What advice would you have for those people, for those collectives? [00:49:21] Penny: Well, the prosperity out of what you can get from this type of economy, it's going to be short term. So those who will make money or those who anyway will make money for those who have small businesses, it's going to be for few years. And particularly with digital nomads, is exactly what the word the term means: nomads. So this year or this couple of years, they will be in Oaxaca, they will be in Medellin.Previously they were in Lisbon. They were in Berlin. There is a product that is movable because their business, the work they do is movable. So for them, is what you offer like a package. And if it is cheap package, they will go there. If it has good weather, they will go there. And easier legislation.So it's a matter of recognizing because at the same time you cannot start pushing and throwing and beating up tourists. You're not gonna change anything. It's basically awareness.I'm not fond local authorities, but I've seen that in cases like Barcelona, the local authorities were more conscious and more aware, and obviously more on the left side. They were trying as well to create policies that has some limitation that at least this thing, it doesn't become beyond what you're able to sustain, basically, to create an equilibrium.But still, even in Barcelona, there are situations as in the neighborhood, which has became totally gentrified and people were pushed out. So they need some kind of legislation to limit the numbers of visitors for Airbnbs or things like that. But in the level of action, it's actually awareness and resistance and to continue.It's not easy because the political situation doesn't help. It has created a fruitful land for this to become even more and more and more. But the idea is not to give up and stop. I know that it's very like maybe generic and very abstract what I'm offering a solutions, because obviously here we're also trying to see what solutions we can have. Maybe you create a critical mass in an international level. Also, you make aware outside of what happens. So, so the tourists before even coming, they're aware of what's exactly happening and also with regards to solidarity between similar causes. Hmm. [00:52:00] Chris: Hmm. Thank you Penny. So we've spoken quite a bit about what's come to pass in Athens, in Greece, in Exarcheia in regards to tourism, gentrification, and the border crisis there in fortress Europe. And my final question for you is do you think there's anything about these movements of people and the way that we've come to understand them about the flight and plight of other people's, not just refugees, but also tourists as well, that can teach us about what it means to be at home in our places?[00:52:40] Penny: Oh, that's a big discussion. Cause it depends. I mean, when you talk about mobile population, like those, for instance, digital nomads, then we talk about something else, which is basically a more cosmopolitan understanding of the world, but also that the world is a product for consumption. So, it is two different layers of understanding also home.And basically when you see advertisements of houses specifically short-lets dedicated to let's say, digital nomads, the advertisements will say something like "home," that what we offer you like home. But when you go to those places and you stay in, what they mean like home, is that you have all the amenities to make your life easy as a digital normal.That you have a fast internet to make your work easy, et cetera, et cetera. So it is a very complex thing and definitely the way we live in, it's between the nomadic that has nothing to do with how we understood the nomadic in previous centuries or histories and to their, place as home, like you have a stable place.So, there are many questions and many questions about borders, that borders are easy to pass if you have the right profile, but then it is a block, and it's actually a "no" for those who leave home because they're forced to. So, it's a very unequal way of thinking of borders, home and place, worldwide.It's not just about Greece or Athens or Exarcheia, but maybe Exarcheia is a good example of giving us both sides who are welcome and who are not welcome. So yes, we say "welcome to refugees" and we see this kind of tagging and stencils and graffiti around because yes, this is what we want. We want them here to welcome them, but at the same time, we say " no to tourism," not because we have individual issues with specific people, but because of what has been the impact of this mobility into local lives.[00:54:59] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Well, may we come to understand these complexities on a deeper level and in a way that that honors a way of being at home in which, in which all people can be rooted.Mm-hmm. So, I'd like to thank you, Penny, for joining me today, for your time, for your consideration, for your willingness to be able to speak in a language that is not your mother tongue is deeply, deeply appreciated. And finally, how might our listeners be able to read more about your work, about the social movements and collectives in Greece?How might they be able to get in touch? [00:55:41] Penny: Okay. We have on Facebook, on social media, we have AARG!. So if they, look at AARG! Action Against Regeneration & G entrification, but it's AARG! on Facebook and also Kropotkin-19, they will find their information. Now about my work specifically, they will look at my profile like Penny Travlou at the University of Edinburgh. So they will see what I do in Athens and in Latin America. So there is material, some things are in the form of academic text and other things are in videos, et cetera, which are more accessible to a wider audience.[00:56:22] Chris: Well, I'll make sure all those links and social media websites are available to our listeners when the episode launches. And once again, on behalf of our listeners, thank you so much for joining us today. [00:56:34] Penny: Thank you. Thank you very much. Have a good morning. Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

AVs are expected to be introduced in increasing numbers over the next decades. Moreover, they are expected to have considerable impacts on mobility, safety, the environment and society as a whole.One of the impacts of AVs that is considered is road safety, which is high on the agenda when it comes to mobility planning and management.One of the primary expectations regarding AVs is a substantial reduction in road accidents. The majority of road accidents occur due to human error, such as distracted driving, speeding, or drunk driving. AVs have the potential to eliminate these risks by eliminating the human factor from the equation. With their ability to perceive and analyze the surrounding environment more accurately and react faster than humans, AVs can minimize the likelihood of collisions and errors on the road.The panel delves into the various impacts of fully autonomous vehicles on road safety, exploring the initiatives undertaken at the UNECE level, within the International Road Safety Observatory, and at a technical level.Panelists:George Yannis, Professor at National Technical University of Athens (NTUA)Lucas Bublitz, Team Lead Technology and Regulation P3 GroupLuciana Iorio, Italian Ministry of Infrastructures and Transport & Chairperson UNECE WP.1

Energy, world grain supplies, consumer goods – so much more: ships transport a remarkable 90 per cent of the world's commodities. As the UN's Secretary-General António Guterres said: “Without ships and the women and men who work on them, economies would stall, and people would starve.” Founded by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) back in 2011, the Day of the Seafarer is on the 25th of June – so this episode we are looking at how EU funding is working to make life at sea, safer – for passengers and for crew. Franz Evegren, is director of the Fire Safe Transport Department at the Research Institutes of Sweden. Franz focuses ways to reduce the number of fires on board roll-on/roll-off car ferries. Luis Sanchez-Heres, is also at the Research Institutes of Sweden where he is working on harnessing the power of Ai and machine learning to improve location pin pointing. Lazaros Karagiannidis is concentrating on how smart applications and wearables can make ship evacuations faster and safer. Lazaros is based at the National Technical University of Athens.

