Latest / UnDocked: The Maritime Transformation Show / The Trust Problem Behind Digital Training Records and Maritime’s Third Mobile Ecosystem
Transcript
- Nick Chubb: it's very easy to create a trust layer when it's a government that does it. But how do you create a trust layer in a highly international? sector like maritime? That's probably a more complex question. Raal: Hello everybody and welcome to this week's episode of Undocked. Hello Nick Chubb. Nick Chubb: Hello, Raoul Harris, how are you? Raal: I'm doing great, still sunny here. That's why I look like I work in a hospital in this top. I actually got given a pair of pajamas that look very much like this when I was in Japan in a hotel. That's why I bought this shirt. anyway i digress what's caught your attention this week Nick Chubb: Well apart from your shirt, what's caught my attention is actually quite an interesting story I literally saw just this morning and I thought I know a man who'll have an opinion on this and that is a story about Mintra. Do you know Mintra? Well of course you know They have just announced that they are integrating its training portal, learning and competency management system with the Norwegian National Digital Competence Registry. So they will be sharing 2.8 million training records with a platform called KREG, which is the Norwegian National Competency Registry. Have you seen this first of all? And what's your take? I imagine you have a take. Raal: I did, I did. thought it was very interesting for lots of different reasons, which we can unpack this week. yeah, Mintra, of course, I know Mintra very well, got lots of good colleagues there. So I think there's... A few things we should get into. The first thing that's notable about this is that this is a example of where the walled garden of maritime may start to collapse in a sense. I collapse Nick Chubb: interesting. Raal: is very dramatic, right? But whenever we've talked about this subject, wherever we kind of gravitate towards digital credentials and sort of these sorts of like proving competence and records and stuff like that because we have very unique frameworks with things like STCW and all of that kind of stuff that operate in a different way. They're sort of outside of mainstream education. our bizarrely, it's always been bizarre to me that even where it comes to something really standardized like English, English language assessments, Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: for some reason in maritime, we've never used all of the Cambridge TEFL, you know, EFL. qualifications and stuff that Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Raal: are there, pet exams and that kind of stuff that are recognized everywhere else. have the Marlins English language test, which Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: is kind of, you know, so that in itself is interesting. So what's, what's going on with this one though, is this is purely just Norwegian as far as I understand, as far as I could see. was the first time I've ever heard of KREJ by the way. So you've caught me slightly flat-footed. I did what I could to find information this morning. Nick Chubb: have found a Norwegian language explanation of it. And then Raal: Okay, give it. Nick Chubb: I've had it badly translated by Google. So I can give what may be a slightly inaccurate summary. the competency register is the central register. for the most comprehensive information system for ensuring competence in the workplace in construction and civil engineering industries. So it's based on information from training providers and employees. The central register issues 50,000 competence certificates per year and has over 1.3 million certificates registered on the database. So it looks like they are certifying the competence of individuals and kind of being Raal: Yes. Nick Chubb: that kind of central register of who is certified and who is not across all the training providers and all the employers. Raal: Connectivity is critical, but it's what sits behind that makes the difference. KVH goes beyond bandwidth, offering managed IT services, cybersecurity and compliance support designed specifically for maritime operations. Combined with LEO connectivity and intelligent network management, this creates a complete communications ecosystem for your fleet. Secure, scalable, and built to adapt as your needs evolve. So whether you're upgrading your network or rethinking your entire communication strategy, KVH provides the foundation to do it right. Discover more at kvh.com. Yeah, and you know, think about it on most industries. It sort of makes perfect sense for that to be sort of a nationally held thing because most people spend their entire working life in a single country. You know, think about mechanics, think about people working in sort of, you know, very safety critical infrastructure projects, building construction, those kind of things. And this is sort of where it's coming from. you know, sure, the guys at Mintrel will let us know if we've got this wrong. one of the things that's why this is maybe more relevant to a Mintra than it is to some of the other players, Mintra began as an offshore offering. And then latterly decided to move into marine with the acquisition of Safebridge, which is also significant in this discussion. but yeah, if you think about offshore, although people are working at sea, they are near land, they come under tax. regimes and there's much more kind of a local workforce typically not exclusively but typically that's the way the way it kind of works so so from a kind of offshore perspective it makes more sense that it's a national kind of register so but the other thing that's interesting about this I said the reason that maritime has always sort of been existing outside of some of these other frameworks, let's say, is things like STCW. But what we see is when we talk about like where a lot of the professional standards that people might want and the credentials that they might want to to follow and things like that. There's a lot in there now, which is nothing to do with STCW. It's about using equipment and offshore is a very good example of where that becomes extremely important because there's a lot of specialist vessels. There's a lot of specialist equipment. You want to be able to track, you know, type specific things and that kind of stuff. So when we start to think about those and when we think about the way in which industry is moving, there's perhaps a future that's more portable. from a skills base. Like at the moment, I think if you're a ships engineer and you want to come ashore, I think that you could work in a hospital looking after the boilers or a brewery. think that's when I remember, it always sticks in my mind from discussions with the Institute of Marine Engineers many years ago, thinking about career pathways and all that sort of stuff. Whereas, know, when we look at, particularly look at