AI, OT SCADA Con, and Big Updates: an Automation Ladies Catch-Up

Something shifted for us this year: the more we commit to doing less, the more we’re actually building. Nikki, Courtney, and Allie get together for a real catch-up on work, life, and what’s next for Automation Ladies, with stories that range from bigger robotics and better work-life balance to a brand-new view outside a bayou window in Louisiana.

We also dig into OT SCADA CON and why it keeps feeling more like a community than a conference. OT SCADA CON runs July 22-24 at the Endress+Hauser Houston Campus in Pearland (south of Houston), and we share what’s new this year: fresh speakers, updated sections, the same 30-minute talk format, and the kind of fun that makes people stay late (taco trucks and karaoke included). If you care about operational technology, industrial automation, controls engineering, and modern data skills, you’ll especially want the part about databases and process historians and why that knowledge still runs so much of industry.

Then we get practical about AI in manufacturing. No hype, no magic: we talk about where tools like Claude and OpenAI Whisper are finally saving real time, from generating documentation and polishing write-ups to building a custom raffle app that runs the way we want. We also lay out the guardrails we take seriously: review everything, don’t leak sensitive information, and follow your company AI policy.

We wrap with where you can find us at Automate and other events, how we’re expanding the show with more correspondents, and our push for more live demo episodes (including a PID loop tuning software demo). Subscribe, share this with an automation friend, and leave a review so more people can find women-led conversations in industrial automation.

Transcript

Welcome And Quick Catch-Up

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Automation Ladies, the only podcast we know of where girls talk about industrial automation. Okay, so let's do this. Ladies, welcome to uh episode of Automation Ladies with just Nikki, Courtney, and Allie. Hey y'all. Hi. What's going on? Well, um, quite a lot, I guess. It's it's been a busy year so far. I can't believe it's already April. It's Easter this weekend.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Yeah, I lost track of that myself, actually. I'm used to it being a little bit later in April, and then uh yeah, all of a sudden spring break is upon us.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Yeah, it seems like this year's been going by fast. So uh should we do updates or introductions? Um, I don't know if you're new to the show, hi, we're your hosts, Nikki Gonzalez. Um I think there's introductions though in the in the beginning of the episode, so I don't think that we need to do this. Um why don't we do this? Courtney, since you're below me on the screen, um, do you want to tell us what you've been up to? Anything that you can talk about uh since we last spoke on the on the show?

Bigger Robots And Doing Less

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Yeah, um just a lot of tuning motors and trying to get stuff to move. Um, I'm again just in a different payload world than I'm used to. I've always done smaller robotics, so now I'm doing bigger robotics. And uh the math is the same, it's just the numbers are bigger. So I've been focused on a lot of that stuff um right now. There's exciting things going on at Relativity Space. So if you are interested in joining us, uh there's I don't know, at least 300 positions, I think, open on the careers website. So there's a lot of fun ways to jump in um to be a space nerd.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Very cool. And from what I gather, just being your friend and communicating with you over the last few months seems like a pretty great place to work.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Oh, it's uh, I mean, as far as work-life balance goes, this is probably the best I've ever had. Um, and when I'm at work, it's nice to be at work. There's like snacks and places to go look at green things. Um, and once a day we go and stretch if we want to. So it's just uh it's it's been a different experience. It's like I I've had this awakening where I've been trying to do for like the last seven months or so, like I've been trying to do less. Um, has just been my mantra. It's just do less, and I've been more productive, I think, than I've ever been in my life. So there's a lot to be said about doing less.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Yeah, no, that's a good point. I'm working on that myself, actually. I've been getting better at uh delegating and not thinking that I need to do everything myself. And I think I'm maturing in that sense. And then obviously the biggest exercise in that, I would say, has been growing our team at Automation Ladies and OT SkateCon. Um and so shout out to Veronica, who is in the background here producing this episode, uh, and our two other team members, uh, Mariala and MJ. And it's been a real pleasure to have capable, competent people um that you can trust to get stuff done. And not that we weren't working with capable, competent people before, but it's just like I have not been, I have I think I needed to do some growing in order to be able to effectively manage um or delegate to people. And and so that's been a big part of my growth this year uh as well. Allie, how about you?

