REBOOT [something] is a video podcast by Trilogy Innovations, Inc. hosted by Chad Jeffries.

#TechYeahConference highlights the innovative West Virginia-based companies forging a new future through the technology movement.

This episode features is a promotion for TechYeah Conference explaining all of the background, day of event details, and the goals #TeamTrilogy has for the inaugural event on August 23rd.

Check out the links referenced in this podcast and be sure to sign up for this exciting event! 👇

👉 TechYeah Conference Website🔗 https://www.techyeahconference.com/

👉 Conference Registration🔗 https://www.techyeahconference.com/

📧 Sign up to the official email list 👉 https://bit.ly/techyeahconference

📝 Show Notes and Highlights...

All about TechYeah Conference:

▫️ Where: Robert H Mollahan Center in Fairmont, WV

▫️ When: August 23rd from 8:00am - 4:00pm

▫️ Why we are hosting the event

▫️ What the goal for TechYeah Conference is and the impact it has in WV

▫️ Who should attend the event? Why should they attend?

👥 #TeamTrilogy members featured on Ep.2 podcast:

▫️ Co-founders: Brandon Downey (President) & Randy Cottle (Vice Pres.)

▫️ Scott Dix - Director of Business Development

▫️ Chad Jeffries - Head of Talent Acquisition and Marketing

🤝 TechYeah Conference Event Organizer Companies:

Special thanks and shoutouts to our event organizer companies and partners @High Technology Foundation @Trilogy Innovations, Inc. @Forge Business Solutions @InnerAction Media @ Stratagen Solutions, @ Allegheny Science & Technology, @ ManTech, @ Vertx Partners,

Meet us at the intersection of technology and government at the inaugural TechYeah Conference!

Learn the path to success in the federal market and attract key decision-makers at the Department of Energy, NOAA, FBI, NASA, Department of Treasury, and US Air Force.

Who should attend this event❓

Business Development Professional, Account Executive, Solutions Engineer, Tech Leader, and who are looking to build stronger relationships with Federal Agencies and existing business in #WestVirginia. #yeswv

🎙About REBOOT [something] Podcast by Trilogy Innovations, Inc.

Our goal for each episode is to REBOOT the way we think about each topic of discussion. Topics range from how we use cutting-edge technologies to deliver superior IT solutions for our customers, to current events, economic development and best practices that are transforming the IT consulting industry for government contracting.

Chad Jeffries 0:10

Hello, and welcome to the reboot something podcast by trilogy innovations. I'm your host, Chad Jeffries. And with us today we have co founders, Randy and Brandon. And we have Scott Dix over here. And we're super excited to be talking to you guys today about tech yak conference. Now, tech yak conference is going to be in Fairmont, West Virginia on August 23. reference links and everything will be in the show notes below. But we're here to talk about tech yet today. So super excited. And thank you so much for joining us. So let's, let's talk about it. So I'm sure everybody's wondering what is tech? Yeah. So let's start there. I know that you guys have some background on it. So. So let's start with you guys.

Brandon Downey 0:53

Very valid. First question.

Randy Cottle 0:56

What is this?

Scott Dix 0:58

jump right in? So

Brandon Downey 0:59

in a nutshell, it's to stimulate economic diversity within West Virginia, by highlighting a lot of the technical expertise, small businesses within the area?

Randy Cottle 1:11

Yep. Absolutely. Well, you

Scott Dix 1:14

know, the thing that about TechYeah, that is really amazing to me, and just North Central West Virginia period, is the massive footprint that we have up here for the federal government, you know, even growing up in the region, you kind of knew stuff was around and you know, of course, is as new agencies came to West Virginia was big news and things like that. But, you know, as a kid, I don't think I really understood the impact of having Department of Energy, and NOAA, FBI and NASA, I mean, we've got tons of really important facilities right here in West Virginia, a

Brandon Downey 1:45

lot of those are actually tucked away out of you. You can dry by not know that they're there, right. But working in the industry over a year, years, you didn't know people, you get to know those agencies are there and actually know the impact that they actually have on families in the area and outside now, especially with remote and telework.

