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Lyceum 2021 | Together Towards Tomorrow

Closing out the Lyceum 2021 global event with what Seequent and the Geoscience community are looking to achieve in 2021 and together towards tomorrow in 2022.

Overview

Speakers

James Lawton
Chief Technology Officer, Seequent

Duration

20 min

See more Lyceum content

Lyceum 2021

Video transcript

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(soft ambient music)

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

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I’m the CTO for Seequent.

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What we’re going to do is just recap everything

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

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about our direction into the future.

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So throughout today’s global session for Lyceum,

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

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

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That data revolution is allowing us to completely change

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the way we think about all of the workflows

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that we have in our every day workplace,

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even our own personal lives,

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and to be able to visualize the data associated with that

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in multiple different ways, from different sources,

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from different elements.

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When we bring in the concept of Digital Twins,

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we now have the opportunity to couple

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or bring together both the concept

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of everything that’s built on the surface

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

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

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The uncertainty of being able to visualize

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that geological model, a geo-physical model,

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

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All of those things together,

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that fascinating combination allows us to start thinking

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about what are inherently uncertain realms, the subsurface,

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and what we expect in our everyday world.

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The reason why that is so important

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

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

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The UN has talked about 17 trends or actions

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that people need to think about.

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Most of those are about geoscience

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and that’s what Seequent is all about.

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Most of those also boil down

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to these five global mega trends

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where we’re talking about climate change

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and the impact it has on both our everyday lives,

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

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Population growth, which in and of itself

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is exacerbating or influencing or impacting

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all of the rest of the mega trends.

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Water scarcity.

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There are nearly a billion people without access

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to clean, reliable, safe water.

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And when we think about that with aging infrastructure,

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if we think about dams,

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the number of dams that fail in a given day,

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just in the continental US is quite startling.

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

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that even off itself becomes even more troubling.

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Digital transformation is another one of these trends,

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

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So for granted in a corporate or a workplace

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or in the workflows that we keep talking about.

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

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around new ways to think about this.

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I’m supporting mining companies,

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supporting civil engineering organization,

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supporting environmental organizations,

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thinking about the connected environment

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as though it’s a broad ecosystem.

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

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And thinking about the powerful geoscience

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that you need at the heart,

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at the core of allowing us to start helping and answering

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some of these mega trends.

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Now, all of that is coupled together with that,

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those data, those insights, that digital and data revolution

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that we were talking about.

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Now, our vision on how we can help you

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solve these challenges is through Seequent Evo.

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Last year, I stood here and talked about

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and pre-announced Seequent Evo,

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

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

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for everyone about what we actually mean

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when we say connected solutions

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that are going to allow you to work continuously

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and solve or come up with decisions in the real time

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

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So if you think about Seequent Evo,

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it sounds somewhat airy fairy.

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

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that Evo is a set of reusable building blocks of software

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that runs in a cloud native environment.

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And if you look at these Lego bricks,

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if you look at the different colors,

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

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But if you look at the different colors

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

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

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those are the APIs.

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Those are the connectors by which you can actually attach

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and bring together multiple components.

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And that then allows you to have an entire pallet

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almost for those of you who recognize this.

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This is the periodic table.

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

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With a periodic table of all of the known elements,

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you can compose any material in the world.

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And that then allows us to think about, well,

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whether we want to have pre-built solutions

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where you just have a set of instructions

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about how to put it together,

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creating something like the vehicle on the screen,

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or allowing you to build out an entire ecosystem.

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And really our imagination is the limit,

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is the only thing that’s going to limit us

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as we go through this.

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So I purposely chosen this because it resonates

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with a lot of people.

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Most of us have kids. I have kids.

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

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

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But let’s bring that into the real world.

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Let’s talk about what is actually available

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as part of Seequent Evo.

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So if you look at this picture,

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

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

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

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Central, Seequent Central is itself composed

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out of these Lego building blocks.

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And as we start thinking then again,

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about all of the other things that we can do,

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each one of these elements, these Lego building blocks,

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these micro capabilities

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allow us to compose a brand new solution

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

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To allow you to think about the data,

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to think about the visualization and to move it forward.

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Now, if we talk about micro capabilities,

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

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about very coarse grain sets of microservices

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that will run in a cloud environment.

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That themselves are composed of desktop solutions,

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cloud-based solutions, APIs, partner products,

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but more importantly about all of the geoscience content

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that flows from place to place within this entire ecosystem.

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And that’s what we call Seequent Evo.

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Is an ecosystem of micro capabilities.

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The web visualization, the automation,

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the drill hole services, the translations,

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the notifications, all of those together are available

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to the current desktop solutions

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that Seequent and Bentley have together,

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the cloud solutions.

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But we also have examples of where partner applications

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

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their geoscience content into this ecosystem.

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And more importantly,

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

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doing things the way that you want to,

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

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So if we think about Seequent Evo,

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it’s an ecosystem as a service.

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This is another view of this,

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but it’s really all about providing a completely

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interconnected arena where the content is flowing

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from one area to the other area.

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It is going to help you solve those problems.

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

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If we update this, it applies to everybody

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all at the same time.

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

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

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You can actually have access to all of the different pieces

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of the puzzle, all of the different Lego blocks.

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

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Now, the other thing that we need to think about

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is you can’t stop here.

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You have to keep investing in the future.

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

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We’re investing in our desktop products.

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We’re investing in our desktop solutions

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

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keeping on growing those capabilities.

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But we also have to invest in the geoscience.

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The core of those mega trends,

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being able to solve those global challenges for ourselves

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is actually understanding the science

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that underlies everything that we see,

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everything that permeates our entire world.

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

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we’re continuously investing in geoscience research.

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And we do that in a couple of different ways.

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We have dedicated research teams

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who are focused on geological or geotechnical

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or geophysical problems,

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but we also have a collective.

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And that collective is a group of people.

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They may not be in the same team,

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but they’re all interacting with each other.

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And they come from all walks of life within Seequent

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and all walks of life, external to Seequent.

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

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

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and solve these problems.

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Now, if you think it back to the tagline

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together towards tomorrow,

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this is how we’re going to do this.

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

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thinking about a completely open ecosystem,

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not a walled garden.

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So as we move forward into the future,

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the last sort of things

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that I’d like to bring up in closing,

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

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That affect each and every single one of us,

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but also affect your neighbors.

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They affect the neighboring country

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

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We’re not finished yet.

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We have to continue to invest in our research.

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We have to continue to work on openness

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and exposing all of our capabilities

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so that anyone in any place,

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whether they’re a partner, competitor, customer,

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

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We have to continue pushing.

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We have to continue driving.

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We have to continue that movement forward.

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We have to continue acting together.

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And the only limit is our imagination and our willpower.

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And so on that note,

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

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to the four regional sessions that are coming up.

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And thank you very much for joining the global session

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of 2021, Lyceum for Seequent.

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Thank you very much.

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(soft ambient music)