📺 [rapidMATION Live] Getting stuff done with a new generation of apps for work. That employees love.

Transcript

Speaker 1:

Automate. Survive. Thrive. The time is now. The Automation Alliance Podcast brought to you by rapidMATION.

Shaun Leisegang:

Hey, everyone. Today I’m really excited to welcome Dennis Parker to the show. Dennis is currently the customer lead at a company called Jigx, and Jigx is a company that we’ve been working with very closely over the last few months. And I’m excited to chat all things Jigx today. So Dennis, welcome to the show.

Dennis Parker:

Thanks Shaun. It’s brilliant to be here. Awesome.

Shaun Leisegang:

Yeah. Dennis, it’s awesome to have you and thanks for spending some time with us today. And while you and I have known each other for many, many years, could you take the viewers and the listeners through a whirlwind tour of your career to date?

Dennis Parker:

Cool. I’ll try and keep it short. Unfortunately it’s a few years, but the accent probably gives it away, but I started down in South Africa. Initially actually interesting working on the corporate side, but it didn’t take me long. It was two years before I realized that I wasn’t going to be a corporate animal, and pretty early on switched onto the software side. And I think it’ll lead into a little bit of what we’re going to talk about later, but that was all software coming out of the United States. We were basically distributing that in the South African context. That led into me working for a company called Sybase. For I guess some of the people on the call they might recall or might not recall that Sybase was the beginning of Microsoft SQL Server actually, and still that is, the DNA of SQL Server comes from Sybase. So rich database background, which amazingly all these years later is still at the core of everything we do. So that was an interesting time.

Dennis Parker:

And then left Sybase, started my own thing in the dot-com bomb area and did actually had a little bit of luck there. Managed to grow and sell a business there and joined K2 as a result of that. Adrian and I met during that period. He showed me a very nascent product called K2, which you and I have some experience around. And that really led into the K2 journey, which kept me occupied, growing that from, well, from pretty much scratch to a medium-sized software company before that was acquired by Nintex late last year. Yeah. So that brings me really up to date now. I took a little bit of time out and then joined Adrian again. So shame, for his sins, he’s having to work with me again, but yeah, we’ve started Jigx and we’re on a journey there, which we’ll talk about today. Yeah.

Shaun Leisegang:

Yeah. Awesome. I mean, what an amazing journey you’ve had in the technology and automation space, and I know I, for one, personally have benefited from your amazing knowledge and experience in the space, and I’m excited for you to share some of your newfound knowledge with the viewers and listeners today. So you started off by sharing your career journey with us and that led you to starting a new chapter with Jigx at the beginning of this year I believe it was. So first up for the viewers and listeners that are not familiar with Jigx, can you tell us a little bit more about Jigx and what has you so excited?

Dennis Parker:

Yeah. So look, I’ll do a headline and then of course I’d love to drill into a little bit of detail, but the headline is mobile apps. I mean, that’s the kind of headline for what it is. And of course I can almost hear people groaning, saying not another one, but we’ll talk about what the differences is there. And of course there’s no shortage of noise around the mobile space at the moment. Yesterday was another interesting announcement from Apple. I don’t know if you saw the Apple 13 announcement and that actually is really, really interesting for today’s conversation because the thing that actually started this journey was a core realization that there is a very interesting performance capability gap that is there, that I don’t think many people are aware of.

Dennis Parker:

And that is that if you look at the computing platform that is on your mobile phone, the capacity of what’s in that phone far exceeds what the software is doing on the phone today. And that’s a very unusual place for us to be in, in software. I mean, if we think back through all the years of developing software, it’s the software that’s always pushed the hardware, right. End up with kind of, all along the way, making software choices to optimize for the hardware. I mean, obviously hugely so in the early days of computing. But even latterly, I think a lot of people spend a lot of time optimizing for performance and so on and so forth. And of course those disciplines should stay with us.

Dennis Parker:

But the fact of the matter is if you now look at this latest phone that was announced yesterday, it’s got the new chip in it which is the A15 chip. That chip is the same as this computer that I’m talking to you on now, the M1 chip, right, that’s in that phone. As powerful. A terabyte of storage on that phone you can put on there, and 16 gigs of memory. So you’ve got a computing platform that’s second to none, but actually the software on these phones is not pushing the phone at all.

