line learners and teachers In our professional organizations and try to find ways to make the online conferences work better Yeah, there's some I don't know the exact number there's several hundred registered at the conference, but I mean I personally I've been to quite a few online conferences since the since March April and um It's been difficult because in some ways It's a bit of a luxury going off to a conference because you put your life on hold. You say bye. Bye kids. Bye. Bye, you know You don't have to worry about pretending you're students or anything you at a conference And it's just absolutely wonderful because yeah, it's all the formal conversations over coffee and stuff and just being cocooned from from this environment And when you do this online, it's actually really hard because I could tell you all the horror stories I personally had when you're trying to The moderate will give a talk and suddenly somebody opens the door and the dog comes in and he's jumping up And you can he wants a biscuit and yeah, you can't pay any attention because you've got Trying to listen to your concentration goes and that and it's difficult It's actually difficult. Okay, so I think this is interesting what what martin was saying I mean in a way our institutions do need to support us. I mean, perhaps I mean, I'm at a distance university or similar to the one that martin's that so I mean, I do feel supported I mean, I'm definitely not going to stay as I don't but I'm not sure that's always the case I mean we did these these webinars in Eden for online in times of pandemic and with some of the feedback we were getting from the The the the people who are connecting in is they didn't really feel supported I mean if we're going to be moving towards is this new normal or whatever you want to call it And we're not necessarily going to be going back to the way we were Teaching and interacting before what kind of support should our My institutions really be re-giving us. I'm not going to start Yeah, I mean one of the things it's sort of related I was responding to terry actually, but I think it helps respond to yours as well When I say local so I'm not talking about completely global one of the things that we thought had been useful is To we I was part of a global thing called ditch pins So they it's a it's a kind of connected learning but with some support type of professional development experience That's a month long And what we had is like you had a person from each institution who's responsible for the cohorts from their institution So they have that local support and then you had activities where they Interacted with people from all over the world some of them synchronous and some of them asynchronous and you could dip in and out And having that agency but some structure and then also some local support So we met sometimes just the local folks And then sometimes with everyone else and going back and forth between those layers I think is one of the things to keep in mind because yeah, just I think what we've got right now is like We're all bombarded by so much professional development. There's I have Three conferences this week Yeah, and and today I just came from like a full day workshop into this keynote So yeah, it's a little bit crazy and I can't focus and what you're talking about focus Not even with my kid around or not around just the ability to focus in general I think with the pandemic and just being online all the time. It's just So we I think we do need to think about like one of the things we're doing in my Department is think we're going to do half hour workshops Where in the summer we were doing three hour workshops Intensive when the semester started people started to know I'm like, oh, let's do half hour workshops Like just teach me one thing in half an hour that we can go So those are the things I think we need to keep iterating on Okay, thank you terry. What do you think the the work life balance and how to manage this stress? Well, I'm retired. So I'm not really a physician Did to comment with much authority on that but But yeah, it is true that I pick up on my house point that this idea of Of having a local group, you know, sort of to to allow that kind of Collaborative construction of knowledge and meaning but have it enriched by People from Egypt or from anywhere or a Caliwit Or anywhere in the world. I think is is really useful for all of us. So a good point Thanks Martin on the Work life balance Yeah, when I think it's interesting I think what working at home Is revealing. There's lots of things that we kind of took for granted before Bad things as well. So I live in Cardiff, for instance And I used to go up once a week. I was a twice a week to Milton Keyne, which is about 150 miles away And I did that drive the other day to go and see someone and I thought I'm not doing this drive anymore Like I'm not spending six hours of a day in a car Like stuck on motorways and stuff and it just felt awful And they kind of felt like bad my mental health and also often you're doing it when you're tired You know, there's lots of kind of You know stats on, you know accidents that are caused by tiredness and drowsing We're doing all this stuff and and the amount of time what is I think it reveals those kind of things But at the same time, it also reveals plenty of kind of inequality, you know, like people don't have a nice office They can sit in separately like I do or You know, I haven't got a young tour and stuff. So I think So things like all this So I'm coming round to the point of view there's good and bad to it Which is a bit of a tweak conclusion But I think it's interesting, you know But I think what is interesting are the kind of things we just took for granted or spending thousands of pounds a year to commute on trains In the miserable setting to go into an office where you sort of couldn't get any work done. So Okay, thank you. No, ma'am. You didn't answer the wrong question. That was that that was a good A good answer you gave us. Okay. So, I mean, what's in some respect, maybe it's because we're educationless similar to an educational conference with where We're somewhat myopically focusing on what's happening in our particular area and we're or maybe at least I am I don't want to put words into your mouth But we're kind of assuming that we're we're teaching and training our students so that once we get over this minor hiccup They'll be back to normal in In going into their their companies every day and working in the old-fashioned way. Do you think there's going to be some kind of If you like transition from the way they were working before to a new way of working That's actually reflecting what we're teaching them. So in a way, we don't have to feel guilty about Using all these online techniques to teach them because that in itself is a useful skill for them in their professional life Martin, do you want to pick it up first? Yeah, I think that sort of links back to the point I was just making before I think, you know, I think Actually, lots of people will be looking to have be able to work from home after you know, and I think, you know It will be a good year now before many of us Go back on into campus or into offices and think, well, I've been doing my job Perfectly well for that time. Why is it you need me to be in the office now? So I think lots of people will want that flexibility I think others will really want to be in office and have that kind of social life I think it'll be a mixture but I think you get You open up for different people to apply for jobs when you get to work online and be home based So I think, you know, you're absolutely right. You know, there's a certain Skill and responsibility in organizing your time being able to study You know, when you're not when the architecture doesn't do that work for you I think and so those kind of skills will be mapped across a lot to be able to work remotely, which I think will be much more than normal Thank you, Terry Yeah, I just picking up on Martin's example of the commute. I I'm glad I don't I'm not an investor in commercial office space because there's a lot of people who are just not going to go Drive two hours a day for a commute, especially when they now realize and their bosses realize that This can't work. That doesn't mean that they're not going to come for the Christmas party and To enjoy a little social interaction with their colleagues But they're going to realize that you can separate the two and and achieve a balance For you personally, but as well a balance that will enhance your productivity or your learning or your teaching Yeah, that's a good observation. Maha I was just saying Deborah in the chat saying that there was a recent survey in the UK Only seven percent of HE students stopped working on how other students was useful But I think that's probably because they've just not had a good experience of it I do tell my students, you know Even before covid if you work in a multinational context You will need to interact with people online and you will have to figure out ways to learn with others online even Even if there wasn't any of this But the other aspect of it is that not only yeah I think the important part is that the employers are realizing that remote work actually is valuable Whereas before there was a lot of resistance to remote work, right? Like they're not sure what the employees are going to be doing now They know that employees can do it and they let them do it And so this is a kind of freedom That students would have in the future if they only you know could take advantage of it And they'll know the value of it when they are no longer Young and when they have families and they have these other responsibilities And when they want to study, you know, when they when they want to work and study at the same time Once they start to have that multiple Right now they don't have that so I don't think they can imagine why why it's so important Some of them do obviously if they're mature students, but you know younger students may not realize the value of it until later So I try to bring that into my class right now until students, you know Actually, you realize this is going to use this later and for example I don't force my students ever to turn their camera on But I told them you realize that maybe in your future you will need to present something online to people So you need to start getting comfortable with that. How can we work towards that? So that when you have to do it in a high stakes context, you're not nervous anymore About it for example Yeah, thanks very much. I mean, I saw Deborah's comment as well And I think that's that's very interesting But I think that tells us more about perceptions of students to begin with because I mean, there are a lot of skills there I mean, I used to teach on a computer science degree and you know computer scientists are notorious for being really bad communicators And we're aware of that. So what we used to do was get I mean we had a A particular subject which was about Producing a tv program because that's something where you really have to work together And some of the people we used to get to go in front of the camera and they completely freak out But it was wonderful because they'd end up, you know Effective communicators at the the end and I've also noticed in another context where we're We're teaching language learning online as well because the students love to do the exercise But they're not very keen on correcting each other's work. You're saying hey, but that's half the value of what you're actually doing Okay, right. I'm aware that time's um Coming out. I'm also like my how tired you are. So I'm not going to make you suffer too much more I'd just like to have if you will please one last wrap up take go home Comment for me chief you so maha if you'd like to go first, please Oh, wow, uh, last comment I've got a brain block You know what, you know what this is my this is what