Hi everyone, my name is Patrick Kew and in this episode we cover
how technology saves lives and helps people, society, and the
world. Joining me today is Doctor Cara
Antoine, and I love her main mission statement, leveraging
technology to help humanity. She's worked at amazing
companies like HP, Shell and Microsoft and she has some
great, great stories to share. Enjoy beyond coding.
You know, the podcasting work when I was, when I was in my
role as President for Women in Tech here in the Netherlands, we
did a lot of the podcasting and particularly as I mentioned
during Corona and I had one woman that was doing the podcast
creation, so she was putting it together.
So we did the the bookends, you know, the the intro, the outro.
But I can tell you it's a lot of work, at least in our experience
when you don't have the whole set up, when you don't have the
equipment and everything else, it's really a lot of work to put
it all together and stitch it together and you know you want
that conversation to flow. But then at the end taking all
the audio bits and putting those back together, it's it's it's a
real challenge basically for not for profits who don't have the
high tech equipment and all that, but so lots of respect for
what you do. Thank you.
And I think I've seen podcasting from the bottom up, you know,
and I've also seen very professional setups like this.
And I've done some others for. There's a group that was that is
called Equals in Amsterdam and it's a a group that's focused on
equality and technology. And so they're very focused on
wanting to have the voice of women, you know, and talking
about all sorts of topics, particularly in tech.
And they do some really nice professional podcasting as well.
So I've enjoyed that, but nice nice range of different
experiences. But I think you have to have
that range to know what the what the bookends can be.
I. Think so too.
Yeah. So no, I look forward to to the
discussion with you. Yeah, same here.
I think. I mean this, this iteration is
like the 5th or 6th iteration even in editing.
We've made a lot of progress recently and both in the past
and I'm just really happy that we're still kind of reinventing
the content and elevating it in that way as well.
I think both in the conversations as well as kind of
the production of it, I see improvements and I still think I
can improve as a host with the content, with the conversation
and it's just a lot of fun for me.
It's a good learning process, isn't it?
Yeah, I love it. And and that's pretty cool.
If you would look back at your first episode, even for
yourself, you know how you have improved your style, your
approach, and as you just said, how you do the questioning and
stuff like that. I'm sure you see a marked
difference. I used to be awful.
Really. I mean, from my opinion, yeah.
Yeah, Maybe a grain of salt in there, yeah.
But that's so nice is to see the learning and to see the
evolution because we can all learn and that's that's super
cool actually if you go back when I was with Microsoft, I did
vlogging so we had a studio very professional set up there as
well, cameras all around. It was really warm in there and
and I invited different people every week behind the desk with
me and we talked about a different client topic or
technology topic or what not, whatever it might be.
And at the end of every year we did a bloopers outtake and that
was so much fun because you know you have just all these really
funny things that you're doing off camera, on camera, you know
that we have to edit clip out you know and whatever.
But when you go back and you put those together and you see the
things that you know UN bovos that you know the things that
you're unconsciously doing. Oh it was it's a real laugh.
Yeah. So we put that to Christmas
music and made it sort of the end of end of year you know
bloopers. So yeah we can all learn and for
me as well I, I, I look back to yeah.
How I orchestrated those as well and did the moderation and and
got a lot better as I went on and doing that every week gives
you a little bit of fitness on you know how to do it.
Absolutely, Yeah. Do you have a preference when it
comes to, let's say, hosting those conversations versus
coming in as a guest and having that conversation?
Yeah, What's your preference? It's a good question because I I
often get requests to be moderators on panel sessions for
instance. Or hosting a a podcast.
You know, like this because I think I am good at guiding the
conversation. I'm good at that.
But about two years ago, someone said to me you should stop
moderating. We need to hear your thoughts.
We need to really hear more from you because you know, it's it's
great how you can moderate. You guide people, coach them and
all of that. But at the same time, boy, we
really want to hear what you say because what I've always tried
to do is integrate as the moderator a little bit of a
queue in or, you know my thoughts about something and
then you know lead the discussion a little bit in a
direction that that I'm hoping we might go.
But yeah, so I, I got a feedback at one point which was you're
amazing at that, but please you know, spend more time sharing
your stories because it's it's there's just so much in there to
unpack. So, you know, so let's go for
that. That's amazing feedback.
Yeah, yeah, it was. It was.
It was nice because I've played both roles and and I enjoy both
roles. But I think the the thought
leadership piece to me is also really important.
It's important to be able to share experiences and for right
or for wrong, they're my experiences.
You know, I'm not quoting somebody else really.
You know, in a way it's my experience and how I see the
world or how I observe things and and I'm I'm glad to share
that. Yeah, as I say for right or for
wrong, but it's what I've seen. I love that I I see a lot of
similarities in there as well, because with this conversation,
since it's more of a conversation, kind of irks me
when people say it's an interview, even though in in
some truth it it might be. I don't feel like I'm
interviewing because I'm I'm genuinely curious about you,
about what you've done and about your opinion on certain things,
and that's with every person that's sitting here at the
table. So then for me, from my point of
view, it doesn't really feel like an interview, but I get
from an outside point of view, it can feel like that.
And then as well, in moderating and giving your thoughts, I like
to stare at the conversation in in so and so way as well.
So I can see a lot of similarities there.
Yeah. But being on as a guest is a
completely different ball game. Yeah, my first time I was like
listening back, man, do I always ramble like that?
Yeah. So it's kind of confronting.
Yeah, it's confronting. I just saw something on LinkedIn
yesterday. It was a Harvard Business Review
and it said don't talk for longer than 40 seconds.
And I thought, oh, I've never really told myself that would be
a challenge to see how that goes.
But interestingly, they said, you know, you lose people's
attention after 40 seconds. OK, that's a new number.
You hear all sorts of different numbers, right?
You know, first impressions in the 1st 8 seconds and you know
all these different types of things.
And so I thought, well, if you can't make your initial point
within the 1st 40 seconds, then you know, what are you, what are
you rambling on about? You know, Have you gotten there
yet? I wonder if that 40 seconds has
kind of always been there or if our attention Spanish is getting
shorter and shorter. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. So let's say it used to be a
couple of minutes. Now it's 40 seconds.
What will it boil down to? Like, do you have to hit people
with information within the next 10 seconds?
Then it's yeah, it's shrinking. Yeah, I used to.
In the past. I used to be someone that built
a story up from the bottom. And then and then I finally
reached the TADA moment and I've switched that around.
And you know, I've started with this sort of the the tada
moment, you know, like this is it.
This is what I want to tell you. And then I work backwards from
there. So I'd.
And and then, you know, I think sometimes people are a little
bit on the edge of their seat, like, where's she going with
this? What's she going to say?
But I I think that when you kind of put it out there, you know,
kind of let people off the hook, this is what's going to be
about. But let me tell you how I got
there. You know, sometimes that works
even better. I think that's a great insight.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Lots of lots of experimentation.
Yeah, that's hard to do to. Figure out what works.
Yeah, it is. Because then you really need to
know what you're gonna say. Absolutely.
You know, at the at the start. Yeah.
And I don't always know that. I don't.
Sometimes I don't know where I'm gonna go with something myself
until I've like, oh, yeah, that's really what I wanted to
say. Yeah, it's a good to get there.
Yeah, I recognize that as well. I I watch a lot of Shark Tank
from the business point of view, from a learning point of view,
but also I love looking at their, let's say elevator pitch
and then whatever I'm doing, because I work at a consultancy
company, I work at an organization.
If someone asks what do you do, I try and pitch it and I try and
fit it in kind of a minute. So what problem am I solving?
