first thing i want to talk to you about is what is this thing called holland in bloom because frankly i've i think if i were not involved in it i wouldn't know what it is i would not have any idea what was going on with this program i think really holland in bloom is one of the most important programs going on in the city of holland that most people have never heard about it is a local branch of a national program called america in bloom in really to get an idea of what it is and what we do we got to go all the way back to the beginning to two thousand and nine when steve sweep our city park supervisor who's sitting in the back there was reading through a magazine called the grower talk which is exactly what you want your park supervisor to be reading is grower talk magazine and he saw an advertisement for this program called america in bloom so he and shelley degrees the city's green house operator and a woman by the name of pat gras guy who's the past president of the house and garden club met that your to discuss whether or not this would be a program that holland might be very good at when they got involved and so they met over the course of the year into the spring of two thousand and ten they went to city council because it's a city run program and they got permission from the city council to enter and they spent the rest of that your organizing they sent in an application in the fall of two thousand and two thousand and ten and in the summer of two thousand and eleven we were actually officially in the program and really what attracted steve and the other initial members of the program to america in bloom is really what its core functions are in its core mission are american bloom is a national awards program designed to help communities create an environment of continuous improvement and that's a really important thing to keep in mind it's can it's all about continuous improvement wow showcasing the communities best efforts it's a quality of life improvement program it's designed to help develop both beautification and economic improvement it enhances cities and it also helps us build pride of place and how it is really a place that's got a lot of pride anyway but we want to make sure that that's instilled throughout the community and that we're trying to constantly keep that pride going in the community it's also not only is it just a quality of life program but it is also a community improvement program it's designed to make the community more appealing by having more citizens involved in the different things that are going on in the community and it's a collaborative effort to beautify and to improve our town by getting residents involved in different beautification efforts it's also and this is my favorite part of it it's a friendly competition communities of similar population size compete against one another for different awards different award categories and we'll be talking about those in a little bit but that really helps build enthusiasm and helps keep guys like me excited in a program like this year  and also one of the one of the things that a lot of people overlook is this is a really valuable tool for a community because what it does is it gives us the opportunity to do an intense survey of the community on an annual basis and get a wonderful report from a couple of experts on things that we're doing well and things that we might be able to improve in our community and so for howard it's been all of those things in the years that we've been involved and we've been involved now for six years and it's a it is definitely a island tulip time we've had the garden club involved and then you've got a guy like me and you go how does he fit into this whole thing who is this guy that's up here talking about this i'm the guy who drove the short straw at the meeting to be able to talk to you about this but what got me involved well i'm just a small town lawyer ok i don't know and i don't know anything about flowers i don't know anything about gardening that's not why i'm involved in this program i actually got involved in this process by accident in two thousand and eleven i had just opened a brand new office drive and one day i was walking in the in the summer of two thousand and eleven and there's a little door hanger hanging on my outside door and it said we're going to be having a couple of judges coming through your neighborhood next week and they're looking at how beautiful our community is and they're going to be judging on the judging us on that so would you please clean up your property and make it look as nice as possible and i thought so i looked around i went well ok i guess so and i'm the i'm the kind of guy who likes to take advantage of a marketing opportunity if i can and i knew i had a new office i knew that there was this thing that could be going on so i actually invited people to come to an open house at my office the afternoon that the judges were going to be coming through so that we could wave to them as they went by because one of the things that it said is community involvement participation is a big deal in this thing i thought well try to see if i can get some community people involved  and what i didn't realize is they stopped the judges stopped at my office on the tour took pictures that's a little sliver of my office there and you can see there are lots of flowers that have that are blooming on the outside of of it they took all kinds of pictures of it they stop and talk to me about the things that had done in my office because a lot of the space between my building and the street is just asphalt because most winters it snows here in holland michigan and so they need to plow that in the winter time but it's awfully ugly in the summer so i put big planners out what i didn't realize the year that i did that i put those planners out there for me so that i had something to look at those have become the best marketing tool i have ever had i get more business because i have beautiful flower pots in front of my office than i do for anything else that i do and once i discovered that that sold me on this kind of community improvement community beautification project i continued to be involved because then came to my office later in the later in the year and said hey you want to get involved and be on the committee on this thing and i said to him what i'm telling me saying to you now is i don't know anything about gardening i don't know anything about trees i don't know anything about that at all i'm just a small town businessman and he said