 This conference has been fundamental in the growth, the information exchange, the energy, and the joy in this industry. That created a problematic for me as how to introduce these next speakers. So I decided to skew a bit mythic. At first I thought tricksters, you know, brilliant, creative, but there were too many negatives with tricksters even for me. So I decided to create a mix of three different mythic archetypes. The jester, who live life in the moment in full enjoyment. The creator, who realize vision. And the magician, who make things happen based on a deep fundamental understanding. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your hosts, Ashkan and Graham. So this is our last year hosting the Float Conference. And it's made us think about a lot of things as we've been going through this. And first of all, we're incredibly thankful. We're happy to be here. We're happy to be on this stage one last time. And we're excited that all of you are here with us. Yeah. It's absolutely a pleasure. And it has been for seven Float Conferences now. And a lot of you may have heard that this is our last time doing the Float Conference, at least as Float On, which is a lot of what this talk is about right now. And so of course, people just are asking us all the time, why aren't you going to do it anymore? Which is something that we ask ourselves. It's an interesting question. And it was hard for us to come to this decision, as you can imagine. We spent a lot of time talking about it. We debated a lot of different back and forths. Even from the point where we felt pretty good about our decision, it still took us a long time to really pull the trigger and make it happen. But there's a couple of reasons we settled on this and actually felt like this was the time for us to stop organizing this. And one of the biggest ones is just that we can't do it forever. I mean, first of all, we're not going to live forever. So that's actually impossible. But secondly, it's just not something that a single organization can really maintain and certainly not float on. So the idea of creating a system for it to be able to carry on well beyond us and hopefully better than us is kind of our goal. And at that point, we had to realize that if it's not going to go on forever, we, as a logical conclusion of that, have to decide at what point we're going to stop doing it. And through talking to each other a lot, we basically came to the understanding of realizing who we are, which is fundamentally restless people. We just like new projects. We like really big learning curves at the beginning of things. When we do something for a really long time, it isn't the same to us as that thrill of that just early stage, which maybe you can tell by the fact that we have like five businesses that we run. So our idea is to turn it into a nonprofit and give ownership of the conference over to the industry, which is what a lot of our talk will be about in just a second. But in the meantime, we thought it might be worthwhile to get all sappy and emotional about the last seven years of float conference and kind of relive some of the past of the event. So let's go back and talk about how this all started. It started like how all of our projects started to float on because we thought it sounded fun. And also because we had gone out to Mark Frickel's float summits, which were definitely fun, so we knew it was a good time. The first one, of course, being in London, which sadly we did not get to go to, but which I hear was an amazing gathering anyway. And then after that, we went to Sweden and got to be at that float summit that was there and basically just got so wrapped up in the excitement about being around all those float people that we pretty much spontaneously, with only moments noticed on stage there, asked everyone if they would be interested in coming to Portland for a conference. So that's how that decision was made. Yeah, you should never make really important decisions when you're in stage high, just like right there in front of people is what we learn. So we'll be launching it now. But you know, a lot of it sounded really fun to us. We were really excited about showing everybody Portland and just having a party in the city that we think is really cool. Yeah, getting to show off float on and show our business to everyone. At the time, there really weren't that many larger float tank centers and ours was only four tanks at the time, but it was still amazing to just have the chance to have people out and check out what we built. And we were hungry for information, just like everybody in the industry was and still is. And the idea of getting to facilitate something where research is presented and information spreads was really exciting to us. And largely, I mean, we were still fresh as a business and we hadn't been in the float industry that long and we just wanted to contribute how we could. We found this amazing industry and we wanted to give back to it and do more than just run a float tank center. And we had never done it before, so it sounded right up our alley, you know? So we did it. In 2012, we put on the first float conference here in Portland and we basically had absolutely no idea what we were doing. Yeah, from the time that we were in Sweden announcing this spontaneously on stage to putting on our event was actually only six months. And between that, we just kind of announced it on stage and then we kind of went back and forth about whether we were crazy and should do this for another two months. So it was really only four months of planning we had