Welcome to our panel on public scholarship and applied research in graduate seminars. We have with us Richard Menkis from UBC and Lenny Hart, MA student now incoming PhD student from UBC. We're going to talk about the course example history 595B public history for our course today. My name is Annika Rosanovsky. I work with the UBC Arts Amplifier. My pronouns are she and her. The UBC Arts Amplifier is a very small initiative in the faculty of arts that tries to connect graduate students to sort of meaningful forms of engagement, engaging their research outside of campus basically to sort of do applying their research with community organizations or industry partners off campus to sort of diversify their own career paths but also to sort of understand and more strongly how their own research actually applies to real world problems that are being solved sort of outside of the ivory tower. And so I'm here sort of a little bit just to facilitate and I'm also going to share a little bit of resources in what firms we can help if any of you in the audience would be interested in pursuing some form of applied research in your own classes then we can help you with that. So I'd like to I thank you all for gathering with me on the unceded ancestral and traditional territories. I am today talking to you from what is also called Fairview or otherwise the territory of the Muscovines, Guamish and Saywa Tooth nations. And I was thinking about doing this land acknowledgement again as for example somebody who's also not not from Canada and an unwanted visitor in that sense here. And I thought I could pose the question sort of to all of you as sort of a take away to think about for today in in what way this knowledge this this acknowledgement informs anything that you do in your in your everyday life. Does that inform the relationships that you form? Does that inform any of the decisions that you make when you're at work? What is sort of the importance for you of knowing that you are on these territories? So for today we're going to talk about applied research projects. I thought maybe we're also not too many people maybe we can start with a brief question of if anybody in the audience has actually used an applied research project before. If you like you can use the raise hand function to let us know if any of you are familiar with the concept. Nobody okay that is perfect so we can introduce you a little bit to what applied research projects are. We're keeping this very broad overall. So for an applied research project you indeed design your course with a project component that would mean students will work with an off-campus partner that could be oh perfect Dury thank you okay yeah public-facing website can be indeed absolutely form of like public research project. So the applied component is indeed coming in from if you have an off-campus partner that might be an arts organization that for example needs a new framework for the next grand application that they want to do or maybe it's a not-for-profit that wants to do an environment scan about the kinds of service gaps that they encounter. It could be a service provider who likewise needs some insight from somebody with the necessary knowledge and skills to help them assess a certain situation and so what your students would do in these kinds of projects is they would help the community partner actually solve these problems. And so in short students actually get to experience how their knowledge how their whole degree experience applies to things outside of university and so helped by your own course and the framework that you provide through sort of the classroom learning and that community partner project you sort of get to help students and transitioning that knowledge into a new context. And so we have two people here with us today who are going to talk a little bit about their particular experiences because there's various good reasons why these applied research projects are really beneficial to incorporate. A lot of it is some of it is very obvious like you allow students to grow their professional connections with people that are not just within a university context but you also provide skills where students learn how they can communicate their research in ways that is actually meaningful to people who don't work in academia. Likewise because students have a new context it often taps into a lot of creative potential and figuring out ways to address these new problems. This exposure can also help with diversifying students' career paths and it also helps with the intellectual confidence of knowing that niche knowledge that was gathered in the core form of like a master's degree for example or even the PhD can actually be applied in a broader scale and that you know there's something beyond that very specific niche research area that can actually be really useful and that students actually possess. Likewise a lot of research projects that are applied rely more on collaboration either because of the community organization that actually has an input or because there's several students working on tackling this project together. Likewise we have public communication and interpersonal skills just again because this is a lot of different people working together in a new context and so that supports a lot of that and so I'd like you to welcome Professor Richard Menkis and the MA student Lily Hart who are going to talk a little bit more about their experience. Yeah would you to introduce yourselves briefly? Hi I'm Richard Menkis I teach in the Department of History. My area is modern Jewish history. I also look at issues like Canadian responses to the Third Reich. I have always been very interested in doing work with museums and have created some exhibits, worked with others on exhibits and I'm very excited to be here to talk to you about the most recent experience of doing that with students. Lily? Hi I'm Lily Hart. I'm a current MA student incoming PhD at the Department of History. My current thesis has to do with the history of anthropology in Canada. My PhD work is more on like Pacific Northwest history and how small town historical societies constructed like stories of nationhood and settler colonialism and things like that and then I've done some public history I did some public history in undergrad years and then now in grad school and I'm also the digital content manager at a non-profit called Confluence so I've done some stuff there as well and I'm excited to be here and thank you for asking me. Perfect so I have a few questions that hopefully like provides all of you with a better idea of what Richard did in his course and so maybe Richard you can just tell us sort of a bit more general about what the applied research component was in your history class and what community partner you collaborated on. Sure so this was a graduate course in public history which means it's taking history beyond sort of the world of academic articles you know giving conference papers in other words beyond sort of the usual suspects when it comes to the academic modes of dissemination. I didn't want this to be a theoretical investigation of public history but really needed to be very much both theoretical and hands-on with practical applications so the students were responsible for doing one public history project with another student and another on their own and I decided to work with the Vancouver Holocaust Education Center because I've had experience working with them before especially on a couple of exhibitions and education guides and very briefly I can just if I share my screen with you so one of the assignments was a research guide which students did in collaboration with one or two other students. These research guides integrated into a structure which the Holocaust Center already had where they introduced the materials for the center so they had already done one on what's called enemy aliens and war orphans and then the students in the course did the research guides to diaries and correspondence Holocaust photography and issues relating to anti-semitic propaganda. Students were also then responsible for an individual project and this was something that kind of broke out of the mold of what the center had done because they had done before these sort of rather tightly constructed and narrowly construed I would say galleries but what I wanted the students to do would be more a project individually where they created a narrative whether it be in the form of a podcast or in the form of a larger slideshow exhibition and so that's what students did individually they did one podcast each student well three of the students did podcasts and four of the students did public history and these were something like I say which is different than what the Holocaust Center has done before and here we see Lily with her podcast and the others did as I said exhibits and there were four of them on the topics topics that were they were introduced to by working on the research guide as well uh so that's it I worked with the Vancouver Holocaust Education Center and we created instruments which they could be using and mounting on their website and that's my introductory glittering thank you so much I think everybody get like a good idea of the kind of things that you can do um Lily I was wondering was that component part of your reason why you took the class or did you not know in which case like what was your reaction when you found out um yeah that was the reason I yeah definitely the reason I took it so like um like I said um like I've done public history and undergrad um and at Portland State University I just wanted to continue to do it at a graduate level um and so I signed up for it and I didn't you know quite know all the details but one thing I was really pleased about is we got to do our own uh individual projects because in undergrad all the classes I take in um it was like very much group work so you might have like four people working together to write like one panel for like like one label for a museum object or something which is like a useful thing but it was nice that we did like the group projects to kind of get um help each other like understand our topic you know the holocaust my name is holocaust photography and uh me and Adina we know work together on this um research guide and then we went off one of us did a gallery one of us did a podcast but like having that individual product at the end I think was really like it's a useful learning process which I'm going to talk more about in the resume thing but like I was um I signed up with it for like I particularly wanted to a public history course especially because the other course I was taking that term was at the MA writing seminar so I was like I want something that's using the different part of the brain or yeah here we go ah perfect yeah yeah thank you so in that case I'm also curious um Richard why did you plan on um apply like why did why did you want to incorporate the applied research project in your well like I say this is a course in public history and I really wanted it to be um both a I didn't want it just to be theoretical but I wanted to be hands-on um let me explain a little bit more about why it's so important for this kind of work to be done in general and why the hands-on component is important um I thought that we could collectively students and maybe we could collectively sort of explore what it is that historians can do why they should do it what historians have done in the past and when we look at that you can see that you know there's a long history of historians not just doing articles and books but also being out there being out there giving being part of public policy um in the past it would have been let's say on radio or television or working on movies in addition to working on museum exhibitions so um I I wanted students to understand that there are historians who we who work in other areas and this is not just I wanted them to have the opportunity to do it for themselves and to experience it and it's um and it's not just sort of students or or academics um um changing academic research and making it available for public but rather it is a kind of dialogue and uh share and learning about sharing authority which I really wanted again the students to experience and not just to read about um theoretically so we want to see how it is that there