All righty, we'll go ahead and get started. Afternoon everybody. My name is Bruce Hedrick. I'm the Senior Vice President for Open Collections and Infrastructure at Ithaca. Cliff Anderson from Vanderbilt is joining me up here today to talk a little bit about Vanderbilt's experience with the Open Community Collections initiative which JSTOR launched, right? I guess really about this time in 2020, right? As the pandemic was getting started. So it's been an interesting couple of years. We're going to talk about a few things and then leave plenty of time at the end for questions that people might have. I wanna give people a sense of kind of how we got started doing this and Cliff's gonna talk about Vanderbilt's experience and it's thus far and I'll talk a little bit about some of the lessons we've learned over the past two years. So most of the folks know JSTOR from the standpoint of the work it started 25 years ago and the digitization of the back files and journals. So we've been at this for some time for a couple of decades. Actually this is the 25th anniversary of JSTOR being launched. And the interesting thing over that time is we've sort of constantly been in this process of bringing together content in the humanities and social sciences. Started with journals, moved on to books and over this time we've also been trying to move more and getting more and more open content onto the platform. So beyond what we started with the back files of journals, everything was paywalled books, everything was paywalled. Now we're seeing more and more books come on the platform that are open, journals that are coming on the platform that are open. We put research reports on the platform a few years ago. Some of you are familiar for Veal Digital which is really about finding marginalized content and bringing that on. They came into the fold in 2018 and that content's been on the JSTOR platform. We have over the last couple of years been moving all the art store content onto JSTOR and a lot of that content is now open. And of course what we've started in 2020 with the open community collections. So the idea here is we're trying to broaden the content that researchers want to use when they're connecting secondary and primary literature and trying to get more open content onto the JSTOR platform. And that has been an interesting experience both with doing things like research reports and books where we actually found that having that stuff on the platform really started to expose it to a much broader audience and started to get quite a bit of use. And we're starting to see that with images on the JSTOR platform as well which has been really interesting. All of this is underpinned with our mission as a not for profit really to be the long-term preservation home for this content. So all the things that we're putting onto the JSTOR platform, we're also doing long-term preservation for that content with Portico including the community collections which Cliff will be talking about. So why did we start to get into the primary sources? Well, we did a lot of work with libraries really in 2017 and 18 to find out things that they were struggling with that a small organization like JSTOR might be able to put some time and energy into. And one of the things that came across over and over again was that people were struggling with making their primary source content, their special collections, their distinctive collections, getting those really into the research workflow. And we were hearing constantly that faculty were wanting to teach more of these resources and that students were wanting to do research with these resources, particularly early career researchers. So this sounded a lot like the issues we started to hear back in the early mid 90s with the back files of journals. They were hard to find, they were expensive to maintain, they weren't in the research workflow. And that sounded like something that we might be able to actually put, have some value add into that space. And so we decided, let's do some experimentation and see what happens when we get these sort of primary source special collections on the platform, how do they get used? Can we connect them to the secondary literature that's already on the platform and things of that nature? And this also began to bring out something for us that we wanted to build out, which is JSTOR has traditionally been a research platform. And our colleagues at ArtStore, when ArtStore was built, ArtStore was really built more as a teaching platform. So one of the things we were trying to bring is the teaching aspect of ArtStore, the tool sets and things of that nature onto the JSTOR platform and see if we can build JSTOR out to be a teaching platform as well as a research platform. So that's really where this experiment has begun. The things that we thought we could actually have some impact on, there were many problems that were brought to our attention, but there were things that JSTOR has a bit of a unique position where we thought that could really add value in. Number one is in many disciplines, JSTOR already is in the research workflow. It is a starting place for a lot of people, sometimes wrongly, but it is a starting place for a lot of people in different disciplines. So this idea of these primary sources being difficult to discover in the silos that they're currently in, we might be able to do something to help remedy that. Oftentimes too, these primary sources are found out of context. So they're found in one place, the secondary literatures in another. The idea was that if we could connect these things together in an effective way that we could be able to actually make the research process a lot easier. We all know these things are expensive to maintain. Libraries spend a lot of money on that and they're getting more challenging to maintain, particularly when you have to start to work in things like are they optimized for preservation? Are they optimized for machine learning? Are they optimized for accessibility? Are they optimized for inclusiveness? There's a whole set of dimensions that people are trying to work through on how to actually keep these collections in the research context, the way researchers are using things today. And that's difficult. And of course, JSTOR has a very broad audience. So we have 12,000 institutions around the world that use JSTOR and we, I think are like the 980th most used website on the web. So we have a big reach out there for institutions. And of course, one of the underpinnings of what we've done all along is preservation. And that's really important with these materials. So our two working hypotheses were these, that if we could make the content available in the JSTOR channel, and this is not about building another institutional repository, this is about providing another channel for this content to be made available, that we would be able to potentially improve the usage footprint of these materials and make them more widely available across the globe. The second piece was that if we can co-locate the primary source contents, these special collections with the secondary literature, that we potentially can make the research process more seamless by putting those things in context. So those are the hypotheses that we started with in 2020. And that's what we've been working on over the last two years as institutions have been putting things on the platform. I'll talk a little bit about what we found in just a bit, but I'll turn it over to Cliff and let him talk a little bit about Vanderbilt's experience. Let's see if I can get this to fit here. I wanna smush your computer. All right, nice to see you all and you can all hear me okay? Is that all right? Okay, great. So thank you, Bruce, and I just wanna reiterate this has been a really exciting partnership that started at a strange time. So Vanderbilt's experience with JSTOR community collections began at the CNI meeting in December of 2019. And so I attended Bruce Hedrick's presentation, it was called Unlocking Opportunity. Using the JSTOR platform to get library special collections into research workflows without a paywall. In my role as digital strategist at the Vanderbilt University Libraries, I'm always looking out for ways to reduce the complexity of our systems while broadening access to our digital collections. So Bruce's plan, as he put it, to take the infrastructure we've developed at JSTOR and make it openly available to libraries intrigued me. Of course, JSTOR is immediately popular and known to students and faculty alike. Our library liaisons know how to teach with JSTOR since Vanderbilt also subscribes to ArtStore, the product formerly known and as well as the product formerly known as ArtStore Assured Self, now JSTOR Form and we'll talk about branding a little bit in a minute. Members of our technical staff were also acquainted with the metadata tools. So it seemed like consolidating our digital collections within this popular digital ecosystem by adding JSTOR community collections would be a good option to explore. So the Vanderbilt University Libraries began its pilot in May of 2020 and the timing actually proved fortuitous. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and probably a lot of you had this experience, the library leadership had to quickly equip staff members to work from home that were really not used to doing that. And the transition proved challenging, more challenging for some units than others. For example, in our special collections units, the curators worked so closely with the collections that it made it difficult to identify work that could be done effectively remotely. As it happened, we had a large backlog of digitized items from special collections and other units in the library that needed to be described and shared. So we commissioned what we termed a summer project team to experiment with putting those backlog materials online with JSTOR community collections. And Nancy Godleski, who is in the room, I think. Nancy was my partner in that and so you can ask her questions about that as well. So over the course of the summer, staff members from IT, cataloging and metadata as well as our distinctive collections units collaborated on building trial collections in JSTOR community collections. We also migrated a few existing collections from Islandora to community collections to ascertain how easy it would be to transfer our already existing special collections in those content areas. So the pilot proved a smashing success. Staff members learned to use the JSTOR form interface with minimal, if any, training. Coordinating over Microsoft Teams, staff members contributed several collections over the course of that summer and even more during the past year and a half, including student publications, diaries from the Civil War and just recently Dizzy Gillespie's personal photographs. Last year, special collections held a symposium about James Robertson. He was an early settler in the Cumberland Valley who is sometimes called the father of Tennessee and among the scholars on the panel was the state historian of Tennessee. As our associate university librarian who organized the panel puts it, the panelists were quote, blown away that the material was available to them. She recalls the state historian waxing enthusiastically about the usefulness of this collection for teaching the history of the state in K through 12 classrooms. I think that's because he was familiar with JSTOR already, so he kind of knew how to use it. From her perspective, the capacity to reach audiences beyond the traditional academic ones that we normally reach with our digital collections underscores the community in JSTOR community collections. Yeah, I was just gonna say, there we go. There's James Robertson. Okay, I think I'll pause here. Okay, so let's talk about a few of the key advantages that make JSTOR community collections a good fit. The primary selling point for us was, as I've mentioned, ease of use. When using platforms such as Islandora or DSpace, a skills gap divides curatorial staff and technical staff. For curatorial staff, using the command line feels foreign and they're unsure how to upload files from network shares into those systems with the accompanying metadata. Community collections seems to have eliminated that gap almost completely. During the period of our pilot, I didn't receive any feedback about technical impediments. The relative simplicity and ease of use of JSTOR forum allows the curators to focus on the description of their collections