 You know, basically, coming out of our USTTA conferences over the past few years, Sally and I have both started groups that meet once a month outside of the conference so that we can continue these conversations. As you have heard, a lot of the animals that we had today this week came from some of the topics that we discussed in our different groups. We alternate months, so it's not two different events each month, so Sally's event was this month and I will be next month. And there's just about an hour, hour and a half of your time. And we're always looking for presenters and topics for what we can talk about, just to keep the communication going, to keep the network from going and the engagement going. So I can actually up full up the website, oh, goodness. Or you can see a little bit more about our groups. So if you go to usatda.org, you'll see the community engagement group here and then also the formatting users group. So I chair the community engagement group. You can learn a little bit more about it here. Whereas the formatting users group really focuses on the idea of the formatting of the document, looking at the different formatting styles, changes that they may want to make. Our group focuses on some of the broader questions in context. We also focus on how we as professionals can develop and learn and grow. Some of the past sessions that we've had include how to foster relationships with the library and looking at how to strengthen those ties or develop those ties. We've done one on self-care for thesis reviewers, especially during the busy deposit weeks. We had a professional come in and talk to us about strategies to take care of yourself and make sure that you're helping yourself so that you can help your students. GW led one that was really great on thinking about abstracts and metadata and how we can help students increase the findability of their work by thinking about metadata instead of just throwing some subjects in there or throwing words in there. And Lily gave a presentation to on cross training, which was actually really wonderful. I think a lot of us are kind of one-stop shops. And if we are not here, then people do not graduate. And so it's thinking about how we can train others and how we can advocate for ourselves to our supervisors so that we can get the support that we need. I think upcoming topics that we'll be talking about include accessibility, which I feel like has been kind of the theme of this conference. We're going to visit that as well. But I think, too, if you have any ideas on topics that you want to explore or that you have questions about, please don't hesitate to reach out to me, because we would love to have you. You don't have to do a PowerPoint. You don't have to do it. You can do as much or as little as you like. We just like having that discussion and asking those questions. I think as a board member, it also helps us as we're planning the conference to figure out what are the things that people want to know about. How can we put that in our call for papers and how can we get the answers to those questions that you have? So I think that's it for the community engagement group. If you want to join, you can complete the form or you can email me and we'll get you on the list. Again, we meet just for an hour and a half every other month. My name is Sally Evans. I'm the coordinator of dissertation and thesis services at George Mason University. And we started the formatting users group in, I guess the first time we met was in February, 2021. We first talked about it at the conference in 2020 and then it came around in 2021. So I think we have about between 50 and 60, 50 and 60 participants now. Yeah, what? Excuse me. If you hear the laptop speakers and if you're mute, then we have a back on. OK. And we have a back on. OK, so will I turn the speakers? OK, my speakers are off. My laptop speakers are off. So yeah, so if I talk into the phone then people can hear me and then just don't talk when Emily's talking and turn the speaker back on. Sure. That sounds fine. Keep going. So anyway, I hope everybody can hear me. My speaker is off. So we do have bi-monthly meetings. They're online. They work better. The video and my work better there. So we meet every other month. Our next meeting will be in November on always the third Wednesday of the month at 2 PM Eastern Standard Time. And all of the times are listed there. We hope you can make it in November. It's open to everybody. If there are people at your institution or university that would be interested in coming but aren't here today, absolutely please share this info with them. We've had a variety of conversations about formatting, formatting rules. We've had speakers come to talk to us about, let's see, gosh, what all, about born digital ETDs. And ETDs, this kind of goes with what Kim was talking about yesterday in her session about, not Kim, who I think left. The session yesterday about different ETDs, the ones that are non-traditional. And by that, I don't mean the manuscript style ETDs, but the ones that are where the dissertation itself becomes less of the important part and the material, whether it's a website or online archive or something. That's the important thing. So we've had someone come and talk to us about that. And we're looking forward to what's coming next. So if you have any questions about it, please let me know. I'm going to put my, actually, my email address is up there. So if you would like to contact me, please do. And if you would like to, you can also complete the form. And I will add you to our listserv. Perfect. Thank you, Sally. Thank you, Sally. Thank you. And I think one last thing that I want to plug, if that's OK, is our regional representatives. So in the past year, we have done a call for regional representatives to help us out with different things. We've had quite a few here. There's a couple in this room. Katherine is one of our regional representatives. So is Kim. I think John is online, John Fudrow. And there may be others online, too. But what's great about this is that we love your help. We love learning from you. We'd love to get people more interested in being a regional representative. Please let us know. Please reach