Podcasts about Queue

On this episode we rank Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon and Revenge of the Mummy on their facade, Story, Worth the Average Wait, Queue and Overall Ride Experience out of 10. Join us in The Producers Club Follow us: LINKTREE     

As the power of artificial intelligence continues to expand into new industries, trailblazers are pushing the boundaries and using these advancements to revolutionize the way we manage and experience public spaces.In this episode of Connect, we are joined by Zack Klima, founder and CEO of WaitTime, the leader in AI-powered computer vision for crowd management. Together, we explore WaitTime's patented AI algorithms used for crowd management, such as queuing, stanchion, entry-exit, and massing.From the company's origin and development to their plans for the future, Zack provides AI-fueled insight that appeals to a variety of industries. We explore how different types of businesses – from retail to events and everything in between – can effectively adopt these methods while remaining flexible in the face of constant change and development.Whether you're a venue operator, an IT leader, or you're simply curious about how you can get swiftly get through lines, this conversation will help you think more critically about our technological future. For more information about Axis Communications, visit us at www.axis.com Follow us on social media at Axis Communications - Home | Facebook Axis Communications: My Company | LinkedIn Axis North America (@Axis_NA) / TwitterAxis Communications USA - YouTube

“it's a hungry world, they're gonna eat you alive son…” Queue the James Gunn dance number! It's the long awaited PEACEMAKER season 2 opening and with that comes Part 1 of JAFN review! We're six episodes in and even more anticipated than this discussion is the return of Double A to the studio and hopefully our regularly scheduled programming! But like Foxy Shazam says we're gonna keep on keeping on!

It's Day 3 of IAAPA Expo Europe, and this episode of Skip the Queue brings you insights from industry leaders. Hear from Andreas Andersen (Liseberg), Peter van der Schans (IAAPA EMEA), Laura Read (Marwell Zoo), Aaron Wilson (ProSlide), and Robbi Jones (Katapult) on resilience, creativity, and the future of attractions.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 Paul Marden, with co host Andy Povey and roving reporter Claire Furnival.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 SkiptheQueue.fm.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 LinkedIn. Show references:  https://www.liseberg.se/en/https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreas-veilstrup-andersen/Andreas Veilstrup Andersen is the CEO and President of the Liseberg Group, Sweden – operating one of Scandinavia's most visited amusement parks. Andreas has a legal and financial background and has been working in the amusement park industry since 2000.  First in several capacities at Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark, later as Vice President of European operations at IAAPA EMEA in Brussels, Belgium. Andreas was the 2018 Chairman of IAAPA. He currently holds board positions at Farup Sommerland and Alsik Hotel in Denmark, as well as Momentum Leisure and Leo's Lekland, Europe's largest chain of FEC's. Andreas is heading up IAAPA's sustainability initiatives, and occasionally blogs on https://reflections.liseberg.se/.Plus, live from the Day 3 of the IAAPA Expo Europe show floor, we catch up with:Aaron Wilson - Vice President, Business Development Europe & Latin America, Proslide Technologyhttps://www.proslide.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronlouiswilson/Robbie Jones - Insights Director, Katapaulthttps://www.katapult.co.uk/https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrrobbiejones/Peter van der Schans - Executive Director & Vice President, IAAPA EMEAhttps://iaapa.org/expos-and-events/expo-europehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-van-der-schans-87715717/Laura Read - Chief Executive, Marwell Zoohttps://www.marwell.org.uk/https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-read-she-her-98110726/ Transcriptions:  Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue, the podcast about the world's best attractions and the amazing people that work in them. I'm your host, Paul Marden, and together with my co-host, Andy Povey, and roving reporter Claire Furnival, we're here at day 3 of IAAPA Expo Europe. On today's show, Andy talks to Andreas Andersen, CEO and President of iseberg Group, about resilience. I meet Peter van der Schans from IAAPA EMEA, and we catch up with Laura Read from Marwell Zoo. First, let's go over to Andy.Andy Povey: So I'm joined now by Andreas Andersen, who's the chief exec of Liseberg, Scandinavia's most visited amusement park. Andreas, welcome to Barcelona. It's very good to see you here. Can you tell the listeners at home a little bit about Liseberg and what you do there?Andreas Andersen:  Sure. So I'm heading up one of the classic regional city-based parks in Northern Europe. So you have Liseberg, you have Tivoli in Copenhagen, you have Kornalund in Stockholm, and Linnanmaki in Helsinki. And we're part of this tradition of parks that have a very strong community base and a long history. Liseberg is 102 years old and three years old. And also parks that represent cultural heritage as well as reflect the cities we're located in. Lovely, lovely regional park in downtown Gothenburg. And if you haven't been, you should come visit.Andy Povey: Absolutely. I must admit, I haven't made it there myself yet. It's on the bucket list. So our theme for today's recording is about recovery and resilience. And recently, in your blog address, you wrote that you feel like for the past four years, you've been in constant crisis mode. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?Andreas Andersen: Well, I think a lot of executives or just people working in this industry can recognise that the last four or five years have been very turbulent, very, very, very volatile.Andreas Andersen: It all started with the pandemic in March 2020, we were at Lisa closed down for 17 months, so we didn't have any any business at all for for 17 months. Then we reopened in the middle of '21, very very hard— you know, with a lot of restrictions and an organisation that had not been you know operating anything for a long time and we also had to let go a lot of people. Then in '22, I think everybody experienced this giant rush, you know, that everybody wanted to get back into the park. So we couldn't really keep up with demand. And that was stressful in a different way. In '23, the market in the Nordics really suffered for some reason. It was a wit, summer and inflation, and interest rates.Andreas Andersen: And everything that went with, you could say, sort of the beginning of an economic downturn. And then, in 2024, our biggest investment, our biggest project expansion in the last 100 years, a large new indoor water park burned down. So it feels like these four or five years has really been this chain of crisis that we've had to get over and manage, basically.Andy Povey: Yeah, I mean, what we're hearing from people on the show floor is that the economic and political unrest that we have all over the Western world is creating some turbulence in the market. So talk to us a little bit more about the fire at Oceania. What happened?Andreas Andersen: We had been building the water park for almost three years, and we were six, seven weeks away from handover. It was some of the last works on the right installation that went wrong. It was a plastic welding that overheated, and these things happen, as you know.Andreas Andersen: Unfortunately, we lost a colleague in the fire and that was basically, you could say, that overshadowed, I would say, everything, especially in the first weeks. Andreas Andersen: That was devastating to all of us and obviously, especially his family. But soon after, we also had to make some decisions. You know, did we want to rebuild? How did we want to rebuild? At what pace? How would we finance? etc. etc. So you also very quickly move into the next phase of a crisis management and that is recovery. And we've been in that phase ever since. Andy Povey: Interesting. It's a devastating situation. I mean, your concern obviously has to be for the team and the people involved— not just those affected directly, but everybody on the floor who feels an emotional impact from this situation. So what tips would you give, as a leader, going through a situation like that, to anyone else listening who may be facing their own challenges?Andreas Andersen:  Well, I think I learned a lot during those weeks and months. And I think I learned that in a crisis, especially of this magnitude, everything becomes very naked. Everything becomes very raw. And you cannot really play a role as a leader. You have to be yourself. You have to be authentic. And it's okay to also show emotions and be caught up in this process of figuring out what to do with the project and the team and yourself when you meet challenges of this severity. Andreas Andersen:  So I would say be yourself, but also recognise that I always say that leadership in a crisis is a little bit like your biggest asset is the confidence that people have in you. And that confidence is something you build up over years. It's a little bit like a bank account that you can then draw on when the crisis hits. But you really have to make sure that you have something on that bank account. You can't borrow confidence. It's not up for loan. So you really, you know, crisis management, from a leadership perspective, actually starts a lot earlier than the crisis. It's about, you know, building a team that works well together, that trusts you and has confidence in you. And then, when the crisis hits, you know, you can draw on that trust, draw on that confidence. So I think that's two of the learnings that I had during this process.Andy Povey: I love the idea of the bank that you can draw on. We're making deposits in our bank every day, not just as a commercial leadership level, but a personal level as well. You need to have that resilience built in yourself. A lovely analogy. And I really love the idea of authenticity. So, if we move on now to talking a little bit more about what we do in an attraction, I think authenticity plays a really big part in that. So, how important is it for you to keep innovating at Liseberg?Andreas Andersen: It's super important because we are in a regional market. I mean, if you look at how our guests are composed, you know, we have 90% Swedish people and then 10%, maybe 12% in a good year from other, especially Nordic countries. But the majority are Swedish and about 60% of our total volume is actually from the local market. And if you want to attract the local market and you want to drive revisitation, Gothenburg is a large city, but it's not a huge city. You have to keep the product fresh. You have to reinvest, reinvent, and constantly adapt. And I think that's actually... part of the, you could say, the formula for these Nordic city-based parks that we've actually had to all reinvent, you know, throughout our history. I mean, Tivoli, that was founded in 1843, it was built by this crazy entrepreneur called Geo Carstensen.Andreas Andersen: And when Tivoli opened on the 15th of August, it was late, it was over budget, and it was not quite finished. And he got a question from a journalist, you know, asking him, you know, when will Tivoli be finished? And his response was, 'Never.' Tivoli will never be finished. And I think, you know, it's almost 200 years ago that he said this, but I think it encompasses sort of the real DNA of our industry that we have to constantly evolve with our guests and reinvent ourselves. And I think, again, that the city, the Nordic city-based parks have really been quite good at that.Andy Povey: Obviously, I mean, Liseberg with 100 years, Tivoli with almost 200 years. There's something good there. You're doing something right. So more recently, you've taken a position with, I'm going to pronounce this awfully, Leo's Lekland. Compare and contrast Liseberg to Europe's largest chain of family entertainment centres?Andreas Andersen:  I mean, there are a lot of similarities and also a lot of differences. I think what is interesting for me, you know, working with Leos is that it's, in many ways, the model is the same. I mean, you pay an entrance fee, you spend a few hours with your family, you may eat a lunch or buy an ice cream or a plush animal. So in many ways, it's the same. But I think, when we're talking about these attractions that are really designed for shorter visits, there is a convenience perspective to them that it's slightly different than, you know, visiting an amusement park or a theme park for a full day. I remember once I had a conversation with one of our competitors in this market, not FECs as such, but, you know, these shorter visits, you know, two, three-hour visit attractions, very often midway attractionsAndreas Andersen: And he said, 'What we sell is actually not.' necessarily an experience, it is two hours spent and I think that's a little bit of a different perspective on an attraction that you actually also go to, Leo's Lekland, to have your kids, you know, be really really tired when they get home, you know, in today's world, where everything is a lot of a lot of stuff is digital and and the kids sit there with their with the tablets and their phones and or their game consoles or they're online with their friends. I think play has a huge and important role to play in the development of motoric and social skills for kids. I think physical play will be something we're going to discuss a lot in the decades to come, because I think we lost a couple of generations the last 20 years. And I think that's a super dangerous thing. So getting back to your question, a lot of similarities, but there are also some differences and I've learned a lot by working with them.Andy Povey: Fantastic. The talk about play really resonates. We lost a year, maybe 18 months through COVID. I have 11-year-old twin girls. I love the idea that me taking them to our local FEC on a Saturday morning so I could recover from a hangover while they went and played was a really positive, good parent thing to do. So thank you for that. We're at the show. What are you looking forward to seeing when you get out on the show floor, when we eventually let you go out on the show floor?Andreas Andersen:  Oh! I very rarely have a plan. I like to just stroll around. Actually, I see it a little bit like visiting an amusement park. You shop for experiences and you see what happens. I think one of the great things about these expos is the fact that, and that's probably what I look most forward to, is that you meet your industry colleagues.Andreas Andersen:  A company like ours, Liseberg, we do not exist; we do not operate within a chain structure. We do not have a corporate mother that knows a lot about what we do. We do not have other parks that we can benchmark with. So these shows is also a little bit a way for us to get out of the bubble and meet other people that work with the same thing as we do. So it's actually not as much the expo floor or the events or the educational program as it is meeting the people. I enjoy.Andy Povey: Andreas, it's been great talking to you. Thank you very much for your time and have a fantastic show.Andreas Andersen:  And I wish you the very same. Thank you.Paul Marden: Now let's head over to the show floor. So we are here on the ProSlide stand, and I'm here with Aaron. Aaron, introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about ProSlide.Aaron  Wilson: Hi, nice to meet you. Thanks for coming in. I'm Aaron Wilson, Senior Vice President, Business Development, EMEA, with ProSlide. I've been with ProSlide for nine years. We're focused really on the design and innovation of rides. That's where we really form the nucleus of who ProSlide is.Paul Marden: Okay, so what are you launching here at this year's IAAPA?Aaron  Wilson:  Yeah, so let's walk over here to our model table. Where we have a large model of our newest feature, which is the Hive. We actually opened up two rides this year, one at Chimelong in China, the most attended water park in the world. Paul Marden: Wow. Aaron  Wilson:  And that's with a five-person family raft, everyone seated facing each other.Paul Marden: That's amazing. So you're going through this on a five-person ring kind of thing?Aaron  Wilson:  Exactly, a five-person tube. So it's a tight radius helix curve. So as you enter, you're entering into a completely open, basically cathedral space. But as you're dropping and turning very quickly, you're staying really stuck along the outside of the wall, feeling those centrifugal forces. And you have a 360-degree global view. So you're able to look forward, backwards, upwards, down. See everywhere where you came from and where you're headed.Paul Marden: It's amazing, isn't it? Because you've got transparent sides on it. So you can see outside as well.Aaron  Wilson:  Absolutely. And there's a ton of theming potential here. In the middle is a support structure. And so we're working on theming there in the middle, if we can. Special effects around the outside. In this case, it's transparent. Exactly.Paul Marden: You've got some amazing models on the table here. This is one of those rides that you can't really bring to IAAPA and experience in real life because we'd all have to be in our swimmers.Aaron  Wilson:  Unfortunately, yes.Paul Marden: But some amazing, amazing models. What's innovative about this? What's this bringing to the market, which is unusual?Aaron  Wilson:  So you have that 360-degree helix turn. We've completely opened it up. So normally in a turn, you can only see a few meters in front of you. In this case, it's a feature that's completely open as you're making that turn. And so you can see everywhere, right? Up and down, forwards, backwards. And that's really part of the differentiation. But obviously the biggest sensation is actually that experience you feel as you have those centrifugal forces around the outside. With a five-person boat, you're looking at about 800 pounds, and you're whipping around the outside, gaining tons of speed throughout. So it's really exciting. The additional interesting thing about this element is we're also doing a two-person tube and a small compact footprint.Aaron  Wilson:  So it's very adaptable for indoor parks or even outdoor parks that don't have a ton of space. That compact footprint gives a lot of flexibility in the design.Paul Marden: So you've got this in China at the moment, you say?Aaron  Wilson:  Yep, and one in the US. And there are a lot more to come in the next one to two years already programmed and open. So we're really excited about this for the water parks.Paul Marden: That's amazing. So we've been asking everybody to get their crystal ball out and tell us trends for 2026. Where do you think the market is going? What do you think that we can expect to see this time next year at IAAPA? Aaron  Wilson:  Water coasters. Water coasters are the big thing. Paul Marden: What on earth is a water coaster? Aaron  Wilson:  Yeah, well, let's head over here to another model table. We have a couple of examples here. So I would say, like in the last couple of years, specifically speaking about Europe, we've seen an amazing response to our water coaster technology using water propulsion. We call it the rocket blast.Paul Marden: Right.Aaron  Wilson:  And so what you have is a series of injectors placed along the uphill sections that actually push the boat uphill. That's amazing. And so with that technology, we're able to do a number of things. And this actually, this ride opened about a year and a half ago at Land of Legends in Turkey. This is, you know, one of the biggest things that will stand out to you here is, as you're looking around all the models, what's very common with a water park is you have—gravity-fed rides, meaning you climb a tower and use gravity to go down. Paul Marden:  This is very flat and long. Aaron  Wilson:  Exactly. This is built essentially on grade. There's no tower here. So, I mean, the first thing is accessibility. So now, as you know, there's no steps. You know, water parks are historically very difficult to meet accessibility. Paul Marden: Yeah. Do you know, I've never thought of that before. But of course, you need to climb the stairs to be able to get to the top of the tower.Aaron  Wilson:  So this case, this is called Turtle Coaster. And this is at Land of Legends. Our guests can walk or, you know, walk or wheel.Paul Marden: Yep.Aaron  Wilson:  As they want up this ramp. This is about four meters off grade. We have a little bit of a drop here. So this is a closed-circuit coaster, right? Meaning the guests are finishing and ending in the same location. Also something different from a water ride. Normally you're going up a tower and finishing in a pool. Here you're finishing and starting at the same location, much like a mechanical dry-growing coaster.Paul Marden: And this, just for listeners' benefit, this has got eight or nine turns in there. It's really, you know. It's going to be a normal coaster-type ride, isn't it?Aaron  Wilson:  This is a 420-meter-long coaster. You're looking at about a minute-and-a-half water ride, which is crazy. Most water rides are about 30 seconds, you know? So it's a really long experience. You have eight uphill last sections, along with what else is unique with our technology is we're able to incorporate these flat last sections. So much like a mechanical coaster has that launch element to it. We're able to do that with water propulsion. So right off the stop, you have this completely flat launch blast. Up, you're getting the elevation. You go around for 420 meters, a series of flying saucer features, uphill sections. Coming back into a water channel.Aaron  Wilson:  And landing in the landing pool, it picks you up on a moving station conveyor. So this conveyor is actually moving at a very slow pace. Guests are cutting off and getting back on.Paul Marden: This is not a lazy river, is it? That you're just sat around for a little while. This is going to hair around.Aaron  Wilson:  Absolutely not. And then here at Siam Park is another coaster here. We opened up in '23. Doolin. So you had two lanes.Paul Marden: Oh, wow.Aaron  Wilson:  And you're racing side by side throughout the experience.Paul Marden: That is amazing. Well, Aaron, look— it's been wonderful to meet you. Find out more about what you're doing here. Looks super, super exciting. I want to get my swimmers on and go and try some, but maybe not whilst we're here in Barcelona, but maybe one time soon.Andy Povey: So we're on the show floor again and I'm with Robbie Jones from Katapult. Robbie, please tell the listeners at home a little bit about Katapult, what you do with them.Robbie  Jones: So we design themed attractions, experiences and destinations. So that can be anything from theme parks all the way through to museums. And our— I guess our core competency is design stage, so pre-concept designs. We get involved quite a lot in theme parks that are very early stages. And my role in that is quite unique within the team of creatives and designers, in that I look towards the insights. So sometimes I work with feasibility partners to kind of pull together the economic requirements for a theme park or an attraction to exist. But more often than not, it's about the guest journey, the guest behaviour, how can we make the guest experience as best as possible by understanding information research that we might have already but also doing some primary research as well to make sure we're creating like that amazing moment for every person that walks through the door.Andy Povey: Fantastic. That sounds really, really impressive. Looking back over 2025, what are your key takeaways from this year so far?Robbie  Jones: Goodness, me. I think I'll speak with a lot of what the industry would say, which is it's been a little bit sticky in places in 2025. There's certainly been more maybes than yeses or nos in terms of projects. But I think we're starting to see things beginning to move. Someone's put some oil in the engine somewhere, which is great. And there's some really exciting projects coming up. Obviously, as a UK-based company, seeing the likes of Universal, Poodie Foo, setting up shop. It's going to be really interesting to see how that impacts not just the UK, but the European market as well.Andy Povey: I couldn't agree more. I really, really look forward to seeing that anticipated improvement in quality of experience that we'll get across the UK. So looking forward to '26 now, what are you anticipating as being the exciting things we're talking about in 12 months' time?Robbie  Jones: Gosh, I mean, I think there will be an element of a quiet time, I think, especially with the new build theme parks, whether that's in the UK or, of course, in the Middle East. I think there'll be an element of quiet that we need to get used to in terms of waiting to see what the next big thing is or the next IP that's going to be in those rides. But I certainly see a lot more positive vibes coming out of the industry. I think we'll see more exciting local experiences, maybe not just big global ones. And yeah, just on the horizon, maybe plenty more opportunity and positivity.Paul Marden: It has been my first IAAPA Expo, and I've had a whale of a time. And I am joined here by Peter van der Schans, the VP and Exec Director of IAAPA EMEA. Peter. Tell me a little bit about what the show has been like for you because I've had an amazing time.Peter van der Schans: Well, so did I. The funny thing is we've always worked so hard on these expos. It takes a hell of a lot of time and it all comes back in this one week. And once you exit that plane or train or however you arrive, you start in a bus and then it's over before you know it.Peter van der Schans: And the week is done and you fall in this big black hole. That's where we're going now. So it's been a wonderful week and it's great to see all our members and every industry leader that is visiting us. We're a small team at IAAPA. We're not a huge organisation, but we have our members supporting us. It's a team effort from both IAAPA and our members, basically. And it's only pride.Paul Marden: One of the most important parts of the show, I think, is the educational side of what you do. There's been a big educational program. Are there any big themes that you've spotted coming out of that education strand?Peter van der Schans: So the education program actually is built with our members and by our members. So, of course, we guide it and shape it. But it's actually done by our members. So it's our members saying, 'Hey, this is where I have issues with. This is the trends I see. This is where I think this is going, which makes it always accurate because we have that industry knowledge by our members.' So in that sense, what we saw this year, there's a lot of focus on AI, obviously, the hot topic nowadays. Paul Marden: It's not a single interview I do where somebody hasn't dropped AI into it. So it's a hot topic.Peter van der Schans: It's a hot topic. And I'm very curious also to see where it's going because right now, if you see execution, the focus is much on back office. For example, Parks Reunidos for example, shared on stage, that they can now predict their next, the next day in visitor numbers with accuracy of 93% which is perfect. Things like that. But I'm curious exactly to see how it's going to evolve in the future to the front end. So what is that visitor going to see in the future? Whenever I go to a theme park, for example, will I be recognised by my name? And if I ride a ride, will the animatronic know my name, for example? Things like that. I think there's limitless possibilities.Peter van der Schans: And we're just at the verge of the beginning. And it's also so, so, so excited about that education program that we share what we know and we work together to get to that point to make it better. Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. The collaboration in this sector is just amazing. And IAAPA is just the living proof of that. So many smiling faces. You know that there were competitors together on stands just chatting and enjoying. It's a really enriching experience seeing everybody work together.Peter van der Schans: It is, it is. And the funny thing is I've worked in this industry since I was 16. I started as a ride operator. I didn't know any better than when I had an issue when I became supervisor and manager that I could call the park at the other end of the country and ask, like, 'Hey, how are you dealing with this?' And they helped me. And then I worked at the cinema industry and suddenly I realised that that is not that common in all industries, to say it lightly. It was much more competitive and I didn't want to share anything and really opened my eyes in a way that I realised, like, 'hey, this is special'. And also made me realise that IAAPA plays a big part in that as well, as an organisation to bring all those people together, to provide that platform to work together.Paul Marden: Yes, the facilitators of the community, aren't you? I'm going to ask you a slightly controversial question here. Outside of show hours, what has been your favourite party or event? And you can name drop any one of them. It's absolutely fine. Nobody will be upset with you.Peter van der Schans: I must say the ballpark reception, obviously for the British people. Always good beers. The Tuesday events with the opening ceremony, where we really kick off the week. They made me dance again. I don't recommend watching that back, but that's always just a fun, fun morning where we really kick off the week with a big energy, with a nice connection to the host city as well. Peter van der Schans: It's always fun to work on that and to execute that, but also the evening event, the opening reception where we gather. Well, this year we had 1,400 industry professionals coming together and mixing, mingling in Tibidabo. Without rain, thankfully. Paul Marden: Well, yes, this is the thing. So I was watching the skies thinking this could go really badly wrong. The BBC weather forecasts were not looking good. Peter van der Schans: There's this tradition in Barcelona that you bring eggs to nuns and they make sure you'll have good weather. We did that. We brought three dozens.Paul Marden: Took a lot of eggs. There was a lot of eggs broken in the making of this party. But you did very well. We're at the end. And everybody gets to heave a big sigh of relief that the show's done. It's in the can. But there's also a touch of sadness and fondness looking forward to what comes next. So next year, what have you got coming up first? I understand there's something in the Middle East.Peter van der Schans: Yeah, absolutely. We actually last year at this expo in Amsterdam, we announced the launch of our newest expo, IAAPA Expo Middle East, which is actually the first time in IAAPA's history that we built a new expo from scratch.Peter van der Schans: Never done that before, our members and and people in the industry ask us year after year like, 'When is IAAPA coming to the Middle East?' Of course, there's a huge amount of investments going on in that region. It's crazy. And in that sense, we we simply listen to our members and decide that this is the time we need to go. And we're excited to get closer and closer to the actual launch of the event in March in 2026 in Abu Dhabi.Paul Marden: So March 2026, Abu Dhabi is our next event. But there is another event coming next year. IAAPA is coming to London, which I'm very pleased about. Tell me, is the planning all starting on Monday? Are you already a long way through planning? Plans you can share with me about what's coming up in London?Peter van der Schans: We will have an exciting program for sure, but we're not there yet with with the actual education programme. That takes a little bit more of time, but we do have the show Florencial already and that's looking to be another record-breaking show. What I think also remarkable is that we will have one third more education than we will have in our previous show. So we always had two conference rooms— we'll have three in London. So we'll have actually quite a big increase in our educational offerings as well.Paul Marden: That's amazing. I cannot wait. This has been my first IAAPA, but it won't be my last IAAPA. I think I can confidently say that. So grateful for you and the team inviting us along as Skip the Queue to be part of what you've been doing. We've had an amazing time and I cannot wait to see you again in London.Peter van der Schans: Thank you very much and happy to have you here.Paul Marden: We are here at the end of day three of IAAPA Expo Europe. We've had a wonderful time. Andy Povey: I'm broken. Paul Marden: Oh man, I'm going home a broken man. The voice is barely holding on. I am here with Laura Read from Marwell Zoo. Welcome to Skip the Queue, Laura.Laura Read: Hello. Thank you for having me.Paul Marden: Laura, what's it been like for you? What's the benefit of coming to IAAPA for you?Laura Read: So this is my first IAAPA. For me, this was all around looking at what's new for visitor attractions, what's innovative, what's coming up, and what could we potentially bring to the visitors of Marwell Zoo that might be exciting and might drive more visitors to come to us, really, ultimately. It's all about, for us, diversification, keeping the zoo product at the core of our offer, obviously, but seeing how we can augment that with other things.Paul Marden: So what can we expect? Is it going to be a 4D immersive ride experience? Water slides? Or are you looking for something that enriches the in-real-life experience for you? And it's a bit more low-tech.Laura Read: Oh, I'd love to put in like a water park. Do you know what? That's something like the coolest stalls. Like going around going, 'oh, I'd love to design a water park. That's so fun. No, no'. So for us, it's really about looking at sort of smaller, lower-level, new attractions that we can bring in, you know, we're primarily a family audience. So it's what do kids want to play on? You know, I've seen some really cool little ride-on Jeeps that we think would work really, really well because we also want to stay true to our ethos. You know, Marwell's built its reputation on our conservation work, our hands-on conservation work in the field, you know, reversing species decline and also around sustainability. So sustainability is really core to our offer.Laura Read: This is not about turning Marwell into a theme park or a water park or anything like that, because the animals are still very much the stars of the show, as is the conservation work. But it's about how we can best utilise our space to provide that density of guest experience. And I think seeing all the things here today. That's where the inspiration comes in.Paul Marden: I think it's really interesting, isn't it? Because when you take your kids to the zoo, you need some space. You need a palate cleanser between the animals, don't you? To give the kids time to burn off some energy, to do something a little bit different. And then they come back re-energised and you're hiding the vegetables. You're teaching them about the conservation efforts and all the really important stuff that you do, but hidden around lots of things that keep them happy and engaged in what's going on.Laura Read: Exactly. The problem with zoos is the animals— they don't care that they're the exhibits.Laura Read: And, you know, we are a primarily outdoor attraction. Extremes of heat, rainy days, animals disappear. We know that. We know that the perennial problem is: I didn't see any animals because we have really, really high animal welfare levels and standards. And if those animals want to go off show and take themselves off to bed or away from the public view, they all can and should and do. So we need something that can keep kids particularly engaged and entertained, hopefully getting across a bit of education and messaging as well at the same time. That's a massive tick in the box. But, you know, it fills in the gaps when those animals just aren't playing ball.Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. Andy, what's been the highlight of day three for you, mate?Andy Povey: So I think it's actually talking to Laura.Paul Marden: Such a charmer.Andy Povey: Let me finish. Let me justify. It's really picking up the fact that this isn't just a theme park show. Yeah. There are elements for everything you could possibly do any day out any attraction, even in any shopping centre or any place you go to where there's large crowds of people— so it's all of that kind of stuff. I think is it's refreshing to see it through someone else's eyes, through our conversations.Laura Read: I was going to say, 'I have to say,'  Before I was chief exec at Marwell, I ran a really large, shopping centre like retail, leisure, events, and destination. And I'm amazed that this is not on more commercial real estate people's radar. I look to see if there's anyone from a previous company here, then there isn't on the attendees list. And I'm like, 'Wow,' this is all the stuff that we should have been thinking about five years ago, ten years ago, when we were realising that diversification from a retail point of view is so important because of online shopping. So that's really interesting what you say. It's not just the theme parks.Andy Povey: No, absolutely not. It's all about the day out. And ultimately, that's all. We're all here to do is we work in a fun industry, and fun doesn't have to just be an amusement park.Paul Marden: Yeah, I found it really interesting. Seeing the things that I've seen has stretched my definition of what a visitor attraction actually is, because it is more than just a theme park. As you wander around and you see the different exhibitors, I was expecting to see... The ride designers and some of the really cool tech that I've seen. But there was other stuff that I've seen that I just hadn't expected.Andy Povey: No, I mean, I was chatting yesterday to a guy who supplies park benches and litter bins.  You see them everywhere. Paul Marden: I say the park bench thing. I remember when I was working at the Botanic Gardens in Wales as it was being built, the importance of the park bench and sitting on them. And they were beautiful park benches, but they were also super comfy. The importance of a park bench, like a good toilet, can't be underestimated.Laura Read: You can always tell someone who works in visitor attraction operations, when they go to any other visitor attraction, they take pictures of the bins. I think that is an absolute giveaway. When I go places with my family and the kids are there, taking pictures of animals or taking pictures of each other or whatever they're doing. And I'm there. Oh, I'm just gonna take a picture of that sign. You know, like.Andy Povey: I have another confession to make. I had a conversation with my wife who took the kids to an attraction a couple of weeks ago. And I was most distressed that she hadn't taken a picture of the till for me.Paul Marden: Oh, you would know what the part number and everything about that till, wouldn't you? Such a retail geek.Paul Marden: Laura, thank you so much for joining us on Skip the Queue. It has been delightful. I feel that there might be a full episode coming on, talking about the zoo, if you'll have me.Laura Read: Yes, absolutely. Bring it on. Paul Marden: Oh, wonderful. Thank you so much.Andy Povey: Andy, take me to the airport.Paul Marden: If you enjoyed this episode, please like and comment in your podcast app. It really helps more people to find us. Show notes and links to all our guests this week are available on our website, skipthequeue.fm. It's been a massive team effort to take Skip the Queue to IAAPA. A huge thank you to Emily Burrows and Sami Entwistle, Steve Folland and Wenalyn Dionaldo, Claire Furnival and Andy Povey, as well as Erica Washington-Perry and her team at IAAPA Global Communications.Paul Marden: Next week, we're wrapping up our IAAPA theme, talking to Choni Fernandez, Chief Sustainability Officer at PortAventura Entertainment, and Jakob Wahl, President and CEO of IAAPA. See you then.  The 2025 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsTake the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report