rather than on technical questions about deploying them in a digital content system. Another advantage of community collections is the interface. With community collections, you get a great user experience right out of the box. In the past, digitizing materials and making them available in online content management systems proved only half the battle. After digitizing products, we then had to engage our web community committee in the library to build websites or create in a Mecca exhibit to showcase them. We also had to publicize them to the relevant audiences. With community collections, we no longer have to take these additional design and communication steps. In fact, we discovered that audiences are finding their way to us through the JSTOR ecosystem without having to draft press releases or create social media posts, which we still do anyway. But you can see, here's the usage statistics. There's a simple but nice tracking mechanism that shows that there are indeed being used. And this connects to a third critical advantage for us. The JSTOR platform drives traffic to our collections in measurable ways. After moving existing collections into community collections, we've been pleased to see that they've attracted new and larger audiences. As Bruce has demonstrated, community collections comes with this simple tracking tool for showing web metrics and engagements. This tool lacks the bells and whistles of, say, Google Analytics, but I imagine better protects user privacy. And since curators are also the ones that have direct access to these metrics, which they don't normally do, it's encouraging for them to check the level of user engagement and to also use them to gauge public interest in their collections, which in turn incentivize them to bring more collections onto the web. So that's been a good virtuous circle. Let me talk a little bit now about Portico and the integration of Portico with community collections. So in August of 2021, we joined the so-called Preservation Early Adopter Program for the purpose of, quote, testing the long-term preservation of collections published to community collections on the JSTOR platform in Portico. The integration of community collections with Portico held forth the tantalizing possibility of a comprehensive system for describing, providing access and preserving digital collections. As with community collections, the onboarding process for our staff proved straightforward. Portico really does offer something close to push button preservation with a few caveats. The introduction of Portico raised questions about our existing procedures for digital preservation. On the one hand, staff have been accustomed to uploading low-resolution access images, typically the JPEGs or the PNG files, to JSTOR forum, while maintaining full-resolution access copies, in most cases for us, TIF copies, elsewhere. And ideally that elsewhere is the library's Fedora digital asset management system. But in practice, many high-resolution images remained on network shares due to bottlenecks in our systems, including lack of metadata description and inexperience with loading digital assets into Fedora. So this pattern of uploading access images onto JSTOR forum into the JSTOR platform, while preserving the original files off the platform emerges a problem when we were trying to integrate with Portico. Because we wound up preserving a raft of lower-resolution derivative images in Portico rather than the full-resolution ones. So that was a mistake. In the Visual Resources Center, which serves as our center that assists with art histories, the traditional slide lab that's become a digital lab for art history and beyond, our staff have worked with technical partners at JSTOR to develop a method for substituting those source files for the derivatives. This method is a little clunky. If anyone's used it, it involves downloading a spreadsheet of the metadata, swapping the names of files, and then uploading the revised spreadsheet to amend the records. But the process works reasonably efficiently. In the future, we anticipate that JSTOR, we hope will release an API for editing metadata, which would allow us to script that substitution process. In special collections, by contrast, staff members have held off substituting the preservation for access images. Why? Well, the reservation arises from a difference in the way that community collections handles preservation formats like TIFFs. While TIFFs display just fine when you view them directly within community collections, when you try to embed links from community collections to other web-based systems, of course, if you're using a TIFF, the links will behave differently than a JPEG or a PNG. For example, browsers do not render TIFFs, and so users receive a prompt asking them to download the TIFF to view it. And you can see here that this is an archive space. There's a PNG that's embedded and that link will go to community collections. And that's what our special collections librarians like to see inside of archive space, which is not possible now when you're using TIFFs as the image that you upload into community collections. This difference makes it problematic to embed images safe from archive space, as I've said, to community collections. We're in context, in conversation with JSTOR now about a fix to the issue. And it seems to me at least that the ready at hand solution would be to have a more robust implementation of the TIFF image API, which will allow staff members to provide links from community collections to any desired format and resolution. So these quibbles serve only to highlight how unusually powerful the combination of JSTOR community collections in Portico is. In our production workflows, we've grown accustomed to maintaining distinct workflows for access and preservation. With this integration, we can pull those processes together into a single stream. And to be honest, we are starting to wonder whether we need to keep the copies of objects in community collections in Fedora and S3 Deep Glacier at all. Or should we just learn to rely on Portico? As with nearly everything in library administration, I think that financing and staffing may eventually dictate where we come down on that decision. Oops, I think that's jumping out, okay. So let me just talk about a few other challenges. If our pilot of JSTOR community collections has proved so successful at Vanderbilt, why aren't we using the platform for all our digital collections? There are a few reasons that prevent us from scaling community collections more than we have already. Copyright questions remain a concern among staff. Initially, the staff worried about sharing materials publicly in community collections if the collections contain material that was potentially under copyright. Because when hosting collections in our campus infrastructure, we can respond quickly to takedown notices if a copyright holder objects to the display of particular materials. But how would we handle a complaint about copyrighted materials on community collections? Would we even receive it? Now that community collections allows a finer-grained control of user access levels, providing the option to restrict collections to campus users only, our curators are growing more comfortable of sharing in copyrighted items in community collections. Still, there are certain classes of digital objects, such as donor restricted materials that we really have to maintain elsewhere because we provide access to them only on request to a handful of authorized users and for legal reasons can't store them with third parties. A second challenge arises from the variety of formats in digital collections. When digitizing archival collections, for instance, we may produce digital versions of photographs, maps, manuscripts, codices, articles, along with audio and video recordings. And at present, community collections offers excellent support for documents, but audio-visual support is lacking. The lack of features for audio and visual formats means that we need to maintain a separate workflow for those objects, even if they belong from a special collection perspective, to the same series. Open source content management systems like Avalon or proprietary platforms like Aviary exist to meet the specialized needs of those type of audio-visual formats. But sorting out AV from other objects feels artificial to our curators. They use finding aids in archival space to link these collections back together, but users do not always start their searches with finding aids or necessarily even understand how to use them. Another issue relates to the discoverability of content in the JSTOR community collections. Of course, items and collections are easy to find when you're working within the JSTOR ecosystem, but what about through library discovery systems? In our library, for example, we use XLievers' Primo VE as our primary platform for discovery. But at present, there's no easy way to federate item-level metadata from community collections into the central discovery index, CDI, that forms the shared metadata store for Primo and related tools like Summon. We're an active conversation with XLievers about adding content from community collections to the CDI, but for the feedback we received, that project will require development effort and has not yet been prioritized by XLievers. So for the present, we rely on metadata from other systems of record, primarily from Archive Space for pushing information about JSTOR community collections into our discovery system. And because of the way that Archive Space is set up, this work around means that users cannot discover objects at the item level in our discovery systems only at the collection level. A final sort of challenge, as I mentioned earlier, relates to branding. As Bruce has emphasized, JSTOR community collections are open access collections. But for many users, JSTOR designates licensed and paywall products like the JSTOR digital library of books and journals, and to a lesser extent, the ArtStore digital library. Understanding what is open and what remains closed takes nuanced understanding. And frankly, not everyone gets it. As a case in point, an anonymous peer reviewer recently questioned our proposal in a grant application to share assets on JSTOR community collections because the reviewer mistakenly thought that that decision would prevent the public from engaging and accessing with our digital archive. So summing up here, when I asked a curator who works extensively with community collections to share his opinion of the product, he responded, I love it. Like I just love it. I love it so much that I want to use it as much as possible. And literally like he kept me on the call to tell me how much he loved it. So his main concern was that we moved beyond the pilot period because he and his fellow curators are already using the system so extensively. And our associate university librarian for distinctive collections, engagements, and assessments responded with similar words of praise. For her, community collections has become the default option for providing access to newly digitized collections. She now routinely asks whether curators would be able to put their collections into community collections. And if not, then why not? For me, JSTOR community collections helps us again to refocus the attention of our curators on the content of their collections rather than on the technology, saving both staff time and budget. And from my perspective as digital strategist, I want to say what more could I ask for? So let me turn it back to Bruce. Thanks Cliff for that honest assessment. I appreciate that. Whenever you get into these things, particularly in sort of a pilot period, you learn a lot. We've learned a lot over the last two years. We've learned a lot of what we had no idea about in some instances. So we have a long way to go still but I think we're moving in the right direction. So where are we today? We have about 850 collections on the platform. One of the real ideas here was that this really would start to, its value would start to show itself as we got more scale. So we need to get, we're looking for thousands of collections on the platform. And so we're working with institutions to have them dip their toe in the water and see if they want to learn like Cliff has learned at Vanderbilt. One of the really interesting things is that, how much of the content, now again, this was during a pandemic. So, and a lot of people were not logging in to their university credentials