Behind the Scenes: How the Trailblazers Use AI to Enhance Engagement
The latest episode of the FeedForward podcast dives into how the Portland Trailblazers, an innovative NBA team, are leveraging AI to enhance fan engagement and improve internal processes. Krista Stout, the head of strategy at the Trailblazers, shares insights on their balanced approach to AI, emphasizing that while they embrace new technology, they remain cautious about its risks. The team has developed systems that allow for rapid responses to fan feedback, showcasing a practical application of AI that enhances customer service. The discussion highlights how organizations can democratize AI, empowering employees at all levels to contribute to AI-driven solutions. Ultimately, the episode illustrates that the lessons learned from the Trailblazers can be applied across various industries, demonstrating that AI is not just about advanced technology but about transforming how businesses operate and engage with their audiences.
Takeaways:
- The Portland Trailblazers utilize innovative AI tools to enhance the fan experience and engagement.
- They focus on internal applications of AI, minimizing fan-facing interactions with AI technology.
- Key strategies include rapid response systems that use AI for customer feedback management.
- The Trailblazers prioritize change management over technical expertise in AI implementation and usage.
- Their approach balances enthusiasm for AI with caution about its risks and implications.
- AI is seen as a tool to empower employees, enabling them to focus on their strengths.
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Portland Trailblazers
- FeedForward
- Qualtrics
- Microsoft
- OpenAI
- Accenture
- McKinsey
Transcript
Hi and welcome to the FeedForward podcast.
Adam:I'm Adam Davidson, one of the co founders of FeedForward.
Adam:You asked and we listened.
Adam:We've been hearing that folks really want to hear case studies.
Adam:How are companies actually using AI right now?
Adam:And today's show is all about that at a place that might seem unusual, might seem quite different from your business, but it's actually, as you'll see soon here, filled with lessons that apply to pretty much any kind of business.
Adam:I'm talking about the Portland Trailblazers, the NBA team.
Adam:The Portland Trailblazers has been celebrated as one of the most innovative.
Adam:They're very quick to take on new technology to learn about new ways to engage fans.
Adam:One of my favorite tools they use is this sort of pad for blind people.
Adam:So when you go to a game, you can borrow one of these pads that is that sits on your lab and you can actually feel where the players are, where the balls are, when they go in, when they bounce out.
Adam:It's an incredibly brilliant and clever way to engage a whole host of fans.
Adam:Our guest is Christa Stout.
Adam:She is the head of strategy at the Portland Trailblazers.
Adam:She's also a member here of FeedForward.
Adam:So you can interact with her.
Adam:Just send her a DM or chat with her openly in the chat as you'll hear from her.
Adam:And then she'll bring on one of her team members, not a professional NBA player, but one of her strategy team members, to talk about all the ways they're using AI and also crucially, all the ways they're not using AI.
Adam:As you'll hear, they really balance an enthusiastic embrace of new technology with some real caution about the risks of AI to their fundamental business.
Speaker B:The Trailblazers have been heralded as one of the most innovative teams in the NBA.
Speaker B:They have a lot of really cool digital tools.
Speaker B:They're the first team to use these really awesome track pads that allow blind fans at a game to actually feel what's happening on the court in front of them.
Speaker B:Krista explains how the Trailblazers are both taking an enthusiastic, embracing approach to AI, but in some areas, a rather cautious approach.
Speaker B:As you'll hear, the lessons from the Trailblazers and AI really apply to almost any company in almost any industry.
Speaker B:Very little of their approach is basketball specific.
Speaker B:Hi, Krista.
Krista:Hi, Adam.
Krista:Great to be here.
Krista:Thanks for having me.
Speaker B:Krista, explain what do you do at the Trailblazers?
Speaker B:Because you told me you are not a technical expert.
Speaker B:You're not a coder.
Speaker B:You're more a Strategist.
Krista:Yeah.
Krista:So I oversee strategy and innovation and technology here at the Blazers.
Krista:I've been here about 10 years, but my background prior to coming here was in international development and sport and social change.
Krista:Even though I don't have a technical background, I do have the pleasure of overseeing some more technical teams.
Krista:I think that's part of the beauty of AI is that it doesn't require highly technical expertise to understand and lead the implementation of it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:A thing we often say at FeedForward is it's great to be a highly technical expert on AI or to just be a passionate, curious person who's coming into AI.
Speaker B:That actually a place we see some people stumble is they have some kind of more traditional IT training and AI doesn't quite operate like typical enterprise software where you just have a clear path for how to use it.
