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anywhere. for our next featured session, it's called making history accessible through technology. this panel will explore how presidential sites, libraries and historical organizations can incorporate innovative technology into their educational and digital resources to reach a broader audience while creating better experiences for visitors and learners. this conversation features presenters who represent technology companies and museum spaces as well as individuals with insights to new trends in educational technology. teresa n president and chief growth officer of splunk and vice chairperson for the board of directors for the white house historical association. if joining teresa are our

panelist ed o'keefe chief executive officer of the theodore roosevelt presidential library foundation. jean-claude brizzard president and chief executive officer of digital promise. dr. jameela moore pew assistant professor digital humanities and new media and history at california state university fullerton and gary sandling vice president of strategy and chief content officer at the thomas jefferson foundation in monticello. please enjoy this discussion on history and technology as well as how different digital platforms can be used to make our past more accessible and readily available to you all. thank you. good morning, everyone already an exciting day. love the panels. how many got here early? you see any did you go last night to the panel? oh my gosh and believable, huh?

so inspiring i just wow, i just went home last night back to the room with my head spinning on. what these individuals had done and that we got to look across 40 years of? essential information from their chiefs of staff it was just unbelievable. so i hope you enjoy air panel today and it's about making history accessible through technology, which is at near and dear to my heart being a technology executive for the last 23 years. and in this session. we are going to explore innovative ways that presidential sites and libraries can incorporate cutting edge technology and if you think about what's happened during covid, it's even more important that we allow accessibility virtually through history and it's one of the big things that we've been trying to do more and more at the white house historical association. so i'm excited and you've already met all our panelists we have amazing individuals today

with such a great dip in breath of experience. and before we get started, i just wanted to share one quick thing about myself. i am from a really teeny tiny town called, nancy, kentucky. and i was sharing with someone. i can't remember my parents were both teachers. my mother was the first female administrator in the county that we lived in and i can't remember a day in my life that we were not involved in the political process. my parents were always whether it was a board of elections for the school board or the local county attorney or the governor or the president. i was dialing numbers. i think at age six at the my parents were republicans and they were we were dialing we would go and dial, you know, and call people knock on doors, you know, the groundbreaking feed on the street kind of thing, but i never dreamed i would get to go to the white house.

and when i actually got to go i couldn't believe i was there. and one of the things that we our goal one of the goals at the white house struggle association is making the white house accessible to every individual because the white house is the people's house. it's great that presidents get to live there. it's their home for the time they're there but it belongs to everyone and that's really one of our big goals, and i just wanted to share i got the great privilege my dad passed away 11 years ago, and he never got to go the white house, but i got the great privilege of like three years ago before covid taking my 90 year old mother on a private tour of the white house. it was one of the most amazing things i've ever done and to watch her and she would not she she is she was in good health that she would not get in wheelchair. she walked every step. we took her up the presidential elevator and i just had to share that because i think the libraries and all these other sites are so important to stay in individuals within where the

presidents were born where they had a history and i think that's what you're going to hear about coming to here so with that i'll jump in. all right, so let's talk about what kind of happened during the pandemic many of the sites. they weren't open to the public. they were restricted hours. they limited children everybody if you got there you had to wear a mask. even the students in historians really couldn't show up to do their do their work every day and what i'd like to ask you is, how did you use technology or in this case the digital promise because i'm going to go to jean claude and how did you use that to promote technology into close the gap and i asked john claude as he got started to tell you how digital promise got started and what what they're about why they're there. well, thank you so a bit about history. we actually authorized by congress in 2008 as part of the higher education act under george w. bush. we're launch in 2011 under president obama and as you can

see look at my board, my boys actually appointed by congress. so we're very non-partisan. we're very bipod as an organization. we're now a global nonprofit we do a ton of work in the us. it's about 40 plus states and about 15 countries around around the world as you can imagine giving who we are in our name, by the way. we're created as a national center on advanced information and digital technologies research. we have a massive team of people who are learning scientists who are technologists who are former educators what you work with schools across across the us around the world. so as you can imagine when the pandemic head, we leverage a lot of what we knew and what we're created to do to really support teachers and principles and school superintendents. we have this amazing construct called the league of innovative schools now as a members of 125 school districts from around the country. we just met last weekend cincinnati looking at the role of technology in really enabling what we call powerful learning so we did things like hosting a

ton of webinars to support our practitioners to really understand how to leverage technology. how do we leverage what we know? one technology and in the homes, for example, you know, we saw that learning management system lms's becoming more or less ubiquitous around the us the question was how do we help school districts really leverage that kind of full understanding do we understand how to support kids? well, maybe sitting at home, but no really important thing was to look at what it did for parents parents had now viewing to the classroom. they never had before. so the question, how do you support paris? you really understand what the case of learning how they actually are learning last thing. i'll add this so much more we can talk about we have an amazing structure called the verizon innovative learning schools program bills. the head of the program is actually here in the audience. so partnership with verizon going back five years where they've spent nearly 400 million dollars in in kind and direct donation to support about 550

