here. I'm just going to turn it over to Polly Carl and let her take us through what it is that we're going to do. So perfect, everybody. On time and off we go. Polly, take it away. So, the, um, so welcome. It's so exciting. And it's not sunny, which I'm really glad about, otherwise it's just a little airy in here. So the first thing, I just really want to start off with welcome. Welcome on behalf of Rina, on behalf of the New Play Institute. This is David convening number one that we've had out of the institute. Five, six, okay. It's going to be number six. We periodically get together and talk about sort of key issues in the field with various people who try to spread the love and invite new people every time. We generally get a certain level of harassment about why people are not invited or why people are invited. We can have that conversation later, but you're all here because you don't have to.  And so you're here because you bring experts and experience and some new ideas. So there are fresh faces and old faces and that kind of thing. So what I thought we started with is just a quick introduction. The arena staff are here to help you as much as we possibly can. We're wearing a very stylish name tag and silver. And so those people are around. And maybe if they could just introduce themselves first and then everybody else just have you all go around and do a quick introduction. So Kevin. Hi, I'm Kevin Becerra. I'm one of the New Play Producing Colors. Hi, I'm Jason King-Jones. I'm the New Play Producing Intern. Hi, I'm Jamie Gillan. I'm the Associate Director of the Institute. I'm Dan Cernopoulos. I'm the Artistic Associate Casting Director. Good morning. My name is Erin Washington. I'm the New Play Producing Fellow. I'm Aaron Matthew and I'm the Senior Literary Fellow. Vijay Mathew, Associate Director of the Institute. Hi, I'm Laura Reigns. I'm the Artistic Development Intern. Is that everyone at the staff level? Oh, no, they're Amritha. Yes. Hi, I'm Amritha. I'm the Literary Manager. But she mostly gets to not help us because we could be part of the conversation. Unless we change our minds a little bit.  Are the Playwrights wearing the stage? Amy Tree, Resident Playwright. It's a new system. I'm in the stage. I'm going to just run these away in a classical theater column, but based out of PC, teaching at Howard University. Tanya Palmer at Goodman Theatre. Adrienne Alls-Hansel Studio Theatre. Lauren Henderson, Playwright. Janice Perron Sundance Theatre Program. Heather McDowell, Playwright, based out of PC. Molly Sutton, Artistic Director, Arena Stage. Welcome, everybody. It's great to have you all here. Ms. Engelman, I'm on the 48th parallel. I'm the director here on Wimby Island, and Talk to Lake Center up in the Boundary Waters. Danielle Magesomato, I'm at the Old Globe Theatre, and I'm the president of Helen D.A. Shirley Serovsky, I'm with Peter Jay. Jessica Burgess with the Inkwell Guarantees. Lily Skid with the Inkwell Guarantees. John Worson, District. Jerry Patch, Manhattan Theatre Club. Madeline Oldham, Berkeley Rec. Reed, Center Theatre Group, Nellie. Rafael Martin, Soho Rep. Jojo Roof, National New Play Network. Pat Flick, Orlando Shakespeare, National New Play Network. Nan Barnett, at Liberty. Former president of NNPN, and former managing director of Florida Stage. Emily Morse, New Dramatist. Julie Givner, Oregon Take-Thru Festival, and board member of LNBA. Marilyn Millstone, I'm a local playwright. Lauren Howardson, Studio Theatre. Martin Peppley, Latino-Nail Theatre Center. Liz Frankel, Public Theater. Erin Garter, St. Wolf. Eric Ramsey, Ohio University MFA, Playwriting Program, and Wardbridge. Cheneen Sobeg, QP of Communications for LNBA. Ignazita Lara, St. Elizabeth Theatre Program. Charles Soglin, Huntington Theatre Company. Matt DeGarden, our signature theater. Ilana Brownstein, Playwrights Commons, and Company One Theatre, and Boston University. Christopher Parker, Atlantic Theatre Company. I think that's everyone. Yeah, everyone, go ahead. And then just so you know, Janice Perron is here. I asked Janice if she would be the scribe of this event. Every time we do one of these convenings, we do what we call a white paper, just to do our best at capturing the spirit of the conversation that happened. Janice has been tasked with writing that. So she will mostly be observing versus, you know, in the thick. If you feel this kind of urge that you have, we can allow you to say a thing or two, but in general, you know, in general, she'll be... That's exactly what you're on. I'm outing you, yeah, so people know. Yeah, don't have your picture taken with Jan.  For those of you who have already lost your folder, like I... We're all logistical stuff. No, Kay, I was laughing because she knows I've already lost it. Kevin said, Janie, we can help you with that sort of thing. In your folder, you're also going to find a media release form. This allows us to capture you on video and photo. Reminder, we are live streaming this. And hence the makeup, you know. We're live streaming the full convening. The only thing we're not streaming are the breakouts.  So that... And then in terms of, I guess, other media stuff, Aaron Valkin is here, and Aaron is going to be doing the kind of summary blog post at the end of the day, just to, again, the goal of this, and just so that you understand, you know, in many ways, you're really delicate, just you may want to consider yourself the chosen. You are really just delegates to the larger community, and so I hope that you'll take that job very seriously.  Hi. We'd be very indebted for you to take responsibility to try to do what you can over both the course of these two days and make sure people feel like they've been asked to participate, given that we only have the funds to bring, you know, this group of 40 here and that sort of thing. So you really are... It's a very important sort of responsibility to invite that third circle in and say, you know, you can also be joining this conversation. And you...it's amazing, at the time that I've been, you know, around these convenings, how many people actually participate in that way, either during the kind of the heart of it or after the fact that you're watching the live stream later on. So we get a lot of people just, you know, coming in later when they can. So... And then my goal is to go over the basic schedule for Friday, except that I don't have my folder. So next up, David is going to be having an interview with Jerry Patch, the following... Jamie, do you want to just say the schedule because you haven't even brought a view? Sure. Yeah, so from 2 to 3, David's going to be interviewing Jerry. And then from 3.15 to 4.30, we're going to hear Matt Vectos and then we're going to hear him about the Literary Office, the 21st Century Literary Office, and then following that will be a breakout session where everyone will get a chance to just still and talk about what you've heard from the afternoon. And then after that we go to dinner and shows for those of you seeing shows here at Arena. If you have reserved a ticket there, you can just pick it up at Will Call, it's under your name. And nightcasts afterwards at the bar, and if you have any other questions, just let us know. And then breakout groups are details in the back of your name page. So when it's time for breakout, group leaders will raise their binders, because we're a binder, and they'll have their group letter on it. So we're going to do that. And yeah, so I think that's it. Anybody have any logistics questions or anything you need to know? Jamie's giving me the thumbs up that I covered all the things on it. Okay so the thing that, so what I'm tasked to do this afternoon is I'm really briefly, because I'm not going to be able to cover all of it because I just want to talk about the context of why this can be. So if we can do two or three convenings a year, why do one on the literary office in the 20th century? I'm going to try to just make sure we remember the history of where the literary office comes from. So again, most of you probably know all this better than I do, so feel free to kind of break in and correct me or something. But just to give us a little bit of that history. And then the last thing I want to do in this 45 minute stretch is talk about just the idea of a convening and how, I don't know, how we should all try to behave. And I mean that in the best way. And I'm going to track my, keep watching my time here, so this particular convening comes out of the swirl that really does. There were a couple of things that happened for those of you who were born prior to 2007. There were a couple of things that, you know, not that many people know, but a couple of things that happened, you know, 2007, Richard Nelson writes this piece, which if you did anything related to dramaturgy in 2007, you took utterly personally. If you were running a playwright center as I was, you felt completely offended by this piece. And I think it created a big stir in our community. So I want to just remind us of that for a brief moment. The thing that Richard said was playwrights are in need of help. This is now almost a maxim in our theaters today. Unquestioned, a given. But where does this mindset, for that is what it is a mindset, come from? Of course, playwrights need things. Many productions support encouragement, so do actors, designers, artistic directors. But this mindset is different, because what is meant here is playwrights are in need of help to write their plays. They are in need of help to do their work. They can't do their work themselves. Now a culture of help reads a culture of dependence, and this is what I believe we now have in the American theater, the culture of readings and workshops, the culture of development. I took this piece to heart, and I know the conversations I was in, there was a lot of conversation that emerged from it. Shortly thereafter, so in 2008, Outrageous Fortune comes out. And in Outrageous Fortune, although I think a book all of us would say had enormous value in the contributions field, again, there was a weird thing that happened around literary offices and dramaturgs in terms of