I'm going to say Pick the things that fulfill you For the next few months because you've probably been working hard for the past six months or so If you come to a professional that you know come to a professional development event if you find that it's not fulfilling You just leave it's not rude to leave things online. Nobody's going to see you walk out the door Just do the things that make you happy indeed because it's a hard life Indeed it is that's a wonderful sentiment maha. Thank you very much indeed. Martin your last thought It's a bit of a curveball. We thrown us at the end Oh, absolutely. You know, I'm glad you went first with maha Um Yeah, I think um mine would be yeah, take care of yourselves. Don't don't be too hard on yourself I think you know and if you find your productivity isn't what it was in normal times. I don't worry about those things I think so it's all good at the moment. So just Look after yourselves Okay, that's great. And lastly, terry can we have your your gem of wisdom to leave us with please? Well, I will do all the wonderful things we were saying about synchronous and here I'm struggling with trying to think of something profound enough to end the session So, uh, but I'll pick up on mahas comment about uh, hope at the university of Alberta They have a hope institute and they sort of drive research and what hope does not medically In all sorts of ways, but if we're going to be effective change agents we can't be gloomy and talk about all of the challenges and all of the terrible things we have to you know, keep keep hopeful Wonderful sentiment. Thank you very much to uh our three speakers. I'll give you a round of applause because I know that We already can't really do that. That's that's that's wonderful. Thank you very much Okay, we're going to move on to our next Session the Lisbon 2020 report the research on odl state of the art and uh and the farewell So I'm going to ask my colleagues. I'm Alan Tate and in this field or in it to uh turn on their uh their cameras, please and Team I can't do the video. Oh, I'm sorry Maria. Can you um give Ines permission to uh turn her camera on? I know so I'll in as well, please Yes, of course Just a second. You'll be able to do that Or Maxim as well, of course Okay, thank you. Hello. Hi Maxim How are you? It's been a long time. Lovely to see you Okay Ines, over to you. So should I start? Is Alan here? Yes, he was um Alan. Let me just check Yes, he was Alan Just checking it At the moment, I think Alan is not here. Let me check please But I think not So Alan is not here at the moment. So I guess we have to start in there some Okay, no problem um Well, therefore an introduction. Uh, I was asked by Antonio the shader to be the core reporter of this research workshop with Alan Tate and it has been two really intense days and very interesting and I I could draft my my report that I will read now at the end of the morning So I really enjoyed this last session more than the pre-usual because I it was like free of That role, but I would like to incorporate all some of the issues from this last session Um, we have prepared it to independent reports and we will work together afterwards. So I think they are complementary um Alan is here. I don't know if he wants to start or should I go ahead? I've got no video at the moment in the video Maria, can you activate his video please? Yes, we are trying to do it one moment It's done. I have to do it myself. You have you can connect the camera Alan It's still got it's still got it. Let's just see if that will work. Ah brilliant. Hello again Hi, hello Introducing what I what we were doing and but I didn't start with the report. So You want to start as you wish Okay, shall I shall I go? So, um, thank you for inviting me back and great to see the Maxime Jean-Louis, an old colleague and friend I think I dare say um And thank you for the chance Antonio to work with Inness in in giving a sort of report We decided to do this Independently so to speak to give two independent perspectives. We thought that will be more interesting and a coordinated report So I'll if I kick off I think the first thing I want to say is what an extraordinary achievement This two and a half days has been in in covid Times it's provided such an enormously important element of continuity for even research a professional community so Um, Antonio to share I think you must take a bunch of flowers virtually you and your team along with the even sacred area for for this extraordinary achievement It must have been so much work Um, I've never spent two and a half days online before solidly Although we all had eight months of zooms and teams We haven't been in the office or on the campus since the end of march It's not been a time of community, but this has felt like a time of community and it's been very very Welcome But it's been hard work. My goodness two and a half days online is hard work But there's a genuine sense of even community coming through to me during this meeting and it's great Great to be back When I look at who has been here There's very widespread participation across europe as well as further afield And so it's great to see that even continues after 30 years to achieve his mission I've been very struck by how many um, participants Have been working european participants are working in other european countries than their own as on the next patriot basis and it's such an impressive vision a multilingual multicultural professional Community highly skilled and intercultural working Which is a 21st century skill, which is too often unremarked And the conference has provided Plenty of evidence that the investigation and inquiry with a focus on practice Continues in our field across a very wide field of research and scholarship And I came across too many wonderful parallel sessions in particular and i'm not going to have a chance to mention them all So sorry about that I've tried to frame my thoughts um following boy's understanding of research and scholarship, which you might remember it was very It must be 30 years old now, but I think it still remains contemporary And he talked about four categories of research and scholarship the scholarship of discovery in your own discipline The scholarship of integration that involves a synthesis of information across disciplines the scholarship of application That goes beyond the duties of a faculty member to communities outside the university or college And the scholarship of learning and teaching that involves a systematic study of teaching and learning Processes and I think we've had examples of all those kinds of scholarship during this meeting But it's just a framework see if you can place the examples that I select Within that framework or use it to assess your own selection of what's been interesting within those four categories So let me first of all focus on the major themes that have struck me um during this conference And the first thing my pullout has been the obvious one the covered crisis and the move to online the online pivot for campuses All around the world and I think the president of Eden Sandra Cucina Set the tone at the beginning of the conference when she reported that 60 percent of school and college students worldwide Have undertaken online learning for the first time and that is an extraordinary phenomenon an extraordinary number I'm Tony Bates who's um from contact north maxi and john Lewis own organization It reported at the beginning of the meeting on a large survey of Canada and the usa of what had been happening during this COVID pandemic Tony forecasted a rise in Canada of something like 10 percent currently from learning online To 25 to 30 percent in the next five years. So that's a forecast which we shall enjoy watching to see if it happens He also said that he thought hybrid learning or blended learning will become a norm And this throws up the need for systematic training for faculty Which may be a responsibility that falls in part to Eden, of course And lastly he made a very interesting remark which I struck me as having a lot of truth in it That how important it's going to be to reform the learning spaces on campus When campuses come to terms with the blended learning systems that they want to imply for the future Um And this covered crisis has also thrown up a huge challenge for assessment which has been talked about by a number of people um, for example, Anna Maria de Santis and colleagues from Moderna and Emilio Romano University is reported on the proctoring. Um, a very challenging phenomenon Maria do come to share a pinto looked at the potential peer assessment to help us And lastly, um, I hope I can be forgiven for mentioning the oxford debate where we discussed another leadership of Christina Costa Durham University in the uk and my parents angustine at the university port of sabati to lose france whether Covid forcing Moved online for millions and millions of students around the world will in fact make a lasting impact on campus-based teaching Or whether campuses will return to what they're familiar with in the cyber relief When when and if we eventually get covered under control the overall judgment was that um Covid would make permanent change on covered on campus-based teaching But a significant minority did believe the campuses would go back to the familiar as soon as they can And in a year's time, we'll hopefully be collecting the evidence across europe About what is happening and we'll see that reported at future even conferences The second theme that I picked up on was artificial intelligence a i And I was stuck up in the session led by susania thomas from the oing portugal on the ethical challenges artificial intelligence in our field She argued that commoditization was intention with privacy with regard to data and proposed the need for active digital citizenship And she worried that personalization Personalization in our field will actually become profiling which is anti-open and that the privacy essential to pedagogy will be lost I also very much enjoyed the session by patricia bernardo And off daniel ailes from barton buddenberg's duala hawkshuler They reported on a grand challenge study of what a i might mean for the future Work they did with their students It was a very interesting approach to learning through facilitation Rather than through what somebody called boolimic teaching. I thought that was a great phrase Content-heavy teaching This um is so important for society for work and for education Because do you remember all those promises 30 years ago made by some that the digital revolution Would mean all unpleasant work would be done by computers We human beings would be having a three-day working week at most under life of leisure But it didn't quite work out that way did it so how will the promises potential of ai work out and in particular for education How will the conflict between people centered? And commoditized big tech interests be resolved This is surely going to be a major theme for future research for critical research, which I hope will see reported only in future even conferences And the third team a third theme I wanted to highlight Which which was a big theme for me at least was the question of openness and open scholarship Which very important in our field of activity And I really enjoyed the round table of senior scholars which were facilitated by From lead and my co raffle term And she was working with the job they do out of walking, cattilunia. I was a little john music out of london or in Braille from athabasca who had to stay up all night to do it paulman and a lot of reggae's from university Minio in broadside um and they discussed The issue of openness at a time of our societies being so shut down by covet And they they rounded the openness was more important than ever Not only for the products, which we're familiar with but also for data And they wondered whether this pivot to online is going to accelerate the pivot to open