And we are now recording, I want to welcome everybody to the Amherst Community Chat for Thursday, December 3rd. We have Dr. Mike Morris from the Amherst Regional Public Schools, superintendent of the Amherst Regional Public Schools joining both myself and your town manager Paul Bachman. So welcome. Thank you for being here Mike. Nice tie. So we've got a lot of questions today that were pre submitted and we hope for folks in the room to be able to ask their questions live they can do so by using the Q&A function, as well as raising your hand from zoom or star nine if you're calling from the phone. Before we get to that I want to give a chance for both both your town manager and your superintendent to give a brief report out. You want to start Paul. Sure. So there are a couple things I want to mention. First is, we have a new program that started this week where we're partnered with the business community and local restaurants to provide dinner meals a couple times a week to people who have been pre identified as being in need and suffering from food insecurity and that's a really exciting program. That's basically just through December. It's a limited time program. We have partnered with the family outreach of Amherst to who have already identified people who were who are needed and needed additional support in this area. The second thing I want to mention is that the community safety working group which was the group that was put together to examine how we do community safety specifically policing in the town of Amherst has begun meeting. They've, and, you know, there are two former principals on it. Paul Wiley, who is former principal of cracker farm school is the chair of the committee and Russ Vernon Jones former principal Fort River School is on the committee, along with five other really talented people and it's really an exciting committee. It's meeting every week, every Wednesday at 530 if anybody wants to zoom in and listen to the meeting. It's a, it's a, I think it's a stellar group of people with a big agenda and limited time so we'll see how they do. Great. Thank you. And Mike. Sure. So I've got a little lengthier list of updates. I'll try to keep it brief. So we have more time for the Q&A for sure. But want to start by just acknowledging that the state of the town is on Monday and Paul and probably will remember the time better than me. Although I know it's on my calendar. 630. Thank you and school committee chair Alison McDonald will be presenting a report about from the schools as well as there's reports from other town departments and well as the town itself so that's just an important one and it's also just it's a really nice event. In my opinion where we get to see the different departments of the town. You know, I think to the public, we each can be look pretty siloed. And the reality is Paul and I talk or text routinely close to daily, I would say, in the same for Emma Dragon, the health director, you know, she's come on, we're in regular contact. And then the other departments as well. Tim Nelson send me updates about weather and, you know, all these things that we do function together and we don't offer we're not often in the same, you know, literal or figurative place. And so just wanted to acknowledge that and really thank Miss McDonald for putting together I think what will be a comprehensive report and I'll preview one thing which which I've said in other settings of late is one of the major focuses of the school committee in the community in the past few years has been diversifying our staff and faculty and this about a week and a half ago the state updated its uploaded its website with the most recent data and so five years ago as compared to five years ago, we've seen close to a 50% increase in our faculty or BIPOC, you know, our staff of color. So, you know, we're, you know, we're, we're about 105 years ago, staff of color and we're at 150 now between the Amherst and regional schools so really good work done by Doreen Cunningham our assistant superintendent our principals directors. It's been a very intentional focus there's a lot of research and evidence of why it's important to be able to diverse have a much more diverse faculty and staff, and just want to, you know, share that so that'll be a prompt or a tease to see the rest of what Miss McDonald is putting together as well as the other departments on Monday. So the second thing I want to mention is just to thank the food service department. A couple, couple months ago we went over 100,000 meals served since the pandemic started. And for those of you who don't know you can find this information or website or they have their own website, which I think is Amherst food.com. So these are the meals for any, any child ages five to 18 who resides in the town. We have over 10 sites with specific time and it's Monday Wednesday Friday, and Monday you get a breakfast and lunch for two days Wednesday get a breakfast and lunch for two days. And on Friday you get breakfast and lunch for three days to cover the weekend. It's a great resource it's completely free it'll be free all year, I will say I'm a resident of Amherst. I have children like it I continue to pick up from there multiple times a week, and it's spread throughout town so there's a site no matter where you live in Amherst there's a site pretty close to you. It's not the one of the pieces of feedback we've been trying to sort of correct is that some people think it's only for certain populations within Amherst. It's for any child ages five to 18 in Amherst there's no you don't have to bring a license there's you don't have to give your name, you pick up the meal that we just have to note it because of reimbursement from the federal government it actually helps our district the more meals are picked up, because we do get reimbursed for them. Based on our existence in the summer meals program prior. So just want to thank our food service staff, but also really want to reinforce that it, the meals are there. They're good, and they're for anyone in the community. The third thing I want to mention is the school committee last week talked about how to discussion about this week, excuse me about athletics winter athletics and they'll, they'll come to some votes on next Tuesday so if you have any thoughts that agenda be posted I think like later today or certainly tomorrow morning but they plan to vote on winter athletics next week that's certainly high interest for many in the community. And so I wanted to communicate that a couple questions that both Rihanna got but also that I've gotten by email and I tried to address on the school committee relates to the, the memorandum of agreement between the school committee and the Amherst Palms Educator Association the teachers union here locally. And what I'll try to restate what I tried to say clearly on Tuesday which was that my job is to implement both the policies of the school committee and then and legal contracts between all of our bargaining units not just the teachers union and our school at this point. I know people have been asking me why do I have to follow and I have to follow because it's the law, right so there's always, there are sometimes gray areas in contracts and that's what we try to work out with our bargaining units and that's not just a local thing that happens everywhere that sometimes there's conflicts. The language is really clear in my opinion on that particular front and so I know that there's been a lot of families and community members would like us to reopen school sooner and disregard the MOA and that that's not something that I feel like I can legally do based on what I know about the law and what I read in the contract so I know that's frustrating for folks in the community but I at least wanted and that's not about blaming anyone school committee APA and I said this Tuesday night very and tried to be very clear about it, but it is a reality that from a labor law perspective, I need to follow contracts that are signed. So I wanted to clarify that. I want to thank our schools we had really what I thought were fabulous open houses I was talking about that a little bit earlier before we went live. The schools did live sessions with principals or leaders and then some videotape sessions with teachers to go over you know the different parts of the curriculum and, and how families could access them and they was really well received I think they were really clear guidelines I want to thank in particular the high school was our first open house and it went really well and all of our other schools followed their lead. But in a virtual environment it allowed for you know, ability to interact but also an ability for family members who had their kids there at the same time often just because the nature of things these days to be able to at their own pace select the teachers that work with their children, find out about the curriculum and really open the door to the parent conferences that were to follow so really well done I just want to think I think our staff are doing that. We do have three distance learning centers that are operating in our schools one is completely ours and that's for a relatively small group of intensive needs students who without in person support. Don't have access to the curriculum so we have 13 students right now that are being educated virtually but have in person support at the high school, physically at the high school building. The second group is through LSE so or Amherst recreation. See if I got that right on off