On this episode of the NTP Podcast we chat with Jackson Clarke about his career to date, his experience at University studying a masters and what problems Tentacle CM&I are solving. Hope you enjoy the interview!

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Here you can source all the things we have talked about in the podcast whether that be books, events, meet-up groups and what’s new in the Newcastle tech scene.

• • Jackson’s LinkedIn
  • Tentacle’s LinkedIn

Find all local Newcastle Technology Events

• Event’s Page

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:27:23
James MacDonald
Welcome to another episode of the NewTechPeople Podcast. On this episode of the podcast, we’ve got Jackson Clarke, director and CTO of Tentacle. Welcome Jackson.

00:00:28:04 – 00:00:28:19
Jackson Clarke
Thank you very much.

00:00:28:19 – 00:00:48:05
James MacDonald
Tentacle, I came across you guys over the last couple of months and it’s really interesting. Super excited to try and share the story of what are you doing at the moment and also your journey there. But for those of our listeners that don’t know who you are, give people a bit of background on who is Jackson Clarke to start with and who is Tentacle.

00:00:48:07 – 00:01:28:23
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, as James said, CTO and director at Technical currently, but grew up here in Newcastle. I did mathematics and physics at the University of Newcastle. That was in 0709. At that time I was deeply interested in theoretical physics and pursued that. The place to do that was the University of Melbourne. So I moved down there in 2010, actually lived on campus under a full scholarship, studied masters under Professor Ray Volkers in particle physics, and I was doing what’s called particle physics phenomenology, which is an interesting space between theory and experiment.

00:01:29:00 – 00:01:57:08
Jackson Clarke
So it’s making sense of the theory of new particles beyond the standard model particles to tell experiments where to look, and then also making sense of experiments to tell the theorists what implications the experiments have for their theory. So it’s kind of sitting in the middle straddling between the the theory and the practical. Yeah. Which is sort of where I find myself in, you know, whatever I apply myself to.

00:01:57:11 – 00:02:08:00
Jackson Clarke
Yeah. And I sort of fell into that. I wasn’t planning to do that for my masters. Yeah, but together with my supervisors just sort of figured out that that’s my natural place.

00:02:08:00 – 00:02:10:24
James MacDonald
Yeah. What sort of jobs can you get on the back of that?

00:02:11:00 – 00:02:32:03
Jackson Clarke
Well, you know, I wasn’t thinking of jobs at the time. No. So I did my master’s, and then I actually came back for a year, finished off my master’s degree, did a lot of tutoring, did some creative writing subjects, just wanted a chance to do something different and test myself in those areas, which, you know, really freed up my mind in preparation for a PhD, which I went back to Melbourne and completed.

00:02:32:06 – 00:02:56:14
Jackson Clarke
And yeah, more particle physics, phenomenology, dark matter physics, Large Hadron Collider, physics, early universe cosmology, really cool stuff. Got my hands a bit dirty with data, got my hands a bit dirty with coding, but nothing formal. And it was only at the end of that that I started thinking about jobs and what I wanted to do. And really the the track is academia, postdocs.

00:02:56:16 – 00:03:31:06
Jackson Clarke
You do a couple around the world wherever you can, and then you cross your fingers that you can get back to Australia on a permanent basis, something that in the end I decided that I wasn’t it wasn’t something that I wanted to pursue because, you know, I’ve just got married. My wife is pursuing a career in medicine. I was interested in lots of different things on the industry side, and it just so happened that, yeah, one of my mentors, Professor James Parks, came to the physics building looking for physicists to hire in the engineering innovation space just as I was finishing up.

00:03:31:06 – 00:03:44:19
Jackson Clarke
And it was just the right timing and I decided to go into that innovation’s group Space small team, trying to apply fundamental thinking to innovations at that time in engineering and construction.

00:03:44:23 – 00:04:03:06
James MacDonald
Yeah, well, US may well get into technical in a second, but that’s a really interesting path because I think there’s a lot of people we’re looking younger listeners in particular, people that are going through the education system. Somebody might be going through university degree at the moment, maybe not know where their job lies at the end of it or maybe even gone.

00:04:03:06 – 00:04:23:13
James MacDonald
Continue down the academia route and then want to apply that to industry as opposed to continuing down the ongoing, ongoing academia out. Would you have any advice to people? It sounds like you didn’t go in there with the actual objective to jump at, rather the place you were at in your life sort of going in the industry as opposed to going internationally?

00:04:23:15 – 00:04:27:06
James MacDonald
Would you have any advice for people that are following that same journey at the moment?

00:04:27:08 – 00:04:51:24
Jackson Clarke
Well, I seeing a trend for physicists and mathematicians to be better appreciated in the data science space. Yeah, and that’s obviously relevant to people who might be listening at the time. My options were kind of, you know, before the Innovations Group came along, I was thinking one of the big consultancies that were hiring at the time, and I appreciate mathematicians for this is one of the big banks.

00:04:51:24 – 00:05:17:08
Jackson Clarke
You know, they’re always looking for that kind of head, but it didn’t excite me. Yeah, I wanted some variety. You know, I think there’s more appreciation for it. You know, we went to the university Technology Day last week, you know, talked to a lot of students, some of them in maths or physics, most of them in computer science, data science, but also talking to the companies around the room.

00:05:17:10 – 00:05:28:14
Jackson Clarke
I think they can appreciate that kind of generic general problem solving approach. Yeah, can just be applied in so many industries and that’s what I’ve experienced in my time.

00:05:28:17 – 00:05:58:15
James MacDonald
Now, I completely agree. And I think with the changing jobs that are out there like data scientists, roles that exist now didn’t exist ten years ago. Yeah, the ability to learn, the ability to problem solve and apply that to different verticals, maybe different industries, different type of jobs, I think that is probably the key learning and I think that that’s one of the commonalities between companies looking for, you know, top, top talent is that people have a proven ability to actually pop himself.

00:05:58:17 – 00:06:02:14
James MacDonald
And I’m I be in a different vertical, but it’s a transferable skill for sure.

00:06:02:19 – 00:06:27:24
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what I’ve seen is, you know, when you approach things from a a first principles basis, just use the fundamental laws of physics and logic. And people don’t look at the rulebook. You know, it’s like, shut that book that tells you how to do something and just think, okay, what is the business problem to be solved here?

00:06:28:01 – 00:06:46:06
Jackson Clarke
How might we attack it and get the right heads in the room who have, you know, knowledge in lots of different spaces, You can come up with new solutions, something that somebody trained in the field might not necessarily think of. And, you know, you pair that with people who are trained with the field. You come with a new idea and that’s okay.

00:06:46:11 – 00:06:48:03
James MacDonald
That might work. That might that might work.