that's exactly the kind of person that we want to evolved in this in this program so that's how i got involved in in this so how does this work for us and there's a there's a real set pattern there's a real set process in how this works every year american bloom itself is an independent nonprofit organization they want to help us improve the community they want to have help us make the the our communities better by promoting this national competition they do it so that it promotes community it promotes beautification it an approach scuse me it promotes a sense of civic pride their vision is that they want communities across the country to be as welcoming and vibrant as they possibly can be so they're great places to live to work and to play and by doing that everybody in the community gets to benefit from the colorful plants and trees they get to enjoy clean environments and they get to celebrate their heritage and plant pride through volunteer ism again they're trying to make places beautiful places great places to live and try to get people involved in their communities and so through that nationwide beautification effort there educating people there educating communities and they're helping people become more involved in that  and so what they do is every year to judge consultants come to come to town and take a look at a lot of different aspects of the community and we compute and we compete as holland against computer communities of similar size so how are we judged well when the judges come they are evaluating us on four different sectors of the community it's the this is a city run program but it's not just about the things that the city is doing city how it does a fantastic job in keeping its parks looking great and keeping the public areas looking great but they are also looking at what commercial businesses are doing so that's why they stopped at my office that's why we have judges going to places like hayworth and herman miller and other businesses in the community to show the kind of efforts that they're making they're also looking at residences so you as individual property owners in the city of holland may be called upon some day to be a stop along the tour if you've got a great garden we want you to know i'm getting it i'm getting a shake up in the front row now i come in and i have another come to my house but but that individual participation is also very important and then they're looking at the community involvement aspect of it how is the community involved in what's going on in the in the greater picture for the city and then with those four different sectors they look at six different six to six different areas and if you're reading down that list you're going how does this lawyer guy get involved in any of will displace ok they're looking at yes i have flown flowers in front of my office so that made them made them happy but they're looking at beds and containers and baskets and window boxes and how they're arranged and how original they are and their distribution and their location and their diversity and their balance and they've got all of these different criteria that they're looking at how are we displaying flowers in the city of holland and so of course we have them come during tulip time right you know they're coming in late july early august ok the judging is done in mid to late summer so we don't have the opportunity to have them here and see us during what is our peak time of the year as far as i'm concerned they're looking at floral displays they're looking at landscape areas and again this this small town lawyer went what's the difference between a floral display and a landscape area landscape area is the use of turf and native plants an essential anything else that you're going to be doing in your in your soft scape in my saying that right steve yeah steve give me about yes steve give me an out of that anything that's not necessarily flowers and how will the there's the balance of that material how well it's kept up because it's not a matter of just planting it you have to maintain it  you have to water it you have to make sure that that's done well next urban forestry again who knew there was such a thing as urban forestry but they want to know what we're doing with our trees how well we are managing those trees have we done a tree inventory how many of you have done a tree inventory ok no i had never heard i'd never heard of such a thing as a tree inventory either but communities go and count the number of trees they have the type of trees they have how those trees are doing they look at how you manage replacing trees one of the issues that we've had two issues that we had related to the urban forestry since i've been involved in the project one is i think it was the second year of the program about a week before the judges were going to come into town we had a major windstorm and that major windstorm knocked down a bunch of our what we refer to as heritage trees big huge one hundred plus year old trees just got mowed down by the wind storm we used how we were managing that to our advantage when the judges came the other issue that we've had since i've been involved in the program is the emerald ash for issue that we've had to remove a lot of trees because of emerald ash bore we've actually gotten points in the program on how we have dealt with removing those trees and replacing them so that we've still got we still have trees involved in in holland michigan environmental efforts is one where we have done really really well done a phenomenal job of helping us with environmental efforts they're looking at our sustainability practices they're looking at how we do with recycling sustainable development strategies so how we're doing with our construction projects and our development projects so it's not just about flowers and plants and trees it's about what we're doing with buildings it's about what we're doing with roads we had a one of our big project ideas a couple of years ago was the snow melt system and how that snow melt system works and all of the advantages that there are to the community and that snow melt system has nothing to do with flowers has nothing to do with trees but has to do with making this a more livable community for people there looking at how we're how we're doing in reducing our carbon footprint or leed certification whether we're doing things like rain gardens and rain barrels and they're also looking at things like our youth programs and then heritage preservation one of the reasons why we're here and why we've come