Educating Tomorrow's Talent

The participants, in alphabetical order, are:

Carol Bousquet, then sales and marketing development director ofFerrofluidics;then chairwoman of the Boston chapter of the AES; then and still chairwoman of the "Women in Audio:Project 2000" whose kickoff event was held at AES/New York the following month.

Steev Coco, then head of audio at National Video Boston, a majorpost-production house (and a graduate of the UMass Lowell Sound Recording Technology program), now a freelancer.

Robin Coxe-Yeldham, longtime Boston recording engineer, and facultymember at the Berklee College of Music; a founder of Women In Audio.

Bill Crabtree, musician, multimedia producer, and chairman of theRecording Arts program at the Northeast College of Communications, in Boston.

David Moulton, engineer, writer, and former chairman of Music Productionand Engineering at Berklee.

Mark Parsons, owner of Parsons Audio.

Martin Polon, writer, faculty member at UMass Lowell, and president ofPolon Research, economic consultants to the recording and hi-tech industries.

Daniel Rose, then marketing director of Mark of the Unicorn (and a Berkleegrad), now working for a high-tech startup in Vermont (and no relation to Signal2Noise's assistant editor).

Jay Rose, owner of Digital Playroom, a post-production and multimediastudio, and former Berklee faculty member.

Bill Scheniman, chairman of the Music Production and Engineeringdepartment at Berklee, and longtime New York studio engineer.

Scott Shapiro, then a senior in the Sound Recording Technology program at UMassLowell, now a sound designer for Sampleheads in New York City.

Stephen Webber, producer, engineer, and assistant chairman of MusicProduction and Engineering at Berklee.

And moderating the panel: Paul Lehrman (PDL).

PDL: How can schools teaching audio do a better job of preparingstudents for the real world? I'm thinking now not only in terms of thestudents' needs, but also what skills the industry needs.

Bill Crabtree: We need to make our students more computer-literate. Alot of students we get are kids who come in the door having never used acomputer. I see teaching them that as a bonus for them no matter where they go.It's a necessity to get anywhere in today's society. So we're focussing more oncomputers first. This may be a reflection of my own training -- where I went toschool to study recording engineering, they wouldn't let me minor in computerscience. I saw that as really short-sighted at the time.

PDL: Is there anything in particular about computers that is especiallyvaluable for people going into audio to know?

Jay Rose: I think if you start teaching a particular operating system orapplication, you're going to dead-end the kids, because these things change sofast. What you can teach is a comfort level, the same way that when Iwas starting out you would get a comfort level with the tubes, with thetransistors, not knowing every circuit. If kids today are comfortable withcomputers, they'll be prepared for whatever operating system comes along in tenyears.

PDL: Talking to the people in industry who hire new talent, what islacking in the students whom you're seeing, that the educational institutionscould be doing a better job of giving them?

Jay Rose: One thing I wish was taught better is communications skills,verbal and written. You get kids who have incredible talent, but can't sit downnext to a producer and tell him what they want to do. One of the courses thatwas most valuable to me in college, other than the nuts-and-bolts technical,was a long course in communications theory, everything from modelling -- how amessage gets from one brain to another -- to argumentation and oralinterpretation. People are coming out of school not realizing there's even adiscipline to this. Do they even have a clue as to the concept that what yousay is not necessarily what you're communicating? That your job does not endwhen you've stated your point of view?

PDL: Unless you're a talk show host. [laughter]

Jay Rose: The other thing to teach is general business. What is aclient? All industries have to look at their business and decide what they'reselling. Record companies are selling one thing, and it might not be what youthink. Broadcast outlets are definitely selling something other than what youthink they are. This permeates the entire business relationship, and shouldaffect every employee: the knowledge of what business this company is in. Isthat being taught?

Daniel Rose: Indiana University has a tremendous music department,turning out very talented classical musicians, and I asked, "Do you have anycourses in management, or careers, or how to interview for a symphony?" "Oh,no," they laugh, "none of that stuff here. We train our kids to starve for aliving." They admit it, and they understand what the problem is.

Another area I would like to see taught is basic sales skills. For instance, ahuge amount of tech support is "sales". You have to convince the caller to calmdown so you can lead them to a solution, to actually hear what you say ratherthan what they emotionally want to do. You are selling them all down the line,and all you are doing is trying to get them to operate the program correctly.But if you're argumentative, or come across bossy, they're going to fight you,even though they want what you have. We interview people all the time where wesee the technical skills are there, but we can't put this person on the phones.They're going to cause an emotional train wreck with prospects. If you arelooking to get people involved in this technology, there are so many variableslike expense and technical complication, if you start stacking emotionalvariables on top of it, you're going to be in a lot of trouble.

