Lakeland Public Television presents Currents. And welcome to Lakeland Currents. I'm Bethany Wesley. The American Cancer Society reports that more than a million people in the United States get cancer each year. Locally, 419 new cancer patients were diagnosed and treated at Sanford Bemidji Medical Center in 2015 with more than 45% of such patients coming from outside Beltrami County. Indeed, the Sanford Bemidji Cancer Center treats about 400 cancer patients a year with breast cancer being the most common and lung cancer the second most common. The Sanford Bemidji Medical Center now is poised to break ground this year on its new 20,000 square foot Sanford Joe Lucan Cancer Center. A new facility planned to bring all of Sanford Bemidji's cancer services together, providing not only more convenience for its patients, but also increased efficiencies for medical personnel. The construction of the new facility continues a 15-year expansion of cancer care services at the Bemidji Hospital. Tonight, as we prepare to examine and discuss those health care expansions, we welcome to the program two key members of the Cancer Center team. Dr. John Bollinger, a Radiation Oncologist, and Dr. Jasmine Cambos, Medical Oncologist and Hematologist. Welcome to the program. Thanks for coming. Thank you. Thank you. As we get started here, why don't we just go through your background? How long you've been at the Sanford Hospital, your background in medicine? Dr. Bollinger? Sure. I'm a Radiation Oncologist, and I graduated from Residency in 1986, and I practiced in Georgia and several other areas, moved to Grand Forks. Before I came to Bemidji, I actually knew the doctors in Fargo, and when Merit Care at the time expanded their services to include Radiation Oncology in Bemidji, they recruited me, and so I came here in 2001. So you've been here since 2001. And Dr. Cambos? Yeah, I'm relatively a new addition to Bemidji and to Sanford. So I did my med school from India. I graduated from the med school in 2007, did residency from Chicago Rosalind Franklin University, and did my fellowship in Medical Oncology and Hematology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and then I came to Bemidji. And when did you come to Bemidji? I started in June, so I'm relatively new. Well, welcome. Yes, thank you. First, I want to look back, Dr. Bollinger, to when you first came in 2001 to Bemidji. Can you tell us a little bit about what the state of cancer care was at that time, how were treatments being offered? I didn't think Bemidji was big enough for Radiation Oncology, and the doctors in Fargo said, well, just give it a chance, you know, and so when I came, I was surprised that it was bigger, even though the population in Bemidji proper wasn't, you know, huge, but the area that we draw from even then was much bigger than people realize. And we had the support from Fargo. They had the cancer program there, and so Medical Oncologists came to Bemidji as outreach, and that outreach clinic expanded, and by the time I came in 2001, it was quite a big chemotherapy infusion area. I think it was three or four different Medical Oncologists would come up, you know, for a day and go back. But in 2001, Radiation Oncology opened, and that's when I came. That was the first time that Radiation Oncology was here, before patients would have to drive to Grand Forks or to Duluth or, you know, farther. Some patients did that, others just didn't get the service, so at the time, cancer care was, what should I say, simpler, because there wasn't all the multidisciplinary protocols there are now. They were starting, but when patients came and they needed complicated care, they'd have to leave the area. Now that's slowly changed since 2001. It was sort of a slow progression up until, I would say, the last five to six years, and then it's been a very rapid progression since then. But if I'm understanding you correctly, even when you initially came here, you could see there was plenty of room, opportunity to have a growth of services. Well, the Radiation Oncology service, you know, took off immediately because they had been waiting, you know, for it.  We recruited a medical oncologist in 2003 that was the first one that was full-time, and then we gradually built that, and now we have three. We think that four is probably the right number for long-term, and we're looking for a partner for me now for Radiation Oncology. I want to kind of take a second before we get too much further. I want to take a second to kind of go through some terminology if I can for our viewers. There's three main specialists or primary specialties. You've got Radiation Oncology, Surgical Oncology, and then Medical Oncology. Could you tell us a little bit about what the difference is between all three? Dr. Campbell?  And so Radiation Oncology comes into picture when we need to burn some tumor tissue. So that's a local treatment. Surgical Oncology obviously comes into picture when we want to resect the tumor. So that's kind of limited from stage one through stage three. Medical Oncology comes into picture when we need to do systemic treatments. And these days, systemic treatments involve chemotherapy, immune therapy, hormonal therapy, or any kind of oral-targeted therapy. So all this comes into systemic therapy. So depending on the stage of the patient or what kind of cancer it is exactly, all three specialties come together to kind of take the best care for the patient. And then what exactly is hematology and how does that play a role in cancer? Is there overlap? There is an overlap. So hematology basically entails benign hematology and malignant hematology. So there are two major parts to it. Benign hematology involves all the cases like anemia, which is low hemoglobin, thrombocytopenia, which is low platelet count, which are the clotting cells, or a lot of white blood cell disorders, which are the immune fighting cells. The malignant hematology is the cancer of blood. Now cancer of blood in itself is a very broad term. There can be cancer of different kinds of cells, multiple myeloma, acute leukemias, chronic leukemias, that all comes under malignant hematology. So you're right, there's a little bit of overlap there. Okay, interesting. We talked a little bit on the statistics when we first got started here, but I wanted to just highlight a couple here again. In 2015 there were 419 new patients, just over 53% from Beltrami County. But that is up from 372 new patients in 2013. Since you've arrived in 2001, have you seen a fairly steady growth in terms of the number of people diagnosed? Well, I think there has been an increase in Sanford, formerly MeritCare in North Country. But there are many more cases that aren't coming to us. They're going to other places. And because there's programs like this help, because there will be an awareness that we can do pretty much everything that places like Mayo or University of Minnesota can do. There are a few things that were limited, but most things we can do here now. Cancer care has become very complex. And so you have to have multidisciplinary team, not just the doctors but the nurses and various specialists that we'll talk about as part of the entire team. So we'll see an increase in volume. We do what we call trying to think of the term for it. It's needs assessment that we try to see what the population needs. And in those needs assessment, we can see that there are more cancer cases. The smoking rate is high in this part of the state. So we think that we're going to see an increase. It's not necessarily that there's an increase, you know, cancer rate in general. It's just that the ones that we're going to see are going up. Mainly by geography there's so much population that's not being served. And I would imagine, Dr. Campbell, that technology has also changed. We learn more, we know more. Our screenings, our prevention, is that catching people perhaps earlier? Is that increasing the numbers as well? Perhaps you're seeing more because you're catching it better? You know, I would say that we are catching it earlier, which is the exact same reason why we are doing the screening methodology in the first place for breast cancer, colon cancer primarily. Now there are guidelines coming for the lung cancer as well. And as Dr. Bolinger pointed out, there's a high smoking rate and we are catching a lot of lung cancers in the very preliminary stages, which is a very good success rate, I would say. So Sanford is now starting 3D mammography and MRI of the breasts for patients who have significant family history or they have genes present in their families, which put them at higher risk for breast cancer. So all those patients, they can get those things done here at Sanford now with their 3D mammography, the MRIs, colonoscopy obviously. We do the low volume lung screening, low volume CT scans. So yeah, I mean, with the better screening methods we are catching cancer earlier. I won't say we are catching more cancer, but I would say we are catching it earlier. So the same cancers, if they are not caught earlier and they present at a stage 3 or 4, obviously it's a much harder core for us to kind of take care of those at later stages. So it's beneficial for the patients and for us. Okay. So this year you guys are expected to break ground on your new facility, the Sanford Joe-Lukin Cancer Center. How long has this been in the making, Dr. Bolinger? How long have you guys been chewing this over and really saying this is something we need to do? It's been a need for quite some time. Historically when medical oncology came they grew out of the main clinic quickly. I would say by, I think it was 2005, there was no more room and they had to expand out. And there's been a need since then. But it's hard to explain, but there's numerous reasons why we need all the cancer in one physical location. Now our processes and our protocols, we still do multidisciplinary care now, but it's more difficult if you think about it. When you have the medical oncology staff in one area and the radiation oncology staff in another area, and all the support services that go back and forth have to go back and forth. Now the patients do too. So we've done, we've made tremendous strides having two physical locations, but having one location is going to allow us to grow much more efficiently. So tell me a little bit in terms of like when did you start trying to raise funds? When did that campaign really continue? So that occurred around 2011, I think it was. We made the decision then that we needed to be an independent cancer center not just affiliated through Fargo. And so we started the process, we established tumor registry, we formed cancer committee, and we formally obtained accreditation here in Bemidji as a cancer center and also as a breast center. I think about that same time the foundation started a project to raise money for the cancer center. And that has been very successful the community just participated very enthusiastically. I think, I mean, we knew it, we knew the support was here, but the response was overwhelming. How big is it going to be? What are some of the highlights from the new facility? Could you tell us about that, Dr. Kambush? It's going to be, I think, just roughly over about 20,000 square feet. I think 20,000 square feet. It's going to be on the south end of the clinic. The radiation oncology department is currently there, but it will extend out in the parking lot for quite a ways on that side. And I understand it's going to offer some different options for patients that perhaps they don't have now. Perhaps either privacy, if they want more privacy, they could have people join them. Is that accurate? The infusion center, the way they're laying out the infusion center, it will be right next to the garden area. Patients will have the freedom to kind of hang out in the garden area.  