Lyceum 2021 closing remarks from James Lawton, Chief Technology Officer, Seequent

Overview

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<v ->Hello everyone, my name is James Lawton.</v>

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I’m the CTO for Seequent.

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What we’re going to do is just recap everything

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that we’ve heard so far and add a little bit more

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about our direction into the future.

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So throughout today’s global session for Lyceum,

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you’ve heard us talk about a number of different things.

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What we’ve heard is that there’s a data revolution underway.

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That data revolution is allowing us to completely change

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the way we think about all of the workflows

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that we have in our every day workplace,

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even our own personal lives,

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and to be able to visualize the data associated with that

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in multiple different ways, from different sources,

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from different elements.

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When we bring in the concept of Digital Twins,

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we now have the opportunity to couple

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or bring together both the concept

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of everything that’s built on the surface

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and to have near real-time updates of that built structure

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together with the picture of what’s underneath the ground.

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The uncertainty of being able to visualize

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that geological model, a geo-physical model,

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or just to understand what’s happening with the soil.

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All of those things together,

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that fascinating combination allows us to start thinking

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about what are inherently uncertain realms, the subsurface,

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and what we expect in our everyday world.

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The reason why that is so important

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is that we need to be thinking ahead to the global trends,

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the mega trends that we’re seeing in our everyday lives.

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The UN has talked about 17 trends or actions

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that people need to think about.

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Most of those are about geoscience

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and that’s what Seequent is all about.

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Most of those also boil down

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to these five global mega trends

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where we’re talking about climate change

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and the impact it has on both our everyday lives,

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as well as the things that we do in our workplace.

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Population growth, which in and of itself

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is exacerbating or influencing or impacting

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all of the rest of the mega trends.

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Water scarcity.

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There are nearly a billion people without access

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to clean, reliable, safe water.

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And when we think about that with aging infrastructure,

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if we think about dams,

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the number of dams that fail in a given day,

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just in the continental US is quite startling.

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And when we picture that across the world, across the globe,

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that even off itself becomes even more troubling.

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Digital transformation is another one of these trends,

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we take it for granted in our personal lives, but it’s not.

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So for granted in a corporate or a workplace

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or in the workflows that we keep talking about.

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Seequent is trying to get into this and work with you all

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around new ways to think about this.

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I’m supporting mining companies,

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supporting civil engineering organization,

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supporting environmental organizations,

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thinking about the connected environment

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as though it’s a broad ecosystem.

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And that’s a great word, we’ll come back to that.

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And thinking about the powerful geoscience

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that you need at the heart,

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at the core of allowing us to start helping and answering

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some of these mega trends.

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Now, all of that is coupled together with that,

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those data, those insights, that digital and data revolution

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that we were talking about.

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Now, our vision on how we can help you

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solve these challenges is through Seequent Evo.

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Last year, I stood here and talked about

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and pre-announced Seequent Evo,

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and I’m happy to add a bit more information,

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but I want to do a little bit of a quick reminder

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for everyone about what we actually mean

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when we say connected solutions

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that are going to allow you to work continuously

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and solve or come up with decisions in the real time

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to apply judgment, to help us help solve those mega trends.

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So if you think about Seequent Evo,

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it sounds somewhat airy fairy.

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What I’d like to do is just make sure that we all recognize

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that Evo is a set of reusable building blocks of software

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that runs in a cloud native environment.

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And if you look at these Lego bricks,

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if you look at the different colors,

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they’re all at the same shape at the moment.

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But if you look at the different colors

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and you look at the little, highly technical term here,

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the little nubby things on the top of the ladle blocks,

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those are the APIs.

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Those are the connectors by which you can actually attach

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and bring together multiple components.

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And that then allows you to have an entire pallet

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almost for those of you who recognize this.

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This is the periodic table.

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Evo is the elements that you can use to build anything.

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With a periodic table of all of the known elements,

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you can compose any material in the world.

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And that then allows us to think about, well,

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whether we want to have pre-built solutions

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where you just have a set of instructions

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about how to put it together,

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creating something like the vehicle on the screen,

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or allowing you to build out an entire ecosystem.

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And really our imagination is the limit,

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is the only thing that’s going to limit us

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as we go through this.

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So I purposely chosen this because it resonates

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with a lot of people.

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Most of us have kids. I have kids.

