Community Showcase - Farhan Quasem

Luis Malbas  
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the training learning and development community. Thanks for joining us today. We have another community member showcase showcase. And let me take a look here. Yeah, I can see that Kim is in the audience. And I see Gerald and our notification just went out. Let's see if we can get a few more folks in today to talk with Farhan. Kasam. Rhymes with awesome. That's right. He just told me earlier in the green room. So yes, thank you so much, Farhan, for for joining today. And thanks for being a CLDC supporter, really appreciate that. It's been kind of fun. I talked to Jeremy for is it Jeremy from Dream see, do

Farhan Quasem  
That's right. Yeah. Yeah, you

Luis Malbas  
introduced me to him. And that was a really fun conversation. He's very passionate about what he does. So I really appreciate that. That opportunity to chat with him. And hopefully, we'll be doing a little bit more with Jeremy in in maybe a few weeks, we'll see what happens. But, but right now, this broadcast is all about you. And you have a really interesting background. When you initially sent some of your information over. I'm like, Oh, I've got a digital nomad here. And I am really I want to just start off with, there's a few things I really want to get to but you were kind of like your college grad. And I don't recall where did where did you graduate from college? I went to Cornell for my undergrad from Cornell. That's right from Cornell, didn't know what you want to do. And then you found ed tech. How did how did that all happen?

Farhan Quasem  
Yeah, so essentially, my first foray into education was right after I graduated from college, I decided to teach English as a volunteer in Turkey. And I went on to have a long love affair with Turkey, which I can talk about later, as I get into my digital nomad adventures, but it was really being a teacher in a classroom, and seeing how technology was enabling my students because I was actually teaching students that had, you know, neurodiverse needs. And back in 2011, there wasn't that much technology out there. So yeah, especially in a country that was still kind of developing its infrastructure. So I was able to really understand, okay, these are the pain points that learners have. And it piqued an interest in the back of my head, you know, how do I use technology to leverage better outcomes for learners, whether that's K through 12, whether that's for students that are neurodiverse, etc. So it kind of planted the seed. And then when I returned to the US, after my stint, I started working for a major health care company. And as a project manager, they put me on a lot of different projects, and I was naturally able to gravitate towards the teaching elements of those projects. So you know, that's that I got to see the corporate side of it. So I'd seen on a very limited level, the classroom side of it, I was able to see the corporate side of it, and then continued to kind of, you know, build, build up that initial understanding that I had, and one thing led to another, decided to go to grad school for ad tech. And then once I had my credentials, in whatever, for whatever they're worth, it was more of the experience that I got in grad school, working with a lot of great startups in the Boston area, being able to make a lot of connections, that is really what I think propelled me to kind of continue to make education, and Ed Tech, specifically, my my niche that I focus on. So yeah, it's been almost seven, eight years since I graduated college since I graduated grad school.

Luis Malbas  
And you were saying that Ed Tech, do you feel like you've really found your calling? Is there anything specific to that that you can talk about?

Farhan Quasem  
Yeah, I mean, I think learning is something that we all do. It's a constant process of self improvement. I didn't realize that I was engaged in learning until I got into the field of learning, which is kind of like the really ironic piece of it, right? Where as a student when you're going through K through 12, and and even when you're going through your undergrad or grad school, whatever. I think definitely for me, by the time I got to grad school, I understood the meaning of learning. I just had those experiences. But back in undergrad, and I think what we traditionally consider learning is really seen as a, you know, you ingest information and then you have to, there's no real way to know when you're gonna apply that information, right that that second component was always kind of elusive for me. But my biggest takeaway over the last decade or so, in this field is the most important thing is learning how to learn. And, you know, we all learn differently. So, Ed Tech really enables us to unlock the ability of individual learners to learn how they learn best, right? So, giving, giving an individual learner all the different tools at their disposal right now. I'm creating that experience and nurturing that experience where they are able to have that agency and that autonomy to proceed with learning, the way that these best see fit is what I'm most excited about. I

