Listeners it's mike schneider and i'm brett molina and welcome back to talking tech. As with many other events canceled due to the covid nineteen pandemic. there is no south by south west festival in austin texas. This year. That is true. But there's a virtual south by southwest going on online through saturday march twentieth. And i got a chance to participate. Let me tell you a little bit about it. I've been scheduled to moderate a panel last year gaming for good but the festival got cancelled entirely when we knew there was going to be a virtual festival this year the company that sponsored the panel skills decided to go ahead and do it so we recorded our discussion over zoom in late february and it was really enlightening and very made me very hopeful about things. Here there's a story. On tech usa today dot com. You can read that if you want. If you really wanna watch the panel and do all the other fun things at south by southwest. Has you can still buy a ticket to the festival. There's a link in my story for that too. But here's the basics. I learned from from the panel. The panelists we had three of them. there's a program called gamers outreach that provides video game carts that means it has like a secure tv and a game console on. It's it's either hook to wireless or however they do in the hospital in two hundred thirty children's hospitals around the us the founder zach. Weigel began the program when he was a high schooler halo tournament. The got cancelled He'd organiz the tournament but public safety official voice concerns about the high school cafeteria being used for a hobby. That was quote corrupting the minds of america's youth in quote. The guy said so to show the gamers from it meant well the next year weigel try it again and raise money for a local children's hospital with that resulting tournament part of that he learned. The hospitals often have trouble keeping kids occupied when they're recovering from treatment in their rooms so that led him to begin having online fundraising to get these. You know cards game carts into hospitals all over the country if you wanna get involved gamers outreach as gamers forgiving event online this weekend and there's a lincoln my story or you can go to gamers forgiving dot org also this weekend skills which is spelled s. k. i. l. l. z has a gaming for good tournament to benefit the american red cross. You might have heard about skills. They they became a publicly traded company in december twenty twenty and last month. They signed a multi year deal with the national football league to create a mobile game in any sports community around the game. That's gonna come out later this year. Basically did a crowd source thing to get developer to find a way to create a cool game. Play on mobile devices Anyway what skills does they connect millions of players all over the world to compete on about five thousand mobile games including solitaire. Cube and blackout bingo. These these are on android devices and they've had passed charity online events. Where your entry fees to compete you know go towards Charities such as american cancer society world wildlife fund and the nwa. You can see information about this weekend's events in the app itself against s k i l l z and it's on ios and android or. You could find the lincoln my stories