John Atkinson : 0:03

Imagine you're coffee company A. And your biggest competitor is coffee company B, and they've got, you know, 50 percent of the market share. But if they have an inferior solution for data analysis for EUDR, they're going to, they're going to be stuck. Their supply chain is going to is going to freeze up, which opens up an opportunity for anybody that's using that data, using that accurate data to actually make an impact and take market share from their competitors that aren't ready for it, right. That aren't moving fast enough

Tom Raftery: 0:36

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast, the number one podcast focusing on sustainability and supply chains, and I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the sustainable supply chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery and if you're hearing my voice a little bit lower in register than normal, it's just because I've had a really, really bad cough and cold this last week, but I'm on the mend now. So voice is back. This is actually the first call I've taken this week. The first couple of days of this week, I haven't had any calls. I canceled everything because I was not feeling too great, but back on the mend now. So here we are today back. And with me on the show today, I have my special guest, John. John, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

John Atkinson: 1:24

Sure. Thanks, Tom. I'm John Atkinson. I'm the Chief Product Officer at LiveEO. We are a geospatial company based in Berlin, and today we're going to be talking about a sustainability product that we've built for EUDR compliance.

Tom Raftery: 1:39

Nice. Okay. And John, I've had your CEO, Sven, on the podcast last year, and we talked a little bit about LiveEO. We talked a little bit about its genesis, and we talked a little bit about, you know, its recent pivots. So I'm going to, I'm going to say that maybe 10 percent of the people listening today might have heard that episode given it's a year ago. Might be a little more, might be a little less. But, for people who haven't, and even for people who have, could you give us a little refresher on kind of the genesis of LiveEO, you know, where you started out and what you're up to now?

John Atkinson: 2:14

Sure. LiveEO was founded to monitor infrastructure at scale. So, think l ong linear infrastructure, like railroads, Deutsche Bahn is one of our customers. We also monitor power grids, power grids throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and the United States. Anything that's that's long that you can use earth observation to monitor. That's that's where we got our start. And the problem that we were trying to solve was understanding the vegetation risk to that linear infrastructure. Well, whether it was grow in risk or fall in risk on a power line or fall in risk on a rail line, it was important for our customers to understand where they needed to go or send their crews to go and cut trees, trim back trees things like that to make sure that their grids weren't compromised or rail traffic wasn't interrupted. And we

Tom Raftery: 3:07

just to clarify, John, when you say Earth observation data, you're talking satellite photography information,

John Atkinson: 3:12

We are talking satellites. We leverage some of the the free sources, the Sentinel 2 and Sentinel 1 for some of our SAR data, but we also use Airbus and Planet for commercial data.

Tom Raftery: 3:26

Okay. And. You've gone beyond just doing the power lines and the railway lines now. So again, Sven mentioned this last time, but for people who didn't catch that, talk to me a little bit about, you know, the, the, the pivot,

John Atkinson: 3:39

Yeah. So, it's not really a pivot. We have three product lines or three product families. We have the tree line product, which is for monitoring vegetative growth for linear infrastructure, such as rail and power lines. We have Surface Scout and Surface Scout monitors pipelines and monitors their right away for any 3rd party interference or incursion into it. And then when, when we sat down last year and thought about where we could go next. What was the market that we really wanted to go after where we could leverage a lot of the experience that we gathered with the previous products, the EUDR regulation came right up to the top. Just to give you a little context when you're monitoring vegetation it's very similar to monitoring deforestation. We're basically looking for where trees are now where they weren't which is, you know, the inverse of what we're looking for in deforestation. The, the way that we did that was through training machine learning models to identify the undergrowth or the growth that was affecting the right away. And so using that background of machine learning and identifying vegetation and species and vitality with ML, we thought, wouldn't it be a better solution to do that with deforestation so we could accurately identify where deforestation did occur that would be in violation of the regulation. But more importantly, as we're seeing these days, where deforestation didn't occur, but some of the open source maps, we call it open source data, but it's just the freely available deforestation or forest cover maps where we see those failing. We thought that we might be able to do a better job with those, with the analytics and, and really make sure that the, the, if the plot is compliant, that those goods could be imported into the EU EU

Tom Raftery: 5:29

Okay. And again, just for people who might be unaware, can you give us a quick 101 on the EUDR?

