The Post-Pandemic College Campus

Episode Transcript

SB S1 E21 – Jay Deshmukh

Kelly: [00:00:00] Let’s talk about skills, baby. Woo. So exciting. Each week, I chat with inspiring visionaries about the skills they developed, the skills that make them successful, how they develop those skills and their innovative approaches to skills-based hiring and learning around the world. Come learn. What skills help you live your best life.

So today, I am so excited because, we’re hearing the live as it goes up on my screen. but here today, I am joined by Jay. And Jay, the only question I didn’t ask you before we went live was I wanted to make sure that I pronounced your last name correctly, and I completely forgot to ask, is it Deshmuck.

Jay: Deshmuck.

Kelly: Okay. Jay is an award-winning architect with over 20 years of experience. She is recognized for thought leadership and [00:01:00] design excellence in institutional architecture of varied scales in Canada and overseas. She leads the design, strategic thinking and planning for educational civic and healthcare projects and engages meaningfully with clients, stakeholders and authorities to define and implement the strategic vision of the project through police centric design.

She has experience in both design and project management for new and existing structures of varied, typologies, scales, and complexity. She is deeply engaged in the arts and design community in Toronto as a member of the board of trustees at the textile museum of Canada, and as a frequent guest critic and lecture at design schools.

Jay, thank you so much for joining.

Jay: Oh, thank you so much for having me. This is exciting.

Kelly: It is my pleasure. I am really excited to dig in to the research that you’ve done on the post pandemic college [00:02:00] campus. I think this is just such an amazing topic and the points that you brought up were so fascinating.

But before we dive in there, I know I gave these wonderful highlights, but tell us a little bit about you. How did you end up at IBI group where you are now? How did you end up in Toronto?

Jay: These are good questions. So yeah, I’m originally from Bombay in India where I studied architecture and I studied architecture because it was a confluence of art and design and to the topic we’re going to discuss left and right brain.

And so I did my original undergraduate degree there and went to the United States for graduate school, actually in North Carolina. And honestly thought I was going to be there for a couple of years. I will not declare how long it’s been. It’s definitely been a long time. And I focused on design research actually.

So the strange thing is that I’ve come back to doing deeper design research all these years later, partly because of the participatory design model that I was [00:03:00] exposed to there in North Carolina, I lived and worked there and then New York City and just some of it is circumstantial.

The farms I worked for were deeply engaged in the community and were very frequently working with K through 12 and higher education. And I discovered that that’s really where my heart lay. This public structures, this notion that architecture has the power to shape life. And that you’re co-creating with people who are going to actually use the spaces beyond the gorgeous photographs that I have to say as an architect, I already enjoy.

After that, life is going to be framed and the spaces that we co-create together. And so that’s where I stayed. So I lived in, worked in New York City for a while before moving to Toronto, apparently because I followed the person in my personal life.

So that’s what brought me to Canada. And I’ve been again, continuing to live and work here in very similar forms. IBI group is a large firm that I’ve been with that really brings design and technology [00:04:00] together. So that’s what’s been interesting. I’m part of a group called the global learning studio.

And we have colleagues in multiple places around the world really, but more in the US, Canada, and the UK. And we’re discussing our projects from K through 12 through higher education at this moment, more than ever. That’s the synopsis of where.

Kelly: Definitely. And I know we talked a lot about this for the few minutes before we went live, but just this combination of design and technology. And actually that was the piece that I kept thinking about as I was reading your article, was that what you’re discussing really is this combination, this diversity of thought, like this whole other way than the traditional way we’ve been thinking of in terms of the college or university experience that I found really fascinating.

It just got my wheels turning a lot as well.

Jay: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. The [00:05:00] biggest thing that one is learning is that, and I think this has been discussed by many people about the pandemic, that several trends that were already in play are getting accelerated, right. No matter what fields one is talking about or what space.

And I think the biggest thing for us to take from the standpoint of what we’re discussing is that the technologies is an enabler. Yes, it’s certainly now becoming even more of a determinant of success, but it’s an enabler. And to go back to the word design, you actually have to design the hybrid experience, right?

So in the same manner and the same care that over generations we have taken around creating space and if I can go back to the architecture credo, there’s a line from Malaguzzi who was related to the Montessori movement, who speaks about the environment as the 13th.

And so architects live by this credo, this notion that we are part of that learning journey and that we’re either fostering or at worst hindering how [00:06:00] an interaction takes place and therefore the learning outcome. So if we translate that now to the hybrid discussion that’s being had at most campuses around the world, then you’re also talking about virtual space.

So you would actually have to think about the virtual environment and we have to really go deeper into it. And how to design it so to speak.

Kelly: And here’s something I just thought of when you said that too. First of all, I was initially thinking of the virtual environment, meaning like the environment of you being at school virtually and making sure that you’re really getting a lot out of that. But then do they have to also go a step further and almost like think forward to where that person is actually physically in their virtual environment?

Because that’s the thing I think of, like my children actually, the three of them right now are in virtual school at home, we live in New Jersey. That’s just the situation we’re in here with COVID. But the interesting thing is, they were sending out all these messages at the beginning of the school year, make sure your child has a [00:07:00] desk and a quiet room.

And all of these things that I’m thinking, we’re in a fortunate situation, but listen, thank goodness, I have one room with a door closed. And actually this happened after COVID because I didn’t need that before, because I was traveling most of the time and I have two children that have their own rooms.

But like I didn’t have these gorgeous desks, I’ve got a kindergarten that’s virtual, my husband’s working from home. I mean, they didn’t want the kids going to school from their bed. And I’m like, okay, I appreciate that. But like that requires a lot of things to get in order for you to be physically in a space, and then again, this is the thing I think of because I have a daughter that has, I know the school calls it learning disabilities.

I don’t call it that. I call it the gift of dyslexia, but here’s the thing, she has like other things that are going on, like sensory stuff. For her to sit still in a desk, she can’t learn. [00:08:00] So she needs to be like bouncing on the ball. She’s fine in the bed, but they’re asking these.

So anyway, that was a really long winded thing to say. But my point being that, are you guys having to think forward in this environment to where the student actually is?

Yeah, 100%. The paper that you’re referencing was done in the spring. So when I was talking to people in May and June, everybody was effectively calling it band-aid education, right.

