About the Episode

Today we’re going to talk about technology and its role in enhancing the customer experience.

Technologies like artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, automation and many others promise better data, better access, and better ways of reaching customers. But what about the customers’ perspective? How will these technologies help customers solve their challenges more easily and offer a better customer experience with products and services they regularly interact with?

To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Charlie Oliver, Founder and CEO of Tech 2025 and Served Fresh Media.

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About Our Guest

Charlie’s years of experience in the trenches of old media include working in advertising in New York at such media goliaths as BBDO Worldwide and Condé Nast, to producing sitcoms and dramas at Sony Pictures Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers, Dreamworks and Oscar-award winning indie production companies, to event management at the Sundance Film Festival.

After spending several years in corporate law in document review at global firms (White & Case, Clifford Chance and Wachtel Lipton, to name a few), Charlie segued seamlessly into tech and new media as a web video producer where she co-created and co-produced experimental video projects such as an 8-hour live webathon for the 2008 presidential election and numerous web video series. Soon thereafter, Charlie launched ArtofTalk.tv (a site that brought the vast world of tv, web and radio talk shows online to Users in bite-size video snippets of debates and interviews in social media).

Served Fresh Media™ (a New York-based company that provides digital media strategy, product development, and branding across platforms including social media, mobile, and live-events) was a natural next step in her creative and media evolution. At Served Fresh Media, Charlie and her team provide digital strategy, senior management advisory, team building and training, strategic partnerships, and product development for startups and brands. Clients Served Fresh Media has worked with include IBM, New York Press Club, Digital Media Wire, Digital Flash, and It’s About Time, among others.

In the Fall of 2016, Charlie launched Tech2025 to educate entrepreneurs and consumers on the next wave of disruptive, emerging technologies that are expected to drastically change our world in the next decade (AI, machine learning, driverless vehicles, IoT, blockchain, VR, etc.), through live-events and interactive workshops with industry experts. The mission of Tech2025 is to help entrepreneurs and the general public to understand and embrace emerging technologies.

Transcript

Please note that this transcript was generated with the help of automated tools, so please bear with any inaccuracies.

Greg Kihlstrom 

My name is Greg Kihlstrom and I'm the host of the agile world podcasts. Today we're going to talk about technology and its role in enhancing the customer experience, technologies like artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality automation and many others promise, better data, better access, and better ways of reaching customers. But what about the customer's perspective? How will these technologies help customers solve their challenges more easily and offer a better customer experience with products and services they regularly interact with. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Charlie Oliver. Why don't you tell me a little bit about what you do at Tech 2025?

Charlie Oliver

Thanks for having me on the show. Really excited to be here. And I am the founder and CEO of tech 2025 which is a subsidiary of surface media. My digital marketing agency that's been around for about 10 years now or the time flies. So I launched a tech 2025 three years ago as a platform and community for discussing the impact of emerging technologies on society. But even more so than that to educate us on what these technologies are, where the opportunities are, where the problems are, that type of thing. Bringing together different stakeholders. And in definitely doing it from the perspective of considering ordinary people. Right. And so to that end, this, this is our events. Our experiences are very much open to the public, the general public.  we have a very professional, network in terms of everyone's doing something, either they have start up or they are in corporate America, but yeah, we, we want to have diverse conversations about these things. Cause oftentimes the consumer's point of view or, our, our way of thinking when we're using these technologies is not really considered when they're being developed. 

Greg Kihlstrom 

Let's let's start about talking about what makes good customer experience. So,  how would you define that? 

Charlie Oliver

Simply put,  a great customer experience is one that gives me what I want offers what I need as well. So I want what I want and I want what I need. And those are two very things because I may not know that I need something. I, I need the business to be sort of anticipate, right? What it is that I've want, what it is that I need, I should say. And then I want to be delighted. I want to experience something that gets me to try something new or see something different about myself or the world or  anything, you know. So I want what I want, I want what I need and I want to be delighted with an experience that gives me a new perspective on something that might be a lot to ask. You may only get two of those things. That translates into product. You know the speed at which something is given to you, but also the, the design of the store a lot of times facilitates like the delight of the experience. You know? Is it helping people to sort of interact more in a positive way? Or is it, is it really such a horribly designed experience in store that you just want to get in and get out and then that's it. So there's a lot that goes into that. But yeah, I would say that I would say, give me what I want. Give me what I need and delight me with something that surprises me and takes me further than I thought I would go.

