There. And now I'm opening the webinar and we are officially live. I should have shared my screen first. Can you all see my screen? I can see, yeah. Perfectly. Perfect, I mean. Hi friends. The third screen says SFPL. Do you see the slide of you? Yeah. One panel. And you and SFPL in black and white. Okay, I'm going to stop my share just to make sure I'm doing all right. Hello folks, we see you. We're going to let the room fill up and I am going to share my screen again just to ensure I got it right. All right, I got it right this time. All right, welcome, welcome. We'll get started right about now. We appreciate you being here tonight for sure. And I cannot believe it. But this is our last summer stride final program. We have had an author talk every single Tuesday, June, July and August. You have joined us for summer stride. Thank you so much for being here. And it's not over yet. You can still do your 20 hours reading and collect your prize up until about mid September. And it will have, you can get that iconic tote bag with that beautiful artwork you see there with the artwork by Kalani Juanita. So without to our friends of the San Francisco Public Library for sponsoring and hosting all of us and helping us support in doing what we do. Thank you friends. San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unseated ancestral homeland of the raw mutish alone peoples, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco peninsula. We recognize that the raw mutish alone understand the interconnectedness of all things, and have maintained harmony with nature for millennia.  In accordance with their traditions, the raw mutish alone have never seated lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this place, as well as for all the people who reside in their traditional territory. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. As invited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples, and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders and relatives of the raw mutish community. We recognize to respectfully honor the raw mutish peoples we must embrace and collaborate meaningfully to record indigenous knowledge in how we care for San Francisco and all its people. We'll put a chat link into the chat box there of some great resources on indigenous and land rights. Right after summer stride we're sliding right into our Viva Latinx heritage months months, they span September and October. And we have lots of authors, lots of poets, and we're looking really forward to that so check it out SFPL.org slash events. And we have some reading campaigns at the library on the same page is our long standing bi-monthly read where we encourage you all to read the same book at the same time. And so September, October we are reading the undocumented Americans by Carla Cornejo Villavan-Sincio, and she will be we'll have a book club on October 25. The very next day, this 26 Carla will be in conversation with Jonathan Blitzer. So come by for that. And these are all still in the virtual. And then we've partnered with San Francisco Chronicles total SF team for a total SF book club, which features the author and for November 17th and you'll notice that says in the correct auditorium, a live event, we're doing it. So it's a nice big space. Come join us. We'll be able to spread out. And we'll be having Bonnie Sweet and her book, Why We Swim. So come by for all of these amazing events. And tonight for our final author, we are so happy to have John Blander join us. And he will be showing his amazing photos from the Shikoku pilgrimage trail. John Landers, a photographer based near Kamakura, Japan, with a passion for Japanese gardens, subtropical beaches and hot springs. John's photos have been published by GEO National Geographic Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Vogue L Forbes, Men's Journal, and many more. All right, let's turn it over and give a warm welcome to John Lander. John, it's all yours to share the screen. Hi. Welcome everyone. Thanks for the lovely introduction. I've been a resident of Japan for about 20 years in Tokyo and the rest of the time near Kamakura on the coast. I consider myself a San Francisco and I went to San Francisco State and I live there many years before moving to Japan, but I haven't been back for quite some time because of obvious reasons. So I'm going to kick right into the slideshow and talk about the Shikoku pilgrimage and introduce what it's all about. We're getting into the temples and what not. So I need to share the screen. We are seeing your desktop, John. All right, so let me put it in full slideshow mode. How's that? There it is. I can make it full. How's that? Yay, we're cooking. I can't get rid of something. Great, John. Okay, the Shikoku pilgrimage. Does that look okay? Looking great. Okay, Shikoku pilgrimage, Japan's sacred tale. It's in print and it's being sent around the world, but there's a worldwide shipping slowdown. And Amazon and other bookstore say that it will be available from September 30th. So that's the latest. The author page at the bottom of the screen. And it should be on there. You may have to scroll through my other books and publications, but it should be on there. But if you go into it and click on it, it's in pre-order mode right now on Amazon. The Shikoku pilgrimage. Shikoku is one of the four main islands of Japan, but probably the least developed because it's, it's up until recently, it wasn't even connected to the main islands of Japan. So it's slow and relaxed and friendly. And that's just the main reason why I like it. I first fell in love with Shikoku because there's a famous, in fact, they say that it's one of the best travel stories were ever written. It's called The Inland Sea by Donald Ritchie. He just gets sick of living in an urban jungle and he hops on a train and ferry boats and takes all these little ferry boats around the Inland Sea, which connects Shikoku to this is before they built these big concrete bridges connecting it with the main island of Japan. That was my first experience down in Shikoku. I wasn't even aware of the Shikoku trail or the Shikoku pilgrimage at that time. I just like Shikoku because people are slow and friendly and they take lots of naps. So, let me get into it. The Shikoku pilgrimage is a trail that goes all around the periphery of the island of Shikoku. It takes about, if a person does it on foot, which is the classic method, it takes about six weeks to do it.  And usually there's lots of different kinds of motivations for doing it. In my case it was basically just to, for the sake of photographing it and experiencing it. But I did enjoy doing most of it. But I didn't do it on foot. First of all, I'm almost 70 so and heavy camera equipment makes it very difficult to move around. On foot, on bicycles, buses, taxis, friends, cars, hitchhiking, you name it, any way to get from A to B. And I managed to finish all 88 temples just last year. I'll talk about people's different motivations for doing it at a later time. Because that's kind of important. Kobodashi, the person on the left, is a renowned monk in Japan, and he's kind of given credit for most of the temples. He was born in Shikoku and he established a lot of the temples. He's kind of a mythical character in Japan. He set up lots of main temples in Nara and Kyoto and Shikoku as well. And made it possible for poorer people and working class people to learn how to read and write. So he's sort of considered some sort of hero in Japan. But amongst the pilgrims he's the main guy. The one on the right is Gyouki who had a similar background. He predates Kobodashi, but he doesn't get so much credit for the trails, even though he established a lot of the temples on it. And he's also a very venerable character in Japanese history, but Kobodashi is extremely famous in Japan, the one on the left. And people on their little pilgrim vest, it says written in Japanese, I walk with Kobodashi. It's pretty much devoted, the whole trails devoted to walking with Kobodashi. For me personally, one of the most moving parts of the whole trail is the concept of Osatai. And in Japan, Osatai means basically just charitable giving or simply hospitality. And community groups all around Shikoku will set up.  Or communities will set up coffee stands and snacks or people will leave orange, a little bag of oranges and pilgrims huts, resting huts. You can take it or not take it, just to help keep you going. It's basically to help keep pilgrims moving. It's an extremely beautiful custom. I found it very heartening in today's cultural world to find that there's people who are basically just showing kindness. There's quite a little writing about this in the introduction to my book, not written by me, but I go to a Japanese nun who's one of the main figures of the Shikoku pilgrimage. She's one of the official guide people and I got her to talk about it as much as I could get out of her. She wanted to just dismiss it as a little, it just means kindness. It's more than that, I feel. And it's one of the things that most foreign pilgrims who do this are most moved by. It's a lovely custom of just showing hospitality and giving people things, giving you a ride or giving you a coffee or a free bottle of water or sometimes even a place to stay overnight. It's, it's called Usa Tai and I have a whole chapter on it. Inro Hats, these are a little bit controversial because sometimes this one's in a very rural area, but sometimes they're in a populated neighborhood and basically they're meant just to take a rest or have a little short nap or something like that to rest, cool your heels for a while. They're not really meant to be camped out in or slipped in, but sometimes people do. So it's a little bit controversial, especially in a populated area. So it's best to be careful of that. But this, this is one of the more magnificent ones I felt out in the middle of the countryside. The trails are pretty well marked, but they're marked always in Japanese. So usually people will pair up with other Japanese pilgrims and they can help show you the way, but it's pretty self-explanatory, which is the way to go. And it's, it's pretty well marked. Sometimes these things are community efforts, local school kids put them up or local communities, community organizations put them up to as a kind of an Usa Tai hospitality thing. It's, okay, the henrose themselves or henrose, what the Japanese word for pilgrim, and they come in all shapes, sizes and ages and motivations. Most of them, of course, are Japanese. There are a few foreigners, maybe not so many nowadays because it's very difficult to enter Japan without a 14-day quarantine, but they're around. And last year was, it was very tricky to get all the photos I needed of the situation because there weren't many pilgrims around. I had friends with a few of them online and I did go down there to finish off a photo set. So I was able to interview them. So I interviewed five or six different people, two Japanese, three Japanese and two foreigners. The woman on the left, she's a city office worker who lives in Chikoku and she does a bit by bit. The American guy on the right, he also lives down there and he's been doing it for years. It's one of his main hobbies is going off on the pilgrimage every few weeks