from theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston. It's theCUBE, covering IBM Think. Brought to you by IBM. Hello, everybody, we're back. And this is theCUBE, and we're covering IBM Think 2020, the digital thing. And we are covering wall to wall. We're here with Keith Dyer, who's the vice president of sales and channels at Cisco and Loric Geo. Long time friend, theCUBE alum. She's the general manager of the Global Cisco Alliance in California Senior State Exec. Folks, welcome back to theCUBE. Good to see you again. Nice to see you, Dave. Good to see you too, Dave. Hey, I got to ask you, Laura, what's this California Senior State Executive in your title? Tell me about that. So I'm responsible for all of the IBM population here in the state of California. And during this time of COVID-19, it's been very interesting. So I manage all the, as I call it here and feeding of the employees up and down the state, and how we're responding to the shelter in place orders and how IBM is responding from an employee perspective. Yeah, I've interviewed a number of CXOs, some from both your companies. And that's the theme that we keep hearing, Keith, is number one is the health and well-being and safety of our employees. And then once that's confirmed, it gets to work. Yeah, it's a completely different environment that we're in. I mean, we're Cisco being a good, and IBM both being global companies, coming from being in offices and in environments of working closely with one another to sheltering home and working out of our home offices. I think the thing that we, both of our companies have the ability to do is to empower our folks to do that. And we're doing that. We're doing that both from an individual perspective with our tools and our technologies, but we're also doing that together with a lot of the things that this partnership and this alliance brings to this, which is really being able to provide IT services to remote workers and to be able to still keep this economy moving along. Yeah, along with our data partner, ETR, we were one of the first to report that sort of work from home offset, how budgets are shifting. In fact, 20% of the CIOs that we surveyed, 1200 CIOs, said their budgets are actually increasing. So I wonder, Laura, if you could talk about the, you guys had a relationship with Cisco and IBM for a long time. Maybe talk about some of the go-to-market highlights, and I want to double click on that. Yeah, so we've had a long-standing relationship over 20 years that we've partnered together in the marketplace. And because of that long-standing relationship, it gives us an opportunity, not at just the very senior levels of this relationship, but all the way out to the field and the sellers on what's needed out there from a client perspective. We're constantly coming out with new integrated solutions, things that answer the questions and the problems that our customers are trying to solve. One in particular right now is called a private cloud infrastructure as a service. This with Cisco technology and IBM technology and services gives the client an answer on how to get that private cloud in their facility and not have to have the CAPEX question on getting that server portion of that in there. Cisco has a unique opportunity with IBM to offer that customer. So Keith, one of the things that I like to talk about when with any go-to-market strategies is you get together with your go-to-market partner and you try to identify the ideal customer, what's the right profile? What's the value proposition? And I'm wondering just generally, what does that look like for you guys? And then specifically, how has that changed or has that changed as a result of COVID-19? Well, I think a couple of things. One of the things where Cisco and IBM have long been partners together has been from a security perspective. And as we move into this new class of workers that are working remotely and that are working in environments, the security is paramount. And a lot of the work that we've done together around threat management and the way we both have put security measures and security products in place and solutions to help promote workers to be able to work with security into their networks. Yeah, so in our reporting, we've noted that it's not just collaboration, video collaboration tools that are on the uptick, it is things like whether it's VPNs, networking bandwidth, wide area networks, securing that remote infrastructure. So Laura, maybe you could help us understand what IBM is bringing to the table and maybe we'll talk about what Cisco is bringing to the table here. Well, when you look at from an IBM perspective, our huge client base out there from a services perspective, generally where we start, those customers are looking for end-end solution. So when you take technologies like Cisco has and combine it with the breadth of technology around cloud, hybrid cloud, security, that gives the ability to a client come to one place, get that end-end solution and feel secure that it is an enterprise quality solution that they don't have to worry about all the other hurt pieces they have to plug in there. One of the things that we've been talking about is, I was just talking to Rob Thomas about this. He said, you know, Dave, I don't know if anything's going to really, you know, dramatically change with COVID-19. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but definitely some things are being accelerated. And when you think about, you know, the acceleration to cloud, talking about the industry of angle, Laura, Edge, IoT, I wonder if you guys could talk a little bit about maybe start with Keith, do you see there are some learnings here in this period during this pandemic that maybe will accelerate sort of some of those Edge discussions or things that we've learned that maybe would have taken longer to put into practice, start with Keith. Yeah, I think first and foremost is just getting at the data and being able to have that data to a decision faster. And that's the whole reason we're really investing around Edge technologies is so that we can take that data in, we can help it help us make decisions faster and get to outcomes for customers better. You know, and a part of that becomes, you know, around having the right security postures, but also then being able to link up back to the data center, which is what we do with IBM around hybrid cloud. Laura, anything you'd add for that from an industry perspective? Yeah, I just, I think the technology that Cisco brings to the table really helps accelerate that solution and get what the client's looking for. Had a recent example, well, at the end of last year, met with a number of manufacturing customers in Europe and we took them through a solution that we have with the Edge and security that Cisco offers, the pieces that IBM bring to the table. But the manufacturers really looked at this, said, wow, this gives me that Edge technology that I need. It provides all of this security that I'm looking for and allows this manufacturing to line autonomously run without having to have that intervention that a number of other solutions would require. You know, it's kind of a sensitive topic when I talk to executives and when we talk to the CIOs and CISOs with ETR and the round table, there was a sensitivity to, and sort of a negative sensitivity to so-called ambulance chasing. And so they don't, what they don't want is, hey, here's a free trial for, you know, but you got to swipe your credit card or you have to promise to sign something, they just don't have time for that. I bring that up because Cisco and IBM came up in this round table as two companies, there were others too, by the way, that were really responding well from the customer perspective. And these were industries that were a hard hit. You know, we're talking about airlines, we're talking about hospitality, really hard hit types of industries. And they called out IBM, Cisco, and as they say, seven or eight other companies. So it's, I think the industry, because you guys are large companies, established companies, they expect more of you. They expect kind of an adult supervision, if you will, in the room. I wonder if you could talk about maybe some of the other things that, but first of all, react to that. And some of the other things, Laura, that maybe you guys have done either as individual companies or jointly. Yeah, I'll start and I'll let Keith answer here. So I'd like to comment the adults in the room. What we're finding as customers are coming to companies like Cisco and IBM and saying, look, I need a solid enterprise solution. I'm looking for somebody who's tested it. It's tried and true that you've got recognition in the industry that you're going to bring a complete solid solution forward. And so we are being tapped into as two companies to really bring those to the clients. They don't have a whole lot of time right now to go figure it out. And they believe in us in what we've been able to provide to the market. Yeah, and one of the things I would echo is that the investment that both of our companies are making, really just in our customers and helping them get through this journey. We both have fantastic CEOs who are really visionaries and they're really beginning to look at and how they can help accelerate our customers so that when we get on the other side, we're stronger and we're able to deliver technology and be able to deliver to our customers. Laura and I have, we're inundated almost on a daily basis of request and support. And we've actually had a grassroots effort that really kind of bore up through our sales teams of providing education and providing services to in the education sector using IBM technology and using Cisco WebEx technology. We've been partnering with other partners such as Samsung and Apple to deliver those on devices. And these aren't necessarily things that came out of the CEO offices. These were solutions and efforts that are grass-rooted up through our organization because of the strong partnership that we have in the industry. Well, I love that because, I mean, we've all been touched by, I mean, education, kids remote learning, healthcare is another one. I mean, everybody knows somebody, a nurse or now the first responders, today's heroes, that are having to really risk their lives, literally, every day when they go into work. And that is happening on the front line. So Keith, I appreciate your comment that it's a grassroots effort. And Laura, you got a new CEO and Arvin stepped into this and I'm excited to talk to him about one of his first moves, but any other color you can add to that or other sort of initiatives that you've seen in the field. Yeah, so, you know, Keith touched on it just a moment there, a moment ago there, you talk about the ICUs in the hospitals. Almost a month ago, when this all started, I sat there watching the news, watching people dying in the hospital without a chance to really talk to family members and the burden that it was putting on to the healthcare professionals. We came up with, I said, there's a solution there. Went to Keith said, you know, we've got WebEx, we've got other things in the portfolio. Went to Samsung, they have devices that are military grade that'll work there. We were able to put a solution together pretty quickly. We've got a number of hospitals that are evaluating it right now. We're almost ready to roll this out. But that just goes to a mature company that has all the security and interactions with other companies that have the part pieces that you need and then test it, make sure it's secure, that it's enterprise grade and get it out there. It's not many companies in the world that can do that. Well, it goes to what you were saying before. I called the DELP supervision, but I talked to Sri Srinivasan who runs Cisco's collaboration division. And as they say, the CIOs told us, we really off put by people trying to sell us. So what Sri told me was that Cisco made a free offering, no swipe of the credit card. Hey, if you buy something down the road, that's fine. It doesn't matter. And that's the kind of leadership that I think people expect from companies like IBM and Cisco, quite frankly. Yeah, and Dave, what Sri and what Chuck did there, that wasn't easy to do. I mean, we've essentially doubled and almost tripled our capacity of WebEx as we've gone through this. I mean, we're just absolutely, that that organization is working well over time, over time, over time. But then we were able to, Laura and I able to take that, take some of that technology, be able to get out in front. And it's really not about, it's not about creating revenue right now. It's about helping get our customers through this crisis together. We'll worry about where commercial opportunities come down the road. Yeah, and those will happen.   I mean, things change literally on a day-to-day basis. And that's kind of, you know, IBM's wheelhouse, really. Yeah, yeah. And we're addressing, you know, a lot of that with what we're doing here in our two companies and providing that solution, get at that data, get it securely where it needs to be. We've been on the forefront of providing from an IBM perspective around the COVID information that's being used around the world through our weather company application that we have out there. We've offered up the mainframe technologies and our supercomputers around helping, be able to help hospitals and those that are working on vaccines and all of that information. So, you know, you've got to have the networking piece of that, you've got to have the technology that it works on and then you've got to have that data that you can access and manipulate quickly to get those answers out. Yeah, and Cisco, IBM, it's been a partnership that made a lot of sense. There's not a ton of overlap in your portfolios, which is quite amazing given the size of your companies. You know, there is some, but generally speaking, it's been a pretty productive partnership. Keith, Laura, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE, sharing a little bit of information and thanks for what you're doing during this crisis. Stay safe. Thanks Dave. Thanks Dave. All right, you're welcome and thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante, our wall-to-wall coverage of IBM's Digital Think 2020. You're watching theCUBE.