that name changes happen yet. Hopefully I'm not the faux pas Briana will edit it out if I'm ahead of ahead of where I need to be on that is operating in the building I'm in now at the middle school. And the last one is the marks meadow after care program and again they're providing in person support for students access distance learning appreciate all of our partners on that. One of the things that we continue to hear experience and read about is the very real concerns about mental health and well being students as we enter. Start entering the winter months and it's getting colder and snow in the forecast maybe on Saturday and for some people they rejoice for that other people like me who wants to change my background to a really warm climate and pretend that I'm there. In one event, a couple weeks ago we plan for two more with our bright partners brights a program based in Brooklyn but we partner with them. They're experts on mental health. I thought the first, the two clinicians that let it had tips that were not only helpful me professionally but frankly personally to you as we head into winter how to support students and ourselves for for hopefully our only true covert winter that will have hopefully the immunization and those pieces make things better in the future and we're not quite in this situation here from now. And so we'll do another one to be on the lookout for that but we want to provide tools and resources for families and that realm and the, I think that's it so I did a little more time that I thought but I wanted to have been on here in a while and I share some updates with the town and the larger community along those dimensions and I'm happy for answer any other questions and dialogue that comes up. Great thank you so much Mike and I think the intro was great because it did address some of the questions that got sent into us previously. So I hope the folks that sent in those questions and who are on the call. Some of the portions of your your comments and questions were answered but I will try to address the ones that haven't been as we take questions from the room and pre submitted so there's a couple questions that have come into the room. We've got a comment and a question from a parent of a Wildwood student one of the questions you just answered but dear Dr Morris thank you in the school district for your hard work in this difficult time. So questions about in person teaching. So what concerns what concerns the teachers about in person teaching and what did the district do to ensure that teachers and staff are in fact protected. Thank you. Yeah, so we had a very robust plan. I think it was like a 38 page document that delineated procedures that went well and above what the state recommended in terms of safety. We bought we have five digits numbers of can 95 masks, which was not necessarily a recommendation from the state. There's was more for more typical masks, but we purchased those. The state said we only had to have students masked if they were above a certain age level for us, unless they had a medical or disability related reason to not wear a mask we may have to do everyone wear a mask so you know we felt like we tried to provide the most safe environment that is possible. I think every environment in the covert area carries some risk. That's just the nature of it and same the same conversation we're having about athletics. We had our all of our rooms tested there's no state requirements and ventilation we said that we would only have students and teachers and rooms that were above for air changes an hour which is a standard that you know kind of Harvard public health is set but the state did not set it. And to get there we did invest a significant amount of resources into room sure fires with the UV light which were recommended to us as the best in the market. So we tried to address concerns that existed there there is no way to address all risk in the covert environment and I think that's that's just simply the reality of it. Particularly as we see rising numbers in our area, you know our distance learning centers are framed a little differently and that their their access to these learning students are way they're not getting together in groups the same way you might in the school environment over the last one I should say that comes to mind in terms of safety as the state recommended a three to six foot distance. And our school committee very quickly affirmed my recommendation that we maintain a six foot distance between students in classrooms so we did have students in for, you know, about a week and a half. In the month of October, you know, feedback we received from directing students and teachers is that it felt good that those requirements were being met for the most part and then there are other individual students who had to build up mass tolerance absolutely for individual problem solving there. So, you know that those are the steps we took and I want to, you know, also suggest that, you know, to assume a risky environment is not, is not, is not real in a covert world so there are some things that we cannot control we recently got approved and got a state grant where we can have a symptomatic testing of all teachers and staff members and students. So we'll be implementing that and our distance learning center the one we, we take ownership of at the high school. So anytime a student or staff member has any symptoms of covert and as you know that the long the list is quite a long list. So we have a lot of testing right on site that would need to be confirmed later but these are pretty high quality tests that can be done right away. As opposed to waiting and I think everyone's read the articles about some challenges with getting tested these days so we're, we have final pieces that we have to send to state will be sent out tomorrow. So we imagine we'll have that up and running before the end of the month. Thank you Mike we have a couple questions that have come in live from the room so I'm going to take them in the order as they came in. So here's a comment and a question Comcast will be raising its charges for internet use so families may face higher bills while their children participate in distance learning. What will the school district do about this will they reimburse families. Okay, so we've looked at that and we've looked at, particularly for families who can afford internet access we have more than 100 mobile hotspots that we were supplying and really much of that is thanks to the PGOs who had a project last spring to raise funds for that we've, we've exceeded the cost of those at this point and we're recovering those from the district, which of course we're willing to do. So I think that that is what we've been able to do is try to provide internet access for families who didn't have it and that's been our primary focus we've given out well over I don't remember on the I apologize but you know, between K to 12 now, or pre K to 12 I should say, I believe the numbers over 2000 devices, you know the very young level, you know kindergarten preschool that's my pads at the rest of the lab. That's been Chromebooks to make sure that folks had the technology needed to access it. And as we did our distance learning, you know survey, what we found is that very few people were maintaining we're having technology issues with distance learning and our focus is shifted much more to the pedagogical challenges that come from that mode of learning and we're trying to look at that and see how we can improve things as best we can best we can for the student experience. Thank you. And I can say just to having a third grader who is remote learning right now in the district she now thinks she's an IT and knows more about me for troubleshooting stuff so thanks for that. So we got a bunch of more comments and questions so I'm just going to go right through them. I'm a parent of a weld with second grader and who is considering other options for my son in the spring given given that it's currently seems unlikely that children will return into in person schooling this year because of the MOA with the APA. Is there anything parents can do to help with the situation with the APA MOA who want to stay in the district but also see that our children are falling behind. Yeah, people have and I think continuing to communicate with the elected officials the school committee, you know I get CC on all those every every email I receive. But as they're the bargaining agent or one of the two bargaining agents, that's where I would continue to communicate with, you know, they have reached out to the APA to see if they were willing to renegotiate that process has been agreed to this moment but I think continuing the communication and sharing those experiences I know every school committee member reads every email they get and takes that very seriously and that would be my recommendation. And you certainly can see see me but anything that goes to the email address at school committee at ARPS.org school committee one word at ARPS.org and all of those get forwarded to me as well so I do have access to those and you know that would be, I think the best vehicle by which to communicate the concerns. So you can't just wave a magic wand and say everybody come back to school Monday right. You know, we have a contract that we need to implement and that's the way contracts work. And I think, you know, as we've looked to work with partners around distance learning we've been trying to try to meet some needs, some of the intensive student needs