 first episode of the state of the state of Hawaii. We are going to be talking about ThinkTech going to 3.0 and we have ThinkTech's CEO here to help us with this discussion. So welcome Jay Fiedel, the CEO of ThinkTech. No Stephanie, Stephanie Dalton, Stephanie, so nice to see you here. So important. You guys don't know this, but I know Stephanie since 1965. We were both 12 years old, wasn't it? Oh, I thought we were kindergarten then, and then on the jungle gym. Yes, it's been a while. So Jay, you're a good friend. I'll know. Absolutely. Yeah, so it's been really good to see you again and to now work a little bit together. We haven't worked that hard together over the years, been mostly play, but this is a place to discuss ThinkTech Hawaii's upgrade. And I know that the upgrade is aligned with the mission statement for ThinkTech, which is to be a leading digital media platform. But I don't really know exactly what that means, how it works, what you had to do to get this here speedily over the holidays and assume that others may not know enough about it either. So you are the perfect person to bring us all to speak. I'm glad that you would have me on your show to discuss these things, because I think it's important that we make the public aware of what we're doing. So in the first roughly 10 years of our existence, ThinkTech was organized in the year 2000, 2001 like that. We had a talk show on white public radio 88.1 FM. Most of that decade, let's call that ThinkTech 1.0, where we had a weekly show called ThinkTech Hawaii Surprise. And we went to video in around 2010. And now we've had almost a decade in 2.0. That is our video experience. But we thought, well, let's go to 3.0 now. Let's go to one level beyond that. And what's the difference? We've had a green screen studio for several years now in Pioneer Plaza. And now we're in 1164 Bishop Street. That is the Finance Factors Center. And we've changed our technology. Instead of having a green screen, we have a big television as the television behind you, Stephanie. And that's our background. And we get great chroma key on that. We get great color on that. And our camera picks you up better than we ever did before. Furthermore, when the camera picks you up, it picks you up full face. So we can see your face. All of us can see your face directly, which we'll know more about you this way. I don't want to embarrass you, but gee whiz. I'd rather see you full face, Stephanie. It could also see me full face. I'm a remote guest. And I'm actually not far away, but I am remote. I'm on a laptop. And the laptop could be here in the Finance Factors Building. It could be in the Pioneer Building. It could be anywhere in the world, actually. And we do have shows. We've been doing remote shows for some time. We do have shows where we connect with people everywhere in the world. And we've connected with people in Europe, in India, in Japan, in China. There's very few continents we haven't touched already. And we do this with a laptop that somebody connects up to the internet. And with decent broadband, we can use our VMIX call technology, which is kind of like Skype, to reach them and have a conversation, the kind of conversation that you see right in front of you. Now, full face. You full face me talking to each other. It's almost intimate, Jimmy. Well, very conversational. Comfortably conversational. I appreciate all those gains that you have made. And hopefully you've seen those already today in the broadcasting. But what about challenges and impediments in going through the upgrade to 3.4? What kinds of challenges did you have to face over the vacation when you worked so hard to make this happen? Oh, yeah. Well, we spent three hard weeks doing it. A number of us worked on it. And we had to move all the equipment that we've accumulated in Pioneer Plaza. We had to move that up here to 1164. And because it's the smaller space, we have a smaller space in 1164, more compact, more efficient. We had to get rid of some of the equipment that we haven't used, that we've accumulated but not used recently. So that meant we had to pick what we wanted. We had to deal with the items we didn't want and organize everything into a more compact space. Right now, after three weeks of wiring and computer settings and configurations and broadband settings and configurations and the like, we used dozens and dozens of software programs and probably a dozen computers to get this done. We had to set them all up. Now we've set them all up. And I'm here to tell you that we have achieved whatever we wanted, all the goals in terms of computer software and hardware. And it's working today. Today, our first day, back to the broadcast schedule, all the things, all the tasks we wanted to do, we have done. And that's really something because it was, you know, it was hard. It was seven days a week. But we somehow slid into home plate on this. Well, congratulations. That's really good news. And I think it's good news for the state of Hawaii and all of its islands. Is that correct? You're able to reach out to all of those places. Is that the case now? Yeah. Well, if we can reach Varanasi, India, which is near the Tibetan border, hopefully