Hello, everybody. Welcome to this session. Today's session's title is best practices in the programs, and we have an amazing set of stickers to talk about it. You're as a host. I'm Dr. Fine. You're saying I'm a professor in the School of Future of Innovation and Society at Arizona State University. So today we are actually going to talk about some disconnects, some disconnects about within PIT and disconnects among the students or the potential students of public interest technology. Because sometimes what we have seen is that many people look into PIT as just a technology and not focuses on the other societal and humanitarian aspects of it. It does not talk about the adaptation of human-centered design. We don't talk about product development. We don't talk about engineering, re-engineering, and also how it actually involves iterative process, how it includes people. So here, to our different speakers, what we are going to do is we are going to focus on some of the philosophical and equitable and social religious aspects of PIT. And we have an amazing set of speakers. I will first introduce them to you. We have with us Professor Alexandrina Agloro. She's a professor in the School of Future of Innovation and Society at Arizona State University. Then we have Professor Elizabeth Graffin, a professor of practice in the SFIS, ASU. Then we have Ms. Joana Abu-Ghazale. She's the president of Pivot for Humanity, an organization that works since 2018. And then we have with us, momentarily, I guess, Professor Eric Fisher will join us. We're still waiting on him. And we also have Professor Robert Cook-Degan. He's the professor in the School of Future of Innovation and Society as well. So I will first start the conversation with Professor Alexandrina Agloro. And her specialty is as a media artist, as a community-based researcher. And she also believes in the possibilities of the colonial imaginary when it comes to using ancestral technologies as liberatory tools. So the first question I have for you is, when we talk about, when we imagine PIT, when we talk about talking to technology, how do we contend with the inherent racial biases that kind of is, you know, we can see in our system? How do you see that? How do you address it? I was also muted. I get to open this up. And I just, though this is a digital convening, we're all located on native land somewhere. So I greet you from the traditional lands of the Gotham, the Yavapai, the Maricopa people. And I understand that it's not enough to give land acknowledgments and real change as Indigenous land repatriation. And I strongly believe that public interest technology can play a role in this kind of liberation. And so when we're talking about bias in PIT systems, I'm going to tell a little story. I was speaking with another ASU professor just yesterday about the first cohort of native students to go to ASU. And they had come straight from the Navajo Reservation and they had no experience living in the city. A few of them were homeless. They slept under the bleachers because it just wasn't, it wasn't just college life that they were unprepared for. It was an entire culture and system and lifestyle shift that they weren't yet ready because they had no prior experience in this system. And so I'm telling you this story because it's also what's going on in our current tech systems. So when we talk about bias, I guess I'm talking about like education and curricula. I want to start even before we get into the classrooms because there are students, particularly young people of color, who never even make it into the classroom. So how do we combat this bias? So we have to think about things like intimidation and advantages, what it means to get into classrooms, whether or not they feel welcome once they get into these classrooms. When we think about careers, thinking about who's at home and in general young people think about their options of who they can be in the world is based on who they see in their families at home and then what they see in the media. So you can't be what you can't see. So they don't see people who look like them. And then that possibility is harder to imagine. And I guess I'll do a curricula one and then I'll stop and we can keep going. When thinking about curricula, like we want to think as educators, so for combating bias in some way, think about your syllabi. Like who are your students reading and at their minimum, do you have women on your syllabus? Do you have people of color on your syllabus?  Do you have trans people on your syllabus? And it's also important how we represent that, like how we represent who's in our syllabi. You should have everybody, authors of diverse authors should be woven into core concepts in your courses. They shouldn't be siloed into these race days, the gender day, as if outside of special interest topics, women and people of color don't exist. And then can we talk about women, people of color, queer people and technology without positioning them in this deficit or damage-based position? So not always talking about this is what's wrong. These people don't have this thing. So I guess I ask, can we have full color conversations that depict the world as it is instead of that narrow slice that we currently just see? Okay, Faheem, back to you. Thank you so much for your thoughts. So you actually started to answer one of my follow-up questions, which is, and I think we will come back to it. But just quickly, I wanted to ask you, one thing is to recognize it. And then the other thing is how we move forward, how we make it more equitable. So, and you started talking about it, that are we doing this? So we are raising the questions. So, but before we move on to our next speaker on a similar topic, would you like to add something in terms of how should we make it more equitable? Or how you foresee so that because in many cases, for example, within SU, we are just starting, we have just started the program. So what are the things we can do? So I like this phrasing that disability activists use and they say nothing about us without us. And so when thinking about design, so taking it on from even a technological design perspective, do not create things for people to help them. You want to co-design with people, teach skills that enable diverse shareholders to take charge of issues that most affect their own communities. So like when we think about these words like we're giving voice or we're empowering, we're doing all of these things and I'm sure these like words come up like especially in a relatively new pit space. I would say don't do those things, give skills to people, teach the skills so that you're actually not needed. If you can step back from the world that you are in and they can carry on without you, then you've totally done your job. Like to move away from that system or to move away and to not be needed is exactly what I think how we can make our systems more equitable, teach skills and move on and let people use those skills. Don't be needed. And then last diverse from unequal structures of power, which I know is really hard because we're all coming from fancy places with fancy degrees and like fancy educations and fancy jobs. But being equitable means that we might get a little bit less so that everybody can have a little bit more and be ready for that if you really mean it. That's it. Thank you. We need to be ready for that and I will come back to some specific follow up questions and I'm pretty sure the listeners will have some follow up as well. So, I'll go to our next speaker. Mr. Jimana. She is a doer. She's a president of the people for humanity, who she founded in 2018. And the idea of this organization, which I find fascinating. It's to work towards a data driven social tech industry and foster a responsible ethical and accountable internet. How do we do this, how do we do accountable internet and also serve the humanity. That's that's that's my question but not for this session but eventually I think, eventually I think you will come you will address it. So, Jimana, what I would start with is you as a practitioner, you look into the industry, and you were striving to make it more ethical. So, what do you think, how should we teach ethical codes of conduct and principles in STEM, within the curriculum. What, what, what are the, what are the, what needs to happen, what needs to connect the dots, and the grad between the theories and the practices. You are muted. Okay, now everybody else has to do it because it's a pattern okay Elizabeth and Bob, we'll start talking on mute and then we can all. Thank you so much I'm thrilled to be here and really humbled by the panelists. You know before we started he asked if he should address me as doctor and I said no I'm just regular old Jimana. I don't have your qualifications and expertise so bear with me as I bring this sort of outside perspective outside of academia. I wanted to say so how do we teach codes of ethics in stem and I think that I would start by taking a step back and saying how are we teaching stem in the first place. Because, you know, we think of stem disciplines, typically as sort of objective, rational, empirical sort of cerebral disciplines when in fact, in, in the real world in application they're not. They can get quite messy. And so that's, you know, there is bias and in all of them, for example so there anything but objective and empirical and one of the things I think it's really important is to say are we, are we grounding students of stem. In the idea that these are applied sciences that they're not sort of just theories but things that actually are forming the actual building blocks digital infrastructure of society. So these aren't just concepts and and, you know, things to learn but they're actually going to be part of how these students go out into the world and what they build and what they do. So, one of the things I would say is we shouldn't think about sort of ethics in stem, but the ethics of stem. So not as an additive sort of extraneous thing that we bring into the discipline but that's something that's embedded in it that's innate that's part of the process. And with that I'd say, we need to, you know, first define what that is as a whole. So what is stem, what is stem's role in in society, and how does, how do we think about the ethical consequences and ethical implications of it. And importantly I'd say in terms of education I'd say it has to be a clear understanding of what ethics means in the context of stem and the ethics of stem, but also quasi universal definition so that from institution to institution from academic organization to general framing is the same, because if it differs in different institutions, you know, you're going to have a patchwork of ideas about what's right and what's wrong. And then you're asked about sort of the, the, how do we connect the dots from that theory from that environment, academic environment where your students are learning and getting grounded in the context of ethics to practice. And I think that that happens in essentially two ways. One is, we need to re humanize the data. We're so enamored with big data right now and you know Alex just mentioned the, you know, nothing about us without us but we tend to see as big data as having all the answers as, you know, the kind of stuff that like numbers don't lie that kind of thing and taking that as as gospel where there's a real truth that data, big data also obfuscates it obscures it makes us as individuals and invisible, it hides our humanity, it makes us. It dulls everyone into sort of a number and so people actually disappear. And so one of the things I think is really important is to re humanize the data and you can do that with students by making it personal by by helping them for example to say whenever they're thinking about a problem or a process is not just who is it for, but what if this is going to be used by somebody you really care and worry about on the one hand, and somebody you you fear somebody who you think is very dangerous on the other. And what if both people use it at the same time, what would you do differently, how would you think about creating this thing differently. So that's on the one hand is like expanding the personas and making them personal so that when we are creating things, we know that these are eventually things that the entire world we want the entire world to use so what does that look like. And second, you know, if we really want ethics in practice. I think it has to be, you know, it has to switch from being something that is aspirational something that's nice to have to something that's required.  