to come to the museum and dealt with other heritage programs that are going on we've been out we've been at the compound house we've been out it been roll to farm with the judges we've obviously been to windmill island and shown the windmill the repair of the windmill is one of our big ideas  recent years and how that project came together in terms of the community effort to get the fund raising done the idea that it was important enough project to spend the amount of money that we did to preserve that piece of heritage in our community and the benefits that ultimately come to the community because of something like that and then the last one overall impression or what used to be called tightness ok how is a clean neat city one of the things that i do in addition to being a lawyer in addition to being part of this is i'm a tour guide for the tulip time festival i get on the motor coaches with the you know fifty or sixty little old ladies who are here from akron ohio who want to spend a half a day and how and see what's going on and one of the things that i hear from them over and over again is what a phenomenally clean place this is how neat everything looks how tightly everything works and it's not just whether the trash is picked up but it's whether or not we deal with graffiti issues which we do have and how  and it's not a matter of whether you have them or not it's what do you do about them how do you deal with that how do you prevent it how do you remediation when that when that issue comes and how do we deal with our open spaces how do we deal with things like our boulevard strips picture south washington in the historic district what we do down south washington we've got beautiful flowering trees in the middle of those boulevards during tulip time we have to it's planted we don't just let the too upset die and go away we replace those with annual that scores  lot of points in a competition like this one that's great for the competition but that's also wonderful for all of us i don't have to get on washington avenue to get anywhere that i need to go usually in holland but i find myself going down there because it makes it that much of a nicer place to go they're also looking at things like the use in placement of garbage cans downtown they're looking at the signage that we have downtown how we're putting up banners how we're putting up signs as i was driving through here today i went down i went down a street and i was reminded as you get to eighth street and river avenue that there are two there two wayfaring science you know you find stuff downtown holland and if you look up from those what are there there sculptures on the top of those two things one of them is immobile on one side and one's kind of a clown face on the other side you don't have to do that that doesn't help with the functionality at all but it certainly makes it a whole lot nicer for us as as residents but it also makes it great for people who come and visit this community and so the judges go and they look at all of those different criteria over the course of two days it is a whirlwind tour it's one of the hardest things that we have to do is figure out how are we going to logistically get them to see as many things as we want them to see over the course of those two days and then they hold themselves up in a hotel room and they make a big a big report for us you can see from the different kinds of things that we're judged on just how well a community like holland might do but before i tell you how we've been doing over the years i want to give you just a little taste think they do a very nice job and of course a lot of nice landscaping in a lot of beautiful floral displays and what's most impressive is that everything is done with quality so i think that sometimes in a community when you have so much planting few years and now they're in the prestige is really circle of champions only about four percent of the communities that are participating in our program achieve that designation  so the judges the comments that the judge just made may have given you an idea of how well we've done in this program over the course of the last six years we look pretty good in this program we have won a five bloomer rating which is the highest rating a city can get six years in a row we have won our population category five out of the last six years we have been recognized for outstanding achievement each and every year we have been involved we' been nominated for we won informal displays twice we have won overall impression that typing this award one time we've won for environmental efforts twice and we've won for historic preservation once  they had to a couple of years ago creating a new category of competition called the circle of champions you heard jack lawson mention that that for communities that have won three or more population and or criteria awards while they've been involved in the program we were one of the first communities entered into inducted into the circle of champions and so now we don't compete with regular communities throughout the country who are our size we only compete with other circle of champions communities the first year of that competition was two thousand and fifteen where they had the circle of champions vs the circle of champions we won again as the champion of the circle of champions communities we in two thousand and fifteen we were asked to host the national symposium for america in bloom a big conference that was held here in october of two thousand and fifteen in prior years that conference had been held in places like philadelphia epcot holland ok shows you what kind of an impression this community has made on this organization over the years and we were recognized as the best community garden program and this past year we were awarded the coolest downtown in the country which i highly agree agree with we have won a combination in order to get in the circle of champions you need to win three the combination of three population and or criteria awards we've won  eleven in the time that we've been involved in just the last six years that we've been involved in the program in the circle of champions there are only fifteen communities nationwide in and out of over two hundred two hundred communities that are involved in this program but for us this is much more than showing off yes i love the competition part i love being able to say to people we're doing really well in this thing they they love us we bring home lots of hardware but it's much more than that we'd be doing it