There will be some private suites, so they will have their own privacy if they require that. So it will be much more patient oriented and their preference oriented. So I hope their whole experience is much better with the new center. We'll be coming to the patients more instead of the patients having to travel all over the place. There's a one stop shop that patient comes in and they're immediately welcomed and we want them to feel at home and they're escorted to where they need to go and they don't really have to leave. Everyone else comes to them. So all the different specialties they need to see to help cycle through. And my understanding is as expected, assuming construction goes on time, it would open sometime next year in 2018. That's the plan. Obviously it's called the Sanford-Joe-Lucan Cancer Center. So tell us, obviously in Bemidji, people may be familiar with that name, but could you tell us a little bit about Joe-Lucan? Who was he and how did he become attached? Well, I mean, he was the owner of the grocery store chain here that's still here. He had experience with cancer himself and the family made a very generous donation and about the time that we were raising funds for the cancer center, they came forward and it's been just a tremendous thing that a local person like that would make a gift like that. There's another center or another part of the hospital on the campus and that's the Edith-Sanford Breast Center and I want to touch a little bit about that because it's connected with and yet it's a little bit separate from this. So that was actually founded, I believe, in 2014, if that's correct. Tell us a little bit about what exactly the Edith-Sanford Breast Center is and is that going to be affected by this new facility? Yes. So Denny Sanford, the founder of Sanford Health, his mom had breast cancer in Edith-Sanford and so as sort of a memorial to her, he donated money for the Edith-Sanford Breast and so it's available in all of the Sanford sites so the main push is to have all the services available no matter where you go in the Sanford system. Now for us here in Bemidji, it's been great because we, for example, as Dr. Kamboj mentioned, 3D mammography, breast MRI, the ability to have all breast services in one place, not just for cancer but for women's health, breast health in general. Women can go in one place and all the services are there. You want to expand on that a little bit as far as... There's another program that Edith-Sanford has recently started in Bemidji. We launched it in August, which is the Athena program. So we're in all the women who are coming for screening mammography. They are given a questionnaire and they fill that questionnaire and based on that their lifetime risk is assessed for breast cancer and any women who is identified with having a higher risk for lifetime for the breast cancer, they are kind of followed up. So that, you know, they are not just hanging around in the system and they are not let loose. So there is a letter which goes to them. There's a phone call which goes to them. There's also an update to their primary care physician. So there's like a very kind of, you know, intense effort from the team to follow up on those patients who have high risk so that, you know, appropriate measures can be taken by giving them preventive measures. So that's another part of Edith-Sanford Breast Center. We are also, like semi-annually, we also have this meeting which usually happens at Fargo where in all the Sanford Enterprise-Wide will come together and, you know, we will discuss different researches going on in breast cancer. We will discuss whatever modalities of treatments we are doing so that we have like one uniform platform in Sanford Enterprise-Wide so that, you know, every patient is granted the best care even if they are in remote areas and stuff like that. All of us will go there like radiation oncologist, medical oncologist, surgical oncologist, and other people as well, like, you know, our social workers, research people. So everybody comes together kind of to have a uniform approach. Oh, interesting. And so the training, you know, for the staff in the Breast Center is very specific for breast health. We have a nurse that's qualified as well as a nurse practitioner. So when patients present there, they're assessed. They get what they need. We have a genetic counselor that's there. We never had any of that before. As Dr. Campbell has mentioned, the Athena Health Initiative is a very sophisticated analysis of the risk for breast cancer. Not just a simple model, but when a patient wants to participate, they run through multiple models. And so if they are indeed high risk, they get the education they need and the referrals that they need. My understanding is that what's kind of unique about Athena is that it takes little pieces of all of those models that exist because there's different questionnaires for different things. And that that is supposed to, in theory, give you a more legitimate look at what your risk is. Right. It uses Gale model, which is the model that Athena uses. And if you have a lifetime risk of more than 20 percent, then we kind of start chasing around our patients. And that's offered to all the women who go in for screening. The other thing about the breast center is that, for example, when a patient presents for their mammogram and if something is found, the breast radiologist is there. And so many times the breast radiologist will meet with the patient and they'll do the follow-up exams if needed or the biopsy the same day. So the other thing about the 3D mammography is that the callbacks are much less. They're much more specific the first time. The indeterminate mammogram and then you have to wait a week for an appointment and all that is pretty much eliminated. Usually they'll leave the breast center with some answer to what problem. Without going and fretting about what it could be or what might happen. They have something a little bit more concrete. Interesting. And this is actually one of the goals for our cancer center also. Like when we all come together, we will try to kind of eliminate all this wasteful time that happens or that can occur between different visits. So when the patient is there and all of us kind of visit with the patient on the same day, that eliminates a lot of wasteful time here and there for appointments. Interesting. I want to touch on something you had brought up a few minutes ago that we didn't expand too much on it and that was the genetic counseling piece of all this. So much of cancer has a genetic link these days. Tell us a little bit about how genetics was added to Sanford and when kind of that started to expand here in Bemidji. Well, Sanford's a leader in that area and that's filtered down to us. So I don't know if you want to expand on the genetic component, but it's very complicated. The average doctor wasn't trained. At least I wasn't trained in that because we didn't have a lot of the knowledge then. But we know now that a lot of cancers have a genetic signature. And so what that actually means takes a long time to explain. So basically, you know, with genetic testing, there are two major things that we want to achieve. One, we want to make sure that the person who is genetically tested positive for a particular gene, we want to make sure that all the cancers associated with that gene, we are, you know, kind of, we are being cognizant about all those cancer for that one person. Second aspect is that for the immediate family or the distant family, we kind of need to alarm them that, hey, look, you know, such and such in your family has a positive gene and so you may or may not be having it and so you may want to get tested. So I feel that's really important.  These are the two main areas in the general population which are caught most commonly for genetics. There are other cancers and other, you know, tumors which also have genetic association but these two have the most powerful impact. So the BRCA1 and BRCA2, I think Angelita Jolie did a lot of advertisement for that. So we have a, we actually have a quite a few number of patients who are tested positive here and so their sisters and their daughters are being taken care of, as well in our screening clinics and in our high-risk clinics and the genetics clinics. Like a lot of them are in their 40s and 50s and their kids are like 18 years old or 20 years old so they will have a heads up from the beginning and so they will have a, you know, they will have a much more information about themselves whether they're positive, if they're positive they need to take precautionary measures for breast cancer versus ovarian cancer and other cancers.  And if you are tested positive then automatically we go down the algorithm to kind of, you know, make sure that it's a genetic versus a sporadic. Sporadic means like, you know, a random association for that particular cancer and if genetics are found positive for that one person, then of course, you know, we kind of alarmed the patient and their family. So this is in the nutshell. Those are the germ cell mutations or hereditary in families, but there's also the analysis of the tumor itself and the genetics of the tumor and targeted therapy. You want to talk about that quickly? So all these are very complex areas. So I'll just try to kind of give you a nutshell about the targeted therapy. So, you know, this is a very exciting time for oncology in general and I feel very happy that I'm a part of oncology at this moment because, you know, there's so much research going on and the moment we find, so what targeted therapy does is like for example, if we find a tumor and that tumor has a particular marker on it, we want to target that one marker with our therapy so that only the tumor cells get killed. So there are two good things about this therapy. One is that we are much more specific in terms of our approach towards cancer and second that we eliminate the side effect profile. So in colon cancer there is KRAS mutation testing, BRAF mutation testing, then there are three or four different ones in lung cancer. In breast, we are trying to find some. We haven't really found any, like, mutation that we can target but we do have some HER2 agents that target specifically the HER2 but that's not a mutation, that's just a receptor on top of the breast cells. So, you know, it's a complex area. There is. It's like four-hour lecture but you know, the bottom line is that we are doing a lot of research and newer agents are coming up and Sanford is not at all lacking behind in all using all those newer agents as soon as something is approved in the market and sometimes even before the approval it's available here. If it's before approval it's available on a compassionate basis. We have a really nice drug assistance program that we have. Brittany is our drug assistance gal and she's wonderful in taking care of patients and something people might not realize because I didn't realize this until we started prepping for this but some of the medications that people can take whether they be oral or otherwise they can be $10,000 to $25,000 a month correct? They can be much more than that and so that's why, you know, the drug assistance program that we have is so imperative for cancer care because as much as we want them to get the best treatment available we also don't want them to land in poverty. So, you know, that's where Brittany's role comes and she's wonderful working with the patients to try to get them the best possible option with the cheapest possible source. So, you know, patients are really grateful to her and we are very happy to have her. I have to imagine that even from a health standpoint that if you're financially stressed about the cost of the medications to keep you healthy that has to adversely affect your treatment process. That's a huge part of it. And now I wanted to touch just a few moments here about some of the programs that exist to keep people at home. Are people better off when they don't have to travel? You've got oral kivos. I know that if your primary oncologist is perhaps at another facility perhaps like the male that Sanford works with those patients to make sure that they can still receive that care locally. How important is it to keep it so people maybe are as close to home as possible? I feel that's really important and a lot of our patients at the end of their care like on the third or fourth line of treatment when they are they really put their foot down and they're like I'm not going to go to Mayo because they're doing exactly the same thing which you guys are doing here and why should I travel like so many hours back and forth when I'm nauseated or I'm having a bad day. So I feel that's really important. So not only is Sanford preventing those extra trips to the bigger cities or to Mayo but we are also sending out our physicians to outreach programs. So one of my colleagues Dr. Chell Hoop he's a medical oncologist with us so he just recently started his program at International Falls so he's doing going there every other week and we will be starting a program, our outreach program to park rapids soon. So those are important things coming up. Well I want to thank you both for joining me here tonight. This has been enlightening not only about the services that are provided thank you for tuning in tonight for Lakeland Currents. I'm Bethany Wesley please join me next time.