scholarship But they also recognized the threats to openness From some who can increase the costs of open publishing and they Let me to look for the first time first time I'd heard of it for something called the Open covet pledge for education, which you can find if you search for that In the future Of the availability of research to all of us and his application is crucially connected to this issue of open scholarship They may just also Reflect on some of the new voices new voices to me at least which I heard at this conference And the first one was that of ellen helsberg from london school of economics She's a very senior scholar, but I've never come across it before and I think this is an example of one of boy's Categories of scholarship because it shows how Expertise in one discipline can come across and be influential in another I think ellen helps our field adopt new perspectives on digital inclusion and exclusion, which is her field of particular competence And gain a deeper understanding of what digital skills can mean She debunked further this myth of the digital native And pointed out that People who thought they had the most confidence in their digital skills Didn't actually have them in reality. She also identified the fact that lower digital skills were Very often related to poverty Some inequalities have been amplified, but not all gender for example has had more negative outcomes She argued that support must be more than skills training and include quality content and services for all And so I think this ellen helsberg's work will be very helpful for us in our field in Further essential monitoring and exclusion and inclusion and developing the nuanced understanding The second new voice that I heard is indeed a newcomer and that was a person iran chavono who won the best research paper award And her work was on social constructivism as a lens of managing online engagement So ellen is a french researcher Based in sweden and her work is on an online course In finlands what a set of impressive intercultural skills to have And she assisted on the creating space for students online to make sense of learning through their mutual recognition of each other Learners and individuals and that this would reinforce their engagement Say a ren if i'm allowed to say this is a young scholar with her career ahead of her That's worth remembering that you heard her voice for the first time at the eden research workshop 2020 I think you're going to hear it again I also thought to myself how I would enjoy a conversation between iran and terry anderson terry's version of connectivist pedagogy was one that I think would connect well with iran's discussion of constructivism Connectivist pedagogy is surely going to be a significant theme for the future So when we remember that iran won the best research paper, I think it's also worth remembering the Great support of the orish bernard foundation has given to eden over I think as long as 20 years In supporting research and scholarship with the with the best research paper award So well worth remembering that So just in conclusion before I hand over to in s and for her thoughts I think this eden research workshop has seemed to need to be a triumph of resilience For the eden professional community and if covet is some sort of plague year A year of the pest in european I'm sure this event is going to Make us feel confident that renaissance is going to follow So thanks again to antonio to share to his team at open new portugal and to eden for all their work in putting This conference on So let me now hand straight over to in s for her thoughts which i'm looking forward to Thank you alan um I will I will first show us this cloud Do you see it The cloud were Work clouds it's made from the titles of the all the contributions and I think it's Well, it's it's a summary of what was talked about during this this event um And I will read my My impressions is it's something I I never do so I don't know if I will be able to get stick to the To the report that I will try um um this in this a Conference in this event. It was a with no doubt that the pandemic was a the situation was very present all the time and The the pandemic has led to the widening of the online provision in education um This rapid change has been addressed in presentations in plenaries parallel session at the oxford debate And there were specific sessions dedicated to the analysis of the impact of the cobit 19 in education and overall a The overall reflection about all that was the the question about what will remain In the long term what what will be the impact of these changes and what will remain in the long term and two out of three people at the oxford debate from the oxford debate participants Said that they thought that the changes will remain. I was among them And to me this is in in accordance or aligned with one of the words in the cloud, which is the transformation or change and positive or optimistic horizon and keep good expectations about transformative potential of a current crisis or situation even such a difficult one as this one and Being optimist about the potential development that education can generate to me is consubstantial to education It it goes with being an educator and I think many people at this conference are educators And this was also raised in the previous conference about the hope and about Resilience and I think it was present and the transformation processes starts from ourselves And I have seen many presentations reporting about Different studies and they're took at the micro level So they were researchers that have shared their analysis about the courses They teach or they're teaching practices before during the pandemic And many of these contributions trying were trying to understand the learner's experience and how they were living and performing in during the pandemic and In different in comparing between the on-site and online settings And these students perception and satisfaction service and interviews have provided Very valuable feedback that can help to make decisions for improving the quality of these courses and one of the topics that had deserve a Quite a lot of attention in some researcher researchers and studies is the social that they mentioned in the digital learning process And the analysis and promotion of the students interaction for learning purposes Which is underpinned by social constructivist theoretical perspective has been the topic in some of the contributions And remarked the role of learners as agents in their learning processes and remarks also the human side of the digital environment And in this sense the community of inquiry framework has been present in In a specific workshop yesterday and also in different studies Particularly dealing with the social dimension. This is the case for the best paper award that also Alan mentioned right right now but regarding transformation and beyond our respective spaces for control power or change that we have each of us have as practitioners This is a limited space and there are other transformations needed And structural inequalities were raised during the event The the pandemic has shown that the digital divide is still not solved. It's not so it's not a solved problem And there are difficulties and inequalities both in the access to the digital devices and to proper internet In many population sectors in different countries But also there is the digital divide with regards to digital literacy even in the more digitalized countries such as the european countries This was also raised by the scholar who Alan mentioned before especially inequalities So the use of the digital tools for educational learning purposes needs a specific training both for the teachers and for the learners And this teacher training was exploring many contributions in the conference as well Moving from the micro level. There were also some contributions at the meso level reporting about institutional change experiences And there were some managers also researchers sharing their description and analysis of the digital transformation of their institutions Which went through converting the paper based exams into online exams for instance or using Mostly synchronous tools. This was also raised in the previous session The use of artificial intelligence and data analytics training of teachers and tutors So this move to digital assessment specifically has been very relevant in the conference and during the pandemic For all the institutions including open universities And there were concerns about proctoring academic integrity But also about the need to rethink in the long in the medium term The way We are doing the assessment So words like authentic assessment formative assessment were also on the debate And also coming back to this institutional And there was a general claim at the event from the open universities open and distance education universities About their historical contribution and accumulated expertise That has not been much considered in this move towards remote teaching in recently So the emergency remote teaching has resembled the face-to-face mode Just with sometimes just synchronous lectures in different platforms um The move towards online education is not considered in all the existing research and practice background that communities such as Eden provide but Nevertheless despite this that open universities have a tradition in e-learning These open universities have also considered that they have not gone too far in their own digital transformation yet So there were some voices from people from open universities saying this So this is also an opportunity for open and distance university um Just as a sum up of this a Section is that the rapid reaction to the lockdown is not in question and the problems were safe and they were very creative and quick mitigation solutions For the students so they could complete their courses But there is uncertainty about the maintenance and Sustainability of these emergency solutions Or if we are going back to the to the normal situation And with regards to open research that also alan mentioned the around panel session this morning provided some insight about A similar situation We are like halfway in the process So the pandemic is an opportunity to promote open access to research results and for instance in the health Area This has been a must research about the cobit 19 had to be public and rapidly available for all their researchers But there are remaining cultural practices like the way that research and Researchers are assessed are evaluated for promotion and there are commercial interests that Profit for commercial privileges who have a big interest in public in publication and who have joined the To get back to charging with article processing charges to authors and institutions So there are this type of barriers that difficult expansion of openness scholarship And also other other challenges will raise beyond open access to publications But covering other parts of the process like open data, open peer review Sustainability and innovation in all the digital publication process And as a final remark, I want to say that Similar to what's happening in research publication where corporate private interests have a very relevant role in setting the agenda We should not forget the question. Who is it in the agenda in education? and There was a lot of discussion in this conference about the students teachers and researchers and also managers and institutions as agents for consolidating the good practices in e-learning But there are other agents at the macro level as well Such as policies and regulations in our respective countries and regions and also corporations That provide technological tools and also educational content Who's at the basis of what we can do when going online? I think this is an issue that was not dealt so so deeply at the conference or at least it may be missed those sessions But still