are people out there who want to learn about history beyond the academy and we also need to learn that there are stories that we should be listening to which may be traditionally we haven't listened to and that we have to improve our our listening skills so um I wanted students to have that experience um which I think will deepen them as historians as civically minded perhaps um and then it's also I think really um an important experience for learning to think critically even and clearly as historians I mean it's one thing for us to write 3000 word essays and think okay well we've you know we've elaborated on a subject it's when we do this kind of work we can see how much more difficult it can be to write 300 words rather than 3000 words and you only can do that um if you sit down and you know and try to create an exhibit or in the case of an exhibit how you blend together let's say visual with the written so that they complement each other and and definitely I mean we know photographs and illustration photographs are not just an illustration but often they're treated that way but when you actually build an exhibit you can see how the visual and the text are part of that need to be complementing each other narrative or in the case of of the podcasts how it is that you bring together your own narrative with the other voices so that they find a good balance in other words um it's a way of learning as historians to communicate and to think more clearly so I think um it makes them makes all of us into better historians as well as thinking about our responsibilities now there's also I know this is the last point I'll make there's also of course I feel like I'm going to be giving specific details to a lot of the general remarks that you made at the beginning and I'll try to color in well maybe I won't try to color always in the lines that you made but I'll elaborate a little bit on them um I want the students to see that professionally there are alternatives to being academic historians to give them a chance to feel what it is to be in a museum or um or to um to try to do something for public broadcasting in in the podcasts so to see that there are other things that historians can do alternate career paths or even if you do become an academic historian that these are ways in which your profession has gone which you can choose to do if you've you know if you've experienced it first you can decide on the basis of your knowledge what it is that you want to do generally in terms of your career and then more specifically what practices you want to be involved with is a historian so um I'm going to shut up now oh you shared some really fantastic parts I really I think there's a really important about the the sharing of the authority and being included in the kinds of stories that can be told but I think you made a really good point too that um there's a lot that can only be learned if you're actually engaged in the process rather than just looking at it sort of from the classroom and so um Lily was was that an experience that that you would recommend like did it have some of that sort of desired impact for you I think so yeah I mean like like thinking like having to think through and think more clearly and things like that yeah I think so and I think that's like so true because I mean like when we're writing our essays and stuff we have to communicate to other academics or to our professors or things like that and that's one thing that can be difficult to self but like to really write clearly for the public is a whole different skill like you can take you know a long time to get those like 300 words done and I find too like um like when I'm trying to like write my thesis or something like thinking about how I would like tell this to a public audience public member of the public like really helps me think through like when my writing is just getting like convoluted and unclear so like just that skill even bringing that public writing skill into your own um academic one can be really helpful but yeah and I think personally I always feel like uh there's like the research is great it's great to do research it's great to do it internally but like it has to be shared with the public or it's not I mean it just has to be like otherwise I don't know there's not a huge point so I think it's really important to be able to all of us to acquire that skill even if we don't all go on to become like public historians or in the public sphere or whatever just to be able to like go and do a lecture that the public can actually understand you know it's just because that suits for is kind of like a public I don't know I feel like we do have duties to like share whatever you search right um yeah so I think it definitely like I recommended it uh you know and it came through for me in the class class I think and then um you know especially because this is not like like the Holocaust is not my area of study so like having to kind of learn about myself and then think about how to communicate it was like a really learning process that was helpful for that yeah nice and so you've talked a bit about like how like much you took away for like communication how like how it's very different um is there other things in which that project made you think sort of um changed like your view of like of history or like did it or or confirm any things that you sort of felt um about history see me I think like one thing I found interesting was like sort of like you know I know I've done public history and not public this year before I don't think I realized like how like when Dr. Maki's was talking about like radio like I had never really thought about of course I think about podcasts now I never thought about how much history has been shared in the public sphere via radio and things like that for such a long time there's even before there's like public history training you know in the 70s or 80s more like there's still been um it's being it's always being shared out um and I think like that changed a bit of it like just thinking about the role of the public historian itself has been around for a long time which actually we hope a bit you know PhD but um see what else will change history I think and then um and also just like I hadn't done a lot with I got assigned to you know Holocaust photography is like the area and I hadn't really done much with photography and thinking about that in any kind of historical context so um thinking about how to like how the top photographs are interpreted and used and we did some really um we read some really useful articles on that that also changed how I thought about their role so thank you yeah and do you so I think there's a lot of good cases in which history is a particularly compelling example because you both talked about a lot of the artifacts that sort of circulate in the public and and a lot of engagement but can you think of other classes um that you've taken um where you think like or that you would like to take where you could see a similar applied research project being just sort of interesting or who are helping you in some way further understand the subject like a non non-history one um maybe if you have one okay so I was like wow since this was a lot um yes so like um yes all that once here you'd be seeing our histories because that grad program and I think a lot of classes could benefit from some sort of applying project even though like this class you know it's the whole focus of public history but like just thinking about like say we do like in the history department we do a MA thesis writing seminar just taking the same time as this but I think it could be useful having like even just like a week to think about it or like a mini project or think about how would you present your thesis research to the public and how could you do it I think that could be useful for students um because um I just I mean it'd be a useful thing to be able to do um then like the other classes like how could you make an applied project for a historiography that'd be kind of funny but I think it would be interesting um and then you know thinking I'm trying to think back to like my pre-ma days like other subjects um I think you know there's like um probably do a lot I think a lot of humanities classes you could have that be an option at least for students especially students like maybe your final project is the essay or something else more applied but um with all the classes I've taken here I think the other one the best be at the MA research seminar like just maybe you don't have time to actually do a project we have a week where you think of a concept or something yeah um I like that I actually I have a friend in physics who tried to really disseminate his thesis for an audience at the public library and then he also said it was an amazing experience to sort of go from his PhD level to common knowledge physics and still trying to explain what it is that he was doing and he also found it was a very good um um uh practice yeah I kind of stepped back away from like your little like blinded bubble of like PhD and then yeah exactly and so maybe um maybe Richard you could tell us a little bit about if you think there are specific elements that we really that would make a course particularly suitable for including um such an applied research project like was there something about your course that made it particularly easy or or practical to include such a component well I mean it was as I said before it was it was clearly something that was meant to to explore the relationship between sort of you know what academics do sort of in the university and the ways in which they can present it outside the university and what they can learn by presenting it from outside the university so it obviously had a direct sort of um and I just couldn't imagine doing a sort of a theoretical course on public history it just didn't make sense to me and that's also what my own experience was about I think that every course to a certain extent can as Lily was saying can include an element or get people to think that okay well you know you know there and you know so much history now talks about representation so instead again of just talking about representation sort of as you know this is what you know this is what's happened in museums then you know in a course say well can you imagine an artifact that you would want to put into a museum or that you would want to describe for a museum or an image so there could be always a very smallish practical component to it so that people can at least think that way or or realize that if you're talking about representation one of the ways you'll learn about is that you try to do it yourself or you try to imagine doing it yourself in a in a kind of public setting so I think that there's always a possibility of including it with but in some courses it makes sense for there to be a much you know a much more elaborate and much more developed as developed public research side and and this is one of them. Maybe you could share too for the audience how how much time of your class was spent for students on that applied research project? It was my view was it was always going to have to be at least half of it was going to have to be on the on the on the on the public research project and it was necessary to construct you know the you know to think in advance about the course to make sure that you've given it that amount of of time to make sure that it fits properly but yeah I always I always knew that there was always going to have to be a lion's share of the course it's going to have to be about it and if it's not about it then it's going to be reflecting on having done it sort of in a more theoretical way so it's always going to be looking at it but in terms of the hands on I knew there are always have to be the the strongest element would have to be the actual hands-on project and the question was how do we build it in so that it fits into an academic course but did it also shows the students what's involved in doing it? Yeah maybe following up on that because you said like there's a little bit of ways in which you have to make it fit and sort of serve the purpose that you're thinking about are there any tips that you would give an instructor who's never done an applied research project about what things they need to think about before they go about