Good afternoon, everyone, or morning or evening, wherever you may be. My name is Gregory Bowman, and I have the honor and the privilege of serving as the dean at Roger Williams University School of Law in Rhode Island. And on behalf of my law school and our co-sponsors for today's event, City University of New York School of Law and Juris, I want to welcome you to today's Integrating Doctrine and Diversity Speaker Series event on Making Changes and Making Mistakes. The inspiration for the series is the excellent book that is co-edited by various folks, including my colleague Nicole, who will speak momentarily. And it draws from the expertise of faculty across the country about how to integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into the law school curriculum. It's been very well received, and we've had a great series of speakers events so far this year, and I look forward to today's event as well. So the question that's driving today's event is, what should you do when you make a mistake in the classroom that is offensive, and we all make mistakes, and it is an important part of the conversation on diversity, equity, and inclusion. So thank you for being here. I'm really excited to hear from our speakers. Thank you to our speakers in advance for what they're going to talk about and the wisdom they are going to impart. And I will turn things over to my colleague, Anna Baraza, who is the School of Laws Interim Director of Diversity and Outreach at Roger Williams University. So Anna, you have the virtual podium. Thanks again. Thank you, Dean Bowman. Before we begin, I want to take a moment to reflect on the lands which we reside. We are coming from many places, physically and remotely, and we want to acknowledge the ancestral homelands and traditional territories of indigenous and native peoples who have been here since time immemorial, and to recognize that we must continue to build our solidarity and kinship with native peoples across the Americas and across the globe. Roger Williams University School of Law is located here in Bristol, Rhode Island. And so we acknowledge and honor the Narragansett and Poconecate people and psalms, the original name of the land that our campus resides on. We also acknowledge that this country would not exist if it wasn't for the free enslaved labor of Black people. And we recognize that the town of Bristol and the very land our campus resides on have benefited significantly from the trade of enslaved people from Africa, the economy of New England, Rhode Island, and more specifically, Bristol was built from wealth generated through the triangle trade of human lives. During this time of national reckoning with our history of slavery and the disparate treatment of Black people, we honor the legacy of the African diaspora and the Black lives, knowledge, and skills stolen due to violence and white supremacy. While the movement for justice and liberation is building and we are witnessing the power of the people, many are still being met with violence and even being killed. As upholders of justice, our hope is to become agents of change for members of our society who have been met with violence, physical, mental, emotional, through our privilege. And as upholders of justice, we believe that our students who soon will be practitioners of law can be and already are agents of change as well. And for those who are not familiar with this practice, why do we do a land and labor acknowledgement? I want to share with you a statement from Northwestern University's Native American and Indigenous initiatives, which explains it much better than I could. It is important to understand the long standing history that has brought you to reside on the land and to seek to understand your place within that history. Land acknowledgements and labor acknowledgements do not exist in a past tense or historical context. Colonialism is a current ongoing process and we need to build our mindfulness of our present participation in it. I turn it now over to my colleague, Nicole. Hi. Thank you, Anna and Dean Bowman. Thank you all for attending our event today. The fourth in the Integrating Doctorate and Diversity Speaker Series. Today, like Dean Bowman said, we'll be discussing what to do or sometimes what not to do when we make mistakes in classroom discussions involving race, gender, identity, ability, religion or ethnicity. My name is Nicole. I'm the moderator for today. If you have any questions, please chat them in. I'll try to work them into our discussion and I'm going to start by introducing today's speakers. Tiffany Graham is an Associate Professor of Law and the Associate Dean of Diversity and Inclusion at Turrell College, the Jacob Fuchsburg Law Center. Dean Graham primarily teaches in the areas of constitutional law and race and law, but has also taught CIRM Pro, Law and Sexuality, and torts. She's written and spoken nationally on topics broadly related to LBGTQ plus equality, including marriage equality, LGBTQ plus youth homelessness, conversion therapy and the integration of LGBTQ plus communities and rural spaces. Dylan Malagrino is a tenured full professor of law from the Charleston School of Law. Presently he's a visiting professor of law of property, will trust in estates and land use at Southwestern Law School in 2021-2022. Amanda Reese is a 3L student at Roger Williams University School of Law where she is a member of the honors program and serves as the executive notes and comments editor on the Roger Williams University Law Review. So today's focus is about when professors make mistakes. It is difficult to even have this conversation. And so I want to start by thanking the speakers who are being brave enough to talk about making mistakes and sort of owning that. The more we seek to change up our methods to make them more inclusive and the more work we do to integrate our curriculum, the more opportunities there are for making mistakes. These mistakes may hold us back from doing the work of change in the first place. So Tiffany, this question is to you. Today's discussion about making mistakes, I imagine within the scope of teaching common law or any topic really, but specifically common law, the materials present many places where a professor can make mistakes. In your chapter of the book, you write, based on my own teaching experiences, students generally respond well to the inclusion of a reproductive justice focused subunit when studying abortion. They rarely have the opportunity to think about abortion within the context of healthcare, more broadly, race, poverty, and the intersections that link these issues. To be clear, I have also had students with strong moral objections to abortion and who resist anything that they interpret as an attempt to persuade them to alter their views. This feels like really fraught to me. And it feels like there could be potential for professors to make mistakes. Can you talk a little bit about how you handle students who might be resistant to the material or your approach? Sure. So I will say that the first time that I became aware that I had stepped in it was my first time through. I was teaching at a Catholic law school, and I thought that I had handled abortion fairly neutrally. And it's quite possible that I handled it mostly neutrally. And the students may have assumed that I had a liberal perspective and full transparency. I do. But to be completely fair to them, when I read my evaluations and saw that more than one student said that my liberal view came out and they didn't think it was appropriate for a Catholic school, I took a couple of lessons from that. One, I began to really listen to myself even more than I already had been doing. I mean, while I was at the Catholic school, I knew I had to be very careful about that because of the sensitivities in the room. But even when I left and went to other places, Catholic schools are not the only ones where students are going to be potentially quite sensitive about the issue of abortion. And so I continued to listen to myself. But I also paid close attention to what I was teaching. There is a case, Gonzales versus Carhartt that I teach. And it is a fairly, frankly, gruesome case in some ways when you get into the facts because the facts are an important aspect of, I mean, the facts around the particular procedure that is used is an important aspect of the decision. And I don't ask my students to recite those facts. I do it myself in order to protect them from having to do that. I also try very self-consciously to incorporate references to both sides of the debate. One of the things that I tried this year was showing my students the film, Jackson. It's a documentary about the last abortion clinic that is in Jackson, Mississippi. And the film highlights people on both sides of the debate. And I did that on purpose so that people would feel like their views were, that all the views were being heard. So I feel like these are some of the things that I have done, not just to respect my students' perspectives, but also to insulate myself from the criticism that I'm not listening or being respectful or honoring the fact that even if you can tell where I'm coming from, that people disagree with me. Thanks. I think that that's like a really helpful strategy when thinking about it and framing it is to really intentionally include as many sides as you can. It sounds like some of the discussions can be super uncomfortable, which is not necessarily a bad thing. But I guess my question is, how do you know when a discussion is too uncomfortable? Sometimes we as professors are met with like this eerie silence and the mistakes we make may be less obvious than we hope. How do you know if you've mistakenly crossed the line in class? Sometimes you don't. Sometimes you don't know until the evaluations come back and that's when you hear it. Sometimes you don't know until the call comes from the dean of students or the dean of academic affairs. I will say that. Listen to your gut. I think that a lot of times there's especially when you're new, you might be a little paranoid, but especially once you have experience, you start to get better at hearing the silences that are just the students don't know the answer. The students are uninterested in the conversation. The students are uncomfortable and the students are mad. One of the things that is helpful about being face to face again is it's hard to read faces in Zoom school.  That actually happened to me yesterday. I was teaching Baki. And when you start teaching affirmative action, especially as an African-American woman in a room full of white students, you have to identify where the minefields might be, especially because you recognize that there are minefields for them too. They're afraid to talk to you. And in navigating that space, it is easy for them to go too far, but it's easy for me to go too far. And I had a very uncomfortable conversation yesterday. I think that I got it right, though. But I did check in with them afterwards to ask them, one, did I go too far? It doesn't mean they told me the truth, but I did ask. And I feel that they sometimes appreciate just being asked if they went too far. But two, sometimes the truth is you honestly just don't know until the end of the semester. And if that's when you find out, you just fix it for the next year. Thanks. The discussion of minefields is a good transition to my question for Dylan. In your essay in the book, you write, when integrating that hill case into the classroom, I'm sensitive to the possibility students themselves or their loved ones might be among the community targeted. I remind the class always to be respectful. Recently, I've realized over the years, students have become more surprised that there would be negative treatment of persons living with AIDS. Some of the class discussion highlights the relevance of this case today. The common interest communities still seek to keep out others with actions cloaked in enforcing restrictive governance. Whether these others are residents of a home for victims of domestic violence or a sober home for residents receiving treatment to stay clean and healthy or group homes for people with mental impairment, neighbors will have some negative associations that will require good lawyers to know how to combat such discrimination. Turning to classroom discussions in my experience, discussions about mental