Okay, folks, 2.30 has passed, so we should actually talk about e-texts for a bit. And on a light-hearted note, it was only one of my goals in putting together this panel, that it was going to be Accent-a-Palooza, and you'll understand what I'm talking about in a little while. E-texts. Like so many panels that I sort of get an idea for, it started in orneriness, but it has moved from orneriness to something else since then. My name, by the way, is Glenda Morgan. I'm from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I direct academic technologies. And I saw recently a call for proposals and a call for participation in a library publishing conference in Kansas City. And it turns out that my worst fears were not realized, but in the call there was a lot of talk about scholarly publishing in the library as a thing that was growing in speed and momentum and things like that, but not much conversation about textbook publishing, so the more teaching and learning kind of things. And I thought, damn, we really should be talking about this because a lot of places are doing it. We're doing it at Illinois, not in the library. We're doing it in IT. I knew that UCLA had an initiative underway. I knew that Purdue had an initiative underway. SUNY has a giant textbook project that they're doing, the University of Oregon, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. So there's a growing sense out there that we're getting into the textbook publishing business either in IT or more commonly in libraries. And we really need to talk about it as a movement, and it is really a sort of interesting movement, I think, both in terms of the need for it, in terms of the growing costs of textbooks, but also what it sort of means, the larger implications of that. So we've pulled together a bunch of people to talk about e-textbook initiatives at their institutions. We've got Milind Basole from the University of Illinois. Todd. Grapone. Grapone, yeah. I didn't want to do terrible things to the pronunciation here from UCLA and Pat Reid from Purdue University. Just to sort of, and sort of through exploring those different things, we can get a sense of what some of the issues are and what some of the challenges are. So I'm going to stop yakking and hand it immediately over to Pat Reid who's going to kick off. All right, so I thought I'd start off by talking about some of the different struggles that we've had at Purdue. I've been at Purdue for two and a half, three years now, and we have in that time taken a look at course load, course smart, vital source, about half a dozen other different third party platforms for providing e-texts. We've also got, I cannot tell you how many different building blocks in Blackboard for publishers who actually go to our faculty members and convince our faculty members that'll only take half an hour for us to install a building block for them so that they can then have an e-text build in. And this has been very frustrating. But about six months ago, we decided that we would take a look at this from a completely different angle. So instead of taking a look at third party platforms, we decided we're going to put that on hold. And one of the main reasons is that there is some suspicion that the State of Illinois, no, Indiana, I'm with Purdue and we're in Indiana. It's really close to the border though. It's just a matter of time till we invade and take them over. And wouldn't you rather be in Illinois rather than Indiana? So there's some talk that the State of Indiana is going to pass a requirement that all of the public universities will use the same third party platform and that they will dictate what that is and when. So we decided let's skip that because that is just a major struggle anyway. Purdue does not own its bookstores. We do not contract with our bookstores and we are not in competition with our bookstores. So that is one of the things that has made it even more of a struggle when we take a look at e-texts. Despite that we've decided we're going to be in competition with our community in this one area. And so we decided that we would identify a completely different purpose. We are now looking at e-texts in two different lights. One is as open educational resources and the other is as a method for faculty to publish books at either an extremely low cost to their students or books that are not really books, things that are far more innovative and therefore the current publishers cannot meet their requirements. And so those are some of the reasons that we decided to go into two different initiatives. The first one that I'd like to talk about is the open... Oh we're remote, look at that, thank you. Make it much easier. This is our open education resources initiative. And raise your hand if you do not know what OERs are. Okay just a couple of you. Open educational resources are textbooks and other media that are available online absolutely copyright free or shared so that anybody can use them. The idea is that one faculty member at one institute might create a chemistry textbook, put it online and make it so that another professor at another university can use that, make changes to it. The only caveat is that whatever changes are made must also be available to everybody without any cost. And so we decided that this for our large enrollment courses might actually be a very effective way of cutting costs to students. And so what we are looking at here is adopting and reducing our textbook costs by eliminating a textbook for a high enrollment freshman course. And at Purdue when I talk about high enrollment we're talking about 1,600 to 2,000 students per year. So if we can cut a textbook that is $150 for that many students that's higher math than I can do. So how do I forward it? Oh no. Point it at it. Oh point it at it. At the laptop. Alright we'll just go everywhere and do this. Pat works in IT. I am technology challenged. I can't work my remote for my TV either. So as I said our target courses for this are high enrollment courses and we're looking for courses that don't have an electronic component because right now a lot of the publishers are sort of packaging textbooks with another online piece of homework or something that sort of ties it together, makes it very useful for the instructor but actually makes it significantly more difficult to replace that online component later on with OER materials. And we also are looking for a common textbook across all of the sections of a course. So if we've got a course that's got 1,600 students that means we might have for English, our open entry English course we might have 100 different sections and that means we have got 100 different instructors possibly and who is it that has made it that determination of what textbook or textbooks they will use. Very frequently each instructor selects their own textbook. When we do have some courses like our Econ 250 where there's one textbook, they have no web access component and so this would be a likely candidate for this kind of a project. We also need volunteer faculty. I don't know about your areas but that can be a challenge. That actually may be the biggest challenge of all of them. So is this my con? Oh it is, so I could just stand here. So what we are going to provide to the faculty who go into the OER initiative for us we will provide them with some, we will work with them to identify what are the objectives that they want for their textbooks. Then we have hired a company who will go out and search for OER materials that will meet those objectives so that the faculty member is not actually having to do that research. We will present those to the faculty member. The faculty member then can determine which pieces are going to be of the quality and the progression that they are looking for and then we can meld those together into a new OER or hopefully just add some multimedia, add some questions to make some interaction in it and then create something that the faculty member can then adopt. One of the other things we will provide that seems to be missing in a lot of the e-text initiatives is we will provide support to both the faculty and the students in how to actually use an e-text. And when you consider that for years and years