Jake Van Ness (00:00)
Welcome everybody to CreavoCast. How you doing Carl?

Carl Grivakis (00:03)
Hey, good morning all. I'm doing pretty good. I've got some winds recently that are very nice and life is good. How about you?

Jake Van Ness (00:10)
Good, Yeah, I know both of us are definitely sick of snow and cold. It's been a long winter. You've actually gotten some storms that I didn't get, which was a different experience because normally me being further north, they get more, but things are starting to warm up and I know we're both looking forward to spring and getting out of our offices and enjoying some outdoor stuff. But today we want to talk about AI. I know, shocking, like...

Nobody's talking about that but one of the first things I think we ought to talk about is the Stuff that's going on with the Supreme Court did is actually very timely Why don't you explain to them what you read about?

Carl Grivakis (00:46)
Sure. Now this just came out yesterday, last night actually, on March 2nd. Alright, so maybe a few days earlier than that. The Supreme Court declined on Monday to take up the issue whether or not art generated by AI can be copyrighted under US law. So this is specific to our country. Turning away a case involving a computer scientist from Missouri who was denied a copyright for a piece of art made by his AI system.

Now I've been cautioning people on LinkedIn, especially creatives and those that are trying to go around the creative field and say, AI can do everything, make my logo, make my website, make everything. All right, go ahead and do that, but you can't copyright it and your brand is gonna be diluted anyway, because it's made by AI, it's pulling from everything. So this is a great...

win for us as creatives right now that are trying to keep our field viable as a professional practice. AI has a place, but you got to make sure that you're not using AI exclusively in your creative workflow.

Jake Van Ness (01:50)
Yeah, so to be clear, what that means is that the Supreme Court basically was not going to overrule another court's ruling, which was that you cannot copyright it. So by not seeing the case or by not taking the case, they're basically saying that they are leaving it up to that court and saying that that court is upheld. So I think that's really interesting because, yeah, that's been the concern is that

if you use AI, can you copyright that? And it's everything from logos to people doing like children's books and things like that that typically would be copywritten, but they can't. And I think that's a really good ruling for us. Like you said, it's great for creatives because now it shows that we still need to have some control over that it's funny because you have a specific

Instance that came up recently that I want you to speak to that really hones in on that and it's funny because if it didn't go the way that it did You wouldn't have been all the copyrighted. So why don't you share with everybody like what happened?

Carl Grivakis (02:57)
Sure thing. So first off, I was approached with a branding project for a local tradesman and I gave him a quote and he's a young tech savvy guy and he looked at the quote and asked a few questions. Maybe there was a little sticker shock, like can I do it myself for a lot less? But he made the deposit.

As a designer, should always get a deposit, especially with these new clients that you don't entirely know. And we went through the usual creative process. Do a client intake, discovery, and then initial ideas and presentation. Now, the ideas were a little thin for his questionnaire was a little thin. So I used

my research and development, just going through what his space is, who his target audience is, and I created a variety of concepts. And then his response was pretty clear. didn't really read the email and the design decisions or the reason. And he started sending a whole bunch of AI generated slop to use a term that people are using these days, AI slop.

Jake Van Ness (03:51)
That never happens.

Carl Grivakis (04:02)
So I did what any other designer would do. I didn't panic. I took his input with a smile. I grinned and bared it. And then I went back to what I was doing, designing, and I came up with an idea. One of my sketches that I did present to him actually resonated with him. It was the third concept, the one that had the least polish to it. But it resonated with him. So...

I took that and I pushed it forward. He had started sending me AI stuff after AI stuff that was based on that initial idea. And I'm like, okay, let's pump the brakes. And I started just iterating. It was a mascot that we were working on and it had to be unique because, know, mascots are a great tool in a lot of these trades, but...

AI will generate a whole bunch and you know they may not resonate with your target audience. So we went through a revision process and we kind of landed where it should be. The AI was generating the same thing over and over which was three-dimensional, had a whole bunch of... it looked like you would put it in a movie.

things bursting out in all directions, three-dimensional, would be impossible to silkscreen, impossible to read from the road on a truck. It was just not reproducible. So I brought him back into the space where Logo Design lives and is happiest. Flat color, one-color reproducible, iconic, but also something that you can remember.