Dennis Parker:

So the core realization was to say, there is an incredible opportunity to push the capability of the phone with software. And if you can do that, then how do you go about doing that? Create amazing apps. And that started the Jigx journey. And of course, then you get into the world, well, what sets you apart a little bit from, there’s no shortage of people doing low code or various other things, developing mobile apps. And I think that’s the next part of our conversation is maybe thinking a little bit about what we’ve done differently there, but that capacity gap started actually the conversation.

Shaun Leisegang:

Yeah. Amazing, right. And I was just pulling out some stats just before our chat and there’s approximately five billion unique mobile users in the world today and almost three billion of those are smartphone users, right. So I can certainly see what has you’re so excited about the space and especially with all the technology that’s evolved and especially with the latest announcements. I mean, there’s some amazing capabilities that that allows you to bring to market.

Shaun Leisegang:

So I love looking at the Jigx website, right. And there’s a beautiful ticker on the homepage and the ticker reads, “Get stuff done with the new generation of apps for work that employees love, that adapt to your business and that are more than just artificially intelligent.” And that really kind of epitomizes what you guys do at Jigx. And I know for the first time when I saw a Jigx app, my first word that I uttered was wow, right. That really, really looked and felt really, really good. So I know that the first app I saw was for kind of a global lubrication manufacturer, right. So can you talk to the audience a little bit about the challenge that that team had and why Jigx was such a great solution to their challenge?

Dennis Parker:

Yeah. Perfect. Absolutely. I’m going to pick up quickly before I go onto that on the stats. The other very interesting stat to watch, and it’s actually one that I look at most weeks, is just if you look at internet traffic and you see what percentage of traffic is now coming on mobiles versus desktops, that’s a incredibly interesting graph to watch because that is just accelerating fast towards mobile, right. Very, very fast. It’s been exacerbated by the pandemic. No question of doubt. So there’s a lot of kind of talk and commentary on the fact that maybe this is a pandemic spike if you like, but actually I’m of the opinion that it’s here with us to stay. So that’s just a look, a quick word on that.

Dennis Parker:

Let’s go back to the example of the lubricants manufacturer. So it’s a really interesting observation. The first is that in dealing with these examples, we find ourselves talking much more to the business than necessarily technology. Now, technology group is really important because obviously in this instance, and I’ll talk a little bit about the architecture is, in this instance, it’s integrated into an SAP Backend. So it’s talking real time to an SAP Backend for pricing and various other bits and pieces. But the key selling point was the desire of the business in this case to connect better with their customers. So in their case, their customers are garages. They’re not, although they do have a consumer business, their primary business is B2B, and you need to think about a garage owner, right.

Dennis Parker:

Now to the garage owner, all respect to that audience, that is not necessarily the most technically savvy audience and whatever you put in their hands has to be compelling, has to be easy and has to be performant. So we put together a concept for them using the app. And I’ll actually use this to sort of talk about some of our key pillars that tick those boxes. And when we put the app in front of them, they were just absolutely blown away and they were blown away really by two major things. One was the look and feel of the app. It just, it looks great. And the second was that it was very snappy and performant. And as we’ve gone from that concept into production, we’re probably about three weeks away from production now, full scale. We’ve managed to fulfill on that promise so nothing has changed. In fact, if I look back to the original video concept that we gave them to now the real app, I actually think the real app looks better than the concept video, which is awesome.

Shaun Leisegang:

Yeah.

Dennis Parker:

So lots of delight. I mean, look, of course it’s the honeymoon phase before we go into production, but it’s great to see at this late stage in the project that they are massively enthusiastic. They have never seen their SAP system being talked to with a UI that looks like this, right. And that, I mean, creates a huge amount of excitement. When you can price stuff real time, you can place an order against SAP and you’ve just got this really snappy reaction coming from the phone. So I think, again, there’s lots of technical debt behind that and I don’t know how much time we’ve got today, but I’m trying to sort of focus in on the things that have really delighted the customer rather than talk too much about how we make it happen. Of course we can do that, but that’s sort of what we see. Yeah.

