Well, good morning, I can hold this time to get started, so I'd like to welcome you to the next session. This is managing your online presence from access info to purposeful. My name is Marcia Dory Baker, and I work at Schminwald Library, which is the University of Nebraska College of Law on this campus for you who are familiar with Lincoln. And our panel is going to introduce themselves and we're going to go ahead and get started. Any questions that you have, please raise your hands. We're going to be migrating between the table and the podium for the mic. So if you're raising your hand, raise your high wave, so that we know and we'll get your question. And we'll also be repeating the questions because this is being live-streamed that way, the audience about looking here too. So I'd like to say welcome and we're going to do an interaction now. My name is Becky Weimer, and I am the Systems Librarian at Bellevue University. A little bit about my own online presence, which we're going to take a look at in a few moments, is that if I had to use myself at grade, I was thinking reaction-wise, I would give myself a C-minus, but then when I really get analyzing myself, I probably deserve like a B-minus. I kind of what my online presence happened, which is what the motivation for this session was is if we're not careful, we're going to need our presence will happen to us, and it doesn't present exactly what we're hoping for. So we'll go into that more, but I am a good morning. My name is Alex and I'm the Librarian at North Star High School in Lincoln, Nebraska. My online presence is fairly recent, and that was because our director, Kim Lincoln, had suggested we be careful about putting things, for example, on Facebook and other places, and things can be manipulated and we not know about it, and my grade might be a C-minus because I wasn't really watching for things. And so I'm a recent addition to Facebook, and I keep a lot of the things private, but then in my library, I have to watch for our students, making sure that they're safe online, and they're not trying to crack into things, and you know, ask what they are, because they need to get them. And I don't know how, because they're smarter than I am on that. So I needed to learn a lot more, too, about my own presence, but also make sure that I'm protected. Okay. Managing my online presence, I think I find you professionally, I would give myself about a B, because I am very active within my profession and within the library role, and I keep close eye on what's out there. Personally, I don't participate as much, and I guess I've probably left that one kind of off the wayside, so I'm probably going to see that as well, which brings us into our next kind of question, which is balancing your personal and your professional activities. I do a lot of social media for my library, so I tend to post at Schmidt Law Libraries, and the thing you see out there is me posting at the same time, and so anytime I post at my own name professionally, and kind of my business card is on my door, I make the professionals, so I'm very aware of that. Otherwise, I kind of stay off. I'm a very private person. I don't want a lot of information out there. I do have Facebook, and that's probably the one area where I kind of merged it to, and I have to remember that, oh yeah, my boss is a friend, my co-worker is a friend, and I have some family around the world that are friends, and they can see what I'm doing. I have a pregnancy setting that's important to that way, and that does, to me personally, restrict what I post, particularly in my pictures, and some of the comments that if you're missing the facial expression that goes with that comment, it doesn't make sense, or it's just odd, so I guess always in the back of my head, I have that boom I'm posting, and I feel like I have two personalities, and I think that's probably a little paranoid or that might be just being practical, I haven't decided yet. I do have a Facebook account, and I think of it as a category of Facebook people I would be considered a marker, because I kind of watch the horizon, but I don't post very often, and a lot of that is because of the conflict between the personal and the private. Just not wanting to offend anyone, I don't post at all, but in the professional realm, that's not very helpful, and if you're part of my family, they don't think that's very helpful either if I just never post, and then they don't have anything. In some of my readings on this topic, it's really suggested that you create networks with your online, you have a professional persona, and you have a private persona, and they even go so far as to suggest that you make your account separate, so that there isn't the overlap, and then it also helps to minimize that bare factor, so then you can actually post and participate. Because one of the reasons that we are looking at this online presence, especially in social media, is so that we can support and network with each other, and if all we're doing is watching the more comfortable in this meeting people post, our voices are being heard. And so I think what I'm going to be looking at is looking at all of those security matters in Facebook, creating networks, and then deciding what my purpose is. Why do I want to do this? It isn't shameless self-promotion, and if you have ever had certain friends on Facebook and all you think it's the posting of our shameless self-promotion, I would really help in some of the literature in thinking that what I need to do to shift from, it's not promotion, but I'm actually trying to do something or share things that will benefit my network. Whatever network that is, it could be at school, it could be alumni, it could be just my professional friends, and I'm posting something that can help them, and that's going to be my motivation to help reduce getting my voice out there. That brings to mind working with the students in the library. I would like to have things out there that promotes the library, reading, coming in, doing research. I consider my library, for example, everybody's dining at the table, which can be used for so many things. I have to keep it safe down at the table. And so in Lincoln, the district technology folks, the computer folks, they block access to Facebook, and there's many other sites that are blocked. Teachers, if they need students to get something off of YouTube, for example, they could log in and get through the restricted access with their password and ID, and get something that is of academic value with their students, but, for example, not Facebook. For my own use, like I said, I'm fairly recent using Facebook. I can do some private things, so I'm online with some friends. It happens to be with dog training. And then, like Facebook is want to do, you get a flood of things anyway. They've just recently changed some things where you can put things on private, but there's like a wall, a backlog of, oh, here's stuff from before and before and before. So when we talk to our students about using things, they're not being able to use Facebook at school, but if they're at home or the city library, we talk about if you put it there, it's everywhere. And it's always going to be everywhere. So we try to do a balance, and I in my own private life and the public life try to do a balance. We do use Edmodo for a lot of things that can be helpful with the students. Kids know about Pinterest, for example. They Google a lot. So there are a lot of social media things that they could use at school and then continue out of school, but the message is always to be safe about it.  You're not going to be sexist, racist, etc. You're just having, no, this is the same thing a lot. And thinking as everybody's talking and getting ready for this presentation, one of the things that came out, and we're going to talk about those practices in a few minutes, but one of the things that came out in the readings that I ran across was the idea that you need to manage your online presence before somebody else does it for you. And I think there's been enough articles in the New York 12 traditional print and TV and online about young people being bullied, making comments online, how things can turn very quickly, you know, the preventality online because you're not actually seeing the person you're hurting. And we've lost a lot of young people and old people as well and everybody's between because of it. And so managing who you are online is just as important as managing who we are in this room. You're not going to see any of us get out and start dancing on the table and, you know, get crazy for both of us. We have a webcam and we know that this is James Street. So that right there is kind of like, okay, whatever. I didn't know that when I signed up for this.  Some of you I know and I see all the time. Hey, I'm going to go on others.  And so the same thing we need to be doing online with our presence. Yes, the party pictures there. We all know what happens in Vegas. It's not saying Vegas, no matter how high up you are. And so we need to be treating ourselves with that respect and saying, this is who I am. This is what I do. These are the people that I know or I will be knowing soon because we're all friends. We just haven't met before. And treat that, treat ourselves with that respect. If that's not, then things are going to be out there that we cannot control. And we know that once it goes online, it really can't do with it. And we don't want to be trying to clean up and wanting to be managing and promoting who we are, who our libraries help, and what we can do in the services that we provide to our communities. And it's nothing like a disgraced individual who tends to get that point. And when we are using these features, we can be helping our kids, our students, the other people that we come in contact with, maybe not the plain use out there, but because we're actively doing it to see where this factor is, we can be helping other people do it and say, hey, here's how you can, we shouldn't be putting all the information on that kind of thing. So that being said, we're going to move into best practices. What you can be doing and what you should be aware of. Because I have so much work to do and the task seems so daunting to manage an online presence. One of my favorite articles that I ran across said that if you were going to do four things to either create or conjure your online presence, the three to participate in that are highly recommended are Facebook, because so many people are on it. Twitter, which I cringed. Twitter and LinkedIn. The reason that, especially if we're talking professionally right now, the benefits of this is to so that people know you more than just a name or a base at a conference. This, I think, if I was managing my persona much more carefully, think of sitting in a committee where I'm trying to figure out a keynote for an upcoming conference that you're helping to plan. If people have this information, what their expertise are, what they are going to present it on, if you could just look up that information and have it in one place because we are presenting ourselves well, think of how much easier it would be to just have, I guess, a speaker at a staff meeting or different aspects. So while my LinkedIn account is like two days old and some of you may actually have a request to be my friend in your inbox right now, that's