Patrick Seitz, Senior Writer, Investor's Business Daily

It's pretty rare these days to find anyone in tech media who has been at the same outlet for a quarter century. But Patrick Seitz has been covering the fascinating world of tech, finance, and the stock market for exactly that: 25 years at Investors' Business Daily. A Chicago-area native who cut his teeth covering courts and crime, Pat switched to covering tech in Washington DC in the early nineties, and he's never looked back. 

He joined us on the pod recently to discuss how that city has changed in 30 years, the AI chip world (one of his favorite beats), and his fascination with obscure halls of fame – the latest topic on his tech media-tainment blog for this episode of Pressing Matters from Big Valley Marketing, the podcast that brings you conversations with the top media and influencers in B2B Tech. 

I'm Dave Reddy, head of Big Valley Marketing's Media and Influencers Practice, and I'm your host. Through research and good old fashioned relationship building, we've identified B2B Tech's top 200 media and influencers, including Patrick. Here's our chat with Pat. Enjoy. 

Transcript

Dave Reddy (00:00):

It's pretty rare these days to find anyone in tech media who has been at the same outlet for a quarter century. But Patrick Seitz has been covering the fascinating world of tech, finance, and the stock market for exactly that: 25 years at Investors' Business Daily. A Chicago-area native who cut his teeth covering courts and crime, Pat switched to covering tech in Washington DC in the early nineties, and he's never looked back. He joined us on the pod recently to discuss how that city has changed in 30 years, the AI chip world (one of his favorite beats), and his fascination with obscure halls of fame – the latest topic on his tech media attainment blog for this episode of Pressing Matters from Big Valley Marketing, the podcast that brings you conversations with the top media and influencers in B2B Tech. 

I'm Dave Reddy, head of Big Valley Marketing's Media and Influencers Practice, and I'm your host. Through research and good old-fashioned relationship building, we've identified B2B Tech's top 200 media and influencers, including Patrick. Here's our chat with Pat. Enjoy. Patrick, thanks so much for joining us on the pod. It was about a year ago that I finally got a chance to meet you live having coffee on a very cold day in Northern Virginia. It's great to see you again, so to speak, and thanks for being on.

Patrick Seitz (01:24):

My pleasure.

Dave Reddy (01:25):

So let's get rolling. You are like many of our guests and something about journalists in the Midwest. You grew up outside Chicago. What town and what was it like? Was it tree lined and so forth? Was it a nice suburban town?

Patrick Seitz (01:41):

Libertyville, Illinois. Beautiful suburban Chicago town. I saw that you had Michael Nunez on a couple months ago. Indeed. He was like me. He was from Barrington. But you say you're from Chicago and when you're in the suburbs just for shorthand, you tell people you're from Chicago. A lot of people wouldn't consider Libertyville to be Chicago, but it's Chicagoland area, but it's a great suburb, nice homes, good schools, great place to

Dave Reddy (02:14):

Grow up. It's all relative. I grew up in Cape Cod, but it's a lot easier even though that's an hour and a half away from Boston for me to just tell people I grew up in Boston. So I hear you a lot. So simple life. What did mom and dad do?

Patrick Seitz (02:26):

My dad was a research pharmacist for Abbott Laboratories. His division is now part of AbbVie, and my mother was a homemaker. She raised seven kids.

Dave Reddy (02:38):

You're one of seven children?

Patrick Seitz (02:40):

That's right. I'm number five.

Dave Reddy (02:43):

Wow. Seitz doesn't strike me as an Irish Catholic name, but perhaps

Patrick Seitz (02:49):

My mother's Irish Catholic. 

Dave Reddy (02:52):

Okay.

Patrick Seitz (02:52):

Father's German Catholic.

Dave Reddy (02:55):

Got it.

Patrick Seitz (02:56):

Yeah, big Catholic family.

Dave Reddy (02:57):

Mine's the opposite, but there are only two of us. So what was that like? My best friend growing up was number six out of 11, and that house, it was just constant chaos. So what was that like growing up with seven kids?

