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Most guests think it's all about the parks and resort hotels when it comes to Christmas at Walt Disney World, but Disney Springs can give them all a run for their money (and even top one park as a must-do holiday destination). Here's why Disney Springs is a top pick for holiday spirit at Walt Disney World (and the fact that it's free for anyone to visit is just a bonus). The Complete Guide to Disney Springs Christmas 2023The best things to do at Disney Springs this Christmas holiday seasonDisney Springs Christmas Tree Stroll (Free)One of the most underrated traditions at Walt Disney World is the Disney Springs Christmas Tree Stroll. For 2023 the Christmas Tree Stroll has 19 Disney- decorated trees with themes from Disney, Pixar, Star Wars and Super Heros. For the first time you can interact with six of the Christmas trees with your DIsneyBand+ (aka MagicBand+). Look for a DisneyBand+ icon to know which trees are active. There's also a Christmas tree map adventure. Get a map of the trees from City Works Eatery & Pour House, Crystal Arts, Joffrey's Coffee, The LEGO Store or Planet Hollywood. As you see each tree, match a sticker to the location on the map then bring your map to any of these same locations for a special surprise.Meet Santa at Once Upon a Toy (Free)You don't have to pay for a Disney Park to meet a Disney Santa. Santa Claus is at Once Upon a Toy in Disney Springs right up until Christmas Eve, December 24. There is a virtual queue to meet Santa: you cannot just wait in line. Queue spots open daily at 9:00 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 2:00 p.m., 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. in the My Disney Experience app. You must be at Disney Springs to enter the queue. One person can do it for everyone in your group (up to a max of 10 people)Photo Memories of a Disney ChristmasChristmas photos are fun memories, especially when they're Disney vacation Christmas photos. The Disney PhotoPass Studio in the Marketplace at Disney Springs has several holiday-themed Disney virtual backdrops perfect for your Christmas card or however else you want to use them. It can be hit and miss with the photographers here, but it's still worth a try. Disney Snow falling and Holiday Entertainment (Free)The magic of snow falling on Walt Disney World does just happen in the parks. As sundown nears, head to the the Town Center tree and keep your eyes on the skies for a little holiday magic. Plus, watch for holiday-themed stilt walkers, rollerblading snowflakes, a Santa Sleigh DJ, and more surprises bringing a festive ambiance throughout all of Disney Springs.Christmas Holidays Means Festive Food and DrinkThere are over 60 places at Disney Springs to eat and drink, including Jock Lindsey's Holiday Bar, which is all spruced up for the holidays. So be sure to grab some cheer while visiting Disney Springs!Christmas Shopping at Disney SpringsWhether you need a gift someone on your list or something special for yourself, you'll find it all at Disney Springs. You can browse for almost anything here, so leave yourself time if Christmas shopping is on your checklist.Thank You for Listening to the Disney Travel PodcastThank you very much for listening to this episode, Amelia and I hope that you enjoyed it. If you did, we would be very grateful if you could rate, review and subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts/iTunes (or on whichever app you choose to listen). A brief review about what you liked most about an episode truly helps to keep the show going by exposing it to new listeners. We look forward to continue producing new episodes each week.Sharing the podcast with your friends and on social media is also extremely helpful and very much appreciated.Contact 1923 Main StreetThank you for listening to the Disney Travel News Podcast at 1923MainStreet.com. As always, we love to get feedback and questions from our listeners and to hear your suggestions and ideas for future episodes.Shop unique and original Disney-inspired t-shirts, sweatshirt, hoodies, yoga leggings, dresses, swimwear and more at the Emporium at 1923 Main StreetPlease be sure to follow along on X, Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook.Thank you for listening and have a magical day!Mike Belobradic and Amelia Belobradic--Media provided by Jamendo

Today we are talking about The Needs Review Queue Initiative, What it is, and How it's helping to improve Drupal with guest Stephen Mustgrave. We'll also cover Translation Management Tool as our module of the week.       For show notes visit: www.talkingDrupal.com/426 Topics Can you give an overview of Needs Review Issue Queue Initiative Is the bug smash initiative related to the needs review issue queue Is this the same as the needs review bot How many issues were in the Needs Review status when you started How many issues today How long did it take until it was manageable How long do items stay on average Who else is helping Let's talk through the pagination heading level issue What help can the community provide How does someone get involved Do you think this helps with burnout for core committers What's the future of the initiative Resources Needs Review Queue Bot Needs Review Issue Queue Pagination heading level issue Guests Stephen Mustgrave - smustgrave Hosts Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Melissa Bent - linkedin.com/in/melissabent merauluka MOTW Correspondent Martin Anderson-Clutz - @mandclu Translation Management Tool (TMGMT) Brief description: Have you ever wanted to automate the process of creating content translations on your Drupal site? There's a module for that. Brief history How old: created in Jan 2012 Versions available: 7.x-1.0-rc3 and 8.x-1.15, the latter of which works with Drupal 9 and 10 Maintainership Actively maintained Test coverage Documentation Number of open issues: 595, 139 of which are bugs against the 8.x branch Usage stats: 8,766 sites Maintainer(s): Berdir, a very prolific maintainer in his own right, who also supports well known projects like Search API, Token, Paragraphs, and many more Module features and usage Provides a tool set for automating the process of creating translations for your site content, as well as strings used within the site like menus, interface text, and so on Works with more than 30 translation service providers, including many that leverage human translators, but also AI-based services like DeepL and OpenAI Also has a plugin system to determine what text needs to be translated, so it can be easily adapted to very custom needs With the module installed that Translate tab on your nodes changes to have buttons to request a translation in each language Once a translation has been requested, it will run through states like unprocessed, active, and finished Also provides an option for Continuous Translation, where new and updated content is automatically submitted for translation Allows for professional translation at scale, using whatever kind of service works best for your site The need for robust translation capabilities is what originally got me started using Drupal, so it's great to see that there are enterprise-grade options for sites that need to manage translations at scale