In this episode of Skip the Queue, Andy Povey sits down with Jérôme Giacomoni, co-founder and Chairman of AEROPHILE, the world leader in tethered gas balloons and immersive aerial experiences. Jérôme shares the story of how AEROPHILE began with a simple idea, to “make everybody fly” and grew into a global company operating in multiple countries, including France and the U.S.Tune in to hear about the company's signature attractions, including tethered balloon flights, the innovative Aerobar concept, and high-profile projects such as how you can experience flying the Olympic cauldron in Paris. Jérôme also shares how AEROPHILE has leveraged its unique platform to explore scientific initiatives like air-quality and climate-change monitoring and how he Integrates unique revenue streams from sponsorship and advertising.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 Paul Marden, with co host Andy Povey and roving reporter Claire Furnival.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 SkiptheQueue.fm.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 LinkedIn. Show references:  https://www.aerophile.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerome-giacomoni-3074b7/Jérôme Giacomoni is co-founder of Groupe AEROPHILE and Chairman of AEROPHILE SAS. Since 1993, he has led the company to become the world leader in tethered gas balloons and balloon flights, operating iconic sites in France, the U.S., and Cambodia, and flying over 500,000 passengers annually. He also pioneered “flying food-tainment” with the Aerophare and Aerobar. Jérôme is a member of IAAPA, serves on the board of SNELAC, and is a Team France Export ambassador, earning multiple awards for entrepreneurship and innovation. Plus, live from the Day 2 of the IAAPA Expo Europe show floor, we catch up with:Rheanna Sorby –Marketing & Creative Director,  The Seasonal Grouphttps://theseasonalgroup.co.uk/https://www.linkedin.com/in/rheanna-sorby-seasonal/Sohret Pakis – Polin Waterparkshttps://www.polin.com.tr/https://www.linkedin.com/in/sohretpakis/Thomas Collin – Sales Manager, VEX Solutionshttps://www.vex-solutions.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-collin-18a476110/Peter Cliff – CEO // Founder, Conductr.https://conductr.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-cliff/Laura Baxter – Founder, Your CMOhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-baxter-4a756466/Josh Haywood – Resort Director, Crealy Theme Park & Resorthttps://www.crealy.co.uk/https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-haywood-68463630/ Transcriptions:  Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue, the podcast about the world's best attractions and the people that work in them. I'm your host Paul Marden, and with my co-host Andy Povey and roving reporter Claire Furnival, we're here at IAAPA Expo Europe. In today's episode, I go on a trip on Santa's Enchanted Elevator with the Seasonal Group, and Claire meets Peter Cliff from Conductr. But before all that, let's head over to Andy.Andy Povey: Good morning, everybody. I'm joined today by Jerome Giacomoni from AEROPHILE for our French listeners. I hope I've got that right. Jerome is the chief exec of AEROPHILE and has been the co-founder and president of AEROPHILE. And AEROPHILE supply helium-based balloon observation opportunities. I probably got the marketing on that completely wrong, Jerome. So please, can you share with our listeners what AEROPHILE is all about?Jerome Giacomoni: So AEROPHILE is a company I created with Mathieu Gobbi, my partner, 32 years ago, with a very simple idea, make everybody fly, you know, and we use a balloon to fly. So we have a tethered balloon. We have a huge, big balloon inflated with helium, a gas lighter than air. And we go up to more or less 150 meters high. up to 30 passengers. So we are linked to the ground with a cable, and the cable is linked to a winch. So you have to imagine that you have a winch that— when we go up—pulls when we go down. This is the exact opposite of an elevator because the balloon wants to go higher and higher. We have a lifting force of four tons.Andy Povey:Wow.Jerome Giacomoni:Yes, it's a big one. And so we need a cable to keep it. And thanks to this lifting force, we can fight against the wind.Jerome Giacomoni: And so the balloon can swing when you have some wind because the balloon is just pulled by the cable itself.Andy Povey: And trust me, listeners, they look absolutely spectacular. Just before we started recording, I was admitting to Jerome that I'm scared of heights. So I've stood and watched. The dining balloon, Futuroscope, never managed to pluck up the courage to try it myself.Jerome Giacomoni: This is another concept, Andy. So we have built two concepts. One is a tethered balloon, a real one with helium, with a cable, with a winch, and we fly by ourselves. The balloon flies by itself, okay? We did another concept 20 years after we created our company, so 10 years before now, in 2013, which is what we call the aero bar. It's a flying bar, and you have an inflatable balloon. to cover the gondola, but it's a fake. This is a real elevator, and you have a gondola with some winches and a metallic structure, and you go up and down. So what you saw in Futuroscope is not a balloon. It's a real elevator.Jerome Giacomoni: And the one you can see in Disneyland Paris, Disney World, Orlando or San Diego Zoo are a real balloon named a tethered balloon. So I'm glad you fell down into the trick. You caught me. Yes, I'm glad about that. But we have really two different concepts.Andy Povey: But the concept, the thing that the guest is experiencing, isn't really related to whether it's a balloon or a lift.Jerome Giacomoni: No. i think it's very different okay i think the aerobar is fun and you have the feet in the sky you feel the thrill of height and everything but you stop at 35 meters it's it's quite high for a ride but it's not a real flight And I think the balloon is a real flight. We have a balloon in Paris. We have a balloon in Budapest, Berlin. And you see the city from the sky at 150 meters high, which is very high. So you really experience a flight. With the aerobar, you have a ride, okay? So both of them are related to the sky, are related to the view, but one is really a flight, the other one is really a ride.Andy Povey: That makes absolute sense.Andy Povey: It doesn't reassure me on my fear of heights anymore, that I would like to go up three times, four times taller, higher than the one I saw first. Very interesting. So, listeners, we're often talking about technology and attractions. There's a huge amount of talk about augmented reality, about AI, about motion simulators. The reason, Jerome, we asked you to come and talk to us is because you don't do any of that. No—your experience is fantastic and it's new and it's unique, but there's no technology or very little obvious technology.Jerome Giacomoni: Yes, quite little. You know, it's amazing because we do this for now 32 years, as I told you. The first balloon was inflated in 1994. We have sold 120 balloons in more than 40 countries. And each time with the balloon, you have a magical effect, you know, because the balloon itself is very nice— because the balloon itself is a show from people looking at it from the ground. And because... The flight experience is amazing because you are really in the sky. You are really looking at the ground, at the landscape. You have no noise, you know, when you take a helicopter or plane. You have a lot of noise. You are in an enclosed airplane or helicopter. Here you are outside. You are on a balcony flying at 150 meters. And wherever we are, always we have like a magical effect of the flight. And with the flying bar, we decided to do something different— where we say, 'Why drink on ground where you can drink in the sky?'Jerome Giacomoni: So we add the drink to the ride, you know. So you are on a table and you have what we say in French conviviality. So we share a drink. We go at 35 meters and you have the thrill of the view of the height and also the conviviality of drinking. So this is another concept, but both of them are universal. And wherever we do it, we have sold 20 aero bars worldwide.Jerome Giacomoni: Everybody is very happy to have this kind of ride. I would say we are on the side of the main market. You know, we have two niche products. The balloon is a niche product. And the AeroBar is a niche product where we have another experience than a normal ride, like a roller coaster or a flume or a spinning coaster.Andy Povey: You say you're a nice product, but the balloon in Paris for the Olympics, where you lifted the cauldron, had phenomenal numbers of visitors watching. That wasn't something you could go on.Jerome Giacomoni: Yes, it was an amazing opportunity. You know, sometimes life gives you some presents.Jerome Giacomoni: And imagine that we were contacted by the Olympic Organisation Committee one day, and we believed it was a joke. And they said, 'We need to talk to you.' And then we discovered that instead of flying humans, they asked us to fly a cauldron. So the Olympic cauldron. And we have like one year and a half of design and manufacturing.Jerome Giacomoni: And then, at 11 pm, 25, the balloon has to fly in front of everybody. I can tell you it was a very stressful time. But so nice and so amazing to have experiences. So, yes, the balloon suddenly was visible by everybody. And that's back now in Paris, isn't it? Yes. First of all, the balloon has to stay only twice— 15 days. You know, you have the Olympics and the Paralympics. So we were open only 30 days in total. And the success was so huge that every night, you have dozens of thousands of people coming to look at it. That's why the mayor of Paris and the French president decided to keep it.Jerome Giacomoni: And just after the deflation of the balloon, they call us back and say, 'Jerome and Mathieu, we would like to have the balloon back.' So we work again with the city of Paris and the French presidency, and we agreed to put the balloon.Jerome Giacomoni: Three times, three months. So from June 21st, in France, this is a music event, you know, the Day of Music. To September 14th, which is a day of sport. So every year until the Olympic game of LA, we will operate the balloon for three months in the summertime. Fantastic.Andy Povey: So, Jerome, you operate in lots and lots of different countries all over the world. I think it's 14 countries that you've been.Jerome Giacomoni: No, we sold, but we operate only in the US and in France.Andy Povey: Ah, okay. Interesting.Jerome Giacomoni: We own ourselves, we operate ourselves, six balloons in the 120 we have sold. So we operate three in Paris region. One, the Parc André Citroën, where we have the Generali balloon since 1999. One in Disneyland Paris since 2005. So we are in Disneyland Paris for now 20 years. Time is flying. And the last one, the Cold Run, which is a very specific event that we operate now for one year and for the next two years. And in the US, we operate Disney World Orlando in Disney Spring since 2009, and San Diego Zoo Safari Park since 2005, and Irvine. South of LA since 2007. So we operate now six balloons for a long, long time, except the cold run. And we keep selling balloons.Jerome Giacomoni: We sell more or less five to six balloons every year.Andy Povey: And how do you find the differences between the French culture and you're on either side of America, so the differences between the different coasts of America and France?Jerome Giacomoni: Yes, we... We are in the US, but we are also in Mexico, in a lot of countries in Asia. In the Middle East, we have a beautiful balloon in Dubai. We have a beautiful balloon in Seoul. So we work a lot with very different cultures. You know, it's very interesting to sell the same product to different cultures. So I would say... The main difference probably lies in the contract. It's very funny when you make the contract. I would say a 'yes' is not the same 'yes' depending on the culture. But everybody is, you know, you... You love people when you work worldwide. You learn a lot, you discover a lot. You have to learn with different cultures. And I have the chance in my professional life to experience that and to meet people from all over the world. And, you know, my job is to go on site, and discuss with someone, and see if it's possible or not to have a balloon at this place.Jerome Giacomoni: So it's always a beautiful job because I travel in a lot of countries in beautiful spots.Jerome Giacomoni: We don't succeed a lot because, if not, I would have sold thousands of balloons. We have always constraints with local authority, with food traffic, etc. But always, it's a pleasure to meet people. And once... The balloon is accepted by the local authority when the customer has a finance for it. Then start more or less a one-year work together between installation, work on site, inflation, and training of the team. And after... They fly with their own wings, even if we have no wings with our balloons.Andy Povey: Very good. And I imagine that you don't put balloons into ugly places.Jerome Giacomoni: We did, sometimes for specific contracts. Ugly, I won't use this name, but not very obvious, logical site. But it has happened. Sometimes we do for small events or for specific needs.Jerome Giacomoni: But yes, most of the time, the sites are very interesting.Andy Povey: So there are other things you're doing with the balloons. So the air quality messaging that you have above Paris. Tell us more about your opportunities to influence in other areas.Jerome Giacomoni: Yes, you know, the balloon is not only a ride, a passenger ride, but it's also an amazing opportunity for communication and for advertisement. So in the city center, like Paris, Berlin, or Seoul, the balloon is used also as a giant advertising billboard. So you have two revenues. You have the revenue of the passenger, but you have also the sponsor revenue.Jerome Giacomoni: When we started the balloon in Paris, it was extremely difficult to get the authorisation to have a balloon in Paris centre. We are two kilometres south of the Eiffel Tower. But you remember, we had the famous Millennium, the Y2K. uh and and so the mayor faris was looking for a new idea and we propose a balloon And they gave us only a one year and a half contract. And the investment was quite huge. And we told him, OK, we can do it, but we cannot do it for only one year and a half. Except if you accept that we have a name on the balloon, a naming and a sponsor on the balloon. And the mayor say yes. And we start another business where we put sponsor on the balloon. And this is a very good business because it makes a... activity immediately profitable so we did that in Paris in 1999 and in 2008 the balloon was like 10 years old because when you fly you have your the balloon is huge we talk about a 32 meters high balloon we talk about like a 12-story building.Jerome Giacomoni: So everybody knows the balloon in Paris. Everybody can see it. And so, when we fly, we have 400,000 people who immediately see us. So we decided to give citizen aspect. And we start— pour changer le couleur de la balle selon la qualité de l'air. C'était en 2008. Et parce que nous l'avons fait, nous avons des scientifiques... coming to us and say, 'Hey, this balloon is a wonderful platform to measure air quality because you make like a carrot of the air from zero to 150 meters. Jerome Giacomoni:  Can we bring some scientist instrument on the gondola? And we say yes. And then we start to make science. And then we start to make scientific publications, scientific publications. And then we start a new business where the balloon is not only a tethered gas balloon for passenger, it's only... advertising billboard and now it's only a scientific platform and so this is very interesting and the last things we have done in 2024 no this year in 2025 is to use the balloon for global climate change. As you know, we have two main gas pollutants for the climate change, CO2 and CH4. And the balloon is a perfect platform to measure evolution on CO2 and CH4. So we are working with a European group named ICOS. gathering all the best laboratories in Europe, who are making a huge study on how CO2 and CH4 how they are in each city.Jerome Giacomoni: And Paris has been chosen as a pilot city. So we are very glad to work with them. And so now the Balloon is also working on climate change. And we will have big, big, big LED screen. So we make some technology sometime, as you said, to inform people on the temperature elevation in Europe and in the world. And the news are very bad, as everybody knows.Andy Povey: But that's fascinating. I love the integration you've been able to take from this unique proposition and apply it to different markets, different problems.Jerome Giacomoni: You know, Andy, I think we have to exit from the box. My message to... all people who are listening to us.Jerome Giacomoni: Okay, passenger rides is very important. It's a key market for many of us. But sometimes we can use... another way to find new flow of revenue, like advertising, and we can be also helpful to our other citizens, like working freely for scientists to make measurements on pollutants of the air. This helps with both air quality and also climate change.Andy Povey: It's a beautiful concept, Jerome. I love it. Love it.Andy Povey: So, final question. Your experiences are obviously very unique. What advice would you have for a venue and possibly a smaller venue that doesn't have the resources to be able to build something 150 metres high or put something 150 metres into the air? What advice would you give them on how to make a compelling experience for visitors?Jerome Giacomoni: I really believe that you have to stick on your roots, okay? I mean that people want authenticity.Jerome Giacomoni: And as you know, we are very keen on balloons, as you can imagine. So we make in our, you know, Paris, it's in Paris where you have the first flight. Yeah. In 1783. Montgolfier, brothers. Yes, with the Montgolfier brothers, with Charles, the scientist. So we really stick on our roots. And I think where you are in Brittany, where you are in Japan, you have to follow your own road and your own path. By feeling what could be the good idea, but also what is your feeling inside you. You need to have something different that you feel very confident with.Andy Povey: Beautiful final thought, Jerome, I like it a lot. So listeners, stay authentic and be passionate.Jerome Giacomoni: Exactly, the right word is passionate.Paul Marden: Next up, let's get some soundbites from the show floor.Rheanna  Sorby: My name's Rheanna. I'm Marketing and Creative Director for the Seasonal Group. We are curators of Christmas magic all year round. Wow, wow.Paul Marden: So you make Christmas special?Rheanna  Sorby: We're the Christmas elves.Paul Marden: Awesome, awesome. I can see you've got such a great set of stands. What have you got here that you're exhibiting for the first time?Rheanna  Sorby: We have Santa's Enchanted Express, which is a three-minute experience that transports customers and guests from a very festive train station to the North Pole in just under three minutes. So it's quite a Christmas miracle. And it also transports on nine pallets. So it's a great return on investment for customers there if it's 24 people on. We also have our elevator experience, which went viral last year. And then we have VR, animatronics, and a lot of our famous items, like the snowman here, just dressed as a little, it's some sort of operator.Paul Marden: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we don't have a lot of luck with lifts at the moment because the team got stuck in a lift yesterday for about 45 minutes. Stop it. We got rescued by the... Well, I didn't get in the lift. I walked because there wasn't enough room. But two of them had to be rescued by the fire brigadeRheanna  Sorby: Okay, so this might be triggering. Well, you know.Paul Marden: Oh, no, I found it hilarious.Paul Marden: I was hugely supportive on the outside, yelling into them.Paul Marden: But Santa won't let me get stuck in a lift today, will he? Absolutely not.Rheanna  Sorby: No, there's an emergency exit. Excellent.Paul Marden: So what's new and innovative then about the Santa Express? What are you bringing to market?Rheanna  Sorby: So a lot of our clients, we sell business to business. They're struggling to get people into shopping centres and we're finding that we need to create retail theatre. So that is something I see as a massive trend moving forward. People want nostalgia. They want an experience, something memorable. But also our customers need a way to return investment as well. So they hopefully will spend something with us and then ticket the experience. So that's something that we're pivoting our business towards. Trying to create a brand new experience every year. A lot of people are struggling nowadays, cost of living.Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely.Rheanna  Sorby: It's difficult, so we're trying to find a way that brings the Christmas magic to people's doors.Paul Marden: We are, where are we at the moment? We're in September, so we've still got a couple of months left before Christmas 2025, but that must be over for you.Rheanna  Sorby: No, the quality of the street is on the shelves. It's already happening. The install season starts literally on Monday for us. Really? Yes. When we get back, we land and then we start installing.Paul Marden: And so this is the busy time. So let's talk about Christmas 2026. What are the trends that you see coming along at that point?Rheanna  Sorby: Whimsical, whimsical. So we've got Wicked number two coming out. And we've also had all like the Whoville, that sort of style, the Grinch. So imagine pastels, furry trees, things that don't quite make sense, a lot of whimsical wonderland, I would say, trend-wise. But equally immersive experiences and how we can bring magic to you.Paul Marden: Wonderful, wonderful. Thank you ever so much. Rheanna, it's been lovely to meet you. Thank you for coming on the podcast. And let's go and visit Santa in his lift, shall we? Yeah, excellent.Paul Marden: And here it is. So we are surrounded by suites in an old-fashioned lift. And there's our doors closed.Paul Marden: Oh, how amazing is this? We're going up.Paul Marden: Ice like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Great Glass Elevator. This is amazing. We're up over the clouds. Just stunning. There's a train there. I think we're going to follow into the tunnel after the train. Yes.Paul Marden: Got cold, now we're underground. Now we're in the tunnel.Paul Marden: And I think this might be Santa's factory.Paul Marden: Let's get ready.Paul Marden: Merry Christmas. The big man's chair as well. Can I take a seat in the big man's chair? Ho, ho, ho.Sohret Pakis: Hi, Paul. My name is Shorhet Pakis. I'm the brand ambassador for Polin Waterparks.Paul Marden: What are you launching this year at IAAPA? What's new for you?Sohret Pakis:Last year, we have won two big awards for a themed water slide, which is... Stingray it was in Nantes in France and it was something big because you know it was like Europeans best water slide number one and I have a brass ring award winner about two million number one but last night in Porta Ventura Stingray has won the second time best water slide of Europe award. But we have something new about it. Last year when I was telling about Stingray, it was an eight-person slide. This year we have something new. Now the capacity went up to 10, especially when we're talking about all these queue management issues. So that's something wonderful. And also, you ask, what is new? This year, we have something very exciting. A parrot-themed stingray. It's the same slide, but it's parrot-themed.Sohret Pakis: It's coming to Dubai by January. It's going to be open.Paul Marden: So can I ask you, what makes that innovative? What's new about that?Sohret Pakis: Actually, it's a very specifically themed waterslide. You know that POLIN has been pioneer in RTM manufacturing and U-texture. It's kind of a composite material technology which we can make waterslides look.  Look like a character, actually. We are the company who did this first because we said that storytelling is very important. Yes, but you know, slides are just slides. So we just wanted the slides look like the characters in that story. Of course, behind that, there is huge material technology, composites technology, design technologies. Actually, that's the time when we introduced King Cobra years ago. And now with Stingray, we took it much further. So actually, the team looks perfectly like a Stingray, but at the same time, it's a water slide with so many features. It has two big towers and between the towers, there's a bridge. From each tower, two slides start with a very special mist roofing and very special bridge where you can just see what's happening all over the slide.Paul Marden: So the queuing experience is enriched so it doesn't feel quite so long and boring because you can watch what everyone is doing.Sohret Pakis: It is, yes.Paul Marden: Super impressive. So we have been asking everybody to think about what are their predictions for 2026?Sohret Pakis: Everybody is talking about AI. Everybody is talking about immersive. So AI, of course, will make a huge difference in operation, especially.Paul Marden: In what way?Sohret Pakis: Actually, in guest satisfaction, because personalisation is very important in our industry. Whoever comes to the park, they are the heroes at the park. And so actually, if the park can make them feel that they are the heroes, truly— if that's their birthday, if that's their wedding anniversary, so whatever. If the park can make you feel that you're special, and thanks to technology, now it's possible.Paul Marden: Absolutely. That's so interesting. Thank you so much for your insights and for joining us on Skip the Queue. Thank you.Thomas Collin: I'm Thomas, I'm from VEX Solutions, so we are a VR company at the start, and now we're going to the arcade with mixed reality as well. Okay, so that's a nice link. What are you launching here at IAFA? So here for the first time we are introducing VEX Party Dash. The Party Dash is a mixed reality arcade machine. So automated, people can go on it, play on it. You have two huge screens that are really highly interactive. You can walk on the screen, you can touch the screen. The goal is really to make you moving. So that's what we want to do with the Dash.Paul Marden: That's amazing, isn't it? So we're watching people at the moment. You can see lights up on the floor that they're stepping on and on the wall.Thomas Collin: What is really the key aspect of this product is that it's highly attractive. People, they just go around, they stop by it, they want to try it. Actually, we can say, 'Hey, come and try it,' because we watch you, we see you. So we can say, 'Hey, come and try it.' And people stop by, they play it. It's highly immersive, but also highly active. Yes. You're just not standing on an arcade, sitting down. No, you're really moving around. So, this is really good for kids and families. Absolutely. That's what we see.Paul Marden: So, where do you see this being used? What sort of attractions will take this?Thomas Collin: Actually, with this product, it can go either in the attraction side or either at the arcade side. So, you can play it as one game, and you can play a three-minute game like an arcade, or you can actually book for 15 minutes. Since there is not a single game, but multiple games, you can play different games, you can play different levels inside the main gate. So you have a high replayability. Because we want you to come back, we want to attract the gamers, and then make them come back.Paul Marden: 15 minutes with this much activity sounds like quite a tall order. It's a workout.Thomas Collin: It's a workout. It's a workout. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Peter Cliff: Hi, my name is Pete Cliff. I'm from Conductr. We're here in Barcelona and it's so exciting to be back at IAAPA. Now, what we're super excited about this year is talking about our collaboration with Norwegian Cruise Lines on Great Stirrup Cay. It's their new water park. It's a great project. We're excited to talk to people about it. It's also lovely to be back in Barcelona. It's been, I think, about six years since we were last back here, and it's always one of my favourite European cities for IAPA. It's great to meet with people from the industry, reconnect with old colleagues and friends, and really see what's happening. There's a huge amount of innovation and special projects that are launching all over the show floor. So yeah, great to be back, and can't wait to see what the future of the themed entertainment industry has to offer.Laura Baxter: My name is Laura Baxter. You may know me as the girl with the purple jumpsuit on LinkedIn. I am the head of marketing for Black Gang Shine, but have most recently just announced that I've gone into freelancing and I've launched your CMO.Paul Marden: And I have to say, the jumpsuits work because I was about 50 metres behind you earlier on and I spotted the Your CMO logo on the back of the jumpsuit, so well done for that. We've talked to a lot of suppliers with stands that are exhibiting. From your perspective, this is your first time stepping over to the dark side and coming to an IAPA. What's the experience like for you? What are you here to get out of the show?Laura Baxter: I'd say it's twofold. Mainly it is for networking. Obviously anybody who's anyone in the industry is here. But also, it's inspiration because I want to be able to talk about new and exciting stuff with... Potential clients that I may have and ideas still for Black Gang as well. So, when you walk around show floor, which is just so vibrant and there's so much going on everywhere—you turn, you can draw inspiration from so many of the suppliers here.Paul Marden: What have you seen that's innovative?Laura Baxter: There's a huge amount of stuff being done with tech and it's very interesting because I think that's where a lot of people are going to think that they need to go, because that's the way of the world now, and the next generation don't know life off of a screen and they're expecting to have these incredible digital experiences.Laura Baxter: I'm not convinced that is the way to go. But yes, it's still impressive tech. So for me, there are things that I stand back out and look at and I'm like, 'Whoa, that's really, really cool.'Laura Baxter: I'm not so sure it's potentially what consumers want, though, controversially.Paul Marden: It's really hard, isn't it? Because as a parent of young kids, you want them off the tech as much as you possibly can. But you need a hook. To be able to attract them, don't you? So there's been some amazing stuff here that bridges that gap between the real world and the tech world. So, summer season 2025 is over. What are your predictions about summer 26 and what operators should be thinking about right now?Laura Baxter: It's a really tough market, we all know that. Budgets are tight for households, so there is an awful lot more thought going into their spending and what they're doing and where they're choosing to take that little bit of disposable money that they do have. Therefore actually I don't think next year operators should be thinking about huge innovations or new attractions. I think they need to strip back to basics and nail their customer service. I think guest expectations now are so high. because they're parting with money that is a little bit more precious to them than perhaps if they don't leave at the end of that day having had a good experience they feel ripped off they're going to go straight to review platforms they're going to let it all out and actually you need to be focusing on making sure that every single touch point with that customer is bang on and we're talking pre-visit as well from the your website journey to buying it to the follow-up emails to the pre-visit emails to that first person they meet on front of house to the ride operators to the events team if you have that kind of entertainment on park if you are not nailing your experienceLaura Baxter: You are going to lose out well.Paul Marden: I think we should end it right there. That there is a nugget of gold.Paul Marden: So I am here with co-host Andy Povey and our good friend Josh Haywood from Crealy down in Devon.Josh Haywood: Hello.Paul Marden: It's the end of day two. What have you seen, Josh? What's blown your socks off?Josh Haywood: Good couple of days so far. We're probably into 40,000 steps, which is great. I think technology is the thing that struck me this week so far. Just the small changes that some of the operators and some of the manufacturers are putting into their existing kits. So, for example, I attended a seminar this morning about bowling. and normally temping bowling is temping bowling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But now there's augmented reality, and they've got features on the lanes, and it's not about just taking all the pins down, it's taking pin one and six out, and all those things they're trying to do to reinvent older, more traditional attractions, which I think I find really interesting. Yeah. I think some of the seasonality stuff, the Christmas and Halloween stuff has been really good. We sat on a train and went on a journey and the seats rumbled and the sound and the visual effects, they were great.Paul Marden: I saw that. There was no room for me to go and sit on that train. It was amazing.Josh Haywood: I thought that was really good. And, you know, I've been really impressed with generally the show. I think you can get around it all as well. It feels really friendly. I think the sun shining always helps as well. It's not too tough, is it?Paul Marden: I mean, the last time we were in Barcelona, we were all wearing face masks. Absolutely, yes. So it's really refreshing to be back here. And not have that.Josh Haywood: Absolutely. And not have to queue to get in as well. I think that was interesting on the first day.Paul Marden: Oh, did they see you and then just wave you through?Josh Haywood: Red carpet was up for, of course, award-winning theme park and resort. Paul Marden: Mr. Hayward. Did you say award? Winnie and obviously you're on the back of your two awards in the theme park awards last week. How was that? And then we've got some really exciting news from Creeley.Josh Haywood: I saw it at the press this morning. Yes, so a couple of things happened last week. So first of all, we had our anniversary 25 years of Maximus the Coaster. The Vekoma Coaster, 25 years. The first coaster in Devon. It was Devon's first coaster, over half a million riders later. It's done 2 million miles around the track. It's great. So we did a sort of event for that, and we used it to sort of make some announcements about future attractions, which I'll tell you about in a minute. But then we went to the Theme Park Awards last week at Wickste Park, where... We've been the recipients of a few bronze and silvers, and we go being little old us and hope for the best. And then the award I really wanted to win was one of two: the best for families and the best for value. And when the family award came up, they said, 'In bronze is such and such, in silver.' And I was like, 'Well, there you go.' That's all that's left for another year. And then when they said the win at gold was cruelly for best for families, we were delighted. I got a bit emotional about it. I think we would just work so hard over the years to be the best in the Southwest, certainly. And certainly since we put Sootyland in as well. We won the award for Toddlers.Josh Haywood: So it was a double wham. And within 10 minutes as well. It wasn't separated. Within 10 minutes, I just got my breath back from the first one. And then we were up on stage again taking that second award. Oh, it's tough, isn't it? Which was great, yeah. Multi-award winning. Multi-award winning theme parking resort. Devon's finest. Most right in Devon. We're just going to... absolutely bleep the hell out of this for the next 12 months because who knows we may not win it again so we'll just shout from the treetops about this and then we also won thanks to martin rose and rose events uh silver for best entertainment event for the city show It's still very popular, the legacy brand. People love the Sooty show. And as I said at the awards, we sell loads of those puppets. People love a Sooty and a Sweep. So it's been a really good collaboration for us.Paul Marden: We were at our first away day for our Merak team back a few months ago down at Creeley, and I found a little sooty puppet underneath the lectern. I was absolutely chuffed to bits. And there he was, just sitting at the front of the away day, watching everything going on with Sue next to him.Josh Haywood: He's still popular. We understood when we put Cityland in, it wasn't going to be Peppa Pig. world and we didn't think for a minute we'd even sort of get to those heights of Thomas Land at Drayton Manor but it certainly hit a chord with the older market certainly the nannies and the granddads who remember such from when they were kids and you know it's a legacy brand and it works but what we have done really well is sort of corner that market for younger children and toddlers and we Sort of took some comments over the last 12 to 18 months that we may be missing the mark when it comes to the 8 to 12-year-olds, which we were pretty good at five or six years ago. So we've decided this year that we're going to invest in some thrill attractions. So we've just launched news that we've got two new rides going in next year. One, I can't tell you exactly because we're still going under. Got some planning issues, but we're going to have the Southwest tallest ride and the Southwest first inverted ride. So a multi-million pound investment going in and hopefully that will give us another boost that we need to kick on again. We've still got new accommodation going in. We'll still be doing new events and shows for next year.Josh Haywood: So it's going to be a bumper year for Crealy. Absolutely.  I really look forward to that.Paul Marden: I look forward to you being on the launch ride.Paul Marden: Me down on the ground watching and videoing.Josh Haywood: What they have said, which is really interesting, we spoke to an operator, there's only one other ride like it in the UK, and that operator said, whatever you do, make sure when you put the ride in, you fit a hose pipe and a tap right in. Because you may be washing the seats down more than you would usually on your current ride. So, yeah, it certainly will add that next level of ride experience to our family market.Paul Marden: Yeah, I think that's super important, isn't it? Mr. Povey, what have you seen today that has blown your socks off?Andy Povey: I'm really looking for the place to go and get some more soft, comfortable socks. I've walked so much. I've stood around and listened to so many fantastic talks, had so many brilliant conversations. I'm done. My feet hurt. I need to sit down and have a beer.Paul Marden: Well, I hate to break it to you, but there's another day left. And there's still more interviews to do. Still more opportunities for us to get some interesting stories on Skip the Queue.Andy Povey: Look forward to that.Paul Marden: Gentlemen, I think we're about done. So thank you ever so much. It has been a joy. And Mr. Povey, see you back here tomorrow. Josh, wonderful as always.Josh Haywood: Maybe see you at OrlandoPaul Marden: Oh. Absolutely, yeah.Josh Haywood: We'll do it againPaul Marden: Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you liked it, leave a comment in Spotify or Apple Podcasts. If you didn't, let us know on hello@skipthequeue.fm. Today's episode was a team effort for Sami and Emily from Plaster, Steve from Folland Co., as well as Claire and Wenalyn from Skip the Queue HQ. We're back again tomorrow for more fun from IAAPA, including Andreas Andersen from Liseberg, one of Scandinavia's most visited parks. See you all tomorrow. The 2025 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsTake the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report

