Hello everybody. Thank you for coming to our session today. Vivi and I are going to really excited to be sharing with you the preliminary results from this Carl OCLC survey that we conducted at the end of last year and we wanted to start by, I wanted to start by sharing some information about OCLC because I find that even though OCLC is pretty well known, some people don't know for example that we're a member govern organization. There's over 18,000 member libraries worldwide. So I think a lot of people think of us as being very much a U.S.-based organization and we are but we also have significant representation from elsewhere in the globe and we're also a member-driven cooperative. We have Global Council and then the OCLC Board of Trustees who very much guide our work and I'm going to be talking about the role of Global Council in particular in relationship to this survey. I work for OCLC research which is a really large organization. I think that in the division of membership and research there's about 60 of us. So that's a pretty substantial investment that OCLC makes in research and to public purpose effort such as this survey and I think that that really distinguishes us from other organizations that are of a similar composition to OCLC that we dedicate so much resource to research. And so I was talking about the the importance of our of our governance structure and the regional councils in this effort. We were gently encouraged by the European Middle East and Africa Regional Council to consider sharpening our intelligence for research library needs outside of the United States and that was a really polite way of telling us that OCLC research tends to be kind of most of our work tends to be U.S. first and then we replicate that work in other regions and this was the first time to my knowledge that we had started some work external to the United States and and then kind of looked at looked at what we could do elsewhere. So we launched the survey that was really looking at what are the priorities for research library directors at in Europe and then we went on from that to partner with Carl and call the the the Australians. Thank you the consortium of Australia University Libraries to do to repeat the survey in in 2018. And this has been really an opportunity for OCLC research to look at the work that we do and how it can be contextualized or indeed where we should launch new efforts to support other other regions of the world instead of being so U.S. focused. So I'm I'm going to jump in here now and of course I'm very pleased to introduce Carl to you all and Carl of course is the group that is the voice for the research libraries in Canada so the 29 of the largest research libraries in Canada plus our two federal libraries so there's National Science Library and Library in Archive Canada. And as you can imagine Carl spends an awful lot of time talking about how we can add value so where can we add value in areas that are important to our community without necessarily duplicating the work of others without duplicating the good work happening in our local institutions. And so when we look at our strategic plan broadly defined we're focusing on very broad themes we're focusing on advancing research so that of course is open access and research data management. We're focusing on the human dimension the workforce and by that we frame it as strengthening capacity and we focus on the assessment and the evaluation of our work and we frame that under measuring impacts and finally we frame out the important work we do around influencing public policy and you kind of imagine that those in some ways might seem like similar themes to for example an organization like ARL but we of course are doing it with a distinctive Canadian flavor. So in 2018 when we were approached by OCLC we were in that critical moment that many of us that are involved in large research library organizations are. We were thinking about renewing our strategic plan and so like many organizations we struck a strategic planning committee and ours was actually led by Jonathan who's right over there in the second row so welcome to Jonathan and the strategic planning group of which I was a member utilized many of the tools that you could imagine. So we of course did an environmental scan of the work the strategic work of our other sister organizations. We looked at our past plan what had we accomplished and what was still sitting on the table. We did an online survey of our members we met with each of our members on the phone individually we did a pretty significant workshop and then we were approached by OCLC and so for us this was a great moment and in thinking about it the reason we were enticed was with the idea of having a third party a neutral and valued third party to come in and help us look at the data and to possibly ask questions in a different way than we were thinking of asking them ourselves. I should also note for our colleagues here in the room that Carl has a very strong international focus. We have increasingly close connections with ARL, with Libre, with RLUK, we're a founding member of IRLA. We are very actively involved in IFLA so this international focus is something that comes very naturally to us. In fact every two to four years a contingent of Carl directors heads off to a different part of the world to try and learn from it from our colleagues in some other place and to share the work of Carl with them and by coincidence the area that we're heading off close to half of the Carl directors are heading off to June in June to Australia and New Zealand so the concept of having a replication of a survey that was also being done in Australia was exceptionally enticing to us. So then you might ask who are all of these Carl directors that we approached with this survey and I could tell you that they're probably the most talented and fascinating people in our profession and some of whom are actually in this room but I think it's probably more important for me to tell you that we're a relatively new group of people. Some of you might recall the excellent work that Stanley Wilder did a few months ago and was reported in the ARL RLI publication where he looked at the demographics of the profession and he identified some distinctions between Canadian and US directors in particular and he said that we tend to be a little bit younger. There's a far fewer of us that are over the age of 65 and I think the important piece from this slide is that there is a large proportion of us that have been in our role for less than five years. So that's the group that we asked the question to. And so for this survey as merely with suggesting, we asked library directors to really share with us their top of mind observations about the use of the library by both faculty and by students and we asked them to focus not only on the here and now but what's happening right now in 2018 but also what do they envision will be the reality five years later in the year 2023. So that again is the framework. And on this very first slide we see that the library directors expect a change in the visits to the physical library to increase somewhat modestly while the use of the online library access to collections and services that can be used without actually visiting the physical library will expand over the next five years with 44 percent of us suggesting that the increase will be upwards of 20 percent which is actually quite significant. I think I'm going to turn it in there. Yeah so we're going to we're going to just kind of switch back and forth here. I'm providing my viewpoint as kind of that neutral third-party and Vivian has the Carl and library Carl and library director perspectives that she'll be pitching in with with her observations over time. So as Vivian said we asked about faculty and about student use so here's how our library directors see faculty and staff coming into the library today as you can see mostly to mostly a collections based view and I think that what's interesting here is the look at the future. So here the slide is it's reordered by well I'm not sure how it's reordered but in any case it's reordered and you can see that there's there's a pretty significant jump in we're expecting faculty and staff to be utilizing the library more for research support services. There's a big jump in library as technology center from 14 percent to 41 percent and also a jump in utilization of the library social space or a meeting in social space and I think that echoes some of the trends and discussions that we see here at CNI and have been hearing for some time is the pivot from collections to services and spaces. Anything