before we put on the first float conference, which for comparison, we kind of start parts of planning for these conferences now, a year and a half beforehand, so before the last conference has even happened. And of course, the conference happened and we were completely exhausted and we made a lot of very critical mistakes. For example, we gave ourselves a full three hours to do our entire setup for the entire event. For comparison, we do three days of setup now. It was only when attendees started to arrive on the first morning that I was like, are we supposed to put the name tags into the name tag holders before they get here? Is that a thing? The answer is yes, yes. You should definitely do that early, not when guests are arriving, if you're curious. And we were under construction. Our shop was going through the biggest renovation it had ever done and we were actually expanding and putting in two more tanks at the time that the conference was being hosted. So when they went on the float on tour, they were actually just walking through hallways of black plastic and large construction sites. Like, isn't our shop cool? Like, isn't it, are you guys not impressed? But we did it and it was an incredible time and it filled us so much with joy and it was so much fun to have everybody here that we were hooked and we wanted to do it again. So quickly from 2012, we started to put these on as an annual event. Yep, and from 2012 we actually had about 165 people out compared with the many hundreds of people that we have now. We're obviously in a much smaller theater. Of that, actually, we only had 31 float tank centers who were in attendance compared to the vast amount of active centers that not only exist now but take the time to come out here and join us in Portland. And things started growing pretty quickly and with that growth, we also grew as people who started to learn how you're actually supposed to plan events. So, for example, here was our logo for the 2012 float conference. You good? Yeah? Minimalist, we'll say. By 2013, switched to the kind of more familiar logo that you know now. Over the years, we started adding on more sections to the event. We started doing the Friday activities and adding on workshops and things like a bus tour full of beer around Portland's float centers. We did a CPO course taught by Jake Marty who we pretty much forced to get certified as a CPO instructor, which at the time he did it was the youngest CPO instructor out there. And we started making way cooler lunches, sending people to the farmer's market or having a bunch of food carts come and give people more of an actual taste of the place that they are instead of just eating some sort of catered food. More parties, like the party tonight, like the one we had on Thursday out at Float On, like the Rogue. We actually turned it from our initial Saturday night reception into now kind of a series of parties running throughout the entire conference after hours. And we've learned a thing or two about decorations as well. This was our first conference. That was pretty much the extent of our set up. You'll notice we do still have the podium of power and we had it from the very beginning, so that stayed through. And we've just gotten to be in cooler places, you know, like this building here. And actually our 2013 conference was in the other theater in this building and I remember getting a tour of that place when I was first walking through here and I was like, what else is in this building? And they took me in here and I remember looking up and seeing everything and being like, one day. You'll also notice at some point we got castle banners, which was a great addition. This is all Ashkahn's idea, as were the capes. Which funny story there, we actually developed because we realized our staff often had to run around like crazy in order to get things accomplished and we're like, how do we make this look cool instead of frantic? We've gotten to do some really, really cool stuff over the years. We did a balloon drop, or three balloon drops if some of you were counting. We had a giant pile of salt on the stage. And you know, we were really into doing big stunts on stage and of course there's all sorts of things that we thought of over the years that we never had time to do, like firing a t-shirt can in or... getting a sword fight. Being pulled off stage in a giant hook, you know, it's maybe good that this is stopping now before things get too crazy. At least we got to come out of float tanks with a giant fog machine, so that was good. So, this kind of is a nice little reminder of how things got started and really it brings us up to the present of the float conference. Which is this? Yeah, you're here. It's happening right now. Yeah, that's here right now. And that brings us to the future of the float conference. Some things never change. So, this obviously required a lot of thought. You know, we've had many, many conversations over well over the course of a year before this point discussing what to do, what to do with the future of the float conference. And we thought of a lot of things and honestly where we settled is a large part because of eliminating the other options that were out there. So, obviously probably the most clear thing to do would be just sell the conference to someone who wants to purchase it and keep putting it on. And there are in fact just whole companies out there that host conferences that know nothing about floating that we could turn it over to. And it would almost certainly just get really lame and turn into a generic event. And even