Good morning everybody. So hi, I'm Chen and I'm an engineering director at Google and I'm leading the development of some of the open source Technologies you already heard about kubernetes and also Istio and also responsible for some of our products like Google kubernetes engine I'm really excited to be here. This is already my favorite event of the year by choosing this amazing location and the weather and And I'm really looking forward to meet many of you and speak about the thing that we are all very passionate about Today is a very very special day for the kubernetes community and also for the cloud native compute foundation Today we announced that kubernetes is being graduation and graduating from incubation as the first project out of cncf Graduation is a signal of maturity of a project From the early days when the Google engineering team started to work on kubernetes They collaborated with people from companies like red hat and coro s and and also customers like box and everybody worked together and Bringing different perspective ideas skills experience and really building this technology With the goal to solve right speaking to what James before really solve problems for users wherever they are And what was amazing that not only we got many contribution But because of the nature of the community and and the openness We were also able to build a really rich ecosystem around that filling the gap and where it's needed So some metrics of how success looks like I just added this morning with the github stars And probably we need to do it again after this after today and Luckily users are recognizing it the success of kubernetes the stability of this project And this is really if you will look on the cncf of what graduation means it means a Governance model it talks about more than one contributor, but on top of everything it's about users using it in production and This is definitely and not the entire list and new users using kubernetes every day And what I love about it and it's not shown here that all of us contributing to kubernetes are also using kubernetes as an example for Google Itself we are building Google kubernetes engine using upstream kubernetes We have products like cloud the mail running on GKE internally And that's what makes it better because we all benefit from that technology and Benefits include of course agility That's what drives everything. This is what drives adoption Today and agility is measured with how quickly you can deploy to production How quickly you can set up environments with the complexity of multiple workloads and infrastructure Leveraging cloud native technologies. This is something that's really kubernetes is putting a goal for and definitely cncf Making it easy to adopt those two connect those technology without the need to modernize everything already And the pace of adoption also keeps us on the edge as a community really trying to innovate and meet the demand of our customers So, how did we get here? Right? This is why we're here This is the intention of this entire week to talk about how can you build a successful project like kubernetes? So when Dan sent me an email to like hey, can can you come and speak in the open source leadership summon? Like yes, what do you want me to talk about and he said like if you can just tell everybody how you made it work? And that will be great like Well, I wish I could The truth is that the world is changing very fast Okay, and the days kubernetes was started four years ago So maybe for some of you it seemed like it was overnight It wasn't overnight it has been four years of working and adopting to the pace of technology and the industry So there is no playbook But definitely there are some really great memories and like every graduation. I want to walk you some to some of them and talk about some of the learnings So, how do you balance between open source and non open source investment? If only I had a dollar every time someone asked me that I would probably not be standing here And I would be vacationing maybe in Hawaii or something somewhere else and This comes up from everybody from customers from engineers that want to join the team from product management executives There is real tension because it's really hard to rationalize So you are taking all this IP and making it available to everybody And I'm sure all of you are familiar with this challenge In mind in my mind one of the choices that we did in Google within my team Is the side that open source is part of the strategy It's not a side gig. It's not something we just take outside It was part of the strategy from the beginning right if you will read the origin story of kubernetes It was about getting at option. It was about getting feedback. It was about building an ecosystem We have made a decision that kubernetes upstream is the core technology that we are building our products on So if you are investing in kubernetes, you're literally also investing in GKE at the same time and What I found is that if you explain? Developers in particular that our users are benefiting from open source Okay, they are benefiting from the fact that kubernetes runs everywhere. It helps them solve problem that helps solve their tension, okay, because we are not doing it just for the sake of the tech or just To make something cool open source. We are really helping our users and this is a journey right and that journey to moving to cloud will be a long one and For many of the customers there will always be that hybrid environment Another point I want to talk specifically about for all the engineering managers here One thing that was important for me is also to build one team There is no open source team and a product team. There is one team. There is one strategy one backlog one team And I believe that throughout the years GKE has benefited so benefited so much with working with the kubernetes users But also the other way around I know that kubernetes the project benefited from the experience that we have gathered with our GKE customers So This is my first community meeting It was Almost two years ago. So community meeting in kubernetes every Thursday at 10 a.m Pacific time and we are meeting. We're inviting everybody from the community Everything is recorded Available on YouTube, of course And and we talk we talk about things we talked about the project ecosystem demos And you can imagine so this is like probably my second month in Google and It can be very intimidating Okay, going up and speaking about something and this was you know, I can still remember you at that I'm able speaking for the first time and I had the O'Brien cheering for me and saying gonna be okay And this was in the in the middle of 1.3 Kubernetes release and in this particular example, we were debating whether to reduce the amount of development in favor of stabilization and the reason we did it is because At least I in particular we wanted to increase our release cadence and make it stable And get to the point that if you miss the train You can always catch the next one and really build that release train and today kubernetes is releasing every three months or 100 days and Really can improve than that And I think from this example there are two things that everybody can learn on engineering and management practices We saw some questions before how do you manage open source? How do you prioritize? I really believe That there is actually shouldn't be any difference From the way you manage an open source product and an engineering team to the way you and manage your own Commercial product or your own product itself those engineering practices Agile release cadence defining the quality bar testing documentation Stabilization period marketing all of those things They are all needed for an open source project if you wanted to be successful And this is definitely something that we had in our mind doing kubernetes and it feels like one engineering team the other point Yes, is transparency while it might be intimidating to be recorded all the time and everything is Visible to everybody But it also empowers people to speak and join the conversation Because you can go and look on what was before and what decisions were made and what alternatives were considered so for me while it was a Bit hard I also felt in that it was encouraging To have new people join the conversation and really it helps to build trust and trust Like any other team whether if it's engineering product marketing or in any other industry trust is key To build a team that works together This was another exciting moment So I'm pretty sure that I don't need to introduce Pokemon girl. So it was a around July 2016 and the entire world was working like that and All the kids were working like that. How many here played Pokemon go? So I didn't because it was it is running on GKE and I was afraid to add more load, but other than that Now I'm like telling the team like don't play don't play And but this was exciting times. Okay, so the entire world There was this crazy excitement about Pokemon go and we couldn't tell anyone that it runs on GKE that it runs on kubernetes And you can see here This is one of the graph that they published about how the traffic that they had was 50 times what they expected 50 times you can see the graph and and that could have become a successful disaster but instead Because of cloud native technologies because of technologies like kubernetes, they were able to scale the cluster as the demand grew without Interrupting the way they're still the users And in my mind, this is Something that is also very important in any open source project in any open source product focus on the user What problems are you solving? What is the pain that you need to solve? And something that I love about the kubernetes community is that we are very pragmatic We're not trying to look for the perfect solution We're trying to solve problems for users and make sure that it's practical and they can use it And one concrete example would be when kubernetes 1.0 Was announced it supported 100 node clusters. This is not a Google scale cluster, right? It's only 100 nodes but for that time that was the right size for people that wants to kick the tire and Try that technology if we would have tried to do Google scale like kubernetes We would probably be blocked forever But this time went by and we got more things in we improved on that and today We have 5,000 node a cluster and to be honest with you that 100 node Cluster is still a good fit for many of the users of kubernetes today And that's what makes it relevant for many customers and users and celebrate success The success of Pokemon Go was not just my team or just Google's Everybody that worked on kubernetes to build that Contributed to Pokemon Go and that was a celebration for the entire community just to show some of that success But not everything in open source is rainbow and butterfly. I wish but no and So when we started to talk about kubernetes and talk about the culture we talked about the values and transparency and respect And it was easy when the community was 600 people But then it became 1200 and then 1500 and then 2000 and then 3000 and From three companies contributing to 10 to 20 and more and it becomes more complex And in particular like again like any other Organization when you scale you need to react and you need to think about what do you change in order to meet the new skill? One specific problem we had was with processes when everybody knew everybody it was easy to make decisions So we had this idea was hey, we we have those six We have special interest groups they meet and they make decisions and it's all great But then we have some new people that are joining and they don't know who's that person Who is the seed lead and why that person get to make the decision or I am and now if I want to contribute How can I engage and how can I