Joining hosts Frank La Vigne and Andy Leonard, Geoff shares insights on the intersection of AI and creativity, the evolving landscape of careers in the age of artificial intelligence, and the crucial balance between innovation and traditional storytelling. We'll delve into AI's role in enhancing emotional connections with audiences, its potential to disrupt traditional media and consultancy services, and the caution needed to maintain authenticity and human touch amidst technological advances.

From amusing anecdotes about AI challenges in creative tasks to profound reflections on storytelling, this episode is a treasure trove for anyone intrigued by how emerging technologies are reshaping the arts and beyond. Stay tuned for inspiring discussions, engaging stories, and actionable insights—right here on "Data Driven".

Let's get started!

Show Notes

Links

• Geoff's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffthatcher/

Moments

00:00 Jeff Thatcher revolutionizes experiences with AI innovations.

08:56 Storytelling is more important than technology investment.

13:38 Football field experience mimicking recruitment video reveal.

18:45 AI summaries risk losing creative inspiration.

22:21 AI enhances storytelling and client engagement passion.

31:49 Collaboration with LLMs enhances content drafting.

34:53 We integrated AI and illustrator for Christmas card.

43:03 AI empowers creativity, challenges traditional gatekeepers.

44:44 Simplicity aids decision-making; avoid complicating stories.

51:19 Slow drive through town renewed my soul.

56:26 Created AI color library to match teams.

01:01:30 Creativity requires discipline, connections, and stimulus.

Welcome to another exciting episode of Data Driven.

Today, we have a truly unique guest, legendary theme park

experience creator, Jeff Thatcher. With decades of

expertise under his belt, Jeff has crafted groundbreaking

exhibitions worldwide, from immersive museum tours to innovative

AI enhanced live experiences. In this episode, we'll

dive into how Jeff is blending creativity with cutting edge technology

to create stories that don't just entertain but also connect emotionally.

From talking paintings to college football heroics, Jeff's work

shows how AI isn't just a tool, it's a bridge to imagination.

And a quick note for parents, while we don't use any profanity,

there's a discussion about Saint Nick that might not align with what the little

ones believe. So fasten your seatbelts for an episode

that redefines storytelling in the age of AI.

Well, hello, and welcome back to Driven, the podcast where we explore the

emergent fields of data science, artificial

intelligence, and, of course, data engineering. With me this time,

is my most favoritest data engineer in the world, Andy Leonard.

How's it going, Andy? It's going pretty well, Frank. How are you?

Good. Good. Good. We're recording this just before Thanksgiving, which is gonna

be what I like to call the time of madness. Because 2

of my 2 of my kids have birthdays in December and, obviously

yeah. But today, I'm

excited. I really have an interesting guest here.

And he is, he's been

told to me by his PR person. We had a little bit of banter about

this in the, in in the thing. But I would say it's true. Legendary

theme park experience creator, Jeff Thatcher. And for the last

4 decades, Jeff has been pushing the boundaries of live experiences.

With his company, Creative Principles, Jeff has designed ground

beak breaking, exhibitions around the world from,

doing some work with the largest zoo in the United Arab Emirates

to designing something that is called a mobile

reverse vending machines, that managed to gather

13,000 donations in one season to creating an immersive

tour at the, Ozark Ozark Historic Mill

and more. But now Jeff is exploring the many ways that

artificial intelligence can elevate the live experience and designs.

That could mean museum visitors forming an emotional connection with a

holocaust victim or, visitors forming

a relationship with an indentured field worker. Individuals could ask

these characters or museum subjects questions,

that a curator never would have thought of, and receive

thoughtful detailed answers thanks to the power of

AI. So welcome to the show, Jeff. I'm definitely,

very curious about this, and I also like the the your your description of let's

not let the fun police ruin AI because I can totally

see that happening. Amen, brother.

So so tell us about You know, I was just so it was funny. I

was just watching all the people complain about the new Coca

Cola, holiday magic commercial that was produced in AI.

And everybody's all this backlash about using artificial intelligence to create

this commercial. And I'm like, wait a second. Don't they know that Santa Claus is

fake? And you're complaining about using artificial intelligence to create

a commercial about someone that's not real? Or talking polar

bears? What's the problem? Right. Right. It's

all fake. It's okay. We love it. It's storytelling. It's

alright. You know? It's okay to believe in the magic.

But how can you complain about using artificial intelligence to

create something that's in and of itself not

real. So and Oh, that's a good point. And if they you know,

it's one of those things where if Coca Cola hadn't done something kinda cutting

edge, they would have been just labeled another big company that's not

using AI and being cutting edge. Right? Like, it's kinda like the they're in a

no win situation with I'm starting I'm starting to think

honestly that we should just stop calling things AI because, like, we

just opened. And, you know, listen, I'm not trying to, like, overstate it. We

actually did our research on this because, you know, if you look at

AI in live experiences or AI in museums

or attractions, the very first use of it was in 2017 in

Brazil where IB IBM and Ogilvy with Watson

went down to Brazil, and they allowed people to actually talk to

paintings and ask paintings, you know, these paintings as artwork. You could ask the

artwork a question. You know? I remember that. I remember there was a

Salvador Dali. Yeah. Well, that's that's a different project. That's a that's

a different project. Okay. Yeah. That's a different one. So 2017 was in Brazil

with Watson. And then Salvador Dali was 2019 in

Saint Petersburg, Florida, the saint the Salvador Dali Museum, where you can

actually talk And they updated again, I think, in 2021, where you can

actually talk to Salvador Dali. And then there was

the Shoah Foundation did a AI experience where you could actually talk

and ask, you know, like personal questions of Holocaust survivors, like, you know,

how do you still have joy? And what was it like when you were

a kid? And, you know, just you could ask it anything. Like one one

of these Holocaust survivors, you could ask him or her anything you wanted. And

then the National World War 2 Museum did this something very similar to the

show a foundation where you could, you know, talk to a USO dancer and talk

to a pilot and just ask them questions. But what we did

at the College Football Hall of Fame in 2024 was we actually made the guest

the star of the experience. And no one had ever done that before Where, you

know, the guest comes in. You know, they they stand at a kiosk. Their their

picture is taken 5 times. They answer questions

like, Frank, what's your favorite football team? College football team. That was

not a rhetorical question. I actually wanna know. Oh, I actually

don't follow college football, so I'll, I don't know. Fordham Rams.

I'll give a shout out to you. Rams. There you go. What about you, Andy?

Do you have a favorite college football team? Sure. We'll go with the Virginia Tech

Hokies. There you go. The Hokies. And then you ask what the

least favorite team is. Most people say Alabama or Ohio State or one

of the big ones, but, you know, your least favorite team. And and then, you

know, you know, what what do you what kind of football food do you like?

