Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Unite our voices. We respectfully acknowledge the watchapnon of people
as the traditional owners of the land in which this
was created.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hi, I'm Crystal Kinsella. I'm a proud Jarwin and Braddrew woman,
a supply diversity expert and published author. Welcome to Meet
the Mob, a series dedicated to showcasing Black excellence in business.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
I get to interview deadly first Nation business owners from
around the country and learn about their whye Today, I'm
joined by Andrew Dowding from when Yama Digital Solutions. We'll
share with us he's why, why he got into business
and why he does what he does. So let's kick
it off. How are you going, Andrew?
Speaker 1 (00:53):
I'm good, good. Thanks?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Tell us who you are?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Who's your role? Okay?
Speaker 4 (00:57):
My name is Andrew Murrambury Doubting and I'm a Nullama
traditional owner from the Pilber region up in Norwest w A.
And yeah, I'm the managing director for win Yama, which
is an indigenous geospatial and cloud consultancy.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Fantastic, it's the first time we're meeting today. But I
was doing all this Google research on you because you
were in the Telsha Best of Business Awards and you
were the national winner. And when I saw that, you
want to back then, because I was a new South
Wells finalist, I had to go and you know, Sush
you out.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
I was like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was an
amazing event for us. I mean we're only three years
old now, so I kind of feel like we've come
through our kind of startup phase and yeah, to be
recognized like amongst some of the really big businesses in
Australia was Yeah, it was kind of mind blowing for us.
(01:51):
And I mean I think we kind of knew like
when we went through that process that we that the
judges were interested in us, and we know we went
moved through the state finals and then we're kind of
looking at the competition as well, of course across the
national space and and yeah, look it was a real
shock for us because there was some amazing businesses there
(02:14):
and we're up against not just all the indigenous businesses
but the wider, the wider businesses that Telstra had looked
at as well.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
So yeah, we were we were shocked.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Congratulations is an incredible achievement, most definitely. So it looks
three years in tell us, you know, what's your why,
like what you get into business for?
Speaker 4 (02:36):
Look, I was, I started off straight out of UNI,
and I went up to the community that I'm from,
which is up in Roban in the Pilbra, and I
started working for our Native Title organization as a language
and heritage officer. And yeah, I spent a lot of
time working with my elders mapping country. We were mapping
(02:59):
place names across across our Nuluma country and and yeah,
just as I saw this kind of engagement with like
mapping and kind of digital representations of country, just realized
that and like, really, you know elders who are really
you know, elderly, and they you know, they lived on
(03:20):
country and they'd kind of come into towns and they
were engaging with this amazing kind of technology to map
our places. And it just kind of sparked something in me,
like I thought, this is something we need across the country.
Really just the age of elders, you know, and we
were sort of losing them and we still are, and
just the knowledge that they held across country and just
(03:41):
making sure that we recorded that stuff and also yeah,
like stored it and worked with it and you know,
worked on it within our own communities. As well, so
we like controlled it. And I was just saying, yeah,
the importance of that stuff, and that's what really sparked
the kind of the business. You know, I said, I knew,
this is something I want to do for the rest
of my own life. And yes, here we are, you know,
(04:04):
down down the road.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
For Yeah, that's incredible. I mean, well, being able to,
I guess, engage with elders with technology. I mean some
of what the technology you probably using is so foreign
to them in such a different world. But bringing you know,
history in the past and story together with the future.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
What it's really surprising is like it's the tech, Like
I never had to explain the technology a huge amount
to elders. Like just using just really simple software like
Google Earth, you know, which is like really commonly used,
or Google Maps, elders just intrinsically just kind of understood
(04:44):
like how to how to look at it and how
to sort of navigate the country like digitally. So I
see it as like geospatial, which is like the mapping
kind of profession. I just see it as a really
easy way to marry like tech and traditions together and
it's just kind of a natural fit in some in
some cases. And yeah, it was those experiences with elders
(05:06):
just navigating country and marking out places that really got
me thinking about, like, you know, why aren't we more
involved in the tech sector, and why aren't we exploring
this as kind of an industry that exists out in
the regions as well.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
What's the connectivity like out in those regions, because I
could imagine that's pretty hard.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
In the bush it is, yeah, i mean, Robin's like
off the not off the grid, but like we've got
the mining sector in our region, so the infrastructure is
not too bad. But yeah, in remote communities it's yeah,
it's terrible. You know, four people would struggle to get
four G in some places, which is what you kind
of need to run those systems. But surprisingly, in the
(05:47):
last couple of years, like infrastructure is starting to get
a lot better with things like Starlink, which are like
you know, satellite in broadband is getting a lot cheaper
and it's getting a lot more accessible. And so we're
seeing now all of a sudden, like a change in that,
you know, in that environment, people want to understand more
about cloud computing, or they want to understand more about
(06:10):
the software that they could use to maintain traditions and culture.