people have been trying to teach students how to read a regular textbook. Adding an e-text on top of it can actually make it more difficult for them. We're hoping that we'll be able to actually combine those so that we will be able to teach the students how to read a textbook that happens to be online, how to use the highlighting features and how to actually read those chapter headings so that the chapter headings will help guide them. And there is also a potential for incentives for the faculty member. We're not guaranteeing this but some faculty members have just said if you've got a course that's got 1,600 students in it, you might be busy. And so we're going to try and help them by providing some incentives for summer work or other things like that. The other project we've got going on is called the e-text pilot and this is similar to but different from the OER pilot. Here we are actually encouraging faculty to develop their own materials and this could be their own materials as in a regular textbook. Some faculty members have got textbooks that the publishers have given them back the copyrights privileges for. So for example, some of our faculty teach high level courses that only have 30 students a year and the publishers are not interested in those kinds of books. They just do not earn enough money on those. And so rather than hold on to the copyright, they've given those back to the instructors and we're helping some of them put those online instead. We also are looking at some initiatives that are a little more innovative. We have got one faculty member who is last semester and the semester before he gave extra credit points to his students if they could send him a link to a website that had examples or information about what they were studying in organic chemistry that week. And now what he wants to do is compile all of those, eliminate the textbook and use completely online materials instead. So it's nothing that is original to him and he's not going to be copywriting it or anything like that but it's a unique way of getting his students involved as well as providing his students with a significantly less expensive. His textbook was $275 for organic chemistry. So on this e-text pilot, one of the purposes is that the students either pay a minimal fee or no fee at all depending on the faculty member. The targets here are faculty that want to try something different or are interested in replacing their current textbook or just developing something on their own. And in this, we've actually teamed up with the Purdue Libraries. I'm in the information technology area and we have teamed up with our libraries area. So the university press people have some expertise in copy editing and project management of textbook development and so they are providing that expertise. My CIO, Jerry McCartney, is providing some, a small amount of incentive funding to the faculty and together we're supporting the faculty and development. So some of the issues that we have faced with this are getting faculty buy-in. If we've got a faculty member, I've had several faculty members tell me that they've written their own book and they earn more on their book than they do in their annual salary. So why on earth would they want to move into something that was less expensive? And so for those faculty, obviously this is not, neither of these are a good solution. For many other faculty, however, we do have faculty who have written their own materials and just want to provide them at a lower cost, not just to Purdue students but also to other universities. Time is a little bit of an issue. Finding time to meet with all of the faculty and discuss their requirements. Sustainability, once they've actually developed the materials, how do we make it so that it stays current? How do we make it so that the faculty understand the purpose of having additions of books? How do we make it so that if we are incentivizing the faculty to develop a new item in the first place what is it that we can do to incentivize them to keep that book current and also create, how do we get faculty to create additional books? In the state of Indiana, we do not believe that we are allowed to make a profit. So if we provide an incentive to faculty to create a textbook can we at least do it back enough so that next year we can provide that same incentive to additional faculty? So we've got to really study that in detail. Again, time is a little bit of an issue working with faculty on project management. Platform selection and contracting. We have spent, I cannot tell you, how many hours working with different contractors, different platforms. We've spoken with Illinois at great length. We've got a platform that was built at Purdue and is now external to Purdue that we have a vested interest in working with. So we're still working on that piece of it. And the time spent on that has been pretty significant. And then lastly, all of our faculty have got individualized needs. What Paul Wenthold wants is not at all the same thing that Jamie Narn wants and what she wants is not the same as what Melanie Morgan wants. And all of these we have to work with individually, work with the libraries to find the best combination of IT staff and library staff and perhaps people in our Centre for Instructional Excellence to work with them. And all of that again takes time. So that is all that I need to say. Here I am. Please do feel free to give me a call, email me if you would like to speak with me, find out more about either of the initiatives that we're working on. Would you like to try using this? I'll just use this, thanks. I'm sure it's fine. Good afternoon. So I want to talk a little bit about the UCLA project. We're calling it the Affordable Course Materials Initiative. It was, we had noticed a few universities doing some open textbook projects that, for example, UMass, Temple, and MIT. Our project, similar to PATS, we wanted to have kind of a broader program to focus more on OER rather than textbooks. And we organized really around four principles. We wanted to lower the cost to the students, build open educational resources, integrate our collections used with licensed content and content created by faculty. We wanted to do some outreach to faculty as well.  Our program itself was sponsored by our executive vice chancellor for research, the libraries, and the California Digital Library. And we didn't do a journal-subvention program. We wanted to do something a little bit broader. We saw new material coming from our faculty, and we wanted to kind of find a way to integrate that. This project was launched last quarter. And so here's the first quarter by the numbers. The pilot program incentivizes instructors to use low cost or free alternatives to expensive course material. These include open access scholarly resources, library licensed and owned resources, and learning objects and texts that faculty create themselves. We provided awards of $1,000 each for instructors teaching courses with enrollment with fewer than 200 students and awards of $2,500 each for instructors teaching courses with an enrollment of greater than 200. These are modest yet significant sums that are really meant to offer an incentive for the faculty to take the time to identify new resources, adjust their syllabus, and modify assignments. And they can also be used to cover actual expenses incurred by the instructor. Collection Development Awards may also be provided to build or enhance library collections in support of specific courses. Since our program launched on the pilot last March, we've received 27 applications. We've made 23 awards, 19 of which were money, three collection development assistants that entailed acquiring or licensing items for the library because they're needed for the course, and one award for expertise in helping to sort out copyright issues for an open access textbook. The total award, the total amount awarded doesn't reflect other expenditures in the library or other resources from the collections budget, for example, we might have put towards the program. As I mentioned before, we wanted a pretty broad program, and so applications have come from instructors in many different departments across