every year. A lot of people don't do it all in one six-week thing. First of all, it's really tiresome to walk for six weeks and day after day after day. It's very tough on your feet and your knees, especially. I met a lot of people who had trouble. They had to give up or start using taxis or buses because they just couldn't walk anymore. A lot of people do it in bits and pieces like me. I've been there about eight times over the course of five or six years and doing a little bit here and then coming back home, going back to work or doing whatever you have to do. People go back to their family, especially people who live in Japan. And then they come back and do another bit in the spring or the fall, which are the best times to do it. But it's fairly rare, I think, except if you're really, really fit to be able to do it all in one go in six weeks. People have widely different reasons or motivations for doing this. Sometimes it's to kind of get over a traumatic divorce or a life event or change of job or change of school or just a change or someone retires and they want to sort of sort things out. So they think that, like in my case, they think that walking around Chicago or moving around the countryside and talking to strangers and meeting new people and making new friends is a good way to start a new chapter in their life. That may be one of the main motivators to do this, but I sense that some other people had deeper reasons like their partner died recently or something like that, you know, or their mother died. The woman on the left here, her mother died recently and that was part of her motivation I sensed a little bit. Anyway, lots of different motivations and of course there's a lot of sort of outdoorsy hiker types who just do it for the outdoorsyness of it all. And that that type exists as well. People, you can stay in Chicago, which are the temple lodgings. And this is a particularly nice one. Usually they're a little shabbier than this. Basically you just get a futon and a tatami room and it may or may not be private and it may have to be shared with other people and meals will be shared or usually if they don't provide meals you have to go out to a convenience store and get a lunchbox or something like that. It's, it's a lot of fun. Unfortunately, a lot of them are closed at the moment because of COVID but there are, there are places to stay that, you know, commercial places that cater to pilgrims and offer discounted rates. Back to the Shojin Jury. This is a vegetarian temple cuisine if you're lucky enough to find a temple that's still open that has temple lodging. It's one of the priorities of Buddhist temple cuisine. It's all vegetarian and very healthy and light and beautiful. It's a little bit rare in Chicago, though, and the main, the main place to try this is the very end of the trail, which is a Goyas on where all the temple lodgings have, have this, and lots of places in Kyoto have it as well. I went to one of the people I interviewed. She went all the way around Chikoku and then took the ferry boat on to Goyasang and then on to Nara and Kyoto. Nara goods, okay. A lot of people don't wear the full drag. They just, just wear the jacket, the vest. It says I walk with, with Kogodashi here. Even I have one. This is mine actually. But most people only wear the, the vest. They don't wear the hat or the sash or, or all the other goods. Some people do, but most generally most people just wear the, the vest and they even have T-shirt versions of it. But it's a good thing to wear, even if you're not a very serious Henro or to pilgrim because it identifies you as a pilgrim to other people. You know, if somebody wants to help you along the way or give, give out a bottle of water or something, or, or if you need directions or help in any way, it's extremely helpful to have your vest on because if not, people will just ignore you. So that's, that's what the vest and the, the Henro hat and the sash look like. They all have particular meanings, but I don't have time to go into all that. It's all in the book. There are, there are certain procedures that a person does when going to each temple. Serious pilgrims will do all of it, you know, in succession. For example, I had to write it down because I was so busy with the photography that I, I had to confess that I didn't do the full ritual, but basically where are we? At each temple's main gate, you bow once facing the temple. And then there's a wash basin. I think there's a picture of it. Maybe not a wash basin where you wash your hands and mouth. And then you ring the bell at the bell tower once. Name slips. Here you write in, you can, one of these is filled out with my name. You fill it out with your name, address, date, and write down a wish. I forgot what my wish was. And you leave them in a main, main, main temple's box. And also people give them, give them to people who give you also time, people who give you help along the way, like a room to stay in or a ride or a bottle of water or even cash. It's good manners to give one of these names that pieces of paper to these people to, it's just like a name card. What else? And then I didn't. Oh, yeah. The man on the right with calligraphy. This is the final step before exiting the temple. People carry these books around with them and have the temple stamp and they're all sealed and calligraphy done. It's 300 yen per per shot, you know, and actually it makes a very beautiful memento of the whole trip. So most people do this, even that, even though you have to pay for it. And then finally, once, once all these rituals are over with people go to the main gate and then go one time and then turn around and then go on their merry way. Okay. I separated the book into four different sections because 88 temples could be very tedious. And some of them are highlighted with double page spreads, you know, especially temples with fabulous gardens or some architectural feature, which I wanted to feature but mostly we wanted to break it up with different things in the middle of the book, sort of punctuation here and there. So this is the introduction to Tokushima Prefecture, which is the first county or prefecture. There's four of them. This is the first one on the trail. It has the one, the picture on the left is a picture of kind of a scarecrow village and it's practically an abandoned ghost town, but the people who are left decided to make an attraction and they made these dolls of so-called scarecrow and with different faces and clothing, you know, it's a kind of attraction. It's really in the middle of nowhere, but it's quite interesting place. And the right hand picture is of Bon Odori dance, which is faint, originated in Tokushima. And Tokushima is the main city and the first prefecture on the trail. And it has a very distinctive dance and hats and clothing. But this dance is so popular and common that it spread all over Japan. It's a summer ritual everywhere in Japan. Unfortunately, the big Bon Odori dance in Tokushima has been canceled the last couple of years, I think, or curtailed down to locals without people pouring in. But Tokushima is the first stop on the trail with temple number one. This is temple number one where it has an ice garden and particularly nice interior with lanterns. Ryuzenji, I believe. Yeah, Ryuzenji. Further along the trail is Konsenji, which has a famous spring and to me this is kind of a pond garden. You'll notice that the ones that I'm highlighting tend to have Japanese gardens in them or some architectural feature, which appeals to me. A lot of the temples are nothing but, you know, they may have a historical significance, but they're not particularly graphically beautiful. So I tend to make a special effort on the ones that have a garden. This one's Konsenji, also at Tokushima. Jizoji. This has a particular interesting hall. In fact, this temple has a nickname. I forgot the name of the nickname because it has all these rakenji. This is a nickname. It has a lot of raken, which are Buddhist disciples. This is a big hall of these disciples in it, which is fairly evocative. And then Shoshanji, it's really hard to get to. And then Byodoji. I quite like the fresco and the ceiling here. Back to Shoshanji briefly. What I noticed is the more difficult to access of these temples, the more evocative and beautiful and memorable they seem to be the more difficult to approach, the more worth it they tend to be. So that kind of helps keep you going for the last kilometer or two. If you're really flagging, it sort of helps to know that the more difficult to access, the more wonderful it's likely to be. Okay, now we're into Kochi Prefecture, which is the next prefecture. This is the Moroto Peninsula, sort of the very southern tip of, well, there's two different tips and Peninsula is the protrude into the Pacific Ocean south of Kochi Prefecture and they're very difficult to get to. But both of them are quite worth it. And this is the lighthouse to keep Moroto. Kochi's other one of its other main claims to fame is the name of it's Machino Botanical Garden in Kochi City. It's right next to. Right next to this, this temple and garden it's one of the more famous temples in Japan. Chikorinji, Chikorinji Temple and Garden, which is, it's right next door to Machino Botanical Garden. In fact, I think that they at one time, it was one giant compound. This was one of my very favorites, Konomineji. It's Temple 27. It's one of the most inaccessible I found, but it was one of the most well worth it. So I really enjoyed it except for the walk up there. This one's quite unusual because it has a pond with these. What's the name of it? Zanzibuji, with a Fudo fountain and pond. Another very inaccessible one. It's on its own tiny little island. But, I don't know. Shoryuji. Shoryuji is outside of Kochi City, but it's on its own little tiny island. It used to be fairly isolated. But now there's a bridge, but I rather locked it up there. And this is the other tip of the other extremely inaccessible peninsula. What was the name of it? Shoryuji is the name of the temple at the bottom of, I can't remember these things, Hachizuri Peninsula. Cape Hachizuri is kind of a bellwether for hurricanes in Taifu and Japan. The weather is really extreme down there, but it's extremely beautiful once you finally get there. There's three visits to the neighborhood to Kochi Prefecture until I finally got there. It's so difficult to get to. And where was Kochi? Sort of towards the end of Kochi Prefecture before entering into Aimee. Aimee Prefecture is famous for dogo onsen or hot springs. Matsuyama is famous for its onsen.  