But perhaps to preface that, before we get into that, maybe you could just give us a bit of an overview of poem one as a as a project for you um what was the impetus for it you kind of set the scene a little bit with chat gpt and sort of seeing its creative potential but i'm curious what went from there to actually having this idea for a device and putting it out into the internet and getting lots of people to support that and help us fill that gap the kind of uh

ridiculous story of many twists and turns.

So I'll give the quick version.

I want to say something about the prehistory of the AI clock, as it was called then, is it came from what I would call a reverse Turing test.

So I was building a prototype with a client where this is very, very early again, like GPT-3 days, right? GPT-3.5.

And the user needs to be able to speak via WhatsApp to an AI.

And I made something just to kind of connect these things up.

with this.

And relative to some of the things we're going to talk about, what was the general theme as you're talking with folks, particularly those that are invested in the virtualization ecosystem? What did you come away with as to where their minds are? What are they thinking?

Yeah, I think the biggest takeaway is we're still in the middle of this.

Even though this happened in...

Still transitioning.

Yeah, like 2023, I think is fall of 2023 is when the acquisition went down.

I think that's right.

You think that this has already passed and we're still in the thick of it.

Like talk about when you're going into these environments where our customers are facing some of these transitions, you know, end of life, moving, shifting, like what are some things that you're that you're contending with or advising customers right now in that space.

but what's the questions that they should be asking?

Well, the first question is, you've got to wonder why the velocity of a deal is so fast.

So, because again, you know, in sales terms, we often call that a bluebird when you get something that comes in really quickly and closes really quickly.

And regardless of what industry you're in, everybody sort of celebrates, don't they? And they go, great.

You know, we, we weren't expecting this.

It wasn't in our pipeline and our order book isn't great news, but if you step away from the deal and it goes back to what we said earlier, that people are buying for a reason.

We step away from the deal and we go, okay, what's happening that means that they have to move so fast now it could be a license and it could be a software thing which means they are you know they're out of their commitment with an existing partner and they want to move away from them for whatever reason and they've left it too late and there can be a number of other reasons But I always get quite, not suspicious in a negative way, but I always get suspicious in a positive way that says, why are they needing to move so fast? So what's been the trigger, to use your word from earlier, what's been the trigger or the signal that says we need to move quickly? What happens if you don't? So before we even think about the infrastructure that we need in our own organization and the longevity to support that moving forward, step off the gas, look at what's going on and make sure that you've qualified really well so that you understand the urgency for the customer.

Is there an example that you could share?

How did this come about?

Well, I suppose it came about in a number of ways, really.

One of the first things that happened was back in the 60s when one of our oryx, Caroline, was sent over to Phoenix Zoo in the States.

and formed part of the sort of world herd, which I believe was probably only about eight individuals.

I think five captive individuals and three wild individuals.

And they started the world herd, which went on to then be released into the wild.

The youngsters of those, the generations of those were reintroduced.

I'm wondering what kind of lessons though were learnt from Operation Oryx that have guided ZSL today, that it can be done?

And again, the fact that they're doing this for the whole university, really moving the brand with the experience that the leadership team has, but Matt, know i think this is this is really where you and your team have recruited some unbelievable people into the organization

yeah well and i can give you maybe a a practical example of exactly what we're talking about so if you go back you know a couple years and this is really university-wide right not just you know focused on the university of utah but almost every university is structured the same way where you have an auxiliary services department you know that is going to maintain facilities is going to work on of campus wide opportunities right and then within that group they're going to have a sales arm an activation arm you know maintenance all of those things then you're going to have an outsourced um mmr partner uh and for us that's jmi or that was jmi and but you know play fly and learfield and others um and then in a lot of cases you'll have an outsourced ticketing partner and and so as as we looked at this opportunity holistically, you know, the one thing or one of the things that professional teams do really well is they put all that under one roof.

Right.

And so you can sit in one room with with the right stakeholders to make decisions across the board because, you know, this is and you go back to kind of the Gestalt principles of, you know, the sum is greater than the the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Right.

Or maybe that's the inverse.

I might need to go back and fix that, but we can do that later.

you know, walking and running and sprinting in this process.

But what's your process like from what's design pathfinding and taking an early idea and exploring from there?

I think one of the things to say is that the process of figuring out new things has changed probably in the last couple of years.

And it reminds me a lot of what it was like in the first decade of the 2000s and the 2010s.

So let's kind of like look at the last kind of 10 years was dominated by like digital or like smartphone digital.

Everyone knows what that looks like.

And before that with the web, everyone knows what that looks like.

People learn HTML at school, right? And so we all kind of know what a a team can do in three months and you know like how like what what they can do and like what the opportunities are and those kind of things and with new technology we don't like we don't know what like that's that's the thing that's changed in the last two years the way you figure out what to do with you know ai or the new technology a multiplayer or Hardware, right, is you don't figure that out by standing in front of a whiteboard or writing post-it notes or by kind of doing a study about what people are actually doing and making a PowerPoint deck, right? You figure it out by rolling your sleeves up.

Is it typically one thing like multiplayer that you're obsessed with and that's all the links you're saving? Or do you have folders, just all the nitty gritty about this? Because I really liked it.

Uh, we, we packed all our stuff in Matt's Tesla.

Yep.

Managed to get, uh, get, uh, one, one good size plane each in there with canopy and these really nice chairs and a table and-

[laughs]

Yeah, so in, in Orange County, we're in Orange County.

It's in that area.

It's called Market Place.

Wow.

Uh, so it was a bit of an interesting start, and then we just sorta grew, uh, organically with our, with our people internally for, oh, for just year-on-year.

Um, we took over our second site, uh, about three or four years after our first one, and then, um, built a new workshop, rolled the two into one, and then, um, started expanding around 2007 into our second site.

Um, and then 2023, we actually took over two more sites.

So we've got four now.

What's your experience in that space?

Again, it's getting harder.

Um, losing the, the, um, tech schools years ago was the start of the decline, I suppose.

What's your experience in that space?

Again, it's getting harder.

Losing the tech schools years ago was the start of the decline, I suppose.

But having the new Victorian Pathways certificate, the VPC program, um that's actually is helping us so they we they're a school-based apprentice where they can come to us for one day a week in year 11 two days a week in year 12 and i get a really good taste of the industry we get to um spend some time with them see if they're the right fit for our business so we we go down that path we go to the taste colleges there's a certificate to an automotive which is a 12-week short course that a lot of the tapes will run we're really involved with Box Hill TAFE and they have like a speed dating process where they'll finish their 12-week program, you'll get a number of employers turn up and you get three minutes with each person that has done the 12-week program.

And so you get to interview them.

So if you're waiting for them to walk in your door, it doesn't happen.

But if you get out there and you get engaged either in the community, the schools or the TAFE colleges, We are still having a pretty good run with getting the right fit for our business.

Okay, so how lucrative is it for an apprentice in construction rather than in automotive? What's on offer in

Wow.

Uh, so it was a bit of an interesting start.

And then we just sort of grew, uh, organically with our, with our people internally for, oh, for just year on year.

Um, we took over our second site, uh, about three or four years after our first one, and then, um, built a new workshop, rolled the two into one, and then, um, started expanding around 2007 into our second site.

Um, and then 2023, we actually took over two more sites.

So we've got four now.

What's your experience in that space?

Again, it's getting harder.