Hello everybody. Time for the Q1 2017 Quarterly Analyst Hangout. Something that I try to do every three months or so, as a benefit to the folks at the analyst level, the co-executive producer level, anybody who's helping us out at a dollar a show, that's the $20 a month level, gets a chance to ask questions live while we're in the slack. If you ever have questions of this, and you're not able to support it at that level, you can always just email them feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. We'll try to get to them as they come along. Folks are going to be popping in throughout the hour, hopefully, Rich from Lovely Cleveland has arrived. Hey, how's it going, brother? It's going pretty good. Just joined a lovely Saturday. Fantastic. And of course, Roger Chang, our producer, jumping in. How's it going, Roger? Good. Sorry, sorry. I was having net cam issues. I don't know. Net cam? An old tech TV phrase. Web cam issues. It's Google Hangouts. It's just this one that works sometimes. Well, cool. One of the things I always do on this update is sort of let you know where we are with funds. And I've changed up how I do it every time I do it. So, you know, if you have particular questions, again, email them to us and we'll get to them in the next analyst Hangout. Or you can ask them in Slack. Gadget Chaser, for instance, is asking in Slack right now. Does the Slack actually cost us anything? A financial question? No, we don't pay for the Slack. At a certain point, if it gets to where the folks in the Slack who are supporting us at the highest level want a feature that you need to pay for Slack to get, we might do that. But right now, right now we don't need to. We just use everything that's there for free. How do you guys feel about Discord? That would be something I would float out there because Patreon actually integrates with Discord where you can give people certain roles based on their patronage. Are you there if you guys use it? I have not used it. I've never used it. I've heard a lot of good things. We mostly use Slack at my work. I would also think maybe not having it rolled. What's the Facebook business one that's like a Slack competitor only because of the social features, but I'm not sure. I actually just came across an open-source project that lets you do a host your own Slack, which lets you do full archiving and stuff. Obviously you need to take care of the hosting and stuff, but I thought that was an interesting alternative, too. Do you remember what it's called off the top of your head? I actually posted it in my work Slack so I can check just a second. Yeah, take a look. Good question coming in. Teeglass1976 even says he prefers Slack over Discord. I think most of the folks in our audience probably do feature-wise for the purposes that we use it for. If you don't know about our Slack, basically you back us at the $20 a month level and once a month we invite all the new people in and you get to chat with each other. There's a bunch of channels in there. A lot of people swap in tech tips, talking about things related to tech in their work and stuff like that. Howard also prefers Slack. It's a cool community that's been building in there and all of us are in there. I'm trying to get the co-host to jump in there more often. Of course, we're all busy, too, so. It's called Mattermost. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to jump. Mattermost, that's the open source one. Open source, yeah. Okay, cool. And then Gadget Virtuoso wants to point out HipChat was Enterprise Slack before Slack. Ha-ha. Zoom. If you're not familiar with Rich, by the way, Rich Truffalino helps me out on Daily Tech headlines, helping write the headlines and anytime that I can't do headlines, you'll hear Rich's lovely voice on there. So thank you for doing that, man. Absolutely. I should also tell people if you're not familiar with Daily Tech headlines, you should probably check that out as well. See, now Howard's putting Mattermost link in the Slack. So if you're in the Slack, boom, boom, boom. You're getting this stuff. All right, let's take a look at the finances. Oh, wait, hold on. A Beatmaster in our regular chat says, can you link me to that? Let me get that Mattermost link over there to Beatmaster. But yeah, finance-wise, we had a very good fourth quarter. Hold on, let me get back to the actual page that shows me that stuff. So yeah, we had nice rises in patronage from September to October, October to November to November to December, December to January was a drop. So we finished 2016 strong. It's not unusual to drop in January. It's after the holidays, everybody starts looking at their bills and was like, need to pull back. And we had a drop January to February as well. So again, not a ton, not a huge drop. It's in the financial terms, it's really just flat, to be honest. But we're talking about the amount of pledges processed to not the amount you see. The amount you see on the website is a best estimate based on history of what we would get. But then at the end of the day, it's what actually gets processed, what credit cards make it, and all of that sort of thing. So the reasons that people are giving, and by the way, if you do leave our Patreon, it's super helpful to tell us why. The vast majority of people leave because financial conditions changed. And I even get some very nice people who will write in and say like, ah, I ran into this trouble, I'm really sorry, I hope to support again, and that's totally fine. I 100% understand, especially at this day at age. But the other reason is people who don't listen as much anymore, and that's going to happen too. I've had that happen to myself, where a podcast that I used to listen to all the time, I find myself just not listening to. And so that's fair too. I would say though, if it's a time matter, A, you can always skip. B, there's daily tech headlines, which is only five minutes a day. And C, there are other things that you can get besides just listening to the show. If you're getting some value out of the Slack, for instance, at that level, or if you're able to take advantage of the weekly update to kind of keep yourself up on the news when you don't have time to listen. We try to provide lots of different ways to take advantage of what we're doing without having to spend 30 to 40 minutes every day listening if you can. Well, and I think kind of along those lines, the new anchor.fm daily tech headlines like is even more, like if you really are compressed in time and you literally have like a minute to catch up, that's like a super great, because you can just grab it in bite size. Each individual headline is its own little chunk and you can come back to it when you need to. It makes it really easy. Yeah. If you don't, if you hadn't heard about that, Ron Richards of All About Android and Damn Fine podcast is doing that as well. And he kind of helped me get into it. It's an app called anchor, anchor.fm if you want to find out more about it. And it has bite size audio that you can flip through. So what we're doing with daily tech headlines is we put in the little bits of the headlines individually. So that way you can listen to them and if there's one like, oh, I heard that or I'm not that interested in that, you could just swipe and move on to the next one. And I love being able to take advantage of other ways to distribute the content that we have. We also get to calls on that app. It's really cool. Yeah, it's really cool. We started getting some from people, just making comments or asking questions. So that's kind of fun too. You might want to check that out. Back to the questions. Howard says, do you have a schedule as to when you thank people on the episodes? Is it random or do you have anniversary dates, et cetera? That's a great question. The little thank yous that I give at the end, I usually pull from either PayPal or Patreon of people who have recently either just started pledging or changed their pledge. The thank yous to people on anniversary dates and stuff, I will do that sometimes. That's sort of random. So I pull from different sources and there's a monthly update that goes to everyone on patreon.com that has thank yous based on anniversary dates and all of that as well. So it's a good question. Maybe I should start putting some of that stuff in the main show as well. I don't know how you guys feel about that. One thing I don't think people are taking advantage of is the monthly update and the weekly update. So if you're at a dollar a month, you get the monthly update. If you're at $5 a month, you get the weekly update. And because all of the episodes also go out by email, some people may just be blocking email or maybe go into their spam folder. But you may want to look at patreon.com because we do have some really cool stuff going up there. And, well, now we've just got people talking about how much they're supporting on Patreon in there, which is great, which is very cool. Let's see. What else we got going on? Do you guys have any thoughts or questions before we move along? Any chance those emails will stop? Oh, any chance those emails will stop? Thank you, Gadget Virtuoso. Any chance those emails will stop? I think what he means is every post on Patreon causes an email and it's all or nothing. So to make the Patreon only RSS feed, which has the pre and post show work, I have to post it to Patreon, which then sends an email every day. What I do in the meantime, I've asked Patreon several times, Heather at Patreon knows this because I've been hammering her about it, to give me the opportunity to say, do not send an email for this post. They don't have that suggestion yet. So what I've asked, what I've done in the meantime is all of the posts that are just about episodes have the word full at the very beginning of the subject line. And if you're getting these emails and you want to see the weekly email and the monthly email, filter on an email from Patreon that has the word full in the title, can go into a folder or even get deleted if you want. It won't affect your RSS feed at all, obviously. It's just gonna, it's still gonna post there. But that way you don't have to get that email about the episode, but you will still see the emails that are the weekly update and the monthly update. Does that make sense, Roger? Kind of. Well, if you're not clear about it, then nobody's gonna be clear about it. So what's confusing you about it? Really, part of it is that I don't visit Patreon every day, so I just, I get, part of it is that I just flag all Patreon emails and they go automatically into my updates. So I very rarely, I notice them when they come in, but for example, I got one for the link to today's Hangout for the analysts. I mean, I don't really have too much of an issue. But you just filtered them all, right? Yeah, that's kind of bad. The thing to do would be to filter just the ones that say full in the headline, but I get that that's extra work, right? I wish people didn't have to do that. You know, I... Go ahead, sorry. Is there any way, I mean, would it be possible to just, you know, if maybe people want to opt out of getting update emails entirely, which I don't necessarily think is a great idea, but if we gave an audio cue at the end when we know if those posts are going up regularly, just say, hey, remember to go to Patreon and check out the weekly... I've been trying to do that in a kind of an offhand manner of like, hey, today I posted this topic so that people think, but yeah, maybe we formalize that a little more. Because they are, I mean, the weekly updates are every Thursday and the monthly updates, I think I have scheduled to go out on the fifth of the