So, I think, speaking of Web 3 ecosystem, venture ecosystem, I know Pearl, you actually invest more broadly in the early stage tech ecosystem, right? And Web 3 is one of your focus areas. Over the past, I think if you look at 18, 12 months, there's been some radical changes that have happened in the funding environment, right? We'd love to hear your thoughts to what changes you are seeing. Just in general, more broadly in the tech ecosystem and more specifically in the Web 3 ecosystem, if there are any sectors that you're looking at that are having more meaningful changes than others, we'd love to hear those thoughts. No, absolutely. I think we all can agree that 2023 and late 2022 is very different from what the markets were before. The environment has completely changed. I mean, in the recent last 48 hours, everything that has unfolded just makes it even more crystal clear that a lot of cheap money being printed and given in the hands of folks has led to crazy valuations been given throughout 2021 and 2022 that is finally starting to correct. So, I think in the broader tech ecosystem, that's what we are seeing. We're seeing that a lot of the founders now are raising at reasonable valuations. There is increased focus on profitability and also increased focus on what's the final sort of product and utility that I'm actually building for, as opposed to coming up with ideas, going out, raising and then figuring out what needs to be built and how to validate the valuation at which they've raised. And I think within Web 3 as well, it's a similar phenomena that we are seeing because Web 3 at the end of the day is no different. It's just a different technology that powers different kinds of use cases. Where people have realized that, you know, internally we had a term for it, just another content platform with token offering. So those have gone away. You don't see another content platform come up because people have realized that, yes, it does power content creators and it gives them immense freedom to really express and get money, get value out of what they're creating. But at the end of the day, there has to be utility to the end users. If there aren't end users who are coming, who are spending time and actually enjoying being on a particular app or a platform, it doesn't make sense. And I think now that that has settled in, a lot of the platforms that are coming are either utility focused where they're trying to figure out how to focus on user centricity and build something that aligns with what users actually want. So start doing user research and then work backwards and see if you can add Web3 or blockchain angle to it. The second is developer tools and infra tools. A lot of middleware coming up because we know that from the past experience that we've had, user onboarding is broken. User targeting is broken. Retargeting doesn't exist completely. Deploying, managing, scaling is very difficult of apps. So solutions that can actually help. So the next set of user applications that get built can be scalable and can be done easily. Great, thank you so much for that. Actually, I'd love to double click a little bit on that topic of middleware. And I know Prabhishan Rajanju, you have a venture studio specifically focused on Web3 and generative AI as well. How do you look at those spaces specifically? How do you leverage your capabilities as a venture studio because you are now building for these Web3 ecosystem players? And there is a lot of movement in from, let's say, the NFTs of the world and community-driven projects to that middleware that infrastructure layer. How are you looking at that and how are you actually assisting these companies to build out for that? So I think we believe middleware actually provides this significant potential to create cross-industry utilities that will integrate with blockchain adoption. So as Paul mentioned, think about it, Web2 or Web3, end of the day what Web3 does is it enables creators to own the stuff they're creating, better ownership, and get rewarded for it. But it doesn't change the fact that whatever you do, you still need to segment the market and for hundreds of years, whatever technology has changed, marketing hasn't changed. It's about user segmentation, user targeting, and figuring out which segment you're targeting and what you're serving. So we believe that there are four areas of middleware that are ripe for innovation, and there may be more, but at least we are focusing on these four areas. One is decentralized identity management. The second is around the node service governance and scalability. The third one is more around the data access privacy and analytics, data access analytics, because even from Web2, whatever you create, you have to have a way of transitioning some of this data and analytics, especially if you have to go to enterprise use cases, even interfacing with Amazon analytics and stuff like that. So you have that access and privacy, obviously, you want to get better, privacy, better access, and better that, and finally is around the Oracle, because obviously, off-chain and off-chain, you need to have that. So those are some areas that if we focus on those areas, we think that we'll be able to solve real-world enterprise problems. They'll generate a lot of revenue, and obviously, currently we're focused on NFT pocketplaces and exchanges, but I think that will provide a huge potential and obviously a lot of stuff to be done in that area. Got it, got it. Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. In fact, Web3, in terms of actually investments, like we're all, in some way, shape or form, we're investing, being entrepreneurs as well, there is a sense that we share a lot from whether it's Bay Area or Singapore-based VCs or so on. There's a sense that there's a lot of deep-tech diligence involved, and deep-tech, I don't mean the deep-tech from technology ventures standpoint, but much deeper technology diligence involved than a typical, let's say, B2B SaaS investment that a venture capitalist might do.  You're also a broader-based fund, which you invest primarily in Web3 as one of the sub-sectors of the tech ecosystem. I'd love to hear from you. How is the process for investment into a Web3 company different than, let's say, a more traditional tech company, which might be building still in the tech ecosystem, but not Web3 blockchain? And how deep do you get in the blockchain infrastructure or the technologies that are needed to be reviewed before the investments? Hello, yeah. Thanks so much. Here we're good to be here. So, as you mentioned, right? Investing in this space is equivalent to investing in, like, deep-tech startups. See, we all know the, you know, fat protocol thesis from years ago, right? In the blockchain space, value accrual happens at the protocol layer, right? And so, anytime you're investing or evaluating a Web3 startup, right? You're basically saying, okay, there is no real mode in the client or the interface or anything. It's about, have they really built something unique in the protocol itself? Now, if I had to build a DEX, I can easily say, okay, I'll just fork Uniswap today, add a couple bells and whistles and say it's a new DEX, but that doesn't really make it something worthwhile, right? Now, we have to really deep dive into the product and see, okay, are they solving some problems that Uniswap has, right? Is their yield curve better? Is there a solution they have built for MEV protection, whatever it is, right? Or if you're looking at games, right? Are they doing strongly on-chain games? Are they building game logic on-chain? Then, of course, on top of that comes the whole process of go-to-market, market-making, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But at the core, is there some innovation or not? That's kind of where my role comes in, right? When you're investing in a Web3 company, you're looking for extreme core innovation at the protocol layer, and if it's not there, then it can't be incremental, okay, I just added a 10% improvement on top of Uniswap, because in the end, what also happens is today, if I build something which is 10% better than Uniswap, Uniswap v4 may, they can easily build it out. You have to build it open source, right? So that's where my role comes in, that's where kind of we go very deep into the core base and understand technically kind of how they're building it out. Great, great, we need that, that's very helpful. Sorry, Watsal, we need you coming to you next. I know you've been a very prolific investor in this space. I think you're very focused on the Web3 blockchain ecosystem you invest out of the Middle East, your Cypher Capital Fund, as well as a few others, I think. How, you know, tech is one side, and then Watsal mentioned GTM is one of those things that, so how do you look at that portion? How does a company that is more Web3 centric than not, how do the GTM strategies look different? How are they similar to more traditional tech companies? Love to hear your thoughts on those. So before I go into that, I'll explain a bit on how we look at this whole sector. You know, we have 400 million wallets exist in the world as of now. If I assume one wallet is one percent, it's less than four percent. We've not even started. It's like the 1980s of the Indian stock market, where no one has a clue what a stock represents. This is where you have those scams of Arshad Mehta's and Ketan Parek's, and this is where the Junjun wallets get formed. We're so early when we talk about future on Bitcoin crypto, it's still evolving. And now coming to go to market strategies and things, again, because you had a show of hands where people were developing, in fact, one show of hands. How many of you have actually lent or borrowed on our way compound or anything? See, that's the percentage of adoption. It's not even one percent. So we actually haven't started on the adoption scale. Now, when it comes to go to market strategies, you know, we meet a lot of people who want to build up these lending borrowing protocols. I don't know how many of you remember Anchor Protocol that was giving 20% a year?  I'm sure you lost. I lost that last. Yeah. I actually don't do 20% a year businesses, so that's why I saved my money. But again, you know, adoption is not going to come by paying people 20%. That's basically upon the scheme. Adoption will come and that is where go to market strategies come, you know, because when I talk to founders, I'm like, okay, what's your go to market strategy? I'll do this marketing ad and I will get influencers and there's this whole BS about community building. But actually go to market strategies, someone landing with a stable coin in Zimbabwe and replacing the US dollar with the USDT. Someone landing up in Lebanon and giving an Aave compound attached to a credit card or a debit card to actually use it for transactions. Suddenly you have 10 million customers overnight and the complexity of all this is, you know, 2017 was all about someone wanted to plant a tree in Africa, let's do an ICO. It has no connection with Blockchart. 