Everybody was like, here we are, we’re triaging. We’re going to do what we need to do to get through this semester. And can’t wait for fall. It didn’t matter who I spoke to, and I spoke to almost 50 people in 12 countries, but everyone simply wanted to go back. And we haven’t. There are a few countries who are doing a little better, but in general, we haven’t.

And so what I’m now finding, and I’m back in research mode speaking to people, is that what [00:09:00] we have done is we’ve taken away that collective experience. So the thing that we were all just taking for granted, that the classroom and it was an in-person situation, which was a whole person and situation to the point that you just made educators know how to deal with the multiple learning styles of their students.

And experienced educators know they can read a room. They don’t need everyone to be the person who’s gone unmute and turned on their camera to be present. They can see the silent student, they can read the person who’s nodding off.

They can relate to, and they can deliver the right education for the students. And that’s what’s happened is it’s gotten flattened and fragmented. So to your point, we’re now asking our homes, right? So I’m sure everybody’s gone through all this stuff about DIY and people running out a lumber, or stores running out of lumbar, right.

Everybody wanting the dag everyone’s super envious of the Californians were able to talk to [00:10:00] you from their back deck, the point that the inequity is far greater now. So every person’s home space, so you were mentioning your children are in virtual school. Here in Toronto, my kid’s a high schooler and he’s able to go to school once, he goes every other day in the mornings, right. And we’ve got our fingers crossed, here comes second wave, how’s this going to go? But I can tell you, anecdotally that this 25% engagement with half a class, they’ve completely retool how they’re teaching.

The kids are behaving like community college kids, they’re doing only two courses. You would think that kids were going to do eight subjects for the whole year, suddenly being asked to do in compressed space of time to losses. First of all, the kids are adaptable.

At least on the face of things. That engagement for even a short [00:11:00] time has completely changed his motivation. And allowed me quiet right now in the house. It just so happened to work out well. So what I’m trying to say is we are going to need these different modalities. By being present, by having engagement with his teachers, with his fellow classmates, he is able to take that energy back and deal with the synchronous, what he’s going to do in the afternoon.

He’d be doing what you and I are doing. And he stays engaged. He is effectively in student’s space, even back at the house. Which was not really possible when he was, in the spring when everybody was left to their own devices and effectively their own motivation. I mean, motivation is a huge part of learning.

Yeah, I can completely appreciate that. Cause you’re right. It’s very different that what was happening for our virtual school situation in the spring looked very different from now. They just weren’t ready for it. And I mean, we all have to appreciate [00:12:00] that. But of course, it’s funny because I’m guessing that you were thinking the same thing I was thinking back then. The schools are just realizing this now? That’s what I thought. I was like, yeah, we probably should have been thinking about this before anyway, but.

Jay: That’s true. And definitely, the schools I think had an even harder time because again, within K through 12, there’s a far greater discussion that you need the students to be there.

So the youngest of the youngest, even more so. There’s a lot of real concerns around reading skills and math skills for K through five, I would say, particularly students who are learning to read. So there’s a lot of discussion around, can you teach reading the way you and I are doing? For the youngest of the young. And so universities that had distance education were able to use some of those skills, but again, back to that notion because technology has been making its way into the classroom for a really long time.

So when the pandemic hit, I was [00:13:00] about four months into leading the design of a health sciences building, a campus actually, that was bringing together five schools of health sciences in the city of Ottawa. Very exciting project, it was really fantastic from the standpoint of these five schools, they were quite disparate and had been spread out across the campus, coming together for the first time.

So you’re going to hear this theme over and over this notion of intersections, this idea that multidisciplinarity needs people to engage. And again, it was health sciences, so it was very technical from the standpoint of the teaching, as well as research requirements of individual professors.

Suddenly you go online. I have 26 user groups that I’m talking to like this to design a building. But a lot of what they’re going to do with their students requires the hands-on piece, but then there are other elements which may be better or well-delivered online. [00:14:00] Right?

So I think that’s the place where most people are now. So where in the spring, everyone was just reacting and trying to do what they needed to do. You definitely can see that over the summer, a lot of time has been invested in trying to improve it. And it’s varying degrees of success.

For some people they’ve simply translated the physical scenario, like the curriculum and just to shift it to virtual space, whereas others are trying to rethink. And I think with each semester.

Kelly: Exactly, there’s like little shifts to make. I totally agree. I mean, unfortunately we all would love to be able to just like flip that switch and it’s what we envision.

But at least they’re trying and they definitely reiterating. So I read the article, but for everyone listening in tell us, like give us the top layer of what are the pieces that you’re really recommending. Cause I think it’s just [00:15:00] extremely fascinating.

And the interesting thing about this, I know some people might be wondering like, what does this even have to do with skills based hiring and learning? This actually has a lot to do with it. And just as we described this design technology combination, this is really like future of education.

This is a huge view into that world and I loved the recommendations you’re making. So give us just that like rundown of what these recommendations are.

Jay: Yeah. So, I could go on about this, but the simple point is that in a way, we’ve all been forced into rethinking the things that we’ve been doing for a really long time.

And again, at this point when we’re talking post-secondary, what is the meaning of college? Why does anybody go to university? What is the promise of it? We’ve been talking a little bit about mass education learning styles but even for the individual, what motivates a person?

And for the longest time we have used the [00:16:00] degree as a frame for our adult lives, you will get introduced to people this way, and then we make certain inferences on the basis of their educational qualifications. And again, we’ve been talking about, back to your skills question, we’ve been talking about lifelong learning for a long time.

So for more than 10 years now, as an architect, we’ve been talking about creating spaces that teach students how to learn. Not what they’re learning, I mean, obviously curriculum matters and knowledge matters and there’s a knowledge acquisition piece to most programs. But on the other hand, what we’re saying is that the critical thinking, the creative problem solving aspect of it, the ability to work both independently, as well as collaboratively, like those elements require that nurturing while you’re in studenthood, right.

And potentially need reinforcement and development with all the words [00:17:00] re-skilling up-skilling yes. So the notion that you’ve been to have this four year degree, that’s going to carry you through a stable career has been lost forever.

It’s just at this moment, everybody’s being forced to understand what it means. I’ve talked to people who’ve talked about the death of campus. Forget the death of campus, the death of university. So are we all going to, at the very extreme, is the discussion around, are people simply going to have a skills wallet, if you will, right?

And then you just keep on adding new currency into it based on this next topic, which is jobs being able, essentially is university preparing you to be an adult, a global citizen, a thinking individual? Or is university essentially preparing you for work and the ability to put food on the table and to thrive as an engaged individual in the world?

