 Please, take your seat, we will get underway, in just a moment. A very warm welcome to all! Please, find a seat, we'll get underway, in just a few minutes. A very warm welcome to all to ALTS 30th Memorial Conference. I, Myron Deepwell, am four, I'm still old CEO. Yes, that will change tomorrow. And I'm so thrilled to have that privilege to introduce our conference co-chairs for the very last time. But before we do the big intro I wanted to also say a warm welcome for everybody who is joining us online and watching the live stream. We are the biggest audience since 2019 in person and this is the biggest annual conference all has held since the pandemic. Si'n ddechrau'n dweud o'r amser, ychydig i ddweud y ddweud, ychydig i ddweud o'r ddweud o'r dweud, a ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud yma, o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud, I'n fawr, sy'n iawn yw'r golygu o'r llwyth ar y brygiad yma. A'n fawr, yma rydych chi'n ei ddweud o'r ddweud. Ond yna'r detall, ac rwy'n gweithio'r collon oherwydd yng Nghymru yw'n cyhoeddwyddiadau i gael eich bod yn ddod yn ysgrifennu. Yr hyn y gallwn cyfroed yn ymgyrchol, yn y gallu gweithio, ddigon cyfroed ychydig o'r unrhyw unrhyw o'r unrhyw unrhyw o'r unrhyw o'r cyfroed, wellcome, warmth and gratitude via emoji and via clapping online. So we're going to have a little exercise for which you're going to need your hands. So if you're holding devices, please get ready to use your feet, your hand, any other limb that can make noise, you can use your voice as well. So first of all I'm going to ask all the participants who are watching us online to show their appreciation, a dweud y bobl fel ychydig, a этих i amser ar y gallwch yn dweud. You can hear, ladies and gentlemen, we need to do a little bit more work here today to amplify the voices of those who can't be with us in a room who are desperately clicking the emoji at home. So, just to have a little practice round, please show your appreciation and welcome here in the room. Thank you very much. Now, this was the practice round – in a moment, we are going to welcome our co-chairs to the stage, to open this 30th annual conference of halt and I hope that we can do a lot better than that. So for the rest of you, please do put down phones and laptops, get your hands and feet and get ready to welcome our co-chair team, Santanew and Laurie. Welcome! Hello, good morning, welcome conference and to this oculus auditorium, my name is Santony Vassant, I'm one of the co-chairs. As of about two months ago, I'm the head of digital education and educational development at London Metropolitan University and thank you for attending today, both in person here and to everyone watching online. Hopefully you have a very fruitful and insightful conference, we've got a great line up of talks and presentations, so without further ado I'm going to hand over to my co-chair, Laurie Phipps. Good morning, so I'm Laurie Phipps, I'm from JISC, some of you might have heard of us. I'm really pleased to be here with Santanu, with Maron, with Billy, the rest of the old team who've made this possible and I just wanted to say thank you for coming, especially on such a hot day. For all those people at home, I'd like to say hi to your cats, so hi. Just very briefly I'm just going to say, we sat down back in March I think and decided what the themes were going to be and put a proposal into Alta about what we were going to talk about. The three themes at the bottom, the diversity and inclusion, sustainability, social justice and those emerging technologies are all things that we saw coming through during the pandemic and before the pandemic and after the pandemic and things that are going to be happening for the next five to ten years. So I guess the major theme, especially for the people that are here, is this leading people in a time of complexity, not leading with technology, not leading with the latest thing, it's about how people in this room can actually show what we can do with the technology when we've got so many complex things that are happening. I hate to say the next pandemic, it's an awful thing to contemplate, but the people in this room made education happen during the last pandemic and we need to recognise that and be ready for the next time. But also it's September and I'm wearing a jacket and wishing I had shorts on. How are we going to cope as learning technologists, as learning designers, as people designing, learning for a temperature that is constantly increasing? These are the complex things that we have to deal with in this room and that's why we chose these themes. So with that it's... So a very warm welcome to everyone in person and online, we've got about 350 to 400 participants in total, which is one of our biggest audiences since the pandemic and that's a real achievement for this time, post pandemic. And we're hoping that we have a really great conference and kind of get people to really interact both online and in person. So we've got lots of channels in place both on the social media channels and also Discord as well. If you've joined there, there's quite a lively channel there as well and there's also the alt radio station hosted by Don Pates happening across the three days at the conference. So without further ado, I'm going to hand over back to Maron for some interaction. Thank you. Thank you, Santunu. Thank you, Laurie. I'll be back on stage in just a moment, but Santunu mentioned all kinds of ways to getting engaged online and in the audience. So I'm going to ask Fraser to come up now and introduce how you're going to get your voices heard today in this auditorium. So over to Fraser, a warm welcome. Lovely staff. Thank you very much, Maron. That was a very smooth transition as well, guys, into the interactivity elements. So thank you very much. So yeah, first of all, folks, just want to say fantastic to be here today for what is the 30th anniversary of the alt conference. It's actually only my second time attending one of these, but we've worked with alt as an organisation for quite a number of years now. I'm very fortunate to have a very good relationship with them. I'm quite sure most of you in here, or a good number of you at least anywhere, will have heard of Vvox and who we are and what we're all about. But if not, essentially Vvox is the number one rated student engagement and response platform. Currently we work with around 56 different institutions across the UK and internationally as well. And ultimately the Vvox platform, as you can now see on screen, is really designed to try and increase the interactivity and engagement element within the classroom. And we primarily do that through three main strands, which is live polling, Q&A, and then both synchronous and asynchronous quizzing. So hopefully you guys will see a good majority of those elements throughout the conference. We're using it in the main auditorium here throughout, as well as in some of the breakout sessions I believe as well. But I'm going to go ahead and stop talking now and pretty much let the product do the work. So what will be great guys is if you haven't already joined the session that we set up for the conference, for the main auditorium session that is, you can scan the QR code on screen now and that will take you through directly into the session. Alternatively you should have some printouts in front of you as well, hopefully also that has the ID for the session on as well. So I'll give you guys just a couple of seconds to get us up there and then we'll kick off with a few icebreaker polls. But please feel free as we're going through the different keynotes and presentation guides to actually use the VVox Q&A. Obviously it's a fantastic resource to post any questions or comments that you may have to the different speakers and things throughout the presentations and conference. So please do feel free to do that. I'll give maybe a couple more seconds and I think, if my colleague Ethan can go ahead and kick off the first poll that we've got set up. Very simply, this is asking everyone what are you most looking forward to to this year's OC23 conference. So please guys go ahead and tap in what it is you're most looking forward to. So I can say we've got networking coming up straight away there. Sun, yep definitely, I think we've definitely got that one so we can check that off. Lots of comments about networking, 90s coming up, absolutely fantastic theme so really excited to see everyone get up tomorrow night. So yeah lots of things coming in guys so I'll give you guys some time to post a few more things in there. Definitely looks like networking is coming out as the number one inspiration, sharing experience. I like whoever posted cake, I'm definitely with you on that one. But yeah it looks like someone's doing a first main talk for the first time as well. So yeah some really great sort of things coming in here guys and like I say it's such a fantastic event and we feel very lucky and privileged to be able to attend and get involved with this in each year. So I think Ethan maybe