And I reworked the text, I chose fonts and colors and presented that. That's where we actually got traction. Now, for the crux of the story, he took my idea and he was still attached to his AI and he went out to the street to show it to people. Not once, but twice after two rounds of revisions. It was me versus AI with his family, with his peers, and with people that were...

were eating in the Chinese restaurant that he was eating at. Just random people. And then he's showing other peers that are in like parallel companies every single time the human design won. Now, yeah.

Jake Van Ness (05:58)
You

That's huge. That's a huge

win for creatives. it's funny because your patients had to be next level to be able to take in what he's sending you and deal with all of these AI generated items and be like, okay, I hear you. I see what you're doing, but I'm going to rely on my expertise and my basically years of wisdom to

give you what you really do need. So I give you props on that because that's huge, but continue because that's a huge win for us.

Carl Grivakis (06:40)
Yes, absolutely. So again, human element one every time AI was tone deaf to his audience, basically, it looked cool, but then it was going to be forgettable. So you have to balance your client input and feedback, however it comes in, whether it's, I don't know, I don't like this. You always got to dive deeper to find out what they don't like, what part of the visual language is not working with them.

If they keep sending AI that looks similar across the board, there is some element there that you need to kind of incorporate into your work if you're in this collaborative process. I'm not the designer that's gonna steamroll my client and say, you have to take this. I'm a collaborative designer. I partner with them because I believe if they have investment in the process, if they sit down and maybe we do a design session over Zoom, they get ownership of that.

and you start asking questions that you learn and discover what the problem was. So it turned out that the text was not, he's like, it just doesn't stand out. And mind you, this is text that I've hand rendered several times. And I'm like, it doesn't stand out. This is the most custom text I've ever done for any project. And then we found out it was just a simple bevel line.

on some of these letters that we had to add so that it looked three-dimensional, but it's still flat color and flat color. So you could cut out that bevel shape and just got to keep it readable. So we hit a good point. I'm in the final round of revisions and this project's going to close. But remember, I took that deposit. I made sure that I at least do not walk away with nothing in this process.

because design is iterative and my time is worth something as well.

Jake Van Ness (08:24)
Yeah, that's

interesting. And again, your expertise come into play where you're thinking about the application. I think a lot of times our clients aren't necessarily thinking about that wide range of stuff that they may need to use it. Like you said, screen printing or if it needs to be cut out of vinyl, things like that, that as a designer, we know what can and can't be done. I run into things all the time where people

are thinking of digital printing versus web printing, which is a very different four color webpress has registration that it has to think about. I specifically work with a few newspapers that I deal with that do get printed on webpress. And if the artwork isn't good or isn't more simplified, I guess is the way to put it, it can cause problems.

And I find a lot of agencies specifically, which blows my mind that there are these big agencies and they can't figure out how to design for print. But they'll design these elaborate ads and wonder why they don't come out well. Well, because you're thinking about magazines that are typically printed in a digital format versus a web press. So again, what we think about as designers and as creatives can really help our clients not run into trouble down the road. mean, another good example is

If your logo is super complicated and super 3D and stuff like that, you're not gonna get embroidery done. Or it's gonna cost you a ridiculous amount to have that embroidery done and it's not gonna look good. The other thing that people need to think about is size. Everything from what does it look like on the side of a tractor trailer or the side of a truck down to what does it look like on a business card. And those are the kind of things that we can think about that

Carl Grivakis (09:53)
Great.

Jake Van Ness (10:07)
Now I'm not going to say I can't think about it and can't be prompted to think about those things, but most people are not putting the right prompts in to have it think about those things. Those are the kind of things where the human has the experience.

Carl Grivakis (10:17)
Now.