health or domestic violence or addiction can be traumatic to some of our students. Can you talk a little bit about how you approach these conversations? Have you made a mistake when discussing some of these sensitive issues? Thanks, Nicole. Great. I appreciate you pointing out that part of my essay. I think as professors, we want to make sure that we're reaching as many students as we possibly can and when you bring up sensitive issues where they might have a personal connection to a path towards being healthy or relatives who are struggling, it can be a trigger. And so I don't think we should shy away from these kinds of difficult discussions. I think good lawyers are needed to help people through those difficult times. Of course, as Tiffany said, we should try to be respectful. And the way that I try to be respectful is to preface any of those discussions with kind of providing parameters as to what we're learning about and where we need to kind of focus our attention so that we don't go off the rails and talk about people's personal passions with respect to certain sensitive topics. I think prefacing the discussion also by saying, although it's sensitive, it's important that we talk about it. And when you acknowledge that importance, you're kind of validating the passions that your students have. And you can kind of, as the professor, steer the discussion around those students who are vocal and want to contribute to the discussion and those who are maybe sheepish because they don't want to talk about something that's really uncomfortable for them. I try to use words that are fairly sterile and I hesitate to say passionless just to make sure that I can kind of keep control of the discussion and not go down a path that would alienate some of the students from being able to learn. I think we all make mistakes and I think that that's inevitable. I think what I've learned over time is to try to remind students that their passions are maybe what's going to steer their career. But that what the goal for today's lesson is to learn about these topics and how best that we can understand and analyze the matter or the law. And, you know, try not to take it so personally and instead remember that this is a profession of service and that there might be memos you have to write or clients you have to interview where it would be personally quite difficult for you to be thinking about these things. But, you know, it's those moments where they need a lawyer to help them through. And that's why you that's why you're here in law school. So I try to focus on that. As far as mistakes I've made, thank you for asking. I think we've all made mistakes, even if we don't know it. I think also Tiffany mentioned this as well, is that, you know, when you make comments in class, they're not only being delivered by you, they're being received by an entire audience of students. And so there might be students who receive the information in ways that are not necessarily how you intended it, but it really is offensive or they took it negatively. And so being open to the idea that we make mistakes all the time and we just might not know about it is really humbling, but it's probably the best way to approach these sensitive topics.  Discrimination comes up in several doctrines and people might have felt victimized by discrimination. And so, you know, understanding that there's no intent behind trying to make a negative comment is going to help the students maybe be more receptive to the things that you're going to say. Yeah, those are the things that come to mind. Sure, thanks. So I guess I directly want to ask Dylan and Tiffany, what advice do you have for law professors when they make a mistake? Here is the thing that everyone's shown up for, like the mistake happens, what do you do? If you know you've made it, own it. I mean, that's really the only thing that you can do. It's part of what it means to be a professional. It's part of what it means to respect your students. You just acknowledge that you made the mistake. You apologize for having made the mistake. And then you work really hard not to make the mistake again. I have found that students more often than not, more often than not, will forgive you if you atone. And by atone, I don't just mean apologize. I mean, apologize and fix it. They are less forgiving if you dig in or if you give the impression that you are not willing to fix the problem for the future. I agree. I think taking ownership for the things that you have said in the moment when you realize that you've made an unintentional mistake. I think it's important. It's a great way to show the students that you're human. They'll probably mostly be understanding of you. I think that students are more understanding if you've worked hard to build and cultivate a personal relationship with your students and so that they feel invested in your success because you're helping them succeed. And so having that kind of humility to be able to accept that you maybe have misspoken in class and if it's truly unintentional, then I think it's an opportunity for everyone to learn. When you make a mistake, you don't just shut down and retreat. You instead try to use it as a moment to educate yourself, maybe educate others who didn't realize that what you might have said was a mistake as well in the class and take it as an opportunity. And so, yeah, I hear myself echoing the things Tiffany said, but I think that they're spot on. Yeah, I think Dylan's absolutely right when he hones in on the word opportunity. None of us is perfect. And as long as we are in this career, we're going to continue to learn or at least ideally will continue to learn. And so if we take our if we use our mistakes as an opportunity, it's just a way for us to get better. I I said this in another one of these events about addressing when a discussion goes out of control. But I think it makes sense in the context of professors making mistakes, too. My approach is that you don't just have the one opportunity when it happens to set it straight or to apologize. You have this ongoing relationship with the students. And as Dylan said, there's work that happened before the mistake was made. And then there's the mistake. And in the moment, you might just be so one, you might not have realized it. But two, you might be overwhelmed by it. You might be ashamed. You might be embarrassed. It might be all you can think about. But you couldn't address it beyond just when it happens. You can send out an email if you feel like you could be more genuine over email. You could address it in a future class. You could, like Tiffany said, discuss it with the students after or in office hours.  How like let's do a check in. You don't have to deal with the mistake in the same instant that you made it. We're human. We have feelings. We're complex. We might not be well positioned in that moment to address the mistake. And so like it might be better in writing or after a conversation with our family or with the person in the office next door, that's OK. I'm teaching is about the relationship and the trust. And so don't feel like I messed it up. And now there needs to be this apology. No, like the process of atonement can can go on over time and you don't lose the opportunity. I'm going to move on to a question for Amanda. Thank you for being here today, Amanda. I realize that this is terrifying that you are a student and you are afraid to be honest and say the wrong thing. But I asked you to speak today because you're amazing. And I know that no matter what you say, it will be the right thing. We want to hear from student perspective. Based on your experiences in the classroom, what has been an an effective or an ineffective way for professors to rebound from a mistake? Thank you, Nicole. My response to this, I guess, will echo a lot of what Tiffany and Dylan have already said, which is that mistakes happen, right? They're in some ways, I think, inevitable. I don't I'm I'm a second semester three. I don't think I've had a semester where a professor hasn't made a mistake. But I also don't think I have ever seen it dealt with effectively. And by effectively, I mean they addressed it and then didn't repeat it. As Tiffany said, like they work to fix it. And I know you mentioned email. And I do agree that situations don't always have to be addressed contemporaneously, but I do find that sort of trying to write the wrong via email is a bit dismissive. And I think I think that way, because if you don't take the opportunity to confront your students about it, you miss the opportunity to sort of, I think, create a forum where you can discuss why the thing that was done or said was offensive, why your students perceived it that way. I think another reason I haven't seen mistakes dealt with effectively is, again, what Tiffany and Dylan have said. I think a lot of times, professors don't know that they've made a mistake. Most of the time, I think, I hope things that are offensive were not intentional and law school is such an insular place where I think people that spend a long time in academia aren't particularly attuned to evolving cultural attitudes and language. And so professors are kind of insulated and don't know when they've crossed the line. And I think it's hard for students to bring that to their attention. And I think a lot of the times the onus falls on minority students, because usually those are the people who have been offended.  I probably can't ask this individual for a letter of recommendation moving forward.  So yeah, I think there's a lot of reasons that there isn't an effective response and we just kind of move past it. So I'm sorry, I don't have a more helpful answer there. But what has definitely not has what has definitely not been effective is any form of deflection. I remember once I had a professor who said a student's name incorrectly and their response to being corrected was to say that the student had such an unusual name and for context, that student was not even the only person in that class with that name. There was a second student with that name. So I think like deflecting the mistake is is never the right way to go. Denial is also not effective. I think it's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to just say like, I'm not racist. I'm not sexist. I'm not homophobic. It just came across the wrong way. But I think that if your student perceives something that you said is offensive, that's not an invitation to debate whether or not it was. It kind of is something that you just have to take it face value and try to learn to be better, ask why, why they perceived it as offensive, how you can be better. Thanks, Amanda. I was actually having a conversation with Amanda and some of the students who worked at the library today and I asked them, which of your professors actually ask you to come to them when they've made a mistake and the students said, none of my professors do that. And so like one of the strategies I employ is I specifically ask the students, if I make a mistake, I'm going to make a mistake. I try to normalize that I'm a human being and we make mistakes. And in order to learn and grow, I've got to get better. And in order for me to get better and to be more effective, sometimes I need you to tell me when I made a mistake. And it's going to happen. So it's not if it happens, it's when it happens. I need you to tell me. I write that in the syllabus. I reinforce that on the first day of class. I talk about it throughout the class. Hey, I might make mistakes. Come to me. And so I guess I would just encourage everyone out there to consider whether they have asked the students to talk to them when they feel like they make mistakes. And I know that it opens me up to criticism from students. But it also humanizes me and it opens me up to other perspectives. And so I think this is like a pretty straightforward and easy, but powerful technique to help like evolve and gather more information. And maybe as Amanda suggested, like be a little less insulated. Dylan and Tiffany, one of the most common ways in which I hear professors make mistakes is by calling students by the wrong name or by the wrong pronoun. This can take the form of dead naming a transgender student or perhaps calling a student the name of another student in the same class of the same ethnicity or race. Do you have any advice to professors on how to