Mike Blake joins Skip Kimpel on the Tech Chef Podcast to share his insights on the evolving landscape of hospitality technology. As Vice President of Information Technology at KemperSports, Mike draws from his extensive experience in the industry, highlighting the critical importance of strategic leadership in implementing technology solutions that enhance operational excellence. The conversation begins with Mike recounting his transition from finance to IT, where he became a specialist in understanding the cost implications of technology investments during a time of rapid change. He reflects on his tenure at Hyatt Hotels, discussing the challenges faced in migrating systems to the cloud and the revolutionary impact it had on the hospitality sector. This foundational experience informs his current role, where he oversees technology for a diverse portfolio of golf courses and resorts.

The episode delves into the pressing challenges of cybersecurity in hospitality, with Mike emphasizing the need for proactive measures to safeguard sensitive data against increasing threats. The discussion also explores the significance of adopting emerging technologies like AI and IoT, which Mike believes are essential for creating personalized guest experiences. He advocates for a data-driven approach, urging hospitality leaders to develop comprehensive data strategies that prioritize security while fostering innovation.

Throughout the episode, Mike's leadership philosophy shines through as he discusses the importance of partnership and collaboration in achieving technological success. He encourages professionals in the hospitality industry to embrace a broker, integrate, and orchestrate mindset, focusing on integrating off-the-shelf solutions rather than reinventing the wheel. The conversation concludes with Mike sharing his passion for innovation and encouraging listeners to engage with the technology community through events like CES, where they can discover new tools and ideas that can be applied within their organizations. This episode is rich with insights and practical advice, making it a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of technology and hospitality.

Takeaways:

• Mike Blake discusses his extensive experience in hospitality technology, emphasizing the importance of adapting to cloud-based solutions.
• He highlights the need for a strategic approach to attending major technology events like CES for maximum benefit.
• Blake believes in the concept of 'broker, integrate and orchestrate' rather than building systems from scratch in hospitality.
• He stresses the significance of networking and helping others in the industry, as connections can lead to unexpected opportunities.
• Cybersecurity initiatives are prioritized in the hospitality sector due to increasing threats, calling for better tools and awareness.
• Embracing digital innovation while balancing security is crucial for businesses in the hospitality industry.

Links Referenced In This Episode:

• gainadvisors.com
• bootcamp.magicgate.com
• skipkimpel.com
• magicgate.com

How To Contact Me

Website:

• https://SkipKimpel.com (all archived shows and show notes will be posted here)
• https://magicgate.com

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• https://instagram.com/skipkimpel
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Youtube:

• https://www.youtube.com/@magicgatetech
• You can also hear all these new episodes on the Magicgate website at Magicgate.com

Email me at skip@magicgate.com

Companies Mentioned in This Episode:

• Growth Advisors International Network
• KemperSports
• American Hotel and Lodging Association
• Hyatt
• Commune Hotels
• Magicgate
• Hospitality Technology Next Generation
• Restaurant Technology Network
• HTNG
• AHLA

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You are listening to the Tech Chef Podcast.

This show is powered by Growth Advisors International Network where travel and hospitality companies come to grow.

For more information please visit gainadvisors.com this.

Is Mike Blake, Vice President of Information Technology at Kemper Sports and you are listening to Skip on the Tech Chef Podcast.

Offering a strategy business continuity.

How about a taste test of restaurant technology?

Drive thru or curbside?

Mobile apps or AI?

It's all on the menu.

Cook it up for the day.

It's a recipe for success.

You're in good hands with a Tech Chef.

Make a plan to be your best.

Strategize with the Tech Chef.

Welcome back to another episode of the Tech Chef.

I'm your host Skip Kimpl bringing you insights and inspiration all the way from sunny South Florida.

Whether you are a longtime listener or tuning in for the very first time, welcome.

Your loyalty and engagement inspire us to keep raising the bar, ensuring we deliver high quality content that empowers professionals like you to to stay ahead of the curve, solve challenges and innovate with confidence.

