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Send us Fan MailAnother week of King of the Court and there's plenty to get into.Tyler and Jimmy preview the MLP semifinals and finals in Central Park, including Brooklyn vs. New Jersey, Dallas vs. St. Louis, DreamBreaker possibilities, and Jimmy making a VERY confident prediction about who will win the championship.Then we get into one of the biggest behind-the-scenes issues in professional pickleball: partnerships. Why are players constantly dropping partners? When is it justified? Does loyalty still matter? And should the PPA implement a 30-day rule preventing last-minute partner changes?We also discuss the APP defaulting a team over mismatched uniforms, the new Tesla x Selkirk paddle, some surprising World Pickleball Rankings, and Nick Kyrgios' recent suspension and Stack's decision to stand behind him.00:00 – Jimmy's Undershirt Debate00:49 – Welcome to King of the Court01:35 – The Football Team That Refused to Play03:13 – Football Brawl & Scott Steiner Connection04:01 – Pickler Universe05:32 – Dominator06:17 – Montis Pickleball07:52 – Jimmy's Pickleball Comeback & "Kill List"10:49 – MLP New York Preview12:13 – Jackie Kawamoto Gets Engaged13:58 – Brooklyn vs. New Jersey Predictions16:12 – Jimmy Predicts a Brooklyn Upset16:51 – Dallas vs. St. Louis Predictions18:16 – Who Wins the MLP Championship?19:12 – MLP Takes Over Central Park20:39 – APP Defaults a Team Over Their Uniforms23:54 – Tesla x Selkirk's New Paddle26:20 – Pro Pickleball's Partnership Problem28:02 – Is Loyalty Dead in Pro Pickleball?29:39 – When Is Dropping a Partner Justified?31:04 – Should There Be a 30-Day Rule?33:44 – PPA's New Qualification Rules34:31 – The World Pickleball Rankings Get Weird36:59 – Can Players Game the Ranking System?39:35 – Grayson Goldin Wins in Malaysia40:22 – Pickleball Nationals Preview41:04 – KOTC Live Podcast at Nationals41:47 – Club Pickleball Mastermind43:09 – Jimmy's Barefoot Lawn-Mowing Advice43:47 – Nick Kyrgios' Cocaine Suspension45:46 – Why Stack Stood Behind Kyrgios48:12 – The Hypocrisy Controversy49:31 – Final Thoughts on Kyrgios50:15 – Wrapping UpWebsite: https://www.tylerloong.com/ KOTC All Accesshttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDiH-sjthLCovD8i79-AkWg/joinCode “KOTC” for insane discounts at: https://www.clubpickleballmastermind.com/kotcCode "KOTC" at Montispickleball.com KOTC Merch - Use “KOTC” kitchpickleball.comNEW KOTC DISCORD https://discord.com/invite/kNR65mBemfNEW KOTC CAMEOhttps://www.cameo.com/morekotcInstagram: Tyler's IG - @tyler.loong Jimmy's IG - @jimmymiller_pbKOTC IG - @morekingofthecourt Facebook: / tyler.loong --Support the show
Don’t miss the marketplace revolution! Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this episode of the Ultimate Partner Podcast, Vince Menzione sits down with AWS Marketplace leaders George Maroulakos and Arif Razvi to uncover the rapidly shifting ecosystem of technology procurement and partner transformation. They dive deep into the evolution of buyer experiences, the critical necessity of executive alignment, and how agentic AI is redefining software discovery and consumption. If you want to accelerate deal velocity and ensure your business isn’t left behind, this conversation outlines exactly why integrating the AWS Marketplace into your core co-sell motion is no longer optional. https://youtu.be/Avp0sIyxRU8 Key Takeaways Embracing the AWS Marketplace should be viewed as a natural extension of your co-sell motion, not an interrupt-driven exception. Successfully leveraging the marketplace requires top-down executive sponsorship to overcome internal friction across legal, finance, and revenue operations. Partners must prepare for global expansion by ensuring local entities and currencies are wired up to meet buyers where they are. Agentic AI and natural language queries are leveling the playing field for software discovery, moving beyond traditional SEO-driven presence. SaaS pricing models are shifting toward consumption and outcome-based structures, demanding highly detailed product metadata. The speed of deal closure is drastically increased when partners are prepared to transact seamlessly through the marketplace. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags AWS Marketplace, partner transformation, buyer experiences, hyperscalers, co-sell motion, revenue operations, strategic alignment, agentic AI solutions, outcome-based pricing, metadata optimization, software discovery, private offers, global expansion, deal velocity, cloud centers of excellence. Transcript Arif Razvi and George Maroulakos Audio Episode [00:00:00] George Maroulakos: From my perspective, think about marketplace as a why not as opposed to a why. [00:00:06] Vince Menzione: You can feel it happening. The ecosystem is shifting beneath us, the way Hyperscalers are partnering, how AI is remaking the channel and what it means to win in 2026. [00:00:17] Arif Razvi: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host. [00:00:22] Arif Razvi: And each week I sit down with leaders at the intersection of technology, [00:00:26] Vince Menzione: partnerships and outcomes. The voices shaping how ecosystems actually work. We talk about what’s real, what’s changing, and what it takes to lead in this era where the partner channel isn’t just part of the strategy. [00:00:39] Arif Razvi: It is the strategy because being in the room changes everything. [00:00:44] Arif Razvi: Let’s start. [00:00:48] Vince Menzione: I’m excited to, because we were talking about some of this earlier with Matt, but I thought this would be a great conversation. I’m gonna ask each of you to introduce yourselves, George and Arif, and your roles. ’cause you have two very unique roles. Uh. Contrasting roles, I would call it, within the AWS Marketplace Organization. [00:01:06] George Maroulakos: Yep. Happy to do so. So I think Vince just didn’t wanna say my last name, so that’s why I’m gonna introduce myself. Mayor. Very, very good. So Mayor Laki, George Meki, pleasure to meet. Hey, I can say that, uh, all of those that I haven’t met before, lots of familiar faces as well here. Uh, so it’s really great to see. [00:01:21] George Maroulakos: Uh, I’m part of the AWS Marketplace team and our center of excellence. That focuses on buyer experiences. So like why is a buyer guy here in this partner session? And I think, you know, I’m gonna help to try to bring some perspective around what our buyers see as the value for using marketplace and. [00:01:40] George Maroulakos: Working with all of these great partners that are here in the room and, uh, you know, the experiences that we see in helping to drive, you know, the blood to all organs. I’m using that a lot, Alison, to copyright it. It’s, it was really good. I love that, that analogy. But, um, for, but for both our partners as well as for our customers. [00:01:59] Vince Menzione: That’s awesome. [00:01:59] Arif Razvi: Hey everybody. I’m Arif Roski. I’m based here in New York City, although I’m a Celtics fan. Um, uh, go, go. I, I still supported the Knicks through the championship and I’m very happy for them. So excited to be here. Excited to be among, uh, other channel and alliance leaders. I’ve spent my entire 25 plus career in channels and alliances. [00:02:20] Arif Razvi: The last seven years, uh, on AWS marketplace where I lead, uh, a couple of functions. One is I support all of Matt Ian’s feature launches. So from a go-to market perspective, uh, I support his launches. I also focus on international expansion of marketplace. So, uh, Matt alluded to this earlier. I’ll mention some, I’ll talk about some stuff in a little bit. [00:02:39] Arif Razvi: And then, uh, we do some deep engagements with some of our most strategic partners to help them accelerate and unblock their marketplace business. By embedding a subject matter expert from my team into their organization to really help drive, uh, adoption of marketplace. [00:02:55] Vince Menzione: So important. Both of your roles. [00:02:56] Vince Menzione: By the way, this is standout roles. I, you know, I. I don’t want to get into trouble here. I talk about other hyperscalers, but I said this with Matt on stage earlier. You guys have been at the forefront of driving marketplace in such a strong way, having somebody who’s customer focused, right? And that lens is so important. [00:03:15] Vince Menzione: I don’t feel, I feel like that’s missed so many times. And then you also have. You know, quite a bit of an important role here in terms of what you’re doing in embedding resources. ’cause a lot of times people get lost in the process and it seems to be the, the common currents. So, um, really great both sides of the same equation here, right? [00:03:33] Vince Menzione: Buyer led, partner built, uh, let’s start George here. Um. Let’s talk about how buying has changed. Right. We go back to the early days of marketplace. It felt like it was a listing at first and it started to become important. Organizations like Work Span started to come to fruition and started to drive, at least in my part of the world. [00:03:53] Vince Menzione: And then we started talking a lot more about Marketplace. And of course the, the cus customer commits really started driving things in a different direction. You’ve got the customer, so talk about what your journey’s been like. [00:04:05] George Maroulakos: So I’ve been with Marketplace nine and a half years, which is pretty long time since the beginning of it, and watching the evolution of, of where things have come and where they started. [00:04:15] George Maroulakos: And I remember, uh, I was covering the, the northeast region when I very first started and working with, uh, you know, different enterprise accounts and financial services and, and, and healthcare and life sciences, and talking about this. This creation that occurred called, called AWS Marketplace, and even folks within AWS didn’t really know what that meant or how to talk about it or sell it. [00:04:38] George Maroulakos: So there was this creation of a infield based business development function to help supplement the account teams and the value and the importance of marketplace as a part of a customer’s AWS journey. And when I first started the, the, the highest, uh, or most frequently subscribed to products that existed were. [00:04:57] George Maroulakos: Uh, Amazon machine images a amis and it’s very specifically open source amis. So think of Bantu or Cintas as the predominant things that were being subscribed out of marketplace. So, um, by definition, not really revenue generating. You’re, these are not the a hundred million dollar transactions or the billion dollar club that we talk about today. [00:05:19] George Maroulakos: It was very much helping. The builders go again, go back 10 years, uh, who are just getting started with the cloud and how could they find partner solutions that they trusted or that they felt were secure and helping them to start to build out and migrate their workloads into, into AWS. Um, so I existed before the. [00:05:39] George Maroulakos: Very first private offer was transacted. Nice. Um, there’s actually a, a gentleman towards the back, uh, who helped with one of our very first private offers. I see you back there, Joe. Nice, nice. Um, so we, we worked on, uh, uh, uh, really big transaction with, uh, with, at the time AppDynamics, uh, and, and helping to get. [00:05:58] George Maroulakos: You know, a customer really up and running with their implementation that, so watching over the 10 years from, you know, the builder mentality of, of getting started with the cloud to really embracing all kinds of partner based, um, solutions that go along with AWS. It’s really been, uh, you know, a, a rocket ship you referenced earlier, moving to the top right quadrant, if we want to use the, the Gartner analogy, and I think we’re at another. [00:06:24] George Maroulakos: Inflection point because with what’s going on with Ag agentic solutions, the way that our customers are finding and discovering different partner solutions is better than ever I would think. And I think it gives much more of a equal opportunity in playing field for all partners of all shapes and sizes because you’re not driving your presence based on SEO or whether or not you have the best Google search results. [00:06:53] George Maroulakos: With AgTech and how you differentiate your solutions, you’re gonna be able to really get yourself in front of more customers more quickly. And as Matt talked about earlier, the, the, the really big penetration that we’ve seen thus far is real, is on the discovery piece, the, the research area, the pre-purchase activity, so validate what’s available. [00:07:13] George Maroulakos: So I think marketplace has really evolved over the 10 year, nine and a half years-ish that I’ve been there. And I think it’s gonna continue to change here in the coming months ahead. Yeah. [00:07:23] Vince Menzione: Any predictions? [00:07:25] George Maroulakos: Yeah, I, I think, you know, the, I, the, the importance of marketplaces is only going to continue to grow. [00:07:32] George Maroulakos: Uh, and I think we’re going to see, you know, even more innovation and expectation from our customers on being able to find the right solutions and being able to procure and deploy them as quickly as possible. [00:07:44] Vince Menzione: Nice. Arif, from your side. Partner transformation. So, you know, embedding resources with the partners. [00:07:51] Vince Menzione: Right. So you basically help kickstart a lot of the, the efforts, right? George? George is looking at it from the customer side, and then you’re kick-starting it on the partner side. [00:08:00] Arif Razvi: Yeah. Either kickstarting it, uh, on the initial stages with a strategic partner. Yeah. Or accelerating their adoption of something that’s already there. [00:08:07] Arif Razvi: Right. So what we’re seeing, what I’m seeing a lot of more recently is partners who say, I didn’t know you had capabilities for us to sell into Korea or Japan, or we just, we just launched India. Yep. Matt alluded to this easier, uh, earlier that we’re making it easier for partners to expand globally. And now partners are realizing, wait a minute, I can match my. [00:08:26] Arif Razvi: Uh, my business processes on marketplace, so revenue recognition, tax collection, locally, local invoices, and now they’re starting to set up multiple entities outside the US to meet those buyers, uh, where they are. [00:08:41] Vince Menzione: Nice. And you mentioned having these resources. How do you determine who gets resources and who? [00:08:47] Arif Razvi: Well, there’s, uh, staging and there’s, uh, there’s qualification mechanisms we use. We work with the PDMs for the partners. So any PDM, uh, any pd DM managed partner can be nominated for, uh, what, what we call a compensation. [00:08:59] Vince Menzione: So you’re overlaying that organization sense. [00:09:00] Arif Razvi: We’re overlaying the PDs. We’re not replacing, we’re only doing time bound sprints to unlock very specific activities. [00:09:05] Arif Razvi: Very [00:09:06] Vince Menzione: cool. So it’s not a poll. Yeah. Cool. You’re not, you’re not there forever. [00:09:08] Arif Razvi: No. [00:09:08] Vince Menzione: You’re there to get the job done. We [00:09:09] Arif Razvi: did that before. Uh, yeah, we’re, we’re doing short sprints now. [00:09:12] Vince Menzione: Yep. Let’s talk about how the buyers are using marketplace. You’ve done some really in, we talked about this earlier with Matt, but we’ve talked about some of the innovative things you’ve done. [00:09:21] Vince Menzione: You know, being, being able to embed into a website and in the storefronts. All these things seem to be unique to AWS. Talk to us about how the buyers are using the marketplace today. And [00:09:31] George Maroulakos: yeah, I think, you know, Matt talked about earlier the. Pre the, the preconception around why customers use marketplaces for the financial incentives, the, the financial benefits that go along with it, whether it’s direct incentives that are associated with the individual product that’s out there, or the Association of Marketplace to our private pricing agreements and the ability for. [00:09:55] George Maroulakos: Transactions that occur in marketplace to count towards those commits. Um, I’m gonna amplify a, a particular point that Matt made, uh, in his talk that, you know, we have many more customers who do not have PPAs with AWS than those that do. And the volume of transactions that take place in marketplace. [00:10:11] George Maroulakos: Dwarf, uh, in volume from those that, uh, are occur from our PPA customers. So yes, there are very large transactions that occur and there is Ben financial benefit that goes along with it. But there’s many other value points that our customers find from discovery. From ease of use, from consolidated billing, from post-purchase, um, you know, management and governance that goes along with it, and reconciliation that’s available, that’s, that exists. [00:10:36] George Maroulakos: Um, you mentioned storefronts. I’m really excited. That was one of the most exciting launches. That’s why I reminded him when he was talking about it, uh, around, you know, what that means. And it’s both a presence for, um, our partners and being able to create their own storefronts on behalf of, of customers or within their own property, but also for our buyers directly too. [00:10:54] George Maroulakos: Take that next generation of something that was previously, you know, our private marketplace and curate a catalog that is very specific and intentional for the things that they’re interested to innovate with and the partners that they’re interested in using. And so I think meeting our customers where they’re at. [00:11:10] George Maroulakos: And being, you know, marketplace anywhere and everywhere is I think really important for our customers. And then the other aspect, you know, in terms of how our customers use marketplace, there’s more than one persona at our customer that we need to be, be, be aligning with. Right. Interesting. We typically talk about procurement and the value points that procurement find in marketplace, but just as important as, as the technologists. [00:11:32] George Maroulakos: It’s the Cloud centers of Excellence. It’s the innovators who are looking for those business applications or those infrastructure solutions that exist and making sure that we have the right things from the right partners available to them. So we see value all over the place with our customers and how they inter interface with [00:11:47] Vince Menzione: more. [00:11:47] Vince Menzione: You brought up something really interesting, insightful, is the fact that all the different personas in the organization that are touching the marketplace, right? [00:11:54] George Maroulakos: And it’s at different points of the journey, right? Yeah. So while there may be early discovery and research and experimentation going on from, you know, the technologists or, or, or the, or the, the, the business application owners, um, as it progresses through the, the, the. [00:12:09] George Maroulakos: The opportunity lifecycle procurement and sourcing and legal, and the shared services then become a more important part of, of making sure that we get those opportunities closed and launched. [00:12:18] Vince Menzione: Yeah, and that was one of the things we were talking about earlier is the fact that how, how, uh, it, it, the work arduous it could be. [00:12:25] Vince Menzione: To go through that whole process at a customer side. Right? ’cause they have to. [00:12:29] George Maroulakos: It is, and and you know, I think when Cloud first got started, it was quite scary for procurement, right? It became another version of Shadow it. And we were seeing things that were getting purchased on P cards because they could quickly stand up infrastructure versus waiting for the IT team to do it. [00:12:44] George Maroulakos: And so now you introduce all of these other things that. Procurement kept near and dear to their heart, and here comes another wave of, is this truly positive disruption? Is it going to affect what’s, what I’m doing affect really my goals and objectives of supporting the company. And as you, you know, you continue to express the value of marketplace, they start to see, hey, this is actually very complimentary and helped me can get better control and governance in a way that I. [00:13:11] George Maroulakos: Perhaps didn’t have before with what was going on inside the cloud. [00:13:15] Vince Menzione: So this is a question for both of you actually, but I was thinking about these partners in the room and what did they get wrong? Like what are they doing? Like what are the things we always talk about, things that they’re doing right? [00:13:26] Vince Menzione: We’re having the happy talk about all the great success that’s been going on, but what is your advice to partners that maybe are not getting it right? Like what, what, what are the things you see that. The easy stumbling blocks that could be fixed. [00:13:38] Arif Razvi: Yeah. Well, probably the easiest is, uh, waiting to talk about marketplace at the last minute and not making it part of the full commercial journey [00:13:45] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:13:45] Arif Razvi: That the sellers will go through. Right. So, um, but that includes being able to have those internal conversations from the executive level, getting that executive sponsorship from marketplace upfront. That filters down through the rest of the organization. So you’ve gotta get rev ops teams, finance, legal, you know, the marketplace terms, the, the standard, uh, contract that goes into your listing has to be approved by legal. [00:14:08] Arif Razvi: Uh, and then you get down to the sales teams, making sure that you’re not penalizing sales teams for doing transactions on marketplace, which will create friction, then meeting buyers where they are, right? So local entities, local currency, um, having all that wired up. Uh, I met with a, a partner yesterday at Summit who is literally wiring up 10 new regions, 10 new entities in 10 new locations on marketplace in advance of what they know is a pipeline that’s going to be building into those regions. [00:14:37] Arif Razvi: So they’re getting ready and not waiting for the last minute for marketplace. [00:14:40] Vince Menzione: I love it. And the internal, go ahead. [00:14:43] George Maroulakos: Yeah, I, I echo definitely what Arif was saying and I think the, the other aspect of that is that our customers shouldn’t feel like it’s more painful. To use marketplace versus they would any other way. [00:14:54] George Maroulakos: And so whether that shows up in pricing, it shows up in awareness of what marketplace is and isn’t, or what it can or cannot do. Um, whether it’s introducing it naturally or it’s this, oh, by the way, on the end, like the, the more. Integrated marketplace is as a part of your co-sell motion, whether you’re doing it directly on your own or through a reseller or with AWS or all of the above. [00:15:17] George Maroulakos: Um, it’s, it should be a natural extension and a value point that you’re bringing to your respective customers, not some. Interrupt driven or, or exception based activity that goes along with selling your, your, your, your solution. [00:15:31] Vince Menzione: Why do you think customer, some customers or some partners are held back or what, what, what is, is it a mindset? [00:15:38] Vince Menzione: I mean, I talk about the principles, you know that, but like, is it mindset? What is it? Is it, [00:15:42] Arif Razvi: it’s, it’s internal. Friction. Yeah. A a a lot of what I see, especially in these, in, in embedded engagements is the amount of, you know, I have a lot of empathy for this room, right? Because you are the ones that have to go internally and navigate all of these stakeholders to be able to convince them that marketplace is the route to market. [00:16:01] Arif Razvi: It’s the preferred route to market, and it’s the way that a AWS wants to co-sell. With its partners. And that’s a hard thing to do if you don’t speak the same language that the tax legal, rev ops, finance, accounting, because everything changes. When you start doing transactions on marketplace, your revenue is booked differently, right? [00:16:20] Arif Razvi: It’s booked as a w from AWS and not from the, you know, from the, so things change and having that conversation is often challenging. Uh, we are working on some tools that will help make that conversation easier. Um, and we’ve already written blogs, and again, there are mechanisms that your partner managers have internally that they can request support and guidance. [00:16:43] Arif Razvi: Uh, and we’re happy to provide that. [00:16:45] Vince Menzione: What needs to change so that marketplace becomes a true go to market engine. [00:16:49] Arif Razvi: Top down, top down, top down where, where I’ve seen the most success. From a partner is where they’ve gotten strategic alignment at the executive level. That marketplace is the way we are going to, uh, sell globally. [00:17:02] Arif Razvi: Right? Then that starts to filter down, as I mentioned earlier, into the different teams and yes, it is a journey and you may start with the US or if you’re EMEA based. Partner, you may start with just amea, but eventually you will start to expand your, you’ll want to expand your business. Um, and marketplace is a great place to do that because we have all of those mechanisms globally to help you scale without adding incremental resources to handle the tax or the compliance or the invoicing and collection and all that stuff. [00:17:30] George Maroulakos: Yeah. I’ll add to that because I’m gonna steal a second thing you said, Allison, about centering around a customer. I, I loved a lot of Allison. Come on now. I’ll be your hype guy. I absolutely, but, but, but the but demand will drive supply. And I think to what you were talking about, Arif, when are customers, when. [00:17:46] George Maroulakos: Our customers come to you about wanting to use marketplace. Yeah. How are you ready to adapt to that? How are you ready to respond to it? And if it becomes a disjointed, not centered around a customer, bespoke based, independently based interaction with the customer, everybody loses. Versus if you’re ready to embrace what that means and how to make that as good of an experience, if not better, versus how they might have traditionally procured your solution and deployed it. [00:18:13] George Maroulakos: Um, now we have a much better together story. So I think understanding that customers more and more are going to use marketplaces, particularly AWS marketplace, and want to make use of partner solutions that embrace marketplace as a part of their way to procure and deploy. You have a much better chance of being successful with them. [00:18:33] Vince Menzione: You know, it made me think about this. Is there a seminal event? Like I think about, I think back to COVID changing buying behavior, right? I’m, we’ll use AWS, an example, three boxes show up in my house every day, right? That didn’t happen before. We used to go to the store. Is there a seminal event we’re waiting to happen? [00:18:50] Vince Menzione: I, I know that the millennial buyer, we talked about this earlier with Matt, is the new buying persona. Over 50% of buyers are millennial and they’re used to doing comfortable with phones and trust Is all there. Is there something else we’re missing or what do, what do you think’s gonna happen? [00:19:03] George Maroulakos: I really think it’s what in front of us right now. [00:19:05] George Maroulakos: Yeah. Vince, I think what. Agen solutions, what Agen SaaS offers, what the power of information and research that’s now directly available to customers versus maybe indirectly available through consultancies or deeper research. Um, the velocity of what our customers are going to be able to do and with partners that they may not have even heard of right before. [00:19:32] George Maroulakos: You know, they started their journey. I, I think this is a present day. Inflection point. Yeah. Um, going back, you know, over the past several years, the advent of supporting private offers I think was a pretty big milestone for marketplace. It allowed for our partners to be able to. Work through customized terms and conditions and commercials that were important for a particular opportunity in a customer. [00:19:54] George Maroulakos: But today, the here and now I think becomes the next inflection point for the success of marketplace. [00:19:59] Arif Razvi: That would [00:19:59] Vince Menzione: Go ahead. [00:20:00] Arif Razvi: I was just gonna add on top of that, but partners need to be ready for that. Right? And if they’re not ready to accelerate a deal and get it closed in days versus stalling it for weeks to negotiate. [00:20:11] Arif Razvi: Yes. Like they’re not gonna stand. Customers are not gonna stand for that. So partners need to be ready to move quickly. If you think about all the innovations that Matt is delivering for Marketplace and Partner Central. They’re about accelerating co-sell. They’re about accelerating deal velocity. They’re about, we know f from, from the Forrester studies and others that we presented, that we’ve made public that the deal value goes up when you’re dealing with marketplace and co-selling with AWS. [00:20:36] Arif Razvi: So how can we just accelerate that? Yeah. Partners need to be ready for that and move quickly. [00:20:40] Vince Menzione: And you use partners in sort of a, you know, plural sense, but I think about those organizations as so many multifaceted. We talked about finance, we talked about all of different functions in the organization. [00:20:51] Vince Menzione: What are you doing to help that? I mean, we talked about you’re doing a lot of readiness work, but I do feel like there’s a lot of evangelism still to be done internally with those organizations. How do you think about [00:21:02] Arif Razvi: that? Yeah, we, um, obviously events like this are fantastic mechanisms to at least get the conversation started and get your head thinking about what you need to think about. [00:21:10] Arif Razvi: But we have other activities. We have, uh, rev Ops squads, right? So revenue operations teams, and we bring them