give out a few more seconds and then we can close that one off. And then we've got another quick question for you guys as well. I know there's obviously many of you joining online as well so I'm just giving everyone an opportunity to have their say but yeah really nice looking work out there guys. And obviously this is fantastic in a student environment as well for really kind of breaking the ice, introducing VVocs for how it may potentially be used but it's a very versatile tool in that respect. But fantastic so we've closed that one off so thank you very much guys for all of your comments on that one there. And I think we've just got one more question Ethan so let's go ahead and kick that one off. So obviously given the fact that it is a 90s theme for this year we're really intrigued to see what everyone's theme suggestion would be for a 90s theme song. So our Venga Boys fantastic yeah but I've not thought of that one. We were actually talking between us earlier thinking that actually it's quite a harder era to pin down in terms of specific sort of music. So yeah got some lots of things in there, Spice Girls for sure. We thought that one would come up. Aki Breaky Heart, very good, very good. Hammer Time, I like that one. Oasis, oh okay interesting. Yep seeing Oasis. Macarena, ooh that could be a good shout. I think you guys have got your work cut out there in terms of what we want to go for. Lots of great suggestions but yeah give that a couple more seconds. Really liking the suggestions there. Moving on up, Blink 182. I think the thing for me is always understanding what's on the verge of the 90s versus the 2000s. It's quite a hard era to pin point but yeah I think we can go ahead and close that off Ethan in a couple more seconds. And then we'll go ahead and hand back to Marin. But yeah thanks very much everyone. Please do feel free to come and say hello to us. We're here throughout the conference. We're located on stand 5 if you want to come and have a chat with us. Really looking forward to speaking to as many of you as we can. And enjoy the conference. Thank you very much. So Santa Nu and I now have the privilege of thanking a whole lot of people who have worked hard to make this conference happen. And I think we're just switching back perfect to our slides. So first of all we want to say a huge thank you to our sponsors. Particularly our headline sponsor Inspira from whom we'll be hearing in a moment. But also our theme sponsors. Do you want to give them a shout out? So Echo360, Calchira, Pebblepad and Vvox. Thank you very much for your contributions today. And one of the nicest things about having all of our partners here is that you can get hands-on experience, talk to the experts, the people who really in the know about what will make the difference when you go back to your institutions and to your desks next week. So we obviously encourage you to join us with the exhibition and all the hands-on experience that is on offer for these three days. So a big thank you to all of our exhibitors and partners who've made this event possible. Thank you. Next up is Ishan from Inspira. Who will be talking about Inspira. Would you like to come up Ishan? Well good morning and welcome to all of you who are here and those of you online. I realise that when you hear there's a message from a sponsor that actually the last thing you want to hear is about us. And you can do that if you want to. You can hear about us by coming to our stand. So instead I thought I'd use my time to think back over the last 30 years and perhaps try and look forward to where we might go. I too wish I was wearing shorts but I think you're all quite safe that I'm not. Mainly because they're red, they're red like my shoes. I feel very welcome here because I saw as I walked in one of the first things is someone else wearing a pair of coloured vans. It's not just me today who's feeling that they need to colour up their clothes slightly. But if I think back 30 years, that's 1993. And I was talking to my team and asking them about what they were doing 30 years ago and thinking about what I was doing. 30 years ago, 1993, one of the things that sticks out for me is that I went on a school trip to Russia with a fellow pupil called Robert Render, who some of you might know as Judge Render. We went to school together. That sticks out in my mind. I remember that someone in my family had a mobile phone. But I remember in terms of ed tech, probably the wisiest bit of tech, probably the computer that was in the rooms, but I was 15, I was at school. The wisiest bit of tech as far as I was concerned was the Rizograph machine because this was fascinating to watch someone check out all of these letters and think, where might the world go? Is it just going to be ink that sticks to your hands that you'll take home every night and you're supposed to hand it to your parents? I didn't actually ever do that. My mother likes to remind me on a regular basis that none of the letters ever got home. What I do remember is that I didn't like assessment. I was very much one of those people who thought, right, when I leave school and I finished university, that's it. No more education for me. I'm just done. That was true for a bit. I was a lawyer for a bit. Then I went back into education and I taught on the bar course for a number of years. In that time, over these 30 years, I've been a student in five programmes. I've taught on two and watched that education technology journey change. I did ask the rest of the team and Harvey, who's our general manager, reminds me that he's not actually 30 until Sunday. I was interested to see what he was going to wear for the 90s theme party. I will leave you to the user imagination as to what that might actually be. I was trying to think of what the themes are of where we might be going. As I wrote down three, I thought, well, hang on, but they're also where we've been. Let's look at those three and think about where they've been and where they might go. One of them was AI. You're going to stop me at this point and say, how? How was AI 30 years ago? I think 30 years ago, we thought to ourselves, either imagine the world when computers did more things, or for those of you who've been around a little bit longer and are not 30 like Harvey on Saturday, you might have seen the infancy of AI. You may have had some idea of where it was going. I think it was that sort of idea of holding a five and a quarter inch floppy disk thinking one day I'll be able to hold a lot more on one of these disks, not necessarily thinking about the cloud. But where have we actually got to? Now that we have all of the generative AI that's made the news almost every day, if not every day, this year, we're almost to quote that great educational philosopher, Beyonce. At the stage of education, can you handle this? And it's not education alone, it's everyone else. We're at the stage of thinking, what do we do with this? Now that we've got it, where are we going? What might it do for us? And what might students do with it? And how might we use it? And the initial rush, I think it's probably fair to characterize, was worrying about how it might be used unfairly. But I think we've got past that at the conferences that I've been to over the course of this year certainly. People are moving well past that and particularly communities like this to think, but hang on, there's great possibilities and opportunities here and it's not just people trying to get something written for them. The second theme was data. Now, was it about 15 years ago that data was the new oil? I think if that's true, then the use of data is the new data. Because much as we all talk about how we want more and more data, how do we get beyond that point of archive to use? Now again, within this community, this is where we see the greatest use of the actual data that is provided that we generate. And so this is a slightly different audience to normally where I'm trying to suggest that we might move on slightly. I'm really interested to spend three days here and find out what people are doing, how they are actually moving this on and using all the data that's harvested for good. The third was accessibility, inclusion, diversity. I have a 16-year-old, so this is something that gets played back to me very heavily as to what a 16-year-old's view in education, starting their A-levels today in fact, where they see this, what do they see as important. And I'm not sure that we're all necessarily in tune with what the students and us are all feeling in the same space, much as we tried because the latest crop of 16-year-olds have a slightly different view to those who are 21 and therefore up and downwards. But what I do know is that the education community, more so than any of the others I can think of, do more than just say they care about it, they really do. The initiatives that you see within education to make sure that it is accessible, inclusive and diverse have pervaded through time. These are not new themes. And so where does that have impact on education? I would