Hey, welcome to Stan the Energy Man, Stan Osterman here from the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies and we're off and running with another show on your lunch hour and my lunch hour and try to learn some more about energy and what's going on in Hawaii with a little bit of different tact on the energy this time. Our guest today is Brandon Haashi from Aptera Energy, they're a company that's got some local roots here, done a lot of work in the last couple of years in the energy market and done some projects and is currently working on some projects with the Department of Education and we're going to talk about you know what his company does and the kind of things that Hawaii can look forward to in the world of decarbonizing and what we can do to get away from fossil fuels. So Brandon thanks for joining us. Thank you very much for being on the air with us today and talk a little bit about what you do so how'd you get started in in the kind of work that you're doing and then tell us a little bit about Aptera. Sure sure I'll make a very long story as short as possible. Prior to 2005 everything had done pretty much was it within the realm of Japanese related things and in 2005 I had my first son and then shortly thereafter Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth came out and being a new father and trying to think ahead what I want for my son in the kind of world that he's going to be growing up in that really shook me to my core and what I didn't know a whole lot about the science that was displayed and talked about in the movie it certainly encouraged me to do my own research and essentially about a year after really going down that path of looking into the data the statistics the science itself behind climate change I decided to make a major shift in myself and went to graduate school in the UK and with the intention of actually working for Toyota Europe and hopefully working on the Prius line but again through through life right interesting things happen the exact or C or D whatever you want to call it right but things kind of coalesced together and basically ended up moving down under to New Zealand and together with a gentleman from South Africa we got a bunch of equity partners together and from there basically tried to create New Zealand's first energy service company which is what I did my master's dissertation on and then from there came back here and started working in the local environment here within the energy sector and the rest is history. Then you got started working with Uptara? Yeah so actually worked originally with energy industries cut my teeth really on the mechanical and lighting efficiency side of work within the private sector commercial industrial sectors and then came to Uptara about two years ago. So your background is engineering? No no so actually mine was on the business side okay so really when we're looking at things from energy service company which I did the dissertation on of course I was really looking at it from a business perspective okay how does energy make sense to those who have the ability to make the financial decision to move forward on the technical solution? That's great because you know one of the things that and I think about two shows ago I talked about critical thinking and really a lot of people just go into these energy projects or energy challenges and and they just look at the first the first impacts and they don't really look at the economic the bigger the macro economic scale impacts like where are you getting your supply from is it the only place you get it what if it's not available and then you know does it because most big companies they're looking for at least three supply chains in their operations or they're not going to go there because it's too much risk they won't take the risk so you know what are some of the business aspects of you know as you go into energy projects you know how deep does a company like Uptara think about the business side of not just the technology side? Sure sure absolutely so I mean to your point you know when you're looking at things in many cases what folks are looking at if they're not really in tune and digging down into the energy side of things right their first introduction is many times they're just looking at first cost right what is the potential cost savings? Return investment right very simple return investment or simple payback period which is just an inversion of the other right and they're looking at that first cost only calculation and not factoring other aspects such as the ongoing cost of energy and where that's potentially trending as well as the operations and maintenance costs or cost savings. The technology you're buying. Exactly and then to your point about looking at supply chains you have to look at many cases manufacturers do matter because you have to factor in warranties available to quit men right who on the island again there are certain constraints on our islands with respect to warranty honoring that warranty who can actually do the work and so forth so that's that's at that general level we're talking to almost any kind of customer basically elevating their understanding and awareness of what you should be looking at and there's a lot of things regarding energy that don't have to necessarily do with financing or the financial impact of it but really what is the business impact right and that's really where I think the biggest component or components need to be examined so for example you mentioned right we're working with the Department of Education here at the end of the day the Department of Education is not here to have more efficient buildings they're here to educate our future leaders and so you're trying to create a learning environment that is optimal so that those students can absorb as much as possible and have the critical thinking so that when they're dealing with the challenges that are and the generation before it's created through climate change they can solve for that and that's really what we're talking about when we drive towards energy projects you know you're looking at everything on the renewable side the efficiency side as we move forward certainly on the microgrid natural energy campuses with energy storage systems but really what you're looking at is a solution that fits the needs for the client right so that's how we generally approach most of our clients that's good to hear because that's really critical I mean I see too many folks that just look at you know when am I gonna turn my first profit or you know what's my return on investment and and a lot of times a cursory look at is like I've done pencil out and they move on and really like you say the more critical thing is what's the requirement what's the real need you know I deal with the military a lot and they'll pay a premium price because it's a no-fail mission they've got to do the mission and so if the technology costs a little bit more then it costs a little bit more but it's got to be able to work all the time right right the reliability aspect right is very very key so it's that customer support what they're really they're really after that's important to in the business? Absolutely you know people oftentimes are talking about efficiency and efficiency is good all aspects from energy efficiency to business efficiency but I think really we should be migrating the discussion to be about efficiency in all aspects of it to effectiveness and I think that's what you're talking about on the military side because even for the schools right we're talking about the impact to the classrooms that's effectiveness when we can help the students learn more and better that's the effectiveness that we're driving for you can save tons of money and totally mission mission yes you can save lots of money and not and fail right so that's great to hear what are some of the kinds of things that that up terrace worked on in the past here in Hawaii mentioned some things about Kamehameha schools right right so here in the islands itself up there Hawaii has done past work with Kamehameha schools with Oceanic Time Warner some work also with Maui excuse me Kaua'i Community College as well as Kahimuhala and what kind of projects were those? A lot of those projects were based on photovoltaic systems some rooftop some canopy systems and then some energy efficiency works as well yeah and then a little bit of consulting in the process as well okay yeah and you say that a lot of your focus now is on Department of Education correct and the Department of Education program itself is called the Kaua'i program and what the Kau'i program is really about originally was called the energy efficiency and sustainability master plan but you know having worked with the military ESMP is not such a sexy word so thanks to the Hawaiian immersion program they came up with Kau'i and the reason why that that really resonates and is relevant for the program is the hey when referred to as a noun is that snare or that net that Maui used to capture the sound right and when used as a verb it refers to being able to absorb as in knowledge or skill and that's exactly what this program is so it's a four pillar program how I oftentimes describe it you have energy efficiency renewable energy energy storage systems and natural energy campuses and then importantly standards-aligned curriculum so it is that curriculum that ties all the dots together on the return on investment side of energy work so that it actually becomes relevant for the students themselves and it is from those energy cost savings that are delivered from the first three of the four pillars that financially sustainably support the education this is societal benefit and return on investment and these are financial return on investment as well together it allows for a very comprehensive program I'm certain that you have a lot of the engineers at DOE and and probably administrators involved in your decision-making do you ever involve any of the students as part of their their personal development to be involved in your program right so a lot of so we actually ran a local contest earlier this is back in 2015 ran a local contest so really to talk about what stem is and I know stem can be interpreted a number of different ways beyond just what the four acronyms of science technology and math stand for we interpreted basically as using an interdisciplinary approach to solving real-world problems and there's a lot of push in the mainland as well too to have stem really becomes steam and that a that's put in there is really about the arts because when we talk about comprehensiveness we talk about creativity entrepreneurship there's absolutely an art to it not just a science degree and so that's where the local contest came in as well too is to really bring in that other dynamic of creativity to the stem curriculum so that's one example of how we involve the students but importantly the model we have for the educational deliverables is really about train the trainer so we've engaged more than 400 teachers across the all the islands not just the four major islands and we train them in this curriculum and we also have a web based platform that they can pull from all teachers 11,000 plus teachers across the 256 campuses can pull from this website and be able to educate and they energize the students absolutely thinking you know I'm really I'm really happy that you talked about the art