improve with respect to student names? Well, I will say this about gender identity. I have a seating chart, but I also work with my colleagues last semester to put a new policy in place where we were going to be mindful of gender identity. And the way that we were going to do this was to commit to doing a survey at the beginning of the semester where we would, for instance, ask for students pronouns. I had to actually train myself out of saying preferred pronouns because of the idea that it's not a preference, it's just a fact. But also if, but that's only relevant for or it's really mostly relevant for professors who want to address students with honorifics. If professors did not want to do something like that, the recommendation was to go to first names. And that's what I've done. But what helps me is a seating chart. I have a seating chart that I passed around at the beginning of the semester and the students identify themselves. I don't have, for instance, a generated or I have a generated document from the school that lists all my students' names, but I don't rely on it. I let them tell me what their first names are. And so that is what I rely on in so far as making a mistake where you must where you where you mix up two students who were of the same race. Really, all you can do at that point is say you're sorry. Or you can do a say you're sorry. And also everybody it's been my experience at every school where there is, you know, a Facebook of some sort. We all have secretaries and one trick might be to take index cards and have your assistant take the student's photo, put it on an index card with the student's name and then study the index cards so that you can get the student's faces in your head and that way, even if you haven't done that perfectly, if you've made that particular mistake after you've done it, go home, pull those two students index cards and then study those cards intensively so that you really do get, if nothing else, those students faces down so you really don't make that mistake again. I have a couple of things to add. I think Tiffany said a lot of things I wanted to say as well. Thankfully, at the schools, I have been on the faculty. There's always additionally on the roster what the student's preferred name is. And so although that's just their preferred name, at least it's the student letting the admissions office or whomever know that that is what they prefer to be called. And one of the things that I started really early was to try, like Tiffany said, to really work to memorize the student's names and then really try to impress the students in the first week or two. By having known their name already when we had just first met. And so when I call on students in class in those first couple of weeks, I call on them as a question, right? Is it Tiffany so that at least I'm prefacing my calling on Tiffany in the classroom with a little bit of uncertainty because I'm still learning your names and the reason why I do it that way is because I have found that students are more forgiving when you do make mistakes at the beginning of a semester than they would be if it's been an entire semester and you still don't know the students names. So I think all of us could maybe really recognize that it's not necessarily obvious on what we should be calling students and then be comfortable enough to make those mistakes early on in the semester so that students can see that you're trying to get it right and that if you were to make a mistake, they're more likely to be forgiving at the beginning of the semester than at the end. Yeah. So those are some of the things I wanted to add to what Tiffany said. Thanks. And I just want to acknowledge we are getting a lot of questions like far more than we can answer, but I'm going to try to work them in as we go. Amanda, so one of the questions was, can you talk a little bit about some mistakes you've seen, but in particular on this issue of naming or pronouns, can you talk a little bit about your experience in the law school classroom if you have any? Yeah. So I don't I don't think I have any first hand experience with this because I have a fairly American name. None of my professors have struggled with Amanda, but I have seen my peers struggle with this. I again will just echo a lot of what Tiffany and Dylan have said, which is I think when a professor tries to guess a name that that it's never going to end well. If you see a name that you think you're going to struggle with, ask. Ask them first for the pronunciation. And then from that moment on, jot down a phonetic spelling, elicit the help of your TA. This sounds harsh. I don't care how you do it. Get the name right. Whatever sort of sorry, whatever sort of tool you have to employ to help you do that. I mean, I know it's harsh, but I don't know. We're lawyers. We Latin terms roll off the tongue easily. You can learn a student's name. And then I think a separate issue is confusing students like interchanging names, and this happens a lot with students of color. I've seen this happen more than I thought I would having gone to law school in the years twenty nineteen to twenty twenty two. I have seen this happen more times than I can count. Don't don't confuse students of color's names. It's such an egregious mistake. As Tiffany said, like get their pictures, study them, whatever you have to do. Really, it's it's not a great mistake to make. Yeah. All right, we'll follow up with that and say that when I in a prior position that I held, I was responsible for reading students names at graduation.  When I say that, what I mean is I view saying students names incorrectly as deeply disrespectful because it's their name that their parents gave them that. And I hate it when I make a mistake. And so when we went through graduation practice, I did exactly what Amanda said. If I encountered a name that I didn't know how to say properly, I would literally just ask and then I would write it out phonetically. So that is that that advice spot on exactly what I do. All right, I have a follow up question to you, Tiffany. Sort of in your role as associate dean for diversity and inclusion. Sometimes when an issue arises in classrooms, students approach administration to intercede. I was wondering how you counsel professors to respond or react when this happens. And we got a question chatted in from do you have advice for the administration in this instance? So I don't have advice from my current position in a previous life. I was the academic team and I had issues come up in that setting more so than I have had in this setting. I've only been the associate dean for diversity for going on a year now. And the way that I would handle it, if a student came to me with a complaint, I would go to the professor and I would talk about it and I would say, OK, a student came to me and expressed this concern. Can you talk to me from your perspective about what happened in the classroom? And from there, what I would try to do is I would really try to broker some kind of a piece because regardless of whether or not I thought one was right or the other was right. Well, if the if the if the professor had done something egregiously wrong, depending on the level of the wrong, it's I think you have to point it out. You have to say, OK, this was deeply problematic and we need to talk about why. I never had an experience quite like that. The experiences that I had were more in the gray area of misunderstanding more than anything else. And in the course of having just an honest conversation about a misunderstanding where we ended up getting to was a place where the professor felt like he or she could go back into the classroom and try to address what happened and move forward productively. Now, I'm not going to necessarily say that that happened in a perfect way in every single instance, but that was certainly my approach to just talk to the professor and say, this is something that came to me. How can we try to make sure that your student is comfortable on a forward going basis? Was that advice for both the professor and from for the administration? Yes. Yes. I mean, I was I was speaking from the administrators with with my administrator hat on, but if you want to but but but but I suppose yes, it is advice for both. If if you're the professor, you don't necessarily know that you did it. So when the if the administration comes to you, I mean, I think this goes back to some of what was said earlier. A lot of this is putting putting self aside and regardless of what you intended, what you said or what you did was received in a particular way. And at the end of the day, our job is to make sure that students learn. And if there is something that happened in the classroom that is undermining our students ability to learn from us, then it's our job as professionals to take reasonable steps to try to address that flaw. Now, I realize that that has implications for things like academic freedom and whatnot. And so I don't want to speak too broadly, but I think as a default position, that's an appropriate position to take. I loved what you just said about self because it is so hard. This is my career. This is part of my identity. I want to get it right at the same time when someone is offended by something that I didn't intend to I didn't intend.  Or a more toxic, I think, version is, oh, but maybe you misunderstood me. Or maybe if I had said it differently, it wouldn't be offensive. Or maybe this was offensive, but not this. And it's it's a lot harder to breathe. And it is a lot harder to own it. And it is also a lot harder to I think about where the lens is. And so if I then put the lens on me and my mistake and how I feel about it, I'm redirecting the lens back to whiteness in a situation where that might be the worst possible course of action. And quickly, from my perspective, obviously, I'm not redirecting my lens back to whiteness, but I am redirecting redirecting it back to power because in the classroom, I hold the power. Absolutely. So I there was this blog post. So one of the things that I really find helpful is having a supportive community. So when I make a mistake on Friday mornings, we have a group of people here, faculty, staff who meet and discuss issues about teaching. And so I know I but no matter what happens during the week on Friday morning, I can come and talk about it with people who will share their opinions, even if they don't agree or if they agree. And so having a supportive community is one of the things I recommend for everybody. But a couple of weeks ago, we were discussing this issue and there was this blog post I found called White Teachers, How to Handle Being Called Racist. The author is a teacher who says, I talk about race a lot in my classroom and it's hard to talk about race, especially as a white guy and not mess it up. It's been the things I've said or not said. It's been who I called on or didn't. Sometimes just being a white teacher is enough.  Then again, we probably should be called racist if we're just standing there doing nothing. So you may get called racist. Get over it.  Being the constant victim of systemic and personal racism is way, way worse than being called racist, so get over it.  