00:06:48:03 – 00:07:17:15
Jackson Clarke
And, you know, they can help to proof it or bring it into production. But, you know, those new ideas can come from people outside of the field or people who have worked in different verticals and bring bring ideas from those verticals into new verticals. I mean, that’s how, you know, paradigm shift in science, That’s how new ideas are born in, you know, general relativity, for example, came from a lot of knowledge that already existed in the mathematical space.

00:07:17:16 – 00:07:30:15
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, that was brought over and applied to the physical space. So working across verticals. Yeah. Can, yeah, really give you interesting and efficient solutions and that’s what I’m after.

00:07:30:17 – 00:07:53:07
James MacDonald
Yeah. I also think it’s one of the commonalities in the companies that I say really hire well is not looking for somebody that’s been there, done that, done that perfect role or done that before. But looking for the person that’s got those transferable skills because a fresh set of eyes sometimes, whether it be from a creative angle or just a general problem solving angle, can be the biggest differentiator in coming out with any form of innovative solution, right?

00:07:53:13 – 00:08:19:19
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, one story that comes to mind recently we working with a large company who has hundreds of thousands of devices installed around Australia looking at their data, they were picking up some problems in the devices and they were trying to figure out what was going on. So we came onboard to help them. We actually brought an analysis technique from the health industry, which we’ve worked in called Survival Analysis.

00:08:19:22 – 00:08:45:00
Jackson Clarke
Typically that’s used in the health industry to study different cohorts of patients. So patients who might have received a treatment in patients who haven’t received the treatment. And then you track those cohorts of patients until death. From that, you can generate a survival kind of probability of surviving after and many days. So 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, yeah, we applied that in this space.

00:08:45:02 – 00:09:15:14
Jackson Clarke
We weren’t looking at patients, we were looking at devices with particular components and we weren’t looking at deaths. We were looking at faults, you know, that were arising. And that technique just absolutely unlocked that problem. Yeah, Well, and you made it very clear and those plots that you can make these survival curves, they called kaplan-meier curves. Yeah. They make it extremely obvious what’s going on and they communicate the problem really well to the stakeholders.

00:09:15:16 – 00:09:38:16
Jackson Clarke
It was just, you know, like a watershed moment when that data came through. And you know that that only happens when you take an approach from one place and apply it elsewhere. Not to say that’s never been done before, but, you know, it certainly wasn’t something that was being thought about. Yeah, but once applied, just unlocked the problems.

00:09:38:16 – 00:09:50:01
Jackson Clarke
So, I mean, I can think of other examples, but that one is just part of our recent work that I really appreciate that translation of ideas between different spaces.

00:09:50:04 – 00:10:09:09
James MacDonald
Not all I could. I was only having a conversation earlier this week with somebody in the education industry and I’m talking about the website and user acquisition type scenarios and like, Hey, I was as opposed to looking at other competitors in the same industry, were looking at our best practice in Ecom and what it’s best practice in other online stores and what who does things well.

00:10:09:12 – 00:10:31:06
James MacDonald
How can we apply that to our industry as opposed to just looking within the same industry? Obviously significantly different and less than, you know, what you’re applying at the moment about similar and similar Bridgeway looking at, Hey, what can we take that’s working somewhere else? How can we apply that to what we’re doing as opposed to just looking insular under what happens, you know, in Israel, What’s a way we’ve always done it ourselves?

00:10:31:08 – 00:10:51:12
Jackson Clarke
You know, that just sparked in my head is acquisition time spent on the page until they leave, time spent on the page until they interact. That’s survival analysis. You can think of it that way. Yeah, you could make those curves and, you know, be interesting to see what it looked like. But certainly that approach can be applied in that space as well.

00:10:51:12 – 00:11:10:16
James MacDonald
Yeah, I love it. Now you’ve opened the door to the projects you started work on under the tentacle company. I felt as a listeners, and I’m assuming the vast majority of listeners don’t know who Tentacle is, might give us a bit of a backstory on who is tentacle. Let’s start with who is tentacle and then you back story.

00:11:10:18 – 00:11:22:12
James MacDonald
Later on we’ll get into some of the projects. I find it really interesting interesting space and it’s a it’s a growing space at the moment and there’s more and more attention being given to the work that you are doing.

00:11:22:14 – 00:11:50:05
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, absolutely. So tentacle today is data and predictions focused company. We’ve had a journey to get here. Originally, you know, I came out of uni in Melbourne and that team eventually evolved into what it is today here in Newcastle. Now that happened because in 2020, you know, just before COVID kicked off, unbeknownst to all of us, I decided I needed to come back to Newcastle for family reasons.

00:11:50:07 – 00:12:06:08
Jackson Clarke
Some of the team came up with me and we established a base in Redhead, so we’ve got a factory unit out in Redhead with some space for our servers and office space, a bit of a workshop area and a gym. You seen our gym? Yeah.

00:12:06:10 – 00:12:08:13
James MacDonald
I’ve also seen your servers that you built yourself.

00:12:08:13 – 00:12:20:08
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, exactly. We can talk about that more. Yeah. Yeah. So we set up there in Redhead, and we’re now well established in Newcastle, and our vision is just to have the core of the team in Newcastle.

00:12:20:10 – 00:12:21:21
James MacDonald
Whilst playing on a global scale.

00:12:21:21 – 00:12:45:14
Jackson Clarke
Right, exactly. Yeah. So we want to really based in Newcastle and, and we have done work overseas, we want to do more of it. But I mean really Newcastle is, it’s a really good spot in my opinion for really talent people and we’ve discovered more of them who are coming out of the university in Newcastle for example, and don’t necessarily want to go to Sydney or Melbourne.

00:12:45:16 – 00:13:08:11
Jackson Clarke
We can talk more about that. But in terms of what we’re doing now, we’re really based around two pillars. Those pillars are our tentacles, hence the name. The tentacles are our data ingestion modules. So we’ve built these to be extremely scalable. We’ve designed an interface, a protocol for them to communicate and run and be managed so that we can scrape data from literally anywhere.

00:13:08:11 – 00:13:27:21
Jackson Clarke
So we go out and we like to say, if you can see it on your screen, we can go and get it. So that can mean scraping the web can mean hooking up with APIs, hooking up with spreadsheets, hooking up with other databases. But really it’s about getting data and centralizing that data wherever it needs to be centralized.

00:13:27:22 – 00:13:49:08
Jackson Clarke
And that’s really the first step in understanding the world around us, in our opinion, to make objective, data driven decisions. And then the other pillar is our engine. So these are our predictive engines. We’ve applied these in different industries, but essentially there are an approach, a first principles approach to predicting the future, understanding the now and predicting the future.

00:13:49:08 – 00:14:16:18
Jackson Clarke
So there’s a case study on our website, for example, where we’ve applied a one time series technique to commodities prices, and we’ve shown that these outperform model benchmarks and industry benchmarks, and our approach is called an ensemble method. Yeah, this method is known to be more accurate, has less variance than any other single model approach. Yeah, and essentially it’s the idea of the wisdom of the crowd.