side of it because a lot of times when we talk stem we're really talking about just the pure science side and the technology side and and I have a personal bent against just that approach because I'm a fine arts major number one really and what I find in my work every day is that I understand the technology pieces because of my military background but I'll oftentimes talk to an engineer and they've got the engineering down but they have no creativity I mean they can design you a very efficient effective you know piece of equipment but they can't apply it to where it really makes sense and it's marrying that art and the science and the technology all together where you actually start to make some really big changes I'm really I'm really excited to hear that that's part of your whole no that is a big part of it and you you hit it right on the nose so when we talk about the curriculum that the teachers get it's not just curriculum by way of paper the vast majority of the lessons that the students are involved in is hands-on project-based learning opportunities so as an example some of the projects that they do you'll actually have many PV modules that the students get they'll go outside and they'll actually have a container tube some water and that module will power a small little pump so all depending upon the azimuth and you know the direction that the module itself is facing will obviously create a current or less exactly right that'll either increase or decrease the pumps capacity so that's one way which they're learning about just a placement for example on that but really as you expand upon and all of our curriculum is is segmented out so you have curriculum that is absolutely appropriate for K to K to 3 4 to 6 and then you have 7 8 and the 9 through 12 so you have this kind of segmenting up so that's appropriate right it's not one-size-fits-all by way of education and when you get to the upper levels when we have the academies that are being done at some of the schools across the 256 campuses where they're focusing on certain things you take Waipahu High School as an example that is engineering focused so some of the things that they can do is they can take that right and then to your point about creativity marrying and an interdisciplinary approach to engineering when you're looking at that sort of thing what you're able to do is also along with the engineering is marry what is the business case right and you understand the numbers from a financing not just a technical perspective but importantly again you can have the best design line up the best financing but if you can't actually persuade someone to say yep that's the way we're gonna go so then there's the business aspect right there's the social there's a presentation skills the confidence that goes along with that right making your case exactly just simple things like learning how to put together an effective PowerPoint and that's that sort of students in their career their whole life no matter where they go communication is cool yeah great well what are when it comes to efficiency in the in the DOE projects what are some of the efficiency initiatives that you've put in place or to help the DOE get more energy efficient in their building so the specific thing sure some of the things that we've done just most recently at some of the campuses so certainly when we talk about lighting right lighting meeting dials LED systems for sure and controls and mobility functionality as well but going beyond that as well too we're looking at what are the 24-hour loads clearly rich refrigeration would come up to the top sure right and so you're looking at that you're looking at the kinds of those that are non controllable that we can add controls or variability to you so you talk about variable frequency drives and just putting in more efficient pieces of equipment such as electronically commutated motors EC motors in your evaps right in your walk-in refers and freezers your kitchen hood exhaust fans your ventilation fans so a number of different types of efficiencies where we're just a by itself maybe is not that impactful but when you aggregate together and then go beyond across the 256 campuses can have huge impact how about some low-tech things like maybe agriculture planting more trees around the buildings to cool them down or or maybe roof coatings on the roof to cool them down absolutely so for example as a part of the renewable side of the program when we're putting you know photovoltaic systems up on the roof we're making sure that what we're doing is providing a better roof obviously has to last a bit of 20 years in some cases the system the roofing system itself can be recoded so that that can last another 20 years in some case we have to do a full reroof and in many cases on those buildings were right below the AC classroom we will actually put in additional installation so there are other ways in which we're doing efficiency work by with building envelope as well as hard-wired efficiency technologies okay great well we've hit a break time right now and we're gonna we're gonna take a quick break and talk about some of the other shows here on Think Tech and we'll be back with Brandon in a few seconds Aloha my name is John Wahee and I actually had a small part to do with what's happening today served actually in public office but if you don't already know that here's a chance to learn more about what's happening in our state by joining me for talk story with John Wahee every other Monday thank you and I look forward to your seeing us in the future hello I'm Marianne Sasaki welcome to think tech Hawaii where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called life in the law where we discuss legal issues politics governmental topics and a whole host of issues I hope you'll join me almost caught me catching a swig of Gatorade there's welcome back to my lunch hour stand energy man here with Brandon actually from up Tara and we're actually talking about some of the things that up Tara is doing in the schools right now we're gonna pick up right there where we left off and we're talking about some of the efficiencies of things that you can do in the building we talked about roof coatings and just you know making sure you design the right things into the systems that you put into the building and and as a rule and they've heard me say this before I always go for the efficiencies in the building first before you go and add on the PV or anything else you try and get the building as efficient as you can insulate it right window films whatever you can do to make the building efficient then start looking at your renewable energy so absolutely it's that's going through the pyramid there you know energy pyramid yep so what are some of the other things that we're doing at DOE to help not only the curriculum side which I thought I totally missed the first time we met and talked in your office but you know that's huge it is that's great but what are some of the other more technical things that you're doing with the department energy yeah help them out sure happy to talk a little bit about that so certainly in the renewable side for our islands and our schools here full of all takes makes a lot of sense but as as you know last October the NEM program was discontinued and the financiers who have been essentially almost helping our economy creating almost the fourth leg of economy through energy are used to a particular model and that model obviously was what the NEM had so it's a different set of economics going forward and given some of the constraints that are currently under the existing program which is going to expire next October it's it's PV is not the area where we're focused on right now but having said that we have 81 NEM systems net energy meeting systems up to a hundred KW AC that we're in the process of constructing some of it's already completed but we're in the process of doing that and those are across 74 schools on the island of Oahu and so together when you aggregate up those 81 NEMs we're looking at just about 9.3 megawatts DC or excuse me yeah DC and then I think that equates to just about 7 megawatts AC so that sounds to me like then you're probably interfacing a lot with Hawaiian Electric in terms of you know managing load and things like that and that would tie into micro gridding and things like that so are you guys looking at micro grids or islanding absolutely absolutely looking at micro grids out we're we're we tend to call them net zero energy campuses and the the model here is basically what we're looking at is to be grid connected micro grids right there's I think there's value there absolutely for the utility as much as there is for the jury itself you know we talk about ancillary benefit that can be benefiting the utility that's just one level you know of which the energy storage system can provide to the utility and the surrounding community that's with on that same circuit as the school and you do you find that he goes open to those notions you know we engage with Hiko and I think to be fair to the utility during the majority of our engagement around we were trying to create a demonstration project at Kamaki Middle School which made a lot of sense for both the DOE as well as Hiko itself but during that time it was right during the next their acquisition we're kind of distracted yeah I would say I would say distraction is is probably a good explanation but you know we continue to want to work with them and you know certain folks from the utility are open to moving forward in that in fact we have already received three standard interconnection agreements on Maui so working with the Miko folks we're at three schools there one high school and two elementary schools where we're essentially creating a micro grid for those campuses and the idea there is to be able to take them to where they stand right now and into the future the near future be able to make them essentially produce all of their on-site generation needs and to strategically be able to support through an energy storage system and how that benefit could happen going forward because the utilities are already putting forth their first pilot program on the residential level with time of use rates so again be able to see would it make sense in Hawaii's environment going forward for energy arbitrage utilizing the battery strategically I know in some of our early discussions we talked a little bit about because you're working with department education the fact that civil defense county civil defense they have shelters they're co-located at some of the schools do you can you guys envision any ways where those may couple up at some point where that islanding capability or the micro grid capability even though you're grid connected you could have essentially island yourself during a disaster and keep that shelter up and running using renewables yes viable yes so that's what we're looking to do exactly now there are certain schools so there are roughly two hundred and fifteen of the two hundred and fifty six schools are hurricane evacuation centers and then less than two hundred arts numbing evacuation centers but we're looking at those schools and there are certain schools for example in certain geographical locations I'm from the winter side of Oahu so for example castle is one that is an evacuation center that meets a lot of needs on that particular part of the winter side because