2020 was use cases and ICOs. So, you know, you had Aave's compound, fractal, where there was real use case. You can lend borrow, you can do stable coins. And I think the next season is all 2024 is all about use cases, ICOs and adoption. How will you get the next billion users on board? And in that sense, going to these Latin American countries, Africa is where, you know, you will have to do groundwork and find out the problems that you can solve. Not launching tokens is not go-to-market strategy. Sure, it makes a lot of sense. Thank you, Vinay. Speaking of, you know, the GTM strategy is one of the core things is also user experience, right? Nakshya, we'll come to you next. I know at Draper Dragon, your global fund, you invest very prolifically, you know, globally and you are helping lead the Indian arm of that. What have you seen from the user experience side of things? That should be different. You know, it's been a lot of times, Web3 or original crypto applications have been very, very clunky.  But there has been lacking in terms of experience, user experience when it comes to these applications. How do you view that? Is it still so early that we don't need to worry about it or is it so late that we must have the best, absolute best UI UX before we can make more progress in the ecosystem? What are your thoughts there? Yeah, so very good question, Ravi. I think everybody that's in the Web3 space is wondering, you know, how do we get past this, you know, as Vinit mentioned, the 4% adoption mark, right? So if you look at consumer apps, you know, they need to be in grossing. They need to be intriguing to the point that people forget what tech they're using. Is it AR, is it AI, is it blockchain, whatever? Right, so we've yet to get to that point. But to be honest, I think we were just not ready as from an infra standpoint until now. And so a lot of our infra investments over the years are now taking us closer to a point where in, you know, those jittery and laggy experiences will go away. When you look at, you know, UI and UI, UX experience standpoint, so I think, you know, in the social side of things, a lot of things are picking up, where things are more about network, where things are more about free speech, or, you know, if you can unlock yourself from, let's say, Twitter because, you know, some sort of censorship is not something that you relate to or a YouTube where, you know, a popular content creator does not get lost, you know, the moment they sort of step away from following the guidelines of a particular platform, right? So from that standpoint for social networks, I feel decentralized social graphs, again, is an infra, you know, innovation, but it does not take a lot on the UI, UX standpoint, for a social app like that to pick up. But when you talk about gaming, so I've invested in a few games, the team is very proud of its, you know, gaming investments all across the globe. So for example, CropBytes, I love the way they, you know, build on the original paradigm of firm will, right? So I feel great about the fact that, you know, these ideas that people relate to in Web 2.5 construction, you know, it's very easy to incentivize people with financial incentives, right? So now we've gotten to that point, but we have not yet added the utility of, you know, finding that what's that next thing that Web 3 is gonna offer to these games outside of financial incentives, right? So I think it's now, it's the moment where you find those hooks beyond that added zeitgeist of decentralization. So essentially, I would say that, you know, find those Web 2.5 constructs at first. And, you know, in no time, I see the infrastructure to be ready, right? It's gonna get there very soon, and sooner than we all imagine, right? And that's the point where I see the UI UX is gonna be a lot better.  The apps look phenomenal. I love, you know, CoinDCX's new app.  So we're getting to the point that people are realizing that, you know, knockry.coms of the world, they need to know it. Look at what Web 3 is doing. We are the poster for where, you know, UI can get to. So I'm very proud of the direction we're getting to, but once infrastructure solutions get solved, Web 3 native games are gonna be coming as well, right? So that'll be my thought for, you know, adopting with a hook something add-on, but definitely again, agreeing with Whatcel that it's not gonna be 10% addition. It's gonna be phenomenally what can you bring to the table that it's not yet been seen. Got it. That's great. Thank you, Akshay. Switching tags a little bit. Harsh, I know you help invest from Kyber Ventures, right? Again, it's a global fund from the decks, and you're helping them invest in India, Southeast Asia more broadly. From going away from, let's say, the consumer applications for a second, and looking at the foundations a little bit. I know you've been very interested and active on the infrastructure on the real-world asset side. How do you bridge between real-world assets? Let's say there is an application between a real estate developer who wants to now put it on the blockchain, tokenize it or what have you, but there is a bridge to be had there, right? And how do you evaluate something like that? Well, what are the constructs that you use to say that, okay, this is actually gonna work versus this has no, you know, whether it's regulatory or not, but this may not go very well. How do you look at those things? Sure, Ravi. So we were always like from 2016, we are the leaders in stepping or setting the stone, like we were the world's first decks now. After that, we incubated Uniswap, one inch, we were the one who behind WBTC, Crystal, and many more. So we know the work, where the DeFi area is going on. We have, like earlier that time, with Alik was our founder, so we have a good connection with Ethereum. So we are here to broadify the DeFi ecosystem. Now coming to the RWAs and the bridging between Redify and I say, CryptoFi or Cryptoassets, so the things are pretty native here. Now, if you talk about DeFi, most of the people say DeFi means buying, selling, lending, borrowing, or swapping. No, DeFi is not that, because it's a decentralized finance. Finance is a very broad term where money comes in. So if in a single export and import transition, I can create six ecosystem there, from a letter of credit, asset securitization, invoice discounting, billing, asset leasing. So finance is very big, so I'm here, like we are now to set another stepping stone to create another economy wherein people will use the finance, right now if you're sitting in India. And if you want to, like last week only, I said my friend to bring an iPhone from me in Dubai. The thing is, in India I had to buy USDC at premium. So here also, like for an iPhone, I had to pay extra. Like if I'm in, let's say, in Zimbabwe, and I want to transit with it somewhere in a village in Chile or in Mexico, so still I have to pay the premium, or maybe some extra premium that went up to 15 to 20%. And if I talk about exporter import businesses, like people still pay 30%, 50%, APY, whether they want to borrow money, they want to discount their bills or something like that. But if you see the DeFi ecosystem, DeFi, money is there, players are there, developers are there, just we need a good bridges. And to evaluate these bridges, yeah, now that, like if we say about the timing, timing is a good timing, but we need some tech stability there because lots of bridge hack has been happening like in last year, tech ecosystem plus finance ecosystem, we had to merge that thing. So we basically look in the team member, founders, I myself from, I've been into investment banking, I work with JPMorganics team, I've also served as a private equity guy in global growth, Florida. So I know how finance ecosystem work, so we are here to integrate finance with tech. So, this is the next area, like we'll be focusing on and we'll be bringing the DeFi to the next where the liquidity will be one trillion, it's not like in billions. Awesome, thank you Harsh. I just wanted to do a time check. So what was that buzzer for? Are we out of time already? Are we out of time? How much did we have, 30 minutes? And we've done 30 minutes? That is awesome.  But there's so many great questions, I'd love to get your inputs on. But Rohit, I'd love to hear and Akshay mentioned about the, how great an app coin DCX is. From, but put your investor hat again, right? Of course, I know you deal a lot with, across the coin DCX venture ecosystem versus the strategy and so on. But putting your investor hat, we have, it was during the ICO boom, the tokenization and all those token offerings were a lot of rage as Vinitha mentioned. But how do you look at, even today, there are certain, when we structure these transactions, a number of these companies, especially the infrastructure companies, are doing pure equity rounds. And that is one way to do it. Some are doing warrants over tokens and so on. But how do you look at, how do you differentiate when is the right time to raise on a token or a hybrid versus just doing equities? What are your thoughts on those? Sure. So I think at a very base level, the fundamentals of investing are the same. Whether it's web two, whether it's web three, whether it's equity, whether it's tokens, the fundamentals of building a business or the fundamentals of investing are the same. So that's the baseline. Now, to your specific question on equity versus token, as far as we are concerned, if it's an early stage investment, we will invest only where we're getting, if the company plans to issue a token, we will invest only if you're investing in tokens and equity. And we're getting the token grant along with the equity. And the simple reason for that is, down the line when they issue tokens, part of the value that the protocol generates, some of it comes to the equity holder, some of it goes to the token holders. So as an early stage investor, I cannot not have a share of the pie which would also go to the token holders. So as an early stage investor, I would certainly invest only in opportunities where we're getting both equity and tokens. In later stage rounds, much later stage companies with, where the tokens have already been listed, they've been listed for a while, the monetization mechanisms and the revenue split between tokens and equity is kind of hard coded into the smart contract. At that point, we can consider investing in the tokens because I know what I'm getting. But I wouldn't invest only in equity, whereas I know a company could have issued a token later in the day.


