Creativity in the Workplace

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Episode Transcript

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more at okill ct dot org.Now here's your host for Pulse of the
Region, Kate Buman Hello, Hello, and welcome back to a Pulse of
the Region. I'm your host,Kate Baumann, and here today I'm loving
it. We have a packed studiohere today in Hartford, Connecticut, our
beautiful capital city. We're in theCandy Cane Building over at iHeart Media,

(01:04):
and today we are getting the pulseabout the value of creativity in the workplace
and how organizations are utilizing creative educationto strengthen their teams. So a great
conversation today and I can feel theenergy already. You can tell we have
a creative group here in the studio. So without further ado Is would love
to introduce our three guests today.So first with the Creative Education Foundation is

(01:29):
Beth Miller, and Beth is theexecutive director. So Beth, so happy
to have you on the show heretoday. Thank you so much for having
us, Kate, We're really excited, of course, of course, and
our next guest is he is thepresident at buzz Engine during i'd say that
your day job, and then isalso a marketing consultant for the Creative Education
Foundation. So we welcome Aaron Wartnerto the show. Aaron, good to

(01:51):
be here, have you here,Thanks for having us, appreciate it of
course, of course. And last, but certainly not least is by day
she is the partner at FMLA CPA'sand then I guess I don't want to
say by nights, but at othertimes in the days than is the treasurer
of the Creative Education Foundation. Sowe welcome Mary Wazinski. Hi, nice
to be here. Excited, Yeah, excited to have you here. This
is a wonderful group. But Iknow we've been lucky to have some creative

(02:15):
calls leading up to this, soreally excited to talk you know today,
just really about I think all ofus look at sometimes the workplace and education
is black and white and where Ilove it. You guys kind of paints
it all with color and are seeingsome great results. So first things first,
So would love to just touch onsome introduction. So first, Beth,
if you could give us an overviewabout the Creative Education Foundation. Sure.

(02:37):
So the Creative Education Foundation was actuallyfounded back in nineteen fifty four by
Alex Osbourne, who's known as thefather of brainstorming. So he literally invented
brainstorming at I want that t allright, that's not bad if titles go,
it's a good epitaph. So hedid that at BBDO. He's the
OMBB DEO, which is a multinationalPR marketing firm. When he retired back

(02:59):
to his hometown own Buffalo, NewYork, he really wanted to teach more
people to be deliberately creative. Okay, so he created the Osbourne Parns with
his friend, Said Parns, theOsbourne Parns creative problem solving process, which
we have been teaching to hundreds ofthousands of people ever since. Our biggest,
our biggest event is called the CreativeProblem Solving Institute affectionately known as SIPSEY,

(03:21):
and we bring people in to learnabout creative problem solving, design,
thinking, lean, agile, anykind of deliberate creativity process that's out there,
creative leadership. It's also wicked funof it. It's wicked fun,
but we learn really important skills fornegotiating complex challenges and complex opportunities. Okay,

(03:42):
fantastic. So and Mary and Aaron, I'm going to ask you what
kind of got you involved when it? Mary will go with you first,
and just what it got you involvedwith the Creative Education Foundation. While it
was a connection through Beth I actuallywe both rode for Riverfront Recapture here in
Hartford. Fantastic. I love this. It's competed for the women's racing team
and it was great. And SoI've known Bath for many years and she

(04:05):
needed a charger and remembered me fromrowing here in Hartford, called me up
and said, what do you think? And here I am. So it's
been great. I've really learned alot about creativity and be able to apply
and what I do every day aswell. Fantastic. That's great. And
how about you, Aaron. Wasit on the river or was it somewhere
else? We have it, definitelysomewhere else. I've known Beth probably for

(04:28):
about fifteen years. Our pad's crossedwhile she was in Hartford, and when
she went over to the Creative EducationFoundation, she brought a buzz Engine marketing
events on to be their marketing consultant. And we're not just their marketing consultant,
but we're also a colliant of theirs, so we've gone through their creative
problem solving training really help our company, our employees think differently about challenging problems

