Latest / UnDocked: The Maritime Transformation Show / Shipping’s Unicorn CTO Problem, LLMs vs. Browsers, and the Broken Interoperability Window
Transcript
- Raal: do I want to bring in people who really understand this technology that I know is potentially going to be interesting for me, but who don't know my business, who don't understand shipping Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: versus do I want people who really know the business inside out? the tools are getting easier and easier to work with and understand and require less, coding and stuff like that than they used to And I think there's no obvious answer, but that's a kind of a real pivot point. Nick Chubb: Hello everybody and welcome to Undocked. Hello to you, Raal Harris. Raal: And hello to you, Nick Chubb. How are you doing? Nick Chubb: I'm good. I'm good. I've I've Raal: Excellent. Nick Chubb: ended up losing hours of my day today, because of a new app that's just been launched by Chat GPT. Well, actually, Raal: my word. Nick Chubb: a new a new app that's been launched in Chat GPT, I should say. Raal: Do tell. Nick Chubb: I'm gonna tell you all about it. so I d I didn't really realise this. But ChatGPT now has basically a full app store. It's a bit like the Chrome plugin store. So if you've if you've been using Chrome for a while, you can go and download different plugins and just sort of add functionality to the browser. ChatGPT's done the same thing, and I've kind of thought I can't really see any sort of major ways this is gonna be useful just yet. But October half terms coming up. and so I need to I need to book a holiday pretty sharpish. and this morning Princess Cruises announced that they have launched a ChatGTP app. so I've installed it and it's quite cool. I can I can basically on my I'm gonna open it up here and and take you through it. I I can basically just type at Princess Cruises into my Chat GPT and say I need a cruise for the October half term. as low price as possible. And what it's gonna do now, it's gonna connect into the Princess Cruises booking system, find the available cruises for the October half term, and then send them back to me. And what it does is it is it sort of builds it as a web page within ChatGPT, it's sort of its own little artifact. and I can go through and I can look at all the itineraries. and at the moment when you click to to book, it's still taking you off to the actual Princess Cruise's website to book. But when you get there, all of the details that you've filled out and and looked for are all just kind of there and ready. so I may well be on a seven day Western Caribbean with Mexico cruise in a few weeks. thanks to the power of the Princess Cruise's Chat GPT app. Raal: so this is essentially a kind of like an intermediary between your sort of, please help me ChatGPT kind of lifestyle and the Princess Cruises app, right? Sorry, website and all of their sort of existing infrastructure. So. The real advantage here is what, what have they actually done that, that, you know, cause right now I, I mean, until I was aware of this, this innovation, I might, for example, put the same into ChatGTP and ask it. And of course it would go to the website and it will retrieve a bunch of information. So what is it that Princess are doing? That's kind of easing that or facilitating a sort of a more, a more of a workflow, let's say. Most organisations invest in preventing a cyber incident. Few can say with confidence how they keep operating on the day one happens. Insight and SmartSea build resilience, so an incident is a disruption, not a shutdown. Connecting technology, people, and operational workflows, so critical decisions can still be made, even when a single system is compromised. Because resilience isn't only about stopping attacks, it's about keeping the business moving when one gets through. Future-proof your digital defences with Insight Follow the link in the episode description. Nick Chubb: Yeah, sure. So it's something called a it's called a model context protocol, MCP which is basically an API but for AI tools. So it allows it to hook into the back end of the Princess Cruiser's booking system and search it and then pull data back out of it and then present it present it nicely. So you're right, a cynic might say that I could go on to I could just go onto Google or I could even just ask ChatGPT natively and say I'm I'm looking for a cruise. And you know that's certainly becoming one of the up-and-coming areas of marketing that people are getting panicky about is is you know how to make your stuff appear in in in ChatGPT search results. or or any other large language model for that matter. but the key here, I think, is the level of control that Princess Cruises is able to sort of put forward in in the data they're putting out. So You know, you go on you go on the website and you have to maybe s search by destination or you have to maybe, you know, search by very specific dates. I've been able to just ask totally in organic language, I'm looking for a a getaway for the October half term. I haven't set the specific dates. and it's been able to to go go and look for what's available. on the on the on the platform and then present that information in a in a really nice, nicely controlled way. and it sort of got me thinking about other areas. if if this is how the world of the internet and the world of search is gonna go, you know, what are other areas in the maritime sector that you you could have this kind of approach to to transacting? and you know, big platforms like ShipServe are built on the idea of taking a sort of, you know, big RFP, that Raal: Mm. Nick Chubb: that's already structured to a data model, but then sending it out to lots of different vendors, those vendors being able to come back and bid. and You have to go and log in directly to a ShipServe or or or or another procurement platform to be able to do that. The interesting thing about this is the the ChatGTP still has access to all of my other chats. It still has access to the context Raal: Yeah. Nick Chubb: about me, it has access to the context about the things I like or dislike. It's bit bit creepy. It knows I have a child, for example, and so it knows I'm booking for three rather than booking for two. All of those types of contextual things that otherwise you'd have to go and sort of manually in Raal: Hmm. Nick Chubb: input, it it can kind of make that judgment for you, which is quite interesting if a little scary. Raal: Yeah, I think it's worth us digging into that slightly before we go on to some of the other applications, So your example of the cruise, I booked a cruise recently for my mum and dad. So going through that process, there's a whole bunch of stuff that most people would expect from booking.com and stuff like that, where you're actually looking at. the itineraries and the dates and obviously and adults and that sort of stuff. But then when it comes to cruise, there's a lot of other things that they want to know and understand as well. For example, mobility, mobility is a lot of retired people who Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: may have things that they need to manage there. You've also actually takes you sort of through various options, which may not be immediately apparent to people if they're not familiar with it. And even down to like, well, okay, what cabin do you want in what class of cabin and what position? cabin do you want and you're normally presented with some sort of floor plan, which won't mean a lot. in my case, I was able to, you know, through professional contacts, thank you, Joost van Rij, shout out to Joost van Rij, Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: I was able to get Joost on the case to kind of tell me, know, what I based on the information that I told him, which was contextual. So this is the benefit really, of you being able to talk exactly as you say, in the context of the agent who knows, you know, who knows things about you and about preferences, but then to actually then pre-populate that because there's an existing trusted interface between the plugin in ChatGPT and what they'll allow to be sort of enacted there. And then the other thing that's worth thinking about there is like, what would a cruise operator or any other kind of business be prepared to disclose to its own agent through the website that it might not disclose to the whole. Internet price comparison and all that sort of stuff. So in other words it puts them into a into a symbiotic Relationship doesn't it they have a direct Interest in you and the fact that you're trying to book that cruise and therefore what they're prepared to disclose to you offer you Shape the package around your needs is going to be very very different than it just scraping an entire sort of internet, could be done by, could be bots on a price comparison site, or could be all sorts of