I just want to see him get back with his daughters getting raise these girls from behind that wall. So I'm just I'm man I'm praying of course. We are praying that See murder Locked up right now Been locked up for 20 years off and on yes What are you have you been I haven't seen him as often as I want and we talked about Corey Miller for sure He was the man in real time. He was me and Max leader like you know saying we ran We we I can't put all my fingers together. It wasn't just talk. You know saying you know Yeah, man, we really really I just want to see him get get back with his daughters Yeah, raise these girls from behind that wall. So I'm just I'm man I'm praying of course. We are praying that you Position to go in there and see that's an upside visit them. I visit I get on mac was there I was just telling them this brother. Oh, man. I can't think it's now Brian Jackson. I believe it's now medium Branded Jack excuse me. I'm gonna say the wrong. I met him yesterday He said he ran real tight with C back there and I was just telling them that I'm about to get his daughter in For I want to continue to visit him. You know say cuz I would know me Almost to say kill two birds one stone. I go visit Mac. I could visit him. I go visit him. I can see Mac, right? Yeah, so now we got Mac home by the grace of God and we have to still continue to go see our brother Cory Miller You know saying I'll get on his visiting list, but bro. He is a different type of strong You know, he's a different type of strong and I'm so happy that the Kim Kardashian's and Whoever else out there want to put a time and energy on bringing him home You know I'm saying oh funny. I tell you funny things story about see right quick. Of course we get out of here We went to Europe, right? I believe Pete didn't want to go to Europe. You know Snoop was like, I'm going to Europe I do my runs over there. He's like Would you bring some of the younger guys with you? So Snoop was cool with bringing us to Europe? 1998 alright, so I'm out there touring off a one-air family. I actually wrote Street Life in Europe That was my 1999 release July 6 so we're over the seas man see just big brother up man We get the Paris he like look we're about to go to a surplus though We're gonna get us some fatigues everybody gonna get knives You don't say we're gonna be strict cuz we ain't got no poles over you know saying we're gonna be straight Better protect ourselves. You know saying at the same time we went to the top of the Eiffel Tower At the same time. I mean we did everything culturally a young brother seeing the world should do But at the same time we didn't forget Oh my god, we did not forget, right? So we're in a concert, right? We're chilling. You heard me But we were like the biggest cancunsel dogs you can have snooker have that he didn't even know that we was ready trained on Sight, you know saying somebody let off a gun pop in the club, right?  Oh my god, that's how we was about each other, bro We got ready. We did this tour. We went to one part of Germany We're there to lock us up in the back of the tour bus and the driver had to say He was transporting equipment because this particular area was so racist Having these black boys come through, you know saying I don't know what would have you went to checkpoint I never get this because Thanksgiving was super close. We was back there. He said the driver said look man Don't make no noise. I don't care if I knock on the door if I don't tell you this when I knock don't answer Don't say nothing, right? He locked us back there. We went through the checkpoint He had pulled over somewhere. He came back. Let us know it's okay. Thanks given we Club crackers and Kool-Aid to bring in our things given right? We got somewhere like Switzerland. We're skiing messing around We're getting ready to go to Japan, Hawaii right see said give me your passports. Give me your passports I don't want you to lose him. Give me your passports. All right, big bro. No problem. He'll take the passport We get to the airport. We had a driver hour from the ski resort to the Switzerland Airport We get that right we're getting a load up get ready get a plane We're gonna get a plane we did not have our passports See left the passports in a safe in the hotel at the ski lines, right? As the first time I seen his face You know like he he disappointed us. You know I'm saying it wasn't that deep But to him it hurt him thinking he was taking responsibility Oh, man, and I just like this is my dog man. This is my oh he gave me a Mack out tanks Put our tanks run on that. Wow, you know once we had been there and you know They've seen what was going on and we had the we're like now. I'm like don't trip man Snoop said y'all got your passports. Hey, I'm gonna see y'all back on stage, baby So I was like, okay, so we're gonna miss Japan we're gonna miss Hawaii so we get in the car We see like don't trip man. Just don't trip there We go to the ski resort drive out get the passports come back, right? So we're sitting there. He's still heated but it got guys walking around minute 14 The officers and stuff in the airport man. We go through one way.   I'm like trying to calm down. I'm in this phase round like you know like like see calm down killer And no one wouldn't know about this for a very long time Look down me that he my boy. Look down me. You're in me here. Who had this who had this in his eye dog But I was just being honest and he felt that and he calmed it down and that was dad, right? That was dad, right? So we got accepted. We're gonna catch a flight the next day We can't we gonna miss we're gonna miss this flight going back to states We get on the plane come back to the United States. We get on the plane cats are still uptight Maddie sitting right here. God bless his soul and his wife that pathway, right? Yeah magic Skeet team I never get they got these red suits this woman the guy's woman is Knee in him in the back of his seat, right?  He'd like man And she's just like he like see bro. See round like that. They keep near me in back. I'm on see I like nah I thought like just chill broke your man. Just chill. She did it again, right? He like man hold on bro He likes say brush you do it again. It's gonna be a problem. I said no, it's all good She did it again. He took his seat and laid it all the way back in her lap. Why right? They jumped up all these dudes. You know that we jumped up Sky Marshall and jumped up you heard me.  Yeah, I was looking at him like I just couldn't chill We had to be 20 man You gonna learn the day you gonna learn the day like it was it was a real lesson I'm happy Snoop to this date brought us over there And like I said made me motivate me to the street life album cuz it let me know the world was a ghetto You know, I had this no-limit chains Rolex and all these things But when I did a street life, I stood to myself for all those Trinkets to put out my music and shoot my videos because I really saw the world as a ghetto I was the one part in the out the country. I saw this woman hanging her clothes up on a clothes line Yeah, I remember that I remember that man. So I was like it just was real I was like man the world is really a ghetto Marvin these people knew what they were talking about You know saying the wall knew what they were talking about. You know saying Bro, they knew what they were talking about the world is a ghetto Yeah, we on boss talk one-on-one. Yeah, we gonna talk


Championship day of the T20 Vitality Blast took place over the weekend. It's a fun day because both semifinal matches and then the championship are played on the same day. So three games all at once. It's a good time. I let my screen recorder run over the course of the day. I didn't capture everything, but of what I captured, I saw some good stuff. I saw a German, a Hawaiian, a Dalmatian, Luigi, a Jedi, Waldo, chicken, an Armyman, Leprechaun, Flamingo, Mountie. And I saw an old man dressed as a British dude as well as a lot of cool plays. This is some fun plays on the boundary.  And now he's got to throw it. He can't touch the ground outside the boundary and the ball at the same time. So he throws it up in the air, then it comes back in and doesn't make the catch. But he did save five or four runs. I'm not sure how many there ran for. I think maybe save two and look at that grabs it up in the air. And can he complete the catch? No, but not a boundary. That's really good cricket fielding. Here is another play on the boundary. Sam's is the batter now, really bad fielding. That should have been one run instead. It's four because he missed it. Let's go back to good fielding on the boundary. I love this one. Full out dive gets his hand on the ball to stop it from hitting the rope. That saves an automatic for probably just went for one run. So save himself three runs and bad boundary feeling slipped. Hmm. Well, smile from the batsman. I think he never saw it and then was like, where is it? It's gonna be my left. It was to my right. Oh, I liked this exchange in the Somerset Surrey semifinal. They think it's out. The keeper likes it. It's not out. He says and the keeper says, yeah, it is.  And then they check it and yes, the ball did hit his bat and I'm says, yeah, okay.  He got me. Let's talk about some skill bowling. That is a regular kind of fast paced ball. And then that is the back of the hand kind of like a 12 six curveball. We would say we're see he's spinning it on the right the back of the hand. That's going to get a lot of topspin opens the batter's eyes.  Look how high it is. That is in my wheels and then it tumbles down and then stays below the bat on the bounce. It's got topspin. Look at this one. So the first the batsman is he's backed up off the stumps a little bit and just gets got on that second one. Now this dude in the championship game, he was mastering this pitch or this ball. It was awesome. Look how juicy that looks collecting wickets left and right. That one's nuts. That one looks so pretty. He's not even jazzed up about it. He's still upset about that ball. He missed on the boundary earlier. But look at this. I got this point. The batter is thinking, oh, baby, I'm going to crush that and then it just tumble straight down and stays low into the wickets. Basically in baseball, we would call it 12-6 curveball back of the hand off pace. I don't know all the terms they have for it, but it's fun. I like it. This is a great play by the keeper on this one ball edged out full extension one hand grab love that another good play. We got a direct hit on a run out throws it at the stumps one bounce and before the batter's bat crosses the line. Yep. He's out direct hit. That's awesome. These are my top three cutest hits of the day. Little ramp shot. Beep. That's six number two that way beats the infielder gets back there and the cutest is that one because he's just protecting. He's just protecting his wicked. He gets beat by it as bad as late. The ball beats him to the spot is what you're thinking. And then at the end he's like, No, sorry. Goes for four bomber seems like every sport is running into what is a catch these days and cricket's pretty deep into that. The umpire is going to rule this. He's going to make a soft call, which is like I think I don't know. I'm not saying this proudly into his hands before the ball hits the ground. But then the ball hits the ground and in cricket the ball can't hit the ground at all. Even if you like 100% catch it, there was a catch in the ashes. Like it was a catch. But by law the ball hit the ground because he used the ground to like get it's very silly. This one.  You had control over it. But when you go into the semantics and the lawyering over the words that are catch, that guy says, No, no, no, no. And the umpire say, Yeah, not out. Yeah, what even is a catch? And the best thing I saw was how the whole thing ended summer set need 15 more runs from the next 10 balls, but they've already gotten out nine times. If Essex gets one more out, the 10th out, the match is over and they have won the championship. And we got my dude, Sam's up again who hit pretty well and that is going for four.  They say come on instead of let's go. That's the different thing there. The fans are going crazy. These two guys have just a sitcom bromance of a hug checking each other's breath, looking at each other's like deep into their soul, celebrating. That's awesome. Summer set were the best team. The whole league, Sam's, it's all right, dude. Go to the MLC and crush it. You're electric. Every time you're out there, something fun is happening. I enjoy it very much. This time it was at your expense and that just happens. But look at this ball. Bam. It's going to rip past the fielder. Nope. Boom. Got it. What an ending. Electric. Oh, yeah. Beautiful stuff. Beautiful stuff. Bye.