Randy Cottle 2:05

It's also funny, because everybody thinks it's a mystery to because I've been behind the NASA IV&V facility, for example, there's this golf ball looking thing. And they're like, What is that a spaceship? What's it feeding into it? And then no one moves in to the I-79 Technology Park. And then there's these giant satellites up there. They're like, what are they doing up there? Right. And that's part of why we're doing this is to make sure that people are aware, all the good work that is happening here, and hopefully drive in more government agencies to take a look at our area, especially the cost in the DC area of what it costs to, to kind of run these organizations there and what they're paying out our tax dollars, you know, could probably be better spent here. Not to mention from the security standpoint, if we were targeted in the DC area of the you know, heaven forbid, there's missile attacks or something, you know, we don't want it to wipe out everything that we're doing especially you know, we have the FBI here,

Scott Dix 3:00

so we'll say Greenbrier Exactly, exactly. Look it up. If you don't know what Greenbrier is. It is super, super great.

Randy Cottle 4:01

Now if we can just get them to fund the rest of quarter H rally be great Hey, we could put something down and flatwoods or something you know, I grew up here Yeah, yeah, you've seen

Brandon Downey 4:13

it started but not finished. Right? Yeah, that's

Randy Cottle 4:15

it goes right through Elkins. And it's funny because whenever I go back home now everybody has to get off at Elkins you can't keep going down quarter ah they did have it opened where you go to Parsons, but I guess they're working on stuff still. So

Scott Dix 4:30

just for clarification, are we all born in West Virginia? All four of us was not born in West Virginia. But did you live to have lived here your native Outlander military fair fair.

Brandon Downey 4:50

So you know the circle back to tech yabb. There are a lot of reasons why but there are several core pillars to the to the actual conference, one been to attract more federal business within the area, and also keep federal business in the areas well, you know, with technology advancing as much as it has, we've given reason for a lot of telework scenarios, remote work, etc. One thing that we want to do is definitely want to highlight technology. But we also worked extremely hard getting those agencies here, right, and we want to keep them here, right, we want to start highlighting some of those. But we also want to part of the the actual conferences to highlight some of the emerging technologies as well. And in order to keep West Virginia in that conversation, you know, trilogy, I know has a rich, you know, relationship with a lot of different industry leaders, right? Hitched your wagon to companies that that simply are introducing new capabilities in the industry all the time. So we keep our ear to the ground and make sure that not only we are, you know, kept apprised of all new technologies, but we also want to make sure that everyone within West Virginia in terms of workforce development, also has access to that as well. Right. So this conference gives them that capability, right to come in, listen to the leaders talking about what's coming next.

Chad Jeffries 6:17

Right. Now. That's yeah, and so you tech, yeah, really highlights the West Virginia based companies that are forging a new future through the technology movement. So Brandon, can you tell us, you know, a little bit are some of the, you know, companies that are that are doing that besides trilogy? How do you say there's dirt?

Brandon Downey 6:35

A lot of I mean, you know, one of the things we want to do is highlight a lot of the small businesses, right? It's not just trilogy, carrying the torch, there's everyone carrying that torch, right. So it's every single one within i 79 corridor. We're in town, it's, you know, even south of us, you know, within the Charleston area. So it's everyone that's doing work across biometrics cloud, in cybersecurity is everything. We want to highlight every single one. So it's not just one, right? It's every single one of the technology companies that we want to highlight. Yeah,

Randy Cottle 7:08

well, and piggyback off of that, you know, we're working with a lot of these major vendors, and even moving to the cloud, you know, the AWS, the Microsoft, the Googles, right, and we're trying to bring them here to help them integrate into these agencies. So that way, then they're moving their footprint here as well. You know, if you're servicing 10 different government agencies with some of these massive contracts, hey, you might want to put a footprint say for Google in Fairmont, right? Yeah. So, you know, this is the ripple effect that we're talking about, you know, having these agencies here, yep. businesses like ours pop up in around that. But then what those people have to eat, so then restaurants start popping up, right? A lot of these people work out and then all these gyms, and a lot of people don't see the ripple effect that this has, you know, I know West Virginia is big on tourism. And that's just it, you move to the area, you get to work in a great place. It's cheap living costs, but then the scenery and everything that's around here, and the places you can go, the outdoor things is just phenomenal.