when they came in. But this stuff is available openly on JSTOR. And what we're found is that about 62% of the item requests coming in have actually come in from IP ranges that we don't recognize from those 12,000 institutions. So it feels like the open part of this idea of allowing just people to find it is working. The other thing I'll mention, and I think I'll get to this in a minute is that the amount of Google traffic that's driven in this content is much higher than what we see in the JSTOR Journal and Bookside. So Google is playing a much larger part and playing such a large, much larger part. In fact, that we really for the first time as an organization are having to think about our SEO with Google, which is we didn't really have to do before. And so that's been really interesting. So collections and a number of institutions who are participating continues to grow. The usage keeps escalating through the blue lines 2020, the red lines 2021 and 2020. Obviously we're adding more content over that period of time, but it's really starting to escalate. These are very similar things to what we saw with the journals in JSTOR early on, this type of growth. Cumulative usage is continuing to go up. And we have things on the, as Cliff was saying, we haven't gotten into audio and video yet. We've really been focused on text and images and really focused on things that obviously have already been digitized. And most of what we're seeing on the platform is stuff that we're harvesting from other repositories, whether it's Internet Archive or Content DM or dSpace or Islandora. Cliff mentioned JSTOR form, which is sort of our content management system we use. A few people use that, but most of the collections are coming in, exist in other repositories and we're simply harvesting them and putting them on the platform. Okay, so what are we seeing so far? Well, in the first, you know, 850 collections, we see that image content is still dominating what's in repositories. If you look at what's in the community collections, over 60% of it is image content. And that's what people have been putting in. We're seeing more text content come in now. One of the things I was really surprised by early on is we didn't see a lot of electronic theses and dissertations put in, which I was really surprised by. I really thought that would be the most common thing that people would put in because that connects to the secondary literature so directly. We're starting to see more of that now. I think rights issues kind of fed around that one a little bit, but I think we'll see more of that coming in. As I mentioned, Google referrals have grown and are growing significantly. And, you know, stuff that is already indexed by Google, the canonical version at your repository, because of JSTOR's just high use in Google, it helps boost those rankings as well, even the canonical version. I did mention it looks like open is working. And as Cliff mentioned, we also have the ability to put things on the platform that institutions can only serve back to their own institution. They haven't cleared the rights to make them open. And we have more people who are putting things on in that space. Preservation is an immediate priority. So many of these institutions have said, we may or may not host things on your platform, depending on what the evidence sends to us, but we definitely want to preserve things with you through Portico. So we're hearing a lot more of that. So to Cliff's point, we have work to do to make that. Portico takes this content in, and then we're kind of used to serving it back to publishers or showing it back to publishers. So we need to have a better way of showing it into the library space for the needs they have. One of the really curious things that has come up during these last two years is this almost universal cry for metadata enhancement and enrichment services that JSTOR might be able to provide. This has been pretty much with almost any institution we've spoken with, no matter how big or how small. And this is particularly interesting. We've sort of begun to develop a tool where we can feed metadata in and kind of score it on different dimensions of discoverability, preservation, inclusiveness, it's accessibility. Trying to think about a tool like that that would really help institutions understand things they might be doing to help their content score better on accessibility, for instance, or be better in the preservation side. And then libraries want to understand that and decide, okay, these are pieces we can take on ourselves, but maybe it'd be interesting if JSTOR could take this on and give this content back to us. So this gets beyond transliteration and adding all text and things of this nature and gets into some artificial intelligence, sort of machine learning ways of understanding with it. So we have a lot to do in that space if we're going to provide a service like that, but we're looking at what the possibilities, where we might get started might be interesting. Finally, I'll just mention that we're still in a charter period. So institutions who want to dip their toe in the water and try a couple of collections out, we're still inviting institutions to do that. Through the end of this year, there's no fees involved. You can get stuff on the platform. I think Cliff would attest there's not much effort at the institutional level that has to be done, particularly if we can just harvest it from your repository or you can send us a spreadsheet. We take care of mapping the thing to the JStore metadata schema and getting stuff published onto the platform. We're looking at providing the preservation service later this year for folks who want it. There's a lot of work that is going on the platform right now. We probably spent the first year working on search, trying to make search work effectively across these different content types. Obviously that's an ongoing thing that never stops, but we're really focused now on how to connect the content more conspicuously. So making sure that when someone comes in and finds something, a journal article or a book chapter, how do we connect them to stuff in the community collections that might be related to that and vice versa. Ithaca has launched a text and data mining service called Constellate. And there's been a lot of interest in pushing this content into Constellate. So folks can do text analytics on it. And we're looking at that. And of course, the metadata enhancement. I'll just say one other thing before we start taking questions. The audio video piece is a really important thing for us. It's on our roadmap. It's just we are trying to make sure we don't put things on the platform until we have the tool sets built to actually use them. And so audio and video are definitely things we're looking at and doing discovery work on right now. But I imagine it'll be a little bit before we actually get that content on the platform because we want to make sure the tools are there first so people can use it for research and teaching. So I'll stop there. And Cliff now I'll take questions. Thank you. I was wondering if you could unpack a little bit more about the LIF because you were mentioning challenges around that but I didn't see that in the next step. So I was wondering if we could connect the dots. Is this on here? Can you, is this working? Yeah, it's on. Oh, it's on? Okay. Yeah, that's a great question. And I almost want to just defer that question or ask Bruce the question because, so it seems to me that there are some technologies from the triple F standards that are at work already in the platform. You can see them. You can sort of zoom in very seamlessly on items that are in community collections. The problem is that there's no way that I know of and I don't think it exists, correct me if I'm wrong, to like serve out a triple IF image link so that you could say I want to see this in like a P&G format at this resolution and then put that into like our archive space link. That's what the curators would like to have. And at the present, I don't believe that's possible. That's correct. We've only implemented part of the triple IF framework and that is on the roadmap to do, to try to more fully incorporate the framework in there, but we've only done part of that up to this stage. To be honest, I was thinking about that in relation to your right issue too because you've been carrying some of the right things and then you have to flip all of that. Right. Yeah, that's a great point. And yeah, so I think as you think about integrating those standards, there are probably some solutions that would work well for our curators that we could think about implementing. Yep. So if we don't have someone speaking right away, if there is, that's great. Otherwise, I'll invite my colleague Nancy to maybe share her thoughts too. Just curious what the screen you showed us with the A on link comment. Where is the Robertson thing? Which system was that coming from? What this was, archive space? I think it was, I think this is archive space if I'm not mistaken. I was just curious whether it was Portico or JSTOR. Yeah, so curious then how the A on link was working. But it's local, so it's just a local link. Right, so they're putting in the links then directly into the collection so that people can go from the finding aid into the collection itself. But you wouldn't have that link in JSTOR. Well, the link goes to JSTOR? Oh, it does. Right. So if you clicked on that image, then you would go into community collections to that image in its context in the collection. But the A on request would come back to your A on request. Oh, right, right. If you're making an A on request, I'm not actually sure how we've done that to be honest. That's a good question for me to go back and see. Yeah, I was just curious because the A on integration is obviously interesting.  I'm wondering how well you're matching against the JSTOR materials. Whether that hypothesis is... Yeah, so I'll say that we have just started that work, honestly, Lorke, and the connecting of the secondary literature and the primary literature, I mean, secondary literature with the primary source content on the platform, that platform work on our platform really just began last quarter. So I don't think we'll start to see the results of that probably until the fall when that gets completed. And that scope of work is quite large. So we'll be starting, I think, with small things and growing out as you all probably know very well at OCLC. Hi, Bruce, Jason Price from Skelk. How are you? Have you done any comparisons on the... So the first hypothesis, the making it open and it's gonna reach more folks part, have you done any comparisons with local usage of the same content and what does that look like? We have. It is, in some instances, it's really been a lot higher in some instances, it has not been. And some of that comes into the way... Did we get embedded text, things of this nature to make things findable? Some of it is just us getting better at being able to surface things in the search. So it's kind of in the eye of the holder. I think one of the things I wouldn't... What I wanna see is happening is that usage jumps off the page at people the way that it did with when books, when we started like chunking books in the chapters and the usage that jumped off the page at people like, holy smokes, look at what's going on. We're not seeing that yet. But I see it sort of trending up into that direction. But I think we still have a little ways to go on that. Nancy, do you wanna share any thoughts? Well, thank you. You covered it so well, Cliff. I don't know what it is. Bruce, I'm still waiting to see pricing after the pilot here. And actually, Cliff knows, we've been in a lot of discussion about the preservation side too. So I think that's where we're seeing a lot of promise to really work these together. So... Yeah, I was telling Cliff before, I think we're gonna have the fees understood probably before the end of June. Yeah, I'm the budget person. So yeah. Again, the premise here is we're trying to make it as low barriers as possible for people to put stuff on the platform. So that hosting fee has got to be, in some sense, kind of a no-brainer for people. And then the preservation will be tied into with kind of what it costs us to preserve that. And I imagine that will have a function of storage in it that we'll have to work through. All right, I think we're at time. Thank you all very much. Enjoy the rest of the year. Afternoon. Thanks everyone.


