Good morning, everyone! Good morning. We're going to get started, so thanks all for coming today. My name is Christina Raymond Murphy. I'm an open and affordable educational resources librarian at Penn State University at the Abington campus. Hi, I'm Brian McGerey. I'm the learning design and open education engagement librarian at Penn State University and I work on the opposite side of Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh. And our third presenter is not here today, Elizabeth Nelson. She is at Penn State Lehigh Valley. We have a bunch of other names up there because those are the, we're talking about a program where we're training and upscaling OER education across librarians at Penn State University. So some things are going to go over today. Overview of the program, we call it OER Leads, how our timeline goes and what kind of funding model we have. We're going to discuss our goals and our hope, our intended impact for this program. Share some of our obstacles and our opportunities in creating the program and managing this project, some impact and then we'll share our QR code with access to our materials. So the background of this program, as you all know, you're all here, libraries are often leaders in the open education movement. However, it might, there's capacity issues and how to scale this up across our institutions. Brian and I, you know, Penn State is lucky enough we have two OER librarians, but we're a pretty big institution. So even that can be a big issue of scale and capacity. There's obviously certification and training programs for librarians around Creative Commons and OER. Brian and I have done many of them. Of course, they require time. But they also, we're looking to run an adoption program or scale up our adoption program. And so they also, some of them lack the like practical training and the logistics of managing an adoption program. So that's really what our program is aimed at. So we address that side of it. Penn State or Pennsylvania, I should say is not as lucky as some of the other states in the United States that have legislation behind them that help propel OER forward. We do not have that champ. So you're speaking a Colorado right here presentation. I'm like, I want to hear that because that's what we need that. So that is an issue for our state. There's no legislation that pushes OER forward. So we're kind of just groundwork doing it up. So to give an idea of our context, this is the state of Pennsylvania on the east coast or close to the states. We currently have 10, those are all of our campuses. We have 24 campuses. Pennsylvania, I should say Scotland is about two thirds the size of Pennsylvania. So that's where we are in terms of, there were one of hundreds of institutions of higher education in Pennsylvania, but we're the largest in our state. We're the land right institution. We have 80,000 students, about 6,300 faculty, and about 150 librarians that work at Penn State. So Brian and I are just two of the 150. So that being said, Pennsylvania is a kind of like interesting state as many are. In the bottom right hand corner near the Addington campus, that's where Philadelphia is on the far left side over by Greater Allegheny. That's where Pittsburgh is. So those are two large cities, the two biggest cities with Harrisburg, another one in the middle. And then the rest of Pennsylvania is really rural. So our campuses range from very diverse to not very diverse from 40,000 students to 500 students. Each of them has a library at them and each of them has at least one librarian. And a lot of our campuses, the flagship campuses in the center is University Park. That has a very different socioeconomic situation from the rest of the campuses. At my campus at Addington, 42% of our students are Pell Grant eligible, which means that families are living below the poverty line. So that really impacts. So that's an interesting thing because at a land-grant institution or a place with multiple campuses, oftentimes things are driven top down. But in this case at Penn State, OER has come from sort of grassroots up because the greatest need is at, tends to be at the campuses, we call the Commonwealth campuses, as opposed to at the flagship campus. So that's kind of been an interesting part of ours as well. Okay, so what is OER Leads? Well, it's funded by two pieces of funding. We have an endowment at the University Libraries. We have a really strong donor system at University Libraries at Penn State. And one of our donors donated the librarianship for learning innovations, which I received two years ago. So that has given me funding to do this. That's one way. We also, two years ago, our dean asked for proposals for Giving Tuesday campaign, and I proposed an OER one and she accepted it. So our first time doing it, we have raised $45,000 from one Giving Tuesday campaign. I think we were the second largest Giving Tuesday campaign at our campus. There was like, sorry, at our university, there was like 150 Giving Tuesday campaigns at Penn State. Only the law school BSL, which wasn't necessarily unexpected, but so that's how we raised money. We did it again last year, and we raised $37,000. So we continue to have donors that are interested in OER, and this speaks to them. The one thing that I found that's interesting for donors that speaks to them is their return on their investment, which is not language. I'm an English major working with donors and all this stuff feels very uncomfortable for me. But there's definitely a language there about how, you know, your $500 donation has an ongoing impact because faculty keep using OER. So that has really been good at getting it across. So what do we do? It's a train the trainer model for OER adoption. Brian, myself and Elizabeth Nelson, the other librarians not here. We develop materials. We train our librarians. They also go through the Creative Commons certificate. So part of the funding that I have, we pay for them to do that. People are trying to keep our own scalability issues there, like we can't train everything on OER. So we sign them up for that. And then we form a community of practice, and we work together over a few months. I'll show you the timeline in a second. And then they immediately put their skills to practice running an adoption program at their campus. So not only do they get funding for themselves to stipend the librarians, but then they receive up to five stipends for faculty at their campuses to support them in doing OER. So this is just the timeline real quick. In the spring 2022, we created the training manual and began onboarding the first cohort in January. We did that for a couple months. That's when the Creative Commons certificate. And then by March, they were putting out the call at their campuses for faculty to apply to receive an adoption grant. In summer 2022, they began supporting their faculty over the summer, as I'm sure all of you know, that could be a wide range of things anywhere from the faculty who says, great, I looked in the open textbook library, got something, good to go, right? To faculty that needed much more support and changing all of their course materials. And then the fall and the spring, the courses started being taught. For the first round of this, we had 17 faculty teaching 34 campuses, supported by the seven librarians that were the OER leads. And then spring, right now in the middle of training, three new librarians applied for the program, and they'll be running their courses and so on and so forth. We've also, because of the fundraising that we did, we're able to continue it for the initial needs as well. So now we're going to have 10 librarians running programs at their campuses. And I'm going to turn it over to Brian. Thank you. So in terms of some of the goals and impact that we've had thus far with the program, as Christine already alluded to, this idea of building a larger, stronger network of folks who have some open education expertise and certainly something that we were interested in doing and having more sweet people across the whole Penn State ecosystem for OER support and advocacy, especially at that campus level. Also, sort of one of the immediate outcomes of all of this was to have these OER adoption programs at all of these different campuses. So we have that happening at eight different campuses. I won't read through all of the campuses, but you can see them on the map earlier there. And this has had an immediate impact on students. Just some initial cost savings calculations there. We estimated about a little under $32,000 for 731 students in 35 courses taught by 30 faculty. The second year of the program is underway right now. They're starting to recruit faculty for it. And so that's going to expand to two additional Commonwealth campuses as well as into some additional programs at the main University Park campus. And then a final goal of this is to have some adaptable materials that can be used at our various Penn State campuses, but also be used at additional institutions. And we will share those with you shortly. So we've gathered feedback from a number of different stakeholders in this program, first of all being the Leeds librarians themselves. And one of the things that they've really enjoyed about the program is having this kind of sense of community around this particular topic. A lot of them were coming to this very little prior knowledge or expertise around open education. And so having other folks who were kind of in the same boat and being able to rely upon each other, learning from each other was very important for them. They all had a great experience in the Creative Commons certificate program. So that was a good thing that came out of that. And one thing that was really important in terms of their relationship with faculty was that, first of all, there were some faculty who had never interacted with librarians in the first previous two to this program. And so having that kind of one-on-one experience with some of the faculty was a new thing for some of the faculty in the librarians. Also, there were some challenges that came out of all of this. So trying to navigate some of the faculty needs and expectations, there were courses where it was difficult to find materials for them, I encountered that actually myself with one of the courses that applied for the program. And then there were also some instances where classes got canceled kind of at the last minute. I actually had one that got canceled a couple weeks before the semester started. Fortunately, the class that this faculty member got reassigned to, we were able to find who we are for that. So that kind of all worked out, but it was challenging in that respect. Also, the leads that they... Sorry, I'm not sure why it's... The leads said that they were interested in having some more case studies to take a look at to learn. Okay, so we're going to share some initial survey results that we have from the courses that ran this past fall. There are still some more courses that are running right now in the spring, but not surprisingly, our survey of students surfaced a lot of concerns around affordability. And so 54 percent indicated that they were worried about paying for course materials. 65 were anxious about their ability to afford being Penn State students. 35 skipped purchasing course materials at some point. I don't think those numbers are particularly earth-shattering. If you've looked at any other studies around students as it relates to textbook affordability.  