together, uh, around the world op, uh, ops squad, which is operational teams, so deal desks and others that help them, uh, understand the capabilities that marketplace can bring to accelerate deal velocity. [00:21:28] Arif Razvi: And then we have, like, obviously other events like the, the, uh, marketplace Seller Conference in September where we bring marketplace sellers together and give them, you know. Guidance. And so there are ways to get this information beyond just like getting somebody from my team, of which there are very few as you, you know, as we start to, to consolidate down. [00:21:47] Arif Razvi: But um, but they are available and there’s other mechanisms and we’re happy to share those out. [00:21:50] Vince Menzione: Nice, nice. Well coming here doing this and we’ll make a podcast episode out of this as well. Can you hear. I hear us all, uh, because I do think it’s important to get in front of, especially the Chief Finance Officer and operations and all those different departmental heads who aren’t really embedded into, like, they don’t come to these events. [00:22:07] Arif Razvi: Yeah. And they also don’t log into Partner Central. That’s right. So how do they get this information right? Yeah. So we have to one to one it with them. Yeah. But that doesn’t scale when you think about what’s gonna happen now with this next wave of GSIs and sis and, and others coming onto Marketplace who hadn’t been there. [00:22:22] Arif Razvi: Yes, they’re gonna need the same guidance. Yeah. So we have to start thinking about what we’re building is AI tooling to help with those conversations. [00:22:28] George Maroulakos: Well, and, and you know, if, when I think about it from, from our buyer’s perspective, even just yesterday we held a, a couple of round table discussions with some procurement leaders that were, we’re here for the summit and, you know, we do a lot of enablement and, and awareness. [00:22:42] George Maroulakos: With alliance leaders at our partners, and that’s certainly a, the tip of the spear of getting the conversation started, but it’s not enough. And one of the things that we hear from our customers is. Well, you may have a great partnership with particular partner A, but the individual experience that I had with that sales rep doesn’t match that. [00:23:02] George Maroulakos: And so yeah, the evangelism and the awareness, yes, and the understanding of marketplace has to go beyond just the alliance team. You guys are the amplifier to it. But the folks that not only are in the back office and all the, the, the operational teams, but on the front lines and field sales need to also understand and embrace, not understand all the features and capabilities of marketplace. [00:23:25] George Maroulakos: AWS needs to handle that, but understand how marketplace fits into the co-sell strategy in what’s going on for that particular customer is very, very important to make sure our customers get the right experience. [00:23:37] Vince Menzione: Well, I think Arif, you mentioned this earlier about compensation models. And that’s a, that’s a factor too. [00:23:42] Vince Menzione: ’cause people, people, um, they’re fearful of change. They’re fear, fearful of compensation changing. Especially, especially sellers. I, um, again, that’s a coaching area. [00:23:54] Arif Razvi: Yeah, it’s a coaching area. Um, it, it, it is, um. It’s probably one of the easier ones to solve. Um, and, and, and, you know, we have these conversations with partners about net, uh, cost neutral or uh, seller neutrality and things like that. [00:24:06] Arif Razvi: Once you show them the economics of how AWS can increase their deal value, those economics sort of, they go away. The problems go away, but they, you have to get in front of those. Uh, you know, senior leaders, the CROs and the CFOs, to have that conversation to then go, okay, I get what’s going on here. I get why I’m paying. [00:24:23] Arif Razvi: The listing fee is, is about funding all of these marketing activities that we do for our partners, right? [00:24:29] George Maroulakos: Well, and then you use the word neutrality. The other end of that neutrality problem or, or, or challenge is the pricing that goes along with the opportunities that are made available to customers. [00:24:38] George Maroulakos: And so to one of your earlier questions on points of friction or what, what stops it from taking off further? When, when partners and our customers have a disconnect on. What they’re expecting to pay when they use marketplace, or if there is a unnatural cost that goes along with procuring that solution through marketplace. [00:24:57] George Maroulakos: That also tends to bring a, a pretty bad experience, not only for that opportunity in front of them, but for respective opportunities that may, may be in play thereafter. So thinking about not, you know, having an a, an unnatural experience for our customers relative to pricing as well as compensation and, and everything else is, is also very important. [00:25:17] Vince Menzione: So we’ve got a few minutes left, and we haven’t really touched on ag agentic AI and agen AI solutions. A little bit different than the SaaS solutions per se. How, how are these solutions brought and sold differently than SaaS? [00:25:30] Arif Razvi: Uh, well, as Matt said, the SaaS apocalypse is not real. [00:25:34] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:25:34] Arif Razvi: Um, he doesn’t, I’m glad to hear that, nor nor do I. [00:25:37] Arif Razvi: Um, I, I think what, you know, where, where SaaS has been very user seat based, you’re moving now to a world that’s gonna be more consumption based or outcome-based pricing. And so that’s really changing the dynamic and I think partners need to think about what does an outcome-based, uh, pricing model look for My particular. [00:25:55] Arif Razvi: Um, product, uh, Zendesk is a good example of, Matt published a blog, uh, earlier this week, I think it was, where we, we referenced Zendesk pricing on closed tickets or, or resolutions to tickets, right? For, for outcome-based pricing. So I think we need to think about on the pricing side, how to reprice, how to think about pricing. [00:26:13] Arif Razvi: But on the discovery side, thinking about what your, what your listing looks like, it’s no longer about marketing copy. It’s about, it’s almost, I was talking yesterday about being an API contract. ’cause the agent needs to have all the details that a person doesn’t necessarily need to have in order to make a recommendation that your product is the best fit based on the technology that’s underlying that, where it’s gonna fit in the infrastructure. [00:26:37] Vince Menzione: So three and a half minutes left lightning round. Um, but seriously, what, what if I’m in the room or even any, any partner that’s listening today, what do I need to change in the next 30 days? [00:26:50] George Maroulakos: From my perspective, think about marketplace as a why not as opposed to a why. And if you change your mindset around marketplace can be better together in helping to accelerate and expand your opportunities with our mutual customers. [00:27:03] George Maroulakos: You’ll get a whole lot more value out of it. You’ll get away from the fud in the system or some of the traditional roadblocks that you either have been or could be encountering when you think about marketplace, uh, together with your, with your solution. So think about the why not think about the value that the, the, the total solution can bring to our mutual customers and integrate it much more naturally into your total sales motion. [00:27:26] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:27:27] Arif Razvi: I would say maybe three things. One, um, don’t just sell globally. Operate locally. Think about how your buyers wanna buy and then meet them there, right? As a partner, even if you’re doing CPPO transactions, um, you know, meet them in the location. Number two, top down, go get that executive alignment so the problems start to disappear, or at least are easier to manage when you’ve got that executive alignment. [00:27:51] Arif Razvi: And the third was, uh, don’t wait till the last minute to introduce marketplace. Work with your sales teams to make sure it’s part of the early conversation versus no procurement leader wants to know at the end of the day, oh wait, it’s coming. I gotta deal with this marketplace thing. They don’t wanna deal with it on the buyer side. [00:28:06] Vince Menzione: No, absolutely. Alright, we’ve got time for like one question in the back. Is that Eric? Yeah, that’s [00:28:12] Guest: me. [00:28:13] Vince Menzione: Hey. [00:28:14] Guest: Hi, Eric Rosenstein, um, with Cornerstone Strategy XAWS. So George, you talked about, uh, tools around that customers can use to research for self discovery. So what guidance, uh, first of all, like what capabilities are these tools gonna bring and what guidance would you give an industry specific ISV? [00:28:36] Guest: So someone that’s focused on law enforcement or private equity. That solution may be Angen solution, or it may be something more SaaS related. What guidance would you give an ISV to think about how to best leverage those tools? Is it metadata? Is it like. The outcome that your solution’s gonna drive, how would you tell ’em to best utilize those coming tools? [00:28:58] George Maroulakos: Yeah, excellent question and, and I think this is gonna, going to continue to emerge in the days, literally in weeks, weeks ahead. But recently, I, I’d say over the last six months, the advent of agent mode I think has been a game changer and the ability for our customers to use marketplace directly to research. [00:29:18] George Maroulakos: Efficiently what’s in our catalog. Prior to that, we had a category based. Old school based, search based category, click through way, which became very buried beyond the first page for any solution that was out there. Now with natural language query and the ability to propose, what am I specifically looking for, it gives partners that were on the first page or the last page in equal opportunity to be surfaced. [00:29:48] George Maroulakos: So then for a partner being able to do many of the things you just enumerated. Better metadata, better keywords, better description and differentiation for what your solution offers allows for the Ag agent search, whether it’s natively within AWS or outside of AWS through Claude Chat, GBT Crock Pick your, your, your agent of choice. [00:30:10] George Maroulakos: To be able to identify and know that your solution’s available. [00:30:13] Arif Razvi: And from a partner side to your question, I would say, uh, rich metadata, uh, both so that agent mode can find it. Yeah. Use cases, problems, it solves, you know, uh, technical specifications, pricing where you can, right. So that agents can really understand the solution, uh, that the buyer is, um, is looking for. [00:30:33] Vince Menzione: GEO is. [00:30:37] Guest: Perspective should be like as detailed as saying, so this agent is gonna act on these various data sources. [00:30:44] Arif Razvi: Yes. [00:30:45] Guest: Bringing it all together to drive that outcome that you want the agent [00:30:48] Arif Razvi: drive, if you can include what it needs to connect to in order to deliver that outcome as part of the listing. [00:30:53] Arif Razvi: Absolutely. ’cause the agent will want to know. For sure. [00:30:57] Guest: Thanks. [00:30:58] Vince Menzione: Alright, we are at time and this was a great session. [00:31:01] Arif Razvi: Thank you Vince. [00:31:01] Vince Menzione: Great to see you, George. George and I grew up, uh, five miles away from each other and went to the same college. I love it. Great to, great to spend some [00:31:09] Arif Razvi: time with you, George. [00:31:11] Vince Menzione: Thanks for listening to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. If today’s conversation resonated, share it with a partner leader in your network. Subscribe where you listen, and head over to the ultimate partner.com. For show notes related content and the resources for this episode, and if you haven’t already, now’s the time to register for the Ultimate Partner Live Event in Reston, Virginia, October 26th through October 28th. [00:31:38] Vince Menzione: Until next time, keep showing up in the rooms that matter because being in the room changes everything.
This week on "Second Helpings" we're discussing the untimely passing of the immensely talented and deeply missed Hayden Panettiere, which directly leads into how Hollywood continues to systematically and repeatedly be failing the children it simply chews up and spits out for their own profit. Alyssa Milano has spoken out about their struggle with PPA after having their child amid the Lindsay Clancy tragedy. And then it's time for something completely different with discussion of the first episode of "Lanterns". Gideon can't stop gushin' 'bout them SNEKS while watchin' "Monsters of God" with MJ! Jackie and Harry Jowsey are lookin' to be your father figure in completely different ways UH WINK ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) we got SPOILER HEAVY "Nation's Dumbest" updates! Meghan Trainor created the next Annabelle and gave it to her son, PLUS SO MUCH MORE!!! Want even more Page 7? Support us on Patreon! Patreon.com/Page7Podcast Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Page 7 ad-free.Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Send us Fan MailThe MLP playoffs delivered some major surprises, and we're breaking down everything that happened in Newport.The Dallas Flash pulled off a massive upset over Ben Johns and the LA Mad Drops after looking like their season was falling apart just a few months ago. We break down how Dallas turned things around, J.W. Johnson's incredible run of form, LA's DreamBreaker decisions, and whether Ben Johns actually "quit" or Dallas simply outplayed them.We also break down Brooklyn's win over Columbus, Jackie Kawamoto's clutch performance, the Shock continuing to dominate, New Jersey surviving Palm Beach, and our predictions for the MLP semifinals and championship.Then we get into whether drafting singles specialists actually makes sense in MLP, Tyler's PPA Challenger experience in Seattle, a controversial new PPA side-switching rule, and some of the upcoming players making noise at Challenger events.Finally, we discuss the PPA's new World Pickleball Rankings system, why singles, mixed doubles and gender doubles are being combined into one ranking, and some of the strange results the new formula could create.Thanks for watching King of the Court! Subscribe for more pickleball news, analysis, opinions and behind-the-scenes stories.00:00 – Coming Up on KOTC00:46 – Welcome Back to King of the Court01:35 – Jimmy Goes Sleeveless 02:18 – Pickler Universe's New DFW Facility03:06 – Ranking the Best & Worst Airports06:04 – Dominator Pickleball07:34 – Jimmy Gets His New Montis Shoes09:00 – KOTC All Access Hits 140 Members09:49 – MLP Newport Playoff Recap10:45 – How Dallas Completely Turned Its Season Around12:21 – Why Dallas Didn't Blow Up the Team13:38 – The Moves That Changed Dallas' Season15:04 – Dallas vs. LA & the DreamBreaker Decision16:38 – Did LA Make a HUGE Mistake?17:19 – Ben Johns & Max Freeman Struggle18:14 – Did Ben Johns Actually Quit?19:04 – J.W. Johnson Is Playing Like the Best in the World20:44 – Dallas Pulls Off the Massive Upset21:32 – Brooklyn vs. Columbus24:09 – Brooklyn Advances25:17 – The Shock Absolutely DOMINATE26:44 – Fives vs. Palm Beach Recap27:31 – Tina Pisnik's INSANE ATP29:34 – Can Anyone Beat New Jersey in a DreamBreaker?30:17 – MLP Semifinal Predictions31:49 – Why Dallas Is the Team Nobody Wants to Face33:14 – Who Wins the 2026 MLP Championship?33:58 – Are Singles Specialists Worth It in MLP?35:32 – How MLP Draft Strategy Could Change39:10 – The Problem With Paying for Singles Specialists40:05 – Potential MLP Changes for 202740:50 – Tyler's Seattle Challenger Recap42:25 – PPA's NEW Side-Switching Rule43:06 – Why Players Don't Like the New Rule43:54 – PPA Challenger Men's Doubles Recap46:05 – Mixed Doubles Challenger Results47:40 – Challenger Women's Doubles49:27 – How Challengers Differ From the PPA Tour50:16 – PPA Australia + Upcoming Events51:08 – KOTC Live Podcast in North Carolina53:16 – Mark Wahlberg Shows Up at MLP54:43 – PPA's NEW World Pickleball Rankings56:10 – The New Ranking System Gets Weird57:57 – Major Ranking Surprises59:25 – Will the New Rankings Bring Singles Back?1:00:11 – Could Players Be Forced to Play Singles?1:01:31 – Final ThoughtsWebsite: https://www.tylerloong.com/ KOTC All Accesshttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDiH-sjthLCovD8i79-AkWg/joinCode “KOTC” for insane discounts at: https://www.clubpickleballmastermind.com/kotc KOTC Merch - Use “KOTC” kitchpickleball.comNEW KOTC DISCORD https://discord.com/invite/kNR65mBemfNEW KOTC CAMEOhttps://www.cameo.com/morekotcInstagram: Tyler's IG - @tyler.loong Jimmy's IG - @jimmymiller_pbKOTC IG - @morekingofthecourt Facebook: / tyler.loong --Support the show
Brookfield and La Caisse closed a $6.5 billion acquisition of Boralex, according to Yahoo Finance. The deal adds an established wind and solar developer to long-horizon institutional ownership. A consortium structure aligns return targets with long-lived assets and enables portfolio standardization. Independent developers face higher bankability expectations and may need to partner earlier or specialize. Corporate clean power buyers may see tighter pricing bands and more standardized PPA terms, with reduced counterparty risk. Suppliers and EPCs could benefit from multi-year procurement frameworks, while higher rates and policy incentives continue to drive consolidation.Learn more on this news by visiting us at: https://greyjournal.net/news/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lars Bendsen, founder and CEO at AC883, joins to discuss the Muehlhan Wind Service acquisition and Canada’s aging turbine fleet. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Lars, welcome back to the podcast. Lars Bendsen: Thank you so much, Allen. Allen Hall: A lot has happened since I talked to you last. I saw some of the announcements on LinkedIn. I was really excited for you. So AC883 has news. Lars Bendsen: We have news. It was about a month ago now, but yes, things have been going very well. Allen Hall: Muehlhan has acquired AC883, which is a company you started how many years ago? Lars Bendsen: I started AC883 12 years ago. From my dining room table, basically. Allen Hall: Wow. And it’s grown to quite the business over time. Lars Bendsen: Yes, we have been expanding, especially the last five years after my son came in. He has been the main driver, so we’ve been expanding like crazy the last five years. And, well, getting older. Now we are at a point where we should extend, spend more. And then when Muehlhan, one of the biggest companies in the wind industry, looked our way, it was an easy decision to make. Very easy. Allen Hall: Muehlhan is well known for being a leader in the ISP world in Europe, and a little bit in America. They’re still making a presence here. That’s why they wanted to talk to you, I’m sure, because AC883 has a nice Canadian market. People trust you and rely upon you, because you bring the quality people over, plus you have all the resources to get to parts that you can’t acquire in Canada and the United States. You know who to call. It’s part of that Danish connection. And that makes a lot of sense, because I do think as we see the industry mature, those quality companies like AC883 are very valuable. They see them as being a huge resource to the industry. Lars Bendsen: As I said, it makes us really proud that a big company is looking our way, and it’s been a very smooth transition. As you were talking about earlier, the industry is maturing, meaning also big is getting bigger, and you need more horsepower, you need more muscle. And we also needed that, because we’re expanding and there’s only so much we can do. And we’re all getting older, so at a certain time you have to do something. Allen Hall: Sure, but it comes at a point where you’ve proven yourself time and time again. How many times have you grown an industry in your lifetime? You’ve done it many, many times. That’s why AC883 has always been the relied-upon source for so many things. Now Muehlhan brings a lot of advantages and a lot of horsepower to the organization. Because as you have gotten larger, you realize there’s a lot of back office things that need to happen. Safety, gear, equipment. It’s not just putting technicians on ropes out on site. There’s all the management of that. That’s where size matters. Lars Bendsen: Size matters, and also the whole health and safety perspective. You’re putting more staff behind the scenes than actually in front of the scenes. So it’s also extremely expensive. And now we’re expanding our offering, because under the Muehlhan umbrella we can do everything, including main component changes, which we didn’t do before. We decided before that anything we need a crane for, we do not do. Allen Hall: Right, I remember that. Lars Bendsen: Because it’s a completely different animal from a health and safety perspective, equipment, et cetera. And now in Canada, the company we’re going to be merging with, that’s what they do. They’re really strong in lifting and really strong in installation of turbines, complete wind farms. Where we are strong on the O&M side. And our primary customer is the asset owners. Allen Hall: Asset owners love you. Lars Bendsen: We hope so. We think so. Allen Hall: I know they do. Lars Bendsen: Where the other company is more focused on the OEM side. So there’s actually a really good mix in that. And we don’t step on each other’s toes, because we are focused on the O&M part and they’re focused on installation of turbines. So it’s a perfect match in so many ways. Allen Hall: And particularly in Canada, because the Canadian market is poised to put a lot of turbines up in the next couple of years. But at the same time, there’s an older fleet there, and spare parts is an issue. Some of the blades and the repairs are a little more complicated just because of the age of the turbine. And there are a lot of spares and components that you have access to and can bring into the Canadian market. You keep those turbines that are 15, 20 years old running. Lars Bendsen: Yes, we’re in a sweet spot in that respect, where the turbines are getting older but they’re not too old. So we need to keep them alive. And also, many owners still have the high PPA, which also means they want to do it. So there is a growing market for the O&M component, no doubt about it. But also, whatever happens in the US, leave that aside, they have a lot of good stuff happening in Canada on the offshore side, on the East Coast. Allen Hall: Oh, yes. Lars Bendsen: Nova Scotia. There are four big projects going out to bid, I think, within a year or so, and a lot of new projects coming up. So no doubt about it, Canada is a growing market. Where my impression is, and I have to be careful not to say too much, maybe the US is more a stagnating market. It’s maybe not growing as fast as it used to be. Of course, I don’t know enough to be smart about saying it. I’m just saying my impression is it’s more a flat market. Allen Hall: Today. Lars Bendsen: Today, today. Allen Hall: But tomorrow it’s something else. Lars Bendsen: That’s the charm of the unpredictability. Allen Hall: Exactly. Welcome to wind, right? It’s unpredictable. Well, I think that’s good, because the Canadian market is one of those pieces that a lot of Americans don’t pay attention to, because it’s not the same scale. Lars Bendsen: Not yet. But also from the European side, every time we have talked to European vendors or customers, it’s “yeah, be in America.” Yes, but I’m talking Canada. Canada has not even been on the radar. They’re talking about it as of late, but they had not talked about anything else before. So now it’s coming on the radar. And I know the Muehlhan people are smart people. They might be seeing that too. Allen Hall: Oh, I would imagine, yes. Lars Bendsen: So I have no doubt that it makes sense. The other thing that’s critical, of course, the US is big as well, but Canada is area-wise extremely big. Allen Hall: Same width as America, roughly. That’s a big territory. Lars Bendsen: But that also means it’s further between the turbines. That means you can travel like crazy to meet very few clients. And that’s why the one company is in western Canada and we are in eastern Canada. That makes sense. There are many reasons why you have to be local in your area. Allen Hall: Part of that is what’s happening in the United States at the moment, but it’s also on the part of Canada to react to it in a positive way. Like, if America’s not going to do it, well, we’re here. We have great wind resources in Canada. And that’s what the Canadian government is saying to itself, I think. They’re realizing the opportunity to go after that wind resource is now. And not only that, because of the way America has situated itself, they can sell a lot of that power that’s going to be generated in Canada right down to the East Coast of the United States. Lars Bendsen: Yes. Well, the whole AI, the whole data center stuff. It takes seven to eight years to build a power plant. Normally they put a wind farm up in two years. You can’t avoid it, whether you want to or not. I think the Canadians are a little bit optimistic right now, to say, “If you don’t want to do it, we will do it.” And I think we are very happy, and we will see by the end of 2028 who’s happy where. But it’s all good. Allen Hall: Right. Lars Bendsen: It’s all good. But again, by that time, well, only now I’m retired officially, so… Allen Hall: What does that mean? What does retired officially mean? Lars Bendsen: I don’t know. But I’m retired in the respect that Muehlhan bought the company, and Jannik, my son, who’s been running my company— Allen Hall: Jannik is awesome. Lars Bendsen: —he’s been running my company anyhow the last three years. So there’s no change in personnel, same person, people know the same him. Same place, same locations. Nothing has changed at all. Same reasons as before. We just have more horsepower and more offerings to do, and we’re very happy, because we needed that too. Just the whole thing about main component routines. Now we can do it. We couldn’t do that before. Allen Hall: There’s a lot of need for that. Lars Bendsen: As you said, the aging fleet, they need to do main components. We need to lift a whole rotor down, different stuff. So that’s good. Allen Hall: Isn’t that exciting, though? Lars Bendsen: It’s very exciting. Especially for our team. And I’m so proud and happy sitting on the sideline and following it. It’s amazing. Allen Hall: Well, you’re not going to sit there and let them do main component exchanges without going and watching that, right? You’re going to have to go at least take a look at that. Lars Bendsen: I can’t go on site, so I can sit from the highway and look at it. Allen Hall: They’ll give you a hard hat, don’t worry. Lars Bendsen: Oh, I won’t do it. Allen Hall: Safety glasses and steel-toe shoes. Lars Bendsen: Maybe, maybe, maybe. But I’m happy. And Muehlhan is truly good people, a good company. And they have bought out, I don’t know the number of companies they have bought the last couple of years, not only in wind but also in the industrial division. They have a huge industrial company. So I think it’s something like, don’t hold me to it, 40 to 50 companies over the last couple of years. So they’re growing like crazy. And you only do that if you’re good people. Allen Hall: That’s true. The only way to survive is with good people. Lars Bendsen: Or people just say, “No, thank you.” Because people are not desperate to sell. And we were not desperate. We saw it as a great opportunity, and we are honored that they did it. And I think we can take the market share if we want to. Allen Hall: I think Muehlhan, in terms of its reputation, is well known. I’ve talked to large European operators, and who do they use? Muehlhan. That’s who they use. So you hear that name pop up quite a bit, and rightly so. We’ve worked with them. Weather Guard has worked with Muehlhan in the past, and the results have been good, so we’re really grateful. Lars Bendsen: It also looks like there will be more presence of Muehlhan, so to speak, because before it was more the individual companies that had been a part of the Muehlhan group. They’ll be branded as Muehlhan. So it’s the same companies, but there might be bigger visibility, is my guess. I don’t know, again, I’m out, I don’t know the strategy plans. But that’s my two cents, that there’s going to be a bigger visual presence as well. Allen Hall: But in terms of contact points at AC883, Muehlhan now, you’re still able to call Jannik, you’re still able to call Jacob, Bent, and Sydney, and the whole crew is still there. Lars Bendsen: The whole crew. No changes. Same numbers, same emails. The email signature has changed, but the same email address, same telephone number. Even I have my same phone number and my same email address. So if you’re desperate, I’m happy to pick up the phone and forward it to someone else. So it’s all in good order. I’m very happy and proud that we can do that and hand it over. Allen Hall: Well, it’s amazing. And congratulations. But I wanted to have you back on the podcast because we’ve had you on so many times before, and because you’re such an industry insider, so to speak. You know where things happen, and why they’re happening, and the history of some of these wind events. So I use you as that resource, but you’re also a great friend, and I appreciate that. We met just randomly several years ago. Like, who is this Lars guy? And you realized immediately, super knowledgeable, smart on his feet, good salesperson, all those things you need to have in the wind industry to be successful. That’s the package. Lars Bendsen: Well, people dealing with people. Allen Hall: Yes. People dealing with people. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. We’re going to have to have you back on. We have to pull you out of retirement to comment on the state of the wind industry. Lars Bendsen: Would love to do that. Allen Hall: All right, I would love to have you back on.