campus. English Nursing Law and Chinese had multiple awards. A journal Subvention Program, we feel would have looked a lot different. We wanted a broad campus scope, and Subvention Programs have more uptake from science, and we really wanted a broader campus appeal. We felt that that was going to be more impactful than an open textbook program, which we felt on our campus we could only do a few of those. We wanted something bigger, and our OVCR, one of our sponsors, didn't really want to do a journal Subvention Program. He wanted us to do something a little different as well, and in order to get his support was pretty important to us. We also wanted to develop a program that offered faculty members alternatives to journals and textbooks as part of their course materials. We had a lot of faculty members using data in their courses, for example, and this was one way we could help them create material for courses. So we've only received complete figures from the courses taught last fall. So here are three of the ones that saved the students the most money. The numbers represent total savings to a theater course, a mechanical engineering course, and an economics course taught last quarter. They're calculated by figuring the cost of the materials used the last time the course was taught and the cost during the ACMI awarded quarter. For example, the last time the engineering course was taught, students had to buy a $200 textbook. During the ACMI quarter, the instructor created a quote-unquote textbook from his lecture notes. A project he had been meeting to do for quite a while, which he provided to the students at note costs. So 56 students times $200 equals $1,120 for one of our courses. So we don't really, aside from the numbers, what we have is some qualitative information, a couple of quotes from our faculty members. They really liked our approach. It's a team-based approach. Our team is a subject matter expert, someone who's an IP or copyright expert, a technologist and a metadata person. These are some of the resources we provide in a team So we also, at UCLA, have a pretty robust data and film school, as you might have guessed. And one of the reasons we focused on outreach is we'd seen a couple of our faculty members in the theater and performing arts creating multimedia applications, multimedia apps for specific courses. And we didn't necessarily think they made informed choices when they chose a platform to develop on, and we wanted to get there a little earlier. Just these two courses, these two apps you see, the one on the right is what's called Clip Notes. It's taught by one of our faculty members, used by one of our faculty members in his course about filmmaking. You play a movie and it calls out particular aspects of the film to draw your attention. For example, if you're interested in a jump cut learning what that is, how it's incorporated in the movie. It'll go to that section of the movie and show you that particular piece. The other title there is for one of our acting faculty members he teaches the undergraduates. It's called Stanislavski at the Movies and it talks about acting in a particular fashion. It'll bring clips of a movie into a text and show you exactly how illustrative examples of what he's teaching in the class. Good afternoon. My name is Milin Besoli. I'm with the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. I'm going to talk a little bit about our e-text initiative here at Illinois and basically go through a bit of the genesis of the project and what we have achieved, what we are yet to overcome, and what are our goals. I'm going to try and be brief so that we can actually spend a fair bit of time on Q&A and actually have a discussion rather than a presentation here. So e-text at Illinois and I was listening to Pat and Todd and we very much have similar goals. It was essentially conceived to be a reader platform for homegrown and published content and the few goals that we had were basically we wanted to reduce the cost burden on students. We want to make sure that, because there's all this hot blue about how much money people spend and how they're going broke, we want to make sure that at least at Illinois that isn't the case. We want to do somehow eventually make it revenue neutral, as in it be a self-sustaining kind of a system. I liked Todd, so it's not just about money, it's about other things as well. One of the other important aspects, or probably the important aspects that separates us from our competition, if you will, is we are universally accessible and by that I mean that you can access e-text at Illinois with any device that has an HTML compliant browser, which basically means any modern device which is in existence now. It's not only your laptop, your desktop computers, your tablets, your smartphones, but also devices for the mobility impaired folks or for visually impaired folks. We at Illinois, we actually take accessibility at a very, very, very seriously. We like to say that it's in our DNA because we are one of the first institutions to actually install curbs which are handicap accessible and bus ramps and so on and so forth. So we are at the forefront of the accessibility movement and we want to make sure that we sustain our threshold, if you will. And again, the nice part of accessibility is that once we make stuff accessible, it also becomes universally available. So it is, like I said, it is on any device you would like and because we can do published material, we have contracts with two publishers right now looking at more, but the idea is that any published textbook can be also made available on a text at Illinois platform and also any internet connected device and lastly, this is something we wish to go as we want to include OERs as well as eReserves and scholarly works in our edX platform as well. So we've been in production since about fall of 2010. We have about 2,000 students use it every semester. We have several 101 kind of classes on our platform because it's a very conducive environment for people who have multimedia needs. A lot of our classes are actually using eText as a platform for flipped classrooms because they can produce video which is then included in the book and the book becomes this main sort of a reference point for the students, especially for flipped classrooms. They go watch the videos before they come to class and then they will then go into a classroom or a lab and then expect to have a much more interactive aspect rather than the teaching. The teaching is already done with the video and the students are expected to have read the book and watch the video before they come to class. And again, like I said, it's homegrown and published textbooks so we have quite a few books that are already in our platform available to Illinois students and are increasing with a pretty rapid clip. We are throwing this platform to all our CIC colleagues. That's Big Ten plus University of Chicago and they can use our services, software as a service kind of a model like Pat was talking about a few minutes ago. They can or they will be able to use our platform and deliver our educational content to their students using our platform. So what are a few of our challenges faced? Again, we are a very small team so our growth has been deliberate. We have not literally thrown the floodgates open. We are trying to create as much impact as we can so we are targeting these Gen Ed type of classes, again 101 kind of classes because those are the ones that like Pat and Todd were saying have most impact on how much we can affect not only the cost but how we can actually use that to enhance teaching and learning, to enhance teaching and learning. There are some reluctance from publishers from using our platform because each one of them have their own platform. They are also well sort of in... Crossway would be in bed with Amazon and with course load and course smart so it's a bit of a model change for them to now use an HTML5 accessible compliant platform which is at eText at Illinois and they don't... Routinely it's like well we cannot do this because then you are giving them access to our content. Yes, we are giving them access to your content but it's behind... We are doing the DRM on