and welcome to the 3.30 session of the 2020 Open Simulator Community Conference. In this session, we are happy to introduce a session called The Creativity Panel. Our host is Maria Koroloff, and she is joined by her federal panelists, Lisa Laxton and Mike Laurie. Maria Koroloff is a published author and covers artificial intelligence for CIO Magazine and cybersecurity for CSO Online. She's also the editor of Hypergrade Business since 2009. During her 20 years as a journalist, she's run a business news bureau in Shanghai, covered wars in the former Soviet Union, and wrote about local politics for the Chicago Tribune. Lisa Laxton is the research and development visionary and CEO of Open Simulator Community, focused foundation called Infinite Metaverse Alliance, She is also the president of Laxton Consulting LLC with experience in providing various virtual world technology solutions for education, research, business, and defense clients. Mike Laurie is a versatile entrepreneur with extensive virtual world, virtual finance, management, and IT experience. He built one of the top 25 virtual reality development companies in Second Life in 2006 with less than $200 in startup capital, reaching a quarter million dollars in annual revenues in less than a year and providing the first virtual stock exchanges. Please check out the website located at conference.opensimulator.org for speaker bios, details of the sessions, and the full schedule of events. Now this session is being streamed, live streamed and recorded, so if you have questions or comments during the session, you may send tweets to at OpenSimCC with the hashtag OSCC20. And welcome everyone, let's begin the session. Thank you for that introduction. Hi everybody, this is me again, for those of you who are here for the panel earlier today about the hypergrid. Today we're gonna talk about creativity in OpenSim and we've got two very highly creative people here on the stage with me today. Now OpenSim is a great place for creativity. The land costs are low or free and hypergrid travel means that you can have a home-based region that you can build on to your heart's content and invite people from all over the universe to come and visit it, which is really, really cool and fantastic for creators. And there are also lots of grids that are out there that focus on creativity and the arts and everything else. Before we get to all that, we're gonna be discussing these topics later on. First, I wanna ask Lisa Laxton to talk a little bit about her work as a consultant and her work for the Infinite Metaverse Alliance. And she works with education, business, research and defense clients and building projects. And so she's interested in collaborating to advance virtual world technology and improve accessibility. And her latest project is the Magnolia Gardens of Knowledge. So Lisa, can you talk to us about what you're working on these days? Sure, thank you, Maria. And thank you, Lear and Mike and everyone here at the conference. I see Terrence out in the audience. Welcome to OpenSim. I hope everybody is staying safe and healthy. First, what is Magnolia Gardens of Knowledge? Let me talk about that. My mother, one of the original founders of IMA who loves to garden had a vision where users would be able to learn about plants and flowers in a virtual world. This inspired me to design Magnolia Gardens of Knowledge and it is dedicated to her. But I took the design quite a bit further. So that not only could users do that but could also learn to use the viewer if they are a new user to interact with digital teaching assistants that I call Ditas. These are NPCs when an educator is not available and experience a live interactive virtual garden with task oriented attendant NPCs. And I'll talk more about that. I wanted to find a creative way to provide a demonstration of how educators could use virtual world to teach non-virtual world skills in just about any topic. So I proposed a design to some of the IMA community as an IMA community project and for some help. To accomplish this, we decided to use new avatars for the NPCs and the open source setter farm project. We had many flowers and plants to make so it became a team effort where others helped build the objects. You'll see some of the images from Magnolia Gardens on the screen behind me. And we also needed to create the garden scape and the new avatars that we would be using. So I want to give great thanks and a shout out to Rosa, Alexi, Timberwolf and Joe Quirian for their help on this project. So what makes this project different from other gardens that you can find in OpenSem? Yeah, that's a good question. What makes it unique? I've got a long answer for that, so bear with me. This is a demonstration of using OpenSem affordances or DITOS to provide introductory learning about any topic with concrete visible parts. It introduces the parts here, garden plants, showing 3D images of them in a typical location which is situated learning. The garden shows a virtual place can be set up to introduce the subject. Almost any course of instruction begins with at least one unit about the parts. The learner should be able to name any instance of an important part and should be able to find instances of a part when given the name. If the part has normal locations, the learner should initially seek instances there, but the locations could change and we did that intentionally. The four DITOS interactively teach users about the basics of using the scene gate viewer, which is an IMA project and to interact with the virtual world while learning real world processes associated with harvested garden items as an example use case. These were developed using first generation adaptive AI. Each user experience is different because they have many paths of learning that they can follow when they interact with the DITOS. Adaptive AI is more than just a chat bot, but it has a limit of permutations based on the number of choices that the users have. This is well suited for self-paced learning, which was behind the design. The next generation research will integrate DITOS with an external AMO server. For those who don't know what that is, that's artificial intelligence markup language to add intelligence to the DITOS. So DITOS 1 right now teaches the basics of navigation and camera zoom. DITOS 2 teaches sitting, working with your AO, how to use your sound controls and your camera tools. DITOS 3 teaches advanced object interaction with a real world process simulation. And DITOS 4 teaches the user how to get and attach a wearable rod to go fishing from inventory and to use voice. So we had a fun time when the virtual world MOOC folks came to visit last year. I believe we had one user who found out she lost her fish because she was too far away from the fish bucket when she caught it. Now more DITOS are planned for advanced social skills. New users need to learn like buying and wearing clothes, using a HUD, driving vehicles and dancing. These are things that most of us really take for granted because we've been in virtual world for quite some time. Now you mentioned that you also stimulate some real world processes in this garden. Are they biological processes or more? And are they interactive with the people who come and visit? Well, first we have to talk about the interactivity and then we can talk about the process. There are five task oriented NPCs. You may recognize some of these from the set of farm project in terms of what they do, even though we made new NPCs for that purpose. What's different about them versus the regular set of farm NPCs is each of these have their own specialty. Their custom program to tend the garden objects in different ways and this has been adapted from that project. Our 2D2 tends to crops. Azalea tends to flowers and plants. Anemone tends to the animals. Antonio tends to the trees. Anarmin is learning to tend to the grounds. The items chosen by the NPCs to plant and harvest are randomized. The planted items are not identified in text like they are with the standard set of farm items. This forces the learner to learn about the plants near the entrance that are linked to authoritative webpages from the National Gardening Association. Learners can do the same things the attendant NPCs can do if they're not wearing a group tag because the garden does not belong to a group unlike the standard set of farms. So users or learners can learn from the NPCs and by doing. And so this is about the real world simulations, not just the things you learned about open sim but about actual world stuff. Right, now we take that a step further into an actual process simulation. The user enters the Magnolia Gardens in a cave with buildings on each side. Now one side of the building has what I call advanced tools. These interactive objects emulate items like a sun jar, cooktop, juice press, a dehydrator, a fine grinder, an infuser, cold storage, dry storage and of course water sources. Some of these items don't exist in the Satter Farm Project objects. So we created those and then provided the scripting behind them. On the wall, there's a map of these tools along with a tutorial and a process flow chart. So learners can follow the written tutorial to learn to make apple cider or they can interact with D2-3 to learn about and how to make essential oils. And this is based on real-world information. So not all the ingredients needed for the different recipes are contained in the cold and dry storage. To get some ingredient, you need to learn to make them by following the extraction processes. So a new user is actually engaged in a real-world simulation but they're also learning to work with the objects interactively. With this type of self-paced learning, users gain knowledge and skills for both virtual and non-virtual worlds. So some learning principles include social learning, situated learning, spatial memory, concept maps and road maps. It's likely we will spin off similar projects for other topics, including role play. So this is a work in progress. All right, now if people wanna visit the hyper-good address is up on the screen and I'm gonna post it in text chat below. Are there any other places that people can go to, to find this work that you're working on? Well, to visit Magnolia Gardens, right now we have the fully interactive MPC Sim is over in the development region that is accessible but if they visit the Magnolia Gardens that's contained in IMA Outpost Alpha, they can interact with all of the Ditas and that gives them a really a good start. They can also interact with the garden plants but the MPCs that are attending the garden are not active right now. They will be very soon. Very cool. We'll be updating that after we finish a little bit more testing of some customizing that I've been doing. Now there is a video of the full interaction here at this link that I posted in chat. That is part of our playlist from the IMA YouTube channel and Selby also has a blog article he wrote after the Virtual World MOOC visit last year and you'll see a link to that article in chat as well. Now I would love to have more visitors get more feedback and I'm happy to answer any questions and consider new topics. All right, please, if anybody has any questions you can put them in local text chat and we can get around probably after we finish the introductions. Did you see the quest? Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were wanting them. They're going to heck. And Lisa, somebody's asking you for contact information and she's already posted it in the local chat. So that was pretty fast. So I want to introduce my floor. Maria, just a minute, I know I missed some questions. I can see the last one, something about business processes. I'm open to ideas, so contact me because I have a bunch of them on my top of my head. Go ahead. All right, so here we have this robot, half robot sitting on the blue couch is Mike Laurie. He's the CEO of Galactic Systems, which is a software development company focusing on VR, AR and blockchain technologies. And some of you might know him from Second Life where he built one of the top 25 virtual reality development companies with a quarter million dollars in annual revenues in less than a year, 53 regions full of paying customers. He's also behind the first virtual stock exchanges and helped capitalize dozens of other virtual businesses. But today he's gonna talk about some of his projects in OpenSim and he has a lot of projects going on. He teaches a Blender class every Sunday about how to use Blender, which is a 3D, free 3D modeling program. He also chairs the exhibits committee of the International Space Flight Museum and he's helping build and use Star Wars role-playing community, which all sound super interesting. And let's start with the most useful one, the Blender classes. Can you talk about Blender and why it's important to creators in OpenSim and how you got into all this? Well, I joined Kitely in 2016 after a number of years away from OpenSim just because I wanted to create scenery for the cover of a novel I had written. And I discovered that there wasn't content available to create the scene, so I had to make it and using the in-world building tools wasn't to the fidelity I wanted. So I had to learn how to use Blender. So at the time there was a group of Blender teaching group and I learned Blender with them. And eventually I wound up taking over that group. And it's really essential to know some type of modeling application to build efficient builds for OpenSim. One of the problems in Second Life and OpenSim is that most of the lag comes from the inefficiencies of the builds. The in-world building tools are great for people to learn to build. But as meshes, they're extremely inefficient and they cause a lot of computational burden on the computer and the server that is the main source of lag other than other communications-based sources that we deal with. And so that was why eventually Lyndon Lab enabled people to create mesh for Second Life and now we can do it in OpenSim is that a mesh is far more efficient. You can render the same shape for 10 to 20% of the number of vertices and triangles that you can render the same object built with prints. And because of that, you can have a lot more detail in the things you build if you make it with mesh and you can have more stuff in the same lending area. So it reduces lag for everybody. And at the same time, it increases standard frame rate performance for people. So you don't need a super high-end computer as much now as it used to be in Second Life. Just trying to go on the mainland in Second Life used to be terrible with the amount of lag if you didn't have a top-end machine. So every Sunday, 6 p.m. in the Space Force region in Kitely, we sit down and we do screen sharing on a media on a prim and show step-by-step through different steps of processes of using Blender for different functions to create mesh for OpenSim. That's really cool. I get a lot of people coming to these classes. It varies from week to week. We range from between two to sometimes as many as a half dozen. Getting the word out more is important. And I'm not the only person who teaches there. Occasionally, we get Kayaker coming in to talk about a given topic. One of the, we teach everything from the basic intro to using Blender up to much more advanced things like rigging mesh for avatar shapes and clothing and so forth, which is a very advanced topic that's particularly given issues with the various plugins for creating rigged mesh. We've been helping to reverse engineer that process to make it easier so that people can make rigged mesh without buying the Avastar plugin. So they'll be able to do rig mesh completely with just the free Blender application. Now the announcements are posted on the Kytli calendar. So people can find out what events are happening and what the schedule is. Yep. All right. And I've posted a link to one of those announcements in the chat here. So if people don't know how to find Kytli announcements, they can just look on that. I'm sorry. Yes, it was four p.m. The six p.m. is another meeting. So the other thing is we mentioned the International Space Flight Museum. And that's what we have a six p.m. meeting on Sundays in Kytli for that. And so we build spacecraft rockets all sorts of exhibits to document and educate people about the entire history of human spaceflight, not just from the U.S. but from all countries. And so it's a real educational resource, not just for OpenSim, but for people bringing different schools into, school classes into OpenSim, particularly in the current era. It's a great educational resource for school kids. And so one of the things that we need to do is we just expanded what we have from two regions that were, I believe, two by two in size, each one. And we've expanded to an eight by eight mega region. And so we're doing a big expansion in our exhibits. We have the normal rocket exhibit sim and then we have a Mars colony exhibit that we've been working on recently. And we're gonna be expanding to have a lunar colony exhibit and Europa and Titan and some other locations around the solar system. And so one of the things we've been implementing is a bidding process so that when we have a need for exhibits we can put up a request for proposals to the public and so that anybody can submit a bid to build an exhibit for us and they can specify how much they need to be paid for and we select the winner based upon what they're offering to build and for how much. And so anybody that's interested in participating in this competitive bidding process can attend our Sunday 6 p.m. ISM meetings in Kitely in the ISM sandbox region any Sunday. So this Sunday, next Sunday, et cetera, and sign up. And so you'll get notices when we have RFPs going out and you can bid for this on a paying basis. Thank you. I just posted a link to that as well as well as to the Kitely calendar so people can see both of those events are listed on the Kitely calendar. Yeah, so now you also talked to me about you're working on role-playing projects and can you talk about what you're doing to bring role-playing groups into open set? Well, I'm a big Star Wars nut and sci-fi nut as you can probably tell from my avatar. I used to do Star Wars role-play in Second Life and since coming to open SIM given the much more affordability of working in open SIM than Second Life, I've wondered why we don't get more people and groups migrating from Second Life to open SIM because most of the role-playing groups' content is built by the players themselves and they should be able to port it pretty easily. So this is starting to happen. We're seeing, for instance, there's been a large migration recently of pirate combat groups from Second Life coming into open SIM, particularly with the advent of the mega regions in Kitely, they're seeing a lot joining Kitely there because of the large size and the smooth operations of Kitely regions. And so I run a SIM called Naboo which is modeled on the planet in episode one of Star Wars. And so I built the full-scale model of Ganga city where Jar Jar banks and his people are from. And so we've been solely building up Naboo over time and there's another SIM owner is starting, he's got a couple of regions of his own that he's been opening up. And so we're hoping to encourage more people who are interested in various role-playing to get together, to try to organize. Part of role-playing aside from creating the content is building the community. And so you need to have groups together as you can't just be the creator sitting down, creating the stuff. You need to have people who want to role-play with it and getting people involved in that. And so given the current conditions it seems like a lot of us have a lot more free time on our hands now indoors than we used to. And so it seems like a great time where role-playing is something that can really help us occupy our time and while maintaining social connections and so forth. So I invite people to join us if you're interested in science fiction role-play to join with us. There's the Pirates groups. And if there's other role-playing groups we'd love to hear from you and try to build a broader role-playing community in an open scene. Now for people who don't know I want to explain a little bit about Megaworlds. This is Kitely's answer to variable-sized regions. A lot of grids offer similar packages. Kitely's has some interesting performance enhancements. So you get for a hundred bucks a month you get 64 regions which is less than $2 a region. You get 150,000 prims and you have up to 80 avatars on this land area which is all region it's all basically it acts as one big giant region that's eight by eight. So that's really new. Kitely just rolled that out this fall. So now Kitely isn't the only grid where stuff is happening. So I wanna talk to both of you about what you're seeing on the open sim grids. We have Franco grid and Kraft and OS grid that are well-known for museums and art exhibits and other sort of events. And we have low-cost things that people run on their own servers or self-hosted regions that they attach to OS grid for free and as well as niche private grids. So Lisa, can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing and especially I know you wanted to say something about niche private niche grids. Sure. The one thing I have to say is I can't recommend any one place to go visit because there is so much creativity out there and I don't want to say that, oh, this is the grid that does art and this is the grid that does music and so on and so forth because there are individual creators that have regions and parcels that have done some amazing things that you wouldn't even know to find on those grids. So the key here is that most of the grids, out on the hyper grid, are niche grids. They do have themes that go along with them. They're not trying to be the next Philip Linden, the next Second Life or whatever because that has been tried and it's failed because this is a decentralized protocol and that makes it really good for niche grids. But from a home-based grid perspective, there are some trade-offs from a community perspective but the community, I believe, needs to come together and find some solutions to those negatives that we do see where you may have a non-technical person administering a grid and they create some issues that might impact the hyper grid protocols in terms of the way they may modify their databases, et cetera, we do need to find some trade-off solutions. Now, if you're looking to find events that are happening such as music events or art events, one of the most popular places, opensimworld.com, I've posted a link to their events calendar and they also have directories of regions organized by category such as, for example, art and I've posted a link to their art category and there's a few other directories and lots of Facebook groups. Google Plus used to be the place but that's been shut down. So now there are several Facebook groups, if you search for opensim, they will come up and there's a lot of events happening throughout that you can look for. Mike, would you like to add anything about what you're seeing? Well, from a role-play perspective, there's another big role-play community there are Star Trek role-players on the third rock grid, which is a nice, I would say it's a small to midland grid, very user-oriented and the kind of science fiction-y orientation in a lot of its content, good people run that so I can recommend that. For in terms of event notifications, there used to be a service called Hype Events which basically- That still exists. It's, they still exist. Oh yeah. Their boards seem to stop working but they're great because they aggregate the event postings of a lot of different grids. So it's easy to have those all put together with that. I love the opensim world so- There's just a different post now. You probably just need the new link. Okay, that's great to hear. The opensim grid site is a great place. The one thing that annoys me about that is I have to keep going in and renewing my events every week. There's no repeat posting. That's annoying. So if they could do something where it would be easier to have repeat events without having to redo that all the time, it would probably be a big help I think. But so yeah. A big promotion is a big topic that I think as a community we might be able to come up with a little bit better solution than what's out there now. So I posted the link to Third Rock Grid in chat and I also posted the new link to the Hype Events calendar. So you can subscribe to that as well. On Third Rock Grid, just one other note. The Star Trek Group which is United Federation Starfleet is also associated with the Second Life Group. Okay, so now there's also quite a few niche grids like Naira's Nook for writers. There's science fiction themed grids. There's a new vampire grid that just popped up. And if you have an event that you'd like to promote