September 27th 2022, and I'm calling this meeting to order that it's meeting of the the board of police commissioners. We have a Full quorum tonight of all corners of the globe and we're all yeah Well, we're all here full quorum moving on to agenda item 1.03, which is the adoption of the agenda I have no modifications to make and I'd entertain a motion to adopt the agenda as is I'll second moves by Commissioner Hart's seconded by Commissioner Grant all those in favor, please raise your hand or say aye. Aye. That passes unanimously Moving on to agenda item 2.01 and 2.02 Which is the approval of our meetings meet of the minutes of our last two meetings Our regular meeting that was scheduled on August 23rd 2022 in the Executive session from September 6th 2022 and I guess I will do them separately certainly with regards to approving of the minutes from August 23rd 2022 Any discussion any amendments or changes to those minutes seconded All those in favor of approving the minutes from 20 from August 23rd 2022, please raise your hand or say aye. Aye. Aye That passes unanimously Motion to approve the minutes from September 6th 2022 All those in favor, please raise your hand or say aye One side Just for the session I confirmed that I commissioner Keith was in attendance My name wasn't listed at the attendees All right What was that noted? Awesome on that case and I moved to approve the minutes from September 6th 2022 with with Commissioner Keith some amendments All those in favor raise your hand or please say aye. Aye. Aye That passes unanimously Moving on to agenda item at 3.01 should public forum Is there anybody in the in the in the tendency that I like to speak and Online they just know anyone online There's nobody online as well. Okay. Thank you If there is anybody that is tuning in via zoom, please raise your hand and we'll acknowledge you We're not seeing any so we will close that agenda item moving on to agenda item 4.01, which is the chief's report So it was posted to board docs pride pride of which and Was not sure if any commissioners had any questions over the chief's report Commissioner, so we know wasn't able to attend the meeting, but did send the report his report in advance and And just a couple of comments one is that at a previous meeting we had talked about the issue of bicycle thefts And he had alerted us to the fact that that there would be Something done to allow Community members to register the bikes and in fact we just received a communication the community received the communication for citizens on how to Register their bikes and so the commission just wants to recognize And express appreciation for that initiative And Also just to note that the chief on this recruitment trip is In line with best practices in terms of In terms of recruitment and wanted to also just extend our appreciation for him conducting the trip and Noting that we recently the city council approved A position as a for recruitment Officer for the BPD and the commission provided input on that and finally just to comment to know looking at the report itself With the chief notes in there is that there are now 62 officers and that is up One from I'm sorry one up from one from last month. So there's some modest progress in Rebuilding the number of officers I'll leave it at that and see if any other commissioners have comments The floor is open for any commissioners to make comments and please Take take the floor I just wanted to mention a couple of things One mention and then a question for DC LeBreck Concerning bike registration it I Would recommend that not only people use the city's website, but also bike index There was definitely a segment of the community and it was increasing that was using bike index already before the city sent out information about their registration Process and also I know that the University of Vermont and their notice that they sent out to all students Because of a number of bike thefts they had on campus within the first week or so They recommended to the students that they use bike index. So I think people should do both and Essentially anything that has a serial number that you own you should register it and have a current photo of it So that would be I think recommendations that we could all agree upon and then I just had a quick question for DC LeBreck concerning TRO's When those court orders come down they are priority one I had emailed you about an incident where someone was reporting that one was not being served Were you able to find out about that order and confirm whether or not it was served? I believe I sent you an email about that the gentleman that it was we were trying to serve it on was wanted And he knew that so he basically was avoiding contact with us so Mary McAllister reached out through his wife And tried to arrange the service of it As far as I know she had gotten it served that way, but we weren't involved in that Okay, thank you. I'll check for that email appreciate that. I sent it right after you Had sent me that email so it was weeks ago I'll go back and double-check that because I don't know if you didn't get it I will definitely double-check that and get back to you. Thank you. It's just we know I Think commissioner Cumberford was first My apologies. I didn't see other hand race. I was simply going to share the information Milo did around the UVM communication on bicycles. I just wanted to for the public to note the press release from ATF with regard to the formation of a gun violence task force with BPD and surrounding agencies and if you want more information on that I Would assume you can contact at the chief mirad or Locate the press release but in any case there is a a gun violence task force that has been formed With several partner agencies to utilize various investigative techniques and to leverage the collective resources To address the increase in gun incidents in our community And do we have any further questions or comments with regards to the chief support? I'm not seeing or hearing any and with that we shall move on to agenda item 5.01 which is a presentation for the Vermont Interfaith Alliance with regards to a well policing guide and they'll be Presented by Debbie Ingram and Bill Neil and Thank you very much for being here with us. It should be a little green light. Oh, it's brighter. It's brighter when it's on Yeah, thank you for the time this evening. I am Bill Neil I'm a retired clergy person moved back to Burlington and to Vermont at the early days of 2021 and One of my first interest was getting involved in a faith-based community organizing project And Vermont Interfaith Action had formed about 20 years ago. It's currently a faith-based community organizing project with about 64 member congregations throughout the state of Vermont and Working together for systemic change around issues of social justice our approach is to go to the community and find out from community members what issues are of their concern and then identifying those issues organizing working groups to Seek to address those issues by doing research finding out information and possibly coming up with some proposals for positive changes to our communities and Racial justice as a significant piece of the work in which we are currently engaged. We have groups working on Racial justice in the areas of housing racial justice in areas of business and economics and Also in the area of public safety and policing There was that group that I joined early on in 2021 and which I speak to tonight We conducted a variety of conversations with several individuals throughout the state participants in law enforcement participants in the criminal justice system residents and members of the communities be going on behalf of racial justice and As we went through our research We discovered the president's task force on 21st century policing, which was released federally in 2015 So refer briefly to that and then we came up with a what we were calling a Vermont guide to community engagement with local police departments. We released this in April this year It's designed especially for smaller communities various sizes throughout the state and in a sense it's it's Designed to assist local communities to end up with something of their version of the police commission here in Burlington To get citizens involved. Yes, this is aware What what questions to ask what these tales to look into how to engage in dialogue and communication with their policing agencies in Their local communities. So just briefly. I'll run through what we have. I believe you received Email copy of the guide. So I don't want to overdo your your patience and time And then of course the question at the end would be well Is there any way that this particularly imply applies to the Burlington community? And I just have one thought on that which I would like to end with from the president's task force on 21st century policing latest they identified six primary pieces of work building trust and legitimacy policy and oversight technology and media community policing and crime reduction officer training and education officer safety and wellness all of these Invite the development Locally in the in different communities and in different ways in those communities some form of civilian oversight agency Which they call a coa in its efforts to reduce racial disparities and police violence over a length of time and This development of a local entity a local group of citizens Interacting regularly with their policing agency. Hopefully would increase the level of trust and participation throughout the community so in order to Pursue that larger agenda. We come up with several specific Areas of interest which a local community might want to engage their policing communities with and Just basically run through these and then You know bring it to an end So there are quite a few we start with an awareness of explicit and implicit bias There are tremendous training programs in Vermont. We we've talked to the Vermont Criminal Justice Council representatives and various other people that have followed We're entirely convinced that the training that is available is awesome as excellent and We're concerned to see that training result in the implementation day to day today and Interactions between policing folks and citizens a training and de-escalation practices discover discovering ways of de-escalating potentially violent situations Performance expectation and review This is a significant area because upon those occasions when there is a possible incidence of Less than best behaviors. How are those discovered and addressed? What tools and processes are in place for performance reviews? How can accountability be brought into the situation and who's involved in investigating complaints? What response is provided to the complainant? What possibility is there for meaningful citizen input result in regard to resolutions or consequences? The next big areas we're involved in data collection To what degree our detailed data being collected it with aspect to racial identities ethnic identities ways that involve stop searches use the force Looking for possible Im implicit or explicit bias And possible replacing So collecting the data then the data analysis looking at exploring it. How does it work? Who's just who's doing that interpreting who's doing that and From just briefly attending a couple of your meetings in this past several months I realize you have a whole system in place But it's in the computer somewhere and somebody has to be able to get to it get it out Then in terms of hiring discipline firing policies And I'm obviously you're right in the middle of a big recruitment Effort and from watching the news The entire state of Vermont is mostly looking for officers Officers to be trained offers to be deployed the ways of Continuing to keep and support the officers that they do have Community involvement looking for ways that citizens have input as well as you know participating in with the policing unit and Then a couple of key issues around meadow health and substance abuse These areas require special tries training in many cases and in Burlington I know there's working with other agencies or with individuals who are not sworn officers, but who are have a specialist area of Support and capacity and dealing with meadow health or substance use issues So then in the last three the attempt here is to acknowledge the challenges that our officers face and to Look at ways that in relationship to the community the community can also be then more broadly educated and aware of What it's like to be a policing officer in our local communities What are the positive stories that can be told? Examples where a police officer was able to intervene or make an influence with a positive result These these are the kinds of things that don't get often counted or recognized and yet are probably happening every day What are the challenges of policing? that the stresses the levels of Trauma that are experienced how are those officers supported and their work recognized and then what is the motivation that brings officers to this job and In what ways can they be encouraged strengthened and supported? In the area of training and and retraining and ongoing trainings Again, I think we've shown that the state has an excellent policy in place but Clearly there have been times when the follow-through