If we just sort of if students just graduate with this understanding of what's right and wrong and go to into the workforce and have no way, no power to enforce this understanding to apply this learning where you know where we find ourselves at ground zero all the education doesn't matter. It didn't help that they were trained that way. They have to have the power to say, I need to apply my these ethical standards in my work, even though, and even if the corporate values or the structure that I'm entering doesn't support it. You know, a profession professionals are duty bound and and I think if we ever want ethical practices in stem we have to make them required not desired. So what what we are actually what I'm getting from this conversation is that it's just not a tick box, we have to actually walk the talk, and we have to include those things as we mean it, and I have some follow up, more, more practical questions for you I will come back to you related with how the young practitioners in kid can actually include that, not just in their curriculum but right after they're actually in the industry. I'll come back to you. Thank you so much. Now, our next speaker would be. Our next speaker is the professor of practice, Dr is a graphic of school of future of innovation in society, and she is focusing on issues related with these rocket changes at the intersection of science, politics, and culture. Her research explores and experiments with energy innovations that enhance that that enhanced social sustainability and resilience. And she has advised and worked with numerous NGOs and academic and government organization. So, I have the first question I have for you is, if you look back like your years of federal policy experience. Now, what capacity, would you think that you want to the kids graduates to have if they would like to work in the policy. What kind of curriculum, we need to provide them, so that people who are interested in care and policy can, they should take it. So what can we do about it, and what how do you see these connections or the tools in there. I'm going to break the trend and I'm going to unmute myself from the start. Yeah, we all learn technology we share our knowledge with each other right. I thank you for the introduction and I, it's really difficult to not just respond to the people that have already spoken, you know, before each of us because the conversation seems to want to get going. So just address your question for him in a couple of different ways and first put in context. When I was in the federal government which I was for almost two decades. I was a national policy advisor for a lot of that time. In the executive branch. Well, initially in Congress and working with folks around the country and in the executive branch and then in the executive branch, working in science agencies with policymakers. And so that gives me a particular perspective. One of the experiences that I had in that and I have to say that these experiences have been also reflected a little bit in my teaching at ASU over the last 10 years is that there is a tendency for people that have technical degrees to arrive in the policy process believing that their purpose is to shed rational light on the issues before policymakers, and that the main knowledge that they need to have is their technical knowledge and that somehow or other that has a linear, you know pipeline sort of relationship into the decision making process. And it's actually not true. It's not really how it works. And so one of the first capacities that I think any students who are interested in working in policy spaces, regardless of what level those policies faces may be would be to have an authentic and deep understanding of the institutional arrangements within which decision is being delivered. And that means not just understanding the rules, and not just understanding that there's a thing called politics but understanding them as systems that are as technology rich, although there are social technologies as opposed to physical technologies as anything that they have that they may have learned in their STEM disciplines. So, one, I think is to develop a really authentic. We're transdisciplinary a lot, but I think that that there is a kind of an integrated holistic sort of a view that people really need to learn and embrace. And it's really, it's not typically taught. So one of the challenges for Pitt curricula would be to figure out how to do that in a really solid way so that people come out with mastery of the whole system, not just the technical disciplines. So, another way of thinking about that is that Pitt is not a way of softening STEM disciplines right so Pitt is not, I think in the ideal for engineers who want to learn about society or policy. Pitt is I think a signal it's a way of reclaiming the idea of technology as being a public thing a public phenomenon a social phenomenon that has multiple facets so what do we what does that mean well technology isn't just something that you know Apple designs right I mean technology occurs in all sectors public and private and hybrid sectors that occurs within and among different kinds of disciplines each have their own sort of ethical premises that each have their own ways of thinking about how you plan and design that each have their own ways of thinking about risks that have their own ways of you know thinking about who Publix are and that in a lot of ways are governed by different policies and laws about what writes those sorts of let's call them the the non traditionally design co designers and input in the public or people with a public interest might might have what what roles they may have what rights they may have to get involved in the processes of technology or even determining what houses technology and what doesn't if you look at what happens in the policy space, we have I would say there's a public interest technology theme, pretty much in every agency in every legislative space, whether you're talking about elections or food or water or medicine you know health climate change, you know, energy development, I mean really across the board, there are there are technology elements, and if we I forget the I forget if it was Jimana or Alex that talked about it but if we try to split those things out their technology elements and then the cultural or policy elements I think that that would need us a stray. So, there are other ways of thinking about how messy the space can be, but the challenge for pit, I think as an emerging discipline is to recognize that messiness make attractable for students so that they can actually learn how to kind of think about those things in an integrated way, and and so function across them without feeling like their role is to be a sort of a technology disruptor in a public space, or to sort of become a more, you know, politically aware technologist I think we're really talking about a new sort of capacity and new kind of holistic capacity, and we're learning, I think as we put our own program together how to do that. I wasn't watching the time, I don't know if I went over or under or sorry. You're good, we are good and these are important things to talk about. Now, in the continuation of your conversation, if I can ask you further in terms of like looking ahead. Hopefully, the link coming by the next session. What kind of, how do you see the issues arising, the things that you are talking about being disruptive, being inclusive. How do you intersect when it comes to the social stability and resilience in this case. So it pretty much all the, all the issue areas I mentioned or, you know, things the administration will contend with but let's just look at a couple of them. First out will be the pandemic. Right. So the public interest technology issues which I'm guessing Bob is going to talk about so I'm not going to get into it much at all. But what the thing I want to stress here is that the way we think about technology and think about managing the pandemic or whatever term you want to use. It's not just about whether we have the right medicines, you know, the vaccines therapeutics, it's not just about whether we have the right kinds of, you know, digital maps that show us what the different risk exposures are around the country, even though they're very cool. It's not just about whether we have tracking apps. There is a, there is a fundamental sort of socio cultural political resilience aspect to how we do it. That is at least as important if not more important than the specific technological options that we may develop and I'm using technologies here in the kind of more traditional sense. So if we develop tracking apps or we develop really, really effective masks or we develop terrific vaccines, but somehow we do it in a way that that depletes or fails to actively cultivate social cohesion, they aren't going to get us very far. And I think that those kinds of considerations are have so far been not very well represented in the discussions around the pandemic. And I think that we're seeing some of the results of those things not having been priorities from the beginning, we're seeing a lot of resistance defiance confusion that are in some ways a response to the fact that those were not priorities. And the same thing is going to be true when talking about climate change, whether we're talking about, you know, energy innovations or talking about specific kinds of climate interventions that may be necessary, some of which we're doing research on at ASU. These are, these are issues they're going to have to kind of be developed, not in laboratories and then sprung on the public, but they need to be kind of brought into conversations where we are thinking in terms of how we're building resilience together, as well as how we're thinking about solving problems that we might normally think about as being kind of STEMI problems. And I think those challenges are really front and center for this administration in particular and I'm hoping that they're going to prioritize that in the leadership in different agencies in their selection of leadership, as well as in how the policies are designed and implemented. Thank you so much. And you also gave me a very good, you know, conversation starter with Bob on this. So I'll start with you Bob. So we are our next speaker is Professor Robert Reagan of School of Future Innovation and Society at ASU. Bob was also the founding director of Genome Ethics, Law and Policy in the Institute of Genome Science and Policy. He's the author of the Gene Wars Science Politics and the Human Genome. And my first question to you, sir, is when we talk about COVID-19 pandemic, the present situation, and as we are talking about heat and how to make it more inclusive, more equitable, more responsive, more complete, how do you see it just not in the short term the heat graduates focusing on or, you know, addressing this COVID issue, but this COVID-19 post-period, how can heat graduates be ready for this? And where are the scopes? Where are the possibilities? And maybe some challenges. Yeah, thank you, Fahim. So just focusing for a second on the area that I work on. I'm a physician who became a molecular biologist and then went into policy. And I think one way to frame what we're trying to do with Pitt is to stop thinking about SDEM as an end unto itself, but rather think of technology as a means to an end and those ends are human ends. And in the area that I work on, biomedical innovation and medicine, think about it and think about it in the context of the COVID epidemic. The United States has the most robust system for biomedical innovation that's ever existed on the planet. And yet we have horrible outcomes in connection with this pandemic. And so how can we explain that this incredible amount of expertise and resources, and we spend more money on healthcare in the United States by a factor of two per person than any other nation on the planet. And yet our health outcomes are worse. And we exclude more people out of our system than any other jurisdiction of the rich countries, the OECD countries. And we actually do worse than many other countries that are not OECD members. For example, when the World Health Organization ranked health systems a little over a decade ago, actually two decades ago, we came in between Cuba and Costa Rica in the ranking of our health system. And yet we're spending 10 times as much as Costa Rica is per person for health services. So that tells you, wow, we've got a system that is not focusing on outcomes, it must be focusing on inputs. And so that's what we're trying to educate folks about, which is, well, wouldn't it be nice if we focused our technology on actually reaching the outcomes that we intend to achieve. So focusing on healthcare outcomes. The COVID crisis has really illustrated very, very starkly the inequities in the current system. And it's also illustrated the incredible strengths of the system.  