The Painesville Johnson County Trail Town Committee will be hosting their fifth annual laid back at the lake Saturday, May 28th. The day will feature face painting and balloons for the kids, a kayak raffle, DJ sound and the Memorial Day Mile. This is our third year for the Memorial Day Mile and that is a race of kayakers, stand-ups, sit-ons, tandems, solos, out to the island and back, which is roughly a mile. And there's trophies for three age groups and those three age groups are 10 to 17, 18 to 60 and then the senior group 60 plus. We are Pikeville Medical Center and we are an amazing place to work, healthcare heroes of all types work here, all who deserve great rewards. So while our heroes are working hard to take care of our patients and visitors, we are taking care of them with top tier benefits, higher pay rates and great sign on bonuses. So join our team today. So what are you waiting for? Apply today! Incredible opportunities await at PMCjobs.org. The PJC will host two other laid back at the lake days throughout the summer in hopes to familiarize the community with Painesville Lake and its offerings. Like most communities, things that are right in the community sometimes go, are overlooked. We take for granted that we have such a lovely, beautiful, clean place for folks to come and hang out. So when we first started it, there weren't a lot of events going on out here and we wanted to change that. We wanted people to come and make the lake a place to host events, have events, have some music. Music, you know, is our signature thing here in the mountains. So have some music and people gather and have a good time. Laid back at the lake will be held from three to five at the Painesville Lake boat ramp and is free to the public. For more information visit Painesville Johnson County Trail Town Committee on Facebook. For Mountain Top News, I'm Breanna Robinson.


In discussing this, we really wanted this to be more of a conversation because I think there's a lot of open questions about where we're going with search in Drupal Core. This is really just about Drupal Core, not about contributed modules. We're going to have a buff relating to GeoSearch and Apache Solar afterwards and therefore if you see me running at five o'clock down the street, that's where I'm headed. So I changed the title on this rather than focusing on sort of adding to Core. I thought it would be useful to pose the question, what's useful currently in Drupal Core search, what's missing, and what's excessive that we could get rid of and make Core simpler. So to frame the problem, thanks, this is basically Chris's framing, that when users come to your site, what they expect is something like the Google experience. So they're expecting an or search, the page to come up first has the most keywords matching, they expect something like a stemming or a little bit fuzzy match, so they don't have to type the exact word. They expect some kind of spell correction or suggestion for spelling. Expect keyword highlighting and they expect that every page on the site is going to be indexed, at least if it's publicly accessible. So Drupal Core misses out on quite a number of these things right now. Just almost all of them in Core. Maybe number two, the most relevant page has the most keywords, that's about it, right?  So not always, but it's there. So we're missing out on a lot of this. So I think, you know, users coming to use a Drupal site, run the site search, it doesn't work the way they expect and, you know, that's going to lead to some dissatisfaction to feeling like Drupal doesn't have a good search, even if the algorithms behind the scenes are doing a good job. There's also, you know, if we go beyond the Google experience, we think about a more rich site like an e-commerce site or something like Amazon.com. And this not only has that keyword search box, but it has a lot more features that help you find what you're looking for. So one of these that Chris is very interested in, and he can grab the mic if he wants to talk about it, is progressive disclosure of facets. So this is if, as I start to drill down, new facets become relevant. So it might not have been relevant when I'm searching the whole site, you know, but once I've gotten into the particular, you know, general category of widget, maybe I want a facet block about colors. Now I didn't want colors, all possible colors for all products on the site. I only wanted the colors, you know, the 10 colors available for, you know, men's t-shirts with the Drupal logo on them, right? So that's all I want to see. So we have to know when it's, we have to sort of intelligently figure out when, you know, those sites are able to intelligently know when to show you new facets that are relevant to your search. They have better widgets for facets that maybe make the navigation a little more intuitive. They have more, you know, ways to target the searches. So if you think about Amazon, you can search within a department like books.  I don't want Drupalcon socks because that would be a different department. And I know I don't want socks, I want a book. You know, obviously they have good keyword matching, you know, this follows sort of from the Google experience and builds on top of it.  So we think about a really great search experience. I would not only have the Google experience of great keyword matching, but we'd have all these things built on top of it. And so clearly we're going beyond Drupal core here. But for Drupal 7, you know, there's really not a coherent way yet in contrib, I would say, to achieve these goals, to sort of match the Amazon experience. Then we have another problem. How do we maintain even Drupal core, the keyword search? You know, so right now I think it's fair to say that no one is actively maintaining the core search module in Drupal, certainly in Drupal 8, Drupal 7, Drupal 6. You know, there's a lot of open issues. And I think this is true for a lot of areas of core. I'm not, I mean, this is a general broad problem. So, you know, things that I'm listed as a maintainer of in Drupal core, like I don't have time to look at the issues keys. And for specific to those things. And, you know, but it's a problem even that there are patches, you know, that are ready to go and are not getting reviewed. And there's also in core search it has functionality that's not used very often. So, how many people here regularly use the advanced node search? How many people here use Boolean searches, like actually typing and and or? All right, we got one. So, you know, those are things, you know, they're nice to have, but really do we, you know, is that important to ship in Drupal core? There's also, I think, a problem in sort of the way core search is set up is the boundary between what search module is doing and what the node module's implementation of search is doing are a little fuzzy. And some of the stuff in the core search module seems to be catering very much to the node module implementation. And I, you know, that's sort of an architectural problem that we might want to deal with and try to make a cleaner separation. So, you know, Drupal, we know, has the capability to have a good site search. And, you know, the challenge for us is really to make the out of the experience, you know, the Drupal experience either out of the box or with contrib modules better than at least the Google site search, right? So, there are problems with something like a site, Google site search. So, why not just tell everyone, you know what, Drupal doesn't come with search anymore. Google will take your money, index your site with a custom site search, and, you know, we're done. We have no more maintenance problems. So, you know, what are the problems with Google site search? You know, what can we do better? If you have a crawler, you get everything on a page. So, you get, you know, the sidebars, the header, the footer, you know, if there's a certain word that appears on every page of the site, well, that's going to tend to come up in every search result, if you look for that word, right? Google doesn't know how to exclude certain content. So, you may have certain node types that shouldn't be in your search index at all. But, through whatever way, if it's crawlable, it's going to show up in the search index. So, an example might be if you have some kind of composite pages composed of multiple nodes, you don't actually want each individual node showing up in search results. Google can't facet on internal metadata. Like things like author name may be, it could figure out. But, you know, there's a lot of internal structure and data about the node that we can use to create those intelligent facets. And Google clearly can't provide your authenticated users, you know, access to private content in search results. So, you have to be within the Drupal user system, the Drupal authentication system in order to do that. And clearly, for a lot of sites, searching private content is a key feature. So, we can't, we don't want to abandon a built-in search solution. Yeah, these are some of the limitations that something like Google has that Drupal can do better. All right, I think I'm going to make Chris talk about this. So, just a dirty secret, I shared a book with Peter last night and then he stole this quote from the books. So, you know, I think right now what we do in Drupal search is, you know, we don't really focus on best practices. We don't focus on what other people are doing. And there's a lot of good examples. I think a lot of times what happens is that core search kind of gets in the way. So, what we end up having is we have sub-projects, right? So, we have a search API. We have, you know, core search, people that still use core search. We have Apache Solar, you know, for Drupal 6. We had search scene APIs. These are different ways to attack this problem. And, you know, I think the big thing is how can we make big best practices easy? There's a lot of patterns out there. And I think, you know, the big argument here is does Drupal core search need to be everything to everybody, right? Or does it need to be handled in contrib? Because Jennifer, I'll put you on the spot here. But if you can describe, if you can say one word to describe the patch committal process in search, what would you use? Now, keep it clean now. Yeah? It doesn't exist? Right. So, you know, I think the big thing here is how can we enable contrib modules to start to work together and to make sure that that search doesn't get out of the way. And to make sure that the core search module is able to get out of the way gracefully.  Would it be nice for core to understand this? Yes. Would it be essential for Drupal core to do all this functionality? No. But should it provide a way for people to do it? Yes. And then leave that out in contrib so that we can bypass this nonexistent patch queue process which we have. And, you know, the end result is how do you find the user, how do you help the user find the desired results instead of just ones matching the keywords, right? There's a lot of different ways to attack this problem. I think that if we're going to focus big efforts on core, it's going to be really tough to get in. You know, just an example, I'm sorry to pick on you again, Jennifer, but Jennifer had a great patch which ended up fixing the highlighting for word stemming. And it's been sitting in the queue for a very long time. Two years, that's it. Nice, nice. So anyways, you know, if we can allow core search to kind of get out of the way and allow that type of contribution to happen in contrib, then that would really help, you know, move things along and get us to where we want to go. Do you want me to keep going? Sure. All right.  