Hello and welcome from the coin telegraph research terminal. I'll be your host michael's bone senior economist with coin telegraph research Today's panel will be discussing the latest blockchain industry buzzwords web 3 and metaverse Last year venture capital investments in the crypto space were focused mainly on decentralized finance or DeFi And over the past two quarters this focus has shifted to the term web 3 Tim draper Web 3 is a sector of the blockchain industry which can mean a lot of different things What does the term web 3 mean to you and do you think it the term might be too broad as it is used today? The media is capturing people's imagination, and they're kind of going Web 3 like we got a new thing coming and what it does is it forced me And I'm sure it's forcing entrepreneurs everywhere to think okay with web 3. What can I do? And and so all of a sudden they're they're getting more creative They're coming up with really interesting new projects that nobody ever imagined and they're saying We're we're gonna make it simpler for you the user in some ways I think oh, it's a hype monster that means nothing and in some ways I think this is such a great idea It's like like we're going to the moon or going to Mars and it gets people thinking What's it going to look like how exciting is this going to be? So that's my web 3 diatribe Absolutely, I love that Simeon Bell reed you're the founding partner of keychain ventures, which is an investment platform aiming to provide institutional investors exposure to the blockchain and web 3 ecosystems through funds and co-investment opportunities, but what are some of the trends in web 3 as you see them and Can they be broken down even further? Maybe even to more helpful categories as as Tim alluded to you know, everything is just kind of love jump together I guess I totally agree what team said about web 3 It's it encapsulates all the innovation that is happening today But if I have to simplify it, I think web 3 is about the decentralization, right? So it's about decentralized technology that you know is used today for Bitcoin or for any other ecosystem For at least the general masters now if we double-click and you try to Look at what what are the subsectors? Let's say or the different layers in web 3 It's today used as a catch-all within the industry for anything that we cannot define as a subsectors To give you some examples and illustrates maybe what today falls on the web 3 we talk about digital identity for instance It has not emerged yet as a key a clear vertical and today to people put it in their report Or they're reporting and they're web 3 but eventually as that category grows and that is drives more builders and more use cases and more Applications that will emerge as a new category and will not be any more Included in web 3 but you know in in short is a bit a catch-all Phrase for anything that is not yet defined as still being built and still very being very exciting to see emerge from this ecosystem That's a great transition over to Julian Linger Who is a from rally is a Bitcoin only app focused on helping to bring the next generation of long-term investors and giving them simple User-friendly experiences to stack Bitcoin Which I am a proponent of and how has the process of onboarding people in the market since the downturn over the past few quarters How is that? How is that journey been? Yeah, that's that's changed quite a lot actually so when whenever there's an uptrend in the market look mainly people new commerce that we talk to or we Focus on they look at price. So whatever whenever the market is moving. There's more activity Usually the most activities and markets are moving up because there's FOMO. So for us as a business It's basically free new customer acquisition, right? They're just they're just coming they're trying out everything that as as easy as possible as fast as possible And and they want to get into it. They want to rush into it Whenever the market is stable, we don't see that much activity We mainly see kind of the core Bitcoin community that is still running their savings plans their DCA is still buying the small Dips, you know, but really the mainstream the PR the media and therefore the normal people on the street Don't really care that much. That was what we observed kind of in the second phase in the last couple of months And so there what we see is basically again newcomers coming in because they see a chance now Oh, it's a cheap point of entry and also the the bit coiners obviously buying the dip And even Ex-accelerating or increasing their savings plans amounts the more the market moves the more people are coming in But different people are coming in when it goes up more newcomers are coming in when it when it goes down The the Bitcoin only proponents or the Bitcoin maximalists the enthusiast basically stepping in with bigger amounts VC capital inflows Have been on a decline since April with October actually dipping down below one billion dollars Which is the one billion dollar mark, which it hasn't done for a long over a year Mr. Draper, do you think that the rest of 2022 might see a slight change in this activity for VCs? Who might have to meet financial obligations in a year, you know for the year whatever for tax reasons or whatever it happens to be Or we likely to hover around this level activity as firms remain risk-off No investors always get it wrong They They come in when it's just hyped up and everything's great And then the venture capitalists all have to compete with each other and it's venture fat fratricide because all the companies fight each other to the death And now of course would be the best time to be investing in venture capital, but The markets are down people are not feeling that That kind of Comfort with their own portfolios and they're saying well, I can't take a risk on something that's venture capital I can't invest in something risky right now. And so my advice to my entrepreneurs is Go out and get your money from customers because the venture guys are tightening up and And people I mean it's it is a little bit more logical You know, this is where bitcoin would be awesome because right now we've got the fed and the fed kind of over compensates and undercompensate, you know, and so when when the fed pumps interest rates up the markets come crashing down And and when the markets come down then nobody has any money And so they can't risk their money and they can't put it to work And so then we we get sort of whipsawed back and forth If this were all a bitcoin economy, it would be a stable economy and and people wouldn't have to go through these terrible whipsaws where they Have huge layoffs and everybody's out of work and you wouldn't have to have that You'd have a very stable economic system and I think That people eventually will recognize this It's right now they it isn't the way they're Thinking it isn't the way they're voting but investors are They do pile on when things are good and they pull back when things are tight But it it should actually be the opposite This is a great to be Putting money into new startups. It's just amazing. Smith. You're the firms that you engage with from all over the world I'm sure are feeling similar sentiments to that What are some of the feelings and concerns you are hearing from your circles? Well, definitely, I mean Inflation has been a big concern over the last year And you know, as team said, it's a very, you know, let's say difficult to market for fundraising both for funds and for projects so I guess, you know The trend is Is probably going to continue for 2023 and Project will have to find to be more efficient to, you know, find more runway and maybe you know, as team said Be able to get capital or funding through sales and from their customers directly. So uh, I'm pretty excited about to see how you know Space in general some of this application could, you know, drive more adoption and drive more revenue and be able to be more profitable Julian Where does relay see themselves in the web three space staying true to the bitcoin only ethos? And are there any plans potentially partnerships or expansions to your product offerings with that kind of mindset? Yeah, so I kind of look at web three in in in a historical way I mean historic historical from like web one web two and web three whereas web one is kind of Read only so this was only like displaying things texts and images and looking at it web two Was now read and write so you could also do stuff you could interact with Services and other people and so social media and all that kind of stuff And now web three is read write and own so it's all about ownership of data But it's also about real ownership of of of value So it's this internet of value that in my opinion needs An innovation decentralized network like bitcoin and it doesn't necessarily need any other protocols Because the true innovation of of blockchain and crypto and whatever it's called today Decentralized finance and all that kind of stuff is really bitcoin. Yes There are a lot of things with other protocols that are now like these other 20k plus And tokens and coins and blockchains there are many things tried out which are interesting But I feel that it's play basically playground where a lot of experimentation is happening and whatever will work will sooner or later be Be manifested and implemented on the bitcoin Network which is not only the base layer like a lot of people always talk about bitcoin as this base layer But no, it's it's going to be a layered innovation like the internet having seven layers Also, bitcoin is now developing several layers. So for example, the second layer Called lightning and then many more like rgb and so forth Which will enable everything that you now see on these other protocols like smart contracts nfts defy tokenization like all that stuff can happen on the bitcoin blockchain And that's for me the true Web web three that is going to develop in the in the next decade I would be completely remiss not