We might just get on with things again. Calm yourself. We were just waiting to see if some of the other sessions had finished, but we might just... They haven't finished. Well, they can miss out, sorry. They should have got here. We just want to wrap up the conference really now. As a lot of you will know, Andy Fenton is stepping down from the board this year after, I think, ten years on the board, including many as the Treasurer. He has sort of been the institutional memory of the board, so it's with some trepidation that we farewell him. We still know where he lives, so that's... We won't be letting him get away. So Andy's going to do a bit of a wrap-up for us, so please welcome Andy to the stage. Good day, everyone. I'm just going to try and attempt to read my notes off my laptop. I had my daughter's Microsoft Surface all cleared up for this, but technology got the better of me. It shouldn't do here. It's been a fabulous couple of days, I'm sure you'll agree. And I'll start in case I forget at the end with a massive thank you to Matthew. I don't think we would have seen anything quite as fantastic as this without all his efforts and those of his team and those of the board who were supporting him as well. So a big shout out to Matthew, please. The board's aim for this conference was to delight and inspire and see how we can network together to enhance New Zealand's digital interaction with culture and heritage to make a difference. The themes that inspired or transpired for me were inspiration, dream, and challenge. And these are words that do come up in conferences across the years. This is my 12th, by the way. I'll touch on these themes as I sum up. Firstly, some thoughts and quotes from our keynotes. I just want to take you back over the last couple of days. Simon Tanner reminded us that we spend an enormous amount of money in the digital space, but how do we know we've actually made an impact that's meaningful and will change people's lives? Likewise, we often hear fabulous statistics about how many objects or elements of objects we have digitized, you know, the papers passed, multiple three million pages and so on. But do the numbers mean anything? Do they just show the scale of the project or the effort to maintain open access to these or the difficulty in preserving them? It's the impact on people's lives that's important and the tangible benefits they provide. So knowledge of stakeholders is crucial and we should look at measuring success for impact internally, innovatively, economically and socially. And you've got Simon's slides to refer back to there. Peter Gogol's pushed a traditional boundary. High quality art picks free online. Always provokes great debate. I love it. After all, it is the people's collection he told us and they should enjoy it anytime, any place, any way they want to.  Make commercial gain from those images. How cool is that? For someone like myself, it's probably cooler than for some of you. I'd like to point out that he made the point that the average online visit to his place increased to 15 minutes as people explored those images in detail and is that really what it's all about? The economic impact on the revenue stream for your smaller institutions will be thinking through and there is a challenge there, I appreciate that. Deb House brought education thinking here and it's something the board's pushed over the years to get that education perspective on glam sector views. Most of their efforts were concentrated on the 3 million a staggering number of annual visitors to MoMA but when you've got 20 million annual online visitors what can you do to offer more to them? So thinking in the education space she told us about offering courses online, the use of MOOCs, massive open online classrooms which clearly are growing phenomenally well and also the point that we need to consider back converting our metadata terminology to match what kids and teachers and researchers search for. She also touched on the use of smartphones ubiquitous. In fact, how many got smartphones in this audience? Yeah, a staggering number. I heard on the radio just this morning that apparently the take-up of smartphones on a mass scale, defined mass, across the world is probably about five years, maybe seven at most. The take-up of the internet was about 10 years so imagine when we get the next breakthrough just how fast technology is changing for us and what that can do to the areas we work in. But MOOC education is clearly growing massively. It provides wonderful outcomes, global reach, homebound folk can learn, all people just can't travel that well. The opportunity for connecting and teaching the teachers is quite high on my agenda. Imagine reaching out to 10,000 teachers in an audience of 17,000 from 110 countries. But challenges do remain. We asked about universities and Deb's challenged academia to think of MOOCs as a textbook, which I thought was quite inspiring. And perhaps an education's sweet spot is that global digital reach to do that via collaboration by harvesting content, by repurposing metadata, sharing data. The outcomes are engaged and to inform the impact will manifestly be life-changing if education standards are lifted more rapidly on a global scale. And I think of continents like Africa where even smartphones are becoming quite prevalent over there and just how much we can do in the education space there. Ed Summers reminded us that the web and the digital ecosystems we operate in are vast and we need to care for the web, archive it, protect it, be islands of persistence on the web, even our own website iterations, your own namespace if you like. Is it important to manage and remember that? And I think a lot of the early NDFs were about digital preservation and included talks on archiving the web. We seem to have moved on from that conversation, but I'm really pleased Ed came and reminded us just how important it is. I think in the digital age we can get a bit frivolous. Are we kidding ourselves on being islands of persistence? We can't really compete with Google, can we? The sheer scale of the job is massive. You've got Library of Congress offering the Twitter archive, but maybe we can just look for sweet spots, but it's not going to help us. Rise to the challenge after all. When you go to a library, you don't expect the librarian to read a book to you. I contend we need to be curatorial and consider what information we discard. We generate lots of data, but keep throwing lots away. That's not always okay. But if cultural heritage institutions don't try to keep it, then who will? Especially in this advent period of the internet the first three decades you could argue. But let's do our best until the cavalry arrives perhaps. I've observed the rise in the interest of humanities which didn't even exist when NDF was first conceived. Many of the presentations touched on the application of digital technology on humanities disciplines and the opportunity to reflect upon the impact digital media has upon humanity. Not surprising this has clear compatibility with NDF's own goals to enhance New Zealand's digital interaction with culture and heritage to make a difference. And that touched me on the matter of perspective. I think many of us in the Twitter sphere enjoyed Simon's wine analogy. Is the value of the wine, the glass, the drinking? Different people have different perspectives and it's important to try and understand and comprehend as many as possible. But our job is to think strategically to assess the risks to consider the stakeholders to accept the impact can be positive or negative. And it's to ask the right questions at the start. In other words to quote Simon again be clear and deliberate about what you do in the digital realm and why. I really thought that resonated for me was that this indeed, that it is indeed almost an impossible mandate for national institutions to hold data and perpetuity on a one to three year budget cycle. It's also crazy to fund a digitisation project as a one-off event and not a sustained activity over time. And we must transform projects into programmes of digitisation. Adrian Kingston and Chris Dempsey both made the point regarding crowdsourcing and I just heard Reid Perkins talk about it as well. Crowdsourcing or user contribution just a few champions can make a significant difference. Find those in your community and stakeholders and yourself will collectively make a big impact. And again I reiterate that we need to plan to manage content beyond initial capture. We've heard Joe talk about KETA and the dilemma it's got at the moment. It's important that we manage