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In this episode of Skip the Queue, host Paul Marden speaks with Andy Hadden, founder of the Lost Shore Surf Resort in Scotland. Andy shares the remarkable journey from his sporting background and early property career to discovering wave technology in the Basque Country, which inspired him to bring inland surfing to Scotland. Despite starting with no money and no land, Andy raised over £100 million and built one of the world's most advanced inland surf destinations. He explains how Lost Shore Surf Resort combines world-class waves with a strong community focus, sustainability initiatives, and partnerships with schools and universities to deliver real social and economic impact.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 Paul Marden, with co host Andy Povey and roving reporter Claire Furnival.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 SkiptheQueue.fm.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 LinkedIn. Show references:  Lost Shore Surf Resort website: https://www.lostshore.com/Andy Hadded on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-hadden-94989a67/Andy Hadden is the founder of Lost Shore Surf Resort, Scotland's first inland surf destination and home to Europe's largest wave pool. Opened in November 2024 near Edinburgh, Lost Shore is the country's largest sports infrastructure project since the Commonwealth Games and now attracts a truly international audience of surfers, families, and brands. With a background in insolvency and investment surveying, Andy led the venture from concept to completion - securing major institutional backing and building a multidisciplinary team to deliver a world-class destination. Long before 'ESG' was a buzzword, he embedded environmental and social value into Lost Shore's DNA, helping set new benchmarks for responsible development. As home to the Surf Lab with Edinburgh Napier University, Lost Shore also serves as a global hub for performance, product R&D, and surf therapy. Live from the show floor, we'll also be joined by:Bakit Baydaliev, CEO/ Cofounder of DOF Roboticshttps://dofrobotics.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/bakitbaydaliev/Hamza Saber, Expert Engineer at TÜV SÜDhttps://www.tuvsud.com/enhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/hamzasaber/David Jungmann, Director of Business Development at Accessohttps://www.accesso.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidjungmann/Kristof Van Hove, Tomorrowlandhttps://www.tomorrowland.com/home/https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristof-van-hove-2ba3b953/ Transcriptions:  Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue, the podcast about attractions and the amazing people who work with them. I'm your host, Paul Marden, and with my co-host Andy Povey and roving reporter Claire Furnival, we're coming to you from IAAPA Expo Europe. This is the first of three episodes from the show floor that will come to you over the next three days. Firstly, I'm joined today by Andy Hadden, the founder of Lost Shores Surf Resort.Paul Marden: Andy, tell us a little bit about your journey. You've opened this amazing attraction up there in Scotland where I was on holiday a couple of weeks ago. Tell us a little bit about that attraction. Why this and why in Scotland?Andy Hadden: Well, I grew up locally and I came from more of a sporting family than so much of a business family. My father was the international rugby coach for a while and I played a lot of sport. Paul Marden: Oh, really? Andy Hadden: Yeah, yeah. So we always had this thing about there wasn't enough facilities here in Scotland because Scotland is a place which doesn't necessarily have all the resources and the access to funds and everything else like that. But one thing we noted with, you know, if you created facilities, whether they be good tennis facilities, good 4G football pitches, whatever it was. It allowed the environment around it to prosper, the communities around it to prosper. And, of course, I was a charter surveyor by trade, so I worked in insolvency and then in investment. So I sold two sites to that market. Andy Hadden: But I always surfed. I always surfed. So whilst I was down in Birmingham in England, when I actually got an email in 2012 talking about some, you know, some surfy thing that might have been happening in Bristol, I called the head of destination consulting up and I said, 'this sounds like nonsense, to be honest', because I surf and you can't really be talking about real surfing waves here. It's got to be something, you know, different. He said, 'No, no, there's these guys in the Basque country.' So I took a flight over there and that day changed everything for me. Paul Marden: So what was it that you saw? Andy Hadden: I went to see what was back then a secret test facility in the mountains of the Basque Country. It was very cloak and dagger. I had to follow the guide and give me the email address. I found this all very exciting. When I went and actually saw this facility, I realised that for the decade before that, there'd been all these amazing minds, engineers and surfers working on what they believed could be, you know, a big future of not just the inland surfing movement that's now burgeoning into a multi-billion dollar global movement, but it could really affect surfing. And if it was going to affect surfing as a sport, and it's now an Olympic sport because of these facilities, they wanted to make sure that it was a very accessible piece of kit. So surfing, it could affect surfing if ran by the right people in the right ways and really communicate that stoke of the sport to the masses.Paul Marden: So what is it that you've built in Edinburgh then? Tell me a little bit about it.Andy Hadden: So we've delivered a wave garden cove, which is a 52-module wave garden, which is about the size of three football pitches, and it can run hundreds of waves an hour, touch of a button and it can run in skiing parlance anything from green runs right through to sort of black powder runs. And the beauty of it is you can have people that are the better surfers out the back and just like at the beach at the front you've got their kids and learning how to surf on the white water. So we're finding it to be a really amazing experience— not just for surfers who are obviously flocking to us, but already here in Scotland, eight months in, tens of thousands of new surfers are all coming back and just going, 'Wow, we've got this thing on our doorstep.' This is blowing our minds, you know. Paul Marden: Wowzers, wowzers. Look, I'm guessing that the infrastructure and the technology that you need to be able to create this kind of inland wave centre is key to what you're doing. That you've got to access some funds, I guess, to be able to do this. This is not a cheap thing for you to be able to put together, surely.Andy Hadden: Yeah, correct. I mean, you know, I have questioned my own sanity at times. But when I started 10 years ago, I had no money and no land. But I did have some property expertise and I wanted to do it in Edinburgh, a close-up place that I cared about. So we have excellent networks. For a few years, you know. Whilst we've ended up raising over  £100 million in structured finance from a standing start, it took me a couple of years just to raise £40,000. And then I used that to do some quite bizarre things like flying everyone that I cared about, you know, whether they were from the surf community or... Community stakeholders, politicians, and everyone over to the test facility to see themselves— what I could see to sort of—well, is it? Am I just getting carried away here? Or is there something in this? And then, on top of that, you know, we sponsored the world's first PhD in surf therapy with that first $5,000. So now we have a doctor in surf therapy who now takes me around the world to California and all these places. How does business actually really genuinely care about, you know, giving back? And I'm like, yeah, because we said we're going to do this once.Andy Hadden: We got to do it right. And it took us a decade. But yeah, we raised the money and we're very happy to be open.Paul Marden: So I mentioned a minute ago, I was holidaying in Scotland. I bookended Edinburgh— both sides of the holiday. And then I was in Sky for a few days as well. There's something about Edinburgh at the moment. There is a real energy. Coming up as a tourist, there was way too much for me to be able to do. It seems to be a real destination at the moment for people.Andy Hadden: Yeah, well, I think, coming from the background I came from, if I knew I was going to deliver a surfing park in the edge of Edinburgh, I then wanted to do it in the least risky way possible. So to do that, I felt land ownership was key and three business plans was also very key. Edinburgh's in need of accommodation regardless, and Edinburgh's also in need of good places, a good F&B for friends and family just to go and hang out on the weekends. And then, of course, you have the surfing, and we've got a big wellness aspect too. We also sit next to Europe's largest indoor climbing arena. And we're obviously very well connected in the centre of Scotland to both Edinburgh and Scotland. So, so many things to do. So, yeah, I mean, the Scottish tourism landscape has always been good, but it's just getting better and better as we see this as a future-proof marketplace up here. You know, we're not building ships anymore.Andy Hadden: Well, in fact, we got a contract the other week to build one, so maybe that's wrong. But the point is, we see it as a very future-proof place because the Americans are flagging, the Europeans are flagging, and they just want to feel like they're part of something very Scottish. And that's what we've tried to do in our own special way.Paul Marden: And when you think of coming to Scotland, of course, you think about surfing, don't you? Andy Hadden: Yes, who knows. Paul Marden: Exactly, exactly. Look, you had some recent high-profile support from Jason Connery, the son of the late James Bond actor Sean Connery. How did that come about?Andy Hadden: Well, I think we've got, there's a real Scottish spirit of entrepreneurialism that goes back, you know, probably right the way through to the Enlightenment where, you know, I'm sure. I'm sure a lot of you know how many inventions came from Scotland. And this is, you know, televisions, telephones, penicillin. I mean, just the list goes on.Andy Hadden: Of course, you know, that was a long, long time ago, but we still feel a lot of pride in that. But there seems to be a lot of people who've had success in our country, like someone like Sir Sean Connery. These guys are still very proud of that. So when they see something— very entrepreneurial— where we're using a lot of local businesses to create something bigger than the sum of its parts. And to do it truly— not just to be a profitable private business, which is what it is, but to give back 18 million into local economy every year, to work with schools in terms of getting into curriculums. We've got Surf Lab. We work with universities, charities, and so on. They really want to support this stuff. So we have over 50 shareholders, and they've each invested probably for slightly different reasons. They all have to know that their money is a good bet, but I think they all want to feel like they're part of creating a recipe. For a surf resort, which we believe there'll be hundreds of around the world in the next few years. And we can create that recipe here in Scotland. That's hopefully another example of Scottish innovation and entrepreneurialism.Paul Marden: So you've got the test bed that happened in the Basque Country. You've got Scotland now. Are there surf resorts like this elsewhere in the world?Andy Hadden: Yeah, there are eight other open in the world. There's actually, there's various technologies. So there's about 25 different surf parks open at the moment. But there's... doesn't under construction. Pharrell Williams has just opened one in Virginia Beach a few weeks ago there in America. And what the equity, I think, is looking at quite rightly, the big equity, you know, the type that go right, if this really is a, you know, kind of top golfing steroids in that property developers can look at them as.Andy Hadden: You know, excellent ways to get through their more standardised property place, residential, office, industrial. Usually they have to do that in a kind of loss-leading way. But if you look at this as a leisure attraction, which councils and cities actually want because of the benefits, and it makes you money, and it increases the prices of your residential around it. I think developers are starting to realise there's a sweet spot there. So the equity, the big equity, I think, is about to drop in this market over the next couple of years. And it's just waiting for the data set to enable them to do that.Paul Marden: Wow. I guess there's an environmental impact to the work that you do, trying to create any big... a big project like this is going to have some sort of environmental impact. You've put in place an environmental sustainability strategy before it was mainstream as it is now. Tell us some of the things that you've put in place to try to address that environmental impact of what you're doing.Andy Hadden: Well, we're in a disused quarry. So it was a brownfield site. So already just by building on it and creating an immunity, we're also adding to the biodiversity of that site. And we're obviously there's no escaping the fact that we're a user of energy. There's just no escaping that. So the reality is we've got as much sustainable energy use as we can from air source heat pumps to solar. And we're looking at a solar project. So it becomes completely self-sustaining. But we also, the electricity we do access from the grid is through a green tariff. But you'll see a lot of the resorts around the world, this is going to become the sort of, the main play is to become sort of sustainable in that sense. Where we really fly is with the S and ESG. And like you say, the reason we were the world's first institutionally backed wave park, of course, we like to think it was purely down to our financials. But the reality is, they started saying, 'Wow, you're as authentic an ESG company as we've come across.'Andy Hadden: And it's the same with our mission-based national bank. So, because we didn't really know what that meant, we just knew it was the right thing to do. So we fit squarely into that ESG category, which I know is a tick box for a lot of funds, let's face it. There's a lot of them that really want to do that. There's a lot of investors out there that want to do it. But let's understand our place in the system, which is we're really market leading in that area. And I think that's very attractive for a lot of funds out there. But the S in ESG is where we really fly with all the work we're doing socially around the site.Paul Marden: So talk to me a little bit about that. How are you addressing that kind of the social responsibility piece?Andy Hadden: Well, two examples would be we're not just looking at schools to come here to surf. That's an obvious one. They'll go to any attraction to surf if you could go to Laser Quest, go up to visit the castle, do whatever. But we reverse engineered it. We got schools coordinated to go around the headmasters and the schools and say, 'Well, Look, you're all teaching STEM, science, technology, engineering, maths, for 9 to 13-year-olds. And you're all looking for outdoor learning now, which is definitely a big part of the future in education in general. Can you allow us to create some modules here? So we've got six modules that actually fit into that STEM strategy. For instance, last week, there was a school in learning physics, but they were using surf wax on a surfboard friction.Paul Marden: Amazing.Andy Hadden: So these kids so it works for schools and headmasters which is very important and for parents and it obviously works for the kids and they love it and the reason we do that and we give that it's all at discounted low times and everything is because it's a numbers game they come back at the weekend and so on so that's example one and another would be we've created a surf lab with Napier University, a higher education. So we sponsored the world's first doctor. It got a PhD in surf therapy, but then the university was like, 'hold on a minute, you know, this is good marketing for us as well'.Andy Hadden: This surf lab, which has the infrastructure to host great competitions, but also PhD students can come down and learn engineering. They can learn sustainable energy. So we've got more PhD students working there. And this higher university collaboration has not only led to Alder kids coming down but other universities in the area are now what can we do with lost shore now that's cool and fun so we're working with the other universities in town too so that's a couple of examples alongside the standard, employing local people and actually having the economics of putting money into the local economy.Paul Marden: It's interesting, isn't it? Because... So for many people, ESG, and especially the social responsibility piece, feels a little bit worthy. It feels an altruistic move for the organisation to go and do those things. But you've hit on the quid pro quo what do you get back for doing all of this stuff well you're bringing in these kids you're enriching their learning, you're helping them to learn valuable skills but you're also giving them a taster of what life is like at the the resort and seeing the benefit of the return visits that flow from that is crazy.Andy Hadden: You know, I like to think we've fought as hard as anyone to ingrain this stuff in your DNA because we're year one. And of course, we have our cash flow difficulties like everyone does. You know, you don't know how to... run the place for the first three months or that's what it feels like even though you've done all this preparation and so on and so forth but at no point does anyone turn around and go let's get rid of the schools program let's get rid of the university partnership and that's why i think it's very important to build it into your dna because it doesn't have to be this zero-sum game that people attribute you know or we're giving here so that means we have to take over here it's like there's cute ways to do everything you can do the right thing but also drive traffic for your business and it's very good right. It's good reputation, because the people that stay there, when they see that we're doing this stuff, they feel like they're part of it, and then they want to book again. So I believe it doesn't have to be a zero-sum game, but it is a different way of creating a business— that's for sure.Paul Marden: For sure. So there's going to be a listener out there, I'm sure, with a crazy idea like you had a few years ago. What advice would you give for somebody just starting out thinking of opening a business in the leisure and attraction sector?Andy Hadden: I would just try your best to make it as simple as possible. I think it was Yves Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, who said, 'One of the hardest things in life is to make it simple. It's so easy to make it complex.' And when you're dealing with a business plan, it's very exciting, right? Well, what if we get into this market? What if we do this? And splitting it all into those components. I think arm yourself with very good people around you. They don't even have to be part of the company. If you've been a good person in your life, I'm sure you've got friends who you can tap into. Everyone knows an architect. Everyone knows an accountant. Everyone knows a lawyer. You're a friend of a friend. Andy Hadden: And I think just overload yourself with as much information to get you to the point where you can be assertive with your own decisions. Because at the end of the day, it's going to come down to you making your own decisions. And if you've got a very clear path of what success and failure looks like, understanding that it ain't going to look like your business plan. As long as it's got the broad shapes of where you want to go, it can get you out of bed every day to try and make things happen. So, yeah, just go for it. Really, that's it.Paul Marden: See where it takes you. So look, in the world of themed entertainment, we talk a lot about IP and storytelling and creating magical experiences. Are any of these concepts relevant to a destination like yours?Andy Hadden: Yeah, well, you know, technically, from an IP perspective, you know, we're using the WaveGround Cove technology. You know, we've purchased that. So from a strictly business perspective, you know, we have access to their sort of IP in that sense and we deliver that. But I think for us, the IP is the destination. It's so unique, it's so big that it becomes defendable at scale. So it does sound like a bit of an all-in poker hand. But it would be more risky to go half in because these things are very hard to build. But when they are built, they're also very hard to compete with. So as long as your customer experience is good enough. You're going to maintain a kind of exclusivity in your locality for long into the future. So, yeah, there's obviously IP issues in terms of technologies. But for us, it was all about creating a destination with three business plans that's greater than the sum of its parts. And if we can do that in our location, then it's very hard to compete against, I would say.Paul Marden: Andy, it sounds like such an exciting journey that you've been on. And one year in, that journey has still got a long way to play out, doesn't it? You must be on quite the rollercoaster. Well, surfing quite a wave at the moment, if I don't mix my metaphors so badly.Andy Hadden: Yeah, we're just entering maybe the penultimate phase of the sort of 20-year plan. You know, we've gone through our early stages, our fundraising, our construction. We've gone through the very hard sort of like getting the team together and opening year one. And we're just starting to go, 'OK, we understand we've got data now'. We understand how to run this place now. So I think we now want to push through to stabilise the next two or three years. And then hopefully we've got a lot of irons in the fire globally as well. Hopefully we can go to the next phase, but we'll see what happens. Worst case scenario, I just surf a bit more and try and enjoy my lot.Paul Marden: Well, Andy, it's been lovely talking to you. I've been really interested to hear what you've been up to. This was only a short snippet of an interview. I reckon there's some more stories for you to tell once you're into year two. So I'd love for you to come back and we'll do a full-on interview once you've got year two under your belt. How's that sound to you?Andy Hadden: Absolutely, Paul, and thanks very much for the platform.Paul Marden: Next up, let's hear from some of the exhibitors on the floor. Bakit.Paul Marden: Introduce yourself for me, please, and tell me a little bit about where you're from.Bakit Baydaliev: We have two companies located in Turkey, Istanbul, and Los Angeles, USA. We develop attractions, equipment, but not just equipment— also software, AI, and content, games, and movies. Paul Marden: Oh, wow. So you're here at IAPA. This is my very first morning of my very first IAAPA. So it's all very overwhelming for me. Tell me, what is it that you're launching at IAAPA today?Bakit Baydaliev: Today we're launching our bestseller, Hurricane. It's a coaster simulator. In addition to that, we're also launching a special immersive tunnel, Mars Odyssey. We're sending people to Mars, we're sending people to space, and the story, of course, may change. After you install the attractions, you always can create different kinds of content for this attraction. It's completely immersive and what is very unique for this attraction is edutainment. Theme parks, science centres, space centres, and museums all benefit from it. It's not just to show and entertain, but also educate and provide a lot of useful information for people. Paul Marden: So what would you say is unique about this? Bakit Baydaliev: There are several factors. First of all, it's equipment. We have a very special software that amazingly synchronizes with the content and it doesn't create motion sickness at all. Paul Marden: Oh, really? Bakit Baydaliev: This is very important. Independently on the speeds, which is... We have very high speeds in our simulators. In addition to that, we have special effects, unusual effects, which feel like cold, heat, sounds.Paul Marden: So it is truly 4D, isn't it?Bakit Baydaliev: Completely. In addition to that, it's interactive content. It's not just the content which you can sit and... watch and entertain yourself and get a lot of useful information, but also you can interact. You can play games, you can shoot, you can interact. And of course, the most important thing which makes this attraction innovative is the educational aspect.Paul Marden: I find that really interesting that you could see this ride at a theme park, but similarly you can see it as an educational exhibit at a science centre or space centre. I think that's very interesting.Bakit Baydaliev: Very, very. Especially, you know, the standard experience for space centres, science centres, and especially museums, it's just walking around, touch some stuff. Some you may not even touch it. It's exponents which you can watch, you can read, it's very nice. But it's even better when you let people live it in real with a nice simulation atmosphere environment, like immersive tunnel.Paul Marden: Absolutely. Bekit, thank you so much for joining us on Skip the Queue, and I look forward to enjoying one of the rides.Bakit Baydaliev: Please ride, and you will be amazed.Hamza Saber: My name is Hamza. I work for TÜV SUD Germany. Our main job is to make sure attractions are safe, parks are safe. We do everything from design review to initial examination of rides, to yearly checks and making sure that we push the standards and the norm to the next level and cover everything that comes in new in the industry as well to make sure this industry stays safe and enjoyable for people. Paul Marden: It's so important though, isn't it? At an event like this, you don't have a sexy stand with lots of really cool rides to experience, but what you do is super important.Hamza Saber: Yes, I guess it's not one of the big colourful booths, but it's at the heart of this industry. It's in the background. If you look at the program for the education, there is a lot of safety talks. There is a lot of small groups talking about safety, trying to harmonise norms as well. Because if you look at the world right now, we have the EN standards. We have the American standards and we're working right now to try to bring them closer together so it's as easy and safe and clear for all manufacturers and operators to understand what they need to do to make sure that their guests are safe at the end of the day.Paul Marden: So Hamza, there's some really cool tech that you've got on the stand that's something new that you've brought to the stand today. So tell us a little bit about that.Hamza Saber: So as you can see, we have one of the drones right here and the video behind you. So we're trying to include new technologies to make it easier, faster, and more reliable to do checks on big structures like this or those massive buildings that you usually see. You can get really, really close with the new technologies, the drones with the 4K cameras, you can get very, very precise. We're also working on AI to train it to start getting the first round of inspections done using AI. And just our expert to focus on the most important and critical aspects. So we're just going to make it faster, more reliable.Paul Marden: So I guess if you've got the drone, that means you don't have to walk the entire ride and expect it by eye?Hamza Saber: No, we still have to climb. So what we do is more preventive using the drones. So the drones, especially with the operators, they can start using them. And if they notice something that does not fit there, we can go and look at it. But the actual yearly inspections that are accepted by the governments, you still need to climb, you still need to check it yourself. So the technology is not right there yet, but hopefully we're going to get there. Paul Marden: We're a long way away from the robots coming and taking the safety engineer's job then. Hamza Saber: Yes, exactly. And they don't think they're going to come take our jobs anytime soon. Using technology hands-in-hands with our expertise, that's the future.Paul Marden: It must be so exciting for you guys because you have to get involved in all of these projects. So you get to see the absolute tippy top trends as they're coming towards you.Hamza Saber: Yeah, for sure. Like we're always three years before the public knowledge. So it's exciting to be behind the scene a little bit and knowing what's going on. We're seeing some really fun and creative ideas using AI to push the attractions industry to the next level. So I'm excited to see any new rides that will be published or announced at some point this week.Paul Marden: Very cool. Look, Hamza, it's been lovely to meet you. Thanks for coming on Skip the Queue.Hamza Saber: Yeah, thank you so much.Kristof Van Hove: My name is Kristof. I live in Belgium. I'm working for the Tomorrowland group already now for three years, especially on the leisure part.Paul Marden: Tell listeners a little bit about Tomorrowland because many of our listeners are attraction owners and operators. They may not be familiar with Tomorrowland.Kristof Van Hove: Yeah, so Tomorrowland is already 20 years, I think, one of the number one festivals in the world. Actually, already for the last years, always the number one in the world. And what makes us special is that we are not just a festival, but we are a community. We create. special occasions for people and it starts from the moment that they buy their tickets till the festival we make a special feeling that people like and I think we create a world and each year we work very hard on new team that goes very deep so not only making a festival but we go very deep in our branding not only with our main stage but we also make a book about it we make gadgets about it so it's a completely.Paul Marden:  Wow. Help listeners to understand what it is that you're doing new here at the moment. You're blending that festival experience, aren't you, into attractions.Kristof Van Hove: Yeah, that's right. So because we are already 20 years on the market building IP, the more and more we really are able to create a complete experience, not only the IP as a brand, but also all the things around it. We have our own furniture. We have our own plates. We create actually all elements that are needed to build a leisure industry project. And that makes it magnificent. I think we are capable now, with everything that we do in-house, to set up and to facilitate water park and attraction park projects completely. Paul Marden: So, have you got any attractions that are open at the moment? Kristof Van Hove: Well, we have the Ride to Happiness, of course, the coaster that is built in Plopsaland three years ago. That is already now for five years the number one steel coaster in Europe and the fifth steel coaster in the world. So this is a project we are very proud of. Besides that, we have already a lot of immersive experiences. And we are constructing now a secret project that will be announced in the beginning of next year somewhere in Europe.Paul Marden: Give us a little sneak peek what that might look like.Kristof Van Hove: It's not that far from here. Okay, okay, excellent. So it's more an outdoor day project that we are constructing. That for sure will be something unique. Excellent.Paul Marden: So look, you're already planning into 2026. Help listeners to understand what the future might look like. What trends are you seeing in the sector for next year?Kristof Van Hove: Well, I think more and more the people expect that they get completely a deep dive into branding. I don't think that people still want to go to non-IP branded areas. They want to have the complete package from the moment that they enter. They want to be immersed. With everything around it, and they want a kind of a surrounding, and they want to have the feeling that they are a bit out of their normal life, and a deep dive in a new environment. And I think this is something that we try to accomplish. Paul Marden: Wow.David Jungmann: David Jungman, I'm the Director of Business Development here at Accesso, based in Germany. I'm super excited to be here at IAPA in Barcelona. We're exhibiting our whole range of solutions from ticketing to point of sale to virtual queuing to mobile apps. And one of the features we're calling out today is our Accesso Pay 3.0 checkout flow, which streamlines donations, ticket insurance, relevant payment types by region on a single simple one-click checkout page.Paul Marden: What impact does that have on customers when they're presented with that simple one-click checkout?David Jungmann: Well, as you guys know, conversion rate is super important. The number of clicks in an e-commerce environment is super important. And because we're at IAAPA Europe, we've got guests here from all over Europe. Different regions require different payment types. And it's important to not overload a checkout page with like eight different types for, let's say, German guests, Dutch guests, Belgium guests, is to be able to only offer what's relevant and to keep it short and sweet. And then rolling in additional features like donations, ticket insurance and gift cards, stuff like that.Paul Marden: Amazing. So get your crystal ball out and think about what the world in 2026 is going to be like.David Jungmann: I think this year was a little bit soft in terms of performance for the parks, certainly in Europe, what we've seen. I think what that will mean is that maybe some will consider, you know, really big capex investments. But what that also means is they will get creative. So I envision a world where, instead of buying new protocols for 20 million, maybe some operators will start thinking about how can we make more out of what we've got with less, right? How can we be really creative? And I think there's a lot to uncover next year for us to see.Paul Marden:  Sweating their assets maybe to be able to extend what they do without that big CapEx project.David Jungmann:  Yes, how can we keep innovating? How can we keep our experience fresh? Without just buying something very expensive straight away. And I think that's what we see.Paul Marden: What is going to be innovating for Xesso and the market that you serve?David Jungmann: Well, for us, it's really about that streamlined, consistent guest experience, but also tying into things like immersive experiences, right, where you could maybe change the overlay of an attraction and feed in personalised information that you have for your visitors and collect it during you know the booking flow when they enter the venue and feeding that into the actual experience i think that's something i'm excited about.Paul Marden: I think that there is a missed opportunity by so many attractions. There's so much data that we build and we collect the data, but oftentimes we don't bring it together into a central place and then figure out the ways in which we want to use it. There's so much more you can do with that rich data, isn't there?David Jungmann: 100% exactly. And I don't just mean from a marketing perspective. I mean from an actual experience perspective. Let's say you ride through Dark Ride and all of a sudden your name pops up or your favorite character pops up and waves hello to you. That's the type of stuff you want to do, not just market the hell out of it.Paul Marden: Absolutely. Look, David, it's been so good to meet you. Thank you ever so much. And yeah, thank you for joining Skip the Queue. David Jungmann: Thanks, Paul. Have a great day at the show. Paul Marden: Isn't it great? I mean, we have got such an amazing job, haven't we? To be able to come to a place like this and be able to call this work.David Jungmann: Absolute privilege. Yes, absolutely.Paul Marden: Now, before we wrap up, Andy and I wanted to have a little chat about what we've seen today and what we've enjoyed. Why don't we sit down? You have clearly returned to your tribe. Is there a person in this place that doesn't actually know you?Andy Povey: There's loads. I've been doing the same thing for 30 years. Paul Marden: Yeah, this ain't your first radio, is it? Andy Povey: I'm big and I'm loud, so I'd stand out in a crowd. I mean, there are all fantastic things that I should put on my CV. But this is really where I feel at home. This industry continues to blow me away. We're here, we're talking to competitors, we're talking to potential customers, we're talking to previous customers, we're talking to people that we've worked with, and it's just all so friendly and so personally connected. I love it.Paul Marden: It has been awesome. I've really enjoyed it. Although I'm beginning to get into the Barry White territory of my voice because it's quite loud on the show floor, isn't it? Andy Povey: It is. It's actually quieter than previous shows, so I don't know why, and I don't know whether... Maybe I'm just getting old and my hearing's not working quite so well, but... You used to walk out of the show and you could almost feel your ears relax as they just stopped hearing and being assaulted, I suppose, by machines pinging and blowing.Paul Marden: It really is an assault on the senses, but in the very best way possible. Andy Povey: Absolutely, absolutely. I feel like a child. You're walking around the show, you're going, 'Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow.' Paul Marden: So what has been your highlight? Andy Povey: Do you know, I don't think I could give you one. It really is all of the conversations, the connections, the people you didn't know that you hadn't spoken to for two years.Paul Marden: So for me, my highlight, there was a ride that I went on, Doff Robotics.Andy Povey: I've seen that, man.Paul Marden: So it was amazing. I thought I was going to be feeling really, really sick and that I wouldn't enjoy it, but it was amazing. So I had Emily with the camera in front of me. And within 10 seconds, I forgot that I was being recorded and that she was there. I was completely immersed in it. And I came off it afterwards feeling no motion sickness at all and just having had a real good giggle all the way through. I was grinning like, you know, the Cheshire Cat. Andy Povey: A grinning thing. Paul Marden: Yeah. So, tomorrow, what are you looking forward to?Andy Povey:  It's more of the same. It really is. There's going to be some sore heads after tonight's party at Tribodabo. We're all hoping the rain holds off long enough for it to be a great experience. But more of the same.Paul Marden: Well, let's meet back again tomorrow, shall we? Andy Povey: Completely. Paul Marden: Let's make a date.Paul Marden: Thanks for listening to today's episode from IAAPA Expo Europe. As always, if you've loved today's episode, like it and comment in your podcast app. If you didn't like it, let us know at hello@skipthequeue.fm. Show notes and links can also be found on our website, skipthequeue.fm. Thanks to our amazing team, Emily Burrows and Sami Entwistle from Plaster Creative Communications, Steve Folland from Folland Co., and our amazing podcast producer, Wenalyn Dionaldo. Come back again tomorrow for more show news. The 2025 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsTake the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report