So 21 percent said that they've struggled with the course because they didn't have access to the materials. And nine percent had even either dropped a course or withdrawn from courses as a result. But in addition to the cost concerns, students emphasized that ease of access was a major concern for them. And so we were pleased to see that 97 percent of the students said that OER were about the same or easier to access than other course materials that they used. And interestingly, cost and ease of access were the top two concerns also for the faculty. We surveyed them as far as their motivations for being a part of this program. And they were also interested in learning more about OER. So that was another reason for participating in the program. They also gave us some insights into the effectiveness of the materials. And perhaps most importantly, 100 percent of them said that students understood the materials as well or as previous materials that they had used. So this suggests that the materials aren't detrimental to student learning, which is good. And in many cases, it's actually providing added benefit to student learning. Also, 73 percent of the faculty said that they thought the quality of the materials was the same or higher than what they had previously used. So that was good to see. And consequently, 87 percent of them said that they would continue to use OER in the future, which is good because we're making this one-time investment in the faculty and they'll continue to have kind of compounding effects there. One thing worth mentioning about the labor aspect of this is that it can take a lot of work. And in this case, 40 percent said that it was more work than they expected. And so this is an important thing to keep in mind for a variety of reasons. One, it's important to, if you're doing something like this to manage faculty expectations in terms of how much work this is going to require to be able to make these changes and how much time it's going to take. But it's also important to us from like an advocacy perspective because at least at our institution, I would imagine a lot of other folks' institutions, this kind of work isn't typically given the same kind of weight in annual reviews or promotion to tenure and all of that sort of stuff as research or other types of activities. So that's kind of a risk for faculty to invest a lot of time and effort into this as opposed to something else that's going to get them more credit, so to speak. And that's particularly a risk for contingent faculty who also happen to be some of our biggest adopters of OER. And that lack of credit really ends up being kind of an equity issue. So it's important for us to advocate for this and we've been doing some of that at Penn State because we don't want to see this turn into a situation where the only folks who can really be taking that risk are the folks who have tenure, folks who have more established careers and have less to lose by spending time on this. In addition to our primary goal of getting more faculty to use OER, as I alluded to earlier, this also had an added benefit of getting more faculty to work with librarians. And in some cases, faculty who had never worked with a librarian previously and that they had greater awareness of library resources as a result of this program. So just a few challenges that have come out of this program, you know, the workload capacity issue for librarians, certainly challenging because these folks are doing lots of other things in addition to OER. Also, recruiting faculty was a challenge at some campuses more than others. We had some campuses that had more than five applicants, which was kind of the number that we had for each allotted to each of the campuses. And then there were other campuses where there were like one or two people.  So kind of again, managing expectations was important and a challenge. Sustainability of the program in terms of, you know, funding is going to be something that we're going to have to be thinking about, especially in the current climate that we have at Penn State, which is not the greatest. And I would imagine it's probably a case for a lot of folks in the room. And thinking about some opportunities, you know, this has been a great way to make lots of new connections across Penn State's various campuses. As I said, greater awareness of library resources and OER has come out of this. And this has been a great proof of concept for kind of distributing this work across the institution because we have these 24 campuses, but it's one institution. It's not like some of these, you know, like SUNY, for instance, where it's a system, but lots of independent campuses. This is one institution, but just geographically dispersed. I believe it's the tag behind it. So this has been a great way to kind of divide up that work across the system. And as I said earlier, this has provided a great sense of community for the librarians participating in the program and is helping us to build up our capacity. And there's been an increased interest in open pedagogy out of this. And so we're kind of hoping to move in that direction. So as I promised earlier, we have materials from the program, the training manual and the dossier letter that we've provided to all of the leads to be able to give to faculty to participate in the program. And the consultation worksheet that we use, you can either go to the URL or use the QR code to be able to grab that. I just wanted to make sure everybody was able to get it before. Okay. Good morning, folks. My name is David Tully. I'm the librarian for student success and affordability at Carolina State University Libraries. I'm Will. I'm here to cheer you for David. Thank you for your patience while we got these slides underway. There we go. All right. I guess to begin with, then, maybe a little bit of context where we come from or who we work for at least. So North Carolina State is a large research one university in the southeastern United States situated in Raleigh. Historically, we've had, you know, strengths within things like agriculture, textiles, engineering, design, and statistics. We have about 38,000 students enrolled at NC State and about 80% of our students are North Carolina residents. And if you're really interested in some of our sort of wow statistics about our university, there will be a go link at the end and you can take a closer look at some of that. In terms of bachelor's degrees, we award over 100, I think at the moment, and growing. Perhaps through virtue of being a land grant institution, NC State has this motto, this ethos of think and do. So we really value and center sort of hands on transformative work that looks to problem solve. And I think, you know, this motto sort of cuts through across campus, including the university libraries. Speaking of the university, the university libraries, the libraries is a heavily used resource on campus, both on and off campus, I should say. And for a number of years now, you know, our libraries is active as one of the main hubs across campus. So, you know, this is a place where students come to research and learn, but also where they gather in their social groups, sort of after hours as well. So really busy building student success. We've been active, as I said, for many years now, both in terms of things like building hours, resources, and services, and so on. But certainly over the last few years, particularly the libraries have taken like an increased presence and become a great stakeholder in the wider scheme of things. To the extent that, you know, student success and affordability is number one in our strategic plan a few years ago. I think the reason why is just the ongoing sort of diversification of our campus. I think wherein as in the past, you know, our university was set up for one or two sort of typical students. Whereas now that sort of that model no longer fits, you know, with greater diversity, with greater access to groups that, you know, to categories of students that are just historically underrepresented in higher ed, sort of brings new challenges and a need to be much more flexible and pivot to meet some of those, some of those demands. So as mentioned, sort of one size doesn't fit all. And I think that really gets to sort of the heart of some of the work that we do and the importance of such. And, you know, to throw some statistics at you, sort of one in five now other incoming students of first generation students. This past fall or autumn, one in seven other incoming students was a transfer student, often transferring from a sort of rural community college elsewhere within North Carolina. But it's fair to say that a large number of our students arrive at NC State more vulnerable than others to suit costs, particularly sort of unforeseen costs that might arise during their sort of four years or whatever it might be on campus. And this these issues can sort of manifest itself in different ways that affect student success, student outcome. One of the ways in which we've seen recently, and this is a trend that is repeated across likely similar institutions in the US, is the rise of sort of food and housing insecurity. So I've worked pretty closely with a professor on campus, Dr. Mary Haskett from Psychology. Dr. Haskett has done a lot of research looking at the rates of food and housing insecurity at NC State. And what her research showed was that 15% of our students will experience food insecurity at some point during their academic career at NC State, about 10% experience housing insecurity. And I think it's easy to imagine when you are experiencing sort of these types of cost pressures, this can have an impact on you elsewhere in your journey towards your degree. This can lead to taking longer to complete, therefore occurring more student debt as a result. And about 65% of our students do rely upon some form of financial aid in order to attend or worse altogether, sort of dropping out altogether with nothing to show for it. This is the sticker price of an education, an undergraduate education at NC State. You'll see there's a distinction between North Carolina residents sort of in the center and Iowa State to the right. So you pay less as an NC resident, but you still pay an awful lot. So over the course of a four year degree, you'll be looking at around $100,000. That's to get your certificate. Now many students still choose to pursue this despite those increasing costs, because without a degree, there's a lot of data which would suggest what your income during your career will be significantly less. And if you go into the job market without a degree, for instance, for many students despite these cost pressures, it's still a gamble worth taking. Now the libraries is not in a position where we can impact too many of these costs, but we do have this sort of unique impact, unique ability to impact books and supplies in particular. And we sort of focus a lot of our resources over the last few years on this one aspect in particular. So this year we asked students to budget about $854 for their materials. That's down from recent years. There's another presentation entirely about whether that cost has got cheaper for students or not centered around things like access codes, student choice, and so on and so forth. And maybe some of us have a chat afterwards about that because I can talk all day about this, but it's still a significant cost to the libraries, particularly interested in helping out. We've been active in student affordability for many years now, so far predating my work here. Beginning really in the year 2000, we began a sort of a relatively small, I'm told, short-term lending program where students would borrow a laptop or borrow headphones to about four hours a day. Now, fast forward a few years later, we launched a technology lending, sorry, a textbook lending program. So if you are enrolled in a class that has a required textbook, the libraries will purchase a copy and it'll be made available to you on a very short-term basis, about sort of two hours per time. Now, given, as we know, the escalating cost of textbooks, open education and OER in particular, is much more of an interest to us. And in 2014, our alt textbook project was launched, and all the credit in the world to the gentleman to my right here. It's been a roaring success, and I'll come on a little bit more about that. And then in 2018, the library started awarding scholarships. So if you're a student worker at our libraries, and we have about 200 to 250 at any time, then you will be eligible for a scholarship award from the libraries. We started off with two scholarships worth $2,000 a piece, so one fifth of your tuition. And again, I'll come on to talk about how that's grown in recent years. Now, because there are so many different sort of threads, and so all these different sort strands around affordability, this is just barely a handful of them. The library's developed a fellow's position, a time-limited position in 2019, or somebody to lead an initiative, sort of marrying these threads together in a programmatic way in developing new ones. I was fortunate enough to be the person that was tasked with doing that, and I've progressed few years later onto my current position of student success and affordability. My role, I'll be completely honest, I think I've got one of the best jobs in the libraries. I love what I do for a living. One of the reasons why is that at our libraries, and I think never more so is that clear than within my role, we are not siloed. We cross departments all the time. There's 20 departments at the libraries. I don't think there's one in which I haven't collaborated on at some point just within the past three years. My home department is open education, well, the open knowledge center, I should say. This is where a lot of our OER work takes place. I think it makes perfect sense to be stationed at home in open knowledge, because what OER is a big part of what I do. I think the values and the principles of open education really inform a lot of the work that I do, whether it's with my colleagues in development or community engagement or access services. Things like, for instance, community. Community is absolutely at the heart of OpenEd and is at the heart of my position. I would be nowhere near as successful if it wasn't for a large amount of people on and off campus that I work with along the way. Innovation and creativity. People in general, openness, trust, that sort of thing. All of these are vital components of this position. And I also get to collaborate elsewhere across this huge campus of ours. Perhaps the best example of that is our Pack Essentials Committee. This is a student basic needs coalition of volunteers. I'm the library's representative, but most of the other units will have a representative. We are set up to sort of serve the basic needs