I want people to say Drupal search is a differentiator when we're talking about Drupal over other CMSs. So, you know, there are some things that we have to focus on. So, you know, basic keyword search has to conform to expectations. People have expectations going in. It just needs to be very simple. You know, I think for the majority of users, you don't have to get really complex. We have a lot of complex logic and core that could, you know, be stripped out and be handled elsewhere. It also has to be customizable, right? The user interface I think is the most important part because there's a lot of work going on in the back end, which is great and very necessary. But users are really focused on the front end and that's what they see. That's the search experience they have. So, again, if we can move that out of Contrib and have some pretty, to Contrib and have some pretty interesting things going on, then that kind of facilitates moving Drupal search forward.  So, you know, I think we're starting to see some collaboration. So, we're starting to see, okay, what are the areas of these big projects that we can actually pull together and start working on together so that it works across all projects? And when that happens, you know, we start, we stop writing one-off solutions and we start writing stuff that's reusable, which will facilitate, you know, more contributions in terms of how to use this stuff. It will be familiar across the sites and in that case, you know, Drupal really becomes a selling point. And, you know, I think in terms of the custom UI, you know, that's another part, you know, once you're theming stuff, that has to be ported to, because I think it's really important when we're talking about search experience, if we can start to work together to figure out a way how to, you know, maybe core search. Maybe this is an area for core search to improve, where core search provides templates that can actually be reused in a meaningful way by site builders. Core search templates are okay right now, but people still run into issues, which is why they move off to other solutions. So, you know, that might be an area in core where we could, you know, work together and figure out a way how we can make that useful to all the various projects. Well, so just picking up on what Chris was saying, so there's a couple things. So as I said, theme templates, you know, that's one area. Maybe core could be improved and that would help carry over. People make it easier, you know, if everyone can rely just on the core templates for theming their search results rather than having customized, but we need to make sure, again, that Drupal core sort of out of the box comes close enough to the Google experience. There are definitely some problems. So we just mentioned a stemming patch, but in general, there's problems with language awareness in search. We need to figure out better how to detect, you know, detect language when we're searching, know what language content is in, when it's indexed, know how to match across languages. I mean, those are hard problems. I'm not sure we can solve them in core. We need to at least provide enough information to the search back and that if it can do a better job on this than core, it does. I think also one place that Drupal core right now really falls down and is probably not that hard to solve is that Drupal core only lets you have basically one search tab per module. And that's, you know, we're finding that that's not really what people want. People often want to customize a search. They want to have a search for a section, you know, search within organic groups, search within something else. So you might want to have several somewhat distinct search pages or, for example, on Drupal.org, we have a search within modules. So why is it that, you know, project module has to basically reinvent a lot of the, I mean, in there, they're customizing that the result template a lot. But, you know, you could imagine some use cases like that where you don't necessarily need tons of customization of the search results, but you need to pre-filter.  Search modules should facilitate that rather than right now it just kind of prevents it or you have to work around it. And what do we, we had half an hour? Right, an hour for all this sort of stuff. We won't have time for discussion, so anyway. It's just been half hour, half hour. Half hour, yeah. So, you know, one of the things I think we have to be aware of in core search, if it's gonna still be useful, is that it has to have enough hooks, you know, available that contribute modules can participate in the indexing process, the search process, or maybe allow contribute modules to more readily bypass the parts of core search that they don't need. So, and in terms of the user interface, so Chris has done a lot of work and I have done a little work around the edges of the Fasted API module. And I think. And Thomas has done work too. And yeah, so Thomas has now done work. And in Chicago, we kind of got up and talked about, you know, the notion of making a bigger toolkit for Drupal core search, which might include something like Fasted API. And I think this is sort of one of the things I wanted to have discussion about, is given where we are with maintaining Drupal core search, do we want to actually add any features really into core at this point? Or are we better off actually stripping out as much as we can, you know, leaving a functional keyword search in Drupal core and really not much else and pursuing all the rest in contrived as, is that a better strategy? If we think that something like this should be in Drupal core, what is the timing, right? So we kind of would need to know that it's mature enough as an API, you know, that we've hit the edge cases, that we understand, you know, we're not gonna suddenly hit, you know, this whole area of things we can't do in Drupal eight after we put it into core and, you know, we've frozen the API. So I think that's sort of a timing. If we decide we really want it in core, when would be the time, how do we know that it's, you know, mature enough? And is there demand, you know, are there enough, you know, do the majority of sites want fasted search or do really, you know, the majority of sites want just a keyword search and more specialized sites are the ones that need fasted search and therefore, you know, depending on our answer to that question might influence whether we think we need this in core. And one might argue that adding something like fasted API to core in some form would be a trade-off that you would offer the community essentially for, you know, like removing features like the advanced search form. Now some people use that, you know, but, you know, once you've taken that feature out, it would be better to say, well, we took that out and we replaced it with fasted API. Even if fasted API doesn't give you that same form, if it at least gave you the facility to apply, you know, to build a form that applied filters, if at least you have that ability in core, you could see it as a trade-off rather than losing, just losing features from core, that, you know, so that's again a discussion point, is that make sense to people as a trade-off or is it simply that we should say, you know, let's take everything out of core that is not, you know, the 90% use case, in which case we just remove it without a replacement.  If we, especially if we add new features to it, how do we maintain it? And what's the best way for us as a community of people interested in this functionality to build a good contributing modules in a way that they interact so that we're not, you know, all reinventing the wheel? You know, for Drupal core, I think this is sort of, you know, this is the problem in a way, and unfortunately I'm gonna run out to a buff, but at five o'clock, Randy and other people will be talking more about, you know, maintenance for Drupal core, you know, how do we maintain Drupal core, how do we deal with new projects, how do we deal with the issue queues? But, you know, so the thing I'm throwing out there for discussion is if we remove features, we reduce the amount of code in core, does that make it easier to maintain? Does that make it easier to fix the bugs? Does that make it easier to test? And is that therefore the thing that we should be aiming for on core? Then also does it allow you to make it reusable so that other people, other projects can use it? And then, you know, sort of another thought in terms of the broader search space is who's benefiting from a good search solution? And how do we, you know, sort of make whatever organizations, individuals, companies are, you know, using search, benefiting from a good search experience, how do we get them to reinvest, again, in a sort of a coherent way that we build a good generic or sufficiently generic tools, especially for the user interface? Again, I think the user interface is the hard part of this, you know, we'll go back to that quote, you know, search is the worst usability problem on the web. It's very hard to get good widget, you know, good user interface widgets to figure out how to expose, you know, drill down options to people in a way that makes sense, that help them find what they're looking for. Yeah, that's the hard part. We, you know, we have great search backends available to us as open source. That's really not the problem. The problem is integrating those with the front end to let the user find what they're looking for. So just to conclude here, some random links of, in case you wanna look for some of the past and current discussions on these topics, and with that, I think we'd appreciate your comments and joining the conversation. No need to clap. Let's converse around, because collaborating, can I take a crack at that? You can repeat the question a bit. Sure, so the question is, let me try to simplify and please correct me if I'm wrong, but you know, a big problem is that, you know, a lot of open sources, you know, the it's just scratch, so who's gonna fund it, right? People would love to work on search, but who's actually gonna buy it, who's actually gonna fund it? Does that accurately cover it? Okay, so you know, just to be transparent, I have a saying, I love code, that's why I don't do it for work. So, you know, all my contributions are in my free time. Thomas, I don't know if you're paid to work on Search API or not. On Google Summer Code. Yeah, so Google Summer the Code, so part of it's funded. I think right now there's an interesting, there's an interesting opportunity here in that we have people who are actually contributing and people who are passionate about search and wanna make it better. And you know, I think the big problems with core search right now are that that itch isn't there to scratch, right? So if we can pull some of that out and we can make it smaller and we can move some of this stuff to contribute and maybe rework it to make it some sort of toolkit, then people will be able to contribute more readily without having to expend a lot of effort having to go through the core channels because contrib is a lot easier to contribute to. You know, I couldn't be able to do the work that I did in core, you know, in my free time. It just wouldn't have happened. Well, yeah, and I think, you know, Thomas was great and Thomas actually, you know, reached out and started working with us on Facet API. So this is an example, right? We have different communities. We have, you