month, every month. All right. Steve I says, based on the feedback from the survey, what are the things that are working well and what are the changes you want to make? Yeah, it's... With the survey, I was kind of testing the waters on a few different ideas, but also just checking in to see how things go. So shall we go through the survey results? You guys into that? Sure. So should Daily Tech News Show focus on more single topics? This is the idea that I've been pursuing of taking some of the load off of Daily Tech News Show from being the everything you need to know every day, which is a lot, 30 to 40 minutes, that's a lot if you're like, I just want to keep up. That's what Daily Tech Headlines is for. Hey, here's the top stories of the day. And having Daily Tech News Show be more about here are the stories we can have an interesting conversation about. If there's something super important, we're going to mention it. We're not going to ignore super important things, but we won't try to go deep on the number of topics, kind of reduce those number of topics so that we can spend more time having a quality conversation on it. And it sounds like you guys are in sync with that. 39% said keep it as it is, but 50% said, sure, you can focus on more single topics, but don't lose all the top stories of the day. I mean, it's one of those balancing things where you do want to at least nod to those stories that are trending that day. But one of the things that Tom and I were talking about is how do we want to approach some of these single topics? Do we want to have a group of people, along with the contributors and a guest and stuff to go really super in depth on these things kind of like Charlie Rose, or do we want to do more of... And this is purely on approach, or do we want to do it more of a kind of a talk radio where it's just kind of banter banter kind of thing where... I mean, I'm sure... I'm wondering if I'm making any sense. Yeah, you are. I think we can mix it up too. Like, we can have certain episodes where it's, you know, a couple of top stories of the day. Again, never want, you know, going on the survey, never want to eliminate that. But we might sit down with a guest and have a bit of a longer conversation about one topic and maybe only have three or four top stories that day to make room for that. Another day would be, like you're saying, the more banter where we have a couple of guests on to just kick around a topic, which is kind of what we normally do with our main topics. And it's, yeah, it's one of those ideas that Tom and I have always been kicking around really just to make sure that we do do it, but at the same time, we're not necessarily alienating people who aren't on that topic level. I guess if, for example, if we go into Internet of Things security, do we, do people who are not all that interested in that feel like they get left out because there is no other content within that show kind of thing?  As long as we're still bringing a majority of topics that you enjoy, right? Next question, if DTNS became a slightly shorter show, say 20 to 30 minutes instead of 30 to 40, you would love it, wouldn't care, dislike it, hate it. And this is me responding to the people leaving our Patreon because they say they don't have time to listen anymore. And I'm like, okay, well, if we made this show a little easier, and I know a 20 minute show is a whole lot easier for me to keep up on than a 40 minute show, hour show, hour and a half show, especially daily, you know, hour and a half shows that are weekly, I have a hard time keeping up with. So our results were here, like 35% wouldn't care, 35% dislike, it's perfect as it is, and then only 9% would hate it. And I think that says a lot, 9, 20% would love it. So I don't know, I feel like that indicates we could shorten the show a little, keep it under 30 minutes and people would be fine. Yeah, I mean, I have, part of me wants to do a shorter show because as a producer, I find it tends to liven up. Yeah. The stuff, the discourse, because we are kind of like, okay, we're on the time limit, sort of. That's one of the compliments we generally get in our reviews is that they like that we move the show along as it is. Well, the previous, oh, sorry. That kind of goes along with the last question in terms of focus and in terms of maybe shortening up the top stories. So instead of doing four to five headlines to start the show, getting it down to two or three, maybe just making those more substantive discussions and I mean, that's one way to shorten it up obviously. But I think those two kind of go hand in hand if that was an approach you'd be willing to take. Yeah, and also, but we'll get to that. The next question is pie or cake. 44% pie. Woo, dodged a bullet there, just edging out cake at 41%. I would have had to disown the audience. What counts as 15% other like donuts? Yeah, I guess. Just leave it, that was survey completionism as you should never limit the options. You should always have a catch-all. I do want to give a nod to Tech Dad who mentioned at the slack about our previous question. I like the pre and post show sometimes better than the actual show, especially if time is limited time or start to get behind. I mean, it's one of the things actually that we've discovered is that people really enjoy our pre and post show discussions because they're not always necessarily tech-related or even tangentially related to the topics we've talked about. It could be something like, oh, you know, I'm running late and we'll have a nice... I think it does add an element of cinema verte where people can kind of feel like, oh, I'm actually part of it. They're getting ready for the show. You know, someone used to make a best of those for the patrons. They did. They were great. Pretty cool. Took a lot of time. And then I made him help me with headlines instead. So that's my fault. What main discussion topic would you like to see discussed? This goes straight to that heart of, okay, instead of having another conversation about a cell phone that came out or the, you know, 100th story about, you know, Uber autonomous cars as our main topic on a day where we should mention that. We should mention those stories, we could dig into more evergreen topics. What would you like to see? And we got a lot of great ideas. In fact, some of these have already started to affect, you know, the topics that we've been picking, right, Roger? Yeah. I mean, like it's very interesting. And I'm not sure if someone just filled out the four multiple times, but security shows up wet. A cognitive bias there is you're going to prioritize the first thing you see. Well, no, but I've noticed that it does that same topic does pop in throughout. Not as regularly, of course. But it's, I mean, it is something that I think people are very interesting, although when they say security, are they talking just, you know, I mean, security is a broad topic. Right. Do you talk about infrastructure security? Do you talk about your home? Network security? Do you talk about online activity security? Do you talk about security issues? For example, things related to legislative things that, you know, might be either passed in law or submitted as a bill regarding, you know, the government's ability to see into your digital content without your permission, stuff like that. So it's, it is, I do find it interesting that we did see one person put FOSS and Linux news in there, which is something I don't see very often mentioned in our general emails. Yeah, true. And again, this is more tell us some ideas, right? So that we can think about whether there's something we want to rotate in. It's not a democratic vote that we're trying to take here. So even if there's only one, that puts it on our radar to think about. The shotgun approach you've been doing works great is another one that somebody said. Whatever is timely is one that's somebody saying, hey, make sure that we keep them. I think I want to keep hitting topics that are emerging and we haven't talked as much about. Right now, that's Internet of Things a little bit, although we're starting to have talked about that quite a bit. Machine learning, AI, autonomous cars. Keeping in front of the technology that is interesting and we're learning more about. While keeping an eye on if there's anything really interesting happening in the mobile space or the app space. I think I missed it. A lot of Internet of Things in here. Yes, and that kind of definitely goes along with concerns for security or at least those two could definitely go together. I think the reason we're seeing a lot of interest maybe in more security topics is because we're kind of hitting a point where there needs to be a little bit more nuance, kind of like how we've gotten with net neutrality where it's not just enough to report on something as being net neutral or not that we're starting to get a little bit more shades of gray and that the DTNS audience I think is really interested in learning about those nuances and same thing with security as we enter an age where everything is going to have a sense or everything is going to be connected. Security kind of shifts then at that point and I think there's going to be a lot of interesting areas to touch on in that. I like this one. Surprise me. I think that's what we try to do. I'm going to skip past the guest ideas because we don't need to talk about them and discuss them here but thank you for the guest ideas and keep them coming. We're always looking for new guests. Yes, we want Molly went on almost every one of you said that we wish we could get her more often but we will get her back. Do you listen to Daily Tech Headlines was just me trying to find out how many people in the DTNS audience where I was promoting this survey knew about it and 67% said no, I only listen to DTNS 28% said yes, I listen to both and then there were a smattering of people who only listened to Daily Tech Headlines or did not know that Daily Tech Headlines existed but most of you knew about it. There was a small percentage who said no, I don't listen to either. How did I get into this survey anyway? Again, trying to be survey complete there. Brief news items before the top stories that's something I played around with like what if we did a top five head brief headlines like these are the things that are going on and then the top stories is more the current discussion that we have and then we have a longer topic. That might be too much but it seems like a lot of you like that. You like having a little one-liner when it's just like, hey Gmail updated so you can play video in the browser without having to download it. Isn't that cool? We don't need to have a big discussion about it but it's a good thing to know. Some people are confused by it because they're like, well why are you bringing it up if you're not going to talk about it? I don't understand the functionality. How are they any different from the top stories? They seem like brief items we won't talk about or explain but here's a headline. But that's all you need. I think that Gmail one is a perfect example. You can now play video embedded in Gmail instead of downloading the video. There's not much else to talk about. Is there? Am I wrong? I think part of it is because maybe not that story but there might be there have been a couple episodes where we have done kind of a where we do the pre-news news notice and you and whoever Justin or Scott or Patrick will talk about it a little bit more, which makes it seem just like like it's a top story. That's just us not executing very well. Maybe what that is. 100% of you responded you were ready. I'm very happy to hear that. That's great. How important is the recording time of DTNSTU? Because this is another thing I'd like to have is the flexibility to do what we did with Lertad. Patrick and I are talking to another guest that he had on the Phileus Club from well now I'm I'm blanking on where he is from. But he's to have him on to come on and talk about his experience in his country. But yeah, it's good to know that 84% of you think that the recording time is not important as long as you get one a day. And that would be the intention is that we still do five shows a week. Maybe we do like we did with Lertad where we do Monday through Thursday and then Saturday. We wouldn't do that terribly often. And also Roger and I have talked a lot about doing some guests as pre-records because it's the only way we can get them. Some guests we can't get or it's awkward to bring them into the live show and make pre-records for those. That's something we really would like to move forward on just because one of the issues at least with booking guests is time and not everyone has that same time window available to them and having more flexibility on that would allow us to widen our guest net, so to speak. Yeah. Include them in the show. A question about pre and post show being available in video and to patrons on audio but it was split into quarters. 