October 24, 2024 • 23 mins
Attending industry events are crucial in extending your professional network and growing professionally.
Join us with Brandon Peters, CEO of Shockwave Automation, as we highlight how short, focused sessions and face-to-face interactions at industry events can offer practical insights and foster meaningful connections.
Gain insights into the importance of staying ahead of industry trends and technologies, even when there's no immediate impact on revenue. Learn the long-term benefits of engaging with your community, and how you are can build credibility within your professional network at industry related events.
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Co-Hosts are Alicia Gilpin Director of Engineering at Process and Controls Engineering LLC, Nikki Gonzales Director of Business Development at Weintek USA, and Courtney Fernandez Robot Master at FAST One Solutions.
Follow us on Linkedin and YouTube for live videos, demos, and other content!
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Get in touch with us at automationladies.io!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, here's another special episode of Automation
Ladies.
We're recording here, not live,but recording at Automate 2024,
mccormick Place in Chicago.
This is the last day.
On the Thursday we're having aStarbucks and a sandwich here
before we hit the keynote andwe're catching up with Brandon
Peters, the CEO of ShockwaveAutomation and, very excitingly,
(00:22):
one of our speakers at thecoming up conference, ot
Skatecon, that we have going inHouston, texas, july 25th
through 26th, hosted at thePhoenix Contact Customer
Technology Center.
And if you're listening to thisand you don't yet know about OT
Skatecon, you can see all thedetails at automationladiesio
slash OTSkateCon.
(00:45):
So yeah, good morning, brandon.
How are you Yourself?
It's day three, so I'm alltalked out.
I'm kind of glad that you'll bedoing most of the talking,
hopefully, in this episode,although every time I say I
won't talk I still do.
So we'll start.
This is going to be a littlespecial, short episode, similar
to what we did at A3 Forumearlier this year with Kathy and
Lauren, where I just sat downin a corner of the hotel.
(01:07):
We are actually sitting outsideof a closed Starbucks in a
FedEx office, here on a couch atleast not on the floor, in a
corner somewhere.
Hopefully it'll stay relativelyquiet until we hit the keynote.
But this will be a littlespecial episode.
I really wanted to catch upwith Brandon A to hear his story
, but we'll keep it brief andthen get his perspective on what
he saw at Automate.
Is this your first time comingto Automate, brandon?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
You betcha.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Okay, very cool.
So we get a first-timer'sperspective.
So I guess I'll start out withour usual first question.
Brandon, if you could introduceyourself a bit to our audience
and tell us what you do and howthe heck you came to be doing it
?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, so I'm Brandon Peters, CEO of Shockwave
Automation, so I guess I startedback doing automation back in
2015, 2016.
Kind of uprooted my family tomove to northern Alberta to get
some work experience with a, Iguess, fellow networking peer.
That's kind of just.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
What were you doing before that?
Speaker 2 (02:02):
What I was doing before that was instrumentation
technology and mechatronics.
Okay, so that's kind of how Igot into the technology side of
things Through college.
I always, instead of going outand partying, I was just mostly
hanging out with the professorsafter building labs and doing
everything, because I mean, atthe time, instrumentation is my
(02:22):
instrumentation technology, itit's a little bit different in
Canada.
It's not.
It's not an actual likeengineering degree, it's more of
like an apprenticeship style.
Apprenticeship style, yeah,exactly so.
Um, we had a young family atthe time when I was going
through school, so my wife wasexpecting our second and so
everybody else who was incollege partying, doing whatever
(02:44):
.
I was pretty much stuck tofocusing on family life, saving
money and, you know, just reallytrying to make the most of it.
So I feel like that kind of, Iguess, maybe catapulted my path
to where I am now.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
So, yeah, and when did you go out on your own as
Shockwave Automation?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, so we started back in October, I guess 2023.
I've been doing variousprojects from mining, oil and
gas, been subcontracting withsome other integrators just to
fill the gap with some of myspare time and, yeah, no, it's
been probably one of the bestdecisions I've ever made.
Everybody's always like, oh,why do you do these conventions,
(03:23):
why do you do these shows?
And everybody's always like, oh, why do you do these
conventions, why do you do theseshows?
And one of the things that Ialways struggled to get was that
buy-in and that support fordoing these type of conventions.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
From other people.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
What's that, Fran?
Speaker 3 (03:36):
You said you didn't get buy-in from other people.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Yeah, usually everybody's like oh well, what's
our return on investment foryou?
Going to automate or going tooh, when you were employed.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
So your employers.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
So what was kind of what's our rate of return of
investment on you going to theseshows?
And sometimes it's really hardto prove that right, Especially
when.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
If you're not sales.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yeah, exactly, and when the people, when those
other people aren't with you,your employers, your higher-ups
aren't with you and they don'tsee that community that you're
(04:19):
building and that network brandthat you're essentially building
for the company and yourself,sometimes it's hard to really, I
guess, quantify that, exceptfor, maybe, your social
following, but that doesn'treally prove to generate any
revenue, usually for people,which is what most people are
typically trying to gain fromthese types of shows, right?
So, whether you actually have alead or there's no leads, I
still feel like it's extremelybeneficial just getting out
there, having people know yourpresence in the industry and
putting a face to your name.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Would you say that also, it brings a little bit of
credibility, or more credibility, when you go to customers right
, you can talk about things yousaw, people you met, upcoming,
you know new trends, newtechnologies.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Absolutely Like.