of around that sort of 20% mark of our students who are sort of particularly vulnerable to costs and unforeseen costs in particular. So we work together. We have ad hoc committees and student government is another one. Student voice is really important. We always talk about this, but it's also absolutely paramount to work the work that I do. And then sort of there's other ones as well, sort of wellness and recreation. I think the last few years have showed us that there's absolutely a need to bring in outside bodies from elsewhere on campus into our building and actually reach students where they are. So I've collaborated closely with the cancelling center with our wellness and rec. We've had things that I thought I would never see before, students getting like massages in the foyer. This would never have happened a few years ago, but our libraries is open to doing things like this. And my job, luckily I get to help arrange some of that. To give you some idea of some of the success stories and what a position like this can achieve, we have a food pantry. Hands up if you're on a campus with a food pantry. Several of you. So our food pantry has been around for a while now. About 10 years or so. And it's a vital resource for a lot of our students. It's still heavily used. Perhaps unfortunately so in some aspects. The library has been active in terms of partnering with the pantry for years. We've sent colleagues, myself and Will, have gone to the pantry to volunteer. We've also gone out into the community to help with other food pantries. But again, in line with that idea of opening up our spaces to incorporate this more sort of holistic set of needs that students need these days, we've began bringing the pantry into our spaces to do sort of pop-up dance. And it doesn't stop there either. We've given our rates of food and housing insecurity. We've hosted things like town halls where we've bought in sort of authors. We've bought in academics. We've bought in students who can speak first hand to their experiences and what we need to do better on campus to support our students. We've held film series that looks specifically at things like students from lower income backgrounds accessing higher ed and being successful within it. We've published white papers on this topic. We also have a personal librarian program on our campus. So if you are an incoming student in this fall, we had close to 7,000 students, you are automatically paired. You don't get to choose, but you can opt out if you want to, with one of our librarians. And the idea of this is you have like a person at the library, a contact, a concierge where you can reach out to at any time and ask a question both about the libraries but also about campus in general. We outreach to you both through things like email but also in person events. And our goal really is to humanize the libraries and sort of, for a lot of our students, our libraries is this enormous like behemoth of a building that can be quite intimidating to step into, particularly if you are from a smaller town or a rural community, you come into our library. It's not immediately obvious like if you found your place or not. So the goal of our program is to sort of hopefully kick away some of those barriers by showing there's a more sort of personal touch. We're not afraid to laugh at ourselves, but we're also there when you need like serious help with your research or access to technology, whatever it might be. The great commercial. Thank you, thank you. We did several of them. We did a few sort of takes on things like the office and everything else and waiting a call from Hollywood that hasn't come yet. I've also done an awful lot of work with our development department in a few different ways. So I mentioned the student scholarships previously. We started off of two in 2018. We have now awarded 37 since and 21 just within the last two years. And 12 of our students benefited from those scholarships in the past year. Half of them received awards of about $5,000 to about half the cost of tuition. We've been able to do this through philanthropy, through growing the number of different types of scholarships that are available to our students. Donors have been great. They've been central. And also the library's textbook project has also benefited from things like crowdfunding. We raised $7,000 just last month to support faculty in OER projects. The main reason I think one of the best successes that we've done to provoke some of that is through them being able to demonstrate the impact of a scholarship award to things like storytelling through whether it's videos, whether it's connecting over lunch with students or to see the middle here had a donors and scholars program in person at the libraries last month. So this helps both steward existing gifts but also cultivate new ones as well. Also been extremely successful in grant writing. So working with foundations to bring money in that I can then use so I can pay for students textbooks or access codes. I can buy students laptops if they are in sort of dire need of access to that regard as well. Our textbook program, it would be remiss of me not to mention this because this has been like perhaps the biggest success of student affordability over the past 10 years. We've estimated since 2014 we've saved close to $11 million. That's what conservative estimate and fairness in that time and already had a date given the applications we've already received this semester as well. It had impact of over 80,000 students, which is amazing. And at 77 projects within that time of 45 within the last sort of three or four years. So since that fellow's position was developed, it's really sort of provided a sense of I think of sort of rocket fuel to this type of program. We've been able to grow the number applications that we receive quite significantly. We also have this amazing program called the Open Pedagogy Incubator. Now Will and I are leading another presentation tomorrow when we dive into the incubator. So I won't give you too many spoilers, but if you're curious what this is referring to, this is a program that's set up to support faculty in developing competencies in Open Pedagogy through things like workshops, through things like discussions, curated readings and so on. So we've had sort of multiple cohorts come through the incubator over the past few years, both at a local level, but also a system wide level as well. And I'm so excited to talk to you through a few of you tomorrow more about that. And also digital access as well. I mentioned at the very beginning we've had that short term lending program for a number of years. And that was great, but there was a growing number of students where that did not benefit any longer through a variety of reasons, be it employment, be it they were no longer accessing campus as frequently as students did in the past, be it they may have had sort of parent or other caregiver responsibilities. So this program I've grown to be a subsection of longer term lending. And that's also been scaled a little bit more to incorporate Wi-Fi hotspots as well for students who don't have any or reliable internet access, at least as well. And finally, another success, we provide needs-based scholarships, but so do a lot of our other colleges. We have a Leathernon campus, so we've partnered with a couple of them whereby students are receiving aid from those scholarships, but we tack on additional library support. So we provide an additional laptop on a longer term basis. We'll purchase textbooks and access codes for the first year, so essentially ease that sort of that landing students have when they first come to campus and they leave a high school where these materials are commonly made available to them and suddenly they're being asked to find $300 by an access code for three months that they can't sell back. So these are my slides. I want to acknowledge we have five minutes left and I want to make sure we get to some questions. So I'll just say a lot of people in the room are doing really cool stuff like this and we're excited to talk about different ways, whether that's sort of a distributed expertise where you have different folks on campus coming together in a constellation, whether you're trying to sort of build a Voltron, David, where you take the different parts together as a team in different ways, or whether you want to think about a full-time position. Our position description is available and David can speak really powerfully to these issues. I could blather on forever. You've ever been to a past session, you know, that's the case, but I'd really like to invite you all to come back and have a little time for Q&A here. So thank you all so much. Thank you, David, for that awesome discussion. What questions do you want? I was very abrupt. I'm sorry about that. Yeah, please. Can you expand a bit on how this went with faculty and how you kind of engage them with workshops? I just know I'm in the starting process, so any hints or strategies to get them going, to get them on board? Yeah, so awareness is always a challenge, as we know, not just of where we are, but also the ways in which the libraries can support faculty in both understanding where we are in terms of discovery, but also potentially using it to sort of transform that course. A few things that we've done is we've had sort of workshop series, so we did the open cafe for a number of years. It started during lockdown, which was a sort of synchronous virtual event, where week to week we would sort of meet and we'd explore a different topic of open education. So we've done that, we had a few different sort of series of that, sort of as it were, that proved quite popular. We'll see workshop-wise, we've tried to sort of position our workshops to speak to the reasons why faculty don't embrace OER, for instance. As we know, the quality question always comes up, so that's one that we've done. Discovery is perhaps another one. Also a lot of faculty aren't aware that if you work with the libraries through the old textbook program, it's a grant funding program as well, so you receive funding that will compensate you for your time, or you can use it in different ways, hiring a student, what it might be. But we also reach outside of the libraries to work with some of my partners across campus to draw awareness to this as well. Student government's a good example of that. Over the past few years, we've worked with them to develop a faculty award around sort of OER as well, so speaking to that promotion and tenure component that we always know is an issue when it comes to faculty working with OER and things like that. So there's a lot of different ways, and I think the pivot to online as it opened up some additional opportunities that were always there, that maybe we didn't always see the value in them. The only thing I'd add to that is you're in a room full of people doing cool stuff who would love to share, who would love to talk to you, who have an open license on all their stuff. When I first started and didn't know anything, I reached out to several people in this room and said, I don't know what I'm doing, and they gave me rubrics and promotional emails and posters and everything else. Please do that too. We'd all really love to share. I would like to know if you use other incentives and affordability to disseminate the idea of using OER. Absolutely. When I have my discussions with faculty, affordability is an important component of it, but it really has to go further than that. I think it's really about the open license, about the opportunity to do something different that you don't find with all rights reserved, tailor content, towards the way that faculty teach their course in the way that they want to teach it, but also talk about things like equity and everything else and inclusion, which is really something that's really important on our campuses at the moment. But I certainly think if the conversation began and ended with affordability, we would not get anywhere near as many projects working with OER as we currently do. So it's really about exciting them about the potential that Creative Commons licensed and the way that they can do things better than they currently are in terms of their pedagogy. Do you all want to share anything from your work in terms of getting faculty invested? I mean, we just had a presentation to our, I guess, a conference on campus, the flagship campus. Most faculty said like, yeah, affordability is nice, but he was excited by what you can transform. And the idea of actually students being part of it and contributing back to knowledge was what really spoke to some of the faculty. So that, you know, that is always exciting to hear that because it allows you to have such bigger conversations. So I have one more question. How do you communicate? How do you get the word out? Okay, I'll email you. We have that same face. Thank you. I think we have a lot of strategies that we can talk about. It is the top of the hour. And I know there's another group of people coming in. So thank you all again. This was a really cool discussion. And we're so excited to keep talking. Thank you very much.