to comment on the current state of the crypto market Which we all know does not exist in a vacuum and is impacted by the macroeconomic conditions across the entire world This is a growing industry the blockchain industry that does face special challenges during times like this as we have seen with Three arrows capital others, you know now potentially ftx Tim and you're late in in our latest coin telegraph research interview with danta apiero from 10 t holdings we talked about regulation Do you think with the recent issues that have popped up with different crypto custodians? They will only accelerate the call for regulation and or can the industry come to its own aid? Well, I think regulators regulate at their own peril. Um, they're not It turns out that Countries that trust their people Uh and create freedom End up with the best economic outcomes and so every time you add a new regulation you are Hurting your economic outcome the u.s. Was very good in um in keeping hands off when the internet came uh And I guess now that they're dealing with money. They're a little more Um control based there the government officials are all sort of sort of saying wait wait This is money information was one thing But this is money and they feel like they've got to control everything that I think The control works to the detriment of a country And so you're seeing Some countries Totally mess up china and r China and russia with their total control Freak leaders And you're seeing some countries jump on the the opportunity Um and those were japan when they made a bitcoin and national currency El Salvador beautifully done Now the the uh central african republic um Yeah, uh now they are making bitcoin and national currency that um Ukraine uh in a desperate situation decided that yeah bitcoin counts um and And and so some of these countries are saying hey, we trust you We think you're going to figure out how best to run your life and And we will only step in if there are some real issues that are affecting many many millions of people I think that's kind of my stance that the winners over the next 40 years are going to be The ones the countries that decided that they were going to allow It going to rip And uh and allow freedom in their countries freedom just works. It just it it's so clear in my head You know, you look at south and north korea. It's pretty clear um You look at cuba versus vong kong before she came in and took over hong kong Uh, it's really clear that that the free countries are the ones that um that thrive and the and the socialists communists dictatorship government control regulated Countries just stagnate absolutely Absolutely smear on our last interview we discussed a lot about regulation and we talked about institutions You know worried about regulation Coming in as a good thing Has your view changed on this at all or has from what you've heard from your circles? Has it has they do they have a new understanding of it? Or they still seeking that for regulatory clarity for them before they jump in Yeah, I mean On the institutional side Um, I'm still of the that they need some form of regulation framework Uh to be able to adopt the technology in its fullest Um, but to go back to the team's points. I mean, I will nuance the regulation or I will split it in a few buckets There is regulation for driving control and controlling populations But there is also regulation just to provide protection for certain participants in the in the ecosystem Uh, obviously I'm a proponent for regulation to drive protection And I think having some form of regulation I guess from for for uh Institutional adoption is in my view pretty required I mean, it's difficult to see how large financial institutions that are regulated today will jump on to Something that is decentralized and you know where they would not be able just to operate in the way they've been operating today So just to be clear, I'm not a proponent for just You know Copy pasting the regulation that we have to then apply it on decentralized technology Obviously, that's not that that would be the worst outcome ever. Yeah, and um in america We've recently had bills proposed in america that talk about um State-to-state trade, you know the this interstate commerce clause and it's it's almost laughable Interstate commerce is not even a question. We're talking about something that is interworld You know, it could be it's going to be on a satellite as well, right? We have bitcoin on a satellite So it's it's everywhere. It's not just, you know, I don't have to worry about just massachusetts Stay kinetic and I have to worry about the whole entire globe So this is almost laughable when you read when you know about the technology and you read the the frameworks that are being out there Which was you know the howie test, you know or something like that's written in 1960 whatever it is, you know Which highlights a very important point in my view about education of the regulators, right? And I say I feel that's you know something that is pretty much incumbent on us as players in the ecosystem to Educate and drive more education and knowledge about what the technology is about so that's you know, the regulators can You know Come up with the right the right framework. Otherwise, we're going to see you know examples of what you just mentioned Absolutely julien you're a ceo of a of a blockchain company. Do you agree with with tim smith on on these points of regulation? Yeah, absolutely. I don't think it should be it should be and it can be Overregulated. I think especially europe where where we are active for we're active in Pretty much all the 40 something european countries and there There's this new regulation coming up. It's called mika Which is about you know framework for all crypto asset handling and this it is it is held super strict so they even tried to ban things like mining or transferring From custodial wallets to non custodial wallets stuff like that. So it's it's really Strict how they want to grasp it and as you as as you said michael It's it's really about you cannot grasp this it is it is a free technology. It's open source It's out there. It's not going to go away back to your point smith about regulation about Educating the regulators. I think this is super important They will come to the conclusion that it is not possible and also not beneficial to try to criminalize these things like mining for example, I mean we saw What what what happened after china? Band mining just the 30 percent of hash power coming from china and this whole huge industry that was built around it with all the You know taxpayers and and and employment and stuff like that is all it all went away within within a month or two It just spread around the the rest of the free world and and just created prosperity there So it was really a shot in the foot. It's something you cannot you cannot stop bitcoin doesn't care But but I think the regulators Still are yet to understand this but they will at one point Tim how are you working with your portfolio of companies to help them go through this market cycle? well, um for the last two years, I always get It's like I get nervous during bull markets and I I feel very uncomfortable And um and then during bear markets, it's like my time. I get all excited um And so during the bull market, I said, oh, yeah raise as much as you can just don't spend it and a few of them actually listened some of them are running into walls now and um And so what I've told them is to focus on your customer Figure out how you can get money from your customer See if you can turn profitable. I mean, that's that's a word that nobody's heard for five years um and that um And then of course in in companies where the burn rate's gotten too high um I suggest that it's time to lay some people off and that um always gets a lot of resistance And so we I tend to say, you know, you got to remember during the dot-com bust I said to a company Uh, well, you've got how many people do you have 400? And I said, well, you're gonna have to cut that to three and they said 300 and I said no three people because You you've got a lot of money and you're burning a lot of money, but you don't have customers yet. You got to get customers Uh, I I think they didn't take my advice and they crashed into the wall and died These bear markets can be short or they can be long If they're short, hey, you cut back and you can always hire those people back later If it's long, you're gonna be in this for a long time. You got to figure out how to make money You're not doing anybody any favors by not making money Smith, do you have any thoughts on on that? No, I will totally agree with what team said. I think uh, what you know founders and entrepreneurs Tend to do badly in downturns is react fast first of all Sometimes it takes a long time for them to realize the severity of the situation And also build enough runway because as team said, we don't know if it's going to be three months six months 12 months or 18 and you have to Be you know, provide for the worst and build for that, you know worst-case scenario Because ultimately you need to be you need to be able to Whether the storm and come out Come out from from this Alive, I guess that's the end that that's survival mode During these times and I think that's what sometimes gets forgotten is you know, we always Feel that we reached the bottom and it's going to turn it's going to be a quick recession And in three months we're going to be back up and therefore we're going to absorb all of this But you know most often than not we are bad at judging that one way and we end up and you know, we end up And not surviving what that's making it through Yeah, I think from a from a founder perspective is really true that you stacked you stacked fast and You should really prepare for the long bear markets. You never know how long it's going to be That's why the closer you come to the bear market or the more the deeper you go into the bear market The more closer you want to think