What already is being done outside of the organization?
And then what am I doing that's different?
So, and I play around with that in kind of elevator pitches.
Sometimes it lands and people are like, oh, that's that's a
good way of putting it. Sometimes it doesn't land.
And I I try again. But I think it's fun to
experiment that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Really nice. Yeah.
So for today, I had you on in the previous conversation.
I asked each guest what were they really passionate about?
And you said very distinctly, it's kind of in the intersection
of humanity and technology, right?
Using technology, leveraging it to better people, society and
even the world. And for me that was you put it
so concretely. And I really admire that because
when someone asked me what is my passion, I usually have to think
about it or it's a few thing. But for you, I felt like it was
laser sharp. So in this conversation I'd like
to see how we can get there. How did you get that vision up
to a point where it is that where it feels that laser sharp
and then we can go on from there?
That's that's great. And you know, it's been a
journey. So I didn't have that, you know,
waking up one moment and thinking, oh, there it is, yeah,
You know, I've kind of figured it all out and I've found my
purpose in why I'm here and what it is that I can do and what I
can mean to other people and for our environment.
But throughout my career it's it's been an evolution of seeing
this golden thread in the things that I've been working on that
if I reflect back on that, I think well that really had an
impact that made a difference. So I think it started with this
beautiful experience I had at Polaroid Corporation which was a
a a division of the company called the Polaroid Museum
replica collection. Now, this was from Doctor Edwin
Land, who was the founder of Polaroid.
He developed a camera. It was a bit bigger than the
size of the room that we're sitting in right now, and I
worked literally inside of that camera.
I came in as a woman in tech. So I had a background in digital
image processing and electrical engineering and actually I think
joining Polaroid. I got that job because I was
walking down the corridor of the headquarter and they had all
these beautiful, what looked like paintings to me hanging up
on the walls. And I was like, oh, look at that
beautiful Monet. Oh, look at, you know, Renoir
and the technique of Hanco. And, you know, I was walking
down the hallway and they were just sort of looking at me like,
OK, we know what division she needs to go to work in.
You know, she got it was the Polaroid Museum replica
collection. Yeah.
And I actually, the idea was from Doctor Edwin Land that he
wanted to make artwork more accessible to people in the
world. Because if you can imagine that
there's a beautiful, you know, Monet of Camille.
Monet sitting in the garden with her child, is the name of one of
the paintings which is sitting at the Louvre in Paris.
Well, maybe not everyone can get to the Louvre and see that
painting. And in a way he wanted to make
that artwork more accessible so that it could travel.
Paintings sometimes were too fragile to go anywhere.
They had to stay in their sort of isolated space and and
sometimes things just from an insurance value couldn't be
traveled because they were too valuable.
Yeah. And he thought, well, if we
replicated those, we could travel those collections and
make them visible to more people.
And in a way it was about making artwork more accessible to
people. And I thought that was such a
great mission, you know, to be on.
And of course I was there as a technologist and the whole the
whole idea was you know how do you make a Polaroid yellow
really stay Polaroid you know yellow on on a piece of Polaroid
film When we all know that after a while the Polaroid film the
colors would would fade they would change And so that colour
matching system was something that I was there to do and to
help ensure that when we photographed that beautiful
vibrant you know okra colour that Monet may have used in
their paint colour that that was replicated as a one for one
likeness on the Polaroid film. And so there was some digital
mastery that was needed to be done in the algorithm and and
how we reproduce that and I think the magic behind it as
well was in the lighting techniques that we used because
we actually turned the paintings.
So literally holding a Monet painting in your hands with
gloves on, but turning that painting on a 30° angle and then
casting a light that created a shadow over the brush strokes of
the painting, it actually meant that when we took a photograph
of that painting, it captured the brush stroke shadowing
effects in the image. And so when you would see that
some place else, cuz of course Polaroid film is very flat.
Yeah. When you would see it hanging on
a wall, someplace in a museum, in a traveling collection or
even as a replica you would buy to have in your home, it already
had the shadowing effect. So it looked like you could walk
up to it and touch. It and touch it like a 3D.
Yeah, like 3D. Yeah.
So that's why when I was walking down the hallway that first time
at the corporation, I thought, oh, look at all these beautiful
paintings. But of course they were museum
replicas. Yeah.
So you know, I think it started from that and thinking that
actually there was a a purpose, there was a mission at Polaroid
that Doctor Edwin Land thought of that he wanted to make
artwork more accessible to everyone in the world.
And that's that's sort of where it started and I didn't think
much of it at the time. I thought I need to do the best
job I can to make sure that the color imaging works well.
And in the years that I stayed with Polaroid, I evolved into,
you know, becoming the head of that division and you know,
created I think quite a commercial success by making
sure that we could offer those Polaroid because in every gift
shop around the world. So you could actually go home
with one of those replicas. When was this timeline wise?
This was in the late 90s, yeah. So while I was still in the
United States, I was living in Boston at the time, Gotcha and
Cambridge, MA was the headquarter of Polaroid.
Yeah. So that that's really where it
started. And I think from that point, I
started to look for the purpose right away in the roles that I
would get to go and do. I moved to Germany in the late
90s, then again as after following the role that I had
with Polaroid, moved to Germany and I went to work a compact
computer. And ultimately, you know, there
were periods in my career when I think this was more about
wanting to do the best I could for myself and creating a
presence, creating a reputation, building credibility, learning
about technology and and I worked on myself, but I always
had in the back of my mind that mission and that that need to go
and do something that was bigger than myself, you know.
And so as I evolved in kind of getting my own self steady,
stable, you know, having a good career, doing really great cool
things, I found myself being introduced to Royal Shell.
And at Shell they attracted me to come to the company.
After I, I met a woman who actually worked at Shell from
Australia and I grew up in Australia.
I spent many years as a as a young girl living in Melbourne
with my family. And you know, when I met this
woman, we were both speaking in Rome at a conference.
It was called Women International Networking and she
said after hearing my talk, which was all about how we
transformed what was at the time Compaq and then Hewlett Packard
from a very static paper based company into a digital online
experience. I was the at the time, the the
globalheadofhp.com. So I ran all of the Internet
properties around the world and she said if you could come to
Shell and do what you did in digitalizing the environment,
you could save lives at Shell in our environment.
I thought whoa, there's that mission again, you know it's
coming back. So after all of those years from
Polaroid and then working through at Compaq, HP coming
into Shell, this was the new mission that I was on.
And so it really started to confirm for me that that was
something that I was really drawn to, was ensuring that what
I could do was going to have an impact and an effect on helping
people and helping the planet And out of the experiences.
And I'll happily tell you some short stories about that what I
did at Shell. But out of those experiences, I
developed a personal mission statement and that was that to
to try to rephrase why I'm here. And what I realized was that my
why was to to save, improve and change people's lives and the
planet. And so when I look at that, you
know, saving people's lives, saving the planet, changing
people's lives, changing the planet, improving people's
lives, improving the planet. Everything that I have done
since those times is linked to one of those parts of my
mission. And so that's really helped me
to make good choices or at least choices that I believed in
throughout the throughout my career because I could always
find myself back in places where I've had that type of an impact.
And that makes me really happy to be able to contribute in
those areas because I think, you know, if you there's this
beautiful quote and I won't quote it exactly very well, but
it I think it's very meaningful and it has something to do with,
you know, if you would, you know, try to name the top five,
you know, football players in all time.
If you would try to name the the top five Olympians in all times
and so on and so forth. You know, look for these sort of
people who have made incredible accomplishments and achievements
in their lives. But then again, if you would go
through and think about who are The Who was the most important
teacher that I had in my life? Who was the the leader that I
most admired in my organization, or who did something for me?