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, Founder of Rubber Cheese.Download the Rubber Cheese 2023 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the annual benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcastCompetition ends on 20th December 2023. The winner will be contacted via Twitter.  Show references: https://vectis.ventures/https://robin-hill.com/https://blackgangchine.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominic-wray-a1b52766/Dominic Wray is the Parks Director of Vectis Ventures, the parent company of the Isle of Wights two leading attractions; Robin Hill, and the UK's oldest theme park, Blackgang Chine. After 7 years of running Blackgang Chine as the Park Manager, he stepped into his role as Parks Director to play a vital position in the planning and execution of the longer term business strategy. Having been in this role for around 15 months, he has led on some big changes and transformations within the business, as well as navigating what has been a challenging year for the leisure industry as a whole. Dominic attributes much of his success, and enjoyment of his career to the people in it. Sitting on the Management Committee for BALPPA, he is a huge advocate for industry networking and enabling peer to peer learning opportunities. He then uses this platform as a way to the develop the team that he is so passionate about, allowing them to flourish into the industry known experts of their fields. Transcriptions: Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. Each episode, I speak with industry experts from the attractions world. On today's episode, I speak with Dominic Wray, Parks Director at Vectis Ventures. We talk about Blackgang Chine, the 180 year old attraction, and Dominic shares his three top tips on transforming processes and developing superstar people. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue. Welcome to the podcast, Dominic. It's great to have you on today. Dominic Wray: Thanks for having me. Looking forward to it. Kelly Molson: Everyone says that at the start, and then I give them icebreaker questions, and they hate me. But this is how the podcast always starts, so you have to do them. Right. If you could enter the Olympics for anything, what would you be Olympic level at? And we're not talking it doesn't have to be sports here. It could be like baking or Olympic level complainer. Anything goes. What's your Olympic level at? Dominic Wray: I think I would actually answer the sports based question answered that. I always, when I was growing up, wanted to play in the NBA. Basketball was a big passion of mine. So I'd say I'd want to enter the Olympics as a basketball player. Kelly Molson: Okay. And do you play now? Is this something that you are actually good at? Dominic Wray: Not so much now, no. I don't want to use the old adage if I got injured, but I did. Kelly Molson: Oh, no. Dominic Wray: We'll never know if I could have made it or not. Kelly Molson: Good one. Have you ever been mistaken for someone famous? Dominic Wray: Yeah, actually, yes, twice. Someone once said to me I look like Joel Dormot. I think he's a comedian. And some of the team seemed to think I look like Mark Wright. Kelly Molson: I know this one. So I saw the picture that Laura Baxter posted of your LinkedIn. I have to say, I did a second look, Mark. Dominic Wray: Yeah. I mean, I'll take it. I think Mark Wright's the right looking chap, so could be worse, I suppose. Kelly Molson: Okay. All right. A final one. What one thing would you make a law that isn't already? I've got a good one for this. So if I could be in charge of laws, I would make it a law that nobody could just stop in the middle of the pavement and look at their mobile phone, or walk upstairs with their mobile staring at their mobile phone, not actually looking where they're going, because it just makes me want to swipe people's legs away. Because they just stop in front of you or they walk really slowly up the stairs. That would be one of mine. Dominic Wray: I'd go with, everyone needs to learn how to go through security at an airport. There's nothing more frustrating when you get there and the person in front of you isn't aware of how to go through and then there's a bit that delays the queues. Kelly Molson: Good one. That's a really good one. They get quite shouty, the security people now, don't they? When you're queuing up like, they're shouting at you about your liquids and your jackets and you take your belts off, and I'm like, "If I take my belt off, my trousers are going to fall down. I'm not even halfway there yet." I like that one. Okay, what's your unpopular opinion? Dominic Wray: My unpopular opinion is that motorists ruined the road for cyclists. Which I'm sure will be incredibly controversial. Yeah, that's my unpopular opinion. Kelly Molson: This is going to be a controversial one and I really want to know what you think about this one, listeners. Yeah, I don't agree with you, but you are a hardcore cyclist. I'm going op guess.Dominic Wray: I do pay my road tax, drive a car myself, but yeah, someone that very much enjoys road cycling. Yeah, that is definitely my viewpoint on other motorists. Kelly Molson: I think there needs to be made room for both on the roads. There's not sufficient cycle lanes in areas where there should be sufficient cycle lanes. Although I live just outside Cambridge and Cambridge is pretty good for cyclists. If this was me, I would ban cyclists from cycling through the city centre of Cambridge, because the amount of times I've nearly been run over by cyclists in the city centre is quite a lot. Dominic Wray: I will say. Not every cyclist is respectful of most receivers. It is a two way street, quite literally. Do you understand that? Kelly Molson: I like this. Right, okay, listeners, what do you think about the unpopular opinion? I feel like I've just got myself in hot water with all my Cambridge cycling friends as well. Dominic Wray: They're all going to be kicking off. Kelly Molson: We're all in trouble. We're in trouble together, Dom. It's fine. Right, tell us a little bit about your background, because you have come into attractions not from an attractions background, and I always find this quite fascinating, how people end up within the sector. You've come from banking, right? Dominic Wray: Yes, yes. I started off my career when I left school selling houses, and then I moved into banking after that. I used to work for Lloyds Bank and one of my clients was our current HR director here, lady called Paula, and I used to see her every year. She'd come in, talk about this great place that she worked and all these fun projects she was working on and how magical it was. And I remember sort of sat there thinking, "Gosh, your job sounds really interesting and you're working on these varied projects and you're getting to experience loads of cool things." She was talking to me about fireworks events and dinosaurs and cowboys and pirates. I was thinking, "I'm saya, talking about savings accounts and loans and boring stuff that comes to banking." Dominic Wray: And then one day I saw an advert in our local paper on the island for a Park Manager role for Blackgang Chine. Which is the park that Paula worked at, and I read through it and I thought, “Okay, yeah, I can do this. It sounds like I've got the skill set to do this.” Not really knowing anything about running a visitor attraction at all. So off I went to the interview, got my job and I thought, “Oh, great, yeah, if I can sell houses and I can run a bank, the only I could run a visitor attraction.” It's just taking those skills and applying them across into a different sector. Dominic Wray: Eight or nine years later, still here now and lot of a big learning curve along the way, but yeah, not a traditional route into it, but Blackgang on the island is a very iconic visitor attraction. All the children on the island have been there, had very fond memories of coming here as a child and I just thought, “Wow, what an opportunity to wake up every day and go to work in a fun”, magical place that's the complete opposite from the confines of a bank. So I thought, “Yeah, I'm going to back myself and go for it and do it.”Kelly Molson: How weird is that? Knowing that you went there as a child as well and now you actually run the place. That's massive, isn't it? Dominic Wray: Yeah, when I'm walking around, there's lots of areas of the park that are still the same and happened for many years and they carry great sentiments or walking through certain areas and they hear certain sounds or certain smells in the park and it takes you back to being a kid every day. So it's quite a magical place to work. Kelly Molson: That's really sweet. And so what was that transition like? Because I've just got this vision of you kind of like rocking up on the first day and going, "Where do I start?". Dominic Wray: Yeah. So on day one when I arrived, the gentleman who was doing the role beforehand had left. So I had a laptop set of keys and they sort, "Off you go.. And I was like, "OK, I've got to have to work this out", which I did. I was lucky enough to go to IAAPA in Orlando and I went on a week long training course, management course there around Park Management of Visitor Attractions, which I think was really interesting, really useful, gave me a great insight into the attraction space. And then I've worked through that by learning about the various different departments and functionalities of the business along the way. But it was a big change for me to go from working for a large corporate company to moving to a family owned company. Dominic Wray: Blackgang Chine has been owned by the same family for 180 years, which is the Dabell family. So it was a big shift for me from having multiple layers of people and it taking weeks to get a decision to just having to go and speak to one person as long as they say, "Yes", you're on your way. So it's enjoyable working for a much more dynamic organization where you can pivot more quickly. And that was sort of one of the surprising things, having come from a bigger company, how quickly things can move and change. But I think that's a real positive fallout. Kelly Molson: Yeah, definitely. I love that you did like a crash course, you did like your crash course, your driver's course, you didn't do those week intensive course, you did your weeks intensive course of being a park manager and that was it into the job. So what does your role cover then? Because I know you operate across two parks at the moment, so you've got Blackgang Chine, you've got Robin Hill. What does that look like for you in terms of your role? Dominic Wray: So my role sees me overseeing the parks and the strategic position. So I look after the business of the group as a whole. I was previously the park manager of Blackgang and then over the last twelve months transitioned to a new role, Parks Director, which sees me overseeing the group from more of a strategic position. So everything from opening calendars, pricing strategy, events that we're running, health and safety, you name it, all falls under my room within the business.Kelly Molson: I love that. I guess all of those things must have been the steep learning curve from banking where you clearly are very senior role, but probably not juggling quite so much in a day.Dominic Wray: Yeah, I liken it to running lots of micro businesses. We've got a retail business, food and beverage business and events business, health and safety compliance element of the business. So yeah, lots of micro businesses within the big business as a whole really. But yeah, the regulation from banking around strict processes and procedures does translate quite nicely into business and also into health for safety as well. Kelly Molson: Yeah. And there's some of the things we're going to talk about today. So we've got three topics to cover which I'm really interested in. We've got processes and systems, we've got peer learning that we're going to talk about and then we're going to talk about people and team development. So what you just said there about what you've brought, that's one of the things that I'm really interested in terms of the processes and systems because you've been through quite a transformative process in your organisation with kind of people and process actually. What have you been able to bring from banking into the attractions world that's kind of helped you with those processes and systems? Dominic Wray: I would say I learned a lot from working in a bank. One of the things was how not to do things, I'd say. In terms of life in a bank is very black and white. It's almost sort of a computer says no culture. And that really taught me that actually in real business you've got to operate a bit more in the gray. And it's much more around how can we actually make things happen and how can we do things rather than actually that's not possible. So I always say to feeling, great, well, how are we going to work around that? How are we going to make that possible? So, since I've joined the business, we've gone through quite a large transformation. Dominic Wray: It was fair to say that when I joined, the business was very much running in a sort of historic, family orientated way of we've always done it that way. That was a phrase I heard quite a lot when I first started this. I know we've done it like that because we've always done it that way. There's sort of a lot of, "Okay, explain to me why we've done it that way and what's the approach to that?". And then over the years, we've moved into using far more digital systems. So I'm big on making sure the team can see at the various levels of the organisation, the bigger picture. And I think that then helps them understand exactly what's going on in the business as a whole. And I think that through digital optimisation of systems and processes, that really helps them do that. Dominic Wray: So, for example, on the ride side of the fence, we bought in Mobaro, which is quite a well known safety system for our daily inspections. And that just gives far better visibility right the way from the ride operator, the person checking the rides, to the duty manager, all the way up to our owner if he wants to go in on a day and see what's gone on at 10:00 before the site opens. So it's really been around pivoting the organisation into becoming early adopters of technology and systems and processes. Dominic Wray: We've also recently joined the LEAP scheme, which was quite a big jump for our industry to move away from a historical scheme that had been in place for a number of years. And were some of the first, well, one of the first parks to join that scheme.Kelly Molson: For our listeners, what is the LEAP scheme? What does that mean? Dominic Wray: So we have our rides basically inspected by an independent inspection body. And LEAP is the scheme that then oversees and checks off the regulation of that inspection body in a sort of basic format. But it had historically been done by a different organisation and LEAP have come into the marketplace. And taken a different approach to how that is done, which gives far more transparency to the operators and also the customers that are coming into sites to visit as well. But it was quite a big thing for us to say, "Okay, we're going to move away from that historic way of doing it into a newer way of doing things.". But I think as a company, because we can make decisions quite quickly, we don't have a big gain of sign off to go through as a team. Dominic Wray: We can move quite quickly on things such as that as well. Kelly Molson: I really like that kind of transparent approach that you talked about because it feels like that would help with kind of unifying the kind of organisational culture as well because people have a bit more visibility about what's going on behind the scenes, so to speak. Dominic Wray: Yeah. And I think giving people the most amount of information you can give them within their job role and position within the organisation, that level of transparency just allows them to do their job better. Because if they understand what the key metrics that they're working towards and how they're performing and actually how decisions they make on a day to day basis impact the bigger picture of how the attraction performs over a 12, 24 month ongoing period, that makes them feel much more empowered. Because then they can see, actually, I've made this change over here, and that made an impact onto the bottom line over here. Kelly Molson: Yeah, absolutely. It gives people that sense of ownership about what they're doing as well, doesn't it? Dominic Wray: Definitely. Kelly Molson: So what do you think have been the biggest transformations that you've been able to make over that period? Dominic Wray: I would say collaborative working. The organisation used to very much be I look after food and beverage, I look after retail, I look after operations and we don't talk to each other. That's my lane. Kelly Molson: So those little micro companies just kind of like they worked in their little silos and didn't really talk. Dominic Wray: Yeah, exactly. Whereas what we've done across a number of years is change the structure of the way the parks run on a day to day basis. So each of the heads of those departments do take turns of doing duty management shifts. So that gives them the opportunity to experience the park as a complete 360, interact with different departments, understand how other departments work and function. Most importantly, that gets them in front of customers in different areas of the business as well, then that helps them understand, okay, in retail or operations, we're allowing people into the park in this way. If we do this is a domino effect that then actually knocks onto something that could happen in food and beverage later on. Dominic Wray: So I think again, that goes back to giving them that bigger picture of what's going on in the company and for them to think that actually we are all one team and what someone does in one department does have a knock on effect and impact onto other departments as well. And I think that's really taken place by opening the business up a lot more. Historically, were quite closed off as an organisation, and I've been very big on getting the staff out, seeing other attractions, going, speaking to other people in other attractions, finding out how things work in other parks, other businesses. Dominic Wray: And I think that's really then enabled us to open up a lot more and we've done that also through being members of BALPPA as well, which has been quite a key point of being able us to open up the business a lot more and experience the team, to experience things outside the company as well.Kelly Molson: Yeah. So peer learning is one of the things that I'd love to explore a bit more, because I think just going back to what you said about those organisational visits, you've got a few team members that are really active on LinkedIn, so I see a lot of the things that you do as an organisation, and it's really impressive. So you do strategic team visits to other attractions to look at how they're operating, how their attractions are running, what events. You even go to some of their events and see how they've been put on. And that comes back to this whole thing about the sector being really supportive and collaborative with each other, because that never used to happen in my world. In agency world, we are far more open now than we ever were. Kelly Molson: But I couldn't imagine ten years ago me rocking up to someone else's agency and going, "Could I just sit in on your team while you work through this project and see how your project management process works?". Piss off. I would be able to do that to a number of agencies that I know there. They'd be really happy to share, but it feels like it's kind of always been that way in the sector for attractions. Is that the case? Dominic Wray: Yeah, 100%. I mean, that was one of the biggest things that shocked me coming into a new career, was actually you can go and ask people for help and ask them how they do things and they're more than willing to share the challenges and issues that they have, but also sharing the solutions to those problems as well. I mean, when I worked at Lloyds, I can't imagine ever walking over the road to Natwest and going, "Hi, can you explain to me how you do this?". They'd say, “Bugger of.”Kelly Molson: You all will have exactly the same problem. So working together to solve that problem surely helps the greater good, rather than. Dominic Wray: Everyone has the same problems. They just have it on varying scales of economy, so we might have it on this scale. You go to a bigger park, they've got the same problem, just magnified by ten. Kelly Molson: Yeah, absolutely. But you mentioned BALPPA, which I know is an incredible organisation that you're members of. How has being kind of a member of that organisation what's it brought to the attraction and to yourself? Dominic Wray: I think it's really been transformational for the attraction, myself and the team. I think having an organisation that these business and individuals completely immerse themselves in from a learning standpoint is so valuable to me. I think it's almost like a black book. It is a black book of other attractions that you can gain access to for their knowledge, experience, processes and procedures. And as someone that came into the industry having not worked in it previous to that, I found the organisation so valuable in terms of my own personal learning and the learning of the site as well. So as an attraction, we've massively benefited from being members of BALPPA. We hosted the summer conference this year, which was a big deal for us. Dominic Wray: So everyone BALPPA came to the island and they spent a day at Blackgang Chine and Robin Hill, and we hosted a gala evening dinner at Robin Hill, which was fantastic. And that was great to show it off to peers and people within the industry and for them to kind of understand about what we do. Because obviously I go along to a lot of events with a lot of the other team and we're all sort of banging the drum about the company. But it's great for people to come and experience that firsthand as well. So I think it's helped broaden the profile of the business and also the individuals within the team as well. I think that's been brilliant for the team's personal development, but also really for their learning. Dominic Wray: The fact that there's people in the organisation that you can go and talk to about everything from ticketing strategies through to mechanical issues you've got on rides, or the fact that people are so open that you can ring them up and say, "Hey, I've got this issue with this, how do I fix it?"  I'll bring this chap, he's the person you need to go and call about this. Or, I'm a bit stuck for this spare part. Yeah, phone this person, they'll be able to get it to you quicker." And everyone's so supportive and willing to help each other. It's quite amazing to see, as I said, coming from a space where that is the complete opposite of that. It's brilliant to be involved in an organisation where if all the attractions are winning, the space is winning and the industry is winning. Dominic Wray: And I think everyone's mature enough to realise that we've all got our own individual niches and we're not all competing against each other. So actually, by helping each other and people having amazing experiences across all attractions, it just benefits the industry as a whole. Kelly Molson: Yeah, completely. It just comes back to that whole working in partnerships and not in silos again, doesn't it? You mentioned about people, this is the other thing that I really want to talk about, because you've got brilliant people that work at your organisation and you call them superstar people, which I really love. I guess BALPPA is one of the things that you've put in place to kind of help them because like you said, other team members, not just yourself, can go along to these meetings and they can benefit from the peer to peer learning that you get at those events. And actually just the networking, not even just I've been to a BALPPA event. And what struck me about it was the knowledge that was shared at that meeting. Kelly Molson: And what struck me about it was the knowledge that was shared at that meeting, it was so authentic and so transparent, actually, that you got a lot from just the talks, but actually you get even more from just networking from people that are in the same position as you, at a different attraction again, have those same kind of challenges and same kind of things that they need to talk about. And being able to just have them on speed dial is so beneficial. What else have you kind of put in place to help develop some of your superstar people there, though? Dominic Wray: So, as you mentioned, I think the team going along to BALPPA events has been a big thing for them. I think when you're doing your day to day job, you're running at 100 miles an hour, it's quite hard to sort of benchmark yourself against other people in the industry. And I've noticed that when team members have gone along to BALPPA events, they sort of come back with a sense of,” I could hold a conversation with someone from a bigger park. I'm competent at knowing what I'm doing”, which I know that they know that, but I think that helps reinforce confidence within them as well. And I just think they're fantastic spaces for developing the team's personal confidence and, as you said, their wider personal network as well, and knowledge and understanding. Dominic Wray: I mean, we've seen some of our team members, Laura, who's one of our superstars in our marketing team, she did a keynote speech on Christmas, at the BALPPA marketing conference. And it was so good. I was so proud to see her go there, deliver that, she'd been in the office working hard on it, and then just to stand up and absolutely smash it and see people's reactions to her explaining about that piece was just brilliant. And James, who oversees our site and services, he's due to do a talk on the install of our new rides at the latest BALPPA for Health and Safety Conference that's coming up as well. So I think it's brilliant for the team to be able to be on that platform and develop themselves as well. Dominic Wray: Other things that we do in an organisation as well. I think I'm really big on giving the team space to be able to do their job safely. I think it's good to allow them to give them the space to they're the experts in that area. I very much see my role is overseeing that and making sure all the pieces are coming together. But quite often I will say to them, "Guys, what do you think about this particular thing? Or how should we approach that?". Because ultimately, they're the experts within the business, within their chosen fields, and I'm big on giving them the opportunity to be the experts in those areas. I also think it's great to take some time out to learn more about them as individuals and their roles and their interests within those roles as well. Dominic Wray: So, for example, when Laura joined the business, went on a two day marketing course together. It was a conference that she wanted to attend, but I said, "I'll go with you. I'm keen to learn more about the in depth elements of marketing and I think it'd be a good shared experience for us.". And I think that then just enables the team to feel, actually I'm interested in their department and how they work and operate. And I think there's always something that you can learn from everyone that you meet and interact with. So I'm big on doing that. And then the final thing I'll say is really let them be a star in their area and promote that. Dominic Wray: I mean, the example of Laura with the marketing conference talk was brilliant. It was great to see her on stage representing the business, but also the spotlight was on her and it was about her in that moment, which was fantastic. And I think that's really good when the team feel like they can be superstars in their own arenas of their chosen fields. Kelly Molson: I love that. I remember that talk really vividly. It was really heartwarming, actually. And there was a really personal element to it as well. And you could see how much she was connected to the subject matter that she was speaking to as well. This is something that we talked about prior to coming on today, about how you've kind of supported your team as well as they kind of move through their careers and they move through what they're doing at the attractions. And one of the things that you've really helped them start to develop is their personal brands. Such a hot topic. It's one I love talking about. Kelly Molson: It's something that I've really tried to do as best as I can over the last kind of I think just prior to the pandemic, actually, I kind of started to think about what is it that I want people to remember me about, what's important to me? And if I've got a platform, how am I going to use it to talk about the things that I think are important and that other people should hopefully find as important as me. Kelly Molson: And I think what you've done there is kind of facilitate that for your team, which is really lovely to see because everybody, like you said, is working for the whole of the organisation, but they all have their own kind of individual specialisms. How have you kind of helped people or encouraged people to develop their personal brands? What are the kind of things that you've done there? Dominic Wray: I've encouraged them to get out there, engage with other people, engage within different networks. I think LinkedIn is a great tool for that as well. I think the team all do lots of amazing things every day that we all see and know that they do. But I'm big on encouraging them about, shouting about that. I think as general British people, we're quite sort of we don't like self promotion too much, don't like talking about ourselves too much. And I think having Laura, to be fair, join the team earlier in the year, who's big on her LinkedIn content and big on talking about what's going on out there, has really helped the team and pushed everyone forwards with doing that. And I've really encouraged them. Dominic Wray: You might not think anyone's going to take value from the content you're putting out or discussing that, but actually they will because there's probably someone somewhere looking at that thinking, "How do I overcome that problem?” Or “I've got a similar ride to that we're just in the process of refurbishing, maybe I can reach out to them and find out how they're doing that." So really believing in themselves and that they really are superstars in their area and they should be promoting that and talking about how great they are in the businesses that they work for. Kelly Molson: Have you seen that encouragement kind of help with some of the team's own self confidence as well? They're kind of braver about putting themselves forward for certain things. Dominic Wray: Yeah, yeah, massively. James, who oversees both of our sites from the site and services viewpoint, started off within the maintenance team one of those sites and he's worked his way up through the business. Now he's responsible for health and safety across both of them. He oversaw the install of our new ride which went in at the beginning of the year as well and it's been fantastic to see him grow and his confidence grow and develop within that. And now he's been asked to go forward, as I said, to do a talk next month about that ride install going ahead, which will be his first sort of public speaking gig, and I'll be very much there to support him along with that as well. So it's been great to watch the team develop and grow along with that and their confidence as well. Kelly Molson: That's really lovely to see. Well, I think in the past, people probably haven't wanted to highlight certain people, do you know what I mean? If we put these people out in the world, other people might steal them from us. But I think you have to develop your people and you have to let them shine in the roles that they're in because they'll just get better and better and better. So it's really lovely to see that you're encouraging that. I think it's such an important part of running a successful organisation now.Dominic Wray: Yeah. And I think the team are happier from that. I think if you give them the freedom to go out and experience other attractions and speak to other people at various different levels of organisations, they feel happier where they are. I think if you kind of constrain them and say, "Oh no, we can't allow you to go and speak to these people. We can't allow you to go and visit them because they might poach you or they might offer you a different job." Then they're going to be thinking, "Actually, maybe the grass is greener on the other side.". Kelly Molson: This is not the company for me after all. Dominic Wray: Yeah, exactly. And I think there's nothing wrong with them being having their own personal brand within the wider brand of the business. I think that's good for them. Kelly Molson: Yeah, I think so too. It's really brilliant to see what you've been developing there. Right. I would love it if you could share some top tips for our listeners. We always get our guests to share top tips. Three top tips on processes and people development that you'd encourage other attractions to adopt. Dominic Wray: My first one would definitely be, and I've already mentioned it, but get your team out visiting other attractions. Can't express enough how much they'll learn from those experiences. I think if you set it out in the right position to say, "Okay, guys, we're going to go and visit this event, this is what we're going to be looking for. This is what I want us to take back from that. When we come back, we're going to have a clear debrief to go through key learnings of that and how we're going to implement that into our business. You can still obviously have a great enjoyable experience."Dominic Wray: That's one of the best things about working in this industry is going on an R & D trip, but getting to go on a couple of roller coasters and get scared, go to the scare mazes or whatever else you're going to be doing. I think it's great team building as well. It's great for the team to go and see that. And what I find amazing is it can be anything from the way a site manages its waste or the layout of a queue line or actually I liked on the way in how this person upselled this ticket for me. There's so many things you can gain from that. Dominic Wray: I think when you're going into an attraction, looking at that from that perspective, I just think it's brilliant and there's no kind of training course that you can send anyone on that will deliver that value that they get from going and experiencing it firsthand. Kelly Molson: I'm just laughing at the excitement about waste as well like, "Yeah, we could see how they process their waste." That is exciting. Dominic Wray: That would be something that James would probably come back to say to me. But that's what I mean. Everyone of the team's interested in different things, so it's good. Kelly Molson: On this topic of the visits, do you always go to places that are quite similar to yours as well? Or do you do visits that are in complete contrast to what you do as well? To see the difference. Dominic Wray: We'll do a bit of both. Probably a good example is when we set up our Halloween event over October, when we very first did that, went to visit Tully's Farm, which was sort of, in our eyes, as the gold standard of scare attractions. The first time went there, we just went to see what is it as an attraction? How does that concept work? The overview sort of headline of that. And then over the years, as we've developed Terror Island, which is our Halloween event, which we run here, over October, we've been back to Tully's on numerous occasions. We've had Stuart, who runs that, come down to the site as well, and we're then looking at that from a different perspective. Dominic Wray: So then we moved on to, "Okay, how do we look at improving through, how do we look at improving guest experience? How do we look at upselling F&B? Where are the entrance and exit points of the mazes in relation to the broader site? How's the actual site laid out?". So we're then going back and looking at it in a sort of more detailed layer of that. But no, as a team, we'll go to much larger parks, much smaller parks, because I think there's things you can learn from all different sizes of attractions. We went to Hobbledown last year, which was an interesting experience, and we saw their water pillow there, and we actually put one of those into Robin Hill this year, which was one of our most successful attractions. Dominic Wray: So the guys there were fantastic at explaining about the pros and cons of that attraction, which then enabled us to make an informed decision as to whether to purchase one of those or not. But, yeah, I think there's things to be learned from all different types of attractions. If people are going to them with the right mindset of thinking, “What am I going to learn?”Kelly Molson: What's the objective here? What's the takeaway? Okay, great. So that's top tip one. Dominic Wray: Top tip two would be celebrate personal wins for the team and then let them be stars in that moment. I think when someone in the team does something really well and they've achieved something, it's really important to broadcast that to everyone, let everyone know about that and let them shine in that moment. And for it to be about them as an individual, not so much about the company as a whole. It's them in that moment, and you want to make them feel valued and positive about whatever the experiences that they've achieved. Kelly Molson: Nice. Good tip. Dominic Wray: And then my third one would be let people make mistakes in a safe manner and learn from it. I think in a working environment, people are quite often aware when they've made a mistake or something's gone wrong. They don't leave someone jumping up and down. Yeah, exactly. You know, when you're like, "That didn't work. I know it's not worked well," but I think allowing them to make mistakes in a safe, controlled manner that they can then learn from, because I think quality people understand when something's gone wrong, and they equally understand how to fix it and put their hands up and say, yeah, that's happened. But we're quite quick to acknowledge that and move on to how we're going to resolve it and not allow that to occur again. Kelly Molson: Excellent tips. Okay, as an organisation, what's your biggest opportunity and also your biggest challenge as we head into the winter months? Because I think you're coming to do you close over the season? Do you close down? Dominic Wray: Yes. So Saturday is our last operating day, and we close from November and we open in March. Kelly Molson: Wow. Gosh, you really are coming up to the end of the season. Okay, so what's your biggest opportunity and your biggest challenge as we head into that time? Dominic Wray: It was quite a big challenge, and opportunity for the company is that we made a difficult decision to put one of our sites on the market and we're looking to sell Robin Hill. So that will be the biggest challenge and opportunity for the business in recent years, to be fair. I think it presents a great opportunity for the business to double down and invest further into Blackgang, which is 180 years old this year. So it's a big birthday year for us. Kelly Molson: Incredible. Dominic Wray: And I think that will enable us to be here for another 180 years. Not that I might still be around at that point in time. Kelly Molson: You certainly won't look like Mark Wright at that point. Dominic Wray: No, look like a very aged Mark Wright. But I think it's the biggest challenge for the team and myself personally as we reshape the business and pivot into a new direction, but I equally think it's an exciting one to see what will come out on the other side of that as well. Kelly Molson: It is exciting, isn't it? I can imagine that having two parks to oversee can be a stretch at sometimes in terms of resource and also in terms of strategy and how things work, because I guess that they work similar but different. So, yeah, I can see that as a huge opportunity and something to I guess it's kind of a nice thing to focus on for the start of the new season as well, that's kind of progressing. And then you've got this really big opportunity to focus on this one thing and make it as the very best it could possibly be. Dominic Wray: Yeah. And the team have really taken to it. They're really passionate about driving Blackgang forwards and are very excited about the changes and the plans we've got for the next year and coming years as well. So it's been well embraced by them. Kelly Molson: Good. And I guess you're ending the season on a high as well, because we talked a little bit about your Halloween event, but it has been a really successful Halloween event this year, hasn't it? Dominic Wray: Yes, it's gone down really well. We made the sun top ten events for Halloween attractions. So yeah, it's been really well received. It's a personal favourite of mine. Absolutely love it. It's been a complete passion project for the team, and the team are always up for every event we do, but this is one that they really get behind and are in every possible conceivable bit of detail. And as someone that never used to like horror films and hated being scared, I now absolutely love going through scare attractions and love scaring other people even more than that. Complete 360 for me as well. So you don't know what you like until you try it. Kelly Molson: Exactly. You just never know where you never knew where this role was going to take you, did you? When you started this, Dominic, you never knew you were going to end up as a horror fan. Dominic Wray: Yeah, exactly. Now I'm like, "Oh no, we need to make that person over there look more dead. Or how loud we need the chainsaw louder, or that guy doesn't look scary enough." Way more interesting than ices and loans. Kelly Molson: I love it. A massive learning curve and 180 years old. I mean, that is a phenomenal achievement. There can't be many other attractions that are coming up for that age. So this is really incredible. I think you've had a really brilliant year. Can't do this podcast without talking about Radio One as well because I've been aware of Blackgang Chine for quite a while, but I think it maybe isn't on the radar of many people because it's Isle of Wight, it's not on the mainland. But I was driving back from the gym one morning and I listened to Radio One. Kelly Molson: I listened to the Greg James breakfast show on Radio One in the mornings and they were doing this thing where they had to find one of the presenters and all the presenters were hidden up and down all over the country, and they were talking about the Isle of Wight and they kept saying, Blackgang Chine. And I was like, they're talking about Blackgang Chine. Let Laura know. I need to pull over and let Laura know. Obviously she already knew that you were being talked about, but I think how many times did he say Blackgang Chine? It was a lot. Dominic Wray: It was a lot. I think it was over 50 times. I mean, my phone was going mental, mate. If you've got the presenters because it's because we have an area called Area Five with large animatronic dinosaurs, and they thought we'd hidden them down there and they were like, "God, you're really good at keeping a secret. I can't believe you haven't told us this.". And I'm like, "No, honestly, they're not here.". I don't want to actually believe me. Well, clearly no one did. Kept ringing up Radio One to talk about it, but that was a great bit of brand profile for the business and I guess sort of showed that people were associating the element of dinosaurs to the park as well. So that's obviously positive for us. Kelly Molson: It was really good press, even if we didn't have the presenter there. It was absolutely brilliant. Dominic Wray: Yeah, it was fantastic. And then everyone was almost like, they should have been here. Kelly Molson: They should have been here. We should, we need to get Greg James back over, don't you? I mean, he said it enough, so you should get him there for a visit soon. Dominic Wray: Greg, if you're listening, come down. Kelly Molson: I mean, I'd love it if Greg listened to this podcast, but it's highly unlikely. But if you are, Greg, would you like to come on? I'd love a chat with you. I'm just around the corner of Bishop Stortford. That's where you were born, right? We could be friends. Dom, thank you for coming on the podcast. It's been brilliant to chat today. We always end the interview by asking our guests to share a book that they'd like to share with their listeners. So something that you love can be work related or it can be personal, whatever you fancy. Dominic Wray: Well, I was going to think about saying the Highway Code so people can understand how to overtake cyclists, really, but I won't. My favourite podcast at the moment is a podcast called the Big Fish that's presented by Spencer Matthews. Kelly Molson: What? Hang on. Dominic Wray: Oh, sorry, my second favourite. My second well, obviously ones that I listen to after yours. Kelly Molson: Thank you. Well recovered. Dominic Wray: Once I've listened to the latest episode, I move on to Big Fish after that. Kelly Molson: Sorry, say it again. Big Fish. Who's it by? Dominic Wray: Big Fish by Spencer Matthews, who used to be on Made in Chelsea, I think, and now owns a company called CleanCo, which is a non alcoholic brand, which is quite interesting. But I like it because he interviews lots of CEOs and business owners. It's got a bit of a sports mindset focus to it, but it's also very much around the culture in those businesses, how they've built the businesses and the challenges they face within them as well. So it's quite an interesting one. Kelly Molson: I like the sounds of that. I listen to quite a lot of podcasts like that. All right, I'm going to put Big Fish on my list. Well, there you go, listeners. You can't win a copy of this podcast because I can't give it away, but I encourage you to go and have a little listen. Maybe it'll be your number two podcast as well, who knows? Dom, thanks for coming on today. It's been lovely to have you. Congratulations on 180 years and best of luck with everything that comes next. I think you've got a really exciting new chapter that's about to start and maybe you'll come back on in a year or so and tell us how it's all gone. Dominic Wray: Yeah, sounds good. Thank you very much for having me enjoyed it. Kelly Molson:  Thanks for listening to Skip The Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip the queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