how that was articulated. So I like to call it credit for nothing and blame for everything. A mantra that I often use when I'm working dramaturgically, I go, okay, I didn't get any credit, but I sure do get blamed for what goes wrong. So in the world of credit for nothing and blame for everything, there was a conversation about literary offices in Outrageous Fortune, and again, I'm just going to do a lot of this quoting today so that you know I'm not making it up. For most theaters, it is the literary manager who mans the gate, or woman's it, through which the most plays pass. Literary managers are, as one agent calls them, the book club, keeping eyes out for talent and possibility. Playwrights speak of literary managers with sympathy and sometimes affection. Many feel they have supporters in literary offices, people who read a lot and care about writers. Writers know that these literary managers speak to each other and recommend plays. Ultimately, however, most playwrights believe that literary managers have at most the power and responsibility to say no to a play, but they lack the power to say yes. And I think that, oh, and then the last line here, literary offices serve theaters, not playwrights. And it seems to me that in the world of literary offices and dramaturges as kind of background people, there's been less opportunity so a book like this comes out where it becomes a conversation between playwrights and artistic directors, but it becomes about literary offices and dramaturges. And so what between sort of Richard Nelson and this, as we were starting to do these convenings, and again, we've been planning the sort of string of convenings for a while, it seems like it was central to bring together the group of people that keeps getting talked about but less often talk to. And so I just, again, contextualizing this is why we're all sitting in this room today. How do we talk about ourselves? How do we think about ourselves? And how do we find a way to sort of get that message out? Because the message of the artistic director and the playwright's been one that's been told now pretty consistently. And then I just want to note that the swirl that is 2007 and 2008, for those of you born before 1988, that you might know, Douglas Anderson wrote a piece with a dream machine 30 years of new play development in America, which is one that I read that piece all the time because it's completely relevant and it's like 25 years old, and it's like, you know, 25. And it's a, nothing's changed, everything's the same. So it's good to remember that we just are repeating history fairly consistently. And he starts off that piece, you know, in 1987, I think it was, or 86, Terrence McNally wrote that piece in the New York Times. I think a dramaturg can do more harm than good. And Douglas Anderson says his article, a short straightforward piece in the New York Times seemed particularly daring in view of the influence literary stats now wield in our nation's theaters. A playwright hungry for regional productions might think twice before going public with the following. I have seen so many plays, so rewritten and improved at the behest of a well-intentioned dramaturge that the actual life force that caused them was stifled. One shudders to think what a structurally minded dramaturge would have wanted O'Neill to jump through. So, you know, these are the things that we're all contending with. And we're not going to spend the whole weekend weeping over them. But I want us to sort of know that there's a conversation that we have not we have not moved past, right? So we did it in 86, we did it sometime in the 70s and in the 90s and now, you know, with outrageous fortune and Richard Nelson in the 21st century. A couple of things I think are important to note about that, that these questions come out of assumptions of what are at the core of the formation of the literary office. So the idea of the literary office is a relatively new phenomenon and even dramaturgy in the U.S., I'm not talking about dramaturgy in Germany now, but dramaturgy in the U.S., relatively new phenomenon.  And the and I feel like it's important in part because you know, one of the things I'm feeling in the you know, I spend a lot of time in the blog world the social media world, which I think is terrific. But one of the things that's happening in that world is because anybody can say whatever they want and just publish it themselves it used to be if you were going to publish something somebody else had to read it and confer that it had an ounce of credibility to it, but now that doesn't actually have to happen. And so I feel like this question of context and remembering the historical part is a huge responsibility as we have this conversation today because otherwise it becomes like we're just sort of you know, we don't want to fall into that kind of blog world of oh, this is what we think today, so that means it must be new and fresh and meaningful. And so I kind of went back to, you know, our Preca's got that great piece about dramaturgy and we play dramaturgy and most of you probably read it at Yale and the Iowa Ideals, but it's such a great reminder kind of like if you look at sort of Yale School of Dramaturgy and where we really start talking about the dramaturgy in the room that kind of comes out of that sort of 60s and 70s motion and many of you know it better than I do it again. My job is just to put it on the table today. In 1977, you know, 1977 Bob Brustine in Yale reworked the literature and criticism program into an MFA, DFA in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism, and again I'm just going to remind us of what the goals of that were. The new program had in Robert Brustine's words the explicitly objective turn, objective to turn alienated critics into helpful and creative associates you see where Richard got this word helpful, creative associates imbued with the philosophy that the theater must participate in the intellectual life of its age and that the intellectual aspect of the theater too often scored by American theater professionals must be ever present and sound. The goals of the program are to resolve the antipathy between the intellectual and the practical and to fuse the two into an organic whole. And I think it's important to know here that what Mareka reminds us in this piece is that the idea was that to take something that was external criticism, so to take the idea of the critic who's a person who's telling an audience, here's what you should think or, you know, not think of this play and to take that and bring it to the internal workings of the process. So now we've charged these same people who are interested in external criticism to be internal critics of the play in the process. This is an editorial comment on my end, but that feels like a terrible setup for people who are asked to do drama tergy in a room. We're going to hire an internal critic. And so I hope you feel safe now making your play. So I think, but I think it's a really important piece to note about, you know, kind of this notion of where it comes from. It comes out of that notion of criticism and it comes also out of this idea of intellectual rigor. And, you know, that's another strange position to be in drama tergy, and again this is my editorial comment, which is a strange position to say you're going to be the person who brings intellectual rigor to the play, right?  So I feel like there are some things that are rooted in kind of the history of how drama tergy became part of what we do in the theater that I might be interesting to contend with over the course of this couple days. Then there are some more assumptions rooted in that 77 document about what the drama terg does. It's the 77 drama tergs guide handled for the student drama tergs at the Yale School of Drama. This is one of the phrases from there, which I this is one of my favorite things. You and your critical skill are there as a resource, ready in case the director feels he needs your opinion. Anything is possible. He may need you, call upon you and use your advice to stunning effect. He may call upon you and ignore you. He may need you and not know it. Or he may simply not need you. Whether he will call on you or not depends largely on his personality and work method. Yours, the relationship you have established in short chemistry. He will let you know if he wants to hear from you. If I had read that, I would never have dramaturged anything in my whole life. I wasn't trained to dramaturg, so that worked out well. I didn't know that was there. I just wanted to put in here are some of the things that the core of the formation of a field, which are rooted in this idea of you would be called only speak if you're spoken to. Given because I know many of you in this room, the level of intelligence and sort of commitment to theater and experience in the room, that's a weird position to be in. It's not one I do very well personally, and so I think it's interesting to know the relationship, the history of the relationship of the dramaturg process. Again, I put it out there. It does have my editorial chuckles in there, but I put it out there. And then finally this is the last piece I want to contextualize for just the history part. And this comes from the Douglas Anderson piece. And here he's talking specifically, he does this, he goes on this little journey around the country, you know, and he visits every new play development center and talks to everyone, and he says this implicitly, he's talking about O'Neill here now, his visit to O'Neill, but he's also, you know, I think talking about play development more generally. Implicit in the O'Neill system are several relatable ideas. A, that massive input is helpful, perhaps necessary to the development of new work. B, that massive on-the-spot rewriting improves the text. C, that directors can be randomly assigned to text and respond to them with creativity and insight. And D, that a public debate with audiences and a wide array of conference members is valuable. And again, I put that out there because, you know, when I was re-reading that's a really interesting set of assumptions, right? I mean, but