or anything like that in addition to posting in directories that are listed, you can also get a free add on HyperGrid Business. If you want to write up your event or promote an event that's coming up, you can submit an article, all this is free. Please, you're welcome to do that. I'm going to post my email in chat so that we can do that. And there's also the Hyperica Directory which is now owned by Fred Beckinson that also has an in-world system that works with the viewers as well. So one of the things that comes up when creators talk about OpenSim is the question of content protection. There's a feeling, especially, I think it was especially strong maybe 10 years ago that people weren't safe, that content wasn't safe in OpenSim. And can you guys talk about that, Lisa? Yeah, I mean, for me, this is a really complex topic and it really needs its own panel session. So I had it in my mind after some discussion with quite a few people before the conference that we really need to host a panel on that and I'm open to anyone who would like to talk to me about their ideas on how we might want to put that panel together. We really do need to start looking at that from a developer's perspective of what we can do to help assure merchants that their content is not as susceptible as they believe. Mike? I find it interesting when people in second life denigrate OpenSim and claim that everybody here has a bunch of copy-botters and outside of one particular grid I won't name, I haven't met any other copy-botters in OpenSim. But I find it interesting that they claim that everything here has been stolen from second life while a second life wasn't so insecure then nothing here would be stolen. And so really if we're going to keep OpenSim connected in any way technologically with the second life platform, the onus really is on Linden Lab to make their grid more secure for content creators. And if otherwise the people of OpenSim really should have a conversation and make a decision about whether to stay technologically connected to second life in their platform or to go off and to modify the OpenSim code base to make it more secure. And by doing so, this would make OpenSim a greater value proposition to people than second life is. And it would attract more people to come here than to stay in second life. Right. Right. Now people say that because you can give yourself God powers in OpenSim or teleport to a grid that has God powers in OpenSim that it's easy to steal content here. But I want to set the record straight since I'm on the stage. You can copy bot anything in second life as easily as you can in OpenSim.  That's where the content is. The only difference, the only extra thing you can do in OpenSim is scripts. If you have high end scripted content then God powers can give you access to that. So if you have, if you're a creator with very high end scripted content, a type of good business I recommend that you can stick to grids that either are close to the hyper grid or restrict travel in the hyper grid to content like Kitely does. They filter content that's not allowed to travel if the creator doesn't want to allow it to travel and several other grids do the same thing. Or you can move the script server side. So the script isn't on the object itself but it runs like somewhere else on your own servers so that the secret sauce of your application isn't accessible in the world. Exactly, exactly. And this is where my comments from my previous panel really tie in here is that utilizing encryption technologies like those used in blockchain is really essential to helping to secure the assets of creators in OpenSim because with smart contracts on a blockchain you can build into smart contracts the heuristics that will ensure that if someone, if let's say I have a car and I put it on a smart contract on the blockchain and people buy it and someone resizes it and they use a ripping app to copy bot the car and then they try to turn around and they try to sell it as their own. Well, they've got to sell it through a smart contract on the same blockchain and the blockchain sees their upload and it compares the mesh pattern and it can compare the textures. And so it can do a heuristic comparison of how the consanguinity of the two pieces of content say, okay, this is 50% or 80% or 90% identical to this other contract. So you want to decline the upload or pay that contract a royalty. And so that way you can create this chain of royalties and enforce it through the heuristics of the smart contract system. And that protects creators rights because it ensures that even if you try to bypass the whole blockchain by ripping and reuploading the heuristics of the smart contract system catch that and enforce a royalty system. And the other thing that I want to add is that nothing gets rid of stolen content faster than good inexpensive legitimate content. We saw that happen with music and with videos because we have Spotify, we have Netflix and the amount of illegal downloads, they're such a pain, they're hard to find, they're riddled with viruses. It's everybody has Netflix, everybody has Spotify. Similarly in OpenSim, we have a lot of creators who are selling and giving away original legally licensed content and we have the Kytley market. So today I needed a pair of glasses and instead of hunting around the hypergrid for it took me a couple of seconds to go to Kytley a few cents to buy it and I have my glasses that you can see me wearing right now. And that is just, I think that's just awesome that OpenSim now has that because it's so valuable. But there's one more thing I wanted to ask you guys before we go, and that's about OpenSim graphics and OpenSim technology. To me as a user, it doesn't seem to have changed that much over the past 10 years. We do have mesh now, but other than that I'm not seeing a lot of differences in the way that OpenSim looks now than it did 10 years ago. Is this a handicap to creativity or does this help creativity? Lisa, what do you think? Well, that's an interesting question. From a technical perspective, obviously we need to update the viewers to support industry standard formats like GLTF and X3D. Creators can also include AI powered chat bot as part of their creative project. And that can help us get up to speed with user expectations from a video game community perspective, that's what they're used to seeing. So we need to do something about quality. When you think about that quality of graphics you look at it from a user's perspective and Frank and I had a conversation about this in our meeting this past week. There was a study that he mentioned where users will accept and engage on platforms that either have low quality graphics or they have high quality graphics equally. They accept those as bad or good and then they focus on the features of what they can do in the virtual world. Second life in OpenSim suffer from being in between. So in my opinion, we can greatly improve the graphics and the user experience in OpenSimulator much of what we're working on at IMA are stepping stones toward that goal. We wanna make it more attractive to millennial users. We need developers of tomorrow so that developers of today have someone to pass the torch to. So the platform is sustainable and we can grow that community of users. This in turn helps all of us attain our objectives whether it's education, commerce, medical benefit or socialization. So that's my two cents. Well, there's kind of two sides to that. Number one is complexity, okay? People tend to put too much detail into the mesh when it doesn't need to be there. The first mesh I uploaded in Kitely when I first joined was a bong and I was so impressed that I could upload a bong with 250,000 triangles in it. And I thought that was awesome but it crashed my viewer because it was so complex, okay? And people tend to, you know and like Green was mentioning in the comments that a lot of people just download junk off of free content download sites but the problem is those meshes are very, very complex and people just download it from the sites and they upload it to OpenSim and they upload it to Second Life and it's highly complex and it completely defeats the purpose of having mesh in OpenSim and Second Life which is to make it more efficient so that there's less lag on the server and less lag on the viewer. And so we really need creators to be a lot more efficient about their mesh. So you can take a quarter million vertex mesh you download off of some free site and with a few simple tricks you can learn in my class so come on and attend. You can make that a much more efficient mesh that's maybe 20 to 10% of the total number of vertexes and triangles that are in whatever you downloaded and that makes it much more efficient. In the process of really optimizing their model and simplifying it so that it's a efficient triangle rendering they also have the opportunity to fix all those flip faces and those holes in the mesh that are just prevalent in a lot of things that you get off of some of these 3D modeling sites. Now, another side to it is in the texture rendering. Okay, now in the old days, we had just one texture you could apply to each face of a prim and that was it. And then you could add a little shiny to it and you could add a little bump map to it and so forth but there wasn't any other textures you could apply. Well, now we can apply three textures you can have the diffuse, which is the normal colored texture of the surface. Then we can have a normal, which is the bump map and you can make a custom normal map image for the bump map of an object. And then we have what's called the specular, which is essentially deals with the shininess and the environmental reflections of the object. So you can have three different and using multiple textures together like that is what we call in graphics physics-based rendering. And you can have complex textures for every feature of a rendered texture, whether it's the glow, whether it's the transparency, et cetera, et cetera. And we only use in OpenSim three of those types of textures and we could have more. And the more of those you use, the more physically realistic the world will look like. And secondly, there's another issue with the rendering engine in the viewer uses a color management system that is 30 years out of date. And this is something that I tell people in Blender is that the color management that we are seeing on the screen here was designed for using on cathode ray tubes. It was not designed for use with LCD screens. And so because of that are the range that what's called the gamut of colors that we can see here is very narrow, all right? And now if we went from a, what's called sRGB color management model to what's called a filmic management model, we could just that one change would make this whole scene look a lot more photorealistic. And that's something I encourage anybody in the audience that's on the OS viewer dev teams to look to try to work to change the color management model used by the viewers. Cause that one change will drastically change how great OpenSim looks. Well, we're gonna have to end that on this note, which is very disappointing to me cause I'd love to get into discussion of VR and what OpenSim can do in that. Cause I always, I always want to get into that discussion. But we don't. So like I said, you can email me. Lisa has also posted her email in chat if you have questions for us and the slides are available online. Thank you. And for those that have more interest in the scene gate viewer development, we'll be talking about that tomorrow morning. So be sure to attend that session. All right, fantastic. Hey, and thank you, Maria, Lisa and Mike for a terrific panel session. As a reminder to our audience, you can see what's coming up on the conference schedule at conference.opensimulator.org. Following this session, the next session will begin at 4 30 p.m. in this keynote region. And it's entitled, Staging Effective Graduate School Residencies in OpenSim VR, Methodologies and Insights. Also, we encourage you to visit the OSCC20 Posture Expo in the OSCC Expo 3 region to find accompanying information on the presentations and to explore the hypergrid tour resources in OSCC Expo 2 region, along with the sponsor and the crowd funder booths located throughout all of the OSCC Expo regions. Thank you again to our panelists and to the audience. Thanks, everyone. Thank you for having us. It's been a lot of fun. Yeah, this is great. Thank you.


Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, accompanied by Medal of Honor recipient, Captain Gary M. Rose, United States Army, retired. We recall the words of sacred scripture. No one has greater love than this than to lay down one's life for one's friends. Let us pray. Almighty God, source of our faith, our hope and our love, be present with us here now on this so important occasion for our nation as we recognize the extraordinary selfless service of Captain Mike Rose. His heroic acts of sacrifice reveal to us the true dignity of each and every one of us of all our brothers and sisters. May these few moments here today, in this example of Captain Rose's noble service, trace for us, for the world, the way of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. May his heroic acts stir within us all the sacred desire to serve our nation, to serve with honor, and to serve with these selfless acts that lead to peace. Amen. Please, thank you. Thank you very much, Japlin Hurley, Vice President Pence, Secretary Shulkin, members of Congress, members of the Armed Forces, and distinguished guests. Please join me in welcoming Captain Gary Michael Rose to the White House. For many years, the story of Mike's heroism has gone untold, but today we gather to tell the world of his valor and proudly present him with our nation's highest military honor. Joining Mike today is his wife, Margaret, their three children, Sarah, Claire, and Michael, and their two grandchildren, Caitlin and Christian. Caitlin and Christian, I want you to know that the medal that we will present today will forever enshrine your grandfather, and he is a good man. We just spoke to him for a long time, and you are great, great young people, but this will enshrine him into the history of our nation. We're also grateful to be joined by nine previous Congressional Medal of Honor recipients. Their courage, character, and conviction is beyond measure. Please stand. We are honored to be in their presence. This afternoon, I want to take a few moments to share with you the incredible story of Mike's heroic deeds. Raised in Watertown, New York, Mike's father was a metalworker and a World War II veteran. He taught his son that we live in the greatest country in the world and that we must love it, cherish it, and always defend it. Mike took that very much to heart. After his first year in college, he enlisted in the Army, and by the time he was 22, Mike was a medic for the fifth special forces group in the Vietnam War. On September 11th, 1970, Mike was called on his second combat mission. He was the only medic for 136 men who embarked on one of the group's biggest missions of the war, Operation Tailwind. Their goal was to prevent the North Vietnamese from funneling weapons along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to use against our American troops. Helicopters dropped the unit into Laos before they even touched the ground. Enemy fire struck three men. Once they landed in the clearing, they rushed to the jungle for much needed cover. Soon another man was shot outside their defensive perimeter. Mike immediately rushed to his injured comrade, firing at the enemy as he ran. In the middle of the clearing, under the machine gun fire, Mike treated the wounded soldier. He shielded the man with his own body and carried him back to safety. But this was just the beginning of Mike's harrowing four-day mission. Mike and his unit slashed through the dense jungle, dodged bullets, dodged explosives, dodged everything that you can dodge because they threw it all at him, and continuously returned fire as they moved deeper and deeper and deeper into enemy territory. Throughout the engagement, Mike rescued those in distress without any thought for his own safety. I will tell you, the people with him could not believe what they were witnessing. He crawled from one soldier to the next, offering words of encouragement as he tended to their wounds. On the second day, one of the Allied soldiers was shot outside their company perimeter. Again, Mike raced to the side of the soldier, exposing himself to constant fire. As bullets flew in every direction, Mike fired at the enemy with one arm while dragging the injured soldier back to the perimeter with the other. Soon after they returned to their unit, a rocket-propelled grenade exploded nearby and shot smoldering metal into Mike's back and into his leg. He was seriously, seriously wounded. The shrapnel left a gaping hole in Mike's foot. For the next 48 excruciating hours, he used a branch as a crutch and went on rescuing the wounded. Mike did not stop to eat, to sleep, or even to care for his own serious injury as he saved the lives of his fellow soldiers. On the second and final night of the mission, the enemy surrounded the company. All night long, Mike treated the wound and dug trenches to protect them from blazing rockets and grenades. After four days of constant engagement with the enemy and after successfully destroying an enemy base cap, Mike's unit prepared to evacuate. When the helicopters arrived, Mike fought back the enemy as his fellow soldiers boarded the aircraft. He boarded the last chopper, limping up to the craft while still warding off the enemy forces that were fast approaching. As Mike puts it, if you don't believe in God, then you should have been with us that day. And I can tell you, it'll make a believer out of you because we should not ever have survived. Mike, today we have a room full of people and the nation who thank God that you lived. Mike's story doesn't end there. Soon after the helicopter lifted off the ground, the chopper was hit by enemy fire. Mike, this is serious stuff. This was not a good four days. The bullets tragically struck a young Marine gunner in the throat. Again, Mike rushed to help. As he wrapped a cloth around the Marines neck, the engine of the helicopter failed and the aircraft crashed less than a mile from where it had taken off. Mike was thrown off the aircraft before it hit the ground, but he raced back to the crash site and pulled one man after another out of the smoking and smoldering helicopter as it spewed jet fuel from its ruptured tanks. Finally, another helicopter rescued them and by the time they reached the base, Mike was covered in blood. He refused treatment until all of his men had been cared for first. In every action during those four days, Mike valiantly fought for the life of his comrades, even if it meant the end of his own life.  Nations are formed out of the strength and patriotism that lives in the hearts of our great heroes. Mike never knew for certain whether or not that Marine gunner who was shot on the helicopter survived until earlier this year when Mike learned that the Marine had endured a painful and difficult recovery, but that he had made it and lived a long and very full life before passing away in 2012. As Mike said, that in itself made it all worth it. That Marine was one of many men Mike saved. Throughout those four days, Mike treated an astounding 60 to 70 men. Their company disrupted the enemy's continual resupply of weapons, saving countless of additional American lives. Today we are joined by many of Mike's brothers and arms who fought alongside him in Operation Tailwind, along with brave airmen and Marines who provided critical support throughout the mission. As Mike put it, if it wasn't for those air crews, all of us would still be in Laos. Among those here today are 10 members of Mike's unit.  Sergeant Major Morris Adair. Sergeant Don Boudreau. First Sergeant Bernie Bright. Captain Pete Landon. Sergeant Jim Lucas. Lieutenant Colonel Gene McCarly. First Sergeant Denver Minton. Sergeant Keith Planchett. Specialist 5, Craig Schmidt. And Staff Sergeant Dave Young. Thank you very much. To Mike and all of the service members who fought in the battle, you've earned the eternal gratitude of the entire American nation. You faced down the evils of communism. You defended our flag and you showed the world the unbreakable resolve of the American armed forces. Thank you and thank you very much. After serving in Operation Tailwind, Mike went on to become an officer in the Army and served for over 20 years. Now, Mike and his wife, Margaret. Margaret, stand up, Margaret. I met Margaret, Margaret's lovely. Reside in a fantastic place where I just left, Huntsville, Alabama, where he lives by a core conviction.  Mike volunteers with the American Legion, the Knights of Columbus, and many other organizations. He volunteers at a local soup kitchen, fixes broken appliances for elderly, and disabled neighbors donates his hair for those suffering from cancer, makes launches for children in need and organizes community gatherings to bring people closer together. Just something we need all over the world and certainly in our country. He's a loyal friend to his fellow service members, many of whom are in addition here today. And every Wednesday, Caitlyn and Christian come over for homework night with grandpa and grandma. I think Caitlyn and Christian will agree, and I just met them, you have to stand up. Come on, Christian. Come on, Caitlyn. But I think that Caitlyn and Christian will agree this field trip is their best homework assignment yet, right? What do you think, Christian? Yes, he said yes. I'm told that recently Christian asked his grandfather, what exactly is the Congressional Medal of Honor? That is a wonderful question, Christian. It's the award given to America's bravest heroes who earn our freedom with their sacrifice. Those who received the Medal of Honor went above and beyond the call of duty to protect their fellow service members and defend our nation. Caitlyn and Christian, you are about to witness your grandpa receive our nation's highest military honor. And America's about to witness Captain Gary Michael Rose recognized as the true American hero that he is, a patriot who never gives up, never gives in, and always stands strong for God, for family, and for country. Mike, we honor you. We thank you. We salute you. And with hearts full of admiration and pride, we present you with the Congressional Medal of Honor. And now I would like the military aid to come forward and read the citation. Thank you very much, thank you. The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, March 3rd, 1863, has awarded in the name of Congress the Medal of Honor to Sergeant Gary M. Rose, United States Army for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty, Sergeant Gary M. Rose distinguished himself by acts of gallantry and intrepidity while serving as a special forces medic with a company-sized exploitation force, special operations augmentation, command and control central, fifth special forces group airborne, first special forces Republic of Vietnam. Between 11 and 14 September, 1970, Sergeant Rose's company was continuously engaged by a well-armed and numerically superior hostile force deep in enemy-controlled territory. Enemy B-40 rockets and mortar rounds rained down while the adversary sprayed the area with small arms and machine gun fire, wounding many and forcing everyone to seek cover. Sergeant Rose, braving the hail of