Krista:Exactly.
Krista:And it ends up being more about change management than about technology.
Krista:Right.
Krista:It's like teaching people how to think differently and try new things and use things differently versus having to know some kind of specific technical tool.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And that really is, I think that's a core theory here at FeedForward as well, is that as Ethan Malik will say, we don't expect AI technical development to end anytime very soon, but even if it were to end very soon, we would still see the long term ripple effects for many years to come.
Speaker B:Because what really matters is how people use it, how it affects organizations.
Speaker B:For a fan of the trailblazers like how do you think about AI and fans and engagement?
Speaker B:Walk me through that thought process.
Krista:We're starting from the theory that nobody wants to interact with the bot.
Krista:Like we actually don't want AI to be forward facing from a fan perspective.
Krista:So short way of saying that is we don't want fans to necessarily know that they're engaging with us through AI.
Krista:So we actually aren't using it in a very fan facing way, but we're using it internally to impact the fan experience.
Krista:As an example, we have a system that we built that allows us to get back to fans when they provide feedback to us in minutes instead of days.
Krista:But again, they have no idea that it's because we're using an AI tool to help do that.
Speaker B:Can you walk me through, give an example of that?
Krista:So you come to a game, let's say you come to the Blazer Celtics game and you have a terrible experience because the Blazers won and also somebody spilled beer on your head.
Krista:So you're not happy about it.
Krista:You get your post game survey the next day, you fill it out, you have some mean things to say.
Krista:And that feedback form that used to go to Qualtrics and then we'd have someone dig into Qualtrics and read all the feedback and decide if they needed a response and cut and paste their name and email and write a response and all the things.
Krista:Now when that goes into Qualtrics, it automatically gets filtered and analyzed through Zapier and ChatGPT and then gets pinged to the Slack person or team that is responsible for whatever that issue was.
Krista:So in your case, it would be a guest experience issue versus guest security issue.
Krista:That team gets to just look at that Slack channel.
Krista:It pops up, they read it, they click a certain emoji on it, and then an email gets drafted in their outbox of the person who did that.
Krista:So they can then just go to their email, make sure it's all correct and send it.
Krista:So it standardizes who we're responding to, what we're responding about, what the make goods are.
Krista:So it's not like people just deciding like, oh, I saw this thing, I'm going to decide to do this for them.
Krista:And so then you as a customer have given us that feedback.
Krista:Let's say the morning after the game and within an hour I might call you and say, hey, Adam, so sorry that you had that experience.
Krista:Next game's on us and the beer's on us.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:I'm now gonna.
Speaker B:Whenever I go to a game, I'm gonna say, someone spilled beer on me.
Speaker B:That's a good tip.
Speaker B:I'm gonna actually create an AI bot that whenever it sees in my calendar, an NBA game, it's just gonna automatically generate the email.
Speaker B:I just have to make sure it does it after the game so it's not totally obvious.
Speaker B:And that is an awesome use case of AI where there's a bunch of buckets we could put AI use in.
Speaker B:One is like super futuristic when the NBA has this app where you can scan yourself and see a clip of you playing with your favorite team and.
Speaker B:But then this where it's like a bunch of things you're doing already, but you can do it much faster, much more easily.
Speaker B:And in that use case, like customer service, people can focus on customer service rather than on handling a bunch of like spreadsheets of reports and things.
Krista:What we're finding is that right now the biggest ROI around gen AI is through these operational efficiencies and different tools that we can build.
Krista:And as part of this exercise, I meet with every single department, understand their pain points are really getting to Understand the whole business and how systems and processes work.
Krista:My hope and our hypothesis is that as we build these individual and cross functional tools that'll also help us understand what is the next transformational change that AI can help with as an organization.
Krista:Right.
Krista:We can't just out of the blue say this is how the future of sports business is going to be run.
Krista:Let's build an AI tool to support it.
Krista:We need to do the steps to get there to figure out what that transformational change is gonna be.
Krista:And like I said before, for us, the massive investment involved in doing something transformational like what you were describing before, the ROI is just not clear enough.
Speaker B:Yet where you can have virtual dinner with Scoot Henderson or something and you don't know how many people want that or how.
Speaker B:By the way, my son wants that.
Speaker B:He's a huge fan of Scoot Henderson's.
Krista:I will say we do have innovative, cool, fun.
Krista:We have a hologram on the concourse and fun, interesting digital technology that is happening that's not Gen AI.
