u have given me from that first phone call when I came here. Sitting next to you and the wind hearing stand. I felt like we were jumping over each other sometimes to get the same kind of question out but even that in a slightly different perspective that was always appreciated. I felt supported all the time in my role as commissioner and as individual as a woman in this industry and moving forward.  Again I can't believe this time has come. I know you're looking forward to going back in to retirement but as Kathy said I can't imagine you actually fully retired so whether we see you here or we hear about you doing something else I hope you stay in touch not only with the commission but me personally you still owe me another round of golf. Just need to give me a little time to get out there and dust off the clubs to do it but I look forward to raising it last tonight. Thank you again for everything and I wish you well. So next on the list is I believe commissioner Hill. Thank you Madam Chair and Gail I'm going to miss you. I think when I I said to her this morning folks I said how am I going to say anything nice about you but then I started thinking about the things I would say and we had a good laugh about that but the more I thought about it the more I thought about your longevity here at the mass gaming commission. It's already been said by Commissioner O'Brien last woman standing but your longevity to me has proven your dedication and more importantly the love that you have for this agency in so many ways. Your experience in New Jersey has been invaluable in creating a strong commission. More importantly is your ability to share your opinions in a blunt but compassionate way that has been adopted through the agency ensuring the agency continues to be a leader in this industry not just nationally but internationally and on a personal note I will miss your institutional knowledge as well of this house that you helped build and of course the wisdom you have offered me over the last few months has been incredible. Your knowledge of horse racing and your willingness to share with me that knowledge has allowed me to better understand the industry and to make me a better commissioner and lastly what I will miss is the great stories and experiences that you shared with me from your time in New Jersey. The stories I learned from you which helped you know me get a better understanding of how some of our own departments here work and I truly appreciate all of that and I lean although I have not had the opportunity to go out and play golf I have been offered to go out and play golf so I'm looking forward to doing that with you Gail in retirement I too will need the rules changed as I cannot the best golfer and I hear you are very very very good and I will also miss our before meeting sport updates because I don't have too many people that I can talk sports with anymore so in the household so I appreciated those conversations you have been so good for the mass gaming commission you are going to be missed and I certainly will miss again all of the great stories but more importantly the wisdom that you shared with us all throughout your tenure thank you thank you chair in particular for indulging me earlier I wasn't going to let the chance to second a motion made by the last original commissioner passing by so I first met commissioner Cameron outside of the virtual public meetings in September last year we were at the Niagara conference and she invited me to take a seat at the table for lunch no big deal right except that it was the very first impersonal social interaction I had had with colleagues since I started at MGC remotely let alone a commissioner so as you can probably imagine I had a lot of warming up to do getting used to being around people again really but commissioner Cameron made a painless she was easy to talk to very lighthearted and I got my first taste of her master storytelling ability so fast forward to just a couple weeks ago and a lot of funny stories later I was preparing to be sworn in as commissioner and I got the opportunity to spend more time with commissioner Cameron as we visited the three licensees and getting to the point of the kind of person she is I was struck by her genuine patience and kindness there wasn't a person she encountered that she felt wasn't deserving of a few minutes to check in with to ask about family to thank them for their contributions to tell a joke to or just to say hello from casino personnel gaming agents the GU team even casino patrons there was really no ranking in who she you know chose to give her time and attention to and having been on the receiving end of that kind of attention back at the conference I know firsthand how they all felt commissioner Cameron is very supportive very encouraging and just an overall wonderful human being so commissioner Cameron thank you for seeing me thank you for seeing others and most of all thank you for your long list of accomplishments and contributions to this body to the gaming commission and the industry as a whole what an example you have set congratulations on your retirement this is not goodbye this is more for me just to talk to you later thank you welcome mr. Cameron welcome to let you speak yet I'm on task we really we really wanted to make this a and I say and I do love Judy thank you for turning on your videos that team if you would like to turn on your videos we don't care I haven't been able to shampoo my hair for weeks so welcome aboard we'd love to see your faces okay and I do think some folks are watching on the live stream that I'm sure they see that beyond this so I think other people okay and that's great that's great too but tune in because we we will have the opportunity for you to speak to commissioner Cameron but right now I want to turn it of course to care thank you so gail uh as other folks have said this is a bittersweet moment you are the last of the original fab five to leave um you are the first and only commissioner to do the full five pardon me full 10 year term so thank you for the that decade of admirable service to the Commonwealth and to the Massachusetts game and commission I was thinking about what I'd say this morning and it is it's a tough to go by because you have been a true leader in this organization you as folks have said you have done it with humor and some good stories and what I wanted to focus on this morning was also the friendship not only to myself but other members of this organization I think I can speak on behalf of the staff that we appreciated your loyalty and your dedication to all the people that work here and your interaction on a personal level going around to the folks in the office chatting with people seeing how they were doing finding out what's really going on and not only on the substantive issues but on also the issues that folks are dealing with in their personal lives and in their day to day business so I want to thank you for that you have been exemplary particularly in the areas of horse racing and getting up to speed there I know in the beginning didn't really have a background in horse racing and you raised your hand and you volunteered to learn all about it and work with Alex and I know Alex is eternally grateful for your support in that area and also the investigations as as the former head of the IEB I want to thank you for all your contributions to that area and the leadership in that area and public safety and then a little more humorous level you know you're also got a great strength of character so I just want to share something folks that I think that nobody wants to be on the other end of this look and I'm hoping that was a licensee maybe or presented rather than staff but I share that just because a it was amusing but also you really were not afraid to make the tough calls you know you you have a real determination strength of purpose and strength of character and so for that I really want to thank you for showing that to everyone and the commissioners as you know we do these certificates of appreciation and certain language in there check with the all the commissioners on that language I just want to read that out loud and we'll discuss the format of getting that to you later but it reads on this 31st day of March the Massachusetts Gaming Commission proudly presents this distinguished service award to Gail Cameron and grateful appreciation for her service to the Massachusetts Gaming Commission and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a founding member of the MGC Commissioner Cameron was instrumental in successfully building a new and sustainable public agency while simultaneously implementing a multifaceted expanded gaming law she utilized her investigatory and leadership skills in a role as commissioner developed an expertise in horse racing regulation and supported equity and inclusion both in the MGC and the gaming industry as a whole a person of genuine character and integrity she was resolute in her decision making and a strong advocate for integrating the commission's values into all areas of gaming regulation the MGC extends its heartfelt gratitude for her immeasurable contributions consummate professionalism and admirable dedication to public service her decency friendship and humor will always be remembered thank you and thank you today for putting a little slideshow together and putting that out so thank you commissioner Cameron I'll turn it back over to the chair thank you Cameron did you love those there are probably four million that we could have chosen but the timing was perfect by the way yeah that worked out thank you yeah um that uh definitely a little bit of a snapshot um now we'd like to be able to to hear from different staff members um and I'm I'm gonna see who wants to lean in first um to share some light perhaps I'll turn to uh director Vilios there you go thank you so much and thank you for the opportunity and hi commissioner Cameron I wouldn't want the afternoon to go by without expressing my thanks to you but I'm going to keep it very brief because so much has already been acknowledged from that you know really genuine warmth of personality that you express to have expressed to me and that I've seen you express to others both on the staff and outside of the staff um to your master's storytelling ability that is a real gift but I want to thank you for myself personally and professionally for your support for your insights for being a wonderful role model and from for the amazing camaraderie over these years I really look up to you and look forward to continuing connection with you and just want to thank you for for everything on behalf of myself and the IEP okay raise hands or lean in you want if you would like to I know Dr I see can I can I go to Steve O'Toole because I see he's here and I suspect he would like to comment well I would there's not a lot a lot that I can say um that hasn't already been said so I'll say the things that