out to me. And I can talk to you a little bit more about what it is. But you see some of the responsibilities helping out with the conference by moderating sessions, sending hello emails to new members, and really helping conversations continue in the regions. Because I know we've had regions who are pretty active. I know the Midwest region has done its own conferences sometimes. And so it's this network of people to help keep conversations going in your own regions with the community around you and keeping that interaction going throughout the year. I think it's also really great for people who are starting off in their role. I remember when I started my job, I'd been working there for like a month. And then I came to this conference and I still didn't really know what I was supposed to do every day. And so meeting people here was a really great way to have some people I could ask questions and understand better how things go. And so that's part of the role of the regional representatives as well. I know it says that there's a deadline, but that deadline does not exist anymore. So if you want to reach out to us, just let us know we're missing some. We need a regional representative or another one for region two. We're also looking for another regional representative for region five. The idea is to have at least one person from the library side in each region and at least one person in the grad school side in each region. And so you can see a little bit about some of our members here and we'll get the full list up real soon, but great. Are there any questions from anybody in the room or online about anything? I could say, I can make a comment about the formatting users group. I'm a part of that group. And I think the reason that we established that group and this also leads into the community engagement group is that we often feel alone in our jobs, like we're the only ones and no one really understands what we do and we don't really have a lot of support. So we created this group to support each other and share technical expertise and it's been really valuable in that way. So if you're not a part of it, I encourage you to do so. Thank you. You're welcome. You have good audio, I just wanted to check. And thanks to Sally and Emily for facilitating these groups. It's been wonderful. Absolutely. I think that we're growing in new and wonderful directions with the organization. Our group has been fantastic. Thusias and I would like to thank you all for your progress and teachers, seriously. You guys are a lot of fun. We're engaging ourselves as well. USCGDA. So more comments, questions, concerns about the casters and anything on your mind. Now that I've got the microphone in my head, like, oh my God, it's hanging up here. I'm gonna say it anyway. It sounds stupid. It's nothing as stupid, seriously. We appreciate all of your concerns. As I mentioned, it's really good to get it out of there. It's the only way we can improve. We will do a post conference here. We'll see how long the time it takes to settle and assemble that on Google Forms and something like that. And we really would appreciate your feedback in more detail. But while we're here today, what time are we at now? 9 o'clock. 10, 10, 10, 10. Do you all mind if we line or need to go over? If somebody needs to catch a flight or whatever that's fine with you, we'd be able to understand. But if you're not, you can be able to use the opportunity since we don't have any other sessions planned after this to take a thing that's our call to the session here. Okay, so what's on people's minds here? We'll talk shortly for our next go-around. Tim, you're always independent. And we know you're not shy. We would appreciate it if there was something off the top of your head. I think the accessibility issue is probably the number one thing on my mind. And got some really good feedback from this conference in terms of some direction. And I think a couple of main things, more in my head. But I think we need to come up with the graduate school perhaps of our own in the AAC doctor's act. The BAS document, we're finding that they're going slow and I'll have to stay with this stuff. I don't know if it's going to be so big. But the other thing I'm taking out of this too is that we need help. Some of you have some really great partners in your library. And we've always gotten along with the library well to work well with the library. When we do, we don't really work with them very much. Because of Ohio, the doctors are going through them and Ohio says the doctor's a library so we don't really have any, they have no feedback in formatting or accessibility or any of this stuff. So, I don't think the graduate school is, we can't take all of us on ourselves for sure to be honest. It's a much bigger issue. So we have an accessibility obviously on campus but they have not really been involved. So I think we need to take the bull by the horns to be honest about and come up with something ourselves. We talk about, you know, we might have to have a cover board or again, kind of thank you for what we need in terms of documents that the students are producing right now that they are not making it accessible. But we're still going to have to publish it at a point where Ohio link is improved on the review system. So we might need one for that and then one for the future one forward trying to combine it with something. But I think something that we can, you know, we can put forth and I ask it to this, they can ask me about who has the authority to do that. And I, and Kim said she wrote her initial one and her name proved it, right? So maybe it's the, that's a route or maybe we need to bring in our ADA coordinator and have that person, you know, give us the blessing on that. I think the legal aspect is certainly one part of this obviously. And so anyway, I think we, I've really taken that away from this. And I think one, we need to, we're not making any traction as with what's been going on. We're not getting anywhere. So we're just going to take a poll by the orange but I do want to bring other people again, you know, I'm going to tell my supervisor that that's exactly what we need to do. We need to reach out to the library and accessibility