Thanks for coming into the talk here today. As I was alluding to as we got started, there is a fairly large topic because there was a lot of content that we wanted to cover. And then there is equally long description of this talk. Oh, man, I should have described this before. OK, equally long title for our talk and long description because we would like to be able to talk about various different things as we go along this talk. I will divide this talk into two halves, if you will, where first I'll talk more about consumer preferences. What do we mean? There is a lot of understanding around personalization, around consumer demand, needs, determining, buying behavior. What does all of that mean? I am in no part an expert in the consumer preferences and consumer research part of it. So I'll touch upon some of these things and happy to talk and engage more because we as material do a lot of work around consumer research. Then what we are going to dive into is a case study around where we'll talk about digital transformation and the technical innovation piece in context of a toy manufacturer that we'll talk about. But during this, what I would like to do is draw parallels to why we think Drupal is a great platform, where the industry is going, where all the other Drupal agencies and partners can go out to market and find a much larger Drupal opportunity that we see, which is not being handled today or which is not being addressed by a Drupal-based solution. Anyway, just a quick introduction about me. My name is Ashish Goel. I also go by AG or whatever is convenient for you. There is an online question queue as well. So if you feel comfortable asking questions, I would love for you to chime in, ask questions, get further details, because there's only so much we can fit on the slides. But happy to go in any direction that you would want this talk to go in. And if it is useful for you to go deep down, I can stay over here after the conversation as well and go a little bit deeper as well. Just have a background in digital transformation, digital initiatives. I've done work on the enterprise side of the world. So I understand enterprise integrations, things like SAPs, Oracles of the world, and moved into the open source arena about seven, eight years ago, and have been working in the open source world since then, in the Drupal world there. So as I said, we're going to divide this talk into two parts. First, the consumer preference and the consumer research part of it. And that's intentional of how we came up with this topic of saying what, how, and why of consumer preferences. What does it mean to have consumer preferences captured? And then how do brands translate that into digital transformation initiatives? So 101, I'm sure everybody knows this around consumer preferences, but wanted to set a baseline on what do we mean when we say consumer preferences. Because these words get so loaded, and there is so much interpretation around these words as well. So what we are talking about is the products that are built by business want to align to consumer preference that will result in a more satisfied customer after purchase. And why do we care about that? Because if we can satisfy a customer after purchase, what we can do is expect more purchases to happen. As more purchases happen, we develop brand loyalty. And people talk about our brand. Apple is a great example of that. Or Nike is a great example of that. Coca-Cola is a great example of that, where they've built very large companies, very strong brands, and built consumer preferences, where you would ask for a specific brand rather than a drink. Or you would look for a specific product rather than features. Generally, how do we find out about consumer preferences? How do we cater to that? One of the easiest things that we all know is marketing and advertising. But there's a whole, as they say, there is a whole piece of other items that happen within the ecosystem of market and market research, where marketing and advertising is just one piece. One of my animation. So marketing and advertising is just one part of a very large ecosystem around how brands cohesively work around setting up product direction, setting up product features, setting up product roadmap, and how all of that relates to a brand. I'm just trying to guide this from a customer preference standpoint into how do we then capture these things? This was an area where, at least being in technology for the last 20, 25 years, I was completely elusive to this whole area of market research that exists. By itself, it's over $80 billion software market that just does market research. And there are two prime sides to it. Think of it almost like the first party data and third party data, if you will, in our world of tech, where there is direct demand generation of consumer preferences by asking questions to consumers. That generally is referred to as market research, but there are a lot of different ways how that is captured. What I'm going to focus on today is predominantly this side of the world, which is what we built for one of our customers using, of course, Drupal as a platform, which we believe is a fairly very extendable, very flexible, rapid application development platform rather than only a content management system. I'm going to focus on that, but also know that I'm focusing on only one part of the consumer preference ecosystem that exists out there in the world. And what I mean when I say market research, again, I'm just trying to define some of these things so that, and we'll have all of these slides out as well shared post the talk, so that when we are talking about some of these terms, market research, consumer sentiment or customer satisfaction, sometimes these words get so loaded that they end stop meaning anything. So that's why I've tried to put some official definitions in there, but mostly what a market research is trying to determine is sort of the middle of the bullet is a function where you're trying to find consumer, customers and public on how brands will connect to your consumers and connect through information and data. So it's the world of market research. Market research is automated or manual. Market research is driven through surveys. It is driven through automated pieces. I'm sure everybody's gotten a survey from an airlines. You took a plane, you took a flight here. Everybody got that. And that's actually part of your quantitative survey method where what every customer is trying to determine is how do I do quantitative research and find out the actual numbers, if you will, of satisfaction so that I can aggregate those numbers across various wide audience and be able to figure out what my customers really want and where the satisfaction level is. But where the companies want to do more and a lot of research goes in qualitative methods which try to uncover emotions of why would somebody want to prefer one product versus another? Why will, so emotional and buying intent is all determined here. The customer satisfaction pieces and how customer satisfaction will work is all in the qualitative. So quick view of where qualitative and quantitative research comes in from techniques as well as from application. Okay, I know I'm just running through some of these slides because this is more background around where the demand is coming from and I'll tie that to what it means for us in the Drupal ecosystem and technology. I was referring to part of this earlier where I said it's an $80 billion software market that I think we as Drupal community can play in because there are very large companies like Qualtrics and Medallia which have surveys that are generated. I live in the US so every time I take a flight on Delta or United, you'll get a survey from those folks and any time you look at the URL it'll either be Medallia or Qualtrics, surveys that those people send out. And these surveys are fairly simple to do in Drupal and that was the question that led us to the engagement that I'm gonna talk about in this sort of teams. Before I move on to from this slide, I just wanted to ask if there is any interest and any questions I can talk a little bit more about how the customer satisfaction market is shaping up and how we feel Drupal can play a good part in that ecosystem. Is that something that is of interest or would you rather move into the case study where we've actually built a manual survey and took that into a Drupal platform? Would that be more useful? Good, okay. So moving on to the digital transformation and the tech part of customer preferences. So what we talked about was there is a whole industry and market which wants to determine buyer intent, it wants to determine preferences for products, it wants to determine satisfaction with my brand. How customers are doing that today mostly is through manual surveys, focus groups, getting people into a room and talking through a lot of different options of products. Similar to that, we worked with one of the toy manufacturers who's one of the top five toy manufacturers in the world and that, I'm trying to see if I can switch off my wifi so that the teams doesn't keep popping up anyway. So these toy manufacturers which was a revelation to me as we got engaged in this project is that they set up these surveys two years before they release a product to see if this product or this toy would be something that my users will like and when they say users, they're looking at two users.  So they wanna understand the purchase intent, it could be great that there is this great $69 toy that I've made but the parents feel that it is too expensive, they don't wanna buy it, they don't wanna build products like that. Versus if parents think that it is great for $15, you're giving me a great piece of puzzle set but kids don't find it engaging, then again, it is a failure for a product for them. Then there are a lot of intellectual property interactions that are going on within the media and entertainment space. So think about any large toy manufacturer, they have tie-ups with Disney for Marvel Studios, they'll have DC, they'll have Batman toys or Superman toys or they'll have Batmobile or they'll have Harry Potter toys. These are all intellectual property transactions or agreements that are happening. So two years from now, toy manufacturers know what movie is going to be released, what characters are going to come out in that movie so that they can start building the toys today to be released in two years. So which means that any data that they work on is very secretive and they cannot have that data be released to the market because there is things about movie, there are things about characters, right? Iron Man is dead, what happens is that Iron Man's daughter becomes the next Iron Man. What happens there? We don't know, that's the cliffhanger where all of the movies want you to come in but now a Lego world or a Metal world or a Hasbro would come out with toys that they would sell in that piece of equipment, right? So that's all of the context of where we are talking about this digital transformation piece and how their process ran currently. All the details may not be important but the important part here is the process took almost six months for them to set up these surveys and to be able to build, come up to a point where they can actually go out to the market and actually take the assessment. Why did it take six months? Because they want to first, they have to come up with what are the types of things that they want to build. They want to look at all the data of previous years, how is my product selling? What sells in China is very different than what sells in the US. What sells in US is very different than what sells in Europe. So there is regional component to it. Then there is a local market component that they need to pay in that market. There is a local component of China's preferences in that market. So all of this data is one, the input. The second part after that is how do you go and render those sets which is the first thing that you see? The skews are fine, right? So you understand what is selling, what types of sets are selling? Is it a set of 100 piece Lego, let's say, or three dollar set versus is it a smaller set of two? That's the first piece, which takes them a couple of months just to do that piece and understand it. Then you have to render the future piece of how the product would look like. And those are artist drawings, those are drawings that are created by places. A lot of times these are models that are created in 3D and then there are various pictures taken. There are different colors done for those models. Just so that you can figure out is this toy better in pink or orange? Is this toy better in blue or yellow? They're trying to determine all of those types of things up there. Then those images are sent today in the current process. These images were sent out in a catalog. And you would think in 2023 there would be better ways to do this. But these are completely printed in a 60 page PDF catalog. That is printed high-designation, north paper, which is another part of this from a sustainability and all of that standpoint, but they generate a lot of this paper because there's no other good way for them to be able to ensure there is secrecy of data when this is going out. So it is printed in a catalog which is kind of growing up, fairly, very easy as well, with this by the somebody. And they don't, this data doesn't need to actually sign out the catalog. That is for the future catalog. And you can only show it in a survey setting under a controlled environment. So no phones are allowed, people come in and look at all of these things. So they were very distant around any digital technology.  