Thank you for being an essential part of our journey and success.

I hope everybody had a great holiday season with your friends and family.

It seems like we prepare all year long for this and within a blink of an eye it is over with and we are back to the grindstone.

Well, this week I'm in Las Vegas for CES.

This is one of those shows that if you don't walk in with a plan, it will be a complete waste of time.

I can't wait to report on it next week and share some of the cool stuff that I saw when I was there.

I am like a kid in the candy store when I go to this show today.

Starting off the year with a bang is my friend and industry rock star, Mr.

Michael Blake.

He recently joined Kemper Sports as Vice President of Information Technology.

Kemper Sports is a leading sports, entertainment and hospitality company that delivers operational excellence in property and experience management.

Kemper Sports manages more than 140 golf courses, private clubs, sports ventures and destination resorts nationwide.

With over 20 years of experience in the hospitality IT sector, Mike brings a wealth of knowledge from his previous leadership roles including serving as Chief Technology Officer for the American Hotel and Lodging association and the Chief Information Officer for notable hospitality brands such as Commune Hotels and Hyatt throughout his career, Mike has spearheaded major cloud migrations, enhanced cybersecurity initiatives, and driven change management across diverse environments, all focusing on delivering cost effective, high impact technology solutions.

Sit back and take notes as Mike shares his years of expertise as we talk about the past, present and future of hospitality technology and the leadership skills that are needed to become successful.

Welcome, Mike Blake.

It's a pleasure to have you on today.

For our listeners who may not know, Mike has an incredible career in the hospitality and tech industries, serving as a global CIO at Hyatt Hotels, CEO of Hospitality Technology Next Generation, otherwise known as hdng, and as CTO of the American Hotel and Lodging association, otherwise known as the ahla, and now leading it as Vice President at Kemper Sports.

Mike, your journey is nothing short of remarkable.

Welcome to the show and it is extreme pleasure to finally have you on here.

It's great to be here, Skip.

Thank you very much.

You've had a unique blend of leadership roles in IT and hospitality.

What inspired you to combine these two industries and what drew you to technology in the first place?

For instance, you started your career in finance, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah, you're right, Skip.

I started IT in finance, but the interesting thing is I was the finance guy for a lot of IT shops, so I started being a specialist in finance for it, which was actually a perfect time because at that point in time, IT and the cloud and some of these other things were coming.

So very few people really understood the cost ramifications of these things.

So you almost needed to be a CPA or an MBA from the University of Chicago to figure those things out.

From leading tech at Hyatt Hotels globally to spearheading innovations at the HLA and the htng, how has your leadership style evolved over the years?

Yeah, I think, Skip, what I've learned over the years is, and I think this is true for everyone, you can't really take things overly seriously.

I mean, with enough money and resources, you can solve just about any problem.

But at some point in time, you just got to recognize that as they say here in golf, there are no emergencies.

The reason I bring that up is because the majority of our listeners are either C level or decision makers within an organization.

So they're looking for leadership aspects regarding how you actually progressed through your career.

Let's start by looking back at your time as the global CIO at Hyatt Hotels.

What was the most challenging technological initiative you led and how did you navigate it?

Yeah, it's funny because some of the more interesting ones actually seem mundane today.

Right.

And that's.

It wasn't so mundane at the time.

I remember I inherited an organization that was with Lotus Notes and this was the Precursor to Office 365 being in existence.

And for some of the older folks who do listen to your podcast might remember a product by Microsoft called BPOS that was that precursor to Office 365.

At the time it was somewhat radical to kind of move to that.

But today it seems like everyone, you're either on that or you're on Google Docs.

So cloud based support much better than some of those things.

So it's kind of interesting that at the time it felt revolutionary and we were one of the big first chains to move to that direction and move to the cloud.

But now it's just about everybody's doing it and there you go.