00:14:16:18 – 00:14:49:14
Jackson Clarke
So the more people in the room making a decision, you’ll get a better decision than any of the single people in a room. So so what we’ve built essentially is we’ve parallel, realized this and we’ve scaled it. So we’ve designed architecture so that we can send off requests for certain models to be run on certain pieces of data, put the results in a central place, collect them, and then optimize an ensemble that, you know, historically back tested performs better than any of the single models that we ran in parallel.

00:14:49:18 – 00:14:59:19
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, that’s our order method that we now offer just through our portal. And users can log on and trial that.

00:14:59:23 – 00:15:05:21
James MacDonald
So that users could log on and put their own data and then use your engine. Is that right?

00:15:05:23 – 00:15:36:03
Jackson Clarke
So currently we, we manage the datasets. Yeah. However, we offer a white label platform for our, you know, bigger customers. Yeah. So that we can plug in their databases and they can run those engines on their own data. Well, so at the moment we’re focusing on that value play. So low volume, high value. And you know, we’ve talked about the other the opposite of that very high volume, lower value.

00:15:36:04 – 00:15:40:07
Jackson Clarke
So more retail customers coming in. Yeah. Something that we might build to in the future.

00:15:40:09 – 00:16:02:11
James MacDonald
Wow. Interesting space. Obviously the, the word I get thrown around a lot at the moment. Yeah. And bastardized versions of what is I. Yeah. Do you promote yourself as an AI company. Obviously there’s two sides to what you’re doing at the moment are two pillars as you described it. Do you describe yourself as an AI company? Is that patronizing?

00:16:02:11 – 00:16:13:04
James MacDonald
You know who you are and what you do is a genuine AI. Where do you sit on that? You know, the current, I guess, market trends and commentary around.

00:16:13:06 – 00:16:42:09
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, well, it’s interesting, right? I mean, we could certainly call ourselves technical. AI Yeah, and maybe business would increase, I’m not sure, but we don’t. We call ourselves technical, Sam and I. Yeah, same in AI as computing machinery and intelligence. Yeah. And that’s actually the name of the paper by Alan Turing, very famous mathematician and computer scientist. We sort of named ourselves that as an Amazon to Alan Turing, but also as a bit of a differentiator, you know?

00:16:42:09 – 00:17:20:05
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, because, you know, in my opinion, A.I. has its place, but it’s a huge umbrella term and correct. I don’t pretend to understand every nook and cranny of it. Sometimes it’s useful, but other times, you know, traditional statistical approaches are faster and more accurate and simpler. And in simplicity, I think comes a lot of power and robustness. So, you know, where I stand on it essentially is that, yeah, I sometimes it has its place and it’s part of what we do, but I don’t think it should be a starting point for solving predictive problems in data or otherwise.

00:17:20:06 – 00:17:47:10
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, we like to start simple and build up. So, you know, traditional regressions, linear regressions can be really effective and they’re fast and they’re understandable and we’ve found in the past can blow AI methods, even machine learning methods, which is sort of in between. Yeah, out of the water if you just get the data part right and the engineering of the data that goes into those models.

00:17:47:12 – 00:17:53:02
Jackson Clarke
So yeah, I think the term definitely is becoming a little bit less meaningful.

00:17:53:07 – 00:18:15:03
James MacDonald
Yeah, I completely agree. And I think some people with a lack of knowledge would potentially consider your company an AI company and as you said, you could probably try a domain name at DOT after it. And yeah, you know, it might change the way that, you know, you’re viewed as well. But it’s a really interesting space. And I think, you know, from the sound of things like what you’re actually doing can be applied to nearly any industry right?

00:18:15:03 – 00:18:27:05
James MacDonald
So you could say any industry or any company with a decent dataset is looking for to make some predictive analysis around what’s going to happen in the future based on data. In the past, you could potentially help. Is that how you’re positioning yourself?

00:18:27:07 – 00:18:33:11
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, exactly. So we want to be the world’s number one prediction as a service provider. Yeah, that’s our ambition.

00:18:33:11 – 00:18:35:04
James MacDonald
Prediction as a service like it.

00:18:35:04 – 00:19:03:09
Jackson Clarke
Exactly. So that’s really based around that idea that we can service any industry, any vertical with common tools, come and know how and deliver value. And that’s really what we’re about delivering high value. I mean, really the recipe is the same getting data, getting fresh data, making sure the pipeline between the update of that data and the update of any forecast or any insight you generating is minimized.

00:19:03:12 – 00:19:23:10
Jackson Clarke
Yeah. So when the unpredictable does happen, you are able to see the implications as soon as possible. Make a decision. Yeah. So, you know, we don’t claim that you’ll be able to predict everything and anybody saying that you might be able to. I think, you know we’re a ways off that you can’t predict things like COVID coming along.

00:19:23:10 – 00:19:35:22
Jackson Clarke
You can’t predict things like the invasion of Ukraine. You might be able to predict the probability of it happening. But exactly the timing, you know, it’s very difficult. Yeah, black swan events.

00:19:36:01 – 00:19:55:17
James MacDonald
And then based on an event happening, you can use your prediction as a service to then look at potential outcomes of that and and make better decisions. And the back of that is that sort of also how you can either obviously you can’t predict every event, but once an event does happen, you can still use your service to then make better decisions based on that event happening.

00:19:55:17 – 00:20:13:10
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, exactly. So that’s exactly it. As long as you’ve got that, you know, that refresh time. Yeah, minimize just the latency. Then as soon as something happens, you can react to it. And that’s important. It’s just making sure that companies have the data there to be agile when they need to be agile.

00:20:13:12 – 00:20:15:16
James MacDonald
So you’re quite a young company.

00:20:15:18 – 00:20:16:15
Jackson Clarke
Yes.

00:20:16:17 – 00:20:30:04
James MacDonald
I think prediction as a service, it sounds really beneficial to a lot of companies. A lot of industries do you have any any early test cases, any early companies or industries you’ve been working in? That would be, you know, a good early story to share.

00:20:30:06 – 00:20:55:15
Jackson Clarke
Yeah. So probably a couple. One is in the commodity space. So as I mentioned, we’ve got a case study on the website where we look into it a little bit more in terms of the scalability of that ensemble approach. But we also offer a deeper sort of analysis, which we call our multivariate approach for particular series that we may want to predict.

00:20:55:17 – 00:21:25:09
Jackson Clarke
What that entails is bringing in drivers of a certain price. So demand curve that we want to predict and using the industry knowledge of our clients to understand what drivers are affecting this price will demand in the commodities industry and building a predictive engine that has all of those drivers as inputs and then attempts to predict on the target variable so the price or demand.