one thing that I am personally going to build up. So if I have something to offer, people know what I have to offer, and it's going to benefit all of us. Twitter, my son is a tweet. He tweets, and that's very, very much of his personality. I've always been rather hesitant to do it, but I'm seeing more of a benefit in the professional realm that what a great way I'm going to this conference. Let's give that out to my friends. Let's meet up. The kind of things that Twitter can be good for, it's just hitting a specific network and hitting information blasts out to them. The other thing that was recommended, and I actually have an example that I'll show you of someone who, she says she didn't do it well, but I was really impressed. Karen Daldyl, if you know her, she has created a really nice curriculum data. And so you can go in and she has base URL off of her name. So of course it comes up high in the search results, and you can go in and see her education, her interests, where she's presented, and everything about her in a nice, condensed format. Now, when I asked permission if I could show that or promote that, her statement was, oh, I haven't updated it lately. Well, her update and my update are totally different levels. But that is another key on best practices is you need to keep it updated. I was looking at other people's LinkedIn as I was becoming acquainted with them because they want you to get to know them. And some people do a much better job of staying current. The final best practice that I'll share with you is that if you have something out there from your past, or something that you are going to choose not to update, you did branch out, or you were an original MySpace and no one uses MySpace anymore, even except for Justin Timberlake. But it's better to go to those sites to remove your content or to simply include a line that this information is no longer updated than to just leave it out there. And there are instructions out there that you can actually remove from those accounts. And I'll share a little bit more about that in the cleanup stage that we're going to talk about. But if you're going to have to do it, it's going to have to be implemented. And if you have stuff out there, get rid of it if you don't want it to continue forever. I was amazed that some things can actually be removed as much as they ever are, at least they aren't currently in the Google searches. My guidance comes from both ALA and the American Association for School Librarians. Everything from scrubbing up your digital identity to how do you help students have a good face on Facebook or whatever they choose to use. I'm more of a proponent for LinkedIn. I like that. It's easy, simple. I'm kind of new at it. My Facebook is only about my dog training. And it's all private. Things keep filtering in and people say, I know what you do like me. I know what you do like me. I know I'm not going to like everybody. It doesn't impress me to click on something and have 2,000 friends. I don't know you face-to-face. I really like face-to-face. That's a little bit of how I talk to our kids. When you're here at school, and more and more we are discussing about not bullying or if you see it, what you do, you have to be able to deal with people face-to-face very kindly and respectfully, as well as digitally. Another thought I had is how do you clean up some stuff? I had Googled a few months ago and my name and it was kind of funny to see the stuff. If somebody else's name is even spelled like yours and who are you, I had published a poetry book several years ago and now there's something online. I have no idea who this woman is attached to my book, which is out of print, out of date. I'm not sure how to get rid of that. The stuff hangs on forever, it seems like. I was looking to find out some information. There are places you can go online to pay them, but for some of the auties, they can clean up your digital identity or, like you were saying, use what MySpace has or some other place that shows you the instructions how to go back and clean out the whole stuff. It's no different than an old, middle file cabinet with the vanilla folders and throw that stuff away. You don't use that snowboard if you sold it. Throw it away on paperwork. Same kind of thing. When I notice it's hard for kids to visualize that because it's out there in the ethernet. They don't relate to, okay, I don't have the snowboard anymore. I don't need the paperwork for it. Throw it away because they don't have file folders or the stuff anymore. There's equations. This is like this. One of the things that I get some help from in the library, for example, is very often we post a career fair in the library. The other day, we had one. It was the whole day long. We had so many folks from Lincoln and talked to kids and they all dressed up and had practice interviews. I was listening at the moment to somebody from the Army National Guard. He said, watch what you're posting out there because your bosses can and will read what you post. You could A, post too much. And or B, post the wrong stuff. And I thought, wow. I hadn't heard anybody else in the career fairs talk to the students like that about you're out there. And you might be, these kids are like 11-12 graders of the career fair. You need to be thinking about it now. During this practice interview, think about it now because your future bosses are going to find you out there. Additionally, you want to be responsible and respectful. That brings up a conversation I was having with some of my co-workers. We were talking about the election. One of the things that came up was what happened in about three presidential elections when our current students were old enough to be running. And we were talking about the entire digital life out there. That's going to be changing things. And I think it's something that we need to be discussing. We need to discuss the virtues of these with our students. We need to be discussing our online presence and managing that. And that's part of it. That's practice thinking, okay, and I know it's hard. I mean, it's hard for us now as adults to be thinking about I'm going to be in a job and people are going to be looking for me online. Okay, Rachel, how many of you at this conference have Googled somebody you saw or that you want to meet or somebody that is at this conference? How many of you guys have Googled somebody? And because you're like, oh, I see that. I wonder if they look like that one. So we're doing it for ourselves. I mean, we need to be realizing that part of those practices is using what we're doing now and training the next generation with that. One of the articles that I read in preparing for this was saying that we're not going to have CDs anymore or not going to have a resume that we send out to get a job from the fight for job and not going to be asking for that. Instead, we're going to do something like LinkedIn as our resume. And if you're using LinkedIn, that's great. If you're not, please start using it because that's who you are professionally. If you're using Twitter, you can add to Twitter to feed into that so people are seeing it. You can put your article to your writing in there. They're available online. If you look at Human Albums, they're available online. I've got all the links to them within LinkedIn so that people can see what I'm doing and they can go to the link. You can see in the download people are able to see quickly what I'm publishing. The one thing I don't like about LinkedIn is you can't put your presentations out there anymore, but instead you can talk about where you're active. You can have basically your personal bio or your professional bio and you can put what you're doing. If you work with somebody and they're really good and you want to recommend them, recommend them on LinkedIn. That is great when people are doing that because when you google your name and we'll show you some results here in a little bit, if your LinkedIn profile is not showing up on the first page, I would say within the first hit, I mean top three, the meaning would be more active with LinkedIn out there. When I google my name the first thing that usually comes up with LinkedIn is the second thing is my faculty page. I can go down. That's how I want it and I can call myself on a fairly regular basis not a vanity searching, but to maintain that because I have people who contact me that they would just speak out their name. If you're googling my name and you're seeing that I'm at the law college and you're seeing all the things that I'm doing on LinkedIn that make sense, that means you contact me out there. So online is kind of invisible unless we're all online, but it's still very alive and real. So treat LinkedIn like your online resume, like I said in the last video, if we could find people to be doing keynote presentations without training, that would be great and LinkedIn is not going to be the opportunity. You can also add basically tags to your name of the things that you're interested in. So library management, tech services, cataloging, social media, that kind of thing. So then as people are searching for people in the library world who have the interests of being able to start publishing on a list and you want to come to a short list. That's a good place to be. If you're feeling comfortable and you're on Facebook or on Twitter and you're LinkedIn and you want to do something more, I do recommend that you google Karen's name. She's got a nice website out there. It's her personal information about who she is but she knows who she's out there. It's one of the top hits when it comes to her name. If you like to blog and you're blogging professionally as yourself and get that content out there, it's great if you sign up for the 23 things and you want to try something new. But if you're not going to keep it active, please send a friend and a colleague who really is or you move it or put it. This was a great run but it's over and we'll not be updated because it's really hard. I google everybody I hire. I hire student workers all the time and I'm feeling everybody left and right and when I see all this kind of old content and see things that are unquestionable it makes me think twice. The first line when people walk into my library I have a question if these students are there and if they're making questionable comments or they've got updated stuff online I'm not sure I'd love that to be the first person to find these when they come into the library. We need to think about that as well. This is a profession where we help people and we want it better than Google so we need to make sure that it's really best practices being consistent being proactive don't let the internet write your history for you be the person out there taking care of you and your library and your colleague and this thing is if you see something that you think is kind of weird or you see something like well I didn't know you did that they might not realize that there's things out there that they need to be aware of and it's good to be watching out for each other. We're in a small and very active profession it's a little bit of a bottle of one thing that my student and I noticed even setting up my computer is that don't forget that Google starts customizing to your online behavior and so if you are continuously using your personal equipment to Google yourself you're going to the