say it's this community here who really are at the intersection of education and technology, as the name would suggest, who have the greatest ability to make a huge impact on where education goes, in part because you have on where it's been so far. I think certainly the days of vendors like me saying, you should do X, have to be over. You know that, you know what you need to do. In fact, we've probably said it because we've learnt it from you. In fact, in order to meet those themes that were put up on the screen of leading people, diversity inclusion, sustainability and social justice and emerging and changing technology, it's about this community leading to make sure that it happens in the way that it's always done. I thought Laurie's point that he made that it's not about leading with the latest thing is precisely where I find myself. It's not about the latest thing, it's about where it's used. What we hope to do, what we want to do and how we want to engage with you is to make sure that we are giving you the right technology to enable what you want to do. To ensure that your priorities are met and that you help shape where we go. This is not about technology leading education. It's the education being enabled by the emerging technology that we know about and don't know about that will be made through what we do now, will come through in where we go. If you're around and you have a moment to chat and you want to get your sticker from the stand and do it by actually talking to me as well, which you don't have to do, you just come get the sticker if you want, we've got loads. I would really love to know what it is that you think the biggest challenges are going to be over the next couple of years and in 30 years if you want to guess. I didn't try and take a guess because I don't know if I'm really interested to hear what this community in particular thinks. Thank you very much for inviting us. We're delighted to be the headline sponsor of the event. I hope you are looking forward to three days of really insightful talks from various people. I know there's lots that I want to see. Thank you very much for listening. Perfect timing and a wonderful message. Sam Tanu and I will give you a little bit more inspiration of what to expect over the next few days and we might take it in turns and see what's happening, so I might just jump in. There is lots happening today on day one. If you've been on our guided run, has anybody in the room? I think at least one person has been on the guided run this morning. Dave White has been leading that for us, so queued us for everybody who got their trainers on this morning. I know our events manager Katie did 10K yesterday and was running this morning already, so I am full of admiration for her. We have an afternoon tea this afternoon by Jisk at 3 o'clock and then there is a drinks reception at 5.15, which I'm hoping will cool us all down. Sam Tanu, over to you. What else is in store? We have a VR experience for people who haven't experienced VR already. There will be some headsets for people to experience that provided by Warwick University, the educational technology team there, so do try those out and see how those go for you. Thank you. That is just outside of the lecture theatre here on the left. Then we have a couple of housekeeping announcements. There's no fire drill scheduled for the duration of the day. This building has exits to the front and to the side. In case of an emergency, please follow staff instructions and go across the road to the assembly point as quickly and safely as possible. We all know it's going to be a very hot few days, so there's water fountains located on all levels to the right and left of these exits and to the right and left downstairs in the same area, so please keep hydrated and make use of the outside spaces to cool down as well. There have been a few last minute program changes, so do have a look at the online program as well to make sure that you keep up to date in case anything has changed. Now, help is at hand. There's quite a lot of help on the website with various aspects there. As you can see, there's help on accessibility and also various other bits and pieces there, so do have a look at the website there. Thank you. We have also a lot in store today to explore the program, so you can scan the QR code on your badge for a quick way of getting onto the program. The two of the highlights we wanted to particularly make you aware of today is that there is a launch of the Trailblazer group for the Digital Learning Design apprenticeship at 2 o'clock here in the main auditorium. This is your opportunity to meet the people who've shaped the apprenticeship that is the first formally endorsed apprenticeship by ALT and a wonderful achievement for our community. Straight afterwards, there is another launch today of the Amplify Fee Communities of Practice sector audit report. It's another wonderful piece of research that we're celebrating today here at the conference, so there is a lot coming up today as well as the regular sessions. What else is in store? We also have a museum of ALT. Use the hashtag Museum of ALT on social media platforms. There's a room on the first floor here, 07, which has some of that and think back on some of the educational technology over the years. For those of you who've seen this development over the last few years, do have a look at that and do post your memories of technology that you used during the last 20, 30, 10, five years there. We also have a quiet and rest space, a dedicated quiet space. We ask you to respect the space in terms of being quiet there for that intended purpose. So just in case people find the socialisation quite overwhelming, there's a space for you to go and to have a bit of quiet contemplation time and thinking time, really important as well. We also have ALT CE Radio, as I said earlier, hosted by Dominic Pates. There's various members of the committee and various people who've already been on the show this morning. When I came in, Julie Voss was there as one of the first guests. That's hosted by the Thursday night show.com. So do look at that. Do tune in there as well. So there's lots for you to engage with both in terms of online, in-person, etc. And those people who are online do take breaks, do take breaks from screen as well, and do keep hydrated as well, wherever you're joining from. Thank you. Thank you very much, thank you. Right, we now are going to switch gears a little bit because we have said our welcome. So before we start the introduction to our keynote speaker this morning, I just wanted to ask you one more time to take your hands, feet, and other anything that can make a noise and just give one more welcome now that we're all in the room ready for our keynote. Thank you very much. Now usually it is co-chairs' privilege to introduce our distinguished speakers, but I've just slipped in there this year and bagged myself this introduction because our keynote speaker this morning is not only someone who I've learnt from and admired a long time, but also a friend. And so I thought it would be a real privilege for me this morning to give the introduction. I had a few people who don't know Annemarie and I think you've seen her work at the University of Edinburgh and most recently at Athabasca University. Her work as chair of the board for the Open Appario Foundation, also in the open source and open education community. There are few people in this building who can as knowledgeably or authoritatively talk about the most technical of topics and the most ethical dilemma while also rocking the shoe-tweet scene. And I am very, very excited that we have her as our keynote. For those of you who joined us last year, you will know that Annemarie stood at least virtually on the stage for the second time at the Learning Technologist of the Year Awards when her team won. She was in Edinburgh and helped to accept that award for the University of Edinburgh. But last year she won the Leadership Award of the Learning Technologist of the Year Awards. And at that point we couldn't make it possible for her to be with us and we had a heartfelt video message all the way from Canada at the time. So this year the co-chairs extended an invitation that couldn't be ignored and got her here in person. And I hope that when you put your hands together you will give some moments of thought not only on the journey that's led to this keynote but also how you would feel in her shoes having to open this 30th annual conference on the first day. So no pressure at all. And I hope that when you put your hands together now you'll put as much warmth and welcome in there and enthusiasm as you lean back and enjoy Annemarie Scott. Thank you very much. Thank you, Maren. I'm not feeling the pressure at all. Thank you everybody for being here this morning. I'm deeply grateful and honoured to be asked to give this keynote because ALT is a really special organisation and a really special community. It's been a big part of my professional life. We won't go into how old I am. But I can see