 Hello. And we'll wait a couple of minutes after the top of the hour because some sessions are running a little long, so let people come over. We expect this to be a relatively small session so we'll do some discussion question answering. If it's not for them that I carry on with my emails is that right. That's fine yep we like I said got another four or five minutes before we start. How are you. How's it going nice to see you. Sorry trying to camera configurations here so. And since I'm not actually speaking in this I think maybe I'll just fade into the background a little bit, but glad to be with you. Good to hear. We'll have time for discussion as we move along. Excellent. I'm here as a candidate for membership with UMass so I'm here to learn all about how UMass Amherst might join in. Have you moved to Amherst now. You know, I've always been in Western Mass so not really a move I'm I'm still out here in the middle of nowhere, and, but I'll start teaching there in January. Good. It's a great community. Yeah, for good things. So those of you coming in, we're just letting them in as you go by so that people can join the room. A couple of minutes after four. See if when I share my screen if I can still have people in the room. Okay, so are people seeing the joining you and PowerPoint. Yes. I'm sort of multitasking here because I'm watching the waiting room and letting people in, but I'm going to go ahead and get started. So if I have any pauses it's because I'm watching the prescription list as well. So thank you for coming. I my name is Eric Meyer and the Dean of the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. I'm also the membership and outreach committee chair for you and I'm the only career faculty development group co chair that you had. So, one of the things to answer for you right away is do they get you involved if you get involved and fit you and the answer is yes, you do work. So, this is today's session I'm just going to give maybe 1010 1250 minutes of a little bit of a presentation it's just walking you through some of the things that we are looking for at the membership side. I'm going to open it up to questions and things that it might be on your mind as, as potential applicants that you and, and maybe we can also, you know, see what institutions people are here from, and we get to that phase. So, let me dive right into a little bit about you and hopefully you've been attending the sessions today so you, I don't have to define what public interest technology is or what you and this, I'm sure you've heard some of that over Okay. Instead, I want to talk just a tiny bit about our very short history. So, you and only in its sort of third year this is the second convening and the list I'm showing you on the screen now are the initial charter members of you and that came in the very first year. So you can see I don't know the exact number there it's somewhere in the 20 something range I should know that but 20 something. So the charter members that last year's convening that started put you in with the America and Ford Foundation and everything and everybody else that's involved. Last year, the membership committee that I chair added a number of new members about a little over a dozen new members so there's the full list of the network now so the names that are not bolder than newest members. One of the things that we were looking for was really broadening the network bringing different kinds of institutions into the network, and I spent a lot of time at last year's convening talking with potential members. That's why we wanted to have this session now so people could have their questions answered is what does it mean to join what are we looking for when we're looking at the applications. We've got twice as many applicant institutions last year as we've admitted into the network. So I'll talk a little bit about one, some of the mistakes people made in their applications and I talked to some of those members individually to help bolster their applications for the second go around. We don't have any particular quota. In terms of the number of organizations we're looking for we've got instead of list of priorities that we're trying to meet as a committee and as an organization. What does pit you and membership mean for your institutions. Some of this information is available on the website about you and applications and so I'm not going to go over any great detail I'm not going to read you every word but I want to highlight just a couple of things about pit you and member benefits. Obviously, the idea of participating in people care who care about public technology is the key thing. One of the things available to all pit you and members are the grants and you've been hearing from some of the grant amplitudes from your 2019 and 2020. And these grants, you know, I'm not going to lie and say that they're gigantic grants, they're relatively modest sized grants summer in the 45,000 range some 90 some 180. But they are nice ways to get things started that don't have other sources of funding and some of them, in our experience will lead to other kinds of funding that might be on a more significant scale. And of course new America and the Ford Foundation are always trying to raise additional money to have a different different kinds of grants and more more grants available to network members. I think it's a really nice benefit of having people who are involved in the network. Obviously, you get to join the network meetings such as the annual convening that you're at right now. And then there's a number of things that we're making available within the network to people who are members that are helping grow this area of public interest technology. So these two examples from University of Texas, my own institution of grants that we got first in the first year and then later year if you were in the session just before this he was will have heard about both of these actually the in 2019 we were funded for the pit UN conference and undergraduate informatics