a lot of the other elementary schools when you talk about the when you go you know north of Kaneohe you start going it becomes ocean road mountain so those are all no longer evacuation centers so they either got to go all the way up North Shore or they come down to Kaneohe so castles a key one as an example so that's one that you know we would be looking at to see how does this make sense and certainly when you're looking at an environment such as Castle High School it makes a lot of sense because there are different types of shelters right there are shelters that are just simply hardened shells where people go to in times of disaster there are other ones that are designated for medical purposes right they're more of a triage type of center there are others that are designated for pets as well so looking and there's more than just those three segmentations but as a general rule looking at those three there are ways that we can look for that and that's where I think when working with the utilities for example we can find ways that makes sense for them and the DOE and it makes sense for the community itself that's where there's absolutely ways that we can work together and that's where I would I would like to you know essentially state that going forward that's the areas that we're gonna be focusing on because it essentially takes a number of different boxes it's not just about energy efficiency or renewable energy it really is about resiliency at the end of the day and and potentially saving human lives when we talk about those triage centers so they have to get my old buddies at the National Garden Civil Defense to talk to you a little bit we'll do that I'll drag him in kicking in the screen this sounds I think it's a good idea too yeah I mean you know resiliency is a big part of getting through a disaster and the more you can simplify Hawaiian electrics challenges in a community and the more you can support the community with a shelter that's up and running viable making its own energy and sustaining itself yeah just seems to make a lot of sense it does it does and you know when you go to the next level going deeper is it begs the question okay so if you have enough on-site renewable generation which for Hawaii the vast majority is going to be renewables such as photovoltaics and then you get a category 3 storm coming in that has sustained winds of over 140 miles an hour or so that has a likelihood of ripping those panels right off so then you have to start examining how do we have a backup to that right so that's where we're looking as well too the energy storage system provided by the fed by the PV systems will only last for so many days or hours right so what's gonna back that up and so that's what we're looking at as well too when we talk about them being strategic resiliency centers beyond just the discharge charge cycle that you would have for a normal type of microgrid system that is really not looking at disastrous time frames in case we hadn't discussed it I'm a hydrogen fanatic so have you have you included hydrogen in your energy storage thought process you know right now so we've done the work that we're doing right now for the microgrids themselves is really looking at the bigger picture but when we're looking at that backup or the backup to the backup that's where I think hydrogen comes in long term yeah more long term and again the cost curve to is really important right now because we have to be able to finance these so to a certain extent it's a mixture of making sure technologies that are essentially here today for example we know things such as PV are here and very very cost-effective marrying that with things that are more towards the beginning part or some who are already starting to get onto the Moore's law curve and that's where through that strategic combination that's where we can get things financed and then test different things out because they're different geographical locations that provide different challenges different technologies that provide different cost benefits so that's really where I think the DOE has an opportunity because there's 256 campuses you can really start to look at different types of models feeding different kinds of needs yeah know how hosted the energy storage conference a lot two months ago in the Kona and that was one of the most critical parts of that whole discussion was picking the right energy storage the right battery system or capacitors or or hydrogen or some other compressed air pump tide or whatever yeah to match the need and that fits financially for the scale that you're working on and there's some really good models out there that the national labs have come up with to that and help you weed through that decision process yeah and a lot of it unfortunately just gets down to dollars but I tend to the day it often does yeah gotta work out there yeah well what are some of the things you know I mean your company's grounded here in Hawaii and does a lot here but what are some of the larger scale things that you do worldwide because I know it's not just a Hawaii company yeah what are some of the things that you keep in touch with what's going on in Europe and technologies and techniques in Europe that maybe maybe you could work here in Hawaii mm-hmm so I should probably explain so OPTERRA itself which had roughly just a little under 400 employees nationally so from Honolulu to Boston we had offices across the country earlier this year we were acquired by NG a power space global energy company and that now makes us 400 employees or so of a larger 153,000 global employee company and so there's a lot of resources that you can imagine to go along with that and obviously coming from the EU itself and just as a general rule of thumb the European Union is tending to be a little bit more advanced compared to the US and Hawaii when we talk about energy and energy yeah so there's a lot of projects that are going on there that are of significant learning opportunities for us and they've also set up our own company itself has set up programs that they'll focus on so micro goods for example and they've actually segmented out different types of micro residential versus commercial versus districts and so forth and they have a number of working groups which we're learning from as well too and it's not just in the EU they're working throughout South America as well and not just in the US North America also includes Canada they're doing a lot of work over there and they have different areas across the world that they're working in and Asia as well Africa for sure so there again I'm still learning it's not even been a year since we were acquired by NG so I'm still learning about the vast number of resources that we can tap into and the goal absolutely is to learn from those who've already done it both successfully and not successfully so that we can take those lessons understand things technically and financially find out what works and is culturally acceptable and apply that model here not very different from what we do really well in Hawaii across the board right our first Fridays that happened it was straight out of San Francisco we just Hawaiianized it so using those kind of things we can absolutely do and make sure that we don't do the same things and avoid the pitfalls of the past I like when we Hawaiianize things it always works out better are you from the ITM out of UK power company no my guest last week was Steven Joseph or Steven Jones from ITM and they're a big electrolyzer company that's doing power to gas and and they're starting to build hydrogen stations in the UK that run off electrolysis and are feeding the transportation sector and they're looking at their building they put in bins for five stations in California hydrogen stations but again like you say they're they're European based and and really anxious to see if they can play a role in the United States and in our market over here right and being that we're the world's largest per capita guzzler of energy I think you can make the case here obviously this is where there's a lot of market opportunity for the companies and that's you know very much what NG is looking at as well to write how how can we use the US as a model that makes sense like even these guys right who use the world's most energy per capita if it makes sense to them clearly should make sense to everybody else well Brenda believe or not we blasted clean through 30 minutes and we're at the end of our time here but I want to thank you for coming out and talking to us oh thank you and obviously we've got some more to talk about down the road for sure well we'll get you back on the stand energy man which by the way stands stem is our acronym to stand energy man like it but we're artsy stem just the science got it we'll get it we'll put a stand stand the alternate energy matters yeah something but thanks for being here and thanks for your insight on what up terror is doing in here in Hawaii and you know and how big you are actually around the world because oftentimes we get our best ideas from outside but we do Hawaii nice them and we make them better and then we give them back to the world in a better state and they actually make make a big a big improvement just because they came here and they got worked on here yeah thanks for your time thanks for coming out today and good luck with up terror thank you very much all the things you're doing for the DOE and until next week we'll sign off for now and come back and visit me on my lunch hour next time yeah who do I have next time oh I have a friend from the big island coming in we'll be a big surprise team we'll talk about what's going on in the big island so until next Friday aloha


Hi everyone, Sean with jaspyscasebreaks.com here doing 2021 break king stars and legends hobby three box case break random letter number 27 with a hundred dollar hit list promo So high risk high reward a hundred dollars randomized to the hit list Numbers or letters in there winner take all 18 spots and we get a random letter for the list below We will go by the players first letter of his or her last name that appears in the card So if we pull Charles Barkley, it will go to be spot for Barkley if we pull a Karim Abdul-Jabbar It would go to the a spot any letter not represented on this list will be randomized to the group if there are multiple hits They will be separated out and not randomized as one lot So you have the list a through combo spot Y V I N and O All pasted right here and our list of customers from PJ down to Oliver with last spot mojo dice will be randomized both lists and pair them up five into two seven times Right five to seven Seventh final time on the customers from Matt down to Anthony and seven on the letters Seventh of my time from S down to T So seven times of the letters seven times on the customers and seven times on the dice So there's the list Matt McLaughlin with S Anthony Pashirek with E Tyler Applegren with our Oliver with G Robert floors with D and P Daniel cats with H PJ McNeely with a Pedro Gonzalez with F PJ McNeely with the combo spot of Y V I N and O Robert floors with W and B James Connell with C Nick Stover with K and J Anthony Pashirek with M Daniel cats with L And Anthony Pashirek with T Quick trade window if anybody is interested and there's a specific letter you were hoping for here Is your chance to try to get that letter for yourself if no talks of trades? I'll