an energy diverse portfolio in the future and the use of alternative fuels and that sort of stuff, you start to see, well, actually working with. hydrogen, there's going to be a lot of stuff happening on land, on ships, on all this kind of thing and infrastructure changes. So is this sort of indicative of that world of the future where we might have more skills that might be recognized port side on the ship, in the supply chain elsewhere and in industry more generally? So I think that's kind of an interesting part of it too. And when we think about those kind of credentials, They are, I guess, free of some of the considerations that flag approved and all that sort of government level issuance goes. And I guess someone like KREJ has their own standards of what they deem to be acceptable and the training providers that they will vouch for, let's say, in terms of the credentials. So one of the things that's interested in here is around data ownership, because I didn't see anything in the story that talked about consent And that I do find interesting, because I think it speaks to something that I had many, discussions with in all my years as an e-learning training provider and sitting on huge amounts of data. we would be tracking a seafarers all this, all the kinds of things that they're talking about in this story, all the sort of competency management things that they do, the computer-based training, e-learning titles that they produced, which would use scores and all those sorts of things to fulfill. a company's training matrix. And for those who don't know, that's what's agreed between the customer and who's going to technically manage the vessel or the DOC holder or whatever their main concerns are about the training regime they want to put on. an important distinction I'll make here is just a quick one about training certification. When somebody gets a training certificate that is an endorsement to be able to work, that is always held in the name of the individual, right? And typically they have a copy of that, which they can take with them portably. the sense that it's unique to the individual. Whoever pays for it, it's held by the individual. Now, when you're in a situation where more general training is going on that doesn't have a sort of a certification moment. Typically that is held within the learning management system and associated systems of record. The crew management software may have this of the company. And so when the individual leaves, that is archived typically and put to one side. So we had this situation where we would have a seat fairer, we'd know who they were. We would see all of the training and everything that they did and have those records associated with them in that account. And we could see... when they become active in another company who was also a customer, right? But Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah. Raal: we would, under the terms of how this thing was set up, we would not port what they'd done with a previous customer to the new customer. So the seafarer Nick Chubb: Okay. Raal: has to start again and the customer, the new customer has no benefit of all of the work that the seafarer Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: has done before. Now you can probably see and look at that and think, well, That's ridiculous. Why doesn't everybody just agree that that stuff is ported? And the reason is that there's, there's a lot of question marks in there. You will find people who would say, I've paid for that training that was done on my time. That data is mine. I don't want other companies to have the benefit of it, which is a reasonable position. Or you could have equally, you could have customers Nick Chubb: Is it? it strikes me as an unreasonable take. would block the sharing of training related data to future employers. I can understand if you were bringing someone in, you wanting to, maybe not trusting wholeheartedly the certificates that someone brings in or even the non-certified training that someone claims to have done. but it just seems like a bit of a self-own to block that share of information because then you're just gonna have to pay for people to redo all of the same training they've already done. It's one of those things where if everyone shares it, it's great, and if no one shares it, it's fine as well. I guess the problem is you end up with some people sharing, some people not. But to try and answer some of those questions directly, because I've been... poking around the central register at which is the Norwegian Central Register for this stuff. The skills follow the employee throughout their life even when changing employer. So if you upload your if your employer upload certificates to this platform and the employee leaves those certificates will be available to the next employer. And the fee is 200 NOC per employee per year, so about 15 pound or 20 dollars per employee per year. the, yeah, Raal: or coffee in Norway. Nick Chubb: yeah, yeah, exactly, one pint. And the employer pays. And on security data and privacy, says this, the central register ensures that competence is registered and standardized. Anyone with legal access or appropriate rights, for example, employees, employers, and clients can view the employee's competence. All processing of personal data is subject to strict data protection regulations. And just on that data ownership point, I Raal: Okay, so one assumes that this is, yeah. Nick Chubb: just to make one point. There is very little value as an individual in saying I own this certificate data, therefore I want to keep very tight control over it. As individuals, we have rights over data about us. That doesn't necessarily mean that we own the data. I think there's an important distinction to be made there. And actually, I think, again, it comes back to when you don't share this data, it becomes a bit of a shot in your own foot. think... it's important that those rights exist but sort of talking about it as if the employee owns the data about their training I actually think is not right. Raal: it sounds as though my concerns are unjustified in the sense that there's, from what you were saying there, there's checks and balances in place. And presumably this only applies to Norwegian, the records of Norwegian nationals. Nick Chubb: It certainly looks like you need a Norwegian personal identification number, a D number, So I think so, which kind of begs the question, Raal: Yeah, would make sense. Nick Chubb: how does this translate to maritime and how do you create, you talked about a trust layer, it's very easy to create a trust layer when it's a government that does it. But how do you create a trust layer in a highly international? sector like maritime? That's probably a more complex question. Raal: It's a very complex question and it's one that I'm dealing with directly at the moment. I'm doing some work with a company called Maritime Passport who are