schools across the us in demonstrating what it's like to bring like devices like ipads chromebooks to the classroom. what content is devices more importantly? how do you train teachers who really leverage that technology these schools had a seamless transition? into distance learning into hybridling in the backing now back into in-person learning so that we leverage quite a bit to tell the world. this is what this looks like in practice and this is the example for what actually can happen with those kinds of schools. that's great. i love that program and i was kind of embarrassed. i didn't really know about it and i was like, i don't know about this dr. pew. i really love it. sounds like you all pivoted from on-site gallery space to digital spaces. can you talk about how you use digital during this time? ah, yes, so i teach students a lot of graduate students in public history how to integrate technology into public history work. so for me, it's natural outreach to extend that to historic sites

and organizations that are also looking to develop their online presence or their to develop their bring their collections to a wider public using technology. so at the time of pandemic, i was actually working with the historic site in bridgeport, connecticut, and we were building their back-end repository a digital repository because a huge part of their capacity building was owning their narrative and owning their story and they had being spread across multiple laptops hard drives. and so that was what we were working on once the pandemic hit they said cease and desist we need an online presence their website would routinely crash with maybe 50 visitors. so we immediately switched to creating a website that was kind of in the future for them, but we created it right at that moment and key part of what i

emphasized was that you know similar to what jean-claude noticed is that teachers parents were looking for materials to enhance student engagement, but also to it familiarize themselves with local history and stories. and so we ended up creating the first phase of the website by building out really just making the primary documents available having a place to store them putting some of those images out. we had an on a brick and mortar as i call it exhibit that have been on display and have been linked with a lot of literacy programs and local initiatives to train students as docents. and so we weren't able to move all of that online, but we were able to get a lot of the images and some of the background story behind that exhibit on the web. that's that's really exciting. i you know, it's so interesting to kind of hear you all talk

about the digital pivot that i think so many people actually had to make but can i ask you what types of materials that you're finding that's working best for a digital audience. and where do you see the digital audience evolving and i'm gonna start i'm going to start. gary if i cannon, i don't know how many of you have been to monticello before have you been? so it exhausts me when i go and see what president jefferson did. i mean, i'm always so tired. so i'm really excited to hear what gary's doing now to turn all that into a digital asset. well, yeah, i think we you know, like everyone else we had to make this kind of pivot and scramble to think about how we kept relevant content and we start so at first it was let's just let's get something, you know online. we you know, we built a website in 1997. i think was the first year that we had an online presence and as many of you been in this field probably know for a long time there was probably for a decade there was a lot of back and forth in the museum feel about

we'll just building a website prevent people from visiting. you know, that kind of argument went on for a while. there's really seem to be a lot of evidence to that a fact and now of course digital so ubiquitous. it's an engagement tool and it went from being maybe secondary for us to primary and we began to think about who these audiences are right. i mean this is always there's no such thing. there is no such thing as a general audience. there just isn't right. we have constituencies and there are some that make up the bulk of our the people who are engaged with us as opposed to others and we were trying to find, you know, we created resources for kids and families when they were at home we did live streams. so we just started like a lot of folks. did we started doing weekly live streams twice a week at first we had some support from the neh from cares funding to do that. we sort of pitched for a grant but we've now built that into kind of a sustainable long-term strategy. so once a week we still do live stream it gives us much wider

opportunity to talk about a variety of topics that are harder to do perhaps in an on-site experience or an exhibition. it brings fresh voices. so we bring people to the table that otherwise you might not hear about and last year we had about a million views in 2021 of live streams. so what we're trying to figure out now is how do you how do you take that data and that those emails and all those things that you leverage out of that and then deepen that engagement? yeah. that's i think for us the next you know. kind of question. we're wrangling with now, but that's you know, really what i think we did. let's create more short form short form and i think as all of you know, that's tough in our field right being concise short-form content videos podcasts and live streams gary what platform are using for your live stream we stream yard for our okay for our live streams and that and again we talk to colleagues, you know, it was sort of we called folks at other institutions. you know, how we learned what we

thought would work best, you know really had to do with some trial and error that everyone was undergoing at that point other thing i'll mention quickly is the first day of the pandemic we had already been experimenting with zoom. we know what zoom was before i think all day right. yeah, we all do now, but before march 2020, we know what zoom was and we had been piloting a live virtual tour for school groups in february sort of outdoors. wi-fi connections weren't great, but we we did build an outdoor infrastructure for wi-fi six or seven years ago. and so from day one we could offer live virtual tours. we were able to pivot the first eight weeks closed. yeah, which was which was great and we've learned a lot. yeah, that makes sense. and you know now there's so many during covid like linkedin live twitter. i mean instagram, there are so many ways. i think you can try multiple things. i like that you do because you don't really know exactly what's gonna work and i think in a digital world, you're gonna want

to hit multiple audiences so you can't almost really have one thing. you have to try multiple things and let's go to you you're in a big project right now really big project you and i met this morning. i'm again president roosevelt is another one. so maya, i think we should have a contest like got around more places and did more roosevelt or jefferson. i think that would be a really great road i could do how we have that we have presidents, you know rent at the washingtons nationals. we have to have something yeah only one gave a speech after getting shot appreciate it. so talk a little bit about what your plan how are you going to use the digital assets in your planning process? well teresa. thank you so much. i just want to begin with gratitude to stuart and anita anita. i know you've been planning this event for two years and it's we're all here in person and life. thank you pleasure to be with you. the w hha has been a tremendous support of the theater roosevelt presidential library project which owes a debt of gratitude dr. stacy corder is in the