(04:51):
and solving kind of those those naggingquestions that you've gotten, really getting to
the root of moving the organization forward. Okay, that's great, well,
and I definitely want to talk moreabout that. And your experience is too
at buzz Engine, Aaron. Butfirst things first, Beth would love kind
of looking at it from a highlevel, and this is probably a big
first question to kick things off with. But if you talk a little bit

(05:12):
about the value of creativity kind ofwithin education and also within the workplace,
and really, if you know,why is this kind of such an important
arena? You know, really we'recf is focusing and you know, spending
so much time kind of with companiesand organizations on this whole creativity right,
Yeah, So creativity is tapping intoour natural creativity is the way to come
up with new solutions, new momentumto move forward. We're often so focused

(05:39):
on the day to day, theanswering of the emails, the going to
meetings, all of that stuff.It's hard for us to step back into
our kind of generative process. Iwish we could do this in what ways
might we solve this challenge? Sothe other thing I really love about our
process is that, you know,if we go into a manufacturing company,
it's not that we're experts on manufacturing. If we go into public school,
it's not that experts at public schools. What we're expert is at is holding

(06:02):
the space where people can get deeperinto their expertise, has that kind of
execution of what they have to doin the day to day into their deeper
wisdom, into their own creativity.And that's the thing that's so exciting about
this work. We're not going into teach you stuff you don't know.

(06:23):
We're going in to help you accessreally deep wisdom that you have because of
your experience. So what this doesis it's incredibly empowering for people. You
realize like, oh wow, Iknow stuff, and if I give myself
the kind of space to think,I can solve our problems when we give
them as a process that they cankeep using every time when they face different

(06:45):
challenges. The tricky thing about itbeing a process is it's not kind of
a one and done and you justlearn it. It's like exercising your creative
muscles. Just like going to thegym. You have to keep going or
else that muscles gonna atrophy. Andwhat the process does is help keep you
honest and keep you moving through thatprocess. One of my favorite trainers that
we work with, she talks aboutyour great ideas, like thirty ideas in

(07:09):
right, so it's not the firstcouple of the obvious ideas that everyone comes
up quickly because like, Okay,let's be done with this meeting. Here's
the quick solution or even the nextbest solution. This is going to push
you through to that thirtieth solution everytime. And the way she described it
is like a Pez candy dispenser,a sheet to the thirtieth candy and a
Pez candy dispenser. You have topop every single one out every single time

(07:30):
get into that thirtieth one. Nowyou may get faster at it, but
just still have to do the workto get to that thirtieth idea. So
what we do is we teach peopleto fish for their creativity, to them
how to do this and move throughthat process so that they can become the
innovators at their own work, workplace, school organization. Okay, fantastic.
Can you guys kind of use aprocess called the creative problem solving and can

(07:54):
you talk a little bit about thisand what does that look like? Yes,
So, the creative problem solving processuses both kind both divergent and convergent
thinking. So think of it likedriving a carent. Divergent thinking is the
gas pedal. Convergent thinking is thebreak you can't use just one. It

(08:15):
usually doesn't work out well. You'reeither going to not go anywhere or you're
going to crash into something and youcan't use both of the same time or
you'll drop your transmission. So youneed to use them alternately, and the
steering wheel as well to get whereyou're going. So when you use divergent
thinking or creative thinking or brainstorming,you're kind of you're not judging anything,
You're just allowing the free flow ofideas. You capture them all and you

(08:39):
just get them out with everybody oreven by yourself, and then you we
have ways to kind of push youto even wilder and craze your deeper ideas.
So tools and techniques we can giveto get past those kind of first
few ideas to get down to thethirtieth idea. But if you just have
a lot of ideas on post itnotes on a piece of paper and walk
away, well that's no good.And that's a critique. A lot of

