Idina's work with learning technologies helps to develop skilled data literate students who can change our world for the better. Teachers and students can develop and share coding skills with multiple or Jupiter Notebook servers. Our DigiMap services deliver high quality mapping data for all stages of education. Future developments include a text and data mining service, working with satellite data and machine learning and smart campus technology. Idina's work with learning technologies helps to develop skilled data literate students who can change our world for the better. Teachers and students can develop and share coding skills with multiple or Jupiter Notebook servers. Our DigiMap services deliver high quality mapping data for all stages of education. Future developments include a text and data mining service, working with satellite data and machine learning and smart campus technology. Idina's work with learning technologies helps to develop skilled data literate students who can change our world for the better. Teachers and students can develop and share coding skills with multiple or Jupiter Notebook servers. Our DigiMap services deliver high quality mapping data for all stages of education. Future developments include a text and data mining service, working with satellite data and machine learning and smart campus technology. Okay, everyone, welcome to this pre-lunch session. We'll have six speakers for the price of three. So that's something to get to keep you here. We'll start off with Martin and Louise. The floor is yours. Good afternoon. I'm sure people are looking forward to lunch and by way of incentive and to keep you focused, there is a small edible prize for those that are able to concentrate and work the hardest for the first part of this activity. That's the title of our presentation. As you can see, there's a mini instruction there, which is to get laptops ready if you have them, or mobiles as a second preference. I'm Martin Compton from University of Greenwich. I'm Louise Drum. I'm from Edinburgh Napier University, formerly of the University of Greenwich. Which is why we're working together on this. Okay, so without further ado, we're going to try and illustrate through exemplification, give you something to do, and that task is for you to work in groups. Obviously in a room like this, which is magnificent, but not clearly designed for group working activities. So around the room, you will see green pieces of paper that determine which group you're in. So we've kind of got one group over there, one over there, one over there, one over there, and then we've got four spaces in the middle. So if you look right towards, if you will, the pieces of paper as being indicated by Louise at the moment, then... Got one right down here. Yeah, there's one over there. That's good. With your mobile devices or laptops. Everyone in this area, please come here. Follow the instructions. If you're joining us online, welcome. I don't know where the camera is. I'm going to wave sort of generally like that. There is also an option for you to have a crack at this as well. But those here in the hall, ignore this. Use your piece of paper, please. So it's not a prize for everyone, but we would hope that everyone will complete this task as swiftly as possible, but the winning team will be furnished with some minimal nourishment. Okay, can we turn over now? Yeah, get going. Turn over. You'll find a QR code and duplications of that QR code or a URL on that page. Pass the white pages around to your friends so they can scan it or log in. Please don't use the people in the room. Please don't use the one on the screen. That's for people who are watching the live stream. So please use the URL or the QR code on the pages that you've got in your group. Too complicated for you. So not everyone needs to be logged on. You can collaborate, work in a way that's best for you. The task should be evident though. So you'll find the task is in Google Slides. You want to make sure you're in edit mode of Google Slides. The second slide has movable words. Drag and drop them. I don't want to worry you all, but the online group seem to have finished already. So if you're with us online, can you click the like button in the VVocs so we know how many people are participating? That would be great as well. Just a code to enter for those working online. Nobody's rushing to me yet with the piece of paper. I hope we should be close. It's the green paper is the one you want to fill in. Oh look, here comes someone. So close. Oh no. So close. We have a winner. We have consolation prizes as well, so keep going for a minute. If you're close, bring it up. Your green sheet. Online group, you've got one letter missing. But yeah, do keep bringing those pieces of paper. We want to check. Excellent, well done. Yes, so we have a runner up there as well. Congratulations. Let's see. So close. Two letters runway round. OK, as much as I'm sure you want to carry on with this until it's complete, we do only have a limited amount of time. So if you give Louise your pieces of paper as we continue with this, these are the answers for the different groups. You'll notice that they are actual words, but not words that are actually that easy to guess. So you have to get the things in the right order. What we'd like you to do is hold on to that experience. Think about how you felt doing that and relate it to the context, the problem that we had, and the solution that we came up with, which is slightly different given that the context here is different. The online experience for those people who are watching online was a little bit closer to ours, but they didn't have audio. They were relying on text comments to interact with one another, but they seem to be able to do it a little bit faster for some reason. Maybe you have an explanation for that. So I'm not going to take any comments now, but we can save those for the end. So the context that we were working on, online, distance, PG CERT HE program, along with Ross who's sitting over there as well, with both UK and international participants, we have as part of our scheme weekly webinars using the Zoom webinar tool. And we were using a lot of the kind of chat, Mentimeter in the background, breakout groups, turning mics on, turning mics off. We heard earlier in the earlier session about some of the issues we've collaborated in these sorts of contexts. But we weren't particularly happy with the amount of participation. And I think any of you that have ever taught online or perhaps even just participated in online webinars will be familiar with this. When we talk to students online, we tend, I feel, and a lot of the evidence shows that we're doing this as well, that we're going back towards more transmissive modes of teaching the pedagogy is much, much more transmissive. And the media, the mechanisms that we use, the tools that we're using can exacerbate that. So the skills and strategies that we use to encourage dialogue in classes aren't necessarily the same ones that we can draw on in an online environment. So we're finding new ways of trying to get people involved. So there are a couple of real issues with the way that we're asking people to interact. So they feel more visible. They perhaps feel more vulnerable, more subject to the surveillance of the tutors and their peers. So a number of these things are causing quite big issues that we're preventing them from engaging in dialogue. So what we wanted to come up with was something that kind of mirrored what you were looking at here or doing here as a strategy for engaging them. Okay, so what we did is we put together a series of Google slides that the students online could collaborate on, which is you were collaborating today. I'm only bearing in mind that they're all at a distance. It's a synchronous discussion. It's a synchronous Zoom webinar that we are running. And we use the breakout rooms facility within the webinar to siphon people off into small groups of three or four where they would then engage in this problem-solving activity. And the thing that was most interesting about this that actually this became a private space in the way that a main webinar room cannot be. So just as you were huddling in groups together, they were virtually huddling in groups. Some of them were using their mics to chat and some of them were using the chat facility as well. So what we did is we had these instructions for the escape room where they went through the slides, would probably progress to the next slide, and they had a drag and drop activity, which in Google slides people can do at the same time. So they were dynamically moving around these words into this left and right for them to experience. Kind of collaborative problem-solving online. And then afterwards we would discuss what was the approaches that they were taking in doing that. And then they had an escape room code much in the same way that we asked you to fill out your code on the page as well. So the student feedback that we had, people had quite a strong reaction to it. Obviously they said they felt more comfortable talking to each other because there wasn't somebody in the room, it was okay to make mistakes. Again, that idea of playing and failure coming to the fore there. And some people indeed feeling this kind of panic. We didn't set a timer on them, indeed we didn't set a timer today either, but actually there was this sense of urgency that they had to get on it and do something and complete a task. And then other people talking about, well they just had a conversation about what was happening. And I suppose most striking of all, bearing in mind the name of this talk, somebody said actually I had to put down my cup of tea and sit up and start doing things in the opposite way that sometimes we think about online webinars, this is a passive thing, I can just sit down and do something. We passed over some responsibility and agency to them. So I think we'll finish up there, but we've got to hand out our prizes first of all. So if people have comments, any feedback? Obviously there was some technical stuff happening there because people couldn't get into edit mode of Google Slides if they didn't already have it downloaded on a mobile. But if you have any comments or anything like that at all, who is our winner? Sewerage one. Sewerage one, and that was this one here, so that is, there's group 3A, who'd you like to come with us? Congratulations. And left. Well done. Sewage, who came down first? Sewerage. So while the grand prize giving is underway, are there any comments or questions about it? I think it was quite ambitious asking you to do this in such a short space of time, but hopefully you get a sense of that experience, which is what we were going for. Who were our runners up? Oh, the second one was, no, oh, it's here. It's this one. Oh, yes, Fishways. 4B, 4B. 4B.  