has has fallen short Reflecting about what does this mean in Burlington? You you're already here We have a police commission you're you're engaged you're involved you're doing I think an incredible amount of work Especially I've volunteered members of the community When we spoke to acting chief Marad earlier on in our interview times He pointed out that Burlington is divided into five sort of policing districts or areas the far north end The near north and the Hill district the downtown area in the south Area it occurred to me as a possible way of perhaps implementing some of this Work that that we have done that we're hoping will be applied throughout the state of different localities But it might be possible to invite residentials residents of these five different areas to gather with some kind of support or some kind of guidance You know coming from the the commission as a whole in order to Discover their particular interest concerns and cares and perhaps to bring the kind of that level of community policing closer to their specific neighborhoods and locations Obviously the the district of the downtown has a whole different set of concerns than the district of the far north end where I live and yet the goal of Developing stronger relationships of trust between the community and the policing folks might be Strengthened it supported By having some of these more localized conversations in the in the five areas where the policing is being done And I only just say that because otherwise I think you're you're on the job. You're doing it. You're doing great I as a resident I'm just I just couldn't be more proud to be Living where I am and knowing that folks like you are doing the jobs that you're doing and that are policing folks They're doing the jobs that they're doing. I'd be happy to respond if there are any questions. I'm not the best Resource even on behalf of our committee. The reason I'm here is because I was available and I live in Burlington But I would try to respond with any questions if you might have Thank you very much, and I very much appreciate that presentation I believe Commissioner Comerford has a question or a comment Thank you so much for your work and thanks to all the committee and also for being here this evening Two things the first is I'm wondering what motivated you to do this work The the larger state are national white issues of racial injustice and policing The Black Lives Matter movement and the the on just the ongoing You know how often can you get through a whole week without we're hearing or reading about some terrible tragedy that has taken place? And I did not live in Burlington at the more recent times when I know or believe that there were some kinds of incidents I don't even know what what happened or when so I came you know arrived in January of 2021 but the larger issue of racial justice and then the specific focusing on policing is a way of Reimagining public safety For the benefit of all of our people recognizing that if black lives matter then truly all lives matter I Also wanted to just let you know that prior to the onset of the pandemic Commissioner Milo Grant had made the suggestion that we take our Commission meetings out you know into the districts So we had had that thought and hopefully you'll be able to move on that in the future Thank You Commissioner Grant


Good evening. Hi. Good evening. It's my pleasure to speak on behalf of PMI. A few minutes I'll be taking you. Other friends, whosoever possible, you can stay back. I think because of parallel sessions and otherwise would have been crowdful here. Yeah, please come in. My name is Rini. I'm one of the ACP practitioner, agile practitioner and also a small volunteer for PMI. As you know, PMI is run by all volunteers and I'm not belong to either employee of PMI or anything. With my enthusiasm and thought of sharing just few words as a practitioner. Just to give a quick background, I'm one of the PMP certified in 2006 and ACP certified in 2012. I work for GE and I'm one of the practitioner of lean over the time. And when this agile concepts came when we're doing a traditional project management. So organizations are looking for a transformation and they wanted to connect with the external people. Some standards, some kind of latest practices and always the certifications will make identifiers in the crowd. So that was one of the need from the organization and also passion for writing the exams so that you can read and learn and over and above you will connect with people when you are meeting on the forums. Probably that is one thing close to my heart. So I'm by way of doing this PMP certifications and practicing them probably I feel four of the areas I got impacted positively. One is on the work side. So in the organization they identify in the crowd. If you are PMP certified that is like a brand particularly when working with overseas people and clients outside. And some of the Latin America friends who are in my organization they think that PMP is something like you're going into Everest like that. That is their feeling. But sometimes always the certifications will help. In difficult times that is a benchmark like you know that's what I feel. And in the community I am being volunteer for the both Bangalore chapter and also PMA India whenever there are some activities. So I meet so many people learning each other and also sharing some good practices. So that way it's a huge benefit for me. And also I energies. I meet sometime very young people and very experienced people. So that is the only forums you can. And being in the chapter in Bangalore we meet every two weeks for knowledge sharing sessions and also annual conference and many other activities. And by virtue of my passion I become a guest faculty for both PMP and also ACP quest programs connected by the chapter here. And also if you look at some of the friendship made. So through PMA facilitated conferences I was called for to give some kind of knowledge sharing and whatever the practices we do. So that is one more thing probably by connecting sometimes they say volunteerism is contagious. So that is one really good forum I feel that we can utilize that activity. There are many community practices and many people around the world you will come across by joining those practices. And also within Bangalore sometimes we don't know where in next building the person is doing wonders. We don't have to share something appropriate information company related. But there is a way that we can always learn from each other whatever we do and things like that. And on the family side sometimes I feel the self-organized teams and this kind of whatever we are doing at work or advocating. That also little bit my family also I think they are that way. So instead of everything depending on me Saturday half day I'll keep for myself. So that is more of going into PMP practices are going to chapter activities and like that. So that made actually you will surprise my son is writing 10th class exams. And I'm writing one of these PMP exams. So he and his teachers were saying that no your son is telling because you are not sleeping. That's why he's forced to read also till till we go to sleep. So it takes a lot of energy and you will connect with different people both younger generation and as well as elders. So that's what I think I was speaking for more myself. Just to give a small glimpse of what I mean PMA population along. How many are ACP anyone in the room? AC, agile certified practitioner. I'm not doing any sales but the just from my heart what I'm saying compared to your any other trainings or certificates. This gives some kind of broad spectrum of different knowledge areas. It can be Scrum, it can be XP and more lean. And as he was saying XP practices that just concluded a pair programming or you can do test driven development. So depends on your area of work. So that test your knowledge. It gives a lot of confidence that no I also know something. So that that's the feeling we get taking the exam. And sometimes which I like more here is every year you are by virtue of your previous accumulating. So one way or other you are again revisiting. One friend was saying that no if you take IAS exam and if you pass that is great.  There is nobody will ask that after three years or four years whether are you really in that mindset.  That's one key thing I see that that's a big value add for all of us. So that's all I thought of just sharing as a simple practitioner by virtue of taking these exams. So sometimes friends will feel that you know if anything required sometimes they will avoid also. Or it is really may ask to take some other exam or something but sometimes most of the times it feel good that you know. So you will be called for some kind of an advice that ok I should go take this exam or that one and keep brushing our self. So in the end it's all professional network and it keeps us always engaged, energized and also sharpen our self. That's all if any questions for me. Yes there is a PMA website if you go there is a icon with ACP. There is a stall here and a brochure also we can pass. So you need to have a 1500 hours of agile experience. Agile experience in the sense any of the agile practices if you are doing if you are a practitioner. So 1500 hours of experience in any life cycle of the project and 2000 hours of regular project management experience. And if you are already a PMP that 2000 hours proof is not required. And this 1500 hours you can show for the last 3 years. So that means even last 4 years also is fine. And after that you need to have 21 hours of contact hours of training, formal training. So you can either take from any of the RAPs many are there nowadays. And even Bangalore chapter offers sometime. And if you are already scrum certified they give some 14 videos. Plus you can suffice with any of your internal trainings. Maybe I can if you are interested I can take you in detail. So that's a overall 21 hours of contact hours of training plus 1500 hours of agile experience. Usually a practitioner not necessarily PMP and those who are in the role of either scrum masters or a potential scrum masters or potential product owners. Not necessarily you are in and out working on agile activities. But you are a project management practitioner and willing to take the next role. So those people will be really good targets. See project here one thing is to my experience what is different from regular PMP to ACP. You don't have to be PMP. And you may not be completely into project management role. You may be leading a technical team or a group of teams even non-IT. So as long as if you are following in any of these agile practices like in the manifesto tells you know the individuals and interactions over process and tools. Or working software over comprehensive documentation. So any of those things if you are practicing then you are good to take. I saw one gentleman from bank Vijaya Bank. So he took an exam. So they are there the way what they are doing it is an amazing experience. Probably I'll connect with the gentleman as well. He has some engineering experience also initially. So that's how you will surprise that know somebody who are ex defense. What the what that person told me he was in Navy agile at sea like that. So probably who's ever run ships they're almost there agile ship is the only vehicle I think doesn't have brakes. So he was mentioning that. So that means you have to be always proactive and move the things in a real agile way. So anyone who are into these practices they're encouraged to take the exam. And it is always you know this tests actually your practitioner experience. So if you are into that practice certainly it's a good certification to take. Yes similar to PMP it is three years. So you need to accumulate if you are already PMP and then you become ACP. There is a overlap of PDU's but if you are only ACP directly. So instead of 60 points here it is 45 points. So those details also given here. So by virtue of your practicing things if you're proving so you will qualify for 45 points. That is again that is one of the things after writing exam you should not leave. So that's how attending people meeting lectures you are giving. So all these things will qualify for your PDU's credential. Some companies just started being if you want to be agile practitioner they encourage them and take this exam. Also that's some trend is coming. Even our people are just encouraging so a lot of people you can see here. And just since you said I got few statistics. So there are PMPs over 35,400 in India. So probably and ACPs are just toddlers are beginning. So it is just touching 580 that is last month. So probably 585 this week. India numbers. So that's that's statistics. Probably we can join the group of 2023,409 members in India. In one word probably since Jacob I'm excited to say one word. I mean there's advancement of learning what we can say. And sometimes I feel if you see PMI in my initial days I'm member for last nine years. So one of my prof who was closely associated he was saying that if you read from this side. That means normally whenever in our college exam school exam so you write EMP means that is important question like that. So as he was saying probably that can be one important element to connect with our communities and professional development. Thank you.


