Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #954: Broadwaycon 2022

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

My eldest daughter Rachel and I again went to New York City to attend a convention about Broadway, so I again made a podcast about it.

I'm not pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the Drive to Work at Home Edition. Okay, well the reason this is at Home Edition was I was just traveling and I'm trying to be extra safe. So after I travel, I stay home a little bit and work from home. But anyway, I was just at BroadwayCon 2022. So for those who don't know, this is my third podcast actually talking about BroadwayCon. My eldest daughter, Rachel, and I, it's something we do every year, although because of the pandemic, we haven't done it for a couple years. But it is a small convention dedicated to Broadway. And my daughter, Rachel, just graduated from college, from Columbia College, Chicago.

And she majored in theater and minored in advertising, and so not only were we going to go enjoy our love of Broadway, but also Rachel's off looking for a job this year. So anyway, it was a very busy year. We went to New York. We had a wonderful time. So one of the reasons I enjoy doing BroadwayCon podcasts, like I said, this is the third one, is it's fun to look at a convention from the other side of not someone who is like running

panels and stuff, but someone who's attending panels. And it's neat to, like, to me, it's really interesting to see another fandom, something that I enjoy, and then watching sort of how they handle things. So anyway, I was going to walk through my experiences at BroadwayCon 2022 today, and then I'll compare it to magic, and I learned a lot. It was interesting for me watching what's going on. Now, first off, I should mention that BroadwayCon is a lot smaller. I don't know actual numbers, but my guess from being there and looking at it is that

there was an audience of a couple thousand, two, three thousand, maybe most four thousand. In contrast, for example, I'm going to go to San Diego Comic-Con soon. San Diego Comic-Con has an audience of like, I don't know, 130,000. So its magnitude is different. And it's kind of nice to go to a slightly smaller convention. This is a younger convention. I think it started out in 2016.

And it happened every year except for 2020, 2021, because of the pandemic. I think they might have had an online version last year, but as far as in-person, they didn't. So, anyway, I want to talk through sort of the different panels we went to, and then just share sort of my thoughts on how what I learned gets applied to magic. Okay, so the first thing we went to on Friday, so the convention was Friday, Saturday, Sunday, was called the New Voices of Influence. And so it was a panel talking all about, hey, we have to advertise Broadway, we have an audience, and you know, who our audience is really is changing, and we need to

adapt to the times with the medium we use. And this was right up Rachel's alley because like I said, Rachel is very into advertising and marketing and all that. And one of the things that the point that sort of the theme that kept coming out is, look, your audience is always going to stay the same if the way you reach out to them never changes. That if you want a different audience, you have to go out in different ways. And it really speaks to me as someone who, like one of the things about Magic is

we've always been trying to get a larger audience. We always want a more diverse audience. We always want different people playing. It's not that we don't enjoy, you know, sort of our core demographic, if you will, but that is one of the great things. And this is true about gaming in general. If you look back, when I was a kid, gaming was something that wasn't very public. Not a lot of people did it, and it was very niche.

And since then, gaming has become very mainstream. And like I said, I've done stats before how what most people are gaming, especially kids, are gaming. And that is just becoming part of how everybody functions, not just a small minority. And so, hey, if we make what I consider to be the best game on the planet,

we really need to get that out there and get other people to see it. And there's a lot of different means to do that. Part is what the game itself represents. That's why diversity is so important. But part of it also is where you're talking to people and how you're talking to people. And a lot of the things I know our marketing people is talking about is that sort of traditional old school marketing. Not that you shouldn't do any of that, but that's not really how Gen Z, for example, is experiencing things.