That's true. Now, don't think that I don't use AI at all or that I hate AI. It's not a, we can't let it be a threat to us. We are human and we need to either figure out our niche and how to adapt to use it. Cause we can't go kicking and screaming saying, never use AI. You're going to be out of a job and you'll be a dinosaur in your field. The way I use it is,

in my research, if I'm not from an area or if I don't know an audience, I'll use AI to help generate some of my research. What are common colors for that industry? Who is the target market? The emotions behind a brand? What competitors look like? And these become part of your creative brief for when you're considering what you're creating. AI is not entirely

going to wipe us out so long as we are able to respond and use it ethically and whatnot. And Jake, I know you've found some great ways to use AI in what you're doing.

Jake Van Ness (11:17)
Yeah, and I think you're right. Like, we can't stick our head in the sand and not deal with it at all. We both obviously have the concerns of are the artwork side of things gonna be, are we gonna be replaced in some ways? And with the Supreme Court ruling, or non-ruling, I guess is way to say it, that that helps us feel more secure.

But I think it's a really important tool that we can use. And what I'm finding is it's a tool to speed up processes. So for example, I hate writing proposals. I will put that out there. I never loved it. But man, do I wish I AI for writing proposals 15 years ago when I started. It would have made my life so much easier. Now, do I still need to?

put the information in, I still need to make sure it's a proposal that fits the scope that I want it to fit? Yes, obviously, but man, it makes it a lot easier when I can take a conversation I had and take that transcript and put it into an AI and say, hey, give me a list of the things that I promised to do, give me a list of the things that I need to do as deliverables and help me write that proposal. That's a huge way to use the tool to speed the process up.

And you're talking about that in the research that you do, that it speeds up that research. And I think that's how we as creatives need to think about how we use AI is how do we use it to speed up our processes so that we can get more done. And what that means is we can earn more money. And I think that's how we really need to think about it. Now, one of the projects that I did recently with AI is I do, like I said, I work for a bunch of business newspapers.

And I was working with the publisher and he has a very, very, very small team. And he wanted to figure out a way that we could take press releases that come in by email and process them quicker. And before, an editor would have to read the whole thing, would have to edit it, would have to apply AP styles and make sure that that was happening, and then cut it down if I needed it cut down to fit a certain space in the paper.

I took some time and I really worked with an AI to say, can you take that press release and can you process it for me? And so I built the prompts and basically built the GPT that will now take that and process it to make it AP style so it works correctly for the newspaper, takes out a lot of the fluff that people tend to put in there, the self-promotional stuff that really isn't.

good in a press release. That's a thing that people need to learn how to write press releases correctly. obviously we're not here to educate people on that. My idea is to process it so that we can have it ready for the newspaper. And so I built it so now the publisher just has to take that PDF for that Word document, drop it into the GPT, and it will export something that we can use. It gives him the original version.

the AP style version and then a couple versions that are cut down by number of words so that depending on where we need to put it, it can put it there. Now, it took me a while to get there because I had to make sure that certain things were in place. I know what I need for a character count for headlines. I know what I need for number of inches. Things like that that I had to really work with the AI to make it understand.

what I needed it to do. Now what's interesting is if you talk to AI and you ask it what it needs, it is very, very good at helping you build the props. And so that's what I was able to do. And so that project has been huge for us because now we can process, again, speeding things up, we can process a lot more press releases quickly, where before an editor would have to do that and it would take them

to go through email, to export those things, to edit the things and then give me what I needed. So we've been able to speed that process up. Now, I'm sure some of you are thinking about the fact that that took work away from the editor. Yes it did. But that's what's happening, is that we are speeding up the processes and people that were doing jobs that were taking longer can now do more.

So that editor can now process a lot more and can get to dealing with writer stories much quicker where he really needs to be like hands on with that stuff. So it really is about using it as a tool, using it to speed up a process and figuring out how to use it in a way that complements your work. Another thing that I've done that's been really interesting and this has been around for quite a while is the sky replacement in Photoshop. So.