we can reach Maui. Although I'm not sure which one has the better broadband, if you want to ask. So the outreach is major. That's very far away, Jay. So we can actually connect now in intimate conversation, as you described it, with colleagues or experts at those venues. Is that, that's the case? China? Yeah, yeah. Okay. The world is flat. The world is flat and it's a smaller place. And the national news should mean more to us in Hawaii than it did before. And certainly other things that are happening international should mean more to us. And, you know, the media refills should follow those things. Of course, you need to have local news, but you also need to have national and international news. And this new technology that we're using, this 3.0 technology actually lets us expand our platform to reach people everywhere. So in a time when we need to go national, where we need to talk to, as you call them, experts and newsmakers everywhere, including people we don't know yet, you know, including people we find, we find the newspapers we find on the internet, and we just call them up and include them, and we get news just like a network would. So this is the time when citizen journalism can expand. And with this technology, we think our platform will expand to cover timely, topical subjects in a very rapidly changing world, a difficult world, if you will, to inform not only the people of Hawaii, but anyone who listens to us, which is actually global too. Because we, you know, we broadcast on the stream. We're on the internet through our website, thinktechway.com. That's our, that's our television box, so to speak. And it can be viewed anywhere in the world. Well, so it's like just great. Yeah, it sounds like thinktech is, is accomplishing a 3.0 platform. But what about all these citizen journalists out there? Is that one area of impedimentia that might need some extra attention? In other words, is everyone receptive to this when they're invited? And when they're invited, can they figure out how to do it with their own equipment? I mean, not only on the mainland, but what about more distant than that? I mean, seriously, getting to a person in China or India or Australia, what, what do you expect to find out when that? Well, Okay, first, if citizen journalism starts out with you, Stephanie, you are the journalist. And you know, you know what you're asking, you know what you'd like to find out, you know what you'd like to cover. And so you, you know, you make that effort to contact people, Hither and Jan, to answer your curiosity. And you're doing this on behalf of your viewers. You figure your viewers want to know about something, in this case, 3.0, because I think 3.0 is newsworthy. And then you call on people who can answer your questions, like me. And I could be here or anywhere. And all I need really is a laptop computer, which has a camera. And a mic, internal mic, a decent broadband and a Chrome browser. That's really all I need, wherever I am in the world. And then you can take that, you can talk to me like you are now. And our staff can broadcast it without special technology anywhere in the world. And we can do, you know, serious journalism that way. We have something like 50 hosts, they cover various walks of life and areas of coverage. And so in the years to come, under 3.0, we want to have our hosts be, you know, not only citizen journalists, but serious citizen journalists. So they can read the paper, they can get ahead of the curve, they can find out what's important, what's happening. And they can find guests and experts, as you said, anywhere and everywhere will help them and us understand that subject. That's what we're about. Well, it sounds like the costs may be of interest here. So have you found that 3.0 has, or 3.0, has that reduced or increased your budget needs? Or has it made it more efficient? I mean, with everybody contributing equipment, but still what about here at ThinkTech itself? Well, our underwriters keep us in busy, keep us in business. Our underwriters, you know, help us, you know, pay our staff and buy the equipment that's necessary. Our underwriters help us pay the rent, you know, and all the expenses having to do with operating this platform, which goes, we go live four days a week, most weekdays, and then we go overnight. We're always broadcasting something. So if you looked at us at two o'clock in the morning, we're broadcasting something. So that costs money. All our software hardware costs money. Now in terms of moving to 3.0, we save money on on space paying less rent. We save money to some extent on staff. And of course, we had to we had to renew our equipment. We had to go current, get up to the edge of the envelope. We had to get some new stuff. That costs plenty of money. And thankfully, we're through that now mostly. And we've got it all in place. So the answer to your question is, in some ways, we're going to save money in 3.0. In other ways, it's going to cost us more money in 3.0. Bottom line is we will be more efficient. As you say, we'll have greater reach. Our content will be better. Quality of our journalism will be better in 3.0. So you mix it all together was certainly