You just got lucky, or at least I did.

And I had a great team that executed.

So moving on, at htnng, you were instrumental in advancing next generation tech standards.

Can you share some of the major initiatives you're most proud of from that period?

Well, I think the proudest thing I am skip is probably of the merger itself because when you look back at HT&G here, we were a pretty scrappy association and we had a very nice niche.

But I do think that over time we had, we had to evaluate the, the entire landscape and you know, HLA just made to be a perfect partner.

And I think, you know, with, with some of the leadership there and with our, with the strength of our board, we kind of were able to pull it off.

And now HT&G will continue to keep living.

It'll live through the hospitality show, it'll live through some of the other initiatives and it'll keep doing great work through work groups.

There's a great team there and it's still pretty exc that it's going to continue to flourish worldwide.

Even though it's AHLA, it's still a worldwide initiative.

Yeah, 100% actually.

I think that it's definitely a misnomer of the A in that piece because it is really global.

All right.

So I'm actually a little embarrassed as we, we met up at the last conference about a month ago and we spent the entire time catching up and reminiscing on stories from the past, which was quite entertaining.

But the one thing we didn't do is talk about your new job.

Now.

You've recently taken on the role of VP of Information Technology at Kemper Sports.

Tell us about this company that you joined, you know what they do.

And this, by the way, is three part question.

How does it enable Kemper Sports to deliver exceptional experience both internally and to its clients?

You know, it's interesting sometimes when you have relationships and who finds who during these things and how it happens, but some of the folks at Hyatt that I worked with are actually working here, so both Jim, Jim Lawler and Sarah Kearney, who are both senior leaders here at Kemper, kind of found me, Skip.

And for those of you who don't know who Kemper Sports is, it's, it's very similar to a hotel management company, but instead of doing hotels, we do golf courses.

So I basically am the head of technology for 100 and soon to be 148 different golf courses around the US and we have everything from a daily fee municipal course all the way up to a dream destination resort like Streamsong.

And that's kind of neat to be able to play in a world where you have all kinds of technical challenges but still can lay back and rely on some of the old experiences with big resorts.

So I have all those fun technical challenges, Skip, of a PMS and a POS and a CRS and all the S's and all those three letter acronyms we all love.

Well, okay, that brings up a good question.

How has it in the hospitality industry changed since your time to Hyatt with emerging tools like AI, IoT, cloud computing up until now?

Well, I do think that, you know, things are becoming a lot more integrated.

I mean, we, this is, we tried to make them integrated back in the past and you know, any guy, any hotel has anywhere between four, you know, 40 to 50 different services and software on any particular property and you got to kind of make all that work.

Well, now things are becoming, they're not seamless yet, Skip, but they're getting closer and closer.

And I do think as we continue to evolve and depending on, you know, some of the partners are doing this a little bit better than others.

I mean, we're pretty fortunate that, you know, we have a partner that is working pretty closely with me to kind of build a stack that is seamless to work with and that it once again, I think I'm helping the industry through making our products stacked better.

Were you directly involved with helping creating those standards for the hotel side while you're at HT&G?

Well, the beautiful thing of it is, Skip, it takes a village to do any of the standards and I think any of the HT&G standards, I think some of the best work is done at the work group level.

And you have, you know, stalwarts like a Sandy angel who is out there leading a lot of this work group effort, along with a name from the past, Patrick Dunphy, who did a lot of work in that space.

Yeah.

And it's just great to have these people who are so committed and to bring others together.

And I can't tell you the countless number of hours spent on particular work groups pulling together standards and best practices and artifacts.

And all those artifacts still reside within the AHLA website.

So under the HTNG auspices, you can still pull a lot of those standards down, look them up, they're free to consume, so you don't even have to be a member to avail yourself of the standards.

And I do have to put out a big shout out to the vendor base because the vendor base spent a lot.

They donated a lot of their engineering hours to help the standards better.