Luis Malbas  
love it. And I'm going to selfishly just jump into my second question, because I think this part of it is so interesting. You're, you found your, your, your spot with Dream, see do through LinkedIn. Yeah. Can you just talk about a little bit? How that how did that work? And I know, I didn't have this and the questions I sent you or posted earlier, but I'm just curious, how did that work? Finding that job? Yeah. Platform. LinkedIn is a fantastic, you know, huge, huge community of,

Farhan Quasem  
you know, professionals, it's with any social network, I feel like it's, there's always going to be noise, there's always going to be distractions. And I think, you know, these are profit making enterprises as well. So you have to, you have to sift through all the noise to get to really what's meaningful. For me, LinkedIn, it's been a constant improvement process for myself, personally, you know, keeping your profile up to date, really setting aside time, I try to set aside at least an hour every week, and I do that maybe, you know, 20 minute increments, like Monday, Wednesdays, Fridays, just to go into groups that I find are interesting. And latching on to the comments and the posts that that folks are making. And then we re commenting on those, right, essentially, it comes down to providing value, right? The more value you provide, what you give you put into it is what you get out of it kind of thing. Yeah. That's that's been my journey with LinkedIn for dreamsea. Do specifically. Yeah, I was looking for, you know, learning experience platforms, and folks that were hiring within that domain. And I wanted to continue to build my skill set, and actually dreams to do is not the first company that I was able to join as a result of LinkedIn, there were others in the past as well. The one other kind of suggestion I would make to anybody that's out there thinking about LinkedIn, or using LinkedIn and wanting to use it more effectively is, don't be afraid to reach out. Right, there's, there's a hesitation, I think on the part of some of us, especially in the post pandemic world, where networking has taken on a whole new meaning, right? In the in kind of virtual space. There's really no harm done to go out there and see what's out there. Right? Yeah, if you find somebody cool that you that you, you know, your work resonates with them, or their work resonates with you, or vice versa. Just send them a message, you know, it can be a casual. Hey, let's I want to learn more about your work. More often than not people are very willing to share when they find that commonality between what they're doing and what you're working on. Yeah,

Luis Malbas  
yeah, I agree. I and I think that's pretty much the reason why people do post, especially regular posters on LinkedIn is they're looking for that feedback looking for, you know, that connection with others. And so, you know, if you see a post or someone reaching out or looking for feedback, and you make that connection with them, it's, I think it's a generous act. And so, um, definitely do it any other professional networks that you or any networks at all that you participate in.

Farhan Quasem  
Yeah, so one of the ones that I got a lot of value from, is called Lunch Club. And it's a very simple app, you basically go in, you create a profile, and then based off of your profile, they will pair you with people, as many times as you want per week, honestly, I think it could be three or four times a week. I did it for a while before I started traveling extensively the time. So it's just made it very difficult. But yeah, I would try to do it twice a week. And I met some really cool people, you know, I mentioned things like ad tech. And you know, it's meant to be like, half an hour call, you know, with somebody that they pair you up with. And a few of those calls led to more calls and, you know, the exchange of ideas, which I think ultimately is really what's most important.

Luis Malbas  
Wow, anyone? You know, I did I did something similar. I can't remember if it was during the pandemic or pre pandemic, where I signed up for a platform that did that. And I would end up just hooked up with really interesting people. But is there anybody that stands out in your mind that you connected with?

Farhan Quasem  
Yeah, so one of the folks I connected with, his name is Dan, he lives in Arizona, and he actually started his own consultancy, he's been working on a lot of different technology based solutions. So you know, just to be able to kind of brainstorm together around different different pain points that you know, entrepreneurs face on a day to day basis and being able to have somebody kind of provide their insight in a very casual and kind of judgment free space was, I think, really, really, really valuable.

Luis Malbas  
Awesome. No, I love Yeah, it always made me nervous participating in those because you just never know what to expect. Like I remember one time I connected with a professional ballet dancer from New York and you It was just crazy having a conversation with her. And, and just other really interesting artists that I ended up connecting with on that. And but it you know, those things are really fun. And it's amazing what you know, the kinds of connections that you can make, like just using some of these professional networks. Kim is asking, Did you actually see the job posting on LinkedIn? The one for Dream, see do is that? Is that how it worked for you?