This is too loud for this room. Okay, so they can't have infringement on these types of things. That process happens up there, right? Multiple version of each catalogs are created as well. Again, for security pieces, what they will do is they will have specific images for specific markets with a specific toy to be able to do traceability in case an image leaks on one of the social platforms. They at least can trace back on where that image leaked from so that they can then control even further who they allow the catalog to get out to, right? So this is really, really sensitive piece for them. Then we start getting into all of this work, it's pre-work where the catalog is now generated. Now what they do is there's a whole different process of getting people onboarded of who will take these surveys. So there are children, let's say from three to six bucket, there are six to nine, nine to 13, different, different buckets for different toys and different parts of their business. They will onboard these folks and some surveys are conducted only with kids, some surveys are conducted with kids and parents, some surveys are conducted with parents, but all of that onboarding today happens manually, literally on the phone. They have a catalog of people that they call on year on year to be able to understand if they are willing to come back and give their point of views for the next years or two years now catalog. But running through this process, this is a 90 minute in-person discussion that the customer pays people from anywhere from 200 to $500 depending upon how intense the conversations are. But these are in-person people are taking out time an hour, two hours of their days, sitting into a third party site, taking the surveys. And then of course there is respondents who respond and flip through the catalog. So there's a lot of disconnect between, okay, I wanna flip through the catalog, then I wanna talk about it. So there is a lot of disconnect between how the process is today versus the process that we came up with and I'll translate that into benefits as well as all the components that we use, right? Because what I've been talking about digital images, so there is a dam component to it, there is a DXP component to it and I'll come to that level of detail as well as we talk through some of these use cases. So first piece that we did was a lot around data management, aggregating their data and bringing all of their data together by market, by product, being able to do just data management because instead of an Excel, being able to do that on a data sheet was the first big advantage for them so that they can actually see some analytics that they do all the time on part of, in a quick view in an air table, right? Simple table, nothing too complex, fairly straightforward, but being able to bring those pieces in and then being able to export that data out into Excel because they wanna be able to send that to markets. So not necessarily changing their process but accelerating it from what is used to take them a couple of months to put together to be able to do that in a week, right? So you still have to create 3D models, 3D images but what we've done is you take those images and put it in a dam and then you can create 3D renderings of those plans. One thing that the PDF did not allow you to do is see 3D renderings, engage with the points. Now I'll talk about the implication around analytics and understanding consumer demands of when you convert that physical data into digital data and now that you have all of these details because we all understand you can integrate hotjar and Google analytics with a page and now suddenly you have data around how long somebody spent on that page. What did they click on? How many times did they click on an image? Did they actually interact with it or did they just skip the image? That tells you a whole lot of other insights than just a catalog and what people are checking on, right? So those are some of the advantages I'll talk about as we go along. Anybody has any questions? I know I'm doing okay on time so I can slow down as well. I'm just rushing through this just to make sure that I leave enough time at the end but anybody has any questions around the process so far or what we've talked about? Please. So this is all of the interactions somebody, rather than spending two hours can do. It's down to less than two hours. A lot of times what they want to do is they want to stay on the paper. They have to shift it to be smart. They have to wait on the process. See it and post it in a box because it is, again, you don't want to offend Disney for what they want to do, right? So this is all of the interactions that we're going to talk about. Because it is, again, you don't want to offend Disney for their intellectual rights. But I'm not going to read all of this on because there is a lot of material on here. But these are some of the advantages of saying this which is like what was the current process and what was the future state, right? And how are they realizing benefits? So one is reduce the significant, reduce the significant resources up front. So what they call this catalog is stimulus, which is the actual content that they create. How can we reduce that up front heavy lifting that happens? There is a challenging survey experience and I'll tie all of these to digital and what it means for us. I'm assuming that there are more people who work on Drupal every day of the week. So how does this relate to Drupal, CMS, DXP on the next slide? I'll relate that to products specifically. But I'll leave this here for a second so that you can look through this and we'll go in each of these slides as well. Good? Let's see a couple of people taking pictures so I just wanted to slow down for a little bit. Okay, so what does that mean, right? So first piece I already referred to this is the ability for us to store, manage, orchestrate and share safely digital content. So one of the big pieces that we brought in here was a dam offering where they had these images that can be created, we have not. So now I'm gonna talk about what we have and what we are doing as well, right? Just so that we can figure out where we are and where we are going. One of the things that we're doing with them now is taking AI to generate look-alike pictures of their model and actually tag each picture to the market and to the terminal where it will be shown so that you can then trace back in case there is a leak of a picture that happens and Reddit is one of the most popular places where they will see some of these things pop up. And so they monitor these things very, very closely and they'll kill a thread if they see things that have leaked. But now they also have the traceability because earlier if somebody took a picture off of a catalog it was very difficult to see where it came from. We can now, with them, we can actually orchestrate images down to a terminal where people are taking the survey which could be an iPad, which could be a screen. Currently all of this is still going to be in a proctored environment. So it is still not like you can take a survey sitting at your home which is what our original thought was that we can do that. So what we also built for them is if you are taking a survey on the screen and somebody pulls a phone out.  So we basically have a webcam on and we have an AI model running in the back which is trying to identify anything like a phone.  But basically anything looking like a phone if it sees that in the preview. Again, it's not fail safe. Somebody can take a picture from the side. All of that is still possible. But these are security features that we are starting to build and close the loop holes of saying how can we create this digital content that is safe, secure, and traceable. That's the first bullet of dam. The next piece was what we call the customer experience platform where we connected the data and feedback from the users from diverse systems into one piece. So when we think about customer experience platform it is basically aggregation of data from various different sources. So this is what I talked about from a data platform standpoint. How do you bring data from various different markets? Sales data that is retail. So Walmart is selling your products and Target is selling your products and Tesco is selling your products. How do you bring that data? Because all of these three companies may have the same product but they call it completely different. They sell it at a different price point. They sell it as a different package. So how do you narrow that down back to the product that we are talking about? Because a product may be sold as a set in Walmart versus it may be sold as an individual unit in Target. So that's where you start getting into complexity of product variance and customer experience platform. Then you go to a digital adoption platform which is something I did not know that existed but apparently it does, DAP as well. So if DXP wasn't enough, there is a DAP as well which accelerates the set of services for adoption. How do you disseminate this information electronically so that people can adopt it faster? Then there is, beloved, we all understand, we are all here in DrupalCon, we all understand where DXP comes in. And the part of DXP which was really interesting for this context was in the consumer survey world, there is very little understanding of what marketing automation can do on a web page which we were very surprised with. Just being able to think about a survey today when you take a survey, it does make a difference about how long did you read the question for? How long did you take to respond? If there was rich text, if there was text or images, did you interact with the image or not? We all do that for our websites. If there is a product catalog, did you click on different views because there is propensity to buy if you were looking at the carousel versus if you just skipped the page. So those are the types of things that is completely missing today in the survey world. So when we brought in that instrumentation that the DXP provides, and these are simple things as I was referring to earlier like a hot jar integration or a Google analytics integration, that was a completely new data set for them whereas they have all of this data set already about what my consumers like and what they have told me, how much they like it. They have told me all of this but what are they actually seeing on the set is a completely new data set. So this