the content beyond the initial conception of the project. Full life span considerations. Adrian reminded us that if our audiences are prepared to give us our opinions we should respect them and care for them and learn from them. And I was quite moved by that. Remember some other important lessons about community. The gamers are big players in the space. That pun was intended. And Helen Stuckey's method of remembering games is transferable to preserving your community memory and knowledge perhaps. Preserving and sharing community experiences is important. And I did like Helen's aside that if you work in digital preservation you get rather fond of paper. Similarly, several speakers inspired my own thoughts about the democratisation of information. Phrase Penny put on national radio some years ago and has been widely used. Linked open data is an amazing yet elusive idea as Chris McDowell told us. And Michael Lascaritas who was a keynote speaker here just a few years ago from America and now a resident here showed us how to make a start on this seemingly too big to tackle task. And with democratising information we must remain mindful of community in place. Consider Iwi and the Marae in the digital era. The values of belonging and identity for Marae resonate in cultural heritage digitisation projects. And I loved Paul Tapsel's message that digitally grounding Tamariki to their own home Marae is critical to future Marae well-being in a world of global confusion. And that wonderful quip that if you have the tools use them. Do you think that if Marae had early Marae had outboard motors they would not have used them? It's about community. Place and community can be bridged in the digital realm. For example from the Marae, well Paul Tapsel's Marae to the sign language archive from Sonja Pivak who equally inspired me with this nation's third official language. I find it hard to get my head around a language which has no written form. It's only recorded in video over the years or it's various formats so preserving that audio and visual material is crucial. A big shout out from me to the work from the New Zealand film archive and sound archive and the work they do in preserving degrading acetate film and many more organisations like my own firm who do the same for those acetate photo negatives that we need to catch before they crinkle. Thank you Deaf Radio for creating the signed DNA an archive for sign language a virtual land for the deaf community and thank you for providing interpreters here on stage. In fact they probably deserve a clap well done. Sticking with community in place I was as moved as you were by Courtney this morning all heritage institutions can embrace emotion if they so choose reflective of the people and collections within and the people they wish to offer an experience to their community. I loved how Courtney intuitively jumped straight to impact how she might change people's lives through her institution's values this is part dream part challenge and certainly inspiring for me and for you and I was also equally inspired by Virginia's 100 years ago 100 years ago talk with Kirsty which was dubbed up 100 collaborating with Topapa of course many speakers provoke challenges inspirations and dreams and I throw these out there. The right to delete as well as preserve is that really new in the curatorial world seems to be a big hang up in the digital world how do we educate young people as the real and virtual worlds blur previous moral codes as Hannah McDougal told us and that nice quote from Tom Renny e-books seem to be 15 years behind the web and though we partied hard in 1999 it seems rather quaint today what can we do about open standards with e-books? I love the mashups, the Rijksmuseum video we can all have some fun there even with a simple smart phone can you foresee your institution open up your entire digital collection free and high res, who pays for some of that digitisation and perhaps owns it already and a nice concept to consider added value for users which we got from the Rijksmuseum again the intersection of museum, user trends and tools is their sweet spot but added value to users I think is something we should all focus on and I learnt a new word, culture snacker I haven't worked out if it's one or two but I quite like it as a single word hashtag so in closing I like to pick up on these opening challenges and dreams you control the information information age I had to get a McCannin because everyone else has and I'm certainly no study of art history but I did pick up this quote about this painting and I think that really resonates with me and what we're talking about here I hope you enjoy that and that is a screen dump so I don't think I've breached any copyright issues I had to pay for it if I downloaded it I think the earthquakes in Christchurch proved how important it is to preserve digitally further because of our NDF initiatives we could connect, research learn and discover about the information surrounding that event and that's impact some years ago policy was developed as Penny told us in shaped strategic thinking it gave impact as Simon Tanner would say because it helped us develop programs that would change people's lives Penny challenged whether we now need to think about how serious we want to get about open access, open data and the creative commons should this be funded by the government not the least because so much of the infrastructure is underpinned by it and I agree let's get serious about preserving digital scientific research and pushing the boundary on copyright and as for you and the NDF board some nostalgia from me not much Matapihi off-sided at NDF because it was our first collective project it was a pretty cool outcome I must confess it's an outcome of the first conference in 2001 inspired by an Australian case study great example of collaboration and networking picked up by Graham Coe and Steve Knight and we ran with it and it inspired the formation of NDF as we know it today said in Bennington and Paul Reynolds are often remembered at these conferences and I think the phrase for me today is less we forget they, Penny, Graham and Steve were early inspirers of the NDF coming home was our first sorry our second big collaborative project and as Andy told us at the AGM it coincided with the formation of Digital New Zealand nowadays World War I is galvanising cross-sectoral collaboration on a grander scale as Virginia showed us I'd like to offer a shout out to Digital New Zealand for us early NDF board members it was everything NDF saw itself being but it actually did stuff still does it and better than we ever imagined chalk that up to Penny's imagineering her word her digital leadership team of Sue Sutherland and John Truesdale along with the NDF board just conceptualising all in the background there so to you all please read the survey, digitisation survey that's on the NDF website read the monthly newsletters a lot of work goes into them we're communicating better nowadays bar camps and experience exchange we've talked about but we're trying to develop a sense of community beyond this conference and it's important you may have other ideas become a member of the NDF if you're not already one already, you can join on the website work with fellow members work with the board don't leave it all to them for me I love the maturity of that NDF in its 12th conference change is a wonderful constant but the one thing that has been consistent across all those conference is the present brain ache most of us experience at the end of day one and I mean before the drinks the cerebrals stretching from the rock stars of our sectors for meant great ideas and inspiration I think you'll all agree that whilst our overseas guests were fantastic Kiwis are brilliant too and the Aussies NDF brought community to digitisation in New Zealand I think that's a fair sum up of what I saw NDF doing over the last 12 years it's got us to a good stage and there's lots of work still to be done it's a digital place where gigs can be cool and heck you can even use tablets and laptops in the front row here without complaint all I do dim your lights please it's a place where bibliophiles can read museum folks can visit and explore archivists can collect and collectively we glam sectorites can live a dream where our data is connected, contextualised entertaining informative accessible for as long as we need it so I'll close with a graphic demonstration of the community we inspire I contacted Michael Edson who was a keynote speaker here two or three years ago with Michael I believe just a few hours ago and asked