improve my leadership and become a leader of this community? And this is again another signal of the graduation today is working on about on our governance model in October 2017 we elected our steering committee and the steering committee is not about making all the decisions It's about ensuring there is a way to make decision. There is a way to escalate. There is a way to challenge and Just the other day Sarah Navadny published the values of The Kubernetes community before we all knew the values, but this is not good enough anymore We have to document it so people that wants to join our community. No, what are the things that we work by? Scaling is not just about processes. You also need to scale the technology. It was around a Also the end of 2016 when we felt that we there is a velocity Heat it was harder to innovate you would change something here and something broke there You needed there was how to get reviewers for everything and really nobody was able to Understand the entire complexity of the system. So if you look on this slide Brian Grant created this diagram to capture the scope of Kubernetes the complexity of it It's almost the same of an entire cloud provider So about that time what we decided to do and I wish by the way that we have done more at the beginning of it It's really investing in what are the extension points to Kubernetes and anyone that is now thinking about a new open-source project Talking about interoperability and like you mentioned before it is critical So while it might seem for people that it's not that important and we can wait with that extension points are critical and are key for Sustainable success. So as you're looking on those levels are over a dozen extension points today and Naming few our webhooks CRI container runtime interface a client libraries cloud providers and what's amazing about it that it helps us to innovate and build new things for example open service broker is still and There are some really awesome Silverness framework that are already using those extension and that allows them to innovate even faster conformance just a three months ago we announced the certification conformance program for Kubernetes Because having those extension points is not enough We wanted to make sure that we reduce the risk of fragmentation Okay, we are planning for success. So how can customers partners make sure that this is upstream Kubernetes that the entire API interface is usable and available for you to use and And that was amazing Because this was a community effort and that really represents one of the values of the Kubernetes community, which is community before product Community before company because for a single company that might not be the most important thing But as a community we want to make sure that Kubernetes will stay for a very long time And we'll keep hearing about it in many years to come So right now. I think there are about 20 something today. There are over 50 Companies that are compliant with the conformance program. So what can you learn about everything that we have done with Kubernetes? The first thing is intentional leadership You have to plan to plan nothing happens Just by doing stuff or not being thoughtful about what is our goal What's your open-source strategy? What is your expectation from the community? What is the release process? How do you ensure quality? invest time and think about it and make sure That your actions are aligned with your intentions and if there are not change your actions We all make mistakes and we make experiments, but definitely Be intentional about everything. What are the culture values that you want to have in the community? Sustainable success what got us here won't get us there Plan for success plan for the future. What needs to be changed? in order to be a successful to update a To react to the amount of adoption that took us by surprise But we adopted and we changed and we were open-minded about what needs to change and how we move forward And and I know for sure that everything we are planning for the next year Will again have to change assuming will be successful in two years and three years And that's how product is how software is how technology is everything changes also around us The last point is diversity. I didn't talk about it Before within my slide being a female leader in tech. It's not easy to talk about diversity But I think that as leaders we all must talk about diversity So my ask from all of you is to be intentional about that build communities with openness that are welcoming people so my Personal belief that every project every team every product will benefit from a diverse team The unique thing about open source that it is in the reach of everybody No matter your age where which country you live in or your gender you can all be part of something amazing It's really a platform of opportunities for everybody and I think for all of us It's really an opportunity to make this a better world. So thank you


You guys know how in the movies, whenever the girl is being played by the bad boy, he always breaks down in some sad sob story where he's like, I'm just trying to be a better person.   How exactly do you do that? And where do you even begin? Hey guys, Alex Hine, author of the book Milk the Pigeon, a field guide for anyone lost in their 20s on Amazon, or if you want me to whisper in your ear at night on Audible. Now, before you jump in, check out the link below this video for a free goal-setting worksheet to plan out how to have the best year ever of your life and how to come up with daily rituals to make that happen. All right? First link below this video. Becoming a better person is about character first, not about goals. You know, think about someone who you think is just not a good person. Right? It's because they're unambitious. It's because they don't clean up the bathroom after themselves. It's because they pee on the toilet seat. It's because they don't clean up. Like, what is it specifically that makes them a bad person? Right? So when you don't like. It's probably something about their character traits. It's about they say things that are different than what they do. They lie. They're dishonest. They don't follow through with anything. They're not that nice, not that friendly. They're critical. You know, all of these things are character traits. And I think that's really, really important to hone in on, because our generation today is so focused on anything other than the essential piece of a human, which is one's character. Character becomes destiny as the saying goes, as the quote goes. You know, one thing I loved about the book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey talks about in the early chapters that when you look at the old school personal growth books, going back in the last hundred or last 200 years, what those old authors talked about, number one was what he calls the character ethic. So they weren't talking about tactics or strategies or how to charm people. What they were talking about is actually being a good person, a virtuous person. I know that sounds, you know, obvious, but in a world where we all watch videos on hacks and manifesting and getting more followers, these are all missing the point. This is all the facade of becoming a better person and not the core meat and potatoes, which is actually being a better person. So Stephen Covey emphasized focusing on the character ethic first, and then what he calls the personality ethic, the charmer, the superficial facade next. But what I would say is focus on character first and goals second. So a useful exercise that may help you that helped me is really to think about what traits you actually have to work on to become an unusually personally developed person. And I came up with three that really helped me because number one, the things I fall short on all the time, the things that I really admire in other people when I see them, and the things that I think are worthwhile to develop. So the first one I came up with is doing what you say, right? Because in this world, a person can tweet something in one second, like I'm going to go write a book, but it can take three years to write a book, right? They can say, I'm going to build a six-figure business with a tweet or an Instagram post or a text that can take one year, they can take 10 years, they can take someone a whole lifetime to do that. And so to me, doing what you say is purely being careful about letting your actions be bigger than your words and letting the evidence of your life show in your actions and not specifically the things that you say. The second thing is to be character growth-oriented. So not just growth-oriented, but character-focused growth-oriented. Because, you know, in the same way, let's say I'm struggling to write my book, I'm struggling to get fit, and I'm struggling to get a girlfriend, right? Well, one could argue that all of those are one character growth challenge, which is let's just say discipline. I'm not disciplined about writing the book. I say I want to write this fantasy novel, I haven't even spent one hour in the last week writing it. So how serious am I really about writing that damn book? Probably not that serious. Where I say I want to be fit, well, going back to principle number one, combined with principle number two, I say I want to be fit. And yet, the last four days ate completely unconsciously. And I've been to the gym since Monday and now it's Friday. Is that congruency with the kind of person I want to become? Probably not. So character growth-oriented is not about saying more things or having more goals. It's working on the fundamental traits that make you a more cultivated person, right? Because when you become a disciplined person, you can reach almost every goal just by developing that singular trait, which is why character is so essential as the foundation. And the third thing for me is to be constantly evolving and goal-oriented. All that means is that for me to be what I think is a personally developed person, I need to be someone who's always growing, both in terms of my character, those old school virtues and traits, as well as what I'm creating. Sometimes I'm not creating anything externally. I'm just working on being more patient or less judgmental. Other times I'm working on aggressive external growth, like I want to grow a bigger audience or I want to complete another new book, or I want to go to four new countries this year. So those things are really this continual evolution, both internally from the character perspective and externally from the goal or progression perspective. Now, maybe for you, this is a good video where you can take the time to figure out what character traits are really most important to you. And one of the ways you can figure that out is by realizing in other people what you like the most. Like maybe what you've decided is none of the things I just said, but you want to be a lighthearted, friendly, calm person that makes people feel at ease. That's an awesome trait. But just thinking about what you admire and respect or even envy in others is a really good focus for character traits. All right, you guys. So those are my personal thoughts on how to become a better person, focus on character, not what you say, not goals, but your fundamental character is usually the thing that people like or really dislike about you. And it's also the thing that will drive you towards the life you really want or make you stay the same or get worse as time goes on. All right, you guys. So check out the link below this video for the free goal setting worksheet on how to plan out and have the best year ever of your life. It'll help you have some exercises, figure out goals and rituals. You'll also get a weekly email on how to set goals that can improve your life. Now, before you go, check out these two related videos here as well.