Scott Dix 8:11

Well, it's been a huge attractor, you know, to I mean, not just trilogy. I mean, although we have been pulling in people who many of us were native West Virginians moved away because opportunities were elsewhere. Even though for six years, I served as a contractor at any to right here in Morgantown. I didn't live in West Virginia, and those tax dollars, were not coming here to West Virginia. And that is a problem. And so you know, I mean, I've moved back here to West Virginia, we've had RvB, thank you for coming back in

Chad Jeffries 8:42

your fifth one now.

Scott Dix 8:44

Five people back with a company of what we're 40 something

Randy Cottle 8:47

strong. Yeah, like an eighth of our workforce has actually moved in that state. And, you know, we're just one of many.

Scott Dix 8:53

I mean, there's a lot of really terrific companies right here in West Virginia. They're doing incredible work. And that's one of the things we want to highlight, you know, with tech as well, right? There's

Brandon Downey 9:01

a converse conversation to going on about, you know, we're reading competition. Absolutely. But here's, here's something that we also need to keep in mind. There's no competition, if there are no opportunities here, right here.

Unknown Speaker 9:13

None of it's great point.

Brandon Downey 9:15

That's so the point is we have to we have to come together. Yeah, that's one thing about West Virginia, every single one of us know here. It's one thing why West Virginia, and we're always willing to put those boots on, hold them up, and let's get to work. Right, but we also have to come together, right? We have to understand that unless we have diversity here. In terms of not just the government agencies, but bringing in more government agencies, then we give opportunities for our kids that are graduating high school, college, you know, cetera, to have opportunities to stay within the state. So now we always celebrate the amount of businesses the amount of people to come in into West Virginia, but no one's asking the question up coming to me we're leaving exactly one of the worst

Scott Dix 9:56

states Yeah, brain drain

Brandon Downey 9:59

that are leaving because there are no opportunities here. So again, this is trying to no granted. There are many variables to the problem. Yeah,

we're not going to solve all but you have to start somewhere. Right? Right. We can't just always sit around and talk about it. Action is made action is needed. Yeah, right. Absolutely have to get started somewhere. And that was the reason we brought Jimmy step in on our first episode. I mean, he writes about the higher educational attainment and actually keeping, you know, the I mean, we have such great education here in West Virginia at the higher level. It's how do we actually keep those people here? And I think we're, you know, me and Scott, in particular, in the some of these other folks are great examples of leaving the state, but then coming back because of companies like trilogy, and

in that money that is coming in for this conference, we actually started a nonprofit organization, right? Yeah. So tell us about that. Yeah. So what we're planning to do with that money is do more of the stem projects, make, make sure that kids are aware, especially in the next 10 years, there's the advanced aerial mobilization project that's going on right now. Right. So drones are gonna be more active in our day to day lives, whether it's delivering our packages, or us right, working with all the different airports here in the state, they're putting all that stuff into place now. So instead of a kid saying, I want to be a police officer, or firefighter, which are great professions, don't get me wrong, we're not wanting to replace those. But we want them say, hey, I want to be a drone pilot, or, you know, I want to do data research or something like that. But they don't know that if we're not out there, showing them a path to the future. And we have to start with K through 12, not just whenever they get to college, or we're in their final years of schooling, that we got to start them young. So they see this, they're like, oh, put a little Lego guy together, write a program, make a walk across the table. That's what get kids excited. I think that something similar happened to you to get you down the programming path, right? Whenever you had the goofy winking.