00:21:25:11 – 00:21:56:08
Jackson Clarke
So we’ve worked with companies to build these engines specifically for target series and we’ve found that well, first of all, that ensemble approach can be already benchmarks in industry that exist and that are being used by these companies worldwide. But then, you know, as you bring in these additional data sources, you can measure what is affecting the price, what is a good predictor, and ideally just improve on that accuracy.

00:21:56:10 – 00:22:23:18
Jackson Clarke
You know, there’s obviously a lot of commodities companies making big decisions and spending millions and millions of dollars every day on these these commodities, metals, agriculture, commodities. Yeah, soft and hard commodities. Any small accuracy that you can get on top of what others in the market have is hugely beneficial. So we’ve built those kind of models for companies and, you know, we continue to discuss with others where we might apply.

00:22:23:18 – 00:22:49:03
Jackson Clarke
Now we always make sure that when we work with a client and we build a model for them, that that client has sole use of, that we won’t go and take that model and give it to their competitors. Yeah, very much. We want to service companies within a particular vertical in a way that’s a good relationship of partnership and exclusive of others that work in the same vertical.

00:22:49:09 – 00:23:16:00
Jackson Clarke
Yes. So that’s one. Another one that comes to mind is in the building industry. So, so buildings, energy, kind of interface. Yeah. So hot topic at the moment, very hot is carbon emissions and equivalent carbon emissions and getting the net zero. Yeah. So we believe that this problem is really a problem of bringing together, at least at the moment disparate data.

00:23:16:02 – 00:23:35:23
Jackson Clarke
Somebody is going to have to do it. We’re set up to do it and we’ve worked with companies to do part of that. We’d like to do more. But one example is marrying up, building energy data. So this is data about how much energy a building or a portfolio of buildings is consuming at any point of the day.

00:23:36:00 – 00:23:58:19
Jackson Clarke
And these are huge databases, like billions of rise in these kinds of databases. So marrying up that data with data from the Australian energy market operator, that’s public data, but they release it as say it’s very files. It’s pretty hard to consume manually, almost impossible. But we’ve built connections, we’ve built tentacles to this data and we bring it into a database.

00:23:58:19 – 00:24:20:00
Jackson Clarke
We can analyze it that gives you information about the price of energy at any time of the day, gives you information about the carbon mix. So, you know, at any point as a function of location and time, how much solar, wind, gas, coal is in the grid. Yeah. And then the third piece that we’ve brought in is is weather.

00:24:20:02 – 00:24:42:03
Jackson Clarke
So of course, the biggest drivers of energy price and fuel mix is the weather. Yeah, you get those three pieces, you’ve got energy use, you’ve got the components of that energy, you’ve got the weather. All of a sudden you can understand at any point of the day and the projections for the future what is the equivalent carbon intensity.

00:24:42:08 – 00:25:14:00
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, you can understand how much for every kilowatt hour I use right now, how much of that is is clean, how much of that is, you know, dirty. Yeah. And we’ve worked with companies to understand historically how that performed and give advice on what they could change today to improve not only like in terms of cost but also in terms of making sure that carbon intensity equivalent is lowered.

00:25:14:06 – 00:25:26:14
Jackson Clarke
What’s interesting in that space is that from day to day and it depends which grid you’re on. Yeah, but from day to day, the equivalent carbon intensity can be twice or more. Like the differences can be huge.

00:25:26:17 – 00:25:27:01
James MacDonald
Yeah.

00:25:27:04 – 00:26:03:20
Jackson Clarke
So if you can schedule plant to run or you know, if you’re a big energy consumer and you have some choices about when to schedule energy intraday or days out, which you can predict to some degree of accuracy the weather days out, yeah, Then you can really really save on on actual carbon used and I think companies that really want to work to that net zero during that transition period where the grid does contain nonrenewable energy that’s of huge interest because you can you can make huge savings today just by moving shifting around your energy use.

00:26:03:22 – 00:26:04:16
James MacDonald
Yeah.

00:26:04:18 – 00:26:21:18
Jackson Clarke
And even if it doesn’t show up in the official carbon accounting, where generally you’re asked to make averages across your kilowatt hours used to the average fuel mix in the grid, the actual carbon intensity is very different.

00:26:21:19 – 00:26:33:18
James MacDonald
Yeah, yeah. I can say obviously multiple years is fair. You know where you guys play at the moment across multiple industries, having that energy space, it’s a no brainer, right. But yeah, potential future growth for you as well.

00:26:33:21 – 00:26:51:08
Jackson Clarke
Yeah definitely. And we’re looking to better understand that transition of all companies to net zero and help them understand really what are the changes that they can make today that will set them up to hit that net zero sooner.

00:26:51:10 – 00:26:52:03
James MacDonald
Yeah.

00:26:52:05 – 00:27:15:12
Jackson Clarke
So there’s various aspects of that. But really at the moment it’s a disparate data problem. The data lives in so many different places is unclear. Yeah, you really need someone to come along who knows what it means to get data from different places and operate and maintain those connections when they go dark and find new connections and advise on ones that are going to be stable and ones that look a bit iffy.

00:27:15:15 – 00:27:19:00
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, to just bring the data in to be analyzed in the first place.

00:27:19:02 – 00:27:20:06
James MacDonald
Interesting problems.

00:27:20:08 – 00:27:21:01
Jackson Clarke
Yeah.

00:27:21:03 – 00:27:33:19
James MacDonald
Before we get into how you actually do that for companies that here this might find, hey, we’ve got a potential problem here but based on what Jackson and his team do, it could be an interesting how do people find here.

00:27:34:00 – 00:27:38:21
Jackson Clarke
So typically we’ve been found by word of mouth and networking. Yeah.

00:27:39:00 – 00:27:42:00
James MacDonald
So but if people are looking for that technical.

00:27:42:01 – 00:27:43:15
Jackson Clarke
Tentacle same outcome.

00:27:43:15 – 00:28:01:24
James MacDonald
Yeah, we’ll link that up in the show notes anyway. But I think it’s an interesting point because I think there’s multiple verticals, multiple industries that could potentially use, you know, you’re down to say everyone’s looking to become more accurate around their predictions, around data everyone’s looking for. Yeah, the little edge here and there. So I think it could be super interesting.

00:28:02:03 – 00:28:15:09
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, absolutely. So technical, same outcome. Yeah. We’re getting more inquiries every day through the website alone, more sort of cold calls, which is really good. Beautiful means a lot of meetings. Yeah, but that’s positive.

00:28:15:11 – 00:28:36:22
James MacDonald
Yeah, for sure. I have this actually comes a guy, I’ve been to offices and I’ve seen the servers he built. Yeah. Talked me through that. There’s some meaning behind why you’ve gone about your approach as well obviously over the past. How many years there’s been a massive move to cloud computing. There’s also been a massive move to, you know, using some of these bigger players and using their various tools.

