Interview with Mark Roberti

Mark Roberti recently retired after running RFID Journal and the trade show RFID Journal LIVE! for over 20 years. We talk about his fascinating journey and what, if anything, is next.

Watch: https://youtu.be/b1oByNUv3PI

Unedited Transcript.

Jim Allan: I'm with the freshly retired Mark Roberti. You will always be the founder of RFID Journal, but now you're the former editor of RFID Journal. Say it ain't so.

Mark Roberti: It is so, yes.

Jim Allan: Welcome.

Mark Roberti: Thank you, Jim. Good to be here.

Jim Allan: So I'm going to start off with a couple of true-false questions, because some people know who you are, some people don't know who you are.

Mark Roberti: Who doesn't know who I am?

Jim Allan: A lot  of people, half the people watching this. So true or false, you invented RFID technology.

Mark Roberti: False.

Jim Allan: Okay, so that's a no, so I got to write no. True or false, you coined the phrase internet of things.

Mark Roberti: False. So also a no. Yes, that was coined by Kevin Ashton.

Jim Allan:  So, this is off to a slow start. I got two no's, so I'm wildly misinformed right off the start. So a lot of these people watching this will know who you are because they're attracted to the RFID hashtag. For those of you watching this, I'll introduce Mark a little bit. So before RFID Journal, you were a technology writer. For a few years, you worked in Asia, so tell me about that.

Mark Roberti: Well, so I grew up on Long Island in New York, and I actually was dating an Asian woman, and I worked in a Chinese restaurant, and I learned how to speak Chinese. I could write all the dishes in Chinese, so I would take the order in Chinese and give it to the Chinese chef so he could read it. And after I graduated with a degree in English literature, I decided that I would go to Asia and go to Hong Kong and try to learn to be fluent in Chinese and Cantonese specifically. So I left everybody I knew, and I moved to the other side of the world. I got a job teaching, and I taught in Hong Kong for a little while where I met my wife, who was a teacher. And then I got into journalism. I was writing about business, because Hong Kong was a business center of East Asia, and at the time, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea, and Hong Kong were known as the four tigers, and they were doing great. And so I wrote all about business. I came back to the U.S., and my first job was actually as a travel trade editor in a travel trade publication, which was just kind of to get a job and get a paycheck when I came back to the United States. And I went to a conference in Vancouver, and I volunteered to go to this conference because my friend John Hull lived in Vancouver at the time, and I wanted to go visit him. So I said, I'll go to that technology conference. And they were talking about this new thing called the Internet. Now, this was in 1991. And I listened to the speeches, and I was blown away by this Internet thing. And so I switched from being focused on business to be focused on technology after I heard about the Internet. So that's when I started to write about technology.

Jim Allan: And somewhere along the line, you stumbled over this RFID thing.

Mark Roberti: Yeah. So when I learned about the Internet, I came back from this conference, and I was telling everybody about this thing called the Internet. And people were saying, you know, Mark, this is really boring. Shut up. This is, you know, we don't want to hear about this anymore. But then when I heard about RFID in 2000, I was at a conference again, and somebody mentioned this thing called RFID to me. It sounded really intriguing, and I had the same feeling I had when I heard about the Internet. So I got really excited. The publication I was working for at the time, the industry standard, which was the dot com Bible, it went bankrupt, and I was out of work. So I had done a lot of interviews for a story about RFID. And so I started posting stuff online, and people started visiting. And so I formed a company and started RFID Journal.

Jim Allan: So why did you move back to the States, though? Just family reasons?

Mark Roberti: Yeah. You know, Hong Kong's a very difficult place to raise a family. Your apartments are really small. There's not a lot of space. So my wife and I thought it would be a better place to raise a family.

Jim Allan: So you started this website, RFID Journal, basically from your kitchen table.

Mark Roberti: I had a spare bedroom. I bought a book on how to write HTML code. I bought a hosting package, $9.99 a month for a hosting. And John Hull designed my logo and started posting stuff and coding everything myself. My startup capital was $500.

