Last week, as we all know, no matter your politics or your level of attention as such matters, it really was a bit of a nail-biter for everybody. One of the major reasons that we move the summit from October, where it traditionally is and will be in future years, too, after the election, is because we didn't want to spend two days talking about what's going to happen in two weeks. You know, we wanted to get past the election and get a little bit of clarity and really try to get a sense and understanding of who's going to control this town and what does that mean. And particularly, we wanted to pay attention to what does, what does this all mean for creative communities and for cultural policy. Superficially, it may seem that not a lot has changed, but there's always more than each more than meets the eye with stuff like technology and cultural policy today. We're going to take a big picture view with our big thinkers. You like that? Big thinkers. Who will talk about how artists and policy wonks can help shape government and public policy for the benefit of the nation. We're thrilled to have with us today best-selling author, Thomas Frank, Sasha Meinrath, the director of New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute and artist musician, Rebecca Gates. Thanks, guys. So just, just, just weighed right into it. Is that the idea? Stand at the podium or no? Podium? No, I just did. All right, we'll do, we'll do a proper panel discussion here. First, all those people in the hall, get in here. What are you doing? They're not even paying attention. All right, so I'm not exactly a freelance writer anymore. I'm a columnist for Harper's Magazine. And before that, I was a columnist for the Wall Street Journal. And these are about, you know, two of the best jobs you can get in the dwindling field of, you know, journalism, the, you know, quickly collapsing field that I work in. But there's a lot of useful comparisons, nevertheless, between, you know, the world that I work in and the world of music. I remember when I started in journalism back in the 1990s, a bunch of my friends worked at a magazine in Chicago called In These Times. Do y'all remember this? In These Times. And we're, I saw a bunch of them the other day and we were talking about back in those days the barriers to entry in journalism were, you know, were so huge that even a magazine like that could, you know, had this long line of authors standing outside the door waiting to get published. And today, of course, there's no barriers to entry at all or very, very few.  I don't know if you've heard of them, their laptops or, you know, these smartphones that people have. You see people with them all the time. And I'm making a joke, folks. There's no barriers to entry at all. But there's also, it's also really damn hard to make a living at it. And I speak as someone who's, you know, worked at these publications where they built the paywall and then, you know, fought with the audience over this and that and, but the social conditions that, you know, while the barriers to entry have fallen, the social conditions that used to prop up journalism all over America have basically, you know, disappeared. It's very difficult to earn a living as a journalist, you know, outside of one of the big nationally known publications. And, you know, just look around at the Midwest where the ground is strewn with corpses of dead newspapers. The, in fact, the last time I spoke on a panel in this room, it was at this very table, we talked about the future of journalism and the only sort of, you know, ironic the future of journalism. And now I'm here to talk about, pretend I know something about the future of music. The future of journalism as I saw it then was the only sort of hope on the horizon. I mean, there were a lot of good ideas out there, but none of them had a, you know, had a prayer of being enacted, you know, specifically what I'm talking about are various kinds of subsidies for newspapers. And that's never happened and probably never will happen. But the one thing that has happened is you have these sort of would-be William Randolph Hearst types all over America snapping up, you know, dying newspapers and using them just as a platform for their editorial voice. So the entire news-gathering operation has just become this support mechanism for, you know, a publisher that wants to spread the gospel according to Ein Rand, you know, or something like that. Look, subsidies for newspapers or for journalism are off the table these days, but should you want to play in some kind of edgy indie rock festival, you've got, I think, more opportunities today than ever before. If you're not interested in getting paid, you remember when we were young, when I was young anyways, punk rock was this kind of unthinkable abomination. You guys remember those days? I'm talking like in the 1970s, the early 1980s. Today, every city in America wants a piece of that action, okay? I'm from Kansas City. They had, we had one of those edgy indie rock festivals that have been springing up all over the country. We've got one there now. The mayor of Kansas City came and spoke at it, right? This has been unthinkable when I was a child. I mean, today, your edgy indie rock festival is subsidized by your local chamber of commerce, right? The federal government itself is keen to arrange some kind of support from the various foundations and Wall Street banks. Now, we all know what I'm talking about here, the sort of strategy for using vibrancy to make cities more desirable, encourage economic recovery. Wait, I should stop.  Dive in on some kind of, dive in on a little bit. This is going to get really controversial in a second. Oh, that's fine. And I have a feeling that I'm going to, okay. Cut to the controversial part. Look, I don't, I'm very much in favor of government funding for the arts, right? I'm, I get sentimental about the WPA. I went to an elementary school built by the WPA, as a matter of fact. And I love those, you know, murals in the post offices all across the Midwest. I love that kind of stuff.  It, what this, the reason I don't like it is because it reduces art to artists and specifically to, to, you know, the hipster, right? That's the, that's the product that everybody's after. You know, this, I'm trying to read my own handwriting here. This is a kind of, of, you know, journalism is an adversarial practice that no politician on earth wants to subsidize. But hipsterism is a kind of pseudo adversarial practice that everybody wants to throw money at, you know. Now the problem with it is that it's, in my view, well, aggressively banal. Look, it's gonna fail as an urban renewal strategy for a bunch of reasons, because it's based on bad data and because it's based on the sort of zero sum idea that cities can compete with one another and that'll somehow build up the whole, you know. And this doesn't work. It doesn't work when you, when states try to, you know, cut taxes and lure businesses from Kansas to Missouri or something like that. And it doesn't work when they build rival fake Bohemias either. But what, the reason it will, I mean, it'll also fail as a strategy for producing good art.  You know, there's, I don't know if a single person that thinks that's why they went into doing what they do or why that's, you know, that that's the way they wanna spend their lives. So this, this way, according to this way of looking at art and music, it's about the, it's not about the art itself, it's about the scene, right? The art lifestyle. Art is an act that we put on for the business class, you know, these sort of creative japes that we do in order to make, you know, Indianapolis seem like a more desirable place to live than Akron or something like that. And the only good thing that I can think of about, I mean, look, it supports a lot of friends of mine and it's made lots of areas more livable and all that sort of thing. But it might finally, I think, turn people's, turn people against the conquest of cool, which has been going on for such a long time. When you use government power, say eminent domain or, you know, TIF districts or something like that to push out blue collar workers and turn their neighborhood over to, you know, theater majors on the ground that you're going to build the next Wicker Park this way. That's when even the theater majors themselves will finally say they've had enough of this and sign up for the backlash, I hope. All right, I'm gonna build, try and, I don't know what to speak to in all of that. Maybe you just spin it out. Just ignore it and go on. Well, I mean, one of the things that's interesting is, so I played to a little background. I started playing music full time in 1993, I guess. It started in 91, quit doing it full time in 2001 and now veer back and forth between sort of sound art, arts production and then I'm working on a record and touring and doing that right now. So it's in the forefront of my practice. But part of one of my artistic interests is land arts and one of the things you think of is like public space, public art. Also, how do you light up actual physicalities? How do you light up city? So it's part of that is of interest to me is as a musician, like as an in this culture of music, there's a lot of things that we're asked to represent. There's a lot of different ways of defining yourself as a working artist, as an artist in general, as a musician. And so what's been interesting to me is to work with colleagues and think how can not only we build a vocabulary and build tools so that we actually have an attempt at some sort of robust practice, whatever form we want that to take in the current environment, both in terms of public policy and in terms of tech. And then also as creative people or as musicians are speaking for myself, what's my role in my community and what can I help light up in terms of issues that I think are important or in terms of infrastructure. And also, how can we start moving artists out of what Tom just talked about in terms of you're only interesting to the public sector if you're available for a benefit or if you're only available to present a certain kind