we've never heard of, help us understand the passed in a new way. and ordinary people in the american past changed this nation. >> you can watch the full program at c-span.org slash history. just search kevin boyle or the title of his book, the shattering. for our next featured session, it is 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 into new trends in educational technology. now, i have the great pleasure of introducing our moderator, and a dear friend, teresa carlson, president and chief growth officer of splunk and vice chairperson for the board of directors for the white house historical association. joining [applause] teresa are our panelists -- edward o'keefe, chief executive officer of the theodore roosevelt presidential library foundation, jean-claude brizard, president and chief executive officer of digital promise, dr. jamila moore pewu, assistant professor, at california state university, fullerton, and gary sandling, content officer of the thomas jefferson foundation in monticello. please enjoy this discussion on history in technology and as well as help 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? did you go last night to the panel? oh my gosh, unbelievable. so inspiring. 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 presidential information from their chiefs of staff. it was just unbelievable. and so i hope you enjoy our panel today. it is about making history accessible through technology, which is near and dear to my heart, being a technology executive for the last 23 years. 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 is happening during covid, it is even more important that we allow accessibility virtually through history. it is one of the big things that we have been trying to do more and more at the white house historical association. so, i am excited. you already met all of our panelists. we have amazing individuals today, with such a great depth and breadth of experience. and before i get started, i wanted to share one quick thing about myself. i am from a really teeny, tiny town called nancy, kentucky. and i was sharing with some, and 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, 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. my parents were republicans. and we were dialing. we would go and dial and call people. knock on doors. you know, the groundbreaking feet on the street kind of thing. i never dreamed i would get to the white house. when i actually got to go, i could not believe i was there. one of the things that, our goal, what 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 is their home for the time they are there. but it belongs to everybody. that is really one of my goals. i got the great pleasure, my dad passed away 11 years ago, and he never got to go to the white house. but i got the great privilege of 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 have ever done, and to watch her. she was in good health, she would not get in the wheelchair. she walked every step. we took her up the presidential elevator. i just had to share that, because i think the libraries, all these other sites are so important to states and individuals, where the presidents are born, where they had a history, and i think that's what you're going to hear about coming to life here. so with that, i will jump in. all right. so, let's talk about what kind of happened during the pandemic. many of the sites, they were not open to the public. they were restricted hours. they limited children, if you got there, you had to wear a mask. even the students and historians really couldn't show up to do their work every day. what i'd like to ask you, how did you use technology, in this case the digital promise, i'm going to go to jean-claude, how did you use it to promote technology and to close the gap? i asked jean-claude, as we get started, to tell you how digital promised got started, and what they are about. >> thank you. so, a bit of a history, we were actually authorized by congress in 2008 as part of a higher education act under george w. bush. we were launched in 2011, under president obama. as you can see, you look at my board, my board has to be appointed by congress. so we are very non partisan, we are a very bipartisan organization. now we are global nonprofit. we do a ton of work in the u.s., about 40 plus states, and about 15 countries around the world. and you can imagine, who we are by our name, how we are created by a national center on events information and digital technologies and research. we have a massive team of people who are learning scientists, who are technologists, who are educators, to work with schools across the u.s. and around the world. as you can imagine, when the pandemic hit, we leveraged a lot of what we knew and what we are created to do to really support teachers and principals and school superintendents. we have an amazing construct, called the league of innovative schools. has 125 school districts around the country. we just messed last week in cincinnati, looking at the world of technology, in really enabling what we call powerful learning. we did things like hosting a ton of webinars to support our practitioners to really understand how to leverage technology. how to leverage what we know about technology and homes. for example, we saw that learning management system, lmss, were becoming more or less ubiquitous around the u.s.. the question was, how do we let school districts leverage that full understanding, to support kids who will be sitting at home. but another really important thing was to look at what it did for parents. parents had now a view in the classroom, they never had it before. the question, how do you support parents, to understand what the children are learning. the last thing i'll add, there's so much more we can talk about, we have an amazing structure called the verizon innovative learning schools program, vils. the head of the program is actually here in the audience. the partnership with verizon is going back five years, spent that nearly $400 million and in kind and direct donation to support 550 schools across the u.s. and demonstrating what it's like to bring, devices, ipads, chromebooks to the classroom. what content goes into these devices. more importantly, how do you train teachers to really leverage that technology. the schools had a seamless transition into hybrid learning, back to in-person learning. that real average quite a bit, to tell the world, this is what this looks like in practice. and this is the example for what can happen with these kinds of schools. >> that is great, i love that program. i did not really know about it, i'm embarrassed. i was like, why don't i know about? dr. pewu, it sounds like you all really pivoted to onsite gallery spaces to digital spaces. can you talk i used vigil during this time? >> yes, i teach students, a lot of graduate students in public history how to integrate technology into public history work. so for me, it is a natural outreach to extend that