give it another 15 seconds. If no talks of trades, though, we'll go ahead and first print rip So trade you want to go once Trade when I go in twice trade when I go in three times So the list will stay random.org has determined your fates Now let's see what the boxes got for you There's the full list Now I'm gonna keep track of the hit list promo on here. I'll just highlight whatever letters we do hit as we hit them Oh Oh First up is Season ticket LeBron James from 2018 contenders draft picks PSA 10 Dark Jersey not sure if that's a shorter print parallel or something. It looks like it's a variation that is going to Jay that is the His are her last name. So LeBron James J. Nick Stover and Yvonne Rodriguez Pudge PSA 10 1991 upper deck final edition. That is a rookie Pudge Rodriguez are Tyler Applegren and retro series autograph Don Russ or sorry from optic John Elway for the Denver Broncos. That is three out of ten E is Anthony Paschia rep nice Elway auto there for you Anthony Box two well first one we already got a peek of it's Zion Williamson Mosaic rookie PSA nine for Robert Flores and the letter w nice panini redemption lightning strike autograph of Troy Palamalu for the letter P That is 11 out of 25 P is Robert Flores Big Mac Mark McGuire 1987 tops PSA 10 that is rookie McGuire and Letter M Anthony Paschia rep I've not been treating keeping track of the letters. So I will do the Markdown the hit list promo at the very end first up is Immortal Letterman Otto Graham Where's there be in the letter Graham interesting or is it Browns? That is 50 out of 80 G goes to Oliver Soria That's from 2008 icons football. Oh Yeah, so it does spot Browns Make sense. You got the admiral David Robinson 1993 1994 hoops Commemorative Otto is that an actual auto though BGS 8 5 Can't tell if it's an actual autograph. I don't Think it is It says COMM Otto commemorative Otto I can't tell if it's an actual auto or not, but David Robinson. That's gonna go to our title apple Tyler apple grin I Want to say it's facsimile. Oh wait nevermind. I'm changing my opinion on that It is a real auto Hard to see Now you can see it So in person you can actually see that it isn't a real auto you can see indentions Indentations where the pen stroke is on the card So that is a David Robinson the admiral autograph from 93 94 hoops and our final hit is another auto and It's Shaquille O'Neal 1992 draft picks 92 93 Stadium Club Shaq authentic autograph Beckett graded a 10 on the auto So Shaquille O'Neal goes to the letter O part of the combo spot for PJ McNeely There you go PJ and there you go guys. That was the break I've got one more of these to post I'll post that up next last case That was 2021 King stars and legends hobby three box case break random letter number 27 We have the hundred dollar hit list promo. So let me actually do that right now I'm gonna pause the video. We'll come back do the randomizer for the hit list promo give away that hundred dollars and call to break Okay, so we're back all the names in orange are not part of the hit list promo all of those received hits So we're gonna actually copy Copy that list into a randomizer There you go, so Anthony back up to PJ McNeely one two three four five six seven eight nine ten names on the randomizer One two three four five six seven eight nine ten There you go. So Pedro should be the fifth name on the list One two three four five Pedro Dice roll name on top at the end gets a hundred dollars and break credit back to them a three and a three six times Good luck six and final time. It's going to PJ So PJ you're gonna get a hundred dollars and break credit there six times on the randomizer six times on the dice and That does it that was twenty twenty one break Kings stars and legends hobby three box case break number twenty seven random letter edition From Jasper's case breaks calm. I'm Sean Jasper's case breaks calm. Thanks for hanging out. We'll see you next time


Yes, okay. Thank you so much Yes, I will be talking a little bit about Wiki Loves a Few different week loves competitions we could last monuments week loves earth and week loves Africa and especially what we can learn from them In regards of numbers, I'll be throwing some statistics at you, but I'll try to focus on the bigger picture And what we can learn from them First of all, I was just curious like who is in the room here So who has organized a Wiki Loves competition in their country? That is actually already like a lot of people that's really good to know and who has ever participated in one of them has submitted a photo To any of the competitions Wow, that is lovely to see So first of all all the images that you see are winners of a Wiki Loves competition international So do look them up if you're interested if you're curious the text is sometimes blocking the pictures. I'm really sorry for that But you'll see definitely a lot of pretty pictures and I'll throw in the link at the very end I'm just to give a quick overview of Of what the today's session is going to be about First I'll quickly recap what Wiki Loves is all about how it started very big picture because you've already heard some from Alicia Then We'll talk a little bit about like the images we collected how they're being used And the people that joined through these competitions into our community So first let's start with a little bit of context In 2009, which was before Wiki Loves monuments. We had Wiki Loves art. It started in the United States In New York and they they started that is why we have Wiki Loves because it was in February and that was like a nice connection Wiki Loves Valentine's Day And they were going to museums and they were trying to take as many pictures of objects in the museum as possible Then in the Netherlands we got feedback from the museums that maybe Wikipedia is running around in the museum to take as many pictures as possible is not the most optimal experience for the museums So we switched to a more qualitative aspect where we had which is where the jury started to come in So in 2009 we did that in the Netherlands with 14 museums and as you can maybe imagine that's a lot of work Signing 40 contracts 40 partnerships that really required a lot of effort and that just did not skill We did not want to do that again So in 2010 we were looking for something a little bit more in the public space where we could organize something Where we did not have to make partnerships And that is how Wiki Loves monuments came to be in 2011 that expanded to Europe and In 2012 Worldwide and before you know we had a Guinness World Record for the largest photo competition in the world In 2013 we saw the first spin-off in Ukraine that you heard a lot about Wiki Loves Earth and In 2014, I believe Wiki Loves Africa started and more and more photo competitions that I'm probably leaving out here But for simplicity's sake I'm going to focus on these three photo competitions which are the biggest of that set With spending the most different countries Wiki Loves Monuments has now been organized 13 times and as you can see many of the countries in the world The darker the shade the more times they have participated Have participated at some point in the competition And you see that it's especially in Europe there has been a lot of participations over the years But a lot of countries in the world have done it to some extent And if you look at Wiki Loves Earth I asked the creator of the previous picture to also create one for Wiki Loves Earth So this is a new one and you see there you see a somewhat similar pattern But definitely different parts of the world being active which is really nice to see because it shows that the organizers of the competition Like they have different focuses and different cultures work better with different topics So the concept of photo competition is pretty similar But the way it's engaged is very different I won't show a map for Wiki Loves Africa because we all know where Africa is and it spends the whole continent The number of countries that participates every year has changed quite a bit So green that is Wiki Loves Monuments, orange is Wiki Loves Earth And you see that the number for Wiki Loves Earth is definitely still going up last year this year I think it has reached peak height Wiki Loves Monuments is going down a little bit. It's more stabilizing at this point Around somewhere between 35 and 50 countries is what we see is fairly common for this type of competitions Which is actually that is a lot that means that you need like 30 at least for Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Monuments You see 35 teams of that are organizing something in their countries. That's a lot of coordination That's a lot of collaboration which is quite exciting all by itself As you can see we're not only talking about a Like we're talking about a lot of different competitions and every team has like their own goals and their own Their own reasons of why they're organizing it And this is some of the reasons that we most often hear from in in surveys, but also in in individual conversations Of course the images is very important, right? Like getting a lot of images from our heritage around the world in all its different shapes and types Is really valuable because we can illustrate things in our encyclopedia and wiki data in different projects And we can show people what it's all about But it's not just the the quantity that matters, but it's also the quality We want to get like really good pictures for complicated topics and we can use it then in also in different contexts But besides the images itself my personal driving motivation And it's all about the contributors the people that we get on board in our projects through the competition There's these people that that never would have considered editing Wikipedia. Maybe Just because they come on the website They see this banner and they think like hey, that's something I can do I can take a picture of that building that's around the corner I can take this picture from my vacation that I upload that I had taken earlier and Upload it to a photo competition and some of these people stick around so that is my my personal motivation But every team has their own motivations Another topic that another reason why people organize it is sometimes because it's it's helps you to do capacity building It might be you're a you're a new user group. You're a new team somewhere in the world You're trying to find out like what is an activity that engages our audience that engages our country And how can we organize something that is? relatively well structured and wiki loves might be a good place to start if that is Something that interests your audience if you have photographers if you have organizers that might be a good place to start and Finally, there's improvement of heritage data We have so much information in our in our projects, but also wiki data for example We really want to understand like what what monuments do we even have in our country? What natural heritage do we have? And just collecting structuring that information might be valuable all by itself So every country every national team has their own goals of why they are organizing this And I think that is good to just recognize because everybody every team is different. I'm into this. That's amazing So to look at this from a from the perspective of a participant Let's let's take us quickly through a journey of like how someone ends up in wiki