This week, Claire chatted to Georgia Chalvatzaki from the Technical University of Darmstadt all about mobile assistive robots, learning, and planning.  Check out the trailer for the UK-RAS Network's one-of-a-kind livestream event, Robot Lab Live, returning to YouTube this June: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC8LBdjCtD8. Join us for Robot Talk Live Robot Talk will be returning for another live episode recording in June! Claire will be chatting about Robotics and Science Fiction with three very special guests at Imperial College London at 1pm on Sunday 18th June, as part of the Great Exhibition Road Festival and the UK Festival of Robotics. Find out more:  https://www.greatexhibitionroadfestival.co.uk/event/robotics-and-science-fiction/  Georgia Chalvatzaki is a Professor of Robot Perception and Learning at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. Before that, she was an Assistant Professor and Independent Research Group Leader since March 2021, after getting the renowned Emmy Noether grant of the German Research Foundation. She completed her Ph.D. in 2019 at the Intelligent Robotics and Automation Lab at the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, with her thesis “Human-Centered Modeling for Assistive Robotics: Stochastic Estimation and Robot Learning in Decision-Making.”

Debbie last spoke with Panos in January 2019 after meeting him in Ironman Hawaii 2018! Here is our past conversation- https://debbiepotts.net/pnoe-cardio-m... Who is Panos Papadiamantis? "I started my studies at the National Technical University of Athens, where I studied mechanical engineering. I then continued my studies at the Stanford School of Engineering, focusing on operations research and engineering management. During my stint at Stanford, I worked as a research assistant in the Center of International Security and Collaboration. There, I worked alongside Siegfried Hecker, former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and William Perry, former Minster of Defence of the United States, in conducting research and risk analysis on nuclear technology and its implications on national security. Following my studies at Stanford, I worked as a product manager in IT infrastructure companies in Silicon Valley while always wanting to start my own company. Hence, when my cofounder and friend approached me with the idea of developing an affordable breath analysis device to analyze human metabolism with clinical precision, I jumped on board. As an engineer on paper and at heart, I was always fascinated by analyzing and understanding systems. Building PNOĒ exposed me to the most fascinating, uncharted, and misunderstood one, the human body. At PNOĒ, my colleagues and I have analyzed more than 100,000 metabolic profiles and helped more than 40,000 achieve better health and performance through metabolic-based recommendations founded on their metabolic profiles and recommendations supported by more than 1,000 peer-reviewed articles. PNOĒ is trusted by 3,000+ health professionals, world-class athletes such as Russel Wilson (NFL champion), Emma Raducanu (US Open champion), and Annie Thorisdottir (Crossfit Games champion), 100+ research centers and universities including MIT, UCLA, and Columbia University, as well as leading brands including Inbody and Spartan Racing." We chat about all things metabolic testing at rest and exercise... What does it mean to have a personalized program? How can breath analysis inform the main pillars of personalized programming  How can breath reveal fuel usage and how can it help me become more fat efficient? How to test resting test- RMR - what do you find out? How does this help someone burn fat/lose weight? How do we test exercise metabolism- how to find fat burning, cross over and speed AT zones? Race pace? Training heart rates? How can we create an individualized program to match fueling to training and racing.  Video link: https://youtu.be/kEWiDF8Mxr0 Debbie Potts The WHOLESTIC Method Program Burn Fat. Optimize Health. Improve Performance. Certified FDNP and FNTP Kion Coach, NASM CPT, CHEK HLC, USAT www.debbiepotts.net

The RC21 Conference 2022, “Ordinary cities in exceptional times,” was held in Athens from August, 24 to 26. A large group of participants from all over the world gathered for was the first in-person conference of the RC21 network since the start of the pandemic. However, the pandemic continued to dominate the conference with a number of participants being unable to travel to Athens due to the uncertain visa regimes. On the opening day of the conference, the participants gathered in the historical building of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in the Exarchia neighbourhood in downtown Athens. At the reception in the grand courtyard of NTUA, the participants came face-to-face with a group of protestors that raised banners against the state-projects promoting the gentrification and pacification of the anarchist neighbourhood of Exarchia. The remaining two days of the conference were organised on the premises of the Harokopio University in the Kallithea neighbourhood of Athens. The University hosted over forty parallel presentation panel sessions along with a number of keynote panels and book launches. The next RC21 meeting will take place at the ISA 2023 conference in Melbourne, Australia. In the episode you will hear fragments of interviews from the following people: Julie Ren, Giulia Torino, AbdouMaliq Simone, Eduardo Marques, Talja Blokland, David dit Dato Gogishvili, Simone Tulumello, Nidhi Subramanyam, Eleni Triant, and Stavros Stavrides

In February of 2014, Russia's military, under direction of President Vladimir Putin, invaded and, subsequently annexed Crimea – a peninsula off the eastern side of Ukraine. Russia quickly installed a subservient government to its own, presided over a referendum in the region under the watchful eye of Russian soldiers to legitimize the action as driven by the will of the people, and began issuing Russian passports to Crimean inhabitants – a pretext for the later argument that Russia was protecting its citizens when it invaded. Since then, a battle has ensued between Russia and Ukraine on the peninsula, throwing Crimea into disarray, dysfunction, and ruin. In February of this year, Russia invaded Ukraine again – only this time the campaign is much wider and Putin's ultimate goal remains unknown. Unlike what happened in 2014, the global response to this invasion has been unified and swift, cutting Russia off from the rest of the world in almost universal terms – from international finance, trade, diplomacy, and travel. Russia has become a pariah on the global stage with a few notable exceptions – China, India, and Brazil. Nonetheless, as of this moment, Putin seems to be playing the long game, and it remains to be seen how it will end. In this episode, I'm talking to a friend of mine, Dr. Radmila Segol. She is an Associate Professor of Journalism at the National Technical University of Ukraine and Editor-in-Chief of the Prometheus Mass Open Online Course platform. She also provides background research, editing, and translation for news organizations and on articles that have been, and soon will be, published in outlets such as Washington Post, the Economist, and Vogue. Mila lives in Kyiv, Ukraine and she has chosen to stay there with her mother and her brother, throughout this Russian campaign of war. We talk about her life before before the invasion- before the war. And we talk about her life in Ukraine now. We discuss some history, the damage done, her thoughts about when, if at all, Ukraine could forgive Russia, how she finds some happiness living under constant air raids and the threat of death, and what the rest of the world, you and I, can do to help.If you would like to explore opportunities to offer some help, Dr. Segol has suggested the following programs:Come Back AliveSoloma Cats-------------------------Follow the Podcast:Instagram TwitterYouTube Email with any thoughts, comments, questions: deepdivewithshawn@gmail.com **Artwork by Dovi Design **Music by Joystock

Today our guest is Anna Tsagkalou, Architect and Co-Founder of the MOR Studio in the Netherlands. Anna Tsagkalou is an architect, sustainability engineer and cofounder of MOR Studio. Anna graduated from National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and continued her studies at TU Delft where she obtained an MSc in Building Technology. Her focus lies on developing an integrated design approach, where climate and energy performance- driven design are used as integral tools for creating sustainable architecture.