him to help me close this conference with those key three that transpired for me inspiration, dream and challenge and here's what we came up with Hi everyone when Andy messaged me a few minutes ago to ask me to comment on the conference themes I thought he said they were instigation, scheme and malice and I thought wow that's awesome but things have changed a lot in the last couple years in New Zealand and now I understand that the themes are inspiration dream and challenge and those are big loaded emotional words they speak to me of a group of people who aren't going to be happy doing the thing they did yesterday just because it's what was always done they speak to me of restlessness and urgency but I want to add another word to those three and that word is you I was in a museum strategy workshop a few years ago with the eminent writer Robert Edsel and Pete Wilson who's the governor of California and a lot of eminent historians and scholars and business people even though I was way way way out of my league I was going on and on about how important it was for this particular museum for this particular mission to succeed to rise above its own rhetoric about inspiration and dreams and challenge to really serve humanity to really win using the internet at global scale and when I finally stopped to draw in a breath and ponder the awkward silence in the room Robert Edsel who is this intense scholarly looking distinguished gentleman with shocking white hair and a very impressive suit straightened up next to me and said in the words of Yoda try not do and I thought that was totally awesome we need all the inspiration we can get because of the work of society and humanity in the not too distant future is going to get so much harder and so much weirder and so much more full of ambiguity and frustration and dead ends than it's ever been before and I think we need big beautiful dreams now because we can have them thanks to the internet and challenge I'm not sure if you mean or verb if you mean it as a verb then you're challenging what you see if you mean it as a noun a challenge then yes it is all of this is a challenge but it's the only game in town and you're the only players and you've got to win you must do you must do starting now thanks and one more slide one of the reasons we do what we do is to make a social contribution to show people we care to provide context from history and the present to forge thinking about our collaborative future in this digital age I think now it's time to go home involve and inspire your bosses and your colleagues dream a little challenge your community and do thanks very much poorly wrapped I know but that's on behalf of the board for the last 10 years thank you for all your work I'm glad you digitised thanks just before you all go we'll do some housekeeping and then a few thanks housekeeping coats are in the foyer I told you that coming up after the conference we'll have a post conference survey coming soon all these talks are going to be on YouTube and we will get that done Twitter has been going off today I think we've been number one in New Zealand so if anybody wants to go for it somebody's created an archive of it all on Google Docs so you can find it there if you want speaker slides and notes are starting to trickle their way onto the internet so we'll be tweeting tweeting them if you've got links you want to share just send them along to somebody I should have a email address but you can find us through our website or just tweet us I've got to give lots of thanks I will forget people but I have to thank everybody for coming I have to thank the program committee where are you Courtney and Simon and Adrian and Virginia for helping me put this together it's not all on me, it's all on you as well I have to thank the board for keeping on doing this thing I've got to thank the speakers we got you here but then you did all the work thank you so much sponsors it does come down to money thank you for taking along so thank you for all your generous financial support and then the part of Cooper's team who kept it all ticking along registered us, fed us, organized everything, the AB teams have recorded everything, set up all the infrastructure and of course to Papa for feeding us and hosting us and housing us for the last two days I've enjoyed it, I hope you have too there's a pub just over there you're welcome to join us thank you and we'll see you next year


Hey folks, I'm with the winner of the 50,000 amateur world championship, Jason Reed. He rode Cheetahs Cat's Marata. Congratulations to you. Oh, thank you. Yes.  Oh, it's a dream come true, I guess. You know, I didn't realize it was going to feel as exciting as it does. I'd try to be humble because humility is not a strong point of mind. You've got a great cat crowd out here in the water arena. They get pumped, they get into it. It's quite a thing really to win in front of them, I'd imagine. Yeah, they're just screamers, you know.  Yeah, so how is it? What's it like to compete there in the water arena? You've got that crowd going. You've got to concentrate on the job you're doing. Tell us about your go rounds. Yeah, the bright lights are quite a little different than all the shows it took to get here. And it is fun that it's a go around building up, but the real nuts and bolts of it are the real enjoyable part of it. It was all the hauling and all the shows that we went to and all the small towns and large towns all over the United States to get here. Yeah, the year as a haul is obviously very satisfying. What stands out? Oklahoma City was a wonderful show, a big show and a big win for me. And after that show it gave me a lot of confidence to go and show anywhere in the world anytime. So the confidence builder of that show spurred me on so that this wasn't such an adrenaline rush or spooky thing, you know. Yeah, so it all came together really for you in that moment and now you can put it together at the finals. Yeah, just build on the little things that, and grew a lot, learned a lot about the business, about the showing, you know, about the competition. What did you learn? What do you think was the big takeaways from this year? Patience, confidence, consistency. I didn't have a lot of big wins. A pretty good win in Las Vegas and that's in Oklahoma City was my biggest dollar wins. But I won an awful lot of small shows and a lot of seconds and thirds and some big shows. And so the total of it, the consistency really is so incredibly important. Yeah, I had another world champion tell me they'd rather come second at every show than, you know, win one occasionally because that's the key, consistency. Yeah, it was the consistency that got me here. There's no doubt. That's correct. Tell us about your horse and how he held up over the year. Jesus Katsumara, a very nice mare, big strong mare. I bought her in March. I had a half brother tour that I was showing before then. I started out the year on Cat Pep with the Katsumara Gilling. It was a really nice horse too and strong. Not necessarily trained to the same level that this Jesus Katsumara Marius. When I got her, she hadn't been showed for about 24 months, so she needed some tuning up. A good friend of mine, Greg Jolly, came alongside of me and really helped me with that horse every day. And from the time that I started showing her in probably June, she just steadily got better and better and better. We've hauled her a long, long ways. I'd unload her at Batesville, Mississippi and show her for four days and jump her back on the trailer and be to the next show the next morning, you know, a thousand miles away or whatever. We drove up and she was a real strong trooper, no habits that made her hard to handle or hard to show. She just got better every time I showed her.  Or what did you have to consider before you really made that commitment? Oh, that's a beautiful question. To haul like this, I had to give up a lot of things. And God willing, things fell together for me. I've got a business in a ranch in western South Dakota where my daughter and son-in-law were able to come up and take over management and the full operation of that business so I could be away from that. My sweet little wife drove, my goodness, 80,000 miles in an F-354 pickup, you know, with the trailer hooked on it. And so we drove over places where before I'd be in traffic where I was Larry about going, now it's not a big deal with the pickup trailer. So yeah, all of those things had to come together. It's kind of odd that this is an individual sport and I win it. I get the award, but that's not really how it is. It's a team effort.