our end. That takes a bit of convincing. So it's a bit of reluctance but we have two publishers, John Wiley and Pearson who are collaborating with us on delivering their content using our platform. Another one is integration with LMSs. We use primarily Blackboard at Illinois and we have had some issues in making our content and Blackboard talk to each other and again that's something that was a bit of reluctance from Blackboard that the interactions that we are seeking it's not something they are familiar with so it's more of a R&D approach there but it's something that we are again actively pursuing. Also, eText is an online platform right now. The next step we will be taking will be make it offline so student could potentially go offline and still read and interact with our platform. The last aspect is making accessibility a priority. Very early on when we were designing this platform we made sure that anything that isn't accessible will not go on our platform. We were trying very hard to stick to that and ensure that we are one of the more accessible platforms. We have been commended by the National Federation of the Blind and other various institutions because of our commitment to accessibility but regardless accessibility is a moving target because often changes in operating systems, changes in browsers or any other variables can make what was accessible a few days ago not so accessible anymore. So we have to continually be on a lookout to make sure that we are supporting the latest and greatest browser versions and operating system versions and that's again it's a bit of a challenge because it's again that's a priority for us but it still takes a little bit of time. Moving forward we want to integrate eText with eReserves. Right now we don't have it's basically a homegrown, anything that is homegrown and written at Illinois is available on our platform. Also some of the published books but we don't have an integration with eReserves so we want to ensure that is going forward that would be something that we will create. Ingestion, everything we do is HTML5 so the content that's available to us is not necessarily in HTML, not necessarily in HTML5 so it's a bit of a process and each of our books that came to us has come through a different route so we want to streamline some of that and possibly the contracts with our engagement with the publishers is going to streamline because it's not a... Each publisher has a different XML format for how they want to deliver their books. They are happy to give us PDFs but PDFs don't fly because they're not as accessible as HTML5. The last again is offline access that's essentially to enhance the usability. These days it's becoming slightly less relevant because students have smartphones and they are always on so if they can be on Facebook they could really be reading eText on bus. So we are... But regardless we do want to make sure that eText will provide them offline access. So that is a very, very short and brief what eText is about and we like to say at Illinois that eText is the future of the textbook, textbook of the future and that's the end of my formal presentation. I really want to encourage you to ask questions and possibly engage in a panel discussion that will help us all grow here.


because most people, they're in it to try to raise their own self, but they don't take their family with them and it's unattractive. And by the way, most of you won't hear me on this. I'm just telling you, if you wanna be the best, this is how you do it. Just make sure that you're present in everything you do. Make sure that you stop racing ahead for the future. Make sure that you make today count. And honestly, I think that a lot of people, when they go to build a company, they wanna get what they want, but they don't want their people to get what they're going after either. You want to, but you really don't make sure and ensure that it happens. If you don't do that and you end up getting what you want and they don't, they're going to leave you. We're gonna make a commitment to each other right now. And by the way, guys, I'm not better than all of you. You know what I did? I cracked the code. You know what the code is? You can have it all. That's the code. I don't care about your to-do list.  I care about your priority list. What is important to you guys?   Like, oh my God, who's gonna watch my kids? Okay, that's your kids.  That's my wife. Hey, am I going to heaven? Jesus, forgive me for my sin. It's God then, so God, wife, kids.  And you need to say, God, I need to figure out how to get time and be closer with you. I'm gonna stop breaking promises. Would you guys stay in a relationship with somebody that constantly lied to you? That's why you guys don't listen to yourself anymore. That's why you guys don't respect yourself anymore. You do what you do because of what you think about yourself. When you break promises, you guys say, I'm gonna get up five o'clock and go to the gym.  You have no freaking idea. Listen, there was a salesman one time. He goes, dude, I'm supposed to make 100 calls a day, but I really make 90 and nobody knows. I said, bro, when you don't touch the line, when you play sports and you don't touch the line, the coach doesn't see you, but you know you didn't touch the line, you're not gonna make it. You guys need to touch the line. You know, this state that we're in in this room right now, this is the way that we should stay until we die. And if anybody is distracted right now, dude, I'm sorry, man. I'm sorry you were here and you're gonna miss out on this. But for those of you that are with me, this is a conversation for the elite.  You wanna be close to God. You wanna be tight with your wife, okay?  You wanna look in the mirror, like what you see, like your mindset. What do you want? Do you wanna make a lot of money? You need to write down these things. Do you wanna be financially free? But can I ask you a question? If you could gain all the money right now, if you've got a wife and kids and you're going on the sales journey and you've got a manager that says, if you wanna make all this money, they're gonna have to go away for a little bit because you're gonna need to be working with me so we can make you all this money.  Guys, I'm gonna ask you a question, all right? The leader that you look up to, do you hear about him or her talk about their wife and family all day long and how much they love them? If not, there's a pretty good chance that they honestly don't value their wife and family.  Just telling you, I talk about my wife all day long. I talk about my kids all day long. I talk about killing and business all day long. I talk about the gym all day long. I talk about my clients that I love all day long. Guys, everything that's important to me, I talk about all day long and my team hears me talk about all day long. So my team cannot be confused and not think that, you know what, Andy, I can't have my family with me.  There's no limits. There's no caps. You can do whatever you want. Truly you can. You know what I'm talking about? Having it all and being uncommon. Who are the people that get the uncommon stuff? Uncommon people. So how do you get uncommon? It's very, very simple.   I swear to God you're not.  Our responsibility as adults are the people that we love is to bring the good life to them. Am I right? And I'm being raw with you guys for a minute because I want you to know that you can do two things now. Number one, you can walk out that door and you can stay the same. Or number two, you can draw a hard line in the sand and you can change. And the one thing's for sure is that time will tell what you decided.


Have your earnings been impacted by the corona pandemic? Then the government of St. Lucia is here to assist with the income support program where non-contributors to the NIC will receive a monthly payment of $500 for the next three months. The process is hassle free. All you do is log on to www.govt.lc. The deadline for registration is July 17th. Best of all, you don't need to go into the treasury. The government will send $500 a month directly to your bank account, but you must register by July 17th. The income support program simple strides towards recovery.