though that would bring us personally the most money, it absolutely was kind of immediately stricken from the table because it just felt wrong. We thought about having another single organization in the industry run it. We even reached out to a few people and pretty much all of them were like, what? No. That's what we were talking about. We can't do that. Yeah, I think Verbatim, a couple of them said, can we not do it, but also say you can't stop? And of course, that was the other option, was just not doing it anymore. But that also didn't feel right to us. I feel like we've built a lot of momentum and I love seeing all these people here every year. And the idea of it just completely not going on anymore was a little too hard of a reality to come to. So, ultimately what we are going to try to do, like I mentioned before, is turn it into a nonprofit and give that ownership of the conference over to the industry, over to a group of people and perhaps even a rotating group who can keep it going, if not indefinitely, hopefully for a long time to come. And so we know what you're thinking at this point, which is probably, you guys are crazy, that's definitely not gonna work. And it makes sense, you know, it's hard to... It's hard to run things with big groups. You know, it's hard to run things with people who are geographically separated from each other. It's hard to just plan logistics and operations when you have that many voices involved. These are all real challenges that we definitely recognize. And as a result of recognizing that, you know, we've also put thought into trying to figure out how it might work. What could we set up in place that would help curb the things in there that felt like big roadblocks? The things that would most certainly become the most challenging when turned into a structure like that? So we have a pretty broad structure and there are some really nice things about the Float Conference specifically and being a non-profit based around an event that work in our favor. So before we get into details, let's just kind of cover the broad strokes. A board of directors. Obviously. A paid staff, volunteers, and a local liaison or multiple liaisons. This is kind of our general structure for how we see the kind of workforce that goes into the conference going on. And there's a few reasons before we get into the details of this that we think are kind of acting on the benefit of the conference. To help this be, you know, to get off the ground as a non-profit and not hit too many roadblocks. One of which is that it already has a source of income. You know, it makes a lot of sense to pay for tickets and come here. So that kind of step of the process is finished. It has a clear infrastructure already. We've worked over many years to develop exactly how to run things and how to make things function and how to deal with large groups of people. And we've learned a lot of mistakes along the ways and we've documented it really well. You know, we have good sets of plans and understandings and what we do throughout the year to put an event like this on. And we have a lot of resources already at our disposal. You know, we have like eight castle banners that can be hung up and a bunch of AV equipment. And you know, we've been slowly collecting these things over these years that will become assets for the non-profit to give it a head start. And really in addition to that too, I think one thing that's pretty useful is there is an extremely concrete deadline, which is pretty nice, right? Like this, like you said at date, and then it has to happen. Like hundreds of people are about to show up and you better be ready for it. And those kind of concrete external deadlines that are just on a non-negotiable, I think are really good ways of making sure things get done. So a little bit about the board of directors and what we picture them doing. You know, mainly I think a lot of the people who are capable of being on the board and who would be great contributors and who have been around the float industry for a while and have the connections that'll make running the conference a little easier are also really busy. They're the people who are manufacturers and who run centers or multiple centers and have their own jobs and lives and sometimes kids. And so for us, we really wanted to make sure that at least in our plans, the board of directors is not in charge of the day-to-day operations and organizing the conference so much as they're in charge of all of the big decisions and kind of guiding the course of things. Because that's really what you need that kind of deep float knowledge and expertise for. You know, having people who are deciding things like the speakers that are coming and who we're inviting, you know, making big decisions about perhaps what city the event is going to or deciding to change the structure of the event and change days around or add other tracks. You know, those kind of big almost taste decisions in the event is something that benefits from having people who are the kind of pillars of our community have a say and be involved and make sure they're guiding that. And really the goal is to try to have the work that that board of directors has to do really be nothing other than having phone calls and having those conversations and basically not having any homework because I don't think it'll get done. Just having conversations on the phone, making those decisions and then being able to go on and run their businesses and keep up with the rest of their lives is the main way that I saw a group of people like that