It's one of the first places I ever went in Shikoku for a conference 20 years ago. But I was surprised that they still had these little slow street cars poking around town. But I sort of fell in love with Shikoku in Matsuyama because when I was taking the ferry boat back to Hiroshima, this is my little anecdote story on Shikoku, one of my first trips down there. Going back to the main island, they're taking the ferry boat to Hiroshima. When I got to the port town, the port part of Matsuyama early, and I decided to duck in for a bowl of noodles and I had an hour or two to wait before the ferry left. And when I went into the noodle shop, the entire staff, the cook, waitresses, a couple customers, they're all asleep. They're all laying down having a nap at one o'clock in the afternoon. I couldn't believe it. So people take naps down there. People are relaxed like it's Mexico or something. I kind of like these people. People in Tokyo would never dream of doing that. So I rather fell in love with Shikoku after that thing. These are my kind of people who like to take naps. So that's my Shikoku story. This is one of the most also difficult to reach there. But this is Iodange, Iowaji in Ehime prefecture. It's difficult to get to, but it's lovely, but hard to get to. I missed this one the first time around the neighborhood. It's near Iodange, Jororiji. Jororiji has a big lotus pond and I was lucky enough to catch a pilgrim who's admiring and photographing now the flowering blossoms. Iodange is an extremely important one in Monsayama city and it's a huge compound with all kinds of things. It's a major one of the temples and no matter how few temples a person goes to, this is one of the main ones to visit. This one has a particularly interesting mural inside of heaven and hell mural called Isanji. My gamiji I rather liked because it's out in the countryside and sort of it has a sort of Shinto shrine architecture. There's another difficult one to get to in Benji, but well worth the effort to get up there. Finally, the last prefecture is Kagawa and Kagawa seems to be to me the most developed of all the four prefectures in in Shikoku. It's Takamatsu is a fairly developed and sophisticated city and the offshore islands is all part of the inland sea, these little islands. This is not exactly an island, it's sticking out from I forgot the name of it. Anyway, one of the offshore islands from Takamatsu and there's lots of ferry boat. These islands are still quite populated and in fact they have a big art expo every couple of years out there, which has become a worldwide event. So they put up these art installations on these little islands to get people to visit and to help the local population keep their businesses going and to keep the urban flight down. But these islands are lovely and it's offshore from Kagawa prefecture and Tokushima. The main attraction in Tokushima itself is the garden. It's not one of the, there's three main gardens of Japan and Ritsurin is not one of the main three, but it's usually the number one people's choice, because it's it's magnificent. It's one of the best gardens in Japan actually. So it's a major attraction in Takamatsu, one of my favorites. Okay, Jinaen and Kanonji, which are these two temples, they share the same kompa, which is kind of interesting. This particular vertical garden is in the back of Jinaen and most people don't even notice it because they don't make a big deal out of it. It's just sort of hidden in the back and pretty much forgotten, even though it's it's well taken care of, but I didn't see a soul back there. It was great. And then across the four year, the courtyard in the same compound is this giant tree and the secondary temple number 69 Kanonji. The temple before that was the garden Jinaen 68 and 69 share the same compound. Another out of the way place is Iodachi. Lovely, lovely places. We will discuss your questions at the end so please be patient. And this is the birthplace of Kobodashi. So it's very important. And they have a huge temple accommodation facility with dining hall and everything. Lots of pilgrims stay there overnight. Even now, I think it's still open. It's a main temple because it's where Kobodashi himself was born. And then let's go to Choji. It's one of my favorites because of the magnificent pond garden with the irises. Shiromuneji is also unique with its sort of wall garden here on the on the right side of it. Shidoji. This is one of my favorites, but I know people who don't think much of it, but I think that they couldn't find the stone garden in the back of the temple, which also they don't highlight it. It's as if it's not a big deal or something, but we spent hours here because that's where the hospitality Iodachi situation was going on with free coffee and free snacks and mineral water and the whole community turned out to welcome us. So we spent quite a lot of time there just and the garden was a big bonus plus there. And this would be Okuboji, which is this is the last temple on the 88 temple tour all around Shikoku. However, it goes on to most serious pilgrims don't feel like they've really completed the entire Shikoku pilgrimage. Unless they've gone to Koyasa, which is not even on on Shikoku Island. It's closer to Osaka in fact up in the mountains. It's a unique little town in the middle of nowhere up in the mountains, but it's devoted to 20 or 30 monasteries and almost all of them offer temple lodgings. It's not cheap, but they're very, very nice and they offer temple cuisine and and and Koyasa is kind of a must whether a person does the pilgrimage or not. It has a this is the largest Zen garden in Japan and cemetery. This is where Kawadaishi is buried and it's I believe well the whole town is UNESCO actually not just the cemetery but Koyasa in itself is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This is part of the cemetery. This is an interesting sort of pyramid. But besides this kind of thing there are some wacky burial sites with with like the president of UCC coffee company is as a big marble coffee cup and one of the Japanese astronauts has a gravestone of a rocket ship. So there's some wacko kind of gravestones here too. But I like the more traditional things. And they have a fire ceremony at a low not all but some of the temples that offer a temple stay in Koyasa and they offer a fire ceremony and if you don't mind getting up at five o'clock in the morning but everybody else does so it's worth it. Koyasa is, you know, for many people it's it's it's the ultimate experience of the Chicago pilgrimage because it's it's kind of part of it really. Finally, I need to save some time for some question and answer I see some raised hands so. Here's my author page and I think there's Amazon US link to the book itself. You will notice that it's now in pre order phase on Amazon. It's, it's not. I think it's available September 30th in North America so. It's in pre order I know quite a few people who have have ordered already. And it's also on my author page it should be one of the first ones. So I'm going to move on to the question and answer I see a few. Yes, we have a lot of questions in the Q amp a function. Okay, all right. Let's read them to you. Yeah, would you. How, how was the pilgrimage different before the pandemic compared to during the pandemic. A lot more people. Now there are still people down there but they tend to be all Japanese or foreign residents of Japan and what I needed the editor of the book editor didn't like my proposed cover photos at all and no, no, I want pictures of pilgrims pilgrim pictures more more more. I said but there aren't any pilgrims. But one of the people I interviewed lives down there and she, she's kind of a kind of an important guide around there and she works for the government. She was quite nice and she drove me around to some of the more inaccessible temples and she put on her full garb and she posed for the front cover. So, so that was that helped a lot. Yeah, not many people. So I didn't have too many choices of people to photograph my friends. Custom if you are on a small amount of pilgrimage to wear that straw hat. Now, some people do. Well, it can be quite sunny and she cookers semi tropical. So it can be pretty, but most people just wear baseball cap or something to keep keep eyes on. This seems to be the most important thing just to identify you to bus drivers or other other pilgrims so other people know what's what, and they will, they will help you you'll get a lot more help if you're wearing the vest at least. Yeah, how do you get the best. There are shops along along the trail itself that kind of thing you can order my my one Amazon event. I think I got mine on Amazon Japan. But around temple number one in Tokushima. There are like two or three shops right next to the temple number one. They're ready to sell the whole temple staffs hats vests t shirts you name it. Who maintains the gardens they are so beautifully gorgeous. I mean, I love the difference between like just so maintain and then some are like very natural and it's very difficult to do I actually there's a Japanese garden right outside my house right right in my yard. I've learned it's one of my it's my photographic specialty, but I've learned to appreciate the work that goes into it because it's the work is just never ending, never ending. In the case of the temple gardens they're almost always maintained by the temple themselves. And if it's a big important temple they'll have their own, their own gardeners that you know that's part of a traditionally. They were maintained by monks it was it was especially in Zen Buddhism. It's a form of meditation gardening, especially raking the sand is, and, you know, trimming the leaves and all of that. It's a form of meditation they considered it but I think, even nowadays, even most in temples in Kyoto they have, they outsource it to gardening companies but I know a couple of monks who do it themselves. Because they like the tradition of it. And a question about the time period of the temples are they all around the same time are they very spaced out in time. You mean from each other. In time period. Like what do they date back to. I don't quite understand you mean each temple is usually open 24 hours. And is one of the questions 24 seven, what, when were the two temples developed, like when did they. Oh, years. Some of them go back. About 1000 years, you'll have to reference the book but there's a lot of information on Google on the, the Shikoku pilgrimage so the, the, the, the dates and things that of when they go back and who, who, who established them and. And all of that how many times it burned down all of that's available. Interesting. Each one, each one's different. We do have john's book on order as soon as it comes out from the publisher for you to check out.  