if you've run a play development center as I have, it's exactly the assumptions that you are taking for granted. The idea that there is value in randomly assigning director on occasion, ideally it's better if they know the director, but we randomly assign on a regular basis, we actually believe rewriting makes the play better, we think it's better, although I bet every one of you would tell the story of the play that got rewritten that got worse, but the idea is that it will get better. And so and that, you know, audience involvement in that process could somehow be valuable. So what I want us to just, you know, have in mind this next couple of days is just, you know, where we started from, which isn't that long ago, A, and B, what are some of the assumptions that we started on? So, I put that out there, I think we'll come back to it in lots of different ways, but I just wanted, you know, to sort of say here are the things that were driving us as we were thinking about this conversation. And then so now just a couple other things I want to do. The next is you all, many of you, most of you, we asked if you would talk about what your hopes were to get out of this couple of days. So, I want to just quote from you what you said that you would sort of ask for and then maybe give you a second to add if I missed anything. And then I have one last section, and then thank God I would be off my screen. So, what you said you'd hope to take away from this weekend, and this is, I'm focusing now, I ask professional and personal, I'm mostly focusing on your professional hopes. Many of you said, and I've taken I won't be quoting all of you, but I've taken sort of what were the consistent themes. So, consistent themes. How can we use new technology to make our work faster, greener, more efficient? And I certainly would be interested in getting some practical information about how other managers and literary officers have incorporated new technology to help them in their process. And I'd be interested to talk to playwrights about ways that we could take advantage of new technology to communicate with them in more effective and efficient and cost-effective manner. Another idea, I want to discuss what are signs of promise in an early career. Another idea, I'd like to discuss where the influence of the literary department manager lies in relation to our ability to influence the decision makers, artistic directors, in our theaters toward development and production of writers. We feel need of writers we feel need a voice in troubled times when safe decisions are the norm. On the one hand, and then another idea, on the one hand I work on projects that come to me with legs and then go off to have a life.  What can we do? I've been thinking a lot about the way we introduce or don't new plays to artistic directors and producers. Is there a need for a new different enhanced format for communicating information about pieces available for development and production? Next one, I would like to see how we can talk about new plays in terms of relationships and connections with writers. What opportunities and environments we are creating to better know their voices and their work rather than talking about plays as commodities as play shopping. In other words, process over products how to be facilitators and stewards of relationships. I'm interested in an aggressive and honest conversation about unsolicited script policies at large theaters and how they are evolving and changing how much replication currently goes on with literary offices around the country and how might this be combatted. I want to engage in an actual productive practical conversation about how institutional theaters and smaller upstart theaters that are yet modeled on institutional priorities can productively support different models of the creative generative process. How artists can both lead the conversation about process and also how literary play development offices can help emerging artists try new forms. I'd like to discuss the value of extra dramaturgical material for reading a new play including research, visuals, dramaturgies websites and each new play to provide context images, synopses. Does the writing speak for itself or do these elements help understand the play better? And then this person asking the question is there more we can do to free up our imaginative brain space as well as limited hours in our lives to do the big picture work rather than reject the next playwright in line work which kills my soul by the way. A subject that interests me and is increasingly a topic of painful conversation among friends who are writers, actors, directors is the issue of sustainability of our souls really. Once you have emerged and have had a crack at some regional productions and one of the wonderful fellowship grants you put this past desert that has few points of navigation and just when you have some craft and we've been a wisdom human grace you are also likely faced with an array of life demands that mean you need some sort of it seems there's a big gap in our field between the emerged world and the elder statesman woman and you make that journey. So that's from you all. Anything that you're not thinking about it's done. I'm just going to take a break because that was a long kind of long intro. I have one more little section but I wanted to stop for a second to say is there anything I missed of yours that you hope to have on? I'd love someone else to speak besides me I'm glad you're not. Yes Christian, thank you. Help me. Thank you. So now I'm thinking my answer but I think I'm interested in the ways which actually artistic staffs or literary staffs other than the artists who direct Henry assert themselves as sort of stewards or keepers of the mission actually here and therefore hopefully have an impact on their own influence. Yeah related to that I also failed to do that but I was sitting here thinking it would be wonderful to include some conversation about institutional dramaturgy and the notion that you know I love the quote you read from Bob Ruskin and another one of my favorite he said was that dramaturges are the intellectual conscience of the theater itself and play a role not necessarily the most important in the room but involved with the artistic director and the staff. Good. Good. I think these things are embedded in what's going to happen but that's great. Yes David. There are three people coming to the introduction part sitting right there on the end. Oh thanks David I appreciate that. Yes so the three of you, yes introduce yourself just just your name I'm Miriam Weisswald with the William M.F.E.M. I'm John Baker with the Wally Mammoth I'm Rachel Jeffkin I'm the artistic director of the team Thank you guys. Miriam didn't do it wrong because you're doing a big cyber narrative thing so we can hear a little bit. Other things that we want to make sure we cover? Yes. We're talking at some point about the education of playwrights in terms of the really MFA programs but how I guess the editing process is taught or not taught in a component or value of either of that. Yes. Some players that don't have MFA's are curious about how to convey the training that they do themselves either by taking classes at institutions like playwright center or playwright foundation or these various things and how to convey that without the letters behind the name. Oh great. How does one emerge out of the pile? Right. I have some training. I just don't have the masters. This is actually also about training. Training for dramaturgs. How can we redefine that to help us redefine the profession? Great. That's great. Can I have a hand? Joy, thanks. I'd like to also think about the dramaturg's place in the system of the theatrical community so how playwrights can be instrumental in really listening to the play and certainly not to committing dramaturgical malpractice but listening to the play finding its pulse and keeping another finger on the pulse of the audience and trying to find points of connection and ways into the place for those audience members who want to dig deeper and want to feel like they're part of a community of intellectually minded lifelong learners who explore imaginatively in these worlds and also to really help audiences find ways into works that might not meet their expectations about what a play is. I think there's something implicit in this what I was saying but it feels to me always like the tension and I know we've talked about this a lot in preparation so I know we're going to cover it in these next two days which is that tension between this kind of external and internal role and just the question I suppose put not in the positive is that a reasonable expectation that one person can navigate inside and outside at the same time it feels to me like my experience particularly as a dramaturg but also as the person not really a literary manager but overseeing the literary department that is a lot to ask of person A and I don't know if there are always things that go together to sort of go I'm going to try to make the play make sense to the audience and I'm going to try to make the play make sense to the people who are making it in the room at the moment they're making it the internal thing is something I hope we'll get at because I think that's what a lot of your comments are connecting to yeah Tanya building on that same idea the other external community that we've spent a lot of time thinking about and wearing our handbutt are critics too is there any I mean is there any relationship between the drone corridor literary staff and conversations with critics is there anything to be is that a conversation that can even happen yeah I mean it's so interesting the truth in dramaturgy and criticism and then how that this is true of a lot of times we'll hear when the critics are giving the reviews that they're actually dramaturging the play and the review so there's a way in which critics get into dramaturgy and dramaturges get into kind of the criticism element so I think it's a really good question Liz I think what you guys are saying these are really great topics just to say that I mean going to LMDA