An airhacks.fm conversation with Maurice Naftalin (@mauricenaftalin) about: retirement philosophy and work-life balance for developers, transitioning from paid work to passion projects, the challenge of relaxation and meditation versus constant activity, the importance of experiencing boredom in a fast-paced world, Java collections framework design and evolution over 30 years, the Collection interface as base for sets lists and queues but not Maps, mathematical foundations of sets using Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms, differences between mathematical sets and Java set implementations, NavigableSet and SortedSet using comparators versus hash-based equality, non-commutative equality between HashSet and NavigableSet implementations, CopyOnWriteArraySet for concurrent read-heavy operations with snapshot isolation, ConcurrentSkipListSet as thread-safe tree structure using skip lists algorithm, skip lists simulating tree behavior through parallel linked lists with sparse copies, Queue interface uncomfortable fit with Collection interface focusing on head/tail operations, BlockingQueue implementations for producer-consumer workflow scenarios, Deque (double-ended queue) enabling work-stealing patterns in Fork-Join framework, Map interface separate from Collection hierarchy representing key-value pairs, Map.of() factory methods using array-based optimization limited to 10 elements, WeakHashMap using weak references on keys for memory-sensitive caching, IdentityHashMap using reference equality (==) useful for serialization graphs, EnumMap and EnumSet using bitmap optimization for performance, String.intern() optimization hack for fast string comparison using reference equality, enum design limitations with final name() method preventing override customization, Epsilon garbage collector for short-lived servers avoiding GC overhead, the remarkable durability of Josh Bloch's original Collections Framework design under time pressure, balancing API simplicity with supporting unusual use cases, converting between different data structure representations and naming conventions, the Java Generics and Collections book Maurice Naftalin on twitter: @mauricenaftalin

durée : 00:16:50 - Clemente : deux oreilles et une queue qui racontent... Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les autres épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France.

Lorsque l'on observe un singe sautant de branche en branche ou un chien remuant joyeusement l'arrière-train, une question s'impose : pourquoi nous, humains, avons-nous perdu la queue, alors qu'elle reste si utile chez beaucoup d'animaux ? La réponse n'est pas seulement une curiosité anatomique : elle raconte une partie de notre histoire évolutive.Une relique dans notre corpsChez l'embryon humain, une petite queue apparaît bel et bien. Vers la quatrième semaine de développement, un bourgeon caudal se forme, constitué de plusieurs vertèbres. Mais très vite, ce prolongement régresse et disparaît presque complètement. À la naissance, il ne reste qu'un vestige : le coccyx, situé tout en bas de la colonne vertébrale. Comme le souligne Jean-François Bodart, professeur de biologie cellulaire et du développement à l'université de Lille, « le coccyx est un témoin discret mais indiscutable de notre passé : il atteste que nous descendons bien d'ancêtres pourvus d'une queue ».Une question d'évolutionLa queue a longtemps joué un rôle majeur dans l'équilibre et la locomotion de nos ancêtres. Mais à partir du moment où les hominidés ont adopté une posture bipède, il y a environ 20 millions d'années, son utilité a progressivement disparu. En marchant debout, les humains ont trouvé un nouvel équilibre centré sur le bassin. « La sélection naturelle n'a pas conservé la queue chez nos ancêtres car elle ne représentait plus un avantage fonctionnel », explique Jean-François Bodart.Quand la génétique s'en mêleRécemment, les chercheurs ont identifié des mutations génétiques qui auraient contribué à cette perte. Un gène appelé TBXT (ou T-box transcription factor T) est particulièrement suspecté. Présent chez de nombreux vertébrés, il joue un rôle clé dans la formation de la colonne et du bourgeon caudal. Des variations dans son expression auraient pu conduire, chez les primates supérieurs, à une régression de la queue. Pour Bodart, « il ne s'agit pas d'un événement unique, mais d'un processus progressif au cours duquel plusieurs modifications génétiques se sont accumulées ».Une fonction remplacéeSans queue, avons-nous perdu quelque chose ? Pas vraiment. Le coccyx, loin d'être inutile, sert de point d'ancrage à plusieurs muscles et ligaments essentiels pour la posture assise et la continence. En un sens, il s'agit d'une transformation plutôt qu'une disparition. « L'évolution recycle en permanence ce qui existe déjà, rappelle Bodart. Le coccyx est devenu une pièce de charpente interne adaptée à notre mode de vie bipède. »Une histoire d'adaptationEn définitive, si nous n'avons plus de queue, c'est parce que nous n'en avions plus besoin. Notre évolution a privilégié la station debout et la libération des mains, au détriment d'un appendice devenu superflu. Ce petit vestige osseux que nous sentons parfois en tombant sur les fesses est la preuve silencieuse de millions d'années d'adaptations. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