of cool, a presenter of marketable codification of like what the success of a city is, et cetera. And it's just ground zero and there's so much work in so many areas to just explore in terms of developing that vocabulary. So what's interesting to me is thinking in terms of what is the musician as an active citizen look like. And there's so many answers and there's not a lot of answers right now. So one of the things is how do you step outside of that definition of this is who you are and whether that's someone coming from a tech position or a business position and saying this is our service. It is the only service that really needs to exist and we will make sure that our service is what is paramount and then you will feed us and you'll feed into our service and actually say, no, can we turn that around? So it would, and can we just say we need delivery platforms. We need to be active citizens in our community. We need to make sure that we're represented and that our interests are represented. So, you know, it's a lot for me and what's compelling is there is the grayscale and nuance and complexity and something that I think there's a lot of, to use the I word, a lot of innovation happening on all levels in design and in tech that, well, you know, I think Sasha might be able to speak to that but that is actually a really interesting time. And so it's trying to, one of the things that's compelling to me is to think like what is the shape of the musician who chooses to activate and be active and advocate in their community. It's not saying that everyone should. So bridging from the conquest of cool into actual like technology. Total uncool, that's right. It's actually very cool, it's punk. Sure, so let me maybe bookend this by taking up this notion of the role of the active citizen. I work here inside the belly of the beast every day. I work with Congress folks and White House folks and various government officials and various agencies. And it's an interesting time. It's an incredibly interesting time, not because we've actually won anything. I think actually we've got sort of triumphalism run amuck here in DC right now. We have a lot of high-minded rhetoric and almost no meaningful action. And what I look to is all this is then this opportunity for the kind of change that we've been told is coming imminently any moment just tomorrow. And that meaningful change will never happen without an activated cudgel-wielding citizenry that's holding people accountable.  And what we've seen is a whole lot of simulacra, approximations of democracy without actually getting democratic processes in place. We have multi-stakeholderism run amuck in terms of endless deliberation but not decision-making across a variety of different sectors. And in tech and telecom and media this is probably one of the most egregiously stagnant areas of national decision-making. No one really knows what to do with these problems and they are serious conundrums of no simple answers that are guaranteed to disrupt some incredibly powerful entrenched lobbies to get addressed. And that's a real problem if you are an elected official in the current state of democracy in America. And so I think in some ways the public sector has granted this free pass for the last four years to the Democratic administration and that needs to end. I think without the kind of watchdogging that we absolutely need to do that it's our responsibility to be doing our government and the processes of democracy become increasingly distorted. So they become less accountable they become less accessible in a lot of ways. They become much less diverse in terms of their thoughts and actions. The notions of how you solve problems narrows to the point of being absolutely ludicrously dumbfoundingly oversimplified. And they become more ossified and that leads to economic as well as cultural stagnation which I fear is where we're heading in coming years. And so there's this desperate need for key decision-makers to be held accountable in order to address certain fundamental problems. And I'll point to just three and then stop. Let's assume for a moment we're successful in bridging the digital divide that we have broadband access, affordable broadband access and adoption of broadband across, not just the country but across the globe. Today we look at things like Pandora and this is not to poo-poo Pandora but rather to say we look to that as the solution for copyright problems that are deeply entrenched. And I'll tell you right now, if we are successful in bridging the digital divide, Pandora will not solve this fundamental problem. It won't solve it because most people on the planet simply can't afford Pandora. The lower two, three quintiles of everyone on the planet can't afford that business model. And so what happens in that kind of environment? Well, you have piracy that makes the piracy that exists today look like child's play. And I don't see anyone addressing that reality that the successes that we're striving to achieve as a society create new profound problems that are far worse than what we face today. A second issue is the lockdown of technologies, the elimination of our rights as end users and participants in media production and consumption whereby the features and functions of our technologies are becoming increasingly limited in what we can do.  And it makes me bonkers. The fact that I have to jailbreak my cell phones and eliminate windows from my laptops to get the features and function that I want is crazy. And these limiters on what we can do and produce are ever increasing and they're happening behind the scenes in a way that we don't even realize that that's happening. And third, I want to point to this notion of the rise of an intranet era. That when everyone's communicating and has the capacity on their cell phones to communicate in a peer to peer direct manner that that creates new perturbations. It disrupts all entrenched media. It disrupts the broadcast media in particular. And I think it harkens the end of an entire broadcast era that we've been living through for the last 7,500 years. And again, there's no processes or protocols or regulations or mandates overseeing what this should look like, how to make these transitions happening. And they are inevitable, but these are transitions that will either be incredibly disruptive or could be graceful if key decision makers are informed, make the right choices now. And that will only happen if all of you get involved. All right, see you guys later. Well, I have a couple of questions for both of you. One is we spoke, there's implicit, it seems, is some disappointment in the past four years and what shape can at least the next four years take. Two, is it safe to assume that cultural affairs are part of a government and civic mandate? And three, as these sort of red arrow areas are identified as sort of agreed to go on points of strategy, what is the role of it? What would be helpful in terms of musicians stepping into their communities and activating that change and helping with that strategy? You can answer, any of those are none. I'll talk about cultural mandates because I think this is important in terms of the trajectory that we're on as a country. So we're going through the beginnings, the initial perturbations of fiscal austerity in this country. And so it's gonna become a question of societal norms as to what are we going to cut? And I think like be Athens, don't be Sparta. How about we cut corporate welfare? I think there's a lot of things that can be cut. I worry that the things that are gonna get cut are cultural fair first, not things like military spending. And we know like, when we harken back and think about like the cradle of democracy, we're not thinking in terms of a militaristic Sparta, we're thinking about the cultural flourishing that came out of Athens. And in a society whereby we forego cultural fair, I think we inevitably end up on a footing that throughout all of human history has always led to the downfall of an empire. Yeah, it's important to subsidize the art, but it should be, to subsidize art, but it should be done for the subsidize art for art's sake rather than for to build real estate values or something. By the way, so I wrote this essay and I was in Kansas City, I was visiting my family in Kansas City and Kansas City has a very active sort of art support community foundations, various people somewhere in between government in the private sector and they're very successful. And then in the state, this is Kansas City's in Missouri, the state of Kansas has just finished abolishing their arts agency. They're going in completely the other direction. And I interviewed, as it happens, both the head of the Kansas, the now defunct Kansas arts agency and then the people in Kansas City, Missouri who were so subsidizing the arts in this really dramatic way on the same day. And I talked to both of them on the same day and it was, it really, it opens your eyes. The thing is that I'm, while I, the people who have, in the state of Kansas with this, they're great distrust for the arts and they're dislike for artists as a class going in the other direction as the rest of America. But they're doing this other thing, right?  I believe it's nothing now. And I believe Koch Industries counts as a small business. I mean, basically anybody can. And they're expecting this to just, they're going to absolutely destroy the economy of Kansas City, Missouri by bringing everybody over to Kansas and then Kansas City, Missouri is like, oh yeah, well we're subsidizing the arts. So, you know, it's a shame to see the arts become a pawn in that sort of game. But at the same time, you do want it to happen. Well, I mean, one of the things is, are we using outdated language? I mean, are we using this binary language and are we actually, there's actually legacy and science and art of a combination with Bell Labs, DOD, ends up bringing in high talent, actually funding. This NASA has funded a lot of development. And I'm not saying it's all, I mean, I don't even know, I'm just throwing it out there because I think that a lot of times we get stuck in this kind of, here's artists, a pro artist, what if you just like, are we moving into an era? The things you just described are these are, when we're living in, we're still living in the age of the untrammeled corporation, whether we like it or not. When you have a leveraged buyout or a corporate takeover, what's the first thing they get rid of? It's always R&D, always. So the things that you just described, this is like, this is what gets pitched, you know. And it's what society always decides it can't afford, is that sort of thing. But then again, you know, look, the 19, I was about to say, no one is really interested in funding, a public funding of some kind of genuinely adversarial project.  