So so yeah, there is a bit of a change
happening since when I was doing my work up after Union.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
I can imagine, I can imagine.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
So what else does I've seen? You've done some you're
doing some workshops in community young people involved.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Yeah, so we have quite a hard consultancy space, like
which is an indigenous geospatial and cloud consultancy and we
do a lot of work for public and private sector clients.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
But yeah, the stuff that gets us up.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
Every day in the morning is our Indigenous mapping workshops
that we deliver and those are really about teaching indigenous
community people mapping techniques or mapping technologies that they might
use to protect country or to manage country. And so
(07:05):
we run six regional events around Australia and then we
run a big national workshop as well, and we bring
in partners from the tech sector like Google and Amazon
and a range of like NASA as well.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
We had this year at our conferences.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
So we bring in a whole lot of kind of
mapping technology leaders and we network them with mob so
that people can understand how to use those kind of
technologies in their own communities well.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
It's fantastic. So what does the future hold for win Yama, Like,
you know, three years in this journey, Like, what's the
legacy piece.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
I think it's a hard one to see at the moment,
but I really feel like, you know, we're quite early
in the tech space with culture and traditions, and I
think that really evolves through people's engagement in that space.
And that's where I see our legacy being like bringing
mob and community it is to technology and kind of
(08:05):
just demystifying it a little bit and kind of making
a little bit more accessible to people who really need
that capability lift and they want to they're really hungry
for kind of skills in the tech sector, and so yeah,
I kind of feel like where when Yama's functioned as
a bit of a tech incubator for indigenous people who
(08:26):
we employ, but also like we're trying to kind of
spread that through the communities.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
That we work with.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
And yeah, I'd love to look back in a few
years and think that we help spark some of that technology,
some of the capability lift that we will see into
the future that people need when they're engaging with tech.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Yeah, because there's such a real lack of young Indigenous
kids going into sort of stem careers or tech tech careers.
So yeah, if there's a feeder ground that you can provide,
But I think it's also about them being able to
see what's possible or what particular types of careers or
pathways are available to them.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Yeah, I don't think like geospatial or cloud is ever
Like people don't you know, necessarily aspire to be a
cloud solution architect when you're from you know, the regions
or the bush. But what I would what I would
say is that there is a really flourishing tech economy
out there in the bush, like indigenous ranges, like the
(09:29):
even Native title organizations and kind of people who manage heritage,
Like they're all working in software and kind of mapping systems,
like some of them are. People are flying drones. There's
a whole range of technology that's out there, and it's
almost like us kind of trying to like connect the
dots between like there's actually a tech sector in your
(09:51):
you know, in your community, and like where a kind
of skills builder to try and get that under like
for people to understand that that's actually a viable career
even out in the community. So so yeah, it's I
think it's just really about like raising awareness that there
are tech careers out there and people might already be
amongst them, they just don't kind of quite know yet.
(10:13):
And and so yeah, some of the some of the
journey for us is to kind of make that a
really mainstream conversation like, yeah, I want to be a
ranger but in the tech space, you know, like that
kind of that kind of idea. So I think it's
important to kind of talk about more and more and
then the awareness becomes kind of raised, and then it
(10:34):
doesn't seem like a massive career change from you know,
like being out in the community flying drones down to
down to a tech career that you could be on already.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Yeah, I feel like we've got to find a way
to get some of those case studies, all those stories
out there, because even for myself, like I hadn't heard
of this ja spatial mapping at all before, Like I
was like, oh, what is this stuff?
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (11:00):
Yeah, mapping is a is a pretty small niche, and
we like that. We like that we're in a small
niche and that we you know, that we exist in
that space because it's like I said, I think like
mapping is a bit of a gateway for the tech
sector for indigenous communities. It's something that's natural that they
understand country and and you know, they have an affinity
(11:21):
with country, and so if you just kind of build
on that relationship in the digital space, you're already moving
people into the.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Kind of tech sector.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
So so, yeah, it's something we're really passionate about. And yeah, look,
look don't want to continue to do this kind of
work into the future.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
I can see your passion comes through every time you speak,
which is really great to see. Yeah, So if you
had like a really I guess a key message for
for the audience out there, whether it be you know,
a young young kid in the bullsh or or one
of the big guys in the corporate land in tech,
(11:58):
you know, what would it be.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
I'd like to have a couple of messages though, right
I think in the in the yeah, in the big
kind of corporate sector, like we need it. We need
allies in this space. Like there's not a lot of
indigenous tech companies out there, and even fewer Indigenous people
who just come through the you know, like a kind
of mainstream kind of training or university degree into the
(12:24):
tech sector. And so when win Yama employees people, we've
got to we don't just go out there and just
you know, advertise and employee like, We've actually got to
build our workers, and we need support to do that.
We need good contract flow through our organization to continue
you know, building like interns and graduates through our programs.
(12:49):
And that's yeah, it's a hard slog sometimes when you're
in the kind of cut through a consulting space. So yeah,
we really need like those allies to think that through
and think long term about the projects that we're kind
of and the internships that we run and and yeah,
for MOB like, I really think that you know, sometimes
(13:12):
just people need to take a kind of step back
and think about the career path that they want and
and that might not necessary if it's in the tech space.
It might not necessarily be you know that you need
to come down to a university or down to the
city to to.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Follow that dream. That there are tech.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
Spaces up in communities, like in range of programs and
different organizations that work with you with with tech, and
those are sometimes just you just need to kind of
recognize that those are pathways that you could kind of
work towards So yeah, i'd say two people, just look
around your your communities and think about the tech sector.
(13:55):
And then yeah, come to one of our workshops and
understand like how how we can build your skills into
being a tech worker out in the regions.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Yeah. Well, two really powerful messages there, And I really
want to thank you for your time today and really
great to meet you as well and learn a little
bit more about what you do. Thanks for listening to
today's episode. If you love it, please share it on
your socials with your mob, let's help amplify as many
Indigenous businesses as possible and get everyone supporting each other.
(14:25):
Thank you.