from New Orleans, Louisiana, at theCUBE. Covering .NEXT Conference 2018, brought to you by Nutanix. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage here from Nutanix .NEXT 2018. I'm Stu Minimanu with my co-host Keith Townsend. Happy to welcome back to the program Ben Gibson, who's the Chief Marketing Officer at Nutanix. Ben, nice to have you on. You're third time now on theCUBE. Couple more, you get one of those VIP badges on our website. You get to be a really good habit and I'm really enjoying it. Thanks for having me here. Well, thank you. And you and Keith share something in common. This is the first time you've been to a .NEXT Conference. So I've had the pleasure of actually being at every single one of the U.S. and Europeans. Haven't done the .NEXT on tours, but give us your impression so far as to, you know, you're heavily involved, but of the show. You know, I have to say, it's lived up to all of my expectations and more. I talked about this this morning, the first .NEXT back in 2015. You were there, it was in Miami. We had a little over 800 people. Today we had 5,500 registered to be here and it's a thrill to see that many of our best customers and partners come together. And for me too, being new to this company, I've been here almost six months now. It really brings home the level of energy and loyalty and excitement that we've engendered within our customer base. It's palpable and what better way to experience that live than here in New Orleans. Yeah, as we say, a lot of shows like this, there's sometimes it's like, well, I've got all the true believers here. But you know, there's good customers here. They're poking, they're prodding, they're trying, but they are big fans of the product. Any kind of key things, interactions you've had so far? Yeah, you know, I've had a lot of conversations with customers here and I am picking up on some common themes. One of them is moving more and more of tier one applications onto Nutanix. And that's very exciting for us. You know, in our early days, it was all about VDI and that was the sweet spot workload. And now we're starting to see more and more Oracle and SAP and other major tier one applications being deployed over Nutanix. And customers are excited to do that because we've made things so much more radically simple for them in terms of the infrastructure that is being run upon, so to speak, right? And so that's certainly a key thing that we're hearing. Yeah, one of the things I took out of your opening at the keynote is that we talk about how much change there is in the industry. But in some ways it's a challenge, but another way it's really an opportunity for customers to go through their transformations, change their businesses and prove their careers. What's Nutanix's positioning? Yeah, first of all, my first and Nutanix's first position on this is dot next. We see as a place where IT professionals can come, they can learn, they can share, get certified, but also help them position themselves for all this change that's happening in the industry, public cloud, right? If you're managing and building infrastructure, or are you renting it? And we think there's a really interesting opportunity for those who have built to become those who advise and lead as everything moves to be a more hybrid cloud scenario out there. And so I think that's the opportunity that we have and this show is about how do you empower our attendees to go back out and be that strategic counselor to build the right type of data center the way they've always wanted to do and be that broker almost between different clouds. And that's a lot about what you heard Sunil talk about today. So Ben, one of the things that I've heard consistently from customers over the past couple of days, Nutanix, humble, Nutanix, not entitled. You're the chief storyteller at Nutanix. How did you get that message out without eliminating kind of the core of that message? I mean, that's great to hear when I'm here at the show. But how do you expand that message out to the greater audience? That's a great question. It's something I think about every day and every night. And for us, we talk about our core values about being hungry, humble and honest. And I really think we live up to that. I think how do we get out that persona who we are as a company out to the broader marketplace? We have a lot of great early adopter customers. And now as we move and as hyper-convergence and everything we're doing moves more into Main Street with candidly more conservative customers that may not be ready to try the brand new, then we do have to get that story out there more. So one big way we do it, just this week we've launched our new brand campaign around freedom. Freedom to build, freedom to run the applications where you want to run them. Freedom to choose the right cloud platform that suits your needs. And so a big thing we're doing this week is we're rolling out this campaign. And who better to unveil that to first than our best and brightest and most loyal customers here at Dotnext? Yeah, expand on that freedom campaign. It definitely, it struck me when I landed at the airport here in New Orleans. And I believe it's build, run, cloud, invent and play. Some of those themes I've heard in the past, I remember the first Dotnext conference it was Nutanix gave me my weekends back.  So why the freedom brand?  What have you heard from customers that resonated with that? We chose to go down this path because we wanted to make sure we connected everything that's wonderful about Nutanix. And I'm going to brag about my marketing team. What I inherited here is an amazing marketing team. And we've all recognized that what this team has built in terms of the voice of the company in terms of the story that we created, a category I'll maybe not quite so humbly say we created with hyperconvergence. We want to connect the past to the present and into the future. And so, yes, give us your weekends back. That's something we have a common refrain we've heard from customers. Freedom to play is about building off of that, right? Freedom to build is about building on the early success we've had. Now with freedom to run, freedom to cloud, as we've moved into multi-cloud and hybrid cloud management, automation and control, these are new elements to our portfolio. So these are new storylines that we need to open up. So the way I like to think about it, this campaign is connecting everything that's been great about Nutanix to today and then also taking us into a new direction. So, Newridge talked earlier about the importance of being able to just go to the website, download Nutanix CE version, kick the tires. Promise Angelo Luciani who runs the community program. That wonderful program. Tie that together to the freedom program. How important is your community program? Which gave some big numbers today on stage. How important is that in helping customers discover Nutanix and move their careers and help digital transformation?  