What The Funk?

0:00 All right, this is going to be kind of difficult because if I say Martin, I'm not sure which one of you guys is going to answer. You can go Luna and you can go my grave. All right, we'll go Luna,

0:10 we'll go McCrae. That's the easiest thing. I got the two Martins on this podcast today. Maybe we'll just call it that's probably the easiest way to do it. You guys, you look different, you sound

0:23 different. You're certainly different human beings. You work for the same company. So there is that And I'm sure people probably say, Hey, Martin, in an email, which probably forces both of you

0:34 to actually read the email because you don't necessarily know until the second line who they're talking to.

0:42 We got Martin Luna coming to us out of Mexico. We got Martin McCray coming to us out of Scotland. People know me. I'm Jeremy Funk. This is my podcast. I'm excited to have you guys on I think

0:55 McCray, you said this is your first podcast That is, yeah. that you've met on, which is great. Have plenty of those. Luna, have you been on a podcast before? Oh, same thing, first experience,

1:06 yep. Awesome, awesome. Podcast, babies. We'll have a good time.

1:13 It's a beautiful day here. We're mid-October in Colorado. It's actually fall. What's the weather like for you guys? Is it fall for both of you two right now where you're based? It is, yeah.

1:25 Yeah, correct. And I have to say, we've got a beautiful day here in Scotland as well The sky is blue. It's not been a cloud all day, so it's a nice day. And it's a Friday afternoon. I'm

1:35 learning more and more about Scotland, right? Ever since we started doing work with Sarah McCauley,

1:41 you know, she kind of plugged us into her network. So I'm learning, I've never been, I've been to London.

1:48 And at some point, I'm gonna have to get up to Aberdeen. But sounds like a nice vibe. You got a couple hundred thousand people in the city, out there, you're not far from. water. There's kind

1:58 of an oil and gas community. It's a real city. There's culture that's been established for a while. Why don't we just jump into it with you, McCray? Are you from Aberdeen originally? Have you

2:11 always lived in Scotland? Give me a little bit of your story and where you ended up, where you're at today, both with AIS James Fisher and then, of course, just life in general Yeah, so I pretty

2:23 much always lived in Scotland by a bar about nine months when me and my now wife went travelling a few years ago. Didn't grow up in Aberdeen though, I grew up in a small town in the heart of Berry

2:35 country in Scotland, so it's where all the best strawberries and raspberries are growing. We grew some of the best in the world, not that I'm biased. But yeah, so I grew up there and then I came

2:47 up joboring to go to university. So that's what kind of brought me up this part of the world. Went to university computing degree and stayed here for for three years doing that. And then I kind of

3:00 decided I didn't want to go back home, I wanted to keep branching out and stayed in Aberdeen. And then I met my now wife just as she was in her last year of uni. So she came from Edinburgh,

3:12 originally up to Aberdeen, we decided both to stick out up here. And

3:18 then about 11 years ago, we moved out to another small Scottish town, similar to the one that I grew up in, but now near Aberdeen And we've been here ever since I've got three kids now. So life

3:30 revolves around them, basically. Yeah, well, and I know it's Friday afternoon for you. We're trying to balance time zones here, right? Because it's a little bit earlier my time than I would

3:39 normally record if it's a Friday, right? So it's like 749 in the morning for me. So I'm guessing it's like almost three o'clock for you. Correct, yeah. Right, so I'm conscious of that, right?

3:50 A little bit easier for Luna, right? He's down in Mexico. We'll get to him and his story in a second, I want to keep this on you for a minute. price. So you got three kids. How old are your

3:60 kids? I've got a daughter who's nine and twin boys who are seven. Oh, that's fun. So you had them close together. They can do a lot of the same things. Are you done? Is that it? Yes. Most

4:15 definitely. Went for it. Went for two close now. Yeah, we got the VODIS. You know, the V1 get one three deal second time range. So more than happy with that. That's that's funny. So I've got

4:28 three kids myself, daughters who are 15 and 13. So that, you know, we had them within about 21 months. So early on, as you know, like with kids at similar age differences, like, it seems like

4:43 they're a lot different. But as they get to be, yeah, certainly around the age that yours are, they can do a lot of the same stuff. So you can sort of put them like in a package, right? And

4:51 they can all go on the same rides together when you go to amusement parks or go to They're, they're into the same movies and the same music and even clothing wise, you know, certainly with us

5:00 having two girls is a little bit different, but

5:04 they could wear some of the same clothes and even still do you have a son, I have a son who's seven. So I thought we were done too.

5:13 Turns out we're not right. And we're like, you just assumed it would be a girl, right? There's a, there's a big gap there. Um, so then it's like, okay, he's into completely different things.

