So my name is Scott Tashman. I'm the Director of Biomedical Engineering here at the Stedman-Philipon Research Institute. I'm also a professor of orthopedic surgery at the University of Texas in Houston and I think my career has been devoted to developing advanced techniques for assessing mechanical function of the tissues in the body, joints, ligaments, tendons, muscles and clearly the mechanics play a big role in injury. The forces that specialty athletes expose their bodies to put all of their joints and tissues at risk and understanding how, what sorts of forces those tissues can withstand, how we can train individuals to increase those limits and how we can try to alter the way they do their sports that minimizes the injury risk is all part of the kinds of things where we can apply biomechanics to injury risk. In a downhill skier, you know, there's some injuries we can't prevent through training. You know, someone hits a rut in the snow and goes flying. We're not going to keep that athlete from falling, but some of the non-contact injuries that occur not only in soccer or other sports that we're aware of, but even in skiing, you see these injuries that happen to skiers when they're in extreme body positions that actually cause them to fall rather than result from the fall, that maybe there's ways we can look at specifics of how those, like their intercruciate ligaments being loaded in those extreme positions, know what muscles they need to work on training or neuromuscular training to alter the way they use their muscles or perhaps small changes in body position that might make just enough difference to alter the forces so that when in one case they tear their ACL, in the other case they don't. Well, we actually do a lot of our studies without, you know, in the more recreational athlete population, not just the elite athletes. It's true that the Stedman Clinic as a whole has treats a great number of elite athletes, but they also treat every day weekend warriors like me. You know, I tore my ACL a number of years ago, and it's really a much bigger population. So in terms of societal impact, we can have a bigger impact treating all athletes. Elite athletes are really in a world by themselves because they can do things with their bodies that mere mortals like you and I can't even dream about. We can watch them on TV. And so in some ways the injury prevention approaches may be different for the recreational athlete than they are for the elite athlete. And we're working towards both. But in terms of how what we do in the lab, yes, we have a very well-equipped, expensive to build laboratory with exotic equipment. But our goal is to identify, using everything we can throw at the problem, what the factors are that are related to injury risk, what, you know, what results in abnormal loading to the anterior cruciate ligament and puts it at risk, and how can we modify someone's behavior to reduce that risk. Or in the case of the Stedman Clinic in particular, we're also very focused on how once someone's had an injury, we keep them from getting a new injury. So looking at how that tissue that was repaired, whether it was an ACL replacement or rotator cuff repair, when that repair is ready, when that tissue is healed well enough, that that person's ready to go back to this extreme level of athletic activity. And we feel that if we understand all of the issues involved, using all of the resources we can throw out at the advanced imaging capabilities we have, we can then from that information devise simpler tests, that we can then take that technology, boil it down to the minimum necessary data, and develop systems that can be used in in clinical environments. I wouldn't say that that's happening in general, but it's like everything else. Some centers and some coaches are much more aware of the issues. I think at most of the major universities now, there's pretty good awareness in the training and coaching programs as to many of the factors related to injury. There's always room for improvement, because there are a lot of things we don't even know at the highest levels. But you know, maybe there's high schools in some places that aren't aware of some of these issues. And in terms of the return to sports, again, there's a huge variation from expert centers like the Stem and Clinic and like other academic medical centers, where people are using performance-based criteria and everything they know to judge when their athletes are ready to go back. But there's other places that say, well, yeah, you're six months out from your ACL reconstruction, so you're good to go. Without really doing a thorough assessment of that individual patient's healing status and neuromuscular performance capabilities. So it's there's a disconnect between the centers that are at the forefront and some of the areas where perhaps there isn't the same level of expertise. I like to say that I can assess anybody's function, but the higher the more elite an athlete is, the more difficult it is for me to say, this is what makes you a great athlete, because each individual elite athlete has found a way to make their body, their physiology, work for them. And they've optimized, at that level, they've gone beyond simple, you know, if you're teaching someone basic golf, you know all the things that they need to know to be a decent golfer. But when they get to a certain level, it's them and how they learn how to use their bodies. Yes, they need expert coaching and all those things, but there has to be a part of it at the elite level. I think this is just personal opinion that they've found the best way to use their body. You know, the example we saw last night with the amazing speaker we had, she should never have, from a biomechanical perspective, she shouldn't have been able to achieve the level she did, and yet she overcame her functional limitations. So that's a classic example of what I'm saying that each athlete, so the answer to your question is no, I can't say what a perfect athlete looks like, because sometimes it's an imperfect body that's performing at a level beyond, way beyond expectations, and then it's the athlete that's somehow making that happen. Oh yeah, so attitude and motivation clearly play a critical role in all aspects of injury recovery and injury prevention. So you can say down the road we've designed the perfect, that we believe is the best possible intervention for athletes in a particular sport. Do this training and your injuries are, your risks, we're never going to eliminate injuries, but we can reduce the risk significantly. That athlete has to want to do the training. If it's a child, their parents have to want their kids to do the training. In terms of injury recovery, we all know how important a rigorous rehabilitation program is. And, you know, in today's environment where maybe your physical therapy only pays for a certain number of visits, and then it falls on you to do these exercises at home to continue to build those muscles that protect your ligaments and tendons. If the athlete doesn't put in the effort, there's only so much the clinician can do. So it is a combination of expert diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, and effort and motivation from the athlete to get back to where they want to get to. I think Dr. Tim Hewitt, who's here from Mayo, summed it up very well in his presentation, that we're no longer in a world where a therapist can solve a problem completely, or someone with biomechanics expertise can solve it, or an orthopedic surgeon can solve it, or a biologist like Dr. Hewitt can solve it. We need to work together because you need to incorporate all of these aspects to heal these athletes. And these meetings give us a chance both through our formal presentations, but equally, if not more important, the time we spend together during the breaks and the meals and, you know, just over casual conversation to exchange ideas and to learn from each other and to form collaborations and work together, because that's ultimately the way we're going to make the most progress in the injury prevention field, is to build teams with expertise across the board, where we're taking advantage of everything we know, we're each learning from each other's insights, and we can really move the field forward. Well, I think in many of these areas, our solutions are data driven, and the more data we have, the better answers we can get. And the USOC and the IOC are both at the forefront of injury surveillance. So they collect a huge amount of information on their athletes, and they have very good histories of injury. So understanding what factors contribute to the development of injury is a critical part, and our collaboration with these organizations helps give us access to some of that data that we can use to help understand what drives injuries, what drives re-injuries, and that really contributes to our ability to focus on those particular aspects that we might be able to address to reduce injury, and which athletes are at the highest risk, where should we target. So I think one of the aspects of that collaboration that is most important to me is access to information about the athletes, and also the potential to work with the coaches and trainers and athletes at this level. When we get to the point where we think we have interventions to work, we have a population and a relationship where we might actually be able to take these advances and help improve the health of our best athletes.