and students are struggling with attendance. And I know that working with those programs they are looking to potentially expand. When we get into January to open up more seats, it's not quite the same thing. I want to be clear as as opening school, but for some families. I know that's made a huge difference for them. And I was up there yesterday, really well run kids enjoying it they're around other kids even if they're in different classes they've got the headphones, but it's been a really successful model for some students. And I think a lot of people are also asking so it's a school committee in the union and it's the two of them have to both agree to come to the table to change what's what's been agreed to so until both parties say yes I will sit down at the table. You know people are saying well what, when can this change and it's until they both parties agree to sit at the table and that's why you say contact your school committee members because they are the elected officials who are one of the two parties at the table. And we do have a couple of the questions in the room that kind of relate and connect back to that that contract question, such as, you know, is it the particular iteration expire at any given point and another question asking if they don't agree when's the next opportunity to revise these criteria based off of a timeframe. Yeah, so I'm just going to make sure I get the language correct, but the MOA is for this current school year. The title of it is regarding the 2020-2021 school year. So, you know, if nothing changes in terms of renegotiating the MOA was written for the, you know, the school year that ends in the end of June. All right, so we still have a lot of questions in the room so I'm going to try to run through those now. So we have mental health is not only counseling mental health could be helped in the winter snow if outdoor programs were offered for kids and teens to skate sled hike build the fire together, etc. What can the town and schools do about it. Thank you. I'll start with that one. So we actually had a conversation with the, the LSSE is now or the recreation department based on and so that's that's exciting. And the, you know, that the recreation LSSE is looking at lots of different options, including, you know, we've had a request for multiple skating rinks we've done. We've created skating rinks in the past that talked with the health director she thinks outdoor skating is good if you're doing things outdoors, much better than anything indoors. You know, looking at, you know, activating Cherry Hill as a more as an opportunity for cross country scheme.  And, you know, I know we have the chair of the LSE commission in here. And they are actively thinking along these lines to, and I agree with you 100% that, you know, mental health of the next three months plus is going to be really challenging for everybody we talked about it for our town staff as well this morning. It's going to be a hard time, and especially if the caseloads keep going up. And so and being having children especially outside activated in. I know that they've worked closely the LSSE has worked closely with the school district to utilize the Pellum gym for basketball. And so that's really exciting because that has a really good airflow exchange. A lot of our buildings don't have that that quality of airflow exchange so we're going to be utilizing that space for basketball programming multiple nights a week I think. Yeah, that's exactly I'll piggyback on that one Paul, and I'll get on Barb's good side by saying Amherst Recreation is working effectively with us. So one of my jobs is I'm also the superintendent of the Pellum school it's a different district. And as Paul noted there, the ventilation scores in their gym were very, very high gyms generally aren't very good as you may have read in the newspaper not much about our gyms but gyms in general, do not have good ventilation Pellums for a whole host of interesting reasons that we'll get into on a here has particularly good ventilation and so we do have we have allowed an outside soccer group that was for an all commerce to do a session. So Amherst Recreation is looking and sent us a schedule to start up, I believe, right after the new year of basketball clinics for students and think as young as third grade and then as old as eighth grade. As I mentioned the school committee will be considering winter sports and voting on that next Tuesday. And, you know, I agree with the health director agree with the comment as well that it is going to be a challenge this winter as all noted, you know, case counts are continuing to rise and being outside is ideal. And so we do have one indoor space that, you know, according to health directors both not just the current one but past ones, it's meeting the threshold for some indoor activity I think it'll be booked very much throughout the week from interest and vendors because this is a rare resource, not just in Amherst and Pellum but in the area more generally.  And to me concerned with Paul I'm sure he doesn't mind getting them or to send them to, you know, our bills at Amherst recreation I think the more ideas we have the better programming will be. And in the Amherst recreation brochure, which includes everything that we just talked about plus a couple more activities will be coming out in the next couple of days. And Amherst recreation is transitioning away from LSSC. So they'll be, we'll be putting out, you know, a new web address and a new email address to fall in line with that so that's some exciting stuff that's coming up for Amherst recreation. All right, so I'm going to go back to the questions in the room. How much money have the town and region spent to enhance safety in the schools that now stand effectively empty. Most of the funds that have been spent have been CARES Act funds both the town which has been generous to share those with the school as well as our school specific ones but you know, I don't have a specific number off top my head but it would be multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars just to work at Wildwood and Fort River would be combined over $200,000 in terms of closing quads and making classrooms or spaces that used to have four classrooms to but full walls and changing the ventilation. So I can give a specific number but I can certainly say it would be a six digit number. Great. Can't the schools offer extra curricular activities for teachers who are willing to work in person would that be against a contract since it would be extra. No, and that's happened so at our high school we had the drama teacher did a dramatic performance actually multiple dramatic performances with students outside in the fall. They were really cool. I'm sorry if you didn't miss them this newspaper did nice job covering them sports is another example of an extra curricular that's occurring outside the school so there's nothing barring that from happening at all from the MOA. Okay, another question and comment ARPS is now one of the few towns in the county that has remained closed is this information being communicated with the teachers. In my experience some seem surprised that the public schools are teaching in person. Yeah, so I don't know. I don't control the information flow of what goes to all staff members. I do think it's been widely reported I think you can't look at the Gazette and not see an article about schools somewhere and what they're doing. But I do think it's been, you know communicated in a broader sense that at this point we are in terms of Hampshire and Franklin County, one of the few school districts that is not open at least to some level of in person learning. We've got a couple more here in the Q&A that were from the room so I understand the ethical obligations to uphold a contract. What about the ethical obligation to provide free public education to our children. This person feels that right now that second obligation is not being upheld. Yeah, no, I understand that and we've heard that from many family members. My perspective is that I can't knowingly break a contract that's been signed in good faith by both parties. So I hear that and I understand that. And again, I think the more people can communicate their concerns about that to the critical stakeholders and I'm one of them is a good thing. Alright, so the last live comment that I have here. So feel free folks as we wrap up on our half hour. It's your last chance to pop a question in the Q&A and to and or raise your hand via zoom. For those of you who did submit questions if they weren't fully addressed. I did copy the superintendent on those so he has your full comments and questions there. So with all that happened with the APEA and school negotiations this year we're hoping that everyone has learned from those mistakes and listen to parents about what we need for next year about what we need for next year our plans being made to address that. Actually, it's a great question and there was some dialogue about this on the school committee meeting on Tuesday and it'll be on the agenda for the next school committee meeting which is on the eighth next Tuesday is thinking ahead towards the 2021 2022 school year and a whole It's not just about the MOA so I think I can't speak explicitly for the school committee but based on what I heard on Tuesday night and what I imagine will be some dialogue next Tuesday. I think they're actively are thinking as soon as possible of clarifying what the program will be for next school year and to take into