Welcome everyone to this keynote session. We are very grateful to our sponsors who make this conference possible. Before today's keynote, as your own owns, we have a five-minute presentation by Rosh, our sponsor of the day. Hello, my name is Roy Federer and I work as a data scientist at Rosh, and I'm happy to talk to you about how we leverage interactivity in our clinical trial work. It's actually exciting times to work as a R-developed Rosh, because we start to use R more and more across our whole content delivery process, starting with expertory data analysis for basic research, diagnostics, clinical trials, including predictive modeling or also doing some expertory data analysis to see which particular subgroups of patients could benefit more from the treatment. But more and more we're also using R to actually produce validated outputs that go to regulatory entities within validated R environments, and we actively pursuing a goal of being able in the future to ship interactive solutions, apps, together with static outputs to the regulatory authorities to actually streamline the process of evaluating or also approving a drug or a treatment. I'm here today to show you an example of one of these apps as we use them. This particular one we use throughout a couple of different COVID-19 studies that we had running or we just did running. We use a shiny solution powered by an internal framework which we call NEST, which features some nice aspects, especially it's totally modularizable. It's quite data agnostic, so you can use like an app scaffold and just swap out the data from different studies. It features some really nice life filtering, and this allows for some flexible expertory data analysis with these reusable modules for plots and tables, also efficacy outputs. It's all parametrizable via templates, so these templates take care of updating the inputs and setting the correct filters, which helps a lot with reproducibility, and once you have liked the outputs you desire, you can create a quick report which is just HTML-based, editable, and flexible, styleable with CSS. I show you a quick video of an example app using some dummy data. This is the typical scaffold as you would see it with some different tabs having different modules, so one for a table, one for a line plot, box plot, but also efficacy outputs like your couple of Maya curves, your time to event analysis. It features this filtering panel on the right-hand side, so you can filter the different datasets that are generated for clinical trials with different types of data, lab data, patient-devil data, and via drop-down menus you can select which variable you want to filter and then interactively set the filters you want to use, and on the left-hand side you have this template drop-down menu which is pre-populated, that is specifically with some templates that you might want to use, but you can also add your own templates or rather one that has been generated by somebody else and just copy-paste it, apply it, and it will automatically update the filters and set the correct inputs. Once you hit the run button, it will generate the output that you pre-specified now. So in this example, a line plot, and on particularity is actually that every time you hit the run button, it will create you a new output in these new cards, so you can generate multiple outputs and compare them side-by-side. Also in this example, it gives you an additional table with some descriptive statistics, and once you have the desired output, you can start it and favorite it because you want to keep it, and discharge the ones that you actually don't want to. Then you can also move to another tab, so you can create a table module and you can create whatever table you want. You also give it a star. You switch over to the reporting module where you can add your favorites to the report. So we pull all of these favorited star outputs into this one module where you then can update titles or add some nodes. And also arrange a little bit the order, or to be generated, and then click on Open Report and it will render you a report in HTML which is still editable, so you can still change your nodes or change your titles. And this one can then be saved as a PDF for sharing. All of these modules and these reports also record necessary information. For example, what filters have been set, what inputs or what methods have been used, so you can really have some kind of reproducibility or at least like it's well documented what you have done. This is it so far for our quick glimpse of how we use R at Roche. I thank you very much for your attention and wish you a good rest of the conference. Have a good day. Thank you. So we thank Roche for sharing that presentation with us to show a little bit of how they're using R. And now it's my pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker, Jerome Ohms. Jerome is a researcher and software developer with R Open Sci at the University of California, Berkeley. He has written many CRAN packages and also maintains the compilers and build infrastructure for R on Windows. Today he's going to talk to us about the R Universe project. During his talk, please post messages on the key Ohm Slack channel that's hashtag key underscore OOMS or ask and vote on questions via the Zoom Q&A. Over to you Jerome. Alright, thank you so much for having me. So this talk will be about the R Universe project, which is a big new ambitious project by R Open Sci, which I've been working on for the past year or longer. So in this talk, I will discuss some of the different components and use cases for R Universe. But if you're going to take away one thing from this talk, it should be that R Universe is for everyone. It is a place for publishing research and research software. It can be used by individuals and organizations. It's beneficial to novice R users, to students, researchers or professional package developers. There's no gatekeeping in R Universe. If you have some R code or a markdown article that you think is for sharing, regardless of what it is, you can sign up and start doing that today, no matter your background or expertise. So a little bit about me. My name is Jerome. I'm a staff research engineer and the lead infrastructure for R Open Sci. If you don't know R Open Sci, we are a research group based at UC Berkeley doing all sorts of things related to open science with R. And if you want to learn more about our group, you should really check out the talk by Stephanie Butler earlier this week, who gives a great overview of our mission and the various activities of R Open Sci. And as part of my work with R Open Sci, I've written quite a few RAM packages. Most of these packages interface to interesting C and C++ libraries, which expose functionality to R that can be useful for researchers. For example, packages providing interfaces to HTTP clients or cryptography or database drivers or image processing and so on. And finally, as I already mentioned, I'm currently also the maintainer of the official installers and tool chains and system libraries for R on Windows. So in this role of Windows maintainer, I spent quite some time in the past few years trying to modernize the infrastructure to build R and the components and the system libraries needed by R packages, collectively known as R tools. And so this process is now entirely automated and transparent and reproducible, such that everyone can see how this works and get involved. And at the same time, I really tried to redesign R tools to reduce the friction for Windows just to develop R packages on their machine. So these days, if you install R tools for and R things should generally just work, which wasn't always the case. And if you're interested in this work, you should check out the R Windows organization on GitHub. So that was briefly a bit of background about me. Let's talk about R universe. So what is R universe? R universe is sort of umbrella projects under which we are experimenting with many ideas that we have developed at R OpenSci in the past years to take open science with R to the next level. And in essence, R universe is an open platform for publishing and discovering research and research software written in R. And the platform has many features and different components. But the core is that in R universe, everybody, every user organization has a personal Cran-like package repository which is backed by a modern build system and also allows you to publish articles and other R-based content. And on top of that, R universe has extensive dashboards and fees and APIs and metrics and so on to make all of this content more openly available and accessible and discoverable. So how does it work? In a nutshell, so in R universe, every user organization has a unique subdomain under R universe.dev for publishing their content. And this subdomain is mapped to your GitHub account as though it can either be an individual account or a team account from GitHub. So for example, I publish my personal content under your room.ropensci.dev and things that I develop as part of R OpenSci go under ropensci.runiverse.dev And so on this subdomain for every user, you can find a Cran-like repository with R packages owned by this user organization. So, and this repository automatically includes binaries for Windows and Mac OS and some of the other things that you expect from a Cran-like repository. So it works, installing from this repository works for users exactly the same as when they would be installing a package from Cran. And you can also find R Markdown articles published by this user organization and a lot of metadata which I will show later on. And if you open this domain, the browser, you get a dashboard for visually browsing and exploring the content in this universe and the packages and the articles. But all of the data is also available programmatically using HTTP APIs. And again, as I already said everything is fully automated. So that might sound like a lot, so let's just look at an example. So here is the GGSec universe. GGSec is a suite of R packages that is developed by a research group at the University of Oslo for brain and cognition research. Most packages here are maintained by Athanasia Movenko and currently we see that there's 14 packages in the universe. One of these packages is Cran and the others are not. So again, the owner of this universe is the GGSec GitHub account which is an organization account and hence the URL of the universe is GGSec.Runiverse.dev. And through this GitHub account we can also show some information about this user. So that's what you see on the right. It is the profile picture and information from the GGSec group that we take from GitHub. Our universe dashboard that you get when you go to this subdomain in the browser has a few tabs through which you can browse the different sorts of content in the universe. So I'll walk a little bit through that. And by the way as we develop this and if you may be watching this thing in the future there might be additional tabs or they may have different names but the ID will remain the same. So first let's look at the most core thing which are the packages. So the build tab is this first tab and it shows an overview of recently updated packages in this universe and that shows the version and the maintainer and the date of the most recent commit package. And it also shows this green batch when the package is available from CRAM. And on top of that on the top of the page we show some example codes for users to explain how to install a package from this universe in R. So you just can directly copy paste that code into the R session and start using these packages from this universe. And so just like CRAM we automatically build binaries for Windows and macOS for the current and previous release of R. So that is this column with Windows and macOS icons that shows if there is a binary package available for Windows and Mac which in this case is true for each of the