I can say that haven't been said um yeah I met Gail when she was first put on the commission she was you know when the commission was form you know forming uh we went through the application process her and I rode the front seat of the plain ridge roller coaster back then I'm sure she remembers that well and I got that look more than anyone probably at the commission level that is the look that you don't want to get and I got that more than once but you know when we were very elated when we got the award of the class two license there was a point in time when it was a hundred the odds were probably a hundred to one that I would still be here uh outlasting Gail but I am and I thank her she's one of the people that I can thank for that uh you know we had the ribbon cutting that we uh that we did she was here throughout the building process of the casino which we were both very involved with and just her it's been mentioned about her racing uh taking the bull buttons from day one doing doing hearings on her you know on her own um the annual licensing that we were going through in the early days and just their guidance and leadership on the uh on all the you know on all the uh racing issues so I look forward to uh meeting up with you Gail at the East Bay Grill sometime soon and uh going over some of those uh old stories uh congratulations and uh you know we love you here I'm just going to turn it around for a minute thank you Steve I appreciate you staying through our meeting to make some kind remarks so thanks very much we will meet up at the East Bay Grill Alex do you want to speak now yeah that would be great thank you um I still remember like it was yesterday that we were over at the division of professional licensure the racing state racing commission had ended up there and um we got the word that commissioner Cameron had been appointed we were very impressed by her resume um raising to the highest rank second highest rank in the state police in new jersey and that she had the interest in racing and was going to be working with us she stepped right in and came out to the field to see what we needed to help us regulate better and really appreciate her jumping right in on that um I had worked for the state racing commission for about 20 years at that point and never had a woman commissioner so Gail was my first woman commissioner and I really appreciated that and I'm glad to see that that is continuing on with the gaming commission on behalf of the racing division I'd like to thank Gail for everything she's done for us um she uh remember how much she enjoyed coming on the roof at the tracks the the judges stand and the stewards stand overlooking the tracks and hearing the different comments from the commissioners on the horsemen and all um she had a wonderful genuine understanding of how enthusiastic the horsemen and horse women are about their professions and um how the um tracks themselves work with the horsemen um I really appreciated her dedication um her also her excitement about the possibility of a new throw a red track we have um listened to a lot of different groups that have had ideas and um she's always been so enthusiastic about that um I don't have much else to say other than I'll miss um Gail's enthusiasm her guidance and her laughter and I wish you all the best Gail I think uh I see Todd I see Todd and then Derek next okay Ronay jump in I'm happy to uh yes please Todd yes thank you well all right again we certainly come a long way uh but let me begin uh in the fall of 2012 I remember seeing a job posting for a lawyer position with the gaming commission and I recall wondering whether that was something I really wanted to get myself involved with uh it was clear even then that the road to the promised land would be paved with many challenging moments but I was fortunate to be invited in for an interview and there I met with Jim McHugh and Gail Cameron they shared with me that day their vision for the future in the organization and I shared mine by the time I left that interview I knew that I was in if they would have me um I knew that if people of the caliber of Jim and Gail were willing to take take the leap then so was I the rest is history and I'll always be grateful Gail that you welcome me in uh to share this journey with you to be certain the road has not always been a straight one but through it all I always knew that when the chips were down and everything was on the line that with Gail Cameron sitting up at the commission table we were all going to be okay Gail you're as smart and thoughtful as anyone I've ever had the pleasure of working with you have an innate ability to always hone in on what's really important and you're as great and conscientious a leader as anyone I've ever worked for I've learned so much from you there will always be a piece of you in my work um since we all know that you're a huge basketball fan and I grew up in Boston in the 80s I thought I'd draw an analogy between you and the legendary Larry Bird's I met not only was he a great player and so clutched in the most important moments but his true greatness was that he made everyone else on his team better players themselves and that in my opinion Gail is your greatest attribute and why you too are a legend you make everyone else around you better so thank you my friend for everything and congratulations on a job exceptionally well done thank you Todd thank you thank you Eric I think shifted there you go sorry about that that's all right Gail I'll keep my comments short um and I'm afraid I won't be able to meet you out tonight even though I would very much appreciate that I haven't had a good night like that since the last time we were all down in Jersey um but I do want to thank you for giving me uh the opportunity to be at this great agency and I truly believe this is a great agency and you and all the commissioners have created a great environment here but what has stood out to me is your leadership um and your willingness to always step up whether it be as someone pointed out earlier horse racing when it was truly a mystery at the outset and I don't think anyone wanted to go near it and you've embraced it and you've stuck with it and I think we've become a great um a great agency at that too you know with you and Alex and the whole team over there um when you took on the acting chair role when that was a very difficult time period for us you stepped into that role and led through it the acting treasurer role which no one really wanted to deal with but you took it on and now thank you Nikisha for following up on that as well um it's always great to have people that want to be here your pinch hitting uh when it came to employee issues early on and we were having some struggles there um the work you did to help with the MOU with the mass state police and all the local police departments um being designated the commissioner for the opening of PPC and spending many late hours there including pulling a former um GM out of bed to listen to some of the issues that we had to had to deal with and personally you being willing to call me out um with direct conversations when I may have been overlooking something obvious we're not considering an alternative alternative point of view so I appreciate that just the direct conversations I will miss being able to catch your eye during a public meeting um and know exactly what you were thinking and finally I'm pleased that you are the last active commissioner that actually remembers me being in a green jumpsuit out at PPC so um I welcome um you going on to your next endeavor we will miss you um but you will always have your mark on this agency commissioner I think we missed that picture of Derek in the green jumpsuit video we saw it on video and it's hilarious that didn't make today's archives I don't know Gail's commentary is the best part he's putting on the suit look at the suit we'll have to dig that out so for an alumni event right Gail um who else would like to speak I'll go really briefly hi Judy hi um Commissioner Cameron it has been such a treat um and a little bit bittersweet if I must say so to come back and work with you again um it's been such a treat and I think a few people know that I love sports but I suffer from tiny person syndrome so I don't really get to play a lot of them out often and be successful but I really do feel like Commissioner Cameron is an incredible coach and an incredible person and I think about good coaches and they tell you how to do it and great coaches show you how to do it and I think the very best coaches like Commissioner Cameron do both but they also encourage you to kind of embrace your own style and be successful and I think that you've done just that in your tenure here you've shown me that I don't have to choose between working hard and carrying myself with integrity and strength and smiling while I do it and choosing joy you have influenced this office from the very first day to the very last day you were the first woman and you are not the last and now there are women throughout this organization in positions of leadership and that is because of you absolutely that's because of you and I speak for more more than just myself when I say that it has been an honor to play on your team as an intern and now as an attorney and the pandemic makes me a little bit more emotional than I used to be um but I just I want to say thank you I refuse to say goodbye I will say I will see you later um but I hope as you transition from coaching us and leading us that you will stay in touch and step off the floor and keep watching us as we work uh and continue on so thank you. What's that? Hi Sharon. Well Commissioner Cameron I'm just going to have you just pause for I'll take it all in for one more second all right put me in coach yeah I'm putting you in but you know these remarks I'm sure are resonating with Gail and this is a chance for you to take your time and reflect so yeah thank you thank you you know I love to laugh with all of you but you really um I thought I would get roasted and everybody was serious and uh you actually are making me cry so I'm gonna I'm gonna lighten it up and but I but I but I'm really really grateful heartfelt remarks starting with the chair and all the way I just you know I didn't expect that I'll be honest with you I expected a couple of thank yous and we had a good time but that was uh really moving and um much much appreciated this is a couple of things I did want to say to all of you my MGC team we all talked about coaching and teams um but I think you all know and you all many of you commented on the fact that I do love teams it's my earliest love athletics playing on teams all the life lessons that I've gained from those experience and I transitioned into the New Jersey State Police and found a new team and that was very challenging but very rewarding but I have to say my MGC team is is my favorite it just is something about rolling up your sleeves