bullets, sprinted 50 meters to a wounded soldier's side. He then used his own body to protect the casualty from further injury while treating his wounds. After stabilizing the casualty, Sergeant Rose carried him through the bullet-ridden combat zone to protective cover. As the enemy accelerated the attack, Sergeant Rose continuously exposed himself to intense fire as he fearlessly moved from casualty to casualty, administering life-saving aid. A B-40 rocket impacted just meters from Sergeant Rose, knocking him from his feet and injuring his head, hand and foot. Ignoring his wounds, Sergeant Rose struggled to his feet and continued to render aid to the other injured soldiers. During an attempted medivac, Sergeant Rose again exposed himself to enemy fire as he attempted to hoist wounded personnel up to the hovering helicopter, which was unable to land due to unsuitable terrain. The medivac mission was aborted due to intense enemy fire and the helicopter crashed a few miles away due to the enemy fire sustained during the attempted extraction. Over the next two days, Sergeant Rose continued to expose himself to enemy fire in order to treat the wounded, estimated to be half of the company's personnel. On September 14th, during the company's eventual helicopter extraction, the enemy launched a full-scale offensive. Sergeant Rose, after loading wounded personnel on the first set of extraction helicopters, returned to the outer perimeter under enemy fire, carrying friendly casualties and moving wounded personnel to more secure positions until they could be evacuated. He then returned to the perimeter to help propel the enemy under the final extraction helicopter had arrived. As the final helicopter was loaded, the enemy began to overrun the company's position and the helicopter's marine door gunner was shot in the neck. Sergeant Rose instantly administered critical medical treatment on board the helicopter, saving the marine's life. The helicopter carrying Sergeant Rose crashed several hundred meters from the extraction point, further injuring Sergeant Rose and the personnel on board.  Sergeant Rose's extraordinary heroism and selflessness above and beyond the call of duty were critical to saving numerous lives over that four-day time period. His actions are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, the First Special Forces and the United States Army. Eternal God, we ask for your blessings, the blessings of this day to remain with us as we go forward. May we go forth in peace, empowered to serve with greater courage and strengthened to overcome the challenges of our service, of our call, given to serve all in need. And we ask all this in your holy name, amen.


I'm here. Okay, well, I guess we can start the meeting then. Yep, start with the Pledge of Allegiance. All right, I pledge allegiance to the flag. So much for technology start our meeting here seeing I have the agenda in front of me. We need a motion to approve the minutes. From our last meeting. I make the motion. I so move. Approved minutes. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. All right. Financial reports Joe. Well, you should have come gut suckers report for the month of July and things were starting to improve in July in terms of our water sales. We in terms of our residential sales were. Pretty close to last year. Then $2,100, which is not bad. Sheboygan falls and Kohler falls was actually up from last year and Kohler was a little bit down. But overall July came in looking more like a normal July than our prior months. However, year to date, we're still suffering from earlier changes in water consumption. We're down about half a million dollars from 2019 revenues at this point in the year. And I don't think we're going to recover that. I think we're just going to hold our own at that level, which, you know, isn't bad. There's nothing we can do about it. Could be a lot worse. See the return of rate basis dwindling. We're down to 1.26%. Otherwise the financials look strong and and normal. We do have a high cash balance again due to borrowing for the upcoming project in part. And also delaying some expenditures, capital projects for this year due to COVID. Pretty much my summary of July financials. Any questions of Joel on the financial reports? Oh, none for me. Not me either. For Joe, a superintendent's report. Well, an operations from a bill over in the plant. You can see for July kind of tied into the revenue. We're only down above 4% from last year in terms of water pumped pumped out of the plant. And that's not bad. Really can't complain about that. Our year to date. Average. So far it's 11.1 million gallons a day. In 2018 we're at 13.2 million gallons a day. So we've dropped off a fair bit. In that figure, but again, that's going to be reflected a lot by March, April and May in particular of this year. On July 22nd, we did pump 15 and a half million gallons. That's been our high. To date. You know, 10, 15 years ago, we would see figures more like 21 or 22 million. Things have changed. Otherwise than the plant, but it seemed like we had pretty cold water this year. Figure it's here somewhere, but the water temperature. I guess it was not all that different. 52 degrees on average for July last year was 46. I guess it's actually a little warmer than last year. Otherwise than the plant, you'll see a range of maintenance. You know, occasionally we, we have to do checks on the, on the ultraviolet system on the sensors. That work has become pretty routine for the maintenance texts over there. We did some, just a variety of. Operations in the plant as usual. I don't see anything really jumping out at me. One thing I thought was interesting, Joe was the electricity consumption for the office building. Yeah. What did you see there, Mark? Down quite a bit for electricity consumption for the office building. I assume that's credit to our solar system. That is. Yeah. In terms of the kilowatt hours, it's down a lot. You know, dollars saved is, it's not humongous, but the thing I like to keep in mind is that that's going to add up every month. Not always the same amount, but every month for the next. 20 years, the lifetime of that system, we're going to see that figure. More like a thousand dollars or less instead of something more like $2,000. So it is adding up and that's nice to see. Yeah, you're right about that. My understanding is when the solar system reaches the end of its life, it's not like it shuts off. It just decreases in effectiveness off. It'll be producing electricity for a long time. Yeah. I mean, it's all things that's now up and running. We forget about it. It's just there doing its thing. We don't have any electric vehicles yet to charge on that system, but we did that at your. Suggestion at that charging station, which we now have, and hopefully use that in the future. You have to get that. Yeah, I converted over to electric. Yeah.  That we just put a sign out on on the on the street saying we have a charging station, whatever they're charging at festival. We could charge and have another in revenue stream. We could. Or maybe get a utility vehicle. One of the new Mustang Machis. There you go. Well, they are making electric trucks and our guys did even point those out to me. So who knows, maybe one year we'll have a truck. Yep. But it's pretty much. Extent of operations and distribution. We had a very busy month with contractors and our own crew. A lot of activity on Gilea Avenue with the Dorner. Company installing a replacing main there. And getting ready to replace a bunch of lead service lines. Our newer engineer tech has been mostly inspecting that project. So that's good that he can be out and independent now. Down by a rock line. We've also got work taking place with vinten. Getting rid of some really old water main. And valve and hydrants. We did have a main break on Taylor drive. Stretch of. Area just seems to have corrosive soil. That main is not that old, but we've had a number of breaks in that 16 inch pipe. One was repaired. By the crew. And I should say. Just to remind the board a couple of months ago, the board authorized to purchase up an electronic leak correlator. A way to find leaks with. Instead of a manual way that we used to use. And the crew members are very happy with it now. And they've been able to basically pinpoint leaks. Oh, just using the device. And that just seems to be a good thing. And, you know, they're on labor putting these probes in and trying to listen. And, and. Not having to dig up pavement. Making a mistake. So that device has been well received by the crew. Excellent. It's a dividing rod, right? It does usually. Custom relations and fiscal. We had a. Act of July, as always. Many fewer people coming into the window. You know, 374 instead of 820 last year. More Dropbox famous and making up for that. Your calls coming in.  Of course, we're not disconnecting. So that tends to be a good thing. We did have two cross connection inspections and commercial settings in the month. We did start to replace some meters. Kind of more on an urgent basis than routine basis. 2700 visitors to our website. We got a lot of interest in our. Drone photos of the plant and of the solar system. Solar panel system. And we are using that $500 drone. Quite a bit. For those. Those pictures from our drone. They were from our drone. Yes. Nice. We did start to replace some meters. Kind of more on an urgent basis than routine basis. 2700 visitors to our website. We got a lot of interest in our. Drone photos of the plant and of the solar system. Solar panel system. And we are using that $500 drone. Quite a bit. We've got an ace pilot, Andy, well, man that we send out on the toughest missions. And he's always come back. We are using it a little bit for gold deterrents. Also, that may not be legal, but we. Don't like the drone either. I saw a. An article about a bald eagle that interacted with a Michigan DNR. The drone did not fare well. It's still staff, but we are still staggering to people per day. On the support specialists. And otherwise, that's the extent of the superintendent's report. All right. I have a motion to approve the superintendent's report. So moved. I second it. They ever say aye. Aye. Aye. All right. Chair votes aye. Aye. items previously held over for discussion, the raw water improvement intake project, we had another 3D, virtual walk through and made some additional comments on the project. You know, these are things like, they've got a pipe in a vault and we're trying to get them to extend the, an area where it's graded You know, access issues that we're working through. We do have some site issues that are challenging. We're trying to reroute to this golf hole there. And we're also trying to provide security for the new area. So, we're looking at a few options of fences and where these disc holes should go. I'm hopeful we'll come up with a good plan on that.  