Shaun Leisegang:

Yeah. I mean, it sounds like an amazing app and I’ve seen some of those concepts, so I have that great visual and I know that it’ll lead to some brilliant outcomes for that specific customer. And you spoke a little bit about when you put this app in their hands, right. So talk to us a little bit about when you first showed them this concept video, what was their reaction?

Dennis Parker:

Well, there was a few things. The first thing is there was this kind of wow reaction. I mean, we obviously gave it to our sponsor initially, but the other thing that the sponsor did rather than kind of doing cartwheels immediately and signing a contract is he actually took it around to a couple of garages. So he did his homework and he went round and he took it to a couple of garages where he interestingly got a very similar reaction, right. So he put it in front of a garage owner and said if you had this, what do you think? And the guy said, can I install it on my phone right now, immediately? So that’s kind of what happened. And then of course, now we’ve taken it from concept into reality. And in fact, actually we were there last week in Cologne with the customer and again, seeing a similar reaction, even at this late stage of the project. So it’s great to see.

Shaun Leisegang:

Yeah, absolutely brilliant. Well, I know a little bit about the team that you guys have at Jigx, right. And I can honestly say that it’s some of the best of the best technical resources that you can get. So I’m not too surprised that you’re getting some of these reactions from your customers. But let’s just go back to the name Jigx, right. So talk to us a little bit about what a Jig is in your world.

Dennis Parker:

Yeah. So it’s a very important concept. And I kind of, at this point, I would maybe just introduce, and it’s not marketing speak, but it just, it’s the things that we think about on a daily basis when we’re sort of thinking about what we should prioritize and what we should do. But the key things we think about is must be beautiful, right. Must be beautiful. Must be native, so it’s no squashed websites or kind of multiple interpreters, must be native, must be responsive, must be offline and then must be connected, right. So I know offline and connected sound diametrically opposed, but offline means you can go offline and then when you come back online, it’ll connect and sync. And then connected means integrated with whatever you’ve got in the backend, whether that’s SQL or SQL Azure, REST, SAP as we’ve got now for this customer.

Dennis Parker:

So those are the things that we think of. Now, when we think about how you go about doing that, one of the fundamental concepts that we have in there is this concept of building blocks or jigs, right, that make things happen. So when you look at the user interface, you will see this kind of widget-based approach that we’ve taken, where instead of giving you, and we’ve all been through this, right, when you design typically in software, what you end up with is a canvas and you drop stuff onto the canvas, and then that gives you something functional. But when you want to make it look pretty, you end up with what we call pixel pushing, right. A lot of pixel pushing to make stuff look decent.

Dennis Parker:

So what we’ve tried to do is to say, let’s take a different approach where we put everything in the box. So you get the UI, you get the behavior, everything comes in the box, so when you drop stuff on the screen, and we’ll also come to that, we don’t really drop stuff on screens in our world, but when you put a component onto, when you build a component, that component encapsulates with everything it needs to display and react in a really, really good way on the form. So, and you know, right, I am the epitome of Times New Roman, 12. I mean, I am absolutely terrible with UI, right. But I can very easily take a database concept, put that into a Jigx app using Jigx, and it comes out looking really, really great.

Dennis Parker:

So the fundamental concept of Jig is like a manufacturing Jig, right. It’s a preconfigured set of capabilities that you can drop onto a screen that allows you to do stuff but yet in the backend, it’s got a programmable interface that you have this incredible flexibility. So it sort of satisfies both needs. It’s the encapsulation and abstraction that gives you a great result. But yet on the backend, you’ve got a fairly deep capability to be technically flexible. So right now, for example, and again, for the people listening on the call, on the backend, the modeling is done in YAML, again, technical term there, yet another markup language is actually what it stands for, but the markup language is actually in VS Code. And so that gives us a lot of capability, but at the same time, we can do things very, very quickly by assembling these Jigx into these apps. Yeah. So I rambled there a little bit, but hopefully I’ve got the point across that you can very quickly get Jigx together, assemble them, integrate them and have an amazing looking app. That’s the goal.