Our next community, yeah, so the number I gave today was close to 70,000 active members and we've drawn almost 20,000 to all of our Docnex conferences over the past year. The online community to me is fundamental to how we continue to grow and deepen the connection and infinity we have with our customers. And what you're going to see us do is really bet on driving more curriculum. That's easy to consume. That helps our community members expand their knowledge base into areas like multi-cloud, hybrid cloud management. We introduced Nutanix era today, bringing new database services to the floor, starting with copy data management. That community needs to be step number one for where our best customers go and learn more about the roadmap. Learn about best tips and trades to be able to embrace these new capabilities and then weave that into the fabric of what they're doing with their data center builds. So community, I'm a big believer in it. We're lucky enough to have a vibrant, strong community already. So now it's like, how do we add more to that experience? This place is kind of like coming to Mecca. It's like coming to, for us, right? It's coming to the event to have a touchstone. But then for the other 51 weeks of the year, that's what Next Community is all about. Yeah, Ben, what type of roles are you trying to reach with your message? We've talked traditionally, you know, we're talking kind of the infrastructure, getting out of silos, going to the architect, but then you have a product like Beam, which doesn't even, you know, it started in the public clouds and working there. Who are you trying to reach with? Your freedom messaging and as you expand the portfolio to SaaS and beyond. It's interesting, our business is diversifying and the audience and the personas that we have to reach is definitely diversifying. So obviously we have great affinity with servers, storage admins, infrastructure managers. We are increasingly engaging up the IT stack, so to speak. Application owners and developers is a significant audience for us. In fact, yesterday for the first time at .next, we had our inaugural hackathon. And we had a lot of folks that come from DevOps practices within their organizations, and this is a huge growth area within enterprises. And they came yesterday, they sat down, they had six hours, we fed them cookies, we gave them drink, all sorts of drink, and they came up with some really cool new apps where they developed to our APIs. And that's just one representation of a new audience and building that bridge between who's building and architecting infrastructure and who's developing these new apps, which by the way, need to get to market immediately, which is why you need such radically simplified infrastructure to make that happen. App developers move up the stack.  And we talked a lot about some of the business pressures they're feeling. We talked a lot about governance and cloud. So there's a lot of new topics there that under the freedom campaign, we talk about freedom to cloud, but then the meat underneath that is really around some of these topics we covered earlier today. So we've been at other infrastructure shows that have tried to do DevOps and hackathons, and they haven't been successful or they've been successful for a limited amount. You guys actually quote unquote sold out the space. What is the message that's resonating with that crowd that's bringing them to a DevOps hackathon? And it was essentially still infrastructure focused audience. You know, the way I'll answer that question, one of my favorite early stories since I joined Nutanix, major retailer customer, the infrastructure team without telling the app dev folks move some of their early apps onto Nutanix. It didn't tell them. All of a sudden they start getting all these phone calls and it's like, what did you do? My apps are performing beautifully. Oh my gosh, it's so simple. Then they provided them with a portal that we offer to our software so they could see how everything is moving. Are the SLAs there? Are these apps humming? And they said, what did you do? Well, we moved it onto Nutanix. And so then all of a sudden this new audience for us starts saying, we want the Nutanix, which I think is a brilliant tagline. I love it. So we're trying to capture that spirit, right? So to me, it's about, in the past there's been a lot of frustration, Candlely, between these app developers who are under extreme pressure to get their new app to market. Customer facing, business facing or what have you. And it's been so slow to get it done. And so then often a crazy CMO of an organization may work around IT and go, throw something out into public cloud. Well, that could still be the model, but with the tools and HCI as a simplified infrastructure, now there's a big answer. Hey, we can move, we can sprint at your speed. And I think that's a key message. And so we're starting to attract that kind of self-fulfilling prophecy to help make that possible. All right, so Ben, you were talking about your team built a really impressive show here. Got the Hackathon is a new thing. One of the things I noticed here in the Expo hall, there's now a whole area with some of the channel providers. There's always been channel providers here, but they've got booths and speaking gigs. What other aspects for those people that didn't attend in person here, would you want to call out, give a little bit of color to what's happening? You know, Stu, thanks for pointing out channel partners. This year over 1,200 representatives from Nutanix's channel are here. And Lou Atenacio, my esteemed colleague and global head of sales and Rodney Foreman, our head of channels, they are both with me very focused on how do we go bigger and deeper with our channel community. If you think about it, they've moved to a software choice strategy. You can consume Nutanix on our own appliance. You can consume it on our OEM, great OEM partner Dell. But we also have ways that you consume our software with Cisco infrastructure, with HPE servers and the like. Channels is a wonderful way for us to be able to gauge and find that new elasticity candidly in the market, where they have customer relationships we may not have yet, but we have to invest in that. We have to invest in technical enablement. We have to invest in co-marketing with them. And I'd say we've done some on this front in the past. The time is now for us to really go deeper on that front. And now it's a big message we delivered during our partner exchange event just yesterday here in beautiful New Orleans. All right, so Ben, I guess do we have to wait to the closing keynote till we know where Nutanix.next.us is next year? Yes, you cannot get it out of me. The announcement will come tomorrow. Cameras are live, they're all asking. No, I'm not going to betray any body language or anything, but we're looking forward to seeing you there next year. All right, well, Ben Gibson, pleasure to catch up with you again for Keith Townsend. I'm Stu Miniman, lots more coverage here from Nutanix.next in New Orleans. You're watching theCUBE.


Greetings! My name is Pierre Chiang. I'm a chef, a cook-to-goatherer, a restaurateur, a social entrepreneur. But most importantly, I'm from West Africa and that's where I get my inspiration. Through the tradition, the food of my memory, that culture. And to my company, Yoleni, we open a global market for crops that are grown by small farming communities in the Sahel in West Africa, crops named for you. So I'm going to show you this view that it's easy to prepare, that's inspired by that tradition. So today we're cooking Kaldou. It's a dish that's very simple, it's a fish that's cooked in an onion, tomato and fish sauce. And that has a little bit of scotch on it.