Going on everyone Sam here with late in sports cars You've been 23 moments best baseball hobby 8 box case number 24 pick your team style We have a list of our names in our teams a Shams Orioles Adam M. Reds a's Alan R with the twins Andrew L Royals Brad W. Tigers shipe with the Giants Chris M. Cardinals Dwayne H. Guardians Gabriel C. Rangers Glenn K Red Sox That is Jackie Y with the D-backs Jimmy or Jimmy H. Phillies Joe H. Pirates John R. Brewers Joshua B. White Sox Joshua W. Braves Justin E. Yankees Justin Z. Mariners angels the way age blue jays Mark G. Dodgers Matthew G. Padres Patrick N. Astros Bobby R. Cubs Timothy M. Rays and Nationals Vaughn with the Marlins Wayne Peake Rockies and William T. Metz. All right, so we're gonna guess right now So I'm gonna type in guesses start now Start now when you see that in chat guess the super fractor You have 30 seconds to do so so if you already guess just put it in again when you see guesses start now and go ahead everybody Go ahead Guesses start now get them in get them in get them in Guesses start now. There we go everybody. There we go. There we go. There we go. Perfect. There we go Very nice very nice About 10 seconds to go now a player on the checklist in Moment's best. All right, so that'll be guesses are closed Are closed If you guess multiple times we're taking the first guess you yes And if somebody get if we pull a super and two multiple people guess it then it'll split the bounty All right. Good luck everybody. Let's get started good luck Sorry about the stream crashing again Hell happened there shout out OBS as always Thank you Carol masterpieces green green mini diamonds tonight and I Brendan Maya and Aaron you can do Two goals and under with this. Okay. Joe Engels get this guy out of here Jordan Walker Shalater. Yeah, she'll act of Adley and Parazzo Refractor auto nice one there yanks. Congrats Yankees your reservoir Is a wave of Gabby Morena for the Bax J. Ram refractor Davis Martin and Adley Rushman Purple the overpig wear out to 250 a Carlos Jorge base auto gone to the Reds There's since he and Corbin Carol refractor Carol refractor Many box to Pugna hunter brown on the Astral projections mini diamonds Corbin Carol a Mini diamonds the 299 Matt Olson and Casey Schmidt refractor rookie Justin Henry Malloy base auto for the Tigers. Congrats Detroit Bobby Miller that is a reel-to-reel of Mike trout and Jacob Wilson refractor real real Vakunya Corbin Carol and Justin Henry or Justin Crawford Crawford Phillies this Bryant base auto Ryan Clifford going to the Astros nice one there each town Grats on that Houston and one so too Think we're down to 13 to go on 25 now everybody 13 to go everyone 13 to go on number 25 Yuri Perez blue to 150 Bobby Miller and Bobby Witt Shalak the gunner and Miguel Cabrera There's Daniel Guillart day for the brew crew base auto nice one there Congrats Milwaukee a reel-to-reel of Michael Harris and Michael Harris refractor rookie Matt Mervis and Zack neto Aqualaba to 1.99 is Raffi Devers and a 250 Shalak d'Auto of Wyatt Langford Congrats on that one there. Ash our Rangers very nice to 250. We'll get that into a mag Congrats Tejas and J rod Everybody 13 to go super fracter bounty still live even if we hit a super fracter We'll just get reset and they'll continue to be a bounty The 250 instead max Clark the Nia and CJ Abrams Yeah, $800 of break credit is what we're up to now. It's kind of insane. Shalak of Laneford. That's a lot of money Yeah, a lot of breaks right there, too J rod base auto glider Figuero for the Rangers That's Texas and Ricky Bradfield wave of Jackson holiday and felon and Celestin Kovar mini diamonds Cabrera as Waldo Cabrera to 2.99 and so India green auto Spencer Jones to 99 for the Yankees. Congrats Yankees. Very nice. That is awesome And Josh young thank you Mitch picking up the Dodgers in 26.  Do know it's a 150 for the Reds congrats since he very nice Do you know do know that it's going to break or to the reds green masterpieces Michael Harris astral projections and Christopher Morel Gold lava to 75 Michael Harris base auto Patrick Bailey rookie for the Giants, I've got the Ravens. I would say James. That's who I want to I mean there. I'm a Ravens diehard So, yeah, I think he's all about the Ravens. I will yeah, I will bet on my team for sure He's ready Crawford and Tati says what I do every single every single game Gold lover, that's a first of all, that's a red Michael Harris Wow to 10 4 of 10 congrats on that Braves get that into a mag. That's nasty That's a pretty solid card.  I like the hidden cards. I think it's interesting James I think it's definitely interesting Eto Michael Eto Michael You met I was trying to bait you into doing the grace and hit when we hit it in the last one Spencer Brooks Lee and Taj Bradley by saying nice hit there. I wanted that base We are not doing Fighting Pokemon you who to be with a spot tonight Scott after the Dodgers in 25. Thank you, buddy Dodgers gone in 25 Yeah, let mariners are literally One of the best teams to 250 at J rod base auto Josh Kazovic Nice one there and Brandon Maia real real Kunya. Donner Henderson refractor rookie now and sale CJ Abrams Ludwig Espinosa rookie for our base auto for the Cubs and Nolan Arnato Timmy the salt Sultan of statistics. I love it Shohei Otani Asturio Ruiz and Vargas mini diamonds of Zach Neto a teal lava to 1.99 Brian Rock you Michael toglia to 250 on the Randy Johnson auto congrats on that when they're at Rockies rookie are white link wave Riley Greene and the Rizzo Drew Jones and Edward Julian. Oh nice family tree Jason Josh young Wow 10 of 10 Let's go baby Tigers and Rangers Alright Tigers Brad W. And Rangers Gabriel C. That'll be a random everybody very nice man Congrats to both of you and good luck to both of you. That's awesome. The the young's I'll go into a mag and Mike trout Yeah, that'll that'll play that'll play just fine right there, buddy. I will play just nice 12 to go now on the next one I knew I should have bought into this one of that chase Josh for my collection. No, I know I know Jeremy It is a nice one, man. It is sweet And that will be random to