to historic sites and organizations that are also looking to develop their online presence or to develop their, bring their collections to a wider public using technology. so, at the time of the pandemic, i was actually working with a historic site in bridgeport, connecticut. we were building their back and repository, i digital repository. a huge part of their capacity building was owning their narrative, owning their story. they had things spread across multiple laptops, hard drives. that is what we were working on. once the pandemic hit, they said cease and desist. we need an online presence. their website where did she 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. i keep part of what i emphasized was that, similar to what jean-claude noticed, is that teachers, parents were looking for materials through enhance student engagement, but also to familiarize themselves with local histories 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 a brick and mortar, as i call it, exhibit that had been on display, it had been linked with a lot of literacy programs and local initiatives to train students as docents. we weren't able to move all of that online. we are able to get a lot of the images and some of the background story behind that exhibit on the web. >> that's really exciting. it is so interesting to 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 are finding that's working best for a digital audience? and where do you see the digital audience evolving? i'm going to start with gary, if i can. i don't know, how many of you have been to monticello before? so it exhausts me when i go and see what president jefferson did. i'm always so tired. so i'm really excited to hear what gary did to turn that all into digital asset. >> well, i think we, you know, like everyone else, we had to make this pivot and scramble to think about how we kept relevant content. so, at first it was, let's just get something online. we built a website in 1997. i think that was the first time we had an online presence, as of many of you who have been in this field, for a long time probably for, a decade, there is a lot of back and forth in the museum field, well, does building a museum website prevent people from visiting that type of argument went on for a while. there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence to that. now of course, digital is so ubiquitous, it is an engagement tool, it went from being may be secondary for us to being primary. we began to think of who these audiences are. there's no such thing, there is no such thing as a general audience. there just isn't, right? we have constituencies. 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, we created socials for kids, families when they were at home. we did live streams. we just started, like a lot of folks did, we start doing weekly live streams at first. we had some support from the nih, from cares funding to do that. we pitched for a grant, but we've now built that into a sustainable long term strategy. so once a week we still do a livestream. which gives us a much wider opportunity of topics that are harder to do -- perhaps an on site experience or exhibition. it brings fresh voices. bringing people to the table who otherwise you might not hear about. last year we had about 1 million views for those 2021 live streams. what we are trying to figure out now is how do you take that data, those emails, all those things that you leverage as and then deepen that engagement. that is, i think for us, the question that we are wrangling with now. that is really what, we did was create more short form. short form, that is tough in our field. being concise? short form content. videos, podcast, and live streams. >> gary, what platform are you using for your livestream? >> we use streamyard for our live streams, we talk to colleagues we talk to folks in other institutions. how we learn what we thought would work best, really had to do with some trial and error that everyone is undergoing at that point. the other thing i will mention, quickly, is the first day of the pandemic we had already been experiment-ing with zoom. we knew what zoom was before march. >> i think we all do now, right? >> yeah, we all do now! but before march, 2020 we had known what zoom was. we were piloting a live virtual tour for school groups. so outdoors. wi-fi connections weren't great. we did build an outside correction 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 day we closed. it was great. we have learned a lot since then. >> that makes sense. you know there were so many during covid. linkedin live, twitter, there are so many ways. you can try multiple things. you don't really know, exactly, what is going to work. and i think in a digital world you're going to want to hit multiple audiences. you can't have one thing, you need to try multiple things. and, let's go to you. you are in a big project right now, really big project! you and i met this morning. so, president roosevelt is another one, i think we should have a contest. who got to more places and did more things roosevelt or jefferson? we have the presidential run at the washington nationals. we need to have something. >> only one gave a speech after getting shot. >> i appreciate that. >> so, talk a little bit about what your plan is. how are you going to use the digital assets in your planning process? >> well, teresa, thank you so much. i want to begin with gratitude with stewart and anita. anita, i know you've been planning this event for two years! we are all here in person, live. thank you. such a pleasure to be with you. the whha has been a tremendous supporter of the theodore roosevelt presidential library project which owes a debt of gratitude to dr. stacey cordery from dickinson state university is in the audience. at dsu have got this idea started about two years ago. and the last two years, and remarkably, during the pandemic. probably due to digital we have really rocketed to where we are now on the cusp of acquiring the land on which the future set will be situated, in the badlands of western north dakota. that will start next month, a groundbreaking in june of 2023. we will open, this is a perfect segue into lunch, on july 4th 2026. what was interesting about the pandemic, we are not pivoting to digital. we are born in digital. we are digital native museum. from the start, one, the association with the dsu and the theodore 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 rob and melanie walton foundation of $10 million to the theodore roosevelt center to continue that tremendous work, working in partnership with them. and for the museum itself, it just affords us an incredible opportunity to think about the digital native experience from the start. our platform is leadership, citizenship, and conservation, and our goal is to bring people, yes, to western north dakota to get out into nature. to experience theodore roosevelt national park, to go elkhorn ranch, to the cradle of conservation. maybe we'll get several hundred thousand, or several million, 3 million at mount rushmore, 4 million at yellowstone. there is an audience that we can reach their. 