That's from Outlayers, yeah. Sorry? I mean, that's the definition of Outlayer coming in, right? Yeah, as I've learned, to my cost. But it is interesting that in our society, it's normative, right? We understand and appreciate as a society, whether we agree with the policy or not, that cutting corporate tax rates somehow is gonna have this benefit. You never hear anyone talking. This might go to the language. No one ever says like, maybe artists shouldn't pay taxes, right, I mean like, that would be a direct and quantifiable subsidy. I already tried that, right? There was legislation in Canada that was defeated last week about, for there was giving artists break on taxes as a small business and as a contribution to society, yeah. And American exceptionalism, of course, holds that like, for some reason, we could never... We put artists in jail. We build special prisons for artists. That's what we do here. That's our cultural policy. We should. No. Not compared to most of the world. We actually have a lot of space to move. But it is an interesting thing, thinking in terms of strategy and speaking to the next four years. I bet people have questions. Yes, you know, based on Joel Pomerance and I'm on the board of the Songwriters' Association of Washington. And I just, you know, I hope to run a space right now in Tacoma Park. It's got some organizational issues and probably will be soon closing called The Electric Made. But basically, we have been, our mission was to sort of be a community, a footprint for community development and against gentrification. And whenever we have tried to speak out, people love to come to our artist events and different people from the community and, you know, our music. But when we try to speak out against the gentrification of the neighborhood and the large-scale commercial business that might be displacing the small entrepreneurial stores in the area, it's like crickets chirping, complete silence. We can't get any political traction in the neighborhood and we end up building an enmity towards our space, which I find is very, we're trying to go against the grain and it's a great problem for us.  It was the Defense Department and a major defense contractor, SAIC, came in and did a video on problems of military youth and decision-making of teenage military children, but it's only gonna be seen by, like, the children of active duty military, you know? And it's like, no, we will not post that online, even though we made it in your space. Oh, it's like very interesting. Welcome to Washington, D.C. Now, that's an unexplored avenue, right? Where how can you get some alliances with the Pentagon? You know what I'm saying? We have a question in the back. Just a thought sped by the comment about the Canadian changing policy. There are kind of policy obstacles which could be removed to create more space, to create more musical activity, more artistic activity. In the UK, they've recently changed the licensing laws to allow for a greater level of live music. Going into the history of that, you know, live music died in the UK in the 70s or 80s due to licensing that was brought in at that stage, making the physical space constrained and it's better to have DJs rather than real-life people playing. Actions like that could be a great help here. These subsidies in Canada, if you buy an album by a Canadian artist, you'll probably see a grand messier the government Quebec was because they subsidize the production of albums. They have subsidies for touring. Some of these things do exist at the local level here as well, there are Virginia artist touring grants, Maryland touring grants, but they're kind of fairly hidden, they're very partial and specific and you've got to have a PhD in artist grants to be able to even understand the website usually. So there's a few things there which I would love for the future of music coalition or other interested parties to be working on to remove the restrictive policies that do exist already to some extent. That's a great point. Yeah, I would add to that. Got a session. My experience in terms of I founded an all ages performance venue about 12, 13 years ago now and we had to go through obviously insane amounts of licensure and permitting and et cetera from our municipal side of things but where we really ran a muck was ASCAP. And ASCAP decided that the all ages performance venue if we wanted to put sound into the public spaces of the venue including the lobby. Well, the lobby was shared with the United States Postal Service and decided that everyone that came through that lobby was therefore a listener and so instead of having like five people listening to the music which is as an independent alternates place that's pretty good. You had like 5,000 people coming through on a daily basis and that of course meant that our rates were jacked up so it became impossible to not hemorrhage money at that point. And so thus ensued a multi month battle with ASCAP. And so I'm pointing out that in essence a lot of our structures and licensure and et cetera are mixed up and dysfunctional from a variety of different facets or variety of different perspectives. And they clearly need to be radically overhauled if we're going to continue to support arts and cultural fair in the 21st century. I have a question back here. Thanks. For Thomas Frank, I liked your comment about adversarial art not really being funded by patronage, by government at least. So I'm curious if you have any observations on what mechanisms you think are best suited for more adversarial or challenging art you might be able to actually look at the example of punk rock to kind of maybe make a connection. I admit this is a bit of a leading question. You know, I would think of my own experience. It wasn't exactly art, but we did sort of creative journalism, you know, to coin a phrase back in the 90s at the Baffler magazine. We were never subsidized. We never got grant number one, nothing ever. We were, this is gonna make you laugh. I always wondered if it was because of the way I dressed or something like that. But we were never, no one ever thought that we were a boon to the neighborhood. We were in, you know, where Hyde Park is in Chicago. We were one south of that. We were in Woodlawn. No one ever thought that we were a boon to the Woodlawn neighborhood. People thought we were a blight. Yeah. And so maybe it would have been different if I had a different hairdo or something like that. I don't know. I never could figure it out. But at the end of the day, I did, I kept doing what I did.  Things worked out very well for me. I was a columnist at the Wall Street Journal, for God's sakes. Doing, bringing my message of hate and despair to the, you know, and I was subsidized by Rupert Murdoch, you know. So, but the funny thing is that I didn't really, my message did not really change as far as I can tell from the Baffler days to the Rupert Murdoch days.  Oh, am I allowed to say that at your conference? No? Excuse me, I'm really sorry about that. So, look, this is something we could talk about for hours and hours and hours. This is a, it's a really involved, complicated subject that I wrote a book in 1997 called The Conquest of Cool about our society's love affair. And I mean by our society, I mean from the top down, from the very wealthy commercial world love affair with outward, the sort of outward signifiers of rebellion, you know, and this has been going on ever since the 1960s, maybe longer than that. But what our society thinks of actual, you know, social critique or really meaningful cultural critique is something completely different. That's something that might succeed on its own merits and might fail, but that no one is gonna subsidize. What are your experiences? Copyright has an important part in it.  And look, you're, I've always been torn by this. I want my, what I write to reach the largest possible audience.  But on the other hand, I wanna get paid. You know, I have a family, I've gotta make money.  So it's a, you know, this is a huge problem that I can't solve in the remaining 15 seconds left to me by Mr. Bracey here. Sadly, we need to bring this conversation to a close. One thing I will flag, I think one theme I heard from all of you is the need for data and metrics and research and an understanding of how this stuff fits together. And I think one of the things that you chose not to speak to, but I'll take the moment to speak to, is I think the administration in the first term has done a very, very important job and a very interesting job in terms of recognizing the need for data and a deeper understanding of how policies are made across the administration, whether it's transportation policy, education policy, health insurance, urban development, how all those things do have an impact on art and culture and vice versa. That these things are, you know, kind of really deeply connected. And I think we're gonna have a panel later today. We're gonna hear from HUD, we're gonna hear from NEA about kind of what they're doing with research, how they're thinking about this stuff. And hopefully we're moving towards an era where the policy community can really have a deeper understanding and a deeper quantifiable understanding of how this stuff works and the impact that their investments can have in art and culture in ways that are sustainable and not just propping up hipsters, right? Great, thank you guys very much. And we'll be back with the webcast and panel.