00:28:36:22 – 00:28:45:00
James MacDonald
You’re going about building things yourself. Talk me through that approach and what that’s look like from the ground up and your reasonings behind it.

00:28:45:02 – 00:29:05:18
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, I mean, we sort of arrived at it organically, but I think it has a lot of benefits and I’ll explain that. You know, historically we did we’ve got experience with enterprise grade servers. Yeah. And to start with and, you know, setting up virtual machines and virtualization layers on those servers and running big crack units and so on.

00:29:05:23 – 00:29:40:08
Jackson Clarke
As we came up to Newcastle, we actually just discussed within ourselves is that all necessary? And obviously Cloud’s an option, but for us self hosting, running on prem, we learned a lot about what it means to run clustered environments to build hardware, maintain that hardware, what it means to set up our hardware and software architecture on that hardware that I think are really valuable for making the end product more efficient.

00:29:40:12 – 00:30:10:10
Jackson Clarke
So we did experiments where we took servers that were lying around and we networked them and deployed clustered databases, clustered orchestration layers so that we could run our microservices on those servers. And we found it to be really good. That kind of extended as needed. We needed additional nodes, additional compute, additional additional GP use. So we added these.

00:30:10:12 – 00:30:38:07
Jackson Clarke
We named our clusters. They’ve each got a feel to us like personally we feel a touch, they have a look and feel. We know a bit of the ins and outs. Each of them have their own quirks. We know what they’re strong at, what they wake up. We know their physical specs because we built it. We literally built the the the nodes ourselves with our own hands, you know, bled, bled for these computers and put them together and network them.

00:30:38:12 – 00:30:42:13
James MacDonald
And is that still the they right. You take as you scale.

00:30:42:18 – 00:31:08:23
Jackson Clarke
I think at some point, you know it’ll make sense to move some of our stuff to the cloud. But at this stage we’re doing really well, just operating on prem and we’re understating the costs from a compute memory storage perspective without having to worry about getting a bill in the mail that you don’t expect, which is really good for a group like us who work on new things and need to experiment.

00:31:09:00 – 00:31:36:07
Jackson Clarke
And interestingly, you know, we talk to the aid group at Stanford who had a very similar experience of going to the cloud and then actually withdrawing and coming back and operating their own in-house systems because students would accidentally rack up huge bills. Yeah, because they’re just learning, you know, having the ability to manage everything in-house just gives you that greater agility, flexibility, control.

00:31:36:09 – 00:31:59:06
Jackson Clarke
And also I just think that the learning experience is invaluable. I worry that if that isn’t part of the curriculum or if you missed that step along your journey of being a data scientist or working in that space of cloud, then you really miss that hands on what it means to run these things, which at the end of the day someone’s doing it and someone’s doing it for you.

00:31:59:10 – 00:32:20:19
Jackson Clarke
For me, when I go to Cloud, I’ve got a lot of questions that maybe you wouldn’t think to ask unless you’ve actually been through the experience and you’ve run these things yourself. Yep. And there’s plenty of, you know, I met some some students at the uni last week who are doing this. You know, they’ve set up clusters of GP’s in their garage and that’s great, but it’s not necessarily taught.

00:32:20:23 – 00:32:43:18
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, there’s definitely people out there who have never built a computer or set up a computer from scratch who are, you know, using the cloud or advising on the cloud. And I just think that it’s really valuable to have to have done that, at least for me. And I would encourage people out there who haven’t done it before and work in the space to go and try it.

00:32:43:20 – 00:32:45:12
Jackson Clarke
And it’s a lot of fun too.

00:32:45:14 – 00:33:04:03
James MacDonald
Yeah. Now I think it’s an interesting space and I think it’s in your space now, obviously the cloud, but it’s actually building something yourself. If you have a look over from a software perspective, you having a look at, you know, the rise of no code tools. And then also I had to be able to build, you know, basically have websites in the moment that I’ll increase as well with functionality over time.

00:33:04:05 – 00:33:23:11
James MacDonald
They’ve be very real difference between being able to spin something car through using that chiro as opposed to building something yourself and understand the ins and outs behind it. I think that’s a very different, obviously very different approach. But understanding what goes in behind it gives you greater, I guess, power down, you know, to do more advanced features down the track, Right?

00:33:23:13 – 00:33:53:05
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, Well, I mean, I think that’s where our group has a big strength. You know, we’ve been through that process. I call it the fullest stack. Yeah, possible. Because, I mean, we don’t build the hardware components, but we put them together. Yeah, we wired a lot. We run our own networking, we run around databases, we we deploy all our own containers, We build those containers, we continuous integration, continuous deploy, we manage our code, we build the front end.

00:33:53:05 – 00:33:57:21
Jackson Clarke
You know, we do all of that. Yeah, we understand how it all hangs together and interacts.

00:33:57:21 – 00:33:58:23
James MacDonald
Genuine full stack.

00:33:58:23 – 00:34:06:13
Jackson Clarke
Exactly. I think there’s no code tools and tools that are available in the cloud. I think they’re really good for getting you 80% of the way.

00:34:06:18 – 00:34:08:03
James MacDonald
And for some people that’s all they need, right?

00:34:08:03 – 00:34:34:03
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, and that’s fun, you know, absolutely. Sometimes that’s all you need. But for that last 20%, which can be really valuable for or really important for people, really valuable to be companies that last 20%, they can give you an edge. That’s where we can come in and we have an understanding of how to chip away at that last 20% where you might not have the option if you went for one of the integrations because the, you know, they’ve abstracted all of that away.

00:34:34:07 – 00:34:54:09
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, Yeah. We find that may take a little bit more time, but once you crack through it, you crack through that 80% and you’re off at 90%, 95 and you’re chipping away at that hundred until you know the business case doesn’t make sense anymore, which is fine. Your inputs are greater than your outputs and then you move on to the next problem.

00:34:54:13 – 00:34:55:06
Jackson Clarke
Yeah.

00:34:55:08 – 00:35:11:14
James MacDonald
I think it’d be really interesting to see how that plays out for you over time and, you know, whether you carve off some sections of that to, you know, put it in the cloud or some parts, that it does make sense for us to actually, you know, build ourselves while still owning the, you know, the pot is the big differentiator.

00:35:11:15 – 00:35:27:17
James MacDonald
Yeah, I think it’s it’s a journey for a lot of companies going through. Right. But actually understanding a company inside out from the ground up gives you a really good starting point of which to build upon. And you know what works, what doesn’t. And you can really make great decisions around what is a better option for your company going forward, Right.

00:35:27:19 – 00:35:54:17
Jackson Clarke
Yeah. And I have a prediction. Yeah. For you. And that is a lot of the companies that are, you know, currently transitioning or have transitioned to cloud, I think over time they will find that there is a place for on prem. Yeah. At Least some of it will, you know, be clawed back. And I guess you just hope that by that time you haven’t lost the internal knowledge that existed because everyone did on prem, you know, that was the way to do it.