all at the end or not to all the to these two teams perfect Beautiful. It's a good break man. Langford red Harris break and now a family tree joining Walker Meryl and show Edward Pulling nice cards out of this man It's a solid case They saw two lots of romances Yeah, giants are pretty solid Luis Giants got Schmidt. They've got Arias. They've got Patrick Bailey one so too They've got a couple other guys as well. Yeah, they're not bad. They're definitely not bad Luis plus he got a shot at the Superbownie, so many diamonds of Francisco Alvarez gunner to 2.99 Detroit and Eldridge to yeah green auto devison de los Santos the 99 congrats on that one at the Very nice. Thank you song love picking up the angels and TC black. I'll be going later on today as well I wanted 15,000 packs, man That is sweet In and just chisel and righty green refracta base auto-randed a Jesus for the angels man clean Wave of Josh Chisholm orange Jacob Wilson to 25. There you go. A's nice one. They're Oakland. Oh, that'll work Masataka yo Him Michael Harris killing it man. There you go. That's awesome Base and base. I did see that actually Joshua. I Did see that Christian causes Diego Cartaglia for the Dodgers. I Did see there's a Bobby Miller Davey patch just pulled out of a blaster top scum update Really? Yeah, there's Bobby Miller, right Joshua my or am I bugging was it stone? It's one of the other Really, I don't know. I know he's from Virginia either, but I was up Blaster magic. Yeah, Yoshida and Matt Mervis of Collier and base Much confirmed blaster magic. Yes Gold auto Jay's bow into 50. There you go pirates Nice one there. I'll play and our Arias. Thank you. Sheik picking up the Giants in the next one makes sure Thank you. Sheik real real of Collier and base Content some eldritch. I like it. I like it Our Freeman green of Xavier Isaac Machatu base auto brother Guerrero for the rays and Brian Rock you feel a little behind going to the next one should be able to catch up on the next two Yeah, golden lowers fine. You're all with a couple of mixer spots. Thank you, buddy. That is that netto and Sends a hot. I was gonna say that's where I saw it originally was with the hobby news. That was Miller Arias Real a real auto pita Lonzo to 150. That's cool. Nice one there Mets. Oh, yeah Sir the polar bears, right? It's literally his only card in here and the entire set is the real real the real the real lot of Mookie bets the 299 netto and Asturia Ruiz Oscar Colas and Anthony Volpe. Hi as base auto Rainer Arias. There you go. Sheik. Sheik's there with that one and James outman brewers off the board Russell G. Thank you, buddy. Very nice. Very nice Move in here, everybody Keep it move in Sean M picking up the Rockies in 25 and then the Auburn, Florida State and Baylor spot number four of Bowman Chrome University hobby So, thank you, buddy. Appreciate that. I'm getting close to Might be at single digits or at ten. We're either at ten or at single digits Ten or nine and the next break. So, thank you all there Yeah, Arias is good man. That's that's solid That is Tovar and Colson Montgomery. Yeah, they're they're good They're a sneaky little team in this for sure at 49 bucks. Not bad Definitely not bad. Okay, Ryan Clifford refractor auto for the Astros and Carlos Correa wave of Matt McLean Good case man. This is a very good case Hoglia purple around Ocunio 250 and Yeah, giants are good in this man. Giant is very good. Very like slept on They saw it oh, you want you Vargas for the Dodgers By the main chase there Lee Juan picking up a spot today later on and I did I did see the brawny super was pulled. Yes, Freddie Freeman a 299 Did see that was Let's go to me. Hell yeah, dude She'll act of Alvarez and Hunter Brown. Have you've always got the stats on lock man? Geez base auto Willie Fannis or the Mets Very nice Sean picking up the Mariners in the next one. Thank you Sean. Let's go, baby See something big in that for you, brother That is a real real Freeman and Lee over Pueblo a Carlos Perez and Drew Jones Ray wave Yuri Perez the 50 nice one there on the Astral projections Vaughn with the Marlins Colby Thomas Base auto for the A's and Spencer Jones and on to the last box of the break. Good luck here, everybody And why not pull a super in this then that would be sweet see who we got left in 25 real quick One two three four five six seven eight to go eat to go in the next one everybody single at Digidorone's Eight to go. Let's go. It's to go Volpe Brooks Lee Logan Ohapi shellacked of Drew Jones as well the Cabrera That's is a blue Colt Emerson to 150 there you go Mariners nice one there Yeah, grab your spots everybody eat to go on the next one all teams are for the most part marked down You know the real Drew Jones blue Tovar to 150 and Jackson Churio is a Lucas Geolito and Vladimir Guerrero There's Max Anderson for the Tigers Congrats on that Detroit Hunter Henderson Cholact of Ethan solace and Jacob Gonzalez Teal lava felon and Celestin to 199 base auto of Brandon Maia. I didn't watch to be honest I have no idea how the mixer went probably pretty decent I'd imagine That is a Mazataki Yoshida Matt Olson last pack of the break super frack in the last pack Henry Shafili refractor out of the twins very nice. All right We got a random to do for the family tree everybody the Young's family tree Tigers All right, everybody again doing the random for the family tree auto it is Jason Josh young number to ten We got tigers with Jace and Josh with the Rangers. Good luck I'm gonna go a total of twice as a re-roll. So we're gonna go seven times instead one two three four five six and seven going to the Tigers Congrats Detroit very nice Congrats Tigers Very cool on that one So again, that was the whoa, that was the family tree Number to ten quick recap now. We've got him of Michael Harris Gold love to 75 Michael Harris Yuri Perez the 50 to 25 Jacob Wilson autos Brandon Maia Max Anderson Colby Thomas Willie Fannis Joenju Vargas Rainer Arias Braylor Guerrero that is reigning to Jesus a las romances. Love me. That's my nose Josh Kazovic Patrick Bailey Axel Sanchez Gladner Figuero Daniel Guiarte Ryan Clifford Justin Henry Maloy and Carlos Jorge Now refractor autos and lower we've got a Henry Chevilley Ryan Clifford Diego Cartaglia Brandon Maia up to 250 Michael Poglia to 150 Pete Alonzo Alfredo Juno Colt Emerson to 99 Devis and De Los Santos Spencer Jones to 75 Dolton rushing the 50 Jays Bowen To 10 Michael Harris on the red and then a white link for a shellacked auto to 250 I'll do it for the break everybody. Thanks again for the fill up next is number 25