Yes, not too many but yes, usually with the parents you know and sometimes with their little vests on and they're the whole thing I was just dying for for a photo of. I thought that would have made a great front cover but there weren't any the last in 2020 and I spent about two months down there last year, finishing this up and there they were very even the adults were few on the ground. So, but, but in the past I've seen kids you know dressed up and everything. They were really into it. More likely that more likely though you see kids like community organizers, families and little communities and the kids participate more on these also tie things like to, to make signs for pilgrims or clean up the pots for pilgrims to rest in or, or clean or clean the trail or remove weeds from the trail. Sometimes you'll see kids doing that. It's great. Yeah, the community thing is really big down there. And here is this question is is two questions and one or a couple people have had this question I mean, could you explain with some granularity what you mean by some of the typical temples are difficult to get to, is it an issue of elevation to rain, no public transportation. All of the bell all of the above, like a couple of them I forgot the names of them were like four or five kilometers from the nearest main road with terrible little trail going up to it up, up, up, up, up for three or four kilometers and really difficult to get some of them. Really difficult. This person says they lived on coachy on she cuckoo for a year. The kindest people they ever met. Yeah, great. Their question is, if you only have one week to walk, where would you suggest. That's a tough question. If they go back to if in coachy prefecture, or anywhere. I, I'm going to say anywhere, but let's stick with anywhere for now. I would say if a person's limited for time for like one week. It's if a person like uses bicycles or buses or public transportation. It's a lot easier around Takamatsu or Matsuyama, because there's public transportation because those cities are in the northern part of Shikoku so they're more developed coachy is also not bad, nor is Tokushima Tokushima's bus system is hard to figure out I had difficulty figure out but someone from the city office drove me around from temple to temple so I had help there. I would personally, I tend to like Kagawa prefecture around Takamatsu because I have friends there and it's it's a very pleasant city and I like all the little ferry boats to all the little islands, you know, it's a nice place. I would could do that. But coaches, I would say the most dramatically scenic. But it's also the most rugged and difficult. Yeah, so a person has limited time I would say around Takamatsu or Tokushima or Matsuyama, but maybe not coachy, unless they fly straight into coachy. How about traveling the pilgrimage alone. Do you feel like that's safe. Oh yeah. Japan's extremely safe country, you know, even a woman traveling alone. You just don't have to worry. It's amazing in in today's world. It's just amazing that that exists. That's one of the best things about Japan actually. Does the Japanese government provide any financial support for maintaining the temples. Not too much now. That's why there's so much community involvement.  They give donations to the priest and that's where it works that way. So probably the neighbors who who use that particular temple. They, they support the temple, but I don't think they get much from the government. Nor does the, the trail doesn't like the, the big pilgrimage in Spain, they get government support and UNESCO support and money should go to pilgrimage doesn't. So it's all community based, which, which keeps it kind of nice and friendly. Yeah, yeah, I like these two questions we have here. Is there an actual trail or path between the temples. And if so, what are they like, are they roadways that cars travel or just walking. That's a good, very good question. Okay. There are ancient trails that go through the weeds and the bamboo grows and all this stuff. And some of that still exists and some of it's well maintained. One of the main complaints of a lot of the foreign pilgrims is they don't like trudging down a busy highway, especially going through a tunnel on big trucks blasting through the tunnel.  There's a lot of that. There's a lot of it. I wouldn't say completely unavoidable, but a certain amount of urban sprawl is going to be unavoidable. It exists. Even in Chicago, but there are trails that kind of make up for that. You know, out in the countryside, far away from a main city like Cochie City or Takamatsu or someplace like that, way out in the countryside. There will be a connecting trail from Temple 41 to 42, for example, through the bamboo, you know, where you don't have to go near a hideous road. But I'd say it's few and far between where that exists. Mind you, I took a lot of it by car and bus and train and bicycle, so I had to take the easier methods of getting there. But, but Masako who showed me quite a lot of it and she's one of the main guides down there. She showed me some of the funky trials. In fact, she posed on the front cover on one of the bamboo trails. So they exist. The word pilgrimage, to me, coming from a Western tradition implies a strong religious element. Are most shikoku pilgrims practicing Buddhist, or is it more of a personal spiritual journey for people? That's a very, very good question. I think a lot of many Japanese don't really consider themselves particularly religious. They say that a lot of people at the end of doing the pilgrimage, they find some kind of epiphany or enlightenment or they got, they got something spiritual out of it, whether they were religious or not. And I've met foreigners who have even admitted to such, you know, but I would say that a lot of people, it's more of a personal journey than a religious thing. Some people, it's basically just a hiking marathon. I'm sorry to say that that exists too. The officials down there don't like that.  There are serious pilgrims, sort of. And there's also tour group pilgrims who go around and buses, you know, and unload about 50 pilgrims at each temple and cause mayhem and they're not particularly appreciated either so. There are walking, so-called walking pilgrim tends to be much more traditional and quiet and they would be there either for a personal reason or trying to get away from it all, or maybe a little bit of a spiritual reason. But I wouldn't say so many of them are that religious but you, you do hear lots of chanting. I think this one, I think this is a really great one maybe to end on, but we are running out of time, we don't want to keep John forever, but this one from Masako. Hi, John, it's Masako, the cover girl. Oh, hi, Masako. She says she really enjoyed her talk, you're the talk and congratulations. Did she get the copy? I sent her an advance copy. I could put that in the chat, Masako, if you received your copy of the book. She's wondering if the audience today are mostly interested in coming to Shikoku to do the pilgrimage, or people have already done that and you can put that in chat everyone if you want. Who's ready to do the pilgrimage? I think a lot of people, a lot of these questions are really like, how do I do this kind of questions, John? Like, what's the best time of year? Spring, spring, spring or autumn? Definitely, definitely not winter and definitely not summer. A lot of people don't imagine, but Japan summer is really hot and humid. Like, I lived in Bangkok for five years in the past two or three weeks around here has been worse than I can ever remember in Bangkok. I mean, really hot and humid. And you don't want to be walking for 10 or 15 kilometers per day and that kind of heat. Definitely not. So autumn, like October, October, November is a good time. Or, unfortunately, September is a hurricane or typhoon season. So October, November or April, May, those are peak. And Masako, did you see all those answers in the chat box flying through? Everybody wants to come. You have to quarantine in Japan for 14 days now. And that's what's keeping me from going home or going to France where I like to go every autumn. It's been putting me out because I don't want to be stuck for 14 days without going out of the house. But I know people who've been doing it. You know, I have a friend in Santa Barbara, but his wife's Japanese and he loves Japan, and he has a house in Nara, and he's been back three times, back and forth, back and forth. I said, but don't you have to quarantine? He says, yeah, but it's worth it. So I guess we're going to have to wrap our brain around that someday. That's just the way things are. And the editor of this book, she's Thai-British. And she has a house in Bangkok and actually a huge compound in Bangkok. She's semi-royal. And a lovely house in London. She's gone back and forth two or three times. And she has to quarantine both ends. But she keeps doing it. Well, that's just the way it is. So I guess that's how we have to start thinking. The final question is, I mean, there are more questions here, John. People are really thankful and seem to really be enjoying the presentation. So we really thank you. What is the most important preparations for successful and memorable pilgrimage? I'll learn as much Japanese as you can. If you don't speak Japanese, I'd say that would be number one. That would hurt. My Japanese is not very good. I traveled with Japanese, so that helped things a lot. But that would help immensely. These are rural places. You'll find, you know, foreigners will find people who speak English or French or even Spanish or Chinese. I don't know if it's Masu or Masuyama, maybe, or Tokushima, but not in the middle of nowhere. At the end of the Aishizure Peninsula, you just won't find it. It would be very difficult to communicate. My Japanese is just good enough to take care of necessary matters if necessary if I'm by myself. Yeah, I would say that would be number one. Number two, plenty of money. Because a person doesn't want to depend on people's giving them a free place to stay or more or less illegally sleeping over in a hut. People need to spend, save their money and bring enough money that they can spend in a business hotel or wherever. Temple lodging, you know, without depending too much on the kindness of locals because they're doing it out of their own pensions or their own community chast. You know, try to maintain things and it's tough going, especially now. Temple lodging? It's about 4,000 yen a night without meals. That's about $40. It's not expensive, but a lot of them are not open now because of COVID and the more commercial ones are open. I'm not sure. Usually, on these websites devoted to the Shikoku Pilgrimage, they keep that sort of information up today. Alright, my friends. John, thank you so much. Thank you for hosting it. And these photos are all from your book? Yes. Yeah, I chose them very carefully and tried to keep it down to 40, 45 minutes, you know, but there's about five times more in the book, you know, so. And you can see the love coming through on the chat box right now, John. Oh, everyone says thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for coming. Thanks for coming. Alright friends, I'm going to steal the share so you can see John's face and my face. Well, no, I guess I can't do that. You can stop sharing for a second, John. Okay. Alright friends, like I said, you can go ahead and check out the book or you can put it on hold and you will get it eventually when it comes in. I think even publishers are slow with COVID right now so. Yeah, and there's our shipping problems. Yeah, even intern even domestic we're having shipping problems. It's okay, John, don't worry about it. Thank you. This will be on YouTube you say it will be on YouTube and I'll put that link in the chat one more time as well. And we'll keep it up there for some time. And you can come back and view it and you know, could you send me the email link. In the chat so. Let's see here comes here comes here we go. There it is. Alright friends but yes I will send you an email after this done. Thanks so much. All right, everyone have a wonderful night and we'll see you again. And thank you for concluding our summer start programming. Wow. Bye bye San Francisco. I miss it. When he says goodbye Uncle John. One of my nephews or nieces. April. April. She's coming from New Zealand. All right. That's going to just look so good on my stats.