So, as many of you know, I am a nerd. In addition to that, I also do stand-up and improv comedy. And I've done nearly a thousand shows in my lifetime, all around the world, in 49 states, 14 countries, and on three continents. When I was recently at my high school reunion, not too long ago, I was telling some friends, some old friends from school, that I did stand-up and improv comedy. And they said, but you're not funny. And they were right, especially with how they knew me, because this, if we can get this to work, is not the face of funny, right? Yes, it is a funny face, right? Because there's a lot that is funny about this picture, and none of it is intentional, right? I have the old school Justin Timberlake die tips that I was going for, baggy clothes that are far too big for me. The theme at the bottom is Into a Dream. And I am no one's dream in this picture, right? Because I was never the life of the party. I was never the class clown in school. I am very much an introvert, right? If you know Myers-Briggs, I am INTJ. If you know Star Wars, I'm R2D2. It's a translation, right? But what I've learned since then is that we are not our personality assessments, right? A personality assessment is only a single moment at a single point in time. And we are, in fact, more of what we do, right? We are defined by our actions. So if we act as a comedian, we are a comedian. And for me, if I act like someone who is socially capable, I am actually socially capable, as opposed to being someone who is socially awkward, right? And I learned it through comedy. When I was at the Ohio State University getting my degree in computer science and engineering, my best friend wanted to start an improv comedy group and he needed people to join. So he forced me to do it. That's how I got into improv. And as you can tell from this picture, we were not very good. At least to start, right? Because we had no idea what we were doing. We watched Tuesday's line, is it anyway, and tried to repeat what we saw. We knew nothing of yes and or of the various schools of thought and stuff. But with practice and repetition, we got better. And over time, after I graduated and started working at Procter & Gamois, I started to realize that the same skills you need to be an effective improviser are the same skills you need to be an effective conversationalist. And that's very, very important because conversation matters. Now, for many of you, especially the extroverts in the room, this slide seems really weird. Why would we even need to explore why conversation matters? But as an engineer, as an introvert, I wanted to see if there is a slight possibility, if maybe, just maybe, I didn't have to talk to other people. I wouldn't. But the reality is that we have to because that's how we get jobs. 70% of jobs are found through networking, through conversing with other people and the same is probably true for us finding our clients as well. It also will make us more productive. In one study they found by increasing the amount that coworkers were able to talk to each other, they increased productivity by 8%. But it also impacts us as human beings. It improves our ability to enjoy this life that we have. In the Harvard Grant study, one of the largest longitudinal studies ever done that looked at what makes for a meaningful and happy life, the founder of the study said, the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people. More so than anything else. Our relationships, right? So it means it leads to our happiness as well. So it does matter. But for me, I started to understand, okay, so then how do we converse? How can we actually do things? So as an engineer, I developed a three-step system. Right? Of course, right? Step number one is to ask compelling questions. If you read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, you'll say the key to being a conversationalist is to ask questions, right?   Right? But in improv, we sometimes learn at least at the basic level not to ask questions, right? Because it's putting the work on the other person. But we realize later that if we ask value-added questions, if we ask questions that add information, it becomes easier. And that's why we want to ask compelling questions. Because so often we hear the normal, same questions every single day. And if we ask the normal questions, we get the normal responses. And we're not really having a conversation so much as having a dress rehearsal for all the things that we've planned, right? So we ask compelling questions. Instead of saying, what do you do, we can ask, what's the coolest thing that's a different response? Instead of asking where are you from, you can ask what's the best thing about your hometown? Instead of asking how have you liked the conference, you can ask what's the most useful thing you've learned so far, right? You're going to get the answer to the first question, but get a lot more in the second question as well. Step number two is to tell interesting stories. When we talk about asking compelling questions, it doesn't mean only ask questions. If you're in a conversation and someone is like, ah, so tell me why you decided to start humor that works.  Because that doesn't even make sense. Right? It shouldn't feel like an interrogation. It shouldn't feel like 20 questions. You still want to actually answer the questions other people ask of you. But rather than just giving a straight response, you can tell a story. Because we are natural storytellers, right? That last session, we hear the power of a story. But not only that, in one study they found that facts told in a story are 20 times more likely to be remembered than facts told in bullet point form. Right? It helps people remember who you actually are and gives context to what you're doing. As improvisers, we learn that as a story spine, right? Ken Adams' phenomenal story spine. In business, we might learn that as context action results. Because reality is a lot of the people around you are still going to ask those same questions.   But then I learned later that there's a difference between being efficient and being effective. Right?  And I started to realize that the skill set that allowed me to be effective with people was improvisation. So now I teach organizations how to be more effective using humor and improvisation. And as a result, they're more productive, less stressed and happier. Right? I've given the context the action and the results of that. So I've answered their question, but in a way that they're more likely to remember. And in those individual connections that we share things, that's where we're going to connect and build our relationships. Because when I mentioned that I'm from Ohio, the people from Ohio are going to come up and talk to me like, oh, I'm from Cincinnati. I'm from Cleveland. Go Buckeyes. Oh, H. I.O., right? If I mention that, oh, I love comedy and I love studying comedians. And one of my favorite comedians is Eddie Izzard. If you love Eddie Izzard as well, we'll come up and we'll talk and we'll talk about cake or death or we'll talk about the Death Star canteen. We'll talk about these great things. If I say I'm an introvert, my fellow introverts will probably not come up and talk to me, but we'll have a knowing look across the room. And we connect and we build our relationships. The third step is yes and. Because this is how you know what questions to ask, what stories to tell is we use our natural ability to yes and the conversation. Because I love this question. Right? This is the heart of small talk, right? This is the heart of where everything feels like it starts to get awkward. And I love this question for a number of reasons. One, I just love talking about the weather. The weather is fascinating, right? I recently found out that there are 1,800 tornadoes in the United States every single year. 1,800. So many of our relationships have started with this question of how about this weather. And no one remembers 20 years from now, people aren't like, I have a really good relationship with this person, but I remember our first conversation started talking about the weather, so I don't like them all that much. We forget about it, but how about this weather is great and you can yes and this question. How about this weather? Yes, it's beautiful out. And if you had another day here at Blueberry Lake, how would you spend it? We can get into more fascinating areas. So this is our three steps of conversation, our three steps to go from socially awkward to socially awesome, right? We can do this. And I would tell you that I'm still very, very much an introvert, right? Sometimes feel like this. And please don't take this the wrong way because I have loved this conference. I have loved all of our conversations together. I love the conversations that I'm going to have. But later tonight when I'm at my hotel, I'm going to be very happy when I don't have to see any of you. Right? Because that is my time to reflect. That is my time to recharge and to think about this conference. And I'm going to think about all the incredible impact that we have as improvisers. I'm going to think about Jim and the work that he's doing with kids and autism, and Marv with the stuff that he's doing with Alzheimer's patients, and all the incredible things that we're doing at a big scale with improvisation. But I'm also going to reflect and think about the things, things like improv the individual, introverted computer geek actually get up and be able to share their message and talk with other people. Thank you guys very much.