audience from dickinson state university. thank you to dr. cordary dsu who got this idea started about 10 years ago and in the last two years remarkably during the pandemic probably do to digital we really rocketed to we are now on the cusp of acquiring the land on which the future site will be situated in the badlands of western north dakota that happens next month. we will have a groundbreaking in june of 2023 and we will open this is a perfect segue into lunch on july 4th, 2026. and and what was interesting about the pandemic and you know, we're not pivoting to digital. we're born in digital. we're a digital native museum and so from the start i think one the association with dsu and the theater roosevelt center. they have done a remarkable job of digitizing 70,000 records from the archive of theodore roosevelt, and we helped facilitate a grant through the

robin melanie walton foundation of 10 million dollars to the theater roosevelt center to continue that tremendous work and work in partnership with them and then for the museum itself, i mean, it just affords us an incredible opportunity to about the digital native experience from the start. i mean our platform is leadership citizenship and conservationship and our goal is to bring people. yes to western north dakota to get out into nature and to experience theater roosevelt national park to go to the elkhorn ranch the cradle of conservation, but maybe we get several hundred thousand or several million to visit. there's three million at mount rushmore and 4 million at yellowstone. so there's an audience that we can reach there but there's seven billion people on the planet. so we think of this as a pilgrimage and a platform the platform is where we think we can take leadership citizenship and conservation to a much wider and greater audience. i'll end with one specific

example, you know, we think of this is a conservation library sort of what reagan is to defense theodore roosevelt is to conservation. what is the one signature issue of the many great accomplishments when that lends itself to getting outside getting is getting in nature and that might be the opposite and say digital but we're working with some really interesting augmented reality companies who know that life is going to live with a device at your side or in your pocket. and so, how can you actually use theodore roosevelt and the presidential site to come as a way to give tr b let tr be an avatar of the outdoor experience a guide to all the national parks or what you're looking at in all the areas of our state parks and other areas. so so we're really thinking of this as a distributed digital site from the start. yeah. what's the metaverse? everybody knows about the metaverse, right? and that is really what we're gonna be able to experience. so real time polling. if you could do a digital just

you didn't have to go there. in person, but you could do a digital real-time walk through of this museum would you go would you do that digitally would you be like open to doing that? so i love that because i think if you know stuart. try to kill me, but i have this idea of doing a passport for every student everybody get to every library and you get something from the white house circle association as you reach these peaks, right? because if we could get all of our students or me, i would love to go through and you can do them in person or you could do them digitally. i think it'd be a great way to do that. just want to be too that the two programs one in particular that talks very specifically to the er or vr technology. we have a partnership with the un called my world to 360 so we actually have young people around the world submitting videos of their work their life where they live that builds a level of empathy that you could not actually you can buy. yeah, so the idea of bringing

the site to people versus just coming to the side. i think it's an amazing thing to do how you curate that with the social studies or the other subject areas in integrating into the curriculum for teachers and for principles. i think the one last page by may i would love to push here is that we tend to force school administrators of teachers to play general contractor, which is that they have to curate and find all these pieces and make sense of it last panel talked about partnerships the more we can do that in providing shovel ready tools for teachers who actually use the easier it is for them to actually make use of it. just one quick example of that. we're working with a civic network right now pulling in feet are facing history. you'll learn i civics one platform that has tools from all these civics organizations think of a netflix like sort of playbook that you can use in kabul on the back end. there's a learning science

engine that tells a teacher. this is a part of learning science. you actually addressing this part you actually maybe want to consider in building a particular lesson or unit of study that kind of stuff is invaluable for for education. i think i can really i mean john quad one thing that we're thinking about is only putting those tools in the hands of teachers, but students children are creators. they're all they're editing live on their devices and they like to put together pieces of visual puzzles. very visual medium, you know, it's so we're we're thinking about inside the museum experience learning from all of the wonderful presidential sites that exist, but how can they learn from doing the theater roosevelt's a wonderful example, but let's face it if they come out and sight facts and figures from theater roosevelt's life that doesn't really imbue them with the spirit of tr. we want people to learn not just about but from theater roosevelt's an example and then take that out into the digital

world where give them pieces of the great story so they can put together their version that will create tell their story through this example. i love that idea because if you think about learning today, i do think students even for me. i'm a visual learner i was and to be able to create something where they can put that into their world. how does it relate to who they are at every level and i love that you could do that their ability if you could let them, you know find a student every classroom that could be the leader and walk the classroom through and have that dialogue and i think in a digital world, it's much more available. so dr. pew in your world. have you thought about these ideas of how you bring more individuals into that experience digitally? yes. i was talking to gary said this is what i think about every day. yes. so one of the things that you know, this conversation brings up is the issue that we all face whether when we engage digital

