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The Speaker


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The Speaker


Untitled

Closing ceremony

CommunicationsFrank KarelPublic InterestThe Event

Transcript


All right, all right, all right. I thought if I was out here with Ben Milder, I should open with a magic mic opening. That’s for you, Ben. I hope you appreciated it. All right. That’s as nice as I’m going to be to you up here. So many of you don’t know that this is actually the third Frank. I know I’m going to talk about the Frank no one talks about. So a couple of years ago, before there was this real Frank, there was small Frank. So Betsy Carell, who’s a wonderful lady who hopefully many of you got to meet, and Anne Cristiano invited a few of us down. They wanted our help in helping to build a phenomenal gathering. But they invited people like me and like David Morris. And so David Morris, who might be still deciding if he’s an environmentalist or not, is definitely not pro-conference. So we all sat there and they were looking for the due list, like what should we do? They’re like, well, you definitely can have buffet. And we went on about that for some time. And we were like, no skirts around tables, right? No skirts around tables. And I know I particularly went on and on about the sticky name tag that they make you wear and like pills. And anyway, and after a while they’re like, thanks. And we were dismissed from first Frank. So then they’re like, let’s do a do-over with like way more cool people and like speakers and a little more can-do attitude. And so that’s how we got to really the second annual Frank here today. So it is just really exciting that we got to be here. And they did take all of our non-ideas and magically created Frank. Great. Well, I want to build on that just by saying I’m really grateful to have spent and really privileged to have spent the last three days with all of you. And I feel like I’m totally inspired and also totally intimidated by the brain power that you all bring to this. And really you are the accelerants on that fire of social change. So real quickly, we want to say a few quick thank yous without sounding like a bad award show. But a few people and groups we really want to recognize. We want to start that off with Ellen and the more than 200 student volunteers at the University of California. Ellen added this next one. It was the bartenders from all the bars in Gainesville. Except the guy at the no-name bar who didn’t let us come in. Something like a fire hazard. I think that was you, Ben. Yeah, it might have just been me. I was in the bar. So I don’t know how I can adequately thank the next person. But Liz, instead, for all that you’ve done for this entire conference, I knew Frank had made it last year when you stood up well before the conference was over and you said, I’m coming back. Whether you want me or not, I’m coming back. And I said, who are you? And I said, who are you? And I am from the McNichon. I like the Taglor truck. I did not show last night, but the vegan sloppy Joe sealed the deal. The next one’s even harder for me, and this is someone who has been the inspiration, the creative force, the persistence that is frank without her. This would not be possible. And Cristiano. Thank you. Thank you. Now, I’m going to add Cristiano. Nice bet. Well, we did want to capture some highlights. We decided that what you all would really like is Ben and Kristen’s top 10 moments from Frank captured in 140 characters or less. And I will admit that we came up with these last night. After midnight, we didn’t even mod the friendly coffee shop. It was like people, you cannot stay here. Please. Yeah, so we left, and we came up with these as our top 10 favorites. But we would really encourage you, click, click, to be tweeting yourselves if you’ve got some favorites that we missed. So our top 10, here we go. Who wore it better? Yeah. All right. Number nine. Tinder. The man of Tinder has some pretty wild thoughts about women and climate change. Number eight, our first terrified late-arriver. Number seven. Hives. Am I an environmentalist? I don’t know, but I still have hives. Number six. Can I burn down your house? No, just the second floor. Garage. No. Let’s talk about what I can burn down. No. You aren’t compromising. Number five. Snark is the body’s natural response to stupidity. Number four. 50 shades of change here. Safe word is goat. Let’s make Bella Ballerina Sugar Plum Apple Banana Ferry a reality talk to Taylor. Number two. You read it yourself. And the number one. Top 10, Kristen Aben’s tweet of Frank 2015. Joy and Gainesville tonight. You’ve got your own ideas. Go ahead and tweet them on in. But we will move on to the really exciting things, which is we have two important duties, Ben. Yes, I know. Over here is not to make this woman stand here much longer. That’s for sure. So we are going to give out the spirit and the substance. And I will start with the spirit. So as you know, we had crews here this year. Many of you got assigned a crew. And the purpose of the crew was to be really competitive. It was to give you guys an edge and like make sure you were on your game. And like, you never knew what was going to happen. Was it survivor? Oh, wait, that was totally