Farhan Quasem  
Yeah, it did, actually. So thanks for asking that cam. Yeah, I was able to I saw the job posting, I saw that it was a company that kind of resonated with my values and looked like interesting work and then reached out and more often than not, I mean, the one kind of job related thing I'll say about LinkedIn is, I've had mixed success with the haec. Apply button. You know, because it's such a quick and easy way. At least, we think it's a very fast way to be able to get your name. But I think that's also its downfall, is because it's so easy to do that. You know, God knows how many hundreds of 1000s of clicks they get on each posting, and then you're, you're hard pressed to really ever hear back from them. But yeah, this one was a direct posting, that

Luis Malbas  
I should find out I should talk to, I should get a recruiter on here and see what that's like from the air and because pretty interesting. So let me move on to my next question. So you've been in edtech. But you have worked a variety of different jobs like a data robot, I noticed. Support Operations Engineer, project manager, or even as invalid miss or volumous elements. Learning Project Manager. Did were those like specifically involved with anything in the in the l&d world? Or were you completely separated at that point? And how if how were those? How did those support your your goals as a, you know, as an ad tech professional?

Farhan Quasem  
Yeah, no, that's a great question. I think the best way to describe my my roles are I've really ping pong across various different disciplines. Minh, but I like to say that the common denominator for all of them was an l&d function. So the kind of unique take I have on a lot of corporate roles is during the interview process, you know, when they ask you what you're passionate about, and what you plan to bring to that role, I always emphasize the learning and development piece. And I kind of encapsulated within the the overall ecosystem of building better processes that lead to better outcomes. So l&d is a huge piece of that, because it's such a, it's such a common theme across many teams, you know, you want to upskill your employees, you want to make sure they're, they're competitive in the market, you want to make sure that your clients know about your services better. So part of is educating your clients. And I've always been able to kind of narrate that story successfully within these various roles. were, you know, how are we using learning and technology to not only improve internal, our our internal teams, you know, capabilities, but also our clients capabilities, that was kind of the common thread. And being able to do that, like I didn't know about, for example, I was the first person that they really hired within their support apparatus to build learning and development. Right. So we had a global support team, you know, 40, plus people constantly evolving, you know, AI technologies. So, you know, professional development was just the name of the game, we had to keep our entire team informed as to how to how to understand the product, it was constantly evolving, right? And consequently, also keep the client informed. So and then what was other roles that I've had? I think, in one of the recent conversations I had with somebody in the tech space, they said that they had up the pm ID department, essentially the project manager, instructional design department, and it's a great way to think about our roles, because I would be it would, you'd be very hard pressed to find an ID who just as ID, right, you're inevitably going to be doing project management, you're inevitably working with stakeholders. So that's, that's the flavor that my experience also took on over the past few roles is prevailing myths. For example, I was their first hire in North America to do client facing work, getting an LMS off the ground and building content and working, working with their clients. But my role on paper was as a project manager, even though I was doing a ton of it. Yeah,

Luis Malbas  
so it sounds like for data robot and Valentinus, you were both sort of coming in new roles for both organizations. I mean, how difficult was that? That must have been pretty challenging.

Farhan Quasem  
Yeah, there was a lot of I mean, of course, I had great support a lot of, you know, super team members that that helped me get to where I were I am today honestly, I have to give credit where credit's due, I've had the great privilege of working with great organizations and teams. But initially, yeah, it was, it was very challenging. Because when you're creating a new role, or when you're stepping into a new role that's that was just created. The KPIs are on everybody's mind. Right? So what what is this guy going to accomplish in the first three months on the job? Are we going to be able to hit some metrics that we decided on? So I leverage data, you know, I still leverage data, you know, for better or worse, you know, garbage in garbage out is always going to be an issue. But I try to make sure that we any decisions that I make, and any strategic moves that my team makes, are informed by data? And because that's the, it's the, it's the one metric that that's never going to necessarily have an opinion. Right? It's totally right. Right, to be able to justify the way that you want to move forward. So yeah, at both at both jobs at data robot, I mean, it's in the name, it was a very data driven organization. I didn't have too much trouble to build a metrics dashboard, and you know, get that off the ground at valid myths and other places that weren't culturally as data driven. Initially, I had to really inculcate that. build that culture of data.