This is what Twitter had to say after Kaiser Chiefs coach Steve Kompila announced his resignation. Leading up to the net-bank cup semi-vinyl against free-state stars, a Mac-OC coach Steve Kompila was under fire and needed a victory and a chance at a trophy to win back the hearts of their fans. Kaiser Chiefs, however, were stunned in front of a capacity crowd at Moses Mabhaida Stadium on Saturday as stars Triumph 2-0 to advance through to the net-bank cup final with the result leading to scenes of violence and hooliganism in the stadium. Seconds after the final whistle blew, fans invaded the pitch and attack security guards, players, and coaching staff. Soon afterwards, Kompila stepped down as a Mac-OC coach. We have had to do a lot of reality checks. Players are not safe. People are not safe. The coach is not safe, said Chiefs general manager Bobby Motong. The coach is stepping down with immediate effect. In his three years in charge, Kompila has failed to win any silverware for the Sowido giants.


So what I wanted to do was just to create a really quick lesson illustrating what petal paragraph means, and how you can apply it. And the example I'm gonna use is actually in Inspector Calls, okay? They're played by J.B. Priestley. However, do bear in mind that the example that I give, literally the petal paragraph and the words that I use can be substituted for any other example, indeed any other play, any other novel, and also any other English language extracts, okay? I'm only gonna use Inspector Calls just as an example of how you can apply a petal paragraph to a sample, pass paper question, okay? So I've put the pass paper question above here in the box, however, always bear in mind that literally these examples, you can just substitute the key words within these examples for something else, okay? Now, let's first go over the meaning of petal paragraph. Petal simply stands for point evidence technique analysis link, okay? So the P stands for point, the E stands for evidence, the T stands for technique, the A stands for analysis, and the L stands for link, okay? Now, as I've mentioned, I'm gonna give you an example and I'm gonna work you through how you can craft a really strong petal paragraph if, let's say, you were studying in Inspector Calls and this question came up. So let's say you've got this question. How does precy explore the importance of social class? Now, you will notice that I've underlined key words within this question because they are exactly that, key words. The stuff within the question, that's the most important thing that you need to answer and you need to address, okay? So when you look at any question or any particular exam style question that you're presented with, always make sure you go straight for, okay, what does this question want me to really focus in on and then you underline and highlight that because that's now how you're gonna start off your petal paragraph, okay? So as I mentioned, the key words within this question is importance and social class. I have to absolutely address this within my paragraph. So let's start off with the point. Remember, in the petal paragraph, point simply stands for answer the question, okay? So just address the question and answer it using words and using key words from the question, okay? So you use those key words to show the examiner or your teacher that, hey, look, I'm answering this question, okay? So let's go back to this example. You're being asked how previously a playwright shows the importance of social class. So I'm gonna read you through my opening point, okay? Presley powerfully explores the importance of social class through the character of Mrs. Burling. She shows the divides that existed between the working classes and the upper classes. Pay attention to the wording that I have used. Because I've highlighted importance of social class within the question, I've then mentioned how the importance of social class is revealed, okay?  Actually examiners and teachers want to see that you're repeating yourself because it shows that you understand the question, okay? So open your point by answering the question, addressing it directly and then using the key words, okay? So that's my opening point. Now, evidence simply means quote from the text. How do you know from the text that this is the case, okay? In this case, I'm just using a quote that memorized. Sometimes you'll have an extract in front of you. You just pick out the quotation and then use that, okay? And if you can try to embed your quotation, make it flow nicely, okay? So now let's look at my evidence. This is evidence when she refers to speech marks, girls of that class, close speech marks, okay? So this is evidence that's supposed to have a D when she refers to girls of that class, okay? So as you can see here, I have quoted from the passage or the text, okay? So the play from my memory. Now that's my evidence. I've used a quote to support what my opening point is. Now, the T in the petal paragraph stands for technique as I've mentioned. And this is basically means you need to mention the technical term within the quotation that you've selected. So from girls of that class, I now need to mention a technical term. Now I'm gonna read you through how the technical terms that I've mentioned in now my technique. The diminutive noun girls, diminutive means anything that makes something sound smaller or more little than it is, okay? So the diminutive noun girls, speech marks, in her declarative sentence, remember declarative sentence is a sentence that states a fact, feeling or mood, shows she saw working class women as inferior to her, okay? So she, of course, is Mrs. Burling, okay? So I'm gonna repeat my technique. The diminutive noun girls in her declarative sentence shows she saw working class women as inferior to her, okay? So now I'm talking about technique and why that's really important, what this shows us. Now you then have to move on to the A in your petal paragraph, which means analysis. What this simply means is explain what your technique, the one that you've pointed out, is important and the reader effect, how it affects us as readers. In this case, because it's a play, audience effects, okay? So reader audience effects, basically how it affects us, all right? So I'm gonna read through my analysis. Precise use of this noun, as well as the declarative sentence reveals to us how many Edwardian upper class women were detached from the struggles working class women face, which shocks us as the audience, okay? So what I'm basically saying is this noun and this declarative sentence, it shows how Edwardian women, women who lived in the Edwardian era during Mrs. Berling's time, they felt like they were totally separate as a class to working class women like Eva Smith, okay? So I'm now going into analysis. I'm now explaining why abuse that technique and how it affects us. And of course, I then also mentioned that we as the audience are shocked. I can't believe Mrs. Berling said that, okay? That is your analysis. However, don't forget the L in your petal paragraph, which is link and this simply means link back to the question, okay? So I'm gonna read through my link, where I'm linking back to the question and I'm linking back to the keywords within the question. Thus, Priestie shows the importance of social class played in exacerbating, which means exaggerating, creating further class divisions in the play. Moreover, Mrs. Berling is used to represent the callous, the harsh, the cruel, indifference upper class women felt towards working class women, okay? So I'm gonna repeat my link. Thus, Priestie shows the importance social class played in exacerbating class divisions in the play. Moreover, Mrs. Berling, Mrs. Berling is used to represent the callous indifference upper class women felt towards working class women, okay? That's my link back to the question. As you can see, I've used the keywords importance in social class right here to show my teacher, my examiner that, hey, I know the assignment, I understand the assignment and I'm answering the question using the keywords it asks me to answer, okay? So let's quickly recap petal paragraph. P stands for point, answer the question directly. E stands for evidence, just quote directly from the text. T stands for technique, mention a technical term within your quote. A stands for analysis, which means explain why your technique is important and the reader effect. And finally, L stands for link back to the question. So that's really a petal paragraph. It's actually quite straightforward once you understand. Again, as I mentioned, this is just a working example from an inspector calls. However, you can literally substitute this for, you know, a language extract or whatever, okay? Just use some of these keywords, especially the opening, okay? So X, powerfully explores, this is evidence when, blah, blah, blah, and just use that and apply. And of course, if you want to use this petal paragraph, just watch over this video once more just to kind of see the different steps and then apply that in your own writing. So thanks so much for listening.


