 Hello, I am Paul Ze Jackson, one of the founders of the Applied Improvisation Network, along with Alain Rostan and Michael Rosenberg. The three of us met at a conference for trainers and facilitators in Orlando, Florida in January 2001. We were all workshop presenters at this International Alliance for Learning Conference. The planned session was called Unleashing Group Genius through Improv Theatre Techniques, and mine was Ways to Improvise in Training. The Americans always had that edge in marketing pizzazz. We'd also been asked to perform an improv show as the Friday Night Entertainment. This went well and we bonded further in the bar after the show, and wondered how many other people might have had this idea of applying improvisation concepts beyond the theatre. We were trainers and consultants by background and actually much keener on learning and workshops than we were on performing. We found out by launching a mailing list and promoting the first World Summit on Improvization in Business in San Diego, California in 2002. That event was a strand within Massagar, the North American Simulation and Gaming Association Conference. And encouraged by the attendance of 35 of us and the subsequent launch of our first website, we branched out on our own with a conference the next year in Toronto, Canada. Then alternating conferences in North America, Europe and eventually Asia, we held one or two conferences every year face to face until COVID. We renamed ourselves the Applied Improvization Network early on, as it was clear that our interests were wider than business. We recovered education, health, well-being and personal development, the charity and humanitarian sectors, and the reapplication of improvisation into the arts too. What we heard at the very first event and have heard at every conference since is this. I thought I was the only person doing this. Now I've found my tribe. We had more than 300 participants at our largest conference so far in Stony Brook, New York in 2019. Our lively Facebook group has more than 8,000 members. The way we organize ourselves has also developed from an informal network to a registered nonprofit in the United States. We had a board with elected officers such as President and Treasurer to satisfy those requirements. But for several years, we also maintained a parallel open in a sanctum to make policy decisions, and anyone who wanted could find themselves right at the centre of creating, organizing and hosting events and projects. So that's because we've always been an improvisational organization using the principles of improvisation for ourselves, which seems a good idea if we're recommending that sort of thing to our clients. We've identified three waves of applied improvisation. The first wave is when someone attends an improv theatre workshop, and during their training to be an improv performer, they realize that what they are learning can have use of presentations off the stage elsewhere in their life and work. It's then entirely up to them what they do with that. The second wave consists of workshops and trainings in which the topics might be presentations, communication skills, ideation and creativity, leadership and many, many more. You can learn improvisation skills like staying focused, accepting and building status moves, holding your ideas lightly when working with others, as core elements of those advertised outcomes. In the second wave, theatre gets stripped out so there's no stage craft, no separation into performers and audience, and no playing of characters or roles other than yourself. There's an emphasis through discussion and debriefing on how to apply the learnings in the relevant contexts. In the third wave we explore improvisation as a valid and central topic in itself, featuring in everyone's life as they live more in the moment, adapt better to change and find more effective ways to collaborate under pressure. It pops up beyond workshops in improvisational events such as the quest, in coaching and personal development, in how facilitators facilitate well, generally in sustaining a playful and experimental attitude through life's events. In the third wave manifests in open space style conferences and in improvisational organizations like the AI in in the applied improvisational network. You'll notice minimal hierarchies, for example, in treating and charging all conference attendees as participants, rather than separating them into presenters and delegates. In the applied practitioner in AI in, you have to demonstrate contribution to the community, as well as having a working connection with applied improvisation. And the applied improvisation network is best defined as the interactions of our network members. We're all unpaid volunteers, supported by paid services only when necessary. It happens only because one or more of us put something forward, inspires others to join in and discovers what emerges. In this third wave, improv comedy and theater are just some of the more well-known applications of improvisation. And that means it's still early days in the development of this network and its topic. We're all pioneers and there's lots of work to be done and lots of enjoyment still to be had. Thank you.