Mark Parsons: Even though we are talking about technical education,there's a case to be made for a liberal arts education. There are othercomponents besides being able to communicate. Knowing how to prioritize, tryingto determine what's important and what isn't -- these things matter whetheryou're working in a sales organization or a studio, or for a manufacturer.Being able to determine what the situation is regarding the people you arerelating to: are you a client, or are you my boss, and what should I be doingand why?

We can give them experience, but they have to be taught to understandthe experience. Sometimes they have the native intelligence to understand, butbeyond that you have to fill them in. It's problem solving, sensitivity,interpersonal skills. That's part of their education if they're going tosurvive the market.

Daniel Rose: On both the communication and the technical sides,listening is a critical skill. The best audio engineers are the people who canhear what's actually there, and can also hear what people want to know. Samething on the business side: people who listen the best are the ones consideredgreat communicators. If you can truly listen and understand what people aresaying, whether you're in tech support or sales, or you're a producer or anartist, you have a tremendous advantage when you want to communicate to themyour opinion.

PDL: How do you teach that?

Daniel Rose: Just to mention it at all would be a big benefit! It's oneof the places we find there's a tremendous difference in the people that weinterview coming out of schools. The technical side is often well-covered, butwhen it comes to business skills or social skills, it's actually -- well,"dreadful" would be about the most polite term I can come up with right now. Alot of people think that to communicate well means to talk as loud and as fastand whenever possible, particularly over anyone else whose opinion you don'tagree with. And they use as role models any political race.

Mark Parsons: As a consumer of college graduates, if you will, there'ssomething that I'd be happy with that underlies listening skills and sellingskills: a measure of politeness and the willingness to listen, and afascination with the people they'll be dealing with. I find myself again andagain taking the time with a new person to portray to them the reality they'refacing. If you remember being a young person dealing with older, moreknowledgeable, experienced people, you were looking at reality through a fairlynarrow viewfinder. It helps to have some old rascal fill them in a littlebit.

PDL: Is the large number of audio education programs turning out morestudents than the industry can handle? If so, what can students do to makethemselves more employable?

Bill Scheniman: I think what we're running into here is the inevitablefact, and it is not something I mention around work, that this area of work isnot suited for everybody. We used to see the apprenticeship or guild system,where you spent a year just sort of being around the business, and observingit, and plugging yourself in and out wherever appropriate, so that youremployers -- the people already in the guild -- could observe your sensitivityand your sense of what was appropriate to the situation. Well, you can't teachthat. And people in the business who have succeeded, who have that sense ofwhat is appropriate, don't discuss it. It's like fighter pilots don't talkabout how scary it is to land on an aircraft carrier. It's kind of "the rightstuff".

I'm not trying to make it too mystical, but to a certain extent, if you don'tknow how to talk to a tech representative, and an older advertisingclient, and Mick Jagger's girlfriend, and the guy from UPS, thenyou're not going to know what a good bass part is, and whether reverb's a goodidea, and where to start getting a snare sound. It's a set of perceptions andreactions to changing situations that not everybody is good for. As educators,and as successful adults in this guild, we have to find a way to impart that:to start talking about the right stuff. The Zen koan for education in ourdepartment is that the people I can get through to don't need me. The guys whoreally get this don't need this, and the people who aren't getting it aren'tgoing to get it.

Martin Polon: There are about 220 schools in the US right now that teachaudio. We just did a study that found that considerably less than 100% of thegraduates of these programs end up, after three years of being out, in audio.These are bright kids, but they are not catching on to one thing: technicalskills today are a dime a dozen in any field. We've seen one milliontechnically-trained people laid off in America in the last three years; manyare engineers with MEEs and PhDs. They can do audio, they have the skills. Whatthere is a shortage of is people who can think, and have the knowledge of whatthe gig is about.

If someone is going to work in the record business, maybe they should bereading Variety, Mix, Studio Sound, the New YorkTimes. In my class I'm a bloody shrew -- I keep bitching at them: readthis, read that. It's not because I own any shares in Variety. Well, youcan bring the horse to water, but some horses will not drink. I'm probably wayout to lunch, and they really should be reading Psychic Horror #7, butin my classes I ask how many read Mix, and three hands go up. Theyshould read Billboard, so when they go in for an interview, they knowwho's doing what session in what studio. People who do the interviewing don'task, "How do you terminate a 600-ohm audio transformer?" They askquestions that deal with general knowledge of the studio and studio business.