account lots of the feedback not just from staff members and parents but the larger community as well of what we want to think about for the next school year so I think that comments spot on and that's why the school committee is starting these conversations significantly earlier than they typically would. Great. Okay, so we're almost at our half hour. I want to give the chance for for Mike and or Paul to, you know, leave the room with, leave people in the room with something that you didn't get asked or didn't get brought up yet. I'll defer to Paul, as I typically do to go first. I think just the number of people who are participating in the questions, we know that this is a driving issue in the town right now I know the school committee and the superintendent are struggling with this and hearing everybody's voices. It's a tough one. And so I just feel for for the, my colleagues on the school side for that. So I really have a lot to add. I did have one last question that came into the room that I'd love to make sure it gets asked if that's okay if we go over a minute. Yeah. So what is the school district doing about the high number of absences among students particularly low income minority students who are already underserved. Yeah, so we had about an eight point plan that was presented the last, maybe two school committee meetings ago, about how to approach the absence issue the short story if those of you who weren't watching or the, the number of absences or attendance is roughly similar to last fall when we're in person but the distribution was troubling to us. It showed that students who are typically underserved in school so our BIPOC students are low income students, especially that students actually attendance was better. That actually showed minor, probably not statistically significant improvement, but those other groups were highly concerning. So, every principal in their goals for me this year has delineated their plan. It involves, you know, some working with distance learning centers but that's gotten maybe more attention than some of the other parts every school now has an attendance team. That's regularly tracking attendance making phone calls people have been assigned different roles and responsibilities to make the one on one connections to understand what our barriers that are going on. The feedback we're getting is technology is actually pretty low in the list of the barriers. There are more often kind of individualized concerns about access to the curriculum based on language linguistic sting engaged has been a major challenge as probably everyone is called experiences being on screens. A lot is is a challenge and we're all adults, and that can be a challenge for students so we are trying to address the root of the problem and what we find is there's no one root of the problem. Mike, if someone does know someone who does have a technological barrier can they reach out to the school district to health. If they say I don't have they don't have a computer at home or whatever they can reach out to the district and get accommodated. Absolutely and we're finding that out. So as these individual reachouts happen. There are very small numbers of people who are indicating that that's the barrier it just doesn't seem to be the predominant one but absolutely and that's why when we're noticing absences accumulating we typically had an email that went out and a kind of set of steps and we're accelerating that so we're trying to be ahead of patterns that we would that would be concerning to us. So instead of getting email we're getting folks are getting direct phone calls and having direct communication to try to understand what are the barriers. So, it's a good point Paul I should have said that absolutely if anyone has a has a technology challenge. Please let us know. What we found so far is that hasn't been the predominant challenge that has that folks have expressed about being on being a virtual school. But thank you Paul that was an important point and we've got, you know, was an international Chromebook shortage in the fall. Some of that was because of the pandemic but actually a lot of that was based on labor violations on the other side of the world that meant that 1000s and 1000s of Chromebooks were confiscated, depending on who made a specific part to them so you know, we did well our IS director found other resources and other ways to get them but now all of our back ordered ones have come in. So we're not short on ability to have technology. And, you know, it's, I think the challenge of distance learning for many families who are struggling. To resolve the tech part, and it's the engagement, the learning part and making sure that students and families are receiving feedback routinely. And that's been more the theme that we've heard of late and so you know we have a pretty strong approach our principles are taking this very seriously. Again it's in every single one of their professional goals for the year to improve not just the overall attendance but the distribution because we know that's a problem. And we're trying to work collaboratively with families on how to solve that. We're going to ask something I didn't share so that's a good one. So I want to note two things. One is that we even extended December break the school committee had a great discussion about this in the summer and our winter our last day of school before the winter break is actually December 18 that Friday. I want to note that and some of that was, well, you know, we're not encouraging people to travel we follow CDC guidance we know that the reality is some people. When this decision was made the world was in better place with COVID or at least our world was in a better place with curve it. But we wanted to have an extended break because we just thought it was in the best interest of everyone to have a longer break of school and I think that's proven to be a good idea. So I think we have a full two week vacation period starts on the 18th and students to come back on Monday, January 4. And I think the second thing I want to notice I just want to think, you know, this is obviously a contentious issue in just about every community. What I want to look at is dominated with stories about this and, you know, as a quote, I set up sort of like a schmule Rosner wrote it was a couple weeks ago. Fewer fewer things prompt hatred fear and vengefulness like a pandemic, right and I think there's some truth in that. And I just want to thank the community while there's been strong opinions shared and today and in other days. I think we've done in my opinion pretty well at having those opinions shared and not getting to a place where our community is truly splintered like it's happening. I'm not pretending that these are. These aren't hard conversations that people don't feel really strongly on one side or another or some third way. I also just really appreciate the questions today the questions Brianna sent me and they're being framed in a problem solving approach. I can't promise we'll solve all the problems, but what I can promise is we read every single comment. And I appreciate that that people are very often going to the place of how do we resolve this how do we improve this how can this change and not to a different place for frankly many superintendents and school committees and other folks are experiencing very personal attacks against teachers against parents against school community members, you know, my job is just the nature of it I'll get the attacks and that's fine. So I'll leave myself out of that for the moment. But you know, given the intensity issue I just really want to thank how people are framing their concerns their legitimate concerns for their children, they're very legitimate concerns for their children's future and the learning of their legitimate concerns about health. So I know it's contentious I know it's really hard. And yet I just, I hope we can maintain the sense that we can advocate without becoming, you know, adversaries and that's sort of the approach that I'm trying to take throughout all of this is that I hear everyone's concerns I have certain opinions. I think it comes as no surprise to someone that you know I wish kids were in school more often. Right I've said that since we started talking about this in June. So I think it's a surprise there. That's not a controversial statement that you can go back watch school community meetings talk about some challenges distance learning and some of this all this what's happening. You know, I've spoken about we have, we have an MOA that we have the school committee is requested to sit at the table they can't do things a unilaterally. It's a very frustrating place for many members of the community so I want to both acknowledge that but also share an appreciation for the framing and, and how people are expressing some very deep seated, very deep rooted concerns about their children and what they're experiencing. So I just really want to thank everyone for coming on this chat thank everyone for the emails that you're getting that you're sending. They're all being read they're all being appreciated by everyone who sees them so thank you all. Dr Morris for joining us today. This will be Mrs being recorded will put up on our playlist and next week we will be having our public work superintendent to talk about public works updates and winter prep and all things. Infrastructure, etc. So tune in next week as well and I want to thank everyone who joined us today. Thank you. Have a nice day.