Let's open up the pre-town meeting at 6.14 or 15, whatever it is, and one thing we had on the agenda for that is a correction to page 69 of the Rochester High School Repurposing Committee report, and there's a number on the midway down the page. This is regarding how much for every 100,000 in property value the rate would increase by an extra $16 and that should be every 160. So it'd be an increase of $160, not $16 for every $100,000. It's 150 rather than 16. That was one piece that we had noticed that was not proper in the town report and we'll open it up to everyone else out here and in terms of the pre-town meeting any concerns or questions about the the town reports go out and people's hands should have a chance to look at them yeah so I have some say relating to the High School report in the essay and what you call it is it is this appropriate to talk about that's that's why we're here yeah so I was hoping it would be here so I got to argue with them about this but I guess I'll just have to make the best I can so in this very long four-page essay on the subject I'm still very concerned that the issues of cost and risk are not being put in the foreground and not clearly in the foreground in common sense easy to understand. As you guys know two years ago at the town meeting I brought in a list of problems with the buildings with associated costs gave it a committee and Vick assured me they would publicize that never was so I think and I'll try to keep this a three minutes I think there's a reason for this there's a stark difference between what I think is a very basic assumption of this whole question of the building and how the committee sees it and this was clarified for me in an argument I had with Vick Robson when I left the committee I said to him this is first and foremost a matter of money cost and risk and he was pretty hot I was pretty hot too and he said no Rob this is not a question of money it's a question of community and he's really heated about it and of course I love the community and and I like that idea but you know we're a community that has to buy gravel we have to have a road crew we have to have a town office we have to pay people in town is about money to a large degree and this is a huge issue but I continually felt that the very simple common sense nuts and bolts information about cost and risk was just never in the foreground in this report it's sort of in there but an indication of how it's not in the foreground is that in this huge document of more than four pages or whatever just bearing in mind the fire department was able to have a report which was with fires they put out all that accidents they went to and everything else they did in one page so in four pages of information here there's exactly one sentence that says here's how we're gonna pay for this one sentence and that sentence is we expect a grant school will pay for this they refer they say the building has good bones and needs upgrades well this is a language about you know the down plays up these aren't upgrades if you look at the list of what has to be done it's a very big and daunting list that adds up to three million dollars so I'm concerned again that this very good hearted committee made up of good friends of mine Vick's a good friend of mine Catherine has been very good to me at a personal level in the years that I've lived here I love these people are really good people but I think in the way that Dick and I disagree in a vision of community and in a vision of just money it's made the the either the ability or the willingness of the committee to really put this hard information out there in a simple way where people can read it has been impeded by what's basically a good hearted mission that's a good heart to say it's for community but we need the stuff that we need is gravel is the fundamentals of running a town do we really need this in terms of cost and benefit that's a big question and these questions aren't not being addressed they're not being discussed there aren't open meetings in which you know people like me can get up and say what about this what about that and I'm very uncomfortable with that I don't meet these are good friends of mine I don't mean to knock them they did a huge amount of work and God bless them and they're doing it for the right reasons but I think there's a very sharp divergence in how they see the question of how I see it that doesn't make me right that's just that's just how I see it I think there ought to be at least two open meetings on this subject to open where people can talk about and people can discuss and disagree like we do the merger there were very lively meetings before the merger where people came in and people are pissed off and waving arms around and you know discussing and kicking it back and forth I think there were three of them they're pretty heated and and you know we we moved the whole thing forward I feel like that's never happened with this of course COVID happened in the middle of this so that's really my only point it's the same point I made two years ago when I made that list for Vic and it's the same list I gave you guys now Vic contacted me last week he said we want to use your list but we want to edit it and I wish he was here because I said what you want to do and he showed me the draft he'd take my thing for you and he had taken all the money out of the bill there was a list of problems how many windows you need here's the condition of the room you know with a price tag on each one of them so you took all the money out and put it in a summary so he didn't the money the information wasn't taken away it was just made smaller and less evident and that's kind of a philosophy of communication that's going on in that committee I don't think I don't he told me he was gonna they were gonna provide that at the town meetings a version of that but there's no mention of it here in the in the report so I have no idea and he never got back I think it's a little annoyed so he never got back to me on that so so that's all I've got to say it's the same message I really wish this committee would get this cost and risk information out in the foreground in a clear common sense easy to read fashion and that's the end of my presentation and that and this whole topic or issue is why we have pushed originally we talked about having a vote on this at the town meeting and we've said absolutely not ready for that because the information had not totally been uncovered yet and not properly shared either so as is as of this point there is no set date for that meeting because we're still waiting for more concrete information to come out and I would fully anticipate that we do hold at least a few public meetings and talk about that to make that educated vote okay if the optimism of the committee diminishes the committee will no longer seek out if the building itself can be converted into anything so we're not even at that point yet we're still in the phase of saying is it at all possible whether it would conform to the laws the rules the grant requirements we're still in that phase we can't get to the next phase of renovating the building until we know whether the building even has a future we're not sending carpenters and lead abatement people in there only to find out that act 250 is going to say no to any of it so we're we're going to get there it's taking forever you know and it's it's a very slow grind when you're trying to get money for grants and the discovery process sometimes looks like a black hole it just goes further down and further down this week there was a meeting about the flood plain which we were all well I was all fearful that the new flood maps are being designed as we speak over the over the course of the next three years but it was discovered that Rochester's already been done so what we see is what we get in Rochester it's other parts of the rivers along the way there that are being surveyed and analyzed but we're already done so the fear of saying oh the flood plain is going to come back and haunt us we know what the flood plain is and that line is not going to change as it will in many other communities but in Rochester that is that is the line that we're dealing with that's what we learned in a meeting last week that was a very small you know glimmer of hope because there's still a lot of other hurdles for us to go through then if at the end of all of those hurdles if it still seems anyway doable then we're gonna start tackling is the building doable and your list will come up for sure and you know what those numbers will probably be double probably and so I rest assured you're you're not forgotten you're just on the back burner because there's a lot of things on the front burner can't get that front burner show off once it does then the back burner will come forward and it just is an incredible amount of time COVID COVID was a factor but not the only factor government wheels turn very slow thanks I appreciate that I want to say that I'm not here to lobby against buying the building I could argue it either way there's I mean it's a very very complicated subject to me I just think this this information thing needs to be out front that's my only great and it is a slow process you know and the wheel has a turn that's all but I but I think this putting that money information out front is important but I won't be the already beaten horse that's coming I do think something and Robin your defense a little bit I do think at some point the select board has to make a decision on where we stand to and I think that's going to be important for the community to know before we go for vote and I you everybody knows where I stand on this and I'm not I haven't wavered on that and I probably won't just because the finances are just aren't there for the community at all and I'll stand by that principle probably till the end but that's that's where I stand I you know this committee wants to form a nonprofit and buy the building go for it but if they don't want to and they want the town to own it I'm dead set against it and I will be dead set against it so that's where I stand and at some point the select board has to stand somewhere and we'll have to do yeah I know I think at the point that we're presenting the town with the time to vote on it yes time to make that yeah anybody else have any input on this topic to be continued I'm sure yeah any other topics concerns or issues that come up on the town report before the town meeting if not I would move to close the pre-town meeting second all in favor and now turn to open the regular select board meeting tonight and I would verify that we've properly warned this meeting on the internet