John Atkinson: 5:38

Sure. So the EU, EUDR is the European Union deforestation regulation. And what it basically says is that you can't import any goods into the European Union that are a that were, are a product of deforestation after January 1st of 2020. So there is a line in the sand that was drawn. If a plot or a parcel was deforested before January 1st, 2020, you can ship those goods in. If it was deforested afterward, those goods are no longer allowed to be brought into the European Union. And as you can imagine that has the potential to wreak havoc on a, on a supply chain. Just making, just going through the process of making sure that you're, you're compliant is a new thing for the industry.

Tom Raftery: 6:26

And it's certain categories of goods, it's not everything, correct?

John Atkinson: 6:31

right? It's it's seven commodities. The, the big ones that we, that we look at our palm rubber coffee but it's also cocoa, timber

Tom Raftery: 6:40

Meat?

John Atkinson: 6:41

cattle, soy. So the, those are the, those are the, the, the seven, but the deforestation issues are really acute when you're dealing with palm, rubber and cocoa and coffee.

Tom Raftery: 6:53

Okay. And so, you guys are doing is you're looking at areas. Now, how do you go back to January 2020?

John Atkinson: 7:05

That's one of the very convenient things of when you're using the free data set from Sentinel 2. They've been capturing imagery for years. So we, and they capture every piece of the planet every 14 days or so. So, we've got the data to show whether deforestation occurred or not. And our machine learning models, you know, they don't need a lot of data to come up with a decision on whether it happened or not. So, you know, we're using data from, you know, prior to the cut off date to understand where the deforestation existed. But then we also look forward to see if any new deforestation occurred, because again, if a, if a plot is outlined, but a new deforestation happened within it at any point, it automatically becomes noncompliant.

Tom Raftery: 7:52

Okay. And if I am non compliant? What are the implications?

John Atkinson: 7:58

Well, as a good corporate citizen, you shouldn't be importing your goods. The enforcement mechanism is that the fines can be as high as four percent of your turnover. And if you're a multi billion dollar company and that's, that's who would be paying. It's the, the company that is bringing the good in or importing the good into the European Union for market. That's the company that would be subject. To the fine.

Tom Raftery: 8:18

So it's only

John Atkinson: 8:19

It's similar to GDPR

Tom Raftery: 8:21

Yep. But it's only companies operating in the EU then.

John Atkinson: 8:25

Correct. Correct. It's only, only goods that are being brought into the EU, though there are other other efforts around the world to, to replicate that. And I'm, I'm from California, even though I live in Berlin now, I'm originally from California, and I fully expect at some point, California will have a similar regulation to EUDR for goods being brought into California.

Tom Raftery: 8:48

Okay. And orecompanies well, let's, let's, let's talk about when this legislation is coming into force, because if I remember correctly from discussions with Sven last year, it's the end of this year, start of 2025, that this starts to take effect. Is that correct?

John Atkinson : 9:07

Yeah, that's correct. on January 1st of next year, large companies have to be compliant. The small and micro businesses, they can, I think it's 6 months after they have to be compliant, but they're really focused on getting the big ones compliant before the end of this year. So that those, that represents the biggest chunk of all of the imports. So

Tom Raftery: 9:30

Okay.

John Atkinson: 9:31

it'll have the biggest impact.

Tom Raftery: 9:32

And I assume like all previous big legislations, like this GDPR or as you referenced earlier, I assume all the big companies are completely prepared for this.

John Atkinson : 9:43

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, they're, they're completely prepared. It's, it's funny. There's, there's been a lot of a lot of stuff happening in the news reports about the, you know, asking for delays and, and pushing back on this this legislation. I think it's actually going to happen. They may do a grace period on the fines for a bit. But there is a lot of momentum with large companies getting themselves ready and if they delay this, I think someone's asking for, you know, one interest group is asking for an additional 2 years. That's just going to suck momentum out of the the efforts that are already in place. And, you know, it's, it's funny. One of the complaints I think it was the the, the head of the Indonesian Palm Industry interest group, they complained that the open source data wasn't accurate and we know that it's not accurate and they know that it's not accurate, but you don't have to use the open source data, you know, there's other, there's other ways and other approaches to get accurate readings so you can, you know, so you can make sure those goods are compliant. And I understand the pain, right? If they, it, there are companies out there, out there that are selling EUDR solutions that are 100 percent reliant on that that freely available data and their customers, when they finally do the analysis their customers are going to be in for an awakening. We've, we've done comparisons internally. And I can get into like how we do it for EUDR specifically, but we did identify in one case open source data from, you know, a very reputable agency or third party N. G. O. Very reputable. We looked at 500, I think it was 540 plots and they had 320 false positives out of 540,

Tom Raftery: 11:28

So in 320 out of 500, they were saying that there had been deforestation where there actually hadn't.