implementing one of them? Yeah I mean I think first of all you have to give yourself a lot of time I think to to think it through right I mean you've got to give yourself a lot of time to find that balance between the practical and the theoretical and why do you need to have a lot of time because and the way that you can deal with it is by consulting widely I spoke I spoke to all of my colleagues who had done public history and who had had a public component listen to them I was fortunate that I had some funding to help me get a student who like did a lot of research in other syllabi to see what other places had done and then I could look and so that took time then it also takes time to find the right partner because you know I may have certain skills or certain experiences but I don't have you know that creating narratives for museums but I don't have the the skills that are the experience that those in museums would have to say to students okay well you know this is how you layer your text this is how you include images you know and and so you have to find the right partner so that they can get the experience in a way that is going to be most useful in a holocaust center I mean I had experience working with them and so I knew that that there were the people there who could who could who could help but I also had to give myself time to think about well what institution do I want to work with like I looked at a variety and I spoke to and I spoke Laetitia I spoke to her about a variety of possibilities and then narrowed it down again to what I was familiar with because I needed to find a way of of feeling comfortable with the project that I was assigning and knowing the people that I was working with right and so but that didn't just mean that I but it also meant that I I sort of like I knew the kinds of things that the holocaust center did and so I was the one by having looked at their website again and again and again I was the one who said well this is what I think the practical projects can be when they just be useful for you so it takes a lot of time to to sort of a kind of you know trial and error asking a lot of people but also digging deeply into the place that you're going to work to come up with the work project so you've got to give yourself a lot of time before the course starts you've got to think broadly and then narrow it down figure out a way that you know that it'll be don't make it don't make it overly complicated for yourself because there's going to be inevitably be complications you don't realize so try to you know try to simplify it so I worked with it an agency that I knew and I had all the students work with one agency rather than putting them into other you know different ones because then it would be another level of complications so it requires a lot of time to organize and and to to consult widely but then to narrow and and then also to think about sort of just being good to yourself in terms of keeping it somewhat simple so that the students can benefit and it won't be too hard for you so that's give yourself lots of time and think widely but then narrow it down do you anticipate doing the same project or like an extension of this project again for another history class um I mean I I enjoy I enjoyed this so much that I would like to do it again you know the graduate there are only a limited number of graduate courses that are offered every year and so you know it changes and you have to offer a variety of of possibilities but I mean in my in my undergraduate courses in my in the capstone courses I have also included public history projects and so yeah I will I'll continue to do it sounds great um Lily maybe sort of going into um sort of like your main your main takeaway or maybe you want to talk a little bit about how how much interaction there was between you and the museum for example and and how I don't know how it felt like having your podcast actually on the website for the center or yeah what was sort of some of the really amazing aspects of um having done this project yeah see it's the podcast it was interesting it was really useful as um definitely like a learning curve because I know we edited our podcasts here then George I was a upper year MA student and had experienced the podcast she like kind of cleaned it up for us but we um we edited them and so you know we produced them designed and then edited and um yeah it's now online which is kind of cool to see how many people have listened to it but I think that was like really practically helpful because like just recently at my job like we have a podcast series and it's it's slightly different not fully history but usually we hire people who like do everything but now we're going to do or I do like the basic production and basic editing and they clean it up so like that's nice for me nice saves us a bit of money too but I wouldn't have acquired that skill set I don't think I would have had the time to like invest in that skill set if I hadn't been able to do it in the class because it's just you know it takes a while to have that support um to do that um so like practically it's been like really useful um so that's been a nice skill to like take away and then interactions with the museum yeah they were we interacted you know we we visited them a couple times in person and then Caitlin at the museum you know they were super responsive and and helpful in terms of I used a lot of oral histories in my podcast we like emailed back and forth and they like pull the recordings for me um I interviewed one of the directors the the director of the museum and that was a bit in the podcast so like it was nice just to interact with them and I always enjoy um like sort of getting it's nice to be part of like kind of start to get start to be part of like the public history community um and whatever place you're living like I feel like that's grounding um and just obviously it's great for networking but um yeah they were it was cool nice to interact with them and um they were super helpful but yeah one of the big takeaways too is just like gaining this like practical skill of how to like design a vision and podcast which I and edit which I never done before and then I guess the other takeaway too is like you know for my phd like my main field of history but I'm hoping my secondary account field will actually be public history which has never I don't think we've ever done that in the department before but like my advisor is somewhat receptive and then um he's receptive and then uh you know taking the class here makes me feel like there's probably like a way to do it simply you know we teach public history and everything so hopefully that sounds like it was a really good experience yeah cool um briefly maybe um share um some of the resources um sort of there were um for anybody who's potentially interested and then maybe we can see am I already got one question in the chat so maybe we'll have a few more questions um I'll get back to that in one second there we go unmuting too fantastic so um so Richard said like he spent a lot of time um talking to to um like looking at different partners and figuring it all out and so we compiled a little bit of um a faculty sort of help page um from the arts amplifier to sort of um help with some of the sort of common questions um a little bit about the timeline um and in case that like you also need some help to um make this fit for your own course um we're happy if you want to reach out to us um Richard mentioned he talked a lot to Latisha she's our project lead um we in general like have a lot of good relationships with a lot of community organizations and so it doesn't have to be history um as long as it's sort of in the humanities um we're very happy to sort of get involved we can either really help you find a partner um we can also like give you some feedback um on your on your syllabus um or we can also provide you with some help on specific like assignments that you are thinking of or descriptions um I'm also going to put these in the chat in a little bit um I also wanted to point out that um if you want to have a look specifically at um the syllabus from Richard's class you can have a look I'll post that in the chat too um we've collected a few more indeed um our pioneers in a five research project and do seem to be um the history and departments and so we've collected another syllabus from somebody from UCLA and we're waiting for somebody else um from another Canadian institution to share their syllabus with us so it might give you a little bit of um ideas of where you could take this um we've sort of kept this very practical sort of in in what could you get started and why would you maybe want to and what are some of the takeaways but um maybe if you have any questions um more more specifically or more broadly um feel free to share them either through the chat um or you can just unmute yourself and um ask your question yeah Judy go ahead yeah it's hi Richard um so this sorry sorry I joined late so you may have already addressed this um I wonder how do you evaluate the work of your students I I come with my undergraduate teaching background so having a grade is very important um and and I'm also thinking about the challenge you have when you if you ever need to negotiate a grade with the community partners like um just because the community partners may have very different expectations I tried to find a way of um creating projects that were substantial but also to break it down so that it wasn't like one grade for the project at the very end but rather that there'd be stages in which you can write drafts you can get feedback get feedback from um like the students were two or three students worked on um on a research guide which meant that two or three students had let's say a certain expertise which they developed about photography so that meant that when the student one student did a podcast and the other student did a an exhibit well at least they knew about the subject of photography where they could talk to each other and give feedback and then there were three students who worked on a three or four students who worked on exhibits three and four who worked on podcasts and so therefore they could have give feedback to each other about the process of doing podcasting so it was very important for the projects to be broken down into smaller components for there to be time for feedback for drafts for feedback feedback from me feedback from um the community partner and the community partner would share strengths and weaknesses and that in fact there would not be really um the grade wouldn't have been given actually until there was time for the student to incorporate whatever feedback had been given so ultimately the grading is going to be on me but it's only going to be after a longer process of back and forth between students between me and the students and between a community partner and the students and um and well I mean I I spent a fair bit of time I think trying to to crunch the numbers so that there was that kind of balance between sort of first drafts and final versions um and uh well um I I hope it worked out I hope it was fair maybe I can ask a follow-up question sort of Lily your your your focus on feedback just made me uh made me wonder um Lily what was that process um like for you like was it sort of it sounds a little bit like iterative development like you get some input and then you work from there how was it getting feedback from like all these different sources like you got feedback from from Richard and you got feedback from your peers and from the museum itself what was that like it was good I was helpful so I remember yeah um like we had sort of a feedback we had a feedback day the museums like our peers had to like read or listen to our first drafts by then as well as the museum staff so we got to sort of not know all managed by them but so we had this like everybody we had got to talk a little about what we did and then we could hear feedback what people had like um heard or listened so it was more fairly efficient that way to have it all and then follow up uh written feedback Dr. Menke so um that was helpful and then that was like and then I know then after the class and did see there was a couple um things that they spotted in the podcast like very minor things so we had like that round um but you know