29% enjoyed it occasionally. 27% say it's not important they could do without it. And that's why we have the regular podcast feed. 20% never miss it and 16% didn't know it existed. 7% think it's the best part of DTNS. That is about what I expected. In fact, I expected maybe more people to say it was not important than did. Yeah, no, it's a healthy amount. If you look at a little more than a quarter say that it's not they could do without it. But if you include the enjoy it occasionally with the never miss it, it's around 50%. If you include the best part of DTNS and all that, it's over 50%. So it's good to know that people are also very engaged with that part of our show because we've gotten emails or comments or questions regarding content or stuff that we've talked about either pre or post show of the actual DTNS episode. Here's what I'm actually not going to talk about a lot. What is the one thing you think would make DTNS better? Because besides Molly Wood, we didn't really get a trend. What are you talking about? Supercats? Cowbell? Yeah, but that's not a trend. That's what I'm saying. We didn't get a lot of people saying Supercats. No, we got things like, I think this part of the audio could be better. Or I wish that the RSS feed from Patreon worked better outside of iTunes. It was all over the place. So to me, that's good. There's lots of great ideas in here that will get me thinking and fine tuning. But it didn't seem like there was one that kept coming back unless did you think so, either you guys? Really, I just kind of locked in on more Cowbell. As you would. I like less flooding of Tom's basement. I think everyone would enjoy that. There's people like less politics and other people. Why do you avoid politics? Which makes me think we're probably hitting exactly the right line. Other than talking about FCC, stuff that actually impacts how we interface with tech. It's not like we go out of our way to be a C-SPAN analytics podcast. What is one of the things you hope DTNS never does? Stop and go away, take ads, quit, disappear. These are all heartening responses. Thank you. Jump the shark, cease to exist. Switching formats to the daily toner news show. I can promise you that won't happen. That would be jumping the shark. If we intend to jump the shark, that's the way we would do it. Yeah, this is almost all, this is where you see a ton of trends, which is don't stop and don't put ads. Don't sell out. In the very important question of should we give Sawyer the dog a biscuit, a dog ice cream cone, or a massage, or more time on DTNS to express the canine perspective, overwhelmingly 38% said more time on DTNS to express the canine perspective. We'll work on that. I do leave the door open now where he can come down. He has not deigned to do that. You may have heard him barking from upstairs. Anything else on the survey was mostly keep up the good work and thank yous. Those are very much appreciated and of course have we told you lately how much rock is good too. Obviously we didn't cover every single response on here or even a representative of every single response because a lot of them were very specific, but that gives you the gist of what we got and I can't emphasize enough how helpful it is when we do these surveys that you guys fill them out because it really is a gut check for us. It's not like we're going to only do what's in the survey, but there are certain things that I feel certain about doing and there are certain things that we as a team feel certain about doing, but those little things on the edge were like should we cut back on top story? Should we increase top story? Should we change the time? Those kinds of things are really helpful to take the temperature of the audience, so thank you for that. Any other thoughts on the surveys from you guys? Really? There was a lot of really good feedback and I think it's always helpful for me at least because it's the only way I can kind of get a gauge on the stuff we do and if we're doing it to the satisfaction of the audience or not. Also, because it's very easy to be very blinkered to get an idea of the topics that we are canvassing are ones that our audience is also interested in. Rich, anything else? I dropped off for a second, so I did not hear that last part of the conversation. Oh, sorry. No, I just wonder if you had any of the last thoughts on the survey before we. No, just, you know, it's awesome that everybody, you know, likes the show enough to give their time and give their opinion. Clay Clymer says, where can we rate the show outside of iTunes? He doesn't have an Apple ID. Wherever podcasts are listed, you can rate them in overcasts. You can rate them in downcasts. You can rate them in pocketcasts. Yeah, wherever you're listening to the show is where you can, where I would say it's helpful to rate it. Yeah, I think Google play whatever does like thumbs up. I'm not sure if they do stars. Yeah, you could thumb up on the YouTube, all kinds of places. All right, Howard wants us to add this day in tech history to the Daily Tech Headlines episodes. I would like to do that too, Howard. Here's the thing that makes it a little longer and not everybody likes it. I did an actual today in tech history podcast for a long time and it only ever got close to a thousand downloads and it declined over time. So I use the tech history on the weekends for Daily Tech Headlines to sort of keep something in the feed and keep it from repeating on the Amazon Echo and things like that, but I don't know. I know you would like that and I would like that, but it doesn't seem like as many other people like that. I wish we could figure out a good elegant way to roll that in. Maybe it should go into DTNS instead of Daily Tech Headlines. You do it at the top and then like, oh today in this tech history but what up and then you swing into the show. Yeah, that's something we could play around with. And it'd be easy to put on to the just the anchor feed if you just want to do that too. Right, that's true because then you can just skip right past it. I used it in the anchor feed on the weekends anyway, so yeah. For the single topics, Howard would like to have a couple of extra voices. He really enjoyed the episodes where Scott Johnson was asking questions and that forced really good explanations. I don't think that five minutes shorter really matters to daily listening. Those are all, those are Howard's thoughts. Teaglass 1976 suggested brownies might be in the other category for Pyre Cake. Rob O says, headlines banter on main stories guest topic. I think the recent Allison Sheridan FinTech episode was kind of the perfect episode for me where the guest dovetailed with current events. Yeah, that was very serendipitous. I would like to say that we kind of had a far-sighted planning for that. It worked out well for that episode. Howard also says, I like that Daily Tech headlines has a lot of quick hit stories and I almost think you could skip more of the less interesting stories at the beginning. I think he means of DTNS. But that really depends on the co-host Justin Robert Young always has interesting commentary about every story.  Rob O says, FOSS is really inside baseball and tends to be very technically siloed. That's a good point. FOSS being free and open source which if you didn't know is an example of what he's talking about. That doesn't mean I don't want to cover it but I want to cover it in a way that is interesting to the open source fans for lack of a better word but also accessible to the people who don't know because that is helpful to open source for people to say, oh I didn't realize that existed. I didn't realize that was an option. So I try to keep my eyes out for those kind of stories. Klee Klammer says, do you get analytics other than the total downloads? Sort of. I mean, honestly, what we pay attention to is the Patreon and the PayPal. Those are the two main indicators of how well we're doing. Total downloads from SoundCloud and archive.org and YouTube. We keep an eye on. They're of interest. But I wanted to repeat this explanation a little at some point and this is a good enough time. If you don't realize the way I imagine DTNS working is this. In a normal show that's advertising supported you're paying for the show by supporting the advertiser. So some of you get a free ride by not buying anything from the advertisers but enough of you are buying from the advertisers that it supports the show. And what happens there is a dollar you spend with the advertiser gets kept for the most part by the advertiser and they spend, they pass a small amount of your dollar along to the show. With this model that DTNS has we say, instead of you having to go support an advertiser to support the show and them keeping a cut of the money why not just cut out the middleman you can spend less money support the show directly. We won't have to take into account the interest of a third party that's not interested in the show they're just interested in selling to you and everybody is happier. There are still people who can free ride the show, right? It's the same model where not everybody is supporting the show directly but now you're supporting it directly instead of supporting the advertiser. So the important numbers to me are the Patreon numbers because of that. That makes sense? Yes, to me it does. It's interesting for the audience to say yes it makes sense. Howard says just FYI the show is probably one of the best, most consistently solid podcasts I listen to. Thank you very much Howard for by all means that's what we're shooting for so that's very nice to hear. Andy Beach thinks Daily Toner would make a hell of an April show. I kind of answered Steve Ice question I think. He asked what's more means more to your stats is there a platform which holds more weight yeah that's basically what I just answered Clee Clemmer says I didn't hear you say no to DTNS the musical. I will say probably not because unless you want to hear I don't know how many of us can actually sing well I mean anyone can sing but singing so other people enjoy it is a different matter entirely. Yeah I think that's that's fair the question is not would we say no what would you say please don't please stop well the other issue is I mean we're just gonna sing the book or is this gonna involve choreography in which case we need to change camera setups for