And then it comes down pretty steep slope to the lake. And we're partly in that hill with the building. So, there will be, you know, a retaining wall and part of the building will be, I don't want to say underground, but partly the soil will come up a pretty high stretch of one of the walls. So, we're just kind of reviewing some of the structural issues with that. The alternative is to put it closer to the lake. And we've kind of preferred to protect it from the lake and deal more with the hillside. So, we're still working a little bit on that, but the project is coming together. I expect we're having another detailed review meeting next week. And then I'd like to sit down with some of our city colleagues and get any of their concerns about impact on the park.  And then my hope is next month we'll be able to give the board a little more of an update. One thing we do have to proceed with in 2004, when we first, I think it was before, many years ago, when we first envisioned this project, we went to the parks committee and the city granted the utility and easement to construct and operate a water treat and water intake facility. At that site in a particular area, as we've come to design the actual facility and lay it out, we've diverted a little bit from the easement area gone beyond it, so to speak. So, we really need to modify the easement that was agreed to those years ago. And that would take a formal request from the board to the city. It's not a huge modification. I think we would take more of the flat shoreland out of the easement and put more of that hillside into it. So, I think it's kind of for the public betterment overall. But we would need approval to modify the easement in a way. And at that point as well, the city did not want to sell land to the parkland to the utility at all. And I don't think there's been any change with that. They would rather retain ownership and provide an easement for this purpose. Would you be required to put fencing up on the top of that hill? Well, the building kind of nests into the southern part of the hill. And we would have some fencing coming up the hill to meet a corner of the building. Yes. Okay. I mean, because, you know, I can just see someone trying to shimmy down that or slide down that hill or whatever and end up on the roof of the building. Yeah, and that's what we're trying to avoid.  Well, that's a little bit of a challenge. Right. Questions on the details of the project that I'd be happy to provide? I'm not right. I'm good. Yeah, I guess I wait a little bit longer until we can maybe see something with a little bit more detail. I think here and things like that, just how it's going to fit into that area. Yep. Down in that area all the time when I was a kid, when the lion was still there and the zoo was still there before the frisbee golf course. So, anyway, all right. We're pretty much on schedule and I think it's been going well. Okay. Good. Good. All right. On to item number 51. Approval to transmit the utility's budget and our capital improvements programs for actually there's six years here rather than five, but that's okay. I'm sure the city would like to see five, but we're giving them six. Yeah, we might have had a type while there, Jerry. That's all right. I mean, they've got the numbers, right, or they will get the numbers. Yeah. It's pretty much the budget that we looked at the last meeting, right? There's not much in the way of change. Yeah. The only changes were typographic changes. No, no significant monetary changes. But you have any other questions? Any questions on the budget after we talked about it last month? No, sir. Thank you. Not for me. A motion to approve sending the RO to the council? Yes. I'll make that motion. I'll second it. I'll second it. Okay. Okay. So it's up to you. Who's seconded? Yeah. All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Onto number five two, hydrants stripping and painting proposal. What was that motion also approving the five-year capital plan? Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay. Okay. Hydrant stripping and painting proposal, Joe? Yeah. So each year we try to make progress keeping up with our fire hydrants. I did ask Dave McMillan to trim this item due to COVID budget impact. So instead of 400 hydrants, we're looking to paint 200. And we really only got one quote this year, but it was cheaper than the price for last year. Same stack. Same white primer? Yes. The ghost hydrants. Yep. Are there people on the phones to take the phone calls on that? Yes. We're not taking hydrants whites for permanent. One of the things last year, right? We got several phone calls. Definitely. Yeah. Okay. People notice. All right. I'm going to attempt to prove the quote from Great Lakes. I take that back from Ferguson Water Works. Yes. Ferguson Water Works. So moved. I'll second it. Favors, A.I. A.I. And shareable size. Thank you. 5.3. Reviews of lead copper sampling results. So every three years, the utility is required to test for lead and copper due by DNR and EPA. And this year we had 30 test sites. And again, the lake water has undetectable lead and copper levels in it. And the water leaving the plant also has undetectable lead and copper levels in it. But because private service lines and in-home plumbing is made out of lead and copper and lead solder, we test for these elements within homes that kitchen faucets. So you have there a list of the 30 sites that we tested this year. We provide the sample kits and actually the homeowners take the samples for us. The results to the right are shown in order, 30 being the highest lead results and one being the lowest result that came in. And we're regulated at the 90th percentile level, which is shown in, I think that's yellow. Color balance, yellow or orange. And you'll see our 90th percentile this year was 4.00 parts per billion. And the action level is the 90th percentile of 15 parts per billion. So we're well below the action level in lead and copper. Last year or three years ago, our lead result was more like 8.5. And that was due to one sample that was not collected properly. Someone had not been using the water, allowed it to sit in the lateral. It was a vacant apartment. Came and took a sample and that resulted in an unusually high sample, but we're not allowed to throw out samples. So we included that one and that skewed our results last time a bit higher. But this result is more in keeping with prior years. Just by example, Madison, Lauderdale, even though they've removed all lead service lines, they still end up with a 90th percentile result that's typically two, three or four parts per billion due to interior plumbing that may not have been changed out, solder, things like that. We did have, why should say these are 30 full length lead laterals. We had seven new locations. Sometimes people move and the subsequent owner doesn't want to cooperate or participate. So we did have seven new sites. That kind of helps our statistics. 30 sites out of however many homes in the city is a small number, but this is the regulatory specification. But seven of these sites were new, so that helps widen the statistics a bit. So we were happy with these results. We did have one location that had a lead level that was above the action limit, just a single point. In a case like that, whenever we become aware of a site like that, we're now going to put them into our lead service line replacement program because that's a site that needs to be replaced. So we've been in communication with that property owner and we will enforce the 18 months time frame to have that replaced, offer them a grant of up to $2,500 and a no interest loan to remove that lead service line permanently. But overall, the results were reassuring that our orthophosphate treatment is keeping lead levels down below standards and we have no further, the results of this testing leads to no further compliance issues with the DNR or the EPA. Everything is in conformance. Further questions on that? I'm good. Do you have any feel for why this one home is a little bit higher? You know, it's a site specific mark. It could be a little bit longer lateral. You know, she might not have flushed water through there in the same way as others. There's a lot of variables. So I know I can't really say why. So that's quite dramatically higher than any of the other samples? Yeah, I can say the last go around three years ago, that site had a high sample as well, but it was half of that result. Okay. If they replace that lateral, will they remain in the testing program? No, then we have to kick them off. So once they no longer have lead, we have to remove them. On to the Seaman Avenue water main project. Need approval for the materials? Yes, you should have a quote. The apologies, we didn't break out all the items, but it's a number of fittings and a small amount of water main pipe for Seaman Avenue. One block voting to accept Ferguson waterworks according with the recommendation and the fact that they were the lowest bid. Yes. All right, so we'll move. I will second that. Questions? Can I take your choice on that, Joel? One question. Now, is it a 16 inch line that we're talking about earlier? Yes. Okay, good. There's a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. And chair votes aye. All right, short line protection. I wanted to report back. Last month, we presented a quote from Wagner excavating for installation and materials to rehab our damaged shoreline protection area. And after further review, I determined that we understate bidding law did need to bid that out and treat that as a construction project. And I think we decided due to timing that we would prefer to purchase the materials and make the installation ourselves with the crew. Then we're simply purchasing materials. It's not a construction project. We're providing the labor ourselves. So Wagner then requested to quote the materials that were quote from Kiehl, Sand and Gravel. And at my last reading, the Kiehl, Sand and Gravel quote was less than the other quote. So we're expecting to go forward with that in the very near future. And we do have Collins engineering out of Milwaukee is kind of a shoreline expert. We're going to have someone from their firm up to give us, lend a little expertise in the placement of the materials. The way you place the stuff is critical to ensuring some longevity. Because we know we've got two ton boulders there that have just been relocated by the wave action. So we want to be sure we're doing this in the best way possible. So I'm expecting that to move forward in the next month. Is the ones that are in the water be reclaimed at all or not? They can and they will be that's part of the plan. So we don't need repair or a motion to approve or not? No, there was a motion last month. I just wanted to report back on that. All right. So we don't need a motion for that now. So with the current plans, Joe, would that be considered O&M work versus capital work? I would consider that O&M work, Mark. I'm not an accountant, but I would call it O&M. Yeah, okay. We've got the approval of the cross connection inspection contract. Yeah. So under the state, either the utility or the municipality must implement cross connection control program. And the municipality was not interested in doing that when we began, I don't know, eight years ago, six years ago. So the program is implemented by the water utility and cross connections are plumbing arrangements that could potentially allow foreign materials to come back into the potable water system.  