Maybe I'll start with this one. Thanks again, Nicole. I think I want to start by first saying we do have to we do have to accept that we're teaching the students that we have and not some, you know, class of students that we wish we had. And so I do think that the students, you know, are telling us a lot about ourselves when they react to the things that we do or don't do or say, just like the blogger mentioned in what you cited. And so I think we should meet our students to where they are, right? If our goal is to try to reach them, then when they react in a way that was not the intended reaction, they call us racist or sexist. Then I if it's truly unintentional, I want to know why that the students thought that that was racist or sexist so I can learn what I did or said that had that reaction and probably try not to have that happen again if it's going to alienate a student and prevent him or her from learning. And so that's one of the things that I wanted to say when I was listening to you just now was that, yes, that will inevitably happen. And yes, there might be some misunderstanding or confusion as to why a student reacts that way, but instead of focusing on the misunderstanding or confusion, accept that you have to reach the students you have in front of you. And if that requires you to learn more, then as humbling as that might sound, then you need to learn more. And if it was truly unintentional to have that reaction from your student, then use it as like we've said earlier today, an opportunity to educate. Tiffany, did you want to add to that at all? Don't. And the reason I don't is because I feel like this is a this is a question that's really very much about how well white people receive this kind of critique and I don't think it's appropriate for me to speak for you. Thanks. I have an anonymous question that I can ask to Tiffany or Dylan, so whoever wants to jump in, I teach a class where there are a lot of terms used in cases and otherwise where there are genuine genuine disagreements on which terms are preferred and the example given is disability law. This can be particularly fraught because the casebook will have non-preferred terms and students will genuinely think they're using the right terms. I've even had some students correct me on a term when I understand a different version to be preferred. Do you have advice for a situation like that? Please, Tiffany. I will say that in common law, where that comes up for me is with negro and colored. And I have white students who genuinely don't understand that those two words are anachronistic now. And the way that it comes out is they will have read it in a case and then in normal conversation later, I will hear them use the words again. And that's when I have to stop them and help them understand that no, these terms are anachronistic, it's appropriate for you to say black or African-American at this point in time. And so the way that I handle that is to make it clear because I've also had black students in particular come to me and say that they don't like, say the word negro. In fact, they have used they've described the word negro as the N word. And my conversation in that case was to say my perspective on that was that I did not think that negro and the N word were the same thing. But we have different points of view and I respect that. And so what I told them is as a professional and in the classroom, I would use case language when it was appropriate to use case language. But outside the classroom, I don't use those words. Having said that, the only place where I draw the line is in fact slurs. I don't use the N word. I don't use the F word. I don't use the C word. I don't use those slurs because regardless of the debate that occasionally rages among law professors about using words in context so students learn.   They know what word is being used. They know what word is being meant. You can use any religion and everybody understands exactly what is being said. They understand the legal principle that is at stake. You can discuss it without making people feel like their skin is on fire. That's hard to follow. But I also want to acknowledge that it comes up in other contexts as well. I think your question highlighted the fact that the Fair Housing Act uses the word handicapped, whereas the Americans with Disabilities Act uses the word disabled. And we've even reached a certain point where we try to be even more sensitive when it comes to those who fall within the purview of those statutes in property law. We also typically use a case somewhere along the lines that addresses the interplay between Native Americans and the federal government. And many of those cases refer to Indians. And so I only mentioned those few examples because as professors, we know they're coming up and what we can do is to provide that context, provide the parameters of what words would be appropriate before we actually engage in the discussion. And so I have to agree with Tiffany that you have to draw the line when it comes to something that would be a slur, you would be understanding if you're using language that is in the opinion, but you want to educate the students to their analysis in today's world would have to use the appropriate words and want to make sure that that's what that's what you focus on in dealing with these sensitive topics. Thank you. I think that that's a great theme to highlight. These things don't happen in a vacuum that there's work to be done in the syllabus. There's work to be done from the beginning up until the class where a mistake or incident happens and then after that. And so I think like there's a hyper focus on the mistake and maybe not the rest of the relationship. We have an attendee question which anyone can jump in on. How does cancel culture come into play after a mistake? Even if someone is contrite, it seems a lot of backlash is in the nature of how could someone not have known too little too late or they're not sorry about this. They're just sorry they got caught. Does anyone have a response to that? I guess I can start. I think I saw that come into the chat and I've been thinking about it for a few minutes. I go back to something I said a little earlier today about we have to teach the students who are in front of us. And I think that the students today have a platform, right? They all have individual websites on the internet for their social media accounts. And so they have a wide area that they can cover if they wanted to disparage someone. And maybe the person who spoke is deserving of it, but maybe it's not. Maybe it's unintentional and more worthy of an educational moment. So my response would be that, like Nicole just mentioned, what we do here is built on relationships of trust. And so if as professors, right from the start of every semester, we try to build those personal relationships with our students, we try to make them feel like every class session is a one on one tutorial, but it just happens to be in this group setting, maybe if if we were perhaps more open with our own vulnerabilities when we come to class, they can they can kind of root for us as the professor trying to do a good job teaching them. And maybe the students would be more understanding when these mistakes come up and they wouldn't resort to what would be a canceled culture. But those are the students we have. And so maybe we have to do more in the lead up to these conversations where there's maybe a higher risk of making a mistake so that we can avoid what would be the ramifications justly or unjustly. So I've actually thought like, sorry, Tiffany, do you want to go? No, go ahead. I've thought so much about this. I teach a class on race, right? And there are so many students and I think so many white students who are afraid to talk and say the wrong thing because of canceled culture, because they're going to be canceled by their classmates because of social media, whatever. And as a professor, like I get it, like I don't want to be canceled either. I don't want the wrath of the internet. I don't want the wrath of anyone. But it to me feels really inauthentic for me to be worried about making mistakes and to not do the work because someone might cancel me if and when I make a mistake. And so because I'm always convincing other people to talk about race, I have to be brave and like I have this privilege and I have this choice and I choose it and I just embrace it that like I'm going to make mistakes and I treat myself with tremendous grace when I do and I try to understand the context of the society we're in. I speak about canceled culture with the students. I use myself as an example because I'm putting myself out there and they should too. And so I get that there is a concern. I get we care about our reputation as attorneys and as humans. But the whole point of like how difficult some of these conversations are about gender, about identity, about race, about religion is because we don't exercise the muscles of these conversations enough in the law school classroom. And so we need to exercise the muscle more. We need to make more mistakes. There needs to be less to cancel us for because we're all in this together trying harder. And I know that that's a bit patliana and it's also a bit dismissive of the question I don't mean to be. I have given this so much thought. But my answer is like I'm just going to lead and I'm going to do it bravely and cancel culture be damned. Although, you know, hopefully it doesn't happen. Yeah, I mean, I want to pick up on something Dylan said in talking about trust. I mean, you're both talking about being brave, but also this idea of trust is an important one, because if you've established the relationship of trust, then there is a greater likelihood that the students will respond to you without the instinct to try to silence or try to punish you. But even if that does happen and even if you're not the one to whom it's happening, it's happening to someone with whom they don't have the same relationship of trust. And you are in a position to try to say negotiate between the two sides. I think that an important part of doing that is honoring the fact that the students' perspectives are worthy of respect. It's important to ensure that you respect their right to speak up. But I also think that depending on the nature of the mistake that modeling empathy is an important thing too, because. I'll be I mean, I'll be honest. I think that sometimes, especially in a world where social media amplifies mistakes and amplifies agreement and outrage. One of the things that can sometimes get lost is the the opportunity to forgive. Now, again, I don't want to be dismissive because some people, you know, let them go. It's fine to just let them go. But I don't know that it's always the case that we get the judgment call right. And so I think that if we are able as leaders in our institutions to be smart about walking that line between respecting this respecting student responses, but also being empathetic when it's called for that we can do a better job, perhaps of getting the answer right. All right. Well, we have a minute or two left. Dylan, Tiffany or Amanda, do you have any final thoughts on this topic you want to share? Thank you. This was a great conversation. I just wish we had more time to talk to the folks in the chat. Me too.  I just want to say thank you as well. I I've enjoyed the panels in the past. Some of the speakers, I've really hung on there every word. And so you've really put together some really great groups. If I did have one final thought, I would just want to encourage us to maybe bring up issues of diversity right from the start, no matter the course that you teach, it's not just for the employment discrimination course. It should be for all of the courses because I imagine there's diversity in every doctrine. And so if we start those conversations right from the beginning, it actually kind of lets the entire class to the idea that there's going to be some some topics that are maybe sensitive that we are, you know, learning to to talk as professionals about. Yeah, I think that that really underlines the point of the book. It was integrating doctrine and diversity. It's not here's a race class. Here's a gender class. It's this needs to be taught in every class and like sort of brought into the entire curriculum and the more we do it, the better we're going to get at it. I'm thank you, Tiffany and Dylan and Amanda. Thank you all the attendees. Thank you to Anna and Dean Bowman. Thank you to the events and planning teams at Roger Williams and CUNY and Jurist, especially Jane and Chelsea. They are the magic that happens behind these events that you don't see. Our next event will be on the afternoon of the 26th of April and we'll be tackling reconsidering and auditing our syllabus and classroom practices. Thank you so much, everyone.