Join the Just Gaymin Podcast trio, Will, Brandon, and Way, in S3 Ep 47: "It's Giving Thanks"! Recorded on 11/19/23, this episode delves into some exciting segments:

**The Turkey Trot starts at the 6 minute, 35 second mark!** It's our first Turkey Trot Audio Guide, and the guys talk you through a 45 minute race, alternating between running for 3 minutes and walking for 1. And they use the time to its fullest, “clearing their queue” of…

Discover the Apple Grand-mères/Grandmothers of North America Todd Little-Siebold (Ph.D.) spoke at New York Apple Camp (2023) on a presentation titled the "Three Grandmothers" or Grand-mères in French. The sub title is "We have to reframe how we think about the origins of American Apple". Todd is a professor of history and Latin American studies at the College of the Atlantic based in Bar Harbor Maine. As such this presentation is academic in nature and inspires both present day pomologist and apple fans of today and tomorrow to continue to trace the ancestral roots of the apple. Enjoy this exploration in to the continuing research behind the origins of apples. Todd Little-Siebold The “French” Grandmothers or Grand-mère Le grand- mère: Rienette Franche (Grise or Grauwe) Unknown 13 Reinette a longue (Queue or Reinette a la long Queue) Calville Rouge Understand (French) history to understand American Apples This research requires looking at genetics and early settlement of French explores long before any English explorers showed up on North America. Additional topics covered in this presentation: When and where, were the French (apple) ancestors brought to America? The early settlements on North America Bay of Funday the first orchard planted in 1604 4,000 French farmers in the Mississippi Valley in 1700s The Dutch impact of American apples What about the pilgrims? Didn't they bring apples to America? Native American's impact on apples in America Genetics provides some evidence, but still looking for missing links of why English apples aren't showing up. Contact Todd Little-Seibold eMail: mailto:tlittle-siebold@coa.edu Website: https://www.coa.edu/live/profiles/1136-todd-little-siebold/templates/details/faculty.php Mentions in this Cider Chat CiderCon 2024 January 15-19th, 2024 Portland Oregon Portland, Oregon January 20, 2024 Artisan Cider Summit http://www.cidersummitnw.com/artisans

Kunstig intelligens udvikler sig dag for dag. Når vi får adgang til vores egen personlige chatbot, og når den første GPT Store åbner, hvad sker der så? Niels Lunde taler med Camilla Ley Valentin, og de to kommer også omkring OpenAIs dramatiske fyring af Sam Altman. Camilla Ley Valentin har været en central aktør i det danske tech-miljø i mange år. Hun var medstifter af tech-virksomheden Queue-it, og er i dag direktør for DI Digital, der er Dansk Industris brancheorganisation for teknologivirksomheder. Producer: Arjuna Alexander Kolkur Sørensen. Læs om McKinseys nye analyse af kunstig intelligens: https://borsen.dk/nyheder/perspektiv/mckinsey-teknologi-bag-chat-gpt-kan-overtage-20-pct-af-danskernes-arbejde?b_source=borsen&b_medium=row_2&b_campaign=news_2 Se Sam Altmans præsentation fra Developers Day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9mJuUkhUzk Få Niels Lundes nyhedsbrev: Tilmelding på borsen.dk/nyhedsbreve.

In today's episode: Part 2 is here! Listen to part 1 if you haven't and let it rip on this one - what else do you want me to say. Check us out on Youtube HERE!  Subscribe to our podcast for some entertainment and music Follow us on Instagram @queueanda and DM us your recommendations. Let's hear your thoughts! Email us at queueandapodcast@gmail.com with your thoughts or recommendations on songs. Shout out to Johnny Rock for letting us use his music! He's a great producer and you can check him out here: https://j-rockny.bandcamp.com/  ////This podcast includes copyrighted material for the sole purpose of commentary, review, and education regarding the copyrighted material. Queue & A makes no claims of ownership of any of this copyrighted material. This use is protected under United States law, specifically Section 107 of the Copyright Act as it applies to fair use of copyrighted material for the purpose of criticism and commentary. If you are the owner of any copyrighted material appearing here and wish for it to not be utilized for this purpose, please contact us directly at queueandapodcast@gmail.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/queueandapodcast/support

Traffic chaos at one of Auckland's most popular malls has raised concerns about what the christmas rush could bring across the city. It was gridlock trying to leave the carpark at the Westfield Newmarket Mall on Saturday aftenoon, with people caught in the queue to get out of the basement for up to three and a half hours. The Newmarket Business Association estimates about 70,000 people decided to pass a rainy day at the shops on Broadway and about 60 percent of them arrived by car. So should the city be the brace position for Black Friday sales this week and the holiday season rush still to come? Martin Glynn from AA speaks to Lisa Owen. [embed] https://players.brightcove.net/6093072280001/default_default/index.html?videoId=6341463803112

Chaque semaine, Laurent Mariotte et ses chroniqueurs vous parlent de leur goût de la semaine. Que ce soit une saveur qui a marqué gustativement leur semaine, un restaurant qui leur a tapé dans l'œil, un plat qu'ils ont cuisiné ou qu'on leur a concocté. L'occasion de découvrir de nouvelles saveurs ou de nouvelles adresses, des coups de cœur mais aussi des coups de gueule. Cette semaine, Ophélie Neiman nous raconte qu'elle a goûté la queue de boeuf. Yves Camdeborde lance un coup de gueule contre le glyphosate. Olivier Poels nous parle d'un pâté croûte poulpe-chorizo. Et Laurent Mariotte nous fait saliver avec la tarte Tatin. C'est aussi l'occasion pour vous, chers auditeurs d'Europe 1, de nous raconter votre goût de la semaine. Si vous souhaitez participer, vous avez deux solutions : sur le répondeur d'Europe 1 au 01 80 20 39 21 (numéro non surtaxé) ou sur la page Facebook de l'émission “Laurent Mariotte, le groupe des bons vivants d'Europe 1”. Un auditeur sera sélectionné chaque semaine.

Chaque semaine, Laurent Mariotte et ses chroniqueurs vous parlent de leur goût de la semaine. Que ce soit une saveur qui a marqué gustativement leur semaine, un restaurant qui leur a tapé dans l'œil, un plat qu'ils ont cuisiné ou qu'on leur a concocté. L'occasion de découvrir de nouvelles saveurs ou de nouvelles adresses, des coups de cœur mais aussi des coups de gueule. Cette semaine, Ophélie Neiman nous raconte qu'elle a goûté la queue de boeuf. Yves Camdeborde lance un coup de gueule contre le glyphosate. Olivier Poels nous parle d'un pâté croûte poulpe-chorizo. Et Laurent Mariotte nous fait saliver avec la tarte Tatin. C'est aussi l'occasion pour vous, chers auditeurs d'Europe 1, de nous raconter votre goût de la semaine. Si vous souhaitez participer, vous avez deux solutions : sur le répondeur d'Europe 1 au 01 80 20 39 21 (numéro non surtaxé) ou sur la page Facebook de l'émission “Laurent Mariotte, le groupe des bons vivants d'Europe 1”. Un auditeur sera sélectionné chaque semaine.

Watch the video!https://youtu.be/e-Pgj1eqwlQThe Essential Litigation Apps: https://www.litsoftware.com/ In the News blog post for November 17, 2023:https://www.iphonejd.com/iphone_jd/2023/11/in-the-news702.html The Essential Litigation Apps: https://www.litsoftware.com/The Bitterant is Back Baby!RCS - Really Cool SoftwareGoogle Pays Up to AppleApple's Supportive and Sympathetic Satellite StipendGiving Your Photos Some Spatial Space17.2.Yay!HomeKit Home Camera KitApp Store AwardsThe Essential Litigation Apps: https://www.litsoftware.com/Jeff's Overcast Tip: Using PlaylistsBrett's Overcast Tip: An Overcast Gaming Easter Egg!AirTag battery replacement: you can use some bitterant coatingsChance Miller | 9to5Mac: Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next yearRohan Goswami | CNBC: Apple gets 36% of Google search revenue from Safari, Alphabet witness saysDan Moren | SixColors: Apple Extends Emergency SOS Coverage for iPhone 14 UsersJohn Gruber | Daring Fireball: Vision Pro, Spatial Video, and Panoramic PhotosJustin Meyers | Gadget Hacks: 43 Cool New Features Coming to Your iPhone with iOS 17.2Bradley Chambers | 9to5Mac: HomeKit Weekly: Aqara E1 camera delivers HomeKit Secure Video in a compact packageApple: Meet the 2023 App Store Award finalistsIntroducing the LIT SOFTWARE Enterprise Program!Jeff's Overcast Tip: Playlists that I use in Overcast: New (Include all episodes, Sort newest to Oldest, Exclude episodic shows, Select Priority podcasts), Episodic podcast list, In Progress [built-in], and Queue [built-in]Brett's Overcast Tip: An Overcast gaming Easter Egg! Found this little gem when I was recently downloading podcast episode to my watch: The Essential Litigation Apps: https://www.litsoftware.com/ Support the showBrett Burney from http://www.appsinlaw.comJeff Richardson from http://www.iphonejd.com

The Petersfield Awards ‘Contribution to the Community' winner needs your help to battle the queue. Our popular Free Shop Petersfield which is based in the community hub at the railway station has introduced a numbering system for busy periods. Lucy Lomax explains why to Jo Gray & also encourages kindness.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You've probably heard that every cigarette you smoke takes 7 minutes off of your life, but did you know that every episode of Queue Tips you listen to actually ADDS 7 minutes to your life? Put us on repeat and you'll live forever!

Read and comment on the written version of this episode: A simplified dinner queue + some dinner reflectionsLearn more about my workshop, Your Year to Shine: A Goals Workshop, happening in early 2024!Connect with Kelsey:www.risingshining.com / blog@kelswharton / Instagram@higirlsnextdoor / The Girl Next Door PodcastThank you so much for sharing RISING*SHINING with someone who you think will enjoy it and for your reviews on Apple Podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speed bumps visit life in many different ways. It could come in the form of an illness, a job issue, a relationship struggle, or something else.  When speed bumps happen, many of us get frazzled and ask lots of questions. In this episode, I share several strategies I've found are not just important, but NECESSARY to overcome speed bumps, and guess what?  They come straight from the Scriptures!  Maybe speed bumps are meant for protection.  Maybe they're meant to slow us down.  Regardless, what can we do when life's speed bumps get in the way?  Give this week's episode a lesson and find out!