Tyler from Benchry's TV out from the UK, how you finding that in Paris so far man? It's been cool, the accent hard by the way. I like the accent. Hard, in-nit, in-nit broth. How's it feel to be in Paris? It's cool, I'm enjoying myself. First time for you? First time, first time. I enjoy it though, it's nice. So what did you enjoy the most? The Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower, I got to see them personally. I never thought of doing that as a kid, you know being from Fayetteville, so that was dope for me. You thought it was bigger or smaller? Said it one more time. You thought it was a bigger tower or smaller tower? No, it's a bigger tower than what I expected. Is it, are you able to reflect on the fact that your basketball journey is taking you overseas in the moment or is it something that it's hard to appreciate while you're in it? No, I take time out. I take time out to reflect on it.  Like they try to live through me, you know what I mean? So I try to embrace the moment every time I'm here and take pictures and things just to show to my folks back home. Speaking of that, you got the NBA Cares after this. How have you in your basketball journey seen the sport as a way to connect with different people and different cultures? It just brings everybody together. You know, sports is like, it brings everybody together. It doesn't matter if it's baseball, football, basketball, it doesn't matter what your race religion is, you know, everybody can come together and enjoy sports and put all the BS to the side. So I'm thankful for that. The team is struggling a little bit with a lot of losses. Do you think it can be a fresh start with this special week in Paris and you can find a new camera street or something like that in a special context? I mean, when the ball goes up, I don't know if we're going to be worried about being in Paris. You know, it's go time. Like I've been saying for a good minute now, we've got to come out as desperate. It's a must win game for us. Every game is a must win, so we're not treating this any different. It counts on the record, so we've got to go out there and treat it like that. You've played with Salah Mejri, the only Chinese guy in Dallas. What do you think about him? That's my dog, man. I miss Salah. He was cool. And me and Dope played with Salah for a little minute, so he's a great teammate, good to be around, and he was a hard worker. Nah, nah, nah. Just rocking with the Kobe's. I ain't doing that crazy. It's a business trip for me. If I say to you, France and basketball, what do you think? France basketball, Tony Parker, Tony Parker. Tony Parker, just Tony Parker? It's a lot. Foyer, Frank, Killian Hayes, Victor. I don't know if I'm missing. Oh, Gobert, Rugo Burt. That's it. Tony Parker is for US basketball player. The main topic when we speak about France and basketball, he did something very special in the NBA that you remember him? Oh yeah, for sure. I think Victor done took that over now, though. When you talk about French basketball, you're probably going to think of Victor first now. But Tony Parker, everybody knows he was that guy, man. He had a hell of a career in the future hall of fame. Do you understand why everybody is crazy about Victor here in France, about what he's doing now for his rookie year? I haven't got to see him in person, but just from what I've seen on the Internet and watching his live games, I see why the hype was there. He's special. After 16 games and 29 days, you kind of have this break in the schedule, even though you're traveling. Do you view that as a positive or you guys feeling kind of antsy to get back on the court and correct some mistakes? It's a mix of both. It's a mix of both. It's a fine line of enjoying this and also making sure that you stay locked in. We had two really good days of practice. Yesterday we came in, got up and down a little bit, got after it. Today was super high energy. Everybody locked in. No reps was wasted today, so that's a major for us going forward. And considering you don't really get to get up and down during the season often, do those in your experiences, those sort of rare practice days, how do those kind of help a team out in the middle of the season? It's good to go out there and get after each other a little bit. Everybody hitting each other. It's just like football.  You get to let some steam off. So it's kind of the same thing. We had a good day yesterday, really good day. Highly competitive and we got to carry that over whenever we see somebody else with different uniforms on. Dennis, you have obviously like lots of experience in the league. How do you approach trade that line? I mean, is it something that's nerving somehow for you or are you calm before such thing? I don't really worry about it, you know what I'm saying? I got traded my second year in the league at the deadline, so it's not like it's not like it's any kind of nervous territory for me. You know what I'm saying? I've been here before and I understand. I ain't got no control over it. So I just come out here and do my job for the Brooklyn Nets or whatever happens happens. But you know I'm happy where I'm at. Dennis, Dennis. Basketball related. You guys are currently in a temp seed in the Eastern Conference. Are you guys looking to like get into the post season come come April? Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, thank you. Thank you.


I love AI already. I just did a hair transplant and showed you the beautiful hairstyle. Thank you so much for coming to this session. I thought I would cover the empty part but I am very glad it is packed.  It is about the importance of AI and how do you choose your projects? Is it worthy to have AI or not? Let us begin. Someone asked a question which is at some point in our lives. What I have thought, hey you know what I wish I had to sleep apart. It would be like I want to go to the university world or I want to time travel, I want to take the world of the world. How many of you here wish that you could predict the future? With which show of hands? How cool would it be if a new world is going to happen tomorrow, today things are very important. How cool would it be if you just know that there is something coming in the technological world and shake up the entire platform. So that you can start preparing for your full hand ready for that new transformation. Luckily, that is not really part of it. There is a lot of tools today which already lets you do that at some extent. One such tool is called as the Cartman's hindsight which I am sure that you have seen in this audience. But I have heard about it. I have already used it in your career for a long time. This curve is very simple. What it does is it has five phases in the life. Depending on where the technology is plotted in this graph, it tells you whether the technology will be going mainstream in the market or will take option. This is how the curve looks like. I would like you to just go here and look at the world, make up. It is very interesting, very powerful and it is directly put into your work. So this is an example of the curve where you have all those dogs, each one with a different technology. What is interesting here is for the last five to six years, there has been one technology which has been plotted in this curve. No prices for the cases, it is actually the AI. So the idea here is last year, not once but twice the AI was mentioned here. Similarly, the AI was mentioned twice which means that that curve has been plotted with a dark blue colour which stands for I am sure people in the back can't see it. Last time it says that it is five to ten years which means AI will go mainstream the next five to ten years. Where most of our audience will have something of a direct reach to it. So long story short, the key takeaway here is whether you like it or not, AI is here to stay. Okay fine, so AI is here to stay. Is that a good thing or a factory? There is this debate that is going on slightly for some time now where one set of people believe that AI is evil, it is destructive, it is going to take away all the jobs. The other one is we have people who think that it is just a buzzword, right? Like IoT and silverware class is going to be there but some of them will be in the market. What I believe in is that it will be a middle ground where of course AI can't look at it at least right now but in the near future it is going to transform the distance. The word that is important here is transform because for you and I as designers we need to upscale and adapt to this new certain future. But there is always a catch right? So just because AI is printing is the buzzword it is going to be the next big thing in the world. Doesn't mean that AI is put in every corner and position. Don't force AI into places where it does not belong. Now this brings up another question which is hey how do I even know whether my product needs AI or not? We are going to spend the next few minutes understanding this question, alright? For that let's take up yesterday. The problem statement is let's take elderly people as a direct resource and they have people keeping up with latest news and events because they don't have access to genuine, honest, trustworthy news and articles because of which they feel isolated and they feel they are missing form. So if we are designers trying to solve this problem statement how will we do that? Let's say I just do a quick workshop and we spend a couple of hours and we generate some very obvious ideas and we put them into two problems. One solution with AI and one solution without AI and let's see how that would look like. The first thing let me take as personalization. So here one very obvious thing you could do is you could ask elderly people who are certain chosen areas of interest and you could give new speeds specific to those areas of interest. And a solution without AI does this and a solution with AI what you can do is probably a step ahead where you can watch for the adaptive personalization. Sorry there is a bit of... I wish the AI could solve this problem. Awesome. So with AI you can watch one as an adaptive personalization where the user has not chosen any of interest. It can understand any habits and give you what possible news article that you might love. Now let's take a second theme which is localization. Without AI just to have a better reach and a more immersive experience you could have this local language support. Now with AI obviously you can do this but it can also do a lot more because you can curate summaries of long articles. You can do language translation and a lot more with AI. Let's take one more thing for last one which is how do you address isolation? Without AI today many people do this already in apps where you have some kind of plug-in which lets you give access to latest events and community activity that is happening around you based on interest location. The user can go out and make networks go on etc. Now with AI you can do this but you can do something more which is the AI can actually make a digital companion where it can give you a news article you can converse with it, you can have a chat over it and the solution becomes like a company of sorts for you. And what can also do is information filtering. Rajat before we just mentioned that we have certain movies which are the first thing that are dramatic. So let's say if you want to mind the mental health, the wellness of the elderly person we can filter out information which can give a potential harm to