being able to be involved. So we're going to rely a lot on paid staff for the kind of in and out, year in and year out operations that go into putting on an event like this. And the nice thing is we do have paid staff right now and some of them are happy to continue and excited to help this move into the next stage of what it is. And we really sat down and thought about this and tried to figure out what it was. You know, who do you actually need to have in place to make this event happen? And we kind of broke it down into a list of very concrete jobs we think are necessary to put this event on. There's having someone be a copywriter. There's a lot of just written material that needs to happen for the conference from writing video descriptions to email newsletters to content for the website and editing people's bios. So that's kind of a job that can happen throughout the year. And speaking of the website, there's just general website development. You know, you need to build these systems and list out speakers and program that in HTML and CSS. So just general website design, plus some fancier stuff and upgrades and maintaining the whole web presence. Someone needs to be able to take care of the social media and connecting with people, running advertisements, spreading the word, you know, running those accounts and keeping up with them, putting out all the amazing content that happens every year here at the event. And PR, you know, spreading the word both out to the media and internally within the float community, just making sure that everyone knows about the conference and that it's able to not only sustain but grow over time. Graphic design ends up being a huge, huge part of putting this event on. I think we've printed our logo on tens of thousands of objects at this point and someone having someone who can quickly manipulate that and get all those files ready and send them off for all the printed materials and everything that we do is definitely a task that needs to happen throughout the year. Video editing, pretty self-explanatory. We record a lot of videos. Speaker wrangling is kind of its own job. All these people you see on stage here are pretty difficult people to track down. I constantly have to email them being like, hey, I haven't heard from you in like three weeks. I really need that PowerPoint. So like that takes a lot of time. And same thing for sponsorship sales, you know, actually getting people to come out and get boots and check in and make sure that they're okay and line all of that up is no small task. There's a lot of booths out there in the lobby and that's a really cool part of the event, being able to come to the conference and see what's available there and add new retail items to your float center and see what new items even exist that might make the life in your business easier. And it's hard, it takes a lot of effort to get all those people. I don't know how many people have realized that float tanks are very difficult objects to move in and out of buildings. But we bring a lot of float tanks here every year and then they all have to go away rapid fire. Customer service, again, I'm sure that all of you have been in contact with our team with Ash Khan and Jeanine and Jocelyn and have received many emails back and forth and that's necessary and it's part of what I think makes this conference run so smoothly is just really active communication. Yeah, and there's also just the world of, you know, running any sort of business, the kind of professional services that you need, things like a bookkeeper, an accountant, a nonprofit lawyer in this case, an HR person, those kind of people that you're hiring probably just on retainer for the advice when you need it. And of course, and separate from a lot of the year round paid staff, just people to come and work the event itself. The paid staff that go year round are much, much smaller than the hordes of people that we need to come out and run registration and move tables and set up lunches and kind of everything that goes into organizing this. And there's about four or five people that spend throughout the year working on this event and then we go up to a group of maybe like 50 to 60 people for a week and then we shrink back down so it's a really extreme ramp up and ramp down. And the nice thing about this list for paid staff is it's pretty comprehensive. This sitting down and actually going through every single thing that we do for the conference other than what we intend for other people. This is almost all of it. So it's a pretty discreet list of tasks that need to get done. And all of this really pairs in with the idea of having volunteers. You know, this is all work that can be paid and we can find people who do these things for a living and we can pay them and that will be part of the budget and the expense of running an event like this. Or if there are people in this room that have this experience in it, maybe you do have past sales experience, maybe you've done graphic design before you switched to being in the float world. This is a really great way to help the industry. If you have a skill set and you wanna volunteer, you can help make this event better because you know about floating and you're gonna care about it more. You can help make it cheaper for everybody either by volunteering your time or just giving the conference like a really awesome rate because you're gonna get in for free and you wanna help it out. So any amount of effort that people put into this is just gonna make the event smoother and easier to run. Yep, and that includes everything