Philly's newest booming neighborhood has tons of jobs, amenity-filled luxury apartment buildings, plenty of green space – and no PPA restricting your parking. Is that what people want? Host Trenae Nuri finds out what's happening down in deep South Philly at the Navy Yard with David Murrell, writer-at-large at Philadelphia Magazine, who has an inside look at the new community in the August 2026 issue. Our newsletter has Philly news & events in your inbox every weekday morning. Call or text us: 215-259-8170 Instagram: @citycastphilly Support our show and get great perks as a City Cast Philly Neighbor. Sign up here. Advertise on the podcast or in the newsletter: citycast.fm/advertise
On this episode of the Renewable Roundup, host Russell Reading speaks with Mark Chappell, a PPA expert with Zeigo, about the UK's proposed voluntary wholesale contract for difference (CFD) and its potential to stabilise wholesale prices. They discuss how the CfD could affect corporate PPAs, market distortion risks, credit barriers for buyers, CPPA consultation feedback, and possible design changes that might support multi-buyer deals and standardisation in the market. With many details still undecided, the Russ and Mark highlight uncertainties and next steps for developers, suppliers, and corporate buyers as the UK PPA market evolves.
Host: Tom Angus, Director of Conferences, Decarb ConnectGuest: Clay Bedwell, Associate Director of Platform and Partnerships, 3DegreesFor years, ambitious corporate renewable energy goals were built on simple targets and Excel spreadsheets. Today, those programs have expanded into complex portfolios spanning physical PPAs, virtual PPAs, spot RECs, green tariffs, and behind-the-meter solar across multiple jurisdictions. What was once a straightforward procurement task has quietly turned into a persistent drain on internal time, budget, and risk capacity.In this episode, Clay Bedwell outlines why software automation alone cannot solve modern portfolio friction, why customer revenue protection is redefining how organizations buy energy, and how sustainability teams can build a compelling case for portfolio risk management to skeptical CFOs.Key TakeawaysWhy corporate renewable portfolios have outgrown traditional spreadsheets.As organizations accumulate multiple contract types and counterparty arrangements, manual reconciliation becomes unmanageable. Escalating demands from internal stakeholders (spanning P&L impact queries from finance, audit preparation from sustainability, and target reporting from leadership) mean manual data aggregation is no longer operational.Customer revenue protection as a new driver for renewable allocation.Corporate buyers are no longer procuring renewable energy solely to meet internal target metrics. Using an example from the metals sector, Clay illustrates how commercial customers increasingly demand specific, audited renewable allocations before purchasing products. Demonstrating compliance at the customer level has transformed procurement into a tool for safeguarding revenue.The critical pairing of software platforms with human trading expertise.While software excels at routine PPA hygiene (such as invoice validation, production tracking, and contract management) it falls short during non-standard edge cases. Managing complex counterparty events, such as developer insolvencies or contract restructuring, requires direct market relationships and real-world trading experience alongside digital tools.How to frame the business case for skeptical CFOs.Repeatable financial value rarely comes from chasing quick, one-off PPA savings. Instead, the core ROI lies in portfolio risk management: stress-testing downside scenarios, evaluating long-term contract strips, and providing financial leadership with the confidence to scale programs responsibly as standards evolve.Navigating policy shifts and future-proofing buying strategies.With upcoming changes to the SBTi Corporate Net-Zero Standard and GHG Protocol Scope 2 guidance, corporate buyers must shift from short-term compliance mindsets to long-term strategic planning. Early adopters are moving away from bloated PPA exposure toward structured portfolio risk models and 24/7 carbon-free energy tracking.LinksConnect with Tom Angus on LinkedIn and discover how to engage with the Decarb Connect community.Connect with Clay Bedwell on LinkedIn.Learn more about 3Degrees Meridian.Sign up for the Decarb Connect Newsletter: Industrial EdgeLearn more about Industrial Connect Group's global events and membership network.
Hannah's first labor began at 40 weeks, the day after a membrane sweep. She opted for an epidural but due to fetal tachycardia, had an unplanned cesarean. It was a lonely and confusing postpartum not coping well with the emotional trauma of that birth. Hannah prepared for a VBAC and planned a home birth with a midwife hoping for a different experience. She felt peaceful about transferring to the hospital when labor stalled at 9cm. She talks about what made that transfer feel empowering, including the sweetest affirmations from her cute husband. She also shares about her baby girl's diagnosis with Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis (LCH) at just 7 weeks old and how walking through a rare childhood illness (quite literally 1 in a million!) changed her perspective on birth, motherhood, and life's hardest seasons.Hannah was a TVL podcast listener herself long before she had her own VBAC. We hope you can find the same inspiration and love that Lily, Paige, and Hannah did when prepping for their own births!To Lily, she said, “The way that you and Paige honor women's birth stories is just so beautiful. It's such a powerful service you provide. It was so inspirational and hopeful, and I still listen every week.”Our birth stories are meant to be held and shared communally. And this is why we are here.Keywords: VBAC, planned HBAC, hospital transfer, cesarean birth, tachycardia, membrane sweep, epidural, PPA, birth trauma, husband, birth advocacy, Histiocytosis, infant cancerHystiocytosis AssociationThe Ultimate VBAC Prep Course for ParentsOnline VBAC Doula TrainingAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Predseda NKÚ hovorí o eurofondových mafiách pravdu, v pozadí je to ešte horšie. Minister pôdohospodárstva - ktorý to popiera, účelovo obhajuje zlodejiny. Richard Takáč o ničom nerozhoduje, je to pešiak na šachovnici a skutočné riadiace centrá smerujú k oligarchií v pozadí. Tvrdí to bývalý šéf Pôdohospodárskej agentúry Jaroslav Jánoš. Podľa neho treba pôdohospodárske eurofondy čím skôr stopnúť. Nemyslím si, že gazdovia chcú aby sa z nich stavali bödörovské Fafokany, dodáva sa Jánoš.Na Slovensku sa udomácnila eurofondová mafia, vyhlásil pred necelým mesiacom predseda Najvyššieho kontrolného úradu. V až šokujúco otvorenom rozhovore pre Aktuality ďalej povedal, že Slovensko sa stalo doslova “Klondajkom” pre lobistov a záujmové skupiny parazitujúce na eurofondoch, ktoré sa usadili v okolí ústredných štátnych orgánov. Nedialo by sa to, keby vláda nerezignovala, dodal Ľubomír Andrassy. Tento rozhovor vyvolal veľký ohlas a dokonca zmobilizoval rezort pôdohospodárstva k mimoriadnej tlačovej konferencií, na ktorej minister Takáč slová šéfa NKÚ razantne odmietol, označil ich za spolitizované klamstvá a podpredseda parlamentu Tibor Gašpar dokonca chce Ľubomíra Andrassyho pozvať na akýsi parlamentný výsluch.Európska komisia pritom nedávno ministra pôdohospodárstva vyzvala aby Pôdohospodárskej platobnej agentúre pozastavil akreditáciu, inak môžu byť stovky miliónov našich poľnohospodárskych eurodotácií vo vážnom ohrození. I v tomto prípade Richard Takáč problém bagatelizuje, kritiku odmieta a s komisiou chce tak nejak nezáväzne diskutovať. PPAčka sa pritom už dávnejšie “preslávila” známou kauzou Dobytkár, ktorú samotný sudca označil za “megastroj korupcie” a na dôveryhodnosti jej rozhodne nepridávajú ani vŕšiace sa kauzy v takzvanej Penziónovej výzve, kde dnes viacero prípadov riešia už aj orgány činné v trestnom konaní či Európska prokuratúra.Má predseda NKÚ pravdu a ovládli miliardy z eurofondov naše domáce eurofondové mafie? A ak áno, prečo to minister pôdohospodárstva kryje a zľahčuje ešte aj hrozbu stopky pre poľnohospodárske eurodotácie? Dokedy ešte bude mať s tými všakovakými Fafokanmi Brusel trpezlivosť? No a dá sa PPAčka ešte vôbec opraviť alebo ju treba celú zrušiť a postaviť úplne odznova? A o čom je to kauza “Dobytkár 2“? Témy dnešných Aktualít Nahlas, s bývalým riaditeľom Pôdohospodárskej platobnej agentúry Jaroslavom Jánošom.Počúvate Aktuality Nahlas, pekný deň a pokoj v duši praje Braňo Dobšinský.
Predseda NKÚ hovorí o eurofondových mafiách pravdu, v pozadí je to ešte horšie. Minister pôdohospodárstva - ktorý to popiera, účelovo obhajuje zlodejiny. Richard Takáč o ničom nerozhoduje, je to pešiak na šachovnici a skutočné riadiace centrá smerujú k oligarchií v pozadí. Tvrdí to bývalý šéf Pôdohospodárskej agentúry Jaroslav Jánoš. Podľa neho treba pôdohospodárske eurofondy čím skôr stopnúť. Nemyslím si, že gazdovia chcú aby sa z nich stavali bödörovské Fafokany, dodáva sa Jánoš.Na Slovensku sa udomácnila eurofondová mafia, vyhlásil pred necelým mesiacom predseda Najvyššieho kontrolného úradu. V až šokujúco otvorenom rozhovore pre Aktuality ďalej povedal, že Slovensko sa stalo doslova “Klondajkom” pre lobistov a záujmové skupiny parazitujúce na eurofondoch, ktoré sa usadili v okolí ústredných štátnych orgánov. Nedialo by sa to, keby vláda nerezignovala, dodal Ľubomír Andrassy. Tento rozhovor vyvolal veľký ohlas a dokonca zmobilizoval rezort pôdohospodárstva k mimoriadnej tlačovej konferencií, na ktorej minister Takáč slová šéfa NKÚ razantne odmietol, označil ich za spolitizované klamstvá a podpredseda parlamentu Tibor Gašpar dokonca chce Ľubomíra Andrassyho pozvať na akýsi parlamentný výsluch.Európska komisia pritom nedávno ministra pôdohospodárstva vyzvala aby Pôdohospodárskej platobnej agentúre pozastavil akreditáciu, inak môžu byť stovky miliónov našich poľnohospodárskych eurodotácií vo vážnom ohrození. I v tomto prípade Richard Takáč problém bagatelizuje, kritiku odmieta a s komisiou chce tak nejak nezáväzne diskutovať. PPAčka sa pritom už dávnejšie “preslávila” známou kauzou Dobytkár, ktorú samotný sudca označil za “megastroj korupcie” a na dôveryhodnosti jej rozhodne nepridávajú ani vŕšiace sa kauzy v takzvanej Penziónovej výzve, kde dnes viacero prípadov riešia už aj orgány činné v trestnom konaní či Európska prokuratúra.Má predseda NKÚ pravdu a ovládli miliardy z eurofondov naše domáce eurofondové mafie? A ak áno, prečo to minister pôdohospodárstva kryje a zľahčuje ešte aj hrozbu stopky pre poľnohospodárske eurodotácie? Dokedy ešte bude mať s tými všakovakými Fafokanmi Brusel trpezlivosť? No a dá sa PPAčka ešte vôbec opraviť alebo ju treba celú zrušiť a postaviť úplne odznova? A o čom je to kauza “Dobytkár 2“? Témy dnešných Aktualít Nahlas, s bývalým riaditeľom Pôdohospodárskej platobnej agentúry Jaroslavom Jánošom.Počúvate Aktuality Nahlas, pekný deň a pokoj v duši praje Braňo Dobšinský.
Georgia is the second-largest data center market in the country, and its grid is straining under load growth no one predicted five years ago. Michael Chanin, CEO of Cherry Street Energy, joins Tim to break down how behind-the-meter solar and storage are stepping in, why utilities need private capital to keep rates in check, and what a multi-gigawatt data center outside Savannah means for the region. Tim sits down with Michael Chanin, CEO of Cherry Street Energy, a vertically integrated power company based in Georgia that develops, owns, and operates behind-the-meter solar and storage for commercial and industrial customers across the Southeast.Georgia repealed its ban on third-party solar ownership in 2015, opening the door for "Solar Energy Procurement Agreements" (Georgia's version of a PPA). Since then, Cherry Street has built a customer base that includes Delta Air Lines, Porsche Cars North America, Gulfstream, and the City of Atlanta, offering no-cost, no-upfront-investment solar that cuts customers' energy bills and carbon footprint.Chanin and Tim dig into what is driving unprecedented load growth in Georgia: the state is now the second-largest data center market in the US after Virginia, and OpenAI recently announced its "Project Camellia" data center campus near Savannah in Effingham County, a $20 billion, 3.2-gigawatt (3,200 MW) project built in partnership with Georgia Power. On the recording, Chanin describes the project as a joint Anthropic/OpenAI announcement and cites 4,000 megawatts of capacity; public reporting on this specific project ties it to OpenAI at roughly 3,200 MW, so that detail is worth a quick check with Chanin or Cherry Street before publishing. Other topics covered:How Cherry Street's economics pencil out: average customer electricity cost of 10-12 cents/kWh, build costs under $1.50/watt, and how real-time pricing has made solar competitive even against historically cheap fossil generationCherry Street's solar-plus-storage pilot with Georgia Power and the emerging value stack for behind-the-meter batteries (capacity payments, energy payments, demand management)Georgia's Public Service Commission, including Chair Jason Shaw and newly elected Democratic commissioners Alicia Johnson and Peter HubbardCherry Street's vertically integrated delivery model: in-house engineers, general contractors, and site supervisors that take a project from signed contract to energized system in under 100 daysCherry Street Energy shows what happens when a state removes one legal barrier and lets the market do the rest. Georgia's 2015 shift on third-party ownership opened the door. Rising load growth from data centers and electrification is now forcing utilities, regulators, and private developers to work together on a scale nobody planned for a few years ago. Chanin's take is clear: solar and storage are not a side story in Georgia's power future. They are becoming part of how the state keeps the lights on and the bills manageable. Listen to the full conversation for the details on Cherry Street's build process, its storage pilot with Georgia Power, and what EPCs and developers should know before entering the Southeast market. Connect with Michael Chanin, Cherry Street Energy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelchanin/Website: https://www.cherrystreet.com/ Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com
Dylan spent half a wedding being blamed for something he definitely did not do, and there were witnesses. It is a strong opening to a Q&A that gets serious surprisingly fast.A listener kicks things off by challenging Hayden to trigger Dylan in the shortest possible time. The broken oven, the door handle, the garden. Only one line actually lands.Then the big one. Is school leadership genuinely incompatible with having young children? Dylan makes the case that the job was built around a household model that stopped existing sixty years ago, and explains why that shows up in exactly who ends up applying for leadership roles.An English lead asks whether English is a bigger subject to lead than maths, and whether the TLR should say so. Lucy wants to know if her PPA actually hits ten per cent, and the maths is worth doing on your own timetable. Harrison asks about Forest School, which turns into something much bigger about school refusers and what school is even for. And James, newly qualified with eleven years of teaching behind him, keeps being told his experience abroad does not count.Honest, funny, and a bit spikier than your average mailbag.
12 - It's Friday on The Dom Show and Dom has a lot to discuss to kick off the program today. 1210 - Side - all time mottos 1220 - More side question answers. Why are some washed up pundits and former Eagles executives mad at Defensive Coordinator ?Vic Fangio? 1230 - “The Angriest Black Man in America”, Attorney, Radio & TV Host, and Columnist Michael Coard joins us here today. Does everyone hate the Philadelphia Parking Authority? How bad is it that the PPA is stringent and incompetent? Why does Michael consider them to be “street things”? Why are “red light” and speed cameras unlawful? How do they act like a mafia? How can you beat tickets? 1250 - Your calls to round out the hour.
12 - It's Friday on The Dom Show and Dom has a lot to discuss to kick off the program today. 1210 - Side - all time mottos 1220 - More side question answers. Why are some washed up pundits and former Eagles executives mad at Defensive Coordinator ?Vic Fangio? 1230 - “The Angriest Black Man in America”, Attorney, Radio & TV Host, and Columnist Michael Coard joins us here today. Does everyone hate the Philadelphia Parking Authority? How bad is it that the PPA is stringent and incompetent? Why does Michael consider them to be “street things”? Why are “red light” and speed cameras unlawful? How do they act like a mafia? How can you beat tickets? 1250 - Your calls to round out the hour. 1 - How will “Sophie Day” in the WNBA go? 105 - Some clips from around the media last night. 110 - Your calls. 120 - Do you order Doordash? Is it more difficult to not tip the driver? How much do you tip? More calls. 135 - Why is a Democrat politician skipping a convention this weekend? 140 - More calls. 150 - Who has responded to Joe Banner's idiotic comments on Vic Fangio? Your calls. 2 - How pumped is Dr. Coates for our sports teams? She joins us for another Friday afternoon chat. What does she think about the legacy of Lindsey Graham? What has Ukraine done in Russia that is encouraging for that war? Are drones the future of war? Is the relationship between JD Vance and Bibi Netanyahu fractured? How big is this electoral cycle regarding energy? Any news on her book? 215 - Dom's Money Melody! 230 - Are the Eagles still the biggest draw in town right now? Legendary Sports Journalist Ray Didinger joins us today. Did people like Joe Banner at all? How has Sean Mannion looked at OC so far? Is it a big adjustment for Jalen Hurts to call plays under center? How important is winning to this team and franchise? Is this the “golden age” of Philadelphia sports? What is his upcoming Greatest Moments in Philly Sports History going to be like? What's the biggest moment to him? 250 - The Lightning Round!
In this episode Russell Reading interviews Leticia Hermida, Global Corporate PPA Director at Acciona Energy, about hybrid PPAs, contracts that combine generation technologies (most often solar PV and battery storage) to deliver more stable, predictable renewable energy to corporate buyers. They cover why hybrids are gaining traction, the role of storage duration, and how these structures manage price volatility and volume risk. Leticia explains common hybrid structures, regional trends (notably in Spain, Europe, the US and Chile), common misconceptions, and practical advice: define your objectives, assess value beyond headline price, and explore flexible PPA designs to meet decarbonization and risk-management goals.