them. We just give motivating uplifting articles which kind of improves the mental health instead of making that. Now having seen this what we can realise is that the same problem statement can be solved with AI and without AI. With AI obviously it was more smarter, better and more updated but without AI it didn't do a bad job on the program because the same core user needs was actually met with both these approaches. Now this brings up a lot of questions. So when do I decide that my problem statement truly needs AI or it's better off without AI? So the key answer to this is it all depends on your project goals. The more elaborate answer would be these three aspects of your project goals is what determines whether your AI solution is needed or not. First is cost. How many of you knew this about this global article which you went to write last week where it was about open AI and Microsoft it only spends 5-6 crore rupees and you can currency for just taking charge of it and running for once in a week. AI is expensive, it's a monetary point of view. It's not just a monetary point of view, it's just a point of view. Getting hold of developers and developers who are already at AI there is still gaps in the very, very costly. And lastly, data. To get accurate AI data, you need a huge trading model of high quality. How do you make sure you get that quality data which is kind of very expensive? And the next thing is user needs. Once let's say you have answered a positive thing you show that your product can afford it. The next key question is user needs. If you create a solution which is AI background, are you sure that AI solution can have a better performance or efficiency or overall user experience? Are you sure that this will happen with AI and that non-AI solution cannot do this? Something to probe about. And lastly security is a huge concern about privacy being at stake when you have AI in your solution. So how do you make sure that you as designer can take care of that? You as designer can make sure that there is no misinformation happening because of wrong things very data. And how do you make sure whatever AI solution you present to the user you are transparent about it. You also tell how that AI solution works at the first place. And lastly bias. How do you make sure that you don't have any kind of cultural or gender bias within your solution? So I'll just give one quick example. Here also a few months back there was this small girl from an operated family who went to an AI solution and typed hey show me women leaders of each top order category unfortunately the AI result was all women of phase 3. So that made the small girl believe that you have to be phase 3 because of how destructive AI is. If you don't take care of these concerns. So the summary of my talk here is if you want to make sure that you have to be confident that you should have AI solution or not make sure that you answer these three critical aspects and the answers to these three are certainly yes then the probability that your solution would benefit with AI is extremely high. If not, you might as the better of the solution is the right one. That was my key idea with all of you. Hope you like that. And my name is Sudeep. I'm going to have a chat with first hope. I'm here until 6 p.m. today. That's a good time and we can talk more. So one question I have was that you had mentioned that AI is here to stay and you showed these three parameters on which we should be judging. So cost is something on which it's easy to get agreement across stakeholders. I mean obviously everyone relates that if there's no money honestly they will not do it. How about the rest of the two when you're in Rome and probably not everyone is in the interest of maybe security or maybe long term effects and like the African girl you mentioned. I mean these are ethical things and ethics is subjective to some extent. Like it should not be ideal but how to navigate that which we are in Rome. Very good question. But yeah if you are in a room which has these aspects raised in a strong way where they want to be able to understand what you are seeing to problem the wrong one first of all. Right. And as designers it's our duty to make sure that we take care of ethical designs. Right. If they can't understand the value of it in the first group, can we show it to the prototype or have it with the research and pointing them the flip of the iceberg of how a domestic can be and probably help. There's only enough articles out there that one wrong group can make AI available. Right. So probably those examples can help. All right. Thank you so much for the audience. Thank you.


Hey man, so Acts chapter 19, we're going to finish the chapter this evening. So in Acts chapter 19, Paul's been on his, what most people call, his third missionary journey. I don't have it really mapped out because as you can see in Acts chapter 19, he kind of just goes all over the place. It kind of gives a lot of reference to, he's spending a lot of time in Asia here which is modern day Turkey if you remember from the second missionary journey. He's about to go across over to Greece again or Macedonia again. But in Acts chapter 19, he's kind of going around Asia and he's spending a lot of time in Ephesus and that's where this last incident takes place. We're going to start out in Acts chapter 19 and verse number 21 this evening and look at this last incident that Paul and his companions get into here in Ephesus. Look at verse number 21 and let's just get started this evening. The Bible says after these things were ended, Paul purposed in spirit that he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia to go to Jerusalem. That when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia to go to Jerusalem saying after I've been there I must also see Rome. That's just kind of showing your projection of where Paul wants to go in the future and we see him come to pass. Paul ends his ministry in Rome. Look at verse 22. It says so he sent into Macedonia two of them that ministered unto him, Tumotheus and Erastus. But he himself stayed in Asia for a season. So he sent Tumotheus and Erastus across the sea and he stayed in Asia, this modern-day Turkey area and he's going around there and at the same time there arose no small stirrer about that way. So he's still having trouble throughout the ministry and then we see a very specific thing that comes up here in verse number 24. It says, for a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith which made silver shrines for Diana brought no small gain unto the craftsmen whom he called together with the workmen of like occupation and said, Sirs, you know that by this craft we have our wealth. Verse 26, moreover you see in here that not alone at Ephesus but almost all throughout Asia, meaning Paul is just going all over Asia preaching the Gospel, says this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people saying that they be no gods which are made with him. So here's a silversmith and he actually makes idols and shrines to this idol, that's his living. And he's going out and he's got a problem with Paul because Paul turned to Habakkuk chapter two. Here's what Paul is saying. Paul is kind of teaching what Habakkuk chapter two, Habakkuk is towards the minor profits towards the end of the Old Testament right before the book of Zephaniah. You'll hit those Z books at the end of the Old Testament, Habakkuk is right before, it's a small book right before Zephaniah. But in Habakkuk chapter two, this is what Paul was preaching that upset the silversmith Demetrius. Look at verse number 18 of Habakkuk chapter two, Habakkuk chapter two. Bible says what profiteth the graven image that the maker thereof hath graven it? So it's saying what profit does the graven image that the maker makes have?   It's saying dumb idols meaning they don't, they just, they're just there, they just don't say anything, they're just nothing. Okay? Look at verse 19.  Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in the midst of it. This is what Paul is preaching here. Paul is preaching that these idols are dumb, they're just, they're nothing. They're nothing.  But when it says lowercase g, what it means is that no other idols you should not make gods, they're not real. There is no other gods.   That's what Habakkuk chapter two here is saying. It's saying, you're, you're foolish to say, wood, teach me. You know, gold, silver, teach me.  It says nothing, it does nothing. Look at verse number nine. Go back. Verse number nine of Habakkuk chapter two. It says woe unto them. So here it's saying in verse 18, it says, what prophet had the graven image?  There's no prophet to the people that have it. But there's prophet to the people that make it. Look at verse number nine. Woe to him that covet, coveteth an evil covetousness to his house, that he may set his nest on high. So what the Bible here is saying is if you covet, if you make money and you covet making money over evil things, look, you're going to pay for this. It's an evil thing to do. And the Bible is saying in verse number 18, look, this is what Paul is teaching, that these are dumb idols, that this idol enshrined to Diana is nothing. It's a nothing burger. And then he goes and he preaches Jesus. But he's saying like, he's teaching the people in Asia that there's no prophet to them to buy this thing, or to have this thing, to worship this thing that is a dumb idol. Now it's just an interesting concept in itself right there. I mean, he's teaching these people, and so back in chapter two, verse number 18 says that there's people that profit by making things that you will buy that you profit zero from. So you're like, why in the world would anyone buy something like that? You should go through your bank statements this next month, and you should go through a line item of every single thing you spent money on, and just start highlighting things that said, okay, what did I buy that has literally zero profit, that is no profit to me? All right, just think of all the things that people purchase in their life that have zero profit, nothing, right? Like a bag of Cheetos. I mean, there's no profit there, right?  Like alcohol, look how much money people spend on alcohol and drugs and all these sinful things that literally have no profit to them. As a matter of fact, not only do they not have profit to them, but they harm them. But guess what, somebody profited by making those things and selling them to people that buy them, right? Think about all the industrial complexes that I've preached about. All, you know what these things are? They're peddling things to you. They're peddling things that are harmful things. They're peddling godless philosophies, that people that, you know, they'll teach your kids and teach young adults in this country that have no profit to you, but they sell them for a lot of money.  These industrial complexes that have no profit to the world, but they're profit to the people that sell them. So look, there's a lot of things in our lives. We just think about that. This is a side note of the sermon.  And you wonder, what's that all about, right? So look, this is what Paul's teaching.  They're not gods. They're not gods other than God. They're nothing. They're wood. They're stone. That's it. They don't speak. They don't have anything.  