SPEAKER_02 3:47

Um, I uh moved from Houston to uh New Iberia, Louisiana, which is south of Lafayette, and uh to follow a boy.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

So it's one of those countries.

A Move To The Bayou

SPEAKER_02 4:01

Um and yeah, I live right on the bayou. I can see a raccoon from outside my window right now, and I think I just saw it catch a rat. That was really scary. Um I didn't know they ate rats. Um I guess they're omnivores, so they'll eat like whatever. Oh yeah. Um but around here there's most all the like um restaurants have like alligator, so that's special. Do you eat the alligator when you go out? I do I have had it. It tastes like chicken. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

I've heard that. I haven't tried it though.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

They just they just make it taste like spices, so tastes like whatever you put on air.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

And is it I could say also that Allie, you have been doing less than you have in the last two years.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

Yes, by a lot. I have been doing a lot less. Um, I'm still working on OT Skatacon though. But um, yeah, that's my main thing that I've been working on.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

So, in case our listeners don't already know, I would say most people that have followed us for a while already know about this. But in case you're new here or for some reason you haven't seen the purple cats, uh, can you tell us about OT Skatacon and what we got going on for this year?

OT Skatacon 2026 Plans And Speakers

SPEAKER_02 5:20

Uh this will be our third year that we're doing OT Skatacon. And uh we just got our first batch of um uh speakers that applied um get selected. And uh we're just we just got our schedule kind of our our pr like preliminary schedule figured out. And um yeah, I'm really excited this year. There's new sections. Uh sections um are the same length, they're 30-minute sections, but there's um different sections and different speakers. Um and we're gonna have a raffle system that is currently being worked on by Courtney Pendant. And uh yeah, we're gonna we're gonna we're still gonna have all the same fun with taco trucks and karaoke. And uh yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited about the new speakers. Um one particular speaker that sticks out is um I've watched him on social media, well, LinkedIn. Um his name is Ricky Sun, and he actually used to work for OSI Pi, and that's like a really highly used historian in oil and gas, and in actual, like in most in a lot of industries, actually, not just oil and gas. But um, he will be speaking about uh databases and process historians, and so I'm excited to see you know uh some new talks that we've not seen before. Um yeah, that's that's what OT Skatacon is. Um it's a small gathering of you know like-minded people, so it's it very much feels like a community conference.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

And I would say that it's probably becoming more and more so of the community as we go along, um, taking in like input from people that came and now letting the attendees or you know, people just apply to speak. Uh the location is the same as last year. So the Endershauser uh Experience Center down in Parland, which is south of Houston, uh was a really great location. We got such good feedback on it. Um, great training facilities and just a fun place to hang out. So uh it's pretty exciting. July 22nd through the 24th, and tickets are currently on sale at OT Skata, and and I am so looking forward to it. Especially now that you're not here in Houston anymore. Um, having you guys come visit is is really fun. Actually, uh Courtney, my daughter was just talking about yesterday. Uh, she brought up how when your daughters came to visit and stayed at Allie's house last year and how much fun that was. And then I was like, huh, I guess they'll probably have to stay at our house this year.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

So that's true. I hadn't even thought about uh where I was gonna stay yet, but I'll I'll pitch a tent if I have to, honestly. I'm going to Houston.