What you're going to find, it's it's so much easier to come up
with those names of people who made a difference for you in
your life, in your environment than those that also may have
had incredible achievements in their lifetime.
But you're going to more likely remember the people that really
made a difference for you. And that's that stuck with me
for a long time. And I thought, I want to be that
person. I want to be the one that you
know, helps to impact people's lives and make a difference
around me, to to improve their lives and to to help our planet
as well. That's a very important goal for
me too. Yeah, I I love hearing that and
I I really admire that. Part of that is because you're
you're able to explain it so eloquently, pinpoint where it
happened, what impacted you and how it drove you.
Really that mission statement and part of it being, I don't
know it as concretely for myself, I feel like I'm, I'm on
my journey now and I'm trying to figure out what domain I like,
what I like to do on a day-to-day basis, if I like
being a generalist or a specialist or a combination, I
feel like I'm still on this journey.
So I really like your perspective in that way.
And what's funny to me is that that mission statement, what
drove you and what made you move to Shell?
Was the woman saying you can save lives here, Right?
Because that speaks volumes. If someone were to say that to
me, it would be interesting. But I don't know if I would jump
on that because that also sounds kind of frightening.
Kind of scary for sure. Yeah.
But I love that it's something that you experienced and then it
kind of drove you. Because I think a mission
statement, truly knowing kind of your purpose and what you want
to do, can get you really far when it comes to drive and
motivation and eagerness to make a change in that way.
So then. Absolutely.
And and that that type of a challenge has come to me a few
times. You know when I, when I went to
join at at Microsoft, so following a 12 year career with
Shell, when I went to join Microsoft, I had heard that
Satya Nadella had made just recently at that time an
announcement that said through ones and zeros we will find a
cure for cancer in the next 10 years.
And I thought there's my mission again, you know, and I was on
the verge of saying no to an offer from Microsoft because I
thought I don't want to go to work at Microsoft.
I don't. I think that's the culture for
me. And then suddenly I heard him
making these statements and I thought, yes, please sign me up
now. You know, I'm coming.
I'm on my way. Yeah, so go.
And yeah, so that type of a mission has definitely attracted
me. And I think that's something
that's continued to be be something where both has become
my calling, but also as something that I look for in
terms of the the other activities that I try to engage
in. So being on boards of
associations that are helping patients or helping to promote.
Yeah, very much so in the world of visual and and ocular
interests. So everything dealing with the
eye and eye disease, but also in the area of technology and in in
inclusion and diversity, you know, these are things that are
very important to me. And I think when you find your
passion, those are the areas you should really lean in on the
most. And so throughout this journey,
sometimes, you know, you can find the experience back in a
book that can kind of solidify your thinking.
And so you know, one of those book tips I could offer here is
a book that I was gifted along the way.
It's a book called The 2nd Mountain from David Brooks.
And in that book he's a short summary basically saying there
are two mountains in your life. And the first one, as I was
describing to you, was this period of my life when I was
working hard and trying to establish myself and, you know,
trying to get my own career off and running.
Well, that's kind of your first mountain.
So we're all working on ourselves.
We're working on, you know, maybe going through university
or not, finding that first job, maybe finding a partner in life
or having a family, maybe not, but maybe wanting to have a
home, you know, these types of things that that often times,
you know, in the beginning phases of our adult life that
we're looking to achieve. And at some point in time, you
kind of get to a point where you say, well, now I have all that.
Yeah. And now what?
You know. And now what do I do?
And that's when you're sort of standing on top of your first
mountain, according to David Brooks, and you're kind of
looking across into the horizon and you're saying, oh, I see
another mountain out there. What's that all about?
OK. And you start to explore that.
And that's actually your purpose.
It's your purpose calling you. It's your purpose that's saying
there's more to life than just me.
You know, there's something beyond me.
And And so I I see the parallels in his book in terms of the way
that I've looked back at my own life and having kind of really
climbed that first mountain, as we do, and kind of rolling off
the top of it and trying to figure out now I'm in the
valley, where do I go now? What?
What else can I mean to people? What else can I do here with my
life? And that's that second mountain
and it's really beautiful. I think when you can start to
climb that second mountain because you start to realize
that it's it's actually not just about you.
It's about giving back. And it's about what your role
means to others and how through your role as a leader and you
know, maturing in your career and your and your adulthood,
what that can mean to empower other people.
And so actually, you know, the the notion of leadership and the
notion of the impact that you can bring is more about what you
can do to empower other people on their journey.
And I think then that gets back to me full circle again on the,
you know, wanting to make a difference for others and, you
know, really wanting to ensure that I've left my mark and have
have been able to help move the bar for other people as well and
not just because of myself. Yeah, for sure, Yeah.
Do you think you can work on that second mountain while
you're still kind of figuring out your first?
Because I feel like it makes sense, right?
Because let's say my home, my home situation might not be
stable, then I come back from work and I have to do I have to
get back to work again When it comes to my home situation when
family's I'll for example, in the past I would just be busy
with that. I could not really focus on my
career giving my 100% because home situation wasn't let's say
stable in that way. So for me it I think it makes
sense to work on your first mountain to get that set up, to
climb that and to reach the top there, to then start with your
second mountain. Do you feel kind of similarly?
Yeah, I think that's why there are two.
I think that's why there are two mountains and you know, we do,
we do need to find ourselves first.
Yeah. And I think that's what's
happening in that first mountain effect is that you're you're
really working on yourself and that there's nothing wrong with
that. You know, we, I think we all are
going through something like that.
There may be individuals that are already from an early stage
of life thinking about what else they can do for other people.
I think that's on the fewer of us, you know and and and I
wasn't one of those. I I'm sure I was also someone
that was trying to figure out who I was and what I could bring
and what I meant to the world. So I I really think that there's
a reason why there are the two. And there's another analogy that
I would say. So you just mentioned.
Something which I think is important that I've observed
throughout my career is, you know, I look at life like we're
sitting on a stool that has some legs on it and you know, that
stool is, you know, so I'm sitting on a stool right now, I
think it has four legs on it and it feels pretty balanced.
You know, I'm kind of sitting firmly here and and talking with
you and and and that feels good. It feels comfortable.
Everything is in balance right now.
But you know, one of those legs represents your health.
Another one of those legs represents your family.
Another one represents maybe your geography or your location
where you live, your home actually.
And another one might represent, you know, things that your
ambitions, what you really desire to do or what what you,
you know, still want out of life.
And you know one of those legs can get a little wobbly and we
can sit on a chair with three legs.
You know, there are plenty of those types of chairs and still
have a fairly stable situation. You know, if your if your health
deteriorates or someone in your family's health deteriorates,
well that's not going to be easy.
But depending on the situation, of course you have the other
things to lean back on your career, maybe financial
stability, the environment where you are, your home people around
you and you know and the kind of hopes and dreams of things that
you still want to do and that's going to help to continue to
push you through. And boy, I've been through some
tough times too, with my health and in the past and and luckily
I had all those other things around me to make things work
really well. But imagine if one of the other
legs of that chair, one of those other dimensions, was also a
little bit wobbly. Suddenly you lost your job.
Or you were told you had to move house and even out of town, out
of out of the country or to a new, completely new location or
that your dreams were shattered. You know that you, you just, you
know, we're just never going to achieve what you really most
ever desired to do. Well, things really start to
become pretty wobbly then, don't they?
That's hard. That's real hard.
Now imagine again another one of those going away.