Krista:So I don't want to make it sound like we aren't also investing in interesting, cool fan engagement type things for Gen AI.
Speaker B:Specifically, you said earlier that one thing you love about AI is you don't need to be technical.
Speaker B:Walk me through what you bring to this job that you imagine someone without technical expertise would would be valuable for them.
Krista:Yeah, I think it's true for someone with or without technical expertise that you need to be willing to try.
Krista:That's the biggest one is just like willing to jump in, get a minimum viable product and try things, learn from them, make things happen and then pivot quickly if you need to.
Krista:Experimentation's huge.
Krista:Change management and being able to influence people across the organization has been really important.
Krista:I have been working with pretty much every team within our organization and they don't report to us.
Krista:Right.
Krista:You just have to be able to figure out how to have cross functional influence.
Krista:I think another key, and I'd be very curious what David or others would actually say about this, but I think positioning and like framing it as a benefit to staff and making people realize that.
Krista:Who is it Scott Galloway who says AI is not going to take your job, but someone who knows how to use it will.
Krista:It's not about me trying to replace you with AI.
Krista:It's about me trying to help you be successful in this job and whatever job you do next because this is a skill you'll need to have forever.
Speaker B:That is a deep issue and not to just talk about Ethan Mollick all the time.
Speaker B:But something that really comes through in his book CO Intelligence is that this is actually a real risk for AI deployment.
Speaker B:That the sense from the data is that the average senior executive at a big company is saying we're taking a cautious look at AI.
Speaker B:A lot of employees are using it all the time, but the last thing they want to do is let their boss know that they're using it because they're afraid it'll.
Speaker B:Can you walk me through how AI is deployed at the Trailblazers and how you communicate that?
Krista:Yeah, it's helpful because we have a president who's on board.
Krista:He was like, krista, we have to just dive into this.
Krista:This is the future.
Krista:Like we have to get behind this and figure this out.
Krista:So having top down support has been huge.
Krista:What we started with is about a year ago, like on an all staff meeting, I just said if anyone's using AI and wants to talk about it, slack me.
Krista:And we're going to get a group together, we're just going to talk over lunch and figure out how people are using it, what it's good for, what it's bad for, which tools we like, which tools we don't learn from each other on it.
Krista:So we created this sort of learning culture around AI.
Krista:This also came after the very obvious policy around don't put customer data and proprietary information in that kind of stuff.
Krista:So it was coming from the place of we want you to use this, we encourage you to use it, let's really share and figure out how we're using it in interesting ways.
Krista:So we have a Slack channel where everyone in the company pretty much is in it now, where we had like a little bot that trained people how to prompt.
Krista:So just like the very surface level, like here's how you get a ChatGPT account, here's how you make sure it's not training off your data.
Krista:Every day they got a different prompt to copy and paste into ChatGPT.
Speaker B:In Slack, it was just you created.
Krista:This feed like a one on one kind of DM and you just get pinged as if it was a person pinging you and be like, put this in ChatGPT.
Krista:And so it got people to use it from a very personal perspective.
Krista:One of the examples was think about a difficult conversation you need to have.
Krista:Here's the prompt that you should copy and paste into ChatGPT and then have a conversation with it and work through that with the person, et cetera.
Krista:So it was very personalized.
Krista:It wasn't like, hey, what's A work problem you have to solve.
Krista:And I think that helped people because turns out people are more interested in themselves than in work, which makes sense.
Krista:And so like, working through a difficult conversation with your mother in law or your child's kindergarten teacher is much more palatable.
Krista:The hope was and is that people could translate, oh, if I can have that difficult conversation made much more easier through ChatGPT with my mother in law, that could probably also be true for my employee that I need to have the difficult conversation with.
Krista:Right.
Krista:So we're trying to train people in ways that they can then apply to their roles.
Krista:The other day I sent a note to the whole group and I was like, did you guys know ChatGPT could do this?
Krista:Because I took a picture of my lunch and asked it how much protein was in it and it told me everything that was in my lunch and how much protein was in it.
Krista:And I had no idea that it could do that.
Krista:So I think part of it is just reminding everyone that we don't know everything about AI and we're all constantly learning.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Including OpenAI anthropic Gemini, you could today do something that no one has ever done with AI.
Speaker B:My favorite personal recent use case is a minor but tense conflict with somebody.
Speaker B:It doesn't matter the details.
Speaker B:And I felt I had to say something, but I wanted to do it politely.