So [00:18:00] two very different things. And for most people both, right? For most people, they would tell you that what I needed to do both.

Kelly: I definitely find that interesting because most people that I interact with, and again, this is not necessarily in my field. I mean, people that I tend to be serving. So people that are actually like consuming the education that I’m trying to help align or people that are on unemployment, that are needing the technologies that we work on to help them find a job.

The majority of people that I talk with, they see education and learning as a vehicle towards a successful life. They might not, and again, this is the majority, I’m not saying that there’s a lot of people out there that don’t believe in the basic foundation. But most of them are thinking like, how do I get into a better situation, help take care of my family. It’s the basics.

Jay: And I think that’s totally valid. And to be honest [00:19:00] again, the instability in the economy in most parts of the world forces that even more to the forefront. There’s all kinds of other elements around the robots are gonna take all our jobs and here comes AI and these manufacturing jobs moving away.

So is a community college. So it’s talking about a whole array of different things, which bring you back to the notion that an individual, I’m probably in the last range of people who went to say, oh, I went to architecture school and I’m an architect, but how many people are going to be able to say that?

And so the wheel thing in my profession is that it’s designed education actually prepares people with a really large array of skills. And in fact, oddly long before the pandemic in the United States, this statistic runs that more than 50% of graduates from architecture school are not architects in the rest of their lives because they have a certain skill set that they can leverage.

Now that [00:20:00] could be a whole other discussion on the profession, but that’s not the point I’m making. The point I’m making is foundational. And then again, because this is a profession, the notion that you have to have continuing ed in order to keep your licensure, for instance, exists.

So there are many different fields in which this notion of continuing to keep your skills relevant, your knowledge relevant, is an old idea. It just has tended to mean that it’s deepening your ability within what you’re already doing. Whereas now we’re saying that, maybe you’re going to do something completely different and maybe you’re going to turn around and take on a different life.

And that for each of those intersections, will you go back to school for an intensive period or will you, what many adults are doing continue to live and to work and to build up skills? So I think that this idea of studenthood being at a particular moment in one’s life, [00:21:00] is going to become a lifelong student, right?

This idea of being a lifelong student with definitely concentrated moments, right? So you’ll have these points in your life where it will be very focused and very concentrated. But again, back to that, there’s several students who walk at the same time that they’re studying. So it is not black and white.

It never has been. And possibly this hybrid learning will allow a greater choice. So another thing we’ve talked about many times in architecture is again, long before the pandemic is that we’re asking for space to not be either or. I’ll give you an example, Constant discussion on the open office.

Is it good? Bad? So the answer is often both and not either/or. It’s not that you need the enclosed office and it’s not that you need to be out outside. It’s more activity-based. Sometimes you need to concentrate and sometimes you need to collaborate and your job [00:22:00] description might lean one way or the other.

And I think that’s true in many different scenarios, so true.

Kelly: I think so. And I think it’s true in learning too. And I think it also has to do with the individual, right. Because some people, like I was saying earlier with my daughter, some people focus in totally different ways. So some people have the collaborative environment to be great.

And that’s a great way for them to focus. And then others, that’s just not like uniquely something that they’re great at. I only say that and laugh because I am not. Like I’m someone who needs the quiet to

Jay: focus.

And the thing is that within a single, because we’re talking about classrooms in a sense, they will be that range.

But also to your point as an individual, there’ll be moments when you want to concentrate forces. So there is no one size fits all, right. So around this, again, this notion of skills is that there are going to be skills that are foundational, that you might have in these kinds of compressed times in your lives.

Like [00:23:00] what one is saying about the future is this idea that many, many of us are going to have to understand that, graduation is not the end.

Kelly: It’s on average now. Like, and I can’t even remember where I read this stat recently, on average we have 10 jobs throughout our life. 10 different jobs.

And that’s just an average. I’m thinking back and I’m like, man, I think I’ve already had the 10. I don’t know.

Jay: Well, what’s interesting is you mentioned 10 jobs, right? What if it’s 10 professions, right? So you were talking about the paper that I wrote, different parts of the world have different attitudes about it, right?

So I was mentioning to you that I grew up in Bombay in India and India has had for the longest time, a much more traditional mindset. People would walk in and say, I’m the engineer, I’m the teacher, I’m the whatever. And even in the United States, for sure you can see, and Canada is no different. This framework,[00:24:00] it’s very much driven by a certain frame that’s put around a person. And then if you hear that they also do something else, we start getting a little bit surprised and, we appreciate that. Wow. Oh also a dancer. Oh, brilliant.

But I can see how in Denmark, for instance, the notion that a person is going to have to retool frequently is completely accepted.

And of course Denmark does everything brilliantly. They allow a very simple mechanism for people to go back to school often in a community college set up. There’s also not enormous pressure for people to be academically oriented. So that’s the other thing, that if you think about again, now a bit of a history situation with trades was determining, to your point earlier about, people just want the basics, what am I going to do? Am I a carpenter? And we’ve created this hierarchy, a false hierarchy [00:25:00] in a way that I hope will be dismantled.

Kelly: I know what you’re saying. One of the things that really stood out to me in that article in particular was you made some references to this, like the Cisco campus at MIT, and then it was the MIT campus at Cisco. And that’s what sparked some thoughts in my mind related to what you’re discussing, because if you think that people have again, when I said on average of 10 jobs, you’re right.

It doesn’t mean the same profession, by any means. And this is just an average. I actually think that number is going to go higher. Because I just think that’s the way that life is, but then also we’re in and out of learning now. People might not even recognize this, right? The way that I look at skills is that we’re picking up skills, not only in formal education environments, but also in everything else.

So today here we are, this first live. I actually just did this for the first time on Tuesday. [00:26:00] Like I didn’t know what I was doing. I Googled some stuff, looked up a YouTube video. That’s how I figured it out. Now we might not say that that’s learning in the sense of like something I’m going to sit down and put on my social media profile or my resume.

But in actuality, we’re learning a lot. I’m going to guess everyone here has looked up the most ridiculous thing on YouTube to do a household project. Like the grill went out the other day and we were like, oh, let’s just find a YouTube video to see how to fix it. And that’s learning too.

And so throughout our life, we are learning whether or not it’s formal or informal. We’re moving through these different professions, through these different jobs. And what I found when you described that was that I was like, man, that those foundational skills, those baseline skills that you mentioned earlier as like an important function, that made me think of so many different ways that we pick up those baseline skills and those environments like this.