education, and this was held just before the university and most places went into lockdown so it was sort of our last public physical event that we had here at the University of Texas at Austin. And it was a really great conference it was about half of the attendees were from pit you and member institutions and half of the attendees weren't there for other institutions. So it was an opportunity to get people together to start talking in this case about the pedagogy of how you embed public interest technology in education at the undergraduate level. And a lot of people hadn't spent a lot of time talking about these topics in a conference format before. So it was a really exciting way to get people who are interested in this these new questions of public interest technology and how do you make that real for students how do you make that. What are the kinds of classes that you need to teach. It was an exciting conference we had, we had great attendance we had great speakers, and it really led to some new things including collaboration. It became a grant in year two so the one of the organization speaking at this is not a pit you and member institution but it is local here in Austin. It's the University which is a historically black college university. It's the oldest university in Austin, and it's a much smaller institution in UT Austin we have about 50,000 students at UT Austin they have more like 1000 at Houston Tillerson, but they have excellent undergraduate education they also had great connections into the community, some of which we don't have. And they gave a panel at our informatics education conference on the things that they've done with student projects I attended the panel is really exciting with student projects working with community organizations to build technologies to build solutions for these community organizations problems. So after the conference, we approached the people who presented and we proposed a new grant to fit you and which is the social justice informatics faculty fellow program, which is a collaboration between Houston Tillerson and University of Texas in Austin. And that collaboration, we wouldn't necessarily have met each other we wouldn't have known each other without the first small grant that then led to the second larger grant. And these could all lead to much bigger grants down the road if this all works out. So this is an exciting partnership that is going to have 24 faculty fellows to get $5,000 in summer salary funding to participate in this. We're going to have a series of seminars and then a series of workshops to get grants together to lead to bigger projects down the road. So, I'm quite confident saying neither of these particular things would have happened without you and because you and is really a catalyst for getting us thinking in a collaborative way around this question of public interest technology. And I'm sure you've heard many other examples throughout the course of this conference. So, in the application for membership you're asked to use to focus on some various activities about how do you build public interest technology on your campus and again I'm not going to read through all five of these these are available on the application materials and you can find these afterwards. Getting you to think about what does it mean to support faculty and curriculum is a key issue that we've been dealing with and how do you build pathways for students and then into jobs in the public sector, or pathways for faculty building careers in public interest. This whole pathway question is something that's really been key. And for me I think this is partly coming from Ford Foundation's long interest in public interest law that was a precursor to this by many decades, and they were thinking there about how do you build pathways into people who want to work in the public sector in the legal arena. We're thinking about the same things here, how do we build pathways into engaging with the public sector and making sure that we have technology that's serving the public good. There are some activities that the liaison is asked to do so each university has a designee I'm the designee for University of Texas in Austin, and we meet regularly, both at the convening but also be a conference calls. The goal here is to both be a conduit between put you in and your home institution, but also hopefully be a generative force at both places to be able to bring lessons that are happening on your campus but also share back the lessons that are happening at other network campuses with what's going on at your own university. Everybody who's a liaison or designee is assigned to various working groups and these have been focusing on various issues including this pipeline issue that I mentioned earlier. So how is membership determined. So there's an application available that is the link. That's what you'll see me go to that website. It's got the application details and this is due at the end of November, and is looking for a number of things one of the highlights is that we really hoping that we find additional members who will continue to help us think about diversifying the network and diversity means a lot of different things. So it could be universities that serve good. We have significant populations of racial and ethnic minority students, it could be people who bring regional diversity to the network. It could be different kinds of institutions we've got a couple of community colleges like 90 day but we'd always love to see more of those different scales of institutions we've had some smaller the arts members that were admitted last year we've got bigger ones like University of Texas. We really want to have different people bringing different points of view we were really clear from the start we didn't want this just to be a club of the same old, same old usual suspects. And also, how you might help help us under expand our concept of what is public interest technology and who might be involved in that. And a lot of the members