One what month to the prime five, your five biggest Nintendo news stories in the last 24 hours. We got news on a brand new update to your Nintendo Switch. That's right, they updated the operating system. We also have news on, well, you know, I had to buy a traveler too, among many other games, actually, for Nintendo Switch. And I don't know, just got some hair on my sweatshirt and just feeling a little shaggy today. Our first story today deals with brand new Splatoon 3 amiibo, which are coming out. And Nintendo decided to show them off. And they include two new Inklings and a new one for Small Fry. They do release on November 11th and they unlock special in-game gear. Now, at least at the time of recording, I was not able to find any pre-orders yet. However, if there are some, we will probably update you through a community post and or on Twitter. That being said, let's get into our next story. Now right now, we got to talk about the Nintendo Switch itself, because it got a brand new operating system update. A major system update to 15.0.0. And according to their official website, on their patch notes, it says the location of the Bluetooth audio menu within system settings has moved. Screenshots can be taken using the capture button while on the Nintendo Switch online application found on the Nintendo Switch home menu. So that's the Nintendo Switch online icon down at the bottom. So this is not within the N64 NES apps. This is just in that menu, that separate navigator down at the bottom. Video capture is not supported, however. And general system stability improvements to enhance the user's experience. Now, right now, data miners, at least at the time of recording, haven't uncovered any other hidden features that might be getting worked on in here like they have in prior updates.  What it's setting up, I have no idea. Now, this is a fun topic we get to talk about because it's about the Mario movie and about the world's reaction to it. Because I'm sure you've seen a wide range of reactions from various YouTubers, some of them positive, some of them negative. But how's the actual world responding? Well, thanks to Video Game Chronicle, we now know. They compiled five YouTube channels and examined all of the data, including Illumination, Nintendo of America, Universal Pictures UK, Universal Pictures Australia, and Movie Trailer Source. These are the primary YouTube channels that have Mario trailer on them. So like the most viewed Mario trailers out there. Combined, it racked up 23 million views between those channels. A rough estimate on likes and dislikes are about 775,447 likes versus 37,075 dislikes. That's an over 95% positive rating on the trailer. For comparison's sake, and it's just a comparison, doesn't mean a whole lot, by the time the Sonic trailer for the first movie hit 12 million views, it ended up with just 39% of the audience giving it a like versus a dislike. This was obviously due to Sonic's design. Their next trailer with the fixed design had a 97% like to dislike ratio. And again, just to remind you, the data was fully compiled by Video Game Chronicle. Again, I'm still really excited for this movie and it appears that most of you guys are as well, even if you might not admit it. A lot of people like it. Our own poll that we did show that most people liked it. So hey, kudos to Nintendo. In the grand scheme, you released a teaser trailer that a majority of the world is pretty excited about. So let's just wait until we see more of this movie, hopefully before the end of this year. So a new trailer dropped in Japan. Well, in particular, the Autobot Traveler Japanese account for Autobot Traveler 2. And this trailer just has some new details about the game or at least some new features dealing with what they're calling HD 2D 2.0. So the rough translation and the Google Translate stuff. So this isn't gonna be perfect. Characters' bodies have risen. I literally don't know what that means. Risen from the dead. That's the only guess I got. New types of camera work have been added. There's more detailed and beautiful graphics. So that is something they're claiming is an update to the HD 2D style. And yeah, you'll be able to pre-order the game through our affiliate link down in the description or obviously any of your other retailers you prefer to go to. Look, I'm really looking forward to Autobot Traveler 2. It comes out next year. It's coming, you know, cross-platform. So that's really cool. I just, I'm sitting here and I'm going, man, what's up with these Japanese trailers and not dropping the English ones when it's just an ad for the game? I don't know. By now, the English one might already be out. But again, this is at the time of recording. So we're going off of these weird Google Translate things because that's just what we gotta do. Come on, we all know Google's AI never lets us down, right? And our last story is just about the updated Nintendo Switch Online icons. We already knew this update was coming. The new batch of icons is out. It's Breath of the Wild themed, a lot of Ramifa and the Zora stuff. Go check them out. I think it looks really cool. Probably gonna get my hands on some of these myself from the My Nintendo Store. So cool. Anyways, guys, I am Nathaniel Ruffeljantz from Nintendo Prime. I wanna thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of the... To today's episode of Prime 5. Oh man, we got a lot of work to do, folks.  I can't say anything yet. But soon, I'll see you guys in the next episode.


Hello everyone, and welcome to today's live webinar on how to set your Mergin Maps forms up like a pro. My name is Hans van der Krust. With my company CrossGIS, I'm an official partner of Mergin Maps. I'm also an associate professor of open science and digital innovation at IoT Delft Institute for Water Education. I'm excited to be here today to share my knowledge with you. Before we begin, I would like to take a moment to thank you all for helping me reach 25,000 subscribers on this YouTube channel at the start of this year. It is an honor to have such a large and engaged audience, and I'm grateful for your support, which motivates me to continue making interesting content. I'm also excited to announce that I have launched my first course at Udemy. It's about point cloud processing and 3D visualization with QGIS. To celebrate these milestones, I have a special present for all of you watching today, so stay tuned until the end of this webinar. Without further ado, let's get started. We have a special guest with us today, Peter Patrick from Lutra Consulting, who will be answering your questions. Hi Peter, please introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Peter, and I'm part of the Lutra Consulting team, software company involved in software development and open source GIS for 15 years now. We are also developers of Mergin Maps, and I was personally responsible for Mergin Maps project for the last two years, and I'm very pleased to be here today with you and answer your questions. Thanks, Peter. Before we get started to dive into the practice, I have a few slides to start with, so let's have a look at those. This webinar will be about setting up Mergin Maps forms like a pro, so hopefully a lot of pro tips for you. For the people who are new to Mergin Maps, Mergin Maps is a great ecosystem for collecting and sharing and publishing data, GIS data, collecting them in the field, using mobile phone, setting it up in QGIS and sharing through a cloud service, and it integrates very neatly with QGIS. You can style your layers, add all the layers you want to use in the field, create mobile forms, and it keeps track of your versions of any changes in your data, and you can connect external GPS receivers, you can collaborate with other users, so it's very useful for teamwork in the field, and it's very easy to use. And today we're going to talk about widgets, and widgets are a nice way to customize the field forms that we use in Mergin Maps, but you can use widgets also in QGIS itself to visualize to users your attribute tables in a nice way. So what you're going to learn today is how to set up widgets in QGIS, with which you can create drop-down menus at date and time and pictures, and also use the more complex ones where we have relations, and you can add multiple entries, and also then how it looks like on your mobile device. So here you have some screenshots, and you see here that you learn how to make those tabs at the top, and you see the effect of using the different widgets. After that we're going to dive into attaching multiple photos to features using the one-to-end relations, and here on the screen you see an example, we have five different features, and each feature has multiple pictures attached to it, which we collected in the field. So that's also what you will learn today. Very helpful is the official documentation of Mergin Maps. It has a very nice documentation about the widgets. I will paste the link in the in the chat, and it has a widget gallery, which gives a nice overview of the possibilities, and it comes with example projects that you can try yourself. So let's get started by looking at the practice. To demonstrate the widgets I have prepared a survey layer, and let's check the attributes that I've put in the layer. Go to the layer properties, information here, you see it has a FID, date in the date time, notes, photo observer, server number, land cover, crop type, water source, irrigation type, cover and fence, and note the different data types that are used here. Now let's go to the attribute form tab to set up the widgets. You can change it here to drag and drop designer to have some more flexibility. I remove the FID, though it was already hidden, and I'm going to reorder here the fields. This determines the order of the field form, and with the plus button I can add a tab. So let's make a tab info and drag it to the top, and under that tab later I will group all the general information, and I create another tab with the plus button called land cover, which contains all the land cover information. Maybe later I need to shuffle things, so I'm not going to group them yet into the tabs, and now I'm going to configure each field with a widget, and let's start with the observation number. At alias you can rename the field name to something more human readable, and the widget type in this case is range, and I keep the subtype as editable, this will result in a widget where I can, with plus and minuses, increase the integer number, and it has to start at minimum of one. It cannot be null, and I want to enforce the not null constraint, and it should also be a unique number, because we want a unique ID for each observation, and