We've well and truly kicked off season 7 in style as we welcome our first guest onto the show - IAAPA Board Chairman, Massimiliano Freddi. In this episode, Paul sits down with Massimiliano Freddi, the first Italian to ever hold the role of IAAPA Chairman in the association's 107-year history. From his early dream of running a theme park to founding Wonderwood and shaping Italy's unique attractions landscape, Massi shares how passion, storytelling, and a people-first mindset continue to drive his vision for the industry. Skip The Queue is back for Season 7 and we're announcing some big changes! Get ready for new hosts, a fresh new look, weekly content and find out where you can catch us live at events to be part of the action.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 Paul Marden.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 SkiptheQueue.fm.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 LinkedIn, or Bluesky for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast.Competition ends on 24th September 2025. The winner will be contacted via LinkedIn or Bluesky. Show references:  https://iaapa.org/https://www.linkedin.com/in/freddi/Massimiliano Freddi  a leading figure in the amusement and entertainment industry, has been appointed president of the steering committee of IAAPA (International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, the leading international association for attractions and theme parks) for 2025. This is the first time since the foundation of the World Association of Attractions (1918) that this position has been entrusted to an Italian.The appointment underscores his extensive experience and significant contribution to the global industry. Freddi brings a wealth of experience gained at some of the industry's most prominent companies. His career began in marketing and press office for the Italian market at Disneyland Paris. He subsequently joined Leolandia.A visionary entrepreneur, in 2018, Massimiliano Freddi founded Wonderwood, an adventure and amusement park for all ages, of which he is currently CEO, in his hometown of Trarego Viggiona, in the Verbano-Cusio-Ossola region on Lake Maggiore. This growing business has redeveloped several local facilities and provided employment to several young residents of the small towns in the area. His passion for the sector also extends to academia. Since 2016, he has been a member of the coaching staff of Seth Godin's Altmba and is a professor of marketing and experience design at IULM University in Milan. At the same university, where Italy's first course in theme park and attraction management was introduced, he teaches subjects such as consumer experience, marketing, and soft skills as an adjunct professor. Freddi was also one of the original founders of Parksmania, the first newspaper dedicated to amusement parks.Freddi will continue to bring his innovative vision and deep industry knowledge to the global association, helping shape the future of attractions internationally. Regarding Italy, he commented that he sees great potential and wants to help realise it. Transcriptions:  Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue, the podcast about the world's best visitor attractions and the people that work in them. I'm Paul Marden, along with my co-hosts Andy Povey and Sinead Kimberley, I spend my days working with ambitious attractions like theme parks, museums, galleries, and science centres to help them to attract more guests. Paul Marden: Today on Skip the Queue, I'm joined by someone who has been shaping the attractions industry in truly remarkable ways. Massimiliano Freddi is the first Italian ever to hold the role of chairman in IAAPA's 107-year history. A milestone that not only celebrates his career, but also shines a light on Italy's growing influence in the global attractions landscape. Massimiliano has worn many hats across his journey, from fulfilling his childhood dream of becoming a Theme Park Managing Director at just 28, where he grew guest numbers from 300,000 to over 800,000, to founding his own destinations like Wonderwood on Lake Maggiore and Wonderwood Spina Verde, overlooking Lake Como. Along the way, he's pioneered inclusive and eco-conscious practices, championing the power of storytelling and shown how attractions can thrive by creating meaningful experiences for every guest.Paul Marden: Beyond his leadership roles, Massimiliano is also a Professor of Marketing and Experience Design at IULM University in Milan, where he's passionate about nurturing the next generation of talent in our sector. Often described as both a dreamer and a doer, he brings together vision and practicality in a way that continues to inspire operators around the world.Paul Marden: Massimilliano, welcome to the show. It really is a pleasure to have you with us. We always start Skip the Queue and the kickoff of season seven, no less, is going to be no different. We always start with an icebreaker question. And I'm thinking back to, we're just back off of our summer holidays, aren't we? For your perfect holiday, would it start with planes, trains or driving.Massimiliano Freddi: Oh, that's a beautiful question. By the way, congratulations because you've pronounced Massimiliano in a very correct way. So that's unusual. I have a complicated name. I know, I know.Massimiliano Freddi: Hey, I would say train. Train is really, really part of the way that I love to travel with. And unfortunately, too often it happens by car, which I like a little bit less. I get dizzy, you know, and stuff. Train is my ultimate, ultimate way to travel.Paul Marden: I did a sleeper train to Scotland a couple of years ago, and it was amazing. I absolutely loved it. And what's brilliant is there's more of those sleeper trains hitting Europe, aren't there now? So there really is very few excuses for us not to be holidaying with the start with some elegant sleeper train. My only disappointment was that there was no murder on the train, so I couldn't have an Agatha Christie style novel themed around my train  journey, but uh, you know.Massimiliano Freddi: I mean, I mean, it could have been the Hogwarts Express, but apparently, it doesn't run every day, so.Paul Marden: That would be pretty cool as well. I've just come back from Edinburgh, actually, and we saw, you know, the viaduct where the train goes to Hogwarts, and completely unplanned, there was a steam train that went over the bridge whilst we were there. It was amazing.Massimiliano Freddi: Happy go lucky.Paul Marden: Yeah. So enough of my holidays. Let's kick off talking about you and IAAPA. What can international markets learn from attractions in Italy? Tell us a little bit about the attractions landscape over there in Italy at the moment.Massimiliano Freddi: Yes. So let's say that the attraction landscape is very similar, somehow, to how the restaurants or the retail landscape has always been, which means a lot of mom and pop stores. And I think that what people who travel to Italy love is to find something that is one of a kind that you can find only in Italy. I have a deep respect for Starbucks, but I'm always... questioning myself, you know, when somebody comes to Italy, do they really want to find Starbucks? Is this a real thing? So when it comes to parks and attractions, Italy has not faced a big concentration in players like it has happened in other countries. Of course, some big players are there. Parques Reunidos owns Mirabilandia, which is the second most important Italian park. And the most important Italian park is Gardaland, owned by Merlin Entertainment. Then we have a few other groups. Owning and operating some of the facilities, but let's say that, out of 250 parks between—or, you said, attractions— that's very correct now, if we talk about attractions, now the number is endless, because where is the border?Paul Marden: What is an attraction? Yeah, that's a big philosophical question.Massimiliano Freddi: Okay, okay, so let's say that, once upon a time, we used to count parks. So when we talk about parks, we have roughly 250 parks in Italy, and most of them are tiny, tiny, tiny, and they are independently owned. That's my case. I own and operate two parks right now, and I'm about to open, a third location that will be an indoor one this November. And so, yes, I think that what what others can learn from Italy i think is to keep this respect for your roots and to make sure that you don't make every attraction look like another one, but you kind of keep it, you know, different.Massimiliano Freddi: And so it's a matter of the mix of how people can have fun and get entertained. But it's really also about retail and about food and about shows and festivals and you name it, you know. So there are these places that we see on Instagram and immediately we say, oh, that's, I mean, when I see a picture of the Empire State Building or of the Tower Bridge. I know immediately where it belongs to. And so I think that, with attractions, we need to think in the future always about this. Guests coming to visit us, they want to have the ultimate experience and they want to have something that's different from anything they've done before. So this is the responsibility we have.Paul Marden: And a big one it is. Let's talk a little bit about the experience economy. And especially when we think about, you know, beyond the parks, there's this... massive ecosystem around the outside of different ways that people can enjoy themselves. What does that experience economy mean to you, especially in Italy?Massimiliano Freddi: The experience economy, first of all, it truly matters to me, the book. Because in 1999, it was once upon a time, it was really difficult to find literature and scientific literature on the leisure industry. And so I think that at that time, we thought that everybody could take inspiration from the attractions industry. And it has happened because right now. Yes, definitely. You know, food is experience and travel is experience and lodging is experience. You name it, you name it. You know, even there is also a funeral house in Italy, which has become very famous because they are really based on the experience they will give, you know, not to the people who passed away, unfortunately, you know, but the people remain. So I think that it's very hard now to find an industry that doesn't think, that we are in the experience economy and that everything should be experienced and experiential. And so I think that when I go back to my example, I think that we as attractions, we need to be even more wise in how we choose to present ourselves and what we cater to our guests.Massimiliano Freddi: Because of course, we need to raise the bar. So right now, we know that some access... And some services to our attractions have become better with technology. But still, we are, you know, long lines sometimes. And we feel we are paying too much for what we are getting back.Massimiliano Freddi: I would say that in the end, experience economy starts with people and ends with people. And so we need to be people-centric. And only like this, we can be truly experiential. I don't think that an experience is about technology.  It's always, always about people.Paul Marden: Absolutely. I wonder as well, I'm always struck by this industry, how close we are, how we collaborate with one another. And really, the competition aren't the other parks or attractions. The competition is getting people out and doing something. There are so many things at home that could keep you at home, getting you out and about and visiting places and enjoying those experiences. I wonder whether collaboration is the answer to this.Massimiliano Freddi: I think you nailed it because it's crucial. Everybody who has not been working for this industry, when they enter the industry, because they might change jobs, everybody is so surprised that we collaborate so heavily. And I think that a key to this success has always been this big collaboration. I have almost always in my career been part of smaller facilities. And to me, IAAPA and the associations were, it's been crucial, you know, because you are alone. Very, very often your facility is in the middle of nowhere. No matter if you're part of a big group, because even big groups have facilities in the middle of nowhere, but for family-owned and operated attractions, that's almost the golden rule.Massimiliano Freddi: And so there are so many days in your life, in your career, in your profession, where you would benefit strongly from talking to somebody else who's been through something like you before and who's found a different solution and who can open up your eyes. So I think that's the beauty of our industries is getting together. Again, if we don't get together, how can we make people get together?Paul Marden: Yeah, I'm very excited about getting together because I've got my first IAAPA in Barcelona coming up. And I'm very excited about what this is going to be like.Massimiliano Freddi: Oh, you will be blown away.Paul Marden:  I can't wait. I absolutely can't wait. Now, look. Someone has once described you as a dreamer and a doer. One of your dreams was to be managing director of a theme park. Where did that inspiration come from?Massimiliano Freddi: So it comes from a terrible childhood. And so it comes from the fact that, yeah, the world around me when I was a kid was not a positive world. And my family had a lot of troubles. And I'm an orphan from the side of my mother. I mean, I went through several things. And so I think that the attractions industry, to me, it really meant this place that's always happy and where grownups can really take great care of kids and kids at heart.Massimiliano Freddi: So I think that my passion came out of that. Now, dreaming and doing, of course, we all have as a big myth and as a reference, Walt Disney himself, and he was the guy who first said, 'Dreamers and doers' talking about, what enterprises, so his imagineers. I think that whenever I see something, I want to say something. Everybody who knows me knows pretty well. But it means that I love to see the world in a constant improvement. So, if I check in at a hotel and I see that there is something in there that, you know, it even doesn't impact me. But with a small step, they could make it better and fix it. I just share it and I share it, you know, wherever I am. And so I think that maybe this was a bit of my secret weapon because I got involved in several things. I think because I'm curious and maybe because I'm generous in sharing.Massimiliano Freddi: And I don't know if there is a secret there. There is just that in the moment in which you accept yourself the way you are and you acknowledge that you have some talents, and you don't have some others, and some skills you can get better, some others no way—okay. I could never never be an attorney, I could never do a lot of jobs on the planet, but now I know, at the age of 44, that I know what I'm good at, and even if I'm good at that, I want to constantly improve. So I think that maybe the support that I could bring to the table to the companies I've worked for, to the associations, to my own business, and so on, it's always been this obsession with constant improvement every day.Paul Marden: I think it takes a certain vulnerability, doesn't it? To spot something that you think can be improved and to offer a suggestion. And I think it's so valuable. I was at an attraction recently and I got the email at the end of the day, saying, 'How was it?' Please leave us a review. I went to click it and it didn't work. I knew the head of marketing, so I just pinged him off a quick email that just said, 'Oh, I had such a brilliant time but I couldn't leave you a review. I wanted to give you a brilliant review, but I couldn't do it because it didn't work. And that led them to go and look at all of their outbound emails, and none of them were working properly. But you know, you could walk by and just leave that alone. But I can't do it. However, it is sometimes does make you feel really awkward, couldn't you? But when I get great services in a restaurant, when somebody looks after me while at an attraction, I want to tell them how good it was, and if I can see something they can do better, I want to tell them what they could do.Massimiliano Freddi:  Totally, totally. And I'm so much on the same page. I was about to say that it's equally important to call people out when they're doing well.Paul Marden: Yeah.Massimiliano Freddi: So to make sure that they are aware. And sometimes, you know, to say there was one day where I travelled during a bank holiday, and I arrived at the entire bank holiday, and I arrived to the airport, and I decided I wanted to thank each and every employee that I would meet because they were there that day. I mean. We got used that Sundays are no longer Sundays, but the bank holidays, these are the moments in which you spend time with your family and with your kids and so on. And if you're there and you're working, I mean, it's good that somebody sees you and tells you, 'Hey, thank you because you're working even today, you know?' And you can tell how everybody gets surprised. So I think that we learn so much more by positive reinforcement.Massimiliano Freddi: And so how important it is also to tell attractions, facilities, managers, CEOs. I mean, CEOs, they are so used to just getting... I can't use swear words. Yes, you can. Under those kind of storms, you know, all the time, all the time. And so when a CEO does something good, come on, let's tell her.Paul Marden: Yeah, it's a really lonely job. And all you get is... is the spankings and the tellings off. Isn't it? So when they get it right, they definitely need a pat on the back because they're not going to get it. They're not going to get it. So I can't believe this. At the age of 28, you made your dream come true and you were managing director of a theme park in Italy for Minitalia, which became Leolandia, in this role you took guest numbers from 300, 000 guests a year to over 800,000.Paul Marden: Tell us that story. How do you so dramatically increase footfall at the attraction?Massimiliano Freddi: I don't think it was me. I think it was a great teamwork because it's a great teamwork, you know, and you can grow this much. If your operation is working very well, if your safety is right on spot, if the park is clean, you know, and so on. I can tell you one thing that when we were at the basic level, so at the very beginning, of course, we couldn't afford to buy big attractions or too heavily themed. And we needed really, I remember that the first Halloween, we had a 10K budget, 10,000 euro budget for a whole month of Halloween. Okay, so we would go to the do-it-yourself stores and buy brooms and build everything. I mean, that was a magical moment because it created the capability of the team to envision that, if you want, you can do with the things you have. And of course, with a huge budget, you can do fantastic things.Massimiliano Freddi: But sometimes, you know, this helps. So in that moment... TripAdvisor was a true success still. We're talking about 20 years ago. So TripAdvisor was kind of the reference. That's even before Google Maps and all that. So I remember that I did an analysis and I understood that every restaurant or park who had over 4. 5 out of 5 was growing. And having 4 out of 5 was not enough. Now we call it NPS, we call it a different way. But there, in this practical way, so I remember this moment with my team saying, 'Hey, we need to be obsessed with getting five stars.' And this is the point. So what can we do? First of all, we can have the cleanest toilets on earth. Let's make sure that the smell is good, they are super clean, and so on. Because people, that's a level of service. Of course, this is not a driver of visit, but this is a driver of satisfaction. And in the same way, let's start to work with better suppliers when it comes to food and beverage.Massimiliano Freddi: Let's start to make things more comfortable. So I think that this was the first thing. The second aspect, again, it's very much linked to IAAPA because I think that attending the show every year and knowing the people. At that time, Jakob Wahl, he used to be one of the employees of IAAPA in Brussels. I don't think he was a manager at the time yet. He was in charge of keeping relationships with members. So I reached out to him. We are the same age. I reached out to him and I said, 'Hey, I would love to visit a few facilities in other countries because I need to get fresh ideas.' It was a very delicate moment. We came out of two bad seasons due to bad weather. Because then you know, you don't go from here to here as a straight line, but always as this roller coaster. And in a moment you think, 'Oh, I made it.' There's a dip.Paul Marden: Yeah.Massimiliano Freddi: You can never sleep. And so he put me in contact with several facilities. I visited some in Belgium, in the Netherlands, and in the UK. And in the UK, I visited this, at that time, small park still called Paulton's Park. You might know that. I remember it was a weekday with bad weather and the parking lot was packed. And I was like, 'How comes?' Kids are not at school today. What is the point? I enter the park. The park is, yeah, not so crowded. So I really suspect that they are, you know, keeping the people all shut down together in a place. I don't know. I don't know what the point was. And then I enter the Peppa Pig's World.Massimiliano Freddi: And it blows my mind. And again, what blows my mind is that it didn't have any huge attraction. But it had that feeling. And people were just so happy. It was magic. Little kids there with their families, a lot of strollers all over the place, traffic jams due to strollers. And so I came back and I said, 'Hey, we need to get Peppa Pig.' And I remember that the team was like, 'It can't happen.' It has happened. In the end, we were the second park in the world after Paulton's Park to get Peppa. And that reshaped the entire strategy of the park we had at that time, turning it into what we wanted to achieve, is to become the best park for the kids under the age of 10 in Southern Europe. And best means really the best, rated from the bottom of the heart. And so this is what has happened. So I think that, you know, before Leolandia, I had worked for Disneyland Paris and I'm a big Disney fan. So that was kind of the school I had attended and I just had to apply. The theory that I've learned, I had to apply it, and I had a fantastic team and the resources to do that.Paul Marden: Amazing. Now, fast forward to 2018, and you've taken the step from MD to founder and founded Wonderwood on Lake Maggiore. Now, let's test my Italian. You've also founded Wonderwood Spina Verde. Massimiliano Freddi: I'm speechless. I can't correct anything.Paul Marden: Wonderful. Overlooking Lake Como, both of which, by the way, were... So I've been to Maggiore and Lake Como for my honeymoon. So a beautiful, beautiful place. And you've put two parks there. How has that been?Massimiliano Freddi:  It has been crazy. So I remember that the first year, and I mean, we created the company at the end of 2018. We've opened our gates in the summer of 2019. Now, if we all remember what has happened at the beginning of 2020.Paul Marden: Yeah.Massimiliano Freddi: Okay, so perfect timing. Now, I can tell you that the first season, every day, I would literally cry, but for real.Massimilliano Freddi: I was exhausted. My husband was exhausted. We thought that this was a nightmare, the worst possible nightmare. And if somebody had knocked on my door and asked me, 'Hey, could I just take it over?' I don't give you a penny. I will just take home the loans. I would have said yes. And that's because, of course, every project is over budget. Of course. No matter. No matter.Massimiliano Freddi: And when it's a family company and you don't have the money because you've contracted several loans and so on, it makes it super, super difficult. So in that moment, my call for action was because the possibility of Lake Maggiore was in the town where I spent every summer as a kid. So it was a love story. And I wanted to give back to the community. I wanted to do something in the nature that would inspire kids to hike more. To become more active and just not only to stay in front of a screen, but to do something different. So that came out of this kind of dream. And so it was a nightmare. It was a nightmare at the very beginning. Then COVID hit and we were very lucky, of course, because we didn't lose anyone from our families and friends. So I am very thankful for that. And at the same time, it gave us the possibility to stop for a second, rewind, and refine our strategy.Massimiliano Freddi: Because we had just closed the park in, I mean, the week before Christmas, and we were supposed to reopen in less than three months, but we were exhausted. So I'm telling this story because usually it's so nice to tell that the triumphs, you know, and say, 'Hey, it's been fantastic.' Yeah, we nailed it. We had, no, we made 200 mistakes.Massimiliano Freddi: And we paid for all the mistakes. So I think that in that moment, yeah, we were struggling at the beginning. We were reflecting in the middle part. And then three years ago, two to three years ago, I woke up one morning and I understood that I really loved what I was doing. And it had changed. It had changed. And seeing so many families happy and so many people visiting and seeing... How many young professionals or students started to work with us and then you see them leaping? I think that this is the most beautiful thing on earth. It's very empowering. So right now I'm in this situation where I am so grateful for this entire six years, even if they started in a way that was very, very heavy. But, you know, the Latins used to say 'per aspera ad astra.' It means... 'towards the stars through the asperities.' And so we need to go through that thing, that tunnel.Paul Marden: Absolutely. Now, as if founding your own parks wasn't enough, you also mix your time as a professor at the university. I can hear from what you were talking about, about bringing the young professionals into the park, that there's an element to you of apprenticeship almost, of teaching that next cohort of people that are going to come and take over the world.Paul Marden: How exciting is that for you to be able to mix that in at the university?Massimiliano Freddi: It's fantastic. It's fantastic. And again, it came out of passion. It came out. I didn't do a PhD after my university. My career wasn't supposed to be the academic one. And I didn't trust I would be able to do that. And then I got called for a lecture, then two lectures, and three lectures. And then, right now, I have several courses at university.Massimiliano Freddi: There's a point. The point is that, if we meet between our age of 14, 14, 15, until our 25, and if we narrow it down, it's between maybe 16 and 22, this is the moment in which it's more important to meet some mentors. And most of us don't meet mentors. They meet nice people around them, giving them very nice advice based on their experience and not seeing the talents they have in front of them. And in several cases, we are scared. We think that we are not enough. And so I really think that it's such a huge privilege for me to be able to be at university and to meet so many hundreds of students every year and to try to make my small impact so that, first of all, they can believe in themselves and they can believe that the world can be a better place, even if right now it's kind of a tough moment. But from tough moments, again, we can learn things.Massimiliano Freddi: Even at IAAPA, one of the things that I really am passionate more about is what are the spaces we can create for young professionals and students. So I want to give two very short examples. The IAAPA Foundation has evolved a lot over the last few years. We were able to collect so many more donations.Massimiliano Freddi: And now, this year, it will be a record-breaking year when it comes to scholarships to which students can apply in universities around the globe. So I think that's... But to me and to all of us in the board of the IAAPA Foundation, that's like the starting point. We are here celebrating because it's a big achievement and then we look each other in the eyes and say, 'Okay, now what's next?' Now, how can we make sure that the impact is even bigger? And if we go on the side of IAAPA, I think we are very... We pay a lot of attention to make sure that the membership fees are very low for the people entering. The word of leisure. Just a few weeks ago, it got launched on the IAAPA job board that whoever has a company and wants to post an internship, that's free to post. So that, you know, there could be thousands of internships available for students.Massimiliano Freddi: Of course, as a big association, we are used to talk to members and maybe older members because we visit facilities and we visit manufacturers and we need to deal with safety and stuff. But students and young professionals are not on the back of my head. They are like near and dear to my heart. And so my real question is: when this year ends in a couple of months, how can I dedicate myself even more to contribute to young people? Because I think that they are making a change. They will make a change. And we are learning so much from them because the work we are leaving you and me right now. I have bad news. It's no longer our world. We don't have the code to decode that. So we don't have the keys. We can just support people that are better than us and make sure that they can live, that they can teach, that they can learn.  That's a bit of what I see.Paul Marden: I completely agree with you. I think it's interesting because you talk about what you're giving, but you're also getting something back. This is not entirely altruistic, is it? The support that you're giving for these young people and early career professionals, you're getting something back, enriching yourself and learning new things from them.Massimiliano Freddi: Always, always. And I think that, you know, I don't always teach. Market leisure marketing and stuff— you know, I teach marketing at a at a Master's Degree in Management of Beauty and Wellness, total different industry, you know, food and wine. As I was telling, but what I bring home every time is how much young people need to feel seen and, and this is truly important because if we create for them not a safe zone, because of course we want them to get messy. We want them to take risks, but they need to feel safe as humans and they need to feel safe as seen. And so I appreciate a lot this because then the energy that I... And you know, when we talk about IAAPA, we have so many ambassadors that have been contributing to the IAAPA trade shows and events all over the globe. We have young people joining the committees.Massimiliano Freddi: Right now, there are a few, more than a few young professional task forces around the globe that are really helping us, old people, to understand what they need. So I think that we are at the very beginning. And if I could say a dream out loud, I wish that IAAPA in five or ten years, maybe in five years, can multiply the number of young engaged people in the association by 100. 10 is not enough. 20 is by 100. We need to make an impact. And I think we want to make an impact. So hopefully.Paul Marden: Well, there's an ambition for you. And I think every... worthwhile project— every it always starts with that kind of ambitious goal— at the very beginning of it you need to be driven by that  hundred times impact not the 10 times impact we we always like to finish our interviews with a book recommendation, fiction, non-fiction, industry-related or not, give us a view uh into your reading habits, okay, so can I mention more than one book? You bankrupt me because I always offer the book recommendation as a prize for people, but you can have more than one.Massimiliano Freddi: Okay. Okay. Thank you because I'm a big reader. So the first author that I would love to mention is J. K. Rowling because Harry Potter is not just a story of a kid or of magic, but it's a story of a woman who was a bit desperate. And then... She followed what she was feeling. She allowed her emotions to flow. And she has created a masterpiece. And she has impacted us all, you know, no matter business-related, non-business-related, and so on. So I think that, to read again, the first Harry Potter book, it's very important because it brings us back to some reason why, you know, and to some things. The second book that I would love to mention is a book written by Seth Godin. I have had the privilege to work for Seth for several years.Paul Marden: Really?Massimiliano Freddi: And yeah, he's an amazing guy. He's an amazing guy. And come on, he's such a generous person and he's amazing.Massimiliano Freddi: I don't have any other words that's amazing. He wrote a book maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago called Linchpin. And Linchpin is not his most famous book, but it's the book that changed my life because it really nudges you. In a gentle and not so gentle way sometimes. No, I'm saying in a gentle way. It nudges you to don't set for what you have, but to see your inner talents and to innovate and to be creative, be generous, and so on. So, Linchpin to me is the book that changed it all for me. So, I think that everybody, young, less young, everybody should read once in a lifetime.Paul Marden: I feel like I need to go and read this because that is one Seth Godin book I have not read. So there we go. Listeners, if you would like a copy of Linchpin, then the first person that heads over to LinkedIn and reposts our show notice and says, 'I want Massimiliano's book' and can spell Massimiliano correctly, will have a copy of the book sent to them. We've got IAAPA Europe taking place next week in Barcelona.Paul Marden: And we have a very special Skip the Queue announcement. We are going to be hitting the show floor on a daily basis. We are going to go live for daily episodes of Skip the Queue from the show floor. We're going to be talking to operators about what their challenges are like. Finding out what new supplier announcements are coming out. And the Skip the Queue team is going to be feverishly working away. We'll be recording during the day and Steve and Wenalyn will be editing and producing through the night, ready to post the show the following morning. So I'm very excited about that.Massimiliano Freddi: And I think we are super excited to have you guys on the trade show floor. And I recommend... Of course, visiting it, making the most out of it, and don't underestimate the fantastic education sessions that take place. There is a strong lineup of speakers that will impact the way that the industry will be in a few years. So, great opportunity.Paul Marden:  How's that for a trailer? That sounds amazing. Massimilliano, it really has been a pleasure to talk to you.Massimiliano Freddi: Thank you so much, Paul, for me as well. And see you in Barcelona.Paul Marden: Yes, how exciting. Looking forward to it.Paul Marden: Remember, if you'd like a copy of today's book, head over to LinkedIn and repost our show notice saying, 'I want a copy of Massimiliano's book.' If you've enjoyed this episode, please leave a review on your podcasting platform. It really helps people to find the show. If you didn't enjoy it, or you've got ideas about how we could improve the show, then let us know at hello@skipthequeue.fm. My thanks to Massimiliano and his team at IAAPA for their help with this episode. Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, the digital agency that creates amazing websites for ambitious visitor attractions. This episode was written by Emily Burrows, produced by Wenalyn Dionaldo and edited by Steve Folland. To Skip the Queue team, also includes Sami Entwistle, Sinead Kimberley, Claire Furnival, and Andy Povey. The 2025 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsTake the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report

As the topic of losers queue once again rears it's ugly head, we find ourselves obligated to head back into the fray to defend the League of Legends community.

Three years in and somehow we're getting weirder, in the best way. We kick off with Taco Bell's Y2K menu (double down on the double-decker), a Furby that will not die, and Jess's spooky-cool “Bottle-yaga” for Knott's Into the Fog. David returns from a cross-country odyssey (Marceline pilgrim badge unlocked) plus an Angels Flight joyride and a spicy modern-art rant (banana, meet wall). We swap EPCOT lore from the man behind “Drinking Around the World,” then dive into park reality: line-cutting mega-squads, DIY Lightning Lane scams, and why Disney's feeling more two-tier than ever.Also: introduce yourself to the Lincoln Challenge (stand like the animatronic—no hands, no lawsuits), a Star Tours hat caper, and a Patreon tease for our two-part Marceline video drop. It's tangents, tiki, and just enough chaos to keep the Jungle boat afloat.Rate, review, and tag us with #LincolnChallenge.Use code JUNGLE10 for 10% off subscriptions or merch, from this episodes sponsor WDW Magazine—the glossy, collectible way to keep the magic on your coffee table.