In today's episode: Hey people, two new episodes with Joe Toro coming your way. We have a disastrous trivia game but turn it around with some deep conversations on creativity. Tune in for Part 2 for a continuation of that conversation and an old school hip hop bracket from Randy! Check us out on Youtube HERE!  Subscribe to our podcast for some entertainment and music Follow us on Instagram @queueanda and DM us your recommendations. Let's hear your thoughts! Email us at queueandapodcast@gmail.com with your thoughts or recommendations on songs. Shout out to Johnny Rock for letting us use his music! He's a great producer and you can check him out here: https://j-rockny.bandcamp.com/  //// This podcast includes copyrighted material for the sole purpose of commentary, review, and education regarding the copyrighted material. Queue & A makes no claims of ownership of any of this copyrighted material. This use is protected under United States law, specifically Section 107 of the Copyright Act as it applies to fair use of copyrighted material for the purpose of criticism and commentary. If you are the owner of any copyrighted material appearing here and wish for it to not be utilized for this purpose, please contact us directly at queueandapodcast@gmail.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/queueandapodcast/support

Krimi-Special! Auf Agatha Christies Spuren geht es ins Golden Age of Crime Fiction. Ein Krimi aus Indien, ein oktopusfreier Wissenschaftsthriller, eine neue und eine alte Cozy-Crime-Reihe, ein deutscher hardboiled Krimi, der aktuelle Bestseller – und mörderisch leckerer Schokokuchen. Gast Ivar Leon Menger verrät, wie er seine Cliffhanger findet und das Publikum muss raten, wie viele Tassen Tee Miss Marple getrunken hat. Eine Aufzeichnung vom Krimifestival in Braunschweig. https://ndr.de/eatreadsleep Mails an: eatreadsleep@ndr.de Lesekreise: https://ndr.de/eatreadsleep-lesekreise Newsletter: https://ndr.de/eatreadsleep-newsletter Podcast-Tipp: „10 Minuten Wirtschaft“ https://www.ardaudiothek.de/sendung/zehn-minuten-wirtschaft/94506706/ Die Bücher der Folge: (00:04:35) Karen Pierce: “Recipes for Murder” (Norton) (00:06:30) Julie Otsuka: „Solange wir schwimmen“, üb. von Katja Scholtz (mare) (00:15:40) Ingo Bott: „Pirlo“ (S. Fischer) (00:17:47) Nicola Upson: „Experte in Sachen Mord“, üb. von Verena Kilching (Kein & Aber) (00:19:50) Josephine Tey: „Der letzte Zug nach Schottland“, üb. von Manfred Allié (Octopus) (00:23:28) Anjali Deshpande: „Mord“, üb. von Almuth Degener (Draupadi Verlag) (00:26:25) Kathrin Lange / Susanne Thiele: „Probe 12“ und „Toxin“ (Lübbe) (00:32:44) Ivar Leon Menger: „Angst“ (dtv) (00:43:31) ATF: Agatha Christe: „Und dann gab's keines mehr“, üb. von Eva Bonné. (Atlantik) Ausgelost für die Bestseller-Challenge: „Lichtspiel“ (Daniel Kehlmann) Extra-Tipp für Skandinavien-Krimi-Fans (nicht in der Folge vorgestellt): „Glutspur“ von Katrine Engberg Josephine-Tey-Krimis von Nicola Upson in der richtigen Reihenfolge (dt. Ausgaben: Kein & Aber) 1. Expert in Murder (2008) / Experte in Sachen Mord (2023) 2. Angel with two Faces (2009) 3. Two for Sorrow (2010) 4. Fear in the Sunlight (2012) 5. The Death of Lucky Kyte (2013) 6. London Rain (2015) 7. Nine Lessons (2017) 8. Sorry for the Dead (2019) 9. The Secrets of Winter (2020) / Mit dem Schnee kommt der Tod (2023) 10. Dear Little Corpses (2022) / Dorf unter Verdacht (2023) 11. Shot with Crimson (2023) Alan-Grant-Krimis von Josephine Tey in der richtigen Reihenfolge (deutsche Neuausgaben erscheinen bei Oktopus, es gibt aber antiquarisch auch andere) 1. The Man in the Queue (1929) / Warten auf den Tod (Jan 24) 2. A Shilling for Candles (1936) 3. The Franchise Affair (1948) / Nur der Mond war Zeuge (2022) 4. To Love and Be Wise (1950) / Wie ein Hauch im Wind (Jan 24) 5. The Daughter of Time (1951) / Alibi für König (2022) 6. The Singing Sands (1952) - Der letzte Zug nach Schottland (2023) Die 20 Regeln für Kriminalgeschichten: https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2019/01/s-s-van-dines-twenty-rules-writing-detective-stories/ Das Rezept für “Delicious Death”: http://www.ndr.de/kultur/buch/eatREADsleep-99-Delicious-Death-und-falsche-Faehrten,eatreadsleep790.html

Hey guys, here's another round of tips for your queue.

Actors are headed back to work as streamers seek to monetize viewers.(xx:xx) Bill Barker and Deidre Woollard discuss: - The long-term impact of Hollywood's strikes. - Linear television's fading ad value. - The value of sports entertainment.(xx:xx) : Tim White and Tim Beyers sit down with Iinformatica Chief Product Officer, Jitesh Ghai to discuss the future of data management.Claim your Stock Advisor discount here:  www.fool.com/mfmdiscount Companies discussed: DIS, WBD, NYT, NFLX, SNAP, PINS, INFAHost: Deidre Woollard Guests: Jitesh Ghai, Tim White, Tim Beyers, Bill Barker Producers: Ricky Mulvey, Mary Long Engineers: Dan Boyd, Rick Engdahl Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Embark on a tranquil journey with us on The Insomnia Project in our latest episode, "Queue to the KEW." Join Marco and Amanda as they recount their serene escapade to Montreal's Boata Boata spa, where relaxation takes on new depths.As the hosts share their spa experiences, they also explore the nuances of language, contrasting "Queue" with "Line." Marco's love for British expressions shines through, while Amanda keeps it closer to home, adding a charming twist to their conversations.Discover the shared passion for calm British shows that unites these hosts in late-night binges, creating the perfect blend of relaxation and entertainment.Follow us on social media for behind-the-scenes content and updates:Twitter: @listenandsleepInstagram: @theinsomniaprojectWeb: theinsomniaproject.comPatreon: www.patreon.com/theinsomniaprojectSweet dreams, and tune in for a delightful mix of spa tales, linguistic musings, and the cozy comfort of British television. Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/the-insomnia-project. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Spencer Rascoff https://spencerrascoff.com/ , Co-Founder and CEO at 75 & Sunny Ventures https://www.75andsunny.vc/ , Co-Founder and Chairman of dot.LA https://dot.la/ , Pacaso https://www.pacaso.com/ , Queue https://apps.apple.com/us/app/queue-what-to-watch/id1554132853 , Recon Food https://getrecon.app/ , and heyLibby https://heylibby.ai/ .  Spencer Rascoff is an entrepreneur and tech executive who co-founded Zillow https://www.zillow.com/ , Hotwire https://www.hotwire.com/ , dot.LA, Pacaso, Queue, heyLibby and Recon Food, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade.  Spencer is an active angel investor and is starting new companies through his Los Angeles venture capital firm and startup studio, 75 & Sunny.  He is also on the Board of Directors of Varo Bank https://www.varomoney.com/ .  In Spring 2022, Spencer was a Visiting Professor where he taught Harvard College's first-ever startup class “Startups from Ideation to Exit”, and in Fall 2019, co-created and co-taught the Harvard Business School course, “Managing Tech Ventures.”  Spencer is the host of “Office Hours”, a podcast featuring candid conversations between prominent executives on leadership, diversity and inclusion, and startups. https://podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/office-hours-with-spencer-rascoff/id1124608295 Spencer graduated cum laude from Harvard University.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

DECENT LOSERS! LoL and NFL Pickems, Swiss Stage Games, and more! Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/LosersQueuePod, follow on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and send in your personal stories/memes/highlights to losersqueuepodcast@gmail.com!

Wait...WHAT?! Another episode of Queue Tips? Didn't we just do this like a week ago? Wow, we must be REALLY committed to bringing you the greatest recommendations on what to watch on streaming! You should really subscribe and give us a 5-star review wherever you listen to podcasts to thank us for our tireless dedication!

Title: Just Gaymin Podcast - S3 Ep 44: E.T. Fantasy | No One Can Save You, Little Nightmares 3, and Weekly Jams! Description: Welcome to a thrilling episode of the Just Gaymin Podcast, Season 3, Episode 44: "E.T. Fantasy." Join your hosts Will, Brandon, Wasey, and special guest Kidu in an exciting and insightful discussion, recorded on October 24, 2023.