And it's good to be part of that, and it's great to be part of that process as they continue to evolve.

I mean, I believe they're looking at standards now around AI and some of these other current initiatives, so definitely get engaged.

What I love about our synergy is Sandy and Patrick were instrumental from the restaurant side with the Restaurant Technology Network as we started to put our standards together.

Sandy to this day still leads that whole initiative.

So I can't wait to tag them in this post because they are very, very good people.

And man, they put in a lot of hard work and guidance to get us where we're at.

But the beautiful part is they had the expertise from the hotel side to translate back to us.

Where I'm getting to is from a standards perspective.

You know, you talked about all these integrations, all these different systems that you have in place, the standards that you are part of and the AHLA HTNG have in place or are available.

You know, what's the adoption level and has that helped you on the.

The hotel and hospitality side of things?

I think it's interesting, skip that you brought up rtn, because I do think there's a.

You will see a lot of similarities between HT and G and rtn.

Yes, only because both Angela and Abby, you know, were able to take a lot and I help them quite a bit through, you know, my experience at HTG and being able to say, how do we build standards and how do we work through.

Work through them?

I do think that, you know, we do have a Technology Innovation Acceleration Award.

I know that's a mouthful, but it's, it's given at the hospitality show, but, but it's meant for those innovators who are adopting standards that kind of demonstrate them to the industry.

So I do think now you have a very tangible way of showing that there's some level of adoption because generally those, you know, it's a fairly well subscribed award show that David Showander has been emceeing for the past two hospitality shows.

And I think that'll continue.

I think, you know, if, if you have, if you are an entrant into this industry, it's good to take advantage of those or be a part of trying to put those standards together.

Because you'd rather be part of the standard than trying to invent something that nobody will follow.

Well, so yeah, you hit on a good point earlier when you're talking about from the, from the hotel side is you need the vendor community along with the operators working side by side on this in work groups.

And that is what impressed me about how we approached it from the RTN side is we got everybody involved and the level of people that got involved were impressive.

From the food and beverage side, we are now trying to, you know, now that we've finished, I guess it's never a finished project.

We're always going to be working on those standards.

As, you know, technology evolves.

But, you know, now it comes down to adoption and you know, I'm out there encouraging every single operator to actually demand, you know, or at least ask the questions, are you implementing the data standards from RTN in your tech stack because it helps the operator at the end of the day.

I mean, you and I have both sat in CIO roles where integration into systems can be a nightmare.

Without standards, when data doesn't match, a sale isn't a sale.

You know, they don't have the same definitions of things.

Creating standards is critical.

Yeah, and I do think, skip that.

The beautiful thing is that, you know, there isn't 100 organizations who are doing this work.

There's two.

Right, right.

So, so it's not like we have to sit here and kind of choose between and, and the thing with an HTNG or RTN is we try to lever the best of that which is available.

So, you know, when we were doing WI FI standards, we didn't invent.

We went to IEEE and said, okay, what's the next standard coming down that we can embed within our own right to make it hospitality ready?

So there were always, and I gotta tell you, the association community Works very closely together and there is no level of redundancy that's out there or you try to limit it.

Well, we're gonna take a little break here, but when we come back, we're going to talk about the current and future challenges that not only the industry face, but specifically face.

We're going to talk about tech and cyber security, the post pandemic era, you know, leadership and vision.

Just from, from.

Because we have so many leaders on this podcast listening.

Just, you know what that looks like from your perspective.

So everybody hold on.

We will be back in just a couple of seconds.

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All right, let's talk about some current and future challenges.

Given the increase in cyber threats, especially around industries like hospitality.

We've seen a lot of headlines.

How do you prioritize cybersecurity initiatives to keep systems and data secure?

Yeah, I think, Skip, this is probably one of our.

If it's not my number one, it's certainly number one a as far as priorities.

Because I think all of us are under the threat and the challenge of, of trying to keep up in this arms race.