I can add any expression to the widget, and here I use the expression that observation number should be larger or equal to one, and I can give a description of this expression, and you will see this also back in the mobile device. For observer I use the alias surveyor, for widget type I keep text edit, which will just be an open edit field. Also that one should not be null, I would like to see the name of the surveyor for each observation, it doesn't have to be unique, but I can use a default value here, and there's a nice variable, margin username, so by default it will use the margin username on your mobile device, and fills this in for the surveyor. Then we go to the date widget, give us alias date and time, and I change here the display format to custom, because I would like to have a different notation. If you click that help button, you will see here a lot of explanation of how to customize the display format of the date. I'll demonstrate it here, so for the year, month and day I want to start with the day number, then in 7 dash I use a slash, if I use mm I see the month number, mm a short month and mm the full month name, but here I just want the number. So this is how I can customize the display format. You can override the field format, but this is only useful if you don't have the date field in the date data type, so in this case we don't need to do that, because my date field is in the date data type, as you can see here also from the icon in the available widgets panel. Also I don't want this to be null and enforce the not null constraint, and to make it easy for the surveyor I use here the now function, which will use the current date and time. I don't check the box apply default value on update, because then every time you make a correction to the observation it will also update the date to now, but I want to keep the original date of the observation. For photo you make sure that the widget type is attachment, storage type select existing file and the path should be a relative path to the project and use the integrated image viewer, and if you keep width and height on auto it will scale with the size of your mobile device or the attribute table in QJS. Next I want a notes field just for open notes to be taken and use a text edit, multi-line, so you can type a bit more than in the normal widget. Then in the land cover I use the alias land cover class, and I want to drop down menu, so for drop down menus you can use value map, and then value will be stored in the attribute table and description is what the user can choose from a drop-down menu. You can also load this from a layer or from a CSV file, now because this is a survey for land cover this should not be null and it should be enforced not to be null. Then for crop type I use the alias crop type, and here I'm going to use also drop down but not a value map, but I'm going to create a value relation. In this way I can link to another non-geographic table and the advantage is that I can extend the crop types always separate from the main survey layer. So let's click okay to close this dialogue and create that layer, go to layer, create layer, new geopackage layer and make sure you save this in the same folder that you're going to synchronize with margin. I call this one crop types, you can change the table name if necessary and it should have no geometry and I just add only one field called crops and add it to the field list. Now I can edit this attribute table and here I can add rows and I'm going to add all the crops and later I can extend this or remove crops and then that's easy because it's separate from the main survey attribute table. So under the widget type I choose the layer crop type, key column FID, value column crops and I want this only when the land cover is crop type. So I'm going to put a constrained expression there, land cover equals crop land. Make sure you type the class exactly as was written under land cover, case sensitive and you can put a description here which will also be made visible in the mobile device if the constraint is not met. Don't check the box to enforce the expression constraint otherwise this need to be always valid. However check the box allow multiple selections if you want to have multiple crop types selected which is useful for intercropping. So for water source I use the alias water source, I want a simple drop down with the value map and there I typed different types of water sources and I need to have an expression constrained that land cover should be crop land. Note that here I made a little mistake with the case of crop land which should be capital, I've corrected that later. So always be careful this is case sensitive. So for irrigation type I use the alias irrigation type again a value map for creating a drop down and here I add the different irrigation types. Remember that the value field will be stored in the attribute table and the description is what is shown to the user so you can vary this and in this case I want an expression for the restriction water source equals and then check how it was exactly called irrigated and add a description that this is only for irrigated parcels. Undercover change the alias to vegetation cover. In this case use a range and it would be nice to have a slider. So instead of editable I'm going to use a slider the dial is not supported. I want a minimum of a 0% and a maximum of 100%. This visual estimation so a step size of 5% would be fine and I use a suffix here percentage which will also be shown on the mobile device and fence is a boolean type and then automatically the widget type is set to checkbox and then true or false will be stored. If you have the data type as string and you use checkbox you can also store any text that you put there under checked state and unchecked state but here we'll just use true and false. And as an alias I use a question is the parcel fenced. So now we can select all the fields and drag them into the tab where we want them. So now we have the info and the land cover tab with the different fields under it. Let's test our form by editing the survey layer and adding a feature. Here we see the two tabs and let's see if the restrictions work. If I choose cropland the others become active. If I choose irrigated I can choose an irrigation type and the slider and the checkbox are there. I would like to add two more features of merging maps that is the ability to scan QR codes. So you just need to create a field QR code with data type string like okay and another nice feature is to add a hyperlink. So I add a field called link and that should also be a string. So go off the editing and click save. I'm going to add a new tab so I call this one links and I select QR code and drag it to links and a link and then I drag both of them to links so they are under the tab. For QR code I don't need to set anything except the alias. So as an alias I say scan the QR code and for link I need to change text edit to multiline html and then I can add a hyperlink in html format under default value. So here I'm creating a hyperlink to the documentation of merging maps where it describes how to add hyperlinks and the text to be linked is called help and this all should be in quotes because it's a string and then there in the preview you see hyperlink help. Now on that help page there's another very nice example that you can link to Google Maps to use it for navigation. So under alias I change the name to navigate and I paste here the example which then says open Google map and it will put your coordinate in Google map so you can use that for further navigation that's very useful. Let's test this. Here there's the links tab and there's scan QR code which doesn't look interesting at the moment but on the mobile device you will see there the QR scanner of your mobile device. The last thing that I want to show is how to set the preview on the mobile device and there we use on the layer properties display and I can choose here to show the observation number and then under the html map tip use hashtag image and there we're going to refer to the photo file name and you need to add here a variable which is the project folder and you see there in the preview where that is use insert to add it there you'll see there in the square brackets the expression being added need another expression for the file name and that is stored in the photo field so under fields and values you find photo just double click okay and then insert this should then point to the path of your picture and show a preview in the mobile device so let's save the project and synchronize with the cloud so we can have a look at our mobile device gives a little warning here because I've started with a sample project which I've heavily modified but that doesn't affect the result. On the mobile device in the emerging maps app download this project and it's just indoor so just for the example of testing the form I'm going to add a point here so at the top you can see the three tabs info land cover and links under info there I can fill in the observation number just using the plus there and it's a unique number surveyors filled in automatically date and time I can take a picture just one here in the office and take some notes then I go to the land cover tab and there it tells me to really fill in this land cover if I choose tree cover I see warnings that I can't fill in all the crop information if I choose cropland I can use here because of the value relation multiple crops which is useful if you have intercropping for example with multiple crops per parcel I choose rain fat I'm warned that I cannot fill in the irrigation type but if I choose irrigation of course I can then choose the irrigation type after collecting the points I synchronize and then back in QGIS I synchronize and check the result in the attribute table and there's the result in the form view and also here you can see the tabs if I go to the table view you can also see what it does with the value relation puts those curly brackets and then with the chosen classes so now you've learned all the tips and tricks of widgets and how to use them in merchant maps I hope that was useful for you before I'm going to look at your questions so feel free to post your questions in the chat I'm going to give Peter first a chance to respond to this demonstration his observations maybe I missed something so there are extra tips and tricks so Peter yeah thank you very much I think it was very illustrative video I have six small notes first note is that really it's good to use template projects or example projects from documentation because it's best best start where everything is set up and tested second tip for me