(09:01):
people will say about brainstorming, andI'm was like, well, you're not
doing it right. What we're doinga part of it, you're doing half
of it, And yeah, no, that won't work by itself. You've
just got the gas pedal on.So the brake pedal is convergent thinking and
Similarly, we have a lot oftools and skills that we can train you
so that you when you look atall of these ideas on a board,
you can start figuring out how tocluster them, categorize them, and identify

(09:24):
the ones that are the best ideas, or further develop those ideas into something
that's really actionable. So it's notenough just a brainstorm. You must brainstorm,
but then bring in critical thinking tonarrow those ideas to something that is
actionable and effective. And that's whatwe teach folks to do. We move
between those two ways of thinking,divergent and convergent thinking through through four steps

(09:46):
in our process. Clarify, idea, develop, and implement, And the
biggest one is actually clarify. Clarifyingthe question is incredibly important, and we
find a lot of times when wework with folks that are stuck, it's
because they keep answering the wrong question. Okay, that's a great point.
It's if the same issue is comingup year after year, I guarantee you're

(10:09):
not answering the right question. It'sprobably a surface question and there's probably a
deeper issue, like, you know, why are we losing so many school
teachers? Maybe you're going to throwa lot of pds at them on other
or other things. But then youcan really go deeper into that retention question.
There's probably something much deeper going onwith teachers that they're choosing, and
it's probably complicated. It's probably alot of factors. So what our process

(10:31):
does is help kind of really sortout what the real issue is, the
root issue is, so that youcan address that with creative problem solving.
Okay, good progress, fantastic,Yeah, And Aaron would love to have
you chime in here and kind oftalking about some of these you know skills.
So in this creative problem solving,you know, is a process.
I don't okay that's the best wordto use, but you know, kind
of what are some of the skills? You know, Bet touched on a

(10:52):
few of them, but if youcould dive a little bit deeper on those,
that'd be great. Sure. SoI'll give you my first hand experience
what I've seen that happening are myorganized Tasks engine. Because we brought in
the wonderful trainers at the Creative EducationFoundation. Getting all the voices around the
table of your team first and foremostwas one of the hugest and biggest return

(11:13):
on investment. Every voice was beingheard. Number Two, it really addresses
our culture or the culture of anyorganization. So is the culture fostering innovation.
And this is really about innovation andgetting people moving forward almost at a
more quickly quicker pace, being competitivein the marketplace. The great thing about

(11:39):
creative problem solving and this process,it's literally for everyone that's this is that's
incredible. Everyone's creative. Everyone iscreative and creative. And we're not talking
art creativity. We're talking that innatecreativity that we all have inside us.
And it's about uncovering that creativity andbringing it to life, bringing it to
fruition. So when you're getting moreengagement, you're getting everyone's ideas, you're

(12:03):
changing the culture. That's when youstart to see innovation within an organization.
Fantastic. And Mary would love foryou to chime in here to to kind
of just talk about some of yourexperience that you've you know, kind of
seen, whether it's in your workplaceor just working with some organizations. Sure,
that's great. I you know,I was new to this when Beth
introduced me to the organization, andI've really learned a lot about creative problem

(12:26):
solving, and as a CPA,I think people don't always think we're so
creative. I mean, I haveto say, my dad's an accountant and
my brother's an accountant, and Iwould say that probably my mom and I
are more on the creative side.So it's yeah, but yeah, it's
yeah. But honestly, we doa lot of problem solving and what I
do, and so it's really openedup the doors for me as to how
to brainstorm and bate, use creativethinking to problem solve and kind of get

(12:52):
through. I'm an auditor, soI use this technique in trying to figure
out, you know, issues withmy clients, and it's been really good
and I've brought that into our organization. Nice. That's great. And now
Beth, you and referenced kind ofworking with education a little bit. You
can you kind of highlight some ofthe partnerships that you have in that arena.
Sure. Sure, we've done somework with the Stanford Public School System.