So obviously we're going to post the wrappers to the online people because, you know. I told them they can take something from their fridge. Yeah. Yes. And obviously those Google slides will be there in perpetuity for people to have a look at. We've shared the links there as well, for people who want to have a look and make your own copies and adapt it for your own purposes. Any questions? Comments? Hi, Stephanie Campbell from Southeastern Regional College. Oh, there we go. Stephanie Campbell from Southeastern Regional College. So just a tiny question about digital confidence and capabilities with the learners and the students, were there challenges to overcome with? Some people have a real fear factor, especially online. And how did you overcome those challenges? I think one of the things that's central to the way we designed the program is that, you know, we're all coming to this online distance program with different levels of expertise and confidence. So built into the program is a sort of, you know, you might be on this rung, you might be on this rung. Let's move up a few rungs wherever you are. And everything that we do is about challenging people to move on. So there's that sort of backdrop that reassurance. And indeed, we had somebody who was there, whose entire job was to support that improving digital confidence amongst the cohorts as well. But, you know, we were lucky, it was a PG CERT AG. So everything we do, it's experience it. These are the kinds of things that students are exposed to. So we had the perfect kind of narrative to frame that, actually. Maybe you can answer the bottom question there. I was going to address the cheese comment, actually. But no, OK. So some of the tasks that we set the students. I mean, the illustration that we have on there is a classic one. But I think that the opportunities afforded by live presentation, drag and drop functionality, synchronous use of things like Google Docs, there's so many things that you can do, completing tables, labeling diagrams, those kinds of things, all lend themselves in a similar way to the kinds of tasks that you had as well. Anything to add to that? No, I think just the next question in relation to people who didn't like the activity. The only one was people felt a little bit of panic. And maybe it might be a little bit related to the digital, not just their own capabilities, but actually the devices. And we were working with people in different countries. So in terms of access to the internet and stuff like that, people found that they had to turn off their video in order to carry on with it, or they had to use a second device in order to actually access the activity. So there were things like that that created a sense of urgency. But out of all the things we did, I think, as the webinars, and we had been doing webinars for a full term at that point, that they did respond very positively to this, in that they had something to do. They were given something to do. But it wasn't with the whole group. And more importantly, it wasn't in the big webinar, which was usually being recorded as well. So actually it was genuinely a private space for them. A desirable anxiety, I would call it. Yeah. OK. Any more questions? Hello, I'm Stephen Bruce from Edmund Napier University. I'm just interested in the challenges of transferring something like that into the asynchronous environment. I think that's a really good question. Actually, these sorts of activities came out of asynchronous activities. So for example, our induction activity is an icebreaker about icebreakers using Google Slides documents. So introducing all of our participants to the concept of multiple authorship on a single document, add your own slide, share an icebreaker with your colleagues or your future colleagues on this program, and then comment on those using the comment function. So introducing people to this idea that you can operate in an asynchronous way using a single document and do some quite interesting and creative things. And they're all academics, teaching academics. They go off and do it in much more interesting and creative ways, sometimes without Lego. I suppose the one thing to bear in mind about this one is that there's no traceability about who moves what around. So if it's asynchronous, we don't know who's done that. And it's debatable whether that's something you need to know or not. But whereas within a Google doc, where people logged in and you can actually trace the history of who's done what. But yeah. Great. OK. Maybe the final question. How long would you give students to complete the task? And what happened when groups finished earlier than expected? We had an extension task built in. So the content of the example that we showed you there was about what was it about? It was problem-based learning. That's it. So there was an opportunity to discuss some of the features that might be surprising, I think it was, wasn't it? About counter-intuitive ideas. Counter-intuitive things about problem-based learning. OK. Thanks for the cheese. Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks very much. Well done, everyone. Thanks. Three of presenters. Lorna, Charlie, and Stuart, the floor is yours. Hi, everyone. Are you good? So my name's Lorna Campbell. I work at Information Services here in the university. I'm in here with two of my colleagues. Like to introduce yourselves. Hi, I am Stephanie Charley-Falley. I go by Charley. And I work in Open Educational Resources. Hi, I'm Stuart Krummer, and I manage a small interactive content team within Information Services. We haven't got any prizes. However, we do have something that hopefully all of you will be able to take away either in a physical or a digital form. So everyone's a winner in our session. So hopefully you've been enjoying yourself here at the University of Edinburgh over the last three days. And as you can see, Edinburgh is a very ancient and a very grand university. But it's also a very playful university. And I think if any of you were at the Cayley last night, you'll have experienced that. And what we're going to do in this short session is look at how we support playful and creative engagement here at the university. Through Open Education. So the mission of the University of Edinburgh is to deliver impact for society, to discover, develop, and share knowledge. And we firmly believe that one way we can do that is through engaging with open education. And we have a vision for open education and for open education resources here at the university. And this vision is very much the brainchild of Melissa Highton, who you've already met, as one of the co-chairs of this conference. And this vision is founded on the history of the Edinburgh settlement, our excellent education and research collections, and traditions of the Scottish Enlightenment and the university's civic mission. We have a policy to support this vision. And this OER policy was approved by our Learning and Teaching Committee in 2016. And that's important because it situates open education and OER very squarely in the domain of teaching and learning. This policy is permissive and informative. It doesn't tell staff what they must do. It encourages them, both staff and students, to use, create, and publish open education resources to enhance the quality of the student experience. And it helps colleagues to make informed decisions about creating and using open education resources. But policy is nothing without practice. And in order to support this policy, we have an open education resources service. And you're actually looking at the entirety of the open education resources service here. It's myself and Charlie. But we cover a lot of ground in the university. We're a centrally funded service, based in Learning and Teaching and Web Services, which is the Directorate of Information Services, but we work right across the university. And we focus very squarely on developing digital skills. And we also provide strategic support for big initiatives. We run a lot of workshops and digital skills events around open education resources and open education. We provide a lot of advice and guidance about copyright and open licensing. And we inform strategic initiatives. So for example, one of our big strategic initiatives at the moment is developing online masters at scale. And that initiative is very much informed and underpinned by our principles of open education and our OER policy. And we also support information services groups, playful engagement strategy. And I'm going to pass over to my colleague Charlie now, who'll be able to tell you a bit more about that. So my involvement with this actually began when I have a very playful approach towards the way that I teach and share information. And one of the things that I was doing as part of our open education service was running OER board game jams. So this is where groups are led through openly licensed materials in order to create and license their own game. And it was really quite popular. And so moving on from that, I went and I did some research with a colleague here at the University of Edinburgh. We ran focus interview groups on people who had been attending the sessions. And through this, we actually found that there was quite a desire for more information on how to be playful in learning and engagement here at the University. And a real appreciation for services provided from us within information services use this playful and creative approach. A lot of this comes back to a lot of discussion that is occurring and playful engagement and learning at the moment, which is in the magic circle, which is where we're looking at creating a space of safety where the rules of the real world don't apply directly and where different norms and codes of practice emerge. So there's space to imagine and create. So where we were talking this morning about creating curious and playful people. And so this is something that we've really been trying to take on board within information services here at the University of Edinburgh. And we're now actually applying this as a strategy in how we are providing our services, our information and the way that we are engaging, both internally amongst ourselves and then broader out across the university community. So we have our playful engagement strategy. This has been put up and is being implemented right across information services. We've got some wonderful little gifts here that have been created by Stuart and the information team. And this goes across our commitment in a number of areas. So our commitment to reflection, development and innovation. And this is seen in our services including our academic blogging services. We have a UCreate makerspace and we have a large number of student internships as well. Our libraries, museums, galleries and collections. So we are looking at different playful and engaging ways that we can engage with those. And Stuart will talk about that a little bit more in a moment. Digital technologies, looking and seeing here my favorite of these is actually the catch box which is just a throwable microphone that you can throw around and it breaks up that divide. So the technologies don't need to be huge but just thinking about how we can use them to engage creatively. So this is also seen in our flexible IT spaces. The 23 things for digital knowledge course which I was talking about just yesterday and our digital skills services and teams. We're also building communities of practice and this can include, we have open educational groups and communities. We have Wikipedia, editathons and game sessions and we also have the fabulous Ada Lovelace Day which is now becoming quite important to us and a regular feature of our calendar. And on that I'm going to hand over to Stuart to talk a bit more about our practices then. Thanks Charlie. Okay, I first got involved in Ada Lovelace Day back in 2015. I don't know how many of you participate in it but it's quite a common and popular activity in a number of universities around the world. It's really just a celebration of women in STEM and sort of encouraging young professionals and up and coming students to explore a variety of different subjects. So I'm just going to showcase some of the activities we do. So typically we start off in the morning with some guest speakers and we now have quite a large commitment from the student body. So we had talks on sort of women in particular in high performance computing. We had representation from student societies sort of mental well-being and the women in STEM society and we had an intern from the library talk to us about things she'd uncovered in the university's collection to do with gender and equality. And we also had a really sort of cool presentation for Madeline about how she hacked her net machine to create portraits of sort of famous women in STEM. We kind of sort of loosened things up a bit when we do some group activities. So some of them are very sort of academic and focused. There's the HPC carpentry course, the university runs which sort of covers supercomputers, what it is, what they can get out of it. But it is a particular focus on women for that particular course. One we'd done last year that was created by the students themselves was STEM Stories where they sort of collectively wrote down and discussed their own personal experience and shared it with each other and online. Some of my colleagues ran the DIY film school activity for mobile journalism. And without fail we always managed to do Wikipedia sort of editing. This is just some of the fun activities we've got cupcakes decorating. A lot of sort of coloring in. We have sort of visible illustrations we've commissioned. Evening events are sort of networking, sort of career discussions. The, sorry, I'm erasing through these. Second project we're going to talk about is the coloring book, which is a sort of culmination of all these different