Just think of the last week, what has happened last week. Number one, the Supreme Court is thinking about dismantling a law that we passed a decade ago to include more people in our health system. That's a great thing to do in a pandemic, right, kick people out of the healthcare system. So that's happened in the last week. We also had the announcement of really optimistic data about a new vaccine. So the technical people have been doing 24 seven working really, really hard to develop vaccines and it looks like maybe we will have some vaccines available early next year. So that's, that's a wonderful thing. Right. But now we're going to have to solve the problem. Who's going to get the vaccine? How's it going to be distributed? And will it be fairly distributed? And will only people in rich countries get access to it? Those are all questions that are still hanging out there. And the final thing that I'll raise as an illustration is if you compare what's happening with COVID to what happened with another huge epidemic that affects even more people on this planet, hepatitis C. What you see is in the United States we have drugs that are actually curative. 90 to 95% of people who get hepatitis C can be completely cured. They have drugs to treat and get rid of an illness. And in Egypt, they've actually managed, they had the highest prevalence in the world and now they are on the verge of eliminating hepatitis C because of these new drugs that have become available since 2012. In the United States, fewer than one in six people who are infected with hepatitis C have actually been treated. And the richest healthcare system that's the most expensive in the world has completely failed to deliver a powerful technology that can eliminate a disease. Why? Because our system is really, really poorly structured. And those are the sorts of issues that we're trying to train our students to think about. And that's not because the technology doesn't work. That's because our system of paying for things and doing things is not functioning properly. That's it. We wanted to hear more on this from you. So you actually shared a very strong example of not just focusing on the inputs but on the outputs and then you talked about the other cases. But, but imagine when we are talking about, I'm just thinking if I, if I were to graduate. So, and, first of all, they need to be, they need to be included within the system. And then they need to change the system. Or how do you see some of the, because some people graduates are the people folks when they see it, they are, they can be a bit, I feel a bit overwhelmed with the things that's kind of going wrong. So, I'm just wondering whether there are some short term wins and then we turn them long term wins when we are addressing. Can you quickly shift some lights on this? I think we could open this up to everybody, but I want to go back to something that Alex raised because I think she basically said the most important thing that we can say which is teach skills and get out of the way. And I think that's what we're trying to do. I'm thinking about the master's students that are in our new public interest technology master's program. It's amazing because they all have day jobs. This is very different from teaching a PhD where that's all that the student is doing. These are folks who have day jobs that are related to technology and actually want to get some intellectual background that provides them, gives them the tools that they can go out and do their work in such a way that it reaches the outcomes that they went into their business for. I mean everybody usually picks an application, picks a career path because they do want to pay their mortgage, but they actually want to make a difference in the world. And these students are kind of looking for the skill sets that would allow them to make more productive use of technology so that it reaches the ends that they intend to do. So it's a really unusual group of students and I think we're going to learn as much from our students who are distributed all over the United States. We're going to learn as much from them as they're going to get from us. What we can do is kind of channel that effort and create a skill set and a set of exercises that allow them to be more powerful at the jobs that they're already doing. And I think that's probably going to be the kind of education that we're trying to do that will be a bit distinctive to PIT compared to your standard PhD or your standard undergraduate education. Thank you so much. And I will be actually, I think I will revisit this question to ask everybody about this, but this is fascinating. Actually, I was taking some notes on this. So, at this point, before I go back to some of the other questions that I have, let's look into some of the questions that our audience actually put for us. So, I see several ones. I think first one is for Alex, I think. So, in regard to Agloro's idea of teaching skills instead of helping question is, like, do they even want or need these skills or what are the skills you have in mind, Alex. So, what gets to a really good starting question is don't go into places where you're not wanted is, I mean, that's probably like the precursor to all of this is that it isn't just about showing skills and as Bob said getting out of the way. It's also treading carefully being cautious listening, and then proceeding with proceeding with care. Humility is a huge part of this. So, when thinking about like teaching skills, like, I think humility is like probably the number one skill that we could be teaching our students like humility brings ethics, humility brings listening. In, like, just in particular, like the ways that the ways that we've been trained as technologists and when we think about building technology or currently our engineering and computer science curricula, like that there's like an ethics day and then we move on and we just carry on going. It's because we're not proceeding with humility and thinking about like what we do and what we don't know and thinking about, like, who, who could potentially be helped but also who could potentially be harmed from this. So, I think, like, if it's particular what skills, it's the skills that are necessary to to to better whatever scenario and so it's really hard to say like what skills should we be teaching exactly. But it's, it's whatever is needed at the moment. So, I mean, obviously, if somebody wants water, they don't want to learn how to code. Like that's that like, there's that disconnected there. You know, if we need health care, like, we don't need to learn how to code, like those sorts of things so we're thinking about like hierarchy of demand and hierarchy of needs. And let's take care of like first things first like let's all let's let's get basic humanity on on par and then we could think about this other tech stuff that can make our life easier, but like food and water and health care and shelter. So I think things are probably more important first then whatever cool tech thing that we all know how to, we all want to learn how to do or we all know how to teach. Thank you so much. So the second question actually start with, I think some reflection and then you have a couple of questions, and anybody can take it. That's a great idea. That's a great idea. If they cannot relate to the data. It does not make sense. Indeed. So the questions are, how do we make that happen, especially when the learner never experienced that. For example, how do you make them understand extreme poverty when they never come close to that in real life. I'll take it. Yeah, I mean I think that that's a really good question, but I think that that's a lot of the work that we need to be doing because I think that as we've focused more and more on on big data and the bigness of the data. We actually reduced our need and desire to to really understand context, and to understand where this data comes from and what we don't know I mean so Alex was just talking about humility, and I think that big data makes us gives us like an arrogance booster because you think you have all the answers. I think that we have spent a lot less time bringing in new perspectives challenging our assumptions making sure that we understand that not everybody looks like us and wants the things that we do and making the space to include those voices and experiences. I mean one of the things that you know I think is just fact today is that technologists are creating with the incentive, like the measure of success is does everyone on the planet use your thing. And if, if that's how we're going to think about it then it is imperative that we know who everyone on the planet is. And if not, then just say it's not for everyone on the planet and make sure that we understand who it's for and how to protect the people who it's not for, from the harms that it causes. I think that it has to come from, again, you know, humanizing the data and making it personal what would, what would some of the questions I mean we're ego driven people right we're human so what would we fear, what would we, we would fear not being understood or not being seen and kind of making sure that as students as practitioners of Pitt we have that in the back of our minds that there are people out there whose lives we absolutely do not understand and who's this and the assumptions that we make can be deeply deeply harmful, not just to them but to the rest of the world. So I think part in like a huge part is to say, let's relearn what the world is made of let's relearn let's get. Let's develop a new and warm and small data understanding of the planet and it's and the environment that we're in. Thank you. Anybody else. And so you were. Yes, you are. I want to take that and bring it back up a little bit to the policy level because I think that there's something should find about this which is that all of it. If we're talking about technology development and design or if we're talking about implementation of use. These things are happening within an institutional context. So by institution I don't mean an organization all over there, but that there are certain rules of the game there are ways that things work that sort of dictate how things will will happen. And those rules can incorporate ethics and awareness and inclusiveness or they don't necessarily have to but I think that one of the traps that we sometimes fall into, not, not just with with pit, but with anything that involves public engagement or the idea of any interest at all. So this one's across all policy areas as well, or science in general, is this notion that we fix it by including people early and often and co everything and one of the things that is just a reality is that when you are in a policy position in government when you're in a position of responsibility, you don't always have the ability to do that in the kind of granular way that we might imagine it. You don't always have a way of checking in with everybody, you don't necessarily have a process for being able to actually contact everybody in the world. And that's why I think being able to build that kind of reflexive awareness into how we teach people to function in those kinds of spaces is really important because sometimes there are mechanisms for being able to physically engage people, you know directly engage people. Sometimes there aren't, but when when they are not there you need to be able to figure out how to interpret data and a few anecdotes or no you have to be able to to project and think about the implications of what you're actually doing for for real people. And at least I became really interested in finding out this is when I was in government started doing research on this stuff. I, I was interested in finding out how much people really want to be included because we talk about it a lot. There's a lot of academia about the need to be inclusive and to engage. And so I did research about it. And part of what I discovered is that there, there are a lot of times when people don't care.  