Okay, I just want to read from Romans chapter 8. Okay, Romans chapter 8 and verse 15 and verses 15 and 16, says, For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, Abba Father. The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. If indeed we suffer with them that we may also be glorified together. So it says that talking about the Holy Spirit's work in our heart in our life says you did not receive the spirit of bondage. So who is the Holy Spirit? Just the opposite of that. He's the spirit of liberty, is the spirit of truth. So we know that when we say a spirit of bondage, when we give a name like that, it leads into prison like situations, right? It leads to imprisonment. But this Holy Spirit, he is a spirit of liberty. And because the scripture talks about how where the spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. So you can expect liberty and freedom in our spirit, in our life, with the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Then he says that he's a spirit of adoption by whom we cry out Abba Father, right? He brings us to that. He gives us that reassurance in our heart. No one needs to reason and give any logic and reason and great theological input to say that you're child of God, right? You know deep within because of the work of the Holy Spirit. And it says here, the spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, right? So there is a transfer of revelation. There is a transfer of information, right? From the heart of God, from the spirit of God to our spirit. And that is something that you know that we need to welcome, right? The spirit bears witness with our spirit. Even as we go through life and just welcome and invite the Holy Spirit to bear witness with our spirit. Here it talks about how he bears witness with our spirit to say that we are children of God. But the Holy Spirit can bear witness in many other things as well, right? He can give that that proof or that confidence or the reassurance bearing witness with our spirit, right? So today I just thought, you know, we could just pray and say, invite the Holy Spirit and say, Lord, you bear witness with my spirit, right? On all those things that I need to understand, all those things that I need to receive, things that are shaky and things that need to be strengthened, Holy Spirit, you bear witness with my spirit, right? Okay, let's pray. Father, we thank you, Lord. Thank you that, Lord, Spirit of God, that you are the Spirit of where you are. There is freedom, liberty, Spirit of truth, Spirit of revelation and wisdom.  Lord, you are here to teach and guide and lead us into all truth. And Lord, today we ask, Lord, that you would bear witness with our spirit, Father God, that you would bear witness in our hearts, Father God, that we are heirs and children of God and Lord, in all other areas that we need that reassurance today. In all other areas of our life, Lord, that we where we need that revelation, Father God, and Spirit of God, we invite you. You speak to our hearts and let there be an impartation today. We thank you, Lord. In Jesus' matchless name, we pray. Amen. Amen. Okay. Okay, where did we stop? I think we kind of cancel two classes. We had to developing leaders. So we looked at what to look for, right? We looked at some of those attributes. Okay. Okay, so when we look at these attributes, it seems like a very long list. And sometimes we wonder, you know, will we find anyone who will fit all these things, will have all these characters. But it's a good checklist for us to have to see if, you know, people aren't wearing degrees of development in this, right? So certain things like, okay, maybe they're not good nurturers, they're not, you know, at least some percentage, they have a heart for it. They don't know how, maybe it's good to have that. It's good to see that and then raise the others. And also this list serves for us also as a checklist. You know, do I see these qualities in me, right? Or do I see something of this, which is not there? Do I see the opposite of this in my life, right? Am I aligned to the vision of the place where I'm ministering?  Do I have spiritual and emotional maturity? You know, am I responsible, right? You know, would I appoint myself as a leader? Would I take myself as a leader in my team, right? If I were to come and approach me, would I take myself as a leader, right? If not, why? What are those characteristics which are missing and which need to be developed? Okay, so let's look at the whole process of nurturing leaders. Okay, now if we can say, okay, this is a process. We see these qualities and, you know, is there a timeline and is there a process? Okay, so we can kind of divide that into several stages. One is the preparation stage. Okay, so the preparation stages when one is sharing the vision. If you are raising up a leader, you are sharing the vision, right? Sharing the big picture. Okay, this is what we are doing as a ministry, as a church, as a team. This is what we are doing. This is how we are going to do these things. You know, you are sharing the values, you're sharing the culture and all that. You're taking time to do this. You know, many times what happens is, we give the person the job. Go get this done. Okay, do you have the tools for it? Yeah, go get it done. And very little of this, the big picture, right? What is the vision? Why are we doing this? Very little time is also spent in doing this. Of course, it differs from role to role. But when we share that vision, then the person understands this is why I'm doing it, right? So there won't be any unnecessary correction. The person understands it and goes about doing it, right? So we're also emphasizing character, responsibility and other things that we expect. So integrity and all those things. So this is the preparation stage. And it's important that we do this while we raise leaders. Then what we could call as the initial stage in the sense, you see that the person has got some skills, got the right attributes there, and then we give them the opportunity to step into a role as a leader. So here's the opportunity to do it. And of course, we have provided whatever guidance, whatever training, whatever equipping we have done that. At the same time, you're also involved in continuing to provide that. So the involvement is there. So practically, how would we do this? Maybe it can be like a feedback session, right? Okay, how was your day? Make a debriefing, right? How was your day? How did it go about? So you want to understand, you're observing from a distance, but at the same time, you're also interacting and receiving, okay, this is how it was done. This is how I did it and these are some mistakes and so on. So there's continuous guidance, training, equipping, etc. This is also a time when maybe there is an expansion of the team, okay? Because this person is raising up as a leader and as a leader, they are going to oversee some people. So we help them, help the leader or the potential leader to put together a team. I find others who can work alongside, okay? So because you as a leader will be able to spot others who have these qualities, so you bring them and you see how you can form the team so that this person can lead the team, right? Now, we're going to learn about teamwork. That is the third section, right? But we need to understand that within the team, there will be certain dynamics, like there will be initial stage of learning to work together, maybe an uncomfortable stage, maybe some human conflicts, personality-wise and so on. But they will learn to work together, they learn to resolve these things and also you are there to provide the guidance, right? Okay, this is something that should not be done. This is something that we don't value, okay? So you're able to provide them. Then there is a settling in stage. Settling in would mean that the leader starts functioning confidently. They are carrying out their role, they're carrying out their responsibility and they're able to make their own decisions for the team, right? They've reached a level of expertise and so then we can actually disengage. We don't have to be so involved, right? We don't have to be involved in the day-to-day. We can disengage and continue to give input, continue to receive feedback. Maybe it can be a weekly thing, maybe it can be a monthly thing where we sit and talk and see, okay, how things are, review things and share where they can make changes and so on, right? So this is a settling in stage, right? Then the growth stage where a leader is functioning well, the team is functioning well and they grow, okay? So the work is productive. It is not where it used to be, it has grown to another level, okay? So the leader is able to take it to another level. So here also as people who have raised up a leader, we are providing again a vision for the next level. It's a high-level vision, not getting involved in the minute things, minute operational things or decisions, okay? But again, it means that the person has grown to display certain things where you have the confidence, right? So you can release them to do that, okay? Maturity stage. Maturity stage is when the leader whom you have raised up is capable of raising up and is also raising up other leaders, right? Delegating other responsibilities. So the leader whom you raised up is raising up other leaders, right?  So we need to be careful, what is it that I'm, you know, what is it that I'm giving as input because that's going to be passed on, that's going to be affecting the next generation of leaders, right? So you be mindful of that, okay? So then again, a transition stage where maybe the leader has become, you know, it's kind of reached a plateau in their role and we can actually help them move into a next stage, maybe a new ministry, new role because they've raised up a lot of leaders, right, to fit in that and then the team is functioning well. So, want to switch on the fan? So, and so maybe a transition stage could be that where you, you know, let someone else take their, from the team itself, take the present role that they're doing so that this person can be moved to a much bigger role with a bigger scope, bigger responsibility and so on. Okay, so this is a simple, yeah, yeah, the growth stage. In the future, they can take their own, I mean, like, not a ministry, maybe they can change any, the way of doing, like, what they feel, they can work like that. Yeah. So the thing is, you know, so which means it's always for the better, betterment of the church and ministry. Maybe they are doing some innovation and some thing which improves the whole process. There's better fruit, right? Fruitfulness, productivity, everything is increases. So yes, definitely. But there's no change in the vision. There's no change in the vision, there's no compromise on the values. There's no, you know, dilution of integrity or all those attributes which you're holding, you know, so that's the thing. The pastor who founded the church and all, he have a different vision. So the person who is emerging as a new leader in the future generation, what if they get a different vision of, I mean, taking the ministry into another way? Is that okay or? Yeah. So the thing is, I get what you're saying. Okay. Maybe, you know, let's say for example, you know, this person whom this pastor has raised up suddenly feels that, hey, we're not doing enough social work. Okay, we've reached a place, I think we're doing church planting, etc. But we need to, you know, we need to branch out, we need to start an orphanage, we need to start a school, we need to start a hospital, we need to start a college. Okay, so that now this pastor, this senior pastor doesn't have any of that. He just wants