Greg Kihlstrom

So on one hand that seems actually pretty straight forward, but why do you think,  why do you think companies are struggling to do this? Cause I mean, to your point, maybe you can get one ho ideally you could get to,  if you get all three, it's, you're telling other people about it, right? But, what do you think the barriers are to, companies really providing that great customer experience are and you know what, what can they do about it?

Charlie Oliver

That's a great question. That's kind of like the multibillion trillion dollar question. I mean, so let's start with the fact that everything is far more complicated than it was just a few years ago, right? I mean, there's a million platforms that ultimately a customer experience falls down to communication. Ultimately it's you telling me what you want. Me understanding that and giving it to you the way I know that you want it. And it's this constant communication between the customer and the store owner or the,  brands and communication has never been more complicated. If you converse with me, if you, if you communicate with me on one platform, I might love you. You, you say the same thing on another platform and I might hashtag and protest you right out of business. Right. So, so it's, it's complicated. So to that end, you do have to sort of feel for brands and for the people who are having to figure out this communication multi channels that are always changing.

The rules are changing. You know what Twitter allows today, they may not allow tomorrow.  the way people feel today, they may absolutely protest tomorrow. It's really incredible. So, so that's one thing. The communication is really difficult to grasp and if you are able to do that, it's very,  staying on top of that is difficult. And, and, and companies and agencies and everything have to do that while their own internal processes are constantly changing over and over and over again. So that's, that's one thing actually, is the major thing. Right? The other thing is that I think because,  everything's changing so quickly, which I think is, we're all on the same page about that now at this point, right? That the world is changing so quickly. It's like God help us if, I don't know anyone who can really fit, right.

It's like, wow. The other thing about that is that we don't know what we necessarily want. You know there was a time when it was easy to define that for the consumer, right? There was a time with brands, companies were able to say, this is aspirationally speaking, this is what you should want it. We can give it to you. You want a house, a car to children's dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And that's it. Right? And it was very simple. Now,  especially in this era of a, as I call it I wouldn't even say pushback. It's just the, an awakening of sorts that those things don't exist aspirationally. We don't know what we want. What do most people aspire to right now with them? I just want to make it home and not have to see a tweet with a president is blowing up.

Reasonably speaking, it's very hard to know what to tell or what to understand. The consumer wants aspirationally or needs. So that's another thing, right? So I, there's a lot in that. There's a lot of little sub stories than that, but if you want to talk about understanding what people want, who they are and how brands can meet those needs, it's not impossible. Of course not. There were some brands that are doing it very well. But it's challenging and it's expensive.

Greg Kihlstrom 

What role does technology play in providing that or in understanding customers better?

Charlie Oliver 

I think it plays a far bigger role than we, than we think it does. But then I also think that we are overemphasizing technology in areas where we shouldn't, where it doesn't play a role, right? Because we change, the technology changes us and we change the technology. And there are things about human nature for all of the things that are happening around us at breakneck speed for all of the accelerated innovation that's happening. There are very much still key things about the way that we think and feel and operate as human beings. That is not changing that quickly, not yet. And I think that it's easy to minimize or forget that when we emphasize technology and I see it at our events because  one of the things that we do is that, as I emphasize, and this is from day one, the reason I launched Tecton 25 is because I said, well, I had clients coming to me in 2016 and again, my clients are primarily enterprise companies and brands.

I was having conversations with with executives where they would literally like Charlie, what is going on with AI and machine learning and 2016 was early. Yeah. You know what I mean?  it was out there for sure, but they would look at, they were seeing the horizon and a cliff, right? And they were like, are we going to, are we going off the cliff? And I said, well, how was the rest of your organization? Have you began to have these conversations with your employees about this stuff? It starts with conversations within your own company. And I knew, and we know, and  and I know that companies especially, enterprise companies aren't set up for that, right? It's very much top down innovation very much this is what it is. This is what's going to be trickled down. And I began to see even then in 2016, Oh no, if we don't change that and begin to listen to what's happening within our own companies where they've listened to the conversations and begin to have those difficult conversations with employees internally, there's not a chance in hell.

We're going to be able to understand how to implement these technologies wisely responsibly,  externally, right? And so I launched Tech 2025 specifically for that. And what I learned immediately what we began to see was that in our think tanks where we ask people to figure out problems, very, very grounded, real world problems, whether it's on the business side of the consumer facing side, figure out very specific problems that these technologies are inherently creating just by,  it means to, the state amazes us that people, professionals who sit in these think tanks actually express to us things that surprise them and they'll say, I get it time and time again. They'll come up to me. I'll have a head of product marketing or product development for this company that can come up to me and say, Charlie, I never thought of this this way.