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 as a much wider and greater audience. i will give this example, think of this as a conservation library. sort of what reagan is to defense, theodore roosevelt is to conservation. the one signature issue of the many great accomplishment, it lends itself to getting outside, getting outdoors, getting into nature. it may be the opposite of saying digital. we are working with a lot of really interesting augmented reality companies. they know that life is going to live with the device at your side or in your pocket. how can you actually use theodore roosevelt and the presidential site to come as a way to let tr be an avatar of the outside experience, a guide to all of the national parks, all of the areas of our state parks, all those other areas outside. we are really thinking of this as a distributed digital site from the start. >> well, it's the metaverse! everyone knows about the metaverse, right? and that is really what we will be able to experience. so realtime polling. if you could do a digital, you didn't have to go there in person but you could do a digital, realtime walk-through of this museum, would you go? would you be open to doing that? so i love that. i think, you know, stewart is going to kill me but i have this idea of doing a passport for every student to get to every library. and you get something from the white house historical association as you reach these peaks. because if we could reach all those students. or even just me, i would love to go through them. you could do it in person, or digitally. i think that would be a great way to do it. >> i want to add a bit to that. the two programs, one in particular that talks very specifically to the ar or vr technology. we have a partnership with the un called my own work 360. we have young people around the world submitting videos of their work, where they live, that builds and level of empathy that you couldn't do, you couldn't buy. the idea of bringing sites to people versus just coming to the sites. i think that's an amazing way of doing it. how you curate that with social studies, other subject areas, integrating that into the curriculum for teachers and principals i think that is really a fiundamental part. one last point if i may i would love to push here. we tend to expect school administrators or teachers to play a general contractor. they have to make sense of all of these various pieces. the last panel we talked about partnership. the more we can do that, the more we can provide shovel ready tools for teachers to actually use the easier it is for them to make use. one quick example of that, we were working with civics network. pulling in facing history, civics. one platform the has tools from all of the civics organizations. think of like netflix playbooks. you can just use in kabul. on the back end is a learning science engine. this is a part of learning science you're actually addressing, either party may want to consider, when you building up these units of study or class lessons. >> i think jean-claude, one thing we are thinking about is not only putting those tools in the hands of teachers but students, children are creators now. they are editing live on their devices and they like to put together pieces of visual puzzles. it's a very visual medium. we are thinking about, inside the museum experience, learning from all of the wonderful presidential sites that exist, but how can they learn from doing? theodore roosevelt is a wonderful example but let's face it, and they come out and say facts and figures from theodore roosevelt's life that doesn't really imbue them with the spirit of tr. we want people to learn not just about but from theodore roosevelt's example and take that out to the digital world where -- give them pieces of the great story, so they can take their version of the story. tell their story through this example. >> i love that idea because if you think about learning today, students, even me, i was a visual learner. to be able to create something where they can put something into their world. how does it relate to who they are at every level? i love that you can do that. find a student in every classroom they can walk the classroom through and have that dialogue. and i think in a digital world, i think it is much more available. dr. pewu, in your world, have you thought about these ideas? how to bring more individuals into you that experience. >> yes, i was saying to gary, this is what i think about every day. yeah, so one of the things that this conversation brings up is the issue that we all face whether we are engage with digital tool technologies it is building digital literacy skills. and so, that is one of the areas that i emphasize both in my teaching, and my outreach is that the technology is there. as you said, the metaverse is here what we need to do is take a step back and really hone digital literacy skills, media literacy, information literacy, -- excuse me. we can do that using the technologies at the same time. so again, it is that idea of thinking and doing simultaneously. one of the ways that i am actively trying to bring more people into this space is i am serving as co-p. i. on an andrew mellon grant called digital ethnic futures consortium. and the entire purpose of this, this large grant, is to support the work of faculty librarians and students who want to engage the intersections of ethnic studies and what we call the digital humanities, but could very much be digital tools, scholarship, broadly. my emphasis in that is really to create intentional pathways 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 to hone that through both curricular and cocurricular experiences, including one that i am piloting now, which is taking students from a minoritized community within the university and bringing them on into this digital collaborative in which they are working actively working one of the digital public humanities projects, creating a data story telling and mapping of black-owned businesses throughout orange county, california. >> i love that. >> yeah, creating projects like that. i think you are 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 becomes. >> yes. in the last panel i thought they talked about, i am a huge fan of icivics. i just love that program. teaching civics through to all of us they have such a great curriculum. if you consider taking that curriculum and make sure everyone understands they have the ability to participate in the democratic process and why that matters to each and every individual, that can change the world. >> i think it's also a matter of equity and representation. doctor pewu, it sounds to me like your work is clearly advancing this. what's been interesting about tackling theodore roosevelt 100 years after the president is gone from the earth, we have a philosophy