Well, good afternoon everyone. Textbooks have played a bit of a, or say, libraries have played a bit of an odd role, or we've occupied a uncertain space in the whole textbook ecosystem. On one hand, you have the faculty, and they are largely the deciders when it comes to determining what's the appropriate learning content that they want to use for their courses, and sometimes those choices are influenced by the publishers, or perhaps somebody else, like a department chair. And on the other hand, you have the students, and they are in the role of the somewhat passive consumer of the learning content, for better or worse. And we know that in the textbook ecosystem, that's part of the challenge, that students don't always understand why they're being required to purchase a particular textbook or how it's gonna help them. And it can be particularly frustrating when there's not a good sync up between the faculty and what they've decided and what the students are actually then required to obtain. Now, the library's in the mix there somewhere where on one hand, the faculty have not traditionally involved us very much in that decision-making process about what is the most appropriate learning content for their courses. But on the other hand, the students increasingly see that the library should have some sort of role in helping them to obtain the content that they need for their courses. Thus, we often have students asking us whether we have the textbook, encouraging us to buy every single textbook that's in the bookstore, those types of things. So in our presentation today, we're gonna cover some of those issues and thinking more about what is the role of the library in the textbook ecosystem. And acknowledging that at many of our institutions, we're moving from that role of uncertainty to a more certain space where we're trying to start this textbook revolution on our campuses and play more of a role at the end where the faculty are making decisions about what the learning content is and possibly giving them a way that they can create more of their own content. We'll talk more about that, but we wanna focus our energy on the importance of partnerships in making these revolutions happen on our campuses. And that, again, we've seen different perspectives on where does that come into play? Is that at the very beginning? Is that somewhere in the middle? Who do you involve? There are a lot of questions and we hope to offer some advice on those matters. I wanna start to frame the topic, though, with a short video. And it's not that you'll see anything particularly unusual or shocking in this video, but I think it can help frame some of the issues as to why we're getting involved in the textbook ecosystems in a way that we haven't before. Book prices are notoriously high, really high, but you gotta get them somewhere. So, exactly how much are students paying? Probably about $500 a semester. Hi. $500. I pay about $750. About $400. Today's prices have many students searching for alternatives to the campus bookstore. I buy online now all the time if I can, because I bought a couple online, yeah. I just don't wanna pay the full price at the bookstore. Some books are really bad about making very, very small changes to the textbook and just calling it a new addition. New or used, cheaper, expensive, some students don't buy their books at all. I don't always buy the textbook that is required for every class. I usually go to class first to see if I need the book. If I need the book, then I will buy the book online. I have to sit and evaluate the professors because sometimes you don't need the book. Sometimes the teacher doesn't use the book, yeah, so. I don't know. That's like a week before I buy the book. Well, if my friend has the book, then I would go to her room and I'd read the chapter that I need to read or I'd look at the pictures I need to look at because sometimes I don't read all the chapters because there's no point. Now whether it's national surveys or anecdotal evidence that you've heard on your own campus, I think these are all the types of things that we are all hearing about textbooks at our institutions. Students are not purchasing them. Faculty are telling us that students are not coming to class prepared having read the material. Faculty are frustrated with textbooks that seem out of date or do not speak to the way that they would like to teach the course or have what they want the students to be learning. Students waiting to find out what the cost of a textbooks will be or whether they'll actually need the textbooks. And I think we all have our own anecdotes. We all have our own textbook stories to tell. For example, I happen to have been on the reference desk earlier this semester. A student came to the desk and said that they needed to read the first two chapters of their textbook for the next day. I did all the things we would all do to see what I could do to find that book. We actually had a copy of that book but it had already been borrowed by another student which is very common. And I searched, tried to find some full text somewhere, couldn't do it. But I think what the student said to me is what really caught my attention. She said, well, don't worry, I'm gonna go to the bookstore and I'm gonna use my phone camera to take pictures of the pages that I need to read. And I thought that might work but that's not a good solution. We're not doing something right if that's the way that students are thinking about obtaining their learning content. That can't be the way that we help our students be academically successful at our institution. So these are all the types of reasons why we care about starting a textbook revolution on our campus. In this talk today, you're gonna hear three things related to partnering for starting the textbook revolution. Allison's gonna share some of what's happening at the Ohio State University where they are partnering with their colleagues for developing open educational resources and creating open learning opportunities for their students. And then Kevin from Simon Fraser University, I think will share some interesting information about a project they haven't developed for open textbook platforms. When I say the role of the library is changing in the textbook ecosystem, these are two of the exact type of examples that we can share. That we're working with faculty to develop the resources, both learning objects and complete open textbooks and introducing them to it. And then I'll talk a little bit about five institutional strategies that we could all possibly take advantage of in making better use of partners to not only start these revolutions, but to bring them to fruition so that we get the type of results we want with respect to our place in the textbook ecosystem. So I'll turn this over to Allison. Thanks, Steven. I'm Allison Armstrong from the Ohio State University Libraries. And when we talk about open educational resources on the OSU campus, that conversation runs in tandem around affordability. So a key strategy for university libraries in our work with OERs is to bring together stakeholders, work collaboratively to develop and deepen partnerships that fully leverage existing talent and resources. Here we have a picture of Michael Drake. He's the president of Ohio State University. Our most recently elected student government vice president and president and a webpage from the department of higher education. From the president, we hear affordability, access and excellence. Those are his three pillars around his vision 2020. Of great concern to students and voiced passionately is debt, education debt. And our newly elected leaders were swept into office on a 77-page platform that focused largely on reducing the cost and increasing the affordability at OSU. And then in February of 2015 from our governor, he signed an executive order establishing the Ohio Task Force on affordability and efficiency in higher education. Academic leadership, student voice and state imperatives are a powerful combination. Within the university libraries, our outreach and education colleague is the point person for OERs within the learning environment. That person works very closely with our teaching and learning unit and those are within one division within the library. So we partner also across divisions. We have copyright resources, digital content services which is akin to a scholarly communication area and with our collections. So we have a complicated landscape where we work to build partnerships so that we can track of who's doing what because we work with campus partners as well out of the office of our chief information officer. We partner with our online distance education and e-learning unit and our OCIO funds in part, some of the positions within our copyright resource center. So we have a great partnership there. We're also trying to work with our student government. That can be somewhat of a moving target since they do turn over regularly but it seems that within the past two years the affordability piece has sustained even with the change of leadership. Our main partnership then with the ODE group is to help prepare the campus and have our faculty move to working with OERs and one of the first things we did together was to invite the open textbook initiative, the folks from the University of Minnesota to campus to speak to technologists, librarians, and faculty to help them understand the landscape. Here we have the library's affordability page. So in addition to the work that we do with our campus colleagues, when we talk about open educational resources, we include in those library resources that may be licensed to the campus. So we have a pretty broad definition of what we consider to be open. And working with faculty, whether they're library licensed content or freely available web resources, things that are in the public domain, anything that they wish to use, we wanna support them in their effort to do that. So after the conversations with the University of Minnesota and setting up our faculty as much as we could to have them understand a little bit about the OER landscape, we initiated a series of grants. And the grants that the library's ODE and student government support are small grants, $1,000 each, to help faculty, just to incentivize them to explore, walk down the path and use alternatives to expensive textbook. It's been quite successful. In one semester, we saved students over $400,000. For example, with an intro to social psych class, there were 500 students enrolled. And if all of them did not buy the $75 textbook, we save almost $38,000. Likewise for an engineering textbook, $400 enrollment, $180 a textbook, that's almost $50,000. We targeted large enrollment classes as a matter of course, but we found that we had faculty who were teaching very small literature classes take advantage of the grant. So it kind of runs the gamut. We work, as I mentioned with the ODE group, they've put out a brand to help the campus identify the place to go for open education resource support, and that's our affordable learning exchange. In addition to the small grants that we've done together, ODE has initiated larger grants that are thousands of dollars and also offer technical support so that if you're really, a faculty member is really looking to convert their approach in a big way in a sustained way, they can get some traction with both finance and technical support. Another initiative that we worked on with ODE was OpenStacks, an initiative out of Rice University. Again, we were trying to target large enrollment classes. We had some experimentation around this, people looking at those textbooks. No adoption, but we did have, again, some experimentation. Also under the affordable learning exchange, we have continuation of education, so ODE offers half hour online workshops on things such as using open educational resources in your online class. They sponsored four half hour long workshops, the libraries were one of those workshops, introducing faculty to how they might use library content as an alternative to textbooks. So our library and campus partners, we also work within a different environment, a larger environment. The Inter-University Council of Ohio is 13 large public universities and this is the group that's responding to the governor's task force report, the CIC, the Committee on Cooperation as our regional consortium, we operate within there and then on the national level, we're working with an organization called Unizen. So for the state of Ohio, as I mentioned, the governor had signed that executive order and that resulted in a task force with various reports, the IUC got together, the technologists' faculty libraries have a working group that is focused on one of the recommendations, we've submitted a grant, sadly it was turned back to us, but we will continue to work towards being affordable and