Building A Custom Raffle App

AI At Work With Real Guardrails

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Yeah, we will make sure that you're there. And and Albert is uh essential as well to the to the con. So we'll have to make sure the whole family comes. Um speaking of the raffle that you mentioned, so Courtney Pendant is an engineer that used to work for you, Alley. Um, and she got a really great opportunity that she now basically had a position almost created for her. Uh, she's doing controls in a marine setting up in Washington, but we're really lucky that she's coming back as a um volunteer to help run the con because she did a really, really great job uh last year helping things, helping with things. And uh, I think her military background has a lot to do with that in terms of her being super helpful. Um, but what she's working on is basically she's been by coding a raffle application that works exactly the way that we want to run our raffle. So one of the hallmarks of OT Skatacon uh is that the vendors don't come and set up tables and pitch their stuff or show demos, um, except maybe one or two. We have a few interactive demos. But otherwise, it's not a common, you know, have people sit at a table and try to get a lead from you or show you stuff. Uh, the way that vendors can engage and show their technology is to give it away. And so we have this raffle, but we have a very specific way that we want to run it. And we've done it manually with raffle tickets and spreadsheets and stuff like that. Uh, and it's a big effort, right? Um, getting the data and managing it all and handwriting, people handwriting their you know, contact information on it. So we were looking into ways that we could do this digitally, and I think somebody did some research on some raffle software, uh, but nothing worked exactly the way we want it. But now, hello, we live in uh 2026, and apparently AI can do a lot more than it used to. Um, and so I built some apps last year uh with some vibe on some of these vibe coding platforms, and I realized that they're getting a lot better. Um, and so I suggested that maybe we look into just making our own, and Fortney just took that and ran with it and started designing um an app. And I'm really, really excited about that. And I think that that's really cool. And um, we pay for an event management software where we sell the tickets and kind of manage the tickets and um the website for the con. And I would say uh also time permitting, I would love to make our own event software uh that works exactly the way we want it to. Because I've been to events where they have an app for the event, um, and it's just really annoying. Like there's all kinds of features you don't want, people pinging you for certain things or notifications. Uh and I just think that it's pretty cool that we live in a time where we can kind of make our own stuff that works the way that we want to, uh, without having to pay, you know, hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars for enterprise software, which in the event management space, there's not a lot of options. There's a few low-end options, and then it gets um to the really, really expensive ones. Um, and so for us, like a smaller conference where we don't really, you know, the primary objective of it is not profit. Um it's it's hard to justify spending that much money on a on a ticketing software. So with that, I know everybody's kind of we've been talking about AI for a really, really long time. And I feel like a lot of it's just like words. Um, but we are actually implementing some of this stuff now in our stuff. Um, same thing with the podcast. We're not like producing any content with AI, um, but we are able to now pull the transcripts a lot easier, uh, create blog posts from those transcripts, things like that to make the content go a little bit further. Um, Courtney, can you talk about in any any words? Um, and I know you probably can't say anything specifics, but are you starting to use any AI anywhere in any of your work? Do you think it's close? Do you think it's useful?

SPEAKER_00 12:14

Yeah, I think recently, um I'm not sure if it's just like an update to Claude or everybody suddenly saw this update and decided to jump in and start using it more. But um, I know even uh like welders and people not on the software team who at home are using AI to do things like um well, the guy I was just talking to the other day is creating an agent to help him shop the best price for golf clubs near him. And yeah, it's just like it seems like all these people I know that are not necessarily software nuts, because like my husband's a software nut. Um, a lot of folks around me are software nuts, so it's not uncommon for them to be jumping into these things because we're all kind of early adopters, but to talk to some of my other friends outside of that circle who are just uh, you know, I would I would categorize as lay people that don't necessarily interact with software on the day-to-day, who are starting to dabble in making their own applications or solving uh you know little specific day-to-day problems that I find fascinating. Um, I actually want it to automate my pantry, to be honest. I want to be able to give it a few weeks of information about like what I bought to put in my pantry and then start having it order from Amazon like by itself. But we can do that now. I don't know how long we've been able to do it and all of a sudden we just thought of doing it, but people around me are really using it now, and it's kind of nuts.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