Everybody forced here ripping 20 21 top scrum platinum anniversary baseball light 8 box number 10 It is a random team style break and you can always find those results at latent sports cards calm quick link is the bottom of the site for Results you can also search for them and the search bar, and there's a Lincoln chat I'll take it there as well Fractor Braves Greg Maddox Platinum mini diamond is 70 Braves Tom Glavin Braves number to 70 on that one black-and-white mini diamond Mets Robinson Cano Padres Refractor Trent Grisham Black and white black-and-white mini diamond Astros Josh Reddick Aqua wave brewers or none of those Braves Braves Warren Spahn Milwaukee Braves Refractor rookie Marlins Monty Harrison black-and-white mini diamond Padres rookie Ryan Weathers Braves extractor Ronald Acuna jr. Black-and-white mini diamond Mets Rick Corcello Debacks rookie refractor Dalton Barshow black-and-white mini diamond brewers Orlando Arcia X-Fractor Nationals Brad Hand mini diamond or black-and-white mini diamond Mets rookie Ali Sanchez Yankees Refractor Chin Ming Wong who mini diamond rookie Mets Franklin Kilimay at a 199 black-and-white mini diamond Royals Whit Merrifield Cubs Refractor Nico Horner black-and-white mini diamond Rangers Chris Davis Aqua wave Cardinals Kwang Young Kim Dodgers rookie Refractor Alex Vesilla Again everybody Personals are full tonight the only break with spots left this flawless football to your random team case That's it Refractor Dodgers Chris Taylor Got more group breaks tomorrow 4 p.m. With Caleb Personals afterwards tomorrow night to 99 green and yellow rookie Mariners Evan White Mariners black-and-white mini diamond rookie Aaron Fletcher Blue Jays Refractor Joe Carter black-and-white mini diamond Mets Edwin Diaz Aqua wave debacks Cattel Marte refractor Yankees Luke Voigt black-and-white mini diamond Mets David Wright red Sox X-Fractor Ted Williams Reds Refractor Eugenio Suarez Angels black-and-white mini diamond Mike trout Nice Ted Williams and trout in that box Braves Refractor Charlie Morton Mariners black-and-white mini diamond Ken Giles Blue Jays Refractor Lord as Gertie L. Jr. Blue mini diamond debacks rookie Andy Young to 1 99 Giants black-and-white mini diamond Willie Mays Aqua wave Cardinals Scott Rowland Phillies Refractor Mike Schmidt Cardinals black-and-white mini diamond Rick Farrell X-Fractor Mets Pete Alonzo Red Sox Refractor Kike Hernandez Yankees black-and-white mini diamond Mark Tashara Royals Refractor Andrew Benintendi Astros blue mini diamond Kyle Tucker to 1 99 Twins black-and-white mini diamond Jose Barrios Royals Refractor rookie Nick Heath as excited for pristine baseball on Wednesday Haven't done pristine in a few years Orange and yellow Dodgers Don Sutton to 25 Kibri and rookie black-and-white mini diamond rays Ryan Yarbrough Aqua wave rays Yoshi Tsutsugo Refractor Mets Carlos Delgado Black-and-white mini diamond Royals Edward Alivarez X-Fractor Nationals rookie Luis Garcia Black-and-white mini diamond Padres Eric Osmer Rays Refractor Nick Anderson Black-and-white mini diamond Cleveland Ahmed Rosario X-Fractor D-Bax rookie Dalton Varshow Dodgers Refractor Will Smith Black-and-white mini diamond Padres Fernando Tatis Jr Yankees Refractor Garrett Cole Yankees rookie gold rose gold wave Davey Garcia number to 50 Mets black-and-white mini diamond Robinson Cano. Let's pack one base A's Refractor Miguel Tejada Cubs black-and-white mini diamond Chris Bryant Dodgers aqua wave Steve Garvey Dodgers Refractor Tommy John Rockies Refractor Dante Bichette Josh Chisholm Rose gold mini diamond Tigers Alan Shrammel to 75 Black-and-white mini diamond Orioles Anthony Santander Yankees Refractor Ron Guidry Black-and-white mini diamond twins Taylor Rogers aqua wave Dodgers Steve Sacks Blue Jays Refractor Hun Jin Ryu Black-and-white mini diamond Royals Adalberto Mondesie Dodgers X-Fractor rookie Victor Gonzalez Angels Refractor Jared Weaver Black-and-white mini diamond White Sox you on Moncada box number eight. Good luck everybody Giants Refractor Mauricio Dubon. I Feel the same way I ever as a breaker. Absolutely blue mini diamond to Red Sox Fred Lynn To 199 black-and-white mini diamond twins Miguel Sunno The only issue is tops chrome like hobby boxes have been Four cards a pack, you know 24 packs for ever Refractor raise will the adamis Yeah, it's pretty tough black-and-white mini diamonds Indians right Indians Bob Lemon even though it's like the new the new Reds will go there What's the game illegal got aqua wave rookie White Sox Jonathan Steve or Stiver wasn't me I don't live in a pop because it wasn't me refractor rookie Tigers Kyle Funkhouser You really have one employee that lives in a pop that I know of anyway I don't know where everybody lives black-and-white mini diamond rookie Yankees. That's the fun Floreal That sounds like an apopka video game X-Fractor White Sox you on Moncada Red Sox refractor Roger Clemens Black-and-white mini diamond Red Sox Chris sale. I had a few more numbered cards in this eight boxer than the previous I'll show those real quick Blue mini diamonds are the 199 Fred Lynn Red Sox Kyle Tucker Astros Franklin Kiliman Mets Andy young D-backs Green and yellow Evan White Mariners to 99 rose gold mini diamond Alan Tramol the 75 Tigers Platinum mini diamond Tom Glavin Braves the 70 Rose gold gold wave Davey Garcia Yankees the 50 and yellow orange Dodgers Don Sutton the 25 That'll do it. Thanks again everybody definitive is up next