efficient, which is what the governor's called for. With our CIC colleagues, we are operating in a little bit broader landscape, so the context opens up a little bit beyond OERs to the digital learning environment and at the end of May in Madison, Wisconsin, the library group of the CIC will get together and start discussing that. And then within the national organization, our engagement is also on the digital learning ecosystem within Unizen and I'll just close with a quote from Inside Higher Education article on that. Different universities point to different reasons for joining Unizen in the first place. Iowa, for example, stressed content management and learning analytics, Oregon State, a desire to live up to its land grant status, and Ohio State, accessibility and affordability. We wanna be in control of our paths and where we go, said Mike Hoffer, chief information officer at Ohio State. When you come together and put Florida and Indiana and Michigan and Iowa at the table, you really could have a much different conversation than you could singularly. Hopefully that's for the better. And with that, I will turn it over to Kevin. Thank you, Allison. So my name's Kevin Stranick and I work at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and I'm part of our university's public knowledge project. And in my section today, I wanted just to talk a bit about our work in developing an open textbook publishing platform. And this is really in the context of the growth of library-based publishing, and I know a lot of you who are here are involved in that and have seen that growth that we've shared in over the past decade or more. We've been part of that at Simon Fraser University and at our public knowledge project by creating free open source software for journal publishing, open journal systems, as well as open conference systems for conferences and open monograph press for book publishing. And what we've started to hear from our community of users is this growing interest in open textbooks. As library-based publishing programs came together, libraries were realizing they wanted to expand their role from the consumption of resources into the production of those resources, and open textbooks were a logical extension of that. There was also, I think, a growing desire to become more involved with the open education movement in general and get more involved in the pedagogy that takes places in the classrooms. Within this interest in open textbooks, there was definitely a desire to start creating new ones, but also to work on making adaptations of existing textbooks so that they could meet local needs. When we think about the library-based publishing, it's important to keep in mind that this is certainly true in the United States, it's certainly true in Canada, but it's happening around the world. One of the things that we've been, maybe we're unexpected or surprised by, is with our open journal system software, over half of our users are in the developing world. And some of the feedback we're getting from those same folks is that they're also interested in open textbooks, but they're really looking for ways to become part of an open textbook movement that isn't just about taking a North American textbook and using that, but actually putting their own voices out there in a way that is unique to their own local circumstances. You can imagine taking a geography textbook from the United States that talks about the Great Plains and goes into great detail, how useful is that in Africa, it has its uses, but if you could take the core of that information and adapt it to those local needs, that's what a lot of our partners are interested in, in setting up and exploring. So in response to this, we thought, well, let's look at setting up an open textbook publishing platform. Of course, it would be free and it would be open source. Everything that we make is built without philosophy in mind. We're gonna be building it off of our existing open monograph press software, which has just undergone a year-long complete overhaul in which is gonna be released at the end of this month, fingers crossed. And it's gonna provide something that we've heard from our friends in the community is missing. It's gonna provide a professional publishing workflow that includes submission, peer review, copy editing, production and dissemination. That's where we've really excelled with our journal software, with our monograph software, and we're looking forward to bringing that into the textbook space as well. As an open system, though, it's important to keep in mind that it can interoperate with other systems. I know a lot of sites are using press books very successfully. It's a WordPress-based, again, open source system for book publishing. And we're looking at ways to make our software interoperate seamlessly with that one. And again, in that sort of spirit of community collaboration, the University of Illinois already has an existing project to look at just that. Not specifically on textbooks, but around monographs and press books. And we're certainly gonna be leveraging the work that they're doing to further that interoperability. And of course, again, is open source software. You can take that, you can download it, you can set it up locally and use it. That's great, that's perfectly fine, and that's the way we've largely been operating. But we wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to explore something different. And that's where the concept of platform co-operativism comes into this. As another research project that we've got going on through our director, John Molinsky, who's a professor at Stanford, we're exploring the viability of open access scholarly publishing cooperatives primarily focused on journals. And we're learning a lot of lessons about the value that co-operativism can bring in rethinking about how scholarly publications are created and especially in terms of thinking of an alternative to the commercial based model that is increasingly becoming dependent on very high APCs. We're very curious as to whether there's another way of organizing this. And we thought, well, if co-ops can work for open access and journal publishing, why can't they also maybe work for textbooks? And that's what we're gonna try to answer with this pilot project that we're starting now. If you're not familiar with the concept of platform co-operativism, this is sort of a term that's gaining sort of more familiarity out on the internet with places like the peer-to-peer foundation who are looking at alternatives in how our economies were organized. I think in some ways it's coming as a response to the so-called shared economy that sort of taking up a lot of air in the room about what exactly does an alternative look like and tries to propose a more democratic and transparent co-operative alternative to that. And one of the keys to that is that it keeps ownership and control within the community that uses it. So if we're thinking about this, if we're thinking about a new model, we really needed to try to explain why we think a co-op is the way to go about this. And there's a number of advantages to the co-op model. I mean, one of the probably most obvious ones is it provides access to the technology. So we've got a number of partners out there who are already using our journal software. They've been asking for access to the technology that can allow them to do textbooks. And this would provide access to that. In addition, because we'd all be members within a co-operative, it would provide them with direct input into the software development. So as we're making decisions about new functionality, new features, priorities, our partners around the table would all be able to have a voice in that and vote on what they think the priorities are for the open textbook co-operative. The other thing that I think is interesting and one that we haven't really had an opportunity to do much with, but are just starting to think more about is how much we can operate at scale. How much can we leverage having a centralized system operating more like a software service that can take in multiple partners from around the world? So you can imagine that you might have in a geography professor who wants to write a textbook on geography, working in the system, making the submission, but maybe can take advantage of reviewers from a geography department at your school or from your school. You don't all have to be within the same institution. It gives us more people and more shared resources. That's something that we're definitely gonna be looking at. But perhaps the most important one are go back right to the roots of co-operativism. And if you go back to the Roshdale principles of 1844, there's seven key internationally recognized co-operative principles that I feel really resonate with this project, but as a librarian, they resonate with me as a librarian as well. And I wanted to share those with you within the context of what we're doing and why we think this is a good way to go. One of the key principles is to have open and voluntary membership so that anyone is free to join, but also anyone is free to leave if they find that it's not working from them. They're able to leave and they can take their data with them. That's not owned or held by anyone. It is a free association. It's also democratic and it has democratic member control. So all the decision making about the platform would be made by the members who would take votes on priorities or different directions they wanted to go in. It's not going to be Simon Fraser University coming in and saying this is the way it is. It'll actually be the membership making those kinds of decisions. And this also goes for the economics as well. There's full member economic participation. So this means that members all pay an equitable contribution to the running of the system, but that all of the financial management is transparent and democratically controlled. Autonomy and independence are a key part of cooperatives and they would apply here as well. As I mentioned earlier, this will be piloted at Simon Fraser University, but it doesn't mean that Simon Fraser University owns it. So that if after a year or two years the cooperative decided, you know what? We'd be better off going over here. They can do that because they're in control of their project. Education and training are at the heart of cooperativism and they'd also be central to a project like this in terms of building that publishing capacity. Groups like the Library Publishing Coalition are already working on this kind of professional development for libraries and librarians and library staff and this would be a core component to this kind of a platform cooperative. Another key principle is cooperation with other cooperatives. There's not a lot of publishing cooperatives around right now. It's still a new idea, but we expect to see this grow and we expect to see an increasing amount of opportunities to work with other like-minded folks who see that these principles are the way that they wanna proceed and we can share resources and expertise. And the last one, and this one really resonates with me and I think it will with many of you, the seventh principle is concern for the community. Cooperatives don't function to make a profit or to meet shareholder value. They get together and they do their work to make a contribution to the community and I think that's how libraries function as well. We may be getting together to form an open textbook cooperative to create textbooks but the ultimate goal is something much bigger than that. It's more like student savings and even more than that increased student learning outcomes. So if we can contribute to that, that's a key component of our work and meets that seventh principle of concern for the community.  So I'm Stephen Bell. I'm from Temple University Libraries in Philadelphia and I've largely had the responsibility for our campus textbook affordability strategy, at least the role of the library in getting that going. Now, I'm not gonna talk too much about the specifics of what it is we're doing. If I did, it would probably sound quite a bit like what Allison shared. There's an incentive for faculty. We encourage the same sort of things. We see similar results in terms of savings to students. So what I'd like to focus on more specifically, particularly for those who are just getting started or thinking of developing some sort of textbook strategy at your institution, what are five institutional strategies that you can employ to try to create more of a partnering environment and hopefully make progress at a faster rate than we did at Temple University Libraries?  