from the planning to just coming out during the actual days of the event and lending a hand then. And the last one on the kind of big list of four categories is the local liaisons, which is the people who run float centers in the cities that this conference will be going to. One of the things that we very much picture happening with us not specifically running it as float on is it moving around and changing cities. And as a result, I think that the people who are involved in those specific cities really get a chance to shine and step up and maybe even kind of submit their city as an application for the next place to have the float conference. Be like the float Olympics. Yeah, so start planning like 10 years in advance, yeah. And stuff like that would be really helpful. Being able to just let people know where the cool spots are in town and make a place more familiar is a really useful thing to have. And this is what we've put together here is really what we think is necessary to form the structure for this event. And this is what we've come up with is kind of our best plan and we really sincerely hope that it will work. But honestly, it's not something we've ever done before. We've never tried to put on something in such a big collaborative way or to do a project that doesn't have a discreet company at its head leading it. So we're not entirely sure it will work, but this is where you come in. Basically, we need your help. If we wanna put this event on, we're hoping that people are willing to contribute and willing to reach out to us and willing to be a part of it so that this can continue. Yeah, and one really nice thing about the act of transitioning this is although we go all out for the conferences that we throw as float on, I don't know if you've noticed. We, it doesn't have to be like that. You know, the most important thing that happens and the biggest compliments we get every year are about socializing with the people. As we've said many times in other speeches, you know, we fundamentally run isolated businesses and a chance to come together and gather and celebrate that and what we do is absolutely what makes the conference magical and that can be done on a much smaller scale that's much easier to run. So keeping it simple, especially in the beginning of kind of turning over the reins is not necessary but probably makes it more likely to happen. And the last thing we think is really gonna help make this a reality is the fact that we'll still be here. We're not disappearing. We're very much planning this in our minds is something that we're intending on helping transition. You know, we're one of the reasons we came to this decision and came to it kind of early is because we wanted to make sure we had enough runway for ourselves to be able to help it go into the next stage. So it's not like on Monday, we're gonna be like, all right, see you guys. Like good luck with that whole flow conference thing. Like we'll be around and we're gonna help in that year to try to get this thing set up and working. Yeah, absolutely. And onto just some specifics, which is how to apply if you are interested in volunteering or just helping out or even just learning more about what we're doing, getting involved. It's actually really easy. You just need to email us. And you should all have this because it's the email you've been receiving all of the notifications about the conference from. So yeah, should be simple. And you know, we've been keeping the ideas and plans for what's after this a little bit loose because in large part it depends on who reaches out and how many people reach out and what the skill set of those people are and how much those people wanna contribute time and be involved. So we're really excited to see how it transforms as we start getting feedback from you guys. Yep, and we're really relying on it. I mean, although we're saying that you can keep it simple, one of the cool things is the structure also means that although the baseline is pretty easy to actually run an event. Once you transition it over to a hotel, maybe you do have more catered meals, things that normal events do, but still getting together together, it allows for a nice infrastructure to build on. And ultimately, just depending on who wants to get involved, this can be even grander than we put on. And it's probably even more likely to make that possible just as a result of having more hands and more brains involved. There are of course other ways you can help too other than just taking on one of these jobs. Reach out to us. Let us know if you have certain skills we didn't think of, if you have a way to contribute to this that isn't in our vision because all that together is gonna help make this happen. Yeah, maybe you have a couple grad students who want to contribute or... All right, so the biggest thing to do though is just keep coming out. The magic of the Float Conference truly is you. It's all of us getting together. And the biggest way to obviously support this event into the future is just to keep on coming, gathering, having fun together, celebrate. Because that really is what this has been about. For us and for everybody here, and we've seen the importance of this and that's why we want this to continue. And we've seen the impact that this conference has had over the seven years that we've been putting it on. And just to kinda, as we've been thinking about everything that the Float Conference has done, we thought it'd be fun to put together some information and actually see if we can figure out some numbers on what the conference has