I found it helpful like the peers remember them spotting some like interesting sort of communicative things um with the podcast thinking things more clear than of course the staff they they're kind of like uh you know they really spot the um like if you accidentally and like they make they can really do like quality control making sure everything is accurate um in the podcast so just having those different stages I think it's very similar it's like what it would be like working with like a client um if you were like working is like a consulting historian or somebody like that so anybody who has a question can have if you use the chat or to raise your hand um I have one more in the meantime if anybody needs to gather their thoughts um Judy made me think of um sort of um evaluation like again happens sort of on on both parts um Richard did you have any conversations with the museum afterwards sort of about their experience like sort of Lily's comment about um working with a client made me sort of wonder um did you get any feedback from the museum side on how the project wrapped up sort of from their perspective yeah I've I've had a number of conversations with uh with the director and with the people who were the immediate sort of uh contact people and and um and they're very happy with the way that it went I mean that was I mean I think that one of the things that we have to do as instructors and in reaching out to them is to realize how of course we're trying to you know we're we're trying to provide a setting for the formation and for thinking about you know how students can get other kinds of experiences but in all fairness to the community partners we need to think about well how might they benefit from this as well I mean they're going to benefit by having I think people who are who are who are more in tune with the process of public history generally but more specifically I mean these are things now that they are putting up on their website right these are things you know they have now three more research guides than they had before they are having another place where people visiting their website can go and learn about the topics and about the collection so it was really important for me in advance to think about how this could benefit from they could benefit from it and in my conversation with them since they they appreciate the work that the students have done and what they're able to put up on the website right yeah I think you nicely touched upon the point that like this is always about mutual mutual benefit like that it's not that the organization is just sort of having to take care of like extra supervision but that it's actually very talented and people who basically create work for them that they can actually use yeah it's a great point I don't want to be taking up all of our question and the period does anybody else have a question maybe a form of engagement that you were thinking of that you'd like sort of some feedback on as we just heard can be very helpful yeah I think that there's a lot of people that I mean I have a list of people that I could be thanking people who who were at the Holocaust Center the executive director Naina Krieger the collection to registrar Caitlin Donaldson the archivist Shaila Seller I brought in an anthropologist who could give feedback on the issue of sort of curatorial dreaming where they can think about what they did in new ways I had the help of Laetitia Hanville I had the help of of of of Danielle Barkley to talk about professional development issues and I was able to get funding from my department so that I could hire somebody who's an experience as experienced with podcasting that was George Twist and then I also was able to get funding from the department so that we could visit rather than just being us doing practical work that we could visit other museums now and I think you know that wasn't necessarily they weren't the students weren't at this point creating their own but they were saying other places which had faced these issues so we went to the sports the bc sports museum and the first nations gallery and spoke to the to the executive director there Jason Beck and we also were able to speak to chief Laura Mussel savage of the squad first nation chiloac to talk about the the gallery that they'd created we did a virtual visit to the museum for human rights and we also listened to a number of podcasts so there are people I wanted to thank but I also wanted to highlight that the practical work isn't always just doing the work but also seeing other places which have done this work and you need to that's one of the things that you need to build in which maybe I hadn't stressed before visiting visiting other museums and speaking to other museums before you doing your own project can be part of that process and and once you think about ways of building that into I would recommend that people try to avoid doing this in the middle of a pandemic and and trying to figure out whether we're going to make it into a museum or not and in fact for two museums we were the first group in there after the pandemic but but if you're free from that kind of concern or restraint yeah you should try to think about how you can bring in others beyond your partner not necessarily to be doing the hands-on work but to share their experience of doing hand of doing practical work that actually sounds like it was an amazing class lady I swear I really hope that your phd experience can live up to the finish of your master's degree yeah I really I would say the indigenous sports gallery that was such a highlight I don't like all my classmates who are just so pleased with that visit and that gallery like I also just recommend like it's like kind of tucked away museum so it's like this amazing gallery so if you ever are like downtown near it like I really recommend that one perfect I have to admit I haven't explored many museums I'm sort of I'm also like I'm fairly new but now I think I'm a year in Vancouver but half of their things were still pretty much closed down and and so I'll have a growing list basically of places to go and visit so we're sort of um finishing time-wise but if anybody else wants to have a question answered we can squeeze another one in what I don't have I don't have a question but um Richard's comment really reminds me of an experience I was in a I was I was joining a end of the course sharing where there are students working in the community and it's an animal welfare program so we also had community partner coming to one Zoom coming to join and it was really interesting it was quite exciting at the end that the North Vancouver Coyote group is now hearing how the Richmond group um how how they develop like how how the partners are actually learning from each other and then sharing information and finding out oh the students help you do this we would like something like this too so it was I this reminds me that it was a Zoom meeting so but then I remember that conversation that the partners started they are taking over the conversation because they really want to know what each other is doing in the different area so so that that was a highlight for me when I was in that um sharing at the end of the course I mean I I do want to say that one of the questions that you asked me in advance was you know what is the what is it that I hope the students would gain but I want to flip that question I want to emphasize for everybody who's out there that there's so much the instructors gain from doing this kind of work um in my case um you know I felt that together we were exploring questions of authority and sharing authority and what it means and I learned an enormous amount from the students I was moved by how respectful the students were of the stories in the images that they were consulting at the at the holocaust center and um yeah it was it was you know it it really made deepened my own understanding and feeling about that kind of issue that issue of sharing authority so it was a wonderful wonderful experience working with the students and more specifically doing the applied research uh was not just a great benefit to them but to me now again there's going to be I hope very practical things like that they've gotten hands on experience that they can add it to their resume that they can get a letter from me saying that they've done it they can get a letter from somebody is from a shared partner that so there's really you know very hands-on practical things but there's also a very strong uh a strong benefit intellectually and professionally and even emotionally from working on a project like this that might actually be the the perfect way to finish a section for like instruction and teaching and learning um at the university I think is very nicely indeed highlighting um that um the work put in is definitely worth it for um all basically participants um so yeah thank you all so much um for your time and like um Richard and Lily um had to get like questions from me and everything and take the time to to think about it and both are taking that time out of their um the research days um to be here so thank you both very very much for your time and your your insight and perspective and um I put all of our resources in the chat if anybody wants to most of the things um will be found on our faculty help page and uh yeah if any of you have any questions feel free to reach out to the arts amplifier again


QuickBooks Online 2023, sub-customers or jobs. Get ready to earn the skills needed to boost your bank books on up with QuickBooks Online 2023. Here we are in our QuickBooks Online test company file using the accountant view as opposed to the business view you can toggle between the two views by going to the cog up top and switch the view down below, duplicating some tabs to put reports in like we do every time. Right-click in the tab up top to duplicate it. Right-click in the duplicated tab to duplicate it again. Tapping to the middle so we can go to the reports on the left and open the balance sheet report. One of the two faves. Going to the tab to the right, reports on the left. This time the other favorite report, the profit loss otherwise known as the income statement. Closing the hand boogie, scrolling up to the top, changing the range. We're going to look at 2025 this time cause it's got some blank space for us to put data in now. 010125 to 123125, run it, nothing's there. That's what we want cause we're going to put stuff there shortly, tab to the middle, close the hand boogie, scroll up to the top, 2025 again, 010125, 123125 and run it. Okay, let's tab to the left. Now we're going to focus just on the sub-customers which used to be called the jobs and the desktop view and focus just in on it. Remembering that the sub-customers are closest related to the projects which kind of supplanted or took over. Support accounting instruction by clicking the link below giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category, further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical, reasonable fashion making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again, click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. Some of the things that you would prior have used sub-customers for doing but sub-customers haven't gone away and you could use these two things in conjunction with each other or sometimes you might not have access to projects because you might have an earlier version or something like that and you might be using sub-customers or you might have an older accounting system that basically possibly from QuickBooks desktop that was transferred over or whatever or you were using it before they had the projects and so you'd be using sub-customers possibly in that instance as well. All right, so if we go into the sub-customers we're gonna go down to the or up to the sales tab and we're gonna go to the customers on the right-hand side. So the whole idea of the sub-customer is that we're gonna have our customers which if we're in a job cost type of system are the people that we're basically going to be billing for and then we'll have the sub-customers which will be the actual jobs that we are doing. So we could have multiple jobs for one customer and then we can track in our financial statements to break out of the activity by customer and sub-customer and track possibly like open and