Hi everyone, it's good to be here this afternoon. My name is Allison Armstrong. I'm the associate director for research and education at the Ohio State University Libraries. And on behalf of myself and my two colleagues, Maris Mandirnak, our head of research services, and Josh Sidvari, our Research Commons manager and GIS specialist, I'm delighted to be here today to talk about our research commons. This is the presentation outline. There should be plenty of time for questions at the end. And my focus today is on partnership development, showing our determination from early on in the process to create a suite of co-located services that taken together would advance researchers' agendas, lessen pain points, promote interdisciplinarity, showcase output, and highlight impact. And I want to say that we'll ask a question. How many of you were at the Clemson presentation besides our presenters over here? And then a number of you at the presentation from Calgary about multidisciplinary. Yeah, I think that we can congratulate the planners of the conference because this should bookend that series of presentations very nicely. So a little bit about Ohio State, we're a top public university. We have an enrollment of 58,000 undergraduates. So scale has necessitated our conversation when we talk about researchers to advanced researchers. Our library, our system has 13 departmental libraries, and the Research Commons is located on the third floor of our 24-7 facility. And it's pretty centrally located on campus. I'm going to take a moment to read our brief mission and vision statements, and then I will drill down into the characteristics of the Research Commons. So our mission statement, the Research Commons at the Ohio State University Libraries leverages campus partnerships to provide support services at each stage of the research lifecycle. It enhances the library's mission by providing a hub for collaborative interdisciplinary research that is both expertise and technology enabled. And then our vision is to create an inspiring suite of services and resources that will enable and drive innovation, motivate and enable research, allow for happy accidents to occur, and provide an environment for dynamic interdisciplinary research that moves Ohio State from excellence to eminence. We define the Research Commons in three key aspects, as a network, as a space, and as a place. And I'll go through each one of those. As a network, we're a network of people, of experts, partners, collaborators, with knowledge, subject expertise, technology expertise, an awareness of campus and library resources, and services that are available all over. We exist to facilitate the connections between researchers and expertise at the point of need. OK? Try one more time. OK. This is our version of the research lifecycle. And this is our conceptual underpinning for the network, for the network of experts of people. And most of these are library resources. We have one partnership in there. The Copyright Center is funded in part by our Office of the Chief Information Officer. They support some of the positions in there. The libraries already serve the functions of a connector, providing resources and services at each stage of the research lifecycle. So it's a natural framework for articulating internal partnerships. So it works well building those partnerships across campus. The Research Commons enhances and expands the network of research support on campus. And the focus is on the importance of the libraries within that network. Defining the Research Commons as a space, we began to define it early on in our visioning process with the architects and design team. We articulated five guiding principles. And I'll have those up on a slide in just a little bit. But they're flexible, creative, purposeful, integrated technology, and unique. OK. I'm not sure what the right angle is for this clicker. I'll try and get it. So here's the first visual. And I'll have a lot of images of various parts of our Research Commons. So we just opened. In January 2016, we are centrally located on campus, as I mentioned, in our 24-7 facility. And we are focused on advanced researchers. And I will drill down into some of these spaces. Let's see if I have my laser pointer. The main area is our colloquia space. We have data visualization, brainstorming. And the next image of our brainstorming room, you'll see that there's a divider wall in there. We have project rooms, classroom, computer lab, conference, gallery area. And when you get off the elevators, you run right into our concierge desk. And here's the same image, but it's the architect's rendering of it. So we've got the colloquia space set up lecture style. We've got extra seating off to the side that I didn't mention before. A gallery space with four large display screens so we can show either complementary information to what's going on in the event space or what is actually going on in the event space. Either way, we can account for that. OK. Up here, this is our computer lab. And it has an advanced suite of software. And we think of it as a good place for researchers to hunker down and do some dedicated work. Over here is one of the small project rooms. We have three project rooms. There's monitors in each one of them. People can connect to them with their wireless devices. One conference room, it's a little more formal than the project rooms. We have video conferencing available. So when researchers need to talk to their colleagues who are outside of the university or even across the university, we can allow for that. And then our colloquia space. And this is a different configuration than the lecture style. And we often leave it this way if no one's in use because the graduate students love to just come in and sit down and work independently. See if I've forgotten anything. And this is our main space for events, workshops, colloquia. And here we have the brainstorming room being used. It's a larger collaborative space. Users can connect with their own wireless devices and take control of the projector. Our data visualization area, we have four screens. I think Clemson, did you have a huge wall? I was quite jealous. It was very exciting to see. This works across different platforms. Again, users can take control of all of the screens, some of the screens, so it's multi-device and, as I say, across various platforming platforms. Here's one of our, again, another brainstorming space. This whiteboard turns into a digital whiteboard so that notes can be saved with the projected image and taken with you. The wall that divides our brainstorming room is also a whiteboard on both sides. And then we have, down here in the data visualization, a desk or tabletop area for visualization. And again, this can be thrown up through the projector and displayed to groups at a time. I think for the people in the back, if you want seats, there's some scattered around. So if you want to come squeeze in, please feel free, or not, close enough. And then the third aspect of our research commons is as a place. So establishing the research commons as a place happens through the integration of the network of people and the physical space and the services that will be deployed there. So it's a space and a place that is based on what the researchers will make of it and what we can help them do with it throughout their own research lifecycle, their independent work and how we can help them with that all here. So when we look at the services and talk about the research commons as a place, we have four aspects to that. Education and training, consultations, referrals, and showcasing research. This is our colloquium space again, and this is a workshop for grant writing that we conducted earlier this semester. This could be one of the 50 or more workshops that we've offered to date. Attendance can vary from 10 to 60, but the average workshop attendance is around 20 to 25. We offer consultations. Our partners have office hours in the space, copyright resources, data management. Those are internal services that we have space in there in addition to their own office hours. And then people like IRB, Office of Research, the Writing Center, they will offer consultations in our space. And both the space and expertise can be scheduled online by users. And then we have referrals, the warm handoff, knowledgeable staff. This is our program assistant, and we conceived of this position as a concierge, someone who's really there to greet people and help them move, whether it's throughout the space or throughout campus, finding the appropriate resources and support. And she's talking to one of the graduate students. And then showcasing research. This is one of the steam factory folks who are in, I think they're doing something on sustainable cities. But we try and bring in a variety of speakers, particularly interdisciplinary speakers. So now that we know what we are, I want to talk a little bit about how we got there. And that's, I think, critical to our success. I want to start with a fairly traditional timeline that's going to focus largely on the research commons as space. We trace our start back to 2012 with a white paper entitled Overview of Research Commons in Academic Libraries by one of our lead librarians, Craig Gibson. And this is just an overview, as you might expect, of looking at all kinds of different similar spaces, whether they're learning commons or information commons and pulling those together. And then in 2013, we have an internal task force library faculty and staff. And they take that report and put it into action steps. In late 2014, we are interviewing design and construction teams with their IT partners. Our two lead players, Maris and Josh, are developing measurement and assessment techniques document that will come in and play a prominent role as we move forward. We are also fortunate that our consortium, the CIC, the Committee on Cooperation, the library piece of that, the CLI has a workshop at Indiana. And we can look at their scholars come and investigate that. So we've looked at spaces over time and seeing the changes and what people are doing is just incredibly informative. And then we have construction. And our research commons opens in 2016. One of the