And how do people describe your personality? So it kinda gets your coaching. So, yeah,

basically, you know, the kiosk asks you a bunch of

questions. You upload your pictures. It all goes up into the cloud, all processes.

And then as you go to 19

different exhibits around the hall of fame, you become part of the exhibition.

So when you go, for example, to the coaches exhibit, and

there there's an actual coaches exhibit that talks about, you know,

Lavelle Edwards and Lou Paterno and all these great coaches and Newt

Rockne. You get to actually there's a creates a mini

mockumentary about your life as the best coach that never was. When you go to

the cheerleading exhibit, you see That's really cool. Yeah. When you see the

TCU cheerleading outfit, you see the, you know, Notre Dame

mascot, you you then become you get to pose with your favorite team's

mascot. You get to see yourself in a cheerleading outfit. You get to see

yourself in the weight room. You get to see yourself as a flyover pilot. You

get to see yourself posing with the Heisman. You get to see yourself

in the exhibition. And, honestly, it's never been done before.

But our challenge has been that everybody just is like, oh, yeah. AI.

Whatever. You know? You know what I mean? Because it's like

because, you know, we actually had a reporter from Wired come in, and

she was like, man, you guys totally undersold this. And we're like, no. We really

didn't. We told you exactly what it was, but we have this

this filter over us with AI where so many people are talking about

it, and so much of it is hype. And so much of it is beyond

hype. It's unbelievable. Like, I was just looking at the new, oh,

it's a Google thing where it turns anything into a podcast. Like

Notebook l m, actually. Yes. Thank you. Notebook l m. Talking about that,

before you joined. Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. Right? So you so you have these

two issues going on. You have one where every single company in the world is

labeling what they're doing as AI, and it's not really true. And then

you've got the other hand where people are talking about and doing things that are

groundbreaking with AI, like we did at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta.

And everybody's like, whatever. You know what I mean? Because they

don't interesting dichotomy. You're right. Like, I I now that you pointed out, like, you

know, the whole thing of, like, you know, people do not

realize that, like, you know, obviously, there are no polar bears looking, you

know, cracking open, you know, glass bottles of Coca Cola with

their, you know, with their paws. But, like, you know, that was CGI. Why was

that, like, you know, praised and became a cultural icon? And then this

is, you know, universally panned. Now I will say from from

from looking at it, there are scenes in there where it definitely looks

uncanny valley when you have the people, but that's to be expected right

now. You know, you know, I am not a data

scientist like Andy. Right? I I when it

comes to programming, I'm I'm not a, you know, I'm not

an AI expert. I don't consider I mean, I use AI, the

groundbreaking work with AI, but the people that did the programming and did the

heavy engineering prompting were a great partner in New Zealand called Hypercinema.

But I have to say, what what we always forget with new

technology is that it's really about the story. It's about telling a

great story, especially on the creative side. You know, I

mean, you know, people clients sometimes

will will like, oh, what if people say this was a waste of money? Like,

you know, like, oh, I'm not I'm not sure we could spend you know, $2,000,000

on an LED tower in a lobby because then they'll say, oh, you're just wasting

money. And I say, well, it's it's just like the movies. How

often do you walk out of a movie and say, well, that was a big

waste of money and time And it's bad. You never say

that when you walk out of a great movie. You never walk out of a

great movie and say, oh, that was a waste of time and money because it

was a great story. But when you walk out of Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor, you're

like, yeah, the effects were great, but what a waste of

time. What a waste of money. Right? Because it

was it was. It wasn't a great story. So, you know and

technology, specmology. You know, it's like people forget. I mean, animatronics,

we think are amazing, and we think Walt Disney invented them. That's not true. They're

actually invented Marie Antoinette and the Silver Swan. 17th

century, 18th century, we were making animatronics.

The holographic experiences that you see at Disney and Universal Studios

and all these things. The 19th century Pepper's ghost that was

invented in the UK by an illusionist.

3 d is great, and the new liminal

space 3 d LED screen is amazing because it gives you

10 times more projection and 10 times more depth of field and it's better on

the sides. So, you know, technology keeps improving. But, you know,

3 d has been around since, what, the 19 forties. It's but how many

of us have seen really lousy 3 d movies

or 4 d cinema or 5 d cinema or there's actually a theater in

China that says it's a 14 d cinema which is just ridiculous and

stupid. Right. But I know 14 d. But

it all is about, are you just gonna use it to tell what what are

you gonna do with it? Right? What are you gonna do with that technology? What

are you gonna do with that data? You guys talk about data. Right? Right. How

often do people take data and just do horrible things with it? You know,

how do people take it? You gotta tell a great story. You gotta

use it in a way that puts people in

the story. And, you know, the analogy that we use all the

time is I I don't know how if you guys are into theme parks, but,

you know, most of us have been to a theme park where they have the

old time photo studio in the western themed land, right, where you go

in and you put on the cowboy hat and the boots and the vest and

the gun and your wife or your girlfriend,

sometimes she's a salon girl. If you wanna be more stereotypical or she'll be

a cowgirl. Hopefully, they're not there at the same time. Well, hopefully,

you're posing together. Right? Yeah. But, you know. Oh, I see. Yeah.

Definitely. With with your spouse

or and or your yes. Okay. So you're, you know, you're posing

in this you're posing in this, you know, you're posing in this outfit.

Right? And it's fun, and it's an experience to do that. Well, what

we've done at the College Football Hall of Fame is essentially allow any guest

to pose as a football player, as a coach, as a cheerleader, as

a marching band, as a historic fan in the 19 twenties, as a historic fan

in the 19 eighties, as a flyover pilot. But we've

done that for 764 different teams. Now if

you were to actually go acquire

764 football uniforms for all sizes,

different genders. And then the same thing for

cheerleading costumes, uniforms, marching band uniforms. The warehouse

would be the size of that warehouse in Indiana Jones. Right? There's a lost ark

at the end of the movie. It's totally impossible. So all we

did with AI is something that we've been doing forever in the theme park industry,

which was we put you in the story. We immersed you in the story. We've

just been able to do it with AI with the scale and personalization that's not

possible anywhere else. And

that truly is as a experience designer as a

storyteller. That's what excites me about AI is being able to

tell great stories and to put people in the

story. And I have to tell you that is something that isn't

fake. That is something that is very real. When you see

someone walk onto the football field, it's like

the College Football Hall of Fame has this massive football field at the the finale

experience. Right? Well, it's not a complete it's like about the size of

a of a basketball court. Right? But it's a football field. Right? It's got the

green grass and it's got a big jumbotron at the end of it and it's

got a goalpost and you go in there and you go into the football field

to actually, you know, play football, like throw, catch, kick and things like

that. But when you see people walking in

to that football field and they see a video play

of themselves, it's a recruiting hype video with them in a uniform that comes over

and says, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Andy Lender to the Ohio