now are from a number of core fields my nose is schooled information there's several schools of information who are designees at the in the network. There's a number of public policy units there's some computer science representatives there's some engineering representatives law schools, and you might have something at your institution will help us even broaden that notion of who might be a good representative to the UN. We've got a couple of eligibility criteria, and one of the ones that is most difficult for some people to really achieve is present provost or presidential level support. This is something that New America and the Ford Foundation are particularly keen on making sure happens that it is an effort that doesn't just come from a single faculty member and institution but it's something that spans some force across the institution whether it's multiple units or multiple levels of the institution we want to see that you've got buy in from a top level, and the expectation is that your provost or president will attend convening next year if you join. We'd like to see that there is some support for the designee and the team of people being put together at your campus so again so it's not just a solo effort. And we'd like to see that you've got some history of interdisciplinary education and research at your institution so you've shown the ability to work well across your institution. There are several criteria that are evaluated and these are all laid out and quite, quite clearly in the application form. So it's got a certain number of points for each one the committee that looks at these has a rubric that we look at each of these six areas. And I'll talk about each of them in a tiny bit of detail but then I can answer questions about them a little bit more so what is about your current or planned initiatives or strategies. I've found that a lot of institutions are doing lots of exciting stuff in here, so trumpet the great stuff you're doing. This is a good place to show some of the things that are already happening are things that you have planned for the near future. I've already mentioned the evidence of senior leadership support. The third point is showing that you've got ability to promote and communicate that you and work within your within your community and across communities. And that is highlighting some of the existing challenges and successes in your efforts to pursue public interest technology. One of the things I would highlight here is if you've struggled in some areas that really becoming a member of the network could help you with highlighted here, because we want to see people who have a reason to join the network. So highlight some of the things that maybe you've tried to get off the ground but you think would be able to be accelerated with your membership. So highlight we look at how it might impact your efforts and again this ties into if you've had challenges how could being a member really help move these efforts forward. And then the sixth point is how will your institution hence the makeup of the network and this is what I was talking about with the diversity of students the area of the country the type of institution etc. And you can include 10 pages of supporting documents that include things like strategic plans and materials that you have in place. These are a list of some of the things we're prioritizing obviously it's not just a numerical if you get X number of points you're in it if you don't you are we look to a holistic review. And I can tell you that in last year's round. One of the areas that some of the applicants fell down most was basically just not answering some of these. You know they basically only put a sentence for something and one area that some struggled with was being able to talk about how that institution would benefit the network. They didn't have an answer for that and so we asked them to go back and think about how they might benefit the network. And again diversity can mean a lot of different things it's not just one thing so how can you help the network become more rich and then some struggled getting senior leadership support and so they didn't do well in that category. And I think the, the areas where people probably did the best was showing excitement around some of the potential of engaging with you and the public technology question. So really play those kind of things up, but don't leave any questions blank certainly and if you are struggling with how to really address something I'm always happy to talk to people individually if you want to talk to help tons of meetings this year with institutions who either didn't make it around in around one or thinking of applying this year. I'm happy to think about how you might be able to sell yourself most effectively to the committee. So the deadline for submissions is the end of the month. I do encourage you to reach out with any questions you might have. Again, it's available on the website you can link to the materials there, and I'm going to stop sharing my screen and go back to being a camera. And I'm happy to then answer any questions and this room is a normal zoom room so people can unmute themselves and unclog themselves. It's not one of the webinars that we've been in. So, I see a couple questions already in the chat let me go right to those can you define the roles of designating liaison there's really no difference that the same thing. And I think that is designated to be the main contact with the institution will be, you know, attending the meetings and being part of the working committees. I mean, why is that would tribal colleges potentially qualify. Absolutely. And I'm sure she points out there's over 40 in the US working certificates two years degrees and some bachelor's degrees. Absolutely they would qualify for membership. As I said, we have community colleges that are offering two years degrees that are members, we would love to see that kind of richness, adding to the network. We don't have any size limit, you know, a small