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Go.
nifty
summer.
I'm not sure if it'll take a civil point.
I'm sorry.
In the bathroom.
We weren't going to.
I'm not sure if it's going to take a civil point.
So we will issue it.
I just wanted to touch on the
amendment that was asked.
We want to make sure that you're like makers.
Let's do that right here.
Let's go to Confidence Talk here.
Let's do it right here.
Let's go to Confidence Talk here.
Let's do it right here.
Let's do that right here.
Let's do it right here.
That's amazing. That's right. There's a silver spoon that I told you to go to that.
It's great.
It's really fun.
It seems like that.
I'm going to break, break.
I'm gonna pick one on,
communist Ainville.
That's not it.
Gotcha.
That's not.
Yeah.
What's in the.
As you want places to be kind of
Simpsons.
I thought of some good reading to
us.
Oh, it's just a curve.
I just see.
I can just open the chancy.
I'm just gonna be into that.
Sanford came.
I don't know. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven.
Six. Seven. seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Eight. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Man. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry
You have MR loaned.
I think we're ready to start, and thanks for being here on a rainy Friday the 13th in Mass.
I appreciate everyone's attendance. We've got a really great program lined up, and I think the
first major start with a phone call, and as soon as Sally gets back we're going to do that.
That's all I have to tell you one. Go ahead there.
Reed Hall, I'm here. File the phone. Are you back? Oh, there he is. Brian Copeland,
Paul Bonner, here. Mr. Sue, I believe, is that so? Yeah.
Um, Sude. Here. Chris Borland has reported absent. Roberta.
Tom Fisk.
Eve. Here. Jennifer. Here. Karen. Here.
Okay. Regina. Here. Oscar. Here. Nick.
Nick plans to join at 1.30. John. Here. Lisa. Here.
Hey, Mark.
Is it? Thanks, Mark. And Steve. Hi, Steve. Here.
That's the role, Reed. All right. Thank you very much. I think we have a quorum.
We'll be clear quorum. So let's move on to today's agenda. And I would let's.
Anyone have any comments on myths? I know I just passed a few lines here. Sally, just a couple
minor comments. And there's a couple of me ahead of time. Are there further corrections in the minutes?
Thank you. Thank you, Oscar.
Any further comments? All in favor of approval, please signify by saying aye.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Uh, and now I think, uh, they want to welcoming Sarah Esport. And unfortunately, Sarah is in
Green Bay, I understand. It cannot be with us. It's cannot tie in by Zoom today. So we'll have to
have her introduce them in your time. You want to say a few words about Sarah?
Yeah. We welcome, uh, we welcome Sarah as the new director of WPR. She's been here for three months.
And her prior experience, um, includes 25 years in media producing, reporting, editing roles,
at this of public radio, New Hampshire public radio, and Vermont public. And we do have a guess
for a low radio here with us today. Very important guest.
Mm hmm. Roy, what I think of yourself. Roy Christian's name. I mean,
board chair for the Wisconsin public radio association. And, uh, my first time here.
And, uh, I'm thinking that we need to do this, this cross thing, you know, between the boards,
uh, more often. I think you're right. It's good idea. Roy and I signed a letter this
summer that went out on a bunch of chair issues going on in Washington, DC. And, uh, it went to
all 70,000 members, 75,000, seven, one, two, and it had an amazing open race. And, uh,
flew to read a piece of that. I don't know if you received any hate mail because of our matter.
Nothing room for it. Yeah. And we want to thank the staff for helping to have that.
It was a team effort. So I'm going and a little more to having Sarah here in the near future.
And I know that Sarah was, uh, really bothered me. She couldn't be here.
Well, one of those things, I think we need to have a great day.
Probably comes to us today. I think so, but, um, funding levels.
I don't think we need to talk about Washington, DC much because nothing's going on in Washington.
I see, right now, but I understand we've been funding separately for this year because it's all,
it's pretty fun. It's really amazing that, uh, we have pre-funding. I don't know how many
agencies have that privilege. I think at one point, there may have been two. Two.
So this is a really good thing for, um, for members to understand. So to take a minute, um,
doing, um, federal government first, appropriate dollars for public broadcasting.
There was this recognition of concern about independence and potential threats of funding cuts
on planning out. And, um, so it is one unusual situations where we are forward about two years.
A moment of wisdom.
Yes, it has proved, it has proved to be, um, to play out that way because that's sort of things
have heated up. Things generally cool down. I feel like that in the world right now, but, but,
but the cool down in general, they, um, we have done really well with their opponents,
where, kind of just to get things done quickly, they would have.
Yeah. And this year was especially challenging because of a select, um, group within the house
that they want to cut. So that's actually our budget, send it to food for funding. So I'd have
to go to some type of my meeting, my committee. Hopefully, I think it'll be okay. Just matter
if this other stuff getting out of the way here, which is still pending. And I don't think it's
going to be resolved this week. So, so, um, this, uh, state report, ECB has been notified that 5.3
million capital budget request was funded at the 5 million dollar level, which really, uh,
it's very nice too. And that kind of funding coming out of the state capital, especially in
these days. So Wednesday, April 17, state advocacy day. So we hope we have a good turnout in the
capital for that. April 17. Now, uh, unless there are comments on that, private comments on those
nice, scary issues, and we'll keep you advised when we know more about what's coming out of
Washington, D.C. But for this year, I think we're going to check. Now, we could I just ask? I mean,
I realize that getting 5 million out of the 5.3 is great. What is it we're going to have to
give up, if anything, or is that really, is there something essential that we're going to.
Yes. This is, um, this is, um, directed to the education communication board. Right. So this
will go to more this budget. Um, ECB has reserves. So if, um, I expect their usual practice would be
to draw on reserves to make up that, make up that difference. I don't think there would be anything
lost is really, uh, that's over the 5% to a paying ask. Right. I think that's just similar to what
the city does. I just want the board of the Madison Public Library. Uh, and we have substantial
reserves. And when the budget comes out from the city, it is expected that, well, you can think
about reducing your reserves. So let's, let's, um, I forgot that right behind me looking at
anybody about this. I can't, I can't, I can't. I don't know necessarily if we're going to be
driving on reserves, but we're going to be able to observe it. Right. easily. There's always with
the capital projects, projects that we anticipate that are going to happen. You know, we're applying
for a license for power to somewhere or something like that. And we don't get it. We don't track
our FCC, you know, someone else, all bids as they like that. So it's, um, it's flexible.
Let me have a moment. It will be, um, and the legislature knows. The relationship with ECB
and, uh, that the funding has been really, really wonderful. There's another thing too, is that
then things can, I'd say maybe that goes into the next, um, into the next capital. So this is
great news. It's really fun. It's great news. And, um, they, you know, about,
about eight years ago, we had a really good conversation in the floor about what was looming
and what were the big challenges ahead. And one of those was the total replacement of our tower,
and brought, uh, transmitter, uh, because, um, with the digital transition, they all went in
at the same time, which meant they all, um, retired at the same time, which meant it was a
pretty significant, um, amount of money to replace that. And, um, ECB was really, uh,
surprisingly and wonderfully, um, um, successful in, in funding that. And this is kind of like,
a part of that. So it's, um, those, um, was a question, you know, in years ago, whether that
was going to be possible. So it's been a good news and good, um, service, especially on the, um,
emergency alert systems and things like that, that the legislature hasn't pretty good.
Thank you. I apologize. So we should have the staff that are here also to introduce themselves.
Megan, do you want to start there?
It's May and Monday. Um, I'm newly, uh, Director of Education, uh, previously I was exactly
interested. So they, uh, were just constantly about five years.
Okay.
Sarah will be introducing us shortly. Uh, I'm already good when I told you to form a grant.
Hi, I'm Amber Sandal. I'm the grant director at PBS Wisconsin. So I oversee our design
you know, uh, and I'm, I'm the managing director of major gifts,
I've been there for about 18 years.
Uh, I think we're ready to hear from Lisa and her experience, uh, at the John McGinnard events,
order of appreciation.
Yeah, my dad is still talking about it and had to tell his business group the next morning,
what a wonderful, um, event it was and how he loved being my date. So I don't think I'll ever
be able to top that.
It was wonderful to have you there and, uh, there were, there were several other, uh,
individuals from the board there. Oh, but any other comments you have on that? Other than it was
a wonderful event. Well, I think what I was really pleased to see is that there were so many
supporters of public television in the house and there was so much conversation amongst viewers.
And I know my dad and I connected with a few of them and everybody loves to talk about the
programming and the reporting of, you know, issues that affect us Wisconsinites. And it was
really good to be, I think, in the company of so many like-minded people. So I thought that was
amazing. And then I see Sally's got my LinkedIn posts. I mean, I got to tour the studios, you know,
the next day, if you haven't done it, I would so highly recommend it. Um, it was just fantastic.
There's magic that happens behind the scenes. And it was very neat, I think, to see and hear
from staff their role in PBS because you realize it takes a village to create something so amazing.
Um, and so it was neat to be able to, to learn a little bit of the magic and, um, say that it was
just absolutely wonderful. So so happy I was able to come down. Lisa, could you tell us about, uh,
the person from the audience who introduced us? So yeah, so, um, uh, John had asked all of the
board members to stand in the audience, um, you know, as just part of, you know, um, honoring those
that were attending that evening. And so I, I, I stood up with Sue Hay, who is, I think, a couple
of rows are a row behind me. And after the John McGivron program ended, um, a woman in my row
kind of made a beeline for me and said, I saw you stood, you know, um, when they asked board
members to stand and I'm very interested in including PBS in my estate plan. Who do I need to
contact? And, and, and John and Eric looked at me after, after the event when I told them the
story and now like this, this just doesn't happen. So that was pretty neat. It also underscores the
importance of being present at these events. I agree. Awesome. And thank you everyone else for
being there if you were able to come. Quite a few people were there. It's great. So, um, I think
we're really here for Mark Perry, if he's available today, about the projects and the
what that we're, I'm recording hometown stories. Boy. Oh, I was like, what did I do wrong?
Just tell us what's happening in Beloit these days.