results are skewed so what you're going to like to do is go to an anonymous computer every once in a while and Google yourself and see what the anonymous results are because you will be amazed at the difference especially for a frequent Googleer the reason that we are also saying Google a lot is the statistics that I ran into said that about 80% of the people who are doing online searching for this type of thing are using Google but they also suggested make sure that you had some of the other search engines being as well to see what's happening in that world because everyone will have a different presentation of value and that should be a concern. One more comment about those practices please professionally try to be consistent with your headshot if you're an institution where they take professional for both you every year and that's on your page do this for your library and your staff use that same headshot. Same thing with the bio I know we all talk about all of your pitches and if your director or your dean walks in or your city county official we need to give them a quick word about who you are and what your library does do that for yourself online and make sure that those all match LinkedIn, whatever bio you have there should be the appropriate bio to meet and interview you at a conference or before presentation have a once in learn about you and make that available but be consistent with across all of the different places where you are online because one you're having better information out there about you and two you're being consistent so people are getting the same result over and over and over on you and we know it is you so that if somebody else has put their name on something that you created you can say hey I don't think that's the right ally because all of your stuff is exactly the same now that might sound like boring and yeah it is but professionally that's what you need to do I think all of our business cards look the same we are very clear and cataloging that everything is the same so I think since this library we should be consistent but please do that one more if I can remember things in order I wouldn't have to bounce back it also plays into your name use a consistent name if you're going to use your middle initial always use your middle initial or never use your middle initial the only way to keep your personal and your professional difference is to adjust your name and make sure that you're consistent doing it with that also when you're googling some tips that I ran across is I just throw my name out there and kind of see what happens Google yourself in different venues, google your name and the town that you grew up in if you're in a certain organization google yourself in that context different context, don't do it just want it and either scare yourself or be very pleased do it in multiple contexts so you can see what's out there also if you can't borrow someone else's like Facebook account or LinkedIn and search yourself and see if when you're not in your profile this is especially important in Facebook because the presentation can differ especially if depending on your security what you're allowing them to see that first time if it's so cut down like mine is right now that basically they get your head shot in your name that's not very beneficial so see what the other people actually can see and what those settings are doing to the presentation okay so you google yourself and you scare yourself and there's work to do let's just say that we actually have our little points on our card on our PowerPoint that we will post and I'll include the citations but I ran across an excellent online article called four steps to clean up your online presence in this it actually includes the links so if you found through and you found oh I had a MySpace or in my case I have a Twitter account remember that somebody sent me a reminder hey I even heard from you it actually includes links so that you can read through oh I need to clean this up and it will drop you into the instructions that I have to clean it up but I loved that something else in getting your hits higher within google is one of the suggestions is go ahead and create a google profile which I didn't even know you could do but if you go in and you have more control over what google will do with your name and how it presents you so that's something else that I would definitely take a look at in my cleanup is how can I take control of the information out there if there's something on a website that I don't like I used to have the mentality of well what can I do but you can ask that Webmaster to take that down and most critical sites will have the contact with Webmaster and say you know this is obsolete this is inappropriate I didn't give permission for you to use this and then you can request that it will come down Google even has a way that you can protest or contest certain listings of your name and then when you go through the process they will remove that as well of course if it's cashed you can have that picture and save it on the hard drive you have no control over it but there are becoming more and more tools that you can actually clean things up that's a good point reminds me about a lot of our teachers are using Google Docs because we have that now in the district and so some of our folks who are a little bit more tech savvy won't have the students work on full files and stuff so that helps clean up because otherwise that's what I was learning about is that go to that site if it's credible have somebody clean it up say that's not me I didn't post that somebody else has the same spelling and what I see is not me have them help you get rid of it I always think of being proactive like healthcare so I'm really proactive with the students when they come in and we teach about going on databases my teachers support me in saying don't just go to Google try not to go to Google voice their hearts they will but when I'm teaching and I have the LCD projector on we're not going to Google we're going to the databases we bought so you try to be proactive and leave them to the right place try to be proactive and say you're going to post this student did you have a second thought and you'll post it there's a clue right there for you that works with most of the students bless their hearts if you can question it don't put it out there whether it's a photo or typing whatever it is a lot of times that works for them otherwise as the librarian I talk with my teachers and ask them what are you doing what's the assignment how can I help anything that would be out there including like using Edmodo what do you want the students to write what do you want them to say and with Google Docs and if they have them be able to send it to each other and work on each other's papers and stuff we talk about that don't type on the side man this paper really sucks don't do that it's out there so you have to help them be proactive when you help them so even that tiny little thing using Google Docs and typing on paper to something I'll say more grand like using Facebook be proactive our personal work on the digital world and our students in any school level think ahead I have just one thing to add because cleaning up is going to take a lot of work so you need to start earlier don't wait until you're going to have a job interview from Google to you if you're using Facebook and LinkedIn make sure you claim your username you may or may not know that if you want to give somebody a URL to your profile in Facebook or LinkedIn it would be facebook.com slash whatever it is claim them then nobody else can take it if that's you, mine's Emory Baker sometimes it's also Marcia LDB I try to keep Emory Baker professionally and Marcia LDB personal that's kind of the way I can remember what profile I am with all the different places that I am online but do that especially if somebody has a very similar name to you make sure you're claiming that and be consistent if you're going to use it when my daughter started her Facebook account there's people with a similar name and they had some questionable profile pictures and so she decided she was going to use her middle initial because it's that her partner really also had that and so then now I'd like to follow that up with an article that was going to be Sunday New York Times I highly recommend you read it I'm pretty sure it's something else but we'll check that out anyhow it was about Facebook and privacy and there were a couple students in Facebook they had very strict privacy settings they were very careful in what they did but they were added to an open group and when you're added to a group everybody knows that you've been added to the group and so this is just something keep in mind as we're teaching our students and as we are maybe making a great group I'll just add people if you're adding people to things well everybody else knows even if you're excited about it you might be damaging somebody but the internet is out there it's part of it and we've participated in it I mean that's it's just a matter of it's time to manage what we're doing online and as we're going from a 2.0 to a 3.0 and beyond it's just an awareness factor and an education factor so it's kind of odd because I think when I was in high school we'd know what we're doing and cameras were not allowed and we weren't ever gagging it was really different than now everybody wants to capture the moment forever and they don't realize that forever it's forever on a morning I think it's great in the world I think that would probably be appropriate somebody's thought about putting a dog a chihuahua and stuff maybe think of students, some of the projects teachers do the students are able to have an avatar and I talked to somebody about that the broadcast is now starting all attendees are in listen only mode like dogs fight chains around the neck kind of thing and the rest of the body and the face was mostly zombie like and kind of funny disgusting not good because again that avatar is not you but it's out there now and it could be out there for a long time and you don't want other folks to see that it's not always appropriate so you even have to think about that the digital world this is astounding to me because yeah I'm from a world where you know all of our work was on paper kept the middle of folders and now it's different and it will last longer much much longer than paper so even avatars you have to have kids think about I don't know so much folks our age but at least we start students if you want to look at other things that are out there online see some more resources I know we all have resources available the kind of training where there's social media presence if you were going to search for that if you're looking to hire somebody to clean up your presence please don't come here on first but yeah if you're looking for that it's online or occupation management if you do the first search social media presence you're going to find a lot of really good marketing and promotion tips out there especially for people who are entering the work floors if you're trying to do a job or your first interview that kind of thing what you need to be aware of a lot of them are from universities they're targeting their students to help them make sure that their online presence is employment ready you also find some other libraries and librarians who are getting