Speaker B:And I worked really hard to write an email that was respectful and I sent it.
Speaker B:But then I was like, was that good?
Speaker B:And I put it into Claude.
Speaker B:Claude said, it's clear you tried very hard, but this section is passive aggressive and is likely to stimulate a defensive response.
Speaker B:And sure enough, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker B:And I was like, oh, put it in Claude before you send it.
Krista:So I've done that a few times too, with how people get passive aggressive or weird sometimes on emails and you're not like, really sure what's happening.
Krista:And then you have this whole chain and you're like, what is going on?
Krista:So sometimes I'll just copy the entire chain and put it into an LLM and say, help me understand these people and where they're coming from and what they're actually trying to say.
Krista:And that's always helpful too, because it just allows me to be like, okay, now I understand what's happening.
Krista:I can come at this from a very clear and objective place and better understand their motivations.
Speaker B:Yeah, I love that dimension where it doesn't have feelings.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It doesn't remove.
Speaker B:It's not like we all become autonomous robots.
Speaker B:It's oh, it's pointing out that I misunderstood their intent.
Speaker B:Or there's a better strategy to approach this.
Speaker B:Obviously it's far from perfect and it can make dumb mistakes.
Speaker B:We're still in the baby steps stage, so no one needs to ask permission to use AI in the Trailblazers organization.
Krista:It's encouraged.
Krista:And again, like we try to provide the scaffolding, which is be safe and be smart and we have more specifics around it and then just try things and share.
Krista:So we think of it in three levels.
Krista:There's the like individual use cases, right?
Krista:For prompting, checking emails, doing all that kind of stuff, which we've trained people on and are continuing to do because it's not like everybody adopts everything.
Krista:And then there's the next level of custom GPTs or things that we were training on our data that some people can do and some people are interested enough and they've figured it out and can do that.
Krista:And then the third level is automations with custom GPTs, like the customer experience one that I shared earlier.
Krista:But we have over 30 projects that are using all three of those things for departments across the company to create efficiencies, for lack of a better word.
Speaker B:That based on the conversations I'm having with people who have similar jobs to you at different companies, you seem pretty far ahead of the curve in broad adoption, is your sense.
Speaker B:This is typical of NBA teams or I have seen Portland Trailblazers named as one of the most innovative teams.
Krista:So I don't know exactly what other teams are doing because my data points are not that recent.
Krista:We actually did a boot camp on all of this stuff, like on how to build custom GPTs and build automations.
Krista:And we invited people from other teams, other leagues just to try to get more people excited and involved in this.
Krista:Because my concern is that leagues are going to default to what the NFL did, which is let's not do nobody use it.
Krista:I don't want that.
Krista:And so from that I got the sense that not that many people were doing very much with it.
Speaker B:That would be my sense is that.
Speaker B:And I don't know it as well as you, but I've read a bit about adoption throughout the mba and my sense is you're pretty advanced and it sounds like that's because you have leadership, that you're a leader who has this approach.
Speaker B:And then your boss also really embraced it.
Speaker B:I don't know if this is a weird metaphor, but I once did a radio story about fungi like molds and funguses, and basically every individual mold creates Dozens of chemicals, and some of them become penicillin or some really useful thing, and some of them are useless, and some of them can kill you.
Speaker B:And scientists really study them as like, this pharmacological research.
Speaker B:And they're morphing all the time.
Speaker B:I did this actually in New Orleans after Katrina.
Speaker B:And every house that scientists went into had new novel molds that never been seen before because of the flooding.
Speaker B:And then they left them for so long.
Speaker B:And so on the one hand, it's terrible and they had to tear the houses down.
Speaker B:But on the other hand, wow, all this chemistry, all this crazy stuff is happening.
Speaker B:We could maybe find all sorts of drugs that'll be useful for people.
Speaker B:And I think of that as a mental model for AI use at the enterprise is that you have all these employees who are having all these interactions with each other, with customers, with suppliers.
Speaker B:They're seeing operations.
Speaker B:Some small number of them have the writing tools and the political savvy and the strategic experience to turn those insights into usable tools.
Speaker B:But most of them don't.
Speaker B:And AI can really be a partner in.
Speaker B:Every employee now has access to Accenture and McKinsey at Personal Consulting.
Speaker B:They have access to a great memo writer.
Speaker B:They have access to a persuasion mach.
Speaker B:Now, not all those ideas are going to be awesome.