would be the first year when they would start capturing this data. We don't have outcomes of how it impacts their product catalog two years from now but this is something that we are studying around. Is there an actual financial difference between what people told me that they will buy versus what my system told me they engaged with the most? What's the delta between the two? That could have a material implication on results and how they conduct these surveys. We're very excited to see as we roll some of these things out and as we measure these data sets, we are interested to see is there an actual difference between financially significant difference between those two. Last two things is analytics, everything as you collect more data, you can understand more and you can get better voice of analysis or voice of customer analytics. And then the last piece there is the sense data. Data became dark. If anybody else noticed it, then it could. So bullet six instead of, so that should say insights using sense data. It is not another acronym with DAA but understand and predict consumer needs like purchase behavior which is what I was talking about that how does the sense data actually impact the consumer preferences going forward. Any questions on this? Because after this it will just get into a little bit more depth on a little bit more detail around these things as well. And we are at noon. I do wanna end in the next five, seven minutes so you can get early for lunch because it runs out very quickly. So I have a lot more slides, a lot more details around, of course, what you see in here is Wyden which was the dam that we resulted and I'll share these slides you can read through each point. So all the six points that I talked about here, the challenges and the future state, how we related those six points into a digital experience platform or digital innovation and the things that we are doing in terms of how we are implementing each of them so that it's just not a story, right? You can see actual details around what we've done. So this is a Drupal screen that we've built. There are a lot of contributed modules that let you do surveys. What they wanted to be able to do is, and why it took 90 minutes, was a person would sit with a child and go through in a catalog, say tell me the top 10 things that you like and now they are going completely based off memory because they've looked at the catalog and now they're doing this assessment. So it could be the last thing that they saw or it could be the first thing that they saw. So right now it is all, we had converted it all as top 10 list. You can sort them, we actually record what did you select as top 10 and then selected it down to top three, things that you ranked up and down. So you may have selected something as three, but then you remembered something else and you put that at three and moved the three to four. We track all of that because all of that is useful data for us to see. You ranked this over that, right? So, and then just from an option standpoint, some catalogs, pieces, and we've just tried to generalize some of the images here on how some of these things are going to work. This is the digital experience platform part of it. You will see a couple of stars on there which are things that are coming, which is what I referred to. Things that we've built today and things that are coming. Some of the interesting things that we're doing with them is actually evaluating and eye tracking technology where what you look at first has and how long you look at something has an impact around how much you like it, right? So there is eye tracking piece in the surveys. There are VR pieces around how you want to interact with a 3D model because we already have 3D models. So these are things that we have not done yet, but these are things that are coming down the pipe to say how much do you want to interact with the system? There are variables, integration. There is natural language processing, so you don't have to type all of what you like and what you did not like about the product. You can talk about it and we are transcribing what you are typing or what you are saying. And all of this data, of course, all of the survey data is anonymized. Personal identity is not stored. We don't record anybody's voice. It is just the transcription that we store, right? So all of the platform is GDPR compliant. The customer is a European toy manufacturer, so they're very, very concerned in to ensure that privacy is met, especially because we are dealing with children in a lot of cases, right? Then there is voice of customer analytics. So these are the types of, I'm hoping that you can see, but there is a radar chart on here which talks about what are the segmentations and what age group is most likely interacting with that data. So what you see as a spike is Marvel. There is a certain age group that they are interested in and the rest of the age groups may not be interested in as much, right? I have some description in slide notes and all of that as well, that detail out all of these analytics if there is interest. Happy to talk a little bit more about this. What you see as a blue graph chart is my general survey question, so one thing that as you enroll people, you ask people about what do you like? What type of toys do you like to play with? Do you like to build things or do you like to race cars or do you like automated pieces versus manual? So I'm sorry, there are no legends because we wanted to remove any customer-specific data, but what you see in blue charts are my preferences as in a survey taker's preferences and the general line is mapping my portfolio to my survey respondents. So how does my portfolio relate to the products that the people are interested in? Some of these analytics are things that they are doing today, but an easier access to mapping something like that was great for them to be able to quickly move to the next level. Insights, I've talked a lot about this already about how the insights would work, and then I think we'll just move on to the next one. So quick summary, we talked a lot about digital asset management, capturing sentiments, capturing true voices, which is what we mean about not only what you thought you like, but actually how did you arrive to that decision? We can actually drill down based on all the data that we are capturing in a survey environment on how we actually can get to that level. We can capture the likes, dislikes, interests, patterns, and themes of what you like. Security is a big piece. Identity, privacy is a huge piece in this, and that's built in from the baseline. There's one source of truth now rather than multiple of these catalogs that are generated over time. There is one dam becomes your source, and DXP becomes your window for all interactions within the system, and then it provides rather than having a paper-based catalog, it provides a modern digital interface which anyway, as kids, are becoming more and more fluent and more comfortable with. And this is my last slide. I will just leave it at this around. What were the key takeaways for us and why we thought it would be an interesting piece for Drupal, or talk about here is one is the technology significantly transforming the accuracy, timeliness, and actionable insights piece. Bringing technology to this general survey and consumer research platform, and as I said, every company is doing this. They are using proprietary tools today to do this, and those proprietary tools does not have the capability that a Drupal-based framework that can result in much better user experience, far better flexibility, as well as much deeper data insights. And so that's one, this brings them into a digital transformation arena, and this gives them platforms to not only run this one survey now, it gives them, which was surveyed to what will be launched in two years, but they do many other surveys around what to sell in retail versus what to sell on funds, what retail price is here. So all of those types of consumer segments and consumer research can be driven out of a platform like this. Good. All right. Any questions? Happy to talk more one-on-one if you wanna go a little bit deeper into any of the things that I've talked about, or any questions I can monitor this queue as well. Okay. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming.


How beautiful is this music? But honestly, how many people really know this? Or how often do we hear this in concert? Not enough, I think. So I really hope that the wonderful Hindle project with the 55 Haydn Sonatas helps to get this around a little more amongst music lovers and pianists. And I'm proud to be part of it.


Hi everyone, Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com. We did it. We knocked out Jaspy's Big Hit Express Multisport Series 6 12 box random team number 19. One spot gets you three teams, football, baseball, basketball. Remember the combos right there, a lot of great stuff here. All right, so a few things we have to take care of. First of all, we had a little promo here, great promo actually. We only sold 15 spots outright. And for the people who bought full spots, you got a chance to win eight spots. A little over 50% of you will get it. So let's do that dice roll first and then we'll use another dice roll for all the other randomizers. This is just for the top eight with the extra spots. So thanks for buying full spots everybody. Six and a five, 11 times, top eight after 11, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 11th in the final time. So Mike, Michael, James, Jimmy, Nancy, Michael, Edward, and Eugene. Extra spots going your way. Apologies to the others, but thank you for grabbing your full spots.   All right, let's go there and now let's start randomizing. There are the remaining, there's the new dice, there's the remaining case numbers. Your names will go right here and there's all the different teams. Football with the combos, Rams bucks, Cardinals, Brown combos, Brewers get those extras things as well and basketball is just straight up. All right, one dice roll for all of those lists. It's going to be one and a six, seven times. So we'll do the case numbers later. Let's do your names first. Lucky seven for some. Good luck. Two, three, four, five, six, and seventh and final time. All right, so we got Eugene down to Lewis after seven. So there's the football list. You can see the tabs on the bottom of your screen right there. So there's the NFL tab. There's the baseball tab and then the basketball tab. So Eugene down to Lewis, Eugene down to Lewis, football section, Eugene down to Lewis. All right, seven times once again for the football teams. One, two, three, four, five, six, and a one, seventh and final time. We got Colts down to Giants. Now remember, you can only trade within your own sport, right? So you can only trade football teams for football teams, baseball teams for baseball teams, so on and so forth. All right, and I'll show you all these lists again. But here's the first half of the list just as is right there. And the second half of the list right over there. I guess second half of the list will be over there. We'll come back to this. All right, baseball, seven times. One, two, three, four, five, six, and seventh and final time. After seven, we got Angels down to Rockies. All right, there's the first half of the list right there. And then we got the second half of the list right over here. And then finally, basketball, one and six, seven times for the NBA. One, two, three, four, five, six, and seventh and final time. After seven, we got Portlandia, big trade, Damien Lillard, ooh, bucks. That's some good spacing out there. I mean, that's a good fit, I think. You know, a lot of times people make these blockbuster trades, basketball team, but they're terrible fits on the squad and it doesn't work out and people wonder why that happened, right? Westbrook with my Lakers. But I think, I think Giannis and Giannis doesn't have to shoot out, take outside shots. You can just give it to Damien Lillard. That's it. Opens up a lot of space for Giannis, do work too. All