John Atkinson : 11:34

they were saying there was deforestation where they're actually hadn't. The actual number was 74. So there is, there, you know, there is a valid concern with the data, but the flip side of that is there's also ways to get better data. And if companies need to spend some money to do that, or, you know, other entities need to spend money to get that data. Then it's, it's worth it because what we're trying to do is, you know, it's bigger from a, you know, sustainability standpoint, it's bigger than any company that's importing chocolate or importing coffee into the EU.

Tom Raftery: 12:08

Sure, sure. No, I understand that. So if I am a company who has had a false positive flagged for my product, either stuff that I wanted to bring in, or if I'm a producer outside the EU, whose plot of land has been false positive flagged, what redress do I have?

John Atkinson : 13:03

You can go and do a manual process to or basically a due diligence process to verify that it was deforested in a different, in a different way or in a different mechanism. In some cases, they'll have people go out and, you know, look at the, look at the fields. They'll look at paperwork to make sure that it was a, a palm plantation before. And there, you know, there are ways to get around the satellite imagery part of it. But when you're dealing with supply chains, as complicated as rubber, that you know, you can have hundreds of thousands to millions of suppliers when you, when you calculate in all of the smallholders doing that level of work is it's just going to be prohibitively hard to do manual or manually. So getting the, getting the data right the first time, you know, and using models that, you know, can be demonstrated as accurate. And if, if anybody at the EU wants to take the time. You know, when goods are coming in, if they want to take the time to do their own due diligence and verify the results, you know, they can, we, we stand behind them, they're extremely accurate results So you know, there are ways to do it, but you know, we've, we've talked to customers we talked to actually one, one interest group in particular, and their entire strategy was to hire lobbyists to get this pushed down the road.

Tom Raftery: 14:20

No doubt. I mean, I could see how this would be massively disruptive to supply chain seeing as we're on this sustainable supply chain podcast. If I'm bringing in rubber, let's say I'm a tire manufacturer and I'm bringing in rubber from, I don't know, Southeast Asia, and suddenly a huge number of my suppliers are deemed as causing deforestation where I know, or I'm told they haven't, you know, suddenly I, I lose access to those suppliers, or is there a way around that?

John Atkinson : 14:49

That's, that's where you can go and do the, the sort of manual due diligence. On every parcel to check it. Yeah, there are ways around it, but it is not it is not automated. It is not pretty. Yeah, it's it's it's painful,

Tom Raftery: 15:04

And in the LiveEO case, though, you can say, actually, no, that false positive is a false positive. So

John Atkinson : 15:12

Yeah, we can point the finger right back at the open source data and say, you know, this is what this is what the open source data says and this is why it's wrong. Right? Because you can you can kind of in some cases you can see that the data wasn't geo referenced correctly. I, I remember looking at one map and it showed a parcel that was legally available for a palm plantation in, in the ocean, right? They just missed the, the, the geo referencing. So it wasn't. It wasn't aligned with with the area that they were looking at. But in in most cases, you know, we can share our result and we do share our results with the due diligence statement. So they can be reviewed by the EU. And, you know, again, we're we're very confident in the results. And we spot check these you know, with, with higher resolution satellite imagery manually, just to make sure that the quality is where it needs to be.