to disciple people, raise them up, release them into ministry and so kind of thing. But then this pastor, you know, feels this way. So the thing is this, to have a, you know, to have a discussion, to see, is there something that we want to do, we'd like to do, to pray about it. And yeah, if it's, to find, just go ahead and do it. Yeah. So it need not be a point of conflict. It can actually, yeah, it's a, you know, it's like a bigger thing, the scope and influence is going to be much bigger, wider. It's going to take on a lot of efforts. Maybe this pastor has the expertise, right? So to do that and the vision to carry it out as well and the gifting. So yeah, so it can be something that can be agreed upon and focused. Yeah, so that can be done. Okay. So it's a very exciting, you know, process of, oops, of, sorry, of raising leaders and it's a very satisfying, deeply, you know, satisfying thing to see people come into their place of destiny, right? Discover their calling and step into their calling and purpose and and, you know, live out their destiny for this. So it's, it can be very satisfying thing, but it's also, we know that, you know, things may not always go right. Okay. Like we see, even in Paul's case, we see that, you know, there are certain people, he says, Demersus Forsaken, you know, he's loved this present world. And people who are part of the team who, who actually, you know, kind of left halfway and so on. So it can be disappointing. It can be painful as well. But at the same time, it's exciting and very satisfying to see people discover the call and pursue God's call on their lives. Okay. Creating opportunities for development develops leaders. Okay. So when we create opportunities for people to lead, that actually really hastens their leadership development. Okay. So why do we hesitate to put people in a place of leadership? Because we feel, okay, maybe they will not deliver. We see some faults in them. And then maybe, maybe they will not deliver. Maybe they will not do the job as good as I used to do or I have done so far. And I don't want them to pull it back from where we actually raised up. We don't want to, we've come to level five, we don't want to go back to level one. But the thing is, when we raise up leaders in the right way, making sure that they're able to carry the load, making sure that they are skilled, making sure that they are developing their skill in gifting. And at the same time, they are equipped and they have the equipment or the tools to get the job done. So when we create opportunities and we place them in positions of leadership, they will thrive and they will do really well. Okay. Feedback, encouragement and correction. Okay. Now, this is something that's very important. Like even as we go through that, you know, those stages of leadership, we should not hesitate to share feedback. Okay. Now, not all feedback is good. Okay. If not all feedback is like, oh, fantastic job. You've done a great job. It is good. Not all feedback is good. Some feedback could be, you could have done better. Some feedback could be, today was very bad. Okay. So the thing is, but that feedback should be shared. That truth should be spoken in love and should be communicated in a gracious manner, right? In an honorable manner so that the person is not broken, you know, the dignity of that person is not removed or anything. But you are able to share. Okay. You share what needs to be done. You share this is what happened. Okay. So, which means if we can have a culture of sharing feedback, encouragement, correction. Okay. So when we know the, what is the heart of it? Why are we sharing it? Is it to, you know, constantly find mistakes? No. It's so that the person can be better. It is so that the department, the team, the ministry can be better. Right. So when that is done, then, then, you know, it's, it develops the leaders, develops strength in leaders. So what do you think? Is it, is it easy sharing feedback? Depends upon the person to whom you're sharing feedback, is it? Why? So we have a feedback of correction or a negative feedback is always difficult. Because you know, but the thing is, no matter how sugar, you know, how, how well you share it, people will get hurt. Right. Because you're actually talking about their performance, something that was not done right. So when there's correction, when there's negative feedback, there is a very highly likely that people will get hurt. So we need to be aware of that. We can't be saying, okay, the person will not get hurt. Anyway, okay, this is going to hurt. The person may not take it well. But I have to do it anyway. As a leader, I have to do it. Right. So many times, what happens is, like somebody said, you know, we share 80% of the feedback. Okay. 80% of what we actually need to do. And at that 20% we hold back. Okay. Thinking that, okay, if I share this, maybe, you know, it's okay. I'll let it slip. That's fine. The 20% I don't share. And that 20% is what really matters. And that 20% which you held back is what really matters for that person to change. Right. So, yeah, so sometimes we feel, okay, maybe I should not share this. I'm just holding it back. No, you share that. But share it in the best way possible. Some people have the ability to share it graciously. Maybe we need, some of us need to learn it. But you need to do that. Right. This will really help develop leaders. Okay. Yeah. So when we have a culture of leaders developing leaders, you know, it really multiplies the process, the nurturing process, or the leaders being developed in an organization in a church. Okay. So it's, it should be a, you know, it should be a, it's a great place, nurturing place. It's a great culture, nurturing culture when we have leaders who are developing other leaders, right? You see somebody and they're encouraging and they're saying, Hey, why don't you do this? And that person, you know, pretty soon, maybe a few weeks down the line, you see that person taking up and being passionate about that, you know, they're carrying the load. So it's a, it's a very wonderful, it's a very thriving place when you have that nurturing culture. Okay. So we should always be an example and also encourage that, encourage that kind of culture intentionally. Okay. Any questions? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So the next thing is about decision making. Okay, decision making within, let's say an organization. Okay. So we're looking at how we need to, we looked at how we need to organize people, resources, time, etc. Now, when it comes to an organization, when it comes to a department, a ministry, decisions need to be made, right? So what kind of decisions generally will, like, let's say, a Bible college, what kind of decisions would have to be made? What do you think? How to do the schedule? Schedule of the college? Okay, that's a decision. Okay. So what, what is the timetable? What are the subjects? Who's teaching what? Yeah. Standards, meaning? Okay. So discipline guidelines for the students, for the staff, right? Okay. Okay. What other, like, decisions would require, would be required? Yeah, sorry. Say it, say it. Use the mic. I was giving the mic. Oh, or students, like, for example, like, if they are doing something wrong, okay. I can't say punishment, but like, like, the consequences of the students. So the whole discipline process? Yeah. Is this a standard? Obviously, if those standards are not met, there will be consequences. So, you know, so that particular, so this is the consequence. So the thing is, you know, there are a lot of decisions, right from operational decisions, staffing decisions, right from the menu, vendor, you know, a lot of decisions in an organization. So the thing is, now for each of these decisions, if you are the senior most person in the organization, for each of these decisions, you know, the tendency is, okay, I'll ask the senior most person, right? Okay, I'll ask what he thinks, I'll ask what she thinks. Why are you asking? Because you want, you have to make a decision, but you are asking for the approval, right? I want, okay, can I go ahead? Can I go ahead and buy? Because I need to get my money reimbursed. I'm paying with my money, I'm buying something. Can I go ahead and do it, etc. So you're looking for approval, right? So one thing that we need to put in place is the, within the organization, if so many decisions, the countless decisions, so the whole process of how those decisions can be made, okay? So the first thing is the standards, okay? What are the standards for making a decision, okay? Let's say, for example, if you need to put out a video, okay? A video of somebody's message, okay? Church Sunday sermon, video we need to put out, okay? So what is the standard? Quality standard? You know, how should it be? What is the design standard? Everything, you know, one needs to, because if we don't decide that, then one video will be like this, the second video will be like this, the third video, and there'll be varying standards of quality, okay? So we'll say, okay, this is good, this is bad, and so which means we need to make our standards very clear, okay? For example, like if you look at the books, the publications, right? A long time before it was decided that we're going to have only black and white, okay? No color, it's going to be black and white, okay? So there are several reasons, one cost, and then also, it was a design by itself. It's something that stood out by itself, where it's black and white, etc. And we also decided that the author picture will not be there, okay? Author's name will be there, the author's picture will not be there, okay? So that was something that we decided. So these kind of things, we have to ask the author, but the authors decided that the focus, the author should not be elated. You know, it's not about the author's popularity or whatever. Yeah, so that was it. So author had nothing wrong in other authors putting their pictures, but the fact is that this was it, so yeah. Actually, there was a one funny instance where there's actually a Bible college student before he joined actually.  I thought you'd be a very old person. I read your books and the way you read it, I thought it was an old person, but you're such a young man. And then he joined the Bible college after, you know, that year. So yeah, you're right, people can know, but now anyway, everybody, you know, on social media and everything, people now identify it. But anyway, so that was the thing. Yeah, so whatever standard it is, you know, you just make it clear, and it always helps. And of course, I'm just repeating this, you will learn more in depth in the church administration subject, more in detail about accounts and all those things, but this is just a brief thing. So the standards need to be documented. Okay, so suppose I say it, and I go, you know, I'm not there in that role anymore tomorrow, the standards still need to be kept. Right, so the best way to do it is to put it in writing, document it, upload it somewhere where someone else who comes in my place also knows that this is the standard. Okay, so we can easily refer and say, go through it, this is the guideline, this is the standard, this is the specification, and that's how we want it. Right, so the person doesn't have to reinvent and, you know, waste time and all that. So this is how it is. Okay, okay, then the second one is to have a proper system for approval of decisions. Okay, one is, first one is standard for decisions. The second one is approval process. Okay, if it's going to be, okay, let's say we need to get coffee for a particular evening meeting here. Okay, so who approves that? Does Pastor Ashish approve? Do you approach Pastor Ashish, can he buy coffee? Okay, so who do we have? The administrator. Okay, or the biblical administrator. Right, that's it. Or let's say you want to have a particular meeting in the college, so you know that, okay, these are people who can give us the approval. Okay, right, so you have a process in place saying or approval of, let's say, even purchases, you know, mainly those are the operational decisions, right?  