State Buckeyes. You know, you know, we're really excited about Andy's potential

as a wide receiver for, you know, when they see them,

their reaction is not fake. Their reaction is real. Their

reaction is to put their hands in the sky, to pump their

fists, because now they're part of their favorite

team. They're part of their college football experience. They are seeing

themselves in the story. And when you see yourself in the story,

it feels very real to you. And so that, to me,

is the exciting part about AI is in the future. You know,

when you start seeing this, the video tools that are coming from Meta

and, you know, you know, OpenAI and

everything else coming down the road. I believe that

you and I, that everyone, all the guests, all

the consumers will demand to be part of the

story because if they're not, it just won't feel the

same. So when you go ride Pirates of the Caribbean in a decade,

you'll be in the ride. You'll be actually

in the ride with Jack Sparrow. You'll be one of the pirates

on the ride. You'll see yourself in the ride.

And it'll be very interesting to see if the same thing happens in Hollywood, where,

no, I actually wanna be in the movie. I I, you know,

when, you know, when I go watch in 10 years, you

know, imagine redoing Rudy with AI.

And when the Notre Dame coach, Dan Devine, is giving

that great pep talk in the locker room, you know? And

I just love that scene, you know, where he's like in there at the locker

room and Rudy's in there and all the other players around it. And he's like,

he's like, gentlemen, this is our house. And no

one, and I mean no one comes into our house and pushes us

around. But in the future, you could

be one of the players kneeling next to Rudy.

That could be me. I could totally see that. I mean, you kinda get

glimpses of that now. Right? I mean, there's a lot

of music generation. Right? Like, I could easily see where

I want I'm having a bad day. I need some inspirational songs

that speak to me, and I want it in the style of pit bull. And

I want this type of, like, you know, this type of song about what I'm

working on. Yeah. Right? Yeah. You can kinda do that now with with a tool

like YuDio. And there's 100 of them. Right? Like

but, you know, the whole idea of, you know, pop music where

everyone listens to the same thing. I mean, it's,

you know, it might just be customized, like, not just a customized

playlist, but customized songs on your playlist. Like, it's not

it's not that outrageous. I mean, like, when you say that, I'm like, I

could see that being a thing. Right? Because Yeah.

Yeah. Cinema is a 100 ish years old. I mean,

it's time for you know, it's it's due for disruption of some sort right

now. You know, we you know, I don't and if and

and literally sorry. I've just got get passionate about this. No, please. I love

Scott Wiener if senator Scott Wiener of California would have been alive in

1910 or whatever it was, you know what I mean? He would have been saying,

oh, yes. This silent cinema, we need to make sure it's safe for everyone. You

know what I mean? Right. Right. Right. Right. Let's kill this silent

cinema industry before it even gets off the ground because, you know, it needs to

be safe for everyone. It's On police. Right? The you

know, I mean, just just let us tell stories.

Let us use this technology to tell stories. And, you know, listen, there's

there is a danger. I'll give you a very real example

that happened to us 3 weeks ago with music. So 3 weeks ago and

I know, this is just a a podcast. You're not gonna see

this. But so Well, they may. Oh, so this

so we were we we had a a a small gig. It was a

2 day consulting project with the the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine

Railroad, which is 5 minutes outside of Yosemite National Park in

in the Sierra Nevada Forest. Right? Mhmm. And it's a a logging

train, and guests get to ride on it and go through the forest and come

back in. It's a great train, great people. And they they they brought

us in to say, hey. Would you look at look at our operation and just

give us some advice and give us some tips? And it was

like, you know, it was we had a great time. Right?

And they they gave us this book, The Whistle Blow Knows More,

as part of our research. Now if I would

have just gone into AI, gone into ChachiPT or

whatever Gemini and just said, hey, could you please summarize the book, Whistleblows

No More by Hank Johnston? I would have

learned about it, but I wouldn't have gotten the inspiration

Right. That I needed to really tell a great story. You

still have to, as a creator, and I think the same is true as

a researcher, right, or as a data scientist, you still have to

do the hard work and read between the lines. Because if you

simply rely on AI to summarize something for you, you will lose

the inspiration. Because in this book, You know, I

started going through the pages and I'm going through it and I'm looking at it.

And of course, I didn't have time in 2 days to read everything, but I

was skimming through it. Right. And as I was skimming through the

pages, I found a poem. Called The Whistle Blows No

More. Right? And it's a a really

powerful poem that talks about essentially the whistles

stopping because the logging industry ended

after clearcutting 35,000 acres, you know what I mean,

around the around the Sierra Nevadas. They, you know,

they the Great Depression was hitting. They saw the writing on the wall,

and they, you know, they shut it down

and completely liquidated everything and sold everything for

scrap. Wow. Including the 54 mile

log flume that went from the Sierra Nevadas down to Madera, California.

This is just amazing, the things that happened. And now when you're there and

you look at the mill pond, it's just so beautiful and pristine. It's kind of

hard to believe that the whole thing was clear cut, and was

just a major industrial operation in

1931. And of course, I can't find the poem right now.

But just in skimming through it, I found this wonderful poem. And

so we took that poem. And we took it into A.

I. And we created a song out of it. Oh, very cool.

A folk song. Right. And then we played the folk

song, for the owner of the railroad.

She got a tear in her eye. Wow. You

know? And, and this was even before

version 4 of Suno came out, which was pretty amazing. Version 4

came out a couple days ago. But but

so, you know, when it comes to AI, and I believe this is true with

any technology, you have to be very careful and

guard yourself that you still have the discipline to do the research

and to do the legwork and to do the hard work to get the

inspiration you need to tell a powerful story.

But then you can use that AI. You can use that technology. Because,

honestly, it was a 2 day consulting project.

I would have never had time, money, or resources

Right. To compose a folk song based on this

poem in that amount of time.

Yeah. So the automation is you

you you were just relying on the automation that has

gotten I and I'd I'd say it's gotten mixed reviews. I

think there are a number of people who look at stuff and kinda focus on

the things that where AI misses.

You know, and it does. It it misses the hallucinations and the

things like that. Mhmm. And they kinda build their narrative,

off of that. And we find that across all sorts of

fields. I mean, I I see that in data warehousing,

and and, you know, before AI even showed up. But it's

it's amazing to to not just we get to

see you, and we do have video, by the way, that we do post, that

people can see you as well.