the conference the to me and despite these difficult circumstances We are still living. We are still inside this the storm inside the pandemic But the conference has been once again a community for sharing learning and networking Thank you Thank you very much Alan. Yes. Can I handle with the maximum now, please? Thank you very much and I'm coming at it from Canada's perspective and one of the things I'd like to highlight is from having listened to the summary from Alan as well as from Ines which are very very insightful in some ways Edened in Doing this work over the last couple of days You've put together the building blocks for what we in Canada are working on what I call virtual learning strategies I want you to picture that in Ontario. We have 24 colleges 22 universities And the government is about to announce in about three or four weeks a virtual learning strategy And what I when I hear Alan when I hear Ines There are at least four or five areas where what you have come up with in terms of insights Are precisely the building blocks for a strategy moving forward and I'd like you to understand that It's not only research that you are doing or insights or analysis, but you are really contributing to Major decisions by government that have a huge impact on populations in other countries as well example In the area of content I've heard Alan and I've really nice talk about That is how we need to also be a catalyst for development of content In a way that is ensuring high quality In a way that is ensuring open access And that is a very big preoccupation here as we In this sector trying to pull together a strategy moving forward I've also heard the point about capacity building In terms of instructional development as well as training of instructors And again here as we are putting together a virtual learning policy and strategy This is an incredibly important part of that strategy A third one as well that I've heard Ines mentioned the word digital divide so infrastructure for us in terms of in a area which is The size of germany and france put together to give you a sense of the scale that is Access to to broadband and digital divide become a very important issue and again Your deliberations your insights your thoughts are contributing to that thinking here across in North America There is also the question of I think plus Alan who mentioned about the myth of the digital native And again here we are very much looking at digital fluency as An area that we really need to focus on because we should not assume that students necessarily have that capacity And lastly, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the whole aspect of sharing internationally Which even does so well which both Alan and Ines in their summary show that the range of presenters the issues being discussed I think Bring that community not just in Europe but also in North America together So let me we let me recap by saying in the area of content in the area of capacity building In the area of digital fluency needed of infrastructure and international cooperation what Ines and Alan have summed up our good building blocks and as an opportunistic Participant I'm learning a lot from that and I'll be sharing that with our governments our universities and our colleges here in Canada Thank you very much Thank you very much maximates very you're very encouraging words. It's nice to to see that the the output of the conference goes beyond mere academic Areas of influence that was very good indeed. So finally, I'd like to hand over to Sandra Christina the president of Eden now to To finalize the research workshop. Thank you very much Thank you team and thank you to aura percers excellent excellent remarks Now I would like to share my presentation I'm not sure I can do that Just give me a second so that I I have a presentations which I want to share so Okay. Yeah, I just found it. Yes share Okay Do you see it? Okay, great So we have come to the end of one really terrific event. This is Eden Research workshop online for the first time and let me conclude with some Information. So if we look at the numbers We had more than 200 delegates from 43 countries really impressive numbers I'm certain that we can be very proud of them The next one is that we had 48 full papers seven workshops 16 posters and 14 phd symposium presentation Oxford style debate excellent one and roundtable discussion today with really really good remarks on open Openness and open scholarship excellent keynote speakers and reporters moderators also We awarded our colleagues with Eden senior fellow award to Irina Antonella and Joseph And also with fellow award to Maria Rosaria Ulf Kovadonga James And Radu who we already awarded in June in Tim Shwara at the online annual conference and we had The winner of best research paper award to a Iran Charbonneau from Stockholm University in sweden And also the new The new award the best research in progress award Which went to the University of Averta in portugal. So Very nice indeed. I already also voted between three proposed posters We are coming to the end To the three wonderful days we had although online I think they managed to show that we can be community That we can Pass the issue of not being able to be present I am also missing the chance to have lousy coffee and Maybe not so good the branches, but to be able to be physically with other colleagues and chat and Share experience and of course have a good Glass of wine after all the events, but I hope we will manage in few in future to Come to this Situation that kovid will not be an issue anymore I wish to thank First of all to my dear colleague, Antonio Teixeira from University of Averta Who hosted with the Education and distance learning center of University of Averta this 11th Eden research workshop I wish to thank conference program committee Best research paper what jury keynotes Eden and up members and fellows I wish to thank to the authors to session moderators Reporters and technical chairs and first of and above all to all participants who contributed That this research workshop has been the highlight of the event events Also in the end. I need to mention that we had the Portugal foundation for science and technology Who provided us with zoom environment? We had international partner contact north and conference Sponsor clothes And let me in the end announced Some further Eden and events. This is open classroom conference starting Starting in November now, which is all organized by Eleanor Germanic here Gogi and the Eden And also before that We have just one week of the rest On november 2 to 6 we have Eden online and distance learning week Plus one because we will join the european vocational training week on the 9 9th november so Be stay with us We are continue with our activities very soon And at the end I would like to announce that even 30 annual conference will be next year in madrid in uned and i'm Hoping that team will be there with us for us with good glass of wine to Be able to drink it jointly in physical presence Once again, thank you all for being with us for this is really great Eden research workshop. Thank you And we wish you the best of north america Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Maxine. Thank you, Antonio. Pleasure. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye all Sandra It seems that the secretary would like to have a photo. So can we ask everyone in the in the room to connect their cameras? So Sharing yes, please Yeah, and in the end I I'm almost forgot to to say a big thank to Eden secretariat For providing really good support in enabling that this conference happens So thank you all of colleagues from secretariat with leadership of andres shazooch Okay, so we are doing the photo We have to smile I don't even need to tuck my tummy in Well, I miss the opportunity to show them my gowns and everything but well, they will have to wait for the next year Well, maybe you can say goodbye at the same time. Okay so Bye Thanks everyone. Thank you. I got the photo. Thank you very much Thank you as well should it See you next time in madrid at least


Some little light shopping and yeah, just kind of escort the city really what is light shopping for a chase and jay miles Is it like a new car or something like every time I see your Instagram, it's like a new car What's up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of road to 10,000 I'm always with my guy one and today we're with chasing Jay Miles, what's up dude? What's up Ricky? It's been so long. It has been a while, bro It has been a while we both got different haircuts. I know. Oh, yeah, last time you saw me I think my hair was short like yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we just flipped it. Yeah Yeah, man, good to see you good to see you man, I took a little vacay last week and went to Pensacola Beach Oh, yeah, how was it? It was good. Maybe like four weeks ago. Maybe a month ago. I like felt really burned out Yeah, and I was like like for once I was like, man, I've been working really hard And like really going hard. Yeah, I was like, okay. I'm human. You know saying?  Really? What'd you get? Yeah, I was I was throwing up. I couldn't get out of the bed.  So like I'm just like roughing it on the way home And then I get home laying bed the rest of the day yesterday Sunday I was able to get up and walk around and stuff, you know, and like wasn't as bad still woozy Today I woke up and I felt 100. I wake up 4 30 go to the gym crushing it ready to get after it First day back from vacation like let's crush it Then carlin started feeling a little woozy and then I started feeling it was again I was like, okay, I'm gonna get tested like tested tested So I went down there and got tested and uh negative like for covid So I was like, okay stomach bug, but I tell you dude, I'm telling you right now bro No, I have not been like that in a decade. So I bet you you were thinking literally like the first vacation I take And then this is what happens your mind probably automatically went to you know What's what's going on? I just don't want to say the word, you know, I'm not trying to mess up any type of flows or monetization But you know what we squeezed every little drop of that Vacation that we could like it was kind of cold. It wasn't really like a beach weather kind of trip We're on the beach But we had we enjoyed it so much man went to the went to the zoo one day when it warmed up a little bit We did go to the beach for a second one day when it warmed up We just like like chilled out like really chilled out for a second I was still handing on a few dms and emails and stuff and deals happening But that was the first time in a long time man like during working hours that actually didn't work You know, I was actually like doing something with the family. It was great.  It was my birthday this past week Oh So I just we got a birthday boy in the house. I know what that means, right? No, I don't Which one was it? Um, my happy happy birthday, you know, it's a for me Um, my birthday was actually friday and so I was out there from thursday to sunday And then got back in and hit it early this morning. Okay. How old were you? Turn 32 32 How do you want? I'm 27 Do y'all know each other No, this is the first time we're connecting Have you ever heard of one chaston? I have not Okay. Yeah one one is my guy man.  That's all That's awesome. So what did you do in chicago? Like what is what is what does a chaston j miles do? In a chicago on his birthday, you know And i'm so used to going on like beach vacations and places that i've never been before but All the past times that i've been to chicago I've only been for for work because you know I used to do a lot with national association of realtors and ypn and all that so Since their headquarters are up there. I would always go up there for stuff But I never got a chance to actually go out and see the city and visit those touristy places So this time, um, I actually visited the bean um thing and yeah Cool to see that I I took a tour boat down the river. So I took this architecture tour Which was amazing because it was just pointing out like the different buildings and the different styles of architecture learned a lot about commercial architecture with that ate some really good food the whole time and um, I know oh went went to an art gallery and so yeah, I did did some little light shopping And yeah, just kind of explored the city really what is light shopping for a chase and jay miles? Do we want to really get into that?  