tools and technologies, which is building digital literacy skills. and so that's one of the areas that i emphasize both in my teaching and my outreach is that you know, the technologies there and as you said the metaverse is here, so what we need to do is take a a step back and really hone. digital literacy skills media literacy information literacy, but we can do that. excuse me using the technologies at the same time. so again, it's that idea of thinking and doing simultaneously one of the ways that i'm actively trying to bring more people into this space is i'm serving as co-pi on an andrew mellon grant that is called the digital ethnic futures consortium and the entire purpose of this large grant is to support the work of faculty librarians and students

who want to engage engage the intersections of ethnic studies and what we call the digital humanities, but could very much be digital tools scholarship broadly. so my emphasis in that is really to create intentional path. days into the digital public humanities. so not just assuming that students may take one or two courses and then be equipped to go out and to work at one of your sites, but to really allow them the opportunity to hone that through both curricular and co-curricular experiences. including one that i'm piloting now, which is taking students from a minoritized community within the university and bringing them on into this creative technology collaborative in which they are actively working on one of our ongoing digital public humanities projects, which is

creating a data storytelling and mapping of black loan businesses throughout orange county, california. i love that. so yeah creating projects like that because i think you're right students also. are going to become the practitioners tomorrow and the more they can see themselves reflected in the practice. i think the better the practice. yes, and the last panel one of the things i thought they talked about. i am, you know a huge fan of icivics. i just you know, love that program and teaching civic stairs to all of us still they have just great curriculum, but if you consider that taking that kind of curriculum and making sure everybody understands their ability to participate in the democratic process and why that matters each and every individual it changes the world. i think it's also a matter of equity and representation. i mean dr. pugh it sounds your work is clearly advancing this and you know what we can what's been interesting about tackling

theodore roosevelt a hundred years after the president has gone from the earth is we have a philosophy that we will humanize not lionize. yeah, you are and building in western north dakota where there are the five tribal nations of north dakota have and out us to engage in an intentional dialogue about whose story is being told and how is it being told because often i think these institutions are seen as places where a story or a version of the story is being told and not the whole complicated story and history is was alluded to in the previous panel is hard history is complicated museums are supposed to do hard things and i think what's what's been refreshing and and really encouraging about our effort is that we then with a historic figure can engage and really complicated dialogues with communities who haven't been heard in allow them through our work to tell their story yes stars, and we have complicated to topics throughout our history that we have to take on slavery the things that we've been doing

like we have to take these topics on and things change over time and we have to address them head on in each and every one of these sites and i want to talk about i want to jump into something kind of the for a moment. be the dark side of the technology world when you're trying to put these things up so we have to worry about cybersecurity we have to worry about protecting our data. we have to make sure that we're responding and one of the questions that came from the audience last night was about how did you with the former chiefs the staff? how did you deal with the press and the media well over this period of time technology changed right you went from not really having twitter even great smartphones, and it definitely wasn't in the white house till president obama got there. he was the first actually bring technology in which changed the even the thinking in the way the white house operated. i remember them pushing out old computers and bringing in ipads, which was like crazy with like crazy david do that.

but for you you have to think about that in your sights in the world that you're living. how are you addressing one security of your data and information and making sure your sights stay up and two i'll how do you respond when there could be negative press which is things that you'd have to do or you preparing for that can start with you? oh, yeah, very sure can so to the first part about security data security, you know one of the questions we had as we built out tools even online for students was also to make sure we're compliant with all the laws regarding what information you can or can't yep exactly with ferpa. so, you know there was that layer of consideration protecting that the information in data of people. we also have you know, ticketing database that has 150,000 transactions in it. annually, it has to be secured as well as the educational, you know kind of assets so we were hacked in 20. eight twenty seven twenty

seventeen, so we had to deal with this problem firsthand. and so have we done it? well, you know one, you know, put all your eggs in one basket. so host hosting services and different places that have different purposes, right the appropriate degrees of security. it's an important part of that and beefed up our it team to you know, make sure that we have you know, we do penetration tests regularly on our website things like that on to look for potential vulnerabilities, but then you know the con how to handle media and press so we're no stranger to controversy in terms of our interpretation of jefferson and of monticello and before social media, it was kind of there's one way you could do that and since social media, there's of course very different ways to do they're you have to respond much faster and you have to be prepared to engage directly on the platforms when necessary to do that. i know everybody has that issue

right and like how much we put out a statement this week about ukraine. we made the point that our investment committee of our board of trustees had had adopted emotion to have the outsourced investment firm that that manages our portfolio to divest itself of any assets of russia or its. the plateau you know, we we made it. we don't usually don't make statements about what our investment committee so, you know, what the board of trustees right? we did in this case and immediately on twitter, you know, sort of you could just like when it went up i just wait like one two when 1,2 clearly clearly and of course then you have to decide whether you engage and often you don't but when you do you have to work out in advance what you're prepared to say. and i think that's that and just good kind of maintaining good media relations in the digital. i mean, that's always a good

idea right but in a digital era, i think it's it's really incumbent and these platforms give us voice to talk to people we might not always have. otherwise talk to you even if we don't necessarily agree with what's right freedom of speech we have it in our platforms now go to all extremes, but i really am very impressed by the way with what you're doing and how you're because you do have to respond in nanoseconds if you're going to engage like if you let these things it's the one big technology thing that most folks miss in your press and media. you have to engage or not. you got to decide and then you got to have your response ready to go and you needed team 21st seven to be doing this and this is one of the big things that have technology has changed the world in. who else wants to respond? can i mean let me just be the first to say thank goodness. twitter did not exist during theodore roosevelt's age. we would not be building a presidential site that i think i would say tooth quick things.