So how can I do this? Who needs to say okay to this so that I can do it? Right, so you choose or you set in place, okay, for approvals, you check with this person. For approvals of, let's say, 5000 rupees, you check here, this person or this manager, this late ministry leader can approve. For purchases above 5000 and to 10,000, someone else can do that. For buying land and, you know, machinery and all that, then it has to go to the top person, right, who needs to approve that, right? So you have a system in place, then it becomes very, you know, very smooth the whole thing within the organization, right? So every time you don't have to check, can think, can spend a lot of time, okay, who needs to do this, who needs to do that, you know, because you've already kept in place, okay? Then when it comes to decision making within the organization, be open for discussions and inputs, okay? So having a culture, okay, so when you have this process, it doesn't mean that it is set in stone, it can always be flexible and change. Maybe the scenario around is changing, maybe the, you know, there are better pricing, right? So things like that are there. So we can always discuss it, share feedback and then arrive at a decision, right? So this will always help in preventing, you know, bad decisions or poor decisions, right? Okay. Then as a leader, one has to take responsibility for the decisions that are made, okay? So the ultimate responsibility leads with us or stays with us as leaders. If we are responsible for leading a team and the team makes a mistake, then we take ownership for it, right? And we say, okay, whether good or bad, we are, we are the, the owners is on us, right? The responsibility for that decision is on us, okay? So I cannot just pass on the blame and say, he did it, she did it and so on. So it's, it's upon me, okay? Okay, okay. Any questions here? Okay, decision making approval process? Okay, so these are things that you can put in place, right? And then you think about it, okay? If you're, you know, if you have a goddess putting your heart, desire, you know, to start something like, maybe it could be a school, orphanage, church, plant, whatever it is, you know, you start thinking on those lines, right? Getting into those, those, those details as well, right? Okay, so creating and nurturing kingdom culture, okay? So what is culture? Okay, lifestyle. So why are we not wearing tie and suit and tie and Francis is in t-shirt and, you know, a nice interesting t-shirt. So, what is that? Why? See, the first day, some people would have come in tie, right?   I'm, he's not tucked in a shirt and he's coming in jeans and then suddenly you realize, okay, maybe this is the, it's not, I didn't find it written anywhere, but this is the culture. You know, this is the way of doing things, this is their custom. They're not leaving their shoes outside the classroom, you know, so you just realize, okay, this is the culture, it's something unwritten, okay? So it's a custom, it's based on really beliefs and values and so on, okay? So, so what is the kind of culture that you want to see in your church or organization, right? So it takes time to develop the culture and one has to be intentional about the culture, meaning that you reward every time, you know, something is the kind of culture that you want to see, well, it's happening, but if something is happening that is not against, sorry, that is going against the kind of culture that you want, you know, maybe you want, you know, a culture where people are not gossiping, you want a culture where people are like nurturing one another and so on, right? So it has to be created, reiterated just like the vision, right? So it needs to be created, it needs to be reiterated over and over again, so that people understand this is what it is. But most important, you know, as a, let's say a point of reference as a leader, I need to walk in it, right? I need to walk in it. Otherwise, things can really fall apart very quickly, right? Okay, so we can look at, you know, the kind of kingdom culture that we want, whether you want, okay, what we see in the Word of God, this is the culture that we want, the culture that transcends all other culture, the kingdom mindset and kingdom thinking, etc. Maybe, you know, in your church, you want people to think in terms of the kingdom of God, you know, they're not saying my church, your church, you know, our church is better, but they're thinking in terms of, okay, this is God's kingdom that we are all serving, like what we see in Corinthians where Paul says, right? He says, okay, I, you know, I sowed, somebody watered, but God gives the increase and we are all co-workers with God and to have that kingdom mindset, okay? So, which means it is there, you know, what you're sharing from the pulpit, how you're living your life, that you're not, you know, putting down other pastors or other churches or you're not making fun of them, you're not, you know, constantly complaining about them, but you are actually, you know, creating that kind of a culture. So, the people also think in those terms, right? Okay. So, we teach intentionally kingdom culture and we need to know that, you know, I myself need to practice it, okay? So, I need to be the culture that I want to see in people, okay? Because we actually reproduce after our own kind, okay? Like Paul says to Timothy, be an example to the believers and he lists out a lot of things, right? Word, conduct, love, spirit, faith, purity, okay? So, that is something that we can do, okay? What is accepted? What is not accepted? No, create, I mean, communicate that, okay? Like for example, I think with the worship team, we, you know, we told them very early on that if you're not practicing together as a team, then you don't get to play on a Sunday morning, right? You need to have practiced together or rehearsed together and if you want to come to the rehearsal, you need to have individually practiced, okay? You practice your instrument or you're singing whatever on your own and then you come together to have your rehearsal with the team and of course, so if you're not doing that, you know, maybe there once, you know, there will be one emergency or, you know, something happened where the whole church is involved in doing something and we could not find but it cannot be repeated. So, if you're not doing that, you know, it's fine. The bass player didn't come, he couldn't make it, it's okay. Let's go without it, right? So, you create a culture, you communicate what is accepted, what is not. Now, there could be some exceptions here and there, okay?  Like for example, last Sunday, I was not scheduled to leave prayer at South, you know, unlike Central, all the other locations, we have a time of prayer, half an hour before the service starts. So, 8 to 8.30 is prayer time and then 8.30, worship, okay? So, Central because we have two services and we can't, you know, the team is practicing and so we don't have that. So anyway, so we have a roster of prayer leaders who will come and lead but I'm there and then 8 o'clock, prayer leader's not there, 8-1, prayer leader's not there. So, 8-2, I started, you know, I was not scheduled and I was, I scheduled to lead worship but somebody had to do it, right? So, you just started off and things. So, okay, there was a genuine reason but what we're saying is if you're not here by 8-1, you know, you will not be leading it, okay? So, someone else will do it, you know, we cannot do it this way. So, and I remember this is not the, you know, I remember the first time coming to APC South, I think, Jainagar. The worship team was sitting aside. Why? The whole team came late, okay? The whole team came late. So, Pastor said, no, you, it's okay, you just sing, we'll start. So, I think, I don't know who sang and it was like that. So, I'm just asking these guys, hey, why are you guys not playing? I was not part of the team then. So, I'm just, you know, I'm, Anu's attending. So, I'm looking and the drummers sitting there with the drumstick and everything. I said, why are you not playing? I'm saying, no, we came late. So, that's a very powerful message that is communicated saying that, hey, if you are not honoring the time and you know, if there's no genuine reason or anything, then you cannot, right? So, culture is set when we communicate, when there is acceptance of certain things, when there's non-acceptance of, you know, the standards which you don't want to accept. So, the thing is this, culture, when it is set, it's a good thing, but if it's something, it's a negative culture, then it's a terrible thing, right? If it is, and it takes a lot to undo that negative culture, okay? Yeah. Okay, so, have you seen that picture that is there on the screen? You've seen that, okay? So, it talks about the core values. The inner circle talks about the theme, content, method, passion, goal. The outer circle talks about integrity, excellence, etc., you know, pioneering relationship. So, each of these words, they are, okay, they are put there because they mean something, because they are held in high esteem by everyone, you know, by the leadership and, you know, so that is why we call it the core values, right?  As a church, as a team, these are going to be high value for us, okay? Okay, do away with what is contrary to the culture and do not encourage any belief, values or practice that they are contributing to a culture that you don't want to create, that you don't want to tolerate, okay? Affirm when things go right and lovingly correct when people do it wrong, okay? We will always have exceptions. We will always have people who are not adhering to it for whatever reason, find out and try to help, right? Help them, okay? Shall we stop here? Okay, let me just quickly make some comments here about, you know, a culture, a community culture that we, that's adapted from the House of God book publication, okay? So, it talks about the early church in Jerusalem right after it was, after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and it was formed and so on. So, some observations there, right? So, a community doesn't mean that people are just getting together and they like each other and they, you know, they want to hang out with each other and, okay, you know, is that a community that is a kingdom community, right? Or is that the kind of culture that you want? The thing is this, in a community of believers, right, we are saying that they are relating to each other in a manner where the Lord is at the center of it all. There is always this awareness that I esteem the Lord, I esteem the Word, I esteem the things of God and I put it at a high place, right? So, that is something that is common to that group of people coming together, okay? Spiritual nurture, growth and spiritual things, you know, these are communicated, emphasized, okay? So, what are we looking at? We are looking at, see, some of these observations from the church in Jerusalem, okay? It talks about, you know, Acts chapter 2, right? 44, it talks about, okay, people were together, people had things in common, etc. And the other things that we observe are these, right? And this is all, this is very important and it needs to be there in a community of believers, right? Okay, we will continue with this. Next class, we will stop right here.


