Building Collegiate Sports IT from the Ground Up – J.P. Williams, Texas Tech Athletics

This transcript has been transcribed by Riverside.fm, no edits (please excuse any errors)

Sean Callanan (00:01.218)
Very happy to welcome a good friend of mine, J.P. Williams. He's the Assistant Athletic Director of IT at Texas Tech Athletics. J.P., welcome to the podcast.

J.P. Williams (00:10.703)
Thank you for having me, Sean. I'm glad to be here.

Sean Callanan (00:13.74)
Not a problem at all, not a problem at all. As I always do, I always like to dive into people's sports business origin story. What about yourself? How did you find yourself in the world of sports business?

J.P. Williams (00:24.729)
Yeah. the grace of God is probably the easiest way to explain that. I, yeah. No, no. Yeah. I was actually an inside salesperson for a durable medical equipment company and they laid us all off and someone gave me a chance, as a programmer and I'd never done programming before. And that was across campus on Texas tech. I went to Texas tech. I've got a master's in sport management.

Sean Callanan (00:29.614)
But that's not an interesting podcast. If we just sort of just do that and move on.

J.P. Williams (00:54.533)
And so Texas Tech is home for me, but that was a huge evolution within. I've never been a programmer before. I learned how to do it. was something that put food on the table for my family. It helped me.

Sean Callanan (01:08.238)
So, I mean, as a former programmer, you can date yourself with whatever language you were coding in at the time. What did you learn? What did you have to code in?

J.P. Williams (01:14.98)
Yes, sir.

So I learned through C-Sharp. Not terribly old by any means. I've only been doing this for probably about seven, eight years now. But from there, opportunity struck and I was able to grow within that department. And after a few years there, I was the head of the IT department and a colleague across campus calls me and he's like, hey man, I'm leaving athletics.

Sean Callanan (01:21.966)
There you go.

Sean Callanan (01:28.269)
Mm-hmm.

J.P. Williams (01:46.531)
this is where you need to be. And I…

Sean Callanan (01:49.174)
So you're on the, if I say the pure college side and from in the admin and in the programming and tech ops and that kind of thing on the, guess the traditional campus side, not part of the athletics team.

J.P. Williams (01:52.045)
Yes,

J.P. Williams (02:04.997)
Yes, sir. I was in operations division, which is going to be like your blue collar workers, all of your plumbers, your carpenters, your trades people that work there. we built applications and managed data within what they did there. So then come 2022, was, I received that phone call and I was like, you're right, man. Athletics is where I want to be. This is where I've always wanted to be. Hence the master's degree in sport management. IT was

Sean Callanan (02:19.372)
Okay.

J.P. Williams (02:34.445)
just a random thing that kind of fell into my lap in a time of need. So we've evolved and here we are.

Sean Callanan (02:42.744)
So what's the, mean, obviously, IT is a backbone and a support for a lot of businesses and sport is one of them. And obviously, college campuses needs a whole bunch of IT infrastructure. What are some of the differences between, I guess, the campus IT infrastructure you need to make sure that the campus runs smoothly to what the athletics department needs?

J.P. Williams (02:48.783)
Mm-hmm.

J.P. Williams (03:07.811)
Yeah. The biggest thing is I'm going to say, and I will tell this to anyone on campus, we move at a different pace in athletics. We have 15 sports. have nine competition venues that we operate. Only two really large ones, but we do anything from desktop support within the athletics department to

on a game day supporting anything technology with the exception of broadcast. have an exceptional broadcast team here that handles all our Jumbotrons and things like that, anything else technology based, we're, handling that on a game day.

Sean Callanan (03:44.62)
And so it's a combination of that pure IT support, like you said, making sure the computer's running, that kind of stuff. But then also into that high performance, like supporting the coaches and what the athletes need and how there's been a long and strong uplift in IT and what's required there.

J.P. Williams (03:49.828)
Mm-hmm.