i mean on fundraising since we're a presidential site that is not yet in existence. we have had to think a lot about security relative to the very many mains many many ways that people want to donate now from yeah, i mean venmode paypal to crypto. yeah. i mean if you want to be successful in modern fundraising at a presidential site or maybe in general, i think you have to be sort of prepared like a presidential campaign where you have bundlers who are probably bringing in the bulk of your actual fundraising, but if you don't have popular support, you're not a popular, right? and and so the means of by which people can donate and the ease with which they can and that has to be lockjaw secure. yeah, because that is their data that is their financial information and that is the trust that you are building with them as an organization, you know, and i think in terms of the publicity side of it, you know again a hundred years after the president has left the

earth. you have a opportunity i think to eat to intentionally engage dialogue we we were the theater roosevelt presidential library foundation was asked by the roosevelt family and the american museum of natural history to accept on a long-term loan the equestrian statue that has stood outside of amnh for 80 years controversial not exactly the thing you want to do as you're raising funds for a new presidential site, but the reason that we did it is because one we could help facilitate a difficult conversation and remove it from a contentious place of public view. the composition is problematic the context of where it was was basically non-existent and there was no consent on central park west and public view for people to to decide whether they wanted to view the statue or not. we said we can intercede here and one remove it from that location, which was the decision of the city and of am and age and then go in engage in an

intentional dialogue with the five tribal nations with black to talk about potential recontextualization of a controversial object again, not not necessarily if you're going to go there then be prepared to go the distance. yeah, do the hard work to have the dialogue and discussion that needs to be done this the spectrum that of individuals you have to communicate with has really changed and i think that's what you are talking about that you're not just talking to a board of trustees or the individuals you're now talking to not just your nation that the world who has opinions on this and we all have to think on almost global scale. so let me let me ask you on kind of going back to the topic of securing your dad and really making sure one of the things i had the privilege to do with starting or not for profit business at aws and one of the big reasons we did this is for that fundamental reason. we saw a lot of not for profits didn't know how to use technology to advance their mission, and i'm so proud that i

see so many more using this but when it comes to talent one of the things that i always heard just can't get talent it is so hard and by the way that's everywhere now, but can you talk a little bit about how you're approaching the tech talent to be able to keep up so he would like to start but i'm happy to okay also have something with verizon you got verizon. they're technically the salaries of these tech books. we're very expensive. i live in now. i live in northern california. so i see all the high salaries being paid to tech folks as you can imagine. we hire a ton of phds computer science etc and that times hard to keep these individuals. we can't match the salaries of a google or facebook when you come to the engineers a few things we found so far has been helpful one because we are national folks in live almost anywhere in the catholic us of a that allows us to keep people and so you can live, texas, kansas wherever you want to live as always you come

to dc twice a year, for example, that seems to really work other one is we be helpful is the social mission of the organization a lot of young people want to take the hill. they want to do social good as you filter for that it tends to work last thing we do is actually live at stanford and mit in this places. we couldn't graduate students who are coming out. sometimes the first great job they have is with us. they spend they give us three to four years. we'll take it. they'll go on and make a ton of money someplace else often. they'll come back quickly to a digital promise because again that social sort of construct calls them back to the work but again finding young people we have a ton of the begin budget phds. all technologies really want to come and do social good that seem to work. i love that doctor he would be found. so actually just the piggyback off of that. i think my approaches. because i'm in the setting where we're training people to go and find these jobs has really been

one to train humanity students those who are already invested in interested in. looking at these humanistic questions that are historic sites provide with tech skills, which is an oxymoron to some of them because they're like, whoa, why are we learning python? and and i have to kind of say well, you know, you don't have to learn it in and out like a data scientist would but you got to learn enough to be able to work with the data scientists right in the future. and i think that's where i'm coming in with i think we can do better in our institutions of higher learning creating really multi-disciplinary opportunities for students in the humanities to connect with students in the stem fields and in computer science and and engineering so that when they come out of these programs the humanity students are already thinking, how can i

use technology in new and ways to advance a particular? mission yeah, and then the the stem students are thinking at the same time. how can i apply my skills towards these these types of programs like digital promise or or even to you know working on a project at your site and i think i just was having a meeting earlier this week with one of our computer science faculty and he and i were trying to put our heads together to think of how we can create a course and maybe a data camp, but he was saying this exact thing. he said, you know, i can train students on the technology, but you have the stories that make it matter and if we can put those together then we can really do something amazing. and so that has been the approach and if i can go one little tangent, i will say i think tapping into regional

comprehensive universities not just because i work at one but they the majority of college students in the united states attend regional comprehensive universities, right and they're not necessarily getting the same access to to whether it's digital humanities opportunities to engage in digital scholarship. and that's one of the reasons why we are pushing this digital ethnic futures consortium because we're missing an entire potential talent pool, and we really need to kind of create opportunities and pathways through which they can develop skills. and then also use those once they leave i love what you said is something i really haven't heard before which is time together to really important things one one is the digital skills. i need to learn but two is tying it to mission doing it >> i love what you said is something i really haven't heard