conference for the last how many years a lot of this we talk about all the time and have been for you know for 25 years plus so what a goal for me in this is to make sure that the conversation goes back to what you're saying in terms of the what you started with which is their playwrights and institutions and often were caught in the middle and people speaking for us but what do we want to talk about in that relationship because a lot of the internal stuff about these feelings about that we have as dramaturges I feel like we do that a lot at conferences anyway amongst ourselves so I just want to go back to I mean Michael just let's get back to the people speaking for us but let's talk about what's being talked about right now and just so that again I'll just contextualize a second more based on that kind of you know from our perspective in the work we're doing with the institute and trying to sort of really build a theater comments it's about for us I think you know just making sure that we understand the conversation and the research and adding to the contribution so we know I mean not to there's no sense that those conversations haven't happened for 25 years at LMD I think we are I mean I just so you know I think they're super important but no no I hear you I just to say I think it's you know exactly to your point we're trying to figure out how we make space in the conversation of these convenings for the voice that it's talked about but doesn't do the talking so that's you know because we've had a number of meetings where this voice has not been heard so I just wanted to put it in that these are great I'm so appreciative of the additions yeah well the artistic things I think are also a concern I'm really interested in the fact that many of us who run literary departments and selection processes have kind of developed them ourselves by hooking crook and stealing and borrowing and figuring out how to do this on our own with the education of dramaturgs of how to basically assemble best practices for a literary office and to actually train not only the artistic portion of the next generation but also to train us as good administrators because it's huge administrative talent that often I don't see being addressed when we start talking and mixing words of literary office versus dramaturgs there's agency in all of that I think that's the thing you talked about without talking to you last thought yes David question I should probably come out explicitly in terms of my own goals for what we talk about I'm really interested in making sure that as we move into the 24th century literary office where we don't throw out the baby with the bathwater which is the old thing I don't know what the baby is part of trying to think what comes next we want to use this weekend and your expertise to help identify what the actual baby is before we go into this whole sort of move of change for change what's the thing to be conservative and I have to say what that means to me is you just said it the easy way in which we move between literary management and dramaturgy as all one conversation I don't understand that as somebody who's come out of the world of practice and not out of the world of academia to get to where I am and so for me a lot of what I'm trying to understand is how come that's such an easy how do we just make that relationship so easily linguistically so easy so that's part of what I'm hoping we understand I wonder if in light of what David just said if we could have a show of hands to see how many people consider themselves dramaturgs how many people consider themselves literary managers and how many people concern themselves dramaturgs I thought there would be more in the both and I'm the interesting how one chooses what your artistic director say what you would say just the last thing I want to do we're going to get into the meat of it that seems obvious by the comments and questions what I wanted to just talk a little bit about the idea of the convening so we did a convening last January which I had a I thought was terrific felt smug about it it was good and then I went somewhere to visit another theater and you know we were having a conversation with a bunch of playwrights and a person who was at that convening was like oh my god the worst experience I've ever had in my life was attending that convening I felt the smug in that moment but so I want to there may be those of you who say that anyway but I want to try to avoid that as that will come from anyone here so that would be my my hope would be that no one would have that experience I find convenings to be incredibly difficult any kind of conference convening and I'll just speak personally I don't care for them very much I don't like the kind of public schmoozing I much rather I would like to write an article for Hall around and send it to you that someone could read it here and I would watch remotely from New Play TV I also find that it takes me a while often I have a really good time to get going I feel everybody's angling to start with kind of what their role is or position or why they're here or you know there's a I would say a kind of self-consciousness that overtakes us I call it the world of the eye the eye of the personality that is like you know about me what about me what about me and will I be heard and you know it just becomes kind of you know a kind of narcissism that conferences bring out in us and so I want to talk a little bit about how I hope we'll you know think about this couple days and do my best to help you know to the degree that I need help overcoming it others of you as well and I was thinking about the importance of convenings for me as much as I don't like them very much like how formative they have been and David Dower and I had this you know a story in 2002 we went to a convening and we were you know I don't even know I was invited I got this invite works in ways in 2002 and it was like I just become the artistic director of the play center and I you know totally kind of hanging out and David was there and this conversation started and both David and I looked at each other and we not met each other at that point and we were like what the fuck are we on TV what the hell are we and so and David I don't know you could speak of that you always saw that story but but something magical came out of that horrible experience for both of us that wouldn't have happened and in fact one of the things go ahead I can feel you're about to speak and it'll be more interesting than what I'm saying this is a longer story I won't make it I can feel him jumping in the middle it's important though because what you just said I'm gonna sit in that chair one of the things that you just said is actually really important to what we're starting which is the starting in that sense of alienation because in that conference anybody here at that conference 2002 in Portland there was a TCG sponsored conference called New Works New Ways funded by Mellon and Duke nobody so we can say anything we want it was a conference that was designed to pull people together from around the country who were working on New Works in New Ways and at the time I was working at the Z-Space you were at the Plurite Center and the Z-Space was largely a volunteer organization at the time almost no paid staff I had a little bit of money just a little enough money to get myself there and what I thought I was doing when I got there was I was gonna figure out for the artists at the Z-Space how it was that I could put them into the national conversation it had been very much focused on San Francisco it was kind of stuck behind you know, stuck by the peninsula of the Bay Area and nobody was moving out into the world and I say this all the time I thought there wasn't infrastructure there was like a super highway that you could get a career like if you could just get in the car and get on at an on-ramp then you'd have your career and the reason that none of these people had careers because I didn't know the directions to the on-ramp so I was failing my job and so I took all of our money and I went to this thing and I mean so what was it like $400 and that was like a huge indulgence maybe it was a little more I don't know I was on the west coast already so I went to this thing to try to find the on-ramp and in this conversation as you're describing my experience of it and I've since talked to many people who had different experiences also many people who were alienated at the outset was that the room was full of people who were doing it exactly the same way and there were a handful of people that I went there cause I saw the names on the list of people who were going to be there like Polly, like Todd like at the time Kim Eisner and the Skirball folks done in LA there were a number of people who were going to be there and some presenters who were doing things very differently but the conversation for the first several hours was entirely dominated and the moderator fed into this she would go from let's hear from a producer and it would invariably be a Lord producer talking about the challenges in Newark and the playwright would respond to that and then she'd say is it different for the presenters presenter go and then producer playwright, presenter, producer, playwright, presenter all people who were the same people doing it the same way and so I finally raised my hand and I said I'm sorry I came to hear there are other people in the room who don't fall into this little rubric that you have and I came to hear that and she said what's your name and I said David she was well I can promise you David and I was really and I literally this is a dead true story I'm sitting right next to her I sit down still I don't think we've talked to each other and she just kind of poked me she said I'm glad you said something but I got up I actually left I was on my way out of the field this is no exaggeration I got up I was so embarrassed that I got up and I walked out into the lobby and I was trying to decide whether I should stay the night I already paid for the hotel or go to the airport and try to get my flight and just go back and I was literally standing there trying