And so I think when we look at our life, I think about that
analogy of this chair that we're sitting on now and how you find
the stability knowing that when you remove one it's OK.
You can probably lean back on other things and find the the
stability again or re stabilize yourself find the balance to
push through and to get through something challenging.
That may not always be the case in you know in in critical
health you know situations but hopefully for most of us you
know we'd be able to push through.
But I think those are things that I always look out for when
I'm mentoring other people and talking with them about things
that are going on in their in their life, in their life
situation and saying so, OK, this might be a bit rocky for
you right now, but tell me about the other things in life.
You know, financial stability. You know, are you living in a
home where you're comfy? Do you have people around you
that love you? Do you have a dream for the
future? And and then realizing that when
you have all those other things, you actually have a great deal
of wealth and and richness in your life.
And that kind of gives this extra sense of motivation of, Oh
yeah, actually what I'm dealing with right now, I'm going to get
through this. You know, I'll just keep pushing
through. So you reminded me of that story
just now when you mentioned it. And I think those are things
that we need to know about ourselves and we need to figure
all of that out on that first mountain analogy so that we can
ultimately move through, move beyond ourselves to look back
and realize what it means to give your hand back to somebody
else and help them along on their own journey.
Yeah, I love that analogy. Thank you for sharing.
I think I need to reflect more and look at those other pillars
because I I reflect a lot, I feel like, but it's not really
structured in that way. And I I've had this, I've heard
this analogy of the chair before and I I can look it up because I
was listening to an audiobook that laid it out in three
pillars, actually, but I forget the author's name.
So I'll share that afterwards. And it really hit home with me.
You have to have balance in whatever you're doing, and
balance can come from a lot of places.
And one of the pillars is kind of rocky.
Looking at the others and looking at what is stable or
what is kind of lying ahead for you can give perspective, the
perspective you need to kind of get through this, whatever it is
you're going through. Yeah.
Yeah, I like that a lot. I think it gives the motivation.
It can challenge you. It can thrill you.
And hopefully they can inspire you to, you know, keep on your
journey. Yeah.
Or even find new paths on your journey, you know, because no
one ever said there was a straight line between here and
absolutely at the end. Yeah.
So it's all wobbly left and right and left and right, you
know. So that's OK.
Yeah, for sure. Moving back to your story and
and the point where you said, OK, I'm going to join Shell, you
mentioned you have a few stories to share there when it comes to
actually making impact in saving lives.
Is there anything you'd like to share on that front?
Oh sure. You know I I I loved my
experience with Shell. It was an incredible company to
get to work with and in fact today I'm I'm very proudly still
part of the Shell alumni network and help to Co found this
community as one of the members of the think tank that brought
that together and a dear friend of mine Dagmara Mecking is now
the president of the Shell Alumni Association and she's
doing an amazing job of running energy conferences every year
and I've been lucky to be invited back to speak on those
podia a number of times since then.
But yeah my my shell career has been just just I feel very
privileged because of what I could do for others.
So I joined as I said because I was told when you could come and
digitize our environment you can save lives.
That was really literally the starting point in what I was
told. So that hooked me to want to go
and to figure out what that was all about.
Now here I was also a person with no geology background, no,
you know, understanding of, you know, I had to learn how to
spell the word hydrocarbon, you know, trying to figure out what
this, you know, environment was all about.
What I did bring was obviously my background in technology and
I started in electrical engineering just to position
that and move my way through fields of technology from the
engineering side to the process control domain to IT and IoT.
And yeah, today we talk about Gen.
AI and so on. So that whole Spectra of of what
technology can mean starting from an engineering perspective.
So when I came in they the the message was basically I started
in the upstream part of our division and this is where we
would explore. We were producing from the
hydrocarbons that we would be drilling for and we would be
bringing hydrocarbon and gas molecules out of the earth and
we would be moving those along the production line to hand over
to what was then our downstream which was the commercial side of
the the organization. So in the upstream, we have
assets and you know, these tended to be in the upstream
offshore assets, so platforms in the middle of the sea.
And it was at those assets that I was told coming into the
company. So when you can go and put
digital sensors on the equipment out there, you're gonna save
lives. So 1 + 1 equals saving lives,
You know, I thought, wow, OK, let's get to it.
Right. And what that required though
also was so I've never been a an an armchair leader.
I've always been in the environments that that I work
in. So first I had to get my my
wings to fly. So I did the the Hewitt
training, which is the helicopter underwater evacuation
training, flipping upside down in helicopters in the simulation
pool at Faulk, new tech in Rockerdale.
So that was lots of fun. And then you know, I I started
flying. So I first focused on the assets
in the Gulf of Mexico, you know, based here in the Netherlands.
But I I went over to New Orleans and I started to focus on the
assets in the Gulf of Mexico. And in looking at those
environments and working with our health, safety and
environment community, I started to learn also more that it
probably wasn't so much the faction of being offshore that
was harming, injuring and killing people in the
environment. Yes, it's a hazardous
environment, but it's actually not where the most of the
accidents were occurring, OK. The accidents were mostly
occurring in the transportation of getting from one to the next.
And so I thought, all right, so maybe we need to take a first
step which is digitizing the environment to prepare it.
Did the digitization of putting a a sensor on the pipeline, we
could start to monitor better when it came to the temperature
readings or the sand throughput or the production flow and you
know if there were stoppages along the line and so on.
So we could really start to understand how our platforms
were operating and that was good because we had never done that
before and there was never the connection between an
engineering, you know, offline hardline SCADA environment
connected anywhere to an Internet cable.
The two never met, you know, and definitely not on these offshore
environments. And so it required partnerships
with telephony companies, you know, putting hundreds of
kilometers of Internet cabling along the seabed.
Well, a a story for another day, but that led me to conversations
with the whales commissions and you know, saying are you going
to affect the migratory patterns of the whales by putting all
this Internet cabling under the seabed, you know, things like
this. So but back to the platform,
what I recognized was that we could improve our performance in
our operations. But it didn't quite get me yet
to this notion of how do we save lives as a result of that.
Until I realized that because of the connectivity that we needed
to make and this understanding that it was in the transport of
shipping 600 guys offshore in helicopters every six weeks to a
platform, that sometimes those helicopters didn't make it,
sometimes there were accidents in transport, whether it was
even in a car or in a truck, people moving around, you know.
And it was kind of that movement of people which was causing
quite a lot of the accidents and incidents that we had.
And so I wanted to see how we could minimize the number of
people we needed to get offshore.
So step one was digitizing the environment.
And so in digitizing, improving the production, improving the
operation, understanding of the operation, but then connecting
with an Internet cable. The opportunity that I saw was
to create a new environment that would be closer to people's home
on the beach. So instead of flying 200
kilometers offshore, you would be able to stay on the beach at
a new asset location. And this was a strategy that I
called the remote operating Control Center strategy and the
demanding of our assets. Yeah, meaning we didn't have to
therefore send 600 people every six weeks offshore because now
we would be able to digitally and remotely operate those
assets. And that's effectively,
effectively what happened. So over time, you know, usually
on a business chart, you want to see the numbers and the lines
going up on a business chart that means good business, right,
Or doing well. In this case, you wanted to see
the line going down because that meant all the way to 0, all the
way to zero goal 0, because that meant that we were harming,
injuring and killing less people in the industry and that was the
goal and that's what we work to achieve.
So over the next period of five years, I developed in a capital
assets, capital project strategy, 3 new assets in in the
Gulf of Mexico, one here, in fact, in the North Sea, in in
Stefunger on the coast of Norway and one on the coast of Brunei
and in the in the in the East. And so those 3 new assets
operated the offshore communities in the locations
where they were and they still exist today.