Again, here we go, Tom, I'll let it into you to kickstart the meeting with Kevin. Pleasure, by the way, to have you all here today. So thanks. I'll add to Andrea's thought. Thanks for joining here, whether it's live or whether you're listening to the recording, which will put out on the wiki as well as we'll put a link on the LinkedIn website. Hopefully we'll have a just a quick quick little thoughts. Here, we're still working on bringing together the trade finance and the supply chain LinkedIn. LinkedIn pages are wiki pages are merged together. For some reason, the old ones are still, we haven't still out there, but we thought we closed them down so some people have signed up for that we're trying to get all it so it's squares away it turned out a little bit harder than we thought it was going to be. So any case that's kind of an update on on the combination of our two groups here. Today we have an old friend from the supply chain special interest group and so Kevin Otto from GS one has joined us today to talk about some of the work that they've been doing around blockchain and seafood traceability. Kevin, I met him at the global forum. How long ago is that Kevin was two over two years ago now right. Yeah, yeah, it was right before not long before travel all shut down for him. There you go me the one of us got COVID from that, at least I know of. Nope. I don't think anyone got COVID from the global forum and I guess they get that also the advertisement Dublin if you're interested in September is the next live global forum. So today, we're going to have Kevin share with us a little bit of thoughts Kevin has up on the screen here antitrust caution. I don't think caution and hyper ledger but say the same any trust rules apply from a hyper ledger perspective don't say anything of proprietary nature don't include this is an open discussion here for all of us and hopefully will again this will be up as a recording and others be able to see that So with that, Kevin, I will let you take it from here. Maybe you could share. Do you like questions along the way or do you want to wait till the end. Yeah, I feel free to jump in as I'm talking I don't want to just drone on the entire time. So I think we have a manageable group here so if you just kind of want to jump in and have questions as I go through. Please feel free to interrupt me I think that'd be fun. Beautiful. Okay, thanks Kevin it's all yours. All right, thank you so good afternoon everybody. I appreciate you all giving me the chance to talk a bit about the work that GS one us has done really over the last couple of years, as it pertains to blockchain interoperability and as Tom mentioned, what a lot of the interoperability work that we've done has focused on the seafood globally, and I'll get into a bit of the why that is here as I go through the presentation so I think Tom did a nice job or obviously our antitrust cautions jive so I won't take you all through that. I just wanted to start off the conversation by talking a little bit about GS one us for those of you who are either live in a line or listening at a later date, who may not know who we are so we are a neutral global, not for profit standards organization. I just want to start off this conversation I don't have anything to sell anybody on on the line today that's that's not our role at GS one us. We work with industries to develop standards that can drive cost and complexity out of this out of the supply chain. One of the main ways of doing that is to ensure that trading partners up and down the supply chain are speaking the same language so you know examples I like to use is here in the US we're very closely with Coke and Pepsi. Right so cold because he obviously fears competitors, but they collaborate to compete on the use of standards right so there's no benefit in them creating their own numbering system to name their products electronically or name their locations. So they use GS one standards in their supply chains for that portion to ensure that there is no commonality of numbers that could clash in electronic infrastructure so you know coke and Pepsi or both name and their products. At some point they're both going to name a product ABC 123 right and so that's going to cause problems in the supply chain, because all of a sudden you don't know what you have a 12 ounce can of Coke 12 ounce can of Pepsi it's difficult to tell in an increasing electronic environment so our goal is to take that you know ambiguity out of the supply chain and work with our members to ensure that they're not seeing that duplication so really just creating that common language of how businesses talk to each other. So we work with all sorts of industries in the US about 25 different industries several hundred thousand members of GS one us that we work with our four core industries here in the US are food service retail grocery apparel and general and merchandise and health care which encompasses regulated health care items and pharmaceuticals. Those are our core focuses we actually have industry initiatives based on those four industries that come together to decide, you know, a what are the supply chain challenges our industry is facing and be how do we deploy GS one standards to have alleviate some of those supply chain pressures. So we talk about ourselves as the global language of business and that's typically put into three different dimensions, identify capture and share. So identify at a very basic level is the identification of products and locations unambiguously in the supply chain using our standards. You may be familiar with the term G 10 global trade item number which is the identifier for products, global location number the identifier for locations right now becomes kind of the bedrock of ensuring I know what a product is and where it's moving through the supply chain. So certainly you need a way to capture that data I think the way the mechanism that most people are familiar with is the trustee old barcode right so it's still the number kind of amazes me about 6 billion times a day. GS one barcode to scan somewhere in the world. So that's how a lot of the information is being captured around batch lots serial number right but it's not always just that barcode that you see at point of sale. You know it could be things like RFID chips as well that are using GS one standards. And then obviously you need a mechanism to share that information with your trading partners. And so we have a mechanism not just for sharing the traceability data which I'll talk about here and a bit more details we go through the presentation, but also product master data. So we have a system called the global data synchronization network or GDSN, and I apologize at the top for all the acronyms it is like a different language please stop me if I rattle through one you're not familiar with. But the global data synchronization network is something that both data providers so manufacturers for example, and people who need access to data like distributors or retailers can plug into to share standardized data about the attributes and specifications, images, allergens, nutritionals, and like the information is standardized so it's more easily digested into various systems that are plugged in, as opposed to kind of it being a free for everyone sitting up their own way of sharing that information. So that's just a little bit about how we identify capture and share supply chain. Kevin real fast on the data synchronization network sounds kind of like an EDI band type of idea you're providing. So you can still we still leverage EDI so it doesn't replace EDI but yeah it's it's a mechanism for basically thousands of different attributes, regardless of industry that can be shared from that data source that's a supplier so yes it's very similar. Okay, thank you. So it's just kind of around the role of standards in blockchain and GS one started GS when you asked specifically started looking at blockchain technology. In 2016, you even as early as 2016, because I'm sure as all of you and I'm preaching to require quite a bit of height around the use of blockchain and how can help revolutionize some supply chains and at the outset we weren't sure, you know, is blockchain somehow replacing the needs for standards. And as our organization started to dig into this a bit we found absolutely not right if anything else amplifies the need for standards right it's a ledger for sharing information, but you still need to actually be generating that visibility data to share with your trading partners. So we found that it was actually a pretty good spot for us to do some thought leadership and talk about how, you know, even blockchain cloud based however you want to share traceability data that need to have the information standardized so the next one block chain ecosystem the next is paramount to make these solutions work. So as we started digging into this and it wasn't just us at GS one us was actually we hosted several executive round tables with different members members of GS one us from different industries. And the exploration of blockchain its use was pretty similar people were looking at is how they can enhance their supply chain visibility and traceability. They understood that standards were going to be necessary because the key theme we kept hearing from our executives is we don't want vendor locking. But in other words, I don't want to be forced to join a particular technology, simply because the retailer that I'm selling to is using it and that's what they're demanding. We want to make sure that there's interoperability between ecosystems. So I have a choice I'll share the data but I like to choose the solution partner, and the technology that underpins it and who I'm working with. So we started to get quite a bit of questions from our industry executive members around how we can make that work. And so that kind of leads me to how we started our interoperability pilots so we kind of put this, we said, very basics, how are we going to crawl to start this discussion with industry. And again, like I said if you have any questions that I go through this feel free to stop me. So the way we approached our interoperability pilots at the outset was first to work with solution partners. Right so we didn't bring in end users right away we didn't bring in the people who actually using technology. We brought them to people who were developing the technology. And we basically created a system where all these technology partners were going to play a role in the supply chain. And we generated dummy data to share between difference blockchain ecosystems. So the idea here was can we use electronic product code information services, which is a GS one standard that I'll get into here a bit more detail but it's essentially the what where the why of the supply chain and standardized data. And can we use that to help stitch together these different traceability events across different ecosystems both blockchain and non blockchain traceability systems. And so what we, what we realize is yes this can be done right so using electronic product code information system if long as the data is standardized. It doesn't matter if it's blockchain, non blockchain, you know, hyper ledger versus another ecosystem the data can be shared, as long as it standardized that's what allows it to be digested downstream by other trading partners. And so what we realize what is really needed is kind of what data needs to be shared right that's kind of the bigger piece of the puzzle here I think most of you who have worked a lot closer and the technology and I have say the technology works. It can be done, you can make it talk to each other. The bigger challenge is what data are you sharing and when and that's a lot of technology discussion as much as an industry discussion. And so just a little bit more about EPCIS and I can share some information from our website about this right this is another global standard that is specifically around creating and sharing visibility data that you can see the physical flow of products through the supply chain. Like I mentioned it's the what where when and the why of the supply chain. What is the product. Where is it today, where is it flowing, and why is it moving right a purchaser was created right there's there's some type we need to destroy per product for some reason. Right so why why is what's happening supply chain happening today we've created a global language that allows you to share that data in a standardized fashion, so that it means something not just within your four walls but as the information flows downstream to the next person in the supply chain. And a bit about read the benefits of EPCIS and I'm not going to do a ton of detail on the standard itself. But again, as I mentioned it is global. It allows for a more holistic view of the supply chain than the way a lot of companies do business today where you know you might be able to see one up and one down, and not really concerned with, you know, three steps down the supply chain where your product is or you know where