J.P. Williams (04:02.809)
Yes, sir. As well as our fans, you know, what, what are our fans looking for on game day? Are our point of sales working for our concessionaire? in our new south end zone facility, we've got fan facing wifi in our premium areas. So anything and everything that revolves around technology and sport, then we've got our hand in it in some way, or form.

Sean Callanan (04:26.327)
So that's a really wide remit for the department. does the, what does, cause you know, if you look at it from a pro team, there'll be people who are supporting from a stadium point of view and that's the stadium and the fan engagement piece. Like you talked about, pause and wifi and those kinds of things, but then also the high performance piece. What does your IT department look like to support all those different functions?

J.P. Williams (04:38.554)
Yes,

J.P. Williams (04:47.617)
So I am the head of the department. I've got two associate directors of IT that are technician-based roles. And then I've got an associate director of information systems that's going to do our data analytics and programming, things like that. And that is our department.

Sean Callanan (05:06.221)
I mean, that was what I was leading to. It's like everyone talks about department, but there's a lot of jobs and a lot of people. So it's really must be an environment like, and you've learned yourself where you can stretch yourself. You do get hands-on. If you're a hands-on learner, it's a great place to learn because there's so many opportunities there.

J.P. Williams (05:07.909)
Yes, sir.

J.P. Williams (05:24.004)
sir.

Most definitely. And I like to lead by example. So I'm never going to let my guys go out and do something new without me being there. I want to be able to help figure that out so that we're not just throwing someone to the fire. we had a new guy start on August 18th and that's about two weeks out from our first football game. I was like, man, I'm sorry to do this to you, but you're going to be drinking from a fire hose for the next two weeks.

Sean Callanan (05:52.82)
And again, from a leadership and a management point of view, how do you get someone ready for that? Because it is, it's like, know, game day in all sports from, you know, the requirements and you can't move a date. You can't say, sorry, we're going to have a two hour delay on fixing that when kickoff is going to happen. How do you prepare staff for, I guess, the manic nature and the high pressure that sports IT has?

J.P. Williams (06:03.695)
Mm-hmm.

J.P. Williams (06:13.722)
Mm-hmm.

J.P. Williams (06:21.701)
You know, when I hire someone, I'm hiring for a personality. so I want that person to be personable and they can talk to people in a normal, normal language that everyone will understand. So that whenever we go out, you know, if it's a high pressure situation, that, that personality, they're not going to be overwhelmed. That's something else we look for. so we do as much prep as we can. We have,

Microsoft checklist that we use to check and make sure we've done everything we can. And even if we do everything we can, there is going to be something that's gone wrong. But if we've done our job right on a game day, I get to sit there and twiddle my thumbs with my guys. So.

Sean Callanan (07:09.493)
Yep, absolutely. it is it is that I guess preparation is the best method, but also that, like that bit of communication as a former geek myself, and that's where I excelled being able to talk to the business and translate the geek like that ability, you know, geeks now, I think it's a mandatory requirement, but you have to be able to communicate and what you want to do.

J.P. Williams (07:32.409)
Yes, sir. Most definitely. That's we've got head coaches that call us directly and we've got to be able to explain to them why X, Y, and Z is happening. because we are a state entity, so we have to follow all the rules of the state of Texas, that they've set forth for data integrity, security, everything like that.

Sean Callanan (07:52.151)
So you've introduced there that Texas Tech. Tell us for those who might not know, I know my listeners in the US would know Texas Tech, but give us a little bit of understanding of Texas Tech as a school and then also from an athletics point of view.

J.P. Williams (08:05.145)
Yeah, Texas tech. We're located in Lubbock, Texas. is West Texas and it's about the only thing out here. so out here we've got Texas tech sports and that is the majority of entertainment that is in Lubbock. mean, majority of our fans come from over 250 miles away to see our events. And with our nine sports, we, that's, that's how we keep people entertained and

Texas Tech is very rooted in tradition and history while we are not the oldest university in the universe. Our football team just celebrated 100 years. So we've got all of that that has been culminating this year with the introduction of NIL and everything else that has been changing with the collegiate landscape. We're actually number five in the nation as we speak today.

headed to the big 12 championship for the first time this weekend. And then ideally we'll be in the college football playoff here in a couple of weeks. So.