office, say you're going to need to come on board with this. This is not a graduate school, just a graduate school issue. This is a university issue for their documents. So that's really the biggest thing right now, I think for me in terms of that. Thank you so much, Tim. And I think, you know, in terms of the equity piece of this, this is really vital that we fight for this so the more diverse areas of people can access this information in this point of accessibility. And then we could look at various means of coordination. We have federal compliance, what the ideal should be, standards and so forth. We have, and we're fighting with our fellow entities on campus to implement these things. Libraries normally, I would think if you get the right people, certainly like how to do library and get it on. But this key of administrators may not necessarily understand that component, but in terms of years of university quiet support, I would say that's key. And in general everything that people in the library environment would be a little more in tune with everything than if you entered the department of talking about. And on the other piece, I would like to know what would be research this. And organizations that create standards, for example, and are archives, I thought they would be tool kit, things on preservation and so forth, and these resources that they've developed and the recommendation that's practices, what to what extent if any, that they incorporated accessibility into their framework. Y'all know I'm talking about that. Okay, I see Emily has a burning question. I don't have any feedback on that. So at OhioLink, we've tried to take the approach of giving guidance and trying to get a starting point for our institutions, but letting them customize what they need to hopefully because what they're able to do and what they want to do is going to be different from institution to institution. So we have a website that we've put up with resources, especially linking out to other departments and institutions nationwide that already do a lot of this work and set up tutorials and linked videos for the student. So we've been linking out so that no one has to recreate the wheel necessarily, take inspiration, use stuff, point to people or point to things already there if you need. And we've been trying to focus more on the institution putting in together their local MDAS and training and thinking about their workflow or their staffing. So with that, if USETDA or this community engagement group in particular wants to take on accessibility as a bigger topic, that would be fantastic. I know Judy and my coworker, Judy and I probably don't want to take on keeping up those resources. There's probably better stuff. You might even categorize things, students versus staff training and all that stuff. And I think that would be a valuable resource because if we're all looking for the same information, we might as well put it in one place. And USETDA and this conference has shown that everyone seems to be working on digital accessibility or trying to figure it out. And so I would definitely be willing to help with something like that and get something started based on what we have. And maybe other people have stuff that they could add as well. I know there's already some templates and tip sheets that people are working on. So I think if people are willing to share them and aggregate them, that would be perfect for USETDA. Yeah, absolutely. And I would just like to put in a good pitch for Ohio because it's really a long, a few years, been team players from the early years working with NDLT, developing standards. Even before, you know, EDD is the whole network thing where they've been involved. But in terms of developing standards and this wonderful marvelous statewide infrastructure developed, which is similar, I suppose, infrastructure in the state of Texas with the Texas Digital Libraries. And you guys are willing to share these some basic notions of how to do this. And so let's continue having those dialogues, sharing that information so that maybe other state and regional groups can adapt similar things. God forbid we could ever do that at a national level in our organization. So there's some other places to do. And I know in Europe they've done the sort of efforts for that. But, you know, we're a well-moving group and a lot of different players in the mix often brings new and innovative ideas towards so many marvelous work. So what else is burning questions, comments, concerns out in people's minds this morning? Austin, anything interesting you'd like to observations when you sit at the conference? I'm gonna put you on the slide. You said that's all right. Yeah, so with ProMOS, what do you guys do with accessibility? Are you aware of any recent developments or trying to figure out how to solve the problem? So we know you're always team players as well. We love the EGD administrator interface. It's very cool. So yeah, and I suppose it's there, has anybody had any issues with, for example, the EGD administrator or is there a student who's using this system? I would think you've already gone through all that. Good, good, there we go. Okay, see I missed out on a lot of these same things. Excellent, I'm glad to hear that. So. ProMOS at 10.30. 10.30, okay. So I suppose it's a good time to wrap up on this. We've got anything else that we want to contribute? So that those slides are ones that anyone wants to come. Okay, now I'm trying to go slide them. I'm trying to go one time. Probably 12.30. 