people in the audience today that I'm delighted to be able to call friends as well as colleagues, not just Maren. And to be here for the 30th anniversary and Maren's last ALT conference that means a lot. When Laurie asked me to do this keynote to talk about leading people and a time of complexity he said, I know you've got a story to tell about the last few years and I thought, oh boy, do I ever and then I told him the story of the last few years and he said you're not going to be able to talk about half of that and in fairness about half of what I said was made a bad swear word so he had a point. It's been a time. It's been an overwhelming and exhausting time with an excess of change and disruption and it doesn't seem to let up and I think a lot of us have had cause to reflect of late to think about our work, our lives the balances we're trying to strike between those two things what's really important to us our values and how we live in them. And we wish things could be simpler. The title of this talk things cannot be simple is a customer Marina Warner quote creating simplicity often makes the heart leap order has been restored the crooked made straight but order is understanding that things cannot be made simple that complexity reigns and must be accepted complexity reigns and must be accepted it's not going to get simpler our futures are very uncertain and unpredictable the themes of this conference that Laurie and Santony talked about earlier leading people in a time of complexity diversity and inclusion sustainability and social justice these are the big societal issues that are ahead of all of us not just for those of us in our room and in our work and those challenges can feel huge and at times paralyzing and changing our path can feel impossible I faced all of these challenges in the last three and a half years so I'm going to spend a little bit of time this morning sharing my stories with you and from them reflect a little on the lessons that I've learned about leadership in the hope that some of it has some use for some of you there we go after all the stories that we tell are important and when we're walking in the dark woods we need to keep looking for that path forward holding out hope that there's going to be a bit of a happy ending so whilst I'm going to talk about the pandemic and a few things that were hard I also want to be clear this isn't intended to be a kind of trauma sharing experience up the front here because as tough as the last few years have been a lot of good work has been done and a lot of positive change has happened and I really believe there's a lot to build on and I feel quite hopeful about the future let's start with a bit about who I am and where I come from and why I'm here today all good seymol portfolio start a contextual statement after all this is me aged about six at Blair Drummond Safari Park in Scotland that's the last known photo of my hair before it went grey and also the fetching socks and sandals combination and the conspicuous lack of health and safety where those giraffes are concerned should tell you something about my age roughly this probably coincides with the time a home computer arrived in our house because my mum was training to become a maths and computing teacher and we had an acorn electron then a BBC micro went everybody else had a ZX spectrum dating myself again around this time I learned some rudimentary coding skills and basic mostly to write programs that generated insults from my brother and sister but then things went quite sharply off the rails not long after that I discovered the mobile library bus and I spent the next 15 or so years in a book induced haze hitting rock bottom when I spent four and a half years on an MA in English and Scottish literature at Edinburgh in truth computers continued to be present in my home and my school life throughout all this period I've grown up with this technology as it's moved through its infancy stages and I was in the first cohort of students at Edinburgh to be given email addresses as standard after graduation I worked as a technical author for a few years writing specifications fitting manuals help systems and gradually I realised that writing about software that software that was difficult to write about is difficult to use and I got interested in human computer interaction I also saw how technology pushed its way into industries in this case the pub trade and how that changed the skills people needed to do their jobs and ultimately the kinds of jobs that were needed I watched as old school pub landlords felt stupid and incapable of doing what they thought their job was how they resented the intrusion of technology into their workplace how they felt they were no longer trusted to use their professional judgement how they were not surveilled by stock control systems and clocking in and out of a bar terminal how a job that they thought was about relationships with people became about efficiency and profit I became horribly disillusioned with all of this and so when a wave of redundancies came I took the opportunity and fled back into the academy because it's not like that at all is it I spent just a little under two decades working at the University of Edinburgh and blossomed into the learning technologist I was always destined to be I was at the first cohort of what is now the MSc in digital education at Edinburgh I took on my first management role in 2007 and by the time I left on December 31st 2019 I was deputy director of learning teaching and web services and many of you know my wonderful colleagues at Edinburgh there's a few here today you know just how good they are and what an amazing place it is I've done some other things in that time too Maren hinted at it a little bit I'm the board chair of the Iperio Foundation supporting and advocating for open source software and education I'm also on the board of the open source initiative who stewarded the global definition of open source software and right now we're working on developing a similar definition for open source artificial intelligence and it's a really vital and fascinating piece of work that I encourage you to go and learn more about I'll skip the bit about working 20 years working for 20 years for historic building preservation charities supporting women in the tech sector in Edinburgh suffice to say I have some weird hobbies I've been on the leadership team of something called the openetc since 2018 we provide a set of shared open educational technology platforms for the post secondary system in British Columbia but we run them along with platform co-operative principles so shared not paying for a service essentially shared ownership and since 2022 I've been a member of the British Columbian Government's Digital Learning Advisory Committee looking at how to scale up and embed digital learning post pandemic across the whole of the province on the 7th of January 2020 so after leaving Edinburgh at the end of December I stepped on a plane at Edinburgh airport with four large bags in the hold heading off to take up a job as deputy provost at Athabasca University in Alberta, Canada for those of you who don't know Athabasca it's the 5th largest university in Canada it's roughly the equivalent to the UK Open University in that it's an online distance based university so academic staff located across Canada and administrative staff based largely in Edmonton, Calgary and the town of Athabasca it gets the lowest percentage of the number of students in the UK it gets the lowest percentage of government funding in the province and I would argue has the students with the most complex needs my job was to run the office of the registrar and learner support services and to lead a massive digital transformation initiative called the Integrated Learning Environment the ILE is a people and process and technology transformation project that touches on almost every single part of the institution every learning teaching and student administration activity and at its core is a huge VLE transformation and a renewal of the entire student administration system so it's not a small piece of work January 2020 we had no idea at the end of March 2020 10 weeks into the role I dragged the dining table in my partially furnished apartment into an empty spare room I emptied my new office and I thought I would get through this without crying and with my peers and my new teams we started the job of flipping the administration of the institution into our more distributed workforce mostly in northern Alberta with poor internet connectivity we learned a lot about digital skills gaps I became the lead for the academic side of the institution in our Covid response team many years of business continuity work and major incident work at Edinburgh really stood me in good stead we took advice from our faculty of health disciplines and dug in for the long term this wasn't going to be over quickly and we made changes that would hold us steady keep people safe and allow our staff and students to cope with lives that were suddenly much more