Geomob Podcast - 20. Andy Coote: ConsultingWhere

Ed 00:01 Welcome to the geomob podcast, where we discusse geo-innovation in any and all forms geared for fun or profit.

Steven 00:11 Good afternoon. It's afternoon. It's my pleasure to be interviewing my old friend Andy Coote, who has a biography, which makes you gasp. And even though I thought I knew you pretty well, Andy, I was really impressed when I read this, this biography, you been manager of spatial database systems that the ordinance survey you've been responsible for technical development in the search flow e-commerce service. You were the director of consultancy services as re UK with a team of over a hundred program managers and technical people. And now you're the director of cult consulting, where, which is an independent, it consultancy specializing in the provision of strategic information, technology and business advice. And your expertise is now grown into my domain of economics and business case development. And that's quite a lot. Have I missed something?

Andy 01:15 Well, Steven May be just to quickly a couple of things. I spend a lot of my time now as a consultant for the world bank and the UN food and agricultural organization. And I enjoy that because it gives me an opportunity working in developing countries to put something back into an industry. That's been very good to me over my career and in a similar vein, I've really enjoyed working with the AGI and including with, uh, with yourself, which is where I think we first came into contact. I've had three stints on the council over 20 years or so, and I was a chairman in 2010 and, and that that's been really worthwhile for being able to put something back again.

Steven 01:59 It did. And I remember serving with you when you were chair of the AGI and we had a lot of fun together and did some good stuff. So tell me a little bit about consulting where,

Andy 02:10 Okay. Well, see, when I left AIDS three, I felt that there was, there was a bit of a gap in the market. There, there wasn't much in the way of independent advice being given to the industry. And, uh, particularly I felt there were a lot of projects that were not being approved because we hadn't being able to articulate the economic case for investments. So that was really where myself and my business partner, Les Rakim started out. We, uh, we looked at that area and, uh, I've done in the subsequent 12 years, a lot of work. I'm not an economist by training. I've sat at the feet of quite a lot of economists. So over that 12 years, and I think from the point of view of looking at business cases and so on, then we can, we can cut the mustard, but that's not all we do. I mean, we've got a team now of just about 20 staff, including the associates. And we've got associates that are based in Australia, in Europe and in sub Saharan Africa. So we really have got a footprint these days, which is global. I keep waiting for the call to go and do some work in Antarctica, but that one eludes me at the moment.

Steven 03:26 Okay. So are these, are these mainly government clones that you're working with or do you work with businesses as well?

Andy 03:34 Well, they're both, there's a lot of work for a developing countries in various parts of the world, but there's also work for commercial organizations. I mean, I still, I still do work for my old employer. -inaudible- not in the UK, but they have distributors all around the world. And, and, uh, I suppose my background, Steven coming from professional services is where I get asked to go in personally and help them with organizational issues and things that are really to do with, with people. Because one thing I've always enjoyed doing is, is building to it teams and working with, with people. And it's perhaps one of the things that you, you miss a bit. Certainly I do working as, as an independent consultant

Steven 04:19 Before we get onto our main topic, Andy, we first met as competitors must be 15 years ago or more, but we'd been pals for a long time now, much longer than we were competitors since we both have moved on in our careers. And you've also moved across roles and organizations throughout your career. Do you think there's something about geo that encourages friendly competition rather than always being at each other's throats?

Andy 04:49 Yeah, for sure. I think that all of the people that you meet in our industry, they have a passion for what they do and, and that helps to transcend some of the politics that I observe in, in certain other industries. Um, and let's face it. I mean, there there's, there's two people in their careers get the chance of, uh, looking at maps, which a lot of people do for fun and being paid to travel widely while it's doing it. And I think that's that that's significant that that passion aspect. But I think the other thing is that the world is, is peak. There's relatively few people that do this kind of stuff and the challenges are wide. So therefore sharing experiences with, with competitors, if it does anything, it increases the size of the pie for all of us. And I think that that's something that has always encouraged me to, to share information rather than to, to keep it to myself.

Steven 05:48 Okay. And so that sucked mention of the size of the pie takes us very sweetly on too. The location market survey that consulting were recently released. This is I think the fourth version that you've released after the last 10 or 12 years, isn't it?