5:23 His energy levels are off the charts He's like far more, um, partaking in risk of your activities with his friends. You know, we, we live on a, there's like a, a walking path right behind my

5:37 house. And we'll see, you know, my son, Ezra, with some of his buddies out there. And we're like, wait a second. I think that they're spraying people with the hose, um, that are walking by

5:47 and we're like, boys, don't, don't spray people with the hose when they're walking by on the path. Like, that's not something we had to say to the girls. You know what I mean? Like one of them

5:56 would spray it and then the other one would run in and be like, Jill, you just sprayed somebody on the path of the house! Rule followers and said the boys were like, You're just, you know, no,

6:05 I'm sorry, no, it was his fault. And are your daughters like, how are they with that baggage gap? There's a good chance they're good at looking after or not. More so the oldest one. 'Cause she

6:19 was like, what about eight? When he was born So the, you know, Julia was a little bit older. There's more of like, almost an eternal relationship there. I think he's like, he kind of sees her

6:31 as a second mom. I think it's a little bit tougher for Sydney or middle 'cause she was the baby for a long time. And in some ways it's like, you little shit. Like you stole my thunder as the one

6:41 who gets all the attention. And now I'm just in the middle. Now I'm in the middle, right? So yeah, I mean, she will take care of him too, but she also, because they're slightly closer in age,

6:49 we'll kind of pick at him a little bit more. It's really fascinating to see, 'cause I'm the middle of three, but I was the only boy. So I was kind of held up as this like golden child, right?

7:00 And, you know, could kind of get away with a little more stuff. But yeah, it's fascinating to see how it all goes. Well, we'll come back to you in a minute, McCray. Luna, down in Mexico City,

7:13 right? Mexico City, so seal 753 for me too. Nice, nice. So Mexico City, I've never been My wife has been twice. I had a friend who, I'd say just after COVID when the whole digital nomad

7:29 concept was a thing, was living in places like Tulum for a couple of months. And then he's like, hey, a lot of the people, Tulum that kind of wore out the party scene here are now moving to

7:41 Mexico City, right? And they're actually like, you know, you have better connectivity and there's like real culture and a little bit more of a work in business focus. And he was saying to me,

7:51 that Mexico City is one of the most amazing cities in the world, and I need to get down there. It's really actually not that far from where I'm at in Denver, there's direct flights from here, but

8:00 are you from Mexico City originally? Yes, yeah, yeah, born and raised here in Mexico City. I lived here almost all my life, a university. I studied it here, mechanical engineering in a Mexican

8:15 university. Then I actually was fortunate enough to live one year in Aberdeen, too. Yeah, we're changed for sure. But yeah, after studying mechanical engineering, I knew I wanted to do some

8:32 kind of more robust sales degree. So I decided to study an MBA. And yeah, that took me to Aberdeen. I went there to study it for the

8:48 presence is a part of the. of

8:52 the study learning. So yeah, I was able to live one year in Aberdeen, experience also the Aberdeen culture, experience the long summer days, the short winter days for sure. But yeah, definitely

9:07 good experience. And when I was finishing the study, I was able to get in front of James Fisher at the time, Sean Cobb, still in the group. He's our chief digital officer of the James Fisher

9:23 group. He offered me to do, it is kind of required to

9:30 do an academic work, but with the industry. And so I started that part with them. And as soon as it was about to be ending, I was offered also. The youth offered to continue working for the

9:45 company, but my com in Mexico City. Did they want you to move back home, like strategically for being located in North America? Do they want you to stay in Aberdeen? Did you have to lobby to move

9:57 back? Like what was that like? I wanna say yeah, definitely a mix. I remember there was a conversation on what was the thing that I wanted to be honest for me since the beginning I knew I wanted

10:10 to get back home. I already was in a relationship We just recently got engaged a couple of months ago and we were going early next year. So yeah, I knew I wanted to come back home, but yeah, I

10:27 think also strategically as you mentioned, it definitely made sense to have someone else in the Americas region. At the time we have one other colleague also based in the Americas in Houston at the

10:42 time and. and. But yeah, I think the main idea was to focus and manage more of the Mexico relationship. And after that, then I was giving a little bit more of responsibility to support Houston,

10:57 to support Caridion.

10:60 So yeah, I think it definitely was a mix of things. I definitely remember one word that even Sean told me the Serene BPT.

11:12 Serene

11:15 BPT, yeah I'm assuming you speak Spanish. What's the Spanish word for serendipity? Serene BPT, yeah. Serene BPT, yeah. Okay, I see, I would have said serendipidad. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't

11:27 say it's even highly used in Spanish because when I heard it, it was like what? Definitely had to Google it, but yeah, it has to save quite a lot.