that we will humanize, not lionize tr. and building in western north dakota, where there are five tribal nations of dakota, they have allowed us to engage in an intentional dialogue of whose story is being told, how is it being told. often, i think, these institutions are shown as a story or a version of the story is being told, and not the whole complicated story. and history, as alluded to in the previous panel, is hard! it's complicated. museums are supposed to do hard things. i think what's been refreshing and really encouraging about our effort is we then as a historic figure can engage in really complicated dialogues with communities who haven't been heard. allow them, through our work, to tell their story, not just hours. >> and we have had complicated topics throughout our history that we have to take on. slavery, these things -- we have to take these topics on. and things change over time. we have to address them head on in each and every one of these sites. i want to talk about -- talk about for a moment what can be the dark side of the technology world when you are trying to put these things up. we have to worry about cybersecurity, we have to worry about protecting our data we have to make sure that we are responding one of the questions that came from the audience last time was, how did you as the former chiefs of staff, how did you deal with the press and the media? well, over this period of time, technology changed! right? from not only having twitter. and it definitely wasn't in the white house until president obama got there. he was the first to bring technology in. which changed the way the thinking of how the white house operated. i remember them pushing out all computers and bringing in ipads. it was a crazy day when they did that! you have to think about that in your sights. and in the world that we are living in. how are you addressing, one, security of your data and information? making sure your sites stay up. two, i'll say how do you respond when there can be negative press? which is things that you have to do. are you preparing for that? >> yeah, sure can. to the first part of, that data security, one of the questions, we built out tools even online for students, also to make sure we are compliant with all the laws regarding what information you can or can't -- yes, exactly, with ferpa. there is that later of consideration, protecting the information of people. we also have ticketing database that has 150,000 transactions and it annually, it has to be secured. as well as the educational assets. we were hacked in 20--, 2017. we had to deal with this problem firsthand. how have we done it, why, and put all your eggs in one basket. hosting services in different places, that have different purposes, the appropriate degrees of security. it is an important part of that. we beefed up our i. t. team to make sure that we have, we do penetration test regularly on our website. to look for potential vulnerabilities. how to handle media and press. we are no stranger to controversy, in terms of our interpretation of jefferson, and a monticello. before social media, it there is one way you can do that. since social media, there is of course very different ways to, you have to respond much faster and you have to be prepared to engage directly on the platforms when necessary. i know everybody has that issue. how much we put out a statement this week about ukraine, and we made the point that our investment committee of our board of trustees, had adopted a motion to have the outsource advancement firm that man is our portfolio to divest itself of any assets of russia or its satellites. [applause] >> i will clap too. good job! >> we usually don't make statements about, what the border the trustee decides. we did in this case. immediately on twitter, when it went up, i waited like one, two, clearly, of course you have to decide whether you engage. often you do. when you do, you have to work out in advance what you're prepared to say. just maintaining good media relations. that's always a good idea. in a digital era, i think it's really incumbent. and these platforms give us a voice to talk to people we might not always have otherwise talk to. even if we don't necessarily agree. >> freedom of speech, we have it on all our platforms, go to all extremes. i'm really very impressed, by the way, with what you are doing. you do have to respond a nanoseconds if you are going to engage. if you let these things, it's the one big technology thing that most folks miss, in your press and media, you have got to engage or not, you have to decide, and then you have to have your response ready to go. you need a team 24/7 to be doing this. this is one of the big things that technology has changed the world in. who else wants to respond? >> 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. i would say two quick things. on fundraising, since we are a presidential site that is not yet in existence, we have had to think a lot about security relative to the very many ways that people want to donate now. venmo, paypal, to crypto. if you want to be successful in modern fundraising out of presidential site or maybe in general, you have to be 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 are not a popular site. the means by which people can donate, and the ease with which they can, that has to be lockjaw secure. that is their data. that is their financial information. that is the trust you are building with them. in terms of the publicity side of it, again 100 years after the president has left the earth, you have an opportunity to intentionally engage in a dialogue. the theodore roosevelt presidential library foundation was asked by the roosevelt family and the american museum of natural history to accept on a long term loan on the equestrian statue that stood outside of emanate for 80 years. controversial, not exactly the thing you want to do as you are raising fund for a new presidential site. the reason why we did it, 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 nonexistent. and there was no consent on central park west and public view for people 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 anmh, and then engage in unintentional dialogue with the five tribal nations, with black americans, to talk about potential recontextualization of the controversial object. again, if you're going to go there, then be prepared to go the distance. do the hard work to have the dialogue adn discussion that needs to be done. >> the spectrum of individuals you have to communicate with has really changed. i think that's what you are all talking about. you're not just talking to a board of trustees, or the individuals. you are now talking to not just your nation, but the world, who has opinions on this. and we all have to think on an almost global scale. so let me ask you all, in going back to the topic of securing your data and really making sure, one of the things i had the privilege to do, starting and not for profit business, one