So can we start there with some of the things that came out of the retreat?

Sure, absolutely.

I'd love to.

I mean, we had a fabulous retreat in the board.

I mean, hats off to the board.

They came in ready and engaged and sponges to absorb what it is that we are focusing on next year.

And one thing to start out with is it's the one thing about NAMM is that it cannot be a stop start every year.

What advocacy issues do we have right now that you believe NAMM's attention is going to next?

Can you talk about the fans in Bruges for that team and what year this took you back to?

Yeah, so I think it is rare with something, with a trend of this magnitude to actually be able to find the starting point for it.

But we were able to find this group of soccer fans in Bruges, fans of a club called Club Bruges.

And not only were we able to find the people that started it, it was unique that we were able to find a specific game, a specific moment where it began, which was an October 22nd, 2003 match between AC Milan and Club Bruges.

Club Bruges was a heavy underdog in this game.

AC Milan was a defending Champions League winners, a team that was stacked with Hall of Fame soccer players.

And Club Bruges really had no business going in there, winning this game.

What do you what do you think? Where did you where did you come away from this project on that question?

So by using, you know, AI, Stephen, as you say, you can actually now gear them.

And I think it comes back down to what Steve was saying.

I mean, your tech stack is going to be based on your style and your approach.

I mean, who is your audience? How is your delivery? All of those are customized to the originator.

And that's what's nice about, I mean, the technology committee, in some case, sometimes are drinking from a fire hose in regards to everything that we throw at them.

Review this, review that.

Because again, we are approached by a lot of vendors that have a new technology that Steve's job and team is to identify, is there a need? And then when you're looking at the need, is this an individual user? Is this a brokerage? Is this a larger box of origination that may need a different style and different approach of tech stack? But it all comes down to style and delivery.

The NAMM

Right.

Um, and so I came home from El Salvador and went straight to San Francisco, and I was just blitzed from having had this experience, and walked into this room full of actors talking to each other about acting and movies and television, and ah.

And I didn't know if I was gonna, um, or go blind.

[laughs] And, um, I looked across the room, and there was this face I recognized, and I walked over to her and I said, "Excuse me.

I'd just like you to know that, um, every time I see you, I feel a little, I feel, uh, really good, and I feel a little calmer than, uh, than I had been prior to that." And she said, "Oh, Mike, that's very sweet.

Very nice of you." And, um, because her name is F-A-B and mine is F-A-R, and they took, they did everything alphabetically when they introduced us all, so we stood in line together and were introduced together.

And I said, "Is there, um, somebody in particular in the sh- in, here you'd like to meet?" And she said, "Oh, there are two people I'd like, I'd really like to meet, Walter, Walter Cronkite," and another newsman whose name I can't remember.

Did it ever feel risky when you were doing it?

You know, do you necessarily know what you're getting if you're cracking one of these things into your drinks? Are there potential side effects and harms?

Well, I presume the initial problem might be, without any regulation, that the dosage of THC you get in it could be very variable.

And obviously the lower the dosage, the less side effects you might have from it.

And the discussions, if you go on the social media and look at the discussions, the discussions are about what's the optimal dosage, and it's somewhere per can about 2.5 to five milligrams of THC they're talking about.

I mean, are they just worried they're gonna get addicted to alcohol? Do we know what the motivation is for those dry months?

Well, this is part of the new sober sensitive era we live in.

So people are, first of all, they're hearing about the risks of alcohol, cancer-related risks, and health-related risks, particularly from the World Health Organization message that there is no safe level of alcohol when it comes to cancer risk.

And that has influenced, and we're actually seeing reports of fall in levels of consumption of alcohol in the younger generation.