about profitability and your runway. I'm sorry for that And and it's also about the the art of reassembling resources when everything is going up Yes, you can invest a bit more in marketing because it's easier to get like cheaper customers then But then and you can maybe neglect a little bit of of the product And and build up some technical Adept but then when it turns and there's a bear market You definitely want to stop like all the the the the ad spend and marketing budget because it's anyway going to be super Expensive to to get new users But then you should cherish the users you have and invest more in the product And also invest more in the team. I'm actually I know this is kind of an american thing This higher and fire whenever there's a bear market. You just just fire the majority of the team Not really where I come from in switzerland We really try and we did now kept keep all of our all of our people is only only 21 But still because we really really believe that it's the power that you have We need we just need to reassemble things and invest maybe I said more in product less than marketing But we this is this is the the core value and the core power that we have and we want to keep it because if we now Get rid of half of the team And then in a year from now, we yes, we can rehire them But it's going to be super expensive process to get this talent again and to get them productive again Which where where you lose maybe in my opinion even more time and money Than if you just find ways to keep them now and keep them productive and invest more into Into the product so that you better positioned When the bear market ends but then in the end it's really about surviving like the ones that survive That the big guys today in the crypto market are like the the binance and coin base and all these kind of guys That just that just here because they survive two three or four Bear markets and most most of them don't and the more bear markets you survive that the bigger you get Absolutely one thing I learned from martial arts is sometimes not how good you are It's just how who can last the longest, you know, so So sometimes that's the truth Thank you guys very much. I really appreciate you guys being on the panel today and being here Julian Linger from Relay Tim Draper from everything from twitter to to SpaceX to you know, you name it I'm it's amazing. You're you know when I was growing up the reading You know going to school for everything you were one of the names I read about in books So I'm honored to have you on the pot on the podcast. So thank you and Smea Bell readie who's always here Thank you very much from keychain ventures. Thank you everybody for tuning in and hope to see you all my next one Thank you


he money that we need to spend. Right here, affordability, I hope that people are aware of this and can share this with their constituents. When there are rate increases, it's very important to me that we have this program so that if somebody who does have a hard time paying their bill, I don't ever want somebody having to choose between being on time at their water bill and paying for things like medication or food, we have these affordability programs where if somebody already qualifies or some other income-based program, they can show us proof of that and then we give them a discount on their water bill. We try to make it as easy as possible. We also have a senior discount and a discount for nonprofit housing organizations. But we don't have a lot of enrollees. We're not spending all of the money that we've set aside for that. I think in total we have, since the program started, only 46 enrollees and the VISTA bill discount program, 21, were qualified as low income and 25 as a senior hardship. Our rebate program, particularly the sewer ladle rebate program where we've been paying for people to be able to inspect and video their own sewer lateral so they're aware of what investment they may need to make. That has been very successful. We've processed over 132 lateral inspection rebates. And I think we've been able to get about $33,000 away on that. We're not done with affordability. We're still not able to reach the renters who may be getting impacts passed down from their landlords. I'm really excited. I've had some initial conversations with BED who do have lists of renters who qualify for their programs. And there could be some unique, cool synergy where we're able to partner with them to get money to those customers directly. We also, we wanna look at any number of things to make sure that we are really making it as easy as possible for people to access water. Because it is a human right. I think that, oh, I guess the only other thing I was gonna say on the affordability stuff is that my staff has been working really hard on the capital projects. We have already pulled in in the past three years, $4.3 million in grants to cover projects that we would otherwise have to bond for. And even with the loan program, the state revolving loan program, we have accessed about $2 million in loan forgiveness. So that loan program has more paperwork than anything I could ever imagine. But it is turning out to be worth it because that's $2 million that we can either repurpose into new projects or not have on our debt service. And with that, just a reminder that water is worth it. None of us can live without it. Please consider that as you consider this proposal. Great, thank you, Megan, for putting it all out in the proactive thinking on this major challenge and really restructuring of water that you've been leading for years now. Last presentation today, I know people are getting a little tired, but go ahead, Councilor Craver. Just wanting to question a little bit here, but one of the difficulties with water rates in the renders is there's no way of meter. And I just, I'm just talking that out because I think such a high render population is something we just need to think more about. Because I think the whole bill, the whole one bill for the building, it's passed on to the occupants, the tenants, and the ones conserving of one is not, they all get penalized. And this is the dilemma, I've heard the conversations, but I really think such high render population we have a more proactive way to submeter would be useful. I think maybe it's something we can have rough let's see if there have been any other programs in other cities. I suspect it has to do with the plumbing because once there has to be a dedicated line into an apartment to be able to do the submarine. I'm not saying it's not possible. Just to get a little bit into the detail of what we think we could maybe do with the renders and what camera which community, but basically by partnering with BED, if they have somebody who already qualifies for their program because BED, they do meter individual units. Right. Figuring out a credit that we would basically have BED give to somebody on their electric bill, but that is for the water, which is different than the time we're in right now, but just to know that I'm totally on board. So I have to get somebody to meet at the main meter and then add something in between and then something. You have to have a separate dedicated line and every building's a little different. But it's a good idea that I want to look and see if there's been any successful programs and how it's been administered. I think it's largely a plumbing engineering challenge. I guess somebody's building a new building. It's easy to address, but let me look into that. Thank you. And also possibly if you could work on the conservation side, like having a water conservation program, it's Philly where they have contractors, plumbers who go into these rental buildings that at least make sure that somebody's not having an excessively high bill because it will leak toilets. That's one of your most common issues. One apartment's got a leaking toilet and they're not reporting it and they could be raising the bill for everybody. Yeah. Oh, no, see, go ahead, Councillor Jenkins. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Megan, for the presentation. But before I start, I wanted to say, I don't know what Losi CLD used for the presentation, but it's beautiful. It's interactive. I like it. I want to know the name, but I don't know the time. Yes, and I think something that I noticed compared to the BED is basically their rate increases. They went back all the way to over a decade ago to paint a picture about, okay, we have not done it for over a decade, but now we're doing it. And I noticed they have already dated by over 11% just from the past two years. But for your, I did not understand really well the history behind the rate increases at this place on the presentation, but I'll follow up in an email to better understand it. Also, I wanted to tell you, I mean, we invested $30 million to fix the problem of sewage overflow, but I also have noticed that you are starting to think about it like from looking forward before we have to fix this problem again. I wanted to say I'm really appreciative and I completely agree with you about the capital and bounds for the capital improvement of your facilities. I completely agree. And I also feel that it's timely, right? I just wanted to say, no, no specific question, but thank you for all that you do, the leadership that you bring into this. And I appreciate that. Thank you. Great, thank you, Councillor Chang. And we can, the rate increase history is interesting and we got more about it. They're part of the challenge we face now as we went a very long period with very, basically, no rate increase, just a little longer. About 10 years. All right. I'm not seeing any further hands online. I'm not seeing any further in the room. So before that changes, I'm going to say thank you to everyone for sticking it out this long. Thank you very much for participating. Thanks to the full team that has tonight to really give presentations. And I will be back again for Monday. Yes. Thanks, everyone. We are adjourned at 7.55.