of the reasons we did this is for that fundamental reason. we saw a lot of not-for-profits did not know how to use technology to advance their missions. i am so proud that i see so many more using this. when it comes to talent, one of the things i always heard, we just can't get talent. it is so hard. by the way, that's everywhere now. can you talk a little bit about how you are approaching the tech talent, to be able to keep up? so, who would like to start? >> i am happy to. with verizon, you have verizon. >> it doesn't pay the salaries of these tech folks, who are very expensive. i live in northern california. i see all the high salaries being paid to tech folks. as you can imagine, we hired a ton of phds, computer science, etc. at times, it is hard to keep these individuals. we can't match the salaries of a google or a facebook. there are a few things we found so far for being helpful, one, because we are national, folks who live almost anywhere in the continental u.s.a., that allows us to keep people. you can live texas, kansas, wherever you want to live. as long as you come to d. c. twice a year, for example. that seems to really have worked. the other one i find helpful, the social mission of the organization. a lot of young people want to help, they want to do social good. so if you filter for that, it tends to work. the last thing we do, is live at stanford, and mit, we recruit graduate students who are coming out. sometimes the first great job they have is with us. they give us 3 to 4 years. we will take it. then they will go on and make a ton of money someplace else. often, they will come back, frankly, to digital promise, because again, that social construct calls them back to the work. again, finding young people, we have a ton, let bunch of phds, all technologists who really want to come into social good. that seems to work fine. >> i love that. dr. pewu, what have you found? >> actually just to piggyback off of that. i think my approach, because i am in the setting where we are training people to go and find these jobs, it has really been one, to train humanity students. those who are already invested and interested in looking at these humanistic questions that our historic sites provide. with tech skills. which is an oxymoron to some of them, because they are like, whoa, why are we learning python? i have to say, well, you don't have to learn it in and out like a data scientist would. but you've got to learn enough to be able to work with a data scientist in the future. i think that is where i'm coming in with, i think we can do better. we know 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 engineering so that when they come out of these programs, the humanities students are already thinking, how can i use technology in new and exciting ways to advance a particular mission? and then the stem students are thinking, at the same time, how can i apply my skills towards these types of programs, like digital promise, or even to working on a project at your site? i was just 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 about how we can create a course, and maybe a data camp. he was saying this exact thing, i can train students on the technology, but you have the stories that make it matter. if we can put those together, we can really do something amazing. that has been the approach. if i can go on one little tangent, i will say, i think tapping into regional comprehensive universities, not just because i work at one, but the majority of college students in the united states attend regional comprehensive universities. and they are not necessarily getting the same access to, whether it's digital humanities, opportunities to gauge and digital scholarship. and that's one of the reasons why we are pushing this digital ethnic futures consortium, because we are missing an entire potential talent pool, and we really need to 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 haven't heard before, which is tying together two really important things. one is the digital skills they need to will earn, but two, is tying it to missions, doing it at the same time. do it in realtime. they are learning the skills. they have to learn the technical skills. it can be short or long, depending on what you are doing. but then 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 know you're coding for purpose. you are actually teaching a purpose. gary, what are you doing? yes i heard you say earlier, you hire more people, you beefed up your security, what about your talent pool? >> i think 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. and i think, so for us, i think more generally, we are in the process now looking at how we articulate these better. how do we talk about what are, not just our mission, everyone has a mission statement. they can usually trot it out. visions as well. but values. what are our core values. i think the more we align those, to say this history is, this inclusive history is worth knowing because it helps us understand, not just who we were, but who we need to be. what we can come become. what we aspire to be together. and so, i think, that is a conceptual idea about that. i think for us, honestly in terms of talent, we try to, beg, borrow, everybody we can -- >> steal is okay? >> the university of virginia is a good partner on certain projects. their center, their digital scholars lab as a tremendous resource for us, for things like 3d, spatial analysis, scanning. we created 3d objects. you know, one of the most compelling objects, personally for me in monticello, it has nothing to do with jefferson, it's a piece of chinking that came from, it was archaeologically excavated long ago. i think in the 80s. so clay placed between logs in a house, to seal it up. you can see the fingerprints of the person who put it there. that has been exhibited. we have, we've made 3d models to use in an exhibition so the original doesn't have to be. and you wouldn't know it, unless you could compare, by touching the objects. so, for certain things like that, having partners, particularly in academia, i think, is really helpful. honestly, for us we're still pretty small scale. this is a question we still, i don't think, beyond finding those partners, we had to develop a lot of it in-house. so, i created the first manager of digital learning at monticello in the position in 2014. and that took a while. that was from someone who had worked within the museum for a long time who had some relevant background. but the idea of teaching everybody python, or being converssant, if you've ever done any work building a house, i don't know if you've ever done construction, any work remodeling, it's easier to have a conversation with a contractor if you know little that what you're doing. even if you don't, even if you can't do it yourself. i love that idea, thats something we want to explore more. >> i made every individual in my unit, 10,000 people, i made them all take the first basic computing course and pass