Sean Callanan (09:12.684)
I mean, amazing effort again from location and the program. did want to, you mentioned the NIL, Name Image Likeness, which is a big game changer for the NCAA in the fact that there's opportunities for the athletes to be compensated for their name image likeness and usage. And obviously that is a new requirement and would come with a whole bunch of governance and IT infrastructure. What have been some of the things that you've had to…

J.P. Williams (09:20.409)
Mm-hmm.

J.P. Williams (09:34.319)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Callanan (09:41.789)
implement and look after in rolling out that, I guess that change and that new phase of college athletics.

J.P. Williams (09:50.169)
Yeah, so something really unique that we do is we provide a device for every student athlete. So we have 450 student athletes, give or take, depending on the year. And we've got Dell laptops that we provide them. That's probably one thing that has impacted us is getting those distributed. It's a large workload every semester.

Other than that, we've helped oversee some of the application deployments or building applications and processes for the name image likeness piece for our student athletes.

Sean Callanan (10:27.306)
Yep. And then from a, and then you've got the rest of the team that is actually working on the commercialization of that and how that gets facilitated and reporting. And I'm sure that is something that's a growing requirement for you and your team.

J.P. Williams (10:40.665)
Yes, sir. It's ever changing. So we are working day by day with different partners to see what data we can bring in to make sure that we're providing the information that we can to our higher ups.

Sean Callanan (10:55.99)
And that was my next question. With a small and lean and really capable team, you obviously lean on partners and tools to do some of that heavy lifting. What do you look for when you're looking for a partner and tool that you want to work with?

J.P. Williams (11:11.417)
have results in communication, man. mean, we've had partners in the past where we could have meetings over and over and over, but nothing's getting done. So one of our current data analytics partners that we use, PacIQ, subsidiary of PacEOLAN, PacEOLAN's our ticketing system, man, they're awesome. We meet with them every week.

Sean Callanan (11:22.465)
Yep.

J.P. Williams (11:37.241)
We talk about, here's what we're looking for. Here's what data we'd like to be modeled based on everything that we have right now. And they're going to have ideas from what they've seen at other universities as well. So they can ask us, hey, what do you think about this? And it's like, yes, you have that experience that we didn't know we were looking for. So that's probably the main two things is that communication and the results.

Sean Callanan (12:03.946)
And is, are you an inquisitive person when looking for, I guess, new fresh solutions, like being open to, hey, this is what someone else is doing, or, you know, hey, JP, have you thought of this? Is it something that you want to adopt and sort of bring into your team as quickly as possible?

J.P. Williams (12:23.459)
Yes, sir. Most definitely. You know, that's one reason why I love the seat conferences, because you get to go out and you get to talk to people and make those connections. What are you doing? What, what can we do better? What can we learn from other sports teams, other universities, other professionals that they know what to do better than we do? You know, technology in West Texas has its struggles. It was difficult to get away from the paper ticket there for a little while.

So it's a COVID helped that along. I was before my time, thankfully, but just being able to go out and see what other people are doing is, you know, I can't even put words to it to say how instrumental that is into what we do here.

Sean Callanan (13:11.742)
And was that something that was sort of in your, I guess, back pocket or some of your drive in looking for when you've recently had some facility upgrades, were they things that you want to sort of dive in on some of those projects? Were they some of those things that go, I'm going to take some of those learnings from my conversations or friends in the community that have done either similar sized venues or how can I adapt what has been done at a super sized venue that's not in my ballpark, but what's

J.P. Williams (13:39.749)
Yep.

Sean Callanan (13:41.226)
what's a Texas Tech sized implementation of that project.