So in the 90s, obviously, there wasn't a lot of computer labs, right. So

yeah, or Google,

or, you know, for us to do any type of research. It was like, Okay, we're the diskettes. Why can I at least search the content on them? So Mr. White was one of my one of my teachers growing up. And he was very, very progressive, right? He had the, you know, the grandson, they get computers and things of that nature. And I remember it was an apple two II that we were working on. And it was we learned basic, we learned basic, like the language basic. And part of our project was a thing you need, you need to do something with it. So the disk, my personality, what can I do? Extreme? Right. Yes, not just meet but exceed. Yeah. So I got the resolution of the screen, drew out. Pluto, actually was Pluto, Pluto. And then what I did was I made the eyes blink within within The Loop timeout. Okay, so that was my first introduction. But it wasn't until really high school and one of my best friends, one of my best friends today. He was the programmer. He's he's probably one of the most skilled programmers I've ever known. Life. Yeah.

Where's his resume?

Market Yeah, out there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, appreciate your resume. But I know, he's the one that showed me, right. And he's one that got me interest. And I've told him this many, many times. Right. But it wasn't because of that. He also had the means by which to do it. His his parents were professors in physics in English, so he had he had a computer, show me around, you know, that sparked my interest. That's great. You know, literally started off pre med. And I'm like, You know what, I'm going to this computer science, pure engineering field. Right? That's awesome. You know, rest is history is this history here.

And that's, that's exactly what we're planning on doing with this. So the Charles Robert Pinkerton foundation is going to be giving back from an educational standpoint, whether it's doing STEM, helping kids with computer labs. I know. They're trying to do a lot of things rolling out broadband here in the state, which is a great initiative. But what are we gonna do with that? Right, we got to put these different types of technologies in these kids hands to let them leverage the investment that the state is making in the internet.

Right. So that's where sponsorship dollars are going. Really? Yeah. All of the, you know, funding from or sponsorship dollars. Is there any tickets from all attendees? It's also

in Toronto, next year's as well. Yeah, exactly. Next year, I mean, this is the inaugural, right. It's not stopping anytime soon.

So if you see me on vacation, it was not paid by any of those dollars.

The whole point here is to create more of these opportunities. I mean, mentors resolutely is absolutely essential. I think we've Probably all got those stories, I'm blessed to have a great mentor as well, who has he lives, just across West Virginia line can throw a stone in the Mon, and runs all the high performance computing stuff at the National Energy Technology Laboratory has for 20. Some years, he was my mentor as a teenager, we did stuff that no, I mean, you could have never done this stuff in school. I mean, the stuff that Mike had us doing, like breaking from Hills technologies, was just insane. I mean, the whiteboard sessions that we had back in the day, were just crazy and probably borderline dangerous. At times were like, I don't know if we should build a Railgun. Today, Mike. But these are the kinds of things we were learning about all of these different pieces, and without the mentorship that we can provide, you know, both through trilogy and through the Pinkerton foundation, you know, we can spark new ideas, while we're simultaneously working with our competitive mates or competitors, and teammates, because that's the way the government world works. We have we have to play together. We're all working to grow. I mean, I see every day on LinkedIn, in the Saul's hiring, you know, Lakota, all of the next gen trilogy, all of these people are putting out, you know, we're hiring, we're hiring, and they need people here in the state to do that. And the state is getting to be a better and better place to live, work and play. Absolutely. Right. Yeah.

So let's, let's shift gears and talk about, you know, who should attend? Like, who's the who's the main audience? You know, aside from all the great technology companies that are coming in? For our listeners, who are who might even be, you know, attending? Yeah, which they should. So let's talk about,