(13:13):
We've worked with their elementary schools,and we also worked with their Board
of Education, which was nice,which was amazing. I went in with
Dwayne Wilson, who was a formerboard chair and one of our one of
our top trainers. And it wasinteresting because the superintendent called us the day
before the meeting and I guess therewas a really rough meeting the night before,

(13:33):
but it was all recorded, sowe could hear that they had a
really rough meeting, like okay,not nice things were said. You know.
So we're walking into a team buildingaround creative problem solving with a pretty
hostile situation where people's feelings were hurtand we were able to you know,
we we decided, well, we'renot going to change a thing, but
we're going to address it. Soso, you know, we walked into

(13:54):
the training, We're like, sorough night last night, and everyone just
started sitting there like wait a second, let's just shake hands with the trunk
of the elephant in the room andgo from here. And we worked with
them using creative problem solving, inparticular with the Foresight assessment. Now,
Foresight assessments are a psychometric evaluation.It's a partner organization that we work with.

(14:16):
It's based on the science of creativeproblem solving. So those steps I
explain to you, clarify idea,develop, implement people's working styles follow along
those same categories. So, forexample, if you have someone who's a
high clarifier according to their foresight assessment, their creativity lies and asking lots of
questions, So which is great,right, lots of questions so they get
clear understanding. It's great in asense, it is part of the process.

(14:39):
But if somebody doesn't understand that thatperson is a clarifier, they can
get really annoying because they're asking questionswhen the implementer wants to get going to
the project or it's like, whyare they asking me questions? They don't
believe me, They don't they don'tthink I'm right, so I can this
whole like monologue can happen in yourhead if you don't understand that person is
a clarifier. But if you dounderstand that they're a clarify, you recognize,

(15:00):
oh, they need to ask lotsof questions to feel comfortable in their
creative process. So you can havegrace for that. So as soon as
you understand that, it deepens compassionwith the people you work with, and
you can see how that can automaticallyshift the room. So when we're working
with these this Board of Directive,Board of Education that had just had a
pretty contentious evening the day before,we went through their foresight profiles. We

(15:22):
aligned it with the percepts and thecreative process, and they were able to
go from literally angry at one anotherto understanding how each individual in that room
shows up to a complex challenge,and they could they could understand what that
when, the value of it,and understand where it was coming from,
and understanding also why they might reactin a way that was bristly, because

(15:43):
if you have a different preference,it's going to be a problem. I'm
I'm an integrator, so I'm likeright down the middle of all four of
them. Okay, So I canget annoyed at people who spike very high
because all I want is balance,and I'll just argue things I don't even
believe to try to get things.And you're like, how do I balance
these? Aaron's laughing over here.You have to, I'd like, and
you know when I'm doing it,because I'll say, I can't believe I'm
about to say this, and that'sthe cue that I'm about to go into

(16:06):
my preference. Why that's not healthy? So you know, I've learned to
recognize that. So what the processdoes, and so what we were able
to do with the Board of Educationwas get them talking again and get them
communicating again. We weren't dealing withthe complex challenges they were addressing. We
were equipping them with the skills tomore effectively deal with them deal with that
on their own. So they hadthis process. Okay, nice, Now,

(16:27):
Mary and Aaron, I'm wondering ifeach of you know what you identify
as within the Yeah, okay,as I share, I am very much
a clarifier and an implementer, soI do ask a ton of questions.
But like Beth, I want toget going. Yeah, I want to
get going. But Beth is absolutelyright. When you understand the proclivities of

(16:49):
individuals in a group, on yourteam, in a workplace, whether you're
on a nonprofit board, whether you'resitting in a board room, when you're
understand everyone a little more, youknow, it's about letting down your garden,
getting a little personal. One phrasehere, and it is commonly used