I think that it's nice for,especially when you're active on
social media and you have, Iguess, a bigger following and
your clients are seeing youactively involved in, like you
said, developing technologies, Ifeel like there's a little bit
more, I guess, trust with theintegrators that they work with
when they see that, because theyknow that they're always after
the best interests and goingafter the latest things that are
(05:10):
coming.
Obviously, you want to stayfocused in your niche or focused
in the industry that you'reproviding the solution for, but
it's still nice to see whatevery other industry is doing in
that aspect.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
I know for us.
So we did an interview a coupleof days ago at Harding with
someone that's really activelyinvolved in the standard setting
for single pair Ethernet andlike.
Those types of connections Ithink are great for when you do
have, you know, a need or youend up working with that
technology kind of knowing somepeople that have been developing
it.
I think it gives a sense of youalso always always have a huge
bench to call on, right, even ifyou're not a large company.
(05:43):
So has that I guess thatemphasis changed since you went
out on your own?
Now that you can choose to dothis, do you think that you
would send your employees toshows when you get bigger?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah, 100%, absolutely.
It's definitely something youneed as an engagement level and
people's buy-in in your brandand I keep going back to your
brand because that's essentiallythe biggest thing that's going
(06:13):
just work your people, work yourpeople.
But if there's nothing thatthey get in return from it and
there's no cultural aspect tothe environment, people are just
going to end up leaving andthat success that you've built
with those people eventually isgoing to deteriorate and you're
going to have to start fromscratch and you can just get
into the cyclical cycle of not.
It'll be like a downturn,self-explosion, essentially.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
I totally agree with you, but how do you know that?
Speaker 2 (06:37):
How do I?
Well, I've been through it acouple of times, but I mean,
it's one of those things it'smore exhausting to fight for
people to stay with you than itis to give them the things that
they need to be successful andenjoy what they're doing.
Because, like I said, if you'renot keeping people engaged,
(06:59):
you're not involving people withyour advancements, people lose
interest, they lose track andthey themselves get in this
cycle of I don't want to be here.
They start looking forsomething new, and then you've
got five big projects on the goand then everybody leaves.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, and I think sometimes smaller companies as
well they lose sight of the factthat they do have to try to
provide education and careeradvancement opportunities to
their people.
Not to say that people don'tcare, but oftentimes you're just
so in the grind right, and I'veexperienced this myself.
I was really good at what I wasdoing and I got to know it well
and I got to train other peopleat it, and so, even though I
wanted to change or advance, Iwanted to move into another
(07:39):
department.
The company didn't want me tobecause I was so good at what I
already did, which is good forsome types of people.
But for people that areactually ambitious and like to
learn, that basically willeventually make that person
leave because they're no longergrowing.
We actually met somebody at themanufacturing happy hour party,
in which we also met your wifeshe's awesome, by the way that
(08:00):
made it here to automate, butshe said that she had to fight
pretty hard for her employer tounderstand that there's value in
coming to something like thisand she's not sure that if
she'll be able to make it nextyear because Detroit's a little
further from where she is, but Ican tell that you know, for her
that's definitely a negative ofher employment situation is
(08:21):
that she feels a little bithampered and the fact that they
don't see the value of hergrowing her knowledge and her
network.
But I think that's aconversation a lot of people are
having now or thoughts right,how do we accommodate people
that have this drive to have apersonal brand or have their own
connections and learn thingsindependently, outside of the
training that's offered by thecompany?
But all in all, I mean I'm onlyseeing the companies that allow
(08:42):
that, that have more visiblepeople out.
There are growing and thenthere are some.
Yeah, the feast or famine forintegrators is certainly real,
and so having a network to callon for subcontract work when
you're slow, or being able toput your people on somebody's
project for a little while.
(09:03):
I know James Dean at AppalachianAutomation.
He's been very successful.
He's grown the company.
He has a lot of steady workcoming up but a big contract.
But for a couple months he waslike hey, my guys are free, and
if he didn't have that network,I don't know that that would be
going so well in terms of havingto float everybody's payroll
while having a big projectcoming up.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, definitely be a huge overhead expense, and
that's the other thing.
Like you said, the integrationit's a cutthroat industry.
Whether you're on the E&I side,engineering side, it's usually
typically raised to the bottom alot of the time.
But then you get into thesesituations and these rescue
situations.
You come in into a client siteand you see what they've been
given or what's been integratedand then you're spending the
(09:42):
next six months trying to cleanit up too.
But it's definitely definitelygood to have a good path forward
and plan in place and havingthat network to call on, like
you said, because I mean it'ssometimes you can go four years
with having steady work and thenyou have six months of downtime
that you need to cover onoverhead costs or you're
(10:03):
starting to pay your people fulltime without having any
billable work, like it'sdefinitely something that you
need to always stay on top ofand kind of have coming down the
pipe.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Speaking of networking, I know I was also
going to ask you, if we havetime, what cool things you've
seen here at Automate, but youare one of the speakers at our
upcoming conference and thereason that Allie came up with
this conference and maybe she'llclarify she really wants to
enable this networking and apart of it was we attended a
training at TraceRoute in Dallas.
It was a two-day training class, but the way that Josh
structured it, it was sovaluable, not just for the
(10:35):
training but also for thenetworking with the other people
that were coming to be trainedon this very specific topic.