Luis Malbas  
I'd like to hear okay, first of all, dream, see do talk about that company, just because, you know, the conversation I had with, with Jeremy, he and I were so aligned on a lot of different things. Yeah. Can you just talk about just describe DMC do a little bit for everybody?

Farhan Quasem  
Absolutely. So dreamsea do, we are a learning design platform learning experience platform, and we've been around since actually October of 2013, if I'm not mistaken. So we're coming up on our 10 year anniversary. And our entire premise is we are, we want to be the premier blended learning experience designers, for coaches, and for professional training. So and really, our secret sauce is we've designed our entire platform around human centered learning, right. So there's a lot of features and a lot of capabilities that are in our platform, which genuinely allow the learner to contribute to the learning experience, take away from the learning experience, share and build community, with their peers within the learning experience. And it's something that our co founder, Jeremy, we spoke to Louis, you know, he's extremely passionate about nurturing that type of an experience, digitally, right? And also in a blended experience, if if, if the need arises, right. So we, we work with a lot of our clients, a lot of our clients are, you know, professional development organizations, coaches, you know, trainers, people that are building larger and larger curriculums around soft skills, emotional learning, social emotional learning. So it's been a great experience. I've been there for quite some time now, and has a small team that's distributed everywhere. And we can get into our my digital nomad experience as well. It's been a blast to see, you know, how much we can build with a small team. And you know, the kinds of clients that we're getting the kinds of inputs that we're getting, I think there's a, there's a huge potential for blended learning, especially in the coaching and development space, moving forward, right. So we're eager to capitalize on

Luis Malbas  
that. And you're the lead product advisors. So when you're dealing with clients in particular, there's probably a vast array of things that you've got to look at. Yeah. I mean, can you talk about what those relationships are like, with your clients? How you were able to satisfy or even establish expectations for what they may want? From JMC? Do?

Farhan Quasem  
Absolutely, yeah. So we we like to say that we offer a tremendous amount of value to any client that comes in to the picture, right? So unlike a lot of other competitors, we don't feature gate we don't like, Oh, you have to be a premium member and pay this much more to get our exclusive features. Now. We open everything in our platform of anybody who wants to be a client partner. And I think establishing that two way street and being very genuine with our clients, you know, you're a small team, we're a startup, right? We're not going to be able to realistically offer the same level of, you know, corporate responsibility that a Udemy of the world would be able to give you, right, but that's also our strength, right? We're able to move that much faster. When a client comes to us with a feature request, it comes to me because I'm the product advisor. Right? And we bake that feature request into okay, what are other clients say about this particular behavior within our experience, right? Should we invest in building this out? Should we put it in our backlog? All those kinds of things, right. So I think kind of strength right now is we have that that level of intimacy with our clients. I mean, the best way that I think Jeremy kind of describes this, and I've seen him time and again, is, you know, he's the CEO, and he's on these calls, he's on the pricing calls, you know, after I do the demo, if the client, if the if the prospect wants to know more about, you know, how we price certain things, he's going to be there, right. And he's going to deliver his vision and his, his, you know, what he's excited about with that potential prospect in a very genuine and meaningful way, once again, because we want to remain human centered, right. So that's our big strength. And it's been a blast. I mean, as the product advisor, I've had to wear so many different hats, I do everything from demos to, you know, building dashboards that that list our NPS scores and, you know, communicating with clients day in and day out. So learning a ton, it's one of those, one of those ecosystems that I really thrive in, I

Luis Malbas  
think that's great. Yeah, having having that, you know, being dynamic and able to accomplish a lot of different things within organization. That's not for everybody. But, you know, if you're enjoying it, that makes you a pretty valuable, I would say, person to have on on the team. So that's wonderful. So, seems like you're real busy. Are there things that you're doing right now to stay updated on things that are happening in l&d, like you're talking about? It's human centered design. But AI is really hot, different things that, you know, that come in and out of our space? How do you maintain your your professional development?