In this part 2 episode, I am concluding our dive into the book of Mark, where Jesus gives us the Greatest Command of loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Specifically speaking to the mind and our strength, we will explore how God can redeem our negative thoughts, restore our imaginations to glorify Him, and what it looks like to commit every gift and talent we've been given as an act of love and worship to the Lord. Queue up part 1 if you haven't tuned into that episode yet! LOGOS LINK: https://www.logos.com/kirby-kelly ORDER MY BOOK HERE: https://a.co/d/0vE5Cji PRINT OUT MY FREE "SHAME CYCLE WORKSHEET" HERE: https://kirbykelly.myflodesk.com/shamecycleworksheet CHECK OUT MY FREE RESOURCES: https://kirbykelly.myflodesk.com/kirbykelly For 10% off of Faithful Counseling, and to start your healing journey today, go to: https://www.faithfulcounseling.com/kirbykelly To sponsor a child in need alongside me with Compassion International, go to: https://www.compassion.com/kirbyisaboss Support the ministry!: https://kirby-kelly.com/checkout/donate?donatePageId=5d23856d41ec3a0001234376 Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Skip The Queue is back for Season 7 and we're announcing some big changes! Get ready for new hosts, a fresh new look, weekly content and find out where you can catch us live at events to be part of the action.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 Paul Marden  and Andy Povey.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 SkiptheQueue.fm. Show references: Paul Marden The CEO of Rubber Cheese, Paul pairs two decades of digital expertise with a love of creative problem solving, making him the go-to guy for turning tricky tech into seamless guest journeys, all delivered with his trademark energy and wit.https://www.linkedin.com/in/pmarden/ Andy Povey The Co-CEO of Crowd Convert, Andy brings sharp insights, deep industry knowledge and notorious anecdotes from decades in attractions.https://www.linkedin.com/in/andypovey/  Transcriptions:  Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue, the podcast about the world's best visitor attractions and the people that work in them. I'm Paul Marden. Along with my co-hosts, Andy Povey and Sinead Kimberley, I spend my days working with ambitious attractions like theme parks, museums, galleries, and science centres to help them to attract more guests. In today's episode, Andy and I talk about what's coming up for Skip the Queue as we enter Season 7.Paul Marden: Seven seasons, hey? Good lord. How very exciting. We've had our summer holidays. We've had our little break, but there's no rest for the wicked, is there?Andy Povey: Absolutely not. You say it's a busman's holiday, really, isn't it?  Working in our industry.Paul Marden: I think it is, isn't it? Life has changed quite a lot for us recently, hasn't it? In the last few months, with the advent of Crowd Convert and Merac coming back to life again, we've been out on the road going everywhere, haven't we?Andy Povey: Absolutely everywhere. And I promise I'm not going to bitch about electric cars and charging.Andy Povey: That's the only thing I've found that annoys me more than a poor online ticketing experience.Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. So we have both been visiting lots of clients. It's been very exciting. But we've also both had our summer holidays. Which attraction is memorable for you from your recent holiday?Andy Povey: Do you know, there's so many. We took our girls to the longest named tourist attraction in the world, I think. Warner Brothers Studio Tour London, the making of Harry Potter. On their 11th birthday. Oh, how was that? We had a beautiful experience. They have this really smart trick there where if they note your birthday, they give you a badge that says, 'It's my birthday.'Andy Povey: It's modelled on the birthday cake that Hagrid gave Harry. So it's all completely in keeping and in theme. So my daughters were walking around with these and every member of staff we saw that saw the badge wished them happy birthday. The first member of staff that did it absolutely blew my girls' minds. They hadn't associated it with the badge that they were wearing and they thought that they were the most special people on the face of the earth.Andy Povey: Absolutely superb. And the experience itself is wonderful. So that was probably the most memorable. I did something else very recently that was a little bit unusual. So I'm a man in my 50s. I was a teenager, probably not even a teenager, a kid when Grease came out. And all my mates and all my friends raved about it, and I didn't go and see it. And I've been very proud of the fact that I've never seen Grease.Andy Povey: Until last weekend. When we went to the Secret Cinema showing of Grease in Battersea Park, wow, wow, what an experience. Live actors, live scenes with the film running in the background, the fairground sitting outside the auditorium, where the final set, if you've watched Grease ever, where they're in the fairground, went out there.Andy Povey: Such a fantastic experience. Really does make me wonder why we don't have more of our larger parks doing that kind of stuff in partnership with Secret Cinema. It would make you stay for the evening and really extend your day. Absolutely superb experience. So, if you get the opportunity to go and see it, please do.Paul Marden: How very cool.Andy Povey: Tell them Andy sent you, which will mean absolutely nothing.  How about you?Paul Marden: We recently went to Scotland. We spent a day, which was really not enough, in Edinburgh. And actually, as you're talking about the Harry Potter experience, we did a little Harry Potter thing because there is a graveyard, Greyfriars Bobby's graveyard.Paul Marden: It was the inspiration for many of the names in Harry Potter. And this graveyard was, I mean, it was chock full of every nationality of tourist you could possibly imagine, plus the three of us wandering around all trying to find Harry Potter themed gravestones. Yeah, so we found Tom Riddle's tombstone. We saw a McGonagall. Yeah, it was just, that was quite magical. But the thing that sticks in my head is we also visited the Real Mary King's Close. And when you walk along the Royal Mile, falling off the side of the Royal Mile are all of these tenement closes that three of them were capped over a couple of hundred years ago and completely forgotten about. Continuum attractions have turned them into an attraction that you can wander around. You get a guided tour of this time capsule of what life was like in a tenement block. In Edinburgh, it was rated last year as the best tourist attraction in Britain, according to TripAdvisor.Paul Marden: And it really, really was magical. It was such a fun visit. We were guided around by a tour guide in costume and in character the whole way around. And at the end of it, she introduced herself as coming from Philadelphia.Paul Marden: She was really really great guide, and I just loved it. I've seen them in the Rubber Cheese Survey for the last four years, and thought, 'What a funny name for an attraction? I wonder what that is?' And so, when I saw it, I had to go. I loved every minute of it, and it was brilliant.Andy Povey: I agree, it's a fantastic place. Did you see J. K. Rowling's handprints just around the corner?Paul Marden: No.Andy Povey: In the courtyard next to the entrance?Paul Marden: No, I didn't.Andy Povey: See, I think they were trying to do something like the Hollywood Walk of Fame, where there are famous people's handprints. I should have told you before. Is there something to go back for?Paul Marden: Oh, we'll definitely be going back. There was so much there in Edinburgh that we didn't get to see. You just couldn't do it in a day.Paul Marden: But so much fun. So much fun.Paul Marden: So we are into season seven. And just like the last few seasons, we've got lots of ideas, brimming with ideas, few changes. And we thought we would tease them for you here in this short non-episode, just to tell you about some of the things that are coming up. And yeah, shall we?Paul Marden: We'll talk about the first thing that you came up with, which was the move to weekly content.Andy Povey:  You're blaming me for this?Paul Marden: Absolutely. Absolutely.Andy Povey: I mean, the objective was to double the listenership of the podcast. And so you did that by doubling my work. And it seemed like it would be really, really easy to do that if we doubled the episodes.Andy Povey: So, yeah, we're going weekly. I'm sure we're going to have plenty to fill it. Because you look at all of the interesting stories we come across, the people that we talk to, the things that we want to talk about, and we end up editing and cutting things. So I'm convinced that we're going to have loads of really exciting things to talk about. We're also going to introduce a couple of different themes. So do you want to talk about the Millennium-funded projects?Paul Marden: Yes, so this is carrying on the theme that I started back at the back end of Season 6. When I spoke to another Edinburgh attraction, Dynamic Earth. They were a good example of a Millennium project that was obviously kicked off 25 years ago. And we had a lovely conversation about what has been the challenges, what has been the opportunities for them in the last 25 years, and what does the future look like? I'm off to the Association of Science and Discovery Centres conference next week. That episode will be out in a few weeks' time. And we're going to be talking a lot about science centres. and how they can thrive over the next 25 years. But we'll be talking to some other Millennium projects as well in the season ahead. So Charles Bishop from the National Space Centre, if you're listening, give me a call.Andy Povey: I'm going to try and hound you to appear on the podcast.Paul Marden: We've also, this is very self-indulgent, but we are going to be going through a little bit of a rebrand. The Skip the Queue brand has stayed the same for the six seasons. And our friends at Plaster Creative Communications have been working really hard. They're the only reason why we could possibly go weekly with our content because Emily and Sami are helping us to ramp up our content and working with us closely. But they've also helped us with our rebrand, which is also going to be an audio rebrand. So there's going to be some new audio tickling your ears coming up as well, which is very exciting.Andy Povey: It's not just the rebrand though, is it? Let's talk about the other things that we're going to be doing with Skip the Queue.Paul Marden: Yeah. Should we talk playbooks?Andy Povey: Absolutely. Tell me what it means.Paul Marden: So I, for a long time, thought that there was something that Skip the Queue could do because, you know. Yes, this is our baby, but it is a lot of hard work from across the industry that goes towards making the podcast the success that it is. And we're going to move that successful collaboration into a series of playbooks where we're bringing together people from across the industry to help guide attractions into... the state of the art and what's possible within the sector across a number of different subjects. And we're starting that with e-commerce. So we're currently collaborating with our friends at Stephen Spencer Associates and at Navigate. And we're producing the first in that playbook series all about what... What does it take to be able to build an amazing e-commerce experience for an attraction? How do you curate the products?Paul Marden: How do you come up with the ideas? How do you put the technology together? And then how do you get anybody to come and visit and buy from you? So that's very exciting.Andy Povey: So that's more of your gift shop. Retail e-commerce.Paul Marden: Absolutely. Absolutely. And there'll be room as well within the series for us to talk about other things as well. So we are completely open to ideas. So listeners, if you've got ideas of a playbook that you'd like to see, it could be about digital sustainability. It could be about ticketing. It could be about any aspect of operating an attraction. Come and tell us and come up with ideas of who we could work with and we'll put something together for you. So I think that's really exciting, and that will be coming out in a few weeks' time.Andy Povey: Very interesting. Look forward to that.Paul Marden: We were excited in Season 6 to break out of the four walls of our little dungeon offices, working via video conferencing and going out and about, weren't we? We absolutely loved visiting the NFAN Conference, ASDC.Paul Marden: We worked from the floor of so many different events, didn't we? And tried lots of formats. And we definitely, definitely want to do more of that. And there's an exciting turn because weekly isn't enough, is it?Andy Povey:  If you're going to do it, go big. Go big or go home.Paul Marden: We have been invited to the IAAPA Europe Conference Expo in Barcelona, no less. And we are going to be coming into your ears daily, not weekly, daily.Paul Marden: So we have got an amazing lineup of people that we are going to be talking to from the conference floor. But there's also so much time to fill. We don't know who we're going to talk to. We're going to be hitting the floor and just grabbing people, just like we did at NFAN. You'll be out, Andy, just hooking people. And we'll be talking to them. And we plan to do those interviews during the day, and Wenalyn and Steve, our long-suffering editorial and production team, will be working furiously through the night to publish the following morning.Andy Povey: Fantastic. So do we need to talk about our launch episode for Season 7?Paul Marden: Yes.Andy Povey: As this is just the trailer.Paul Marden: Yes. So in 29 minutes, I will be recording my launch episode. So I'm meeting with Massimiliano Freddi, who is the IAAPA board chairman. We're going to find out more about Massimiliano. Not only is he the first Italian chairman of IAAPA, which has been in existence for over 100 years, I believe. We are also going to find out about what he does in his day job and the attraction that he runs over in Italy. So that's a very exciting first episode. So we will be launching that episode 17th of September, and then we will be live from Barcelona starting on the 23rd and going out daily from there on for the rest of that week. I mean, what more could we want? Andy Povey: It's justification for the family for me going to Barcelona after just having returned from Menorca so daddy does a holiday work.Paul Marden: We've at least got to walk down Las Rambla and chat about the conference we can't just be within the expo location surely. A little vino tinto on.Andy Povey: I'm sure we will be at Tribudabo at what, in my experience, this is the third time I've been to IAAPA in Barcelona. But the opening night party in Tribudabo has always been one of the most fantastic events I've ever been to. The view over the city at night with rides and superb food, drink and entertainment going off behind you is just  out of this world.Paul Marden: But it's work just for anyone that's listening outside the door right now.Andy Povey: Very hard work for very important people.Paul Marden: Yes so we are still planning out the rest of season seven, obviously going weekly, lots of opportunities for us to talk to lots of people. If you've got ideas for themes or people that we could interview, we are absolutely all ears. So hit us up on LinkedIn, hello@SkiptheQueue.fm, or go to the website, skipthequeue.fm. Yeah, and you'll find all of our contact details and we'd love to hear from you with ideas of what we could do for the rest of this season. What would you find interesting? Apart from that, we're going to sign off. I've got an interview to go to in 25 minutes. We will be back with you on the 17th of September with our first episode and from IAAPA on the 23rd of September for the rest of that week.Andy Povey: You're going to be on IAAPA. Come and find us. Come and have a chat.Paul Marden: Looking forward to it.Paul Marden: Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, the digital agency that creates amazing websites for ambitious visitor attractions.  The 2025 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsTake the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report

The Ethereum validator entry queue overtakes the exit queue. Eth.limo reveals its ongoing legal battles. Safe integrates DeFi positions. And Superfluid approves SUP token transferability. Read more: https://ethdaily.io/776 Disclaimer: Content is for informational purposes only, not endorsement or investment advice. The accuracy of information is not guaranteed.

We're so excited to bring you Limitless Africa, Season 3! Rest assured, we'll still be exploring the limitless potential of the continent but we'll be focusing on our changing relationship with the U.S. during this season. Queue interviews with the high-profile entrepreneurs, investors, creatives and changemakers deepening the relationship between Africa and America. If you want to hear the first episode as soon as it drops on Monday 8 September, please follow or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Substack. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

No Sell Entertainment movie review podcast takes on the 1980 film Can't Stop The Music starring The Village People, Valerie Perrine & Steve Guttenburg Available now wherever you listen to your podcast.

Send us a messageHave you ever played Scrabble and felt the rush of laying down the perfect word? Maybe it was one that hit a triple word score or cleverly used up all your letters. There's something deeply satisfying about seeing those points add up, especially when you've been staring at your tiles for what feels like forever not sure if you're ever going to make up a word. Scrabble is more than just a test of vocabulary; it's a game that shows the real power of words.What makes Scrabble fascinating is that every letter and every placement matters. In the same way, in life, the words we choose and how we arrange them can open doors, shape relationships, and even define our reputation. Words are small, but they carry a lot of weight. Today we use Scrabble as a guide to talk about why words matter. We'll look at how they carry power, why strategy and intentionality matter, and how they have the potential to shape our identity and legacy.

It's Forbidden Door week, and Ian Hamilton (twitter.com/IanWrestling) is back to take you on a tour of who else is running this week around London - with run-throughs of what you can stream at home, and why you should be interested in these shows. Well, some of them…Track: Midnight - Next Route [Audio Library Release]Music provided by Audio Library PlusFree Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/midnight-nrAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Linear, IA Writer et même TikTok ont utilisé l'opinionated design pour se créer une place au sein d'un écosystème ultra-concurrentiel… Aujourd'hui on analyse Queue, une app qui a su s'immiscer dans le monde du podcast grâce à une philosophie forte.

Send us a messageHave you ever asked yourself this question: "What am I really aiming for right now?" A lot of our energy can get spent chasing moments that feel exciting in the short term but don't leave us with much lasting meaning. We stay busy, we keep moving, and yet sometimes we realize we've been firing off effort and attention in a hundred different directions without really locking in on what matters most.That's what today's episode is all about. Because life, in many ways, works a lot like the game of Battleship. We each have a limited number of moves, a limited amount of energy, and an invisible board we're trying to navigate. The difference between spinning our wheels and moving toward our purpose often comes down to one thing: aim. Today, we're going to explore why this question matters so much - especially in a season like summer when it's easy to drift - and how making sure you know what and where you are aiming can bring fresh focus, peace, and purpose into your daily life. 

Thank you for tuning in to Episode 303 of the Down Cellar Studio Podcast. Full show notes with photos can be found on my website. This week's segments included:   Off the Needles, Hook or Bobbins On the Needles, Hook or Bobbins From the Armchair Knitting in Passing In my Travels KAL News Ask Me Anything On a Happy Note Quote of the Week   Off the Needles, Hook or Bobbins   Gabriella's Unicorn Pattern: Shy Little Unicorn by Ana Paula Rimoli Hook: C (2.75 mm) Yarn: Red Heart Super Saver (white), Knit Picks Brava Worsted (cotton candy & various solids) Ravelry Project Page Total for Stash Dash: 116 meters   Sum-Sum-Summertime socks Yarn: Woolens & Nosh SW Targhee Sock in the colorway Sum-Sum-Summertime Pattern: OMG Heel Socks by Megan Williams ($5 knitting pattern available on Ravelry) Needles: US 1.5 (2.5 mm) Ravelry Project Page About the Colorway- thinner stripes- 2 colors of aqua, lime green, pink and an orange/peachy yellow. CC mini in lime Total for Stash Dash: 293.3 meters   Stash Dash Total for this episode: 8,715.2 meters   On the Needles, Hook or Bobbins   Hot pink spinning Fiber: Mountain Vewe Coopworths Fiber in hot pink (no specific colorway name)- three 4oz bumps Ravelry Project Page Twist direction: singles = Z plied = S This means when I'm spinning, my wheel is spinning clockwise and when plying my wheel is moving counter-clockwise. Progress: ~1/2 way through first bump. 1st bobbin full and the second is started I've now spun in July and August so I've only missed 2 months so far this year.   Log Cabin Blanket Pattern: Log Cabin Square by Julie Harrison. Free crochet pattern available on Ravelry. Video tutorial available on the Little Woollie Makes YouTube Channel Yarn: Legacy Fiber Artz Minis (mostly from Advent calendars 2023 & 2024) Hook: I (5.5 mm) Ravelry Project Page Inspired by Rachel (treehousefiberarts on Instagram) and Sue & Chelsea (Legacy Fiber Artz on Instagram). Check out the Floss Toss Ravelry Group for details on their Scrappy Blanket CAL. Ends December 21st (but you don't have to finish. 2 prize drawings will be done). My color placement is inspired by this project/pattern available on Ravelry.     From the Armchair   Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister. Amazon Affiliate Link. My Friends by Fredrik Backman. Amazon Affiliate Link.   Note: Some links are listed as Amazon Affiliate Links. If you click those, please know that I am an Amazon Associate and I earn money from qualifying purchases.   Knitting in Passing   I shared a story about a little girl in the nail salon who asked her mom if they could come talk to me because she wants to learn to knit.   In My Travels Travel packing tips Packing cubes- here's an Amazon affiliate link to the set I purchased 6 years ago and still love! I always pack some clothes pins/ metal or wood that I use for snacks/drink mix pouches and/or to keep curtains closed in hotel. I have a standard packing list in Evernote that I customize for each trip. It saves so much time and frustration. Pack a travel power strip- to keep all of those chraging cords in one place (also less likely to leave one behind) Knitting project approach At least 2 socks/stockinette hats for waiting, sitting etc. A project that occupies my brain and makes a long flight go by easier. Queue the audiobooks & download podcasts   KAL News   Splash Pad Final Winners were announced!   Pigskin Party '25 Sponsor Sign Up is Open- click here for details Key Dates: Registration starting Thursday August 20, 2025 KAL Starts- Thursday September 4, 2025 KAL Ends- Monday February 9, 2026 Form Teams- starting Monday August 25, 2025 Virtual Kick Off- Friday September 5 & Saturday September 6   Ask Me Anything   Tune in to hear the answers to these questions: Pat- loonyhiker asked: I know you have probably told this before, but I'd love to hear how you and your honey met. I also would love to hear how your parents met. (bonus audio of my parents talking about this by the pool in 2017) Sandy, sjh801 asked:  Favorite children's book? Both as a child and now as an adult. Children's Book (purely for sentimental reasons): Walk Rabbit Walk by Colin McNaughton. Amazon Affiliate Link. Hardcover available for ~$20 & paperback for around $7 Adult book: Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. Amazon Affiliate Link.John Lee does the audiobooks for what is now this series of books. Book 1 of 5 now in this series. I love them all. Dianne, woohoogirl asks: Do you have a Dream project that you'd really like to make that you just haven't made the time, or plans, for yet? The Traveler by Andrea Mowry ($9 knitting pattern available on Ravelry & the Drea Renee Knits website). This may be my favorite version:a handspun Traveler knit by Emily Curtis. Check out her Instagram post. Click here for a post about the handspun yarn Carrie, Gooberdawn asks: Do you have a project you have created that you feel most proud of? If so, which one and why? ETA: it doesn't have to be yarn-related. Laura, LauraKnitsPA asks: What is one book you would read over and over, and one movie you would watch over and over? Book- The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. Amazon Affiliate Link Movie: You've Got Mail Dani, stitchintime82-  Any updates on designing? I've enjoyed your patterns and am wondering if you have any plans to make more patterns.   On a Happy Note I was able to get my Apple watch to charge again after I thought it was dead. Oikos yogurt shake/drinks with 23g of protein. My friend Nathan had a heart and kidney transplant just over 1 year ago. He's still learning to walk again after ECMO caused major nerve damage in his legs- and we just went to see the musical he directed. Sometimes this world feels so dark right now but this made me incredibly happy. The night we had tickets for the show, we lost power, so we made it a full date night and went for dinner too. A visit from my cousin Gayle. We enjoyed a great pool day on Sunday and dinner in our town Monday night followed by a walk along the harbor. Gayle chose Mom's Trickle shawl as the item she wanted of hers. I took a photo of her and Google photos turned it into a pop-out. Trickle Shawl- Ravelry | LoveCrafts I gifted Gayle the pair of Stranger Things 2 socks from DVD as an early birthday gift and she sent me a cute photo of her wearing them the next morning. Great customer service from an Etsy maker to order pins. I had fun putting together photos Millie, Teaghan and Rhiannon asked me to take a couple weekends ago at the pool of them jumping off the diving board and making their bodies into the shape of the letters of the alphabet. Fun memories!   Quote of the Week “It's not hotels and nightclubs I crave, or even spectacular beaches -- it's isolation and solitude, time away from the human world and a chance to measure life on a different kind of yardstick.” ― Peter S. Adler   ------ Thank you for tuning in. Remember show notes for this episode can be found at www.downcellarstudio.com/# If you have a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, I'd greatly appreciate it. I can be found on Ravelry as BostonJen and I'd love it if you came over to join our lively and engaged Down Cellar Studio Ravelry Group. Check me out on Instagram at BostonJen1 if you want to see what I'm up to between episodes. Check out my Down Cellar Studio YouTube Channel Email me at downcellarstudio@gmail.com   For website: Thank you for tuning in!   Contact Information: Check out the Down Cellar Studio Patreon! Ravelry: BostonJen & Down Cellar Studio Podcast Ravelry Group Instagram: BostonJen1 YouTube: Down Cellar Studio Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/downcellarstudio Sign up for my email newsletter to get the latest on everything happening in the Down Cellar Studio Check out my Down Cellar Studio YouTube Channel Knit Picks Affiliate Link Bookshop Affiliate Link Yarnable Subscription Box Affiliate Link FearLESS Living Fund to benefit the Blind Center of Nevada Music -"Soft Orange Glow" by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/ Note: Some links are listed as Amazon Affiliate Links. If you click those, please know that I am an Amazon Associate and I earn money from qualifying purchases.  

We have our first guest-free episode of A Gay And A NonGay in ages! We're diving into everything from backpack etiquette to Oasis concerts. We kick off with a burning question from their straightest friend: Why did we all believe that wearing a rucksack with both straps was gay? Queue a debate about bags, masculinity and school-era social dynamics. Dan also shares his incredible experience at the Oasis reunion concert, leading to a discussion about whether massive concerts like these serve as "straight pride". The episode explores themes of accountability, the complexity of community dynamic and the Coldplay concert incident that had everyone talking. Follow A Gay & A NonGay TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@gaynongay⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@gaynongay⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@gaynongay⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@gaynongay⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠gaynongay.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Email Us: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠us@gaynongay.com⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Socerton, Askallad, and Draxos talk about the big trending topic in AoE IV! No, not THAT topic, we're talking about auto-queueing villagers (again!?). All that and more as we preview KotR rules and maps!  Support us on Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/TheExtraSheep    Follow us on Twitch and YouTube!  Socerton: https://www.twitch.tv/socerton Beale: https://www.twitch.tv/aoe_beale Sir Nevels: https://www.youtube.com/@sirnevels4603   Join a Discord!   The Griot Bara: https://discord.gg/JH2E5Afe5j The Rising Empires: https://discord.gg/rising-empires-aoe4-957044242520375336 Socerton's Discord: https://discord.gg/BjU8QcVgFQ    We're also proud partners of www.moreknights.com

In today's Daily Fix:The Battlefield 6 open beta isn't even live yet, and there's already 30,000+ players waiting in the queue. The beta goes live for this weekend and next, but early access to those with codes begins tomorrow. And early access or not, expect some long wait times if you're trying to get in. In Nintendo news, the creator of Pokémon and the former CEO of The Pokémon Company confirmed that Nintendo of America had some notes on Pikachu's original design. Before the game made its way to the U.S., Nintendo of America reportedly wanted to add "large breasts" to everyone's favorite electric mouse, and also wanted to toughen up some of the other pokémon, to make them less cute. Thankfully, those notes were ignored. And finally, Genshin Impact is being delisted on PS4 next month, and will be shutdown for that console next year. Don't worry, PS5 players will not be affected.

How many Stone Cold Stunners does one NEED in an episode? And "apparently" Team Rocket might be going corporate... Queue the eye-roll cause yea right...Chuck sucks, and Sam may be reconciling with her birth mom! Will She Who Must Not Be Named try and stand in her way? Not if Brooke has anything to say about it!Send us a textEliminate the hassle of taking your clubs in for regripping with FORE GRIPS. Our product allows you to easily customize the grip on your clubs, ensuring a perfect feel every time. Choose from a variety of sizes, shapes, colors, and patterns to find the perfect fit for your game.Order. Open. Wrap. Play.That simple.Fore GripsDitch the rubbers, wrap your shaft!Support the showCheck out @thwf.podcast on ALLLLL the socials including: Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook, and Threads!

Dans cet épisode, l'ami Olivier Swift nous parle de l'extraordinaire parade nuptiale de la Barge à queue noire, une sacrée voltigeuse ... difficile à suivre pour un bioacousticien.Olivier parle aussi du Râle des genêts (Crex crex) ou Roi caille; Ce rallidé migrateur niche au sol. Il établit son nid à la mi-mai dans les prairies de fauche en Europe. Sa nidification dure deux mois. à l'automne, il migre dans le sud de l'Afrique.Autrefois commune, l'espèce est en fort déclin, victime de la disparition de son habitat et de l'intensification agricole entraînant une fauche des prés précoce fatale aux jeunes voire aux adultes eux-mêmes._______Le FIFO (Festival international du film ornithologique) de Ménigoute est un rendez-vous incontournable pour les passionnés du documentaire animalier et pour les amoureux du Vivant.Le FIFO propose des projections de films, mais aussi un forum des assos et autres acteurs naturalistes, un salon d'Art animalier, des rencontres-débats, un festival off, des sorties et ateliers nature. L'entrée est gratuite et chaque projection payante. C'est simple, riche et “familial”.BSG a eu l'honneur et la chance d'y être invité pour la 38 e édition, fin octobre 2022. Marc y a réalisé 48 interviews, en se laissant guider par le hasard, au petit bonheur la grande chance. Il en est revenu les cales pleines de belles rencontres et de pépites naturalistes.___

In this episode, the boys come together to discuss Marvel's The Fantastic Four: First Steps! (Queue the theme song) We dive into all things spoilers, easter eggs, and end credit scenes! Tune in and make sure to follow us on social media to stay up to date on all things cosmic.Follow Us On Social Media https://www.instagram.com/cosmickickback/ https://twitter.com/cosmickickback https://www.tiktok.com/@cosmickickbackpodhttps://discord.gg/m6p6z3B8Follow us on Twitch! https://www.twitch.tv/phantomhushhttps://www.twitch.tv/apolloxnickThe Boy's Channels! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOVCy8sQkO8cafKxYpO-VVA https://www.youtube.com/c/NickBarreraFollow us on Letterboxd!https://letterboxd.com/JoshuaFowlerhttps://letterboxd.com/nickbarrera

Al and Andee are back in the podcasting space - refreshed and ready to share a new concept. Dueling Disney will now be 45 minute wait: Conversations in the Queue. Debates are always happening when we're together. Yet, we always come back to reminising about the days before cell phones and the great conversations we had while waiting in lines for attractions. For our first episode back, we actually recorded while in a queue. The sound quality is not perfect, but the heart is there. We missed you and we're anxious to be discussing Disney again!  What do you think of the changes? Let us know on YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram.  We appreciate reviews wherever you go to for podcast listening, thank you! “C” ya real soon!

The Refugee Family Support Category is supposed to allow refugees to reunite with family. Instead, it's a waiting game which could take another decade to clear. It could take 10 years to clear a refugee visa waiting queue - but those applicants have already been waiting for seven years, and some have families in danger…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

We're back with Part 2 of The Best of Disney & DVC: Our Ultimate Picks! In this episode of The DVC Show, we're revealing even more of our all-time favorites across Disney Vacation Club and Walt Disney World! From the Best Boat Ride to our picks for Best Mexican and Italian Restaurants, Best Ride Queue, Best Nighttime Show, and Best Epcot Pavilion—you won't want to miss this mix of hot takes, solid picks, and a few surprises.Let us know in the comments if your favorites made the list—or if we left something off that you love!Support our DVC Fan content by joining our⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!Visit our official sponsor, World of DVC, for all your DVC needs!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠DVC Resale Market⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is the largest broker of DVC resale contracts on the internet!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Monera Financial⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for an easy solution to financing your DVC contract!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠DVC Rental Store⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is a fantastic resource for those looking to rent points or rent out points!Buy Discounted Disney World or Universal Tickets with ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Unlocked Magic⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!Book Your Next Disney Cruise with⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Be Our Guest Vacations!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Become a member of the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠DVC Fan Facebook Group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠DVC Fan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for even more on Disney Vacation Club!

There was an idea...to bring together a group of silly middled aged boys to make even the most dry bits of history...silly...that we never could... The Silliest boys in history return for....Pretenders...ASSEMBLE! We're plunged screaming and yawning back in the thorny history bed that is. THE WARS OF THE ROSES again. Henry Tudor smoked Richard the Third at the battle of Bosworth* to start the Tudor Dynasty. But its only two years later and John de Pole Earl of Lincoln is already burying little presents in Henry Tudor's Rose garden...a little White Rose Present...has one of the Princes in the Tower survived? Or is it just a no mark peasant twit called Lambert Simnel who has a passing resemblance to a dead Prince?** Queue a mad dash to hire Irish Gallowgass, Antipodal Mercs with a great faith in the Schwartz (Martin) and massive swords! Join us for the tale of Lambert Simnel the boy who would be King! Enjoy the show? Want help us by new noises?! You can help make the show by hanging us a few quid on Kofi! Ko-Fi Thanks to zapsplat for the SFX and music Thanks to scott buckley for his incredible music Thanks to Lord Fast Fingers for his music Strings by Jonny Dyer           *alright actually he got his Mum on them! **kind of but no

Introducing The Killer Queue, a new podcast that may sound strikingly familiar. Check it out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you like scary movies? Are you frightened by the length of your Netflix queue? Good news - I've got you covered. Every week, I'll preview new and resurrected horror movies dropping on Tubi, Shudder, Netflix, Hulu and more, plus reviews of my favorites. This time around, I outline the show and share three of my top four on Letterboxd, plus a little about me and the struggle to pick number four.