That's not really how Gen Z, for example, is experiencing things. And so it was a really interesting talk about how Broadway has this problem that, on some level, its mindset is really stuck in the 50s, the 1950s. And there were multiple panels I went to. They were talking about how to really think in new terms, that Broadway has potential to reach a lot of people, much like magic has potential to reach a lot of people. And so this was a really eye-opening panel, and that it really got you to think about,

hey, how could we be different? And I do think that our marketing team is doing a really good job of finding, you know, influencers and finding a lot of different ways to get people to experience what a magic set is beyond the old school, like, ads and such. Okay, the next panel we went to was called Broadway Jackbox. So there is an actor named Andrew Barth Feldman who was in, what was he in? Dear Evan Hansen. He was in Dear Evan Hansen. And anyway, during the pandemic, he started this thing where he would get Broadway stars and they would play Jackbox. Jackbox is an online game, if you don't

know. There's a lot of little sub-games you can play. It's a humor-based thing. But anyway, it's a fun interaction you can play with your friends. He would get together with a lot of his Broadway friends, and they would stream it online. This was kind of a live version of that. So they got a bunch of people together. Anyway, it was neat to watch

them bond over gaming. As someone who, obviously, gaming's very important to, it was neat to watch them bond over gaming. As someone who obviously gaming is very important to, it was neat to see that, like, this bonding experience was through games. And it was fun. It was a fun experience to watch. It was neat to see them sort of live in action and just, the audience, also with Jackbox, the audience can get involved so we can vote on things. So it was very interactive and it was a lot of fun. And like I said, it was a neat way to watch the crossing of the streams that, you know, Broadway and gaming aren't all that separated as much as you might think. So that was cool.

Okay, the next one I went to was what they call a show spotlight. So what a show spotlight is, is they get a bunch of people from a play, a lot of the actors and sometimes, you know, the director or the writer or other people involved in it, and they have what's called a show spotlight. So this was for A Strange Loop. So for those that don't know, A Strange Loop just won the Tony for Best Musical. And once again, you'll see this reoccurring theme of Broadway kind of readapting itself. And this is a good example of diversity. This is a Broadway musical where the main character is black and gay.

That is not an experience seen in tons of Broadway musicals. And so it really was something, presenting something kind of new, I mean, from a Broadway perspective. And a lot of what they were talking about was what it took to get there and what it meant and all the response from the audience. And it really reinforced to me the importance of diversity, the importance of having the

thing you are reflect the people who are playing it. And that, you know, I've talked about this a lot. I had a whole podcast on diversity. But the idea that when people can see themselves in the game they're playing or in the musical they're attending, you know, when people really sort of get to see themselves, that is really powerful and really impactful. And it hammered home. The other interesting thing about this panel was

this show went through a lot of changes. Like, there were whole songs in which, like, all the lyrics of the song changed. And that is really interesting, and it's fun to watch somebody else's iterative process. As someone who's constantly doing creative iteration, it's neat to see someone else say, well, we started here, but we went to there. Because a lot of making magic is you make something, and then you realize, oh, there's a better way to do it, and that happens many times, and then the finished product can be very different

from where you started. So the idea that you have a song in which every single lyric of the song changed is not, like, I can relate to that. That was very relatable to me. Okay, the next thing they had on this, this is the last thing that Rachel and I saw on, um, on Friday. It was called the BroadwayCon Game Show. Um, so the BroadwayCon Game Show, they had two teams. It involved some members of, like, Broadway stars and some members of the audience. So there was a mix of sort of mixing fans and the pros together and there was just a lot of different trivia all about Broadway

so for those that follow me I love trivia I think trivia is a very bonding thing I have been responsible for a lot of magic trivia and so it was really fun watching other people bond on their own trivia so that was kind of cool and it was funny because like for those that don't know

I did a whole podcast on this but I used to run a magic game show and it was neat seeing someone else run a game show now obviously Broadway like they did a name that tune thing where you're guessing what song it was you know they had one portion where they give you a category and you're naming everything

in that category. But anyway, it was really fun to watch. And I definitely enjoyed that. The other thing we did the first day is there's a marketplace where there's people selling all sorts of related items. And Rachel bought infinite stickers and earrings and magnets and cups and all sorts of stuff. A lot of things to reference. Because she's a huge fan of Broadway. And so it was neat sort of watching her find all the stuff. I bought a few things myself. So anyway, okay, so that was Friday. So let's get on to Saturday. So Saturday, our first panel was called E-Ticket to Disneyland. So one of the rooms, so the way the convention was set up was we were in a hotel,

the New Yorker Hotel. There were five rooms in the New Yorker. And then we were also in the Manhattan Center, which was around the corner. And there was one big giant stage. So there was like six areas that you could go. And one of the rooms was dedicated to podcasts. It was set up so they brought in all these sort of Broadway-themed podcasts. And then they did live podcasts, which was really cool. And really a telling thing about the nature of how things are changing. Obviously, you're listening to a podcast. So I do get podcasts.