packages. The color of this icon shows if the package also passes all of the CMD checks. So if the icon is green it means that the package was successfully built and deployed and it also passes CMD check and if the icon is gray in this case it means that the package was successfully built and deployed to our universe but there was some error or warning in CMD check. So it means that users can still install this package but maybe if you are a maintainer you might want to look at what's going on. So as said the top of the page shows example code of how you could install packages from this universe. So this is a CRAM like a ball story so it's simply using installed packages the easiest way is by setting the repost argument in R to both your universe and then also CRAM. So what happens with this code is that the package and its dependencies will be installed from the the ggsec universe but for dependencies of the package that are not available from ggsec it will fall back on CRAM. So note that again all of this is done using the base R package manager exactly as when the user would install from CRAM and on Windows and Mac we have these binary packages so the user does not need any complicated tools and libraries to build these things from source. So the second tab of the dashboard is called packages and this basically gives us an overview of the content of the packages that are in the universe. So this is just mostly information that is taken from description files and then some additional metadata that we collect when a package is deployed. So for example it includes the title and the description for all of the packages in the universe who is the maintainer and the most recent commit. So this is like a place where you can quickly browse like what is available from this universe and what it is and if the package has a logo this is also shown here in this dashboard. So there's a few standard places where you can include the logo into your package and we use the same rules as package down to find the logo. So if the logo works for package down it will show up here as well. So this tab shows you some of the information from our database that we have for packages but there's really much more available through the API. So this is basically just the core stuff that's interesting to visually inspect but as I will show later so this dashboard actually calls to exactly the same API that's also public so we don't cheat and you can look at these APIs to extract many more pieces of information from the packages that are deployed in the universe. All right, so that was everything about packages and let's talk a little bit about articles and so besides publishing packages our universe is specifically intended as a place for publishing articles and this is really articles in the broad sense these can be vignettes with documentation but they may also be research or like a tutorial or anything that you think is worth sharing so if you go to this third tab you can see a list of all of the articles that are available for this user or organization and they are listed here and these are automatically rendered using the vignette system in R so the idea is that you you include these articles into an R package and then they automatically get built and rendered and shown here in the dashboard however articles don't have to be limited to software documentation so I will emphasize it a bit later on but really you can publish any sorts of content in your R markdown article so it can be a research paper or a tutorial or a homework assignment so whatever you want to publish into your universe so you can easily browse these articles within the dashboard by clicking on them from the list that I just shown and this will this will show the article within a context of this of this dashboard so it's easy to sort of browse through different articles in the universe or maybe across different universe universes and we all of these articles are rendered in a consistent HTML theme that is the same across all universes so hopefully that makes it more pleasant to browse rather than when all of these are using their own theme as you see on Cran yeah so you can browse these articles from within the dashboard and some of the articles also show direct links to the input markdown file and the output file so you can link to these resources directly if you just want to share the HTML or markdown without people having to go to the dashboard API access so an important feature of our universe is also that we provide programmatic access to all of the content and the metadata that is in the system so I think it's an important part of open science that content is not locked away in some platform but made accessible and available in as many generic ways as possible so all of the information that I've shown so far in the dashboard you can retrieve that through APIs and you can even retrieve much more information and also sort of aggregate statistics and other sort of metadata information about the repository and the system through our APIs so the API tab shows a few of these example endpoints that you can explore if you think that's interesting so this part is still a bit under development although the endpoints that I've document here are pretty stable so you can play with this in your browser or in R so for example the dash packages endpoint in this slide provides all of the information and all of the data that we have for a given version of a given package so in this URL dash packages slash ggsec slash and then the version number it lists all of the artifacts and the data that we have for this version of this package so in this case it's listing probably a list with five artifacts into a JSON list which is one source package and two binary packages for Windows and two binary packages for macOS and then this API call shows all of the data that we have about these files about these package artifacts and of course you can also read all of this in R or any other language or platform that understands HTTP or JSON so I'll leave it up to you to run this code and one thing to note is that many endpoints in our universe use the NDJSON format which is a streaming version of JSON which is needed for to optimize performance and therefore if you want to read these aggregate endpoints in R mostly in the dash stats you need to use the stream inference in JSON light or the equivalent function to read NDJSON format from your favorite JSON library right so that was sort of a very brief tour of what we have so far so let's take one step back so for who is our universe intended it's like why are we building this so I think there are many different use cases of having a personal art publishing space for your personal work or your organization or research group so the system is built around the concept of packages of course as the central container and deployment format but it's certainly not only for professional art package developers so in your universe you can publish whatever you want there's no policy there's no policing of what is allowed or not and certainly no archiving happening without your approval so yes I'll show you can use it to publish that version of grant packages for sure but you can also think about publishing more experimental projects or research material or even homework assignments so let's have a look at some examples of the early adopters of uses and organizations that are currently using this system so one one example is that you can simply use it as sort of your personal package portfolio so suppose you've written a bunch of art packages some of which may be on Cran or they may be in various places on Git and you can set up the universe to showcase all of your work it will show everyone things you've developed if they're in good state what you're currently working on and also for example if you publish articles you can use it to have a collection of things you've written about or your research another use case is to use a universe as an outlet for your research group so here's an example of a research group based at the Imperial College in London and they develop a suite of packages that is mostly maintained by Rich Fitzjohn and many of these packages may not be suitable for Cran or it's just too much of a pain to release it along Cran so they release all of their source code on GitHub but by creating a universe you can sort of increase the exposure to the work and make it more accessible and discoverable for users better than when it's only available in source form somewhere on a GitHub account and people may not be aware of another use case for our universe is software curation so as you may know our open site organization maintains a large suite of peer reviewed and staff maintained our packages for which we try to keep up to standard for use in scientific research so this is actually where our universe originates from this ID so through the open site universe it becomes easy to see for users which packages are available and it's easy for them to install regardless of whether or not they are Cran or not at that point but it also helps us as an organization as a monitoring tool so from the dashboard and the APIs we can keep an eye on the development activity of the packages that live in our organization and we can quickly spot packages that are failing tests and they don't seem to be actively maintained anymore and they might require our attention and another use case of our universe is simply to publish a development version of Cran packages so sometimes users they may want to test the version of a package that is not yet on Cran to test some new feature or a bug fix installing packages from source, from GitHub sometimes can be quite painful because many of these packages are live for example they contain C++ codes or they require system libraries and so on so by creating a universe for this everything gets automatically built and it's very easy for users to install the development version of the package it's just as easy if they would install the Cran version of that package without requiring any special tools or knowledge yeah I finally another example of a use case is for organizations that are developing an interdependent sets of R packages in a given domain such as for example here the R spatial organization who develop a set of R packages that are all related to geospatial analysis so if in the universe you can quickly see what they're currently working on and try the latest versions of these packages and a benefit for the developers of these packages is that these packages automatically get built and tested against the other versions of the packages in the universe so these are the other dev versions of the packages in the universe so if one of the maintainers of these packages makes a change that unknowingly breaks some of the other packages that depend on that it quickly becomes apparent in this dashboard because the other packages are built and checked against the version of the dependencies that are in this same universe so you can quickly see if the package that is being developed is passing checks in the content of the current development versions of its dependencies without having to do a manual ref depth check before the current release and then figuring out that you broke something a long time ago and having to go back so these are just some of the examples there's many more examples we have about 300 universes right now you can browse our web page to see some of the cool stuff was in there but I want to highlight one more use case which I personally most excited about that we haven't seen much yet so we are used to think of our packages mostly for sharing reusable code I mean that is what crime is for it is to share software that is useful for other people but many researchers have argued that an R package is actually a fantastic generic container format for research material R packages provide standard format for bundling code and data and articles and metadata