No, I think uh yeah, there is something about Claude just got significantly better, like somewhat recently, because I feel like I've been kind of toying around with a lot of these, and a lot of the tools use Claude in the background, right? So even like base 44, or I don't know what Replit uses, but I I know base 44 uses anthropic in the background um or plod code. And so when Claude got significantly better, a lot of these tools got significantly better all at the same time. Um, and yeah, I'm finding like a lot of use cases that I tried last year that I did not get. Like I got down a rabbit hole enough to think it was gonna do something for me. And then once I realized how limited it was, I kind of, you know, abandoned it was like, oh man, I just spent all this time on something that doesn't quite look. Um, but some of that now I'm kind of glad I did spend that time because now I have a point of reference, right? And some of the things I tried last year that didn't quite make it are actually, you know, I'm getting a lot more useful output and I'm starting to build some systems for some things that like um I mean, a simple one for us is by like taking user case studies, uh, things that engineers really wouldn't have had the time to write up in the past. Um now I can just ask them to send me an audio file or an email or whatever they have time for, and however is the easiest way for them to communicate, they can just send that to me and then I take that and then wrap the transcript from it, and I can, you know, format it very quickly. Uh that sort of stuff. So it's definitely been a force multiplier. In the cases where I don't end up, you know, spending a lot of time and then getting nothing out of it and wasting my time.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Uh like from a code writer's perspective, like what you were saying, uh, you know, the after-the-fact stuff from your work. Like our actual work is the podcasting, and then afterwards, transcribing stuff and you know, making posts and things that come after the fact can be a little bit easier to, I don't want to say automate away, but you can uh, like you said, it's a force multiplier. Like you can create a README for your code by giving it your code and saying generate this or put in the doc strings wherever they're supposed to go in this code. It's like little stuff that I know I'm I'm not good at writing code uh at all. And I'm really, really bad at documenting the code that I do write. So generating documentation, I think, around code is huge.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

Yeah, that's that's even as an ancillary use case, like that's still time saving and a lot more. I mean, more for some people than others, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Uh yeah. And you still have to review what it does. You know, everybody keeps saying that, but I we cannot stress enough, right? Like never push if Claude Code writes code for you, you should never deploy that without a human looking at it, you know. And if you're like creating a README or a very important how-to document, you should probably be reviewing that and making sure it's correct. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

And then also certainly think about the security implications of what information you're putting into public uh or or non-private enterprise AI systems. Um and make sure not to expose API endpoints and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Um, if your company has a policy, like look for that also. Like if you're trying to put company protected information into a, you know, into an AI, check and see if there's a policy surrounding that at your company. Because like my company has a policy um around what you're supposed to not give AI or give AI. And I'm pretty sure every company now, you know, that has information they want to protect has some uh policy for the employees, you know, sharing that information. So don't do it willy-nilly. You can get in trouble.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Yeah. But I I don't know, I feel like and I don't know how you guys feel about this, but like at this point, if you're not at least looking into how AI applies to your position and what sort of you know tasks can start to be lever, you can start to leverage that. Um I'm pretty sure that you will be at a competitive disadvantage in the next year or two if you're not looking at, okay, it within the context of what my responsibilities are, how can I leverage AI for this? Um, with hopefully you in the in the loop with some oversight. I've also, you know, talked to some members of my team and the engineering team that they do code, you know, they're software engineers, so they're like, yeah, but do not trust this. Like you you better not this and reviewing this. And he's like, I'm a I'm afraid that not everybody is, right? They trust it a little too much. Um but I think it's uh ignore it at your peril at this point, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Choose your choose the problem you want to solve today.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Allie, last time I heard you're the one of the people I know that hasn't been messing with that stuff too much. Have you started?

SPEAKER_02 18:44

Um yeah. Um I'm using it for more personal stuff. Um there's you know some of the legal things that I have to deal with, like um, it actually helps me with some of that. Um not not that it replaces lawyers, but yeah, uh it does replace, you know, some of the documents that the that lawyers look at. Um and uh yeah, so I haven't been completely ignoring it. Um I haven't been using it for necessarily work, but um, yeah, I've started dabbling a little bit in um uh and and also creating it for I guess I do use it for work because I I do create some images um for OTCA to con sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

Yeah, I guess that's the music qualifies as not as much on creating you know documentation, but um, yeah, no, I've I've since messed with it.