Yeah, no like I I love cars and I get bored with things quickly. So Um, but I will say, you know, with my cards. I always make good investments and and cars That'll do smart things. So chase chase it if if you add a hundred million dollars spent on a car And there's no money left over you can pick any car in the world you want. What are you going with?  He's done some research He's looked up the customer reviews. Have you have you ever drove in drive one? No, I haven't no I'm a little scared to get behind the wheel right now I gotta I gotta wait a little while but I don't get I don't get behind the wheel of anything. I can't afford What are those ron? I got a little uh, let's check this out three million I I have a million Yeah, I have a feeling he wants the uh, the six million dollar one. There's a there's a specific one, right? Wow Three million dollars I'll be honest with you bro. I didn't really even realize there was a three million dollar car out there Absolutely Which would disclaimer y'all I would never buy that car But we can all just have a little dream moment right here, but no I wouldn't actually buy something like that.  Am I am I out of place here? Yeah, no, I still I still rock still rock it. Okay.  He is a fellow real estate entrepreneur youtuber author Speaker real estate agent runs a team in dallas expanding all over the world And uh, yeah, it's just been cool to watch chasin's growth because when I started youtube You had like three or four thousand subs. I think it's been kind of a cool little back and forth. I think I Had more subs than you for a second and then you came back. I think you got more than me now. Have you hit 60 000 yet? No, I think I'm like 1200 away or so. Yeah. Yeah fixing to hit 60 k So that's his instagram by the way. Oh, here we go. Look at that bean. There we go It's all my like is that what inspired the haircut? I No, no Go ahead speaking of bean man. They used to call me mr. Bean and like college for like football Yeah, yeah, yeah, like like they like and like they just narrowed it down to just bean You know and like wait wait like like you looked like mr. Bean or yeah, that's what yeah Yeah, like that's what they said looked like mr. Bean and um, yeah No, no, and uh, and like it got so bad that even the coaches Even my coaches like when I did something wrong on the field, they would be like bean You know get over here.  Bean's net worth Mr. Bean's net worth. Hmm. Hold on. Hold on.  Yeah, I know he's he's a genius. He's like a genius over there in london Yeah Yeah, he went all the way he went all the way And I I think I can beat him though as far as that net worth goes, but um Yeah, but back back to what I was saying man anybody who doesn't know chastin j miles Uh, this is my guy met him in dallas at an event. Uh, what was the name of that event? That event, um Wgr Wgr. Yeah, what with colton. No, that was a good event. Yeah, it was fun Yeah, I I how like how on a scale of one to ten how excited of you are you to get back on the scene and start speaking and go into events and doing real life like You know 500 agent thousand agent 2000 agent events I am I'm off the charts man. I I've been needing to to just be out in front of people and You know, I know everybody's going to be excited about getting out to events and stuff So I'm expecting, you know, once things do open up. I'm expecting bigger crowds Out at events. Hopefully, um, you know people are ready to get out there shake hands and gain knowledge all that good stuff I think it's going to explode so much when we finally do open up to do events or such a pent up demand of people who want to go to those things and network with people in person. I think uh, Whatever size venues we were renting out before co we were going to have to get much larger larger spaces To hold the uh, to hold the audiences. Um, I'm excited. I'm real excited Yeah, um Yeah, that's as soon as we get to go ahead the green light I've got I've got a tour like planned out like I've got my like I've got it all worked out. I'm ready to roll I got everything set up Hmm. Yeah, I've got everything in place Nice Yeah, I'm ready to get after it bro I've got I've got all all over the southeast planned out And then, uh, you know, once I get to that point where I go, you know travel southeast and knock all that out Then, uh, you know, I'll I'll have plenty of time to plan the rest of the country So have you heard our news over here? We're we're set to open up completely this Wednesday So really yeah, texas, um the governor last week. He said that this upcoming wednesday where Everything's open 100% even clubs bars. Yeah, everything. Uh, there's no more mask mandates Um, yeah, it's it's going down Literally, literally, huh?  Whatever. I mean um You know, I think that they're just using it as a test here To you know, and maybe wear the guinea pigs to to see if it can actually be pulled off and You know, if everything will still stay steady or slowing down and Um, then, you know, if it's successful here, it'll probably start happening in other places but Guess why not tackle the biggest state or see what happens, you know Have they opened up vaccinations for like people under 65 there? Oh, yeah, vaccinations are are happening a lot. So, um, I mean even like at the cvs is now Like for all ages for just anybody So what they're doing is they're saying that if you have like some type of medical condition Right, but the criteria is is like very low. I mean High blood pressure Just like anything that a lot of people have Right get vaccinated. So it's not too strict And they're supposed to be like another big rollout where they they are gonna, you know, open up stadiums and stuff to So you can just drive through them and all that kind of stuff Nice nice. Well, hey, it makes sense, man, you know, I mean it's it's I don't know if the timing is perfect, but when is it going to be a perfect time? You know, I mean you got to open up sometime Yeah, exactly Cool. So I seen on your instagram like Y'all y'all are y'all like pre-selling like pre-sell closets for like 500 g's now Closets. Yeah, just closets like a bedroom closet Our market out here, man, it's so crazy right now. Like It's it's insane. Um, I literally don't even feel like there is a market value to anything anymore And some of these listings that have been going up have been at Crazy prices and I think that people are just putting stuff up just to see if they'd get it And they've been getting it and and above it So yeah, I put that tweet out the other day that pretty soon all you'll be able to afford is a closet here For half a million dollars, you know, because that literally seems like where it's going. It's It's it's insane Do y'all do you guys have like zero inventory? Um Like literally like zero months of inventory 15 buyers for every every listing kind of deal All that all that so a lot of people are trying to Trying to go the new build route and that's not even working out anymore because Our builders backlogs are so long. I mean typically it would take six to eight months to get a home built Now they're telling you a year plus wait lists of 40 to 50 people On all these sites and you know, I mean you were you were here in texas. There's there's a lot of room here There is a lot of room in all these communities are popping up and they're they're even having Huge long wait lists and so it's at a point where people are just trying to get what they can get And I mean putting down insane amounts of money To to try to get there all for one and and yeah, there's there's no inventory It kind of sucks, but it's it's the reality that we're living in here Is your is your like is your team sells down this year because of lack of inventory? No, I wouldn't say that they were down. Um, we're still trending to last year down meaning maybe down slightly But I will say that the price points have gone up just because um, we we made the decision to kind of focus on people who were actually able to to work in this market and Unfortunately for some people, you know, this has kind of led our efforts to people with large amounts of cash because I mean you're having to Put these offers over by upwards of 50 to 100 thousand dollars And you and I know Not everybody has that just laying around And so the price points has definitely gone up our average price point before was around like 170 to 230 Now we're we're about 425 or so And that's just from year over year. God. Yeah, I know um And and so it's it's taken us to focus with the different clientele and And help out people who could actually Compete in this market and that was a tough decision It it really came down to making sure that as we're having consultations with people that We're setting the right expectations and and not just expectations of oh, we have to be quick about things but Hey, I mean if you're on down payment Assistant or you're you're basically like using all of your money in your account to do the bare minimum Then this isn't this isn't the market for you because I wouldn't want to set you up for the disappointment Of feeling like none of your offers are getting accepted Especially when I know that we're competing against big cash buyers, especially at that 200 and below price point It's it's kind of a wash for people who are trying to get financed Um because the cash buyers have come scooping that that stuff up just like nobody's business.  Yeah, it's it's an insane market. It reminds me of like 2003 and four when the market doubled overnight um Yeah, so I mean, do you do you feel like there's like a I feel like there's this pent up demand the other way right now, right? I think that there's a lot of sellers that are sitting on like normally we have a lot of buyers on the sideline Right that are like it's pent up and like, you know that, you know Since there's less transactions that there's you know, like when the pandemic hit for example and transactions went down And then it exploded when they kind of reopened quote unquote the economy Um, it was pent up demand, right? I feel like there's pent up demand on the other side right now like sellers I think sellers that are sitting there saying wow, we could get a lot of money For our house right now, but I don't want to sell because there's nothing to buy And I want to time the mark. I don't want to sell now because it's going to if it keeps going up I'm leaving money on the table, but at some point we're going to see the tide turn a little And uh, I think we're going to see just the market flood with sellers trying to take event once they realize that We're at the top or near the top if something there's going to be some sign Whether it's interest rates coming up or You know some sign of the buyers starting to slow down for some reason and sellers are going to say, okay We better get it now before The bubble burst or before You know, this is it. This is as much as we're going to get and I think we're going to see a real flood Of listings from sellers who are sitting there that want to sell right now They want to sell right now, but they're scared to leave money on the table And they don't know what they're going to rebuy. Do you feel do you feel that? Yeah, and like I tell people all the time It's like how do we know when the market's going down or when we're in a down market Like you don't know until it starts going down right and so even on the