loves In most of the cases we see that people they see a banner on top of the wiki page of the Wikipedia, right? They come to the encyclopedia They look something up that is totally unrelated and they see this banner and they say like submit a photo Participate in a wiki loves monuments wiki loves earth and And then they click on that banner the next thing they come to a landing page that explains what the competition is about what they're Supposed to photograph and what they can what they can win perhaps. What is it? What do you have to do? Then the third thing is they need to well I skip a step they first need to figure out what the photograph that's sometimes a challenge depending on the country, but That's definitely a step and then they take the photo they upload the photo They create an account in the process and then sometimes they come back after that Maybe for the next competition maybe to just contribute to Wikipedia because they now realize like hey I can actually do something that makes this website that I use every single day better and and they They they may come back and then we see some kind of retention Maybe to participate in a different kind of competition because they kind of get that vibe of ooh That is kind of fun making a photo where I know that people actually want to have that photo That is quite a satisfying feeling So let's talk about that first phase that we have in that process the banners So thanks to the research team I was able to to look a little bit deeper into this in 2021 and we did a project where we were looking at Trying to figure out like how do people arrive at these landing pages? How many people do that and How do they then get to the uploading phase? So so all these different steps like what happens with these people. There's a lot of caveats in there There's a research report on meta. I'm I'm welcoming you to to look into that if you're interested in that But there's a few things that we definitely learned that might be worth while mentioning So first of all we see about 0.2 to 0.8 percent of the viewers of the people that visit Wikipedia They actually click on the banner and less than 1% of the people who actually click on the banner typically goes then to actually Upload something which is what we consider a success That is there's actually a big range in there. So there's for every country There's a different number of people that actually come from the landing page to an upload and that can range all the Way from 0.08 percent to 1.7 percent So it's really interesting which tells me that the landing page design really really matters that may be obvious sometimes But it's really important that if you if you organize a competition like this You have to talk with some people who are not weak comedians and just say like hey Is this a sensible design? How can we improve this? How can we make sure that people know what to do if they arrive at this landing page? We what we also learn and again, these are some things that are maybe obvious to to some of us and not obvious to others If someone actually visits the landing page They're more than 25 times more likely to actually visit also the account creation page So that means that if someone clicks on that banner, they're also much more likely to then also create an account Compared to people who are just visiting Wikipedia itself If if a reader then visits the landing page, they're also much more likely to also visit the upload page Which is good, right? Like if that would be equally likely then why are we doing even doing the campaign? And finally if someone actually Creates an account through the campaign. They're also much more likely to upload an image than if you create an account Not going through that banner These are just some interesting tidbits. They're not going to change your life But I think they're really telling us that the campaigns that we are running are actually working to get people on board of our projects Another thing that we looked at carefully is like how many banners do we actually need? Like we talk a lot about diets and things like that There's a lot more work to be done here to really understand what's going on But something that we did understand is that the number of people that see more than three banners before they arrived for the first time on the landing page That is about That's about half the visitors so half the readers That do arrive on the landing page have seen more than three banners in that same day Which tells me that three a diet of three banners in a week is maybe a little bit on the low side Because that means that if you would successfully implement the diet you lose like half your visitors Secondly The United States introduced a diet in the middle of the campaign Which we were actually not aware of until after the fact and that's capable some kind of an experiment Unintentionally we saw a significant drop in the number of visitors, which is not surprising given what I just told you But we also saw that there's still quite a lot of visitors that actually still had more than 10 Banner impressions before they arrived in the landing page. So the diet is not working As we would expect it to be and Finally, there's it is very unclean experiment So you would have to do a lot of extra research if we want to do that properly So what did we learn every step of the pipeline? We lose a lot of people. So try to reduce the number of steps Lending the part design of landing page design really matters a lot We could as monuments draws in people in higher rates than through natural recruitment if you just come to the website And showing banners multiple times really does make a difference It might be a very different behavior than what we see in fundraising for example Because in fundraising if you just click on a banner you can immediately take action If you click on a weekly loss monuments banner You first have to actually find a photo before you can upload it or find or take a photo So it may takes a little bit more effort and introduce introducing a diet Is probably not helpful for recruitment purposes, but there might of course be different reasons why you do that So now the question is if people actually are recruited this way like what what happens with them? How many people stick around? I'm sorry I would like to talk you a little bit with these people these these uploaders that never edited before So first of all, it might be good to just get a little bit of context of like how many uploaders are we talking about? So this is the number of uploaders for each competition per year that we see through all the countries combined Of course, if you crane that decides not to participate one year that means a big drop in the number of participants Right, so it really depends on like which countries are participating But this is just to give you a little bit of context of like how many people are we talking about? We do see a significant drop after 2020 So something is changing in our ecosystem and that might be for example that would just have more competing banners Or it might be something else in our infrastructure. We don't really know but it's just interesting as an observation If we look at the number of countries, these are the countries that have generated the most up the most Uploaders over the past years So that's just interesting to see that we really see at India Germany Russia That's the kind of countries that generate the most uploaders again not surprising. They also have the most people living there But what is really interesting is also the number of images per uploader So in we see that in week it was monuments There is a very different kind of behavior the number of images on average per uploader is much higher that may have something to do with Super uploaders. There are some people that upload more than 10,000 pictures per year. It's like, I don't know how they're doing it It's amazing But it definitely skews the numbers a little bit So more research is needed in this if you're wondering why there's always this gap in 2018 for week it loves Africa by the way That's because they shifted months from the end of the year to the start of the year and that is why in 20 So they went from the end of 2016 to the start of 2018 17 and 19. Sorry. Yes So that is and there's something we would expect The other thing that is interesting is just a cumulative fraction of uploaders So if you look at the number of uploads and how many people are part of that You see that there is more people in week it was monuments that upload more images So there's a lot more people in week loves earth and week loves Africa that upload a single or two or three images It's just a different kind of competition. There's nothing wrong with that But that's just as a little bit of context of what kind of competition we're talking about So what do the participants upload And how many and how many of them stick around for that? I looked at all the images in the images from wiki love something category Split it up by country split it out by year and look that the people who are in that set And I looked at their first edit if that edit that first edit that they ever made on any wiki media project Was in the same month as the competition. I consider them a new editor I know it's not a super clean definition But it's something to work with that is what we call month zero and then everything after that is month one month two Etc so all the months that you see later in the presentation They're all relative to their first month of participation and their first edit Now the first thing that that might be interesting to look at is like how many are actually new editors There's a little bit of a bug there week loves Africa does not have one one hundred and six percent new editors in 2019 I know what the buck is coming from but Just as a background But we see that actually there is about 60 70 80 percent new editors consistently over the years for every single competition And then you wonder like ah, but there must be some countries that have a much lower number of new editors, right? What turns out that's not the case. This is every single country activity combination and you see that actually Every single time it's above 60 percent new editors And that's really exciting to see that if you use this banner if you use this this format You actually get a lot of new editors every time So then the question is like what what do we see if we look at like how many of these people stick around? So we look at like how many edits they made in the months after and if they made at least one edit I consider them to be active. So it's a very low but a threshold But it gives you a little bit cleaner numbers and if you use higher Thresholds if you use a higher threshold of five at us, for example, you get similar patterns But it's just a little bit a little bit more noisy and what you see is 2010 was a very different here than all the other years Which makes sense. It was just in the Netherlands and the first year that you organize one of these things It looks like the first year is always a little bit different because you're you're basically taking the low-hanging fruit You're catching all the people that are super excited about this and that really get engaged And they stick around much more than the people later in later years But after that you see that it kind of stabilizes the number of people that make at least one edit every