accomplished over the years. So we found some fun stats to run by you guys. Yeah, so we've had people come out from 37 different countries to attend the Float Conference. That is the amount of people that we have trained at our workshop. So prospective center owners who have come through and gotten much-needed float knowledge through coming out to the conference. Over the years, we have had 45 float tanks hauled out to Portland and set up for two days and then removed. And nine of those have been total debut float tanks that have never been presented anywhere else before. We have 52 different types of AV adapters to make sure we're ready for anything. I've been thinking about making them into like a little utility belt or something like that. And now I treat them as little collector's items. I'm like, ah, yes, micro DVI to HDMI, nice, very, very rare. It does, you kinda feel like a superhero when you can just connect anything to anything else. It's a really powerful place to be. The 3,850 PowerPoint slides. Over seven years, we have spent $46,689.33 on coffee. Is it sad that that's the loudest applause we've gotten so far today? They're drinking a lot of coffee, that's right. And $3,200,000 invested by our predictions into the local economy. Yeah. And this one I'm really happy about because we really do go out of our way to try to have the money from this event go back into the local economy. We specifically do things like have lunch at local food carts or the local farmers market or support local companies in town when we're buying our materials as opposed to going with large catering companies or national organizations to rent things from. So because of that effort, and it's really cool when you get to go to a local company in Portland and be like, hey, I need to get like 700 of these. Is that okay? And it's great. You get to actually see the impact of it right in front of you. 107 permits that we've pulled from the city in order to put on these different events. Every time we put on a lunch or close the street down there or have amplified music anywhere, all of that is an application process and multiple pages of permits that we have to fill out and get approval from from the city. 700, this is my proudest stat. So I was just gonna take my time delivering it. 728 silly registration photos. Makes me so happy. Sometimes at night I just flip through those. And over the years we have compiled 72 terabytes of video footage. And perhaps the most important, there have been 2029 unique attendees. So people who have made the long journey very often all the way out to Portland to gather together. And while statistics are fun and enjoyable to look at, really the things that we've gotten out of this conference much more than a bunch of fun numbers are the kind of amazing memories we've had. We've just done really cool stuff and had really amazing people come beyond the stage and present information to everybody. So that's things like having all of the past presidents of Iris, the early research association come out and actually talk on the float conference stage. I'm also a silly registration photo up there. Just like to point out. We actually pulled out one float researcher, Jeffrey Bruno, out of retirement from float research. I went through the old research books one year and I looked at the top, like the first pages and all the research names in there and I just saw if I could hunt these people down. And I started just like Googling them and trying to find who they were and just reaching out. And most of them did not have any existing emails anymore because these were books from 30, 40 years ago. But this guy answered me and he was like, I haven't thought about floating in years and came out to the conference and had such a good time that it like wrapped him back into getting involved in float tanks. One of my favorites from events that we put on up here on the stage was just seeing new researchers getting to discuss science with all of the historical researchers, the people who kind of paved the way. And that's really magical to be able to host an event that brings together not just the community but people who are so influential and lets them actually dialogue and share information in front of all of you. We've had a number of unique pieces of artwork created over the course of this event, live artists painting artwork and that we've raffled or just given away to people in the audience over the years. I know that we've been saying it forever. On this stage, we actually got to see proof that we entered the theta waves during the floats which is amazing. We also got to see manufacturers helping other manufacturers put their float tanks together when they arrived which is just one of my really fond memories is watching somebody like, oh yeah, let me help you with that and like putting the other person's tank together. Just really seem to symbolize that kind of feeling of community we all have here. We're in such a cool industry. Also, we got to see a float tank given away on stage by Peter O'Brien, which is amazing. We got to get pranked by Tom Fein. Many times, but. Many times. One time he finished his presentation and he walks off stage and he tells me, Ashkahn, I have to get back on stage. And I'm like, Tom, there's somebody speaking. Like, you can't go back on stage. And he's like, I left a huge bag of weed under the podium. Like, I have to go get it. And we're like, and he's like, just kidding. Just kidding. So, we're gonna put this up online in retaliation. Yeah, yeah. Take that, Tom. Yeah. We've also just gotten to see