Our photographer had gone out. It's ugly this time of year. The snow is dirty. It's always cloudy. It just is winter here. And so we have recently had a new car wash open up. He took the picture and I was like, could you have picked a worse day to take this picture because it was gray, overcast, the snow was disgusting. I'm like, why today? Well, I went into Photoshop and I said, okay, I'm going to try the sky replacement tool and I'm going to use a much nicer day.

Carl Grivakis (16:09)
Nope.

Jake Van Ness (16:32)
much sunnier day and then I worked with some of the other tools to kind of brighten up the building, clean up the snow, that kind of stuff and I got a photo that was much nicer to be able to put into the newspaper and it was so funny because the publisher was like, wait a minute, I know what this photo looked like before, how did you do that? And I explained to him there's a tool in Photoshop that's sky replacement and it is amazing that

it can figure out trees, can figure out power lines and all this stuff and not like accidentally erase some of that stuff so that you get this weird like half power line going across the photo and you're like where did the rest of it go? So that's just another tool that I use to speed up a process that would have taken me forever to do and I'll be honest with you, we wouldn't have done because we wouldn't have wanted to pay, I say we but they wouldn't have wanted to pay me

to do all of that work to do that sky replacement. So again, it's about using it to speed up the process and using it as a tool.

Carl Grivakis (17:32)
Nevermind the irony of we use AI in generating this podcast too.

Jake Van Ness (17:37)
use it to like, obviously we all know that YouTube shorts and clips and all that stuff is super important. Well, we record with Riverside and Riverside is amazing AI to give us those clips. I.

I enjoy editing the podcast, but boy does it make my life a lot easier when I can use something like Riverside to at least get me started with those clips. And then the other thing is transcripts. Transcription and closed captioning and captions are so important for inclusivity and now it is so easy to do it. And I think anybody that doesn't caption their stuff, they're just being lazy because it's so easy to do now.

And it's so much better when you can do that because it's amazing. I don't know the actual stats, but there are stats out there to talk about how many people watch videos on mute. And it just cracks me up because they've read the captions and I'm like, why would you watch them? But they're traveling. They're in spaces that they shouldn't have their volume on. They're at work.

things like that where they can watch these videos with captioning on. And so, yeah, we use AI for the podcast and it makes it so much easier. So what other ways are you using AI?

Carl Grivakis (18:48)
I've created some GPTs just to do assessments on sites. So if I want to deep dive in current conditions on a Google business page, which has become one of the services I offer, I will put in the coordinates from the Google map. It'll start assessing like what the site looks like, you know, what the tasks are that I need to do to help improve that page for my client.

it'll help me create service descriptions as well. These are just tools that we can use to just better describe what we're doing and so that Google can pick that up in search. I've used it to create a GPT where I'll grab a screen grab and I'll check the accessibility levels of text on, say, color background, because there are certain standards that we want to follow if we want things to be readable.

whatnot. So I'll just throw in the screen grab and have it assess whether or not it follows the methods of the WC3 standards. yeah.

Jake Van Ness (19:46)
Very cool. So another way I'm using

it is I've started a sub stack on being a soloprinter. You and I both are soloprinters and have been for a number of years and I'm using it to help me come up with topics. And so obviously there's a ton of topics that I could cover, but I like using AI to really keep me organized and keep me on track so I don't accidentally write about something the same twice or I don't

write about the same subjects twice. But it also helps me like really gauge what is going on because it can do relevancy and it can do research for me about what topics are being talked about now as opposed to what was talked about 10 years ago. And so it helps me in my writing as well. The other thing is I love the fact that I can write and I don't have to worry about

sentence structure or spelling or any of that stuff that I Don't like thinking about and I can put it in AI and say hey spellcheck this for me make sure that I my grammar isn't ridiculous and And it can do all of it in my own voice so that it's not changing it to be too robotic or too Simplistic, but again, it's really important for me that I go in and read that before I post it

so that I know it's in my voice and I know that it didn't change the context of what I was talking about and things like that. But I love having that writing companion because I enjoy writing, but I'm not good at. So that's the big thing for me is I'm not great at spelling, I'm not great at my grammar, but now I've got a tool that can help me with that so that I can go and do the stuff that I enjoy, which is the actual writing part and sharing ideas.