Bill Scheniman: Because I come from a professional background, it'sreally weird to be in a recording studio with students who aren't sure whetherthey like this or not. In 20 years, that was one thing I could count on: youcould have a head full of coke, you could be a drooling idiot, but this wasyour favorite place on Earth or you wouldn't be here. Why would you put up withthis unless you loved it? Who would stick around for more than three monthsunless they had to? Any more than someone would compose classical musicunless they had to? It's a horrible job [laughter], but you do itbecause you have to. I and the people that I know who went through that, making$150 a week and living in Manhattan, didn't choose this as the way to make bigbucks. They wanted to make records. They knew something magical went on in thatroom, and they would do whatever it took to let them in there, to touch thestuff and learn the spells.

But now we're doing this in colleges, and suddenly I meet 80 people a day whosay, "This is okay, this is kinda cool, but I'm not sure yet." Their Mom andDad write them a check, and say okay, you can go there if you want to, and theysit there and go, "I don't know, you wanna mix today? Maybe. No wait, 'TheSimpsons' are on, I'll mix later!"

David Moulton: Something which has bothered me for a while is that we'vealways tried to train people for this industry very much in a trade school orvocational school way, and I have a sense that we're doing it just backwards.What we should be doing is using this industry as a springboard for education,because it's such a wonderful inter-disciplinary kind of industry. If you canmaster this industry roughly, you can do anything you want.

I've seen research that shows that we're all going to change fields at leastonce, and that if you start in audio it's reasonable to predict that you'regoing to end up some place else. Here we're training for a prototypicalrecording engineer, which is a job role that probably won't even exist in 15years. We should be using this to train students to be as adaptable aspossible, and that's liberal arts education.

I tend to look not at what the industry needs but what the students need. Weshouldn't be training them to get their first job. That's not thebusiness of college education -- you go to a vocational school for two monthsto get an entry-level job skill set. You should go to college to get a jobskill set that will allow you to get your 20th job ten years from now.

Stephen Webber: I think we have to put this into a historicalperspective. We have something that came from the European university system,which was developed centuries ago to educate people who were already wealthy.They went to learn about poetry and literature, and maybe architecture if theywanted to get their hands dirty. The underlying philosophy behind highereducation in this country for years has been to teach a person not how to get ajob, but how to use their mind. It's only been in this last generation thatwe've been asking the university system to educate everybody. Thirty years ago,only the brightest and the best and those who could afford it were expected togo to college. But now we are asking the system to educate everybody whowants to go to college. And that means people who didn't do very well in highschool, people who are only going to college because it's the next thingthey're supposed to do. So the role of higher education is changing a lot, andyou can see it in these fits of flailing around trying to figure out what it'ssupposed to be doing. Are educators supposed to be training people to get ajob? That seems to be what the government and society are asking them to do. Orare they teaching people how to get a set of life skills together, like Davewas talking about, that will guide them and help them get their second, third,fourth, etc., jobs?

Daniel Rose: I'm sure this is true for any industry, but in the audioindustry, since we're more clearly aware that we're selling dreams, it affectsus more when people have bought into lies, like they can do anything. I'm anearly Berklee grad. I prove a lot of the points around here: I'm a bass player,but they let me into college. It's no longer just the cultural elite that'sgetting into school. It's no longer the competent who are getting degrees[laughter].

Our coming in and talking to students about the real world wherever possiblelets us find out if they're really interested in supporting themselves withthis, or if it's just a hobby. If you want to support yourself, have youthought about how much money you want in your hand at the end of each month,and what particular jobs will accomplish that? There are plenty of people whofor the love of it will say, "I only want $150, but listen to this music!" andother people will say, "Well, I already have a kid, so if I don't see $2000 inmy paycheck, I'm stuck." So you say to them, "Sorry, you shouldn't go intern atPower Station right now."

PDL: How can manufacturers help schools do a better job of preparingstudents? What is it that educators are not getting, or getting enough of, fromthe industry? Is it money, is it gear, is it people coming by and sharing theirexperiences?