Playing difficult videos, I'm financially supported by the generosity of my Patreon and YouTube members. Members get early ad free access to videos, usually Monday or Tuesday before it's released on the main channel. You can also get other perks depending on the pledge, including your name at the end of the video. Right, well thanks for listening to me talk, back to the normal scheduled dose of well me talking. So for the past few months I've been building up to this subject in my previous videos, and this is about the worryingly long list of concrete construction failures in the state of Florida. I believe all I've covered so far failed before actually was complete, but today's video is an outlier, as it had been completed and occupied for quite a long time. The Champlain Tower's failure also marks a dramatic increase in the number of victims and financial costs. It is also the most recent entry in Florida's building blunders. My name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult. Today we're looking at the Surfside Condominium Collapse, a place to escape the cold. Surfside in the early 1970s was a retreat for Canadian holiday goers. It was considerably cheaper than Miami and offered a no-frills quiet place to get away. One of these Canadians was Nathan Rieber, the lawyer-come-real estate developer from Ontario set about pushing a proposal to Surfside for some new luxury apartments. This was in August 1979, but there was a slight snag at the city. Their sewage system wasn't up to snuff. This had placed a moratorium on new residential developments, but a mere hurdle Rieber must have thought, as his development offered $200,000 to the city that had required water upgrade. This was roughly half the total build the city needed to cough up. The developers whined and dined officials in an effort to speed permits through. In November 1979, the initial proposal for an overall development at Surfside was approved by the city. The original buildings were to be named Champlain North and Champlain South, and the southern tower was placed at 8777 Collins Avenue, Surfside, Florida, with the north a block away. There was also an art deco building already standing in between them. This was the site originally of a hotel which had been bought up by Canadian investors for $475,000 in 1970 and was the site of an earlier failed attempt, which would be taken up in the late 70s by Rieber. The project ran into issues in May 1980 when their lead contractor resigned. A new one was brought in, but there was a lot more trouble ahead. The south building by mid-1980 was well underway, but one of its site cranes collapsed and by the end of the summer it was discovered that over $10,000 worth of timber had been stolen. At the end of the summer season, a new contractor was hired, Arnold Nickman. The original towers were to be 12 stories high, but in August the developers applied to increase this with the addition of a penthouse level. Architect William Friedman didn't object nor did structural engineer Sergio Breitemann. Interestingly, both men had slightly dodgy pasts, with Friedman having his license suspended in the late 1960s for a dangerous sign structure that had collapsed. Breitemann had also got into hot water in the mid 1970s for signing off a car park without steel reinforcements. In November, the penthouse was apparently approved, but in just the same month the permit was revoked. The town manager who revoked the license got into hot water himself, being accused of being a peeping tom. He resigned and the penthouses were finally allowed once more. The original issue was that Champlain Towers would exceed height restrictions. They had been brought in to try and stop Surfside turning into a mini Miami with its towering seaside buildings. The town kind of had its hand forced by allowing the extra height, as the developers had already started building them, meaning if they were stopped and pulled down, the city would have had to deal with a hefty lawsuit. The South Tower was completed in 1981, followed by the North a few months later in 1982. Reba would see several lawsuits brought against him for failing to pay for works completed, and even part of the construction consortium that owned the towers also ended up in court with him. Reba did get a pretty good payday, however, with the sale of the apartments, some $22.5 million, making him one of the largest developers in Florida. So what was the design of the Champlain Towers? Most notably the south one. The design. As we know during its turbulent construction, the South Tower underwent several changes, and this is reflected in the changes to the building's plans between 1979 and 1980. Some were rather worrying, where support beams were removed in the building's final iteration. The tower was when looking down into it in the shape of an L and had 12 stories with penthouses on top. It had a total of 136 apartments varying in size from 1 to 4 bedrooms. The eastern side of the building had lovely views of the Atlantic Ocean. The building was constructed of steel reinforced concrete. It made use of a standard column and two-way slab design. Slabs were between 9.5 and 8 inches thick. The slab were reinforced with Reba, and at the point that the column connected with the horizontal floor with Reba went through the column's Reba cage. The columns in the building ranged in size, but for the purpose of this video, I'll only talk about three types named A, C and N. Type A columns were largely around the southeast side of the building and were 24 inches square. Type C were predominantly located at the north perimeter and central areas and were 16 inches square. Type N were 8 by 16 inches and were placed on the south eastern perimeter underneath the pool deck and on the western perimeter. Oh yeah, did I mention the complex had a pool deck. This area was on the first floor and housed a heated pool and a number of planters, creating a nice outside area without the need to venture onto the beach. However, the planters, the very heavy planters, were not actually originally specked out in the plans. This caused extra stress over the smallest columns, which rather worryingly was where some of the beams had been removed in the plans. The waterproofing for the pool deck was placed on a flat surface instead of with a slope. This would prove troublesome as the building aged not allowing water to properly run off. The building's columns were supported by piles that had been driven into the ground. This acted as an anchor holding the building in place. Above the pilings was the lowest accessible section of the building, the car park. It had the rough footprint of the building above and was accessed via a ramp. Issues. So not only did the project see issues with the city in getting permits and the like, but problems arose with the plans right from the start. The columns in some places were too narrow on the plans, which meant the contractor would have to make a choice. Use the narrow columns and overcrowd the rebar, increase in the risk of corrosion, or remove some rebar, which weakened the structure. Of course there was the option of refusing to build it, but we all know that wouldn't have happened. Clearly parts of the building were not up to code, however this didn't stop construction and as we know the building was actually completed in 1981. But that wasn't the end of the issues. Almost right from the start, after the first residents started moving in, cracks started appearing in the car park level concrete. Seawater was known to seep through the foundations at high tide, causing the car park to be constantly damp. And in particularly bad days, could be up to 2 feet deep. Pumps were employed to combat this, but it was a persistent problem on site. But it wasn't just the car park that had standing water and seepage. The roof also had constant complaints of leaks. Over the years, the building fell into disrepair. And to hinder any repairs, the condo association was mired in arguments, stalemates and cost cutting. You see the condo board was a volunteer organisation, usually made up of people who were owners and residents themselves. As such this often means they aren't the most professional property managers. Because of this, professionals are brought in and are paid from a reserve fund that the board collects. In the UK this is what a sinking fund is. Do you call that the same thing in the US as well? Anyway, the board by the time the apartments were approaching their 40th year was very low on money. This meant that when repairs were required, the board had to go directly to the residents for the money.  