Obviously, I do a podcast. But it was neat to see other people doing their podcasts. And that was really compelling for me. So this one, the interesting thing about this one, Eat Ticket to Disneyland was basically a bunch of Broadway stars talking about their love of Disneyland. So they didn't even talk about, I mean, only peripherally talked about Broadway.

So it wasn't really about Broadway, but it was Broadway stars talking about something else they loved, which was Disneyland. And it was really fun. So what they did in this one is they took 32, they just sort of like, kind of like my head-to-head, they took 32 rides at Disneyland slash Disney World, and then the panel was voting on which was the better one.

The one that won the whole thing was Haunted Mansion. But to give you a sense of the geekiness of this is when they first brought up Haunted Mansion, they were like, okay, do you mean Disneyland or Disney World? And they're like, Disneyland. Okay, do you mean the normal one or do you mean the holiday one? You know, the specificity was very cool. And the other thing that really taught me was, I mean, I've been to Disneyland.

I've been to Disney World. I know some of the rides. I've been on some of the rides. But they were going into much greater detail than I had any knowledge. But it's really fun watching people be passionate. That was a big lesson of this panel slash, you panel slash podcast was how exciting it is and compelling it is to watch just excited people. Now, not that I don't get excited

because I do get excited, but it does remind me that me getting excited is an important part of when I'm doing things that when I show genuine enthusiasm, that is very compelling for people. So that's for me to remember. Not that I'm not enthusiastic, but a reinforcement that that very compelling for people. So, let me, for me to remember, not, not that I'm not enthusiastic, but a reinforcement that that's, that's a good thing. Okay, the next thing we saw

was Broadway live streaming expanding the reach of live theater. So, one of the big, I don't know, sticking points, but one of the big issues that's going on right now, or has been going on for quite a while, is Broadway is very much stuck in a 1950s mindset. So there are people, a lot of younger people, but not necessarily just younger people, saying, hey, there's a lot of people that enjoy Broadway that can't afford to come to New York, aren't able to come to New York,

and even if they could come to New York, hey, the tickets are kind of expensive for a lot of people. You know, we could put this online, we could stream it at a much cheaper cost and hit a lot more people, so know, we could put this online, we could stream it at a much cheaper cost and hit a lot more people, so you'd make it up in volume. And it would let a lot more people interact with that experience, right?

You know, that part of, like, there's a lot of fans of Broadway that can't literally come to Broadway. That a lot of the sort of traditional Broadway audience is a very old, white, you know, richer woman. You know, there's a certain audience that tends to come to Broadway. And

this group is like, look, there's so many more people that would love Broadway. I know this is a passion. Rachel's been talking about this forever of how it is so crazy that if you love Broadway, but somehow you just can't get to New York. Somehow you can't really appreciate Broadway. And the belief,

and the true belief of all the people on this panel is that it's just a revenue stream, that like Broadway eventually will understand that they can broaden their reach and make more money. And that they just quite, they don't quite understand that there's a lot of fear

of like risking the live experience that some of people see it online for cheaper. They wouldn't come to the live show. Although, as music has demonstrated, that if you listen to a band, you still pay a lot of money to go see the band live. So a live experience is a different thing from a recorded experience.