institution small institutions are great some of our newest member institutions are very small. We're, we're very big. So we, we, unlike some organizations don't have some sort of oh you must have this much research expenditure this makes none of that. We want to understand how being a member could really benefit your institution and how your institution could benefit the network more broadly. And so I would see tribal colleges originally being an excellent potential member. I have a couple of questions in the chat. And I'm happy to hear questions out lots of eating up see your hand up. Sure to and I'm sorry these are both specific to where I'm coming from I'm writing the application right now for you mess Amherst where I'm joining the faculty in January. We don't help you very much in terms of geographic diversity you've got a good Massachusetts representation. There's two ways that I'm kind of hoping that we may be able to help one is that as you know the sort of flagship state university. We anchor a group of smaller liberal arts colleges that are not a member of the network. And we also serve as a resource for most of the community colleges in the state. Are other sort of anchors state universities dealing with that is that something that they're, they're bringing out and sort of talking about in it or is that, is that something that we should bring out. Definitely highlight that definitely definitely highlight that I mean that I think is an excellent way because being a sort of node in another network that you build a connection to is an excellent way to show how you diversify the network just and you might have her membership, but bridging out like I said with our new grant that we're involved in Houston Tillerson they're not a pit by membership member right now, maybe they will be down the road. I think that was one of the reasons this grant proposal was then attracted to the people were reviewing it is because it expands that out so I would definitely see highlighting those connections you've already got as a way of building it out, not just through your membership but through your network. And just another really quick question on that. One of the major partners that we're likely to bring into our application is our PhD program and nursing, which amazingly enough is doing brilliant work on nurses as essentially advocates for for both patients and practitioners in dialogues about technology. What are some of the other nursing schools that are involved in the network at this point. I don't, I don't think we do have as a members and we've got some connections like here at Texas. One of the faculty members of our school has a cross appointment nursing and so we've got some engagement with their although nursing isn't sort of does unit they are participating in that way, but absolutely I think that's a good way to highlight there are people with interest in health. I think highlighting bringing in a nursing unit to show some of that really on the ground engagement with patients and health information is really a good addition. That's great the the head of the PhD nursing program will be my co author on the application so yeah I think that will be that I'm going to shut up for now those are my questions this has been hugely helpful and I'm just going to stay and listen. Good, good, good. So I see a couple hands up so I think I saw a silver first and then Diana after that. Sure, so, so my question is actually connected to Ethan's question builds off of that. So we, I represent Cleveland State University and we have a very robust partnership with case Western Reserve University which is a private university so it's an interesting partnership. It's been very active for the last three plus years and we are doing good work in this space I'd like to think it's good work. So should, what is your advice for us should we apply separately should we apply together should one lead and have, and you know bring in the other university under us, what do we do. Yeah, I could. So I could see a real advantage to sort of, if you're doing things jointly and you want to have one does need between you I could, I could certainly see an argument for making a really strong case of how you want to use your existing partnership to then add into this network. You know, I think probably what I would say is I haven't talked about this with America but the punch is that you could put in the joint applications and put a note saying if you'd like us to join as two separate institutions are happy to do so but we think that it'd be strong together. I certainly would see that as a positive, and I know Cleveland State case question I'm from Ohio and my wife grew up in Cleveland so you could argue about the diversity your two organizations bring to each other as being something that you also bring to the network and already understanding how to partner between neighboring institutions and different serving different communities will help you bring something unique to the network as a sort of joint member of the network. Yeah, just quick follow up question the application form says designees within us. So my takeaway from that is that it is possible for us to have more than one designee, even if we went with one institutions application. Yeah, I think we could be flexible with that. God, thank you. Diana. I've been really helpful I'm coming from American University on the provost for research and so we're trying to we're putting our application together we're very excited about it but I wanted to ask you a question about the types of partnerships we have lots of partners that are global international institutions would that be something that would be good to highlight in absolutely absolutely so one of my goals as the chair of the membership committee is to figure out a way to make us more international. One of the problems I know with the network is it's still based in North America. And so we're one of our goals for our committee this year is to think about how do we open up membership