As such residents and the board's relationship broke down. Board meetings would erupt into arguments and votes would be locked, all while the tower deteriorated. Many of the exterior railings of the tower were rusting away, constant lakes in the car park and cracking columns were a concern to many. Eventually the board managed to get an assessment done on the building's deteriorating condition and no surprise is it wasn't good news. Morabito consultants issued a report on the building in 2018. Noting major construction errors on the pool deck, cracking and spalling in the car park, facades cracking, soffits rotting, window seals failing, improper flashing on doors and windows causing leaks and serious cracks on the columns, revealing rebar were all major points.  So none of that was good and the bill for repairs wouldn't be any better. This would result, again in arguments and frustration with the condo board. And in 2019, six of the seven board members resigned. A new round of board members took over in 2020 and managed to secure a $15 million loan for the repairs. Which, nearly two years after the report, had grown in need and cost. In a presentation from the board members to residents, the point was bluntly put across. But how would this multi-million dollar loan be paid off? Well, the residents would have to bear the cost in what's called a special assessment. This put condo owners on the hook for between $80,000 and $200,000 depending on the apartment size, paid up front or monthly for 15 years. But although falling apart and with expensive repairs due, the Champlain Tower's location and views still made it an attractive investment opportunity for prospective buyers. Several properties sold over the next year, including one of the penthouses for close to $3 million. In April 2021, the special assessment bills were sent out to residents. But for the residents, it wasn't just a financial disaster on the horizon. The collapse. It is the early hours of the 24th of June 2021 and passes by, near the Champlain Tower's south, hear noises from the building that sounds like a car crash. A tourist films through the gate to the garage, where rubble and water can be seen pouring onto the ground. Residents inside the building are awoken by cracking, as one person would describe as construction like sound. This is around 1.14 in the morning and the noises were increasing. Roughly 1.21 in the morning, the ground floor deck gave way, followed by the central portion of the northern side of the building. Shortly after, the eastern section also plunged into the darkness. The dramatic collapse happened in just 12 seconds. The western sections of the building surprisingly remained precariously in place. Within minutes, the first responders arrived on the scene and in one of the gruesome modern wonders, the disastrous aftermath was recorded with body cameras. The air in the immediate aftermath was thick with dust, obscuring street lighting in the night sky. Over 80 emergency response units would race to the scene immediately and begin frantically trying to recover any survivors. Within hours, hundreds of police officers and firefighters from agencies across Miami-Dade were in attendance. Survivors were carried from the standing portion of the building and severely damaged sections in stretches and even on the first responders' backs. A cherry picker was employed in an effort to reach people trapped on the higher sections of the remaining structure. Evacuations took place in the hotel next door. Luckily, due to the building being flanked by the beach on the east side, no one else was at risk within the immediate vicinity. As the hours dragged on, more specialist rescue units began scouring the wreckage but it wasn't looking good. Rescue dogs sniffed over the rubble. 35 people were rescued during the first few hours. An on-site triage was set up and various levels of wounded were treated on-site and sent off to hospitals across the Miami-Dade area. A state of emergency declaration was signed by the Miami-Dade County Mayor at 4.33pm. By the evening, the missing list was increasing in length. A fire had broken out within the depths of the rubble and was spreading horizontally. By the 26th of June, 127 people had been accounted for. Five were confirmed dead and 156 missing. Champlain Towers North was voluntarily evacuated due to it being built around the same time with the same developer. This also happened alongside the evacuation of Champlain East, which was built in the 1990s. The still-standing portion of Champlain South was announced to be demolished on the 4th of July and this would be using explosives. It was planned for the structure to fall into its footprint and into Collins Avenue to try to not disturb the recovery efforts on the east part of the site. For the best part of a month, rescue workers would continue scouring the site for survivors. However, it was more a case of body recovery on some days just one body and on others as many as 15 would be retrieved. By the 17th of July, 97 bodies had been pulled from the rubble, with all but two being identified. On the 23rd of July, the Miami-Dade Fire Department stopped the rescue efforts and left the area. By now, all 98 were identified. Vital evidence in the form of an important structural debris was removed and stored off site for investigation. Some of the damaged cars and personal property from the tower was transported to a field 10 miles away. Surprisingly, in 2022, the site was sold off for redevelopment for $120 million to Dubai-based developer Damak. But what was the cause of the collapse? The investigation. Now this might actually be the first subject I've covered on this channel, but the investigation hasn't actually been complete. It has fallen on the feet of the NIST. But although there isn't an official verdict yet, we can go into the most likely causes. As investigators and the media dug into the past of the building, unsurprisingly, the buildings to mulch as history came to light. The 2018 report was made public information. But although it highlighted many serious issues, not all could have caused the initial spark that caused the collapse. Luckily, there was some footage of the building pre-disaster, the collapse beginning at the base of the building. This was because, as you can see, the upper floors stayed intact as they fell, meaning their supports had gone closer to the bottom of the building. This coupled with the footage of rubble in the car park pre-collapse showed that the initiator was likely around here. The second part of the collapse, as seen on the video, shows us that the middle section removed the support for the eastern section. The western section didn't collapse. This also gives us a hint. But it was built slightly differently with stronger columns of their type A variety at 24 inches square. The shear walls on each side of the central section were different, with the western wall being thicker than its eastern counterpart. Post-collapse photos also hinted at a cause of the overpopulated concrete with rebar, most notably in the narrower columns. This meant that the concrete didn't fill the gaps in between the rebar, allowing air pockets to form, potentially creating areas that said rebar could corrode. They also found on the concrete floor slabs that some had delaminated from their rebar, that is, the rebar had