I never thought that I felt this way about this particular technology in this particular way. How we're having the conversation here and the problem with that or the reason for that is that we're not asking people, ordinary people in our, in our companies, it's what was the consumers, what they think and feel, and that has nothing to do with technology. That just has to do with a person, number one, needing to be validated in their thoughts. And number two, us getting to the core of what they think and feel, not the surface. See like, Oh, this is cool, but like, I feel a really vulnerable with this, or I don't know,  and getting them to articulate it more. So I guess that's what I mean. I hope I didn't, that was a long way of saying, saying we're screwed.

Greg Kihlstrom 

There's two threads I kind of want to follow out, follow up on that. I mean, there's, there's definitely an employee experience component that you, touched on. And so I want to get back to that in a second before I do,  from a technology standpoint, given what you were talking about, obviously there are so many things right now for any, whatever role they play, whether it's CX, marketing, technology, whatever it may be, there's so many things to keep up with. Are there things right now that you feel are over-hyped? That, people are, they're putting too much stock into,  it's kind of a silver bullet to, to solve problems that really either the technology isn't mature enough or it's being it's being kind of put up on a pedestal when maybe it needs a little more thought or anything like that.

Charlie Oliver:

Oh, that's a great question.  there are like nine emerging technologies all sort of percolating right now. Right. And the other reason I'm watch tech 2025 is because I kept hearing in 2016 the developers of these technologies saying,  in a few years this a little, it's got the, those who's going to be ready for mainstream. And when you read the interviews from back in 2016 and you listen to what the developers of all of these different categories of technologies are saying, they will all say at around the same time,  in about seven to eight years, about eight years, we're going to be ready or whatever. And I'm thinking, wow, that's like 2025. And it cuts. It was like, I'm eating my oatmeal and when I, it occurred to me, I'm like, wait a minute, we've got nine incredibly, mind altering, like game changing technologies that are really questioning and changing our definition of reality, how we perceive reality all developing at the same time.

If they all came to fruition,  the fullness of the promise of what they can deliver at around the same time, the world would just explode. We can't handle that change all at once. Right. So my thing was what was even two of these things came to fruition. We'd still be, it still is game changing, but the question was back then and when I launched it in 2017 and we're going on our third year anniversary was which ones are going to rise to the top and which ones are going to sort of be over-hyped to death. Right. And so as  the hype cycle is what it is. I would say honestly, I think although there's a lot of potential for it and obviously it's going to be game changing. I think VR and I normally get a lot of this, but let me explain.

I'm very careful about these, these conversations that we have about which technologies with our audience at tech 2025, I refuse to get on the hype train. Part of what we try to tell people, professionals and consumers or whatever it is, don't get dragged by the innovation train that's going to just like have you going all over the place, right? That's always, there's too much going on. You got to pick and choose the ones that are things that you want to put your money on. Right? there's two things. There's the VR and I, again, I'm going to get pushback on this, but  the cryptocurrencies blockchain definitely and I, and again, I want to be clear, I am 100% pro. Both of these technologies, I know that they are going to eventually, tr tremendously possibly change the world.

The problem is that they were at, and again, we lived, you and I, we both live in this, in this world of tech. And so I saw the media around,  sort of cryptocurrency, blockchain, there's this, investing in stuff and it was damaging. It was damaging for people who felt like, I have to invest in this, I have to be a part of this. I have to, you know what I mean? And, and for the ones who couldn't afford to do it, it was pretty dangerous. There was a lot of things happening in the community that didn't get publicized that those of us in the community know what's going on with just sort of like, wow consumers are going to need to be really smart about this and, and who's educating them on it. Right. and the other thing with VR for example, is again, there's a lot of APIs, tons of applications for VR that's being used right now.

But it's crucial, like in training, industrial,  department of defense there's a lot of the amazing, you skip construction use cases for it. But as for the consumer aside from gaming, yeah, it's, it's not, I don't think it's going to happen for a while and I think it's, it's so nascent and there's so much more that needs to be considered when they're developing that particular technology, especially with regards to pushing the idea of creating empathy or, or empathy through these technologies. I'm really worried about that with VR. I think it's almost irresponsible right now, the way it's being done. So anyway, I would say VR and then cryptocurrency, although again, both are incredible, right?