You know, to be responsible to be accountable to the public or to the public's and to really and to do your job so that they can continue being nurses or teachers or, you know, wait staff at restaurants or, or professors teaching something else, and not this. And I think that that is one of the absolute trickiest pieces of all this, that there is some sort of a, there is constant balancing point between being kind of directly inclusive and being able to somehow have that frame of mind, even when you don't have the ability to, to, you know, run, run, I'm going to run focus groups about every decision that you make or whatever, and you can't realistically co design in a kind of a practical way with everybody. And I, I'm wondering if Alex might have views about this because there's this kind of very micro and very macro aspect to this work. And I think that that the micro stuff is a little bit easier to think about in terms of classes and curricula. But the kind of work that our students are likely to be doing, maybe at that macro level, and how do we teach them to sort of take that sensibility forward with them. Am I going to respond. Okay. Yeah, you look like you wanted to that's why is that okay. Yeah, so I think this is like the moment for me to plug that we can't let go of the arts and the humanities. Because we all stop being human without those lines of thinking so like as we're defunding the arts and we're defunding humanistic thought and we're piling everything into like stem education and stemming everything. We, we need to not leave, we need to, yeah, we need to not leave behind care caring for each other like learning those skills of like inquisitive thought curiosity asking questions, not just solving the problem set. And because people do have to make on the ground decisions on their own like eat like for as much as I am all about co design. I also know that if we co design everything, we get nothing done, because we'll be like moving so so slowly. And so I think that like my approach to it is that you somebody has to be in charge, like, even if it is co design somebody has to be in charge and at the end of the day, somebody has to actually make those decisions. And the way and people, people also want to feel safe, like better co design is co designed within some kind of parameter or a structure, where you're deciding between certain sets of stuff, and not like dumping out the entire sandbox and starting from because then nothing gets done. And so I guess, like on on a macro level I think you're totally right that people need to do their jobs and make decisions. And I think that, again, humility and ethics and humanistic thought are ways, things that we should keep teaching our students going out into the world, it to help them process better think better make better decisions be more thoughtful. And for him just a thought here also I think there's a methodologic thing that we can insert here into how we're teaching our students. And that is this question is really about how we can get stuck in an office thinking about statistical lives instead of real lives in the real world. And one of the things that Lisa and I used to work at this place called the Office of Technology Assessment which part of the US Congress. One of the things I learned there was the most powerful methodology that I ever had as a study director at OTA was to actually go out and field trips and go talk to people that were doing the things that we were supposed to be writing about. It's amazing how few people actually do that. And we've brought that into our curriculum, we're asking all of our students to go out and actually interview some stakeholders about the technology that they're focused on, so that they don't just think of this as statistical stuff. It's like real people facing real questions in their real lives. And I think there are there are methodologic things that we can do like that to kind of change the norms so that it's not so academic and only focused on publications. I totally hear you. Yvana, you have a comment. Just a quick pylon here.  I also sort of get a bit anxious when I hear so much of the, I mean, I know this is the panel on what we're talking about, but so much sort of responsibility being put on the educators of Pitt or STEM, because you can be the best educator, the most, you know, the most inspiring. You can have your, you can create a legion of students who want to go out there and do nothing but wonderful, beneficial things for humanity. But if they are, if they go out there in the world and are confronted with institutions that want none of that, it is impot like it's not something that just the educational system can fix. It has to go beyond that there has to be a holistic, you know, Elizabeth was talking about, you know, reclaiming the idea of tech of the social phenomenon, I think that that is, that means it has to go beyond the walls of academia, it has to go into the workplace. And so what are we also doing, what expectations are we how are we preparing our students for that disconnect, you know, how are we, what can we do to go in and say, unless we can change that environment, which is sort of like saying that like, if there is a way we can build in, make this required rather than desired, we can say, no, you don't have a choice. And they can't make you not do it. They can't say, No, your ethics don't matter because my KPIs matter more. If there is a way to protect the students once they leave that environment, that you know, that's the Holy Grail. So listening to Bob and Alex and now Jimana makes me think that language is really important. And we haven't talked about what our backgrounds are. I'm a political scientist and economist by background. So words like public interest actually means something very specific to me and it has to do with sort of competition and coalition building within the policy space to put it mildly. And I think that if that's the perspective that people take with them into these jobs where they have to try to decide how they're going to, what ethical stance they're going to take right, what are they going to bring if they're small fry in the organization if they're in a leadership position, what do they do. Listening to you, I'm thinking that perhaps the language we should be using as public service technology, because it just puts you in a different frame of mind. So the frame of mind that it that it puts you in is that, regardless of what role you have in your organization, whether you're someplace that really wants to have that, you know, perspective or not. That it makes you other looking, it makes you focus on trying to understand how you can be of service and to whom, instead of being able to kind of become complacent that as long as you can figure out what the interests are, you're good. And it kind of turns it from being kind of a relationship based sort of way of thinking about it and instead of a methodological or analytical based and I don't know what the rest of you think about that but that public service ethic is something that we've seen make a big difference in the last few years and and going forward into the, you know, the next federal administration. It's likely to change how governance gets done. If that comes back. Then we have like four minutes left so we need to also have a quick response I think that's really interesting framing Elizabeth because I think that the changing it from interest to service. Sort of imbues the practitioner with an ownership it's with a role with an action, rather than just a knowledge. And I think that that is a really interesting shift and a really important shift because it puts the, you know, the learner and the driver seat, how are you going to, it's a it's an active term versus a passive term, so I'm all for it. Okay, so we are actually redefining fit that that's that's awesome within within that within an hour that this is this is very good conversation. So when we talk about language when we talk about contentualization then we talked about governance policy and technology industries. I actually have a question for all of you, if you can reflect on this quickly. That the globalization of it is just not about us it's just not about OECD. It's about us that we all inherit. So, in terms of globalization of Pete now let's be very specific, like imagine our program within as you that we are we are we just started. What are what are the couple of things that you'd like to see each of you to make sure that we are inclusive in terms of just going to a century, but also out for whoever wants to take it first. Well, one thing that I'll observe is that in fact, the online technology. In many ways it's not the same thing as being in a classroom and it's not quite as rich and experience and all that but the big advantage is, you can do it from anywhere. And while our first inaugural students in the master's program are coming from all from the US they're all over the US but I don't think we have any international students, there's no reason that we can't. The skillsets are at least as relevant, maybe even more relevant in countries outside the US than they are in the US and I think the methodology and the ways of thinking about emerging technologies are are totally global. I just, I can I should I. I think I mean I think Bob talked about it earlier when he was talking about, you know, the, the earth of people going out in the field, I think it's just the idea of thinking about the field is a really big one, and we need to go into it and how we, you know, you don't just include voices by sending out a survey and seeing what people say.  And that field means very different places very far and very removed places and I think we ought to spend a lot of time thinking about how we can enter them respectfully. Yeah, so I would second what was just said by Jamana and Bob also to note that recruiting if we're thinking about global issues here. Recruiting I think is a question clearly the people who can't engage in online learning are going to be excluded by definition. And I also think that the emergence of the term and people not understanding what it is could be an issue. And third, if we're trying to figure out how to kind of embed this, then we may need to think about things besides degree programs. We may need to think about sort of short term weekends, you know, sort of things are more accessible to people that are ready for a degree. All right, closing it out. I think that learning together globally helps everybody to learn better that if we're learning things as a whole, then it isn't just like us looking at them them looking at us but we have a lot to share. The US based students can learn our own culpability about how the world has gotten to be the way that it is, and some of the places that we've been at fault for, and then not going into this trap of making simple fixes for simple problems that leave everybody feeling good, but never ever tackles anything of substance that we could do that all better together learning together. Thank you so much, thank you so much so you see this is very fruitful and like if I end with some of your quotations that nothing about us without us so we need to make sure that we're inclusive. We are going to reclaim the technology with that that just for that does not just focus on inputs but outputs as well. We need to make sure that we do co design as we made it that we are asking real people real questions, and we have policymakers with empathy, so that we can definitely make sure that it's inclusive it's equitable. It's globalized, and it's definitely also contextualized. Thank you so much guys for this conversation. I wish we could talk more and hopefully we would be having the conversation offline as well, and have a great rest of your day, and I'll see you guys soon. Thank you.