Sami goes behind the scenes of Ruby on Rails (https://rubyonrails.org/) with Rosa Gutierrez, principle programer at 37Signals (https://37signals.com/), to discover what its like to work on one of the most widely used frameworks out there. Rosa breaks down how the team at 37Signals work and implement new tools for Ruby, the challenges of working remotely, as well as the current practical use of AI within the development space and how we can expect it to change in the years to come. — Check out Sami's blog on AI vs Human-led Coding (https://thoughtbot.com/blog/ai-led-or-human-led-coding-you-decide) for a more in-depth look on his thoughts from this episode. You can get in touch with Rosa directly and find all her various social links through her website (https://rosa.codes). Your host for this episode has been Sami Birnbaum. Sami can be found through his website (https://samibirnbaum.com) or via LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/samibirnbaum/). If you would like to support the show, head over to our GitHub page (https://github.com/sponsors/thoughtbot), or check out our website (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com). Got a question or comment about the show? Why not write to our hosts: hosts@giantrobots.fm This has been a thoughtbot (https://thoughtbot.com/) podcast. Stay up to date by following us on social media - LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/) - Mastodon (https://thoughtbot.social/@thoughtbot) - Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/thoughtbot.com) © 2025 thoughtbot, inc.

No Sell Entertainment movie review podcast takes on the 2025 film Superman starring David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan & Nicholas Hoult. Available now wherever you listen to your podcast.

Buckle Up Fans! The Fan Girls are in their "KPOP Demon Hunters" Era, and we're ready to Dish & Spill all the tea!

Un chasse-mouches en queue de lion devenu l'un des symboles les plus marquants du pouvoir de Kamuzu Banda. Médecin formé en Occident, le père de l'indépendance du Malawi cultivait pourtant l'image d'un chef profondément enraciné dans les traditions locales. Un nationaliste culturel assumé, qui n'apparaissait jamais sans cet accessoire singulier - à la fois outil cérémoniel, signe d'autorité et instrument de mise en scène politique.  Il le brandissait partout. Lors des cérémonies officielles, des rassemblements politiques, ou même à sa descente d'avion… Le fouet à queue de lion ne quittait jamais Hastings Kamuzu Banda. À l'image de son costume trois-pièces à l'anglaise ou de son chapeau homburg, porté à la manière d'un Winston Churchill, cet accessoire faisait partie intégrante de sa silhouette présidentielle. Le chercheur Chikondi Chidzanja de l'université de Stellenbosch s'en souvient : « Lorsqu'il se rendait au palais, il était dans une voiture décapotable et agitait son fouet à queue de lion. Pour nous, enfants des écoles, c'était un moment d'excitation. On répétait : “Aujourd'hui, on va voir Kamuzu Banda !” » Mais ce n'était pas un geste improvisé, souligne l'historien John Lwanda : « La main droite partait vers la gauche, puis vers le haut, puis vers la droite… Ce n'était pas un geste lancé au hasard, comme tu ferais lors d'un match de foot ». Le fouet servait aussi à projeter l'image d'un libérateur, explique Chrispin Mphande, enseignant à l'université de Mzuzu : « On l'appelait le Lion du Malawi. Certains allaient jusqu'à le voir comme un Messie, surtout après sa nomination à vie dans les années 1970. Le fouet symbolisait ce pouvoir : celui de l'homme qui a vaincu le colon et libéré le pays ». À lire aussiOù en est le Malawi 60 ans après son indépendance? Un symbole de pouvoir, mais aussi d'identité. Formé aux États-Unis et au Royaume-Uni, Kamuzu Banda voulait paraître comme un dirigeant enraciné dans les traditions africaines. Chikondi Chidzanja : « Kamuzu, il avait étudié en Occident, mais pour ne pas être perçu comme un étranger, il devait aussi incarner l'Africain. Alors le fouet est devenu le symbole de cet ancrage culturel ». Dès 1962, l'objet apparaît dans ses mains. Il lui aurait été offert par un autre père de l'indépendance, le Kényan Jomo Kenyatta. Mais sous le régime à parti unique de Kamuzu Banda, nul n'était autorisé à le porter, sauf lui. John Lwanda : « On ne pouvait pas se promener avec un fouet en disant qu'on était guérisseur. On se faisait arrêter ». Aujourd'hui encore, l'objet fascine. Il en aurait existé plusieurs : en poils de buffle, de lion ou de cheval... Mais la dernière version est bien connue, affirme l'historien John Lwanda : « Le dernier fouet était une vraie queue de lion, avec un manche en ivoire ». Cette version a été confiée à l'université de médecine qu'il a fondée, la Kamuzu University of Health Sciences. Elle est encore utilisée lors des remises de diplômes. Un enseignant la passe au-dessus des têtes des jeunes médecins, comme pour balayer l'ignorance, et consacrer leur entrée dans le savoir. Une manière de prolonger, dans le rituel universitaire, la portée symbolique d'un objet devenu emblème du pouvoir.

That's a wrap! It's time for our Wimbledon wrap-up show, where Joel, Kim, and Chris reflect on The Championships from our own unique perspectives at Tennis Weekly HQ. We dish out our awards for Best Match, Biggest Surprise, Most Room for Improvement, and Players to Watch as we look ahead to the US Open. (Clue: there may or may not be mentions of Lorenzo Sonego's epic clash with Brandon Nakashima, the lucky loser story that kept on giving with Argentina's Solana Sierra, and Coco Gauff's evolving grass-court game.)We're also bringing back PEAK, PIT, and PLEASANT SURPRISE to share our personal high points, low points, and unexpected moments — including Fabio Fognini's sudden retirement that caught Joel off guard in the staff canteen, how Charli XCX at Glastonbury somehow found its way into Kim's routine and Chris realising you can't eat in the Media seats on court. So join us for our alternative guide and review of Wimbledon… just don't ask Joel about strawberries and pasta!Listen to our Wimbledon Guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-Y_76_R7IM&t=1591sN:B. Ticket resale has moved - it is now between the main entrance for ground/queue admission and Number 1 CourtThe Wimbledon Public Ballot opens in September and you have to register a myWimbledon account before entering the ballothttps://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/ticke...BABOLATBabolat are an official partner of Wimbledon and their Wimbledon collaboration collection and Pure Drive (2025) is available to purchase now from babolat.com SOCIALSFollow us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, plus email the show tennisweeklypod@gmail.com.MERCHPurchase Tennis Weekly Merch through our Etsy store including limited edition designs by Krippa Design where all proceeds go towards the podcast so we can keep doing what we do!REVIEWS***Please take a moment to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your pods. It really means a lot to us at HQ and helps make it easier for new listeners to discover us. Thanks!*** Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Send us a textIn this episode, we're diving into the new verse added to It's a Small World—the final gift from Disney Legend Richard Sherman. We'll also break down the virtual queue system for Disneyland's newest show Walt Disney – A Magical Life, preview all the festive fun coming to Walt Disney World this holiday season, and spotlight the hottest SeaWorld ticket deals happening right now. Whether you're planning a trip or just staying in the loop, we've got the magic, memories, and money-saving tips you need!Join us in our completely free discord https://discord.gg/4nAvKTgcRnCheck Out  All Of Our Amazing Sponsors!!Getaway Todayhttps://www.getawaytoday.com/?referrerid=8636If you want to book a Disney Vacation please use our friends at Getaway Today. Also if you call 855-GET-AWAY and mention Walt's Apartment you will get a special dose of magicThe Themepark Scavenger Hunt Game - Where In The Parkhttps://shop.whereinthepark.com/?ref=waltsaptpodcastCheck Out Sunken City Designs - from the mind of Louis Medinahttps://sunkencitydesigns.bigcartel.comWe are proud to be part of the Disney Podcast Family , checkout all the other great shows below https://linktr.ee/DisneyPodcastFamily

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 Paul Marden.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 SkiptheQueue.fm.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  or Bluesky for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast.Competition ends on 23rd July 2025. The winner will be contacted via Bluesky. Show references:  Sam Mullins, Trustee at SS Great Britainhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/sammullins/https://www.ssgreatbritain.org/ Transcriptions:  Paul Marden: What an amazing day out here. Welcome to Skip the Queue. The podcast for people working in and working with visitor attractions, I'm your host, Paul Marden, and today you join me for the last episode of the season here in a very sunny and very pleasant Bristol Dockyard. I'm here to visit the SS Great Britain and one of their trustees, Sam Mullins, who until recently, was the CEO of London Transport Museum. And I'm going to be talking to Sam about life after running a big, family friendly Museum in the centre of London, and what comes next, and I'm promising you it's not pipes and the slippers for Sam, he's been very busy with the SSGreat Britain and with other projects that we'll talk a little more about. But for now, I'm going to enjoy poodling across the harbour on boat number five awaiting arrival over at the SS Great Britain. Paul Marden: Is there much to catch in the water here?Sam Mullins: According to some research, there's about 36 different species of fish. They catch a lot of cream. They catch Roach, bullet, bass car. Big carpet there, maybe, yeah, huge carpet there. And then your European great eel is here as well, right? Yeah, massive things by the size of your leg, big heads. It's amazing. It goes to show how receipt your life is. The quality of the water is a lot better now. Paul Marden: Oh yeah, yeah, it's better than it used to be years ago. Thank you very much. All right. Cheers. Have a good day. See you later on. So without further ado, let's head inside. So where should we head? Too fast. Sam Mullins: So we start with the stern of the ship, which is the kind of classic entrance view, you know. Yeah, coming up, I do. I love the shape of this ship as you as you'll see.Paul Marden: So lovely being able to come across the water on the boat and then have this as you're welcome. It's quite a.Sam Mullins: It's a great spot. Isn't it?Paul Marden: Really impactful, isn't it? Sam Mullins:  Because the amazing thing is that it's going this way, is actually in the dry dock, which was built to build it. Paul Marden: That's amazing. Sam Mullins: So it came home. It was clearly meant to be, you know,Paul Marden:  Quite the circular story.Sam Mullins:  Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Paul Marden:  Thank you. Wow. Look at that view.Sam Mullins: So that's your classic view.Paul Marden:  So she's in a dry dock, but there's a little bit of water in there, just to give us an idea of what's going on. Sam Mullins: Well, what's actually going on in here is, preserving the world's first iron ship. So it became clear, after he'd come back from the Falklands, 1970 came back to Bristol, it became clear that the material of the ship was rusting away. And if something wasn't done, there'd be nothing left, nothing left to show. So the innovative solution is based on a little bit of science if you can reduce the relative humidity of the air around the cast iron hull of the ship to around about 20% relative humidity, corrosion stops. Rusting stops. It's in a dry dock. You glaze over the dock at kind of water line, which, as you just noticed, it gives it a really nice setting. It looks like it's floating, yeah, it also it means that you can then control the air underneath. You dry it out, you dehumidify it. Big plant that dries out the air. You keep it at 20% and you keep the ship intact. Paul Marden: It's interesting, isn't it, because you go to Mary Rose, and you go into the ship Hall, and you've got this hermetically sealed environment that you can maintain all of these beautiful Tudor wooden pieces we're outside on a baking hot day. You don't have the benefit of a hermetically sealed building, do you to keep this? Sam Mullins: I guess the outside of the ship is kind of sealed by the paint. That stops the air getting to the bit to the bare metal. We can go down into the trigger, down whilst rise up.Paul Marden:  We're wondering. Sam, yeah, why don't you introduce yourself, tell listeners a little bit about your background. How have we ended up having this conversation today.Sam Mullins: I'm Sam Mullins. I'm a historian. I decided early on that I wanted to be a historian that worked in museums and had an opportunity to kind of share my fascination with the past with museum visitors. So I worked in much Wenlock in Shropshire. I worked created a new museum in market Harbour, a community museum in Leicestershire. I was director of museums in St Albans, based on, you know, great Roman Museum at Verulamium, okay. And ended up at London Transport Museum in the 90s, and was directed there for a long time.Paul Marden: Indeed, indeed. Oh, we are inside now and heading underground.Sam Mullins: And you can hear the thrumming in the background. Is the dehumidification going on. Wow. So we're descending into thevery dry dock.Paul Marden: So we're now under water level. Yes, and the view of the ceiling with the glass roof, which above looked like a lovely little pond, it's just beautiful, isn't it?Sam Mullins: Yes, good. It sets it off both in both directions, really nicely.Paul Marden: So you've transitioned now, you've moved on from the Transport Museum. And I thought that today's episode, we could focus a little bit on what is, what's life like when you've moved on from being the director of a big, famous, influential, family friendly Museum. What comes next? Is it pipe and slippers, or are there lots of things to do? And I think it's the latter, isn't it? Sam Mullins: Yes. Well, you know, I think people retire either, you know, do nothing and play golf, or they build, you know, an interesting portfolio. I wanted to build, you know, something a bit more interesting. And, you know, Paul, there's that kind of strange feeling when you get to retire. And I was retiring from full time executive work, you kind of feel at that point that you've just cracked the job. And at that point, you know, someone gives you, you know, gives you a card and says, "Thank you very much, you've done a lovely job." Kind of, "Off you go." So having the opportunity to deploy some of that long term experience of running a successful Museum in Covent Garden for other organisations was part of that process of transition. I've been writing a book about which I'm sure we'll talk as well that's been kind of full on this year, but I was a trustee here for a number of years before I retired. I think it's really good career development for people to serve on a board to see what it's like, you know, the other side of the board. Paul Marden: I think we'll come back to that in a minute and talk a little bit about how the sausage is made. Yeah, we have to do some icebreaker questions, because I probably get you already. You're ready to start talking, but I'm gonna, I'm just gonna loosen you up a little bit, a couple of easy ones. You're sat in front of the telly, comedy or drama?Sam Mullins: It depends. Probably.Paul Marden: It's not a valid answer. Sam Mullins: Probably, probably drama.Paul Marden: Okay, if you need to talk to somebody, is it a phone call or is it a text message that you'll send?Sam Mullins:  Face to face? Okay, much better. Okay, always better. Paul Marden: Well done. You didn't accept the premise of the question there, did you? Lastly, if you're going to enter a room, would you prefer to have a personal theme tune played every time you enter the room. Or would you like a personal mascot to arrive fully suited behind you in every location you go to?Sam Mullins: I don't know what the second one means, so I go for the first one.Paul Marden: You've not seen a football mascot on watching American football or baseball?Sam Mullins: No, I try and avoid that. I like real sport. I like watching cricket. Paul Marden: They don't do that in cricket. So we are at the business end of the hull of the ship, aren't we? We're next to the propeller. Sam Mullins: We're sitting under the stern. We can still see that lovely, gilded Stern, saying, Great Britain, Bristol, and the windows and the coat of arms across the stern of the ship. Now this, of course, was the biggest ship in the world when built. So not only was it the first, first iron ship of any scale, but it was also third bigger than anything in the Royal Navy at the time. Paul Marden: They talked about that, when we were on the warrior aim the other day, that it was Brunel that was leading the way on what the pinnacle of engineering was like. It was not the Royal Navy who was convinced that it was sail that needed to lead. Sam Mullins: Yeah, Brunel had seen a much smaller, propeller driven vessel tried out, which was being toured around the country. And so they were midway through kind of design of this, when they decided it wasn't going to be a paddle steamer, which its predecessor, the world's first ocean liner, the Great Western. A was a paddle steamer that took you to New York. He decided that, and he announced to the board that he was going to make a ship that was driven by a propeller, which was the first, and this is, this is actually a replica of his patent propeller design. Paul Marden: So, this propeller was, is not the original to the show, okay?Sam Mullins: Later in its career, it had the engines taken out, and it was just a sailing ship. It had a long and interesting career. And for the time it was going to New York and back, and the time it was going to Australia and back, carrying migrants. It was a hybrid, usually. So you use the sails when it was favourable when it wasn't much wind or the wind was against. You use the use the engines. Use the steam engine.Paul Marden: Coming back into fashion again now, isn't it? Sam Mullins: Yeah, hybrid, yeah.Paul Marden: I can see holes in the hull. Was this evident when it was still in the Falklands?Sam Mullins: Yeah, it came to notice in the 60s that, you know, this world's first it was beached at Sparrow Cove in the Falkland Islands. It had lost its use as a wool warehouse, which is which it had been for 30 or 40 years. And a number of maritime historians, you and call it. It was the kind of key one realised that this, you know, extraordinary, important piece of maritime heritage would maybe not last too many war winters at Sparrow cope had a big crack down one side of the hull. It would have probably broken in half, and that would have made any kind of conservation restoration pretty well impossible as it was. It was a pretty amazing trick to put it onto a to put a barge underneath, to raise it up out of the water, and to tow it into Montevideo and then across the Atlantic, you know, 7000 miles, or whatever it is, to Avon mouth. So it's a kind of heroic story from the kind of heroic age of industrial and maritime heritage, actually.Paul Marden: It resonates for me in terms of the Mary Rose in that you've got a small group of very committed people that are looking to rescue this really valuable asset. And they find it and, you know, catch it just in time. Sam Mullins: Absolutely. That was one of the kind of eye openers for me at Mary rose last week, was just to look at the kind of sheer difficulty of doing conventional archaeology underwater for years and years. You know, is it 50,000 dives were made? Some immense number. And similarly, here, you know, lots of people kind of simply forget it, you know, it's never gonna, but a few, stuck to it, you know, formed a group, fund, raised. This is an era, of course, you know, before lottery and all that jazz. When you had to, you had to fundraise from the public to do this, and they managed to raise the money to bring it home, which, of course, is only step one. You then got to conserve this enormous lump of metal so it comes home to the dry dock in which it had been built, and that has a sort of fantastic symmetry, you know about it, which I just love. You know, the dock happened to be vacant, you know, in 1970 when the ship was taken off the pontoon at Avon mouth, just down the river and was towed up the curving Avon river to this dock. It came beneath the Clifton Suspension Bridge, which, of course, was Brunel design, but it was never built in his time. So these amazing pictures of this Hulk, in effect,  coming up the river, towed by tugs and brought into the dock here with 1000s of people you know, surrounding cheering on the sidelines, and a bit like Mary Rose in a big coverage on the BBC.Paul Marden: This is the thing. So I have a very vivid memory of the Mary Rose being lifted, and that yellow of the scaffolding is just permanently etched in my brain about sitting on the carpet in primary school when the TV was rolled out, and it was the only TV in the whole of school that, to me is it's modern history happening. I'm a Somerset boy. I've been coming to Bristol all my life. I wasn't alive when Great Britain came back here. So to me, this feels like ancient history. It's always been in Bristol, because I have no memory of it returning home. It was always just a fixture. So when we were talking the other day and you mentioned it was brought back in the 70s, didn't realise that. Didn't realise that at all. Should we move on? Because I am listening. Gently in the warmth.Sam Mullins: Let's move around this side of the as you can see, the dry dock is not entirely dry, no, but nearly.Paul Marden: So, you're trustee here at SS Great Britain. What does that mean? What do you do?Sam Mullins: Well, the board, Board of Trustees is responsible for the governance of the charity. We employ the executives, the paid team here. We work with them to develop the kind of strategy, financial plan, to deliver that strategy, and we kind of hold them as executives to account, to deliver on that.Paul Marden: It's been a period of change for you, hasn't it? Just recently, you've got a new CEO coming to the first anniversary, or just past his first anniversary. It's been in place a little while.Sam Mullins: So in the last two years, we've had a, we've recruited a new chairman, new chief executive, pretty much a whole new leadership team.One more starting next month, right? Actually, we're in July this month, so, yeah, it's been, you know, organisations are like that. They can be very, you know, static for some time, and then suddenly a kind of big turnover. And people, you know, people move.Paul Marden: So we're walking through what is a curved part of the dry dock now. So this is becoming interesting underfoot, isn't it?Sam Mullins: This is built in 1839 by the Great Western Steamship Company to build a sister ship to the Great Western which was their first vessel built for the Atlantic run to New York. As it happens, they were going to build a similar size vessel, but Brunel had other ideas, always pushing the edges one way or another as an engineer.Paul Marden: The keel is wood. Is it all wood? Or is this some sort of?Sam Mullins: No, this is just like, it's sort of sacrificial.So that you know when, if it does run up against ground or whatever, you don't actually damage the iron keel.Paul Marden: Right. Okay, so there's lots happening for the museum and the trust. You've just had a big injection of cash, haven't you, to do some interesting things. So there was a press release a couple of weeks ago, about a million pound of investment. Did you go and find that down the back of the sofa? How do you generate that kind of investment in the charity?Sam Mullins: Unusually, I think that trust that's put the bulk of that money and came came to us. I think they were looking to do something to mark their kind of, I think to mark their wind up. And so that was quite fortuitous, because, as you know at the moment, you know, fundraising is is difficult. It's tough. Paul Marden: That's the understatement of the year, isn't it?Sam Mullins: And with a new team here and the New World post COVID, less, less visitors, income harder to gain from. Pretty well, you know, all sources, it's important to keep the site kind of fresh and interesting. You know, the ship has been here since 1970 it's become, it's part of Bristol. Wherever you go in Bristol, Brunel is, you know, kind of the brand, and yet many Bristolians think they've seen all this, and don't need, you know, don't need to come back again. So keeping the site fresh, keeping the ideas moving on, are really important. So we've got the dockyard museum just on the top there, and that's the object for fundraising at the moment, and that will open in July next year as an account of the building of the ship and its importance. Paul Marden: Indeed, that's interesting. Related to that, we know that trusts, trusts and grants income really tough to get. Everybody's fighting for a diminishing pot income from Ace or from government sources is also tough to find. At the moment, we're living off of budgets that haven't changed for 10 years, if we're lucky. Yeah, for many people, finding a commercial route is the answer for their museum. And that was something that you did quite successfully, wasn't it, at the Transport Museum was to bring commercial ideas without sacrificing the integrity of the museum. Yeah. How do you do that?Sam Mullins: Well, the business of being an independent Museum, I mean, LTM is a to all sets of purposes, an independent Museum. Yes, 81% of its funding itself is self generated. Paul Marden: Is it really? Yeah, yeah. I know. I would have thought the grant that you would get from London Transport might have been bigger than that.  Sam Mullins: The grant used to be much bigger proportion, but it's got smaller and smaller. That's quite deliberate. Are, you know, the more you can stand on your own two feet, the more you can actually decide which direction you're going to take those feet in. Yeah. So there's this whole raft of museums, which, you know, across the UK, which are independently governed, who get all but nothing from central government. They might do a lottery grant. Yes, once in a while, they might get some NPO funding from Ace, but it's a tiny part, you know, of the whole. And this ship, SS Great Britain is a classic, you know, example of that. So what do you do in those circumstances? You look at your assets and you you try and monetise them. That's what we did at London Transport Museum. So the museum moved to Covent Garden in 1980 because it was a far sighted move. Michael Robbins, who was on the board at the time, recognised that they should take the museum from Scion Park, which is right on the west edge, into town where people were going to be, rather than trying to drag people out to the edge of London. So we've got that fantastic location, in effect, a high street shop. So retail works really well, you know, at Covent Garden.Paul Marden: Yeah, I know. I'm a sucker for a bit of moquette design.Sam Mullins: We all love it, which is just great. So the museum developed, you know, a lot of expertise in creating products and merchandising it. We've looked at the relationship with Transport for London, and we monetised that by looking at TFL supply chain and encouraging that supply chain to support the museum. So it is possible to get the TFL commissioner to stand up at a corporate members evening and say, you know, you all do terribly well out of our contract, we'd like you to support the museum as well, please. So the corporate membership scheme at Transport Museum is bigger than any other UK museum by value, really, 60, 65 members,. So that was, you know, that that was important, another way of looking at your assets, you know, what you've got. Sometimes you're talking about monetising relationships. Sometimes it's about, you know, stuff, assets, yeah. And then in we began to run a bit short of money in the kind of middle of the teens, and we did an experimental opening of the Aldwych disused tube station on the strand, and we're amazed at the demand for tickets.Paul Marden: Really, it was that much of a surprise for you. And we all can talk. Sam Mullins: We had been doing, we've been doing some guided tours there in a sort of, slightly in a one off kind of way, for some time. And we started to kind of think, well, look, maybe should we carry on it? Paul Marden: You've got the audience that's interested.Sam Mullins: And we've got the access through TFL which, you know, took a lot of work to to convince them we weren't going to, you know, take loads of people underground and lose them or that they jump out, you know, on the Piccadilly line in the middle of the service, or something. So hidden London is the kind of another really nice way where the museum's looked at its kind of assets and it's monetised. And I don't know what this I don't know what this year is, but I think there are now tours run at 10 different sites at different times. It's worth about half a million clear to them to the museum.Paul Marden: It's amazing, and they're such brilliant events. So they've now opened up for younger kids to go. So I took my daughter and one of her friends, and they were a little bit scared when the lights got turned off at one point, but we had a whale of a time going and learning about the history of the tube, the history of the tube during the war. It was such an interesting, accessible way to get to get them interested in stuff. It was brilliant.Sam Mullins: No, it's a great programme, and it was doing well before COVID, we went into lockdown, and within three weeks, Chris Nix and the team had started to do kind of zoom virtual tours. We all are stuck at home looking at our screens and those hidden London hangouts the audience kind of gradually built yesterday TV followed with secrets of London Underground, which did four series of. Hidden London book has sold 25,000 copies in hardback, another one to come out next year, maybe.Paul Marden: And all of this is in service of the museum. So it's almost as if you're opening the museum up to the whole of London, aren't you, and making all of that space you're you. Museum where you can do things.Sam Mullins: Yeah. And, of course, the great thing about hidden London programme is it's a bit like a theatre production. We would get access to a particular site for a month or six weeks. You'd sell the tickets, you know, like mad for that venue. And then the run came to an end, and you have to, you know, the caravan moves on, and we go to, you know, go to go to a different stations. So in a sense, often it's quite hard to get people to go to an attraction unless they've got visitors staying or whatever. But actually, if there's a time limit, you just kind of have to do it, you know.Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. Everybody loves a little bit of scarcity, don't they? Sam Mullins: Should we go up on the deck? Paul Marden: That sounds like fun to me.Sam Mullins: Work our way through.Paul Marden: So Hidden London was one of the angles in order to make the museum more commercially sound. What are you taking from your time at LTM and bringing to the party here at the SS Great Britain?Sam Mullins: Well, asking similar, you know, range of questions really, about what assets do we have? Which of those are, can be, can be monetised in support of the charity? Got here, Paul, so we're, we've got the same mix as lots of middle sized museums here. There's a it's a shop, paid admission, hospitality events in the evening, cafe. You know that mix, what museums then need to do is kind of go, you know, go beyond that, really, and look at their estate or their intellectual property, or the kind of experiences they can offer, and work out whether some of that is monetisable.Paul Marden: Right? And you mentioned before that Brunel is kind of, he's the mascot of Bristol. Almost, everything in Bristol focuses on Brunel. Is there an opportunity for you to collaborate with other Brunel themed sites, the bridge or?Sam Mullins: Yeah. Well, I think probably the opportunity is to collaborate with other Bristol attractions. Because Bristol needs to. Bristol's having a hard time since COVID numbers here are nowhere near what they were pre COVID So, and I think it's the same in the city, across the city. So Andrew chief executive, is talking to other people in the city about how we can share programs, share marketing, that kind of approach.Paul Marden: Making the docks a destination, you know, you've got We the Curious. Where I was this morning, having coffee with a friend and having a mooch around. Yeah, talking about science and technology, there must be things that you can cross over. This was this war. This feels like history, but it wasn't when it was built, was it? It was absolutely the cutting edge of science and technology.Sam Mullins: Absolutely, and well, almost beyond, you know, he was Brunel was pushing, pushing what could be done. It is the biggest ship. And it's hard to think of it now, because, you know, you and I can walk from one end to the other in no time. But it was the biggest ship in the world by, you know, some way, when it was launched in 1845 so this was a bit like the Great Western Railway. It was cutting edge, cutting edge at the time, as we were talking about below. It had a propeller, radical stuff. It's got the bell, too,Paul Marden: When we were on, was it Warrior that we were on last week at the AIM conference for the first. And warrior had a propeller, but it was capable of being lifted, because the Admiralty wasn't convinced that this new fangled propeller nonsense, and they thought sail was going to lead. Sam Mullins: Yeah. Well, this ship had, you could lift a you could lift a propeller, because otherwise the propeller is a drag in the water if it's not turning over. So in its earlier configurations, it was a, it was that sort of a hybrid, where you could lift the propeller out the way, right, set full sail.Paul Marden:  Right, and, yeah, it's just, it's very pleasant out here today, isn't it? Lovely breeze compared to what it's been like the last few days. Sam Mullins: Deck has just been replaced over the winter. Paul Marden:  Oh, has it really. So say, have you got the original underneathSam Mullins: The original was little long, long gone. So what we have replaced was the deck that was put on in the in the 70s when the ship came back.Paul Marden: Right? You were talking earlier on about the cafe being one of the assets. You've done quite a lot of work recently, haven't you with the team at Elior to refurbish the cafe? What's the plan around that?Sam Mullins: Yeah, we're doing a big reinvestment. You always need to keep the offer fresh anyway, but it was time to reinvest. So the idea is to use that fantastic space on the edge of the dock. It's not very far down to where the floating harbour is really well populated with kind of restaurants and bars and an offer, we're just that 200 meters further along the dock. So perhaps to create an offer here that draws people up here, whether they visit the ship, you know, or not. So it's money, it's monetising your assets. So one of the great assets is this fabulous location on the on the dockside. So with early or we're reinvesting in the restaurant, it's going to go in the auto into after some trial openings and things, Paul, you know, it's going to have an evening offer as well as a daytime offer. And then it's been designed so the lights can go down in the evening. It becomes, you know, an evening place, rather than the museum's all day cafe, yes, and the offer, and obviously in the evenings would similarly change. And I think our ambition is that you should, you should choose this as the place to go out in the evening. Really, it's a great spot. It's a lovely, warm evening. We're going to walk along the dockside. I've booked a table and in the boardwalk, which is what we're calling it. And as you pay the bill, you notice that actually, this is associated with Asus, Great Britain. So, you know, the profit from tonight goes to help the charity, rather than it's the museum cafe. So that's the,Paul Marden: That's the pitch.Sam Mullins: That's the pitch in which we're working with our catering partners, Eli, or to deliver.Paul Marden: Andrew, your CEO and Claire from Eli, or have both kindly said that I can come back in a couple of months time and have a conversation about the restaurant. And I think it would be rude to turn them down, wouldn't it?Sam Mullins: I think you should test the menu really fully.Paul Marden: I will do my best. It's a tough job that I have. Sam Mullins: Somebody has to do this work. Paul Marden: I know, talking of tough jobs, the other thing that I saw when I was looking at the website earlier on was a press release talking about six o'clock gin as being a a partnership that you're investigating, because every museum needs its own tipple, doesn't it?Sam Mullins: Absolutely And what, you know, I think it's, I think what people want when they go to an attraction is they, they also want something of the offer to be locally sourced, completely, six o'clock gym, you know, Bristol, Bristol beers. You can't always do it, but I think, I think it's where you've got the opportunity. And Bristol's a bit of a foodie centre. There's quite a lot going on here in that respect. So, yes, of course, the museum ought to be ought to be doing that too.Paul Marden: I was very kindly invited to Big Pit over in the Welsh Valleys about 8 or 12 weeks ago for the launch, relaunch of their gift shop offering. And absolutely, at the core of what they were trying to do was because it's run by Museums Wales, they found that all of their gift shops were just a bland average of what you could get at any of the museums. None of them spoke of the individual place. So if you went to big pit, the gift shop looked the same as if you were in the centre of Cardiff, whereas now when you go you see things that are naturally of Big Pit and the surrounding areas. And I think that's so important to create a gift shop which has things that is affordable to everybody, but at the same time authentic and genuinely interesting.Sam Mullins: Yeah, I'm sure that's right. And you know I'm saying for you is for me, when I when I go somewhere, you want to come away with something, don't you? Yes, you know, you're a National Trust member and you haven't had to pay anything to get in. But you think I should be supporting the cause, you know, I want to go into that shop and then I want to, I want to buy some of the plants for my garden I just seen, you know, on the estate outside. Or I want to come away with a six o'clock gin or, you know, whatever it might be, there's and I think, I think you're more likely to buy if it's something that you know has engaged you, it's part of that story that's engaged you, right, while you're here. That's why everyone buys a guidebook and reads it afterwards.Paul Marden: Yeah, it's a reminder, isn't it, the enjoyable time that you've had? Yeah, I'm enjoying myself up on the top deck. Sam Mullins:  But should we go downstairs? The bow is a great view. Oh, let's do that. I think we might. Let's just work our way down through.Paul Marden: Take a sniff. Could you travel with these smelly passengers? Oh, no, I don't think I want to smell what it's like to be a cow on board shit. Sam Mullins: Fresh milk. Just mind yourself on these companion, ways are very steep now. This is probably where I get completely lost.Paul Marden: You know what we need? We need a very good volunteer. Don't we tell a volunteer story? COVID in the kitchen. Wow. Sam Mullins: The Gabby.Paul Marden: Generous use of scent. Sam Mullins: Yeah, food laid out pretty much based on what we know was consumed on the ship. One of the great things about the ship is people kept diaries. A lot of people kept diaries, and many have survived, right? You know exactly what it was like to be in first class or in steerage down the back.Paul Marden: And so what was the ship used for? Sam Mullins: Well, it was used, it was going to be an ocean liner right from here to New York, and it was more like the Concord of its day. It was essentially first class and second class. And then it has a founders on a bay in Northern Ireland. It's rescued, fitted out again, and then the opportunity comes take people to Australia. The Gold Rush in the 1850s. Migration to Australia becomes the big kind of business opportunity for the ships. Ships new owners. So there's more people on board that used to it applies to and fro to Australia a number of times 30 odd, 40 times. And it takes, takes passengers. It takes goods. It does bring back, brings back gold from because people were there for the gold rush. They were bringing their earnings, you know, back with them. It also brings mail, and, you know, other. Kind of car goes wool was a big cargo from. Paul Marden: Say, people down and assets back up again.Sam Mullins: People both directions. Paul Marden: Okay, yeah. How long was it taking?Sam Mullins: Well, a good trip. I think it did it in 50 odd days. Bit slower was 60 odd. And the food was like this. So it was steerage. It was probably a bit more basic. Paul Marden: Yeah, yes, I can imagine. Sam Mullins: I think we might. Here's the engines. Let's do the engines well.Paul Marden: Yes. So now we're in the engine room and, oh, it's daylight lit, actually. So you're not down in the darkest of depths, but the propeller shaft and all of the mechanism is it runs full length, full height of the ship.Sam Mullins: Yeah, it runs off from here, back to the propeller that we're looking at. Okay, down there a guy's stoking the boilers, putting coal into into the boilers, 24 hour seven, when the engines are running. Paul Marden: Yes, that's going to be a tough job, isn't it? Yeah, coal is stored in particular locations. Because that was something I learned from warrior, was the importance of making sure that you had the coal taken in the correct places, so that you didn't unbalance the ship. I mean,Sam Mullins: You right. I mean loading the ship generally had to be done really carefully so, you know, sort of balanced out and so forth. Coal is tends to be pretty low down for yes, for obvious reasons.Paul Marden: So let's talk a little bit about being a trustee. We're both trustees of charities. I was talking to somebody last week who been in the sector for a number of years, mid career, interested in becoming a trustee as a career development opportunity. What's the point of being a trustee? What's the point of the trustees to the CEO, and what's the benefit to the trustees themselves? Sam Mullins: Well, let's do that in order for someone in the mid part of their career, presumably looking to assume some kind of leadership role. At some point they're going to be dealing with a board, aren't they? Yes, they might even be doing, you know, occasional reporting to a board at that at their current role, but they certainly will be if they want to be chief executive. So getting some experience on the other side of the table to feel what it's like to be a trustee dealing with chief executive. I think he's immensely useful. I always recommended it to to my gang at the Transport Museum, and they've all been on boards of one sort or another as part of their career development.Sam Mullins: For the chief executive. What's the benefit? Well, the board, I mean, very directly, hold the chief executive to account. Yes, are you doing what we asked you to do? But also the wise chief executive recruits a board that's going to be helpful in some way or another. It's not just there to catch them out. Yeah, it's it's there to bring their experience from business, from IT, from marketing, from other museums into the business of running the place. So here we've got a range of Trustees. We've been we've recruited five or six in the last couple of years qquite deliberately to we know that a diverse board is a good board, and that's diverse in the sense not just a background, but of education, retired, still, still at work, young, old, male, female, you know, you name in.Paul Marden: In all of the directionsSam Mullins:  Yeah. So a diverse board makes better decisions than one that just does group think all the time. It's, you know, it's a truism, isn't it? I think we all kind of, we all understand and understand that now and then, for the trustee, you know, for me, I particularly last couple of years, when the organization has been through huge changes, it's been really interesting to deploy my prior experience, particularly in governance, because governance is what it all comes down to in an organisation. You do learn over the course of your career to deploy that on behalf, you know, this is a great organisation, the story of Brunel and the ship and and, you know, his influence on the railways. And I travel down on the Great Western railways, yeah, the influence of Brunel is, you know, is enormous. It's a fantastic story. It's inspiring. So who wouldn't want to join? You know what in 2005 was the Museum of the year? Yes, I think we'll just go back there where we came. Otherwise, I never found my way.Paul Marden: Back through the kitchen. Sam Mullins: Back through the kitchen. It looks like stew is on the menu tonight. You've seen me at the mobile the rat.Paul Marden: And also the cat up on the shelf. He's not paying a lot of attention to the ratSam Mullins: Back on deck. Paul Marden: Wonderful. Yeah. So the other great endeavor that you've embarked on is writing, writing a book. Tell us a little bit about the book.Sam Mullins: Yeah, I've written a history of transport in London and its influence on London since 2000 since the mayoralty, elected mayoralty was, was started, you know, I was very lucky when I was running the museum where I had kind of one foot in TfL and one foot out. I knew lots of people. I was there for a long time, yes, so it was, it was easy to interview about 70 of them.Paul Marden: Right? I guess you've built trust levels, haven't you? Yeah, I don't mean that you don't look like a journalist walking in from the outside with an ax to grind. Sam Mullins: And I'm not going to kind of screw them to the Evening Standard, you know, tomorrow. So it's a book based on interviews, oral reminiscences. It's very much their story. So it's big chunks of their accounts of, you know, the big events in London. So what was it like to be in the network control room on the seventh of July, 2005 when the bombs went off? What was it like to be looking out for congestion charge the day it started? Yep. What was it like to kind of manage the Olympics?Paul Marden: You know? So you're mentioning these things. And so I was 10 years at British Airways. I was an IT project manager, but as well, I was a member of the emergency planning team. Yeah. So I got involved in the response to September the 11th. I got involved in some of the engagement around seven, seven, there's seminal moments, and I can, I can vividly remember myself being there at that time. But similarly, I can remember being there when we won the Olympics, and we were all sat in the staff canteen waiting to hear whether we'd won the Olympics, and the roar that erupted. There's so many of those things that have happened in the last 25 years where, you know, you've got, it's recent history, but it's real interesting events that have occurred that you can tell stories of.Sam Mullins: Yeah. So what I wanted to get in the book was a kind of sense of what it was like to be, really at the heart of those, those stories. And there are, you know, there are, there are people in TfL who made those big things happen? Yes, it's not a big, clumsy bureaucracy. It's a place where really innovative leadership was being exercised all the way through that 25 years. Yes, so it runs up to COVID, and what was it like when COVID struck? So the book's called Every Journey Matters, and it comes out in November.Paul Marden: Amazing, amazing. So we have, we've left the insides of the ship, and we are now under, what's this part of the ship? Sam Mullins: We're under the bow. There we go, and a bow spread that gets above our heads. So again, you've got this great, hulking, cast iron, black hull, beautifully shaped at the bow. Look the way it kind of tapers in and it tapers in and out.Paul Marden: It's a very three dimensional, isn't it? The curve is, is in every direction. Sam Mullins: Yeah,it's a great, great shape. So it's my sort of, I think it's my favourite spot. I like coming to look at this, because this is the kind of, this is the business, yeah, of the ship.Paul Marden: What have we got running along the front here? These these images in in gold.Sam Mullins: This is a figurehead with Victoria's Coat of Arms only sua Kim Ali points on top with it, with a lion and a unicorn.Paul Marden: It's a really, it's not a view that many people would have ever seen, but it is such an impressive view here looking up, yeah, very, very cool. And to stand here on the on the edge of the dry dock. Sam Mullins: Dry Docks in to our right, and the floating harbor is out to our left. Yeah.Paul Marden: And much going on on that it's busy today, isn't it? Sam Mullins: Yeah, it's good. Paul Marden: So we've done full loop, haven't we? I mean, it has been a whistle stop tour that you've taken me on, but I've loved every moment of this. We always ask our guests a difficult question. Well, for some it's a difficult question, a book recommendation, which, as we agreed over lunch, cannot be your own book. I don't think, I think it's a little unfair Sam Mullins: Or anything I've ever written before.Paul Marden: Yes, slightly self serving, but yeah.Sam Mullins: It would be, wouldn't it look the first thing that comes to mind is, I've actually been reading my way through Mick Herron's Slow Horses series, okay, which I'm a big fan of detective fiction. I love Ian Rankin's Rebus. Okay, I read through Rebus endlessly when I want something just to escape into the sloughhouse series Slow Horses is really good, and the books all have a sort of similar kind of momentum to them. Something weird happens in the first few chapters, which seems very inconsequential and. Suddenly it turns into this kind of roller coaster. Will they? Won't they? You know, ending, which is just great. So I recommend Mick Herron's series. That's that's been the best, not best, fiction I've read in a long time.Paul Marden: You know, I think there's something, there's something nice, something comforting, about reading a series of books where the way the book is structured is very similar. You can, you can sit down and you know what's going to happen, but, but there's something interesting, and it's, it's easy. Sam Mullins: It's like putting on a pair of old slippers. Oh, I'm comfortable with this. Just lead me along. You know, that's what, that's what I want. I enjoy that immensely.Paul Marden: And should we be? Should we be inviting our listeners to the first book in the series, or do they need to start once, once he's got his, got his, found his way? Sam Mullins: Well, some people would have seen the television adaptation already. Well, that will have spoilt the book for them. Gary Oldman is Jackson lamb, who's the lead character, okay, but if you haven't, or you just like a damn good read, then you start with the first one, which I think is called Sloughhouse. They're all self contained, but you can work your way through them. Paul Marden: Well, that sounds very good. So listeners, if you'd like a copy of Sam's book, not Sam's book, Sam's book recommendation, then head over to Bluesky and repost the show notice and say, I want a copy of Sam's book, and the first one of you lovely listeners that does that will get a copy sent to you by Wenalyn. Sam This has been delightful. I hope listeners have enjoyed this as much as I have. This is our first time having a @skipthequeue in real life, where we wandered around the attraction itself and hopefully narrated our way bringing this amazing attraction to life. I've really enjoyed it. I can now say that as a West Country lad, I have actually been to the SS Great Britain. Last thing to say for visitor, for listeners, we are currently midway through the Rubber Cheese Annual Survey of visitor attraction websites. Paul Marden: If you look after an attraction website and you'd like to share some information about what you do, we are gathering all of that data together to produce a report that helps people to understand what good looks like for an attraction website. This is our fourth year. Listeners that are interested, head over to RubberCheese.com/survey, and you can find out a little bit more about the survey and some of the some of the findings from the past and what we're looking for for this year. Sam, thank you so very much.Sam Mullins: Enjoyed it too. It's always good to rabbit on about what you do every day of the week, and being here and part of this really great organisation is huge privilege.Paul Marden: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others to find us. Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them to increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcripts from this episode and more over on our website, skipthequeue fm. The 2025 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsTake the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report