know, Core Search has a big user base. Patchesolar has a big user base. Search API has a very much growing user base and, you know, Search Lucene API for six had, you know, an OK user base. We were doing a lot of the same things. So what ended up happening is we took out pieces, right? So we ended up, instead of building up a core API from scratch, we took out pieces of Search Lucene API. We mixed it with the faceted search in Apache Solar and then we kind of put it underneath as a toolkit module that people could use. And then, you know, Thomas ended up showing some interest and then he ended up contributing further to the Facet API module, removing a lot of assumptions and now Search API is starting to move towards leveraging that. So I think that's an example of a project which is a toolkit piece, you know, which is done completely in Contrib which is an enabler for all the other search projects. So I think part of your question, Doug, was are we gonna try to remove Core Search in favor of something in Contrib and replace it? Yeah, you asked the question. So you were right. So I think, I mean, I think we were coming into this trying to, you know, come up with a coherent argument and I think Chris and I are in agreement that, and, you know, we talked with Jennifer and with Thomas a bit and that probably at this point we don't wanna try to invest in putting a new API in Core. But rather we should, you know, take out the parts of Core Search that aren't broadly used, you know, because it makes it more difficult to maintain and, you know, try to get it to the state where it can be maintained. Now, again, we have this question, do we wanna add anything back? Do we wanna add something like facet API as a feature? I'm, you know, I wouldn't be in favor of putting like a whole new API in that tries to be fairly broad and functional because I just think we're gonna end up with the same maintenance problem. You know, the code that's there works, you know, by minimizing a little more we may make it even simpler to maintain. We can improve the initial experience by changing some assumptions that aren't, those aren't big patches. So I think if we did those things we could leave Core Search as it is not alone but not make a radical shift, not rip it out altogether. Yeah. I mean, simply because, you know, and I think Thomas maybe can talk to this more. I mean, my impression is that trying to make an API that's very generic across different search backends is hard. And in fact, you know, I'm not sure you can be successful enough that you want to be in core for the reason that every backend has very specific features, right? So, you know, can, do I have to, you know, keep patching core every time, you know, a patchy soler comes out with a new version with new features? I mean, that, it doesn't seem like that's, you know, the direction we want to go or we have some kind of, you know, plug-in that integrates to the patchy soler that integrates to the core then what is core actually doing? Right, to me it's better for core to come with. You have an API that. Maybe, I mean, it depends what you mean better. Right, so I mean, I think there is cleanup to be done in the current API. I guess I'm arguing against kind of starting from scratch. Like, let's basically leave what we have and, you know, marginally improving it to me sounds like a lot less work than ripping it out. Sorry. Sorry, just to add to that quickly. I think that the big thing for me is, you know, not focusing wholly on core search to make it, you know, a full-fledged API just because, you know, we're seeing problems getting small stuff in right now. So, you know, making it smaller and helping it get out of the way better and allowing that innovation to happen and contrib. And once that gets try and tested, you know, it's easier to innovate more quickly and contrib, try things out, break things, you know, iterate again. And then, you know, maybe Drupal 8, Drupal 9 comes out and we can start thinking about it once we have some try and test and stuff. And so make there to be a simple keyword search that behaves more like what we expect from our Google experience with the ability for the plugins to do the stemming and stuff and actually do it right and basically we core of that. And then anything else that we can do and contrib, just let it happen and contrib. Yes. Very eloquent. Much, much more eloquent than I could have said. All right, come up and say it again. No. That's okay. So Jennifer says, you know, basically to... The proposal that we're coming to is basically yes, we should remove advanced search, we should remove boolean parsing and other kind of special parsing and basically leave core search with a keyword search. We should make it do or queries by default rather than and, which it does right now and improve some of the way the hooks are invoked so that stemming could be implemented properly in a contrib module and basically leave it more or less at that. So somewhat simplified, some fixes to API but really actually less code and simpler code than we have now. We're about done, but yeah, do you have a question? Core search implementation that has extension points and you wanna do solar, that's its own thing. If you wanna do elastic search, that's its own thing. Well, so I mean, there's different, yeah, I mean there's different levels of API, right? So core search is currently an API. Apache Solar uses it for things like displaying the tab on the search page. A few uses the result templates. So there are elements of an API there that can be reused and are useful but I think making it so it's a more full-fledged framework for connecting to different search backends, I would say to me doesn't seem worth the effort to put that in core. Well, that's about as good as I'm gonna get it from you, Larry. Yeah, I guess you're coming from core search API right now. I-ish parts, in my experience, are the ones that I have the most trouble with. So if you're talking about, you know, the core search can out of the way and be easier to just do your own thing, that's the kind of stuff that I would be talking about getting rid of, is search has to go up in a tab on this search slash whatever page as part of that core API that means to just go away entirely as far as that. Sure, so I would agree, for example, yeah, I mean we can make simple changes. Larry's saying it's aggravating that search module forces you to put a tab at a certain path. And I would agree, yes, we could probably improve on that. But that's not, to me, that's not a broad API, that's a little bit of fiddling with how it does its- It's not a module-level API. Yeah, so I think Thomas is his turn, so last question while he's coming up. Why are we talking about Apache Solar and forgetting about Sphinx? Because not very many people use Sphinx and there's not a good integration module. So if you want to write a good integration module, I mean more of the work has been done to integrate Apache Solar. It's easy, fun. Yeah. What's up? Another thing, so. You can put this on your head. I was supposed to tell him that he can put this on his head and don't touch anything else here. I'm gonna have to step up. So while we're waiting here, I'll just make my speech because that's the one we're fine. If anybody's on the hotel Wi-Fi, can you get off? I think we'll meet up the group of calling we got on. Okay, we'll open up. Awesome. We'll be at the spring? Yeah, so we'll be at the spring. Okay, then we'll meet there. Sorry, I have to do that, that's fine. Beth, can I dream of your thoughts? I'll be around a lot, but yeah. I'll just post to you. So don't be on the hotel Wi-Fi and lunch will be here tomorrow as long as you're in a building. And I'm just waiting what? The lunch is better over there, though. Well, I don't know what the line is on there. I just thought it was this thing, once you come down there. Hello, I'm Thomas Seidel and I'm gonna talk very shortly about basically the same stuff that Peter and Chris already told you only from, well, kind the opposite direction in which they took it. So, but basically the problem is the same or this is a slightly different view on the problem. We have Core Search currently in 777. It's mostly a product. It also tries to be a framework, but it's not very successful at it. It has very limited scope as Peter said, it's very much is built towards the node search currently in Core and doesn't really facilitate very different solutions. Apache Solar Module currently uses it, as I said, only for the theming part and for the basic UI that there's a tab and a form field, but it really doesn't take much of a search module's hand, search API, it doesn't use it at all. And so it's in its framework part, not very useful, it's mostly just a product. And there's been a proposed solution which has been as linked by Peter several times now on groups.truple.org. And it's to bring a real flexible search framework into Core, which could do all the things really flexible so that it could really cater to all different sorts of advanced search modules, which want to take stemming and highlighting plugins and whatever different backends, different indexing mechanisms, different data sources, index all entities and pages and whatever. It should clearly separate the basic framework and then the backend implementations. Currently, we would have a database backend in Core which does what this Core search does now but only as one possible backend implementation. And then there would be the extra features, the default plugins provided with Core, so that you have case-in-sensitive search and HTML filtering and such things. The admin UI could also be separated from the framework so that a simple user who just wants to go search to work could activate the framework, the backend and part five of this Core search to product which would offer some basic defaults which would ensure basically the same Core search as now, only as an implementation and configuration of this whole flexible search framework. And this will then leave the implementation of these parts to, well, contract modules, which could then replace all these things with advanced solutions. You could then have a real Apache Solar module which builds on Core search and really just replace the backend and maybe adds then backend-dependent features to leverage all of Solar's capabilities. You would, of course, also have to make all these steps pluggable, not just we are hooks, but we are real plugins. You would have a plugin for data retrieval so that you can not just get nodes and here there are, but build the data from different ways which would, for example, also be a page search which could just retrieve pages as they are rendered and the pre-processing would, of course, be pluggable. The indexing part, how the data is really indexed, of course, then the backend, search query pre-processing at the search time. The actual searching would, of course, also be on the backend and pluggable there, maybe, and how the search results are post-processed so that you could have a highlighter plugin and maybe other steps, and all this pluggable in-core will ensure very great flexibility. And here we come to the advantages of this. Of course, there's now, there would be a common standard which all such advanced search modules could build on, in contrary. Code duplication would be reduced, of course, really back in the dependent functionality could, would just be implemented there and wouldn't have to be duplicating into all these other modules. And, of course, another very large plus would be that if a user comes