But anyway, this whole panel was talking about trying to change mindsets. Which is very interesting. One of the things that I deal with magical over time is, part of being head designer is, I deal with magical over time is part of being head designer is I have to push us in places we haven't gone

I have to mechanically do things we haven't done before and that part of doing that is getting sort of the powers to be and just the rest of R&D to say I know we

haven't done this before but we could do this and what's happened over time is the more I push and guide us to new places and those places have been successful

R&D's gotten a little bit better at pushing in new directions, you know the story I tell all the time is about the split cards where nobody wanted to do them we're far, far away from that nowadays we do something new there's a lot of people that are excited about something new in fact, one of my things right now

is sort of making sure that when we do something new, it's for a reason we're doing something new and not just to do something new, you know? In fact, one of my things right now is sort of making sure that when we do something new, it's for a reason we're doing something new and not just to do something new, which is a different side of the problem. But I'm glad that R&D in general is more accepting to, hey, magic does change, and that means something that might have been true for a while might not be true anymore, or, you know, we can change things up. And that, the other thing that's really interesting about this is the idea of getting the experience to the players. And I think digital is a big part of this. It reminds me of the importance of digital.

I'm, nobody loves tabletop more than me. I do love paper cards in my hand. But I do want to understand that part of what the appeal of digital is accessibility. Not everybody lives in a town where there's a game store right there. Not everybody has a lifestyle where they can just leave their home for hours on end. And so having the ability to be accessible where you are, when you are, like making magic playable in more ways, you know, that's a big part of accessibility. That we want, no matter where you are or where you live or what your schedule is like or who you, you know, we want anybody to be able to play. And part of that is being conscious of how you do that.

And this really reaffirmed for me. Like I said, a lot of these themes are, I watch different people talk about different things. The first panel talking about marketing and how to be different in marketing and this panel talking about live streaming, on some level first panel talking about marketing and how to be different in marketing and this panel talking about live streaming on some level we're talking about slightly different things, but the themes between them are very strong, which is

Broadway has done something for a long time a certain way and that way doesn't really reflect how people are now. We need to change. So, I mean, Magic is a game that lives in flux, so it's kind of nice to know that the nature of how we function is we are in flux and we are always changing. Uh, but it's good to understand those forces and how the, it's very easy to let familiarity and the way things have been dictate the future when they don't necessarily have to.

Like I said, it doesn't mean you should change for change's sake, but you should be willing to change when it allows you to do something you can't do before that is good for the game. Okay, the next panel that we went to was another podcast panel called Musicals with Cheese. So I think the premise of this podcast was the host loves Broadway musicals and the other people on his panel aren't Broadway musicals, and the other people on his panel

aren't Broadway musical fans. And so he introduces them to a musical, and then they sort of give their feedback on it. And it's sort of like an insider and outsider appeal. So the musical they did for this event was Popeye, the Robert Altman film starring, um, starring Robin Williams

and Shelley Duvall. Uh, and it was a musical and it was a weird movie. Uh, and they, and it was fun talking about it. And, like, once again, I had not seen the musical.

I had seen clips of it, but I hadn't seen the whole movie. Yet, this was a very compelling podcast because the people shared a lot of information, had a lot of interesting,

compelling things to say about it, and really illuminated about it. Like, one of the things, for example, that drives home for me about when I do a podcast, like, I like doing a lot of history podcasts where, like, let me talk about

how in magic this thing happened. And I like to give a lot of context. And a lot of people don't know that. I mean, some people do, but a lot of people don't know that context. And it's kind of neat to go, oh, I didn't realize that's why they did this, or I didn't realize that was here, or why, you know, and that I really enjoy watching somebody else giving the context for a thing I didn't know to remind me

that, hey, context is important, that when I'm doing my podcast, that I should be explaining things. And so that is something that was important to me. And like I said, this is another good example of how it was very entertaining even though walking in, I knew very little. I mean, I know a lot more about the Popeye movie, but I knew very little about it.

So it was very cool. And they involved the audience in a fun way. The audience also shared information that they didn't know. Now that is possible in a live podcast, a little harder in a recorded podcast, but it is fun, and when people, I love on my blog when people share information,

or on any of my social media, when people share information that I do not know, and I like to share that information. That's a lot of fun. So, and the other reason I also love bringing guests on my podcast is because they know things I don't know. So, I, like, it's great when I can have a podcast

with Richard Garfield, and I learn things about the making of the game that like, it's great when I can have a podcast with Richard Garfield and I learn things about the making of the game that I just never knew because I had never asked him before. You know, that's always awesome. Okay, the next thing was called the fascination of the flop. There's a guy named Brendan Henderson who does a show on YouTube, I believe, called Weight in the Wings, which is like a little documentary on, he does videos on Broadway.