But people don't need to see you to hear it in your in your

voice, Jeff, your your passion for what you're talking

about. And that passion is really, about telling

the story and delighting your consulting

clients, and you found a way to automate

some of that using AI. And it's that's, like,

excitement on the excitement of the normal passion that you

bring to your job. And I think that's awesome. But I

like that. I like I like I like the idea that where you're going with

this is that, you know, the time no

one I'm not a musical person, really, so I'm not gonna compose a

song. But I can't. I'm not a musical person either. I have no idea how

to compose a song. Use AI to adjust it and create songs

based on things that I like as a listener. Right? So if you watch

any of my live streams, the intro song that sings, you know, Frank's World on

the stream and all that, that that kinda like that, you know, Europop or

late nineties, early 2000 type of thing. That's AI.

Right? I never would have had that. I just would have used some kind of

stock thing or whatever or or or sound effects. So the ability to do

that, the ability to to to kind of also tie it to a much larger

story, I brought tears to that ladies eye. I think that's very,

very powerful. I think I think when you get down to it, that these are

gonna become storytelling tools that, you know,

now we look at it as controversial. But in maybe 10 years,

it'll just be just part of the toolkit. You know? Yeah. But but the

other point that I think is just as important is if I wouldn't have actually

thumbed through the real book. Yes. Yeah.

And actually, you know, taking the time to look at

it and to read it, I would have missed that poem. Because if I would

have just said, hey, ChatJPT, can you summarize The Whistle Blows No

More by Hank Johnson? It wouldn't have told me about the poem. No. I wouldn't

have got it. And, you know, you know, again, it's not just

about AI. One of my,

I'm gonna probably nerd out on you guys a little bit, which is kind of

ironic since you are both nerdy data scientists, but

but I'm fascinated by the NASA report about the

Columbia shuttle disaster. Mhmm. Because in that in

that report, it says that the endemic use of and I'm

I'm paraphrasing, but the endemic use of PowerPoint. No.

Yeah. It's right. Led to the engineers

not understanding the importance of what was being

said. Because if you if you actually write a report, if you

actually, as an engineer, write a report and

make somebody read that report, you can't miss what's

between the lines because you read all the lines. Right? It is there, and it

would be stated very, very clearly. You know what I mean? You know, this is

a danger. You know what I mean? And this needs to be

addressed. Well, people put the engineers were were going straight to the PowerPoint,

skipping the writing part. Mhmm. Right. And going and we've all been

guilty of that. Right? Of, oh, I have a presentation due. And you just build

the presentation at PowerPoint rather than doing the harder

work of actually writing it yourself. And then once you have it

written, translated into a PowerPoint. But the

actual committee that studied that shuttle Columbia

tragic loss that cost, I don't know, was it 7 lives or something.

Right? They blamed, and I'm quoting, it was the

endemic use of PowerPoint by the engineers. And we have to be careful.

We have to watch ourselves as creatives that we

don't lose our edge and lose our creativity

through the endemic use of AI. We we have to make sure we still do

the hard work. And again, I recently watched a

talk about AI from actually one of my, we'll call it a spiritual leader,

somebody in my church, and we don't you're gonna get the details of it, but,

and they talked about, you know, yes, use

AI, but don't let it act upon you. Make sure

you're using it. Make sure it doesn't use you. Right?

Right. Because Yeah. We can let it use

us. We can let it, you know, because it's like, where does

that inspiration come from? Right? I mean, if you believe in inspiration.

I believe in inspiration. I do. And I

believe that, you know, not to get spiritual on you guys, but I believe that

God inspires us. I do. Yeah. And I believe we get inspiration. And I

believe he cares about our work. Right? In the same way he cares about a

farmer, you know, providing food for his family. I I think he cares about

our work. And and so I believe in inspiration.

I believe in that spark, that light that comes. Mhmm. Right? And

and, you know, this this guy

that gave this talk was amazing. He basically said at the end of it, he

said, always remember, it is an algorithm. It does not

like you. It does not care about you. It doesn't even know you

exist. Right? Yeah. It's a tool. That's

powerful. You know? And I personally hate

hate hate hate hate hate all the branding around AI

because it's all humanistic. I hate what Open Eye Eye is doing with, like, oh,

hey. How's I tell that stupid chatty p t

whatever I have the upgraded one or whatever all the time. Would you

please stop asking me questions? Would you please shut up? Would you please

stop referring like, I want it to be like Star Trek.

Computer. You know what I mean? Tell me this, and then it shuts

up. Right? Don't act like a human on

I don't want you you are an algorithm. You are a tool. Right.

Right? I don't wanna treat you like a human being. We already live in a

society where people treat their pets like human beings, and they

shouldn't. Right? Sorry. But I don't wanna offend anybody here. It's sort of

controversial. But, you know My dogs won't hear it. I'm on headphones. Well,

listen. I'm sure you love your dogs. Right? But hopefully not as much as

your children. Right? No. It's Yeah. Right? You

know? I mean, we have a sickness in our

country, in our world where we we personify things that should not

be personified, and AI should not be

personified. It shouldn't. It's a tool. And so

dangerous to personify these things. It is. What was the

was it 2 years ago now? There was some guy who was saying that,

he was he was fired from Google, but he was saying that he was

dealing with a sentient. He said that he thought it was Ascension. It was

alive, and it was like, not really.

I mean, it was just It's an algorithm. It's Mac. Yeah. Well, if you asked

it, like, why are you and even some of the transcripts of the conversations while

they you could be led down the path thinking it was

alive, it would say, I'm sad because I can't go to the pub with my

friends or something like that. Like, it's a computer. It doesn't go to the pub

with your friends. Right? Yeah. And for someone that would say to me, like, oh,

well, you're using AI to generate emotions in a live experience, like a museum or

a show. I'm like, I use theatrical lighting to create

emotion. I use I use

music to create emotion. I use all kinds of tricks and

scenery that are fake to create emotion. There's nothing wrong with

that. Yeah. Right? Yeah. It's a tool.

To me, AI is a tool like animatronics and Pepper's

ghost and theatrical lighting and music and everything

else. It's a tool to basically create to tell to tell a great story.

But it is important that that story is a human story

and and a powerful story that's that's, you know, and there are good stories and

bad stories, and they're great storytellers and lousy storytellers. So

and it's not easy to tell a great story, but it's important

Well, I always like to use the example of when you're using AI, it's kind

of like, you know, the Aliens, the the second movie.

Yeah. Arguably, the last good Aliens movie, but that's Oh,

100% agree with you on that one. Alright. Good.