We do have better tooling.

We try to get, you know, ahead of it.

But I gotta tell you, one of the most effective tools I think I have in my toolbox is our.

The rhisac, which is hopefully folks who are not aware of it should be aware of it.

The rhisac, the retail hospitality isac, is definitely something to get engaged with and involved with.

We share on a daily basis different threats that are coming down at a very detailed level.

So, you know, kind of what's going on.

This is a group that very early on had its start in htng.

I'm very proud of.

And at some point in time, it grew Beyond, I think, HTNG's capabilities and now it's on to its own.

You know, they combined with retail, which I think is a great fit.

Yeah.

So moving, moving together, able to share kind of current issues, possibilities, techniques, tools, you name it.

It's a very specialized, very.

It's highly specialized to the cyber security space for that we deal with.

And I gotta Tell you, I can't imagine l without it.

So digital innovation is the buzzword out there today.

Through digital innovation, you're, you're trying to create this perfect profile on a guest, which means collecting a lot of data and information on that guest.

What advice would you give to businesses looking to balance digital innovation with the ever growing need for security?

Yeah, I think, Skip, this is, this is a classic.

You want to think big, start small and scale fast.

Exactly, yes.

So, you know, I think, you know, golf, the, the industry I am currently in is, is very analogous to where hospitality was probably 10 years ago.

So I'm going to kind of skip past all those 10 years of learning and kind of jump into a more modern look at CRM and being able to get to that golden record of a guest and being able to understand them with structured and unstructured data.

I do think that the tooling is much better than has been and never will be.

So I do think this is one where if you don't have a data strategy, you better sort one out pretty quick and understand your subsystems and then understand the security profile around it.

Because if you're not doing it, your competitor is.

So we've had a lot of talk on the show recently about tech innovation.

You've led tech transformations in large organizations in the past.

What is your approach to managing teams, driving innovation, and building a strong IT culture?

Oddly enough, Skip, I think a lot of it is just trying to be aware of innovation.

And what's interesting is innovation is all around us and I think you just kind of got to be aware of it and you got to try to apply it into your own space.

For example, I'm heading out to CES at the beginning of January.

I'll see you there.

Right, fantastic.

Because I do think that that's about a five year look into the future for all things that are hospitality or even in our space in golf, you're going to start seeing things that will be applied at scale later on.

I mean, and I do think if you're able to have that lens and be able to see it, you're going to see some cool stuff that could be applied in your space.

And that's really kind of, you know, one of the definitions of innovation.

Right.

Being able to use something that somebody else uses in their own space into you and apply it to yourself.

I think it's just a fantastic look.

See?

So whether it's ces, whether it's publications, whether it's just going to a conference or talking to some of your Peers, you'd be surprised at what you'll learn.

Yeah.

Ever since going off on my own with Magic 8 and really concentrating on those emerging, emerging and disruptive technologies, you know, my landscape of conferences has really expanded now.

I've always gone to nrf, always gone to ces.

There's some great opportunities there.

Nrf, being the retail side of it, recently started going to iapa, which is military simulation, certainly from an XR and a VR perspective.

That's where the money and research is being spent.

Sure.

So, you know, I walk in there looking through the eyes of entertainment, through sports and entertainment and as well as hospitality.

How can some of those technologies translate to hospitality?

You know, is it future coming or is there something immediate that you could just easily just make a suggestion, pull a trigger.

They could modify something and it could be applicable to our industry.

So, you know, you talked about going to conferences and staying ahead of the curve when it comes to identifying technology.

How about adopting emerging technologies?

What advice do you give there?

Yeah, so first of all, I would hope that anytime somebody has a vendor or a partnership with, with a large company that they choose the partner that's innovative.

Because I, you know, I, I do think that innovation curves are additive.

So what that means, Skip, is the more innovation you take on with a partner, the more innovative you too become.

Right.

Because those innovative partners are the ones that are going to be adopting things like AI.