more to say about this particular slide? No only and we'll see it again when we get to the students but the implications are really around physical space around staffing and perhaps more importantly around our campus relationship when you start heading into the area of the library as technology center it's a dramatic focus change from physical collection. So we're going to shift gears from faculty to students. Students we can see now library directors see them mostly as coming into the library for spaces and also collections and I should emphasize here that that in the in these sets of slides we ask people to pick the top five. So it's not like things on this slide are not in if they don't if they aren't reflected in terms of the percentages it's not like they aren't important they just didn't rank in that top five and that's something that I want to repeat over and over again is that if things are fall low on the list it's not that they're not important they don't collectively reach that that top five so that's something important to keep in mind about the survey overall. So here's the five-year forward picture which again is quite interesting as with faculty we see students coming into the library for technology center and also really interesting to me is receiving research support services. So this is something new where we haven't traditionally thought of students as being recipients of research support services and this is a theme that we'll come back to again later in the presentation when we look at UK and Australia New Zealand results. So keep this hold this in mind. And again we see that use of the library as space individual and collaborative space holding holding very strong in our future as well. So then we asked what are your top five priorities and which areas would you categorize as most challenging or ripe for innovation and it's most challenging and ripe for innovation area is where where it is really this is where OCLC would like to be focusing is what are the areas that are most challenging and ripe for innovation because we think of these as categories that could be areas for collective action which is where we like to think about focusing our effort and attention. And again this was there was a long list of things that people were presented with and we asked them to to rate their their top five. So there's some differences in what people see as their top five priorities and things that are challenging and ripe for innovation. So you see at the where library directors are currently focused is around data curation and research data management and indeed talking to Canadian colleagues I can see why this gets a lot of attention 75% of people put this put this in there in their top five but on the most challenging and ripe for innovation you see 63% of people signaling their interest in focusing on support for digital scholarship and digital humanities and then a drop off from there to open access publishing research information management data curation in our activity. And I'll just add to the group that was looking at strategic plan for Carl found this particular slide most compelling and in some ways it's not surprising. So as Merrily was suggesting RDM is top of mind in Canada. The amount of resources and people power and money that we have invested in the portage network is really quite extraordinary and and as a result that the work of Portage and Carl has achieved a huge amount of prominence in the country. So it's not surprising that it's our number one thing. It's almost surprising that there were 25% who didn't put it in the top five. And I think facilities and budget just never go away. So it would be hard to imagine a slate of five of priorities that didn't include money and facilities. But I think in some ways the focus on digital humanities, digital scholarship and the focus on RIM were quite interesting to us. They hadn't always surfaced as clearly in our conversation. But there's certainly areas that many of us are starting to move into in those spaces at Carl and we're focusing on new roles and new partnerships with our campus. But really as Merrily was saying that the issue around the second side, the right side of that screen, the challenging, the right for innovation is what is in some ways the sweet spot for us. Those are the tough problems. Those are the problems that we need help with. The ones that innovation seems within our grasp but we need some assistance to really to get there. And so again it was really interesting that 63% of us framed out digital humanities and digital scholarship as an area that's right for innovation. It makes good sense. We're all moving in that direction. And it was great to see it called out and open access and research information management. It made good sense and it was very affirming to see it listed. Another thing that we asked people in their own words, so this was not people choosing from a text box but expressing themselves in text, was to talk about the most significant initiative that they would be undertaking on their campuses in the next two years. So we had 19 people who gave us information in this category and then we coded the information. So again kind of confirming some of the things that were challenging and right for innovation. We see people investing in digital scholarship and digital humanities. Also shared systems, research data management, skills development and facilities and renovation. But as those of you who've done surveys know it can be kind of well taken surveys and analyzed surveys. It can be kind of tedious to code out this information. So present this information for what it's worth. But I think it's many colleagues that would have been answering this survey from Ontario. They would be thinking very clearly around the Collaborative Futures Project that is just taking over a large proportion of Carl libraries in the province of Ontario moving into a shared library information system. So again, these were not surprising, but it's useful to see them listed in that order. Yeah, so this is, this was for those of you who took the survey. Thank you very much. This was a, it was a relatively short survey. So we have gone through, I think, kind of the major findings from the Canadian part of the survey. And we do want to share with you some interesting highlights from both the kind of compare and contrast some data from the UK survey and the Australia New Zealand survey. But we thought that this would be a good time to pause and see if there's questions or any discussion around the Canadian perspective. Since that's an important one and why we wrote our proposal to come and share with you here today. So any thoughts or perspectives on data that we've shared with you so far? So we can come back to any of this, but let's move forward and look at some of the other areas. So in the same time period that we did the Canadian survey in conjunction with the call, we did a survey for Australia and New Zealand. And we see as Sivian foreshadowed a sort of a different array of things that are both in the top priorities and most challenging ripe for innovation. So here you see that the folks in Australia and New Zealand also are interested in support for digital scholarship, digital humanities, but at the very top of their most challenging ripe for innovation is being able to better tell the story of libraries to be able to reflect that back to funders and other stakeholders. And they wind up getting what is that seven things into their top five because they're just so split on so many other things. So library skills development and visibility of the library's collections are both at 33 percent while that third position gets split between three different things, 29 percent for e-collections, open access concerns, education and support for open access and research data management. And then when we go to the UK, we see kind of a different array of things that there were some small changes in the survey instrument, both because we've learned things along the way and also in discussions with Carl and Carl. There were some small changes to the to the survey instrument themselves, but one of the things that we that's probably the biggest change in the survey is that we gave people five choices. So top five in when we ran the European version of the survey, it was a top three. So we asked people to make harder choices in some way. So that's going to impact what you see. But at the top of their list is research data management. They have, you know, that's an area where they really still need to come together and have more of a unified approach. Whereas in in Canada, I think that the fact that there is a national and consolidated effort kind of takes it off the list. Of most challenging and right for innovation. So, yeah, and to be honest, we're really at the beginning stages of trying to analyze the relationship between all of these. And I literally just try to map it out this morning in my hotel room. So it's filled a little bit hot off the press. But, you know, there are certain things that appear unique to Canada. And there are certain things that are the same across all three.  