11:41 just the whole story, right? Mexico City, massive city, 10 million people going to Aberdeen, much smaller city, beautiful, but much smaller, and how a Mexican that was studying an MBA turned

11:57 out with a company that was wanting, or even used to be working with Mexico and was able to get an academic start of the process for Super in Mexico and just continuing to that So yeah, that word

12:12 definitely has stayed with me since then. Yeah, I'd like how you explain that. And to me, I love when I have people from all over the globe on this podcast, because truly, obviously I speak

12:28 English, McCrae speaks English, it sounds different when we say our words, you speak English, you also speak Spanish, but all of us speak the language of oil and gas. And that is a very common

12:38 international language that sort of bonds all of us. in this industry, and there's acronyms and terminologies that take time for people to learn, which is why for us as like a sales outfit, it's

12:50 really hard to bring people on that even if they have sales skills to introduce them to the industry, because all of a sudden you're getting thrown terms and acronyms and things that are second

12:60 nature to us, but make no sense to them. And then all of a sudden they're like, what was that? And then you're falling behind on conversation So it's fascinating to me that we might speak

13:11 different languages or speak the same languages and sound different, but we speak the common language of oil and gas on a daily basis where we're at. So that's kind of fun. And as far as

13:22 serendipity, yeah, that's like a serendipitous of an occurrence as you could possibly have, right? You've got a big enough company. You ended up in Aberdeen to go to school You met a good group,

13:35 and yeah, it makes plenty of sense for somebody to be based where you're at. to manage business both, I guess, North East, as you said, in the Caribbean and South as well, and also just where

13:48 you're at. So I'm sure you and I will be seeing each other, I think at the end of this month in Houston, which is fun. But Craig, back to you real quick. Have you been over to the States a

13:58 little bit? Have you spent some time over here? Yeah, I was over in July. I mean, Martin, we're in Austin and Houston. Oh my God. But in July. Yeah. Yeah, that one It's just really, really

14:09 cool weather, just really, really chill, right? Yeah, yeah, I mean, it was basically just the same as here in Scotland, yeah. That was nice to get some heat. But yeah, so that was the last

14:20 time, first time in a while I'd been there. I spent a lot of time there, just what you know, I said before, kind of traveled a bit when I was younger. So I spent a lot of time in the US then,

14:28 but that's the first time I've been back for work purposes since COVID. It was over about two weeks before lockdown kicked in for COVID So just made a home in time.

14:40 What was COVID like in, I send you a list of prep questions and here I'm going asking you absolutely nothing that was on that list, but what was COVID like in Scotland? Was it complete and total

14:52 shutdown for like a year and then casually opening up some pubs and restaurants eventually at 25, 50. Like at what point could you even like fly out of the country? I mean, for us it was really

15:05 state by state almost. There were some, you know, national regulations but every state and even within each state, it was different, you know? So curious what it was like in Scotland. Was it

15:16 countrywide? Was it full shutdown? Talk to me a little bit about that. Yeah, I mean, when it first started, it was nationwide, everybody was at home, you know, they all kind of came on us all

15:28 very quick and it's really strange to think back that that even was a thing that happened, that whole kind of period. But as things started to open up, it got to the point, even in Scotland,

15:37 really had it broken down by. counties or regions within Scotland, whereby

15:44 my mum lives in a different county to where I live, and she could travel, but we couldn't yet because our rates were higher and things like that. So it was quite difficult. I mean, my boys had

15:57 their second birthday in 2020, so about April 2020, so about a month after it all started. So that was just the five of us in the garden, and that was it All you could do, you know, there was no

16:08 parties, there was no anything. I have to say though, the weather, the weather was good that time, it was like 25 degrees, so it was at least, it was at least a good that way. But yeah, as

16:17 things started to open up, it was all, it got very specific based on where you were and all these kind of things, but it's led to like a huge amount of people still use the UK as a holiday

16:28 destination a lot more, you know, local people. For a long time, everybody, you know, the default was getting a plane, summer holidays go to Spain, Greece, Italy. They're all close for us,

16:38 which is good. But I think it led to people forgetting that we actually had a pretty good country that we're in from a holiday perspective. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it's an awesome place. I mean,

16:50 just based on my experience in London, I think there's some similarities. Obviously, Ireland's different, and Wales is different, and Scotland, but you do have some similarities, I think, in

17:03 terms of cuisine, in terms of eating a lot of fish, in terms of just accessibility of the water, and then also just location-wise, like, yeah, it's not that bad for you to get to the US, it's

17:17 not that far for you to get to the Mexico of Europe, which is Greece, right? How about for you, Luna, at that time, were you back in Mexico? Yes, so I lived actually 2018, to end of 2019 in

17:36 Albany, so yeah. lockdown came in 2020, right? So I was already six months in here. I think I, at that time, I even moved, moved place. So I was just starting three months living in

17:53 this exact place. So yeah, it definitely was kind of a shocking. I wanna say it was much more relaxed and even when discussing with the Aberdeen folks, it was, yeah, they were constrained to go,

18:07 even a specific miles and I think I remember Marina at the time, it was also, you were able to go once for kind of walking or running or something like that, my correct? Yeah, like an hour a day

18:18 or like the house, your garden. Oh my God. You're like under house arrest. A little bit, yeah, yeah. I mean, we were fortunate because, you know, where I am, you know, I don't even live in

18:28 Aberdeen. So I'm in a pretty small town. I mean, 10-minute walk, I can be beside a river, up a hill or a castle. So like, you know, we've got a good range of places you can go for a walk, at

18:39 least.