worthwhile the effort. And it is worthwhile the effort. And it will increasingly be worth the effort going forward. You know, we say in think tech, we say every day better. We mean it every day is better than yesterday. And then we've been building it that way for almost 20 years. I think too, as you described the 1.0 platform, then moving to the 2.0. Now we're at the 3.0. So this is all probably geometrically increasing the needs to produce the program. So with your underwriters, is there anything in particular you think they should know about the demands on your resources as the work of technology continues to produce more and more ways to go about doing it better? Well, we remain ambitious. And ambitious means we want to do more better, every day better. And so we still need our underwriters to help us. We need more underwriters if we can find them locally or nationally. And we have some of both. We have a number of local underwriters. We greatly appreciate their support. And we have some national underwriters as well. All that considered, you know, it's in a good balance right now. But I look forward to expanding our operations, expanding our reach, expanding our coverage, and also expanding our budget. But that to expand our budget requires additional contributions, mostly from underwriters. Now we also have twice a year, we do a fundraiser. We do an on think tech. We've done it a couple of times in the past 2019. And it's been successful, we raise money, both in the spring and the fall, using our systems and asking people in our programs, asking people if they would contribute. Of course, the amount they contribute is a lot less than our corporate underwriters, but it really helps us. It helps us rough out the edges, smooth out the edges. It helps us, you know, keep going. You know, it's not like you, you make more by doing more. You have to get more to pay the costs of doing more. You don't make it up in volume. You have to seek additional funding for volume. Right. Well, how does all of this 3.0 and underwriter support and how does this affect your aspirations for this business operation, this entity? Really, where are you going? What would you like to go do? What is the fantasy? Yeah, we have bi-annual, I think that's semi-annual corporate meetings, director meetings, and the management, mostly Carol Monalie and me, she's executive vice president. We're on the same page about moving the needle ahead of being better and more and, you know, not only continuing our efforts, but improving our efforts. And I think everybody's on the same page to do that. Now, where does that go? Where does it take us? Well, you know, in a time, as I mentioned, where the news comes faster, where a lot of news media in this country are going out of business, you know, thousands of journalists are leaving journalism or losing their jobs. Media is consolidating and in radio, that's a little scary because they're all consolidating on the conservative side. And same, same to a certain extent, you know, there's lots of consolidation in television. And there's only like, you know, three or four major newspapers in the country that are printing original news. So we like original news. And like Civil Beat, we like to go out there and try to get it. We like to talk to the people who are the news makers or who have, you know, personal involvement and knowledge of these news events. We'd like to take our cameras out into the field and talk to people, cover events, cover, you know, the episodes and issues that are going on in our community, talk to the community. But also talk to people overseas and in this country about the news that happens. And I think if you ask me, the one aspiration that I have that rides over everything else is, of course, the technology. You want the technology to be better and better. We believe that with a fairly modest budget, we can achieve production values that are really good and that can be distributed, disseminated around the world. And that's really a thrill. Imagine a small company in a small studio in Honolulu, Hawaii, thousands of miles from the mainland, from any big continent, we can do this. It's a statement about Hawaii. It's a statement about, you know, entrepreneurial aspirations. But the other thing is, you know, we aspire to actually cover these national stories and these global stories with local news makers, local experts to show the world to demonstrate that Hawaii has the talent. We have the knowledge. We have the people. And that our platform can allow them to express themselves and show the world that Hawaii is a player. It's a player in science and technology. It's a player on climate change. It's a player on energy. It's a player on a number of social issues and social phenomenon in Hawaii. We have great advantages, and we can actually help the world by allowing them to understand our dynamic. So that's part of think there. We don't have enough broadcast of those facets of what's going on here in these islands. You know, you talk about reaching out and finding out what people want to hear about and what they'll join you in doing. But do you have, you do have feedback coming in all of the time about the