But when I look at the top priorities of all three jurisdictions, I see that research data management makes all three lists. And so I think that tells us something about the importance of that across the world and also value to funders. It makes all three lists. But there are certain things that are just not in the Canadian view. So the whole area around there just isn't a priority around licensed electronic content and there isn't a priority around increasing the visibility of our collections. They're just not front of mind as priorities in Canada. And one area that's unique in our priorities for right now is digital humanities, digital scholarship, regardless of the definition. But again, when we focus on the challenging and the innovative, which is again the sweet spot, what I see, there's one area that is the same that is considered innovative and right for change across all three areas. And that's digital scholarship, digital humanities, which I think is really interesting because it's a bit of a surprise. And there are many things that are not in the Canadian view that never made it into the Canadian list at all that are prominent in Australia and the UK.  It doesn't feel like that's something either that we can do that it's right for innovation or it just doesn't feel like it's there or something like developing librarian skills. You know, a positive take on that might be that we feel in Canada that we've already got a pretty good handle on that or that it's just not right for innovation. So we don't want to invest our resources there or licensed electronic content. It's not on our mind because we actually feel that we've got a pretty good handle on it. Again, that might be a false assumption and that's the part that I think we'll need to struggle with as we're looking at the data more. What is the reason for the absence? What is the reason for the presence? And finally, looking at what's challenging and right for innovation that's unique to Canada, research information management made our list and it didn't make the list of other two jurisdictions. And Dale, the institutional repository, made Canada's list and didn't make the others. So I'll leave that to you and really we'd love to hear what you think of those absences or presences. Just a couple of comments from traveling all over these places. You know, I think one of the things is that the government mandates the responses here a little bit. You know, research assessment exercises in Australia and the UK obviously leads the funding of the institutions at a very top slice level, that's important. The other thing is in Australia, there's a big push on connecting to student engagement that is like government mandated as well. So there's a lot more going into that space of the value of the library or having the resources they need in order to make student engagement higher. The second comment I'd make is I found interesting in all of the discussions that we've had the last couple of days. It seems to me that skills, developing skills that are going to be required to actually do creative things in the digital humanities and digital scholarship is a huge problem for not just libraries, but just for the universities right large. And I feel like that is something that's probably maybe understated because it's not that it's necessarily library, obviously library skills have to grow, but just the skill sets required to do what people want to do in these top priorities are not always there right now, so how are they going to grow that? Yeah, I think it's an excellent point. And the interesting piece is that there's a lot of work going on in Canada in that area right now. And so we're working right now on a new revised slate of competencies for librarians. And it covers the whole category including the competencies to succeed with digital curation and some of these other pieces that we're seeing across the slate. But for one reason or another, our Canadian directors in responding to this survey didn't call out the workforce. As the chair of strengthening capacity, I like to think that because we're doing such an amazing job, no more work needs to be done, but I know that's not true. I just think that there were so many things vying for our director's attention that when they were only allowed to choose by, they had all sorts of nuts and bolts, hard ticket items, and they ran out of slot before they got to workforce. But we'll never know. So you recall that the end for Canada was 19, right? For some of it. For some of it. That was for the, so the end I think overall was, let's see if we can go back up. No, that's fine. That's what we're here for. 24. 24. Yeah, I think 29. Yeah, exactly. Or the census of 29, it didn't go to the federal. I'm not sure that it went to the two federal. I'd have to check that. That's a good question. Oh, Donna, yes. It's striking me that the interest to reflect the size of the each of the four committees. So people were very consistent in terms of their interests. They self-select which of the four committees they're on. And obviously, they're reflecting those interests. Yeah, so, Donna's comment in case it's not being picked up by the mic, I think was a very astute one. And it actually reflects in some ways the four committee structure of Carl. The interesting piece is when I was reflecting on these results this morning, I saw that many of our priorities map into the advancing research portfolio. They really are pushing there. And that I think in some ways calls out as you're suggesting the intense interest in that part of our work. And it's not because the other components aren't important, it's I just think we had forced people to only choose five things and they have so many things they cared about that they ran out of plot. So I'm wondering if you so you asked kind of related questions here, right, the priorities that your current priorities and the things. It was the same list. Yeah, and we asked people what are your top five in each category. Yeah, I wonder if you for the second set the most challenging innovation, you actually saw more divergence there across country. And if so my hypothesis actually that the phrase right for innovation might be introducing some ambiguity because I've been sitting here puzzling about that slash and thinking are they supposed to be definitive and because right for innovation to me is not the same thing as most challenging. And I'm sitting here thinking what is my for innovation even mean. Yeah, I'm thinking well is it low hanging fruit or is it you know there's an obvious need or what. And so I actually wonder, especially across, you know, varieties of English, whether there's real potential here for for different results say in Australia. Yeah, again, in case it's not picked up by the Mike's, the comment was around the flash. The most challenging flash right for innovation are we actually asking our respondents to do two things in one question, which can be confusing. And so were they answering on the basis of most challenging or were they answering on the basis of right for innovation and it could be slightly different results. And I think again in the survey instrument, I think that there was a there was a sense or two that went along with this. But what we're really after is where is there opportunity for collective for collective action? So that's how. Yeah, so that that's a way to to think about framing it. And I think that that's why you get things like facilities issues, not exactly up for kind of collective action. Sure, the office of collective action necessarily are the most challenging things. Yeah, yeah, right, right, right, right. Yeah, I think challenging kind of works against low hanging fruit. I also wondered at one point, again, after the survey is done, you always have these pondering and the moment of the 30 the five year window. You know, five years didn't feel that it was very far out. And so in some cases, I think we responded saying that, well, we think there'll be change, but the change will be relatively modest. What if we had said 10 years or 30 or 30, but we only said five. So things don't change all that rapidly in some areas