Speaker B:And going through all those ideas might in itself be a challenge, although AI is pretty good at that as well.
Speaker B:But you now have, I hate to call your employees a bunch of molds, but you have all these creative.
Speaker B:This creative energy, like you're the head of strategy.
Speaker B:But every problem you can think of, someone in the Trailblazers organization is on the front lines of that in a way you will never fully know.
Krista:Exactly.
Krista:That is exactly our philosophy and how we've approached this whole thing.
Krista:It's like, how do we democratize AI in a way that allows people closest to the problem to be closest to the solution?
Speaker B:It's like AI is allowing you to intimately understand the Trailblazers much better, right?
Krista:Absolutely.
Krista:That's another specific example.
Krista:David and I have a colleague named Michaela who is a phenomenal employee.
Krista:She is a marketing automation specialist.
Krista:So she sends emails all day because we have 200 events, concerts, et cetera, plus all the blazer games and everything else.
Krista:So she's very busy.
Krista:And because we've been pushing so hard for people to learn about and get excited about it and figure out ways that they can use it to improve their own world, she went off and built this entire tool that is basically going to a tool that we pay tens of thousands of dollars for because she figure out how to do it herself.
Krista:And I could never have said, hey, we should replace this tool with something we build because I'm too far away from it.
Krista:But because she's there in it every day, she learned the technical pieces, understood the actual problem, and is able to build her own thing that again is going to replace a tool that cost us a lot of money.
Krista:There's a lot of ways that people can get excited about it.
Krista:She gets to present that to 20 people across the organization and people are like, this is amazing.
Krista:You're amazing.
Speaker B:I want to bring your colleague David in.
Speaker B:Luckily enough, he's right here.
Speaker B:Hey David.
David:Hello.
David:Thanks for having me.
Speaker B:Explain your job and what your title is and what you do at the Trailblazers.
David:So I'm the VP of digital and innovation.
David:My job is twofold.
David:I have half of my team that works on all of our digital products, our app, website, some of the digital experiences within the arena, point of sale, stuff like that.
David:And the other half is our digital marketing team, which includes folks like Micaela, people who run our paid media and other things like that.
David:And it's across not just the Trailblazers, but the Rose Quarter and other entities that are organization.
Speaker B:And you have more of the technical know how.
David:I am not a coder, I'm not technical.
David:And I would echo everything that Krista said that this feels like the most accessible, impactful tech that I've ever experienced.
David:And I also think not being technical has allowed me to share my experiences outwards because I think I can learn a lot from other folks who are utilizing it.
Speaker B:I have a bunch of different questions about use cases, but maybe David, walk me through what are some of the challenges?
Speaker B:Because I know when I talk to some executives, I'm imagining many people I can picture thinking I can't just deploy it to everybody.
Speaker B:Maybe they're at a bank or a medical facility where there's HIPAA laws or major bank secrecy laws.
Speaker B:Maybe they just have an employee base that they don't feel as confident in.
Speaker B:As you said, you're a leaner organization.
Speaker B:There's not 600,000 employees at the Portland Trailblazers.
Speaker B:How big is the trailblazers?
David:Around 400 folks.
Speaker B:Walk me through.
Speaker B:How do you feel?
Speaker B:Confident.
Speaker B:This is well controlled.
David:I think the first thing to recognize is that people are using these tools no matter what.
David:I think just being out there and sharing and saying that we are encouraging this stuff has brought forward a lot of uses, which is great.
David:I don't Want those happening in the shadows anyway.
David:So that's been helpful as an approach, as an organization.
Speaker B:I think that we know that I have a friend who Chris is also friends with who worked at a company that won't allow anyone to use it.
Speaker B:So everyone just brings in a personal device.
Speaker B:And I worked at the New York Times and at Sony Music where the IT rules are so locked down for good reason, like constant hacking threats, that basically non compliance was the way the company worked.
Speaker B:You had your official email and then you had your Gmail, you had your official laptop and then you had the laptop you could actually use.
Speaker B:I think the fantasy of control or the fantasy that some IT office or some general counsel or someone gets to decide what people are going to do is just not realistic anyway.
Speaker B:I just want to underline the point you made.
Speaker B:They're going to use it.
Speaker B:So the question is not do we allow our employees to use it?
Speaker B:It's do we acknowledge that our employees are using it and do we learn from it or do we pretend it's not happening and not gain any learning?
Speaker B:You just have to acknowledge people are using it.
Speaker B:You do the training to make sure they don't put customer credit card numbers or personal data, that kind of thing.