And maybe you can elaborate on this, what you meant by [00:27:00] MIT, Cisco campus. I know what you mean. But I was thinking about that and I was like these entrepreneurial. That really lends toward the growth mindset, the critical thinking, the problem solving. And when you combine this like working and innovation style space, that got me really thinking.

So maybe you can elaborate on that first and then I tell you a little bit about where my thoughts were coming from?

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. So what you’re referencing is the fact that a lot of engineering schools for instance, will have some endowment that will come to them that will create a partnership.

So, certainly a lot of the elite universities will have external partnerships with engineering concerns, or as I said Cisco for instance, has been quite active and they will create that. It became really popular right over the last 10 years, every elite school got to make a space, the hands-on, the learning. And it’s been quite dramatic, but now one is [00:28:00] wondering whether instead of the private organization or the research lab being embedded in the university campus is going to be the other way around.

Right. And so is it going to be more likely the educational mindset is actually getting inserted into the private concern, into private space? And then I think, again, back to the both end, I think they’re both going to happen. I don’t think it’s going to be an either or, I also think it’s going to be much more distributed.

There are many, many different campuses, particularly ones in urban centers that are creating these kinds of innovation zones. That are really creating a space, but not just a physical space. It’s an intellectual space. It’s in a space of experience of experimentation, but also a space of mentorship.

It’s a space of we’re all in this together because you have this idea, the classic oh I am in my garage creating something. And on the other hand, I can think of one here in downtown Toronto where [00:29:00] they’ve got it overlooking the time square of Toronto, right?

So right in the buzz of the city and this place where everybody’s intersecting and they may not actually be working with each other, but because they are together trying to create something new, it gives them a different platform. And so I think that that relationship similarly again, with university educations not being so straightforward.

So for instance, when I was in university, you had to do a semester of practical training where you were placed in the architect’s office. As part of grad, for graduation, you actually had a term. And there was always this discussion about whether that term should be at the end of your education or somewhere in between.

And I honestly believe that when it was in between, it actually brought you back to the campus with a very different mindset.

Kelly: Just like you were describing with your son having this, like I think of it that way, because you’re bringing something. It’s just a different learning environment.

That’s all I would [00:30:00] describe it as. You’re learning in a different way, in a very hands-on way. And we all know how important that is, which is why I love the concept of these maker spaces. But it reminded me of, I had a conversation with Houston community college. I want to say it was earlier in the year.

I feel like time is, we don’t even know what that is anymore, but whatever it was. They had created an innovation space, again, very similar to what you’re describing. Now, this is at a community college campus. Okay. And granted it’s in a urban center, like the middle of Houston. Right. But it was a place where entrepreneurs can come.

They also had different areas where they would teach courses like the 3d printing lab. But then they also had spaces that were geared towards parents. And this is what I love about it. So they had children’s spaces, think of like those Lego playgrounds or whatever, but like spaces where they were hands-on.

Again, this is just like Legos, Playdoguh, 3d printing, like [00:31:00] just things that you can play with and learn, and they mingled spaces. And when they described this, I found this really fascinating because of course they were saying, they were learning. And I’ve heard teachers say this often, like they were learning just as much of interacting with adults, as well as play learning, interacting with children.

And I think the concept of this and the MITs of the world, the Stanfords of the world, like, of course, right. What I really think of is this community center that makes learning, not like these highly intellectual people. And I really want to say that because I think that the world we’re going towards, I don’t want a certain class of people to think, that’s not for me.

I’m not that style. I’m over here, I’m just like in construction. No, like life is not, it’s very fluid. The concept of learning, failing all of these, the critical thinking skills that you have to build that aren’t, I think our society in general, [00:32:00] globally, too, because collectively what’s going on right now, are more accepting of this.

When I thought of those two things together, your description and then me bringing it to this concept that I heard at this community college, I was like, no, this is for everyone. And actually the cross mingling of people from various backgrounds actually leads to additional innovation. It’s a huge plus.

And I think if campuses start to rethink how learning is happening and not make it so like hands off, it might be really fascinating what could happen and how they could reuse space.

Jay: A hundred percent, a hundred percent. I mean, you’ve really, really hit upon something here that coalesce has several different ideas.

One is breaking down this hierarchy that you’ve already hit upon, which I won’t go on about. I think that is incredibly critical because again, the inequities that are being stretched and there’s a lot of talk. We speak about the death of campus or the death of the university, but we know that the [00:33:00] elite universities are going to be fine.

We know that those reputations are going to India or, it’s everything in the middle. And to some degree it’s also the smallest ones that are incredibly community engaged that we think are going to do okay. It’s everyone in the middle that’s not differentiated. And so to your point, another idea that this really coalesces with that’s broader is the notion of city as campus.

And so this idea that they come together and a third one, which is the 15 minutes city. I don’t know if you’ve come upon that. Again ,yet another thought that’s been around for a really long time. I mentioned that I moved from New York to Toronto, a very, very famous American writer, Jane Jacobs move from the Greenwich village to the annex in Toronto.

She was leaving New York city. She had an enormous impact. She wrote this book called Life and Death of the American City, which is incredible. And she talked about people, the life of what makes a city vibrant, what makes community, [00:34:00] et cetera. Where I’m going with this is these ideas have been there forever.

The notion that the neighborhood matters, the notion that place creates community, intersection, all these things that you’ve talked about. So the 15 minutes city is what, in a sense, we’re all living right now. So when the commute has been taken away, successful neighborhoods are those that you can go to the grocery store and you can go and you’re not completely relying on the online shopping experience for instance.

I’m going to forget the quote, but somebody who said, when I want to buy an envelope, I go to the store to buy the envelope. I believe it was Kurt Vonnegut actually, who talks about this. He says, I don’t want to buy it online. And I don’t want the box of a hundred or a thousand.

I want to go talk to the person, speak to the person in line, et cetera. So if you start talking about those intersections, is it the public library that gets re-imagined? The American landscape is based upon the five minute [00:35:00] walk to elementary school. So if you think about that, you’ve got all these elementary schools that in the evening, can create all kinds of different spaces for the community together. And when I was designing schools in New York, for instance, this was always a consideration. It was always a 16 hour school building.

Kelly: I’ve actually been to a ton of events at schools in New York City, that were business related events and we were actually mingling with the students. That was the best part about it is because you got that fresh perspective.