similar talks and presentations and that's out there and then you're going to find marketing companies that have this type of article out there for people who want to start writing you want to start blogging you want to become a professional online there's some really good resources and some really current there's also some stuff from 2007 and 2008 so this isn't a brand new topic people who are thinking about it a lot and like anything else actually it's going to show us some Google searches does anybody have any questions and ready to go I'm going to ask you about so now when we Google our needs our like our entire needs we got married, we ever got married our kids told me is there anything I can do about that so the question was you have the mailing numbers into genealogy I have the family members and so when you Google your name you're seeing your whole family history you know full names that kind of thing I don't know if you can do anything or not because there's one where I had a very proactive family member who put the wrong birth date they didn't include my brother and when I told my mom she's like I don't want to include your brother so I don't know depending upon the genealogy site there's some pregnancy settings because so many people are trying to do genealogy they feel like it's a good thing if you're still alive you might not think so I don't know what to tell you if you can contact that person because many of the genealogy sites that they can be posting on have ways that living people can be blocked so they can still have that information in their database but the fact that you're still alive blocks it so it doesn't go out to other people and things like that so I would talk to that person if you're concerned okay we have just a few minutes left yes ma'am what is the feature that is the state of the search what could they use to do this Google I think most people because it's free you can just google and really I mean anything you can get on I mean most things you can get online for free if you want to pay the money you could get a a rest record, a public record or something and I guess that's something that future administrators need to think about okay we're going to start hiring a whole group of people they're on online presence what is appropriate for somebody working on hire and what is not there are two other people two other people same spelling in this country at the same time as well as other people who are deceased yeah I don't know their ages where they live etc I don't know if they have a rest record if one of them does and they think that person to be and I don't get a job that's something that the courts are going to be having to handle about 10 years for kind of behind the technology but that is an issue okay real quick I'm going to show you the search results for Becky she googled her name as Becky Weiner she's also known as Rebecca and so depending on how you search for her she's got to get here first is Facebook MySpace we've got photos and a whole lot of websites I had never seen and maybe did you walk? actually accepted the picture of me I don't think any of that is me me so there is a real estate agent in Ohio there are different people using Becky which is why I will probably be doing something like Rebecca which is also an email address and then in parentheses going to Becky another thing that I found through my research is that some companies are hiring groups to research employees so they will search the public records on top of the Google searches and all of that and it doesn't take very long to conclude how old you are and your different life just through the public records and they'll do that back 7 years which is convenient if you're hiring and terrifying if you're the big one okay and we're just about done so let me show you this one because you were mentioning arrest records so good quotes and for whatever reason there's a disability baker out there she must be a criminal because I get criminal search results I don't know who she is not my alias so anyhow this is what kind of surprised me I have not seen these first two results ever when I search myself on my computer on my network at home and at work they'll never get these results this particular Wi-Fi network I do here's what I'm hoping that you will see I'm giving myself a game today the first result you're going to get is my faculty webpage that's what I want everybody to be seeing next you're going to see that I'm hard of seeing you I want you to know that I'm the current chair of seeing you as of this afternoon and then boom you're getting my LinkedIn profile that's me in a nutshell professionally that's what I want people to be seeing and so that's why professionally I get myself about meeting and online management you're probably not going to find me as a person just me and anal from that kind of thing because that's my kind of high because it's more important online that I'm showing up professionally so that's there we are out of time if you have any questions our contact information is available we're online you can find us and if you have any questions I'm using somebody else's trying to get to the right slide we are here if you have questions that kind of thing and please have this conversation at your workplace and with your family and friends and anybody who is a minor so that they don't need to start thinking about their future, thank you


There are many astonishing ancient ruins which can be found throughout India. Ancient temples or caverns often carved into giant boulders or directly out of the bedrock of Earth itself. Many of these ruins drenched in exquisite artwork. Carvings created with such vision and accuracy that they boggle the minds of all who attempt to explain the methodology of their creator. We have covered a number of sites within India in the past. Many of them so precise in their finish that they could have seemingly only been created using precision stone cutting technology, and our next site of interest is of no exception. Located in the northern part of the state of Karnataka in South India, the village of Hampi has some extremely captivating ruins. Dotted with large boulders, the site is also home to some extremely puzzling relics, one of which is the ancient chariot, clearly a depiction of a once astonishing creation. The cart itself was not only clearly massive, but was pulled with elephants rather than horses. Clearly indicative of a highly capable group, this incredible chariot is one amongst an array of marvelously preserved architectural artifacts, most of which display a level of refinement created with such precision that modern man could only replicate such feats using machines, something modern academia claims has only ever been utilized by our own modern civilization. Thus, an explanation as to how the site, or indeed its smorgasbord of ancient precision-made stoneworks were made eludes us to this day, and we hypothesize that the reason for this is due to mainstream historians' reluctance to consider what these ruins clearly indicate, that they were once the work of a civilization that was not only highly advanced, but utilized stone cutting technologies, methods of transportation, lifting and placement, that rival even that of today's architectural capabilities. How can one peer upon such sites as that of Hampi, or indeed others, Pumapanku, Giza, Petra, etc. sites created with such accuracy, that to suggest they were created with soft metal tools or with the use of primitive measuring equipment is simply absurd. Furthermore, none of these ruins would be possible simply with the use of the human eye. The only logical explanation is that just like that of modern-day stonework, the stones were indeed machined, cut to such a high quality using precision tools, only then were they placed where they lay today. Hampi was predictably re-inhabited by ancestors based within permitted timelines, once being the capital of a previous Indian Empire. What's intriguing about the site, however, is the mysterious, seemingly untouched boulders which dot its grounds. The question is, although they now appear to be geological, were they in fact once relics themselves, left by an even earlier civilization? If not, then why were these stones left where they are found today? Why were they built around rather than utilized, carved, or shifted? They were clearly ones of significance, and due to the fact ancient sanctuaries and fortresses are often re-inhabited. The possibility that they were indeed once carvings would logically make sense. The questions would be, just how old is this civilization? Who built the ancient site of Hampi? How did they build it? Were ancient high technologies utilized in its creation? If not, then how was it constructed? It is a place which we find highly compelling. A few months ago we did a video regarding an enigmatic mountain which rests within modern-day Tibet. We touched upon the amazing legends, speaking of the mountain actually being that of an ancient man-made pyramid, which according to such legends is placed at the center of the universe. They spoke of a mysterious giant eye placed upon the top of the mountain, an eye which according to said legends will reveal itself when the ice and snow within the area melts away, akin to a story containing the eye of Mordor, yet hopefully not as malevolent. Although Mount Kailash can be found within modern-day Tibet, its location is very close to the borders of India, a place which few know possesses one of, if not the most amazing ancient structure to have ever been discovered or indeed built upon our planet, a structure which dwarfs the great pyramids and indeed the great Sphinx with artistic wonder. Actually known as the Kailash Temple, it is an exquisitely cut series of supposed praying temples and other communal buildings which was, many thousands of years ago, carved straight out of an enormous horseshoe-shaped rock resting within a hillside. According to mainstream academia, Kailash Temple was somehow built by a primitive people using primitive tools during a duration of 400 years, from 200 BC to 600 BC. However, no one seems to be able to explain how such a primitive culture could have possibly created something so awe-inspiring, something so artistically accurate and wonderful, something we would indeed struggle to recreate today, a structure not only architecturally accurate, but also drenched in a masterpiece of sculpture. Largely accepted as a flawless piece of art, no less than 200,000 tons of stone was masterfully carved away, creating several separate temples each drenched in tiny artistic detail. Rediscovered in 1819, is it possible that the Hindu decorations found within were merely later additions? Additions to a relic left actually built by a civilization far more advanced and far more ancient than we are allowed to publicly believe? It is understandable for one to wonder how did a primitive civilization create such a wonder with primitive tools, attaining such a perfection, such refined finish to each tiny detail. It is conveniently unexplained just how they managed to cut into this single block of rock with such precision and indeed vision, adorning the structure with thousands of animals. It seems as if it were a tribute, a gift depicting what can be found on our planet. Is Mount Kailash, as legends say, really the center of the universe? Is this mind bogglingly