and starting from scratch it's it's just been a unique and profound experience and one that I had no idea at the beginning that I would enjoy so much I went on a 15 mile bike ride when I when I was asked to apply for this position and I said god I want to go to Boston and work full time and um and I'm really glad I did it because I met all of you and I got to work with all of you and we got to build this agency together so that means so much to me um you know we started off the early days it was Steve Crosby and Jim McHugh Bruce Stebbins and Rike and it was Janice and it was Jamie and that's it we sat around Janice got us some office space and we had to figure out what to do right we just had to figure it all out and it was you know we all divvied up work we talked about it and I did raise my hand and say hey um racing was first because we had no staff and they said well you're taking racing this summer we had just started the commission and I know Steve Crosby made calls and you know he was connected and they said oh no you're taking it anyway so I just said just give it to me and we'll figure it out right so I can't tell you how much I love that experience we brought a consultant in I said I just have to figure out where the landmines are and we got a great uh roadmap of how to regulate racing properly and we followed the roadmap right and I just I really want to thank Alex for so much being part of the old team that did things one way and then having to adjust to a new team when we're going to close a lab um and do some other things that were really hard um that's not easy and Alex not only embraced the change she led the change people say nice things about me with racing but I need to say we're so lucky to have Dr. Lightbaum as our leader she's being recognized now you know with committee work international racing uh commissioners racing rather um you know we are a model agency when it comes to racing now and that's uh that's something we all can be proud of right and that's not me saying that that's the scorecard that uh that uh racing international puts out and we're right there as a leader in the way we regulate so that that's really been a great experience um you know Steve Crosby was our big picture guy right but he really did care about diversity and responsible gaming Jim McHugh his legal expertise he was such a present and what a big what he was such a presence and what a big laugh he had enjoying laughing with him just really quickly um commissioner Stebbins uh incredibly thoughtful detail oriented we were like polar opposites I was the bull in the china closet and he was so thoughtful and really um just a wonderful man really really appreciate what he brought to this commission Enrique we were like brother and sister we fought but we uh well we loved each other and we really did talk an awful lot and try to figure things out so just just I think the um the team they did a great job of uh putting the five of us together and um and all of the um your early work right we brought in consultants we looked at different regulatory models we had a higher staff we had to set up a licensing scheme and at the same time we were figuring out how to how to score how to have a selection process how to implement the law properly right so there's a lot going on but you know as I mentioned we did care about certain big picture things you know the diversity the transparency uh and making this agency a great place to work um um and and that's that's where we get into our commission our new commissioners coming in you know um and and I think one thing that hasn't changed right we have new people here and one thing that hasn't changed is that commitment to to really looking at the big picture how do we do it well I really want to um come into our chair who came in and really thought about things like um you know this working group this this um this equity diversity and inclusion group and we had done some things as a commission early on with holding our licensees accountable for diversity and trying to to get you know folks to use the a diverse group of vendors right building a life that worked with women in construction there was some really important steps but this new working group um that the chair brought on board her leadership is really taking this to a whole new level right it's it's us and how we are we look differently today because of this work we just today's meeting alone demonstrates all the work that's being done in this field um I got a call from uh former chairman Crosby last night it was a nice article on the globe about some of the work that he's doing frankly when it comes to the work that was started at this commission now being taken out to businesses and scoring businesses and awarding contracts um and he just he made the comment to me that jeez I just hope all the new commissioners are going to care about this issue and I had to tell them about this working group and the chair's leadership here and he had no idea I said this this is not something that will be brought this commission cares deeply about this issue and um this is something that's taken on um you know a bigger role than it ever was so I really commend you for that role and and many other leadership pieces to just a fresh set of eyes to make our commission stronger I really do appreciate that uh that dedication um you know commissioner mcdonnell came in after after uh judge mcqueen he you know he was a former judge and added some great uh just values and leadership when it comes to some of the legal aspects so I really appreciated that commissioner brian shares my love of public safety um but also has a sharp lens and I'm grateful that you care about all the issues and you know leading up the public safety committee uh the research the crime reports all of those things and also you're just your thoughtful um attention to detail and your legal prowess you really do again it's that new lens that lens of looking at things a little bit differently and not afraid to say okay you did it that way before but guess what I think this might be a better way so I do uh really appreciate that and commissioner hill makes me smile every day I don't know how to say that differently um his enthusiasm his eagerness to learn and he appreciates all the hard work of the staff he has seen it and he appreciates it and also his willingness to jump right in with horse racing and and you know understand it uh be enthusiastic about it I think all the commissioners have embraced it but commissioner hill is is going to be in the weeds and I so much appreciate that and by the way you have to give him get him to give you a tour of the state house I'm so glad that we were able to do that I was able to do that before I left I've been here for 10 years I've been to the state house a number of times different meetings I never had a tour like that and I just loved it so we were we were lucky um Dr Wells right just was it was a great it was a great tour uh Loretta was with us it was just a great tour so a lot going on and our newest commissioner um someone who I already admire because she has courage and let me tell you why I think this you know she came to the M.G.C. after an impressive legal career and um and one of the things she said to me is I really had an interesting gaming um she came in as a licensing chief and really learned that role and distinguished herself but then had the courage to step up and say you know what I think I have more to offer and the willingness to compete um knowing there would probably lots of qualified people who wanted to be a commissioner with us but that willingness to compete I admire and we've had other staff members who have done the same thing um Karen Wells has stepped up she was in her zone right she loved um the IEP she really knew it inside now it was her comfort level but she raised her hand and said okay I'm willing to step up and now take on the the role as executive director so I really do admire folks who are willing to do that and I challenge you all to do that your career's right just don't be afraid to step up and and say hey I can do this and learn from others and just have your career be anything you want it to be so um one quick story you know you're right I do like to tell stories but um I thought it was important to get out the casinos because you know the way we regulate we understood it should be a partnership right we're not just going to force something on you and not listen you may not always like our decisions but we're going to listen and need you to be a partner right um and so going out for me it was to say thank you and I appreciated the partnership and um and having uh Nikisha join me because for her it was an opportunity to say hello I'm the newest commissioner so we we show up an encore and we end up in a conference room and we start looking around the table and there's president Jenny Holliday there's executive vice president general counsel um jack and crumb and there's Nikisha Skinner and me and and it just hit me wow has the face of leadership changed in this gaming uh chair you pointed it out in this in this 10 years you know as it started I was the only woman commissioner and there were no one in the casinos leading the way that were women and how things have changed and we commented on it you know we talked about that and it uh I think you know it's it's a different form of leadership and it just struck me in that meeting that that's that's how things have changed so um one of the things I just talked about all the commissioners and I very much appreciated everything I've learned from every single one of you those who have gone but the most important thing that I want to talk about is the staff frankly I may have started with the commissioners but I'm ending with the most important thing which is everyone that works at this commission that is so important to me you know I've learned from every single one of you we would not have accomplished a thing and every commissioner knows this without the team we have in place right we you know we'll we have ideas we have to take tough votes sometimes but we are so well prepared for any decision we make because of the staff that we built here at the commission and that changes all the time and I see the attention to detail now with new staff members coming on board how important it is to every commissioner that we we build this team the right way so I'm really encouraged by that um you know in the early days uh it was a privilege to work for me before we had an IEB director uh to work with Lieutenant Brian Connors and Lieutenant Kevin Condon I was so proud of the Massachusetts State Police and the individuals they gave us because you have no credibility when you're brand new you have to investigate these huge you know multi-million dollar companies and they were smart they were savvy um shortly after that we hired Karen Wells to come in as the IEB director and and I don't know how