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, Founder of Rubber Cheese.Download the Rubber Cheese 2023 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the annual benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. Show references: https://carbonsix.digital/https://www.linkedin.com/in/pmarden/Paul Marden is the Founder and Managing Director of Carbon Six Digital and the CEO of Rubber Cheese. He is an Umbraco Certified Master who likes to think outside the box, often coming up with creative technical solutions that clients didn't know were possible. Paul oversees business development and technical delivery, specialising in Microsoft technologies including Umbraco CMS, ASP.NET, C#, WebApi, and SQL Server. He's worked in the industry since 1999 and has vast experience of managing and delivering the technical architecture for both agencies and client side projects of all shapes and sizes. Paul is an advocate for solid project delivery and has a BCS Foundation Certificate in Agile. https://www.rubbercheese.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellymolson/Kelly Molson is the Founder of Rubber Cheese, a user focused web design and development agency for the attraction sector. Digital partners to Eureka! The National Children's Museum, Pensthorpe, National Parks UK, Holkham, Visit Cambridge and The National Marine Aquarium.Kelly regularly delivers workshops and presentations on sector focused topics at national conferences and attraction sector organisations including ASVA, ALVA, The Ticketing Professionals Conference and the Museum + Heritage Show.As host of the popular Skip the Queue Podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions, she speaks with inspiring industry experts who share their knowledge of what really makes an attraction successful.Recent trustee of The Museum of the Broads.  Transcription:  Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. In this new monthly slot, Rubber Cheese CEO Paul Marden joins me to discuss different digital related topics. In this episode, we're talking about mobile optimisation, why it's important and what you can do to improve it. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue. Kelly Molson: Hello, we're back. Everyone will be sick of us by this episode. Paul Marden: I give it a couple more. We've got some interesting stuff to talk about hopefully, hopefully.Kelly Molson: We have. Okay, so let's start as we usually do then, with what attraction have you visited most recently and what did you love about it? Paul Marden: Well, there's one that you and I both visited recently, and there was something I really didn't love about it. We went on what was it called? Was it Mandrake Mayhem? It's the new Jumanji ride. Chessington World of Adventures. Kelly Molson: Mandrill. Paul Marden: There we go. If you are a roller coaster nut, would be amazing. But yeah, within 2 seconds of the ride starting, I realised it was not the ride for me. Kelly Molson: I like roller coasters. Yeah. So we sponsored one of the awards at the UK Theme Park Awards. And it was brilliant. It's fantastic. Paul Marden: It was such a great event. Kelly Molson: Really good event, brilliantly organised. It was absolutely brilliant to see so many attraction friends there. And it was at Chessington World of Adventures, which was super cool. I also want to talk about Chessington because I had forgotten how good it is. So I haven't been to Chessington since I was really small, and I think I'm pretty sure I only visited once or twice because we actually lived closer to Thorpe Park and were like in the Thorpe Park Rangers camp. But what I'd forgotten about Chessington was the animals. Yeah, I was really lucky. I drove down the night before of the awards and got to stay at the hotel that night. I didn't get to stay in any of themed rooms because budget did not allow for that. Kelly Molson: However, what I'd forgotten was that when you're having breakfast, the animals are literally right outside where you're eating. And I'd forgotten about it to the extent that I went up to the buffet to go and get my lovely, delicious English breakfast, which I was really looking forward to. And I could see people looking out the window and I was like, "Oh, what are you looking at?" And they went, "Giraffes? Yeah. Wow." Actually took my breath away a little bit. It was a really great experience. It's not often that you get to eat your breakfast whilst looking at giraffes and zebras as well that were out there. So, yeah, that was really great. And I really enjoyed the roller coaster. Despite someone's screams in my ear.Paul Marden: I heard this screaming noise all the way around and about three quarters of the way around I realised it was me. Kelly Molson: There was quite a bit of a screaming, to be fair. Paul Marden: I watched it back. I found a video on YouTube to show Millie, my daughter, and I was like, "Oh, my God, it's horrific. You get to the end and you're just dangling on the side for about a minute and then it changes direction.” And we watched it on YouTube, it barely stops at the top of the ride. It gets up to the top, gets to a hole and then drops back down again. Now, to me, in my memory, that was a solid minute. We were hanging over the side of the hole.Kelly Molson: It was just a minute. Paul Marden: Anyway, I did enjoy it. Kelly Molson: Yeah, big thumbs up to Chessington. It was a really great experience. So, thank you. A big thumbs up to the UK Theme Park Awards organisers as well. It was a great event. We'll be back next year.Paul Marden: For sure. Kelly Molson: Right, we're going to talk about mobile optimisation in this episode. We're going to talk about why it's important and what you can do to improve it. And we've got some really interesting stats to share from the Visitor Attraction Website Report about this. But did you know optimisation is no longer a nice to have? It's a necessity, because Statista forecasts that retail sales from mobile commerce are expected to surpass that 100 billion mark by 2000 and 2400. Paul Marden: Crazy, isn't that? Kelly Molson: I started my career in digital, in ecommerce as well, which is crazy. So it just feels really I know, back in the day, so I always say it was my last proper job before I founded Rubber Cheese, which then has been like, what, nearly 21 years. So it was the last proper job that I had before I set that up was for a really early startup, almost like Shopify, but back then. So this is like 23 years ago. Paul Marden: We've got employees younger than that.Kelly Molson: Let's look at it. But it enabled sellers to go and build their own shop. It was called iShop. It was an absolutely incredible platform of its time. And back then, I just about had an email address, let alone did everything, could pretty much run my entire organisation on my mobile phone now. It just blows my mind how much things have moved on. Paul Marden: It's crazy, isn't it?Kelly Molson: Anyway, I digress. So our Visitor Attraction Website Report shows that attractions understand the importance of mobile optimisation for their websites, but there's really huge areas that could be improved. This, for me is the most shocking stat from the entire report. It's blown my mind slightly. 96% of the respondents stated that they had never conducted any user testing for their mobile sites. So that's nearly all of the 188 attractions that took part said that they've never done any user testing on their mobile, which I just don't understand. I've been banging on about testing on your mobile, testing your mobile site for every talk that I've given for the past two years. Paul Marden: Well, that's having a big effect, isn't it, mate? Kelly Molson: Isn't it? Maybe I should talk louder. Yeah, I'm really gobsmacked at it. What was really interesting, though, about it, I mean, it's a shocking stat in itself, but what we did this year with the report is that we asked attractions to kind of self-score their website. So we asked them what they felt their design scored in terms of design, so they could give it a one to ten score. So we asked them to do the same about different areas of their site, and one was mobile optimisation. So 31% gave their site a score of nine out of ten for it, and 24% gave their site an eight out of ten. Paul Marden: They think it's pretty good. Kelly Molson: Yes, and this is the problem. So they think it's good. That indicates that those scores are based on internal assumptions, not potentially not tangible user centred data, because they haven't asked the people to test that their mobile sites are a nine out of ten or an eight out of ten. So I just thought that was really interesting, that a lot of your judgement can be based on your assumptions rather than actually asking the people that are using it. So yeah, I think that's really important that people do that. Paul Marden: I was looking at some stuff that was related to this, but not the same area of the stats that you were looking at there. So I looked at how many of the group actually did any user testing on their site. Okay. And obviously that's a really in comparison to other stats where there's a big wide disparity between different sorts of people. The vast bulk of people reported that they weren't doing any user testing, but the ones that did, all sat in the top range of conversion rate. I'm not saying that one causes the other, but there is a strong relationship between the group of people that are user testing their sites. And all of that group of people also had a conversion rate right in the top of our data set, and that ranged in size as well. Paul Marden: So we're not just talking about the big brands that are doing this. And when you looked at that set of data, there was a big brand in there. Everybody would know it. There was quite a few big brands that weren't in there. So for me, they were conspicuous by their absence because I'd seen them elsewhere in the data set that had been reported. But there was a small brand in there as well, a small organisation. I'd not heard of them before. They had between 5 to 10,000 transactions a year, which in comparison to the people at the top end of the scale, that's at least an order of magnitude smaller organisation. But they were reporting that they were doing user testing and they had a conversion rate right up there in the top end of our data set. Paul Marden: Even more surprisingly, of those that have done user testing specifically on mobile was a very small percent. And this bit you will be pleased about because some people are listening to you, that consisted of a very high proportion of Rubber Cheese clients were in that set of people who were doing user testing specifically on their mobile experience.Kelly Molson: Yay. Yay, Rubber Cheese clients!Paul Marden: Somebody is listening to you. Kelly Molson: High five to all of you lovely people. Yes. So it's interesting, isn't it? Because user testing for me, so we talk a lot about marginal gains at Rubber Cheese, about trying to make something that 1% better, 1% better, 1% better. And the only way you can actually do that is by doing user testing because you just don't know what to make better. You don't know where people are finding those barriers, you don't know where people are maybe confused about something or being blocked by something as well. For me, it's the number one thing to do if you want to start making those tiny adjustments that will start to then have those incremental and larger effects later on down the line. Paul Marden: I think it's so difficult to put yourself into the head of that person that knows nothing. We all come to the party if we run the testing, whether it's us at the attraction or us as the agency. We come to the party with lots and lots of knowledge that the average person that comes to the site and just doesn't have. And it's really hard to put yourself into that position and the solution to that is getting them to do the testing for you. Kelly Molson: Yeah. And when it comes to testing, I think I kind of split it into two. Because for mean I've said this before, but most of my browsing or purchasing is done in a very short window of time in front of the telly when I'm supposed to be watching something that Lee and I have decided that is the one thing that we can watch with the hour of telly time that we get together each day. But actually I'll be trying to watch that whilst also doing ten other things on my phone and I'll split it into browsing and purchasing and most of that happens between about 9:00 and 10:00 for me at night and it will always be on my phone. Do not make me go, I'm not going to go back into my office and crack open my laptop at that time. Kelly Molson: So everything has to be on my phone. I'm really time poor, clearly. So page load speed for me is really important. If I'm trying to find something, I need to find it quickly. I want to read something that's engaging, but not at the expense of not being able to load that page that I want to read. So things like compressing your images is really important. This is a difficult one when it comes to video is that I love video. I think there is nothing more engaging than video on your website, especially if you're a visit attraction to sell that experience. But lose the video on mobile or reduce it, reduce it, reduce it down because that's going to wipe out a load of bandwidth speed and it's going to make your page loads really small. Paul Marden: I've got beef about it in terms of it's autoplay video. It's not an environmentally sustainable thing to do. We don't often think about the environmental impact of websites but it's right up there in terms of industry generating CO2 emissions and it's not the main cause of it, but it's one area where this is prevalent is in the use of autoplay video on homepage. The website. People go to the site, the video plays whether they want to watch the video or not and that is just burning through bandwidth which is ultimately generating CO2. So I'm not anti video. I think video is an amazing thing and as you say, it can really engage you. I sat this morning talking about engaging video to try and get people to want to love the attraction to a client. So I'm totally for it. Paul Marden: But it should be something that user opt into, not something that autoplays for them. Kelly Molson: Yeah, I agree. And content as well. So we know that people read content online differently than they do in a book or a magazine or a newspaper for example, but actually they read it differently than they do on desktop to mobile too. So you actually need to think about if a certain article you have or a blog or event or whatever it may be, is going to sit in the demographic of people like me who is a 45 year old woman with toddler has 1 hour in front of the telly a day to do all of her purchashing and scrolling and anything else she needs to do on her phone. Paul Marden: Superheroes you make. Kelly Molson: Where is my cape? That content really needs to appeal to them and it needs to be in the shortest form possible because I don't have the time to read all of the engaging content. I just don't. So you need to kind of think about, is your content formatted differently when it's from desktop to mobile as well? And then when it comes to purchasing this one's, a little bit trickier for attractions, I think, and there's lots of different reasons for it. We're probably going to talk a little bit longer about this one, but the number one thing that we're always asked to review on attraction websites is that booking journey. And the thing is, we can only do the review of it if that booking journey is owned by the attraction. Kelly Molson: What I mean is if it's been designed and you are integrating with your booking system via API, so your agency or your internal team have designed that journey up to the point of you know, the tickets in the basket and gone. If you're using a third party system, an off the shelf ticketing platform that isn't integrated via API, there's not a lot that we can do about of once a guest is into the purchasing journey, they're with that system. The things that you can think about if you are going to go down the design and at your own route, you need to think about big buttons, you need to think about less clutter. I want arrows, don't make me type stuff into small form, free form boxes on mobile. You just need to be able to select things really quickly and clearly. Kelly Molson: So you want to kind of just strip out all of the noise and just get people to focus on the one thing that you want them to do, which is go through that journey and buy that ticket. What was interesting in the stats that came out of the report is that 75% of the respondents to it still expect customers to complete more than five steps to purchase, which hasn't changed from last year, that's similar to last year. And again, the reasons you might not be able to control that, you might be unable to control that because of the system that you use. So this is a really challenging one, but if you can reduce it, you can actually make some quite significant financial gains. So you looked at the impact of bookings on conversion rate, which is quite significant. Paul Marden: I got really excited working this number out. I reckon these numbers are conservative as well because these are on the basis of ticket prices and lost ticket sales. For me, I think this number could be higher for most attractions because the value of somebody coming to an attraction is bigger than just their ticket price. We talked about this the other day when were chatting. When you go there's, the meal that you eat, there's the gifts that you buy when you leave. So the total cost of somebody arriving at the attraction is probably higher than I'm estimating here. But using some stats on what the fall off rate is in ecommerce transactions, we've worked out that each step that you add to your checkout flow, it costs. Paul Marden: For our average attraction in our data set that we reckon it costs about 8000 pounds a year in lost sales. And for our top performing attractions it could be worth in the range of a quarter of a million pound a year in lost sales for each step that is included in their checkout flow. You think if you're in one of those top performing attractions with five steps, a quarter of a million pound in lost sales just in year one, that's a lot of developer time that you could buy to simplify your checkout workflow, isn't it? The return on investment for that, for a big organisation of simplifying your checkout workflow I think could be huge. Kelly Molson: Yeah, it could. There's so many other factors to think about. We have clients that have API integrations, we have clients that use off the shelf booking systems. In one way, I've always been really in the corner of designing and owning your own booking journey, but you have to be realistic about what that puts on the organisation as well, and what size your organisation is, whether you have the internal team to be able to manage that, the infrastructure to be able to manage that as well. Paul Marden: There's a total cost of ownership issue, isn't there, that is beyond just the buying price of the website in the first place. You've got to be able to maintain the thing going forward, haven't you, and that's pricy. Kelly Molson: Yeah, absolutely. But I think if you are thinking about your booking systems at the moment, then having the conversations with the providers about what their mobile journeys look like, ask to get them to demo it on mobile so you can see it for yourself. And ask them what the roadmap is in terms of mobile optimisation for the booking journeys as well. So just go into these conversations with those thoughts in mind so that you can get an understanding of what that looks like. And if their purchasing journey is six steps at the minute, ask them what are your plans to reduce that to five steps and how could we work with you to make that happen? That could start to take those conversations in some really positive ways. Paul Marden: Honestly, this stat, I'm going to sound like such a nerd, but this stat has stuck in my head ever since we worked this one out. And I can't get out of my head what the impact is of the lost opportunity, the lost sales that are happening because of these steps. And I've been thinking, what is the absolute barest minimum? Because lots of attractions, when they're going through their buying journey, I'm thinking, what on earth do you need to ask me? This is a rhetorical question, by the way. I know the complexity that is going into a lot of these things, I do understand it, but why is it that you actually need to ask me to take these five steps to get through, to get me to actually part with my money? Paul Marden: And I've been thinking about, for me, what is the absolute barest minimum you could get away with asking? Well, there's no way that you can affect a payment card transaction without knowing the card details. So you've got to ask the card number, the postcode, the CDC number and the surname of the person holding the card. So you have to have those. And if we can't give the ticket to somebody, we've got to have a mechanism getting the ticket to them, so we need their email address. Those five things are the absolute barest things I could get away with. But of course, that would only sell you, could only sell an undated, untimed ticket with that. Paul Marden: And I've been thinking about this back in COVID, so COVID and lockdown, and then the gradual release of lockdown was what introduced for many attractions, timed and dated tickets, wasn't it? And that was a complete transformation because we had limited capacity, we needed to make sure that we didn't oversell that capacity and create a problem at the gate. But is it necessary now? I completely understand that there's lots of benefit to the attraction, to guest services and people like that, of knowing exactly how many people are coming into the attraction and being able to metre that. But I wonder what impact having timed tickets and dated tickets is having on the number of people that give up buying because there's just too many steps in the process. "I can't be bothered with this. I'm going to not do it."Kelly Molson: This is quite controversial.Paul Marden: Isn't it? Completely. And I'm thinking back to that podcast episode that you did with Roman Baths where you were talking about variable pricing and dynamic pricing and of course you can only do those things if you have dated and timed tickets. So if nothing else, there is a creative tension there, isn't there, between if I ask the absolute barest minimum, I will sell more tickets, versus if I date and time my tickets and I could be really flexible about my pricing. Everybody wants lots and lots of information because who wouldn't want all the information you could possibly get about your customers versus the more I ask, the less people will buy. Harsh, isn't it? Kelly Molson: Yeah. I'm in the camp of pre booking as well, so this is uncomfortable for me. I'm in the camp of pre booking and I don't mind time ticketing either. I think there is absolutely a place for it and I think for organisations, for attractions, it just makes their life so much simpler. Paul Marden: Completely agreed with you. But I guess there's this at one end of the scale, you've got the absolute barest minimum that you could ask that will get more people, take their money, take money off of people and get them through the checkout flow as fast as you possibly can. Versus if there's two ends to this spectrum and both make us both feel uncomfortable, Where's the middle ground? Do you need to know where my address is? You don't need my address to be able to sell me a ticket. You need to know my postcode so you can do the credit card transaction, but you don't need my whole address to do that. So maybe that's where the compromise sits. That doesn't make either of us feel uncomfortable. Kelly Molson: Maybe. I always think there's a way to get more data out of people at a later stage as well, if you really want it. And maybe that's something that we need to look at in a different episode, is that you don't have to ask for all of these things at the point of purchase, but you can ask for more stuff afterwards as well if you're really engaging with that audience. Paul Marden: There's also one more thing just on that point, there were tools that could simplify this as well. Because if you have a clever use of Apple Pay or Google Pay, both of those checkout flows, people have all of their personal information plugged into Apple Pay, so you don't need to ask me anything about me. If you have a clever checkout flow with Apple Pay, then you could take my money and then get my personal information from Apple rather than make me having to type it all in. How much easier does that make the process?Kelly Molson: When I posted about this on LinkedIn, it must have been a couple of months ago now, and I asked people what their biggest frustrations was with booking journeys. They said lack of Apple Pay. They said it's a necessity for people. They don't want to think about their details. They don't know their card details. They haven't gotten again, they're sitting on the sofa like I am, their cards are upstairs. They're not going to get off their bums and go and get their cards. That was the number one thing that kept coming up over and over again. And then the second one was around clear and consistent pricing so that they don't feel like they're being ripped off as the deeper they get into that journey. So that's two really interesting things to think about there. Kelly Molson: On these episodes, we often highlight people that are doing it. Well, we've decided not to do it in this episode. And there's a couple of reasons for that, is that it's really hard to compare between people that have an API integrated designed booking journey and people that are using off the shelf systems. And there will be very specific reasons for why they have chosen to go down either of those routes. And you can't compare them because the reasons are uncomparable, I feel. So we've decided just to take that step out for today, but we are going to talk about what next steps that you can take. So I think the first one is going back to what you've just referenced is thinking about what information you actually really need from the customer. Paul Marden: Yeah, if you ask less, you'll need less steps. The less steps, the more people will make it through the checkout site. Kelly Molson: So what can you remove and maybe what could you add in later in addition to that. Paul Marden: Completely. Kelly Molson: And then test on mobile. Test again. Didn't I end last episode with saying just test, test on mobile regularly, but go through the entire process from start to finish.Paul Marden: And then the fix the stuff that doesn't work. So I had an interesting conversation when were at Theme Park Awards with another podcast alumni. We were chatting about prepping for the report and where were going and what were doing and all that kind of thing. And he told me a story about a site, fairly large attraction, where when you try and check out the only way if you're doing it on mobile, you can't select the number of tickets when you hold your mobile up. Now, the attraction has tested, they know it because they've written a message at the top of the page and it says to be able to book your tickets, rotate your phone to the side and then you get the ability to be able to choose your numbers. Paul Marden: So great, they're doing some testing, but how many people don't bother reading that message, how many people are stymied by the idea that, "Oh, well, I can't choose the number of tickets?" Not only have you got to test it, you got to fix the stuff that doesn't work as well. Kelly Molson: Yeah, gosh, how frustrating is that? And is that the system that they're using? So they've got no control over it. And if that is the system that they're using, then they didn't get them to demo it on mobile, did they, when they purchased it? Paul Marden: I think it's a combination of the two. I think there was something very special about the ticket descriptions of that attraction. That meant that they wrote quite a lot in the descriptions and when you wrote quite a lot in the ticket description, it just overflows off the side of your mobile, unless you've got a massive tablet. Or you rotate it on the side. Kelly Molson: Yeah, it's not great. Asking them to do something that they're not expecting to have to do is challenging, isn't it, asking all your users to think, well, they don't want to think either. They don't want to think at that point. They just want to do the doing. Okay, what kind of budget are we looking at for some of these things? It's really difficult to say.Paul Marden: Yeah, as you've just said, or to remove steps out of the checkout flow. It could be impossible for many people, because if they have an off the shelf ticketing system that they call out to that they don't have control over, then they might not be able to do anything about that. I mean, don't get me wrong, there's lots of things with those off the shelf ticketing solutions. Many of them are very flexible about the steps that you take through the checkout flow. So it can be very highly configurable and it could be in their control to just take it out without any need for developers doing things. It could just be a case of how do they use their third party ticketing system and changing that slightly. Paul Marden: So it could be possible, or it could be something very practical that they could do themselves. Kelly Molson: It's worth saying that we as an organisation have lots of conversations with lots of the ticketing providers and they are very aware of improvements that can be made or would like to be made to this. Kelly Molson: So I think that there's definitely a movement in the ticketing world of acknowledging that this is challenge and knowing that they can do something about it. And I know that there are a few that have got kind of plans to make change in this area as well. So that's great to see.Paul Marden: It's a really competitive space, isn't it? So it's interesting to see how that's going to play out. Kelly Molson: Yeah, very much so. Okay, well, look, listeners, this is us for another month. What we'd really like, though, is to understand what you'd like to hear from us. So we've got loads more topics that we can talk about from the report. We have got loads of things that come up on day to day basis, things that we work on that we can talk about. But if there's anything that you would like us to discuss, any questions that you'd like to ask us, we can happily make those into a podcast episode. So send me an email. It's kelly@rubbercheese.com. Just let me know what you're having challenges with. Yeah, any questions that you just would like us to cover as a topic and we can make that happen. Paul Marden: Awesome. I'd love to. I'm enjoying it. Kelly Molson: Me too. It's lovely to have a fellow guest. Fellow host.Paul Marden: I just got downgraded then.  Kelly Molson: Who's the real host? Me, of course. It's lovely to be joined by a second host. Thank you, Paul. See you next month. Paul Marden: Bye. Bye. Kelly Molson:  Thanks for listening to Skip The Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip the queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

Wow, is it Friday already? Why don't you call in sick and get a head-start on some of our recommendations for this weekend - you deserve it! Except for Bill's second pick - NO ONE deserves THAT.

UPSET LOSERS! Football and Leg Pickems, Football Fantasy Update, Swiss Round Update, and more! Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/LosersQueuePod, follow on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and send in your personal stories/memes/highlights to losersqueuepodcast@gmail.com!

On aime ce qui nous a émerveillé … et on protège ce qu'on aime. ________ Découvrir tout l'univers Baleine sous Gravillon, et Mécaniques du Vivant sur France Culture : https://baleinesousgravillon.com/liens-2 Soutenir notre travail, bénévole et sans pub : https://bit.ly/helloasso_donsUR_BSG http://bit.ly/Tipeee_BSG https://bit.ly/lien_magq_lilo_BSG Nous contacter pour une conférence, un partenariat ou d'autres prestations ou synergies : contact@baleinesousgravillon.com ________ Interview : Marc Mortelmans Rédaction en chef des articles du site https://baleinesousgravillon.com : Guillaume Lassalle et Bérénice Toutant Rédacteurs : Julien Brethiot, Chloé Routa, Héloïse Caraty, Thomas Prat, Aurore Fayard, Rémi Trivellato BSG dans les Festivals : François Léger BSG sur Instagram : Audrey Tindilière Graphisme / vidéos : Elouan Plessix Montage / notices / programmation : Zeynab Tamoukh, Albane Couterot, Laure Davoigneau, Dorian Roulet

Title: Just Gaymin Podcast - S3 Ep 43: Jack Hoe Lantern | Halloween Town, Mystery Games, and Weekly Bops! Description: Get ready for a spooky and exciting episode of the Just Gaymin Podcast with Season 3, Episode 43: "Jack Hoe Lantern." Join your favorite hosts Wasey, Will, and Brandon as they unravel the mysteries of the following topics, recorded on October 22, 2023:

Wow, is it the weekend already? Seems like a good time to catch up on all the movies and tv you missed out on this week while you were busy toiling your soul away at the pen factory!

THE LOSERS REMAIN! Fantasy Football Update, Pickems LoL and NFL, Worlds Swiss Stage Round 1, Loser's Queue Media Review The Money Store Editon, and more! Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/LosersQueuePod, follow on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and send in your personal stories/memes/highlights to losersqueuepodcast@gmail.com!

In continuing the conversation started with Queue, I invite TikTok's Favorite Aunt into this space to give her opinion on what it means to get free, be free and stay free.

Dive into the vibrant world of independent game development with our podcast! Join us as we discuss the creativity, innovation, and passion behind indie games. From hidden gems to groundbreaking titles, we explore the stories and insights that shape this dynamic industry. Get ready for a journey through the diverse landscape of indie gaming! We Do Not Own The Rights to the Music in the Episode!Check out the track and producer:   [FREE] TYLER, THE CREATOR X OLD KANYE TYPE BEAT "GOLD"Music by: RAF NITELink: https://youtu.be/1vbw4m3TNwc?si=9FrNswLeo9o5QOmb IG: @theblerdspectrumFacebook: TheBlerdSpectrumPodcastYouTube: @TheBlerdSpectrumPodcast4892