18:41 Yeah, but just knowing that one, I mean, it was like shocking. I'm not allowed to go out for Mexico, I wanna say it was much more relaxed. And I think probably one of the reasons that we end up

18:53 getting a lot of visitors, right? Yes, malls were closed, cinemas were closed, restaurants were closed, but I was able to go on and visit my parents as freely as possible. We in one visit, I

19:08 think I was infected by my dad. So that definitely came into place. Thanks, Dad. Thank you, Dad. Yeah, correct. And then I infected Pam. She struggled even in the process, but

19:23 yeah, it was much more relaxed and we were able to definitely do more things compared to, I think, world-wise

19:31 restrictions, right? and you were both working at. AIS at the time. Yes. So how did you navigate that from a business perspective? 'Cause my understanding is you guys have an international

19:44 business, right? You'll work with oil and gas companies looking to decommission wells. You'll help out in a variety of different ways, whether it be technology, services, 3D modeling, digital

19:59 twin, I don't wanna undersell what it is you guys do. But how did that impact your business? 'Cause my understanding is you guys are relying on actually going out to a place or having technology

20:11 bring in some data from a place and then process it somewhere else. Was that a tough time in business? Did business sort of continue as usual? Give me like the lens of AIS during the COVID days.

20:23 And I guess how it's different now. Yeah, I mean, in some ways it works in our favor. In some ways, you know, throughout new challenges, you know, we as a business already quite geographically

20:35 spread with our people. So we're already used to kind of remote working. The team's call was already pretty standard for us. Technology wise, everybody was used to it. So everybody hadn't having

20:46 to go home and work on their computers. It wasn't difficult for us to adapt, you know? I think in terms of the business, it gave us a bigger value prop. You know, in terms of working in our

20:57 favor, everybody all of a sudden understood or could see additional value in being able to remotely access their site from wherever they were located. You've got experienced engineers who are locked

21:09 down and you need their view on something out on an asset. They can't get out there. If they can see it, you can talk to them on teams, they can see it on an additional twin. Then it made a lot

21:21 of sense. In terms of us going out and doing some of the data gathering that we do,

21:28 Again, it was kind of a bit of a double edged sword in that, yeah, it made it a little bit harder for us to get there for if we were going to do that, but it also opened the client's understanding

21:37 that a lot of the time they had, they had a lot of the data they needed already, they just didn't have it in the right place. So working with them from where we were and pulling that data together,

21:46 then starting to give them that kind of picture of their asset without the need to send additional people there. We did have a few trips out deployments out to their assets because we were classed,

21:58 or the guys that go out classed as critical workers at that point, because it's the energy industry. So yeah, it was definitely a challenging time, but it had some upsides for us as well. Yeah,

22:12 and it's always interesting for me to hear that, because I think for my lens, my purview of this is United States, oil and gas, and technology. And

22:25 it's almost like each company

22:28 kind of established their own rules. So there were some companies that are like, all right, well, we are classified as a critical business. So therefore, we're just gonna keep coming into the

22:37 office. All right, I mean, there were some challenges with that happening, of course. And others are like, we're a bit of a younger, more nimble team, we're gonna go remote, and that ended up

22:50 changing policies, we're now, okay, you can work in the, we want you in the office two or three days a week, but you can work from home for two or three days, which was not as much of a thing

23:00 for the oil and gas operator over here. And even I would say like the most forward-thinking types of operators like the EQTs, we're like, you know what? We can use this to our advantage and say,

23:11 now we are a remote oil and gas company. So we're gonna, even though we're based in Pittsburgh, we're gonna hire talent out of Houston, or Denver, California, or wherever, and get the best

23:23 people we can possibly get, because we have this advantage that we've decided to embrace fully remote.

23:28 but it didn't happen industry-wide. And I think everybody sort of had their own preferences and priorities. And in some cases, for me, I've worked from home since 2009. And in sales, it's

23:40 oftentimes you work from home or you're going to an office if you have a headquarters when you need to. And then you're on airplanes traveling or in meetings. So it didn't really change too much for

23:50 me other than I didn't have to fly places, which was odd. 'Cause I think it was my wife especially, got used to me like taking a, oh cool, I got a little break from Jeremy, right? He goes on

24:01 the road and he gets energy from that and he connects with people and goes out and eat some steaks and God, now you're here all the time, right? What's going on? 100 100 on the week. Yeah, yeah,

24:14 so it was, it shifted that and just everything slowed down. It gave me a chance to think about like, not only what I wanna do next, but how do I creatively get in front of people? you know, in

24:26 addition to a podcast, like we started leveraging. more recorded videos even in emails, right? So instead of like oftentimes be like, all right, we're gonna sit down or have a session where we

24:36 walk through the contract and you tell me where your issues are, we negotiate it and figure out in person. Instead, I would like record my screen and be like, all right, I'm scrolling down to

24:46 page 16 right here, this is the important stuff, wanted to highlight this and point this out and then embed that video on an email, right? Just because otherwise we're in like 12 teams meetings

24:56 and trying to figure out that one piece and said we can do it in 30 seconds over the email and negotiate that way. So yeah, some changes that stuck and some that didn't, but I don't know, we don't