other things going on. so, so Nick Chubb: Well and it it Raal: I think number one, it's that contextual, it's the level of information that might expose to a trusted party through the interface. And then number two, it's what, that then might enable during the booking process to make that whole, you know, bring that context in to sort of make those options much simpler. And then, exactly as you then describe Nick, it's like, when you think about that as the paradigm, what else does that then lend itself to? You mentioned procurement. Immediately I'm thinking, well, all of my CSR policies could be included into that. All of my preferences, providers that I've decided I won't do business with anymore for whatever reason, blacklisted, all those kinds of things. all about information about my regional offices, for example, where can I actually take receipt of things, know, what ports am I working in, my itineraries, where it's actually a really kind of interesting way that you can see a facilitation of a much more kind of intelligent workflow. Nick Chubb: Well as a there's a few other aspects to that as well. So so one, if I'd have just what I think is clever that Princess have done is if I'd have just gone to ChatGPT and asked, there's a fair risk I would have been shown cruises from Carnival or P&O or, you know, w one of the other brands. so that's quite interesting. And then the other thing that I think is quite interesting is in installing the plugin, I did have to give a little bit of data back to Princess Cruises about who I am. And so they they know my email address, for example. and so you know th this this ends up creating a sort of an entirely new marketing channel. Now obviously this is a consumer app. It's interesting to us, I guess, because it has it it is in the in the maritime world, but I can definitely see If this is where the future of the internet is going, much less browser-based, much more based on conversing with LLMs, I can absolutely see that the huge advantages in being able to give structured data to the LLM in exchange for getting some structured data about who the user is on the other end, and then being able to build that into your kind of overall go-to-market marketing workflow while also making the person buying, making their life easier as well. Raal: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I wonder as well that this is sort of something that kind of flips the kind of paradigm as well, because for a long time we've been sort of thinking about how do we bring them into applications that we use? and there's of examples of that where people have kind of... have their application and they've tapped into LLMs to do some functions on the site or within the app or whatever. This is actually kind of flips it the other way around, doesn't it? And says, well, people like to interface with their agent that they have working or their, I don't know what else, cause it's not, is that the right term? Is that what you call your LLM? It's not an agent in the sense of when you actually purposefully create Agents, but it is a kind of agent isn't it? It's a I don't know Nick Chubb: the thing that probably knows the most about you that you didn't realise you were sharing. I don't know what you c what you call that. Raal: Yeah. That's why they kind of give them names, isn't it? And like Claude and stuff like that. But you're talking to this thing. That's where the context is happening. That's where the information is sort of being gathered. And it's sort of the interesting thing about it is in most people's cases, it's sort of crossing a number of different domains. You might be Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: doing some stuff about your holiday, your children's party, some work stuff. So it's kind of, it is the hub. of the wheel in a sense. And what this, this app sting seems to do is kind of quite a neat way of then saying, well, no, it's, it's down to the rest of the world to sort of plug into, to this. Not that software vendors will probably like that model so much, but I mean, certainly smaller ones and startups and things like that will, certainly be like that. It's almost like kind of like the early days of the app store, isn't it? And thinking like, well, actually Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: Apple's going to be, I'm going to be the aggregator. I've got all the user data. I've got all the, you know, and if you want to play ball, you give me 40 % of your, which is a model that's served them very, very well. So it's kind of interesting that that's happened. Nick Chubb: The the Apple App Store facilitated I've just very speedily Googled one point four trillion dollars in developer billing and sales globally during its last year. That's trillion with a T. Raal: the last year. Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: Jesus Christ! that, read Nick Chubb: Yeah, isn't that incredible? Raal: that again, what's that number? Nick Chubb: The Apple App Store ecosystem facilitated one point four trillion in total developer billings and sales globally during its most recent fiscal reporting year. Raal: That is staggering and... Nick Chubb: So that that's everything, including there are some things that Apple doesn't take a cut from, but most apps that you can sort of download and then subscribe to for ten pounds a month, Apple takes a thirty percent cut of that. now n none of this i Yeah, it's I d Raal: Yeah. Yeah, is it 30? I mistakenly said 40. It used to be 40. Nick Chubb: it's I I I think it's thirty. Raal: Anyway, let's not quibble about 10%. Nick Chubb: Did it So Apple does not collect a fee on more than ninety percent of the total commerce generated in its ecosystem. Instead it primarily charges fifteen to thirty percent commission strictly on digital goods subscriptions in in app purchases. so it is estimated that it does twenty seven to thirty billion dollars billion with a B in direct revenue from App Store commissions. Which is wild. That's an insane amount of money. Raal: It is and it's why that there's do you remember Varis Farrakis, is that how you pronounce it? The economy, was briefly the Chancellor, wasn't he? Nick Chubb: Yes. yes, yeah, yeah. Yes. Raal: He don't want to get this to be too much of a diversion, but he does this thing about modern feudalism, techno feudalism, in just the Nick Chubb: Right. Raal: way that sort of, know, landowners in the past had these. had all the land and the peasants or serfs worked the land and in return gave most of what they produced to the feudal overlords. this is exactly why he kind of makes that analogy with tech that there's these relatively few gatekeepers who basically control access to market, Amazon being the obvious other one as well. But that's a diversion, but I put it in there for those that are interested to pursue that line of inquiry. Nick Chubb: What it's a s it's it's a slight diversion but it but but I think it i there's an interesting point to to make there and and that is that, you know, genuine feudalism took hundreds of years to undo. And what's interesting about the way that the pace that technology is going is something like the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store or Amazon have only been in the market for well you know anything from kind of ten to fifteen years up to up to maybe kind of thirty years. And now these new LLMs coming onto the market, you know, are potentially the the new gatekeeper. so, you know, I I see that as enormous opportunity for someone who wants to sort of get on the right side of Mm-hmm. Raal: Yeah, and it sort of, you know, I think it's an interesting debate as well for anybody that's looking at this from a maritime perspective. There are lots of examples and maybe, maybe this is thinking about some of the things I want to bring up which is around like sort of, you know, where is it appropriate to have a kind of a maritime ecosystem versus where does maritime have to plug in to Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: everything that's out there? And obviously the more the more maritime opens up to different kinds of tech, the more we want to be able to leverage the really sexy things that are happening out there in terms of technology, the more we have to perhaps de-marinise some of our expectations. well, sorry, not so much our expectations, we have to de-marinise our expectation that everything is kind of... bespoke to us and we're going to do something slightly different. And there's some some really interesting examples of that that we could divulge into where the rubber hits the road with those kinds of things. one of the examples that I can give you is in the kind of digital ID space, which is something, as you know, I've been working on. Nick Chubb: Yep. Raal: And this is kind of like the route that they first went down with. I the regulation is ILO 185, is a ILO convention