and physically in town and email and coach okay so with time so we go forward now we've got prior minutes from a emergency select board meeting on February 10th which was to open the bids for the West Hill Bridge but that got delayed because of we had an addendum to that and while we were in this meeting we did approve the Huntington house third-class hotel license so those look proper to me I've moved to prove those seconded no favor all right okay and then the next two meetings I wasn't that so I'll let you present those on September well yeah September 13th was for sure September 17th September I mean February February 13th um we it was a regular select board meeting the minutes were taken losing called the order at 615 there was a lot of discussion during that meeting about the first responder services and then meeting 732 I read them I approve good minutes and you want to second that second that all in favor right right February 17th there was a special select board meeting I was there on uh June you were at this meeting oh no it says absolutely Frank Surrey Pat Harvey and we opened the bids we had four bids for the replacement of the West Hill Bridge we did not make any decisions at that time it was just a bid opening with the prices and meeting adjourned at 2 0 6 p.m so this is a six minute meeting I move that we approve these seconded all in favor all right so we have um guests and I think it's probably the first item under new business dean to talk about skate space in the update yep updating the fundraising that we're continuing to do um we are we have approximately $15,000 as of as of this point we have we're very thankful for the fire department we had a clear this winter uh no liner the ground froze they flooded it and it was used I would say for about six weeks and we were trying to beat the the weather basically at that that point in January but it was utilized um quite a bit this winter from here on in we have decided to forego plowing for the rest of the season to try to save that money towards the rebuilding of it so I believe we we we got $900 to for John Gorton to plow and I think that personally is key for any forward movement you've got to keep it plowed so the ground freezes and then it can get flooded uh so we're trying to basically we're not plowing for the rest of the season um sun's high the the the ice had evaporated um in that time so I'm here also asking the select board to keep skate space in the forefront of ARPA funding for the future of getting the funds to to increase our numbers so that we can get matching funding from other resources so what's the target number you are hoping to get total target number is 50k what's the target number to match the the grant well you know it depends on how you what they do for matching but this particular um um one of the the state of Vermont rec fund last year I was hot about doing it it there was a september 10th deadline and they had up to $25,000 up to 25 right so if we got 25 okay we could get 25 but that's not a given yeah you know um it's applications applications etc norm has uh has done a um what is that the Levesque there's a Levesque award from Gifford medical and uh that they're handing out two grants of $2,000 each um and we applied for those um it's just just regulated to the valley um Randolph um you know Hancock down to Pittsfield so we're hoping for that um and we're going to be doing that actually the Vermont rec or the state of Vermont offers two separate grants which we're going to be replying applying for that have matching funds um and determining exactly which matching funds are um qualify is is a little bit up in the air right now definitely the individual donations will qualify and that's totally right now 14,700 we've gotten uh almost a hundred different individual donors which is amazing I'm just uh yeah amazed at uh you know how people are backing us up um so I think you know what we'll get a nice chunk from these uh state uh grants but the ARPA will be that final piece to augment and get us to 50,000 that's the way I see it are those grants in kind um you know are those grants are are they in kind work where part of the matching money that you put forth is is work related or or matching from the community as far as not just dollars and cents is it matched with work yeah so so even as as of today we we qualify for 14,700 now maybe like this Levesque award might you know be a matching in in kind thing as well I think the question is that if if we get ARPA funds is that contingent uh is it part of the initial matching funds that we need to get matched understand what I'm asking yeah I don't see why it wouldn't be no I think they intended for ARPA funds to hopefully be leveraged yeah to leverage in that way yeah so it's not it basically are the town's money now it's no longer right the federal money right because one of the one of the grants basically says it can't have anything to do with federal funds but I'm what I'm asking the select board is to promise us something so that we can go in front of them and say well we have uh 25 we have 30 000 we can get you know a matching fund of up to 25 and one and then another one yeah so we're um it's we're at a point where I would like I would personally like the the select board to make a decision in our in our favor and in a direction of how we're going to yeah where we're going to head yeah um do we have to be careful with that as far as the rules go on whether those can be used as matching monies and I'm I wasn't sure if that's the if that's clear yet you know yeah um I'm gonna in the next month or two I'm gonna start really getting into those um grants all the details the fine print and you know find out if they do qualify or find out how you know what this seems like it's kind of a shell game yeah you know where this money's coming from what account it's sitting in and then find out how to make that happen if there is an avenue to make that happen Nancy did you have some input how much are the state grants well they they're you said there are two grants yeah we have an amount attached to this one that I've got in my hand is the recreational facilities grants program um this basically states that it if that if the resources creating get up to $25,000 it can match it doesn't necessarily it can match up to 25,000 it doesn't necessarily that mean that they guaranteed that right because there's another there's 100 towns after this money yeah um but I um you know and then there's in the fine print here you know and this is what this is the big question about what are are the ARPA funds the towns now and is it you know because it says you cannot use any state or federal funds as your one one financial funding match so it either comes lary it either comes after you know you know from so we work our tails off to try to get as much as we can from the public and then you guys fill in the blanks at the end but I'm I'm afraid that it gets furthered away personally because it's easy to spend no we pretty much earmarked some for skate space where you haven't we haven't put the figure on that yet only because we want to get two other projects that we've got in front of that but there is money earmarked for that that is our third there's one this year um we've got this wall out here that's been an issue for the last five or six years that we can't get funding for which we plan on doing that we don't know what that's going to be and also the extent of what happens at the library there and then we've kind of put a number in our head here to start with which was between 20 and 25 000 that we were looking at to supplement that but my question is I'm not sure that we can use ARPA money as match money we have to use it for the project we can't use it as a match to the project I get it so and that's that's what I'm not sure we'd have to look at that they've changed the rules on that but is do you understand it that way Larry well so I have two questions so there it is a technical question and and it relates in two ways it relates to the rules of this grant right and how this what are the rules of this grant and so that has to be investigated and I think it could be answered quickly with a phone call to this grant administrator what you'd get the answer immediately I reckon I can I can do with do that but I basically you know but there and and what is the timeline for this application well when when is this grant like August this this one I'm just assuming it's the same date around September 10th that's what it was last year so it's upcoming this summer yes okay so they're not necessarily to really be discussed here but there is an avenue for the town to take its ARPA money in hand in total now and be done with the government the federal government right patty and I have discussed this briefly it's an avenue I think this board should carefully consider it room but it's not for a discussion for tonight so it would answer Dean's question it then would be your money to use in any way you wish right so but we don't need to talk about that too but if you don't take that route then there is a technical question about whether it can be used directly as match right that's the question yeah but that can be answered quickly by the yes by the grant administrator of this particular right so we are moving forward with the scope of work and the bidding process one of the one of the questions I had was could the I know you might have been asked already but when cricket did the engineering of the site she found a section of Martha Slater's land on the northern section still in her possession that she did not donate we actually built on her land there's a little slice of the northern section of the of skate space and it was recommended by cricket to have a lawyer try to deal with the easement and I believe somebody said I don't know that the the select board had okayed the use of the the town lawyer for the the easement of that Martha Slater needs I talked with Martha I think she's on here and she doesn't have any issue at all with it but it's just a it's a dot dot in the eye kind of thing where if we built it in the the property transferred somehow it could be messy so I'm asking the the the the the select board if they would utilize the town lawyer yeah you may not need to use the town lawyer if it's just a minor lot line adjustment but we could look into that Martha's got something to say I just just wanted to say that I remember them talking to me about that and I'm perfectly fine with whatever works out you know as far as because I want the skate space to be used you know I was very very you know I because I live directly above skate space you know I like when he was