J.P. Williams (13:46.085)
Yeah, absolutely. So as you speak about it, we just, we're in year two, I guess now of our Womble football center and our south end zone facility. It's a $250 million renovation project, which for us is massive, right? We tore the buildings down, connected them by sky bridge. The Womble football center marries up to our sports performance center, making this the largest contiguous collegiate athletic facility in the nation.

So with that, mean, it was like week one on the job and I was tossed in and said, all right, we need you to review this and figure out what you like, what you don't like. And it was definitely some growing pains of I come from across campus where, you know, we don't have that, that leverage. We don't have that freedom to do all that. Cause money is definitely tighter on campus. Like, well, we want this to be their premier facility.

And what does that look like? And not just the premier facility in West Texas. We want this to be just amazing. Any, a recruit walks in or a family walks in or a guest walks in that they're just wowed at what Texas tech is and has.

Sean Callanan (15:02.059)
So part of that is obviously the look and the feel and the finish, you know, and the all like the, just the grand nature of the size of the facility you're talking about. But then also some of a lot of IT is unseen, but like required, you know, I know in many years we've talked at SEAT, like, you know, all the really cool tech is hidden and no one knows, but they know when it's not there. So what was some of the, and you know, there's lots of options in, hey, what can we roll out from it?

J.P. Williams (15:17.561)
Yeah.

J.P. Williams (15:25.124)
Yes, sir.

Sean Callanan (15:31.147)
tech point of view, how did you start making those choices of, is a, you know, this is absolutely required. Oh, this is the shiny thing that's going to impress people. And obviously you've got to juggle that all in a budget that you've got, you know, you don't have an unlimited amount of money. It might be different to the normal campus, but like, how did you balance that piece?

J.P. Williams (15:32.495)
Mm-hmm.

J.P. Williams (15:45.529)
Yes, sir.

Yeah, you you want your technology for everyone to just work. Our job is making sure that technology doesn't stand in the way of others doing their job. Right. We want everything to just be seamless integration. Of course, you're not going to see the wireless access point that's painted black on the ceiling, but you walk into our subterranean south end zone field club and you have Wi-Fi, you have cellular service, you've got everything you need. You've got

40 TVs on the wall with every different game. So when it came to the value engineering piece, it's, know, where do we pull certain things that we can make sure that we're still providing a high end product.

Sean Callanan (16:35.657)
Yep. And then how much of it is also, you can roll out the tech, you know, if people, know, a lot of people, myself included, never read the manual, right? And so you roll out the tech and, and if your coaches and your athletes don't know how to use the tech, then it's not getting maximized. How did you go through that process, either working with your coaching staff and your high performance staff to say, Hey, this is what we're rolling out, why we're rolling out, and this is the benefit for you.

J.P. Williams (17:03.429)
Make it as simple as possible. Because that's what I would want someone to do for me. Not because of coaching staff or anything like that. I feel like we've got a really intelligent coaching staff. And how can we make their life easy with this new integration? know, something else we threw at them is, you're moving, you're already going to be gone for two weeks. Let's get your computers over to Windows 11. So when you go into this new building, you've got a new computer, a new operating system.

less all of this new technology. We're just going to walk through it all at once together and there will be growing pains and you're going to call me at 10 p.m. some night but that's okay. That's what we're here for. That's why we have jobs, right?

Sean Callanan (17:44.637)
Absolutely. So, I mean, that's obviously you did discuss their year two, like it's obviously a long project. What's what's in the future plans for, you know, those continuing upgrades?

J.P. Williams (17:57.795)
You know, we are right now just going through what NIL looks like. Collegiate athletics is in a unique state where we don't really have anything on the docket for our project timelines or that I know of, I guess I should say. But with the South End Zone, we just finished our regular season home football schedule here. And I will say it was much kinder to us than year one.

You know, our south end zone in year one with it being open, we got our certificate of completion the day before the football game. And it was an adventure, a lot of learning and a lot of teaching and a lot of moving parts on day one.