before, which is tieing together two really important things. one is the digital skills they need to learn. but two is tieing it to mission, doing it at the same time. do it in real time. they're learning the skills, they have to learn the technical skills. it can be short or long depending what you are doing. tie it into real solutions. i do find today that they want -- for me, i didn't want to just code a blue button. i want to code for a purpose. i heard you say earlier, you hired more people, beefed up security. what about your talent pool? >> in some ways, the question about talent is also true for people -- i think for burgeoning professionals in the museum field, they want your mission and your vision and your values to really align with something important that they share. i think for us, more generally, we're in the process now of looking at how we articulate

these better. how do we talk about what our -- not just our mission. everybody has a mission statement. they can trot it out. what are our core values? the more -- the better we align those to say, this history is -- this inclusive history is worth knowing so we hoe what we aspire to be together. i think that's a conceptual idea about that. in terms of talent, we try to beg, borrow and -- everybody we can -- >> steal is okay, too. >> university of virginia is a good partner. their center -- their digital scholars lab is a tremendous resource for us for things like 3d, spatial analysis, scanning. we created 3d objects. one of the most compelling

objects for me at monticello is anything to do -- it's a piece of chinking that came -- it was excavated long ago. i think in the '80s. so clay between logs in a house to seal it up. and you can see the fingerprints of the prn who put it there. and that's been exhibited, but we have 3-d models of this to use an exhibition to the original doesn't have to be. you wouldn't know it unless you could compare by touching the objects. so for certain things like that, having partners who particularly in academia, i think, is really helpful. but honestly for us, we're still pretty small scale. beyond finding those partners, we had to develop it a lot in house. i created the first manager of digital learning and the position in 2014 and that took

awhile and that was from someone who worked within the museum for a long time who had that background. but the idea of teaching everybody python, or being conversed if you have done work building a house i don't know if you have done any work remodelling, it's easier to have a conversation with a contractor if you know a little bit about what they are doing, even if you can't do it yourself. so i love that idea. i think we have to explore that. >> every individual in my org, i made them all take the first cloud computing course and pass it. even my executive assistant had to do it. so many of them came back to me and said i'm so glad i did this because even with the basic course, you can move up the scale $20,000 in salary just the first basic course of cloud computing tech. tell me when you're doing? >> i think this tech talent,

digital feature. you have all said it so kwent ri. learn the past, know the future. we're living through the great resignation. people are voluntarily leaving their jobs to go to more fulfilling fields. that is obviously an advantage for these organizations, but we also have a philosophy at the library that nonprofit is a tax status, not a business plan. so we are twoping a content studio that's highly unusual for a presidential library. the content studio is working with partners in augmented reality, virtual reality, talking about doing film and television, looking at digital platforms and different ways of bringing in revenue to the organization, spreading the message of the organization and not always requiring everybody to visit the actual site to be a

part of the tr library and building those in from the beginning, it's not too late if they already exist, does give us an advantage because really i said earier maybe what the re gain library is to defends the tr library will be to conservation and sustainability. one of the aspirations of our library is to be the most sustainable museum in north america. potentially, up with of the most sustainable in the world. we're in western north dakota. we're second only to the state we're in. and that gives us a really interesting opportunity to have a conversation with the energy industry about the transition that we're all in, theodore roosevelt, who would have had one foot in the present and one in the future would have been a part of that die dynamic discussion. there are issues beyond the history or what the history

represent ares that i think each organization can think about and say where can we reach a larger audience for that current discussion. it's probably going to be digital. >> you really have a unique opportunity to create the most innovative because you can create something that's very easy to manage with new tooling that you can bring on. i think one of the things that you pretty much all said is you can use that local talent. you have built in talent with your universities that you can go use. with that, i'm going to make a connection to partnerships. because we start talking about partnerships. i'd love to know how you think with each of of your sites about partnerships and how do you manage them and go get more? so gary, let's start with you again. >> over the years, we have

partnerships with several institutions and profits. one of the first fruitful ones was with the center of history and new media at george mason university in terms of building a website for teachers actually that was based on an exhibition that we had. and how they could utilize those source documents, both as texts but as objects. so those kind of partnerships come through the networking that happens in the field. partnerships with there are i'd say partnerships with for profit are always a little more difficult sometimes. there's been cases where we have found things that work well through networks of our trustees are very good kind of source for

those ideas, partnerships, there are also people want to pitch in a lot of things, we vet those carefully. but partnerships through networking have been really helpful to us in terms of advancing our scale or focus or particular technology. and the other thing i would say is we have done a lot -- we built an app in 2015 about slavery at month cello and that app, we had funding that allowed us to go to developers and make small bets because they would say here's this feature that's going to be great. we'd say if we gave you this much, not a lot of money, can we prototype that and test it first. if it doesn't work well, we went through three developers before we found the one we wanted. so things like that, those aren't partnerships, but they have helped us think about how to test and it rate before we