talking about the six weeks that the skate space was used this winter and everything I mean year round I look down and I see people down there enjoying it and I really am glad that we have that so I'm perfectly fine with whatever they come up with I don't you know I didn't realize that there was an issue before and whatever it is it's okay with me okay because I want I want the town to have that so deal with your grant you say you have $15,000 in hand now with donations so even if you went for your grant and that 15 was the matching that would give you 30 yeah and then we have an earmark of 20 so I think you should sleep well at night saying that this can happen okay that's that's what I wanted to hear yeah yeah we planned on that all right okay first came in all right we just needed to address some other issues that's really great news I got one other question I'm basically coming up with a scope of work and I was wondering if I could use the town website to have the bids go out um you know I don't really know how to do it other than pick up a phone and ask three contractors which I will do anyway but the the town does use the website for the bidding process a good avenue for that might be through cricket if she's still involved well I emailed her yeah I emailed her last week she might be away I don't know but she has always been very helpful and I'm going to run what I have by her for sure it's just a matter of how it gets out there yeah that's all I'm asking yeah there's an avenue that goes through a state of Vermont it just gets broadcast to all the contractors everywhere and she knows how to do that so she might be the lct you can also advertise through them yeah they usually put it on their site yeah yeah great as a municipal part I mean the bidding should go out through the municipality anyway don't you think I would think so that's the town should be putting that out not right committee okay so when I finalize this I'll run it through cricket and then yeah we we should all get together and do it okay because it has to go through the municipality it's a you're part of that so okay that's the way we have to look at I would think all right thank you thanks for all your perseverance and vision and work on that yeah so enough of this small money stuff let's talk about the big money stuff here we got we got um so we got the bids um for the West Hill bridge and where they what how much higher than we were hoping 50 percent higher yeah the cheapest one or 100 percent higher they were double what we were wanted yeah so been in contact with with uh the engineer uh Jason Keener and um we have a time frame where we have to address this and I believe it's 30 days if I'm not he said it's a great thing to do yeah within 30 days too and we can do look at it a few different ways we could say all the bids were to buy and and not award it or we could award it to the little bidder which uh Jason is still in the process of reviewing those bids as far as he wants there's some questions that he has that he wants to address and um so we would want our best bet is to hold off on whether or not we award this or make a decision on it at this time um I I personally think that we're going to have to look at funding this because I I think down the road it's just going to get more expensive and it's not going to be price won't go down it's not going to go down and we run a risk if we refuse by only having four bids we run a real risk of having nobody bid again and I would feel differently about it if the bids were closer together so that everybody was in a game but we there's a pretty major discrepancy between the bridge of the bids so I I think we really run the risk of nobody bidding again and so I I think we need to really look seriously at the low bid here and see if we can come up with a way of funding it so so what will we be short we're I'm still talking with the state on trying to get an extra 400,000 or so uh yeah we're we're a little more than 400 short um we have about two two-thirds of the money and the states possibly can give us another 25,000 so that would be we would be up to like a little short like 425 but I don't you know we can't every bid is come in that way talking with the state every everybody's been surprised at how much they are and so I I don't know it's it's a decision we have to make if we don't do it we run the risk of not getting any bids possibly they handed out 18 sets sets of plans and we got four and we've got four bids roughly 18 sets but only 12 or legitimate bid packages going to legitimate contractors so to only get four bids and have them three being really high and close and then one being halfway reasonable or pretty reasonable we we figured um if we could have done it three years ago we might have been able to get it for that but how everything worked out it just didn't happen so well you look compared to the school and that's bargain huh yeah but it just goes to show what we're faced with down the road I mean if you take on a project like the school and you you run into something like this where you have a what 15 that bridge goes to 15 people plus recreational place force you know forestry and all that you know it's something we're lucky that the forest service is coughing up yeah that would be difficult for us to turn our back on that funding because it may never come back to us again right um that that is almost a gift that we should not refuse yeah well there's no guarantee we would be able to hold the funding for it for three years down the road and then no guarantee the price would be anywhere near what it is now two rivers doesn't have any avenue for us to go knocking on grant doors at this time and the only money coming but it's not here yet for the infrastructure bill the widened infrastructure bill and uh it's not downloaded to us yet so I don't know if we would be able to apply for funding on a project that we already have planned for this year that's the next batch of funding that's coming is infrastructure which would be designed for this but it's not here yet so we continue to dig with shovel we're working for you folks so we're kind of just going to look and see where the where we might possibly address the funding issue and we'll go from there but I believe we have a 30 day window that we have to make a decision and so how far into that 30 days are we already 10 days or so that's from the day the bids were open so it's uh the 17th February so we really need like the 12th I think of of March right that we need to make a decision on the next meeting yeah Martha yeah Martha I was just going to say that when the meeting at which you opened the bids was the 17th of February so it gives you to the so at the next so you're saying now that you'll you're just feeling that you're going to make a decision at the next regular select board meeting on the 13th or an emergency meeting or an emergency meeting I guess what we're saying is we're not going to make a decision tonight okay but you need to make a decision by March 17th is what I should say uh March 30 days from February that would be 30 days from when you opened the bids yeah right right well there's only 28 days of February so you got to knock a couple days off of it and and we'll probably be more equipped to make a decision when we hear back from the engineer because he had some questions about the bids and and he was going to address those that he was going to get back to us so I think we'll wait till we hear hear that and then we can figure it out okay thank you yeah thank you okay any any um good ideas from the crowd about where we can come up with a quick $500 you got a couple extra bucks in your pocket you want a big sale boy too bad Irene just didn't just have one more kick for that one more no um so I guess well um it's too bad we couldn't build a road and forget the bridge yeah coming on the pink side there but it's steep enough you couldn't do it well on the other side of the money spectrum we did finally succeed in getting the um some reimbursement from is this from FEMA or the state this is our last um reimbursement from FEMA so the 16,530 is the Cat Z so that's like the uh Jones time that she spent on the FEMA work and then the 31,168 is the state's portion so those will be our two final and these were regarding which project April 2019 20 21 22 23 wow yeah four years I've done a lot well okay well that's accepted huh yeah the total total that you're that you're receiving I'm sorry I'm confused aren't there two there there's two toes one of them is 16,530 17 and the other one is 31,168 94 and they're both but they're both basically from FEMA you could say that yep okay thank you very much I'm sorry I didn't hear the correct figures before okay um in various other locations it would have been all the um not the Bepple Mountain all the um sites right yeah oh the site Sky Hollow and yeah and uh Maple Hill wing firm there were like 26 sites yeah yeah at least 21 yeah there's a bunch of them yeah a lot of paperwork okay it's a lot easier to talk about accepting money than spending money isn't it that's been hard money to get yeah yeah we haven't got it yet no we haven't in that um that will allow us to be put into the pool to receive the funds so it's still going to be some time before we get it that's great we're just jumping in the pond with with that signature there buddy okay all right um Tony got any um reports from the library tonight once they last uh Thursday's paper had a lot of information about things going on at the library but one that I think I should mention is the uh great uh decisions discussion which will start again uh April 18th and they run for something like eight eight different Tuesdays I believe so I think that was mentioned there but there's there'll be a lot of information about that all right you guys are talking about great decisions that have been made at the select board yeah any um highway is pretty self-evident they've been just working away at keeping the roads clear yeah they've they've had their their issues but you're bound to it's equipment always always some issues yeah they've been busy they're just miserable little storms where they have to do some work and can't really settle on anything else but things are they're moving along yeah they're doing as all they can so right they had started on some mud season work and then then it regressed back to winter so it seemed to have a tough time getting in gear for certain things yeah so um terry you um our contract for the spring walk around I think that was the wise decision to make that a three-year contract and yeah a yearly contract it's just been taking so long for me to get a contract over the