complex you can probably tell it was the most effective rapid induction into a new institution that I've ever had and it will probably take me some years to recover from along with coping with the pandemic we continued to work on the large digital transformation project, the ILE the pandemic only further heightened the strain that was already evident in legacy systems and the large amounts of technical and process debt that we had people and systems were being pushed to absolute breaking point this was tough work to do as a newcomer and in October 2020 I moved to Kamloops British Columbia as our head already had friends there nobody wants to make new friends in a pandemic as it turns out you may have heard of Kamloops British Columbia or more accurately to Kamloops to Shequet Mac within Shequet Maculw the traditional and unseeded territories of the Shequet Mac people the legacy of colonialism is impossible to ignore though some give it their very best and progress towards the 94 calls to action from the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission remains in place for anyone who is unaware of the history of the residential schools in Canada go and educate yourself and you will better understand the connections between Canada and the UK and our shared decolonisation challenge if the pandemic was already highlighting in existing inequities this was a stark reminder that those inequities are structural intergenerational intergenerational intergenerational and education systems have a difficult and traumatic history Universities in Canada various stages on their path towards decolonisation and conciliation and I use conciliation not reconciliation intentionally as Maria Campbell my elder in residence at Athabasca University said you cannot reconcile a relationship that has never existed there is no good time to which we are going back this is hard and urgent work but it can't be rushed what's taken generations to do will take a lot of time and conversation to undo the discoveries in Kamloops sparked much needed conversations inside education systems in Canada and Athabasca was no exception we started to be more aware of the ways in which structural inequities manifest inside the institution students who don't have medical documentation to back up a disability grant application because when they grew up going to a doctor wasn't the safe thing to do curriculum that reflects a Eurocentric view of knowledge in the world how few Indigenous colleagues and staff we work alongside oh go back as the pandemic dragged on we announced our near virtual project formalising the move to a remote distributed workforce for administrative staff as said academics had been for a while already this allowed us to recruit more staff from across the province of Alberta and beyond especially important in a competitive digital market many more people looking for hybrid or remote working jobs this is unsettling for many staff and it implied significant changes in organisational culture process and technology as well as work location in April 2021 Neil Fasena the president of Athabasca resigned moved to Okanagan college and our chief financial officer Deb Myers stepped into an interim president role we learned two new phrases in 2021 as well the first was heat dome as the temperatures in the pacific north west spiked setting new all time records for Canada and burning the town of Lytton to the ground BC had the third worst fire season on record the worst ever is happening right now the three largest fires in BC were burning around the city I lived in I worked with the sound of helicopters over head every day but I didn't know the smoke was constant and dangerous to breathe for about three months new weather systems rose up from the biggest fires causing dry lightning storms that sparked yet more fires ash and burned pine needles fell on my car every day the smoke drifted clear across the rockies 800 kilometres to my colleagues in Alberta the second phrase we learned was atmospheric river after the fires died down record setting rigged the second phrase we learned was atmospheric river after the fires died down record setting rainfall hit the lower mainland of British Columbia wiping out all four highways that connect Vancouver to the rest of the province devastating large farming regions and causing whole towns to be evacuated colleagues who are coming over from Alberta to visit family brought me groceries because supply chains were interrupted staff and students living in these regions were obviously impacted not just me and as a result of the devastating fires in Fort McMurray in Alberta in 2016 we already had student bursaries for anyone affected by natural disasters we had to use them every year I was at Athabasca this is what the new normal looks like there is no escaping the visceral reality of the climate emergency in this region of the world the impacts are a daily topic of conversation in January 2022 our new president Peter Scott joined his arrival coincided with a ground spell of concern the potential impact of the near virtual project on the town of Athabasca worries included the potential for the loss of jobs in the town people relocating, recruiting people in new locations by May 2022 concerns have been presented to the provincial government they were sympathetic and they proposed to use performance based funding to incentivise more jobs to be based back in the town I'm not going to go into the gory details because it's been really well documented in the press from all angles suffice to say that we entered a period of around six months of incredibly tense relations with the provincial government and significant changes in our board of governors the whole situation created weird tensions inside the institution along political union and personal lines the stress was palpable on a very human level had colleagues break down and cry in front of me because they were scared for the jobs and the impact on family life if they were forced to relocate and we had strong conversations about Canada's rather unsabary history of forced relocation of people from their homes and land Spring of 2022 also saw a difficult collective agreement negotiation with the faculty association reaching impasse and work towards preparing for strike lock out began for eight tense weeks almost all other work was dropped in order to focus on business continuity planning amongst very fractious labour relations that again created lots of stress and tension amongst colleagues of course the pandemic continued as it does today throughout this period and like every other university enrolments were incredibly volatile as an institution that receives a very low proportion of funding from the government Athabascus much more heavily dependent on tuition income so this creates a lot of volatility in budgets and financial planning in addition to continuing to work through negotiations with the provincial government on the location of our staff we had to do a lot of planning for various challenging financial scenarios that might play out I had to lead a relatively inexperienced management team through this exercise looking for cost savings, efficiencies and those much harder questions about what we might need to just stop doing and what that meant for students and for staff we got to the end of 2022 and in December finally settled a new funding agreement with the provincial government settled a proposed budget to go to the board of council approval in January 2023 In January 2023 the new board of governors decided that they wanted new leadership for the institution and on the 1st of February Peter Scott was removed as president and replaced five hours before that news came like a bolt out of the blue I handed my resignation in with the intention to come home and take some time out I went home at the end of March and worked with a perio on the impact of new cyber-resilience legislation in the EU, amongst other things like I said, I have weird hobbies As of the 1st of August I'm back working for Atabaska as a contractor So that's global pandemic a climate crisis labour disruption, difficult government relations huge digital transformation budgetary pressures four presidents in three years and grappling with the grimaced realities of the Canadian residential schools It's tiring just recounting everything that's happened and I'm sorry if you feel tired now you've had to listen to that As a senior leader I had a responsibility to guide teams of colleagues and peers across the institution through all of this often with very little historical knowledge to go on So how do you lead people when you've got all of these conflicting things many of them that feel overwhelming and impossible to move How do you keep moving forward when change feels impossible and when you don't have a lot of resources how do you ensure that the little bit you have moves the needle most So I'm going to talk a little bit about what I think I learned and the leadership practices that served me well and I could give multiple examples for all of them but I've