pulled away from within the concrete floor slabs. But we already knew the building wasn't very well built. But it did last 40 years. Well, this is where poor maintenance comes into play. With not addressing the gradually appearing issues over the four decades, the built-in floors would only make themselves worse. For example, not painting the concrete at regular intervals to protect it from the corrosive seaside air. Anything neglected will eventually fail. The building during its lifetime had rather a lot of construction projects undertaken around it. The aforementioned Champlin Towers East was thrown up in the 1990s. Also next door, there was the 2016-87 Park, which began construction. And in 2019, a beach replenishment project was undertaken, which would involve large heavy trucks of sand being brought along the 88th street, which was along the building's northern perimeter, exactly near where the collapse had begun. It was also found that during the 90s Champlin Towers South was experienced subsidence, of just under 1mm per year. Although leading up to the disaster, this had seemed to have stopped. There had been reports of the pool deck having issues with, in the 1990s, the concrete underneath the pool needing repair from the carpark side. This involved removing the damaged concrete and rust-proofing the rebar, then sealing it in with water. Spooling had to be repaired in 1997, again around the underside of the pool deck, and waterproofing was also looked at. Personally, I think the issue was inadequate concrete and rebar specifications, which allowed to weaken beyond the point of holding itself up, due to woeful maintenance in an area which loves to rust things away, i.e. by the sea.  The official cause, we will still have to wait from the NIST, so now I need to look at the aftermath. A lawsuit was filed against Champlin Towers South Condominium Association on the 24th of June 2021, initially for $5 million, and this would be joined over the months by many more residents. It would result on June 23, 2022, with a $1.02 billion settlement for victims of the collapse. It was estimated that the collapse also caused around $1 billion in property damage, making it one very expensive disaster. The disaster has put the focus on condo boards and how strict rules would help associations keep on top of maintenance and holding enough funds in for repairs.  And, unfortunately, due to the event being so recent, I'm not going to give it a legacy scale just yet. This is a plain difficult production. All videos on the channel are created because of attribution-share-alike license. Plain difficult videos are produced by me, John, in the currently surprisingly sunny corner of southern London, UK. I'd like to thank my Patreon members and YouTube members for your financial support, and the rest of you for tuning in every week to watch my videos. I have Instagram, Twitter, and a second YouTube channel, so check them out if you want to see behind the scenes stuff and random photographs. All I have to say is thank you for watching, and Mr Music, play us out please.


Hello, my name is Louise and I'm a senior social worker working for West Sussex County Council. I love being a social worker. I enjoy my job. I enjoy my role. I joined social work to make a difference. As times progressed I do know that I do make a difference in people's life and that makes me proud. I think there has been positive outcomes out of the last couple of years and I think that as a team we kept each other safe if we had difficult cases and we were a debrief after and my manager is amazing and so is my supervisor who I've been lucky to have all the way through from when I started with West Sussex. I feel it's made us look at how important human contact is, people are lonely and people are isolated and I think the last two years has actually brought back to the front end of our minds and that we now realise how much more important that is because we've all been through it now ourselves working from home and working in sort of isolation. I think in my role I support individuals and families through difficult times. I work with vulnerable adults to ensure they're safe, guarded from harm and also I think we empower people and advocate for people and their behalf and sometimes it's a small change, it's just the support, just listening to people, just being there and respecting their wishes and views about what they want to happen in their lives. I think in our role we need to all stand up and be proud that we're social workers and we do do our best, it's a hard job, it's not an easy job, it's hard, extremely hard, we see a lot of awful situations and we try to help and I think we need more positive publicity around being in the social care system as a social worker or a social care worker and just how positive it can be.


Hi, I am Dr. Sunil Kini, Senior Consultant Joint Replacement Natroscope Surgeon working at Manipal Hospital's Old Airport Road Branch, Bangalore. I first saw Mr. Narayan Chandar Ghosh in the outpatient department about nine months back. He came to be with excruciating pain in both the hips, more on the left side. So this pain started about two and a half years back and gradually increased to the present day scenario. No history of any injury and no history of any drug abuse. On examination his movements of the hip were grossly limited, more on the left compared to the right. So as you can see this is his x-ray of his pelvis with both the hip joints and you can see that there is a reduction of the space of the hip joint on both sides. You can see that there are multiple cavities which are called as cystic cavities here and the ball of the hip joint which is the femoral head is deformed and it's like a mushroom shaped contour now. So this indicates that he has got arthritis of both the hips and he needed a surgical procedure which in this case was a total hip replacement. Now I am done with the operation and I can understand that I was successful in the operation. I can do it again in the future, I can do it again in the future, I can do it again in the future. This is the only way to do it, so I would like to say to the doctor that he is very beautiful and good. I have been able to do both the hip joints for a long time. I have been able to do the operation of the surgery of Sir Sunil J.K.Nik. I am successful. I cannot do it at all. Now both the hips are good. I can do it again in the future. I cannot do it again in the future. I can do it again in the future. I can do it again in the future. I can do it again in the future. We recently did the right hip about 10 days back. So patient has walked both times immediately after surgery the very next day with the help of a walker. His pain was minimal thanks to our anesthetic team and also the use of analgesic blocks to the limb as well as patient controlled analgesia which we frequently use for all joint replacement cases. So this is how the patient with the hip replacement looks like. So it is a standard procedure where we use uncemented implants for younger patients. There you can see the cup which is being put in the socket with a couple of screws there so that it is a press fit. And then this is a titanium stem which goes all the way in the prepared thigh bone and we have used a ceramic head on both sides as his young. So total hip replacements are one of the best surgeries in orthopedic practice in terms of outcomes and it is a boon for patients with end stage hip arthritis. Patients are extremely comfortable with minimal pain. Do very well. They walk very next day with surgery and within a couple of weeks they are off any kind of support. The longevity of the implants are very good as well. They last very well up to the third decade in modern day joint replacements. So we at Manipal hospitals as a team do a large number of joint replacements both primary and redo joint replacements and we have a multidisciplinary setup to ensure that we have the best surgical outcomes. Thank you.