closed jobs. So we won't get into too much depth on a job cost system now in terms of the details of it but just to get a general idea we set up a sub-customer last time. Let's set up a couple more sub-customers just so we can get a good feel for what the reports look like with the sub-customers. So we've got, let's add another one. I'm gonna say another sub-customer and I'm just gonna number the sub-customers as if they're gonna be job numbers but of course you could put a lot more detail in the sub-customers as well. I'm gonna put four 10 for this one and then I'm just gonna say it's a sub-customer. I'm gonna say it's a sub-customer once again of customer number one and I'm gonna make it a bill to the parent customer. So that's gonna be the general concept usually. So now we've got our two sub-customers here. I'm gonna go back to the primary window and so now you can see the two sub-customers which I'm basically just calling jobs here. Now we could also set up a new customer and let's say this was a 415. If we set up a whole new billing item here we can make this for customer number one again and then again if we wanted to build the sub-customer we can uncheck that and say build the sub-customer. This is gonna be checked on by default. So let's add that one and so now we've got these three sub-customers or you might call them jobs as they would be called in the desktop version that are connected to customer number one. Let's make a couple for number two customer. So I'll say add another one. Let's make this just a different number and structure just so I can differentiate them. I'm gonna make it a sub-customer for customer number two. Okay, and then let's add another one. Add another one, hold on back to my customer list. New again, let's make this 512 and this is gonna be once again for a sub-customer for customer number two. Okay, so then the general process would be that we're gonna be having expenses and whatnot that will come up that we're gonna be applying to a long-term kind of job and we wanna basically be able to break out primarily the income statement but possibly some balance sheet accounts as well by customer and be able to run those reports. So the general concept would be we'll make invoice type of forms and we'll make them billable. So we turned on the billable option before. So if you hit the cog button over here and we go to the account and settings, then expenses on the left-hand side and in the bills and expenses, we said we wanna track the billable expenses and items. Now you can also add a markup as you do that. So you're gonna have an expense. It's gonna pull over to the invoice and then we'll mark it up 30% per line item. Let's just play with that while we're doing this. So I'm gonna say let's say done and boom and then as expenses come up, we're just gonna say let's add an expense. I can hit the plus button over here without that opening. Now let's open it up over here. Expense form and we're gonna say that we had vendor number one. I'm just always gonna use the same vendor just so it's easy and this is gonna be as of 010125 and I have my location in Nevada. I'm not really focused on the locations right now. The tags and whatnot, we're focused on just the sub-customer. So I'm gonna say supplies again and traditionally what we would be purchasing is like cost a good sold type of stuff if it was a long-term job. So let's just set up another account and call it a cost a good sold type of account. Cost a good sold and we've got cost a good sold labor versus rental, let's say materials cost a good sold. Save it, boom and then I'm gonna say it's 2000. Okay, I'll keep it at 2000. It's gonna be billable and then we're gonna assign it to the customer. So it's gonna go to customer, let's say 400 again. And so what's this gonna do? Decrease the checking account. The other side is gonna go to what we assigned here which I believe was cost a good sold on the income statement and then we're gonna have it billable so it'll pull into the invoice and mark it up by that 30% is the general idea. Now note that as we do the markup because I just assigned it to an account which is the cost a good sold account. It's gonna pull into the income statement using the income account that's just kind of generated by QuickBooks. So we could do a little bit more advanced method using items that we might practice later but let's go ahead and save and close it and then we're gonna go to the tab to the right and let's run it. So if I look at a standard balance sheet now we got the checking account went down because that's what we would expect to happen. Now I could run the balance sheet breaking it out by customers and I've got a lot of different customers here so it becomes a long report. That's one of the problems with this method and notice it's in here as not specified some of the balance sheet accounts again don't exactly break out perfectly by customer. If I go back into this and check it out we've got our expense report here and the customer is assigned. So I'm gonna close this out. So balance sheet reports don't always work perfectly. The income statement reports is really where the focus generally is because that's the performance report. So if I refresh this, this is the income statement before we break it out it's in the cost a good sold. If I go up top and I wanna see this by customer so now we could run this not there by customer customer, customer, there it is, boom. Okay so there we have it. Now it's broken out by customer. Now let's pull that in to the income line item and we'll see the income related to that customer as well and notice it has the customer and this is the sub-customer and then the total for the customers adding up all the totals which we'll see more when we add data. So I'm gonna go back to the tab to the left and let's say that we're going to, let's hit the plus button up top and say we're gonna make an invoice now and we will make it for customer number 400 and that's the sub-customer. I can pull in the billable item now. Let's do it. Let's pull it in. Let's do it. And then now we've got, let's keep it on the same date. We'll keep the same date here and so now it's pulling in. Now, if I don't add anything else other than what's put it in here, I could put a description in for what it was put in. So like materials that pulled in then it's just gonna pull into an account that's kind of made up by QuickBooks because I'm not using an item which is the thing that usually drives which account it's gonna be going to. So let's go ahead and just record it and see what it does, see what happens. So this is going to then increase the accounts receivable if I go to the balance sheet. The balance sheet accounts receivable is breaking out by customer. And then if I go to the tab to the right and run this one, now we've got the 2000 billable and the supplies. It didn't mark it up by that 30%. So for some reason that the thing didn't take to mark up by the 30%. Let's do it again and on the next one we'll mark it up by 30%. I just turned it on again. But here we've got the income that pulled in. Notice that it pulled into the billable expense income and then which is an income account that it kind of made up for the billable expense. We couldn't really switch it because we use that billable thing instead of using the items. So let's do it again. This time let's try to use an item with it and let's apply something to 410 this time. So I'm gonna say a new, not new, what am I doing? Plus button up top. Let's make another expense form. And this one we're gonna make it for 410 and let's make this one as of 1.5 let's say and we're gonna say then down here instead of using the category, let's use the item. So I'm gonna use an item now and this is a standard technique for using items if you're gonna try to pull the expense in a job cause type of system over to the invoice so that we have more control on which accounts gonna be hit on the income side when we get to the invoice. So let's hit the dropdown and I'm gonna say new item and this time let's make it a non-inventory because I'm not gonna be tracking the inventory with it. Let's call it materials and so I'm gonna say copy that. It's gonna be materials down here. I'm not gonna add a class or anything. I'll keep it in the services even though it probably should be going into the product. Well, let's put it to product. That's where I should have put the last one. And then I'm gonna have both of these checked off so that when I pull it down to the income statement it's gonna pull in to the income account of sales of product. That's the thing that's a little bit different here and then down here when we purchase it I'm not gonna put it into purchases. I'm gonna put it into cost of supplies and labor cost of goods sold. We're just gonna expense it as we go. All right, so we're gonna save it and then let's put this in there for let's say 500 this time and then I'll make it billable and it should mark it up. So notice now it's marking it up like we wanted it to do last time but I didn't really check it too much. So anyways, that's what's gonna pull into the invoice when we pull it into the invoice. Obviously we could have multiple line items on one of these items too. So if I say add another one, let's say it's gonna be a non-inventory labor and description, same concept, the income account. I'm gonna put it to the sale of products when I pull it over to the invoice and then down here I can put this to cost of goods sold labor and we'll save it and let's say this one was 400 we'll make it billable as well, marking it up 30% when we pull it on over into the invoice. And by the way, this shouldn't be going to customer up top, this should be going to a vendor and that's gonna delete the whole thing. I'm gonna save it, it should be going to a vendor and then down here it's still good. I'm gonna say, okay, so I've recreated it materials and labor and then I'm gonna make it go to the project which I think we're looking at 410 now is the one we want it to be going to. So that's gonna be pulling over when I make the invoice. Okay, what's this gonna do? Decrease cash, other side goes to the expense account driven by the items this time to the cost of goods sold ones and it'll be billable so when I make an invoice for customer project or subcustomer for a 10 it'll pull over. So let's say save and close, tab to the right and run it, running. And so then it's in not specified over here again if I go to the tab to the right and run this one now we've got the expenses that are pulling in to these same accounts it looks to similar to what we did over here even though we did items with this one the items will differ when I pull it now into the income account because instead of just making this billable expense income QuickBooks will now put it into the income account that we prescribed by the item. So if I go back to the first tab and just do that plus button invoice and then we're gonna say this time we wanna do 410 and we'll pull in both of these items we can just add all of them. And so that looks good, that looks good. So now it's got the materials and it's got the markup that it pulled in and it's also got the product or the item. So the item is what's gonna drive it to the income account that we wanted it to be going to. So then, so that looks good. So it's gonna increase accounts receivable. The other side is going to be going to the income account to the accounts that we prescribed it to be going to and it'll be broken out by customer job or sub-customer. So let's save it and close it, tab to the right and run it. Now this one, I think breaks out the accounts receivable. So now the accounts receivable are breaking out whereas the cash wasn't. And I believe that's because when you look at the form for the invoice, we're assigning it to a customer on the invoice whereas the checking account because we're not assigning the customer to the full transaction, we're assigning it per line item. So it's not hitting the cash side of the transaction. I think that's the differentiation. So when we use like classes for the entire or location tracking for the entire transaction then the balance sheet might work out a little bit better in those cases, we'll experiment with that later when we get to classes. But if I tab to the right, now we've got the income, the markup and the sales pulling over for this