That makes a lot of sense. That's exactly what we didn't do. Now, admittedly, we started this in 2010. There were not a lot of models. There were not a lot of examples. I basically had heard Nicole Allen at the time of a public interest research group talking about textbook issues, affordability, and thought this might be a great thing for us to start at our institution. I went to our dean and said, hey, would you happen to have $10,000 handy so that we could do something and encourage faculty to stop using commercial textbook and start using other types of content? And fortunately, the dean said, sure, let's give that a try, took a risk. And I could have, I guess, spent more time trying to line up partners and figure out a better way to do this, but it seemed like I have the money, we better get going with this and show some results. Now, admittedly, I did consult with our teaching, learning, and technology roundtable. Those kinds of groups that have some institutional representation can be helpful. There's some faculty. There's the instructional folks computing and so on. They were supportive. They said, okay, go ahead. Let's see what happens. And I think that was important because if you're gonna do some type of project where you're gonna ask faculty to submit proposals that have to be vetted and it's a competitive process, you really wanna have some faculty involved in that process of reviewing the proposals and helping to make the decisions. You don't want that to just be folks from the library and administrators. Finally, five years later, we have a campus-wide textbook affordability task force that I think does have a lot of the right people in the room to talk about. How do we get this to the next level beyond just having 10 grants a year for faculty to stop using a commercial textbook? So we've got, number one, people like the bookstore, disability services, because accessibility is a critical issue here, teaching and learning center. They can be truly instrumental because they have the real connections with faculty in creating workshops, getting the word out and all those important things. And there's a whole bunch of other people, including the registrar, and I'll touch on why it's important to maybe get the registrar involved in this process. So again, maybe something that's a little bit obvious if you're the library and you're providing the funding for this, you probably do want to be involved in a leadership capacity within your partnering group. But I don't think that necessarily means you have to be at the head of the table. And in fact, it's probably better now in retrospect in looking ahead that it's much more interesting to see how this is shaping up with other people taking the leadership and the library being somewhat in the background in providing support, funding, or whatever it takes to make this happen. And it's great to see that faculty members, student, the teaching and learning center, a high level academic administrator, taking on those leadership roles, sort of like what we say about leadership that you want to be the influencer and then you want to see other people take your calls on and make it their own. And if they think they're the ones that are leading it, so much the better. Just an example, though, of the way that a librarian on this group can be a leader is to provide information, find the latest research results, get that out there, also involve partners who are not immediately obvious and show examples of why those people need to be at the table. So for example, I mentioned the registrar. One of the things I discovered at our institution is that students cannot find out how much their textbooks cost until after they have registered for the course. But I found an example, Maricopa Community College actually lets students find out what their textbooks are going to cost when they're trying to figure out what courses they want to take. And it can be very powerful when students can see that a certain section of a course does not require any textbook costs. That could really help them to make those important decisions about what courses do they want to take. And let's face it, students have all kinds of factors that they use when deciding what their courses are gonna be like, I don't wanna take a class on Friday, so I'm gonna avoid those at all possible costs. So there are lots of ways that you can still lead and set the path without needing to be the leader of your partnering group. I would always encourage you to try to find ways to see what others have done, look at the models that are out there. I'm really excited about the fact that many libraries and institutions are now coming on board with textbook affordability projects, like the two that you've heard, and there are others in the audience who are doing things, and some of you are here today because you've heard about it, you're excited, and you wanna try to get something going on your campus. But please take advantage of all the information, the models, the examples, the evaluative reports, the surveys, all of the information that's already out there. I'm always amazed when a new library comes on board and they create a new OER resource guide, they may in fact ask some of us if they can use what we already have, and many of us put Creative Commons license on it, so you can just go ahead and feel free to use everything we've already done. But surprisingly, people do tend to reinvent the wheel and create their own, and I hope we can get to the point where we have more of a national data bank or resource where we can all go to for that same type of information, and our informal Lib OER group that some of us are members of, and that is organized and sponsored by Nicole Allen of Spark, we're trying to figure out some of these exact things. How do we stop all doing the same thing and start working together to make something that's available that everybody can use and is productive for all of us? Now if you don't recognize those two folks in that picture, those are mascots from the Student Public Interest Research Groups 2011 textbook revolution campaign in which they had these two characters going out to different campuses to create this idea of a textbook revolution. And I can't say enough about the importance of partnering with students. I don't know why I didn't do that right from the start. I've gone out to the student government groups, I've talked to them, I've tried to get them excited about this, but I don't know why for some reason it wasn't resonating. You would think they would care more than anybody else about the cost of textbooks and trying to do something about it, but it didn't really work that well. And so ultimately I did have a student actually come forward who said I found out that the library is trying to do something about expensive textbook costs and I would like to be a part of that. And fortunately the student was a transfer from a community college and community colleges are doing, trying to do a lot with textbook affordability and he was the president of the student government and he had actually tried to start something and he wanted to do something similar at Temple. And when he came to visit with me, his primary goal was to start a revolution among the students and get them literally out into the streets screaming about textbook costs and I was able to talk the student down from that a little bit and said maybe you should just start with trying to write a letter to the president of our college, a university and see if you can get a meeting. Well the president passed him on to the provost and the provost passed him on to an associate vice president for undergraduate academic affairs. That person actually decided to start a textbook affordability group and I was able to help the student to shape a paper, recommending what some of the topics should be and what some of the recommendations should be. And I think if we hadn't had that student come forward and create a catalyst or an impetus for the institution to do something and take a more serious look at what we need to do to get beyond where we are now to involve more players in the process, I don't think it necessarily would have happened and I'm very worried. I mean, I love that the student is graduating, love student success, but now I'm worried about trying to find another student who can help us. And the fifth and final strategy I wanna share is hopefully not too difficult for us to achieve. I mentioned the Lib OER group that is sort of an informal group of librarians who have programs like these textbook affordability projects and are trying to advance the cause on their campuses and we had some very interesting informal discussions once a month and we also have a discussion list and somebody shared on the discussion list a good question. Can anybody provide an example of a president or a provost who has written a letter to the faculty basically saying, look, we want textbook affordability to be an institutional priority here. And so for faculty, when you're making your decisions about what learning materials to assign to your students, please think about the affordability factor and if you look at the Babson survey that was done about a year or so ago and they asked faculty when you were deciding what learning materials to use, what are the factors that you look at? And of course things like quality, reputation of the author, those were at the top. Well, where was cost to students totally at the bottom? So we need to reshape that thinking and I think a letter from your president or your provost could make a significant difference and that's one of the things our textbook affordability group has is one of its recommendation to get our president and hopefully our provost to write that kind of letter and then get that message out to faculty that textbook affordability is something we care about and it's a priority and it's part of our mission to keep higher education affordable for our students. So just to wrap up, here's a couple of things that you can think about when you get back to your home institution. If you haven't done so already, try to get a sense of whether your campus is really ready to start a project, to start a textbook revolution. Our people talking about this issue, I just was out in the hallway here with someone from an institution and they were actually telling me, we heard from our faculty, we heard from our students, they want us to do something about this and they started, they joined the open textbook network bringing others to campus to share their ideas. Don't make the same mistake we did and don't wait as long. I mean, there's a trade-off. If you wanna start something right away, great. If you wanna have partners, it's gonna take a little bit longer. You need to be patient. You need to form the coalition. There's more bureaucracy, but you probably will get further faster in the long run if you set up your partners and you have that coalition. Can't underestimate the power of having student activists involved and encouraging faculty and administrators to do something about this on your campus. There are now projects and groups like LIBOER, Open Textbook Network. They can be really, really helpful for ideas and ways to get started on your campus. And again, don't reinvent the wheel, look at what others have done. There's a lot of great examples out there. And as I mentioned in that last slide, try to get the support of your campus leaders. Now, we are members of the Open Textbook Network and we had our workshop last week where they come out to your campus and they do a workshop for faculty and really anybody else that you want to hear more about the Open Textbooks. And our presenter was Rajiv Janjiani. And Rajiv is, if you're someone who's familiar with what's going on in the world of Open Textbooks and OER, you know Rajiv. He's this incredibly passionate professor of psychology at Kwatlan Polytechnic University in British Columbia. And he's written wonderful things and he's an outspoken person about the importance of textbook affordability. And I really liked this quote I found in an interview that he had done with some local media about. Yes, we care about the economic factor. We want our students to have an affordable higher education. We want them to be able to afford learning materials. And yes, we do care about their academic success and we do want them to learn.  But more importantly than that, I like how Rajiv framed this as a social justice issue that some students can afford to buy all the textbooks that their faculty assigned whether they're gonna read them or not. But there are many students on our campuses who cannot afford to buy these textbooks. And so therefore we need to pay attention to the equality and the ability of all of our students to have equal access to learning content. So I think this is why we care and this is why we're doing this. So thank you for being here today and we have some time for your questions, comments, discussions or for you to tell us what you're doing on your campus to start a textbook revolution. Thank you.


Thank you, Michael. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's a great pleasure to be back at the Institute. I've been here twice with three times, Jill. I have been, I must also admit, the weird times when I was much, when I could travel to Dublin and Ireland more frequently, when I was a young European editor in the 90s, or even before. The interesting times have brought me, made me travel somewhere else, unfortunately. But, nevertheless, I'm very glad to be here with you this afternoon and share with you a couple of thoughts on my country and how it sees itself in the world and in Europe. Former German Foreign Minister Siegmar Gabriel, who was probably, is probably known to you, said the other day that the new decade will be one of major challenges. To meet them, he added, we'll have to engage, invest, and adjust the goal to remain relevant. Gabriel will not win any peace prize, any Nobel Prize for his obvious political analysis. Nonetheless, he's right. The post-Cold War period is over period. The times ahead of us will be rougher and politically less comfortable than before. Just at the speed of change, technological change in particular is much higher than before. I would like to take Gabriel's comments a step further and proceed in three steps. I will talk a little bit about Germany's domestic landscape, move on to Germany's foreign and international challenges, and place it too in a larger European context, if I may, and see how these trends might affect Europe. A Europe that would struggle to adapt to unpleasant global realities and for us to life after Brexit. Let's start with the evolving political scene and the place of Germany's parties in it. The Merkel era is drawing to a close. Post-Merkel syndrome has set in. It could last until the next election. If the next election is held as scheduled in the fall of 2021, Merkel will have 16 years under her belt, making here the second longest or even the longest serving chancellor in the history of the Federal Republic, depending upon when the new, the next government will eventually be sworn in. I think it's fair to say that Merkel was a dominant figure in European politics for many years. She provided an extraordinary degree of stability and reliability. In the process, though, she became the target sometimes of nasty criticism. The European debt crisis and the refugee crisis of 2015 and the rafter were two particular flashpoints during her term in office. Some saw her as to orthodox, others to liberal and to lenient. She was caught in the crossfire more than once. According to many observers, Merkel has lost some of her influence and authority in recent years. The outcome of the Libya conference in Berlin the other day and the praise for German leadership notwithstanding. Domestically, she's becoming a lame duck at the American scene. Though paradoxically, her approval ratings are up again. Maybe this is an early sign of we will miss you. Who will succeed her in Berlin? The first stop of the transition has, as you know, already been taken. Annegret Kahnbauer, who is also known as AKK, not AK47, but AKK. The former minister president or governor of the small state of Saarland and Merkel's closest collaborator became head of the Christian Democratic Union in December 2018. To further bolster her power base, she became minister for defense last year. For now, her rivals for leadership and there where a few, as you know, have stopped openly challenging her. But this might change as elections approach. AKK does not, I like this word, AKK. This is by way the only abbreviation we allow are at the headline, AKK, because Annegret Kahnbauer, you are second page. AKK does not do well in the polls, does not do well in the polls. Critics within the party blame the new party leader for the CDU's poor showing in state elections. So far, the social democrats, the coalition partner in Berlin, have not missed an opportunity to attack her. Every initiative Kahnbauer has tried, has run into a barrage of criticism. She gives them an opportunity to tarnish a potential competitor while shifting attention away from their own weaknesses and dismal election results. Dismal, they wear indeed in some states. Journalists like myself love it of course. The feuds give them, give us an opportunity to ponder the favorite questions. Will the coalition last the full term? Of course it will. Who would bring it down? No one. Is a minority government a realistic option for Germany, the anchor nation in Europe, in states, in the states? Yes, on the national level. I would say no. As I said, I for one think the coalition will make it to the finishing line. Elections will not be held before the schedule time in September of next year. Well, the social democrats, they are really in trouble. Structurally, historically, politically. And I don't say this was any sense of gratification. It's bad. It's everywhere. In our case, after years of infighting, which members continuously ripped apart the top dog in the party, this seems to be their prime concern to bring it down after they had elected him or her now with a hundred percent. Yes, but they have ushered in new leadership. This time it has elevated two people. Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter Borens. How many people in the room have ever heard of these two? None. I actually, the first woman I have never heard before myself, to the top spot. It's sad, in my judgment, because the couple represents, the couple represents the triumph of political provincialism. That's my gut feeling, political provincialism. It is the abdication of any claim to a strong leadership in and for Germany and in and for Europe. Remember, they have had a, yesterday has a finance minister, her Schultz, who is not popular. I know that, but as a finance minister for Germany, you are doing world politics. They sound like him, they ridiculed him, elected an unknown, completely unknown person from the state of Baden-Württemberg, whose political credentials are that short, beyond my imagination. Yesterday a pillar in post war Germany is about to be relegated to the second or even third division in politics. It pains me to say so. I must say, as per days an important party for the country has been and is now, as I said, relegated to minor league. The Greens, however, in contrary, are flying high. They just celebrated their 40th anniversary and they have the zeitgeist on their sides or so it seems. They have jettisoned some ideological baggage. The leadership team of Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck is competitive, yes it is, and politically attractive. There's no doubt about that. The ascent has taken the party so high that people are even seriously talking about a member of the Greens moving not just into government again, but all the way into the chancellery. Imagine, Germany has been unable to escape a force that has swept through many countries in Europe, right being populism. We once assumed that we would be an exception. We love to be exceptions actually. You think always we are the exception to some other global trans, but none? We are not. No more. The hot-ride alternative for Germany is the biggest opposition group in the Bundestag. Imagine this, the biggest opposition group in the Bundestag, almost a hundred members. In election in several eastern German states, Lender, as we say last year, he told in more than 20% of the vote in some districts more than 50 in the east. And this group is here to stay. It's toxic cocktail of anti-elite resentment, anti-immigration, climate change denial, and a general protest mood will continue to intoxicate its voters. While this feeling, this cultural economic resentment might be stronger in eastern Germany, the phenomenon is nevertheless national. The party's rise is also a clear indication of how Germany's big 10 parties, CDU and SPD, are already alluded to it, have fallen. Maybe a word on the economy. The German economy has seen a long stretch of good or even very good years. Unemployment is down. Employment is at record level. People cannot find new staff to fulfill vacant places. But the clouds have appeared at the horizon. Trade disputes have hurt German business. The main worry, however, extends well beyond such export-related issues. The big concern involves something larger. The question regarding whether the German manufacturing sector, which is still the backdrop of our economy, much more than any mature economies, will be able to pull off a technology-driven transformation. The auto industry, the heart and soul of Germany's economy, and particularly, for example, the state of Baden-Bürttemberg, the powerhouse of the country, is the source of many questions. The list of problems business community faces is easy to sum up, whether they're all difficult to answer. Potential shortcomings in artificial intelligence, energy transformation, shortage of skilled labor, adaptation to climate change. And again, fundamental technology-driven structural changes. All of these factors will apply enormous pressure to the economy. But only to say this, if the German economy fails to successfully transit into the digital age, other economies closely intertwined with us may suffer too. For a very good reason, Angela Merkel's mantra is competitiveness, competitiveness. Essentially, Germany is struggling to maintain its stride as it enters the new decade. Its influence and cloud are considerable, but they may have ebbed in recent years. This is particularly important since the new decade will be dominated by big power conflicts and more robust ways to pursue one's own interest. And people realize that rapid technological and economic change will fundamentally affect the way they work, live, and organize society. Fundamental rapid change is becoming something that people start to talk over dinner. And politics is becoming more complicated and more fragmented too. The forces that were instrumental for Germany's revival and stability are eroding. In terms of security and the conflict between the advocates of the old culture of restraint, so is the ambassador who would serve in the old days. They know what I mean when I speak of culture of restraint. This was our gospel at the time and we believed in it and think it was great. It was coming down directly from the heavens and the prospects of a sharper international profile, advocates of a sharper international profile, including military deployments. This dilemma still haunts policymakers. The concept of the old federal public of keeping your head down while at the same time occupying the moral high ground still flourishes in some quarters. At a time when many expect strong leadership from Germany, the government is sandwiched between what it thinks is necessary and domestic politics. Its authority and sense of power are hardly commensurate with the multitude of tasks ahead of us. We're in the process of a changing of the guard and also we have somewhat weakened ourselves domestically, i.e. the refugee crisis, and we have come under attack from forces beyond our control. Pundits say our golden age is over and since I get older and get more pessimistic, I start to believe that. The external attacker in chief is no other than the American president. We are confronted with the revisionist Russia, an increasingly assertive and powerful China in geopolitics and geoeconomics and a disruptive United States. For us, the task of coming to grips with an America that is trampling over old beliefs is probably the most difficult task of all. Since Donald Trump took office, the list of controversies has grown and grown. Some bilateral agreements, yes, this is true, have a long history. Some complaints are legitimate, which is also correct, but they are now being raised with the new kind of vindictiveness against the level of German defense spending, for example, that the horizon will not reach the NATO 2% goal. That's clear, we won't reach it, not in 2030, maybe never. The list of disputes includes the gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2 from Russia to northeastern Germany, German trade surpluses with the United States, tariffs on auto exports, of course not, of