So OT Skatecon is lots moretopics, but the idea really is
to have people that work onthose different areas of OT and
IT technologies with practicalexperience to be able to come
give some tips and tricks, sometraining, some information, some
(10:56):
resources.
And then really, I think a hugepart of the resource is the
speaker right Access to meeting,networking with and getting a
community with the speakers aswell as other attendees.
And, inadvertently, I think, westarted a little mini community
of the speakers with our littleVIP speaker chat on WhatsApp,
(11:17):
which came up this morning.
It has amazed me how you guysstarted networking and sharing
ideas and asking each other forhelp on projects or tips, the
resource sharing, I mean, thatstuff is real.
Can you speak a little bitabout that?
And are you excited about OTSkate at Con?
And, if so, what excites youthe most?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
I think Courtney kind of said it the best.
She said it's our dysfunctionalfamily reunion and I think that
really hits a home run todescribing the group and
everybody in it, and I thinkyou'd get that.
Anywhere you go in theautomation industry and the
people that you meet, I feellike everybody's on the same
level as everybody in that groupchat.
(11:56):
No, definitely looking forwardto the OT Skatecon and, like you
said, bringing out everybody aspractical experience together
to present on multiple topics.
I feel like everybody's goingto get a heck of a lot more out
of two days than you would, Iguess, walking a trade show
floor or, I guess, doing aLinkedIn learning content.
(12:18):
I mean, you're going to getmore from that one-on-one
interaction with the people and,yeah, I feel like you're going
to see a lot more lessonslearned and a lot more, I guess,
candid feedback on what'sactually happening in industry
and the best practice.
People are doing software.
People are using hardwarecomponents to fill in solution
(12:40):
gaps, so I think it'll be reallygood to see those people all in
one spot.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
And it's a group of people.
Yeah, it's a group of peopleand we can check each other.
Yeah, and we do yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
So yeah, that's the other thing I'm a little bit
worried about.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Everybody's going to fact check my presentations
probably right Check mypresentations probably right,
we're going to fact check eachother.
It'll be good.
Yeah, we can veto things.
We can vote, it'll be ademocracy.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
At least we won't be tearing down your panel design
in public on a LinkedIn post.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
That's all good.
That's always good, every oncein a while especially if it's
somebody that you never kind ofbatted heads with or went up
against in the long run, againstthe project, and they won the
bid and you lost it.
So it was good to throw acouple of jabs in there when you
did I'm just kidding, not me.
So you came up with ot skatercon.
This is your idea.
What drove you to kind of itwas.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
It was definitely, highly.
Basically, I came up with it inthe middle of trace root con,
trace root trace route, so themiddle of josh's training.
I was like this is amazing andI need to make this, you know,
something that isn't just aboutnetworking, and I guess I went
too far.
But the other thing that Ilearned, you know, is that I
don't know how Josh did it, buthe talked for two days straight
(13:51):
and one of the things I knewimmediately was that I can't do
that and so and I can't, I can'teven keep attention more than
30 minutes on one topic anyway,and so that's kind of how I came
up with and that is how Alliecame up with the 23, now turned
into, I believe, 26 differenttopics, 30 minute sessions.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Maybe 25 minute sessions at this point Because,
yeah, I think all of us,especially in this industry,
have attended some trainingclasses that weren't exactly
designed to keep yourimagination, keep your attention
.
Either you know, trainingmaterial can be dry, and then
there's certain people that youknow that really can inspire and
(14:29):
keep your attention whiletraining, and then others I've
talked to people recently about.
There's a lot of trainingopportunity out there, but not
everybody is cut out to be atrainer.
To be really effective, ittakes both the product knowledge
, the application knowledge andthe ability to talk to people,
keep their attention, keep thementertained.
As much as I would love topretend otherwise, I think most
(14:49):
of us nowadays the attentionspans are getting shorter, the
younger kids more so, but evenus adults there's just way too
much to pay attention to at alltimes, so much going on in our
businesses, in our lives.
So I find that when I learntechnical information, if I can
recall it with a then personalconnection, tie it to a story,
(15:13):
something that I felt at thesame time as I was learning.
That really helps with theretention.
And when you go to a two-daytraining, you get a lot of
information dumped at you all atonce and then you may not be
able to go and implement itpractically for a while and
typically that information kindof recedes over time if you
don't use it right.
Which is why we thought, hey,let's make these short topics
(15:33):
and then give you lots ofresources so that when this
comes up later, if it comes upin your work or a colleague asks
you right, you can kind ofrecall some of the information
but then also recall where youshould go to get that and get
more details and who to call ifyou have a question.
Right, and what I love about sofar, the speaker lineup and
we've met a couple people, bothin Nashville last week and here
(15:55):
at Automate, that are dying tocome and, you know, be a part of
it and speak.
So we'll probably be announcinga couple more speakers before
we close the doors in the nextfew weeks.
But these are people that arereally passionate about sharing
their knowledge.
So something that you mentionedearlier too about companies,
they kind of sometimes want tokeep things close to the vest.
Obviously, a lot of us can'ttalk too many specifics about
(16:18):
certain projects, but I think wecan really all share with each
other, especially things likelessons learned, right?
So vendors have tons of greatinformation to share about the
technology they're making, howit should work, how it works
under ideal conditions.