Andy 06:07 You're right. Steven, we did the first one in 2008. So it's a, it's over a span of 12 years. Uh, at the time of doing the first one, we just started consulting where, and so a lot of doing that survey was about establishing our profile, but also I was involved with the AGI at the site at the time. And there was a lack of objective evidence about the size of the market, how many jobs it supported. So it's quite difficult when you were dealing with government to explain this industry and why they should support it. So I was pleased that that initial survey filled, filled a gap there, but we, we found a lot of interest in what we done. And, and so since then, it's grown in scope. I mean, we've been asked to look at the value of the demand side rather than the surprise side.

Andy 06:59 So the surprise side is those vendors and others offering things into the market. And the demand side is the, is the users consuming it in, in simple terms and where we spread out from looking purely at GIS and software to include earth observation and Marine subsectors is as well in the, uh, and the last couple of surveys now in the UK in terms of how we do this, we've been quite lucky because we have companies house company's house provides a lot of by state or on turnover, staff levels and other economic and financial information. We then use a lot of information from annual reports, for larger companies. We track mergers and acquisitions. We do that on a constant basis. We look at recruitment trends and we also undertake sentiment surveys. We go out to opinion formers like your good self and, and ask how people are feeling about how the industry is, is developing. So we get a lot of other insights which come from a wide range of people, both inside and outside the industry who we'd build up relationships with over the years. And often their views are given in confidence. They know who they are. And I just like to call them out really because we really appreciate their input. We, I probably couldn't do this, uh, this work without their help.

Steven 08:26 It's a really impressive piece of work I've got to say. And in fact, I can remember back in 2007, 2008, you sitting in my office when I was still MD of MapInfo UK. And we did, I think, a first interview then for the very first survey and 12 years later, you're still doing it and still phoning me up and saying, what do you think about this? Have a look at that. So, yeah, I'm glad to, I am one of those contributors and I think it's a great piece of work that you do

Andy 09:00 Well. It's nice of you to say that Steven, but, you know, giving the praise back, I've always valued your views. You give them, you give them freely. And in my experience, you're always worth listening to. So, uh, so it's a mutual fan club.

Steven 09:15 Thank you, auntie. And let's hope the listeners to this podcast also think that I'm always worth listening to,

Andy 09:23 So

Steven 09:23 Tell me about the audience for the survey.

Andy 09:26 Well, it's C suite executives, government decision makers, sales directors, really anybody who's involved in defining futures strategy for their organizations. And we have customers for this from the, the private sector and from the, uh, the public sector, since we live in such extraordinary times, we've also this time made a commitment to provide updates over the next 12 months to, uh, to people that buy the report because as you and I discussed just before we came on the call, the market impact of COVID-19 is very opaque. At this stage. We hear horrible things from, uh, office of management of the budget in the last 24 hours, suggesting that Q2 GDP is going to be down by something like 35%. I mean, that is absolutely her. I think that's a third of the, the economy whiteout for a period of time and coming out of COVID-19, we, we don't know how much of that is permanent damage and how much is going to be simply bouncing back to where we were before.

Andy 10:36 I think anybody that looks at this can't see that we're going to bounce straight back and just carry on again. But what we're not clear about is how deep the damage is going to be in the longterm. And also it's not going to be over for a while. I mean, we're, we're only just starting to see some of the, the, the possible effects of this on the developing world. And whilst we might think are our NHS is, is deficient in some respects, when you look at it compared to the developing world, the potential, therefore horrendous loss of life is, is just pains me to even think about it

Steven 11:15 Indeed. And it's a, it's a challenging time to be in the market forecasting and surveying space because I don't think anybody can really accurately predict how the downturn that we're experiencing is going to impact individual sectors. I mean, I think just a thought from me on this is that public sector is a colossal part of the UK GI market. And well, we know about public sector is that we're likely to see at some stage, the bills have to be paid. We're likely to see a downturn in public sector expenditure in nonessential items. You know, and if, if we can't convince public sector, that GIS is essential, then we're going to be impacted by that. But if we can, there may be, we're one of the sectors that rides through this only time's gonna tell.