around the digital ID of seafarers. And this is to do with their card. So before we talking a little bit about certification and the way that's going into, as as digitalization is concerned, a topic that we will be covering together at the end of next month. where there's a Thetius webinar Nick Chubb: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Raal: on building digital trust in seafare credentials. So look out for that one. But this actually, this ILO 185 is actually relating to their sort of, not towards their qualifications, but their identity as a professional seafarer and used. Just as there's a lot of interest and expectations around sort of digitalization of certification, same is true of this, is this more kind of employment card. And if you look at the origins of that standard, the first instinct was to go down like, well, let's kind of invent a maritime standard for this card. Yeah, what ended up happening there was that they, as I say, the rubber hit the road and then it was like, well, no, we are going to have to fall back to something that's a little bit more internationally recognized because of seafarers are, yes, we need to recognize them within the maritime context, but they're also moving through national boundaries. They're moving through, you know, airports, ports, Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah. Raal: know, homeland security and all those kinds of things. so, so you can't suddenly do something in isolation. So that's a good example of where going out to, you know, deciding, we need a maritime standard and then finding out that we need another one. I think there's a lot of examples of this that we're gonna see. And I've got two or three examples of that today, but this is obviously like a headache and potential driver for people in maritime companies that are... that are responsible or given the responsibility of working out a digital strategy, right? Because they're going to have to have to look at all of the constraints that we have, all of the needs where it really does need to be that maritime is really operating in a very different way in a very different context and may not be catered for by some of the off the shelf kind of solutions versus trying to make sure that they do things that are future-proofed and that are on the right sort of journey. So very interesting story that this sort of neatly takes me to that I saw on digital ship, entitled Maritime Tech Has a Unicorn Problem. Now this is written Nick Chubb: Ha ha ha. Raal: by a guy called Ethan Tyler, who works for Spinnaker, so in the recruitment business, and it was in yesterday's news. And this is the story that shipping companies are struggling to recruit senior technology leaders because they are increasingly trying to find one person who can do almost anything. And I think what's interesting about this is that when, by almost anything, what are they talking about? I should qualify that first of all. So, you know, what's the cloud architecture and infrastructure, cybersecurity, we've talked about that, data and analytics, AI, obviously, digital transformation, supplier and vendor management, because it's very rare people build everything themselves, building and leading technology teams that they're trying to kind of get together. commercial board level thinking because they're going to have to be, you know, the one who's representing those, those kinds of needs at board level investment requests and all that sort of stuff. And then, as I said, on top of all of those kinds of things, this really deep understanding of shipping. And, and also on top of that, the kind of the idea that this person is going to be able to think strategically, but it's also going to be really hands on and make stuff happen and earn their corn on that sort of thing. And I think it's really interesting article. where he kind of you know, gives an example of kind of like same job titles that he's advertising for, Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: but the expectations and the kind of organizations that they represent that he's hiring for could be kind of massively different from people who've Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: got no real IT strategy and you know, a bunch of data in spreadsheets and that sort of stuff. And they were looking to kind of build out that kind of stuff. And then at the other end, really maritime technology focused companies with like a hundred people in engineering and technology departments who've got like product leadership already in there and major kind of, know, cloud platforms and infrastructure already underway. And that person's kind of coming in to do that. And yet when he's kind of looking at the, you know, the market and the job titles, there's all of those things are catered for by not always the same position named position, but it's like head of IT or. CTO or Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: something like, you that kind of thing. And I think it's kind of interesting because it speaks to the lack of maturity in that market that we haven't kind of, that we still just have this one name for a role. There isn't already the kind of, you know, structured thinking around that and the differentiation Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah. Raal: of the roles, depending on what you're supposed to do. So I thought that was kind of interesting. Nick Chubb: It's a really interesting article and I and I the the thing that I took from it was I think was everyone having the same job titles, you know, sort of chief technology officer or or technology director, and then the salaries ranging from 90,000 to I think nearly half a million for the same j Raal: Yeah, head of IT. Yeah, that was a pretty. Nick Chubb: for quote unquote the same job or same job title. and I Raal: Yeah, that's very nice. Nick Chubb: I think that kind of speaks to the l level of Well, I don't say I don't even necessarily want to say the level of complexity, but almost the kind of level of bifurcation across the industry, where you you've got yeah, what what may feel like a complex operation you know, for someone who's who's operating ten ships, and actually that that could feel complex because there's lots of spreadsheets and things. or you you may look at a an operation that is responsible for seven hundred ships. and the kind of you know, the IT or technology departments will be totally worlds apart. and and I think the other the other aspect of that as well, which I think often gets overlooked is how often technology It's just sort of seen as this single kind of lump of stuff. And it could be IT, it could be OT, it could actually be you know, technical systems on board the vessel. you know, and so so you can have a you know, for a large shipping company, you can have a chief Technology Officer who's responsible for all of that. and it's sort of impossible to become expert in in everything. So I I I think sort of really understanding what are the bits you need to be expert in, and then And and then perhaps what are some of the things that come with any senior leadership position in a in a large organization that you need to be thinking about? Raal: There's also another thing in there, which I think is something for all the people that listen to this podcast that working in this space need to think about. And it's like, do I, do I want to bring in people who really understand this technology that I know is potentially going to be interesting for me, but who don't know my business, who don't understand shipping Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: versus do I want people who really know the business inside out? And the tools are getting easier and easier to kind of, you know, to work with and understand and be more kind of require less, you know, maybe coding and stuff like that than they used to and sort of go that route. And I think there's no real, there's no obvious answer, but that's a kind of a real pivot point. And I had that in places that I've worked before where we had to kind of really look at that because The answer is obviously you need to find some sort of blend in there and you need to put the team together that can kind of balance Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: that out because the two things are, mean, shipping is so, so context driven. And I've worked with software engineers who've been extremely frustrating because they think they kind of worked it out. And then, you Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: know, it can be quite arrogant sometimes in sort of telling you you're going about the problem in the wrong way, you know, when it's just simply that they just have no idea how actually complex and convoluted and exception driven our world is. Do you know what I mean? That's part of the issue, I think, that there's always so many exceptions. Nick