customer or sub-customer and it pulled to the account that we wanted it to, QuickBooks still made up kind of another account for the markup. So if you do the markup that way, QuickBooks kind of mixed up another account but you get a little bit more control on where it's gonna go as opposed to that billing one where it's just gonna make up kind of an account which isn't, I don't think that's ideal because you kind of like to have the control. But in any case, here's the customer, we've got the two jobs for that customer and then here's the total for customer number one. So now let's do one for the second customer just so we can see customer number two and see how this kind of expands our reports are gonna get kind of unwieldy if we have a lot of customers gonna be a lot of line items, a lot of columns. So if I go again and say, okay, let's do this again and say we have an expense again and let's say this one's for sub-customer 501 on like the eighth, let's say and I'm gonna use my item technique down here and we're gonna say materials this time. Let's say, let's say 6,000. We're gonna make it billable and customer, customer five, oh, I did it again, hold on. This isn't a customer up top. This is the vendor that we're doing. Do you want to pre-fill? No. Okay, we're paying the vendor. Now the fact that we're paying a vendor is why I believe the balance sheet accounts the cash account isn't gonna be breaking out by customer because this vendor isn't indicating which customer we deal with as opposed to the invoice where the invoice has the customer up top. So, but when I assign it line item by line item I'm assigning the customer per line item. So I can't assign the customer to the checking account because there's no line item for the checking account because the checking account is just the other side of the transaction driven by the expense form. It's bottom line here. There's nothing to assign this to the customer field. Okay, so let's do it again. Spitted out, I can't really talk yet. I'm still warming up here. Let's do the next one is 1,500. And then we'll say this one also goes to customer 2501. Okay, this is gonna decrease the checking account. The other side's gonna go to the cost of goods sold driven by the items, save it and close it, tab into the right in it and then run in it. And so it decreased the checking account. And so let's do that. And then let's go then to, I believe it decreased the checking account, right? If I go into it. Let's just double check that. If I could drill and drill and down. So there it is. I don't think I refreshed it.  So that looks more correct. It's been refreshed now. All right, and then if I tab to the right and we run this report, now we've got customer number two and the subcustomer. So now we got customer number one activity and then the total for customer number one. And then customer number two and the subcustomer or job related to that total for subcustomer number two. And then the total line, which is our total income statement. The fact that we have this long report that actually kind of sums up horizontally to the total could be quite nice when we're trying to figure out problems with our job costing kind of system. The downside of course is that once you have a whole lot of customers, you're gonna get a very expansive report that is gonna have a lot of horizontal line items to it. And if you have a lot of customers that aren't job related customers, it might be difficult to kind of differentiate. Like if you're selling other stuff that's not job related in QuickBooks and you have all these other customers in there that you're not trying to track by job, then that could be quite bothersome as well with this type of report. However, note that even if you have like a hundred customers, your report's not gonna be a hundred customers wide if you weren't doing actual jobs on those hundred customers because it's only gonna be showing the activity being the income statement for this time range. So the income statement will just, you know, if there was no activity in this time range even though you had customers that you did work on prior to that, then it's not gonna be showing up in this type of report would be the general idea. So in other words, if I ran this report for 010126 to 123126 and run it, then I still had some activity that I put in the 26 but this isn't the same activity. I don't see customer number two here at all, right? So let's go back on over to 010125 to 123125 and run it. And let's just do at least one more. I think I needed to add the income. Let's pull that on over to the income side, plus button, invoice it. And then on the invoice, we're gonna say that this is gonna be for 501 and pull it in. And so then it pulls in beautifully. And so now we're gonna have accounts receivable going up and the other side going to the revenue accounts driven by the items that we have set up. Let's save it and close it. And then balance sheet account, balance sheet account. The accounts receivable is breaking out properly because the accounts receivable line item can tell what line item it was because we actually assigned the customer to it as opposed to that check the expense account. And then if I go to the tab to the right and we run this one, now we've got the income and the expenses. Let's just do one more in customer number two so we could see this subtotal again. So if I go back on over and we say plus another expense, we could say let's do the second one for customer number two. And let's say this happened on 12 or so. Same kind of concept down here. We'll just say that we had laborer for 3000 billable item and then it's gonna be this one, 512 this time. And then we have materials. Materials for one four, let's say billable and it's gonna go for 512. Okay, so what's this gonna do? Decrease the checking account. I assigned it to a customer again. It shouldn't be a customer. It should be the vendor. No. Okay, now because I'm assigning it to a vendor, then notice it can't really break out this number which is the checking account, the other side of the transaction by customer because there's no line item assigning this one to a customer. These line items which are the income statement side are assigned to the customers. That's why it breaks out the income statement properly I believe and not the checking account. Save it and close it and then run it to the right. Running and so you can see here it didn't break out the cash account like it has been breaking out nicely the AR accounts. So if I go to the tab to the right, run it, then now we've got our another sub account here on 512. So it can get kind of an extensive sheet here but you can see it works, it does its thing quite nicely in a job kind of system so I can break out my income statement by customer although it gets a little bit tedious, so a little bit redundant because you have this concept of the customer and then the sub customers and then the total. So I mean you have basically two extra columns here. I mean sometimes it'd be kind of nice to just run the report by just the jobs to see the open jobs and not having these two redundant columns which can make your report really long. If you were using class tracking, then you can do it that way, right? You could sort it by job and it's a little bit shorter of a report. Then you got customer two, which has the sub customer, sub customer and the total for customer number two and then the total income statement. So one of the primary things that is nice here is that you can run this report that has all of the customers in it and it's got the total so that you can tie everything out to your actual financial statements as opposed to like tags or sometimes when you go into the project reports just the individual reports they just give you the income statement activity by that particular project or job. Great, that's great to zoom in sometimes like that but it's nice to be able to see the whole everything tied out so you can tie it out to your financials. Then you can filter this kind of report by going to the customize up top and you can use your filtering options and if you were using other kind of things as well like classes and location tracking then you can filter, you can run the report by customer and filter by location and class tracking, right? That's one way that you can do it if you don't have location and class tracking then you would most likely filter by customer. So if I wanna focus in on one customer or one job I can say let's just take a look at that, let's take a look at that 415 customer only and run it and I didn't do anything for 415 apparently. Let's run it again, wrong pick, don't pick that one. Let's do it for 410. 410, run it and so there we have it. Now again it's a little bit tedious even when you do this because it's the sub-customers tied to the job so you're gonna have the customer and then the sub-customer, the sub-customers tied to the customer I mean. So you got the customer, the sub-customer and then the total and then the total over here but that's not too bad to deal with, right? So now you can zoom in to each individual job by filtering to each of those individual jobs. So it's a workable kind of system. Now note that the primary thing that happened after sub-customers were in play is the projects. So if you go over to the projects, then like if you were using sub-customers before in another accounting system or jobs before in QuickBooks desktop or sub-customers in QuickBooks online and then they added the jobs then the question is, well do you wanna convert everything over to, I'm sorry, then they added the projects. The question is, do you wanna convert everything over to projects? And I mean, if you have a system that's working, maybe it's not worth it, but they have some conversion concepts that you can look at to try to convert everything to projects but it's still kind of a scary task to do. But the projects are different. They work in a similar fashion so we'll talk more about projects later but you'll see that basically you have your own kind of area that's separate from the customer area that sorts the projects and you've got a little bit more of the sorting tools down here for the projects as opposed to the jobs and then you could run the reports by project. So do the projects then make the jobs or sub-customers obsolete? Not necessarily cause again, you could imagine that you're using sub-customers quite well and thank you very much. I'm going forward quite well with them. You might keep going with that. The projects also add some features like sometimes when you're trying to integrate payroll and stuff into the projects but you might still use the jobs or you could say, hey, look, I would like to have a use the projects but let's say I wanna tie them to a job. So now you're gonna say I'm gonna make a project that ties to a customer. The projects ties to the customer in a similar way as the sub-customers or jobs tie to customers even though it's not in the same window but you might say, hey, look, I've got a customer and then I've got the sub-customer which has a different billing address to the other customer. So I would like to say, yes, it's tied to customer number one but I wanna make the project tied to the sub-customer. So you can see the tiering action you might have, customer number one, then the sub-customer and then you might tie your project for some reasons to the sub-customer. So if I make a project, for example, I have to tie it to a customer instead of actually customer number one, I could tie it to a sub-customer which might be useful for like billing type of purposes. So obviously the sub-customers have it going away. They haven't removed the sub-customers. They are there in a system where you might need them if you don't have access to the projects possibly even if you have access to the projects, if you're using the sub-customers and you're content with the sub-customers because that's what you've been using, then the question is do you wanna try to convert all the sub-customers to projects or are you good going forward with the sub-customers? And then of course you could still use the sub-customers in conjunction in some cases with the projects even if the projects are kind of taking over some of the functionality that the sub-customers would have done in the past. So we'll get into projects more in future presentations.