One of the greatest joys and fulfillments of life is helping another person. Not through the base obligations we have to family, but to reach out when we don't have to and help lift another person up. But I find two problems that arise for most all of us; we don't know where to plug in to really help others and when we do happen to see opportunities to serve they often feel ill fitting for who we are. So we have good intent and don't get to apply it. Queue up my guest today, Neil Ghosh. Neil is a renowned social entrepreneur, humanitarian, and philanthropist. He has written a book that to me is both inspiring, and incredibly equipping as a resource manual for doing good in the world. The book is aptly titled, Do More Good: Inspiring Lessons From Extraordinary People. The forward is from the Dalai Lama himself, and the book is endorsed by such notable figures such as President Bill Clinton and Nobel Peace Laureate, Professor Muhammad Yunus. Neil has the book in three sections, Sit, Rise, and Act. They showcase three ways we can serve the world according to our personal style, in essence. Then in each category he highlights 10 or so people, some famous, some not, and he shares how they uniquely bettered the world, the lesson we can learn from how and what they did, and then shares a list of organizations we can engage with to help in a similar way, plus ways we can embody the way of serving, in our lives today, right where we are. I was incredibly inspired in this conversation with Neil and feel you'll leave enthused and equipped to give of yourself in new and uplifting ways. You can find Neil's book, Do More Good, anywhere and connect with him at neilghosh.net Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This show has been flagged as Explicit by the host. New hosts There were no new hosts this month. Last Month's Shows Id Day Date Title Host 4391 Mon 2025-06-02 HPR Community News for May 2025 HPR Volunteers 4392 Tue 2025-06-03 The Water is Wide, and the sheet music should be too Jezra 4393 Wed 2025-06-04 Journal like you mean it. Some Guy On The Internet 4394 Thu 2025-06-05 Digital Steganography Intro mightbemike 4395 Fri 2025-06-06 Second Life Lee 4396 Mon 2025-06-09 AI and Sangria operat0r 4397 Tue 2025-06-10 Transfer files from desktop to phone with qrcp Klaatu 4398 Wed 2025-06-11 Command line fun: downloading a podcast Kevie 4399 Thu 2025-06-12 gpg-gen-key oxo 4400 Fri 2025-06-13 Isaac Asimov: Other Asimov Novels of Interest Ahuka 4401 Mon 2025-06-16 hajime oxo 4402 Tue 2025-06-17 pinetab2 Brian in Ohio 4403 Wed 2025-06-18 How to get your very own copy of the HPR database norrist 4404 Thu 2025-06-19 Kevie nerd snipes Ken by grepping xml Ken Fallon 4405 Fri 2025-06-20 What did I do at work today? Lee 4406 Mon 2025-06-23 SVG Files: Cyber Threat Hidden in Images ko3moc 4407 Tue 2025-06-24 A 're-response' Bash script Dave Morriss 4408 Wed 2025-06-25 Lynx - Old School Browsing Kevie 4409 Thu 2025-06-26 H D R Ridiculous Monitor operat0r 4410 Fri 2025-06-27 Civilization V Ahuka 4411 Mon 2025-06-30 The Pachli project thelovebug Comments this month These are comments which have been made during the past month, either to shows released during the month or to past shows. There are 29 comments in total. Past shows There are 4 comments on 3 previous shows: hpr4375 (2025-05-09) "Long Chain Carbons,Eggs and Dorodango?" by operat0r. Comment 4: Torin Doyle on 2025-06-06: "Reply to @Bob" hpr4378 (2025-05-14) "SQL to get the next_free_slot" by norrist. Comment 1: Torin Doyle on 2025-06-12: "Cheers for this." hpr4388 (2025-05-28) "BSD Overview" by norrist. Comment 4: Henrik Hemrin on 2025-06-02: "Learned more about BSD." Comment 5: norrist on 2025-06-02: "Additional info for OpenBSD Router" This month's shows There are 25 comments on 10 of this month's shows: hpr4391 (2025-06-02) "HPR Community News for May 2025" by HPR Volunteers. Comment 1: Torin Doyle on 2025-06-06: "Very disappointed."Comment 2: Ken Fallon on 2025-06-06: "Thanks for your feedback."Comment 3: Torin Doyle on 2025-06-09: "Reply to Ken [Comment 2]"Comment 4: norrist on 2025-06-09: "Watch the Queue for a show about how to find all the comments"Comment 5: Torin Doyle on 2025-06-10: "Comment #3 typo."Comment 6: Torin Doyle on 2025-06-11: "Reply to Comment #4 by norrist"Comment 7: Torin Doyle on 2025-06-11: "Got the link." hpr4394 (2025-06-05) "Digital Steganography Intro" by mightbemike. Comment 1: Henrik Hemrin on 2025-06-05: "Fascinating topic"Comment 2: oxo on 2025-06-05: "Good show! " hpr4395 (2025-06-06) "Second Life" by Lee. Comment 1: Antoine on 2025-06-08: "Brings philosophical thoughts" hpr4397 (2025-06-10) "Transfer files from desktop to phone with qrcp" by Klaatu. Comment 1: Laindir on 2025-06-18: "The perfect kind of recommendation" hpr4398 (2025-06-11) "Command line fun: downloading a podcast" by Kevie. Comment 1: Henrik Hemrin on 2025-06-11: "Tempted to have fun"Comment 2: Ken Fallon on 2025-06-22: "Personal message to redhat (nprfan)" hpr4403 (2025-06-18) "How to get your very own copy of the HPR database" by norrist. Comment 1: Torin Doyle on 2025-06-18: "Appreciated!"Comment 2: Torin Doyle on 2025-06-18: "Database size."Comment 3: norrist on 2025-06-18: "Also an SQLite version"Comment 4: Torin Doyle on 2025-06-25: "Not able to use database to find my comments." hpr4404 (2025-06-19) "Kevie nerd snipes Ken by grepping xml" by Ken Fallon. Comment 1: Henrik Hemrin on 2025-06-22: "More to digest"Comment 2: Alec Bickerton on 2025-06-29: "Shorter version"Comment 3: Alec Bickerton on 2025-06-29: "Shorter version"Comment 4: Alec Bickerton on 2025-06-29: "XML parsing without xmlstarlet" hpr4405 (2025-06-20) "What did I do at work today?" by Lee. Comment 1: Dave Morriss on 2025-06-25: "Thanks for bringing us along..." hpr4406 (2025-06-23) "SVG Files: Cyber Threat Hidden in Images" by ko3moc. Comment 1: oxo on 2025-06-23: "Interesting! "Comment 2: ko3moc on 2025-06-24: "response " hpr4408 (2025-06-25) "Lynx - Old School Browsing" by Kevie. Comment 1: Henrik Hemrin on 2025-06-29: "Review ALT texts" Mailing List discussions Policy decisions surrounding HPR are taken by the community as a whole. This discussion takes place on the Mailing List which is open to all HPR listeners and contributors. The discussions are open and available on the HPR server under Mailman. The threaded discussions this month can be found here: https://lists.hackerpublicradio.com/pipermail/hpr/2025-June/thread.html Events Calendar With the kind permission of LWN.net we are linking to The LWN.net Community Calendar. Quoting the site: This is the LWN.net community event calendar, where we track events of interest to people using and developing Linux and free software. Clicking on individual events will take you to the appropriate web page. Provide feedback on this episode.

Welcome! This week's guests are the hilarious Charlie Bardey and Natalie Rotter-Laitman! Charlie, Natalie, and Caleb talk waking up early, Americans watching soccer, Mind Palace's, the pronunciation of big words, and much more! Join our Patreon for an exclusive post-episode chat with Charlie and Natalie and other bonus content! https://patreon.com/SoTruePodcast?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink Follow Charlie! @chunkbardeyFollow Natalie! @natrotlaitFollow the show! @sooootruepod Follow Caleb! @calebsaysthings Produced by Chance Nichols @chanceisloudGo to www.Quince.com/sotrue for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty-five -day returns.Transform your living space today with Cozey. Visit www.Cozey.com, the home of possibilities, made easy.Download Cash App Today: https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/xvjndanx #CashAppPod About Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com. » SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1 » FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum » FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/ » FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum So True is a Headgum podcast, created and hosted by Caleb Hearon. The show is produced by Chance Nichols with Associate Producer Allie Kahan and Executive Producer Emma Foley. So True is engineered by Casey Donahue and engineered and edited by Nicole Lyons. Kaiti Moos is our VP of Content at Headgum. Thanks to Luke Rogers for our show art and Virginia Muller our social media manager.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Send us a messageThere's something so simple, yet so enjoyable about a game of Checkers. The game has a simple board of 64 squares, identical pieces facing each other, and only one real objective: keep moving forward. Unlike so many games out there, there are no complicated rules, no major power pieces, and no elaborate strategies. There are just simple moves, one after another, building toward victory. And yet, beneath that simplicity lies a powerful reflection of life itself. Every day, we are making moves - sometimes cautious, one step at a time, and sometimes bold, leaping over obstacles in the way - all shaping the future we're stepping into.This week, we explore how this simple game of Checkers can teach us some profound lessons about life, growth, courage, and even faith. Because whether you feel like you're advancing, standing still, watching your pieces disappear, or picking up the pieces after a fall - the board isn't finished. Your next move still matters.

It’s Auntie season! And no, I’m not talking about Christmas, but the sweet sweat of summer. Su Adds to Queue some great shows and defines what a perfect “door shoe” is. Plus Ku is extremely chill walking down the aisles of Costco to tariff/disaster-prep shop. We have a website! Sign up to find out what’s happening next with the Aunties at ADDTOCART.WORLD. To see all products mentioned in this episode, head to @addtocartpod on Instagram. To purchase any of the products, see below. Su’s Add To Queue: Paradise on Hulu Four Seasons on Netflix Celeb addicted pod Style tips pod Ku’s Very Chill Costco runs based on this list here. Su’s favorite door shoes: Malibu Sandals for life! Quince suede clog Please note, Add To Cart contains mature themes and may not be appropriate for all listeners. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Problem: People almost have an accident all the time. (Recorded on Monday, May 19, 2025.)