And, you know, we're at the end where she has the,

the exoskeleton. Right? Yeah. The exoskeleton was

originally built to lift heavy things. Right? But, you know, it's kind of like,

that's how I see AI. Right? Like, without a person in there,

it's it's it's just a tool. Right? It's just this lump of metal

in robotics. But, like, with a person in there, that person could do more,

whether it's, you know,

create a song out of a poem that never really existed or you know,

but but there still has to be a person driving it. And without without

a person driving it, it's it's it comes across as very

mechanical. It does. And in fact, I think and again, I'm not

you know, things are moving so fast with AI, but I I believe there was

some research done in Japan about 6 to 12 months

ago where they had, the AI write a

haiku, and they had people write a haiku, and then they had

people and AI collaborate to create a haiku. And it

was the the writing that was generated by a

combination of both that scored the highest among

consumers.

That doesn't surprise me at all. No. I was gonna say the same reaction.

Yeah. The collaboration the collaborative, aspect of

it is, I think, the strength. I think it's you know, when you

use an LLM to draft an

outline of some topic, and then you take it from

there or vice versa. You draft an outline and you hand it to

the LLM and say, you know, can you flesh this out?

Fill in the blanks. And I I've done both. I've

had, you know, 5 minutes I needed to respond to a

consulting client, and I've written 4 sentences because I

knew it needed to be longer than this, and it needed some finesse.

I I'm an engineer, and it shows.

So I've handed it to the LLM and said, hey. Make this, you know,

nice. Make this sound way nicer and expand it.

And a couple of times when I've done that, it's been so good.

I just copied and pasted it and sent it to the client. Now at the

same time, I've handed, you know, code, you know, in

one language. It's to translate this to another language. And,

it was my first exercise that I that I did that with it. I thought

it worked because it didn't fail. And I learned

a very important lesson from that that not failing is not the same

as succeeding. Mhmm. The code compiled, and it

executed, but it did not do what I wanted it to do. It looked like

it did, but it didn't. So the creative aspect of it,

though, I'm I'm fascinated to to hear you talk about, you know, how

you can do that. And it the story you told specifically about,

not having the resources or the time to, you know,

to turn that that poem into a song, that's such an

accelerator. And that's where I keep hearing the stories over and over again,

whether it's in language, whether it's in art.

It just keeps repeating itself that people are able,

through percussive prompting, you know,

you just keep beating on it until it gives you the answer that you want

or need. But because it can do so much so fast,

it can fail 3 or 4 times before it gives you

the song or the paragraphs or or what have you

because it it is an accelerator. So

There's no doubt. And, you know, I I was having a

healthy debate with the chair of the illustration department of the Savannah College

of Art and Design, and 2 of our kids went to SCAD, and we

live here in Savannah. You know, and and her initial reaction

was, oh, AI is gonna take my job. And I said, no. I said, it'll

take your job if you don't learn AI. Right.

But, you know, our designers and illustrators, we're a family creative firm, so they're

my daughters are illustrators and designers. They use they're

using it today. We're designing our Christmas card. Nice. Now, the ultimate

design of the Christmas card is definitely gonna have a human touch. It was written

by my son and I, who's our creative writer. So we we wrote it. And

we wrote it without the help of AI. We did. We just wrote it

ourselves. And then, what we

didn't do and probably should have is pumped it back into AI and said, hey.

Would you analyze this as a Christmas card and offer any suggested edits? Right? Because

that that is one benefit of AI is you can get an instant critic on

your work. Yep. And, but, you know, we did a

couple of you know, as as the writers in the firm, we did a couple

of we did some creative direction and some mood boards of what we wanted the

Christmas card to be like, but then we gave it to our designer and illustrator.

And, you know, and then she ran with it. And, you know Jeez. And she

did use AI as part of it, but, you know, she added her own little,

you know, touch to it from an illustrator perspective. And, again,

you know, I feel like a broken record here, but I keep emphasizing,

you know, illustrators, you know, over the last, you

know, probably 15 years, they've been doing

something called a mash up, where they don't actually like, if they need to put

a rock in an illustration and concept art, they don't actually draw

the rock. They go to Google and say rock. You know what I

mean? Images. They grab a rock they like, put it in, paint

over it, fundamentally transform it from a copyright perspective. They

fundamentally transform it, and then they're fine. Right? You know, I I loved

a couple of things. That's one that you just said, and then I'll go back

to something you mentioned earlier. I love that your family is working with you.

That that's a huge blessing, and I know because my mine

work with me. And you mentioned earlier about that. Nice, isn't

it? It is. And then you mentioned earlier about the spiritual aspect of that.

Both Frank and I are believers, so we we track. You know,

we we get what you're saying, and that all kinda ties together.

And my my children are older than Frank. So Frank's getting there. They've he's

got a teenager, a couple of teenagers, I think. No. I have a

preteen. Preteen? A teenager, preteen, and a toddler. And

so mine are a toddler. Oh my goodness. I'm a glider. There you go.

Yeah. And so I've got 2 children from my first marriage, and they are

the moms of my grandkids. And then I've got 3 children from my second

marriage, and they the youngest one is now 17. So I've kinda

done the the family, almost the family 2 point o thing,

but, it's super cool because there's they

never say things like half brother, half sister, or anything. Like, they're

all brother, sister. And they they mostly get along. They're

different. I mean, gosh, they're 2 sets. You know,

they in in between themselves, you know, same

mom and dad, they they don't always get along either. But it's it's

fascinating to to see what

I'll say this about it. I think the spiritual, dimension that you bring to

it brings a purpose beyond just

something. I don't wanna, I don't wanna poo poo it, but I also wanna make

the distinction. It's like if you're just in this for doing money,

for making money, it's not the same as if you're in it

for fulfilling some purpose beyond money. Do you wanna

make money? Well, yeah, you kinda got to. But

is it all about the money? No. And the

best and I would say the people who make probably the most

money in general, you know, 80 20 rule applies,

are the people who are driven by passion, driven

by some purpose that's beyond that. And I

know that's true of me, and I know, you know, I know it's true of

Frank. It sounds like there's that dimension, in your life and work as

well. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah.

Or I'm sorry. I should I should say amen. Yeah. There you go.

Well, I I think that there's an interesting thing here because I think one of

the things that I think has shocked a lot of people it's been

about 2 years since chat gpt was released. Right? I think

almost to the week almost to the day, but definitely to the week. Mhmm.

And I think that there was a certain smugness

in the creative class that prior to

generative AI, that they would have been the last jobs on earth.

Right? Like, the most ridiculous things you'll ever have heard Mhmm. Would never

be replaced. And then suddenly, I think 2 years ago, you

haven't had this big bag moment of, oh, wait a minute. You

know? And I when I say creative class, I don't No. It's just artists. Oh,

no. There are people that are very worried in the creative class for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's it's it's one of those things where,

you know, the whole idea of, like, you know, the low skilled jobs will be

automated away first. Right? That was that was the the the mantra of of

kinda AI people up until about 2 years ago this week.

