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.