Eric Schmidt of Google, every time I see him says, well, how come you guys do this and no one else does? Estonia right now is one of the biggest champions of the digital single market in Europe. And E.U. just did a study that E. Governance placed us as number one in Europe. Crucial element to making a system like ours work is the universal use of a electronic ID. A unique ID enables you to have a legal signature. All these services that require a signature or identification can then be done electronically. For example, we offer digital prescriptions and 99.9% of the population uses digital signatures. The other side of what all of this does is that it leads to far greater transparency. Our system is extremely trust-based. People believe that they are secure. This is one reason why I'm completely against any kind of back doors, even if there is a belief that there's a back door, let alone if a political leader says, oh, it's just to catch terrorists. The knowledge that someone can use a back door to access your data will say to people, this is not secure. The problem we face today in this whole field is that we're working with solutions that were devised in the late 70s, early 80s. We've not gone beyond that. Having one big server with unencrypted data is not one of those solutions. If you want to have security, you're going to have to have a different system, some kind of chip or a fingerprint. You need to have two separate things with the architecture to match them up. It makes it far more secure than the usual system that we use, which is just a name or an email address and a password. Unless we have a clear understanding of what one needs to do to have security online, we will not move ahead with e-governance.


Hi everybody, welcome to the March Pressbooks Monthly Product Update. I'm Steel Wagstaff, the Product Manager at Pressbooks. And what I want to start today is to give an introduction or show you the big changes that we made to the Pressbooks interface in the last month. So you had seen, if you've come to these in the past, you've seen some previews of it, but now it's real, it's live, it's in production. And I'm going to give an overview of the large scale changes we made for network managers and for general end users. So I'm going to log in as a network manager to Pressbooks. So I've just logged in. And as a network manager, the first thing I'm going to see is I'm going to be greeted by a welcome page that's specifically customized for me as a network manager. You'll see here the administer network dashboard has been selected, and we have a much more consolidated and compressed set of options for me as a network manager to administer my network. We clarified and kind of simplified things so that instead of having to go to several similar looking dashboards, there's now a single consolidated dashboard, as well as a bright, hopefully cheerful presentation for who you are, what you're doing and what you might want to do next. So you'll see that there's a welcome page. It's going to give you the name of your network. There's a little block here that will tell you how many books and users you have on your network. And you have the ability here, if you're on a hosted network for Pressbooks, to drill down and view some of these more detailed stats which would show you users over time, books over time, network storage, revisions over the last several months, and the number of clone books that have been made from your network since the beginning of this year. So that's the first thing you'd see on your dashboard. The other things we're trying to do is kind of help you do common network manager tasks, specifically thinking about if you're brand new to administer your Pressbooks network, here's the first things that you may want to do.  And so you have the ability to control all of the text and the calls to actions you display here. You have the ability to showcase books on your homepage and link to your catalog to customize your menus and your footer. There's quite a lot that you can do to make this network feel like your institutions network. And the way that you do that I guess is in this block we tell you you can customize the appearance of your network. This is an option here that will give you all of the controls needed to change that page I just showed you to make it more of what you want. You can change the title on the tagline you can add a logo a site icon, you can change which page you display on the front page of your network whether it's your homepage or any other page that you've created. You can also choose to display showcase books, anything in your catalog you could pick so I could say, let's add this book as a fifth featured book on my network, and you'll see now it's being showcased here, or a third third featured book I apologize. You can choose to show or hide this feature from your homepage altogether. You can choose to display a contact form, if you do display the contact form. It will show up on the homepage and look kind of like this, and we'll go to whatever email you want to send it to. You can also change if you have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you can include those links to your institution social pages there. And you can customize the colors to fit the branding scheme of your organization. You can want a different header image, for example, like let's say I don't like these peaks. I want to go blue. I want to put this image or I want to look very library ish, or whatever desired kind of header you want you can just put the header of your dreams up there and display the header. And then you have the ability to customize the menu items at the top or the bottom of your homepage. And this is where you can add and customize what appears in each of those menus and the locations. Last but not least, there's a couple of widgets that display in the bottom block. You can add some custom text. I'm a header. And you'll notice as I add this here it's going to appear in this footer area. And I could add links images whatever I'd like to do to customize that kind of semi footer on my network. There's two blocks there so if you haven't want to have content that next to each other you can do that. And you can add custom CSS to change the styling or the appearance of this page if you want to use that with caution obviously. Those are the things that you can do there from that additional or from that starter menu to customize the network appearance. You can also create or edit the content of the pages themselves from this link. This will take you to the pages menu, my homepage could be edited here, and all of the tools and skills needed to update this homepage. So, if I wanted to say, we're glad to talk you through the many options. I've just made an edit, and now my homepage of my network will now say many options instead of options. So if I wanted to see that I could go view the homepage and see. I now edited the content so it says many options. You'll also see you have the ability if you're on a hosted network to see the page view analytics for your homepage and other pages. So clicking on this link will show you the cocoa analytics dashboard here. And this shows me how much web traffic my network homepage and other related pages have received over the given time period. You can customize this and show you this for the quarter of the year or whatever you'd like to see. And you can see the most popular page on my home site is my homepage, and my catalog is the second most popular page that it's received this many views. Here's where visitors are coming from. Most people are finding this through Google, some through Bing, some through you can see search engines are the biggest refer for my particular site. And that's what's available there in the dashboard for your homepage tools. Each of these links correspond to some links that you'd see over on the side as well so you can navigate them from other locations as well. And then you have the big kind of core tools that network managers will use which are how to administer your network. The first thing you'll see are a bunch of settings you can get to that here or here. These are all of the choices that you have as a network manager. This will tell you who your network managers are, how to get help or support from press books. How many people have been using results for LMS if you have that additional add on.  And then you also have your books upload to today's storage size, the default language, the default page size for PDF exports, iframes, and whether or not your books will be included or not included in the directory. You also have settings for user book and user registration. These are detailed and explained in the guide, and there's the Google analytics optional integration. And we mentioned this in a past webinar but you can use Google analytics the old one or Google analytics for we really do recommend that if you want Google analytics you move to GA for because they're shutting down the old way of doing things in on July 1. So, if you are using them, please transition to the new method before January 1. Some of the things that are available there from the network settings. If you're hosted with press books you also get a really powerful book and user list that let you kind of filter and sort and understand more about the books that are being published on your network. So here down below you'll see cover title last edited created words, whether or not my book is public in the catalog with license with subject. How many people have different roles, who the book admins are the storage size the language the theme, and whether results is turned on. You can also filter by a bunch of different things so I might want to see who what are all the public CC BY books on this network. I've got 20 of them. And these are the books I could download it as a CSV and do more analysis on it. I could also say I want to see books that have more than 5000 words. And now I'm down to 16. And I want to see books that use the Malala or McLuhan theme. And then I'm down to 10. So you can mix and match those filters you can reset them at any time. And you can always download this list as a CSV for further analysis. You can also do things like make public make private add to catalog remove from catalog add or disallow grading and delete books in mass on mass in bulk from this book administration menu. I have a very similar option for users. So you'll see there's a user list. It allows you to see who's been added since a given date, when they've last logged in, what kind of role they have, or if they have a given role in a certain number of books. So for example, I might want to see everybody who's a super user prospects I want to see someone who's an administrator at three or more books. And here I've just got 12 users. I can download this list and I can email them and invite them all to a power users training session. Okay, who hasn't logged in in the last two years. All right, so these eight people they really haven't logged in for at least two years, I might contact them and make sure they still want their accounts or I might just want to say, you know what you haven't been for a while I'm going to remove you from the network, or whatever my policy is for that. So those are those tools you have there for user management. And those are also linked from the administrator dashboard page. So these are the most common tasks that network managers have or want to perform. So we've displayed them there in a prominent place on the dashboard and cleaned up the options over here. Finally, you'll see there's a new support resources block, which points you to places that you can get help as a network manager. So there