You come to great shows likethis at Automate and somebody
has spent all weekend putting ademo together and making sure
that it works and it does thething that it's supposed to do,
(16:38):
and they still don't always work, which is why most of us, I
think, are sometimes skepticalif demos are real or if they've
been kind of programmed to lookreal, because real-life
situations generally don't go assmoothly as the installation
manual tells you it will, andespecially if it's an integrated
system of lots of things right.
So I have just the greatestrespect for everybody that's
(17:00):
coming to speak at ot skater conbecause they're willing to
share, you know, the real lifeexamples, things they've learned
from their failures, right,tips and tricks like lessons
learned, and those are thingsthat I think our industry could
do a better job of in generalsharing not just the successes
but how we're working throughthings so that we can all have
more success.
So we are actually heading tothe keynote here on the third
(17:21):
day, intrinsic is speaking aboutAI.
They're an NVIDIA partner andI'm pretty excited to keep
learning more about that stuffbecause it is starting to creep
into practical applications,just like some of the tech
that's single-pair Ethernetwe've talked about.
It's not a new technology, it'sfive years old, but it's
finally getting to a point wherepeople trust it.
(17:41):
They know where it belongs.
They're looking for commonstandards and I think a lot of
the AI applications we're seeingnow are.
You know.
People are asking how does itwork?
What does it do?
How can I use it?
In this conference and thenmaybe two or three conferences
down the road.
It'll all be about which one'sright for me, which one fits my
application.
So I'm not necessarily lookingat AI to hype it right now for
(18:02):
any practical use, although itdoes have practical use cases
that have been tested over adecade.
But a lot of the new stuff wewant to follow to see when and
where does it make sense toactually give it a shot, or to
see if our customers are, ifthey come asking.
We want to know what the heckis up right.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Gotcha come asking.
We want to know what the heckis up right, gotcha, and on some
of the things that are comingdown the pipe, I feel like
they're pretty constructivetools for not only companies but
the employees to utilize.
Um, we're looking at ways totie in to the production side of
things so that the operationsthey got conversion, that's that
they want to calculate, or ifthey've got different production
(18:42):
throughputs that they want tokind of model out or I guess,
just do some basic math on thefly for for their day-to-day
activities in their plant ortheir manufacturing facility.
I feel like it'll really tieinto the ics level pretty
tightly.
And then I guess, just on thecyber security side of things,
with I, I feel like we'll startto see a lot more proprietary,
(19:03):
standalone artificialintelligence deployments of not
necessarily the touch, the webinterface, but it's more of a
company repository ofintegrators to kind of dive into
.
And I feel like it's going toopen the doors for a lot of
(19:25):
different opportunities that wenever had access to before Stuff
like model, predictive controland process modeling.
Typically you'd see thesesoftwares that are hundreds of
thousands of dollars.
But now, with the AItechnologies and data modeling
sets that you can build with.
You can build your ownsolutions for a quarter of the
(19:45):
price, right, so it's definitelysomething that's very
interesting.
It's something that I'll beworking with a couple people out
of California and Canada onTalk a little bit more on that
at a different time, but there'sdefinitely some cool, very cool
data modeling, predictivecontrol stuff that's coming down
the pipe, so pretty excitedabout that.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
That'll be really interesting.
I'll be talking a bit more.
I had a great conversation witha person in the AI side from
NVIDIA yesterday, alvin, who's asenior AI engineer there, and
we talked a lot about likerobotics applications and vision
applications and things likethat, which you know I've always
found interesting but now toucha lot more of the process side,
(20:28):
and even those are applicationsthat are less visible to the
common world.
I guess Robots look cool andeverybody's been talking about
them and seeing them, butprocess mixing and all these
other things process automationthis is stuff that the public
doesn't think about as much.
There's no flashy Elon Muskconferences about AI in that,
but we did talk a bit about youknow they're really wanting to
(20:49):
come in as a community player,provide microservices and
structures that systemsintegrators can take to build
proprietary applications orthings that you know they know
that their customers will need.
So I think it's also prettyexciting as the world evolves.
The distributor, systemsintegrator, oem those lines have
been blurring for a long timeand for many, I think, systems
(21:11):
integrators, with theavailability of something like
AI, you can really almost turninto an OEM of sorts right,
having some standard processesor products that you've built
that you can sell to multiplecustomers and customize and
integrate, and that can maybehelp some of these companies
have a better way to weather theups and downs.
(21:33):
But then really, this networknetworking and having a strong
network of people that areinvolved in the industry, that
are learning, like you are, Ithink it really just multiplies
your effectiveness, your valuein the industry, because it's
not just you now and what youknow, but it's everybody that
you know that is willing toshare and work with you.
(21:54):
So with that, I think we haveto get going.
We will do another episode withsome of the more of the OT
SkateCon speakers and probablyone where we actually discuss.
I'd love to pull some fewpeople together and talk about
what the heck are you doing withAI, if anything From a
practical actually on the ground?
We are doing this perspectiveright.
The vendors talk so much aboutthe future promise and we think
(22:18):
that's great and we'll go to akeynote now and see all kinds of
stuff.
But then there's also kind oflike, well, the proof is in the
pudding, right.
What are you guys doing?
So thank you so much forjoining us, brandon.
Check out automationladiesioslash ot skate con.