right, so there you go. So football, once again, there's the first half of the list, second half of the list. You can see James last spot mojo with Miami, and then we'll sort alphabetically and you can still see James with last spot mojo with Miami. All right, same with the baseball. You can see James last spot mojo with the Tigers. Alpha ties by team. James still with the Tigers right there. And then same with basketball. James with the Raptors last spot mojo. And I think Portland got some good pieces back too in draft picks and I think that rebuild is going to be a lot quicker than you think, especially with some of their top guards that they have out there. So basketball season should be pretty exciting, I think. All right, we're going to pause the video just for a little bit and allow for some trades. I gave Chad a spot then granted him the three worst teams in each sport. Really? No. The... What'd you get in basketball, Chad? Pelicans? Not so bad. That's not the worst team. These might be the worst team. What'd you get in the NFL? Oh, Saints aren't bad. Come on, that's cool. Baseball probably. All right, we're going to pause the video when we come back and we'll see if there's any trades. Oh, actually, I got to go grab the case too. One in six, seven times. Case number on top is the one we're going to do. One, two, three, four, five, six, and seven in final time. Case 13. Lucky 13 is what we're going to do. All right, so we're going to pause the video. When we come back, we'll do the case and we'll see if there's any trades. Stick around. We'll be right back. All right, welcome back. Look at this. A deal between the Jameses. So this James is out of the Niner spot into the Steeler spot. Put a T there for trade right there. And James is out of that James. James L is out of the Steeler spot into the Niner spot. All right. So now we can roll. So that list remains the same. Baseball list remains the same. And basketball list remains the same right here. I don't have my printer set up here. So I'm just going to leave these, leave these up here and just work with it this way. But I'll print those out later. You saw your lists. Here is case 13 of 24 right there. Thanks everybody for making this happen. This is sort of an awkward size case. So maybe I can pull this camera back just a little bit. Make myself a little extra room here. The box is right here. I'm going to make a mess of it. No, I think mostly okay. And just that back column got messed up just a piece. It's cleaner than I usually do it. And the stacks and boxes up top here. To make myself a little extra room. But all the boxes are there. And now we can roll a little bit. Good luck everybody. All right, first one out of the gate. We got basketball and we got a die cut auto. Jason Tatum. 9 out of 17. 917. That's my birthday. Along with Michael Jaspie has the same birthday as me as well. Share the birthdays. Basketball, Celtics. That's for Mike. Stableton with that one. I guess I'll put basketballs on this side over here. All right, next up. Next up we are going NFL. This is going to be for Nancy with the Cardinals-Browns combo. Two-color patch and on-card autograph. 104 out of 149. It's Michael Jaspie's team. I know, I mean it's got 917 on it. I may as well sign it. That's practically my birthday card. Next box, two pieces in there. It's an RPA for the Lions. It's Alan Matsui with the Lions. And that's Amonra St. Brown. There's a little bit of blue right there. Three-color patch, on-card autograph. 75 out of 99. Nice RPA for the Lions. Interesting ear for the Lions. All right, next box. Is that right? I've been saying a little Aussie slang for us. He's a jet. Jet meaning an excellent player. I like that. We've got a graded card. It's going to be basketball. And it is LeBron James. From 2003, Tops Chrome Basketball PSA-8 for the Cavs. That's going to be for Jimmy Connell for the extra spot that he won for buying a full spot. Cleveland! This is for you! Sorry, it's Chad Duh. Sad times. Maybe he'll let you hold that LeBron card when he gets in the mail. We'll walk right over and go next door and be like, all right, we got a graded card here. It's going to be football. And it's going to be for Chad Duh. Come on, Chad. Chris Alave, three-color patch, an autograph, an 8-5-10 from Phoenix Football. Centering 9-5, edges and surface, and nine corners are an 8. His autograph is a 10. The dynamic Saints receiver. 4 out of 10, nice low number on that. And with a spot that you won in the filler. You got a spot for a fraction of the price. It's not so bad. There you go. Look at that. Now, Chad's going to grumpy about the 8-5. Don't be grumpy about the 8-5. Don't do it, Chad. You want a spot with one spot. You got a hit. It's graded already for you. Come on. I don't know what happened with the corners. I guess you're welcome, Chad. Thanks for getting in, man. Appreciate it. If Julio's not going to hit, Chad Duh better hit something, right? All right. Now we got more hoops. It's going to be for Nancy and my Lakers. It's the Magic Man, Magic Johnson. 45 out of 49. Jersey and autograph from Panini 1. We got more boxes to go. We got six to go. A lot more to go. Fingers crossed, everybody. All right. What's this? What's this? Ooh. Wow. I didn't realize this stuff was in here. A redemption. The Rockies get a box of 2023 Top's Chrome Baseball Hobby Edition. That's not bad. Who got the rocks? That's going to be for Louis. Read with a spot he won in the filler. Sentence seal, Louis. You can rip it if you want to. If you do, let me know if you get anything cool. Or you can sell it if you want to.  All right. We have some baseball. And it's going to be Bobby Whit Jr. 2 out of 15 from Flawless Baseball in his 18 and under gear. You got the sapphire in the middle. His on-card autograph. Very nice for Michael and the Royals. Mike State, 2 out of 15. Very nice. And when I go be Royals, you can be mine. Those typos will always get us, Chad. We've got a football. We've got an SGC 9-5 grade. And it is Jalen Hertz from 2020 Select Football. Copper die-cut prism. Very nice. And that's rookie Jalen Hertz. 155 out of 355. Fly, Eagles fly. And Michael Osia with that one. Nice. Three to go. We've got more football. We've got a good-looking patch coming up here. This must be a train whistle hit. It's got to be. With that patch? Rookie patch auto. Lamar Jackson. I'm sorry, Miss Jackson. Ooh, I am 4-3 out of 2. Eugene with the Baltimore Ravens. Hitting the Lamar Jackson RPA out of the Big Hit Express. And all aboard the Big Hit Express, Eugene. Excellent patch there. Real nice. All right. Two more to go. Thanks, everybody, for making this happen. Appreciate it. Hey, speaking of that flawless Bobby Whit Jr., ladies and gentlemen, we do have flawless baseball on this site. jaspyskatesbreaks.com. Check it out. ABC. Always be closing. All right. Next one is more football. Uh-oh. This is the risk of the trade. Rookie auto, Kenny Pickett. 54 out of 99. From impeccable football. Rookie landscape autograph. Jimmy Connell making the deal. Getting the Steelers and drawing first blood. Sorry, other James, but congrats, Jimmy. Slow start to the season, but hopefully, hopefully he warms up a little bit. Which would be good for the hobby. Last one. Good luck, everybody. Maybe a hit for the hit list. Maybe a hit for the hit list. Maybe something to balance out the trade. We've got another graded card to close things out. It's going to be baseball. I think it's going to be nice. Who has this team? It's a PSA 10. From 2022, Bowman Baseball. It's a Bowman first. It's Ellie Della Cruz. I think who maybe had his first multi-homer game. A week ago, maybe? Recently? That's Michael Lossia with the red legs. There you go, Michael. Very nice. There you go, everybody. Thanks for watching. Thanks for breaking with us. I appreciate. I'm Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com. And we'll woo-woo with you next time. Bye-bye.


Hey everyone welcome back to a special weekend video at Nintendo Prime because we have some Nintendo Direct rumors to talk about including something that someone is making a particular bet like if you were to make a Super Bowl level bet against it you would be considered to be foolish that being said before we get into it I will remind you we are given away well a Switch OLED a PlayStation 5 or an Xbox Series X to enter you just got to go down to the pinned comment or into the description click on that gleam.io link and I wish everybody who enters look so look it's been a bit of a crazy few days for us here at Nintendo Prime the studio is starting to fall apart at the seams we're preparing to literally rip everything out of our house and studio as we're going to be taking out all the carpet putting brand new flooring in and we actually already have started construction on two brand new sets for you guys this set you see here this look you're seeing right now it's not going to be around for much longer so enjoy the current set the current podcast set everything while it lasts this set will be gone as of the weekend of the 18th and 19th I believe of this month so that'll be the last time you see this set in its current iteration and we'll have to wish it farewell that being said let's get into the actual rumors here and oh boy we need to bring our tin foil hats we need to bring our skepticism to the uh to the fray and as this person says hypersponsibly always always always hypersponsibly think he stole the line from me but that's neither here nor there so this rumor comes from somebody that I have stated in the past to not trust and that's okay this person isn't out there stealing leaks from others this person also isn't out there pretending that he knows everything so they've gotten some things right call it predictions if you want sometimes they get some things wrong whatever supposedly still credible enough to be covered by comicbook.com so we're going to talk about it here and that is zippo so zippo over on his blog put up two interesting blogs one of them I think is being mischaracterized at least I think the game he's talking about being mischaracterized the others directly about the director so his blog post that he put up a few days ago says well here we are a new month and it's time to do what we do every year over hype a video game commercial aka a direct but seriously yes I'm hearing that the first director of the year will take place this month in February and could be as soon as next week he's talking about next week uh not you know not the current week that we're in now or ending uh this week is being ruled out because of Nintendo's imminent financial readings obviously we already got that I'm gonna go say it and he's it's gonna be a big one I'm not sure of the content at this point in time but it's safe to assume that Kirby and the Forgotten Lance between three advancements one plus two reboot camp and the heavily rumored Zeno Bay Chronicles 3 and a new Fire Emblem title will likely be featured in this one again that's all stuff we either know about or has heavily been rumored about Nintendo has a metric shit time to talk about so I expect some huge bombs to be dropped in this presentation so okay I wouldn't know that any of that many of the Fire Emblem game would be a new announcement but the rest of that's not really huge bombs but this is the line that has me this is why we're really talking about this because all that's just safe right okay there's traditionally a Nintendo director in February seven of the last ten um you know was it seven of the last ten uh February's also fun fact did you know that Nintendo has a nearly 100 track record outside of the COVID year where financial briefing one to two weeks later there's a direct I don't I don't know if people realize how Nintendo times those directs conveniently after financial briefings that being said uh let's just look at what he said here so if you made a super bowl sized money bet so millions and millions of dollars on a new blank not being real you're going to be out a lot of money and the new blank he's talking about is Mario Kart 9 10 crossroads whatever you want to call it it's