it's going. We know that a lot of the blockchain implementations that we've been talking to trade workers about is about getting that circular flow of data that I can see you know where my product went where is it selling why isn't it selling so that I can make more informed decisions about how I drive cost and complexity out of the supply chain so having a standardized language that flows all day around allows for that kind of circular flow of data where if you have a bunch of organizations that ingest the data, you're going to have to do some type of translation to make sense of it, and then send it down a line the next person supply chain has to do the same thing. You're really just adding a lot of cost and complexity and the supply chain, and not getting anything valuable out of those efforts and that's kind of what we're trying to get to pass here with the use of the PCIS. Maybe you're going to talk here about this. It is. EPC is sat stand on top of G 10s and global location indicators and barcodes. Okay, absolutely. Yeah, so part of the PCIS is sharing G 10s is sharing GLNs. It's also sharing some information that's you know what we call critical tracking events and key data elements, and some of those key data elements maybe something as simple as using the ISO format for time time stamps that sort of thing so not necessarily our standard, but an important piece of that was key data elements and need to be shared but yes absolutely Tom at its core. You can't do this if you're not using G 10s and GLS that's that's absolutely fundamental. Okay, good. Thank you. Good question. And so this just kind of gives you an idea of this crawl phase and so the right you can see the solution partners that we worked with. The first phase of the interoperability pilot we had the right bio, which is I can't really call my startup anymore they've been around for a few years but a smaller blockchain organization does really great work that we've worked with and I'm certainly some larger ones and I'm sure you're familiar with SAP IBM food trust, and then food logic actually is a food traceability program that's cloud based so it's not blockchain at all. So what brought them in was to prove that it really doesn't matter which technology is underpinning your particular platform. It's about the use of the standardized data that's going to allow this information to flow up and downstream. And so, you know, this is kind of the perfect world scenario the way that we did this right so we had all the information we needed. Like I mentioned that we generated, and we asked all of the solution partners to take on a different role in the actual physical supply chains for example, you know, in this right I was the packer and the shipper. Right so and they we created the dummy data and shared it amongst the trading partners to say yes we can stitch together these traceability events, because excuse me the data is standardized. And so one of the things that was abundantly clear from the start and this to be honest was not necessarily a surprise for us a lot of this effort that the crawl stage was around proving what we thought we already knew. Right and so there's really a two part solution. I'm sorry I'm getting a little bit of feedback here. And the technology, right, so I think this is the part that mostly you're ever, you know, much more familiar with an item right so understanding the technology, how it works. Can you share standardized data in in the blockchain ecosystems I think we kind of knew going in the answer is going to be yes it was just around how difficult is it going to be. And so we knew that using global unique identification was going to be core and using EP CIS data. And to talk about there is just access and authorization who has access to the data and when and creating a network governance model, which again even that could be part of more of a industry discussions in some instances. The bigger challenge is the business side of it right so it's not about will we see kind of the 2080 here. 20% is understanding the technology and how it works the 80% is okay you've now decided as an industry that you want to share traceability data. Right if you have 10 different steps in the supply chain and 10 different players. I'm willing to bet that you're not only going to get 10 different definitions of what trace abilities means, but you're certainly going to get different perspectives on what data is necessary versus what data you might want to keep as proprietary. And so that's I think the bigger part of the discussion that industry needed that he needs to have is, what do we need to share, when and with whom. And that's going to be different from one industry to the next and so that was one of the things as we went through just even this initial part said yet we can figure out this technology piece but the business part of it is is a much bigger solve. Kevin, if there was a question in the chat here from Dennis. Oh, sorry yeah it's a little hard for me to see the chat on the presentation. Yeah no no worries so that's why I'm bringing it up here what if what if I have multiple components of this particular product with a barcode and maybe Dennis can elaborate on that since I'm not exactly clear what you're asking Dennis. I'm thinking about medical device. For example, on the, this on the dispatching on the on the package you have one barcode. But if you open it for the traceability reasons and for the interoperability you have, you may have multiple components. It can be before the production or before the utilization. And that was my question, can you expand the barcode. I mean, temporarily, I mean with if you need it. Yeah, so there's different barcodes that are used at different points in the supply chain so if you think about product flowing through a warehouse there's typically barcode on the box that's going to be scanned there. And then if you're breaking down that product at the warehouse to ship individual units to a retailer or to a pharmacy. You can scan the individual unit barcode and each one of those are going to have different information on them some of them you know one's going to identify the case. The other is going to identify the sellable unit. So it's actually pretty common that we talk about things like inner packs and cases and even pallets to have multiple different barcodes. It's just about where is that particular barcode relevant in the supply chain. And when you're talking about components and maybe there's several components of one product like physical components. What typically you're trying to scan there is the actual selling units you may not capture all the data for every components but the idea here is as that information is being shared throughout the supply chain that is still being captured upstream in your system so you don't have to do all the components of that particular product because they've already been scanned at different points in the supply chain. You don't necessarily have to scan every barcode that's on there but it's a good question. And that's where different industries and actually the some of the guidelines that I have here you'll see there's a healthcare guideline around traceability for pharmaceutical on there talks about which barcodes need to be used and when in the supply chain and then again goes back to those industry discussions to figure out how that works. Thank you very much on both. Sure. And so, you know what we realize again was going to be the bigger challenge here is getting industry to talk to each other and come to a set of agreements and so you know we've got some documents here that GS one has worked on obviously just around EPC is and what it isn't how to use it but on the right you can see we have as I mentioned a healthcare guideline around compliance with the drug supply chain security act which GS one standards are heavily used in helping companies come to compliance on that regulation. But again that was industry coming and sitting down deciding hey we would like to use GS one standards to make this work. And here's the data we have to share so it's a pretty comprehensive guideline. That took quite a while to pull together and again that's where you need the willingness for industry. And then the reason that we had actually decided that the next portion of our pilot was going to be around seafood is because that global dialogue on seafood traceability already existed. Industry had already sat down and come to those those conclusions around what they wanted to share and when. So, we already had something that was agreed upon and it made it a bit easier for us to test the hypothesis. Yes, if we have this information, we can fairly seamlessly share data down the supply chain. And then we had to what Kevin's talking we had folks from global dialogue and seafood traceability on one of these calls for the supply chain a couple years ago. And I think I remember Kevin, I'm saying it took him like five years to get that get that standard nailed down for seafood traceability. Yeah, yeah, it's, you know, and I think the the DSC SA one I just mentioned was a couple of years for people together to write and that was it that's even a smaller lift because just the way the pharmaceutical supply chain is structured you've got these basically three wholesalers that do about 95% of all the business here in the US I was a lot less corralling than there is in the seafood space. So yeah, when you're talking about getting all these different players and sometimes competing initiatives, it can be difficult to come to some of these conclusions and that's that's a real challenge. So, you know what we realize I think at the end of the first part and I'll get in the second part here in a moment was that data sharing you need this specific event data requirements from industry. Global unique identity is absolutely paramount you're not going to get anywhere without it. And that's why you need kind of that that common language, otherwise you're just going to be, you can share data, all you want if no one can adjust it and understand it and that's pretty So, you know, we did what we realized is as we were going through this we're actually talking a lot about blockchain because you realize it didn't matter what the technology was. But because the impotence for digging into this was around blockchain just kind of this slides gives you an idea of where we see GS one standards, kind of sitting right so you've got all these different systems in the supply chain that generate data. But that data needs to be valuable right it needs to be able to be translated, it needs to be understood, it needs to be accurate and that's where GS one standards can help with the standardization of that information. And then that can be written as a ledger entry to to blockchain or to other technologies. And then the next parts and we're still crawling here we tend to crawl phase one and crawl phase two because we were trying to you know be really diligent about we, excuse me we approached these is now we thought it's time to bring in end users and actual supply chain data so as I mentioned before we kind of use dummy data, perfect world scenario we know that's not how the real supply chain works. We're actually having data from specific industry supply chains across different solutions, so that they can do the same thing around trying to stick together that trace ability, but doing it with actual data in the supply chain. And again we went with seafood because we already had that standard that had already been developed by industry. So we did add another solution partner for this part of the project whole chain otherwise the technology providers remain the same from the initial portion of the pms. And you'll see the industry players that we added so seafood union bumblebee nor pack beaver street fisheries. Walmart and the Institute for food technologists so actual industry that helped us share data to you know prove out what we had seen in the first part of our hypothesis. And certainly the global dialogue for seafood traceability was a huge component of the work we did. We wanted to use components of the food safety modernization act proposed rule 204 job legal beginning the final rule in November of this year, which is again around data sharing for food traceability. So we wanted to use some components of that as well. And I won't go