Farhan Quasem  
Yeah, it's, um, I subscribe to a lot of newsletters. And yet, I tried to maintain inbox zero. So it's a it's a day to day challenge, to make sure that I contain my inbox and also keep keep abreast of everything that's happening. I think it's tremendously important for professionals in our field, to have a pulse on what's happening. It's, there's really no other way around it. Right. So, you know, I've loved the community that dlbcl offers is fantastic, I, I still have my a bunch of emails from the recent webinars like in my to do inbox, I'm just have to make time to watch them maybe on Sunday, when I have right. Watching things and learning, you know, learning and learning from the community as a just as a whole is absolutely imperative, right. So you'd have to set aside time, you have to be deliberate in terms of how you schedule your time, sometimes I tried to do an hour before work to read up on things. But I also now post pandemic, I've really made an effort to attend in person events as well. So in the greater Boston area, we have a lot of universities, there's just a tremendous education community here. So I try to latch on to any event that I can, if they if they have a particular topic that I'm interested in, I just have to make time to do it. But there's one newsletter that I really enjoy now that I would highly recommend is actually called superhuman, superhuman, they've done a lot of the person behind it, Zane has put in a lot of work on LinkedIn kind of getting the word out. But it's a bite sized newsletter that gets delivered to your inbox around noon Eastern every day. And it just gives you the latest and greatest in AI within a quick five minute summary, right? So what's happening, what's not happening? And many times there are so many cool education related possibilities from some of these AI solutions, right? So how did how to design content, how to use AI to splice videos, and just take something that would take three hours make it three minutes. So that's one newsletter that have gotten a lot of value from it, just to give me an example, just

Luis Malbas  
signed up. I just signed up now. Hi, there. I'm just gonna throw this in there. There's also one that I that I subscribe to that is similar and it's called the neuron, which is also an AI newsletter. It's kind of quirky. I don't know exactly how to get people to subscribe to it. It's kind of fun. It's just, it's all really cat themed. But that's a good one, too. Yeah. And I totally agree, especially now with a technology like AI that is quickly transforming and evolving and getting better all the time. Like for instance, you know, chat, GBT just added this, this visual element to it, and I tested it last night and I'm like, Oh my gosh, this thing is incredible. But yeah, it's you kind of have to stay up on this and I was definitely a newsletter nerd for a while. I can't do inbox zero but I have a way that I organize all my newsletters as they come in. And I do share things that are really interesting, I think in my in the regular to DC newsletter, but I yeah I love newsletters as well just because you know, even though my inbox is sacred newsletters are pretty much welcome in there for me to go through. Let me check. We've got a few comments here. I know I saw Rubina pop in inboxes. And nightmare Rubina and Ken saying email filters are my sanity. Oh, thanks for being a joy joined at the neuron daily.com. It's a good one. It's I think that's a that's a that's a fun one. But superhuman. I'm looking forward to checking that out as well. There's just so much going on with all of that. Let me see here. I have more questions. Okay. And, you know, it is interesting to me having this sort of, you know, alignment with Jeremy and and the values like as far as running an organization, just how, how we both share the same things, same ideas about how we like, we like to make decisions around our organizations. But how about a rewarding project that you've worked at GMC? Do? Is there anything that you can talk about there?