detailed, most intricately built ancient temple by a long way actually a tribute to this fact? Made up of temples which are all now perceived to be shared between three faiths, Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain. Are these multiple faiths further evidence of a re-inhabitation rather than a construction? The 200,000 tons of rock, for example, is nowhere to be found. And, as previously covered in the Kailash video, the same is seen with the apparent enormous excavation found around the base of Mount Kailash itself. Compelling evidence for manipulation of the landscape, giving credence to the legends of it being, in fact, an enormous pyramid. Regardless of this, the fact that the temple carries the same name as this mysterious and still unclimbed mountain within Tibet, we find highly compelling. The 16th century Kerala's temple, located within India, used to be the royal chapel of Travancore's former rulers. It shot to fame five years ago when one of its six vaults later coded as A was opened unearthing tons of gold coins, jewelry, and diamonds worth hundreds of millions of dollars. An expert panel, inventorying assets at Kerala's famous Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple, has approached the Supreme Court for permission to open an as yet untouched vault, a vault containing unimaginable fortunes face off between the judiciary and religious authorities. The temple situated in the heart of India is billed as the country's richest and is one of several Hindu shrines that hold enormous amounts of gold and precious gems. The wealth was accumulated by way of holy offering from devotees over many years. The temple contains six chambers buried deep under its sanctum sanctorum. Two of them are open during daily rituals and two more every six months. The remaining two, A and B, are secret vaults. Sources close to the temple said antique coins found in the chambers alone weighed more than 600 kilograms. Around 200,000 items were documented, 600 of which were embedded with precious gems. One single locket alone was believed to contain 997 gems. Besides jewels, precious stones, necklaces, golden crowns, and pots were also included in the list of inventory sources said. According to the India Times, an audit conducted into the assets shows that a massive amount of gold has mysteriously disappeared. Up to 769 gold pots and silver bars have been reported missing, some suggesting that there are hidden tunnels beneath the chamber which allowed the architects to lock the chamber doors from within, making it impossible to breach. This secret tunnel seems to have led to many years of plundering the treasure trove without anyone noticing. However, what has not been publicly acknowledged by the Indian court is the existence of the hidden inner chamber beyond Vault B. Reported as having thick walls made from solid gold, and it is where the real treasure is said to be located. Dwarfing what has been recovered so far, it could quite possibly contain the largest undiscovered treasure in the history of the world. Not only is the temple covered in gold, it seems it is also stuff full of the stuff also. An expert panel from the Center for Earth Science Studies has also quashed rumors that the B Vault has an underground tunnel connected to the Arabian Sea. The team led by Dr. Ajah Kumar Verma detected small cavities and drains around cellars that they found insignificant. Chamber B is not part of the temple's official treasury. The Holy Chamber houses idols of gods and many other valuables meant to enhance the potency of the principal deity. Also found was a pure golden throne adorned with hundreds of diamonds and fully precious stones, meant for the seeding of a past giant that has been estimated around 18 feet in height. In addition, many other large, sometimes giant, and very old solid gold crowns were found, all studded with diamonds and other precious stones. The valuables are believed to have been accumulated in the temple's vaults over several thousand years, having been donated to the gods by various dynasties and kings. We will keep you posted on what they find in Vault B. There are countless ancient sites found all over the planet that are not only far older than current academically claimed, by individuals funded to come up with specifically permitted dates for their creation, selling one's integrity in favor of financial securities and an authoritative position within society, offered to them in return for their obedient deceits. Like a mule guided by a carrot, these individuals not only fear losing such reputations and handsome incomes if one were to tell the truthful story regarding said sites, but they unquestionably turn a blind eye to the many areas that I cover, which are often not only implausible to state where the work of the particular permitted re-inhabitants placed much closer to us within history. But to suggest that such ancestors were capable of said feats is simply a preposterous claim. They often knowingly and deliberately overlook such features, due to their lack of any plausible explanation for such accomplishments. As such, with many ancient sites simply ignored or are disguised as closed book cases with a dull, deliberately disinteresting tale of origin. These academics have some of the most intimate access to these ruins, yet deny the world's population a true account of said relics. For to suggest that a civilization less advanced than us, accomplish the placement of megaliths far into the thousands of tons, precisely atop one another with awe-inspiring stonework details, and polygonal brickwork seemingly created like a puzzle of unique pieces, among many other baffling features, I feel is a proof of a deliberate agenda-driven conspiracy concealing said site's true origins. These unexplainable anomalies, the main reason why said individuals perceive me as a threat, not only to their funding, but also their positions of trusted authority within modern society. For the truths I tell, due to the inexplicable nature of their existence and their lack of exposure within academic studies, expose the field as a funded organized group of deceivers. These features are simply impossible for them to explain, yet they continue to claim that they were built by people who were undeniably incapable of such feats. This is why many unexplainable artifacts simply vanish, and why many ancient sites are not only brushed under their proverbial carpet, but said features overlooked, ignored, and not mentioned at all. And our next relic is no exception. Many people have heard of the Great Wall of China, one of the only ancient ruins which is so large it can be seen from space, a very famous wall. Yet an even greater number of people are unaware of another great wall which can be found within India. Successfully overlooked by modern historians and antiquarians alike, this wall, known as the Kumpalgar, has been claimed to be merely a recently created ruin. Yet I feel just like the many other ancient ruins found around the globe is far older than currently claimed. It is of an astonishing size, and a number of alternative so-called fringe researchers, which academics like to derogatorily call them, have found substantial evidence that not only is the upper layers far older than claimed, but the entire wall sits upon a foundation immensely older than the wall we see today. A foundation that many have concluded is so old that it had simply turned to dust through the eons, rebuilt at a currently unknown time within antiquity. The wall stretches an astonishing 22 miles, and once protected hundreds of extremely ancient dwellings, and measured at over 40 feet thick, to suggest that such a feat could have been accomplished by our more recent ancestors, who the founders of mainstream academia permits is a tough posit to agree with. For if such claim were true, why is the wall seemingly ignored by modern history? I feel the reason the wall has been successfully kept largely unknown is due to the fact that if openly studied and widely known of, more people would research such site, eventually realizing, like many before them, that the wall is far older than currently claimed, and possesses such enormous amounts of stone, along with an immensely older foundation, that current claims of its origins and age are simply incorrect, and a clear attempt to shrug off this astonishing structure as a reasonably modern creation, which they hope will not be looked at closely. An attempt to close the book on a possible antediluvian ruin, which many people as a result told with a dull deceptive history for its existence, which not only stifles one's interest regarding the wall's origin, but deters the curious from ever investigating the wall's truly astonishing nature. A motivation which I feel is the main driving force behind its lack of public exposure. Who rebuilt the Great Wall of India? How old is its far older, highly eroded foundation? The Great Wall of India was an astonishing feat of ancient engineering, a feat that academia would prefer stay largely unknown, a reality which I find highly compelling. If you enjoy our content, if you think our battle worthy, please help us to continue our voyage of discovery in unraveling the mysteries of history. Links to donate can be found within the description. Without you, we cannot survive. Thank you. India is a place littered with incredible ancient yet unexplained ruins. Intricate ancient carvings can be found dotting the cliff faces, seemingly laser-cut caves hewn from enormous rocks, and perhaps the most impressive of its collection, the rock temples hewn straight from bedrock, which can be found all over the country. We recently focused our attention on one of these sites in particular, perhaps the most impressive of these ancient temples. Known as Kailash, it is a structure drenched in sculpted animals and religious idols. Many others also exist, somehow carved straight out of stone hillsides. The accuracy in which these structures were carved, the refined finish achieved, has allowed these structures to evade explanation to this day. There is, in fact, another site within India, another temple that, just like Kailash, was somehow hewn from a solid hillside. However, what is particularly interesting regarding this temple is that it was mysteriously abandoned leaving the apparent different stages of its construction for all to see. Known as Vettavan Coil, it is located within Kallagumalai, a Panchayat town in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Intriguingly, upon the structure and the carved walls, which it is now framed by, is the same telltale chisel marks found at so many other sites around the world, an anomaly we have already covered in depth. However, what is particularly interesting regarding Vettavan Coil is the fact that these crude marks are also accompanied by the seemingly impossible perfect finished sculptures, which mystify all who peer at them to this day. It is a visual chronological timeline cast in stone, possibly left by an as-yet unknown people using unexplained yet amazing artistic skills. The temple seemingly displays the methods used to carve it. The artist responsible crudely chiseled the design, presumably somehow from the mind's eye, then somehow professionally worked into the refined astonishing art which adorns so many of these ancient Indian structures. Who built Vettavan Coil? How