it, even my executive did it. so many people have come back and said, oh my gosh, i'm so glad i did this! even with the basic course. you can move up the scale something like $20,000 in tally. the basic computing tack course. >> this is the single biggest opportunity for presidential sites, tech talent, digital future. you all said it so eloquently. learn the past, know the future. we are living through the great resignation. people are voluntarily leaving their jobs to go to more fulfilling fields. that is obviously an exam to try these organizations. we also have a philosophy at the tr's, nonprofit is a tax bracket not a business plan. we are developing a content studio. i think it is highly unusual for a presidential library. the content studio is working with partners in augmented reality in virtual reality. talking about doing film, television, looking at digital platforms, different ways of bringing in revenue to the organization. spreading the message of the organization. not always requiring everyone to visit the actual site to be a part of the tr library. building those in from the beginning. it's not too late if it already exists, but it does give us, i think, an advantage. really are, i said earlier maybe what the reagan library is to defense the tr library will be to conservation and sustainability. one of our aspirations of the library is to be the most sustainable museum in north america, and potentially in the world. we are in western north dakota. we are second only to the state we are in, is the world's leading energy production. that gives us a really interesting opportunity to have a conversation with the energy industry about the transition that we are all in. theodore roosevelt would have had one foot in the president and one eye in the future. he would've certainly been a part of that dynamic discussion. i feel that there are issues beyond the history. or what the history represents! each presidential site, each organization, they can think about, say, where can we reach a larger audience for that current discussion? it's probably going to be through technology, tech talent partnerships and digital. >> you really have the unique opportunity from the ground up to create the most innovative, you dont have to go back at your point. you can create something that is very fungible and easy to manage with new tool that you can bring on. i think one of the things that i love that you pretty much all said is, you can use that local talent. you have built in talent with universities that you can go use. and with that i'm gonna jump and make a connection to partnerships, because earlier we started talking about partnerships let me know how you all think at each of your sites about partnerships. how do you, how do you manage them and go get more? so gary, let's start with you again. >> yeah, over the years we've had, partnerships with several institutions and nonprofits. and again, one of the first very fruitful ones in 2012 with the center of history and new media in george mason university, in terms of building a website for teachers, actually, that was based on an exhibition that we had at monticello, and how they could utilize those primary source documents. both the trends -- both as text but also objects. >> right. >> so those kinds of partnerships work through the networking that happens in the field. partnerships, their partnerships with the for profit entities are always a little more difficult, sometimes. there have been cases where, you know, we have found things that work well through networks of our trustees are very good source for those ideas. partnerships with -- there are also people who want to pitch you a lot of things. -- you have to vet those very carefully. 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 of -- so, we built an app in 2015 about slavery at monticello. and that app, we actually had funding that allowed us to go to developers and make small bets. because they would say, here is a feature that's going to be great! we'll, if we gave you this much, not a lot of money? can we prototype that and test it first? can we see it work on site? and if it doesn't work well, we will go through three developers before we found the one we wanted. those aren't exactly partnerships but we thought about how to test and iterate before we adopt. >> do you have any, do you all, find that one model works. do you have one person that manages all your partnerships? or do you multiple -- do you, like parse it out? >> so we've attempted over the last year, my role in the organization changed in 20 into the one that i have now in part to attempt to do that. to centralize those partnerships. they are still distributed. i have research colleagues, archaeologists especially, who do all kinds of technical work through the digital archaeological archive of comparative slavery. they have built the data protocols in the back and. this method for allowing sites across the southeast and the caribbean to do this, some of which are also presidential sites. they are not all in one place, they are distributed based on goal and mission. >> so jean-claude, let me ask you, how do you think about partnerships and manage them? >> we do a lot of work with partners. because by ourselves we can't eat the entire elephant. two things we look for. one is actually solving a fundamental challenge, whether it be digital, local, or national, we tend to focus on that. see how we, but we call a value network of partners together. superintendents, or something that has to do with an adult workforce. right now we are actually doing work in dallas along the regional pathways. we are looking at educator pathways from early learning to being a school principal. how do we work with the industry, community partnerships in dallas here. school systems, etc. creating a pathway for young people to go all the way up. that kind of position is what we look for. the other thing is what we call, mutual-ism. for a partnership to actually work they both have to benefit. if it doesn't, it's not beneficial. so, what's in it for you? what's in there for us? the impact his primary. the second thing we make sure that all partnerships are benefiting from the partnership, otherwise it is unsustainable. >> do you have allies, i will ask dr. pewu and ed, do you have technology partnerships that you have tried in particular? so sometimes, i know tech companies can be hard to work with. you have to manage them a bit. >> when you said partnerships right away i was thinking, oh my goodness! i had -- thankfully through the digital ethnic futures -- i was able to create a position, part time. but still a position! for someone to help manage the partnerships. before it was all me! i was getting like, very excited but overwhelmed! one of them was we up partnered with a student run nonprofit called bit project. and they are students pursuing degrees or recently completed degrees in computer science, software engineering, and they are looking to teach non-tech folks