Speaker B:What are some of the other structures you put around the use?
David:It's a little bit of common sense.
David:And also looking at our current tech stack and understanding that some of the tools that we utilize, I think we've mentioned Qualtrics, we've mentioned like Photoshop, Microsoft, we have a big shop of Microsoft products.
David:They're going to develop things within AI that take into a lot of considerations around safety.
David:We want to respect all the data that they provide us.
David:The other part of it is just going back to AI is very accessible.
David:We don't need to present AI to everyone as this is a tool that you need to use.
David:You need to make really amazing stuff.
David:The kind of process that we do is talk to people about pain points and particularly within certain systems that they utilize.
David:So a system could be communications around renewable season tickets.
David:There's a step by step process that we get from point A to that email actually being sent for renewal.
David:And where can we insert AI within those steps.
David:And I think those are just like little wins.
David:And it shows that you can have a big impact with just some small insertions of AI within your daily systems.
David:And I think that stuff is easier to digest, it's easier to look at and say, hey, this could potentially cause a problem from either a data standpoint or something like that than just trying to come up with these huge ideas and then run into problems that way.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think where you have a lot of forms, that's a great place to look.
Speaker B:One stumbling block, we hear a lot is legal, and Legal has reasonable concerns.
Speaker B:They're often very concerned about IP protection.
Speaker B:My sense is a lot of this hasn't been resolved yet legally.
Speaker B:Like, we don't know.
Speaker B:There's a lot of court cases that will have to happen.
Speaker B:But there's an idea out there that if an image is fully AI created, it can't be IP protected.
Speaker B:Obviously, everyone has a fear of some AI generated social media content that is offensive or contrary to the brand's values.
Speaker B:Why does legal let you do this the way you do it, and how do you put those safeguards in?
Krista:So we have an amazing legal team and they are part of the scaffolding that we built out initially.
Krista:Our philosophy is that we should not be putting anything out publicly that was created by AI internally.
Krista:So again, that's where we could be doing scoot, having an interview with you and your Korean friend in Korean.
Krista:We could be doing all kinds of very interesting things, but we're just not at the point where we're going to do that.
Krista:Fan facing image generation, video generation, anything like that.
Krista:That's been like one of our rules.
Krista:That's another reason why we're so focused on internal ops is because everything's behind the scenes.
Krista:And so if we're building like a proposal bot that reviews, reads, critiques, ask questions on decks that we're sharing with partners and the board and other stuff, it's not like anything that's going to become a lawsuit.
Krista:So I think we've just been lucky to have a legal team that understands that this is happening, that people are using it, and that we're going to just use it in a way that is beneficial to our business without putting us at risk.
Speaker B:So you have several international players on your team, right?
Speaker B:You have players from Belgium, Senegal, Dominican Republic.
Speaker B:And the language piece feels really exciting.
Speaker B:Like, I have a bunch of friends who work at the NBA headquarters.
Speaker B:And India comes up a lot.
Speaker B:India is now the largest country in the world.
Speaker B:It's not yet a basketball country.
Speaker B:They haven't had their Yao Ming, their big breakthrough player.
Speaker B:It is very growing.
Speaker B:I believe it's the fastest growing sport, but it's well behind cricket and soccer.
Speaker B:India has well over 100 languages.
Speaker B:And so the idea of being able to reach communities in their language or for you to be able to engage Senegalese fans Belgian fans, Dominican fans.
Speaker B:That must be just exciting.
Speaker B:The possibility of a non native English speaker being able to really engage the sport on a big level, that feels inevitable, but it's not quite ready yet.
Krista:Yeah, I think it's exciting and it's inevitable.
Krista:And there's so much.
Krista:We've been working in China for years and you have to be very culturally specific and very conscientious of like the region that you're in and the language for that region and the dialect and the cultural norms and expectations.
Krista:There's so much to it that again, I'm like, AI can for sure do that.
Krista:I don't know if AI is there yet or not, but I think that's also fraught with potential challenges and potential concerns around then.
Krista:Anyone can use Scoot's voice, for example, in any language in any country to say anything.
Krista:That's terrifying.
Speaker B:I now want to talk directly to people in your role.
Speaker B:So like heads of strategy, heads of AI deployment who are a little more.
Speaker B:They haven't quite deployed yet.
Speaker B:Pretend we're drinking a beer at a conference and they're just like, I'm nervous about it.