SHORT SEA SHIPPING – Leading the Green Revolution to Zero Emissions Moderator: Mr. George Dimopoulos, Principal Specialist, Head of R&D & Advisory Unit Maritime – DNV Maritime Panelists: • H.E. Frode Overland Andersen, Ambassador of Norway to Greece • Mr. George Alexandratos, General Manager - Apollonia Lines SA; Vice President - Hellenic Chamber of Shipping • Mr. Ioannis Chiotopoulos, Senior Vice President, Regional Manager South East Europe, Middle East and Africa - DNV • Prof. Dimitrios Lyridis, National Technical University of Athens

GREEN TALKS : A new series of talks by ECOWEEK, Archisearch.gr and The Design Ambassador. Welcome to the GREEN TALKS, the new series of Podcasts co-hosted by Vassilios Bartzokas creator of ARCHISEARCH.GR & the DESIGN AMBASSADOR, and architect Elias Messinas creator of ECOWEEK. In this new series the duo interviews leading Architecture and Design personalities who share their experience and how they connect Design, Sustainability and Innovation in their work. Aris Kafantaris, Chief Project Manager at Kengo Kuma and Associates Architects in Tokyo. Aris Kafanantaris is an architect, graduate of the National Technical University of Athens School of Architecture and the University of Tokyo School of Architecture. Aris joined Kuma research lab in 2011 and then Kengo Kuma & Associates Tokyo in 2014. Kengo Kuma Associates Architects is an international award-winning practice based in Tokyo, Paris, Shanghai and Beijing, with more than 300 employees, established by architect Kengo Kuma in 1992. The office has designed a number of important commissions including the Japan National Stadium in Tokyo for the 2020 Summer Olympics. Kengo Kuma was the keynote speaker of ECOWEEK in Rome in 2012 and a co-author of the first ECOWEEK book published in 2016.

Evangelos Spiliotis is a Research Fellow at the Forecasting and Strategy Unit, National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). He co-organised the M4 and M5 Forecasting Competitions and is an organiser of the M6 competition.Evangelos talks about his research directions, highlighting the role of machine learning algorithms in time series forecasting within current business processes. He also discusses the M competitions which have been organized by Professor Spyros Makridakis and Evangelos for the last several years. The M6 competition, a competition on forecasts of stock price (returns) and risk, is live now and will be finalised in February 2023.Evangelos recommends Forecasting: Principles and Practice (3rd ed) by Rob J Hyndman and George Athanasopoulos and Practical Time Series Forecasting with R: A Hands-On Guide by Galit Shmueli and Kenneth C. Lichtendahl Jr.He also recommends the following papers: Forecasting: Theory and Practice by Petropoulos et al., Retail forecasting: Research and Practice by Fildes, Ma and Kolassa, and the special International Journal of Forecasting issues on the M competitions. 

This week we welcome Dr Harilaos Psaraftis, a professor at the Technical University of Denmark. He completed his undergraduate studies in Greece and received a diploma from the National Technical University of Athens. He later received two M.Sc. degrees from MIT, the first in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering and the second in Shipping and Shipbuilding Management. Shortly after, he acquired his Ph.D. in Ocean Systems Operations Research from MIT and went on to work as an Associate Professor at the institution for a decade.                                                                Psaraftis also served as CEO of the Piraeus Port Authority in the late '90s to early 2000s. During this period, ports faced new challenges as international regulations for shipping were shifting. Psaraftis shares his experiences with us and provides commentary on changes he thinks we can expect to see in the way ports operate in the future. His latest European Union project is AEGIS, which stands for Advanced, Efficient, and Green Intermodal Systems. It is a three-year project, and its objective is to design autonomous ships that will aid mainly intra-European maritime transport and short sea shipping. It will also design Europe's new sustainable and highly competitive waterborne logistics system. Not only does this initiative help Europe to move shipping from the roads to freight but it also serves as a model for other countries to follow suit and mobilize towards clean shipping. In this episode, we discuss a variety of topics ranging from climate change to the role carbon taxes have in internalizing environmental externalities. Join us and get an insider on what a maritime shipping expert believes it will take to achieve a zero-carbon fueled shipping industry. 

Georgia Papacharalampous, Researcher at the National Technical University of Athens, joins us today to talk about her work “Probabilistic water demand forecasting using quantile regression algorithms.”

One of the things we tend to forget the most about archviz, is that it is a service industry, and managing people – whether it's clients or teams, is a pretty important part of what we do. At the core of this, there's always smooth communication. But how should we manage the expectations of our clients, and how do we build a positive dynamic with internal and external teams?I've asked these questions and much more to Anna Perela, chartered Architect and Head of Planning at Cityscape Digital in London. Her role at Cityscape Digital has many facets, as not only she coordinates internal production teams, mentors people, and maintains standard working practices, but she also liaises with clients, designers, and helps to solve issues that may surface during the cooperation.In this episode, we go through her background and the self-reflection process that lead her to embrace the managing side of our industry a what is it like to be a Head of Planning. We also discuss architectural competitions as opposed to real estate projects, how smaller teams could implement sustainable practices for growth and management, and much more.More about Anna:Anna Perela is a Chartered Architect and Head of Planning at Cityscape Digital in London. She has more than 15 years experience as a Visualisation Artist and Architectural Photographer.She studied Architecture at the National Technical University of Athens. The need to convey and present her ideas, led her to arch-viz, through abstract illustrations, 2d drawings and renderings. In the meantime she had developed a passion for photography, experimenting with various techniques and formats. After graduating from university, she enrolled in the State of Art Academy, to further advance her skills in Architectural Visualisation. She had been working as a project Architect and Visualiser for more than 5 years in Greece, prior to moving to London to pursue more career opportunities.She worked at Squint/Opera for 3 years as a Senior 3d Artist. There, surrounded by like-minded people and inspiring artists, she had the chance to get actively involved with every stage of the visualisation process: image planning, 3d modelling, rendering and post-production, and experiment with versatile visual styles.After years leading high profile projects for Museums, competitions and master plans, she joined Cityscape Digital in 2018 as a Senior Visualiser.She is currently managing the Planning Department, which consists of more than 20 Artists, Photographers, Technicians and Producers. Anna maintains standards and working practices within the team, aiming to mentor, support and lead by example. She also liaises closely with some of the biggest architectural practices, developers and consultants in the UK, focusing on problem solving, innovation and excellence. Her team has been involved in some of the most high profile and intricate developments in London, covering the full spectrum of images and services that could accompany a planning application in the UK, from early feasibility studies to post submission support.