I'd like to start that and I'll pass it over, let's talk about who is attend. The early morning, you know, at the first half of the day, I'm gonna hit my microphone here, just gonna box that thing off. Is, is a collection of speakers from these agencies, right that we have here in West Virginia. So we got the director of any TL Dr. Brian Anderson is coming in. Terrific. I mean, they've they're a great story. Under the Department of Energy. The mission is super cool. The Simulation Based Engineering that they do on their jewel supercomputer is just out of this world. And if you're interested, go check out m fixed dot o RG. It's there. There's free modeling simulation software that they have. So Dr. Anderson will be in we've got Ken, how do you say his last name? REM REM, Ken REM, and He's the assistant director of NASA IV and V, another incredibly important facility, to the entire organization of NASA, you know, independent validation and verification or verification of validation is, is part and parcel to everything that NASA does, that all that code has to be assessed and and tested to the nth degree. They've also got some really cool projects out there with their is it Nasus cubed, I think is one of their simulation based tools. Again, open source, some of the great work that is provided by the government is out there for us to use, you know, you can download this stuff and use it on your own. We've got Frank Indiglo, who's the CTO of NOAA, formerly the head of high performance computing. We've got a little bit of a theme here with the high performance computing, for NOAA, and they've got a footprint down in Fairmont that they recently expanded in their data center. Absolutely. And Frank was, was hugely influential in that and that has continued to move up and, and sort of managed from, you know, a higher level over there. So he's coming to talk about Noah's mission and why they chose West Virginia to expand that footprint. And then I'm missing one.

Yeah, that's the Deputy Assistant Director for the FBI, Brian Griffith. We actually worked with Brian, back in the day before we started trilogy. ISR was that building, and ISR actually got bought out by the high technology foundation. Right? And so he was actually worked in there before he went down the FBI. I think he went a year before we did maybe in like 2008. But yeah, he's moved right up. The rain has long been part of the all the way. So if there was anybody that can speak about that, it would definitely be him. So we're really happy to have him.

Yeah, that's excellent. And then we have some other speakers too.

Yeah. Jim Estep I can't forget, Jim. So, yeah. Jim. Jim also works with a very important initiative called opportunity moves, right. So as part of what we're doing, yes, we're shining the spotlight on local small businesses. We're trying to recruit government agencies. And that's kind of what he's doing to build up that 79 Technology Park. So Jim's actually going to be talking about opportunity move. And then hopefully, Frank will follow up after him to say why they did move NOAA here. And while they're expanding out that then

they work together on that initiative, they they were on hand to make that all happen.

Yeah. And then lastly, we'll have ManTech talking about the dark web because again, this is a technology based conference. So we want to showcase you know, cybersecurity is absolutely huge. If you have a cell phone right now and you're not getting the text saying hey, your city alone went through, click the link and enter your information. Right. So I mean, there's constant tax who you know, doing this raising awareness about these attacks is another thing that we're trying to do but we have Bama Citrix we have some of the leading edge in biometrics, identity management, Okta will be there,

right and Rank One just opened a new office right here in Morgantown incredible company with Vantage. Yeah, yep. Have Vantage is playing a huge role in this, the development of West Virginia as well.

Yeah. And that's also piggybacking off this in West Virginia. Because again, that's what we're trying to do is show all the different opportunities you have here in the state, and what you'd hit on earlier. And I know me and Brandon talked with Senator capital and mansions office yesterday was with the remote if they're in other states, we're having to pay those taxes out to those states, right. But if we can get them to move here and still do that job in California, they don't have to have a $350,000 salary. Living in an 800 square foot place, you're gonna have an 8000 square foot place here, working now you're home, doing the exact same thing at pennies on the dollar of what the cost was.

You just nailed it. I'm I'm living it right now. I've been back in West Virginia for a couple of weeks feels great. By the way, August in West Virginia is beyond lovely. I can't even describe it. I woke up this morning and I, at the risk of getting a little too personal driving or to get a cup of coffee. And the mist on the mountains brought a darn tear to my eye. It was like It felt so good to be home to have the windows rolled down and smell that it was incredible. But you had mentioned to send West Virginia, that is an incredible program. It's basically used to incentivize people to come either back to West Virginia or consider West Virginia. Even if you work remotely, for example, that jobs in California, fine. Live in West Virginia, pay taxes here and they'll pay to help get you back here. We've had a couple people take advantage of that.

Shane powers.

I couldn't wait.

He's not gonna wait. I'll just come on back. So still a

little blood on the table there. But it was like I just need to get back here.