Patrick Seitz (03:12):

Yeah, it was a little crazy, but you're never lonely in the house with that many people in it.

Dave Reddy (03:18):

You probably wish you would sometimes.

Patrick Seitz (03:19):

Yeah, but I was number five, but before me it was like a one or two year gap between the kids and then after me, it was a six year gap. I guess I was too much for my mother to handle, so it was almost like the next two kids were like a second family. So my sister Jane, the oldest as she helped raise those two younger siblings. And that's true. I mean everyone pitches in. Wow,

Dave Reddy (03:45):

That's awesome. So I'm sure there were lots of stories in a house of nine. When did the storytelling bug bite for you? I noticed that you studied journalism both at Illinois and at Northwestern, which of course is one of the best journalism schools in America and in Chicago or near Chicago. How young were you when you were like, this is what I want to do?

Patrick Seitz (04:10):

Well, when I was in high school, I had an English teacher that really helped me to understand about writing and really praised my writing at the time and made me think that this is something I could do for a living. But when I went to the University of Illinois for undergrad, my original thinking was that I was going to go into chemical engineering. You didn't have to declare a major until your junior year. And so I took some chemistry classes and I flamed out of those pretty fast. And then I focused on basically going back to my passions, which was writing. So I decided that I was going to go into journalism.

Dave Reddy (04:50):

And you stuck relatively close to home with Illinois and Northwestern. Now I know we will get into the second, I know tech wasn't the first thing, but was there also sort of a tech vibe when you were growing up? Were you interested in gadgetry or was that more accidental when we got into that?

Patrick Seitz (05:08):

Well, there wasn't a lot. There wasn't a lot of tech growing up.

Dave Reddy (05:11):

No there wasn't.

Patrick Seitz (05:12):

When I was an undergrad at University of Illinois, our journalism classes had typewriters. That goes back, but

Dave Reddy (05:21):

You're a tad older than me. We had four processors.

Patrick Seitz (05:24):

Well, and then my first job, actually my first two jobs, we used Atex terminals, these green screen networked computers. They couldn't do anything. They weren't personal computers, but they just linked to a server and you filled in little blanks and wrote your stories on them. And so it wasn't the PC area. It didn't really start until around when I went to grad school at Northwestern. And then at that school we used Max Macintosh's. We

Dave Reddy (06:00):

Used Max at my school newspaper too. Now the system you're talking about was that that big giant typewriter with huge keys?

Patrick Seitz (06:07):

Yes. And you could actually have this little ledge. You could put little toys, toys on the screen and yeah, people did.

Dave Reddy (06:17):

And there were keys, keys for everything. It's like they didn't figure out the function keys, I think until the next iteration. So there was a key for print. There was a key for return, there was a key for send to the to print guys downstairs. It was very primitive,

Patrick Seitz (06:35):

But they worked. But they worked.

Dave Reddy (06:37):

Yes, they worked. They looked like the control center of some sort of nuclear plant, but they did work. So the old days we're aging ourselves, sir.

Patrick Seitz (06:46):

That's right.

Dave Reddy (06:48):

Now this may also be aging you because the kids these days wouldn't do this, but you have had, if I counted them right, four jobs, three in tech. You've of course been at IBD for a quarter century. Congratulations on that. Being anywhere for Century is amazing.

Patrick Seitz (07:03):

Yeah, I know. Time flies.

Dave Reddy (07:04):

Which your first gig was, were you actually working for the small family newspaper group or was it a small family newspaper group? I wasn't sure what you said.

Patrick Seitz (07:12):

Well, that was the thing, and that's why I put family in there because it's the small newspaper group. That's

Dave Reddy (07:18):

So awesome.

Patrick Seitz (07:20):

I didn't want to tell people I looking for the small newspaper group, it's like how small are they? Although the first newspaper I did work for was probably Circulation 13,000, so it really was small. And that was in Streeter, Illinois. But I don't believe the small newspaper group exists anymore. I think they sold off all their assets.