exercises we went through with the design architect team was a visioning process. So our visioning and mission statements come from the work that we did very, very early on with that group. And there was a large group from the libraries who participated in that. So you can see, maybe not, you can look at the slides later. And the font might be more readable. But again, we have those five guiding principles down below and then some of the brainstorming that took us into that particular vocabulary and concepts. And then we also were presented with different concept designs. Very similar, but somewhat different. And we ended up mostly with the concept 1B. And now I want to switch to a different kind of timeline. This is really the timeline that is about partnership and developing as a network. So it's a little bit different. Our markers are somewhat different, though we start and end in the same place. We've got the white paper. But then we immediately go into listening sessions with our graduate students. And one of the big drivers behind developing the research commons is that we had heard through our live quals survey often enough that graduate students had no home. We have 58,000 students, 45,000 are undergraduates. They are everywhere. And important and lovely as they are, they crowd out a lot of other spaces for a lot of other people. And it was acute for our graduate students. So we started listening to them and thinking of them. And they're really the core of our advanced researchers. We developed a partners advisory committee and I'll have a slide with the list of the partners in just a moment. We're hiring all kinds of people, data management. We get our GIS person on board, our research commons manager back in 2014. And that was just critical to our success. This person has done unbelievable work, particularly in going and knocking on doors and introducing himself and the services to every group at every orientation, just phenomenal work. It's made a huge difference. And then we also had our business librarian connect us with a marketing class. A senior capstone marketing group took the research commons on as a project. So there were five teams of students developing marketing programs for our research commons and they provided us with an enormous amount of information. One of the things they helped us with was make sure we articulate the advanced researchers, not just researchers, because they reminded us clearly that undergraduates do a lot of research, but that our focus seemed to be not just any researcher but those advanced researchers. They also gave us our tagline of connect, contribute, collaborate. We tweaked it around a little bit, but they gave us the basis for that. And then we also worked with developing use cases and worked with both our IT partners in the library as well as with a campus digital humanities working group. And when we had originally thought to hire a digital humanities librarian, we also developed use cases. And I can have some of those in the back and if we have time and you want to hear specifics, I can share those with you or send them to you if you shoot me an email. We held two positions for IT support for the research commons and the first of those positions came on board in January. And this colleague is IT support like a desktop or desk help supports person. And he's proved invaluable. He hooked me up so I could make sure my technology worked for the presentation. He's incredibly helpful and has been called upon for a bunch of different things. We also hired half a dozen student workers, graduate students. And we brought them on board the November before we opened. And they worked at our general reference desk in our main library for six weeks. And we then followed up with a two day training bootcamp before they took any hours on the public desk. This is a slide of our partners. It stayed fairly static. The one group that we've added is from the Graduate Student Association. They meet about once a semester. The agenda is fairly informal. They come to talk about, for a long time it's been updates. Where are we? Where are we progressing? Are there gaps? And we do work with our undergraduates. But we like to work with them in a coordinated effort and not just have them come into haphazardly. We also think of education and training as a partnering endeavor. So here are some of the workshops that we've done around the research lifecycle. When we first heard from our graduate students, we asked them about workshops that would appeal to them. And they were quite clear that unless we were doing a two for one, two topics that would bring them in, they were not going to leave their offices. That they really needed a compelling reason to come out to venture out of their offices. And that worked for a long time. We've since heard otherwise, and we're now being much more focused and narrow. But I think it's because our brand has been successful that they know when they come into the research commons that it'll be worthwhile. So these are just some of the topics that we've covered. And we usually, in our partnerships, have a campus person as well as a library person. We developed a website early on. So our website came into its first incarnation in August 2014. And it serves as a virtual referral point. Up here we have some of our colleagues. We call them experts. They're from the Office of Research, who's been one of our main partners. We collected some basic back statistics about how many people have hit the website, done that, just so we can see as we make changes and add to it what the changes in traffic will be. This just shows some of the groups that we've developed our use cases with. It's the digital humanities working group on campus. And just an example of some of the text that demonstrates some of those use cases. And then we really are interested in growing our network and building partnerships, not just keeping the same ones. We want to deepen those, but work across campus. So we have our university libraries partners, our campus partners. And we've also had some interest in the community. We've brought them in a little bit, but that's stretching us a little bit for the start. So the timeline for the partnership is important because it allows us to forge these strong networks. It increases the community awareness and it highlights services and has really, for us, built brand recognition. One of our great concerns, because again, of the number of undergraduates, was that if we built this and it was empty, it would fill up with the students who were going to use it to sit down and study. And that's not what we brought this online for. So we've been very careful. We were very deliberate about placing our concierge desk right by the elevator. So when students come in and look lost, we gently but consistently redirect them to other spots, both within the library and around campus. So that's sort of what we are, how we got there. And now I'm gonna look a little bit about going forward. I mentioned that we had developed success measures and assessment techniques document. And that was based on the visioning work that we did way back in the beginning. I'll go through each of those so you can get a sense. And this is really a work in progress. Some of these are panning out a little more robustly than some others. And we intend to check back also with our stakeholders about what they consider to be success. But these weren't entirely developed in isolation. We always had our partners in our conversations. So counting's good. We wanna know how many people have been in our spaces but we wanna know who they are as well. So we've done a good job of bookkeeping and tracking folks. So we started offering services back in September of 2014 and through March we've had more than 50 workshops, panel discussions or showcase events and over 1200 attendees. And 18 of our events have occurred within the first eight weeks of us being open. And as you can see from this slide up here, we've been successful in getting those advanced researchers into our space. So we've got 81% of our traffic is advanced, graduate students are higher. Traffic on the virtual space, as I mentioned, we've benchmarked numbers about who has been at our site which is fine. But it doesn't really tell us much except if we compare it to other things. So as we change services, bring new things online, we'll look to see whether or not we're getting more traffic, different kinds of traffic. We've also added cues to be able to better handle our email and chat. Another success measure, repeat customers, creating a community is what we think of it as. So in addition to our website hits on the pages, we also have a Twitter account with 100 followers. We'll see how that grows. And an email list served with about 400 subscribers. Again, we'll see who stays, who gets added to that. Of the more than 400 attendees that we've had recently, we've had 33 individuals who have attended multiple events. So again, creating the community, building a following loyalty. We've had one person who came to seven events, so a groupie perhaps. But we're excited about that. We want to build up that community and get some loyalty. And here we have partners on campus we work with in all kinds of opportunities. Our office for distance education and e-learning. And they've used our space sort of as a one-off. They've had occasion to have meetings and they found that the Research Commons is just the perfect place for them to do some brainstorming. We've also had groups like the Department of Anthropology that comes in every other Thursday to have their meetings around what kind of research they're working on, who's doing what, practice for presentations that are coming up. I think this group over here are applied plant sciences who came in just for a meeting. So we want to build up the loyalty but we'll take the one-offs as well. One of the most successful partnerships that we've had and our repeat customers is around the writing group. And when I looked at my notes, this spring all of the 10 writing groups, I thought 10 writing groups. That's a lot of writing groups to have into this space but in fact we have 10 different writing groups who are using the Research Commons. We've got