But do we have a silent God? Do we have a silent? We do not have a silent God. What's unfortunate is people that think that we have a dumb, meaning silent God that, you know, is this magic man in the sky or whatever, but look, God actually has a lot to say to us. It's just people today, there's never been a time in our country's history where people know less about what God has to say. You go out so many, you'll see that. People literally know nothing about the Bible. If you have four Bible verses memorized, you know more Bible than 99.9% of the people in the United States right now. It's pitiful.  We don't have a silent God. And guess what? We also don't have a God that is not profitable to us.  There's no profit. They sit there and they say, teach me, rock, teach me, stone, teach me, silver and gold and all these things and there's nothing. That's what Habakkuk chapter 2 and what Paul is teaching. However, our God, look, salvation's pretty profitable. We didn't pay for it. We didn't even have to buy it. But it's really profitable to us. Not only salvation, but guess what? Salvation and then you listen to all the other things that the Bible has to say other than salvation and guess what? You will be profitable to other people. There is profit everywhere in what God has to say. Not only salvation, but just everywhere in his word there is profit. This is an infinitely profitable book. There's a reason we read the New Testament. Why in the world? I've read the New Testament before. Why would I read it again every January? Because this is the only book that you will ever read that every time you read it you will get more from it. You will read it again and again and again and that will never stop being true. Until you are 99 years old and you die of old age, you will keep reading the Bible and you will keep just garnering new things from it. It happens every time you read it. It's the only infinite book out there. So look, God's word, God is not silent. God has plenty to say to us and it's infinite what God has to say to us. Go back to Acts chapter 19, look at verse number 27. So you know this silversmith, he's not too happy about this so he's getting all the other craftsmen that are in this trade together. Look at verse number 27. The Bible says, this is Demetrius speaking, he says, so that not only this our craft is in danger, to be said it not, but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised and her magnificence should be destroyed whom all Asia in the world worship it. I mean that's a little bit of a stretch. Look at verse number 18 or verse 28. And he said when they heard these sayings they were full of wrath and cried out saying great is Diana of the Ephesians and the whole city was filled with confusion and having caught Gaius and Aristarchus, men of Macedonia, Paul's companions in travel, they rushed with one accord into the theater. So we're going to talk a little bit more about some of Paul's companions in chapter number 20 but Aristarchus actually comes up a few times in the Bible, he comes up in the book of Philemon, he comes up in Colossians chapter 4 is actually being in prison with Aristarchus and Paul had a lot of loyal companions just to all that to say that. Look at verse 30, when Paul would have entered into the temple the disciples suffered him not. So these two guys get caught and grabbed by this mob after Demetrius tips them up into a frenzy and Paul wants to go in there but the disciples you know they convinced Paul not to go. Look at verse 31, and a certain of the chief of Asia which were his friends sent unto him, desiring him that he would not adventure himself into the theater. They knew that there was trouble there. Some therefore cried one thing and some another for the assembly was confused and more part knew wherefore they were come together and the more part knew not wherefore they came together. So I mean verse 32 is kind of telling. I mean this is just basically chaos at this point. They're in this theater, they have these two men caught, it's chaos, the mob's all whipped up into a frenzy and look people are pretty easy to whip up when you look at this story. And this is like mob mentality right here in the Bible is what we're seeing.  In verse 32 it says the more part meaning most of them is what it's saying didn't even know why they were mad. They were all just in this frenzy just ready to tear these two guys apart and they didn't even know. They're just like yeah get them. Everyone's like yeah you know they just chose you how you know mobs work right here. All right. I mean they're just feeding on each others. This is why evil people want to get more people with them by the way.  They don't even know what they're upset about. You know don't get caught up and stuff like this but I mean it's just a snowball effect.  It's kind of a snowball effect. Look at verse 33. And they drew Alexander out of the multitude. The Jews putting him forward and Alexander beckoned with the hand and would have made his defense under the people. Now this is Alexander. You don't hear too much about him in the Bible. There's an Alexander the Coppersmith that is probably this same guy I'm thinking. But you know he was kind of a troublemaker to Paul. But he doesn't really come into play in this story because look at verse 34. It says when they knew he was a Jew all with one voice about the space of two hours cried out, great is Diana of the Ephesians. So they didn't want to listen to him anyway. But this is what's interesting right here in verse number 35. And verse number 35 is where the story really gets interesting. Now look at this guy. And when the town clerk had appeased the people he said ye men of Ephesus what men is there that knoweth not how the city of the Ephesians is a worshiper of the great goddess Diana and of the image which fell down from Jupiter. So here's this low level politician stands up and kind of takes over the conversation here and he does something that you don't see too many politicians do. He actually tries to defuse the situation. Look at verse number 36. Seeing then he still keeps speaking. He says seeing that these things cannot be spoken against. He's like everybody knows that Ephesus they worship this Diana. He says seeing then that these things cannot be spoken against you ought to be quiet and do nothing rashly. If you've been brought you've brought hither these men which are neither robbers of churches nor yet blasphemers of your goddess. Boy this guy is really good here. This isn't this is no Christian talking here. But what he does is what does he do? He kind of placates the crowd. He's like everybody knows that this whole town worships Diana. And then he throws in a defense right after that for these two men, Gaius and Aristarchus. I mean it's a brilliant strategy that he has here to kind of defuse the situation. He said you brought hither these men. He's like they're neither robbers of churches nor blasphemers of your goddess. He's like they've said nothing against. I don't know whether that was true or not because maybe they have. I don't know. But he's basically trying to get this mob calm down. He's like these people aren't thieves. They're not blaspheming Diana. Look at verse 38. Says wherefore if Demetrius and the craftsmen which are with him have a matter against any man, the law is open. And there are deputies. Let them impede one another. So he kind of does that. If you ever heard of the Oreo cookie method of criticism here, this is what he does. He kind of gives them a compliment saying everybody knows that Diana is the goddess of this town. And then he throws in a quick defense of the two disciples that were caught. And then he throws in another. Hey, if Demetrius has a problem, so he kind of sandwiches two compliments with you should let these guys go is what he does. It's a brilliant little strategy here. He's like, hey, go to the law. There are deputies, let them impede one another. He's saying, just don't do this vigilante justice. He's saying, quit, calm the mob down. We don't need a lynch mob here. He's like, just take it to the law. If there's a problem, take it to the proper channels. Look at verse 39. But if you inquire anything concerning other matters, it shall be determined in a lawful assembly. For we are in danger to be called in question for this day's uproar, there being no cause whereby we may give account of this discourse. And when he had thus spoken, he dismissed the assembly. So he succeeds here. He succeeds. If you look at the very next verse in Acts chapter 20, the situation is diffused. I mean, this is a great example of de-escalation. It's fairly amazing because most politicians cave to the mob. Look at John chapter 19. Look at John chapter 19. Actually, most politicians either cave to the mob or they do something else. But look at John chapter 19. Pilate kind of started out like this guy. Pilate started out kind of in the same manner. However, he cave to the mob. Look at John chapter 19. Look at verse number eight. A very similar situation. You have this mob whipped up against Jesus saying, we want to execute this guy, crucify this guy. And Pilate, he's like he's done nothing wrong. He's innocent. He's like, you want to execute him, you execute him. He's like, I'm not going to do this. He's like, this guy hasn't done anything. Look at verse number eight of John chapter 19. It says, when Pilate therefore heard that saying, he was more afraid. So the only reason I read that for you is they're saying, oh, he claims to be the Son of God. He claims to be the Son of God. But this shows you verse number eight that Pilate was literally afraid of the mob. He was afraid of the Jews here. Look at verse number nine. And we went again into the judgment hall and sayeth unto Jesus, whence art thou? He's like basically saying, where did you come from? But Jesus gave him no answer. Then said Pilate unto him, speakest thou not unto me? Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee and have power to release thee? Jesus answered, thou could have no power at all against me except that were given from above. Therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the what? Here's that all sin is equal thing again, right? This idea that all sin is equal in the eyes of God. No, Jesus here said, the people that brought me to you, they have the greater sin. He says here in John chapter 19 verse number 11, verse number 12. And then from thence forth Pilate sought to release him.  Pilate doesn't see anything wrong. You know that he's got all these false accusations against him. Pilate could care less if he's violating or offending the Jews religion. The Romans didn't have any respect for the Jews. As a matter of fact, just a few years later, they're literally kicking the Jews out of Jerusalem and in 70 AD they destroyed the entire temple itself. Look at verse number 12. It says he sought to release him but the Jews cried out. Now remember verse eight where he says he was afraid of the mob. Saying if thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend. Uh-oh, there they threatened his political career. They threatened his position of power in the Roman Empire. Whosoever maketh himself a king, speaketh against Caesar.  