Understanding and Practicing Digital Inclusion with Belo Miguel Cipriani

Luis Malbas  
Thanks for listening to the training, learning and development community podcast. My name is Luis Malbas. And this podcast focuses on exploring topics and people of interest in the learning and development space, and hopefully provide you with inspiration, focus and a sense of community in your career. This is definitely one of my favorite episodes of the nearly 800 in our archive. Our guests was bello Miguel Cypriot he of old media, bello became blind in 2007. based in San Francisco, California was formerly a Unix administrator, and software sales professional. But after losing his sight, he had to learn how to interface with technology in completely different ways, mostly relying on accessibility features as designed by software vendors. And in this episode, you'll hear about his journey his thoughts on digital inclusion. Bello even shared how he interfaces with a screen reader on his iPhone. Altogether, talking with bellow was inspirational and educational, and I highly recommend checking this one out. If you find value in our content, please consider supporting us with a membership. Go to that TLD see.com/join. Sign up and get access to hundreds of our recorded videos pre entry to all of our live virtual conferences and events and more. Your support helps us continue to build community and share valuable resources for l&d professionals around the world. Thanks for listening. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the training, learning and development community. Thanks for joining us today. Really glad to have our guest today. Bello Miguel SIPRI. Ani who is somebody that star Peterson introduced me to just I guess it's been a couple months now and I had the pleasure of speaking with bello by phone a while ago it was an excellent conversation. I am just I'm honored to have him on the broadcast. Really, really interesting. He's an author, educator, technologist formerly a journalist over it was at the at the San Francisco Chronicle. You know, Bay Area resident, and today we're going to be talking about practicing and understanding digital inclusion. I've got a group of questions that folks that are live in chat can can add to if you want that's in the bottom of the screen. And we're going to be going through this stuff with bellow. And before I get going. Let me just give a shout out to some of the live folks that are in Christiana is here get solace here. Instructional Design lady, I can't remember your name. But I know that you've emailed me in the past. Molly, it's good to see you. Nick is here. Thanks for joining us. Why don't you go ahead and just introduce yourself to our audience and let us know who you are.

Belo Miguel Cipriani  
Thank you, Luis. Well, first, I want to say that I'm very excited to be here. I'm a listener. And, you know, the longtime listener, I, I've noticed that a lot of people in the l&d field just have very colorful backgrounds, they have many careers. And I think that's, I'm no exception. I began my career in high tech as a Unix systems administrator then worked into management, IT management and did all kinds of jobs until back in 2007, when I was assaulted by a group of men in San Francisco, and that's how I lost my sight. And so I went from being able bodied, to being completely blind, rather quickly. And so here I was in this new world, living in, you know, in Silicon Valley, but still struggling to, to gain accessibility. And so that really started my journey into, you know, what I call the digital inclusion field where I started off, you know, troubleshooting, trying to fix my own problems, access problems as an employee, as an artist as a writer, and eventually made it my made my decision to become a scholar in the field and got my doctorate in education. And that's where I'm now where I'm focused through my consulting practice on helping people not just understand digital inclusion, but you know, make sure that they're able to practice it to their best ability.

Luis Malbas  
I love it. Thank you so much. So, um, when exactly did your accessibility journey begin? Was it something that you know, after that, after the tragedy that we're after you lost your sight? Was it did it take a while before you're like, wait a minute, I really need it. Change things up here and just figure out like a better way to be able to, to continue to use the computer and technology? I mean, was it something immediate that that you really acted on? Or? Or was it something that you had to kind of consider for a while

Belo Miguel Cipriani  
there is definitely an assimilation period to the assistive technology. So I am completely blind, I have no light perception, everything's pitch black for me. And so I'm dependent on several technologies. I've been through different versions of different forms of devices and apps. And but, you know, the one that I've been using the longest is called a screen reader. And for many individuals, you know, educators who are creating content these days are probably coming more familiar with the term of a screen reader user. And so learning to understand the screen meter voice took a while, I would say it took me a good year to get comfortable with understanding, you know, the phonics voice that, that very robotic speech that, you know, for those of you who remember, those old speaking skill, toys, sounds a lot like those. And so yeah, it was a year of just getting used to the technology, helping my ear adapt to the noises, the sounds. And it was, you know, just getting that under my belt that really led me to realize that, hey, I learned how to use this software really well. And sometimes, it doesn't work, because I'm not using the software correctly, it doesn't work, because whoever designed this digital property, you know, a website app, you know, document didn't include these things that I need for my software to work. And that's really what led my, my research and my interest in helping people understand, you know, what they could do to help me be more successful.