is that if you are adding a new fields in a in a layer it's it can break the the database schema and it can make a conflict file so when you're adding a new fields you should really follow the instruction documentation synchronize all devices then change the schema and then synchronize them back so you don't have a conflict files and what is good if you are creating new layer let's say is adding some some text fields extra text fields that you used as a hidden widget at the beginning and then later during the survey you will find out that you need some extra data in a form you just show the show these fields and add them a new widget so you will not break the database schema you don't need to worry about conflicts third tip is that for the expression it's good to check the documentation for example there is a new variable called merging email that you can use it's not shown in a plugin yet but it's already implemented in a phone so you can use also not just merging username but also merging email that is registered if you found it better for photos i have a few tips it's probably you can also look for advanced functions like renaming of the photos having different names for them also selective sync so the photos are not synchronized to your colleagues phones resizing of the photos to save some some bandwidth and storage and the qr codes were already mentioned which are good for if using qr codes the selective sync and other features will be in the in the next demonstration of this webinar so yes yes so that okay so the the for the features for for example this dial and or others we have a wish list that you can join and vote for features that we will implement next or as it is open source project it's also open to funding if you want to boost some development of particular feature and the the last tip is about the new feature that we implemented a few months ago and its support in a mobile application for other widgets uh these are read only and is html widget and text widget and also spacer widget and these widgets can be used for let's say displaying the the instructions how to feel or what to feel to the surveyors in a field the html widgets also can be used to to if you have photos or pdfs on some extra location you can include the the link to the extra location in a form so the surveyors can click on the link and open let's say pdf in the browser or extra photo and these other widgets are very useful for as i said instructions or links or attachments so those are like my small tips on top of what was said very useful peter and i'm sure that in future sessions or videos we'll also cover those new things let's see if there are some questions here from the viewers there's of course a question if the video will be available after the webinar for sure this will remain on my youtube channel there's here a question which external receivers can be supported can you comment on that on android most of the external receivers are already supported through through bluetooth for ios we support all the receivers that has ios mock location implemented and yeah so so generally most most of the receivers on the market should be supported already we have also a link in the documentation where you can check a particular receiver and also sometimes there are some tricks for some applications that could be downloaded that will show you or from the vendor that are required to to run the the device with merging maps nice if you have a receiver that is not listed and you have heavy then you tested it works let us know and we'll add it to the list for others thank you there's another question from fiasca slav the difference between this and q-field it's it's similar technology both technologies are powered by qgis so it's like qgis running on the phone so you can use your q-field project in merging maps as it is pretty much and and tested out so it's more similar than different but to mention some differences the synchronization service or architecture is completely different our architecture is more mimics the the git technology and also for mobile phone we try to make the application no training so you don't need to even if you have surveyors in a field that are not from gis they should be able to use the application pretty much without any training or with like minimal training so the so you need the power user of gis or qgis only for setting up the project but everything else should be available for anyone who has a very basic knowledge of mobile devices and mobile applications like navigation recover anything like that thank you there's here a question i think some of you can also comment on it do you know if there's a possibility of remembering the last cell you recorded in the form yes this is possible you need to go to the settings and there is a checkbox like allow remember last recorded value and if you activate that setting then in a form you will have a small checkbox next to each field that you can use to remember last entered value for your next entry nice then there's a question here Nelson any plans to support audio video attribute forms attachment editor widgets uh yes i seen i think that there is the item in a wish list so yeah once it's come to the top of the list or we'll implement it as far as i know it's not on a short term plan let's say in the following months but i think it could come in 2024 but partially this html widget or other widgets could be used already now but the full support is not planned short short term let's say next few months it's great it's great to see that you guys follow the wish list so i would like to ask everyone here who has wishes to go to that wish list let's see how software will further improve in 2024 and beyond yeah the wish list is simple like wish list dot merging maps dot com so it's easy to remember there's another question here is it possible to toggle on off legend symbol in a layer with many categories defined uh no this is also not supported yet also i think that there was a wish list item or for it but this is not yet supported it's um yeah not on a short plan not yet supported then there is a question from arthur but that's already a nice bridge to the next item that i'm going to show you i'm going to demonstrate how to take multiple photos and configure widgets in such a way that you can store multiple pictures so i think we should go to that demonstration now okay you probably already know how to configure a widget for storing one picture in emerging maps form you choose widget type attachment storage type select existing file and then make sure that you store the path as a relative path to the project path and set the integrated document fewer to type image and automatically scale the width and the height for configuring merchant maps for using multiple pictures per observation we need to follow a different procedure we're going to create a merchant maps project from scratch for surveying multiple pictures per point i'll start with adding a backdrop from open street map you can simply drag under xyz tiles from the browser panel the open street map layer and i zoom into an area of interest then i create a new layer a geo package layer i create a database called survey and the table name i keep it survey it's a point layer this is where we're going to collect our points and i create some fields here like nodes and this is the most important one for multiple pictures is unique id should also be of the text type let's first style this survey layer i use a dot marker and give the red color now create a second layer which is a non spatial layer it's a geo package i'll save it as photo database because this will contain all the data linked to your pictures i call the table photos and then i use here no geometry as geometry type the table name photos will also be used like that in the form so take care that you give it the name that you want you can also rename the layer later i add a field called photo a field surveyor the date and the most important one here is external underscore pk and then click okay now click right on survey layer and go to the layer properties there under attributes form click on unique id set the widget type to hidden otherwise it will show up in your field form and add here at the default value uu id which adds a unique identifier set f id also to hidden you can give another alias for nodes if needed now we need to configure the one to end relation go to your project properties and there go to the relations tab and click add relation you can keep the id as it is you don't need to give it a name relationship is association and there choose survey with the field unique idea in the left column and the right column use photos and external pk so these are now linked in a relation now click right on photos and go to the layer properties of photos click on external underscore pk and there you see that the widget type is automatically set to relation reference display expression to nodes and the relation is there click on f id to also make it hidden for photo change the widget type to attachment keep it at select existing file store path should be relative to project path and then the integrated document viewer should be set to image with an auto width and height so it scales with the size of your viewer you can give aliases to the other fields here so let's use capitals for photo and for surveyor and for surveyor we can also set a default value which can be your merge in maps name use the variable add merge in underscore username and for date we can use the default value of now the current date and time will be automatically filled in then now we need to do a few settings in the project properties first of all i want to set the view settings to the extent here on the screen and then here under merge in maps you see the parts are grayed out that is because this is not yet a merge in maps project so let's save the project it's still in a local folder i call it photo survey demo and then i click the plus icon of merging maps and i create a new merging maps project from the existing one and they also give it the name photo survey demo which then will be stored under c users i'll click finish and now it will be synchronized with the merging maps cloud which has been done successfully now from now it's a merging maps project and i can go back to project properties and there under the merging maps tab i can do some settings for if i don't have much space on my phone i can enable selective sync which will only synchronize my pictures and not from other users to my phone and i can set the photo quality to medium for example here i can also control the file names that are stored on my phone i could use for example my merging