Sean Callanan (18:36.116)
Okay.

Sean Callanan (18:46.763)
But again, like many in the IT space, it's a date that doesn't move. You wanna take the learnings and minimise the impact both on your athletes and also your fans, but to still get the result.

J.P. Williams (18:53.381)
Okay.

J.P. Williams (19:01.753)
Yes, sir. Yeah. And we are blessed to have a great video team for our football department that is right there in the weeds with us. When it came to this new technology, you know, we're learning it together. How do we make it work? How do we show it to the coaches? How do we teach the coaches, teach the athletes, you know, how do they connect their phone to the Bluetooth in their lounge or,

How do they use their podcast room that they have up in the student athlete or the football lounge? So just different things left and right.

Sean Callanan (19:35.383)
So that's the thing you're also working with, like you said, you've got a video team that runs the game day and the operations, and you've got a different broadcast team, and then you'll have the sports information team that's producing all the content and covering the games. Again, that's part of your remit to be able to support them, make sure that they can do their job, but then also have the tools to be able to talk to the Texas Tech fans.

J.P. Williams (19:49.54)
Yes, sir.

J.P. Williams (19:59.94)
Yeah, absolutely. And we've got one of the best social media teams in the world. You can go find them online, anything, Texas tech everywhere. They go by create six because our, you know, our phone code here is eight six. So, but they put out some content like I've never seen. It's really amazing. Our big Adidas reveal back in July of last year.

Sean Callanan (20:16.555)
Okay.

J.P. Williams (20:29.463)
was unprecedented the numbers that we did on the Texas Tech Socials.

Sean Callanan (20:36.382)
Absolutely. And one of the things that has, you know, has always been a long, I guess, IT requirement is making sure that your fans that are there can consume that content if they're at the game, but then also like post their own content. You know, now we're seeing more and more, you know, people pulling out their phones, whether it's the, you know, the run out, the, you know, a touchdown score or the celebration. Again, that, I guess, requirement on wifi and Daz to be able to do it.

J.P. Williams (20:52.549)
Yes, sir.

Sean Callanan (21:06.25)
how much of you had to look at and upgrade those facilities to make sure that your fans have access to a they want and need in accessing their phones, but then also it helps spread the message for Text2Tech.

J.P. Williams (21:06.488)
sir.

J.P. Williams (21:20.943)
Yes, sir. So with the, you know, introduction of our new south end zone facility, AT &T also came alongside and they revamped our DAS. So we had the first true 5g in Lubbock, Texas. And something that is on my wish list is whole stadium wifi, in venue wifi. We've only got it in our south end zone right now. I'm not going to say how good or bad.

It is on a game day, we definitely would love to have that whole stadium Wi-Fi to really increase our fan experience and make it to where if we wanted to do some augmented reality or anything like that to tie into their phone, that supercomputer that they have in their hands, that would be amazing.

Sean Callanan (22:10.796)
And the thing is you've now started to get some of that data at the South end of usage, uplift, all of those kinds of things. So then start talking about what is the business case, you know, for the full stadium, you know, what the, you know, what the fan satisfaction survey is staying at one end of the stadium to the other end of the stadium. That's all the data that you're currently collating.

J.P. Williams (22:14.788)
Mm-hmm.

J.P. Williams (22:28.057)
Yes, Yep, that's correct. You know, being a state entity, we are unique that all of that network rides on our campus network. So we work with our campus network operations team. We work with our security operations team on campus to make all that work. Whereas, you know, a whole stadium, Wi-Fi, if we were to work with AMP Think or someone like that, then we would likely move to our own circuit and

have a little more, not necessarily freedom, but a little more control over our own Wi-Fi. know, we could capture email addresses or something like that that could then be turned around to our communications and our promotions and things like that.

Sean Callanan (23:16.332)
Absolutely, absolutely. We've sort of talked a little bit about the future and some of the things that are sort of on the horizon. there any particular projects you're either currently working on or, you know, having the pipeline that are really exciting you over the next 12 to 18 months?