Hey guys, sorry for being late. Welcome to the stream. Just need to do something before the stream We will be summoning in a while. Let's just wait for the others. Let's give it around five minutes or More depending on Who comes in? Chat me up guys if you have anything to ask Don't we will be the gender for today would be summoning for a weekend Who's the awakened forgot? weekend Lee's so young and After that we're going to be Going through the Halloween skins probably gonna buy be buying some then We're also going to be taking a look at the lewd Mila today I have her already at the actually I haven't gotten her yet, but I could get her in a while and also We're going to go and take a look at Shadow Palace So we're going to be going all of those today As you can see here Where is Counter-pass So I'm I can actually get you'd Mila today ready. So let's get her. Let's get her first while we wait for the others so just got her and I'm actually hesitant to take her yet to level Whatever level I can take her I'm gonna take We can see you in first later, then probably level up you'd Mila. Let's take a look at her for a while you'd Mila Morning guys, welcome to the stream There she is let's Do some salary negotiations gonna use this one Bring her up to 50. I think I'll have enough for we can see you late Let's do summons in a few minutes While we wait for the others Sorry, I wasn't able to set up my stream for The face cam I actually was using this mode yesterday, so Gonna do this one today for the stream Hope you guys hear me. Hey first been a while What's up welcome to the stream it's been a while much do I have Let's stop here for you Mila and I want to waste my resources for her I'm gonna level up DC you later Okay, let's go over the shop guys. Um What I think is a good value here. So I actually purchased this one admin coin One one point five times package. This is actually a very good value This one the SSR employee recruitment package I'm not sure if you want to get this but if you want if you if you're missing some of these Especially for gay on this is actually a good value so for those who are planning to purchase and if you don't have these one of these especially gay in again and probably Sigma and Also young Harim, then this is a good package for you guys But overall if you have these already, I wouldn't recommend buying this package and you also have Fusion courses here Then what else so later? Let's do some skin purchases while we wait So currently we do have These so vampire princess and training the only one that is in crystals That's new is going to be Karen Wong um, I think it gave me 7,000 Admin coins So that's that's the one that I have the 7,000 up here. So it's a big Bump, it's actually similar to this package in terms of cost this one Um That 30 to 80 plus 800 with this one gives you 4,000 that one gave me 7,000. So it's bigger value So let's go back to the skins So for this one The only one that's going to be purchased for crystals is going to be Karen Wong again So the two which I'll be purchasing in a while is going to be Worth admin coins Let's do a preview of How they look While we Hi, Gusty. Let's give it around two minutes. I'm just previewing the skins here. Nice This is a different look for Karen, let's give it two minutes before we begin the summons Then we have Serapel which is I'm going to get later as well. Nice better This is better. It this is a better look than what she has before way way better and Now we have Last one would be Yuna so for Yuna skin this one is a bit cute Vampire with wings and as you can see really is actually colored purple He's colored purple here So nice new look with the with the purple, you know highlight for the skills I like this. I like this better than her original one. So, okay, let's start with the summons guys. I've actually Had you wait To recruit make sure I don't summon Would you want me to go singles first? Let's do singles first first pull single second pull will be Maltese Their new mission in achievement tab Let's do some pulls first Gusty is very excited already Do ten of these then we'll go to a multi next so far starting slow a bit Hope to get SSR's other SSR's other than Dsu Yun Hopefully last time I did pull for this banner for for a pull was actually a pity I think you saw that with Nael the last live stream that I had I Met the mission tab not achievement. Okay. Yeah, we'll go to that later. I'm just gonna finish the summons We're up to five six Welcome guys to the stream who just came in we're starting. We're just starting our summons Singles for the first ten so far none up to seventh right now Wherever you guys are so welcome to the stream whatever time it is in your region welcome to the stream Hopefully, I don't get too pity today. I just wish Been having a little bit of bad luck for the past few pulls With pity the one of pity this one because I'll be running out of tickets for the next banner The last one that I pitted for the classified Employment contract was actually Yuna. Oh Did I get her? No, sorry. I Saw a banner. I just saw a banner come out. Oh This is the one. This is the one guys. You saw that banner, right? There it is Ten pulls guys ten pulls hot bad I'm done. So This is so far my luckiest fool for an awakened unit so far Okay, that's it That's it for the polls Let's go to Leveling her up. Let's go to leveling her up That was some luck first ten pulls and singles So it actually pays to pull singles first Where is she? Thanks, man. Thanks So Do some Let's level her up Hopefully I could get her up to level 110 if I have enough fusion course What luck Really can't believe it. Are you guys doing over there? gonna just finish this then we'll go back to the new skins for Halloween planning to purchase some Yep I'm glad it happened now. I really actually I'm still I'm also looking forward to the summons for Replace her queen if ever she drops so that is why I was really hoping that I'd get this one early. So read really happy really happy guys really really happy for this one Got her very early Just gonna finish this one. Let's see if I could bring her to level 110 For those who came just came in the stream. So just pulled the Lisa Yoon on the 10th pull 10 single pulls So wish you guys have you know have luck as well in your post today Hopefully you guys don't have to pay to this banner because we're expecting replace her queen as well Congrats man. Gusty. Congrats. You just did it now. That's good That's very good So she's up to Do this Bring her to 100 There goes my credits We are at level 100 I'm at 55.  This is going to be 10. So I'll be needing to Let's see the other packages here. I Will need 20. That's the best one Have not this one. I'm sure there's going to be a rerun for a banner Let's just buy this one Um Special package I need to okay. Let's let's do I Do a conversion I do convert Let's see a Five here. Oh, I have 10 Do for the mix. I don't have mix. Oh Max 20 I have 20 here 50 here. Let's do this That is 10 Then what else I need 10 more You want to use this Let's just buy one gonna buy one. Okay. We're done. Let's just the Level her up 110. Where is she? Where is she? Now there she is let's limit break up to 110 happy Take her for her first pin in PVP take her for a spin so Do some Tell training first. Do you think there will be a cerebral banner soon? I want her skin, but don't have her um Let me just take a look at something for Sarah Bell In terms of the timeline the the timeline that was supposed to happen there was There was actually a rerun a projected rerun of Sarah Bell's banner Let me just check Therapel I Don't think there'll be a rerun anytime soon. There is a rerun, but this is going to be I Think a few months ahead Probably two or three months. I think So That is where That is where I think Sarah Bell will land So I think we're done. Let's just Gear wise What's her gear gear suggestions guys? Is it going to be cool down? Let's just put cool down on her and see Get the preset of You know No, no Not you know well Sarah Bell Sarah Bell is actually, you know, I'm trying to save up for her I'm sure she that's just a projection from me. I'm on two to three months I've seen you can actually check the old leaks that we had I'm just gonna get the we can say Gears, okay, let's try her out EVP See how she is going to be okay So far I've been using Which team I Think this is the team that I've been using so I'm gonna replace her With where is she I Don't see her here. Where is she guys? Why is she not here go back? He's at 110 right? Oh, sorry. I forgot to take her to 110 Not too excited Two million no more credits no more credits.  Let's go Let's go. Let's go. Okay So five three fifty Let's just do something here change up a bit. I need one more Change her up a bit Need one more striker Who to use this week striker Okay Let us try this out a lot of people got her ready Thanks, man. Let's see how she fares Sorry, sorry, sorry have to Go on turbo She is actually very strong tanky Thank you enough Whoa She's tanky guys. She is going to be good Let's do some rearrangement first. I'll go with this one. I haven't been playing PVP for a while But this one I think I will He is going to be good. I tell you guys Where's my mouse? shoot Lost my mouse for a while never mind Moving on to the next Yeah, I know she's a good for cost as leader, but five cost is actually decent enough She's going to be decent at five. I wonder why they don't have a cerebral rerun It's okay, man. It's okay We have a sniper here. Let me just fix my audio in a while Or do I have audio? There you go There you go. Sorry Was not paying attention There you go Let's just have another one air superiority Cerebral seems good Um, I haven't seen much now you've been today. Mm-hmm. Oh boy What is Hmm gonna do something guys Let's to Where is Lumi? Lumi Lumi, where are you? Let's change her a bit reset Try this one. Oh boy three four Here we go.  