25:08 need to dwell on that time too much. It was such a strange period of time in general. I think there was some PTSD from it for quite a while from some people and I think some made life changes that

25:21 were positive, some made life changes that they haven't fully recovered from. And it's a very wide, spectrum. But I'm glad at least from a business perspective and a personal perspective, you

25:31 guys were able to figure it out and make it work. And because you're classified as a critical business, you know, you can make it all go down. We'll get back to James. Yeah, go ahead. No, I

25:41 was just going to say, I think, you know, I think the good thing for me out of that whole period from a technology point of view, not just in this space, but in general, you know, the fact that

25:48 you and I and Martin are having this conversation right now. Yeah, technically, this was possible back in 2019, but it wasn't done as much. And, you know, we, we, as a business and just as

25:59 people have that much better communication, much more comfort with using technology to communicate. It's good as it is, obviously, to get in person and try and do that as much as possible. Kind

26:08 of opens up things up a bit more. And I think we saw that in our space as well, is that there was a kind of

26:16 realization that, oh, yeah, we don't always have to go to the site to do the work we do. Some of this we can do because we were forced to, and it's that same kind of ethos, I think, is

26:25 definitely an upside, I think. It's 100 true, I think my business trips when I go places now are busier, but they're more focused. Whereas before, I think I would just go for the sake of going,

26:40 I haven't been to Houston or Tulsa in a while, I'm just gonna get out there and schedule a couple meetings and make it work. Now it's like, all right, if I'm going to go to one of those places, I

26:49 need to fill my time and go do it, right? Like you have a reason to actually go, which I think is a bit of a shift 'cause otherwise we can just do it like this, right? And get 80 of the impact or

27:01 in some cases even more. I think, for me,

27:06 that ties to the kind of value of technology in that something like an oil and gas asset, especially an offshore one. It's difficult to get to, there's only so many people you can put out there at

27:17 any one time. You want them to be as busy as possible, being as productive as possible. So if you've got, people are going out there just to sort of have a look around. trying to understand what

27:28 they need to do next time they come out there. That's not that productive. You could have somebody else in their place who's there doing physical work hands-on that's making a difference in the

27:38 asset and how it operates. I think it's kind of similar to what you're saying there in terms of even just how you do business trips now. Make better use of them once you get there.

27:48 Yeah, yeah. I think certainly, even just look at stocks, like Zoom technologies went through the roof and obviously it's leveled out. Whereas, you know, conical Phillips rex on mobile, cut

28:00 down as cheap as it possibly could. I think people that had foresight were like, all right, this is actually an opportunity, right? Like, this isn't going away, but oil is negative, right? Do

28:11 you have the, I'm not sure what the Spanish word is for this, but I guess in Hebrew, it'd be like, to actually go out and buy that stock, right? Because in In the moment, it feels like you're

28:25 buying something that could. at zero, stay at zero, go negative, whatever, but with a little bit of foresight, you realize there could be an opportunity.

28:35 Talk to me a little bit about what you guys do outside of work, right? Obviously, we all work and we talk about your, your AIS stuff and have a little bit of history of the story. And we'll talk

28:43 about how you got, got into James Fisher and, and all of that, at some point here too. But like, what is, we're, we're on a Friday, right? You, especially McCrae, you're in a Friday

28:53 afternoon, you got three kids, it's fall. What are you, what are you doing this week? Like, what does your weekend look like? What does your life look like outside of, you know, when we meet

29:02 for, for teams calls? Well, I mean, there's, you know, there's the, there's the, the life driven by what my kids likes are, you know, so there's the, there's the football matches and the

29:12 birthday parties and that kind of thing. But yeah, for me, you know, and it's quite good from a work perspective is that, you know, things like traveling, eating out, trying, you know,

29:21 trying new restaurants all over the world. It's something I do, me and my wife and my family, we do. we can, but I also, unfortunately, have to get to do it with a work perspective. And then,

29:33 you know, to kind of counterbounce all that eating, trying, I'm a bit of a runner, certainly not, you know, by any stretch and amazing runner or anything, but that gets me outside, gets me

29:41 some fresh air, gets some, you know, gets the blood flowing. You know, so that's something I like to focus on. And yeah, I think just, I suppose the other thing, and something I know that

29:51 Martin and I share, is motorsport and Formula One, so I've been an F1 fan all my life. So yeah, yeah, that's it. I'm sitting down on the couch. That's the sport that would be on the TV for me.