Hi and welcome to our session. Let us discuss the following question. The question says, rewrite each of the following statements in the form p if and only if q. The given statement tells us for you to get an a grade, it is necessary and sufficient that you do all the homework regularly. Let's now begin with the solution. We will first write the component statements of the given statement. Now the component statement of the given statement that is qr, you get an a grade and you do all the homework regularly. Hence the given statement in p1 if and only if q1 form is, you get an a grade if you do all the homework regularly. This is our required answer. So this completes the session. Bye and take care.


T. F. N. N. headline news update. Good morning folks. Steve Rhodes coming to you live from the shores of sunny Delray Beach, Florida. This year 11 a.m. update and we've got a sea of red out there. All the U. S. Indices that we track trading to the downside dows down 102 S. N. P. Up 21 NASDAQ 100 points 62. That's about a little over 1% Russell's off eight semis down 64 nearly 2% of a move there down. Gold is up a buck. Silver's down 10 cents. Lights recruit off 30 pennies traded 78 59 natural gas up 7 cents 30 Treasury down four ticks trade out at 120 03. Let's try to figure out what all that means by looking at that nine panel. Market update chart upper left hand corner. You've got the E. S. Mini. What do we know about it? Well, what we know about it is it has held the bottom of its weekly profile did that last week price yesterday tried to get up inside its new profile. It's got a kind of a sideways move out here. If we take a look at the spot ball of Tildex, what's really going on? Why is the E. S. Mini trading lower? Well, because what we had today is we had the spot ball to test and reject that 50 day exponential moving average 50 day currently printed 1550. We had a low of 1548. As long as price remains above that spot ball of Tildex, we will likely see markets move lower. What else do we have take place? Well, we had the NQ testing resistance. That was the top of its daily profile. That's at the 15 359 area US dollar index testing a level of resistance as well. That's its TD nine count top in a close today above 103 62. When they gate that signal and suggest higher price. Goldilocks consolidated with inside its daily profile. It's not proven itself from a breakout standpoint. It's just had a nice move as it consolidates with inside its daily profile. That range is from 1918 to 1953. Silver's had a nice move. It's well above profile levels. It's made it to the point six right retracement. Yesterday was day number five of consecutive moves higher. That suggests we get a pullback today and or tomorrow as well. And that could then set up the next buy lights. We crude if we're to close below 78 60, that would trigger an A to B equal CD to the downside. We don't have that just yet, but watch that level. Natural gas got back tested and so far has rejected its swing point from August the second, but a real rejection means it has to close above 269. If it doesn't close above it, it's trades trading inside it, depending on volume. Maybe telling us it wants to go retarget that low of 257 and a 30 year treasure. Yeah, it had a nice TD nine count bottom. That's led to a consolidation with inside its profile. Resistance for it is one 2029. Folks, thanks so much for joining me. Please stay tuned for the Trader Zed show. But if you have to start your Thursday, please have a terrific one and we'll look forward to speaking with you again soon. Take care now.


Hey guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rosal. I want to do a quick video about this company called Sennetic, because there's a few sort of threads out there on the internet asking who or what exactly this company is. So I've just ordered my second piece of hardware from Sennetic. I've ordered a TP-Link load balancing router. Now, when you're looking for this kind of product as a consumer, your load balancing router is your VPN router is your wired router is you're already sort of drifting a little bit from your kind of classic consumer grade hardware that you can pick up from Curries or Best Buy if you're in the US. So when I was looking for this in Israel, a load balancing router, I actually sort of didn't come across many options or there was maybe four or five options on the market I could find. And Sennetic kept coming up for, you know, sort of big names in the space, Ubiquity, Microtik. And therefore, I was looking for an upgrade on my load balancer and I decided to purchase from them. Now, just a couple of observations. Firstly, this is the second piece of hardware I've ordered from them. The first thing I ordered was this Jabra conference speakerphone. And all I can say about it is that it works perfectly fine. It's totally fine. And it came here relatively quickly via DHL. Now, speaking about DHL, this is sort of telling because looking at the tracking, now I'm based in Israel. So it's kind of obvious that if they had multiple shipping locations, it would come ex-Europe. But this is the tracking I'm seeing in my DHL. Like it left from this place called Katowicz in Poland. I'm undoubtedly pronouncing that wrong. Then it had a quick stopover in Leipzig in Germany. And now it's here in Israel and it's just gone through the start of the clearance, customs clearance process. Now that to me indicates very much that this company is a Polish company. Did find a few threads on Reddit. Interesting threads here on sort of the big tech subreddits. There's one here saying, ''Synetic, has anybody shopped there? Are they legit?'' And some people sort of speculate about what they are exactly. There's a couple of people saying, maybe this is great tech. I'm not exactly sure what that means tech. From my understanding of great tech is sort of like the Logitech C930E webcam that I wound up with. Great market tech. Technology that's intended for one marketplace. That was a Chinese version of the C930C webcam I'm speaking into now. And that somehow wound up in Israel and in the US. And a lot of people were annoyed because they picked up what they thought was a Logitech webcam for Europe only to find all the firmware in Chinese and they couldn't upgrade the firmware using Logitech. So I think that's a category of great tech. There's this other thread here in Build a PC saying, ''Synetic, is it legit or is it great?'' And that's what they mean by great. Again, someone says that they're checking Synetic.ie in Ireland. And this is what it seems to be for me. They have this huge network of international sites. Now this is the Israeli website, Synetic.co.il. There's also Synetic.ie. And the question is it looks like a local technology store. Everything's in Hebrew. If you go on to the contact page of this company, they've got an Israeli office address and there's an Israeli guy on LinkedIn. So the guy is real that much, I know. But it's still a little bit unclear. Look at all these locations. Germany, France, Switzerland, Poland, UK, Bulgaria, Spain, Sweden, Romania, Czech Republic and Italy. So that's a lot of international locations. Now two things. Firstly, any time I've ordered from this company, it's come via Poland. The second way I always when I'm sort of curious, well, what exactly is this company? Is I go on to LinkedIn and I put the company into the search box and then I look at where the people are based. Now this is my sort of foolproof way, I would say. Or I think it's pretty foolproof. You can't really hide, it kind of gives an imprint on where the company is located. So it looks to me as this in Israel, they do have some real people. There's this guy who's the manager. This guy says he's a procurement manager. And then they've got some people, but most of the company is located in their headquarters in Katowice, undoubtedly saying that wrong again. Most of their people are in Poland. So I'm waiting on my TP-Link router from Senedik. I'm none the wiser really as to what they are, but I do suspect that it's kind of this Polish company that is sort of operating all these local websites, maybe a couple of people on the ground. The one thing I would say that I would hold against them is that when you go on to Senedik.com, the first thing you see is this US number here and you kind of get the impression that they're an American company. And that from what I can tell is just not the case. Perhaps they have a virtual address in the US, perhaps they have a couple of employees in the US, but essentially it's a Polish company. How they describe themselves is Senedik is a global provider of IT solutions for business and public organizations, et cetera. So what I would say about Senedik is in terms of the two pieces of hardware I've ordered from them, one of which has arrived. This was totally fine. The price of the TP-Link was comparable to the other IT shops in Israel. It wasn't suspiciously cheap, but I thought it was sort of a big global IT company. And I must admit I was a little bit disappointed to dig into it to sort of see that it was really, and the only reason I say I'm disappointed is that as a consumer I appreciate transparency. If this about us page said we are a Polish company and we work with agents in different countries in a sort of franchisee business model, I would actually be a lot more comfortable ordering from them because they're being transparent about who and what they are. I have no problem whatsoever ordering from a Polish store. I just don't like when I sort of, people create this impression that it doesn't seem to stand up too much scrutiny. So my thoughts on Senedik, like most people on Reddit is I'm confused. I can say I've ordered from them and I did try to change my order and they didn't respond to my emails in a very timely fashion. So it wasn't a great purchasing experience from their Israeli franchisee to be honest. The communication was sort of typical for Israeli companies, not very professional. And I probably wouldn't buy from them again, but I didn't get a response from emailing the Polish office either. So yeah, and for a couple of reasons, Senedik is probably legit, but I would have a couple of question marks and I don't really like the way they're presenting their company. Thanks for watching for more videos. Feel free to subscribe to the YouTube channel.