The former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mohamed Ussouna Sanusi, has said Nigeria has never been this divided since the Civil War of 1967 to 1970. He said a country because of the elections was now dangerously divided along ethnic and religious lines, adding that it had put the integrity of public institutions in question. Sanusi, in his address, stated that the country now had a challenge of nation-building, adding that the economy was now in the daldrums. According to him, beyond defining the kind of leaders the country needs, it also needs to look critically at the process through which the leaders emerge. We're now being joined to discuss this tonight by Abiodun Shomi, a political analyst. Thank you so much Sarah for joining us on the program. Thank you for having me. I remember in those days when we were growing up, when I was growing up, I don't know about other people. We had a march past song and we were singing about a particular person who wanted to divide Nigeria, but go on. The man at the hem of affairs at that time said Nigeria must be won. So we are now for general go on. That's how it was. Nigeria must be won. It was the concern of everybody. There's always been that Nigeria does not disintegrate along any lines, whether ethnic, whether religious, whether whatever kinds of lines. But right now according to Sanusi, the division in Nigeria has become so worrisome that we can compare it to 1967 to 70 when we had the Civil War or even worse than that. What is your comment on this? Yes, division in itself is not really a problem. It's the nature of the division that we have in society. In the first instance, there is no way you can avoid division. Whether you look at it politically, you have to be divided. That's the nature of democracy. Then you have classes in society, social stratification along class lines. You have the working class, you have the rich class, you have the middle class. They are part of the divisions existing in any society. But two of the most dangerous forms of divisions which could threaten the existence of any nation, more than the rest, is that they are religion and ethnicity. They are very, very potent weapons which could lead a country into being divided, badly divided or the collapse of a country. Yes, it is true class stratification could also lead to revolution which may also threaten either the country or threaten the establishment of that very country. But it is not quite as potent as the ethnic and religious divide in any country. In the last election, we have seen our country badly polarized along religion and ethnic sentiments which pertain to some danger for our country. We are at a very serious crisis at a point in time when we really now need to address the issue of Nigeria being a divided nation. And we need to make it a nation, a diverse nation, but united as a country, not necessarily to divide along ethnic lines. What Sanusii remarked on actually is about the nature and the level of ethnic politicking that characterize the last election. And that can easily be evident from what happened in different parts of the country. When you look at the almost unbelievable one-way voting in the South East where 97%, 98%, 92% are returned in favor of one candidate and one political party. To the exclusion of others, that none had even 5%. Hello, can you hear me, Mr. Shoumi? You know, that is ethnic nationality. Okay. Yeah, can you hear me? Yeah, go ahead now. Hello. Yes, we can hear you. The nationality could think along that line. That is very worrisome. That is dangerous. The second aspect of it is the what happened also in particularly in Lagos. We also saw, you know, ethnic politics, you know, playing itself out out of anxiety about some other nationality coming to take over Lagos. Of course, that is not helped by the nature of the propaganda that came out, you know, from that nationality. That actually foiled that ethnic sentiment in Southwest. Whether justified or not, the fact of the matter is a very dangerous form of a politicking in our country. To the extent that there are people from certain parts of the country, particularly Southeast, who are very, very apprehensive, you know, of their continuous existence in Lagos. Whether real or imagined is not the issue, it's about perception. Even though there are other ethnic nationalities living in Lagos, but they are not apprehending the same level of fear. So that is, I think, what drove that on the path of Samozi. But when you look at religion also, the way religion has been employed, it is such very shameful that we could descend to that level. I mean, we saw people moving, presidential candidates, moving from one church to another church. Almost all churches are appealing to sentiments, even though claiming it was not campaigning on religious ground. But of course, that is not true. The perception is clear. It's not about reality. It's also about perception and the body language. And we had all what the pastors and bishops, you know, said, drumming up support for one candidate against another. So that has also not helped. We also have the another angle to it. We saw the religious, the traditional religionist, or how do I call it? Traditional religious worshipers, you know, also, you know, declaring their Oro festival around the period leading to the election or leading to voting, including on the day of voting. That, of course, affected, turned out to some extent, which nobody can dispute in my view. Of course, that has also not helped, because even though they didn't attach that to politics, but it's clear that the intention is to influence the voting pattern of people one, and it also evoke a kind of religious sentiments in the Southwest, particularly in Lagos. So these are the issues which are really very troubling about the nature of the division which we have currently. There's nothing wrong with having a political division or a social division. We've always been having that, but we've learned how to manage those ones. But the ones that can lead to mayhem is either the religious or the ethnic ones. You only need to look at Rwanda, and then we will understand how Rwanda got to where they are today. And also, we have the same ethnic issue in Somalia. Somalia, till today, has not been able to rebuild the country. It's still bloodshed today, bloodshed tomorrow, because the nature of the problem in Somalia is along ethnic clans, lines, and that's the problem. So it is, San Jose is right like many people to be concerned about the nature and the character and the type of division which we have in our country today. Because if we look at the political history from 1999, for instance, the South East has always been almost like giving block votes to particular parties. When PDP was holding Sway, it was almost like all their votes went to PDP, for instance. And then Lagos State, on its own, I'm not too sure it's more like an ethnic thing. Well, maybe it is the European nationality against the world. Otherwise, if you're talking about people who really are from Lagos State fighting for Lagos State, a lot of people will argue against that. Because, for instance, the president-elect has held Sway in Lagos for a long time, and it is said that he's from Oshoon State. We also know another political actor in Lagos State, in the person of James Faleke, who has been contesting governorship elections in Kogi State. We also have Eric Beshola, who has been a governor in Oshoon State and has a very great say in Lagos politics. Nobody is saying those people are strangers, except they want to say it is Lagos is Yoruba. It doesn't matter whether you're from Lagos or from anywhere else. But some people perceive this, what is happening in Lagos, as it is a particular set of people who belong to a sect, a political sect in Lagos, against the rest of them. Because Yorubas are also saying a lot of things against what happened in Lagos now. So my concern is what really fueled what happened here. Because these things that happened here have been happening low-key, but now it was so wide. What gave room or what gave rise to this kind of the magnitude of what happened in this political circle that we just finished, and we're hoping that May 29 it will be very complete. So what was the fuel that brought about this division that we are concerned about now? Yes, Lagos is a cosmopolitan city. So in the largest sense you are quite right with the way you've viewed it, that people have been living together for long, and they've been voting for a particular party or a particular political tendency in Lagos, which is correct. Lagos has always been standing by Ashua Jutinumbu's party. There's no doubt about that, and a lot of it is due to the fact that people could see that comparatively speaking, Lagos has been doing well more than any other states in the country to the extent that it's now the fifth-largest economy in the world. So the support for that political tendency led by Ashua Jutinumbu is actually predicated on the performance of Lagos states in comparison with the rest of the states in the country. So that put in context, we can then understand why people across all ethnic lines, majority of them prefer to stand by that political tendency led by Jutinumbu. Now, in