Tom Raftery: 16:07

Sure. Sure. Yeah. No. And if suppliers are wrongfully excluded, you know, could this lead to some kind of blacklist effect where good suppliers are penalized based on faulty data and you know, how does that ripple

John Atkinson : 16:21

through chains Yeah, that's, that's the big risk, right? So the easiest way to make sure the goods are compliant is to make sure you're buying from suppliers that have compliant plots or compliant parcels. But if you're a, if you're a compliant, supplier, and you're obeying the rules, you know, that is unfairly removing you from the supply chain. And when you think again, going back to the smallholders, when you pull them out of the equation, you know, that's someone's livelihood, right? And if they, if they're working land that has been deforested, you know, in a way that is compliant with the legislation. Yeah, they they deserve a premium right for that for those goods. And instead they're getting disqualified entirely. And and what's going to happen is if the if the if things go forward with the second tier data, the open source data, if things go forward with that, you're gonna have a massive surplus of rubber that that can get, be shipped into everywhere else but the EU, so those prices are gonna, are gonna drop, which means that, that, you know, that small holder who is unfairly disqualified, not only are they not gonna be able to sell it at a premium, they're gonna sell it at a lower a lower price because the supply of noncompliant goods has increased.

Tom Raftery: 17:38

Ouch.

John Atkinson : 17:38

You know, and these are, these are families, right? And there's millions of them across those seven commodities that would all be punished by using this type of, of data and not taking the time to do a proper analysis. You know, it's it is. I will say this. It's a hard problem to solve right when they're coming up with a global like global forest coverage map. They're trying to solve for the entire planet. What we learned is you can't do that. The models really don't work in that way. The planet's too diverse. So we break the models down by region so that we get them to that, that point where they're as accurate as they can be. And so we know, we know that if we're looking over Southeast Asia, you know, we have a 93 or 97 percent accuracy, but that same model, if we used it over Brazil, would be horribly inaccurate, which is why we train in a different way for Brazil and a different way for Sub Saharan Africa.

Tom Raftery: 18:40

Right. Okay. And you referenced as well that some of the plots were, you know, in the wrong place for want of a better way of putting it.

John Atkinson : 18:49

Yeah.

Tom Raftery: 18:50

How often does that happen? And, you know, how can companies make sure that their plots are where they're supposed to be or they're correctly geo referenced?

John Atkinson : 19:01

Yeah. So that that's something that is extremely tough to do. And, and fortunately the, the plots themselves, those usually come across as pretty accurate because the, the suppliers can either draw, you know, inside of the Trade Aware platform, which is our, our solution for EUDR inside of Trade Aware, they can draw the parcels, they can update or upload the geo JSON. And then they're seeing it right there on the map to make sure that it's, it's valid and it's in the spot where it's supposed to be. The issue is when you're dealing with data that's coming from, you know, maybe it's coming from a, a government organization in Indonesia or in in Malaysia, and when you're putting it on top of a different map, those two might not align, right? So they may not have the same geo referencing in which case things can sort of shift. And that's, that's the bigger issue. But the way that our, the way that our approach works, we, we basically bypass that risk by sticking with the Sentinel base map and the, the parcel drawn on top or uploaded in bulk on top.

Tom Raftery: 20:06

And, you know, for companies who are working to comply with EUDR what does the total cost of ownership look like, you know, are there hidden costs and that companies might overlook in their compliance strategies.

John Atkinson : 20:20

The biggest hidden cost is the shrinking supply chain, right? The, it's funny that the way they see this problem, they see it through the same prism as a lot of their sustainability goals, but the difference between a sustainability goal that you set for yourself as a corporation, and a sustainability requirement enforced by law you don't have to be 100 percent accurate for your corporate, you know, ESG reporting, but you do need to be 100 percent compliant to bring the goods into the EU. So the problem is different. And the procurement teams that we're talking to in a lot of cases, they have zero visibility into the effects this will have on the supply chain. You know, they're trying to get the cheapest solution that they can in the door, right? That's their job. It's what procurement does which means, you know, they, they kind of have to, you know, cast a blind eye toward the, the, the issue with the data. And they're not familiar with it anyway. It's not something that they deal with on a daily basis. They're not running the business. They're not affected personally. If the supply chain shrinks, they're just, you know, procuring a solution to make sure the data, you know, the goods are compliant. The paperwork is done. And that's actually we see a lot of the focus being on the paperwork side and you know, for months, customers didn't want to talk about the data. But now that a lot of those, a lot of companies have implemented a solution based on a competitive offering that has the open source layers or open source data, they're seeing the problem. So they're coming back and reengaging with us around this conversation of you know, how can we use, you know, your ML to ensure that our supply chain is as complete as possible.