This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. Here it is on a given Wednesday, and we always have energy in America on Wednesday. And we have Jeff Kissel from E-princk to talk about, gee, some very sophisticated issues you need to know about. It's not only that we study energy in Hawaii, but we should study energy globally and see how that affects Hawaii. Welcome to the show, Jeff Kissel. Thanks, Jay. It's very nice to be with you again. It's the same here. So let's talk about two things today, and the first would be the change in standards effective 2020 in LSFO, low sulfur fuel oil. There's one thing, and later on we'll talk about the tariff that President Trump just imposed on solar panels, both interesting, both affecting the U.S. energy markets, and both affecting Hawaii, right? So let's talk about the LSFO. What's happening? Well, this is a really interesting topic, because right now, international shipping is at an all-time high in terms of the amount of cargo being moved, the number of ships on the high seas, and of course, those ships run on oil. Unfortunately, they haven't figured out a way to get renewables into those ships. More importantly, today those run on high sulfur fuel oil, the International Maritime Organization, which is a group of ship owners, which is comprised of a group of ship owners and regulatory officials, look at all kinds of things relating to safety and fuel efficiency and sulfur content for the fuel. And the fuel itself today can range up to 3.5% sulfur when the ships are out on the open seas. And we're closer to the shores of certain North American and European nations. They have to bring lower sulfur fuel. But by and large, today, they're burning 3.5% sulfur fuel. Now, the sulfur fuel, the more sulfur in the fuel... That's 10 to 1.5% of 1%. And that changes the whole dynamic of fuel for Hawaii's power industry. Unfortunately, we have not weaned ourselves away from fuel oil for power generation. Even though we've added renewables to the mix, we're actually burning more fuel in Hawaii for power generation today than we did 10 years ago because the demand for energy is high. Unfortunately, that means higher prices for oil. So that's a real conundrum that we're going to have to deal with in 2020. And it could push rates back up to the levels that we saw them at when oil was approaching $150 and $200 a barrel. Even though oil itself is still around $60 a barrel. Well, is the low sulfur fuel oil a matter of the natural characteristics of the oil, or is it a matter of refining and processing crude oil into LSFO? Indonesia used to be a source for low sulfur fuel oil because the oil, the crude oil that they exported, naturally had fewer, lower sulfur content than most other crude oils. Unfortunately, Indonesia is no longer an exporter of crude oil. The crude oil we get from places like Venezuela, it used to be lower in the sulfur, has diminished for various reasons. So you actually have to run it through the refinery and scrub the sulfur out of it. But that isn't the real problem. The problem is when these ships... We're going to take a short break until we can reconnect with Jeff Kissell. This is energy in America. We'll take a short break, we'll be right back after we can reconnect. Sorry. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Okay, we're reconnected with Jeff Kissell. Here we are in energy in America and we're talking about LSFO and how the standards are going to change in 2020 and give Hawaii a headache, I think. So isn't it possible, Jeff, for somebody at one end or the other end of the transit of this oil to make high sulfur fuel oil into low sulfur fuel oil by some kind of chemical refinement process? The refineries are capable of doing it. The point is the demand is going to go up from roughly half a million barrels a year, half a million barrels per day per year, to over three million barrels per day, per year. And that means Hawaii is going to have to compete with every ship on the high seas to buy its fuel. And that means higher fuel prices for Hawaii's power generated plants. Well, there's really no way around it. And that means markedly higher fuel prices. Close to the $200 barrel mark that we saw during the height of the fuel spike almost 10 years ago. What are we paying now? $50 and change? Right now, crude oil prices are around $60 a barrel. Fuel oil prices are around $75 to $85 per barrel. So that's more than double. So we're in for a big shock up. Yeah, more than double of what it costs now. That passes right through to the people who use electricity in terms of a fuel surcharge. But utilities quite rightfully have to pass along, otherwise they can't afford to make the electricity. What about buying futures? I mean, if I were a utility company, I knew this was going to happen in 2020. I would buy futures. Would that help ameliorate the problem? Well, many companies are. But regrettably, the Hawaii market is tied to the Hawaii refineries. And it's pretty much impossible to hedge that on the futures market. And what is the relationship of this whole change in standards to the Paris Accord and to the global movement to cut greenhouse gases and, I guess, sulfur in general? Is this IMO change a function of an environmental discussion and resolution at the Paris Accord? Well, yes, it's in response to the international treaties to reduce pollution. More importantly, the ships are moving toward a clean fuel renewable standard eventually. This is just one intermediate step on the way. You know, they're experimenting with LNG to move ships. They're experimenting with solar cells and a lot of other fuels. And they're determined to take as much fossil fuel out of dirty fossil fuel out of shipping as they possibly can.  I wonder if this is the kind of thing where you ramp up to a higher price or whether it happens all of a sudden. In other words, should we expect prices to increase as we approach 2020? Or will prices just go skyrocket at 2020 when the new standards come into effect? They will start to increase probably not until 2019. But, you know, that's just around the corner. Yes, it is. And there's almost nothing we can do to stop it, except to redouble our efforts to diversify our fuel supply and move away from oil as quickly as we can. Unfortunately, the second barrel of the shotgun has just been fired by the president. And that is the increased tariffs on solar panels. So just as we were moving toward utility-scale solar in Hawaii, the cost for that is starting to rise as well and likely to rise very, very substantially. Yeah, that's really interesting because on the one hand, the international maritime organization is going to cause a huge increase in fossil fuel. And I was going to ask you the solution. And the solution is obviously to move to renewables at a faster clip. But now we've just been stopped from doing large-scale solar, community solar and utility solar because the cost of solar panels will increase by virtue of Trump's tariff, 20 percent tariff. So when you start doing the numbers, Jeff, what does it look like? 20 percent is just add 20 percent on the top. Is that what I do? How do I look at what it's really serious because the utility is entitled to earn a rate of return on its investment. So what used to cost a utility one million dollars is going to cost them one point two million dollars. And they're entitled to earn about a 12 percent rate of return on that. So you're going to be paying an additional 12 percent on two hundred thousand dollars per million. Forever. And if you look at the compounded impact of that, it's more than doubling the cost of the installed solar plant every three years. Solar today costs about twice what conventional fossil fuel generation costs in Hawaii. So you're going to take that and you're going to add at least one-third more to it. You're approaching a dollar-a-kilowatt hour, whether it's from fossil fuel or from solar. My goodness gracious. We scream and squawk about 30 cents or 40 cents or even 50 cents. Now you're talking about the combination of these two disruptions in our energy system going to cost a dollar-a-kilowatt hour. That's really hard. What kind of effect do you think that will have on the state? Well, the economists can measure it against the gross domestic product in Hawaii. But you're certainly looking at at least a one to two percentage point negative impact on the growth of that GDP. That means fewer jobs, lower paying jobs, lower investment in Hawaii's infrastructure, higher costs to operate transportation. You know that it's going to go through the economy. It's going to be very hard on a lot of people. Yeah, they say that an economy that has energy resources that are cheap, those energy resources that will allow the economy to grow. And of course, it's the other side also. If you don't have energy resources that are plentiful and cheap, that will constrain the economy. I guess that will come into play for Hawaii when we get pinched at both ends this way. It's not a good story. So let me ask you this, Jeff. What do we do facing these two disruptive events? Well, you can't change what's occurred. You can only look forward. And the way to look forward, in my opinion, is we want to look through the slide pack on this. But what you've got to do is diversify the energy sources.  We need diversified energy sources for Hawaii. And they can be clean, should be clean. They may be fossil-based, but they also can be renewable. Hawaii's taken a great step forward with renewables. It needs to invest more in that. But we need to step away from the highest cost of energy, which is oil. And there are some alternatives for that, as we both know. Well, let's talk about alternatives. What comes to mind, for example, for me is if we can't get solar panels, say, from outside the country, I guess that's primarily China. Even Chinese companies here that would be buyers of the Chinese panels, they can't bring them in, except with that 20% tariff. We should consider what? I guess we can't go to Europe either, right? They make panels in Europe. We could consider buying them, but that would also be subject to the 20% tariff, I guess. Of course, the Chinese are making the panels in Europe largely. So it doesn't really matter. They've got a lot of things. One thing we could do easily is change the tariff and allow people to put solar on their rooftop and sell the power back in the grid. Because when I put solar on my rooftop, I don't have to give the utility a rate of return on that solar panel. It may cost me 20% more, but once I pay the 20% once, I don't have to pay it again and again. Yeah. Well, maybe that's the solution. Just pay the price and generate it back. What about the possibility of manufacturing solar panels in this country? We did that for a while, but I think it diminished as the Chinese ascended in their manufacturing. Could we do it again? Will this tariff have the intended effect, the effect intended by the White House, to improving America's manufacturing capability? Everybody says no. I'm not the expert, but I understand that if I'm going to have to invest three or four or five hundred million dollars in building a solar panel plant here and distributing it and putting all that investment in place, only to have the next administration change the tariff structure and put me out of business, we'd be very reluctant to make that investment. Yeah, that's true, because if the next administration reverses it, then you're in trouble and you've just made an investment you can earn a return on. So I don't imagine people are going to go out and do that. American capital won't go out and do that. Not with the volatility of this particular administration. Well, what about other sources or renewables? I mean, is this a time for us to reconsider the limitations on geothermal, for example, on a big island? Is it a time for us to look at ocean energy and deep sea water energy? Should we consider other renewables now? Is it worthwhile? We absolutely must, and that's part of diversification. It's geothermal, it could be wind, it could be energy differentials. The other thing that really people don't like to do is to be energy efficient.  