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Somebody has to make the spicy memes. Yeah. It is a job.

Whisper Keyboard For Faster Writing

SPEAKER_01 19:49

I finally did. Um, I had been thinking about this for a while. Uh but oftentimes when I try to download something new, I forget my iPhone, my iPod password, and then I just get frustrated and I stop doing it. Um, but based on your reference, maybe last week, I finally downloaded Whisper keyboard and holy crap, I'm very proud. I'm still getting used to remembering to use it all the time though. Um, because I find myself like writing something, and then I have, you know, go back to fix a typo that I just made, and then I go back to change the punctuation. And then I was like, wait a minute, why didn't I just whisper this? Like, um, so if you don't know, Whisper keyboard is an application, one of a few, um, or maybe one of many that uses OpenAI's Whisper API, which is a uh speech to text API, but it is built to format the text properly. So if you're, you know, we've all had the built-in dictation in like, you know, your products, your phone or whatever, but you end up with kind of you know a jumble at the end of that, a lot of words, and then you have to go.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

I used to not I used to just give up using it. Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

But this really like it even in a situation like this, right, where I like in the middle of the sentence, either end up saying a bunch of stuff that doesn't matter, or I changed my mind, the transcription actually captures that and it just removes all that stuff that I kind of stuttered in the middle or changed my mind on the point that I was trying to make, it gets that. So it really is extremely time-saving. Um so if anybody is thinking of like, hey, what's what's a small productivity gain that I could make with AI today uh that isn't too controversial or something that you have to test out too much, um, I would highly recommend giving that a shot, especially if you write a lot of emails. I've actually even found it like I can respond more to stuff from my phone now than I would in the past, um, just because it's so efficient to be able to type, so like I can respond to teams' messages and things that I've would normally not do for my phone because they require a little more punctuation and just making sure that you kind of have the right thing in there.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

You can talk at like 200 words per minute, but what's the fastest you can type? Because on a good day I type maybe 35 words per minute. Because you gotta figure in the delete like you said, delete, delete, delete, delete. Oops, didn't want to comma there. Delete, delete, delete, delete.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Yeah. So uh we have some plans this year um for shows for events. We talked about OT SlaterCon. Automate this year. Are we all going? I don't think we know this. We haven't really discussed it, have we I mean I think just the assumption is that we're always there. I'm certainly gonna be there when tech is exhibiting. Uh what about you guys, Allie and Courtney?

SPEAKER_02 22:50

Yes I think so I depend my now same.

Automate And The Travel Calendar

SPEAKER_00 22:58

I don't know if I will walk it on behalf of relativity or if I will just take PTO and go as an automation lady but uh I feel that one way or another it's imp it's like the one show where I see basically everybody. So I try to make sure I get there every year.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Yeah and then also um I guess in a little bit of news Wintech is co-sponsoring the uh manufacturing happy hour explain this year. Oh cool very cool we've always gone to that party at least a little bit um I think we caught kind of the end of it last year but this time I will be there from start to finish and uh I expect to see you guys there and everybody else that if you're listening if you're gonna be at Automate um we will have some more concrete information about that soon but I believe it's on the Tuesday and then there will be a couple of other extracurricular activities um that I think we can let you guys know about closer to the show. I don't think we're gonna be officially hosting anything as Automation ladies though this year.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

As far as I know though um so if you if you're listening and if you have a party and you want to collaborate we may uh have some time and be interested but otherwise I think uh as usual the schedule for automate gets very very uh full very fast any other things on your guys' agenda as far as travel or events uh where people can find you or meet you this year I'm trying to travel like a lot less and so far I have actually been pretty successful on that so outside of automate and OT Skatacon, I may try to go to an additional show around the September October timeframe but I'm not really sure what that's gonna be yet or if I'm really actually going to do that or not. But for sure automate and skatacon. Sweet.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

Yeah I'm in the same boat.

SPEAKER_02 24:51

Okay.