And he gets really into the nitty gritty of how things happen on Broadway. He's sort of like a Broadway historian, much like I'm a magic historian. And this particular one, so one of the rooms had a screen. And so all the things in that room had slideshows that went along with it.

And by the way, slideshows so make a podcast, not podcast, a presentation better. If you ever do a presentation, like whenever I do presentations, it just really reinforces me. You know, images, images, images. I really want to get stuff for people to see. And I'm putting together

my San Diego Comic-Con talk right now. And I'm making sure there's lots to see because it's a lot more compelling. So they're really reinforced to me. Now, for those that have never seen me do a presentation, I'm a little crazy with slides. I have a lot of slides. I have a lot more compelling. So, they really reinforced me. For those that have never seen me do a presentation, I'm a little crazy with slides. I have a lot of slides. My GDC talk, which was slightly under

an hour, I think I had like a thousand slides. So, I like me some slides. Anyway, this one was about famous flops. He talked about five famous flops. He talked about Spider-Man Turn on the Dark, I think it's called. He talked about Starlight Express. He talked about five famous flops. He talked about Spider-Man, uh, uh, Turn on the Dark, I think it's called. Um,

he talked about Starlight Express. He talked about Ex, uh, Exurbia, uh, Ex, Exurbia, Exurbia?

I'm, I'm messing the name up. Exurbia, um, I'll come back to that one. Uh, and then, uh,

there was Carrie, and then there was, uh, Rebecca. Um, Exurb, uh, okay,

I'll get there back in a second. So the first one was about Spider-Man, um, Turn in the Dark, uh, Something in the Dark. Uh, I'll get there back in a second. So the first one was about Spider-Man Turn in the Dark. Something in the Dark. It is the biggest flop that Broadway ever had. They wanted to do a Broadway musical about Spider-Man. They brought in members of U2.

And the director, who didn't really know Spider-Man, just kind of went in a weird place with it. Like, she literally read the first page of Ultimate Spider-Man and then just went off on this, like, she literally went on, like, Greek mythology thing

and, like, added a character of Arachne that really isn't, you know, like, she did a lot of things that weren't inherently Spider-Man. And the lesson, the idea behind this, which is very in the style of a thing I would do, is what was the lesson that you learned from your failures? I've also done podcasts on failures, multiples, I think, so you can listen to those.

But anyway, he said that really you have to stick to your source material. That a lot of the reasons Spider-Man flopped was it wasn't why, it wasn't doing what made Spider-Man awesome. It wasn't, you know, it didn't really capture the essence of Spider-Man. Like, I remember once Ang Lee did a movie of the Hulk, and he bragged he had never read a Hulk comic. I'm like, that is not what I want to hear from someone making a movie. Like, if you're going to make a movie about a famous book, I

hope you've read the book. I don't want to go, I've never read the book. That's not what I want to hear. So, anyway, it was a lot of fun just sort of learning about it, and like, it failed big. It lost $64 million, I believe, which is the record right now for Broadway

for losing the most amount of money. Biggest flop ever. Next, he talked about Starlet Express. Andrew Lloyd Webber, the same person that made Cats and Phantom of the Opera and stuff,

made it. And so, the basically, the premise of this one is they were trains. Um, they were, uh, um, the people on the stage represented trains and they were on roller skates. Uh, and no, you might say everybody's a cat. That wouldn't happen.

That was one of the longest running things on Broadway. So, um, obviously, you know, not everything quite plays out the same. But it was very interesting. And like, the weird thing about this musical is it's been successful in some places. There's a place in Germany that built a whole theater for it. So it's not like the show

didn't have potential to be popular. But anyway, and then the next one, Jonathan Larson, if you've ever seen Tick, Tick, Boom, he made a play in there that was about the future. I'm blinking on the name of it. It's, what was it called? It was basically a play set in outer space. Anyway, if you've ever seen Tick, Tick, Boom, it's mentioned.