But I think it really shook people

to the core to what does it mean to be human. Right? Because no one's

really figured that. No one really has a good solid

mathematical foundation of what does it mean to be creative? What does it mean to

be human? Right? I think. Right? This is just

me. And one of the things that people could

would always point to whether it was, you know,

weaving machines in the 1800 or, you know,

factory assembly lines in the 1900 and, you know,

whatever we have going now in terms of automation, was the idea that,

well, a machine can never be creative.

And I think 2 years ago, I think we're still struggling to get our head

around that. Right? And then when you start throwing in other things

like, well, you know, the notion of sentience. Right? The notion of a

consciousness and things like that, then it really gets muddled. And again

like you said before with our prevalence

to anthropomorphize things

and certainly I think today's culture generally

that's really muddied the waters

in terms of what what does what does it mean to be human? What does

it mean to be creative? And what does it mean? And I think you're you're

seeing people kind of go into 2 camps or maybe more

than 2. But the 2 obvious ones are extremes on the spectrum of I'm

never touching AI. If you use AI, it's cheating

versus there's people that use AI, but don't have

any soul to it. Right? Like the example of you actually reading the book. Right?

Yeah. I've have AI. I'm guilty of it. I have AI. I have no book

l m. I'll give it a PDF. It summarizes like a 300 page book for

me. I can listen while picking up the little one from daycare. I can listen

to their summary of the book. I've done it just as an experiment. And there

and there's as much value in that as reading cliff notes of of mice

and men. And I I mean, here's the thing. I mean, this is

you know, at the time, I didn't realize it was a sign that I actually

had a career in writing and and and, you know, storytelling,

but I would show up at my high school on the

day morning of the paper was due that day, and I would

sit and I'd interview my classmates about the book report

that was due. And I'd quickly write up a 2 page report on yellow

notepad because we didn't have typewriters and, you know, that stuff. And it's and I

turned it in and get a, you know, a b, whatever. And I didn't

care. It's a long story, but I didn't really have a parent that was

caring about my grades, and so I didn't care about grades. And you know what

I mean? So Mhmm. You know,

I would just interview people. Did I get less out of that as a human

being? Absolutely. You know what I mean? Yeah. Every cliff note I

I I didn't read this is true story. I didn't read one book in high

school. Oh, wow. Not one book.

Am I a better person because of that? No. I

probably should. I should have read books, but you know what I mean? But

you know, and and that and that is the worry. But you know, going back

to your point, I think there's another reason why the

creative class are so worried. And it's because

AI democratizes creativity. I believe

that every single person is creative. You guys are engineers, but I think you're

creative. I think every every child is

creative in our public education system pounds it

out of them. Our culture pounds creativity out of children. Right?

They're right here. Yeah. Everybody is creative. Everyone.

Right? And what AI allows

us to do is to if you have an

idea, you can then now use AI

to bring that idea to life, and that

scares people who have been the gatekeepers of that

creativity it scares people who write

music and produce produce music that I can create a folk song without

them it scares it scares writers

right That a CEO can write a book

without their help. And and and I

believe it should actually

to me, AI will have in the long term this kind of

sifting effect. And I'll give you one example

because I've never been a fan of the

brand consultants who make 1,000,000 of dollars coming up with brand

purpose, mission, and vision Because I just think it's so

obvious. Right? I I I like really you paid

$1,000,000 for that? For somebody to come in and tell you what your purpose and

your mission and vision is? You know what I mean? And then they're so

long winded that it's very difficult for people to make

decisions. I I am into simplicity when it comes to storytelling.

Right? The best stories are just a few words long.

Again, I had nothing to do with it. But at Animal Kingdom,

the story there or the theme there is the intrinsic value of nature.

Very simple. Mhmm. If that's the story, then

and if you and if you stay true to that story, then all

decisions become relatively easy. You know, and the guy that

was the imagineer over at Joe Rodey talks about it. He's like, okay,

you have a door in a zoo theme

park about the intrinsic value of nature. Is that is the door steel

or is it wood? Wood.

Obviously. Right? You know? It allows you to make decisions if you

keep it simple. I think when you when you, make

things complicated with all this brand mission vision stuff, it's amazing. But but you

can go into chat gpt now, and you could basically say, hey, could you give

me the mission vision of the I mean, this, you know, this train, for example,

did not have a brand position and and brand purpose and mission and

vision. I just asked ChatGPT to do it for us, and it it nailed

it. It nailed it. Wow. So

if you are if you are a creative in a

industry that is a bunch

of already, and again, bias

here. I think a lot of brand consulting is smoke and mirrors and

just stupid and ridiculous, but they

convince people to pay them a lot of money to do it. So if you're

in an industry where, you know, it's a

bunch of smoke and mirrors, well, you're exposed, and AI is gonna

expose you. There's there's there's just ignore the man behind the

curtain, so to speak moment. Exactly. Exactly. So

listen, if you're not good, if you're not talented, I mean, you can

certainly try to use AI to, you know, beef up your talents. But the bottom

line is, it is gonna have a sifting effect.

Because I think if one creative

firm is only using AI to generate ideas and another firm is

using their own inspiration and sparks with AI to enhance

those inspirations, very human inspirations and sparks. I

believe the latter agency is gonna win.

Yeah. Just like the haikus. Just like the haikus.

So, I think it will

have you know, that kind of effect on the industry. And,

again, it will also and this is totally true. We have no idea where it's

gonna take us. We can guess. Yeah. I mean, one of my

favorite story about technology not, you know, not really

knowing where it's gonna take us is I worked on the Iron Bridge,

Iron Bridge in the UK, Coalbrookdale. It's where the blast

furnace was invented. Like the coke

fired blast furnace, right? Was in Iron Bridge, UK.

And Abraham Darby, and this was I think, oh I'm gonna get it

wrong, like 1807 I think. Or maybe it was

in 7th, so I can't. I'm getting to get the date

wrong. But it was Abraham Darby and all he was trying to

do was make a cheaper iron pot.

That's it. He was simply trying to find a better way to make an iron

pot. Yeah. That's it. That's all he was trying to

do was make an iron pot. Invented the blast furnace,

and then because of that blast furnace, they were able to

make, steam engines because the iron. Right?

You because you couldn't make a steam engine without, you know,

without the ability to make it with iron. You know? So iron bridges, iron

buildings, iron, you know, you know, iron steam

engines, railroads, everything in the industrial

revolution was born out of that blast furnace. And all the guy was trying to

do was make a better pot. So, you know,

we always we never know exactly where this technology is going to take

us. That's true. I mean, we have prognosticators who think they

know. And I Yeah. Think I know in certain areas where

it's gonna take us. But at the bottom line, I don't know

exactly where it's gonna take us because somebody, some human being is

gonna come up with some really creative way to use AI that

none of us have thought of. Well, let me go back to, like, the nineties.