focuses within the university. So this sort of started as a series of workshops back in February. And we invited students to come and look at the university's collection. There's sort of 40,000 images online. Most of them are open licensed. And we sort of shortlisted some of them here. And we gave them the sort of digital skills to go through, transforming the photographs or paintings into a black and white outline with the sole focus of that creating this sort of collaborative book for publication later in the year. And these are just some of my particular favorites the students created. And this one I'm sort of overhead garden designs, I think it's really unique. What was nice was one of the outputs was we took these publications and used them during exam times. So we had drop in sessions for the students wellbeing. And we also ran a series of similar events during mental health awareness week. And that was for staff and students throughout the university. I'm happy to say we've got some copies of the book with us today. Come and grab us, but we'll leave some out at the poster downstairs as well. All of it's available online. There's a Flickr album and there's PDF downloads for the book and for running the workshop yourself. And there's links to Charlie and Lorna's efforts as well for you to look at. I'm going to wrap up there and open the floor to questions, if that's okay. The audience, there's no online questions so far. We have some copies of the coloring book that you can take away, but as Spirit said, you can also download them. And all the outputs that you've seen today are completely open licensed, so you can take them away and use them at your own institution, even including like the Ada Lovedless Day posters. The playful engagement strategy. The gifts that you saw in the presentation and even though we are policy is open licensed. So everything that you've seen here today is there for you to take away and use. Okay. I think it's that time of before lunch. People are getting hungry. Colt, my attention was that thing you said about sort of in creating the real life don't apply. I mean, it's a shame that real life rules aren't those that are in that space. And I'm just wondering sort of in these, through these practices, do you find that creating these spaces sort of makes it such that those rules become real life rules, the openness and the interaction? So the movement towards playfulness has been happening for quite a number of years within our information services group. So we've had a number of people who have been practicing just independently like myself and Stuart just doing playful things in the way that we engage and teach and share information. Now that we've applied that as actually a strategy as a way that as a group we're moving forward and embedding, it is actually signaling to a lot of other people all across the organization that they can be playful, that they can participate in all of these. We provide a number of playful materials. Throughout our buildings and our spaces for anybody to use and incorporate in their activities, whether they're just having a team meeting and trying to figure something out. We've got craft boxes that they can go in and pull that out. And it is actually leading to more people thinking about, okay, how can we present this information in more informative, engaging and creative ways? And it is actually leading to an uptake in our own practices, but also in people attending a lot of the services that we're providing. Any other questions? I have a question. How is the uptake of the colleagues and the teachers changed in culture there? In terms of open education or playful engagement, or both? Playfulness. Playfulness? Yes. So when I was running the Board Game Jams, I was doing it because I wanted to reach a different audience to those who would normally come along to information sessions about copyright and licensing. And the research that I did actually show that exactly what was happening, the people who were coming to the sessions were coming because they wanted to learn about playfulness and then apply it. And from those sessions, we've actually had people go and create their own games. They've applied and openly licensed and shared and taken out to their own students. That we've had some featured at conferences. And there was one that was quite prominently featured at a geoscience conference the other year. And we're seeing a lot of interest in playful engagement across the university. And because of course, Laura and I are involved in open education, it's also being tied in with the way that these new resources are being created and shared, which again is encouraging that to be taken up elsewhere. Yeah. Hi. It's not really a question, it's just a comment. I think it's a brilliant strategy. I love the focus on mental health and wellbeing as well, which is such a key issue for students and coming more and more into the conversations. I just love that it overlaps. Teaching and learning and wellbeing aren't necessarily mutually exclusive events. So thank you for sharing. Thank you. If there's no further questions, then I want to thank this person. Thank you very much. Thank you. And then I give the floor to Stephanie, who goes by Stephanie. So, hello. I'm aware that I'm standing between you and your lunch. So, I'll try and keep this in good. So just to introduce myself, my name is Stephanie Campbell, or Steph, and I'm part of the Learning Academy, which is a small team within Southeastern Regional College. We are one of six colleges in Northern Ireland that deliver mostly FE, but also HA as well. And all the details there, if you want to find out more or to reach out and get in touch with us. So the first thing I would like to do is ask you a question. The British cycling team have a philosophy that you should ask yourself, why are you on the bike? When you're starting off on your day and you get onto that bike and you've got a big challenge ahead of you, why are you there? What is motivating you to be there? And that's something that we should keep at the forefront. Why are we on the bike, especially those more challenging days? So once we're on our bike, where do we want to go? What is our destination? And there's been so many amazing discussions as part of this conference about what our destination is and learning technology and data analytics in health and wellbeing as well. So what is our destination? Where do we want to end up? As that question used to hear at interviews, where do you see yourself in five years time? If you remember that one. So we're on our bike, where do we want to go? For us, it was about challenge. Not that long ago, we had a lot of challenges in terms of our makeup. So Northern Ireland went through a bit of a reform a few years ago where they merged multiple colleges into six super colleges, as they were called, and at the time we were merging three main colleges into one. And each of those little colleges had their own organisational culture, they had their own systems, they had their own processes, their own people. So how do we get those three different, completely different cultures to work together in a way that is productive and effective and is working for the students at the heart of it? And we wanted to plan for where we wanted to be. We were on our bike, we knew why we were there, but we needed our destination. So we thought about, well, what happens when we do have lovely facilities? At the time, our facilities weren't great. So what do we do when we do have our great facilities that we really want to get? What do we do when we have our brilliant technologies in every classroom? We're a few years down the line and we do have those buildings. The difference was when we got to those buildings, our people already knew how to use them. They already had the confidence and the digital capabilities to embrace the changes and to embrace the technology to make it work really effectively. We've got these great facilities now and a lot of people will say, oh, it's okay for you, you've got lovely facilities, but we didn't always. I taught in mobiles where the toilets froze over in winter time and the students had to come in and walk for miles to get to them. And now we have these great facilities, so what do we do with it? And part of that strategy was about integration, about taking the systems that we had, the people, the data and the technology and making it work together as a whole college, as one unit. So how did we do that? So this is our science bit, a little bit. This gives you sort of overview of how we integrated those systems together. So at the bottom would be our learner management systems using G and EBS, we have Moodle as our VLE and on top of that we built our systems using cloud services and also within our own quality processes as well. Then on top of that again, we developed the people agenda a little bit. So we looked at staff development, we created a learning engine where people could do their mandatory training online in a flipped learning environment and also developed enterprise entrepreneurship and employment as part of that strategy. So we took all those little bits, smushed it together to make a whole strategy so everything works and everything talks. And one of the key themes of this conference is about dialogue and that's not just human-human dialogue but how do we communicate with our systems and how do they communicate with us as well. But at the heart of this are our lecturers, our teachers and we really firmly believe that teachers are the agents of change. They are the people that our students see every day, every night if they're night classes and they are at the forefront of creating a change strategy. So how do we empower those teachers? How do we give them agency to be able to change the agenda within their own classrooms and for their students? We live in a world very complex digital landscape and the questions and the conversations that have been happening in this conference or testament to that, we're not quite sure where things are going and where it's going to end up. So in that landscape we have students that we need to prepare for a future and we have teachers that we need to prepare to teach those students to prepare for the future. So how do we do that? When teachers see an iPad or a piece of technology do they think teaching or do they think gimmick? Do they think a tool that I can use? An appliance as was mentioned yesterday in the keynote. Do they think about teaching and engaging their students? How do we address that gap? People see that there is a value in technology and teaching but do they have the confidence and the skills to be able to utilize that really effectively and make a real change? One of the things we looked at was that you can train somebody up brilliantly, you can give them lots of technology but unless their mindset is in the zone of change they're not going to. They need to have the right mindset and how do we cultivate that mindset change? And one way is to show them what good looks like. Let's see what the really good things are. So with that in mind we started to think about how do we help people to unlearn some maybe habits or changes that they've done in the past and relearn some new ideas in teaching and learning? How do we remove those barriers and there are always barriers and there always will be and to me that's just a challenge. I'm like yeah, what's next? So a barrier can often spark innovation and creativity. So one of the ways that we did this with the 3R peer mentoring process and you can see here coming up here in a lot of ways it's a very simple process but built into that are some very key elements. One of the key elements is the pre-mentoring assessment where we sit down with the mentee, this is all taking place on a one to one basis and to follow with the themes of cups of tea we usually do this over a cup of coffee or a cup of tea and have a conversation, an open dialogue. And one of the questions we ask is tell us about your most challenging class and if I could wave a magic wand, sprinkle some fairy dust, what would you change? And from there we start to address, okay, what teaching and learning strategies, what digital tools, what appliances can we use to help address that challenge? We then have our mentors and we have a dedicated team at the moment of around nine and they go into the