beyond North America one of the things that I've been trying to get clarification from new American Ford Foundation is things like grant eligibility and whether funding can flow outside the country that's a sort of technical detail, but conceptually, I, most of my career was spent in Europe by British and American and I was in the UK for most of my career. And I really want to broaden out fit you into becoming an international network, not just in North American or just the US at the moment network. And showing that you've already got international partners that you're going to help bring into the network. Absolutely, I'm going to see that as a positive because that's one of our stated goals for the committee over the coming years is to really think about how we can become more international right, thank you. I see, I see a couple of questions over in chat let me pop over there for a second so our team is housed in the VP for Research Department we have full support of the provost to join we're trying to determine which person with best service designate any advice. Really, anybody that's going to be able to dedicate some time and energy to the network. I think most of our designees are faculty members of various sorts. I think I'm the only Dean, Dean, so I'm the Dean of the School of Information I think I'm the only Dean is in as many. We've got several who are directors of institutes or department chairs, other kinds of faculty positions. Essentially, we just want to see evidence of somebody who cares about public interest technology and is going to participate in this if it was somebody that was, you know, first year assistant professor we might worry about whether they've really got the time to designate to it so it's probably going to be someone a bit more senior than that. But beyond that, I think we're pretty flexible. Can a faculty member be the designee so that sort of answers that as long as evidence of high level administration for this prompt team so absolutely the president provost aren't the designee ever. I mean they could be I suppose if they wanted to be but they're having been the president provost do have a role to play and like we had a meeting earlier this afternoon for the presidents and provost and that happened last year as well. And I think that the but the day to day work is going to be by someone who's on the faculty level or, or some, some other kind of level of university that really wants to engage with these questions. Okay, so those are the chat questions other other questions from the room up and see somebody in the way. Okay. I hope you weren't waiting, waiting or too long. So I just noticed you waiting there. Thank you so much and I'm so sorry to be late I had a work meeting so I'm coming up on one zoom into another. Okay, so I can always stay afterwards and answer specific questions you might have. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Yes, area. Thank you. Question about some of the mistakes that you've seen the non successful institutions. I have seen a first draft area from William and Mary should have said, I've seen a first draft for an application, I think as an institution when incredibly interested in taking part. So there is quite some restrictions in terms of characters for for the questions to answer the various questions, but you at the same time allow about 10 pages of supporting documentation. In sort of the universities that were not successful. Did you recognize you see any patterns that they you mentioned something about some being too synthetic in answering some questions, what kind of a supporting documentation it would have wanted to see was not provided. So don't don't send us tons of boilerplate because we can tell whether played a mile away doesn't doesn't help us that much. Yeah, so it's not like a grant that's 100 pages long and you're trying to fill up with all the background. You know, we're a committee that we try to get our work done pretty quickly and if we have to read tons of material it's not helpful. It doesn't help us at all. So get to the point of, you know, why do you and why now why your institution and we trust you to be a good institution to sort of prove all that stuff. I think some of the mistakes that we saw last year where there were a couple of applications that quite clearly clearly we're just coming from individual. You know, they had a little research group that cared about this stuff, but they hadn't really made much effort to show that it was going to go beyond their existing efforts or their existing research group. It's like, okay, well that's fine but it's not really what we're trying to prioritize. So anything that shows connections across the institution shows either existing or desired modes of interaction are good. I'd say the, you know, we've tried to be a little a lot more clear this year in defining what we mean by the network diversity. So that we've got this broad understanding of it because some people struggled with that and because they struggled with it they just didn't answer it they didn't give us anything that basically said, we're a big research institution. Okay, well, that's nice but that doesn't help us understand how you might have to network. So we've been much more, I've been having a lot more individual conversations and put more information on the website on the broad definition we have of diversity that it can mean lots of different things as you've seen in some of the questions today. I'm just highlighting that and that that some of the weakest applications just weren't able to really make that case on why they were applying, other than it seemed like a good thing to do. And I think the, the, the other, you know, the other mistake, and this is not entirely everybody's fault because I'll admit until last year's convening I was a little bit fuzzy on this idea of publication technology, even though as it doesn't mean right. I think sort of not getting it. Now that we've had the convenings and people like yourselves have attended