relation to this last election, what created the problem is also the nature of the people in southwest in comparison with the nature of the people, particularly from the southeast part of Nigeria. When it was made clear that people in the south who produced the next governor, by all the center governors, it was not zoned to any part of the south. It was not zoned to the south. So given that situation, all people from the south, some part of Nigeria are entitled, all ethnic nationalities are entitled to contest for it. We saw Wiki trying from south-south through the PDP. He didn't make it. And we saw Jutinumbu tried through the APC. He made it. We saw OB from southeast tried through Labour Party and he made it also. They all got the ticket. But what was in relationship is the failure to recognize or respect the relationship in the southwest. And what do I mean by that, baby? If you allow me to explain a little bit. In the southwest, you can have in the family the father being a Muslim and you have the mother Christian. And the son can choose to be a traditionalist. When it's festival period, the whole celebrate all the festivals together. It is not a problem at all in the southwest at all. Being a Muslim-Muslim candidate or a Christian-Christian candidate is not something spring. And I can give you examples of that. When Awolowo was contested in 1979, he had Philip Umiadi from southeast as his vice presidential candidate. Both of them were Christians. He didn't create any problem at all in the southwest. When the former governor of Oshun State contested, he contested with Terelu Obada. Both of them were Christians in Oshun State, like the Muslim. And they voted for them. Even the current governor of Oshun State, voted, is a Christian with a Christian deputy. And they still voted for them in this same election cycle in Oshun State. As I'm speaking to you today, in all of the southern part of Nigeria, there is no state where there is a Muslim governor. In all of the entire south. So it then becomes a problem for people in the southwest to understand when the campaign against Tinumbu was led by the church. That you can't have a Muslim-Muslim ticket. When in reality, this issue of same religion is not a problem in southwest. We've had it before. We've had it again with Tinumbu and Shetima. So it has never been a problem. But it is a problem for people in the southern, particularly in the southeast. Because they made a lot of noise around it and campaigned heavily using the church. And we saw the Christian transition in Nigeria. We saw PFA, all coming out, heavily criticizing it. And that did not go down very well with people, with many people in the southwest. And because of that, that is the basis for the new tension. And it's exactly why the traditionalists in southwest actually had to intervene. Yes, show me. Just your final words, please. Okay. So basically what we need to do is to learn to have to understand each other. We need to jettison religion and jettison the issue of ethnicity. We are all Nigerians. We are all people created by God. And it's just an accident of geography that I'm born in Lagos or born in Kano or Kadeno or Enugong. So I think we need to learn from what has happened. And we all have to show respect for each other's feelings. Okay, I do hope that that healing process that everybody is asking for now will really begin and lead us to where we want to be. Lagos used to be the dream of Nigeria. What Nigeria could be? You could come from anywhere and be anything so long as you are in Nigeria and here in Lagos. And everybody else was hoping that it's going to happen like that in every other state. And a lot of people were agitating for state of origin to be removed from all the forms that we feel and all that so that Nigerians become just Nigerians and without saying wherever you're coming from will affect you in any way. But all that, a lot of people fear has been eroded. We do hope that this consciousness which it has given us to see how if we divide ourselves along ethnicity and religion we're going to be will teach us a lesson enough to make sure that we come back together to unite and build a strong Nigeria. I'd like to thank you, Mr. Abiodun, show me for coming on the program and talking with us. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Okay, we'll be talking with Mr. Abiodun, show me a political analyst on the show. Stakeholders are concerned about the unity of Nigeria. We do hope that that unity that we so much desire will put our hands together to make it come about. On behalf of the entire team of Plus Politics, my name is Nyam Gul Agadji. Thanks for being there.


Hi, folks. This is John Ross. I just want to go over a couple of issues about using the link interface, if you've never used it before, and then we'll pass it on to our presenters. We will use a couple of different features in the session today, including if you would like to change the way you're viewing the screen right now, you might be seeing a bunch of small blue squares at the top. If you'd like to change it so the presentation is larger, there's a button on the lower right-hand side that allows you to pick from three different layouts. You can pick whatever one you like and it won't change anybody else's view. And we're also going to do some interaction today through chatting as well as using the phone. So in the far left corner of your screen, if you haven't already seen it, is the chat window.  And I have to enter your comments and press return. I would like to pass this over now to Dr. Sharon Harst, who will present a welcome and introduce her speakers. Thank you, John. Hello and welcome to the ARC Webinar. This Webinar is one of a series of presentations on cutting-edge issues facing education today. I'd like to thank Dr. John Ross for his leadership in directing the Webinar series and for his skill and knowledge in conducting technology-based services. Thank you so much, John. Benchmarking capacity building is a topic whose time has come. The ARC and the three evaluators presenting today's Webinar are engaged in benchmarking the capacity building services that we're providing through the Regional Comprehensive Center. And we're conducting this Webinar today in response to interest across the Appalachia region in designing and implementing state-level capacity building services. Detectives, investigative reporters and evaluators all have one thing in common. They know how to look for evidence and they know how to use evidence to determine the existence of some fact or some event or something that they're trying to prove or disprove. In this Webinar you'll learn to locate and use existing data in your organization that will identify capacity building needs and look for evidence that will benchmark the progress that your organization is making in building capacity. I'm very pleased to introduce three highly skilled and knowledgeable evaluators who are presenting today's session. Thomas Horwood, Dr. Katelyn Howley and Dr. Keith Sturges. Thank you so much for doing the presentation. Katelyn? Thanks Sharon and welcome everyone. We're really delighted to have you with us today. As Sharon said, I'm Katelyn Howley and I serve as the Associate Director of the ARC. My background is in the sociology of education and in a previous life I was an evaluator of technical assistance programs. I'm going to tell you a little bit more about our other two presenters today. First up is T.J. Horwood. T.J. is the evaluator for the ARC. He also conducts research and evaluation for state and local education agencies and has investigated the effectiveness of a huge range of education interventions. So he knows quite a lot about how to measure things that are difficult to measure. T.J. is going to discuss today some great data sources for benchmarking capacity and then he's going to tell us the story of the Vandalia Department of Education Standards Initiative. Our next presenter is Dr. Keith Sturges. Keith is an educational anthropologist specializing in the evaluation of technical assistance and change. His work plans together ecological and stakeholder engagement approaches to program planning, development, delivery, and improvement. So he knows quite a lot about the messy work of organizational development and complex change. He's also an accomplished group facilitator so Keith will guide our discussion later during the webinar. No pressure please. We have three main objectives for today's webinar as you can see here. If I had to distill down to one sentence it would be something like this. Our discussion today is intended to help you begin to explore how to benchmark your SEA's development of capacity using data that you might already have as well as potential new data sources. So here's the big idea that we're considering today capacity. That's a really huge concept and it means different things to different people in different contexts. But for our purposes here we want to be as specific as possible. So in our work capacity isn't just potential, skills, or great systems. It's a group's ability to put their collective knowledge, skills, interdependencies, and systems into action so that they can overcome problems and achieve goals. And we all of us have individually