Luis Malbas  
Wow, okay. And, and so, and you were, actually after you lost your sight, you, that's when you became a journalist write for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Belo Miguel Cipriani  
I did, yeah, I had a column with them. For a while I was a soy a, a radio correspondent, for the back to show in San Francisco. And so I was in this space where I was, you know, working in high tech, I kept having problems with accessibility. You know, employers had a hard time customizing or making changes to the tools they were using. So my screen reader could work, you know, often they were third party, vendor tools that they couldn't, you know, they couldn't modify in any way. So I couldn't produce and I went through a lot of jobs I went through, like, I think within a two year period, I had like, nine jobs. And, you know, I had recently been blind. So I had a really good resume working, you know, many top companies in Silicon Valley, so I was getting jobs, I just couldn't keep them because I kept running into issues with, you know, workflow, products with tools that we're using to communicate with even, you know, even like, reporting my timecard was an issue at one point where I couldn't do that, because of the, the payroll system they're using couldn't be access to my screen reader. And so, I did say to myself, you know, what, maybe this is a an opportunity for me to, you know, change what I'm doing, maybe, you know, this is a need, maybe I could, you know, be the voice of the people. And MIT, you know, jumped into writing and journalism and my career picked up for a while. But then again, that, you know, in accessibility fo creep back up, when I started, I started facing access problems, you know, in journalism, as I started to, you know, the expectation became that I needed to do social media and do videos, and, you know, and do slideshows. Right? And that really hindered my ability to sustain that field.

Luis Malbas  
Wow, wow. That's amazing. I have a really wonderful question here. That was kind of, you know, along the same lines of what I was thinking from Nick fluoro, that I'd like to, to ask you, what technology or assistance has worked best for you to date? And what is the feature or function you'd want to be improved?

Belo Miguel Cipriani  
I think that, you know, that the tool I use the most is a screen reader. Right? Whether it's a mobile screen meter on my iPhone, or on a desktop, I'm most relying on that. That's what gives me you know, the most independence. And so having, you know, websites, documents and apps that, you know, you know, have defined headings and, you know, use all texts and have, you know, properly labeled elements are, you know, are crucial for me, but I would say that definitely, you know, screen readers had been over the last, you know, 15 years that I've been blind, the most powerful tool because that's, you know, that's what I use for being That's, you know, how I went to how I got my doctorate degree was through online classes. And so definitely screen readers, you know, are the key, I would say that I'm, I'm happy that things have really improved even within, you know, my 15 years of being blind. When I first lost my sight, I was still using, you know, cassette recorders, to to take notes, you know, and so just, you know, that space, I went from using digital recorders to now I'm using apps on my phone. So, you know, technology has, has definitely improved, but I would say that screen readers are like, the biggest, you know, the most important tool in my toolkit.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, I love it. So well, you know, we were talking about this in the green room. Can you just show us how you use your screen reader, just so we can just get a view of, you know, someone you know, who is blind, who has to use like, you know, your your iPhone, I just would love it if the audience can just sort of experience like, what, what? You know, how you interface with it? Oh, absolutely.

Belo Miguel Cipriani  
So, let me, I'll grab my phone here. And I think I had turned it off. Turn VoiceOver on. Okay, I've turned VoiceOver on. So I'm using the built in screen reader on the iPhone, which is, you know, as you guys heard, it's called VoiceOver and, you know, it's, you know, Apple products, you know, they're just, they're accessible to me pretty much off the shelf, they've done an amazing job with a duck with accessibility. And so not that the voiceover is on, I'm just gliding my thumb over this screen. And it's saying camera. Something I want to note is that people who are blind and use assistive technology can often teach themselves to hear faster, that is called verbosity, which is the speed of speech, and I had to take classes and get myself to that level. So I set my, my verbosity pretty high, because I like to, you know, listen really fast, but I'm going to slow it down. And it's an 85% I'm going to slow it down.

screen reader  
6060 5050 4040 3020 20% 10%

Belo Miguel Cipriani  
So I have an interpret sent to everyone here on the cast could hear what I'm experiencing a little better. So that's the flashlight. It's telling me it's off. Camera, let me get too much.

screen reader  
Miss messages.