adopt. >> have you found one person that manages all your partnerships or do you have multiple parse it out? >> we have attempted over the last year my role in the organization changed in -- in part to try to do that to centralize some of those partnerships. but there's still distributed. i have research colleagues in archaeology who do all kands of technical work through the digital archaeological archive of slavery. so they have built the data protocols, the method for allowing sites across the southeast and the caribbean to do this. so they are not all-in-one place. >> how do you use partnerships and manage them? >> we do a lot of work with

partners because by ourselves we can't feed the entire elephant. but we look for solving a fundamental challenge. and see how we bring a value network of partners together to solve that problem for a group or something that has ab adult as an example. we're doing work in dallas around regional pathways. we're looking at the educator pathways for early learning to being a school principal. how do we work with the industry, the partnership in dallas, school systems to create a pathway for young people to go all the way up. so that kind of value proposition that we look for. the other one is what we call mutualism, which is that for partnerships to work, they don't sustain. so the impact is primary. the second is making sure that

all partners are benefitting from the partnership. >> i'll ask do you have technology partnerships in particular that you vied to just drive? sometimes tech companies can be hard to work with. >> so when you said partnerships right away i was thinking, oh my goodness. so thankfully with this digital ethnic futures irvegs able to create a position, for sunshine to manage the partnerships. before it was all me. and i was getting very excited but overwhelmed. so one of them that we did is a partnership with actually a student run nonprofit. and they are student who is are pursuing degrees or recently completed degrees in computer science and software engineering. and they are looking to teach nontech folks, those same

skills. so we partnered in 2020 to design a curriculum that actually integrated narratives or existing projects like the slave project, the freedom on the move project into data science curriculum for humanities or nontech foxes. >> that's good. >> so i was just going to say to bounce off of that statement, is that i think what i have seen is we do a lot of community engaged digital public humanities work. so managing. partnerships where we have like funders and foundations that partner with us, but we also just have community members and their local libraries or their local organizations that are just cultivating and retaining the local history.

and so we recently did one with a performing arts center, but they are all varied. what i think you pointed out is knowing kind of that mutualism is important. and then also knowing that you're going to have different partners for very different reasons, but partnership is definitely the path to go on. it can lead to grants, it can lead to new initiatives, it can can lead to recruitment. so i can't emphasize the necessity enough. >> i have one speed round. >> i know we want to get on to the q&a. first, raise your hand if you work for the library. so we have tour of them here. and they are not to leave tallahassee with a single business card. they can't get on the plane if they have a business card left. so meet them, talk to them.

we are in the business of partnerships. we can't survive without those partnerships. there's a guy that's associate ed with the tr library over there. you should get to know him too. >> i love that. i have allergies. i promise it's not covid. this is a speed round. can you tell me a book that you would recommend to the audience to read about your area. something that you get super excited about. i'm going to start with ed because i know he knows the answer. >> this is the challenge with theodore roosevelt. there's so many great books. the trilogy is fantastic beginning with the rise of theodore roosevelt. if you want a good beach read, it's river of doubt. >> just very quickly. there's a book called think again.

it teaches people how to step back and rethink. >> i have unessay so i think it gives an overview of how also these discussions are being had specifically within african studies, black studies. >> that's awesome. >> so i guess for jefferson biography, i'll have to go with john meacham's book. it's a very good book talking about how jefferson used the medium of his age effectively to communicate ideas and ideals to affect change. that's true. count the deep work because i feel overwhelmed by e-mails and i refuse to let the i.t. people

put microsoft teams on my computer because i don't want that chat function working. so how it create space to think is a real challenge for all of us. i found this book to be dish don't know that i practice it enough to preach it. >> line up for questions, but mine i'm going to say if you haven't done wine in the white house with fred ryan, you have to do it. it's fun and fred might even do fireside chat. let's take some q&a. who has some questions for us? >> hi name is christy. i'm from the rutherford b. hayes library. so thank you for your commentary. i just wanted to quickly mention, and i'm looking around the room. i see some partners that worked with us on a project last year when schools were not allowed to do their tours of presidential sites anymore, we partnered with

some groups on a program called road to the white house. many of us were closed. so this was a way to have a strong digital component. but i think it could have a stronger degenerative tall component. but it connected through about ten sites on eight presidents in ohio that we gladly share with a couple other states i see indiana over there. with the first ladies. i don't know if my other colleagues were here. but we deliberately called it not ohio's road to the white house because we wanted this to be a test case and enlarge it to include some other presidential sites not only because of covid, but with wanted to have life beyond that. this is a great way to connect some of of our sites. during the planning for that, we came up with the idea there's a program called the leader in me, which is the leadership habits based on the eight habits of highly effective people.

so it became measure a passport program. it had real content to it. i have a question. we would love to have a couple of you be part of this project. but knowing that that's how we're connecting to each other, do you have some recommendations on a platform or some digital aspects that we can incorporate into this kind of a program? thank you. >> i would stay there's a great platform for compose. and maybe wf more about that. it's the digital piece that brings a lot of civics content into one place for the access. it's a place where you can put all the tools and solutions you have and it shouldn't cost you any money. it's called composer. >> grab him afterwards. thank you for that.