Alona Posashkova is a Management student at National Technical University of Ukraine "Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute" (NTUU KPI). Born in Cherkasy, Alona loves Dancing, jogging, doing yoga, drawing, and is also interested in design, psychology, learning English and time management. Her Instagram: @helen_posashkova

In the third episode of our series, Jennifer Baker talks to Dimos Dimarogonas, Professor of automatic control at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Dimos is working on the Co4Robots project, exploring better ways to communicate with groups of robots cooperating and working collectively. In the podcast, he shares his passion for mathematics and talks about his role as project coordinator. Professor Dimos Dimarogonas received his Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2001 and PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 2007 from the National Technical University of Athens. He is currently Professor at the Division of Decision and Control Systems at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at KTH. His research interests include multi-agent and hybrid systems, robot navigation and manipulation, and networked control. Dimos is the coordinator of the Co4Robots project. He received a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant in 2014, an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2019, and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Academy Fellowship in 2015. Find out more:Link to project on CORDIS Link to EU-funded project website: Co4Robots For more EU-funded research and innovation success stories Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the interest in, and hype around, Knowledge Graphs is growing, there is also a growing need for sharing experience and best practices around them. Let's talk about definitions, best practices, hype, and reality. What is a Knowledge Graph? How can I use a Knowledge Graph & how do i start building one? This panel is an opportunity to hear from industry experts using these technologies & approaches to discuss best practices, common pitfalls and where this space is headed next. --- Katariina Kari Research Engineer, Zalando Tech-Hub Katariina Kari (née Nyberg) is a research engineer at the Zalando Tech-Hub in Helsinki. Katariina holds a Master in Science and Master in Music and is specialised in semantic web and guiding the art business to the digital age. At Zalando she is modelling the Fashion Knowledge Graph, a common vocabulary for fashion with which Zalando improves is customer experience. Katariina also consults art institutions to embrace the digital age in their business and see its opportunities. Panos Alexopoulos Head of Ontology, Textkernel BV Panos Alexopoulos has been working at the intersection of data, semantics, language and software for years, and is leading a team at Textkernel developing a large cross-lingual Knowledge Graph for HR and Recruitment. Alexopoulos holds a PhD in Knowledge Engineering and Management from National Technical University of Athens, and has published 60 papers at international conferences, journals and books. Sebastian Hellman dbpedia.org Sebastian is a senior member of the “Agile Knowledge Engineering and Semantic Web” AKSW research center, focusing on semantic technology research – often in combination with other areas such as machine learning, databases, and natural language processing. Sebastian is head of the “Knowledge Integration and Language Technologies (KILT)” Competence Center at InfAI. He also is the executive director and board member of the non-profit DBpedia Association. Sebastian is also a contributor to various open-source projects and communities such as DBpedia, NLP2RDF, DL-Learner and OWLG, and has been involved in numerous EU research projects. Natasa Varitimou Information Architect, Thomson Reuters Natasa has been working as a Linked Data architect in banking, life science, consumer goods, oil & gas and EU projects. She believes data will eventually become the strongest asset in any organization, and works with Semantic Web technologies, which she finds great in describing the meaning of data, integrating data and making it interoperable and of high quality. Natasa combines, links, expands and builds upon vocabularies from various sources to create flexible and lightweight information easily adaptable to different use cases. She queries these models with their data directly with SPARQL, guarantees data quality based on business rules, creates new information and defines services to bring together diverse data from different applications easily and with the semantics of data directly accessible.

On 14 November 1973, students at the National Technical University of Athens (also known as the Athens Polytechnic or Polytechneion) went on strike and started protesting against the military regime. - Σαράντα επτά χρόνια συμπληρώνονται σήμερα από την εξέγερση του Πολυτεχνείου.

Maritime Education – Encouraging a Maritime Career for the Younger Generation Human Capital and Shipping Moderator: Mr. George Gourdomichalis, President & Managing Director – Phoenix Shipping & Trading Panelists: Mr. Vasilis Papagiannopoulos, Director – Common Progress Co Mr. Yannis Golias, Professor – National Technical University of Athens (NTUA); Senior Advisor, Publishing Department – Eugenides Foundation Professor Dinos Arcoumanis, Chairman of the Academic Board – Metropolitan College; Former Vice-President of City University of London Professor Michael Tamvakis, Professor of Commodity Economics and Finance – The Business School (formerly Cass) Mrs. Venetia Kallipolitou, Tsakos Group Maritime Training and Education Advisor –Tsakos Columbia Shipmanagement S. A.

Vassilios Bartzokas, the Founder & Editor of ARCHISEARCH.gr interviews Dimitris Papanikolaou Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, founder and director of the Urban Synergetics Lab who shares his experience on Architecture and advice to young professionals. This series is a part of Archisearch Portfolio Reviews, taking place within the Archisearch Career Days initiative. Dimitris Papanikolaou, DDes, is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, jointly between the School of Architecture and the Department of Software and Information Systems, and he is the founder and director of the Urban Synergetics Lab. His research investigates the relationship between urban space, information technology, and social behavior from a cybernetics perspective. He has worked at Microsoft Research (Computational User Experiences and VIBE groups) and at the MIT Media Lab (Smart Cities and Changing Places groups), and he has taught at the NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program, MIT Media Lab, and Harvard GSD. His research has been published in 32 peer-reviewed conference proceedings, journal articles, and book chapters, and has received distinctions including the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, the Harvard Deans' Design Challenge, the Harvard Fellowship on Energy and Environment, and the Knight Foundation Celebrate Charlotte Arts Initiative. He holds a Doctor of Design (DDes) from Harvard University Graduate School of Design, an MSc in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab, a SMArchS in Design Computation from MIT School of Architecture and Planning as a Fullbright scholar, and a Diploma in Architectural Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens in Greece.