30:04 It's really, F1 has really changed. I mean, it's been around. I mean, I remember, was it Schumacher, as a name, right, where from when I was a teenager or something, and he was like the

30:16 dominant guy, but it was sort of like, not a mainstream sport by any means. And then all of a sudden, it's like Tom Brady and Tiger Woods are showing up to these events, and it's this. There's

30:27 events in Monaco and in Austin, Texas, and it costs a pretty penny to get in. It's pretty fascinating. I'm sure there's case studies in business schools, right, for people getting their MBA on

30:40 what happened, but like, how did that change? It sort of went from this like, people that were maybe NASCAR fans, but like faster cars, or maybe it was kind of this international view of car

30:50 racing to sort of almost like, I don't wanna say elitist, but sort of like a sport that caters to the wealthy in some ways. And you know, like, how did they rebrand? How did they do that? So

31:04 I'm actually, I'm reading a book just now called Fast Money, which is basically about the business behind the sport, right from the start. And it's quite fascinating actually, just how it all has

31:14 evolved nearly at the end. I'm sort of a few chapters from the end. So I'm almost to where we are just now, certainly up to the current owners. And yeah, I mean, the sport grew from some guys,

31:24 you know, lying in a gravel car park. doing mechanic and, you know, and just sort of racing at the weekend to what it is just now is quite phenomenal. But I mean, it seems, you know, it seems

31:34 there was a bit of a, you know, some of it was COVID related, some of it was the Netflix, you know, drive to survive series. I think that kind of grew its popularity turned the, you know, the

31:47 drivers into more personalities than they were before. I mean, you know, if you were, like I say, I've been an F1 fan since I was a kid, since it was a Scottish driver in the sport, David

31:56 Coolter Um, but if you weren't really, you know, an F1 guy, you didn't know anything. You never heard of it in most of them, you know, maybe a couple of names you heard over the years. But

32:06 nowadays, you know, they're much more kind of household names. Oh, for sure. I mean, if you were to look at Lewis Hamilton's Instagram following, it's probably up there with Messi and Ronaldo

32:18 and LeBron James and people like that. I would guess, right? I mean, these are international celebrities. Czecho Pérez is definitely a national hero here in Mexico for sure. It's awesome. Yeah,

32:29 no, that's awesome. So you guys have that common bond, right? Both of you really like the racing. So does that mean that you like to drive fast cars yourself, too?

32:40 I used to before I had kids and I had to drive, you know, practical family cars. Yeah, now you got a minivan. Yeah, exactly what I have, yes. Nice stuff.

32:51 I have to Yeah, no, you can, you're fine, Luna. You can still drive your fast cars for now, but you're getting married soon. So, it's come along. That's what's on the wall behind them.

33:03 That's his previous fast car on up the side. It used to be, it used to be mine yet. Is that a Mustang? Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Proper B8.

33:15 Yeah, I will say, and I'm not ashamed to have made it I, definitely was, you know, when when I was in my early 30s and we had two kids, but.

33:26 I like when we go travel places and we get a rental car and it's a minivan.

33:32 It's just so comfortable, man. The kids each sort of get their own space and oftentimes there's the little drop down TVs and they can stretch out and it's easy to get them set up in a comfortable

33:43 way that you don't necessarily get in an SUV or certainly in a full-size car. So any time we get one, my wife and her, Yes, let's not tell anybody how excited we are about this. We're not going

33:56 to buy one. We'll be really like when we get them when they run. We're definitely enjoying the trip. As soon as we knew we were having twins, that was the choice. The only way we could fit them

34:07 all in, but no, I like them as well, to be honest. It's a comfy drive and it's also, I mean, on Wednesday, our washing machines stopped working, so I had to go buy a new one. Chuck that in

34:19 the back, no problem. It's funny. But to see a sound throw in the back, you are the ultimate like suburban death right now. That's me. You could be anywhere in the world. So question about

34:31 Scotland, and I know Mexico 'cause we go down to Mexico, but like, what side of the road do you drive on? Is it the same as like England, UK? Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah, so it's just

34:42 - Come over here, it's like, what, what am I doing? Yeah, well, we, when I was older, I was Martin in July, and we hired a car to go from Austin to Houston. But I've driven, yeah, I've

34:52 driven overseas a lot, so I've kind of, I've done both. The strangest thing is when you drive a car from, like from the UK, but you take it over to Europe. And so you're on the wrong side of the

35:03 car. You know, I mean, you don't, you don't, you don't swap. At the same time, you swap in the road side. I was, I was just gonna say, right? 'Cause I went to London for the first time.

35:15 You know, we have a client over there, And we. I went over on a business trip and, you know, I'm just like such a like stupid American when it comes to this. I didn't realize that it's only like

35:26 a two hour and 20 minute train to Paris. Like I knew they were closed in a tale of two cities, all that stuff, but I'm like, oh, there's like a train that will take me from the center of this

35:35 city to the center of that city. And I can just do some work or fall asleep as this thing goes under the water, the tunnel. And then I get there and I'm like, oh, they're driving on our side of

35:48 the road, right? Then occasionally you would see people sitting on the wrong seat, driving on the wrong side of the road. I'm like, all right, that's weird, but I get it, right? 'Cause they

35:58 probably brought their car over somehow.