12.30, good. I'm just trying to go one time. Yeah, I had to address this morning, it's really good, so. Yeah, first quarter, so. There's a comment online. I think we could, yeah, I think we could find value in developing a set of tiered standards with related tools and shared policies to help inform all of us. Oh, great, who's telling us? Sean Fudrow. Oh, thank you, John. For accessibility. Okay, we have anything else? I mean, John. Is it worthy for the comments? John, you could unmute if you wanted to say something. Oh, yeah, if any of you are virtual, we're just going to place it on you. Talk to us through the audio or the indoor video. We can welcome that. We'll get a second for people to react to the comments. It looks like we have 10 people. This isn't the number on top of the virtual adjournments. Okay, people might be shy, so that's okay. I wanted to give people an opportunity of seeing when people can hear me. Because I haven't checked bags and I haven't had an experience. John Fudrow says he lost his voice yesterday, so it would be rather hard to understand him, but. Yeah, well, we love technology because there are many unique means which we're just taking in a case, so. Oh, there are, okay, so people, first of all, it's, I think this should be mindful of it. But then I do have my bag of tournament there and personal audiences is so awkward. Okay, so with that, I think we're going to wrap up. Larry, this is a final opportunity for wrapping up the session. Did you have anything you would like to share with the audience, comments, questions, concerns? A final goodbye. We're talking about the future of the USCDEA, and I know you know what to say already. Yeah. And about, you know, working with the format and a group of the community engagement and the USCDEA, regional representatives, and how we can help it should be throughout the year to make things happen. So that's where we're at because, you know, kind of interesting dialects about accessibility and things. As I mentioned this morning, I think there's probably some other ways that we can, the program together rather than relying on what we relied on this time. And I think we need to consider, and actually we can do some testing online before, you know, we can come close to the meeting. Great, great. Yeah, Larry and I were talking at breakfast about other technology pieces. For example, using Zoom. And we had to look into, when we did our first virtual conference two years ago, that was quite a feat, because we had to defeat the technology at the time. The Zoom stream, we only had one stream per institution. And obviously we had three different institutions streams going on. To do three concurrent breakout sessions, you know, that kind of mode. We had advanced it, I don't know, on a webpage. It wasn't fancy, dynamic, like it happened. So years are ticking now, but we have the basic links and things. And people, and they had interpasswords along the way. It kind of keeps it secret because of the registration process and all that. But we were through, you know, it was a little clunky, but we got to the hit one. I think now we can probably have multiple streams, but we'll check into these kinds of possibilities because Zoom has been fairly reliable and it is for a lot of people who are used to using it. And then we'll look at how we could improve if we continue using, for example, a lot of interfaces because we can have access to it very inexpensively. And we'd be happy to try and extend that, and always make arrangements that you all want to reach on conferences. One thing that we would probably, the board of directors needs to discuss this, that I think that if we wanted to promote in-person reach home conferences, we would want those people to also make it a hybrid event. So one way or another, using technology, whether it's Zoom or Hoppin, to make that available to everyone nationwide or worldwide or whatever. So that we can continue this conversation, continue the community spirit and all of that. It's a very minimum, I can guarantee, USCDA will have the future for next year, for example, in the immediate future, put on any virtual national conference. Whether we get local hosts to work with us and whether we can afford it, put on an in-person event in conjunction with it. Time will tell and we can look from you all, okay? So either way, we will survive, you want to find ways to grow in the event. And that's one way that we'll be looking at is growing new avenues of getting together in different ways that can format and so forth and different technologies. So I really appreciate your comments on it this morning. Very... Well, actually, I would go farther than that because I would kind of recommend that people think about generating, if they have a presentation, for example, generate that presentation prior to the meeting, okay? And either say an import, the MP4 of it, prerecorded it, an approved report, and it can even be posted before they get to the meeting as far as that goes. There are some conferences too. When we get here, we've already seen it, we know what it's about, we know what kind of questions we want to ask. Okay? Let's do a review of it and then ask questions. Yeah, and I think the other aspect we discussed was that certain backup and the technology for outlining to the interface, if things fail, you always end up with a prerecorded thing, you can modify it, put that on, and continue to show if we get the vital information. I think most of us are capable of doing that. All of us, right? Yeah, so we can offer a game a little bit and it's on people on a professional level. Very good consideration, I just think so, okay? In fact, we did this a little bit with our poster present that presenters, because three of them were in person here, but we wanted to be able to capture the experience and be able to post it online eventually. So we had them send us prerecorded videos, and we had one virtual person who unfortunately in the session did that, they recorded by email and asked her to do the same and send us a five or 10 minute video that we were doing in our poster presentation. So there's no reason any of us could be bad and most of us have access to technology, but we can also think about that, and the resource is not already has access to KTB or whatever the data software is to do, you know, the polypels and pistols, but there are many ways to do that as well. I mean, you can think of some standards of what we would expect and so forth, and guidelines to create those things. I think that happened. Good, good. So I guess anything else for the good of the order, gang, because I know you're on your way home, but I just need to, but I am so delighted that we were able to make this happen for you to join us, the virtual people, and our in-person audience. And so, now here's to next year, gang. Thank you, John. I'll give you all a round of applause for you. Thank you.