Episode 499 of “Cool Things Entrepreneurs Do” is co-produced in partnership with the Austin Technology Council, the largest tech industry organization in Central Texas. ATC empowers members by using insights, resources, and connections so their members can succeed and thrive. This conversation is with long-time ATC member (back to the days when it was the Austin Software Council) Jean Anne Booth - CEO and Founder of UnaliWear.   In this episode Jean Anne talks to Cool Things host, Thom Singer, about business, Austin, and the changes in technology. She shares her story from working at NASA in college, to engineering jobs, to a career as a serial entrepreneur.      About UnaliWear   Focus groups have named our Kanega watch a wearable “OnStar for People” because we provide discreet support for falls, medication reminders, and a guard against wandering in a classically-styled watch featuring an easy-to-use speech interface rather than buttons.   Thanks to our patented battery system in the band, you never have to take your watch off to charge – and unlike Apple watch or Samsung Gear, we don’t require a smart phone (because it’s built in). We combine cellular, Wi-Fi, GPS, BLE (for hearing aids and telemedicine devices), an accelerometer for automatic fall detection, and continuous speech to provide an active medical alert that works anywhere, along with data-driven artificial intelligence that learns the wearer’s lifestyle (think “NEST for people”) to provide predictive, pre-emptive support.   Our naming derives from Cherokee: “Unalii” is “friend”, and “Kanega” is “speak”, so we are the friend that speaks to you.   OnStar is a registered trademark of OnStar, LLC. UnaliWear has no affiliation with OnStar.   About Jean Anne Booth (CEO and Founder)   A serial entrepreneur, Jean Anne started UnaliWear after selling previous startups to Texas Instruments and Apple.   Jean Anne was the founder of Luminary Micro, the creators of the Stellaris microcontroller platform and the first to market with ARM Cortex-M3-based microcontroller solutions.  Luminary Micro was purchased by Texas Instruments in May 2009, and was one of the top VC-backed M&As of 2009.  Jean Anne retired from TI in 2012 after serving as the general manager for TI’s Stellaris family of products.   Jean Anne was also a founder at Intrinsity, the creators of the graphics chip in Apple iPad products.  Intrinsity sold to Apple in 2010.   Jean Anne holds a BSEE from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MSCE from National Technical University.   https://thomsinger.com/podcast/unaliwear

Panagiotis Michalatos on the luxury of choosing to be simple and the emerging trend of simplicity, the power of intuition, questioning our creative interfaces and workflows, and his love for screens. Pan Michalatos is an architect, lecturer in architecture technology at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a Principal Research Engineer at Autodesk. Between 2006 and 2010 he worked as a computational design researcher for the London-based structural engineering firm AKT. Along with colleague Sawako Kaijima, Pan provided consultancy, and designed computational solutions, for a range of high-profile projects. They have also developed a range of software applications for the intuitive and creative use of structural engineering methods in design. Simplicity is an emerging trend; a luxury not everyone can afford. For the last 10,000 years, human biology has barely changed — yet our lives feel more complex, accelerated, and stressful than ever before. What are we trying to slow down from? Favorite quotes "I don't think there is such a thing as a simple life." "You need to have the luxury to choose to simplify your life." "Everything [including art] has utility for the fact that it is being done." "There is a misconception: that our lives have accelerated. […] But for someone 10,000 years ago, [life] would be an equally constant state of stress." "Screens are constructed, by accident or intentionally, to be stared at. You don't have a problem focusing on the screen. The problem is looking away from it." "We are trying to create tools and workflows for designers that incorporate all the knowledge [existing in other disciplines] to be directly accessible and usable." "Software is seen as a way to package knowledge in a usable (and mobile) form, to distribute it." "The other people. That's the challenge." "We try to find drives to keep us distracted from the fact that we're all gonna die." Links Adams Kara Taylor Commodore 64 oramata (app) Monolith (app) Objet 3d printer from Stratasys Millipede (app) Application Programming Interface In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg (podcast) National Technical University of Athens Images of the artifacts used by the main hand by Alberto Frigo (project) WarioWare: Smooth Moves (videogame) "Simplify your life" on Google Ngram Viewer Books Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich Red Plenty by Francis Spufford Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter Holy Anorexia by Rudolph M. Bell People mentioned Cristina Caprioli Sawako Kaijima Andrew Payne Melvyn Bragg Dimitris Papalexopoulos Paul Valéry Alberto Frigo Slavoj Žižek Episode notes · Part 1, Pan's career Intro. [0:00] Pan Michalatos. [2:27] Intuitive. [12:02] The "opening" of making. [13:43] Specificity. [15:19] Simple interactions. [16:47] Developing intuition. [18:28] Who designs your software. [20:01] Rewarding interfaces. [22:56] Design automation. [24:33] Constrained interactions. [25:35] Programming languages - How do coding languages affect user interactions? [26:06] Three social contexts - Working with a team, teaching, and doing your own projects. [28:10] Side projects. [28:57] oramata. [31:01] Monolith - A response to the "big promise" of the digital manufacturing industry. [32:46] Millipede. [35:52] Open source. [38:16] Teaching. [39:26] Episode notes · Part 2, Pan's worldview Pan Michalatos. [41:26] Is your life simple? [42:00] Complexity vs Intensity. [42:31] Daily habits. [43:14] Commute. [43:25] Exercise. [43:47] Meditative moments. [44:18] Boredom. [44:44] Media recommendations. [45:06] Focus. [45:48] Email. [46:09] What makes you more creative? [47:25] Your best ideas. [47:52] Work in progress. [47:57] Deliberate practice. [48:32] Disconnection. [49:03] Restrictions. [49:45] Analog. [50:03] Social media. [50:52] Digital clutter. [52:48] Communicative software. [53:37] Success. [55:12] A person that influenced you. [56:33] A sentence to the world. [57:25] Anything you'd do differently? [57:42] Nature. [58:15] Money. [59:11] Clothing. [59:57] Objects. [1:00:33] Distaste towards clutter. [1:00:54] Travel. [1:02:06] Fun experiments. [1:02:52] What's art? [1:03:50] Slow down from what? [1:05:13] Slack vs Scarcity. [1:07:08] The exceptional and the regular. [1:10:06] Book recommendations. [1:15:20] News. [1:17:28] A creative hobby. [1:18:19] Regulating technologies. [1:19:10] Future work. [1:21:42] On Getting Simple. [1:22:53] Submit your questions and I'll try to answer them in future episodes. I'd love to hear from you. If you enjoy the show, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps. Show notes, transcripts, and past episodes at gettingsimple.com/podcast. Theme song Sleep by Steve Combs under CC BY 4.0. Background sounds of people playing golf, vehicles, dogs, bugs, and birds, happened in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while we were recording. Follow Nono Twitter.com/nonoesp Instagram.com/nonoesp Facebook.com/nonomartinezalonso YouTube.com/nonomartinezalonso