Belo Miguel Cipriani  
So there's my text messages, calendar, photos, camera, weather,

screen reader  
cheap. Reminders, stocks, books. Mail.

Belo Miguel Cipriani  
Telling me, I just got it one, one unread email. So it's pretty much how I navigate most technology, I try to, you know, first jump on my phone, and just to see if it's accessible or not, and then, you know, maybe go on the computer, you know, I also have an Apple Watch. I feel like I'm a spokesperson for Apple. You know, they just do such a such an amazing job. And, you know, I also I should I should say that, you know, Microsoft and, and, you know, Google have actually stepped up in doing a lot for accessibility. But, you know, that's something that within my research, you know, it's companies, large companies, because they have the resources, you know, hiring the professionals doing the research. You know, it's easy for them, you know, where people really need the help, or, you know, freelancers, small business owners, where they think about accessibility, and it's also overwhelming.

Luis Malbas  
No, absolutely. I totally agree. And I even faced that challenge myself. You know, it's like, Where do I even start and and I am just so thankful for the opportunity to be able to talk to you about this and also for your generosity and like sort of just showing us how you how you interface with the device. I think that it was tremendously educational for me so so I really appreciate that. Now, I want to talk about you know, the circumstances y star introduced me to you and it's because she is working with you to build some courseware

Belo Miguel Cipriani  
yes, we're, I'm putting my own my own online asynchronous courses together. And you know, actually I first heard from Starr was when she was a guest on your podcast. So, you know, again, I'm, I'm a listener and so I just, you know, when I heard her passion, her voice for inclusion, you know that that felt like someone I would like to partner and, you know, see this into complete this project. So I'm working on a couple things right now. And one of those things is, is my online academy where I want to, you know, present courses that really, you know, present all this, you know, accessibility compliance and inclusion topics in bite size, you know, if already just kind of make some generalizations about the content out there for accessibility. I think there's a couple of people providing this service, but a lot of that is really aimed at developers, you know, some of the courses that I've taken, it's like, you need to know, CSS, JavaScript and html5 to even, you know, enroll for the course. And so, you know, my perspective is like, No, I want to make accessibility training accessible. So, you know, take a step back, and really showing people how to use the tools on the products they're using, there's very simple things that they could do you know, how to write, you know, all text that works, you know, and, you know, the, the project that I'm working on now, and I'm hoping that it'll go live in the summer.

Luis Malbas  
Now, I love it. And I'm very excited, I can't wait to see, see what you're going to release, I think that it's going to be tremendously useful. So with this audience of instructional designers, is, where would you suggest that they start if they're interested in improving, you know, their accessibility strategies, or their digital inclusion strategies?

Belo Miguel Cipriani  
I think, you know, something to keep in mind is that, you know, I was an instructional designer, right. And so when I went into instructional design, you know, being blind, I knew that I would never be the best graphic artist, you know, I knew, whenever those projects came up, I would have to outsource partner with somebody else. And I have my list of people to partner with, right? Um, I think that accessibility is another component where, you know, whether you're a freelancer, you work for a small company, or a large company, it's something to consider is, do I have the time to become an accessibility professional? You know, how long will that take? Or should I just partner with somebody? You know, accessibility? Is the field in its own right. You know, we have our conferences, our certificates, you know, I have I have my doctorate in digital inclusion, right. And so it's just like any other field, whether it's accounting, or, or even, you know, the culinary arts, right, I would cater a party, if there's five people are coming, you know, there's 100 guests, I'm calling a catering company, I'm not doing that. And so those are things that I encourage, you know, structure designers to really look at, you know, long term is, do they want to get some skills and really built that skill up? Or do they just want to work with a partner, you know, and, you know, figure out what that may be?

Luis Malbas  
Oh, that's a great suggestion, I was sort of not really expecting that, but you're right, the whole, you know, accessibility is like pretty much a field unto itself. And it's, it does feel like it's a struggle, just trying to be able to, you know, like, pick up this whole other skill set and integrate it into your own. And, and, you know, so I can see how it would probably make more sense to find, you know, somebody that is more of an expert in that, and bring, bring them on, but just to get working knowledge and just understanding stuff, like saying your daily things, like I know, for what I do for O'Reilly Media, you know, all text is something that I watch out for regularly, because I do some development and messaging and you know, and on different areas, all text is something to always watch out for, are there other things that you know, that that you know, of? That would be important that you'd like, for people like me to keep in mind when we're, you know, building our, our projects? If, if it's, if it's, you know, graphics or instructional design? Concepts? Is there anything in particular that you think is important?