and in groups capacity already. But even the highest flyers really can benefit from capacity building. But we really have to be honest as well about capacity building. It isn't easy at all. And that's for three main reasons. First it requires continuous change. This means continually cycling through assessment, refinement, implementation, and evaluation, and back again. Secondly capacity building really depends on your team's willingness to define its goals and then consider very seriously how to get there. And third capacity building can be difficult because it's disruptive. It disturbs things as they are and it reverberates throughout the organization. But when capacity building is successful it enhances organizational ability to respond constructively to disequilibrium by doing two things. First of all by empowering individuals with knowledge, skills, and tools that they can use to identify and understand the problems they face and then devise feasible, meaningful solutions to them. And second by strengthening processes that means things like strategies for ensuring interdepartmental education and structures, things like lines of authority. So that people collectively and individually can apply what they know and know how to do to addressing problems and ultimately to achieving their goals. Today we're going to talk about four main types of foundational capacity summarized on this slide here. Very briefly, human capacity includes things like people's knowledge and skills as well as their determination or will to accomplish goals. It's kind of what inherits in people. Material capacity is just kind of what you think it would be. It's things like funding, equipment, software, office space, kind of the material tools that we use. Organizational capacity is a bit more complicated because it has to do with dependencies and it's concerned with how people across an organization intersect, how they communicate and collaborate among individuals in various teams. And then finally structural capacity which includes organizational constructs that exist kind of independently of the people in those organizations. So structural capacity includes things like guidelines or policies, procedures and systems, kind of the legitimated ways that we do things around here. So very briefly, those are the foundational capacity types we'll be talking about benchmarking today. Now here are some of the questions we hope that we'll consider as we look through our vignette during today's webinar. How would you know if your State Department lacked human capacity? What kind of indicators would suggest to you that your team had developed material capacity? What evidence would let you know that your State Department had improved organizational capacity or strength and structural capacity? I'm going to turn things over to TJ now who's going to talk to you about some great data sources that can help you answer these kinds of questions. TJ, it's all yours. Thank you, Caitlin. And before I jump in, John, can you reiterate where the handout is available? I think it got sent around but is there a place to download it as well? There is. We sent it to registrants in an email but you can also open it by clicking on and the left hand of your screen, there are a couple of circles with icons in them. The one with the computer monitor is clickable so if you click on that it'll open up a pop-up box. There are a couple of options there's an attachments option at the top. If you select that it'll take you to two handouts. One is the Vandalia vignette and the other is a handout about data sources. Great, thank you Caitlin. So Caitlin mentioned the definitions of the different types of foundational capacity human, material, organizational and structural and I wanted to take some time first of all to talk through what are some of the great data sources that are available to SEA staff to gather evidence of these different types of capacity. So you can imagine that some of them are easier to observe than others and I think what you'll find too that as we dig deeper into the core definition and the different components of these types of capacity that what we hope that you'll gather today is just that you'd be able to think beyond what you might normally look at for evidence. So for example the first one is human capacity and so you know most of you obviously are very familiar with the staff who are involved in the various initiatives that you're planning and developing and implementing and so you might think about human capacity in terms of staff members background based on their education or their work experience do they have the intellectual proficiency to implement the change that you're hoping to implement. And so that's I would say kind of the easiest one to think through but what we also want you to think through is staff members disposition during the initiative planning and implementation of the initiatives you would know okay do these staff have the will to make the desire changes that the initiative will hopefully make and so that helps you dig a little bit deeper into the human capacity element that's the first part of the foundational capacity. The second one is material capacity and here I've listed three examples of great data resources that are available that FBA staff can look to. The first are the fiscal resources this would be documentation that funds are available to do the initiative and so that would usually come from your business office or as identified through a grant. The second one is technologies and software and the third is materials and equipment. With the last two the capacity is of having these things in place so have you purchased the correct technologies and software to do the initiative? Do you have the materials and equipment in place? Have you purchased that? We also want to make sure that you're looking for evidence that these items have been logged that they're installed or assembled and that they're actually available for use for the initiative. So that's another way to look at the material capacity to do these initiatives. The third area is organizational capacity and here we want to think about a few examples of areas where you might observe organizational capacity and what you're really looking for here is the extent to which the people involved in the initiative are interacting, collaborating, and communicating. So for example for interaction you may observe meetings to determine whether initiative leaders and stakeholders are regularly interacting to carry out activities and that would be interacting with each other as well as the leaders interacting with stakeholders, other stakeholders interacting with each other. A second example is that you could work to gather feedback from the team members directly to determine how they are collaborating to accomplish initiative goals and objectives. And thirdly, you can track how initiative leaders and stakeholders are communicating with each other about the initiative goals, progress, and outcomes of the initiative. And I like to think about structural capacity as being from paper to practice. So the different elements within structural capacity that you'd be looking for evidence of would be that the SEA has policies in place and that those policies are highly functioning. That means that the policies have been written and they've been adopted. And here you want to make sure that that would be the first step. The second step would be that the SEA has procedures in place and that the procedures are also highly functioning. And these I view as being the formal steps and the guidance that's provided to the staff who are involved in the initiative. And then the last area that you'd look for evidence of would be that the SEA staff are practicing what's written. So that the SEA has practices in place and that they too are highly functioning.  So after going through those slides, are there any questions about the different types of evidence to look for? Excuse me. And if you do have questions feel free to either shout them out or type them in the chat box as well. I was going to remind people that if you muted your phone with Star 6 you can use Star 6 again to mute back off or you can use the chat box. T.J. Sarah Seiko has posed a question which is that Will is one of the components of human capacity. Seems a bit hard to measure. Any thoughts? Well we think of wellness as identified in the handout as interest, patience and persistence. So yes that is a great question. Thank you Sarah. I like to think of looking for evidence of that through your interactions with staff. So for example, as you're getting ready to plan an initiative, I like to think of it as those people who kind of step to the front of the line who say that they're interested in the initiative and that they have that they really want to see the initiative be successful. And so that's one way to think about it and one bit of evidence to look for. And the other components that we talk about when we discuss Will are patience and persistence. And I think that would be observable throughout the initiative particularly as things get more difficult with the initiative. If the group gets to a point where they might be experiencing some disagreement or having difficulty