We will be putting guestprofiles up for all of the
speakers there as well, soBrandon will have a profile with
(22:40):
links to his business and anyother kind of resources that he
wants to put out there.
Make sure to follow him onLinkedIn.
That's also where he's probablymost active.
So thank you, guys.
Cheers from Automate.
And if you're not here and youdidn't get a chance to see all
the stuff, there will be moreconferences coming up later this
year, but Automate 2025 will bein.
Hello, here's another special episode of Automation
Ladies.
We're recording here, not live,but recording at Automate 2024,
mccormick Place in Chicago.
This is the last day.
On the Thursday we're having aStarbucks and a sandwich here
before we hit the keynote andwe're catching up with Brandon
Peters, the CEO of ShockwaveAutomation and, very excitingly,
(00:22):
one of our speakers at thecoming up conference, ot
Skatecon, that we have going inHouston, texas, july 25th
through 26th, hosted at thePhoenix Contact Customer
Technology Center.
And if you're listening to thisand you don't yet know about OT
Skatecon, you can see all thedetails at automationladiesio
slash OTSkateCon.
(00:45):
So yeah, good morning, brandon.
How are you Yourself?
It's day three, so I'm alltalked out.
I'm kind of glad that you'll bedoing most of the talking,
hopefully, in this episode,although every time I say I
won't talk I still do.
So we'll start.
This is going to be a littlespecial, short episode, similar
to what we did at A3 Forumearlier this year with Kathy and
Lauren, where I just sat downin a corner of the hotel.
(01:07):
We are actually sitting outsideof a closed Starbucks in a
FedEx office, here on a couch atleast not on the floor, in a
corner somewhere.
Hopefully it'll stay relativelyquiet until we hit the keynote.
But this will be a littlespecial episode.
I really wanted to catch upwith Brandon A to hear his story
, but we'll keep it brief andthen get his perspective on what
he saw at Automate.
Is this your first time comingto Automate, brandon?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
You betcha.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Okay, very cool.
So we get a first-timer'sperspective.
So I guess I'll start out withour usual first question.
Brandon, if you could introduceyourself a bit to our audience
and tell us what you do and howthe heck you came to be doing it
?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, so I'm Brandon Peters, CEO of Shockwave
Automation, so I guess I startedback doing automation back in
2015, 2016.
Kind of uprooted my family tomove to northern Alberta to get
some work experience with a, Iguess, fellow networking peer.
That's kind of just.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
What were you doing before that?
Speaker 2 (02:02):
What I was doing before that was instrumentation
technology and mechatronics.
Okay, so that's kind of how Igot into the technology side of
things Through college.
I always, instead of going outand partying, I was just mostly
hanging out with the professorsafter building labs and doing
everything, because I mean, atthe time, instrumentation is my
(02:22):
instrumentation technology, itit's a little bit different in
Canada.
It's not.
It's not an actual likeengineering degree, it's more of
like an apprenticeship style.
Apprenticeship style, yeah,exactly so.
Um, we had a young family atthe time when I was going
through school, so my wife wasexpecting our second and so
everybody else who was incollege partying, doing whatever
(02:44):
.
I was pretty much stuck tofocusing on family life, saving
money and, you know, just reallytrying to make the most of it.
So I feel like that kind of, Iguess, maybe catapulted my path
to where I am now.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
So, yeah, and when did you go out on your own as
Shockwave Automation?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, so we started back in October, I guess 2023.
I've been doing variousprojects from mining, oil and
gas, been subcontracting withsome other integrators just to
fill the gap with some of myspare time and, yeah, no, it's
been probably one of the bestdecisions I've ever made.
Everybody's always like, oh,why do you do these conventions,
(03:23):
why do you do these shows?
And everybody's always like, oh, why do you do these
conventions, why do you do theseshows?
And one of the things that Ialways struggled to get was that
buy-in and that support fordoing these type of conventions.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
From other people.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
What's that, Fran?
Speaker 3 (03:36):
You said you didn't get buy-in from other people.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Yeah, usually everybody's like oh well, what's
our return on investment foryou?
Going to automate or going tooh, when you were employed.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
So your employers.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
So what was kind of what's our rate of return of
investment on you going to theseshows?
And sometimes it's really hardto prove that right, Especially
when.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
If you're not sales.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yeah, exactly, and when the people, when those
other people aren't with you,your employers, your higher-ups
aren't with you and they don'tsee that community that you're
(04:19):
building and that network brandthat you're essentially building
for the company and yourself,sometimes it's hard to really, I
guess, quantify that, exceptfor, maybe, your social
following, but that doesn'treally prove to generate any
revenue, usually for people,which is what most people are
typically trying to gain fromthese types of shows, right?
So, whether you actually have alead or there's no leads, I
still feel like it's extremelybeneficial just getting out
there, having people know yourpresence in the industry and
putting a face to your name.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Would you say that also, it brings a little bit of
credibility, or more credibility, when you go to customers right
, you can talk about things yousaw, people you met, upcoming,
you know new trends, newtechnologies.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Absolutely Like.
I think that it's nice for,especially when you're active on
social media and you have, Iguess, a bigger following and
your clients are seeing youactively involved in, like you
said, developing technologies, Ifeel like there's a little bit
more, I guess, trust with theintegrators that they work with
when they see that, because theyknow that they're always after
the best interests and goingafter the latest things that are
(05:10):
coming.