classroom and teach that mentee's class, we teach their subject with their students in their classroom with what they have in that room and that is a real light bulb moment. That's a real chance for that mentee to sit back and think, oh my goodness, I can use this. Let's take a look at how do my students engage with this strategy or this approach and really reflect on how it might shape their learning. So we show them what good looks like, we show them, we demonstrate that technology and that's such a win. It also gives a lot of kudos to the mentor. So I've been a mentor for around seven years now and I've got to teach plumbing, animal care, hairdressing, a bit of beauty therapy. So I can tell you how your toilet works and also how to do a skin test for hair color and we get a brilliant opportunity to go in and see these classrooms as well. The whole approach is entirely confidential. It's not about reporting on anybody, it's about support and it's about showing that mentee different methods and coaching them in a very safe way. They get to try something new with somebody alongside who can help them and if it all goes wrong, it's fine. We remove that fear of failure. We take away that risk. The students feedback into this as well at the end of each classroom session, they give us feedback on the learning and teaching, not the tutor. So how did you learn today? What did you learn today? Did you like it? Did you not like it? What would help you learn better? And that feedback shapes the rest of the process. So the mentoring process maybe takes, well, it could take any time between six or 12 weeks or longer. It's all completely bespoke to each individual lecture and what they need in their classroom. We've developed this over around 10 years. So we started off in 2008 with a bit of a trial, working with our essential skills team or foundation skills you may know it as. And we've developed it over the last 10 years, tweaking it and making little iterative changes to it. And because of that, we feel like we've learned a lot of lessons. Some of those lessons have been quite tough personally. And we've taken those and used it to continue to work this model and tweak it to make it work for our lectures. So here's the real science bit with numbers and everything. And I teach English, so numbers are not my. So we saw then a roughly 13% increase in achievement rates with 500% increase in Moodle use within that first pilot team. And that's when we thought we're on to something. This could work. Let's see if it'll work on a wider scale. We developed, we're very, very lucky in our college. We have a team of creative developers and software developers. And they created a plugin for Moodle that would allow students to rate activities but like a trip advisor, just like a wee star rating zero to five. And we're able to take that data and see what students like and what they don't like. The numbers here I just pulled on Tuesday nights. So they're quite fresh. So you can see there that students don't really like putting in assignments. That's a bit of a shock. Don't really like submitting assignments, but they do like resources. They do like URL links. So let's see how can we develop that and make that better. So this all feeds into our process. We saw 87,000 roughly Moodle ratings just last academic year, with a rating of about 4.6. So it gives a bit of an overview. And obviously there's a huge amount of drilling to be done into exactly what those numbers mean. We don't just take it as a blanket number. What does that really mean in the classroom? And we're able to work with that. Excuse me. What this meant for us was that we had 6.2 Moodle views, 6.2 million, so not 6.2. That would be a very different number. 6.2 million Moodle views in that year, which was a complete surprise to us. We weren't expecting the mentoring program happening live, face to face, to have such a huge impact on our online blended provision as well. 30% of that access was from outside the college. Again, an unexpected number, but a very lovely one to have. And how do we develop that further? This gives you a little sort of lovely graph of our Moodle data over the last year since the mentoring program first came into play, and it gives you a bit of a picture of the growth and the development of that. What we've seen is large-scale behavioral change in our college. We know that change management is a huge field of research and some trial and error, and sometimes it works. Around 30% roughly they think of change programs succeed. What we found was that mentoring helped to address this slightly by giving that one-to-one bespoke training to people, and it was an opportunity to have a go, test, and learn what was happening. These are some of the key benefits as well. We saw that people are more satisfied in their job role. They feel like they're supported. We haven't just invested in the technology, we've invested in the people that are using it. Collegial relationships. I now have colleagues across every curriculum area in all of our campuses that I've worked with over the last six or seven years, and we've been able to improve practice at large scale as well. This has been demonstrated in external evaluation. ETI, our version of Austead, celebrated this, and most recently, I don't mean to brag, but just yesterday evening, I stood in this very stage and very honoured to accept an award for being highly commended at the ALT award. So thank you very much to ALT. Oh, yay! Bonus applause! So we're really honoured and we're really thrilled, and it wouldn't happen without the team. We found that the student data then, 92%, felt that the teachers were using a range of methods, and that, to us, was a huge win. Students enjoy this, they see, they perceive how teachers are changing their strategy inside the classroom. But it's not just about what we know, it's about what we do with that, and that's what we've found, by taking knowledge, adding some skills, we dash a confidence, nice cup of tea and a biscuit, we get to improve what we do and empower people to embrace change and empower people to try something new and transform how technology is perceived and received with our students. We offer them an opportunity to skim, swim, or dive, so we have little micro-learning through our weekly webinar series that goes out to all staff, corporate and academic. I'm racing through because I'm worried about time. We also have Open Classroom Week, just piloted last year and hoping to do the same this year where lecturers can go and see. Go into your classroom, have a look, see how people do it. Let's have a conversation. We also work heavily in collaboration and about a growth mindset. Where do we go next? We've been able to develop and support mentoring programmes across Europe, UK, Ireland, Slovenia and Italy and also work with, most recently in Uganda, I was there in July, Thailand, Singapore and Japan as well to help implement active learning strategies and technology enhanced learning strategies and that's all come out of this process of collaboration. We work closely with the National College of Ireland, Walsall College and Forth Valley College here in Scotland and we're able to collaborate with them on project-based learning technologies and project-based learning projects as well. We're continuing those relationships into the next academic year, which is really exciting. So last thing is to ask you a question. Where will you go next?  So thank you very, very much for coming to speak. It was a bit of a sprint at the end. I know, it was like that. I was on my bike. Peddle on, pedal on, pedal on. To keep it in the Irish atmosphere. Any questions, Fristis? We'll start with questions online. This is about the mentorship process, academics coming to a non-academic looking for a mentor. How did it actually work? So the process of it is that our mentors are academic teaching staff, so they still have a full-time table. They're sort of seconded out for about a day and a half a week. And that day and a half, then those hours are spent with mentees. So they're still teaching and they're still very fresh in their practice. And that gives a bit of credibility to that mentor. And as a mentor myself, it was meant that I tried this with my students on Tuesday and they really liked it. Do you want to try it with yours? So in terms of that, we still have that built in to the whole process. And the second part of the question was what about the culture? How do you get such a culture that people accept you as an outsider to come into the classroom? Yeah, right.  Nope. Definitely, it took a while and it was about that organisational culture and realising as soon as we said, well, no, we're not going to start off with me observing your class. You're going to observe me. I'm going to take your class first and you can see. And we use the same paperwork. So the feedback that we use, the mentee uses that first on us. So that gives some credibility and it helps them see that this is about an open, safe dialogue. It's not going anywhere else. It's not about pinning somebody down and what are you doing wrong? It's about let's share how we can do things right and let's do it in a really open, dialogic way. So in terms of a culture change, it took a wee while to admit it took a little bit of breaking in and it took some trial and error as I said, but I think because we had that pilot group with the essential skills, the foundation skills, that really helped because the students were feeding back that they loved it, the teachers were feeding back that they loved it. We also asked managers to get involved. So they were one of the first ones to get involved with being mentored. So deputy heads and assistant heads and we also asked those who were in our teachers union if they would be mentored and they did. And obviously that lent a weight to the process and a weight to the openness of it. Most popular question now is some painful lessons. Can you share a couple of those? I think probably speaking from my own experience about times when I went in and tried to mentor somebody in a completely different subject and it all went terribly, terribly wrong at the demo lesson. I remember trying to deliver mechanical engineering at HND and it went very, very wrong. The lesson from that was too that you can never prepare too much but also we put ourselves slightly at risk as mentors in that respect. But the huge benefit of that was that empathy, you know, we're together in this. I'm not saying that I know everything when I walk into your room. I'm saying let's learn together. Let's work through this together. Why did it not go right? We also had some lessons around staff development. So we did the standard staff development of having everybody in a big room, you're going to learn this. And half the people went, oh, really? I don't want to. Another half the people went, oh, okay. I'm here anyway. And that was a painful lesson for us a little bit as well. I have to say over archingly, it has been very, very positive. I feel so honored to be part of the team. Some people used to say, oh no, the mentors are coming.  