next? >> good afternoon. i'm with the calvin coolidge presidential foundation. thank you all for being here. one of my earliest memories of american presidents and technologies was going to disney world. first of all, wanted to go to the hall of american presidents and all of the things there. and true to form, when i went to the hall of presidents, mr. coolidge was there. and in true character, he remained silent. i'm looking forward to the day that we may actually have hologram technologies that will be truly interactive where we can learn more about each of our presidents and dare i say maybe even a capability in the white house to summon up any one of

the presidents who maybe a counseler in a time of crisis when they have unique knowledge. do you know of any efforts through m.i.t. who may be working on creating holographic presidents? >> yes, so i'll just say very quickly, local projects is the interpretive firm within we're working. they did the race massacre museum in oklahoma. they did the legacy and justice museum in alabama, the media for 9/11 along with our architects. fabulously creative on the cutting edge of technology hologram visuals and others. so local projects would be my recommendation. >> the whole concept of augmented reality is getting there. so they can cure rate any content. this idea of making history alive and rich, especially for young people so it's not boring. but really exciting to engage. so there's a lot of of work

going on. >> once the blanking on the company name, but the platform is going to be called reach. it's produced through who is considered the god mother of vr. and basically her company is designing this platform so people without a computer science or engineering background can create augmented environments. so i think they are accepting people for beta test right now. >> i would say one of the big goals with the the white house historical association council on history is to continue to have an augmented reality world. i would love for people to go through the white house in an augmented way and presidents walk out to your point and say did you know this happened or this happened. we are already there that can be done. we just have to find the right companies to put it together. it's not a technology issue

anymore. it's a pro serve, how do we do it and how do we fund it kind of project, if that makes sense. so thank you, that's great. >> or make them do it in kind as much as possible. we'll have to support it. if we can get them to help us put it together, we can provide the support to fund it afterwards. >> good afternoon. i'm nate from the clinton foundation. i have two questions. one, how do you define a virtual visitor? it's been quite controversial. is it a one-second view, a click? and secondly, any advice on how we evaluate the effectivity of your online resources? is there a unique thing we should be looking for as success in digital? >> we have begun to use google analytics to see how people have tools and solutions. we have a the great platform

that we get 11 hits a month. but to your point, it's 20 minutes, 4 seconds, and why is it happening? so we modify the experience to engage people. so right now, we can't ask those folks yet, because the privacy issues can't go and ask, but we're seeing schools of education. then how do i actually change the experience to get folks to stay longer. >> i think ien couldn't agree more. it measured engagement and not visits. >> they can only click for a second. it has to be time they spend. and almost every application that you run should have analytics with it. then you can roll it up through google analytics to see what did

they click on and then what did they stay on. >> and how to enter the site too. >> where do they come from and what parts of the world? . >> i created and host a podcast about history and legacy. and i'm completely different here because i didn't come from a history background all the all. i was in marketing. i clicked a netflix documentary and now i have a real passion for teaching people about history and how important it is for our generation to learn. and i have realized in my audience that people come for an episode about the style and stay to learn about the new frontier. i'm curious what are some of your plans and strategies for taking this awesome digital content and putting it out to people like me this just need that little spark, need to click it and have a whole world opened up. >> you go where the audience is. what you're doing is exactly what i think every presidential site is or needs to be doing.

create content not in the form that we enjoy cob assuming it, but the audience does and put it on the plt forms ask places where they are likely to not just have to seek it, but to find it. that's the big difference. social media is not a network of channels you choose. it's content that is curated to your liking. and so we need to put conditionen tent in the places where the audience is consuming, wants to consume it and in the form they the to consume it, not the way we do. >> anybody else? >> one exercise that i have students do, digital story telling is phenomenal. there's so many ways to do it. i can go along way. and one thing i challenged students to do give me one that walks me through two minutes in history.

they see that and they are coming back for many more. >> i like when you're doing in terms of connecting. different generation with an earlier generation. even if it's fashion or time bound, you're going back and connecting from today yesterday and yesterday to today. that's a really good strategy. >> our last one. we're down to 1:50. we're on target. >> hi, everyone. thank you for such a great discussion. i'm the director of education at the white houses historical association. and since we're having this dpan it's aic conversation about making history accessible with technology, i did want to point out just outside this room in our booth, we do have available with our head sets vr immersion into the white house and the public space there is. so i vicinity united states you to check that out while you're here.

>> part of the great work they are doing. so if you will join me one more time in giving our panelists a big round of applause. thank you all for taking the time to come. and give us feedback on other topics you'd like to know in digital or tech. i know anita would like that. enjoy the restover your day. "american history tv," saturdays on c-span 2. exploring the people and events that tell the american story. at 2:00 p.m. eastern on the presidency, the final ep soed of our eight-part series first ladies in their own words. we'll look at their time in the white house and the issues important to them in their own words. this week we'll feature melania trump. >> welcome to the white house. i'm very excited that you're

here today with me. and thank you in advance for sharing your stories and your thoughts about your struggles and triumphs. i want to help children everywhere to be their best. so with your help, we can achieve positive results. >> and at 8:55 p.m. eastern a discussion about hollywood's take on history with creator of historians at the movies jason herbert and christy coleman. exploring the american story, watch "american history tv," saturday on c-span 2. and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online any time at c-span.org/history. weekends on c-span 2 are a an intellectual feast. every saturday "american history tv" documents america's story. and on sundays, book tv

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