Dave Reddy (07:39):

I'm sure they don't, unfortunately. But we can talk

Patrick Seitz (07:41):

About that little bit. A lot of my old employers don't exist anymore.

Dave Reddy (07:45):

And you covered crime and courts, so you really cut your teeth like a good old fashioned reporter. It's either sports crime of courts, that's what you started.

Patrick Seitz (07:53):

Well, when I was in J School in the University of Illinois, my goal was to get a daily newspaper job when I got out. And Streeter Times Press was a daily newspaper, but it worked for me. But so I covered pretty much everything there. But the interesting stuff was usually whatever was on the police blotter or what was going on in courts. So I covered some pretty interesting cases, some horrific murders and things like that. There was a weird sex scandal case that was kind of a scam that someone set up was even before the internet and things like that. And so that was fascinating stuff for me. And so that kept me going for a while until I decided that maybe the future wasn't in all this crime in courts reporting and just daily newspapers were already kind of on the wane even when I was at University of Illinois in the eighties. And then when you get into the nineties it got even worse. And so I was like, I don't think there's a future here. So that's when I went back to grad school and decided to focus on business journalism. Ended up getting into the technology sector with Space news in Washington dc and that was sort of the start of that whole and I guess part of my background.

Dave Reddy (09:20):

Let's talk about that. So you'd been in Illinois, I'm sure you traveled, but you'd been in Illinois most of your life. You'd worked there, you'd gone to school there, you'd gone to two different schools there. And then you go from covered crimes and courts to space news, which, of course is in or outside Washington DC, I'm not sure which. So you move halfway across the country to a very interesting city, which we both lived in. What was that like culture shock or were you ready for it?

Patrick Seitz (09:46):

It was a bit of a culture shock. Yeah. I moved far away from my family and friends, and I was usually only within a couple hours’ drive of Chicago and my family. And now in DC I'd have to fly, but that was a big change, but I needed a change at that point in my life. And so going to DC was great. And, actually it is outside of DC. The officers that I was in were in Springfield, Virginia, and I lived in Alexandria. They were right next street. 

Dave Reddy (10:17):

Oh, okay. Springfield's a decent distance from DC. Am I right on Ridge Road? See now I'm having all these flashbacks to when I was going to school at American and then doing some high school report on. Okay.

Patrick Seitz (10:30):

It's like Libertyville and Chicago. I mean it's a suburb, but it's still in the beltway and that counts as the DC metro

Dave Reddy (10:39):

That inside the beltway. So what was it like covering space back in the nineties? This was before, and of course now space has a whole different connotation, but this was maybe as space was sort of becoming less cool because obviously I missed, I was born in 1970, so I missed the moon stuff, but I remember the shuttle stuff. I remember the shuttle problems. And then space kind of in the nineties and later, at least from a government perspective, lost paper.

Patrick Seitz (11:10):

The publication that I was at, space News was originally focused on sort of the beltway bandit kind of business where a lot of government contractors and the space contractors, it was all government business like NASA and the defense. But when I got to Space News, they were interested in expanding into the commercial side, and that was just starting to take off with satellite television, with DirecTV and the Dish Network launching their own satellites. And also it was early days of Iridium and Global Star, the satellite telephone services and GPS was taking off in a big way in terms of GPS navigation applications using the US GPS satellites. And so it was a burgeoning industry in commercial space. And so that's what I covered. 

Dave Reddy (12:00):

Got it.

Patrick Seitz (12:01):

And I didn't have any background on it. I had a lot of interest in space and technology, but the reason they hired me was because of my daily newspaper background. They figured I was a generalist and I could pretty much cover anything and I could.

Dave Reddy (12:15):

Did you have any trepidation? I mean obviously I remember those days you're reaching out to just about everybody for jobs. When Space News was the one who called you back, were you like space, huh?