Growing The Show With Correspondents

SPEAKER_01 24:52

Well then I guess uh if anybody out there wants to try to convince Allie and Courtney to travel more let us know where they should be going. Um otherwise I think we will treasure some of our uh downtime and then family life this year maybe a little bit more than we have in the past I definitely Courtney am trying to travel less but I'm succeeding less than you I am just I can't shake that curiosity and that urge to want to say yes to doing things that I find interesting and fun. And as much as I uh it's a challenge for me I really really enjoy what I do and uh the opportunities I get to meet up with people in the industry. So I'm heading to Nashville next week for uh the AHD Spring Meeting that's the Association for High Tech Distribution. And then the week after that I am headed to Amelia Island Florida for the first time I will be attending um a PMMI executive leadership conference. And so um another new thing for me this year is my involvement in PMMI um and PACExpo. So PACExpo International is this fall in uh Chicago and we I will have a booth there. And so that will be my first time being an exhibitor at Pac Expo. So if you're gonna be at Pac Expo and you this far enough in advance that like there's plenty of time to plan stuff um hit me up if there's anything cool that I should be doing or seeing um or if we can collaborate on anything. So I think that and OT Skatercon and Automate are kind of my main travel things as well in terms of what I'm committed to. Chicago's not my favorite place to go but I'm still going there twice this year. But hoping to hit I I have some other visits too that I gotta make. I think I'm going out to the Bay Area um later this month and then uh gotta make a few more visits to like some partners and stuff. So yeah I'm I'm really lucky that I have a really good family um at home to hang out with my kids when I am traveling because now that I'm a single mom it's definitely the mom guilt hits a little bit differently when you're traveling and are away from the kids. But at the same time I think I probably needed that much more to get away for a little bit even though it's not a vacation. So I I try to kind of make the best of that for sure. What else do you have to talk about ladies? Oh yeah so I mean obviously um the show is kind of it is it is back. We were to be honest not so sure last year if we would keep the show going uh because it is a lot of effort it's a lot of time um and finding time to record which I think we've tried to schedule and reschedule this time to record the three of us uh at least two or three times now. So what we're doing is we're bringing on more correspondence so that um there will be more conversations led by ladies in the industry uh that are not necessarily us. So keep an eye out for that. Um we also wanted to do that so that we can get more coverage from shows that were not acting um including Modex next week uh we have Lauren Vandemart is gonna be uh reporting a bit for us uh sending some videos and his stuff from Modex so if you're there um you should hit her up uh Lauren Vandemart from Flex Line Automation she'll be walking that show and producing some content for us and yeah I think we'll try to put together a schedule somewhere on the website of upcoming events that we have and where we may have correspondence. But also if you're a listener, if you're um you know want to try your hand out at hosting or having some of these conversations on air and we would love to talk to you about becoming a correspondent for Automation Ladies. Ideally if you're a lady um it's not it's not really limited to ladies but I think the general premise is that the hosts uh of Automation Ladies are the ladies and everybody else is welcome to be part of the conversations um and you know come chime in and and let's talk about stuff that matters stuff that's actually being done in industry um meet people that we wouldn't otherwise get a chance to learn from that sort of thing uh but we should be seeing regular episodes come out um with any one of the three of us being a host most likely not more than one of us at a time except for special episodes like this so hopefully we can kind of get together and and catch up um on a regular basis. Anything else that we haven't talked about today guys that we we should let people know about or that we want to talk about I want to do more live demo episodes.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

So if you have cool stuff to show off that you can do like on screen for 45 minutes, please reach out because yeah last year we did like a lot of really cool live demos and I'm thirsty and I want more.