only got 40 minutes so I'm going to try and keep it brief but if there are things you want to know more about or examples you want to ask me about hit me up in the Q&A or come find me later The first thing is to accept that complexity be clear that things can't be made easier sometimes be clear that things can't be changed sometimes and be okay with not knowing the answers because you can also be clear that if things are complex and futures are uncertain then nothing is predetermined there's space to act in that uncertainty so even if you don't know the answers or have guidance to offer your teams make space for people to speak and be heard because knowing their concerns in advance will help if there is an opportunity to change things or to represent them tell them that and thank them for sharing find your guiding stars find your visions for the future however small and however temporary because they are a thing to aim for and they can narrow down an overwhelming field of possible choices what does a good outcome look like in the circumstances imagine multiple futures changes coming how might we deal with it how can we shape it make multiple plans do scenario planning they won't be perfect but you won't be starting from scratch when things start to move hold on to hope and do everything you can to just reduce the fear factor for people with something we did a lot while we were planning for labour disruption I couldn't share the detailed plans with my staff or our student unions and a lot of colleagues felt really conflicted about helping management as it was so we just held space to talk about things we were worried about the impact on students the impact on colleagues, communications gaps financial impacts on the university and on individuals being able to feed that information into scenario planning or communications was useful for me but the more important aspect was to create a respectful ethical space where we could recognise that we had a state of difference and divide but there was going to be a place after this where we all came back to work together and that was a vision for the future that we needed to keep in mind and work towards the next one, pick the priorities we say this one all the time but it can be the hardest to do because everything feels important it takes a certain level of confidence to let things drop in favour of others because someone is always going to haul you up for not prioritising the thing that they want most you need to reframe your ideas of what success looks like it is not about pleasing everybody accept as inevitable that someone is going to have a strong opinion about your choices I find it useful to think about where work will have the most impact if we have limited means and resources then where can we move the needle most? As I say, this isn't about making the largest number of people happy I can think of plenty of examples where we make loads of people happy but we change nothing about the status quo Obviously there are always going to be pieces of work that need to be done for political or strategic purposes so also think about what your line management might see as a dropped ball maybe you can ask them and most of all prioritise the time to quantify the impact of the choices that you make because this is how you will know and demonstrate that you make the right you made the right choices or know and own when you didn't and over time that's going to build you trust and you're going to need that Most of Athabasca students are mature students combining study with work and most also have caring responsibilities there was a concern that we'd start to see a wave of dropouts for students for whom education was already a bit of a struggle but also vitally important for their futures so I asked my office to the registrar what students needed right now and their answer was the gift of time so we authorised free two month course extensions for any student that needed one we used a continuous enrolment model for undergraduate teaching and allowed anyone in a front line job to take an interruption to studies so nurses, military, key workers was a pretty close second so we established our first ever emergency bursary scheme worked in partnership with two student unions to fund raise and faculties donated their unspent travel budgets and we dispersed around $440,000 in $1000 bursaries the thank you notes we received nearly broke us we didn't see a wave of dropouts in the first two years of the pandemic enrolments went up nearly 10% pick the priority where can we move the needle what will have the largest impact $1000 didn't seem like an awful lot but as I say the thank you notes made it really clear that it made the difference it bought people rent, groceries baby milk, childcare, basic stuff take one step at a time when the path ahead isn't clear or the circumstances are overwhelming or the outcomes are uncertain making a fully formed plan can feel impossible so planning for multiple scenarios is a good approach as I've already touched on but you can disappear into it and never actually move forward and in a crisis you may just not have the time you also need to leave a little bit of space for the unexpected this is where I find adjacent possible thinking useful this term is coined by the biologist Stuart Kaufman but it's spread beyond that field as a way of thinking about the opportunities that evolve essentially you can't change a whole system in one go but by making a move you can change some of the parameters what's possible now and when you do that opens up a new set of pathways it requires you to be comfy with not having a complete plan all the time maybe you have a thing to aim at know the first few steps but not the whole road map that's okay, that's how learning happens how am I doing for time, Maron? ten minutes, okay I'll skip that and speed up, okay take the small winds sometimes we think that the changes we make are so small as to be a drop in the ocean what's the point, we're barely scratching the surface this is where we have to reframe our thinking again and see ourselves as part of a much larger picture I find Adrienne Marie Brown's thinking really helpful here she talks about change making work as emergent and fractal like lots of work at small scale which together builds up in repeating patterns to a much bigger change and I really like that she recognises that the learning that takes place in those small scale changes is what builds capacity in the system overall I've talked about the emergency bursaries that we set up at Atabasca at the start of the pandemic and there was some concern about not being able to support everyone who needed help it was colleagues really wary of proceeding what if we disappoint people essentially in the end we satisfied about 30% of need with those bursaries but on the basis of having demonstrated that need around another million was added to our budget the following year as a one time windfall as well as supporting more students through more emergency bursaries we were able to create an indigenous first start bursary we again demonstrated that there was need and so even though the extra one million was one time money we went on to repurpose an underutilised leadership bursary into an ongoing permanent bursary for indigenous students so it's a good example of small changes repeating, building up to a bigger a more permanent and structural change with us learning at each point in that process I hope you're starting to see how a number of these things knit together once you've accepted complexity you can focus on picking the priorities and you can pick a priority that moves the needle you can take a step at a time and you can build on those small wins repeating that pattern over and over and over again which begs another question I think how do you help people keep going in this work first off you measure the distance travelled when you're in the thick of it progress is really hard to see and you're often not aware of the work that your colleagues are doing it really can feel like you're grinding away with no end in sight as a leader make the time to gather up the work done and reflect it back make lists, get your team to help contribute to the lists cos they probably know about things you don't make explicit the links between people's work and the big picture help them see how they contribute bake in feedback if you have it thank your teams and colleagues for their work their support and its impact and I'm mentioning colleagues explicitly because we work in communities someone who gave you feedback or proposed an idea or expressed some support is just as much a part of getting the work done as the team who knuckled down and got it out there share those lists upwards and outwards too build a sure-footedness in progress as well as sustaining people on the path and remember to celebrate the wins perhaps even prioritise a little time to apply for rewards and I believe there are some really excellent ones available for learning technology work and I'm looking forward to whooping and cheering