sure well top-stuming you know does Daily Tech Headlines just become a libretto in that situation? Yeah I think well it just becomes like a jukebox musical where we just yeah we's hitting that could be that could be a goal we're gonna have to factor in singing that a milestone for the show if we hit a certain level we won't do DTNS the musical the musical sort of Damocles hanging over all listeners Kledothimer says the explanation of analytics versus advertising reminds me of broadcast versus Netflix in many in many cases it does although Netflix and broadcasters slowly kind of muddying the waters a bit especially broadcast as they some networks are trying to push into that kind of subscription model territory well maybe more radio versus Spotify since you can get it for free yes public radio I guess oh wait you're saying you're Spotify yeah oh right okay yeah but we don't have to pay a license fee to everyone anyone bonus yeah don't say I shouldn't say that suddenly tech meme and Google news will come knocking hello oh this is a good question Klee Kleimer by the way Klee Kleimer apparently stands for Cleveland Kleimer so another one of those there's a lot of elevation here so he has a lot of work cut out for is there no it's so flat yeah I was just thinking like aren't you at like seat like river I thought this was like a secret fact about Cleveland I was unaware of unimaginably flat isn't that what made that Cleveland or the the fire of the river even more threatening it's because back in 16 alright anyway yeah go ahead he wants to know what a podcast network is will you say you're part of the frog pants network what does that mean it seems like a common website where hosts are friends with each other is there something more Tom I I don't know that Scott even really knows what the frog pants network is exactly but yeah it's a bunch of us who want to help each other out so we don't frog pants doesn't necessarily want to be a network of the Scots thing frog pants number to Scots thing but he doesn't want it to be a thing where you have to be a member and you have to submit to Scots control he just wants it to be a thing where we all help each other out the kind of like what you're saying you know host or friends with each other and we help each other out so we promote each other shows we appear on each other shows and we have a central place where we can point everyone to say hey you know we're part of this network if you like our show maybe you like these other shows over here and Diamond Club is almost even harder to explain because Diamond Club is your network except it's not really a network but it is kind of a network which is all of us who are on Diamond Club are part of it but all of you who participate in Diamond Club are part of it and it's created and managed and developed by you by the people in the audience and granted folks like T2T2 it's Arjun Muffin Tenbeck and I shouldn't start naming names so they'll forget people who are very involved there's so many of them are sometimes seen as maybe ringleaders or organizers but they're seen as that just because they do something so pretty much anybody can get in there and start doing stuff and yet it's entirely separate for me I don't have anything to do with it if I want to do something on Diamond Club I have to go to those people and say hey would it be cool if I did this so that's something that I'm really proud of that that Brian and Justin and Andrew and I talked about when we first started doing these independent shows is let's have a central place where they can pull in whatever they want but they manage it, they run it and so that's even more independent of us any other thoughts on that? I want to know Robert Metis is frog pants is kind of like a good old fashioned link ring yeah on steroids I guess it's more than just a link ring everybody remembers web rings nobody remembers I totally remember that's the little thing at the bottom of the website go to the next show in the ring Andy Beach says I think frog pants is a very loose collection of podcasts whereas other networks are truly an organized group of shows that all are produced in a very similar manner so you sort of know what you're getting from show to show we don't have a format that everybody has to fit in on frog frog pants I'm old too Robert Metis Howard remembers web rings so does teaglass 1976 well it's a self selecting group here isn't it uh yeah let's see uh have you considered enabling youtube super chat is a question out of the rsc we started turning off youtube chat because we weren't looking at it and it was ending up just being a place where people were spamming and so if we couldn't moderate it my policy is if you're not going to be involved in something you shouldn't encourage it so we started turning it off and to turn it on to do youtube super chat which is where people can pay to get their chats elevated we'd have to turn that chat back on so I guess the short answer is no I think there's a reason to do super chat um everyone everyone seems to like the IRC so yeah I mean I don't get in there all that much but every time I do it's like a super awesome experience so and that's because people are in it and moderating it and you know invested in it uh text jeb says where is ace detect reading that stuff from it's from the analysts slack so that's the perk of the analysts slack is that you get to ask the questions on this analysts hangout show we should bring back web rings he loved them several people are typing in there it's a lot of web ring opinions what is the one changer improvement we can expect in the upcoming quarter for the show asks steve I what is what would be the one changer improvement we could expect a lot of it is what we've been talking about the idea of maybe some tighter shows maybe some some better selected I did better selected topics we're really working on coming up with topics that are different and interesting I think that's the challenge that I've said that that we want to set for ourselves right roger definitely I mean having having topics that are I wouldn't say unusual but something that we don't necessarily touch on but are just as interesting and just as impactful to the best of us I think is would be great and being able to do topics like that you know not all the time but enough so it does give a nice spread of ideas to various things that isn't necessarily surrounded by you know security with any kind of social media platform or you know technology or you know something that's a little I personally enjoyed the one with Annaly where we talked about basically fat grown tissue stretching growing human flesh on robots it's a fascinating topic because the end result could impact a lot of us especially those who require any sort of any kind of transplants or stuff like that it does spread open a potentially wide benefit to medical science yeah I want to find more topics like that that stand out and are perfectly legitimate interesting and fun to talk about security is one of the biggest challenges right because with security you very easily can be just covering the same thing over and over again but yet it's obviously very important people want to know more about it so how do you cover it in a way that's actually helpful useful and interesting that's the challenge there and often times I mean we kind of jump off those from a story regarding data breach that's what the news covers right is oh there was a data breach and so what you end up is me saying there was a data breach this is why you shouldn't worry too much because all the headlines are screaming at you to be afraid and I try to balance that with like there are reasons to be concerned I'm not trying to pretend they're not but I want to be a counterbalancing factor at which point then it just becomes repeating the same thing over and over again right exactly and that's kind of where we don't want to be necessarily but when you get five different media outlets with the same trending story even though the breach might have happened five years ago like well Steve I has a follow up how can we help with the refinement of the topics what do you need from us thank you just keep the feedback coming for one thing whether it's here in the slack like Steve I is or if you if you can't support us at the slack level in the IRC chat in the emails on the website letting us know what you think about topics is extremely helpful contributing to those topics I love when the guy wrote John about color and his experience with using smart livestock colors like that's the kind of stuff we want so if you if you're sitting there thinking like oh what I do is boring think about it again like if it's got technology and you don't hear us talking about it it may not be boring it may be that we just don't know what's happening so that helps and I am increasingly relying on the subreddit for interesting discussion topics the subreddit is somewhat helpful in deciding what goes into the top stories in the daily tech headlines I still look at it for that it's one of the signals but it's where we found a lot of these more interesting discussion topics that we found later so keeping those fun and interesting discussion topics not sensationalistic but but legitimately interesting and unusual topics that that's super helpful and if you could give examples of what you're talking about for example like oh can you discuss security about yada yada if you could give us an example like oh you know if you could talk about you know what ports close or whatever my router or any kind of good etiquette when it comes to say at the home network and things like or something like that where you can kind of flesh out so we're we don't potentially just take the topic but do maybe the wrong thing with it so yeah if you just like talk about routers like that that could lead us to talk about it in all kinds of different ways so if if you want to talk about routers what is the reason you want to talk about it or if it's internet of things what is the reason you want to Rich you were about say something too I think yeah if one of the things I'm trying to do with daily tech headlines and we've talked about this time is to try and bring in some more not unconventional sources but stories from places that we don't hear about as often I try and keep up on BizTech Africa I try and look at Nikkei for more Japanese and Korean focus news but I really don't have that great of resources for that so if there are great publications that are reliable and that have like focus tech coverage I really don't want to be reading like four or five Japanese newspapers every day or translations of that but if there are good sources for some unusual stuff I would love to put some more headlines and you know a lot of times right now we're going like you know Reuters reports that Israeli news is reporting that mobile I got sold or something like that so it's like I'd rather just go to the source so yeah when we can of course when we can't if the report was in Hebrew or Japanese and Reuters is the place where we can read in English we're gonna have to do that but yeah the more of those other sources we have the better or if it's in the information t-falstead says I understand avoiding politics but I'd love to see stories that reflect how tech is affecting society I feel that's what we are doing where we definitely talk about politics when it's actually tech and so when it's net neutrality when it's security policy or cybersecurity or encryption we talk about it when it's affecting society when it's sometimes I think and I'm not accusing t-falstead of doing this I think it's a legitimate suggestion but sometimes I