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, Founder of Rubber Cheese.Download the Rubber Cheese 2022 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the first digital benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcastCompetition ends on 20th December 2023. The winner will be contacted via Twitter. Show references: https://www.beamish.org.uk/https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhiannon-hiles-4469784/ Rhiannon Hiles is Chief Executive of Beamish, The Living Museum of the North.Rhiannon leads the talented team of staff and volunteers, and is responsible for strategic development and operations at the award-winning County Durham open air museum, which brings the region's history to life.With over 30 years' experience in the culture sector, Rhiannon has extensive curatorial, commercial, operational and development expertise, combined with a great passion for museums, heritage and the North East.Working with national and international museum colleagues, Rhiannon is at the forefront of leading open air and independent museum practice, focused on sharing ideas, knowledge and supporting talent and progression across the sector.Rhiannon has a background in architectural and design history and an MA in Museum Studies specialising in social, rural and folk life studies and was an antique dealer and museum volunteer early on in her career. Her professional experience includes the prestigious Oxford Cultural Leaders Programme, SPARK Association Independent Museums (AIM) senior leaders programme, appointment to the board of the Association of European Open Air Museums, North East Chamber of Commerce Council member, National Museum Directors' Council, Museums Association, Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, and the Association of Independent Museums. She has been a school governor and is currently a Museums Association mentor and Director of the Melrose Learning Trust.  Transcriptions: Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. On today's episode, I speak with Rhiannon Hiles, CEO of Beamish Museum. We talk about wiggly careers and finding opportunities that use all of your skills. We also discuss philanthropic thinking and how to use this approach to support the funding of new projects. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue. Kelly Molson: Rhiannon, it's lovely to have you on the podcast today. Thank you so much for coming on. I'm very excited that we've got Beamish back on, if I'm honest. So I know that we've had lovely Matthew Henderson, one of your past colleagues, came on not too long ago and talked about creative ideas for driving commercial income. Kelly Molson: But I've recently experienced Beamish, which I'm sure we'll talk about later on in the podcast. So I'm really tough to it's lovely. Rhiannon Hiles: It's a pleasure to be here. I've been dying to talk to you as well. So this is great. We had that initial conversation, didn't we? And so to be talking to you again today, it's brilliant. Kelly Molson: Well, hopefully you still feel like that after I've asked you these icebreaker questions. Let's start. Okay, I want to know what's the worst gift that you've ever received but you had to try really hard to kind of be grateful for. Rhiannon Hiles: Well, I used to have a black and white collie when I was growing up. We had a small holding and we always had collies. And I had my favourite collie was called Woody. I loved Woody. Woody came everywhere with me, black and white. And I was out somewhere once and I said, "Oh, she looks a bit like a badger." When they asked me what she looked like. And then people kept giving me badger stuff all the time. And my house was getting full and full. I was a student at the time and had a student house that's full of badger things. And I was always very polite because I was brought up to always say, "Thank you. Thank you very much for the present." Inside I was going, "Not more badger things."Rhiannon Hiles: And when I eventually thought I was moving and I thought, I'm going to put all those badger things in a box and take it to a charity shop, and I did that. Kelly Molson: And somebody would have loved that big box of badger rubbish, wouldn't they? Rhiannon Hiles: Somebody. Kelly Molson: You get this if you've got a sausage dog as well. So we used to have a sausage dog. The minute you have one of them, everyone thinks that you are a dachshund mad and you're not. You've just got a dachshund. But they buy you everything that I've got so much stuff with dachshund. I don't know if the person that bought me is listening to this. I've got like makeup bags with dachshunds on I've been bought, like, shopping bags and things like that. And I'm like, "Yeah, she's cool and all that, but I don't need to dress myself in dachshunds and paraphernalia". For now, anytime that anyone buys me anything rubbish, I'm going to put it in the badger box. Right. I love that. Kelly Molson: Okay, well, this is definitely not going to be badgers, but if you had to pick one item to win a lifetime supply of, what would you pick? Rhiannon Hiles: It's not really very sustainable and everyone who knows me will be like, "You are." It sounds so vain, mascara. Kelly Molson: Oh, yeah. No, I'm with you. Rhiannon Hiles: Sorry.Kelly Molson: No, don't apologise. Mascara would absolutely be on, like, my desert island diffs. If I was put if I was sent away somewhere, I would need not Desert Island Discs. What am I talking about? If I was on a desert island and I could take one thing, I want my mascara.Rhiannon Hiles: When I was pregnant and packing, you packed the bag, ready to go to hospital, and I was like, "Have I got everything in?” And I was like, “Have I got mascara in?" And everyone's like, "You will not want that or need it." And I was like, "I will." And to be fair, I'm not actually certain that I did care, but I was safe because it was in there. Should I need it? Kelly Molson: Yeah, at the time. Things like that are really important. Are they? Have you ever had the fake eyelashes put on so you don't have to bother with it? Rhiannon Hiles: Oh, not to that degree. When I was a teenager, I was a goth and I thought I was Susie Sue. So this is 1983. And I really thought I was Susie Sue. And I'd spent ages studying the way she had her ticks and her eyeliner and her eyebrows. So I spent ages perfecting that and I couldn't get the eyelashes to work in the corners to what I wanted. So probably from Superdrug or the Equivalent in 1983, because I can't remember where it was in Durham. I'd snuck in with my pocket money and I bought these stick ones to go along the top. They didn't stay on for very long. Rhiannon Hiles: I've never had the ones that people actually have physically put in, but then when I see people and maybe one of them's come out, I'm like, it looks a bit odd. Stick with your own eyelashes. Kelly Molson: I can't do the put them on yourself. I'm not very good with stuff like this at all. I'm not very good with makeup, but mascara is my go to because.. Rhiannon Hiles: That's easy, isn't it? Opens up your eyes, away you go.Kelly Molson: All you have to play like a new woman. But I have had the ones that someone puts in professionally before, which were amazing, but the only downside is when you decide that you don't want them any, have them taken off. Your own eyelashes look so rubbish. That you look a bit like an alien because you've got not enough lashes, because you had loads before with the extra on. So, yeah, little tip for you, everyone. You'll look like an alien.Rhiannon Hiles: I'll remember that. Kelly Molson: Right. What is your unpopular opinion for us? Rhiannon Hiles: I listen to your podcasts and I love hearing what people's unpopular opinions are. And I listened to the one with Bernard Donoghue and the other two brilliant chaps, and one of them had nicked my unpopular opinion and now I don't want to share it because they didn't nick it, because they didn't know that I was going to do it. But I used to live in the museum, I used to live in Beamish, and it was brilliant. At the end of the day, when visitors weren't there, it was amazing. Kelly Molson: Oh, this is what Paul said. Rhiannon Hiles: Yeah. Kelly Molson: Kelly said that the best thing about the attractions is when people aren't there. Rhiannon Hiles: Yeah. Now, like, during the day, I would never think that or say that, because I love being amongst all the people, but when I lived in the museum, when everyone went, when the trams went, when it was deadly quiet, it was like yet another place, and it was like, "Wow, this is amazing now." And it was so different when the people weren't there. But I have to say that, for me, is an unpopular opinion, because, obviously, visitor attractions work when they're full of people. And although I used to think, I think, “Oh, it's so lovely at nighttime, or when everyone's gone”, but then when it went into lockdown into COVID, it made me sad when the people weren't there. So then my unpopular opinion kind of shifted. A very simple unpopular opinion is that I really don't like mushy peas. Kelly Molson: I'm with you. I don't like peas of any form at all. No, I'm absolutely this might not be so unpopular because I've got, like, a group of friends that are pea haters like me, and I have passed it on to my little girl as well, which I'm trying to yeah, I know she's not great. She's really good with fruit, not good with veg, and I'm trying to kind of retract that a little bit, but she's heard me say peas and make the face and now she's like, “Peas, yucky mummy.” Yeah. I'm trying to get her to go back, but I draw the line. There's no way I'm having mushy peas in my mouth. Rhiannon Hiles: And I think it's like the husky bit. Sometimes they're not really mushed and there's still a bit of husky pea shell in and I'm like, I don't like it. Kelly Molson: It's actually turning my stomach, thinking, well, let's see, whose side of the coin are you on? Are you on the pea lovers side or the pea haters? Come and join us on the haters side. Rhiannon Hiles: Vote now. Kelly Molson: Right, I want to know a little bit about your background, because I know that you've been at Beamish for quite a while. But what did you do prior to that? Rhiannon Hiles: When I was at school, I was really into horse riding, I had ponies and I set my sights from about the age of ten, probably to be a riding instructor. And so I was determined that's what I was going to do. But I was always a very good artist and I used to love drawing buildings and animals, not always in the same picture, but I loved the shape of buildings and I was just very interested in them. And I used to travel quite a lot with my grandparents and we used to always visit museums on the continent in particular. We used to go to open air museums loads and I just loved them. We always went in the summer, really loved them. But I still thought, I want to be a riding instructor, just want to visit those museums and have fun. Rhiannon Hiles: And then as I went through school, you flick around, don't you, a bit, when you're in school? Because I love drawing, I love sketching clothes. And I was a bit of a gothy punk when I was a teenager, and I used to make my own clothes. But I also was really into how the interiors of buildings looked. But I continued to ride horses and I did train to be a riding instructor, but I soon discovered there's no money in that unless you've got really wealthy parents with your own riding school and everything. So I continued to ride, still love horses, but knew I just went on a bit of a quest and I did quite a lot of commissions of drawings whilst I was studying, while I was doing art at college, and then I went on to do architecture and design at university. Rhiannon Hiles: And while I was at university, I met some people who said, "Have you ever thought about studying this and have you ever thought about doing some work in museums? And what about open air museums?". And I thought, "Well, I've always visited them, and I love them." So I started doing some voluntary work in museums and at the same time supplementing my living by buying and selling antiques. So I was antiques dealer for a while, which is good fun, actually. I quite enjoyed doing that, but I wasn't the greatest antiques dealer because I was more interested in the history of the things than the money that I was making from them. Sometimes I'd be like, "Do you know where this is from? And I just want to buy it". I was like, "But it's really interesting."Rhiannon Hiles: So I love doing that and I think it did give me a really good grounding. So I would really like scrabble around and things. I would go into skips and get stuff out and I'd sometimes knock on people's doors and I'd say, "You've got this really interesting table in the skip, can I have it?". Sometimes I would just pass a skip and go ask paper, put it in my car, and then I'd do them up. And one of my mum's friends used to buy and sell student housing in Durham, and she used to get me to help her to get the houses ready. And she'd say to me, "I'm going to leave you.". This is in, like 1987, 88. She'd leave me with a hammer and she'd say, can you knock out that set pot in the corner? Rhiannon Hiles: And when I come back, I'll just take you home, no PPE or anything. I'll stand there with the hammer thinking I was like, I was 18, I was like, I'll just hit it everywhere. But funnily enough, I think that gave me quite a good understanding of the ins and outs of older buildings. And I just really knew that I wanted to be involved with telling the stories of people who might have lived in those older buildings. So when I started doing that voluntary work, I did it in a museum in Durham first, which is brilliant, great grounding. It was the Oriental Museum in Durham. There's loads of work in their stores. And then my uncle's friend was a curator at Beamish, and my uncle said, "Give Jim a ring, see if you can get some voluntary work at that Beamish."Rhiannon Hiles: So I rang that Beamish up and I said, "Could I get some voluntary work?" And it kind of started from there, and I thought when I went, I was like, I've always visited here. Didn't really cross my mind you could work here. And I just kind of loved it right from the start. I became immersed. I found a picture of me recently when I'm a bit older. I'm 21 by then, and it's just before I started working at the museum, because it's when I was doing my undergraduate degree, and I'm like, I'm in one of the cottages and I've got all my glass stuff on and I think I'm dead cool. I've got my camera, but I can tell in my face that I was like I'm like, "Wow, I'm in the opening.”Kelly Molson: This is amazing.Rhiannon Hiles: Yeah. So I think I had a bit of a, like, I don't know, was I going to be a horse rider, was I antique stay there, was I an artist? But then when I went into open air museums, I just knew I just had this fire in my belly, whatever you want to call it. I was like, this is where I need to be and this is what my quest is. This is where I want to lead one of these I want to be responsible for one of these fantastic places. Kelly Molson: Oh, my God, what an incredibly wiggle. I love that. So I really like hearing about where people I think the skills that people have and how they then apply them into the roles that they've ended up in. I was so shocked when you said about antiques, because I love that. I love nothing better than a Sunday morning mooch around a vintage shop or just like, scouring charity shops for any kind of bargain that I can find. And I was like, "She's literally living my life. That's amazing. I'd love to do that job.”Rhiannon Hiles: I think, briefly, because I used to go so a friend of mine who was at university with, he said, "Well, if you're dealing in antiques, why don't we set up together? Why don't we get a van together? Have you got any money?". And I loaned 500 pounds off my mum and I said, "I'll give you it back." I don't think I ever did. And we bought this really tatty van, bearing in mind this is, like, in the late 1980s, and we used to do, like, Newark. We used to go up to Isntonton in Edinburgh near the airport. We used to go around the country doing all the really big antique spares and camp and sell our goods really early in the morning to the dealers and then all the public would come in. Rhiannon Hiles: And then I started to be like, semi all right at it. And a friend of mine had a pub with a little what had been a shop attached to the pub in York, and she asked me if I wanted to sell some of my antiques in that little shop attached to the pub. So I did that for a little bit and then I thought, I think it's not quite working for me, there's something not quite right. And it was because I wanted to tell the stories of the things. So I enjoyed doing it and I learned lots doing it, but I wanted to be a curator, basically, and I hadn't clicked at that point. And then when it did click, I was, "It's clicked. That's what I'm going to do."Kelly Molson: And then you stayed at Beamish and you've just progressively worked your way through all of these different roles, up to CEO now. Rhiannon Hiles: I know. That's amazing. Kelly Molson: It is amazing. But you hear that quite a lot, don't you, where people, they find the place and then they stay there because it's got them basically, it's just got them hooked. And I totally understand this about Beamish. Were talking about this just before we hit record, but I visited Beamish a couple of months ago and had such an emotive reaction to the place. It's an incredible experience. It's the first living museum that I've ever been to. I knew what to expect, but I didn't know what to expect, if that makes sense. I knew what was there and I knew what was going to happen and how were going to experience the day, but I was not prepared for how completely immersive it is and how emotional I got, actually, at some of the areas. Kelly Molson: So can you just give us an overview of Beamish for our listeners that haven't been there. What is Beamish? Rhiannon Hiles: Yeah, I think you've described it really well there about it being immersive and emotional. So those elements will perhaps occur for the visitor. They might not. It depends what people want to get out of their visit. But you and I were talking about how increasingly, as we have more living memory that we represent in the museum, that people will have emotive responses. And I think that goes back to one of the founding principles of why Beamish was originated. So our first director, Frank Atkinson, in the 1950s and 60s had traveled around Europe looking at different types of social history museums. He was a social history curator and he'd come across open air museums in Scanson, in Stockholm, in Malhagen, in Lilyhammer. Rhiannon Hiles: And he was just mesmerised by how they told the stories of the people of the locality in a meaningful way that represented the normality, the ordinary, the typical, rather than being the high end stories of lords and ladies in aristocracy. And he wanted to recreate something similar back in the north of England because he had seen disappearing stories and communities and lives. And he foresaw that there would be more of that disappearing as he foresaw that coal mines would begin to change or close. And people laughed at him sometimes when he said things like, "I want to recreate a slag heap of coal.". They went, "Why would you do that? There's lots." And he said, "Because there won't be any soon." And he was right. Rhiannon Hiles: So the reasoning behind the creation of Beamish was to tell the stories of the rural, the industrial, the social history of the people of the north of England in a similar way to those that are told about the fork life, which is the lives of the people that you see in museums on the continent. So that's what inspired Frank. And Frank's founding principles have stayed strong throughout the museum's ups and downs. And I've seen ups and downs across the years. The 27, 28 years that I've been at Beamish, I've seen lots of ups and downs. But if ever I'm thinking, what should I do next? I always think, what does the visitor want and what would Frank think? And I don't always agree with what Frank would think. Sometimes I think," Would I agree with Frank?". But I always have those two things. Rhiannon Hiles: I think, what would Frank think and what does the visitor need to see now? And I was watching there's a YouTube film called The Man Who Was Given the Gasworks, which is about Frank and his ideas. It was filmed in the late 1960s and it's really funny to watch, very BBC when you watch it, but it tells you a lot about where the ideas came from. But some of the things that he's talking about and the people that he's meeting in Scanson in the continent and he's interviewed by Magnus Matheson as a very young man, which is quite interesting. They still ring true and they still have this philosophy that all school children would visit from the locality to their open air museum. Rhiannon Hiles: And that's still a strength that's still very important to myself, but also to our museum, but also to other open air museums that I know. So Beamish kind of evolved as a concept, and then Frank found a site to build this big open air site which would tell the story of the people of the north of England. He was shown lots of different sites around County Durham. And the story goes, and I've talked to his son about this, and his son says, "I think that's what dad did." His son's about the same age as me. So he wasn't born when Frank had this idea, but apparently he got to where you come in at the car park underneath the Tiny Tim theme hammer. Rhiannon Hiles: The story is that when Frank arrived there and the trees hadn't grown up at that point, that he looked down across the valley and turned to the county officer who was saying, "Do you want this site?". And said, "This is it. This is where I'm going to have a museum of the people of the north." He said it was the bowl and the perimeter with the trees, so it could be an oasis where he could create these undulations in the landscape and tell the stories through farming, through towns, through different landscapes, through industry, through transport. He did at one time have a bizarre idea. Maybe it wasn't bizarre to flood the valley and tell the history of shipbuilding. I'm kind of pleased that didn't happen. Kelly Molson: Yeah, me too. It's really spectacular when you do that drive in as well, isn't it? I got this really vivid memory of kind of parking my car, walking across to the visitor centre and you kind of look down across the valley and the vastness of the site, the expanse of it is kind of out in front of you and it is just like, "Oh." You didn't quite grasp how big that site is until you see it for the first time. It is really impressive. Rhiannon Hiles: It is. And actually, I'm taking trustees, our new board of trustees. I'm taking them on a walkabout. And that's one of the key things. You just explained it perfectly. I'm going to use your quote tomorrow morning. I'm going to say, this is the Kelly Molson view, because I'm taking them to that point and I'm going to say, "Look across the vastness of the museum and the woodland. We look after all the woodland, all the footpaths through the woodland.". So it's the immediacy of where the visitor comes into the museum is more than that. And so I think we are a visitor attraction and we are self sustaining, but we're sustaining environmentally as well, in terms of what we do, looking after all that woodland and farmland as well. And I think that there's a lot more still that the museum has left to do. Rhiannon Hiles: I think it's almost like it will continue to evolve and change. There'll be ever changing. Someone who I know, who runs a museum on the continent, I was saying to them, "What are you going to develop next?". And they've done a lot of development very quickly and they get some very good funding, which is brilliant for them, but they have to stop developing because their site is so small, they can't develop any further. They're in the middle of a city and they represent an old town and their site is constrained by its size. And they said, "We're very jealous of Europe Beamish, because you've got so much space.". Kelly Molson: Just carry on. Well, the self sustaining thing is actually it's part of what we're going to talk a little bit about today. So think it was last season we had Matthew Henderson, come on, who was the former head of commercial operations there, and he talked quite a lot about creative ideas for driving commercial income. So all of the amazing things that Beamish have done to really kind of expand on the Beamish brand. I mean, I'm sitting here today and in front of me I've got Beamish sweets, I've got a tin of lovely Beamish jubilee sweets sitting in front of me. And Matthew talked a lot about the things that you did during lockdown and how to kind of connect with the audience when you couldn't be open, but just expand on that whole kind of product base that you have. Kelly Molson: And that was something that I was super interested in when I came to visit Beamish as well. Because your gift shop is phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal. But all the way around the sites as well, the things that you can buy we talked about that immersive experience, but you can buy products where the packaging of those products, it hasn't just been created. It's been created from things that were in use and used as kind of branding back in the 50s and back in the18 hundreds. And that is just amazing. I guess I want to kind of just talk about Christmas. So we're on the run up to Christmas now, aren't we? Rhiannon Hiles: We are. Kelly Molson: I want to talk a little bit about how you drive revenue at what is often considered quite a quieter time of year for attractions because you've got quite a good process of doing that. Is that part and parcel of the hard work that you did during the pandemic to get these products developed? Rhiannon Hiles: Yeah. So just prior to the pandemic, Matthew and I, and Matthew talked to you about this. We had started to think about how we would turn the museum into a really good profit centre without us looking like were selling the collections, because obviously you've got to be really careful, we're a designated museum and all the rest of it. There are really easy ways to do that without it being a barrier. And we came up with all these sort of ideas and then went into pandemic, into the pandemic, and it sped it all up for us. The things which we've been thinking about, would we do it or would we not? We just said, "Look, we're going to do it because what else have we got to lose?". And Matthew did talk to you about that. Rhiannon Hiles: So we entered into this, what are we going to be doing? What are we going to replicate? Who are we going to work with? What are the things we've already got? And Matthew had been working on, for example, the monopoly, he'd been working on that just prior to the pandemic. We just sold out of that during the pandemic because everyone was at home and wanted to buy board games. So we had thought, everything will sit on the shelves, but it didn't, it flew out. We didn't have an online shop, but then we suddenly did, like, overnight and so we talked about having an online shop and were sort of getting there and then went into pandemic and like a lot of folks, it just sped everything up. It really did. Rhiannon Hiles: So some of the work which we've been doing, which was taking us quite a lot of time, I think the pandemic silver lining and people talk about the negatives and the positives of the pandemic. The silver lining for our retail and our product ranges was that it really allowed us to move swiftly through ways of helping the museum to be self sustaining through our immersive sales. When you were in the museum, you'd have been on the town street and we have stalls in there. It's a market town, you would expect to see stalls outside. And all of the products on there are all Beamish products and they've been made either in the museum or they've been made by local suppliers who then are only selling through us. Rhiannon Hiles: Our ice cream is produced by a local ice cream maker, but the method and the flavours are only sold at Beamish. You can't get them anywhere else. So it's bespoke to us, but I'm thinking about how we move us into the next phase, which is all those things which we only sell. For me, there's a lot more that we can do in terms of we've talked about brand licensing, things like that, but in terms of the Beamish reach. So during lockdown, the Harrods of the North, Fenix contacted us and said, "Can we sell Beamish products?". And were like, "Yeah, Fenix have rung us up.". We were like, "Fenix are on the phone, we're so excited.". And we thought, "We're going to sell through Fenix.". Rhiannon Hiles: But for me, that's the start of what we can do with our brand name becoming a high street name, but a high street name that has got some gravitas behind it. So I would want to make sure that we didn't sell ourselves out, we'd want to place ourselves in appropriate places, if that makes sense. So what I wouldn't want to see is that our brand became lessened because we'd maybe chosen the wrong partner or whatever that happened to be. But I think that the Beamish Museum brand is strong and I think it could stand on its own, two feet as a brand, not just at Fenix, and it does at Fenix, so that's brilliant. But elsewhere as well. Rhiannon Hiles: And I've got some conversations lined up with folks to do with High Streets and how we can link up and partner with High Streets locally and perhaps that grows and develops as well, but also in terms of what we can do through our online sales, because we've lessened our impact there, I think. But that's probably because the items which people were buying at home during the lockdown, they can now go out and get, they can come into the museum and buy and they want that in the museum experience. But I think there's other things that we could do, like we have a lot of enamel signs and posters. We wouldn't need to hold all that stock in the museum. Rhiannon Hiles: We can work with companies who can then just download that and then sell that, rather than us having to say we have this massive space where we just hold loads of stock. And for any museum, that's a challenge. Where do you store things, let alone where do you store shop stock as well? So I think at this stage we're on the cusp of something quite exciting, but we don't know what it is yet. But we've got showed Jamiejohn Anderson round, he's a good friend of ours, he's the director of commercial at National Museums Liverpool and he's brilliant. I use him as a bit of a mentor. He's great and I was walking around with him and he's done work at Warner in the past with the Butterbeer and all the can. What can we do? Rhiannon Hiles: There's just so much lists and lists of things that you could brand license and you could sell and that would bring that in. Kelly Molson: Does that make it harder, though, to make those decisions about what you do? Because there's so much it's so much that you could do. There's not an obvious kind of standout one, there's just vast reams of things that you could do.  