programs. Can you give us a sense of what the feedback, how the feedback helps you develop think tank Hawaii? In other words, is there criticism that's constructive or you've got anger coming in or really good suggestions for how to improve and maybe expand the portfolio of topics or whatever? Once in a while, we do surveys among our constituents, our viewers, and ask them specific questions of what they like, what kind of subjects, the kind of coverage, what shows they like best, what hours they like to watch them. And that's always interesting. We also, as I said, we post everything on YouTube, and YouTube allows for comments, and we allow them, people in general, the viewers to make comments. And those comments are instructive. But I would have to say that in the world of the internet, where you can leave comments on an anonymous basis, really find out about humanity. There are some kind people out there, some rational, thoughtful, solid citizen viewers who give us good feedback, and who give constructive advice, not only to think tech as an organization, but to the hosts like you. They'll tell you to change your technique this way or that way. They're trying to be helpful. They want better. And it's okay, we want that. And we abide by that. We listen to that, consider every comment. But I have to say that there are also people on the internet who leave comments anonymously on YouTube who are not quite in that category. They are incomprehensible. Sometimes they're very angry. Sometimes they reveal a huge level of ignorance. Sometimes they're abusive. And we have that too. We can't learn much from that, except we learn about humanity. We learn about the humanity that pops up on the internet. And that's what we have. That's the world. That's the world of the internet. Ever since the 90s, you know, this sort of thing has been developing around the world. And we are an internet company. We do have exposure locally, nationally, both as a video producer and publisher, and as somebody who gets comments. And so we're in that mix. We're in the waves, so to speak, on both ends of that. And so we are in touch. And we are in touch with that. We also have social media coming and going. And we go live on social media. And we have comments coming in on social media. So all of this, it's a matter of being connected, but also realizing that the connection has to be moderated. That the connection has to be, you have to take some of it anyway with a grain of salt. Well, if you can figure out how to handle and manage that incoming and be able to sift it for what's useful to you, that that's quite an accomplishment. I mean, sounds like that you're learning to do that and doing it. My other question had to do with how do you decide on the content of the shows and the episodes? Do you look to that feedback? Perhaps it's coming some in there? Or is it a matter of the news media paying attention to it and picking up and following them? Or do you try to lead that? So what what ways do you think about expanding your portfolio of content? That's a great question, Stephanie. Thank you for that question. Well, you know, there are some media that are interested in weather sports, crime and accidents. And that's not us. We're probably not going to cover much of that at all. We're going to end. So it's a test of whether, you know, you, you, you cover the things that people say they want to know about, like sports, whether you cover the things that you think people should know about. Because, you know, the reality is, a lot of people in the community, this community and many other communities, their, their education stopped in school or in high school or college. And they didn't do anything much after that. And they don't necessarily read the newspaper on a regular basis or, you know, national magazines or even, even, you know, cultural magazines to understand the world around them. They get a lot of it. They get a lot of their daily intellectual material from television, from network television. And that's, you know, in our view, we want to supplement that. We want to give them things that we think they ought to know about. We want to give them a view of the community, a view of life on this planet that we think they ought to know about. And that is not necessarily, you can understand, that's not necessarily what they would like to, they think they would like to know about. We want to take them to another level. We want to make them think further. I'm wearing my math pin. M-A-T-H, you know, that's what Andrew Yang wears when he goes to these debates. I'm not necessarily supporting Andrew Yang. I just love my math pin. And math does not stand for mathematics. Math stands for make America think harder. That's what we want to do. We want to make America think harder. So we're going to offer them things we think they should know about. And that's, you know, the, the gratification for us, that's our aspiration. That's where we want to go, more and more. So it's not just news, it's news that takes them to another level, that educates them about things that they should know. Yeah, I think that you mentioned supplement. I think that's important too, because it looks like