and does a simple search on the site and later wants to upgrade, he really can easily do that and keep all his configurations like they are but just switch out the backend to a patch of solar and whoops, here's now a much faster and more accurate search. However, as Pete and Chris already illustrated, there are several disadvantages of bringing a full-fledged framework into core. One of the points would be that as I said, if you separate all these things clearly, you would have three to five additional modules just for search in core. And, of course, the whole API which would be very complex and do we really need another complex API in core? It's something to think about and, of course, we also would have more overhead for basic search solutions if a user just wants basic keyword search like currently in the background that would be all stuff going on which would really be unnecessary for his use case. And then, of course, what Chris and Peter also said, maintaining something core is way more complicated than maintaining it contrived. So putting such a framework into core would really multiply the maintenance effort by quite a bit, I think. And what they also said, and I forgot here is, of course, that this API would then have to be really good because if you later find out, well, there's some cases missing, then you have a small broken, in a small case, broken API in core and maybe you would have to go and make another contrived API after all which would, of course, eliminate all the advantages. So the rather lame conclusion is that I think Peter and Chris were right. Forget everything I just said. Doing this in contrived, after all, I think is the right thing as really if the API is good enough, it will be used even if it's in contrived only in the cases where it don't need it which would be redundant anyways. And as Peter and Chris already said, it might even be worth the effort to prune some of the attempts at being a framework from core search, prune some features that are currently very used and just fix some of the structures but basically just leave it as it is now and let it step aside gracefully to let a contrived do a better job at it. Yeah, that's, yeah. By nine. I don't know. You know, you've built the search API, I think. Okay, these are three questions, I think. Oh, I don't think I remember that. Okay, the question is whether I don't think that search API is already mature enough to be in core or that it could be mature enough in Drupal 9 or as Jennifer put it, if I want it in core. Okay, so first off, do I think it's mature enough now that's a complicated question. It hasn't been used for that long. I think that we can tell I'm pretty, pretty content at its current level. And I think if for Drupal 8 we could do some API rewrites, I do think that it would be good enough for core but the big problem I'm seeing is the maintenance effort and that we have to be really sure that it's catering to all needs of advanced of other search modules. And I don't know if we can get enough usage in Drupal 7 on time for it to go completely in the Drupal 8. In Drupal 9 when it has been widely used in Drupal 7 and Drupal 8, maybe we can really get it into core but I think that's another discussion for well in two or three years when everyone then says, yeah, search API, whoo, then yeah, of course you can get into core but I think some of the problems remain. I think that's a good analogy with the CCK module and field and if, of course, if search API turns out to be the second most used contract module, then yeah, please put it in the core but yeah, I think some of the problems would remain even if it were so popular but of course as said, if it turns out to be mature and used and popular enough then of course we could make the effort but it would of course be an additional effort and there would have to be enough people involved to really make it viable. So I don't end up hacking together a whole core search module. And no, I don't have the accent. And yeah, so for Drupal 8, I just don't think it's viable. Also with the whole four to six search modules in core it would be kind of a slap in the face to people saying, small core, yeah, so yeah, here's another five modules. I, yeah, for Drupal 8 I don't think it would be viable but for Drupal 9, who knows and no. Of course, we could have just, oh, sorry. The question is if it would be really three to five modules, we couldn't have one module of the API and the other in Contrib. All right. No, that wouldn't be possible or it would be possible but then we wouldn't have core search to product in Drupal and I don't think we can afford that. We have to ship Drupal with some kind of search solution or we could say use Google site search, I don't care. But I don't think that would be a good option. So we would need the framework module, the backend module. So we have anything to store the data on and the thing providing the search. So a search page module which would add the search page for the users and these would really be three modules already then maybe if you want to put it into another module the extra features like case insensitive search and HTML filter which are really needed for core search product if it is to work correctly and the admin UI could of course live in Contrib but that would still be four modules so three additional ones. Thanks. Three by my account but I don't think it's a mathematical problem. No. So you would put the admin UI into the framework module. Yeah, that's what, yeah, we could do that but I'm sorry I didn't quite catch that. Well, with the full-fledged framework there. Yeah, but if you have a simple UI just for core it would have to be a module after all because otherwise you can disable it if you have a proper admin UI. So then you would have to have admin UI module in core after all and but of course you could do that and just have a very simple form for checkboxes. Well the question, so for example for the new database layer there was an assertion that you needed basically three database backends to validate a generic API. Would you agree with search that if you have a generic search framework core we basically have to be tested against three search backends to validate API? The question is that if with the search framework in core with plug-able backends if we wouldn't have to test against all these backends to really verify that this is working and I guess that would be another problem because yeah really without implementations you couldn't be sure and with test coverage you really would have to do that and if you only have one backend implementation in core this would really not be possible. So probably another argument for that. Yeah Larry? But if we then start screwing around with the API and writing it as we usually do something more to the core, then we would still need to bet it against three different implementations. So we need a database, like a database backend a something with a schema backend like SOAR and something without a schema like Elasticsearch because those are three very different approaches. And if we- Yeah, but we can't know that the core and implementation is right. I mean informally you can say, well it's too much for justice. We have to develop those core contributing implementations in parallel with the core version and the core API. And test coverage would be. Especially if just the only core is enough and the core has to fit better. Yeah, that's actually one of the bigger arguments I think for doing the robust framework instead of in core and just in core VA. If you just have a blog you can use this implementation because yeah, doing three full implementations in core would be a nightmare. Of course. And then it would even be useless to have a SOLAR implementation in core when it says, hey, if you want to use that you have to download something else after all, so. Oh, okay. Well, yeah. Thanks all. Thanks a lot. What's that?  Right. Thank you all. Okay. Thank you, Thank you, Okay, I didn't know he was coming now or I don't know. Okay. Right. Longer one than this fall? I mean, are you adding that to something? Someone's on there? Yeah.


I'm thrilled and pleased and honored to be kicking off this year's campus conversations with our new athletic director, Jim Nolton. Thanks for joining us, Jim. Just a little bit about the format. Again, you have on your chair index cards. If you have questions now, write them out, hand up, hold up the card and let Donald pick them up. And during the conversation as well, if you have questions that come up, there's one right there. Questions that come up, feel free to send them forth. The format, as usual, we'll be going to ask Jim to start off with just some brief opening comments. I've got a few questions of my own. And then we'll open it up to a discussion, a full discussion and conversation. These have been great events in the past. And again, we're going to continue this throughout the year with a number of campus leaders ending again with Chancellor Chris towards the end of the semester. So stay tuned for news of those future events. But without further ado, Jim, have at it. Well, Dan, thank you very much. And thank you all for coming today. I have just hit my three-month mark here. And I don't think my feet have touched the ground yet. So I love it more than I did when I took the job, and that's a good thing. So I thought today I would just tell you what I've been doing in my first three months, give you an idea of what's consumed my time, and then open it up for questions. But one of the things that I started off with by saying was, I'm going to do a lot of listening. And for three months, I've really done a lot of listening. In the department, we did listening days, which was a very deliberate way to meet all 30 teams and to also meet the 15 business units in our department. And we had 75 minutes with each group. It was a SWAT analysis enhanced for athletics. So your strengths and weaknesses, opportunities, threats. But we really made it bigger than that. What do you think we could do as a department? So if you're in the locker room after a great workout, what are you saying to your friends about, boy, if I were the AD, this is what I'd be doing, or if I were the chancellor, this is what I'd be doing. And so we really, really had some good discussions. I sent it a month before I got here. And what I heard from our department was we've not really ever sat down and talked about what we do well and what we need some work on. So very valuable, and from that I have gathered a lot of feedback and it really accelerated my understanding of the department. I've also been out listening to the alums. And I think Herb has told me I'm somewhere between six and 700 alums that I've met in my first three months. And I've been to DC and New York City and I've been to Orange County and LA a few times and Hollywood and Menlo Park. And really it's been phenomenal because the passion from our alums and their willingness to provide feedback has been incredible. That's always a problem here. No, but it's been really good feedback. And I've really wanted to get a sense for where do people think we are right now. And so a lot of good feedback and I've really been doing a lot of listening with our alums and then the third part, the third leg of the stool has been getting out and meeting our chancellor's cabinet, meeting our faculty. And as you may know, I used to teach civil engineering at West Point in a previous life, so I feel like I can get out and connect with both sides of the aisle and really my job is to how do we bring athletics and