So we're really excited about Beloit big, Beloit, Wisconsin, my hometown being the next,
featured, featured community for, for Wisconsin hometown stories. Um, staff have been doing an
amazing job coming down and engaging with the community, our historical society, our NAACP,
our other community groups, our school districts, um, interview and community citizens, people have
turned out for every listening session, every video session, every picture session to talk
about Beloit history has been really incredible. Um, last this earlier this week, there was a group
down that shot some footage of, um, of a house that are that youth from our youth field program
just built and is getting ready on the market for a mile small part in it. But Beloit is incredibly
excited about hometown stories. It is, you know, it's a small community with a rich history. Um,
and as people know, it's a very racially and culturally diverse community. So, really great
things going on. It's very, I can't think of a person the community is not just incredibly
excited about about what's happening. So I also want to plug, um, the Ready to Learn program,
which has been going on. We're in, we just finished, we're in our, I think this is your number four.
Um, but all the work that PBS kids staff are doing in Beloit right now is just incredible
in terms of engaging families and children and promoting early literacy and early learning.
Lots of really great stuff in that space. The staff have been incredible to be,
and have been great role models for other organizations from my organization,
from the other partner organizations as well. So lots of great stuff going on in Beloit. Thanks
to PBS Wisconsin. Thank you, Mark. Appreciate that. And we're looking forward to other great things
coming out of the light discussions. Um, Eve briefly want to talk about Judy Woodruff again.
I know she's your hero. My new best friend. Anything else about that evening?
That evening idea fest, which is a, a series of programs sponsored by the Capitol Times here in
Madison, uh, had as, uh, one evening's event, uh, an interview, uh, by David Marinus, um,
a, uh, whose, whose dad was the editor of the Capitol Times many decades ago, uh, and is, uh,
a reporter and author. Um, he is, he interviewed, uh, Judy Woodruff and Al Hunt. Uh, he brought
him, according to what the cap time said, they, uh, uh, they are neighbors and friends of David
and Linda in DC. And he invited them to come and talk about what, what is going on. It was a very
exciting event. Um, there was, um, it was wonderful that PBS, uh, sponsored the table. I had hoped
that we might be able to get through a little bit for us, uh, to share with some of our, uh,
donors, both those current and those we hope to become donors as well. But she wasn't,
um, I think they were not willing to give her up and I understand that. Uh, but it was great to
see her once again. And she was very excited. He sent me a text afterwards that she had talked
to John was last name. She couldn't put your outfit on. Just say Jonathan, Stephen's point.
So, um, but it was, it was a great evening and it was lovely to see her again. Good. Thank you.
Um, I asked her to please come back and let us have an opportunity to honor her in some way.
And I said, certainly, you know, coming to Wisconsin, it is going to be almost mandatory
in the coming year. Yeah. And she understands that. Well,
Jen, anything you want to talk about? Um, the orientation was fantastic. I was so impressed
with the preview of everybody's time. Um, I got to read with, um, Heather,
and Brenda, and John, and, um, there's kind of the whole, the whole crew I got to sit in on,
um, to meeting of Eric's. It was a very full day and it was a great way to kind of immerse myself.
And John told me the history of radio in particular initially. And then, um, I didn't think that
when you said, uh, Morse code at the, I'm a given event, it was Joe, because I was a
dental, but I think other people didn't think it was Joe, um, that it was great to hear my
experience. Um, my name should not be necessarily stories, but if you don't want to do anything
in Lake Country, um, that's it. We'll make that correction.
It might be just a chat. Um, Kyle, you want to talk about your active role in the homecoming
grade? Oh, you bet. That was a fantastic afternoon, just so we can go today. Um, so basically,
I was down there with the PDS staff and there were two general reactions. One, the younger kids
were always asking about Daniel Tiger. Where's Daniel Tiger, which was fun to hear. And then
the older kids, they were actually chanting PBS, PBS, as we went along the parade route. Um, so it
was very unique and very inspiring. And, uh, yeah, it really reminded me of why I'm involved here
and all the potential that PBS has. So it was a great event and looking forward to making even
bigger and better next year. Thank you, Kyle. That, uh, trust being in the parade is, uh,
maybe advertisement too. That's really fun. That's great. Yeah. It is. Did you throw candy?
Say it. We got to do that. We did. We had, we had candies. We had deeds. We've got all kinds
ideas for next year. So it's going to be bigger and better in 2024. Great. There's Karen. Karen,
Michelle, I think there's an award coming to you next week. You want to talk about a big award too?
Yeah, I was very surprised, uh, to be honored with the Carol Jenkins Award. And I had the
opportunity to meet Carol sometime back, but I, and I admired her. She's been in broadcasting
for many years. And, um, so I was really surprised to, you know, get this honor and it, that's going
to be coming up next Thursday in, in New York City. So, um, I didn't know that you knew about it,
but, uh, thanks for mentioning it. You're famous Karen.
Thanks. Yeah, that's really outstanding. We just all really, really
Thank you. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. And well earned and deserved.
I assume that local newspapers in Tomah region will be carrying this live.
No, no, I don't think so, but, uh,
I'm sure there's just any more I know ourselves. Yeah, but thank you. Thank you for mentioning it.
Do you appreciate that? Oh, we're all proud of you. Thank you. Keep it right back there. So,
lunch with the chancellor, uh, October 26th. I think the sign up date is passed, but
that anyone wants to get in yet. I think we could still hopefully arrange that. The room's got a
lot of seats in it. So, but, uh, if you haven't gone to that before, it's really nice. You've got
a chancellor outlights for the agenda for this year and next, and, uh, very engaging person.
Yeah, I think it's a really great time to try to increase our attendance. I'm going because I'm
also on board of visitors for education. But, um, if you haven't been, it's a great experience.
And with the extension now at UW Madison and the need for public media, a radio and TV,
um, you know, to have that presence there to maybe walk up to the pro new provost and welcome him and
make sure he gets to meet you as a person on the board for either public radio or PBS, I think would
be another thing of, you know, just in connecting the dots and kind of, you know, not getting
lost. And I know there's a lot of thinking right now about the provost office and how large the
span of scope of responsibility is. And so, where and how the public media fits into all these
different ways he's thinking about stuff is, um, is important. So if you can make it, I just
encourage you to it's very, and it's very interesting. And it's kind of powerful to see that many alumni
and other friends of UW volunteers board members from all these different areas. And you know that
you've got that kind of level of engagement and commitment that's kind of partnerships and people
that can really make, um, there's such an important component of the university,
not just from a donor standard, but all the many other ways that they're influenced in advocacy
and everything meaning. So I don't mean to get such a long commercial for that. But I mean,
I just, I didn't, that'd be great to, you know, have a little, I'm going to be sitting together.
I remember when that community sort of sitting random stipends, they're usually
at the same table. There are so many people. Right. There is. I, I, I will do everything that you've
said about the lecture, the chances, and add one more thing. This is 170th anniversary of the
university and which makes that whole week very special. If you have an opportunity to go to some
of the other events, please do. Uh, they're having a really a very special gala, uh,
at Whid on Friday night. Right on Friday night. Yeah. But that whole week is filled with things.
So, um, and it, and as Paula said, it gives you a chance to see others. But what we, what we
have that be forward groups is you kind of get together and you immediately, you immediately
go on on to a table. And that becomes your table. All right. And that can hold on. Very
important to do. Yeah. So if anyone would let them like shut the string of tables. Yeah. We'll
watch. Bring your own table stick. Yeah. That's a W. A series of where your badges. I'll bring my
PBS fan. Oh, that's good. You think that is a bad joke. Parking is,
parking is at a premium. So I signed up for a parking spot. I think a lot of 80 I got into
through transportation. Last year, I looked for over half hour for spot.
I think it's good for a lift moment. Yeah, they're good maxies.
It's easier. It's been broken. It's okay. Yeah.
One other board involvement. It was featured in a newsletter. When I went to the PBS
conference in San Diego, I had happened to need a filmmaker who was employed with PBS. And
we she did a video called Quilted Education about her mother's journey as a filmmaker
and making a Black History Month quilt. And she found the Eric and the staff and they invited
her to the Great Quilt Show. So she really enjoyed her time here at the Alliance Energy Center.
I also organized a small gathering of their, she's part of Delta Sigma Theta, one of the
seven Black sororities. And they made some interesting connections.
Thank you for bringing that up. I meant to. It shows the importance of active participation
by the board event, by the San Diego or Eric Bases. Yeah, so you can send me to the next
conference. I'd like to add to that one of our very generous dinners from Reebag and down
with friends. And we grabbed some things to eat and set down and we and the co-turner
daughter joining us. It was really such a wonderful chance for them to hear that story and how much
appreciation they had for public television and for us to invite them. Thank you. They were,
it was, you know, it's a day. You sit down for lunch with a donor and have this other person just
love us to death. It was such a great one. Yeah, it took my time away.
Just mention, I live about five walks from Union South. If you're willing to walk, I can take two cars
and personally drive. Whoever, you know, and I'm just going to walk, I always just walk over.
So if anybody just let me know, I can only fit two behind my house. But I'm going to ask you
look on the paper to save $20. Give it back. You can sell it. You can sell it at your party each
time. Okay, very fine. Finance Committee report. I think it's
Brian. Sarah is going to present. But Brian, why don't you kick it off?
I'll kick it off. Thanks, Rhee. So the finance committee recently met and was really pleased
with the audit report that was presented to us. And the audit or the finance committee is
recommending that in order to the draft. And we're going to spend a few minutes and have Sarah
Fincher, who is the signing director, signing partner on the engagement from Flipton Larson.
Thank you for being here. Just to go over a few of the highlights and kind of walk through the
process. And then she's done with the presentation. We'll have some, if there's any questions, we'll
certainly, you know, do a Q&A and then ask for approval of the audit. So with that, I'll
turn it over to Sarah.
Come on, I'll hear. Okay. Sure.