Oh boy need to change ship. I think let's change ship changing ship Let's do new Detroit Let's switch it up ship Ship ship ship attack speed strikers. So I have to change up only have one Triker do Nile reset Together you know P 25 Let's change up her preset one two three Let's try this first. There you go Very nice Welcome guys to the stream for those who came in just now nice That's one All right. See if it would climb to three six with this one three six That is If I change Stanimity attack I go back. Oh boy. Let's try Alex Switch up to Alex. I haven't used her actually in action. So Let's try her Alex Alex Alex. Excuse me before three four Oh boy Something's missing here Let's do Young hurry. Where are you? So far. I haven't tried buzzard yet for this one, but Last time I was able to use him. Oh boy. I'm playing this wrong. Dang it wrong If it's coming soon, so I Think the mech team has a needed Reinforcement there got to focus. Oh boy. Oh boy. And it was not bad Do I change it up a bit? Yeah, I know. I'm sorry too How good would it be? What do you mean? What do you mean first? How good is what? I changed up my my line of my tank Let's do 338 not bad Do this Okay, mech team and ifrit Well for me any Reinforcement for the mech team will be will be good Ifrit is actually three costs, so It would be a big help really this PvP season is going to be actually PvP week. Sorry. It's going to be Tank versus tank Edel is actually coming out. Oh boy Yeah, sorry. Thank you Edel Edel trying to think about Edel. Let's let's see his team Edel's there to push. Let's do Edel gonna keep these guys Let's do Edel. Where is she? Again going back to ifrit. Um, I think he I think ifrit would would be good for mechs For me at this at this point any rain good reinforcement for mechs is actually going to be going to be very needed Hello Grandpa goat. Oh boy This is bad Actually, I forgot. I forgot about Rosaria Hmm Rosaria is actually here Flying Grandpa goat Rosaria Rosaria Let's Let's stick to this for a while. Yeah, I know Rangers My god Downgrading. Let's do the woman in the chair One in the chair Here we go Esuke Esuke Esuke Better better better better Not going down today I have to concentrate. Thank you Hikori The F. What happened? Oh boy What did just happen? What happened? Sibley Sibley Possible possible Good match Oh boy, I think I didn't need another tank. I think Let us see Let's do Two defenders for this one did push back. I definitely need a healer. I think Can't go head-to-head with no healer Need a healer. Oh boy And I drop you for firepower if I have a healer. Let's put back a lady in the chair Hello Hello Good match. Oh boy Gotta go back to my other ship This is not working Mm-hmm one two. Oh boy There you go Pizza na There you go Hikori There you go Those who just joined the stream welcome to the stream Hit me up in the chat guys Little quiet in here one more win one more Did one more win Hey first sorry for that. Um, yeah, I'm gonna try shadow hall Later and see that hey Paolo Congrats, man Me too. I actually I actually was able to pull for her in my first ten sniper sniper Last three games Then I go to the skins and I buy those skin two games to go two games two games There you go


You're watching Suncoast Spotlight, and I'm your host, Jeannie Corcoran, and I'm here in partnership with the Suncoast Technical College and their Digital Filmmaking Department, as well as the Educational Channel. And we have some amazing guests this morning, particular favorites of mine, Mark and Jeannie Simon. They are the co-founders and the creators of Sell Your TV Concept Now. They know all about pitching, selling, and much, much more, and you're gonna find out right now. So, welcome, Jeannie and Mark. How are you? Well, thanks for having us. Always good to see you. Oh, it's great for you to be here. We came all the way down from Orlando, rushed down here in the early morning, rush hour traffic, so you get an extra, you know, brownie points plus a little gold medal for making it on time. I'll take a brownie. Good, we'll take it. Yeah. Coffee donuts and brownies, right? I don't know, I never know quite where to start with you all because you have such an amazing background from Nickelodeon, from television, from pitching your own projects. Mark, you're an amazing artist. You have the leading storyboard company, really, in the Southern US. But I've also written the main book in the industry that's used, I think we're in six or seven languages now that trains studios all over the world on how to storyboard. Right, and for students out there, filmmaking, whether you're young or old, whatever your stage of development is in script writing or creating content for television or film or new media or web, storyboards matter and they really help you. They help you structure, prepare. Well, I can explain it beautifully. Everyone understands a comic book. So basically, a storyboard is a comic book version of a script before it's shot. It is the blueprint that is used to create and build the entire production. Just like if I told you, I want you to build me a three-story house, you're gonna have a ton of questions because it could be a thousand different ways. Well, if you read a script, everyone on the crew can see that script built in a number of different ways. The only way you can build a house is with a set of blueprints. The only way to create a production is with a set of storyboards. I agree, I agree. I don't know they're being taught that much to that extent and I think it's a shortcoming, especially when students don't have a lot of preprep and a lot of pre-preparation when they're in development. That was where the storyboard should start, isn't it? It should. I mean, a number of schools do because I know my books are, I've written a number of books. I know they're used in schools all over the world. I don't think it's used enough because storyboarding is not considered sexy. A lot of, because I, for instance, I even taught at UCF for a while and the students who came in all thought they were Spielberg and they just wanted to jump straight into directing. Oh, I don't need to learn anything else. Kind of forgetting the fact that Spielberg does his own rough storyboards before it goes off to the other story artists. So yeah, it's incredibly important. Not the sexiest thing. I think it is, but not everyone else does when they're just learning, but it's incredibly important. In fact, just even the process of doing the storyboarding between the story artists, the DP, the stunt guys, the effects guys, and the story artists working together forces the director and the rest of production to think about things they might not think about otherwise. So just the process of creating it, you find issues and problems and solve potential issues before you get into production. So the money you spend on storyboarding, you save much more than that in production. Absolutely. Time saving. And also the visualization of it all is really great. And I know, Jeannie, you do projects of a different kind. Besides the pitching and the concept development, so on we're going to talk about, you also do producing. You've recently produced an award-winning... And documentary, right? And writing. And writing, yes. We're just multi-talented people, I'm telling you. Well, you know, so my background is in production. So Mark and I, we actually met in LA working for HBO on a show called First in 10 with O.J. Simpson and Shannon Tweed. Back when O.J. was doing good graces. Exactly, that's right. Kind of a good graces. Kind of a good graces, yeah. So we met on that production and then we moved here shortly after that to open up the Nickelodeon studios. Have you ever been slimed? I forgot to ask you that previously. I have not, but I've eaten slime. I would eat gack all the time. It's actually pretty good. Yeah, it is. Is it like Jello? Well, it's made... No, it's... It's cream and the chunks were like applesauce. I think applesauce. So it's not bad. It's whipped with an applesauce. Whipped cream and applesauce with some green pink color. Exactly, right. So it's totally edible. So I worked for Nickelodeon, I worked on Clarisse Explains It All on Gullah Gullah Island, Allegra's Window. What would you do? Roundhouse, just a ton of shows, though. I was a producer. Big Bear in the Blue. Well, now that was created by Mitchell Kregman who created Clarisse Explains It All. So he went on, when he left Nick, he did that show. So you came to Orlando. You started Nickelodeon Studios. You got that rolling.  Oh, I was there at least six years. Yeah, you're there longer than I was. I was there longer. I left after about four years to work with Spielberg on Sequest when that came in. Oh, sure. One of our six-in-a-mix instructors for special effects prosthetics and horror makeup and so forth, Greg Baker did the special effects and prosthetics on Sequest. Yeah. You two can renew acquaintances, are you? Absolutely, absolutely. So yeah, so that was fun. And that's actually where I got my start in directing. So I did second you to direction on that as well as doing all the concept art and all the storyboarding. And during that production is when I wrote the first edition of my storyboard book, the third one is out now. And it's also when we launched the storyboard company. So storyboard company is 20, 94? 96. No. Or maybe 94. No, that was 93, 94. No, that's right. Yeah. 13, 14 years, wow.  Or is it 20? Yeah, it's over 20 years. My math. But thank you. My math is right up there with my personal calendar and time clock in my head today for whatever reason. And what is the website for your storybook? Storyboards-east.com since we're on the East Coast. Yeah, storyboards with an S-east.com. Okay, that's easy to recall. And sewyourtvconceptnow.com is easy to recall. And then you're also doing a do-it-yourself pitch tool. Yeah, our DIY TV pitch kit, which we're really thrilled about. We've had what we called original TV pitch school for a number of years, where it was a product of CDs and printed material. As Jeannie likes to remember how heavy it was. Well, it was, yeah, you know, seven pounds. So when we sold three, four, up to 10 at a time, that was quite a, that was quite a haul and a lot of shipping, yeah. The post office loved you, I'm sure. They did, yeah. Our assistant got really big arms.  