interacting. And I think that that would be something that you would look for during the initiative implementation or even during the planning. Great question. Does anyone have anything to add to that? I'm ahead then to our tale of the Vandalia Department of Education. Sounds good. So the example that we've come up with for today's session is the Vandalia Department of Education State Standards Implementation Initiative. And this SEA is facilitating a statewide initiative to implement new content standards in English and math. And I think this is timely given that it is summertime and there are several SEAs who are planning this initiative. But in this example we've focused on three components of the state's effort to highlight some of the takeaways in terms of what you might look for in terms of the types of capacity and evidence that those capacities are in place or if they are having difficulty. So the first component is pilot testing of the new state standard. And so the pilot test took place in 15 schools and it involved the development of formative assessments and curricular math and it also involved the creation of online PD modules around the implementation of the standard. And they assembled the Vandalia State Standards Pilot Team, or the BSSPT, which was comprised of district school leaders who are organized to guide the process and report on the implications for the statewide implementation the following from. And so the 15 schools we had nine from one large urban district, three from a suburban district, and three from different urban districts. And there were bi-monthly work sessions, the development of the formative assessments, curriculum maps, and the creation of online PD modules. And so upon the completion of the pilot the three capacities, human, material, and structural. So there was evidence of these three. So for human capacity, some teachers reported needing more content area PD to teach material more deeply as required by the standard. And they found that not all teachers knew how to use formative assessments. With material capacity, teachers in some of the pilot schools could not access digital material like the PD modules and the formative data. And with structural capacity, the pilot site selection process failed to ensure an adequate representation of district types. And as a result pilot findings were not sufficiently generalizable to all of the districts who would fully implement across the state. The second component was regional center professional development for principals and teachers. And these are the intermediate education agencies that were organized to provide these services. And from this the organizational capacity was that Vendalia facilitates regular web meetings for regional service centers to help them prepare to provide PD on the standard. And structurally some regional centers mainly offered webinar PD whereas others facilitated PD workshops on site. The third component is the online implementation support. To provide ongoing implementation support, Vendalia established and maintains a website for educators across the state. And in addition to the standards themselves, the site includes instructional materials aligned to the standard, the PD modules consisting of videos and regularly scheduled video conferences with instructional coaches. And the takeaways from this were that for material capacity they found that most districts used the digital resources provided by Vendalia but some rural districts could not access videos or interactive materials because they lacked robust broadband. And organizationally the site developer do not coordinate with RSEs to obtain support materials for inclusion on the site. Thank you very much T.J. Are there any clarifying questions before we move on to a discussion of Vendalia's foundational capacities and how we can gauge where they are? If you have any clarifying questions please feel free to speak up or type them in the chat box but at this point I'm going to turn things over to Keith. Hey good afternoon everybody. This is Keith and I'd like to use the remainder of our time today to hear your thoughts on Vendalia's rollout of the new state standards. And to do this I'd like to draw on your experiences, your knowledge, the cumulative wisdom of the people in the room to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the State Department's efforts to assess its capacity to implement the standards. So first what I'd like to do is talk a little bit about the individual activities. Maybe we can start with the pilot testing. What do you think the department did well in assessing its capacity with regard to the pilot testing? That's the Vendalia had those teams, state standards teams to be working on going, seemed to be a positive thing. There was something, a structure then in place to kind of keep track of how things and people were progressing. So that seemed positive. I agree. I think that was a real strength. What else? I also think that it was positive for them to recognize that there were different aspects of that capacity building like the human part, the sexual part, the organizational part. That was good. Yeah, I agree with that too. What else was really positive about the pilot testing? Folks have also answered some in the chat box. John for example said that a positive was that it involved lots of different stakeholders. And Candace says that creating online PD modules to support those pilots was great. Indeed. I think one more that I might add would be the compilation of results after the pilot period. The left work that was provided back to the State Department. What about some areas that Vendalia might improve its capacity assessment with regard to the pilot testing? The issue there with teachers is not feeling equipped with the ability to go really deeply into subject matter. There's a gap there. I agree. What do you think about the choice of pilot sites? Would you repeat your question please, Chief? Absolutely. What do you think about the choice of pilot sites? Well, it seems to be balanced in that they had rural. And I think probably I would have hoped they would have realized that the rural districts would have had problems with all of that online information and the fact that they wouldn't be able to access it. You would think they would have known that up front. You might. You might be surprised. I saw a couple of comments pop up there trying to see what they say. They disappear before I can read them. But one of the questions I would have is about the representativeness of the pilot sites. Do they really represent the diversity of the state? If I'm not mistaken, I think quite a few of them came from one large urban school district. Yeah, and John Ross has pointed out there that the results might therefore be kind of skewed in that direction. For that result might be more generalizable to large urban districts than to other kind of sites. Anything else on the pilot testing? What did you think about the regional service center PD? What did VSEA do well in terms of measuring its capacity there? The monthly meetings would be a positive aspect of this. Twice monthly via web conferences. So again people are keeping in touch and able to talk about what they're doing. The conferences with the coaches. Does that run to that part of it? I forget if that was the SDA or the other I'm sorry, I didn't quite hear your question. I thought that it was good that they had the follow-up conferences with coaches but I couldn't remember if the SDA did that or the other organizations or support groups. Yeah, the SDA was I think it was sort of facilitating with all of this activity. What do you think they could have done better with regard to their assessment capacity related to the regional service center activity? It would have been great if they coordinated what they were going to present to the LEAs that way because it seems from the survey data that there were some variations in the implementation of PD and how it supported teachers' felt in the implementation based depending on the RFC that was leading that PD. And so I think there could have been some better coordination there. Yes, great. Anything else on the regional service center PD activity? Was there anything related to quantitative and qualitative information on the training? Good, I think we're getting into the meaty stuff here and there might have been a little bit of a downside there. We'll come back to that. There are a couple of comments in the chat box as well. On the positive side John says it seems like they've given the participants some autonomy to think about and continue their professional development. He said the follow-up survey was a nice touch too. We have an opportunity to grow side of things. Sarah mentioned lack of consistency in delivery methods which I think I heard Candace mention earlier. Ann notes, is there any relationship between teachers feeling well prepared and professional development via webinar or workshop? Great comments and questions. What about the online support? I think that online support is good. The teachers have the time and access that I think that that's where that coordination with the coaches would need to come in to make sure that teachers knew that it was there, that