We have a waiting list of people to be mentored every year that we can't get round them all because there's too many. And people want to come back and back and back. So. Okay. Any questions in the room now? Can I just address one about the IT departments? Yes, sure. Because I think that's an interesting one. We have a very small IT department. We have one of the lowest spends on IT services. And what we do is we invest in the people agenda rather than that. So as they say, we have a small IT services team. We have a small team of creative and software developers. And that's it. So, yeah, that's quite a small team. I'd love to have sex. It'd be brilliant. Yeah, related to that is, do you limit the number of technologies that are being used to keep it sustainable? Yeah, I think it depends. It's super spoke that it just depends on the lecture. Some lectures are like, give me everything. I want to know everything. And you go, okay. And you show them everything. Normally, through each mentoring process, we would focus on one. Let's get one really good, really strong. Let's get you feeling confident and able to progress this even further and even better, tell your colleagues and help them. So we tend to focus on one per mentoring cycle, but we have people who come back every year and ask for it again and again and again because they want to know more. So we do limit the technologies for each individual, but we don't limit our scope. We see our role as kind of horizon scanning to see what's out there. And then we suggest what we think may be useful for other lectures. Okay, final question. Do you involve students in the process and how do you involve students? We involve the students really heavily. So their voice is so, so important. And so often they don't get a chance to really say what they think. And we do that from that first demonstration lesson and we ask them, did you like this? Is it good? Do you think it's gonna help you learn? Did it help you come to grips with these subjects? And they get that voice which feeds forward into the whole process. So from stage one, their voice is being listened to and sometimes lecturers might say, I really want to use Pablet, Pablet's amazing. We try it with the students and students go, no, I don't like it, please make a go away. And we change our whole strategy and we look at something different. So their voice is the most important voice at the heart of that. If students don't like it, they won't use it. Simple as that. So they have a huge voice in the whole process, yeah. Okay, thank you. A round of applause for me. Thank you. Edina's work with learning technologies helps to develop skilled data literate students who can change our world for the better. Teachers and students can develop and share coding skills with multiple or Jupyter Notebook service. Our DigiMap services deliver high quality mapping data for all stages of education. Future developments include a text and data mining service, working with satellite data and machine learning and smart campus technology. Edina's work with learning technologies helps to develop skilled data literate students who can change our world for the better. Teachers and students can develop and share coding skills with multiple or Jupyter Notebook service. Our DigiMap services deliver high quality mapping data for all stages of education. Future developments include a text and data mining service, working with satellite data and machine learning and smart campus technology. Edina's work with learning technologies helps to develop skilled data literate students who can change our world for the better. Teachers and students can develop and share coding skills with multiple or Jupyter Notebook service. Our DigiMap services deliver high quality mapping data for all stages of education. Future developments include a text and data mining service, working with satellite data and machine learning and smart campus technology. Edina's work with learning technologies helps to develop skilled data literate students who can change our world for the better. Teachers and students can develop and share coding skills with multiple or Jupyter Notebook service. Our DigiMap services deliver high quality mapping data for all stages of education. Future developments include a text and data mining service, working with satellite data and machine learning and smart campus technology. Edina's work with learning technologies helps to develop skilled data literate students who can change our world for the better. Teachers and students can develop and share coding skills with multiple or Jupyter Notebook service. Our DigiMap services deliver high quality mapping data for all stages of education. Future developments include a text and data mining service, working with satellite data and machine learning and smart campus technology. Edina's work with learning technologies helps to develop skilled data literate students who can change our world for the better. Teachers and students can develop and share coding skills with multiple or Jupyter Notebook service. Our DigiMap services deliver high quality mapping data for all stages of education. Future developments include a text and data mining service, working with satellite data and machine learning and smart campus technology. Edina's work with learning technologies helps to develop skilled data literate students who can change our world for the better. Teachers and students can develop and share coding skills with multiple or Jupyter Notebook service. Our DigiMap services deliver high quality mapping data for all stages of education. Future developments include a text and data mining service, working with satellite data and machine learning and smart campus technology. Edina's work with learning technologies helps to develop skilled data literate students who can change our world for the better. Teachers and students can develop and share coding skills with multiple or Jupyter Notebook service. Our DigiMap services deliver high quality mapping data for all stages of education. Future developments include a text and data mining service, working with satellite data and machine learning and smart campus technology. Edina's work with learning technologies helps to develop skilled data literate students who can change our world for the better. Teachers and students can develop and share coding skills with multiple or Jupyter Notebook service. Our DigiMap services deliver high quality mapping data for all stages of education. Future developments include a text and data mining service, working with satellite data and machine learning and smart campus technology.


It's not about where we go or what we do, it's about actually that moment when those children have those sparkles in their eyes because they see Elmo or they see a mature, grown-up woman dressed in a stupid costume and you know it just brings joy to them and it brings joy to us and so our team we talked about it and I asked them what it was that they came for and they said that the variety is all about giving. Everybody gets something from variety whether it's the satisfaction of seeing a child happy or you know then the fact that you know that the family is going to get some real benefit from the hard work that you've done all year to get to variety. It's just about giving actually, it's about giving.


Unstructured has been around with us for a while. You know, it's getting a lot of attention now, but as Informatica for a long time has been helping customers like you heard both Morgan Stanley and more recently, J.P. Morgan Chase with Larry Feinsmith, we've been helping them handle the processing of their various document formats, Swift Processing, Excel, Spreadsheets, Word documents. So we're just taking some of that same expertise and bringing it to you. Was it 30,000 databases? Is that what it's? Yeah, that's right. It's a good time to be Informatica when you have customers out there with those sorts of footprints. Yeah, so we're just taking the expertise that we've built up in the sort of non-Hadoop world even around Unstructured and bringing it to Hadoop. But I think what's interesting about Hadoop is you're seeing the real economics of information changing. And so we have customers that are doing things like mining their social media influence networks to drive business value. We're seeing customers that are mining things like their survey verbatims, seeing their mine sites like Yelp and Travelocity for feedback on their hotel experiences. And the interesting thing is that a lot of these problems combine unstructured processing with transaction processing because you want to know who you should really be paying attention to. So I might post some random tweet about something. Should the company that I'm tweeting about actually care what I have to say about it? Did I actually stay at that property? Am I just retweeting effectively something that somebody told me that's not really verifiable? But when you can correlate unstructured information with an actual hotel stay and maybe even an actual hotel room, you bring those two worlds together, then you have really actionable information. That's what Informatica is helping. I am moderating.


Hello, everyone, and welcome to the East Africa Community Session. My name is Winnie Kabinti from the Wikimedia Community in Kenya. Before we proceed with our session, I would just like to say that our hearts and thoughts are together with the people of Haiti in these tough moments and we are with you. So, for this particular session, you're going to learn more about East African communities where we are as communities and we have two amazing speakers who will be taking us through the session. We have Douglas from the Wikimedia Community User Group in Uganda and we have Anthony Mttavango from the Wikimedia User Group in Tanzania. So, at the end of this session, you will have a deeper understanding about the major and upcoming Wikimedia communities in the East African region and you'll also be getting a glance at some of the challenges that these communities face and how they're even trying to navigate them. So, just before I introduce Douglas to give you a quick background about the East African region. So, basically, outside the Wikimedia Community, the East African region is actually a block containing six countries namely Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi and South Sudan and these six countries actually enjoy quite a historical, political and economic partnerships and when we come to the Wikimedia Community, the communities are trying to leverage on this existing historical partnerships so that we can grow together as communities. So, Douglas, I will welcome you to take the stage and share your presentation and tell us more about what you do as well. Thank you. Thank you so much, Winnie. My name is Seba Gladia-Glas. I'm the co-founder. I'm one of the co-founders of the Wikimedia Community Youth Group in Uganda and I welcome once again to Wikimedia for our session. I'm delighted that we are doing this together as a community at the East African region and also joining the rest of the Wikimedians on this historical event, the very first batch of Wikimedia session. So, I'm sharing my screen. I hope you can give me a thumbs up if you can see my screen. Yes, Douglas, we can. Right. So, as Winnie has explained, the East African region is a block of so many countries and we are doing this as a region. There are quite a number of activities that have happened but we are just going to highlight key events that really, really brought us together as a region in the last couple of years. And through this, we were able to make some commitments that we can work together and we can make a reality as humans collaborating for a common goal. As the title of our session suggests, these are commitments we made as a region and we are really working towards making them a reality as a community and we are very glad to share some of the previous current and upcoming activities that we do as East Africanists. It all started around three years ago in 2019 at the East African Capacity Building Training in Dawasalam. This happened somewhere in April 2019 and it was, it was, it encompassed very many different topics including capacity building sessions, capacity building in terms of technical skills in wiki data editing, training on licenses, pretty common licenses and wiki media licenses as well as other areas that involved grant making and also proposal writing. So one of the key elements that arose from this capacity building training was the need for East Africans to increase collaboration and work together. We learned a lot about volunteerism and how it can benefit us as individuals and how communities can benefit from volunteerism but the key outcome was how East African, how us East Africans can be able to work together as a community and collaborate in terms of making wiki media projects work around our region. Six months later we had another key milestone which was the East African Strategist Summit that happened in Kampala. This was mainly about movement strategy and demystifying some of the key facts and areas that are involved in movement strategy how underrepresented communities can be able to participate in the movement strategy and this was at a point when there were very many working groups that are doing work. We were able to understand what free knowledge meant and what the strategic direction was. There was a kind of myth around what free knowledge meant. Some of the participants, some of the individual community didn't understand it. They could relate it to economic, political or culture spheres but in the end