many times you know I've attended conferences everywhere I've received um you know Gina Joyce is another example I've received compliments about how we investigate how we don't waste time how we treat people professionally um how we ask such smart questions and um you know it just it always made me proud to sit at a conference and hear things like that about our team so um it just uh and it goes on right Loretta Captain Banks is there now uh Bruce Band we needed his expertise big time right when we started this so we could be technically we understood what we needed to do so IEB's in great shape and I've loved um I've loved working with that team over the years we mentioned racing a little bit um you know just again I'm going back to the leadership of Dr. Ellis Lightbone just it is amazing what we've done with uh and Derek even mentioned that we really do regulate racing properly hopefully Alex you're right thoroughbred track let's see it'd be nice um many others I just mentioned Derek Mark Vander Linden that international reputation for what we do with responsible gaming and he's he's allowed those efforts and really is something that we can be proud of our research you know game sense it's it's just cutting-edge stuff um play my way we've got a report on that today it's being implemented again just really really important stuff um Jill Griffin and Elaine Driscoll early on were just tremendous as part of this organization Katrina how would we have gotten through uh this whole COVID thing without your teams I mean we were ready right we were ready to handle remote work and there's so many other challenges Joe D you took over seamlessly Todd I can go on and on because I love to talk about all of you I'd love to watch your work um and I don't want to forget people so I I'm just going to in general talk about um the fact that uh everyone on this team cares about the mission I'm proud of all of you I've loved working with every one of you um Jacqueline Marion thank you after after Jamie left you just filled in seamlessly Marion's another one been with us a long time stepped up has a more challenging role now amazing um love to watch everyone grow Crystal you're not you're another example you use the word today that you are a lowly program manager and now look at the roles and the and the work that you do um it just you know not afraid to say I can do more I really do appreciate that um we've all had a lot of laughs together I laugh with you every single day uh Judy you're right there in front of me you can play on my team any day I love your enthusiasm your can-do attitude and uh the chair is not going to like this today because she wasn't able to be in the office but she made the best homemade chocolate chip cookies and we all got to share them I'm sorry you weren't here to share with us but uh Judy brought in a whole group today a whole bunch of cookies and it just uh it got us through in that 15 minute break can I join can you bring one over around 5 p.m. oh that's right that's right that would be great next week one in for me Judy thank you I you know I I've spoken long enough um I just last thing is a big thank you and you all enriched my life tremendously I had no idea 10 years ago that this would be the ride it has been and just a big thank you thanks to everybody sign language um we learned that at the Oscars right I love that that was really wonderful kota and Gloucester right so um well commissioner Cameron I know that um it's it's uh it's tough to have these kinds of moments particularly when it's literally on a public stage but um it's it's really been fun to hear from everyone and reflect you know some of a lot of the stories we've heard and you've shared with us and there's so many more but the good news is that we are going to gather in a more informal setting and and I hope that folks will have a chance to maybe roast you a little um so um I think I actually think I forgot to mention Todd real really quickly I use another one say Todd but yeah I just I just know another one who raised his hand and said you know I have more to offer to this to this commission so good good work great work thank you thanks to everyone for your kind remarks I really do appreciate it and gail you made it very clear the entire team you couldn't necessarily mention everyone you've um always said that so um that I think if anyone wasn't mentioned everybody knows everyone was included um I think I will close up Karen um I know that at some point you want to formalize your remarks for Commissioner Cameron and in in whatever process you are planning on doing that yeah yeah I'll speak to Commissioner Cameron we've got a we've got a little plan here I gotta speak with her yeah there's always a there's always a little plan going on right um there's always a little plan so uh Commissioner Cameron um 10 years it's an accomplishment you had a remarkable first career a remarkable second career here um in this capacity my my college community we um are quite close through social media and everybody's always asking about the next the next act um I had a dear friend today retired from Barclays says um a long career Barclays and I thought of you and her and um we talked just briefly about her next act and like you she's not sure but she's going to spend a little bit more time at that Berkshire um house and got kind of used to it during um COVID um another one is literally climbing Mount Everest you know right now he's heading up to base camp following my sister-in-law who's going to be a doctor at base camp and that was her second act to become a doctor you've had an unexpected second act here we look forward to your third fourth fifth act whatever it is um what we know from today's remarks and everybody's sentiments um including those who are not speaking but we all know so many stakeholders who have um been the beneficiary of your work here who expect no less so uh for me again um my best wish is on whatever the next act is and if it's getting what is it 400 holes in one that you could get or in a game what is it what is the match I wish that for you um all right everybody can breathe breathe carry you're looking emotional I think um Commissioner Cameron unfortunately your job isn't done all this um we're going to bring to um probably we have um if we move another session this afternoon we are running a little bit long um Todd I assume that um ANK would will be ready for us but before we even move to that um I think we uh this is on executive sessions that we've anticipated it makes sense for me to go through this process now commissioners and then if we decide to go to the executive session have a lunch break and then go to okay everyone you know knows that that process uh Mekisha you're coming in during COVID was hard it's hard for me every time I do this to think about this process because I literally have to put myself into one room physically room and then walk up the stairs to the McHugh really normally conference room where we would normally do executive sessions I'm looking forward to that with you um but right now it's still virtual so um Commissioner Cameron will have um hopefully uh the opportunity to continue to work with you right now on March 31st commission anticipates and I do have to read this into the record that it will meet an executive session in accordance with a GL chapter 30a section 21a3 to review the status and discuss strategy with respect to city of ripier and mohegan sun massachusetts LLC versus massachusetts gaming commission as discussion at an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the litigating position of the commission in order to move forward on that we do have to have a a motion and a vote commissioner brian yeah i'm madam chair i move we go into executive session for the reasons just stated thank you do i have a second second thank you um i'll take a roll call vote commissioner camera i commissioner o brian i commissioner hill i commissioner skinner i and i felt yes five zero i'm assuming that if there's any question people will raise their hand just because i know we're hungry um the next is that the commission anticipates it will meet an executive session in accordance with GL chapter 30a section 21a3 to review the status and discuss strategy with respect to fbt effort reality LLC versus mgc versus wind mass LLC as discussion at an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the litigating position of the commission do i have a motion madam chair i move we go into executive session for the reasons just stated second thank commissioner camera i commissioner o brian i commissioner hill i and commissioner skinner right and i felt yes five zero thank you commission anticipates it will meet an executive session for purposes of reviewing and approving draft minutes of previously held executive sessions as conducting such review in public would contravene the intended purpose of convening the executive sessions i have a motion madam chair i move that we go into executive session for the purposes just delineated relative to executive session minutes thank you second thank you commissioner cameron i commissioner brian i commissioner hill i commissioner skinner i and i felt yes five zero okay so um a very um i hope that uh our tribute this is recognized publicly commissioner cameron we um again extend our appreciation and i'm looking forward to joining everyone in the senate this evening for a little bit of an informal gathering so thank you and thank you to caron and maryann's leadership here and and tom and dade so thank you so much um now um we will um actually not adjourn this meeting todd right and i'm going to leave this meeting we will then um reconvene should we do a half an hour straight half an hour 30 minutes for lunch that gets us to what 225 we're gonna um and then we'll go into the other virtual room and all of us will have that invite in our boxes so it's a different room altogether makes sense all right thank you and thank you to the entire team for joining us today and for all your good work it was a very interesting meeting in a lovely turbine thank you to make clear that we're not reconvening the public oh you don't thank you i i think i have to read that into the record correct um yeah so we will not thank you i commercial brian that attention to detail right uh commissioner caron um and the memory is fabulous um so thank you um we will not reconvene this meeting in public we will be going into these executive sessions and adjourn from directly from those executive sessions so we get to the public thank you to for your attention i appreciate it thank you everyone