such as the author and license and dependency and so on so I think that for example if you have a publication or a homework assignment which consists of a R markdown article or a SWE file and then you have some supporting code and data and you have that in a setup in a reproducible product or something from here is actually a small step to put it into an R package have published that into your personal universe so that you get a live automatically rendered version of that paper or that assignment on your our universe so this idea has been raised in the past by various people but it never took off and I think because well sure you could put your research into R package but then what I mean this can't go on crime because it's not software so what do you think about that but I hope that maybe now if you have your personal crime like repositories and your vignettes are sort of beautifully rendered this idea can take off and people can it really it becomes really rewarding to turn your research paper into an R package that is entirely fully reproducible and automatic such that the vignettes contains your paper or your article and through the supporting code in the package and the data in the package and the dependencies that are declared in your package file we have this place of publishing like fully automated reproducible research so that was an overview of different use cases that we envision so so far we've mostly looked at single universes but we want visitors of the website to be able to quickly discover and browse content from various universes so one way through these global feeds so if you go through the R universe homepage we show a global feed of all package commits across all universes so that's fun to look at to sort of see what people are working on across the entire our ecosystem similarly we have a feed for articles so you can see which articles have recently been created or updated across the entire ecosystem so this actually works very well it's very cool I've discovered several cool new R packages and new features just by looking at what people are writing in their articles and finally there's a maintainer view on the website which shows an aggregate of all the people so the various of these packages across all of the different universes so for example if you hover on a certain name of a author you may see that this author has published or maintaining packages in several universes and then you sort of may cross link and you click on that and sort of see the different projects that they're working on in different projects so maybe by now your period how do I set up my own universe I promise it's very simple I will briefly show how it works in the upcoming minutes but the best reference for this is a tech note that we wrote recently on the R open site blog which you can check out on ropensight.org but basically the way it works is all we need from you is to list some and it lists the packages that you want to include in your universe as to list the name of the package and the URL the git URL from where we can git clone that package and the only requirement is that this URL is a public git URL so from here our build service will literally git clone and that URL and that's basically everything you need to provide publish that in a repository called universe in the GitHub user organization for which you want to create a universe for example here is the one by Mahel and then the next step is to activate this by installing the GitHub app on your account for which you want to create the universe and the GitHub app needs very few permissions it basically only asks for writing commit status updates which means that the system is able to post like commit status which is like the green check mark or the red cross behind your commit on the R package repositories as we will see in a second so once you've done this what happens next is that the system automatically creates a mono repo for you again there is another blog post which extensively describes this process so you don't have to remember it but basically the mono repo is a Git repo story in which each of your packages is a sub module and this is basically the canonical source for your universe and it allows us to see currently but also have a full history of what was in your universe at any given point in time and then if you go to the actions tab of this mono repo on GitHub which is by the way the mono repo is under R dash universe action in the name of your account and there you can see where all the building happens so if something is not working you can check that out and then once you've set it up after a while usually no more than our packages that have a complete building will start bearing on your dashboard and then if you gave it permission if you gave the GitHub app permission to write commit statuses as I said earlier then every time a package is successfully deployed on your R universe it becomes visible in the R package repository as you see here as a commit status so that as a link here with a green check mark so that means that this commit for this package was successfully deployed onto our universe so this is basically the current state so this is what we have right now we have just started this and we really want to build it out we have many ideas for features we want to have but one thing that we are working on and that I want to highlight is that we want to integrate various metrics about packages and maybe good indicators about the quality and the health and the impact of research projects so if you want to understand the motivation behind this better you can watch the recording from my talk at our studio gone from earlier this year link is also on our home page and in the talk I try to explain why we believe it is important for organizations and potential users of software to get a sense of the health and the quality of the software that they build on and in this talk I talk a bit about various types of indicators that I think that you could look at for an open source project and here I distinguish technical and social and scientific indicators that may say something about the health and the role and the impact of a project so we want to integrate such indicators with our universe such that the dashboard and the API show some information about these software and research projects that gives you a sense if the project is still active and how it is maintained and if it is used by other researchers so for example some low-hanging fruit we want to show something about the download statistics and the reverse dependencies of packages that are obviously an indicator of how much something is used and particularly for example if we look at these numbers over time you may get a sense about the life cycle of the package if this is something that is up and coming or on its way out of sort of an established package into the ecosystem but a much more challenging and important aspect of this project is to find uses and citations of research software in scientific code and publications we think this is very important for research software to be able to say like where is this software used in actual scientific research so for this we are collaborating with a team of experts to build machine learning models to recognize software mentions in the literature and they are now running experiments to look at the citations from like the large corporates of 20 or 30 million open access articles and try to extract citations automatically especially for software that we haven't seen before so we hope to announce some interesting progress in this area later this year right so that was most of what I had to say small recap so what is our universe and why is it useful so it's an open platform for publishing research and research software and other art based content the system automatically tracks your git repositories and then builds the binaries and the articles and so on users can easily install these things just like they can from CRAN there's no complex tools needed like art tools or remotes or so on installation for users is just like as they would install from CRAN and then the dashboards they show the art packages and the articles that you have published and they can even work when the actual source content is spread because different github organizations or even different git servers also our universe can be used as a zero configuration continuous integration system so as I showed if you if you give the app permission it will show this check mark when the package was successfully deployed so if you want to have a continuous integration or actually it's continuous deployment in this case for your art packages you can just install that app and there's no other maintenance or configuration on your site and it will just run the standard checks on a different platform so you can quickly spot if there is an issue and our universe is very easy to set up we've tried to deal with all of the challenges solve that on our server side so really what you need is just provide a list of the git repositories that you want to include so we hope that it sort of becomes a space where you can publish your content your packages and your articles maybe other things later that is both these packages can also both be on github or they can also be on cram it doesn't have to be exclusive and again I want to emphasize our universe can be used by anyone whether you are just starting to use our or you are a veteran package developer you can set up your own universe and start publishing your work so some references if you want to learn more I recommend you check out our website from our open site where we have a landing page for the project and in particular so documentation for our universe is a little bit sparse right now but the best references are a few tech notes that we published on the blog so for example we have a post that is tightly dedicated to explaining how the build system works and one in which I have explained the idea of publishing articles based on the vignette system and also this idea of what if we could use this system not just to publish software documentation but actually to start publishing research compendia and other research material that would not be suitable on cram but definitely fits into an art package and then there is the most recent blog post that is very detailed how you go about setting up your own our universe and some of the tricks if you want more fine control yeah that was everything I had to say thank you so much for listening thanks so much your own yeah so we've got 10 minutes of questions and we have lots of questions on the Q&A and also on the swag so we probably won't be able to get to them all but we'll see what we can do now so to start with how do you guard against malware and so on in our universe we don't so the idea is that is your personal publishing space so I expected users will install so they will if they install something from a particular universe just as if they would install software directly from github using install with github or something that you think about from that you install that from source that you trust so in a sense it is similar to when users would install from github is that you need to trust the source of the author or the organization from where you are installing this from okay does our universe build macOS binary packages the same way CRAN does in other words can we use our universe like a windbuilder to predict CRAN success of building binaries for macOS mostly yes I mean CRAN is not it's unclear exactly how CRAN builds things because their build platform is not entirely open so but in most cases I would say if the package builds on our universe it will probably work on CRAN vice versa but you know it's impossible to exactly replicate the configuration of the mac build server because we are building everything in public CI service on github so obviously we don't know all of the custom settings and tweaks that CRAN may