I'm very proud of that. And it took me about the first
five to six years of my experience within Shell to
establish that environment and start to get those assets up and
running. You know, at not everything
always worked very smoothly either.
Of course, while we were going through that because you know,
in dealing with the change that this meant to people, you know,
I had these big burly guys that, you know, they had sort of hands
the size of shovels, you know, and they were used to turning
these big cranks offshore. What?
They were good. At that's what they were great
at. And and they knew these assets
because they'd, you know, literally seen every centimeter
of those assets throughout a period of 30 years in their
lifetimes. And usually when they were
dedicated to an asset they stayed, they stayed with that
and they didn't switch assets you know per SE even in a
similar geography. And so you know we had many what
I called pipeline talks. So we'd literally sit our bums
down on the pipelines and we'd have a have a toolbox talk and
you know and my visits offshore to them.
I was talking about this transformation that we would be
going through together and they said, but you know you're you're
you're really killing our brotherhood by suggesting these
changes. And I thought, oh, you know
what's going on here? I said, aren't you guys with me
on this strategy? You know, I really want to, you
know, move, move forward and make progress here with you.
And they said, but you know, you you're disrupting this community
effect that we have always felt by, you know, getting on a
helicopter and flying away for six weeks and being away from
our families. We know that.
But when you would go on to the the asset you'd go on board, you
would see, you know, they'd be pictures of all their family
members. They'd have posters hanging up
the things that they wanted to reflect on, you know, and they
created sort of a home away from home.
And so in in all my conversations with them, you
know, I said, well, what if even if we're on the beach together,
what if we would recreate that feeling of being in the canteen
or, you know, having pictures of your family members lining the
hallways like you do offshore and things like that to make it
feel like you're still kind of going to a place that's a home
away from home, even though you're a bit closer to home and
not having gotten in a helicopter to get there this
time. And it was, I think those
conversations that helped to get them over the line in terms of,
you know, I said look. I have two main goals.
One is I want you to be able to go home every night to your
families and be safe. #2 is I want you to actually be equipped
with skills that are going to mean you're going to have a
career in this industry for years to come because this
industry is transforming and don't you want to be on that
bus, you know, or, you know, are you going to just stay away and
and and not not go on on the journey?
Yeah. So I think by then suggesting
that we could of create the look and feel of an offshore
community on their new onshore remote oerating Control Center
was what finally flipped the switch for them that they said
OK we go, we go on the bus, now we're on the bus.
That is so human for them to not want to lose that feeling.
Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. And you know, it's some in the
the New Orleans location we created kind of like a Hall of
Fame, which was the the whole hallway, the corridor of the of
the onshore asset was lined with pictures of people's families,
member family members. Yeah, it was just the coolest
thing. And they were like, OK, this
feels like a home away from home again for us, you know, and so
we can keep the Brotherhood together, you know, we're here
to work together on new things and you know, getting them to
use their, their, their big fingers on these tiny little
digital keys, you know, and saying.
But the, the, the, the, the most beautiful thing I think about it
too was their realization of how much they really knew and how
much they could contribute to the continued operation and
success of their asset. Because they knew that when they
hit that button, it was turning that crank, that they knew
exactly what that crank was doing and exactly what was
happening. And and you know I think that
realization for them, you know and and then being able to bring
it full circle by going home to their families every night and
having skills that they knew would keep them employed, those
were really important things for them.
And so that was this piece that I felt for me was all about
saving people's lives and it did have that effect.
So we, you know, the numbers went down.
We were working toward goal zero and we were pretty much closely
there in that five year period. And and in the years to follow
we did hit goal zero while I had moved on to the downstream part
of the organization. But in the upstream, that was
the goal there and it was really a focus on the people.
The organization had asked me to hit repeat and go to the
downstream organization basically say, OK, look, you've
gotten this all set up now for our upstream environment.
But we've got similar issues in downstream, you know with all of
our onshore assets. Look at the Lube oil blending
plants and the chemical crackers, the manufacturing
refineries and the grease plants.
And you know sometimes they're in such remote locations that we
can't get them serviced for three or four days and we're
going to have operations offline for that amount of time or we
were noticing that VATS would be overflowing for instance.
And you know, it was an uncontrolled situation And and
also at that time, and this was in about 2013 fourteen that we
were also really cognizant of the emissions coming out of
smokestacks and saying, well you know, shouldn't we be doing
something differently here? Can we measure that?
Can we understand what that is? And so that was my task there.
So, so good. You know, more than 10 years ago
really started looking at how I could put sensors on equipment
that said when you hit this level, turn the machine off
because sometimes there's not an operator at every VAT.
And if they didn't notice that that VAT was breaching the the
overfill line, well then suddenly you'd have Lube product
flowing over into the Earth and you know, causing an
environmental hazard. So my mission shifted a little
bit from the saving people and improving people's lives to the,
you know, improving the planet. And then, you know, as a part of
my mission statement, you know what I could do there to protect
the the environment. So looking at how we could not
only monitor, measure, but also reduce the emissions coming out
of smokestacks, improve the overfill and and even make an
improvement in the formulation of what was going into the
chemical, what was going into the product.
So all of that could be improved through the digitization and the
digital sensoring, but starting to really measure monitor
through technology what was happening in the onshore
environment as well. So that was what I got to work
on there. So upstream and downstream and
everything in between. Sounds honestly sounds really
cool it. Was very cool, yeah, very
learning time. I can imagine, yeah.
I've I've recently come off a project and that was more so in
the IoT domain. And I've I mean I've worked at
the software components and the nitty gritty details.
Sometimes it literally translating zeros and ones into
information that we had to process and it's a lot of fun.
It's a very specific domain and before going into it, I didn't
imagine it having this much value, creating this much
impact, right. Because exactly as you said,
first we knew there were issues, but we didn't know what.
And step one was to gain data and to then form insights from
that data. And based on those insights, you
could find out what the real problem was and then try and
tackle that, automate what was needed so people didn't have to
go on site but could do that remotely, do exactly the same
things. And in that way it was amazing
because they were experts and they could do it perfectly fine
remotely. For me that's fascinating that
technology nowadays allows for so much and I don't think
everyone wants to understand or understands or even acknowledges
what the potential it has. For me nowadays, I don't know
where it's going because I mean it's 2024 now.
Last year was all about kind of this generative AI period where
all of a sudden kind of your problem solving and the
information. How do you say that?
Let me step back a bit before I I have information at my
fingertips. I have to do a Google search.
I can find all the information I needed.
But what I would have to give, and what was sometimes lacking,
was context. And I feel like with generative
AI, there's so much context now. I can take a picture of my
fridge, for example, and ask what meals can I make with the
ingredients that I have, And it spits out a bunch of meals and
they're very much accurate and they're getting more and more
accurate in that way. So I'm very much looking forward
to what this new technology has to offer and I don't, I don't
exactly foresee where it's going.
I just think it creates opportunities and this year,
probably 2024 is where a lot of opportunities create business
models and create value for people, the planet and hopefully
society. But I also feel like there's a
fear going on, especially within tech or within fields that
processes could be automated, that humans might be obsolete in
certain processes when it comes to business, even technologies.
I recently did AQ and A and one of the questions and still I can
see in the comments section some of the questions are, should I
get into this field? Should I spend my time for six
months either at a boot camp or self study and become a front
end engineer or back end engineer, any type of engineer
really or am I at risk for being obsolete with this new
technology that's coming up? What is your thought on kind of
Gen. AI last year and this year?
And I'm really curious to hear from your view, what have you
seen and what do you think is going, yeah?
Great, great questions and great great conversation to get to
have. I I think you know indeed you
know from a a public perspective we became much more aware of AI
and and generative AI of course multi modality because of
ChatGPT yeah, but of course you know AI has existed for years.
You know, at the the start of the smartphone we already had AI
incorporated in and the way that we were doing things, you know,
started to incorporate using facial recognition technology or
you know, thumbprint identification to unlock your
phone using Google Maps or you know any type of, you know, maps
to navigate. These were capabilities that we
already had even in our own smartphone, in our own
smartphones before, you know, the the, the magical, you know,
space of of the ChatGPT came along.
And so AI has been with us. This is for me not a revolution,
but an evolution of something that has existed for quite some
time. And and so I, you know, I want
to start with that by just saying AI has been around for a
while. What's interesting however about
the AI has been around is that I don't think it has been
leveraged or commercialized yet to the extent that it really can
benefit organizations. And when you look at the
artificial intelligence capabilities in terms of both
the back end and the front end, you know back end, I see
companies leveraging AI to improve you know, cash
performance or understanding logistics, inventory management,
you know these these types of capabilities.
On the front end it's about the user's experience, about how a a
a patient journey might evolve or a customer's experience in a
in a retail or an online space. And of course we have some
clumsy things like the the, the current day chat bot which you
know, sometimes I'm just looking for the eject button to get
myself out of the conversation because you're not getting
anywhere. And luckily it's becoming much
more humanised now today, but so, so we will continue to
evolve when it comes to those capabilities.
You know, and I think what we saw last year was you mentioned
this fear factor, FOMO big time all over the place.
You know in every boardroom conversation that I was in the
fear of missing out was was actually not afraid of but
afraid of missing out on this next big trend.
And so it was a door opener, it was a conversation, a
conversation starter and you know AI, so Gen.
AI is a part of the AI family. Of course you know as we go into
the depths of AI you have your, you know machine learning, you
have deep learning, large language models, you know all of
that sits within AI and then ultimately you get to Gen.
AI and even inside of Gen. AI you have the multi modality.
So you know we continue an interactive AI, so it you know
which is where you and ask a Chachi BT 4.5, you know to build
a website for you and it will do that right.
So it will actually no go, go and do something for you.
So it's it's it's continuing to evolve and of course we saw this
you know bursting onto the marketplace of hundreds and
hundreds of niche players that saw that tiny little component
that would make a difference, you know and and continue to
improve and all of that will continue to make things better.
But I think what's happening or will happen, I am anticipating
this year in 2024 is that everyone expected that Gen.
AI last year commercially would become the thing that was going
to be where everyone put their money and it didn't really
happen. No, not yet, not yet, right.
So it what happened was people started to experiment.
They created pilots and PO CS, you know, but it didn't really
hit, you know, it kind of hit that tipping point, but it
didn't go over, it didn't go into the commercial models.
And you know you and I know well that you know any innovation
that remains an innovation that hasn't been commercialized isn't
going to bring value to that organization or to the end user.
And so it just stays as an idea, as an innovation.
So where I anticipate are two things going to happen.
I think one is that Gen. AI is a door opener for
conversations that says, you know, we in our company, we
believe that we need to do something with Gen.
AI because everyone else is doing it.
And what it does is it starts a conversation that says let's go
back and have a look at your data platform, let's look at
your data strategy, how you're managing your data, are you
doing any analytical work with your data?
You start to dive into that conversation.
You realise that they're nowhere with their data.
There's no strategy, Data is not being managed, it's all over the
place, it's not integrated, there's no mapping layer,
there's nothing that's cohesive or coherent in in their data
strategy. So that's a nice place to start.
Why don't we start there? Because it is a stepping stone
approach. You can't really just dive in
and start with jet AI if if your data isn't in order.
So, you know, there's that piece.
Then I think there's this, this notion that says what you have
within your own enterprise domain, that's safe, that's your
trusted domain, that's all the data that you have and you know
about is within your own domain. When you get into a model which
is like open AIS, ChatGPT or a Google Bard or you know any of
these solution areas, it's also going to incorporate everything
else that's out on the Internet, which may or may not be right
because we all have been feeding it, you know, and it could be
right. But I I think the interesting
thing is that with generative AI can be 99% right and it looks
really good. At the same time, it could be
100% wrong. Yeah, and it still looked good.
And still look good. Yeah.
And and so that will, you know, deceive you.
And we talk about the hallucinations.
We talk about, you know what, what seems to be OK.
But actually it's completely not, OK, right.
And so I I I think we're going to take a slight sidestep from
where we the path that we've been on to say let's let's
leverage this opportunity to open the new doors when we look
at our own data strategy. Then start to work on that in
its own evolution of how we analyse the data that we have,
how we understand how our organization is operating within
our own domain, not leveraging information and and sources and
content from outside of our domain, but really understanding
how to make our own domain work. Well, you know how many times in
a, in a a corporation you bring for instance, a new employee on
board and you have all these intranet sites and you say go to
just go find it on the intranet and you'll know all about your
pension or you'll know about your lease car or you'll know
all about, you know, our onboarding process and so on.
And you can't find the information anywhere.
And so imagine the human experience of saying let's
leverage AI to, you know, consolidate to to make it make
more sense. You know, to help guide you
through a human experience of finding the the information
you're really looking for within your own domain.
I've worked with several medical entities who you know a a lot of
the terminology simply in that domain is is medical.
And so you have someone in HR or in finance that doesn't have
that medical background, has a really hard time navigating
through the environment, finding what they need because they
don't know those terms as well. And so how can you make it
easier for individuals to navigate, whether you're working
within your domain or for marketers to be able to create a
campaign based on the content? That is the tone that you use in
your organization. And not because the rest of the
Internet says this is how you should, you know, be talking,
but how, how you are reflecting your own entity.
So I think this this notion of learning how to analyse, get
more into some of the predictive analytics, get more into really
demonstrating that you understand what the customer
that you're working with needs and that you're, you know.
So when we started all this, you start with the search
capabilities. And when we got into search,
take Microsoft Bing, for instance, you know, collecting
tremendous amounts of data from individuals, what they were
looking for. And then they would, you know,
they would make a guess, for instance, and say, oh, you know,
you searched one time for golf vacations.
So now every ad that we're going to put on your page is about
golf shirts, golf gloves, golf balls.
You know, everything is related to golf.
But you know, in fact, maybe you were searching because someone
ever said to you, there's this beautiful location, you know,
where I once went and played golf, and you're just curious to
see what that was? You know.
And now suddenly you're a golfer, you know, so go go golf.
But, you know, today it's more about really understanding.
And I think the it's this, this Big Brother is watching, but
you're going to see the incorporation of, you know, we
know when your birthday is coming, we know that you're what
gender you are. We know what some of your
interests are based on. You know your your patterns,
your behaviours, You know what's repeated in your own history.
And now we can serve up things that are more more relevant to
who you are. Because I think that, you know,
the most annoying thing is you click on an ad one time and then
that becomes the, you know, the ad theme du jour on every, you
know page that you're that you're surfing on.
And that becomes annoying to people like the chat bot that as
I mentioned, you know it just you get into this endless cycle
that you never get out of and looking for that eject button
and help Get Me Out of this conversation.
So I think we're going to see the the, the opportunity become
even more relevant to what people are really looking for.
What they're really trying to achieve is going to start to
come out through the leveraging of more AI, deep machine
learning a large language models and understanding of how we
translate you know what what people's interests really are
and demonstrating that we understand that.