with everybody tomorrow night now we come to what I think of as the core of my leadership practice build resilience, lead by developing others my job as a leader is to create the conditions in which everyone else can do their best work I don't need to know how to do everything and I don't need to be the smartest person in the room if I think I can do the work of 30 or 50 or 150 people then I should never hold a leadership position again in my life my job is to embrace diversity in every sense of that word and to use it as a superpower how do I find and bring together the people who have the wide variety of knowledge and perspectives needed to work out the best way forward and that includes students by the way and how do I ensure they have the skills and the resources they need to get the job done how can I support them and invite them to take risks so I think about teams of teams or matrix working type arrangements you won't always find who you need inside your own teams so you need to be able to work your organisational culture and bring in others too you need to help build an organisation that in the face of challenge doesn't freak out because they don't know the answers they ask changes coming who do we need in the room to deal with it and my job is also to make sure that each time we do this we build doing the work together should change us we should have built new relationships with our peers we should have built new knowledge, new networks community and resilience help teams and colleagues to build that connective tissue the networks between people that live below the surface of the organisational chart the networks between peers and colleagues organisations like all facilities I think one of my biggest successes as a leader was that I built a team at Edinburgh that I walked away from in 2019 and nothing bad happened my deputy stepped neatly into my job and 10 weeks later they were part of that enormous effort we all went through to flip our institutions and they didn't stumble ok nearly there my final point no need for heroes during all the time that I told you about my health wasn't great my dad was dying of Parkinson's and I hope you've heard a lot today about supporting people and about leadership as practice of care because it's certainly what I believe in so when I got to January 2023 I knew I needed to take a break and I stepped away visibly and explicitly putting caring for myself first taking some time out to refuel and refocus I'm not done not by a long chalk but that's the final thing I learned know when it's not your time to lead anymore and if you've done all the other things I've talked about you're going to be able to step away safely don't be a hero I've shared a personal story about some difficult years but as I said at the start this isn't about sharing trauma this is about sharing what worked what good work done what moved us forward to a new place however hard it was and what I hope could do the same for all of you and I'm sharing it because in a time when the words digital transformation are on everyone's lips I also really want to emphasise that people are the real infrastructure of our institutions this talk is about leading people in a time of complexity as Laurie emphasised at the start in a career spanning more than two decades I've seen technologies come and go and they change they'll continue to do so people are where we're going to see continuity and adaptability people are the real engine of transformational change in our institutions not the digital people like us learning technologists are the ones who are going to inform shape and shepherd the digital change in our institutions and support our communities as we do universities are people this quote comes from a book which is due to be released soon later this year higher education for good and it's a closing piece from Raywin Connell but if you are not the book will be open access by the way when it's published if you're not aware of Raywin Connell's work find a copy of The Good University and have a look at that she talks about universities as collections of labour which I find really useful and comforting thought so yeah universities are people so I'm going to end and say go and enjoy the next three days and hopefully this hasn't put your start to the conference on a total bummer listen to the stories of colleagues working on the big challenges that faces and celebrate with them that joy in moving the needle even just a little bit meet new people make connections hear what others are finding challenging dream up wild ideas of what the future could be and then make plans for working to get there build that resilience in our community in the face of that comfortable and unrelenting complexity and as big and as overwhelming as the themes of this conference might feel recognise that the sum total of all of the pieces you are going to learn about all the pieces of work you will learn about over the next three days adds up to a very large amount of change and progress and this is why I'm hopeful thank you thank you so much for such an inspiring talk we can see the comments coming in and I think there's deep appreciation online and in the room for all the issues you've raised and all the difficult things that you've highlighted that we're grappling with we are going to bring up the comments on the screen now and I'm going to pick a few as we've kindly left enough question time so first of all obviously not just a question but an amazing insightful and personal keynote so thank you so much for that comment and please keep them going we're just going to pick one and I think this one is maybe the one we're going to start with so Annemarie you spoke about there's no need for heroes you also spoke about care in leadership so how can we move away from that sense that learning technology is an emergency service for staff and for students I don't know if we can actually I think the pandemic highlighted that complexity is going to keep coming at us it's part of our job I think I would like to think that we can embed some of what we've learned over the pandemic so that we don't have that rabbit in the headlights moment again I've already mentioned we don't want to think about another pandemic but it probably is coming and where I was working before there's been natural disaster bursary since 2016 the unexpected happens all the time so there is I think always going to be a need for some kind of emergency response I did touch a little bit on business continuity planning and I think every institution should be planning plans at the moment from the top down and thinking about where learning technology fits in that business continuity piece I was working in a fully online university so it was a different scenario to many colleagues but I think that is a space that we should be revisiting but I think that don't be a hero bit on a personal level we all feel responsible for our work because we care about it deeply we care about education, we care about students we care about the communities we work in but we also have to remember to care for ourselves and I think that's how you strike the balance I don't think the work does get easier I think what you have to do is learn to care for yourself and every single one of the quotes I've used today come from books or thinkers or people who give me inspiration who feed or nourish my soul in some way so take that time and make sure you look after yourself Thank you Before we pick another question I just want to point out that here on the side of the stage is the meeting ID so if you go to VVocstock up and just put the numbers in you'll be able to post your own comments and questions in there and I can see that there's a few more comments so maybe we'll have one exceptionally thought provoking keynote not only to hear a journey but to leave us with questions to consider in our own practice Thank you I'm sorry that it would be a total bummer of a way to start the conference because it's been quite a few years of complexity and we have some more questions so I might pick the one with the fairy tale here so the question says which fairy tale do you think we're looking at at the moment for learning technologies I like that question I hope we can put you on the spot a little bit with this one I like that question a lot the fairy tale that is artificial intelligence which somebody once said to me was a bad choice of words sometime back in the 1950s or 60s yeah I think I didn't touch on chat GPT in generative AI because honestly there is enough to be talking about but I think well I hope this one has a happy ending but I think the kind of collective madness that we're in at the moment is something about our digital capability as institutions I wrote an article for an organisation in Canada where I described our approach to digital change as panicking wildly on a two to three year cycle in an institutional level not the people in this room obviously you're the ones they come to when the panic sets in but I think that's beyond any specific learning technologies I think