Speaker 1:
From Carr, Riggs & Ingram, this is It Figures: The CRI Podcast, an accounting, advisory, and industry focused podcast for business and organization leaders, entrepreneurs, and anyone who is looking to go beyond the status quo.
Keith Hundley:
All right. Well, welcome to It Figures: The CRI Podcast. I’m Keith Hundley, I’m a partner with Carr, Riggs & Ingram based out of the enterprise Alabama office. I’m joined by three of my other partners today. We’ve got Sandi guy with us, Alyssa Hill, and David Mills. And guys, you want to just say a little something about each, tell a little bit about yourself?
Sandi Guy:
Well, sure. Sandi Guy, I’m partner with CRI and oversee all of our human capital strategies, which is everything from recruiting, retention, development, culture. Always like to say if it touches our talent, it touches me in some way, shape, or form. And I am in Charlotte, North Carolina,
Alyssa Hill:
Alyssa Hill. I am a partner out of our Houston, Texas office and I have had the pleasure with working with grant-funded organizations for almost 30 years. It’s just a pleasure to be here with y’all today.
David Mills:
Hey, I’m David Mills. I’m a partner out of the corporate office. And I’m pretty much out of my car or my truck, either one, because I do travel quite a bit. But I’m actually based out of Birmingham, Alabama right now. And I’m the IT audit and assurance partner for the firm, also known as the firm nerd. But been with the firm for 27-ish, actually before the firm was this big, just was 35 people. So been with it a long time. Looking forward to this Keith, and thanks for asking me back.
Keith Hundley:
Thanks guys. Appreciate it. Happy to have all of you with us today. So as I said, again, my name’s Keith Hundley. I’m a proud member of the firm’s governmental and not-for-profit practice. I’ve been working with federally funded organizations for the fast 25 years.
I’m also the creator and the founder of the Southern Grants Forum. This is our 11th year of doing this event and I’m a bit biased and very proud of it and it’s a great event, just what you’re going to hear from our group here today. And these guys are just a small sample of the talent we bring to this event each year.
So let me start out by just, you guys listening to the podcast, just to let you know what the Southern Grants Forum, what the event is. So the Southern Grants Forum is a three-day educational and networking event for grants management professionals. This event is designed for CEOs, CFOs, finance directors, fiscal staff, program directors, program staff, board members, HR professionals, IT professionals. We get a very broad mix of individuals attending this event. Our grants management professionals come from nonprofits, from governments, from healthcare, from colleges and universities, from tribal groups. Again, just a really diverse group attend this.
The 2025 event will be held in New Orleans at the InterContinental Hotel. The hotel is just two blocks away from the French Quarter and it’s in the heart of everything that is New Orleans. Plenty of food, sights to see. Just lots of activity, a great location. We’re happy to be at that hotel this year.
Registration for the 2025 event is… The event itself is $899. That’s a bargain for a three-day event. We’ve also secured the unbelievably low rate of $143 for our hotel accommodations. Again, the InterContinental’s a really nice hotel, centrally located to everything. I think you guys will really enjoy that.
You can find the link for registration as well as the hotel link to book your rooms at our website, which is southerngrantsforum.com. Just click on that, go to that website. Again, the registration link is there. You’ll need a credit card or debit card to register and pay. You can also register with the hotel. I believe we have that rate, 143 is good several days before as well as after. So if you want to come to New Orleans and make a little vacation out of it, I encourage you to do that. Awesome city, you’ll have a blast.
And we’ll be updating that site all along. We still have a few things, we’re still finalizing our agenda as well as our speaker group, but we should have that wrapped up in the next week or so. But just checking back.
I will encourage you to register early. We are limited to about 250 seats. We keep the conference small intentionally. I think that just gives it a much better feel for everybody. It’s much easier interact with the speakers. I’m constantly [inaudible 00:05:12], I’m sure Alissa and Sandi and David have all had this experience of we get questions throughout the sessions, but then once it’s over with, there’s always quite a few folks that want to grab you at the end and spend some time with you and we’re happy to do that. That’s why we like the size of the event, it gives us the ability to do that.
But anyway, we’ll continue to update everything, so just check back on the site. But I talked about the limitations. The hotel also, the room block will close June 30th. The event is July 14th through the 17th. 14th being registration, the 15th, 16th, and 17th is the actual event itself.
We’re doing something a little different this year, day one and day three are going to be general sessions. Day two will be our breakouts. Our breakout sessions is where we run four concurrent sessions of various technical type information. A lot of good stuff going on there. Day one, the general sessions, I think we have David slated that day to do his cybersecurity update. We try to populate that first day with topics of interest to everybody. They’re not specific to any particular position, finance or anything like that. So we’ll do a grants management update. I know David’s doing his session that day.
We also have Ben Kincaid from CRI coming in to do a 90-minute session on fraud. Ben heads up our fraud practice in the firm. Excellent speaker, get a lot out of that.
And then day three, probably, I think day three, we get a lot of questions about AI, artificial intelligence. Still a lot of misinformation and a lot of questions floating around out there about AIs. So the next generation of the Mills family, Tyler, Tyler’s going to join us that morning and he’s going to do a session on AI and I’m really looking forward to that. Tyler’s a really neat guy and a real [inaudible 00:07:10] chip off the old block, very… I don’t know if I’d call him a nerd. I guess he’s a nerdy guy too, like you, Dave.
David Mills:
Oh, gosh, yes, absolutely. [inaudible 00:07:17].
Keith Hundley:
Very techy guy and he’ll be great for that. And then we’ll close out the last day with everybody. We’re bringing in a special guest speaker. I’m not ready to announce that guy yet, but I think it’s somebody everybody will really enjoy listening to. We’re excited to have him coming and we’ll be posting that to the website a little bit later once we get everything finalized on him.
But anyway, so that’s the event kind of in a nutshell. Again, I think we get a lot of returnees each year, which speaks to the quality of the event. Again, I think it’s focused around grants management, so there’s a lot of uniform guidance stuff 2 CFR 200 type information as well as some things not necessarily, again, Sandi coming in to do some stuff on our human capital side of things, David doing stuff related to IT, the cybersecurity. But then you’ll have people like myself and Alyssa that’ll be doing more of the technical stuff. Alyssa does the every year and been doing our, I guess call it a FASB/nonprofit kind of update.
But anyway, we do the governmental. Dean Mead will come in to do the governmental again this year. Dean’s the GASB guru, so we’ve got… And I’m just really proud of the people we have [inaudible 00:08:40] really, really talented subject matter experts that speak at this thing every year.
So anyway, that’s enough for me. Let me quit yammering here and let me bring our group in and ask, just throw a few questions out to them and everybody kind of respond. So the first thing I wanted to kind of address with everybody, you guys are all subject matter experts in your respective area, so we’ll start up here on the top with Sandi. So what are some of the hot topics in your area that you think attendees can probably expect to be hearing about this year at the conference? And I realize we may still be solidifying all of our agenda and stuff, but you know what the world looks like out there in the places you deal with, so just give us some idea of what you think you see happening this summer from your perspective.
Sandi Guy:
Yeah, it’s a really broad array of topics to choose from. And I know, Keith, every year when you and I talk about what topics do you want me to present on, we start big and kind of have to narrow it down to some of the biggest ones.
I will say we’ll definitely talk about digital communications and a little bit of AI, more from the talent perspective, not the David Mills, the nerdy perspective, but how AI and digital communications are impacting the workforce. We did that the first time last year. I did it as a breakout session last year and it went incredibly well. I thoroughly enjoyed it. We had a lot of two-way dialogue about it. A lot of people raised issues that they were facing or questions they had, that then spilled over into a couple other breakouts that I was sitting in. So they’ll definitely be that digital communications, AI, its impact on talent in the workplace and things of that nature.
And oldie but always a goodie are kind of what I like to call talent trends, trends in retention. It’s always interesting to me every year to see what we face in financial services a lot of times isn’t that different than what somebody in that not-for-profit space are experiencing as well. And in some ways it’s very, very different. So a lot of the best practices sharing that come out of that as well.
And then we’ve had a couple of fun topics in the past that we might go to, but you’ll definitely be hearing from me around digital communications, the impact of AI, and some general retention and overall talent trends in the workforce.
Keith Hundley:
Good deal. Thanks, Sandi.
Sandi Guy:
Mm-hmm.
Keith Hundley:
Alyssa, same question to you. I’m not sure what FASB’s been up to or what’s hot how with the nonprofits right now. We may still be dealing, I still get questions on good old ASC 842. That one still gives everybody fits. I’m talking about leases. What do you see maybe as being the hot topic for the nonprofits or for all the folks following FASB this year?
Alyssa Hill:
Yeah, sure. Thank you, Keith. So I’m really excited. One thing I’m really excited about the conference this year is, as Keith was talking about, the restructure of the format because as a speaker, there’s classes I want to go sit in. I love listening to David every year with cybersecurity because it still just blows my mind in how help people think, how criminals think on certain things. And of course Sandi, with everything related to people. Public accounting is no different than industry and working with the resources that we have, finding the right talent and so forth. So I’m really excited that, again, with the format this year.
Fortunately, FASB has been kind of quiet lately, which I think is a good thing because after revenue recognition leases, which I agree, Keith, those are still out there causing some fits from time to time. And then the credit loss standard, we had three huge ones over the last few years. So we’re kind of in a little bit of a quiet stage right now. There are obviously still things coming out, but hopefully a little bit more manageable. So hopefully we’ll get to talk about what’s on the horizon, give opportunity for revisit anything that might still be keeping folks up a little bit.
And then another class that I had the opportunity to speak on that’s just wonderful is internal controls. While there’s nothing new with internal controls, the framework is still the same. If you just think about have you had turnover of key people or individuals involved in processes? Has your organization changed? Maybe you’ve got new funding streams or funding streams have changed, things that they want you to provide. It’s always good just to stop a minute, think and say, “Is what I’m doing, does it still make sense? Is there something I could be doing better? Is there something I maybe haven’t even thought about in years that might be a good fit for my organization?”
So again, just those opportunities in every session to learn something new, maybe revisit something that you haven’t in a while, and you really just being able to interact with your peers because Keith, as you mentioned, you do cap the conference at a couple hundred people. So you really get that opportunity to interact with everyone at the conference, which I think is just so beneficial for both not just attendees but us as speakers as well.
Keith Hundley:
Yeah, good deal. Thank you, Alyssa. So that brings me to David Mills and cybersecurity. And this is the one topic that just scares the hell out of me because I’m still amazed and share this with you. I was at a conference in, where was I? I was in Charleston a couple of weeks ago speaking and I did a… One of the new things in the uniform guidance, they just did a big revision and one of the new changes on internal controls was they added an additional thing to cover. They didn’t give a lot of detail, but they want organizations to have controls in place over cybersecurity awareness or training.
And I still am dumbfounded when I ask people about that. We talk about that and I ask a show of hands of everybody whose organization is doing cybersecurity training. And maybe half the room’s hands go up. And I just look at that and I cringe like what is wrong with folks?
So anyways, and that’s why we always put your session on, I like to have it for everybody because I think whether it’s cybersecurity, whether it’s in the workplace, is just as important as your personal life and how you conduct business in what you do. So anyway, share some thoughts on what you see being the big issue this summer with cybersecurity that you probably are going to address or questions maybe or what you think’s going to be the issue this summer.
David Mills:
I know that all of this cybersecurity stuff is very scary to most people. So one of the things we try to do in the session there is we get that most folks aren’t cyber experts. So what we try to do is basically tailor the presentation to the less technical folks and sort of go over and help everybody understand just by writing, using a computer to write a grant in Word has cybersecurity impact. So we kind of go over all that stuff and a lot of times after the session’s over we get people with their iPhones and their iPads coming up and saying, “Hey, look at this. Can you fix this?” So it kind of varies on what we do.
I know that no matter what we do, all of our sessions have speakers that make their topics very informative and fun. I’ll be honest with you, for a long time I thought FASB was a new dance. I did not know that it stood for Financial Accounting Standards board. I just kind of kept quiet when people would say the word, thinking I might figure it out that night while watching them kind of dance across the floor. Never did find out. But anyway, I know now.
But these topics that we’re going over are fantastic. Tyler speaking about AI, this is not from somebody who just has read a lot of AI articles. We actually have a large language model test AI in use now that we’ve set up and built in our home labs. So we’re looking at it from all kinds of use cases and scenarios. So this is not just, hey, AI’s out there, dial up ChatGPT and see what it’ll do. This is actually, we’ve actually set an AI system up. We have it, it’s a private AI system. So this is not coming from just somebody that’s just read some articles, that we’re actually doing it. So I think that makes it a little more interesting and you can get a little more in-depth knowledge out of it. So I look forward to that session for sure.
I’ll be heckling Tyler from the back of the room, to do my best to try to trick them up there. So anybody that’d like to join me in that, I welcome your attendance. But I think these sessions are fantastic. I think we tailor them and for the audience that you guys send and those in attendance to where it’s just a super special event.
Keith Hundley:
Good deal. Thank you, Dave. Yeah, we’re all looking forward to yours. Again, that’s another reason I always put it on day one is I know I’m not speaking so I can sit there and enjoy your session because it’s always a good one.
And I’m not going to leave myself out of this question, I’ve got a few things too. So the question being, my area of expertise being in federal grants and stuff, what do I think the hot topics are? Well, every year I’ve somehow never become the de facto expert in the firm on indirect costs. I had no idea how that happened. I think it happened when Marie Harrison retired, somebody just said, “Okay, you’re it.”
So I’ll be doing indirect costs and there’s a lot of questions. I’ve done several conferences in the last few months for some friends of mine and in the world of indirect costs, the de minimis is the big question everybody… We’ll be talking a lot about that this summer, answering questions and helping folks with that.
The grants management stuff is ever-changing. There’s always something out there. As we are recording this podcast, I probably shouldn’t bring this up because it freaks people, it’s freaking everybody out at the moment, as everybody knows, if you’ve watched the news, Trump administration decide basically freeze all federal grant money, literally everything, and which affects countless thousands if not tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of organizations. Now, they’ve walked that back and the federal courts have stepped in and put an injunction to stop all that, now they’re…
Anyway, I’m sure that will hopefully all be resolved fairly quickly and by the time we get to the summer, that issue will be long gone and everybody will be fine. But right now that’s affecting the federal grants world quite a bit, that people are concerned about their cash being cut off. But I think that’s in the process of being worked out.
But anyway, there’s internal controls. The revision on the uniform guidance that went into effect October 1st of ’24, that is huge. There is a lot of changes there, and we’ll be addressing that probably in a number of sessions this July for folks.
But anyway, as David, as everybody has said, it’s a lot of good material. We try to make it as entertaining and as enjoyable as we can. It is hard to do that with some of this material, but we do all give it our best. When you’re getting into some of this stuff that’s really technical, it’s hard to take leases and make it funny and entertaining. And Alyssa, she has taught it many times, but we do try to keep everybody engaged. And I think all of our speakers do a great job.
It’s not just CRI, we bring in outside speakers to give it a little bit more flavor and flair. And we vet those speakers and try again to make sure that the material that’s coming in is relevant, it’s timely, it’s as entertaining as it can be.
But anyway, so again, I think guys attending, you folks that are attending will… It’s a good event. I can’t stress that enough. I think you’ll really get a lot out of this. It is not industry specific as far as a particular type of non-profit group or particular type of government. It is grant specific, it deals with all federal grants. So again, I think it’s a great event for you.
My other question I wanted to kind of pose to the group, and I can kick this off, we’ve all been presenters involved in this thing for a number of years. Just your impressions of the event and what you think attendees will get out at the event.
I’ll kick this one off. As I mentioned earlier, it’s a small event. I’ve been to some of these conferences that have 600 to 1,000 people, and you just kind of get lost in the crowd. I’m not a big fan of those. They can be good events, but we intentionally have kind of kept this one at a certain size. And again, I like the exchanges with the attendees. I like talking to folks, I like taking questions.
But I really liked the after, I’ve met folks. A couple of years ago, I think somebody had plans, they wanted to talk to me about something and I actually had to bring a friend of mine in because the subject matter was probably a little… It involved several different things. Brought an attorney friend of mine in who works with us on this event and we actually met him in the lounge for a drink about 9:30 that night to talk about a problem they had. And I think we solved it.
So I like that fact that we’re available, we’re there. And that’s kind what I tell folks, “Look, this conference is about you guys that are attending this thing. It’s about you. It’s not about me, it’s about you guys.” And we want you to get a lot out of it. We want you to walk away through like, “Wow, I’ve earned something. This is just as good.” And we hear that a lot in our feedback from folks, and that makes it feel good because I think we’re doing it right. That’s what we want.
So anyway, I guess for me it’s the size, the networking, the meeting people, and it’s the exchanges with attendees between the presenters. I like seeing that and I think that’s really one of the good points of this event. Alyssa, let’s start with you. Some of your thoughts from your prior experience.
Alyssa Hill:
I think you said it very well, Keith. Listening to that, I’m like, “Yep, yep, all of that.” So it is, it’s the relevancy of the information, the size. Just being able to see attendees, that they’re able to network with their peers, because again, the class sizes are small. You’re attending similar sessions with individuals, so seeing attendees be able to expand their networks and get some of their questions or their expertise I think is just a fantastic piece to this conference as well.
Keith Hundley:
Good deal. Sandi?
Sandi Guy:
I echo what the two of you say, the relationships that are built, because it’s interesting over the last, this will be I think my 10th consecutive year, which I’m kind of excited about. But as the event “grows,” it’s still intimate. There are people that I look forward to every year, attendees that come back and maybe we would’ve connected throughout the year, so I think the relationships.
But if I’m being really honest and very selfish, I love what I, as a presenter, get out of it. So my profession has always been in professional services, couldn’t be further away from the not-for-profit government space. And every year, I look forward to it because some of these principles that apply in financial services, it’s always interesting to me what’s consistent. As Alyssa said earlier, talent is talent, people are people.
But then some of the ways, as we brainstorm, whether it’s in a session, if we’re all like, “Hey, let’s go grab lunch together,” and we start talking about issues, some people will share their issues and solutions that they’ve had. I’m like, “Gosh, I could probably take that solution and tweak it a little bit and it would work in my environment.”
So as a presenter, very selfishly, I get a lot out of it and I’m super excited that Ben Kincaid’s coming this year too. And Keith, you and I are going to have to talk about where you schedule me because I want to sit in on David’s, I want to sit in on Dean’s, I want to sit in on Ben’s. So we’re going to have to be strategic about where my sessions are.
Keith Hundley:
All right, we’ll work on that. We’ll work on that. David, same question to you.
David Mills:
Oh, yeah. For me, during the class sessions, one of the things that I love the most is usually when class first starts, everybody’s kind of tentative and sits down and you don’t know how it’s going to go. And about 10 minutes into it, all of a sudden you start seeing, if I do a good job, you start seeing folks kind of eyes widened a little bit and all of a sudden we’ve got questions and we’re starting to get folks engaged and we try to keep obviously the atmosphere pretty light. And I don’t really do drama or very hard atmospheres or whatever it is, I like to keep things light. So when those lights go on with everybody and their eyes widen and they start to ask questions, I love the questions they ask, love to hear what problems they’re going through.
And then usually after that evening, I’ll have a cold unsweet iced tea down there with the folks in the lounge, which tends to obviously make everybody a little less apprehensive about asking a question. So we get more questions, you’re in that part of it. So I think just and that boils down to just all the relationships that you have and making people feel comfortable.
Keith Hundley:
Yeah.
Sandi Guy:
David, it’s funny you say that because I learned, I think it was maybe around the fifth year. Talked to Keith, you got your topics and you’re good. I learned to build into my content cushions because I’m like, “I know they’re going to be comfortable, it’ll be engaging at that point. We could get off the rails, so let me build in space at these parts of the content because I know we’re going to talk about all kinds of stuff.”
So it has been interesting. I agree with you, you watch the vibe in the room and you’re right on. About 10 minutes in, it’s more like it’s a discussion and not a conference session. It’s a lot of fun.
David Mills:
Right.
Keith Hundley:
All right, good deal. So we want to kind of end on a light note, a fun note.
Sandi Guy:
Oh, were we being serious? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.
Keith Hundley:
[inaudible 00:28:07].
David Mills:
I was being… This is as serious as I get.
Keith Hundley:
That’s as serious as David’s going to get. But I think at the beginning when we started this, I talked about the event itself as being, there’s two stars to this event. There’s the event itself, the material, the speakers, the event, and then there’s location. And I think last year, we were in Fort Worth. Prior to that, we were in Nashville. We try to pick fun cities that people I think would enjoy visiting. And we’re trying, I know in the early days of this, we spent several years in Atlanta and several years in New Orleans and we tried to get away from repeating ourselves too frequently in a city.
But anyway, so the other big star is the location, like I said. And this year we’re back in New Orleans. And New Orleans to me is like no other city in the United States. It’s got its own vibe going on. Now, I don’t think in July, I don’t know if everybody saw the pictures and where people might be viewing this from, but, of course, we had the big Snowmageddon or snowstorm or I call it super storm Becky, because in honor of my wife who’s bugged me for 12 years about no snow in the South.
So anyway, so I don’t know if everybody saw the pictures, but don’t expect any ice skating or snow skiing on Canal Street or down on Bourbon Street or any place this summer. That was still hard for me to believe that it actually snowed almost a foot in New Orleans, but it did. Don’t expect that this summer, but still a fantastic… You’ll have a lot of fun without the snow.
So guys, just whoever wants to jump in, tell me just your thoughts on New Orleans, maybe your favorite restaurant, your favorite bar, your favorite place to visit, or just your feel, what you like about that city.
Sandi Guy:
Listen, get a pen people, if you’re listening and write this down because you’re going to get some good recommendations. There are two places that I go. I’ve been going to New Orleans since late ’80s, early ’90s, so back in college. And there are two places I’ve never been to New Orleans and not done both of these, even if I’m there for 24 hours.
First and foremost, you go to the Hotel Monteleone on and you go to the Carousel Bar and you go get you a cocktail because it’s a historic bar. If you’re a ghost hunter like me, it’s haunted too. But it’s a slow turn. You have to go to the Monteleone, Carousel Bar. And then after that, as you’re walking down Bourbon Street, trust me, there’s a little hole in the wall bar, tiny, tiny little bar called Le Booze, right as you get onto the French Quarter. Stop there for a drink, walk out and walk the quarter. But Hotel Monteleone on and Le Booze are two must-go’s [inaudible 00:30:49] while you’re there.
David Mills:
I think I’ve got a couple that I really like. There’s a restaurant called Mandina’s. And I’m not sure, it may not be there since the last time I was there, but if you can believe it, it’s Italian food in New Orleans, but it is great. And then there’s Juan’s Flying Taco, which is yet another wonderful restaurant that I really like.
I just did want to say that while you’re in New Orleans, take a minute to maybe take a carriage ride or something. We had an interesting one last time we were there where we were riding in the carriage and the carriage driver said, “Would y’all like to hear some music?” And I said, “Sure.” And I thought maybe he’s going to break out some jazz. He reached under his seat, got a flute and ripped off a rendition of Play That Funky Music White Boy. So I thought that was absolutely great, but it wasn’t jazz. So you’re liable to actually hear anything down in New Orleans. But I do think that you got to take some time to do some of those things. And carriage rides are great because they go slow enough for you to see things. So a lot of fun down there and I think you guys will enjoy it. Yep.
Alyssa Hill:
All right, I’m going to add a healthy aspect to this after we’ve spent all this time eating food of New Orleans and drinking cocktails. Walking around, running, going through the Garden District along the trolley lines, great places to run, beautiful areas, beautiful homes. So you just got to get out early before the humidity sets in. But New Orleans is a fabulous place to sight-see as you’re running or walking.
The other thing that I have friends do that just raved about it, so if I’m going to have to go for a run first before I do this, is you can do a beignet tour. You can go have the best beignets and donuts in New Orleans, one after the other for like two hours. So you could go do that, then you could exercise a little bit, then you could go have that cocktail that Sandi mentioned. But there’s a lot of sightseeing to do. Other great thing to do is to get out of the city a little bit and go do plantation house tours. That is just [inaudible 00:33:15].
David Mills:
Those are nice. I’ve been to several of those. Those are really nice.
Alyssa Hill:
Oak Alley, Whitney, those-
David Mills:
Oak Alley. Yeah.
Alyssa Hill:
Yep. Oak Alley is just gorgeous. So a few different things. You can get away from the hustle and bustle of Bourbon Street in pretty short order and enjoy some of the other sides of New Orleans that are just beautiful.
Keith Hundley:
Yeah, I’m glad you mentioned Oak Alley and the plantation. There’s a lot to the entire state of Louisiana. That’s an incredible diverse area.
And New Orleans, I love music. Some of the best food in the country is there. Somebody, Sandi, I think you talked about a hole in the wall. David probably mentioned [inaudible 00:33:53].
Yeah, some of the best stuff is just dumps, what you would think is just… I enjoy Galatoire’s and Commander’s, all the touristy fine eating places are fantastic, but a lot of times, I can’t remember, the first time I was in New Orleans was in the summer of 1980s. I’m kind of giving away my age there a little bit. But I think I had one of the best cheeseburgers I’ve ever had in New Orleans. And it was literally, I think it was Sam’s, was in the window. I wasn’t even sure it was a restaurant. David maybe familiar with, it may still be there. But it was a dump. It was just a hole in the wall, but it was some of the best food. So you never know what you’re going to get.
David Mills:
Lucy’s Retired Surf Club.
Keith Hundley:
[inaudible 00:34:34] what? You what?
David Mills:
I forgot about that one. That is a fantastic, fun place to go.
Keith Hundley:
What’s that?
David Mills:
Lucy’s Retired Surf Club. It’s fantastic. That’s a walk from the hotel, by the way.
Keith Hundley:
Oh. That was across the street from the Marriott, wasn’t it? Where we stayed a few years ago. Yeah, and you [inaudible 00:34:51].
David Mills:
[inaudible 00:34:52] sneaky.
Keith Hundley:
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, that was an awesome place. And look, if you’re not into the food, the music, the sightseeing and all that, if you’re a history buff, I highly recommend the World War II Museum. Amazing, amazing place to visit. If you had family, relatives, [inaudible 00:35:09] history buff, incredible place.
And if you like losing money, there’s a casino in town too. You can go lose all your money. There’s just all kinds of stuff to do. I don’t encourage you to lose your money, I’m just saying there’s just literally anything you want to do there. So a great, fantastic city. We’re looking forward to being in New Orleans the summer. Anybody have anything else you want to say before we wrap this up and close this out?
David Mills:
Just looking forward to it.
Keith Hundley:
Same here. So listen, again, southerngrantsforum.com, if you’d like to go. We hope to see you in New Orleans. And on the webpage, there is contact information for myself as well as our co-host Brian Tipton. You can reach out to me and I’ll be happy to answer any questions for you. With that, we’ll say so long, thanks to everybody and we hope to see you in New Orleans in July.
Sandi Guy:
See ya.
David Mills:
Bye everybody.
Alyssa Hill:
Bye.
Speaker 1:
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