Tom Raftery: 22:02

Interesting. Given how complex all of this is and it's becoming, it feels like we're in kind of a mission impossible movie. What's the what's the toughest mission LiveEO has had to take on and how did you, how did you navigate it?

John Atkinson : 22:18

I think there were the toughest one for us to date has really been getting customers to understand the value of precision analytics, right? And making sure that they can see the pain that's coming. It was hard for us to quantify that until we started seeing results come back from our, our now, you know, now customers that we're trying to solve the problem with the freely available data. You know, again, when, when a rubber supplier to, you know, large, you know, tire manufacturers sees 70 percent of their supply chain evaporate that raises a flag, right? So the business now starts to care about that which by the way is where sustainability needs to be. It needs to be thought of as part of the business, not thought of as something procurement can handle internally and managed through an ESG team. It really does to have a truly sustainable supply chain. It does have to be part of that business. So we're getting the attention of the people that, that actually run that core business, the rubber, you know, the rubber supply business. So when, when they're getting engaged, we start to see that, that traction. The other problem that, and it's not necessarily a you know, a LiveEO Trade Aware problem. It's a customer problem. It's getting all of the suppliers onto a platform. Understanding what the, what the plots look like. You know, if you've got a million suppliers in your supply chain, how are you going to collect all of that data? Because we've talked to teams where they have, you know, two people, you know, sitting in an office, you know, or in a war room in a conference room. Trying to, to get all of this data from their suppliers and their suppliers don't really want to give it up because it is, you know, a bit of a trade secret. Right. Where, where are they getting it? That's a little, they want to keep that a little bit private. So that, and that led us to create a second sort of differentiator for, for Trade Aware. Again, we were focused on the business problems. We weren't focused on the compliance paperwork at first, right? The compliance paperwork. We see that as something that, you know, that is a straight information system, not overly complicated to do, but there was a separate, complicated problem around how you get suppliers in. And so we created a are you familiar with, with a commercial or a social graphs?

Tom Raftery: 24:26

Yeah.

John Atkinson : 24:27

Yeah. So it's, you know, what social networks are built on. We built our own commercial graph into Trade Aware, so you can start to it. So buyers can invite suppliers. Suppliers can invite their sub suppliers. And so on and so on. And all of that data is anonymized until it gets to that tier one supplier. And the tier one supplier can provide all of the data without exposing their supply chain to their customers. So there's no risk that the customer is going to go around them you know, to buy the goods, right? So, but what, what, what that does is instead of having two people in a conference room, you know, in a war room trying to do this, you can now have, you know, hundreds or thousands of suppliers adding their own parcels as they need to either uploading it or just drawing it inside the Trade Aware tool. It's it's free for all of them to add their data.

Tom Raftery: 25:16

Nice. Nice. Cool. And I mean, LiveEO started off doing infrastructure, as you mentioned, power lines, railways. Now you're doing as well, EUDR. Looking ahead, where do you see the greatest potential for satellite space technologies to improve not just supply chains, but sustainability as a whole?

John Atkinson : 25:41

So, I think that that we what we're doing right now is is sort of that that leap ahead of where satellite data has been influencing sustainability to date. Where where we see it, you know, we're seeing it with EUDR today. But there are a lot of other regulations that are coming that are going to want this specific type of data. There are sustainability certifications that I know will be created based on this type of data. The importance of making sure that your supply chain is truly sustainable, meaning the business owner understands where their goods are coming from and that those are sustainable, that's going to start becoming more and more important globally instead of it just being an ESG, you know, sort of team that sits outside of the core business and just calculates numbers.

Tom Raftery: 26:30

Cool.

John Atkinson : 26:31

And, you know, our, our mission at LiveEO is really to to leverage Earth observation to make life better on Earth for all mankind. So, when we think about how we're solving problems with utilities, right, we're building solutions that not just, we're not just monitoring whether trees are going to hit a you know, a power line, but we're also trying to understand what that fire risk would be. Right. I'm from California, as I mentioned before. And, you know, we had 80 people killed in one city, 85 killed in one city because a power line a power line came down, sparked a fire and it just went crazy. If you know that that risk, that that risk is there, you know, and you, and you learn about it through geospatial technology, then you can do something about it, right? You can take an action and the power companies can, energy companies can fix it. Right. So all of this is we see it is very consistent, whether it's helping to preserve rainforests, or helping to prevent, you know, unnecessary death or unnecessary outages for our power customers or under unnecessary train incidents because of debris falling on the tracks, you know, that's, that's all consistent with what we're doing.