of our enterprise. I don't know whether that had an impact on on how people responded. But I think you still see some pretty I mean, if you go back to that to the student data, for example, you do see some pretty radical people think in five years that, you know, that library is Technology Center is going to be something that we're going to be living and breathing and making a really big transformation in some way to get to that. If that's what we're anticipating in five years, that's a big shift. And but we also saw the expectation of more change with our with our students than we did with our faculty, the sense that faculty behaviors don't change that rapidly. The student behaviors change dramatically because it's a whole new group that comes in every year. So yeah. Speaking of students, we had, I think, two more slides that we wanted to to share. I just remember. So so remember when I said with with students, it was interesting to look also comparatively at the UK data and also the Australian New Zealand data because I think you see some similar patterns in some ways. So what where did where did the UK respond? That's our library directors see students in the future. It's library as Technology Center and also even more strongly than in than in Canada, a big jump in receiving research support services and then in Australia, New Zealand. Again, huge jump in library as Technology Center and an even bigger jump in in students receiving research support services. So I thought that these two were kind of some trends to to pull out is, you know, what are we expecting the library to be doing and how is the library going to be appearing to two students and this kind of anticipation completely expected to me, anticipation of undergraduates receiving research support services is something that I thought I would flag because it's really not a lot that I hear talked about at library conferences. So so in library conferences, you know, five years ago, it was all about I don't know, like data three years ago, it was all about Bitcoin. Five years from now, it's all going to be about research support services for for undergraduates. So any thoughts or reactions to either library as Technology Center or research support services for students? Pascal. So I think this is quite exciting because it means we have a common platform across Australia, the UK and Canada to really look at these areas and try to come up with common solutions or at least compare what we do in these areas with each other. Dale, you had a comment. I'm just wondering if there's a definition problem again. Now, where what people think when they when they see research support services might differ in different heads or if it's just a mighty concern, like you need to use research support services in the population was sort of incidental, like, oh, yeah, everyone needs these things because I would question those future conference panels in five years about research support services for undergraduates really scale across the curriculum. OK, what will that look like? Because I don't I'd rather go like that. If we mean it the same way you mean it for faculty, research support services. And whatever people were thinking it meant, they think there's going to be a lot more of it five years from now. That's the thing, you know, whatever it is, right? You're going to be more. From our perspective, Virginia Tech, we are working a lot around research services with undergraduates and it's kind of a mandate out of the university. So our focus of light really has been around data science, data analytics, use of data creation, data curation of data. There's a course coming out called Data Matters. We co-developed it with faculty as an interdisciplinary group on campus called Data Decisions. Faculty from all colleges participate. We're part of that as well. So we produce that, co-teach it now. So we've incorporated a lot of this data aspects in our first year experience program. So we're seeing for us, we're seeing this huge trend around that. We're focusing on the data because we have a good size of services department we're just leveraging our current strength. So Tyler's got the future. There you go. Talk to Tyler. We'll see you on a panel about the future. And the Library of Technology Center, it was interesting when we when we got these these results from the UK, we did some we did some interviews, some targeted interviews with library directors in the UK and we asked them about this in particular Library of Technology Center and the people that we interviewed. I think we interviewed six library directors and they also I'm not even sure what that term means. So then that made us really when we were doing when we redid the survey with Carl and Carl, we paid particular attention to the definition and the words that went along with this so that we wouldn't run into that confusion. So we wouldn't have library directors say I'm not sure what that meant. I don't you know, I don't know. It's not my priority. So, you know, it could have been just the six people that we talked to. They said, well, that's not something I'm not even sure what that term means that it wouldn't be one of my priorities. So we paid particular attention to the definition of that and it still came out quite quite high and in the subsequent surveys that we did with both with with Canada, Carl and Carl. So interesting point. OK, so research support services for students of lip or not. We'll we'll find out. Meet me meet me and St. Louis in five years and let's find out. Other comments on this part of the survey, you can go into wrap up mode. So so what does this say to a CLC research? So we were kind of our European colleagues through down the gauntlet and said you need to pay attention to other parts of the world. It's not just about the US and US Junior. We we need to think about our work and the context and the context of our work differently. The good news is that looking at so for the UK, research data management was a particular high focus. And indeed, we we have done just a ton of work in research data management. We have a publication survey series and we also did a series of webinars that were based on the publication and also came up with a learning guide. So if you're not in Canada, where everything's all, you know, together and wonderful with with RDM, that is a resource that's that's out there and available for you. Similarly, research information management, which is something that is as Bruce indicated, kind of of of high concern and driven by national level interests in the UK and Australia. But it's kind of in ascendance, I think, in other parts of the world. We have similarly done a great deal of work in research information management, looking at Chris systems and looking at the range of stakeholders that includes the library and how libraries can and and should be involving themselves in research information management systems. And indeed, my colleague Rebecca Bryant is at this conference and has done a great bit of work in this area and she's just an amazing resource. And then with open access, which is really something that I think that OCLC's work and investments were diffuse, maybe to say the least. We were we were rather encouraged to launch by that European survey that we did to launch a open access and open content survey. So looking not just at kind of capital A, capital O, capital A open access, but also looking at the range of open content, including digitized materials that that libraries provide and make available. We did a major survey. I think we got seven hundred and eighty responses from seventy eight countries or something like that. So the very broad survey and we're doing an analysis on that and publication will be available on that later. And I think that that really shows how libraries are investing and thinking about challenges related to a broad range of topics around open access and open content. So maybe I'll put that on the proposal list for the next CNI to talk about results about that survey. So and these are mostly just takeaways, kind of some short URLs for our work in R.D.M. RIM and a little bit on the open on the open content survey. But that's that's it. So on this particular survey, we are really wrapping up the preliminary results in the and sharing them at conferences like this. And you can look for a publication of the combined results from the Canadian survey, along with colleagues from along with the UK and call data later on this year. So have that to look forward to. But we're happy to take any more questions or or talk to you all in the hallways and on the emails. So thanks for coming. Thank you.