Andy 12:06 I agree. I think though the, the digital transformation agenda is a it's going to come through this and perhaps be written even larger, certainly COVID-19 and, and, uh, contact tracing is starting to come right up the agenda. And of course that's underpinned by essentially geospatial information. So I think one of the things I'll take some comfort from Steven is that the, the geospatial commission still seems to be expanding. And that tends to indicate that the government still has faith in the initiatives that really started up are back in, in 2017. So, so maybe we can take some heart from that.

Steven 12:52 Indeed. In fact, I guess the geospatial commission now probably comes in the top 50, maybe even the top 20 employers in the geospatial market in the UK. We can have a much longer discussion about that, but that's a separate, that's a separate one for another.

Andy 13:10 Okay. Yes.

Steven 13:11 Give me a couple of examples of the users and use cases for the survey.

Andy 13:16 So there's a couple of favorites I've got at the moment, Steven, and one of our customers is in the health sector. And what they're doing is they're using BI enabled three D fly throughs of the area where the patient lives to distract and interest them while surgeons are fitting pacemakers and doing other types of surgery where the, where the patient has to be conscious. So what they need to do is, so I need to make sure that the patient is, is kept interested during the procedure, but doesn't get too anxious. So two things they don't, they don't want them looking down what they're fiddling about with when they're fitting the pacemaker. But also if they do use these three D headsets say they want to avoid contentious planning developments, because these could actually push up the heart rate of the, of the patient. So it's a, it's a very, very interesting field.

Andy 14:13 And one, one that I'd not come across before this, this recent work. And of course, as we've just been talking about the tracking technology for Kobe 19 compliance, the work that's been done in South Korea and Singapore, I think is going to test U K society in terms of the ethics and the moral appetite for surveillance. We're moving there too to something that once we get testing going, I think he's going to come right up the agenda, which is the discussion of whether in fact, people, once they've been diagnosed as, as positive are going to be willing to

Steven 14:51 Their smartphone and have it on the whole time. So their movements can be, can be monitored. My own view is I've got nothing to hide. If that's going to stop the spread, I'm happy to do it. Providing the, uh, it's in the control of government. I have some real concerns about it being in the, in the hands of the, uh, the, the large commercial social media companies. But I think that the cyber security and an anonymization around this, if it, if it does use the standard protocols, then, then maybe we don't have too much to worry about. I don't know whether you've been looking at the announcement in the last few days from Google and Apple about their contribution to contact tracing. Um, they're using, they're not using location technology at all in that they're using the Bluetooth low energy system that's available on all the Android and Apple phones.

Steven 15:51 And they've got, they're using a protocol called DP three T, which means that your phone broadcasts these random messages to another phone. If it's within Bluetooth range and that phone stores, those messages, it doesn't know what so they've come from or anything. It just has these random strings. And you can then log into a hospital server. And if any of those random strings that are on your phone, I've been logged on the hospital server as from a, an infected patient. Then you're advised that you've been in contact with somebody who's got the infection. You don't know who it was or anything, but you know, that you've been in contact. So presumably once people that are, uh, tested and found to be through the virus, um, to have the necessary antibodies, then they're no longer infectious. Um, when they broadcast those signals would give you the reassurance as well.

Steven 16:57 I mean, it's quite quite clever technology, but that's not actually using location. It's using the Bluetooth, but I think you're right, that this needs to be in the hands of government, rather than have everybody who thinks they can spin up an app to track or trace or monitor the disease. And in mind, I think the other problem there, Steven, is that his coordination I've, I've had a number of people who got in contact and said, you know, I've got an idea for an app or a visualization, who should I, who should I get in touch with? And I think that we run a danger at the moment as an industry of not helping two coordinate this. And there's a, there's some work going on through the Royal society where Mike batty from university college, London is involved. And when I've been asked, What

Andy 17:50 Should I do with my idea? I've, I've directed them towards that because I think the, the Royal society is a, is a pedicle body. And, um, they will have the right connections to make sure that this lands well with public health, England, but, but there is awful lot of people running around with ideas, which we, uh, quite frankly, uh, uh, probably just clouding the picture. I could, I could go off on a rant on that, but I'm not going to, I'm going to get back to your study and give our listeners an idea of the scope of the recent location market study. So Steven, we do a financial breakdown of the market, and we do that by segment and also by activity type. So activity type will be whether they're in data services, consumer mapping, the other segmentations that are around the sector is consuming the data.