even if the even if there were not those awards that are there because those plaques those trophies those awards are great but our participation has created incredible added value to the community we don't have any way of being able to put an exact dollar number on the money that's come back into the community because of this but we've seen benefits in a lot of different areas we have seen it as a program that helps unite the community through the years our organizational committee has been made up of people from different sectors within the community as i said we've got people from the city we've got people from the chamber we've got people from the c b convention of visitors bureau we've heard college has had a very strong presence you probably saw a lot of hope college images the college has been a very strong presence in this is well to time the board of public works the garden club local businesses in other community minded volunteers have been involved in this program over the years and while that's great for helping us do well in this program we see the benefits of that year round as i said i'm a member of the tulip time board during the week of tulip time i didn't know steve before i got involved in this program i love seeing steve now during the t festival one because a friendly face where i go hey steve can you help us with x y or z and two it has given me insight as a two time board member and how much the city does to benefit to time and if you don't know the city into a time are two completely different organizations to a time and the convention and visitors bureau are two completely different organizations but because we have members we have people who are working on this joint program together we find it helps us work better together year round just as those organizations are out there we have had hundreds of individuals and corporations and other organizations participating in events related to how and in bloom whether they have been guests on our tours like the like the museum has whether we have gone and looked at people's beautiful gardens in their backyards whether they've come and taken pictures of a small office on so short drive we've also had people participate in what is called our blizzards t also found that this program has really helped build civic pride in the community we're trying to get the voice out there more that's one of the reasons why i'm here we're trying to get people to to know more about what's going on but what we have realized as a committee is there is a lot of pride in what's going on in the community and all of those people that are involved in the tour or doing any one of our events are finding out about other things that are going on the computer community we tend to have our own little silos of things that we deal with and we don't often see what's going on outside of those and this is a program that helps shed a light on a lot of those things that might be outside of your traditional silo that's there helena bloom has also helped with tourism efforts as i said howland got to host the two thousand and fifteen national symposium for america in bloom that brought in visitors from around the country people who are on committees like us all came to holland to see what howland is like and took back those images of what holland is like took back the great ideas of the things that we do here back into their own communities and bragged about what a phenomenal place how in michigan is we have found that is bringing tours and dollars back in your community c v s told us there are people who come to visit who say one of the reasons why they're coming to holland michigan it because they heard about how well holland michigan had done in the american boom competition so it's bringing direct tourism dollars in and how a mission or two time was nominated last year for the usa today top flower festival in the country and we won we were nominated for that award by katy moss warner who is the president of american bloom because of what she saw when she was here she said we need this this is a community that deserves an award like this nominated us and got recognition on a national scale simply because we were involved in this competition and in part of the process of hosting the two thousand and fifteen symposium we brought in speakers and experts from around the country to be the ones who are the who are presenting at the conference that was here one of those speakers was a man by the name of michel got to from canada who is the chair of the world tulip summit who knew that such a thing existed their representative to the world tulip summit from the united states which was a little town out in washington that we're not going to talk about wasn't able to make it that year and he loved what he saw in holland michigan and invited holland's tulip time to to become a participant in the world tulip summit and so we were invented we were invited to go to suit your own city south korea i got to go  and present about how in michigan to to look festivals and garden tourism organizations from around the world i got to meet the head of the bouchard gardens i got to meet the head of floria from australia i got to meet the heads of the garden a couple of tulips in istanbul turkey i met all kinds of to look folks from korea because it was it was local there i am now friends with the head gardener at disneyland paris because i spent four days in korea with these folks and they were wow about what our little hauen michigan is able to do we impressed the people from istanbul turkey who do thirty million tulips in the garden of tulips or the carpet of tulips they were more impressed by what we do than by what they do and that's the kind of thing that's going out and that's the kind of the kind of thing that a program like holland and bloom is able to do for for the community and we were by the world to have summit named one of t five to look festivals in the world so it's a fantastic fantastic thing that we're able to get so that increased pride that improvement in tourism that in turn encourages and supports economic development in the community one of the biggest things one of the biggest challenges that your city council has talked about is attracting and retaining high quality talent in the community well what's one of the things that you need in order to attract and retain high quality talent in a great place to live and that's one of the things that how and bloom does is it helps promote it helps in encourage and it helps to showcase what a phenomenal place