Shaun Leisegang:

Yeah, absolutely, right. And I love the name because it gives you that visual picture of slotting together one or more of these Jigx to build out an app that makes it really quick to assemble, but also ensures that it looks amazing, right. Because it’s pre-canned, and you’ve thought about all of these different bits and pieces in it. One of the things that I’ve heard you and the team talk about pretty often is this concept of the dopamine effect, right. And having everything under your thumb. What do you guys mean by that when you talk about that?

Dennis Parker:

Well, if you’ve got a teenager in the house or even less, or even younger than that, or whatever, you don’t even need to have a teenager in the house. Actually I laugh because I often here in the UK, I go on to a station and I often look down the platform and it reminds me of zombies because everyone is just head down in their phone with thumbs, right. It’s kind of the world that we’ve become, we live in now.

Dennis Parker:

But I mean, we don’t need to pontificate about the fact that people are drawn to apps that they look at every day because of dopamine effect. And of course there’s unhealthy side effects of that as well. But I think in the business world, we can use that to our advantage because if you give business people compelling-looking apps that react and react very, very quickly and give them data and analytics that allow them to do their jobs better, we can take that dopamine effect, which is somewhat unhealthy in the social media world, and turn that into something really positive in the business world. And we’re seeing that, right. So as we put these apps in front of people, we’ve borrowed from that world.

Dennis Parker:

I mean, let me give you one example. One concept that we have in the app is this concept of a story. And a story is basically an area in the app where you can serve high value content. So it might be a video, it might be a news feed. It could be a product promotion, anything that you want to promote in the high value area. And that sits at the top. The moment you drill into that, it kind of takes over the screen real estate. And then it uses social media gestures, right. So thumb right, it’ll click to the next one, thumb left, it’ll go back, hold your thumb, it pauses. So that whole kind of seamless integration of imagery going past is integrated into the way that we present that content.

Dennis Parker:

And again, we just think that that’s the way that increasingly people are going to want to see stuff. It’s not a kind of, as again, I use the term, a squashed website experience is just not going to do it. When it comes to these mobile devices, you need to have those kind of native experiences to make it compelling. And we’ve worked really, really hard on those kind of concepts to make it feel very natural for people.

Shaun Leisegang:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s amazing patterns and obviously there’s been a lot of thought that’s gone into the platform, right, and all these different Jigx that you have available. So you’ve mentioned kind of some of those elements and I think you called it a story there, but talk us through some of the other Jigx that you guys have out of the box that allow you to assemble these apps pretty quickly.

Dennis Parker:

Yeah. So, it’s a good point. So story is definitely one of them. It’s there, but as you would expect in the platform, then there’s a bunch of other components, right. So of course listen forms, as you would expect, are there. The other really important one not to underestimate is the integration components, right. That’s a big piece of our componentry. So, out of the box, we provide our own data source that you can immediately just connect into Jigx data, but then very easily, for instance, you can sit on top of Azure SQL if that’s something that you want to do or Salesforce or ARREST interface or any kind of, I guess, internet reachable source.

Dennis Parker:

A very interesting, just a side note actually. We’ve got a project right now and its concepts, I’m not sure where it’s going to go, but one of our customers has kiosk-based machines that do various things that have a Bluetooth interface. And so they’ve asked us to say, well, can we control the machine from a Jigx app, right. So one of our backend guys, and I want to come back to the team actually, because massive credit needs to go to them, but they’re actually building a Bluetooth API as a integration component so that you can now control Bluetooth connected machines from a Jigx app. So we’ll see where that goes, but it could be a really interesting use case.

Dennis Parker:

So integration components I mentioned. Shaun, then there’s a bunch of other components. So things like signature controls are in there, obviously the ability to use the camera, so QR code scanning, taking a photograph, bringing that straight into your app. That’s all possible. Obviously buttonology and those sorts of things. Then we’re doing things like checklists. So there is an ever-expanding list of controls and components. And in fact, we are literally, as we speak, we are reconfiguring the dev team that there will be two guys and their sole job is to produce new components because we just see so much demand.