Speaker B:Maybe their general counsel or their CEO or president is nervous about it.
Speaker B:It sounds like you dipped your toes in a little bit and built organically, step by step, walk through how they might do that.
Krista:Before I answer that, I do want to be clear that it's not like everyone at our company is on board and using this.
Krista:It's a very normal bell curve with the people that are all in, people that are never going to use it and people that kind of use it when you hold their hands.
Krista:So it's not like everyone is using it.
Krista:But there is going to be a ground spell at any organization because there are early adopters that are into it and using it.
Krista:So I think if you can in parallel tap into that group and reach those couple key stakeholders, president, head of sales or revenue, like whatever those kind of key roles are, where you need their buy in to be successful.
Krista:I think that's the right approach.
Krista:The way that we did that.
Krista:We already explained the groundswell approach again, because we had our president on board.
Krista:That was helpful.
Krista:But our head of revenue who is awesome, he's new as of the last few months, he would say, I don't know, I'm not really into it, I'm not going to.
Krista:And I'm thinking to myself, like the revenue opportunity here, we've already seen it in his team in some ways.
Krista:And so what I did is I just try to generalize it so it's not just about sports, but, like a sales table of, like, how we can pace out our sales of these different products over the next X months.
Krista:And I was like, hey, check out this table.
Krista:Let me know what you think.
Krista:And he's like, this is awesome.
Krista:I made it with ChatGPT.
Krista:On my walk from my parking spot to my desk, he was like, what?
Krista:And I was like, yeah.
Krista:He's like, this would have taken my team days.
Krista:And I was like, I know.
Krista:He was like, great, let's talk.
Krista:And so from there, he was in.
Krista:So it's figuring out what are those oh, my God.
Krista:Moments that are relevant to that key stakeholder that can get them on board.
Speaker B:And maybe it'd be worth, like, thinking through because you've identified some really helpful areas.
Speaker B:So there's internal processes.
Speaker B:Just like we have this process that takes 18 steps.
Speaker B:What if most of those steps were automated?
Speaker B:That's a pretty base level.
Speaker B:Like you, David, and you, Krista.
Speaker B:I don't know how to code.
Speaker B:I've coded a ton of little automated programs that I just feel like I have superpowers.
Speaker B:It's really cool.
Speaker B:So that's one major area.
Speaker B:Then what you just described also is what is some more advanced analysis?
Speaker B:What is some more thinking through?
Speaker B:Just yesterday, my son is 13.
Speaker B:He really wants to be a sportswear designer.
Speaker B:He has his own line of basketball apparel and he wants now to launch, but he just uses like, some company where you design an image and they print it on a T shirt.
Speaker B:He wants to actually design, like, ski pants and ski jackets.
Speaker B: in: Speaker B:I don't know, wait a few years and go to fashion school.
Speaker B:We just sat down and in 20 minutes had, here's all the things you need to do.
Speaker B:Here's how you do it.
Speaker B:At some point, someone actually has to sew fabric.
Speaker B:I can't do that yet.
Speaker B:If I'm thinking about fan appreciation or events, just brainstorm with me.
Speaker B:Here's the 10 ones that worked.
Speaker B:Here's 10 that didn't help me think through some other events.
Krista:Yeah, even some of the stuff that we're doing with the remix our G League team like David recommended, which they're now doing, is upload some of the successful social media posts or digital paid media posts that we've done to drive ticket sales and then ask it for copy ideas or whatever.
Krista:Again, we're asking it for ideas.
Krista:We're not asking to create the images of, like, new copy based on this theme night.
Krista:We're doing for Pride Night in February or whatever.
Krista:So rather than having someone be like, oh, what should the coffee be for Pride Night that's going to help drive ticket sales?
David:It's.
Krista:Oh, based on what is successful in your market and based on this and based on that, here's some suggested copy and here's what you should do for creative for that.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker B:This was fabulous.
Speaker B:And Chris, can we tell members of the feedforward community reach out if they have questions?
Krista:No, I'd love it.
Krista:We talk to people every week and it's like the highlight of the week to get to talk to people about what they're doing and what we're trying.
Krista:Cause again, like, we're all just figuring it out.
Krista:Everyone's just figuring it out.
Krista:So we're all learning together.
Speaker B:So, Krista, you're in the feedforward discord.
Speaker B:If people want to reach out, they could through the discord.
Krista:I would love that.
Speaker B:Great.
Speaker B:Just to wrap things up.
Speaker B:This both sounds incredibly powerful, but also like real baby steps.