Much. Thanks for having me today. As much of my name is Sarah Fischer. I'm a signing director
with Flipton Larson, Helen. Lori doesn't know this book in two weeks. I'm actually going to be
principal at this family. But yeah, I've had the opportunity to work with you guys for a number
of years. And I really appreciate the relationship that we've built in the opportunity to perform
the audit and also do the text return work as well. Really just wanted to spend a couple minutes
just at a high level, providing an overview of the audit process and then giving you some of the
results and then obviously willing to answer any questions that you might have at this point. But
really, from an audit process standpoint, it was a smooth product. As I expected, we were able to
do some planning work and then came and did our final field work. In the beginning of August,
we were able to come on site and do work on site which was fantastic. It's always good to
get back to campus and get into the building and see people based on the audit we think
was a little bit more efficient process that way. So that was great. Lori did a great job of
getting us all the information we needed. At this point, we are 99.9% of the way done. We're
waiting for approval and we'll be able to issue the final reports. Again, really a testament to
Lori and the work that she does that we're able to start the audit in August and two months later
now. I don't have a ton of comments where the process moves quite that quickly and is that
clean? I think you have a really quick presentation in your packets. Just looking at some of the
significant audit areas that we look at from an audit perspective. Are we looking at internal
controls, making sure that with proper segregation of duties, reviews, having done
reconciliations performed. We don't have any internal control findings that we are reporting to you
so that we felt significant efficiencies on the chair week as to internal controls. Also listed
are just some of the larger dollar amounts on your financial statements where we do spend most of
our audit attention time. That being your cash on investments, promises to give, net assets,
making sure those are being properly classified in accordance with adult wishes. You made your
revenue streams, expenses, and then again the financial statements and all the related disclosures
that go into it. If we are planning on issuing an unmodified or what's known as a clean opinion,
so management is ultimately responsible for the financial statements, Lori actually prepares
the financial statements and we audit them, which again is unusual for a lot of our clients. A lot
of the times we are asked to prepare the financial statements, but Lori takes complete ownership
of them, prepares them, and then we just do audit procedures over those. Like I said, our opinions
basically saying that the financial statements are presented fairly and commentary respects
in accordance with generally accepted appealing principles.
The next slide is a summarized version of the statement of financial position. The actual
financial statements do have a couple more lines in here, but this is just a summarized version
so you can kind of see some trends year over year. A couple of things just to know to investments
increase this year by about three million dollars, related to see the market recovery after 2022
where we get some significant investment losses. 2023 now heads of gains to pick that back up.
Other assets increased this year and that includes some of the capitalized costs related to the
next week conversion so that there is that conversion that's right out of the part two
July 1. So on for Lori. And then overall you'll see your net assets increased about 2.2 million
dollars year over year. The next slide is your statement of activities. So this shows your
major revenue streams as well as your expenses in the comparison to prior year.
Membership was really strong this year with an increase of about some hundred thousand dollars
so really a testament to the organization, the membership growth, the contributions that are
coming in really strong requirements this year. Fundraising and special events increased with the
ability to hold the closed expo in person this year. You can see that uptick. And then a couple
things that were present last year that weren't present this year you had contributed use of space
so that relates to your contracts that you have with the Align Energy Center. They essentially
are giving you some free rent for the expos that are being held there. So that was recorded last
year when those agreements were signed so that's that three hundred and forty thousand dollars.
And then last year there was also the loss on restricted contribution of 518 that was a
write-off of funds receivable. So and then you can see the other significant change was the
investment income which I've touched on earlier 2.3 million dollar increase versus a three million
dollar decrease last year. So overall 2.2 million dollar change in your net assets
year over year. Some of the more significant disclosures there's a lot of information and
the footnotes that provide a lot more detail on items within your financial statements.
Just going to highlight a couple of things. I don't want to do your county policies.
There was a new county standard related to leases that was effective for fiscal 23 that did not have
any significant impact or any financial impact on your disclosures just based you didn't have
any leases that felt under the scope of the new standard that we did to be recorded.
But going forward if you do enter into new leases that will not be shown as an asset in the live
and all the annual your statement of financial position. Notes 567 and 8 just a ton of information
related to your investments your allocation of your net assets and your endowments and
the changes year over year. Really good information. I encourage you to read.
Note 9, textbook that contributed use of space that I mentioned before that was
started in 2022. And then Note 11 has some additional disclosures about how liquid the
argumentation is. Just one thing to check out. A liquidity standpoint.
And then lastly is the governance communication letter. So we're required to
review communication, including the audit specific to the results. We talked about
accounting policies already. There's always estimates within financial statements. You have
a couple estimates related to unquestable promises to give and the beneficial interests
that are recorded on your financial statements. We always take a look at estimates making
your management's process for developing those estimates is consistent year over year.
Didn't have any issues or concerns related to how those were being developed. We didn't have
an audit adjustment either corrected or uncorrected. So a lawyer gave to us was clean
financial information that we did not have to propose any audit adjustments for.
And then like I mentioned, no difficulties during the first of the audit and all the
agreements and nothing to report from the management letter. Again, thank you to Lori.
Thank you to everything prepared and ready for us. That was a good process this year.
We'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have.
Yes. I have a question just if you would give me some examples. I'm along to another organization
and they struggle with getting donations, but their donations are restricted. It's a museum.
And I notice donor, you're very successful in getting non-restricted donations.
I'm curious about what kind of restrictions happen. This is on a second page and I'm just curious,
some you don't have to, someone else can tell me, just give me a couple of examples of donations
where there's a restriction tied to that particular donation. If the other goes to a specific project,
like Wisconsin Pride, that would be considered a specific program series or to the work of the
education department. Basically anything where the donor says this is what you should spend this
on. Yeah, that's what I thought. Another question, why are you so successful in getting
it? I'm sorry. The excellent question. There are one thing that you'll see in statements too,
is there aren't a board has made funds. So some are donor designated, they're a board designated,
so we'll have that conversation in a few minutes about net revenue and what we're doing with that.
So some of those are strategic investments the board has held for us to make investments and
service over time. Well, I see. So in other words, restriction isn't necessarily donor,
but it may be internal, regional, you know, when you look at the financial statements with donor
restrictions, assuming you're looking at the page too, that is specific donor. But when you look at
other statements and things that there are also funds that the board has, so a little broader
look at ours, the board has designated for certain investments. When we get to the
net revenue allocation, we'll go through that exercise and you'll see how that's been working.
But go back to the other question. Well, the other question. I don't want to make
it a question because we can't belabor the issue, but what I will do is compliment you.
I want to compliment all of you and Clint, I want to compliment everyone on the fact that
you have so many unrestricted donations to the organization that really gives you the kinds of
flexibility that you need in programming and every other thing that you're doing. So that's the end
of my innovation. I just want because we do fundraise for projects, such as hometown stories, a lot of
times we're going to release those funds within a year because it's an active program or a program
that's going to take place in a year. So those dollars might be restricted, but they're also
released in that city, which is what it's the bottom one. It says release from restriction.
Well, that it depends on the type of project, but I just, so there's a time issue there, too,
with the way you can be against the project. So a little bit, probably it could be higher,
but because it also is going to the station, the next within 12 months, it's not going up as
restricted. Thank you. Thanks, Jen. Just a quick follow-up on that. I know seven
is, I guess I've been asleep, but I don't know. So the 22,000 in non-dollar restricted
includes 8.3, almost 8.4 million. That's actually earmarked for ECG.
Is there a reason? I guess I'm saying I didn't know ECB.
So we're looking at net assets, not current revenue. Oh, that's what net assets, but net
assets without dollar restrictions. And how you're allocating them? Yeah, yeah. So all of
Jane Downley funds that we've raised over the years because of the nature of our partnership
are generally allocated to either the ECB or WHA. Okay. Okay. So that's why that number is so
large. It's because you're looking at the entirety of friends net assets rather than
what we've raised in this current year. Okay. Okay. I mean, I'm never caught that.
Okay. I think I would find that way to work. The actual financial statements provide
obviously a lot more detail than just the little summary that we have in the presentation here.
Great. Well, more on that. Just being new, it was lovely and surprising to see that you
audit and that there's no notes to management, no adjustments to the financial reporting.
So congratulations to both of you. I also appreciate it hearing the guidance committee
meaning the methodology about correlating the numbers from the old platform to the net suite
numbers. And I think that's important. I appreciate your thinking about doing that. And we don't
just help out for that kind of transition. Yeah, share that. And that's another thing that we
do appreciate with Lori is the ongoing communication that we have throughout the
course of the year. So anytime something does come up, she's always reaching out, you know,
if there's a question and new transactions, something that she's just not 100% sure on.
Because then when we do get to the audit, there aren't any surprises and we've already kind of
worked through things and then I got that transition that that suite and we've already
been in discussions about, you know, how are we going to address that for fiscal 24, given the
change to 7-1. So again, really that time-going dialogue and that communication throughout the
first three years really does pay off when it comes to August and they're, you know, trying to get
the audit done and, you know, having surprises. That's good. Yeah, I don't know Lori very well,
but I just want to thank you for the work. I think sometimes when we're in the public media,
we forget the whole back office stuff, because they're the ones that make everything work.
You know, we're really appreciating your due diligence. Sometimes I don't think,
we hire the scenes to get to the public space, so I want to thank you. Any other comments or
questions? I guess I would ask for a moment when we look through the financial statements on
it. Second. Good evening. Seconded. All in favor? All right. All right. All right. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. And I think Lori's got a lot of thanks here, but I'm going to do
another moment. You know, I think we moved side out. We also went through the system conversion to
during this time. And Jen was alluding to that where on 7-1, we transitioned in that suite. I mean,
there's there's a lot of work there. So a lot of balls in there. So thank you. And Sarah, thank you
for doing your due diligence throughout the year and being available to us as well. So appreciate it.
Sarah, how many years have you been going through that?
I'm going to say six or seven. I just ended up in the same. I think it ended up.
Thank you for having me. Yes. It's been a pleasure. You know, it's been a good relationship.
I had some transition at the other levels, but I think it's been an incredible service. And,
you know, even with my transition to principal, I'm so, so they're still serving you. So,
just a change in title. I'm not doing it anyway. So I'm going to cover it. Thank you.
Moving on, then from the FY23 final dashboard, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this because
we shouldn't relate directly to the audited financial statements that we've just looked at.
So this is for the full fiscal year of 23, and it's fairly consistent with what we saw in June at
our June meeting. So just maybe a couple of real quick highlights. The support of our partners
was a little bit less than what we had budgeted. And that was really good for results of WHA not
calling on all the funds that we had built in the budget. So we still expect that we move forward
you know, we budget as well as we can, as close as we can, but a lot of it depends on the partners
and not the cash flow needs. And then Sarah mentioned this, just our membership. We had another,
we keep continuing to get record members for our membership. And so we ended the year at 75,243.