Chubb: The opposite can be true as well though, as w you know, where someone who's highly, highly experienced in the industry, you know, kind of misses a bigger transformation Raal: Yeah. Nick Chubb: going on in technology because because of the thinking that this will this will not work in my, you know, in my industry. You know, to your point about about digital ID, you know, it's unreasonable to expect a CIO to become an expert in or a CTO to become an expert in digital ID for seafarers and onboard systems and IT systems ashore. You know, that s something's kind of gotta give somewhere. and and that then I think becomes a you know, a case of how you kinda construct a team. Raal: Yeah. And what you need from that leadership team. So if we, if we, if Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: we kind of go down some of the examples that we've called out of being really good practice where people have been very, very good at leading transformation, very good at bringing people with them at kind of, you know, galvanizing the team to do that, you know, that person may not also be someone who's, who's can get their hands dirty in the actual technology itself and maybe doesn't have that full understanding. Nick Chubb: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Raal: And that again speaks to structuring the team in the right way to have very good people who are very good technology focus and people who are perhaps more able to lead transformation. And again, this really comes back to sort of what it is that you want to do. What is it you're trying to achieve and what is it that you, where are you starting from as well in terms of, you your maturity. But I think what's kind of interesting is that the chap, Ethan, is too politically savvy to make this point. So I will take it from, Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: you know, I think the real question here is, is shipping, you know, looking for the unicorn out there because... And the problem is there's not enough of those kind of special candidates, or is it that they're just designing an impossible job that cannot be Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: reconciled? And I think, again, I think that's perhaps down to the maturity of thinking about these functions. Nick Chubb: I give you a one other thing that the head of IT or the CIO or the CTOs are now gonna have to get their their their head around. Raal: Yeah, sure. Nick Chubb: that is CCTV in use Raal: Mmm. Nick Chubb: across the fleet. So there was a a story that came out I think it's today actually about Newport ship management has just completed the deployment of M2 intelligence is GVMS Have you ever heard of GVMS as a as a concept? Raal: I don't think so, doesn't ring a bell. Nick Chubb: me neither. I had to go and had to go and look it up and I I've consider myself s something of a of a geek on this stuff. it is a global vessel monitoring solution. Raal: Okay. Nick Chubb: But it basically it's it's s it is CCTV that it instead of sort of pointing out to the world, there's lots of systems like Orca AI, for example, that kinda look out into the world and and see what's Raal: Yeah. Nick Chubb: going on in the world around the ship. this looks in. so it looks at spaces like the bridge, spaces like the ECR, you know, the main deck, the forecastle, the kind of stern mooring arrangements, and has a live CCTV feed and then puts an AI layer kind of on top of it to make to to to make the kind of analysis of of what's happened possible. so it sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole about the the the use of ctv on ships. and I actually I discovered that the Indian flag has taken a bit of a lead on this. they actually put out a notice last year saying that that CCTV is now mandatory for all Indian flagged merchant ships and for foreign ships trading on the in the Indian coast. Foreign ships calling at Indian ports are also recommended to have CCTV installed on the ship. And there's there's a set of th they've laid out kind of in a table a set of based on the the tonnage of the ship, how many cameras you should have, where those cameras should be, and they've set some some deadlines as well. that thirty-six months from the notice or at their next survey, they have to have this these systems installed. Now, I kind of thought, well, okay, that that kind of makes sense. kind of see, you know, a lot of ships have CCTV already. but what I my memory of CCTV on chips is kinda like, you know, like the grainy Crimewatch CCTV where you know it's a frame every few seconds. Raal: Yeah, the fidelity is not great. Yeah. Nick Chubb: Yeah, exactly. The specification on this is that it has to be filmed in 1080p so it's HD, and it has to be thirty frames per second. and anything on open deck has to be IP sixty six or sixty eight rated. So basically it has to be waterproof. waterproof, weatherproof. all the footage collected on board has to be stored for at least fourteen days. and you should have as a minimum monitoring stations on the bridge, in the control room and in the citadel. the the flag can request access to to footage and the managers and owners should also be able to access the footage that's on board, otherwise it stays sort of locked down to the to the ship. and something I'd never seen before, is the The Indian flag have said they are h strongly encouraging owners to invest in AI analytics. highly recommends AI analytics systems for use on board. So it's not just about having a record of what's happened on board, it is about sort of bringing AI in to help improve the the safety, security, productivity of of the ship. Raal: Well, firstly, will you send me that? Because if you Nick Chubb: Sure. Raal: remember when I did my presentation, when we did the Undock Live in Bergen and I presented my idea, one of the things I gravitated to was that, if you remember, I took an analogy and Nick Chubb: Yes. Yeah, yeah. Raal: I'm doing another version of that. I've sort of upgraded it for Crew Connect. I'm gonna present it there. Nick Chubb: Nice. Raal: And at that time, what I was looking at was, black box recordings, which do not always have, not black box recordings, aviation. Nick Chubb: Video. Raal: We can learn much from aviation, but we don't need to Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: call it a black box recording. The VDR, quite right. So this is for those, the uninitiated, these are the feeds which are then recorded should, should much like a black box recorder, whatever happens to VDR. And there are systems on board that get that off the vessel and thus allow us to do sort of incident accident investigations. Very helpful. for those and for claims, investigations, all that sort of stuff. But they don't have to. Sorry. Nick Chubb: Just a a s a side note, th w when you when you work at sea you'll you'll end up, you know, chatting with people. There'll be you know, a couple of people on the bridge at night, and you'll be chatting from midnight till four in the morning. And so you cover a lot of ground. And the number of times in my time at sea I thought to myself, God, I really, really hope we don't have an accident. because if this recording feed gets pulled off the bridge and and the the the conversation that we've been having over the last half an hour gets played to the world in some court or something, it's gonna be so embarrassing. Raal: Yeah. Wow. And then they wonder, don't they, why, you know, we struggle to form good relationships on board and all that sort of stuff. I mean, I mean, in all seriousness, what other environments are you in potentially where that's a real possibility? and this speaks to the privacy thing. I mean, that was the thing. When I was putting the presentation together, you know, I could see a lot of cross looking faces when I start kind of sort of explaining. And it is that sort of, I always miss attribute this one. I'll try and get it right this time. It's lock, isn't it? I think the social contract. And that's the idea that you exchange your freedoms for safety, for security, right? So this Nick Chubb: Right. Right. Yeah. Raal: is why we allow laws and things like that to restrict what we. can and can't do, but in return it restricts other people and therefore we're protected and we're safe and all those Nick Chubb: Right. Raal: kinds of things. And we pay taxes so that there can be a military that can protect us and all that sort stuff. That's all in lock, I believe. And it's a bit like that. We're in one of those kind of dilemmas here because of course, if we can analyze what's going on all the time, we can maybe spot an AI is the enabler here because we can't possibly sit through hours and hours of footage or. be there in real time seeing what's going on. Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: But AI can go through and it can find those patterns and it can see what led perhaps to an unsafe act or it could see perhaps work not being performed as imagined and therefore that might be a precursor to corners being cut or things kind of happening. So there's Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah. Raal: clear. But what's really fascinating to me in what you're saying there is the mandation of the flag for this. And yeah, because It does change the game in quite a big way if we're sort of, if we start mandating this, because then that then it's a little bit like the kinds of things that were going on, you know, in COVID. It took a lot out of the operator's hands in terms of the decisions they needed to make around what they were going to do to try and keep people safe, how they were going to interpret Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: the guidelines. And this is a big, big, big, big change. And I think a lot of people will be very uncomfortable with it to be honest, particularly the mandation of AI. But as I say, without AI, you're collecting video for what purpose? You're keeping it for 14 days. What realistically, other than an incident investigation in the manner you describe, there's no other purpose for it, right? So the introduction of AI is a bit of a game changer there in terms of what happens. And mandating it is quite a spicy move, I think, by the Indians. Nick Chubb: Yeah, it is. And and I and I think it's worth saying, you know, on that on that point you make around lock and you know, that there are real benefits to be gained from systems like this. So so Shipping Systems has a a system called Fleet Vision, which is you know it's very similar to two intelligence in terms of the kind of the basic presence basic premise is it it's inward facing CCTV. but what they've been able to do, which is quite interesting, is They use AI to track things like maintenance tasks being done. So instead of going to the plan maintenance system, getting the job, doing the job, then having to go back to the plan maintenance system and write a detailed response about what was done, the system will effectively track that the job's been done, the inspections have been made, whatever it is, and then can go and just update the plan maintenance system straight away so it can be approved by someone rather than having to do lots and lots of paperwork. Similar kinds of things you know in in terms of you know marpole compliance, for example, and things like the oil, you know, oil oil log book, all of that sort of stuff. So that there are areas where it can reduce the burden on crew. but there there's there's some quite interesting thetis research on this. I d I did a bit of a search earlier this afternoon. and there's a quote from a anonymous quote from a chief product officer of a supplier of CCTV systems. and they said the crew often feels that they're they are observed, monitored, controlled by the team ashore. Crew were damaging the equipment, breaking the cameras, or turning them away. and that mandatory notice from the Indian flag, interestingly, you could get a a flag state deficiency if you don't have the system installed. but faulty cameras or cameras that have been switched off will not count as a deficiency. so so you know there there's a bit of a there's a bit Raal: Well... Nick Chubb: of a loophole in this in this whole thing. Raal: Yeah, well, you know, and and again, brings me to my point, right, when we talk about transformation, this would land on a you know, this is clearly a technology question, and it would automatically normally land down that route. But actually, the success of this kind of thing directly relates to the crew understanding this and and ultimately accepting that this is in their interest and benefit because otherwise exactly what you describe will happen and why shouldn't, you know, why shouldn't that be a course if you, if you don't get that right, you've got to expect that there will be resistance, I suppose, is a politest way I can think of putting it there. But you know, the, but the application there for it, in my view, the thing that the biggest thing, and obviously it's the topic that I gravitate towards behavioral stuff, right? the amount of rich information you could derive around the culture that's on board, way in which people are interacting together, the way in which people are checking for understanding, all those kinds of things, the attitude people have to the work that they do. But all of that is potentially really, powerful. And as someone... that looks at, you know, how do we work on those channels with people to have a starting point and a real baseline and a real understanding of the reality, the lived reality on board Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: the vessel. Because then that gives you like, you know what you're doing, you know what you're up against, you know what you need to work on. And by the way, you can then return and see whether the interventions that you design make any difference to that, right? So it's hugely beneficial. Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Raal: And as a good actor with good intentions, You know, you can see that it would be, it would give you something to really power up what you were doing, but you can't get away from the privacy concerns of it. think, I mean, I don't see how you, how you can do that without acceptance, consensus, you know, people being willing to do it. And, and I think, I think we're a long way from having those kinds of things in place. I haven't seen anything Nick Chubb: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Raal: that's making the argument, but I certainly will do my best to provoke it because as we've seen a lot of the time, the technology outpaces our ability to kind of move things around, some of the things around it to actually make it work. Nick Chubb: Have you ever heard of the Hawthorne effect? Raal: No. Nick Chubb: So that is a there there's a a factory in Illinois called Hawthorne Works. And between nineteen twenty-four and nineteen twenty-seven they conducted a lighting study. And so they basically they they changed what was quite a dim electric light, they changed it to a much brighter electric light, and they observed that productivity went up. and then over time productivity sort of went back down. So then they decided to t test a different type of lighting so they switched it out for a kind of much warmer light. And they found productivity went back up again. and then again over time it just sort of started to go back down. And then what they found over eventually someone realized that what was happening was not that the lighting was changing, it's that there was someone stood at the top of the gantry in the factory counting productivity. And everyone in the factory could see that someone was stood at the top of the gantry counting productivity, and therefore productivity went up. And so it's this it's this behavioral effect that when someone's being observed. Raal: Yeah. Nick Chubb: They end up behaving differently and and in the short term it needs to becoming much more productive because of the feeling of being observed. And I think there's an element of that. I can also see, you know, potentially, if you're kind of willing to embrace it, lots of ways that if you need to prove that something got done to a port state, you know, port state surveyor, for example. and you know, you you can you can show them the logbook where it's been written in, that's one thing. But actually if you can show a bit of video that shows that the crew did the thing they were supposed to do, you know, that that becomes y take take that into into legal cases, for example. That that becomes really, really compelling evidence. So I c I can see ways when it's used correctly, that actually it would become a massive net benefit to the crew, 'cause it gives them a layer of protection. As long as obviously they're they're They're doing the things that they should should be doing. Raal: I mean, certainly when you put your point around, know, when you're observed, you perhaps generally do more of what you're told. I think potentially, yes, but also as well, I think what you see on those kind of reality TV shows where people are filmed all the time, they Nick Chubb: Yep. Raal: kind of forget that it's there, right? And then it becomes, you know. power of that I think kind of diminishes pretty quickly because no one can be on high alert all that time I mean and even if that and if they were it would Nick Chubb: And that's why Raal: be detrimental to their relaxation and health anyway so yeah Very interesting. The laws of unintended consequence will be, you know, like you said, will this lead to a changes people are expecting or will something else happen? On that I came across something else this week which I sort of I went down a bit of a rabbit hole and I'd love to share with you. So are Nick