On the 6th of June 2021, I started Doctor Who The Community Show with a really bad pilot that I'm 80% sure I've unlisted. But since then I've done nearly two full seasons of the show, met some amazing people and then about a month or two ago I announced on Twitter and such that it was ending. Well, how do I put this? Oh, I know. When Doctor Who The Community Show returns, it won't be with me. Yeah, so let me explain. At the end of October I did my fifth and final MCM Comic Con panel, the final community show project and it was a blast. I am shocked I've done five of those. But it was also my final chance to do my cheeky Doctor Who themed quiz where I do questions about the show as well as the guests.  But this year I had something big on the line. I decided that day as I was writing the questions that morning when I arrived at the con on Sunday, would be something big, something spectacular. The license to the community show. Yes, really, whoever won my silly quiz on that day would win the community show, the brand, the show, all that comes with it in the future. Everything that came before, of course, is still mine. You know, everything I've hosted, so the previous five panels and the last two seasons of the show, all mine. But whatever comes next or all of the social media presences like Twitter, Instagram and even the Discord will belong to whoever won. So who did? Well, if you were there at the panel, you would know that it was between two people. Would have been three if Josh Carr bothered to turn up. I'm kidding, love you Josh. But it was between Jack of Nerdden and Jack of an awful lot of running podcast. Yes, really, between the Jacks. It couldn't have worked out better. And of course you'll be thinking to yourself, well who won?  I don't know. I just think he looks cool. But the winner, the person who will be helming the show, if they choose to continue it and helming all of the social medias and just the brand as a whole is Jack Alexander. You were serious. Feels weird. Now you may be thinking to yourself, you decided to do this on the day. Do you regret it? Was it a sort of stir of the moment idea? And yes and no. I ended the show for a myriad of reasons. I didn't feel like I was fit for that sort of role of a community manager, if you will. I didn't enjoy really creating the show outside of doing in-person interviews, which I adored. But at the same time, I recognized that the community show, if I may toot my own horn, was a bloody good idea.  It's so depressing. I've deleted Twitter off my phone now. I can't physically look at it all the time. It makes me sad. But at the same time, it is important that we have something like that. So I saw an opportunity with two, well it would have been three, but two brilliant people in the community that would be perfect for that role. Better than I ever could. And Jack Alexander is now that person. It is up to him what happens from here. If he decides to just can the show, that's in his right. He can just do that. I can give him all the passwords, which I'll be doing soon, and he can just delete it all. That's his call. And he doesn't have to continue the show the way I did it. It is his thing now. And of course, he still has an awful lot of running podcasts and all the other projects that he wants to do. And that's awesome. But now he has the community show and he has accepted it wholeheartedly. If I may take a moment, I would like to thank everyone that was either helping me make the show or came on the show or you know, made something for it. There's honestly too many to count. And that also includes my Comic Con panelists. All of you are wonderful and did an amazing job. I mean, we're all weird internet people translating that to a live show with pretty sizable audiences if I can brag for a sec is mind blowing. Excellent work to all of you. But there are three people in particular that I want to thank very specifically. Number one is my good friend Harry. I'm sure you'll know him by now from the City of Death spoof and being Rory and the Let's Play thing. He's the one that made the theme tune for me, both the regular theme, the new theme, the Christmas one and the Halloween one. So massive thank you to you, Harry. You always are fantastic with your music when it comes to community show or Doctor Who Road. Phenomenal. Love you. Subscribe to Hudson Media.  Yeah, probably. Next is Jerry, who made that and all of my Comic Con posters. Jerry, who you'll probably know from Doctor Who Poop, has been phenomenal in just in the beginning, specifically just making it for a laugh. Like he was just like, I like this idea. Here's a logo if you want it. And I've been using it for the last two years. Phenomenal. I love it. And I do hope Jacqueline's on the keeps the logo because he could change it. He could do what he wants. It could just be his face. Like, but yes, Jerry, you are phenomenal. You'll work on the Comic Con panel posters, especially have just blown my mind. It's added this sort of level of professionalism to it, which I sure as hell can't match. I'm not professional in the slightest.  Also, I've just realized in this very important for me video, I've just got the words pleasure help, which proves my point. Also, the final person I really want to make sure that I think is Bo. Essentially, Bo was a my first ever guest. It was an unproven show that didn't exist yet. I got in touch with her because one of her pieces was shared on the official Doctor who Twitter, and she was very kind to come on and have a chat. And now she's been a great friend. She even came down and stayed with me and Gemma for a while in the flat so she can go to Comic Con. And I love her. Love Bo. We all love Bo. Love Bo. Amazing artist, too. She's also made some pieces for the Community Show store, which is still around. I probably have to take that down. But for example, two examples. In fact, she made the melon t-shirt, the Dalek melon, which was actually sold pretty damn well for what it was, and also the Cybermen Pumpkins, which is a hoodie I wear all the time. So big thank you to Bo, Jerry and Harry, my Community Show team. So where does that leave me? Where does that leave Jack Community Show-less? Well, basically where I was before and after.   Just doing that. Having to laugh me. Just stepping away from the wider community as a whole because if I'm being completely honest, I'm not that enthused. And hell, that's one of the main reasons that I was never fit for the Community Show. It doesn't all interest me very much. I know what I like. It's very small and niche and I'm happy to stay there. And if you want to stay with me, cool. If not, no hard feelings. Don't expect any more Community Show content here. Well, that's it from me. If you want to follow any more Community Show stuff, go to Jack Alexander's Stuff, his is social, as well as all the Community Show socials, which will now be his. So there's Instagram, Twitter, and even a Discord link in the description. To steal a phrase, it's been a trip of a lifetime. I've been places and done things I never thought I would do, ranging from Comic-Con to Time Fracture. Oh, God, Time Fracture. Seeing the DW 2012 TARDIS and meeting Katie Haynes in the flesh and the Dobsons. Oh, love the Dobsons. And I'm not going to keep listening because I'm going to miss someone that I'm going to be very upset with myself. But thank you for watching. I hope you've enjoyed all the Community Show stuff that I've done. And good luck to the other Jack. I'm free.