That's absolutely great. And a lot of the companies that you guys mentioned, I mean, they're definitely ultra important in terms of again, the economic diversity, economic development. Yeah, but that was just a small fraction. Alright. She has a larger pie, if you will, that that's needed to get this thing moving. We got we got to have that momentum going forward. But

and thanks to a lot of the companies that are organizing companies that helped us in this effort, forge business solutions, ATS vertex strategy and

ASD. alleghenies. Thank you. Vertex partners this year, like you said, ManTech has been pivotal in this entire process as well.

at NCMA.

Yep. IBM. There's another one right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, let's talk about who should attend this event. Who are some of the, you know, people that listening right now that that, you know, could attend? Like, is it just for technologists are?

Well, you know, I can say that a lot of the the interest that. So you know, we've been sort of promoting the event among we've moved from sponsorships over to individuals. And some of our sponsors are incredible IBM, Google, we've got some big names coming in from Red Hat is in there, right? We've got a lot of folks coming in to all of our sponsors, or all of our committee members who have helped to support the event are also sponsors. So not only are they giving their time, and their talent and their experience, I'm also giving their dollars to support this thing, because they see how important it is as well, not from the individual side. Some of the folks that had been keenly interested are folks that I don't think we're really aware of how big of a footprint the federal government has here in North Central West Virginia, specifically. So you know, I've been talking to folks, they're, you know, account execs, people who are bringing really interesting new technologies out into the federal space, which can be a challenge, because you know, the federal government, they only have so much time to talk to all of us, there's a lot of us out there serving the federal government. So it's really hard sometimes to, for them to give attention to a lot of new technologies, they got a mission to achieve right work. So one of the things that we do as a system integrator, and all of our partners are doing is we try to say, hey, you know, we've got this new technology, you know, we've got something that we think you need to see, that could be a value that could accelerate the mission could improve response times, for example. I mean, we've got programs that require response times that are under 20 millisecond or something like that, it got to be fast. And if we can improve those times, that's great. So we bring a lot of vendors in that have these new technologies and technologies moving quickly. So we're talking about, you know, maybe they've only existed for two or three years. What's hard to hear about these things. So those folks those account execs, those consultants, those subject matter experts, BD professionals, professionals, they want to come in and hear about what these agencies are trying to do. They want to know if you're using AI/ML big broad term, right, right. What are you doing inside of that? Add space, if you're using a Kubernetes management plane, what are your goals? And so there's lots of ways to skin that cat for sure. If you're doing cloud and you need to manage cloud, what does that look like? So we've seen a lot of BD professionals get very interested, mostly because they want to come and learn more about what we're doing here to take that information out. And I think that is absolutely essential. Because if they don't know what's going on here, then we're not going to get the attention, we're not going to get the focus, we're not going to get those new technologies brought to us. And I think that's probably one of my the things that makes me happiest is to see people be professionals like me, and get excited about coming to West Virginia, and learning about what we're doing here and how they can work here. And I think that helps to kind of build the strength that we already have here and kind of continue to bolster that.

And we're actually trying to foster that. So we talked about the speakers. So that was kind of like what's going on in the morning. Course we have lunch, the coffee is actually going to be sponsored an afternoon boss stratagem, right. But that's the keep you going. And then we have the exhibitors, that's going to be in the main hall there. So you can go see these technologies, and watch demos and stuff like that. But we allotted time for actual networking, right? Because at the end of the day, some of these smaller companies and stuff, they might not have the relationships with these beauties of the man taxi centers, the lighthouse IBM's. So this gives them a chance to actually go and talk to those folks to say, well, this is kind of our core capabilities. This is my area of focus, how can we work together to do other things. So it's fostering again, opportunities, growth, and at the end of the day, more revenue coming back to our state, right.

And when we're not doing a formal matchmaking event, by any stretch of the imagination, these are the prime contract holders, these these, these are the folks that we need to know and who are looking for support team members and things of that nature. Whether it's here in West Virginia or beyond Roseburg, right? Yeah, yep. So it's networking with with federal agencies, a lot of the big, you know, decision makers, as well as dealing with these and IT professionals and it exactly right, we've got a lot of actual folks that are hands on keyboard, doing this stuff they're coming out to, to see what is coming next as well.