And our sustainers continue to increase as well, which is you all know that those are nice because
that's consistent revenue coming in every month, every quarter, every year, depending on what the
donor has requested. Other than that, the only other highlight I maybe made just because we've
talked about it almost every quarter is just corporate development. You know that that department
was in flux. And Eric, you were right. We did our budget for the, for the, for the corporate
development support or for the project gifts. So I wasn't sure we were going to get there,
but you were right. So they had to wait until June, didn't they? Yeah. So again, just test them
up to the team with everything that was going on in there.
And then the other thing that we covered at the finance committee meeting was just the
history on the endowments. And that's also included in the packet. It just continues to show the
power of the dollars that we're raising and the plan. Giving all of the things that the staff is
doing. This is now going to generate over a million dollars a year, which is really, really
amazing. And as Sarah said, our net assets hung up by $2.2 million this year. I mean, that's a great
graph. Look at that from 2012. We were at about three and a half million dollars.
So those are things that are going to set us on the path to continue to succeed and continue
to be able to provide just great service to our members. So great job to the team.
Can I answer those earlier? If you go back to that,
if you go back to the question that Gina asked about, why successful? I keep going back to that.
You're proud of that.
I want to point this out and connect this to the investment for Friends Board has made,
for instance, in plan giving. A lot of organizations struggle with that kind of investment because
it can be staff intensive and it doesn't have necessarily an immediate return.
And this board has been very supportive of that and looked out into this future like we're seeing now.
So that's I think one of the underlying parts of success is making that kind of investment
and seeing a long-term investments pay off and this graph shows that.
Thank you.
The finance committee also reviewed the net revenue allocation. Just as a reminder,
when we met revenue in the year, we designated. We have to do something with that with the revenue.
And so the allocation that was approved by the finance committee was $250,000 to be allocated
for the salary support of PBS staff. So for the title and total compensation program
implementation and then also $250,000 for facilities and capital improvement projects.
The remainder shall be net revenue for Friends and FY23. The reconciled net income is half a million
bucks, so we're there. And just as a reminder, these are things that the committee and the board
has done over the last couple of years because we know we have the capital improvement projects
that are ongoing and the title and total compensation. So making sure that we have funds designated by
the board to help fulfill those projects. And Eric, I might just have you touch on the August
pleasure. One question, Tristan. How far are we from being where we want to be as vice
staff compensation? Shall we want you to answer that? I can answer that question too. We want a
motion. Or are you getting it? I think after the pledge results, okay. We'll get a motion.
I'm going to have a question just to generalize.
I would say that in television, we're probably in the neighborhood about two thirds of the way
of a target. We've now kind of entering for us here for, even before TTC was officially
implemented at the university, we started to look at this anticipated, you know, shift some of
our practices specifically to say, this is going to be a big draw. We have to be careful about an
organization that has been growing pretty dramatically. And in some ways, you can say every new nickel
is like we can hire new people. We had to shift and say, we need to anticipate this. I would say
roughly two thirds of the way in that four years of prioritizing those biggest gaps
of prioritizing folks at the lowest end of the salary. So we're going to really do progress.
And we're still going to fund that with their revenue at the end of the year, or are we
questioning or increase the social makeup? Yeah, you mean sort of like next year?
That's a good question. Next year, I think there's some allocations within the front
budget that we've already talked about, for instance, facilities. There's 300,000 allocated
facilities. We see that as going into pay for this, you can write these salaries are ongoing.
It's not just this is just paper this year. That's an allocation, for instance, that we could see
disappearing in facilities and shorting up those salary needs at the stage. So, yes, we are
thinking about that. Outplays out here. If you start seeing staff, any staff being recruited
away by the university or something else, I think it's something that we might want to look at again.
Yes. Yeah, there has been a good review from our HR folks on retention.
And what's been happening, I guess, our numbers in television have not been anywhere near a
national average. But at the same time, we're an organization that has added extraordinary
attention. I mean, you know, and it's changing. So, we have more people coming in, working
through four years looking for an ex-challenge and moving on. There is quite a number of people
moving within the university. I would say, especially on the radio side, that quite a
number of people are recruited within the university. So, it's an issue. Thank you.
Well, I think, John, I'm going to ask you. This is the question I'm going to ask you. How is
our employment, our HR fit in with state employment and university employment? But you
don't have to answer it now. No, I just want to remember the question. I don't know if I think
about it. I'm going to put that answer. We're nested within UW Madison HR system. Yeah. So,
we have our HR department. But it sounds like you have more control over your salaries over your,
well, within UW Madison, we have pretty significant control over our salaries.
That's what I learned. So, you know, they have guidelines and they review it. There's very,
you know, so there may be things like, you know, there's a cap, for instance, on a merit increase
at 10%. But beyond that, we have a lot of leeway within UW Madison. There's a lot of trust there.
We can pay for it. We can do it. So, it is, I would say, I've tried to describe this
enough very well. When we move from extension to UW Madison,
you can feel the difference in an organization that was bent on success and excellence as opposed
to compliance, which felt the UW extension. So, a lot of that compensation philosophy is like,
we need to recruit and hold really good people. And it's a different kind of a group. And so,
we are, I would say, you know, just very clearly benefiting from that sort of new spirit of
compensation of rewarding people. So, you also have to remember, do you have an advantage that
you can earn money that set other departments in the university? Yeah, but I think it's important
that all of us that are sitting on, well, I don't know where our governance structure is. I can
be reminding myself. But it's, I think it's important that we understand that.
August Pledge, it's just briefly in the interest of time. The August Pledge Drive is our smallest
drive of the year. And this year, we saw $176,000 come in from 945 gifts. We were down about $200,000
from last year, which really fits in with our year over year trends. And what we saw from our
peer stations nationally is really just driving us to think more carefully about reimagining
our on-air drives and staying current and looking into the future with those, but also looking at
all these additional revenue sources for membership, like digital and, of course,
you know, should we be more invested in canvassing, etc, etc. So, you know, once again, that kind of
diversity within membership fundraising techniques is really important to the success of that year.
This is the report read. That's all we have for the report.
If you'd like to request the motion, I mean, as per motion, you can replay the financial report.
So, so moved.
Let's see.
Quick answer.
All right.
All in favor?
Aye.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Keep up the great work.
And with that, I think we're ready to push the clips.
Yeah.
And this is an opportunity to get up and stretch with it and get all the copies.
So, the first clip is the one that Oscar mentioned.
Okay.
Hello, I'm Hannah Springer live at the Great Wisconsin Quilt Show with insights into this
year's event. I am joined by Karen and Kayla Robinson. We are standing in your special quilt
exhibit. What an amazing exhibit.
Thank you so much for having us.
Yes. You're so welcome.
Thank you for being here.
And tell us, Kayla, about the exhibit, how this all got started.
So, early 2022, when around the time when everything was happening in the south and,
you know, history was starting to be questioned, critical race theory, all these things,
I was upset.
But then when I really paused and thought about it, I realized I didn't even learn history in school.
Like, I learned it at home.
And I was inspired to tell a film about that.
And that film was quilted education.
And it is a story about my mother, who is my black history hero.
And made sure that students across the city of San Antonio and beyond that they also
had the opportunity to learn about the amazing history that African Americans have brought
to national reach. And that's how we found you.
Our friends at PBS Wisconsin saw your film and shared it with the quilt show team.
And we're like, we have to get in touch with you and ask if you could join us at the show.
So we're so glad you're here.
Karen, tell us about the quilts we're looking at.
Well, these quilts I made over 20, some of them over 20 years ago.
And like Kayla said, this quilt started because of my passion about history and teaching history.
And children enjoy history story. That's how they remember it.
So all of these quilts were done, inspired by history of some sort.
Whether it's my family history, black history, military history, because I also served in the
Air Force. And I just like to tell stories with quilts. So that's how it came about.
A beautiful quilt. And thank you for your service.
Thank you.
And you're right. Every quilt does tell a story.
So you can spend 10, 15 minutes looking at each quilt and learning the story.
And then those stories can be passed along.
Absolutely. And that was the idea.
I also have flashcards because my mother was a teacher.
So the teacher and her passed through to me.
So we have flashcards also so people can read the things that they don't know.
Thank you for providing that. It's very helpful.
And you're here at your exhibit too.
So if visitors come this week, they can visit with you at your exhibit.
Yes, come on over. I'd love to have everyone.
And Kayla, tell us where we can see your film.
Quilted education is currently streaming on PBS.org.
So just go head to PBS.org, type in quilted education.
And you can see the film that brought us here today.
Thank you for making the film. And thank you for joining me today.
Thank you. Thank you.
You're welcome.
And thank you for tuning in to learn more about this year's event.
And next year's event, head over to quiltshow.com.
Proceeds from the Great Wisconsin Quilt Show support PBS Wisconsin programming.
Your financial gift helps make this event possible.
Thank you.
People think, oh, you just go out there and talk to people.
There is method to our madness, right, Lois?
There's an awful lot of methods.
Here's our day.
So we start off and they're all color coordinated.
Because I like that.
You do.
I like it too.
There's yellow means I'm going to be talking to somebody.
Blue means I'm going to be just talking to myself to camera.
Do you want to guess which ones he likes the best?
Which one do you think they'll think they'll think they'll make you like talking to the
people about the truth is I like doing stuff by myself and only me.
It's fast.
It's quick.
Yeah.
Because he's increasing our crew band.
If you look in the back.
Oh, there's breakfast on the run because this is how we live.
Is this a surprise for somebody that clip far for later?
Along with this is their tool.
Hey, what's up, dad?
This show don't go, right, Brian?
This show don't go.
Brian and Gail.
Brian does all the shooting gals, all the audio.
So Gail, Gail has been with us forever and Brian is new this year.
And we're wondering if he'll ever come back.
He hasn't decided yet.
But we're really hopeful.
So then in the beginning of our day, there's hope in the beginning.
Talk to me at five and see what happens.
So we always get to place as people never get to.
Like up here, we're on top of the courthouse.
Brian is wedged in there.
Gail is wedged in there.
And you're wedged in there.
To start the day like this.
Look at this view.
In the spring of 1805, the Lewis and Clark expedition reached what is now Montana,
near where the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers meet,
moving farther west than any white Americans had ever gone.
Along the way, they had encountered tribes of native people,
who for hundreds of generations had called the bountiful land home.