Hailing from Minsk, Belarus is Elena Sizova coming in with an hour of heavy work outs. On weekdays she is an engineering lecturer at the National Technical University of Minsk. Weekend audiences are rather different - Elena shares her musical knowledge with the crowds at underground parties, often in Europe and Russia. Enjoy! R @lectra

Panel: Mark Ericksen Eric Berry Josh Adams Nathan Hopkins Special Guest: Andrew Dryga In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Andrew Dryga who is a software engineer (full-stack), entrepreneur, blockchain architect, and consultant. He currently works for Hammer and previous employers include Contractbook, Nebo #15, BEST Money Transfers among others. He studied at the National Technical University of Ukraine. Check out today’s episode where the panel and guest talk about Sagas and Sage. Show Topics: 1:52 – Our guest today is Andrew Dryga. Why are you into Elixir? 2:04 – Andrew: I have worked in Elixir for a few years. I worked on one of the biggest opensource projects for a while now. 2:42 – Let’s talk about Sage! 2:49 – Andrew: I felt like I was doing the same thing over, and over again. Andrew talks about how he was on a mission to solve a problem that he was having. 3:48 – Panelist: I have run into this problem before, and I am looking forward We have distribution systems and anything that is external for us (Stripe), and one of the solutions was to create a multi. Let’s create a user, register theses different pieces, and then... Then we realized that this request was taking too long. Our transaction is timing out. The other connection went to the other server. We had database records removed from the other side. People aren’t aware that they have these distribution problems. I think Stripe is a good example of that. I started with my multi... 5:24 – Andrew: I am trying to be very programmatic. I don’t want to do that, so write now the project is multi. It’s doable if you know what you are doing. If you are dealing with just one it’s simple. But if you can monitor them (Sage Read Me)... 56:16 – Let’s talk about Sagas! 6:19 – Andrew talks about what Sagas are. 8:20 – You are right it is a new mental model. That’s why I love the Sage library because it is simple. It gives structure to that mental model. The idea that I will take step one and create a user, step two another entry, step three now an external entry. It can fail for any reason. Then these compensating functions are saying: what is the undo for this? It could be just delete this specific entry. But do I have that right? 9:53 – Andrew gives his comments on those comments. 10:26 – Andrew continues his ideas. 11:09 – When you start with a new team, you don’t bring Sage right off the back? What is your strategy to figure out that pain? 11:32 – Andrew: I don’t have a plan – how do I feel about THAT coder. After about 2 services and 1 call it’s time to use Sage or it will be too complex. Integration is the case. So if you try to integrate substitution then... 12:29 – Question to Andrew. 12:35 – Andrew: Figure it out by judgment and it varies by situation. I enjoy working with them but I’m not like them. I use my best judgment. 12:59 – You talked at Code Beam and talked about Sagas and Sage. I think that’s a good resource to defend you case. To talk about the sequence of events, something goes wrong, and then rollback the changes. What feedback have you received? 13:46 – Andrew: Yes, good feedback. There some people will say that there are problems, but I know there are companies that are actively using it. People say that it simplifies their projects. I think the presentation slides can definitely help. 14:39 – Yes, check out the show notes links. 14:45 – Are you a consultant or are you fulltime? 14:53 – Andrew: I used to be fulltime and do large projects for companies. Andrew talks about those projects in detail. Andrew: Those projects we used Elixir (see above). I do a lot of opensource, too. Last time I check it was... 16:04 – That’s a good number. 16:08 – Andrew: I am trying to participate in conversations, but if I had more times I would work more in Sage and opensource; to have a persistent nature behind Sage. I think it can be done a much better way. 16:55 – How do you envision doing that? Configuring it to a repo or something else? 17:07 – Andrew: I want to solve the problem of... 17:56 – That’s cool. 18:03 – Andrew: Yeah, everything I find a new application built in. 18:17 – Andrew and panelist go back-and-forth. 18:32 – Andrew continues talking about Sage and models. 18:43 – Proxy channel – I think I want to do a Mud. Anyway... 18:59 – Question. 19:11 – There is a WX library that is built into Erlang which was talked about at the conference. That one looked interesting. How they built the debugger and the widgets. It looked that there was more there than I thought. 19:47 – Great to have out of the box. 19:56 – Andrew comments. Andrew: I saw the talk from Canada and... 20:08 – It’s early to work with. Someone tweeted about it and now I’m rambling.    20:08 – Andrew: Someone made the keyboard while on the plane. 21:04 – I hope we are going that route eventually. 21:12 – Panel and Andrew go back-and-forth. 21:39 – What other applications have you found that Saga would work for? 21:50 – Stripe. 21:56 – Panelist: When I make an authorization request, capture the funds. Even when I am dealing with one of their services there are multi-interactions. 22:03 – Andrew comments. 23:32 – I have an app that I would prefer using Saga because of the... 23:44 – Loot Crate! Check out their deal! 24:37 – Andrew talks about the core team, Elixir and Sage. 26:03 – Panelist: To solve a problem with SAGA let’s talk about the pros and cons. I had an umbrella application and one of the applications was supposed to be the interface to that service. It could be like a payment service and other payment gateways. I am going to make my request to this app, and it’s going to track the app. The main thing continues and talks to the bank and/or Stripe. Depending on the problems but you still have THAT problem because maybe the account wasn’t set up properly. Now we’ve talked to the bank, medium intervention, and let’s run this. I like SAGE and SAGAS because I don’t’ have to go to that level to break out the proxies. I just need to talk with the sales force or something. I need a reliable system when it can recover when something goes wrong. It might be over engineered but I don’t know. 28:17 – Andrew comments about that particular example (see above). 29:03 – With Sagas you can loose them... 29:09 – I haven’t played with Rabbit, yet. The one that is built into AWS? There’s Simple Q and there is something else. Rabbit is built with Erlang. What’s that like for you? 29:40 – Andrew: It’s pretty painful. Andrew mentions MPP. 30:37 – Interesting; I haven’t gotten that far, yet. 30:45 – My first Elixir application had...behind it. That was the worst part. I feel those pains. 31:00 – Andrew: That’s the case. 31:51 – The other service I was thinking of was... 31:56 – Question for Andrew. 31:59 – Andrew answers. 32:39 – That is the problem we are having at work because of older code. How can we resend them out? That probably will be a good fit for us. 33:18 – Andrew.  34:31 – Andrew: Once you’ve found the bug... 35:16 – When you are coming to a new language, it could be React or...the first few things will be pretty awful. What has this path been like for you, Nathan? 35:40 – Nathan: Yeah I am very early days. Yesterday, I had a set of code that I was creating to try just to function and it was really ugly. But I was okay with that because I was just trying to solve the issue. 36:05 – You have to be okay with that. The idea that: You are trying to just make it work. When you come to Elixir and being fresh and thinking I don’t even know what to do. 36:32 – I have a buddy with that now saying: How do I even start with this?! 36:40 – Andrew: It takes time to break your head and a different way to rethink the code. Once I have the basic concepts then it makes me feel super efficient. 37:24 – I am curious what languages have you had experience with? 37:38 – Andrew: I started commercial projects in my teenage years. I built websites for them. I have some JavaScript knowledge and that was good going to Elixir. 39:04 – I favor that side, too. It’s not hard to build solutions with the things that are in the box (Erlang). I don’t like to bring in all of these libraries that people are creating. It’s great but, at the same time, I have been burned by Rails and JavaScript where you bring in all of these different libraries, and it becomes really nasty. I could have solved it more natively. 39:55 – Andrew: In Elixir you can... 40:28 – Oh, that’s all I needed – those 2 lines. 40:40 – Andrew. 40:46 – That’s an interesting dynamic. 41:09 – Andrew comments talks about Elixir and Hex. 41:23 – Andrew: I think it’s a good thing. I think there needs to be work in Hex because it’s underdeveloped. To name a few... 43:08 – Part of the keynote this year that it won’t be merged, or they aren’t promising to merge it. 43:29 – Andrew. 44:08 – I haven’t used 3, yet. 44:10 – Andrew. 44:55 – They are talking about the Read Me. I didn’t know there was an Ecto Mnesia? 45:20 – Andrew: Yeah I helped build it and the plan was... 45:50 – Yeah I can see the issue there, do I maintain it or...? 46:02 – Andrew comments and talks about the community and different codes. 46:36 – Andrew, anything else that you want to talk about? 46:48 – There are tons of notes in our chat, which the listeners can’t see. 46:58 – Advertisement – Fresh Books’ Advertisement! 30-Day Trial! Links: Ruby Elixir JavaScript React Erlang – Disk Log Erlang WX Railway Oriented Programming Nebo 15 GitHub – Scenic Kafka Rabbit MQ AWS AWS – Kinesis GitHub – Firenest XHTTP GitHub – Ecto GitHub – Ecto Mnesia Saga and Medium Introducing Sage Andrew Dryga’s Website Andrew Dryga’s Medium Andrew Dryga’s GitHub Andrew Dryga’s LinkedIn Andrew Dryga’s Twitter Andrew Dryga’s FB Andrew’s YouTube Channel Andrew’s Sagas of Elixir Video Sponsors: Loot Crate Fresh Books Cache Fly Picks: Mark Mark of the Ninja Josh A Sneak Peek at Ecto 3.0: Breaking Changes Nate Pragmatic Studio Eric Looking of Elixir Developers Metabase.com Polymail Andrew Tide of History