It is Redacted's best kept secret. No one outside of the university knows it exists. Its habits include terrorizing students and occasionally eating us. You're probably wondering why we would attend a school with its own personal monster, no matter how prestigious the school is. You might as well ask me why the sky is blue or the grass green or why everyone eventually grows old and dies. We just do. I can't explain why. Those of us who are still alive have never actually seen it, but we hear it shrieking late at night as we're desperately shuffling through books and cramming for our examinations, fighting over the coffee someone braver than us snuck inside. And of course, we've all seen the corpses it leaves for us. Our first year during Trinity term, it took Jennifer Carr and then spat her mangled body back out on the grass in front of the camp, our main library. It had taken her body from the waist down, her intestines spilled out in messy loops and the ragged edges of her torn skin fluttered in the wind. The camp is inarguably the most photographed building of Redacted University and Redacted Square is the top place tourists flock to. Possibly it hates tourists as much as the rest of us. More likely, it wanted to make some kind of point about how it chooses to stay in the camp, but doesn't actually have to. Whatever its actual shape and appearance, it always sounds like a crying girl emphasis on sounds because it is most definitely not human. You don't even need to see it to know that. Although they would deny it, if you asked, Redacted University administrators have documentation that it's been here for over a thousand years, leaving behind one mutilated and half eaten body after another. Obviously, no human can live that long. Two decades ago, a handful of university students got the bright idea to analyze some remains, i.e. the corpses of its victims. The rest of the community promptly shouted them down for desecrating the dead, but not before said students managed to determine that it has claws 30 centimeters long at minimum. You might think that the sound of someone crying in the dark would be out of place and warn us all from going there. Actually, many students cry in the relative privacy of the stacks. A lot here have breakdowns in general. I once saw a classmate sit down in the steps leading to the top floor of the Bodley, the other main library. We have over a hundred libraries, all with sweetly vomit inducing nicknames. And ball her eyes out. A herd of tourist pastor looking alternately bewildered and sympathetic. Meanwhile, the tour guide didn't even break his stride. So hearing crying in the stacks isn't necessarily a sign of alarm. What is alarming is your friends accidentally leaving you by yourself in the lower levels after sundown. In the darkness, you're probably thinking, what darkness?  And as anyone with a modicum of common sense knows, students usually stay still while reading their books and absorbing the requisite amount of information to regurgitate back in their studies. Because I was completely alone, I had to jump up and down several times to bring the lights back on. I looked frantically up at the graded ceiling to see if I could spot any of my friends above me. The same brilliant mind that had dreamt up installing motion activated lights in a library had also decided that the floors of cam's lowest levels needed to be made out of metal grates. This meant that on an ordinary day, if you happen to be sitting at a table on a lower level, bits of mud from people's shoes dropped through the grates from the floor above and onto your head in books. Ominously, I couldn't see anyone above me either. At least the grates made sure my screams would echo beautifully through the above levels, warning off everyone else from this level. Milton's paradise lost just had to be shelved here, I thought bitterly, and I just had to write my 3000 word paper tonight. The lights began to dim yet again, so to keep them on longer, I waved my arms wildly, like someone on the airport tarmac waving down an airplane. And that was when I heard it, somebody crying. Maybe I wasn't completely alone, or maybe it had noticed that I was, and fancied itself a mid-afternoon snack. I tucked paradise lost under my arm, collected the books I'd scattered across the table, and shouldered on my messenger bag, preparing to leave.  We roamed the lower levels in packs because we knew that it usually went after people wandering around by themselves. Did it truly expect that I would simply walk into the stacks, offering myself up like a particularly dim-witted sacrificial lamb to the altar?  But I'm not completely heartless. Yes, I didn't care enough to venture into the stacks, but I didn't want to leave anyone by themselves down there either. So on the off chance that it was an actual human being crying and not a sadistic monster trying to lure yet another victim to their doom, I said, is anyone else here? No one responded. The sobbing simply grew louder. I edged towards the exit as I scanned my surroundings. I couldn't see anyone, or more to the point, anything. Which didn't mean much, because even when the lights stayed on, they were so dim that you couldn't see more than five feet away from yourself. Naturally, today was the day I'd forgotten to bring my portable phone charger so I had no handy flashlight to light my way. My dead phone sat heavily in my pocket, a useless lump of metal. I heard a faint clicking noise, though the increasingly loud sobbing drilled into my ears and prevented me from pinpointing where it came from. I suddenly had a horrible image of something right behind me, something monstrous, inching ever closer, drooling and leering and capering in the dark with malicious glee. I whirled around. The space behind me was empty. There was a clicking sound again. I glimpsed a black shadow out of the corner of my eye. It swooped down into the darkness at the end of the room. Too fast for me to make out any details. It was stalking me through the stacks, toying with me the way a cat toyed with a mouse. Of course, right as I had this realization, the lights went out because I'd been standing still for too long. The sobbing stopped abruptly. In the darkness, the clicking noise grew louder. I ran. I ran with my arms held out in front of me and sweat pouring down my forehead. I crashed painfully into the tables I couldn't see and bit down on my cries of pain because I didn't want to draw any more attention to myself if I could help it. Running brought the lights back on and I saw the exit on my right. I veered towards that direction with my heart and my throat, my ears straining to hear any movement behind me. Just as my fingers touched the handle of the door, some great force lifted me and threw me like a rag doll against the closest bookshelf. I hit the shelf so hard that it toppled over and rained books down on me. Blood ran down my forehead from a cut and dripped into my eyes. I wasted precious seconds just sitting there in the middle of all those fallen books, too stunned to move. The sound of clicking from above finally made me look up. It clung to the graded ceiling with sharp claws, a vast mass of darkness that my eyes kept sliding off of as though I gazed at something too horrible to look at for long. I met half a dozen dark yellow eyes watching me, pupil-less and scattered across all that darkness they shone with intelligence.  It would pluck me from where I sat and it would bring me back to its layer, to the mounds of rotting corpses stacked almost to the ceiling. And then a sharp pain pierced my side and my vision doubled. I had nothing to use as a weapon as I couldn't outrun it. Yet as I glanced to my right, my breath caught in my throat. I was actually close to the exit. I ran and I slammed the door open, ducking and rolling through it just in time. Fiery pain erupted across my back as sharp claws dug in. I crawled free, moving on my hands and knees to the foot of the stairs.  As I continued to run, I heard a shriek below me, the same one I'd heard countless times before. It was so loud, my nose and ears began to bleed. Somehow I kept going until I reached the lower reading room. I heard a loud babble of concerned voices and felt hands grasping my arms. Purple spots danced before my eyes as I swayed on my feet and I knew I was going to pass out. I only hoped that they would take me back as far away from the library as possible. I dropped out of the university a few months ago, given the fact that I couldn't bring myself to step foot in many of the buildings ever again. I'd begun to fail all my exams, but I didn't care. I would do anything, go anywhere, just to forget the terror I experienced while stumbling around in the dark, not knowing which way the exit was. Sometimes when I dreamed, I heard the sound of its claws as it hunted me. My parents welcomed me home without any questions or lectures and unexpected gift. These days, I spend a lot of time thinking over and over again about how lucky I was, how I got away. But here's the thing, luck doesn't last. It's proved before with Jennifer Carr that it can leave the building if it wants to. I worry about coming home one night to see a patch of darkness moving against the sky. I worry about hearing its shrieks ringing through the air as it plunges down towards me, its sharp mouth aiming for my soft throat. I worry about meeting its dark yellow eyes and seeing that it still remembers me, even after all this time. So I wrote this post to warn you. I don't know how long this post will stay up or if you'll even be able to understand which university I'm talking about. If the university administrators catch sight of this post, I suspect they will do what they've always done, which is to sweep all information about it under the rug. I'm hardly the first student to have abruptly quit and attempted to tell others about what lives here. I most certainly won't be the last. Next year, yet more unknowing first years and visiting scholars will go to the university only to find themselves in its maw. So if you're reading this, please know, should you find yourself in the redacted dreaming spires, do make sure you avoid the lower levels. And if you can't help but go there, whatever you do, don't stay past sundown.