Jay: Definitely. And again, to your point, once again, about bringing together people who wouldn’t otherwise cross paths. At this moment, this is one of the biggest things that we are losing, right?

So the grand university experience is often the, suddenly being ___ or in the dorm hallway, or, in-between. Being around people that you wouldn’t otherwise be around. And then it’s effectively accruing a sense of [00:36:00] global citizenship. Through that debate, through that discussion.

And in the beginning, a lot of the immediate response to the pandemic and virtual education is everything that happens inside the class. So people have spent a lot of time trying to say, how do I deliver philosophy online? And how do I translate the interior design studio online?

Or can I teach chemical engineering online? But what about the spaces in between? Because as much learning is occurring in the spaces in between, the connective tissue of physical as well as interactive space, that is much harder.

Kelly: What are your thoughts about, cause at least I didn’t notice it in the article, but let me know if this was in your thoughts.

I have been really keeping an eye on lately this shift from virtual reality VR to what’s being called, like XR, having actual experience. So I don’t know if anyone over this time period has been to like a [00:37:00] virtual event where they have an avatar. There’s like two things that I noticed lately.

I think it’s like Arizona State, or university bears. They just announced something. But I was talking to a firm the other day that was just sharing this new updated version, it wasn’t like the big Oculus glasses. It almost looked like just my glasses.

I wonder what you think about that, because there’s times that I think, at least I’m having two thoughts about this and I can’t really wrap my brain around it yet. But I was like, wow there’s certain things that we consider only in-person learning experiences. And if you’re training to be a surgeon, as we were talking about before, you’re like I really want you to be in there doing it. But then when you see, like I was actually experiencing someone build a house virtually.

And I was like, it was like building a house. It was amazing. I have never [00:38:00] seen, it was so realistic. And I was like, oh my gosh, I was starting to envision, could this actually turn into something that is so in fact real that you’re practicing just the same way you would in person? But then I also was thinking of that other side of things like you just described, the sense of community and talking to people and not feel isolated.

Where I think you’re right. The and/both or whatever

Jay: you said.

The outcome, yeah. This is an excellent point, again, yes, definitely. AR and VR has been around and again, as an architect, I’m putting those glasses on my client’s long, long before COVID right. And allowing them to experience a rendering and feel like they’re in this space because often what we’re doing in architecture is asking people to make enormously large decisions on the basis of something that we just cannot demonstrate to them in full scale. Even the most fantastic renderings will still be flat. And this helps you.

So to your point, [00:39:00] the jury is still out on this in most cases. Definitely because we’re all looking for engagement, there are certain scenarios where the unflattening, if I can call it of the experience definitely allows for deeper engagement and for exploration, let’s say. So attention span is terribly important, right?

So if you’re allowing people to get deeper engaged, you’re getting something out of it. So for instance, my firm is involved quite strongly with Noma, which is the National Organization for Minority Architects in Los Angeles. And they do a design camp for high school students.

Very much hands-on and they had to do it virtually. So they send the kits off and the students were despirsed and they did in their homes, what they would have done together, et cetera. But they still created these projects and the culmination that was deeply enjoyed was that IBI created this virtual exhibit that was a three-dimensional space.

And it was a more conventional way of displaying work. And the students [00:40:00] were there and people were walking through as though in a gallery setting. And this created a deep enthusiasm. It created a sense of camaraderie, of wondering, of discovery that was deeply engaging.

Now, can that be extended to every situation? One is hearing about conferences doing similar things. So again, instead of the flat website, because it’s still all virtual, we asked that question. We create three-dimensional buildings models, so if my building that I mentioned, the health sciences building, would it make sense in fall of 2021 for that virtual space to then get engaged with technology like this?

And would that somehow deepen the engagement? I think to some degree it might, but as we were saying earlier, the designing of that is going to be the key. The technology can bring a lot of tools to the [00:41:00] table, it’s how those tools get used in order to actually deepen the engagement and for them to have.

And I think that’s going to take a little time for us to see how well that functions beyond the event. Because events, it works great. But if it talks about a whole term, then you’re actually looking to see somebody’s knowledge expand, or you were saying about building something, we’re talking about dexterity, right?

So within learning, there’s thinking, doing, feeling. In the west, we’re very cognition oriented, cognitive acquisition, knowledge acquisition based culture. And so we know that more and more people talk about feeling and developing empathy and being able to sense.

And I don’t mean feeling in a touchy feely way, although that’s incredibly important. But more on a sensorial way.

Kelly: It’s like all of your senses, like you were saying earlier with the reading the room, right.

Jay: Exactly. What have we taken away? I mean, maybe the not having smelly [00:42:00] teenager. I don’t know. Maybe that’s what I know.

Kelly: It’s fascinating to me to imagine, even as you were describing this from an architecture standpoint and I’m not an architect, I was like, I know some people think about COVID as this like huge doom and gloom scenario. I am just like, my mind is blown at the possibilities that we could be transforming to right now.

Yes, of course. I want to think of both sides, but just the thought that at some point in time, you, as an architect may actually develop a completely virtual environment and space that people interact with virtually, it’s just totally, what!

Jay: That’s not far at all. That is not far at all. We’ve already held certain events.

So what’s funny is that right before the COVID hit, I don’t have to tell you that, in physical space we had created something called the sandbox. And it was a few floors away from where I worked, and [00:43:00] it was called the sandbox because it was going to bring together external partners and consultants and others to develop new ideas.

This was the idea of it, so it was a space of collaboration and it had a large variety of spaces that you could do that in. And the day that the WHO declared the pandemic, I was meant to go to Ottawa to do a workshop with 50 people. And I ended up having to stay in Toronto in the sandbox because it had better technology.

And I was interacting with people in Ottawa, and we re-ran the workshop virtually, but at that time, the rest of my participants were together in the room. I was the only distance person. Well, that sandbox space is architecturally and design-wise a really fun space. We’ve recreated that as a virtual space and we’ve just started hosting events there.

So, oh my gosh, next time we should host [00:44:00] your thing in the sandbox.

Kelly: Let’s do it.

Jay: Because what it’s doing now, so we’re testing it. We’ve done two of them and we’re going to do an environmental awareness one. Again, the idea is that you activate that virtual space and try to create some of that interaction that occurs before and after.

Kelly: Yes. Because in the hallways, right. That’s like the most important part of when you’re in person.