did they achieve such perfection, with such hard stones, at such an early time in history? Is it, like academia would have you believe, a mere 1400 years old? Or is it a far more ancient structure, built using as-yet unknown stone working techniques used by an unknown group of artists? As research mounts surrounding such sites, the answers will inevitably be discovered. India is undoubtedly the jewel in the crown of ancient sculpture, and although Rome is home to the Renaissance, an attraction which lures enormous numbers of people there every year, India is unquestionably home to sculpture, which would put even the most efficient of the Italian masters to shame. However, conveniently, academia and thus most of the modern world overlook these astonishing feats of ancient art in favor of less controversial artistic wonders. One of our tried and tested methods of establishing whether an ancient artifact, or indeed an ancient ruin, attributed to a less capable, more modern imposter, is actually evidence of forgotten lost knowledge, is finding the puzzling accomplishments often hidden within the architecture or construction. One of the many examples of these is polygonal masonry. And although the modern man does indeed practice this lost art, a good example of this being found within the Cotswolds in the UK, known as Cotswold Drystone Walling, once built and still used to mark out very ancient land boundaries, and amazingly, longer than the Great Wall of China. These very old walls, created without the use of mortar, are compelling examples of a fragmented technique either borrowed or possibly intriguingly left over memories of a now forgotten technology. And although these more modern attempts range in age stretching far into thousands of years, the lesser capability of the builders is clear for all to see. Our point being that when these ancient walls stretching far before the Romans are compared to Mesoamerica, Peruvian, and indeed ancient Indian ruins, the exquisite polygonal architecture, the precise carving and stone building present, are clear, strong, controversial evidences of a forgotten civilization. How did these ancient builders acquire such a sophisticated knowledge and awareness of stone shapes, and the subsequent placement of each stone, perfectly placed against one another, forming impenetrable barriers which have stood the tests of the ages? We feel that, regardless of what academia claims as the truth, pertaining to the origin and creators of these ancient wonders, the skills required to create them are thankfully beginning to become apparent to the majority rather than the few. This ancient, forgotten people clearly attained a level of stoneworking and construction knowledge we are yet to acquire. Clearly, a far more advanced and capable people than we are today, let alone the modern historical imposters academia claims as the culprits. We feel, regardless of others' claims, the evidence to suggest an intercontinental, highly advanced technologically superior civilization, once flourished here on our planet, is highly compelling. India possesses an enormous array of incredible ancient architectural accomplishments, mind-boggling feats of ancient engineering, many of which continue to mystify modern explorers and elude modern understandings, exquisite details displaying prodigious artistic abilities and accuracy, ancient stone carvings which seem all but impossible, yet here they are for all to see. We have in the past explored many of these sites. We have explored the similarities and tool marks found at other sites all over the world, the now lost methods which were utilized to once carve entire temples from a single block of bedrock. We have also investigated the many temples constructed from quarried stones, temples which possess columns seemingly created on lathes, yet many of these pieces weigh in excess of six tons. Just how these feats were accomplished remains a complete mystery, and our next architectural anatomy is of no exception. According to mainstream academics, Virabhadra Temple was built by the brothers Varana and Varupana, which were governors under the Vijayarangana Empire during the reign of King Achittoraya within the 16th century. Located in the village of Lepakshi, a significant place in the great Indian epic Ramayana, legend has it that the bird Jatayu, wounded by the king of Lanka, fell here after a feudal battle against the king. When Rama reached the spot, he saw the bird and said compassionately to him, Lepakshi, meaning a rise bird in Telugu. Although the temple is claimed as the work of said brothers, just like that of many other incredible inexplicable sites throughout the world, any explanation as to how they achieved this incredible feat remains elusive. Additionally, there is one feature in particular which not only remains unexplained, but its past purpose, or perhaps more importantly, how this feature was successfully created, remains unknown. Known as the hanging pillar of Lepakshi, it is a column which initially appears to be a weight-bearing structure. However, on closer inspection, one discovers that this column is in fact set aloft, with its significant weight somehow being dispersed along the temple's roof. It is as if the builder of said temple created the column as a statement, a display of their incredible abilities and architectural skills. The column seemingly serves no function other than to display the capabilities of the temple's builder. It is as if they were simply showing off. Furthermore, along with a past purpose remaining elusive, just how the temple's inner structure actually supports the weight of the column is also an unknown. How can one be expected to believe that a temple such as this, located among many of India's other astonishing ruins, one which possesses clear displays of complex, advanced, and in-depth understandings of load-bearing architecture, along with the majority of its existence currently unexplained, was supposedly built by one of our well-studied ancestors a mere 500 years ago? How can one accept this as a logical explanation for its origins? The hanging pillar of Lepakshi is clearly an incredible work of ancient engineering, one that, although claimed as the work of known ancestors, remains largely unexplained. It is a temple which we find highly compelling.


Excellent. So we actually have 50 people already with us on stage. Hello, everyone. Hi, Sally. Welcome back. And we have a very, very special guest today with us, Don Sparling. Welcome, Don. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Thanks very much. Glad to be here. So good to have you. We've had a really good day and a half, actually. So we're heading towards the end of the conference, but this is a very special moment, I think, because just a few hours before we had a conference, keynote really about open source, the community, and the power that this has for the public, really. And I really like that you're now going to talk a little bit more about Bernon specifically, right? How the city changed. Yes. What I want to do, should I start now right away? If you want to, absolutely. Just one reminder for the people that are watching this, if you want to share with us what you think, we have the chat right here in the virtual event, and also tweet. So you can follow us at devconf underscore CZ with the hashtag, and we also have an account. So if you want to share anything with us, we're always happy to hear from you on Twitter right here. And just to give you maybe a brief introduction, Don is with us. He is originally Canadian, but he's been living in Bernon for, I think you said 50 years? More than 50. More than 50 years, which is a very, very long time, actually.  Is that right? Yes. I was in the English department. I was doing language, literature and things like that. Right, right. And I guess you will tell us a bit more what brought you to Bernon. How I guess you fell in love? After I came to Bernon. Okay, okay. That's excellent. So I think also this is very relevant because of course, Devconf is hosted and really was born out of the Bernon office and the Bernon community especially. So without waiting further, I will leave the stage to you. And for everyone have a great session. And if we have a bit of time at the end, we also have some space for questions and answer with Don. The stage is yours. Thanks very much, Daviano. Yes, I've been here for more than 50 years and I'm a, as you'll probably guess from this talk, I'm a big Bernon patriot. The city of Bernon has been around for well more than almost 800 years. And if you sort of stand back and look at it from the point of view of its economic growth, you can see that there were basically three stages. The first stage was quite long, 500 years or so. And during that period, it was basically a trading city. And then that lasted up to the middle of the 18th century. And then in the second half of the 18th century, it started to switch to be an industrial city, a manufacturing city, an industrial city. And that lasted up until the second half of the 20th century. And since the 1990s, Bernon has been transformed. And it's a city now that's based on the knowledge industry or whatever you want to call it, knowledge economy. And I want to talk about this long period of almost 800 years, but I'm going to try and speak more on the second and third periods and the transition. So Bernon was founded as a trading city. And there were four groups in the city that founded it. Just a moment, I'm very bad at this. I'm not technology. Oh, there it is. So Bernon was founded in 1243. And there were four groups. If you look at the city here and think about it as being divided into quarters, up here in the left-hand quarter, it was settlers from the low countries, from what's now Belgium and the Netherlands. Up here, there were settlers from the German part of Europe. And the lower half here was... So sorry to interrupt you.  Because I think we don't see it from our end. I thought I was sharing my screen just a moment. My mistake. Now I am. Yes. Let's give it a second to see if it comes or not yet. And this. Yes, it's coming now. Yes. Sorry. Yes. There it is. It will be there. Yes, sorry. Perfect. Thank you so much. Yeah, okay. My mistake. So it was, as I say, if you think of it as being divided into quarters, the... From the low countries, Belgium, the Netherlands were up there. The Germans were here. Down at the bottom here were the Czechs. And at the very, very bottom here were the Jews. So there were these four groups that founded the city in 1243. And it was not a major production center the way, for instance, Ghent or Bruges in Belgium that exported masses of cloth in the Middle Ages. It was more local. But it was situated on very important trading routes going sort of north, south and east, west. It was quite prosperous. It's interesting. One of the first guilds that was started was the... The first guild that was started in the city was the wine cellar's guild. It's just south of Brno. It's a great wine country. And here you see a 16th century building. It's a magnificent Renaissance palace that still remains in the city. And it was owned by a man. He made his money in wine. So it's a nice reminder of those periods. In the 16th century, the Czech territories came under the control of the Habsburg family. The Habsburgs ruled this vast empire in the middle of Europe in central Europe, which included not only Austria, but Hungary, parts of modern Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Poland and so on, this massive empire in the center of Europe. And the Czech lands, including where we are now, the Czech Republic, became part of them in the 16th century. And in 1641, the city of Brno was made the capital of Moravia. Moravia is the province that we're in within the Czech lands. And this meant that the links with Vienna became much stronger since we were the Moravian capital. And Vienna, of course, was the metropolis. It was the capital of the empire. And this was crucial for Brno, because Vienna is very close. It's only about 110 kilometers away. That's 70 miles for people in those countries that might still deal with miles. Brno, in fact, came to be called a suburb of Vienna. It was so close. And this was very important because it was very close to the metropolis. And it was a source of new ideas that could come very quickly to Brno. This situation of Brno was a trading city. Last, as I said, up until about the middle of the 18th century. And then we turned into a, we started to turn into a manufacturing city, an industrial city. We can pinpoint this exactly. It happened in 1763. This was the first textile manufacturer. It was a small building, not this one, but a small building like this. With these complicated looms, they were not had, they were hand looms still. They didn't have mechanical machinery.  