and we've got more information available on the website. I think we've got, we've done a better job as a network and defining what public interest technology means and so hopefully people won't run go down that path before I've just talking about something that really wasn't public interest technology you know it was either just sort of just computer science or just public policy without any sort of engagement between the different areas. So we did see a couple applications like that that weren't really thinking very broadly about this interdisciplinary nature of how we engage technology in the public interest and I hopefully we've done a better job about communicating what that means so we wouldn't see applications making that same mistake the second time around. Thank you very much. Anybody in the room. Can I ask my dumb question today. Absolutely, go ahead. So on the application form under institutional contact information there's the, you know there's just like asking for a name. What is the role of that person, I understand the role of designase what's the role of the, what's the role of the. We just need somebody to communicate with. So I think here it was someone in our BPR office that handles the application materials. Yeah, if you can get anybody. Yeah, just got to be somebody that communications going to flow through but there's no particular significance of that individual later on once you become a member. Thank you. And do will web links work. If we have web links to interesting projects or work or curriculum that's fine we'll take a look at things like that. Okay. Don't give us a thousand web links but you know. I know your audience. I was already creating us. I mean we need we do need to read all these applications so. So I see another question coming through some of your members that two projects listed in their descriptions to WSP at family and internship program. And don't don't think about this as project based you know that there will be projects that come out of membership and fit you and so, but the two I talked about we're over a course of couple years but we've got a lot of other things happening project wise. So you can present lots of different things that are happening at your campus as part of the network and how you'll do that so definitely don't think about it as a single project. So you're applying for membership, but then a grant project might flow out of that that would be a specific project that says here's what we're trying to achieve in the next year. But think more broadly about, you know, if we become part of this network, what are the kinds of projects that might flow out of that so you can absolutely talk about multiple things that might be coming once you become a network member. Remember over things that you've got plan, definitely think about the multiplicity of things that could flow from being part of it. Other other questions all you've got me here. There's a Friday afternoon, like the afternoon. Great. If you don't mind me asking a question because I'm standing in for somebody else who actually was teaching at this time and who will be the certainly the designate. Would you mind at all if I put you then in contact with him. You don't mind. Thank you for that. Part of my part of my job is, please. Like I said, I've had a lot of those meetings this year with people by spend half an hour and zoom with folks and talk, talking through some other questions if they want to. And again that applies to any of you as well if there's questions that come up. I'm more than happy to spend a little bit more time with you. Okay, so when I'd be willing to show recording the session so it is recording so I'm guessing it'll be put someplace. So yes. I'll ask New America what they're doing with it where it's going. You know these things just happen without my knowledge. Yes it is being coordinated soon we're going to make it available someplace. Is there any kind of a network map that says here are the universities. Here's how they break down private public here's the specialization, or here's what schools and these universities are an active part of the membership. So there is a list of the members of the network members. There are private documents with what you're asking for but they're not on the website so we do have spreadsheets with all the designees and the things like that. But they're not public at the moment it's one of the communications committee which I'm not on is working on beefing up all that material. So I think it'll be available the next couple of weeks to be honest. If you had any specific questions you can always contract contact Andreine Soleil who's the new American contact, and she'd be able to tell you a little bit more about some of the things that are happening specific questions. So that. So yes that information exists but it's not available on the webinar. Yeah, I mean it's helpful only in terms of deciding who we might want to partner with within the network. So that's how we bring diversity to the net to the existing network. So, yeah, with a dream for that. Yep, that'd be good. Great. Okay, so if there's no other questions I think Serena you're a couple minutes later I can stay around the chat with you if you want if other people want to go. I think we'll probably wrap up the main session for now but I'll stick around here if anybody wants to sort of ask a private question after most of the rooms cleared out I'll stick around for a few more minutes and happy to do that. There's nothing private if this is still being recorded. That's true. So anyway, thank you all for coming. That was all I had to share and if I said, like I said if you want to get to me again later just feel free to do so. Thank you so much. This was so helpful. Thank you very much. I would like to stick around. If you don't mind. If you can just tell me briefly how you began because obviously I must have missed some important information. Yeah, so I did give a little presentation. I think this recording will be available afterwards