And we actually even have some student organizations, too, that's wanting to come to come and see like, Hey, I'm graduating in the year two, these are the companies you need to getting internships with, right? So if you're not preparing yourself for when you graduate, because I know a lot of kids like I got my degree, but I didn't have anything. If you're not out there talking to these companies and saying, what internships Do you guys have? Like, what areas of expertise do you do? This is the great event for that. So I know we're going to have some of those folks attending as well

focus on those main areas that they know that their clients are wanting. Right, exactly. Right. So a lot of the I mean, we all been here, there's core curriculum, right? Yeah, there's the work that you do outside of outside of the classroom. Right, exactly where the real work. And that's where you actually do that self study. That's where you actually increase your skill set, right? Yeah, it's those all hours, but this will allow them to prioritize, right? Based upon what's out there. And what those companies are looking at.

Sounds like a great time to give a good plug for our trilogy interns who are kicking butt,

butt as actually just going to say that, and that's what we do is try to prepare our interns because we see what's coming out there. We know what's coming next. And even if it's not covered in the curriculum, we show them the areas of focus that they need to be doing in having an event like this to say, Well, I've never even thought about artificial intelligence, machine learning, how are these models trained and that kind of stuff, getting them excited about that. So that way, during the internship, we'll put them in real world situations. So that way, whenever they graduate, they can hit the ground running. So yeah, I do have experience with X, Y, and Z technology,

there's only so much you can learn in a four year class. And a lot of that stuff gets lost. And that's type things that you pick up within the the actual first year of your professional career. The problem is, is that we want to build as much confidence and, and skill within our interns. So right when they do go out into the job market, they they have an advantage because they already have the certifications. They've worked in a team they've learned to communicate. Now I'll say this, again, technology changes all the time. All right? We rebrand things, right? New. You in this industry long enough? What's old is new again, right? It's true. But the thing of it is, is that you can learn to study, you can learn to work in a group, you can learn to start peeling back the technology and get rid of the complexity. So we build experience, real context so that they can go out there and be effective within the workforce. Yeah,

and you know, jump off of that. I think one of the things that we do with our interns and I'll circle this back around the tech in a way to is To help people see what's possible. You know, a lot of times, you get these ideas of like, you hear things like aI ml, and it sounds too big and too complicated and too new. And the fact of matter is there are entry points into every technology. I don't care if it's high performance computing, AI, ml, Simulation Based Engineering, it doesn't matter what it is, there are entry points where it can be accessible to everyone. You just need the right experts, right? And the expertise to say, Well, let's start over here. And we'll layer you in I know that's happening with our interns. Have you flipped that over to tech? Yeah, I know that they're, I mean, growing up, you know, in West Virginia, and, you know, some in Pennsylvania as well. You know, I also spent some time in Fayette County, and there's a lot of negative stereotype, a negative stereotype. And there were times as a younger person, where I was very defensive and felt very like, oh, you know, why are people? You know, I All my friends are super smart, doing all these great things, you know, they're, they're teaching me how to do these things, right? I'm watching all this stuff happen? Where is this idea coming from? And it's just not a correct assumption. And so I think a big part of what we try to do every day is reconcile ideas that are actual facts against stereotype. Tech, yet is an opportunity to do that to come out and really take a look. I mean, we have, you know, all of these major federal agencies out here doing incredibly complex work, some of which we can't even talk about, right? That's great. You know, that's top secret. And man, the stuff that's going on there is just phenomenal. I mean, it's so complicated. It's so high tech, it's so advanced. And for some people, they don't reconcile that with West Virginia. And that's one of the perceptions we're trying to change as well, is this capability, right? One is the work ethic that, you know, we all learned that we all have. Yeah, we all learned. Another thing about my grandmother the other day about growing up with my grandpa shook was his name. We love nicknames in West Virginia, for sure. But you know, Grandpa Shug was always you know, fixing some, and that was a big part of it. And it gave that confidence. And so what we're looking to do is whether it's with our interns, whether it's with businesses that are looking to West Virginia to do business, you can have confidence that we're going to get it done out here in tech, yeah, is is a great highlight, and a place to kind of come and feel that we're going