00:35:54:18 – 00:36:06:05
Jackson Clarke
Yeah. A decade, two decades ago. And that knowledge is slowly being lost and the cloud is consuming all of that. And it works in many cases, but not all.

00:36:06:10 – 00:36:13:08
James MacDonald
And is that your reason you predict is the reason for your prediction? Is the lack of knowledge or the greater knowledge that you’d have in-house?

00:36:13:10 – 00:36:39:09
Jackson Clarke
The reason for my prediction on that is my own experience and our own experience. And you know, going some way toward that and then realizing that there is more to learn and more to explore in doing things efficiently in-house. And the on flow effects of that is that you really are thinking about how do I make the most of what I’ve got?

00:36:39:09 – 00:36:57:03
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, what’s the sort of minimal required to get where I want to go rather than buying into something that you can grow into or might be too big or has too many features that you don’t really need and will just kind of slow you down if you aren’t careful.

00:36:57:08 – 00:37:20:21
James MacDonald
Yeah, I think it’s an interesting space, right? And I think it’s a horses of course as type situations while nowhere near as technical as Yeah, but I’ll just look at it from a talent perspective as well. You’ve obviously got that capability in-house. Some companies don’t have that capability or the skillsets in-house to be able to do it, and then you get that, you know, cost benefit ratios and yeah, I got to hire somebody with those skill sets to actually do that.

00:37:20:23 – 00:37:39:00
James MacDonald
And then you’re looking at, as I think it’s one of those situations where, as you said, there’s some companies that are making, you know, a lot of sense to bring it back in-house or keep it in-house. If you’ve got a on prem and there’s others. But it would just be a cloud star forever for them because it’s a bit of a, you know, a set and forget and then hope you don’t get the big bill in the mail.

00:37:39:05 – 00:37:40:06
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, that’s it.

00:37:40:08 – 00:37:43:04
James MacDonald
It’s an interesting space. It’s good to have both the options there.

00:37:43:10 – 00:38:02:15
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, I think so. And I mean, not only that, our mathematicians and physicists, they really enjoy that because they want to understand. They want to dig deep and understand what’s going on. They don’t want to just use a tool to get an outcome. Yeah, they want to understand what’s going on inside that tool. I mean, we hired really Bright Minds.

00:38:02:17 – 00:38:10:07
Jackson Clarke
We’re also always on the lookout for those minds wherever they might live. Typically we found them in in science, but they exist everywhere.

00:38:10:09 – 00:38:32:19
James MacDonald
And do you think I’m going to just dig into that for a second? Yeah. The rise in data science roles is massive, right? Predictive analysis prediction as a service I think is going to be it’s going to continue to be a growing space. The best path into that as a career. I think you’ve mentioned multiple different things that, you know, the problem solving is the core of it, but it could be maths, it could be physics.

00:38:32:24 – 00:38:47:18
James MacDonald
There are people obviously going through and just straight data science degrees. Now do you have thoughts around that? Is that is there one that sits above others or is that just the right person no matter which different avenue they’ve taken?

00:38:47:20 – 00:39:09:19
Jackson Clarke
I mean, one disadvantage of hiring a mathematician or a physicist is usually they’ve got some experience coding with data, but it’s not formalized. You know, they need to learn that on the job. And what we’ve found is they can learn it and they can learn it quickly. And when they do learn it, they can really master it, become very good at it very quickly.

00:39:09:22 – 00:39:37:00
Jackson Clarke
So there’s that kind of time that you have to, you know, teach. And we’re very willing to teach. Yeah. Good people, smart people. Now, I think it doesn’t matter whether you’re coming from mathematics, physics, data science. I think what’s important is that you do well and in doing well, that’s an outcome of really understanding the subject matter and really wanting to excel in the solutions that you’re working on.

00:39:37:02 – 00:40:02:08
Jackson Clarke
You’re looking for people who achieve well at university, but really kind of take that next step to understand at a deeper level what’s going on. And I think that’s the key. You know, whether you are trained in in physics and maths, which are at that more fundamental level or you’re doing straight data science, understand at a more deeper level what’s going on, don’t settle for just using the tool to get an outcome.

00:40:02:10 – 00:40:10:19
Jackson Clarke
And they’ll be people in data science that are wanting to do that and do do it and just do it naturally. They’re the kind of people that we look for.

00:40:10:20 – 00:40:31:08
James MacDonald
Yeah, as you said, I think with the rise in fantastic tools out there as well, some people could consider themselves a data scientist without actually understanding, you know, the nuts and bolts behind it or what’s actually going on, but just putting it all right into script to sit down and talk some data and you can get an outcome with that genuinely, genuinely understanding the problem.

00:40:31:08 – 00:40:33:09
James MacDonald
I’ll be able to put more predictions around that.

00:40:33:09 – 00:40:50:16
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, well, that’s that’s the danger, right? Because getting it 80% of the way can sometimes be easy and but it can also be dangerous. Yeah. Because that last 20% I mean therein lies the weeds. That’s the bit that I love but in the weeds that’s the important bit.

00:40:50:19 – 00:41:13:07
James MacDonald
It’s also the value because like if you’re talking, you’re working with companies where you’re making predictions around, you know, small percentage changes being worth millions of dollars. So, you know, you’re getting 80% of the way. There are you get 92% or 94% of the way there. No 90 for that 2% difference can be made. The difference of millions of dollars, I imagine, for the companies that you’ll be working with now and then in the future, right?

00:41:13:13 – 00:41:14:13
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, absolutely.

00:41:14:15 – 00:41:19:02
James MacDonald
And that is the differentiator and that’s the value add for a company like yourself, right?

00:41:19:08 – 00:41:55:18
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I would definitely encourage, you know, dig deeper and understand what’s going on and see if you can do better with simpler tools. And that’s really a challenge to yourself. Like how far can I push the simple thing until I’ve reached the ceiling before I move on to the more complex thing and understanding where the ceilings lie, each point tell you the return on investment because the simpler things are less investment, both to develop but also to operate and maintain.

00:41:55:20 – 00:42:31:10
Jackson Clarke
And the really big AI based solutions, they’re going to be expensive to run in the future. And we have to start asking questions about whether our society wants to consume that much energy on some problems that may be quick to just throw an AI or multiple at it and get a good solution. But is it efficient computationally when there are much simpler, just traditional statistical methods out there that that can run it, much less the cost, but give you potentially more accurate outcomes like that?

00:42:31:12 – 00:42:58:08
James MacDonald
Just from an advice piece? So if somebody is looking to join a company like yourselves or even just not join your company, be looking to get in around prediction has an interest in machine learning or AI. I’m really understanding like you’ve gone through the academic avenue, but you’ve also mentioned that you’ve had people in your team that have had to learn to code non traditionally and you know, whether that be online or just learning from others.