at the Creative Freedom Summit, day three. And it's my honor to introduce Jason to us. It's time to show us some stuff in Blender. So if you have questions for him, don't feel free to leave them in the chat or the ether pad and someone will jump on the screen and give those to Jason to answer. So take it away. Perfect. Hi, I guess let me, for those of you who don't know who I am, also I talk with my hands a lot. I'm Jason Van Gumpster. I guess the easiest thing to do is to screen share just a little second here. Let's see if I can click those buttons fast enough. Share. All right, so I'm Jason Van Gumpster. I, most of my time these days is spent working with Orange Turbine. Orange Turbine is a consulting company specifically set up for helping studios and tool makers integrate Blender into larger production pipelines. That is not necessarily unlimited to media and entertainment but we're also doing stuff for manufacturing. I mean, Blender gets used in all sorts of different wild and crazy places. And so finding ways to get that to work and getting those things trained, getting people trained up on how to use them is kind of what this is all about and what we do. Orange Turbine is part of CG Cookie which is mostly related to tutorials and education of Blender. So this is more hands-on consultation sort of things. So that is me currently, let's stop sharing so I can have my goofy face here, stop sharing. And so yeah, that's me currently. I also, I wrote Blender for Dummies and also for the last 10 years I have been doing work in currency design which is the weirdest application of animation that I have ever been involved with. And so when thinking about what to talk about for this particular talk, a design sort of came in mind but one of the things I really wanna think about is how design, like depending on your community, design can be anything. And we tend to get a little bit myopic about what design is, right? You talk to a user interface person and user interface design and that's gonna be usually application based or web based or something along those lines. You talk to an industrial designer and you're talking about products and things and things that move around. You start talking to currency designers, which by the way is technically also a user interface and you're talking about designing for usability but also making sure that things are secure. And so you have these accessibility, usability, all these things are interacting and there's a lot of different things that are involved here with what sort of comprises design. And the really cool thing is that you can use Blender for nearly every facet of it which is one of the really cool things about it because Blender, as you guys have seen in some of the other talks already is a Swiss Army chainsaw of computer graphics and you can do 3D, you can do compositing, you can do drawing with three-spincil, you can do video editing, you can do audio editing if you really, really want to, you might want to try something a little different but you can and you can do a lot of procedures like you can do Python coding. There's a lot of different things you can do and all of those things relate or comprise or are adjacent to design. And so Blender becomes a really solid tool for that sort of thing. I was trying to think of something to really show about that. I actually, I'm going to lean away from stuff that shows up on screen and stuff that shows up design-wise in that respect. I'm thinking about designs that you do more manually, more with your hands. And what I mean by that is that making things, right? And so Blender can facilitate that as well. Blender and Open Source in general can facilitate that. And so one of the other fun things that I do and I will be bouncing back and forth between my face and screen sharing. So hopefully it is more or less seamless. One of the other things that I tend to do is I make rings out of wood. This is a, I'm showing my hand here when it's only on the side now instead of the actual screen. But these are rings that I've made when I basically bend the wood and sometimes I carve on them. Sometimes I do complex inlays and these sort of things. It's sort of a thing I do on the, something I do on the side for hobby. And the challenge that I had was I do like carving. I do like working on these things and making more intricate and complex designs. The challenge is that you're working very, very small. And so if you're trying to carve on something, small knives are helpful, but you're trying to hold the, the, you know, if I'm working on it, I'm holding the ring and I'm trying to dig into it and carve on it. It could be very, very difficult. And from my experience in art and currency design, engravers have a really cool tool.  Now those tools that stand engraving stand thing really cool, really awesome. Usually machined out of like high quality metal and really, really awesome stuff. And then, you know, entry price for that's like close to $1,000 US. And I don't really have that, especially for, you know, whatever amounts to a hobby of making rings and carving on them. So I took it upon myself to try to design something like that for myself considering things of being usable, usable for that particular task. And that means I'm designing an actual tool. I'm designing a thing for making things, right? I'm designing a tool, which is, you have to think about all these different aspects, not just spatially, but then you think about how it's moving, how it's changing, how I'm gonna interact with it and these sort of things. And I'm not gonna show the physical thing that I will start showing blindery things with that. And so we'll start with this. So back to sharing screens and launching Yonder Blender. By the way, for doing the break, there is the 10 cube challenge. And this is that 10 cube challenge, making a teacup. Thank you, W, for saying that it was something to try and do. So it did, it did, it's there. Yay. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about this thing. This is my carving mount. And what it is, is it's built around a single five-pound weight. So a five-pound disk weight lives in there. And the idea is I needed something that I can put the ring on, variable in size and still work with. And so the cool thing is that because you have tools like Blender that allow you to model and animate, once you create it, you can actually disassemble the whole thing and then make cool animations about it. So this is this thing taken apart and coming back together. But so there are some parts that will have to be manufactured. And then there are some parts that I can actually just get. And then there are some design considerations within that. So this here is my stand-in four or five-pound weight. And I mean, modeling this in Blender is pretty straightforward. I mean, it's a simple geometry for those sort of tasks. And one of the cool things about working in for these sort of things that are gonna be sort of hard-body and actually made physically, they're not deforming, they're not changing in this case. So I don't have to worry so much about really, really ugly topology, like whatever craziness is going on here. But I do need to have something that says, okay, I can look at that and that's a five-pound weight. Now, then I need something for it to live in. And so that's gonna be here. And then, so the other thing is that I decided I was gonna be 3D printing this because the PLA film is relatively inexpensive. So you also have to think about how it's being made, right? If I print this and maybe it's nicer to have this beveled in the other direction so my weight doesn't come out, then I have to worry about supports and struts and trying to clean that up from the print. So always thinking about when you're doing design, especially when you're doing 3D spatial design and you're knowing about the manufacturing process, then you have to think about, okay, what's gonna facilitate making that more effective? So you're not just thinking about design as it pertains to, again, design fits in everywhere, which again, I've said before, it gives us a little bit of hubris, but it's also one of those things where you have to think about that for every stage, right? You're not just designing the tool, you're also designing the process by what you're making it.  Now, more and more customizing can be done, but we'll get into that in a second. So yeah, this is, again, a fairly simple shape, just extrusions and there are some fun things you can do with Blender here with that edge loop there.  So this is a crease, actually doesn't show up nicely in this render size, but so from here, we can switch over. Now, the one thing that I really wanted this to be able to do is rotate on the whole thing I wanted to be able to rotate around the center axis here so that you can actually move it. So I'm actually, I should be able to do that because I'm usually going to be holding the knife that I'm carving with in my right hand, but I need different angles to play with it. So this means that a top of my weight, the thing here that is, next I should show the whole assembly here, this obviously will be printed the other way around that gives us an axis and gives us the, and this actually I believe goes inside that. Now, this is another fun thing to think about when you're doing 3D printing in particular, I did a lot of time, spent a lot of time measuring around this weight and spending time with the rulers and calipers trying to make sure you have things right. And one of the really nice tools in Blender for that is this measure tool. So you can actually measure distances pretty well and you can snap it as well to different components to really get a better sense of, that is not even across the center there, that's better. So yeah, but the thing is when you do 3D printing your tolerances are always, unless you're dealing with really, really nice 3D printers, your tolerances are always not nearly as precise as you would like them to be. So there is some iterative movement here in trying to like this is probably still a bit tight, but after moving around enough that this actually wore itself down, but I did have to print this a few times before to even fit properly because my 3D printer has tolerances that need to be addressed and are not necessarily well documented. You can try and map it out a little bit, but they're basically, it's a lot of trial and error to try and get that right.  Now there's a fun thing about this. Again, I just needed it to be the right dimensions and space I needed to be able to have the holes for drilling it into things. And there is a savvy person would notice that quickly you'll notice that there's a problem with what I'm about to show you here. And that is, so this is the most complex part. I'll show you these. This is the most complex part of the whole thing.  