Jim Allan: Right. So I believe I did one of the first RFID videos. I'm going to insert myself into your story here. That's when it started to take off. When I got involved. When the aforementioned Kevin Ashton, then of the auto ID center at MIT, needed someone to record very early demos of RFID. He contacted you. Do you know anyone that does? Well, there's this guy that lives next door to this is the third mention of John Hull on this video. He'll be happy. I was his next door neighbor. And so off to Boston and MIT, I went. And this is 2002, I think. So somewhere along the way, not only did you find out about RFID, but someone whispered to you, trade shows. So why trade shows?

Mark Roberti: Well, so that's sort of an interesting story. I had two people I worked with in the technology journals that I was I was with Information Week for a few years. And I had a colleague, Charles Pelton, and another colleague, John Eckhaus. And John and I left Information Week the same week without knowing it and went to the same publication, the industry standard. John was on the event side and I was on the I was on the editorial side writing stories. And John knew that I could speak publicly. So he invited me to speak at some of the industry standard publications. Then he wound up leaving and working with Charles Pelton, who started his own company. And they said, well, why don't we collaborate on an event? And I said, I think that's a great idea. So early on, I mean, it was 2002 that I launched the company and 2003 that we ran. We ran our first event in Chicago.

Jim Allan: So the first video I did for you was 2003. So I'm going to test your memory here. So you were staging your first RFID live in Chicago. How many attendees?

Mark Roberti: Probably 200, 300. We had 300 attendees at that time.

Jim Allan: So pretty good. But humble beginnings.

Mark Roberti: We had like 10 or 11 tabletops.

Jim Allan: Now, as I recall, your keynote speaker couldn't make it. So I flew to Boston so you could interview the executive from Gillette, Dick Cantwell, who I had already interviewed for that previous video. So he was one of the first corporate champions of RFID. And I remember it fondly because it was during SARS. Toronto was a hotbed of SARS. So I flew to Boston, empty plane, and I had a coughing fit during, like just right now, like during the interview. And I remember seeing the blood drain from both of your faces as I was trying to shoot it. So that was fun. So a keynote speaker cancelling is one of many crises you probably faced over the years, no doubt. I mean, it was hard.

Mark Roberti: It was hard.

Jim Allan: And you built it up from scratch. And what I, you scaled up pretty quickly. What I didn't realize until much, much later is that you had investors at the beginning. Is that correct?

Mark Roberti: No. So what happened was I started the company. I was the sole proprietor. And as the company was growing, I, you know, I had no resources. I had no accounting person. So I went to look for an accounting firm. And I met this guy, Les Suffren, who focused on media properties, doing accounting for media. And I forget who recommended me. And so this was 2005, companies starting to grow. And Les, for reasons that I don't really fully understand, said, Hey, you know, I know some investors that would be interested in talking to you. Would you be interested in talking to them? And I said, yeah, why not? So he dials up the phone and he calls somebody up. I won't use anybody's name because I don't know how much they want their names to be out there. But he calls this guy at Boston Ventures, which is a big firm in Boston, and says, hey, I got this guy here. He's got a great cash flow business. Things are going really well. I think you might want to talk to him. So this guy flies down from Boston a couple of days later and we have lunch together. And he says, well, look, I can't invest in you because you're too small. Boston Ventures can't. But I'm interested in doing angel investing. And I have a bunch of friends who I think would be willing to do that. Are you interested in investors? And I said, well, I said, really, I don't need the money. I'm doing fine. You know, we're self-funding. And he said, well, you know, that may be true, but you may want advice. You may want, you know, feedback from people. It may help. And I thought about it. And I made the decision that I would sell a small piece of the company to these guys. And they're all big wigs. I mean, they're guys who know media businesses. You know, they've run big, some of them ran big media companies.

Jim Allan: And what year is this?

Mark Roberti: This is 2005. OK. So I sold 20% of the business at the time.

Jim Allan: OK.

Mark Roberti: And they were passive investors. I mean, the last 10 years, I didn't even talk to them. I mean, I would send them a yearly update. Hey, here's how we did this year. But they never called me and said, hey, I think you should be doing X or Y or Z. They just let me kind of run the business as I saw fit.