operating in this space this is exactly the challenge that we have as an industry going forward. And it's one that I'm gonna be talking about in Crew Connect in October. And the important take here is that there is no world government. We don't have that. know, the IMO, anything that goes through the IMO, sometimes we talk about international law or international governance, right? It doesn't Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: exist. What exists is an international agreement, which is then put into local legislation. Nick Chubb: Loss. Yep. Raal: So we're always talking about a framework of what people can collectively agree on and this mutual recognition and trust. And, you know, Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: I mentioned the name maritime passport, the way that we're coming at that is exactly that passport analogy, because when you take your passport, it's recognized where you turn up, right? Because they have some faith in the issuance of that document. And there's some internationally recognized ways of of verifying that, you know, through biometrics Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah. Raal: and all that sort of stuff. So at that very top level, there's that sort of agreement in place. And, When we think about like the system that we have today, this sort of paper-based documents which have to be checked. Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: I mean, occasionally they're scanned before everyone says, it's not always, but you know, it's a paper document at the end of the day and it's a paper trail behind it that needs to be verified. Nick Chubb: Yep. Yeah, yeah. Raal: That system is, know, you would never start that the way it is today, but it's working Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: to a degree and it's, there are some issues around the efficiency of it, around the, it's, It's a robustness to fraud and things like that, but it's kind of working and it's internationally, people are coping with it. Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: What we're talking about is a transition, which is already in motion to digitize that. And there are things already going on various initiatives going on by, individual companies, but also implementations at flag level. So it's already moving. without us really having this global trust layer agreed and so on in place. But the point is that we need an interoperable ecosystem to be able to really support this. going forward and how we kind of get to that is really going to be the challenge to be able to make sure that we don't replace what's a fragmented sort of paper system with a fragmented digital one, which is even more difficult to manage. Now when we talk about sort of COC issuance and certificates of proficiency and those kind of SDCW certification, medical certificates, all that sort of stuff, there's clearly a massive upside to having that securely, just as there is to having any kind of personal identifier. You remember the days we used to sort of take documents around with you. Probably, Nick Chubb: left mine on a train once. I was in a very, I was about two weeks away from my oral exam and I had a big blue folio book folder thing, had every single certificate in it, the original paper copies and I was on a train to Blackpool. I changed at Preston. and then the train went off towards Edinburgh or Glasgow, I can't remember, and I got off to change to go to Blackpool, and then I was halfway to Blackpool when I realised that my folder was on the train that was going north, and I ended up with a friend doing a mad dash car ride from Blackpool up to Edinburgh to pick up the certificates on arrival at the train station. And if I hadn't... to be clear about the consequences if I hadn't managed to get those back, would have had to redo at least sort of 50 % of the training. It would have put my career back years if I hadn't got it back. Thankfully, the great Western Railway staff were very, helpful. They did find it and put it aside for me. Raal: Well, that's actually, I mean, that is a really great story as a good example of where, you know, I said that people are comfortable with this system that's working there. But that's clearly like, I mean, how much... Nick Chubb: I think it works for most, I think I'm just slightly forgetful. Raal: I mean, come on. I mean, it could happen to anybody and probably does happen quite frequently. I just assumed that you'd have a, you know, the real challenge of getting back in touch with all the different providers and, know, and then getting them to release you new versions of certificates. You're saying you would have had to actually redo it. Nick Chubb: Well, that is challenging and expensive, but doable. If memory serves, because I remember having a long conversation with people in the know about it after what would happen. It's the government issued stuff. So new discharge books. I had a British discharge book and I had a Marshall Islands discharge book, and getting replacements of those would be quite difficult. Those discharge books are stamped for your seat time. And so... I would get new discharge books, but they wouldn't have any sea time in them. So when I go up to the board to Raal: That's the issue. Nick Chubb: be examined, I wouldn't have sea time. Also in that same folder, makes me have sweaty palms thinking about it, all the sea service testimonials. And again, they're all original, they're stamped and signed by the ship. The training record book itself is signed by the officers on board the vessel. Again, it's a single, it's now been digitized, I think, although that took about 10 years. training record book was physically signed and stamped by the vessel. So that would have been gone. So all of the college certificates were, I think, relatively Raal: Really? Nick Chubb: easy to get back. All of the lived experience that you have to certify that you've done on board the vessel and all the things that you did on board the vessel, that would have all have to been restarted from scratch. So I would have gone from Raal: Yeah. Nick Chubb: near enough 12-month sea time back to square one. Raal: Yeah, amazing, isn't it? The last thing as well is just, just don't want to gloss over it because you mentioned it there. And I think it's a really, really important one. When you said you had two discharge books explained why why you would have to discharge books. And I think we start to get to another interesting discussion. Nick Chubb: Yeah, well was sailing on a, so I was obviously a British seafarer and I sailed on some, although not many, UK registered ships. And that was my kind of primary record of sea service. And just for anyone who doesn't know, a discharge book is essentially, it's kind of like a diary for joining and departing a ship. So the day you join, you get kind of the ship stamp in the book that tells you, what rank you're joining in and the kind of role