Robin Coxe-Yeldham: More important thangetting the stuff is being able to call them up and get some real answers, notjust have to deal with whatever shmo Digidesign decided to let answer the phonein customer service. [laughter]

PDL: Not to be too specific.

Robin Coxe-Yeldham: Regardless of the size of an educationalinstitution, when you have a fair pile of certain manufacturer's things, you'reputting a lot of toys in front of a lot of potential buying power. Theredoesn't seem to be that sensibility or understanding from a lot of themanufacturers. It doesn't necessarily come down to doing any more than givingus a reasonable break on purchasing stuff, but they also have to give us theactual support we need to keep it really running smoothly and at top level. Aclassroom is not the place to Beta-test.

Bill Scheniman : Mostly I would like to see a change inattitude, so we can abandon our role as supplicants, and be acknowledged aspartners in the process -- not just as weasels who are trying to get a hundredbucks off on a reverb. We have a wealth of information: we are creating theenvironments that people will be working in, and we have unique and valuableinsights into how people work and learn, whether the interface is designedwell, whether the manuals are being written well. We have financial constraintsthat have to be acknowledged: yes, we're the guys who always need a breakbecause we don't have much money. But let's get that part of the conversationover with, and get on to the real work of making better equipment and betterpeople to run it. In film it happens: they got a jump on us of about 25 or 30years of turning movies into "cinema", and learning to teach it. Film schoolshave the cooperation and constant presence of Kodak, and the acknowledgementthat "your teachers are really smart, and we want to know what they know."When's the last time anybody here heard from a record company who wanted tocome in and talk to your kids? Who has a Sony scholarship, or a Warner Bros.scholarship?

Mark Parsons : We're in the middle of therelationship between the educators and the industry, especially when youeducators come looking for free stuff. And as far as I'm concerned, if you canget free stuff, that's great. I sometimes act as an intermediary, or anobserver, or sometimes I make introductions and help schools approachmanufacturers directly. I know the manufacturers' thought process, and I'veseen it again and again: I call them up and I say to them so-and-so wants adeal. I make the case that they're graduating a class of so many, of whom1-1/2% will end up being significant buyers, but probably not[laughter].

I'm being ironic, but let me rewind: in fact they do respond seriously, up toa point, but nowhere near the point that you imagine. They do not value thepersonal relationship that much, about you as people, or your students, or whatyou're doing, from a business standpoint. I know there's something you want tobuy and you want to develop something out of the transaction, whether it's abeta relationship, or to get the company in to show their products to thestudents. And I can predict, usually within milliseconds of when I first talkto you, what you'll get in terms of percentage. I won't tell you what Ipredict, because it's usually a lot less than you would like to think, and Iwant to go through the whole process to see if there's a chance that I, as youradvocate, can get more. But I usually am right -- you can't get much of a deal.So there's a process of mutual education that has to happen. As faculty andadministrators you are learning about that every time you approach one of thesetransactions.

Martin Polon: I did a study on the audiobusiness's relation to public universities. We looked at all the other areas:chemistry, computer science, funeral science, military science, anything youcan think of. The audio industry is almost unique in not getting industrysupport at any level; it ends up at the bottom of the list for per-capitasupport from industry. Deans and presidents see the audio industry doesn'tcare, and that's why most of the public university programs are in jeopardy.

IBM assigns staff for six months to computing programs. IBM gives schoolscomputers. They ask for students for interns, and they recruit on campus forgraduates. Our industry doesn't give us money, or staff, or equipment. Not evenold equipment. We have a credibility problem that no other part of theuniversity structure has. When have any of us ever seen an audio company comein and recruit, unless we push them into some kind of audio fair? The audioindustry doesn't realize the value of what's going on, and they have a badattitude towards the students. At every AES convention I hear complaints about"those crummy tire-kicking students -- keep them off the floor, they discouragethe regular customers". I've nearly decked any number of people, because thatattitude is a bad one.

Jay Rose : There's another reason. In everyindustry that Martin talked about, there is a formal body of knowledge thatmust be had in order to succeed. You have to know chemical engineering ifyou're going to get anywhere at DuPont. You have to know how computers get puttogether, at the bit-by-bit level, or else you'll go nowhere with IBM. In therecording business we're all, "hey, we're seat of the pants, we do it becausewe love it" -- and there's a lack of respect for an educational process.