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In fact, I’m a someone who loves playing with Lego myself,

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and it’s all about composing and creating new solutions.

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But let’s bring that into the real world.

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Let’s talk about what is actually available

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as part of Seequent Evo.

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So if you look at this picture,

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you’re going to see is bringing in desktop solutions.

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And you’re going to see is bringing in partner solutions.

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You’re going to see is start composing new applications.

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Central, Seequent Central is itself composed

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out of these Lego building blocks.

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And as we start thinking then again,

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about all of the other things that we can do,

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each one of these elements, these Lego building blocks,

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these micro capabilities

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allow us to compose a brand new solution

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that is going to help us help you work on those mega trends.

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To allow you to think about the data,

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to think about the visualization and to move it forward.

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Now, if we talk about micro capabilities,

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micro capabilities is a word that at Seequent we use to talk

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about very coarse grain sets of microservices

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that will run in a cloud environment.

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That themselves are composed of desktop solutions,

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cloud-based solutions, APIs, partner products,

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but more importantly about all of the geoscience content

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that flows from place to place within this entire ecosystem.

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And that’s what we call Seequent Evo.

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Is an ecosystem of micro capabilities.

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The web visualization, the automation,

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the drill hole services, the translations,

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the notifications, all of those together are available

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to the current desktop solutions

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that Seequent and Bentley have together,

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the cloud solutions.

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But we also have examples of where partner applications

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have attached to these APIs and they’re flowing their data,

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their geoscience content into this ecosystem.

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And more importantly,

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it is also about enabling your own in-house applications,

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doing things the way that you want to,

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the way that is going to make and solve your own problems.

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So if we think about Seequent Evo,

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it’s an ecosystem as a service.

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This is another view of this,

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but it’s really all about providing a completely

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interconnected arena where the content is flowing

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from one area to the other area.

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It is going to help you solve those problems.

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It is also going to allow you to keep everything up to date

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If we update this, it applies to everybody

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all at the same time.

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Coming back to the composition, because you have the choice,

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you don’t have to stick with those pre-built solutions.

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You can actually have access to all of the different pieces

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of the puzzle, all of the different Lego blocks.

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And with those, you can then solve your own problems.

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Now, the other thing that we need to think about

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is you can’t stop here.

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You have to keep investing in the future.

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So I mentioned last year, and we’re continuing to do this.

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We’re investing in our desktop products.

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We’re investing in our desktop solutions

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as much as we’re investing into our cloud solutions,

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keeping on growing those capabilities.

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But we also have to invest in the geoscience.

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The core of those mega trends,

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being able to solve those global challenges for ourselves

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is actually understanding the science

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that underlies everything that we see,

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everything that permeates our entire world.

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And so we must invest in that future and to do that,

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we’re continuously investing in geoscience research.

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And we do that in a couple of different ways.

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We have dedicated research teams

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who are focused on geological or geotechnical

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or geophysical problems,

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but we also have a collective.

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And that collective is a group of people.

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They may not be in the same team,

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but they’re all interacting with each other.

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And they come from all walks of life within Seequent

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and all walks of life, external to Seequent.

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Whether it’s academia, whether it’s partner organizations

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and together, we’re going to be able to work on

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and solve these problems.

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Now, if you think it back to the tagline

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together towards tomorrow,

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this is how we’re going to do this.

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It’s that continuous research, thinking about an ecosystem,

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thinking about a completely open ecosystem,

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not a walled garden.

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So as we move forward into the future,

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the last sort of things

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that I’d like to bring up in closing,

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we have real world problems that we’re trying to solve.

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That affect each and every single one of us,

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but also affect your neighbors.

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They affect the neighboring country

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and they affect the far-flung regions of the world.

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We’re not finished yet.

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We have to continue to invest in our research.

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We have to continue to work on openness

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and exposing all of our capabilities

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so that anyone in any place,

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whether they’re a partner, competitor, customer,

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so that we can all learn, grow and act on things.

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We have to continue pushing.

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We have to continue driving.

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We have to continue that movement forward.

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We have to continue acting together.

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And the only limit is our imagination and our willpower.

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And so on that note,

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what I’d like to do is leave you to look forward

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to the four regional sessions that are coming up.

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And thank you very much for joining the global session

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of 2021, Lyceum for Seequent.

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Thank you very much.

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