Andy 18:46 So, uh, and the systems, uh, so that's one, one aspect. So we've got a number of different breakdowns of that type. We also look at sector by sector growth prospects. Uh, obviously these are pre COVID, but nevertheless, there's some good evidence to show that the industry is growing stru, the periods where, where we've had austerity. And, and this is partly I think to do with, with new technologies. But I think it's, it's also a growing recognition that a lot of the questions that we ask us as policy makers or decision makers, there is aware element to them, there's a location element to them and that you really can't Mike, those kind of decisions unless you have decent information behind it. So, so I think it is it's, it's a number of factors, but certainly my feeling is that our importance in terms of our contribution to society and, and how easily that is, is recognized by people is improving.

Andy 19:52 So, so we've got some, we've got some good, good evidence around that. We've, we've done some competitive positioning. So, uh, we've, we've got, uh, a short analysis within the report on, uh, most of the major, major players in the, uh, in the industry, uh, what they've been doing recently in terms of mergers and acquisitions, uh, what their turnover tell us about, uh, about the way they're going forward as well. Uh, we've looked at, um, technology trends. So we'll come on. I think it's all good. A little bit. Yeah. The hype cycle, but, uh, that's, uh, that's one aspect of it. And then we've looked at these external impacts and what they often refer to as, as a step. So social, technological, uh, economic, uh, um, political impacts that are coming in to the, the industry from outside and, and obviously affect us. Uh, we got some very good industry opinion thought pieces, which are sector based and I'm, uh, I'm particularly pleased that we've, uh, we've got, uh, a very interesting piece around, um, uh, the defense and, uh, intelligence industries, which whilst obviously not giving away state secrets does, does indicate why that, uh, is one of the fastest growing segments of the market at the moment.

Andy 21:18 And then we've looked at recruitment patterns, which are also very interesting when you start to look at the, the rise of the data analyst. And, uh, one of the things that pains me a little is that perhaps we, as an industry, don't make clear that actually we've been doing data analysis for an awful long time. Uh, and we'd been doing it with big data. And I sat in a, uh, an AI conference recently and listened to, uh, somebody talking one Oh one remote sensing, uh, with a bunch of people there sat a wide male and just absolutely gobsmacked, uh, the kinds of things that, uh, we've been doing for perhaps 10 or 20 years. So I do think that that's, that's something that people will find interesting, but it does indicate that the, uh, the cost of holding on to some of our best minds may actually be a, uh, liable to increase even, even with what we're going through now.

Andy 22:22 Well, that's good for some people. Yeah. Tell me how a little bit about you end up giving a size to the UK location market. How big is that Mark? Oh, it's a, it's about a bit over 2 billion. We think, um, Steven, th you know, there are some uncertainties there's always, uh, difficulties establishing the scope. I mean, what we do is, is very much horizontal across many sectors. Uh, there's no figures from the ons that would allow you to just say the size of this particular market. Whereas if say we're in telecoms or something like that, there is, there is much more in the way of, uh, of national statistics. So, so we, we tend to look at activities in, in three particular categories, um, uh, geocentric activities. I mean, some of the defense market is can't be done without, uh, geospatial information. There's a lot of, uh, other activities that are a geo enabled.

Andy 23:22 So therefore it's important to the decision making, but it's a, it's not the whole thing. And you can, you can think about, uh, applications that, uh, um, the utilities use where, where those are largely geo enabled, uh, rather than being a geocentric, but then we've got a lot of casual geospatial use. And, and when you to look into the outmarket and you start looking at things like, uh, for instance, um, personal fitness apps, they, they include geospatial, they're consumers of geospatial, uh, information. Um, it enriches the experience, but it's, it's, it's somewhat casual. It's somewhat incidental to the, uh, uh, to the actual, uh, use of the app. So we, we try to encompass each of those. Um, and what we've done is we've developed two value chain around the geospatial ecosystem, uh, and we've used that to validate our decisions on, uh, what to include and what not.