Carl Grivakis (21:31)
Right.

Jake Van Ness (21:31)
Yeah, that's been great. I'll link that sub stack in the notes so you guys can check that out. I've been doing that for about probably close to a year now. And it's been a lot of fun. It gives me something that's a bit of a creative outlet. But also it's more about the repetition and getting better at writing. Now not sure I'm getting better at spelling and my grammar, but I'm getting better at sharing my ideas.

So yeah, have you used AI at all in any of the gaming stuff that you do?

Carl Grivakis (22:00)
so I've, when chat was probably in version three, I had it try and run a solo adventure and this was when chat was too kind. it running an adventure was way too simple. it knew the rules and it, created a nice story, but there was no challenge to it. Haven't gone back to try it myself, but, in the more recent chats, but, I, I think that it's a great way to just.

get a story going and to kind of react to it and just have a little bit of a mindless activity, I guess.

Jake Van Ness (22:30)
So I have another subject that I want to bring up and I'm curious how you feel about this. And we have to get political with it, but I found it really interesting that the makers of Claude, Anthropic, turned down a government contract because they were concerned about AI being used to build weapons and AI being used for surveillance. And unfortunately, ChatGPT

OpenAI who is the parent company of ChatGPT did sign a contract. Now there's a lot of information out there. There's a lot of information about I think there's a lot of false information which is a big problem we're having right now but there's a lot of information about how OpenAI has structured that deal and they say they've put stop gaps in place to keep that stuff from happening but I'm curious your thoughts on the fact that

We now have AI being used by the government and by military and it's, it was gonna happen. I think that's the thing I laugh about is everybody's like, no, and like they all freak out. I'm like, did you really think that our government wasn't gonna use this tool? Now, like anything, like the internet, anything can be used for evil. So we have to realize that and be smart about that.

But I didn't leave ChatGPT or OpenAI because they signed that contract. I know a lot of people did. But I'm curious your opinion without getting political. What are your thoughts about governments and military and stuff like that using AI?

Carl Grivakis (24:01)
they're going to do it anyway, like on social media. They already began everything and you know, they probably have backdoors in all of it anyway. so long as I believe it's called the FISA court exists, they can get access with minimal like friction. And so, you know, it's just come out public knowledge. They've signed this contract with the government. don't trust the government hasn't already had that.

Jake Van Ness (24:02)
Right? Right!

Carl Grivakis (24:27)
So go ahead, tell, tell chat GPT to delete your history, delete everything, pretend you didn't exist. I don't think it matters. It's, it's too big of a beast and you know, it's combing all the data anyway. and I, the conversations I have with chat are, you know, business centric, how to write this letter. Or I take a picture of my food and say, come up with a recipe and you know,

If someone wants to read that, go ahead. That doesn't mean they have a right to look at it, but they're not going to find anything interesting. I'd rather that we did have privacy in our conversations, but unless you sign a contract with chat that says everything you do is exclusive and private, you're at their mercy. And I'm not sure that Claude's any better or Grok or any of them, frankly.

Jake Van Ness (24:53)
you

well i

i i think that's the thing that we have to keep in mind is just like the internet it's the goalposts are moving they're constantly moving and none of us i don't care if you tell me you read terms agreement i i will call you on that that not nobody reads everything because you just

You'd spend your whole life reading these terms and conditions and never get to do anything. But I do think we need to be aware of what we're sharing. It's just like social media. You need to be aware that if you do share something, it is public, it is possible, it could be used for something. And it's like, I agree with you. I don't put my medical history in chat GPT. I don't think that's a good idea. I know people that do.

I people that take doctor's reports because they can't understand it and say, hey, Jack, can you tell me what this means at like a 14 year old? Because I have no idea what all this high level stuff means. It's great that it can do that, but it's your choice whether you share that information or not. I just thought it was interesting that I give props to Anthropic for standing the ground and saying we.