And the idea was that I would screw this into there and screw this into here. Problem, and this was one of those things that I realized way too late is that in order to screw this into there and this into there, you can only really do one of those because the whole thing closes up. So if I screw this one into the base, I have no means of screwing it into the top. Likewise, if I screw it into the top, I have no means of screwing it into the base because yeah, that would thinking spatially, thinking about manufacturing. Fortunately, I was somewhat clever and that I designed this shape in the bottom. So on the physical one that I finished, this is actually screwed in to the bottom component and this just rests on there and because tolerances are pretty tight, it doesn't move around and everything is happy and golden. Though I wouldn't recommend necessarily picking up the whole device by the outside casing because some might slip off because it's a five pound weight in there. And so this is a design improvement that I would like to address at some point. Probably the easiest way to do it is just put some kind of adhesive here and then don't worry about screwing it into it. Just use adhesive, use super glue or an epoxy or something and that'll solve it. But that's one of those things where you can do all sorts of cool and crazy and fantastic things in 3D space, but when it comes to actually physically assembling the thing, yeah, there's complications that could associate with that. So thinking ahead with those kinds of things. Hey, Jay. Yes. We have a question in the chat. Goodie. What 3D printer do you have and what do you like or not like about that model? So I have a Inder 3 Pro by Creality and one of the things I really like about it is that it is very doofus tolerant, I'll say. It's very resilient. If you've never done a lot of 3D printing before, you can do, it'll be very forgiving for doing any sort of mistakes or those kinds of things. And it's pretty easy to assemble and feed and get working. And the nice thing about the Pro is it has this sort of Teflon coated magnetic mat. So you don't have to worry about scraping things off the glass. You can just pull the mat off and bend the mat and your print comes off of it. And it is one of my favorite things about that particular model is having that mat. I've worked with the ones before, right? You have to do the hairspray on glass and scrape and it's never clean and it never quite works the way that I want it to. And this mat really is one of the things that's really nice about it. As far as things that I don't necessarily like about it, I think there's a lot of people who do mods to it to give it other capabilities. I've seen people do laser cutting additions and print other things to go and associate with that or... But the build volume is not particularly large. I use it mostly for making these kinds of things and if something breaks, it's plastic or plastic enough, then I will recreate something to print it or if I'm working on, I've built little light fixtures and those sort of things with it. And for that size, it works fantastically. I think the largest thing that I made was actually a headphone stand. That's the shape of a hand that's holding it that way. I should mention that I'm doing all of this traveling full-time in the back of a 37-foot motorhome. So that's what I've been doing for the last year and a half. So I have my 3D printer with me because things do break. But yeah, I would say that it is not the fastest print speed and it doesn't have the tightest tolerances in terms of the default nozzle and those sort of things. But for getting started, it's hard to recommend anything more than that. So that's the end of 3 Pro. That's my little ad for them. Yay. There's actually a follow-up question. Someone says, it looks like you're streaming from your motorhome. I'm guessing from the decor behind you. That's true. That is, this is technically, just to digress here, I'll stop sharing my screen because this is funny.  We modified that to be the office and bedroom. So that's a Murphy bed there that flips down and flips up for doing work. And so yes, that's exactly what's happening is I am in a motorhome in the Florida Keys currently and for the next few weeks at least. So yeah, that's that part. Let's go back to sharing my screen. And I have a feeling that for some reason, yeah, Jitsie has a tendency to, whoop, that's not right, has a tendency to make Blender non-responsive after I, when I start sharing screens. So we'll do it that way. Yes, you can start Blender with an icon after doing a few add-ons and whatnot. I've gotten in the habit of just starting it from the terminal, but let's see where we were back to the assembly part of it. So yeah, this particular element right here, this lazy Susan, thinking ahead would have been smart, but fortunately this most complex shape we have here compensated for that. Now, this is where a lot of the thought and work and design sort of goes into this thing. And this is where if you're doing these things, you end up doing a number of things to try to revise and make edits to it. So what we have here is the base I've already covered. Now this, we were talking before about how do you print something like this and deal with cleanup of structure of the parts and pieces. And this one is actually a fairly challenging one because there's not really a side that I can lay it on that won't require some sort of support. And so really it's about what's gonna be the least annoying to try to do cleanup with afterwards. This is a lot and then how much material you wanna clean up as well. This is a lot of dead space under here that has to have support built for it. So that's not ideal, that's not great and we'll take a fair amount of time to print a bunch of stuff that ultimately is gonna get thrown away. I believe what I ended up doing is printing it this way. So if I do it like that and rotate my view, oh, it's set to turntable, all right. But I printed it, I believe with one of this side down. And so that gave me the fastest print. I did still have support structures in here for covering that top of the curve and there was some cleanup that had to get done as well, specifically so that this channel remained clean and also from what I could tell had the least amount of waste when I was printing it. Again, thinking about the manufacturing process, the reason why I also didn't wanna have a lot of cleanup on these parts is because this is one of the main moving parts, aside from the rotation of the overall thing, these slides are the main moving parts within this design. And so what you end up with is you have this component that pairs with it, ooh, so we can see it. And so just to give you a sense of it, this part right here will slide on those rails because you wanna be able to work on rings of different sizes and so you need to have a means of having tension to keep that ring in place. I mean, actually, there's still some more improvements that could be done to this design so I'm always welcome to suggestions and recommendations. You'll also notice that there is this channel here. This channel, because once this thing slides in, I don't have, one of the improvements that I should have put in that I never did was a sort of like a set screw to keep things in place. Instead, what I did is I modeled this whole channel and if I put an edit mode here, oh geez, not horrible, but I modeled this channel and what I do with that is I will use a string or a rubber band and tie it to keep that tension on there to keep the ring in its place. Now the ring is gonna be living here, but so now I have two axes of movement covered, right? I have the rotational axis and I have, I actually only need two, because I don't have to go in the other axis because the ring is, I'm not gonna carve on the inside of the ring, not with this device at least. So I have my rotational axis, but I need to have an axis where it rotates this way so that I can actually move the ring around and carve on it in the round. So I have a support for it, but I need to be able to rotate it and do those things and that's where these two little buggers come in. So if I go to the exploded view here, what I've done is I have, these are basically roller blade bearings that you can get for just about any kind of pair of roller blades and they set themselves nicely in there and with a little super glue, they don't move. And then this weird straw looking thing is, we'll assemble these here. What we have is, comes together and Mary's like, so they're held in place because there is a taper to it, they're held in place on the bearings. That whole assembly actually gets locked in place by the string that's held there. And then these two fun things will rotate, which it's hard to see them rotating because I didn't put any visual indicator that they're rotating, but these two things can rotate and that's where the ring gets mounted. And I can, with one more small non-printed device, I can actually keep the ring in place and prevent it from moving. And so, there's a lot of different parts to this, right? There's a bunch of different components and because the build volume for the Mi3D printer can't do all of these parts all at once. Also, by the way, printing these two, similar challenge because one, this one, has yet printing something that's really tall that has to stand up. There's a couple of challenges with that. One, if you print tall, I have to worry about the supports, one side or the other that I have to clean up after. Then I also worry, depending on your material that you're printing, and I'm doing this with PLA, you're printing in layers. If I print in layers this direction, that's also the easiest direction for things to break. So it would, because if I put tension too hard this way, because it's kind of tree-ringed around, each of those layers becomes a potential breaking point. So maybe it would be stronger to print it lengthwise, but then the sacrifice is that, then I don't have a smooth surface where I'm gonna be mounting my ring, which especially back here could impact how easily it spins and rotates. And then likewise for this one, because one fits into the other as a nesting piece, this one, I mean, cleaning up down the pipe is pretty easy because it's just gonna marry with that, but you still have to worry about that strength component. And I think ultimately what I ended up doing is I did actually end up printing this one standing up, and I believe I printed it with this flat facing up. Nope, I'm wrong. I have printed up the flat facing downward because this is the surface that I was most important. And basically I was rolling the dice to make sure that my, and if I do the layers tight enough, if I do small layers, then while there are more, from one mindset, there are more potential points of breakage because you're doing it such a much finer print depth, it becomes more sort of solid in terms of the way that works. And again, thinking in terms of designing for manufacturing as well as designing for usage, there are obvious trade-offs in what's gonna work best and what's not. And- Oh, we have a question from the chat here. What's the most ambitious thing you've 3D printed using a Blender design and did the print turn out well? I will say the easiest, the easy question to that is the first print never turns out well, at least for me. It's always, especially