you can go back and watch the little 10 or 15 minute presentation I gave at the beginning. That talked through some of the key things that we're looking for an applicants and so I won't repeat that now but if you have trouble finding it later just let me know and I'll, I'll be recording more for me individually. Is your email available. So, yeah, my email is here. It's Dean at high school. u texas.edu. I am the Dean at I the letter I, a C H O L C O L. I see I see. My screen. I'll show you where it is. Okay. Thank you. She's green earth on the bottom left is my email. Oh, there it is. I see it. Okay, I'd be happy to either answer your question or direct you to somebody can. And then dream in New America is also extremely helpful in terms of getting answers for things. Who's the other person and dream so Lee. And I don't know her email top my head but she's listed on the New America website. How do you spell her last name. S O L E Y. Okay. So, um, I realized this is pick new N. But you're part of a larger organization. Which is new America right. Right so, so new America is the funding body and has been organizing it. So they've got the public interest technology part of New America I took me quite a while to get my head around this. Public interest technology university network sort of springs out of the public interest technology efforts in New America, which has funding from Ford and Hewlett and MasterCard. And so, and then is a, you know, it's all universities and colleges. It's a network that we get a lot of support from New America so we're not within New America but we're connected to New America through the funding and through the organization that they provide. Okay. But it's, you know, we don't join New America in any real way we joined the network which is facilitated by New America. But do you know, things about New America. I'll tell you where I'm going with that. I'm trying to figure out what if anything is the difference between New America and New America Chicago. You have to ask somebody in New York and more about that I don't, I don't, I'm not affiliated with them in that kind of way. I visited their offices once and I know. I'm wondering if you have just a sound bite definition of public interest technology, because I've been all over all the websites everywhere. I'm reading everything I can find on this, and I can't. But I need a more specific grasp because what I'm trying to do is figure out if my work, my own personal research can fit under this umbrella. So, it's a pretty big umbrella. For me, it is of the whole network is about building the pathways for people who want to use technology for the public good. It could be in pathways for technologists to get jobs in the public sector, whether it's in government or non governmental organizations, it could be in partnerships between universities and community organizations. But essentially, it's all about that intersection between the public interest and people who are working with it and engaging with technology. So, the way that I best understood it was so when I came last year to the convening I was sort of scratching my head and why why public interest technology. And it made the most sense to me when Darren Walker who's the head of the Ford Foundation talked about the Ford Foundation's role in establishing public interest law as a field, and that public interest law in the 1960s and 1970s and 80s was really an approach of saying for people who care about the law and want to do good in the world, and don't necessarily want to just serve the interests of the wealthy or big corporations. How do we build pathways so that they can do that so they can achieve that through at the time law schools. And so, this model is very similar to that right how do we build better pathways for people who want to do good for the public. To have those pathways more open to them than they are right now, so rather than saying I can only go work at a big company make a lot of money, how do I serve the public good with these skills. So then let me just ask a more specific question, because I've been all over that material to. And it's fascinating. And so my specific question is this nationally, an English professor. I'm very interested in tackling systemic racism through algorithmic bias. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay, and what I'm interested in doing like I'm not a computer science person at all. We have an idea about how having a historical perspective about our legal and cultural development can not necessarily attack but speak to and perhaps provide possibilities for different perspectives on unconscious or implicit bias, which could find its way into algorithms. I mean, that's absolutely the kind of topic we care about I think one of the things that would be good to think about is that how might you partner with others, whether they're technologists or people in the public sector, or other kinds of organizations to really move that work forward in a way that would expand upon what you're bringing from your own discipline into an interdisciplinary collaboration. That would then be a very strong story about how your work can be moved along through collaboration. Do you have any sort of example or idea about the kind of partner that might look like. I mean, it could be anything that could be, you know, it could be a community organization that cares about algorithm bias, it could be some technologists who are writing algorithms. And you want to partner with them to figure out how to have accountability built into those algorithms. It could be, you know, other kinds of social justice organizations that are working with how to help educate people about these technological choices that are being made on their behalf and are influencing their lives. Yeah, there's a couple of a lot of different models there and maybe if you could have a couple of different partners it would bring different perspectives on that. That to me would be really interesting. Okay. Perfect. That is so