the table, another dinner table issue, by the way. And then when your mother-in-law asks you about tariffs to be imposed by the United States president, your mother-in-law, then, you know, that something is going on. Migration, the nuclear deal with Iran that Trump abandoned, that Germany and principle with European partners wants to preserve the Palestinian issue and climate change, and the list goes on and on. Trump's attacks have also an institutional dimension, at the repeatedly trained his guns at NATO and the EU. The two institutions are the backdrop of our security and prosperity. And then he doesn't care much for multilateralism and chooses disruption over global order, some of our core principles are at stake. We in the United States, the longtime guarantor of European security, are on diverging trajectories. A German expert for transatlantic relations, Thomas Kleiner Brokow, recently wrote that the United States finally stopped playing mother to Germany, as ended der Bemutterung, as he called it. This may be both healthy and inevitable, but as we all know, growing up is not a painless process. The consequences, ladies and gentlemen, are obvious. Polls show that Germans trust the US president much less, repeat much less, than they trust Russians president Putin or Chinese leader Xi Jinping. So do see Donald Trump favorably our supporters of the heart wide, like in Italy, like in France. A big majority agrees that Germany and the United States are moving father and father apart. The old German anti-Americanism that existed on the right and on the left has been reinforced. When it comes to security, a large majority is willing now to place its bets on the EU rather than the United States. No less worrisome. Many Germans think Germany should simply stay out of this way, when the United States becomes locked in a clinch with China or Russia. Those like myself, I can say who believe the partnership with the United States is indeed indispensable, find it increasingly difficult to make the case. As I said, the old model is falling apart, and maybe we need a new compact. A word on China. China is among the top three trade partners of Germany. For years, German companies worked to become China's supplier of choice and contributed to its rise. They ignored all warnings about the oddity of tying our economic prospects to the economic fortunes of a communist dictatorship. That's what Beijing still is. Again, this is how it is. This ignorance has given way to a more realistic view, not least because of Chinese heavy-handedness in pursuing its political and economic interests and as it wants to maintain control over foreign companies. Even the business community now sees China either as a systemic competitor or a systemic rival that acts in ways that are not at all benign. This new realism is going to face a test. Will the Chinese company be allowed to help build Germany's 5G network, and if so, to what extent? This test case is replicated in the UK and France and Italy and elsewhere, I know. The uncomfortable sandwich position in which the US-Chinese trade conflict left Germany and Europe is a stark reminder that the time when we could avoid hard choices is over. No matter that the Chancellor the other day in Davos said she doesn't like the concept of a new Cold War, we may already be in the midst of this Cold New War. The EU enters the new decade of ever-growing unpredictability and big-power rivalry with new management, but also with smaller membership. The loss of the UK of the United Kingdom may be welcomed by diehard federalists who have seen the UK, sometimes quite correctly, at the greatest obstacle to further integration. In my country though, the business leaders are far from the only ones who are mourning the UK's pending exit. They will miss a country that is open to the world, cherishes the principle of economic competition, and commands a military that is much stronger than most other European militaries, though the British military has seen a drawdown as well. And of course we will miss a net contributor to EU finances, which will mean that Germany will have to dig deeper into its pockets. This, however, is an issue the German government would rather not touch than any German government I would think would. In any case, with the UK out, even more eyes are on Germany, and I should add, on Franco-German collaboration. I'm sure, ladies and gentlemen, that you will have a lot to say about the wisdom of the Brexit, as it affects your country more than anyone else. The new commission headed by Ursula von der Leyen has declared climate change its top priority. That is fine. It's also a good sign that the commission wants to become more geopolitical in outlook and approach. After all, her predecessor Jean-Claude Juncker once lamented about the EU's lack of ability to act like a world power. He said, spoke in Munich in 2018, about Weltmachtfähigkeit, Weltmachtfähigkeit, which of course we were lacking. von der Leyen herself was silent on the first days of the new year when the United States and Iran appeared to be at the brink of war. In any case, the New Hike representative, Joseph Borell, found a full plate waiting on him when he took office. Quote, I am hopping from crisis to crisis, and quote, he was quoted as saying after a recent commission meeting in Brussels. Iran and Iraq, Syria and Libya, sub-Saharan Africa, ISIS, you name it. These are all big issues, each of which deserves our full attention. Commitment and adequate resources. So far, we are struggling to rise to the occasion. You may recall what French President Macron told the Economist a couple of weeks ago.  Turning his attention to Europe, he said the following, and I quote, With America turning its back, China rising and authoritarian leaders on the EU's doorstep. The result is the exceptional fragility of Europe, which, if you can't think of itself as a global power, will disappear. End of quote. This is a sober warning by a French president who thinks that Europe is on the brink of extinction in political terms. He has been calling for European sovereignty time and again. Putting military capabilities aside for a moment, which of course is a major issue, I know that. He is conceptually right. We simply cannot ignore our lack of strategic relevance. At times, this lack of strategic relevance is downright humiliating. When the United States killed the most senior Iranian military commander in early January, Europeans learned about the attack, and I mean European leaders learned about the attack, and this includes Boris Johnson, by turning to television and to the internet. The only thing that policymakers in Berlin, Brussels and elsewhere could do was to urge the United States and Iran to avoid making the situation worse. European pleas to keep the nuclear deal with Iran are falling on deaf ears in Washington and are increasingly ignored in Tehran. Indeed, the abrogation of international agreements by the Trump administration creates a serious problem for the EU and its members. A deal and a principle in which we strongly believe are rejected by their most important non-EU partner. Put it in a different way, we are caught in a dilemma. Natalie Taci from the Italian Institute for International Affairs has simply suggested that we should break with the United States, at least when it comes to the Middle East. Politically, I don't think her proposal will fly, even though it has a certain logic. European nations may dislike President Trump. There may be furious about the weaponization of trade, but at the end of the day, many, if not most, will side with the US. After all, the United States provides the ultimate security guarantee for Europe. It is hard for me to imagine that Europe may choose the Islamic Republic of Iran over its old ally, patron and partner, the US. Trump may love to antagonize Europeans, maybe with the exception of the British Prime Minister. I do not see the same desire on our side. Libya is another conflict where Europe has mostly been on the receiving end. In the past efforts to stabilize the country and prevent it from fracturing basically went nowhere. In any case, our prime motive when it comes to Libya has been to stop the flow of refugees into southern Europe. Now, a coalition of the willing has stepped up to the plate, France, the UK, Germany and Italy. The participation of the UK can be a template for future collaboration after the Brexit. But maybe it was Russia and Turkey that made a difference and that eventually led to the Berlin Conference. This is not to deny the role that the German government has played. Chancellor Merkel has invested considerable energy in Libya and in Africa in general. It is high on her priority list. As I said, the Berlin Conference was basically her initiative. And the agreement reached may pull Libya back from the abyss. So, seen positively, a Europe that is marginalized, helpless, powerless, is not written in stone. The lesson to be drawn? Do not wait until others have established facts on the ground, then you cannot change. Which only change at great cost. For the EU to regain relevance, it must adopt a realistic view of the world. A view that does not start with the institutional propositions nor with grandiose visions like a European army. Out of its own self-interest, it is largely up to Europe to provide some kind of order to its neighborhood. If it does not, nobody else will or other powers will step in on their own terms. We have to look no farther than Russia's intervention in Europe to see what I mean. Europe is the life insurance for Germany. Angela Merkel told the Financial Times a few days ago. If this is the case, and I think it is true, then it will have to invest more in Europe, in political and other terms. German policymakers should not automatically, and not only policymakers, also people from the chattering classes, which is of course my exception. German policymakers should not automatically brush aside ideas that they do not like or go against German preferences or against German orthodoxies. Generally speaking, Germany cannot shirk the responsibilities that come with economic power, size and political influence. I know that many Germans are still attracted to the idea of being a big Switzerland. Many politicians on the left and on the right cling to the culture of restraints, think a big Switzerland is a perfect place to be. Actually, we have come a long way since the days of the Old Trappler, and speaking ahead of this, the formal part of this event I just mentioned. Imagine if we had been told 20 years ago that Germany still had the thousand troops in Afghanistan, a thousand in Mali, where most people have not heard of the word Mali in the first place, that they could identify it on the map. It's still astonishing, but still we need to do more diplomatically, maybe militarily, certainly military, just as Merkel has suggested. The growing willingness among the public to support increased military spending may be more an expression of collective shame than anything else, but it's nevertheless a sign of a more realistic view of the world. Let me come to the conclusion. You may remember what Merkel said two and a half years ago after she had a few encounters with Donald Trump in his early days in office. At times, when we could fully rely on others, are somewhat over. We Europeans really have to take our destiny in our own hands. It's certainly a good idea. It could be a catchy-like motif to guide us, but it's still waiting to be implemented, and this waiting has to end. If we continue to allow events and others to sideline us, then Macron's doomsday scenario will become a reality. It falls not the least to Germany, hopefully together with France and others, to provide the necessary political will and the resources. The world will not wait until we have concluded our domestic transit to a new political era. My country cannot let down in its engagement for a strong and coherent Europe, despite the fragmentation of its domestic politics. And I think it will not do. At the same time, there is no drop in expectations of Germany, as I said to the contrary. Thank you very much for your attention.