the development of Libra, the Laureate Institute, and Justin Feinstein. And this started with some dude named Justin sending me an email and saying he really wanted to come check out floating because he was interested in it. And I was like, all right, who the heck is this guy? And now he's doing all this amazing research and publishing studies and presenting the data for the first time here on stage. And we've just gotten to see the birth of that entire thing happen every year and get updates on that. There have, of course, been amazing speakers that we've had out, amazing speakers like Aubrey Marcus. Duncan Tressel and Christopher Ryan. Yeah, Rick Doblin, of course, was amazing to have here. And maybe just bringing you back to a little bit of a more small local scale. One of my favorite things is that it's probably the most time that I actually spend with other local float tank centers is during the conference. So it's actually bringing together just our local Portland community of float centers is amazing. Yeah, we call ourselves the float mafia here in Portland when we all get together. Another one is just getting a chance to hear personal stories like Murphy's, like Emily Noren's, talking about her eating disorder and seeing her get a standing ovation on stage. This actually, afterwards, she took a little mental snapshot of that moment and that always stuck with me. Like somehow her clicking her imaginary camera kind of took a photo in my brain. So that was actually kind of a special moment for me in the conference as well. And honestly, just getting to be around all of you guys and party with you guys and hang out and have fun conversations and communicate in a way that's not over the phone or over email or over social media where everything's just about communicating and getting down to business and getting information across. Just getting to chit chat and hang out and have fun and feel like we're friends instead of just some sort of industry collaborators. And it's so often. I mean, when we went on this float tour just from having conversations and consulting with so many people, the amount of people who say that coming out to the float conference and nothing to do with us, but the vibe of the float conference being around center owners, getting to see what the community is like is what ultimately made them take the plunge, what inspired them to open centers. How many of you decided to open your center after coming out to a float conference? Yeah, a good number. And that's really important. Events like this and getting together mean that our community can continue and grow and inspire the future generations who are going to open the next wave of float centers. And of course, the connections. You know, that's what this is about, the connections that are made here. And over the years, we've got to hear just some really, really amazing stories about connections that have happened at the float conference. One of my favorites is Rick from Third Wave magazine and Float St. Louis. Before he was with Float St. Louis, really wanted to open a float center. Thought he like flew here from St. Louis to this conference thinking he would meet someone cool here and then just move to whatever city they happen to be in. And then met the guys from Float St. Louis and was like, oh, well, great, let's do that then. Which is amazing. Of course, Art of the Float with Dylan and Amy, they kind of met and decided on that collaboration here at the float conference as well, which having a weekly podcast that's been going on for so long for an industry our size is a great boon. And it's amazing that this in some way was able to contribute to that. We've had people not be able to make it but send one of their staff members and then in their head, they were like, oh man, that staff member's not coming back. And that was exactly what happened. The staff came here, met some cool other float center owners and then just went to work at their float center in a completely different city. I know more than one couple who has had their honeymoon at the float conference and at least one couple who actually met at the float conference and got married afterwards. So, conclusions? This has been a really amazing experience for us and we're happy that you guys have trusted us to put this on for so long and of keep coming back and of keep supporting this event and us through the years of us spending many countless nights putting this entire together. Yeah, thank you, thank you so much. It means a lot and it's been an absolute honor to be trusted by you to host this event over the years and hopefully we've lived up to that trust and put on a good show. But mainly, especially in turning the ownership over to the community, we're really excited for what the future holds. And I think we actually finished our talk early, which almost never happened, so. A couple extra minutes, huh? Yeah, maybe take questions or? I got, hold on, I got an idea. One second, hold on a second here. Okey-dokey, yeah. I'm not being able to fire a T-shirt gun thing, it's been kind of bothering me, so. I thought as long as this is our last time I maybe I'll give it a go here, huh? You guys ready? Yeah. This is Russ, thank you, thank you so much. Thank you so much for your time. Great. Oh boy. Yeah, my name is Aikon and I'm here to say this conference stage is in my DNA. I breathe it in and out, it's in my thumb prints. Yeah, I put the con in, con print. Yeah, coming out to jam, gonna be a grand slam. Yeah, you better have insurance for your ride on the grand villains. Oh my god, thank you.