think people want us to talk about their political issue and they're trying to come up with a tech angle to it right and that's the thing I try to avoid is you know what that really is just politics that really is just a diplomatic relations issue there's nothing technologically interesting about it isn't going to change how we live technologically it's not that effect so yeah so an example that I think t-falstead probably means that is legitimate is taking away jobs the automation effect on jobs and I think that's something we could cover more and cover better any news on Peter Wells says Klee Kleimer Peter is going to be in the US for the Samsung announcement and he tried to get me to come out to New York and hang out with him but I just couldn't do it but yeah he's working hard he still has plans to launch that independent Australian focused podcast and I believe he will so we'll give you any more news when we have more news but he's still working on it TeagleS 1976 tell me more about that later on he says I'd like an episode that dives into a lot of the legal stuff we've seen in the news lately with a legal expert and there are a lot of different things like that that we could dive into some of them would just be law episodes at which point go watch the second law would they do a great job covering that but I know there's a few of these things where the law regarding tech is a little fuzzy and that would be interesting anything else you guys how much for me War McGill says I think tighter shows are good as long as the pre and post stays organic yeah I agree what is the fantasy feature you would add to DTNS if money or logistics was not an issue I would like to do a show remotely from an international capital not every month but every quarter like DTNS on the road that would be kind of cool Jenny and I talked about in celebration of the fifth anniversary like what could we do because we're coming up on five years in a little bit and it's a ways off obviously we just celebrated three year anniversary so we're in our fourth year but when we get into the fifth year what do we do and one thing I would like to do is that kind of thing that kind of remote broadcast from from places where we have listeners right so wouldn't it be cool to go to Taiwan and hang out with Sean who helps us with our video feed just Sean no one else well no but you know what I mean you know what I mean like you know talk to Sean just anybody else who wants to come or go to Estonia see if T2T2 actually is a bot or a real human being if he'll let us he's just an old mainframe for a new purpose he's a cray his old excuse but yeah you know like come up with cool stuff that's a fantasy thing I totally agree any last thoughts from you guys before we wrap this up I have to say you know all the things I've worked on that TV web cable this audience is great there is a tremendous amount of constructive feedback I mean like on the other shows I used to where I would get feedback but it wasn't there were definitely constructive but that made up like maybe 50% of the comments I think the DTS audience is outstanding in being able to you know give to give out critiques but they give it and they explain what they mean and it's not just kind of it's like oh you know I didn't think that particular topic covered the actual situation you know an offer or whatever and I think it's great because we can't shape the show without your feedback Yeah 100% agree Rich anything else from you? No I would just echo that I mean again Daily Tech Adelines by its nature gets a little less feedback but everybody's been super constructive and helped make the show better Thanks everybody for all of that for helping out and enabling us to make this show which would not be here except for you for those of you who support us continue that support we appreciate it it means the world to us you've changed the way we can do things and I can't express that appreciation enough again if you like these hangouts they happen every three months not at exactly the same time we have to work around various schedules but you know every three months we try to do one of them if you are helping us out at the $20 a month level again that's a dollar a show then you'll get advance warning of when they're happening you'll get to have access to the Slack or the IRC but that's a perk that we give folks and everybody else can watch them on demand afterwards or send questions in advance by email at any time and we try to just keep you up to date on how it is we do the show what we're thinking about and all of that sort of thing so thanks again and we will see you on Monday with Veronica Belmont or the next show that you watch after you happen to stumble across this see ya


ngs we can do in order to, instead of basing our actions and basing the community members, mask discipline and distancing, et cetera, on fear to turn it into something that's based on solidarity, on self-respect, respect for others and so forth, knowing that if they act responsibly and effectively, that this will allow schools to operate and everything else that will fall into place thereafter. Has, I know you've got so much on your plates, but have you thought about how we can do that? It sounds like kind of a board thing, at least in part, but interested in ideas, not necessarily tonight, but Joe. Scott, the Department of Health actually has a whole masks on public health campaign. It's a huge promotion. I just had my picture taken for it today. So I think as a healthcare leader, so I actually think that that is really important work, but I don't think it's work that we need to do as a board or as an administrative team, other than perhaps looking into the materials and maybe wanting to promote it, but I think that work is being done in other quarters on that broader sort of public health basis. Okay, thanks. Mindy. You, I mean, just from what Jill said and thinking about it, because I agree with her, if you wanted to jazz up the COVID website, you might put some pictures of our administrators with their masks, smodeling their masks or something like that, just showing that we're doing it and what Kat presented tonight also has a lot to do with mindset and that positivity. I think what you just said, Scott, is so important that we're looking at the positives of what Vermont is doing and not comparing ourselves to states who are in a huge uptick and forcing everyone back in a school at the same time trying to have that outlook of trust that the schools are doing the best they can and we're trying and watching the data. Washington County has had very low positivity rates and having a little of that compassion and positivity but maybe jazzed up the website with some mask pictures, I don't know. The power of art, yes. Jonas. I don't have the exact number in front of me but I believe there have been seven new cases and one death in Washington County in the last seven days. Thank you for the darker side of things. I mean, I mean.  I mean, we are here, if we're gonna go into discussion instead of Q and A. Yeah, that's. I mean, if it can, if opening schools full-time five days a week can happen anywhere, it's here in Washington County. Even with those, a case a day over the last week, we've been extremely fortunate but as Branch Ricky said, luck is the residue of design and Vermont has handled this very well. Our citizens have been extremely responsible. We also have the benefit of seeing what is happening in other states that have not done as well as we have but that are opening that, their school year normally opens earlier than ours do and the early returns from Georgia and Indiana are not great. What I am most concerned about is that since early March in Vermont, there have been virtually zero significant gatherings of significant numbers of people inside. On September 8th, there are going to be hundreds of locations across the state where dozens or hundreds of people will be inside together, seven or more hours a day, two to five days a week. We are, there's nothing magical about Vermont, there's nothing special about us. It can happen and I think that we have, in addition to the educational responsibility we have to our children, we also have a public health responsibility and I'm glad that the administrator, I'm glad, Brian, thank you for answering all these questions. Everybody thank you for sitting and listening to me go on and on about this but there is a pandemic going on out there. We do not have closed borders in Vermont and without being too dire, it's not a matter of time but there is significant risk out there and opening schools is going to increase that risk profile. So yes, there's good news and there are things to celebrate but we also need to take a sober look at what the implications are. I would be very interested to know, the people at the state who are doing the modeling around COVID-19, I would be interested to know what their modeling says about the reopening of schools and what the different levels of future casting are for schools remaining closed versus a one day hybrid model or a two day hybrid model versus opening up full time. I think we need to confront this stuff. If I may, Jonas, first of all, your branch Ricky reference wins quote of the meeting award for tonight. That was for you. Yeah. Also, there's the, if you follow the as obsessively some of us do the graphs of incidents of disease in Vermont, there tends to be those blips that have happened since May. Upward blips tend to follow by about two weeks such events as Memorial Day or the last week of school or fourth of July. And the one concern that I have is about Labor Day weekend. There's clearly a lot of mixing going on. People may be getting together with relatives, with friends, sort of the last hurrah for the summer and then back to school without a testing protocol or a kind of soft entry, if you wanna call it that, that allows for any cases that might have been acquired to show themselves. So anyway, that too is a concern. Jump in board members if you care to, unless you're tired. We can call this at 9.30, in this particular section of the meeting if you like. Unless you're done now, Jonas. I have more questions. I have a question to Jonas. Go ahead, John, I'm sorry. Okay, it's okay. So I'm trying to eat dinner and be in this meeting. So I wanna actually go off of what, of Jonas's first question. And maybe this was discussed, maybe I missed it, but I got tested for COVID and it took 14 days to get the results. And so I'm concerned again, like if a child has a scratchy throat or something and they have to go home until their tests results come back, are they just going to be absent from school or are they going to be able to be incorporated into remote learning? Because I didn't feel it sounded like they would just be absent until they were either healthy or the test results came back. So I just needed more clarity on that. Yeah, currently, Jail, we were looking at that and that's a great question. And I would like to explore that further with the leadership team when we meet tomorrow. But currently the answer was if the child has to go home, if the child goes home sick, they would not be participating in remote learning because they're at home sick. But I think if you're saying if a student tests positive for COVID, but maybe it's asymptomatic, what would happen, is that the question? No, if the student goes home with a scratchy throat and then goes to get tested for COVID but doesn't get the results for 14 days, what is that student supposed to do during that time? I mean, because the symptoms can be very mild but they still may be contagious.  