we were able to come out at the same page and countries were able to make national and regional commitments. Most of the countries that got together were not at the same level as far as acclation is concerned because in the East African region they are around to be wiki media affiliates. That is in Uganda, in Tanzania and they are in Congo. But in the end we realized that we need to work together as a region be able to lend a hand to communities that are lagging behind so that they can be able to come together for a common goal which is criminal for the world in 2013. Over seven countries were able to make commitments that they would be able to do when they go back to their national communities and also commitments that can get us together as a region. We will later on share the links to those commitments. Maybe we will put this in the etherpad but we made quite a number of commitments per country in terms of what each country would do nationally and regionally. So the question always is there, there are always differences in making a commitment is one thing and fulfilling it is another. But as wiki medians we have principles as wiki medians. Principles being working in an open way and in an transparent way and we can be able to finish what we started. There has been small bits of this that have been done because some of the communities that we worked with didn't know anything about the wiki media movement but ever since we held these two major conferences we've been in touch working together openly and transparently with most of the communities. We keep in touch both through wiki media channels and then wiki media channels. So wiki media channels being we work collaboratively meter and then wiki media channels being we collaborate on other communication channels like WhatsApp and Telegram but we have a long way to go and we are ready to finish what we started. Yeah, trust is something that is not built overnight but with time we have been able to build trust together as wiki medians and also being able to trust the wiki media movement as we travel along with it. Since we have a common goal we think that if we trust each other in an open and collaborative way we can be able to fulfill this goal and if the goal is free knowledge if the goal is to fulfill some of the commitments that you have made we are ready to fulfill this in an open and transparent way as we move along. Trust is a key component in all the activities that we always do as wiki medians as a community. This has been manifested one year later where we still had the same group of people whom we've been collaborating with for the past year. They were able to join together and attend or be part of the movement of the global discussions. This is something that could not have easily happened if it wasn't for the different interactions that we had made that we had been making with the community. But one year later we were able to get together once again as a community and collaborate online to attend the wiki media the wiki media movement strategy discussions to determine our future. This was one of the other key milestones in the activities that we do as wiki medians and currently we are wiki mania and I would like to hand over to Anthony to take us to the next slides. Over to you Anthony. Alright, so thank you so much Douglas and hello everyone. I'm so happy that I'm meeting you victory through this wiki mania conference the historical and ever virtual conference. So yes, my name is Anthony Ntavangu and I'm a co-founder of wiki media community in the group Tanzania. So I'll be taking you through these slides that are remaining that led to what we have been doing within the East Africa region. So yes, for this year as you remember some of you you have some information that we did try to organize the wiki mania pre-conference in late July and in the beginning of August but unfortunately it didn't happen because of various reasons such as COVID-19 issues that the WMF was not able to find the international travel and so other factors. So this we saw like it was the first step to come together as East African region also as wiki medians from the East African region since we share the common background such as some challenges solutions that can solve the problems that we are facing in relation to contributing to wiki media foundation projects in East Africa region. So after the wiki mania pre-conference was cancelled we got another way to come together luckily we were allowed to apply for a joint wiki mania scholarship that for this year some communities that are not affiliated was not eligible for applying for wiki mania scholarship so the idea was like one affiliate within the East Africa region should apply on behalf of the others. So that's what we did wiki media tenure upon discussions with other representatives within East Africa region to apply on behalf of the others. That's what we did. So yes, sorry Douglas back to the yes, this is the joint grant that we applied and somehow it delayed but we have been telling the people to use their own resources then it will be funded because it will be on the way right now as I'm speaking. Okay, so the question is as the East African communities wiki communities, what can we do in the future? First we have the implementation plan last year during the movement strategy discussions there was a point where each region, each individual communities was asking to do some implementation plan for the initiative and the recommendations that they prioritized to work on. Then yes, as East Africa Douglas on behalf of all of us need to apply for the grant so we have the implementation plan for the entire East Africa region and we will be having some multiple calls and discussions around this. Then yes, back in 19 we had a summit in Uganda and we need to commit ourselves like okay we will be collaborating as East Africa region and then we are doing this to work on what we have been committed to do. Also we are trying to find another ways, another project, another opportunities, another way of collaborations such as exploring new projects engaging and collaborating in other aspects of projects that we have never worked before as a unity. I mean as a collaborative project so that's what you're looking. Next slide please. Yes, so in terms of implementation plan some resources available including the grant that Douglas asked. Also we'll be looking for the other opportunities to apply for another funds if possible to implement whatever we are thinking to do within the East Africa region. Also we are thinking of bringing to you some discussions around the concepts of region hubs you know there is a lot of questions like okay what should the region hub should be should it be like an online platform should it be like physical address or something so we have some discussions going on and we'll be having more. Next slide. Yes, work on what we committed to do as I've said before resources can be shared yes we have some resources and luckily the foundation is supporting us on whatever we are doing so yes resources in terms of resources is something that we learn to worry because it's here and also we'll be in future discussing more about regional and the thematic hubs. Meaning despite of discussing regional hub in terms of geographic locations like which countries are in East Africa or whatever but also we can think of thematic hubs like okay we can be focusing on this topic in this area maybe tourism, agriculture or whatever so these are the thematic hubs we are talking about a specific topic we can choose to work on as a collaborative project. Next slide. Yes as I said before apart from what we are already doing we are looking forward to the exploring new potential areas of collaboration for example we have several ideas like we can have maybe East African East Africa summit each year for example in a rotating way maybe this year in Tanzania this year in Kenya next year another country within our region for the aim of focusing on some projects such as Glam, Wikidata, Wikivoyage etc. these are just examples but we can always have some topic to collaborate with. Next slide. Yes the ball is in our hands meaning there is no a layout there is no layout that is already there everything we can always think from our head start something new that didn't exist before for the future of our community so it's the job of me you to think of what can or which area can we work together as a collaborative project. Yes next slide. Alright so we explained about which countries they do constitute the East African community she mentioned like six countries but actually when we are talking of East Africa wiki communities we are talking beyond even the countries that are geographically located in East Africa we have Somalia then we have next slide yes we have Somalia sorry August next slide Yes South Sudan, Zambia Botswana, Mozambiki wiki in Africa is not a country but a project that supports us or join our efforts in East Africa because they normally work on things or topics that are led to East Africa so they are supporting us on this. Also we have Somalia South Sudan I think South Sudan is part of the East Africa region then Somalia Ethiopia, Congo Zambia yes it's here so it's quite of and we still welcome other communities or countries that you want to if they think this is a good initiative to collaborate with us they are warmly welcome we not limit countries based on geographical location so next slide Yes in here I will be welcoming Bak Doglas because he has to talk about Wikindaba 2021 in Kampala Uganda so after Doglas I will be coming back again to wrap up my presentation Welcome Doglas. Right thank you Anthony for that this will really be quick because we have a Wikindaba table at the community village tomorrow you can check it out but taking up countries to join us in this initiative Wikindaba is happening in Kampala so we urge everyone to spread the word about this you will be coming up with the call for volunteers call for sessions look out for those and we think this will be like a very good platform for us to give the community an update of where we have reached as East African Wikimedians so we are at Wikimania right now and we believe that by the time that Wikindaba happens in November we will have a major update about the activities that we've done and how they have been able to impact the rest of the East African Wikimedians so watch out for that and we'll be glad to have you join us for Wikindaba thank you so much back to you Anthony Thank you Doglas so just in case you are new to what Wikindaba is can you go back to the last slide please Yes, so Wikindaba is a conference that is specifically for African Wikimedians to come together and discuss some topics that leads to Africa Not only Africa, even the people that are living in diaspora they are always welcome to join this for the past years it has been happening as an important conference but for this year I'm not sure Doglas didn't say we need to be virtual or we need to be like in the past one It will be virtual, we need to be a virtual conference Yes, so it will be virtual conference So yeah, thank you I just wanted to clarify about that Thank you for that Anthony Yeah, so we are the three here who just tried to create something that can be going in terms of East Africa community but we really value your contribution and support that we have been receiving so far from many of you as individuals or representatives of different communities within our region So maybe the last thing as the next step will be organizing another event I mean the discussion around which is the next event we can have for the East Africa region Hopefully the wiki endeavor is the next but we can always think again instead of the wiki money pre-conference that was cancelled we can have another conference and we have been told it is very possible if we apply under the conference and the events run So we are looking forward to that we will be sending the invitation and come together to discuss about what should we plan for the conference that can bring up together is a virtually of any person or the hybrid both the virtual and the in person So thank you guys I'll be handing back the mic to Winnie Welcome Thank you very much Anthony and Douglas for that elaborate presentation Douglas I think at this point you can stop sharing your screen so that we can have you