Let's hope.

I I knew Tim like I knew Tim Curry because I'm a big Dragon Age fan and he voiced our Rendon Howe and Dragon Age Origins, one of the villain characters in the game.

And I it was always just a great it's like a sniveling performance.

Like it almost was almost felt like a villainous chief Palpatine, as it were.

But I always thought that was interesting.

I never realized he actually hadn't acted in many video games.

He was obviously more known for his films.

Go

Um, and you were kind of coming at this from a similar perspective, so I'm curious what you, what you kind of, what your first impressions were getting there for the first time.

I mean, my priority for this trip in, in totality was to meet with my Star Wars friends, podcast buddies, because I hadn't been to a Star Wars event since Celebration 2022 in Anaheim.

So it, it had been four years and I, and I know like, you know, four years really isn't that bad in the grand scheme of things.

I get that.

But it, it did dawn on me, and it was why when you invited me to Rebel Scum, I'm like, "Okay, yeah, we're gonna do this," because I'm like, "I don't wanna wait till 2027 in LA," you know, and to maybe see if hopefully my friends will get tickets.

Some did, some didn't.

Right? It was a mixed bag in that regard.

Oh, yeah

Uh, what key projects are you focusing on into twenty twenty-seven?

Well, they're mostly around capacity expansion.

So we opened a couple of new Emirates campuses this year.

Uh, the one in Sandton on Grayston Drive doubled our capacity from the previous sites to nine thousand.

Uh, we've also built a, a brand-new campus in Nelson Mandela Bay that's added fifty percent capacity there, to around four and a half thousand.

Uh, we are about to break ground on a, a new mega campus for both Emirates and Vega at Cornubia near Umhlanga in KZN.

Uh, that should open in twenty twenty-nine with a capacity north of ten thousand.

Are you finding that parents are keeping up with the fee payments given the tough economy?

How is that level of diversic- diversification benefiting you, um, as an education provider at the moment?

Well, I guess the, uh, benefit we have is that we operate in both schools and tertiary institutions, so then there's a nice balance and synergy between the two.

Um, our schools division in South Africa is performing very well, but the, the standout is actually in tertiary.

The tertiary division has grown revenue by 17% and operating profit by 19% in the first half of the year.

So, um, that, that is helpful in terms of the, the balance.

And, and then you mentioned our African operation.

Uh, we've been very successful in adding schools and, uh, building out organic capacity in, uh, Ghana, in Ethiopia, in Botswana, and in Kenya.

How is that, uh, segment of the p- of the portfolio performing?

I don't have a very good frame of reference for Celebration or anything like that, but for those of you that have been, how would you compare the, the crowd management and just the overall Star Wars-themed experience of RSC to something on a bigger scale, like Celebration?

I, I love that this already feels like an episode of IPC, and like Zack's asking, uh, Ben, by my proxy, all of us all these questions.

Um, yeah, today I would say was equivalent to the, the hype, the, the energy, the sheer amount of people at Celebration.

Obviously, this is...

I believe this is too small of a venue in a mere hotel, t- technically a hotel ballroom.

But, um, like, I really feel the Celebration vibes here.

It has been s- so exhilarating and, you know, as my, my second day, um, you know, some of our, uh, second day here at Rebel Scum Con.

Story time

Your relationship with underwriters?

Yeah.

So, uh, we have a, um, a positive working relationship with underwriters that is necessarily, um, a, a bit in conflict, right? So underwriters have, uh, they have two sets of clients to make happy.

They have investors, and they have issuers, and those clients have diametrically opposed, um, outcomes that they expect from a transaction.

The highest possible yields on one hand and the lowest possible yields on the other.

The least flexibility that the issuer has and the most flexibility that the issuer has.

And so our job is to make sure that we are the arbiter of that inherent conflict that underwriters have, um, on behalf of and in favor of our local government client.

I can't imagine we're gonna see quite what we saw in March as far as adding debt in there, but, uh, I wouldn't be surprised.

No, no

... um, I, I'm still recovering from my drive.

I've, all I've j- I've just seen these fine folks, and I'm still just, like, soaking in how crazy this area is.

We're in, uh, Frisco, Texas.

It's near Plano.

It's, um, like, in the vicinity of Dallas, and I've, I, I was just blown away by the surroundings.

I mean, yeah, is it Hollywood? No, of course not.

I would, I, I think I would be angry if Zeb doesn't show up, okay? At this point, where is Zeb? Put him with his family, okay? It's past time.

Oh.

So I went back to fake Robert and said, um, you know, "How does this book club opportunity sort of work?" And fake Robert said, "Well, um, what I do is I organize a Zoom meeting with all of my thousands of members, and you appear on the Zoom meeting, and you can talk about your book, and then I will buy your book." And I said, "Oh, w- right.

Um, will you be at this Zoom meeting? Are you asking the questions?" And Robert said, "Yes." Fake Robert said yes.