what is up welcome back do you like to do a builder to make it so do we and we have a new video each week this week we have a killer colossal craft show in like two weeks we do we do we have two weeks two people to make 240 signs that is a lot of signs that is a lot of painting that's a lot of cutting it is a whole lot of ribbons a lot of planning we are gonna be we are definitely gonna be heads down super focused nights and weekends to get all of these signs painted and prepped and ready to go for this craft show so we thought we would show you how we do it and give you a little peek behind the scenes a little peek at the special sauce recipe step one time to bring everyone together for a team meeting Garrett and I used to be in the IT industry and so we're very familiar with agile project management style so we use a form of scrum on a weekly basis to get ready for any large project gather the team together have them all in one room and then we share a little bit about what the upcoming projects are alright this is our daily stand up welcome to our daily stand up we do that we try and do this every day especially especially on Mondays and that's where we are today it's Monday and we're talking about our next craft show the craft show coming up is Newport News on 10-1 and 10-2 it's the biggest show of the year so we need to bring 240 signs to Newport News and each team member will share a little bit about what's going on and their aspect of the business so what's happening out back in the warehouse are things running properly or lasers functioning properly as maintenance getting done we hours how is production going for the store is the store caught up is a store behind the paint room will share a little bit about what's going on in the paint room do we have signs what craft shows are we prepping for that's kind of where I jump in and help there do we have enough supplies we talk a little bit about upcoming workshops and preparation for the workshops Courtney will do her update on marketing share a little bit about the marketing paint campaigns that we have going on marketing campaigns that are coming up what kind of results are we getting from those campaigns and then I'll jump in and I'll talk about the videos that are coming up any videos that I need designs that are coming up cut files replacements or personalized signs that's all me and I'll be giving my report it's a fun round robin we try and make we try and keep it quick we keep it for less than a half an hour on Mondays that's usually our like weekly sprint and then every day we try and do like a 10 minute standup of where we are we meeting our goals we pass the paintbrush we do we do we toss the paint brush from person to person great time to organize it we're going to take all of that information and all of the signs Kim says she needs and we'll put it into that project management board we use a sauna we set it up into this scrumboard format so there's a column with every sign that needs to be cut and a little tag for each one of them and as they get cut they get slid over the little tab gets slid over to the next column which is paint painting glue the third column is bows when the paint and glue is done they drag it over to bows saying hey now it needs bows and ribbons and then when I'm done with bows and ribbons I drag it over to in the cart slash done that means it's done and that way we keep track of what's been done each person will tag what signs that they've done so if all we have help painting Courtney will help paint Jonathan paints sometimes Tanner paints I paint Garrett does not usually paint I'm designing we kind of tag who's doing what so we can kind of make sure that the workload is still spread evenly and everyone's pulling their fair share you know you could do this with Post-it notes too we found the Post-it notes were getting lost so we went to an electronic format yeah it's an electronic like project board step three we're gonna make all of our cuts but we're gonna do these in batches we can fit six signs at a time in all three of our big lasers so I like to run six of the same sign at the same time they're all kicked off at the same time now if you're using lightburn did you know that you're able to put your lasers on the network and then find them by IP address and send your files over the internet that way so any of you guys that are currently using lightburn you can network those lasers so you can send it all one laptop can run all three lasers and that's really really handy yes you used to have multiple laptops running multiple lasers so I can frame it on each at the same time watch them all get framed out and then start them all each then I'll come back they'll all be done at about the same time I'll tape everything off so all little pieces will stay together and we'll bring it inside step 4 batch painting that is where I exit stage right so we don't always batch paint with this large of a batch so typically we will do two to four signs at one time but in preparation for a craft show this size we will do eight to ten signs on these tables so luckily we do have our workshop tables and during the weekdays they're there for us to paint on so I can line up these signs and paint eight at one time this takes a little more time to set up but the painting goes a lot faster so we will break down all of our little pieces and group them by color and then we'll do all the backers at one time do the first coat on all the little pieces we can do all eight of one color at one time and then come back and then do the second coat of backers and then you're just about ready to glue it's really efficient to paint a large batch at one time we call it bow time this is where for us we can get a little bottle neck because nobody else does the bows but me it's not that the bows are that hard when the guys are helping me paint signs or assemble signs even just gluing things they're not good at picking out coordinating ribbons now if every sign had a specific bow that went with it that might make things easier but I don't have that much ribbon of one type of ribbon so sometimes it's a creative process and I'll be choosing ribbons that look like they match the sign and not every ribbon is the same for every sign she's got that ribbon bow eye only she has but what I can do is I'll make the ribbons and I'll make them in batches of four so for this particular round of signs if I'm doing four signs I will make four bows at one time that is faster and then I will set them out onto the tables here you can see we have our signs laid out and I just drop the bow and the hanger and we lay them out so that anybody can come along and tie the hanger on and add the bow step six let's circle the wagons I titled this segment put him in the wagon and the second I saw him smile as we hit record so yes we use these great collapsible wagons we have several different brands that we use and I'll tell you they're all pretty much the same the one the Ozark trail from Walmart is the same as the you line wagon that we have which is the same as the wagon we got x yeah from Dick's sporting goods they're all pretty much the same the wagons are definitely all the same size and they're great for traveling with our signs the big thing about these is that they're hand-painted and you don't want to mess them up as you were traveling not the wagons the signs correct so what we do is we've come up with an efficient way to pack these signs in our wagons we use these recycled brown paper bags that what are they probably 20 inches wide they're big when a customer asks for a bag we will have it because we actually use the paper bags as separators for the signs in the cart so for every sign essentially there's the bag that goes with it we don't offer the bags because I want them to walk around with their sign and advertise for me well where did you get that but if they ask for a bag I'm happy to give it with the signs and bags it's like a giant sign file cabinet I'll even sift through looking for one of the signs that I need yes do you have any more of these let me see I look for the bows yeah I'm looking for the bow yes you can tell whether it's a Christmas bow a Halloween bow a fall bow yeah you start looking for those orange ones for a fall sign I scoop my glasses down to the edge of my nose I just peep on through step seven pack it up we're heading out so every craft show whether it's this large show or down to the date the weekly farmers market that we go to we always bring the bow box and the bow bag and so I thought I'd show you some of the things that we bring each week the bow bag doesn't even have bows in it it doesn't but we call it the bow bag because it kind of comes along with the bow box the triple B's so in this little Tupperware box here you can see this is like a this is Sterilite brand from Walmart I always have my zip ties trusty zip ties that we use to put the bows together with so there's a large zip tie and the tiny zip ties are in this one bag and then here's one of the things that I've learned to do over time this might look like a lot it's I gather this over time so as I make bows I sometimes have leftover nine inch pieces scraps they're not really scraps they're just I use four nine inch pieces to make a bow so sometimes I have extra in my little pile that I've cut and I keep them together and I actually change this pile out with the season so I have a stack like this for summertime ribbons and then I have a set stack like this for winter and fall and Christmas or winter ribbons sometimes they'll love a sign and then they'll say I don't want the bow or can I change the bow and so I luckily will have a very large selection of ribbon with me I don't have to that's when she makes the fatal mistake of asking them do you want to pick out your own ribbon I do sometimes say do you want to pick out your own ribbon so I'll let's see that is an hour side detour well this gives them the then they're invested they're really excited because they got to pick their own really into it usually I mean every sign has a bow with it but if in case someone asks just in case there's a bow missing or I've had to steal a bow from the sign and put it on that sign we have these extra ribbons with us and they're all ready to go to make a new bow I also bring rolls of ribbon but just a few of these with me for hangers so this is only really used for the backers and the hangers if for some reason the hanger needs to change or maybe I did forget to add a bow to something or it was last minute and we threw it in there I can create a bow and a hanger I try to keep this ribbon pretty neutral a black a white orange whatever the color of the season is I'll try and have matching hangers with it like here's just a roll of black because this can go with almost every sign so that's what's in our bow box now what's in our bow bag this little bag right here goes to every show with us that little bag is like bottomless it's the bottomless bow bag it is you wouldn't believe how much stuff I can fit in this bag and there's more in here right now but it's duplicates of what you see here it is the bottomless bag I can fit there's actually some more stuff in here but it's duplicate of what you see here but I thought I would show you what we take with us for each show so we have a touch-up paint kit so for every color that we use we have one of these little lip gloss tubes where I can squeeze out just a tiny little bit of paint enough to get on the tip of your finger or one of these little sponges or even a q-tip yep we have a little pack of q-tips in here that go with it we can do touch-ups if we need to I have one of these Sharpie paint pen markers this is what we use to clean up the edges or touch up black maybe that's what these Sharpies are for I also have a white paint pen so if the backer a white backer gets scuffed we can clean that up with this paint pen what is our number one favorite tool to have with us the number one tool magic eraser this thing is magic it'll clean up a sign it'll clean up a spill it'll take coffee off of your tablet this thing right here never leave home without it we do you wouldn't believe how often we use these magic erasers they do a great job if your sign gets scuffed it may not need a touch-up paint it just needs a little wipe down with a little magic eraser sometimes they just get rubbed together again this will clean off those rub marks you want by a little chocolate fingers yes that too we also make sure we have extra glue in case