And under the right conditions of the distribution system, some of that water could get sucked into the housing, house plumbing and be a cross connection. So the company that we use to assist us with the commercial and industrial plumbing arrangements, which are very complicated is has been Hydro Corporation. We do the residential inspection. It's a very limited inspection, but we do that part of the program ourselves. But Hydro Corp does everything with the companies and industries. And you'll see we've got a proposed two year contract under which they would conduct 960 inspections. The frequency is all dictated by the state. So they're not coming up with their own cycle dictated by the state. And they've got a figure here, which is about a little over $100 and an inspection. And that includes all the communication, getting it set up so they can't just appear and say we're here to help you. They have to lay the groundwork to get in. And we would certainly recommend continuing to work with them. They've been an outstanding partner in this effort. And they basically provide the backflow preventers. They do not. They advise the companies what should be done, and then the companies have to engage a plumbing contractor to do the actual work. Are these the same guys that have come into my office the past couple of years just to check the one sink in the basement? Yes. I'm good. We've got backflow preventers. Don't have to worry. I think a lot of the heavy lifting has been done in earlier years because the first time they come through, they catch a lot of problems and companies then over time address those issues. So the next go around usually there's fewer issues. Any PSC coaching? Well, I guess we need approval. So we need a motion to approve that. Yes. Want to go Tom? Okay. I'll make a motion that we approve. Okay. I'll second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. We're going to get Tom's name in the minutes, right? Yep. Any PSC code changes, Joe? No. Okay. And I will move to approve the vouchers. I'll second that. Any discussion on the vouchers? Paying an awful lot of money to aligned energy. Yeah. Those buggers. Those retirement benefits. Yeah. Well, I didn't get hired. I'm getting my retirement from Wisconsin Electric. Oh, okay. Well, thank you, Jerry. All right. So we've got a motion and a second to approve the vouchers. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. All right. Plans for COVID-19 risk reduction. I don't have any new information there. We're still running our plan. You know, I think everybody's aware the issue is still there. And in fact, at some level, the county is kind of increasing their activities and such. And I think we at the facility very early had a strong plan in place. And we're getting a lot of work done. We have had two or maybe three individuals in contact with a positive case. And we did put those individuals on 14 day of COVID leave. And it turned out they did not have the virus, which was good. But one of the challenges I think we're all aware of, even if you get a test, first of all, there's limited testing. And second of all, that test is just at one point in time. So we still are keeping people out of the workplace if they've had a positive contact. And I would say even in the case of family members that had a direct contact with a positive case, as an employer, we've not been contacted by the county for any kind of tracing. So we're kind of having to rely on individuals reporting, which, you know, they are. But other than that aspect, we are maintaining our plan and we're maintaining our plan and we're providing full service. And I think we're in a good position to whether what ever happens this fall. And hopefully not a lot. Right. Exactly. All right. Next on the agenda is just to schedule our next meeting, which according to my calendar would be September 21. If I were to voice the preference, I do prefer the 330 time to 3 o'clock time. And again, it's finance committee is that what it was? What was it protection and safety that's meeting after this? Yeah, normally Monday council is meeting and it's not uncommon to have a meeting, you know, shortly ahead of council. Okay. I would just assume 330 as well if we can do it. And I mean, we can get an hour and a half for our meetings for the most part, especially the fact that we're getting a lot of the information ahead of time. And we can kind of limit some discussion and things like that at a meeting such as this. Yeah, 330 works for me. So we set it at 330 on the 21st of September. And the first, the third Monday, whoever that works ought to be. That would be the 21st of September. All right. With that, there's only one more motion to make. I'll go ahead, Tom, you can second it. I'll second it. All in favor, say aye. And thank you for putting up with my technical disabilities. You're making strides. 21st, maybe I'll have this figured out. Maybe it's just my hardware too. Who knows? I would bet at the setting. Again, I didn't get a chance to check the audio settings at all. Just kind of got the camera up on the monitor here in the way we went. All right. Very good. Thank you gentlemen.


Okay, so first off, I'd like to welcome everyone, and I have to tell you that I've only been at Roger Williams a little while, and this is actually my first alumni event on campus, and I am gratified to say that even throughout the whole COVID reality, the personalities, the characteristic and the warmth of this community has come through time and time again. And my name is Amy Berkeley, and I'm the Vice President of Institutional Advancement. I am lucky enough to have been brought by our new president, well, actually, two and a half years. Oh yeah, President Mialis, with whom I worked at the Museum of Science. And as I said, this is my first alumni weekend, but the experience that I've had here, even though the majority of it has been through COVID, has resonated with a warmth and a continuity of community that is, to me, very touching. And one of our trustees, Bill Garrity, I don't know what year Bill Garrity graduated, but he came to Yanis and to my office and said, I cannot believe what this institution has done throughout COVID. I not only have we maintained a 0.3% positive, no faculty member came down with COVID in the spring semester. Our students have allowed us to stay open in a way that has not only shown respect for the institution, but respect for each other. And I hadn't really thought of it that way. And he said, I think we need to make a statement. We need to do something that talks about what this community did for each other and what this community did to ensure that our students are continuing their academic journey. And so it's my great pleasure to introduce a piece that he inspired, he paid for, and has actually helped us raise a lot of money to mitigate all the COVID costs for the institution. So when the students came back in the fall, it was a bittersweet situation because it was exciting to see life back on campus. It's amazing that the wildlife actually had taken over campus. We had the foxes of pups running around campus and deer and wild turkeys because there was nobody around. And it was, although I liked seeing the animals whenever I would go to my office, it was better to see the students coming back. The bitter part of it was that you couldn't see people's smiles. I'm very happy that Roger decided to stay open. It was very hard to concentrate on with my classes if everything was online. Having the opportunity to come back to campus and having not only the dorm open but having the lab setting open was really crucial to my education here at Roger Williams. Not to be to be sappy or cliche or anything, but the ability to be able to be here my senior year and finish off is incredible. Whether you're an undergrad or law school, like being in person is just, it's better to build that community but also to be able to put in your best work, whether it's in the classroom on the field or in the clubs and really getting that full experience. I think it's really important to talk about how great the reopening Roger plan was and how amazing it was that we were able to stay on campus for the whole year. And I know a lot of schools, like a lot of my friends from high school, their schools sent them home halfway through first semester. They didn't go back second semester. And just the fact that we were able to be here for so long means so much. Some of the other institutions around us did not want to take a risk to invest in testing and technology. I was in constant communication with presidents from around the state and around the country and I realized we're one of the best schools in the country for dealing with this. I think the biggest difference between Roger Williams and other schools was their testing protocols and just having us test twice a week, sometimes as athletes we tested three times a week. I think that made the biggest difference in the amount of stuff that we still had freedoms to do. Walking into the COVID testing, a lot of times I would see my coach or a lot of my professors actually administering the test so it was even a nice little catch up with them. But it was really nice seeing the community band together and them giving their extra time and efforts to help us. Half of my friends weren't even going to college after high school in person. They were all doing it online. And that just, it kind of broke my heart after seeing like how different of an experience they're gonna have. I just think it's us as Roger Williams University, faculty, staff, students, we're passionate about being here. We're passionate about what we do. And staying home was just not an option. We were ready to make the sacrifice and continue to work to make sure that we were going to thrive and succeed here on campus. I think just in general, just seeing what has happened, this school definitely has like a bright future. And I know like just going forward, we're gonna see just how amazing the school is and how they can just like quickly act on things. Whenever there's a situation, the school is willing to like think of solutions. What I keep telling my senior team is if we could go through this, we could go through anything. For this unfortunate period, I believe built some confidence in us that we can handle a lot of difficult tasks and difficult programs. So as we move into the next steps of the university through strategic planning, we are very much not only equipped to make significant positive changes, but also would be confident throughout the process. So hopefully we're nearing the end of this crisis. And I feel so grateful to everybody in this community, the students, the faculty, the staff of their amazing efforts to keep us going and have a great ending. Go Hawks! While I love the students on that video, I think I love Yannis more, go Hawks! So Yannis and I are both, all of us, are honored to be at Roger Williams