36:01 It's really fascinating and kind of funny to see. But yeah, obviously very different places despite being so close together, Paris and London, you know. Yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah

36:15 I prefer the food in Paris, if I'm. to be honest, and sorry, you probably align a little bit more with the food there. You guys have haggis, which I just heard about like a couple, what, what

36:24 is haggis? I mean, it's one of those. I want to say. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's what we tell the tourists. It's a thing that runs around in the hills. But no, it's, it's one of those foods

36:36 that you bear off not knowing what it is. So after you've tried it and decided that you like it, because it's, you know, it's, it's tasty, but you just try not to think about what it's made from

36:46 So what is it made from? It's basically the, you know, the, the bits that you would normally and they're kind of wrapped up in the stomach lining of the sheep. Yeah, for sheep. Yeah. Sorry.

37:01 Yeah. So almost like a really large sausage, but like thick. And then yeah, it's like I say, it does not, it sounds that appealing, but honestly, it than it better lot a tastes sounds I'd like

37:13 it. I definitely like it. do you put like gravy on it? Like do you like put lots of sauces, eat in a sandwich? Like how do people eat haggis? Yeah, I mean, the kind of the traditional way is

37:27 what's called haggis, nips and taties. So haggis, turnips, sweet, I think you would probably call them. And yeah, all mashed up. But you know, it's it's something that you kind of see in lots

37:40 of different things I mean, it's it's it's good with scallops. That's okay. You know, everything's good with scallops. Well, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. And Martin knows from his trip over here

37:51 last year that little kind of fried deep fried haggis, a little ball of haggis. That's yeah. That's good as well. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, you've just got to come over and try it Jeremy. There's

38:03 no there's no two ways So I'm definitely going to like at some point. It wasn't as much on the list. I don't know. There's like a romanticism, I think, for the American mind. which is going to

38:16 places like, you know, London and Paris and Rome and, you know, Amsterdam, if you're looking for debauchery, I suppose, and maybe even Munich for Oktoberfest. It doesn't, Scotland, for

38:30 example, doesn't hit your radar. Even Ireland, I would say, has more of like an appeal for people over here, just 'cause you see, you know, golf tournaments, there was even a football game

38:39 over there, a couple of American football game over there, a couple of weeks ago. And now this is Dublin, and then you go online, you look at Dublin It's almost like Scotland stays a little bit

38:48 more under the radar, at least in my mind, but it looks spectacular. You know, like you guys have everything you could possibly want, including a nice city and seems like a very friendly culture

38:59 as well. Yeah, yeah, no, definitely, yeah. You've got to come over and,

39:05 you know, from the likes of the Centre of Edinburgh, the Centre of Glasgow, the two biggest cities out to the sort of northwest of Scotland, it's like different worlds. or you can say that you've

39:16 been to Scotland properly. And you've got like, like you mentioned, castles and

39:23 bridges that you would see pictures of in books as a kid where you imagine a troll living under them, right? I mean, you know, things like that. So I do wanna see it and I'm excited too. Have

39:33 you been to Mexico? Yeah, yeah. So I was over there with Martin last year, just about July last year. Went to Mexico City and then we went down to Carmen and Vietnam also Wow, nice, nice. So

39:46 for you, Luna, your cuisine's a lot different. Yeah, definitely. The best cuisine I wanna say, but

39:55 I definitely enjoyed it. I think one of the shocking things when Martin came, it was actually the cuisine

40:05 to all the best places that we were able to. Of course, it was first work and then food and some all joined up even. uh, dinner, work dinner or something like that. Uh, yeah, definitely,

40:19 definitely one of the best things of Mexico. Yeah. I want to say it's, it's the first

40:26 and because Mexico city really is truly an international city. Like you probably have, you know, people will think about, all right, Mexican food, but I think you kind of have everything. Right.

40:35 Like if you want French food, you want Italian food, you want, I guess, traditional American fair, you've got it. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I mean, even once there was, um, one of the

40:45 biggest Scottish events is the Burns Night, right? It's November, Martin. No, January, right? And January, yeah. So Burns Night is a gala event, I want to say, every year, it's normally

41:01 used to commemorate Robert Burns. And then one, one Haggis will, will actually appear into the event, a poem, the poem that Robert burns growth for the haggies will be. will be shared within the

41:17 event and the Haggies

41:30 will appear into the event and all that. Reason why I'm saying one, there's definitely a big one in Houston happening in the Galleria area, I want to say. Being hosted, well, Nina Spencer, I

41:35 don't know if you have met her, she's part of the Organizing Committee, Paul Gunan is also part of the Organizing Committee As Polish members that organized it, and I want to say Sara Macolio.

41:48 Well, Sara gets involved in everything, so certainly if there's some sort of Scottish event in Houston, you can count on Sara. But I think I even saw two years ago, or three years ago, that one

42:02 Burnes Knight was hosted here in Mexico, and I wasn't aware So yeah, you can get all all all different of Indian. Scottish. Yeah, definitely a good, a good half for for having a bit of

42:20 everything.