Dennis Parker:

Now, an example of one that we’re working on right now is a calendar component because just about every app that we have has some element of booking or timing or that kind of stuff in it. So a calendar component will come. Beyond that, the vision actually is not for us to do all the hard work. The way we’re going to actually take this to market is with a very, very deep community focus. So one of the things you’ll be able to do is you’ll be able to do your own components on Jigx. So we’ll give you the frameworks to do that and then, I mean, I don’t want to use the word the app store model, but it fits because we have to actually compile that component into the platform. So it’ll go through a little bit of approval on our side and then it will be available in the Jigx platform. So that idea of a very rich library of components will release with a platform on day one. But we feel pretty good that that’s going to expand fairly rapidly to pretty much cover any scenario.

Shaun Leisegang:

Yeah. Awesome. I mean, exciting times, right? So talking about exciting times, I know our team and your team have been working on some really exciting projects, right. And I often tell you that once someone sees a Jigx app, they cannot unsee it, right. And what I mean by that is that the app looks and works beautifully. Often we feed this with data and automations and all these amazing capabilities behind the scenes. So maybe you can talk about some of those stories. We might need to be a little bit generic about them, but talk a bit about some of the use cases that we’ve come across.

Dennis Parker:

Yeah, absolutely. So I think it’s probably reasonable to start talking about this manufacturer, because there are some common examples there and we’re actually starting to see that in a few other areas, right. So that is the challenge of a manufacturer wanting to connect digitally to a network of distribution channels in some shape or form. So whether you’re, in their case lubricants manufacturer, or in fact, some fun ones that we’ve been dealing with are brewers in Germany, right. So I can’t mention names, but there’s some, let’s just say some household names there that are figuring out and it’s the most strange things. So for instance, brewers often have branded glasses in their restaurants, right. So, and the problem is, I mean, there’s a very simple business problem, but there’s 50,000 restaurants. So how do you digitally now shorten that gap between the brewer and the restaurant to say, when you break a glass, here’s a little app that just says I’ve broken six, I need six, order.

Shaun Leisegang:

Yeah.

Dennis Parker:

And it just happens, right. So it’s things like that. So we’re definitely seeing those things. And then of course there’s all supply chain, damaged goods, returns, orders, all that kind of stuff which just, if you could put that on someone’s phone, I’m just always blown away by the fact that when you dig into those businesses, people are still doing this on paper actually.

Shaun Leisegang:

Yeah.

Dennis Parker:

And in some cases, believe it or not, yes, a fax machine.

Shaun Leisegang:

That’s insane.

Dennis Parker:

I mean, you just like, okay, well, whatever. So it’s there. So we see that. Of course legal is a really, really interesting vertical. And I mean, I know we’ve done some concepts with you guys in that space. I mean, I think that’s going to be very interesting. We’ve got similar kind of requirements here in the UK and I think that one’s going to be good, but for again, closing the gap between the legal firm and the client, which has never been done satisfactory, right. You never get on the phone and look forward to your conversation with a lawyer, right. It would be much better if you could just do that on your phone and kind of see where you are. So that would be great. So that’s an example.

Dennis Parker:

And we have a super exciting one and again, I can’t do brands here, but massively exciting. And you guys just did an amazing job of helping, of introducing us and getting us to a point with this, but in the aviation space, stuff that will sit with pilots, doing some interesting kind of stuff around missions. And we are, man, we are burning on that one because it crosses a lot of personal passions on this side. So we’re really looking forward to that one. So that’s an example.

Dennis Parker:

Then insurance is another area where we’re working with. And again, you start to see some themes. In insurance, you’ve again got insurance company brokers, and then consumers. Again, the theme is how do we close that digital gap and just make it really easy for brokers to talk to customers, for customers to see their portfolios, all that value adds. So that’s another area where we see.

Dennis Parker:

And then interestingly, a couple of small examples. So charities connecting with volunteers and volunteers connecting with charities is some work we’re doing. We have Pineapple, which is a yoga provider and amazing what’s going on in that world. I mean, I’ve never seen it, but there you can go, everything is digitized, so classes are digitized, recipes, there’s a whole lot of digital content there that you can serve and monetize if you do it correctly. So there we’re also again.

Dennis Parker:

So yeah, some very, I mean actually in a way for where we are, the use cases coming at us are just, I mean, it’s brilliant. I mean, we’re just, we’re kind of overwhelmed and immensely pleased that we’re seeing this kind of level of interest. So it’s at a relatively early stage.

Shaun Leisegang:

Yeah. Man, exciting times, right? So I, for one, I’m extremely excited for what the future holds and how we’re going to use kind of some of these Jigx apps to interface some of this amazing automation and data and artificial intelligence and all these cool things that we’ve been doing on the backend. So extremely excited for that. So you’re obviously right in the engine room at Jigx, right? So you’re involved with customers and engineering and everything. What has you most excited?

Dennis Parker:

There’s a couple of things. Look, I think the first thing I’m going to highlight here is the Jigx team. I wake up on a daily basis, of course excited about what we’re doing, and I really mean this because of course it’s easy to blow smoke about topics like this, but we are working with a super gifted bunch of people across four continents. And actually continents, it’s across two continents and it’s across four countries. But if I look at that, I mean, we’re dispersed obviously and we had to be during the pandemic. So in fact, many of us have never met each other, but the skill and the capability of the team is just, blows me away every day. I mean, some of the UI concepts that we see coming out of the team in terms of making stuff amazingly beautiful is breathtaking.

Dennis Parker:

And then combine that with the skill of the backend teams at multiple levels, because I think people forget about it. It’s security, it’s scalability, it’s cost of the platform, it’s dealing with authentication providers. There’s a lot of detail in building a platform that is ready for prime time. And we are just very blessed to have that combination of skills working on the platform. And I think that kind of gives the game away in terms of what are we excited about. Well, for me, the thing that excites me is this kind of intersection of the need that we’ve talked about this morning, along with the technology base that we’re building. I mean, we’ve been busy on this platform for just over two and a half years now. I mean, it’s gone by amazingly quickly.

Dennis Parker:

But we’re feeling pretty good about where it’s at. Of course, we continue to work really, really hard on it. We’re not resting on laurels. There’s intense work going on, but it’s starting to feel really good. We’re seeing a great reaction coming from the initial customer base. And when I look at the roadmap of new components starting to come out, first customers starting to go live and the interest that we’re getting that’s, I guess, what’s so exciting at the moment. I mean, it’s just a lot of things starting to come on stream in the next sort of 60, 90 days. And that will become more public. I mean, if you go to jigx.com right now, it’s very evident that it’s in kind of the mode that we’re in. It’s very focused on our people, focused on our key message, but watch the space there in the next couple of weeks. We will go live with our pre-launch website, and I’ve seen glimpses of that. I’m not going to give the game away today, but I think it’ll live up to some of the pillars we talked about earlier.

Shaun Leisegang:

Yeah. Awesome, right. Well, as I’ve said, right, we are definitely excited about what you and the team are doing, looking forward to seeing how that unfolds in the days, weeks and months ahead. You mentioned the website there, but if people did want to get in contact, what’s the best way to reach out to you guys?

Dennis Parker:

Look, there is a contact us on the website. I never like to apologize in advance, but I really am. It’s very basic at the moment. Like I said, watch this space. It will be a bigger website, but right now you can actually connect with us on the website. And we do monitor that every single day. So if you want to get in contact, do the form, just fill a form in on the website and I promise you, we’ll get back to you and we’ll get back to you quickly. And of course, we’d like to connect with people. I mean our models are very much about inclusiveness, working with partners. I mean, it’s been fantastic working with you guys. It’s been so successful. So that’s the connection method is what we’re looking to do. So, yeah. I mean, it’s early days. Exciting time to get involved and ja, we’d love to talk to people, ja.

Shaun Leisegang:

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome, Dennis. Well, thank you very much for sharing with us today. I mean, I think that’s been amazing. Whirlwind tour of Jigx and everything it’s about, so yeah, as I said, exciting times and looking forward to seeing how it unfolds.

Shaun Leisegang:

All right, but now it’s onto my favorite time and we call this the hot seat. Right, so the hot seat is where we fire off quick fire questions to you and we get some of your answers.

Dennis Parker:

Yeah.

Shaun Leisegang:

All right. So first question to you, Dennis, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Dennis Parker:

It’s sad, but it’s probably not a surprise. I did want to be an airline pilot. That was my big goal when I was a lightweight, but fortunately sage advice from my parents said hey, earn a living and fly for fun. And that’s kind of what I did. And I know, I mean, airline flying is immensely challenging, but of course it does come with its challenges as well. So I think that, I have to say at this age that they were probably right and I was wrong. So there you go.

Shaun Leisegang:

Awesome. All right, next up. What is something that was on your bucket list that you managed to check off?

Dennis Parker:

Yeah, so look, there’s a couple things there I could highlight. I mean, probably the one I’ll do though, I’ll take Kilimanjaro, and Vana who I’m married to has put up with me for a while. She actually was super motivated to do that one. We did it back in 2013, we did that. And that was amazing. To, A, to do the walk, because it is a walk rather than a climb, but to end up at the highest point in Africa was just incredible.

Shaun Leisegang:

Yeah. Amazing achievement, right. All right. Next up. So what’s something on your bucket list that you haven’t managed to tick off just yet?

Dennis Parker:

A couple of things there that I’d like to do. The one thing which I’ve never managed to get to that I really want to do is sailing, some ocean sailing. So it just feels to me that the combination of that challenge plus the fun of it. I mean here, obviously, you don’t need to go and sail in the Antarctic to challenge yourself. You can just go down to Croatia where things are flat, sea is blue and clear, and there’s a few bars. That feels to me like something I’d really like to do. So a skipper’s course and that kind of sailing is definitely something on the bucket list to do still.

Shaun Leisegang:

Yeah. Brilliant. All right. Next up. What are you reading at the moment? And this could be something that you’re reading at the moment or a book that you feel has had a profound impact on you. Talk us through something like that.

Dennis Parker:

Yeah. So I’m going to single out a couple of authors in different areas. Look, my favorite author for perspective, and I hope it’s not too heavy is Carl Sagan. He is just amazing to read. If you want to start with him, I mean, he did a massive amount of education and TV series some time back. But Pale Blue Dot, if you, I mean, he’s written a lot of books, but Pale Blue Dot is the one I would single out. Whenever you think you’re important or you think that you’re amazing, you need to go and read Pale Blue Dot and kind of really put yourself in perspective as that ant in the galaxy. And it just gives you great perspective of never take yourself too seriously.

Shaun Leisegang:

Awesome. All right, brilliant. And last but not least, how do you want to be remembered?

Dennis Parker:

Well, that one was a tough one for me. I must say I, because I don’t know, maybe I thought about it the wrong way, sort of maybe think a little bit more gloomy, but look, I think for me, it probably boils down to entrepreneurship, right. I think the world needs entrepreneurs like never before. I think we really need to try and help develop entrepreneurs and teach people don’t be afraid to fail because it’s a part of being an entrepreneur. You get out there, you try things. Some stuff works, some stuff doesn’t. But I think for me that’s what I would kind of want to encourage. And if the right phraseology there is remembered for, that would be the thing that I would want to sort of say hey, be an entrepreneur, challenge yourself, get out there because that’s where we break through, right. I mean, we invent new stuff. Hopefully we think about things that are useful for the world and we build new capability and new things. So I think that’s the thing that is important to me and that I would want to encourage people to consider.

Shaun Leisegang:

Yeah, absolutely. What a great way to end off, right. Well, Dennis, yeah, thanks so much for sharing with us today. Some unbelievable knowledge in the space. I know we could probably talk about it all day, right. So it’s been really great to have you on the show. Just before we say goodbye, is there any parting thoughts or comments you’d like to leave the listeners or viewers with?

Dennis Parker:

Two things. Firstly, big thanks to the partnership we’ve had and to you personally. I mean, we’ve had such a rich history together. It’s been really amazing and that continues. And again, I’m not blowing smoke. People might think that that’s the case, but it’s based on 15, 16, 17 years of time and some good times and some challenging times over the period. But that’s the first thing and my last one is going to be for the Jigx team. I mean, I mentioned it before, but I really want to kind of emphasize at the end, a huge thanks to the talent and the individuals, each and every one of them in the team that make this possible. It’s impossible without the Jigx team and a huge thanks to them.

Shaun Leisegang:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, on that note, thanks again for joining us. We’re looking forward to following your guys journey, cheering on from the side and being a small part of that as well. So we look forward to speaking with you soon.

Dennis Parker:

Awesome. Thanks, Shaun. Brilliant.

Shaun Leisegang:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

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