have configured on their build server okay makes sense perhaps while we are on building are there plans to also build linux binaries in the future e.g. for selected distributions similar to RSPM maybe right now because it's pretty resource intensive to orchestrate that and of course our studio is doing that for CRAN and they have a lot of resources to be able to build these binaries but it's very expensive because if you want to build linux binaries you need to build separate binaries for every version of R for every different version of every different operating system so you literally need a binary for R4.0 for Ubuntu 20 and then another binary for R4.0 for Ubuntu 80 and so forth and then so it's like you need to build a lot of things so for now that is out of scope and it doesn't weigh up to the price that would cost us to provide these things which version on GitHub gets built is it the latest commit on master you can specify that so this is detailed in the blog post about how to set up your own universe by default it will be it will be tracking the the head branch which is the default git branch which is either master or main but you can specify in your registry file if you want which branch you want to track so for example if you have a special stable branch where you only commit things that you want to share that are considered stable in your registry file you can track that and there's even a special value that you can enter in your branch called star release which is a syntax that we've taken from remotes and if you track that automatically track the latest github release of the package showing github you can tag releases of your package and if you do if you specify in your registry file you want to track the star release branch then we know that at any point we look like what is the latest git tag what is the latest tag release on github and that's what will be deployed in your universe and actually the control is for the user and can we build something like this on private clouds or does it require github it does not require github but private is pretty complicated and so I've also written about this in the last tech note there are packages the source code of the packages they may be hosted on any kit server they may be hosted on github but they may also be hosted on gitlab or they may be hosted on like a private git server by your university or your institution the only thing that matters is that we that is public and we can git clone from that URL the source code of your package yeah making this private is pretty complicated and I don't think that we are very interested in that right now because we are about open science and if we would make this private it would add layers of authentication complexity at every level we have to authenticate probably we're pulling the source code and then I imagine you would expect users to authenticate if they want to install the package which I think ours install the packages doesn't even support authentication it's really not something that we are at this point investing in if I install something from our universe is the R package RM able to know that it's installed from there when I create a snapshot yes the description file as you install the package of course the description file the package is installed and that one contains several fields which we stamp which are built server stamp into the description file which shows you which universal which universal repository this package was installed from and it also shows you for the package that's built it shows you the upstream URL of the R package sort of get URL of the package which is where you build from and it shows you which branch that this package was installed from so by default this master remain but if you're installing from something else and it shows you the shaw hash of the of which version of the package was built so if you look at the description file of the install package you will be able to see exactly like which universe is coming from and also exactly which commit to the R package that this package was built of okay can a package be part of multiple universes? yes absolutely that we see that happening a lot so the the universe registry file you just list to get URLs from the packages you want to include and of course different people may all include the same package for example if you have I may have a package of mine that's both part of R or PSI and it's also part of my personal universe that's fine can our universe be used to share forks of grand packages say? so that's you can but it's tricky so we specifically of course that's dangerous right so because I mean you of course you can share a fork of a package and you can even share a completely different package with the same name but of course that is not something we would recommend because then if the user installs that then it overwrites the other package and maybe other packages on your system were depending on that package so then things break so in the dashboard we will show for the show indicators like these badges on whether the package also exists on CRAN and then if it is the same source as a package from CRAN so we will show actually a red flag if the package has the same name as a package that is on CRAN but the URL does not match what is shown on CRAN thereby we try to show and we try to warn users or also developers against like watch out because this package has the same name as a CRAN package but it may actually not be from the same source Thanks so much for ruffling through those questions there's still a few more left and hopefully you'll be able to follow up with those afterwards on Slack on KeyOmes channel Up next we have a 15 minute break and three parallel sessions after that statistics and bioinformatics are in production and statistical modelling and data analysis so join us there thanks very much everyone


Hello and welcome to the back story tonight. We're going to tell the back story on the unseen costs of child care and the implications for child care in the cost of child care for our local economy and the stability of our workforce My name is Tim Watters and as a volunteer for Longmont Public Media I get to host this program which gives me a Chance to interview guests like I'm going to have a chance to interview this evening who I'll have the pleasure of introducing in just a moment To talk about this you actually do storytelling to share stories of what's happening in the community that at least I think are relevant and interesting And I hope you will as well We're coming to you tonight as we do the last Monday of every month Although this is the third Monday of the month doesn't it next week is Labor Day or Memorial Day So we're coming to you a week earlier this this this month from beautiful downtown Longmont the Longmont Public Media Studios We have a live studio audience this evening and so to the audience members who are with us When we get 40 minutes or so into the hour if audience members have questions that they'd like to To participate in this conversation They're going to be invited to join us if they have them and if you're not in the studio audience tonight You're missing a good time down here in Longmont So think about next month when we're going to be talking about the second of a two-part series tonight's the first part We're going to be talking about problems challenges not necessary Necessarily solutions to the unforeseen costs of child care and its impact on the economy So we'll come back to the to the questions about solutions and options, but tonight I have three women who are gainfully employed running businesses high-level High-profile executive jobs in and around Longmont. You're going to most of you are going to know who they are because of what they do And each of them has their own story about how they've continued to stay in the workplace earn a living for their families and Manage all the implications of being a mom at the same time that they're professional women So Sarah Morgan is the owner of Martina B. Stroh's B. Stroh, right? Everybody in town knows Martini's So Sarah, thank you. I know this is a tough time for you in particular Probably peak moment in your restaurant. So thank you for what you do day in and day out But thanks for being here tonight and sharing the story Amy Ashenbrenner. I've known Amy for number of years here, but as the director of the realtors association and in just recently has made some transition to a Maybe a less frenetic job, but still in the in the real estate business with Boulder Bolo realtors Bolo realtors and Jessica Erickson who is now the director of business development with Sun construction Sarah Sarah Jessica and I've worked together For a number of years when she was the director of the Longmont Economic Development Partnership and has now made this transition to Sun construction in their business development. So Ladies that's as much as I'm going to try to talk less. Have you talked more? Let's get started with just those introductions. I'd like you to start by telling Sharing with our listeners your stories Sarah well if we could just start with you and you'll just kind of work around the table Help us get to know you your background your professional life and what kind of what brings you into this conversation? So I started as a general manager for Martini's B. Stroh in 2018 this is my 25th year in the restaurant industry and And so I 25 years and I'm looking at me like clearly like I started very early in the restaurant Yeah, you were just a baby pretty much I was 13 when I got my first job in the restaurant industry You really were baby. I really was and so I did dishes and bus tables and made salads This was never my life goal to be a restaurant owner by any means the restaurant industry was always a Lily pad for me. I could jump in jump jump out and For our cultural society wise at the restaurant industry is that for a lot of people? It's a very transient industry and so like most of us in this industry I did the restaurant While I was always trying to leave the restaurant. So I got my associates of nursing I got my bachelor's degree in equine science and pre vet. I did ranching for a while. I was a Art consultant for a while. I've been all around like really the professional world and You know, I definitely have the how hard could it be Jean so whatever industry I get in I'm bound on tournament I'm gonna be great at it gonna figure it out and When I was graduating from CSU with my degree in equine science and pre vet that point I was 30 and Really felt like I thought at that point I've been married for about seven years And I was really ready to start trying to have children And so when I graduated CSU I was pregnant with my first child and I decided not to go on to vet school And then considering at that point during my last two years at CSU I was managing a wine bar in Fort Collins and Had left that and just moved over to Chimney Park Which at that point is one of the top 100 restaurants in the country and I've always loved fine dining I'm a second-level Psalm and so summer yay. So moving over to Chimney Park was really a ton of fun I mean really good money and a little bit of time and So I was at Chimney Park through my pregnancy and that was really my goal was to Maintain that job so then I could work at night and still be at home with my baby during the day Always wanted children. I always wanted to be a mom and I've always had this this mentality that professionally I didn't need to lessen myself so I could be a mother and I don't believe I need to be less of a mother so I could be a professional and So I felt like at that point in my life It was a really good fit but then a week after I had my daughter my husband at that time had lost his job and I had to get back to the corporate world. I needed more more everything more sustainability we need security and so I'd gotten into the franchising industry and That was my first time in the franchising industry I had never really acknowledged how large of an industry it was any kind of concept or Industry you can you can really bounce around within franchising And so I was on the restaurant side and I was doing quick service or fast food restaurants I was a franchise development coordinator and It was it was everything that I needed for my family. I made good money I had a lot of upper's mobility. I traveled a ton but I started this job when my daughter was six weeks old and so I was still nursing I was still very postpartum and I had to put all that aside because I had a family to support and I never really gave myself space to Accept or even consider like did I have any kind of postpartum depression?  