with some, this is probably one of the most intricate things that I've done because it does, it is tooling for tooling, right? It is a tool for making other things. And I'm using tools to make it, which is, I kind of like the overlap of that. This is probably the most functional and complex and complex because it's a functional device. I have taken a number of like 3D sculpts that I've made and 3D printed them and made them to do things. And while those are intricate and detailed and fun, they're not necessarily complex in terms of usability. They're complex to look at and they may be complicated to figure out how you're gonna, like I 3D printed a, like I said, a hand and the hand itself is a sculpt of a hand and looking at it, there's a lot of detail, there's a lot of cool things in it. But really, if I put the hand like this, as long as it fits the build volume, it's not challenging necessarily to manufacture. Now that one did have a challenge because I was using it to hold it. I'm talking with my hands and I'm in the tiny screen. So let me do this real quick. So the actual hand would be like that and I would mount it to the wall. And while that is, the functional part of that is really, how do I mount it to the wall without the hand falling off and thinking about static weights and how much weight you can actually carry and those sort of things, those are considerations, but it's not moving and it's not necessarily a functional prototype of anything. It's just something really cool to look at. So I would say that this thing is probably, it took me a while to actually want to conceive of it and then sketch it and then model it and then remodel it a few times each time iteratively to make it work a little bit better. But since I've already switched over to here, I can show the thing in real space and then try and loosen things up my desk to make it easier to redirect handles and stuff. So first, here it is and yes, I printed it in black because that's the PLA that I had, but so there's my binding string, it goes in the seam. I'm gonna try and see if this, ooh, is that actually visible possibly? I can't see me seeing it. So the idea is that this thing rotates and I can spin these elements here to do the carving.  And yeah, this one was printed like that. Nope, yep, yes it was, sorry. I'm looking at it and making sure that I'm not telling you I was, again, because I need these channels to be clear because if I had to like do a lot of cleanup in these channels, then that doesn't slide as well on these parts right here. This assembles and yeah, so if you look closely and it stays in focus, you can actually see that the layers are this way, but it's held up to use for a number of different rings that I've worked on. Now you'll notice that if I try to put, for instance, my thumb ring on this rig, it's not really holding it in place. This may look like a flaw in my design, but here's the solution that I ultimately ended up doing. This tubing, this is great tubing and I've actually, what I'll do is I'll cut off a chunk of that, cut a slit down it, make it sized so that the ring itself will nestle onto it and be pretty taut. And then that squeezes between these two cones and that keeps the ring in place, it doesn't move. And then once it's fully assembled and held in place and I put my handy-dandy little piece of string, I tried it originally with a rubber band, but rubber bands have a tendency to lose their elasticity and that bouncing was not great. So little handy two half hitches that I can slide tighten. Now this is held in place. This still rotates freely because it's on a bearing and this whole thing rotates. And you hear that rattling? That's partially because of my mistake of not getting it screwed and levered in from the bottom. But that there is this whole thing. And yes, if I try to lift it, the weight is sitting on the bottom and inside of the casing here. So this is one whole piece, but if I try to lift this from here, that's thing. Now I will say one of the things that I did for usability and I'm not entirely sure I did it right was I made this purposely round so that I could set my hand here as I work and then I can carve on this side with my blades and do that and I can rotate. And since I'm, if I go this way, I still have this sort of support hand, basically because I don't have rubber footing and anything on here, I can rotate the ring if I need to do my carving. And it's, if I really wanted to try, this could also maybe work as a lathe. If I were like, I have a good feeling that that would just tear this whole thing apart because I don't think it's made for that kind of high speed spinning. Though maybe one day when I get tired of using it, it will be one of those things that I do just to make it self-destruction glorious fashion. But the other cool thing is that this is in PLA. This is all in plastic and this functions in service for me, but there's nothing saying that this couldn't be, at this point, manufactured. And if for instance, if these little axles here ended up not having the tensile strength that I need, this is a design that I could easily get done as a piece of metal and have that fabricated that way. And basically, you could see and see it, but probably easier to just have it like drop forged or something in one of those lines. And so that, let me put that there and pull me up here and hello again. And so that's designing for manufacturing, that's designing for use as a tool. And I will say one of the really fun things is that, let my keyboard, can't switch screens without it. One of the really nice things that doing things in Blender and doing things with 3D printing in general, one of the things that facilitates you is the ability to share and have other people improve. And so, but of course, this is on Thingiverse. And I'm reasonably sure I included the blend file and build instructions and how to print it out and at least the way that I put it together and those sort of things. You can see this is kind of, in this video, you kind of see where I realize, oh, I can't screw that part into that part. That's, but for, I would say for the cost of a 3D printer and free software and the computer to do the 3D modeling and the PLA to do it, and the bearings and whatnot. I was able to do this and while that is not free as in beer, there's no, there's absolutely financial cost associated with that, it is substantially less expensive than the professional engravers mount that they use. That serves my purposes. And I would say also that it's custom built to fit my particular workflow. There are things about those really nice fancy mounts that they do a lot of really great things, but they're also built primarily for jewelry makers and engravers that work particularly different way. They're not necessarily working in wood for their jewelry. So that provides some additional constraints and challenges and fun parts to do with that. Yeah, so that is sort of the brief sort of, I'll just say walkthrough of a single example done with basically entirely in blender. I think I did a little bit of pencil and paper scribbling, but this entire designing concept was done in blender. I think I used Cura for converting it to G code for printing and that's also a good source. So that's why I like to work about it. I just want to jump in here because there's a relevant question. What's the process to 3D print from Blender? Is it just filed a print or is it more complex than that? It is slightly more complex than that. So I think there may be a Blender add-on that goes directly to G code, but Blender itself has made for the creative process of that and trying to visualize your layers and visualize tool-specific requirements. It's sort of not built within Blender and trying to build that as an add-on to Blender while very cool would also probably be an enormous task because you have to account for all the different makes models and whatnot that are coming in. Community can do that, but community has already done that and some level with tools like Cura. And so what I end up doing is I will export my, you can, there are 3D printing tools within Blender to make sure that your geometry is sane. Basically, you don't have any non-manifold meshes, which means meshes that are like a single face that has no depth, that the whole thing is watertight. Sort of basic sort of solid modeling concepts. You can do a quick sort of 3D printing pre-check from within Blender there to make sure that that will actually work. And then you export that basically as an STL file. And you can do that, the exporter will adjust the orientation to, cause a lot of 3D printers will use, won't necessarily use the vertical as the z-axis. So sometimes you have to rotate that as well as adjusting for scale. I do model and Blender at scale, my units set properly, but I've noticed that even though it accounts for it and makes it look pretty on import, it will say, by the way, I scaled this by 1,000% or 10,000% even though the units should have been stored in the file. But in any case, the exporter still works, the importer on Cura still works. So you export the STL and then you pull it in, in my case, I pull it in in Cura and lay it out on the bed in the way that sort of makes as most sense as I can make it, and then preview it. And then if the print time is tolerable and the amount of material used is tolerable, go ahead and do it. Usually again, first of, first, second, 13th run, I would do those at lower precision, faster prints, just to make sure that the overall idea and concept actually works. And then I'll spend, you know, I'll do a sort of a high quality print because it does have a need to stand up to me banging around on it and those sort of things. So brief, brief answer is export to STL and use, sorry, use the 3D printing tools to make sure it's watertight and 3D printer safe, export to STL, pull it into your G code creating tool of choice and go from there. We do have a thought from the chat, which is, Ooh, I like thoughts. You may want to break up your tough to print items and then use a PLA glue to put it back together. Then you could invert for printing and not need support structures. That, especially for the, this tough piece is a really solid suggestion, a really good idea. I never, I don't have a whole lot of experience with PLA glue. Most of my experiences with CA glue, super glue, and because a lot of the rings, they're at least especially like the shiny ones, that's actually what I'm using to finish and put shine on it is that that's actually, the finish is done with super glue basically, so I don't have to relate. And so most of my experiences with that, which tends to be brittle and doesn't necessarily have a lot of structural strength when dealing with 3D print. So if PLA glue can do that, that'd be fantastic. The question is for me, I'd have to figure out which parts are glueable and still maintaining structural integrity. So likely I would probably