to figure out I didn't have smart phones in those days just trying to talk myself through what just happened I just resigned from the American theater I got to tell my wife this was a waste of money because it was our money not the Z space money and this woman came out and she poked me in the ribs and you know when I say she's tiny she forgive me she is tiny but she has had an extraordinary impact on the American theater and her name is Olga Garay and she's the director of the cultural sorry Olga what's your title she is the director of the funding agency that is the Los Angeles city the city of Los Angeles is cultural funding prior to that she was head of the Duke Foundation and she was one of the people who was sponsoring this and she came out she elbowed me in the ribs and she said I'm so glad you said what you said and I said I'm glad that you're happy about it but I'm actually leaving I feel totally embarrassed and I'm leaving you to hell you are and she grabbed me back and she goes I'm Olga Garay and I funded this thing and she dragged me back in the room and then she kept saying all right what do you think about it every time someone has well what do you think and at the time she asked me well you can't you just get to be bitter you actually have to be productive and so what would you do and I said well I get some time for the people who are doing them in different ways okay fine there's time she sort of drew a circle in the agenda then what else would you do well I asked I want to talk to them about how we could okay fine there's dinner you make a table and if anybody shows up at your table you'll know there are other people and at the time she was asking me who are the people doing what you're doing and I couldn't answer and so that was what we used that meeting for but the main part of that whole story is the alienation piece when she kind of grabbed me and pulled me back in and said you don't just get to be bitter you actually have to be productive that there were people all over that committee who were feeling similarly like they didn't understand the words they didn't understand the roles they didn't understand the process whatever but they were sitting there like this and what she caught was that I said something so that gave a way to begin so there's alienation in this room from all different ways at this some of you are from play labs some of you are playwrights some of you are from major institutions that are always the boogeyman some of you are from mid-sized institutions some of you are straight you came through this academically some of you came up to practice without that benefit of that background so that's why you're here it's composed that way on purpose we wanted people here to sit in your alienation together and be productive not bitter and so we're going to pull at that and that's why you're delegates you are not the anointed and it's hard to keep that in mind as it goes on all week we are not somehow especially charged people who can solve this we are delegates of the people who think about this and it's just the beginning of trying to move it into the 21st century yeah and I'll just say a couple more things the thing I'd say is what came out of that for those of us who were alienated from that experience was we all started working together and it's a collaboration that's now more than 10 years old of us having a conversation for David and I in particular you know that alienation of I think all this point of you don't just get to be bitter you have to do something made all of us to really begin to think about what are new practices, what are other ways and some of those things I think are David and I can talk about our own personal agendas but just coming to fruition now you know 10 years like understanding those things are just coming to fruition now so it's kind of knowing like we hope it will be the kind of thing where the alienation is about something productive not about a few months later saying the experience of my life but you know I mean you might for that but I hope not a couple of other additional things I want to say about that in terms of just the style of this and what I hope you'll feel free about we've been all reading amongst us at the institute that great little piece by Jonah Lair called group thing a lot of you have read it in the New Yorker it's a great piece about brainstorming and about the sort of limits of brainstorming and so you know and I just want to reference it here because the idea of brainstorming historically traditionally idea of brainstorming is there are no bad ideas everybody should put out their ideas on the table and you can never have enough ideas and you should just rip on as many ideas as possible and the safety of no bad ideas means you can say anything and we've kind of built up a culture around the importance of brainstorming as like the key to sort of innovation in ideas and what Jonah says in his article is there's good things that come from brainstorming but there's kind of a flawed idea and he wants to sort of take it a step further and I was really compelled by this he says and so they do a bunch of experiments about the power of dissent within the sort of context of brainstorming and idea-forming and he says in a way the power of dissent is the power of surprise after hearing someone shout out an errant answer we work to understand it which causes us to reassess our initial assumptions and try out new perspectives and be difficult but it's always invigorating it makes us right up and so what I was thinking about was both the importance I think in this convening to feel like there can be room for that that this isn't about just brainstorming there's room for dissent there's room for friction and that friction will wake us right up and that I have no doubt because I know so many of you that that can be done in the utter respectful way that we know how to do it because we've been giving feedback to sensitive playwrights for a long time and so I know we can do it and people we're all sensitive and then I think the other thing that he says on that piece which I love is he talks about the whole Broadway formula for like what a good collaboration looks like you should read it if you haven't that a good collaboration he has a thing called a Q quotient and the idea of the Q quotient is that if you put five people in a room to make a new Broadway musical who have never met each other and trust anybody else people will kind of tear each other apart and you put a group of five collaborators in a room to make a Broadway musical who all know each other and have always worked together before you may not have a very great product because nobody will challenge anybody and nothing new will come into it and so when they look to do this Q quotient what's a successful Broadway musical the way they assess it is the right mix of bold and new so there has to be some amount of familiarity in the room there has to be some amount of trust in the room so one example is you've got West Side Story and you bring in one new voice like Stephen Sondheim and that changes so if the Q quotient is one to five you don't want the familiarity to be five but you also don't want it to be one nobody knows anybody or you want it somewhere in between I think we have a great Q quotient here there's a lot of familiarity and we've worked together before in some capacities and there's some new people in the room and so I feel like we've kind of set ourselves up we've collaborated a couple of days for the kind of zone and then this is just the kind of last idea but let's see the final thing he talks about in there is just getting the right composition of a group he gives that great example of building 20 at MIT where Noam Chomsky worked and all these people kind of came together and it was this old building that nobody wanted to be in and so they came in and everybody got to kind of create their own space and make their own room and the amount of creativity that was generated by just putting people in proximity to each other and so I feel like I just love the lesson of building 20 which is I hope kind of what we're going for here in this idea of the composition the lesson of building 20 is that when the composition of the group is right enough people with different perspectives running into one another in unpredictable ways the group dynamic will take care of itself and the different discussions add up in fact they may even be the most essential part of the creative process although such conversations will occasionally be unpleasant now everyone is always in the mood for small talk of criticism that doesn't mean that they can be avoided the most creative spaces are those which hurdle us together it is the human friction that makes the sparks and so I feel like I hope that this will be a building 20 for all of us here we're throwing ourselves together the best spirit and intentions will embrace the friction of it, the alienation of it and we'll feel as quickly as we can because our time is short some sort of sense of safety to take the risk to have those kind of conversations and do that work could I do two quick little exercises around that that just occurred to me while I was listening to you hold on, let me see if you can I'm not even like I can cut into it 158 is where we are really fast, can everybody stand up take a look around and actually maybe face each other I just want to see take a look and sit down if there's nobody in this room that you are meeting today for the first time sit down if you've met every single person in this room who's single person she works there okay sit down if there's less than five people who are new to you today sit down if there are less than five people who you just met here do we count Facebook on that David? no, in the room I'm just going to leave that one at that but you see, this was on purpose we always get this thing, oh it's the same old suspects it's just the same group of people but you don't even know each other better about that stand up every stand up again for a second can you just sit down if you have an advanced degree in dramaturgy or literature great, so a balance excellent, alright, stand up again and sit down if you have no advanced degree in theater sit down unless you are primarily a playwright in this conversation sit down if you're ready to sit down it's simply people working in the context of so like, I know, Sundance Dramatis, advocacy playwright sit down and so people stand who are freelancing at the moment in this work you're, yeah, I consider you because you're in about more stringing it together only? only freelance? more stringing it together by freelancing in an institutional context I just wanted you to see where we're starting out and now stand up if you're here in DC so these are your local halls for the things that you need to do I know John's been in DC before John Gloria used to be here there's early days of the field that's right, okay good so just to give everybody a sense of part of the ammunition for me in that earlier thing was I think I'm such a freak I'm the only person in the room who's like me that's not true and you also can find that there are you have your tribe and there are also new things to meet in here so I think the Q-quotient is going to be okay