But they were kind of a leap ahead. Very small scale, but very complex machines and so on. And textiles then were at the core of Brno's prosperity for the next 200 plus years. In the first wave, many of the entrepreneurs in the industry came from outside. They came from Germany, from Belgium, from England, from Scotland. They brought in, as entrepreneurs always do, they brought in know-how and they brought in capital. What was interesting, many of them were Protestants. At that time in the Austrian Empire, it was illegal to be a Protestant. It was a totally Catholic state. And they had to make exceptions for these people because they needed their skills. But this had a profound effect then on the opening up of Brno in the sense of diversity and tolerance. And this could be then observed very much in succeeding years. The second wave of people came in the second half in the 19th century. And we were now getting very big factories. You can see in the first stage, it's quite interesting, you see down here in the lower corner, this is the very substantial, luxurious home of the factory owner. Here's all these factory buildings very close so he could keep an eye on it. But his garden, his wonderful garden was in behind. This was very typical in the city. They were still very much sort of hands-on, even though they came to be called textile parents because many of them eventually got raised to the lower nobility because of their great contributions to the Austrian economy. And in this second wave, a lot of people were still coming from outside Austria, outside Moravia. And many, but also from inside now, and many of them were Jewish. So there was a large influx of Jews, and they became very important in the economy in Brno. Again, we're welcomed and absorbed in this tolerant milieu in Brno. And by the second half of the century, we had massive factories. You can see these gigantic factories in Brno. And Brno came to be called the nickname for Brno was the Moravian or the Austrian Manchester. Manchester as the quintessential textile factory, textile town in England, and us here in Moravia or Brno in Moravia or Austria. Textiles, of course, once they took off, necessitated machinery. Once the steam-driven machinery came, they needed machines. And so the city began to develop the machine industry. At the beginning of the 19th century, we had a wonderful example of what we now call industrial espionage. A local nobleman went incognito to England and bribed people to give him plans for the latest English textile machinery. He smuggled them back inside his walking stick, his cane, and developed his factory this way. But the machine, the textile machines were built and then this led to all kinds of other machinery for different areas. So by the end of the 1932th century, you had these massive engineering works in Brno. You can see what they looked like in the photo. And this is from, let's say, 1900. This is what the factory looks like now. It's one of these factories that actually has been preserved and it's now a sort of heritage site. It's an art gallery. It's social space and so on. We're quite lucky about that. It's not only this. As I said, because Brno was so close to Vienna, it meant that there were all kinds of firsts, not only in these kind of textile things, but in railways, the first railway in the now the Czech Republic was the Vienna Brno railway opened in 1939. Here's a photograph of the first train coming in. It was a huge occasion, of course. They had four trains, each of them with seven or eight carriages. It was a huge kind of excursion for the sort of better off Vietnamese society to take this exciting trip on a train up to Brno for the day. Here you can see them being welcomed in Brno at the time. It's also kind of funny, because on the way back, there was another first, and that was the first railway accident. Two of the trains collided with each other. But we also had the first trams. It was now the Czech Republic. You can see this horse drawn tram, which is still in the property. It's part of the property of the amazing transport museum of the city public transport department. But it was also innovation in all sorts of other ways. Here was the municipal theater in 1882, which was the first theater on the European continent to be lit by electrical light. As I said, this closeness to Vienna meant that the city was always open to new ideas and prided itself on being progressive and so on. We come then into the 20th century, and the Czechslovakia becomes independent. At the end of the First World War, the whole Austrian Empire collapsed, and Czechoslovakia emerged as an independent state. One of the first effects was on Bernault. You see here a map of 1919 when great Bernault was created. Up until then, Bernault had been the historical core of the city. It was surrounded by all these small little villages and a couple of other municipalities. In 1919, these were amalgamated, so there was this great leap forward. Suddenly, we had a city that has twice as many people, seven times as much territory. And the First Republic then was brought sort of a new dynamism, I would say. Bernault had previously been dominated by German speakers. Now with the addition of all these new villages, it was about 75 percent, most of these new villages were Czech-speaking. It was now 70, 75 percent Czech-speaking, 25, 30 percent German-speaking. And there was an effort on the part of the Czechoslovak state to build up Bernault as a genuine Czech city. So three new universities were founded, a lot of secondary schools, the highest legal universities, the Supreme Court and so on moved to Bernault.  This was a young democracy, Czechoslovakia, progressive democracy, and so Bernault was a kind of emblematic city for this with modern trends, modern trends in the arts, in architecture. This functionalism became the main architectural style, this very democratic style. It didn't have all sorts of complicated ornament and all the rest of it. Sleep lines, minimalism, roof terrace for instance here if you bring in nature on your roof terrace. Family house this way, public buildings were built in this very clean architectural style. And there are some amazing buildings in Bernault dating from that time. The Villa Tummenhap was a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was by the German families Wanderer, first open plan house in the history of architecture. It's what I say symbolic, that in fact it was built for a Jewish couple that were among the leading industrialists, textile families in Bernault. Again, textiles were still at the core of Bernault's wealth. This is another functionless building, the cafe area, this gorgeous absolutely minimalist cafe influenced by the Dutch architectural style, the steel. And the industry was moving into new fields as well. Bernault started producing cars, this wonderful Breufke cars that they started producing. The Brenga, the armaments, the main armaments factory was in Bernault, this was the main light machine gun that was used by the Allied forces in the Second World War. I have the photo there of the soldier carrying a Brenga in the Second World War, because he's a Canadian soldier. I thought this was really nice. So I'm going to take a look at some of the armaments that were used in the Second World War. This is a Canadian soldier. I thought this was really nice. I added it as a little bit of nationalist propaganda. After the Second World War, the Second World War and its aftermath were pretty catastrophic for Bernault. Huge impact. It was the most badly damaged of any of the Czech cities and of course there was a human population, most of the Jewish population, 90% of the Jewish population because of the Holocaust and all over Czechoslovakia in 1948 and 1945 the German-speaking population was expelled. This hit Bernault very hard because it was the Czech city with the highest proportion of Germans, so roughly 25% of the population vanished overnight in May of 1945 and hardly was it recovering from that when the Communist era came in 1948, lasted 40 years. That meant isolation, that meant difficulty to travel, it meant difficult to have any books, reading material, whatever from the West. The presence of foreigners was in the city of 400,000. There were five of us native English speakers in the communist years, five native English speakers in the city of 400,000, hard to believe. And it particularly meant stagnation, it meant buildings unrepared and crumbling, it meant little investment in infrastructure, it meant minimal innovation in industry. And when the communist system collapsed at the end of 1989, it was followed very quickly by a total collapse of the Burno economy. They couldn't compete, cheap Asian textiles flooded the markets and textile factory after textile factory went bankrupt. Factories that had been producing these low quality goods subsidized could no longer compete on the international market and they began to go bankrupt and so the question was what to do. And this is when we moved into the current phase of Burno technology economy based city. We were very lucky after 1989 to have a fairly enlightened city council and they set up task forces who visited western European cities that had gone through this similar economic collapse 10, 20 years earlier. And on the basis of that they created the strategy of reinventing the city of Burno as a city for research and development for information technology. It was based on several key factors one was the universities. Burno had six public universities it had the highest ratio of students to the population of any city in the country. These universities covered virtually every field from the humanities right through science and engineering and all the rest of it. It was the first informatics faculty in the country that was founded in 1994 and so on. There were some local quality products particularly electron microscopes and so the idea was on