seller side Yeah, a lot of sellers have that fear But I think that this reality is setting in on on how the market is and what it's doing and even a lot of sellers are choosing to Do things differently than historically they would like we have sellers who are Sitting here renting long term Airbnb. Like I'm talking three month air bnb You know until they find something I have a lot of clients getting Stelling their their home and selling their home for great money can buy something You know any day of the week and they're choosing to just rent and wait it out Because the money that They they've made they're not thinking of it as a loss. They're like, oh, I'm throwing money away They're just waiting on that on that right time um, you know doing things like how we normally do with lease backs and In all of that stuff. It's been quite difficult for that so A lot of them who do want to sell haven't really had a choice but to You know rent somewhere or move in with friends and family or you know Or just stay put because a lot of the conveniences that were there before It's not really working like that these days. Um I do see a lot of homes coming on the market like even daily But just as quick as they're coming on they're they're going And so, you know, I'm interested in watching when that is going to flip to where Homes are actually staying on the market and and inventory is lasting longer than a week. Um, I don't know necessarily when that is Because like I say even right now. Yeah more and more sellers are coming out of the box Which is to be expected. I mean we're hitting into this the spring and summer market. So it's to be expected but It's it's not to that point where the glass is getting full yet Like it's it's not even you know getting the quarter. It's gonna take a lot Dude, it's gonna take a lot to swing the pendulum the other way. It's so far It's so far this way, but you know like Like it can only go it can only swing so far though Yeah, you know, I mean it can only swing so far And then it's gonna it's gravity right once it goes that far. It's going to start swinging the other way What you got there Juan looks like you're trying to tell us something Yeah, if we look up the demand Uh as far as how much inventory we've had over the last couple of years We've been average and steady since 2015 about a million houses a year This is national stats. This is national But if you look at this from 2021 there's less than half a million So we're down more than 50% as far as inventory goes and yeah, just pent up the man like crazy Um, I don't think the pandemic has everything to do with it. But yeah, there's a lot of factors happening where 500,000 homes listed for sale nationally like that's Unimaginable We're we're in a boom man. Like I've been saying this, you know for a minute like we're in like 2021 is going to be like I I think we're like in really like almost like the beginning stages of like a really massive boom You know real estate boom. I don't think it were and then like bubble and then burst But like the fundamentals of it right now are so strong Like they're lending restrictions are so high, you know people that are buying the houses are buying them to move They're live there. They're not buying them to flip the houses. Are you guys seeing a lot of flips chasing in dallas? Um, not so much right now. I mean we've historically always had a strong flip market Um, but what we're seeing more is is what you just referenced to like people buying them and pulling on to them a little while Um, people who would commonly invest in properties to flip them are marketed Our values are just way too high right now. Like they're not putting those deals that that they were once getting and being Price of lumber all that kind of stuff I mean, it's it's all being affected even on the builder side to where it doesn't make as much sense right now Now those people who were holding properties Um, and maybe had renters in there. I've been seeing a lot of renters getting notices that their landlords want to sell And you know, like that's the move that they're trying to make so Investors are looking for properties as much as possible right now. I get a ton of emails every single day But I'm just like I haven't had anything worth it come across my desk that you know Somebody that's what I'm saying, you know, like like most of our buyers are end users right now You know until we see speculation going on at a really high rate There's really not a bubble because everybody that's buying right now is literally buying for a long term it's like unless Something happens with their income that makes it to where they can't afford what they felt like they could afford That's the only thing that could be a possible bubble. It's not like a bubble in prices based on like mindset of the buyers It could be there could be a bubble if there's a bubble in the economy That we're not seeing like I don't see it like other like there's always people that think there's a bubble, you know Like I don't see a bubble per se in terms of like income for you know Average income for households or you know prices of properties so on and so forth even I like even I even think the stock market is not overpriced right this second Of course, it's come down a lot in the last week or so which has been nice um Yeah, no, no, I think we're in the beginning stages of this whereas uh, we're going to see it go to these places that uh is going to be Unimaginable right now because we think it's crazy right now Okay, right wait till you see what happens next. I think like we'll we'll see time will tell the cool thing is I went in either way If it crashes burns it goes great like goes to the moon it doesn't I don't care what it does I'm gonna help people buy and sell properties. You know Yep, absolutely. Absolutely.  Um People haven't been working and we've been in this in this situation where people Haven't been living their normal lives and even making the amount of money that that they would normally make and as specifically even here in texas as we're moving into this Reopening everything and things getting back to normal as soon as two days from now You know, I'm gonna be interested in seeing once people get back to those levels What happens in this market like where that demand goes? Um because even on the lending side like you mentioned earlier the lending has gotten a little bit stricter They've taken away some of those programs and stuff and this is what's still happening You know, this is what's still happening in this market So just imagine as as we do move back to that state of normalcy Like yeah, you're talking about The market going crazy I i'm i'm looking forward to that day just uh just to even watch and see what happens That's a good point dude and listen. You don't have to wait anymore, bro. Okay We are there bro. I was I read a thing this morning that said that That said that the the uh The sell to list price ratio Okay The the price that property sell for compared to the listing price now listen to this um Like this month, okay this month it it was uh, it rose to like 90. Hold on a second. It was something crazy um, let's see You got to see this um Basically it was saying that it's it's it's at an all-time high. Okay, and this is like a national average I don't know if my my my my computer's acting up. That's why I was late to the zoom Basically in a nutshell it rose to like 90 I don't want to quote it like what it rose. I think it was like 98 or 97 or something like that Percent but in like but the lat and the last like week of that which is like the last week of February it actually hit 99.1. I believe was the number that it hit 99.1 This is a national average Okay, like like and it like shot up to the 99.1 of that last week We are literally on the brink of the highest Uh sells price to listing ratio That we've ever seen Um, that's crazy and also the highest average house That the average price of a house in in the us right now According to this article I read which is like through in men like information from redfin Was uh 323 thousand dollars, which is an all-time high it says, okay All-time high, okay average house in the us all-time high You know sales price to listing ratio Um It's crazy, bro. It's crazy out there Yeah Well cool, man. I uh, it's always cool jamming with you about the marketing stuff I love to always to hear your perspective on stuff because you're like so deep into it Let's see. Here we go. Here we go So it was uh, it actually hit Okay, check this out Okay, um the average sell to list price ratio rose 1.6 percent year over year to an all-time high of 99.6 percent Okay, that was for the uh during the four-week period of of february All right during the seven-day period ending february that ratio jumped to a 99.9 99.9, let me show you this All right, can you see this? So like the gray line the gray line is 19 is 2019 Okay, this is this is the sales price to listing price ratio So it was like 97 percent It got up to 98 and then back down under 98 percent 2019 and 2020 started out the same place It got up higher. Then it came back down Then it then it really went up and got into the 99s came down a little bit and then look what it did in 2021 Right started out above 99 and then right here bro in that last week of february just A rocket ship Boom 99.9. That's never happened before That's never happened before now now chaston in a market that's so high right and you have people always trying to save the most amount of Money in their pocket What's your value proposition or for sell by owner that could quote this and say like hey I could just stick my house up. I got an evaluation from a local realtor What are you guys going to do to add value? I could just sell it on my own like what's your unique value proposition in your market? Yeah, I mean it's it's the same that it's always been Because just because we're in a hot market doesn't mean it's different contracts different process different ways of doing things you still need That that expert there you still need that person with the databases Where where I where I find a lot of for sale by owners Going the wrong way or messing up is thinking that Just putting their home on one website is it's what's going to get it sold or just putting that Sign in the yard is what's going to get it sold. Um, a lot of people are affected right now In this industry meaning a lot of our key people that we do transactions with title companies attorneys appraisers and inspectors things like that and I know for a fact that I've been able to make calls personally to some of my contacts in the industry and get stuff done quicker than somebody Just randomly calling them that they've never done business with that they that they don't know I mean even to the point where getting in appraiser in somewhere Super quick when they have these backlog, you know, like that's valuable in itself Um, even to get a property sold is is a big reason why the for sale by owner would need Someone like myself or like Ricky, you know, who's been in the business and knows how to navigate things like this Now when it comes to competition, right? Because I'm assuming There's only so many listings in your local market, right? And you guys are all fighting to just get these sellers What are you doing to generate sellers before another realtor gets ahold of them? Yeah, I mean we just got to stick true to our to our scripts to our closing techniques Speed to lead on on the phone calls making sure that we are getting on on the calls quickly And yeah, we know that they're talking to a lot of agents. We know a lot of agents are calling but There's an insane amount of agents out here who are thinking that they can just hop into the business and ride this train And that that they're going to make all this quick and fast money and they're doing a horrible job Like they're doing a horrible job and that's been really evident to a lot of the expired listings and