had a number of rumored names but a brand new Mario Kart game there is essentially saying look you could pretend this game doesn't exist you can even put a super bowl like bet down so millions of dollars down this game isn't happening and uh he would say you'd be out all that money so one I'll say I think a new Mario Kart game comes someday so you can argue if this sentence will eventually be true but the inference obviously that is going to be a switch title which that's very interesting considering Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the best-selling Mario Kart game of the whole time it's also not a brand new Mario Kart game so it's going to be really interesting to see how this all plays out all I know right now is uh he is saying no matter how much money you put down you're just going to lose it all if you're betting against a new Mario Kart now he doesn't say the Mario Kart will be dropped at this direct but that it's coming it's happening and there's been even some rumors from others that it might drop this year now what I also really like is something he mentions I think just yesterday he says sometimes I really don't understand Nintendo as a company or as a developer this is one of those times one two switch is one of the most dull lifeless forgettable games I've ever played yet it's getting a sequel for some reason it's so well I think usually when I do a scoop it's usually the game I'm interested in this is not one of those games this year is really going to be 2017 part two isn't it so what's interesting about this part here is obviously that we've heard some slight rumors out there that we were going to get a sequel Nate the hate and others out there put we're getting a sequel to a game or we're getting some sort of game from Nintendo a casual game that nobody wants and I'm going to fight back on this a little bit one two switch to me is a good game I think it's a misunderstood title yes Nintendo pretended it was going to be some game that you go with Karen do a rooftop party with your okay yeah that was probably an unrealistic situation but I've actually played one two switch with a number of children with a number of adults I've actually had it out at parties it's fun one two switch is a fun game it's a party mini game experience that adds in the ability for there to be tons of people playing at once it is literally the definition of a party game and it's really good at it it takes full advantage of the hd rumble and does prove the concept of this rumble is significantly better than most of the rumbles we have gotten outside of the playstation 5 dual sense I honestly think that this game is only viewed the way it is because Nintendo sold it as a $60 product at launch when it should have been this generation to be sports impacted notice how we sports doesn't have a bad reputation who wants to play that oh it's sports games the sports are more except guys one two switch isn't a bad game I literally owned it at launch and I thoroughly enjoyed it and I've probably spent over a hundred hours playing multiplayer matches in it so yeah um a sequel called one two three switch or whatever they end up calling it I am all four and I'll probably end up picking it up again I think one two switch just gets a bad rap because it felt like it should have been a packing game and Nintendo maybe should have charged 60 bucks I could I could argue it's probably more like a $40 experience at launch than a 60 but you know brand new system launching I can kind of see where Nintendo was going with that that being said yeah these are all rumors um could be made up you know at well let me know down on the comments like hashtag team real hashtag team fake I'm probably on team fake here but that doesn't mean I think everything he is saying is wrong I do think a new Mario Kart game is happening which is one reason why I wanted to talk about this whether it gets revealed this month or later I don't know also interesting note about this direct so Nintendo has this thing on their website where they list upcoming games it gets updated every time there's a new financial briefing and the order in which they list the games uh has a 100 track record to be in the order at which Nintendo releases the games here's the interesting note Breath of the Wild 2 is listed before Splatoon 3 um a lot of us felt like Splatoon 3 be a summer title but as Splatoon 3 is going to be their holiday hitter is Breath of the Wild 2 a summer game obviously I think if it is we're seeing it at this direct probably with a full title reveal as Nintendo ramps up the next three four five months of hype for that game anyways obviously this is all speculation at this point but I am really really excited for the prospect of a future on Nintendo direct this month all right folks hopefully I'll be live reacting with you next week it'll still be on the set there'll probably be the last live reaction uh show on this set but uh I'm I'm still so really excited about it the countdown is on guys for brand new studio I can't wait to reveal we will do a quick pan over of the old studio before everything gets torn down even though there's already been some changes without any footage recorded it's okay it was to a section of the studio that was mostly off-limits to you guys it's now going to be part of the grander scheme in fact there's going to be a lot changing uh with our studio I don't want to go over everything we will go over in our studio tour uh that we actually want to do it's going to be a studio update one uh big thing about this tour it's going to be some some cable managing as well that I I need to perfect and see what additional cables if any I need to purchase I'm going to see that the things are going to be changing a lot but I'm really excited for the future of this channel I always say if you're not improving you're not improving you know we we we just dropped we don't have $3,000 yesterday um not all of it was specifically for the studio but a huge chunk of it was uh and we have more we're spending uh coming forward because as we bring the next generation of nintendo prime to all of you guys I I'm getting a little nostalgic looking around this room this has been our set now for over a year uh and it feels crazy that a year later you know a little over a year later we're we're changing it all we're uh tearing it down I mean this this part of this set was built you know back right before e3 last year and it's getting torn down and it's going to be uh it's going to be interesting that's for sure but some things will stay the same our audio equipment's not getting swapped out or camera equipment's not getting swapped out but I'm really I'm excited so catch you guys um in a couple weeks otherwise we'll just keep doing our regular content as long as we can um there's going to be I would say probably a four or five day period where you guys are going to end up getting a lot of either if not voiceover gameplay videos me using a pseudo green screen with probably not the best lighting uh just because hey that's when the studio is completely torn down and I will have to rely on my laptop and a more portable setup so all right folks I'll catch you guys in the next episode video live show episode do we do we call every video on my channel an episode what how many episodes would that be that like 2700 man I've been doing a lot of videos


I've reviewed several speaker isolators over the years and they all improve the sound quality. Although using quite different constructions, they all worked according to the spring and damper principle. Recently, Stack Audio offered their OVO70 for review that worked quite differently. Vibrations in audio equipment are unintended movements that has always caused distortion. In turntables the tone arm, the chassis and even the cantilever suspension can cause perious movements, movements that differ from the groove modulation and thus will distort the sound. That is why good turntables have heavy sockets, a floating subsidy or both. In the 70s people created a sandbox, placed a solid plate on the sand and placed a turntable on the plate. Sand is an effective damper of vibrations. Even today the sandbox is popular, see Roots final guide, link at the usual places. The same system can be used for loudspeakers of course, but for loudspeakers spring and damper systems are less of a nuisance and less eye-catching. Last year I have reviewed the Townsend seismic podium that offers a platform on damped springs to place the speakers on. The AudioPhysic VCF2 Magnetic Plus Vibration Control Feed that use magnets as springs and Isoacoustic Gaia II that use rubber like springs, if I recall well. These systems allow for some movement of the loudspeaker, movement that should be damped. The spring-damper relation depends on the weight of the loudspeaker and when chosen optimally loudspeaker movement should be minimal. The Townsend gave the most improvement but did not pass the aesthetics committee. The AudioPhysic and Isoacoustic products perform about equal. The first still are under the AudioPhysic Scorpios, the second under my PMCs in set of one. They prove to be a perfect investment in sound quality. I have said it here before and I repeated here again, spikes do not isolate vibrations. Some think that spikes conduct vibrations in one direction and blocks them in the other. This is absolutely untrue. Spikes conduct sound in both directions. Then why do spikes often make loudspeaker sound better? Spikes work well on carpeted floors for they stick through the carpets and make direct contact with the solid floor beneath. That way they fix the loudspeaker solid so that the kinetic energy coming from the drivers cannot cause movement in the cabinet in the opposite direction. This Tech Audio OVO uses a completely different principle, somewhat related to the sandbox. Like the AudioPhysic and Isoacoustic products, the each spike under the loudspeaker is replaced by an OVO isolator. So you need four isolators per loudspeaker. The isolators are machined aluminium cases containing multiple cells in which a mix of particles of, amongst others, tungsten powder. They act like sand in a sandbox, converting kinetic energy into heat. Tech Audio has applied for patent and wisely does not want to disclose more until the patent is granted. Currently two models are available. The OVO 70 and the OVO 100. The OVO 70 has a diameter of 70 mm and the OVO 100, you've guessed it, 100 mm. The OVO 100 also has two more cells, five instead of three, and thus can absorb extra amounts of vibration. A smaller, lower priced version is being developed. For placement on carpet, three spikes per isolator are supplied. This secures the loudspeaker to the solid floor under the carpet. For carpetless floors, the spikes are not used. Instead, sticky felt pads are supplied not to damage the floor. I will send the OVO 70s with M8 threads to fit my PMCs. Quarter inch, M6, M10, M12 and M14 threads can be ordered alternatively from stock. Other sizes are available on demand. As said, the diameter of the review samples is 70 mm. The height is 36 mm while the spikes are 14 mm in height. Each isolator weighs 0.4 kg. You have to assemble each isolator by screwing in the thread, adding the locking nuts and either screwing in the spikes or sticking on the felt pads. I mounted the OVO 70s to the PMC Fact 12 signature loudspeakers. The amplifier was the Air AX520 connected to the PMCs over AudioQuest Robinhood Zero loudspeaker cable. The core DAVE did the digital to analog conversion and was connected to the Air over Grim Audio SQM XLR cables. The Grim Audio Mu1 digital player was connected to the DAVE over Siltac AES-EBU cable. Both the DAVE and the Grim were connected to the mains over the transparent power isolator 8. A network acoustic Mu1 internet filtering cable connected the Grim to the Sistel GS1900-10HP switch.  