Obviously, you want to stayfocused in your niche or focused
in the industry that you'reproviding the solution for, but
it's still nice to see whatevery other industry is doing in
that aspect.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
I know for us.
So we did an interview a coupleof days ago at Harding with
someone that's really activelyinvolved in the standard setting
for single pair Ethernet andlike.
Those types of connections Ithink are great for when you do
have, you know, a need or youend up working with that
technology kind of knowing somepeople that have been developing
it.
I think it gives a sense of youalso always always have a huge
bench to call on, right, even ifyou're not a large company.
(05:43):
So has that I guess thatemphasis changed since you went
out on your own?
Now that you can choose to dothis, do you think that you
would send your employees toshows when you get bigger?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah, 100%, absolutely.
It's definitely something youneed as an engagement level and
people's buy-in in your brandand I keep going back to your
brand because that's essentiallythe biggest thing that's going
(06:13):
just work your people, work yourpeople.
But if there's nothing thatthey get in return from it and
there's no cultural aspect tothe environment, people are just
going to end up leaving andthat success that you've built
with those people eventually isgoing to deteriorate and you're
going to have to start fromscratch and you can just get
into the cyclical cycle of not.
It'll be like a downturn,self-explosion, essentially.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
I totally agree with you, but how do you know that?
Speaker 2 (06:37):
How do I?
Well, I've been through it acouple of times, but I mean,
it's one of those things it'smore exhausting to fight for
people to stay with you than itis to give them the things that
they need to be successful andenjoy what they're doing.
Because, like I said, if you'renot keeping people engaged,
(06:59):
you're not involving people withyour advancements, people lose
interest, they lose track andthey themselves get in this
cycle of I don't want to be here.
They start looking forsomething new, and then you've
got five big projects on the goand then everybody leaves.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, and I think sometimes smaller companies as
well they lose sight of the factthat they do have to try to
provide education and careeradvancement opportunities to
their people.
Not to say that people don'tcare, but oftentimes you're just
so in the grind right, and I'veexperienced this myself.
I was really good at what I wasdoing and I got to know it well
and I got to train other peopleat it, and so, even though I
wanted to change or advance, Iwanted to move into another
(07:39):
department.
The company didn't want me tobecause I was so good at what I
already did, which is good forsome types of people.
But for people that areactually ambitious and like to
learn, that basically willeventually make that person
leave because they're no longergrowing.
We actually met somebody at themanufacturing happy hour party,
in which we also met your wifeshe's awesome, by the way that
(08:00):
made it here to automate, butshe said that she had to fight
pretty hard for her employer tounderstand that there's value in
coming to something like thisand she's not sure that if
she'll be able to make it nextyear because Detroit's a little
further from where she is, but Ican tell that you know, for her
that's definitely a negative ofher employment situation is
(08:21):
that she feels a little bithampered and the fact that they
don't see the value of hergrowing her knowledge and her
network.
But I think that's aconversation a lot of people are
having now or thoughts right,how do we accommodate people
that have this drive to have apersonal brand or have their own
connections and learn thingsindependently, outside of the
training that's offered by thecompany?
But all in all, I mean I'm onlyseeing the companies that allow
(08:42):
that, that have more visiblepeople out.
There are growing and thenthere are some.
Yeah, the feast or famine forintegrators is certainly real,
and so having a network to callon for subcontract work when
you're slow, or being able toput your people on somebody's
project for a little while.
(09:03):
I know James Dean at AppalachianAutomation.
He's been very successful.
He's grown the company.
He has a lot of steady workcoming up but a big contract.
But for a couple months he waslike hey, my guys are free, and
if he didn't have that network,I don't know that that would be
going so well in terms of havingto float everybody's payroll
while having a big projectcoming up.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, definitely be a huge overhead expense, and
that's the other thing.
Like you said, the integrationit's a cutthroat industry.
Whether you're on the E&I side,engineering side, it's usually
typically raised to the bottom alot of the time.
But then you get into thesesituations and these rescue
situations.
You come in into a client siteand you see what they've been
given or what's been integratedand then you're spending the
(09:42):
next six months trying to cleanit up too.
But it's definitely definitelygood to have a good path forward
and plan in place and havingthat network to call on, like
you said, because I mean it'ssometimes you can go four years
with having steady work and thenyou have six months of downtime
that you need to cover onoverhead costs or you're
(10:03):
starting to pay your people fulltime without having any
billable work, like it'sdefinitely something that you
need to always stay on top ofand kind of have coming down the
pipe.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Speaking of networking, I know I was also
going to ask you, if we havetime, what cool things you've
seen here at Automate, but youare one of the speakers at our
upcoming conference and thereason that Allie came up with
this conference and maybe she'llclarify she really wants to
enable this networking and apart of it was we attended a
training at TraceRoute in Dallas.
It was a two-day training class, but the way that Josh
structured it, it was sovaluable, not just for the
(10:35):
training but also for thenetworking with the other people
that were coming to be trainedon this very specific topic.
So OT Skatecon is lots moretopics, but the idea really is
to have people that work onthose different areas of OT and
IT technologies with practicalexperience to be able to come
give some tips and tricks, sometraining, some information, some
(10:56):
resources.
And then really, I think a hugepart of the resource is the
speaker right Access to meeting,networking with and getting a
community with the speakers aswell as other attendees.