It's like exorbia, exorbia. I'm blanking on the name of it. But anyway, it was a play that never got made. He was sort of talking about how it was just, it was designed in such a way that he couldn't do it, but that it really led the way he would later make Rent and sort of like failure can lead the way to other successes. Then Carrie, the story of Carrie was very funny. The producers were talking to other successes. Then Carrie, the story of Carrie was very funny.

The producers were talking to the director. They said, this takes place in high school, so please think of Grease when you're putting it together. You know, Grease is probably the most popular

high school musical ever done. They come to see what the director has in mind. He has like a white staircase. They're like, there's no white staircase in the book. There's no white staircase

in the movie. We don't know what's going on. People show up in togas. And the director had said, Greece. Oh, and they're like, no, no, no, we make Greece the musical, not Greece the country. And the director's like, well, I like my Greek take. We're going to keep that. Anyway, Carrie with a Greek take was an odd thing, and it bombed. The show would later go on and get redone and played a lot of regional theaters and stuff and did really well. The final one, and the lesson of Carrie is kind of like you have to be careful what you do.

You do have to figure out what you're doing and not deviate too much. And the last one, Rebecca, was about a show that was a really good show that got great reviews and everything and then just greed behind the scenes kept it from coming out. There was somebody who took advantage of them. Turns out one of the people that gave money was not a real person,

and they were trying to steal from them. And anyway, it was very crazy. Anyway, that was a lot of fun. It was neat seeing how you learn from your mistakes. It's a theme I've done a bunch of times in articles and podcasts. So anyway, I really enjoyed it. I think that was my favorite panel of the whole weekend. Next, we went to a Broadway cabaret. Broadway

con cabaret. That is where famous Broadway stars sing songs. That was a lot of fun. There was a couple different people who had been in the original Rent. There was a bunch of Broadway stars that made a boy band. Anyway, definitely a lot of fun. Okay, now

we get to Sunday. So, first panel on Sunday was Gen Z Broadway, POV. So this was people who are all Gen Z working in Broadway, talking about all the different experiences. And once again, reinforced the theme of things are changing. Broadway needs to change with it. And it was fun hearing from sort of young people talk about what they need to do. It is neat because Rachel and I have a lot of conversations,

and Rachel obviously is very Gen Z. And it's interesting, a lot of the things that Rachel keeps going off about on the ways that Broadway can become more in tune with the times. I hear it reflected in like the marketing one. I heard Rachel talk about that and live streaming of her, Rachel talked about that.

And a lot of the Gen Z stuff, it was very funny. Like I felt like I went to a panel where a bunch of people like Rachel were saying things that Rachel had been saying forever. So it was very compelling and cool to listen to. Next, there was a panel called Making Fun of What You Love. There's a channel called Broadway Beat that is basically like The Onion but for Broadway. And they do a lot of fun.

They do a lot of articles that are sort of parody articles. They make videos. They actually do live stage productions. They showed off one of their videos, and it was all about how Stephen Steinhardt used to have a partner, you know, like Rodgers and Hammerstein or something, but the partner didn't like that he sang over each other, which is like a very Steinhardt thing to do.

Anyway, there's a comedy there. They do these productions where they do third acts of plays. So they did a third act of Little Shop of Horrors, my favorite play, which is very funny

because they all die at the end. So how do you do a third act when everyone's dead? Anyway. It was fun to see, once again, my love of comedy because my background

is comedy writing for those that somehow don't know that. It was fun to watch Broadway mixed with comedy, with humor, and that was a neat, that was probably my second favorite panel. Also in the room, by the way, with all the pictures.

So the fact that my two favorite panels were in the room where they could show pictures and videos and stuff like that made it that much better. Next, BroadwayCon Family Feud. So this was kind of like the game show except it was Family Feud. They had teams of five, two Broadway

stars and three people from the audience. It was a lot of fun. The host was a very fun, energetic host. Two problems with Broadway Family Feud. One was the host didn't quite understand how the show worked, which in the future, he was really fun to watch and a lot of energy and a lot of

charisma. He needs to learn how the show works or the producers need to teach him. Number two is one of the things about Family Feud is you ask like 100 people. And the weird thing is I asked a bunch of things that were not subjective but objective. Hey, name a Sondheim musical. And a lot of the answers were just false. So like name a Sondheim musical. And one of the number five answers was Wicked.