And they made it about Pilate's boss. And he was already afraid of them and of course we know at this point he sends Jesus to be crucified. He caves in. That's why this town clerk in Acts chapter 19 is kind of a unique situation. He literally stands up, he defends these men and he de-escalates the situation and gets them out of it. And there's no indication that he was a Christian or that he was a believer. He was just some politician, some Gentile. He stood up, probably some Roman official and he defused the situation. So that's rare for a politician. That's why I bring that up. Another thing that politicians will do is they'll either cave into the mob or they'll promise the mob money. That's what politicians do, right? That's what politicians do. They promise the mob's money. That's what all politicians do in America. I don't care what party it is, what they do. It's just whoever, all they do to get elected is they get up and they just promise money. And then the other side gets up and promises more money. And the other side gets up and promises more money. That's what politicians do. You say, why? That's what I'm gonna explain to you tonight. You say, why do they do that? And here's why, because it works. Because it works. You say, why does it work? Why does it work for politicians to get up and just promise people money? I don't care, Republican, Democrat, whatever. Whatever other party you wanna, they're two wings and the same bird, folks. They all do the same thing in the end. You say, why do they do it? Because it works, why? Because Demetrius, that's why. So we're gonna look at Demetrius. There's a common political saying in the United States that's been ever since I was just a little kid to even understand politics.  You ever heard that saying? And the reason that they say that, the reason that they say that about politicians to get elected is because people vote their own economies. People generally, when it comes down to actually who they vote for, they actually don't have any morals. They don't have any standards. They just vote for what's gonna make them the most money. And politicians today, and politicians back in Jesus' time, they've always known this. That's how politics works in general, all right? And it's always gonna work that way. Whoever can promise you more is correct. But is that true? Bullock, it's the same with Demetrius. Go back to verse number 25. Go back to verse number 25. How did Demetrius get everybody worked up here? What was his main thing that he came to all the people with? Did he say, hey, this Jesus, we don't believe that. Instead, it's Diana. What did he say? Look at verse number 25 of Acts chapter 19.  That's all anyone cares about, and that's what Demetrius used. Look at verse 25. He said, when he called together the workmen of like occupation and said, sirs, you know that by this craft we have our wealth. He said, it is this trade making these things that we get all our money. That's how he sold this to all of these people. He didn't go up and say, hey, what is the truth? He didn't go up and say, Paul is saying this. Let's find the truth. He said, no, this guy is attacking our money. This guy is attacking our livelihood. He's, as far as the truth, who cares? You know, none of these people cared. He basically said, we are going to lose all of our money. And that's how he got this coalition that ended up in this theater with this huge mob. But guess what, folks? Everyone does this. Everyone does this. I mean, just examples. You know, the reason that politicians are successful at being politicians is because everyone thinks this way. If people didn't think this way, where they were only thinking about their own personal money and their own personal wealth, as Demetrius says here, these politicians wouldn't exist. Politicians that promised people money, it would be just like, people would be like, no, what's right? You'd be like, that's not moral. That's not moral that you wanna take all my money and give it to people that don't work. It's like, that's not moral that you wanna take money from even those people. Because don't you have these people that are like, I used to call them fiscal Republicans. They could care less about abortion and Christian topics, abortion and homosexuality and perversion. They could care less about all that stuff. They're just like, you know what, I want lower taxes. You know what, I don't want the government taking so much of my money. You know, they're just the fiscal, because what do people care about? All they care about is money. And that's the majority of people, which is why politicians that act this way exist in the first place. Look, here's another, here's a conspiracy guide for you or maybe a truth guide for you. Because, look, because people are this way. Because the majority of people on planet Earth are this way, that the first thing that they think about is their own personal economy, if you want to find truth in situations, just follow the money. That's how you can find truth in a lot of situations. You wanna find truth in why a war started? Follow the money. You wanna find truth on why a war is prolonged? Follow the money. You wanna find truth on assassinations? Look, and I'm not saying we can know truth on all these things.  And you'll get closer to the truth in almost everything. Why? Because this is how people operate, as we see Demetrius using this tool to get everyone together in Acts chapter 19.  That's all I'm saying. But here's a sad fact, and the point of the sermon tonight. Christians do this too. Christians do this too. Do what? They make decisions based on money. Pastor Jimenez said many times, and I think he's just a great saying, he said this many times, he said, if you are ever in your life making a decision solely based on money, that decision will be wrong. I wanna explain that to you tonight. But here's what Christians do. They make a decision based on money, and then they try to justify that decision many times using the Bible. Trying to justify that decision that they really made just based on money. Here's the thing, folks, turn to Ecclesiastes chapter three. Let's talk about money, all right? Money should be benign. Meaning money should be something that is just, it's neither here nor there, all right? It's neither, you know, it's something that we all have to deal with. It's something that you're gonna have. Sometimes you're not gonna have it. It's just, that is the way it's gonna be. It should never be a driver of decisions in your life. Look, we should be happy. We should be happy when we have it. We should be happy when we have it. Look at Ecclesiastes chapter three. There's nothing inherently wrong with money itself. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a few bucks. As a matter of fact, if you follow what the Bible says about stewardship of your finances and your blessings and things like this, you're probably gonna have a couple of nickels to rub together at some point. Look at Ecclesiastes chapter three in verse number 13. The Bible says, actually look at verse number 12. The Ecclesiastes chapter three, verse number 12. I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, he's talking about men. He's like talking about a man's life here. He's saying, I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice and to do good in his life. He's like, this is what a man should do. He's like, men aren't good, but what they should do is they should just be joyful and they should do good is what he is saying. And then look at verse number 13. And also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor. It is the gift of God. So first of all, it's his labor, okay? Meaning you work for your own stuff, okay? You work for your own things and God will bless you. Look, it's the gift of God.  You say, well, no, that was me that worked. No, it's by God's grace that you were able to go work. Everything good comes from God. That is clear in the Bible. Don't ever forget that. But God is saying here, the Bible is saying, hey, if you go out and you have good labor, first of all, it's good labor, all right?  It's saying a man should do good, first of all.  You have labor that is moral, hardworking labor.  That's what we're talking about here, all right? The Bible is saying, look, enjoy those things. Enjoy the fruits of that labor. It's the gift of God. God wants you to have that. That's what the Bible is saying. So look, money should not be a driver of decisions. You should be happy when you have it. It's a gift of God, all right? Look, you're going to have some blessings in your life.  But here's the point that I'm trying to make tonight. Being a Christian, you should not be like these people that follow Demetrius, that their only, their only decider of right and wrong was whether or not they would lose or gain money. And Christians should have nothing to do with that because guess what? Being a Christian may require making decisions in your life. No, being a Christian will at some point require decisions that cost you money. Require decisions that, you know what? That will not be good for the bottom line, for your economy. You say, what do you mean?  You know, there's plenty of jobs that are not just ways to make money. There are plenty of jobs out there that are immoral jobs. What if you got into a job and you thought it was a good job and then all of a sudden they're asking you to do illegal things? This is not good labor as the Bible would say. Look, many jobs that pay a lot of money are just not moral jobs. They take advantage of people, they steal money from other people, maybe even in legal ways, who knows? But the point is, you know, you could be doing unethical things that could make you a lot of money. But this is not what the Christian should do. Money should never be the driver, but what people will do is, well, I have to support my family, 1 Timothy 5-8. No, there's good ways to support your family. There is moral ways that are pleasing to God. Look, you can't go and do bad things to accomplish what the Bible says you're supposed to do. God cannot contradict himself. God would never condone of this. Turn to 2 Chronicles, chapter 25, and I'll show you an example of this. God would never contradict himself. God would never want you going out and committing sin so you could support your family. So you could, you know, take care of your own. I'll get 2 Chronicles, chapter 25. We see a story of Amaziah here. Amaziah in verse number two of 2 Chronicles, chapter 25, Amaziah was a king of the lower kingdom of Judah. So the lower kingdom of Judah was much more godly and followed the Lord much more closely. They slipped up along the way. But according to the Bible, they followed the Lord. They followed the Lord, even though their kings messed up here and there. But in verse number two, it says, Amaziah did that what was right in the eyes of the Lord. Or in the sight of the Lord. Now look at verse number five of 2 Chronicles, chapter 25. Amaziah is getting ready, he's putting an army together. The Bible says moreover, Amaziah, this good king of Judah, gathered Judah together. Now of course, Israel, the northern kingdom of Israel, they went off 100 years before this. As soon as Jeroboam took over when the kingdom split, he immediately started worshiping false gods and just taking these people the wrong direction. And God was angry with them from the start. Look at verse number five. Moreover, Amaziah gathered Judah together and made them captains over thousands and captains over hundreds, according to the houses of their fathers and throughout all Judah and Benjamin. And he numbered them from 20 years old and above and found them 300,000 choice men able to go forth the war that could handle spear and shield. He's putting, he's organizing his army. Now look at verse number six. He hired, now he's going to get some mercenaries here. He hired also 100,000 mighty men of valor out of Israel. So he went and he got 100,000 mercenaries from the northern kingdom for 100 talents of silver. But there came a man of God to him saying, oh king, let not the army of Israel go with thee. For the Lord is not with Israel to wit with all the children of Ephraim. And so God has mercy on Amaziah and he sends a messenger to him saying, don't do that. God does not want these wicked people fighting in your army. It also shows us like who we should be, you know, yoked up with here. This is a great example of separation. God wanted his people separated from these wicked people that had gone the other way. Look at verse number eight. Look, he's saying God won't be with you. Look at verse number eight. He says, but if thou wilt go, do it. So he's saying, if you're not going to listen to me, just go ahead and do it and go to battle with these 100,000 mercenaries. He says, but be strong for the battle. God shall make thee fall before the enemy. For God have power to help and to cast down. This is just, there's so many lessons here it's hard to even say. But the point is, he's saying, look, you can go with 400,000 men. He's like, and God's gonna put you down.  