helpful. I have been weeks trying to get precisely that engagement so thank you, thank you. You're welcome. Can I ask a stupid question. There are a few questions but you can ask it. Oh, you know that's wrong. Um, why is the limit to a thousand characters with no spaces. So, so that is sort of out of my job description. I have no idea. I can, I can check with the America. Yeah, I mean it's it's hard to introduce really didn't dictate that. Yeah, it's hard to introduce an idea, right without being able to define anything. So I didn't realize that they had that built into their form. Yeah, I'll check with Andrew about, let me just note that down. I mean, normally I like a good challenge like that, but at least create space where you can let your hair down in one of the answers and define which one in particular was it that was limited to a thousand. Most of them. All of them. Yeah. I'll check with Andrew and I. I don't know who made that decision. But I mean, I get that you want something concise, but it's just not enough to really, this could be, this could be an example of technologists making choices without really consulting with people have to live with them. I guess, yeah. It wasn't a choice maybe our committee about put it that way. Somebody somewhere implemented that when they don't perform. Yeah. Okay. And I asked a question about from a project perspective because when looking at the sample grants that look like they were submitting project ideas by the way that they're described. With it with the grants, yeah, so the grants are project based, but the membership is organization, but like the new members that look like they were being described like projects. Well, that might just be a mistake in presentation. So, a lot of the new members got grants that are projects. Yeah. But the members themselves are the applications that came in it's based on the organization that's multiple things that will flow out of that it's definitely not project based at this stage. Okay, okay, great, great. And can I ask one more question. Three other universities in our region are members. We try how much space should we dedicate to trying to distinguish ourselves and to make the argument as to why we also what's your institution. American University. Okay. One of the things that we just had some meetings about yesterday was how to build on regional cooperation if you had. Yeah, so it might actually make sense to reach out to some of the existing members and talk to the designees there about how you might be able to build on that synergy. Okay, because we we do have partnerships with all of them already in multiple disciplines. So I think that would be one way of talking about ways of strengthening, strengthening the region by building on those partnerships. I see. Okay. Okay, that to me would be a good story to tell. Okay, great. Great. That's that's a good story that I can do in 1000 characters with those days. So listening to you. I'm getting the impression that that I have a lot of groundwork to do with my institution before we can try to bring an application. So basically I would need to talk to my institution say hey look, look at this now what can we do to build toward this application. Would you say that's probably true. From what I'm hearing probably, and we'll have application around each year so you know if it doesn't happen. You know, things need to be developed still in coming next year, and then during the year is there any like liaison or something with all of you who can help with that with the development of. Oh yeah yeah yeah I mean also I'm still chair of the committee for another year. And I'm happy to work with people. We will be continuing to have public events, and you're more than welcome to attend those and talk to people and get some ideas that way. And as I said the people in New America are happy to work with potential applicants. So yeah we're happy to continue to help develop ideas over the coming year. And just one more question should I said, should I just maintain the link with you or should I approach new America to say I want to find out more about what you're doing here in the region because I'm in Chicago. So definitely get in touch with New America so that you get on their mailing lists and that they're aware of your interest. I know that when so I met with New America earlier this summer I think it was, and they shared with me all the people who've got been in touch with them about potential membership so I was aware of some of the places that were developing applications. So yeah so I think it's good to get in touch with them and make sure that that that they're aware of your interest and can help you think through those things. So being at New America or not. It's Andreen. So Lee. That person. Okay. She's the main network coordinator and contact with the system that she's tremendously helpful. Well, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. I'm just listening here and apologies that I didn't have my camera off just that I was in another meeting I couldn't get here sooner but anyway, I'm listening to the conversation thus far it appears that it is a university not a school level. So it's at the university level so it's cross departmental and it does need to have that sort of provost or president support. So we do like to see things that, even if it's coming primarily from a unit that you show at least the desire to embed other units in that maybe have some initial support from from these other units. I think I mentioned earlier that one of the weaknesses where some applications that came in that just seem like a person with a topic that wasn't really connected anything else and if it was a simply about a grant funding that would be appropriate but because it's about the network you want to see sustainability Okay, okay. Great. Thank you. Very good. So there's no other questions. We're coming up on the hour and I what the last couple of you go. Have a nice weekend. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye.