Episode Transcript
[00:00:18] Speaker A: Hi, everybody, and welcome to another edition of the Southern Pride podcast, a production of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. I'm Rex Nelson, senior editor of the Democrat Gazette, and we are delighted to have all the way down from Bentonville today, Sam Dean, chief executive officer of the Scott Family Amazeum.
I was in Bentonville recently. We had a great day together and I said you need to, you need to head south so you can do my podcast. And lo and behold, he took me up on it. Thanks, Sam. Appreciate you being here today.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: It was a great road trip. Happy to be down here and happy to join you this morning on this side, Southern Fried podcast. I love it.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I, and I loved, love being in Bentonville and seeing everything you've got going on, which we're going to talk about in the next 30 minutes.
You know, I've got a lot of listeners though, here in, here in central Arkansas, and I don't want to take for granted they're familiar. So I guess we'll just start with Amazium 101, if you will tell them what the heck the Amazium is.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: All right, Professor Dean in session, right?
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Well, the Scott Family Museum is a hands on museum up in northwest Arkansas, located in Bentonville. We're a part science center, part children's museum, part makerspace, all hands on. We really want to celebrate the spark in nurturing the curious and creative spirit in all of us. So if you, if you ever been to a place where you get a chance to explore science, you get to put circuits together, you get to explore the topography of the land around you, you've been to a place like the Amazium. But actually we would argue there's no place just like the Amazium.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Well, it is an amazing place in an amazing area.
And of course, I was doing a number of columns that I'm still working on while I was up there, as you know, because I had, doing something on the, on the hundred thousand square foot expansion of Crystal Bridges, on the new Alice Walton School of Medicine, on the whole health Institute, all on that Crystal Bridges campus.
You sit right there and I know you like to make this clarification so you share synergy, if you will, with that exciting neighborhood. But the Amazium is not a Walton family enterprise, as are the others.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: That's correct.
We're our own nonprofit, 501C3.
But we work in close collaboration with our neighbors. In fact, we talk a lot about a one campus philosophy that, you know, when Crystal Bridges opened 11, 11, 11, we opened 10 years ago. We're celebrating 10 years now.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: But the neighborhoods were mostly grass fields around us. So as the Heartland Whole Health Institute and the Alice Walton School of Medicine have come online, and as we've worked on projects with Crystal Bridges, like this play space that'll be opening up next summer as well, we kind of look at it as a campus. And how do we think about families are coming and they're moving from one place to another and how do we think about this unified look of a neighborhood that is in many ways like, I would argue, Central Park? It's like our version of Golden Gate Park. Right. You get a chance to wander hundreds of acres of land with all these great anchors at different corners.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: You know, you take what you're doing with the hands on experiences. There's.
You take Crystal Bridges, which obviously is one of the great art museums in the world. You take all the nature trails, the outdoor sculpture there. And now what Alice Walton and her team are doing in the area of health care and combining healthcare and art, I'm not just blowing smoke at you, that's why I'm doing multiple columns. But that is not just in the state, but that's one of the most exciting neighborhoods, if you will, in this part of the country or the country as a whole.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I would argue I have seen nothing like it in any of my visits or to colleagues around the country. They all look and go, you know, how is all of this happening at once?
And I think what's interesting is that there's the original concept for how all these different entities come online and are changing the face of healthcare practice, medicine, art, STEM learning. I think what's also interesting is as we work together, I'm really curious of where are these, where are these crossover? What's the crossover potential? I don't think we even know where that's going to go the next five or ten years.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: I agree. The potential is just amazing what can happen there.
And you know, we see, and we talk about Arkansas as a whole a lot on this show and we see the continued growth there in, in Benton county, neighboring Washington county also. But we see all of these new families coming, whether it's with Walmart, whether it's with JB Hunt, Tyson, or whether it's with a vendor whomever.
But it's really amazing new.
I like to think of it as both intellectual capital and diversity for this state. And there are certain cultural amenities that people in this day and time, they just say we've got to have these. If we're going to live in a place. And I think you, you play right into that puzzle. You, you offer something for potential new families coming to our state that maybe they come from much larger metropolitan area, and it's the kind of thing that they really demand for themselves and their children.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: Yeah, Rex, I mean, I think you hit that right on the head. That was one of the reasons why the Amazium made a lot of sense at that moment in time. It was sort of helping build out that learning ecology of the space where a lot of folks, if you're moving in here, you might have had this in the city you came from. And it's an expectation that you've got access to museums and other learning opportunities. You can have a great educational system, but actually in school, you're only in school for like 14% of your waking hours. When you're a kid, what do you do in the other pieces? You need great sports opportunities, you need great access to libraries, and great access to museums are another one. In fact, when we opened, it was interesting. I ran into folks at a Mercy Ball right after we opened, and it was. I ran into a couple who, who had just moved here, and they said, you know, the fact that you were here was like the final check mark to say, like, oh, I can move there. I recognize it. Yeah, this is the kind of thing that I know I want my kids to go to.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: Exactly. And I think you do play a role in all of that.
I like our listeners, this podcast, to feel like they know our guests. So if you don't mind talking about yourself for a couple of minutes, tell me about your background and then what attracted you to Arkansas. But let's walk through your background a little bit.
[00:07:36] Speaker B: Sure. You know, I like most people in the, in the science center and children's museum worlds, you know, we land there on the way to somewhere else, you know, so. So I was a kid. I love science. Growing up, my dad was a professor of geology, a presser at University of Toledo. Go Rockets. I'll tell you an aside later. The first time I ever got booed was after the University of Toledo Arkansas game a few years ago.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: Hey, I love we're October now. I love coming up in November. I get Maction, you know, because it's the only Tuesday and Wednesday night football and I watch any football game. So I'm ready for some Toledo and some Mac action on Tuesday and Wednesday nights next month.
[00:08:17] Speaker B: My two degrees are from Mac school, so. Go Falcons. Go Rockets.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: I'm telling you, I have a boy down here. In the south. Who loves me some mag sheets. There you go. But go ahead.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: So you know, I love science growing up, and so I thought I'd be a scientist. That was the pathway, you know. And turned out I did research after I. After I graduated from college, found out research wasn't for me, and I started working in a museum.
While I was getting ready to go to medical school, I was becoming an emt, exploring some things, right? As we learn. Sometimes you go to college, you're not quite sure what you want to do until you start doing it and then you find out that's not the thing you want to do. So I started working in a museum that had just opened in my hometown of Toledo, Ohio.
It was a converted festival marketplace that turned into 100,000 square foot museum called Cosi Toledo. And I fell in love with the kind of science learning that happened there.
Growing up, I would go to museums. I remember the first museum I went to was up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was the Museum of Natural Resources there. And it was this. T. Rex would greet you as you went in. I still vividly remember the T. Rex kind of looming over me.
[00:09:28] Speaker A: Over you?
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Yeah, as I went in. So I found out I loved science education and science learning that happens in a museum. And I've been museums ever since. So from Toledo, Ohio, then I moved to Fort Worth, Texas to work at the Museum of Science and History and then at a museum in San Francisco called the Exploratorium. Exploratorium in the science museum world is one of the earliest science centers in North America. There are three that opened up around 1968, 1969, opened by founder Frank Oppenheimer. And they actually were Museum of Science, Art and Human Perception. So it was this interesting hybrid. And Frank Oppenheimer, of course, famous physicist, right, worked with his brother on the Manhattan Project, et cetera. He opened this place. This idea that, hey, if museums are normally about artifacts, normally about stuff, what if I open up a museum that's not about stuff but about phenomena? What if we study light and electricity, magnetism, what if we study biology in different ways? And really science centers were taking their cues from where the stem crisis was happening. As we're, you know, as we're chasing the that time, the Soviet Union and the space race, et cetera. So he created this novel space that would pull together this exploratory style learning, this inquiry based style of learning.
So I moved there and was doing work. I was taking their work and actually helping other museums around the world plan around the country. And around the world. So helped do master planning for a museum just outside of Istanbul and some others in the Middle east and in Europe. But I was working with some museums here in Arkansas. And there was this network of museums called the Arkansas Discovery Network right down the road. Museum of Discovery, I was gonna say.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: Walking distance from where we're taping right now in downtown Lovell.
[00:11:17] Speaker B: Mid America Science Museum, Museum Nature and Resources. Down in sm up in Jonesboro, they have a university based museum, et cetera. And we were helping them plan these making and tinkering spaces, these hands on, tinkering, rich spaces. And we built studios for all of these museums. While I was working here, someone said, hey, you should go check out northwest Arkansas. They're trying to build this children's museum.
Go talk to them. They're looking to bring on their first team members.
And I tell you what, Rex, I went up there and did a visit and just fell in love. I mean, there was. There's spotted lightning. You can really kind of just tell the city was the city and the region.
[00:12:01] Speaker A: Well, you can feel the energy.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: You can feel the energy as soon.
[00:12:03] Speaker A: As you get out of the car.
[00:12:04] Speaker B: This is 2012, so it's still early enough that as people were painting this picture of what was to come, it was just. You could feel it. I mean, your hair, the hairs on your arms stood on end.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And you use the term children's museum, but, you know, when I was touring a month or so ago, when I was up to see you, I mean, what I loved was the fact that you're so much more than that.
I really got to tell you, I enjoyed meeting the staff in your innovation lab. I mean, you talk about a group of folks that could do anything, and they were telling me how people would just bring things in and say, fix this or invent something new to solve this problem.
And they do it right.
[00:12:50] Speaker B: Real people, you know, it wasn't part of.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: They were amazing.
[00:12:54] Speaker B: It was not part of our original business model to do that. But yeah, we have a workshop, the makerspace part. And what we found is we've inspired some folks and they're looking to get access to tools that are a little bit harder. These digital tools, the fourth age of industrial revolution, our CNC machines, you know, et cetera.
[00:13:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:13] Speaker B: People would come in and we had a machinist who came in. I loved it. He's like, look, I'm. I'm just trying to mill out this piece of aluminum. And I'm a former machinist. I don't have this tool because I no longer work for the company and, and I just, I. I don't want to. I can't pay someone to mill this out. Can I just do it here? And so we bartered with him and it was great. So he milled out the piece, but the deal was then he would turn around because he was a skilled machinist.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: Right.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: He trained our team on how to use that machine better.
[00:13:38] Speaker A: Uh huh.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: I love it. So we've done a lot of bartering with entrepreneurs who wanted to launch a couple of products and just needed a little bit of a boost, a little bit larger equipment.
So it's been fun. And then usually the trade's been. Then come educate our teens and our team to be able to think about the kind of art you do or the kind of materials you use.
It's been a great. I feel like it's a throwback to the, you know, the economy of hundreds of years ago where you're just kind of trading your skills and other goods to be able to do what you need to do.
[00:14:12] Speaker A: You've been there since before day one and 10 years is young in the museum world, as you know, but you're already expanding after just a decade.
Talk about your expansion and why you saw the need for that already.
Yeah.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: I feel like I need to pinch myself, rex. It's funny, 10 years and expanding and I think we'll have to expand after that.
What we see is that as the region is growing and clearly in arts, health, wellness, I think that one of the areas that has been sort of lagging in growth and we're hearing this as we opened the doors, we were hearing that STEAM based learning, particular for kids. There weren't a lot of opportunities and there still aren't a ton of opportunities.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: And I can talk statewide on that. There really are not.
[00:15:06] Speaker B: So for us, what we found is that the sheer mass of folks coming and talking to us about partnering, about the work that they want to do, and our building was built for, you know, 100, 120,000 people a year. Well, we see about a quarter million people a year and as you know, with northwest Arkansas and the whole region growing, that number is just going to keep expanding.
So we're really trying to keep up and, and really one of the, one of the key areas we want to expand is a community based space that allows us to have more community events. We can bring in more groups that want a robotics groups, Girl Scout groups at any given day in our two classrooms. We have, we're always having to say no to a lot of people because we can only take two groups of people at a time. So for us, as we expand our ability to bring in community groups to do rentals in our place, we can host more events in there, we'll be able to do more adult style programming because as you know, like you're never done learning.
So we need to be able to expand to be able to accommodate that. And then our outdoor space, we're doing a really great level up layer onto that as well as we know that we're the natural state outdoor economy here is huge. We think that one of the, as we look at issues of mental health, as we look at with kids, as we look at issues of anxious anxiety, getting outside and reconnecting with nature is truly one of the clear pathways into a healthier, happier lifestyle.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It again, I want amazing, I want to use the word amazing, but it really is amazing what you've accomplished in just 10 years.
10 years open and where you're going. So give me that, give me that long range outlook where you see the institution going in the next 10 years. Even the next 20 years.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: Oh gosh, this is where I get in trouble. Rex here.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: Dream out loud here a little bit. Yeah.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: I mean the piece that we think that the Amazium can do is there's growth. If I think about a triangle and at each corner we might look at impact. So one impact would be the building in our campus itself. How do we grow our facility to be the facility of the next 10 years? I mean what is it in 2050 Northwest Arkansas purchase to be? About a million.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: A million people.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: People.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And so it's 25 years. So our, it's about 610 now. So that gives you a sense of how much growth we're talking about.
[00:17:37] Speaker B: And, and then on top of that, you know there's, there's the growth that's happening in other cities around us. You know, within a couple hour drive we, we get a catchment from you know, a 90 minute drive pretty regularly. So, so there's the growth of our campus. I'm excited about that. I think increasing and doubling down on our, our STEM based work. I think our maker based work, how we open up our shop to more people in our community on a more regular basis. Our youth maker market, for example, we're working with teens. There's this group that in museums often around 9, 10, 11, 12 kids start to age out and then they might come back and work later as a 17, 18, 19 year old. But there's this gap in between that, what happens there. And so we're starting to work with teens to come up with their own ideas, run through work with our, our museum store and our folks from our, our innovation space. And they're creating their own product learning tools, selling them in our store, selling them in markets around. So they're learning the tools of, the tools of creation making, then learning the techniques of being an entrepreneur in the mindset and frankly making some money doing it. I just, I just signed some checks for some of the kids the other day. They're, they're, they're, and then they're reinvesting in their business.
So we think this work with teens, adults and early childhood is an important expansion for us on our campus.
But then, you know what happens at home. How do we think about the ability to reach kids when they're, they're at home and looking for, you know, how do we appear on maybe podcasts, how do we appear on the web? How do we think about getting materials at kids so when they're home and they're looking for something to do that it can be stem rich experience that then connects to maybe what they experience at the Amazium and they might connect with what they do with school. We work with about 800 to 1,000 teachers a year on STEAM based ideas and curriculum for the classroom. So if we think we connect school life, life at the Amazium, life at home, now you're thinking about the ability to create a STEAM rich lifestyle. So within the next 10, 15 years, how do we build up that ecology and then how do we support the other people that are looking to do.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: So, trying to do the same?
[00:19:47] Speaker B: The robotics clubs, the librarians who are also working to do STEAM based stuff. So I think we're trying to build the whole ecosystem while anchoring those three different locations. Home, school, and then our campus itself.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
You mentioned earlier when I asked your background, you're not a Navy Arkansan like I am, grew up in Ohio, so I'll let you tell me. You're, you're, you're just letting your native Arkansan pride get to you too much if you think that's the case. But with all that you guys are doing, and I mentioned the hundred thousand square foot expansion of Crystal Bridges going on now, already one of the world's great art museums here in Little Rock.
Warren Stevens and his wife Harriet picked up the ball and it did a massive expansion of what's now the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts. Brought in one of the top architects in the world, Jeannie Gang to do that. Now she's working on an expansion of the Clinton Library, about a $200 million project right here in downtown Little Rock.
I look elsewhere, I look just an hour down the road for me at the U.S. marshals Museum in Fort Smith, which is truly both architecturally and the exhibits a, a world class because I'm a history nut and I can tell you of history museums, it is, it is truly world class. So you tell me if I'm right, but it really seems that for a state of only 3.1 million people that we are, we are punching above our weight class right now in the museum world. Am I safe in saying that?
[00:21:29] Speaker B: I, I mean, I wish this were a video podcast because you could see my face just like, yes, Scrunchie up. I mean, I think as a, as a state that collectively, what do you compare it to? I mean, I think that there's, I think on multiple fronts, the state is, and it's accelerating. I think that's the other piece. It's not, this isn't even, this isn't even sort of like step by step growth. It is increasing in the rate of change.
So I think, yeah, we're punching above our weight class for sure.
[00:22:05] Speaker A: Yeah. And you're right, you talked about population, but it, but it is increasing.
And you know, I think those of us in the media, and I've used this in speeches and I chastise us in media, we've gotten so used to good news coming from northwest Arkansas that I think we have actually underplayed some stories in recent years. And one of the big ones is basically when first Tyson and then Walmart in essence said to all of its white collar employees across the country, we don't work you working from home anymore. We're closing these regional offices. We want you in Arkansas.
That was the equivalent, Sam, of two Fortune 500 companies making a corporate relocation, which would have been huge news, but we lost it. But we're talking about hundreds of new families that were coming to Arkansas. And again, I just think back to the terms I used earlier, the intellectual capital and the diversity that, that adds to our state as all those people move here.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it happens, you know, you know, at a, at a, at a, at such a rapid pace that movement is all happening almost at once.
[00:23:31] Speaker A: Yeah. I have to, I have to tell you that. I'll let you finish. But again, the native Arkansas in me, as you know, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, others did articles both when Tyson made the decision. And when Walmart made the decision of people complaining and I would say out loud as I read the paper, oh, get over it, you'll love it when you get here because they're going to discover people like you.
[00:23:59] Speaker B: I mean, and I will tell you, I was one of the people who was.
You don't know until you show up. So the secret sauce is you got to get someone there and once they get there, you get it.
But until you get there it's kind of hard to conceive of what's happening. So I was one of those that's like, well I'm, I wasn't really looking to leave the exploratorium and just doing work around the world and love the work I was doing. But once I got here for, for my interview it's like, oh, I need to, I need to get there.
[00:24:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:24:34] Speaker B: And I think, I mean I think the other piece that, and this is if I think about Walmart's decision to stay located and anchored in, in Bentonville, huge. But I also think the decision of both Tyson and Walmart as they build their campuses out.
[00:24:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: To, to, to, to turn them inside out and be a valuable part of the infrastructure of the community versus a closed satellite campus that you might find on an Apple campus or somewhere else meant that their investment in the region was an investment for everyone.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: Oh absolutely. And that multi billion dollar, I think I had told you when we visited, I had spent the day before and still very hot then and I'd spent the whole day walking the new Walmart corporate campus. Almost passed out, probably overdid it for a fat guy. But it's just amazing. It's unlike anything in this part of the country. The only thing I could compare it to, and again I've used this comparison in speeches is it's like somebody created a major new university from scratch. Well, I was already using that in speeches and lo and behold then, you know, it's like we can't dream big enough in Arkansas. Tom and Stuart Walton said they are going to create a new university on the old Walmart corporate campus and it's going to be STEM focused and you've got to think, man, they're, there's chances of coordination again for us right there.
We're going to have a four year university down the street doing what we do.
[00:26:16] Speaker B: Rex, I'm going to call you every week and I want you to do your great Karnak to say what's happening around the corner. What other things are you putting in your speeches that are going to be.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: Well I was using Edge Apple. It's like creating a new university. Then I pick up the paper Tom and Stuart Walton said well yeah, we're going to create a new university.
[00:26:33] Speaker B: I mean this is a big deal for of course northwest Arkansas. It's a big deal for Arkansas, big deal for Arkansans. And I and I think, you know, the Heartland, Heartland Forward had put for brought out a report like if we can double the number of engineers coming out of University of Arkansas, it's like a multi trillion dollar increase in GDP of Arkansas over the next, you know, couple of Absolutely.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: And so for us and, and this is really where and actually I'm going to I'll underscore this. It means that every step along the way we need to have more on ramps into being excited about science. And here's the part that I think you know where to why children's museums and science centers. Well, it turns out if you're going to go into science, if you're going to go into a STEM career, the decision to not go into it. Little kids love science, we know this. But at some point they start to decide to go somewhere else and often it's not because they found something more exciting. It's actually because a lot of early experiences in science might not be all that thrilling.
It turns often kids off Science by grades 4, 5, 6. Once that happens, you start making your choices that make it harder and harder and harder to go back into it. So if we get an integrated pipeline from early childhood through your elementary years years you have interest in it, then you start in making choices of maybe I'll join a robotics club, maybe I'm going to go visit museums. When I travel now, I may pick the calculus course, I may pick these courses that keep me on a pipeline to be able to be an engineer, go off to a college, become an engineer, go off to a two year college, get a certification maybe and in a technical degree it keeps that pipeline going but we need it at every step of the way. Otherwise you're fighting the inertia of drift away from kids who are curious but haven't quite been able to really figure out how they're going to turn that into what they want to do for.
[00:28:42] Speaker A: Yeah, we're almost out of time. I'm probably going to go over time because you're preaching to the choir here and getting me excited. But again you mentioned the need for more engineers and getting kids interested in science and I'm been talking about what's going on in Northwest Arkansas. But the exciting thing now for Arkansas is it's not just northwest, northeast Arkansas, Mississippi county, the leading steel producing county in America right now. You know, I like to say take that, Pittsburgh Steelers.
You know, we never could have dreamed, never could have dreamed of that, those of us who grew up in this state, that Arkansas would be the heart of American steel making.
And it's clean and it's green because it's recycled steel that we're doing. Meanwhile, the opposite end of the state, southwest Arkansas, you got the lithium boom about to happen. And you've got the giants of the industry, ExxonMobil, Chevron, already announcing they're moving in there. They will, I'm telling you, build multibillion dollar plants to use this new method called direct lithium extraction. So over the next 20 years, I have no doubt there's going to be huge needs for engineers and scientists and these people. If we can get these Arkansas kids excited like you're talking about, they're not going to have to leave the state for good jobs because there's so much going on right now.
[00:30:12] Speaker B: That's right.
I think about like, why steam?
So right. These advancements in steel manufacturing, that is cleaner, greener steel and the lithium thing is cleaner, greener.
[00:30:24] Speaker A: I mean you got old evaporation ponds overseas now this is pulling the lithium out of the saltwater brine and then injecting the brine right back into the air.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: And we need it. I mean, if we're going to have an electric, if we are going to.
[00:30:36] Speaker A: Have to have it for those batteries.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: You need it for the batteries. I think too about aerospace industry.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: How important is it started mentioned that, you know, we're training every fighter pilot in the world, American allies now in Fort Smith and Tim Allen, the head of the chamber there, I've written about this, told me I'm already getting inquiries now from defense industries around the country. Fort Smith's got a chance to become a real defense hub.
[00:31:05] Speaker B: I had a factory. I graduated with a buddy who went into the Air Force out of high school and he was not a science guy, tech guy, but what happened is he went into the military and he became an AWACS tech and now he's working for one of the big computer companies as a software engineer. Never thought he'd be a steam person, but then he got into it and then he loved this technical aspect. It's the, you know, there are lots of path. This is the, lots of pathways. You need lots of on ramps because often you don't need an off ramp. If you can get on at just the right time.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:35] Speaker B: Oh my gosh. In wood industry, the CLT industry, the ability to think about lumber and timber in a very different way for construction. You know, I was just talking to architects who were working on some of the buildings up in northwest Arkansas using cross laminated timber, the clt and they're like we the ability to draw out everything and then basically have a giant bot, you know, be able to drill out, pre drill all of your holes and then you're just dropping it in place.
[00:32:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:05] Speaker B: Such a different approach to architecture and construction, but it's very technically based. It's one that you have to know how to use really good computer programming at a very early stage.
Otherwise you'll get in a lot of trouble if all your pipes and whatnot are not hitting the different penetrations that you had drawn out.
[00:32:28] Speaker A: Yeah. All right, I'm going to let you close with a sales pitch. Let's say that I'm a guy living here in central Arkansas, that I've got young kids. I'm not, I'm an old dude, I've got older kids. But let's say that I am.
Why is it worth the three hour drive up to Bentonville to bring my family, spend a night or two and go to the Amazium is one of the things that I do while I'm there.
Give me your sales pitch.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: I'm going to give an untraditional, a non traditional sales.
[00:33:00] Speaker A: Okay, okay.
[00:33:01] Speaker B: If you're down here and live in middle of the state, you should be a member of the Museum of Discovery because you should show up all the time as a member and make it part of your kids lives. You should then take your membership, go over to Mid America Science Museum, get in at no cost because you're an hour membership. You get a chance to pop over there and then come up to northwest Arkansas often because once you come up, you're going to want to make that trip pretty regularly. There's the Amazium. We're an incredible experience.
The bike trails, the quality of life for kids and families is strong.
Come on up, visit us, get a scoop of ice cream around the square at the Spark Cafe and I think experience what a weekend could be like with families. And most importantly, just keep, keep doing science as often as you can with your kids as they grow up.
[00:33:51] Speaker A: Amen. Sam Dean, he's the CEO of the Scott Family Amazium in Bentonville. Thank you for coming and visiting today. We'll do it again.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: Oh, my treat. We'll we'll invite you up to when we. We're ready to open up our own expansion here.
[00:34:05] Speaker A: That sounds great. That sounds great. Thank you for joining us for another edition of the Southern Pride Podcast, a production of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