Belo Miguel Cipriani  
I say that the, there's two things that I want to cover here real quick. One is, you know, understanding the, you know, the accessibility features in the tools you use regularly, right, so if you're using, you know, Moodle or canvas or if you're using any other type of tool on a regular basis, understanding is does this offer accessibility? Why or why not? You know, sometimes, it's been my experience that some very progressive vendors have added accessibility features because their clients Ask for it. You know, so really having that consciousness of asking, Okay, is these tools that are used? Do they have built in features? You know? And if so how do I learn to, you know, how do I learn to use them, kind of start with what you have, right. Um, the other thing would be is to be mindful of not relying too much on automated tools for accessibility checker from a compliance perspective, and the reason for that is that, you know, these, a lot of these, you know, overlays or accessibility checkers are just, you know, don't are not able to capture what I call the representative range, meaning there isn't one type of, you know, disabled user, there's a range, you know, there's novice users, there's, you know, pretty advanced users. And, you know, those tools cannot capture that. And so, you know, if you're able to get real testers feedback, just like with any product, you'll end up with a better quality, you know, server slash product.

Luis Malbas  
Nice. No, that Yeah, yeah, no, that all makes perfect sense. Yeah, in fact, after this call, I'm probably going to test out all my accessibility features on my on my phone, and on my iMac, I'm gonna have my MacBook, I definitely want to test that out. And I don't know why I'd never really thought about that before, it might be just as simple as like, you know, you know, just turning some of these things on. So yeah, definitely gonna get into that. Um, you've had to seen some success, right. Like with with, with your strategies for digital inclusion and his success, accessibility? Do you have any examples of things that you've seen that have worked, you've offered to like other organizations or individuals?

Belo Miguel Cipriani  
You know, when I first started my consulting practice, even I'll take a step back when I was, you know, doing my doctoral research, and I would tell people, that my dissertation was on digital inclusion, they often laughed, it's like, what, what the heck is that are really is that a thing? You know, and now, you know, post COVID, people are realizing that it is a thing, right. And so, the reason, the reason I preface that is that, you know, when it comes to, you know, inclusion, like, again, it's because technology, you know, is always changing, so are the accessibility and inclusion approaches, right. And so, I often, you know, get clients who say, Hey, I took a text class, you know, in 2015. And, you know, I don't know why things are not working, people aren't saying that, it's not working the way it should be. And so and so and so. And so then I say, Well, you know, the web has changed a lot since 2015. Right. And so it's important to understand that don't have the expectation that accessibility is something you just do, once again, it's, you know, something that's an ongoing thing. And as technology changes, that will change. So, just to get, you know, give you guys the, you know, quick preview, you know, like many of many LD LD staff here, you know, I have a lot of NDAs that I, you know, hide my work, right. And so what I could say is that I'll have clients that are doing, you know, accessibility from a virtual reality perspective, you know, there's clients developing, you know, courses, for the medical field, or for business people, there's a course on ethics that I had to help make accessible, and it's a virtual reality course. And so, accessibility is moving towards that way. And there is a way of doing that. And so, I would just, you know, let people know that accessibility is something that, you know, it that's why it's important to make that decision, right? Am I gonna grow the skill set? Or am I going to work with, with with consultants, because it's consistently changing? As, you know, the tools we use change?

Luis Malbas  
Excellence, you know, I'm just thinking, you know, because something that I'm working more with, in fact, you know, I'm in a boot camp right now using Java scripts. And, and it is, like, really focused on building things within the browser that are automated, and, but when I reflect on it, it doesn't seem like some of the things that we're doing are very accessible. Like if you're just building things, you know, with JavaScript. Is it better to sort of like, avoid like, for somebody like me, should I like, try to stay away from building sort of automated sort of flows of things that that aren't accessible, would it be better? Well, that's what I'm thinking is that I should prioritize accessibility over everything else that should be the number one thing that I look at, versus creating things that are really, you know, that, that might look really pretty, or, you know, potentially, might even be usable to people. But if it's not accessible, it's just not, you know, as important, it shouldn't be the priority. So I'm having a hard time trying to know that,