And Jeannie created some really great interactive files for basic templates on putting together your pitch package. You literally fill in the blank. We've laid everything out for you and what you need and how to put it together. Yeah, so it's a Word file that you can download onto your computer. Oh, well. And then use it how you want. You know, you fill in your content. I even put image here. I mean, it's very... It's a road map. It's foolproof, I'm telling you. And we've got videos taking you through not only what to do, but why. The reasoning behind it in samples of existing pitch packages on why they worked and interviews with network executives and successful TV producers and creators. I mean, like the head of Showtime, the executives from Saban Entertainment, the Emmy award-winning producer of Deadliest Catch. Wow. Yeah, I mean, just huge, huge people in the industry. And we cover literally every aspect. Of everything. Of everything. They're gonna make us go to a quick break, but when we come back, we're gonna learn more about that. And then I wanna hear success stories and how you go to trade shows and when people go with you and so many things that you do. I know we can't cram it all in one show, but we're gonna try, so stay with us. We'll be right back. Florida is on the verge of a new housing boon and the one thing all new buildings will have in common is heating and air conditioning. The HVAC program at Suncoast Technical College will train you in all phases of ventilation and air conditioning, installation and maintenance. For more information, log on to suncoast.edu or call<PHONE_NUMBER>. Suncoast Technical College, career in a year. Welcome back, you're watching Suncoast Spotlight with our guest today, Mark and Jeannie Simon, the creators and co-founders and owners and creative minds behind sellyourtvconceptnow.com. And they do much more than that. And that's what we're talking about that as well as many other things today. How did sellyourtvconcept.com as a business get started? Were people just pulling information and asking for advice and wanting you to mentor them all the time? Well, we started this business 11 years ago. And what was happening was prior to that, we started creating our own content and pitching it. Like around 1997, we went to our first conference, NAPI in New Orleans. Sure, I remember when it was in New Orleans. It was so fun when it was in New Orleans. Then they moved it to Vegas and I lived there at the time and not so much fun when you live there and you go home. Of course, now it's in Miami. It's in our own backyard. But anyway, we digress. Yes. So we started pitching our own content back then, of course, making about every mistake possible, but we were still getting to pitch meetings and we were learning and we were having some success. We were starting to sell some of our content. We were seeing that blaming a lot of deals. A lot of deals. Right. And that took us years to figure out how to do that. Well, yeah, on the job training, that's for sure. Very expensive on the job training. Very expensive. You were working out all the kinks and working out all the bugs. So that you could teach others how to take a shot. Well, little did we know. That's what we were doing. So people kept coming to us and saying, well, how did you get that meeting or how did you put that pitch package together? How did you make that deal? To make copies of this force like that. And we were. We were like spending a lot of time doing this. And finally we looked at each other. We're like, I think there's a business here. We just need to figure out how to set it up. So that's really how it was born. And that was in 2006 that we started to sell your TV. And we've really set up a strong process on being able to guide people through every aspect. Because everyone has different needs. Some people start with a stronger idea, others weaker. So we always start with an evaluation where our whole team goes over their concept and then we know where they need to go from there. Some people like to start that way. Others prefer starting with the kit, the TV pitch kit. Which is great because it literally does guide you through every step of the process. But our team is set up where we have script writers, designers, artists, animators. Any aspect that someone needs along the way, we can fill in the blank to help them get ready to pitch to the network. From helping them write it to helping them edit it and everything in between. Absolutely. And we've done that in numerous times, yeah. Right. And I'm going a little off track here, but I think it's so interesting. You just worked on a Barbie movie. Yeah, it just came out three weeks ago. And it's called Barbie Video Game Hero. I was the senior story artist on that. And I was overseeing all the artists in four different cities. And I never even saw production in person. It was up in Vancouver. But in order to get the rate that I wanted, any travel ended up coming into my pocket. But nowadays it's so easy to work virtually. So I've got clients all over the world. I'm working on a series out of Eastern Europe right now. We just picked up a series in Ireland. I just finished working on it with a director in Ireland. We're doing another series in Canada that we just picked up with Disney. This morning we picked it up. And still made it all the way down to here, I don't know. Early morning emails before we get on the road. So yeah, so it was a nice way to start the day. It was great. Congratulations. Thank you, thank you. And you heard it here first on Suncoe Spotlights. Breaking news. That's awesome. And then you have also worked on a couple of other interesting ones lately. Chucky, installment seven, were you kidding when you said this? It is the seventh Chucky movie. It started as Child's Play, the horror movie, if any of you remember that, of the doll that kills people, little demonic doll. Creepy little doll. Creepy little doll. Yeah. And what's funny is Jeannie and I actually had dinner with the creator of the Chucky series years ago at another conference. And I do a lot of work with Universal Studios out of LA. And they called and said, hey, do you know Don who did Chucky? Yeah, I actually know him. Well, we need a story artist. So they put me on. So it was great. So we already had a relationship there. And then I did Woody Woodpecker right after that. Right. And now that's going to be a combination live action and animation, right? Yeah. It's really exciting. The first trailer is up online in Spanish because Woody is really popular in South America. How do you do in Spanish? How do you do that? It's exactly the same. Chucky trivia. Who did the original laugh of Woody Woodpecker? Who did the original laugh? I'm going to guess Bob from Walter Lance created the character. His wife did the laugh. Oh, that's fun. Oh, really? Yeah. It's just like us. They're working together. Yeah. And I bet you never got a residual doll of Bob. Probably not. Residuals, that's always a great consideration. Now when you do that sort of thing, when you help, for example, a client of yours or student of yours, get their pitch sold. You're paid as their instructors. You're paid as their consultants or their teachers. Do you ever have an interest in any of the projects? Do they really inspire you to where you say, I really want to be a part of this and I want to help you longer and I want to take a little piece of the back end or something? We never work that way. The reason being, well, there's a lot of reasons behind it. If we don't have full control, we don't want a piece of it because we have our own. And so we're going to spend all of our extra time on things we know 100% of. And we feel that everyone should get access to the information that we've got. And if we set up where we would take a piece of it, we would only be able to work with a select couple of people. And we want to be able to help everybody. So it's straight pay. Now there are times that we then get hired on, like Jeanne on the documentary. Well, yeah, on the documentary. So that was, she originally came to us as a consultant client. So I helped her develop the idea. And then she, this is the documentary we mentioned earlier about the Elephants in Motion. And this is about how the Thai government is conserving and protecting elephants. And my client is from Thailand. This is a very, she's passionate about this project. Project of the heart. Very much so. So she came from Thailand to Orlando and worked with us. She came and did several development sessions over the course of a week. And we came up with the structure of the documentary. Then we worked on the pitch package. She went, as a client of mine, she went with me to Real Screen Summit, which is a conference where you can pitch any kind of nonfiction show, held ever. I've seen you both at multiple trade shows. I've seen you at Real Screen Summit in Washington, DC. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. For Real Screen West and all over the world. Yeah, we got all of them there. Yeah, we went to the one in DC. So she ended up getting it picked up by a distributor in London, Espresso TV. So it's a one hour documentary fully edited, beautifully edited in shot. She did a great job. She's also director. So that is now being distributed across the world. And winning awards. And winning a ton of international awards, like best documentary, best woman filmmaker, best storytelling. And then that's, so she ended up hiring me as a consulting producer on the project. And I really helped her out in the post-production in the storytelling element. Putting all those pieces together. Exactly. I know myself from when I was in the business. You can end up with 40 hours of footage and you have to roll it down to 80 minutes or something. But you can't lose character and story. Everything is character and story. And that's what we really, really refined. That's a great thing. It's a great thing. Well, we're gonna have to take another break just for a second. And then we'll come back with our last segment. So stay with us because there's more to come on Suncoast Spotlight. Tectots Preschool is located on the campus of Suncoast Technical College and is open to the public for preschool and voluntary pre-K classes. Tectots has been serving the Sarasota community since 1977, offering a safe and nurturing environment for children three years of age and up. The students in Suncoast Technical College's early childhood education program work side by side with the professional licensed childcare providers learning the skills of quality childcare services and offering a low child to adult ratio. Tectots childcare services are offered at no charge to students of Suncoast Technical College and are available to the public at a reasonable rate on a first-come, first-served basis. For more information, call Tectots at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Extension 62383. Tectots, a great start for your TOT. Welcome back. You're watching Suncoast Spotlight and I'm your host, Jeannie Corcoran and my guests are Mark and Jeannie Simon. The talent's extraordinary in many, many fields including selling your concept, pitching your concept and much more. So let's get into the selling and the pitching and the pitching and the selling. Not only do you teach students, but do you still take them with you on trade shows? Is that something that you still offer as an option on occasion? We do, it's called our Pitch TV Buyer's Tour. Right, and in fact, we have one coming up in June. Oh, and? BAMF World Media Festival in Canada in the Rockies. It is the most beautiful place in the world. It's our favorite. To all of us sweating in Florida. Yeah, right. This might be a really good idea. Yeah, really. It's not a hardship to go. No, it's awesome. And what dates are those? That's June 11th to the 14th.  