Rhiannon Hiles: It is. And we've got a commercial manager who took over after Matthew left and she's brilliant and she's still in touch with Matthew. They talk a lot about how we would move this forward and which product comes first. And our collections team are really excited. I mentioned just now about the post, the railway posters and the enamel signs that we have. People would love those. And the collections team are like, "We need to do those first because they're brilliant and they're easy and we could do them.". So it does make it hard. And everybody has their own version across the museum about what they think we should do first. So, yeah, it is tricky. And we've just dipped our toe in. And there's other sides of things. Rhiannon Hiles: When we enter into our accommodation, which will be the first time we've done this at the museum, we've done overnight camping at the museum for a while, and that's really successful. But to have our own self catering accommodation is coming on next year. And I would like to feel that if you're staying in one of those cottages that the soap, the welcome pack, the cushion, whatever that is, that you would be able to get that, but that it's bespoke to us. But you will be able and it's not at a ridiculous price either, that it's accessible to people, but that people will be able to get those items should they wish to. Kelly Molson: This was something that was really exciting to me when I came to visit. Well, there's two facets to this. One that was were taken round a I want to say it was a 1940s. It might have been the 19 hundreds, actually. So forgive me if I've got this completely wrong, but there's an artist's house, 1950s house. Sorry, I've got it completely wrong. I said 40. So were taking around the artist house, and what struck me is how the design and the interior design of that house, how similar it is to things that I see now. So interior design is a bit of a passion of mine. It's something that I spend hours scrolling at, looking at, on Instagram. But there were things that were in that house that are now back in fashion. Kelly Molson: So things, they just come full circle, don't they, with design? And so that was really interesting to me. And I remember at the time having a conversation and saying, "I'd buy that wallpaper that was on the wall. I would buy that wallpaper. I would buy that rug that they've got, that throw that was across the bed.". And it was just like, "Yeah, I absolutely would do that.". I know so many other people that would do that as well, who really want that authentic look in their house. I mean, this is a 1930s house that I live in, but I would love to have more kind of authentically 1930s elements to it. Art deco, mirrors, et cetera. Kelly Molson: And you can kind of imagine that not only being popular with the people that come and visit, but actually extending that into, well, interior designers that are styling other people's homes. They haven't necessarily been to Beamish, but they know that they can get this incredible thing from Beamish because they know how authentic that's going to be. And then that translated into Julian telling me about the overnight stays. And I was like, "But I want to stay here now, I could stay potentially in this room.". How amazing would that be? That would really fulfill my interior design passions completely. So that's the next step for you? Rhiannon Hiles: Yeah, it is. It was the number one thing that came out of the market research that we did with people when were looking, just before we launched Remaking Beamish over ten years ago now. When went out and asked people what they would like to do, what's the most important thing to you? They all went, we want to stay in the museum. We want an Immersive, we want to be in it. So we thought, well, okay, we can do that. We thought about where that might be and it went through lots of different sort of ideas as to what it would be. It was going to be a hotel. And then we thought, "Is that going to work? Is it a hotel?". And then we had some buildings which had been unused and weren't part of any future development plan. Rhiannon Hiles: A beautiful row of workers cottages and some stabling and courtyard up Apocalypse, which were outside of the main visitor area with already a courtyard, stabling and cart shed. So I thought, "Well, let's do it there.". Talked to the lottery. They were over the moon with that idea, because it's more environmentally sustainable, because they're existing buildings, brings more of the existing museum into the public realm and it gives us an opportunity to use areas which, to be honest, how would we do something with them going forward, but also enables people to stay in the museum. So a night at the museum, literally be it's going to be phenomenal. There's so many people saying, "I want to be the first tester of the first one that's open.". There's like a massive queue of people who want to come and be the first to stay. Kelly Molson: I want to add my name to the list. I don't need to be the first. Put me on the list. What an amazing experience. I mean, you've lived in the museum, so you've actually done this yourself. But yeah, I just think to be able to extend your visit to do that would be phenomenal, because I know that you're building a cinema at the moment as well. So come in. Come for some dinner to the cinema. Rhiannon Hiles: Exactly. Kelly Molson: Stay overnight. Rhiannon Hiles: Exactly. And we had some European museum friends across. We run a leadership program across the continent and ourselves, myself, Andrew and some others in Europe, and some of them were over last week and we did a lovely dinner for them up at Popley. And I didn't know if you got time to go up to Popley when you visited. It's beautiful up there. It is magical up there. And we have this young lad, he's been a trainee chef and he's brilliant. He loves historical recipes, he loves preparing in the old style. But to make it edible, to make it something which can then be eaten in a venue. And he spent ages thinking about what we would eat and how we would describe it. And it was beautiful. Rhiannon Hiles: And as the light was going down, I thought, "This is what's going to be like for those folks who were going to be staying just across there, just right near Popley.". So I started thinking about all the ways we could make additional revenue. People will want to pay for this. They'll want to pay to have Connor come in and do them a period dinner while they're staying. There's so many other additional add ons that we can attribute to the overnight stay, should people wish to. I think that the list is endless. You've mentioned the cinemas, cinema nights, there's music, there's dance, different experience of different cuisine as well. I think there's so much that people will get from the overnight stay. Not least that you're going to be inside an exhibit staying overnight, which is really exciting in itself, isn't it? Kelly Molson: It is magic when you think about it. And I think what's nice is the way that you talk about that. There's so much opportunity, but it's the opportunities that people want. You do a lot of work about, we're not just selling things for the sake of it. What does our audience really want? And you ask them and you get their feedback from them, which is absolutely vital. Something that you mentioned as well was the lottery. So you spoke to the National Lottery about funding for what you were doing, which is brilliant, because one of the things that we said we'd talk about today was, I always struggle to pronounce this philanthropic thinking. Rhiannon Hiles: Philanthropic thinking? Kelly Molson: Philanthropic thinking. I had to say that slowly, so I got it out right. So we know what philanthropy is, we talk about it. It's charitable works that help others as a society or as a whole. What does philanthropic thinking mean to you? And how do you use this approach to support the funding of new projects? Because that's vital for you, isn't it? Rhiannon Hiles: It is, absolutely is. It's vital and we can and need and should do much more of it. And it's something which I'm exploring further. We have got a new Chief Operating Officer, we've got a new board, and I've talked to them about this and how this will help the museum to prosper for the future for our people. It'll allow us to invest in some of the what I would see as perhaps enough of us might say as core activity. So our learning program, our health and wellbeing program, our environmental sustainability. But to me, those are the things which make Beamish. They're the things which are about our communities and about our people. Rhiannon Hiles: So if we can have partners who will invest in us to work on those strong elements of what makes Beamish then that will help us substantially because that will enable those programs to grow, to develop, to add value to people's lives. While we can then use our surplus that we make through our secondary spend, through our admissions to put into those things which people don't find as interesting. And I don't like the word when people say, "Oh, it's not sexy.". But people don't find toilets that interesting. But if you don't have good toilets in a visitor attraction, if your entrance is clunky, if the admissions and if you're walking around and everything looks a little bit like it looks a bit tired. Rhiannon Hiles: So I think that all those things which are so fundamental to enhance the visitor operation but need to have that money spent on them, will be able to be spent on because we will have developed those other relationships. And I've seen really good examples just recently that have made me feel that there's a lot of opportunity out there. The Starling Bank has been sponsoring the whole summer of fun activity for National Trust. There's the wonderful philanthropic giving from a foundation to English Heritage to fund their trainees and apprentices. That's amazing. Kelly Molson: That is amazing, isn't it? I've read about this numerous times now and I just think, one, it's a fantastic opportunity for people that are going to be involved, but what an incredibly generous thing to do. So those traditions don't die out? Rhiannon Hiles: No, not at all. And I just feel that when there's more and more competition for less and less grants and foundations, which I get, and I understand that there's no point just sitting around feeling sorry for yourself on your laurels because all that will end up in is blah. And I've been in the museum where the museum sat on its laurels and expected things to happen and expected people to come and it didn't. And it had a downturn and you've got to be proactive. You've got to be the one who goes out there and talks to people and expresses what you can do, that you're a leading light. Rhiannon Hiles: We're seen as a leading light in the north of England and that's because of the work that we do with our communities and the fact that we are a little bit we'll take risks, we're entrepreneurial and we're always thinking about how we can improve the museum, improve the offer and also be there for our people. Because fundamentally that's what we're about. Right at the beginning of this conversation, were talking about unpopular opinions and how when nobody was there, I was like, "Oh, it's quite nice." But then during COVID when nobody was there, it was awful because that's not what the museum is about. The museum is fundamentally there for people. People are what brings it to life. The hug, the buzz. It's about all of that dialogue that happens on a day to day basis and that's so important. Rhiannon Hiles: And I think we already have folks who get really excited by what we offer. The Reese Foundation who are from an engineering firm, which is in Team Valley, already fund our STEM working program, because they get that. They get the work that we do. So that is an element of already successful pocket giving that we've had in the museum and I want to do more of that. We've got opportunity over the next period to really turn that around. And I think when you talk to Funders now, they expect a proportion of that to be happening. The Arts Council are talking to us about how you can be more philanthropic or work with philanthropic partners. And so even before were thinking or aware that they thought like that, we'd already had that in our mind, that's how we would work going forward. Rhiannon Hiles: And I think that it isn't just about taking money, it's about having that relationship with the partner and showing how what they've invested in. And generally it'll be something that means something to them and that's why they've made that decision to do that. So if you can show back to them we've been working with a brilliant social enterprise locally called the Woodshed at Sacrosant, which is about getting young lads and lasses who aren't in mainstream education as they come out of skill, or maybe for them, it's not working. And they have done great work together and we have been doing work with them back in the museum. Rhiannon Hiles: So those 1950s houses that you went into, they've done some of the woodwork inside there and they did the pitch and put golf and then they came along to the opening of the 1950s and two of the lads came up, they were like, "I like, you yelling. ". And I said, "I am. How are you doing?". They said, "I feel like this might be what you would call it, a graduation.". And I was like, "It's my last weekend.". And I thought, "Oh, it's exciting.". For him, it's also sad. But he said he was moving on to get another placement with a joiner. And I was like, "That's brilliant.". Another lad's gone on to do Stonemason up at Raby Castle. So it opens up pathways, it opens up journeys, it has so much benefit. Kelly Molson: Oh, goodness, do you know what? That's so weird because that kind of goes full circle to what were talking about at the beginning, doesn't it? And you had all these different skills and then you brought them together and actually they all fitted really well into the museum sector. You've just done the same with these kids who have now got these skills and they're going to take them back into the heritage space. That's amazing. Rhiannon Hiles: Yeah, it's dead exciting. And sometimes people say to me, you're opening up opportunities, people are coming along and learning, and then they move on. And I'm like, "That's okay, that's absolutely fine.". If they come and learn here, and if there is something for them here, that's brilliant. If there's not, or for whatever reason they choose to go elsewhere, they're taking that skill set and they're still contributing to the economy, to their community, and that is brilliant. So I never look at it as kind of like, "Oh, why is that?". I look at it as like, "That is a real opportunity for them", for the museum and for the economy, for the region as well, for the visitor attraction. Kelly Molson: Ultimately, with that in mind, that you want to get more people on board is a big part of your role actually going out and talking to organisations about what Beamish is? And if they don't know about you already, I'm sure that you are incredibly well known around Durham, but you have to go out and engage with those organisations to kind of see where those connections can be made. Have you got like, a targets list of..Rhiannon Hiles: I want to go and talk to. Kelly Molson: In front of these people and have these conversations, but I guess that's a creative element of what you do, isn't it, is making those connections and kind of looking and seeing how you fit with them? Rhiannon Hiles: Yeah, it absolutely is. And I think there's other elements which are really critical for museums, for charities, for the sector, with regards to how those conversations can better enabled and how businesses can feel more comfortable in then donating or becoming part of. So some friends of mine who are in Denmark, it's very usual for big money making businesses, when they get to a certain threshold, they've got no choice. It's a government responsibility that you then have to choose a charity or a museum or a culture sector organisation that you give money to. So my friend Thomas, who runs a brilliant museum, has had a lot of his developments funded directly through a very big shipping company, who I probably won't be able to say now, but a huge shipping company fund their development, basically. Rhiannon Hiles: And I was like he's like, "Oh, does this happen for you?". And I was, "No."Kelly Molson: We have to go and hunt these people down. Rhiannon Hiles: I was, like, brilliant. Could you imagine? Look, but for me, Bernard's brilliant because he can get in there into cabinet and he's a lobbyer and I think there's some additional work that we as individuals in the sector can do. So I've talked to Andrew at Blackcountry about this and what our responsibility is to help to change policy. And if nothing else, if you're part of that change and if you are able to voice how that will then impact on people's lives, then that is so important and so critical. It just depends on different parties approaches to what that impact on lives means, I suppose. Rhiannon Hiles: But at the moment, with all the parties conferences going on at the moment, we've got the ideal opportunity to go along and listen, but also to have a little pointer in there and say, “Don't forget, and this is how important we are.”Kelly Molson: That's a skill, isn't it, in itself? I can remember a conversation with Gordon Morrison from ASVA. Sorry, formerly from ASVA. He's now ACE, when we talked during the pandemic and he talked a lot about how he'd kind of taken some learnings from Bernard in the sense that Bernard, he's quite strong politically and he's a really good campaigner. And Gordon said that they were skills that he'd had to learn. He wasn't a lobbyer, it wasn't his natural kind of skill set. And I think it's really interesting that you said that, because that might not necessarily be your natural skill set either, but it's something that you've now got to kind of develop to be able to shape policy, because if there's an opportunity, take it. Rhiannon Hiles: That's right. And it's not my skill set. But when you have a strong desire to see something work through change, and you can spot how that change can come about through having the right conversations, it's who you go to for the right conversations that can also be the skill set. So that can be quite tricky. And when were looking for our new board of trustees and when were looking for a new chair, one of the key things were looking for was somebody who would have that kind of skill set. And we have got that in our new chair. He really does know how to do that. So I constantly feel like, "Where's he going to now and who's he going to talk to next and who's he going to get me linked up with?". Rhiannon Hiles: And that's brilliant and he knows how important that is. But we also know that we have to take it at the right gentle time. Yeah. So he can open doors. And I think that's so important. And our trustees, we've got a really strong set of trustees who can open doors for us. And again, that was deliberate in our approach that we took, to have a very diverse and representative board, to also have board members who can open other doors that we wouldn't normally be opening, because we have a strong set of doors. We open regularly and close regularly. But also the pace of it is so important that all of this is really needed. Because we're an independent museum, we got to make sure that we are self sustaining. Rhiannon Hiles: Our main money comes from what we make on the door, but if we want to develop, we've got to make sure that we continue to get brilliant secondary, spend brilliant revenue. But on the other hand, we've got to make sure that we bring our people with us, whether they're the staff, the volunteers, our visitors. We don't want to be garping so fast that they're not behind us when we worry about Crown. So it's very exciting times. Kelly Molson: Isn't it? Lots of exciting changes happening. Well, look, we can't have this podcast without talking about MasterChef either. Rhiannon Hiles: Oh, yeah, that was brilliant. Kelly Molson: So that's an incredible opportunity. So you're recently on MasterChef, where they came to Beamish. What an opportunity. Rhiannon Hiles: Oh, it was amazing. But the thing was, they said, "You cannot talk about it, you cannot say anything.". So, literally, for months, were like, were dying to say that we've been a MasterChef. And they were like, you can't tell anybody. But I don't know how this managed to keep under wraps, because there was literally over 200 staff and volunteers were eating all the stuff that had been prepared. How they managed to keep that under wraps is beyond me, but at the minute seemed to work. Kelly Molson: How long was it from recording to that going out as well? Rhiannon Hiles: It was from February up until just the recent airing. So that's quite a long time to keep it to yourself. Kelly Molson: Well done that team. Rhiannon Hiles: It was really hard. Like I said, "Julie, when are they showing it because I can't keep it in any longer ", because it's Julie, who you met, who was nope. They've said, "It's tight lit, but it was brilliant.". And it's great for us, for the museum. It was great fun taking part, don't get me wrong. And I was in the local court recently and the lady behind the counter kept looking over and she went, "Are you a MasterChef?". Kelly Molson: I wasn't cooking, but yes. Rhiannon Hiles: Yes. So I think my new quest now, I'd like to be a presenter on Master Chef. I don't want to cook, but I'd quite like to be a presenter. Kelly Molson: Yeah, I could do that. I could do the tasting, not the cooking. The cooking under pressure. It's another level of stress, isn't it? I like to take my time, read the instructions. Rhiannon Hiles: Don't need the pressure. It looked lovely, though. They'd used the school, they'd taken out all the benches that are in the school, in the pit village, and it turned into it looked beautiful. They'd use really lovely. I suppose they wouldn't call them props because they brought them in, but they were in keeping with the school. It looks so lovely. I mean, you probably watched it and that scene of all the staff of volunteers coming in to sit down to their meal, the lovely tables, the bunting they put up. It looked right. It was brilliant. Yeah. They had some interesting takes on some local cuisine as well. Peas Pudding ice cream was one strange one, but got peas in it, Kelly. You don't want it. Kelly Molson: Giving that one a swerve in that one. Right. What book have you got that you'd like to share with our listeners? Rhiannon Hiles: Oh, well, one of our trustees called Rachel Lennon, has written a really brilliant book called Wedded Wife, which is a great book, and I've just started reading it's about the history of marriage, and it's really interesting, so I would certainly advocate that one. I have a favourite book, which I go back to quite regularly, which is a childhood book and perhaps nobody ever would read it, but I love it and it kind of sums up for me what I was like as a child and what I continue to be like as I've gone through my career. It's called Wish For A Pony, and I really wanted a pony when I was between the ages of six and seven, and then I wished my wish came true. And from then on in, I believed that anything I wished for would happen. Rhiannon Hiles: And I still have that kind of strange, I often think I'm just going to wish that to happen, but I think it's not just that, it's holistic. I think if you really want something and you set everything towards it, yes, of course some people might say, but then you potentially set yourself up for great disappointment and failure. But I kind of think that you can't do something without taking that risk. So I just tend to think if you want it and you wish for it that much and that's what you're really aiming for, just go for it and do it. And perhaps the environment in which I've been brought up has enabled me to do that. And I completely understand that for some people that is probably difficult and challenging. I do get that. Rhiannon Hiles: So I feel that if I can help others who maybe haven't got that kind of environment to help them like those lads and lasses from the Woodshed at Sacrosanct and folks like that if we can provide spaces where they really want to try something but they're not sure how to do it then I think then we've achieved something. Kelly Molson: Yeah, that's lovely. Do you know what? So I'm reading the book at the minute I've read the book Manifest, and it is about visualisation and the power of our thoughts and how we talk to ourselves and the things that we kind of want to bring into our lives. And there was a little bit of it that I was kind of going, "Is it the power of the universe?". It felt a little bit way woo to me, but then I kind of reflected on it a bit and went, but this is about taking action, really. It's about going, "I want this to happen in my life.". And it's not about sitting back and hoping that it might happen just because you've put a picture of it on your wall. It's actually about going out and doing the bloody hard work to make it happen. Kelly Molson: So have those conversations with the right people who are the people that can open the doors for you. Go and meet them, ask out to them. And I think that's a really important element of the whole. Yes, you can wish for something to happen, absolutely. But you've got to put the legwork in to make it happen. What a great book. All right, Wish for a Pony. Rhiannon Hiles: Wish for a Pony. Kelly Molson: Listeners, as ever. If you want to win a copy of Rhiannon's book, if you go over to this podcast announcement on Twitter and you retweet it with the words, I want Rhiannon's book, then you'll be in with a chance of winning it. I'm maybe not going to show it to my daughter because I'm actually terrified of horses. Rhiannon Hiles: You don't want a horse to appear in your garden. Kelly Molson: Her cousins have got a pony. She can do it with them and not at home here. Rhiannon, it's been so lovely to have you on. Thank you. I feel like this is one of those chats that could go on and on for hours. So I want you to come back when the accommodation is open. Yeah, because I want to know all about that. I'm going to visit that cinema. But, yeah, I'd love you to come back on and tell us how it's gone once you've had your kind of first guest and stuff. I think that'd be a really great chat. Rhiannon Hiles: I'd love that. All right. Kelly Molson: All right. Wonderful. Thank you. Rhiannon Hiles: Super. Thank you, Kelly. Thank you. Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