Andy 24:23 And, and that's somewhat subjective. We, you know, we, we, we have to admit, we can't, we can't put, uh, uh, an absolute objective measure on some of those things. However, on the supply side, we looked at almost 3000 companies to start with, these were from keyword searches, trade show, directories, industry knowledge. And then we, we went through a painstaking process of, of checking, uh, all of the websites, um, that, uh, that were in those, uh, in those parameters and looked at annual reports. And, and eventually we've come up with a, a roundabout 900, uh, who we think meet our yeah, key criteria. And from those we've, we've estimated percentage revenues of their geospatial activities, because a lot of them are organizations like construction companies. Um, the carry out a lot of geospatial, particularly land survey work have a much wider portfolio of activities. Um, we've also tried to work out the percentage derived from UK business because quite a lot of the companies we're looking at are global players.

Andy 25:31 And so therefore we have to, we have to try and looking at annual reports and other, other information, also information from opinion formers. We, uh, we come up with our estimation of, uh, of what we think that proportion of, uh, of businesses in the UK. So I'm on the demand side where we're looking more at major customer types, typical use cases, the breakdown of the UK GDP is useful in that respect. And then we've, I've done some bottom up triangulation from international studies. Uh, there are some like, uh, an extensive study in Canada that we were involved in few years ago, which, uh, we've taken into account some of the methodologies that, uh, uh, we use there to come up with the, uh, uh, the size of the, the demand side of the market. And from that we've, we've arrived at an estimate, which is a fairly broad one for around 10 to 15 billion per annum.

Andy 26:30 Um, so that's, that's round about five to seven and a half times, uh, the, um, supply side. Uh, if you go to places like the U S their figures are something like 20 times, uh, the, uh, the size of the, um, supply markets, uh, but they're, they've got more geography and it sounds stupid to say that, but that does make a difference. Um, and therefore, uh, they are also different from us, um, both in Canada and the, uh, and the United States in terms of natural resources, natural resources, the big generator of, uh, of, of usage.

Steven 27:10 So just explain once again, the difference between the supply side and the demand side, you're saying that the demand side is five to seven and a half times the supply side.

Andy 27:23 Yes, exactly. So the surprise side is, is those broadly who create geospatial data, software, uh, produce, uh, aggregated data sets the demand side, uh, is those who are, uh, end-users, uh, either as, uh, businesses, uh, as governments, uh, or as, um, uh, private individuals. So we go right down to the level of, uh, of, of looking at apps, uh, and the, uh, the, the generation is, you know, of, of money, uh, from apps is relatively small. Um, the, the majority of that 10 to 15 billion is corporations and the public sector.

Steven 28:12 Okay. So when you were researching this report, we had a conversation about the hype curve and where different technologies were on the high curve. So

Andy 28:25 Could you

Steven 28:26 Explain to our listeners what the height curve is? The geospatial height curve?

Andy 28:31 Okay. So, so more normally called the, um, the hype cycle. It concept in invented originally, I think by Gartner, and it's a, a curve that on the left hand side goes up very quickly. Um, perhaps Steven, I can give you, uh, a copy of it that you can, you can put out with this, uh, and then it's, uh, it starts from what school did technology trigger. So something totally new in terms of, of technology starting to come out of research into commercial exploitation. What happens first of all, is the, um, the marketing people get hold of this and hype is generated hyperbole about this being the greatest thing since sliced bread. And we see the hype cycle peaking for things like at the moment, you can't talk about technology without slinging the word AI in there as a computer scientist, I rail against some of the things that are referred to as AI, but Hey, if it's, uh, if it's, if it's going to sell, then the market is, and the sales people will use it.

Andy 29:38 Well, then what happens is after a peak, it starts to drop down into, um, what's called the trough of disillusionment where people start to realize that perhaps it was not the greatest thing since sliced bread. There's a fair amount of BS involved in, in what's been described. And sometimes technology's just don't stop in the, uh, in the trough. Uh, they actually drop out of existence completely. And there are a fair number of examples around technology that's happened over the years. And, and we can remember the, uh, the, the dot bomb of websites, where, where it looks for a while. So the entire internet might sort of disappear completely. But then what happens is you start to emerge from that trough into what's called the slope of enlightenment, where people realize that maybe the hype wasn't completely fulfilled, but actually there is some productivity gains to be had from a type of technology.