the basis of this very good educational complex they could then attract foreign firms international firms to come to Burno and a combination of the city of public institutions the next 15-20 years made the difference. The city set up a very effective strategy development office which gave priority to this new development and it's continuing, it still continues right now they have a very ambitious strategy for the development of the city up till 2050 which is a long term thing in 2020-50 A lot of the public institutions accomplished some major achievements initiatives. The Czech Technology Park was founded immediately in the first Czech Technology Park in the country founded by a Burno native who had emigrated after 68 and became head of BOVAS in England, one of the largest building firms in the world and they came back and set up this Czech Technology Park in combination with the technical university and the city of Burno the Masaryk University created a new campus which is the largest university infrastructure project in central Europe in fact bringing together the medical faculty part of the science faculty and many research institutes the sports faculty as well and then four of the universities got together to create a university of technology with different centers this is the European Institute of Technology and the Burino University of Technology has one center Masaryk University has another center and so on and finally there was an international clinic research center it's the only health research center funded in Europe by EU money these major research centers private was more interesting sorry I don't need this anymore I'll get rid of it the private sector the private sector was more complicated because just get rid of that for me was more problematic because there was a lack of infrastructure here I got involved in the around 2000 2012 I was head of the international office at the university and several times a year several times a year the check-invest would bring a potential investor to Burno they would take me out to lunch because my job was to talk to these people and tell them what a wonderful city Burno was and the university base and so on and after a while I said it's interesting and none of these firms seem to be ending up decided for Burno and I asked the check-invest people why this was and he said well the problem is there's no state-of-the-art infrastructure a firm an international firm comes to Burno and says we'd like to start here yeah it looks like a great place we want to start in six months and then check-invest would have to say well unfortunately there's not really any proper infrastructure maybe in a year or two years and that was the end of things so it wasn't until private firms were established and started building building parks of various kinds business parks then the place could turn up and this happened around 2005-2006 and since then it's been this incredible kind of very very steep curve and the result has been the transformation of the economy transformation of the infrastructure visually of course transformation of the makeup of the city because university research institutes plus these international firms in Burno have brought a lot of foreigners to the city there's certainly well over 50,000 foreigners in the city now it's a city of 400,000 certainly well over 50,000 let's say 15 percent of the city population now and Burno has become known abroad it's it's very common now to see articles being published in leading western newspapers The Guardian, The New York Times and so on about Burno various aspects of Burno can you can you hear me what's the problem yeah we can hear you sorry I took the liberty to remove the presentation from the screen so we can see you okay I'm coming to an end now anyway so it would be coming well known abroad and so on Burno of course until recently was utterly unknown abroad my favorite story about this is when my bank in England sent me a letter in the 1970s in Burno it was addressed to me with my address in Burno and the person who had sent the letter typed up the letter from Burno had addressed it to Don Sparling and my street address Porno, Czechoslovakia Porno, Czechoslovakia Burno was just something that didn't even look as if it could be pronounced well Burno is a little bit better known than it was in back then and the city itself has been very much transformed it's a very lively city it's a very young city it's a very experimental city one of the experiments I'll just have a little this is the commercial bit at the end the city of Burno in order to help attract foreigners cooperates with us or we cooperate with the city there is an NGO which is largely financed by the city also by many of the leading international firms in Burno and our job is to be a place where people who are thinking of coming to Burno who already have agreement with firms who are coming to Burno people who are settling in Burno physically people who have problems in Burno foreigners highly educated foreigners there are the people that we work with and we are the city is very happy that it's able to do this but it's interesting it was the first city in this country to come up with this idea or we presented it with the idea and they accepted this idea that the city should be making these extra efforts to attract foreigners to Burno so that's it for now thank you that was perfectly on time first of all but also super interesting well if anybody has any question please write it in the chat and we're happy to ask them while he's here I did have a little question for you Don that I was thinking about because you were describing of course how Burno at the beginning being close to Vienna there was a geographical benefit of course in kind of offsetting some of the work there the cost of manufacturing and so on and so forth from what you know right the resurrection the technological resurrection of Burno did that depend on geographical elements too or was it really the human capital that was still present in the city despite you know World War II and what happened in that period of time I think it was the human capital the closeness to Vienna was not so important I suppose the main importance now of being close to Vienna is that they've got a big international airport you know Burno has a boat international airport but it's very small and has very very few flights right but otherwise no it depended on internal capital of course now it depends on external, internal human capital now it depends on external capital coming in because the growth of the of these firms in Burno is phenomenal even during COVID the numbers of foreigners in Burno increased and we need the foreigners from outside and so the the aim has to be to make the city as attractive as possible for foreigners and that's part of our job in the expanse centre of course but the city of Burno knows everything it can as well in terms of providing services if possible in English and so on and so on so it's we're sucking in capital from we're very fortunate I should say it's not so much Vienna what we're very fortunate in is being beside Slovakia I hate to say it but there's a huge brain drain from Slovakia and we're we're first in line because the receiving end of the you know 70% of the foreign students at Maserich University are from Slovakia and you go into the centre of Burno and you go into shops and you hear as much Slovak almost being spoken as you hear Czech so that human capital has been extremely important for us very good point we did actually receive a question also in the QA session I know that we're almost out of time but this is a very good question so I want to take the time Miro is asking how did you end up in Burno 50 years plus I came thinking I would teach English for a year it's very strange it was after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 but I had visited just before the invasion and I found it a fascinating country it's a beautiful country it's got incredible historical resources you know chateaus and castles it's got beautiful countryside and very very amazing people and so I visited before the invasion it was after the invasion and I was thinking I've been studying in England for two years finished that and I thought I'd like to stay in Europe for another year and after the invasion I became very curious I'm from Burma in Canada capital city of Canada and I'm a political junkie my whole life has been interested in politics I was very curious after the invasion because if you know anything about the invasion in 68 it took a long time for the invading Soviets to really close down the country and still seemed as if some of the gains of the Prague Spring could be maintained so I was very curious to see what actually was happening on the ground so I came thinking I would teach English at a language school for a year and then go back to Canada and I was here for a year and then I was in Prague for seven years then yes I met a woman I got married and it's always sure we know this right and so then I came back she didn't want to go to Prague and she didn't want to go to Canada which was also exceptional many Czech women were very happy to marry a foreigner and move abroad so I came back and at that point of position came up in the university so that's my story that is a fascinating story we also got one last question hopefully this is a quick one but because people are really loving by the way the stories they're really having a good time do you think in your experience is it absolutely necessary to learn Czech or Slovak to be able to live there and access the doctor obviously you know if you have Czech you can access them better but I mean of these 50,000 foreigners that are here there are not that many that are fluent in Czech well some of them are not I mean yes no this has changed totally it's because of the presence it's like a chicken and the egg kind of thing in my opinion the thing that came first was this sharp surprise in the number of foreigners and people realized they just had to learn English and be able to communicate with them it was also helped by the fact that English back around 2000 was introduced as a compulsory subject in schools from grade 1 so you're getting a whole new generation of people who have English but no you can certainly come here I encourage people to come here and we're here to help you as well there are many problems I mean what's a better introduction seriously knowing that there are people like you right that are helping people getting there and I have to say that when you were mentioning before how during the manufacturing textile phase people from Bernau were going to learn from like Manchester the secrets of textiles I think there are many cities in Europe now Munich where I live at the moment they should learn from Bernau how to welcome this how to make things accessible what's actually happening in a city like Bernau I know that we are over time I really want to say thank you Don this has been super super interesting thank you so much thanks for giving me the chance as I said I'm a great Bruno Patriot that sounds great to everybody thank you so much for taking this time with us have a great time for the rest of the afternoon and we will come back together at 7 for the quiz with Radek remember that there are prizes to be won at the end and for closing this thank you again thanks very much bye bye ciao