Stephen Webber: I think it's going to change. Like Bill says,film has got 25 or 30 years on us. Once all of our alumni are running thesecompanies, and have a stake in this, there's going to be a lot more respect.The guys who are in there now have the attitude, "I didn't go to school!" Ithink they're a little threatened by the fact that here are these snot-nosedkids coming up who might know something they don't. They feel like, "what makesyou think you know anything about this, just because you went to school?"Eventually there will be an aesthetic, a set knowledge of audio engineeringthat you have to know in order to get a job. It's going to grow up. To be acinematographer now you have to have the credentials to do it. For the first 20years, you were just a cameraman, and did it by the seat of your pants. But nowyou look at the credits on any movie, and the cinematographer's got lettersafter his name. That's because it's been around a while, and has had a chanceto mature.

PDL: There have been attempts before to accredit audio schools. What hashappened to them?

Martin Polon: We have never been able to implement an accreditationprogram in audio because the legal liabilities make it impossible. I've livedthrough efforts to do that by the AES and SPARS. The problem is that if you setup accreditation and you don't accredit somebody, this being America, they'llhit you with a ten million dollar suit. That's frightening to most of thepeople who are involved with AES or SPARS at the studio level, because theydon't have the big bucks, so they never got the programs going.

PDL: One of the ways we've replaced the old apprenticeship concept iswith internships, where students go out into the world and work, paid orunpaid, for a company. How well is this working?

Steev Coco: There's an immense value in havingan intern. When I have an intern he's my assistant engineer for fourteen weeks.We can bill more work, pull more clients through the facility in one day, andput band-aids on the things that normally wouldn't get band-aids. He advanceshis education: he gets client skills he otherwise wouldn't get, he understandshow the industry works, not just how to move the fader 3 dB or look at thesample rate on the DAT player; he knows there's this guy back there looking athis watch, paying 300 bucks an hour waiting for him to finish, so he learns howto do it really fast.

Daniel Rose: I think internship programs aregreat, but I've met a lot of resistance at our company, which I understand. Thetypical internship is three or four months long, just long enough for theexperiment to be a total money and time drain for the manufacturer. We'd bebetter off taking a $5000 check and writing it to the institution, rather thanaccepting the intern.

What would be fabulous for us would be to have an intern there for nine monthsor longer, so there was enough of a commitment that we can get to the pointwhere there is a physical or emotional break-even. Knowing MIDI or knowingcomputers just isn't enough. We get a lot of technically adept people whoeither freeze or otherwise really embarrass you, and we can't put them into ourgeneral customer service area in that short period of time. They don't know howto physically get a press release out the door, and call a magazine and say,"Do you have that in your hand?" It may just be the nature of our beast. Maybeif somebody comes in whose skills are stronger, and after four weeks we cangive them the press list and say "Okay, get a copy to every editor around theworld, and please don't swear at them..." [laughter]

Scott Shapiro : I interned for a large recordcompany this summer. I felt I was shafted. I felt that I had an entranceinterview with someone who knew nothing about music, nothing about audio, whosaid, "Sure, come in whenever you want, we'll let you use all the equipment youwant to use," and I got there and it was a complete lie. No one knew how tohandle an incoming student at all. One engineer told me: "I don't care ifyou've gone to school, we're going to re-teach you everything." That's an awfulway to approach a new student, or a new employee, someone who loves tomake records. I think it's very important for them to understand that there arepeople coming to them with some sort of knowledge. I got into an argument withone of their engineers about how many megabytes per minute Pro Tools uses. Isaid five, and he said one. And I said, well, I learned at school it's five,and we had this argument for half an hour.

Daniel Rose: This tells you an interesting thing about sales skills. Ifyou've got somebody with a wrong opinion, you saw how direct contradiction gotyou into an half-hour argument.

Mark Parsons: What about survival skills? If Scott feels brutalized bythe manufacturer who takes him in, whose fault is that? Is it themanufacturer's? Or his own, to some extent? Perhaps he needed to learn alesson.

Scott Shapiro: I was just stating what I was taught.

Bill Scheniman: That wasn't the lesson. That wasn't the knowledge thatwas being requested. The headline says, "Local boy argues with engineer, Bodyfound in alley." [laughter]

PDL: Education in this country traditionally has been a way to bring newpeople, immigrants or otherwise disenfranchised groups, into the economicmainstream. One of the groups we focus on a lot today is women. Audio,especially engineering, is still mostly a guys' club. Do the schools have arole in helping to bring more women into the field?