Jay: So we’re all experimenting to be honest. Back to what you were saying, the best part of what could happen for most of us individually, as families, as communities, as institutions, is if we can keep that experimental heart on, if we can do that, and if we’re doing it at an individual level, peer to peer has become far more important.

And so I think that’s the exciting part of it. Is that it’s causing each of us to, nobody is being as collaborative, I don’t know how many, each person has attended more [00:45:00] webinars than ever in their life.

Kelly: Right. And I do agree, like we need to figure out a way around this part. Cause all of us, as we’re sitting here on a live video session. But it is hard to get to everything. And there’s so much now I’m sure that there’s going to be a lot of innovation around this.

It’s interesting, like I just want to say when you were just describing this whole new potential, virtual event situation and more, I was also thinking about all of the new jobs, companies, everything else that’s going to create all of the ways that people, as they might be doing physical space events right now, will have to retool themselves. Learn new skills to be able to host a virtual event.

These are the types of things we talk about is this whole, like that lifelong learning process. It’s because of us seeing these little micro innovations throughout time caused by various events, but sometimes it’s just naturally happening. And it’s just [00:46:00] very fascinating to me, just this whole concept of what that could lead to even that just one example, the scale of that.

Jay: Yeah. And then to your point about the skills idea. We make a lot of assumptions on the basis of the frames that we’re given or that we’ve taken on for ourselves. When you talk to me as an architect, you’ve already assumed there are certain skills that I have, and I will do the same for you when we’re all doing that for each other.

And it really struck me recently because of other reasons people are starting to put under their name. The he/she.

Kelly: I know this seems crazy, but I actually wondered why is that? Just so that people understand.

Jay: Yeah. It’s the whole not assuming gender, right?

So it’s an expression that’s coming out of being able to say that I’m being explicit about it because it actually comes from a place of accepting that it’s not binary. [00:47:00] So that’s where it’s coming from. But it almost struck me that are we going to now start talking about skills?

So when you talk about a resume, back to what we’re were saying about jobs and work and how we define ourselves and how we put ourselves into this two pager right. “Keep it to two pages”. It’s like, I have more to say. Once you do that, I know like architects for instance, will say previously it would say skills and they would start listing the software that they were good at.

And they would start putting, I slowly started seeing these graphic demonstrations of skill level. Where somebody would, it’s like saying I’m fluent versus learning in a language. Now, I’m wondering if people are going to be able to have an ability to demonstrate, or I guess it’s not even demonstrated, but you’re just declaring it.

Kelly: I feel like it’s this communication layer.

That’s why I really liked the idea of these, what [00:48:00] you called wallets earlier. These like records that could live with you. I tend to visually look at that as like a backpack that you carry throughout life. And so I’m just a very visual person, so I often have like a picture and a story that goes with something in my mind.

And I look at this as like this backpack. And as you go throughout your life, you add to your backpack. And, right now we’re only able to add to our backpack from formal education and formal work experience. I really want to see a day when the rest of our life experiences collectively, everything in our life can somehow be added to this because I know, and I’m sure you think the same, just being a mother.

Just that one thing, I am a better worker because of what I have to do. Just learning to deal with different personalities. Like I have multiple children, [00:49:00] I have three children. If in the day, when we had to get out of the house, to get three children out of the house with clothes on, that in and of itself, like that level of like persuasion that you need to have.

Jay: As an organization.

No, absolutely. The question I have around this is, again, our ability to reliably measure, right? So where I was saying was going with that, is that all we now going to start saying my skills are creative problem solving? Again, as an architect of course, that’s what I do every day. I don’t need to go and be taught that, right.

Like right now, for instance, design thinking is having a moment. Everybody needs the design certificate, but if you went through a design education, most likely again, decent design education, I suppose, and then certainly in your work-life. So are we going to start describing critical thinking collaborations?

But the question I have is how, how do you expect a reliable measuring of those skills? Right? Because [00:50:00] again, anecdotally, usually

Kelly: I can say I have critical thinking skills, but what does that mean? Exactly.

Jay: I just think there will be ways to do that because that’s what the credentialing does, right? Like

Kelly: Well the credential right now. So here’s the thing. This is why to me, and this is, again, I can’t promise that I’m right, but this is just what I’m seeing. So right now, the credential and authenticating the credential says that you have been exposed to this. That school, however they assess or that learning provider, now it might not be a school, that learning provider may have some assessment that they perform.

But now we have to say that what happens over here, an employer would be willing to say, great. But what’s happening is an employer is saying, well that I just now know that you have this certificate, this degree, whatever.

I need to assess you again in coming in here, because I need to know that what you learned as [00:51:00] critical thinking is the critical thinking that I need in this environment. So I actually think that right now, it doesn’t exist in the way that is actually useful because no one’s trusting of either side, but I do strongly believe that we’re going to get there.

And it’s just something, I think this is a huge part of this like learner and employment record to be successful is to be able to really get at proficiency levels and assessments of skills in a way that all parties can trust them now. And there’s a lot of groups out there that are trying to tackle this right now.

I had a few on to talk about it and this is a piece that I’m like super interested in right now, because I think it’s so simple.

Jay: Right. And you were saying that these groups are effectively living outside the traditional boundary of either campus or work? You’re saying that it doesn’t matter where they live.

Are they more important? Because I know for instance, based in [00:52:00] many other countries where you actually have, particularly technology companies, are actually creating schools on their campus. Because they’re finding that they might have engineering grads or business grads who have the degree, but may not to your point may not have the specific skillset that they’re looking for.

Kelly: I think that we’re going to see a huge shift too. There’s been employers have really been taking on learning and development. Not necessarily in the best way for many of them, but I think that we’re going to see this movement. I mean, we’ve always tried to, at least in my field make these partnerships between educators and employers, but it’s a very difficult process.

I think people need to be more open to that for sure. But a lot of employers are getting frustrated and just saying like, we’re just going to do it on our own because we know what our people need. And I do think that there’s that [00:53:00] and/both situated. I think there people just have to be a little bit more open-minded about how this is going to go.

But I do have a very strong feeling that more employers are going to be looking at this because they want to move faster. They want to focus on certain things that a school can’t personalize specifically towards their situation. And I understand that. And then of course they might be able to then create really deep assessments in the way that they’re looking at people and understanding people and bringing them through.

But I think the thing that I keep going back to, and the reason that I focus on this like open aspect when it comes to these various layers of the ecosystem of hiring and learning, is truly because if I build an environment here at Cisco and I’m like, this works beautifully at Cisco, but guess what?