Right? Like, where, when the Internet was first kinda

starting to become of its own, like, the the graphical browser was new. Who would

have thought that would have replaced going to the mall? Who would have thought that

you'd be able to, you know, interact with people on

a device like this? Right? It just didn't

seem possible. Right? And it just that had all

these let alone you know, what's the joke about,

I mentioned in the last episode where it was like, don't talk to strangers. Don't

get it. Don't talk to strangers on the Internet, and don't get into

strange people's cars. And what do you do when you call an Uber? You

do exactly that. So true.

So true. Yeah. Well, the potential is I I agree with you, Jeff. The

potential is just limitless. And like you, I'm kind

of kinda waiting to see what all comes of this.

And we get to interview lots of guests,

doing work, or some of them doing work on the literal cutting

edge. We've actually had a few

guests that were CEOs, of companies,

and they said, you can't release this until we send you an email

saying that you can't, because they were telling us basically Oh, yeah.

Trade secrets. And so hearing that, that's,

of course, that's that's cool and shiny from a podcast

perspective. Don't get me wrong. We, you know, certainly love it when

that happens. I I love hearing people talk about

very pragmatic, very practical, very applied,

things because and it you know, I wasn't always an engineer. I started

as a farmer. And, you know, grew up on a a small

farm, not too far from where I live now. I live in

Farmville, Virginia. And, I mean, you mentioned Savannah.

Beautiful, beautiful place there. Yeah. Very pretty there. I

I lived in Jacksonville for a few years, and,

we would often drive from from Jack's back up to Virginia where the rest

of our family was. And we'd come through Savannah. We'd jump off

and go through and see just just drive through. We didn't I

mean, I think there was the is that where the fountain of youth is

attraction in Savannah? That's Saint Augustine. Saint oh,

okay. Saint Augustine. There's there's something like that there. I've I've

There's a there's a fancy there's a nearly nice fountain in the middle of town,

if memory serves. Maybe that's where we left. Forsyth, yeah.

Forsyth Park has a beautiful fountain. Yeah. So we'd stop there. But just

it was just relaxing to get off of this, you know,

more efficient, if you wanna call it that, highway

and and drive through this town very slow, you know, slow

way down, quarter or third of the speed. And just

it was just so peaceful just, you know, driving through there and and getting

that, I don't know, a renewal of the soul almost because, you know,

it's a long drive, from Jacksonville to Virginia.

And I just the the application

of the I guess it's

instead of humanizing AI, and I'm kinda changing the subject here

midway, but instead of humanizing or or, you know, doing

the anthropomorphic thing, letting it

enhance our work, letting it assist us in

being creative, letting letting it help

improve our life and work and efficiency

and just the amount of work, you know, we're able to crank out

on this. That's I think that's more of a thing. Is

is it gonna cost people jobs? I I agree with you, although I hadn't heard

it characterized that way before that if you're

phoning it in, you're faking it and, you know, mail and then

sending out invoices, then maybe, probably.

As as it gets better. I mean, there's no doubt it will take I mean,

but here's the thing. That's that's life. I mean, my first job was at

the Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News Newspaper Agency. It was a joint operating

agreement company, the newspaper agency in Salt Lake City, Utah. That was my first

job. And and I remember there were, you know

and then I and then I went to the Hamilton Journal News. And at the

Hamilton Journal News, they weren't advances, the Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News. At the

Hamilton Journal News, we still had a union shop

where somebody who was a union, right, a union employee

would paste up the newspaper on big pay stub boards,

like the headlines, the pictures. You know, and I'd stand there

with my and I still have it actually on the shelf, my pica and points

wheel, you know, to to to crop pictures. And, you know, and I'd

stand there with the union member, and I was not allowed to touch that pay

stub board because I was not in the union. Right? If I tried to move

Wow. If I tried to put my finger on that board and move it, you

know, a point or a pika this way or just you know,

I was yelled at. Right? I mean Wow. And then they would take that they

take that big pay stub board, and they would take it into the next room,

and they would photograph it. Right? And then they would, you know,

after they photograph it, they'd add, you know, the the acetate to it,

and they take it and and print the newspaper from it. Right? Wow. That was

a very real thing. That was my my first career out of college

was in journalism. And, those jobs are

gone. Yeah. Never to come back. Never.

You know? And

that's okay. You know what I mean? Because some jobs come up. I mean, the

Exactly. The college football the college football hall of fame job we did. Right? We

had over a 100 people working on it, like, a 112 people working on it.

Right? And we probably had at at one point, probably about

15 people doing prompting. Right? Oh, wow.

It it's work. It's a lot of work. And the creativity,

you know, there's a lot of creativity that goes into prompting a

lot. And I have to tell you. And there's a lot of failure. One thing

that we've learned that was not even possible was

AI is not ready to do face painting and body painting of fans in a

college football. It's just not ready. We tried it. Oh,

my gosh. We've spent so much time trying to get the prompts right

to do body paint and face paint, and it just didn't

work. It just didn't work. And then this was probably

from a a nerdy perspective. What you guys might appreciate the most.

How do you come up with the right colors for

764 different college football teams when you can't use

hex codes, can't use pms colors, you have to accurately describe

in English the difference between Clemson's orange, the University of

Tennessee's orange, Auburn's orange, Florida's orange, and the

University of Texas is orange. And if you put burnt orange for

Texas, you get somebody on you get

someone charred coming at you get you get, like, on

fire, like flame charred. Oh, man. Look at the little girl about the burnt If

you put pumpkin orange for Clemson, you'll get a hallucination where the person's

holding a pumpkin wearing a marching band uniform. Right. So

how do you describe accurately in English 764

different colors? That in and of itself was a

huge challenge that human beings solved. The computers didn't solve that.

Right? AI did not solve that. We had to solve that

issue. Wow. So there's a lot of work. Do you end up

do using hex codes? I'm curious. Oh, no. No. You can't use

hex codes with AI. No. We we we had to come

up with a solution using English to describe the colors that

would match accurately. Doubt. What

we ended up doing is we created a library of colors.