Wildlife seemed to be everywhere,
and in astonishing numbers, Mary-weather Lewis wrote,
particularly the buffalo.
The whole face of the country was covered with herds of buffalo, elk, and antelopes.
The buffalo frequently approached us, more nearly to discover what we are.
And in some instances, pursue us a considerable distance,
apparently with that view.
Less than a century later, in 1887, another expedition would explore the same region.
They hoped to find some buffaloes to kill,
and then preserve for an exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
They searched for three months without seeing a single one.
Everything the chayoas had came from the buffalo.
Their tepees were made of buffalo hide.
So were their clothes and moggisons.
They buffalo meet.
Most of all, the buffalo was part of the chayoa religion.
The priests used parts of the buffalo to make their prayers,
when they healed people, or when they sang to the powers above.
The buffalo were the life of the chayoas, old lady horse.
They are the national mammal of the United States,
the largest land animals in the western hemisphere,
a species that scientists call bison bison.
Nourished by one of the world's greatest grasslands,
they proliferated into herds of uncountable numbers,
and in turn, by their grazing, nurtured the prairie that sustained them.
For more than 10,000 years, they evolved alongside indigenous people,
who relied on them for food and shelter,
and in exchange for killing them, revered them.
So much of my blood memory has to do with buffalo.
We have regard for each other, and we are friends,
we are brothers, we are related.
So I, you know, think of them in a particular way,
and it's always with reverence.
Newcomers to the continent found them fascinating at first,
but in time came to consider them a hindrance,
and then a source of profit for a growing nation.
In the space of only a decade, they were slaughtered by the millions for their hides,
with their carcasses left to rot on the prairies,
the species itself teetering on the brink of disappearing forever from the face of the earth.
The story of American bison really is two different stories.
It really is a story of indigenous people and their relationship with the bison for thousands
of years, and then enter, not just the Europeans, but the Americans,
and that's a completely different story, and that really is a story of utter destruction.
It's not just a story of this magnificent animal.
It takes us into all the different corners of our history, and how we interact with one another
as human beings.
It is a heart-breaking story of a collision of two different views of how human beings should
interact with the natural world, and there's a tragedy at the very heart of that story.
At the same time, as you follow it a little bit farther down that trail, it can offer us hope.
Oh my gosh.
Goodby.
Oh my gosh.
Great.
Yeah.
That's a theme.
What effective.
What's.
Wait.
She's.
Oh, I'm going to make a question.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So.
I think I'll come back to order as well.
I.
It's going to be an amazing document.
I'm looking forward to.
Among all the others.
To bring the.
Gentlemen.
And so.
And birds.
To the good friend of PBS.
Sings.
Remember.
Hi, everybody.
Hi, my name is Amber Sandall and I'm the student directorate, I guess, so I oversee our design and emerging media work at the organization.
I'm really excited to be here today and talk to you a little bit about some of the work we've been doing and some of the work ahead.
Can't remember before coming here.
Before coming here, I've been here almost five years this spring, only five years.
We grew up in Madison, but most recently I was out in Los Angeles.
It's working for a world design engineering so building be first.
And I can't.
You're glad to do it.
Thank you. Thank you. So I'm excited to talk to you today about our work in emerging media, particularly thinking about innovation as one of our core values at PBS Wisconsin as strategic priority for us.
As you heard the story about the history of public broadcasting began, you know, that history of innovation, and of course it's important for building our future as well.
And you know innovation takes a lot of different forms from the tools we use and the processes we're always looking at how we can innovate on that the course part content.
And the distribution of our content as well. So today I'm going to talk to you a little bit about some of our emerging media work.
In the last few years we've been working on things like 360 videos and virtual tours and exploring virtual reality as well to create new types of emerging media.
So I'm going to start there and talk a little bit about what we've done and then where we're going in the future with that.
So a quick look back.
You may remember a couple years ago we launched shipwrecks immersive experience so this was in alignment with a shipwrecks documentary did back in November 2021.
And alongside the documentary we also created a collection of digital experiences.
And they're all centered around the SS Wisconsin so this is the shipwreck off the coast of Kenosha is a steamer fit that same in 1929.
And what we did was we went down to the bottom of my bed did a scan a photogrammetry scan the shipwreck and created a virtual tour so you can actually click around go through the tour see the different places on the ship, explore the cargo
area today, and really learn the history of that ship and that shipwreck.
We also created another experience as part of this, that was a digital recreation of the night the ship same itself so this was all done through.
And then we created a series of different spaces on the ship so you can kind of walk through what happened and how that whole.
Their survivor counts there's you can zoom in and look at items that were on the ship, and you really can kind of experience the events at that night.
And it was turned off of course here but there is a really neat spatial audio as well so and it's been around the audience.
So these experiences took place on the web browser so you can experience it on a computer on your mobile phone, but they also were experienced in virtual reality so you could pull up a VR headset or, as was, we might have seen over there we also created these little cardboard
cameras, you could slide your phone in, and actually do a VR experience from your phone, just a little scoop of masks there.
And it really allowed us to kind of open up the accessibility of VR, we use these as pledge premiums for the shipwreck documentary and sent them out across the state.
And then on the learning from our shipwrecks work, we were able to really start to look forward to our adventure so we've begun creating more connections both locally around the state, as well as across public media system looking for other partners.
So gifts coming in, we have a designated funding for innovation that has allowed us to make investments and staff. So we recently hired our first ever interactive media producer, which is really exciting.
She's joined our team this summer early summer.
I'm going to talk a little bit about what she and I think that we're going to work on next.
So one of the projects we're excited to be jumping into is around Wisconsin light houses, you may be familiar, there is a documentary in progress right now coming up next December, 2024.
And much like shipwrecks we're going to be creating an interactive experience that is in the long run Wisconsin light house so the interactive experience will be really focused on clean island.
So this is the cana island lighthouse it's up in Bailey's harbor and door county is starting place.
Really iconic lighthouse from Wisconsin so we're going to be exploring that and creating a virtual experience to really learn the histories of that.
So what we've done first over the summer you worked with a company called tech runner based on the Milwaukee.
So we ended up and actually did a scan and the photogrammetry stand of the lighthouse took some drones out there to scan the whole exterior of the lighthouse.
And it allowed us to capture a really authentic capture down to the textures of the bricks of what does the lighthouse and the keepers building look like.
They actually took a laser scan.
And we're able to develop even more data so this is what's called a point cloud so it's like 35 million different points.
And they're actually able to not only do the exterior but go inside as well so we have these great scans of the inside they just renovated the inside.
And what we're doing now is, you know, still in progress is we're going through clean up this model to make sure it looks its best.
But it really allows us to get very accurate authentic, you know, capture of what this lighthouse building looks like.
And we're also able to, you know, open up accessibility for people who maybe aren't able to go up the steps or fear for the pipes.
This allows people to do that.
We're also able to do this great like cutaway experience you can stop at any point in the depth of this building and see what the prints look like.
So this is type of technologies use more and more architecture, more excited to be using that as a foundation of our experience.
And the part of this project is we're doing something new we're working with UW Madison school of computer data and information sciences.
So if you are familiar with this school, they're the ones building the really big building campus right now.
UW maps are very invested in the school.
The computer sciences they like to say is the largest major, UW Madison, and the data sciences is the fastest coordinator so they're really wonderful partners to be working with.
What we're doing is we're actually working with their students on a project this semester. So we've given them our lighthouse model and our lighthouse research, and ask them to think about interactive media and how to bring better accessibility into interactive media so they're doing
developing different accessibility options for interactive look that's been really fun.
And the last thing I was going to mention about white houses we're also looking to collaborate this with this author and illustrator named Sophie Blackell is a helicopter award money illustrator of the book Hello Lighthouse just just beautiful charming illustrations.
This is the front and back cover of her book, and works and talks with her about having her do similar illustrations for an island lighthouse with a lot of ideas of how we can integrate that.
I'm excited about that. Is that the kind of word. Yes, yes that she wanted to kill it up for.
So this, as I mentioned, it's going to be launching in collaboration with the documentary December.
The next product I wanted to mention is a collaboration with Nebraska public media really focused on the stories of the Menami Indian tribe of Wisconsin.
So we got connected to Nebraska public media they have a really great innovation team.
And we're approaching this work much more from a design standpoint so we've been in talks of how we can potentially, you know, complement each other on the partnership so how this project unfolded is we've been in talks about this for a while.
And then we discovered that there is a member of their team who actually as the first descendant Menami and lives up in Kishina and has been interested in finding ways to tell the stories to new media.
And we thought, well, this would be a really great opportunity to collaborate together bring these stories to light. So the working title for this project is Menami Homecoming.
It's an interactive storytelling game, again, the goal of exploring traditional Menami customs but telling them through a modern lens.
This will be a web based game and really we're targeting a general audience. We like to say fifth grade through 50s, because the gamer generation people that grew up with video games are now in their 50s.
And so we think that's an important audience to be thinking out as we're thinking about our future and making sure we're exploring the storytelling games as well.
Will you be reviewing their lumber industry there.
Oh, the NDE and the Menami tribal enterprises. We did go up there, we got a tour and we got to go see a forest and it's quite unique.
It's beautiful. Yeah, and they're very proud.
So our story really centers around it's a fictional narrative about family returning home to Menami reservations for their annual contest power.
And it's really exploring the relationships between the family and how this reconnection to family and culture helps them understand themselves and understand each other more.
So this is Jacob in the middle is our collaborator there is twin brother mother and very invested very much a family fair.
They've been absolutely wonderful storytellers and connecting us across the community.
We did a finishing kind of a research phase. We did a shred up there in the summer, visited the power of course, and we're moving into now script writing and concept art development to move this forward.
It will be launching in 2025.
All right, so what lies ahead. Of course, everybody, I'm sure there's no surprise. Let's talk about AI in particular generative AI.
We're also talking about that a lot. And I'm sure everyone is right all about this.
But just in case, if you don't know the definition, the generative AI in particular is a type of artificial intelligence.
It's actually generating new content, whether that's for video audio. And the way it works is it's trained on a large set of data, it looks for patterns in the data and then it's predicting what's going to come back so you give it a prompt and says, Oh, I recognize that pattern.
And it provides me based on that.
So we have been talking about this.
In our organization. We've recently formed a work group to really talk about this and explore.