(17:10):
Bud buzzword, but I think itis really important here is having and fostering
a growth mindset. That is somethingthat this process does very much about getting
people to think bigger, but notjust thinking bigger, taking the actions that
gets you to that bigger point,right, let's know, very well said

(17:33):
and Mary, I guess first iswhat's your kind of categorize or how do
you categorize yourself? Yeah, that'sa good I categorize myself as an implementer
because I like to get things done. I like to just you know,
take action, have an organization method, and just get it done. So
I'm kind of more on that side, even though I would say as an
auditor, I would clarify a lot, so I would ask a lot of

(17:55):
questions to be able to get somethingdone. So I'm kind of more on
that side. Okay, fantastic sickAnd I guess kind of from a corporate
perspective, and you know, whatare you seeing kind of some of the
benefits of corporations because again it iskind of you know, you set it
perfectly upfront, Beth, where creatingthat space where I think you know it
is every day we're busy. Youhave a lot of you know, meetings
we all look at there, especiallynow with zoom meetings. I mean you

(18:18):
could go back to back and back. You don't always have that space.
What do you feel the value isreally for a corporation? Or a company
to kind of take time to makethat space. Well, I think that,
you know, for me, itcomes down to, you know,
you don't have to do things thesame way all the time, and there's
a lot of ways you can getto a goal, and I think that
we tend to just do things thatare easy or you know, the easiest

(18:41):
path to get there, and youknow, sometimes it's not the best path
and the outcome might not be thebest. So I find that this really
open opens up avenues, you know, the brainstorming, the creativity, the
what if statements. I've learned tosay, well, you know, what
if this or how might we dothis? And so it really opens up

(19:02):
kind of the thought process to otherways to achieve good goals. Oh that's
great. And Beth, on thecorporate front, you know, certainly with
the pandemic, I felt like weexperienced a lot of shifts and would love
to get your you know, justthoughts on that and how did that sort
of impact creativity you know across theworkplace. Yeah, people had to change

(19:22):
how they did business really quickly.I joke all the time that we were
virtual before it was cool. Yeah, because we already had a virtual office
and we were kind of able tohit the ground running. My board is
all over the US and we havea board member in London, so we've
always had to do most of ourmeetings in a virtual way. So I
think that really helped us in developingcurriculum to meet people where they were,

(19:45):
which was on the computer screen andnot in person anymore. So I think
businesses, it was a real bigreminder that there can be things that change
outside of your control and you're goingto have to be creative in the box.
A lot of people talk about creativityoutside the box, and it would
be lovely to have no parameters orcriteria that we have to be creative,

(20:07):
and wouldn't that be great, Butin real life, we have to be
creative in boxes that are thrown upin front of us all of a sudden,
and how do we negotiate that newconstrained space. Creativity functions very well
and constrained spaces as well. Okay, I can speak to you know,
for us, virtual curriculum had alwaysbeen on the back burner because we're a
very small nonprofit organization, and whenright up to the front burner's OVID and

(20:33):
so you know, I talked tomy team and I'm like, okay,
program, guys, make this virtual. I'm going to go get a PPP
loan. It's so we get tostay in business. And we just were
able to really quickly negotiate that ambiguitybased on our skills and kind of divide
and conquer based on those skills.Because we practice creativity ourselves, we just
that creative problem solving. So oneof the one of the hugest assets I

(20:53):
think of creative problem solving is thatwhen you you have that growth mindset,
that creative mindset, and you knowyou've got tools and skills to fall back
on, you can negotiate ambiguity,that scary space where I don't know what's
next, you can courageously walk intothat because you know you've done it before.
You know you have a creative mindset, you know it's in you,

(21:14):
and you know you've got tools andskills that you can deploy fantastic, And
you know, I think it's alwaysgreat to kind of share with examples,
which has been wonderful. All ofyou kind of touched on some, but
I don't know if there's any otherexamples of you know, just experience as
you guys have either had, youknow, on the learning side, you
know, or on the teaching side. I'm kind of looking at all three
on who would like to chime inhere. I've got at a fun business