to build on this foundation. And I'd love to invite Yannis up because I think he has some big plans, so. Thank you all, and it's so wonderful to see alums and smiles, no masks, it is wonderful. I officially joined the university in August of 2019. And we had grand plans for strategic planning, grand plans of re-engaging with alums, grand plans for traveling and starting the alum clubs throughout the country, boom! March came and it all fell through and we're so happy to start again and we're in full force moving forward. There are lots of challenging things that happened throughout this crisis, but on the other hand, this crisis showed, as I said on the video, that we are a very strong community. It's amazing how the faculty and the administration and the students and the staff all came together to make this amazing thing happen and we're truly one of the best universities in the country of how we handle the situation. And because we went through this hard time, together, we have built much stronger relationships between faculty administration and students. We're a much stronger family now, which is very important as we move forward into transforming the university. The faculty and staff and students also work together along with the board to create a new strategy for the future, which we're going to roll out slowly and it's going to involve much more personal attention to students and Brian is gonna talk more about it after me, we're going to specialize on some excellence we have at the university and combine excellence from different schools to move forward within the disciplinary education. And as you know, yes, we can have lots of plans, but it's the people that make it all happen. And you, as alums, are going to be great partners. From what I understand, alums have not been at the focus of the university in the past, but this is all going away and alums are going to be partners in helping us build the future, helping us mentor students, helping us make this awesome university from good to awesome and great. So thank you for coming tonight. Good evening, everyone. I'm Brian Williams, Chief of Staff and no relation to Roger Williams, I've looked. And I've been at the university for four years. I came in as Vice President for Enrollment under President Farrish, and then with the transition, Yanis pulled me into be his Chief of Staff. Right before dinner, I think I want to talk a little bit to talk about our strategic plan, but talk about it in terms of how Yanis talks about food is having all of the right ingredients at Roger Williams and just to want to share a little bit of the momentum that we're creating coming out of the pandemic and how we put all of our energies of campus into the present and staying open through a challenging time, but now it's about taking all that energy and putting it towards building an amazing future for the university. So the degree that you have will value and go up through all the energy and what we need to do as a campus together. In that sense of right ingredients, what I want to share is thinking about our schools of study. We have a lot of amazing programs at the university, but the strength of adding them together means even that much more for our students and for the world that our students are going to enter. A key example of that we have with us tonight, a large contingent from our School of Architecture, but I wanted to call out, but through a challenging year and an unexpected passing and death of one of our deans of our schools of engineering construction management, Dean Steve White served as sort of a double dean in his leadership through this year, and what that gains us as a leadership team in Steve is to see the entire design and build spectrum, to think from design and architecture all the way through to construction. And when we talk about centers of excellence on the academic side and a new provost and deans and a lot of energy for our faculty, we start thinking about real estate. We start listening to our alumni about different partnerships and skills that our students need to enter the world. Through listening sessions with boards of advisors and alumni, those sessions have had us here that a lot of construction projects that are happening are laboratories and lab management and construction managers saying we don't have enough scientists on our staff to design the right lab facilities. We need our construction managers to understand science. So the lines between majors and schools and putting right ingredients together is how the university is really moving right now in exciting ways. And you'll see this idea of centers and how they move really coming together with Yanis's leadership and the provost over the years ahead. But the most powerful combination and right ingredients mixing together for us is students and alumni. The alumni and the experience you've had mentoring our students, helping them see career paths, helping think of the skills they need to be job ready the day that they leave this campus and then coming back to reunion and continuing to learn new skills, moving to a new city and connecting with the alumni of Roger Williams as you move on through different pathways through your lives and helping others and you continuing to help and be helped by others as you move through your career paths and how we can be a partner and truly a lifelong partner in that. So these relationships of building a degree, putting faculty and students and staff together is just an energy and a momentum that is really exciting for us to all see and be a part of. And we're all here today to listen to you to have discussions. If some of these things spark ideas for where Roger Williams should head next, Giannis will say that's great. Talk to Brian, that's why I'm here as well. And thank you for being here. I hope you're wonderfully connecting and reconnecting and making new partnerships and friends while you're here and hope you enjoy the rest of the evening. Thanks so much. Hi everyone, I'm the last one, I promise. So just for those that I haven't spoken to during the weekend, I'm Megan Hansen, Senior Director of Alumni Relations. I just want to give a final thank you for joining us this weekend. It's been so great to see all of your faces. And I know I've heard from many of you that you're happy we had something in person. And we are too, honestly. This is what it's all about. Coming together to be in community together and having our reunion classes here has really been exciting and sort of gave us some new energy because this last year definitely has been challenging. So seeing you here has definitely given us a renewed energy for sure. And earlier you heard me speak about how reunions are important because we can celebrate our alumni accomplishments and be in community. And so I just wanted to give one last mention to our honorees that we congratulated earlier today. Omar Barr, our Young Achievement Award and then our two Spirit Awards to Jamie Warner and Mac Doyle. Congratulations again. And I know you've heard the theme of the weekend which is that great things are happening here at Roger Williams and it really does apply to our alums. And so as we develop this future together, definitely reach out. We're always happy to talk about the opportunities but also you'll be hearing more from us and we look forward to working together down the road and today and tomorrow. So with that, we are gonna start dinner but we're gonna call up tables so we don't have a mass rush. So if you're just a little patient, catering is gonna come around to welcome you to join and enjoy dinner and thank you again for a great weekend.


So you wanna know if you're too old to join the Air Force, not just within the age requirements, but if you're just on the upper half of the age requirements, are you too old to join? So technically to enlist in the Air Force, you have to be between the ages of 17 and 39. Now, if you are 17, you are gonna need parental consent in order to join at the age of 17, but if you're 18 or older, you can actually sign for yourself, you don't need anyone else to consent for you. Now, if you are pushing that 39 age limit, you're gonna be looking at you need to go to basic training before your 40th birthday. So if you are in your upper 30s, you don't have much time left in your window. Now, I know some people might be like, I get it, I'm not too old to join, but I'm in my upper 30s and what's the point? Or you might be concerned about being the oldest one at basic training in tech school. Now, here's a truth bomb. If you don't go, there will always be somebody that is the oldest at basic training. Once you're there, you don't care if you're the oldest or not. So the hardest part is getting over the mental battle of telling yourself, if you want to do something, then do it. So earlier when I said, what's the point? There is a point to it. If you want to do it, you have to commit and just do it.   If you're worried about being one of the oldest ones at basic training, well, news flash, you're not getting any younger. If you already think you're gonna be old for going to basic training or tech school, the longer you put it off, the older you're getting. So just go ahead and start the process. If you really do want to join, stop giving yourself the excuse that you're too old or you'll be the oldest. Nobody cares. You're the only one that cares. And if you want to join, start caring about that more than you do about your age.  So if you're contemplating joining and you just want more information, go talk to your recruiter.  Just do it. Stop making excuses and start following through with what you truly wanna do. A lot of people ask me if they should or shouldn't join when they're in their late 30s. I could care less. What I do care is that you're doing what you want. Start following through and stop giving yourself excuses to back out of doing something that you wanna do. I know this might have been a little bit of a tough love situation here, but sometimes people just gotta hear it. Be sure to click the subscribe button and like down below and also become a channel member with the link in the description. We would greatly appreciate it. It helps us continue to make videos here at AirmanVision.


Early data. What is this? This is an all-winner F1C200S. It's the big sister of the F1C100S. This is one of those kind of famous all-in-one Linux on a chip type things. It's actually got RAM built in. All it needs is some external NOR flash and maybe an SD card and it's like a full Linux computer. It's not a very fast one but you know it may be enough to run some simple Python scripts. So I thought it would be fun to design a feather. So I started the schematic capture with an SD card micro USB host. Instead I'm starting to lay it out where you'd have a CP2104 for the serial console. Maybe it would be battery powered. It won't last a long time on a battery but you know you could run it on a battery. Micro USB host out here and then you know start to get all the other components going and I think the micro SD card will be on the bottom. So Linux feather could be coming soon.