Right.

And their name is now being used by some slummy scammer to defraud book authors.

I hate all of this, and the more pain I can cause this person, the better.

So for listeners, please watch out for my post on LinkedIn.

If you're connected to one of the banks or know someone at one of the banks that I post, 'cause I'll be posting the names of them, let me know who's in the fraud department or the AML department so I can get these accounts shut down, so we can at least cause this guy some pain.

So can we kind of dive into that? You know, how does it compare to your average mid-sized company, for example?

Yeah.

It's worth thinking about where Conti came out of.

So the sort of genesis of this group was, uh, we think, um, a, a cybercrime operation that had been around for quite a while.

It grew out of the sort of Russian cybercrime community in the sort of 2010s.

Um, the person who's accused of setting this up went by the nickname Stern, and Stern was involved with a previous, uh, sort of malware group, group called, uh, called the, the Dire Group.

Um, Dire got raided and went under, and that was pretty traumatic.

So how did that kinda introduction to the dark side of what they were doing actually play out in these chat logs?

Did you do that and did you find it helpful?

I was directed to a patient support group prior to my treatment.

And I went to that and was an anomaly because everybody pretty much in that group was post-treatment.

So they weren't ready for somebody that was pre-treatment.

I was trying to get as much information as I could.

And I didn't find it to be the most welcoming environment.

People really wanted to talk about kind of what they were going through post and didn't really... connect with me.

And obviously with survivorship, right, the ongoing, is there anything to add to say like what aspects of survivorship are rarely discussed but deserve more attention?

So what happened back in September 21 here? Give us an outline of the attack.

In a way, the Graph Diamonds attack was a fairly typical Conti MO.

They hacked into the organization, scrambled its data, stole a bunch of data, and then threatened Graph and said, look, you pay the ransom to decrypt your data.

But by the way, even if you refuse to do that, we are going to leak this incredibly sensitive data And that's going to be a big problem for you because this is private data of your customers.

So either way, you pay the ransom.

And they were hitting them up for in the millions, we think about seven, seven and a half million.

It is fair to say that diamond dealers like Graf, you know, they have a hugely famous client list.

Tell us about what happened here, because

in Toronto I don't think we're not worrying about spoilers if you're listening to this you've either seen the movie or you don't care about

spoilers but like in a scene that we thought Din Djarin dies and like Grogu's trying to keep him alive very sad music very quiet And you have these kids who are so used to the constant music, constant stimulation, just like jumping down and like being loud next to me.

And anyways, so you combine the social anxiety factor and the fact that I wasn't with you guys.

That was why I haven't seen it like six times like y'all.

But when we see Starfighter next year, you know, I'm going to.

I'm going to see it a million times with y'all.

But I loved the movie.

What were your initial impressions?

you're allowed to spoil the movie we haven't I think we talked about the ending of the movie as soon as the opening of the podcast two weeks ago in Toronto I don't think we're not worrying about spoilers if you're listening to this you've either seen the movie or you don't care about

spoilers but like in a scene that we thought Din Djarin dies and like Grogu's trying to keep him alive very sad music very quiet And you have these kids who are so used to the constant music, constant stimulation, just like jumping down and like being loud next to me.

And anyways, so you combine the social anxiety factor and the fact that I wasn't with you guys.

That was why I haven't seen it like six times like y'all.

But when we see Starfighter next year, you know, I'm going to.

I'm going to see it a million times with y'all.

But I loved the movie.

What were your initial impressions?

It was gonna be their inaugural season in '95, and Neil is there as an assistant under, under Jarrad Neesham.

Yeah.

Well, what happened was, uh, they, they locked it away.

They knew they had the number one draft pick, so I was locked in eight weeks before the draft.

Um, so they said, "Look, we, we're going with you.

We're gonna lock that in." And so part of that, they invited me to the grand final, um, between Geelong and West Coast 1994, and I sat down and then I just remember someone saying to me, um, "I want you to intro- I want you to be introduced to your new assistant coach, Neil Danaher." So that's the first time I met him.

And then, uh, yeah, the journey continued from there.

How, how did you find out though, Geoff, and how did he tell the players the news that he'd coached over the years?

[laughs]

... happy times and, you know, ra- shiny rainbows and all that.

Like, they, they are going through adversity.

They have trauma.

They have so, a shocking past, and I think there's always more room in the Star Wars saga, uh, to explore that further.

Uh, we, we, we see it a lot, you know, with Darth Vader, especially a lot of the comics that, into that, um, goes deeper into Vader's psyche, uh, while he, you know, is just dealing with, you know, the past.

But in the case of Maul, I, I really loved the visuals of that scene [laughs] where Maul's go, like he's like, it, it's almost like that scene in Uncharted, in the Uncharted movie where, like, Nathan Drake's, like, just walking through a desert, all, all the wind and, like, there's nothing else around, and it's just like, "I'm lost.

[laughs]