Yeah

... of exchanging ideas with peers.

Uh, so I started throwing dinners and, like, a whole community forum.

So once, like, we were back to going to conferences and other things, and, like, the rise of AI, I think it just was the perfect combo to kind of, for me, to have this essential feedback loop form m- for, from my peers who are in the operator seat, and have friends in the Bay Area who are building companies, who are dying to hear the inside insights and the gaps that are in the retail in- missing in the retail industry, or what they could build towards.

So essentially, I kind of sit in the middle connecting the two, the brand side and the tech side now, um, and making magic happen.

Essentially, in the end, it's all about adding value to both sides.

And if there's someone I can help by introducing or giving insights on, or helping the tech company on their strategic position.

Mm-hmm.

It depends, you know, what do you mean by in the loop? Is the human actually pressing the button? So How important is it when you're thinking about automation in your own professional careers to actually think about like, to what degree am I trusting the machine versus something that's coming directly from you?

Yeah, I think we're still making ways on how much we can trust AI and automation.

Of course, all the tools are promising, you know, unicorns and rainbows.

But in practice, I think there's still like, there's tools that say we can deploy all your marketing dollars, right, and manage all your campaigns.

But when I think about, okay, am I ready to give half a million dollars to an automated system and not worry about it? We're not there yet, right? So I think it can certainly provide insights and recommends actions, but I think we still need someone to review the recommended actions and say, yes, approve, go ahead and do this.

And that's what, when I think of human in the loop, that's where it is.

And not to mention at the very beginning, when you're even choosing the tools, we need to bring the humans along and who are going to be executing or using this tool on the day-to-day for it to actually embed the organization and have usability and utilization.

I