back Great thank you So we will now move to our question and answer session Q&A where we are going to open up the floor to answer any questions that you might have whether you are watching from Rimo or YouTube you can share your questions and the speakers will be able to answer but to start it off Douglas and Anthony you are also some of the established you come from some of the established Wikimedia communities in East Africa actually you are part of the only three existing affiliates and for I know for most members within the East African communities they are actually joining Wikimedia for the first time so what would you tell or rather what would you encourage any participants joining this conference what are some of the things that you will tell them are important in a conference what are some of the things that they can expect to learn as Wikimedians during this 5D conference Let me start It's good to attend with many for the first time we are good enough there are many numerous sessions that are out there so what I would encourage the first time participant is to really network and keep the networks moving network and also network as much as we can and keep in close contact with the people that you interact with at the conference this is like the right you are the right place because Wikimedia only happens once in a year it's an annual event so it brings together all the Wikimedians across the world and this being a virtual conference at least there's a chance that you can create as many networks as you can and you can utilize those maybe learning from them and also keeping in close contact with them not only at Wikimedia but beyond Wikimedia Great thank you Douglas Anthony do you share the same thoughts so maybe my advice is that there is a point where you can feel like whatever is discussed during the Wikimedia can be somehow advanced to you this are tough things and I never heard about them before so yes it can be true because you are new but don't be discouraged grab whatever you can listen the good thing is that most of the East African communities will be having the post-Wikimedia events they need to apply for that so that would be a good part for digesting whatever is discussed during the Wikimedia so that you can understand better if you don't get it in a much percentage for this Wikimedia so it's a good platform it's a good thing that you attended commutation for that but don't be discouraged if you think like okay some contents are somehow advanced than I know so I can advise maybe new people who are just joining for the first time thank you Anthony and in the same bread if I may also ask what do you think is the role of mentorship as far as helping the younger communities to grow within the community not necessarily just within East Africa Anthony is this a question for me yes thank you I think mentorship is very important for the growth of Wikimedia movement to both the Wikimedia communities to individuals who want to participate in contributing to Wikimedia foundation project because through mentorship that's where somebody can fetch some knowledge from the person who understands better a specific topic for example in East Africa we might be good at editing Wikipedia uploading photos to Wikimedia Commons but we might be not knowing much about Wikipedia and other projects that we have never implemented before so mentorship will be helping us to be acquainted with the right skills and the right knowledge on how we can better contribute to our movement so this can be done by outsourcing not necessarily we should be depending on people from the same Africa community it can be yes same with African communities Nigeria, Morocco, Tunisia but what I can say here that we are not limited to who should we involve just to teach us to mentor for the future of our movement that's what I think thank you Anthony I will move to Douglas is a question on the Ida Pad from Kelsey from WMF and she's asking what areas of movement strategy implementation are the most important for East Africa thank you for that we need thank you for the question Kelsey well at the moment we think since we are looking at East Africa as a region we have identified an initiative initiative for the regional hubs so one of the most important initiatives is the regional hubs that we think can work for us as East Africans because we already have this in some of the commitments that we made we need to work together as a region and we are already working towards commitments that can get us together as a region so the good thing is that we also additionally have the media foundation creating regional structures so we can be able to tap resources and also be able to support and work together with the foundation to make this a reality so regional hubs are putting up regional hubs as one of the key important implementation plans for the East African region thank you and if I might also comment on that another area is on leadership and capacity building and I know that was one of the initiatives that most of the East African countries actually prioritized during the movement strategy discussions and the other aspect was on the areas of improving user experience for editors and new entrants I don't know if Anthony has anything else to add as far as that question is concerned I think most of the priorities in East Africa region have been explained and the capacity building has been putting a lot like some communities within the East Africa region are still upcoming still emerging so much of the capacity building in terms of how can they grow to the level of having the user groups for example as affiliates as in East Africa for right now we do have only Tanzania and Uganda as the official user groups but other countries are still struggling for that so there need much capacity building on that thank you Anthony for that and I agree as far as the capacity building is concerned because I know for us for our community in Kenya we do a lot of projects and at the pace in which we are also growing some of the skills or other questions most of the organizers actually have and will benefit a lot from mentorship in that area I know it's in how we engage our partners and how to even go about it considering that we are yet to even be recognized as a user group if I'm going to organization aid or a government agency for instance we've been working on the Afrosin project and one of the things we wanted to do this year is to work with the Kenya Film Commission so that we bridge that gap so even when at what capacity are you going to this office and such kind of things so yes I know when it comes to the capacity building it goes beyond just being trained on Wikipedia editing it goes all the way down or rather all the way up to project management yes so that's one of the areas just to answer Kelsey and another question that's both of you can still answer what does the future look like for the East African communities like when you look at the plants that you have as a region as far as the movement implementation plants go where do you see the community in the next five years or even two let's not go far whoever is ready can go fast right so do you want to go first? yes sure there was something that was mentioned in the presentation that the ball is in our hands so we would definitely it's upon us to determine what we can do but we can not only do that like the three of us we are just what we can call a staring committee or one of the community leaders that see a vision in the East African Wikimedians so the moment we work together collaborate as as a region then we can be able to do a lot in the future so it definitely depends on what we can do as a region and also as Wikimedians so we might not be able to foresee what can happen in the next two years but once we get our minds together working together in an open and transparent way then we can be able to work together with ideas that can steer us forward good enough we have the support and the ideas of the Wikimedians of course the world because we work together in an open way everything is in meta if you want capacity building if you want mentorship, if you want resources they are available on the Wikimedia resources so you can be able to collaborate and work together on this so I'm not providing a direct answer to this but as long as we work together that's what I emphasize in an open and transparent way we can be able to achieve a lot probably the next two years we could be able to maybe have like a larger larger team working together to share some of the updates in a project probably have more than three athletes in the region and we already maybe have a regional hub setup in a given country you can have different capacities in there different projects and different skills moving the community and the Wikimedia movement forward Anthony any thoughts? Well I think I'm thinking like there's something but maybe in different words yeah so I'm looking forward to see the communities that are united not necessarily to be a single thing but that are working together towards a common goal vision and vision so I think like together if we work together it's something that will bring energy and the capacity to we as one community because whenever where the certain Wikimedia community is weak some another so sharing working together makes us to be stable and to be able to implement even bigger goals that are ahead of us so yes I'm thinking like in the future I'm thinking like a regional hub that is working together to solve different issues to implement new ideas and throw another potential area that we can work together Great I know we are almost coming to the close of the session I have one more question and it's regarding the East Africa Wikimedia conference that you've spoken about in your presentation that you've mentioned it will be one of the things that you would like to see within the region so what do you envision what are the roles you envision this conference to play within the communities Okay Thank you Win for your question I mean it's not your question somebody ask it there yes so what I'm envisioning that this conference will be looking forward to come together and discuss more about the pending issue that we have Yes back in 2019 in Uganda we had a commitment and we are continuing to do our commitment but it's like we are not there yet we are looking at a certain point that we are not there yet so through conferences regardless if they are any person or if they are actually it's a good platform to come together and share ideas on how do we want to reach or how can we reach there where we want to be so yes that will be one, two the conference should be used as a platform to solve some knowledge gap yielding more capacity for the community that might be lending some interaction with the community that are somehow stronger so this is the that's what I'm thinking it's nothing final yet as I said it's something that needs input from different communities but this is what I'm thinking right now Yeah and if I may add something small like it would ideally be a platform for East Africa New Comedians to rise up and show that like we are not quiet in our underrepresented world to have our voices heard because there is always this saying that we can make them one of the objectives to reach out to the underrepresented communities and it happened to be some of the underrepresented communities but then it will come down to what happens on the ground it's really more than what the outside world sees we don't meant our activities so such conferences are platforms to show what we've been doing to share challenges and also successes as Antonia had mentioned previously we'll be able to determine communities that need the hand and be able to help those rise up for the whole world to know that something that happens within the underrepresented communities Thank you Douglas indeed I am rooting for the East Africa Community Conference and as we come to a close there was a comment that was also shared by Jeron and it's not a question it's a comment and he says Douglas I think that the schooling in 2019 in Tanzania was important but I'm quite sure that there was community activity in Tanzania before that Aki Pala in Okoli was making community work especially for Kiswahili Wikipedia for many years before that so it was very helpful but it was not the only activity that boosted East