And, inadvertently, I think, westarted a little mini community
of the speakers with our littleVIP speaker chat on WhatsApp,
(11:17):
which came up this morning.
It has amazed me how you guysstarted networking and sharing
ideas and asking each other forhelp on projects or tips, the
resource sharing, I mean, thatstuff is real.
Can you speak a little bitabout that?
And are you excited about OTSkate at Con?
And, if so, what excites youthe most?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
I think Courtney kind of said it the best.
She said it's our dysfunctionalfamily reunion and I think that
really hits a home run todescribing the group and
everybody in it, and I thinkyou'd get that.
Anywhere you go in theautomation industry and the
people that you meet, I feellike everybody's on the same
level as everybody in that groupchat.
(11:56):
No, definitely looking forwardto the OT Skatecon and, like you
said, bringing out everybody aspractical experience together
to present on multiple topics.
I feel like everybody's goingto get a heck of a lot more out
of two days than you would, Iguess, walking a trade show
floor or, I guess, doing aLinkedIn learning content.
(12:18):
I mean, you're going to getmore from that one-on-one
interaction with the people and,yeah, I feel like you're going
to see a lot more lessonslearned and a lot more, I guess,
candid feedback on what'sactually happening in industry
and the best practice.
People are doing software.
People are using hardwarecomponents to fill in solution
(12:40):
gaps, so I think it'll be reallygood to see those people all in
one spot.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
And it's a group of people.
Yeah, it's a group of peopleand we can check each other.
Yeah, and we do yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
So yeah, that's the other thing I'm a little bit
worried about.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Everybody's going to fact check my presentations
probably right Check mypresentations probably right,
we're going to fact check eachother.
It'll be good.
Yeah, we can veto things.
We can vote, it'll be ademocracy.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
At least we won't be tearing down your panel design
in public on a LinkedIn post.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
That's all good.
That's always good, every oncein a while especially if it's
somebody that you never kind ofbatted heads with or went up
against in the long run, againstthe project, and they won the
bid and you lost it.
So it was good to throw acouple of jabs in there when you
did I'm just kidding, not me.
So you came up with ot skatercon.
This is your idea.
What drove you to kind of itwas.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
It was definitely, highly.
Basically, I came up with it inthe middle of trace root con,
trace root trace route, so themiddle of josh's training.
I was like this is amazing andI need to make this, you know,
something that isn't just aboutnetworking, and I guess I went
too far.
But the other thing that Ilearned, you know, is that I
don't know how Josh did it, buthe talked for two days straight
(13:51):
and one of the things I knewimmediately was that I can't do
that and so and I can't, I can'teven keep attention more than
30 minutes on one topic anyway,and so that's kind of how I came
up with and that is how Alliecame up with the 23, now turned
into, I believe, 26 differenttopics, 30 minute sessions.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Maybe 25 minute sessions at this point Because,
yeah, I think all of us,especially in this industry,
have attended some trainingclasses that weren't exactly
designed to keep yourimagination, keep your attention
.
Either you know, trainingmaterial can be dry, and then
there's certain people that youknow that really can inspire and
(14:29):
keep your attention whiletraining, and then others I've
talked to people recently about.
There's a lot of trainingopportunity out there, but not
everybody is cut out to be atrainer.
To be really effective, ittakes both the product knowledge
, the application knowledge andthe ability to talk to people,
keep their attention, keep thementertained.
As much as I would love topretend otherwise, I think most
(14:49):
of us nowadays the attentionspans are getting shorter, the
younger kids more so, but evenus adults there's just way too
much to pay attention to at alltimes, so much going on in our
businesses, in our lives.
So I find that when I learntechnical information, if I can
recall it with a then personalconnection, tie it to a story,
(15:13):
something that I felt at thesame time as I was learning.
That really helps with theretention.
And when you go to a two-daytraining, you get a lot of
information dumped at you all atonce and then you may not be
able to go and implement itpractically for a while and
typically that information kindof recedes over time if you
don't use it right.
Which is why we thought, hey,let's make these short topics
(15:33):
and then give you lots ofresources so that when this
comes up later, if it comes upin your work or a colleague asks
you right, you can kind ofrecall some of the information
but then also recall where youshould go to get that and get
more details and who to call ifyou have a question.
Right, and what I love about sofar, the speaker lineup and
we've met a couple people, bothin Nashville last week and here
(15:55):
at Automate, that are dying tocome and, you know, be a part of
it and speak.
So we'll probably be announcinga couple more speakers before
we close the doors in the nextfew weeks.
But these are people that arereally passionate about sharing
their knowledge.
So something that you mentionedearlier too about companies,
they kind of sometimes want tokeep things close to the vest.
Obviously, a lot of us can'ttalk too many specifics about
(16:18):
certain projects, but I think wecan really all share with each
other, especially things likelessons learned, right?
So vendors have tons of greatinformation to share about the
technology they're making, howit should work, how it works
under ideal conditions.
You come to great shows likethis at Automate and somebody
has spent all weekend putting ademo together and making sure
that it works and it does thething that it's supposed to do,
(16:38):
and they still don't always work, which is why most of us, I
think, are sometimes skepticalif demos are real or if they've
been kind of programmed to lookreal, because real-life
situations generally don't go assmoothly as the installation
manual tells you it will, andespecially if it's an integrated
system of lots of things right.