The member representing Ekremor Constituency 1 in the Biasa State House of Assembly Honourable Territory has called on the federal government to give financial aid to the state government. This is in order to bring the Argyre Deep Seaport project into fruition. The lawmaker made this call in Yenagawa on Tuesday. It was briefing newsmen on some factors which earlier delayed the smooth execution of the Sabama Ekremor Road and the Argyre Deep Seaport which is cited in Ekremor local government. So you know that the Argyre Seaport no doubt will go a long way in boosting the economic profile of Biasa states and by extension the federal government. Again the Argyre Seaport is more or less an aftermath of the Biasa West senatorial road. You cannot particularly get to have a seaport without a road leading to the seaport. And you know that these are big ticket projects and it's also federal inclined. It is expected and it's also expedient that federal government also give a helping hand. Especially the Ministry of Transport and the other critical stakeholders and international partners to come in to support Biasa state government in order to ensure that we have that seaport. Hello hope you enjoyed the news please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


In fact, this is Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. We're talking about Coronaville. What's next? And what's more? With Tim Apicella, Cynthia Sinclair, Winston Welch. On a given Thursday, which we always do. So come around on Thursday at 11 and you'll see us. In fact, if you come around on Wednesday at 11, you'll see Tim and Trump week. We like to cover the subject because it will guide us our future. It'll hand us our future, I should say. So before the show began, Winston said, Jay, there's something preoccupying you. And I'm digging deep in my own consciousness to find what is preoccupying me. And what is preoccupying me is I don't like what's going on. Trump is making an absurd campaign. He's campaigning 2016 all over again as if the whole four years was lost. And he's saying, you know, think about it. The Red Hats make America great again. Wait a minute. Does that skip the four years? What America is he talking about? Is this the America he was talking about in 2020? Where has he been for four years? Well, I'll tell you where he's been. He's been doing destruction and damage to our country, to every aspect of our country. He has not fit. And the problem is there's still a lot of people who think he is fit. And that, you know, we've been talking about that guys and girls for years. And I don't think we fully understand yet why anyone would support this guy.  He's mean. He's incompetent. And yet he's the president, you know, setting the guidelines of our lives to come for years and years. And so here we are engaged in a great campaign where he's doing his reality show and Biden is being a gentleman, if you will. And at the end of the day, it's not clear that Biden will win polls or no polls. And of course, the background, the backdrop for all this is coronavirus, which is killing hundreds of thousands of people and Trump denies it completely as he has from the outset. It's again, the reality show, the alternate universe. And so I guess I want to ask, that's my feeling and I'm not happy. I'm not happy because I know he's got tricks up his sleeve and he's destroying our country and he may succeed. Tim, what do you think? I mean, coronavirus is killing a lot of people. He's ignoring it. He's making it going to go away with shiny objects from every direction. Is this madness? Yes, it is madness. Good morning, Jay. It's what we've been talking about for years is his distraction. And as we've said many times before that he made a decision not to address it as a serious virus that could kill 215,000 Americans. He basically just forged through it, didn't want to disrupt the Dow, didn't want to disrupt the Nasdaq or the standards and pours. He just needed his economy to keep chugging along so that he could be reelected. His filter is reelection. If you remember four years ago, basically two days after he is elected, he's holding rallies for reelection. So reelection has been on his mind since the day he was elected. And coronavirus or not, it's not going to get in the way of my reelection. And so that's how he's treated it. So yeah, it is madness. Who thinks like that? Well, it's a demagogue. And in the end, U.E. Long, the classic demagogue, I think somebody came and took him out or something. He said, they said about him, you can fool some of the people some of the time and you can fool some of the people all the time and some of the people some of the time but you can't fool all the people all the time. Well, I think he's fooling enough people here. And maybe there's something coming down the pike where people will realize this. You know, I vacillate. I have a sun curve where sometimes I feel that people understand as a demagogue and some days I feel they don't. So Cynthia, your feelings on this, please? Well, I don't think it's just him involved in keeping people in his camp. We've got to remember that Russia is also involved in this misinformation campaign that's been going on. And his number one tool is projection. So he's always pointing his fingers at other people when in reality it's the thing that he's doing himself. Just to try to muddy the waters and confuse people. And knowing as many people as I do in the South they're following for it. Yeah. Okay, Winston, why don't you try to be pessimistic for a minute? I'm pessimistic, yeah. Go ahead. It's a question. Tell me the question again. What do you- How do you feel about what's going on here where I'm not quite three weeks out and there's all these strange things happening and Trump has all these tricks up his sleeve. The Republican party is acting like they can cheat at this football game. It's a reality show that has entertained us. My theory is maybe we're getting tired of being entertained but the base and the tricks are still there. They are there and they're going to continue and they're going to continue during the election and after the election. And they're going to continue after Joe Biden is sworn in as president. This is, it's not going to go anywhere but he can, when he gets in, it will help to normalize things. I think when we have a column saying rational adult in the office, it will make a difference. And I think the tide has turned. We can't be complacent. We can't decide, oh, that's great because as Joe Biden's campaign chair said today she said that the election is much closer than we imagine it is. And I think that that's true but we still have to account for the fact that there's 40% of the people that do support Donald Trump. And I think it's more helpful to understand why do they support him? Because well, we might think it's hypnosis or it's Fox News and those may play