Speaker B:Everyone who knows AI, we're barely got started.
Speaker B:This is Ms.
Speaker B:DOS stage.
Speaker B:So do you have a thought of, like the Trailblazers offices five years from now or whatever?
Speaker B:Assuming these tools are more widely embraced that they continue to become more capable, do you think more people work there, fewer people work there, or we don't have to go there?
Krista:No, I just mean it's hard to wrap our heads around, like, what things are going to look like in five years, because two years ago I didn't know I was going to be spending any time.
Krista:And so it's really hard for me to guess.
Krista:But that's also why we're approaching it the way we are, which is the more we can learn about the company, the more we can figure out what that big next transformational change is going to be.
Krista:And people have talked about how sports business hasn't changed in 30, 40, 50 years.
Krista:Like, it's still the exact same setup, basically, and the same number of people and the same approach to everything.
Krista:And I genuinely believe this is going to be the technology that transforms it.
Krista:I just don't know exactly what it looks like yet.
David:Yeah, yeah, I have a couple of thoughts on that.
David:I think the question you asked is exactly what you should ask employees.
David:Right.
David:I think it asks them to audit themselves and what skills they have and how can they be more nimble and become more than a Swiss army knife, because there could be parts of their job that are no longer needed to be done.
David:So how does that job shift?
David:One example I'm following pretty closely and I'm talking to my paid media folks about is there's no world where meta and all these different ad platforms aren't going to change the way you purchase ads.
David:I think it's going to get easier, it's going to become more accessible to mom and pop shops down the street who can prompt an ad to be run.
David:So the actual technical expertise of running ads, I feel like is going to become less and less of a barrier.
David:So these folks who are incredibly talented in that area, how can you be on top of that?
David:How can you utilize that as a example to shift your skills to be maybe more strategic and talk more about creative, talk more about audiences, like that sort of stuff and add that to your utility belt, to your abilities?
Speaker B:I completely agree.
Speaker B:Some people look at it through the lens of, oh, these are activities that people make a lot of money doing.
Speaker B:Right now it's going to take it away, but the financial burden to just enter certain kinds of arrangements.
Speaker B:I have some doctor friends who are worried, oh, is it going to eliminate doctors?
Speaker B:And I like you, Krista, I've spent a lot of time in the developing world where the vast majority of people will never see a doctor in their whole life.
Speaker B:And so rather than think my thoracic surgeon only make 800,000 instead of 1.2 million, it's what if kids in Haiti and Senegal and India get to actually have some real pediatric health or their mother gets some pre birth guidance through maybe a nurse practitioner who has access to AI?
Speaker B:Something like that.
Speaker B:When you think about sport, like something I noticed with my son already with TikTok and everything is the number of touch points into the game of basketball is so much bigger than what it was when I was a kid where it was basically some games were on TV and then like once a year my dad took me to a game and that was my touch points.
Speaker B:And my son is all day, every day, he makes his own edits, he engages.
Krista:I was gonna say you're reminding me of a podcast, I don't remember which one I listened to where they talked about how everyone was freaking out about ATMs.
Krista:It was like, oh, all those tellers are gonna go out of business and the banks are gonna run out of business and it's oh, actually there's all these roles for people that are much more engaging and beneficial to the bottom line of the bank than handing out dollars.
Krista:We just adapt and we're going to adapt and we're all going to be fine.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:My dad, he's older and he has a lot of medical issues.
Speaker B:And the best person we deal with in the medical, the whole medical world is this billing woman.
Speaker B:And I'm like, she should spend all of her time talking to patients because she's like the kindest, best person.
Speaker B:And Instead, she spends 98% of her time filling out forms and 2% engaging patients.
Speaker B:And I'd be thrilled if she's freed up.
Krista:This reminds me of another use case that I think is really relevant for every company.
Krista:Because form filling and that unstructured data needing to become structured data.
Krista:I think that kind of stuff that everyone hates doing, if AI can, AI is helping us take care of that.
Krista:But if that can, like, free people up to, like you're saying, lean into their strong suits and their strengths and core competencies, like, that just makes everyone happier.
Krista:When you're doing things you like doing, you are happier.
Krista:You're a better employee, you're a better partner, you're a better parent.
Krista:I'm such an optimist about this, with some caveats, but I'm such an optimist that if we can get AI to take on stuff we don't like doing for us and our whole team, five years from now, people could be happier at work.
Krista:Dare I say it.