Jim Allan: So the first RFID Journal Live that I actually went to was at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas in 2006.

Mark Roberti: Yeah.

Jim Allan: So I got there as the event was already underway. And I was surprised to encounter about 3,000 attendees. So you grew pretty quickly. Yeah. And that's sort of where you landed in terms of attendance over the years.

Mark Roberti: We kind of plateaued around 3,000. Yes, it was 2,000, 2,500, various reasons, which we can get to.

Jim Allan: But, you know, 3,500, I think I remember one year. So back then, in 2006, did you have visions or ambitions of growing it to five or 10,000 attendees every year? Or was that never really in the cards?

Mark Roberti: That was absolutely my goal. And frankly, it was my expectation that that would happen. I think that everybody in the industry thought that RFID would take off faster than it did. And, you know, to this day, it's still a technology that is, you know, widely used, but only by a small minority of companies in any meaningful way. So it's still fairly niche and has not yet kind of hit a tipping point where it's exploded and used everywhere.

Jim Allan: So, I mean, I went to that show, I didn't know what to expect. But there was a big keynote session, at least 1,000 people. There was simultaneous breakout sessions, maybe up to eight, all happening simultaneously. And this is all day long for two or three days. There was also an exhibit hall full of booths and vendors. So for me, it was a crash course on how trade shows were put together. And I was basically I was doing promotional videos for you. And I was interviewing people and I didn't, you know, I'm just encountering people in the hall. And I don't know, I didn't know the difference between attendees and vendors, sponsors and speakers. When I first went, just to be honest, it probably took me a couple of years to figure it out. But the truth is...

Mark Roberti: You could have asked me, Jim.

Jim Allan: Well, you're busy and a little standoffish, frankly.

Mark Roberti: Really?

Jim Allan: But the person I was interviewing could have been all of those things. Because as you know, you could be in the audience and then five years later be a keynote speaker and bring your case studies.

Mark Roberti: Even less than five years. So we had some guys from GM speak and they showed a picture of them two years before sitting in the audience. Because our photographer actually took a picture of them. And they saw the picture on our website and took a screenshot of it and showed it in their presentation. Here's us two years ago in the audience. Knowing nothing and then two years later sharing info.

Jim Allan: So it was a uniquely collaborative experience, really, because you could be in a booth and then watch a keynote. And then also go to some of these breakout sessions because everyone was kind of learning from each other. It was kind of a uniquely collaborative atmosphere, really.

Mark Roberti: Especially in the early days, it was a very, you know, there was a strong sense of community. And I think, you know, in the early days, we all felt we were changing the world. That, you know, this technology was going to revolutionize supply chains. And, you know, we were doing this. So speakers and exhibitors and, you know, we all knew each other. And then as it got bigger, you know, that sense of community kind of got lost a little bit. But it was very collaborative, still is. You know, people move from working for a vendor to working for a retailer or working for a retailer to going to a supplier. You know, it's a very fluid community. And again, back to 2006, 2007, it seemed like the sky was the limit, really.

Jim Allan: But then it got difficult, didn't it? Because the economy was always a factor, right?

Mark Roberti: Well, 2008, we had the financial collapse. And frankly, our company came within a whisper of going out of business at that time, because the nature of the trade show business is in order to get that space in the convention center, you have to guarantee the hotels in the area a certain number of rooms. And so we were at the Swan & Dolphin that year, 2009. And the world economy was going through the floor. People weren't traveling. And hotel prices had gone, you know, to nothing. So we had contracted with the Swan & Dolphin for something like $259 a night.

Jim Allan: Orlando, right?

Mark Roberti: Yeah, in Orlando. And people were registering for the event, but they weren't registering in the hotel. So we started calling them saying, well, you need to book your hotel. And they're like, oh, no, I got a room at the Hilton for 100 bucks. So I'm not staying at the event hotel. So we were faced with, we were going to owe the hotel a million dollars, a little bit over a million dollars, if everybody stayed in the Hilton.