Well, it seems clear that we should do that. We should look at these other alternative sources. I think we've been, you know, in the last few years, we've been focused on solar. Solar's been our primary direction in renewables. And we haven't spent as much time and effort on wind, we should be. And on these other possibilities, geothermal and deep sea water and the like, ocean energy. So maybe it's time for us to do that. But my question to you, and this is a hard one, Jeff, I'd like to ask you hard questions. How do we get that through politically? How do we impress the legislature or the governor as a case may be with incentivizing these other renewable sources in order to avoid the pinch that we're going to experience between the solar tariff and the LSFO standard? Well, unfortunately, many governments make choices that have long-term consequences for short-term political gain. And in Hawaii, our government did exactly that. They said that we are not going to move to an intermediate fuel-like liquefied natural gas. They said we are not going to permit economic rooftop solar anymore. And we're going to move to total renewables without a plan to do it. And Jay, you know, that's just a formula for disaster. And the disaster now is right around the corner. I think people like you need to advocate for the kinds of sensible alternatives that will allow us to diversify our energy base. That's really where it comes down to. Yeah, problem is we're here in an election year. The problems you describe, disruptive events you describe are happening pretty quick and are going to have an effect pretty quick. But we're in an election year. Nobody wants to take chances in an election year. So it's hard to get the government to spend money on incentives. It's hard to get the government to take bold steps either at the executive level or certainly at the legislative level. So I think we're in a kind of problem. Let me ask you this. We've been having these conversations on and off for a while. You mentioned natural gas, LNG, for example. Is this a good time for Hawaii to consider or reconsider using natural gas imported from the mainland as a way to solve the, what do you call it, energy price crisis that we're looking at? Yes. There are a lot of alternative fuels to oil. There are clean ones and dirty ones. But natural gas, propane, ethane is a fuel that's in use. Even coal has a place as we move toward that renewable economy and move away from these fuels that are really not good for the environment and definitely not good for the economy. Well, you've left me worried, Jeff. We can continue this conversation and find other ways to solve the problem but I suspect that the pincher movement that you've described between the one thing and then the other thing and both things affecting the price going forward is going to happen without real political action and so we'll be walking right into the storm. And by the way, at the same time we should be building resilience on energy. At the same time we should be dealing with climate change and all the things involved, energy is one of those things. So this is a year, despite the fact this election year, this is a year where the legislature should be super active to try to handle these things coming forward. Any thoughts on that? Well, the only thing I can say is trouble comes in threes because in addition to the price spike in oil and the tariff on solar it might be time for a recession in 2020 and the economy might not be in the shape it needs to be to weather that storm. Are you talking about the Hawaii economy, the national economy or the global economy? Well, the national and the global economy. We've been steaming along at such a heavy cliff. It's hard to believe we can continue indefinitely and we can see our way through 2018 pretty easily. 2019 doesn't look bad but 2020 is early on in the year. Well, I wish we had a happier discussion today, Jeff but clearly we're going to have to carry it forward. Next time you're around let's have this discussion and check back and see how things are evolving after all. Energy is at the heart of our economy and our future so we need to keep very close tabs on it and that's why I think that Hawaii has to keep close tabs on you, Jeff Kissel. Thank you for staying in such shape. Thanks very much. Thank you, Jeff. Aloha.


Los Angeles commuters are starting their workweek with a major traffic headache on November 13 as a downtown stretch of the heavily-transited Santa Monica freeway remained closed until further notice after a weekend fire charred the columns supporting the overpass, about 300,000 vehicles used the freeway daily, California Governor Gavin Newsom said on November 12, and the area is often clogged even under normal circumstances. Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency in Los Angeles County in order to expedite repairs and he toured the damage on Sunday, vowing to get the freeway reopened as quickly as possible.A section of freeway, also known as the East-West Interstate 10 where the 10 in local parlance is shut in both directions at a point between Interstate's 5 and 110, two other major freeways that are vital to LA's car culture. The closure was likely to last several days, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bays said. It's of significant consequence to the economy. The traffic is going to be horrendous, it's going to really impact Los Angeles.


With me, I'm always nervous when I get, you know, around police or, like, how, when they pull me over, like, what they expect or how to approach it. Ready to get it. It's time to go to work. Just having fun. So right now, what's in your mind? What are you looking for? Think about it. Just scan. And if you see something that catches your eye or, you know, talk to people. So this is our district now. We're here. We're in District 1 right now. Yeah. So. No, of course. Start on our D-45. 5-0-0. D-45 to have. We're going to go to this because they don't have anybody going. OK. Let's do it. This is a whole department. And this is a priority one call. This is an emergency call. So you've got to get cars there as quick as you can. You get nervous going on these roads like this? No. And not being a tough guy. You've done it for so long that you kind of just get used to it. OK. This will get me out of the other way through this traffic like this. Yeah. We get a lot of training. Everybody going in code 10 to the hull up. Slow to code 9. Again, slow to code 9. OK. All right. We can kill it now. What is that? He got up there. And it's looking like everything's good. So you go through all that. And you're like, oh man, I missed the action. D-25 is clear. That happens probably more often than not. And that's what you want. All right. I mean. But if somebody's in there with a gun or whatnot, you've got to get there. I'm a little bored for a second. I'll bring it. No. You've got the speed. This is real. We're going to stop him real quick. He's got the broken right tail light. Right. I've seen that. Yeah. I'm going to go camera on. I got my body camera on. OK. See what we've got here. Hey, do you have your license for a stretch proof insurance? Is this your car? Yeah. Do you think your right tail light's broken? Yeah. Your license is good? Yeah. I'll tell you what. Everything checks out, man. I'll have you out here in just a couple minutes. He's having some good combo. I like it. He's just smooth about it. Sit tight. I'll get you out here in just a sec, all right? See you looking around a lot, man. What are you looking for? Just checking out there's somebody in the back seat. He's getting smooth though. So he's not really hinking me. I'm being very respectful.   Just wanted to auto zone or something and buy some red tape and throw it over there until you get it fixed, all right? Cool. All right. Can you see over the steering wheel sitting back that low? Yeah. All right. I trust you. Have a good one. Oh boy. So you got a couple of jokes too, huh? You got to. You hear that? Yeah. That's my camera going off. So I just deactivated it? How do you feel about this though? I love them. How long have you had them? It's been over here now. Okay. That's your buddy now, okay? Yep. I can only tag my videos in this. I cannot manipulate the videos or access them. Right. When I activate it, the video is actually going to show me getting out of the car because it goes back 30 seconds. Oh, okay. That's cool, dude. Yeah. So how do you separate this from your everyday life? Like if you're out at the grocery store, like just on you with your family, things like that. Are you reading people still? Yeah. I think it becomes almost second nature. Yeah. So how nervous do you get when you're pulling up the cars? Honestly, it all depends on what it is. I'm not going to lie.   No one has done anything wrong. What advice do you give me just like the real thing? I'll just tell you. I mean, they have to have a legal reason to stop you. Sometimes like when I'm contacting people, I lay out a lot of times exactly why I'm contacting them and what I'm going to do. Okay. You know, so that way there's not that. That's good. I think that's a good idea to explain it, you know, like... Yeah. But it's a cool job, man. And I make almost as much as you do. Seriously? No. Oh, I'm going to tell you, whoa. I had a great time. I learned a lot. Nice, man. Appreciate it, man. Anytime. There's a lot of great officers in this world put their lives on the line daily out here for us and to keep us safe. It was an amazing trip. You know, an amazing experience. I'd love to do it again.