We don't agree with how this is gonna be used, so we're not gonna be involved. But I also understand OpenAI is a business, is thinking about what they need to think about. Do I have concerns? I've had concerns about the internet and social media. Of course I have concerns with AI. If you don't, then you're not living in the real world. But it is interesting, it was just interesting to hear that news. And so I'm...

Watching a lot of the stuff that's going on. I know you are too with AI. I'm using it I'm enjoying using it. I think it's a great tool. I think it's going to advance things quicker than we can ever imagine Am I in the belief that it's going to eventually kill us I? Don't want to live in a world that that has to think that way do I think it's going to become extremely powerful Yes, do I think that as human beings we need to be very careful? Yes

But I'm not gonna live my life every day that I'm gonna get run over by an autonomous car or I'm going to have my computer hack me and like I just can't live that way.

Carl Grivakis (27:22)
There's three or four futures to look forward to from the movie perspective. Is it going to be Terminator? Is it going to be the end of Wall-E where everything is done for us and we're just on floating chairs? ⁓ Is it going to be to go into anime? Is it going to be Chobits where we all have a personal computer automaton that serves us in every way?

Jake Van Ness (27:31)
I love that movie

Carl Grivakis (27:45)
You know, if we all have X robots, maybe that's what happens. Or are we going to go hand in hand with AI and utilize it? Or is it the matrix? Maybe we're already in the simulation.

Jake Van Ness (27:55)
Well, don't forget Minority Report. Minority Report is a great example of how AI could be used to help. do I think we should be stopping? is there really? yes! Yeah, what is it?

Carl Grivakis (27:58)
⁓ yeah.

There's a new movie coming out like that.

It's the guy needs to defend himself against AI using all AI's resources to prove he didn't do a murder.

Jake Van Ness (28:11)
Yeah, what's that cut?

I remember

what that's called. It's Chris Pratt, isn't it? That's in it? Yeah. But yeah, I think...

Carl Grivakis (28:19)
I think so, yeah.

Jake Van Ness (28:24)
There's always the positive and negative when it comes to technology and just like our phones have turned into a curse in some ways, I think AI will of course turn into a curse at some point in some way and I'm sure it has already in some ways. But yeah, we just can't live in a world or at least I can't live in a world where I worry about that stuff all the time. But am I paying attention? Yes. And I think that's the important thing is we need to pay attention to what's going on. Now,

Carl Grivakis (28:50)
Absolutely.

Jake Van Ness (28:51)
The crazy thing is the fact that there are people that are teenagers making millions of dollars with AI because they're figuring out how to do crazy things. And that you hear about these companies getting acquired and it's because somebody built an AI app or they built something that can compliment another company. And we had somebody, a kid locally do it. And I've read stories about like two teenagers that were

Co-founders for something that sold it. So it's amazing what people are able to do with it But yeah, we just as with anything we need to be careful with it. It's no different than the people that didn't want Didn't want cars when there were horse and buggy Of course the guy who was making the the horse whip was worried He was never gonna have a job because the cars were coming around but it's it's all the advancement in humans and what we can do

So it'll be interesting to see where it goes and what happens with it. I'm not scared. I'm enjoying it. I love what it does for my business. I love what does for me personally. I have done that where I've taken a picture of a bunch of ingredients and been like, I don't know what to make for dinner. And it gives you a recipe. I think that's crazy that it can figure out what stuff is from an image and give you a recipe. I think that's amazing.

So yeah, I think we just need to be careful how we use it. We need to keep an eye on how it's used, but we just can't live in fear. And I think this whole craze of people that are like, like you said, my God, I'm deleting everything. I'm walking away from this app. It's ridiculous to me, to be honest with you. So anything else you want to share?

Carl Grivakis (30:22)
And

a call out to chefs, we're not using the AI to replace you. It's just because we're bored of what we're making at home. We still will go out to eat.