So I have just the greatestrespect for everybody that's
(17:00):
coming to speak at ot skater conbecause they're willing to
share, you know, the real lifeexamples, things they've learned
from their failures, right,tips and tricks like lessons
learned, and those are thingsthat I think our industry could
do a better job of in generalsharing not just the successes
but how we're working throughthings so that we can all have
more success.
So we are actually heading tothe keynote here on the third
(17:21):
day, intrinsic is speaking aboutAI.
They're an NVIDIA partner andI'm pretty excited to keep
learning more about that stuffbecause it is starting to creep
into practical applications,just like some of the tech
that's single-pair Ethernetwe've talked about.
It's not a new technology, it'sfive years old, but it's
finally getting to a point wherepeople trust it.
(17:41):
They know where it belongs.
They're looking for commonstandards and I think a lot of
the AI applications we're seeingnow are.
You know.
People are asking how does itwork?
What does it do?
How can I use it?
In this conference and thenmaybe two or three conferences
down the road.
It'll all be about which one'sright for me, which one fits my
application.
So I'm not necessarily lookingat AI to hype it right now for
(18:02):
any practical use, although itdoes have practical use cases
that have been tested over adecade.
But a lot of the new stuff wewant to follow to see when and
where does it make sense toactually give it a shot, or to
see if our customers are, ifthey come asking.
We want to know what the heckis up right.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Gotcha come asking.
We want to know what the heckis up right, gotcha, and on some
of the things that are comingdown the pipe, I feel like
they're pretty constructivetools for not only companies but
the employees to utilize.
Um, we're looking at ways totie in to the production side of
things so that the operationsthey got conversion, that's that
they want to calculate, or ifthey've got different production
(18:42):
throughputs that they want tokind of model out or I guess,
just do some basic math on thefly for for their day-to-day
activities in their plant ortheir manufacturing facility.
I feel like it'll really tieinto the ics level pretty
tightly.
And then I guess, just on thecyber security side of things,
with I, I feel like we'll startto see a lot more proprietary,
(19:03):
standalone artificialintelligence deployments of not
necessarily the touch, the webinterface, but it's more of a
company repository ofintegrators to kind of dive into
.
And I feel like it's going toopen the doors for a lot of
(19:25):
different opportunities that wenever had access to before Stuff
like model, predictive controland process modeling.
Typically you'd see thesesoftwares that are hundreds of
thousands of dollars.
But now, with the AItechnologies and data modeling
sets that you can build with.
You can build your ownsolutions for a quarter of the
(19:45):
price, right, so it's definitelysomething that's very
interesting.
It's something that I'll beworking with a couple people out
of California and Canada onTalk a little bit more on that
at a different time, but there'sdefinitely some cool, very cool
data modeling, predictivecontrol stuff that's coming down
the pipe, so pretty excitedabout that.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
That'll be really interesting.
I'll be talking a bit more.
I had a great conversation witha person in the AI side from
NVIDIA yesterday, alvin, who's asenior AI engineer there, and
we talked a lot about likerobotics applications and vision
applications and things likethat, which you know I've always
found interesting but now toucha lot more of the process side,
(20:28):
and even those are applicationsthat are less visible to the
common world.
I guess Robots look cool andeverybody's been talking about
them and seeing them, butprocess mixing and all these
other things process automationthis is stuff that the public
doesn't think about as much.
There's no flashy Elon Muskconferences about AI in that,
but we did talk a bit about youknow they're really wanting to
(20:49):
come in as a community player,provide microservices and
structures that systemsintegrators can take to build
proprietary applications orthings that you know they know
that their customers will need.
So I think it's also prettyexciting as the world evolves.
The distributor, systemsintegrator, oem those lines have
been blurring for a long timeand for many, I think, systems
(21:11):
integrators, with theavailability of something like
AI, you can really almost turninto an OEM of sorts right,
having some standard processesor products that you've built
that you can sell to multiplecustomers and customize and
integrate, and that can maybehelp some of these companies
have a better way to weather theups and downs.
(21:33):
But then really, this networknetworking and having a strong
network of people that areinvolved in the industry, that
are learning, like you are, Ithink it really just multiplies
your effectiveness, your valuein the industry, because it's
not just you now and what youknow, but it's everybody that
you know that is willing toshare and work with you.
(21:54):
So with that, I think we haveto get going.
We will do another episode withsome of the more of the OT
SkateCon speakers and probablyone where we actually discuss.
I'd love to pull some fewpeople together and talk about
what the heck are you doing withAI, if anything From a
practical actually on the ground?
We are doing this perspectiveright.
The vendors talk so much aboutthe future promise and we think
(22:18):
that's great and we'll go to akeynote now and see all kinds of
stuff.
But then there's also kind oflike, well, the proof is in the
pudding, right.
What are you guys doing?
So thank you so much forjoining us, brandon.
Check out automationladiesioslash ot skate con.
We will be putting guestprofiles up for all of the
speakers there as well, soBrandon will have a profile with
(22:40):
links to his business and anyother kind of resources that he
wants to put out there.
Make sure to follow him onLinkedIn.
That's also where he's probablymost active.
So thank you, guys.
Cheers from Automate.
And if you're not here and youdidn't get a chance to see all
the stuff, there will be moreconferences coming up later this
year, but Automate 2025 will bein.
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