And then and then we would say, okay, this orange

works for these 3 teams. This orange works for this one

team. This orange works for these 2 teams. This blue works

for these 4 teams. This purple works for this. So we

literally created a you know, so it's not

perfect, but it's it's it's close enough

that we you know, nobody's gonna be yelling at us for, like, you got my

orange wrong. Right? But we we literally

just we created essentially a color wheel in AI,

and then we then matched. And there were a few

outliers where it was like, oh, you know, there were some where it was

like they had a custom color just for them. But most of the colors, we

were able to apply it to, you know, as, you know, a certain number of

teams. And so that that's that's essentially how

we solve that problem. But then there were there were other problems as well. So

I I have no idea. I I have no idea how to solve that problem,

but I would my first thought was, send it an image, like,

of a color palette and say, you know, a number, the

the colors that you know, there's gotta be some subset of some of the hired

you, Andy. Maybe you coulda helped us. I don't know. I I don't know. I

don't know if that woulda worked or not, but I had the same issues when

I've you know, it it seems like the AIs that I work with and I

work with a handful, of LLMs, and I'm

asking it to generate images. And I have the worst,

the worst experiences ever with that. Frank, on the other

hand, Frank is a naturally gifted graphic artist. He

is an artist Thank you. Who went to school,

to learn computer programming languages, and he's gotten

into AI. And he's the he's the data science person in this

team. I credit my parents with that because when

they were, like, there were really only a handful of careers,

doctor, lawyer, engineer, or, the

military. Yeah. They wanted you to get a real job.

That was how it was. Then there were only, like, 3 type 4 types of

jobs, doctor, lawyer. And now you're like, look, mom and dad.

I'm a podcast host. That's right. Right. Right. Well, when I switched to

computer science, when I switched to computer science, that was a

big that was a big thing. Because originally, I went to college to be a

chemical engineer. And then I had to convince my parents that this

was a legitimate engineering discipline with

a monetary upside. And that was,

you know, today, you you how could well, okay. Maybe with AI,

but, like, maybe programming isn't necessarily have

the the the bright future it once did. But, you know, it's hard to

imagine, I think, kids today, like, well, how could how could computer

science not be considered an engineering discipline? And,

you know, the 1990 something, it was not

immediately obvious. Yeah. Yeah. But it's you know,

I I have the prompting. I I have just the

worst luck, prompting for image type stuff. So

I've come up with a couple of hacks to do it, but my number one

hack is to email Frank. Email is your own. Message

message Frank. I said, Frank, I need something that looks like this. I

won't convey this image. And, you know, he's got Frank's Yeah. You

know, his his free time is spiky. And so when he

gets the next free time, he thinks of me. He'll he'll build something or send

me a song. He's done all my intro videos and all of that stuff,

and they're all awesome. But he has that natural gift already, and I don't. I

still don't color in the lines. Yeah. You know? It's a so it's not my

idea. There's a there's a gift to prompting. There is. There's a talent to it.

And, you know, I tell every young person who's in college who

asks me for advice, I'm saying, learn learn prompting. Yeah. That's

that's the if you and, again, it's it's a combination of skills. I

mean, you know, again, I've I've got Discord popping over here right now

on Midjourney as I'm watching, you know, my kids working on our

Christmas card. They're coming up with different ideas, and, you know, you know

That is so cool. It is cool. I mean, you know, and they'll some

ideas, actually. But I mean no. I mean and they'll end up

painting, you know, painting over it, you know, and and customizing it to

a certain degree. But that's, you know, that's,

you know, that's it's just it's a

natural evolution. I I you know, people who are like,

oh, again, I get it. We have to

guard ourselves. We cannot get lazy,

right? We have to make sure that we still Don't be like

me in high school. Read the books, Right? Don't don't just

go with the the cliff notes. But there again, you

know, there's always been ways to cheat. Always.

Yeah. Yeah. And Shorten road. Technology makes it easier to cheat, but there's

always been ways to cheat. Always. Sure. I mean, you

know, so we just have to make sure that we

don't cheat. We have to have the discipline to actually, you know,

read, write, look for that spark of inspiration. And,

again, at the end of the day, people ask me all the time, well,

oh, what's the secret to your creativity? How come you're so creative? And I

think there's a much longer conversation, but I

think a lot of it is just about making connections. And it's about having stimulus

coming in. It's a simple formula. You guys appreciate formulas.

You're computer scientists and math people.

In order to get something out, you have to put something in, right?

In order to have an idea come out of your brain, you have to have

stimulus come into your brain. So the more stimulus you put in,

the better opportunity you have to have great ideas coming out. And if you

want a creative company, you know, make sure you surround

your employees with a lot of stimulus. And that includes things like food

and great design and music

and and encouraging trips. You know what I mean? A lot of our ideas

come from simply what we call hashtag research, which

is we go places. We see things. We do

stuff Because we're in the experience business, and so

we want to take part in experiences. We wanna

go look at stuff. And so, you

know, AI is yet one more point of stimulus that can

come in. We just need to be careful that we don't let it,

act upon us. We need to be the one that

uses it and and commands it to to Yeah. To

work for us rather than have it command us. I love that point.

And it's a it's a great I think it's a great

summary of of of a lot of the points that we've

talked about on the episode. So, Jeff, if people wanna learn more

about you personally and your business, where

can they find out more about you and the business? Well, thanks,

Andy and Frank. It's been great to be on and talking with you. I just

love I mean, we could go on for hours and hours talking about this stuff.

Well, it's very inspirational, which is Same. Yeah. It's

it's exciting. It really is. I you know, it's it it is. 1 of 1

of the yeah. 1 of the sorry. One last thing.

I mean, just just like Okay. You know, like, one of

the projects we're working right now is talking to a fire sprinkler. Right?

You know, and, you know,

but have the sprinkler talk to you about engineering from a fire

sprinkler's perspective. But just something like that, you know,

we it's just fun. I mean, do we all have that real time

conversation with a Spire sprinkler? Are you kidding me? Or a lithium ion battery to

talk about thermal runways. There's so many things you can do with it. Anyway, I

digress. If you wanna get a hold of us, honestly, you know, just Google

Creative Principles, creativeprinciples.com. LinkedIn's an easy way

to find us. You know, Jeff Thatcher with a g. You know, Thatcher like Margaret,

the prime minister. And if you're old enough, you know who she is. But, you

know, but that that's the that's the best way to find

us. Just find us online. And, yeah. It was

great talking. I really appreciate the time. Oh, same. Excellent. Same

here. And we'll let the nice British lady finish the show.

And that's a wrap for this episode of Data Driven. A massive

thank you to Jeff Thatcher for taking us on a journey through the world of

immersive experiences and the role AI plays in creating

unforgettable stories. From theme parks to football

fields, Jeff reminded us how technology can spark creativity

and amplify the human connection when used wisely. If you

enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave us a

review, and share it with your network. And as always,

stay curious, stay data driven and maybe keep an eye out for

where you might show up in your own favourite story someday. Cheers

everyone.