Jake Van Ness (30:30)
That's true. Right,

exactly, exactly. We haven't figured out how to get that Star Trek emulator that basically we can just say, hey, we want a steak and it just all of a appears in front of us. We're not quite there yet. Would I love that? Absolutely, because I would love not to have to cook. But maybe someday we'll see that. I don't know.

But I have seen some really crazy, like the crazy things you see, speaking of going out to eat, is the like, Manless McDonald's. Like, that's amazing to me that somebody has figured out how to, now, really shouldn't be eating that food anyway, but it's amazing to me that somebody has figured out how to make that entirely robotic, and it's just insane. And I'm sure we'll see more and more stuff like that. all right, so in closing,

We're going to do something we've been doing in most of our episodes, is we use pod decks. I'm a huge fan of pod decks. have several of the physical decks. And so today's question is, brag to me about the best things going on in the past 30 days for you.

Carl Grivakis (31:30)
I have a branding project that I'm working on right now that will be in my top five of my career. It's a good brand and I can't wait to showcase it. So look out for that on my new website, which launched just yesterday, holycrapdesign.com. It'll be in the projects folder probably sometime during late spring once we debut this thing.

Jake Van Ness (31:36)
Bye bye.

Awesome.

Alright, awesome, very cool. Well for me, almost exactly 30 days ago, I went to what is called the UnConference. And you may be asking what the heck is the UnConference. A friend of mine, Vincent, started this two years ago. This was the second one. And what it is is we go to these conferences, we go to a room, we go see the keynote, and we're basically

talk to or we're taught something or where somebody shares something with us and there's not a lot of interaction between us and the speaker or us and the person on stage. There can be but typically it's not a lot. He wanted to take what we do in the hallways which is where we have those conversations with people and we network and we get to know somebody and we find friends and we

figure out what we're going to do that evening for dinner or whatever. You want to take that idea that we do in the hallway and make the entire conference that way. And so what it is is we all go and meet up in Florida, which is always great because it's in February and I'm from upstate New York and I'm so glad to be warm, except this year. This year it was like 30-something degrees the entire time we were there. And I'm like, we're in Florida. What the hell is going on?

It was really cool because he also curates the conference or the on unconference in a way that is really interesting because there are still like discussion groups and stuff like that, but you don't have to really feel like you're being pulled into that. You can go and say, Hey, I want to meet with a couple of people in a different room and have a discussion about something that's not on this schedule, which is very light, very free flowing. And so.

Not only does he curate it really well, but he basically vets who's there. So there's only 100 people involved, and he personally invites each person. He personally talks to each person and says, this is what it is, this is why I'm inviting you, these are the people that I think you'll be interested in talking to. And so it's really interesting the way that he's put this together, and now, going into the third year, he is now doing 50 %

or 50 people are alumni and 50 people are new. And I think that's super smart because then you don't end up with the same 75 people every year or same like 60. You know what mean? Like you don't end up with all the same people. You get to mix it up as well. So I really enjoyed that. That was a lot of fun to do and I'm really glad I got a chance to do that beginning of February. And so that was something. And it was great because I got to connect with tons of people and

I now have those relationships that I'm continuing to do one-on-ones with those people and continue to do referrals and things like that. So that was a huge win for me in the last 30 days. So congratulations on your new website. That's awesome that launched. ⁓ I look forward to looking through it and see how it came out. And that's awesome news. Is there anything else you want to share before we close off?

Carl Grivakis (34:38)
Excellent.

No, I'm looking forward to recording again next week. We do need topic ideas, which, yeah, we can ask AI, but if you're listening to this, we want to know what you'd like to hear as well.

Jake Van Ness (35:02)
Yeah, absolutely. And if there's anybody that's out there that is interested in coming on the podcast, please reach out to us. We're very interested in having guests. We can do it very easily. Riverside makes it super easy to do. So if you are interested in coming on the podcast, definitely reach out and let us know. And we'll figure out a time to make that happen. And with that, I think we're all set. It was good to talk to you, Carl. And I will see you next week.

Carl Grivakis (35:22)
Excellent. Yep.

Likewise, Jake. Take care.

Jake Van Ness (35:28)
See ya.