month Is actually quite reasonable. It's somewhere around 1% What we also see is there is a big peak 12 months later That is not surprising for people who have organized this competition probably But that is basically the people who return to the next year's competition So there's actually quite a number of people that return to the next year Which is two three percent depending on the year depending on the country But that's really interesting a peak that we maybe expected a little less is a peak roughly about eight nine months later And that has to do with week loves earth So this is the week-loss monuments data and we see week-loss earth is about eight nine months later And you see a little peak there which is the people that basically cross they joined through week-loss monuments And then the next year they joined week-loss earth So that's really interesting to see and you see that those peaks go down over the years But people keep coming back a year after year But there's also between the competitions. They're still quite a bit of retention We see roughly the same patterns in other years the numbers are a bit lower the percentages are a little bit lower But you see roughly the same peaks the same kind of movements If we look at week loves Africa or week loves earth we see similar patterns, of course the eight-month peak is now a three-month peak But you see roughly the same patterns We could love Africa is much more noisy And it probably has something to do with the fact that we close Africa is a bit more spread out over the months It's a little bit more every country is different and maybe does not have a week-loss earth or week-loss monuments competition So the peaks are a little bit more noisy But in both cases you see that there's actually still a fair number of retention, but it's different patterns So if you really want to understand that we have to dig deeper. I didn't have time to do that But I would really invite the organizers of those competitions to do that together What we see is if we look at multiple months, so we take a ten month period So we take for example if you have a competition in September That's month one a month zero then month one is October and then we look at November all the way through August That's a ten month period and we look at like how many people make at least one edit in one of those months And then we see that there's about five point four percent in the case of week-loss monuments That make at least one edit in that ten month period. So that means that these people at least have their passwords still That's a very encouraging thought for me because they can be reactivated Because you get logged out about after I think after one month you get logged out. Is that still the case? Someone here must know that Sorry oh one year is now it is okay So it could it so we have to look at after one year. So I'll try to rerun that at some point But basically five point four percent of if you look at their whole lifetime So months to until eternity so that includes the next edition that we see it's about ten percent 11% for week-loss monuments week loves Africa has about 10% and for we could observe it is about 7% Of course these numbers are highly affected by the fact like how hard do you make it to join in the first place? If you make it very easy to join that percent is going to be lower If you make it very hard to join like you have to do a lot of effort to join for it at first time Your retention percentage is going to be through the roof What is also interesting to see is like how many contributions did all these retained users? So we're talking in the case of week-loss monuments 74,000 new editors joined over the course of these 13 years that Like together they made 5.7 million edits after they joined so in months to and later In the case of week loves earth that is 1.7 million edits or contributions in the case of week loves Africa We're still also talking about 138,000 edits. That's a lot of edits For for that number of users and it's really encouraging because it's not just about the competition itself After that you have a lot of effect going on So we also looked at like different countries and what what I find most interesting I mean you could look at these graphs forever, right? But what I find most interesting is there's some countries that have a much higher Retentuated others and what I would like to do with those organizers dive deeper into this like why it's Germany is such a high retention rate What are they doing differently? Are they making it really hard to join or are they making it really easy to stay? And I would like to understand it a little bit better So I think we need to talk with countries that where we see that kind of patterns in every competition You see some differences. So for example, if we look at week loves earth, we see that for example Germany and Germany and Ukraine are having a particularly high retention rate compared to the other countries And I think we need to start learning from each other a little bit more in that context in week loves, Africa I was mostly surprised by Nigeria that was doing particularly. Well, you see that there's a lot of noise But there's one country that has a consistently retention rate And that is Nigeria So that's really exciting that may have something to do with the fact that they have more Activities in that country it may have to do something that they have a very supportive user group We don't know we should dig into that So some observations from all of that from a non-competition month We see roughly 1% retention in the case of week loves monuments week loves Africa She's also about 1% percent a week loves earth see about sees about 0.6% If we look at that 10 month span, we see 5% for week loves monuments 6% for Africa and 3.5% for a week loves earth And if we look at lifetime retention those percentages are even a bit higher There's always a retention bump around 12 months, which is the returning visitors And we see a bump when other competitions are happening So really try to encourage your participants to participate in the other competitions in your country Because it helps them to re-engage Most of the retention happens on Commons I didn't show you the figures for that but about 50 to 60% of the off cycle retention Happens on Commons, but that also means there is there's actually quite a bit of retention happening Outside of Commons. So if we want to look at retention numbers, we have to look in the full breadth of our movement And there's a few smaller countries that have an even higher off cycle retention rate in Germany So I wouldn't know we should talk with Austria. We should talk with the Netherlands to see what what they have done differently over the years So finally it's worthwhile considering contribution across all projects if you want to look into these numbers There's big differences between countries and how can we leverage this reactivation In a better way. So thank you very much for your Participation there's a lot of work to be done in this. There's a lot of more data to dig into and if anyone is interested Yeah, hit me afterwards. I think we have a few minutes for questions, which I would very much invite. Thank you Sure, please Yeah, please quickly introduce like your back like your your name and Yeah, hello, I'm Matty username is MB1 I'm mostly active on comments. So it's very relevant for me about the retention You said the retention as high as on Commons, which is hardly surprising to anyone, I guess But I would be interested. Did you look at the figures of? Uploads versus other types of edits on Commons as well I look I look at the edit table, but every time you make an upload that also generates an edit basically So I would also see those I see them as one package Yes, but the question would be is is editing which is not uploading on Commons also Significantly higher than on on other wikis in the retention. I don't know. That's a good question I have not looked at that separately. Okay. Thank you Yes, if you have questions, please just go to one of the microphones and Hello, I'm Robin from the Philippines and I organize different week allows a contest So I just want to share the reason why there are very low retention of the Philippines is that Once you create an account Using your mobile phone phone, you'll automatically get blocked So that's the main reason why there's a low participation in at least in the Philippines and another one is that the We can call musty when you upload that it's not very User-friendly there are lots of fields to fill in so it discourages participant Thank you. What I would like to say in response is I don't think 1% is low I think it's actually really good. So if we hit 1% retention consistently over this kind of number of new editors We're doing actually really well. So so don't feel like you're doing poorly in that sense But secondly, these are great thoughts of how we can improve our retention experience. So thank you for sharing those Hi, so there's a question from Ina Lee Hi retention in NL. When was the last time they ran a wiki love sex? I don't know. I think it's been a few years and It may have been a while. I Think it may have been three or four years. I could look into the data Use a poco poco on commons You mentioned that one your of your main targets is to get quality content. Have you measured? Quality on the uploads. Is there any metrics about this? I'm some beta or words or so what I wanted to just to clarify These these goals that I listed were goals from local teams. So every local team has their own goals I have not personally measured the quality That's a great thing to look at but I have not looked into that one comment So I'm George jiku from from Moldova and they're organized weekly observed and moments and We saw in the graph that In the graph with the contributors that the graph was Starting to get the number of contributors was lower and lower and lower In our case it was because of purely because of saturation. We we just don't have much to to take photos off anymore because we already filled up the tables so to speak and it requires a lot more effort at this point to To make the the photographers go out in the field again, thank you makes a lot of sense I Think we have one time for one more question and then we have to close up Mike from New Zealand We haven't yet done photographed everything in New Zealand yet. So there's still some time It wouldn't be possible to estimate the person ours per retained Editor based on the calculating the amount of effort involved in administration and judging comp photos divided by the 1% retention and compare that with personnel is expended to retain editors and other things like editor thons So the data that I found is is publicly available here under on the pause Sure, I know that but is there is do the projects collect the hours of Personals in the administration time. So I don't have that data. So what I can do I can offer you one piece of that puzzle I can offer you how many new editors there are if you then want to know how many Hours you need to retain one of these editors then I would suggest that someone else can maybe provide you those hours And you can match that data together Okay, if there is probably more questions. We have a Session later there maybe it might be some time over there But for now, I would like to give the floor to the next speaker. Thank you very much