So I I think that's going to be while we've opened doors because
of the excitement of what Gen. AI offers and you know sort of
amplifying the possibilities, which is really super exciting.
It's going to help us to actually lean back a little bit
and say let's be sure our data is in place.
Let's learn how to leverage AI in ways that we haven't done yet
today to the fullest extent that it can.
So I think we're going to actually see a larger bubble
happening around the AI space this year.
And while we continue to build our confidence that the Gen.
AI can work well for us because we see too many times the small
mistakes, the the hallucinations, things that
don't always go exactly how you want.
You know, give you an example, we had a, a, a, an A really
interesting use case where you know we were given a product
that was a white label product and you know had a certain form
of a form and a shape and you know just kind of a, a, a white
image of that. And we said well let's try to
leverage Gen. AI to create that product in
every colour that you know that it could.
And then also because there should be different capabilities
that people could build on top of that product that we can then
do it in that colour with that capability.
For instance, and just trying to make that white object blue
leveraging Gen. AI, you know, you had things
that were yellow and green but not quite blue, you know and
there was like a blue BLOB on the side of the object and but
not the object itself. And you know and so and so this
is where I mean that with the Gen.
AI, it's not always going to get it right right now, but we're
going to get there. And so it will continue to
evolve and it will continue to improve.
And so you know your question about do we need people in this
field. So first of all, yes, we
absolutely need people in this field and we need people of all
sorts of backgrounds and you know, thought and identity, a
gender, race, you know, ethnic, every person you know.
If there's one thing that I would say to anyone listening to
to today's podcast is please go and educate yourself about Gen.
AI. There's so much great resource
available if you go to any of the.
Hyperscaler sites or anything in between.
Microsoft, Google, Amazon, you know all of them will happily
teach you about Gen. AI for free and you can learn,
you know from AA101 through to you know become a software
engineer and you know a solution architect and go for it.
Back end, front end, it's all needed.
I saw a very controversial comment that was made recently
and I will flag it as that controversial but it said men
should stop working in AI. So because and the statement was
because we lack diversity in AI and there's tremendous amount of
bias. And so the statement was trying
to suggest well if men would take a break and not work in AI
for a while, give women a chance to catch up.
So, and I mention it here to make a point that we need the
diversity, not to say that men should stop, that's not my
message here, really. We need men and women, but we do
need both. And so I want to encourage and
see more women and more people with other diverse backgrounds,
diverse thought, getting into AI.
So if you think about the the images that you see today on the
Internet, you know, you go and search for, you know, show me a
picture of a race car driver, show me a picture of ACEO.
Show me a picture of a an innovation officer. 80% of those
images on the Internet today are represented by men and so that's
the problem. Ted X Amsterdam have come up
with a solution for that. So if you know some of the
imaging technologies like Mid Journey for instance, you can
use Mid Journey to create with Gen.
AI you can create any image that you want given a few prompts you
know to to define what you're looking for.
But Ted X Amsterdam have done a take off on that which they call
Miss Journey. So instead of Mid Journey, it's
Miss Journey and misjourney dot IO when you go to that site will
be one where anytime you can tip in, show me a picture of a race
car driver picture of a CEO picture of someone working in
innovation, you will only get images that it's created of
women and what they're trying to do.
Even though there's a watermark on there and it says, you know,
created by misjourney and so on. What they're trying to do is
just simply flood the databases and say look, there can be
representation of other images than just the male, the male
images, you know, that we know. So I have a a presentation slide
that I've used a few times in large audiences now and you
know, it shows 2 images of, you know, two people showing a quote
about the meaning of innovation. And you know, there's an image
of Bill Gates which is very clearly Bill Gates.
And of course anybody I think that's in the the field of tech
or or beyond would recognize that as Bill Gates.
And then there's this other woman who's a a darker skinned
woman and her name is Miss Journey.
I've named her of course. And I asked the audience, anyone
recognize her. And sometimes, interestingly, a
few people do raise their hands, which is interesting, which
shouldn't be possible because of course I generated her and then
I mentioned that I said, look, I've generated her because, you
know, I want to show that there's another, you know,
person possible that you could see representing this field.
And because I generated her, I had to give her a quote also.
So I've created a quote for her, but I, I, I think we need to
show the balance. And so we do need everyone in,
you know, helping in the space of AI and Gen.
AI. It will continue to evolve.
I'm not on the fear monger side of saying AI is going to replace
our jobs. I actually think in the future
people will be looking for individuals that know how to
work with AI in their role. So in the future if I need a
doctor or I need a lawyer, I want to have a doctor or a
lawyer that knows how to work with AI to do their job, to
improve their job. Let me give you 1 short example
of that. So if we think about going to
get our eyes tested, there is a beautiful solution, a company
called Easy, which is a scale up out of Amsterdam.
And they've created a solution which you sit behind your
computer or use your mobile phone and you test your eyes.
And this is typically work that's done by an
ophthalmologist. You get in your car, you go to
the doctor's office, you sit in the chair and you look at the E
charts. You know and you tell which
direction the E is facing. Or you have to read off certain
letters on the chart, and probably the one thing they
didn't go to medical school to learn was to watch you read the
letters, the which direction the letters were facing in, right?
And so Easy have come up with this solution, which is not only
sustainable because you're no longer getting in your car and
going to the doctor's office, you know, or taking transport to
get there, but it also is complimenting the work and the
capability of ophthalmology by saying, look, this is the stuff
that is complementary to what doctors can do.
We have a declined population. We miss more than 9 million
doctors on the planet and nurses.
And so how can we help to complement that certain skills
are no longer there or no longer needed when actually the
solution can perform at 99.5% accuracy, which is in most cases
better than what a human can perform.
And that's, you know that evolution that we have seen also
of AI where we have achieved above parity.
So we achieved parity and that parity means, you know, what can
a human do versus what can a computer do.
Back in 1983, you know, Big Blue demonstrated that in the chess
game of of, you know, defeating the world famous chess player by
showing that the computer was better than the person.
But if you look at the evolution of for instance, speech
recognition, I think that was one of the first that's back in
2000 and 14 achieved parity with with human speech recognition
capabilities. So in 2014 a computer could
already detect speech to the same degree of of of performance
as a human could detect speech. And since then things have only
gotten better. You know, whether it's speech
recognition, whether it's the, the, the hardest one actually
has been in terms of recognising writing that the computer still
doesn't quite get that as well as human.
That's interesting. But other other capabilities,
Yes. You know, so facial recognition,
speech recognition, audio recognition, you know, you play
1/2 of a second tune and the computer can already tell you,
you know, where it's from and what that was and so on.
Yeah. And the the, the very cool
modification of that now, I think is with Google, who now
you just have to even hum. You don't even have to put the
words in anymore, but you just hum what your favorite tune was
and it'll say, Oh yeah, that was that song.
So, you know, it will continue to evolve and it will continue
to show improved performance over what humans can do.
And there's just so much opportunity.
I'm really excited. I'm quite thrilled actually to
see here where this is going to go this year.
Yeah, absolutely. I in a lot of people I talk to,
the personalization part I think always shines through.
I think that's what really what we've seen last year and I
really like that you add that from your role either in sales
or marketing or really any customer or user facing role,
you can leverage the technology that is now new, but you still
have to customize it for your use case, right, Give the
context and then leverage what knowledge you have to then
execute and execute better than you could be executing
otherwise. So whether you're a doctor,
whether you're any type of legal form, you can use what is out
there also to better understand your own domain.
Because for me it was always interesting that people that
practice medicine go to school for a really, really long time.