those same skills. so, we partnered in 2020 to design a curriculum that actually integrated narratives, or actually existing projects like the slave voyages project -- freedom on the move product. into data science curriculum for humanities for non tech folks, i'll put it that way. [laughs] >> yeah, that's good. >> i was just gonna say, to bounce off of jean-claude's statement, is that with what i have seen, we do a lot of community engaged digital public humanities work. managing partnerships where we have like, funders and foundations, the partner with us. but we also just have community membersand their local libraries or like, local organizations that are just cultivating and retaining the local history. we recently did one with a performing arts center in costa mesa. they are all varied. but i think you pointed out is, knowing that mutual-ism is important. it's important that you are going to have different partners, for very different reasons, but partnership is definitely the path to go on. it can lead to, you know, grants, it could lead to new initiatives, it could lead to recruitment! so, i just can't emphasize the necessity of partnerhsips. >> i love that -- >> and then i have one speed around. >> i know we want to get on to the q&a i won't take long to simply say, raise your hand if you work for the tr library. there's four of them here! and they have been instructed not to leave dallas 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 cannot survive without those partnerships. there is a guy who's associated with the tr library too, joe wiegan. you should get to know him too! >> i love that. by the way, i have allergies. i promise it's not covid! [laughs] >> legally required to say that. >> this is the speed round. they don't know what i'm going to ask them. after talking to and i had an idea for each one of them. can you tell me a book that you would recommend to the audience to the read about your area, something that you get super excited about! i know and because he has the answer i told him to this morning. >> this is the challenge with theodore roosevelt. there's so many great books -- obviously the admin morris trilogy is fantastic beginning with the rise of theodore roosevelt. if you want a good beach read you cannot do better than candice millard's river of doubt. we can go on and on and on. non tr subject i would say these truths by jill lepore, the best we have had over the past 18 months. >> jean-claude? >> very quickly there's a book called think again, i forget the author's name i just finished it. he teaches people how to step back and rethink. uses the blackberry as a good example of why we need to rethink. >> wow, i love that. >> the digital -- i have one essay in it so i am plugging. it [laughs] i think it gives an overview of how these discussions are being had specifically within africana studies, black studies. >> that's awesome. >> so i guess for -- thinking about a jefferson biography i would have to go with meacham's book. jon meacham's thomas jefferson, the art of power. a very good book to use the medium of his age to effectively communicate ideas. ideals to effect change. i think that is true. calum newport's deep work, i feel overwhelmed by emails and -- i refuse to let the i. t. people. for a long time i wouldn't put microsoft on my computer. i didn't want that blank chat function working. how to create space to think. i think it's a real challenge for all of us. i found this book, i don't know if i were the practice it enough to preach it but i found it inspirational. >> so you lined up for questions but mine i'm gonna say if you haven't done wine in the white house with fred ryan, you've got to do it! it's fun. he might even do a fireside chat with a group of people if you can get together. all right, let's take some q&a! who can have questions for us? >> hi my name is chrissy weininger, i am from the russell b, hayes presidential library museum from fremont, ohio. thank you very much for all of your commentary. i just wanted to quickly mention. i'm looking around the room i see some partners who 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! this is the way -- it had a strong digital component. now i've heard all of you i think you could have an even stronger digital component. we've connected with ten sites, we have eight presidents in ohio that we gladly share with a couple other states. and indiana, over there with first ladies. does the partners. i don't know if my other ohio compatriots who were part of the project. we deliberately called it not ohio's road to the white house. we wanted this to be a test case and enlarge it, to include some other presidential sites. not only because of covid but because we wanted to have a life beyond that. during the planning for that we came up with the idea, there is a program called the leader in me, which is eight leadership habits. it's based on the eight habits of highly effective people, you may be familiar with. it became more than a passport program. we wanted to be more than a passport program, it had some real meat and content to it. i do have a question! [laughs] >> yes, i now. we gotta go. my point is also pr. we would love to have a few of you, or all of you, eventually be part of this project. knowing that, do you have recommendations for aspects we can incorporate into this kind of program? >> i would say there is a great platform called composer. i can share more about that. it's a netflix kind of digital piece that brings a lot of civics content into one place for teach us to access. it's a place where you can put, for example, all the tools and solutions you have. it shouldn't cost you any money one so ever. it is called composer. >> anybody else, any other thoughts on platform? >> if not, grab it afterwards, and i have a couple thoughts. next? >> good afternoon, my name is tracey messer, with the calvin coolidge presidential foundation. thank you for being here. one of my earliest memories of american presidents in technologies was going to disney world and first of all, wanting to go to the hall of american presidents, all of the things there. and true to form, when i went to the hall of presidents, mr. coolidge was there, in true character, remained silent. mr. coolidge had a lot of things to say. i am looking forward to the day that we may actually have hologram technologies that will be truly interactive. we can learn more about each of our presidents, and dare i say, there may even be a capability in the white house to summon up any one of the presidents, who may be a counselor in a time of crisis, when they have unique knowledge. so, do you know of any efforts, through places like mit, or other georgia tech, who are may be working on creating a holographic presidents? >> i will say very quickly, local projects is the interpretive firm where we are working. they did the green road rising, the tulsa race massacre museum in oklahoma. they did the legacy museum in alabama. they did the media for 9/11 along with