Panel: Mark Ericksen Eric Berry Josh Adams Nathan Hopkins Special Guest: Andrew Dryga In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Andrew Dryga who is a software engineer (full-stack), entrepreneur, blockchain architect, and consultant. He currently works for Hammer and previous employers include Contractbook, Nebo #15, BEST Money Transfers among others. He studied at the National Technical University of Ukraine. Check out today’s episode where the panel and guest talk about Sagas and Sage. Show Topics: 1:52 – Our guest today is Andrew Dryga. Why are you into Elixir? 2:04 – Andrew: I have worked in Elixir for a few years. I worked on one of the biggest opensource projects for a while now. 2:42 – Let’s talk about Sage! 2:49 – Andrew: I felt like I was doing the same thing over, and over again. Andrew talks about how he was on a mission to solve a problem that he was having. 3:48 – Panelist: I have run into this problem before, and I am looking forward We have distribution systems and anything that is external for us (Stripe), and one of the solutions was to create a multi. Let’s create a user, register theses different pieces, and then... Then we realized that this request was taking too long. Our transaction is timing out. The other connection went to the other server. We had database records removed from the other side. People aren’t aware that they have these distribution problems. I think Stripe is a good example of that. I started with my multi... 5:24 – Andrew: I am trying to be very programmatic. I don’t want to do that, so write now the project is multi. It’s doable if you know what you are doing. If you are dealing with just one it’s simple. But if you can monitor them (Sage Read Me)... 56:16 – Let’s talk about Sagas! 6:19 – Andrew talks about what Sagas are. 8:20 – You are right it is a new mental model. That’s why I love the Sage library because it is simple. It gives structure to that mental model. The idea that I will take step one and create a user, step two another entry, step three now an external entry. It can fail for any reason. Then these compensating functions are saying: what is the undo for this? It could be just delete this specific entry. But do I have that right? 9:53 – Andrew gives his comments on those comments. 10:26 – Andrew continues his ideas. 11:09 – When you start with a new team, you don’t bring Sage right off the back? What is your strategy to figure out that pain? 11:32 – Andrew: I don’t have a plan – how do I feel about THAT coder. After about 2 services and 1 call it’s time to use Sage or it will be too complex. Integration is the case. So if you try to integrate substitution then... 12:29 – Question to Andrew. 12:35 – Andrew: Figure it out by judgment and it varies by situation. I enjoy working with them but I’m not like them. I use my best judgment. 12:59 – You talked at Code Beam and talked about Sagas and Sage. I think that’s a good resource to defend you case. To talk about the sequence of events, something goes wrong, and then rollback the changes. What feedback have you received? 13:46 – Andrew: Yes, good feedback. There some people will say that there are problems, but I know there are companies that are actively using it. People say that it simplifies their projects. I think the presentation slides can definitely help. 14:39 – Yes, check out the show notes links. 14:45 – Are you a consultant or are you fulltime? 14:53 – Andrew: I used to be fulltime and do large projects for companies. Andrew talks about those projects in detail. Andrew: Those projects we used Elixir (see above). I do a lot of opensource, too. Last time I check it was... 16:04 – That’s a good number. 16:08 – Andrew: I am trying to participate in conversations, but if I had more times I would work more in Sage and opensource; to have a persistent nature behind Sage. I think it can be done a much better way. 16:55 – How do you envision doing that? Configuring it to a repo or something else? 17:07 – Andrew: I want to solve the problem of... 17:56 – That’s cool. 18:03 – Andrew: Yeah, everything I find a new application built in. 18:17 – Andrew and panelist go back-and-forth. 18:32 – Andrew continues talking about Sage and models. 18:43 – Proxy channel – I think I want to do a Mud. Anyway... 18:59 – Question. 19:11 – There is a WX library that is built into Erlang which was talked about at the conference. That one looked interesting. How they built the debugger and the widgets. It looked that there was more there than I thought. 19:47 – Great to have out of the box. 19:56 – Andrew comments. Andrew: I saw the talk from Canada and... 20:08 – It’s early to work with. Someone tweeted about it and now I’m rambling.    20:08 – Andrew: Someone made the keyboard while on the plane. 21:04 – I hope we are going that route eventually. 21:12 – Panel and Andrew go back-and-forth. 21:39 – What other applications have you found that Saga would work for? 21:50 – Stripe. 21:56 – Panelist: When I make an authorization request, capture the funds. Even when I am dealing with one of their services there are multi-interactions. 22:03 – Andrew comments. 23:32 – I have an app that I would prefer using Saga because of the... 23:44 – Loot Crate! Check out their deal! 24:37 – Andrew talks about the core team, Elixir and Sage. 26:03 – Panelist: To solve a problem with SAGA let’s talk about the pros and cons. I had an umbrella application and one of the applications was supposed to be the interface to that service. It could be like a payment service and other payment gateways. I am going to make my request to this app, and it’s going to track the app. The main thing continues and talks to the bank and/or Stripe. Depending on the problems but you still have THAT problem because maybe the account wasn’t set up properly. Now we’ve talked to the bank, medium intervention, and let’s run this. I like SAGE and SAGAS because I don’t’ have to go to that level to break out the proxies. I just need to talk with the sales force or something. I need a reliable system when it can recover when something goes wrong. It might be over engineered but I don’t know. 28:17 – Andrew comments about that particular example (see above). 