is a guide I referenced that earlier if you click this link, you'll see detailed guide documentation for all of the things I just described. How to administer books, how to administer users, how to customize the appearance, how to create an edit pages, all the things I just mentioned, they have detailed guide chapters that tell you how to do these things in more detail if you want to read them. There's a community forum that we maintain and host. There is obviously on the community forum. There is a public section where anyone can post and answer questions. There's a specific group for press books clients. These are the people that are network managers. And this is a space for you to talk with other network managers. Sometimes the questions you have aren't support questions. There are more questions about how do I do this as a publishing program how do I do this as a, how do I approach this thing generally. We want this space to be a place where you can give and receive mutual aid and talk to one another. If you aren't a part of this space and want to be let us know and what happily add you there. And that's a place that you can go to talk with peers. So that's linked here. We also have a series of free webinars that we offer an ongoing basis. This links to the webinars page on our website and you can see what's coming up in the next few months. So you'll see we've got a getting started session next week at advanced session the week after another getting started another event session in May, and there will be occasional kind of one offs for network managers and other things scheduled in the future. The final thing you'll see is if you are a hosted network with us, we provide premium support to our network managers, and this link will take you directly to just send us an email and file your question or support. So that's the big change we made for network managers. It's this dashboard and these menu links here. I'm going to pause and take any questions. Okay, so my big question for you is network managers are what's missing. Is there anything that you really need or want to have that you don't have now that would make your life as a network manager easier. Do you think it's something later, please do let us know. Nothing would make me happier than to know that we built something that met your needs I mean that sincerely. Let's go back into the screen share and I'll show you a couple other changes that have made that have happened so this is a change that's not just for network managers this is a change for all users of press books. It's this top nav bar here. We have cleaned up and simplified it. If you are a member of a one or more books you'll see your books in a list here, and this will take you directly to the dashboard of a book that you are a user in. And you can do all of the book level things here. You'll see a similar dashboard appears for all users of the book that tells them what they can do and a simplified menu with new icons over here. The changes we made to the top dashboard we made it larger and a bit more visible, and we added some permanent buttons that you can access anywhere from the from the press fix interface. Before it was a little confusing if you wanted to make a new book or clone a book you didn't always know where to go. So now there is a user dashboard, new users will see this when they log in. They will see an invitation to create a book or adapt a book, and they will also see permanent buttons here to create or clone books, if they have the permission to do this in the network, creating a book will just take you to the new clone page. Cloning a book will take you to our cloning page. And if you hadn't seen before, we've got this new integration here that lets you search the directory. So if I were to search for human rights, I would see publicly available clone books I could clone, I could select a book for cloning and just clone it directly from the interface there. So that makes the adapting and cloning experience easier and more enjoyable. The last thing is if you are a network manager, you will see a button that lets you add users easily. This will just take you to a bulk add new user page where you provide a bunch of emails, and they will be added to your network as regular users. This is a new feature. So we had bulk add users at the book level, but we didn't have it at the network level. We added this because networks managers sometimes wanted to add 30 people at once for a training session. And this is a way to just do that on mass and send them all email invitations so that when they log in, they would come to see a new page or menu that looks like this. And then as we've simplified and kind of changed a little bit of how your profile picture appears, this will show you your gravitar image if you have one, and there's a link here where you can edit and update your profile. You can add your name. You can add information about yourself. You don't have to add any of this, but this will be used in your individual books as part of your bio or your profile. You can take a little bit of time and some steps if you want to be displaying information about yourself elsewhere in the site. So that's what's happened and changed for the dashboard here. Yeah, there's a question in the chat. What happens to the material created by individuals that no longer work at your institution, and you want to delete the inactive account. That's a great question. I believe your institution as a network manager, you have total power to remove their accounts, delete their accounts, update their email addresses, however you want to manage those users that's totally up to you. What will happen is you'll be invited to delete the user. And then when you delete the user, their content will remain on the network and tell and unless you decide to deactivate or delete it. I'll give you an example of that flow. If you want to see it, would that be helpful misty? And I can administer users here. So let's say who's someone who hasn't logged in for a long time. All right, my great. It's been three years since they've logged in. So I'm going to delete them from my network. There's a menu that makes it seem a little bit scary, but we don't actually delete the content, even if you say delete all content. So you can ignore this part of we can probably improve and change that you could, you can choose whatever you want. The book won't actually be deleted, but to be safe, I could say let's attribute all of their content to steal. And I'm going to say confirm deletion. This user has been deleted. So their users gone from my network. I could add them or sign them up again later. But the books that they created are still there. And if I wanted to delete a book, I'd have to come in here. So I think one of those books was called Liz something. So, okay, here's the Liz demo book. Let's say there's nobody left. There's still people left in this book, but I bet I can find a book that has no admin users. So let's find one that has nobody. And this book has nobody in it. This English composition book. So I think it's safe to delete. If I'm not sure I can deactivate it, which means it's only visible to me as a network manager but it's for all intents and purposes gone so I can just do this and deactivate it. It's going to ask me are you sure and I see it. I want to deactivate this book. You'll see it with this kind of red highlighting which shows me that it's deactivated. If I'm really ready to permanently delete it, let's go ahead and permanently delete it. It asked me to confirm and that book is gone. So that's how you can remove users and remove books or content from your network if you want to do that. The second question I saw was, it's interesting that create and clone adapt are featured so prominently on the user dashboard. So yes, I'm in the three most common things that people will do. If they are new users or network managers, they often want to make new books or clone books. And then once they've made a book, this is where usually they're going most often.  So those three options should be visible and kind of apparent at all times from your dashboard so that you don't have to dig and hunt to find it. We also thought many people were finding they wanted to make a new book or clone a book, but they didn't automatically think to look at my books because they hadn't done it yet.  So that was one of the changes we made to support that. Cheryl asked, do deactivated books count toward the tier pricing totals. I don't know, John, do you know the answer to that I don't think they do but john might know. So no in in our dashboard. When a book is deactivated. It doesn't we don't count it in our dashboard it's still on your network but we don't count it towards the tier. Thanks john and Cheryl hope that answered your question so you don't have to permanently delete if you want to not count it towards a tier limit that you can just deactivate the book. All right, those are the big ones that's what we spent most of our time working on. There's a handful of assorted bug fixes and other things that we shipped and released a kind of smaller one but that you might have noticed is if you are displaying books in a catalog on your site. I'll give you just a second to show you what I mean by this. Everybody who has a precipice network has the ability to showcase books on their homepage, and we have a new rebuilt catalog, where you can display and customize your individual catalog here. Well there was a bug before where we weren't breaking, we were breaking words in weird places so like this might say non dash TRAD and then it would just go to the next line with traditional. We just changed the styling so that words break at a more logical place here. We're not doing a lot of hyphenation but we're just breaking it so that a word doesn't suddenly break in the middle of the word for these display things. If there are other little tweaks or things that you've noticed about your catalog that aren't working as expected. Please let us know and we're, I mean this is a relatively new feature and we've tried to catch and fix most of the bugs that we're aware but if there are small residual things please do let us know and we'll fix them as quickly as we can. So I've been talking to you in the past several meetings about the question of discoverability. And what we mean by that is, when you publish a book, you've made a book public, but attracting people to it or letting them know that this is a different challenge. So there's several things that press books does or can do to help you achieve your publishing aims. The first thing that we do is we add relevant metadata and micro data in ways that conform with broadly accepted open media standards. So we use Dublin core metadata and schema dot org metadata and attach it to the book and chapter level, based on what you've provided in your book info page. That really helps for search engines for Google and anybody else who's looking on the web to say, Oh, this book has good metadata, and it can be used by search and other kind of providers. Another thing we've done is add the catalog that we give you the network link so you can showcase your books. And the third thing that we do is we collect the open metadata for all open access books and display it in the press books directory. And we know that there are other places that people want their books to be discovered. So many of you list your books other places, some of you take them to institutional repositories. Some of you list them in the open education works library. And there are in the library world I would say probably two really big discovery service provider companies, there's EBSCO and there's ex Libris. Both