some that are working on grant writing, writing journal articles, dissertations, thesis and these groups are further splintering and organizing into small informal working groups. So it's growing out like a tree and we're delighted for that. So the partnerships and the collaboration have been very successful. Our office hours have also been successful. The IRB folks have doubled their hours since they started. They're very popular, no surprise. I don't think they quite knew that but none of us were surprised that there's a great demand for them to be accessible and easily found by people around campus. And I think I mentioned in our workshop development we started with the two for one idea. We have now, based on the feedback, moved to a much more directed and deep model so we will just do data management plans for biomedical researchers. So we've found that there is now a need to narrow what we're doing. And then partnerships within the library. So this is a screen capture from a collaborative effort between the head of special collections and our GIS specialist. This is a digital story map that complimented a physical exhibit that we have in our main library. And just another example of librarians coming together. This is an ACRO webcast of engaging in the digital humanities. Breaking the silos was another area where we wanted to have success, those happy accidents that we envisioned. So we've had a couple of very large events. This one is in our Thompson library and it's GIS for the rest of us. Another workshop that we've offered is having our partners do a partners day lining the perimeter with tables, speakers of the various partners so they could get to know each other, what each other are doing and learn a little bit more about what's going on on campus. And our GIS for the rest of us, this is where we've had some community partners come in but there were I think 60 attendees coming from nine different colleges. Yeah. And the community participated in that particular event. And again, another steam exchange, our science, technology, engineering, arts and math. And breaking the mold, we wanted to make sure again that these services were directed at our advanced researchers and they were like nothing else. So this is just a reflection of that. One of our graduate students who has been here for a while and just hasn't been able to find a home has found it. We also had a student come off of the elevator, look around and say, wow, there's a Hilton in the library. I mean, it is just a much different look and feel. Another area where we've had success and I think we really wanna look into this and dig a little deeper is as a valued resource around recruiting. So what we've discovered in our cookies in the commons particularly, graduate students are coming in with their friends who are not yet enrolled in graduate programs and showing us off as a place and a resource and a real hook to bring them into the university. We've had one department, our women's gender and sexuality studies use this during a faculty recruitment and we would like to push that and make that more of a success story that we can share with the campus that's really about the campus and helping other people be successful. And then our long-term thinking, we want more of a plan going forward. We'd like both a programmatic plan and then an assessment plan that matches that. So we wanna be a little more intentional about where we're going, what we're doing and then how we know that we've done a good job. The value that our partners bring to the research commons is important to us. The value the research commons provides to our partners and the value of the research commons network to the whole campus. We wanna make sure that we can pull all of those things together and with that, thank you and we have time for conversation, questions, comments. Well, thank you very much.


Okay, good morning to all of you who are here and we'll get into first Samuel, all right. So last week we did the book of Ruth and on Tuesday I could not take a class but yeah today we will have first Samuel it actually is on you guys can't hear is it online they're saying that they can hear me which I'm very glad about but maybe you could one of you could you know call Milken and maybe he can do come and do something about it so could we have one volunteer to just quickly go up to him and you know in case my voice is not very clear if one person can go and call Milken but online it seems to be all right one two three seems to be all right so online it's perfectly fine so let's just get started you can open your ears wide or you can bring pull up your rod table a little closer okay let's actually begin first Samuel now first Samuel is a narrative history it basically talks about Samuel and Saul and David these are the three main characters who are covered in our first Samuel they say that most probably the first 24 chapters were written by Samuel himself because he was alive during those events but chapter 25 on but chapter 26 onwards those are events which took place after his death so obviously it means that someone else would have recorded those events so they say that most probably it was Nathan or Gad you know the prophets they are probably the ones who most probably recorded the events which took place after Samuel's death if we can have the students actually settle down and stop moving about yeah it's kind of distracting sorry all right so the prophets probably would have recorded the events and then someone later on must have brought all the records together and compiled it into one single writing at a later point of time why do we say that because in first Samuel chapter 27 verse 6 it talks about the kings of Judah so the kings of Judah is a term that would have been used after the Israelite kingdom was split up into two kingdoms the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom of Judah so if this term is now being used over here in first Samuel it means that whoever did the final compilation whoever did the final editing of this particular book would have done it sometime after the death of Solomon because it's only after Solomon's time that the kingdom got split up into two and that is when the term Kings of Judah would have been written at all so that is why we can say that Samuel probably wrote the first 24 books the events which took place after his death probably would have been recorded by Nathan or Gad or any of the other prophets and finally after the time of Solomon someone must have brought all the records together and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit would have edited it and compiled it into this final document which we have with us today all right so coming to the structure of first Samuel the first seven chapters mainly focus on Samuel that is where we get to know about how the Ark of the Covenant was taken away by the Philistines the plagues which come upon the Philistines because they have taken the Ark and how they return it back all of those things are mentioned in the first seven chapters chapters 8 to 15 talk about Saul mainly that is where we get to see Saul and we get to know that Saul was appointed and anointed by God but then he was also rejected by the Lord due to his disobedience those are the main things that we see in this section the third section maybe we could say is 16 to 31 because that is where you have David being mainly focused upon so in this section we see David being chased by Saul he's he's worried about his life and he's trying to escape again and again and he also gets a chance to attack Saul and kill him but he does not do that because he says that Saul has been anointed by God and so if God wishes to God must kill him I do not have the right to kill him so he chooses not to do that and then of course we also see how Saul ends his life he commits suicide so all of these things are recorded in the last section chapter 16 to 31 coming to Samuel just to talk a little bit about him he was considered one of the most popular respected revered you know profits of his time and he functioned in three main capacities he was a judge he actually held court solved you know civil cases and criminal cases he actually served as a judge we see that in first Samuel chapter 7 verses 15 to 17 where it talks about how he would go to 4 different places and hold court over there so that people can bring their cases over there and he would sit as judge over there and solve those cases he would reach a judgment regarding those things so if someone could turn to first Samuel chapter 7 verses 15 to 17 and if you could kindly tell me which are the four places from where he functioned as judge because yeah and the fourth place yes so these are the four places where he would travel to during different parts of the year so one part of the year he would be in one location then he would move to a different location and he was actually serving as a legal judge he was also a priest which meant mainly that he would intercede for the people we see an example of that in first Samuel chapter 7 verses 5 to 8 in first Samuel chapter 7 verses 5 to 8 this is basically after the Ark of God is returned by the Philistines so all the people they admit that they have sinned against God and because of that the glory of God had left them now they are repentant of what they have done they want to come back to the Lord and to come back to the Lord is not an easy thing in the sense God is extremely holy and he cannot put up with sinful behavior he must judge them for what they have done so they turn to Samuel to intercede for them so Samuel intercedes for them and so all the people gather together at mispah where Samuel intercedes on their behalf so that the Lord would be willing to forgive them of all their sinful behavior and he would be willing to take them back so even as they gather over there and Samuel is interceding for them the Philistines get to know that a large number of Israelites have gathered over there and they think that this is an excellent time for them to attack and so at that time the people cry out to Samuel and they say do not stop crying out to the Lord our God for us so once again Samuel intercedes for them so that they are not you know killed by the