How was I was I getting to be the mom? I wanted to be absolutely not I was I knew I was very sad about that But just kind of I put it in a box and move forward and I had to be the best I could be because I had a lot on the line and I did that was right at the time where we had hired a new VP of HR for for Tucker Johns and she was so progressive. She was very much about Satellite working and you know, and I leaned into that hard it really as a franchise development coordinator I could do my job anywhere as long as I had a cell phone and internet connection and my computer and So especially that as much as I was traveling for work when I started to ask for more of that balance for me At least can I work at home so I can be with my my baby a little bit more and the demographic in the The overall or majority demographic for the office wasn't so supportive of that I was definitely the youngest one in my office and getting a lot of pushback because culturally that's not how they did it And so I definitely especially now being an employer. I understand the hesitation for it and still this day I do definitely believe that there's some needed balance and boundaries in order to be an effective Parent and working from home is still trying to be around your child. That that's a whole nother ball game But I beg for that and they I did get a lot not a lot But I did get a lot more flexibility with my schedule at least I wasn't needing to be in the office every day But still no less. It was it was a major strain on me as a mom as me as a parent and definitely on me like on my family and so I did that job until that job ended and it kind of left me at that point had just had my second child and Was definitely Acknowledging is probably giving me my last and so I wanted to take as long of a maternity leave as I could at that point And I was a little bit more in a secure place professionally with the same company at that point And so I took the full three months and then that all that responsibility with that needing to be able to forward Taking three months off of work and making that happen but got it together and it was good and And then eventually that when I did get back from maternity leave It wasn't long until that my position was dissolved anyways We're going through a big leadership change and so then after that I was like, you know what? This is okay. I have a new farm. I have both my children I can now I can ride horses at my place and just figure out life and I'm finally gonna be able to be the parent I want to be and That was on Friday when my job ended and then on Monday I had a really bad accident that landed me in a wheelchair for about eight weeks and physical therapy for 20 weeks And so I was still actively interviewing for other jobs within the franchising industry I've been really successful in my position, but now that I couldn't travel so easily I was not a Candidate for the positions and so quickly like the interest of me kind of died off and it landed me back on This side of the restaurant industry and it was you know, one of the greatest things ever to happen because it put me right back Where I am happiest and it gave me the most flexibility again to be with my my children Now the money and the income was obviously different and so that took a little Readjusting and figuring that out, but I was back to working Later afternoons and into the evenings when my children were sleeping. I had coverage at home I was still married at the time so I had coverage at home to watch them while I was working but during the day and You know the weekends I could really rearrange my schedule to work or be a little bit more accommodating to being a parent So I started working at Martini's in 2018 as the general manager And then my life happened to where I was able to buy it in 2020 And it was just an incredible opportunity and that's where I realized the stewardship of now being an employer It was really on me to build the culture of for my employees What did I want for them and realizing how much I wanted to be at home with my children? I liked the restaurant industry because of the flexibility it afforded me How can I offer this to more industry professionals that have children that don't feel like their whole life needs to be for work? They can come in they can make good money They can have benefits and they can still have coverage for their children when they need it And so that's really what I have developed Martini's and my my managing company is service LLC So service LLC is now comprised of industry professionals and the majority of us are parents or nonetheless We have active interests that we like to explore outside of work and we cover each other Appropriately for that some of my proudest moments in the restaurant is when I have an employee with a new baby And and she's got to come in and bring the baby and that baby will go on my chest Well, she goes and does something and so I've got the baby carrier and we're vacuuming and we've got a playpen set up in the office And I'm proud to be able to do that, but that's really where I feel like as a culture We've we've gotten away from that but the more conversations I have about this I realize how many people are very Flexible and open and accommodating whereas I feel like we've as a culture has we've kind of taken that almost 1950s mentality of oh, no babies don't come around babies don't need to be heard But I I believe that you want to support the workforce you support the family and it raises the children into the workforce We become a better society. They learn about work ethic and responsibility, which I do think a lot of our our generations right now are Having major issues with that. And so I feel like because of this neglect that we've almost Adopted as being okay with our children. It's really kind of starting to take to Eat at us culturally. So I'm I'm excited to have some effect to try to change that and There's nothing that makes me more proud than to have my children at work with me and people know my children and they bus Tables and they pour water and my guests luckily don't mind much But I also have to manage how much you know the whole the whole environment, but it works Well, you we're gonna come back to I have a question here about creativity and you you've begun to open up some of that But I want to come back to that to what are the creative approaches occurring now, right that you can just go with on your own And whatever your workplaces, but what we'll come back to that thing Amy tell us about you. Well, that's actually a great said segue to Amy. Thank you Cuz I think I bring a little bit more of a elder No, I bring the elder to this day well, I I'm a native of Boulder. I grew up on a ranch right outside of Rocky Flats Once I finished schooling. I didn't go far. I ended up in hygiene Bought a farm there started a life that I thought that I was going to have Raising children. I have three children when my youngest was oh gosh almost Three years old for her birthday. My husband divorced me So I did not have any Professional experience at that point. I'd worked odd jobs while I was in school and whatnot But now I found myself with three children Youngest being three the oldest being eight a farm with a mortgage no health insurance and no income So what do you do, right? Fortunately for me The words of raised by a village came to play because out in the farm community. It is a village I was by the grace of God Given an opportunity to work in the office at Keeter trucking in Boulder, Colorado And I flourished and it was a fabulous experience Except for when it came for being a mom I didn't have to worry about daycare at that point because I had neighbors around me But what what I was not able to do was go to school functions to go to doctor's appointments Because there was that mindset back then with the employers and this is what would be told of me I don't know how important is your job? right my son suffered a Broken bone up at Keystone and they called and I had to go to the hospital and whatnot And when I'm walking out the door the boss at the time says to me, well, you will be back this afternoon, right? So I worked through that. I went got a different job. I keep moving up bettering myself during that time period my children are learning Responsibility and that's what plays in so key with you My older two children knew that they had to come home from school Everybody had to sit down and do homework They had to skip chores done and then they had to get dinner started and then there was the little one to take care of right Then it got to the point where I did have to get daycare for the little one I Couldn't afford daycare. There was nothing out there that was available So by asking around here was the situation. I made too much money to qualify for this, right? Just and it was like five or ten dollars Thankfully the YMCA and they had a fabulous program Going through that will just fast forward because I could go on forever I have three of the most outstanding children in the world. My son holds a master's in secondary education school Education was very important in our family my daughter Samantha the middle child is Starts working for the Department of Corrections with the state of Colorado and at 21 Then my youngest daughter Cheyenne is in the health care she does home health care I Was very fortunate throughout the years to be able to take all the experiences that I had at the different jobs that I had To not only further my education, which I worked on every night. This is My children were teaching me how to use a computer because that was before computers were readily available and Thankfully the st. Rain Valley school district We're introducing computers to the children at hygiene elementary So I saved and saved and saved and bought you know one of those great big old computers and Every night after the kid the two younger ones would go to bed My son would teach me how to use Excel and word because I knew I had to have that right It was going to get to that point. So we'll fast forward I went to work for the realtor association 24 years ago the lung line association of realtors I started as an administrative assistant. I worked my way up to the CEO of the association but the entire time I was doing that every Missed opportunity that I had with a being able to be the mom that I wanted to be Never got to be What's that called the mom the home school room mom or whatever it is or cake cupcakes or go on the field trips? I always told myself that when I got to a position where I was the boss I was never going to allow that to happen. So I created that same atmosphere I have a fabulous fabulous woman that's worked for me for years.  They're sick.  