00:42:58:10 – 00:43:19:18
James MacDonald
I if you had to give some people some some best practices or advice from your experience and the people that you’ve work with, is there some no brainers that you would say, I’d definitely do this, definitely do this and that? Obviously there’s multiple avenues to get to either your team would to be successful in this space, but is there some no brainer that you would say, Hey, I definitely investment time in X, Y, Z?

00:43:19:20 – 00:44:06:24
Jackson Clarke
I mean, for me, what I look for is genuine interest and initiative. So not just taking the boxes or going through the motions. Somebody who has actually gone out there and done stuff. So that could be in the form of, you know, going in, investing in building your own cluster. You can get second hand stuff to do that relatively cheaply and really cut your teeth on what it means to run a database that is redundant, run containerized services across multiple nodes and load balance those and expose them to the internet and pay maybe for a virtual machine where you host a website, things that are real and you can put in your, you know, portfolio

00:44:07:00 – 00:44:19:02
Jackson Clarke
to exhibit what you’ve done, but just tell the story and and be able to say with hand on heart. I know these things because I’ve done them not I know how to do it in theory.

00:44:19:02 – 00:44:39:09
James MacDonald
I love it. I think there’s a lot to learn by doing as opposed to book smarts, right like that. Learn by doing. It’s the same with a website somebody is looking to sell for engineering. Grow doesn’t have a great deal of experience, but they’ve built something themselves. It’s again, it’s showing that you’ve had the ability to learn and the ability to turn that those learnings into actual outcome.

00:44:39:09 – 00:44:58:10
James MacDonald
Right? I think for me as well in the recruiting space as well, having a look at people that have shown that initiative to go out and do that on their own shows, again, that real interest in it and if they are interested, if they’ve got a genuine interest in it, I always find that those people tend to succeed longer term because we all face challenges in our, upgrades and more ordinary days.

00:44:58:10 – 00:45:10:24
James MacDonald
But if you’ve got a genuine interest and allows you to fight through those problems that are a little bit hard or the challenging days or, you know, the times where you’re working on a project that might not be as sexy as some of the others. And I think that’s fantastic advice.

00:45:11:01 – 00:45:40:23
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, I think you need a genuine interest to survive and stay sane. I had some friends going through page day who had a real hard time, but I loved it because I loved what I was studying. And today in my job, yeah, there are days where you’re doing stuff you don’t really want to do. Yeah, but there’s lots of aspects that I would do in my spare time and sometimes do you know, I can’t do too much because you need to do other things.

00:45:41:00 – 00:45:55:07
Jackson Clarke
So I go out and go for a run or play soccer. Yeah, spend time with the family. But yeah, having a genuine passion and interest and feeling compelled to do at least some of what you do every day. You should be latching onto that.

00:45:55:09 – 00:46:17:06
James MacDonald
Yeah, I think that’s how you continue to get better at it. You continually learn and you’re doing that after hours because you have a genuine interest. You mentioned the family and then the health part there as well. So I’m, I’m super interested in you’re obviously super technical, but you’re also a director of the company. You mentioned you’re taking multiple phone calls at the moment from companies inquiring about your services.

00:46:17:06 – 00:46:32:02
James MacDonald
Are you not? A Technically, you’re looking at a business development is buying in there as well. And then you’re trying to manage family and health as well. How do you manage those three buckets if you look at health family work?

00:46:32:04 – 00:46:56:15
Jackson Clarke
Well, I mean, on the health side, a funny story. I actually had a health scare earlier this year where I ended up in hospital with viral meningitis. You know, I’m told completely random can just hit anybody. And I’m maybe not the best person to talk to about managing health because there I was once after a few days in hospital, I felt good again.

00:46:56:15 – 00:47:21:01
Jackson Clarke
I still had to be on the antivirals. Yeah, but I was doing work. Yeah, because, you know, I couldn’t sit still. I had to do something and I was trapped in a room. I’m all recovered from that. But essentially I just try to work to first my responsibilities, make sure I’m fulfilling those from a family side and just keep active and healthy because it’s good for my mind.

00:47:21:03 – 00:47:48:24
Jackson Clarke
So I used to ride a lot, ride my bike. I don’t do that so much anymore because the time investment is bigger than running. So I’m just running and I run long distance. I did some ultramarathons and training for Sydney Marathon that keeps me sane, but in my work life I think for me the key is to only take the things on that I’m naturally best inclined and good at and the other bits to share amongst the team.

00:47:48:24 – 00:48:21:21
Jackson Clarke
It’s really a team effort and understanding who in the team is best placed and has the mindset for certain tasks and to help each other out when needed. Because I’ve a tendency just to work really hard and do things that I’m not necessarily inclined mentally to do and then sort of start to burn out. But I always put my hand on and say, Hey, team, you know, I feel in the the burden of doing this, can I have a day to do my other stuff and somebody take it?

00:48:21:23 – 00:48:43:13
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, it’s like, yeah, sure. And then we just share that and importantly, you know, we’ve had a new CEO come on board, Davi La Furler, He’s taken a lot of that commercial side away and I’m partaking in most meetings, but not having to set them up and continue the communication or be part of the early meetings.

00:48:43:13 – 00:49:00:14
James MacDonald
The place stronger from the tech because I. Which is your strength. Exactly. Yeah. A lot of this is a couple of points he made mention there that part where you are doubling down on your strengths. So you’re playing to your strengths and you know, using your team to actually play on the pathway. Either you don’t get as much energy or potential they can do and it’s not as high valuable.

00:49:00:18 – 00:49:17:20
James MacDonald
Yeah, of your time. Like if you’ve got a particular skill set, obviously as one of the founders, probably one of the most technical in the team and have strongest knowledge around particular areas, a doubling down and playing where you know your time is most valuable and, then spreading out the responsibilities that you know other people can come in and help with.

00:49:17:22 – 00:49:35:01
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, I mean you’d, you’d know, like when you’ve been in the business for a long time, you set it up, you know, all the ins and outs and how it works, which means that in principle you can operate anywhere, you can do anything which is a strength, but also a weak, a potential weakness if you don’t manage that.

00:49:35:01 – 00:49:54:12
Jackson Clarke
Yeah. So you need to make sure that and always thinking is my time best spent here or somewhere else. Sometimes you’ve got no choice and you’ve just got to do what you’ve got to do on the day. But we have a meeting every morning. I guess you could call it a stand up. We never called it that. We just have our morning meeting just naturally every morning.

00:49:54:12 – 00:50:08:18
Jackson Clarke
Yeah. We review everything that we’re doing. We report on what we did the day before and we just reallocate, you know, what do we need to get done today? Are we on track for hitting our goals for the week? It’s formal, but also informal.

00:50:08:18 – 00:50:09:07
James MacDonald
Yeah.