We have two main goals of the work group. The first is that says guidelines, develop internal guidelines and best practices. So we want to make sure we're, you know, staying true to our ethics.
You know, we're really centering this inner values are actually, actually, that is a lot of our questions around generative AI.
And we also want to develop a community of practice. We don't want to get left in the dust. We want to be sure we're experimenting and learning and sharing what we're learning amongst our results in the organization as well.
So that's kind of the twofold goals of the group.
We have a couple experiments of caveat, very much experiments, but just thought you might like to see the types of thing use cases of what we might think about using this tool for so the first one is really a text generating.
And this was actually a video.
At the PBS annual meeting might have already seen parts of this. This was developed by the PBS digital innovation team in Virginia. And this is a little clip of something they were trying with chat GPT.
Chat GPT has the ability to quickly learn information that you provide to it. Suppose we wanted some help creating copy and the PBS brand voice. We can simply provide the text of the PBS brand voice to chat GPT and have it assume the role of a copywriting system.
This particular prompt will use the starting prompt of this is the PBS brand voice guidelines. Please learn it and use it for any future prompts I give you. And below, I'll just copy and paste the PBS brand voice in its entirety.
So as you can see, it's reading and parsing it and it's ready to go.
So now that we have the brand voice, let's see what it can do. I'm going to give it a prompt to generate five taglines once without the brand voice and once with the back brand voice.
So here we can see that it's generating five taglines per nature shows without the brand voice. And now it's generating five taglines with the brand voice.
Now it's doing something very powerful. It's breaking down the differences between the two and explaining what it did and why it made those changes.
You can see that it's emphasizing curiosity, illumination, and fostering of connections with the community. Those are all very in line with the PBS brand.
Just an example of the power. I mean that took a minute.
Could you tell a little bit about what it says mine. Yes, it's very tiny. So the examples of once it read the brand voice guidelines and it spit out those taglines.
I remember just giggling when I first saw this because it's so spot on. Explore the unseen illuminating natures and wonders.
A celebration of life inspiring stories from the natural world shared journeys connecting communities for nature of beauty is very much PBS language and really focused on that community connection and curiosity.
So it really took that in. They have other examples to they explore creating metadata and tags and taking in information about how to create searchable results and things like that but I thought this one was a pretty good example.
So how do all the writers in the room.
I understand that we just had a long writers practice right in the United States.
But think about that, your work on ethics and values and how this is properly and appropriately used and doesn't get too seductive.
Yeah, I think the seduction of it all is the scary part.
Absolutely. And it's important to us that we don't lose trust with our audience that we're staying true to those ethics that were, you know, authentic, we're not, we're transparent.
We're aware of the biases that are naturally built into these systems as well. One of our first principles that we're talking about is the importance of human oversight of anything that might be created with these tools that there's always
people aware before using the tool and people checking things afterwards and you're treating it as a third part of source, in a sense.
Things like that we have absolutely being centered in our ethics.
Yeah, can you talk a little bit more about how you're doing that both in terms of enablement governance of the usage but also risk management for IP data security, you know, all the different.
The rest. Yeah, well, UW Madison has security cyber security guidelines around gender and AI so we're sticking to that as our guidelines as well.
Part of our work group is our IT director who's very well versed in that.
And he's been instrumental in helping us develop these.
And still early in the stages of creating guidelines for infirmary use.
They're really focused on the things I mentioned like being aware of bias transparency, human oversight is a big one.
And then the idea is we're going to create a community practice also that allows us to share so that we have that open dialogue about who's using what and how and why, so that we're making sure we're all aware of that.
I just had this disinformation and making sure your double chat game so it's not making stuff.
Oh, hi, so it's not actually just taking.
I have the client.
I think there's and they just said not through Grammarly.
So it's like picking up.
And potential.
There can be real risks. We, I just was with an identity group.
And they, they did a case to present to the Supreme Court.
And when they reviewed the citations of the cases that were used, they were.
Oh, an attorney's already lost his life.
I think that was the one they were talking about.
Right.
PBS just last week.
Two weeks ago just really standards as well around the use of gender and AI and very much is connected to their news and journalism and the importance of treating this.
It's kind of like a special subsection of their ethics policy around uses it like you would use any third party source fact check, make sure it's authentic site your sources and that level of rigor that.
And you give a suggestion for folks who might want to like dabble and see what it's like of like how they might do that. Yeah, chat GPT is the definitely.
It's for open man eyes.
You can get a free account and try it out.
I think one of the first things I tried in there last year was what is the mission statement for a PBS station and it just, you know, spit out like three versions of it.
It's kind of interesting to see what they're doing is going out and looking around for data and then, you know, predicting what that next text is going to be but it's interesting experiment.
Someone and someone that was describing to you that they used it.
Or what would be the into an ideal interview questions for whatever whatever that in the hiring process.
And, you know, and one.
And she used it for a very specific purpose which was having to do with an orchestra leader and who said, that was for the best question.
So, yes, there, there is a great deal going on. There is a woman at, I don't know if she's in the journal and communications.
She's a professor, Kate Ping Chen, who is working focusing all her work, a lot of her work currently on artificial intelligence and, you know, it's impact on business and media.
You know, so we have somebody clearly at the university who's, you know, digging deep into this subject.
And you provost is also comes from that background too and she does exciting to have is.
Wasn't it the best we can they just spoke it really couple weeks ago.
Okay.
I think that you did, which they discussed it at the group, which was a creation of specific libraries.
So that what, what, what jet GBT does, if you don't limit the library or, or the, what limit what you want them to go out and see will go all over and pull out all kinds of things.
And the real importance of this is to limit the library so not not only do you limit the type of data that you use, but also what you said you limit what the ethics what the mission statement is so that it has parameters around its surface.
Yeah, there's some prompt crafting that is a real art, and it's evolving quickly around how what you actually instruction.
So,
how to, how to ask strategy to either my question, but I got it, but to get more refined content.
I recently helped the friend do a press release and I don't do that.
So I did, and he is all of the replies, so about 20 pages of transcripts coming out live, which is another, you know, the actual, all this stuff that I just thought was taking me thanks.
And so I just put into chat to right me in 650 word press release, these three key points, both from press, and in a minute, it came up with pretty good first draft.
And, but what I said, what I've said in different webinars, I've been doing this is if I were a new PR person, I probably would have thought that that draft was good.
I would have made that be the draft that went for final group.
But so I think that training element of, you know, using it as a tool and then taking it and not giving it the agency, making sure that you are using it as a tool and then you are using a great first draft.
But it's also, you know, a couple hours.
And then going back and forth with him, I'm not just letting it do.
A couple of hours as opposed to a date. Right.
And I will say that first draft was better than the first draft.
Right. So, um, it's a great tool, but it's.
Yeah.
And I know that PBS won't be an organization that is only looking to the weekends, but a lot of positions are, like, only given the part of the games and I think that's the, the other thing I was just going to show also related to things that we want to be sensitive to how we're creating
and how's it here. We have been doing experiments with generating images too. And again, a caveat here, we're not going to be delivering, you know, creating images and saying that they're authentic photos. Right.
This is mostly an experiment for us to learn what's possible.
We see this is really a great potential for concept are communicating a pitch for an idea.
Likely will not be generating images anytime soon.
So this is a quick example. This is a very detailed text prompt.
That was entered into as a tool called Leonardo AI.
You can see it's very detailed down to the camera settings, but what they want to generate.
Came out with this image here. It's a little light here on the screen, but you can see it's got, it got very specific and maybe want to change our clothes and we can put 10 seconds later.
Change their clothes and kind of iterate on the lighting and, you know, the people really quickly.
And then we started doing experiments with what if we wanted to take this a level further.
What's possible. So we did a voice generator and then lip sync on it.
Okay, frog. Any new business.
So obviously faces an animated body is not animated, but the ability to communicate something that quickly.
It's really helpful. And this took a couple hours of work just to experiment and see what's possible with this tools.
And I have one other example similar I'm bringing motion into images as well.
So this was a team member.
I'm calling brain and recording took a picture of his son, bringing a newspaper, but he needed an example of historical image.
So he went and cleaned out all the content of the paper, working with chat GPT to generate text. So this is like a period of primary articles.
Text if you were able to zoom in and see it and generated the imagery as well.
And the person that's in the photo down there, he has a lot of iterations on this person.
And then is able to animate it from there.
Picture of it in the Boston Lake Weekly and in the caption, it said, frog for.
So just a simple little animation, but to your point about, you know, an artist, for instance, might get that image and be like, done, it's, it's good enough.
But we are also thinking along the same ones with our artwork that it needs another in an Arctic pie to look at these things and edit them and, and, you know, build upon them.
So just some fun experience, we're just literally just working on that last week. So that is what I have today. Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
There's time for questions and.
Thanks.
Thank you.
We come back and show us that my house.
Yes.
Absolutely.
Maybe we could hold the board meeting there.
Eric, I think you're up with.
Friends report.
I'm right to your agenda. You think one of these times I, you know, follow somebody.
I'm not sure.
I will go quickly in the interest time.
Staffing updates from friends and development.
Last time I reported that we were close to hiring a managing director for giving.
We had, we weren't able to close that out. So we opened the search again on that search closed today has really.
We find candidates in the pool. So once again, I am optimistic to make that higher and forward.
And hopefully second time is the charm and the way it was meant to be to get the right candidate.
In Saturday news, we're bidding farewell to Anna January.
Who's been with us for four years as gift officer.
Anna is moving on to our friends of neighbors Wisconsin watch.
So she's not leaving the building, but we wish her well and congratulate her on her move to Wisconsin watch.
And I want to recognize that she really made an impact here with us in these four years.
And she worked hard on being a project lead, especially projects like home has to happen to them.
And our current hotel store is the light and she's been a close partner and advocate with our education team to make sure our departments are synced up and we're finding what the opportunities we can for education.
So, congratulations to Anna and we are opening a new search, just as ever so fast as we can.
Moving on.
Some of my items have been anticipated in the agenda but the great response of quilt show was held last month.
In September, tenants rates were similar to last year's show.
The energy is terrific.
It felt really full and vibrant excited to be there.
We did have more vendors this year.
He's some of our pandemic spacing and also part of the success of the quilt show and the garden show.
It's actually dependent on the vendors and their economic recovery and their ability to staff to be able to come to these shows.