Episode: 140 RAISING PPA assessment and treatment from the Ground Up: In Conversation with Jeanne Gallée In this episode you will discover: · Assessment and Intervention Aren't Separate — Conversation itself can double as both. By listening closely and responding to what a client offers, in a "more art than science" way, clinicians gather meaningful data and provide support at the same time, rather than treating these as two distinct phases of care. · Rigid Testing Can Erase the Person Behind the Diagnosis — Traditional standardized assessments often serve the goals of an institution or research protocol more than the person being assessed. Frameworks like RAISE and the PACT scale shift the focus toward strengths, natural conversation, and what someone can still do, rather than repeatedly measuring decline. · PPA Needs Its Own Identity and Training Path — Because primary progressive aphasia sits uneasily between post-stroke aphasia care and traditional dementia care, clinicians often receive little formal training in it. A global survey found major gaps in education and confidence, underscoring the need for dedicated resources, like Dr. Gallée's PPA roadmap, built specifically for this population. Do you ever wish you could step back in time and undo the missteps and errors of the past? What if you had the opportunity to build something from the ground up? Certainly, knowing what you know now, you could begin in a better place. But of course, there's always pitfalls with new beginnings, even with the knowledge of lessons from the past. You could, however, make a positive impact on that new beginning. Welcome to the Aphasia Access Conversations podcast. I'm Jerry Hoepner, a professor from the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, and co-facilitator of the Chippewa Valley Aphasia Camp, Blue Gold Brain Injury Group, Mayo Brain Injury Group, Young Persons Brain Injury Group, Brain In-Cog, and Thursday Night Poets. I'm also a member of the Aphasia Access Podcast Working Group. Aphasia Access strives to provide members with information, inspiration, and ideas about their aphasia care through a variety of educational resources. I'm privileged to introduce today's guest, Dr. Jeanne Gallée, who is a clinical scientist in the Department of Medicine at the University of Washington. Dr. Gallée is a licensed speech language pathologist practicing in the greater Washington state area. She completed her Bachelor of Arts in Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences at Wellesley College in 2016 and Doctor of Philosophy at Harvard University in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology in 2021. She has been recognized as a Distinguished Early Career Professional by ASHA and a Distinguished Scholar by the Tavistock Trust for Aphasia. Her work is dedicated to improving assessment practices and functional outcomes for individuals living with aphasia and neurodegenerative conditions. Jerry Hoepner: Jeanne, it's really nice to see you again today, and to have this opportunity to have a conversation with you as a recent recipient of the Tavistock Scholar Program, and to talk about your work with individuals with primary progressive aphasia. So, thanks for being "on" today for the conversation. Jeanne Gallée: Thank you so much for having me, Jerry. I'm really honored to be here. Jerry Hoepner: Likewise, I'm really excited for this conversation, and as I just alluded to, I wanted to congratulate you on being awarded the first Tavistock Scholar with an emphasis doing work in primary progressive aphasia, and I thought maybe I could get your thoughts on being selected as a Tavistock Scholar. Jeanne Gallée: Thank you. It feels honestly incredibly remarkable in the sense that I think it represents a shift in how we're thinking about the separate diagnoses of progressive aphasia versus an aphasia that's due to an acute injury. And I'm really honored to be a part of that. I think there have been many discussions growing over the years, and I think we're seeing that shift in how we do think about addressing assessment and intervention and general care for people across the aphasia continuum. Jerry Hoepner: Agreed, I think there's been so much growth in the last five years in that area. I can remember at the outset of the pandemic, having discussions about "What do we do with people with primary progressive aphasia who were a part of our aphasia group? Should they be a part of our aphasia group? How do we pivot to that in an online context?" and it feels like we've come so far in our conversation about where primary progressive aphasia fits in in all of those different contexts. Jeanne Gallée: Right, I entirely agree, and I think the journey of my own work has already evolved in so many ways that I couldn't have imagined, like you say, five years ago I completed my doctoral work March 2021 and just seeing the phenomenal amounts of change that have really taken place since then has been incredible, and I feel very lucky to be part of that momentum right now. Jerry Hoepner: Absolutely, it's exciting to see these things move forward. And one of the differences that I see is primary progressive aphasia started out within the Life Participation Approach, just soundly from day one, as opposed to a lot of aphasia care, which has kind of evolved from this medical model, and how refreshing it is to see something built from the ground up. Done right, so to speak. I don't know if you have thoughts on that piece… Jeanne Gallée: No, I do. I think that's a really interesting point. I think I might be part of the camp that at times feels like progressive conditions get a little bit lost in the rehabilitation space, but I think you're absolutely right. I think the absence of pharmacological treatment, or a cure that has long standing effects for these progressive conditions has made rehabilitation specialists much more attuned to focusing on quality of life, life participation, maintaining autonomy, and so forth. So, I think I forget that perspective sometimes. Perhaps from the space that I work in, I tend to be in a more interdisciplinary environment where I feel on the opposite end. I'm often asked for justification for providing these types of services, and that fits in nicely with our previous discussion on how we do see that differentiation and how people with aphasia due to a progressive condition may be siloed from people who have the more quote unquote traditional aphasia symptoms. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, that's a really good point. And you know, referring to those previous conversations we discussed that need for primary progressive aphasia to have a space of its own. It's tricky because it doesn't fit into post-stroke aphasia quite right, and it doesn't fit into the Alzheimer's and dementia world quite right. So, yeah, it's nice to see this developing in the Life Participation kind of context, really excited about Anna Volkmer's conference dedicated to primary progressive aphasia. Yeah, what an excellent point, that even though we feel like it's great to build it from the ground up, there's still people in that interdisciplinary context, who are very much looking at this, like,"Justify this. How is having conversations and doing activities with someone justifiable, as a, you know, as a skilled intervention?" Jeanne Gallée: Right. I think a lot of it comes back to misunderstandings about the scope of our profession. So, coming from the speech language pathology standpoint, we may have a perspective that other providers may not. And it's interesting, particularly when that confusion or disconnect happens in conditions that are communication led, where we see the symptoms primarily touching upon our ability to interact verbally or non-verbally to communicate. And it's fascinating, and I think speaking to that silo, we see PPA having been a relatively new and still considered very rare condition, but there's so much overlap with other conditions, right, in the kinds of symptoms that we see and there's so much where, as any speech pathologist with experience in acquired neurogenic communication disorders, we can see that we can apply our skill set, but again, likely due to the terminal nature of the condition, we end up seeing providers taking it a different route, or saying either there's only the pharmacological route, or we just let it lie or let it be as is, which we wouldn't do with any other condition. We wouldn't say that for someone with ALS. We would want to provide them the supports, even if they're temporary, to improve quality of life. So, it is an interesting, almost cultural phenomenon as well. I think. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, that I think it's really fascinating, and I'm so glad you brought that up. It reminds me of kind of the phrase, the company we keep, right? It's easy to be amongst, you know, people who are in the [Life Participation Approach to Aphasia] LPPA world, who think the way that we think, and who do the way that we do. And I do a lot of work in the area of cognitive communication disorders with acquired brain injuries, and so forth, and there's been a remarkable shift in the last five years there as well towards a more Life Participation bio psychosocial approach, and some of the work that I've been passionate about for years has been more and more accepted. So you feel like when you're in that company of all of your people that everything's all good, but it also reminds me of something that my friend Natalie Douglas always says, which is that "We need to be out there amongst others who need to understand the importance of this kind of a perspective, and sharing that." And when you talked about those other professionals, I really didn't think about that until you said that. Right, really important to get them on the same page, and to help them understand why this is so important. Jeanne Gallée: Right? And I think that's where the conference that you mentioned, the first PPA only conference that's taking place this summer in London, is so special because one of the reasons why we were so motivated to have this type of a conference is that there wasn't really the space at the typical aphasiology conferences, and then the larger neurology-based conferences, or more broadly dementia-based conferences, also didn't quite feel like a home. I think, especially their studies of quality of life, in particular, we're really not seen as rigorous in those contexts. So, this conference, what's nice is that we have that uniting force of everyone being focused on PPA, but it's super interdisciplinary, and that I think will really promote some fantastic conversations. Jerry Hoepner: Wow, that's really encouraging and exciting to see that move forward. I'm not in the primary progressive aphasia world, although when we're at aphasia camp and things like that, certainly that's a part of my role. But as soon as I saw the call for papers come out, I'm, you know, texting and messaging all of my PPA folks to say, "Did you see this? This is great. Are you doing something?" It's very exciting. So, I'm excited to see where that moves in the future and to hear how things go this time around. That's great. Jeanne Gallée: Likewise, I'm really excited, and I do really believe it will lead to a whole future cascade of collaboration. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, amazing. Well, before we delve into your amazing work, I've been reading your articles, and it's been just a pleasure to read it. I'm always impressed with how certain themes of importance can come across in different areas of our field, and it's been fun to see that. I wonder, because I'm looking at the list of collaborators, just some incredible collaborators on that list, in those papers, I'd love to hear a little bit about your mentorship, both in primary progressive aphasia and kind of thinking about the Life Participation quality of life kind of context as well. Jeanne Gallée: Yeah, I think in hindsight my mentorship experience seems more linear than it did in the moment. And I think it goes back to my original journey in my doctoral program. The program I was in, the Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology program at Harvard was a little bit different from others, where we didn't apply to work with a specific mentor, but truly just to get into the program. And they encouraged a pretty extensive shopping period to work with a variety of mentors to get a feel for topic area, mentorship style, and so traditionally first year students didn't even have any experiences, they just focused on the very time-intensive and rigorous coursework. I came in and started my first experience with Evelina Fedorenko at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who had worked with an undergrad. And that I think from the get-go gave me a very holistic view. I think, of the ways in which we could think about language, and in particular, the language network. So, there I was working on MRI studies of what activations do we see in the language network. In response to linguistic stimuli. And we were working with undergrads at MIT who were all healthy between the ages of 18 through 30, and I just felt at a certain point that I had this growing interest towards thinking about what happens when something goes wrong. So when it's atypical processing of language. I first thought I might be interested in pediatric population, so I was all over the place, but through the partnership that my program had with the MGH Institute of Health Professionals, I ended up having this amazing opportunity to be mentored by Evelina Federenko, as well as Sophia Vallila Rohter at the Institute of Health Professions, as well as the Frontotemporal Disorders Unit at Mass General Hospital, through my actual clinical training. So I had this quite hefty consortium of mentors, and I think that has its own set of challenges, right? It's a little bit less mentor-directed and more on the student to say, "This is exactly what I want to work on." But I think that allowed me to build a network of experiences and mentors, and that just has bled into every experience I've had since then. I also think the pandemic, you brought that up before, had a huge role in this, and all of a sudden people were very, very open to virtual meetings and connections and wanted connection. I think everyone felt very stuck at home and wanted to find more people and to find meaning and Anna Volkmer and I had the opportunity to meet at the Academy of Aphasia in Macau in 2019. And honestly meeting her in our connection has been also one of those launching pads for me to really jump out into the world of international collaboration. So all that to say, I think a lot of chance encounters and just a lot of plunging into possible conversations head first has led to this phenomenal mentorship team. And a lot of people who I collaborate with now I see as my inadvertent mentors, and that includes Anna, that includes Maya Henry at UT Austin, Amy Mooney in Oregon, just people who have consistently volunteered their time to mentor me in ways in which I can only say I would have never expected. Jade Cartwright and I have had such a phenomenal collaboration over the past few years as well, where we just had the same interests, and Zoom allowing, we were able to build on those. Jerry Hoepner: That's really an amazing answer to that question. I love the term inadvertent mentors, because I just think that those are the best mentors, where you're as much a mentor to them as they are to you. And it's just this really reciprocal relationship, but it's also built on this organic, like passion and interest for the same kinds of topics. Where it's not forced and that's a really nice kind of look back on your entire process. I was also struck by the term "mentor shopping", or "mentor shopping period", whatever. And I think that's really great that you had an opportunity for that not to be so mentor-led, and I mean it clearly shows through when you talk about your clinical experience and how that was connected to your research experience, and kind of all used to create this amalgamation of who you are. I mean, it's clear in talking with you, it's clear in reading your work that you have that strong, multi prong kind of basis. It's not just research, it's not just this specific area of research, it's really broad and the clinical connection is there, so that makes a lot of sense when I hear you talk about that, for sure. Jeanne Gallée: Oh, thank you. Yeah, I think in hindsight, again, it seems more linear, and in the moment it sometimes felt a little wild, I will say, in terms of just wrangling what do I actually want to pursue, and how. And I'm still figuring that out. But I think this community of collaborators and mentors is truly what has kept me in the field and as well. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, I think when you can connect with other people who are passionate about the work that you're doing. I can't imagine sitting at alone in my office doing a project, and I mean it's just so much more fun when you're doing it with other people. And other people who can expand the way that you think, which I'm sure everyone that you've mentioned on that list really does, when you can say, "Well, I think we should do it this way" and someone says, "Have you thought about…" and it just completely wrecks your world in a good way, "Like, oh my gosh, I didn't think about that, that's so exciting!" and then you just get into this back and forth. Yeah, very fun to hear about that. And again, it clearly shows through in the work that you do. In our previous conversations, you also mentioned this idea, and this again built on those clinical foundations that your initial mission was really to help develop interventions for people with primary progressive aphasia, and then you kind of got not off track, but inadvertently focused on working on assessments. You mentioned that there's just such a need, and this is so common in a lot of areas, but there's a need for more person-centered, ecologically valid strength-based assessment, and that the traditional measures just don't tell us enough. So, I'm really excited to talk about the work that you're doing on assessment, and how that brings us closer to what we need from an intervention standpoint, too. Jeanne Gallée: Yeah, so that really is at the heart of what has been my experience. Also, right from the get-go, we started talking about the differences, or the possible differentiation that the field has historically taken in thinking about post-stroke aphasia versus primary progressive aphasia. One of my first real PPA projects in my doctoral work was meant to be a naming treatment study for people living with PPA, and one of the roadblocks I kept hitting was also my mentors and reviewers telling me that I was trying to add too many things. And in that process I realized I don't think just using something that exists for post-stroke aphasia is going to be the best way to address the patients I'm seeing right now. And it's not because there's something wrong with that treatment. That treatment was not designed for these individuals. And that led to many more rabbit holes, and you know me really just feeling this existential crisis of "Well, why are we working on the stimuli that we are, and why are we asking questions about these ones?" And I have so much respect for the assessments that exist, and the individuals behind them, and the time they invested in making them. I am also of the belief that we can move forward and improve our processes. There are certain assessments that may be widely used and have so much again power behind them. You know, we have best associated certain assessments with characterizing a diagnosis, but what I ended up seeing in my placements and throughout my clinical work is that many assessments serve more of a mission of an institution or a research protocol than the person being assessed. And in the face of a person with a terminal condition who is using their precious time to serve you in that space, I just think it's so much more important, or that much more important, to really consider what is most functional for them. What will serve them? And how we, how can we give back to that person? And again, part of that emotion, I think, comes from having worked in many research-centered spaces, where someone might not get intervention afterwards, or they might not understand why they are participating in up to five hours of assessment, and I think that's where that passion for focusing on reprioritizing the patient or the client really came from. Jerry Hoepner: I think that attention to "what's in it for them", is really important and clearly based in kind of where your heart is at and where your clinical mindset is at. Because it's easy to go in and say, "Well, we need this data. We need all the data that we get." but to what end, right? Like, how is it going to help? And how is that going to give us any more information about how to help this person, then what they can't do, right? So, I appreciate that mindset a lot, you know. It makes me think, and this is a little off track, and we didn't talk about this question earlier, but what a shift it will be clinicians working with people with primary progressive aphasia, and how they'll be able to shift from using kind of the existing tools that were out there for other purposes to moving towards tools that are designed specifically for people with PPA, and maybe just a snapshot of your thoughts about that piece. Jeanne Gallée: So I think it's really important to know where the field comes from, the work in which it was grounded in. So, I think it, it makes sense to talk about standardized assessment scores. It makes sense to talk about, you know, the specific assessments that can help us quickly differentiate presentations or needs, right? So, using the symptom-led approach, can we identify specific behaviors really quickly in a standardized way? I think the issue comes in when we stop being dynamic in how we use them. It's very easy to use an assessment in a way that feels rote. It feels just like a test, and it's like you said, "just collecting data for the purpose of collecting data." And lose that aspect of humanity. And maybe I'm putting words in other clinicians' mouths, but especially when a certain condition is rare, like PPA is. You may not have very much experience with seeing someone with PPA, or any type of progressive condition, and feel really stuck and needing to be in the motivation of being really professional, sticking to a certain set of tests. "This feels right." Right, this is what someone told me to do. I can fill this out, and there's something very potentially vulnerable or scary about just going with your gut in those moments. And what Anna Volkmer and I have spoken about so often is just the power of having a conversation with someone, and seeing what you can learn from that conversation, not only about the person themselves, but their communication behaviors. And how you can get so much from that conversation, including the trust and comfort of the client in front of you. Jerry Hoepner: Absolutely, yeah. One of the things that I think about when you're talking about that is, in working with people with acquired brain injuries and traumatic brain injuries one of the things I've learned is they will tell you, or they will ask, right? They'll say, "What is this? "What kind of information is this giving you?" "Why do we have to do this stupid test?" And I think that's good. I think that's a mindset that we should have when we're thinking about all of the assessments that we do. Why are we doing this? Is this really necessary? And they're very willing to say, "If it's necessary, that's fine, I'll do it, but are you getting something from this that I'm not seeing?" Right, I love that question, and I think it speaks to what you just said, right? Like, there's so much information that we can gather from conversations, from our interactions with people, we should be thinking about getting that, and if we're doing something else, we should have a why directly following, yeah. Jeanne Gallée: Yes, the why is so important, and you're right. Sometimes we do just need to get certain information. I think for me, one of the most striking moments early on in my training was having small talk. You know, just conversation with a person with semantic variant primary progressive aphasia, and thinking, "Wow, this all feels quite typical. I'm curious about why they're here? What their testing will look like…" and then moving on to the Boston Naming Test and immediately seeing the challenges that came. That dichotomy is really helpful to have in those moments, but again, there's the argument of why are we asking about the name abacus, right? Why are we using that right now, and how does that represent how someone is performing functionally in their everyday life? Jerry Hoepner: Absolutely, yeah, totally. I agree. Can you share a little bit about the RAISE framework, which I really love, because it relates to the way that I think about assessment from the standpoint of counseling, like you build on relationships and connections. William Miller is famous for saying, "The last thing you should ever do at the beginning of a session is assessment." You're beginning of a relationship with someone, don't assess first thing. So, I love that piece, and then thinking about the pact, and I'll let you kind of expand those, but I'll let you unpack them – ha ha- but how that starts to move us towards intervention. Jeanne Gallée: Right. So the RAISE assessment framework was really built out of those conversations, and I guess realizations on my own part about that discomfort with the really rigid end that assessment can…I'll restate that. The rigidity that assessment can have, so again speaking to really, really standardized sets and rigid protocols of specific measures that someone uses, and like you said, having the experience of multiple research participants, as well as patients, asking "Why are we doing this? I know I'm not good at this. Why are we doing it again and again?" And in those moments, not feeling like I had the power to really justify exactly why we were doing everything, apart from, "Oh, this is important for the research study." Which it was, but just feeling like there was that aspect of humanity that was missing, and coming up with my own toolkit in those moments to fill in those blanks. So right after the completion of my PhD, Anna Volkmar and I started speaking a lot more about the power of conversational assessment. And then that led into conversations where we worked with Anne Whitworth, Deborah Hersh, and Jade Cartwright, where again, through the power of Zoom across all times. I was pregnant with my first, and meeting everyone usually at midnight my time. I already was nocturnal at that point! Where we would just be discussing all of these issues, and what was amazing about this is that, particularly Anne and Deb come from more of the post-stroke aphasia world, and had these amazing principles grounded in those populations where Deborah Hersh had also really come forward with the concept of therapeutic assessment. So as you had said assessment and intervention shouldn't be separate, they belong together and coexist at all times if we're smart about it. And what we ended up doing, first informally and then formally through the more official Delphi process is coming up with a set of principles as a framework for assessment. So, to take a step away from, "Oh, it's just Lucy Goosey, we're having a conversation and chit chat." What we're actually promoting is a pretty structured set of principles to guide the ways in which we can cultivate assessment for individuals with PPA and their loved ones. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, absolutely. I was kind of scanning on my computer, I was trying to think of the name. I love this name of the article, where it says, 'Please don't assess me to death, or something like that. Jeanne Gallée: Yes, yeah. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, and, and thinking about that whole entire process from beginning to end as a relationship, as you know, not discreetly assessment, not discreetly intervention, I think it's just really important. Can you talk a little bit about the PACT and kind of where that has moved things in terms of the assessment piece, but also kind of set a set up for intervention and what that looks like? Jeanne Gallée: Great, so the PACT the Progressive Aphasia Communication Toolkit kit builds off of what we put forth with the RAISE assessment framework. So with RAISE we promote that the relationship might be temporary, it might be a single interaction, or it might be long term, and we cultivate that through conversation and then the PACT is a set of scales that leverages that conversation, we take that natural or as natural as can be interaction and use it to come up with a concrete framework of communication strengths. So that might all sound very esoteric. To make that more concrete, there are four scales to the PACT. They're all clinician ratings, where the clinician is asked to look at a pre-recorded conversation that would occur naturally in a clinical or research context, and then on a scale from four to zero, rate the person speaking's strengths. So within the domains of speech and voice, as well as language and social pragmatics, as well as discourse, and the point or the purpose of that was to really anchor a person's communicative ability in one of these more natural environments with a provider. We collect so much phenomenal qualitative data, but at times it can feel challenging to quantify it and the hope with the PACT is that we can quantify our very real, possibly subjective evaluation of a person's communication at a certain moment in time. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, and what I love about that, and you might have a slightly different thought about this, because you're deeper into it, but from an assessment standpoint, you can then do that all the way through. You can say, "Here's where they are this year, here's where they are next year, here's where they are the year after that, or you know, two years ago, or whatever your lens is at that point." You can do that without kind of this constant repeating of, "Okay, let's see how bad you are today compared to a year ago, or compared to two years ago." Just a very different mindset. And I love the focus on "What can you still do? What what's working? And how can we leverage what's working to really help you to actually communicate today?" As opposed to saying, "Oh boy, the ship is sinking." which is kind of the typical approach. Jeanne Gallée: Yes, that exactly what you're saying. The tendency tends to focus on what's no longer there. And while that might be helpful in clinical trials to characterize a person's performance diagnostically and the trajectory of a diagnosis over time. It really does not serve the person who goes home after the assessment, nor their loved ones to help them maintain that autonomy and quality of life, and also caregiver burden. And that is actually one of the points I really love about the PACT, is it builds on that RAISE aspect, that final tenant of evolution or adaptation over time. There's no repeat measure conflict here, where you know something might seem familiar. One of the unique parts of the PACT is that the clinician doesn't fill out the scale while they're talking to the person, they're really just recording them talking, so it is on the clinician side where, as often as they'd like to, they could implement the structured prompts of the PACT and then fill out the scale and see how performance might vary over time. They might see effects of context of the conversation, or the environment, or maybe the time of day, you know, phase of life, but it remains a way to use that really important information you gather through these conversations without recreating a testing environment frequently. Jerry Hoepner: I really love that framework. I think there's a lot of room for that to be used in other contexts as well. I just think it's really a wise way of thinking about it. I also, you just mentioned caregivers and caregiver burden in this context, and how does that fit into this entire RAISE framework, the PACT, and so forth. Jeanne Gallée: I think for both the RAISE assessment framework as well as the PACT the carers play an essential role in the sense that if they are available and present in the patient's life, then they are involved in the process. And so within the RAISE framework, the care partner is involved to provide feedback or to be given feedback, and in the PACT the same occurs, where if they are present at the time of the conversation, they are involved in the conversation. What I tend to do in the people I have piloted the PACT, I say come in as you would naturally, but then also take a step back. Let the person that with PPA that we're talking to take the lead, but I want you to interact as you would naturally. And then they're separately also asked to comment on the strengths that the person with PPA has. Their feedback is so integral because if they are present in a person's life, they play an essential role in promoting anything that we do work on in speech therapy. Jerry Hoepner: Absolutely, yeah, really well said. And I wanted to dig in, partly because I have envy of this figure, the roadmap figure for PPA, and I think it really sets up well for as we think about professionals out there too, like what's the roadmap, not just for the person and their partner, but what's the roadmap for clinicians, future clinicians, all of that. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that figure. Jeanne Gallée: I'd be delighted to. So, this was one of those, I would say classic for me moments where I had an idea and went to PowerPoint and started playing around with a visual of what I was thinking. The roadmap paper in no way is meant to be the only guide for how we can work with a person with PPA, but was really born out of discussions with Amy Mooney, as well as Zoe Ezzes, and Kristin Schafferr Mendez through the National Aphasia Association about the possible gaps in education or preparation a person might experience when first working with people living with PPA. There are so many ways in which we could say, "Oh, just work on this exact task. Work on these.." and that can feel so lost and unanchored, unmoored moreover. And I wanted to provide the clinical toolkit that I've been using to help me think about my broader approach. So to not get lost in the weeds, but just generally think about what's my purpose here, what's my journey, and so at the center of this road that I created is the tenant of providing that person-centered care, like we aim to with the RAISE assessment framework, so really bringing it back to establishing that honest and holistic and person-centered relationship with your client and their care partners. And focusing on creating a journey that's unique to the client that I think can feel hard when there are so many unknowns with a condition like PPA, where you're always working with an interdisciplinary team. Which you may or may not have contact with. So the first part of this roadmap is really defining your role. Who are you as a professional, and what kinds of support can you provide, and part of defining your own role includes defining your role relative to the rest of the interdisciplinary team. How can you provide a different approach from the neurologist or the neuropsychologist who play vital but very different roles in a person's care journey? Part of that definition also includes advocating across professions, so a classic conundrum that people with communication-led disorders face is that they may not have certain challenges in other domains, but their communication results in a domino effect of difficulties. And so, as the speech language pathologist, coming up with ways in which you can provide supports to other providers or your client to improve their communication can be essential for that comprehensive care. That might include coming up with a communication notebook that has a single page related to specific questions or common topics when talking to the neurologist or the physical therapist or other providers. And then part of this roadmap includes referring out. So having the humility and confidence to say I can't help with this in the ways that you may need. I will either refer you to a specialist within our field or outside of our field to help with these specific aspects, and I think that's just responsible care. Jerry Hoepner: Absolutely. Really well described, and such a perfect. A segway to my next question. I always tell my students, assessment isn't just the first and last session that you're working with someone, and the same goes for intervention, right? It's not excluded from the beginning and the end, right? Like, you can't do intervention on day one, you can't do it on the last day, right? I think we kind of silo those things as well, you know, we assess and we intervene every day side by side. Can you share a little bit of your perspectives on this? And, and how that relates to kind of what we just talked about in terms of that roadmap? Jeanne Gallée: Yeah, I think part of the challenge with some of these concepts is that it's very helpful to have experience in working with individuals, whether it is through formal speech therapy or elsewhere, to feel comfort with the unknown. Because a lot of it relies on your ability to listen and to respond to what you notice. You may inadvertently put in assessment by asking follow-up questions to a point a person made when you were talking about their commute. Ad you may offer different technological supports or just visual supports to your client in that conversation in a way to build up supports to see, "Oh, do we see a difference in how they're responding to what I'm saying? And how I provide support? Or when I dial it back, do we see a completely different direction?" So, it is this beautiful, possibly more art than science approach of responding to what a person is giving you. And there are so many individual differences in all of us. I always joke about how when I used to collect data on the picture description using both age match controls and people with PPA, I would almost burst out laughing when some of the controls provided responses, because I would get one to two sentences sometimes because see the difference in motivation. A person who does not have a communication concern, does not see the need to show exactly what they can do. And would benefit from some encouragement to show exactly how much they can say, whereas a person with PPA, who might have an Aphasia Quotient that recognizes their aphasia, might speak for five to 10 minutes to show exactly everything that they can accomplish. And so I think having that in your back pocket is really important when it comes to thinking about coming up with your recipe of all the ingredients of your assessment and intervention approach and counseling approach. So, I think that's where most of my work comes from, is that there is no one size fits all, but there are certain ingredients or components that we need to apply, and the exact ratios depend on the person you're working with. Jerry Hoepner: That is such a good description of dynamic assessment and intervention and how that I agree, probably more art than science. And that's hard for people who want a black and white answer, like "Step one…" but it's so true, and, and being effective in working in this context, that really moves us nicely into a recent paper that you did, those global perspectives on the management of PPA, and I was struck by the numbers here. Only 40% of respondents said that they had received training in primary progressive aphasia at their university, and they identified all of these needs, right, like online instruction, sample tools, and activity dealing with end of life care and trainings for end of life care. When you mentioned counseling, that totally relates to what we're up against in terms of counseling, right? No one feels confident or has very good self efficacy. Tey don't know if what you know the lines are, what part is theirs and what part is someone else. And I think just really important to like I said, lay out a roadmap and help people to understand what we were just talking about in terms of that art and science of how do you navigate this space when it has to be individualized for every person, and that can feel uncomfortable for a lot of people. So, I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on that, and kind of what you learned from that context. Jeanne Gallée: Yeah, so this research study. Was really an amazing endeavor on part of everyone who was involved. It felt like a grassroots effort to find the speech language pathologists around the world who aren't associated with a particular institution who do work with primary progressive aphasia. So of course it will never be a fully representative sample of every clinician who does so, but I do think we worked very hard to cast a wide net. So we used a snowball method. I contacted almost 40 institutions and governing bodies to find speech language pathologists who do have experience with PPA, because while more and more non-specialist providers will be seeing this patient population, we wanted to hear from the people who currently are in the field and creating their own expertise and toolkits to work with these individuals. So, what we found is that a lot of people are out on their own creating their own wheels, so to speak. And it just really led to that beautiful conclusion of now with the power of our globalization of education and sharing of resources, we can come up with a resource that's shared worldwide. Of course, there will be adaptations to fit different contexts, cultures, languages, but one of the issues has been that the systems of care for PPA have often relied upon very specific individuals. And that's reflected in the educational level. Even I was in the master's program between 2017 and 2019, I didn't hear about PPA formally in my coursework, and if it was mentioned we did not go into any of these aspects of specialized care. Part of that might have been because I didn't take very specific courses that then you know were optional or precluded, so I might have missed it, but I really didn't receive that education in the classroom. I received it through my clinical training, which I would argue is possibly even more valuable, right? You have that experiential training. But I think for clinicians who might want to transition in their careers, or you know, inadvertently in their place of work, are transitioning based on who shows up, that is a huge disservice. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, agreed. And it's a complex issue, right, because I can remember actually teaching about this back before Tom [Sather] was in my department. I taught the aphasia class and the acquired cog class, and I was thinking, like, where do I talk about primary progressive aphasia? Do I talk about that in acquired com? Do I talk about that in aphasia? Do I do it in both? Where do I talk about end of life care, and like, how does that fit in, because that's, you know, at that point I was teaching dysphasia, too. Believe it or not, and I'm like, it's kind of there, it's kind of here, it's kind of, it's kind of in counseling, it's all right. So that makes it tricky to have kind of a uniform message when it's all over the place. And love to just get your thoughts on that too. Like, where do you put that stuff? Like, it's it's PPA, it's end of life care, it's aphasia, it's right, it's counseling, it's so many things at once. Jeanne Gallée: It is so many things at once, and I do think that speaks to the fact that it may well need its own class as part of progressive conditions. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah. Jeanne Gallée: But I do think a large part of what we share there is that understanding of we may also need to shift the identity of who we think about when we think about life care. And when we think about a progressive condition. Since a huge flavor, so to speak, of PPA is the fact that it is early onset, and especially with our cultural shifts, and you know, people starting families later in life. The face of a person with PPA looks very different from, at least in my childhood, of what looked like typical Alzheimer's disease dementia. And it's a younger, possibly more dynamic working person, possibly with little kids at home. And I think that's where that symptom-led approach has been most beneficial for my practice. Where we think about "What are you experiencing and how is it impacting your life?", rather than saying "This is the diagnosis, let's put you over here in this box." Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, the idea of putting it in a box and siloing things really resonates in this context, and I love what you said about identity, right? The identity - what we all have in our mind's eye when we think about end of life care is not the typical person with primary progressive aphasia. Like I can remember as an elementary school student visiting the nursing homes and singing to the residents and things like that, and this was not, this was not the group of people that we were thinking about in that context. Very, very different, and I just think that's a really good mindset shift to recognize how actually broad that is. I'm sure there's people listening to this who work in, you know, end of life pediatric care who want to slap me in the face right now, but right, we have such a different mindset when we're thinking about end of life care, and that reset that you just made super important. Jeanne Gallée: Yeah, yeah, and easier said than done, I think, As well as just seeing who shows up to the University of Washington support groups, and just the own perspectives that individuals bring there. But I think we can do it. I think, as a field, that will be the way in which we can become the best generalist provider, so to speak, where we take general principles of addressing symptoms or situations, and then apply those to diagnoses across the spectrum. Jerry Hoepner: Absolutely, really well said, and a great place to kind of wrap up our questions, but I want to give you the opportunity, are there points that you want to share before we kind of close our conversation? Things that we missed. Jeanne Gallée: I think the general thread throughout our conversation has just spoken to the power we do have as providers or researchers working with patients with primary progressive aphasia or related conditions, I think when we feel that our expertise in the newest theories or approaches might be lacking, we can always rely upon our empathy and full body listening, just to bring in elements that go across the lifespan, and that in of itself can lead to so many honest and transparent choices in our clinical care that can best serve our communities. I think we are much more empowered than we think we are. Jerry Hoepner: Absolutely, that's a really important thread through many places where clinicians feel uncomfortable. They've got it there and they just have to gain that confidence, and being empowered to step into those moments. Well said. Well, Jeanne it's been just a really fun conversation. I'm sure we could talk all afternoon, but I look forward to catching up to you at future conferences and things like that. It's been my pleasure to have this conversation. So, thank you for being a part of it. Jeanne Gallée: Right back at you, Jerry. Thank you so much. This has been a really fun conversation, and like you said, I hope to meet in person in the near future. Jerry Hoepner: Agreed. On behalf of Aphasia Access, thank you for listening to this episode of the Aphasia Access Conversations Podcast. For more information on Aphasia Access, and to access our growing library of materials, please go to www.aphasiaaccess.org. If you have an idea for a future podcast series or topic, email us at info at aphasia access.org Thanks again for your ongoing support of Aphasia Access. Resources and Readings 1) The RAISE Assessment Framework: Gallée, J., Cartwright, J., Volkmer, A., Whitworth, A., & Hersh, D. (2023). "Please Don't Assess Him to Destruction": The R.A.I.S.E. Assessment Framework for Primary Progressive Aphasia. American journal of speech-language pathology, 32(2), 391–410. https://doi.org/10.1044/2022_AJSLP-22-00122 Gallée, J., Volkmer, A., Whitworth, A., Hersh, D., & Cartwright, J. (2024). Applications of the R.A.I.S.E. Assessment Framework to Support the Process of Assessment in Primary Progressive Aphasia. American journal of speech-language pathology, 33(5), 2280–2290. https://doi.org/10.1044/2024_AJSLP-24-00085 2) A roadmap for clinicians just starting to work with PPA: Gallée, J. (2023). A Roadmap to enhance care for people living with primary progressive Aphasia: What Can Be Done Now?. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, 8(5), 847-862. https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_PERSP-23-0002 3) Aspects of language functioning in early and late-onset Alzheimer's disease dementia: Gallée, J., Gibbons, L. E., Choi, S. E., Lee, M., Scollard, P., Trittschuh, E. H., Mez, J., Saykin, A. J., Foldi, N. S., Mukherjee, S., & Crane, P. K. (2025). Facets of language performance in early-onset and late-onset Alzheimer's disease dementia. Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association, 21(9), e70705. https://doi.org/10.1002/alz.70705 4) The Progressive Aphasia Communication Toolkit (in production at Alzheimer's & Dementia, but here is the preprint): Gallée, J., Cartwright, J., Henry, M. L., Mooney, A. R., Stark, B. C., Volkmer, A., Dietz, A., Nakano, C., Battista, P., Beales, A., Beber, B. C., Cadório, I., Caldwell, M., Davies, K., Ezzes, Z., Gauch, M., Graney, T., Grobler, S., Haley, K. L., Hausmann, A., … Crane, P. K. (2025). The Progressive Aphasia Communication Toolkit (PACT): A Strengths-Based Approach to Multidomain Evaluation for Intervention. medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences, 2025.11.25.25340904. https://doi.org/10.64898/2025.11.25.25340904 5) A global survey on SLP perspectives on the management of PPA: Gallée, J., Cartwright, J., Grasso, S., Jokel, R., Lavoie, M., McGowan, E., Pozzebon, M., Beber, B. C., Duboisdindien, G., Montagut, N., Norvik, M., Sugimoto, T., Townsend, R., Unger, N., Winsnes, I. E., & Volkmer, A. (2024). Global perspectives on the management of primary progressive aphasia. Scientific reports, 14(1), 19712. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-70156-5 6) Aspects of language functioning in early and late-onset Alzheimer's disease dementia: Gallée, J., Gibbons, L. E., Choi, S. E., Lee, M., Scollard, P., Trittschuh, E. H., Mez, J., Saykin, A. J., Foldi, N. S., Mukherjee, S., & Crane, P. K. (2025). Facets of language performance in early-onset and late-onset Alzheimer's disease dementia. Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association, 21(9), e70705. https://doi.org/10.1002/alz.70705
PICKLEBALL THERAPY · SHOW NOTESEpisode 304 – Tap Your Flow What this episode is aboutFlow is not something you go out and acquire. It is already in you. This week I make the case for that, and then I show you what the work for finding your flow actually is.Do you already have flow? Yes.Picture yourself waiting to return serve. The serve gets hit. What happens next is remarkable, and you do it without thinking about it:• Your brain tracks a ball spinning through space• It calculates where that ball will be at a moment in the future• It moves your body to that place in space• You hit the ballYou were doing that before your first lesson. Before your first pickleball YouTube video. Nobody taught you. That is your supercomputer running software that came pre-installed.So what is the work?Removing interference. Taking away the noise. Clearing out the distractions and obstacles so that you can stop trying to think your way through the rally and start feeling the rally instead.Playing by feel more than by thought.One example of interference: trying to read paddle anglesPlayers ask about this a lot. How can I learn to read my opponent's paddle at contact so that I know where the ball is going? It's a fair question.To be sure, some coaches teach it. But think about what you are actually asking yourself to do. You are moving. You are tracking the rally. And now you want to also read a paddle face at the moment of contact.There is a better way. When the ball travels to one side of the court, you start to sense where it is likely to go next. Will you get surprised? Sure. Once, maybe twice. Then your brain adjusts. That is flow doing the work instead of your conscious mind.Watch the pros. It looks like they are gliding. They always seem to be where they need to be. They are sensing the rally.Pickleball is musicThere is a rhythm to a rally. Learn to hear it and move with it, and you are in flow. That idea sits at the center of what we are doing in the Flow Project.The Flow ProjectFive weeks. Five bite-sized chunks. Focused on your mechanics.Here is why it works: you have probably already tried the frontal approach to learning pickleball. You want a better third shot drop, so you watch 87 videos and take 32 clinics on the third shot drop. Fine. Let's come at it from a different angle. That's what the flow project is all about.No cost. To participate:• Go to tonyroigpickleball.com and get on the email list. The written lessons come by email, so that is the only way to receive them.• Add tony@kjbm.tonyroigpickleball.com as a contact so the emails do not land in spam.• Join the community at tonyroigpickleball.com for the video lessons and follow-alongs.In the riff: what Tony Roig Pickleball is aboutIt is about you. A pickleball player who wants to grow in the sport. Period.On the question of whether the pro work I've been doing lately means a pivot away from amateur coaching: no. Commentating Major League Pickleball and the PPA, and coaching pro players, increases my knowledge of the game and keeps me current. I bring that back here. Not a pivot. Doubling down.Free at tonyroigpickleball.com• Four mini courses• The TRP Community• The Flow Project (five weeks)
Many people picture a power purchase agreement as a 15-year mega-deal between a tech giant and a solar farm. In reality, 99% of UK PPAs look nothing like that. Power purchase agreements now sit behind a growing chunk of how the UK's electricity supply is sourced, and getting the price wrong could mean getting locked in well above the market rate for years.Ed sits down with Rob Ogden, Founder and CEO of Renewable Exchange - one of the UK's largest PPA marketplaces - to unpack how PPAs are actually priced, why REGO certificate prices have swung from over £20 to just a few pence, and what happens to Europe's ageing wind fleet as 20-year subsidies run out and thousands of turbines are pushed onto the merchant market.They cover:Why the "blue-chip" corporate PPA is the exception in a UK market dominated by short-term utility contracts, and how subsidy schemes from NFFO to CfD shaped that split.How negative and volatile power prices are forcing generators and off-takers to rethink how PPAs are priced and structured.The lessons from Covid and the Ukraine energy crisis on why locking into a 15-year PPA carries real pricing risk.Why matching thousands of small renewable generators with energy suppliers is such a hard problem to solve, and what it takes to build pricing infrastructure that can handle PPA demand spiking overnight.Why REGO prices have swung from over £20 to just a few pence, and the case for moving to 24/7 REGO matching.Want to see what future power prices look like right now? Head to Modo Energy and ask Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst — sign-up's free and takes seconds.Transcript available here.Chapters00:00 Introduction: Is Your "100% Green" Tariff Really Green?01:15 What People Get Wrong About Power Purchase Agreements03:45 UK Power Purchase Agreement Market Structure04:57 UK Renewable Subsidy History: NFFO, RO, FiT and CfD07:16 PPA Regret: Negative Pricing and Value Erosion09:49 Long-Term PPA Risk Through Covid and the Ukraine Crisis14:32 Hybrid PPA and Flexibility Contract Structures17:46 Renewable Exchange Origin Story: The Aberdeenshire Wind Farmers19:53 Platform Scaling Pains: Rebuilding Three Times22:41 Renewable Exchange's Impact on Consumer Energy Costs24:30 Co-Located Solar and Battery Revenue Streams26:58 REGO Explained: Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin32:16 The Case for 24/7 REGO Matching36:27 Expanding to Germany: Legacy Wind Assets and Repowering41:13 Contrarian Take: Ending Renewable Energy Subsidies
Many people picture a power purchase agreement as a 15-year mega-deal between a tech giant and a solar farm. In reality, 99% of UK PPAs look nothing like that. Power purchase agreements now sit behind a growing chunk of how the UK's electricity supply is sourced, and getting the price wrong could mean getting locked in well above the market rate for years.Ed sits down with Rob Ogden, Founder and CEO of Renewable Exchange - one of the UK's largest PPA marketplaces - to unpack how PPAs are actually priced, why REGO certificate prices have swung from over £20 to just a few pence, and what happens to Europe's ageing wind fleet as 20-year subsidies run out and thousands of turbines are pushed onto the merchant market.They cover:Why the "blue-chip" corporate PPA is the exception in a UK market dominated by short-term utility contracts, and how subsidy schemes from NFFO to CfD shaped that split.How negative and volatile power prices are forcing generators and off-takers to rethink how PPAs are priced and structured.The lessons from Covid and the Ukraine energy crisis on why locking into a 15-year PPA carries real pricing risk.Why matching thousands of small renewable generators with energy suppliers is such a hard problem to solve, and what it takes to build pricing infrastructure that can handle PPA demand spiking overnight.Why REGO prices have swung from over £20 to just a few pence, and the case for moving to 24/7 REGO matching.Want to see what future power prices look like right now? Head to Modo Energy and ask Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst — sign-up's free and takes seconds.Chapters00:00 Introduction: Is Your "100% Green" Tariff Really Green?01:15 What People Get Wrong About Power Purchase Agreements03:45 UK Power Purchase Agreement Market Structure04:57 UK Renewable Subsidy History: NFFO, RO, FiT and CfD07:16 PPA Regret: Negative Pricing and Value Erosion09:49 Long-Term PPA Risk Through Covid and the Ukraine Crisis14:32 Hybrid PPA and Flexibility Contract Structures17:46 Renewable Exchange Origin Story: The Aberdeenshire Wind Farmers19:53 Platform Scaling Pains: Rebuilding Three Times22:41 Renewable Exchange's Impact on Consumer Energy Costs24:30 Co-Located Solar and Battery Revenue Streams26:58 REGO Explained: Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin32:16 The Case for 24/7 REGO Matching36:27 Expanding to Germany: Legacy Wind Assets and Repowering41:13 Contrarian Take: Ending Renewable Energy Subsidies
A new report found that Portland Police Bureau response times for high-priority calls is on average more than 20 minutes. And as reported in Willamette Week, some neighborhoods in Portland can wait as much as 40 minutes. The reports of these delays come as a new city budget is adopted that will lead to cuts to public safety. A PPA-backed proposed measure aims to direct Portland Clean Energy Fund dollars to the bureau. Portland Police Chief Bob Day joins us to share more on response times and the new budget.
Host Russell Reading speaks with Gabor Szabo, Renewable Energy and Carbon Advisory Senior Consultant, from Schneider Electric about Hungary's evolving renewables landscape, with strong solar growth, an emerging PPA market and corporate interest from the automotive and industrial sectors. The episode covers wind development challenges and recent regulatory changes, grid constraints, and how upcoming GHG protocol guidance and a new government could shape corporate decarbonization and future renewable projects.