The Emperor toying with the galaxy, a desert planet at the center of a saga and the chosen one rising as foretold in the prophecy; Just a few of the connections Dune has to Star Wars... or is that the other way around? Queue up this episode to find out & enjoy! Thanks to Mike and Dale from It's True, All of It podcast for providing our intro song. Thanks to James Arnold Taylor for our intro! We have t-shirts for sale! Please visit our Etsy store for our latests designs! Start a ConverSWation with us: converswations.com converswations on twitter converswations on facebook converswations on instagram converswations linktree We are proud founding members of the Red 5 Network --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/converswations/message

LOSERS BACK LIKE WORLDS! NFL and LoL Pickems, WQS and Playin games, Annual Jersey Ranking, and more! Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/LosersQueuePod, follow on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and send in your personal stories/memes/highlights to losersqueuepodcast@gmail.com!

For The First time ever The Dark Ride is pitting the theme world mega champs against each other where it counts... the lines. in a knockout, all-holds-barred, battle royale Tournament of the Queue of Champions: Disney Vs Universal. Us Theme nerd aficionados have spent more time riding the stainless steel saddle , carving switchbacks and spotting queue cuties than any level-headed park hopper has any business undertaking. Some say "it's just a wait time", well those magic carpet riders are missing the joy, splendor, and appreciation of the finely crafted story steps that our courageous creatives have cogeled together for our experiencing pleasure. so which of your favorite breadlines will take the the big "W", heres a hint... it's not the peoplemover. we have 28 rides and attractions vying for the top spot, and you gotta give a listen if you want to meet the champ! Drunk Distory, The Dark Ride, Funny, Comedy, Comedians, Adult Disney Podcast, Adult Universal Podcast, Adult Themepark Podcast, Vacation, Universal Studios Orlando, Disney Vacation, queues, tournement, Bracket, lines, wait time, champ is here, Disney Hollywood Studios, Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, epcot, Animal Kingdom, Rides, History, booze, Theme Park Podcast, Orlando, Amusement Park, Drinking Game Podcast, Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure

John speaks with Respell's Harpriya Bagri about using her firm's AI workflow tool to fight through the frustration of lost luggage. Also, Glen shares conference nuggets and ponders the meaning of the word “cashless.”     Links related to this episode:   Respell: https://www.respell.ai/   Harpriya's viral tweet/video (that's right- we said Tweet) on her lost luggage pursuit: https://twitter.com/harpriiya/status/1682165101867175936  The full Town Hall video featuring Harpriya's Respell on-screen demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcPws0YWMiQ  FIVEGPT press release: https://www.big-fintech.com/Media?p=best-innovation-group-and-bonifii-announce-joint-development-of-fivegpt   FIVEGPT video: https://vimeo.com/871619836/f6309935c5  Equifax Market Pulse: https://www.equifax.com/business/trends-insights/marketpulse    Follow the Best Innovation Group on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/best-innovation-group/  Follow Glen on X @154Advisors Follow John on X @jbfintech

Season 6 – Episode 26 Pub portals & Love Behind Locked Doors Ahoy, spectral squad! We're diving deep into the paranormal pond once more. Linda has some titillating news: she's introducing her new beau, Emilio, to the parental units. Can't wait to see how that spectral encounter unfolds!

Baby Eme is turning one, and Kulap is leaving no pumpkin unturned to throw her the biggest, most fall-themed party. The birthday itinerary includes everything from a giant pumpkin punch bowl to hay bale couches. And although Eme is the pumpkin princess, Ku is saying no to one birthday tradition. Meanwhile, SuChin is Adding to Queue the most devastating movie she's seen all year, and turning to newsletters for fall shopping inspiration.  Please note, Add To Cart contains mature themes and may not be appropriate for all listeners.  To see all products mentioned in this episode, head to @addtocartpod on Instagram. To purchase any of the products, see below.  As an October baby, invites for Eme's birthday party are pumpkin themed This pumpkin topper is going on the birthday cake  Birthday sweets are arriving from Cat's Macs and Treats. Follow her on instagram for more goodies Cat is also a member of the Laos Angeles community This personalized name banner will be used again and again (hopefully) The birthday girl will be dressed in this perfect Maisonette pumpkin dress Ku is making Mixed Sandos and a Big Festive Salad   For the adults, Ku is serving fall sangria in this Williams Sonoma pumpkin punch bowl The party favors are pumpkins from Mr. Jack O'Lanterns Pumpkin Patch These signs matching signs will direct partygoers to the pumpkins  MERSEA's sweaters are the perfect transitional piece for fall  Even Kulap's nephew loves lululemon! Check out their Align, Wunder Train and Fast and Free and collections  Add to Queue: Past Lives is the best movie Su has seen all year  Newsletters to follow: THE LOVE LIST by Jess Graves and Magasin by Laura Reilly  Laura maintains a spreadsheet of readers' best loved fall pieces  Add to Queue: Camp Counselors with Zachariah Porter and Jonathan Carson. Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.  Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at bit.ly/lemonadapremium.  Click this link for a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this show and all Lemonada shows: lemonadamedia.com/sponsorsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In today's episode of the Atheist Experience, Jim Barrows and JMike have fun with antinatalism, and most importantly, blasphemy!Kirsten in TX asks about the benefits of religion providing community, and how secular communities can provide the same benefits. We now have many choices on social media where you just can find your community. You can even start your own group! You can use words like “critical thinker”. If we do not do this ourselves, it is not going to happen.Samuel in Canada asks how to talk with a pastor that believes there is no evidence for creation or evolution and to just decide based on faith. There is more evidence for evolution than there is gravity. Everything in biology and in medicine is related to evolution. Changes in allele frequencies in a population over a period of time is already a fact that evolution occurs, and we haven't even got to natural selection yet.Jon in Canada believes that evidence for god is that people have faith. Does the number of people who believe something have any bearing on whether it is true? If we have evidence that god exists, we will believe in god. We do not have anything against something that does not exist. Queue in IL asks about the hard atheist stance with the belief that god does not exist and needing to provide the burden of proof. You can give a strong inductive case of why god is not probable. Every theist tends to make deductive cases for their god. Every phenomenon that we know of has a natural explanation or we just don't know how it happens. Even in places where naturalism might be improbable, it is just as improbable under theism with extra ontological baggage.Amanuel in TX says there should be a restriction on freedom of speech or expression because of an experiment of his that showed panic caused when some hosts tore up the scriptures. What kind of experience do you have setting up these experiments and was there a control group? How is bias not built into your study if these were people you knew? Stating a position of non god belief is not blasphemy or causing harm. Your irrational fear that should not be someone else's problem is used to justify atrocities such as gay conversion therapy. How does a blasphemous meme harm you? Look at how the Islamic world goes nuts for drawing on magazines. Restricting freedom of speech and what artists can portray is the totalitarian way and downright wacky.Andrew in FL calls to state that atheists tend to lean towards antinatalism and how they are damaging the population. Where do you get this claim? If this is true, why is atheism the fastest growing segment? If correlation is causation, then the increase of ice cream would increase the crime. Up until the last 10 years, the US was 90% Christian. The No True Scottsman fallacy does not work with the Baby Boomers messing up the population.Thank you for tuning in this week and the question of the week is to capture the image shown on the screen by giving us a caption!

In this week's episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Will Gorman, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, about the interconnection queue. The interconnection queue is the waiting list for developers that hope to connect power plants to the electric grid; regulators must first study the potential effects of connecting a plant to the grid before moving forward with a project. Gorman discusses the reasons for recent growth in queue wait times, the costs that are associated with connecting a new power plant to the grid, a new federal regulation that aims to improve the interconnection queue, and additional reforms that could speed up the process of connecting new power plants to the grid. References and recommendations: “Improvements to Generator Interconnection Procedures and Agreements” from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; https://www.ferc.gov/news-events/news/fact-sheet-improvements-generator-interconnection-procedures-and-agreements “Queued Up: Characteristics of Power Plants Seeking Transmission Interconnection” by Joe Rand, Will Gorman, Seongeun Jeong, Fredrich Kahrl, Julie Mulvaney Kemp, Ben Paulos, Dana Robson, Jo Seel, and Ryan Wiser; https://emp.lbl.gov/queues “Generator Interconnection Costs to the Transmission System” by Jo Seel, Will Gorman, Fredrich Kahrl, Julie Mulvaney Kemp, Dev Millstein, Joe Rand, and Ryan Wiser; https://emp.lbl.gov/interconnection_costs “Beyond FERC Order 2023: Considerations on Deep Interconnection Reform” by Tyler H. Norris; https://nicholasinstitute.duke.edu/publications/beyond-ferc-order-2023-considerations-deep-interconnection-reform “Energy at the Movies” television program; http://energyatthemovies.com/about/ “The Art of Energy Efficiency” by Arthur H. Rosenfeld; https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.energy.24.1.33 The “Parable” book series by Octavia E. Butler; https://www.octaviabutler.com/parableseries

Queue up that national anthem because we've got 10 trivia questions on sports team names that begin with the letter ‘D!' If you'd like to choose a specific topic or dedicate an episode to a friend send a donation of your choice on Venmo to @NoChitChatTrivia and write the topic you'd like in the comments: Choose a topic via Venmo Our official store is live!  Support the show by grabbing an NCCT shirt, hat, puzzle, or more: Official Store Visit our sister site thetop10things.com for travel and entertainment information! Thank you to everyone who listens!  Say hello or let's collaborate: nochitchattrivia@gmail.com

From the BBC World Service: Officially, “Barbie” isn’t showing in Russia, but unofficially, pirated versions are doing a roaring trade in Moscow cinemas. Then, the European Union has the gig economy in its sights; it's working on legislation that could give gig workers for ride-hailing or food delivery apps more rights. Plus, the giant Chinese property developer Evergrande has confirmed that its founder and chairman has been detained on suspicion of criminal activity. Its shares remain suspended.

From the BBC World Service: Officially, “Barbie” isn’t showing in Russia, but unofficially, pirated versions are doing a roaring trade in Moscow cinemas. Then, the European Union has the gig economy in its sights; it's working on legislation that could give gig workers for ride-hailing or food delivery apps more rights. Plus, the giant Chinese property developer Evergrande has confirmed that its founder and chairman has been detained on suspicion of criminal activity. Its shares remain suspended.

Sebastian Duesterhoeft of Lightspeed Venture Partners joins Nate to discuss Are Software Businesses Defensible? What is the S curve and How to Time it, and Lessons from Investing in Snowflake, Databricks, and Confluent. In this episode we cover: Investing in a Challenging Market with a Growth Investor AI Technology, Its Impact & Potential to Disrupt Industries and Create New Opportunities Investment Strategies and Price Dynamics in the Startup Space Investing in Enterprise Software Companies, Including S-Curve Analysis Market Size and Potential for a New Endpoint Security Player Determining the Size of the Queue for Cloud Security and Software Development Market Sizing, Vertical SAAS, and Software Margins Investing, Brand, and Distribution in the Tech Industry Guest Links: Twitter LinkedIn Lightspeed Venture Partners The hosts of The Full Ratchet are Nick Moran and Nate Pierotti of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in founders outside of the Bay Area. Want to keep up to date with The Full Ratchet? Follow us on social. You can learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our LinkedIn and Twitter. Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and we'll send a list of potential investors right to your inbox!