So, they're covering to we have vendors who haven't been able to come to shows simply because they didn't have enough staff to keep their bricks and mortar store open and show or, or issues like that.
But we're continuing to recover and the shows as we try to build back the fundraising components of them.
There's still a wonderful community engagement license 1516.
We already talked about the video and the connection that Oscar made for us with Karen,
Robinson, and her daughter, filmmaker, Kayla Robinson.
I also want to congratulate our staff member in corporate giving Julie Sternle.
She was awarded a quilt of valor for her 12 years of service in the United States Army.
Congratulations to Julie.
And Julie is also working hard on the hotel stories.
You're kind of Paul wanted to leave to the video.
Yeah, we can send that out.
Nice to see it.
You know, we're all talking and needing to go to the bathroom and all that stuff.
And it's really great.
I just, we're finding that.
I think it's so cool.
What's that?
Clean the bathroom.
Remove that.
I need it on the phone.
Um, speaking of AI, I've thought of that.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I'm a patient bad.
Give it time. Give it.
It's going to be a text from Oscar.
There's always great ideas that I don't think chat GPT can predict from Oscars.
Um, so our grants and reporting manager, I'm Rika.
She's worked with engineering staff across our multiple organizations to prepare a grant application that we submitted to.
To CPB who is managing a FEMA funded grant for the next generation warning system.
Um, so this proposal is to upgrade our statewide delivery architecture for a CS 3.0 or next gen TV means the same thing.
Um, readiness and to add to our advanced emergency alerting capabilities to our transmission.
The next level of emergency alert system and improving the robustness and the sustainability of that infrastructure.
Um, if we successfully earned the grant funding, we applied for $1.4 million.
Then PBS Wisconsin is going to be able to move forward with Smith said new broadcast capabilities that are going to be possible in next gen TV.
So, um, don't always like to report on grants that we've applied for and haven't heard about, but this one's an important topic.
And, um, I think important to, um, to let you know that we've applied for this and, um, where, you know, jumping every time the email pings to see it.
It's an email from the CTV.
Um, I've been working with Jan Botts and a few others on Patty Stauffer's Elizabeth Reed on this emeritus board concept.
So we've met twice about getting this group organized and we've circled with summer meeting in pencil to come back to the board and say, well, here's what we think an emeritus board should look like and we're constant activities that could engage in side by side with the serving board.
And two weeks ago, we celebrated 10 years of.
Oh, sorry.
Reverse that October.
It's a state planning awareness month and our new PAC campaign national state planning awareness campaign.
It's going gangbusters this year. So we have already over 400 responses.
Actually, by October 1st, we had 400 responses to the booklet that we sent out by mail.
And now even more heavily by email and digitally.
Typical year was 150, 200 in total. So by October 1st, the start of the month.
Um, we'd already doubled that. Um, so we're conceivably going to reach out.
Thousands responses to 600.
So we're out track.
Maybe at least 800.
So what's the response? It's somebody indicating they have any interest in,
including because we've sponsored in their state in some way.
And our goal is to meet with them, talk with them about that.
Possibly convert that into a letter of intent if that's something they're comfortable with so that we can document their, their interests.
Maybe the value of the estate. Um, it's really important to, to do that kind of work. And, um, no, it's not, it's not the actual request.
We hope, we hope we're all long retired by the time an actual request comes in from, from, from a donor, but.
But it's really important part of the plan getting work and it's really taking off this year.
And our design team, I think two years ago, two years ago, designed the national campaign for national state planning, where in this book for the system.
And that's some of that work.
Um, always good to have a picture of Farritundi Thurston.
John, did you bring a comment? We did Farritundi came through our studio last week and did his first ever station visit.
Um, and we had a watch party for his episode.
Um, it was fantastic. You give us no notice that he was coming.
But, um, when I get this week's notice, all those.
My favorite screen. So have an extreme.
Oh, here it is.
Um,
I didn't know we shared editorial access to his life show.
Big mistake.
Um, I absolutely love and look forward to Virginia's exploration of our country.
He finds aspects of places I thought I knew and expands my views.
Even more, he brings his own very personal and emotional experience when he finds,
which deepens my understanding of how differently each of us lives through what looks like the same environment.
This is a great example of why my husband and I support PBS Wisconsin.
Um, so one of the things Barritundi talked about, if you haven't seen the show, I highly recommend it.
It's not an outdoor show. It's a people show.
That's set me up.
Um, Barritundi is a great storyteller, a great community builder.
Um, a great voice for PBS and values.
We tried our code.
I'll add to the, um,
the episode in Oregon, folks who were in the, at the, um, at the reception and presentation.
Um, he asked how many people seen it. I hadn't seen it, but it was like, uh, 80% of the folks in the room have seen it.
Um, but, uh, if you want to note of me, we could send a link, um, to the board of that is, um, there's a moment in there.
Everybody who watches that shows been talking about this really quite powerful.
And I, I won't begin to explain it.
Um, but, um, but we could find that, that show and send a link, um, that one against your Oregon show.
If you remember the, if you were there, remember the reference.
Yeah, he's one of these people who, uh, have a unique ability with person and, um, powerful conversation.
I watched this show this week. Did you remain in winter? It was.
Totally exceeded my expectations. I mean, it was just, it's the way his approach is just backwards.
This was, uh, this is his first station visit.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
And best.
Okay, I keep going. Um, uh, two weeks ago, we celebrated 10 years of hosted travel with PBS Wisconsin and our travel partner holiday vacations.
Um, holiday vacations is a company that was founded by Patty Stopers and their late husband, Pat, and they have terrific values.
So we took a group of former travelers out to Taliesin and, um, it was a, it was a great, great reconnection.
A lot of these folks have become, um, plan givers to us, the state givers to us, major donors to us, which is one of the goals of our travel program.
So travels an important part of better understanding our world.
But these hosted trips in addition to that, give us an opportunity to spend time with, with people and make really important connections.
And, um, we have been able to create, um, some of those, uh, donor relationships as a result of, of, um, going on these trips and investing in them.
Um, and we've picked our destinations for next year. So Scotland and Northern Ireland, Canadian Rockies, Spain and Portugal. And if you care to travel with us, come on over.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Jenna.
Well, we have a couple of changes in leadership that I want to point out. One is, um, Michael Harrington, my director of communications is, um, focused on, um, some audience research.
Um, we'll be posting, um, position in the months, or months ahead. And, uh, I think, uh, just keep you that alert to, um, think about, um, your connections.
Um, um, um, your social media feeds have been really helpful in, um, expanding the reach of, um, our sort of promoting positions that are out there in the world.
So that we will, you'll see that in a, you may have, um, some suggestions.
And maybe encourage people to, um, to take a look at that. Um, and I also want to, uh, welcome Megan.
We're going to be already, already welcome.
Yes.
Um, but, um, Megan joins us as the director of education.
Um, just remember that five years ago, um, Alyssa recruited Megan to join us and, uh, it's a tremendous, uh, a cabinet of awards and a claim and all that, uh, in those five years.
And, um, maybe want to talk a little bit about what's, uh, for the department.
Sure.
Um, well, I'm really happy to be on a leadership team now.
The rest of the directors and carry on the work that I did as executive officer.
Um, one of the things that I was really proud of in the production of all of our educational resources is that we have an engagement led approach.
So we're always working on educators to co-design and form the development of all of our collections.
And so one exciting thing that we have that's coming out is, um, a new collection called the look back.
And it is, um, inspired by educators stated need to have something to teach social studies and use the new charts through an arrows based approach.
It aligns with the department of public inspections standards and scope and sequence for how and when to teach those arrows.
And, um, and we did a focus group of teachers to come up with the idea and we did a series of pilots and test the goals and classrooms.
And now the series is in production.
And the idea is, it's five young real life historians, Wisconsin historians, public historians and professors, who, um, all explore artifacts throughout the state, and they'll show them to each other.
I'm curious about about artifacts, and then they'll usually travel to a location like a library or a museum to learn more about that artifact and that artifact opens up an understanding of era.
So it's super fun. It's very, it's a little zany. There's a studio set and it's very eighties kind of looking and there's old artifacts in the set.
And they go on the bench together. We just filmed an episode about track bike. So all the hosts showed up on their bikes with their helmets to historical Wisconsin historical study voting.
So it's been a lot of fun and, and we're getting feedback right now from classrooms and we're in the city.
Thank you. Welcome.
Megan, what, what, what age should we step for? Thanks for asking. It's, it's, they're great. There's six great.
When you say artifacts, you don't mean just Native American artifacts should be historic artifacts manufacturing and everything.
We're doing a really old toaster that's actually just like a pitchfork that swivels that you put into the pie here. So it's all, and that's like an express of our technology.
So there's all different types of artifacts. We aren't doing one first nations are in fact the hotel that was on earth.
So the T vote for the hotel nation is coming help describe that the language.
So yeah, we're doing all of the eras from pre contact after the modern era. So one artifact for each era.
And the idea is that over the course of several years, we'll have multiple episodes to illuminate the different eras so that you're not having to have a single story, you know, you have a multifaceted contextualized understanding.
That's all.
And credit and congratulations to Megan and team honored in Michigan last month with the Bobby English champion of children award. This is, this is the award and public television for service to children.
And I think we are joining a pretty smart group of doing wq me and Pittsburgh who has some, some connection to Fred Rogers of that is named.
So they've had a legacy that with children that I think ours is a little bit longer, but equally as rich. But this is this work is especially focused on the work that we've done with early learners.
Mark referenced the working below.
Some of the reflections of the quality of the work on CPB and other folks nationally have come to us several times fired off trainings for other stations to roll out materials.
So it's a great enthusiastic group and moon out who so this is there in the middle of the sign and moon to her stage black is just one of the great stars of the light now.
Anybody who's touched and been connected with ready to learn to see her spirit and her investment in young people and young families is really inspiring. So it's a great group and really wonderful to see them honored.
With this national work. So, and Bobby English, by the way, I think we shared this with the board of doubt was UW Madison alum. She grew up in Fort Atkinson.
Great wonderful connections to us and work at Sesame Street and stations and was a great champion for children. So to add to connect our.
Our legacy is really quite quite moving and wonderful and a good recognition of the great work.
Also want to share that another within Wisconsin public media of new leadership and finance.
Zach Pickman is joined us so it's really a finance committee to start to meet him and hear from him and give his perspective.