Chubb: Yeah. Go on. Raal: you familiar with the maritime single window? Nick Chubb: I'm I'm familiar with it. I mean I've I've the term has been used a lot over the last decade. I've I've I think I've seen talks on it, I've been to panels about it, I've read papers on it. In all honesty, ten years on, I'm still not a hundred percent sure what it is. Raal: Yes, it's a bit like those words that you use a coat but without real, you you kind of know roughly what they mean, but you're not like 100%. And Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: some of those I've been using for many years and probably misled people on a number of occasions with my intent. so let's break it down. So I was exactly the same as you and I'll come to the story in a second, but it doesn't really work unless you know what. Maritime single window is. so breaking it down to its simplest kind of form, right? When a ship comes into port, there are lots and lots of people who want to know about it fundamentally. So you've got, you've got the port itself, you've got the customs, you've got immigration, health authorities, coast guard, and others as well, right? So lots of people are going to want to know. And then a lot of them are going to want to say the same information fundamentally for different. reasons, but they're more or less the same thing. So before the maritime single window, is some was known as the MSW. We love our acronyms in this industry. Nick Chubb: Okay. Raal: The ship might have to give that same information to lots and lots of different people, okay, using lots of different forms, lots of different systems to input stuff in. And so the, the idea of the maritime single window is it's just a single digital letterbox. The ship sends its information once and all of the right authorities can then get what they need. So instead of kind of knocking on six different doors telling everybody, the same thing, you eventually knock on one. That's basically it, right? Okay. So the IMO basically got behind this. So two years ago in January the 1st, 2004, it became mandatory for ports to have this maritime single window under the IMO FAL convention. Okay. So a single electronic entry point for arrival, stay and departure information. And basically within that last two years, the IMO is now taking a look and running a survey, which will close on the 31st of October. So the end of next month, at time of recording, looking at that implementation gaps, good practice, what's actually going on out there. And the idea is that they'll sort of learn and see what's actually sort of going on. And I think it's well worth them doing that because when you look at sort of what was going on before, it was kind of implementation of Maritime Single Window. It certainly was less than desirable, let's say. It was a BIMCO survey. I can't remember exactly when. I think it was the year before in 23. Maybe I'll look at that when we, yes. BIMCO led maritime digitization survey conducted in 2023 with help from the great and the good that was looking at. So that's before implementation in January 2024. And the figures that they quoted there was around it taking on average 191 minutes to prepare Nick Chubb: Wow. Raal: and port code documentation. So every time they Nick Chubb: Wow. Raal: go into a port, That's the investment from the busy, busy people. And 64 % of the port calls in the survey cited that they still involved some sort of, you know, combination of paper and digital. So far from being any kind of, you know, it was not starting from a position of digital maturity and then saying, okay, let's try and give that one entry point. It's actually like beyond that, sort of almost like a digitalization. kind of thing there. So clearly that survey from BIMCO kind of highlighting sort of what the issues are previous to its implementation. Now, where is the problem in this and what might come out of that survey? Well, from what I can see, somebody please tell me, do get in touch if you have different information. But from what I can see, One of the big problems that we find in this is that whilst they mandated that single window, there was absolutely no mandation of how to do that and what the digital format should be or what the transport should be or anything Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: like that. So the risk is that this survey comes back and just says, yeah, we've got like one entry point, but there's no means of doing it. Also as well, we yet to see, you know, has this actually come to pass? Have people actually, you know, of followed it, essentially? Nick Chubb: So but perhaps as a as a s as a starting point, it'd be good to just explain the the FAL Convention to to anyone who doesn't know. So it's it's short for the facilitation convention. And it's basically the exchange of information between ship and port. So there's a whole bunch of different declarations a ship has to send in, preferably in advance before they arrive. So things like the cargo declarations, what cargo's on board the ship, the ship stores declaration, you know, what are they carrying on board? You know, particularly sensitive if you're, you know, for example, if you're if you're transiting places where alcohol is banned, you know. what what it what is actually stored on board the vessel. the crew effects declaration, so to make sure that, you know, if if the very well paid captain or chief engineer has a Rolex that they don't get accused of importing Rolexes into the country the ship's visiting. they have to have all of you know all effects listed out. A crew list, a passenger list, dangerous goods manifest. The Declaration of Health, so essentially saying that you you haven't got smallpox or anything like that going on on board, which became very important during COVID. the ship sanitation control exemption certificate, so that that is basically the we used to call that the kind of deratting certificate, basically saying that you don't have rats on board the ship because rats tend to spread diseases. so all of these different certificates have to be or ha have previously had to be created by by hand or different lists created by hand and then sent once the ship arrives. and the Fowle Convention mandated from twenty nineteen that that should be done electronically. and but to your point, Raal I I I Googled Maritime Single Window when you brought it up. And the UK's National Maritime Single Window came up and I got very excited because it looked like you know I could go in and and submit all of my lists through a through an online platform, which is which is quite exciting. And then I clicked into it and I found a list of Excel documents I can download as templates that I then have to then complete myself and and then Raal: Yeah. Nick Chubb: I could log in and upload all the Excel documents. And I'm quite Certain if I was in the EU, it would be an ever so slightly different way of doing it with ever so slightly different Excel documents. Raal: Well, let's just clarify one point here. So the EU has actively tried to solve this problem. So the EU acknowledges national port reporting systems have historically had different requirements and interfaces. So it's European maritime single window environment applicable since August 2025 as a harmonized data set and common reporting interface and once only principle across MSWs. So at least Europe have sort of seen this, tidied it up and attempted to do it. Almost certainly we've been excluded from that in the UK. But again, know, that's Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: the kind of, these are the sort of the dangers here, right? So because you could say, well, there probably is, perhaps maybe I haven't made it clear. think there is a harmonized data set of what people Nick Chubb: Yes. Raal: want. But I think the issue is the systems themselves and how people have to do it and access it and all those sorts of things. So, yes, okay, so maybe Europe then makes that a little bit easier for people by comes down, but then everybody else outside of that doing something different is unhelpful. Now we'll see, won't we, what comes back from the survey and we wish them well with that, but it's a good example of where we're perhaps mandating things without full and due consideration of kind of how things are actually implemented. And we think we may be solving the problem we don't. Once again, this brings me back to the Seafarer ID and the certification thing, because it's a very, very similar story. And BIMCO have been on the front foot in terms of looking at, know, making sure that there's an interoperable standards, because we want to make sure that if you issue a certificate, that it's, you know, it works in perhaps different contexts, different digital systems that need to kind of then check Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: and then validate that. But your interpretation of these things is really, really potentially very, different in terms of what you, one, what your expectation is around the levels of security, two, how you approach trusted parties and that sort of stuff. Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: But that's for the webinar at the end of next month, which you can sign up for on Thetius website, I believe. Nick Chubb: Yes you can. Yeah, it's live. It's up and running. Raal: And, but I think these are the kind, sorry, but these are the kind of discussions that when it comes to things like interoperability, it's not just about kind of how we approach the data. And it's, it's, it's about how we kind of set kind of common standards and how we do that. When we have lots of different localized, you know, ways of doing things, how the EU approaches digital ID versus. how the US does it versus how other parts of the world might do it. And all of those things are kind of digital maturities at different stages. They will have dependencies on other systems that things need to relate to. So trying to herd everybody towards a common set of doing things is very, tricky and possibly unrealistic. So the next question is how do we achieve not just interoperability and sort of file format, but actually in workflows and things like that that actually work for people. Nick Chubb: Well and it and it's you know, it it's nice how when these things th th we we never plan this out, but it's nice when these things sort of tie back together, isn't it? Because As we talked about right at the top of the show, those workflows are changing, you know, and the idea of of having, you know, FAL information being pulled together by a a large language model or some kind of AI agent that is taking the data and then sending and receiving it via an MCP to some kind of government gateway service to to to cover off the FAl convention requirements, that doesn't feel like it's very far away, or at least has the potential to not be very far away. But then when you look at something like Seafarer ID, so our the Thetius team has been researching this for the last two or three months, and as Raal said, we've we've got research launching on it at the end of October. the actually kind of having a a a sort of single record of truth to who the individual seafarer is that every party can buy into and every party can trust and can be delivered digitally. hasn't really existed historically. And that's created a whole host of different problems, which we can probably get into you know, in in in the coming weeks. but I think all of this all of this has the potential to kind of tie together to totally turn to transform how all of this work gets done. because that's what's happening in in the kinda in the rest of the world or in in in other sectors. Raal: Yeah. And, know, at the risk of trying to look like we're tying everything up with a bow, this falls on the desk of the CTO or, or Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: the head of IT is it's still some quaintly advertised for some of these roles. you know, th these are the kinds of things that they're having to get their heads around. Not just, it's not just about like, can this, you know, can I achieve this kind of point idea of this point solution and how that kind of works? But what does this mean in terms of the whole kind of ecosystem, the way things start, you know, because the convergence now is extreme. And the examples that I gave you there, which is sort of interesting, is you've got got the foul convention. You've got this MSW over here. We've got the ILO 185 that I mentioned, you know. And because these were all sort of, separate physical cards being, know, or separate physical pieces of information that we're changing within fairly kind of Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: walled gardens. They've kind of grown up as separate things. But if you actually look at it, what have we been talking about? We've been talking about ILO 185, which is my professional identity card as a seafarer. says my profession is seafarer, right? We've got these certificates, which are saying, now, these are the qualifications that I've assumed in my career. Then you've got the MSW maritime Single Window where you want to be able to say to people who's on board and potentially, you know, have they done the right training? Are they safe to kind of bring that ship into into my port and all that? It's actually one thing. It's one problem. Or at least it needs one solution to all those kind of multiple needs. And because we've these things have grown in silos, they haven't necessarily been even thinking about the problem in the same way. And I think that's where it becomes really fascinating for us at the moment in this industry because there is so much convergence. You mentioned about a planned maintenance system. Planned maintenance system has needed to know absolutely nothing about the CCTV that's involved. Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah. Raal: No, it's just completely different companies working in completely different spaces, not competitors at all. What's going to happen now if we start to of go down that road then? What does that then mean? for crew systems, for training, all these things all start to kind of converge. And again, where do they converge? They will all converge on the desk of that CTO. So this person that's kind of been a bit of an outlier within a shipping organization suddenly becomes undeniably kind of center stage as the person on who this fits. So without wanting to tie everything up with a bow brings us to... the Digital Ship Summit, which you've put together and which I have no financial interest in, should point out before Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: I plug it. But what I loved about it, and I'll let you, I'll hand the mic to you to talk about it, but like, you know, from the beginning, when you and I were kicking around ideas, when you first were thinking about what events belonged in Digital Ship stuff, you know, this is the thing that I love is that this idea that there is, that we start creating spaces for these people to come together and have these conversations without I don't want to call it noise because it's all important stuff, but without the distraction of many other topics and many other voices, there needs to be a discussion at this kind of very, you know, technical level where, people can start to see how they're approaching these different problems and hopefully converge on some, you know, some themes to start being more aligned. Nick Chubb: Yeah, and actually we we have a panel on data and IT infrastructure. in fact we have a whole session on data data and IT infrastructure Gunnar Eida from Odfjell is coming to give a keynote presentation on how they manage both digital infrastructure, but then also platform infrastructure within Odfjell as a as a as a fleet. And then we've got a really interesting panel. We've got various CIOs, VPs of IT who are joining that discussion with a kind of debate style question of should you consolidate around a kind of single platform vendor or should you look for best of breed across the fleet? And look for best of breed solutions and work out how to integrate them. There are some very divergent approaches and divergent views on that panel. We had the kind of pre-chat about it earlier this week. And I think it's going to be really interesting. The kind of short answer that I've taken so far is there isn't there isn't necessarily a right or wrong answer, but there's a very clear choice that you have to make as an IT leader to work out which direction you want to go in. And it needs to be a deliberate choice. You shouldn't, what you shouldn't do is sort of drift into it. But no, Raal: Mm. Nick Chubb: you're right. We're absolutely trying to create Create that space for IT leadership, IT and digital leadership, because I think it has been underserved historically. And so, yeah, we're all all of the sessions are kind of geared around the the hot button issues that IT leaders are facing who are kind of operating a modern fleet. And we've got some really exciting speakers on on the docket. I will say If you go to the Digital Ship website and look for the the link to the summit, it's not too late to register for a delegate pass. so I perhaps we'll put a link in the in the show notes as well. Raal: You do. the other thing as well, you mentioned Odfjell there, I think one of the things that I neglected to mention, so it wasn't as neatly tied up as I hoped. But there is also this thing which is maybe not unique to shipping, but shipping is it's it's unique to a lot of businesses. That you have that physical dependency as well on, you mentioned the OT systems, but if you look, you mentioned Odfjell. So Odfjell, you know, when they, when they approach this, that they are looking