Tom Raftery: 27:37

nice, nice, nice. And we often hear about the risks involved and we've talked about it as well in non compliance with regulations like EUDR, but what are the opportunities? How can companies use this as a competitive advantage as opposed to an obligation?

John Atkinson : 27:53

That's, that's actually a really good one. So, you know, imagine you're coffee company A. And your biggest competitor is coffee company B, and they've got, you know, 50 percent of the market share. But if they have an inferior solution for data analysis for EUDR they're going to, they're going to be stuck. Their supply chain is going to is going to freeze up, which opens up an opportunity for anybody that's using that data, using that accurate data to actually make an impact and take market share from their competitors that aren't ready for it, right. That aren't moving fast enough. And you know, that's, so that's one thing that we see we see happening. The other part is, you know, we kind of see that markets are going to be created for sustainable goods that aren't just like greenwashing sustainability, but actual, you know, data driven and evidence driven sustainability or sustainable supply chains that, you know, we're, we're not seeing broadly today. We've seen lots of pledges, but when you, when, you know, when you can verify that these goods came from this place, this place is compliant with the, you know, with this legislation and other piece of legislation. I think we're going to as a, you know, as a society end up in a much better spot, especially when it comes to choosing whether you're going to buy sustainable goods or not, who you're going to be buying those goods from.

Tom Raftery: 29:14

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And I mean, satellite monitoring is, you know, currently focused on infrastructure and deforestation. Do you see this technology playing a larger role in other environmental challenges like water management or biodiversity biodiversity tracking?

John Atkinson : 29:34

So not only that, but also in disaster not disaster response, but also understanding what flood risk is for certain areas. Again, going back to the fire, you know, what the wildfire risks are. So, so, I mean, I worked at Planet for Planet Labs for three and a half years, and they operate the largest imagery Earth observation constellation in the history of the world. It's some 300 satellites that are launching a two new constellations throughout this year and into next and the use cases that we saw there are the same use cases that we're considering, right? So whether it's monitoring the migration or, you know, migration of refugees. Right. Where are they going? Where are they coming from? And you can, this is information you can see from space. Understanding, you know, what's happening with refugee camps and the size growing and contracting. You can use it to make sure that people aren't being bad actors you know, promising to do "A", but not actually doing it with earth observation. And, and the broad availability today, you can monitor that. So, you know, whether it's, you know, geopolitical, whether it's refugee related, whether it's disaster, understanding disaster, mitigating disasters, preventing deforestation in ways that go beyond what EUDR does. There's the federal police in Brazil, they use geospatial data to monitor deforestation as it's happening. So, when they get an alert, and usually it's like illegal gold mining or clear cutting for cattle or clear cutting for a runway for drug trafficking. When, when the, when the federal police see it, they don't just, you know, write a report, they get in a helicopter, and there's, there's videos of this on YouTube that you can go and see, but they'll get in a helicopter, you know, suited up, commando style, fly out there, arrest as many people as they can that are on site. And then destroy the equipment that was being used for deforestation. And this, this equipment is very expensive, right? That, like, some of those, those pieces are millions of dollars, but they destroy them on the ground and really try to take, you know, take the initiative to stop the deforestation before it becomes too bad and too broad. That's that, but these are, you know, there are so many opportunities to do things like this. With that type of data, it's, you know, the number of use cases we can go after are almost limitless, which is why we kind of have to, we have to do a lot of homework. And, you know, we have a biz dev team that is out there and looking and seeing what might be next, but we have to do the legwork and the research before we make a commitment. Because we can't do a thousand things, but maybe we can do three things really, really well. That, you know, in the end, leave a positive impact on the planet as a whole. And mankind as a whole. And when we decided to do that fourth thing, we want it to have that same level of impact.

Tom Raftery: 32:29

sure, sure. sure. And for companies that are just starting to explore satellite based monitoring, where would you begin, you know, particularly in the context of sustainability and compliance?