Carol Bousquet : We need to betalking to girls at a younger age. By college, it's too late. There's recentresearch underlining the differences between the ways boys and girls are beingsocialized: girls are still being taught to be passive, not to pursue technicalareas. In the classroom, girls are being called on six times less than boys,and are being chastised for acting out for being aggressive. So we're talkingabout how do we create a revolution in the 90s? How do we address somethingthat's as organic as this is? We're building a program called Women In Audio:Project 2000 [which had a very successful first meeting at the New York AESconvention a month after this discussion took place], and we're talkingabout creating an alliance with Girls Incorporated, which used to be known asthe Girls Club, which is 50 years old, and the only service organization in thecountry that studies issues affecting girls. They have a research center thatdesigns a curriculum which is gender-targeted and compensatory. But you can betthat organization is underfunded. I'm on the board of directors in mycommunity, so I'm real familiar with what's going on. They have a programcalled Operation SMART: Science, Math, and Related Technologies. We're going tomassage that. I have a very deep-rooted feeling this alliance will help.

Mark Parsons: I'm the father of a grade school girl in a very goodsystem. There's a tremendous body of research about the way girls are treatedfrom the very earliest -- within the family, through day care, and the schoolsystem. A great deal can be accomplished at an early age, if the programs areappropriate. The good schools feel very strongly that women need a bettershake. If you want to get girls into the audio profession, you have to appealto the parents of the girls my daughter's age. You can do a lot with thestudents of college age, but the greatest accomplishments can be done withparents, through PTAs, talking to the principals, teachers and neighbors.

Bill Scheniman: Another thing we can do is to be a little more forcefulwith our peers in the industry who would like to defer the issue. We can'tdefer it any more. I try to place my students in top studios in New York andCalifornia. Although there are fewer female students, once in a while I get onethat is just great, and I want to see her make it, so I'll call a studiomanager and say, "I've got somebody you've got to have on your staff." And thenshe comes back and she's real disappointed, and she says "Well, they didn'thire me because there's a lot of lifting and a lot of heavy stuff to do, andyou know, I understand, the guy told me about insurance and all," and she'sstarting to buy it.

So I call the guy, and I say "You idiot! I can't believe you did that! Youwant another try? You want to talk to her again and say you're sorry, and itturns out you've hired two guys to carry all the stuff, and now you want her inthe studio? Or do you want me to call across the street and tell them this isone of the best people I've got?"

This happened with one of the big studios in midtown Manhattan, and I turnedaround and called the female manager at a studio on the next block, andtold her, gee, over at so-and-so they wouldn't hire this person because she's agirl, and she went, "I hate that asshole!" [laughter]

The clients are driving this. Boy rock-n-roll bands don't like girls in thestudio. I saw this all the time working at the Power Station. Suddenly theycan't make the jokes they like to make, they have to tighten up their act, andcan't be sloppy, and stupid, and thoughtless any more. It's about learning tobehave around women, learning to respect women in the studio the same way yourespect your mother and your girlfriend and your daughter. That's thechallenge. Until all our friends change their attitudes, that's not going tohappen. Right now, it's not a nice place to send a woman into sometimes.

Martin Polon: The issue you run into in recording studios, is thatgenerally speaking they are small, privately owned, not covered by any federalgrants or business, so there is no way to force them to hire women. The problemstudios have, and I've talked to people about this, is similar to whether theyhave an SSL console. The owners say, "If I decide to buy another kind ofconsole, and my bands and the record label want SSL, I can't sell them myservices. If those guys in the band don't want women behind the console, it'sthe same issue, because it means we won't get the business." So where you'vegot to start the educational process is with these bands. And it shouldn't bedifficult. You have to find a way, maybe through NARAS, to get that messageacross.

Robin Coxe-Yeldham: I'd like to say that it's not all entirely terrible.A lot of bands react quite favorably to having me in the studio, so they're notall idiots. But as to the more specific question of what we can do, one of thethings I've had in mind is for AES to hop onto the "Grammy in the schools"bandwagon, perhaps actually going into the schools and describing what the jobsare. Which opens up a whole range of things -- not just women, some of thoserepresentatives are minorities that will act as sort of a magnet. A lot ofthese things are already in place, but we can really pinpoint the technologyside as opposed to the musical side. NARAS is showing more about performance,not so much recording, but we can add that into their program. Seeing as how weare the educators, we're the obvious point source for some of this.

PDL: Thank you all. It's been quite an evening. See you next year.