you're joining in. And then the day you leave, you get a same kind of stamp and then you get that book back. And that becomes effectively your kind of permanent record of sea service. But I worked on a Marshall Islands ship as well. And so to sail on a Marshall Islands ship, you need to have a Marshall Islands discharge book. And then that record goes into the Marshall Islands discharge book. It also got duplicated into the British one. So it's kind of, I don't want to call it performative bureaucracy, but it was a lot of bureaucracy. It essentially ended up with kind of duplicate record keeping across both. But in theory, if I'd continued on sailing on Marshall Islands ships, that Marshall Islands book would have become much more important. Raal: And that's important in the reason I wanted to pull that out is because when we think about the solution to going digital, you've got a situation there which is dependent on two completely autonomous regimes that will Nick Chubb: Yep. Raal: have their own digital strategies. this is ideally everyone would use the same technology and we'd have one sort of system. But as we see you know, it's a big old world and there's lots of different reasons why different people do different things. And so we do have to look at how these, how is that going to work from a seafarers perspective when they will go with different ships that are flagged with different countries and all that sort of stuff. Nick Chubb: Well, you can join a Marshall Islands flagged ship and then halfway through your voyage have the flag changed to Panama. And so you start on one ship. one country, one set of rules, one set of documentation, you stay on the same ship, you end up actually technically in a different country with different set of rules and a different set of documentation by the time you've finished the voyage. It's really common for ships to be flagged and reflagged. Raal: Mm. Mm. Nick Chubb: It is a relatively straightforward process for a ship owner. But things like that, things like what you're talking about there, creates quite a lot of complexity for people. Raal: Yeah, and that's why I think, you know, that's why my angle on this is it's a maritime transformation story. And as I said, we're really, really scratching the surface. I think we'll come back to this and we'll go through and we'll get into some real detail. and just let me kind of return it back to Mintra as well, because one thing I mentioned was the Mintra acquisition of SafeBridge. And one of SafeBridge's big things was they started as a way of getting around the type specific ECTIS training requirements, or at least the perceived requirements of the ECTIS. And, and so they were sort of coming at this professional credentials kind of angle quite early on. And they moved into this, they were very early movers in this whole digital certification space. And, and maybe it was a timing issue, because as the different players have emerged coming forward to supply the digital solutions for this, now that we're here and we're ready to kind of start digitizing digital credentials, This is the first indication that they're kind of potentially back in the in Interested in that space. Nick Chubb: Interesting. Yeah. Raal: Is it significant? We don't know. We'll find out Nick Chubb: that's one to watch. funny, you said that it's difficult to predict for good or for bad what the unintended consequences of a technology rollout could be. And it reminded me actually of a, I'm to sound all smug now, but I made a prediction back in 2019. actually publicly you can read about it in. I wrote an article in Splash, what's that, seven years ago, and it was about trade lens. And I said, a single dominant and proprietary platform is not only unlikely to succeed, but also be highly undesirable for the maritime industry. to explain why and obviously four years later TradeLens, which is the Merck IBM trade platform, shut down because of a lack of adoption. So I sat there feeling very smug about how good my prediction was. And then I kind of thought to myself, well actually it's kind of, it's very easy to be a pessimistic predictor. And it got me thinking about how difficult it can be to predict the future when it comes to technology. So I've pulled together some... technology predictions that have been made across the maritime industry. And I thought it'd be fun if I'm going to read you them and then I want you to try and tell me when those predictions were made. Raal: Okay this is one of the ones where Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: sort of age is an advantage isn't it? Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll start with an easy one. I'll start with an easy one. Rolls Royce unveiled a vision for a robotic cargo ship and said that in the next six years, these ships will be a reality. Totally smooth decks, no superstructure, completely unmanned. They would look like surface whales. A, do remember it? And B, when was it made? When? Raal: 2015, 2015, 2015. Nick Chubb: 2015? You're one year out, 2014. That's pretty good. Raal: not bad Nick Chubb: So they predicted that by 2020, 2021, totally robotic ships would be sailing the oceans. Unfortunately, it has not become a reality just yet. Another one. Raal: This is like tomorrow's world, isn't it? I love it. Nick Chubb: Another one, right. When was this prediction made? The US Autonomic Energy Commission published a report on nuclear propulsion for merchant ships. It reports that... they expect that in the next 20 years they will be demand for more than 300 nuclear merchant vessels. Raal: This is the IUC. Did you say? The US. Nick Chubb: the US, US, yeah, so not the international one. So reasonable guess. The actual answer is 1962. Raal: I'm bored out of it. Nick Chubb: They were expecting, the US Atomic Energy Commission were expecting that by roughly 1980 there would be demand for Raal: That's brilliant. Nick Chubb: 300 nuclear merchant ships. Only three were ever built. Raal: Wow, that's mad. That reminds me actually, there was quite a few stories in nuclear as well this week which I failed to cover. Big investment. Yeah. Nick Chubb: Well, the funny thing is, yeah, that could have been a 2026 prediction because there's a lot going on in nuclear at the moment. Raal: Yeah, exactly. yeah, what should have alerted me there was the nuclear agency. This is like, you could have asked, when did the milk marketing board sort of say that butter cured cancer or something? That Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Raal: would have been a bit, yeah, that was the giveaway. They were heavily invested in promoting nuclear. Nick Chubb: Would you like one more? Raal: Go on then. I've got one and one I've bombed out on, so let's find out if it's... Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah, yeah, not bad. One for two. All right. When we just reported, owners see crewless cargo ships as the next wave of the future and scientists are working on vessels controlled entirely by computers. Several shipyards already hold designs for unmanned, trans-Pacific container ships and tankers, which could be trading in the next four years. The unmanned ships will sail in flotillas behind one crewed vessel carrying a maintenance team. So this is the kind of unmanned convoy. Raal: Hmm, I don't remember it. And what was the projected in so many years? Nick Chubb: for. Raal: Four years. Nick Chubb: Pretty ambitious timeline. Raal: Mmm. I'm actually gonna go with something bonkers like 2006 or something like that. Nick Chubb: November 1991. Raal: You know why I knew it was old? Because there was no mention of AI. know that would have been like anything in recent times. Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah, Well, it was also a vessel controlled entirely by computer. It sounds like it's very 90s language. Raal: Yeah, the computer thing, yeah. It was, yeah, I should have gone earlier on that. yeah, 2004. So was out. Nick Chubb: To date, there are no unmanned flotillas that I know of crossing the Pacific, although in September 2025, the Evermax did complete a Trans-Pacific voyage autonomously. So there was crew on board, the crew were overseeing the voyage, but the vessel took all of the navigation decisions. In fact, I can tell you it made 224 navigation decisions along the voyage entirely autonomously. So we're halfway there, but it is about 35 years too late. I think we've seen it's very hard to make predictions about technology. and it's very hard to make positive predictions about technology. So I'm to ask you for a positive tech prediction. What do you see coming in the next 10 years that will be a positive for the industry? Raal: I'm afraid I'm not gonna come up with anything kind of new in a sense because I've been gravitating around the kind of opportunities for a while now. So my big prediction is that we'll see some major leaps ahead in terms of the interpreting and the bringing together of information across ships for the purpose of being able to look at performance indicators and to make that sort of digestible and actionable for people. And when we think about that as well, that's my other big prediction, which is adjacent to that is I think we will see someone crack weak signals as turning them into something really actionable. By that I mean a lot of the stuff that I've talked about in the, we were together in Bergen, what we Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: can actually see happening, the phone calls, the emails, the kind of AI's ability to interpret data differently. And so, yeah, I think that for me is the prediction that we'll have Nick Chubb: Go. Raal: a completely different way of managing that kind of thing in the next 10 years. Nick Chubb: All right, well, if you want to see whether Ryle's correct, you have to stay subscribed until July 2036. And we'll make sure that we revisit this and find out. Raal: Really. Nick Chubb: I think it's a good one. I think I can kind of see instant vetting as a, know, as a, just based on the data that becomes available. becoming a thing off the back of that. But yeah, stay tuned for a decade, folks, and we'll make sure you like and subscribe. And tell us what you think of Ryle's prediction. Do you think he's correct? Stick it in the comments somewhere. Wherever you're watching this, just comment it out, whether you think he's right or wrong or totally nuts. Raal: think that my takeaway to these kind of things is that I think the quote is where people overestimate the impact of technology in the short term and underestimate its impact in the long term. Nick Chubb: It's Amara's Law, Roy Amara from the Institute of the Future. And that's the way that quote comes about. I think it's great quote. I think these things often just take much, much longer to come to fruition than one would expect. Raal: Yeah, we tend to sort of look at it through the lens of where the way the world is now. And we think, you know, we imagine the same paradigm, but with this sort of extra piece of technology involved. Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: Whereas, a good example of that is is the phone on your camera, you know, and having Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah. Raal: the phone on the camera. It's not really about the camera, is it? It's about what having a camera all the time and the ability to publish directly from the camera, Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: but all the time has led to changes that are infinitely bigger than could have been predicted. we tend to sort of predict the technology. that we're thinking about and talking about there, whereas that technology is not happening in isolation. There's myriad technological advances happening at the same time, and as well as other factors that influence the adoption of that. Nick Chubb: It's one of the really hard things to model. We do a lot of addressable market size work at Thetius and understanding the concept of TAM expansion, so how the addressable market will be expanded by technology is just so hard to predict. If you go back to the early pitch deck slides for Uber, you know, talking about trying to take one to 5 % of the taxi market without, and saying that that would have ended up being something like, you know, $10 billion a year if they were able to take sort of 5 % of the taxi market globally. And now obviously Uber does, I think it does something like $80 billion a year in sales because what Uber did to the taxi market was massively expanded. You know, was only really cities like New York and London where you had these kind of registered cabs. But now, near enough anywhere, I live pretty much in the countryside. I can get an Uber straight from my house. That just was not possible 10, 15, 20 years ago. And definitely not at the price and availability that it is now. That has then created the delivery market and the likes of Deliveroo and Uber Eats. So how Raal: I was going to say exactly. Nick Chubb: an adjustable market expands over time based on a new technology coming in is so hard to predict. Raal: Yeah. Yeah. And that's the big disruption. And I think this is one of the things that was on my mind yesterday. I mentioned last week, I've been privileged to be part of this group that Intent Communications are doing Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah. Raal: round tables, closed door round tables talking about demystifying digitalization and AI. And last week was the sort of onboard and this week was the onshore one. And Nick Chubb: Right. Raal: I think that The onshore one was, I unpacked quite a few things last week from the discussion this week. mean, the onshore one was much more like the kind of conversations you and I have fairly Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah. Raal: regularly, you know, but there were, so I think I was kind of