Patrick Seitz (12:25):

No, I thought that was pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, it's basically when you were able to tell people, it's like, oh, I cover the space industry. And they go, Ooh, everyone's like, their eyes light up and I got to see some rocket launches, and that's always fun. So I had no problem with it and I was excited about it, but it was a learning process. Whenever you go into a new industry, you have to learn all the players, all the companies, all the technology, all the lingo, and that takes time. But I

Dave Reddy (12:56):

Was in Washington from 88 to 93, so I remember Bush's inauguration, Bush the first, and then just before I moved out here, the Clinton inauguration. So this is going to sound like a loaded question, but I don't think it is. How has Washington changed in the past three decades?

Patrick Seitz (13:15):

Some things never change. I mean, politics is always going to be, it's kind of unique animal. I mean, it may go swing from right to left in terms of what the bent of Capitol Hill is or the administration, but it's all sort of the same stuff. And maybe it'll change now, especially with the Trump administration coming in and this focus on Doge, the Department of Government efficiency. Maybe we'll see some movement there, but there's always wasteful spending and there's horse trading and just the politics of it is, I don't think that ever changes.

Dave Reddy (13:56):

I am trying to wonder where all those people who cause the traffic that goes from Northern Virginia into the city of Washington, DC every day. If Trump and Musk have their way, I'm trying to wonder where they're going to go work.

Patrick Seitz (14:10):

Well, on the other hand, it could get much worse because one of the things that Elon Musk wants to do is get rid of the work from home. So everyone's going to have to start showing up. So that'll make traffic worse.

Dave Reddy (14:24):

I'm very glad I don't work for Elon Musk in that regard. We will leave the rest out. You briefly worked at Washington Technology for two years and then the job that became your career came about in the early nineties or therefore, but 95, I believe. Well, if it's been 25 years, I should do my math.

Patrick Seitz (14:44):

So it was right. I moved to LA to be with Investors business in late 1999, right before the turn of the millennium.

Dave Reddy (14:55):

Oh, I didn't know you had a stint in the LA office.

Patrick Seitz (14:59):

Yeah, I was in the LA office for three years and it coincided with the three Lakers Championships with Kobe and Shaq under Phil Jackson, who of course was the Chicago Bulls coach. And he had a three-peat there. It felt like there was a Chicago vibe going on. But I went to LA after being at Washington Technology, as you mentioned, and one of the reasons I went to Washington Technology was to get into it from a space. Once you've covered that, it doesn't really change very quickly because making satellites, launching satellites takes a long time. But the computer industry was just starting to take off when I jumped over to Washington Technology, which was covered, the government contractor portion of it. And so that's when, in the same way I broke the chains with the crime and courts by going to grad school to get sort of a business background. And then I got into business and I got into space and technology and then moved over to it. Each step kind of made sense for me. And moving to IBD was sort of the reason that I went there is I was applying for jobs in LA because my girlfriend moved there

Dave Reddy (16:28):

Of course,

Patrick Seitz (16:29):

And she eventually became my wife. But yeah, it did work out. So I mean, it was kind of just a fortunate thing that IBD was hiring and I had the right background for it.

Dave Reddy (16:41):

You were in LA for three years, which might explain why you do a tech media-tainment blog, which we'll talk about in a minute. But how did you end up back in dc?

Patrick Seitz (16:50):

Well, I basically followed my wife when she jumped from a couple of different jobs. And so I was in Chicago for a little while and then moved back to Washington DC where I currently live, and I've had a home office during those jumps. So I was in the LA office for IBD, but then I moved to become a home office worker ahead of my time in Chicago and now in Vienna, Virginia,

Dave Reddy (17:15):

Also on Chain Bridge Road. And you mentioned that your wife did media relations in the space business, which probably explains why you're nice to me and other flax. So I'm going to guess you guys met while you were a writer and she was in media relations on space, or was she also writing space?

Patrick Seitz (17:31):

No, we met when we were both at Space News, but I didn't have an interest in her at the time I was dating someone else,

Dave Reddy (17:38):

You fool.

Patrick Seitz (17:39):

And she reached out when I was at Washington Technology and we went on our, I think I knew from our first date that this was the woman me. And so we hadn't been dating that long when she got transferred out to Los Angeles, and I just followed my gut and my heart and chased her out there. Now that'd be considered stalking, right? I don't know.

Dave Reddy (18:05):

Well, I live in San Francisco. My wife moved from Washington DC when she was my girlfriend to San Francisco. So you and I must be both romantics at heart.

Patrick Seitz (18:14):

Yeah, that's right. It happens.

Dave Reddy (18:17):

So talk to me a little bit more about IBD. It's one of those titles that seems to have been around forever. Like most financial titles, it's gone through a lot of changes, but you don't stay at a place for a quarter century if you don't like it. So what is it about IBD that you like? What are you proud of about it at IBD? And also just you've covered just about everything. So is there a favorite beat that you have? So there's three questions for it.

Patrick Seitz (18:45):

Yeah. Yeah, I guess it's a big sandbox for me because I get to cover a lot of different areas, consumer electronics, PCs, software, semiconductors, video games, and I will cover the companies that our investors are most interested in, and those ones that are showing great growth in sales and earnings and their stock is appreciating well. So I won't cover the dogs, but I will cover the winners. And that keeps things interesting for me because it's always changing. I mean, some sectors are in favor and some sectors are out of favor. And I go where whatever's hot and right now AI chips are hot, so anything Nvidia, et cetera, I'll be covering.

Dave Reddy (19:42):

Yeah, that's where you and I have rekindled our knock hack relationship over the past couple of years. Talk to me a little bit about being a tech finance reporter. And look, every market is a rollercoaster.

(20:00):

And like you said, you follow companies going up mostly up and down, few other people. You've done it longer than most other people. How do you feel about tech as a business right now? It seems, and I'll shut up in a minute and let you talk the bad interviewer I am, but it seems like there's two different worlds going on here. In one case, the job market for tech seems to be rough. In other cases, Nvidia is now worth a quadrillion dollars. So what do you think, and that might also apply to the economy in general. Where do you stand on tech right now and how strong it is or,

Patrick Seitz (20:47):

Well, definitely valuations have gotten stretched quite a bit, and I don't have a sense on whether or not there's a bubble. Some people are talking about in some areas like Bitcoin, which I don't understand. I don't understand how that can continue to skyrocket like it is. And the areas that I cover in the semiconductor realm, and when we're talking about artificial intelligence and even the software related to that and data center, hardware builders, that seems to have still a lot of growth ahead of it. So I don't think that there's a bubble there. But some of the other areas, they've obviously come down and semiconductors, if you're not in AI, are kind of struggling right now and software. It's a mixed bag. But I think that the technology industry is pretty healthy.

Dave Reddy (21:46):

So semiconductor if you're not in ai, in other words, Intel. And let's talk a little bit more about AI because I'm curious, as you covered very closely, you covered from literally the ground up. Everything starts with the chips.

Patrick Seitz (22:01):

That's right.

Dave Reddy (22:02):

Is it good, is it bad? Is it both? We're going to hear a whole lot more about it over these next four years. I think we're going to hit that and crypto, which sort of both fall into the category of, so where do you stand on it?

Patrick Seitz (22:16):

I think ai, it is an amazing technology so far. Like the generative artificial intelligence, like the chat, it's got a lot of improving to do though. When I test out chat GPT for instance and ask it questions, the things I know about, sometimes it's dead wrong and I'll even type into it as if I'm chatting with it. It's like, Nope, you're wrong. And it'll come up with, oh, sorry about that. How about this? It's like, okay, I guess it depends on what it's trained on. I mean, if AI is getting trained on Reddit, I'm not going to trust it. But if it's getting trained on the Wall Street Journal for instance, I would trust it. But you don't really know a lot of this AI doesn't really have sort of a nutrition label or an ingredient list, that sort of thing. So you don't really know where it's coming from,

Dave Reddy (23:14):

Right? It souped and at the end of the day, it was created by human beings. And last I checked, we aren't perfect. I know some people,

Patrick Seitz (23:22):

Some of it's pretty amazing. I mean, being able to take a long document or PDF file and say, summarize this for me, it does a really good job of that. I mean it's internally consistent with whatever the document is, but if you're asking it to kind of reach out on the web and figure something out that's a little bit more complex. I don't know. It's not there yet, but I can see the future and it will get there, but it definitely needs improvements.

Dave Reddy (23:52):

So you're using it for research. Some outlets have gone a little further, both from public relations terms, both from an earned and paid perspective. They're using AI to write stories. Where are you guys on that?

Patrick Seitz (24:05):

We do some articles that are generated from the data that we have, stocks that are close to buy points or stocks that have the highest composite ratings or relative strength ratings, but there's always a human editor involved that'll take the story and check it out and maybe add some more information. And I think that that's going to be sort of the model with a lot of these data-driven stories that you'll have a first draft that'll be kicked out by whatever AI program, and then you'll have a human go in there and make sure it's all correct and maybe add some more context or maybe a few other things. But it'll have to be like that for a while. I mean, I think about some of the stories I do like earning stories. They're very

Dave Reddy (24:57):

Formulaic.

Patrick Seitz (24:59):

In fact, I'm doing Adobe earnings after the close today, and I've already sort of ghostwritten my story that did it beat miss match expectations. The next line said it earned this much on this much revenue and this is what the analyst had projected it would do, and this is what it earned last year. So you have to have those three things, what it did, what analysts were expecting and what it did last year. And then you kind of reformulate that after the earnings come out. But a computer could do that. But the problem is if you're looking for specific things like non-GAAP earnings, the computer might just grab the gap earnings when most of the analysts look at non GAAP and in some cases non-gap earnings, you have to figure it out. It's not written in the release, but you have to do the math yourself. I have to do that with a lot of video game companies where I have to figure out, use net bookings instead of revenue, and I have to do an adjusted earnings that for some reason they don't put it in the release, but you have to go in and add up and subtract certain line items to get it. Now, I think that AI would grab probably the wrong things on that.

(26:21):

And I've seen some Seeking Alpha will come out with these quick hits as soon as the earnings come out and I'll say, no, they use the gap number and it'll say, missed earnings. It posted this big loss when analysts were expecting this profit of this. But then it'll come out later and say, oops, sorry about that. So I wonder if they're using ai,

Dave Reddy (26:44):

Crank out

Patrick Seitz (26:44):

Some of those

Dave Reddy (26:45):

Quick one lines. There's a couple few of those that pop up that every once in a while, one of my clients says, Hey, can we pitch these guys? And I'm like, we could. I don't think there's any guys to pitch, but we could

Patrick Seitz (26:55):

Computers, right? But it'll be a helpful tool, but it's got to have the human supervision for now.

Dave Reddy (27:03):

Yeah, I'm getting also, I mean you mentioned Michael Nunez, he mentioned on our show a couple of months ago that he's bullish, he's cool. Oh my God. Doing the writing

Patrick Seitz (27:12):

Weight bullish, I think.

Dave Reddy (27:13):

Yeah. Well, and I think we're going to have different opinions on this as it evolves. And that's a good thing. As long as we don't kill each other.

Patrick Seitz (27:22):

Think it's like deep fakes videos and imagery. I mean, some of 'em are really good that they're doing. Now

Dave Reddy (27:31):

I get these,

Patrick Seitz (27:33):

Some of are done for laughs like the door brothers that do like Trump, Putin, Kim, and they'll be hanging out in the club and flashing their guns and things like that. But those are pretty entertaining. But you could make some really convincing videos.

Dave Reddy (27:51):

Well, even the, what was it, the football bad lip reading ones. I mean those, oh, those are great. Probably aren't ai, but they're pretty funny. But I have seen recently there's, I wonder how many people get fooled by this. I will see an interview with a coach or a player at a press conference and within 10 seconds you realize this ain't them because they are swearing their tails off and they're saying all sorts of really mean stuff and stuff. And don't get me wrong, having been a sports writer, I know that athletes and coaches a swear and can be mean, but they're usually pretty good at a press conference. And I'm like, wow, I wonder how many people are buying this.

Patrick Seitz (28:36):

Well, you see that on social media where sort of this memeification of society that we've got where people just want a trend for something or want something to go viral. And so they'll put out an image or there was one the other day that looked real and it was, what was it after the UnitedHealthcare assassin was arrested at McDonald's, someone made a fake Twitter/X post that looked like it was from Burger King that said, we don't narc on our customers because apparently someone from McDonald's called the police on this guy who was sitting in their restaurant. But it looked real and someone had to say, no, fake, fake. And you're going to be seeing a lot more of that.

Dave Reddy (29:27):

So given all of that and those challenges, to your point, aren't going away given the fact that I don't think we've still figured out how to replace, as I always like to call tire ads. There's always tire ads in the sports page and a few other ads I won't get into. What do you feel about with regards to the future of journalism?

Patrick Seitz (29:51):

Well, I think sort of with the rise of AI and like I said, the memification of social media, people might rely more on trusted sources, trusted sources of information. If they know they can go to IBD or the Wall Street Journal and it's like, I know I won't get AI stuff that's hallucinating the news, they're more likely to trust those sources. So it might be great for certain journalism outfits and those that maybe go full in on AI and do AI generated stories and then have a couple of bad experiences might find that they're losing their audience. So I don't know. It could go either

Dave Reddy (30:32):

Way. So taking a bit of a left turn here, I wanted to talk about, you've got a blog that you call Tech Media Attainment.

Patrick Seitz (30:41):

Tech Media Attainment.

Dave Reddy (30:43):

Tech Media Attainment. Okay, I won't start. That's what I call it. Tech media attainment.

Patrick Seitz (30:47):

I'm sorry that I missed started that a long time ago. At the time I started that, and it's not, blogging is not hot anymore. Podcasting is hot.

Dave Reddy (30:57):

Well, yeah. And look, as I've said many times on this show, if they'll let me have a podcast, they'll let you have a podcast. But at any rate, this is pretty cool. And I wasn't aware of this until you sent it to me. I'm intrigued by your post this Sunday Physical Halls of fame for sports gambling poker and 16 inch softball. And while it didn't make the headline, the one I'm most fascinated in is the Space Camp Hall of Fame. Because I think you told me that you don't have to have been in space to get into the Space Camp Hall of Fame. You just have to have gone to Space Camp. So I consider this the astronaut participation

Patrick Seitz (31:39):

Trophy. Yeah. Well, as I've pointed out on tech media attainment, there are a lot of really obscure halls of fame. Many of them are virtual, but there's a lot of these halls of fame that you can visit. They'll have artifacts and photos and memorabilia. There's an accounting Hall of Fame. You can visit an Orange Grower's Hall of Fame. I went down this rabbit hole, I guess I was interested in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and I said, how many halls of fame are there? And it just got worse and worse and worse. And that's why I keep writing about it on the blog. I have set up a Google map, a custom Google map where I put all these halls of fame that you can visit on it. And this is really sad. I've documented over 540 I think across the country.

Dave Reddy (32:38):

I'm reading this list. It's unbelievable.

Patrick Seitz (32:40):

Although the virtual one, that's another one. Those are usually just online shrines to the various things.

Dave Reddy (32:50):

Hooter's Girl Hall of Fame.

Patrick Seitz (32:52):

Yeah, seriously. That's right. There's a White Castle Craver's Hall of Fame or something. I don't know. You'd have to be a super customer or be able to eat a ton of 'em or I don't know what the deal is. But they put people in that too. I mean,

Dave Reddy (33:07):

Some of these are semi legitimate, the Irish American Hall of Fame. That's pretty cool. Asian Hall of Fame, absolutely. Cool. But then first of all, what is the ultimate hall of fame? Is that ultimate Frisbee or is it just like

Patrick Seitz (33:19):

Ultimate Frisbee? Right, yeah, they call it just ultimate because I think they don't own the copyright or the trademark.

Dave Reddy (33:26):

And do we need a Canadian Curling Hall of Fame? Couldn't we just go with the Curling Hall of Fame?

Patrick Seitz (33:31):

There might be one in Europe. I don't know.

Dave Reddy (33:34):

Well, I have to stop looking at this list. We could go half an hour and listeners are probably like, you can create your own. If you need to check this

Patrick Seitz (33:41):

Out, there should be a podcasting Hall of Fame. I bet there is. I should get it up after I'm done. There's a Hall of fame for everything.

Dave Reddy (33:48):

There really is. So if you want to check this out and you do, please go to Tech Media Attainment. That's all one word. I'm not going to spell it. We don't have time. Dot blogspot.com or just look up Pat Seitz. Patrick Seitz, S-E-I-T-Z, and I'm sure it'll come up on Google. I'm going to stop fictitious Athlete Hall of Fame. Okay, I'm officially stomp. My last question is always Sir Chicago LA or Washington dc

Patrick Seitz (34:20):

Oh, they're all good. They're all good. But I got to go with Chicago. I grew up there. I still root for the sports teams. I've just a Chicago guy at heart. I still wear shorts into December. I love Chicago style hot dogs. It's just everything about that city I love. And I do go back to visit quite a bit because my mom's still there and my got a sister and a brother, and my best friend lives there. And I love visiting. I can't say the same about dc although there's a lot of great museums and things you can visit, but DC doesn't really have a particular culture. I mean, it's kind of like the federal government. That's the culture. And la I was out there for three years. I enjoyed it, but I don’t know, I do enjoy the entertainment industry. I'm a big movie TV fan, so yeah, got to stick with Chicago.

Dave Reddy (35:20):

I'm actually going to throw one more question to our big movie and TV fan. What's going to win Oscar for best pitcher this year? I know we're early, but you got an early

Patrick Seitz (35:29):

Yeah, it's too early. Too early. And it's so politicized. Some of the ones that have won Oscars in the past, that's not very good. I just went and saw Wicked and I really enjoyed that. So I don't know. Wicked might sweep.

Dave Reddy (35:45):

I'm thinking they're going to wait till Wicked part two to give them all the They did

Patrick Seitz (35:49):

Making mistake because

Dave Reddy (35:50):

The Wings

Patrick Seitz (35:51):

Part one of the Broadway play was much better in part two after the intermission. I don’t know if you saw it. Yeah, it was just part one, the first part up until, what is it called? Define Gravity, whatever the song is. That's great. And then you come back and it's just big crowd scenes and mass chaos, and I think that's what, unless they improve the movie, part two is not going to be as good as part one.

Dave Reddy (36:18):

Yeah, no. Well, we'll see. Gosh, we're going out. So for those of you who are tech nerds, PR people, and musical fans, if you haven't seen Wicked and a Few, you're a musical fan. You have all the songs that I remember, were in the first part, but we'll see. See what happens in part two. Okay. Well, we went all sorts of places. Halls of Fame, wicked,

Patrick Seitz (36:42):

Sorry.

Dave Reddy (36:42):

Love it. No, don't apologize. Trying to

Patrick Seitz (36:44):

Go on tangents

Dave Reddy (36:45):

With me. Can't talk about AI only every time. So Pat, thanks so much for being on. Really appreciate it. That was a fun conversation.

Patrick Seitz (36:52):

Yeah, no, it was going fun. Thanks.

Dave Reddy (36:54):

I'd like to thank you all for listening today, and once again, a big thank you to our guest, Patrick Seitz of Investor’s Business Daily. Join us next month when we interview yet another member of the B2B Tech Top 200. In the meantime, if you've got feedback on today's podcast or if you'd like to learn more about Big Valley Marketing and how we identify the B2B tech Top 200, be sure to drop me an email at dreddy@bigvalley.co. That's DRE double DY at Big Valley, all one word.co. No m, you can email the whole team at Pressing matters@bigvalley.co. Once again, thanks for listening. And as always, think big.