maps username and then add the date with an underscore but i could also use just a simple string and the date and call it survey something else in a single quote for a string and then the date will be added with an underscore click apply or okay and then save and synchronize the project to push these updates and now you're ready to use this application in the field let's have a look at the project on your mobile device i add a point here i can add nodes i call this location scout work plan and then i can add the first picture it uses the photo widget to take a picture there it fills in my username and other information i take the second picture and that's also added let's do a third one and this one is also added now to save this feature i just tap save and now this feature has the three pictures and let's take a final one here at the schiland's house take a picture there from the front take another one now from the side and the last one at the inner court and tap save again to save this whole feature with the three pictures now let's synchronize to the cloud and back in the office we can synchronize to qjs and there we see our pictures added there are the points and now click write on survey and if we open the attribute table we see there the unique id but if i switch to form view it is changed into the features in the first column and then in the main panel i see here the different pictures for each of our observation points so that works nicely if you want to add multiple pictures per observation point i hope that was useful for you all Peter do you have any comment on this video things i missed or tips yeah thanks just two of them one is that what you've seen for photos in the video it's also possible for relations in general without photos if you for example i don't know have a place and going to visit the place a few times per year and want to take some notes about the visits particular visits or some other result photos and so these relations also works generally and then a small tip only that recently we added a feature that you can if you have a photo to tap on a photo and it will show you the photo full full size and you can then zoom in or rotate the photo and on the phone to to see some like details if you need to so this is just a small like user experience tip to in the field if you need to now you can click on the photo so it's very useful i've noticed when i configured the file names in how to store the pictures on a different file name that it didn't take that up you could see that in the video could it be related to the relations or is it something else you think the the real thing with the photo is like should work and it's tested i'm not sure definitely generally maybe there is a some bug with combination with relations i would have to check generally if there is such a bug or something is not working the the best place is probably join our community chat it's emerging apps com slash community slash join and ask there and or possibly to go to github and look for issue tracker and see if such a bug is reported but i don't know top of my mind if there is such such particular bug at the moment with the recent application i would need to check okay we'll further test it and see what's going on there there is a question here from johnson also partly answered by cyber i think can the multipot is labeled differently on the desktop and the labels made visible to the surveyors the label is probably meant the name of the photo on a disk i think um and if this is the case i um i am probably like not not uh yeah because because it's uh it's just the thought the emerging map synchronization works that you can imagine is like one folder on a disk and it's just transferred to your phone as it is and vice versa so the file has the same name but there is an option with the media thing to transfer photo to external location and also it's possible probably through python or some scripting to to rename the photos afterwards as post processing but this this would be interesting to see to like the the use case for for such such feature in general what sabra also answers here is you know you can use any field for for the labels which can also be an expression that you want to use so i think there's a lot of opportunities there to have the labels as you want the template projects that are provided in the documentation are very useful in that sense they also showed how to add the x and y coordinate and the direction and all these extra things related to your pictures also what what was mentioned by peter about using relations for other things there's a really nice example project which makes it really clear is about cars and car types so if you choose a certain car brand then you can only choose from a relational table the types the models from that brand so that gives a lot of insights on how these relations work and how you can configure those any other questions anything to add peter from your side no i thank you very much for inviting me i think it we seen today a lot of interesting tips how to set up different widgets and happy surveying to everyone thanks peter for being here and i promised everybody at the beginning that i would have a surprise for you to celebrate these milestones so i'm going to tell you what it is i want to give everybody who's watching this a limited time to access my new udemy course on point clouds and 3d visualization in qdis for free i'll paste the the link now in the chat so a limited amount of people 100 can use this and only for two days so here's the link and hope you will enjoy that course feel free to give reviews and feedback on that and with that i would like to end this webinar thank you for participating and asking nice questions i hope this was helpful for you and i'll keep you posted for a nice new content so see you all next time bye bye see you bye


So our major the Army's number one priority is developing leaders. What are the things that you've been doing here during your two years in US Army Europe to help develop young leaders? Well first and foremost I think what we've done here is show that how important it is to developing leaders and we are very fortunate in our theater to Give them experience of both our allies Not only in exercises, but also bringing them to our great NCL Academy So they get an opportunity to train together before they deploy together I've heard somebody describe US Army Europe as the leadership lab for the Army What do they mean by that? So when you think about our leadership laboratory that we have here in USER What impresses me the most is how units are being very creative and adaptive in developing leaders Not only to meet Army requirements, but internal requirements too that's specific to their organizations One of the most valuable components of our leader development program is the Warrior Leader course and you have personally been involved in making sure that Course is effective that we're able to manage the throughput and plus you've brought in our allies What makes the Warrior Leader course so effective here in US Army Europe? We have fantastic cadre that instructors are the examples of fit and discipline and well-trained and Was very unique about our NCL Academy is that on average we have five to ten international students that attend every course So when we talk about enabling the alliance what better place than to get to know each other Than at that junior level during that course You know one of my favorite things that you've done is to take young sergeants from across US Army Europe on Staff rides you've taken them to best stone and other places That's not the typical training audience actually for a staff ride. Why do you do that? Well do it for a couple of reasons first and foremost there the future of our Army and if we really want to establish a Trust with the institution. Let's highlight what's great about an institution and and be able to show them What makes our army great is the people? Well, I liked your idea so much. I'm copying it We're going to take a bunch of young company commanders from across US Army Europe on a staff ride in May And I thought it was a great idea to reach that level of young leaders Investing in them because they're going to be leaders in the future for us And in sir and I what I really think is great about here So we have all these great and historical sites that we can take our soldiers to to highlight what's great about our arm. I Believe that one of the most important principles of leadership is a willingness to step forward and accept responsibility That's why I think US Army Europe is the leadership lab for the army So I think there's no better place than what we've seen going on in operation a line at resolve The non-commissioned officers truly understand the NCO creed and they're out there executing To the standard knowing that first and foremost is accomplishment of their mission and taking care of their soldiers Yeah, I don't think there's anywhere else in the world where you've got a company-sized element is the US Army element in an entire country so you've got a Calvary troop commander or an airborne company commander or a Logistics company commander with his or her first sergeant and that's it They're the senior Americans in an entire country as part of it operation Atlantic resolve and see and that is the best example of mission Come in the trust that seniors have with junior organizations to go out and do the right thing So our major is you prepare to go take over as command star major of US Army training and doctrine command And you reflect on your time in Europe. What are some of the aspects of US Army Europe that stand out in your mind? So I can think of three things first is good quality training That is the best thing that we can do for our soldiers to make sure that they're successful Secondly, I would say the role of culture. We're very fortunate to have 51 countries in our area of Responsibility and culture is hugely important in future operations and in our leadership laboratory Our soldiers are getting exposed to it in OAR and they're also getting it at our NCL Academy And then lastly I would say about relationships relationships truly matter whether it's not only up and out But also with our alliance and make sure that we establish those relationships in a peacetime before we have to deploy together What's our major down for you have? Been training soldiers for over 30 years. I'm obviously very proud of you to be selected as the command star major for US Army training and doctrine command where you can take the Experiences of the leadership lab in US Army Europe and spread that to the rest of the entire Army. Congratulations. Thank you