make them more integrated into the campus. And so from those 30 days, we've developed a list from one to end of the things that we want to fix. We want to improve that will help us on our journey from good to great. And we'll use that to develop our vision. And then over the next 18 months we'll develop a strategic plan that will be nested in the strategic plan that the university has been working on. And so I'm excited about that. I think until we do have a vision statement and a strategic plan, everyone's gonna have an opinion of what success looks like in athletics. And we have 450,000 alums and we have 450,000 different ideas of what success looks like in athletics. And so we really have to get all that information and decide what do we consider a successful world-class athletic program here at UC Berkeley. And that's what we're working on right now. I thought I would give you just a couple things that I'm focused on as we move forward. One of them is providing and this is the center of gravity for our athletic department is providing a world-class developmental experience for student athletes. I think that's first and foremost, what we have to do. That's really what our charter is. In addition, we've got to come up with a long term sustainable financial model that'll help us support this world-class operation that we are. And that's gonna be tough, but we've been looking at it in a lot of different ways and I think that when you look at an athletic department and you look at the 1,500 schools that have athletic departments, I think 14 are self-sustaining, don't require any university support. And we don't look like any of those 14, nor do we want to, right? That's not who we are. We're scholar athletes and we're at a world-class educational institution and research university. So what does it look like for us? What does support look like for us and how do we move forward? We want to be compliant with Title IX, Prong 1, and that is what the chancellor has challenged us to do. It's the right thing to do. It's all about equity and we're gonna embrace that and we're gonna make that work by 2021, which is what the chancellor has challenged us with. And then a couple other things is I feel like athletics can be a great, is a great way to really build affinity and really build community. And so how do we use, for instance, a football game to be more than a football game and to use it to be a platform for our university to celebrate exceptional? And so I've been talking to faculty, I've been talking to deans. How do we celebrate what's going on in your areas at halftime, at the 30 yard line between quarters, out in front in Goldman Plaza?  So if you bring a son or a daughter and you come to a game, you're getting more than just watching a football game. You're getting to really sort of look behind the curtain of what is UC Berkeley and what else goes on besides just a football game. So we really think that's important. And then the last thing is just building a culture of excellence in our athletic department, I think that's important. So that's what I'm focused on and I thought I would just share a couple highlights from the last couple of weeks. We had our first student athlete, welcome back, big C society barbecue. And it wasn't our first time doing this, but it was the first time every team came, every coach came, 850 athletes. The chancellor talked to our student athletes and really for us it's about building family, bringing everybody together. And I thought and from the feedback it was a great opportunity for us to bring that family together. So that was fun. We did a welcome back, really a welcome to the family for all the athlete's parents that came. So for the first time ever we brought them together and let them meet each other and I think the synergy there is gonna be important. And again, we're trying to build life long affinity for our university. And I think that's important to do. And then if you didn't see it, we had our football team and our volleyball team out helping our students move in on move in day. And so what better way to get a workout than carrying some suitcases up and down the stairs for a few hours? So the coach was really excited about that and my hat's off to coach Wilcox for making that happen. It really was I think special and brought integrated our team. So they're not just someone that they see on the field and as a result of that and some of the other things that are marketing and ticketing teams have been doing. Last year at this moment, we had sold 2,300 season tickets to students. Right now as of today, we're at 4,500 plus. And so we're excited about that because we really feel like that's one of the ways that they're gonna become gonna meet friends. They're gonna become lifelong supporters of our university. So with that, I'm excited, I'm excited to hear what you're thinking. And I see some athletic department folks out there. Hopefully there's softball questions from them and the hard ones come from others. But I really want you to get to know where we're going and answer anything else that you have. So go Bears. Thanks Jim.  So when I first heard you were hired, I had to say that I was struck. I mean, you came from the Air Force Academy. You'd been at West Point. You'd been on active duty with the Army, rose to a rank of colonel deployed to Iraq. I'm pretty sure there have been very few athletic directors of this university who have an air assault badge. And I had to wonder what your friend said.  They're barely American and they don't take orders. So what did people say? And how are you thinking about it when this opportunity first rose up? Well, the first word I think that everyone said was, what? But after I talked to them a little bit about it, in my background, both my parents were educators. So my dad was a college professor.  And so when you see an opportunity at the number one public university in the country, it gets you excited. And so the more I learned, the more I studied, the more I researched about UC Berkeley and really what this entire university has done over many, many years to impact society, the more excited I got. And so when I talked to them about that and talked to them about a world-class experience for young men and women through athletics, they softened a little bit. Yeah, but I think that's exactly why I'm here. And I think the last thing was when I finally met during the interview process, Chancellor Christ, that was sort of a trump card. When I listened to her and she talked about the vision for the university and where we're going and how athletics plays a role in that. I was convinced, if offered the job, this would be a great place for me. And speaking of the chancellor, just put out a back to school message. And clearly we're relieved and pleased that the campus has made significant financial progress, addressing a pretty significant budget deficit. But having said that, the campus spends pretty good amount of money on athletics every year, recently as much as $20 million. And while that's less than 1% of our overall budget, there are people here who think that may be money that could be better deployed elsewhere. So when you think about that, when you make the argument for the value that accrues to the community, to the institution, how do you sort of explain to people and justify the extent to which the campus does invest in our intercollegiate athletics program? I think it's a great question and I think for me, I would start by saying we provide a world-class developmental experience for student athletes. That's first and foremost and for them to be able to get this incredible education while also competing and representing Cal on the national and in the national stage, I think that's certainly key. And I would say we're many times the front porch of the university. And so that's sort of step one. Step two, I would say, is we also get a chance to celebrate our brand nationally and internationally. And if you're on ESPN and you're in 110 or 120 million households, and we use that to celebrate not just a football team, but we celebrate all the other things that are wonderful about Cal and UC Berkeley, that is really important. And so we have institutional messages when we're on TV that aren't athletic focused, but are university focused. And I think that really helps us get the word out on what a great place that we work at. And so yes, there are 1,500 universities in the country that have athletics, I think at last count 14 of them don't have institutional support and they don't look like us. We don't want to be like them either, right? We're very different than what they are. And so I think there's an investment just as there is in the history department and some of the other places of education on campus. And I think the investment in us may be more than I would like. I think we have some great opportunities to generate more revenue, to be more philanthropic. And those are the things that we're focused on and we're gonna work hard on. But there is an investment to provide this world-class opportunity. And last question, at least from my part before we get to questions from the audience, what's going on inside the department? I mean, I think there have been some difficult years. There have been some ups and downs within Cal athletics. How did you read the morale? What are you doing about it? How are things inside the family there? I think one of our biggest challenges is we've had 210 people leave in the last three years out of an organization of 300. So and they leave for many reasons. They leave because the cost of living is high. They leave because they start as an entry-level person and then become, they go from a volunteer assistant to a second assistant and to a first assistant. And so for many of them, we want, we encourage them to get some great experience and then take the next step to be in an assistant coach or to take it over their own budget program or whatever their area of field is. But I think we can also do a better job with our family. Sort of building morale, finding those opportunities where we can bring the family together and make it a place that people enjoy coming to work. And we're working on that. I think we've got some great opportunities and we had our first all staff meeting and we did shout outs. And it was amazing the incredible work that's happened inside our department that many times people don't hear, including great cross, that really integration across campus. People are working with departments and people are working with the educators on different projects. And so I think sometimes people don't know the things that are happening in athletics. And I think the more we tell the stories, the better people understand, wow, this is a value added to our university. Super, so I'm going to turn to your questions now with just a reminder. If as we go along, you have additional questions you want to pose for Jim. Jot it down in the car, throw your hand up in the air. We'll come around and pick it up, but don't hesitate as we're in the course of the conversation. So the first question here is, Jim, what's one thing or an area that Cal isn't doing that Air Force, where you last worked as athletic director did well, that you can bring over as an area to improve? It's a great question. I think one of the things we talked about yesterday, we had a cabinet retreat. And one of the side conversations was about CTE and concussions and the challenges with where we are. And one of the things at Air Force that was very, very valuable is we were at the cutting edge of