Hello, everyone. Today we have the winners of the Visits Project Prizes 2013. On the left side, I have Mr. Mukesh Hajjela, CEO and Vice Chairman from NICT in Dori, India. And on the right side, I have Mr. Santiago Amador from the Ministry of ICT's Colombia. My first question will go to Mr. Mukesh Hajjela. How actually this social enterprise NICT was created? And what is your advice in order to ensure the proper coordination amongst stakeholders and particularly governments? We have created this social organization in the hunt of sustainability for the telecenters, in fact. The telecenters or in India we call it common service centers, all are struggling for the sustainability. And what we try to do is to marry the entrepreneurship with this ICT project. And if we can do that, we can create a business model, enterprise business model which can sustainable. And it is in the hunt of the sustainability for the centers we have created this organization. In fact, my advice to the government is that they should strengthen the information and communication department and every department of the government should have a spoke from ICT department. So have to have better communication and coordination. Thank you very much, Mukesh. And my next question will be to Santiago. Will it be possible to provide more information about the project in my language and why this project is important for the ministry? Okay, in Colombia we are a diverse country. So we have 96 indigenous communities living there with 65 different languages. So we are into promoting the preservation of the languages in Colombia which is very important for us. And we think that ICT is a perfect tool to do it. Those languages are missing every day and we are trying to put some knowledge and technology in order to preserve other languages. So we accompany the indigenous communities to make themselves lessons. We don't put anthropologists, they do the work, the communities do the work. We just accompany them and provide the technological tools to do it. They make lessons we put in digital and then we help them to share. And David has three different phases. The first one is to build the lessons and to build confidence and trust between the indigenous and the government to do it. At the beginning, for example, the platform was so close, the indigenous asked us to close the platform. But now they want to share that knowledge even in commercial platforms like YouTube. The second phase is we did a big Latin American but mostly Colombian indigenous and Afro-Colombian forum to discuss what to communicate. If the communication is important in that communities and they say yes and they make an agreement. And we start to teach or accompany the communities to encourage us to produce digital content. Not closed lessons like at the beginning but digital content in every platform, even using cell phones or something. And the third phase is we're going to build 12 production content laboratories which allows the communities to produce anytime and to edit some content. But we don't want to make a TV set with big cameras. Just a few devices and methodology to produce a lot even with cell phones on small cameras and produce sounds and videos. This is the third phase which is very ambitious. And I think I have to say thanks to WISIS and to this prize because when they know in the government, even inside the government, I work for the government, even inside the government you have to convince the other policymakers to put money and to believe in that kind of project. And I think WISIS was a very, very important platform to get more money and to get confidence from the government to continue doing that. Thank you very much. And actually it will be my next question. What does it mean for you to win this prize? It is a success of all the grassroots social entrepreneurs. The change agents what they are working at a grassroots, they are doing tremendous work. And I accept this award on behalf of them only. This award is dedicated to them, they are the grassroots level people, those who are really bringing change for the community, for the people living there in far flung villages. They are doing their business, they are earning their employment as well as they are doing public good. So this is, I feel this award is a success and a celebration for all those people who are working at a grassroots level and dedicated to them. Thank you very much Mukesh. It's very nice to know this. And Santiago, do you want to add something? Yeah, we are implementing a big and ambitious plan of technology in Colombia. My name is Biwe Digital, live digitally. There are a lot of initiatives and projects, like kind of 92. We are connecting, really connecting the country. We were just 20% of the municipalities connected to broadband and to fiber optics. And now we are going to pass to 96% of the country connecting to the fiber optics. And we are doing some many changes, mostly for the base of the pyramid for one, two and three economic strata, which is the 88% of Colombians. So we are making a revolution, but the revolution cannot be just for the urban people or for the rich people. We are trying to put the internet service of, I don't want to say poor people, but people for the one and two and three strata, for the base of the pyramid. And this project, it's a clearly message that technology is for all. With indigenous people and Afro-American people who live in Colombia, we have to build confidence. It's kind of slow. This process starts a few years ago because you have to, at the beginning they say they don't want to be in touch with technology. They say this is going to destroy the culture. But in particular, internet is not destroying the culture. Maybe the mass media try to destroy the culture because they want all of us to be the same. But internet is based on an economic model, which name is niche cultures. The internet is based on the difference of other people and internet can attend every need of the people, every niche need. So the indigenous, I think they are understanding that the internet is a huge tool. And now they ask for the government to communicate public policy for indigenous. And we are working on that. And this project, it's a part of a big policy. And I think the basis, the pillars of the confidence are already building. So we are trying to move on. And this project is so, I don't know how to say it, but it came in the right moment. Because we are trying to do the next step. The next step is encourage indigenous to produce a lot of content, not just a few, but a lot of content. And use technology in everyday life and share the knowledge and participate in the knowledge society. Sharing their beliefs and their recipes and their concerns and their claims, everything. And I think and I hope that next year when I come here again, because which is fun. When I come here again next year, I think the indigenous are more empowered and producing a lot of content in all kind of platforms. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Santiago. Thank you very much.


You know the exams coming up, March and September for E-45E6, every January, like clockwork for chief. You know, it would behoove us to study early, or continuously, and flash cards and other tips that we're going to talk about. But we don't. Everybody waits the last minute thinking, oh, I got this, you know, I'm just going to cram, you know, like a week before. That's my method. I take a week's leave and, you know, before the exam and I just cram. And then you ask, well, how long have you been taking the E-5 exam? Oh, this is my seventh time. All right. Well, I see that method is working for you. So why don't we talk about a new method that can maybe accentuate your method, you know, or add to your method. Let's talk about something different. And there are ways that are published, you know, by scholars on how to take an exam. Somewhere in your head, you've either heard it, saw it, spoke it, taught it, visualized it. Somewhere in your brain is the answer to every test question on that exam. But you just don't know it. You don't know where it is. So it's all stored here with all of the upfront things you've learned in the last six months, the last year. If you're cramming all that stuff, crowds up front and all that other good stuff is way back, push back here now.  So when you're reading the question on an exam, cover the distractors with your paper. They're not answers because only one of them is an answer. Yeah, there's our distractors. So cover those distractors with your free piece of paper, you know, that you have for your notes. Read the question.  Now it may not jump in the front of your brain and say, petty ups are right, the answer is, you know, C. But somewhere in there, it pushed forward. Now uncover those distractors. If they're completely foreign to you and the question is foreign to you, but one of those distractors just jumped right out at you, that's your answer.   Don't wait for things to happen to you. Make them happen for you.