into it. There's new studies out that point to this as to why Washington Post and I mentioned it yesterday has a research on exploring the authoritarian mindset of Trump's core supporters. I think it's interesting to read that and understand why are people supporting this and it just may be in their makeup. There's some positive news out there too that people are changing. They're waking up there saying we cannot have four more years we can't have four more months of this and they're making a change and they're moving in the swing states they're moving in the entire nation. And I think there's just been that change that's somehow taken place. So I'm remaining optimistic right now. I'm not convinced. One of the things that Trump did when he was in real estate in New York, Tim was he fooled the press. He would call and pretend to be somebody else. He would try to create his own universe of fact. I mean, he was doing this kind of thing a long time ago fooling people, fooling the press. And he's been doing that. He understands the news cycle. He understands that if you throw shiny object they forget what happened just a few days ago. And you could, you know you could make a list of the outrage points that he has engaged in, you know calling the military suckers, gee whiz. I mean, there's so many of them like we don't have time. But, you know, what I'm thinking is that is that people forget and that how about this one? Even the coronavirus is not a significant feature in what's going to happen here because he's able to put a damper on that. He's able to throw shiny objects to distract us. And if you thought, you know he's been doing that up till this point. Wait, give it two or three weeks. I guarantee it'll be the tale that wagged a dog, Dustin Hoffman. It'll be something to distract the whole country. And at the end of the day, you know we all agree that the coronavirus is the biggest issue in this administration, the biggest failure. And yet somehow in my heart of hearts I don't think it's gonna have that much effect. What do you think? I think it already has had an effect. I think Donald Trump is losing the 65 plus crowd. I think they are directly affected by the coronavirus. They feel the impacts of being shuttered in. They're scared and they're not getting any sense from Donald Trump that he's concerned about their welfare. And I think those impacts have already set into the mindset of the 65 plus crowd and the polls are reflecting that by 20 points Joe Biden has pulled ahead of Trump. So it is working now. There is something called overexposure to information. You know, we've been talking about coronavirus since March and here we are in mid-October. And there's an old saying back in World War II that because it was being reported on each and every day, morning, noon, and night, younger generations said the war is a bore. This was a war that was fighting for the freedom of the world. And monikers like the war is a bore started to crop up because it's information overload, information burnout. And I think that's part of the issue with coronavirus and Donald Trump is playing that pretty well. He's trying to just pass it off as a common flu. We know it's not, but that's what he's trying to do. So there we are. Yeah. Well, it's not only coronavirus. Think of the CARES Act maneuvering in Congress. That's disgusting. Think of the impeachment. That's disgusting. Think of immigration. That's disgusting. Think of the protection of the environment. That's disgusting. I could go on Cynthia, but you know, a lot of these things have been like forgotten. They're no longer in the public mind. We have been shown shiny objects on a now basis. And we forget all these horrendous things that he's done and not done. Are these things going to have an effect in the election? I don't think so. No, the people that are in his camp are very well set in guns, abortion, and guns, right? And abortion, oh yeah. So they don't care about the rest of it. They don't care about the coronavirus. You think it's a hoax anyway. The people that understand all these things, we understand it. So I don't think that the majority of us are feeling, I mean, we all feel the burnout, but I don't think it's making us close our eyes to it. Whereas I think his supporters are so entrenched in the guns, abortion, guns, abortion that they don't care about anything else. And they've so fallen for this, it's a hoax, it's nothing. And if you think about his illness, his positive case, should it come at a convenient time for him? Because right at a time when he was tanking about this whole coronavirus thing, he suddenly comes up with it, then what? Four days later, he's cured of it. And so I still kind of have some suspicions to whether or not he was even sick. I really don't- Well, he's capitalizing on his success in any event. He's telling everybody that, you know, it's no big thing and he got over it. And by implication, they can get over it, which is not true. Again, another lie. You know, Winston, what about his failure of foreign policy? What about his disruption of relations with our allies? What about his succumbing to the will of Vladimir Putin? His failure to negotiate and engage in positive foreign policy with Asia, with North Korea, with China and so forth. Is that a factor in this election? He's good friends with dear leader Kim Jong-un and with Vladimir Putin, let's not forget. So there's been some policy successes there. Like everything else, this administration has just been a wrecking ball on everything that we have built up over the last, I mean, since the World War II, honestly, as far as policies designed to protect Americans, that the new deal, I mean, frankly, is up for grabs at this point. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's plan to secure the safety and wellbeing of Americans is up for grabs. All of this has been happening behind the scenes. You talk about information overload like Kim does and you talk, Cynthia, is this gonna make a difference? We are so overwhelmed by the outrage of the day. There's not enough space in our brain to contain all of these things unless you see it in a list. And sometimes you get a clever person that puts the list there that says, these are all of the things that this administration has done. And you see that and you're like, whoa, yeah. And every one of them sparks like this. Oh my goodness, oh my goodness. But after a while, there's just not enough space in the brain, but it's coming out and dribs and drabs. I saw that really Giuliani's daughter came out and saying, please vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. She says, I've led a life of privilege and it was in vanity there that came out. The Postal Service agrees they were forced to say that they're gonna put back their machines by a federal order. Now when and are they gonna salvage them from the junkyard? I don't know. There's a really