research both with DOD, the Department of Defense provided us a significant amount of money, and the NCAA did. And we're doing a lot of that research here, but I think there's more resources that we can get to that can help us even do more to improve how we look at and protect the health of our student athletes. Right now, we had looked at putting sensors in helmets, and we found that even better than that is we now have our players with sensors on their bodies, so you can track where they are, reduction in acceleration. And really look at where there are times where they're having impacts that could affect them, and so that gives our trainers insight right away. And I think there's more that we can do both from my influence with rules in the NCAA and also with how we protect. And then what we do when an injury does occur, and how we help our student athletes get back to health. And so that's one of the areas that I'm already talking with Ryan Cobb, who oversees our medical support. Super, so the next question is, can you describe how you will approach developing the strategic plan for athletics? And specifically, how will you ensure it is aligned with the campus strategic plan, and I think part of that may also come from, I think in recent years there was a little bit of a sense of us and them. It was like the campus and Cal athletics as opposed to all joined together. So I think that's in that context an interesting question about your own approach to the strategic plan, and how you're lining up with what's happening across the campus. Right, I mean I probably could sit down in my office and in the next three hours write our strategic plan from my perspective. But that is not helpful for our campus. And so the way and the reason it takes 18 months, just like what we're seeing with the university's strategic plan development is you start putting some ideas down on paper, you throw a little bit of the meat on the bones, and then you go out and you talk and you communicate. And much like I've been out talking to faculty, talking to staff, and talking to our own department, you do that during the development of a strategic plan. You put some committees together and you get feedback from all corners of the university and also our alumni base. And I think that helps you get a plan that everyone will embrace and everyone will support. And then it becomes not the athletic director's plan, but it becomes our strategic plan. Do you have in the context of that planning process, do you have any sort of overarching objectives?  I think I come in here with what I think would make us world class. And then when you do listening days and talk to multiple constituencies, you sort of frame that a little bit different because it's now what would work best here at UC Berkeley? What would be Nirvana here? And so what's Nirvana at the Air Force Academy or at West Point or at RPI is not necessarily the exact same here. And so how do you, through these committees, figure out what really makes sense when you talk about a world class athletic department? And so that's really the refining of what happens over the course of those 15 to 18 months. Got it. So the next one has to do with a subject that is near and dear to the hearts of many who follow Cal football. And it's the television scheduling on the time of games. As people may know, we've had a lot of evening games and people missed the daytime games. So the specific question is what data has the athletic department considered in reflection to the or in relation to the Pac-12 television scheduling and the attendance at football games? Because there has been a drop off in recent years that some ascribed to the fact that games are being played at night and or we don't know when games are going to be until perhaps just a few days before the weekend. So first off I'll say the two most asked questions that I've had in all of these events that I've been at and I've been at a lot of events. The first one is when are we going back to the Rose Bowl and will I see it in my lifetime? So that's the first one I'm always prepared to answer. And of course my first question is how old are you? So I know how much time I have to work with. And then the second one is this. And the first time I spoke I talked about 100 people down in LA and this question came up and I said, you're kidding me. I took this job because I thought all of our games were at noon. When I was at the Air Force Academy there at 8.15 and many of them it was below freezing when at kick. I said, are any of our games below freezing at kick? And they said no. I said, oh, this is going to be a great job. And of course I almost got booed off the stage. But it's a big problem. I think every single athletic director across the country is dealing with this problem because the exposure on TV is phenomenal. The resources that they provide to have the rights to show our games, it's what allows us to provide a world class experience. The problem is it is hurting attendance around the country. And if there's one AD that will tell you it's not hurting their attendance, give me their number because either they're telling a large fib or they've broken the code that nobody else has broken. And so we really work hard to talk about how we can do better, but until 2023 when our TV contract is finished with the current contract, we are where we are. I think the pressure on ESPN is now starting to build because they're seeing the challenges. They're seeing the fan pushback. So they're looking at other ways as are we. And as we start unbundling some of the ways that people can watch our games, we're going to see something different in 2023. I don't know what it's going to look like. And I spent a lot of time looking in my crystal ball to see what it might be, but we're talking a lot. And we spent a lot of time at the Pac-12 talking about what are we going to do next? What are we going to do that allow us to still have the resources that we get now, but also get the exposure that we want and also pick our times? We'd love to be somewhere between 11 and 3. And what's amazing is in our league, there are teams that only want night games. So you can imagine the schools that don't want to be playing at noon because it's 115 degrees. So they're in a great spot. All their games are at night. They want them at night. And I'm thinking, boy, what a great spot that is to never have to worry about night games because everyone wants night games. So we're in a different spot. And we're working it and we're talking about it. But yeah, the data shows night games hurts our attendance. It hurts our family attendance. And now there are others that will tell you, I have two young kids. I do their soccer games during the day. I get a babysitter. And then my wife and I go at night. So some people like the night games. But by and large, we'd rather be kicking between 11 o'clock and 3 or 4 o'clock. Thanks. Speaking of resources, the next question has to do with philanthropy. As many of you know, the chancellor commissioned an outside consultancy collegiate sports athletics. Take a look at revenues and expenses in their collegiate athletics. One of its findings was programs apparently leaving a lot of money on the table in terms of philanthropy. And so this question says, from a fundraising perspective, how do you view the need to collaborate across the institution to build athletics and academic or to support athletics and academic interests? In other words, moving away from a zero-sum game mentality to one of partnership and strong communications. So maybe address that question just in a broader level, what you're thinking about in terms of tapping into the full potential of the Cal athletics community in terms of philanthropic support. And I think if you read the Marts and Lundy report, what they say more than anything else is UC Berkeley has the largest upside for philanthropy of any school they've ever looked at. And it reminds me a little of Air Force. Air Force was fully funded for years and years and years. So there was no need to fundraise. And we used to get 100% of our support through the state of California. I don't know if anybody knows, but we're not 100% funded anymore. Is that something new to anybody? And I think our philanthropy machine is really still cranking up. And we had a record year last year, $567 million. $69? $69 million of philanthropy. And in the athletic department, we had $30 million, which was our five-year high. Now, people say, well, Lundy, you must be cash flush. The problem with philanthropy is many of these gifts are over many years. Or many of them are gifts when you pass. So it's not money in your pocket right now. But it's a commitment. And that's important. And I think for us, when you look at our donors, many of our donors, their first gift, their second gift, and their third gift were to athletics. But their next 10 were across the campus, which is really the way it should be. We build affinity with our athletic program. And then that affinity helps them branch out and support other places. And I looked at probably seven just this week of people I was getting ready to meet. And all of them typically had gifts early on to athletics because they were athletes. And then the next thing you know, they're given to the business school or the law school or somewhere else on campus. And I think that's important. When I'm out talking to donors, one of my questions is always, what are you interested in now? And if they say, I really, really want to help student services, my next phone call is back to UDAR and saying, hey, this is a great athletic supporter. But they really now want to do this. And I think if everybody's doing that, that $569 million goes to $1 billion a year. I mean, that's the capacity that we have. And so it's a team effort in our department. I mean, that's what we preach every day is, how do you build great teams? And I think when it comes to fundraising, our whole university has to be a great team to realize our potential. So let me follow up with you there. So when you have asked donors, what are you interested in supporting? What are you hearing? What are the connection points that the biggest supporters and donors are not even the biggest just across the board? What do they say? You know what's amazing? Most of them say, what do you need? What does the university need? How can I help? And those are the best questions to get. And unfortunately for me, for my first three months, I've given everyone the heisman and said, I don't know what I need. I really don't. But I know where you are. I know your phone number. Do you mind if I come back once I do know what we need and have another conversation? And every one of them says absolutely, come back. And so I think our alums want to see us remain the number one public university in the country. And they are willing to help us in whatever way we, from the chancellor on down, say is the best way to do that. And so that's exciting. Super. Next has to do sort of an interaction with the academic side of the house. It says there are a number of faculty and scholars on campus who do research and teach on sports and society. Would you be interested in learning more about this work? Perhaps there are ways to bridge between the scholarship and athletics here. Absolutely. And our first all staff meeting, the first speakers were two of our faculty members that run SCETs, is that right, SCET. So Danielle and Stephen came and they talked about the programs that they're running and how there is this intersection between academics and athletics and how they want to continue to improve that. And I think that partnership could be happening everywhere on campus. I mean, there's so many ways that we could work together and as a former academic I would love to be part of that. So who asked that question? Can I get your information afterwards? It's on there, perfect. That would be great, thanks. Here you go. All right, there it is. Next one here is, this is sort of interesting. How important is it to you that student athletes find gainful employment after graduation? And maybe take that and run with it a little bit about in terms of what you want to do and what you want to see in terms of ensuring that student athletes take full advantage of all that's on offer here. So both the employment question and the academic question for student athletes. So I would say this, our student athletes are gonna go pro after they graduate in something normally other than their sport, right?  