J.P. Williams (23:31.662)
Yeah, I mean, I know this is going to sound so weird, I know you've probably been to many of many venues. And one thing that we have started to do here with our concessionaire partner, Oakview Group, is our frictionless experience and how we can get our customers, our guests through our concession stands in a much quicker pace.

Well, we haven't gone with like I-Fi or Amazon Just Walkout. Our concessionaire has created where we have a self-checkout system and we have deployed these things all over the stadium. And it has really increased the time in line for all of our fans and also definitely our revenue on top of that. So we're…

Sean Callanan (24:23.924)
So just the speed and throughput at your concessions because of that change. I mean, I find it fascinating, just small tweaks at concessions, whether it's, you know, changing the menu boards to have less items or things like just making, you know, taking away that friction of I'm tapping on and I'm going through, you know, taking away five to 10 seconds, like when you've got thousands of people in your venue, is there such a game changer?

J.P. Williams (24:28.803)
Yes, sir.

J.P. Williams (24:44.675)
Yes, sir.

J.P. Williams (24:52.363)
It really is. And so that's what we're looking at. We're looking at adding more of those in our football stadium as well as our basketball arena. And how can we make that fan experience just a little bit better by getting them their food and beverages at a quicker pace.

Sean Callanan (25:10.122)
And how many people would be at, just to give people an understanding of the size of the volume, how many people would be at a football game?

J.P. Williams (25:17.859)
Yeah, our football stadium holds 60,000 and then our basketball arena holds 15,000. So we don't have a ton of concourse space. it was the way that our stadium was built is it was built on grade and you know, some years later they decided, we need to make this larger. So they took that and they put it on train tracks and moved it out and then dug down to create the lower bowl.

Sean Callanan (25:34.72)
Mm-hmm.

J.P. Williams (25:47.823)
So that's how we've kept our concourse the same size for many, years. So we have to make do.

Sean Callanan (25:56.951)
And that's thing like the older stadium designs, as you said, sort of that had smaller concourses that didn't have that wider space for activations or pop-up concessions really makes, I guess, customer flow and having people know where to go. And again, those time savings, they begin, because it's a far cheaper thing to solve than, we need to build a new stadium or widen the concourse. Like the construction cost is phenomenal.

J.P. Williams (26:05.882)
Mm-hmm.

J.P. Williams (26:23.97)
Exactly.

Sean Callanan (26:26.206)
Are you looking at some of those, I guess, they might seem small wins, but they become big wins in aggregate?

J.P. Williams (26:34.059)
Exactly. Yeah. You know, we take a belly up concession stand that, you know, the lines are perpendicular to the stand and we take the line and we run it through the stand instead. And it's a parallel line and we create concourse space, which, you know, our fire marshal loves that, but we're also getting people through there at a much quicker pace. So that's, that's the biggest thing is maybe it, makes our bathroom line a little bit nicer as well. So.

Sean Callanan (26:52.598)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Callanan (27:04.7)
Absolutely. But it's also, yeah, I mean, the good thing about having a fan base that keeps turning up, you would have a lot of regulars, they would have a certain pattern to what they need to do. So it's just like this is that again, that education tweet to say, this is what frictionless looks like, or this is how we've know, this is why we've done this change. And once those types of fans understand it, like they adopt pretty quickly, and it can be pretty smooth. But that education teething piece is pretty important.

J.P. Williams (27:30.201)
Exactly.

J.P. Williams (27:34.362)
Yes, sir. Absolutely. know, whenever we rolled out our first walkthrough concession stand, we had plenty of people there working to show them how you do this. Here's how you approach it. Here's the new entrance. Here's everything you need to know about this stand to make your life easier and just educate them. Just educate however we can to our fans to make their experience the best that it can be.

Sean Callanan (28:04.428)
Absolutely, absolutely. Well, JP, I really do appreciate you coming on the podcast. I hope there's a way that I can come to a Red Raiders game at some point and sort of get it in my schedule. I want to get to the Sports Geek Closing Five. Do you remember the first sports event you ever attended?