at combinations of technology and hardware and software, which is delivering the kind of gains that they've done in their fuel and their energy efficiency measures and stuff like that. And increasingly, think there's that Chris Aversaro mentioned, made this point in an interview with you recently adversario. Sorry. Sorry, Chris. It's been a long day. Aversano Yeah. So, Nick Chubb: Avasano, yeah. Yes he did, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Raal: so he was talking about, you know, about that being the next big thing is that and certainly from an investment perspective, people looking at that. And I think, and that's the thing in shipping, like when we talk about like the software choices that you're making, you have to be looking at actually the hardware as well and what's available and the superstructure Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: of the ship and all those kinds of things that are, know, connectivity, all those things that perhaps other CTOs in offices don't have to think about. So that's a dimension as well. And I think your point is a good one around like the idea that these guys and girls can make the right choices or always make the right choices is, you know, is not going to happen the way things are going. You know, it would be impossible to always make, make the right choices. But I think it's understanding what doors you're closing and where, you know, what technology you're backing. and all of that sort of stuff. And how do you design and build an infrastructure that can be resilient to some of the things that you can't control? I think is also a really, really big part of it. Nick Chubb: I think that's a really good point and I and I think my big takeaway from our little chat here is is is the importance of making choices and making sure they're proactive choices. We did some work earlier with earlier this year with with Sedna who got w sort of researching IT infrastructure as a as a as a kind of topic and and the the number of ship owners who've kind of drifted into a into a setup. Not because they've sort of made a proactive choice to do it, but just because, you know, you make small decisions, small decision, small decision over ten years, and suddenly you've just got this this sort of fleet that you're that you're dealing with with this particular setup. and it can be quite difficult to unpick. So I so I think you know, making big strategic choices about IT and digital, I think is really important. we we have been asked, by the way, Ra, I'm I'm gonna spitball this on live on air with you, but we've been asked to come up with our our topic for the undocked and unwind session, which is part of the cocktail response. and I wonder whether it should be a bit like we did a big idea in Odfjell, maybe we should be pitching what I we think our big choice should be for the IT leaders of of the maritime industry over the next few years. Raal: Yeah, yeah, we could do that. We could do that. Because I think it speaks to, mean, the other thing I was gonna say is just, and maybe that's part of it as well, like, doing nothing is a choice. That's the mistake that's often, you know, I think I've told you this before, when I've often put in place when I've had the chance, sins of omission, you know, when somebody Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Raal: chooses not to do something, I want it on record. Because otherwise Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: people gravitate to saying no to good ideas, new ideas. innovations, challenges, Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: then status quo, it's too easy to go, well, if I, if I back that I'm putting my neck on the line, if I just do nothing, then, you know, I'm not at risk. Whereas, you know, that can be absolutely fatal, not making Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: decisions and inertia and not having, not being able to kind of move forward on your best case scenario. I think the, and so I think, I think that, you know, something along those lines for us to debate in Athens. is maybe a kind of good one. You what are the choices that people should be making and thinking about? But let's kick it around a little bit more. But I think it's a potential. Something off the back of this episode, I think, is kind of like, is the pen sketch. And just wanted to kind of make that point as well, because it leads me to one other story we haven't really got time to get into, but I thought was interesting. And this was the Splash 24-7 event that just happened in Singapore. And the thing that's great about that is, you know, I think it's partly driven by the location. Nick Chubb: Mm. Raal: The splash boys for their maritime CEO event, which I like to get to whenever I can. This one was in Singapore, the others in Monaco. They tend to bring together the real heavyweights and it's really good space to kind of hear the priorities of the big ship managers and owners and Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: that kind of thing. And I think that I was reading a write-up of those over the weekend and I thought that was really interesting talking about, I think the quote was the resilience premium, you know. And we talked about this on this show where we kind of like the focus and the attention has been about finding efficiencies. And I think the focus has now shifted to resilience and how we go about doing that. And one of the things that we're talking about there was really one of the great questions around the investment risk was how wrong can you afford to be? I I like really quote because we talked about last week, you're making like 15, 20 year investment decisions from a shipbuilding point of view. Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: It's actually, you know, not a million miles away from some of the big in infrastructural things you could do with with with from a technology perspective as well. And of course, the cycles it mentions in this article. the cycles are becoming and shipping are becoming shorter, more intense and more extreme. so, Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: you know, thinking too long term isn't going to pay off. So a lot of this is about kind of being kind of a little bit more scrappy and a little bit more kind of like, what is, what is the state of play now? looking at the world of software. and the things that you could buy off the shelf at the start of this year versus to how things look towards the end of this year. I Nick Chubb: Twelve months down. Yeah, yeah. Raal: mean, has there ever been a time like it where you could make a choice today and regret that choice in six months because things have changed so fast in terms of, you know, what's out there. So I think it becomes more and more important to build in as much optionality as you can. Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: and to pick partners who are really with you in the mindset and can also kind of pivot and adjust and are kind of agile as well because otherwise you could be kind of blocking yourself out from choices that you could regret quite quickly, I think. It's really, really tough. And I know that's a bad message for vendors who want to sign contracts, because I've just kind of potentially kiboshed that for you. But like... Nick Chubb: Mm-hmm. Raal: And this is it at the same time, you know, I've said, you can't do nothing. Don't say, no, we're going to wait and see, wait and see, wait and see, because Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: it would be too late. So it's a really interesting kind of, a really interesting time to be alive if you're in the CTO role. Nick Chubb: Well, and that and that comes back to, you know, probably the next six, twelve months becomes very, very critical to make some quite big choices, you know, about how how the fleet is gonna look from a technology standpoint for the next ten, fifteen years potentially. so yeah, if you if you want to know what some of the large ship owners, ship managers, and and smaller ship owners and ship managers are doing and thinking along those lines, then please do join us in Athens. And if you can think of a better topic that Raal and I should debate and you're gonna come to Athens, then drop us a a message or a comment or something and and we'll consider all the options. but very much looking forward to well I'm very much looking forward to seeing you in person there. I don't we have not seen each other Raal: Yeah. Nick Chubb: face to face for months, I think at this point. Raal: Yeah, yes, I'm looking forward to it as well. Love Athens, be a great chance to see a few friends and meet a few new ones as well. So really looking forward to it. Nick Chubb: Awesome. All right. I think that's all we've got time for this week. So thank you, Ral. Thank you, everyone. And we'll do it all again next week. Raal: Goodbye.