Now there are a few, here's a perfect example of one right here who's our shining star in the department who spent 10 years in the NFL. 10 years in the NFL, but he's the exception. Most are gonna go on to do great things in something other than their sport. And so we have to prepare them. And that's really the developmental experience. And as we talked, when I had all 850 student athletes together this week, it's really embracing all that is UC Berkeley. There are so many opportunities. And I think your head can almost pop just trying to figure out how do I do everything that you can do here because there is so much to do. And what we want to do is make sure that they are getting career development. They're getting great education. They're getting exposed to faculty members that are leaders in their fields. One of them was prong three, which is where we've been for years, was you're meeting the needs of the underrepresented sex. And so what that meant was you're providing sports and if nobody's coming forward each year and saying we'd like to have a triathlon team for women, if no one's doing that, then you've met the requirement of Title IX. What you haven't met is it's not, you haven't provided equal opportunities, but you've met the requirement. Then prong two says you're working your way to prong one and prong one is proportionality. And so proportionality means if we have 52% of our undergraduates are female, then 52% of our intercollegiate opportunities should be for females. And so right now we're skewed, we are not there. And that's the challenge that the chancellor has given me is we have to provide an equitable amount of opportunities based on the percentage of undergraduates in each of the sexes. And so I completely and 100% embrace that. I believe in it, it's the right thing to do. And I think we're working our way towards that. And in the facility realm that you talked about, we had just not taken care of business for many years. And as a result, we didn't have equitable facilities for males and females. And I think what we're gonna do with softball and beach volleyball is going to help us provide equitable facilities for both our men and our women. Thanks. Moving on to a different subject, the question is what is your stance on longtime campus traditions pertaining to athletics like the California victory common? Do I have that right? Cannon? Oh, cannon, sorry. Card stunts, et cetera. Are you willing to fight for their continuation? This is a loaded question. Yeah. Yes. Next question. You know, it's funny, I haven't seen, except on TV, I've never been to a game. And so I'm so excited to get to a game in person and not watch it on TV. I mean, I've seen the play at least 50 times already, but really to be part of and see the traditions, but I absolutely believe in them. And so yes, we will continue to battle to make sure that those continue to be part of the game day experience. What makes tradition such an important thing, particularly in the intercollegiate athletics realm, seems like every university, it's almost like a religion, right? I think it ties the generations of alums and supporters. I think when you come to a game, after 50 years of going to a game, there are just some things that you expect to see every game. And when you don't, your affinity goes down. And I think we wanna have a family environment. We wanna have a fan experience second to none. And we want those traditions to continue on as people teach their kids, then their grandkids, what it means to be a Cal Bear. So I mean, given that love that so many fans of intercollegiate athletics have, given the love they have for traditions, does that make change harder? I think it does. I think it makes change hard. And I think change is already hard anyways, but I think you look at the traditions and how do you keep them and still improve the fan experience? I've heard so many things about improving the food, improving some of the other amenities that we have. Those are things that don't change tradition, but certainly make it a lot more fun to come to a game. And that's really what we're trying to do. So here's a question from someone for whom change apparently isn't happening fast enough. It says, update please. What's going on with the Rec Sports Locker Room installation and new changing and shower spaces? It's been over a year in construction, Jim. Do you have any update on that? And perhaps just a little bit broader about how you see the relationship with Rec Sports and intercollegiate athletics. I will have to admit, I do not know. I do not have an update on the, I did not know that was a project that was going on. So I will, do you have your information on the back of your card? No, if you would, whoever it is, give me, I will get an answer for you and I'll respond to that. What I think in a broader scale, where I came from, I was in charge at Air Force. I had under our organization, both the intercollegiate, the intramural, and the PE. And so I don't want nor need that, but I know we were better because we had a great relationship and we had a great partnership. And so I think that's really what I need to do. We just have a new person for PE. I think this was his first week. I met him in his first week and we've already are working to get on the calendar together in the same with Rec Sports. I think we need to be partners. We need to work together. And I think we all win when we have a good partnership. So that's gonna be my goal. So the next question actually circles back to something you said earlier that we don't necessarily want to look like those 14 institutions that have balanced budgets and it's a good question, why not? Why don't we want to look like campuses with financially independent athletics departments? Sounds like it would help Berkeley's structural deficit, good question. So it's a great question. The reason we don't want to look like many of them is because they don't have scholar athletes.  I think you just did. Yeah, no, yeah, block that from the screen. No, but I think that their focus is totally different than our focus. Our focus is we are gonna have scholar athletes. We're gonna get a great education. We're gonna experience a developmental experience. And there are other schools that are doing really, really well financially that are focused on getting their kids to the pro ranks. And that's exclusively what they're doing. That's not us. The chancellor and I had Jalen Brown. We were together with him in her office last week. And if you don't know Jalen, he was here for a year and now he's a superstar for the Celtics and just an absolutely incredible young man. At age 20, he was a speaker at the Harvard School of Education, the youngest ever and the biggest crowd ever. And he came here and then was on his way to talk at a tech convention. And he talked about just the one year at Berkeley and how it sort of flipped the switch for him and his intellectual inquisitiveness. It just, he just felt like so challenged intellectually here that he really misses that. Being a pro, he said, I really miss that stimulation that I got. And we're working hard to get him back and find ways that he can continue his education and get his Berkeley degree. That's really what we'd like to do for him. And that sort of leads right into the next question, which is what's your plan to make sure our athletes grow up to be upright citizens of the community? So beyond their performance in the classroom, beyond their performance on the field of play, do you see the program as having additional responsibilities in terms of personal development and the kind of things that this person is asking? No, absolutely. And at our lunch, that was one of the things we talked about. I talked, I called it my real discussion. I have five sons and our 850 student athletes got my dinner table discussion.  But really it was your ambassadors for our program.  And we expect you to hold yourselves to a higher standard. And I think my most important job that I do is hire great coaches. Because our great coaches spend a lot of time with those student athletes and developing them both in the pool, on the field, and then also off the field. And that's really critical to having a great athletic department. And so our coaches are a key cog in that. And I feel like that's why I wanted to talk to all 850. I wanted them to hear it from me, that these are the things I expect of you with respect to sexual violence and sexual harassment, with respect to many other things that you're reading about in the paper and other athletic departments. And so if I don't have the courage to stand up and talk to them about it, and our coaches don't have the courage to stand up and talk to them about it, then how do we expect them to behave and develop the way we really feel it's important to become model citizens? So I'm gonna hit you with another hard question because you talked a little bit about Jaylen Brown. And I know he's an exceptional human being, but at the same time, what do you think about the one and done phenomenon where student athletes come, play basketball for a year, sort of use this as sort of a farm league for the NBA and then they're gone? How do you feel about that? I think most of us ADs and in the college space would love to see a model like baseball or football where you have to stay for two or three years because then you're close enough that you can get an education. You can get your degree. When you've only been here a year, it's gonna be a lot of hard work for Jaylen to be able to come back and get his degree. And I think there's also young men and women who don't really wanna go to college. They don't wanna get an education. They're majoring in eligibility. And those are at those schools that are financially stable that I said we don't wanna be like. We don't want that.   