Andy 30:44 And then it then moves on into what's called the plateau of productivity where it's, uh, adoption of a particular type of technology has reached a level where our level of maturity and the incremental gains in terms of, of productivity start to start to plateau out. So, uh, that's the, that's the height curve. And what you, what you try to do is you try to put, uh, uh, new technologies onto, or new ways of using technologies onto that, onto that hype cycle, just so that people can understand with some, some passwords that will be more relevant to them. I can see looking at the hype curve, but block chain. Yeah. Just at the peak of expectations and about to the rapid descent down into the trough of disillusionment with, um, currently wearable UI and link data being right at the bottom of that trough. What's in the slope of environment, sorry, the slope slope of in enlightenment.

Andy 31:58 I mean, I think there, Stephen, there, there are a number of a number of things. And if you think about things like the internet of things, if you think about cube, SATs, you think about drones. These are all things that have been around for a while, but are now emerging out of that expectations being slightly dat dashed into really beginning to deliver productivity. And I think we could, we can mention a whole bunch of other things, but when I look at the acquisition technology area, then drones, cube, SATs the internet of things and, and LIDAR, uh, probably some of my, uh, uh, my key takeaways just to go back blockchain is I think something that everybody is thought, this is, this is going to be totally revolutionary in terms of peer to peer transactions, completely secure. And so on. My problem with, with blockchain is that not the technology itself, but the fact that you actually I've got some people that were involved in development of blockchain to understand how it works.

Andy 33:08 And you've also seen a hijacking of the term, well, a lot of the existing financial institutions where they're using blockchain as a peer to peer technology, but it's not, uh, what originally was conceived by the inventors of blockchain. So, so then you've got a, a requisitioning of the term four, something that isn't really was originally conceived. And, and I think that that's where we start to see it being at the, uh, uh, the top of the, the hype cycle, because that recognition that it's been picked up by others and repurposed is just coming into play. I have to say probably pig Sinek on blockchain or geospatial that I'm rather pleased to see that so far, no one has come out saying blockchain is the answer to contact tracing. No, well now Steve, that's only a day or two away. Okay. So I mean, the other thing I think that I'd like to speak out on two others, just one is around actionable insights.

Andy 34:19 And this move with platform as a service and the super K of intelligent, uh, artificial intelligence, a lot of the things that we were doing, machine learning, neural networks, edge computing platform, as a service, all of these things have been around for awhile. It's just the, the, the ability of the internet and the, the, the power of the servers that we now have access to, to be able to, uh, make these kinds of things what happened. And certainly what I've been really impressed with is, is some organizations that are now providing insights instead of selling data and systems. Well, they're doing is, is they're providing platform as a service and saying, you want to know where the commodities market for, uh, rice, it's going to be in six months time, I'll show you how we do the analysis, but, and that's going to be using remote sense data information from telecoms and other sources of social media data. I'm going to scrunch that together. And I'm going to give you the answer, which then made use of by the likes of hedge funds means they can, they can beat the market. And the financial incentive of being able to do that kind of thing is, is enormous. And it gives me a certain amount of a satisfaction that if the financial markets are beginning to realize the power of geospatial, then there's half a chance that all the money that they make might trickle down into, uh, into our industry.

Steven 35:57 That's a good thought. That's a good thought, an alternative view on that would be. And of course, if the algorithms that are driving those decisions are open sourced, that we'd all be able to see where the markets were going and no one will be able to play the market

Andy 36:13 That that's right. And then, then, then the market will disappear because the hedgehogs are only going to be interested in this while it gives them an age. So, uh,

Steven 36:23 Just, we need to start wrapping up Andy, but before we do give me a couple of the highlights from the survey in terms of growth trends and companies on the art.

Andy 36:33 Okay. So, um, growth trends, average compound annual growth rate, 2017 to 19 for the, the industry as a whole was around about 12%. That's, that's really quite impressive. That's backed up by when you look at the, uh, the turnover at the, the usual suspects, uh, on the supply side, Google, Garmin, hexagon, Esri, they've all shown double digit growth over the, uh, over the last three years. So, so that, that backs up our, um, our analysis. I think that, um, companies to watch, I'll just give you three very quickly. There's a, there's an organization called Palentier. I'm Palentier, almost certainly. Most people have not heard of they're specialists in intelligence community for detection and other dark arts. But if you want somebody who's really using AI in our marketplace, um, those, those are, um, guys to watch other smaller outfits. I like G a Spock. She has spoke a Cambridge based AI company. I've done a lot of really interesting things recently starting to get heavily involved in transport analysis. And then the other one is orbital insights and orbital in science or an American company, but with a UK branch. And they are in this business of extracting information from EO imagery and selling it to anybody from hedge funds through to, uh, big projects in the, uh, in, in the developing world. So those are, those are probably my top tips for, uh, for watching,