print out this, on this complex piece. I would print maybe the base up and then the ring would be a separate print. The challenge of course with, and this is something I've run into, especially with the, the Ender 3 Pro, I don't know if other ones have this issue, but if you're just printing like a thin wall, if it's just a single thing standing up, sometimes if it doesn't have enough support going around it, it tends to, even with bracing supports, if you have something over top of it, it can fall over pretty easily. And so I would have to make sure that my walls are thick enough that it, when I print it, it doesn't fall over. But that's the, that's a great recommendation. And I think if I, if the top of this thing ever broke in the future, I would probably take that approach. Nice. All right, we have another question. Yes. Any advice for Blender, newbies, favorite channels or tutorials, website? Yes, I am, I will say I am, I am a little biased simply because of my association with CG Cookie, but I think that they have a really good starting point. And then for getting farther along it, their citizen training subscription is actually pretty solid. The Blender, Blender Foundation and Blender Cloud, they've got a lot of really good getting started videos. There's always the, the, the donut tutorial by Blender Guru. Everyone sort of refers to that one. And that's somewhat, that one's still pretty relevant for getting your hands dirty and, and first getting, sorry, your hands dirty and your feet wet, mixing metaphors here, but getting, getting started and getting rolling with Blender, those, those tutorials tend to be a really starting point. I will throw in a pitch like, I did happen to write a book of Blender for Dummies. It is not necessarily a tutorial based book, it's more of a beginner's reference. So it's a good idea. It's a handy book for understanding why things are doing the things they are, what sort of things you would do for an overall workflow or what does this button do and why does it do it kind of things? That's, that's really the, the, the best use case for Blender for Dummies. Those would be sort of the best, best, sort of self-driven sides of things. I would say also that the Blender Artists forums, Blender Artists, BlenderArtistsplural.org is, is probably one of the largest English speaking Blender communities on the web and has been around forever. I happened to be a moderator there as well. And in terms of getting help from other people who are working on stuff or showing off your artwork or those sort of things, that's the place to go really to get a lot of goods community support, at least asynchronously. If you want it real time, the Blender Foundation does host a rocket chat instance called Blender.Chat, which is Blender.Chat. Put your browser there and you're off to the races and there's, there's a user channels but it's also where the developers will, will hang out and do real time collaboration stuff as well. Let's see, but I just wanted to make sure that was CGCookie, Blender Cloud, Donut. Okay, go ahead. So yeah, CGCookie, the Blender Cloud, which is run by the Blender Foundation. And I would say that the Blender Guru Donut tutorial and literally if you search for that, you'll, you'll find it. Those, those tend to be the three sort of video based starting points that a lot of people will go through. Of course, you just type Blender in, in, in YouTube or any, any video streaming thing and chances are good, you're gonna, you know, you can't, you can't go on a video streaming service right now and throw a stick and not hit something that that's related to Blender, it seems like. Right, okay, here's the next question. My thinking process usually ends in a mind map, but I was looking for something better looking than any mind map tool that I know. Is it possible to do mind maps in Blender? That is a use case. I have never used Blender for it. So if your mind maps are, cause I use, I use mind maps an awful lot. And I actually, my, the one that I've been going to and has things that I, I don't like about it, but they work is a VYM is called, it's an acronym for view your mind. And it's, it's written in an old cute tools kit, but it does a job for me trying to do that in Blender. Your challenge is gonna be on connecting threads and you can, I can imagine there's a few ways you can do that. I would probably like doing it manually. You could have bits of geometry and or bits of text actually. That's fine that I just use bits of text that put out an idea. I wouldn't necessarily write a paragraph, but you would have a bit of text and parent it to another bit of text that is the core of the idea. And you could sort of get yourself a tree structure based on parental hierarchy within, within the 3D environment, which could actually be pretty cool. The difficulty is when I do mind maps, I have a tendency to, I'll have like a bubble that encapsulates an idea.  And trying to have that sort of encapsulated structure just based on the 3D geometry alone, to get in the 3D viewport or even in the node compositor are, because node compositor also already gives you the ability to draw like connecting points between two nodes. The difficulty there is that there's not a lot of meta information that you can associate with that unless you start building an add-on for it, which is what I would do next is I would, okay, if I wanna use this, this parental hierarchy mechanism, then I would be able to add little bits of, because every object can have custom data associated with it. So I might use an add-on to build an interface where I can click on say a cube and that cube represents whatever idea or a bit of text, probably smarter, a bit of text that says idea. And then within that, I can encapsulate maybe an image or those sort of things bundled with that. The other way to do that would be with a, again, develop an add-on for Blender that uses the node editor as your mind mapping tool. I've seen actually people do that for, if you're doing branch storyboarding, kind of like how, oh, what's the twine? Twine is a really cool tool for doing sort of branching stories, like for a game or choose your own adventure stuff. That is a pretty cool interface and a pretty cool way of doing that. You could do that with Blender's node editor if you wrote custom nodes for it to pull that off. So long story short, you could use Blender for it, but you would probably end up developing Blender into a tool to do it, which could be pretty sweet. One of the cool things that are coming up with Blender, it's sort of a bit of a digression, one of the things they announced at the last Blender conference was this concept of Blender apps where Blender is a platform for creating tools. So again, this kind of goes back to the conversation of designing tools that are building, making things for making things, right? So in this case, Blender is a thing for making things, but then you're using Blender to make things to make other things. So in this case, the Blender app would be, maybe you strip away the parts of the interface that you don't need and only have the node editor with a specific Python add-on code to make it into a mind map. It's all built within Blender as a Blender app, but really it's whatever your application is, Blender is just the platform that you're doing it. And that's one of the things that they're working to to make with the next few releases is really facilitating that kind of development. And I'm actually pretty stoked to do that sort of thing because a lot of the work that I've been doing with Orange Turbine has actually been more industrial and more with manufacturing folks. And so if you wanna have a process that is being refined and you don't need this, so I need to have a full 3D suite, you just need to be able to modify different parts of geometry within some constraints, then stripping away all the stuff you don't need that would confuse somebody who's not used to using Blender is a really, really fun way of approaching that. So there's a whole bunch of cool things that I'm excited to see what comes out of there. So yeah. If you wanna take a few minutes to just wrap up and add anything else you wanna add, you can go ahead and if a last minute question comes in, I'll jump back on. Absolutely. Yeah, so I'm just gonna do this thing. The easiest way to track me down, we'll go with that, is by way of my website. That's monsterjavaguns.com, also any social media stuff. Monster Java Guns is me. That is an anagram for Jason Van Gumpster because that tends to be easier to spell than my name. But this is also, I'm a little bit behind on updating my little website here, but it points to all the other different projects that I have myself involved with, be they writing projects, 3D projects, orange turbine, carving a lion to the top of a table with an angle grinder, little bits of code, or the books in the right fiction and non-fiction. This is basically the home for all of that and how to get in touch with me. So yeah, that's the basic wrap up of that. I would just say that from a design standpoint, the biggest thing is Blender can be used for all sorts of things. And again, the Blender apps component that they're trying to roll out in future versions, I'm really stoked about that because then yeah, you're designing a tool that's very specific to a thing that you're doing. And so because Blender can do so many crazy things, you can apply that with a design mentality and all sorts of different and interesting ways because obviously Blender is 3D, right? It's gonna give you the ability to think spatially in a way that maybe your traditional vector drawing or 2D application doesn't natively have, right? I think Paul yesterday was showing some really cool stuff with grease pencil and being able to light your vector drawing or those sort of things, that's a whole dynamic that I think is ripe for exploration in terms of design and just creation in general. But it also gives you the ability to think kinetically, right? Blender is not just a 3D modeling tool, it's an animation tool. And most of what we do, especially when it comes to things that are design related, they involve an interaction. They involve change over time, change in state, change in appearance, change in whatever. And so being able to have a tool that you can animate things and control when those animations happen is very nice. The very least just for conceptualizing a design, but you can also execute those designs as well. Awesome, thank you so much, Jason. This was a great talk. I like how it merged making things with software. I'm a crafter myself, so I really appreciated that. And also recently, my household has adopted a 3D printer, so I was excited to see you talking about that. So thanks a bunch for your time and joining us from the Florida Keys when you mentioned you had to turn the AC off, I was like, where is he? So now the dots have connected for me and thanks a lot again. Take care.