Jim Allan: It's no longer in your living room, this company.

Mark Roberti: Yeah. So I called the GM of the hotel and I said, look, I know you think, you know, you have a contract and we're going to give you this million bucks, but frankly, we don't have a million dollars in cash sitting around and we're going to go out of business. You're not going to get your money. So we got to do something. And he worked with us to say that if we could move someone from the Hilton, he would match the $100 rate instead of charging $259. And my sister and another woman, Debbie, called up all the people who had registered and asked them to move. Some did, some didn't, but we wound up filling the hotel block and we didn't owe them anything at the end of the day. It was the worst experience of my life that year, was trying to keep the company going.

Jim Allan: Well, I remember being at one of your events in 2007 and I don't want to city drop, but it was in Prague and Obama got elected, so it's very memorable. Like you wake up and he's giving an acceptance speech because of the time difference. But I remember, I mean, the stock market had already, I mean, the economy had already crashed at that point. And I remember very clearly everyone was looking around, the stock market just dropped 25%. Like what's the future going to be like? And you know, the stock market is not the economy. So I mean, especially during down economic times, it must have been a slog for you. I mean, the next couple of years would have been a slog.

Mark Roberti: Yeah, so we, you know, what companies do when there's a recession or when there's uncertainty is they tend to cut any projects that are, you know, futuristic projects. So RFID was something, hey, you know, we think it could be some value. Let's do something and see if it's useful. Well, financial collapse happened. Those projects all got killed. So that meant vendors lost money. A couple of vendors went out of business. It had a huge impact on us. Our revenue in 2009 dropped 25% from 2008. And our health care costs coincidentally went up like 40%. Because people were abandoning, you know, getting rid of their health care to save money and some people were being, you know, they were unemployed. So the health care companies need some way to make up the revenue so they increase the prices of everybody else. So we were in dire financial straits at that point. We cut everybody's salary. I didn't take salary for a couple of years. And you just did everything we could to survive. We cut every, my sister was my accountant and she went through the books and she cut every possible expense we could cut. And, you know, in some ways, as horrible as it was, I think that's when I started to learn how to be a CEO and to really run a company and focus on the costs. And, you know, at that point...

Jim Allan: Just the hard decisions?

Mark Roberti: Just making the hard decisions, but getting down in the weeds and really understanding. Because when you're making enough money, you're like, yeah, yeah, okay, the AV guy wants 200,000, give it to him. You know, we can cover that, you know. But then when you're, you know, you don't have the revenue, you're like, okay, let's look at the AV budget really carefully. We don't need this. We don't need that. We don't need this. And you start becoming much more, you know, much more hands on.

It's funny. Remember the, somebody just posted the Tag Man thing. And I did a video for you, like an opening video, and it was a three screen thing, you'll recall.

Mark Roberti: I do, yeah.

Jim Allan: Tag Man, that was the Tag Man year. And so I'm standing at the back, like with a camera and maybe, I think John was near me actually. And then, I mean, no one knows that I had anything to do with that video really, other than I'm holding a video camera, right? So, but one of the attendees comes up to me, goes, we don't need flashy videos like this. And walks away. It's like, you know, they appreciated the austere. I guess that maybe they're thinking, if you're not spending, if you don't spend a lot on frills, which, you know, an opening video is kind of a frill, maybe it's cheaper for him as well. So it was just, it's funny how-

Mark Roberti: Well, one interesting thing about that, and I've always tried to explain this to our marketing people and the people at my former company that I sold to, our audience is, it's not a boondoggle. Like a lot of events are boondoggles, right? Yeah, we're going out to that conference out in Vegas, you know, and people go and they attend a couple of sessions and then they- Reward and recognition for the sales force. Our audience is not like that at all. Most of our people are executives who have a full-time job running a supply chain or running retail stores. And they're asked to do RFID in addition to their regular job. So they're spending their time and they're busy and they want to get in, they want to learn what they want to learn and they want to get out. And we, you know, we didn't spend a ton of money on frills and we tried to make the show, you know, straightforward, come learn and get what you want and get out.