Philistines so Samuel was an intercessor he was their priest we also see that Samuel was a prophet and some people say that he was the first prophet which you know is technically not true because we also had prophets before that we had Moses we had Deborah these were all prophets who were there before Samuel however Samuel is called by scholars as the first prophet maybe because he made it into an official institution up to then prophets were just people whom God chose and then they would just you know do whatever God is asking them to do but now for the first time something officially called the institution of prophecy came into existence because he set up many schools of prophecy many prophetic schools and they are mentioned in a few of the passages in first Samuel where it actually talks about the school of prophets which was established by Samuel and we have two incidents first Samuel chapter 10 verses 9 to 11 talk about the school of prophets and we also have first Samuel chapter 19 verses 19 to 20 which also talks about the school of prophets can someone look at these two passages and tell me what what strikes you what is the what what's the contrast between these two passages the only reason I'm posing all these questions today is because I see a lot of deadness in the class people are like completely tuned out and very sleepy and tired and this is just my attempt to kind of you know get your attention so if you would look at first Samuel chapter 10 verses 9 to 11 and then first Samuel chapter 19 verses 19 to 20 in both of these passages you have the school of prophets being mentioned and there's a contrast between these two passages can anyone just very quickly detect what is the difference between passage one and passage two first Samuel 10 9 to 11 the second one being first Samuel 19 19 to 20 what is one main contrast between these two passages where the school of prophets are mentioned in the first passage this is basically when Saul has not yet become King he's you know searching for his father's animals which have strayed away and he comes to Samuel and that is when Samuel says to him that God is going to appoint you as King God has chosen you so this is just in the early days when when when when when Saul has not even become King as yet and even as you know Samuel finishes talking to Saul and Saul is turning away to go back home the Lord comes upon him in a mighty way and all the prophets are gathered over there it's a school of prophecy that he has come to and even as he's just turning away and leaving from that place the Holy Spirit comes down upon him in a mighty way and he begins to prophesy along with all of them and people are amazed and this is what it says in first Samuel chapter 10 verse 11 where it says when all those who had formerly known him saw him prophesying with the prophets they asked each other what is this that has happened to the son of Kish is Saul also among the prophets so they rather suppress it here is an ordinary man who never had prophesied in his entire life and now he is prophesying and so they say is Saul also among the prophets that is the first incident where we have this mention of the school of prophets yes yeah so ha so in okay for those of you who are online one of the students read out their version and in that version it says has Saul also become a prophet okay so so there was so what is the question is there any question attached yeah but whatever he was doing must have been some kind of prophesying because when we go back to the original Hebrew Bible over there it very much says is he also prophesying in that sense so yes maybe he was dancing maybe he was shouting but he was also prophesying in what style he was doing the prophesying that maybe your version has elaborated upon but one thing is very very clear the man prophesied and people who knew him were shocked because he had never been a prophet in this life but now they saw him prophesying and so here we see something very beautiful happening the Lord is kind of putting his mark of approval on this young man and saying this man I approve of him I have chosen him I have something special planned for his life and so he joins with the school of prophets and he prophesies and then when we move to the second passage which was first Samuel 19 19 to 20 the scenario is very different it's very sad and now at this time by this time Saul is chasing after David he wants to murder him is trying desperately to find him and David is running for his life he's trying to hide here and there and so he desperately comes to this place called now oath where he asks Samuel for protection for help and so David hides in now oath where you are you have another school of prophets established in that place so so David is hiding over there and when Saul gets to know about it he sends his soldiers to capture him and bring him back so that he can be executed and so in that you know if you look at that entire passage the soldiers go there they want to capture him but before they can capture him they all open their mouths and start prophesying they have no control over themselves and so they are under literally under the control of the Holy Spirit and they're unable to do what they came to do and so he sends a second batch of soldiers they to go over there and the Holy Spirit comes upon them and takes control of them and they're unable to do what they are meant to do they just stand over there prophesying so this happens again and again and so finally Saul himself comes over there he thinks there's no point in sending my soldiers so in verses 23 and 24 of first Samuel chapter 19 he comes over there and then you have a description of what God does to him a very scary frightening Bible passage so if we could have someone read out first Samuel chapter 19 verses 23 to 24 so the first time when the people said can Saul also prophesy is he also a prophet it was a very positive thing that they were saying but now now this man is in a fallen state this murder in his heart he has made up his mind that he's going to shed the blood of the person anointed by God himself and God brings judgment upon him so the second time when he's prophesying it's not at all something positive God's judgment is upon him God humiliates him God punishes him God judges him in front of all the people you know so he came over there to to do harm to David but then he is the one who ends up being harmed so a king you know being made to take off his clothes and lie over there in a helpless state what a humiliation and all the kingdom must have heard about it and people would have laughed about it so you know God was very angry with the way Saul was functioning instead of repenting of his attitude he was becoming more and more determined to somehow capture David even though he knew very well that God himself had anointed David and so we have these two incidents which talk about the school of prophets and we have the story of Saul told over here in both these passages and we see such a great contrast so Saul who could have had a very positive future instead ends up coming under the judgment of God where he's literally humiliated in front of his people another thing about the book of 1st Samuel the term Messiah is used for the very first time in 1st Samuel chapter 2 verse 10 so if we could have someone over here read out 1st Samuel chapter 2 verse 10 the word anointed over there that basically is the word Messiah that is being used for the very first time so if you were to look into the Hebrew Bible the word over there would be Messiah so that's the word that word is used for the first time over here where God says that one day a king will come whose horn will be exalted because you know he would be anointed by God himself what exactly is this whole idea about a horn you know being exalted basically the imagery is of a bull you know when a bull gets into a fight with another bull or with whatever other wild animal at the end of the battle once the bull is victorious it raises up its horns in victory so that is basically where the imagery was drawn from so in those days in their culture when they were whenever they would say the horns are being lifted or exalted they basically talking about victory okay so that's basically the imagery the imagery is being drawn from a bull and the way it acts the way it lifts up its horns when it has won the victory so here it is being said that one day when the Messiah is sent his horn will be exalted he will be victorious okay so glad to see my class awake I think I have got their attention now it took the humiliation of Saul to wake them up but I'm so glad it has happened yeah alright now we see something rather strange regarding this whole kingship stuff you know because Samuel is very upset when the people ask for a king and the Lord is very displeased when the people ask for a king but it was God in the beginning who said that they would be having kings and God is even talking about you know a Messiah who will be sent and he will be exalted so God wants to have a king God has prophesied about a king but when the people ask for a king God is unhappy so what is this whole thing I mean how do we understand this entire thing so let's actually look at all the Bible passages related to that we would have to first look at Genesis chapter 17 verse 6 which someone will read out for us from here Genesis 17 6 okay so this is a prophecy that God very plainly clearly gives to Abraham saying you know what your lineage is going to be a great one kings are going to come from among your descendants so God himself is saying that kings will be coming one day from the lineage of Abraham and then let's look at Deuteronomy chapter 17 verses 14 to 15 and if someone could read out that look at the wording that is used over here in verse 14 it says when you have you know taken position of the land and you have settled down in it and at that time when you say let us set a king over us like all the nations around us be sure to appoint over you a king the Lord your God has chosen okay so over here there is no condemnation at all it doesn't say when you say those words you know let us set a king over us like all the nations bad people you shouldn't be saying that there's no such I know