and for sell by owners these days because Simply even in our appointment like us showing them what true real marketing looks like compared to what their agent put up there And why their home didn't sell in this hot market in this market where all these properties are getting 50 offers You know what the problem was or why their stuff keeps falling out It's it's been making our job a little easier, but but yeah, there's there's a lot of agents out here working Our big thing is consistency and follow up So making sure that hey even if you didn't get that appointment on on the first try Continue to follow up continue to follow up because agents aren't are going to forget to do that You know agents don't follow up the way that they should if they didn't get first time then they're going to give up No, we're still going to hit them on that six seven eight time One thing that we are doing is we're going back to old expires and old canceled So from last year back when the pandemic first hit Going going back to those and seeing where they're at in in their process if they came back on the market If they had a change of plan. So we've been getting really good traction with those Cool old expireds Cool, cool, cool. You've been watching my videos I don't know. I missed it. What have you been talking about that? I'm just messing with you man. Okay. Now. I've been preaching the old expired thing for a minute, man. It's gold It's gold Yeah, go bro Those are how I got my first listing much my strategy was old expires and I looked for the ones that were were baking Um, and those were the ones that I would that I would call Um, but yeah, you know, we we we have a pretty strong foundation here. So Um, a lot of the competition that we're we're up against. Yeah, we're we're up against the big guys And it's it's just about using our personality to to really shine the appointments Yeah, yeah, yeah I hope everybody really pays attention to what you said there personality man because everybody's like How do I stand out and how do I compete against all these other agents or these experienced agents and stuff? And it's like they want you for you Like it's not about how many you sold or you know, you know This or that or experience it really comes down to they just like you as a person Like they just want to do business with people they like That's really what it comes down to and the experienced people know that and they know They know how to make people feel comfortable with them You know to a point that they want to do business with them the new people I think they just Are nervous and so it makes them seem like They don't know what they're doing even though real estate is real simple You know they just there's this unknown and people are just it's not the fact that they're new. It's the fact that they It's the fact that they their tone is new.  You got a local team in Dallas, right?  Yeah, sure. So so the expansion is separate from my my local team here The the expansion is more of the exp side of things and growing out my network there And and it's it's expanded quite a bit. Um, as far as the the local team We've done a little bit of expansion with that So we're located here in Dallas and we currently expanded out into houston And are going to be moving into san Antonio and austin here pretty soon. So so i'm going to keep that Really based on um texas for the most part um The local team here. Yeah, so it consists of agents I got about eight agents here on the team eight eight or nine agents In being I have our office manager. We have a transaction coordinator marketing person in being George who is our sales manager So we we really um work here in the the local market The dfw market and then down in houston as well But currently on the expansion side 101 agents um On on that side and so now my my biggest role with them is just Being as resourceful and valuable and as valuable to them as possible and making sure that They know how to navigate things and um nowhere to go to get something and Lay that foundation for for a real Long lasting real estate business instead of just trying to worry about generating facelessly So that's that's been my focus with that That's genius brown. That's genius. I'm doing it the same way. I'm still of course. I don't have a local team I'm just a single agent guy and everybody like cringes when I say that but um I'm just a single agent guy and uh, and then the expansion part is a separate deal This is this podcast is called road to 10 000 man for a reason This is our little journey to 10 000 agents one is part of my upline Juan what number how how big are we we are at as of this morning 640 and we're open in three or I think three continents at this point Is it three or four? What'd you say six what? 640 640 cool cool cool and i'm in wands down line. So let's see. I'm at i'm at 465 Look at you. I've got 60 fl qa's more than anyone in the company Wow. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, I've got 151 sponsored 60 fl qa's So i'm pretty excited pretty excited. I'm just i'm using it as a platform to help agents. It's not about It's not even about exp or recruiting or anything. It's just about Using it as a platform the way that you're supposed to you know, like for the greater good, you know for To try to help people. Um, you know everything I do I try to figure out how I can use it as a vehicle to help Yep. Yep. I was telling Juan earlier. I haven't gotten too deep into it yet. Um, you know just with all of the Systems and agent attraction it's it's it's been a goal of mine and and i'm looking to to get more Get more traction going in that area But I I decided to kind of see how all this Works because the whole difficult part That I was facing before was you know having an existing real estate business and And I was just like I don't even know how to begin to focus on doing a whole different area Of this business that I've never done before Um, that I that I wasn't really familiar with and I didn't even see how I would fit it in You know, especially when I'm so used to doing things a certain way But it's it's definitely powerful and I can see How it is helping people, you know, I I give I give my agents You know access to my to my coaching and everything and it's been miraculous to see people that um That you know started with with nothing the same way I did and and just tap in and just feed into the information and Are changing Their lives and and helping their families in different ways. So I'm I'm gonna do more of it. Definitely Yeah Well chaston bro. It's always a real pleasure, man. Let me just say and I appreciate you taking the time to to come on the show and Share your inside of the the market down there and and all that good stuff, man Just really appreciate it. Where can everybody find you or how can they reach out to you if they need something? Sure. Just visit my website chastonjmodel.com So that's c-h-a-s-t-i-n the letter j-m-i-l-e-s dot com And don't definitely do not forget the j bro. Yeah J Miles bro, this dude has the fanciest name in real estate I appreciate it. That's my new tagline Let's write that down Cool guys, thank you guys for tuning in after you're listening to this on pot on a podcast somewhere on youtube Please like comment subscribe. Give us a five star review reach out. Let us know what we can do to help you We are You know doing interviews if anybody's interested in joining our team in any market Just reach out to me or wan on instagram email Text message any form of communication possible wan you got anything? I think we're good to go chaston. Thanks so much for the info. We're looking uh Really really excited to see your growth and keep us posted on any collaborations that we could get in on And to the audience anyone who's out there who needs more help When it comes to skill in their business if you're an agent that just has overall questions or You really want to know what it takes to kind of get to the next level reach out to us me and ricky answer every single one of our Dms We're always available Cool guys. Talk to you guys soon. Peace


Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back to theCUBE. We are live at day one of Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas. I'm Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante and we are joined by two guests. We have Shannon Champion, Product Marketing of HCI at Dell EMC, and we have customer from Celtic Manor, Chris Stanley, IT Manager. Hey, Chris. Hi. Welcome to theCUBE, you guys. Thank you, thank you very much. And we just had time this perfect music intro for you. They knew, they knew. So, Chris, Celtic Manor, you're based in Wales. Talk to us about Celtic Manor, what it is that you do before we start talking about your IT and digital transformation. Yeah, sure, so we're a collection of hotels of four in South Wales. Within that four there is a resort hotel with a conference center. We offer lots of facilities to our guests, golf courses, spas, all the niceties, bars, restaurants, and as well as the conference business being quite a big side of that. And we've got a lot of growth coming on with new hotels and a new convention center. Yeah, and we've got a staff of around about a thousand at the moment, half of those being PC end users and a small IT team of eight supporting all those people, so. So a lot of locations, a lot of stuff, a lot of data. Talk to us about what you're doing with Dell EMC. Where did you start from infrastructure-wise and where are you now? Infrastructure-wise, we've been a Dell partner probably since 2014. That was, we were the previous vendor before and now a Dell EMC house. Always good news, eh? And our VX rail journey has begun probably the last eight months with a new convention center opening, which is an international one, international convention center, Wales. A joint venture with the Welsh government there and it's something that's, whereas we've got a lot of conference business, now we do very well at it, we have to turn away a lot of conference business because we're not big enough, so this facility can offer up to 4,000 people in the main room, 1,500 people auditorium, as well as other breakout rooms, so sort of 6,000 potential guests on site. And we needed some technology to support that, so we engaged with Dell EMC and VX rail was our choice. We briefly evaluated others, but Dell EMC was, we had a proven pass within a great support and strategic partnership, so it was an easy decision. So we're going to get into sort of the details there, but Shannon, let me bring you into the conversation. Last time we really spent any time together was in the 14G launch. You helped orchestrate a lot of the messaging of that, so give us the update on HCI and VX rail and did that awesome marketing package that you put together, is it living up into the marketplace? Well, thank you for that softball, Dave, yes. Yeah, so in November, we were talking to you about HCI on 14th generation power edge servers and how power edge is really designed with software defined storage in mind and how that really set itself up well for HCI. And what it does is open up doors to being applicable for even more mainstream workloads and applications because of the power and the predictability that that provides and Celtic Manor is a perfect example of that in terms of initially using VX rail to scale quickly and reliably for a majority of their workloads and applications, actually, and now are moving to VDI where historically VDI has really been the entry point for HCI, so it's really exciting to see that sort of flip-flop use case here. It was like the obligatory workload or use case, right? Like to be different. Well, I mean, your business is different, right? I mean, I wonder if you could start with some of the business drivers, right? Obviously, very competitive industry, but you've got some unique differentiators, right? The experiences that you're offering customers are somewhat different, but