Steven 38:11 Interestingly enough, none of them are the traditional vector, GIS businesses. They're all, you wish companies with different approach to this stuff,

Andy 38:23 But, um, and it'll be interesting savings to see whether they peak very quickly and fall again very quickly, or whether they're more like Esri who've, who've managed to buck the trend and I'm keep growing over, over the last 20 or 30 years. I mean, they they've changed their business model. They've done a tremendous amount in terms of looking at moving to talk about infrastructure rather than, than point solutions. And they've also done a tremendous amount in terms of moving on to the web. So -inaudible-, and others like them are still worth watching because they are, they are still growing and they're pressing for their longevity.

Steven 39:07 Yeah. In fact, I was something prompted me to reread something that I wrote 10 years ago now. And in that, I'm not sure I predicted the demise of Israel, but I certainly was suggesting that the combination of open source, open data, Google, all of that was sort of crowding around Israel and that, uh, they were going to be a on the back foot. And I really read this and thought, gosh, how wrong you were, because they have adapted, as you said, very, very successfully to all of the challenges. And I'm sure they'll carry on doing so I'm probably, at least one of these companies will end up being purchased by a Google or a nursery or a hex again, and becoming an important part of their next decade of groups.

Andy 39:59 Now, these guys survive that that's how hexagon got where they are

Steven 40:03 Indeed. So wrapping up our D how can listeners read the executive summary of the report?

Andy 40:11 Okay. So it's online, it's free, Steven. Hopefully you can put out the, uh, the web address, but just go to www consulting where.com forward slash LMS 20 that's, uh, that's where it is, or, or, um, drop you or I an email and we're pointing in the right direction.

Steven 40:33 Okay. And if they want to email you, your email addresses.

Andy 40:38 So I'm Andrew dot [email protected] or at a COOs on Twitter. Okay. And that's Cozzi O T T E

Steven 40:51 Correct. Okay. And so the closing question, you've been to a few deer mold, but we haven't yet had the pleasure of having you as a speaker, which is something that I hope we can rectify once were back up and running, or even online. What were your favorite speaker?

Andy 41:06 Well, a statement just, I love the enthusiasm of the speakers and the quality of the, the questions, uh, so well done well done to you and ed for, but getting people involved and both. So I think there might be some potential in exchange with your sister organization, because I do quite a lot of work in Australia. They have an organization called geo rabble and their sessions are also excellent directly answering your, your, uh, question. I, I thought at your recent event, there's an organization called cunning running. Um, and, uh, don't try and say that after you've had too many JIA beers, but they, they are a really interesting organization, what they do in terms of, of spatial analysis for lots and lots of different uses some of them in the, uh, uh, the dark arts of intelligence, but, uh, also a lot of the ideas that, that they have adjust, I just first rate and, um, so well done for getting them to come and talk openly about the kinds of things they do.

Steven 42:09 Yeah. It was a very impressive talker. He was Chris Barrington Brown was incredibly open about what they did. He didn't give away any national secrets or anything, but he did give a really great insight into what they were doing. And it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast today. I look forward to the time where we naturally toast each other face to face, but until then, cheers. And thank you.

Andy 42:36 Hold on. Thank you, Steve. Now I've enjoyed it. Okay, bye.

Ed 42:41 Thanks everyone for joining us today and listening to the GMO podcast, hopefully you've enjoyed the discussion. Please don't hesitate. If you have any feedback for us or any suggestions for topics that we should cover in the future, you can get the show notes over on the website, which is at -inaudible- dot com while you're there. If you're not yet on the mailing list, please do get on the mailing list where we once a month send out an email announcing future events, summarizing past events, and just generally sharing, uh, events that you may find of interest. You can also of course, follow us on Twitter where our handle is geomob. You can follow Steven at Steven Feldman. You can follow me Freivogel you can check out Mallory at -inaudible- dot org. And of course, if you need any geocoding, please check out my service, which is open cage data.com. We look forward to you joining us again at a future episode or end of course, seeing you at a future op event. Hope to see you there soon. Bye.