So do they have to sit at home and do nothing for two weeks just because they have a runny nose? Elizabeth, do you have a comment on that? I think one thing is that if somebody goes home with a scratchy throat and they check in with their health provider, probably they're not gonna get a COVID test but they might be monitored and if they don't have a fever and the sore throat goes away, they can come back to school. I think that there is some allowance for kids who in that situation, if they did stay home longer and they were asymptomatic or they got a positive COVID test and they were still asymptomatic, they weren't sick and there is some allowance for doing some remote work with their own class, the class that's in person. And it's similar to if somebody's out for a period of time and needs to make up work but they could perhaps, they wouldn't join the remote group. I don't believe, I think they'd still be part of their class but... Yeah, they wouldn't be joining the remote learning the group that's already doing full time now. So they'd still be part of their class and that teacher would be able to work with them and figure out how they would participate to not fall behind now. So I think there has to be some allowance for kids who may need to be out of school. Like you said, not really sick but we're asking them not to come and they shouldn't have to miss. Yeah, Brian, I could add to that from U32's perspective. So the way, as we've been talking about these teams of kids the 60 kids, we're assigning all kids whether they're remote or in person to one of those teams. So those groups of six to seven teachers are gonna be working with that group of 60 kids. If some of them are remote by choice of their families we're building that into the teacher schedule as part of their day to work with those kids. And that way, because we know that there's gonna be these issues where if a kid ends up being quarantined for 14 days because of this, we want them just to be getting the same information as their classmates and being able to participate as much as possible. I mean, if they're actually sick then they probably won't be able to do their schoolwork but as much as possible. And I would also say that we haven't spoken much about this but one of the other big things is we're putting in place is a learning management system. And I cannot speak as the expert on that yet. I have other people who are becoming experts on that as we speak. But what that will do is allow our students and that's pre kindergarten through 12th grade that they're gonna be able to access lessons from their classroom on the learning management system. And so I don't know exactly how it will look yet but I can tell you that we are trying to create some better systems than we had back when we went into remote learning in the spring so that kids have quicker access and families have easier access through one portal to be able to get what schoolwork all of their kids no matter which grade level they are in. They'd be able to see that information for all their kids. And so we recognize the need for kids to be out sick and we're gonna try to plan around that. Thanks, Steven. Chris and then Jonas for the last word. So my question is, is there any situation in which the district can require a student or a staff member who is exhibiting what seems to be COVID-like symptoms to undergo a test before returning to any of the school? Let me answer that. Yes, please. I don't believe that we can force anybody to have a test but we can say that you need to check in with your healthcare provider and that person makes that decision in conjunction with them. And it can be a team kind of approach. The school nurse can be in touch with the healthcare provider. But if they refuse to go and say, if they say I'm not gonna go to my healthcare provider is there any protocol that would require assurance from a healthcare provider before someone returns to the school? That's a good question. I don't think we've thought about that in exactly that way. But I don't think we can, if somebody goes home because they have one of the symptoms or they've made that checklist and they did, there was some reason that they needed to go home or be excluded. And you're talking more about staff, right? I'm a staff or a student. You know, that person just basically a member of the population, whoever it is. Right, I mean, if we're concerned about a particular student especially, and we can contact the healthcare provider and have that student be seen. I mean, we can say that in order to come back, we could do that. As far as adults, that's a little bit different. But if somebody has symptoms, I don't think we can require that somebody sees their provider before coming, as long as they have no more symptoms, if they're better in a day. But if they do have, see a healthcare provider who says you need to have a test, then we would have them excluded until they had the results from that test. Okay, thank you. Thanks. Jonas, would you like to play us out? Well, Scott, it's hard to know what you're tuned to play. I had a long set list written up. So I think I'll ask the most uncomfortable one. How will we deal with mask and distancing non-compliance? And in a similar vein, will we require COVID vaccinations if and when one becomes available? So to answer your question, the last one first, will we require COVID-19 vaccinations? We're gonna have to wait for guidance from the state. The state will end up ultimately, I believe imagine setting that because it's a vaccination, usually the most vaccination laws and requirements come from the state Department of Health. I just want to make sure that is correct. I believe that is, but I just wanted to make sure Elizabeth, do you have anything else to add about the vaccination piece? That's correct. I don't think we can insist that, I mean, even regular immunizations, we can't insist. If somebody wants an exemption, they can have a religious exemption and not have a vaccination and they can't be excluded. But it would be, it's a state mandate. It's not our mandate about vaccinations. Yep. And the other question Jonas that you asked is, how will we address mask and distancing non-compliance? Yes. So I know Cat Fair talked about the trying to, when kids are coming back and we have all these options of discipline, right? To discipline a child when they're not doing something and it's being non-compliant. I think the first thing is we need to find out why they're being non-compliant and find out what is happening. But if it's just someone not following it because they think they don't have to and we work with their families to try to let them know that your child's not complying, here's what can happen. Ultimately, I think we have to be prepared to tell the family and the child that you may have to be on remote learning. Thanks Brian. Thanks. I know that, sorry Jonas. Yeah. Cat Fair. I'd love to fit in just one more. Just one more. Sure. Thank you. So this is about the separation of kids into in-person and remote cohorts. And it seems like there will be a wall and I haven't seen any opportunities for cross-engagement there. So in the event that I forget who said it earlier that this is not what we're gonna be doing for I think it was Lindy said we're not gonna be doing this forever. We won't have this pandemic forever. If that is the case and I certainly hope it is, how will the existing in-person class cohorts maintain contact and cohesion? If some are remote in classrooms what they don't know and some are in-person. And the last piece of this is will grading be comparable for in-person versus remote cohorts? So the answer to your last question is yes. And I can have Jen talk more about that. But I know she's under CI curriculum instruction and assessment task force. Jen can you please respond to that? Yeah, sure. So the standards, the performance indicators, the rubrics, the criteria, the proficiency skills they are all the same whether a student is in remote learning or they're learning in-person. Stephen had mentioned the learning management system earlier, Canvas. We did a lot of research this summer as the curriculum instruction and assessment task force to figure out a learning management system that was gonna allow us to customize so that we could continue to implement proficiency-based learning principles and so that we could customize so that the interfaces were developmentally appropriate. It also allows us to having one system pre-K through graduation to streamline our communication with families and students which we heard a lot of feedback about as a room for improvement in the spring. And it allows us to collaborate with teachers as well. In terms of your earlier question I guess I'd answer that in two ways. One thing is that we're currently envisioning the remote learning cohorts to be comprised of students in similar grades or grade level clusters of elementary from across all of our schools. And just like we spend the first six weeks of school in a responsive cluster model building community and articulating expectations we would envision doing the same thing so that that becomes a robust learning community as well. That third grade cohort from across all of the schools. So that there will be a lot of intentionality and community building and expectation understanding there. And we have been hearing questions about and how can I also maintain a connection to the broader school? And the principals have been talking about that, right? To the extent that there might be an event or some sort of a virtual exchange those sorts of things. We do not have all of the details ironed out but it is definitely something that we're all thinking about so that one day when kids can all be back in person we will preserve those relationships as well. Thank you, Jen. Wonderful. Thank you, everyone. Scott, just one, I'm very sorry, Scott. Okay. The topics that I haven't gotten to address and that I hope that we will have an opportunity to do as a board to continue to ask these questions are about the balancing act that in the decision making between the deleterious effects of remote learning, part-time remote learning, how those effects stack up, the more time a child spends out of the class and how we're balancing that against public health. Also more about the mechanics of how quarantine and isolation in schools should a kid become sick, how that happens. I have more questions about the resilience of the system, where the pain points are here, and particularly around how we will know each day if we have enough staff on hand to operate each school, given what we approved last week in terms of letting their kids come either as enrolled students or in their remote learning pods. Thank you for bearing with me. I appreciate everyone's patience. Of course, thank you, Janice. It's a good illustration of just how fiendishly complicated this whole business is. So I hope it's with some sense of relief that we move on to the fairly simple and straightforward part of the meeting, which is the consent agenda. Would anyone who care to move to approve the minutes of July 15th and July 22nd, beginning on page eight? This is Diane, I so move. Thank you, Diane. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Flora. Thanks, Jo and Jo, as backups. Any changes to the minutes? Any questions? Scott, I have a minor one. It's Jo. Sure, Jo. Lisa, it looked to me like in the minutes of July 22nd, my name is spelled correctly in the part up top where it lists who was present, but in the body of the minutes, it's spelled Olsen with an E-N, it should be Olsen with an O-N. Got that, Lisa. And Chris, I see your hand up. I think you need to unmute Chris. It was up from before, I just didn't unread it. Thank you. Oh, okay, great. All right. So if we're ready then to vote on the minutes of July 15th and July 22nd, please click yes if you approve and no if you disapprove. And I'm seeing all yeses. Jial, you're good? Yeah, I just accidentally hit the hand. Oh, okay, great. Great, okay, minutes are approved. Now, a motion to approve the board orders, whoever has them handy, please feel free to read them out. I will do so. I move that we approve the board orders in the amount of $180,213.21, $223,813.97, and $8,812.18. Excellent, thank you, Janice. Is there a second floor seconds? Great, are there questions about the board orders? Linda, did you have a question? No, I was actually just moving my hair, but I had sent an email inquiring about the readmission management software because I was a little concerned. I know we were, something was mentioned at our last meeting about some sort of software, but I didn't expect it to be $15,000 for a one year subscription is what it appears to be. So I just wanted to voice that, which I had done earlier as far as I think some of these COVID expenses have been Cadillacs or Mercedes or Audis or something. So I'm just saying. Thanks, Linda. And I presume you'll receive an email response. Have you received a response already? Oh, yes. I Googled the company to find out what it was because all it said was the name. So it had to do with hospitals, minimizing readmission hospital software. I thought when parents were filling out their checklist or whatever, it would be a simple Google Sheet or something in our already management, student management system or through Google, but not a full blown hospital software system. So I was a little surprised. Thanks. Other questions about the board orders? All right. All in favor of approving the board orders as moved by Jonas and seconded by Floor, please click yes. If you disapprove, please click no. And I'm seeing all the yeses. Thank you very much. The motion passes. And as I see some of you are already doing, please don't forget to send in your email as token of your signature on the board orders. Very good. So moving on to 6.0, approve new teachers, et cetera, beginning on page 23. Would anyone like to move in the first place, the hirings, the new teacher nominations? I move that we approve the new teacher nominations. Great. Would you more Heather? Yes. I move that we approve Heather Clark Warner, East Montpelier pre-K teacher at 0.4 FTE. Kevin Richards, U32 social studies teacher at one FTE. Jessica Abisla, the new Dodie school nurse at one FTE. Great. Thanks very much. And Dorothy, your seconding. Yes. Thank you very much. Okay. Is there a discussion of these? Thank you for including the employee nomination forms. If there is no discussion, we can go to a vote. All in favor of approving these teacher nominations, please click yes. If you're opposed, please click no. I'm seeing all the yeses. Great. Thank you very much. Now we also have one change in FTE. Would anyone care to move that? I can move it. I have it in front of me. David Mathews at East Montpelier nurse increased to a 0.5 FTE to a one full-time position. Great. Floor moves. Is there a second? I'll second. Thanks Dorothy. Great. Any further discussion of this? If not, all in favor, please click yes. Opposed? Click no. And I'm seeing once again, all yeses. The motion passes. Wonderful. Okay. Now at this point, we have, yeah, sorry, Brian. Yeah, I didn't want to, I'm sorry for jumping in. Maybe I should let you talk. I was just making sure we didn't miss the behavior interventionist position. Right. Thank you. Having jumped from the back to the front again of the agenda, I'm reminded that we have this 6.2 approving the addition of one behavior interventionist. Would anyone care to move this? Almost. Gile moves and Dorothy seconds. Thank you. Very good. So Brian, there's a memo explaining this, but would you like to? Yes. One of our contractors is no longer gonna be providing services that we've contracted with. And our director of special services, Kelly Bushy, has realized they cost savings to the district with being able to hire a behavior interventionist position, which would be a new position. However, we would be able to pay this position with the contracted service, with the money that we wouldn't be spending on the contract would basically cover this behavior interventionist and also result some savings to the district. Kelly, did I get everything? I just wanted to make sure. Is there anything else? I know you worked on this. You got it. Okay. Great. Thanks very much. Any board discussion or questions? What is the savings to the district? It'll be approximately around $20,000. Okay. Is that, and is the valuation of the new employee based on an average of benefits or conservatively using the family benefit? We use the family benefit. We use the family benefit. We went high. Okay. Thank you. Great. Other questions? If not, then let's go to a vote. All in favor of adding a behavior, a behavioral interventionist position, please click yes, opposed, click no. And once again, I'm seeing all the yeses. Great. Thank you, everyone. Now, almost there. However, we have at this point, public comments. Scott, I'm sorry. We do have, I do have one other piece that came out. We had a resignation recently that someone had resigned after 46 years of service. And Kat Fair wanted to, I really wanted to speak up tonight at this section. Absolutely. Yes, I'm, we're all ears. So, Moni Hudson, Mrs. Hudson, has been a parent educator and classroom assistant at Calis since I was a kid there at Calis. She started just a couple of years after I joined Calis. She has lived in Calis her whole life. She's worked in Calis her whole life. Her grandkids, her kids have gone through Calis in U32. This is an end of an era. And it's not, she is, this is not a position that the board needs to approve or not. She's been ready for retirement. I've just held on to her every year. But this is the year that she's decided to retire. And she did write a nice letter to the board. Do you guys mind a few minutes if I read it? No, go right ahead. No. So, Moni says to the school board after 46 rewarding years of being with Calis kids, I've decided to graduate to retirement. I started three years after this school was built, been here for all eight principals, seven librarians and countless teachers. I have seen and learned numerous reading and math programs over the years. And it's been a learning experience for me as well as the kids. Most rewarding to me has been seeing Calis students become successful adults. And it's gratifying to know where they got their start. That part makes me cry. Calis Elementary will always have a place in my heart and it's been a big part of my life for a long time. And I treasure my time there. I just wanted us to acknowledge her. That's beautiful, Kat. And Moni, you're right. She's an institution. It's impossible to imagine the school without her, actually. And she has like 10 times more energy than I do. So, we wish her our very, very best. And I know she'll continue to be a very big part of the community anyway. Just hope she stays safe and healthy. So, Brian, sorry, Flora? I just wanted to tell Moni that I am at the retired Calis librarian. She's hosting me because I had no power in my house. And Moni and Karen are best friends. So, the connections continue. Yeah, that's great. So, Brian, is it safe now to move to 7.0? Great. All right, 7.0 is public comments part two. So, I have public comments at the beginning and no one took us up on the invitation. For now, if you're on Zoom and wish to make a public comment, I would ask you kindly click the raise hand button on the participants box. Or if you were in on your phone, I guess if you just, uh, Ursula? And Lisa? This is actually Chris Stanley. Oh, hi, Chris. How are you doing? Good. There's been a lot of really good questions. That was a lot of hard work going on. With the community forum on the 19th, is there any way to delay when parents have to make their decision? There are way too many open questions, you know, commit by tomorrow. What are things that are going on? Thank you. Thank you for that question. I'm not, I know the, are we in a position to answer that question at this point? I would just say that we're trying to make this, I mean, I understand the question and because parents want as many, I know Chris has been reaching out and asking questions and we've been answering questions. I understand he has questions and he's asking great questions. A lot of times the questions end up, we end up taking back to our team and reviewing and trying to be more thoughtful about certain things. So I thank you, Chris, and I thank you, Ursula, for your questions. Can we delay answering those pieces? I would not say we want to delay because we do need to have answers and I know we're going to continue to send out more information. It's going to continue to come. I think some of these questions that board members, school board members asked today, we're going to definitely have to continue to go back and look at some of these questions that we could not answer today and try to get them out. So I think the instruction, the best way to try to say is try to answer the question as what do you call it, as well as you can with the limited information or the information that you have and again, the guiding principle is everything we're trying to do is we're trying to be as flexible as possible. So yes, please answer the questions so we can start making decisions on what we're doing. I do recognize though that things on the ground may change as new information comes available. So we have to be flexible, but we would also really, I don't want to say, yes, you can change it and then all of a sudden 200 parents don't answer questions. I think we really want to have an idea of have parents answer the questions based on the information that they have available and obviously if things change, maybe you want to reach out to your principal and let them know before the start of school, but I do think that we are in that area where we're trying to make some decisions, but we are recognizing that we have to be flexible. Thanks, Brian. May we move on to Lisa? And thank you Chris and Ursula for your question. So first I just want to thank the board and the administration and the SLEEP for all the work they've been doing. I know everybody is working really hard at a lot of impossible tasks. I am a fifth and sixth grade teacher at Doty as well as a parent of two school-aged children also at Doty. As a teacher, I've had growing concerns that the collective teacher voice hasn't been amplified to communities, especially because at some point all of this moves from discussion and meetings to teachers and staff implementing what Scott called earlier a fiendishly complicated system. So I've written a letter to the board that many of you probably have seen as an individual and also there is a letter in the Worcester Front porch forum today signed by 12 Doty teachers expressing some of our questions and concerns that haven't been answered yet. But so tonight, like Jonas, I have so many questions and it's hard to choose what to ask or what to comment on, especially as my list has grown tonight, but I'm gonna choose a teacher-focused question and ask in that capacity. So earlier a question was asked about providing more specific information on the website rather than just policy statements. And I'll give the specific example of the claim that we're sharing with the community that there will be a robust remote learning experience and what that would look like. I was