Or you can go with 300,000 and you can win. That's what he's saying. He's saying, because look, God's not, what was the difference? The difference wasn't the 100,000 men. The difference was God wouldn't be with them if they had the 100,000 men. So he's like, you take the 100,000 men, you're without God. Or you can have God without the 100,000 men. It shows you the strength of God right there. You need God with you. But even after this direction, think about this for a second. Even, this is how powerful this problem is amongst mankind. Amaziah is a good king that did right in the sight of the Lord. And this man of God just told him, get rid of these 100,000 people. Or God will not be with you. You'd think at that point, you'd just be like, okay, sorry, I didn't know. But look at verse number nine. And Amaziah said to the man of God, but what shall we do for the 100,000 talents, for the 100 talents which I gave, would I give into the army of Israel?  You will lose the battle. And he's like, but what about the money? He says, because that's what we think about. He says, but what about the money? And the man of God answered, the Lord is able to give thee much more than this. He's like, forget about the money. He's like, God can give you much more than this. This is how we all need to, and look, he might not have been talking about money. He might not have been saying, God's gonna give you 200,000 or 200 pieces of silver. He might have just been like, hey, God's just gonna bless you in other ways.  He's like, hey, have some faith in God. Quit putting your faith in money and have some faith in God is what he's saying. I mean, look, that's the way we need to be in our lives. That if we have some blessings right now, we should just appreciate that. It's a gift of God. Don't ever forget that it's a gift of God. But maybe something comes in where something goes awry. I mean, look, the vaccine mandate was a perfect example of this. And a lot of people quit their jobs. They're just like, no, I'm not going to do something that I feel goes against my conscience. And a lot of people quit their jobs. A lot of Christians quit their jobs. And look, that was them saying that the Lord is able to give me much more than this. That was those people saying that. And look, God blessed those people because they were just having faith in God and not faith in whatever money they made is what they were doing. Look, it's a sign. Look, the love of money is the root of all evil. And if you start making decisions based on money, that is a sign, as 1 Timothy 6 says, that you do love the money. And you definitely love it more than you love God. And the Bible says it's a root of all evil, meaning it's the beginning of all kinds of trouble for you. Jesus said you literally, in Matthew 6, Jesus says you literally can't serve both. Look, you have money, you use money. Money's like a tool. It's like a benign tool. You should appreciate you have the tools, but when you don't have the tool, you know, I mean, whatever. You don't serve the tool, though. And Jesus says you can't serve God and mammon. It's impossible.  You're like, no, I wanna love them both. It just doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way at all. But the point is, just like these people with Demetrius, Demetrius used this to get this mob together. Money can't drive you. Some people have asked me, over the course of being in the ministry, a few people have asked me. They've asked me, like, hey, I wanna go do this thing that's wrong, but I'm gonna make more money. And I'm just like, yeah, you know, I've even had people say to me, I wanna go do this thing that's wrong and it'll bring the church more money. And I'm just like, oh, I'm like, I'm like, what in the world? You know, look, and many people, they've already made the decision that they're gonna go and do the thing for the money. They just won't ask me because they know what I'm gonna say. But the point is money should, look, the Bible drives right and wrong. The Bible drives right and wrong. Money comes, appreciate it. Money goes though. And God can give us more than that. So look, here's the two things that you need to take away from this. Money, consideration, decision should never drive your moral right and wrong. That should come from the Bible. That's the first thing. Just try to, like, when you come into situations in your life, just try to remove money from the situation. Just try to remove, like, you know, you're thinking about a new job or you're thinking about moving. This is a huge one right here. You're thinking about moving somewhere. You're like, what do I move there? Am I moving there for spiritual reasons? Would I move there if, you know, I didn't have a good job there? You know, would I move there if, no, is this a spiritual move? You know, is this, how is this gonna affect, we're talking about leadership, how is this gonna affect my family moving to this other place? But people, what they'll do is they'll find a good job and, you know, they'll come up with justifications, like, okay, I'm gonna drive three and a half hours to this church and everything's gonna be fine. And what they'll do is they'll put money first and try to justify it through the Bible. So the first thing is, the Bible drives right and wrong. You gotta take money out of the equation. Look, there might be money there, there might not be. And the second thing you need to realize is this. Accept the fact that at some point in your Christian life, if you are following the spirit, you will make decisions that don't make you the most money. That's what you have to, look, you are going, you will come to a Y in the road where it is God and it is more money. And you will have to choose. This will, I guarantee you, this will happen to you. I mean, we moved, when we moved to California. And look, these are gonna, I'm telling you, these are gonna be what in the world moments? If you do take the God path, which I pray that you all do in those moments, these may be moments where you look at yourself and you question yourself and you say, what in the world am I doing? But you know what you're doing if you follow the right and wrong of the Bible and not money. But a proof, a proof of how everybody thinks this way is we moved to California for a church and people literally thought we were insane. Like people thought, people thought, people still do think that I have lost my ever-loving mind. People thought that as I walked away from a job, I walked away from these things, I walked away from everything. And there were some moments in the middle of the mover. I was like, what in the world? What am I doing? But the point is you will come to those crossroads in your life. And look, that's not been the only one in my life. And that's not gonna be the only one for you. There will be many of those times. And those are times when you just have to choose the Bible over personal profit. And look, the Lord is able to give you much more than this. You say, well, that's never happened to me. That's never happened to me, pastor. Well, here's the thing. If that's never happened to you, it's going to happen to you. You know, if you're living for the Lord, it's going to happen to you. And you're like, I've been living to the Lord for years, well, here's the thing. If you can't think of a time that that has happened and you made a decision that cost you money where you went with God instead of the money, you probably don't think it's happened because you've just gone with the money the whole time. So the point you have to realize is that's going to happen to you if you are living your life for the Lord. And look, it is a tool of Satan because everybody is concerned with it. Everybody is caught up with it in this world that we live in. Money is such a funny thing because you can't really be like, I don't care about money. You don't want to be that guy either.  I mean, I don't know. I'm sure there's people that do that. But the point is, you got to follow the Bible on debt, follow the Bible on savings, follow the Bible on being covetous, follow the Bible on just being responsible with this tool that God provides you, this gift that God provides you, but realize that it comes and it goes. And realize, look, and if you do love money as a Christian, God's probably gonna test you on it.  But it's the mature Christian folks. It's the mature Christian that will do this successfully. All right, it takes maturity. And look, here's the benefit of this lesson tonight from Demetrius and all of these people that followed him, just judging right and wrong on money only, on their welfare, on their salaries. This lesson will help you understand. It won't help you agree, but it will help you understand why the world operates the way it does. All right, when you see things like, when you see things like we're seeing today, where you're just like, none of this makes any sense. We're literally risking, killing tens of millions of people. None of this makes any sense. Well, I mean, we're risking World War III, all this stuff. And you're like, but oh, the root of all evil, it's money, that's all it is. That's all it is. This is how, and you say, how could all these leaders in all these different parts of the world be all making these same decisions that are imperiling so many tens of millions, billions of people? And you say, because this is how the devil controls the world. The devil, Satan, is the God of this world. And this is, it's his number one tool right here. Just as Demetrius controlled this, Demetrius was a nobody. He was a nobody that knew nothing. And he controlled this massive mob of people by threatening their livelihood, by telling them they're gonna lose all their money. It's how the devil controls the world towards his goals. And guess what? He's got pretty much everyone. But he shouldn't have us. We should make decisions in our lives where people look at us and they say, what in the world?  What in the world?  Instead, you're, what in the world? And you know what they'll say? They'll say, that's peculiar. Because you know what? We're supposed to be a peculiar people. That's why. We're not supposed to act like everybody else. We are the minority.  You're one in 10,000. And look, you should stand out. And here's one way that you can stand out by not making decisions with your pocketbook, by making decisions according to the Bible. Let's bow our heads and have a word.