J.P. Williams (28:10.533)
Yes, sir.

J.P. Williams (28:20.293)
Yes, sir.

J.P. Williams (28:24.005)
Yeah. Um, the first sports event I attended was actually a motor sports event. was the NHRA fall national drag races. Um, when I was very young, probably 10 or 11 years old.

Sean Callanan (28:32.832)
Okay.

Sean Callanan (28:37.836)
Absolutely terrific. We were there talking about concessions. You would have been to a lot of different sports events in your time. Do you a favourite food or a favourite go-to food or a favourite food memory at a sports event?

J.P. Williams (28:49.987)
Yes, sir. So my go-to food being from West Texas, being from Texas in general is going to be barbecue. If someone has a good barbecue sandwich or a good barbecue option, I'm there.

Sean Callanan (28:56.406)
Yep.

Sean Callanan (29:02.7)
I concur with that as I've been lucky enough to be to Texas a few times and the barbecue in Texas is well and well and truly worth the trip. What's the first app you open in the morning?

J.P. Williams (29:10.841)
Yes, sir.

J.P. Williams (29:16.611)
That for me is going to be either local news if there's something that's popped up overnight or it's going to be Twitter. I refuse to call it X. It's still Twitter no matter what Elon Musk says.

Sean Callanan (29:30.895)
I'm with you. It's looking less and less like Twitter most days, but yeah, I still call it Twitter because it doesn't make sense to call it X. Is there someone that you follow? They might be someone that still is on Twitter or it might be an author or a colleague that you follow that the podcast listeners should give a follow on why.

J.P. Williams (29:37.988)
Yes, sir.

J.P. Williams (29:49.636)
Yeah, absolutely. So this was someone that a professor recommended to me in college. It's McCann Sports Law. This guy, Michael McCann, he just does sports law. It's really intriguing to me to see everything that he covers in the world of sports and how it pertains to everything that we're doing these days.

Sean Callanan (29:57.812)
Okay, yep.

Sean Callanan (30:08.843)
Absolutely, and I think there's more and more things that have that overlap with the law, sometimes good, sometimes bad, so it's always good to keep an eye on those kind of things. Lastly, and you can answer this however way you want, but what social media platform is your MVP?

J.P. Williams (30:17.242)
Yes,

J.P. Williams (30:27.823)
For me, it's going to be Twitter for sports news and then Instagram for let's call it brain rot. You know, you just want to sit on the couch and decompress for a little bit and see what's going on. Instagram's my go to.

Sean Callanan (30:36.181)
Yeah

Sean Callanan (30:41.927)
Absolutely, absolutely. I think there's potential that those two could be swapped. Like you can get a lot of brain rot on X these days, but I completely understand. I can understand your point there where you just want to tune out and you want to catch up with your friends and what's happening. So makes perfect sense. JP, what is the best way for, I always ask listeners to reach out, say thank you. What is the best platform for people to reach out and say thank you on?

J.P. Williams (30:47.215)
Yeah. That's true. That's true.

J.P. Williams (30:57.519)
Yes, sir.

J.P. Williams (31:06.681)
Yeah, it'll be Twitter X as well. I'm fortunate. heard your podcast with David Jones. was one of the early adopters. So my handle is at JP Williams to number two.

Sean Callanan (31:19.499)
Yep. Two because you're the second one or is the number two significant?

J.P. Williams (31:22.285)
Yes, sir. I am the second JP Williams in my family.

Sean Callanan (31:28.097)
there you go. Exactly. Well, that's fine. Again, you're part of the club like myself that has my name, has my handle. Thank you very much for coming to the pod. Look forward to catching up with you next time in your part of the world. Most likely we'll be at SEAT. So, thanks very much.

J.P. Williams (31:35.225)
Yes, sir.

J.P. Williams (31:42.661)
Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.