into a ton of detail on what the global dialogue is like I mentioned it was industry coming together and talking about what data needs to be shared throughout the supply chain. And internationally agreed upon will be called key data elements. So that means what are the pieces of information that need to be shared at each critical tracking event or CTE and critical tracking events or things like commissioning of a product transformation of raw raw materials into a new product shipping other product from point A to point B right so those are the key events where you want to be capturing information and they've defined what those key data elements those pieces of information benchmarks for verifying data availability validity let's try that again. And so these are other things you have to think about as well just because just because you know it's time mentioned it takes five years to come with this guy. You know you can you can back on their five years or more before you have full implementation so another challenge that you have with industry is actually setting up milestones for when these things need to start being adopted. Otherwise it can be very difficult to get traction. I'll add a to my two cents on that I really like the work that they did and you can find their documents out there go to global dialogue and see food traceability and just do a Google search and you'll you'll find it. They have some very nice documents that I've used for other projects just kind of a model for these key data elements and critical tracking events. So, maybe it may be something not intended but I think they did really nice work that can be applied elsewhere. Yeah, that's a great point. And I think that's important as your, you know, industry members are talking will be continuously tell them is just because you don't have guide you're not necessarily building from scratch right because there are some really comprehensive guides that are out there. And you know 30,000 feet it's still about sharing product data with your trading partners right so obviously there's nuances you change from seafood to like the I talked to somebody about the wood supply chain nest right yeah there's going to be differences but it's still about sharing accurate product information so there's there's the global dialogue is a great document to use when you're having those conversations and same with you know the FSMA 204 I won't go into a ton of detail yet because the rule hasn't even been finalized yet but it's about how can we leverage emerging technology like blockchain to make this food supply chain safer. And using kind of the same same idea of key data elements and critical tracking events. So, the only real difference I think as I mentioned in phase two of what we did here is we had an actual actual application standard that we were using. And we were following specific data and a specific use case right so can the technical providers share the information across platforms in this more real world use case. And what we found was yes, there were challenges, right and so this was this also was not unexpected. So what we realized as we went through the second part of the supply chain is there are several key takeaways to what the challenges were in industry so a number of them I touched on already and I won't go through. Again, but around that industry specific standards is core right that's 80% of the challenge you've got to do that. So what we realized is even with, you know, so end users who have been leveraging GS one standards for years in their supply chains, there were still gaps, right there, they realized there are parts of their supply chain, where they were not capturing all of the key data elements that they should be in order to really have holistic traceability so think a lot of the people that were part of this pilot realize they have some in-house cleanup to do to make sure their processes are capturing all of the information at the relevant times. And then again, it's, you know, these are evolving processes, even if you've been doing this for years you can expect to find some of those gaps. There was also just master data elements so around the not just the dynamic traceability to information that you need to be sharing but there were gaps in the actual product master data and how that was being shared. So it's important you need that product master data really to tie together what the product is that's flowing through your supply chain. So when that's incomplete it causes challenges in the visibility of the products.  Why, why using master data and that transactional data. You're using both. Right, so I, if I understand the question correctly the transactional data being, you know, the GTIN the GLN and where the product is flowing. But there's also a host of attributes that people need to have in their systems to actually more effectively ship and receive products so think about master data like the tie high of a palette, or the weight of a product. It's information that is generally shared outside of the transactional visibility data, but it's still information that is important to the flow of goods through the supply chain. So they kind of work in conjunction with each other you've got that global data synchronization network that helps you more seamlessly share the product master data. And then the EPC is standard, what helps which helps you share that transactional visibility data. That's the key right there so you're using both Louisa, does that answer your question. Yes, thank you. Beautiful. Okay, you hit it there Kevin. Thank you thank you yes and please like I said jump in if you have any more questions I appreciate. One challenge that we see a lot of is upstream in the supply chain. The further upstream you get the less adoption of standards and just the less concrete the practices are around traceability. And that's a challenge everyone's after you know full supply chain visibility so for example, with a lot of the seafood work we did right so as you get on to actual fishing vessels. The way that they track if they're tracking at all some of the visibility data is not fully formed. Right so there needs to be the more pervasive use of standards upstream in the supply chain. And that's where we need to work through, not just those solution providers you see as the multipliers right the people that that are kind of talking about this every day but also work with our core end user members to make sure they're driving this practice. Through the supply chain, because that's a major challenge if you want to get full supply chain visibility but you're not capturing the actual visibility at the very source of where practice harvested, then you're starting out behind the eight ball and it's difficult to kind of stitch together that information if it's not it doesn't exist at the outset. And so that was one of the challenges and one of the challenges honestly that's kind of a bit about our purview. I think that was more pervasive than we might have thought was just connectivity issues right so yes I'd love to share this data, but I'm not my fishing vessel in the middle of the land I don't exactly have the best Wi Fi here so there's there's other challenges that industries and the same thing goes for you know farms and remote areas even of the US, where some of the, you know broadband access and things like that are not as prevalent as you'd like to be and sometimes that creates challenges in sharing this visibility data. So what a lot of people do is end up doing it later in the process and there's a chance that it's not as accurate if you're not doing it right at the source. Quick question about inputting the data from the fishing boats and other upstream places. Are you still seeing it mostly done manually but by human or are you seeing more adaptation of using RFID or Bluetooth other sensors things like that. At present it's more manual. When you get when you get to that point I mean obviously we would love to see it move towards more, you know something RFID or to be quite honest even if it's not RFID on the actual fishing vessel. What we're seeing is a lot of solutions be they blockchain based or not have some pretty, pretty cool apps that will allow you to upload EPC is formatted data on your smartphone. So it's not, you know, it's not Bluetooth right at the source, but it's at least allowing you to get that data. But again what we're seeing is for a host of different reasons kind of a lack of enforcement of that upstream and that becomes a challenge. Makes sense. Thank you. Thank you. So I think those were kind of the key takeaways from what we saw in our couple of different pilots I mean I think at a high level. The technology works. The ability to use standards to share data from one ecosystem to the next works. I've said it, you know, numerous times and it bears repeating the chat the biggest challenges industry agreement and to Tom's earlier point that can take years. You at first need the appetite to even start the conversation so you know we've talked with industry around do you need a specific traceability guideline for blockchain. The answer seems to be no right I mean the global dialogue was not blockchain based when it was brought together, but it can be used in blockchain so I think that the good news is you're not necessarily starting from scratch and scratch in different industries, but there's still a lot of work to do in the conversation piece and just a blocking and tackling to make sure that the user standards is pervasive in your supply chain. So I think I've kind of hammered that point home that we make interoperability possible that kind of what we have where we position ourselves in the blockchain discussion and another visibly platform as well. I did have one other thing I wanted to do before I close it out and open it up more broadly the questions for the group and Tom had asked me to touch on this we connected several weeks ago. Back in 2018, we actually started a cross industry blockchain discussion group that was focused on understanding how blockchain can be used in any supply chain, namely those four major ones that we work with in the US I mentioned at the top food apparel and healthcare, because they were all kind of looking at the same. They were all looking at it as how to be enhanced visibility, you know, and from our perspective the standards are industry agnostic so you can learn from how something is being done in retail and translate that to the pharmaceutical space. So we set up a blockchain cross industry discussion group that actually went until the end of last year so we got solid three years of discussions around blockchain and its potential in various supply chains. And what we did at the end of last year is kind of stepped it up to more of like a 60,000 foot view and change the group of bits so we're talking about supply chain optimization as a whole, not necessarily couched in one particular technology, which is generally how we talk about the standards we don't position it in one technology another blockchain was just such a unique opportunity for us because there was so much talk around how it could help revolutionize supply chain that we absolutely had to take advantage of that. But members of our various industry initiatives that I had mentioned participate in this group I leave these calls on a monthly basis and it's really interesting right we have solution providers we have end users big and small as part of the discussion. Talking about the challenges in their supply chain and as I'm sure you're all aware they are many right now. And that's how we can leverage us one standard so encourage you if you're interested in learning more about this group. Again, it's not just blockchain focused anymore but it is blockchain certainly is still a component so if you're interested in learning more about how you can become a member of one of our industry initiatives I'd be happy to have those conversations with you. Kevin is there a website for that or is this something they should contact you be very. You know, if you're interested in contact me and and in my contact information issue you can certainly go to GS one us.org to read more about it. But in terms of actually getting engaged in the conversations will need to link you up with somebody from the GS one us staff so I can if you reach out to me I can put you in touch with