Yeah, amazing, amazing potential. But I, I agree. And I mean, I think there being, I would say particularly the blockchain aspect, it's being applied to a lot of things that it was never even originally intended to be applied to, but sort of as a  as a solution because Hey, it's the latest, to your point about the hype cycle and all of that, it's like, well, blockchain could be great in the cases where it's, it really performs well and scales well and everything like that. But don't try to put that, don't try to put blockchain on something that blockchain should not be put on just to raise some extra dollars or raise some eyebrows or  whatever, whatever the case may be, promotion or, well, and also the question is, when you ask that question, which is why to, I think that's a question that we should be asking ourselves constantly. Because the question really is also, are we mature enough for the technologies? Are we wise enough right now to, to ask the questions and to, to face who we are as the technology is mirroring what we are back to us. Right? Are we able to face who we are using these technologies and transcend that because those two, just those two technologies that I mentioned,  especially blockchain, especially the BR, there are things that are going on with the development of them. There are a lot of ethical issues and we can say that about every technology I go there that I just think made me need more time to figure out before we push the technology onto the consumer. 

I think then lots of people complain about data privacy and social media, which, I mean, I, I agree that there's, there's issues there, but all of a sudden now you're, you're tracking everyone's movement in VR and  all of these other, it's like my, my concern, this came from someone else, not me, but is our, even our governmental structures are, do not move quickly enough to handle like, to your point, the a few minutes ago, if all five of these novel technologies actually took off and were in, in ready use, how would we handle,  how would we regulate privacy? And in an environment where VR, AI, all of these things are regularly, part of day to day, regular life. I mean, how, how do we, how do we handle a world where that stuff is, I mean, it is becoming more prevalent. So, how do we handle a world where that is commonplace?

Right? Well, and here's another great example or I think a decent example I T to be honest with you, I also the the impetus, the emotion behind what made me launch Tech 2025 was anger and disgust, which I know it's negative but it can be used for positive. Here's the thing, Eric Schmidt and Sebastian Throne call coauthor,  he is the cofounder of or the founder of Khan Academy and Eric Schmidt of Google, I think former Chairman of Google. But anyway, they co authored an article in 2016 I think it was June and Forbes and the article it, it's so I was angry after reading it because the gist of the article was that they were saying, look, don't, don't be such wussies about AI. Okay. They were basically responding to,  they are tech, they are tech utopianism, right? They believe technology is going to say they were responding to Elon Musk and, and the late Stephen Hawking and the men of those ilk who think, that technology could possibly destroy us and whatever.

And until their response was this article, when they basically said, Hey, listen, we are going to turn this world and to a Mecca utopia and AI is, is our greatest tool to do that. So stop asking all of these ridiculous questions and creating these horror scenarios. Just let us do what we're going to do. Which I thought was disgusting. I, I was so angry at that that I would say that's one of the main things that made me launch Tech 2025 because I said, okay, so you aren't in any way even entertaining the possibility that these technologies can have an adverse effect or devastating effect for many, many people and that just historically doesn't make sense. Any transitional period,  an industrial revolution, whatever thousands, millions of people fall through the cracks. The problem is that the thing is that you usually have the time to absorb that as a society.

You don't really have time right now because it's moving so quickly that this develops desperate technologies. But when I heard that, it made me say, okay, if these are the people who are developing the technologies and they aren't even considering that it's going to be a problem we're in trouble. And then a few months later, of course I sat in front of, as I told you when I saw you the last time in front of Mark Zuckerberg, when he gave that now famous talk where he was asked by David Kirkpatrick, that's economy. Hey, do you think Facebook had anything to do with Russian interference of the election or in any way in 2016 and  Mark, the answer was no. I sat right in front of him and I saw the look on his face when he, he seemed absolutely stunned and disgusted that that could even be considered.

Now, of course, now he knows, everybody knows, and he even admitted it. That was his biggest mistake and it probably in his entire,  tenure at Facebook. But the point is is you don't even see, there's such an arrogance. There is such a desire to turn this into something without seeing that everything comes at a cost, at a price that you are willing to dismiss the idea of people possibly being hurt by these technologies or society as a whole being hurt by these technologies. And that's a problem and it's not, it doesn't seem to be getting better.

Greg Kihlstrom

Right, as more as more technologies arise,  it's sort of people divert their attention to the newer things when it may be something,  five years, 10 years old,

Charlie Oliver

Three words. We have to ask at what costs. Okay, you're going to give me utopia. You tell me I'm going to be in a flying car. Okay. Whatever your thing is, it sounds fun, but what is it with flying cars?