Don’t let the AI wave crush you. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Dive into the seismic shifts happening within the AWS Marketplace and discover how AI, self-service product-led growth (PLG), and advanced co-selling strategies are redefining partner success. Matt Yanchyshyn, VP of Marketplace at AWS breaks down the recent announcements from the summit, illustrating how agility and adaptation are crucial to surviving the new agentic future. From lowering professional services fees to the explosion of business applications like ServiceNow, this conversation reveals the hidden mechanics of modern cloud procurement and how you can position your organization to capture massive enterprise opportunities before your competitors do. https://youtu.be/gaWxU1kgCLk Key Takeaways Adapting to the new agentic future requires agility rather than fighting the influx of AI tools. Lowering the listing fee for professional services from 2.5% to 0.5% drastically improves partner economics. Organizations without a self-service or PLG motion on the marketplace are literally leaving money on the table. Millennial buyers increasingly initiate complex enterprise procurements through self-service and AI-driven research. New AI-powered opportunity scoring empowers partners to prove their value internally and to AWS. Marketplace success hinges on optimizing metadata for AI agents, not just traditional SEO. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: AWS Marketplace, agentic workflow, med pick scoring, phoenix.ai, Cara Cloud, branded storefronts, product-led growth strategy, intrinsic value boost, SaaS evolution, self-service motion, Databricks credit model, Trend Micro companion app, MCP servers, opportunity score tracking, PPA drawdown, concurrent agreements, AAMI structural debt, CXML procurement Transcript: Matt Y Audio Podcast [00:00:00] Matt Y: The ability to adapt with change and kind of roll with punches. ’cause a lot of people are saying like, agents are gonna destroy everything. And, and the opposite has been true. [00:00:08] Vince Menzione: You can feel it happening. The ecosystem is shifting beneath us, the way hyperscalers are partnering, how AI is remaking the channel and what it means to win in 2026. [00:00:19] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host. And each week I sit down with leaders at the intersection of technology, partnerships and outcomes. The voices shaping how ecosystems actually work. We talk about what’s real, what’s changing, and what it takes to lead in this era where the partner channel isn’t just part of the strategy. [00:00:42] Vince Menzione: It is the strategy because being in the room changes everything. [00:00:46] Matt Y: Let’s start. [00:00:50] Vince Menzione: And now on to the really important stuff. So, Matt, I don’t wanna butcher it ’cause I, a couple people have told me how to pronounce your last name and they said use the word magician and you’ll get close to it. But I’m just gonna introduce you as Matt Wy and I’m gonna ask you to pronounce your name on stage, but I want to have you join us. [00:01:08] Vince Menzione: So excited to have Matt wy. After a super busy day and night last night, come over from Brooklyn and join us today. Matt, so great to have you. Thanks. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Alright, so pronounce your name for us. [00:01:23] Matt Y: Anyone wanna guess? Ian’s? It’s like magician. [00:01:27] Vince Menzione: It’s not that hard, [00:01:28] Matt Y: it’s not that [00:01:28] bad, [00:01:28] Vince Menzione: but I don’t wanna butcher. [00:01:29] Vince Menzione: I wanted to let you do it. Good. [00:01:30] Matt Y: What calls me Matt White. [00:01:31] Vince Menzione: That’s great. [00:01:32] Matt Y: Yeah. [00:01:32] Vince Menzione: So 13 years. [00:01:34] Matt Y: Four coming up on 14 next month. Yeah. [00:01:36] Vince Menzione: Wow. Congratulations. Yeah. So you’ve been there, you’ve been there since the early days. And we, we had a conversation. I had some Microsoft, former Microsoft colleagues. Uh, Theresa Carlson, for those of you who knew the public sector business. [00:01:48] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Who started, I mean, Andy came out, it was so funny because I was there and she was hosting Andy for a dinner and with all the CIOs of the federal government. [00:01:57] Matt Y: Yeah. [00:01:58] Vince Menzione: And she was still at Microsoft and it was actually kind of an interesting time. And she came over and did a lot of great things for a number of years. [00:02:04] Matt Y: Yeah. She [00:02:05] Vince Menzione: and a lot of great [00:02:05] Matt Y: business. [00:02:06] Vince Menzione: Yeah. She really like, it went from employee number one to 7,000. [00:02:09] Matt Y: Yeah. [00:02:09] Vince Menzione: And you, you were, you’ve been there all that whole time. Pretty much. [00:02:12] Matt Y: Yeah, I guess when I started in New York, just down the road, we were, uh, in a Regis facility. There were like 11 of us in, uh, just sitting around a table and we had to speak quietly sometimes because there was a, um. [00:02:21] Matt Y: Some type of a financial services organization down the hall and they’d listen to try and get stock tips on Amazon. Yeah, [00:02:28] Vince Menzione: I love it. [00:02:29] Matt Y: Never leaked. That’s [00:02:29] Vince Menzione: good. I love it. [00:02:30] Matt Y: Yeah, [00:02:30] Vince Menzione: you probably got some great stories and, um, we won’t have time for today ’cause I wanna leave some room for conversations on marketplace end questions. [00:02:38] Matt Y: Yeah. [00:02:38] Vince Menzione: But I would love to invite you back for a real, like, in-depth podcast and I would love to get the whole genesis story. [00:02:44] Matt Y: Let’s do it. [00:02:45] Vince Menzione: We’ll do it. Okay, so let’s talk about, let’s talk about yesterday for you. Uh, some, some really big announcements as well. I thought maybe you could recap a little bit of what’s been going on in the marketplace business and it’s an, it’s been an exciting time. [00:02:58] Matt Y: Yeah. Yeah. You know what’s, I think what was really nice yesterday is it was sort of the combination of bringing, uh, our partner services like Partner Central and all those other services together closer to marketplace. We’ve been doing that over, over several years. So Marketplace has some of its own. [00:03:12] Matt Y: Big announcements, like, uh, we have a, we formalized our list and sell initiative. For example. We have a new, so it we essentially reducing the cost, uh, to list on marketplace through a partner program. [00:03:22] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:03:22] Matt Y: And incentives associated with that. We have a new AI powered listing experience, which I think is particularly important ’cause I think many of you are like me and watching your SEO numbers go down and watching your agent traffic go up. [00:03:33] Matt Y: And so having, uh, an AI assistance in marketplace to optimize your listings for not just to, you know, retain what you can of your SEO, but prepare for the newent future and improve your GEO as we’re calling it. So that, [00:03:45] Vince Menzione: so it’s GEO now? [00:03:46] Matt Y: Yeah. You know, there’s a little debate right now in the acronym Moral A A EO versus GO I’m going, I’m on the G team, so, yeah. [00:03:52] Vince Menzione: Alright. GEO [00:03:54] Matt Y: It’s like the, the, yeah, they’re gonna win. They’re like the Knicks, but the, um, [00:03:57] Vince Menzione: yeah, yeah, exactly. [00:03:57] Matt Y: But yeah, so AI assisted, uh, I mean, making. The most of, like, essentially marketplace is an excellent conversion engine. And so using AI to help improve that conversion engine in the form of your PDPs for both humans and agents. [00:04:08] Matt Y: So that was an exciting launch. Um, I got the most applause when I announced that. We lowered, we made the economics better for, uh, consulting offers professional services, nice to marketplace. We lowered the listing fee from 2.5 to, to 0.5% and wow, it goes even lower in certain circumstances. So just improving the economics. [00:04:24] Matt Y: I’m really excited to. Really partner with a lot of you to reinvent services through, through the marketplace like we did with SAS and other areas. Uh, and we’re doing with agents right now. So that was a big one. And then a whole series of announcements around, um, how we’re making it easier and more cost effective and more efficient to partner with AWS. [00:04:41] Matt Y: So using AI to, uh, using med pick scoring to automatically progress opportunities so you don’t have to kind of wait on a human. To, to click and progress, you know, that that can take days. And, uh, if you, if you wanna have an opportunity and have that be cos sold with AWS, that can be through a mix of agents for the long tail and with humans in the, in the sort of top end and more complex. [00:05:00] Matt Y: And allowing AI to help all the partners improve their opportunity quality so that we can better co-sell together. So. Yeah, I said AI a lot intentionally. Um, [00:05:09] Audience Guest: yeah, [00:05:10] Matt Y: AI sort of in the whole cycle for buyers, for sellers, uh, for operational efficiency, cost of sales. So a lot of announcements. I think I hit the big ones, so yeah. [00:05:18] Matt Y: I’m Might have missed something there. There we go. [00:05:21] Vince Menzione: George. [00:05:21] Matt Y: Oh, and storefront. Yeah. Thanks George. See, I look at George to see what I missed. Uh, we, we acquired a great company called phoenix.ai late last year. Okay. And you, you actually were said Caresoft and Yeah. Be down. Uh, [00:05:30] Vince Menzione: yeah. [00:05:30] Matt Y: So if you’re familiar with Cara Cloud, they have a procurement portal. [00:05:33] Matt Y: It’s heavy use by the US government, and they, um. Uh, we, we acquired them, uh, the really great growth company. They have over 70 logos now, and they help you build a branded storefront on marketplace, which obviously is important in the government space. If you’re procuring on a certain contract with a certain reseller, um, you know, there’s a certain set of products you’re allowed to buy. [00:05:51] Matt Y: But what we’re finding is even down on Wall Street, you hear, um, enterprises are, are using storefronts for internal procurement and they wanna have a curated collection of, of partner products and, and your own ecosystems internally. So we’re selling to both customers. And also to channel partners to build custom storefronts, branded storefronts for, and [00:06:07] Vince Menzione: it makes total sense, right? [00:06:08] Vince Menzione: Yeah, because you wanna li you wanna limit the, the viewing and, uh, and get, because I mean, how many different listings do we have? Like over 30,000? [00:06:16] Matt Y: Yeah. Yeah. There’s, I think the official numbers over th we have over 36,000. I was checking from over 6,000 vendors. Um, it’s a lot. And, and that’s gonna explode with the AI powered, uh, listing, uh, experience that we launched. [00:06:26] Matt Y: We’re gonna make it easier. And I guess what I’ve been telling partners is. You know, customers aren’t clicking through categories anymore. They’re using AI to search. And so it doesn’t matter how big our catalog is, what matters is being found. And what matters is converting that buyer. So if you have a. [00:06:39] Matt Y: If you’re running a demand gen campaign for say, like, you know, life sciences in, in Jersey and there’s a specific buyer at j and j, you wanna capture, that person doesn’t wanna be just dropped onto a generic marketplace, 30,000 listings. They wanna be dropped in a very specific place where they’re seeing like life sciences offers from Accenture, for example, coupled with a life sciences power thing with Elastic, you know, like, but a solution. [00:07:00] Matt Y: And that they want to land in a curated place where that highly intention buyer can be converted effectively. So that, that’s what we’re doing with all this. [00:07:06] Vince Menzione: And that’s where the GEO comes in because [00:07:09] Matt Y: Yeah. ’cause that buyer might be an agent That’s right. With, and that agent has is even more fickle, honestly. [00:07:14] Matt Y: And you know, what used to be milliseconds for the human before they kind of click away is, is now perhaps microseconds. Yeah. And so, uh, you know, having the right metadata and, and the right positioning, uh, the right story that an agent or a human can pick up to ultimately. Uh, complete their product research and choose your product is, is critical. [00:07:30] Vince Menzione: Very cool. Very cool. So before I, I, I’ve been asked to ask you this because I, I’ve had this con, people have brought come to me and said, you gotta ask Matt about music. He’s a big music guy. And, uh, so what are your favorite bands? [00:07:49] Matt Y: So, I mean, the, the real answer is, uh. I, I go to about a show about every week. [00:07:54] Matt Y: As, as Mike Trill knows, uh, we heard a show last night. Um, we were, uh, just a few hours ago, really? And, uh, um, favorite band, uh, well, I’ll tell, I’ll tell a story. I, I had a side hustle with MTV for years. Um, I used to run a music website. Um, oh, that’s cool. I didn’t know that. It got, it got kind of popular. It got sponsored by, if, if anyone’s into like early hip hop. [00:08:16] Matt Y: It got sponsored by a group called Jurassic Five. ’cause he, one of them reached out to me and said, nice. Hey, uh, you know, I’ve been, I like your website. And he ended up paying for a web, hosting a Dream host, if you remember, of cost back then. [00:08:26] Vince Menzione: Oh, Jesus. [00:08:26] Matt Y: Because I was broke and couldn’t afford it. And then, uh, and then this band sent me like a, a single and said, Hey, you know, trying to get the word out about our little band, can you help us out? [00:08:35] Matt Y: And I put their, uh, I put their, you know, single up on my, on my website and it blew up. And that band is Vampire Weekend. So they’re kind of big now. Wow. Yeah. Um, and uh, that got picked up by like Vanity Fair and all these other guys. And then I got sponsored by MTV to essentially write. Music reviews for years on the side. [00:08:51] Matt Y: So I was working for the Associated Press, laying cable in sports and war and, and, uh, yeah. So Vampire Weekend was good to me that, that they, they kind of paved a way to go to a lot of free shows over the years and a lot of bands and see a lot of great music. But yeah. [00:09:03] Vince Menzione: That is very cool. And that, and how did that get your day? [00:09:05] Vince Menzione: WS It was just a, it was just the technology path that was like, [00:09:09] Matt Y: I mean, it’s a, it’s a, I guess it’s a bit of a long story, but, um, the. There’s many versions of this story. I’ll tell the, tell the one quickly. I was living for free in a Fulbright scholarship house in West Africa. You, we can talk about how that happened another time. [00:09:23] Matt Y: And, uh, a guy had sort of fallen down on the floor ’cause he’d had too much to drink. And I, I sort of lay down beside and be like, Hey man, are you all right? And, um, he, uh. He worked, he, he worked for the Associated Press and next day I had the job, um, being West Africa, head of technology for West Africa. [00:09:37] Matt Y: And because of that, um, and as I learned years later, the AP didn’t have dr they had no disaster recovery. Yeah. And I, I can tell you that now ’cause um, you know, 16 years since I worked there, but they, uh, I put the DR in, um, on AWS and we’re talking like, yeah, 16, 17 years ago. This is early. It was early days. [00:09:56] Matt Y: And I, I swear to God, I paid for. Uh, our AWS bill using, um, taxi receipts, fake taxi receipts that I bought in on Nigerian market, um, because there was no budget and so, you know, it was like 30 bucks. [00:10:08] Vince Menzione: I was gonna say swipe a credit card, but they didn’t [00:10:09] Matt Y: knew that this is the entire press this before. [00:10:11] Vince Menzione: This is before, yeah. [00:10:12] Matt Y: Yeah, like the entire ap. Um, and, uh, so AWS called me like, who are you? Like, why, why are you paying on like this like low limit credit card for like the ap? Like, who are you? And, uh. Next day I had the job. Well, a week later I had the job with aw WS. That so cool. So that’s the story’s [00:10:29] Vince Menzione: cool thing. [00:10:29] Matt Y: Yeah. [00:10:30] Vince Menzione: Very cool. [00:10:31] Vince Menzione: Uh, sports teams. So Knicks fan. [00:10:34] Matt Y: Yeah, I mean, I like the Knicks. Um, they’re h hockey, I’m not allowed to say anything different. No. I appreciate them. Uh, I’m a Raptors fan. I grew up in Toronto mostly. Yeah, yeah. Uh, so, and you know, when they won, uh, that was very exciting as well. So no, Nicks are great. I like the Knicks. [00:10:49] Matt Y: Nothing against the Knicks. Um. They’re fine. Yeah. [00:10:54] Vince Menzione: Hockey, hockey fan. Favorite hockey teams? [00:10:56] Matt Y: Oh yeah. Itron. Maple leaf. Maple leaf. Yeah. They’re gonna, they’re gonna win. Of course. Of course. Yeah. Um, like every year they’re actually, we [00:11:02] Vince Menzione: have some Canadians laughing in the sand. [00:11:03] Matt Y: Well, the leaf are, are, are the Knicks of hockey? [00:11:05] Matt Y: Like Yes, they are. You know, it’s 67 years out, coming up on 68 since they won, so That’s crazy. 53 is nothing. I know. Pain. So. Yeah, definitely the least. Yeah. [00:11:15] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love it. It’s so cool. Yeah. So what was the, uh, what was the, what was the last concert you went to? [00:11:22] Matt Y: Well, literally last night. Oh, it was last, [00:11:23] Vince Menzione: oh, that [00:11:24] Matt Y: was actually concert were my favorite bar in the world. [00:11:26] Matt Y: This place called Sunny’s. Uh, it’s, you know, I, I took Mike and, and Matt from, from Texas and from TGS down there to sort of see my neighborhood and they’re like, where are we? And I’m like, yeah, I live here. Uh, sort of an industrial part of Brooklyn. And, and we went to see, um, I dunno what you would call it, like. [00:11:40] Matt Y: I guess it’d be like roots music. There was a woman with an accordion and a guy with a big cowboy hat. Yeah, it was, it was fun. Yeah. [00:11:47] Vince Menzione: That is so funny. Alright, we’re gonna shift back years. Um, important time right now for partners. What, what should partners be looking out for the most? What would you say to them in terms of what’s the, what’s their real headline for them? [00:11:59] Matt Y: Well, I, I, you know, to borrow from you actually, you know, I liked, uh, the, the principles you had up there and, and with agility, um, you know, there’s a lot of fud flying around right now. You know, people. People were like, oh, it’s the demise of sis with the arrival of ai, you know, everyone’s gonna be using agents. [00:12:13] Matt Y: And then it turns out it’s been a huge boon for most, uh, you know, system integrators and consulting companies that I work with. They all have, you know, the, the good ones especially have vibrant consulting practices now, and everyone is deploying fds, uh, you know, um, the new, the new cool acronym. But it’s, it’s essentially created a huge opportunity for the consulting space. [00:12:31] Matt Y: Uh, and similarly, uh, you know, there there’s this narrative around the sa sa apocalypse, which I really hate, you know, ’cause it was, uh, premature and kind of a trigger reaction from the stock market. And, you know, just look, look what Snowflake did. And, you know, they did what a lot of SaaS companies are doing, but they, they added a nice sort of glaze of positioning and, and, you know, their stock popped and they did pretty well. [00:12:50] Matt Y: And so I think the ability to adapt with change and kind of roll with the punches. ’cause a lot of people are saying like, agents are gonna destroy everything. And, and the opposite has been true. For the more successful consulting companies and software companies who have become agentic. But SaaS hasn’t gone away, you know? [00:13:05] Matt Y: No. Look at our own marketplace. We have this agent marketplace, but people aren’t buying atomic agents at scale. They’re buying ified SaaS solutions with sort of agent sidecars, which has created new opportunities for candidly additional licenses, [00:13:16] Vince Menzione: right? [00:13:16] Matt Y: Um, as customers sort of want to consume more AI services on top of their. [00:13:20] Matt Y: On top of their SaaS solutions. So I think being agile, you know, you see like ServiceNow as part of our billionaires club. Yes. They’re not going anywhere. They’re, yeah. They’re gentrifying. You know, Salesforce has pivoted to this headless model, um, along with Asian Force and using sort of Slack as the operating system. [00:13:34] Matt Y: And, you know, you said like a lot of companies from the seventies aren’t around anymore. They’re gonna be winners and losers. Yeah. Um, but the winners are gonna win even more. And so I, I think what’s so important right now for partners is to not, not bite too hard at the, the latest trend. You know, models are changing and everyone’s like, oh, you know, philanthropics really in the world and they’re wonderful, great to work with, amazing technology. [00:13:55] Matt Y: That’s what people are saying about open AI six months ago. That’s right. And before that, you know, and it, I, I was with Fireworks AI yesterday, a great company and they have some really cool stuff with sort of, um, they believe in more cost effective, uh, open source models essentially, that you can find tune. [00:14:08] Matt Y: Maybe that’s gonna win. I don’t know. Um, is it gonna be sort of domain specific models? Is it gonna be highly capable LLMs? Are LLMs gonna level off as soon as Fable and Mythos are allowed to launch? Maybe. I, I don’t think anyone can predict the future right now. So you have to be agile and you have to kind of seize the opportunities and take a couple punches. [00:14:25] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:14:26] Matt Y: You know, and marketplace too, like we’re, you have to be unafraid to experiment right now. Um, you know, that’s hard if your stock’s taking a beating. Um, but this is, it’s a, it is a disruptive time, uh, but it’s creating actually enormous opportunities for growth for partners and, and we really see that, you know, in marketplace specifically within AWS. [00:14:45] Vince Menzione: It, it, it does still feel like the deer in the headlights moment. Right. Would you agree? Like you’re probably taking a lot of meetings and, and calls from ISVs specifically? [00:14:54] Matt Y: Well, [00:14:54] Vince Menzione: that are still trying to figure it out. [00:14:56] Matt Y: Yeah. But it’s everyone. Yeah. I think what’s really interesting, I had a meeting [00:14:58] Vince Menzione: with, it’s not just one. [00:14:59] Matt Y: Yeah. I, well, I had a meeting with one of the leading AI companies, like one of the biggest ones. And they, uh, they demonstrated how they work and they were really proud. They were like, you know, look at our agentic workflow. And I came out at me. I’m like, that’s it. Ours is way better. Like really like, you know, ’cause we we’re, we’re using quick desktop with MCP servers and connectors and all this, and you know, we, we have our own sort of ecosystem of partners, a mix of homegrown software and third party. [00:15:20] Matt Y: And I kinda walked out there and, and looked at, you know, my phone, which has been populated by agents this morning with all the, and I was like, I have a way better agent workflow than this world’s leading supposedly AI company. And I think, um, that really, so during, I, I would, during the headlights, you can call it deer in the headlights, I call it chaos. [00:15:36] Matt Y: And in times of chaos there are people who create. Opportunity again. And so, yeah, there are some people who are stuck and who don’t know what to do, who are over worried about token costs, um, who are not experimenting. But there are a lot of companies, uh, taking this opportunity to kind of pivot their business. [00:15:53] Matt Y: Um, I think, I think we’re in a moment and, uh, yeah, I, I candidly I see more of the latter. I see more experimenting. [00:15:59] Vince Menzione: You mentioned ServiceNow. Any other great examples of that? Organizations that really embraced it? [00:16:04] Matt Y: Uh, yeah. Well, you know, ServiceNow is part of this business applications category, as we call it, in marketplace. [00:16:09] Matt Y: That outside of AI, I think is the fastest growing category in marketplace, which is wild when you think about it. ’cause we’ve historically been an infrastructure partner marketplace with security and data and analytics and, you know, security with channel partners, et cetera. But Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, Adobe, you know, I could go on. [00:16:23] Matt Y: They, they are actually. You know, our fastest growing category and yeah, ServiceNow, obviously reinventing itself for ai, Salesforce, but Workday, you know, the workday’s done some, who knows if it’s gonna work, but they, they’re experimenting with essentially like a Databricks, uh, credit style model for like, units of work, uh, which I think is fascinating. [00:16:41] Matt Y: Like everyone’s talking about value-based, outcome-based pricing and meter. And, and you have companies that are ERP companies, you know, like traditional business applications, experimenting with effectively like a metered pay as you go, value based credit model. Again, like who knows if it’s gonna work. [00:16:54] Matt Y: But I think that’s really amazing to see and we need more ISVs experimenting. I, I was talking about trend ai and I know they’re, they’re, they’re one of the sponsors yesterday. You know, many of you know them as Trend Micro back in the day. They’ve successfully reinvented themselves. They built that companion app. [00:17:10] Matt Y: Um, you know, that I think we’re seeing. Just a ton of experimentation in the market across categories. Uh, I could go on and on about partners. Um, yeah, there, I I wouldn’t pick a winner right now. Yeah. [00:17:24] Vince Menzione: You, you, we’ve talked about ai. We’ve talked, talk more about the buying journey and how that’s changing, because again, it feels, it feels like that’s also [00:17:33] Matt Y: Yeah. [00:17:33] Matt Y: So, you know, one of, one of the core, uh, strategic objectives, or we’ll say like the philosophy marketplace is that. Um, financial incentives are important, you know, EDP or PPA drawdown, uh, credits. Like we need to act as an efficient and effective vehicle for allowing buyers to exercise their discounts for, and, and sort of partners to exercise their credits, et cetera. [00:17:55] Matt Y: That, that’s actually important. But what, what a lot of people over rotate on that, and we’re really, one of the things we say a lot inside at Amazon or at AWS marketplace is we want to continue to boost the intrinsic value of marketplace beyond the financial incentives. And well over a quarter of all private offers, private pricing, private, uh, custom terms, et cetera. [00:18:14] Matt Y: Um, begin with a self-service or PLG motion. And partners who don’t have a PLG or self-service motion are literally leaving money on the table. Like if you look at like a Databricks for example, and they did a good job integrating buy with a WS within their SaaS application. They have free trials, they have really strong pego and, and, uh, and PLG motion. [00:18:33] Matt Y: They’re making, I can’t share their numbers obviously, but they’re making a ton of money. On purely self-service motions. And importantly, they’re acquiring new business, new logos that they nurture, you know, really like not just leads but closed opportunities, right? That they lead, they’re growing, uh, at a reasonable conversion rate or or success rate into the next big logos. [00:18:50] Matt Y: And these are over multi-year horizons. They’re patient, you know, they bring in these new logos with PLG, and they’re also bringing banking, a lot of large enterprises. Through self-service. I, I was with data Mask. There’s this great little startup from New Zealand. They’re a New Zealand based company. Um, super nice guy. [00:19:06] Matt Y: And, and, uh, they, they got huge logos. I think they got, what was it? A DP and some huge American logos. Okay. And this like logo in, I think it was Chile, or no, it was Peru. They’ve never been to Peru. They don’t have sales in Peru. Um, and they. Buyers were discovering them self-service and they, they, I think they got something like 13 logos entirely through a self-service motion. [00:19:26] Matt Y: One password will tell you the same thing. I was just with them in Toronto and companies big and small startups and the largest are getting enterprise wins in addition to net new small logos through that PLG. Buyer motion. And that’s because you have a whole generation of CFOs, CTOs, CROs, whatever. The C is [00:19:43] Vince Menzione: millennial [00:19:43] Matt Y: who grew up on their phones. [00:19:45] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:19:45] Matt Y: And, and it sounds like, you know, hyperbole, but it’s true. They, they want immediate apps, immediate access. And that actually, you’re like, oh, that never translates to business applications. Turns out it does. It does. And they might not be buying on their phone, but what they are doing is researching and we see the numbers, the amount of customers who are doing their research, and then eventually landing on the page from chat, GPT. [00:20:06] Matt Y: From major financial, like Fortune 500 companies is extremely high. Yeah. Uh, you have procurement team, sourcing team, uh, developers who are starting the research increasingly, like in clawed in chat, GPT, and then, you know, building a proposal and then handing it to their enterprise procurement team. Yeah. [00:20:22] Matt Y: Which is still largely unchanged. So buyer behavior is on the front end, on the research side is really changing. So the [00:20:29] Vince Menzione: discovery is happening through PLG. [00:20:32] Matt Y: Yeah. [00:20:32] Vince Menzione: And then the backend work on private offers and things like that sometimes still happens the old way. [00:20:36] Matt Y: Yeah. Well, and so, you know, it’s [00:20:37] Vince Menzione: fax machine, [00:20:38] Matt Y: some people Yeah, sure. [00:20:39] Matt Y: They’re bringing the deal directly to Marketplace last minute. But even if that deal goes direct, sometimes they’re still beginning their research journey and increasingly using Marketplace as a research vehicle, which is why we launched Agent Mode, um, to help you sort of help you and agents do research. [00:20:51] Matt Y: But that I think if, if I have one piece of device for any partner consulting or ISV is. Don’t leave those leads and that money on the table by not having a PLG self-service strategy like you’re fooling yourself. Uh, and it’s, it’s a huge, it’s a huge, huge business for us. The, the majority of all customers by far on marketplace don’t even have a PPA, uh, and a huge percentage of even those with PPA spend beyond the p. [00:21:17] Matt Y: And so if you’re just think if you’re just using marketplaces as like BPA retirement, you are literally losing money. [00:21:22] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:21:22] Matt Y: Yeah. [00:21:23] Vince Menzione: We have a session with Vinod. We’re gonna talk a little bit about that right after. Great. So good. Um, so I, yeah, I think, um. We talked about, we talked about agents, we’ve talked about the millennial buyer, the change in buying behavior. [00:21:40] Vince Menzione: What other, what other areas of aspect I, I, I, I do wanna think about like opening it up though for a second. I think that maybe with maybe nine minutes left. Sure. I just want to get a read from the people in the room. People have questions for Matt that we weren’t able to ask them. Yeah, I think, I think we probably have a few of those. [00:21:57] Vince Menzione: I think that would probably be great. [00:21:58] Matt Y: I can sense the hardball coming. [00:22:00] Vince Menzione: You’ve known each other [00:22:00] Matt Y: a long time. [00:22:01] Vince Menzione: Yeah. No, no. Hardball. We have a mic back here. Okay. I’ll just, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll get you a mic as we are recording. So good. Thank you. [00:22:11] Audience Guest: Uh, Boris Geller with a, a Click PLG is near and dear to my heart. [00:22:17] Audience Guest: We’ve been doing a lot of business in marketplace and I’m still struggling to sell my vision internally on, on, uh, on PLG. Uh, I think. Ag Agent AI is gonna be one of the drivers, and we are already on, uh, agent Marketplace, but I would appreciate guidance on, uh, best practices. How do we kind of, uh, operationalize it? [00:22:41] Audience Guest: It’s, it’s on us, not on you. [00:22:43] Matt Y: Well, no, I think it’s on both of us. You know, we, uh. One thing that we’re trying to do is give you more data to, to sell to your internal stakeholders in your executive suite. The value of co-sell with AWS all up, like finally with what we launched at, uh, the summit yesterday, you now get an opportunity score. [00:23:02] Matt Y: You, you get a number. People have been asking for this for years, so, so you can say when we do this and we, when we give AWS this information. The score goes up and we have a higher propensity to be cos sold by humans or agents before you had to kind of, it was like this mystery you had to guess. And similarly with marketplace, um, we, we have new dashboards that you can use to sort of, you used to have to sit down with us and go through spreadsheets to trace sort of lead to trace the funnel to sort of a close opportunity. [00:23:28] Matt Y: And we’re gonna continue to launch more there. But you now have more data that you can show. You can be like, listen, these are our inbound leads, this how’s converting, and now we have PRM, the partner revenue measurement where we can say like, this is what it’s translating into in terms of. AWS service revenue driven by our product. [00:23:41] Matt Y: And so that being able to tie from that inbound lead from your demand gen campaign through to a converted opportunity to what you actually drive from an AWS impact perspective, so you can, and then what your opportunity score is that data you can use to sell. Not only internally, but to us as well. Yeah, to a skeptical sales team or whatever who’s not maybe, you know, hype on partners in the, in the US West. [00:24:03] Matt Y: You can be like, listen, I don’t care what you think about my business. This is what I’m gonna drive for you with your quarter retirement from an AWS perspective, and this is how the shape of your customer accounts are gonna change. And this is why you should pay attention to my opportunities. ’cause my opportunity score is, is crazy high and I’m giving you insights into business that AWS would not otherwise have. [00:24:19] Vince Menzione: That’s your brand story we’re talking about. [00:24:21] Matt Y: Yeah. [00:24:22] Vince Menzione: Building your story up with within [00:24:25] Matt Y: So it’s, it’s about the data, I guess. And, and you should, you know, you should all actually be [00:24:28] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:24:29] Matt Y: Asking me for more data, so, you know, and tell me like, what do you need to sell to your internal stakeholders? ’cause if I can draw a clear line. [00:24:35] Matt Y: From your demand chain campaign that lands on a marketplace, which I know is a conversion machine, it has way better than industry levels of, of conversion rates. And then you can show, hey, if we have a PLG strategy and we land those leads on marketplace, we will convert them with high efficiency, low cost of sales and, and, and have sort of a bifurcated where we can close some through self service, some through express private offers and some through private offers, depending on deal size. [00:24:57] Matt Y: Like you tell A CFO that, and they’re my number one customer now and they love it ’cause they see cost of sales going down, cost of operations going down and business going up. Um, so I think we have more data than we used to use that data. And let me know what other data do you need to make that pitch and make that pitch to the CFO go around the head of sales, all those other people. [00:25:15] Matt Y: Honestly, the CFO is where we get the best leverage. [00:25:18] Vince Menzione: Awesome. Great question. [00:25:23] Matt Y: Gonna bring your mic. [00:25:23] Vince Menzione: We’re, we’re gonna get your mic here. There you go. Oh, [00:25:25] Audience Guest: thank you. So my name’s Jody Cheval and I’m a consultant now, but I was at Workday during when they adopted AWS and it, a sales organization needs propensity to buy data. [00:25:34] Audience Guest: To really drive the sales team to realize the opportunity kind of makes them visualize it. We didn’t struggle, but it was challenging to get that data because at that time we’re getting spreadsheets. So does AWS have a vision of making that API based data that our client, my clients, can get at and bring into a tool to start building account hypothesis based on that data? [00:25:57] Audience Guest: ’cause it really is important to an enterprise sales guy to have the sense that OAWS can help me close this deal. [00:26:03] Matt Y: Yeah. I mean. Part of that. So we, we launched, we’ve been launching part of that in stages and we’re not done. There’s, there’s more coming. Um, part of that is embedded really within the new, uh, partner agent workflows. [00:26:13] Matt Y: We are giving sort of more, uh, information back to you, not just about like what funding programs you’re eligible for, but like, you know, and when, when we will co-sell this deal with you, which is effectively a signal like we, we see this as a high value opportunity, that you have a likelihood of winning internally. [00:26:28] Matt Y: We, we have this solution matching engine that we’re using and we announced. That, that that ties you the partner to a customer specific opportunity that you have a high propensity or the partner has a high propensity to assist with and ultimately win. And now we’ve tied that to our express private offers, which we announced this week. [00:26:44] Matt Y: So it’s an indirect answer to what you’re asking, but a rep can essentially say. Send a private priced offer to the customer on behalf of the partner without having to ring up the partner because they have a high propensity to win this deal with the customer. So we’re progressively launching features like that. [00:26:59] Matt Y: In addition to the propensity to buy data that we do now share. It used to be kind of, again, manual magic depending on who you knew we could share. Now we do share that programmatically, and there’s more to come specifically in that space. Uh, I’d say watch that space. In the next few months, there’s gonna be more data coming away, but we do have the APIs, we have the agent. [00:27:16] Matt Y: We have things like express private office solution matching, and we have been sort of in that space progressively launching features over the last six to 12 months. And, and you should expect to see some more there soon, not just from us or from our partners. [00:27:27] Vince Menzione: Nice. Any announcement dates? [00:27:30] Matt Y: I can’t commit to a date or else my engineers will get mad at me. [00:27:33] Vince Menzione: It looks like we Another question number. Is the mic still back there? Okay. There’s a gentleman over here [00:27:40] Audience Guest: first Go leaves. Um, it’s awesome. I’m right next to. I was right next. [00:27:46] Vince Menzione: We’ve got a lot of great plants here, so, [00:27:49] Audience Guest: um, so this may be a little bit myopic or, or a challenge that we run into, but I love a lot of the innovation that’s looking forward and all the future things that we’re doing. [00:28:00] Audience Guest: One of the things that we’re struggling with is a little bit of almost like tech or structural debt. How do you think about bringing flexibility to the core pieces that underpin all of the innovation, which is. We are self-hosted. So one of our listings is an a MI. You can’t amend an a MI, you have to cancel and start over. [00:28:18] Audience Guest: So a lot of the building blocks, when you think about PLG, if somebody wants to add to that in an a MI listing, it’s, it’s sort of broken. So how are you thinking about taking all of the, the rapidly changing buyer behavior and then looking back at the structural foundation that underpins all of those things, like offers and, and amendments and changes and all of that? [00:28:39] Matt Y: Yeah. I, I promise I didn’t seed that question, but that, that’s a great one. Um, so not to get too in the weeds, but fundamentally, marketplace was built up, um, a bit like AWS like a set, a series of services somewhat independently. And each product type was effectively its own service, SaaS, server images, ais. [00:28:59] Matt Y: Um, what we’ve done recently is now we, we have, we got rid of product types basically on the backend. You, you don’t see it, but what that means, for example, like another thing AAMIs don’t support today, future data agreements. Um, or concurrent agreements, uh, they will all be supported by amis before the end of the year. [00:29:14] Matt Y: ’cause what we’re doing, this fundamental thing that you won’t even see called product offer decoupling. Uh, and it’s a fundamental piece of things that we need to unwind. ’cause we built up, we were moving very quickly over the years. We had a distributed engineering model and we built each product type independently. [00:29:28] Matt Y: And so yeah, if you’re a seller and you’re selling containers, agents, SaaS, amies, um, we’re breaking down the silos between those so that each of them will get the same benefits. And, and by the way, we’re taking the same approach to international. Hopefully you’ve noticed now that. It’s not like a feature launches in the US only and then takes five years to launch in either public sector or another country. [00:29:48] Matt Y: We, we’ve taken a global approach to feature launch and increasingly a product type neutral approach to feature launches. Uh, that’ll be largely resolved before the year’s out. We’re working on it right now. So again, it’s, it should be transparent to you, like you shouldn’t actually see any difference in the, in the experience. [00:30:05] Matt Y: Except that all of those features will be available. So, so that is, uh, actively under work. And that’s actually something if you’d like to try, um, you’re, you’re welcome to. So, yeah, [00:30:17] Vince Menzione: we have time for maybe one more question and we we’re actually gonna have you up here with a couple partners. [00:30:24] Matt Y: Sounds [00:30:24] Vince Menzione: good. Kind of fun. [00:30:32] Audience Guest: Hey, Matt, uh, met Natasha from Dondo. Uh, quick. So great announcements. And you know, you talked about the million, multi-billion dollar, uh, club, and, uh, that’s all great. Uh, in terms of the. Propensity data. I think that’s coming at the center of a lot of things, right? You know, for enterprises, oh, there’s an investment and you tap into that investment. [00:30:53] Audience Guest: But also there’s the other side of the procurement where a lot of customers, sometimes we work with, they’re like, they still wanna go direct for whatever reason, right? So I think there’s an education piece there, but also trying to understand like how we can work together to, you know, get some of that side of the things sorted out as well. [00:31:11] Audience Guest: You know? ’cause a lot of times it’s not about. Just, you know, retiring the, uh, the, the spend comets, but also like, Hey, I’m used, I’m already used that for something else. So maybe that’s not an, uh, something that applies here. And in also in tying that the PLG motion, uh, you know, for the customers you said, you talked about, you know, if there is. [00:31:34] Audience Guest: Leads on the TA table, like where the, it’s not the enterprise, but you know, the others. Um, I feel like it’s more to do, changing the business model at some times. Like with the enterprises, you have the revenue stream coming through, say large deals, right? And all of a sudden you tap into this, you know, PayGo. [00:31:51] Audience Guest: Where it flips the whole equation with, you know, the financing and the, and the, and the revenue measurement. So I think there’s two aspects of how do you kind of cons reconcile those things in terms of, you know, the revenue measurements going forward. [00:32:05] Matt Y: Yeah. So, so two things real quick on the procurement. [00:32:07] Matt Y: Um, yeah, like, yeah, I sort of alluded to this earlier, but, uh. Procurement is a bit late to the AI ag agentic transformation. They’re trying, and there’s a lot of great new incumbents in this space. And the big leaders like, you know, Coupa and Ariba and Oracle are, are, are evolving their products, albeit a bit slowly. [00:32:26] Matt Y: Um, but the, I think, uh, it’s still the long pole in the tent. You know this. And so like, there are two reasons why deals tend to go direct, because it kind of hits a wall of. Legal, uh, you know, procurement, governance, like all that kind of after the selection’s been made, et cetera, or, or they’re, you know, we can’t change. [00:32:44] Matt Y: People are gonna optimize for, for finance, you know, they’re, they’re going to, if they’re getting big discounts. I mean, that is life. I always say it’s like sellers at the most agented company are still gonna chase quota no matter how, you know, crazy. Uh, your, your company is, and it’s the same with, um, with the chief, uh, financial officer and chief procurement officer. [00:33:01] Matt Y: They are going to, they’re literally. Paid to find discounts. And so we’re not, we’re not gonna get rid of financial engineering. That’s a, that’s a thing. What we can do is reduce the friction for procurement. So we launched, for example, like mandatory purchase orders. That was a big thing. We, we have buyer notifications, now we’re making other procure to pay enhancements. [00:33:17] Matt Y: I mean, procurement systems still use like CXML. It’s like, that was, that was cool when I worked for the ap. And like I, I have teenagers that are old, like older than, so they, I, I think, um. Procurement needs to evolve and we’re gonna help it evolve. We’re gonna push it forward and, and we need to make it more seamless for procurement teams so that we remove those objections. [00:33:38] Matt Y: Uh, I can’t remove the financial engineering objection, like, you know, that’s just life. Um, but I can make it irresponsible not to use marketplace ’cause it’s so easy to use. And, uh, that, that’s kind of the approach we’re taking on, on the front end. Uh, you, you know, I think you, you, again, I didn’t see this question. [00:33:52] Matt Y: You, you stepped into a trap. Un unwittingly, um, PLG is not just is for enterprise. And, and PLG doesn’t necessarily mean pego or self-service. Uh, doesn’t necessarily like, uh, most of our self-service efforts are actually focused on private offers. And not necessarily for pego. Uh, when, when I say self-service and, and PLG, uh, it, it can mean all kinds of things like it. [00:34:14] Matt Y: We have requested private offer, requested demo call to actions, buttons that you can put on your listing. For example, you don’t necessarily need a free trial or a metered pay as you go listing to take advantage of those inbound self-service leads. So, and those inbound self-service leads are often massive enterprise deals, like I mentioned specifically, uh, the data mask. [00:34:31] Matt Y: Those giant enterprise deals that they launched came from an enterprise like Fortune 1000 Enterprise in the US that organically discovered their solution on the marketplace using our AI search. And that was a massive enterprise. And so I, I think yes, there is the long tail, you wanna capture a new logo acquisition, but you should think of your product like growth in your self-service strategy as a way to, um, acquire all kinds of leads, including large enterprise. [00:34:54] Matt Y: And so when I say leave money on the table, I’m not just talking about things that are gonna mature over two years or tiny little deals. These could be massive deals. Uh, and, and you’ll accelerate those deals by accelerating their discovery and, and research so that I think that, so, and my advice is don’t, you don’t have to go all in if you don’t have, if you don’t have metering, if you don’t have PayGo, that’s cool. [00:35:13] Matt Y: Start with something simple. Start with a public listing, with a request to private offer like that. That is a, a huge step. That doesn’t take much, and, and it kind of blows my mind still that a lot of companies aren’t doing that yet. [00:35:25] Vince Menzione: Great answer. Well, it’s now time we’re gonna bring, we’re gonna bring, it’s time. [00:35:29] Vince Menzione: We, we’ve got some great partners coming up here, Nvidia Elastic, Accenture gonna all join us for a conversation. Great. And I’m glad that you’re gonna stay with us. And let’s, let’s, well, let’s thank Matt, by the way, for that session. [00:35:41] Matt Y: Thanks. [00:35:42] Vince Menzione: And [00:35:42] Matt Y: thanks for listening to the Ultimate [00:35:44] Vince Menzione: Partner Podcast. If today’s conversation resonated, share it with a partner leader in your network. [00:35:51] Vince Menzione: Subscribe where you listen. And head over to the ultimate partner.com. For show notes related content and the resources for this episode. And if you haven’t already, now’s the time to register for the Ultimate Partner Live Event in Reston, Virginia, October 26th through October 28th. Until next time, keep showing up in the rooms that matter because being in the room changes everything.
Zane is fresh off a trip to PPA Tokyo and lands straight in Grand Rapids for the Beer City Open / MLP Mid-Season Tournament — so he and Nico have a lot to cover. They break down the mysterious dueling "Team USA" pickleball announcements, preview Match Day prop bets for the Beer City Open, draft the most Silent Assassins in an MLP-style event, and dig into Jay Devilliers' surprise move to the APP Tour ahead of a wave of expiring PPA contracts. Plus: Zane's Tokyo recap (sumo wrestling included), MLP trade deadline predictions, and a new Guess My Duper.
Russell Reading speaks with Stefano Dessi, Offtake Manager for Italy and France, of Uniper Renewables about Italy's fast‑evolving clean energy market — solar overtaking hydro, rising battery storage deployment, and hurdles for onshore/offshore wind amid north–south transmission constraints. They explore current and upcoming support schemes (FER‑AX and the proposed FER‑Z), zonal pricing, corporate PPA demand, and developer strategies — and why these shifts could reshape investment and revenue models through 2028 and beyond.
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Send us Fan MailThe professional pickleball world had one of its craziest weeks yet.Tyler Loong and Jimmy Miller break down everything from the shocking Rachel R scoreboard incident, controversial MLP trades, surprising upsets, DreamBreakers, player hype, league issues, and what needs to change if professional pickleball wants to continue growing.00:00 Fan behavior & where the line is00:48 Welcome back01:35 World Cup discussion04:18 Club Pickleball Mastermind05:00 Pickler Universe07:36 Dominator08:23 KOTC All Access09:10 MLP New York recap09:57 Massive MLP trade explained12:24 Hunter Johnson, Elsie & JLG trade14:02 Why third players matter more than ever14:44 Ross Chaffetz's farewell post17:45 Did Chicago make the right move?18:33 Is Elsie Hendershot overhyped?24:48 Stop comparing players to Annalee Waters27:16 Carolina shocks Palm Beach29:36 Players leaving MLP events32:12 Does MLP need stricter rules?34:28 Rachel Rohrabacher scoreboard incident37:46 Should players receive compensation?39:36 Bobby's Guy Fieri outfit40:21 PPA's official response40:58 Court spacing problems41:45 DreamBreaker recap44:10 Ranchers upset the Five's44:59 MLP standings update49:03 Should the Mad Drops trade Max Freeman?52:52 Third players becoming more valuable53:36 Florida Smash drops Travis Rettenmaier58:02 Professional commentary discussion1:01:29 Jared Paul & The Kitchen discussion1:08:05 Which players deserve the hype?Website: https://www.tylerloong.com/ KOTC All Accesshttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDiH-sjthLCovD8i79-AkWg/joinCode “KOTC” for insane discounts at: https://www.clubpickleballmastermind.com/kotc Use Code "KOTC" for Big Savings on Vulcan Gear: https://vulcansportinggoods.com/pagesKOTC Merch - Use “KOTC” kitchpickleball.comNEW KOTC DISCORD https://discord.com/invite/kNR65mBemfNEW KOTC CAMEOhttps://www.cameo.com/morekotcInstagram: Tyler's IG - @tyler.loong Jimmy's IG - @jimmymiller_pbKOTC IG - @morekingofthecourt Facebook: / tyler.loong --Support the show
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1. Ako sa taiwanská TSMC vyšplhala na vrchol vo výrobe čipov a prečo je ťažké ju dobehnúť 2. OECD nepriamo vládu kritizuje za transakčnú daň a plošné dávky 3. Takáč nevyhovel Bruselu, PPA má naďalej trvalú akreditáciu
Send us Fan MailThe MLP drama continues.This week Tyler Loong + Jimmy Miller break down everything that happened at MLP St. Pete, including the controversial Casey Diamond situation, questions surrounding Palm Beach's roster decisions, the upcoming waiver wire, and what could happen before the trade deadline.They also discuss:* MLP St. Pete atmosphere and venue review* Casey Diamond's surprise appearance* Palm Beach's impressive performance* Jay Devilliers leaving for APP* Future APP and PPA player movement* Tina Pisnik's incredible season* Dream Breaker strategy and whether teams overvalued singles specialists* LA Mad Drops struggles* St. Louis Shock dominance* New York MLP preview* Potential trades before the deadline00:00 Intro & Remote Podcast Setup01:07 Club Pickleball Mastermind02:38 Pickler Universe & MLP Playoffs05:00 Dominator Sponsorship05:45 KOTC All Access Update07:08 First Impressions Of St. Petersburg08:52 Venue Atmosphere & Crowd Experience10:30 Rollout Court Discussion11:58 MLP Attendance Growth Numbers14:26 Jay Devilliers Heading To APP16:20 More Players Could Leave PPA?17:12 Tina Pisnik's Remarkable Season18:51 APP vs PPA: Who Won The Trade?19:45 The Casey Diamond Situation Explained22:27 Why Casey Was Able To Play24:07 Questions Surrounding Palm Beach24:58 Waiver Wire & Casey Diamond's Future27:21 Palm Beach's Strong St. Pete Performance29:04 Tyson McGuffin Looks Like The Old Tyson30:08 Does LA Need To Make A Move?31:49 Anna Bright's Dream Breaker Proposal34:29 Brooklyn's Position In The Rankings37:50 Eric Lang's Comments On Team Lineups40:17 The Columbus Sliders Story44:24 Players Setting Their Own Lineups45:18 Have Teams Overvalued Singles Specialists?49:17 Do Teams Need Better Bench Players?52:22 Trade Deadline Discussion53:56 New York MLP Preview56:36 Thumbnail Title Brainstorming57:49 Predicting The New York Final01:00:34 Randall's Island Breakdown01:02:26 Final Thoughts On St. Pete01:04:10 Outro & All Access PreviewWebsite: https://www.tylerloong.com/ KOTC All Accesshttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDiH-sjthLCovD8i79-AkWg/joinCode “KOTC” for insane discounts at: https://www.clubpickleballmastermind.com/kotc Use Code "KOTC" for Big Savings on Vulcan Gear: https://vulcansportinggoods.com/pagesKOTC Merch - Use “KOTC” kitchpickleball.comNEW KOTC DISCORD https://discord.com/invite/kNR65mBemfNEW KOTC CAMEOhttps://www.cameo.com/morekotcInstagram: Tyler's IG - @tyler.loong Jimmy's IG - @jimmymiller_pbKOTC IG - @morekingofthecourt Facebook: / tyler.loong --Support the show
Today we were thrilled to welcome back Daan Struyven, Co-Head of Global Commodities Research and Managing Director, Head of Oil Research at Goldman Sachs. Daan joined Goldman in 2015 and previously co-led Goldman Sachs' Global Economics team as well as the firm's Canada Economics research effort. Daan and his team recently wrote a report titled “EV Sales Acceleration Poses Downside Risk to Global Oil Demand.” We were pleased to hear Daan's perspective on the report, the acceleration in global EV adoption following the Iran/Hormuz supply disruption, the outlook for global oil demand and oil prices, and what investors should be watching across the broader energy landscape. In our conversation, we explore the key findings from Goldman Sachs' recent research on EV adoption, including how higher fuel prices and concerns around energy security may have accelerated EV sales across several major global markets following the Iran/Hormuz supply disruption. We discuss the significant differences in EV penetration rates around the world, the growing influence of Chinese manufacturers, the importance of charging and power infrastructure, and the role government policy continues to play in shaping adoption trends. We examine the outlook for global oil demand, including Goldman's view that oil demand continues to grow through 2040 despite rising EV adoption, supported by growing energy consumption and the limited availability of substitutes for petrochemical feedstocks and jet fuel. We discuss the recovery of Middle East oil production and exports following the conflict, OPEC supply dynamics, strategic petroleum reserves and stockpiling activity, and why oil prices did not rise as much as many expected during the Iran war disruption. We touch on investor sentiment toward energy markets, China's role as both a major EV market and a stabilizing force in global oil demand through stockpiling behavior, and tightening power markets driven by rising electricity demand from AI and data centers. We also discuss the interplay between future oil prices, power prices, and EV adoption. Finally, we cover advancements in battery technology, the long-term implications for both the energy transition and global commodity markets, and more. We greatly appreciate Daan for sharing his time and perspectives. To start the show, Mike Bradley noted that market volatility is becoming more prevalent across asset classes. From a fixed income perspective, the 10-year Treasury yield is holding steady at approximately 4.5%, with traders closely focused on this week's PCE Index as a key inflation indicator, particularly in light of the Federal Reserve's more hawkish tone following last week's FOMC meeting. In equities, he emphasized the increasing volatility observed in recent trading sessions, especially within Big Tech and the Nasdaq, with semiconductor and chip stocks coming under notable pressure and with several declining by more than 10%. He suggested that market leadership may be shifting, as the Nasdaq lags while the Dow Jones Industrial Average demonstrates relative resilience. Turning to commodities, WTI crude has fallen to around $73/bbl, marking its lowest level since the first week of the Iran conflict. WTI has broken below its 200-day moving average, indicating that oil appears “broken” from a technical trading perspective. He also highlighted a rapid shift in market sentiment, moving from concerns about tightening global inventories to fears that OPEC supply could increase sooner and more significantly than expected. In energy equities, he observed that the sector has declined modestly over recent trading days, with Oil Services bearing the brunt of the losses. Electric utilities have outperformed, serving as a temporary safe haven for investors. He ended by pointing out two notable headlines: first, a partnership between Chevron and Microsoft to develop a co-located power facility in West Texas that will supply electricity to a Microsoft-operated data center under a 20-year PPA; and second, the Department of Energy's announcement of $17.5 billion in financing to help incentivize/jump start utilities to order equipment for large-scale nuclear reactors. Ellen Wilkirson made her COBT debut and added her questions and perspective to the discussion as well.
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R.Power Renewables CIO Michal Swol joins NPM Europe Managing Editor Peter Kneller on the pod this week to discuss how to get Polish BESS projects financed and how operating a portfolio of standalone BESS and standalone solar, rather than co-locating, might be the best approach.The two also discuss the evolution of the PPA market, and why now might be the perfect time to acquire project pipeline across Europe.NPM is a leading data, intelligence & events company providing business development led coverage of the US & European power, storage & data center markets for the development, finance, M&A and corporate community.Download our mobile app.
Find out more information about the Psychedelic Pharmacists Foundation (PPF) & Psychedelic Pharmacists Association (PPA):PPF: https://www.psychedelicpharmacistsfoundation.org/PPA: https://psychedelicpharmacist.org/
2 - Robin Shaeffer of Protect Our Coasts NJ, is here this afternoon. What is the Attorney General saying with this latest ruling on windmills? Why is the wind industry failing without subsidies? Why is Mikie Sherrill seem even more driven on this issue than her predecessor? Why is climate change being taught in schools detrimental to environmentalism in the ocean? 210 - Your calls. 215 - Dom's Money Melody! 220 - What is there to say about this Iran deal? Why don't Republicans like it? 225 - Why is the PPA towing instead of ticketing during this World Cup? More calls. 235 - Is Mount Holly having their carnival the same as the mayor keeping the beach open in Jaws? 240 - Should Stacy Garrity do a listening tour? More calls. 250 - The Lightning Round!
12 - The VP takes on The View! Why isn't Mount Holly having their 4th of July carnival? 1215 - Side - associated with France 1220 - We're getting live look-ins to JD Vance shutting down and fact checking the ladies on The View. 1240 - Whatever is happening with The Quakertown Five? 1250 - Your calls. 1 - Jonny Z, owner and proprietor of our favorite summer spot, Mulligans Shore Bar in Wildwood joins us today. Is Dom spouting revisionist history? How will the Jaws debate go? How are the shirts looking this year? Who designs them? 110 - Your calls. 130 - Attorney, 1210 WPHT Host, and Founder of SaveJersey.com is here. What does Matt think of the incident with an ICE agent being struck by a car yesterday? What has led to this moment and the continued threat of violence towards immigration officers? Mount Holly has canceled their July 4th carnival over safety concerns, is that the right move? What can these towns learn from shoretowns? Who is “the real attorney”? 150 - Who was planning an attack at UFC Freedom 250? 2 - Robin Shaeffer of Protect Our Coasts NJ, is here this afternoon. What is the Attorney General saying with this latest ruling on windmills? Why is the wind industry failing without subsidies? Why is Mikie Sherrill seem even more driven on this issue than her predecessor? Why is climate change being taught in schools detrimental to environmentalism in the ocean? 210 - Your calls. 215 - Dom's Money Melody! 220 - What is there to say about this Iran deal? Why don't Republicans like it? 225 - Why is the PPA towing instead of ticketing during this World Cup? More calls. 235 - Is Mount Holly having their carnival the same as the mayor keeping the beach open in Jaws? 240 - Should Stacy Garrity do a listening tour? More calls. 250 - The Lightning Round!
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Send us Fan MailWelcome back to another episode of KOTC! This week Tyler Loong & Jimmy Miller break down everything from MLP Columbus, including the California Black Bears' performance, the continued struggles of the St. Louis Shock despite one of the most expensive rosters in MLP history, and whether the pickleball world is too quick to overreact to a single event.The guys discuss the recent Genie Bouchard trade, Alix Truong's move to the Flames, the Palm Beach Royals' roster decisions, and why one-game-to-11 MLP matches can create some wild results. They also dive into the ongoing debate surrounding international PPA points, John McEnroe's comments about pickleball, and whether top pros should be stronger ambassadors for the sport.Plus: MLP St. Louis preview, Anna Bright and the pressure facing the Shock, championship ceremony controversy, and Tyler's now-infamous Museum of Ice Cream golden spoon story.Timestamps0:00 Intro & Shock Super Sunday jokes 1:35 Club Pickleball Mastermind sponsor 3:01 Pickler Universe update 5:00 Dominator sponsor 7:02 KOTC discount code update 8:37 KOTC All Access membership 9:20 Tyler's New York story begins 10:01 Museum of Ice Cream & the golden spoon controversy 13:54 Pickleball destroying a marriage? 16:45 MLP Columbus recap begins 17:39 Jeannie Bouchard traded to Carolina 18:10 California Black Bears weekend recap 19:35 Miami Hogs stock discussion 20:26 Are people overreacting to MLP results? 22:08 St. Louis Shock concerns 22:50 Why haven't the Shock won yet? 24:58 Should the Shock make a blockbuster trade? 27:06 MLP St. Louis preview 28:50 Breaking down the St. Louis groups 29:53 Rumored Shock player contracts 31:32 Pressure building for St. Louis 32:21 Brooklyn and Utah outlook 33:06 Is Jaume Martinez Vich better on the left? 33:53 Paris Todd controversy & comments 35:26 Relatability of pro pickleball stars 36:59 International PPA points discussion 39:04 Do international points need adjustment? 41:19 LeBron's dark mode strategy 42:14 Should Anna Bright go dark mode? 43:44 Columbus venue, courts & lighting review 44:26 Championship ceremony controversy 47:20 Alex Strong trade analysis 48:56 Columbus team chemistry concerns 49:48 Palm Beach Royals discussion 53:00 John McEnroe, Jeannie Bouchard & pickleball criticism 57:29 What should ambassadors of the sport do? 58:59 Final thoughts on St. Louis 59:45 Why MLP is different than PPA events 1:01:58 OutroWebsite: https://www.tylerloong.com/ KOTC All Accesshttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDiH-sjthLCovD8i79-AkWg/joinCode “KOTC” for insane discounts at: https://www.clubpickleballmastermind.com/kotc Use Code "KOTC" for Big Savings on Vulcan Gear: https://vulcansportinggoods.com/pagesKOTC Merch - Use “KOTC” kitchpickleball.comNEW KOTC DISCORD https://discord.com/invite/kNR65mBemfNEW KOTC CAMEOhttps://www.cameo.com/morekotcInstagram: Tyler's IG - @tyler.loong Jimmy's IG - @jimmymiller_pbKOTC IG - @morekingofthecourt Facebook: / tyler.loong --Support the show
Taiwanese officials have apprehended three individuals accused of smuggling Nvidia chips to China, and we debunk the fears over AI's water use. Welcome back to The Blockspace Podcast! Today for our lead story, we cover the latest Nvidia chip smuggling crackdowns in Taiwan, and then we hop into an interview with Udi Wertheimer of Taproot Wizards to discuss the current state of Ethereum, and why one of its chief proponents sold his entire bag of ETH. Then, Haley Thompson, Director of Energy at Luxor, joins us to talk about how the Iran War is impacting energy markets in the U.S.. Plus, we analyze Google's 200MW solar PPA in Oklahoma, concerns with Strategy's STRC, and debunk the viral criticisms surrounding AI data center water usage. Check out our latest report, “What's a Megawatt Worth?” where we quantify the trillion dollar opportunity for bitcoin miners venturing into the AI sector. Download here: https://megawattreport.com/ Subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates for all of our shows and content: https://newsletter.blockspacemedia.com
Executive producer Mark Infante and pro pickleball star Anna Bright join Kate to talk about PARTNERS, the six-part Prime Video documentary series following the meteoric rise of the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA), the league that, in less than five years, has gone from scrappy upstart to the center of an international phenomenon. Anna Bright is a former Division I tennis standout at UC Berkeley turned top-ranked PPA and MLP pro, known for her aggressive style, lethal two-handed backhand, and high-profile partnership with world No. 1 Anna Leigh Waters. She gives a rare inside look at life on tour: how the sport actually works, what sets it apart, the wild financial transformation of pro pickleball, and the rivalries and romances that make the league must-watch TV. Reality Life with Kate Casey What to Watch List: https://katecasey.substack.com The Story Behind My Podcast: https://katecasey.substack.com/p/i-was-the-narrator-of-my-own-family Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/katecasey Twitter: https://twitter.com/katecasey Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/katecaseyca Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@itskatecasey?lang=en Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/113157919338245 Amazon List: https://www.amazon.com/shop/katecasey Like it to Know It: https://www.shopltk.com/explore/katecaseySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Send us Fan MailKOTC is back breaking down EVERYTHING from the wild MLP Dallas weekend at Pickler Universe — including the controversial new MLP rules, Ben Johns' dominant performance, DreamBreaker strategy, player rankings drama, and whether international PPA events are gaming the system.Tyler and Jimmy discuss the chaos surrounding blue cards, standing restrictions, phone bans, injury replacements, singles specialists, and the biggest winners and losers from the event. They also dive into Utah Black Diamonds, Dallas Flash struggles, Mad Drops' championship run, and what to expect heading into Columbus.Make sure to LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, and join the KOTC All-Access membership for bonus content, gossip, breaking news, and behind-the-scenes discussions.Timestamps 00:00 Intro + AI line call rant00:52 Youth sports & “plastic rings” discussion02:15 Dallas trip recap + Chili's review03:53 Club Pickleball Mastermind sponsor11:48 PPA Asia ranking controversy begins20:34 MLP Dallas recap begins21:50 New MLP rules explained22:35 Fed's blue card comments24:01 Why the new bench rule hurts MLP25:36 Cell phone bans & gambling concerns26:13 Blue card controversy with Bay Area26:55 Utah challenge timeout mistake explained28:17 MLP energy & atmosphere discussion29:02 Injury replacements & alternates chaos31:52 Singles specialists discussion33:22 DreamBreaker importance this season34:45 Communication issues with singles specialists41:09 Biggest losers from MLP Dallas43:48 Utah Black Diamonds analysis45:59 Connor Garnett & Tama breakdown47:35 Pablo Tellez praise + Utah struggles48:31 Surprise performances from the weekend49:17 Best player at MLP Dallas50:07 Young teams analysis (Phoenix & Bay Area)51:36 Luka Mack injury + Joey Wild signing52:31 Columbus MLP preview53:10 Georgia Johnson/JW matchup controversy54:39 Pickler Universe crowd & atmosphere55:32 Columbus team pools breakdown57:00 New MLP format discussion57:47 Columbus preview continues58:33 KOTC All-Access membership plug59:25 Columbus women's lineup debate01:00:14 Questions01:10:28 Final thoughts & outroWebsite: https://www.tylerloong.com/ KOTC All Accesshttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDiH-sjthLCovD8i79-AkWg/joinCode “KOTC” for insane discounts at: https://www.clubpickleballmastermind.com/kotc Use Code "KOTC" for Big Savings on Vulcan Gear: https://vulcansportinggoods.com/pagesKOTC Merch - Use “KOTC” kitchpickleball.comNEW KOTC DISCORD https://discord.com/invite/kNR65mBemfNEW KOTC CAMEOhttps://www.cameo.com/morekotcInstagram: Tyler's IG - @tyler.loong Jimmy's IG - @jimmymiller_pbKOTC IG - @morekingofthecourt Facebook: / tyler.loong --Support the show
Pickleball Tips - 4.0 To Pro, A Pocket-Sized Pickleball Podcast
Michael O'Neal (@solohour) and Mircea Morariu (@brainsdoc) return to the 4.0 to Pro pickleball podcast, recap Michael's visit to the PPA finals in San Clemente and what stands out in person about open pros' hand speed, defense, resets, and dinking pressure, and announce plans to publish more regularly. They discuss CRBN's Barrage paddle (promo code 402P at checkout at crbnpickleball.com) and its power and durability, then dig into DUPR volatility, including ratings dropping after close losses or even wins, the impact of low reliability opponents, and suggestions like weighting later-round matches and the need to “play up” to raise rating. They share tournament stories (including a walk-off ATP and a disastrous windy match) and highlight key improvement areas: stop and hit with a split step, communicate with partners, and let out balls go, plus a drill to understand how little pace keeps balls in. They close with thoughts on sticking to one's strengths despite the game's increasing aggression and what each is currently working on (Mircea's two-handed backhand; Michael refining defensive resets). Peace and love, peace and love. :P M&M Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
SUMMARY DEL SHOW Futuros en rojo al entrar en una semana cargada. Reportan $NVDA, y también $TGT y $WMT. El tono está presionado por rendimientos al alza y petróleo otra vez arriba de $100. El evento es $NVDA. El mercado se juega si el AI trade sostiene valoraciones con 10Y y 30Y subiendo. El movimiento dependerá de guía y de si el beat justifica el precio. $M sube por participación de $BRK.A y $BRK.B. En defensa, el ciclo de gasto sigue empujando a $LMT, $LHX y $RTX, y mantiene en radar ETFs como $XAR y $PPA.
Russell Reading and Mark Chappell, Senior PPA Manager at Zeigo Network, recap highlights from Solar & Storage Live, discussing the recent surge in panel exports, evolving PPA dynamics, and how CFDs are reshaping the UK market. The episode explores battery energy storage (BESS) — scaling challenges, longer-duration trends, revenue streams and practical advice on selling co-located batteries with solar projects, emphasizing value-led approaches over simple price competition.
Send us Fan MailIn this episode of King of the Court, Tyler and Jimmy break down everything from the PPA Finals and San Clemente 500, including partnership rumors, controversial line-calling technology, MLP storylines, and the future of pro pickleball. Jimmy absolutely unloads on the New Jersey 5s logo, while Tyler shares behind-the-scenes stories from competing in the finals himself.We also discuss Ben Johns and ALW continuing their dominance, Kate Fahey's big win, possible men's doubles shakeups, Nico Acevedo's rise, the “Partners” documentary, sponsorship money in pickleball, and why some players may already be searching for new partners. Plus, we talk Pickler Universe, upcoming MLP events, court surface issues, and some wild behind-the-scenes stories from San Clemente.If you enjoy honest conversations, pickleball drama, player insight, and all the latest pro pickleball news, make sure to subscribe and join the KOTC community.00:00 – Intro 00:49 – Jimmy Rips the New Jersey 5s Logo04:06 – Sponsors07:03 – Pickler Universe Giveaway Call11:54 – Why Pickler Universe Is the Best MLP Venue18:37 – San Clemente Parking & Venue Stories19:18 – Court Surface Problems & Dead Spots22:05 – New Line Calling Technology Discussion24:07 – How Accurate Is the AI Line Call System?27:42 – PPA Finals Points System Explained31:39 – Why the Rich Get Richer in Rankings32:24 – Men's Singles Recap (JLG, Garnett & More)34:00 – Players Pulling Out of Events34:40 – “Partners” Documentary Reactions39:10 – Kevin Hart Roast Reactions41:35 – Mixed Doubles Recap42:33 – Ben Johns vs ALW Debate44:50 – Should PPA Randomize Mixed Partners?47:05 – Tyler's Finals Match & Mid-Match Rule Change51:25 – Alshon's Viral Interview Reactions53:59 – Future Partnership Shakeups56:22 – Why Some Partnerships Actually Work01:00:44 – Missing James Ignatowich in the Scene01:01:36 – Competition vs Personality in Pickleball01:02:12 – Sponsorship Money & Paddle Deals01:05:55 – Lighting Issues During Matches01:06:38 – PPA 500 Tournament RecapWebsite: https://www.tylerloong.com/ KOTC All Accesshttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDiH-sjthLCovD8i79-AkWg/joinCode “KOTC” for insane discounts at: https://www.clubpickleballmastermind.com/kotc Use Code "KOTC" for Big Savings on Vulcan Gear: https://vulcansportinggoods.com/pagesKOTC Merch - Use “KOTC” kitchpickleball.comNEW KOTC DISCORD https://discord.com/invite/kNR65mBemfNEW KOTC CAMEOhttps://www.cameo.com/morekotcInstagram: Tyler's IG - @tyler.loong Jimmy's IG - @jimmymiller_pbKOTC IG - @morekingofthecourt Facebook: / tyler.loong --Support the show
Send us Fan MailThis week on KOTC we break down one of the biggest moments in pickleball history — a $225 million investment into the UPA and what it means for the future of the sport.From MLP and PPA growth to players cashing in, KOTC is diving into the real story behind the headlines (and calling out the misinformation along the way).We also recap the Atlanta tournament, including The rise of “Tama Time” and breakout performances. Major upsets and new faces shaking up the brackets Heated moments, body shots, and sportsmanship debates. Why line call issues are getting worse (not better). The dominance of top teams — and who can actually challenge them0:00 Start 5:00 Sponsors 13:32 Big investment 23:13 Atlanta 27:26 Womens Singles31:48 Mens Singles 37:45 Mixed Doubles 40:24 Mens Doubles 54:12 Womens Doubles 1:00:32 The Race 1:05:48 Questions Website: https://www.tylerloong.com/ KOTC All Accesshttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDiH-sjthLCovD8i79-AkWg/joinCode “KOTC” for insane discounts at: https://www.clubpickleballmastermind.com/kotcNext Mastermind is 8/12-8/14 pickleruniverse.com/2026-mlp#ticketoptionsClick the Vulcan link below for a discount to be applied to your order https://vulcansportinggoods.com/pagesClick the Stack Athletics link below for discount to be applied to your orderhttps://www.stackathletics.com/JIMMY62262KOTC Merch - Use “KOTC” kitchpickleball.comNEW KOTC DISCORD https://discord.com/invite/kNR65mBemfNEW KOTC CAMEOhttps://www.cameo.com/morekotcInstagram: Tyler's IG - @tyler.loong Jimmy's IG - @jimmymiller_pbKOTC IG - @morekingofthecourt Facebook: / tyler.loong --Support the show
This interview is disseminated on behalf of Arianne Phosphate Inc.Arianne Phosphate (TSXV: DAN | OTCQB: DRRSF | FRA: JE9N) Head of Strategic and Business Initiatives Brian Ostroff discusses how global supply chain disruptions, particularly in the Strait of Hormuz, are impacting the phosphate market. The conversation also covers Arianne's partnership with Travertine Technologies to produce purified phosphoric acid by combining Arianne's high-purity phosphate concentrate with Travertine's proprietary acid production process.Learn more: https://www.arianne-inc.comWatch the full YouTube interview here: https://youtu.be/PJMYp5Ru4t0And follow us to stay updated: https://www.youtube.com/GlobalOneMedia
Most people [who have been in the industry awhile] have opinions about SunEdison.This is one of the first times Ahmad Chatila and Jigar Shah have sat down together to compare notes on how it actually played out.Both were inside it.Both made the bets.Both saw things others didn't.In this conversation, the two leaders who helped build one of solar's most ambitious companies sit down to examine how it actually worked and why it did not hold.They walk through the operating logic that made SunEdison so competitive. Using semiconductor-style cost modeling to see price declines before the market. Making audacious bets on equipment inputs. Structuring deals that looked aggressive at the time but consistently won.Ahmad explains how lessons from silicon manufacturing shaped that thinking and created a real edge.But they also get clear on what ultimately determined the outcome.The strategy worked.The cost curve was real.The execution was there.What broke was the financial architecture behind it.A capital structure that depended on continuous demand.A global footprint that introduced currency and market friction.And a model that moved faster than investors were willing to follow.In this live conversation, Ahmad Chatila joins Jigar Shah and Nico Johnson for a candid look at the decisions, convictions, and missteps that helped shape one of the most consequential chapters in clean energy history.This is not a sanitized founder story. It is a rare, honest reflection on what worked, what failed, and why the hardest problem in clean energy may still be capital formation, not technology.You will hear how Ahmad anticipated solar cost declines years ahead of the market, why he determined that owning the PPA mattered more than owning construction, and how TerraForm Global became the critical fault line in SunEdison's collapse.The conversation also reaches far beyond the past, into the future of India, currency risk, and the global financing models that still need to be built if clean energy is going to scale where it is needed most.It's one of the most fascinating conversations Nico has had the opportunity to co-lead (and eaves-drop on!)Solar may be cheap, but capital still decides what gets built.If you're trying to scale projects, raise money, or understand where deals actually break, this is worth your time.Press play and decide what you would have done differently.Are there other technologies you've scouted on the frontlines of the Clean Energy Revolution that you think we should be covering here on SunCast?Hit us up - team@suncast.me with your feedback & recommendations.If you want to connect with today's guest, you'll find links to their contact info in the show notes on the blog at https://suncast.media/episodes/.Our Platinum Presenting Sponsor for SunCast is CPS America!SunCast is also sponsored by Nextpower!You can learn more about all the sponsors who help make this show free for you at www.suncast.media/sponsors.Remember, you can always find resources, learn more about today's guest and explore recommendations, book links, and more than 875 other founder stories and startup advice at www.suncast.media.Subscribe to Valence, our weekly LinkedIn Newsletter, and learn the elements of compelling storytelling: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/valence-content-that-connects-7145928995363049472/You can connect with me, Nico Johnson, on:Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/nicomeoLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickalus