What The Funk?

0:00 We got Paul Richie on What the Funk Today. Coming to you live from downtown Calgary, where Paul resides. And of course, some Jeremy Funk hanging out here in the confines of lovely Lafayette,

0:14 Colorado. This is one that I've wanted to have for quite some time. Paul's a dynamic dude. He runs a business called Osparity. He's on the road a lot. It's almost like a ghost. He's in one place

0:27 and then he disappears I just saw him in Houston two days ago. Osparity is crushing it right now, but we'll get to that. Really, Paul wanted to give the audience a chance to get to know you a

0:39 little bit. I've been fortunate enough to know you for the last five years. We met at a clean tech conference in Denver, where I think Osparity or Osprey informatics at that time was just getting

0:49 its footing. I want to understand you a little bit. You're upbringing, kind of where you went to school, you got into oil and gas. talk about how COVID maybe shifted a little bit of the landscape

1:01 for us parody as we're seeing a whole lot of interest in your solution right now. But tell us, man, who is Paul Ritchie? Well, that's a long story. I'm not sure your 45 minutes is going to hold

1:13 onto that. So, yeah, I mean, I grew up a West Coast kid. I grew up in Vancouver, BC, actually to be exact, North Delta BC spent

1:28 until I was 16, 17 there, and

1:32 then decided to go play a little hockey in the WHL in Seattle. And

1:41 I spent a couple of years playing hockey there And I wasn't scoring. I wasn't a goal scorer. And I went there as a defenseman and ended up being the guy that stood in front of the net on the

1:53 offensive zone after about half a season. And You know, the reality was it was time to grow up and decide what I wanted to do with my life - So you were living the dream, right? I can only imagine

2:09 every Canadian kid, whether you grow up in Prince Edward Island, Vancouver, and all points in between, dreams of being the next,

2:20 Wayne Gretzky, right? Kids these days, maybe it's Connor McDavid or Sidney Crosby, but you actually had a chance to start living out that dream and played pretty competitive hockey. Was it hard

2:31 for you to eventually kind of hang up

2:35 the pads and put down the stick and trade it in for a computer - You know what, you know, a little bit, a little bit, but you know, I really,

2:47 when you're a phenomenal player in Bantam, and then you go and play with the men

2:56 and you're not that guy anymore.

2:59 And really was never going to be that guy, no matter how much work I put into it. I didn't wanna be the guy playing three minutes, four minutes a game.

3:10 And I made the decision for the right reasons. And was it hard? Absolutely, it's something you've done for a lot of years of your life, but it was also time to open a new chapter, to look at

3:23 something different. And you know what? It wasn't going to be in cloudy Seattle or rainy Vancouver. And you know, I packed everything I owned in my Ford EXP and drove through the mountains and

3:39 ended up in Calgary. And never went back, never left, that was

3:49 1989 - Wow, okay. So Calgary was kinda popping then. It was just after the Winter Olympics, we're in Calgary 1988 I was about. nine years old and I distinctly remember watching those Olympics.

4:01 It was really, I was the right age for those to be the first Olympics to watch. And just remember thinking it just looked really cool. Seeing the mountains in the background, the speed skating.

4:12 Of course, I had a bunch of sisters. They loved the figure skating stuff, which I found really boring, but it was, it was cool. And I, you know, I didn't get to Calgary personally till about

4:21 2010 And always in my mind viewed it as this like very international kind of cosmopolitan city. I was really excited to see where the Olympics were. And for the most part, there's not really much

4:34 around it now. You got some sort of, you know, old decrepit, you know, Olympics related things, but that must have been cool to get there just after that happened. You know, it was because it

4:47 was, it was a big time, obviously, for the flames At that point, right, now that I look back and do the math, the, the settled ones really old Yeah. You know, you still had international ski

4:58 jumping events right off the Trans Canada Highway in the city of Calgary. And it was exciting. And for me, you know, I moved out here in August and went to Mount Royal College at the time. Now

5:13 I'm gonna age myself because I'm gonna say that it only offered two year diplomas. Now it's a full-blown university, but you know, did my two years and three years and worked and worked and lived.

5:29 And just decided this is where I wanna be. I mean, the people are cool. The city is

5:39 just always feels young. I mean, you know, everybody always relates Calgary and Houston as sister cities. And I always have to correct them because clearly you've never been to Denver.

5:52 You know, it's the same view. It's the same sandstone buildings. It's the same vibrant downtown, sort of nine to five Monday to Thursday. And then Friday, it's a little later activity and

6:08 blunches and things like that. And

6:12 this synergy is between those two, Calgary and Denver are, it's like not even changing places other than we're a little closer to the center of the mountains That's about it - Any? Yeah. And the

6:27 mountains out there, I feel like are just a little less trampled than out here. It's just a little more off the beaten path. All right. So if you go to the Rockies in Colorado, you know, it's

6:39 very well established. And of course they are in Western Alberta as well. But I think it's nicer out there. I think it's a little more beautiful. I mean, not to mention you've got the green water

6:51 out there, which kind of blew my mind first time I saw some of those lakes. heading out

6:58 to Canonaskis for a conference back in 2014. It was super fun. And I completely agree. It was amazing for me to go to Calgary 2010, 2011 and be like, oh my God, this is exactly like Denver. How

7:12 did nobody tell me that Calgary is Canadian Denver? Even down to sort of the dry conditions that you have there, kind of the temperament of the people. The fact that Earls is down there. You guys

7:23 sort of had that before us and then Earls came to Denver and you've got all the oil people having meals there. But I love it, man. I just feel so comfortable every time I'm in Calgary and it just

7:34 feels like a real awesome town. I guess I understand the parallels with Houston just 'cause Houston's the epicenter for energy in the United States. Calgary really is that for Canada as well. I

7:48 think a challenge that Calgary has had, like, well, I guess to back it up. When I first got into oil and gas late 2007, like the Calgary market was blowing up, right? I mean, you had lots of

8:01 companies there, lots of US companies that had Canadian offices. And I feel like a lot of those have either been sold to Calgary based companies or even just gone away entirely. But it was really a

8:13 vibrant market at that point. Talk a little bit about, you know, we'll get to your career. But some of the changes that you've seen in Calgary, from sort of the initial shale boom. So now here

8:25 in 2023 - Yeah, I think what, you know, one of the biggest ones is you're right. There was a lot, I think a lot larger American and international presence in the past.

8:38 But also back then there was a lot of small independence.

8:43 And there's been, you know, a lot of consolidation over the years You have a lot of asset trading and swapping and sales. so on going on within the industry.

8:57 And we have federal government challenges in our industry. And we've got the third or fourth largest reserve in the world in Alberta.

9:11 And you're landlocked. We are landlocked. And we're taking a cut to distribute it through the US. We're very fortunate right now We have a phenomenal LNG market and pipelines that are opening up to

9:26 get that to Canadian waters. But

9:30 the biggest changes really have been, there's a lot fewer small producers that were homegrown.

9:38 And you have less

9:43 US influence in the operations

9:49 And I don't know if one's better than the other. But what we're seeing here is, you know, a lot of really strong the arc resources, the CNRLs, the Sun cores that are, you know, taking the leap

10:06 and gathering up these assets and really becoming world leaders, but, you know, in, in, in, in ARK's case, just in one country, just in Canada, but being production leaders and, and again,

10:21 pros and cons to that But I think, you know, as a province, we've got our stuff together. You know, the majority of what happens in North North. Yeah, I've got to do my math here. North

10:34 Eastern British Columbia, you know, that's mainly Alberta companies. They just have the rights up there. And then, you know, in Saskatchewan, it's a nice blend of local Canadian and there's

10:47 some US operations there as well and I'll burn in Saskatchewan and get along. phenomenally well, this is you know if it wasn't oil and gas and agriculture and and you know ag tech is growing in both

11:00 these those provinces it would be a different that would be a different conversation and you know some of the investment that's driving the technologies is is It's coming directly from these Canadian

11:14 energy companies and That's one thing that a lot of people don't know is they're a big part of pushing these Clean technologies and operational efficiency technologies Both in energy, but also in in

11:29 ag and those two industries go hand in hand in Alberta and Saskatchewan Yeah, and we'll dive into the the tech influence that that Calgary has had on the oil and gas industry because it is

11:42 Significant and and even I was with um with you at Grayson mill energy earlier this week and those guys were We're talking about how you know, they would come up with some solutions down here and be

11:54 like, man, we just discovered these Canadian tech companies and we hope they don't come down here. Because they've already got this stuff figured out. But to backtrack a little bit on you, right?

12:04 So you decide to hang up the skates, you load up your car, you end up in Alberta, you finish up at Mount Royal. Did you get right into oil and gas? What was your kind of career path in the 90s

12:17 and subsequently ended the 2000s? Yeah, so I went to school and I was going to come out and get and be a stockbroker in New York, which is a big career transition.

12:30 And then I realized that, you know, okay, so I've got a little bit of student loans here and yeah, that's not going to happen. So I actually believe it or not, my first job was

12:46 selling trade show exhibits.

12:50 the physical graphics and all that.

12:54 And actually I misspoke. That wasn't my first job. My first job was a marketing assistant at a company selling trade show displays. And the sales guys were driving BMWs

13:11 and had the nice suits and all that. So I went to the owner of the company and said I want to be, I want to get out of that. Marketing's cool, that's what I went to school for But I want to get

13:21 into sales. He goes, hey, no problem. I said, so what do I get paid? He says, whatever you sell. He says, you know, he's cool. And I went, hmm, OK. So can you do advances? Yep, but

13:35 only X number of dollars a paycheck. Then you pay it back. I'm like, OK, let's go. And I said, all right, where do I start? And he handed me the yellow pages. And he said, you do that And,

13:48 you know, that really did it.

13:52 It excited me every day. I ended up, I was there for 10 years. I ended up being vice president of Western Canada. I mentioned basically from Winnipeg, Manitoba to Victoria, British Columbia with

14:06 teams all across there.

14:09 And then I just decided to hang that up. There obviously I had over eight, nine, 10 years. I'd gained a lot of contacts in here and I wanted to get into technology.

14:24 So I did and actually ended up starting with Reuters and selling their offerings to the energy sector in North America sort of around that practice. And that led one thing to another. And then I was,

14:43 you know, in between there, I had a couple of my own companies that I exited

14:51 just kept alone the tech track. So, it's funny, I always used to tell my kids, had one daughter that was at one point in her teen years and environmentalist, but then she realized she lived in

15:05 Calgary and that didn't work.

15:09 You know, it didn't matter what you did in Alberta, you were directly tied to it. I mean, that was what food on your table was the energy sector, right? And when I got into the tech side of the

15:23 energy sector, it opened up a lot of, opened my eyes a lot and just sort of kept going down that path. And, you know, once I developed the portion at Reuters, it was time to leave and move on to

15:38 building. I like building and that's, you know, leads up to a few things in between in the tech world I was part of a team at a company called Evocco, which was - one of the first SaaS-based

15:53 construction platforms here based out of Calgary. We dealt with the Wal-Mart, the Benihanas, the Lowe's, the Home Depot's in the US, and we were this company of 50 people in Calgary that didn't

16:08 have a client in Canada. And again, traveling, lots. And that's the exciting part is the building And when I came here, it was commercialization time. And boom, there you go. You're right back

16:25 at it again. So that's the path in a short term. I mean, the blood, sweat, and tears in between everybody knows that he's been on the path. But if it's exciting and it's moving forward, I

16:40 really want to be a part of building that. And that's what we're doing here. And that's what makes it fun every day But this makes a lot of sense to me, you know, getting to know you better.

16:51 We've known each other for five years more socially and then more recently, business-wise. And I'm with you. That's part of my mindset too, is I like to build stuff. I like to take an idea or a

17:04 concept and improve upon it, make things affordable for the buyer, and then create value coming out of it. And I've seen you do that with with Osparity. So this company, Osparity, was Osprey

17:17 Informatics You guys had a real strong foothold for intelligent video monitoring in the mid 2010s, late 2010s, primarily focused in Canada. And then from my viewpoint, you guys made a couple of

17:36 changes to the organization. I think the founders kind of left. You had a new group come in, took on some investment, bought out the investors. I'm sure a lot of things happened in between and

17:46 then we re-engage toward the end of last year. And it really sounds like. You guys have diversified a lot of your revenue to be US centric, as opposed to just really kind of being a Calgary

17:59 monitoring system with a strong platform that can show you these very cold, very remote locations in Canada to really kind of spreading across the whole ecosystem and working here in the US, whether

18:11 it's extremely hot conditions, extremely cold conditions. But what I'm curious about, 'cause I have a theory, that COVID actually was one of the best things to happen for your business. 'Cause

18:23 this is an industry where people have been very manual on their efforts. The same pumper, the same lease operator, the same service resource goes on the same route every single day. They go to the

18:34 same wells, they check out the same things. And then all of a sudden, we hit this crazy time where you can't always be around people. We got negative oil prices. Some of these assets are

18:45 extremely remote We need more eyes on those that are not just eyes of humans. So then I think, at least my theory, is that COVID brought an eye on what you guys can do. It really helps sort of

18:59 streamline that revenue. Now I'm sure you had some supply chain challenges like everybody else did during the COVID time period, but talk about sort of the shift from 2019 into 2020 and now here in

19:10 2023 and what did sort of this change to more of remote infrastructure as it relates to work affect Osprey informatics - Yeah, so I think immediately when COVID hit, what we saw was a massive

19:28 increase in

19:32 the

19:36 number of users that were being added to our platform by all our clients. Number one, and then when you started digging deeper, the level at which these users were at. Now you have SVPs looking at

19:44 it where generally you have GMs, ops, operators, mid-level directors. that are a part of this, doing it, you know, really using our platform. But I think what really propelled our technology

20:01 was the whole idea of, you know, yeah, it's great that that disparity can help us manage our sites by exception. Now they didn't have an option, right? It was, it was, oh, well, you know,

20:17 we can't go here, we can't go there, contractors can't go here. You know, now we actually need this tool. And, you know, what it did for us was actually, it really, so, you know, as a

20:30 computer vision, industrial computer vision company delivering this, this information, it actually steered us a little bit away from the whole computer vision, the same library, same training was

20:45 still going on, But we said, Hey, there's other things we need to do. you with this equipment out there.

20:53 And number one was, we need to create an inspections module. The last thing these guys want is, one, they've got less staff, two, they can't always go to these sites anymore, is let's enable

21:07 autonomous remote inspections. In some cases, it meant adding a little more hardware or more cameras, or it involved just refocusing and setting different presets on the Pentel Zoom cameras to

21:21 actually deliver that to them. And now we have one client that we

21:32 deliver over 10, 000 images of day two, simply in a multitude of inspection reports. So that

21:35 was sort of one thing that changed and drove us through COVID.

21:43 The other was, obviously, companies that were already clients going, now we got to put it here and here. And of course, there comes a supply chain challenge,

21:54 which affected but didn't hurt. Everybody was in the same boat.

22:01 And then it was, what other, okay, so now you have a sensor go off that says X is leaking.

22:10 So what's the first thing every operator does either, just out of habit or is instructed to do, get the hell out to site and find out what's going on Yeah, or shut it down and get it fixed. So we

22:22 said, well, there's lots of things that camera can't decipher through our technology. So why don't we connect into those and then deliver them a video or photographs of that geo-located sensor and

22:36 say, Here's what's happening. So after they get their skater or process control alarm, now they're actually getting an image a minute or two later that says, Here's what just happened, or is

22:47 happening. and it enables them to send the right people out there or shut it down or go, Ugh, jeez, this happens every six weeks for about 10 minutes, it'll go away.

22:60 So it didn't slow our path down on the computer vision side, but it said, Wow, there's these other things we can do. And then let's fast forward to today with everything that happened during COVID

23:15 We have

23:17 operators and field personnel in the energy industry now that are actually very tech-savvy and very tech-forward.

23:28 And they want this, they want to do their job on an iPad.

23:35 They bring ideas to us as opposed to, you're putting a camera out here, you know, why? You know, the old grumpy guy, I mean, we've had our contractors get turned away at sites, you're not

23:47 putting a camera out here. The Vice President says we are, right? And that sort of is gone by, really gone by the wayside.

23:59 And then it was, okay, well, we sort of as a software connected well with two or three different brands of cameras, it was, hey, look at all these cameras out here. Now we've got to be able to

24:14 be far more accepting of other data streams in that sort of industrial IP camera data set and be able to pull those in. So you want our system, here's our edge device, plug it in, let's go. And

24:32 that's changed it too because you don't necessarily have the operational, sorry, the CapEx budgets that companies had in the past. And with a SaaS model, you're rolling in at an operational

24:43 expense, right? It's not cash out today for something. It's going to happen in two years from now - Yep. Yeah, I mean, you said a lot of really good stuff there. And I think the one thing I

24:55 want to come back to is, when I first met you in 2018 and you explained to me what was then Osprey Informatics and became Osparity, what you guys did, candidly it struck me as a nice to have. And

25:09 just the way the universe has shifted in that time, now it's very much a mission critical application. We need to have eyes on our assets of all time, not just from an observation and inspection

25:22 standpoint, but from a safety standpoint too. Like full disclosure, Osprey is a client of Fung Futures. I'm not supposed to pick favorites, but one of my favorites, in part because you guys work

25:35 just as well in high traffic areas as you do in places where it's 40 below that nobody wants to go to. The application of what you have is just as important. if people are going to the site and

25:48 stealing copper wires, or if it's somewhere that's so far out there that it's physically hard to get a truck on site, you know? And it's kind of cool to see that shift take place. Talk a little

26:00 bit about some of the things that you've seen and observe from a crime standpoint and how you can help from really a security perspective as well Yeah, I think, you know, right now, the last four

26:14 years have been incredible. I mean, you know, I go back

26:23 to when I first started with the company and the funniest story that kept coming up was crack heads stealing the sight glasses to smoke crack out of,

26:27 to, you know, and that was, that was a big thing. And it was like, oh, wow, what am I getting into here? And now, I mean, we're seeing and guys tie chains to live wire poles. three trucks

26:45 at a time, three poles at a time, and pull them down and start fires. Like the end of the day, it's copper.

26:52 And

26:54 they're all nice trucks, so I don't know why they're stealing copper unless they're trying to make the truck payment, but

27:00 it's just crazy. Like, you know, they're not going in and stealing the monitor out of the shack. They're cutting live cable trays. They're pulling down poles They're starting fires in

27:14 the way they're doing it. And, you know, for the client to know exactly what's happening, getting alerted to it, and then being able to watch it live, one, they're telling their people that,

27:28 you know, it's not safe to go out there. The police are on their way. EMS is on their way. Fire is on their way, 'cause all these things are happening. It enables them to shut down remotely if

27:40 they need to And we're not talking. just stealing out of little sites now. We're talking unmanned terminals. We're talking unmanned batteries and places like that where that's critical

27:55 infrastructure that's coming down. The flip side is, as many terrible accidents, there's some hell of a funny stories out there that we see. Christmas morning, two kids in a Honda Civic, a stray

28:10 and a whole spool of copper out of a site, only to have the

28:15 police follow them, the track to their parents' quonset that this has caused in the snow.

28:23 Just

28:25 getting stuck and never getting their job done. And as much as that security, it's truly safety as well for the employees and for the community, even though these are remote. people still have

28:43 land out there and houses out there in the remote areas of

28:49 the energy industry. There's still people live out there. And in many cases, you know, on the bigger sites, these guys are sleeping in an employee lodge or an employee trailer out there

29:05 and it just ties into so much. And from incidents, I mean, catching explosions, catching fires, watching different things occur that have environmental impacts that enable a faster response. You

29:24 know, maybe it's 72 hours before somebody is going to be out, or has to go out there, or is going to be out there for them to know within minutes. It makes a big difference on the mitigation plan

29:37 that's going to be imposed on them. So.

29:42 It's lots out there. Yeah, no doubt. Well, let's shift a little bit to ESG, because on your website, that was definitely not something that was there before ESG became a real hot topic. But I

29:55 think inherently you guys were doing ESG-related functions. Can you talk about how Asperity is a strategic application for companies that are leaning into their ESG and carbon-related footprint?

30:09 Yeah, so I like to say we were a clean tech company before that was a term. And I only say that because we're not doing anything different, we just have something different to attach to it. And

30:21 that's ESG. You know, 90 of what we do reduces truck rolls, which increases safety, which reduces carbon, which lowers cost to operations. You know, we have the ability through our partner with

30:38 Viper, imaging to detect and quantify methane.

30:46 We work with different thermal cameras around activity around flare stacks. I know more so in the states, various states have some very specific rules about wind direction, about smoke, flare

31:03 height, about amount of time flaring. And we can provide that data that's very accurate through thermal cameras to it's not blowing the right direction. This is happening.

31:19 But one of the biggest things is there's a big social effect of seeing something with a camera on it today more than there was 10 years ago. And that's just the Someone is watching it. I mean, who

31:40 doesn't have a doorbell camera now? I got one -

31:45 I've got one, but I wouldn't know if someone was there because my neighbors' kids are always out front playing street hockey and

31:51 it just tings the whole

31:54 time. But that's

31:60 ESG, everybody just immediately go, the public goes to environment. But the governance perspective, our inspections are being submitted, visual inspections, as most of the regulators call for,

32:12 are generally an operator in his truck, driving around, taking the boxes, that yes, this has been done, this is good, this is good, this is good. We're actually delivering to the client a

32:25 visual with third party auditable images of what exactly is there. And there's a couple of regulators in the US that are like, hey, this is absolutely amazing. Wow, who's doing this? This is

32:38 great. Well, these guys are doing it, then you call them up and go. All right, well, endorse us there. Like, no,

32:46 no, you know, we don't endorse, we don't endorse technologies. Okay.

32:52 So, you know, we tell the story. But, you know, there

32:58 is, there's so much about what we do

33:02 that we've been doing for a long time until somebody finally come out and said, this stuff is important. We're actually gonna define it. This is what ESG is And then it was like, oh shit, we've

33:14 been a clean tech company for five years, six years. What's going on here - Wait a second, we're ESG. The ESG thing. Now you're telling me this matters and you're gonna save money and you got

33:27 this whole IRA and your carbon footprint matters? Hey, wait a second, we're here - Yeah, yeah, exactly - I wanna ask you something, kind of put you on the spot with this. There's lots of camera.

33:41 providers out there. Some of them are really cheap. Like there's nothing stopping a company from putting a very low cost camera, a hunting camera, or something of the sort, a rain camera, right?

33:52 Out there on a site and have that data just feed back to them. What are the differentiators? Like why would somebody make a, I guess what I would consider a more substantial investment for a

34:03 product like Osparity, as opposed to leaving like, you know, using just some sort of off the shelf video camera? Yep, so first off, we're a software company.

34:15 So we're, as you know, Jeremy, we're, you know, from a camera perspective, you're right. All those things work. We have tried them. We have tried the trail cams. We have tried the lower cost

34:29 cameras. Let's look at the environment we're putting cameras in. We don't put cameras inside buildings, inside commercial buildings or residential buildings parking lots of parcades. where they're

34:42 protected from the elements. We're pointing cameras and literally in some of the harshest working conditions in North America, whether it's in New Mexico and the Permian, or whether it's in

34:57 the Northwest Territories or Yukon in oil and gas industry, right? And the old adage, Garbage in Garbage O. So you put that out there, trail cams run on batteries, they have this little solar

35:10 panel, they have a little LTE modem in there.

35:15 What's the point of having a camera that you gotta replace the batteries every weekend? You're still going up, right?

35:24 We can run ours off solar, absolutely, but we're gonna have two to four panels and four to eight batteries out there to give you a 247, 365, right? And it's also using and focusing on industrial

35:39 IPQ P cameras. the bigger manufacturers, the accesses, the vigilance, the PELCO, those type of cameras, one, they're far more hardened for the environment.

35:56 You're in the extreme weather, you're in extreme conditions with hydrocarbons floating around, doesn't matter where you are, it's gonna be there. And you're around rough people,

36:08 you know, working and equipment. So, you know, the differentiation is, you can put that out there, but you're not gonna get the results. And for our analytics to work and be accurate and not

36:22 send you the wonderful children that live next door to the Play Street hockey, that I may join them some days, telling me that someone's at my door because the ball came into our yard, right?

36:37 We cut that noise out because the data we're getting from the camera, cameras are censored. You know, outside of giving us the feed, that's all it's doing. We're analyzing that feed. You need a

36:50 crisp, clear feed. You need a reliable feed. And you need a quick feed. You need a processed quickly, right? We all know when you watch a live sporting event, it's not live. Well, it's no

37:01 different than a camera at a remote site, 100 miles northeast of Edmonton. It's not live, but it's live. You know, and we need that fast. We need that fast. We need when a client wants to move

37:17 the camera, you know, on a Pantel Zoom camera from our site, we need that camera to move to more like not tomorrow, but as they press go. So you need a camera in the northern conditions with a

37:29 heated gearbox. So when it's minus 40, that sucker's going to move on command. So, you know,

37:39 there are a lot of camera systems from our software's perspective. And we're not talking tens of thousands of dollars for these cameras that we recommend. In many cases, you and I were just in a

37:52 meeting together, Jeremy, and they have the exact cameras that we use. You know, we men sitting on sites right now saying, Yeah, we can't access them. Well, you can't Because they don't have a

38:06 means. So, we can give them that means. They can view them locally. We can give them that means and then add a massive layer of analytics onto that. There's why people are there - Makes perfect

38:19 sense to me. And just the whole concept of artificial intelligence has been more established now, right? I mean, something like chat, GPT wasn't a thing just a few years ago. So, I think the

38:29 market continues to come in your direction. And I say this for most companies in clean tech. You were probably just a little bit early for the market really caring and embracing this when you guys

38:41 initially had this concept. And now it's firmly coming in your direction and people are buying it. And there's just a general significant amount of interest, whether it's a large scale operator, a

38:54 mid-sized pipeline company, a construction firm that's remote or a company that works in a big city. It just makes sense that you'd want to have intelligent video monitoring, but I appreciate you

39:07 diving into that. Got a few more minutes here. I want to play a quick lightning round with a couple of questions for you. Put you right firmly on the hot seat - Okay - Let's go with, I see you got

39:18 a hockey player behind you right there in the picture. Who is your favorite hockey player of all time - Bobby Orr - That's my guy. There you go - I wore it on your floor My whole hockey playing time

39:32 from when I was probably five years old till I. until I hung them up - I mean,

39:39 in Boston, he's up there with Ted Williams, Larry Bird, Tom Brady, you name it. That he's on

39:47 the pantheon of greatness. That's a good answer. The greatest hockey team of all time for an individual season - Whoa. Well, I hate to say it being in Calgary, but I think Edmunds and Oilers may

40:03 have had a couple of the greatest hockey teams ever. Will, you know, and I actually hate to say it right now. They're almost borderline getting that way again.

40:17 But, but, but,

40:21 you don't want to, I do have to say, I mean, that's a tough one in our era. I mean, Detroit had some phenomenal teams - They really did - And in the years, you know, we can even go back You

40:33 know, the LA Kings there for a couple stretches under Sutter had some phenomenal teams too - I know - Outside of the Gretzky LA days. So, you know, it's really tough. I can't go back in history.

40:45 I'm sure there's, you know, talk of phenomenal Bruins teams way back in the day before you and I were a lot. But, you know, I think that's probably it, but you know, all that you ask your next

40:58 question, 'cause I probably know what it is, but go ahead Who wins the cup this year - Well, Austin or Edmonton - Wow, that would be a fun series. I mean, I'm personally hoping that, you know,

41:09 the Bruins are my team and then the ABS are my Western Conference team. So if there's any chance that last year's champs and this year's hopeful champs can beat up, I'd love to get to a game in

41:19 Denver. Don't even get me started on Celtics and Nuggets. There's a chance of that too - Yes, well, you know, it's interesting that the apps thing, you know, they've had a lot of injuries this

41:28 year and let's hope they can stay healthy. there was a time this year when McKinnon and MacArthur wrote for a stretch, right? And now everybody's back and hopefully they're helped. Would I love

41:40 nothing more than the abs to crush the Oilers in a series?

41:46 Absolutely. But I don't know, like some of these sneaky acquisitions the Oilers made in the off season, or sorry, just at the trading deadline.

41:56 It's scary. But the one thing that the abs have over the Oilers is goaltending.

42:04 Yeah, and

42:09 for all my American listeners out there, which is probably the large majority of the people, no better way to endear yourself to a Canadian than learning just a little bit about hockey. See, I was

42:18 fortunate enough growing up in New England back when not only were the Bruins there, but the whalers were there in Connecticut too. So there were two teams within And if you include the Canadians,

42:29 which was three hours north, from three hours in my house in the middle of nowhere in New Hampshire, there were three professional hockey teams. And they all played each other a lot. So I would

42:39 get the French feed from the Habs games. I get the Boston feed from the Bruins every once in a while, even get Whalers feeds. So it was really kind of a cool time for me to grow up and of course,

42:50 you know, Cam Neely and the great Ray Bork But it's a great sport and I was never a great enough skater to play. I played basketball in the winter season, but it's just an awesome sport. And as

43:03 far as going live, it's as fun as it gets, man. There's no bad seat in the stadium. Unlike basketball, you really kind of have to sit close, I think, to get the full understanding of how

43:15 athletic these dudes are. Whereas in hockey, it's just you just get a different view of the game. It's not like a worst seat if you're up top. You see more of the ice I've sat everywhere from

43:25 right on the penalty box to the last seat in the back and had a similarly awesome experience. Final question on the hot seat for you, Paul. You are a traveling man. You told me just earlier this

43:38 week you spent about 50 of your time on the road. And even when you've gotten into relationships with women you said, Hey, this is part of what I do. I'm a traveling sales guy. I'm gonna be on

43:47 the road half the time. What's your favorite city to travel to -

43:52 Why - I don't

43:56 know. I would say there's probably two. One, how can it not be Nashville - Yeah, Fun Town - It's a great city. But just a city to go and wanna stay, I'm gonna say San Diego - Ah, what a town,

44:14 man - I mean, I'm gonna throw my Canadian out here, but it's 22 to 24 degrees Celsius. Anytime of the year you go there you might catch a, you know, you're guaranteed. just have a decent time

44:29 and hang out in Coronado and chill and watch the Navy SEALs work hard while you drink beer. And it's pretty cool place - Yes, indeed. Well, I think we had some technical difficulties there. We'll

44:44 wrap this up right here. Paul Ritchie, Asperity, thank you, my man, for coming on. And you can find Paul on LinkedIn, Asperitycom, O-S-P-E-R-I-T-Ycom.