good Lincoln project thing that talks that shows all of Donald Trump's then opponents who now are his sycophants saying, he's insane. He's a lunatic. He's a con man from Ted Cruz or Lindsey Graham or Nikki Haley. It's very telling. So go to the Lincoln project and find out. You know, and then we have the attack on science that doesn't help us at all. But again, it comes back to what can we do locally? I was heartened to see that in a civil beat article today, 83% of people in Oahu wearing their masks, something like 77% said we needed the shutdown. The pain was there, but it was important to have that. Now that we're opening up, it's scary because is it really that hard to administer? Well, you know, yesterday I saw there was an article about how 41 states had spikes. This morning I looked, there was an article that said 44 states had spikes out of 50. My God, it's getting worse every day. Europe is also at, in Europe too. It's spiking all over the place. And I think that as this complacency wears on and you talk about that the war is a bore, you know, we've got a war on a virus here. But there's some, there is some research that shows, I saw in People Magazine said the CDC says small household gatherings are one of the main drivers of this increase in spikes to stay home folks. It's not rocket science. I thought Anthony Fauci coming out and saying his kids are staying wherever they live. They're not doing Thanksgiving. They do a remote Thanksgiving. That's the part of the chaos. Now you have different people making different advice to the public. Well, you got to go with science in this case as best as you can. But I thought one interesting piece was that pneumonia vaccines seem to have some protective effect on people. So if you haven't gotten your pneumonia vaccines, including the HIV as a boy, that was a new one that came out in Washington Post. Today it said, I'm sorry, not Washington Post in Discover. And it's discovermagazine.com. It came out on October 14th. It says pneumonia vaccines may reduce deaths from COVID-19. So there's some protective effect that they don't know. You mentioned that. Well, Tim, I want to ask you about a thing that is also dwelling on my mind, and that is the shenanigans. We talked about the phony ballot boxes in California. We were going to talk about Michigan and the attempt of the skinheads to kidnap the governor. There are other attacks on the governor, too, on social media, by the way. She's been a regular victim on social media. And then Virginia, another conspiracy to kidnap the governor there. And you know, my own theory is this is going to increase. It probably is happening in other places, maybe in other ways. And the FBI, the Homeland Security, which doesn't seem nearly as effective as we might like, doesn't really have control over this. And as we get closer to the election, they'll be more. And so my question to you is, you know, despite who votes for who, or should that be who votes for whom? You know, and all those campaigning and they talk about who's the better candidate and who stepped in something and who didn't. You know, bottom line is our system is in jeopardy. It's already been undermined. Public confidence is at a low ebb. Yes, they're voting, but their confidence is at a low ebb about whether their ballot will be cast, will be counted, and whether the guy across the street, whether his ballot and the guy across the country, his ballot. So my question to you is, how do you feel about this? Because there's really two parts to the problem. One is that people should vote right. At the base, you know, should have a revelation. But the other part is that whatever, whoever people vote for, the system of voting is in great jeopardy. The system of counting is in great jeopardy. Our constitution, if you didn't hear it before, I'm telling you now, is in great jeopardy. What are your thoughts about that? The circus continues, you know, it'll continue to November the third and it will continue for probably two weeks after November third. But I'm feeling a little bit more at ease because I think the gears of government are working behind the scenes. I am really very pleased to see that the FBI was on this proposed conspiracy to kidnap the Michigan governor back in June. This was suddenly discovered. They were working the case back in June and I think that's a prime example of, you know, the dedicated men and women that want to keep this country safe and keep its population safe and they're working tirelessly to do that. And I think it be it the FBI working for on conspiracy cases or the secretaries of state, many, many, many states, they're dedicated to their mission. And I don't think it's being over influenced by the bombast of Donald Trump. I think they're dedicated and they're gonna do their job. Although we get these, you know, these shiny objects and news reports indicating otherwise, I do believe that deep down the system is working and working quietly. Well, I don't think Trump is going to accept the loss. And, you know, we have many people speaking out on that possibility right now. Later on today, we have a show with Admiral Zuckumpf. Used to be the commandant of the Coast Guard. He retired a year, a year and a half ago. He joined 500 other high-ranking military officers to express his concern about Trump and to say that he was not supporting Trump, not supporting, you know, that he was supporting Biden, that he had concerns about the leadership in the White House right now. So I guess my question for you, Cynthia, is what is gonna happen? You have the possibility that Trump will surround himself with those in uniform, those with guns and say that the whole election was a hoax, it was rigged and he is still the president. I mean, we talk about how we can protect ourselves from the virus, we talk about who we should vote for, but what do we do then? There's not a lot we can do, unfortunately, but I think we all need to plan for it because I believe it's going to happen. He told us about it even, but a year and a half, maybe two years ago when he told us all that he had the tough people were on his side, all the bikers and the military and the cops and everybody, they're all on his side.  