Now we have, again, on average people moving in and out of 10 professions. And like we said, that’s likely to increase. They’re [00:54:00] moving in and out of various learning, not only internally of what you’re providing at Cisco, but whatever they’re doing throughout their life. So if I’ve created this beautiful environment in Cisco that speaks, it may not translate out for people movement.

And so this is going to start to get difficult for a person because I need to be able to communicate to multiple things throughout my life. But for that organization, in terms of talent pipeline, if I can’t keep people moving in and out without having a lot of work to translate what they are in and then what they are out, I think that’s going to cause a lot of barriers.

So that’s my focus on helping people create a collective communication layer so that these people can move seamlessly because it’s beneficial for people, beneficial for employers, beneficial for educators. And isn’t that the whole point?

Jay: Yeah. No, it’s beautiful because you also just mentioned a word that I do write about and that I believe in and [00:55:00] meant at multiple levels, which is this notion of the ecosystem. And this idea that if we are going to be lifelong learners, there’s effectively an ecosystem of learning and doing, and I don’t even know that they’re two separate words anymore. I don’t have a nice word to put them together.

Kelly: We’re going to have to think of some.

Jay: But to your point, we went back to the notion of the elite university, there’s also the elite workplace. And so I think once again, the credentialing that comes from name recognition and reputation, precedence, is secure.

It’s everybody else who needs to have those trustworthy, reliable, measuring systems that other people can have. And back to your backpack analogy, I didn’t speak about this, but it actually comes from refugee resettlement. So you’re talking about people who have incredible skills and who, because of the label of refugee [00:56:00] are seen in a ‘you need me’ manner rather than you are this whole human being with all of these skills and experiences and abilities.

Kelly: Quite frankly, people that have gone through major crisis like that, the skills that they’ve built.

Jay: There you go. That’s true. And that would change your mindset. I know that it’s the same thing, even in Canada where I live, where we have an immigration system that’s completely based upon professional education and ability to join your workforce. And yet, it gets very difficult depending on the field you’re in to be able to give credibility to people’s experience in parts of the world that are very different from Canada. Because employers don’t know what to do with it.

Kelly: How many times has someone come into a country and they have to retake an entire medical degree? I mean, [00:57:00] I could understand if they maybe had to, again, be in an environment where they can prove that they know what they’ve learned. I can understand that, but to actually just say, Nope, this means nothing.

Jay: Yeah, definitely.

 This is a huge one in very particular fields that have particular skills and abilities and in healthcare its a really big one for that. When I was in North Carolina and went to graduate school even, my skill that I needed to learn was typing. It was really funny because we were completely paper-based in India and I knew that an American graduate school I’m going to have to write a paper. Actually that’s what I had to do.

And in the time that I had, I had only learned the top two lines of the typewriter. And in the last line, well I had goofed off. So when I got to school. It was really funny because it was a [00:58:00] different way of thinking. You see? And I would go to the computer lab and I mean, this is how poor I was at it that I would actually write my entire paper by hand.

And I would go to the computer lab just to type it. Because I couldn’t think and type at the same time.

Kelly: It’s interesting though. I’m going to throw this out there, I would love to talk to someone that just has always typed, because I grew up in this like half and half.

So when I was younger, we had a super old apple computer. I don’t even think we actually did anything on it. I’m not going to lie. It was there in the house and it was cool, it was yellow. And then we were always like writing papers. But then there was at one point in high school where there was a shift where like, I guess it was like the floppy disk that made the big difference, because you could bring in your paper.

But prior to that, we had a computer class in [00:59:00] school and they would put a box over your hands and I just happened to be very competitive. You had to type and spell correctly and everything, whatever it was that they were asking you in 60 seconds.

And for some reason it was just the thing that made me want to do it. But as I got older, I realized that one year, I think it was sixth grade where we had to and I mean, I learned the whole thing with my hands. Like people still say to me, how do you type so fast? It is the most helpful thing now.

And I look at my daughters, they don’t have this in school. Which is fascinating to me because everything is touchscreen for them.

Jay: Yeah, no, it’s interesting. Because I went on to say that the fact that I did my graduate thesis using only computer software, I learned all the software that I needed to learn and it was an architecture school.

So the presentation model. Desktop [01:00:00] publishing. Just figuring out how to do all that. So in that two year course, I would say back to your point about skills, the fact that I had gone from being totally paper-based to being able to put out a graduate thesis that was decent, in that way, it was an enormous skill for me. And so you can definitely see that.

On the flip side about hands on, I insist that people draw. When I’m working with a group, the manner in which the body thinks while drawing the space and time, because my profession is space and time-related right.

So the way that you describe and sense space and the way you think, what triggers in your brain that allows you to draw sketch versus move a cursor around.

Kelly: Do you make them draw on paper or?

Jay: Oh gosh.

The other drawing is not drawing, right. This is the point.

Kelly: That’s why I asked because like, you’re right.

You’re right, and on a device, I have one that I do it all the [01:01:00] time. Where I will do a mock-up, I’ll draw it so that I can send it off to an engineer.

Jay: No, I think it’s a very different mind space that you’re using. It’s also being able to draw three dimensional space. Again, this is one of the most frustrating thing.

I mentioned my 26 user groups earlier on. The fact that I cannot draw them. So I ended up, I’ve got my scribbling here too. So I started drawing them my response and holding it up. Then I photograph it and I send it in the chat because I haven’t gone and bought myself a stylist yet. I mean, this is just minor. It’s so minor, I just haven’t done it because I liked the pencil.

So I’ll sit there, I’ll draw it. I’ll use my colors and then I’ll send it off. It’s my way of communicating with the people that I’m working with. But it’s also my way of thinking. And that’s what I meant earlier that when I was typing, I didn’t know how to think and type.

Kelly: You know what it is when you’re learning a new skill, you’re so [01:02:00] focused on that piece. If you don’t know how to type, you’re so focused on that, that your mind. To then try to have your mind think of what you want to do. But then once you’ve probably mastered that skill now.

Jay: And it’s second nature, because to bring it back to what we were saying about hybrid learning, virtual learning. At this moment, the technology is overriding the education.

Kelly: So if people are having difficulty with technology, they’re not. But this is what I say, and this is an article that I wrote early on when this happened as well with my daughter. And it was about my kids going into virtual school and these resilience skills they learned. So you’re right. I was concerned that I was like, her reading is probably not getting better right now.