29:03 – With Sagas you can loose them... 29:09 – I haven’t played with Rabbit, yet. The one that is built into AWS? There’s Simple Q and there is something else. Rabbit is built with Erlang. What’s that like for you? 29:40 – Andrew: It’s pretty painful. Andrew mentions MPP. 30:37 – Interesting; I haven’t gotten that far, yet. 30:45 – My first Elixir application had...behind it. That was the worst part. I feel those pains. 31:00 – Andrew: That’s the case. 31:51 – The other service I was thinking of was... 31:56 – Question for Andrew. 31:59 – Andrew answers. 32:39 – That is the problem we are having at work because of older code. How can we resend them out? That probably will be a good fit for us. 33:18 – Andrew.  34:31 – Andrew: Once you’ve found the bug... 35:16 – When you are coming to a new language, it could be React or...the first few things will be pretty awful. What has this path been like for you, Nathan? 35:40 – Nathan: Yeah I am very early days. Yesterday, I had a set of code that I was creating to try just to function and it was really ugly. But I was okay with that because I was just trying to solve the issue. 36:05 – You have to be okay with that. The idea that: You are trying to just make it work. When you come to Elixir and being fresh and thinking I don’t even know what to do. 36:32 – I have a buddy with that now saying: How do I even start with this?! 36:40 – Andrew: It takes time to break your head and a different way to rethink the code. Once I have the basic concepts then it makes me feel super efficient. 37:24 – I am curious what languages have you had experience with? 37:38 – Andrew: I started commercial projects in my teenage years. I built websites for them. I have some JavaScript knowledge and that was good going to Elixir. 39:04 – I favor that side, too. It’s not hard to build solutions with the things that are in the box (Erlang). I don’t like to bring in all of these libraries that people are creating. It’s great but, at the same time, I have been burned by Rails and JavaScript where you bring in all of these different libraries, and it becomes really nasty. I could have solved it more natively. 39:55 – Andrew: In Elixir you can... 40:28 – Oh, that’s all I needed – those 2 lines. 40:40 – Andrew. 40:46 – That’s an interesting dynamic. 41:09 – Andrew comments talks about Elixir and Hex. 41:23 – Andrew: I think it’s a good thing. I think there needs to be work in Hex because it’s underdeveloped. To name a few... 43:08 – Part of the keynote this year that it won’t be merged, or they aren’t promising to merge it. 43:29 – Andrew. 44:08 – I haven’t used 3, yet. 44:10 – Andrew. 44:55 – They are talking about the Read Me. I didn’t know there was an Ecto Mnesia? 45:20 – Andrew: Yeah I helped build it and the plan was... 45:50 – Yeah I can see the issue there, do I maintain it or...? 46:02 – Andrew comments and talks about the community and different codes. 46:36 – Andrew, anything else that you want to talk about? 46:48 – There are tons of notes in our chat, which the listeners can’t see. 46:58 – Advertisement – Fresh Books’ Advertisement! 30-Day Trial! Links: Ruby Elixir JavaScript React Erlang – Disk Log Erlang WX Railway Oriented Programming Nebo 15 GitHub – Scenic Kafka Rabbit MQ AWS AWS – Kinesis GitHub – Firenest XHTTP GitHub – Ecto GitHub – Ecto Mnesia Saga and Medium Introducing Sage Andrew Dryga’s Website Andrew Dryga’s Medium Andrew Dryga’s GitHub Andrew Dryga’s LinkedIn Andrew Dryga’s Twitter Andrew Dryga’s FB Andrew’s YouTube Channel Andrew’s Sagas of Elixir Video Sponsors: Loot Crate Fresh Books Cache Fly Picks: Mark Mark of the Ninja Josh A Sneak Peek at Ecto 3.0: Breaking Changes Nate Pragmatic Studio Eric Looking of Elixir Developers Metabase.com Polymail Andrew Tide of History

jean Anne Booth is a serial entrepreneur in Austin. In 2013, she founded UnaliWear, the makers of the Kenega smartwatch for seniors. She serves as CEO of the company, which has raised $7 million in funding.  Previously, Booth founded Luminary Micro, which sold to Texas Instruments in May of 2009. She retired from TI in 2012 after serving as the general manager of TI's Stellaris family of products. Booth also was a co-founder at Intrinsity, the creators of the graphics chip in Apple iPad products.  Intrinsity sold to Apple in 2010. She holds a Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and an Masters of Science in Computer Engineering from National Technical University.  

On the Wednesday, June 18th broadcast 2014 at 10AM Pacific/1PM Eastern our special guest is Jean Anne Booth a serial entrepreneur with 30 years of experience in high technology.  Her fourth startup company is LifeAssist, which focus groups have described as “wearable OnStar for seniors”. Jean Anne's background spans from P&L business unit management to marketing; product definition; systems, software, and applications engineering; silicon development engineering; and operations and product engineering. She founded Luminary Micro, the creators of the Stellaris® microcontroller (MCU) platform and the first to market with ARM® Cortex™-M3-based microcontroller solutions.   Jean Anne holds a BSEE from the University of Texas and an MSCE degree from National Technical University. Join us for an informative chat.