from some of the data, and I can't cite the source at this moment, but I can give it if anybody's curious, but that there is data that shows the young people, the younger people, are preferring now to get their information from reading about it. So, you know, we've moved over to the visual mode and having it come across television and, and perhaps in, in this, but now it looks like the, the young people are, are looking to the written information again because of the issue of time. And so the analysis was that people want to be able to control their time and get the information at the rate they would like to do so. And when you have the media to deal with or to take it off the internet or watch a movie, whatever you've still got, that time you have to get through, you are not controlling the amount of time that it takes you to get the information you have to go with the time that the item is presented in. So if, if that is a trend, I mean that's something that builds up your supplemental service, if not, and not thinking about it in other ways. That's another great question, Stephanie. Thank you for that. You know, when Ben Franklin walked out of Liberty Hall in Philadelphia and whatever it was, 1817, 1889, I guess, when they were writing the Constitution, they were developing a new form of government, a woman stopped it and said, Dr. Franklin, Dr. Franklin, what kind of a government are we going to have? Because it was a big secrecy. And he said, we're going to have a republic, madam, comma, if you can keep it. And so that, that really tells us the whole story about the obligations of the citizen, the obligations of the citizen to participate and to be, to be educated, to educate himself or herself about what is going on in the community and to participate in the civil process. And unfortunately, I think in recent years, we haven't done that as much as we should have. Maybe that's an educational failure. I hope you cover that on your show going forward. You know, do we have good citizens in the country or have we slipped and slipped down the slope on that? We need to have, we need to have educated citizens who care about it, who vote about it, and who educate themselves. So I think it's, it's critical for, in this country, for us to all be good citizens. And that means we have, we have to stay educated on the news of the day and the sea changes of the day to use that term. Okay. And so the other thing is, you were asking about what we want to do in terms of those, those things. And the answer is we want, we want to make sure that everyone is a good citizen. We want to make sure that they all follow the news. You spoke of the speed at which our world moves. It's obviously moving faster than it ever did in the world, largely because of the amount of information that's thrown at us and the disinformation that's thrown at us. And we all have an obligation as citizens to make sure we don't read trash, to make sure we use our critical skills, critical thinking skills to discard, disregard the bad information, the disinformation, those who would, those who would, you know, manipulate the public, the demographs, the demography in our country to divide us. So we all have to be on guard about that. It's a, it's a duty of the citizen. And that's where we want to go. So if you open up Twitter, and Twitter has an outrageous article right there in the top, you say to yourself, this is impossible. This is not really happening. This is suckering me again. You have a duty to use your brains and say, no, I'm not going to listen to that. I'm going to go to other sources before I believe it. So you have to have multiple sources. You have to spend more time, more time, and you have to spend more brainpower. Really important, Jay, that way of thinking about it and encouraging people to find out what is their strong, their strength for getting at the information they need. You want it from the newspaper, you want it from the mags, or you want it from social media or from something, an entity like this, this kind of service is just so important to be in that potpourri of options. People need to learn how to use them well so they are constructive and informed citizens. I think that we, we have discussed a lot about how the, the think tech is going to accomplish its aspirations and to be a leading digital media platform for Hawaii and other places that you want to reach. And I think there's much more to discuss on this and to bring in other perspectives on how it is consumed by the public. And maybe there's more of that available in the data of the feedback, which is, is a, is very rough. But I think that think, think tank will have accomplishments and will be making the public more aware as it intends to do and, and brings these citizens into the, the, the responsibilities that they have to help us keep our democracy or republic as Ben Franklin was addressing. So I thank you so much, Jay, for being so informative and sharing out of your background, your wealth of knowledge. I know we could go on and on and maybe we will again. So, I look forward to it and thank you. Thank you, Stephanie. Enjoy the talk to you. This has been really interesting. Thank you.