Farhan Quasem  
Yeah, absolutely. So it was actually earlier on in my tenure, when, you know, one of the things that I that I really and I think, for any any professional especially in l&d, it's really important to discover your why, right? As cliche as that might sound because so many others have said it before, but but it rings true, right? Discover your why, why is it that you're passionate about this field? For me beyond the learning outcomes piece, and the behavior change the application of learning piece, a big part of what I enjoyed doing it, a lot of startups was actually building processes. And there's so much potential to do that when you're on a small team. So I remember when I first came in to dream, see do having worked in the support department at my previous role, I said, Hey, we need to tie up our entire support operations umbrella, like, well, how is it that we support our customers, right? It's great for us to be able to have this great platform out there, right. But as we scale and as we grow, how do we deliver optimal support. And so within the span of I think, two weeks, I just took all of our inputs from a support team, or as a support team and created our Bible support. Sop, which I didn't think I could put together that quickly, right. But I had a lot of input and and a lot of help from our team. And I was able to synthesize this kind of very, you know, biblical s document like these are our rules and processes when it comes to delivering excellent customer support. And that it helped us because it kind of was the foundation for other processes that we have built. Right now I'm working on a Client Onboarding, SOP, right. And once again, these are all processes, which they take time and energy to really, you got to talk to this means you have to build consensus, you have to craft a document that everybody can kind of rally around. But once it's in place, it can do tremendous things for you as an organization in terms of scaling that growth and scaling, success, and really helping everybody just thrive in the gray as I like to call it because every day on the job, we're just thriving in the gray. There's very few, purely black and purely white Ellen Yeah, that we can kind of rely on.

Luis Malbas  
So that's fascinating. That's great. I'm a process nerd too. I just love that stuff. And I've always felt like every organization that I've been at, that was always one of the one of the strengths that I had was to be able to establish some of these, you know, define these processes. So everybody knows like, what the heck they're doing. So yeah, that's great. Now let's get to the digital nomad stuff, because that is something I'm really jealous of, of digital nomads, and, and, and the lifestyle that they lead. Talk about that. What do you mean when you're talking about a digital nomad?

Farhan Quasem  
It's a great question, Louis. And I think I, you know, a year and a half ago during the pandemic, I think everybody was just so eager to leave, right, they wanted to explore the world and see what's out there. digital nomad, and for me, I'm not a genuine digital nomad. I mean, I still have my physical address my tax addresses in Massachusetts, but I've been able to over the past over a year, really, because of different circumstances. join organizations that were okay with me being wherever, right? And more and more companies are doing that, like dream, see, do for example, they don't care where I am, you know, I mean, I'm around. I met Jeremy for the first time last month after, you know, after seven or eight months of working on the job. Yeah. And you know, whenever you get those opportunities to meet that those are fantastic opportunities to be able to get together. But generally, if you can provide value, and you have a solid internet connection, and there's no technical kind of limitations, there's a There's a lot of potential within the lnd field, right? So how did I get into digital nomad and well, I wanted to, I'm gonna go back to Turkey. So Turkey was where I first been exposed to education as a teacher after I graduated college, I decided to go back, I love turkey, it's a fantastic country, huge potential. And I have friends and family in the neighborhood. So I said, You know what, I'm going to set up shop, right outside Istanbul, and I'm going to see how long I can do this, how long I can get away with this. And before I knew it, I was, it's like, it didn't matter that I was in Turkey, I was still, you know, as engaged as productive as value providing right to my organization. And no one really had any issues with it, right. So I still made sure that everything stateside was getting taken care of somebody's looking after my house here, you know, my car, the battery died after a while, but I was able to get that sorted out, you know, so there's, there's some things you need to work out. It's not can't just jump into it, I'd say, you definitely want to do research, especially with regards to taxes and things like that. But, you know, if you if you do your research, and you're committed to really delivering the same amount of value, it's something that anybody can, I think has the capacity to do, right? Time Zones are going to be an issue, I was seven hours ahead of eastern time when I was in Turkey. So yeah, I would work from 4pm to midnight local, because that was nine to five, Eastern, right. So which I kind of miss because I can my mornings and early afternoons were where for me, essentially, I could kind of go out run errands, do whatever I wanted to. I use Turkey as a base of operations to travel all throughout Europe this summer. So I went to Italy, Germany, France. I mean, things that we kind of dream of, and you see all the all the newsletters, all the travel newsletter folks write about, but it's feasible. It's feasible, if you if you really, if you find that ecosystem that's willing to support you. Number one, and then number two, if you actually put in the work and are really diligent about maintaining that digital presence in a very active way. It's absolutely doable.

Luis Malbas  
How about the bad stuff? What's no fun about it?