And I think that's still the case when you see some of these, I guess you call them campaign rallies where the Trumpers get in their cars and the big flags and they drive all around the place. Not quite sure what to call that, it's not a protest. I guess it's a campaign rally without the campaigner, I don't really know. But we see that more and more and more, we even see it here in Hawaii, which scares me some. I saw somebody with a Trump flag right here in the EA and had a big Boogaloo Boy flag right along next to it. And I thought, here in Hawaii, oh no, this is dangerous that we have them here in Hawaii too. Yeah, well, Winston, I'm sure you have some optimistic comforting thought to give us on that. Not about the Boogaloo Boys, QAnon conspiracy theorists, but I think that what will happen is it will be okay, there's gonna be a lot of shenanigans, just plan on it folks, don't buy into it. Sanity will prevail, this country was built on a hope and a dream of people for something better. It is incumbent upon every single generation that we look at ourselves and we see where we're going, what we're doing, that we correct course. Right now, we got off course a big way and we've got a big correction to make, but it's going to require that we look at deep inside of ourselves and make the right choices for all Americans. Well, wait, wait, wait. You know, we had the thing in Michigan and Virginia. Let me just hypothetically say that we could have, as Cynthia suggests, we could have just a handful, just a handful of Second Amendment people here in Hawaii who decide they're gonna kidnap Governor Ege for better or worse, they're gonna kidnap him, they're gonna take him away. They don't like what he's done reopening or not reopening or whatever it is they're complaining about. Now, what are you gonna do about that? They have guns and that's the problem. The Second Amendment is important to all of us because it means that the people who have the guns can control the streets. They can control the power. And if you don't like it, there's pretty much nothing you can do because they can shoot at you. We're not in a situation where we're not Yemen. If we have rule of law and we still abide by rule of law and so that's not going anywhere. So if there's something happens. That's not going anywhere. We've been losing rule of law for four years. We have been, but when you're talking about something of that magnitude, then we have entire structures that would go into play. And hopefully people take their oath to the Constitution of the United States very seriously. And I think that they do. And I think that will prevail over everything else when it comes back. Okay, well, what are you gonna do when they take over your street with guns? What are you gonna do when they kidnap somebody or do violence? What are you gonna do? Are you gonna do violence too? Well, let's hope that we're not going there. We're going that we're not going there because we don't need to as a people. We need to say this is insane that we even have this conversation. And we need to pull back from this and say enough. And we've been driven to this by one person primarily who's been stoking the flames of a lot of ignorance and hatred. And that needs to cease. We need to pour a lot of baking soda on everything and get back to common sense, decent American values. And I think that's what we're talking about. There it is. It's not Drano at all. It's not Drano. You heard it here on Think Tech. It's baking soda. Baking soda. Baking soda. Okay, Tim, we're almost out of time, but I would like to know your thoughts about what is coming. What is coming and what is the word that you would like to leave with us today to remind us so we don't forget what you say because we have this kind of amnesia problem. So tell us what you think is coming and the word that will help us remember it. Okay, well, let me go to my words first. And it's two words. Hold steady. And what's coming is I think you're gonna see a lot of shenanigans about this debate that's gonna take place. I think you're gonna see a lot more rallies that people are all appalled at because there's no mask wearing and he flaunts it and he's proud of it. And you're just gonna see a lot more absurd comments and statements. And as Winston said, just expect it and don't get sucked in by it. All right, Winston, let's go to you. I say that because I want Cynthia to have the last word. Winston, what do you think is gonna happen next week or two? And what is the word by which we should remember your view of it? Oh, boy, it's, you know, every week is so amazingly different. We just have to say, of course, we have to think about what is best for my nation? What's best for me? Fundamentally, when we look inside, am I better off? Are we all better off than we were four years ago? The answer is clear. Hold in our hearts a higher vision for all of us.  Go out and vote. Talk to people that may be on the line and do what you need to do because that's all you can do. Don't contribute to things and turn off the news like Cynthia says, take a new sabbatical so you can give yourself a mental break. All right, so I guess that would be mental break. A new sabbath, I'm sorry. A new sabbatical might be a little long. Waking up a year from now might be.  Okay, Cynthia, this is your big opportunity. Oh, gosh, well, you know, I do say that you're supposed to take breaks. It's important, you know, there's a fine line between staying informed and staying sane. But I think to not be prepared for violence in the streets is just being an ostrich and sticking your head into the sand because granted, it's the hopeful way to think and I want to hope for the best, but I'm a good girl scout and I want to be prepared for the worst just in case. So I'm like stashin' away cash in case the electrical grid grows down for some reason. And this isn't just from people in our own country, right? Taking advantage of this moment, but because we are at this moment of quasi-civil warfare in the streets, we are at great risk to other countries. I mean, at us. And I think it's important not to forget about that and to remember to be prepared for all of it. Because the more prepared we are for all of it, the better we will be able to face it. If we have to, you know, shelter in place, not because of the virus, but because of the violence in the streets, be prepared for that.  And I think that's important to remember those things should be prepared. Be prepared. And I offer you guys my thought on the same question. I think in the next couple of weeks, we're gonna have surprises. I've already said that. That's really clear. But some of them will be surprises that we can. They're true surprises. And there'll be things happening under the hood where they emerge suddenly as a surprise. And so as far as think tech and us guys, we're concerned, we have to, we have to, we should not be hypnotized. We should not be subject to the new cycle, shiny objects, especially from Trump and his friends. We should be, we three, we four. One, two, three, four, five. We five. We should be looking under the hood. We should be connecting the dots under the hood. We should be looking for those changes. Maybe, just maybe we will be pleasantly surprised. Winston first, of course, but we should, you know, we should, we should connect the dots at all times and not be distracted. And so my, my word is hood. Thank you, Tim Apachele. Thank you, Cynthia Sinclair. Thank you, Winston Wells. We'll see you next Wednesday for Trump Week. Aloha.


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