criticism made over there it's just saying when your people make that statement let us set a king over us like all the nations around us be sure to appoint someone that the God that the Lord himself has anointed and appointed so there is no kind of anger or displeasure from the Lord regarding this matter but when we come over here to first Samuel chapter 8 Samuel is displeased the Lord is also very very displeased so what happened what went wrong maybe we would need to read those verses first Samuel chapter 8 verses 5 to 8 if we could have one person lead out yeah please go ahead yes okay if you read these verses we get the clear impression that Samuel is not happy about their request and God is most displeased he says in verse 7 it is not you they have rejected but they have rejected me as their king and in verse 8 he says forsaking me and serving other God so they are doing to you so God is very displeased it's so it is the Lord who first of all said that they would have a king the Lord in fact even prophesied and said that this king would be someone who would be anointed and exalted you know in the future he would be anointed and exalted because he would be the Messiah all of these things the Lord has been saying but finally when the people actually ask for a king God is not happy so we see an explanation for that in first Samuel chapter 8 itself verses 19 to 20 so if you know if you can very someone can read out for us and if the rest of you can really concentrate on what these verses are saying okay so the problem seems to be the motive with which they are asking God does want them to have a king and God wants them to have a king in his timing not in their timing but the attitude with which they are asking is wrong why do they want to be like all the other nations because if they have a king he can lead them into battle and fight their battles for them so the motive here is wrong they are kind of feeling insecure being under the commander you know being under the command of an invisible God whom they cannot see whom they cannot hear if they have a physical king in front of them the king will say okay you bunch go that said and fight you bunch go this said and fight someone who can know whom they can see and hear it would be easy for them you don't need any spiritual maturity to be able to see an actual king and hear his voice on the other hand if the king if God is the commander of the army then you would need a little bit of spiritual maturity because then they would have to turn to the priest the priest will speak to the Lord and the Lord will give directions on what is to be done and they don't want to operate in this way because they are very very fleshly and human in their behavior in their attitudes and they have no desire to grow spiritually so they want to be like all the other nations in the wrong sense they don't want to have to depend on the Lord or grow in him and learn to hear from him they want it easy just like all the other kings just listen to a human king and do whatever the king says they also want to come down to that level and that is why the Lord says they have rejected me as their king I am the one who led them into battles and gave them miraculous victories I did I change the laws of physics you know God parted the sea God created havoc among the enemy where they killed each other these are all things almighty things which their commander did and now they're saying no no we don't want that commander because it takes a little bit of too much commitment we need to stay in line with him we need to be pleasing to him if we you know go go into sin then he will not be there for us so they want to continue living their immoral lifestyle and they want to have a human king so the whole attitude with which they asked for a king was highly wrong and also of course it would have been maybe more polite if they had said Lord in your timing can you give us a king but no they were like give us a king now you want the king now so they were they did not care about God's timing and they also had the very very wrong motive in their hearts about why they wanted a king and that is the reason why God was displeased but originally God did want them to have a king he wanted to give them a king in his timing and he wanted them to have the right hearts when they would ask for a king but that was not the case and so the Lord was displeased with them moving on very quickly to maybe what else we can cover in this book people generally bring up this particular verse first Samuel chapter 16 verse 14 and there's a lot of debate that goes on regarding that so if we could have one person read out first Samuel chapter 16 verse 14 and then we'll see if we can try to understand what is being said okay so in the version which was read out over here it said that the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul and a distressing spirit from the Lord came upon him you know so different versions English versions try to use different words I know they say distressing spirit they say harmful spirit they say they try to avoid the term evil spirit because evil spirits clearly sounds demonic so they just try to you know use other terms but then if you go back to the original Hebrew you basically have good and bad good would be tov and bad would be very clearly it says over there that the spirit which came was it was evil okay so there's no avoiding the fact that this was definitely an evil spirit that is being talked about so the question which is raised is how could God send an evil spirit to trouble someone he could have sent a holy angel to trouble him why did we send an evil spirit okay so that is the question which is generally raised yeah yeah so the student over here who's pointing out the fact that when the final you know plague was sent in Egypt and the angel of death was sent that person that is an angel of death a negative force so now I don't know whether over there God released evil spirits to come and do the killing or God used his angels to bring judgment not sure about that so angel of death over there could be someone from the Lord's own army or it might have been you know so I'm not very sure about that but over here very clearly it is an evil spirit from the Lord which is being sent how would we understand something like this we who live in New Testament times have a little more clarity regarding these things because of things events which are mentioned in our New Testament maybe we can learn some lessons from the New Testament and apply them to this particular passage in the Old Testament and of course I'm referring to 1st Corinthians chapter 5 verses 4 to 5 where it talks about a man who was living in immorality openly he was living in immorality and all the people in the church were thinking oh this is an alright thing to do you know so it was a very terrible situation and so over there this is what Paul instructs should be done you know regarding this particular person yeah so if we could actually have someone read out 1st Corinthians chapter 5 verses 4 to 5 okay so over here the instruction that is very clearly given is this man is living in outright sin and is not even feeling guilty about it and the rest of the church members are thinking oh okay this is an alright thing to do and so he needs to be excommunicated he must be removed from the church and not allowed to enter the church anymore and so basically when he's removed from the church what is happening in the supernatural realm is that the protection of God which covers his people is going to be withdrawn from this person so it's not just a social excommunication there's something happening even at the spiritual level at the social level yes the believers are going to excommunicate him but at the spiritual level God is withdrawing his covering from this particular person you know it's not sure that you have ever really consciously thought about it but in your homes you are under the covering of your parents even you are in a church you are under the spiritual covering of the senior pastor and depending on what kind of a person that person is the one who's under who's under whose covering you are it can have a great impact upon your life you know for instance I mean those of us who are from families where the spiritual covering is not there in the sense that your parents have not yet become I know believers who have made a commitment to the Lord that makes it harder for you I mean because you know you are a believer but the evil one can attack to a greater extent simply because the head of the house is not able to provide an adequate covering and there's always greater conflict greater battles that you have to go through it's the same in a church when the senior pastor is not providing the covering that is required it does harm the congregation so over here this is a very serious thing that's happening when this person is removed from the church even the covering and protection of God is going to be removed and he's going to stand completely exposed to the evil one so it's almost literally like handing over the man to Satan it's like almost like you know saying to Satan you know this man is now fully you know vulnerable you can do what you want with him but when God does this his intention is not for evil why is this being done so that that flesh of that man that sinful nature of that man can be destroyed because right now he's thinking oh this is a wonderful way to live the sinful lifestyle is really cool it's really good is what he is thinking but once he gets into the hands of Satan and there's no covering protecting him then he'll know how wonderful Satan is and how wonderful are Satan's ways he will fully experience what it feels like to be under Satan and his flesh would be destroyed he would come to his senses and he would understand how much better to be under the protection of my Lord God and he would come back so with that intention he's turned over to Satan so that he can understand what actually happens when a person is left to Satan and the Lord is no longer covering and protecting them so in 2 Corinthians chapter 2 verses 6 to 10 we see the result of this treatment 2 Corinthians chapter 2 verses 6 to 10 where it says in verse 7 you know now this man has