Farhan Quasem  
So, of course, the human connection piece suffers, because you're not able to meet your colleagues in person. In many cases, with dreams you do. We're remote anyway. So those opportunities are few and far between. When they are they're great. But yeah, if you're somebody who creates human connection, and really thrives in that, let's brainstorm together in a in a working group, kind of in a in a co working space. Those are that part of it will need to be thought differently, or thought about differently, I would say. But honestly, Louis, there aren't too many cons. Yeah, we've gotten to that point. I think as a society, I know there's still ongoing conversations around hybrid being maybe the better model and the long run, right? I would, you'd have to convince me pretty hard to go back to an office. Even if it was part time. I just don't, there's no value add, that I can really confer come to terms with either for me or my team. You know, it's even, it's even better. I feel like when you do meet a few times a year because each meeting is just so much more meaningful and that people are looking forward to, as opposed to like doing a three hour commute or twice a week just to show your face in the office

Luis Malbas  
and Jeremy's is he's in New York, isn't he? He's in Connecticut. He's not too far away. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Well, when are you planning on going back?

Farhan Quasem  
So I'll probably be heading back to Turkey in like January or so I'd say in the new year. Yeah. Maybe it'll be there for a little bit. Winter is not the most fun time there. So you also have to think about, you know, your day to day, right. In Turkey, I have better internet than I have in the US. And really, it's $15 a month, like, right cost of living is you know, if you can earn in an in a foreign currency, and you're able to live in a country that has a lower cost of living, you know, you're really able to make your dollar stretch that much further. Right. Yeah. That's another consideration as well. So yeah, looking forward to being back in the new year sometime.

Luis Malbas  
Very nice. I have friends that that that are digital nomads and do the Mexico thing and

Farhan Quasem  
I'm going there next month, Louis. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to set up shop there as well. I would love to have a turkey Mexico. Boston kind of Nexus that's what I do. Yeah, I I'll be in Mexico City but I'm not 100% sure if I want to go outside the city. It's I love Mexico City. Honestly, if I could choose like one city to live in. If I could choose one to live in it would probably be Istanbul if I could choose to my second would be Mexico City. That's But yeah, so I might venture outside Mexico City, but I'll be spending about a week there.

Luis Malbas  
That is awesome, Farhan. I love it. I love it. Well, gosh, I hope that answers your questions. Kim, you got to hear about the digital nomad piece of all of this. I think that's fascinating. And I wish it's something that I could do. I would love to go to Mexico City I've never been I've definitely been to other parts of Mexico. But that big city is still something I have yet to check out. And of course, Istanbul. I mean, the closest I've ever gotten is I think, like Prague, I was in the Czech Republic at one point but yes, love it. Thank you so much for sharing all this. And for being a part of TL DC in an introducing me to Jeremy and dream, see do such an interesting organization I look forward to, to talk and more with you and, and other folks there. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and just close this out. If you ever need anything, just hit me up.

Farhan Quasem  
Absolutely. Yeah. And to everybody who joined, thank you so much for joining and feel free to reach out to me. I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on all these other platforms, you can search for my name, and I'm the only guy named my name as far as I know. So you'll

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, that's right. I think we're I think I connected with you, I'm pretty sure but definitely here actually, let me grab your LinkedIn URL and post it in so that absolutely, that that is here. All right. And with that, let's see Friday. We have Margie Meachum is going to be talking about generative AI, we just wrapped up that AI of AI event a couple of weeks ago, I have all the recordings finally done, ready to go. I'm going to send out a message to everybody so that they can get access to members can get access to those recordings and, and watch them I'm pretty sure I'm an AI expert. Now that I lived through that event. It was crazy. But that'll be on Friday. And then I have this l&d and d&d event that is, I'm probably going to have that open for registration on Monday, and that one is absolutely crazy. So everyone's gonna have to sign up for that. I'll just say that costumes are going to be involved in that one, and we have an entire adventure for everyone that's going to participate in that it's not going to be like anything that you've ever seen in our space. So that's gonna be exciting coming up. All right, and with that, I'm gonna close it out. We'll see you. We'll see everybody next time. Thanks again for

Farhan Quasem  
thank you so much. Okay, bye bye.

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