stated that the remote learning survey documents what this experience will look like. And I have to argue that as a teacher, what I find is that the survey lets family know lets family know the hourly requirements, lets them know the tool, which is Canvas, which teachers are yet to be trained on, which will take up a few of our days as well as social-emotional training and protocol training. So those 10 days are getting filled very quickly. And there's a provided schedule that suggests to parents when math might happen or global citizenship might happen. But what's missing is instructional approaches and what we know makes a robust learning experience for students is high-quality instruction, strategies and tools, and teachers who are equipped to deliver that instruction. I'm a teacher and I know that if we are selected to teach remotely, we'll be asked to add an endorsement to our license, which will require 10 credits of coursework over the course of the year. But I don't know whether we'll receive any training beforehand or if we are implementing a remote program on the go as we also are trained. And I think these are the kinds of details that really are important for families and teachers to be aware of as we say that we are ready to implement a robust program. And then so I think these sentiments ripple through the concerns around all of the information on the website in terms of not just having policy documents and sentiments, as Chris spoke to earlier, but even Kat's presentation, which I have so much respect for and so many teachers believe that we're trying to make good plans to support students in social and emotional learning, but there are so many questions about what this looks like for us as teachers operationally and how much training we'll receive in those 10 days and if it's enough. And so I don't know what my specific question is, but I would like to see more information, specific information for families on that website. And if the board or admin wanna speak to my concerns, I would love it, but I'll leave it at that for now. Wow, thank you. Oh, let me summarize, Lisa. So you would like to see more information and you feel like teachers need to see more information on how some of the things play out operationally, correct? Yes, and if there's not more information then families need to know that. And teachers need time to plan and be trained and while I hear that we have 10 days, the list of things that we will need to train for in 10 days when our jobs are really gonna look very new for us is a little bit overwhelming for teachers. Yeah, and I know, and a lot of things are being placed on teachers, I get that. And I know it's probably the hardest time to ever be a teacher and a lot of people have not signed up for that, right? I mean, it's just a difficult situation. So, and I thank you for your dedication to your community and to your profession. The pieces, so basically a lot of the times the way that we're trying to set up our communication capacity has been, the website has been kind of, not gonna get into the minutiae of, it gives you an idea of a lot of the broader ideas of what we're thinking, how we're gonna be implementing and what we're gonna be doing. And then I know that the principles typically put out newsletters to their communities and they really get into a lot of the specific details. I know that it's, again, it's like an onion. You peel off an onion and there's more details that need to be added. So, I definitely would ask the employer to talk to your principal. And also, if there are certain things that still require more details, we do have folks working on those. So, for example, the instructional approaches. I can probably have Jen maybe talk a little bit more about she's a member of the curriculum Instruction Assessment Task Force as is, who else, I'm trying to think who else is there. Jen, I know Jen has been working with the task force about identifying PD professional development needs for teachers in regards to implementing the remote learning option. I also think if Alicia is also on that task force as well, as an elementary principal, I don't know if any of you want to talk about some of the work that we're working on, because I did see your letter and I thought that there was a lot of questions that you had. I thought that there was a lot of things that folks have either A, answered, or maybe haven't provided out to you directly. And then there's also some questions that we still need to look at absolutely for short. So, Jen or Alicia, do you have anything else to add about the student learning, I know about the learning management system and instructional approaches? Well, I can say a little bit. And then Jody, Alicia and I have been working on the in-service plan together to bring to the rest of the team. But we, a subgroup of the curriculum instruction and assessment task force is designing the PD around Canvas, using Canvas so that teachers will be familiar and confident with the platform and also embedding in that training, the modeling and the utilization of best practices in remote learning. So it's all sort of coming together in that way. That will be, that's some of the answer, but more extensive training as you mentioned regarding, I mean, this is a licensed endorsement in some cases, but we are trying to provide that baseline. We also wanna make sure that in utilizing Canvas, we're preparing all of our families, students and teachers in the event that everybody has to go remote down the line, that we all feel confident and competent in our use of that platform, so that we can more seamlessly transition to a period of remote learning should that be required. Jody or Alicia has anything they wanna add to that explanation. As we build our professional development, we've been working to build in best practices, as Jen said, and universal design for learning, so making sure that we remind teachers of the skills that they already have and that their experience and expertise hasn't gone away. We just need to shift how we're using it and so helping folks to do that. And teachers are designing the PD modules for that work in those two weeks. We also are setting aside a great deal of time in the second week to allow for teachers to collaborate and work together, whether it's across schools at the elementary level, at grade level teams, or if it's content alike, pre-K to graduation for my cat. And at the high school, working in teams are in course alike to start building those courses in Canvas, which I think will be immensely helpful so that you can divvy up the load, so to speak. Yeah, I think the only thing that I would add to that is just thinking about the timeline we're interviewing for the remote positions next week. And our hope is that once we've identified who those remote teachers are, we'll be able to work with them and developing the plans really for what more of those specific details look like. We wanted to come up with kind of the framework, but those details have yet to be determined and we're hoping that the remote teachers will help with that. Many thanks. Thank you. I believe the telephone 324-6622 unmuted is that... Yeah. Hi, Scott. Corinne. Hello, Corinne. How are you? So I'm great, thank you. Hope you guys are all doing okay. At least you don't have a drive home. I did send an email along with this, so I get it that you may not have answers to it and I will look forward to the frequently asked questions, but some of the things I haven't heard are, and I've read as much as I can on the news site and in principles, newsletters and so forth, but I have not seen or I missed what the vocational student plans are, what with them going back and forth between two schools, and I haven't heard if staff and substitutes will be working in more than one school. I'm wondering if school photos will be taken as usual. I'm wondering if instead of thinking about using tents at all, if people have thought about having at least one large shelter at each school, because besides the expense and the hassle of putting tents up and down, if you own it, you actually have to store it too. And I mean a shelter larger than the one that's currently at BES. And the last thing I want to note is please don't wait to put up the frequently asked questions until you have all the answers. Put it up even if you just have the questions and then people will know that their question has been asked and the answer will be coming and to make sure to date the answers. So if information changes and you need to update an answer based on new information, people will be able to discern what's current information. Thank you guys very much. Thank you. Nice suggestions. Thanks. Are there other public comments? If not... Sorry, Scott, I am raising my hand again. Oh, I'm sorry, Alisa. I'm going to sit next to your lead and keep asking a few. I am wondering what the process is or the plan is for hiring teachers, classroom teachers, to fill the positions of those teachers who will be hired to teach remotely. With the current timeline, as I understand, there's a interview process next week for current classroom teachers who are interested in teaching remotely. So there's going to be a number of jobs to fill across the district in classroom. And so that leaves about 12 days before the 24th, at best, to hire teachers to fill classroom positions. Is there a plan to shift teachers around in the district to fill that? Are we posting for external folks to get those jobs? And just what is the plan for that? Yeah. So I think the preliminary plan, Alisa, is to operate within our budget, right? So I know I heard some board members tonight are talking about being physically responsible. So we need to see where those teachers are coming from and also how many students, how many families are opting for the remote option and how many families are opting for in-person. So it's kind of a little bit of a puzzle, but it may involve moving some folks around. Nice, Ryan. Alisa, yes? I guess I just want to echo one more time from the community, both parent and teacher perspective, some of the unanswered questions about testing and protocol for when kids are showing any symptoms. I think there was a lot of unanswered questions there. I do really feel like as a community member and a teacher, I'm doing my due diligence to read through all the materials and really thinking about the questions that I'm submitting to administration and feel fairly confident that the questions I'm submitting have not already been answered in a way that adequately answers my questions. And I think it became very clear that there are a lot of questions about testing and about kids going home and how long they need to stay home and how the rest of us who are in the buildings or sending our children to the buildings can feel confident. And I heard a lot of the answers where that we need to talk more about that. And I think that needs to take a high level of priority for those of us who are deciding on whether to send our children into the buildings or not. So I just wanted to echo that, to make sure that that is not lost. Thank you, Lisa. Yeah. Thanks very much. Other public comments? If not, 8.0 is future agenda items. We've added a couple today already from business administrators succession and board retreat. Are there any others that board members would like to put on the list? Diane? Check in on where we're at for a board replacement. Membership? Good one. Yeah. Any others? Great. If that is the case, then if there is no objection, let's adjourn by consensus at 10.12 with thanks and best wishes for a calm and peaceful night. Good night, everyone. Good night. Thank you. Thanks.