repented of his sin he has fully experienced Satan he has understood how terrible it is and now it says you know you ought to forgive and comfort him so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow and then in verse 11 it says you know you need to do this because in order that Satan might not outwit us for we are not unaware of his schemes so now that this person has repented Paul instructs and says bring him back into the fold let him come back under the covering of you know the corporate the church so that you know Satan cannot take advantage of him anymore okay so in that sense even here in the Old Testament is my assumption that God allowed an evil spirit to come and torment Saul not because God hated Saul but because God wanted to give him a chance to change now did Saul change that is another question how much time do we have okay we have time so we see that Saul is no longer hearing from God and God is no longer speaking to him because he's not repenting the man is not repenting so the Lord this is not talking to him anymore and so when the Philistines gather a huge army gathers against them Saul is so desperate he goes to the Lord for instructions God keeps silent God doesn't say a word why because this man is only wants to see what he can get out of it he doesn't care about honoring the Lord he doesn't care about God's will he just wants to know can we win this battle or not he so he's not really going over there with the right attitude so God keeps quiet God does not tell him what to do and he's so desperate he thinks fine let me go to a medium of which someone who practices black magic let me go to that person maybe at least they will give me some guidance some help and so he that happens in first Samuel chapter 28 where Saul stoopes to an extent where he goes to someone who is on the devil's side to ask for guidance because the man is now in such a desperate state but then let's not criticize Saul too much because in first Samuel chapter 28 we see David also doing something extremely ungodly and stupid David is getting ready to fight along with the Philistines against the anointed of God okay so it's not exactly David who is shining over here in this chapter both of them are at a really low spiritual level David is at a low spiritual level getting ready to fight against his own people with the Philistines Saul terrified that such a huge army is coming against him doesn't know where to turn goes to a witch for advice so both of them are doing rather bad over here in this particular passage but coming to the end of first Samuel chapter 28 verse 19 where you have you know Samuel coming up out of I don't know not it's not exactly out of the grave but anyway he makes his he makes a physical appearance over there and this is what Samuel says if you could have someone read out first Samuel chapter 28 verse 19 okay so Samuel who is now dead and who has now come in spirit form to talk to Saul this is what he says he says you will lose the battle the Philistines will win but tomorrow you and your sons will be with me nobody would say that Samuel is in hell you would definitely say that Samuel is in heaven so and more of it says your sons will be with me and I don't know much about the sons of Saul because nothing much is given in the Bible but we do know one righteous son Jonathan who was killed in that battle so if Jonathan is going to be in heaven with Samuel and it says over here you and your sons will be with me so I'm assuming at the end of it all probably even Saul made it into heaven so the Lord's purpose was never to destroy Saul but he gave him opportunities to repent he allowed an evil spirit to torment him again and again hoping that it would drive him back into the arms of God but this man I think probably just didn't want to hear God you know maybe he just hardened his heart to an extent where he really didn't want to hear but there must have been some goodness in him that the Lord saw and so he allowed him to come into his presence after his death so we don't really know the details but we see that Saul actually ends his life in a very tragic and terrible manner if anyone has got any vital important doubts we can get into that others maybe we can take a look at Saul's death and how he died will it be questions or will it be the death scene of Saul which one would you prefer shall we just go ahead because you see here you have two accounts of yeah there's a question bubbling go ahead we'll discuss that later because the online students have got nothing to do with it yeah okay this is just about the written assignment for the students over here so you don't need to concern yourselves about that so let's move into you know the two accounts about Samuel's death sorry Saul regarding Saul's death in 1st Samuel chapter 31 verses 1 to 6 it's it we are told that Saul killed himself and then when we come to 2nd Samuel chapter 1 verses 4 to 10 there's an Amulakite who says that he is the one who killed Saul so is the bible contradicting itself you know is there a mistake being made in the bible so we would need to kind of resolve that we need to kind of touch upon that so just to very quickly you know talk about this because we don't have much time left in 1st Samuel chapter 31 verses 1 to 6 it very clearly describes the the various events that you know led to the final suicide the Philistines have won and Saul realizes that next they're going to come and you know take hold of him and he doesn't want to die at the hands of these Philistines you know with whom he had a struggle his entire life and he doesn't want any of them killing him so he feels it's better for him to not die rather than you know die with Saul you know by his own hand rather than have any of those terrible people touch him okay so he's kind of in that kind of mode you know and so he actually commits suicide but over here when we come to 2nd Samuel chapter 1 verses 4 to 10 you have an Amulakite coming and boasting in front of David and saying you know what I am the one who killed him so we would probably have to accept the fact I mean at least this is what sounds correct to me and to many of the scholars they say that most probably in 2nd Samuel chapter 1 the Amulakite was lying because he was trying to gain favor with David and we can actually have some good reasoning you know to support what we are saying because you know if the armor bearer the sauce armor bearer once he sees that his king is dead he's the man who's supposed to protect the king and the king has killed himself just now so he's so horrified and shattered that he could not fulfill his duty that he also kills himself and if the armor bearer had still been alive you think he would have allowed this Amulakite to peacefully come over there and take his crown and take his arm band and walk off no the armor bearer would have killed him so the Amulakite when he came over there he would have seen both of them already lying dead then he takes the crown he takes the arm band and thinks up a scheme if I go and give this to David and say you know I am the one who killed David would be really happy and say oh wow I'm so glad you helped me but you know of course David does not do that another thing a very valid argument which I read somewhere is that would Saul ask an Amulakite of all the people on earth would he ask an Amulakite to kill him because he hates the Amulakites guts you see they are the reason that God finally takes the throne away from him God says to him wipe out the Amulakites and what does this man do he disobeys God very deliberately and because of that his kingdom is snatched away from him I seriously doubt he would ask an Amulakite to kill him he did not want to be he did not want to die at the hands of the Philistines he says rather than allow one of those horrible Philistines to touch me I'd rather kill myself and a man like that you think he would have asked a requested an Amulakite to kindly kill him no way so the Amulakite in chapter second Samuel is most definitely lying and yeah David does not reward him for his lying rather you know he is executed so there are two versions of Saul's death and the first one is correct because over there all the details are given about how exactly it happened on the other hand in second Samuel you just have the words of an Amulakite and he was you know most probably lying because whatever he is saying does not really add up okay so um there are other things to be said because after all first Samuel is a historical book and it's filled with history and lots of events but then we are out of time so we will close and now in the three minutes that we have left any brilliant questions why are you looking to your spokesman if you want to ask the question you ask him why we'll we'll get to at least let's finish with the online students okay so let's close with a word of prayer okay um Lord we just thank you so much for the lessons that we could learn from this book of the Bible we pray oh Lord that as and when required you would bring these things back to our mind so that we will apply them in our own lives in our own situations and honor you oh Lord we pray that we would not allow ourselves to waste the second chances that are given to us the way Saul did he was given many opportunities oh Lord to change his ways but he was foolish and we pray that we would not be foolish in the same manner but that Lord we would have a soft heart like David who was always willing to repent and admit his sinfulness and turn back to you so we pray oh Lord that we would be like David and not like uh Saul regarding our repentance we also pray oh Lord that we would learn from Samuel and his character a man oh Lord who always stayed faithful to you did what was your will uh was such a blessing to his entire nation because he was always your hands and your feet oh Lord whatever you wanted done he did it oh Lord help us to be like that so that we can be a blessing to our own people in our nation oh Lord thank you a lot for today's lesson and we pray that you would be with each student even as they go about the rest of their responsibilities thank you Lord in Jesus name amen thank you so much online students for you know joining us for the class and we'll meet again tomorrow