more tuned into the vibe and the kind of Nick Chubb: Right? Raal: general mood music around how are different people coming at this. And I think my big thing was there is high, high confidence that AI is not going to replace humans. Nick Chubb: Okay. Raal: There is high confidence that it's good at certain things like helping out with certain tasks, but it's never it's never going to be able to make the kind of decisions and stuff that humans make. And I understand that. I do understand where they're coming from with that because You can't delegate the responsibility. Number one, it's a safety critical thing. There are lots of examples of where, you know, AI is, is, it is, is not reliable enough. You Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: know, but I have to say, I think the confidence is massively misplaced they're right to call back on some of the hype. that's talked about at the moment, that sort of short term over, Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah. Raal: you know, over expectation of what's going to happen and being, you know, there've been some, some ludicrous things, maybe most of them said by me probably about what it's going to, the impact it's going to have. But I think that longer term, I don't think people are really thinking through because I think that a lot of people are basing their, their general thoughts on AI. around the kind of experiences they're having with the kind Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: of way that they're engaging with tools, is, which is, would say is almost universal. mean, everybody seems to be, I haven't come across anybody in any discussion that's not got some, isn't using it for some, some Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Raal: purpose, but I think it's really easy for them to then sort of start to imagine that's the relationship. That's where AI is sitting that, you know, it's a human having a conversation with a chat box. You know, and Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: then you can easily pick the flaws that that's not really where the big changes are coming. The big changes are coming from a CTO saying, yeah, my, my software development team worked, you know, at infinitely scalable and work, you know, around the clock, as long as I Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: keep paying for the usage. That, know, that's completely different. That's going Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Raal: to completely change anything. The way in which systems knit together. the levels of automation, the levels of ability to kind of, you know, process it. I don't think people are getting their heads around that kind of thing. And that's where we will see things completely transforming and where we will see humans being taken out of the loop because they're not adding value into a lot of sort of areas. I love people and I don't like to think of a people-less future in lots of different areas, you know, so it's not like I'm a fan of the technology. just think that it's, there's, there's the people are underestimating the impact of the way that this is going to change things. And I don't think that's unique to maritime, by the way, if you talk to any politicians and see, you know, I think they're all kind of doing it, but the change is too big for us to get our heads around. Yeah. Nick Chubb: I think, I mean NetNet, think of it as job creator. I'll just put that out there. But I do, I think people are underestimating how much jobs will change. I think quite an interesting way to think about this is like. you know, you run an organization, there are generally core competencies that you have in the organization that you protect quite closely and that's where your employees, your kind core employee base sits. And then you have things that sit outside those core competencies that you tend to send to agencies and freelancers. And I can tell you just within our own business, the volume of agencies and freelancers that we're working with now versus two or three years ago. It's quite difficult to justify, we still do it, but it's now becoming increasingly difficult to justify bringing in a freelance graphic designer versus using Claude Design. Because Claude Design is so good, you know, and I think a lot of the freelance designers that we know of, you know, are still using Figma. which is a great tool or Adobe, and not embracing this kind of next generation of tool that's coming out. And I think potentially kind of shoot themselves in the foot. And I know people who own marketing agencies and they're just finding like all of the kind of core services that they can deliver are just being cannibalized by these tools. And I think if something's kind of working its way around the outside of your business where you're using agencies and freelancers, you do have to sit there and question, well, how long is it until it works its way into the inside of my business? And we start to look at the core competencies of people in the business. And I do think it should be a case of looking at how you increase the productivity of those core people by redesigning their work. rather than just looking at who you can get rid of. Because I think ultimately you're going to lose a lot of long-term value through that. But it's definitely happening. It's definitely happening. think it's just one of those gradually then suddenly things. think a lot of people will be taken Raal: Hmm Nick Chubb: by surprise by it. Raal: Yeah, yeah. And I think the other thing as well as unintended consequences of stuff, you know, like I think maritime is a really good example of this is if, we start to remove some of those lower level entry level tasks, we lose that base that can then be promoted into some of the other positions as well. So it's the temptation to do as you're suggesting there and sort of, you know, let's bring in a whole bunch of automation and AI. task to take care of those low level more junior kind of position Nick Chubb: Yep. Raal: type things. are sort of removing a layer which you may then need for some of those higher order Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: things in the future, which is why these things kind of need design and you need to think about unintended consequences. I'll give you another unintended consequence if I may. Nick Chubb: Okay, please do. Raal: Are you ready for this? Now, native apps in maritime, they have been Nick Chubb: What's that mean? What's a native at? Raal: I remember native, you know, on your phone rather than a web app for Nick Chubb: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Raal: a browser on your phone. so this has been a, I think was, was heavily embraced in maritime trying to think when it was about 15 years ago, I guess, and probably less in maritime for me, even, newer, but people jumped on native apps because they solve a massively difficult problem in, in maritime, which