Live Demos And What To Showcase

Life Updates And Closing Thanks

Sponsors, Subscriptions, And How To Reach Us

SPEAKER_01 29:35

Okay well then I think we can definitely make that happen Courtney um so yes if you're listening and you know of any cool tech that you would like to see demoed on Automation Ladies live on LinkedIn and YouTube uh please let us know and if you are a vendor of some cool tech that you would like to show off live to our audience um on our channels also please reach out because we do want to see cool stuff and we don't always get a chance to do so in our day jobs. And that is kind of the point of this is to be able to get an ungated very you know preliminary but just sneak peek kind of demo of of the cool tech that's out there in our industry for anyone to see either now or later, right? So you can participate live you can ask some questions uh we try to make it kind of a fun community experience um but otherwise you can certainly go back on our channel um and we do have some we have those on YouTube now um as well as under our past events on LinkedIn where people can watch those but absolutely yeah I think Courtney um and Allie also yeah you guys can have fun running those demos I I want to see them all but I'm trying not to commit to all the things so that's a really great point Courtney I think we're gonna do our first live demo uh of a PID loop tuning software sometime in May. Oh cool yeah excited yes I and I feel bad because I I like wanted to do that one back in January I think and then just we've been pretty busy and trying to you know kind of get the infrastructure and everything up and running for the show. And then we've been capturing some other content. I went on some visits to Michigan a couple of weeks ago and did some floor tours there. Problem is so much editing is needed when you walk a floor that has stuff that's under NDA um you end up having to do a lot of rounds of approval for that video. And then of course like most of the cool stuff doesn't actually make it out there. So that's always a challenge in our industry. But hopefully yeah we'll get we'll get more cool stuff out there whatever we can share certainly from trade shows all of that is shareable but when when you get a sneak peek behind you know somebody's real business uh a lot of that you can't quite talk about so yeah I think um well I guess I'll I'll just say also I'm not sure what I'm doing exactly with uh my house after my husband died last year I've realized I I live in my house is too big for just me uh and my kids and I had it on the market for a while and then it was really hard to keep up with showings and keeping the house clean and working and doing everything that we do. And so I I decided to take a break for a while and then I actually had a surprise like showing today somebody apparently was in town from California and was so intent on seeing the house even though it's not on the market uh that I gave them a little showing this morning. But we'll see where uh where that ends up whether I end up moving or not um because at the moment I've camped out I work in my kitchen slash dining room um because I just I even though I had an office in a different part of the house I was constantly working from here because I like being in the kitchen. Got good light it's close to the coffee. The food's right there exactly so I finally just came in and I just put a little desk over here in the corner it's where the kids used to do homework. Um but it's great and uh I know the acoustics may not be the best though so that's something that we're still hopefully gonna work out. Uh and it sounds like I gotta take my dog outside. So I think unless Ali if you can think of anything else you want to update people on, I I think we should wrap this up here. Uh no I think I'm I'm all wrapped up. So with that um yes automation ladies we are still going we are growing we have a team now um and we gotta pay them so if you your company or anyone that you know uh you think would be a good fit to sponsor automation ladies uh we are actively interested in looking for good partners that would want to support this content um and get more of it out there and get more representation and and women led conversations out in our industry uh please contact us at hello at automationladies.io if you have some interest in collaborating with us. First and foremost we'd love to get sponsors for the show uh and then we certainly are also open to engagements um in terms of events or trade shows or or anything that you got going on. If you think that we would be a fun fit or addition to whatever you got going on, we would love to consider it. Yeah and with that thank you for joining us thank you for being a listener. If you haven't subscribed to our YouTube channel yet uh if you ever are on YouTube we would appreciate that we're gonna be putting a bit more effort into uh getting our videos polished and up there uh this year and yeah check us out on our website send us a message send us an email uh we also have like a voicemail feature on our website automationladies.io so honestly uh if you're listening to us we want to get to know you we want to be your friend um we don't think of ourselves as people that speak at uh anyone and so if you see us around at a show or uh you know on LinkedIn please do say hi and I hope that you have a great rest of your day and thanks for listening. We'll catch you next time. Hi thank you for listening to Automation Ladies if you like our content and you want to stay in touch please connect with us on LinkedIn follow the show page subscribe to our YouTube channel and you can send us a message or a copy on our website automationladies.io we look forward to getting to know you. Our producer is Veronica Espinosa and our music is composed by Daniel J.