No, we meet them there. We meet them there. Oh, you meet them there. We do virtual training prior and we go over all their materials, make sure they're ready. And then once we get to the conference, then we help them out. Right, and we have people already who have signed on from Australia. I have a lady coming from New York and we'll have, I've got several more. Well, Banff is a very big deal. I mean, it's a very big deal. Well, what's great about it is you can pitch any kind of show. You know, so many of the conferences now are specialized. Meaning just nonfiction or just kids, which are great, but I like this one. Right. Because you can take anything. I've been going and scripted in New York. I don't know if you've tried that one yet. I've heard it's great. It's the same people. And I've gone for the last three years. It's amazing. But it's always scripted. And it's primarily television. I mean, there are some people that are made for TV movies and so on. But you end up, it's a small conference. It's getting bigger, of course. They all get bigger as they grow in reputation. But the first conference was maybe 200 people and then it was maybe three. And then maybe last year, 353.75. And you end up standing in line next to, you know, the Weinstein brothers or the conversation before or after a session with a New York producer from A&E or from, and the contacts are amazing because it's still very intimate, still very small. Well, Banff has that feel, but it's thousands of people. But it does have that feel. It's very easy to talk to people there. And because it's in Canada, everyone is so freaking nice. Yeah. And they all speak English so well. Oh, they do. Oh, yeah. And a lot of French. Well, what's nice too is it's set up, so as part of your registration fee, there are so many opportunities to pitch. There's speed pitching, breakfast with an executive, luncheon with an executive, cocktail with an executive, party with an executive.  And then our group gets extra stuff because we also set up private meetings with studio and network executives. Like one of our big ones this past year was we got a private meeting with Netflix, and which is the hardest group for people to get a meeting with. Oh, absolutely. But because of our connections, that was one of many that we had set up for just our group to sit down, and we spent over an hour with the Netflix executive. Right, when we started our TVME competition back some years ago, before the whole idea got ripped off by another festival in another state that I won't name by name. But when we had it the first year in particular, you coached our first winner, and he was extraordinary. Oh, right. He had put nine entries into the competition because everything was judged blind. We had no idea that, we ended up with these different winners and out of 12 possible winning positions, there's the grand prize winner, and then there's three, first, second, third in three categories, and there's two honorable mentions. So that's nine, 11, 12 possible wins. He won five. Wow. His script was... I remember that. His project was very good.  We met with the creator of Modern Family, and as well as the showrunner, we met with CBS and ABC. We met with the president of USA Networks and the head of Sci-Fi Channel and the partner of George Lopez for George Lopez Productions. And it just, the list went on and on and on. We had these amazing meetings, and because he had so many entries and so many categories that won something in addition to his grand prize winning entry, I made sure that he got a smattering of one-on-one interviews with someone about Sci-Fi, someone about comedy, someone about drama, someone about docudrama, that sort of documentary kind of drama, and it was an amazing thing. And he was well-prepared because he learned the rudimentary absolutes from the two of you, so it was great. Well, and he also had the older version of our TV pitch kit, too. Yeah, he did, that's right. So we gave him that and we did one-on-one with him. So it's great to have the reference materials and then have us to be able to go over it. So it's a really great one-two shot. And one of the things that we're hoping to do, we're gonna replace TVME at some point in the future. And what we're looking at now is omni-media because more and more when we meet with independent filmmakers or script writers or producers that want to grow in their skill from local or regional to national and global, we're talking more and more about omni-media. How do you pitch for the OTTs, the Ophidransoms, the Netflix and the Hooloos and the Amazons and the this, how do you frame that differently for limited-run series where they only want six episodes like 11, 22, 63, the... Believe it or not, there's not a whole lot of difference. That's what I'm hoping. There really isn't. But we've actually, even when we've gone to Amazon and to Netflix to pitch our own shows, there are subtle differences depending that you need to look at is like, how are they running things and how is it being viewed on that service? So Amazon and Netflix, people tend to binge watch. So they even for kids shows, you can do something that's serialized where it's one long story over multiple episodes where it's broadcast, especially for kids, you never do serialized. Because you don't know in syndication what orders are even gonna run them in. Think of Fred for example. And the studios don't want it that way. Oh, and Nickelodeon hates that. They don't want it dated. And they don't, if they're running... Well, they don't want to get lost. Well, Nickelodeon likes to run a single episode multiple times in the week. So if the episodes are, you have to watch them in order, that messes up everything. And it really screws up their programming. So there are some subtle differences in all of that we cover in-depth when we're getting people ready for the conferences. And I have to tell you, I've turned into a binge watcher and I've never thought I would. We do too. Because you have so little time in the working world. We're all so busy, and you know, even more so than me. But I'm running, running, running. I never even know what I'm gonna be home anymore. And I wanted to watch Justified on FX, which, oh my gosh, one of my all-time favorite shows. But I knew I was never gonna be able to watch it on a weekly basis, so I just waited. And then I binge watched six seasons of 13 episodes each, or maybe seven seasons of 13 episodes each. And my husband and I binge watched them over about a 10-day period. And I was- That's a staycation right there. Well, we did that with Breaking Bad. Oh, there you go. We didn't, because we didn't watch it until after the third or fourth season, I think. Right, coming up to the last half season, you know. And that show, you know, is dark, and we would watch three in a row. We were totally warped. We were like, we have to watch something funny before we go to bed. It's a good night and easy. Just watch, you know, How I Met Your Mother, or Big Bang Theory, or Fun and Silly. Well, we'll have to do more of this in the future because I know they're gonna tell us we're out of time almost immediately.  What's your next big plan? Besides BAMF, we know about that. But do you have something new or big or different on your horizon? Are you just gonna do more of this excellent stuff you've already been doing? Well, we're continuing to upgrade our TV pitch kit. We have a lot of new videos that we're editing right now that are going to be added in because everyone who buys it gets free upgrades for life. So yeah, so that's a great thing. So check it out, TVpitchkit.com. Now does Austin, because you gave him one as a winner's prize, does he get to upgrade his? That was the print version. Oh, okay. It's just the digital version is free upgrades. Mailing is a hardship. I know. So we're working a lot on that and we're about to start on a new production of Dream Factory, so we're in pre-production on an animated show right now for ourselves. Well, keep us posted. And everybody out there that watches Suncoast Spotlight keep watching. We'll have Gene and Mark, Simon back and we will learn more and keep following their wonderful career. They just do great things. Let them help you. Thanks for watching.


Good morning, everyone. So I'm Anisia, your community outreach specialist, and today I'm with Deputy Carmack and Canine Shep, who is inside this beautiful dirty saloon. No, but did you even hear what I just said? We're at Fox 13 this morning and this man is going to be on camera, a different camera, again to talk about going to New York to be on live PD. And how he feels about it, so stay tuned. Are you excited? Yeah. Yeah? Nervous? No. No? Is it because you've done this so many times? No. No? It's just another day in the life, right? No, it's just another day. It's 13 with Deputy Carmack and Canine Shep. They're excited to go to New York. Yes, baby. It would be a lot of fun. Anything you want to say? That was a lot quicker than the other one you guys did. That was extremely fast. Yeah, like seconds, gotta go. We walked in, did his questions. It was a good time. Yeah. All right. Today was fast. Mm-hmm. The weekend's going to be a little longer. Just a smidge. Maybe some practice runs, I'm sure, with me reading that teleprompter deal. Are you actually reading the teleprompter? I think so. Yeah, that's not good. No, no.  Do not forget to like, comment, subscribe, and we'll see you next time. Have a good day.