Aaron Judge had a CT scan to see if the upper rib on the right side has healed. So he spoke to reporters that are still down in Tampa and he said that there's slight improvement. The bone is still about the same, slight improvement. In two weeks they can't really tell much of anything. The bone is healing the way it should be. Now, that's a little bit jarring because he hasn't really been doing much. You guys have been lifting as far as we know and swinging the bat with any ferocity and they're not going to know anything for a while. Now, I think everybody assumes we're not going to get baseball back until maybe late May or June. But I would assume that if they removed that rib, it still wouldn't have him ready for June. So now that there's not baseball, maybe they're looking at it this way. Let it try to heal, let it continue to try to heal. And if it doesn't heal by the time baseball resumes, then we know it's an issue and then we could remove the rib and then he'll miss the rest of the season. Again, nobody's told me that. That's just what I assume they're feeling now. He also, in talking with the military reporters, that he had suffered a pneumothorax, which is a partial collapse of the lung, which can occur according to Marley Rivera with rib fractures. He said, that's now completely gone. And Judge said, quote, I can fly if I need to go home. Now, none of us knew anything about this pneumothorax. And I'm reading Twitter and the reactions to the stories that people are putting on there. Why the Yankees lying to us about this stuff? Why didn't they ever tell us he had a pneumothorax? Which in layman's terms is a collapsed lung. Let me tell you all something. With HIPAA laws, they don't have to tell you anything. They tell you exactly what the player tells them that he wants said. So even if they knew it was a pneumothorax, they cannot legally tell you unless Aaron Judd said, yeah, that's cool. You could tell them. But when was the lung collapse? Was the lung collapsed on that diving play in September that he tried to make? He's had a collapsed lung that long? Or did the lung collapse at the beginning of spring training? That's the question nobody really seems to have the answer to. But it does tell you that he can fly because the collapsed lung is in fact healed. And again, cracked ribs sometimes do collapse a lung. But did that happen in September? He's been living with that since. So a lot of things that we don't have answers to right now. But we know that the bone is not healed. He's saying that it's healing as it should be. But two weeks, it's not healed. But the collapsed lung is in fact healed. And we'll see exactly where we go from there. So the delay of the season gives them some maneuverability and some time. So there's no need to rush anything. And even if they felt this is the time to remove the rib, does anybody really want to go to a hospital now unless they really have to? Right. And I guess that's elective surgery. And all the people in charge are telling us don't do any elective surgery. Only go to the hospital if you really need it. And beds and hospitals are scarce right now. And really, do you want to be in a hospital where there are people that are recovering from COVID-19? So again, a lot of unanswered questions. We just gave you exactly what Aaron Judd said, but not quite sure where this is going. I wouldn't think it's an overly great thing that it's still not completely healed. This is an injury that was suffered in September. So I have no idea how they move forward other than wait another two weeks and he gets another CT scan.


I said, well, no one. Samet, Andy Norrhoff, here, Jane Coyote, Jerry Jones, Boba Tree, here. We'll call the meeting to order. Start with the Pledge of Allegiance. The students are divided of the United States of America and to be a model of which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. What's your pleasure in the minutes of April 7th? I would need a motion to move to approve as presented. Second. We'll get a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor signify with saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. Next item on the agenda is election of offices that will open up for the office of president for the nominations. Andy? I'd like to nominate Boba Tree for the office of president of police and fire commission. Second. We have a nomination and a second. Is there any other nominations? Is there any other nominations? Is there any other nominations? Seeing none, nominations are closed. We'll open up. In favor of that nomination? Yeah. All in favor signify with saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. We'll now open up the position of secretary. That nominate Andy Hap for treasurer. Andy Hap has been nominated. We have a second. Is there any other nominations? Is there any other nominations? Is there any other nominations? Seeing none, nominations are closed. Andy, will you accept the nomination? All in favor of Andy Hap as secretary. Signify with saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. Thank you, Andy. And now move to 3.2 discussion of current police department hiring process, future needs, and next interview dates. We're scheduled for next week, next Thursday and Friday. Right now I have 26 candidates. I'll be interviewing over two days. We have an assessment panel put together, and we'll also be administering the standardized test and going through some of those other functions that we do at that assessment center. I would anticipate that after that we're going to have a need for a candidacy pool, a hiring pool. So I would be asking that the Police and Fire Commission be ready to interview applicants, probably the first week of June. That would give us enough time to go through and check and double check the assessment scores and select the candidates that we would like to send on to the Police and Fire Commission. Any questions? Now you said right now you've got 26. Right now we have 26 candidates, yes. Well, we have 26 candidates that we're going to interview. We had 134 applications. So we had a good applicant pool this time. So with that 26, I mean you're going to narrow it down and then we'll get the list. Yes, I'll bring the list on the day of the interviews. I'll bring the list of the 26 people that we assessed with me so you can see that. I would expect that we're going to ask you to interview probably, I say six, it could go one or two either way of that, remember we haven't seen these candidates in person yet. Most of them I'm basing that off what I'm seeing on applications. I believe we have some very, very good candidates in there. But again, until we have a chance to see them in person, we really just don't know. Yeah, list 26, is that going to be sufficient to what you had asked for? As will we see the list of 26 before the decision is made as to which ones we will interview? That's not the way we've done it in the past. I've made this list of all the assessed applicants available to you. But really we're screening the applicants that we want to send for you to interview and either approve or deny. And really that's based upon trying to identify the characteristics and attributes that we're trying to build in the police department. And so I would be hesitant if we put someone through that assessment. And we're aware that they did not have those attributes or characteristics to bring the list in and create a conflict or require certain information as to why that person wasn't moving on. I just, in the past, we have looked at all of the candidates that have been assessed. And then it was the commission's decision as to where to do the cutoff. Again, in association with staff, completely understanding that. We can send you all 26 if you want to see all 26. We don't have an issue with that. We just need to know a number. And every time we have this discussion, we're told we don't want to see all those people. And so we're running a process to whittle the number down and try to get to a manageable number. So if you want to see 10 or 15, we're just looking for that guidance. Right. And I think we're just, oftentimes we would like to see all 26. I'm just saying, personally, I don't want to see, let me rephrase that. I would like to see the evaluation of all 26 and then hopefully be in agreement with you as to which are the ones we should actually interview. Does that make sense? So my suggestion then would be, maybe we can have you schedule a meeting between the 20th and the 21st. And yeah, on the 20th and 21st. So the Monday or Tuesday after that, and we can present you with the information and you can decide who you want to interview. But we have two vacancies. We want to fill them. We've designed a process with you and I'm just again confused about why every time we meet to discuss this, the same issue comes up. Well, I think you got to go back quite a few years ago but I know there was a couple of times where we get the list and by scores where you cut it off. Like you'll tell us, you want to interview six or seven and by your scores, we'll cut it off. But if there's somebody and it has happened, you've got a couple of people on the police department right now highly regarded that would not have been there unless somebody- Not in the last 12 years. I would vehemently disagree with you on that. It's probably not. I'm not sure. Okay, so if we could deal with the present rather than the past, I would appreciate that greatly. But the issue is trying to be as transparent as I can be. We have two vacancies we want to fill. We have 134 applicants. We've narrowed it down to who we believe at this point are the best 26. We're going to do an assessment on them. We will rank them based off of that assessment. However many you want to see, we're happy to provide you with. I think we want to see the list of 26 and where you cut it off as long as we see who was on the 26. I believe that's what Andy is asking for. Okay, and then I'm going to say this cautiously, but again, the assessment is not based on somebody's name or anything like that. And so if