I've had a few that took advantage But for the most part they will give you back tenfold Because of what you've done. We had a rule in my house with my kids when they were little Do not call mom at work Unless you're bleeding profusely or a bonus sticking out because I couldn't leave and Then I had to run around try to find somebody that could go take care of them Jessica that's interesting because that's a good say go like this order was great unplanned I'm assuming but So I actually grew up in the in the Twin Cities in Minnesota in a household where my mother was the primary breadwinner oftentimes the only breadwinner which at the time in the age myself 80s and early 90s was not as common as it is today. It's almost half of households today but and so I watched her try to do all of the things while working full-time and supporting our family and Baking the cupcakes in the middle of the night and and missing some of the events and activities and never being the mom in In my classroom, and so I think I pretty early on Decided that I was I was not going to prioritize having children having a family Because I didn't want that for my life what I had seen my mom had have to struggle with for my life. So 2002 I moved to Colorado and relatively quickly found my way into an economic development office and really and I discovered not only my profession but my passion that sustained for the next 20 years and has allowed me to We were talking about before have a pretty exciting life because it was just me. I was on my own I was doing well. I had this great profession that provided me a lot of flexibility but was also very demanding as you know and and then in So found my way through that career path to running the Longwell economic development partnership Starting in 2015. So for eight years, I ran the Longwell economic development partnership But in I started here in February of 2015 in May of 2015. I was diagnosed with breast cancer I was 37 years old and I was told that The treatment that I was going to have to undergo as a result of breast cancer What 100% of the time affects fertility? And I was told that if I had any thought or consideration of ever wanting to be a mother that I should take measures in advance of treatment to preserve my fertility and So the first for the first time in my life. I was faced with this Motherhood of being taken from me. I wasn't making a conscious choice not to pursue it anymore I it was being taken from me. And so that's where I said, you know, I think I actually Do want to do this and at 37 about to go through breast cancer treatment Ons are slim but went through treatment and kind of aftercare and then my partner and I were fortunate enough to conceive naturally and Have a perfectly healthy Against all odds perfectly healthy normal though high-risk pregnancy and have a beautiful baby girl Of all days on March 12th of 2020 So if anyone wants to know the exact number of days ago that the pandemic started I can always tell you that And she's three years old now and and she's incredible and she's thriving But all of the sacrifices that you've talked about and all of the sacrifices that you've talked about Are ones that I have to make every day as well. And I think all of us have to make I'm Right in that position that I told myself. I didn't want to be in I'm the primary breadwinner for my household and for my family and and Every single day having to make here or their decisions What's in the best interest of the long-term? You know health and safety and wellness and financial Stability of my family versus the time and energy and effort I get to put into being the mother that I want to be and a lot of that impacted my decision to move from You know a career I had Enjoyed and and been very arguably very successful at for 20 years into something different and new and foreign Because it provided me with more consistency of schedule and stability and flexibility And financial stability than what my previous career had Well having crossed your path a number of times you said arguably I would say inarguable you were successful And I and I'm mindful right now first of all all three of your stories obviously unique to you But there are some patterns here And I want to make certain we we pull out some of those patterns because their patterns I think not just for you but for moms working moms or want to be working moms right who are making some dealing with some of the same issues And I don't want that my my fear is that I'm gonna kind of begin to frame this on the negative side because there's so much Positive that you've just shared but there are some challenges, right? Could we just let's call out The sacrifices and the challenges, you know, what what what are the constraints that we all want to understand that talented People just like you just happened to be all three of you women Really talented successful women Are are doing this because you're able to work around or overcome some of those challenges Let's just put those really kind of make them really visible for a few minutes once Reiterate you've touched on them Sacrifice what you can and can't do I want to make certain we tell the story about what you what you're challenged with Now so then we talk about how we might relieve some of those burdens later. We're clear on what we're trying to relieve. Yeah, absolutely So if you don't mind Was fortunate to participate in an event that you had with Governor Polis around early childhood care and education policy in Colorado and Had the opportunity to speak at that event So we just kind of revisit I don't want to speak for anyone else at the table anyone else in the room But I want to kind of check my privilege and say I am one of the fortunate ones Because I you know the cost, you know one of the biggest challenges of child care My household income is around 150 percent of the area median and child care costs are about 12 percent of My income my household income So if you consider someone at the median or below the median at the median that same child care costs would be 17 or 18 percent Of their household income That's that's a mortgage, right? So I again consider myself fortunate that while it's a squeeze Let's make this clear. It's nearly $2,000 a month that we pay for child care It's a squeeze for my family, but I have the ability to To do that and so have the highest quality best available child care for my my daughter that people in a different situation don't have I have to drive from Central long my home and central Longmont to Northeast Longmont back to kind of Southwest Longmont from home to child care to to Work so transportation, but again, I'm fortunate I have a vehicle a reliable vehicle that I have the ability to do that to take my daughter from or to take my daughter to daycare and get To work on time and regularly every day not everybody has that privilege or that good fortune You talked about you know flexibility of the work environment There are some jobs that just don't allow for the level of flexibility that that mind certainly does so that you know my My ability to go to work every day is dependent not only on my health and my daughter's health But also on the health of our nanny and the health of her family And so if there are one of those days where you know, we're healthy, but they're not and I can't get my daughter to child care I have the ability to Work from home. It often requires that I get up two hours before her and stay up two hours after her to get The work done that needs to get done for that day, but I have that ability and I have that option I have that good fortune to be in that position So I do think cost accessibility So where child care centers quality affordable child care centers are located? Transportation all of those things are challenges and then workplace flexibility all of those things are challenges that Are so critical to be Addressed as part of this conversation and not for people like me But for people who aren't as fortunate as me to be able to manage those things. Yeah, great I'm going to come back to I'm going to circle back on a couple of points you made but I want to invite Amy and in Sarah into this and I think and and Jessica gives a Example of a very small percentage of Whether it be mother's fathers or or partners or families in in a hole the bigger picture We all need to focus on not only at the local level But the state level is those that make up the majority which are the ones that Basically, the bottom line is they're going to work to pay for daycare And it's a very sad thing with the hopes that they will continue to advance So that when they get to that point where they don't need the daycare, you know, then you know Financially things will be a little bit more stable. I Also would love to see there be the conversation in the mindset with all employers everywhere That there has to be that work-life balance and I think that's one of the points where we're missing really talented workers out there Because they can't come to work It's not that they don't want to but they can't and then the one other thing because I could go on forever is Tim knows The transportation part of this Because there is so much Conversation at the local and state level about not driving You tell me how is a working parent supposed to do a trip? Such as what Jessica just talked about it would be impossible on public transportation With not only your briefcase that holds your computer, but the diaper bag the baby the car seat whatever else that you have to have with you It's a broad conversation So, I mean we're just kind of adding up So what would you add to this the emotional and physical warfare of Parenthood in general and then to have just the stress and any of the higher you are in the workplace the more stress is on you and There what support do we have for that? We really like just push it under a rug. We've all been there We've all done it. It's just like really I'm torn down today having to make the decision of Leaving my screaming crying child that wants to be on my side With her grandmother because I have to go to work and not not say I want to like lack on my slack on my Responsibilities with work, but right now I'm having to not be the comfort and the nurturer and the hundred percent person That I was biologically geared to be at that moment because I had to make the decision for my employer That's where I always go back to culturally. I feel like culturally we've just become so centered on economic growth Financial growth growth of the company growth of the of your finance finances growth growth We all think that we need to have the biggest house in the best car And it's like really like can we just focus on being happy? What do you need to be happy? That doesn't require the material if we did that could we kind of back off on always needing that growth? What happens if we just are happy with sustainability and getting to enjoy a company and like a work life balance the So we've talked about The unforeseen cost what these are what you've just identified are not unforeseen Some of the emotional toll that you've just described is part of that unforeseen cost, but I just want to go back to the To the number you you mentioned $2,000 a month. That's it. I may be an exit 1850 the average cost For a full-time for one child average full-time cost for childcare right now in long months $21,000 a year right so your numbers are kind of spot-on And that's it. That's if you if you earn enough and you have the options, right? That was your reference to privilege and the opportunity to have the means to do some of that working around There are there are some other numbers and these these are not mine There's a member of our audience who is tonight who's who's done the research on this so I'm gonna cite her work 8.3 billion dollars of lost wages right now annually in America Because of men and women who would like to be in the workplace and can't some of that goes to you know The stresses the economic stresses that come with it over the next ten years a Trillion dollars over the next ten years of productivity will be lost Because of the number of moms and dads who can't be in the workplace who don't just don't have the means or the Support even as little as it's been free to do the kind of workarounds that you've been able to do just to kind of make the point That what you've described Is not as true here and it's true, you know at some scale Now all that said The three of