But a person that is kind of out of practice of medicine or their
information is outdated just by virtue of having been in this
field for 20 years and their educational journey kind of
stopping really 20 years ago. Yeah, that's a weird thought
because those people we rely on, maybe that's why some of the
information is kind of catching up or sometimes outdated or
people are really you have to do a lot of self study to keep up
to date. But by virtue of you using and
leveraging technology to gain insights to reach to a point
where you have better parity, that's that's really where it's
at, I think. And you will always need the
human component in there, at least for now.
I have no clue about 10 years or 20 years down the line.
But for what's here right now, there's always going to be a
human factor needed, I think. Yeah.
I think the, you know, this this notion of the parity that we
talked about now from a a computer to a human performance,
I think also has a similar analogy in the space of, you
know, parity of of individual capabilities.
And so, you know, I think we had this theme a little bit of of
doctors here just now. And if you think about, you
know, maybe even 10 years ago, 2050 years ago, you know, what
was the relationship between a doctor and a patient.
You know, the the doctor was the person in the white coat
standing above you. The patient was definitely lying
down on a bed someplace, you know, and saying help me, you
know, I don't know what's going on with me, you know and and you
think about today what that relationship is becoming the
more informed patients being equipped with information and
insights so that you can understand your own recovery or
your own symptoms. You know, people Google things
all the time in terms of what's going on with me.
And sometimes you don't want to do that.
But sometimes, you know, you get some insights and then, you
know, you can communicate better with your doctor And what I, you
know, I, I think we're not anymore in this phase of, you
know, just being this helpless individual that says I don't
know anything about what's going on, fix me, you know, because we
can come in and have a more informed conversation.
And I fundamentally believe that when we do, we for ourselves can
get in much better and improved results, you know, for our own
recovery and for our own issues. And so it's not that we are
going to surpass the the, the education and the experiences
that those doctors have had. But at the same time when we can
be a bit more curious about what's going on and open to
understanding what you know, our own symptoms mean for us, I
think we can help ourselves in our own journey.
And I, you know, I I just have a a mindset of wanting to be a
learn it all. You know, because there's
there's there's an endless amount of information in the
world that absolutely not possible for any of us, even the
doctor or the patient in that case, to learn to to know it
all. But we can try to learn.
We can try to always in any circumstance learn as much as we
we can. And so I think a a good goal you
know for this year is you know be a learn it all and learn
about Gen. AIAI data in general learn what
that can mean for you. But in particular you know what
what it means for if you're in a in a role in a professional
space, what it means for your end customer, what's relevant to
them, what what's meaningful for them.
And I I think the better that we get AT identifying solutions,
you know that through innovation that sometimes, you know when
you think about the stories that I've shared with you today like
at Shell, you know, starting with some small areas that said
we could improve some things here or there, but it's not the
end game yet. You know you have to keep going.
So it's a continuum. And when you're innovating, you
can often do those small things that will make a really big
difference every day. But you can also go up the
continuum until you realize that in fact what you've done is
you've created a systematic, radical, fundamental change that
improves the entire ecosystem. But that doesn't just happen in
day one. You know what happens on day one
is doing the small stuff and that's innovation too.
And you know and then we can continue to improve until we get
to this point that you look back in your career and your you know
few years of of experience and say wow where I've just come
from, look at the difference, look at how far we've come and
there I think you've gotten a gone along the continuum of
innovation which is ultimately having a broad broad based
effect. And that's I think that's the
beauty of it. And so to to to keep your mind
open to that to that journey is a goal I think for this year
also in terms of wherever you are start today but start small,
start with an idea that you think can make a difference.
Because ultimately, you know, I think when we look out into the
world and we see what's going on around us, you know, as I was
just driving here today, it's it's raining and and and I had
my windshield wiper on auto, meaning that whenever there's a
raindrop hitting my windshield that automatically will will
clean my windshield for me. I don't even have to think about
that today, right. And it's maybe laser guided in
there even today magnetic windshield wipers.
But you know where this all came from?
Back in the 1800s, there was a woman who was observing A
trolley driver in the middle of the streets of London during a
snowstorm. And she noticed that he had to
stop the trolley every few meters.
And he literally kind of hung out the front side toward the
window of the trolley and then used his arm in that kind of a
waving motion. Wipe it.
Off to wipe it off, Yeah. And of course, that's the motion
of the windshield wiper today. But she went back to her home
and she thought, well, what if I could create something for him
that while he was still sitting inside the cabin, would have
like a button that he could turn to kind of make it go on off, on
off, and then move like something that looked like his
arm to clean his windshield. And it's literally, and you have
that image in your mind now, maybe, but it's literally what
has become today's windshield wiper.
And OK, it's evolved slightly. It can, you know, move in
different directions now today, you know, and maybe be, as I
say, laser guided or magnetically guided and so on.
But it came from someone who saw something that needed to be
improved. Yeah, that.
Kind of a small. Very small idea and it has made
a big difference for many people.
Yeah, absolutely. That's what I think innovation
is all about. I I I love that explanation.
I always think about innovation and how to explain that, but it
it starts small and just by doing that continuously, by
going and moving towards your vision or a shared vision,
eventually you will get there and that's kind of the whole
journey that you've laid out. It starts small with something
that you think needs to be improved, Yeah.
And and in this space of Gen. AI today, that's where we see
all of these unique little solutions coming in because
everyone's found a little niche and something where they said
that could be better, that could be better and they're coming up
with their solutions and that's innovation too.
And so with that mindset, I think is how anyone can innovate
and come up with amazing ideas. You know another another short
example is the the paper bag. So there was a the the paper bag
that was originally invented and the machines that were made to
make paper bags made a a pointed bottom on the paper bag.
And so when you put a few apples in the bag or something, the bag
would basically burst open because there was no room to put
those larger objects in. So a lady looked at that and she
saw this production and she thought, well, why don't we
develop a, a paper bag that has a flat bottom on it?
And she developed the flat bottom paper bag, you know, And
so today, of course, we have digital online bags.
We hardly even need something physical in our hands, right.
But but she started with the flat bottom paper bag.
She saw a problem that needed to be solved.
And you know, the same with where did the circular saw come
from? You know, a woman who saw her
husband and her son sawing a tree with a straight blade, saw
two men on one side of the saw going back and forth, back and
forth. And she saw, wouldn't that work
better? So, you know, she invented the
circular saw. So, I mean, there's so many
inventions that have become innovative ideas that people saw
a problem somewhere in society or something they encountered
that they thought they could make better.
And I I think that's the spark of innovation and where anyone
could, could come up with a beautiful new idea today.
Yeah, anytime. It's just now there's a specific
technology which all of a sudden opens a lot of doors and I feel
like people are starting and I'm really looking forward to see
where it's going to go. Absolutely.
I've really enjoyed this conversation, Carrot.
This was this was a lot of fun. Yeah.
Was this kind of what you expected going into it?
I had no expectations 0 and I hope it was of interest.
I I I think I didn't do well in keeping my answers to 40 seconds
or less. But I hope that you know that
there were interesting stories and you know, just sharing some
thoughts and and experiences with the audience here today.
And I really appreciate your asking me to come in.
I've really enjoyed this conversation.
With you. Thank you for joining us, I
think. I think, I mean, I love your
stories. That's why I invited you in the
first place. And I'm gonna enjoy listening
back to this as well. Thank you.
So I'm gonna round it off here. Thank you so much for listening.
If you're still here, let us know in the comments.
Feel free to reach out to Kara. All our socials will be in the
description as well. And with that being said, thanks
again for listening. We'll see you on the next one
beyond coding.