Let's jump over to our man, Teddy Kegstad. We talk to Teddy folks every Wednesday at 40 past the hour. Put it on your calendar at 9.40 a.m. Eastern Time every Wednesday. You can reach Teddy every trading day at his website, forex-trading-unlock.com. Teddy Kegstad, good morning. Good morning, Tommy. So we got volatility in these markets to say the least, Teddy, quite a week for retail, but jumping around to forex, we have a little bit of a reversal maybe in the dollar. We have yields back to 2.73% this morning. What do you think about this market? Well, right now I think we have a nice little corrective rally going against the dollar. I think it's possible to get edge a little higher, and one of the main reasons is the Treasury bond market. We know that right now the 10-year and the 30-year have been trending higher for the past week and a half. Interestingly enough, the 30-year bond had a reverse head and shoulders that it broke out of last week. Over the past couple of sessions, it's been trying to push resistance a little bit. Right now, if that head and shoulders pattern is really true, we can still see a little bit more upside potential in interest rate pricing, meaning a little pressure on the dollar also with that variable. I think that the markets are getting skittish because when you really see how much the dollar has corrected when it has, over the past few months, it hasn't corrected very much. So I think we're kind of at that little friction point right now. Yeah. When I just take a look at it on a six-month basis, I mean, quite a little pullback what we have, almost up to 105 in early May, and we're sitting at 102.27. That's the DXY, the Bloomberg Dollar Index. But that's coming, as you say, from a price point of 96 in almost March. Yeah. Not really a pullback. I love Fibonacci levels, and I don't even have to put a Fibonacci level on that. Even to the 382 in terms of a real pullback of still a bullish run. Breaking down the individual pairings, where can we start off? What are you looking at this week for the individual pairings? Okay. Well, interestingly enough, the end that I've been a bull of for a very long has had a pretty nice correction over the past, like especially weak or so. I would be careful at these levels being a seller. I'm not saying that we haven't seen the low yet, but we are kind of bottoming in there, especially with oil poised to break out to the upside. You've got to realize that the second the bonds turn and the 10-year turn, even on a daily basis, you see this knee-jerk reaction in the US dollar-yen trade. So I think that as the interest rate trade starts to give a little relief, meaning the rates are going short-term lower in the market rate and higher in pricing, I think as that starts to nudge up against resistance and pullback, you're going to see a big snapback in the US dollar-yen as well. So I really do believe that if oil does start to break out to the upside, we're in front of a holiday weekend. There's a lot of reasons to be more bullish oil than not. And if we can break out, I mean, right now that we're wedging, if we challenge that 1.16 level and get above 1.16, well, I can't see how the US dollar-yen wouldn't explode to the upside. So on the Euro-US dollar trade, I would use caution at these levels because we already hit our short-term daily target. We had a buy signal about a week and a half ago, but we had a weekly buy signal that was finished yesterday, or not yesterday, last week. And if that level runs out of gas, that's why I was mentioning the head and shoulders and the interest rate market because these coincide with each other right now. So you have the rate pressure going down, meaning up in price and the dollar pulling back, but it's very, very sensitive. We have a lot of inflation numbers that, hey, we were talking about this months ago about how the lag is there, and now people are accepting the fact that, well, we're going to be talking about inflation six months from now still. And I even heard you earlier about people's choices. Like a target, yeah, maybe you can get a good deal on a patio set right now, but people aren't going to be buying patio sets right now when they're spending $6 a gallon for the easy one. That's half choice, right, for sure, yeah, for sure. Hey, we got a caller, Teddy, all right? Let's jump to a caller, if you don't mind. We got Jeff from Philly and he wants to talk a little New Zealand dollar. Jeff, good morning, man. Thanks for calling in. Hi, good morning, Tommy. Thanks for taking my call and Teddy, thanks for taking my call. This is a little bit of an obscure question, but I've been trading Econ News and FX for about the last four years and I saw something last night that I've never seen before. There were two very strange price actions and I wanted to ask you if you heard anything or just had any comments on this. So what I saw was there was a rate decision coming out in New Zealand at 10 o'clock Eastern time, PM, and three minutes before the news came out price started dropping. The New Zealand against the US dollar started dropping. Now I've seen sometimes news releases come out a little bit early, maybe 10 seconds, 30 seconds, most, something like that, but this was three minutes early. I saw the price started dropping and but then exactly at 10 o'clock when the news release came out, it shot up like crazy. It was a huge move and actually I made a lot of money, but it shot up in the opposite direction and the weird thing about that, I mean, in addition to the early price drop for no apparent reason, is that the forecast for that rate decision was 2% and the actual was 2% and 2.00%. I mean, precisely the same. So when I see big price moves like this, it's in response to some kind of a surprise, but I mean, it's gonna be less of a surprise. It exactly matched the forecast. So to get this huge move without a surprise and to get the price dropped in the opposite direction a little bit before the news or a few minutes before the news, those are two very strange things. Well, it is and it isn't. You gotta remember when you're trading a news event that's very typical. So I mean, especially in today's algo world, so I would assume that probably right before that number, you have a lot of liquidation where a lot of algos will actually shut off because they don't wanna trade the number because of the noise that happens during those moments.  So now I think one of the biggest questions you have to ask is besides the knee-jerk reaction on just the volatility of the number going out is what are the expectations? Are they gonna continue to follow suit? And I think that there is an interest rate war going on now with all the central banks. It's a matter of who's gonna catch up to who first, except for like Japan where they're not doing anything when they said they would. So I think that that's where you're getting these little reactions right now, but you get the expectations no matter what for New Zealand are not that good. So we're raising the interest rate where you would think it would help support their currency more. I mean, right now the New Zealand dollar isn't an upside correction. I view it as a correction, especially because their lockdown measures are very severe and still coming back again. So there's a lot of reasons why their economic numbers are gonna be very poor moving forward over the next six months. So that's gonna weigh on their currency. So and we know that they just pop their rate. Well, we're gonna pop our rate again in the next few weeks, no matter what, at least, and more likely over the next few months, we're gonna pop our rate more than theirs. So I think that that's why you're seeing this kind of a reaction that you're looking at that happened. Okay, great. Well, thank you very much for your insights. I appreciate you taking the time. Jeff, that was a great question, man. Thanks so much for calling in. All right, thanks, take care. Teddy, I appreciate the update as always, man. Have a great holiday weekend and we look forward to chatting you next Wednesday. We'll see where Crude is following Memorial Day, man. Hire. It's gonna be surprising, man. Thanks so much, Teddy. I appreciate it as always. Okay, you too, man. We'll talk to you next week.