how to access that easily and work closely with their teachers to make that online support accessible and usable for them. What about in terms of Vandalia's efforts to gauge its capacity with regard to the online support? There's no evaluation of it at all. Yeah, right. It would be really hard to know how they're using it and if they're using it correctly and if it's making it has an impact. Exactly. Yeah, it's hard to say whether or not something's working if you don't have any documentation. Now I'd like to move on, move our discussion to the more general question about Vandalia's capacity to assess its capacity. I guess the first question would be what kinds of data does Vandalia probably already have? What are some of the data sources that are already available to Vandalia for documenting capacity to roll out the new state standards? I think meeting agendas can be a good data source. I think we can really show who's meeting with whom about what and how often. Good, and I think I would add to that probably minutes of the meetings if there are any. Right, maybe just to have an implementation plan with people responsible for certain parts of that implementation and a way to hold them accountable and to get feedback from them about how it's going. Agreed. Anything else? Is it related to any associated component of the initiative? Those data would be useful. Yes. From the chat box, archives of webinars and web statistics. Web statistics, absolutely. Yep. This set of data that we've just generated or just this list of data that we've just generated of likely data types that Vandalia already has available. What do you think they still need? Help them assess their capacity with regard to this bigger initiative of implementing their new state standards? I would think we need feedback from the actual people who were the recipients of that PD. Say a little bit more. I get what you mean by feedback, but feedback and what kind of questions would you ask? Do you have the knowledge and skills that you need to implement the Common Core? Do you have the resources that you need? What roadblocks or what barriers are there? What do you still need? I think that to me, working with the FDA, the big missing piece in trying to implement something was that they wrote it out and they provided all this information and then they didn't follow up with the questions to make sure that the people who were supposed to receive that information got it and used it in the right way. That to me, and they weren't allowed to then say, well, I need more of this. I need this. I still don't understand that. There was just no feedback there. To me, that's the biggest missing piece in that capacity part. If you're really going to implement something, you need to have a way to have feedback loops in there. I don't think that FDA do that so much that I've seen. We feel there are pain when we know Vandalia is very busy trying to manage this big initiative. And personnel has always a problem. There's a couple of comments from the chat box. John says they need to know who's actually using the standards and implementing them with fidelity. I just suggested participant survey data and recommended website use data and evaluation. Sarah asks, since few schools are using formative assessment data is it an access issue or a knowledge and skills issue or something else? And John says the focus is more on use than efficacy. And efficacy is also an important question. Indeed. If we were to take what Vandalia already has available, what it's already using to assess its capacity. And then we superimposed, we added these new measures, these new data sources like the feedback and participant surveys. Would they have everything they need to really be able to assess their capacity? Or in other words, would they be fully equipped to improve the state standards rollout initiative? John says they really need that feedback loop that Janine mentioned. Yes, they do. And I guess the proof of the implementation will be when they get their achievement scores and they get, you know, how to get those test results. But that would be sad to have to wait that long. So here's another way to ask that same question. Aside from data, what else does Vandalia need to assess its capacity? Is it just a matter of data? Well, the way you ask that suggests no. Well, they'll elaborate for us. I think that first of all, they kind of need to conceive of their roadmap. Where are they now and where are they going? What kind of capacity do they need to get where they're going? And I think that they need a schema, a plan and approach to make sense of all their data. They can roll it together and analyze it to make meaning of it. Yes, absolutely. And there's one more piece that I would add to, at least one more piece, but one piece in particular that I think is really important. Anyone want to take a stab at it? John has asked, what are their indicators of success? Do they have the right data match to each indicator? Right. So we have the right data. We have the right systems for understanding or making sense of those data. But then there's one more thing that we probably need. And it looks like some more folks are typing. So maybe we have some answers. Can I ask a leading question, Keith? I think we're... I'm going to give it a second here. I'm going to see where we're going. Sarah has written, I think that feedback is necessary, but it's not efficient. What precise actions are taken based on that feedback and how do the actions help to achieve outcomes? Yes, Sarah gets the golden point. Doug Walker has also added, this SEA initiative is built on a collaborative effort involving three partners, the SEA regional service agencies and local districts and schools. That is the complexity that our assessment needs to understand and assess. Absolutely. That's a great point. Yes, it really is. So what are some of the barriers that might prevent Vandalia from accessing or gathering those data? People, time and money. Time and money. Tell me a little bit more about the people side of that. Well, you know, Sharon always talked about the head nodding syndrome, which is kind of what Sarah meant. I think, you know, you can talk to a teacher or someone about something, oh yes, yes, I know that I understand that, but do they do it? That's a different story. So getting someone actually into that classroom to see if they really are doing what they need to be doing and are teaching in the way that the Common Core says that they need to be teaching. That's different from them saying, yes, I understand and I know what I, oh yes, I'm doing that and I have a perfect example of that. I did some PD with district just in December and I did a self-assessment for teachers on, oh, there were about 50 different behaviors that they do, that the Common Core would like to see teachers doing in the classroom and I knew these teachers well and just to watch them go through this self-assessment was interesting. So I think that people sometimes think they're doing things and they're not really doing them sufficiently or they understand but they're not doing it, but anyway, I'm just saying I agree with Sarah that, and to get someone, get people in there to really get that evidence that it is being done right, that would take a lot of people in a lot of times. Yes, it would, that's right, it really would. So that's a good setup for the next question here which is so if Bandalia was using feedback from teachers say surveys from the pilot sites, let's say interviews with principals, let's say maybe student benchmark tests of some sort, and some of the other data types that we just discussed, which of those are probably, would you put sort of as the priority data types for assessing capacity? Can you list those again real quick? Yeah, sure. We have feedback from teachers surveys from the pilot sites, interviews with principals, and if I missed any please chime in folks. We had web based data, and then student benchmark tests. I would say the benchmarks would actually be benchmarks of what? Benchmarks of students taking benchmark achievement tests, or a teacher or benchmarks like in a roof work that you've made for your implementation. You met this benchmark, that benchmark. What kind of benchmarks? Why don't you answer that question? What do you think would serve our purposes best for these new state standards? Well all time and I would say that you would eventually want benchmark test data but not in the early part because we even know that our benchmarks are going to be appropriately aligned so I wouldn't want to go more at the teacher level or implementation of what's going on. In terms of feedback, I think of a lot of different kinds of feedback. I want to see videos, I want to see lesson plans, I want to have classroom observations. I don't want to just people to just reply to a survey. Okay. And then you were talking about earlier what people might lack and I think people sometimes don't have an understanding of all the material capacity as a teacher. What can be provided from different kinds of services? Often through web-based services there's all kinds of data you can collect about who people are and how they're using it. It's just the level of security that you're allowing or