Greg Kihlstrom 

Blade Runner did it to me.

Charlie Oliver 

Blade runner. Right. But the thing is is we should always be asking, and I, and I literally launched tech 2025 the guys that are always thinking about asking the question at what costs, right? The bigger, the grander the claims, the more we might have to sacrifice to get that right. So if you're telling me AI is going to make this world a utopia, well yeah, but at what cost and who's gonna pay the price?

Greg Kihlstrom 

Oh, definitely. Well on switching gears a little bit to, to go to the the employee side.  you, you've mentioned a little bit before where, where leaders of companies are not necessarily,  they're, they may have the vision and, and the the ideas the, the general idea is, but listening to employees and  so quality of life for for the employees becomes more and more important, particularly when not only at least currently unemployment is, is where it is. Gig workers are increasing, so on and so forth. So,  this idea of customer experience is, really driven by employee experience.  

Is employee Experience that something that's solely,  driven by the economy or is that, is this, is this sort of, regardless of what may happen and  12 months, four years, whatever, it's kinda here to stay that companies are going to paying more attention?

Charlie Oliver:

It's funny you should mention that because we have an event next week on on, on companies, on developing the next generation of technological leaders or technology leaders and companies. And absolutely. I'm really intrigued by this because I think historically companies have,  they have set the tone, obviously it through their culture and their mission as to what the company is going to be and the employees have followed along. And if you didn't follow along, you were fired. It's just that simple. You don't belong here. Again, things are complicated, right? It's like the comp, it's the conversation between the consumer and the brand extends in, is just as complicated as the conversation between the employer and the employee. And it's even more complicated because, you know the employees helping to build the product or the service and they, they see the emperor with no clothes, right?

A brand can hide from consumers in a number of ways, but the employees, they have the keys to your kingdom. And a lot of these companies now, I, which is why I think what's happening with the big tech companies in particular is so fascinating because employee activism is, is, is no small thing. The CEOs of the top companies in the country, if not the world. Well actually in America,  they just released their, I think it was the business roundtable released that statement with back in August to September where they said, we are 108 executives, including like Tim Cook and, you know we're, we want to change. We know that we need to change how companies, corporations are right. We are 100%, sort of dedicated to the, the shareholder, and we know that this is now a shareholder mentality of,  and we can no longer do that.

Why do you think that they're doing that? Why did they put out that statement? Granted they didn't back it up with anything, but they did put out a statement where they all signed this letter and said, we know that we now need to be more responsible to employees and to vendors and to all the stakeholders. We need to treat them well. Well, it's because they know what I've been telling Tech 2025 attendees for the past years. They can't do this without you. They're screwed. Why? Because the technologies that they're trying to implement are not as simple as 2.0 or not. This is not as simple as his mobile apps. And  it's not as simple. They are complicated. There's all sorts of unintended consequences. They are dealing with ethical issues that they have never had to deal with before. They are tiptoeing.

There's blood on the streets, blood on the tweets, and so they have to rely on the thing that they've taken for granted the most over the past several decades, which is their employees. Right. but they don't, I don't think that the most companies, I don't think they know how to do that. Again, it goes back to what I told my my clients back in 2016 are you listening to your employees? Well, that's really wasn't the right question. The question is do you even know how to, and they don't and they don't, but here's the thing. They absolutely, the companies that survive the companies that will thrive, pick it up, survive you want to thrive and grow in the next 10 years are the ones that figure out how to reinvent a mechanism of communication with their employees that helps them to bring the employees into the, into the decision making process in a way that's really substantive. Okay. And creates the new leaders that are leading, put the companies that are coming in the next 10 to 15 years.

Greg Kihlstrom 

How much of that is culture change within an organization and how much can be enabled by technology or do you see it as kind of both feeding each other?

Charlie Oliver

Well, they both beat each other. But I mean, and this is, this is what the base, right? But I think that the culture defines everything and that doesn't mean that obviously I know that the technology defines the culture too, but, but the company culture, and that's a huge thing that gets overlooked. That's actually the core of this right, is that companies already have their culture in place.  you have companies that have had their culture in place for the past, three decades. This is who we've been. This is who we are. I mean, and that's even for the big tech companies. I mean, Facebook is 10 years old, the big tech companies are 10 years old and then you have Apple and Microsoft. They're 30 years old. Right? But the fact of the matter is they pride themselves on the culture.