Hello, everyone. This is another in the series of keynotes on online and blended learning. I'd like to thank the Commonwealth of Learning for their support in making these videos. This one is about digital learning and the new economy. One of the things that we're seeing happening is that the requirements of the workforce are changing rapidly. And digital learning, I believe, has a very important role in preparing learners for living in a digital age, not just for work, but for all the other things that they need to do digitally. So I'm going to look at, first of all, the demands of a digital society about developing intellectual skills and what we know about developing intellectual skills. I'm going to provide some examples of online learning for skills development. And then I'm going to be talking about open education resources, which I think is a game changer in the sense that it so suits the needs of a digital society. And then some conclusions. First of all, the demands of a digital economy. We have a changing workforce with new work and new knowledge and skills. There was a report from the Royal Bank of Canada who did a very interesting study. They looked at all the new job postings in LinkedIn over the three to six month period and looked at what the employers were asking for in terms of what they were wanting in their new employees. The bank was particularly interested in the impact of automation and artificial intelligence and how that's going to affect jobs and work. And what they came to, what they concluded at the end was there is a future for jobs. There's going to be plenty of jobs out there, but we're not actually preparing learners properly for them. And when I say we, they referred to both the education sector and the employers themselves. So artificial intelligence, automation will have a big impact on jobs, but there will be new jobs, but we don't have people trained for them. So what are 21st century skills? Well, back in 1993, the conference board of Canada identified some of the core skills and they haven't changed very much. We still need these independent learning, ethics and responsibility, teamwork and flexibility, communication skills, thinking skills such as creative thinking, problem solving and creativity, which universities always thought they'd been teaching, IT skills embedded in the subject area and particularly knowledge management. And I'll have a lot to say about knowledge management, which I think is a core 21st century skill. So what are the 21st century skills? Well, you see they had a range of them. The dark blue means very important and the very faint light blue is not important. So if we look at the ones skills most in demand, you can see there are things like active listening, critical thinking, etc. And if we look at the least involved, at least in demand, there are some surprising things in there like while repairing and maintenance and installation are least in demand, science least in demand, programming least in demand. One reason for that is a lot of programming will be automated in the future and that's where artificial intelligence will be very strong. So what does that mean? Well, it's not just about meeting employers' needs. What the bank found was that the skills most in demand were the ones that were needed across a number of different jobs so that if you have those transversal skills you can take it from one job to another. An obvious example is good communication skills. If you have a range of communication skills in one job they'll probably carry over to another job. And so this gives learners some control over their own life in the future. So what I'm talking about here is empowering learners to manage their own lives by controlling everyday technology in life as well as in work. And this includes managing their own use of data for instance, understanding how the big tech companies work and how they're using your data and things like that. But also knowing how to use technology in everyday life. I make a rather artificial distinction between content and skills. Both are important. But content are facts, ideas, principles. They're about knowing something. Skills are about doing. They're understanding, analyzing, evaluating, applying. And they're both necessary, but particularly in university education content has been the traditional priority. Most instructors are content experts. That's their speciality, their biologists, their forestry specialists, their health specialists. But also increasingly we need to focus on the skills that content needs to support. So we know that a lot of skills are context specific. Problem solving in business is not the same as problem solving in medicine. For two reasons. The content you need to know in order to solve problems is different. But also the approach to problem solving is somewhat different. For instance in business you have to take some risks. You have to take a certain amount of uncertainty if you're going to be successful in business. In medicine decision making is risk averse. Do no harm. Do not do anything that could cause harm for patients. So now that's a fairly subtle distinction. And certainly some of these skills probably do generalize to some extent. But because I'm a thoughtful academic researcher, it doesn't necessarily make me a thoughtful husband as my wife has often told me. Now learners need lots of practice. We know that to develop a skill you have to go on using that skill. You need small steps initially. And very important you need regular feedback from an expert, a coach, or someone who knows a lot more and has much more experience than you do. And again I'm making important distinction here between skills and competencies. A skill is something you develop over a lifetime. Critical thinking I like to think I'm a better critical thinker now than when I left university when I was 21, 22. Whereas a competency is a kind of skill that gets to a certain point where you can do it perfectly but you don't have to progress much beyond that because you're competent in that. So if we take that view of skills as ongoing development rather than something that is static once you've got there, it has big implications for the design of curricula. In particular, if we're teaching critical thinking for example, what are we adding from year one to year four? How is that critical thinking progressing? How is it getting better from year one to year four? Now an interesting study was done by the Higher Education and Quality Council of Ontario which found that in terms of critical thinking there wasn't much development. They looked at students coming in in the first year in Ontario universities and tested them in numeracy, literacy and critical thinking. And while their numeracy and literacy skills improved, they found no improvement in critical thinking skills. Now you could criticise that study because critical thinking needs to be embedded in a particular subject area and assessed in that way and they used a generalised test. But it raises a good question. And it's an issue that Dalhousie University School of Computing Science tried to address. They found that something like 30% to 40% of their students were not going on to complete the Bachelor of Computer Sciences a few years ago. And they were concerned about that. Why are so many students not completing? And so they got all the professors together teaching in the programme and got them to write down their learning outcomes or learning objectives, what the students had to be able to do at the end of the course. And they also asked them to say what learning skills or objectives do they have to have before they come in. So they put these all in a big spreadsheet and they found that some of the subjects they were teaching in the wrong order. And in particular, they were teaching theory in the fourth year and it became clear that students needed the theory in the first year. And what they developed then was a set of learning objectives for every course and so you could see what students would go out with but also students could see what skills they needed to have or what commonities they needed to have before they took the course. So they could then route their way through. So they made basically the development of skills transparent throughout the whole programme. And incidentally this programme is now being used in a number of universities in Canada. Now I'm going to give some examples of using online learning for skills development and I want to give these examples to show how digital learning can be very helpful in developing skills. At Simon Fraser University in their biological sciences programmes Professor Joan Sharp, the professor, found that students coming into third year classes were expecting a right answer for every scientific question. They thought science will always have a clear answer whenever you put a question to it. And of course that's not actually true as we found in COVID-19. There were a lot of grey areas that we didn't know, certainly at the beginning. So she thought they had poor skills at scientific argumentation. So working with the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser she developed a simple web-based tool. In northern British Columbia and Alberta there's a policy to kill wolves to protect endangered woodland caribou. So you'll see that this is the web page and on, very simple, on the left hand side there's a box, there's a screen, the green screen for pro reasons, on the right hand side for con reasons. And on the pro reasons side you'll see a long thin box which is where they had to put their reasons why it was good policy. And underneath, and the critical part, is another box where they had to put the scientific evidence that supported that particular reason. But students also had to complete the other side, the con reasons. They had to put reasons why it was not a good policy and the research that supported that particular argument. And then at the end they had to come to a conclusion. Every student had to come to their own conclusion based on the arguments and evidence they placed. And Professor Sharp being a scientist had divided the class into two groups. One who had taught scientific argumentation in the traditional way and one that used the web-based and she found that the students who did the web-based version did 30% better on the end of course exam. This is an example of using pre-existing apps and adapting them slightly for an educational purpose. What happens in soil science at the University of British Columbia is that students have to go out into the forest and collect soil samples. This is very time consuming for the instructor who goes out with them and directs them and probably handles six students at a time. That's the most comfortable number you can handle. So what she did with working with the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology at UBC they identified a kind of quest program like Pokemon Go, a local developer in British Columbia and got them to adapt their already existing app for the soil sciences program. So the students go out, they use their mobile phones to find the spots that are marked on the map on the app and then they have a set of activities to do. They have to take the soil sample, they have to do some tests, they have to enter the results into their phone. That's sent to the professor who can then mark them and no longer having to go out in the forest in the pouring rain six times a week. So it's a kind of gamification as well because students get points for finding the right sites, they get points for doing the activities and so on. Bristol University, this is right at the other end, this is a much more complex piece of technology. The professor of chemistry there, David Glowacki, found that when his graduate students came to do research they weren't very strong on the intuitive thinking. Most scientists are deductive thinking, they work back from data to hypotheses and so on. And in fact you often have to think intuitively to generate a good hypothesis.  