Right.

Because we're looking at technology within the, the view.

I don't really want to do AI things on own.

I would rather have one of my technology partners, you know, subsume that into their stack and then we'll be able to use that AI module or what have you through their device and through their tool.

There's a lot of advantages to that.

There's some, you know, especially when you talk security and what have you.

They, they are probably, you know, I, I look around and I don't see a lot of security professionals on, on my team, but a lot of them at Microsoft.

I do see a lot of them in the Google world.

Right.

I do see a lot of them within our partners.

So there you go.

So for aspiring technology leaders, especially in hospitality, what are the skills and mindset you believe are most crucial to success?

And let me preempt that with, you know, just a few seconds ago, the audience heard an advertisement for an XR bootcamp which Magic 8 is putting on.

And the whole goal of that is not for a technology based person.

I mean, you could have a technology background, but it's more to Talk about these emerging technologies and have knowledge and be able to understand the advantages or disadvantages of implementing some of these things.

So the question back to you is, what are the skills or at least the mindset that you believe is most crucial?

Yeah, I think.

Skip that.

One of the biggest mindset shifts within hospitality or restaurants or any one of the other what I call kind of enabled environments, let's say, versus where technology is the product.

Right.

The enabled environment is.

Hospitality has a different model altogether.

I call it the broker, integrate and orchestrate model.

So you're basically taking a off the shelf solution.

You're integrating it within your environment, and then most of the time you're not even running it, but you're orchestrating it to make sure it goes right.

Whereas if I was a bank, that's where you get into the world of plan, build, run, where I go ahead and I plan it, I code it, and boom, out comes the checking account software.

Two different models.

And I think when people in hospitality are kind of trying to get that through their mind, that whole broker, integrate and orchestrate model is what they should be looking at.

They shouldn't be thinking about building the next CRS or building the next pms.

They should be thinking more in the tune of, okay, how do I go ahead and negotiate the best deal I possibly can, how do I integrate that within my environment and also have enough faith and confidence in my, in my vendor base that I don't need to step on them and, and run it.

All I need to do is orchestrate it and make sure that they are the right people to do it and it's safe and it's secure and all that good stuff.

You know, as a cio, I never looked for a vendor.

I looked for a partner.

I wanted, I wanted to make sure that, you know, they were in it as much as I was.

You know, my reputation was at stake and, you know, I wanted, I wanted them to be part of that journey to make sure that they were a valuable partner for us.

You know, looking back at your career as we close things out here, what's one lesson that you would, that you carry over to this day from a leadership perspective?

Yeah, I think to this day is, you know, the, the strength of your network.

We're not talking bits and bytes here.

We're talking more the people element.

We're talking all about, you know, the individuals out.

You know, all of us are in between jobs, Skip.

And we should recognize that, yes, even when we have a job, we're in between a job.

And I gotta tell you, you know, we're gonna live in a world of upheaval.

And we've lived in upheaval.

You know, if somebody needs help, help them.

And you know, if you know of somebody in transition, help them out, because you never know when that might happen.

And I do feel, you know, throughout my career, I think I've helped a lot of people out and I will continue to do that because I think what you'll find is even a simple conversation could make the difference for someone.

And, you know, just, you should be able to do that.

I'll give you a perfect example.

And this just happened today.

So I had a individual reach out to me.

At first I just thought it was spam, saying, hey, I would like to get some career advice.

I heard you speak a couple years ago.

Do you mind jumping on a call?

And I'm like, absolutely.

So this individual saw a presentation I gave at the University of Las Vegas, the hospitality school, and they recently graduated and they're now they have a job, entry level job at a very large resort or a large hotel on the strip in Las Vegas.

And they were asking about, you know, career advice.

You know, they told me about what they were looking for, how they were looking into, to proceed, you know, what, what the best way to approach some of this stuff.

So I, you know, I gave my two cents, whatever that's worth.