Everybody, how's it going? I'm Chris Morrill. I'm a Senior Product Manager of Technical Products with Amazon Alexa. I've been at Amazon for about four years and I have shipped consumer facing products in both Alexa Entertainment as well as Alexa Shopping where I currently am running the all of Alexa's book related shopping capabilities as well as things like if you ask Alexa to read a book or if you ask Alexa to recommend you a book, those are all part of the product portfolio that I manage which is why I'm really excited to be here today to talk about the power of the prototype which is something that has helped me as I've gone through my career thus far in product management. Let's kick things off but checking in with our agenda. So introduction, great news is that that's already complete. Next we're gonna move into a little bit of context setting and then jump into three different types of prototype techniques that I've used in presenting different types of products across my career and then we'll end with a couple of takeaways. All right, so some context setting. I learned best through application and so the focus of my talk is gonna be on applications and less on theories and the output of this is gonna give you a couple of ideas to try the next time that you happen to be in this particular phase of product development. I will at full disclosure is that my talk is not mutually exclusive nor collectively exhaustive so do not tell my business school. There are many different frameworks that you can use for prototyping. There are many different times that you can use prototyping from the very start of the product development cycle all the way through software development, shipping and then iteration post launch. The purpose of this talk is not to catalog all available prototyping methodologies. It's just to tell you my experience using prototypes which is reflected here in Merriam-Webster's dictionary definition so it doesn't help us at all here. It's first full scale and usually functional form of a new type, no, that's not what we're talking about here. What we're gonna talk about today is prototypes as part of the introductory phase. So that phase when us as product managers are out there trying to communicate this idea to stakeholders, we're trying to add evidence or weight to our hypothesis of customer value and we're just trying to or we're trying to prove product market fit. It's prototyping in those, the first two phases during product development and introduction. And my experience so far is with prototypes is that it using a prototype helps others understand the vision. It doesn't matter how well I am able to speak about a concept or write about a concept, a stakeholder actually seeing the concept helps them understand in a way that talking about it, I've noticed doesn't. The other thing that it helps you do is or it has helped me do is identify hero use cases in P0 features, which at the beginning of product development, especially as we're, at least for me as I'm writing a, Amazon, the PRFAQ, which is how we fund projects. That's what every product starts with. As I'm writing through that, the specificity of what is the MLP look like? What are the features that go into that? What does the customer absolutely have to have? And what does that customer journey look like? Prototypes are a great way to drive to specificity with some of those very questions. And then finally it adds confidence to product market fit. It can help me gather information and it has helped me gather both quantitative and qualitative information to help add data to the hypothesis of whatever customer value opportunity I've discovered. So the three approaches that I have used, I've sort of, there's the paper prototype, which I think is fairly straightforward. Turns out that if you do an internet search for paper prototype, there are plenty of both design and product management websites that have assets for paper prototyping. We're gonna talk about some really low fidelity stuff that I did. Then we're gonna talk about the hackathon special, which is one of my favorite things to do, very low fidelity as well. And then we're gonna talk about the video supercut, which also can be either scrappy or spendy, depending on your budget and most importantly the risk level of what you are trying to prove. So let's go back to 2018 and let's talk about Choose Your Inventor. So as a fresh product manager, I had just started and the scope of my responsibility was to ship the first three Choose Your Inventor books starting with the Abominable Snowman and turn those into interactive audio experiences on Alexa. We were partnered with Audible, so we had full access to their number of very talented narrators. And we were gonna take that audio, take that narration, turn it into something you could interact with with your voice, which was all well and good. But when you get into the specifics of, well, what does that pattern look like? Well, sure, the narrator will read through a segment of the book. In fact, so how do we take this and turn it into something that goes on a device? If we look at here on the book, there's no prompt that says, aside from something that says, turn to page 18. Well, how would we represent that without a visual? Would Alexa just say, turn to page 18? No, that's not gonna happen. We're gonna add some abstraction there to make it more delightful. Then what does Alexa say? And most importantly, what will the customer respond? How will they respond after Alexa says, do you wish to turn to page 58 or turn to page 59? In the case where the story branches, it is after all, choose your own adventure and each of the books advertises at least 30 different endings. We had to build an interaction model and I needed to specify the requirements for that interaction model, but we didn't even know what the interaction pattern would be. We didn't know how customers would respond to these navigation prompts that we had just written and iterations were expensive. So every time we put a concept in front of a customer with some mocked ideas of what we thought they might say, if we were wrong and the experience broke, we wouldn't get the feedback that we needed to continue iterating. And if we didn't get enough customer feedback, each of those iteration cycles costly in terms of engineering and