a piece happens to pop off we can put it back on accidents happen or breaks off that'll sometimes happen we use this little plastic container has all of our hooks so each of the sign gets hung onto the little metal display racks with these cute little hooks we can put them in there if this goes in the bow bag a little box of brochures we give everyone a brochure that talks about our workshops assuming it depends on which craft show we're if we're really far away we don't give to we don't just give these out we'll let them take them if they want them especially if they know they're close by or in Richmond often close I'll slip it in the bag every time yes and then for as you know most people ask who do you have a business card so for business cards we actually use these postcards yeah a little harder to get lost in your purse or pocket they stand out just a little bit more just a little bit bigger these are the thank you cards we put in order so if you've ever ordered from us you've probably seen this it does have all of our social medias on here so they can find us everywhere Instagram tick doc Facebook everywhere on the YouTube's the YouTube's yes our email address and there's a little coupon code here thank you 10 coupon code for 10% off and sometimes this works too but just say here you go you can go check us out there's a little coupon code right here on the bottom of the car slip it right in the bag also we also bring our Venmo this little Venmo standee when I registered for my Venmo business account they ask if we wanted a little advertising kit it came with a few stickers and this cute little stand-up thing and it's great I really just hope I'll tell you what they can't do they can't really scan it standing up like this it is too straight up and down so I just hold it up for them and it works great let's put it in front of my face and what do we get comments on Garrett every time of these things they love them people asked if they could keep them when they're buying their signs it's a price tag I just made these little jams on the Glowforge I picked the font and the tag shape from the Glowforge app that's it it's just a scored and cut with the Glowforge and they're reusable so Baltic birch if they don't ask only like one person one or two people have really said oh can I have it we're like yeah sure you can have it you want it but they're reusable every every show so I don't have to keep buying tags I don't have to write numbers down they're right on there and speaking of reusable yes reusable zip ties these are another can't live without we use them for everything we use them to keep the racks together we use them to keep the tent together keep the racks to the tent the flag to the tent yes hang our signs we started with just regular zip ties and found we were we felt like we were wasting them and the great thing about this it works exactly the same and just as well but there's a little tab here on the side and we'll release it well thumb tab great highly recommend bungee cords of course I don't go anywhere without at least two bungee cords and we use these bungee cords to hang up our little display in the back or just a sign and in these we found these are just the door hangers that hangs on the door that you put the door hanger on where we've had a couple of comments about people saying well I don't have a hanger to hang on my door do you have one and we say so for you right here we have one five bucks the other couple of things of course gotta have these scissors scissors and believe it or not this paint brush first of all Garrett plays with it if it's near him he's flicking tossing it spinning it but I use it to dust off the signs as you travel with them or sometimes you have glitter on your ribbon or you might have the burlap sheds and this kind of dusts off the signs so after I hang them I will go back and clean them off shall hang it fluff the bow and come in with a little paint brush to and then dust them all off yep do a little dusting touch up all of that in the bag oh oh and sunscreen and my little bad thing is you're not forget your sunscreen that sun shifts and I burn up like that he does especially when I fall asleep in the chair he does step eight load them up we have this covered travel trailer it serves a bunch of purposes one we didn't have the space in any of our vehicles to fit more than two wagons so this allows us to bring up to ten wagons and our racks and our ten and our chairs tables here is this everything we need goes right in there and then at our space we don't have enough space in our booth to keep all ten wagons that we bring with us so it also acts as a storage unit on the spot so I'll do a lot of running back and forth from our craft booth out to the storage unit to grab signs or put signs back and and bring wagons back in if he comes back back and forth that's loosely sometimes it's back to the trailer it's a man cave it doubles as a man cave it's a storage unit and a man cave I'll just set a chair up some chips and some diet do and watch the YouTubes so Garrett talked about how he's back and forth on the trailer because he's so busy let's just see where Garrett is. I'm looking for signs. It's empty. Oh they're not here. I better look somewhere else. This just in. Kim and Garrett's biggest craft show of the year has just been canceled. Over to you Kim. Due to inclement weather and approaching hurricane craft show has been canceled. Gonna have to come up with a plan B. Stay tuned for more information. Now back to our regularly scheduled program. Step nine. Let's set it up. We're here. Now it's time to plant our roots and set up our booth. We start by setting up our tent. You can set this tent up with one person. It's the easy up tent. It gives us a true 10 by 10 and it actually covers the whole 10 by 10 space. It's great because sometimes I'll drop Kim off or she'll drop me off and we'll start the booth set up. And since we have to start with the tent first it's great that one person can start setting this up. Next we come back in with the 20 inch by six foot tall racks. Again we told you we have them set up in pairs so we'll set these up and we'll use those reusable zip ties to tie them to each other and tie them to the legs of the tent. We can set five across on one side and five across on the other side. They essentially make a grid wall inside that tent. Sometimes we can use the outside of the panels and the inside. We always set them up on the inside and it all depends on where our booth is and who our neighbors are and how close we are as to whether or not we can set the signs up on the outside. And if you can schmooze your neighbors they're a little more likely to let you set them up on the other side. Next we set up the table. It's a four-foot wide table that's countertop height. This is great because nobody wants to bend over to try to complete their transactions. They might be eating or carrying a child or holding a dog and this just makes it a little bit easier. And we use the four foot as opposed to the six foot foot because the six foot table is a little bit wider and longer and in that 10 by 10 booth space it takes up a lot of room. It gets cramped real quick. So we use the four foot table because it is a little bit smaller and gives us a little more room on the sides. And then we have this great tablecloth that Kim found. Everybody loves this tablecloth. We got it from Stack Displays. There's no affiliation with that company but I tell you what go take a look. They have a ton of really cool tablecloths out there and we get tons of compliments on this tablecloth. I can't tell you how many people have asked where did you get this tablecloth? And it's easy to just it makes it look a little bit more professional. It's super durable. We used it over and over and over again and we have had no it's super durable. No no rips, no tears, nothing. We haven't even washed it. And chairs. So you got to have some sort of a chair when things are slow. Hopefully they're not slow.  So yes we use these countertype chairs. Now this particular pair that we have I do not recommend because it's like getting in and out of a hammock every time. I'm gonna counter her and say I love these chairs. They are perfect for napping. I can't tell you how many times I walk away from the booth and say here can you watch the booth I'm gonna take a look around and I come back and he's asleep. Those chairs are comfortable. So our eight foot sign banner behind us and we use these bungee cords to hang that up. Then we set the sandbags around each leg. A lot of the places will make you have sandbags and a fire extinguisher. We keep both out there and open so that any auditors that walk by can see them. I would recommend the the nice flat like directors chairs over these camp chairs, these tall camp chairs. Your choice I do highly recommend them. Jesus trying to keep you awake. That their countertype height so you can get in and out and then we can sit in the chairs and talk to everyone pretty much at eye level when they go by and we're not down below our table. Kimmy yells at me for being on the phone after have to compliment their shoes. I highly recommend greet every single person that pops in. Or walks by. Alright so what'd you think? Did you find any of these tips useful? Do you have any useful tips? What is that super secret craft show tip that you have? Are you sitting on a good one? Leave it down below. I'd love to share it with everybody. I won't tell them it's your super secret trick. It's our secret. Alright well big thanks to all of our patrons. We love you guys. Some of these tips and tricks have come from our patrons so thank you guys. You guys helped us out with this one too. Didn't even know it. Well we are about out of time so if you're not going to join us for the patron after show you should totally join us this weekend for the hurricane party because it's been rained out or winded out. Hurricaneed out. We're going to substitute this craft show by going live this weekend Saturday and Sunday and we'll be able to see all your shiny little faces or at least you'll be able to see our two shining faces. Yeah hopefully you'll chat with us. Yeah come chat with us. See what's up. See what we're up to. See what we're doing. Tell us what you're doing.


Hi, my name is Rene Romero and I work in POW Library. Today I'm going to be talking about one of my favorite books called Dawn by Octavia Butler. It's actually the first of three books in a trilogy currently called Lilith's Brood, but it used to be called The Imagenesis. You can find it under either title. The plot is kind of interesting. I'm a huge fan of science fiction and fantasy, so I was instantly drawn to this book. The plot is about actually humans who have been picked up by an alien civilization after Earth is destroyed after a nuclear war. So it's really a story about survival and a post-apocalyptic world, which again is something that I'm very interested in. Why I really like the book is mainly because I enjoy thinking about what it means to be a human, and that's something that they cover a lot in this book, whether it's from the viewpoint of the main character, Lilithiapo, or the viewpoint of the alien race who picks them up. It really just kind of explores what it means to survive, what it means to be alive, what it means to be a sentient being, and what it means to try to understand yourself and others, which makes it even harder in a post-apocalyptic world. So I just really recommend picking it up if you're looking for an interesting read that also talks a lot about what it means to be alive, which is something that I think is an issue that we can all really talk about in this day and age.


Income tax 2023-2024, name and address, get ready and some coffee so we can avoid having to move into a shack by learning some income tax preparation 2023-2024. Most of this information can be found in the line instructions of the Form 1040 Instructions Tax Year 2023, which you can find on the IRS website at irs.gov, irs.gov, looking at the name and address, which seems fairly basic, fairly straightforward, but there are some nuances that we want to touch on and point out here, obviously. The IRS is going to want when we fill out our tax return, our legal name, our address, and then they're going to want our identification number, typically our social security number so that they can turn us into a number and then require that we're going to pay taxes and if we don't pay taxes, they know where we-