what's driving your business? Speed, digital disruption, maybe you could talk about that a little bit. Organizational growth was a key one with new hotels and conference centers coming on. We were bursting at the seams with our current environment. Good problem. Yeah, so all very good, but it was supporting that for customers going forward and as well as our staff, supporting with the systems and reliability that we can to ensure that the business is doing, you know, it's utmost. And then, yeah, going on from there, we offer all these different kind of facilities on site, golf, bedrooms, spas, all needing different systems from booking systems through to your VoIP systems, your big databases, Oracle databases on these servers. So quite a hard workload on them and we're looking for something that was easy for us to manage, you know, minimalistic going forward. So Chris, in terms of IT transformation, Michael Dell talked this morning about, you know, these four transformative elements that a company should take to be successful, digital, IT, workforce, security, talking about the opportunity for IT innovation to really convert IT into a profit center. And where IT innovation is successful is where customers are looking at it as a business strategy. Talk to us about the stakeholders, maybe from the CFO's perspective of, hey, we have a great opportunity here to capture more business and to be more competitive. What was that conversation like the IT folks to the CFO to get budget and approval to help transform? Always a tough conversation. Going from the past experience where we'd initially gone with a converged solution back in 2014 with Dell, we, that loan center saved us a significant amount of money to empower a loan. So it was something that paid for itself. So the CFO was already like, all right guys. Yeah, you know what you're doing. So yeah, so we took that, we could see where our pain points were in the environment that we currently had and with all the additional hotels, conference centers coming on, we were at a key stage where we needed from the core build outwards. So the X-Rail was an obvious choice I should say in the end, but it was key to transformation because it enabled us now to look at other methods. It's freed up a lot of time for IT staff. So we're looking at deploying a virtual desktop solution now, which we currently don't have. And that could be initially from anything up to 300 virtual desktops. So big load, but we now have the core capacity there to do it. And we're looking at other things for our guests where we can give them a better experience. So artificial intelligence AI is very big on the agenda. So we look at everything some, there's face recognition systems now that can recognize the guests when they come in, ping a message. We haven't deployed these yet, we're still looking at them. But it's enabled us to look at these now with the power behind us of the 14G service. So it's a key enabler for us, the VX-Rail solution. Opening up the potential for emerging technologies, artificial intelligence, machine learning. Yes, very much so, so yeah. Shannon, how do you differentiate from your HCI competition? What are some of the touch points there? Well, from a VMware-focused perspective, Celtic Manor has deployed VX-Rail. Our differentiator is that we're the only provider through our strategically aligned business relationship that is jointly engineered with VMware. And so what that means from a customer point of view is a more seamless experience, right? Familiar tools that they already know and love that they use day to day from a VMware perspective for day to day management, but then also the automation that's built in, right? Automated deployment, ability to upgrade with one-click seamless process to scale quickly when you have new hotels coming online, for example. And then have a single point of support. So we take one single call, whether it's hardware or software for VX-Rail. If there's an issue, call Dell EMC and a lot of customers find a lot of value in that. So okay, Chris, now I got to ask you. So you heard that from Dell EMC, but a lot of companies would say, well, we get along great with VMware, we get the STKs early. Yeah, those guys overplay all that stuff. From your perspective, how important is what Shannon just laid out and how real is it? It's very real. Shannon basically covered, yeah, all those points there were literally what we were struggling with when the one supports telephone coming to call. Imperative to us, we've been ringing, in the past we'd be ringing sand storage, we'd be ringing air sex, VMware, all blaming each other. And you're going from back and forth and you're wasting key time. With one support number now, you've got one call there, you've got one stop shop to sort it. So that was a big, big call for us. The 14G servers as well, we've also get the recover points, which enables us to have two environments where we can lose one in one total environment loss, but still operate as a business. So all of these are giving us up times to close to 100% as we can. Have you had to test that yet?  I mean, you probably tested it, hopefully you've tested it, but we've, we haven't. Has it tested you yet? It always tests me, yeah. We have failed over servers, we haven't failed over a whole cluster because it's one of the things I hope you would never have to do. We've tested between nodes as you would. And we have tested recently with the recover point software where we have lost servers and it's a decision then, do we try and troubleshoot the problem or do we just go back a few minutes when it was working and hit the point? And we just, we gave it an hour to sort it out, it was impacting, so we just rolled back and as if it was never happened, yeah, which was a nice reformation of what we did was right. So Shannon, you talked about resiliency, speed. There was an analyst report recently that I'd like you to kind of enlighten us on and kind of look at one of the things Chris said in terms of getting back to the business, cost savings. How does Celtic Manor's achievements so far kind of align with what you were seeing in terms of customers being able to leverage ACI to be more budget friendly? Yeah, so I think you're referring to our IT maturity study and what we're seeing is that the majority of customers, almost all of them are telling us that if they don't transform in their industry, then they'll no longer be competitive. So I think all of our customers are kind of coming that realization that one of the key aspects to that is that a year ago when he asked the same question, a significantly lower number was mentioned. So I think that just speaks to the speed and the urgency that customers are coming to the realization that it's really important to transform and we need to do it sooner rather than later. We have a lot of proof points around VxRail particularly in terms of the automation, 73% faster to deploy. That means value to customers. That's money that they're saving directly. And lower serviceability costs overall, over 40% lower. So that translates into real TCO, goes back to the CFO, helps them understand the investment that they're making, lets them reprioritize in other areas of the business that helps them transform and stay innovative in their industry. I want to follow up on that last point that Shannon just made. A lot of times when you're bringing in some kind of consolidation, the staff says, uh-oh, that means I'm going to lose my job because I'm really good at provisioning loans or whatever it is. How did you address that? Was there organizational tension? What did you do with the time that was freed up? Yeah, I think it's helped transform the IT team, if anything, it's freed up time, but that time has now taken, it's given us more time to look at innovative products and going forwards. There is, our staff has tended to specialize more as opposed to generalize, which is nice, as in the VxRail has sat there and it's pretty much in what you would do with minimal amount of watch and over with the remote support who also watch your environment if you enable it. So if you're getting outages, they can potentially draw your attention to it before you even know. So lots of times we've freed up and now you can see the staff embracing it there. They're happy that they've got this additional time now not to be doing the not so important stuff as we say, although it is very important and to keep us going, but they have more time now to specialize in what they mostly enjoy. So it's brought it on full circle now, so we're really seeing some positives. And hanging out with their families on the weekends. Or it's like all for going to the spa. That's like, yeah, exactly. So since they're not doing that and they have more time now to innovate, where are you on this data center modernization journey? We talked about VDI, but where do you think you are in that journey? With respect, with VDI, we are imminently doing it. We finished deploying the second VxRail cluster to the five S-series nodes, probably only a couple of weeks ago, after a full migration of all the existing VMs. So it's now enabling us now to look at VDI, which ironically, if you want to get back, that we can get back. We have a meeting with Dell EMC on, do we need another node and all flash? Or do we have spec'd within our five nodes some capacity for virtual desktop? But it's again something that with all these other additional hotels coming on in the conference centers, virtual desktop is the way to go. Even centralizing the data more, so people aren't taking all the data off in their laptops or in a more secure environment. So again, a great enabler for us. And finally, after four or five years, I get there to virtual desktop. Done it the other way around, but... Did you golf? I used to golf a lot. Yeah.  Yeah. So if you had a mulligan, what would you do differently? What would I do differently? Good question. I mean, it's specific to this project. Nothing really. I think everything pretty much has been done as I would expect. When we first deployed the conference center, the new conference center environment, it was a bit disjointed, but because the conference center wasn't built in full use, it kind of gave some time to test the environment fully. And which we also did with the Dell VX4L test drives, which I know the guys offer you where you can go in and to a classroom kind of facility for a day and see it in action before you actually purchase and use it. Same question, different spin. Advice for your peers that because obviously you had some successes, what would you tell them to be successful? Just go for it if you're thinking it. I mean, it is, as far as I can see, it is a future product and it's not going to go in any other direction. The management side of things is far more simplistic than what everything else that we've experienced in the past. And it's baked in with VMware. So you have the best chef with the best ingredients doing the best thing as opposed to another chef taking the best ingredients and trying to do something. So yeah, it's just seamless integration now and it gives us a lot of confidence that we have everything there with Dell and this environment that to go forward and grow even bigger as a business. I knew we've cued your outro music. Find that perfectly. Chris, thank you so much for sharing what you're doing at Celtic Manor to innovate, making your IT transformation a real shame. And thank you for sharing what's new with HCI. Dave, thank you for sharing with me the word mulligan. I just looked it up. In case you don't know what a mulligan is, it is an extra stroke allowed after a poor golf shot. I'd probably be like the mulligan queen. Get a few. We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. We are live on day one of Dell Technologies World. I'm Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante. Stick around. We'll be right back after a short break.