Sure. That they, they know has brought them a certain amount of success and they are like any of us would be in our lives on an individual level. They are slow to recognize an even fight the idea that they are going to have to change that culture and that it's, or that it's changing very quickly without their consent. Right. So you,  this is what the employee activism is about and this is why that's so crucial right now because this employee activism, which is centered around pushing back on the irresponsible implementation of technologies or irresponsible behavior by executives, including you climate, not, not being as involved in climate change as companies should be or whatever the case may be or  sexual harassment or whatever. This is telling the leaders in organizations that your company culture is changing and you're not changing quick enough or effectively enough with it. And if you don't change this, you will implode or explode, whatever you want to say. Yeah. And here's the thing. Yeah, technology will be all over that. But at the end of the day, it's not about the technology. It's about what people who, people

Let me rephrase that. It's about how people want to see and define who they are through the lens of their organizations when they're working during the day. And that the lines between who I am at the office and who I am after work or on the weekend. Yeah, it's, it's no longer, it's not there anymore. Right? There's no look Charlie and at home Charlie, there's one Charlie now. Right? And people now they want the, and that's, you got to sort of understand that. I think honestly, part of what we've hated about corporate culture and when you look at any movie on there has to do with company culture. Some of the movies from the 90s, they were great about,  workplace environment and the toxicity of it. The toxicity of it has to do with denying us sort of the voice that we need to be heard and was a place for us to feel as if we can express what we are without being condemned. Right? So that has been the basis of a lot of the culture and now the technology is helping to sort of up in that. And it's fascinating to see actually, you know.

Greg Kihlstrom

Well, as always, I love talking about this stuff with you. It's been great to have this conversation. So one last thing,  before we wrap up what is, what is on your radar? I know, you have a lot of events coming up atTech 2025. Qhat kinds of things are on your radar for this year and what should people be keeping an eye out for?

Charlie Oliver

Well, so now that we are are in the year 2020,  everybody's like, well, you call it a Tech 2025, what do you do? Yeah, I, right. I'm like, listen, listen, we'd be lucky at this rate. We'll be lucky to get to know. We're like two days into the new year and the attack that ran. Great. So anyway. So what I would say is this, we are switching gears. At Tech 2025, we'll say switching gears with doubling down on our initial mission, which is that the last three years have been about educating people and professionals and companies and the stakeholders on the, that these changes are coming and that this is happening. And that was a lot of like getting shaking people to sort of wake up,  and I include myself in that as, as tech savvy as I am and I work in tech and everything, but it was the realization of what's happening, right?

And the feeling of, Whoa, my God, this is really happening. So now that we've got the shock and awe over with, right? Everyone's on the same page. We all know everyone, no matter who you are. I think most people would agree, okay, everything is changing and it's not only changing, but we've got to figure out how to make this happen in a way that's going to be responsible, smart. Where are the opportunities, what do I do? So for the next five years, we're moving into full on strategy mode, on starting with what do you do if you're a company, how do you begin to sort of really strategize and, and I say this more so to individuals actually, how do you create a strategy that's going to make you more in control of what you should be doing as opposed to feeling as if you're being dragged along by what's happening next, what's happening now?

So we're helping now people to focus and one of the things that we're doing with that and to, and to sort of get up to speed is to we launched tech 2025 to 25 continuous learning, which is our upskilling platform. And we are, we get a lot of requests from companies to do our courses, which are very grounded in being able to have non technical employees and people learn about this stuff in a grounded way. And we get a lot of requests for that. So we are licensing our courses to companies for that. And we're also doing more courses for the public as well. We have that. And then we of course have our events. We are spreading to other cities. So you guys look us up. If you want to learn more about what we're doing tech 20, 20 five.com you can sign up and follow us at join tech 2025 across the internet, across the social media.

Charlie Oliver 

And yeah, we have a lot of cool events coming up. If you're in New York city we're doing more tech tours. We're going to Walmart to see how they're implementing AI in their new AI supermarket of the future as they're calling it. And the whole idea behind that is that we want to get people out there and really asking questions and seeing the implementation of these technologies in a different way as opposed to just sort of stumbling into stores and just accepting the experience for what it is. Maybe being a lot more intentional and observant in the, in the world that's being created around us.

Greg Kihlstrom 

I'd like to thank Charlie Oliver, founder and CEO of tech 2025 and served fresh media for joining the show.