you have been creative right so no matter what anybody else does As you described Sarah an employee bring them their child in and you know You're you're caring for the child as they are doing something else Talk a little bit about the kind of the creative things not the dark side of this and and not dependent upon anybody else Right to come up with a solution We're going to talk about solutions in another in another one of these sessions What are the examples of what you've been able to create as as options for yourselves for your employees and For your family members right given the challenges of finding places and affording those being able to afford the places where you want to put your kids So when I started to work when my daughter was six weeks old I was really fortunate enough at that point that my mother-in-law was willing to move from Florida to Colorado And she got a house just around the corner from us It was a beautiful thing how it all worked out But so for the first year of my daughter's life It was my mother-in-law being able to take care of her when I was at work And then once I had a second child we definitely needed a we needed a larger house And so we decided to combine our incomes and become a multi-generational household And so we I mean as a you would speak more to this than anybody But that has I think that's a really amazing Cultural movement that we've had that the last 10 15 years of more multi-generational households That has been great because it's obviously given care and less than the financial Responsibility on my mother-in-law being of an older age But then it's also given me the care for my daughter at home so and then with my son So we weren't needing to pay out what would have been almost $4,000 Especially to have an infant in daycare is significantly more expensive than having an older child or a toddler And so that saved us $4,000 a month But was able to also like I said financially benefit my mother-in-law And my in my business Yes, I've had points where I not you know obviously I couldn't legally like write it down like looking for a new Mother for this position, but I had office things that I needed done. I needed a An executive assistant essentially and I luckily I knew one I knew a person that would just be fantastic for the job And she had just had a new baby and she was kind of scrambling about how I Could just sympathize of where she was and I was like bring him in is it set up at the playpen And take the time you want we put a chair in the office so she could breastfeed as she needed to She had the ability to still be a mom and get the job done and she did a fantastic job She was so loyal. She was so dedicated. She was so happy in her workplace. She felt effective She felt like she could grow and I was really excited to be able to offer that for her Now being divorced and now I live over my restaurant So I have an apartment about my restaurant And so I can't tell you how often my children are upstairs Somebody else's children also needs to be upstairs because we didn't have enough staff to give them the night off So it's like okay, we're since I have a daycare upstairs and like four kids running around and eating applesauce and chicken tenders And we're we're shuttling up and down the stairs shaking in on them. It's it's a really beautiful thing Yeah, it's a little stressful. Yes, it's another element to manage with work, but there's nothing wrong with it It's it's so healthy. They're almost latchkey kids with better supervision I was definitely latchkey kids so I can sympathize with that but it's just like They're they're doing well, so we've gotten creative and it's I think it eases especially It regardless of your mother or your father if you're a dedicated parent that emotional weight and stress of am I doing it, right? Is it what's am I scaring my child up or are we all thriving right now? And I'm happy to say that I think majority of my staff at least with 95% of the time say we're thriving as parents being able to thrive as professionals And part of that is really the collaboration what you've done with that workplace at the village Yeah, and you know, I was very fortunate as my children got a little older in the elementary school age. I became great friends with another Divorced mother of three who was actually in the real estate industry, which I was not at that point We worked out a Very simple deal. Neither one of us could afford to pay somebody right so her kids would come home on the school bus to my house And then be there through dinner sometimes until 10 p.m She would pick them up and then when my kids had appointments during the day She was able to take them to those appointments neither one of us had to pay the other one to be able to do either one Those are I think really great ideas that that today's Families aren't utilizing that village Mantra and maybe it's because they don't know who's in their neighborhoods. I've never lived in town I don't know what it's like to have neighbors around you So, you know, I think in my little fantasy world, everybody has really great, you know Neighbors, which I know is not always the case But it's that solution right there and that I agree with you when I first became the boss I wanted to put an ad in the paper for a single mom and Of course the attorney quickly told me I could not do that. Why can't you do that? But and why can't we do that? Why have we created the stigma and that's another part of this Conversation conversation as well is the stigma you chose to be a mom you made the decision I don't know how many times I've heard that Jessica would add to this just in terms of the creative Yeah, I mean I think very similarly at you know as fortunate As the CEO of Long Island Economic Development Partnership to put some policies in place for my staff long before I was a mother Started our discretionary leave policy, which was basically take the time off that you need to have balance and take care of your family So same without feeling that you're going to be Penalized or lose wages or not be able to financially support your family if you take the time off that you need to do so Or even to just go on vacation with them refresh and recharge with your family and have that business And so I have multiple Employees take advantage of that and you know travel the world with their kids and come back Just absolutely refreshed and much better more productive more energized employees for it and also more worldly which is was Kind of critical for the work that we were doing so that and then certainly once I had my daughter same thing set up the Play area you saw it in in my office TP table arts and crafts supplies and toys all over the place and And so many you know afternoons and evenings spent in the office with my with my little one Make it at work. So I think the answer to this question is yes, but I'll ask it then unpack it or better go down Are you in conversations with other parents other working parents mom's dads in your in your professional spheres who are dealing with the same kinds of issues I Have a child that's Going through these issues. So I know you're not spokesperson for others, right? But what do you hear it from your kids your college your associates, you know, my daughter has a Three-year-old special needs which makes daycare even more expensive, right and it was that whole trying to create how Mom I need to go to work financially I need to go to work But almost everything I makes going towards this daycare Right and Fortunately, it's worked out for her because she's in the home health care profession. She works at night When the little ones asleep and whatnot and then She's found a fabulous Wonderful daycare setting that they actually call it school and it's only for special needs, but It's that difficulty of It would be great if everybody had it Easier to find daycare easier to do that to be able to afford it but that that's just not the reality and Seeing it firsthand with my daughter Yeah, because it's different from when I had children and you talk about latchkey kids When my son received his Masters, that's what his speech was that Thankfully because he had a mother that was single and raised three children and taught him the hard work ethics How to do housework how to do Cook dinners how to take care of siblings. He was able to achieve his accomplishments. So I mean some Moms groups on social media where there's a lot of conversation around child care and then the number of conversations around You know, where can I find child care that I can afford and that is accessible and available to me based on my schedule? Not everybody in 2023 works nine to five Monday through Friday but that's when child care is available because Child care providers also have families that they want to go home to in the evening and spend their weekends with so How do we address the challenge of? Accessibility for all regardless of kind of what your schedule is or what your profession is to be able to access child care and then the number of conversations around how do I work from home and Care for my child at the same time and the fact that that's even a Necessary conversation is just so Devastating, I don't think anybody should be in that put in that position where they have to find a way to Simultaneously work from home and I think a lot of times the conversation is oh the pandemic provided for this Opportunity for us to be able to work from home and have our kids there at the same time That is no kind of opportunity and that is no kind of life that anybody should aspire to or have to be Put into there need to be options for for people of all walks of life and in all situations and in all kind of scenarios so What are the implications? What are your observations about the workforce more you know broad more broadly conceptualized or thought about? and This idea of working at home as a as either either a requirement or it's an attraction or is as the opposite The relationship between child care and recruitment and stability the workforce What what's it?  What are the challenges there? It's just the loss of incredible talent that I can't I I have friends who are just incredible restaurant industry professionals and They I cannot get them back into their workforce because of the child care issue because of how expensive Because of how you know financially our our industry really works its feast or famine throughout the year And so it's it's a lot and so they've just chosen not to Rejoin the workforce after having children or they try to go Find another new another industry to pursue and it's kind of sad because they made a good amount of money in The restaurant industry to see them leave to go take half because they get a better schedule for day care It worked a little better logistically with children or you know the health care cost something It's just it's hard makes it really difficult. Um, so yeah, that's part of the conversation. I think is it There's a lot of industry out there including mine Where we can't pay what they can get in other places and that may be the whole package right health insurance The salary or by our wage or whatnot So they're either Choosing not to get back into the workforce, which is so very sad because there's a lot of extremely Intelligent and talented people out there that are not working that want to work They just can't make it happen or they are going into a line of work that they absolutely hate And there's nothing worse than working some place that you hate So a couple well just one observation you're talking about the restaurant industry specifically but when you look at the availability of child care And it primarily being you know that kind of 9 to 5 of Monday through Friday and where it is available Earlier or later or on the weekends. It's more expensive But when you consider who's working the earlier the overnight the weekend Those are not the highest wage-paying jobs that are out