our architect snohetta in new york. fabulously creative, on the bleeding cutting edge of technology. hologram, visuals, and others. local projects would be my can recommendation. >> there is a lot going on. the whole concept of augmented reality is getting there. these folks can curate content, this idea of making history alive and rich. especially for young people. so it's not, as a last panel pushed, boring. but really exciting to actually engage. there is a lot of work going on. it's pushing these folks to curate the content. >> i guess, once -- i'm blanking on the company. the platform is going to be called reach. it is produced through noni de la pena, who is considered the godmother of vr. basically, her company is designing this platform so that people without a computer science, engineering background can create augmented vr environments. i think they are accepting people for beta testing right now. >> and i would say one of our big goals with the white house association history is we continue to have augmented reality worlds. i would love to be able, to our love for people to be able to go through the white house in an augmented way. presidents walk out to your point and say, did you know this happened, or this happens? 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 is a pro serve, how do we do it, how do we fund it kind of project. does that make sense? thank, you that is great by the way. next. >> you have to make the technology cheaper for folks, unfortunately. >> make them do it in kind as much as possible. we have to support it, if we get them to help it put it together, and then we just provide the support to fund it afterwards. >> good afternoon. i am nate from the clinton foundation. i have got two questions. one, how do you define a virtual visitor? it has been quite controversial. is the one second view? is it a reach, is it a click? secondly, any advice on how do we evaluate the effectively of your online resources? is it through surveys, is there a unique thing we should be looking for as success in digital learning? >> i will jump on that. you know, one of the things we have begun to really do is use google analytics to see how people interact with different tools and solutions. we have a great platform called variability navigator. we get about 11,000 educator hits a month. we are finding it from south africa, from australia, from the philippines. but to your point, we are trying to see if they are sending 33 minutes, 20 minutes, four seconds? why is this actually happening? we can actually modify the experience to engage people better. right now, it's all the analytics. we cannot ask those folks yet. again, privacy issues. we can't go and ask. we are seeing schools of education in south africa actually accessing a particular tool. the question becomes, how do we actually change the experience to get folks to stay longer? >> i could not agree more, jean-claude. measure engagement, not visits. >> because they can only click for a second. it has got to be time on. mostly, almost every application now that you run should have analytics with it. and then you can roll it out through a tool like google analytics, which allows you then to then see, why did they click on, and then what did they stay on, if that makes sense. >> where do they come from, if you can look at the ip addresses, which is nice. >> i'm alison haaland. i created and host a podcast called the kennedy dynasty podcast. it's about their history and legacy. i'm completely different here. i did not come from a history background at all. i came from marketing, i clicked a netflix documentary one night and was hooked. that's what happened. now i have a real passion for teaching people about history and how important it is for our generation to learn. i have realized in my audience a little bit that people come for an episode about karen besset's style and stay for the new frontier. i'm curious, what are your plans and strategies for taking this awesome digital content that you have been putting it out to people like me, that just need that little spark. they need to click it, and then have a whole world open up for them? you go where the audience is. >> what you are doing, alison, it is exactly what i think every president site needs to be doing. create content, not in the form that we enjoy consuming it, but the audience does. put it on the platform and places where they are likely to not just have to seek it, but to serendipitously find it. that is the big difference. social media is not a network of channels you choose, it is content that is carrying it to your liking. we need to put content in the places where the audience is consuming it, want to consume it, and in the form they want to consume and not the way we do. >> anybody else? >> i was just going to say. one exercise that i have students do, digital storytelling is phenomenal. there are so many ways to do it. i can go a long way. and one thing i challenge students to do is, so especially student who like to write and be verbose, give me a digital storytelling that i can post on instagram that walks me through two minutes in history. that's it. sometimes that is the spark that some audiences need and they see that, and then they are coming back for more. >> i like what you are doing, in terms of connecting a different generation with an earlier generation. even if it's fashion, time bound, the gilded age, you are going back and connecting from today yesterday and yesterday to today, and i think that is a really good strategy. next? this is our last one, we are down to one minute and 50 seconds, we are on target. >> hi, every one on panel, and thanks for the great discussion, i'm samantha hunter gibson, the director of education at the white house historical association. since we are having this fantastic conversation about making history accessible to technology, i did want to point out that just outside this room, at our rubenstein center booth, we do have available with our oculus headsets a vr immersion into the white house and the public spaces there. i invite you all to check that out while you are here. [applause] >> part of the great work that he was doing. if you will join me one more time in giving our panelists a big round of applause, and thanking them for their time. >> thank you. >> and i just want to say, thank you all for taking the time to come and please give us feedback on other topics we would like to know in digital or tech. we would love to do it, i know any would like to be back as well. so thank you all, enjoy the rest of the day. the rest of the day. this session first ladies impact and influence will explore the many ways in which first ladies? have sha >> this session, first ladies -- impact and influence, will explore the many ways in which first ladies have shaped history as the closest adviser to the president. as advocates for both change in continuity, as well as how the influence america's

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