of them maintain large discovery tools and databases that academic libraries frequently subscribed to and provide access to. So over the past several months we've been talking to both of those companies and in this last month we announced a partnership with EBSCO where we are providing metadata from the press books directory at no cost to EBSCO and EBSCO is ingesting it into its discovery tools. We described it here on our blog and you can read more about it there if you like. Basically what happened was the product manager at EBSCO was a former press book network manager. She'd use press books you love press books you from mountainhood community college here in Oregon, and she said she came to us and said, we have this tool called faculty select that's designed to help faculty choose free or low cost material for textbooks in their course. Obviously for that tool to be more effective we want as many free and open license books as possible in that. How can we get books in the press books directory into this discovery tool. And so we had a conversation about that, and it resulted in a partnership between our two organizations where we're providing them with regular dumps of the press books directory metadata, and they have now included in their discovery tools. If you don't want your books to be included in these other discovery tools, then the simple thing is to opt out of inclusion in the directory, or to make the book private or those kinds of things but generally speaking when people publish a book and make it public with metadata. The idea is that many days open and can be consumed hopefully by people who use the interoperable metadata standards and so we're trying to improve that. The number one piece of feedback I heard from other people is, that's great but we don't use that scope we use ex Libris discovery tools what about that. And so we have been in conversation with ex Libris we're talking with them now. I think we would like to explore doing something similar with ex Libris, so that those of you who's use Alma or Primo as your discovery tool would have the same opportunity. I know that is there they were a little bit later to engage with us on that. But a lot of you have talked to them and have talked to us and so we're trying to do our part there. For those of you on the call who think a lot or care a lot about discoverability. How does that sound to you does that how would that meet your needs are their concerns questions things that you want or don't want out of those partnerships or discoverability relationships in the future. The library that has all my Primo. I'll just say at the University of Arizona we would be very interested in this. I think the ex Libris version of faculty select is called leganto, and I know as you has adopted that but we have not. So, my preference would be that this would be discoverable and Alma Primo rather than look on or maybe in addition to leganto. Yeah, that makes sense to me. Most everybody we talked to with ex Libris has been talking to us about Alma Primo first. So I don't know the answer to that I had my very first conversation with their product owner earlier this week. Things will take a little bit of time to get to like, I'm sure lawyers are going to have to drop an agreement, even though it's the non commercial deal but that's how companies work I think so we'll have to work through that and figure out questions about that. EBSCO is a paid service is that right. This is discoverability for some folks but not the open internet. I think so I'm not a, I'm not the world's expert on EBSCO and their products. EBSCO has the EDS discovery service and they have the faculty select product. I don't know if you have to be an EBSCO subscriber to use faculty select. So the librarians are saying yes. So in these particular cases, the people who benefit from inclusion and faculty select are subscribers to faculty select. It doesn't impact like prospect directory is still free and you can still discover it there. This is just the open metadata is flowing into a proprietary discoverability tool I think that's the case for both ex Libris and EBSCO. I don't, I don't know the politics of library discoverability and the degree to which there's a open source self hosted alternative. If there is one and you use it and you want us to send metadata to them, I would have no problem doing that. So far, I've heard it. They're not paying us. They're not paying us anything and we're not. This is totally not commercial. So we did this described in our blog but we're, this is open metadata and our feeling is it should be open metadata. So, Nick, I believe so, but that's a good, my understanding is that going in the EDS, which is the EBSCO discovery service layer and EBSCO faculty select is probably the primary product that it's or collection is being included. So those other questions about what EBSCO, what services and products that plan to put in. I don't know the specific answer to that we could find out or you could ask EBSCO directly. Here's the blog post that I mentioned earlier. That's basically everything I know about it. I'm not, I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know the EBSCO product space as well as any other precipice product space. All right, so that's what I wanted to share with the discoverability and what's coming. Cheryl, thanks for your input about the ex Libris world. Is there anyone else that has feelings or thoughts about and a potential ex Libris partnership or what you would or would not want out of a relationship going forward. Yeah, Liz, thank you. Okay. All right, so the next things I want to kind of give you a sense of, I gave you a preview of, I think that we're going to be exploring partnerships with other discoverability tools. We really want to be guided by you on this. I have heard from more people there are more people that said, This is nice EBSCO but I actually want ex Libris than I heard saying, Yeah, EBSCO so I want to make this a comparison about which vendor whatever but what I'm hearing from EBSCO so far is this news sounds really nice but can I have it for the product that we pay for and we use. So we're trying and we'll do our best there. If you have other questions or objections or concerns or things you want to air with me in private, you, I think you know where to reach me I'm always willing to listen and discuss that honestly. The other things I think we're thinking about doing are, we'd like to build some more analytics and more exportable data for you as network managers. So I have a little bit of what I have in mind and I can kind of show you and talk you through it, and then you can tell me whether that sounds great and what sounds not so great and if you want to see other things that we're not providing. So what we provide right now for network managers is largely kind of on this stats page. So you'll see here. I'll show you for example network you can see users over time books over time. You've revisions made over the last period network storage and most clone books. The first thing that I'd like to do that I've heard from you is you love these charts but they're not very shareable with its leaders at your institution. So what we're considering doing would be let's say you wanted to show the story of growth from pandemic growth or something like that we'll say let's start with January 2020. I'm going to go January 2020 to the present. Here's the story of usage. We started with just six users and here we are at 60. What I want to what I'm going to like to give you is for each of these visualizations the download CSV option. So you can download the underlying data and look at it presented display it to shape stakeholders and other people at your institution. So we'd like to try to add download CSV buttons for all of the existing graphs and charts. That's one change we want to make based on feedback from you. The other thing that we'd like to do is, as you know, in press books you have the analytics. You have these cocoa analytics that we provide detailed pay view information for your homepage, and each book has its own dashboard. You can get a roll up view if you use Google analytics, but we don't give you tools right now to get a roll up view for everything on your network but out visiting the dashboards one by one. That can be a little bit tedious. So our plan is on this on, let's see, let me go back on this page what we'd like to provide for you is a new input where you can put a start date and date, and there can be a download CSV button. And what it will do is it will download roll up stats that will include visitors, page views and book downloads for every book on your network. I'm going to show you an example, but I think what I'm going to do is stop screen sharing before I do so that. Yeah, great question. So for right now, it's just total downloads. Would you want them perform at what would you want? Yeah, okay, so I'll make a note that's in the you're interested in. Simon, I'm not sure we don't we don't make delivery day promises but this is at the top of our backlog and it's something we're planning to work on in our next sprint starting in April. So you'll, you'll, if we do make progress on it have something, hopefully they'll have an update to share at the April product update, and maybe it'll even be production by then but I can't promise. I know that it's important to us. I want to make sure that what we're doing is things that are important to you I've heard from many people that these are what they want most other other things or ideas that you have that come to mind. Data that would be helpful for you to understand the impact of your publishing program or make a case to people who fund your program that this is working in matters to you. Right, quiet group so if you do think something elsewhere and want to share please do. I'm always interested to hear that and the earlier we hear the better we can plan and build those things. Some other things that are on our kind of future horizon. We want to make improvements to our how we handle math and other scientific notation. In particular we have a math jacks integration that's a few years old that could use a refresh and update. So instead of features related to that that we want to improve but chief among them is, we want to improve support for types of syntax delimiters. Right now we make people do a little bit of a cumbersome step if you want the math to be included properly in your export formats, we make you use a custom press book shortcode. I think tech authors aren't accustomed to doing that don't like doing that and it's a bit of a fine replaced mess. So we'd like to fix that, as well as make a series of kind of more detailed improvements that will raise Jonathan's eyebrows. I think he's probably the only person on the call that's really deep into this, and I will carry on that conversation outside the call with him. But if you have users that are advanced stem authors or math writers, please do feel free to put them in touch with me. We're going to get a kind of group advisory group of power math users to make sure that what we build satisfies their needs, as we start this work. And then we also have some improvements to the results for our best product on the docket, we want to make sure that it's working reliably and consistently and the user experiences smooth and great for everybody. So that's what's coming for us next. Any questions for me about the product or what we're working on it. And why. Thank you everybody for joining us at the March precipice product update. We'll see you again in April and until then thank you for all you do to support publishing at your various institutions and organizations.