Now this needed cloud computing because of the various variations and the intensity of data but you could go in and alter the structure of the molecule, you could see the chain reaction that would happen and you could see the molecule changing in real time as the changes work through the molecule. And he found this really helped students to get a better intuitive grasp of the chemical compounds and that enabled them to come up with better hypotheses as a result. A much more simple use of technology is from the Veterinary Science, the University of Prince Edward Island in Canada. This instructor only had one version of a plastinated model of a dog's heart. These are incredibly expensive, these plastinated models are almost handmade, so she only had one for a class of 30. And she had lots of problems with the students crowding around and wanting more time to look at it and so on. So what she did was she took a mobile phone and made a video. She disassembled the parts, she explained each part, what its function was, how it fitted with the rest and put that video up on the web server and you'll notice that there's a QR tag attached to the model of the dog's heart. What students do, they come in, they photo, use their camera on their mobile phone and photo the QR tag which is the URL and they just touch that on their screen and that downloads the video onto their phone. Another example is from the Justice Institute of British Columbia. The Justice Institute trains paramedics, police, fire services, social workers and so on. And what they develop is a tool called praxis for real time synchronous emergency response training. Basically the students who are all working are given a set time when they need to be able to do this exercise. Because it's synchronous. And at that time they'll get a warning on their iPad or on their mobile phone saying there's an emergency.  And then they have to respond in real time to the actions that are required. And there's a supervisor who can throw a curve at them. They can say for instance there's been an accident on one of the bridges accessing the port so they have to change in midstream. So all the responses are then recorded and then the learners, the students come in to a face-to-face meeting to be debriefed. And what they're trying to teach are decision making skills under pressure, problem solving and good communication. And also they use the exercise to improve procedures to eliminate conflict or errors that were carried out in the exercise. And also to team build because it means they have to work for instance with municipal officials as well as with the port officials as well as each other in an emergency like this. So there's a special role for technology in schools development. Students are going to need to learn digitally to earn and live digitally. And digital technology can provide the practice and feedback to some extent. Students need to know the strengths and limitations of digital technologies for life and work. The other development in online learning that's really important for skills development are open educational resources. These are free copyright protected educational materials. There's a whole set of them. Open textbooks or open videos that can be downloaded, simulations, games, even some virtual reality programs like the one I just mentioned from the University of Bristol. They can be downloaded and used locally. There's open research and data. If you get federally funded in Canada for research, you have to publish in an open access journal. And increasingly we're seeing open data. Cities are making a lot of their data open and available. And of course you've got the whole internet. But you have to be careful there because you have to be sure that you have the rights to use that material. But the students will often go and use that material anyway. So there's a whole treasure trove of open access materials available over the internet. Now one reason this being brought in is to reduce cost to students. Something like $1,000 a year students have to pay in British Columbia for open textbooks. And that's a straight saving for the students. But also we're finding that open education resources can have a big impact on the way we teach. If you're a creator of the open education resources, you still can retain the copyright. You can get a Creative Commons license that protects your copyright but allows people to use the material for free. But depending on the kind of license you've got, they have to acknowledge where it comes from. Or you'll see there's an NCV non-commercial that will stop publishers, for instance, taking your free material and then trying to sell it and putting it into a book and selling it. And there are many collections of open education resources. I've got a list there. I'll not go through the list. But also if you often Google OER and then the topic, you will often find stuff just with a simple Google search. So open textbooks. These are free online textbooks. In the province where I work, BC Campus which is a government agency has organized for books to be available for all first and second year university and college programs. These books are reviewed by local faculty and made available free for any course that's taught in first and second year university and college programs. In Canada, just over half the public higher education institutions are now using open textbooks. And out of this is something called Open Pedagogy where students create knowledge through their use of open education resources. The focus is on learners as constructors of knowledge. So basically you give the students a task, find out something about this, and they go online and find the materials and then create a resource, a portfolio of work based on open educational resources. It's a form of constructive is teaching. Now this is for me as a paradigm shift. If we take the extreme version that all content in future will be free, open and available online, then that's OER, open textbooks, data and research, the whole internet, then students can find, evaluate, analyze and apply content. That's the key 21st century skill of knowledge management. And this is what we need our students to be doing now because you can't teach engineering, everything you need to know about engineering now, even in an eight year program. Engineering is developing so fast that you have to go on learning. So students need that skill of lifelong learning. They need to know where to find and use information. It's going to be a critical skill in the 21st century. But this is a big shift in teaching and learning. If you look at a lecture, who's doing the work there? It's the professor. They're the ones who decide what content to use. They're the ones who organize it. They're the ones who build arguments and so on. The students are fairly passive. Can we not say, here's what you need to study. Now here are some guidelines. Go off and study that and come back with what you've learned about this topic. Because that's how they're going to have to work in the future in whatever job they're doing. The other thing that came out quite clearly from the Royal Bank of Canada report is that content acquisition and delivery can be pretty much automated. Artificial intelligence can easily search out information and can actually organize it to some extent. So what they said was that artificial intelligence can teach decorative knowledge. That's the kind of knowledge that is already classified and already solid and so on. So where does that leave the instructor then? Well, I think still curriculum and course design, that's really important. The instructors must know what's important for students to learn and the best ways for them to learn that. They need to provide individual learners support, especially feedback for skills development. It needs an expert to really develop an expert. They can help with technology integration and use of technology in the learning and qualitative assessment because computers will do the quantitative assessment. If you can measure something and it has a right answer, then computer-based learning will handle that. What it can't handle are things where judgment is required for instance or intuition is required or these higher level skills of critical thinking. So that's where the role of the teacher and professor will become increasingly important in the future. But that's a big shift in the way that most of us teach these days. What I see happening with the new economy is that we'll move away from information transmission towards knowledge management. We'll have more emphasis on skills development, although content will still remain important. We'll have lecture-based courses will be replaced by student projects, problem-based learning and collaborative learning. So they're developing the kind of skills and the environment that learners will need. And goodbye written exams. They test one kind of knowledge only and that's the kind of analytical written knowledge. And it'll still be a place for some written exams. But I see often these being replaced by e-portfolios where students can record what they've done and show that and put that available for assessment and even for employers to see what they actually done, did at university. So again this is a big shift in teaching and learning coming. What does that mean for instructors? Well I think we need more incentives and rewards for innovative teaching. Most of the system is geared towards rewarding professors for research, not for teaching. So we need to look at our promotion criteria to make sure we're rewarding innovative teaching as well as innovative research. We need funds for new designs and maybe reduce teaching load while instructors learn how to use these new technologies and more importantly these new teaching approaches. More course design support from instructional designers, more technical support like Media Labs for instance. The University of British Columbia has a Media Lab where instructors can go with an idea and work with professional producers and they will work out whether it's best done as a simulation or virtual reality and also using graduate students or fourth year students to help build virtual reality experiences or simulations. And then just in time access to resources that will help them work in new ways. So in conclusion the digital economy is going to require high level intellectual skills. This is where the money is basically. Unfortunately we're going to see a divergence in the economy between many low pay jobs and many high pay jobs and the aim is to get as many high pay jobs as possible. There's no limit in the sense to the number of high pay jobs because these are new businesses, new industries that can come. Teaching methods must include opportunities for skills development. Technology enables more flexible delivery and ways to practice skills but all of this must be within a specifically designed learning environment that supports the learners. We need better definition and assessment of 21st skills in every course and the choice of technology should facilitate skills development. I'd like to thank you for this. This is my book which is free and available online and discusses many of these issues, the URLs and my websites there as well. You can see some questions that can be used if you're using this in a conference so you can have questions and discussion afterwards. Thank you very much.


What do you think most people get wrong about God? I'll go first. Most of us think that God is primarily concerned with our outward behavior, what we do, whether we're nice to people, though I believe that God is by no means indifferent to our outward behavior, He is primarily concerned with what's going on on the inside of us. The Lord sees not as man sees, for man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. The problem is that our inside is broken and we have a tendency towards sin. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and because of that we stand guilty before God. However, through Jesus' redemptive work on the cross, we can be made right with God. We are made a new creation and we are being transformed from the inside out. You see, God doesn't desire behavioral modification. He desires transformation. Follow for more Christ-centered content and help support my ministry on Patreon.