time. So, well, this is where paper prototyping comes in. This is a definition from concepttesting.com. Design teams, they draw sketches, low fidelity, say bias towards cycle time. So what the heck did that look like? Well, that looked like me and the designer writing up some scripts. And then we went and did seven user studies, which usually involved us patrolling the hallways of Amazon looking for someone who would make eye contact and pulling that, asking them if they had an hour that we could use to do a user study. In the context of a user study, it'd be three people in a conference room and I would pretend to be Alexa and I would read off a script. So it would be me sitting here saying, he thanks you profusely. I slipped into the gully two days ago, he explains, and I was beginning to think I'd never get out. Do you go with FATON or set off to the Palace of the Sun? And the customer would reply as they would reply to the device, that was sort of how we instructed them. And then we would just take note of what they said. And after the second or third paper prototyping session, which absolutely started as awkwardly as you would imagine, but what was interesting is that after the first couple of interactions, the customer relaxed and just started responding as normal. We coalesced around a set of 80%, around an 80% solution. So for each of those types of interactions, we identified about 80% of what customers, how customers would respond. And that enabled us one to tune the interaction, tune the questions, the prompts that we were giving customers after each one of these was read, but it also allowed us to generate a allowed me to write the requirements for the spread of customer input that we needed to handle. And as a result, so here's a great little TechCrunch article from the launch of the launch back in 2019. But so at the end of the day, the value was I was able to write more precise requirements which meant we spent less time iterating in QA because we found fewer bugs. We shipped overall a higher quality experience that handled a broader range of customer input. And we shipped it faster. It was all because we were willing to walk around with a paper script and just grab someone. There was no fancy customer recruiting. I wasn't overly worried about segmentation and the sample size. I just needed to go from total unknown to a closer known. The point is paper prototype is low fidelity, shockingly low fidelity. It can be as simple as something you have written down. It can be on a whiteboard. It can be a series of index cards. The point is to get customer feedback so that you can start at, or for me, so that I can get really clear on what are those requirements exactly? What is P0? What is P1? P1 so that when I hand that off to the engineering team to be built, I have higher confidence that the requirements I'm giving are the actual requirements that need to be built. And it's nothing fancy. There are very, there are higher fidelity paper prototyping tools like Figma that you can usually create very interactive prototypes. But for my purposes, when the unknown was so broad, all I needed was a script and customers willing to pretend. And the real value of paper prototyping for me comes from the observations. So excellent. Talked about paper prototyping. Now we're moving on. Next situation, Starfinder. So in 2019, I'm pitching a new type of entertainment where the hypothesis is an audio book means choose your own adventure. We, I had data that showed that there was a sizable number of customers who would enjoy more agency than an audio book, but they didn't want something as actively engaging as a video game or watching something visual. So our idea was the interactive audio adventure. We knew that we needed intellectual property. So my business development partner secured a meeting and I knew a prototype wouldn't convey that the concept adequately. We needed something a little bit higher fidelity. Well, that's where what I call the hackathon special comes in. So this is a single hero use case where everything's hard coded. If the wrong person sneezes, everything goes wrong. I just, but the hackathon special is what is that absolute minimum hero use case that you can't, you and maybe a developer can knock together in three to four hours that only works if you use it in a very specific way, but it works and it will convey the value. So let's talk about this hackathon. So I went back and my designer and I, this is actually a screenshot from the tool that we were using at the time to mock this out. We built a happy path in about four hours. It represented less than five minutes of gameplay because I knew that I would have a very limited time to showcase the functionality that we were proposing to this partner or to this collaborator. And, but it was key that we be able to showcase it on a device to get them to envision the concept. I shamelessly bribed a developer with Shake Shack, both a burger and a chocolate shake to build in dice rolling because a fundamental to the IP partner that we were pitching was this idea of rolling dice as part of a tabletop role-playing game experience. So we had to have dice because that was an essential part of the experience. And then we spent a lot of time making sure that it functioned on a device only in the use cases that we needed. So we got there. This you can imagine, this is what I see is I'm walking into, I've driven out to Redmond, Washington. I am walking into the headquarters of Piezo, Inc. And they own the rights to many, many iconic tabletop role-playing game franchises. And this is the conference room that we're taking the meeting in and walking in, this is what I see. All of this history and intellectual property. And so we sit down. My business development partner goes through the pitch deck and then I plug in a device and we go through the demo. Six weeks later, we signed the deal. Why? And I think we may have gotten there eventually, but in that meeting, we played the demo and you could see the people, the folks around the table start to lean in as they start a brainstorming with us. If they started to