Belo Miguel Cipriani  
you know, you know, so I buy, we're communicating telepathically because I know what you're getting at. And so what I want to say is that, and I work with a lot of, you know, instructional designers, you know, we, through all media offer a help desk service where, you know, they buy a couple hours per month or book hour, and then we answer their questions. So most of our clients, you know, when I launched that service, I thought we were going to get a lot of, you know, engineering companies, tech companies, and it's actually been a lot of teachers, instructional designers and content creators, because they're always checking before they start something, because it's, you know, it's what a waste of time to spend, you know, hours doing something, and to have it not be accessible. And, you know, so I think starting with accessibility, right, at the beginning, selecting the right tool, selecting the right, you know, partners, vendors is crucial, you know, there are, there are some tools that are better, for certain things, you know, um, what I, you know, want to just make sure I am clear about is that with accessibility, it is always better, cheaper, and more efficient to start thinking about accessibility right at the beginning. So, for instance, you know, say that, you know, you're against that you were telling me that you're going to launch, you know, you want to use, you're going to do an event training, in, you know, may write for Mother's Day, right, and the first thing I say, Well, what tools are going to use, then you'll tell me the tools, you're gonna use heavy checks as levels as accessibility, and you would say no, so that I would do that for you. But the reason, you know, I bring that up as it just as a step is that it saves so much time, it cannot imagine, you know, how, the disappointment that I hear people, when they say you use something that's not going to work, and I'm sorry, you spend 3040 hours, sometimes years, on something. And that that's the key start at the beginning. And accessibility is really usability. Right. And so, of course, you know, an example that I often bring up in my lectures is that, you know, think about the, the automatic doors of grocery stores, right, those were, you know, created with to help people who have mobility, you know, issues who may be using a wheelchair or a walker, right. However, who hasn't benefited from those? I mean, I do, and I wasn't the intended user. Right. And so, the same thing with accessibility, you know, just some, some quick facts is that, um, you know, captions, close captioning, improves comprehension by like, 75%. You know, it's very helpful for English learners who, you know, may not understand how something's pronounced, but man may see the spelling, and can then reference it go look it up later. Right, all texts really affected all Texas actually really good for searchability. If you have got good old texts, your images, you know, show up in image searches, because that's connected to to a topic, right. And so, you know, accessibility often makes your content stronger, because it's more usable.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, that is a great point. And it's sort of, you know, trying to clear up the mud in my head about what I was trying to express. But you know, I'm going through, building out these JavaScript things that are really, really powerful, you know, just visual things that are, that are really interesting movement, different things like that, but ultimately, kind of complex and just not actually that usable to begin with. Right? It's just like, it's, it's got a lot of bling to it. But when it comes down to it, I personally just favor very simple interfaces, websites, things like that. And, you know, as much as is I'm enjoying learning how to do JavaScript, I'm probably not going to use most of what I'm learning, you know, maybe just more for back end types of things. So, I do think the usability piece is is so key, like you were saying, I've got a great sort of comment here and question from Christina pranky. Christina is asking, it sounds like accessibility like dei is more of a process that needs to be built upon not just box can be jacked. How can we create the systemic change needed to move the needle? on accessibility?

Belo Miguel Cipriani  
That is such a beautiful question. And thank you so much for bringing it up. So how I differentiate myself, because, again, this accessibility is an industry and, you know, you can now Google accessibility consultants, and you get, you know, many, many options. But, you know, my approach is not, you know, to step away from the checkbox mentality, right. And I'll just say that, you know, like, section 508, of the ADEA. You know, it's wonderful, it's given people like me rights, but some of the technical requirements are a little outdated. They're like, from from 2008. And, you know, they don't take into account like, you know, the cloud, and, you know, other tools that we're now using. And so, you know, what I always tell organizations is even, you know, meeting local policy, you know, because I work with clients in other countries, meeting local policy doesn't guarantee the best inclusive experience, that's something that you have to operationalize. And you do that with ongoing training. Right. And so with some of my clients, you know, what does that mean? So I have clients that are, you know, magazines, popular blogs, you know, podcasts and so on, they're producing a lot of content, so I'm creating training for them every three months, because, you know, they need it. But the organizations that, you know, need something once a year, right, that's something that leadership management need to take into consideration is, you know, what tools are we using? How often are they changing? And how often should we bring, you know, someone to work with us? Or is it you know, worth us having our own accessibility, and so on in house, because there's not much of a need.