is something that's the less of a problem now, but Certainly the beginning where you've got intermittent connectivity and you have to design software systems that could work offline Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: and then do data transfer. We've talked about that. Some of the pain points with that and getting data off the ship and all those sorts Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: of things. Now the benefit of the native app is that it's inherently made for that because Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: when you're moving in and out of signal on your mobile phone, you didn't want sort of things to stop working and stuff. So people in maritime got very very attracted, very interested to that. And you only had to worry about two things. had to worry about Android and iOS, and that was it because Apple had its own and Nick Chubb: Yep. Raal: then Google developed Android and that was what was picked up by all other phone manufacturers. And why was that important? where that kind of appeared in Maritime as probably the biggest example I can think of is where you... want something in the seafarer's hand that they can use, in which case you're talking about a bring your own device model. So you're expecting to use the seafarer or the seafarer to use their phone. Nick Chubb: I can give you a real example, if you like. About 10 years ago, I used to work for the Marine Society and we developed a bunch of native apps for a platform called Learn at Sea, where we were taking all of our learning content, which historically was very traditionally delivered, and putting it onto native apps. And so, you know, we would have all the learning content served. locally and then we would even be able to track progress and all that sort of stuff and then it would sync basically whenever the phone got a phone signal and it would sync to the kind of core cloud platform that we were running all the education stuff off and it was a total nightmare and it was Raal: You Nick Chubb: bring your own device as well. Raal: Yeah, so exactly. Great example. What do we want? We want C-Fair to be able to access learning anytime. do we do it? We put it on their phone. They can download things. They can work in their own time. And then when we get a signal, we take those learning records back. Another good example is sort of where you want to be able to use the sort of features of the phone. So sort of inspect those kind of inspection apps where people were doing those remote inspections during COVID and Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: some of those kind of surveying things, using the camera, you know, and there are other things that, that take care of things like the accelerometer and all those sorts of things. You know, when you want to rely on something about the device securely and that sort of stuff. And then the other one is of course, digital payment wallet. So all the people that sort of doing, you know, from, from, from that sort of side of it, Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: as I say, only having to worry about Android and iOS, but in May 2019, the US government of commerce, placed Huawei, who are big Chinese manufacturer Nick Chubb: Yep. Raal: phones, onto the entity list. And that prohibits US companies from supplying Huawei with specified US technology, technology software and services. Yeah, without Nick Chubb: Export control list, it? Yeah. Raal: a government license. So the government justified, justified it on national security grounds, foreign Nick Chubb: Yep. Raal: policy grounds. Some, think it's was the whether it was stated or not. I think there was some concern that Huawei that Huawei may be have some sort of state connection in China. These lines are a little bit blurred as we know. So why is this important? Well, Hawaii, as a result of this, it's not that they were prohibited from using the open source code because the open source code was out there. But if you wanted to have any Google certified mobile services, you would then have a problem because they weren't going to give them what they needed to be able to verify the services. So anything that was about security, payment, know, payment stuff, anything that needs to be verified, and let's face it in a maritime context, that would be everything. We're not in the business of Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah. Raal: a low level security or any of those sorts of things. So that immediately placed Huawei in the position of needing to create effectively its own ecosystem, if you like, or own operating system, let's call it, which is called Harmony OS. Now, right now, Huawei phones are about 5 % globally. But in China, it's more like sort of 25%. And of course, China is a growing kind of market. And when we look at that from a seafarers point of view, and we look at the BIMCO ICS workforce report, the figures in there, China is number three in terms of seafarer population Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: now. So that's, I think we've got it here 110. 893, and just over 100 nearly 111,000 officers, nearly 200,000 ratings. So a big player and with them being part of the working population, it poses a question whether or not if we're gonna have that bring your own device model, whether or not that then means that there's now a third thing with all of the implications and stuff that you've got to do with that as well. And I'm not suggesting that that is going to happen. I think it's but what's interesting about this is when you then look at what Huawei are involved in and where Harmony OS may be significant. This is the first time in over a decade since really since the inception of smartphones that there's been it's been a two horse race and now Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah. Raal: There's going to be this situation now. It's leading in that Chinese market, as I said. But it also, it also kind of, when you look at what they're doing with Harmony OS, it isn't just on phones, it's on wearables, it's on vehicles, autonomous vehicles, it's in industrial IoT. It's on edge computing cloud, it's on AI. And in fact, when we look at it, it's in some of those industrial sectors, including ports. So when you were talking about that port, the ports infrastructures and all those kinds of things that's going on, that huge amount of work and automation that's going on in China, they are a significant kind of player in there. And obviously China is, would you say 85 % or something last week of all ships being built there? Nick Chubb: ship-building. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Raal: You know, Nick Chubb: yeah. Raal: so they're a big player in that kind of stuff. And certainly, like I mentioned, anywhere where you're looking at bring your own devices is a consideration there. But if, if, if harmony becomes a much bigger kind of infrastructure thing, it may make, some additional kind of things to think about for software developers more generally. So there's some interesting choices for. anybody that's currently using that app model, whether they move to progressive web apps instead. And that of course then means that you're relying on the connectivity. So that, you know, it may be that now that there's greater connectivity on ships, this is something that people will move towards there. Or maybe they'll look at the way in which they've got their background infrastructure in place so that the apps themselves are doing much less work. And then it's much easier to Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah. Raal: just rely on the security layers of each of them. But the reason I bring it up is because it was a question that was posed to me this week around whether it was something that was necessary to look at. And I genuinely didn't have the answer. So he if you're out there, software developers, it was difficult for me, I couldn't find any statistics, reliable statistics of how many kind of maritime focused apps there were, because when you look at the categorizations, a lot of what's there is in leisure or it's in, you know, navigation Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah. Raal: more broadly that there isn't a maritime. you know, thing there, but I think a fair estimate is, you know, upwards of three, 500 apps probably out there that are linked up to some of the major software platforms and all that sort of stuff. So it's not insignificant and developing, you know, two is bad enough. Having a third that you have to cater for would be a, would be a major imposition for technology providers. Nick Chubb: There's a lot to unpack there. My first thought is export controls just generally speaking don't seem to work. There's a very long track record of the US putting export controls in place and then China turning around and sort of creating the technology, competing technology sort of indigenously if you like without exporting anything, without importing anything, sorry. And I think that's it. I hadn't heard of this Harmony example, but that's another great example of export controls backfiring. is actually, Huawei are also involved in 5G networks. And there was, I don't know if you remember, there was a lot of controversy in the UK about whether Raal: Yes. Nick Chubb: we would use Huawei for our 5G network or use someone like Ericsson, for example. There is actually, interestingly, there is a... building, a slightly nondescript building in Oxfordshire called The Cell, where all of the Huawei network traffic in the UK passes through it and it can be inspected at any time by MI5. the security services for whether there is any vulnerability that the Chinese government is tapping into that network to pull traffic out of it. So there's literally a building in the Oxfordshire countryside that allows our security services to kind of check on the Huawei network, which kind of puts stock in how little trust there is in Huawei as a providing critical national infrastructure in the UK. I actually think the number of apps, number of maritime apps is much higher. I mean, we track about 5,000 suppliers, technology suppliers to Raal: Really? Nick Chubb: this space. Probably about 3,000 of them are software vendors of some description. And then how many of them are actually built native apps rather than doing stuff in a web browser is another question. But I think it's all is a magnitude more than what you've said there. Yeah, I think it's really interesting what a headache that creates for any vendor. If that starts to happen, then you start to get complaints through that the software is not working. It's a bit of a nightmare. Raal: Yeah. think the I'm reminded about like you mentioned there, your example there with seafarer society, you know, that there's sort of, remember technology people rubbing their hands with glee saying, we won't have to worry about the onboard, you know, training. box, I've mentioned Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: it before, that works offline, you know, we've got these apps now and all that kind of stuff. And you kind of think, yeah, that's fine. As long as your customer is happy to rely on when the inspector turns up, whether or not the seafarers mobile phone is working. It's not something you'd really, not something you'd really want to have to kind of, know, bring your own devices is such an interesting one. mean, because, you know, there's pros and cons, right? No one wants to carry two, I had a work phone and a private phone for a while and it was just such a pain in the ass taking two phones everywhere. You know, but equally you may feel that that's a big imposition. The other thing about that from a seafarer's point of view is that you've got to remember that that phone is probably going to contain, all the personal stuff that they want. It's going to be movies they're going to watch, podcasts. Music everything so the data storage and everything they've got they're to be very protective of because unlike you and me they can't just easily Re, you know redownload a bunch of that stuff. So yeah, Nick Chubb: Yep. Raal: it sounds like a really easy solution, but it's fraught with complications Nick Chubb: No, I think it's probably a bit of a nightmare. Raal: Yeah, if you know, and security is the biggest one there. if you want to have, you know, if you want it to be secure, you need control of that device. And is it reasonable to say to someone, hey, you're paying for that device, but I want to have complete control over it? It seems highly unreasonable. Nick Chubb: The only other thing to say on that is it's important to recognize that China has a big enough domestic market that they kind of don't really need to care. There's enough domestic ship owners, enough domestic ship operators. If there's going to be a Chinese OS, there'll be enough domestic software vendors to build on it. And so to a certain extent. It doesn't matter, but Raal: Yeah. Nick Chubb: to a much wider extent is the kind of impact it has if you're building software for the rest of the world. Raal: Yeah Nick Chubb: Or you make a choice not to be as active in the Chinese market, which a lot of software vendors have gone down that route. Raal: And the other thing it does is it nicely ties up with the bow, the opening story to this one, which is that where that sort of domestic market legislation, how they kind of approach things, you know, and where that kind of rubs up against the maritime industry, which requires a sort of, know, universal standards and universal trust. Nick Chubb: Yeah, yeah. Raal: So, yeah, good. That's nice. Nick Chubb: Well, what a nice way to end it. Raal: Yeah. Nick Chubb: Well done for finding a link back. Raal: Well we hope you enjoyed that ladies and gentlemen and we look forward to seeing you all next week. Nick Chubb: Thanks everyone.