John Atkinson : 32:41

Yeah, so it all goes back to pain, right? What is the problem? How is sustainability or how is being a sustainable company affecting your business? And again, EUDR was a great example of that. But there are other regulations that are that are going to come that may have a similar impact. If we can understand what the problem is they're trying to solve, and if we know that that that problem can be solved by looking at historical data versus current data, right, doing some change, change detection, that's, you know, a down the middle use case. Another very important use case is if you are actually purchasing land for conservation, for the purposes of conservation. If someone goes in and illegally logs it, then what was the point? But if you can monitor that land, and you understand that the stands are, you know, are still there, right? And, and that illegal deforestation isn't happening on those conservation easements, you know, that's a, another great use case, but also means that, that when you spend the money, you're getting the value from it or we're all getting the value from it in the end.

Tom Raftery: 33:48

Sure, sure, sure. Okay. Left field question, John, if you could have any celebrity or fictional character alive or dead as a spokesman for LiveEO and satellite tracking, who would it be and why?

John Atkinson : 34:07

It would be my great uncle. So my great uncle was he was an inventor of some note, you have no idea who he is. But he, you know, he grew up on a farm, self made. Went to Antioch College in, in Ohio, then went to the Ohio State University for a master's and PhD. At various points, he was the director of development at Technicolor, he was the director of development at at Kodak. He invented, like, the solar pool cover, those blue ones with the bubbles on it but in his later years, he really, he and his wife really started to focus on conservation. And, and they, you know, they spent a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of capital you know, dollars as well as political capital to try to preserve land in Los Angeles. And if you can imagine trying to preserve land in Los Angeles, it is, you know, it is a, it is a really tough thing to do. But, you know, he, he and his, and his wife did that. And actually, if you go his name was Roy Deering and his wife's name was Betty Deering. And if you go up into the Hollywood Hills. Off Laurel Canyon there is a trailhead for a trail called the Betty Deering Trail that was named after her for her efforts to conserve that land. So it wasn't, you know, it didn't turn into houses. I like to think that, you know, if he, when, you know, he's looking down on me right now, he's, he's, he can see that what we're doing, is an extension of that, right? I got my, my thirst for renovation from him and, you know, I'm taking that and applying it to a problem that I think he really would've appreciated. And so, and so, you know, he may not be the best spokesman, most people don't know him, but in Hollywood, he was known, right? He was on the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences. The sound you hear in theaters today is sound that he worked on, you know, back in the day and voted on that until the day he passed away. So, but he, he, I would really love for him to know that, that this is the, the product of the work that he did.

Tom Raftery: 36:05

Fantastic. wow, brilliant. John, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now. Is there any question I did not ask that you wish I had or any aspect of this we haven't covered that you think it's important for people to be aware of?

John Atkinson : 36:17

I think, you know, I think we covered a lot of what it is that we're that we're doing and where where Trade Aware sits in terms of being focused on business value, right? And solving the business problem of sustainability, not simply the, the paperwork and the tracking issue, which is not that is important,

Tom Raftery: 36:33

Sure.

John Atkinson : 36:33

But there are lots of companies that are going to solve that problem. But, but what we're trying to make sure, you know, the, the industry understands is that the problem is bigger than that. The issues are meaningful to the companies, you know, that have to comply with that regulation. And if we keep putting on, you know, putting on blinders and thinking that the open source data is going to be the solution, we're not going to get anywhere with this.

Tom Raftery: 36:58

Super. John, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

John Atkinson : 37:06

Let's see to learn about the company LiveEO, it's Live-EO. com is our web address. If you want to learn about me, go on LinkedIn, it's John. Atkinson on LinkedIn.

Tom Raftery: 37:18

Super John, that's been fascinating. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

John Atkinson : 37:22

All right, thanks Tom.

Tom Raftery: 37:24

Okay. Thank you all for tuning into this episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast with me, Tom Raftery. Each week, thousands of supply chain professionals listen to this show. If you or your organization want to connect with this dedicated audience, consider becoming a sponsor. You can opt for exclusive episode branding where you choose the guests or a personalized 30 second ad roll. It's a unique opportunity to reach industry experts and influencers. For more details, hit me up on Twitter or LinkedIn, or drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com. Together, let's shape the future of sustainable supply chains. Thanks. Catch you all next time.