your level of access that you're allowing people to come in. So I think you could bump that up and very easily collect a great deal of data about who's using what and how you want to protect it that way. Good idea. Especially for the online I would think, for the online portion of the online activity, online PD modules. Sarah had asked an interesting question. Is there a distinction between feedback and evidence? Ooh, that is an interesting question. Who wants to answer that question? There is a difference. Is one a kind of the other or are they two different things? I always think feedback is self-reported. Because feedback is probably a type of evidence and it has some flaws built into it but it is some indication of what people are thinking and how they're feeling about the initiative. Yeah, I think I agree. I think I tend to think of feedback as more effective. It's not always effective but that is touchy failure. It's more subjective but it can be terribly important as a form of evidence. Especially if we think about what John just mentioned about having a multitude of data types, I think that was John. And when we put feedback into conversation, if you will, and to dialogue with other types of data, it can certainly help us interpret three types of data of all of those that we've discussed. Which of those would you think would be the most important for assessing the capacity of Vandalia in terms of its rollout of these new state standards? When you say assessing its capacity, are you talking about the administration, the central office people or the impact in the schools? That's a great question. I think what we're talking about is the State Department's capacity. This is added that she thinks that student benchmark test data might be most important. Yeah, especially as we get down the line. What else do the rest of you think? Written in the chat box that the Vandalia could probably assess their capacity to roll out the initiative without student data. Although that does seem like a long-term outcome that they want to look at. I'll jump in. I think that I would be most interested in some of the implementation feedback from pilot sites because that's a trial run. I want to know how people interface with the materials and what they wanted to improve in the PD and that kind of thing. That's right. I think there are a lot of missed opportunities with Vandalia's efforts. That's where it stems from initially. I think that when you take a look at all of the different activities related to the rollout of the state standards, a lot of the issues go back to what happened during the pilot study when they had a very skewed sample of folks. The implementation wasn't uniform at all, which isn't always a horrible thing, but when you do an assessment or an evaluation that relies on uniformity sometimes that can be misleading when we look at a boiled down set of lessons learned. I know we just have a few minutes left, so I'd like to turn our attention to the last set of questions here and talk about some of the implications of data collection and data systems. What are your thoughts about how Vandalia might benchmark its progress over time? For instance, thinking about its efforts to run the online support site. In what ways would Vandalia expect to see their data change as they increase their capacity to run the online support site? I would think if those online support sites had value then the web statistics would show increases in usage. And Janita said the same thing, more folks would be accessing the site. Okay, so more folks would be accessing the site. That makes a lot of good sense. What else? I might expect to see more contributions from other parts of the system like the regional service centers. We're supposed to be providing PD. Right, and I was thinking that if folks find the site really valuable then they're going to want to start accessing certain things to that site maybe and try sharing across schools ideas and things. I'm sorry Janine, we had difficulty hearing you. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm just thinking if teachers find a site or a tool to be helpful then they're going to jump on board with it and want to add their own things and more materials and more information and use it more and develop it more. In the interest of time I'm going to ask one last question here. How does data collection efforts overlook the likely burden on SEA staff, district personnel, and of course schools? So for example if principal interviews are used for each activity at least once a year and they might average say an hour a piece or at least that's what I tend to do. And how many interview hours will each principal be expected to participate? So what are the implications for all of this data collection on the folks who are supposed to be doing the work? One implication would probably be the question asked what do you want me not to do so I can do this instead. Perfect question. Really good. Any ideas about how the department might minimize its negative impacts on participants while trying to maximize its positive impacts in terms of assessing capacity? Well a lot of this is related to teacher evaluation I would think. And if a principal has to do observations as part of the regular teacher evaluation I would think this would just be a kind of a natural part of it and you could maybe try this two together somehow so it wouldn't be a huge job but one. Yeah I think that's sort of borrowing from that idea and thank you for saying that. Maybe using the same data sources for multiple purposes. A piece that might also want to consider is people at the end of the year or whatever you're looking at how much turnover have you had and is there a plan for additional training repeating this training for people who were not there or people who may need a second round of it just to you know it didn't quite take the first time so let's go back and do it again. It just appears to me a lot that's not done when it really needs to be done. Good point yeah so sort of optimizing the onboarding process is that kind of a really good point. And there were probably some people who were on board already but for whatever reason they didn't take the training. They were sick. They were you know whatever. Right. Hey Keith, this is John Voss and I know we only have about a minute left but can I ask you a question? The scenario was helpful but can you then turn on around and say what should NSC be thinking about when they have a different kind of initiative? How can they be thinking about this evaluating of capacity? The last part of that question again. What should they be thinking about when they're going to evaluate their own capacity? They might have an initiative that's different than this one. Can you give them some general advice about that? I agree with you first of all that having a multiplicity of data types is probably absolutely important. I wouldn't want to rely on one type of data. I would definitely advocate having as many different types of data as possible. In addition to that having a really strong data plan is important. How are we going to make sense of these data? And of course being able to collect information that's actually going to lead to some sort of change that's going to be implementable down the road. This isn't open sort of academic research. I'm out of time. I want to thank you all for sharing your thoughts and experiences. This conversation is really far from complete of course. I hope it was helpful in broaching the topic of assessing capacity building efforts. A big part of it is the question of accessing the right data. Another part is having the right office in place to understand what those data are saying or trying to say to you. Another is being realistic about use of those data to make improvements. And I would add to that that it's also making sure that the data you're collecting isn't derailing folks from doing what's most important. I'd like to turn it over to you all and ask if you have any questions for the panel. And I think because we're just about out of time if you have any lingering questions please feel free to email the ARC. If you have my email you're welcome to send it to me or we have a kind of organizational email info at ARCARCCTA.org So I'm going to thank Keith and TJ very much for their great presentation and also for sharing John and Kim Cook's contributions. I will say that this kind of work is part of what the ARC does. We help state departments figure out what they want to do, where they want to go how to get there, how to measure things along the way so that they know when they do arrive or when there's a potential road block and then help them think about how to work around that road block so they can ultimately achieve what they hope to achieve. So we'd like to thank you very much for your participation today and invite you to continue connecting with us. This kind of webinar is just the beginning of these kinds of conversations. I will also say that your goals are in many respects our goals and our services are designed to help you achieve them. Please feel free to visit our website, follow us on Twitter, check out our videos on YouTube, or call or email us anytime. Thank you again and have a great Tuesday.