(21:36):
one I'd love to share of myone of our board members, Greg Shoemaker.
I actually met him at my veryfirst Sipsey or Big conference. We
were both in the introductory creative problemsolving class together and at the time he
was just kind of a freelance businessman, not doing not really focused yet on
a particular thing. I fast forward. He hands up running a company called

(21:59):
Arca and what they do it's it'sasset recovery work. So basically they can
sign big lot products like chalkboards froma college that's going to go to whiteboards
or transformers or whatever. So theyhad this one. They got a lot
of beer bottles from a failed homebrewerthat were embossed with the logo for this

(22:19):
bottle, and so they he decidedto create a problem solve with his team,
including a few unpaid interns, tofigure out this this process. So
he so to how to make moneyoff this product, and so the first
idea, obviously was let's resell themto another beer group, they won't care
if it has another logo on it, like nope, that was an early
idea, easy idea, No peoplecared. Yeah, then in the next

(22:41):
solution, let's recycle them totally.Could be something they do, but it
would end up being a huge lossof money to bring it to the recycling
place that could handle the volume thatthey had. And so they continue to
be in that divergent space again,that creative thinking, and they one of
the key rules of to not shutdown creative ideas is to have exercise no

(23:03):
judgment. Now you do exercise somejudgment in the convergent phase, but not
in divergent So no judgment is aphrase that we will use. So one
of the unpaid in turn says,wouldn't it be great if which is one
of our invitational stems to provoke answers, wouldn't it be great if we could
get paid to smash the bottles.Somebody at the table certain thoughts about idea,
and Greg's like nope, no judge. Put it up on the board.

(23:26):
That ended up being the money winningsolution. So there are rage rooms
all over the Idea Canada. Sothey ended up selling these beer bottles for
a huge profit to a Canadian rageroom where people have ever thought they have
paid to smash the bottles. Andthat was the unique solution that came from

(23:47):
the kid at the table who wasn'teven getting the page because Greg the owner
protected that space and let that ideago forward. That's great. Yeah,
I just want to jump in witha couple of other examples that are could
potentially be specific to Metro Hardford region. Please, we know Metro Hardford region,
we struggle with that flight of youngtalent. So let's start asking ourselves

(24:11):
some of these these these challenging questions, how might we retain a younger workforce?
No perfect question? What if wehad more opportunities? You know each
company, every company deals with us. What if we had more opportunities to
reward our employees without breaking the bank? Right, So, these challenging questions
and the creative problem solving process hasbeen kind of delivered throughout major large corporations.

(24:37):
So we're calling talking Deloitte, We'retalking Disney, you know, huge
fortune. Five hundred companies are bringingin creative education foundation, the principles of
brainstorming and creative problem solving to makelong lasting change. Okay, very neat
and Mary, anything else you'd liketo chime in there kind of on some
examples. I don't know if anyone'sgoing to beat the rage room with the

(25:00):
beer bottles, but anything else thatyou've seen, No, not necessarily I've
seen when we I think when wedo our board meetings, we have creative
problem solving sessions, and so We'vehad really good strategic plan sessions and I've
been involved with those sessions, andI think the outcome of that, you
know, is a bunch of greatideas that we kind of put together the

(25:22):
pieces of the puzzle and then figureout the best way to get there.
So it's kind of my experience withit. Oh that's great, I love
it so And last, but notleast, on Sipsey and these conferences,
is there a conference in the nearfuture at all or anything upcoming? So
we have. We just acquired theFlorida Creativity Conference, so that happens in
March this year, March fifth toeighth, I believe, And that's going

(25:45):
to be in Sarasota, Florida,so anice warm location if folks want to
go there. Fixed. So FloridaCreativity Conference is yeah, I was coming
up in March. It's like asmaller version of SIPSEY, if you will,
perhaps a little bit more person littledevelopment then professional development. SIPSY is
usually the third week in June.We're just working out some details on our