00:50:09:09 – 00:50:30:00
Jackson Clarke
That’s our time. That’s the golden time. We don’t schedule any meetings over that. If it can be helped, just everyone get on the same page and make sure that we are in the place that we need to be to inch forward as far as we can inch forward that day, we kind of self optimising self-correcting. Yeah, yeah. It’s a little self-correcting algorithm every day.

00:50:30:06 – 00:50:42:22
James MacDonald
I like it, I like it. It’s good productivity as well. Right. To just keep checking in. What am I achieving each day? And then a bit of retrospect as well. And, you know, how did I perform yesterday? And, you know, sometimes we’re better than others, but it’s good to be aware that either way.

00:50:42:24 – 00:50:59:12
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, we try to keep the half an hour’s on an hour or more. That’s a lot of time to dedicate a lot of resources. But we used to do a just a Monday meeting, and then, you know, you’re off for the week. Yeah, go do your thing. But sometimes somebody misinterprets on the Monday or.

00:50:59:15 – 00:51:00:12
James MacDonald
I wait a long time.

00:51:00:12 – 00:51:15:00
Jackson Clarke
Things change, right? Then the next week you, you potentially you’ve wasted a week. So Yeah. Of potentially multiple resources. Yeah. So just you know I think it’s time well-spent. We couldn’t think of working any way differently anymore.

00:51:15:04 – 00:51:20:07
James MacDonald
I like it, man. I like the other point you mentioned before, which I just want to come back on the work life balance part.

00:51:20:13 – 00:51:21:00
Jackson Clarke
Yeah.

00:51:21:02 – 00:51:37:20
James MacDonald
Do you think work life balance is a thing? Do you think you can be successful in building a company the way you are having work life balance in the way it’s viewed? Well, again, I’ll actually ask you on on what your vision of what does that mean and do you think it’s possible?

00:51:37:22 – 00:51:59:02
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, good question. I a friend of mine years ago said to me, you know, do you live to work or do you work to live off of it for a and and what is and I thought to myself what is the best. And he was very proud to say that he works to live, you know, goes to work to live the life that he wants to live.

00:51:59:02 – 00:52:11:08
Jackson Clarke
And I was like, I don’t think that’s a good answer to me, at least. Like I. I think living to work is only bad if you hate your work. I agree. So I was like, I think I live to work like I want to work.

00:52:11:08 – 00:52:40:12
James MacDonald
And working to live. If you hate work is terrible. I come also because if you have to look at purely from a ratio perspective of having a look at a week, five days out of your seven you spending doing something you hate to enjoy the other two so four five spend doing something you don’t like to do with a bit of oversight, you know, mornings, afternoons or whatever mornings and evenings you do what you like, but to do something you hate five days a week just so you can enjoy two days a week is a ratio that just blows my mind.

00:52:40:16 – 00:53:01:21
Jackson Clarke
Yeah. And like I’m not saying he hated his work, but to me living the work would be a great outcome because if you live to do the thing that you spend of your days doing every week and that was part of what drove or what drives you every day to get up in the morning, I think that’s really great and it shouldn’t be that.

00:53:01:23 – 00:53:26:08
Jackson Clarke
It feels like that squeezing out other things that you want to do in your life. Yeah, it’s just about finding that balance. And you know, for me I need to make sure that it doesn’t squeeze out family time or time that I need to dedicate to keeping healthy and keeping my mind fresh. But the things that I do in my personal life are also helping my work life.

00:53:26:09 – 00:53:35:14
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, because they do keep me fresh and they allow me to have new ideas that I wouldn’t have if I just went all in on work.

00:53:35:15 – 00:53:56:04
James MacDonald
Yeah, I like it. Partly. You talk about that. It’s like finding something meaningful, meaningful in work, or finding a connection between what you do day in, day out and who you are. They genuinely are what you want to be as a person. I don’t think you have to love work, especially like it’s a little bit different being a business and because it’s something, it’s obviously a passion of yours, But I don’t think every employee out there has to love work.

00:53:56:06 – 00:54:07:12
James MacDonald
But I feel like to be successful. You want to feel like some form of connection between who you are and what you’re actually doing or some form of meaning and actually what you do day in, day out to be truly successful.

00:54:07:14 – 00:54:11:19
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, I think, you know, you should love some aspect of your work.

00:54:11:19 – 00:54:12:16
James MacDonald
I agree.

00:54:12:18 – 00:54:16:22
Jackson Clarke
And if you don’t, then that would be a shame. And you should think about what you can change.

00:54:16:22 – 00:54:44:03
James MacDonald
Especially in the technology. I think like anyone that you’re talking to in your space with, you got really strong skills from a scientific perspective, our data science perspective, you shouldn’t be without options for work. There should be multiple companies out there that are looking to hire people with your skillset, or you add a secondary or a third skill set on top of yours and skill stack and if you do that, you open up more opportunities for yourself and hopefully something that you actually do get some enjoyment out of.

00:54:44:05 – 00:55:00:01
Jackson Clarke
And there’s lots of different aspects to it. Yeah. It’s not just the deeply technical data stuff that’s important, you know, For me what’s important is using that and the power that you can get from that to actually help people.

00:55:00:03 – 00:55:00:18
James MacDonald
Solve problems.

00:55:00:24 – 00:55:26:23
Jackson Clarke
And solve problems. And there’s, there’s the people aspect, right? And you’ve got different people in this space that like different ends of that spectrum, people who really want to work closely with the client, have personal relationships and excel at that and enjoy that. Then you’ve got people who would rather have as little of that as possible and just get down in the weeds and work there and look at logs, look at numbers, optimise algorithms.

00:55:27:00 – 00:55:53:06
Jackson Clarke
There’s a place of both. I span across all of it. I enjoy all of it. But what’s important I guess, is that there’s a place for different kinds of people even in data science, which you might think, well, it’s pretty geeky, pretty nerdy data, but data science means nothing unless it’s applied to real problems, real people who have real feelings and want to do better.

00:55:53:06 – 00:55:58:23
Jackson Clarke
So it needs to be communicate, it needs to be applied. It needs to have genuine impact on people’s lives.

00:55:59:04 – 00:56:21:20
James MacDonald
Now, I love that. I think that’s pretty tight. I do finish podcast today, but for those of our listeners who might have an interest in what your company does there to join your company as an employee, if they’ve got skillsets around this and super interesting to them, or you’re a company and you’ve got a real world problem that you think Tenneco might be able to solve or help with, how do people get a best in touch with you?

00:56:21:24 – 00:56:36:05
Jackson Clarke
Yeah, just go to our website Tentacles CM&I. Yeah. Or Google+ and the contact form. Yeah. Fill it out and get in contact and it’ll go to my inbox and a few others in the group and we’ll get back to you pretty quickly.

00:56:36:09 – 00:56:38:05
James MacDonald
Yeah. I appreciate your time to.