that is really what we're using to determine who we're interviewing, then that really undercuts the whole process that we're doing. Chief, Captain Cobb, I'm sorry. The group down from whatever the large original number of applicants you have, in this case 134, to get to 26, you must use some set of criteria that makes all of those 26 people eligible to move on to the next round. Is that accurate? Yes. Okay, so that said, if you gave us that list of people and I appreciate it and I understand your time restraints. So if we're asking something of you, we need to be willing to do the work to not clog up the system. So if that means we have to have an extra meeting before the interview to review that list, then that's something we have to do in order to keep the process running smoothly. But moving a little beyond that, let's say from this 26, you narrow it down to six. Of that 26, we may, as a commission, feel there might be one or two other people that we'd like to interview. That's not saying that your criteria are bad or anything else. We're the people that have to do the hiring and we look at these 26 people knowing that all 26 have met the initial criteria. And when it comes to the final interview process, if we want more than hypothetically the six or eight you recommend, but another one or two or whatever, I believe that would be our prerogative to do as a commission and would also ensure for the independence of this commission, not just being, and since I've been on it and knock on wood, I'm glad I get another five-year term, I have not experienced that I feel that you're putting forward, you're always putting forward the best candidate. But I think just in the spirit of independence or whatever and knowing that we're doing the hiring, if we see somebody we'd like to add to the interview, I think we should have that ability to do that. I would say that when we screen from that original applicant pool down to a group of candidates that are going to be assessed, yes, that's an objective measure where there are more points of different stages for information that's on their application. Now it's not a bright line because sometimes there are candidates who score a lower score on their application, but they have attributes or things on the resume that aren't necessarily scored, but they're reflective of the types of people and the types of things that we're trying to bring into the organization. Conversely, there are some people who score more points. They're not always invited in because of the nature of how they have scored their points, but they just don't have anything in their application that is indicative of them being a successful resource. So there's a small number on either end of that spectrum where it goes both ways. When it comes to the assessed candidates, we went to a tremendous amount of effort to write interview questions that are trying to evaluate and apply a score to a set of principles and characteristics that we worked out with Dr. Pico that demonstrate people that are likely to be good police officers for the city of Sheboygan. No other city, every police department has different value systems, different strategies on how they're going to reduce crime and address crime. So we developed our system around that model, the model that we're using. So that brings me to my question. I would be curious to know what criteria you would be using to look at a list of people who were not chosen to move on from that assessment and then decide to bring one in. That's where I think there would be the most concerns. So I just want to clarify, you want to see the 26 or you want to see all of them? No, 26. So I'm fine with that. I would just ask that you keep in mind what I requested and that if we could set a meeting then as early in that week of the 24th as possible so that we can get the candidates that we're going to invite enough lead time that they can fit it into their schedules to meet with you during that first week at June. Okay. Chief, did you say the 24th? The week of. The week of the 24th. Okay, I only have the 24th that day. So, okay. But then week. I'm on grandparent duty. Well, I'll let Carly send something out and we'll set something up. Any other discussion? Jean? I guess I'm still a little confused. I guess my request was not to, are we talking about physically seeing the individuals or are we talking about physically seeing them? We can see who the 26 people are. On paper. Correct. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's what I understood. Yeah. Jane? I don't know what they ask here. I don't know on the paper what's gonna change. It's gonna be all numbers and ratings and things like that. And it's always been, you know, the best ratings, you know, and then bingo, that's it. I don't know what else we're gonna use besides the numbers that are on the paper. I don't know what other criteria we're gonna use. That's my question. Well, usually we used to go by ranks. We'd see hundreds and then it would be just a certain number they cut it off. Yeah. And then if there was a question, like Carly wasn't there then, but he'd answer the questions on why this and this questions we had. And, you know, we worked it out pretty well. Never had a problem. I guess that's before my time. I don't know. Any other comments or questions? Okay. So we'll have Carly send something out. We'll schedule something on the week of 24th for a brief meeting to just to go through the list of 26 and give us a cut off. I just would respect for a request that we could do it in the afternoon on the 24th only because I'll be gone the rest of that week. And I don't know if that works for the rest of you, but looking at it, I'm sorry, Jim. After a four o'clock, I am busy the rest of the day. So it had to be before four o'clock on the 24th. Could I put out two o'clock? Four. I understand, but I'm putting out the time two o'clock. Would that work for everyone on the 24th? Okay. Yeah, I'll find a way to make it work. Is that okay for you? I'm still Carly sending something out so everybody responds so we know what's going on. I don't want to argue or not argue was the wrong word. I just comfortable taking a position on something and then not being there to be able, you know, it's kind of weak. Okay. Now the next one is the confidentiality of police and fire applicants. I think we had talked briefly on that. And you wanted to. Yeah, we had talked briefly on it. And I just wanted to have just a little discussion about the confidentiality of applicants. And so prior to their appearance before the police and fire commission and approval, there's no real question about that. Their identity of an applicant is confidential. It can't be released and it can't be shared and we can't share who has applied and who's in a process. At the point after they've appeared before you, though, depending on the process and what we're doing at the time background investigations may or may not be done. So even though their name has been made publicly available, it's really important that as a group, we only have one background investigator. And I think at different times in different processes there's been comments made about somebody asked about somebody or somebody knew about somebody. It's really important that we not go out and conduct questions that could be construed as background investigation questions. And the real risk of that is as the hiring authority, if you develop information that's not in our background and it's not shared with us or if we develop information as contrary to something you may have heard or you may know, it creates real risk for the city. We have to make sure that we have one stream of information where we're conducting a background investigation and making sure people have met requirements and they exhibit the moral character necessary for police. And so with that I would just ask that even after identities are known that we're all very careful not to ask probing questions about candidates and if you were to learn something to make sure and get that information to us so we can include it in the official background. I think just to explain a little bit, I think what Kevin Cobb is saying is if we have a list of people and you know anything about them or whatever that we're not supposed to make any phone calls or talk to anybody about the candidate, is that correct? That's correct. There's certainly their name as a matter of public record at that point once they're approved for hire, they're not hiring pool. Their name is a matter of public record. It's making inquiries about them at that point that it could really cause conflict. Now, did you check with Chuck on that? Yes, I did. Okay, and that's just what he said? Yes. All right. And so fire, I don't believe you do background investigations the same rules apply to fire about confidentiality. Yeah, yeah. So what if you did a background on six or seven candidates and we're interviewing them and something comes up that we hear or we know definitely this person should not be hired. What, we just don't say anything or do we come to you or what? No, you would, yeah, you would have a responsibility to bring that to us and we can include it in the official background investigation. All right, well, any questions or discussion on this? All right, understood. Thanks. I would now need a motion to go in the closed session. I'm gonna motion a second to go in closed session. Roll call. Larry, Samet. Aye. Andy Hop. Aye. Jean Clayunas. Aye. Jerry Jones. Aye. Bob, reconvening an open session. I would need a motion for the approval of a promotion to the rank of Sheboygan Fire Department Assistant Chief Jeff Salsman. Jeff Salsman. Jean. I move to approve Battalion Chief Jeff Salsman to the office rank of Assistant Chief. Second. Effective May 24th. I'll second that. Andy with a second. There are any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. Congratulations to Jeff Salsman. I'm gonna have a motion and a second to adjourn any discussion. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? We are adjourned. Thank you, commissioners.