Luis Malbas  
Very nice. So Bello, tell me something, oh, what if there are, you know, educators in this community until DC instructional designers that want to keep accessibility a priority or top of mind, as far as conversations or resources, things like that? Is there anywhere in particular that you would suggest that we can go to

Belo Miguel Cipriani  
you know, I always recommend people to check out the, you know, the W CAG. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, you know, there's a couple blogs that talk, give information about them. They're a little robot, they're very robust. Those for some people might be, you know, a little too much to kind of take in. I offer surveys, if you go to old media.com, I have what's called the Digital Inclusion quarterly newsletter. So every quarter, I send out free videos, articles and content for people to, you know, to read over. There's a woman named Lainey Feingold, who's an attorney in San Francisco, she has a great resource blog. You know, what I'm seeing now, is that the, you know, even though accessibility, it's an industry in its own right, I would say that it's still in its infancy, you know, 10 years ago, I don't think we existed. And so, free resources. I think that there's about a handful, but I think the ones that I mentioned would be a good place to start.

Luis Malbas  
Excellent, excellent. I did paste a link to all the media in the chat area. And I'm going to go ahead and start to wrap things up. But Bello, you were so interesting. I mean, it's not often that I'll meet somebody that, you know, is a teacher, author, you've got your own media company, you've got your own book, published book publishing company, all of these amazing things that you've done, you've got a PhD. Tell us, like, when did you have you always been this productive, like accomplishing all of this, and I was, you know, I want to get your book about your experiences prior to your blindness. And I figured it was kind of more of an autobiography. I'm really interested in in reading that. And, you know, I was really taken by how you said, used to look up at the adobe building in San Jose, and it was kind of a, you know, something that you were aspiring to, but you know, what is what didn't what continues to inspire you? How do you manage to keep doing all of this incredible work?

Belo Miguel Cipriani  
I think things really changed for me. When I stopped trying to control things, you know, not just in my personal life, but at work, wanting things to be you know, a certain way instead of letting things happen Been organically, right? And so I really, my approach has really been about, you know, being adaptable, and being able to pivot. And, you know, I sit here saying, you know, talking about it, like, it's easy, it's something that I'm working on, you know, every day, and there's certain projects that I had to say, you know, this has to be put on the shelf for now. One of those actually was my own podcast, you know, we had a very good year, and we were doing well, but just my availability was, you know, I couldn't give it the attention wanted. So that's something that I had to say, you know, I can't do it all. I got up this on the shelf. And it doesn't mean I'll never do it again. But, you know, had to put that away and focus on other things. So I think that that's something that for me, you know, understanding having a very clear action list and not being obsessed with, you know, the outcome.

Luis Malbas  
Nice, very nice. And you're in, you're in Minnesota now, right?

Belo Miguel Cipriani  
Yeah, I'm in Minneapolis. I've been here for six, seven years, seven years now. So it's, it's been a quite a transition, but my family's from here. I'm originally from the San Francisco Bay area, but I have a lot of family out here. So, you know, as I got older, being our family just became more important.

Luis Malbas  
Sure, absolutely. All right. Well, Bello, thank you so much. I you know, if you ever want to do another guest appearance, anything you want to talk about, showcase, you know, some of your courseware, anything like that. Please come back. I would love to have you on the broadcast again. This has been an incredible opportunity, just to spend some time with you. And yeah, looking forward to seeing more of your projects. Thank you. Yeah. And everybody if you you know, at that OLED media.com website, I think what is it? You can subscribe there. Yeah, it's right at the bottom for the quarterly newsletter, sign up, stay in touch with with Bello. And that's it. Hope to see you again sometime soon. Bello. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much. Okay, everybody. Um, next week, don't forget to sign up for the women of l&d Conference, which is happening on the 17th and 18th of March. That one is great. If you go to that to vc.com, you'll see a link to to the landing page for it. It's a free event. So please sign up. We've already got a few 100 people signed up for that one. And that takes place next week. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and close out the broadcast. Thanks again, Bella. Thank you. Alright, bye bye.

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