Well, Sondheim didn't do Wicked. So it's very hard to guess Wicked when Sondheim didn't do it. I think if I were them, just the gamer in me, I would be very careful about asking objective questions that are just wrong answers. There's just no way, you know, okay, well, what musicals might people think Sondheim would do? That's just not a lot of fun. It's fun to guess what Sondheim musicals people would guess. So I think if I was going to do that again, I would have them fine-tune the answers you get so that you're not either be careful about asking objective questions or prune a little bit what you get. So like there are a bunch of rounds where it's like,

okay, they guessed everything that's guessable. And now it's like, what did people say that don't make any sense? You know, a little of that was funny, but I think too much of it derailed the ability for it to really be a show. Finally, the last thing we saw was BroadwayCon Blizzard Party Line. So back in 2016, the very first year they did BroadwayCon, there was a blizzard, it shut down the city, and so to entertain the guests, they were calling their friends on the phone, fellow Broadway stars, and talking with them. And that's since become a tradition at BroadwayCon. And so it really hammers home a really important point, which I think I might have said last time I talked about this, but I'll say it again. Because in previous BroadwayCons, obviously we went into this.

It is fun when something good comes out of something bad. There's definitely been times in designs where we sort of, something bad happens, but we sort of recover from it and find something we never would have found had that not happened. So, like, there's a lot of times where, and this is talking about how sometimes mistakes can lead to good

things, or even just trying something bold that doesn't work out can lead you to something that fundamentally does work out. And it's a really good example how this to me is like the foundational element of BroadwayCon. Like the trait of BroadwayCon. And it only came about because kind of something went wrong.

But from it, something grew. And there's a lot of, that really hammered home to me the importance of being willing to experiment and try things and that don't be so afraid of something going wrong. That something going wrong is not the worst thing in the world.

I try not to repeat the same mistakes twice, but mistakes can lead you sometimes to good places. And there's fun things that come out of things that you might not expect, you know. And that even when things go wrong, look for the silver lining. Look like, don't treat everything that goes wrong as if nothing good can come from it. There's a learning experience for all silver lining. Look, like, don't treat everything that goes wrong as if nothing good can come from it.

There's a learning experience for all of it. Anyway, that was the end of BroadwayCon. So, like I said, one of the things that's a lot of fun for me,

A, I adore having time with my daughter, my eldest daughter, Rachel. So it's fun sharing that with her and spending time with her and seeing Broadway and stuff. And, like,

we were across the street from this really good bagel place and she and I got a chance to see Book of Mormon. And anyway, we had a lot of fun. So it was really fun going to New York. It's fun being in New York.

And it is just so much fun being at a convention kind of as the fan. It really hammers home... Like, for example, I'm going to San Diego Comic-Con soon and I want to make sure that I'm maximizing

what I'm doing for my fans so thatCon soon, and I want to make sure that I'm maximizing what I'm doing for my fans so that, you know, like, it really sort of hammers home for me as somebody on this side of the fence, at least for Magic, of all the stuff the fans appreciate and what we can do, and anyway, so it really reinvigorated me, and I think I came home and added, like, numerous slides to my presentation. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this. And like I said, I do like to talk about offbeat things once in a while. I like to... One of the things that my truism

about design is, you're inspired by everything. That it's not just, like, only magic things inspire me to do magic. Everything inspires my magic design. And so here's a good chance of something that shaped me and something that really influenced me, and it was something that I really enjoyed. And there's a lot of lessons we learned from that.

So that's why I did a podcast on it. Also, I have a lot of podcasts to do. So I'm always looking for information. But I've done two previous BroadwayCon. And I got very positive feedback from that. So another BroadwayCon podcast for you guys. Anyway, thank you all for listening. But I can see my desk.

So we all know what that means. We all know what that means. This is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys, so we all know what that means. We all know what that means. This is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.