the right people dependent upon which industry you fall in. Great. Good. Kevin this this has been good I'm glad to you that there was some progress or some work thanks for sharing. What you guys have done over the last couple years and given us additional food for thought as we're continuing the evolution of adopting blockchain and supply chain and trade finance out there. So, I'm going to open up for questions see what else is out there thanks folks for asking questions you can ask them a chat I'll monitor those, or just take yourself off a mute and you're welcome to add in a thought there. So I'll give it a second. See, Michael's already asked a question a Michael, can you describe the alignment between GS one and ISO related in ISO related to quality. Portable mass and portable master data. Michael if you'd like to share more on that you're welcome to. I'm learning more about GS ones work recently and have been working with the ISO 8000 groups under TC 184 SC four and five, and just was wondering your thoughts on alignment of those, those efforts because they seem to be addressing very similar. Master data and transactional data. Yeah, I will say I don't know all of those those work groups specifically but generally we have a whole team from our standards organizations at our standards part of our organization that actually sit on a lot of those ISO calls. So we're actually part of a lot of those discussions for that reason how can we make sure the standards are complimentary, and that we're not duplicating efforts so I can't speak to those groups specifically because I don't sit on those particular discussions, but it will say that we're not using a lot of those TC, you know, name your name your number after that calls on a regular basis. So if there if there's specific questions around things that you think Mike might be duplicative. Certainly let me know what I can get in touch with our standards team to make sure that we have a voice in that in those particular groups. So Kevin I've just taken a snapshot of your contact information. If it's cool with you I'll reach out for you offline and engage in a supplementary conversation. We'll be happy to thank you. Good. Anybody else out there. Thank you for that presentation. Very much appreciated. I work for the I triple a interoperability for medical device in it environment. So we have been also discussing in the identity management perspective. So, so you have the UDI identities. Yep. And in consideration with the whole identity management how do you suppose to build the traceability and the whole interoperability throughout the system throughout the workflow throughout the supply chain. And it's really very much complimentary for me. Thank you very much. Yeah, my pleasure. Happy to share it. And like I mentioned, we have, you know, that whole kind of pharmaceutical side of the house that hosts work groups that that's hot, you know, UDI and you know, I have some colleagues very much more well first and that world and I am but we do have you know, discussions around challenges and solutions in that space. So again, if anyone's interested and kind of get involved in some of the discussions please let me know. Thank you very much. I will contact you. Thank you. I'm going to ask a question here for Andrea here since we've merged supply chain and trade finance and they kind of go together here.  Yeah, so it's an interesting question Tom a lot of when it people like I mentioned, when people initially got involved with the use of blockchain it was around enhanced supply chain visibility. And where they started to gravitate after that was how can I deploy smart contracts to actually help with things like accounts payable and accounts receivable. So automating that process based on what actually shipped and what actually was received, kind of mitigating the challenges around often voice deductions because you, they say you shorter product and you say you didn't that sort of thing. So yeah, I think people are looking at what are the financial implications of how I can automate some of these processes and then kind of redeploy that workforce the other parts of the organization where the kind of direct human is actually necessary as opposed to where it can be automated so I'm not sure if that answers your question but you are hearing a lot of discussion around that. I mean it answers the answer from my perspective you gave one example Andre I don't know if there's another one that you wanted to bring up there if that makes sense to you. That's perfect explanation actually is fits perfectly into the world of open accounts. So when tracking back the origin of certain product and automating through smart contracts that's big fit. It's not related basically to structure treat finance rather than commodity finance. That's why I see this feeling the most. But that's considered that's 90% of the global commercial exchanges, the pie is that big. Sorry, I didn't want to interrupt you. No no no please please, like I said please jump in. It's interesting as the conversation evolve you know it was really just about visibility but then when people realize like now that I have this visibility. What other things can I do with it, besides just knowing where my product is and why it's there right and so that's where people started to realize like hey I can use this to to automate a lot more processes that I might be able that I may have thought of in the past. And that's really coming to the forefront as the members were talking to her dealing with significant labor challenges right now so they've got to find ways to automate processes where it's possible and that's kind of one of the places they're looking to do it. Okay, thanks Kevin. Any other questions going once going twice. I have. So Kevin, very interesting that you mentioned about this pilot and you mentioned about the quality of data. When I came across I think a pharma company and they were trying to map and have visibility of their supply chain and they tried to use just one and they said that many of the data was not available so wondering if in your pilot, you have like statistics on the availability of that because I definitely agree we need to have a standard and just one seem to be very widely adopted by CPP W3C etc. And if maybe which industry you said that they're planning you know putting roadmaps for adoption which one would you say that is the most evolved. And so I would say in terms of statistics around the adoption of standards. We do I know for a fact have some information out on our website around adoption levels for food service. I'm not certain if we have items so just my background before I took on this role around blockchain and supply chain organization was on our food service team so I'm more familiar with that work. I'm not sure if we have that data publicly available for the other industry so I'd have to check. In terms of which industries are more evolved than others. I think you see a lot more traction in food. When it comes to the use of GDSN data so that product master data, it's really pervasive it's it's it's necessary to for example, for example to do business with Walmart. Right you have to share that information. So when you have major players kind of put that stake in the ground that kind of drives a lot of the adoption for food and CPG so on that side of the house. We see quite a bit now when you go towards the pharmaceutical side of the house. Specifically as it applies to the drug supply chain security act and saleable returns of pharmaceuticals so you need to return to a wholesaler and that product is still good it can still be resold. There's the adoption of GS one standards for that particular process is extensive that we have the whole guideline around the use of standards in that space. And again that goes back to the fact that we have relationships with the three major wholesalers here in the US. So certainly if. When they say there's gaps in the standards that can be taken a couple different ways right so is the industry itself has gaps or is it just maybe particular trading partners that they're trying to obtain information of aren't adopting the standards. So I think that's one of those things that we could kind of bring to the discussions we have with industry to find out where those gaps are. Great exactly I think the problem is with the trading partners right how do you get them and they're everywhere how do you get them to use that information so we can actually have a full visibility of that supply chain that's where the challenges. Exactly and that's the 80% I mentioned a few different times right it's getting an industry to sit down have the appetite to have these discussions. And then agree to a path forward and those those conversations can take a long time so I say for certain processes there's pockets of adoption, even within specific industries where adoption is better in some areas than others and it's just around having having those conversations and actually holding trading partners feet to the fire to actually provide the information that's been agreed to. Great. Really good thank you so much. Sure. I think we've got lines early on or upstream. One of the apps I saw. I think it was the global blockchain business council that they highlighted was one from a bank in Omaha, Nebraska First National Bank of all FNBO is what what they go by and they created an app to basically track some of the information. About about a cat about cattle, based on the height pattern there. So, you know, it feel you know everyone's trying something different here trying to figure out how do I capture easily that upstream information out there whether it's an app or whether they're going to write it down or it's going to be some sort of API of you know your existing systems whatever might be out there. Yeah, it's really interesting and that's why, typically, when we talk about GS one standards we tend to talk industry specific so like I said I worked on food service for a number of years. But for blockchain and just supply chain optimization as a whole we consciously made the decision like hey, let's bring all the industries that we're working with together because you know Tom what you just mentioned, there's applicability there in various industries. So, the idea can still, even if the nuance changes a bit the idea is still valuable and that's why we wanted to have these discussions with kind of senior leaders from different industries all coming together. Absolutely. Good. Any other questions here, going once, going twice, there are a lot of quite a lot of good questions. Through throughout as well as at the end as I like I know when I present I like having people ask questions. Oh that way you know everybody was awake so that's always good. Not doing email or whatever. So, Kevin, thank you very much for joining us here today on the 5th of May, hopefully spring will sprung in the United States. Thank you very much. Thank you very, very quickly for it all. We had 100. I think there were 150 or so Andrea who registered for this. So that probably be a good number of people who will look at the recording here that we're going to have out there. So, if you guys have listened all the way to the end of the recording. Thanks for, thanks for staying with us. Thanks for staying with us also and asking the questions I just talked about my quick takeaways here on it. Setting up the setting up the data sharing is non trivial. I mean we probably have all realized that but also you know it's it doesn't hurt to think about the magnitude of it whether it's five years or two years or So, story a couple years ago talked about six months just like a contract set up between organizations. The other takeaways this whole upstream push, you know that that whole thought they're doing it in the real world there and then Kevin a plug give Kevin a shout via his email auto at gs one us.org. If you're interested more and more about his supply chain optimization cross industry discussion groups there. So with that. Thanks everybody again. Enjoy the rest of the day, Andre and Eric anything that you guys want to add in. Hello, I would love to thank Kevin. We'll have to thank him for so many insights today and see next time in two weeks time going to have another meeting. And so you soon again. Beautiful. Thank you everybody. Thanks everyone. Thanks guys. Bye.