I don’t think they’re teaching anything new in math, but guess what she learned? How to use a device. How to get on zoom meetings. How to actually structure her own [01:03:00] day, create that calendar, how to get her lunch ready. Cause me and her father, we’re working. How to learn how to be with her sister outside for the rest of the day with us unavailable.

So I was like, you know what, you’re right. There are things that if I focused on those things that she was not excelling in like it’s important. Right. We want those things. But then I was like, if you looked at it the other way, yeah, you’re right. It’s not perfect. But she learned all these other new things that will still help her be very successful in life.

Jay: And especially if she learned time management, I mean, my God, if that’s not an enormous and self motivation. That’s just enormous. Yeah, I think that’s what it is. If we’re able to pay attention to the elements of the surprising things that we’re all doing.

And if we can also give ourselves a break, I think both [01:04:00] have to happen, right? So this is a moment of great ambition. And I think that those people who are ambitious and arting putting, I mean, this design research that I did around the campus, I did it over and above. For instance, the building that I was designing there was beyond.

But because I was completely engaged with my project and off I was going and being able to talk to people around the world about their personal experiences was motivating in a way that was remarkable. Right. So I think that’s really brilliant, but then you also need the pause points and I think that’s the other part where you were mentioning a bit earlier that we’re losing track of time.

I mean, again, God willing, we will all be past this pandemic and we won’t be in such an extreme situation, but I think that what is coming is a hybridization. Particularly in those parts of the world where technology access exists. Because the other huge thing that’s coming out is the notion of the internet and access to the internet there. [01:05:00] Easy access being like electricity, right?

Like it should be a basic right. And certainly parts of the world contemplated. In many other parts of the world the mobile phone is more important, right? So there’s been phone based education.

Kelly: Honestly, even in the US there are areas that we would call like internet dead zones. But they typically have mobile access. We’ll see that even in generally vulnerable populations, like most often and it’s refugees too, right? Like most often they’ll have no paperwork.

Jay: A hundred percent.

I spoke to somebody who is right now piloting a program with the Rohingya Muslims. The people in Bangladesh at the refugee giant, they live very basic education, but what’s interesting is again, back to your skills question, they are giving them the platform to not be disengaged from learning.

So that’s what I find [01:06:00] really interesting. It’s not the curriculum, it’s the ability to engage the thing to stay in that space of learning. So they’re keeping them education ready, keeping them engaged socially, emotionally. Keeping them engaged, but also growing those aspects of themselves so that when the school begins, so they’re not trying to pretend that they’re delivering curriculum, which I thought was really, really interesting.

Kelly: Really interesting. And that was my approach. I mean, in the spring, at first I was for like a few weeks, I was very concerned. But then once everything settled and we were like, okay, this isn’t just like happening for a few weeks, this is real. Then I was like, I’m going to drive myself crazy and all of these children crazy, if we just keep focusing on what it is that they’re not learning.

Even you’re saying they’re learning ready, I’m like, but those are such important aspects of life handed percent that that need to be practiced [01:07:00] and learned throughout time. I would say that actually they’re probably setting up that group of people to be way more successful in life.

Jay: Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, to be able to calibrate when everyone is talking, we haven’t discussed it that much, but it’s been implied a little bit is this whole notion about mental health and wellness, and that has now come back into the discussion in a way that, it’s always been around and the fringes, but because we’re all really forced into a space where a work and life and everything is colliding.

And as you said, I have no idea when the day begins and when it ends and this thing. So then you have to pause and be generated. You have a family generated, community generated. So I think that in a way it gives agency at many different levels, but we can only have it if we’re replenishing in some way.

Kelly: Just like school right? It’s not like we can just go to school for that one period of time. It’s the same thing. I’m so [01:08:00] glad that it’s becoming more aware, and this is the first time that collectively we’re all experiencing something similar. And that’s why I feel like this awareness at this time is different than it has been in past time.

Jay: I hope so.

Kelly: I hope so too. I mean, we could talk forever. I love this, but we should probably wrap up. I’ll give you one last moment here, though. If there is anything else that you’d like to share as parting thoughts or words? And then I’ll go ahead and wrap us up.

Jay: Yeah, for sure. What I want to say is that when the pandemic hit and we were all collectively switched to separated online universes, and whether it be education or life in general, we took it to be a sprint. For many people, we needed to see an end in order to get through this.

And I think what’s turned [01:09:00] out is that we’re discovering it’s a bit of a marathon. And so if we can take the notion and if we can learn from how marathon runners train, that’s almost what we need of ourselves. And so again, I’m going to keep saying it at all levels of ourselves, of our families, of our communities, you have the fight. You have the both understand that this is for the long haul.

So there’s a very different skillset that’s required for the long haul, but also those moments of replenishing that are required. The fact that there moments of a burst of energy, there’s moments of just coasting. So I think that that is required of us at this moment.

And if we’re able to create the ability to engage again, either because of our own agencies, our peer to peer, our colleagues or our teachers, I think we’re going to get to a different place.

Kelly: I really love that analogy Jay. And I’m like thinking of that endurance building that happens because the other thing about marathon runners in particular is [01:10:00] that you don’t just all of a sudden run 26 whatever miles, you build up to that. So I think we have to give ourselves grace and our family and other people grease throughout this process as we’re building up our endurance.

Jay: Yes. And hopefully we’ll be resilient in ways we couldn’t have imagined.

Kelly: Right. It’s so true. It’s so true. Thank you so much, Jay, for mentioning that. And then for anyone who would like more information about IBI group, they are at ibigroup.com and you can also find Jay on LinkedIn.

I’m going to throw out your Instagram account Jay, because I looked at it and for anyone who’s super interested in the architecture side of things, she’s at j_urbanlens on instagram. I loved it.

Jay: It’s my beauty.

It’s my everyday beauty account.

Kelly: Yes, it’s gorgeous.

It’ll keep me positive. So thank you. If you guys check her out she’s doing some wonderful things. And then I want to thank everybody for listening in [01:11:00] to the first live Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby. This was a lot of fun. Looking forward to doing this. I would love to get some feedback. Although we’re on the YouTube channel live right now, this will also be pushed over to the podcast on Spotify and iTunes.

And you can find me at Kelly Ryan Bailey on all the socials. Let me know what you guys think. Jay, thank you again. Hope you all have a wonderful day.

Jay: Thank you so much. Bye bye.