42:22 No, I like that. I like that. Well, we've only got a few minutes left. I want to talk a little bit about the AIS James Fisher relationship. So my understanding at least is AIS was its own thing

42:33 for a while, right? And then at some point, you guys were absorbed or acquired or merged into James Fisher. Were you guys with the company at that time? Talk a little bit about sort of the you

42:43 know, the history of AIS. And then how'd you end up as now part of JF? AIS. Yeah, so I mean

42:51 I joined the company just over 11 years, 11 and a half years ago. So at that point, it was a company called Return to Scene, which was a company that was set up in 2007 in Aberdeen, built around

43:06 what is now the digital twin platform that we have, R2S.

43:12 developed for partly for the energy industry for oil and gas. You know, everything is an oil and gas hub in Europe. But also it was used and still is today, actually, used for forensic purposes.

43:27 So it's used by police forces, security forces. It's used to capture the scene of a prime, a major crime. And then it's used to allow people to visit it because it's hard to visit place or it's no

43:38 longer a place you can visit And it's used to gather all the information together. And then to give people in court or whatever, that visual context of all of the evidence. So the fundamental use

43:49 case is kind of the same still in what we do with energy. It's letting people who aren't there understand the space better than they could just with the data that they have. So it kind of grew from

43:59 there. And then, yeah, it must be seven or eight years ago now, James Fisher acquired us. And then about five years ago, we were We kind of reform those students who share asset information

44:10 services.

44:13 or AIS. And yeah, so that's kind of, that being part of that bigger group is really interesting. It's a really interesting group to

44:23 work with, or work as part of. James Fisher Sons is a group

44:30 that's 180-year-old UK marine company. It was all shipping, but nowadays it's energy, it's defence, maritime transport. So they do a lot of things in energy, but in the defence division,

44:40 they're also doing things like they build rescue submarines, they build

44:45 tactical diving vehicles for Navy SEALs and all the sort of stuff. So there's a huge breadth of capability in the group, but it's a really interesting place to work. Yeah, it's neat. There's got

44:55 to be a party that's like, Hey, that's not fair. We want to do the fun stuff.

45:00 Yeah.

45:02 Well, you guys do is fun too though, but no, that's neat. So, I mean, getting absorbed by a bigger company acquired by a bigger company, I'm sure comes with its set of challenges. Do you feel

45:11 like you guys still operate as its own company within James Fisher for the most part? Yeah, I think we've got a good blend of being part of the group and having some autonomy as well. So we're the

45:26 only kind of digital focused product line within the group at the moment. There are some other digital parts to what the group does, but they are more bolt-ons to a service or equipment kind of

45:38 based offering. So for us, we're

45:42 fortunate in that we can do, from

45:46 a digital perspective, we're doing things that other people aren't doing and we've been doing it for so long, we've kind of have a bit of experience in that space. The group in general has a real

45:55 push towards digital, as you would expect, and Martin mentioned Sean earlier on, so he used to run the EAS business, he's now the Chief Digital Officer at the group level.

46:08 So, yeah, I think it's a good balance there of we've got access and support from the group, you know, access into these markets that we wouldn't otherwise have. It's a real global business now

46:19 with operations all over the world. So that's a real advantage for us, not just in terms of access, but the people are in the experience and knowledge that's inside the group. Yeah, I like that.

46:29 And I think that that creates an opportunity for you also, right? The world is continuing to go more and more digital, obviously We didn't even talk about AI, but we know how much of a role AI is

46:38 going to play. So it'll be interesting to see how you guys get further pulled into the broader ecosystem over there, like, hey, wait a second, we've got this whole digital suite, right? These

46:50 AS guys know it. How can we leverage this for our broader platforms? I think that'll be fun to recognize. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely, you know, as part of what we're doing at the moment,

47:00 we can have an external focus for the markets that we're in, but we also have an internal focus and we're working with quite a few of the other. companies now looking at how artists can benefit them,

47:12 both in terms of just how they do the work that they do and driving efficiency and kind of digital innovation into that, but also adding to what they're putting out to their markets as well. It

47:24 gives them that differentiation to get some of their competition in their spaces. I love it. Well, we're coming up on time. I have a crazy Scottish lady, Sarah McCauley, texting me to tell me to

47:35 come on to a different call, so I do have to cut this thing off. I think we could probably talk for hours. Where can people find you guys? Where can they find your company, website, LinkedIn,

47:45 things like that? Yeah, I mean, so James Fisher, the website's jf-aiscom. That's the best place to start. From there, you can easily get in touch with any of us. For anybody in the US, Martin

47:46 said he's up in Houston quite a lot with a couple of other people out there and I'm going to

48:07 sometime pretty soon. So yeah, and anybody over the side are coming over this way. Feel free to get in touch and help me with digital transformation. We can help you with good food. All right.

48:18 All right. Well, Haggis Haggis on me when I'm over in Scotland and then I don't know, I got to get down to Mexico City to Luna, but I'm going to see you as well as at the end of this month and in

48:31 Houston, which I'm looking forward to. So thank you guys both for coming on what the funk.

48:36 You both did the name Martin. Good today. So hopefully for what that's worth. Well done. Thank you so much guys. Good to see you Thank you very much, Kelly.