But it is those types of connections that you never know where that person's going to end up.

And say, Skip was the guy that led me here.

He gave me some really, really, really good advice.

Hopefully he says that and you know, we're, we're, like you said, we're in the business.

You're, you're, you're one step away from your next job and you never know where your next opportunity is going to come from.

So.

That's right.

And I didn't do it for that purpose.

I honestly have a good heart and was just trying to help this, this individual out.

But you just really put the exclamation point on why I did what I did today.

Right?

And that was the right thing, Skip.

I mean, you never know, right?

And, and a lot of the things we do, you know, it may never come back around and that's okay.

But you've just made the world a better place and that's not a bad thing.

What's one technology trend or innovation you believe the industry isn't focusing enough on and should be?

I, I still think, you know, the whole, we call it robotics, we call it autonomous machines.

Whatever you want to call it, I do think that it's not a room to replace human beings.

That's not what hospitality is about.

But I do think that for certain roles, for certain functions, for certain areas, there is probably a need to automate to bring in the robots.

Whether it's selective, selective vacuuming in rooms, I mean, whether it's just flipping fries, there's some very specific modes that I think can make the world a safer, better place and actually enhance the product and make, you know, employees much safer than they are right now.

Okay, so I have an off the wall question, and this is like a question that we'd have after, you know, hanging out for a couple hours.

Sure.

And certainly a question I don't know the answer to, but.

So in the golf industry, is there such a thing as a, or being developed a self driving go kart?

No, not yet, but there are.

I, there are some cool technologies, Skip, I'll give you.

And I'll leave you with this one, which I think is probably the coolest one that I've seen in a long time.

But, you know, we're all talking about drones now and, and, and what have you, I'll just leave it at that.

But we actually have a drone that can scan a golf course in about 18 holes in about two hours, but it can actually look at the color of the grass and start to tell you whether it needs to be watered, fertilized, or what have you from that point of venture.

I mean, at one point, you know, we have agronomists who kind of walk the course and kind of try to do that, but oddly enough, they're not as effective as that two hour stint of a drone, which I think is fantastic.

I mean, it's a step in that direction.

Well, I'll tell you what, when this podcast drops, you and I are actually going to be the day that we're in Vegas.

This podcast drops.

So that will be exciting.

Hopefully we get to celebrate together.

And it's been great hearing about your new journey and vision for technology role and hospitality.

And before we close, is there any advice or final message you'd like to leave with our listeners?

Well, Skip, I'm going to meet you in Eureka park.

And for those of you who have not been to CES before, please go.

Eureka park is where really the new entrants are coming.

They don't really afford where the big, the big layouts and the, the big booths are, but Eureka park is where to go and, and what I would always tell all my friends who are technologists.

You know, hook up with with some.

You know, hook up with someone.

Make sure to use the hell out of LinkedIn.

Link in with me if you'd like.

Happy to extend my network to you.

And by all means don't.

Don't take anything too seriously.

Just keep a straight face and keep moving.

Keep on keeping on.

Love it.

Simple but effective.

Mike, thank you so much for joining the show.

I look forward to seeing you in a couple weeks.

Yeah, take care Skip.

Mike is always a wealth of information and he is really one of the good guys out there.

If you would like to reach out to me or the show, you can do so via everything social.

Skip Kimple or everything magicgatetech.

This includes X, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

You can also visit the website@SkipKimple.com for all of the archive shows and the show notes are also there.

And you can also hear these new episodes on the Magic gate website@magicgate.com and of course you can email me at skipagic8.com Next week I have a fascinating show to share as we talk with our guest, Brandon McRill, co founder and CEO of Five out, with a discussion around artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Wait, I'm not supposed to say AI as it does not exist yet.

What?

That's right.

Tune in next week's show to hear this discussion.

I am wishing you a very happy, healthy and prosperous new year.

Until next week, stay safe, stay healthy and stay hungry.

My friends.

RA.