how it is to live but we only do this for those two days a year ray balor now this is a long process that we are involved in we have wonderful meetings as a group there probably some of the most fun meetings that i get to go to over the over the course of the  month planning for that two day visit is a big piece of what we have to do every year because that is a big logistical issue we also have to present what's called a community profile book ahead of time so the judges get to get a chance to know what it is that they're coming coming to see and also gives us an opportunity to be able to showcase things that we might not be able to show on the tour like to have time for instance but but every year that that book needs to be a little different and the tour needs to be a little different we can't do the same thing every single year we have to make sure that every years tour not only includes the traditional fundamental fantastic things about holland michigan but also about the new things that are happening in the community and new things that have happened since the year before remember this is a continuous improvement program ok they want to see what we've done since the last time they were here they gave us last year a report on all the things that we're doing well and the things that we could be improving upon they'd really like to see some things that we've been improving on over the course of the last year and so we're constantly during the course of the year trying to trying to identify those things trying to make sure more things are happening and trying to get that ready for the next year's judges and they're not always the same judges every year so some but so traditionally we've had different judges every year but now we've been doing it for six years we've had some repeats and we made the mistake in two thousand and fifteen of inviting everybody from america in bloom to holland so every single judge has seen how in michigan already and so we have to make sure we've got a tour that can impress people that have been here before and so that becomes a big issue for us to do as i mentioned we also have a blizzard to bloom contest and we have a contest every summer where we will say to people we want to see the fantastic things that you are doing in planting in holland michigan the communities that we compete against are often times in more temperate zones than than we have if you're not a gardener like me that means there are a warmer climate ok they don't have the harsh winters that we do we competed against communities in florida we competed against communities in california they have much longer growing seasons it's much easier for them to be able to showcase things than it is sometimes for us we've decided to do is to get people involved one to save show us what you're doing and to to be able to show the the the judges hey look what it looks like here in a typical january or february and here's a picture of that garden in january february and here's a picture of what it looks in july what an amazing thing that we're doing here and we've continued that contest year year after year we people are entered entered into that contest yes you may enter the entry forms will be coming out in the springtime and then we send our own judges around to look at those gardens and then we award prizes you get a nice sign in front of your yard the shows that you're a winner and you also get gift certificates to some of the area garden centers as well and then the the what i think initially i thought was an unknown likely successful event has turned out to be one of our most successful and probably best known events and that's our tulip dig that takes place every every year after to look time here's a familiar the fact that there's this big to a festival that takes place right and you're familiar with the fact that the city plants thousands of balls you may or may not be familiar the fact that a lot of those balls are replanted every single year and a lot of the got a lot of the beds that they have the city used to just take a rototiller through after tulip time and they would grind up those two balls and they just became mulch and then they planted a new balls on top of them somebody and i remember exactly who it was had a bright idea and said why don't we try to recycle some of those balls would it be possible to let people go and dig the bulbs out after tulip time and we can sell great idea saves money for the city because in the city workers don't have to do as much people get cheap balls and we're recycling we're hitting like a couple of boxes on the on the category there so we started a few years back and said for ten bucks you may bring a five gallon bucket you may bring as many five gallon buckets as you want to and for ten bucks you can fill that five gallon bucket with tulip bulbs there is nowhere else you can get a five gallon bucket full of two a balls for ten bucks people have been coming not only from the holland area they've come from the state of michigan we've talked to people who have come from as far away as cleveland to come to this people have pinterest pages devoted to this people have come during the to look time festival taken pictures of the tulips that they like mapped out the beds and they come with map in hand the morning that we do this we do this one of the last saturday  may now it varies a little bit depending on how the weather has been and other tulips are doing but this year may twenty eighth something like that a four that's why they keep track of that stuff and if you try it so first saturday in june this year we're planning out first saturday in june and we have to have a shotgun start people will come early and stake out a claim for the tulips that they w last year we sold over five hundred buckets of tulip bulbs that were all recycled that has been a great fundraising opportunity for us so what do we do now we've been doing this for six years we decided we're going to continue to attend the national symposium holland is going to continue to attend the national america in bloom symposium we have started as a community to be a mentor to other communities this past year midland michigan approached us they wanted to get involved in the program we're really sure what to do asked us for some advice steve was wonderful and help them along with some other folks up along with some ideas in terms of what it what do what's required of them in the program what kinds of things can make them successful they were there at the national symposium this this past