truly in camp. Sorry. Crew here was totally about having a family instantly and hopefully you got to connect with really great people. And we had some really nice folks doing stuff. So we had funny names. We had two live crew. Very nice. Shout it out for them. We had, and I’m going to put her on the spot here so she better get off her iPad, that Katie Burns did a phenomenal air guitar. So you need to show us. Show us your air guitar. Come on. Air guitar, let’s go. Let’s go. Come on. Yeah, nice. That was that karaoke night. And apparently I didn’t know this was going on because I ran into Mark Desauer and Chuck Alexander in the coffee room this morning. I was saying, hey, can you tell me a little bit about your crews and what y’all did and how cool they were. And they were like, the best thing about it was the hunt. And I was like, oh, really? Because I’m killing the hunt. And they were like, you know what was so nice was Chuck actually started, their team got going a little late. So they were like 20 minutes behind. And I was like, should be on time. And they were like, anyways, and Mark was like, well, I asked some other people and they shared some clues with me. So then I shared them with their team. And it was so much fun, like the teams sharing with each other. And they’re like, who did you share with? And I was like, oh, shit. So if you don’t mind, could y’all pass that back to Chuck Alexander? He’s up there. And Mark Desauer. Yeah. All right. Now I’m not going to lie. Despite my sharing nature there just a second ago, I am from Florida. I don’t know if you know about us in Florida, but we sort of take voting a little bit like advisory as opposed to like actually decision making. So I actually know what’s already in this envelope pretty much, but I’m going to open it anyway so I can say crudeta. But let’s just see if I stuff the ballot box. Did I suppress the vote enough? Be careful. Did I hack the system in all of my time? So best name crudeta. 10 points. No, no, no. I had to get back all of it. No, I haven’t won yet. Come on. I’m milking this. Best crew activity was crew to Cambio. 10 points. Best crew branding was the upstarts. Yeah! Best crew selfies was a tie between two life crew and murmuration. But as a Florida foregone conclusion, the actual winner is, yeah, I can break it over, crudeta! And I know that this is a height joke. I got it. I got it when they brought it out earlier. So, okay. All right, we’ve done the spirit. Now time for the substance. The moment you’ve been all waiting for, we’ve had four researchers whose research I think really informs and impacts the way we do the jobs we do. And so if we can take a moment to give them all, I will mention them by name and then a collective applause. We’ve got David Sleeth Kepler, Sarah Blythe, Brendan Nyan, and Vivian Serrani. So, thank you all. All right. The hour has arrived. The $10,000 is on the line. One other thing to say, the way the votes were tallied, 50% of the votes came from the audience votes and the other 50% came from the steering committee for the award. So that’s how the ultimate winner was selected. And the winner is Sarah Blythe! Come on down! Come on down! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you so much. Got it. There’s James! Oh! All right. That’s the campaign for you. Cheers! Cheers! Cheers! Cheers! Have no colors. Don’t drink it! Thank you very much. It is soda, by the way. It is before noon, no matter what this is. I thought it was totally inappropriate. All right. I think we better wrap this up. I think we better wrap it up. We gotta move! We gotta move! We gotta move! What I will say is that it really is about you who showed up here. So, that’s what makes this place special. And so we really need you to tell us how we can keep making a special year long. So we want to hear great content. You hear a great speaker, you read a great book, you see a great article, send it our way. We’ll stick it up in the Frank blog, we’ll share it out with you all. We’ll start to look for speakers literally tomorrow for next year’s Frank. And we also want to hear more people. We need folks from the entertainment industry. We need lots of different folks coming to our gathering. So please send us folks’ names. We love to nominate them. Ben, take us home. Perfect. Let’s take a look back at Frank 2015. Thank you. I wish we didn’t have to go. It’s so hard to say goodbye. We all have things to do. Life is sure no time to lose. So before we go, just let me say to you, goodbye my dear farewell. I’ll see you next year. I know you’ve ever been me. Goodbye my dear farewell. See you next year. I’ll be seeing you here next year. I’ll be seeing you here next year. Thank you. I just want to say it’s really great that unlike the Oscars, we saw an incredible black woman win an award. That is very well found. So thank you very much. Now we will go and drink and eat margaritas. And well, I don’t know. I guess they have solid margaritas. But if you haven’t been to the Woolly, somebody outside will tell you where the Woolly is. We’ll go over there. We’ll gather, we’ll eat, we’ll drink. And we’ll be on our merry way. We’ll see you all next year at Frank. Thank you so much for your participation. Thank you.

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