think about, wow, this could be something really cool and asking us questions like, well, could you build in this? Could you build in a dice rolling mechanic that also took into account an armor class and another modifier and well, could it save your state over time? And what about monetization options? It gave them enough of the functionality to be able to inspire further conversation and for the folks around the table to see, well, this is a really interesting opportunity. This was the result. So this was a article in variety because obviously we needed a voice cast, stellar voice cast. So we recruited 12 exceptional narrators from Audible as well as Nathan Fillion. And we ended up shipping seven interactive audio experiences and ended up proving the hypothesis that there were indeed a number of a business material from a business perspective, number of customers who are willing to pay a premium for this type of interactive adventure. And the point of the prototype in this case was that I needed something more than a paper prototype because going into a pitch meeting where I had a very limited amount of time where I'm trying to convey the value of the product, I couldn't ask them to pretend that I was Alexa. I needed something better than that. But the key was that it was focused on the happy path. If I had tried, if I had deviated from any of the pass that we had, that we presented in this five minute adventure on Rails, the experience would have broken. But it communicated just enough of the concept to where everyone in the room could see the potential value which then led to additional conversations. Now, this was not sufficient to ship that project. There was significant work that went into establishing the business opportunity, negotiations, establishing a schedule in the actual execution. But in the ideation phase where what was important was my ability to convey both the business opportunity but also what could this be and what could it unlock? And that was what this hackathon special did and I've used this multiple times in across different scenarios. So that's the hackathon special. Now let's talk about the video supercut. We're gonna talk about this digital unboxing experience. So it's late 2020. And I'm working on sort of this intersection of commerce and digital goods. And I've got this observation and it just hits me one day because I ordered this physical book. I was looking forward to it and then I got the box and I opened it up and I was like, yeah, I was really looking forward to that and realized there's really, there's no synonymous experience for that in when it comes to digital goods. And in fact, when I order a number of digital things it would be kind of cool if there was some type of experience that was synonymous to the excitement that I get when I open up a physical box because I've ordered something that I'm looking forward to. So the hypothesis was that delightful digital unboxing experience could be a differentiator that might lead customers to purchase one format over another or may lead them to look for a badge when making a purchase decision. And so on, the hero use case of pre-ordering a video game for the Xbox. And in this particular case, the reason for selecting Xbox is because Xbox has an existing Alexa skill and there are people who use Alexa to control their Xbox. So that we had some existing tailwinds with that specific use case. That was sort of our hero use case, our beach head. Now, what I need to do is kick off a discussion with Microsoft. And in this case, that brought me to the video supercut. So in this case, prototype doesn't have to work. And the primary tools, it's a cell phone, trim tool and then, you know, whatever I need to sort of show what that functionality would look like. So in this case, a monster load of Alexa devices, one with googly eyes. I'm not still not sure why that is, but that's what happens when you have children and then working from home. The point with the video is that in the case where the prototype doesn't work and I can compensate for that by using the trim tool and stitching different video clips together and it still communicates the end-to-end experience. I'm gonna come back to this though because this has bitten me a couple of times. So I knew that I was gonna go the video route as a demo to show some of the folks from Microsoft as we went into a business meeting with them. And here's the video that I showed them. Alexa, open shopping menu. The owner Exosuit is now complete. Even though this technology will save humanity in the Lord to come, it all means nothing until you step inside. Halo Infinite will release on October 21st, 2021 and is available for pre-order. Because you've used the Xbox skill, I see you have an Xbox Series X, the standard edition for the Xbox Series S is $59.99 and will be delivered digitally to your console on release day. Would you like to pre-order it? Yes. Fantastic. You have pre-ordered the standard edition of Halo Infinite for the Xbox Series S. It will be digitally delivered to your console on release day. I can send a notification to your devices and mobile phone when Halo Infinite is ready to play. Would you like that? Yeah. There was a problem with the requested skills response. So a couple of things to point out in here. So one is that obviously it does not work end to end. In fact, we saw the ridiculous latency at the very beginning. We saw it referred to something called the Xbox Series 10 which has never been released to the best of my knowledge. That is because with Alexa's semantic understanding, it interprets in X after a regular word as the Roman numeral for 10. So instead I needed to, there was a way I could have corrected that but I didn't have time to do that. So it says Xbox Series 10. You also noticed that it very clearly failed when I said that, when I responded yes. However, in the demo, I trimmed the latency at the front from the video and then I cut right before the experience failed. I didn't correct any of the small errors like Xbox Series 10. It also then refers to the Xbox Series S at the end of the demo, obviously inconsistent. We got shaky cam, the aspect ratio is not great.  