And so I think that's what the NBA Players Association is working on right now is how do we make a new rule that allows them to come straight to the pros whether it's the G League or whether it's the NBA. And then if you make the decision you wanna come to college, then you're here for two or three years and we get you close to a degree and we can get you back because the bottom line is we want everyone that we bring to Cal to get an education, to get a degree. Great. Talking again about the pro sports thing, this question, your thoughts on paying players in high revenue sports and players unionizing as I'm sure everybody knows that's been an issue on the front burner. The institutions and the networks and the advertisers that a lot of people profiting the players, some claim are not really seeing their just rewards from their efforts in the realm. Others say they're getting great education or an opportunity. Pretty divisive debate. Where do you fall out on all that? So I really believe that the model, this amateurism model is a really good model. Now, is it perfect? No, it is not. But when you add up what a student athlete receives as part of his education at Cal and it's not just the tuition, the books, the cost of attendance, but it's a world-class strength and conditioning support, world-class training support, world-class academic support center. I think Derek, yep, Derek is right here. I mean, those things we don't put a price tag on, but those things are absolutely huge investments for our university and our athletic department to provide a world-class experience. And I think when you look at all of those things that we're providing, it is an absolute life-changing opportunity to be there. I told our student athletes this week that if you're sitting in those seats that you're sitting at, you basically won the Willy Wonker Golden Ticket, right? That is a golden ticket that you may not even realize how key it is right now, but an opportunity to compete at the highest level, Power Five, Pac-12, and also get a world-class education. It doesn't get any better. And again, when you're only 18, it's hard for them to really understand what a golden ticket it is. But if you talk to some of us who have been through and now can look back, it's game-changing, it's life-changing, it's career-altering, and so it is, the golden ticket. So I know that you played varsity hockey at West Point, right? I did. How have things changed for student athletes since your day? The equipment's a lot better. I wouldn't have got half as many stitches if I had those nice face masks when I played. You know, I think some things haven't changed. I think balancing academics and athletics is a challenge in 1978 when I started and it is today. It's really, how do you balance, how do you find a way to be exceptional in both? And our tennis coach said a funny thing to our incoming freshmen. There are three things, this was really kind of a funny thing, but he said there are three things you can do in college. You can party, you can study, and you can do your sports, but you can only be world-class in two of them. And he said I've had students try to be world-class in all three and failed. And so I use that sort of jokingly, but really it teaches them how do you really balance because you think that once you get out of college, then balancing is over. Does anybody have to work on balancing every day? I mean, there's not a day that goes by that you're not balancing family and kids and budgets and really I think it gives them a huge jump start into how do you balance and how do you maintain some sanity at the same time that you're balancing. And I think that's one of the huge values of the student-athlete developmental opportunity. So speaking of partying, the next person asks, as a new source of revenue, what's your thinking of selling alcohol at home games? That's a great question and I will tell you when I went to Air Force, I'd listened just like I am here and one of the things I heard from fans was we would love to be able to have a beer at football games. And so we did a lot of research and what we found was our fans felt like they had to do five shots at their car before they then came in because it was a long walk to get into the stadium and that was how they kept their buzz through half time. And I thought, okay, that may not be exactly the model that we're looking for. Now, if you have to walk all the way up from the Bart station, maybe that's 10 shots. I'm not sure. So what we found is we did a soft opening and we tested it because my main goal was it's gotta remain a family environment in the stadium. So we've done beer tents here. This year you'll see some beer tents outside. What's a beer tent? They sell beer outside of the stadium and we're gonna see how we can manage it, how we can maintain a family environment. And I think four-pack 12 schools already are selling alcohol and what they have found and what I found at Air Force was the number of incidents have gone down, not up. And so you don't have to do those 10 shots from the Bart station as you walk up Bancroft. You can have a $10 beer. And who wants to get drunk on a $10 beer? No, or whatever it is, yeah. So. I'm gonna go back into the tradition realm here with a question about the Cal Band, which is something I think near and dear to a lot of our hearts and the question is, the Cal Band is a student run marching band that doesn't get paid or receive units but has served the university for over 100 years. In recent years we've been moved from field to field required to set up on our own yard lines at Underhill and had to change practice times as often as twice a week. This complicates our efforts to learn our shows and hinders our ability to serve the university. What can you do to make this better considering other college bands don't face these obstacles every day or every season? It's a great question. And what I would say to that one is, please give me your, can I have that one? Yep. Please give me your contact information afterwards. I did not know it was a problem and certainly a perfect. Sarah, thanks. I would love to help. That shouldn't be the way it is. And let me see what we can do to help. Because you're part of our team, you're part of the family and yeah, that's not how it should be. I'm just, I have to say, I mean, this is the third or fourth campus conversation that I've done and I've never seen such a wide array of questions. I mean, it's interesting. It speaks to how much, how many different things athletics is involved in and so we're gonna go back into the money realm at the moment. It says Cal athletics is working towards decreasing its deficit. How will you keep coaches accountable to achieve this goal but also carry out a successful program? Again, a question about balance here. All right, which coach asked that question? You know, it's really interesting. What the CA report said, CSA, I'm sorry, CSA report said was the athletic department is lean and it's very efficient. And so when I look at where we are in our budget, you know, when I look at the institutional support each year for our budget, it is a balancing act and it's how do we provide world-class experience? How do we give the coaches the things they need? And really the answer is we have to generate more revenue. We have to sell more tickets. We have to get more and more people excited about what we're doing and we have to really rev up our philanthropy and I think we're working on every one of those and I think that's gonna pay dividends to provide those margin of excellence resources that'll allow our coaches to continue to improve. So we're gonna circle back to the facilities issue, the new facilities that we'll be building for Beach Volleyball and Softball. Got two questions in that realm and I'm gonna give them both of you together. So first of all, just an update about where things stand. This person has asked for it, said they're very excited for Beach Volleyball, the Beach Volleyball program, but where do things stand with that? And then the other question here is regarding the $30 million investment for those facilities. Says there seems to be more choices for women's sports than men's. So are these costly sports needed? I'm not exactly sure what was meant between the two, but maybe just sort of take that up in terms of how you see the future of the program in terms of its scope and men and women and also a little bit of update of where we are in terms of the facilities. Sure, so I'll do the easy one first, which is the update and the update is we're working on architectural renderings and then design. We've gone out and met the neighbors and clock Kerr for Kerr, Kerr, Kerr. I'm learning to just talk about the impact and what we're gonna do, what it's gonna look like and then listen again and hear what they're, the challenges that this may provide. And so that was a really good session. We've got some good feedback and we'll do the same thing for softball in a couple of weeks. And I think from a bigger perspective of why do we have to do this? Well, I think the reason we have to do it is because it's the right thing to do first and foremost. I mean, I think that's really why we have to do it. The second thing is we just have not, we have not taken care of our women's sports for far too long. And I think when you look at that, I don't think there's anybody in the room who doesn't feel when you say that like, well, dog on it, that's not UC Berkeley. Why aren't we taking care of all of our student athletes equally? And so that's what we're working on and we've got some fundraising to do. I've just been working on putting a committee together and talking to some major donors who are gonna be chairs of the committee and how do we rally to really get some of our female alums excited about supporting these programs? And so we've got a list of a lot of folks that have said they're interested and now we'll go out and talk to them and get them excited about supporting. So we've got time for one last question so I'm just gonna ask you. So one easy one after all these hard ones. It's gonna be an easy one. Oh yeah, sure. Looking down the road a year from now, what would enable you to look back in September of 2019, say, I met my goals. I've accomplished the things I set out to accomplish. Where do you hope things are a year from now? That's a great question. I think this year is gonna be a great opportunity for me to evaluate how are we doing with the student-athlete experience? You know, how is that work? And are we doing everything we can to make this world class? The budget's gonna be a big thing. We're gonna have at least a plan moving forward that's gonna continue to reduce the institutional support required for athletics. And so if we've got a good plan that I can look at my crystal ball and say, wow, this is gonna get us to where we should be from institutional support I think that will be really good. I think Title IX, we're gonna continue to refine the plan so in 2021, we feel good about where we're gonna be. And then really just integrating athletics throughout this community. And at every touch point, I'd love for us to be a partner, a teammate with faculty, with staff, with everybody, including the town of Berkeley. I think that's important. I think we can be a great driver of building affinity. And I think that's important. If we can see some strides in that area, I think it'll really be, that'll be a success. Now I've never had a year where I said it was successful because I'm always pushing and wanting to do better, but I think those will be a great start. And I think our internal department, if we can build some of Spree to Core and feel good about our family, then yeah, I'll be smiling any year from now. Super, so before I thank you formally, I just wanna remind everybody about future campus conversations that are coming up. In late September, the 25th, we'll have Kathy Koshland, Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education, Fiona Doyle, the Vice Provost for Graduate Division. Then in October, Randy Katz, Vice Chancellor Research. In November, Julie Hooper, Vice Chancellor for University Development and Alumni Relations. And then in December, Chancellor Carol Christ. Jim, I wanna thank you for your transparency, your openness, your generosity of time. Welcome you to the campus and go Bears. Go Bears, thank you. Thanks.