African engagement I think that was a comment with regards to the earlier presentation that just sought to drew to the events where the activities for the East African community started so I don't know if you want to clarify that for Jeron Yes I will clarify then Anthony will add we do recognize the efforts of the Swahili Wikipedia community and Ingo has done a great job in that regard to actually with him at the East African Kapa Stability Program Training that happened in Darasalam but I mentioned it as one of the key activities that East African together I'm not sure if Swahili Wikipedia has spread has spread beyond Tanzania but we have Swahili as a common language within the region so we do recognize the importance and the work that the Swahili community has done in building the Swahili Wikipedia and I think it is not the East African Kapa Stability Program is not the only key activity that happened in the Tanzania community maybe Anthony can add but thank you so much Jeron for adding to that and thank you once again to Ingo Kipala for the work in the Swahili Wikipedia Anthony can add something Yes definitely Wikipedia community user group Tanzania do thanks a lot Ingo call by user named Kipala he's a German but he speaks very good Swahili he's having a lot of knowledge and he always contribute to Swahili Wikipedia and he's one of the Swahili Wikipedia administrators he's very super useful and he contributed much to the to the formation of the Wikipedia community group Tanzania Swahili Wikipedia do extend beyond Tanzania we had some editors from Kenya from Uganda, Congo et cetera so that's one of the factors that if we do have conferences we can have some sessions that are aiming to do some more provide some capacity building on how can we contribute to the Swahili Wikipedia because now Swahili the language that is not only spoken to Tanzania or Kenya but a lot of the static countries are already adopted as a working language so thank you Kipala for your contribution and yes East Africa also can be looking forward to learn how to contribute to Swahili Wikipedia thank you so much I think we have one minute to go and we can save this minute to thank everyone who has tuned in to watch this session and yeah I think where are we telling them we are meeting next is it at the is it at the wiki endeavor or where are we meeting next at East Africa wiki endeavor but then wiki mania has just started so we have three more days ahead of us we meet in the other sessions so enjoy wiki mania and thank you for watching wherever you make out thank you so much everyone indeed we have the community village thank you so much for joining


Well, you saw the times this morning they had a big story yesterday, and they got a big one this morning And they have canvassed the whole country and a majority of almost well is 17 percent against me Well, that's a relatively small percent For an incumbent 17 percent, but I think that you could start off just Unanimously with 11 states on the count of civil rights and that would include Texas Because Texas is not for civil rights currently is not for the Democratic platform He made speeches against Medicaid. They made speeches against Medicare. He went on television to oppose them all he made speeches against the the civil rights He made speeches against housing and made it in Asia and the Republicans in this state support him a hundred percent and So we've got 11 states so I'm surprised at 17 percent the very small number, but they conclude That 26 percent refused to commit themselves So 17 and 26 make it very doubtful That's their conclusion. That's the lead and Bobby Kennedy started it with King up in New Hampshire and with Hughes out in Iowa. Teddy's roommate Is Gone out there and set up statewide organization and he's a member of Congress Now we know what they're doing. We see it But these other dumb people that were down good many up down here never didn't know what the pigs were King and Hughes and one or two others at her Out in Missouri One of the boys of the National Committee went out there and set up a public relations firm that's financed by the Kennedy's and located in Kansas City and He's making his headquarters there for operations in other states kind of like that. They did up in New Hampshire in 1964 Vice presidential pictures on So that's what it is.  I'm just gonna carry out the platform and continue to do what I can let everybody jump home and kick me around I've done nothing to deserve it.  That's what I'm gonna do and I appreciate your friendship and I'd rather rather sorry that you came up because I don't think you've got in the business and a crowd like that It's like the old dog prey you get in with a bunch of bad dogs Hughes or Hughes does he voted against the resolution civil rights continent. He's a guest those things he's a goddamn Republican running an hour and I've got letters from our chairman just raised in hell about his committee never having met they talk about the Democratic Committee Now I couldn't tell him But I went in to his state and I left him a hundred thousand dollars in cash Right in that damn little jerk state and in addition to that we contributed over ten to each one of his congressmen and in addition to that we went all over the state speaking and The reason he got elected because he's he pushes the Democrats and he's filed the Republicans. He runs on the Democratic ticket And it's it's a Republican state and I can't do anything about Hughes And I can't do anything about South Carolina and I can't do anything about Virginia and I can't do anything about Florida And I can't do anything about Missouri This hernes has been against this ever since he came in he wanted to dictate the poverty man So he could run a patronage thing and I can't I can't go Against Ed Long and Stuart Simon who in the Senate who would kill my father did they like just past it before vote but They were blown up much about nothing the way I see it and I think that In due time I'll have to just indict the whole damn doubt that on my side of it. I don't think that'll help But I think it's That's the way that going I will have to explain my position So we'll be in a tug-of-war between a bunch of the southern governors and then the rest of us on it and I guess I Guess we'll just turn it over to you I don't think we ought to see them I think the more contact I have with the governor, you know, I've had more than any more presence put together And it doesn't do anything but harm They come out and they're afraid some Republican in their states going to criticize them So they criticize me and they use my springboard as a launching power. You saw that damn deceitful her I asked any of them to get up and say anything they wanted to and he didn't have guts enough to do it They called a press conference after walked out of the hangar. Didn't you see that? Well, that's what he did and he took the whole story down here and the story was it's like God They were pursuing what they said is why it's over And that he wanted to know that Johnson was in deep trouble And the whole story from the ranch was just what he had said is why it's over because when I asked each governor to get up I want to be fair on each man to say what he wanted to But he wouldn't do it And then when he got out and all of us started to play and I was a host and I felt like I ought to Put Conley on his plane now to put the others and he came in a separate plane of the Northwest life insurance company And While I put them on he called himself press conference and he spoke for the whole group then by saying all up on happy And that they said just what they said is white sulfur and that this was a mess So I just think if I see any governor anytime anywhere about anything But I think it's going to promote a debate and so on so forth and I'm working on my budget and I'm working on my State of the Union and I'm grinding away day and night and I've got the Vietnam thing is going bad We've got the negotiations going but everybody is jumping in and saying the wrong thing at the wrong time New York time. It's got a man over there and I'd rather have a Soviet agent and So I think that Far as I'm concerned is not the thing I want the party I just want to do the best job I can that I'm gonna do and I'll do it whether without the governor I don't want any other sportman. Don't care. I just think that they hurt their party and hurt themselves with these food talks I Know I know your attitude. It's been a good fine hard-warming one, but Folks get over a bottle, you know, they do a lot of things and I think the damage was done when you let use come out There and say that after Romney met with his governors They were all unanimous and they hadn't done a goddamn thing my governor's met We had the finest program in history and done more to help their state Than ever before and put more money into their states got more people jobs Better coming out and saying that they came out and said their presence.  I've done. It's wrong according to any up south It's against the right But I even think they think I've got to do it That's the only thing I know. I don't know anything else. I've done this wrong.    I had to give it up to a bunch of the nincompoop politicians I spent I had seven different meetings with governors that week The ones that didn't have any communication Well, it's got downed out O'Connor came in that state over an hour during my lunch hour. I gave him my lunch I didn't even go to lunch that day Plus a four hundred million dollar atomic energy reaction And then he went down there and he said that he differed on this and he differed on that But I got out there for with him on a good many things and I just don't understand people that way Well, there's seven of them came by Connelly came and and not only came and spent the afternoon spent the night spent all the next day When he came down and had lunch with Frank Morrison and spent two hours with me and I just don't understand I think all of them want to get a little national publicity and then sell out to the Republicans and I imagine if you go down to the Montpelier whatever your paper name you can go down there and denounce your wife and get a page get a front page spread by saying that She's on offer somebody and that's what I consider they did to me.  You didn't I saw what you said. It was it was generous, but I don't want you to I know I'm unpopular. I know that I don't think it's unpopular They say and I think Bobby Kennedy had a couple of polls made but I think that I've got a better poll than the other Democrat And I'm still about 50% so When you carry on all the stuff I have but I know it's all the all the buzzers they sit around They smell something a little bit bad. They like to fly down take a piece out of it That's what's happening But good Lord will take care of you and then you time I will be back on top. So I wouldn't worry and I just tell Terry If he's loyal to the Democratic Party just keep his mouth shut. He's not the mouth of them.


We've launched our business and innovation team, and they're hosting co-starter sessions across the region, three different communities right now. Those are about halfway through. It's a nine-week class for people who want to start a business. We think entrepreneurship and owning your own business is part of the future here in the region, and not just any business, but people who are starting businesses who are thinking about solving problems that have a marketplace outside of our community. So with connectivity and technology, there's an opportunity that an entrepreneur here could create a business, an app, a service that could disrupt and become a national company. We're trying to give people the opportunity to learn ideas, connect with other entrepreneurs, and just build a culture around that mindset that taking a risk and starting a business is actually a good thing, and it's a cool thing. It's okay if you fail, you know, you need to be smart about it, but we always say we can't accept the risk of doing nothing. So we've got that team working hard across the region. We'll be launching three more of those cohorts in the fall. So if you're interested in starting a business, we'd love for you to kind of keep a track on that, and you can find more about that at soreinnovation.tech. That's the website. You can track everything that's happened on our business and innovation team.