sign usually we're late so this way yeah we'll have to deal with it I think it's I mean you're not going to change engineers at this point because it costs us a fortune to have a new company come in and redo our whole system and the fire department got their new truck we got a new truck you got to exercise it already no no not yet we tore the old one apart or we can get done fighting the fire so everybody's really happy for a long day in for nothing get them up early in the morning but yeah it'd be we got it so we can use it but it's not nearly ready it's gonna take some time we spent a considerable time today and tomorrow it'd be a couple weeks where it's all back together all right um this Jeff get part in in the wings there yep good evening Jeff good evening all uh well I heard it already mentioned it's the library that's most of what's on my plate um moment I've been working with uh two rivers out of qui chi seeing if we can shoehorn that project into the municipal energy resilience program that's ARPA money have provided uh two rivers out of qui chi with detailed information on the town buildings and it appears really that the library is the critical one at the moment not so much on the energy standpoint but on the building preservation standpoint due to the fact that water is getting behind the cladding particularly badly on the north wall and we have roof leakage this project is going to be very expensive today window estimates came in and frankly I'm not that happy with the efficiency of the windows they chose to estimate but they are quite costly and that's six windows um we're going about 700 uh $3,700 just for weather resistive barrier and the tapes that go with it um the problem is is that we have wood cladding over nothing there's no weather resistive barrier there to kick water back out onto the face of the cladding so we have to remove all of the cladding um and which is um lead painted and so there's additional expense in the in the abatement there we have to basically uh scaffold in cocoon the the building to do the demolition um we did have a high school site visit um a while back Robert mayor and I were able to round up all of what we know to be existing for blueprints for the building and to get that on to the school system those have been digitized so that they can be further analyzed. Lyle um I wasn't able to attend but Matt Sharp from Efficiency Vermont came down and did a walkthrough with the former facilities person Lyle Smith who was helping out the supervisor reunion um they did a walkthrough and infrared thermography and identified some huge holes in the building um large relief not valves doors um frankly I don't know understand that what they were I'm not that familiar with commercial construction but in any case there were enough very large holes filled that we should see a significant reduction in fuel consumption in that building going forward. And you know listening to skate space discussion um you know it really seems like we need a grant writer in this town or a grant to get a grant writer in this town uh Dean's working on a scope of work I'm working on a scope of work for a live for the library but I'm not familiar with how with grant writing procedures and and whatnot I do feel like I'm spending half my time attending grant writing workshops and workshops about grants that are available um so you know just I have to wonder whether we've got the right people doing the right thing um you know the obviously one needs a scope of work to apply for a grant but I think there's some other skills in grant application and acquisition that I don't know of or have um but as I've got I've gotten most of the lumber materials pricing back and so now I have to do the estimate of actually how much of each of those things are necessary or needed um we'll need to do a review to see whether all of the efficiency things that were listed in prior records from the town uh you know for things upgrades done to the library if there's significant ones there that were not done this would be an opportunity to get that taken care of um so that's that's pretty much it there's just a lot of estimating to do to come up with cost and I heard a number floated today that isn't going to cut it um so yeah yeah it's going to be a costly project I'm afraid Jeff have you uh looked into utilizing two rivers for grant writing I'm sorry pat patty I could not uh hear utilizing two rivers to assist you in the grant writing um I will if they are available to do that I'm happy to use them yeah I mean I'm I'm working with harry falconer on this uh municipal energy resilience program I have done the latest things that he has requested and I haven't heard anything back but I was off with my granddaughter's last week well thank you for your energy and time spent on all this can we continue absolutely thank you yeah speaking of grant updates what's on here um yeah the only other thing that I have is that we received um our reimbursement for the security cameras at the fire department so that's all closed out that was quick easy um we will be looking at some point john has a request for the upper part of beffel mountain that we'll have to look at and see what what that is um I've had talk with chris bump about projects coming forth for the town whether what we need and what our needs are john put together an assessment of the beffel mountain that where he thought we could go and I've yet to address that with chris but I'll take care of that soon after we get through a few of these other things you know I have to do it soon I think we have to put that request in sometime in april I believe isn't that right christen I think yeah yep so we'll be we'll be doing it shortly at some point the old business got any um old business that we haven't touched upon nope any um public comment from folks in the room or on zoom well I've been hearing a little about about we aren't going to be connected with the grandville of rescue first response is not that we're not going to be connected with that word we've been trying to actually improve it and and stimulate conversation around it there's been some do you want to speak on this pet we did do a decrease in their funding but we still funded them at 50 percent a little more than 50 percent of what they requested um there were some deficiencies that they're already showing some improvements but we are also taking a step back and looking at the service that werver provides you understand that this is not affecting werver coming over the mountain the ambulance still comes okay um that can take a while and and they are they are responding to calls when they go out so um the the first responders are the ones that come and they can you know give you oxygen and tend to you but they can't transport you so we're taking a little bit of a step back and analyzing whether or not it would be wise to pull the communities together throughout the whole valley and improve the service so that perhaps we could we have a lot of emt's in this valley at this point in time and um perhaps use their services and improve the service to a point where we could transport and that way it would eliminate maybe werver coming over the mountain waiting for werver to come over if we if we would allow them to expand into this valley and utilize the resources of the people the emt's that we have here it's still preliminary so um we're we're exploring but if you don't take a step back every 10 years ago or so and look at your population your demographic and your needs which also includes some back country rescue um this is exactly what we're doing we're just taking a step back and looking what what in the meantime we still have the same oh yes i have a scanner they're they're they're they're responding there's yeah no we we did not terminate their service no no we encourage them to continue on the path that they're they're going on and uh they have some very good members and uh we we we don't want to discourage or eliminate that we want to enhance it and make it better all right i guess we'll um bring this meeting to close and and um let's go home and wait for it to snow again oh yeah tonight thank you all for coming thank you thank you


My name is Ted Hills, I'm a data architect, consultant, author, and educator with Concepts and Objects, LLC, which is my own consulting company. My learning plan with the Diversity Training Center is focused on a data modeling notation called the Concept and Object Modeling Notation. I developed it because we have emerging data technologies, especially no-sequel database technologies. We also have big data needs and other nontraditional data needs, and entity relationship data models and other data modeling notations just can't step up to the challenges of modeling the new data. And even more importantly, of representing unstructured data the way it comes into us from the world as opposed to the highly planned data that entity relationship models usually represent. There's a lot of value in data that businesses can't always access because the data is poorly documented or it's poor quality or they don't understand it. So I help them organize their data, document their data, understand their data, add semantic technology into their existing data, and get more value out of it.


Welcome to Business on the Web. These days, many companies do business on the internet. Usually, this is done with a business website. Big companies like Etsy and Amazon have websites. So do small companies like local restaurants and stores. People can also have personal websites for selling goods and services. In this module, you are going to learn how to create and design business websites.  There are a lot of free website builders online. They make creating websites pretty easy to do. First, you select a web building site. Then you choose a style and add the information you want on your website. You're also going to learn some language for business. For example, you will learn how to write emails for inquiries. To inquire means to ask for something like information. You will also learn to write emails for responses. That means replying to inquiries and complaints. You will learn how to write all of this in letters. Now here's the really fun part of this module. We are going to create a corporate classroom. That means you will build mock business websites. Mock means not real, but made to look real. Each person will choose a type of company. You will create and design a website. And then each person will send emails or letters to the other companies in the classroom. Then you will respond to the emails or letters. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? It will be the end.