there. So it's just this Double yeah double-edged sword and also reverse mentality of what it should be in order to create a sustainable and affordable child care system for everyone and What else I was gonna say well I'm gonna if there's any audience members who would like to ask a question I'm gonna ask them to come over here now And but I'm gonna ask one more question as somebody makes their way there and if there's no one there We're just gonna keep going on with the conversation Here's the question. I'd like to follow along with We're talking about problems tonight and the challenges a month from now. We're gonna talk about solutions What would you want? Anybody who's thinking about addressing some of the challenges are the issues What would you want them to thinking about doing and not doing like make certainly cover these bases and make certain You don't make these mistakes. I would like to see that there is an affordable child care Option out there for all For all it serves multiple Purposes one so that we can get our workforce back up and working and Two so that we can prepare these children to start kindergarten with knowledge Strong opinions on this topic have been part of a lot of conversations over the last few years in terms of just based on my position with long dot EDP and the Relationship with you in the city of Longmont But a few things that have struck me with all of those conversations that I think are maybe some Unintended misses on the part of the people that are having those conversations and driving those conversations and the resulting Policy that is intended to be helpful That isn't always like 10 hours of free preschool is not helpful Just throwing that out there. I appreciate the intention and the effort that was put into it's Useless to most of people most of the people that need Can we just cause right there just so folks know you're talking about the universal pre-care program Yes, the universal pre-care program some some may think of it was a governor's initiative supported by the legislature and supported by the public Yeah, but the mindset that somehow that solves the problem. Yeah, is is misunderstood. Yeah, and so from that you know We have an entire economic system in this country That's based on the idea of a nuclear family that was irrelevant almost as soon as it was conceived of And so everything from the way suburban housing development Transportation systems that are intended to transport an individual from one place to another usually a man from home to work and work to home as well as Obviously childcare and even K through 12 education all of these systems are based on this idea of a nuclear family that again Has not been relevant since it was conceived of none of us none of our stories And I would venture to guess most of the stories of the people in this room and the people that might be watching this are that of a Nuclear family and so we need to throw that out as the basis or the foundation for how policies around things like Childcare and education and housing development and transportation are talked about And then I think if a municipality like or government entity whether it be the state or the municipality or the county Is really serious about making childcare a priority That priority has to be ubiquitous across the organization So everybody down to the clerk at the planning counter has to understand that childcare is a priority for this city And is a priority within their job and has to be directed to address projects related to child care as Priority as such so businesses that are Building new facilities that include child care Residential development that are including child care facilities within the bounds of that development or Childcare centers themselves should be placed at higher priority when you're considering things like planning and permitting and all of the things That have to go through there's a little Drop-in daycare facility and just down the street on third and lashley That has just started to go fund me page because their construction and permitting has been so delayed They're they now fear that they're not going to be able to open with some additional financial resources So are there things that the city could have done at the very like bottom level of Services to be able to make that a little easier path for them in order to create that Resource that's going to be a huge benefit to someone like myself who often needs that earlier or later And then I've said this before I'll say it again in every room that I get to have this conversation in Do not have policy conversations around childcare and early childhood education Do not make it about us without us So none of those conversations should be had without having actual parents who are having that lived experience today as part of that Conversation, I think that's where you end up with bad policy well-intended bad policy because you're not including the people that are being impacted in those conversations and part of that means consider Childcare when you're planning your events and your conversations and your meetings to have those conversations Is there on-site childcare available? Are you having them at convenient hours for? Working parents who need to consider child care. I had to make special arrangements for So I almost brought her with me So that would be yeah the final thing just don't make it about us without us when you're having these policy conversations Sounds like you've been thinking about this Any other comments? No, I one of my concerns about having this conversation was the talk about Affordable child care and as much as I love the sound of that. I also probably would not utilize it It scares me so much for affordable childcare. Yes I want it obviously to be cheaper and easier on my finances, but affordable child care That's still a business at the end of the day That means a lower wage for the people taking care of my children and that's what I agree with you on that So maybe the choice of verbiage was wrong But it would be more along the lines of something like what Jessica was talking about We're gonna write this topic of affordability and how to make it things affordable or subsidized work That's going to be on the table. We have a question First of all, thank you. These have all given me great insights into this whole topic and a lot of interesting stories The first thing is you talked Sarah. I think you talked about the life work balance And all of you've been in many many different jobs many different industries Do you find that the life work balance is getting worse or getting better? I personally And having seen my mother as a single mom and my grandparents Culturally I I can see where Us having so many conversations about the work life balance It's now becoming more of a forefront of Or top of my thinking for a lot of people what for the employee for what they're looking for What kind of jobs and professions they're looking for and then for the employer as well realizing That if you really do try to honor the work like the work life balance Then you and result normally have a lower turnover of your staff Which is going to increase your your economic efficiency So I think that we're getting better with the work life balance and more conversations we have about it Yeah, the fact that it's even a term and that we're having that conversation like No, my mom worked in the insurance industry for 25 years and nobody There in her office was talking about work like balance or gave to Or gave a care about About whether or not her work in her life were balanced and you know for me I work for a relatively large company that has And part of the reason I'm there is because they place a priority on family values and so That is definitely a benefit a value add to And again, I think as we've said makes me A better more productive more balanced mentally and and psychologically balanced employee for them as well We uh, I can't show you may have more questions. We're at the end of this hour And I only got to half my questions This is a great panel Maybe we'll have more opportunity to talk about to reengage on this topic on what the problems are But I just want to tell you how much I appreciate again You're being here tonight What you do every day in your contributions to this community and you will you're gonna We're all going to get we're going to be smarter walking out of this room tonight about the challenges Working moms and dads face. In fact, we would have had a fourth panelist here tonight a single dad With it with a disabled child in a setting He couldn't work out child care tonight to be with us So if we had helped him with that he might have been able to make it But that's just an example of what we're talking about So It's it's the challenges are daunting. I don't think they're insurmountable And long monitors on june 26. We're going to be back here to talk about solutions In the longmont public studio at 6 p.m. On june 26. Join us. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks


Okay, so ordering question type in Moodle Core. So we've been discussing a lot in the previous increment, mainly primarily around the work that the team is doing to get the plugin ready to be integrated into Core. But I think it's a good opportunity to speak more about the plugin itself and what will provide to the users. So to give you a little bit of an intro, the ordering question type is widely used, and it will be a great addition into Moodle Core. The purpose of this plugin is to enable features to create a question where they can add several short sentences in random order, which will be dragged into the correct sequential order. The plugin was developed and maintained by Gordon and Batesen in the support of the Open University. And also provided a link to the Moodle Talks where you can see a bit more information about this plugin. So I will now share my screen and quickly demo the plugin in action. Okay, so for the purpose of the demo, I've already created a question. I already added an ordering question type. So I'll start off by going to the settings page of the questions so that we can see all the configuring options that this question provides. So the teacher will need to specify the question name and the question text and also the default mark. Going further down, there's some specific options that enable features to further configure this question type. They can select the layout of the items. They can choose between vertical and horizontal layout. They can specify whether they want to show all the items, all the dreadable items, or just a random subset of the items. They can choose the grading type based on their educational goals. And also they can choose whether they want to show the grading details and also whether they want to number the choices or not. In the next section, they can set their dreadable items. So in this case, I've just added the words that are forming the acronym Moodle. They need to be added in the correct order. So yeah, in the next section, they can define or combine specific feedback for each question based on the correctness. They can be either correct, partially correct or incorrect. And once I save the question, I can quickly demonstrate how the question looks like from a student perspective. So I'll just preview the quiz. So this is what a student will see. They will see a randomized order at first, and they will need to order it in the correct order. So for the purpose of the demo, I'll just won't answer this question correctly. I'll just finish the attempt. And you'll see that there will be a preview of the question and each question will be outlined based on the correctness. And there's a feedback at the bottom section outlining the correct answers and basically all the scores and also the correct order. So yeah, if it's answered correctly, yeah, the feedback will be just well done. You've answered the question correctly. So that's about it. Any questions?