fall they actually sat at the table next to us in the awards dinner and doggone it they won their population category we were as proud to have been member of mentors for midland as we had ever been for winning on our own and we've seen now that we've we've done so well in this we've we've seen that is maybe a responsibility in a role that we can do and we can do really well in we're to continue to do that to a big that thing is so popular it's taken on a life of its own i think that people would be sorely disappointed if they were not able to continue to do that you're on and we are going to continue to support encourage and showcase the people places and programs in holland that plant pride and that's and that's our motto we're planting pride in our community but after six years in the competition at the national level we've decided we're ready to take the next step we've decided we're we're not going to compete this year in the america in bloom competition not only of the other members of the committee might put it this way i would somebody told me recently that they thought i had the biggest ego of anybody they've ever met in the nicest way possible i like to think of howland in bloom as being the michael jordan of the america in bloom contest we have gotten so good it's really kind of hard to compete against us we actually heard a story a couple years ago that another community was going to get involved in our population category they saw what we had done and said we can't compete with that and decided not to get involved and we don't want to we don't want to be that we don't want to be that we think that our being involved sometimes make me meet making it hard for others to compete and so we've decided it's time for us to move up we're going global ok we were invited to participate in the communities in bloom international competition we're going to be competing with communities from europe communities from canada communities from asia it is a step up for us it's a similar process it's similar criteria so we're going to be able to use what we've done in the past as a template moving forward but it's going to be at a whole nother level of competition and as far as the community is concerned it's a whole nother level of visibility we think that we've done a really good job of showcasing how in michigan to the nation we're ready to showcase holland michigan to the world and if you don't know it already holland michigan is becoming more and more of an international community if you look at the names of the businesses in town ok they are not  corp and johnson controls anymore they are having more international sounding names they are bringing in employees internationally we are starting to do more tourism efforts internationally think of the world to look stomach look time is now on an international stage we want howland to be an international community and we want to be part of showcasing the community that way so that's what we're going to do and the next international symposium is going to be this fall in ottawa canada we have already applied for the international competition we've got judges lined up to come into town this summer for the international judging and we plan on being in ottawa in october to be part of that judging that's go to taking place and just coincidentally the world tulip summit is going to taking place in ottawa in october as well we don't think the dates are going to line up exactly but they're going to be very close and so holland is going to be a presence at both of those things going on in october so watch the press for that it's going to be very exciting what we want from you join us join us join us we are always looking for good people to help us remember this is a community wide collaborative effort we need help with planning and execution we always need good places to go on the tour we need good ideas we've got a great committee we've got a smart committee we've got a committee that has fingers in a lot of the things that are going on in holland but we don't know everything that's going on in holland we would really like you to help us find more things to be able to showcase what are those things that are going on that are that are fantastic things that might fit into this program that we can tell the judges and catch their attention and help us put a spotlight on those things for the rest of the community as well we would also love your money ok we need financial support this is not a free program the city has been very generous in terms of helping us with application fees in allowing their employees to be part of this program because it does cost the city to have steve's weep at these meetings all of the time not all and and there are other organizations that are involved as well as i said hope college has been a great support of the b p w the the convention visitors bureau we get lots of private content private donations as well but we are always running a tight budget it's because we have to pay for the cost of the judges being here we have to pay for meals and those kinds of things that are on the tour jody science is our administrative assistant we could not do this without the administrative help that she was going to make sure this operation runs and we don't expect us to do that for free and with all of these awards that we've been winning at the symposiums around the country the shipping costs are getting outrageous in terms of getting those things back home again and we're going to pay for international shipping this year i'm sure when we go to the international competition we do get a lot of funding also from the to a big but we could always use tell your friends tell your family tell everybody as i said at the beginning of this this is one of the greatest programs in the city of holland that not very many people know about and that's that one of been one of our biggest challenges is getting the word out because what we're doing isn't necessarily things that we're doing we're showcasing other things that are going on in the community we're not necessarily generating generating new activity we're getting we're we're combining or working or we're pulling together all of these different things that are going on in the community and we're we are making sure that other people try to other people get to know know about them i want to thank you for your attention if you guys have questions i would love to answer them but it was a great opportunity for you good for me to be able to share something that i'm pretty passionate about really