that's the piece that we have to work on is how do we build into our normal business and practice this constant evolution and change of technology and how do we build critical appreciation of those technologies into our institutions I am deeply deeply travelled by generative AI I am travelled about its environmental impact I am travelled about the labour practices behind it I am travelled by the large scale theft of IP that's behind it but it also can't be ignored it is in our world now and we can't make it go away it is the wolf that's going to eat grandma if we let it we've got to develop that digital capability in the institution to really be able to critically appraise this stuff not just panic when it comes at us like generative AI seems to have but I kind of hope it's a bad fairy tale and it goes away as well thank you we've got time for at least two more questions there is one around teams and senior leaders so let's pick that one up because you've mentioned about your journey from all different types of management into more senior sorry it's the other question around being part of teams so thank you for your thoughts around motivating a team tricky here do you have any suggestions for motivating and I think that's probably a polite word more senior leaders to be onside with your priorities what we euphemistically call managing upwards I think yeah I've been genuinely lucky in my career actually to work for and with senior leaders who are the kinds of people who listen and want to lean on the expertise in their teams so I've had the space to talk to people about why I think and they've been willing to let me run with it but I think in general terms this is probably going to sound quite right you have to understand their jobs and you have to understand their pressures part of why I stepped into senior leadership roles was a sense of we go on about senior management this senior management that and at some level if you don't like it get on and do it yourself and see if you can do it better and it's been a huge learning experience for me to understand all the ways in which senior leaders are pushed and pulled in institutions and pushed and pulled by external forces as well I mentioned some of them, some of them political some of them environmental whatever there's a lot coming up people so I think understanding where they're at, what their priorities are what they need to move and then how can you align your work with that or occasionally explain why they might be missing a trick somewhere they need to think about something else but I think understanding the pressures that senior leaders are under and trying to align your work rather than kind of fight for attention try giving something to say yes to basically Many of you have given a thumbs up to this question so let's think a little bit more about leadership so how has the experience of being a leader in the last few years changed your perspective on leading people I don't think it has but I think what it's done is it's made me double down on what I believe in even harder I feel when I was young and stupid I burned out a little bit and I feel lucky actually for that experience because it happened at a time when the stakes were a lot lower I believed I could do everything I worked myself into the ground and that's why I come back to that building resilience and leading by developing others also I'm really great at starting things not so good at finishing them so if I build a team I can build a team of people who are good at finishing things and then we can get stuff done so I think truly understanding that people who are different to you can really bring something to the plate that you can't be completely okay with that use that as I said it's your absolute superpower and if there's one thing I've maybe got more strong on over the last few years it's bring the student voice into the room bring students into the room, put them at the table give them equal weight at the table it takes a little time to do that you need to build trust you need to build those relationships but oh boy there's nothing like bringing a supplier into the room and getting them to do a demo when you've got a student in the room with you it's all of those lazy stereotypes that they want to spit out during their presentation they suddenly have to swallow down and they have to answer directly to the students they're talking about so I don't think it's changed so much as it's helped me really double down on that point about teams diversity and authenticity who can bring authentic experience into the room that you don't have well bring your aim game tomorrow people because there is a student panel for the keynote in the morning so we're walking that walk as well as talking that talk we have one more question here from the audience and it is about burnout and that is a topic that you've mentioned so it is a real thing nowadays in our field how can organisations build in support for colleagues at risk of becoming overwhelmed there's so much going on yeah not mindfulness over your lunchtime probably not yoga over your lunchtime either nothing in your lunchtime maybe except what you want to eat I think there's a tension in here because not to put my lefty hat on but you know ultimately we're all selling our labour for pay organisations academic institutions being no different will take that and they'll take as much of it as you will give them I think academic institutions are a public sector in general are much better at creating a more humane work environment I think that you probably need to help shape some of that and help your organisations understand what works probably not mindfulness over lunchtime as I said and provide feedback rather than just kind of opt out of stuff if it doesn't work but I think also you need to support your colleagues and not assume that your organisations can always do this work for you especially in large institutions it's a bit difficult to see what's going on sometimes and speaking up is a really difficult thing to do especially as a woman especially as a woman working in IT I can have a material effect on your career that's why when I left Athabasca I was really explicit about I was leaving because I needed to take time out for my health and wellbeing and I wanted to model that very intentionally that that's an okay thing to do that that's a position of power and a position of weakness so yeah engage with your institutions try and help shape that stuff if you can don't just make snarky comments like I did a moment ago but support your colleagues don't assume that everything can be seen and create that environment where it's safe for people to step away when they need to thank you I know we have a lot of questions and comments and I know you'll be with us for the whole of the conference and hopefully people will come but I just wanted to give you an opportunity to close your keynote to share any more reflections you have on openness this is a threat that runs through all of your work I know it's something you are technically and ethically and practically passionate about but do you want to leave us with some closing thoughts on the open aspect of why that's important of why is open important because ultimately I think that we should own our own institutions and I think that the digital transformation narrative is being used to extract money and our labour and our time through data and other forms from our institutions it's happening in the healthcare system as well and I think that particularly open source is a way to do innovation and when I talk about the decolonial context as well it's really important in those contexts that you're not stuck with technology that just has a western Eurocentric view of the world and a western Eurocentric view of what knowledge is so we often talk about open in terms of things like creative commons and that breaks down when you get into indigenous cultures and indigenous knowledge so I love open I think open source is super important because it's a way of putting power back into the hands of those kinds of communities to build something that looks different to the open maybe that I think about and it's ultimately about having being our own institutions and I was preparing for this I watched Amber Thomas's keynote from a couple of years ago which is well worth watching everything Amber says is smart but she talked about the public sector as being the home of innovation that innovation comes from the private sector and she had an excellent keynote and how that's just total garbage and how lots of it has come from within the sector so I have hope and I think open is how we do it well on that note please put your hands together for more time to show your appreciation for Henry Scott we do have a coffee break for refreshments now there's water fountains available on all floors and sessions resume at midday so we've given you a little bit extra time for the break this morning so you can find your next room presenter please do enjoy your day with us and see you all later today thank you