Jim Allan: And then Walmart was an early adapter. Adopter. And then they weren't, right?

Mark Roberti: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim Allan: So there's a lot of obstacles that you were, I mean, Walmart back then was huge. I mean, you don't even think of them in the same way anymore because of Amazon and things, but you never, but you didn't quit, right? So what kept you going?

Mark Roberti: There was a lot of, a lot of. Stupidity. That boofed us sheer, sheer, you know, boneheadedness.

Jim Allan: It's like officer and a gentleman. I got nowhere else to go.

Mark Roberti: It's exactly like. What else am I going to do? Well, you know, to be honest, there were times where I kind of felt trapped. And, you know, you have a staff and you have salaries and you got to pay those salaries and you're not making enough profits to really sell the company and, you know, get out and get something for it. And, you know, it's like, what do you do?

Jim Allan: So you felt responsible to the people.

Mark Roberti: I did. And I certainly did. I felt a huge responsibility. But there was no easy, like, oh, here's an exit strategy, you know, that you, you know, when things are going well, you know, you can sell and you can exit. When things are not going so well, you can't even do that. So you're kind of stuck. Like, this is the only thing I can do. I mean, I can't just go get another job and fold up the company and lay everybody off. But I always believed and I always ran, you know, and looking back, I probably should have run the company different. But the way I ran the company was eventually this technology is going to take off. I'll be able to sell at that time and I'll be able to retire. And the technology never took off. So I was investing in educating people. And I've said this publicly before, we were putting a million dollars a year into the editorial quality of the events, hiring speakers, getting speakers to the events, hiring staff to go recruit the speakers, but also the writing of the stories, the editing of the stories, the posting of the stories. We were investing a million dollars a year. And all of the money from the event, all of it, 100% was going back into the editorial quality. Now, if it had worked out the way I had hoped, I would have been brilliant because all of that education would get the market moving and that would grow our show and grow our business and then we'd sell and, you know, I'd be golden. But it didn't happen that way. We were investing all that money and the industry really wasn't growing and really wasn't growing and really wasn't growing. It was kind of plateaued. Eventually it will take off. But in the meantime, I'm just getting salary. I'm not taking any money out of the business. Now, if I could do it over again, what I'd probably do is say, instead of a million, I'm going to spend 800,000 and I'm going to take 200,000 for myself and put it in a retirement fund. I didn't do that. And it was because I had this absolute conviction that the technology would eventually take off and will become commonplace and the show will be much, much bigger at that time. I still believe that. But the reason I sold the company was because having had this strategy for 15 years, my family was at risk. I had put all this time and effort and I worked 70, 80 hours a week, many, many weeks. I didn't have this big nest egg that I was taking money out and put it on the side. So if something happened to me, my wife had the money I'd saved from my salary and this company would have been worthless and that had been it. So I figured that I needed to do something to safeguard my family's future, at least get something out of it.

Jim Allan: And you kind of self-identify as a journalist, right?

Mark Roberti: Absolutely.

Jim Allan: But you're also definitely, you've just shown it, you're a bit of a cheerleader. You were trying to promote the technology, the industry. Is there a conflict there at all? You being a journalist and you promoting the industry?

Mark Roberti: No, I don't think there is because I never saw myself as a cheerleader. What I saw myself as is somebody who is educating people about the technology, including what it doesn't do. And I have never promoted the technology or never encouraged someone to use the technology when I thought it wasn't going to help their business. So I've told many people, look, you don't need RFID for that. You could use barcodes. Barcodes will work fine. Don't use RFID because what's the point of telling them to use it when they don't need it? So I saw myself as an educator and as an educator, if you believe the thing that you're educating people about is great, then you have to tell them it's really great. I mean, RFID is really, really powerful technology. I believe it is absolutely game-changing technology in many applications. So to not say that, to believe that and not say that would not be educating accurately in my view. So I didn't see it as a conflict. But if you want, we could argue about that.

Jim Allan: Well, I went to about 20 events that you produced. So Las Vegas, Orlando, San Diego, Chicago, Toronto, Prague, Amsterdam. I know you went to Brazil several times. London. Colombia. Middle East, Central America. Dubai. Australia. Groundbreaking in a lot of ways. Internationally, which one maybe gave you the most satisfaction?

Mark Roberti: I can't say it was one more than another. I saw them all as being important, and it is a global technology. I'm proud of the fact that RFID Journal was a global brand. I talked to people from all countries all over. In our database, we had folks from 212 countries and territories around the world. So that always, more than anything else, I felt very proud of that people from all over the world relied on us. And the brand was respected globally. Obviously, we're not Coca-Cola. I'm not suggesting that at all. What I'm saying is in our niche, we were a global, well-respected brand.

Jim Allan: You were really, really trying to get the word out. Did you accomplish what you wanted to accomplish, do you think?

Mark Roberti: No. My goal had always been from day one to get to the point where RFID was used in almost all large companies. It's taken a lot longer, and I've kind of run out of the energy needed to keep doing that education. So I feel like I didn't get there, but I also feel that RFID Journal made the industry as big as it is today. I think if we hadn't existed, I think there would have been others that would have filled the role, but they never would have invested a million dollars a year in education. They would have posted press releases, and press releases don't have the same impact as interviewing people. If you have events and you have a consultant speak, that may be educational, may be valuable, but it's not the same as having, you know, we had speakers from Walmart and Procter & Gamble and all companies coming and saying this is the benefit that we got. And that gave the technology credibility, and people in the audience could say, oh, that's a company like mine. We can get that benefit, too. Whereas if you're just out there pitching, pitching, pitching, I don't think it would have been adopted as much as it has been.

Jim Allan: The trade show part of your career has been, it's a 20-year ride, right? Knowing now what you do, what you know now, any advice to anyone out there who may be watching and thinking about starting a trade show, anything you could say?

Mark Roberti: I mean, a hybrid maybe, hybrid might be the future, hybrid events. Online, offline? Yeah. I think the online, offline thing is very challenging. We tried a few different options during COVID, didn't really find anything that was successful. You know, I've seen these things where you have speakers and then people go off into a trade show area. I haven't seen that work. It hasn't worked for us. I think the number one thing that I always felt was give people a lot of value. So have great speakers. Put in the time and effort to get great speakers. Look, it's easy. One of the challenges we always faced is there were competitors out there who would say, look, buy a booth and we'll give you a speaking slot. And then they would come to us and we would say, buy a booth. And they'd say, can I speak? And we'd say, no. And they would say, why not? And I said, well, we get end users. You know, your customer can come and speak if you have a customer that's willing to do that because the attendee wants to hear the customer. They want to hear the user, the company like them. They don't want to hear you pitch them. And it was always a struggle because a lot of people would just like to speak. You know, I want to go out there and speak. So they would go to other shows and not do our show. But I felt, I always stuck to my guns. I felt that the attendee wants value. And value is hearing educational, objective educational information from someone who's not selling them something.

Jim Allan: So eventually you sold. What is it, about four years ago? You sold the company? Five and a half.

Five and a half already. Time flies. So you sold the company to Emerald Expositions who produce several trade shows. They're the third largest trade show producer in the US. What I didn't realize until that happened is that you had, the way you put it at the time, you had angel investors since the beginning and they needed to be repaid at some point. But you stayed with it. So you were probably contractually for another couple of years.

Mark Roberti: Two years.

Jim Allan: Two years. But you stayed with it. And then people are probably sick of talking about the pandemic, but you had to cancel a show and a half. And you finally got the event back on its feet, but I suspect it'll take some time to get back to the numbers that you enjoyed previously. I mean, was that part of the decision to retire yet another mountain to climb?

Mark Roberti: To some degree, yes. And I think that when you're part of a larger corporation, the corporation has different priorities or they've got to decide where they're going to put the resources. So you don't have full control over how much resources you have and how you're going to deploy them. So I just felt that I could work really hard and again go back to working 70, 80 hours a week and get it back to where it was. But frankly, it's not even in my financial interest anymore. I'd be doing it on behalf of the corporation. And so why do I want to go work 70, 80 hours a week again? In all honesty, and I know people think I'm exaggerating when I say this, but I didn't take a day off in 10 years. And I don't mean I didn't take a Friday or a Thursday off. I mean, I didn't take any days off.

Jim Allan: So Christmas and New Year's.

Mark Roberti: I worked Christmas, New Year's, Easter. I mean, not a full day. I worked four or five hours on a Christmas day. I worked four or five hours on a News day. But I worked 12, 15 hours a day on Monday through Friday, and then I would work 10 hours on Saturday and Sunday. And so you sacrifice a lot. You're not with your family. My kids and my wife went on vacation without me. My wife would take the kids to Hong Kong where her family's from, and I wouldn't go because I couldn't spend all that time away. And so you feel like at some point you want to have a life back, and you want to spend time with your wife or your kids while you still can. And so those were big considerations for me.

Jim Allan: So it was like the Beatles breaking up. It was time.

Mark Roberti: It was just time. I think it was time. And I think the industry is at a point where the ball's rolling, and I think it'll continue to roll and eventually it'll hit critical mass.

Jim Allan: And you're still kind of around, and you still want people to go to the show, right?

Mark Roberti: Absolutely.

Jim Allan: You still want people to go?

Mark Roberti: yes. I believe, and not everyone thinks this way, but everybody thinks that, oh, you can just Google something and you can go get an RFID company. I don't believe that. But I think trade shows are really important. You get to meet people face-to-face. You get to take measure of them, and that's really an important thing. Plus, you get to meet people that you might not find on the internet, or if you did find them, you might not pay attention to them. So I think trade shows are really important, and I think having a high-quality news site like RFID Journal is also really important, especially to a developing industry. You know, if the industry's already mature, everybody knows what's going on, then the news and the information is not as valuable. But with RFID, I think it's absolutely critical.

Jim Allan: So, I mean, you're retired, blah, blah, blah. I've heard that all before. But I mean, you're a free agent. I mean, you're perfectly positioned to be a consultant, whatever you want to call it, because you literally know where all the bodies are buried, right? I mean, someone could call you and, oh, there's this guy that used to work at Airbus. He's not there anymore. He's over here, but I've got his direct number. Let me call him. I'll tell him that you're calling, and then you call him, and that's worth something, right? Because you know what? You literally know everyone. So if you're new to the industry, you'd be a good guy to talk to, right?

Mark Roberti: Yes, and I have played that role for many years informally. So people would write to me, and they would say, we want to do this. Is there anybody else who's done it? And I would put people in touch with each other. I would recommend vendors to see. I would recommend consultants to hire to do the more in-depth stuff. But I think there's a role, a demand, I think, and we'll see as I start to market my services a little bit. I think there's a demand for how do I deploy this technology in a strategic way, not just how do I track my parts bins, but how do I deploy the technology in a way that's going to reduce my costs and improve my competitive advantage? How does it integrate with AI? How does it integrate with video analytics? How does it integrate with big data? What should we be thinking about? I've spent my whole last 20 years of my life thinking about this stuff, writing about this stuff. So I think I can help companies save a lot of time, because the reality is when you talk to companies that have done RFID, they tell you that we had a lot of false starts. We were going in this direction, then we realized, no, that's not the right direction. Then we go in this direction. I've seen who's done it right. I've seen all the mistakes people have made. I think I can help you get on the right track very quickly and have a successful deployment.

Jim Allan: So you might do that, or you haven't decided yet?

Mark Roberti: There's things in the air. So there's a bunch of, you know, obviously when you retire or you announce you're leaving, people contact you, and so, you know, there's a couple of things floating around. But I think that probably I will launch a consulting business and see if there's a demand for this. I don't plan to work full time anymore. I want to spend some time with my wife. I want to travel and go to places that I haven't gotten to. And we'll see. We'll see how it goes.

Jim Allan: Perfect time to end this. So thanks, Mark, for doing this.

Mark Roberti: Appreciate it. Jim, thanks so much. It's great to see you again, and I really enjoyed it.