From the Sistel switch the glass fiber connection goes to the Netgear ProSafe GS418TPP switch on the third floor where the Intel NUC 10i7 FNH running Roon ROG is connected over a CAT6 patch cable. The NUC is the Roon server, the Grim Audio, the Roon endpoint in this setup. An Apple iPad Pro was used to operate Roon. The room where the testing took place has brick and mortar walls, ceiling and floor. On the concrete floor is an oak floor on a damping subfloor. I expected a cumbersome comparison between the OVAs and the Isoacoustics Gaia's that I happily used in my setup one for about a year now. Replacing 8 isolators, then listening, changing them back, listening again, you get a picture. But there was no need. The difference was obvious. Using the Gaia 2's was a big improvement over using the standard ball-tipped feed of the PMC's. But the OVA's 70s were yet another step better. The impulse response was improved, resolution was increased over the entire band, timing was tighter and then there was the lows. Not only was there an impressive more texture, baseless also quite a bit tighter. Yes, yet again. Although my setup 1A already is of rather high quality, the OVAs brought something magical to the setup. It must be the further reduced time smearing, better timing. The music is more evolving, more immersive and it's the same with all tracks I played. I want to stress that all three systems I have reviewed last year clearly improve the sound, but surely the audio physics and the Isoacoustic products not to the level that the OVAs do. Since I have tested the Townsend seismic podium system using my previous loudspeakers, I can't compare those. It's amazing to hear how eight of these little feet can largely solve the remaining low and acoustic trouble I had in some places in the room. Two years ago I would have thought there were room modes that, next to loudspeaker placement, could only be cured with acoustic measures. I have always wondered why the piano did not suffer from room modes, where my stereo did. It was after the hefty upgrade of my reference system 1A that I discovered that even the grim digital player reduced the problem. As did the DAC, the amp, the speakers and indeed the speaker isolators. Taking acoustic measures in a living room is not automatically accepted by the aesthetic committee. The same was the case with the Townsend seismic podiums while the isolators by OVAs, Isoacoustics and Stack Audio passed the committee with flying feathers. Stack Audio charges £700 excluding VAT which, at the time this video was produced, boiled down to just below €1000 including VAT and Euro. The AudioPhysic VCF2 Magnetic Plus vibration control feed has an MSRP of €769 and the Isoacoustics Gaia 2s €678. Depending on the size and weight of your speakers, the Townsend Seismic podiums vary in price between €1679 and the €3799. All prices for a stereo setup including 21% VAT delivered in Europe. If your stereo has cost you €2000, I would invest in other things first, probably starting with the source. But if your stereo was 5K or more, I would surely try one of these solutions. A good dealer will be happy to lend you a set or you can order them online when they, like with Stack Audio, can be returned for a refund. Which brings me to the end of this video. See you next week, Friday at 5pm central European time. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media so you will be informed when new videos are out. Help me reach even more people by giving this video a thumb up or link to this video on the social media. It is much appreciated. Many thanks to those viewers that support this channel financially, especially in these times. It keeps me independent unless we improve the channel further. If that makes you feel like supporting my work too, the links are in the comments below this video on YouTube. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.


Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. Mr. President, we're truly honored by your appearance here this morning. Your presence marks the first time an incumbent president has addressed a meeting of the Economic Club of Chicago. And it's a special pleasure for us to have a son of Illinois, the only Illinois-born U.S. president I might add. Join us for this discussion of mid-American economic policies and programs. So your being here this morning, Mr. President, is proof of your deep interest in this matter, and we appreciate it very much. We have gathered at this working breakfast to discuss States Ronald Reagan. Thank you. Well, thank you very much.  I had a good to fly in yesterday on Air Force One and see the city of the big shoulders again. All my life I've believed in miracles. I believe that if you truly have faith, your dream will come true. And now, after 39 years of waiting, the miracle is happening. The Chicago Cubs are on their way to a National League candidate. I have to tell you what that means to me personally. I was broadcasting the Cubs in 1935 when the only mathematical chance they had to win the pennant was to win the last 21 games of the season. And they did. And it still stands today as an unequal record. When I'm in the presence of such greatness, how can I feel intimidated by a little challenge like running for president? And if you share my belief that all things come together for good, then how can we not believe the success of the Cubs bodes well for our nation's heartland? Permit me to commend Ameritrists Corporation and its fine chairman Jerry Jarrett for your leadership in sponsoring Choosing a Future for Mid-America. Your survey identifying the significant economic difficulties we know your region faces, as well as strategies for overcoming them, represents a far-reaching and impressive private sector economic development initiative. Choosing a Future reflects the spirit of partnership between government and industry, essential to lasting industrial or economic growth and human progress. And it portrays a people with a realism to see clearly and the courage and confidence to go far. When we talk about the great changes in America in recent years, we often describe them in statistical ways, and I'll be guilty of that before I finish. But I think the most significant change, a good and hopeful one, has been the change in America's attitude, our renewed confidence and the higher value that we place on the truly important things in our lives. Ben Franklin once said that, when the wells dry, we know the worth of water. Well, 1980 marks such a moment for America. It was, in a sense, a great moment of truth, a time in our history, when it seemed to many that America's well-finally had run dry from a philosophy of bigger and bigger government. It was time to begin putting back what we had lost. For half a century, we'd been giving government greater power over our lives. We did this with the best and most honorable of intentions. But by 1980, the full impact of distorting our economy, of draining spirit from the heart of our people and of permitting our traditional values of faith, family and work, neighborhood and freedom to be undermined, and all of this had come home to roost. The worst trauma was not the breakdown in our economy or the humiliating setbacks that we suffered abroad. Being sick was bad, but the worst thing was when they told us we couldn't get well, that the problems were just too big and government wasn't to blame, we were to blame. Can you imagine what the fate of England would have been if before the battle of Britain in World War II, the English had not heard those words, we shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them in the streets, but instead had been told, it's no use, you suffer from a malaise. Well Americans didn't give up hope, we just hadn't been allowed to hope. And that's why in 1981 we said, let's renew our faith and hope. We have every right to dream heroic dreams, let us make a new beginning with one revolutionary idea, freedom. From day one, the driving force behind everything we've done in economic policy, from reducing the growth of federal spending which soared over 17% in 1980 alone, to lowering tax rates and providing new incentives for business investment, to cutting back the jungle of regulations, to supporting stable monetary policies, has been to put our future back in the people's hands so working Americans could make America great again. And somebody out there must be doing something right. 21 straight months of economic growth with a monster of inflation still locked in his cage. Today one industrial nation in the world has the strongest economic growth, 7.6% for the last quarter, inflation of only 4.1% for the last year, labor force participation at an all time high, the fastest rate of job creation, 6.5 million more people working in the last 19 months alone, a record 600,000 business incorporations last year, the fastest rate of business investment in 40 years, robust productivity gains, the largest increase in real after-tax personal income since 1973, and leadership in developing jobs and markets for the future in science and high technology, both on earth and in outer space. Well, I think you know the one nation I am describing. Its initials are USA. America is on the move again. But I repeat today what I said in 1981. Our challenge is to move America forward and to make sure that nobody gets left behind. One continuing challenge for the future must be to clear away the remaining roadblocks to economic growth without inflation and do it for all Americans. We do not believe as some propose that higher taxes on income, capital and labor is the way to reduce budget deficits. That idea was bad policy before and it's bad policy today. Entrepreneurs must not be discouraged. They must be encouraged. So we must move forward into the future with an historic simplification of the tax system, a tax system more fair and easier to understand so we can bring everybody's income tax rates further down, not up. Strong economic growth will keep deficits coming down and make no mistake the deficit is coming down and it would come down even faster if the Congress would give us a constitutional amendment mandating governments spend no more than government takes in and a line item veto so that a president could veto specific spending requests without vetoing an entire appropriations bill. Oh, bless you for that. I had it for eight years as governor of California and I miss it. Another reform could bring hope and opportunity to depressed neighborhoods in Chicago and pockets of despair throughout the Midwest. Imagine an abandoned ghetto with people working again in shops and firms and restaurants. Imagine their families living in more secure neighborhoods with less crime. Well, we can and will have this rebirth in America if the House of Representatives would just give us a vote on our enterprise zones proposal. Less than a year ago, Spiegel Incorporated dropped the idea of moving to the Sun Belt and announced a $20 million renovation project on Chicago's south side that preserves thousands of jobs and can lead to many more. They stayed because of a state-sponsored enterprise zone plan. With enactment of our enterprise zone legislation, there could be more and more such stories. We understand too the challenges your agricultural and industrial regions face. We've tried to help you meet those challenges in a number of ways. By ending a totally unfair wrong-headed grain embargo, by restoring grain sales to the Soviet Union over 22 million metric tons since August of 1983, by reaching an agreement with Japan that will virtually double our beef exports over the next four years, by accepting an understanding with Japan permitting our auto industry to get back on its feet after the killer interest rates in 1980, by working aggressively for more open markets, and by opposing protectionist legislation like domestic content which would revive inflation, provoke retaliation, and destroy American jobs and farm exports. May I suggest that the most productive food growers in the world, the kind of leaders who once invented the assembly line, who manufacture our cars and who've given us the hard-hat spirit and the expertise that made American business second and un, can out-produce, out-compete, out-sell anybody, anytime, anywhere in the world. We can and we must go forward, all of us together, building an economy that spurs the initiative and ingenuity to create sunrise industries and make older ones more competitive. To do this, we must meet the challenge of developing our next frontiers in science, technology, space, and education. In my travels across this land, I've seen a vision of America's future too often ignored in Washington. An America unafraid, pushing back those frontiers with courage and leadership, becoming once again America unsurpassed. A new revolution is rising from the deepest yearnings of our nation's spirit to challenge the limits of knowledge and to put the power of discovery at the service of our most noble and generous impulses for decency, for progress, and yes, for peace. I saw that in Decatur, Illinois. Men and women not only processing corn and soybeans to produce food products that feed a hungry world, but putting into practice breakthroughs in the field of hydroponics and pioneering work in ethanol to increase demand for farm products, create new jobs, and give greater energy security to our country. America's heartland is on the cutting edge of progress. I saw us meeting that challenge on the assembly lines in Kansas City and Detroit where investments to modernize and the introduction of robotics are helping the American automobile industry come back stronger than ever. And where engineers are using lightweight, super-strong, plastic-like materials to reduce the weight of modern cars and consumers are getting the benefits from more miles to the gallon. I saw us meeting that challenge when the people at Goddard Space Flight Center showed us how practical applications of space and aeronautical technology are transforming our lives from life-saving vests for firemen to sophisticated aerial scanning techniques to locate and identify everything from schools of fish to mineral deposits to agricultural resources. I saw the vision of technology with a human face, miraculous medical wonders like PIMS, the programmable implantable medication system can administer medication automatically within the body. HTS, the human tissue simulator, can send electric impulses through wire leads to targeted nerve centers or areas of the brain giving relief from pain. Who could put a price tag on the value of these human benefits? Even more dazzling opportunities lie ahead if only we have the faith and courage to keep pushing on. Each technological breakthrough enables us to work from a newer, higher plateau of knowledge and each breakthrough opens the door to a new leap in productivity considered impossible only a few decades ago. The great untold story of the technological revolution is the awesome potential for productivity power. If we meet the challenge of building a manned space station, for example, we can manufacture in one month's time life-saving medicines that would take 30 years to manufacture on Earth. We can manufacture crystals of exceptional purity that could enable us to produce larger, faster computers, the supercomputers, and achieve even greater productivity gains throughout our economy. My friends, we can create a bounty of new opportunities, technologies, and improvements in the quality of life, surpassing anything we've ever before dreamed or imagined. Our vision is not an impossible dream. It's a waking dream. If we cultivate the art of seeing things impossible, if we challenge the limits of growth, we'll have the strength and knowledge to make America a rocket of hope shooting to the stars. I believe we will be leaders in space because the American people would rather reach for the stars than reach for excuses why we shouldn't. And as our technology transforms the great black night of space into a bright new world of opportunities, we can use that knowledge to create an American Opportunity Society here at home. We can ensure that every person has not only an equal chance, but a much greater chance to pursue the American dream. I promise you, we'll do our part. We'll support high tech, not high taxes. We'll constantly endeavor to strengthen the private economy to support tax credits for incremental research and development, strive to lessen concerns that cooperative R&D ventures between companies may violate antitrust statutes, and continue our strong commitment to support basic research and development, particularly in universities, to train tomorrow's industrial scientists and academic scientists and engineers, and build our nation's intellectual capital. You know, the more we look at our changing world, the more we see that the problems and challenges we face are interrelated. The American Opportunity Society will blossom from the progress of a growth economy. That progress will hinge on our ability to push back the frontiers of science, technology, and space. Meeting those challenges depends on education, and our success in education will depend on what kind of people we have in our schools. What values we absorb and bring forward into the future with us. The world of learning and the world of work must not only come into better harmony, they must strengthen and enrich each other. So our vision of education must be as forward-looking as our vision of the rest of American life. A school system that teaches our children how to enrich their lives using telecommunications as educational tools that shows them how to educate themselves so they will be able to keep their skills current in an ever-changing job market and that gives them an appreciation of the arts and humanities that give life meaning. The sense of our boundless potential and the spirit of excellence are rising again in America. In every state in the Union in the past three years, there has been a resurgence of interest in our schools and a resurgence of commitment to excellence. SAT scores are turning up again, and the Back to Basics movement has proved itself not old-fashioned, but indispensable to progress. We've come far in just a few years, but it isn't enough. We've got to do more, and we will. In the past few decades, many of us turned away from the enduring values, from faith, the work ethic, and the central importance of the family. We had something of a hedonistic heyday, but it's passing. We've righted ourselves, and across our country there's a rebirth of the traditional values that guided our fathers and mothers and guided our nation. We affirm this trend not to return to some mythical past, but to build on proven strengths for a creative future. There's another challenge for us to think about. In the history of our nation, we've had problems with ill-spirited divisiveness, one race thinking it was better than another, one generation thinking it was superior to another. We've had religious divisions, we've had our share of bigotry, we've had tensions between this class or this group and that. And one of the good changes of recent years is that we've outgrown a lot of that nonsense, but we must commit ourselves to doing better. We are and must remain a pluralistic society, but we're also one nation together. We're brothers and sisters equal in the eyes of God and equal under the law. No one group in this country is better than another. No one race or religion or sex or color is better than another. And no region is better or worse than another. It's time we erase the last vestiges of intolerance, bigotry, and unkindness from our hearts. Decency demands this, and so does our history. There's a final challenge. It may seem remote from issues of regional economic development, but it's a most fundamental challenge, for if we ever fail to meet it, the value of our economic progress and our spiritual progress, too, would be lost. It's the challenge to maintain peace in the world, peace with our neighbors and our allies and our adversaries. I think you well know my feelings on this. They've been shared by most American presidents down through our history. Simply stated, if we're strong, we will discourage those who would disrupt peace. If we maintain our strength, we will maintain peace, and there is no threat to the world in this. America has always been a peaceable country. We've never loved war. We're the least war-like, powerful nation in the history of the world. We can be trusted with the military power that is our responsibility to hold. We maintain it only for the good, never for territorial gain or imperialist desires. We work for peace by staying strong so that we may be a nation at peace with ourselves and at peace with the world. If we keep these things in mind, if we retain our economic strength, help our children, strengthen the bonds that keep us together, and work for peace, then the well will not run dry again. We will have replenished it, and more will move forward. The future will be bright and shining. Our nation will continue to be what it's always been, a place of refuge for those who come from places that are not free and not fair, a place of great hope and endless possibilities. Winston Churchill surveyed the Western world, and he said, we have not journeyed in all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we're made of sugar candy. Well, like many of you, I share his spirit. We can do anything when we set our minds to it. The dream of America is much more than who we are or what we do. The dream is what we will be. We must always be the new world, the world of discovery, the world that reveres the great truths of its past, but that pushes on with unending faith toward the promise of the future. In my heart, I know we have that faith. The dream lives on. America will remain future's child, the golden hope of all mankind. Thank you for welcoming us here today, and thank you for all that you give us, and thank you for your courage to dream great dreams. God bless you all. As I indicated earlier, President Reagan has indicated that he'd be willing to take a few questions from our audience. We have collected your cards. Our committee has reviewed them and tried to distill the essence of them into a few succinct questions, which I have. So I'll ask the president to come back to the podium at this time, and I'll address those questions to him. This is working here. Mr. President, looking over the questions, this audience is very concerned about four things. I would say in this order, the federal deficit interest rates our international competitive position in the Chicago Cubs. Now, you've already dealt with the last one, so we'll get on with the other. The first one deals with our Midwest economy. We had an excellent panel discussion this morning, and I think we all would agree we have challenges and opportunities here. But one of our very significant problems in the Midwest is the very substantial net outflow of tax dollars to other faster-growing regions of this country. Now, what might you suggest that we do to reverse this trend if you have any thoughts on that particular subject? Federal tax dollars going from the Midwest to other parts of this country. Substantial net deficit or net outflow. Well, we have been trying a thing that we call federalism, and we've run into some of the same kind of opposition or we've run into some of the other things we tried. One of the things that we would like to see more of is block grants, where that's all that we can resort to instead of the federal government dictating and spending the money. It's true that there are, oh, probably some place between a dozen and 20 states that are considered to be the rich ones, and they must help support the others. What we would like to do, even rather than block grants and what we have not done as much of as we would like, and that is to wherever possible turn back to the states and local communities tax sources that presently are held by the federal government and turn back with them the responsibility for functions that properly should be administered at state and local level, that the federal government is not as well equipped to perform as they are. And I think in this way there would be some help with what you're saying. I know it has to seem unfair when you're in one of those states recently, some years ago, when New York was having its great problems