I think that the internet provides a good environment to do interventions. You can do it easily, quickly, briefly, and you have access to almost unlimited information. I think that the role of health advisors or of health professionals is to give reliable information. I opened a thread in the Silk Road Forum giving free advice to Silk Road users about drugs and unhealthy in a hand-reduction perspective. I have had more than 60,000 visits to the thread and more than 800 questions. So that means that when we offer the drug users the opportunity to access to reliable information, they care. We have prejudice against drug users that are people who are not concerned about their health, but drug users are as any other person that they search to protect themselves and if you give them the opportunity to have access to information they accept, they accept very well. The intervention in virtual spaces is necessarily limited. It is not comparable to an interview or an exploration face-to-face with a person and so it is much more limited than we could do in the real world. On the other hand, in the virtual world you can gain access to a lot of people who you wouldn't contact in any other form.


Hello, everyone, my name is Marilyn DeMores. I work here at TechSoup. I'm the CSP Account Manager, and today I'm gonna show you how you can use Microsoft Forms. We're gonna create a survey. So the first thing you need to do, you need to go to office.com and find the forms icon. If you don't see it, click on all apps and you will find it there. Now you will click on new forms. Then what you need to do, you need to enter a title. We're gonna say CSP Chat Survey. Then we're gonna choose a question. In this case, we're gonna choose a date question, right? Now you can see your question there. Now we're gonna preview it. If you like it, we can just go back and share it just by clicking on share here. You can also select the team by changing the color on your survey. But if you are satisfied, just copy the link and share it with anyone you want. Thank you so much for watching. I will see you next time.


What's up guys, welcome to a new video. So in this one, we're going to be talking about how to avoid getting sued on Shopify So as somebody who's been dropshipping now for over three years I know a thing or two about getting sued and the sorts of things you can do to protect yourself from lawsuits So what kind of images you can use where to source those images? What kind of products you can sell because it was actually about six or seven months into my dropshipping journey in which I got contacted from a company Threatening to sue me if I didn't change the name of all my social media pages of my site pretty much everything So it was at that point then which I was forced to seek my own legal advice And basically just take the time to get myself Clued up about the kind of images you can use when it comes to logos when it comes to type of products And the sorts of things you can and can't actually get sued for so in this video then I'm going to be addressing the three kind of most popular questions I get asked on this topic which are Number one, can you use Aliexpress products images number two? Can you sell trademarked items and then number three? Can you use copyrighted images and if you can't then where to actually source those images? So that's the top of the video then guys. Thanks for tuning in before we jump into the first question I just want to quickly mention as always then in every single video I am giving away a free one-to-one call with me So chance then for me and you to have a chat one-on-one And you can ask me whatever you want then about Shopify dropshipping or Facebook ads So for example then the last winner me and him went through some products on Aliexpress Which was actually what gave me the idea for this video So if that is the kind of thing you want the chance to win is dead easy to do all you have to do to enter It's simply like comment and subscribe on this video and then tune into my next one Which will be Monday or Tuesday where the winner will be announced and with that being said then guys Let's get straight into question number one So question number one then can you get sued using the images the products images you find on Aliexpress now before jump into this I just want to very quickly say I'm not a solicitor. I'm not a lawyer So if there's anything you're unsure of then I recommend speaking to a professional or at least doing your own research on Google Back when somebody threatened me I was able to find out some pretty decent information online But then just to double back that up Then I found a couple of companies that were willing to do free consultations Or free initial consultations over the phone for about 10 15 minutes And it turned out that was all I needed to basically tell this woman to go away Anyway, that's another story for another video Maybe if you want more details on that then leave a comment down below and I can do a video Specifically on that one story Anyway, when it comes to using the images from Aliexpress then you do have to be careful in certain situations So when most people think of China, they know it's the place where you can get a pretty much knockoff anything when I went There was markets that were literally miles long selling knockoff Rolex watches knockoff taggers. They were selling knockoff Yeezy's just pretty much anything fake. You can pretty much source from China. So they're trademarking laws They're copyright laws. They're not as strict as they are in the Western world So when it comes to using their images, then you do have to be careful sometimes because they may have just Rather than taking their own images, they may have gone on to Instagram or Facebook and taken another companies So to give you an example, then let's jump into my computer And I just want to show you this product here then which is this camera mug as you can see there's no brand names There's nothing like that. The images are pretty generic. They don't have any faces in so when it comes to using products images like This just generic ones then with a white background, then you're going to be absolutely fine However to give you an example then of one way you have to be careful If you're in the fashion niche or if you're selling any product that features a model showing their face like this For example, then you have to be careful because you don't know where they have sourced that image from So one thing you can do then is if you open up the product page Save the image or take a screenshot of it then head over to Google image search You can actually use Google to search the internet for images Which is what I did for this product here and these are the results here as you can see There's some very similar ones. There's the exact one there But then if we scroll down look at all the different pages which are using this exact same image So you have to be careful here because because you don't know who owns the rights to that image The last thing you want to do is make a hundred K off a particular product using somebody else's image for them to pursue Lawfully and if it can be proven that you've made that hundred K using one of their images Then you can be entitled to have to repay that money So just be very careful if you're unsure after all of this then make sure you contact the supplier and say Where did you source your images from anyway with that being said then guys? Let's move into question number two, which is can you sell trademarked items? The answer to this question is quick and simple which is a flat no or you can But again if you get found out any money you made through selling these trademarked items You can be liable to repay plus if Facebook find out They will shut your ad account down straight away and you might have difficulties trying to open a new one So what are exactly then trademarked items? Let's jump into my computer again and just show you so anything that comes with a brand or logo or anything like that And so for example the good one is Harry Potter because there's so many different Harry Potter items on Aliexpress So for example if we just have a flick through there's just hundreds and hundreds So if you get caught selling any of these items without the required license Then you could be liable to pay some Significant amount of money if you're ever unsure whether a particular brand is trademarked One thing you can do then is head over to the gov.uk website where you can search for certain trademarks You can put in a certain image. So let's just show you the process from the beginning. So we can search for a trademark We've got words. We've got trademarks words. We've got classifications But if we just put Harry Potter in here hit enter It might take a while because there's quite a few different trademarks to search and by the way This will just be for the UK if you want to sell within a different country Then obviously you'll have to check the trademarks in that country But if we just have a look through here We can see there's a trademark here for anything with a marked text of Harry Potter The same registered Harry Potter And we can keep going through Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix So trying to sell any products in relation to this this one is actually logo itself Which we saw if we go back to Ali express We can see there were certain products with the actual Harry Potter logo one So if you get caught and found out selling any of these products with that marked text or that logo then again You can be Subsceptible to some kind of lawsuit and with that being said then guys, let's move on to the third and final question which is How do you avoid using copyright images? So you're not liable to some kind of lawsuit and you don't have to risk getting sued So if you go into Google then for example like this and we just put in golf We can go to images then some of these will be Copyrighted and if you get caught using them You may have somebody send you a letter saying you are worth $10,000 or whatever it is believe it or not There are actually companies that do that for a full-time living They'll go out there and they'll take hundreds and thousands of different stock images put load them all onto the internet and then basically just on a daily basis try and catch people out using them and Then send them letters. I've seen it before on Facebook groups You might have seen it yourself So you have to make sure that the images you're using on your site Copyrighted and there's a couple of ways you can do that number one is you can use Shopify's own service themselves. It's called burst dot my shop burst dot Shopify calm And as you can see all the images on here are free to use But also free for commercial use which is the key thing here because there are two different laws One which is for personal use which is fine But then if you are using them for a commercial purpose then that is a different trademarked law So whatever images you use you have to make sure that they're free And okay for commercial use as well So to do this using Google then one thing you can do is if you go back to the main Google search Go to settings on the bottom right here go to advanced search We can put golf in here now again But what we're gonna do here is in the usage rights It's just make sure we've got free to use share or modify and put even commercially as well click advanced search Go to images and now all of these images here will be absolutely fine to use and with that being said then guys I just want to end the video again by saying I'm not a lawyer. I'm not solicitor So if you are unsure about anything then please do make sure you seek your own legal advice Anyway, that's it for today's video. Thank you very much for tuning in the support on the channel being absolutely awesome What I'm gonna do is when we reach 10,000 subs is do some kind of meetup in London so please do make sure you subscribe and please make sure you keep watching my videos and Last but not least then let's get into announcing the winner of the previous video for that one-to-one call So this is the previous video then if you haven't watched it yet Please do go and check it out eight interesting things to make sure you do before you start drop shipping the feedback on it To be honest has actually been pretty good too. So please do make sure you go check that one out There's something in there for everybody. Anyway, let's get into announcing the winner So we'll take the URL head over to the random comment picker just to reiterate these competitions at 100% random I do not pick the winners and the winner then of the previous video is Experia desire so thank very much for your comment Please do reach out on Instagram or we can get that call arranged and guys if you just want to get straight out into business And book a call right away. You can do so make sure you check out the links in the description below I do have an e-commerce academy as well, which has a 100% satisfaction rate Absolutely zero people have wanted to refund. So if you do want a step-by-step system that's got really good results Please make sure you check that out too. Anyway, with that being said, thanks again for tuning in I hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you in the next one