(26:06):
next contract right now. We're holdingit at Niagara University. We kind of
bring it back home to Western NewYork and that is a five day creativity
conference where you can really do adeep dive into creative problem solving. But
there are a ton of other workshopsin many other deliberate creativity processes. I'm
also extremely open to bringing this toHartford. Okay, all right, so

(26:26):
I would say we will note that. Okay, I just want to add
that these conferences bring together some ofthe most fascinating individuals that I have ever
had the opportunity to interact with anybig thinkers. They are instigators of change,
they are innovators, and truly anamazing group of people that networking opportunities

(26:51):
from not just people who are withincorporate America, but educators, administrators in
schools, people who are entrepreneurs lookingto level up their business. Truly people
from all walks of life who believein the power of creative problem solving fantastic
and where can people go to learnmore about these events? And then also
too about Creative Education Foundation. Great, yep, you can come to our
beautiful website created by our marketing consultand then I sense a little pitch here.

(27:17):
I don't know, they're amazing.It's www dot Creative Education Foundation.
You have to write it all out. There's definitely two e's in the middle
door, so Creative Education Foundation dotorg. Everything is on there. We
have virtual programming, we have ourlive programming. We can come to you
and deliver either virtual or live programming, and we're constantly developing more things.

(27:41):
So definitely check out the website.That's where you're find it fantastic. Well,
thank you all so much, justwith such a good kind of creative
session, which is I love.Of course. Of course, now before
you scoot though, we have abouta minute or so left, so I
love if we have an extra minute, I'm gonna put you each on the
hot seat and we'll ask you ourquestion that we ask your on Pulse of

(28:02):
the Region is what do you lovemost about the Hartford region, either working
here, living here, spending timehere. I'm looking who wants to go
on the hot seat first, Beth, I'm gonna throw you there. Yeah,
Hartford is Harvard changed the trajectory ofmy life. I was an adult
student at Trinity College, which changedeverything for me. Actually failed out of
college twice before I went back toTrinity, and then I ended up teaching

(28:26):
there. So yeah, it's acool story. I'll tell you another time.
But so I love Trinity. Ialso have taught a lot of different
organizations here, from Recapture, theMark Twain House, Harvard Use Scholars,
so so many, so many greatpeople here in the Hartford area. One
of the things I loved about workingin the nonprofit industry here is how involved

(28:49):
businesses are with with the all thenonprofits across the boards, and what a
great and tight community it is.I mean, I'm still connecting with the
folks that I met down here,and part of the reason I'm back here
is because I really think this wouldbe a great product for an amazing city,
so perfect. I like it,Mary, how about you? Well,
Actually I'm originally from Buffalo, NewYork, which is funny because I

(29:11):
wasn't gonna say so. This isfull circle, full circle. But I
went to school in Massachusetts and thenI picked Hartford actually for jobs, and
because it was between New York andBoston. It was a good spot for
me to raise a family. SoI love the Hartford area. We made
this our home so fantastic. Nicehow about you, Aaron. I came
here almost thirty years ago and formy first job out of college, and

(29:34):
I've been here ever since. AndI would call Hartford I live in Hartford,
I work in Hartford. I wouldcall Hartford the land of opportunity and
community. I think we need toclose on that said, I could not
have ever said that better myself.So thank you all again so much for
being on the show today. Wereally appreciate it. Thank you Kate of
course, of course, and forall the details about today's show, you

(29:56):
can visit metro Hartford dot com.We'd like to say thank you to our
partner, oh Kill, and ofcourse thanks to you for listening. And
last but not least, thanks toJenn Acoustie, my colleague who's here.
I've been taking great videos of photos, so if you do see things on
social media, it's all because ofJen. So go out and make today
a good day here in Connecticut.Thanks so much for listening.