But the point is that we kick off with an artifact from a trailer that I borrowed for the sake of the, borrowed from video, extracted the audio for the purposes of creating the demo. And then it leverages some an evocative background that's close enough, shows some interest. And then it's good enough to show what it might be and covers a couple of key elements of value that we thought were really important to convey. So what was the result here? Well, prototype it wasn't perfect as we just talked about but it did show sort of what could be and sort of where we were thinking. When we met with the partner teams and this was enough to get the jumpstart the conversation and to move along towards an initial agreement. But guess what? Product ended up defunded after we secured the initial agreement. About two months later, product was defunded, team pivoted. Key here is you can do all these things, get the right alignment and you still won't win them all. So what's the point kind of overall is we've talked about three techniques, the paper prototype, the hackathon special, the video supercut, this is an excellent example of this was recently last summer a paper prototype or sorry, a hackathon special that I put together. It was one day of effort that what we wanted to show was what could be possible with a certain books experience. You can see this is very clearly one of my test devices but the point was just the picture with the, this information on it was enough to show to our partners and to get them to work with us on a longer roadmap. Let's talk a couple of caveats very briefly, which is the more risk, the higher fidelity. So thinking about risk as the amount of investment, the opportunity cost of that investment versus the idea that I'm bringing to the table. Do I need one engineer for three months or do I need 15 engineers for 18 months? The difference in the information that I need to bring to show stakeholders and offset that risk is going to sort of drive the amount of fidelity that I need to have in my prototypes when I am interacting with stakeholders. So, for example, in this sort of on the left here, what we see is this is using the tool Figma. So from the UX collective, if you want to create mockup videos using Figma, you can also create mockup web prototypes all the way through TV television series. They film a pilot episode. A pilot episode is a prototype of what the TV series will be, who will star in it, what the setting will be, and the results, the customer results from that pilot drive, whether or not there's gonna be investment in the entire season or multiple seasons. So it becomes a factor as sort of a sliding scale of how much investment is required to make this idea work, both from an MLP perspective and then as sort of on a broader vision. And there's an art to knowing when to be scrappy and when to spend money. When I was looking at that first meeting with the Starfinder intellectual property holders, Piso, I knew that a paper prototype wasn't going to work because I needed them to quickly understand the type of interaction pattern of the device would provide content and a prompt, a player would respond and that was the fundamental cycle of the interaction pattern. And that we could add different types of content. We could add different types of features around the intelligence that we were able to build into that interaction pattern. But the fundamental interaction pattern was content prompt response. Those three things in cycle. That's what I needed them to understand. And it was gonna take me too long to convey that with a paper prototype and I needed them to hear it instead of have it be read to them. The difference there I think has not been something, it's a judgment call. It has ended up being a judgment call in there of times where I've gotten it, where it has worked in times where it is not. Most recently, I have had on the product that I'm currently working on, there were a series of stakeholder meetings where the prototype that we presented was the result of six months of effort, sizable investment using agency work, as well as leveraging both a two designers and an engineer. Because that was the fidelity of the investment we're asking for from these stakeholders. We had to show them a prototype that was not a hero use case that showed a number of edge cases that was exhaustive in the way that it handled some of the common questions to come up. We needed them to envision what this product would look like over a multi-year arc, not just what would the MLP look like. So that was a time where we spent much more time and a lot more resources in creating a prototype that would help them understand and de-risk their investment. In general, what I have found is the precision of the information that I'm looking for as an output of the exercise is the precision of the input that I put in. Which is to say a paper prototype, there's not much investment upfront because the output that I'm looking for, it's still very broad. I'm not looking for precise outputs with a paper prototype. The outcome of a meeting with stakeholders is more precise, can be more precise, especially the closer that you get to a meeting where the outcome will be a commitment or not. So therefore the precision of the input that I'm providing in terms of a prototype will then go up or down. As generally speaking, what I've found is the way for me to meter between which of these types of techniques that I use and they're not, like I said, they're not mutually exclusive and I use them sort of as I move, I may use all of them as I move through the initial process of product development. Thank you so much for spending time with me today talking about these three different types of prototyping, how I've used them in different phases of product development, how I've used them to communicate with stakeholders and how I've used them to reduce uncertainty in as I've written requirements and as we move through the product development cycle. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. Thank you again.