Good morning or evening or afternoon my beautiful friends. There are two quick things I need to say before we jump into this video. First of all, it's not a very happy video. I'm in a pretty dark place in this video. I decided to go ahead and share it because I feel like sharing the ups and the downs are pretty important. I know that a lot of you guys are on similar journeys. Whether or not it's related to health or imputation, nobody's life is a straight line and I think we all experience hopelessness at some point and that is definitely where I am right now and so I wanted to kind of share with you guys some honest feelings of what's been happening and where I am and what's happened this week. Secondly, way cooler news before we actually jump in. This is my new intro created by my good friend Rick. He is freaking fantastic. I'm so impressed with him and I put his contact information in the description below. Please hit him up if you have any questions. If you need an intro for anything, if you need any after effects work done, he was amazing to work with and did such a killer job, check this out and then we will hop into the less chipper video. Hello beautiful internet friends. I am shooting this video to hopefully clear my mind a little bit so I can hopefully do some things I need to do today. I am pretty good at like just coming back to hope, not staying hopeful all the time like nobody can do that but like like I mean like we've pointed out before. I have hope tattooed on me. I have eight tattoos total of them like six of them all revolve around the idea of having hope of coming back to hope because man we kind of suffocate without it. I went to the doctor this week as I mentioned to you guys I would be doing because working with my press that I like didn't feel right, even putting the liner on didn't feel right. I had like shooting weird pain like it just it felt wrong you know. Hi I'm on my way up to Denver yet again to see my doctor yet again. This is me trying to keep a wide open mind that maybe that's all that's going on you know so I've got sunshine in the back. She has a name? That's right. So after much debate I have decided on her name being sunshine like walking on sunshine. I thought that was just so punny and adorable but her nickname is gonna be hiccup because I also love that so I mean basically two names. I am so tired of making this drive. I haven't wanted to be in front of a camera ever since I went to that doctor's appointment. Videos you've seen released since then because that doctor's appointment was on Thursday have all been recorded before Thursday because I have not been able to put into words any kind of summary of being okay because I'm not. I also haven't wanted to talk about my feelings because they don't feel great and avoiding them sounds a lot better. Long story short I went to my doctor's appointment. I figured out what's going on. Basically I've got a nerve issue. They don't think it's a neuroma but my nerves are freaking out at the very bottom of my leg which actually kind of makes sense because I was thinking it was like in the same place I had surgery but through really like poking and prodding at things we figured out quickly. You know how sometimes you have pain in one area but the actual source of the pain is a slightly different area because that's just how our bodies work that's kind of what was going on. The actual pain that I was experiencing was like at the very bottom of my leg. Totally unrelated to what I had surgery for. Totally unrelated to anything else at all that's been going on just something random that's going wrong that's really painful. There's not really a super direct way to fix it. Right now we're trying CBD oil and like massaging it basically pissing it off like just making it hurt more thinking that like desensitization I think I think I said that right will work. My doctor also ordered like this super special expensive prescription topical compound cream that's supposed to help with pain but I am just so so defeated because if this doesn't work maybe we'll inject it full of steroids and and who knows if that's gonna work. In the meantime it's super painful and in the meantime I can't use my leg or if I do at all it's really painful. I hate saying this because I sound so victim-y saying it but like this comes at a time when like just after I recovered from surgery and like have the go-ahead to start doing things and like start trying to get a prosthetic leg and like let a little bit of hope in that like okay well maybe I can like actually start on this this course and start like maybe this is it maybe this is the time to like actually start moving forward like boom out of nowhere something else randomly goes wrong for no known reason. I know stuff happens like I know I really do. I know better than like anyone that stuff happens because it always does. I just don't know how I'm like supposed to keep vision or like really need to readjust where my hope is I think because it feels very unwise to hope that this issue will actually magically resolve itself when my doctor didn't really have any hope that it would and I may see second opinions on this I probably will actually hear pretty soon. It's just another roadblock as soon as things get started and I feel like that's what I'm destined to and I'm not I know that I know that I'm not you're seeing me in a very low place in a bad place I don't know if you guys watch the story time video I did on Saturday but it was about that day where I had to shave my head for no reason and then went to the doctor expecting to have major brain surgery and he canceled everything and that day was one day where I hit a wall and was like it's never gonna get better it's never gonna get better because I was like kind of the culmination of so much stuff where I was like finally something after so much stuff happening finally something is gonna fix it even though it was gonna be really painful even though it's gonna be difficult like I was on board for that and then like all that hope was taken away and I remember just like yelling it is never going to get better and then that led to like years of trying to find a way to like patch work away to make things work and that's what chronic pain is like that's what this life is and I hit that same wall walking out of the doctor's office on Thursday just being like oh oh it's not gonna get better okay we all know that like logically rationally the past is not a good indication of what's gonna happen in the future if we rely on our own experience we go astray pretty quickly but it's hard not to listen to my own experience in the situation where for the past 14 years something has always gone wrong with my ankle when it wasn't supposed to and I feel like I finally took care of that problem and now things are consistently going wrong every time I think I'm gonna take a step forward with this process and I realize that that's part of the journey and I will learn from this and I will grow from it and a part of me is grateful for that but that's not the part that I feel right now and if I decide to publish this video which I'm not sure is a good idea or not at least it will show the reality of the roller coaster that is this journey and I've been like fine the last couple days because I've been like nope we're not gonna think about that I'm just gonna pretend that I'm gonna wake up tomorrow and everything's gonna be fine but that's that's not the case posted on Instagram the other day about how I think it's important that I readjust thinking what life is that like focus on how nice it is to wake up to coffee in the morning because damn it it's really great and focus on how awesome it is to have great conversations with friends and car rides up to Denver and focus on the fact that I really like the color of this blanket because I am so frustrated with life as a whole right now but when I say that I discount all of the other little things that like actually make up life and so today a few hours we're gonna go bring my dogs home because I feel like that's an important safety and protective mechanism for my mental health right now they need to be around even if it makes things harder like around the house at least for a little while they need to be here and I will figure it out but right now I just kind of feel like my wires have been ripped out and I am not brimming with hope and I'm not sure how to like readjust my perspective from relying on so many years of my experience to to what reality might be in that like this issue might resolve itself in a couple weeks and like we might be able to actually start this process time because that might actually be the case and I don't want to dwell in like bitterness and anger and darkness for too long this is the honest roller coaster so thanks for being here for so there we have it um so I was actually thinking as I was about to edit this back to a video I made back in the middle of my trip before I had the surgery all about hopelessness and kind of the hopelessness I was feeling before that surgery and a lot of the same stuff is coming up it's a lot of the same like this will never be okay it'll never get fixed and that's very catastrophic thinking and I recognize that rationally but emotionally I just feel like a basket case and emotionally I feel like I'm drowning and there's no other way for me to qualify that or for me to be like but I'm like everything will be okay because right now I just feel like I'm drowning I'm not sure what to do and that's where I am but I will keep going to sleep and waking up and you know what it's not gonna feel like this forever if there's anything I've learned so far in life it is that and I will do my very best to look for whatever this season has for me and to try to stay away from that catastrophic nothing will ever be okay kind of thinking I also do want to let you guys know that this video is kind of sponsored not really I actually just wanted to thank my patrons this video is sponsored today by my patrons on patreon thank you guys so much I know I always put an end credit up thinking guys but I wanted to actually thank you guys today and say that our patron of the day today is Karen Ross Karen thank you so much for supporting my patreon and the same goes for all of you guys I appreciate it more than you know thanks guys I'm thinking about you I love you I will see you in the next video I hope you're taking care of yourselves bye guys


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