That's a great addition to our staff.
So do you leave like going to spend everybody else he has white water connections.
That's things to be a given.
But anyway, I'm doing a great job and I have to have Zach join us.
So the next thing that I wanted to mention.
Is this week premiered the leaders this week.
This week up on a week that that was on Monday or Tuesday night.
Wisconsin black and white.
So I'll just take a minute and read this quote.
Because I think it's a, it is a viewer who's recognizing one of the underlying.
Inspirational projects in collaboration with me, I am.
So finding lasting solutions to these difficult and often misunderstood issues like systematic racism.
Recry with fires requires constructive dialogue.
This film is an excellent addition to the toolbox.
Of any leader and community member working to make Wisconsin a great place to live for all people.
The thing that that's really wonderful to see repeated back at us.
is that the toolbox, because we can see this with me and mine
and not only to create a bot broadcast program,
but to create some content on the community groups
can use in their own discussion of these issues.
So this is quite a powerful work.
I don't mark, is Mark still on the line,
a chance to talk to Mark last week
and he expressed his appreciation of that.
And I'll just repeat one thing.
He's, you know, Mark said it's sure
in color structure, sugar coat issues.
And so really important work, a really good,
ambitious collaboration with EMI
that I think will serve us well
in a great variety of the work we do.
So thanks to a lot of folks who work for years
to work this out, behind the scenes,
Merci Morr, who's our producer on this
and lead producer on this project
is a wonderful voice, a wonderful addition to our staff.
Had some pretty significant health issues.
So behind the scenes, which nobody has,
well, we've all seen a lot of twists and turns
and a lot of recalibrating and rescheduling
all with this really overriding concern for him first,
but also eager to share his vision
and approach to the subject of the audience.
So a lot of heart in this and a lot of heart
to pull it through in that pretty challenging time for him.
So I'll acknowledge our staff for that.
Finally, Mark talked a little bit
about what time stories were like,
I think finally, and that's true, and quite finally.
So one of the things that we're working on
with the Wisconsin Black and White
is a little bit more of assessment
that we've usually done in maybe a new ways.
This is early results from a survey.
So this isn't new for us.
Maybe some of the questions are a little bit new
because of the content.
We're working part of this project was funded
by Baldwin grants.
And part of the equation there
and strong, really good questions about assessment
from Baldwin.
Baldwin's a quite prestigious grant on campus
and highly competitive.
We've been past recipients
as partners with the university,
one particular with the UW School of Education,
now that we've crossed over to UW Madison,
we are received our first grant as a UW Madison entity.
But the assessment has been a really key component of that.
So one of the things that we've done since
with this beyond this survey
and these kind of asking these questions,
we've had focus groups look at the content,
give us feedback.
So we'll continue to kind of look at the work
and see how people tell us
it changes their attitude and their own sort of inclination
not only to rethink things, but to act.
So Nehemiah has been a great partner,
really brought so much expertise
to how we, what stories we've approached
and who we've included in the story.
And just as a brief on those programs
and the stories which continue on here and now,
weekly over the next six weeks,
it's the first, almost last week,
they're focused both on the systematic racism
and also in organizations
and people who are working in repair.
So I'm coming out of our conversations with Nehemiah.
These are both really important.
That's about understanding
and about people feeling like there's ways to act
and to change and work in my community.
So we're learning and trying to create
the public television version of the work.
There's really profoundly important work
that Nehemiah does every day.
Okay, then I think maybe hometown stories of life.
Yes.
So Mark gave us a little preview of that.
So this is, we can just go through the slide again,
just move ahead a little bit.
One of the really important parts
that makes Beloit different
is the Great Migration story.
So World War I,
Fairbanks-Morse,
it's a manufacturer recruiting African-Americans
to come to Beloit to work in the factories.
And we heard from a lot of the folks
who are contributing stories and their memories
and memories and photos of their parents,
my grandparents, people came on,
the workers came on the train.
They didn't know Beloit.
They didn't, they didn't,
so they would, on the train,
they'd say, I'm getting off at Fairbanks.
They knew the company.
And there's a great story,
a great character in Beloit who proved it in Mississippi.
Obviously this story deserves its own, you know,
epic story.
Obviously the Great Migration is an epic story.
This is something really profoundly important to our state.
And so we're excited to be, you know,
this is Beloit has been on our to-do list for so long
because, especially because of that.
And so we're really pleased
that the participation and the engagement
and contributions of the community is in collaboration.
So we're excited about that.
And then recently we held a photo gathering
was at one of our partners is the Beloit Library,
which is an amazing organization,
one of our partners in the Ready to Learn project as well.
Get amazing leadership there.
And they worked with us to host a photo gathering.
We had people coming through all day.
It was like 10 to two in the afternoon
and got a great response.
And this idea started with a misunderstanding.
I was talking to a colleague in Milwaukee public television
now, Milwaukee PBS had done a history of Milwaukee
and they talked about a photo gathering thing that they did.
And I thought, wow, what a great idea
for our hometown stories.
Because one of the challenges, images
and where do you find them?
And some of these places in small towns
don't have these rich, huge archives.
So I think the first one is in Juneau County
where we really challenged to find images.
There's no historical society archive museum.
And we kind of invented this idea of people bringing in photos
and it worked really well.
We replicated it since.
So a year later, I talked to my colleague in Milwaukee
after we had done this.
And I said, I just want to thank you
and told him what we did and how successful it was.
And he said, oh, we didn't do anything with that.
He said, well, we produced a program
and then we collected photos after.
I'm like, oh, oh, okay.
But this is so much gravity better.
I thought the fact that we told this understanding.
So I had a listening problem, but to have people
contribute their images from the community
is just such a fundamentally different thing.
And an example of that is in each of the communities
when we had the public screening,
we have shared like all of those that people create.
And it's just this wonderful moment that people are like,
they're helping us, they're connected, they're involved.
The content story is even if it's 15 years old,
there's still a model of engagement
that we're learning from and modeling
and the other work we do.
It's just, it's a wonderful project
and we're really excited about the way.
So maybe I have maybe one more thing.
One of, let folks know that
electric quinine is our new education biography.
We've talked about this in the past.
One of the things that really makes this project
so wonderful and a new way of working
is the depth at which Megan and her colleagues
have worked with the Stockbridge Muncie community
to the point of posting positions together
like designers, translators, writers, historians
where we worked with the Stockbridge Muncie community
to post those positions and recruit.
It's been really successful
and the artwork that you see, Megan,
you wanna talk, did you mention the artwork?
I'm sorry, I forget.
Yeah.
I'm the artist.
Holly, Holly, Holly, Holly.
And we actually have a really interesting combination
of our internal design artists and animators
and an outside artist.
So Holly, the contact to all of the concept art
for this whole story.
And then internally, Ellie, one of our animators
translated that art into animation.
So there's also three traditional 2D animation.
That's what you see in the background.
And then there's 3D animation.
And so that's new and a different person
for Sniff Lexi developed that.
And that's based on the planning style beading technique.
So you can see all these traditional beading
what you see as you go out the animation into the borders.
There's a fundamentally different experience
to watch them with, so we'll have a premiere
in the Stockbridge Muncie community in November.
But to see those communities, see the depth and the insight
and that of things that we wouldn't know about
without that kind of help and collaboration
and truly creating the content within their community.
And so the other thing that's different here,
we've never done this before,
is it has a broadcast premiere.
We've aired Wisconsin biographies,
but this will be in our guide, it's a seven minutes,
six minutes and 58 seconds.
Six minutes and 58 seconds.
So Gary, Danny, our programmer is giving it a spot
for that seven minutes.
And so we're gonna make a mode,
we're gonna make a lot of it.
But it's a really wonderful, they're really wonderful.
And I think they played so well on our air
for folks to see what we do in the schools.
And also, I think one of our driving things,
is electric 20 is Wisconsin's first public school teacher
and more people in Wisconsin should know their story.
So bringing it not only to schools,
but to our general audience is a really important part
of the goal of that project.
We're gonna bring it to the school and goal
and to get a listening session.
We'll follow in the first phrase model.
I did it before we produced it with the community.
And now we're going to show it in the public school there.
They're gonna have a popcorn pizza night
and invite people that participated.
There's, the whole thing was composed,
there's voice over as well.
So a lot of,
it's not pretty much the number that's worth it for you,
so no.
So a really good example of collaboration.
And finally,
our staff is coming through thousands of surveys
at this time of year.
But I will tell you,
if you feel it on your survey and return
and someone looks at every one of those,
we try to identify,
you see something that feels like that
should have an answer to it, we answer that.
But here's a little note that Jeffrey sent, PBS has now
inspired the 12,000 homes I have written,
including nearly 7,400 sonnets.
Anybody wants to go on here?
I'll see you.
Okay.
We have lots of volunteers.
You can add it to Jeffrey's collection.
We did not volunteer to do that,
but it's a very sweet, nice note.
And just the piles of surveys,
these really wonderful comments about,
you know, how this work changes people
and inspires people inside.
Sure.
Jeffrey's.
Thank you, John.
Very nice.
I think in the interest of allowing people to get back
to O'Connell vlog,
and some vlogs,
in Ellipale.
Yeah.
In other parts of the students, guys.
And we should probably adhere in this, David.
But we want to thank everyone for being here.
And wish you a safe trip home.
I think the rain has stopped a little bit.
Hopefully there's no public entrance,
but you know,
maybe it'd be nice to have you on the end.
Also, it's right.
Yeah.
Okay.
We do.
I don't know that we did.
We introduced Victoria's,
but thank we should.
I think we should.
Veronica.
We're fine.
I'm fine for you.
What are you saying?
I'm sure.
Veronica, I'm on the engineering team.
So, I've been on three or a couple of years before that,
but I'm getting married
and I'm hoping to drive the truck to them.
And.
Oh.
All right.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
They said before you helped make Seattle look good.
Very good.
All of this.
Every minute.
Yeah.
Okay.
I just want to note that upcoming board meetings.
December 8th, March 8th and June 14th, itself.
Thank you.
You tell us to support the four.
Thank you very much.
Everyone for Dennis and how I should go to a journey that's been made.
All in favor.
All right.
If we are now adjourned.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Bye.
Finally.
Thank you.
Bye.
Thank you.
Bye.
I just.
It's recording.