with bankruptcy. I thought at the time that it was pretty ironic that New York was considered way up at the top of the list as one of the states that could afford to help out the other states. Thank you. Next question. Given your position on personal income taxes, what do you propose to do to tackle the deficit? Well, I know that I'm accused of not being very specific on this. I think we've been more specific than almost any administration that I can remember. If you will look at the program that we started to implement when we first came here. Now what we're going to continue to do are two things in attacking the deficits. One of them is, look at the deficit as being partly structural and partly the result of the economic slump. Now as you bring back the economy and it expands, even at the lower tax rates that we put in as an incentive to help bring back the economy, your revenues grow, they don't shrink. So we are reducing the deficit right now. The one for this year will probably be some 20-odd billion dollars less than we had estimated ourselves that it was going to be simply because of the economic recovery. That is one thing. The other thing is reducing government spending. I still think that the federal government has a higher overhead than is necessary. We haven't made all the gains that we wanted. As a matter of fact, had we gotten all that we asked for in our first submission of our program, the deficit would be between 40 and 50 billion dollars less right now. But we see the deficit as one in which as the economy improves and that brings up revenues without increasing the actual rates on the individual. And if at the same time we can continue, we have 2,478 specific recommendations by the Grace Commission where they came in and looked at all of government and made recommendations as businessmen and women as to where government could be run more like a productive business. We have a team looking at those. We have already implemented by administrative decree some 17% of those. Now, as we bring government costs down, the share that government has taken from the private sector and as the recovery brings income up, there must be a point out here at which those two will meet. Now, if they don't, and this is what I mean by those today who are saying that the first resort is increased taxes, we say it is the last resort. If you come to a point where you've done all you can do with regard to economic recovery and the revenues fall short of that line then all you can do to bring government down to be as efficient and economical as it should be and still perform the services that we can expect of government. And those two are apart. Then you have to look at your tax system to bridge that difference. But today to suggest a tax increase, simply for the cure of the deficit, well, we've had any number of tax increases over the last 50 years and we have had regularly deficits every year for 50 years. Every year since World War II, well, we had them during the war but that's the kind of deficit we could expect and then you pay off in the years following the war. But in the five years before we came here to office the taxes doubled in those five years and the deficits increased. The deficit we have to face is an effect, not a cause. The cause is when government takes too big a percentage from the private sector you're going to have economic troubles. It's government is going to become a drag on the economy and this is what we're trying to cure. In stance with respect to protectionism if re-elected, specifically, do you favor import restrictions to help our steel industry keeping in mind on the one hand that imports account for about 25 or 30% of total usage in this country, while on the other hand our Midwestern manufacturers must be able to buy steel at world prices in order to be competitive. It's an easy question, sir. But it isn't easy. We do know that sometimes, and our law provides for this, that sometimes there are emergency situations in which an industry has been suffered unfairly and temporarily you can give that industry some help to get it back in its feet. Basically, however, I think we have to be opposed in principle to protectionism because it's a two-way street. Having looked for my first job in the depths of the Great Depression, graduating in 1932, I looking back have some idea of what the Smoot-Hawley Tariff bill did to the Depression worldwide. And I think that free trade is the best answer, but free trade must also be fair trade. And what you have recited there is that many times the protectionism can help hear a particular segment, but no one pays any attention to the disaster or the depression that is created over here in other areas. And this is true in some places where fabricators find themselves at odds with the mineral producers. Now, we're studying this very carefully because it is true. Free trade must be fair trade, and it is true that in some instances the competition is unfair that things like steel have been sent into this country that are subsidized by a foreign government and are selling below their cost of production, which our people can't do. And there we have rules and have invoked them in these three and a half years at times to prevent that, and we'll continue to do that. Next question. Is there a real possibility that the line item veto that you mentioned in your address will be approved in your next term? Oh, we're going to fight hard for that, and we need all your help and support. I said yesterday out in Salt Lake City, we need in Washington your input to some of the people there who balk at some of these progressive measures. It isn't necessary to make them see the light. You must make them feel the heat. I'm going to look down here at the end where Jim is. Jim, do you have line item veto? Yes, sir. See, 43 states, I had it as governor of California, and I inherited a situation out there where in spite of a constitutional provision that we could not have a deficit, I walked into office in the middle of the fiscal year, and we already had a deficit. The line item veto, I invoked it more than 900 times in those eight years, and we didn't have an unbalanced budget very long. We solved that problem. It's absolutely necessary. It's the most vital tool. Now, the Congress has the right to overcome that veto, to override it if they feel strongly enough to do it. In all of my more than 900 vetoes, the legislature that had passed the bills to begin with never once overrode one of those vetoes. They never once dared stand up and publicly vote for that single item that they had agreed to put into another bill. So please, write letters, send wires, twist arms. We need the line item veto. We're going to try for it all out. We have one last question. It's a little different thrust, but very important nevertheless. Affirmative action and job training have been of great assistance to minorities. Since your administration has reduced the impact of these programs, what do you propose to do to replace them? We are opposed to as not affirmative action so much as a quota system. And having grown up, as I did, in a time when there were prejudices of all kinds, you find that the quota can be used actually as an instrument of discrimination, not to cure it. We have in place today throughout the country a job training program that we believe encompasses the proper ideas. And that is that it is a team between the federal government, local authorities, and local businesses to train people in those areas for the jobs that are available in those areas. The federal government in the past with many of its job training programs, they really were just make work programs. They didn't train anyone really for a specific job. And there was no relationship between the area where the training was taking place and the residents of the people and whether there were jobs once they were trained that there would be jobs in those areas. Now this program of ours, incidentally the CETA program, only about 18 cents out of each dollar actually went into job training in that program. That's why we don't have it anymore. In this program, over 70 cents of every dollar is being spent, an actual job training. And already we are seeing tens of thousands of people going through that program and almost immediately out into productive jobs. Now I know that there's been a lot of criticism that somehow I am opposed to civil rights.  If I ever did I was raised to believe that there's no sin greater than prejudice or bigotry. And I grew up that way. In fact, back in those days broadcasting the Cubs and all, I was one of the handful of sports commentators throughout the country that was even then campaigning for an elimination of the rules that had kept minorities out of organized baseball. And finally there was triumph in that. I was fighting for civil rights before they called it civil rights. And so any translation of this criticism of the management of some of the Affirmative Action programs in an attempt to make that look as if I am not supportive of the elimination. The goal in this country must be, and we haven't completely reached it yet, but it must be the day will come when whatever is done to someone or for someone is neither because of nor in spite of any difference in race or religion. Thank you all very much. Thank you very much. They tell me that I have to leave now. I'm due back in Washington. As the senator down there knows, that's because today the Congress is coming back and I can't leave them there by themselves. So thank you all. It's been a great pleasure. Would you please stay in your places until the president has departed. Thank you very much.


We build AI enabled robot tutors that work in the classroom to support teachers and to benefit students with reinforced learning so essentially the robots will teach math and reading and socio-emotional learning to really help those kids that need a little bit more reinforcement or repetition, scaffolding in their lessons so that we can really bring up the bar we can help students from across our state and across the country really to really improve their math core math reading and SEL skills. So we had pretty much outgrown our old space we just needed something that would be a little bit more flexible in terms of supporting our growth as a team but also in supporting our visibility as a company across not only the U.S. but now we have robots in six countries in 33 states so it's really helped us from the standpoint that the the the suites being centrally located in Colombia gives us that leg up to to be able to really invite people to come and see us here and so that's that's been really important. This was the first office in Colombia of a company I started many years ago and so this office is special too. When we first moved in here we were four or five employees honestly so long ago it was about 1996 I don't exactly remember we were here for two or three years but I mean it's a great location we liked it for the size we were so you know hopefully they'll outgrow it soon I mean that's that's that's what you want for a suite like this. Colombia is really pivotal because it's a it's a really welcoming community and it's also it's a community that provides a lot of feedback for us that helps us really understand the needs of the school population even across the U.S. so it's it's been um it's been really good being in Colombia I think you know we've obviously benefited from being here not just from the capital standpoint but also because we have great talent here too. I was fabulously happy to hear about van robotics I was up for in Colombia for another event and I first time I heard about them and then I found out that they were in our old space so I was really happy happy to hear that and I wish them all the best. We so appreciate all of the support we've gotten from from all of the the different organizations in Colombia including the Colombia Empowerment Zone including you know David Dunn and you know his generous gift to the Colombia Empowerment Zone we're very grateful to be here and we're excited for what we're going to do next.