Podcasts about Aggreko

Rupert Soames has forged a brilliant career leading businesses through some of the most daunting challenges. His professional journey has been defined by his unflinching resolve to ‘run towards gunfire.' As CEO of commercial giants Aggreko and Serco through periods of crisis and now as Chair of the CBI as it continues to recover from a reputational shock. Rupert also talks for the first time about appalling abuse he endured at prep school and how those terrible experiences ultimately helped shape his wholly positive approach to confronting challenge. Here is Rupert's Crisis Compass – his points of navigation when trouble comes. This is a paid advertisement by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/CRISISPOD. Our listeners get 10% off their first month.Host: Andy Coulson CWC team: Jane Sankey, Hana Walker-Brown, Bill GriffinWith special thanks to Ioana Barbu and the brilliant people at Global For all PR and guest approaches please contact – podcast@coulsonpartners.com

Rupert Soames has forged a brilliant career leading businesses through some of the most daunting challenges. But behind the decades of success, there's another story that Rupert has chosen to share here for the first time … an experience which, against the odds, forged his resilience. His professional journey has been defined by his unflinching resolve to ‘run towards gunfire.' … as CEO of commercial giants Aggreko and Serco through periods of crisis and now as Chair of the CBI as it continues to recover from a reputational shock.Given Rupert is also Winston Churchill's grandson, it would be easy to assume that his courage is more biology than biography … but that would not tell the full story.In this episode, Rupert talks for the first time about appalling abuse he endured at prep school and how those terrible experiences ultimately helped shape his wholly positive approach to confronting challenge. He shares his valuable lessons in resilience, decision-making under pressure, and the importance of learning from past struggles. But more than all of this, Rupert powerfully explains and demonstrates how trauma, instead of defining us, can drive us towards a more positive life.My thanks to Rupert for this conversation.This is a paid advertisement by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/CRISISPOD. Our listeners get 10% off their first month.Host: Andy Coulson CWC team: Jane Sankey, Hana Walker-Brown, Bill GriffinWith special thanks to Ioana Barbu and the brilliant people at Global For all PR and guest approaches please contact – podcast@coulsonpartners.com

In the School for CEOs Leadership Insights podcast, we access the workable wisdom of prominent executives, thought leaders and business experts, whose knowledge can help you to become a more effective leader, and improve your company culture. In this episode we are joined by Angus Cockburn, an esteemed member of the School for CEOs faculty. Angus is Chairman of James Fisher & Sons Plc, and Senior Independent Director at Ashtead Group, and The Edrington Group. He is also a non-executive director at BAE Systems. During his executive career, Angus was Chief Financial Officer at Aggreko for 15 years followed by 7 years as CFO of Serco. Previously, he was Managing Director of Pringle of Scotland and held various international roles at Pepsico Inc and KPMG. In a frank and informative chat with School for CEOs' Dave Wright, Angus reflects on:Becoming a successful CFOCultivating the relationship between CFO and CEOHis working dynamic with CEO Rupert SoamesTaking Aggreko from a small-cap to FTSE 50 company'Cleaning house' at SercoLeading Finance teams and preparing his successorsBeing an effective Chair and NEDAdding value and eschewing ego on the Board

En esta emisión de Autos y Más, arrancamos con el acuerdo multianual entre la Formula E y Aggreko líder mundial de soluciones energéticas, con la finalidad de tener una reducción de emisiones para el 2030 en la serie. En otros temas, Honda celebra que ha alcanzado la producción de 15 millones de unidades en su planta de Marysville, la primera planta de la marca norteamericana. También, dimos información sobre el nuevo modelo Renault Captur 2024, recordemos es un modelo que se fabrica en la planta de la firma francesa de Valladolid. Nuestra querida Katy de León, nos platica de la mayor subasta benéfica que organizo eBay de los recuerdos de Ken Block, el legendario piloto y acróbata de autos, fallecido en un accidente mientras esquiaba. En la recta final, hablamos de la compañía de furgonetas eléctricas “Flexis” que lanzarán Renault y Volvo. Aún se desconoce el diseño y capacidades que tendrá el primer modelo. Autos y más ahora está en todos lados, en la radio, en MVS Televisión a las 10:30 pm, en el podcast y en todas las redes sociales. No dejes de escuchar la transmisión en vivo porque tendremos muchos regalos, recuerda sintonizar de lunes a viernes de 8 a 9 pm y sábados de 10 am a 12 pm por tu estación favorita MVS Noticias en el 102.5 de tu FM.     See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Top 5 Most Read RNS's on Vox Markets for Friday 9th December 2022 5. Zephyr Energy #ZPHR - Award of Grant Funding Zephyr Energy announce the signing of an amended cooperation agreement detailing an additional US$1.0 million in non-dilutive research grant funding for the Company. These funds will be utilised for data gathering purposes during the ongoing drilling of Zephyr's well in the Paradox Basin, Utah. 4. Oriole Resources #ORR - Update on Thani Stratex Resources Thani Stratex Resources Limited has advised the Company that it has now formally relinquished the Hodine licence in Egypt. Accordingly, an amount of £1.45 million, relating to the carrying value of TSR, will be written down in the Company's accounts at year end. 3. Aggreko Limited - Recommended Cash Offer for Crestchic plc The boards of Aggreko and Crestchic are pleased to announce that they have reached agreement on the terms and conditions of a recommended cash offer to be made by Aggreko for Crestchic at 401p per share. 2. EQTEC #EQT - Agreement of loan facility with Altair Group The Facility will provide the Company with an up to £2.0 million unsecured loan with a term of 24 months from the date of execution with an annual interest rate of 8.0% on funds drawn and outstanding, with interest payable quarterly in advance. Additionally, the Company will pay a 2.5% fee for arrangement of the Facility. 1. Argo Blockchain #ARB - November Operational Update During the month of November, Argo mined 198 Bitcoin or Bitcoin Equivalents (together, BTC) compared to 204 BTC in October 2022. The decrease in BTC mined was primarily due to an increase in the Bitcoin network difficulty in November compared to October. The Company's total hashrate capacity continues to be 2.5 EH/s.

Yes, that is how Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon describes himself. Skip has served as an internal Medicine physician in the Army rising to the rank of colonel.   Throughout much of his life, Skip has also been a wrestler competitor, and he has been good at the sport.   In 2014 Skip discovered that he was suffering from a deep depression. As he worked through his condition and emerged from it he also wrote his Amazon Bestselling book entitled Wrestling Depression Is Not For Wimps.   I very much enjoyed my interview with Skip Mondragon and I sincerely hope that you will as well and that Skip's conversation and stories will inspire you.   About the Guest: Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon, MD is a transformed tough guy. Since recovering from depression in 2014, he's been on a quest to help ten million men struggling with depression, one man at a time. He's practiced Internal Medicine for over thirty years. Colonel Mondragon is a twenty-six-year Army veteran, spent eighteen months in combat zones, and is a national wrestling champion. Skip's book Wrestling Depression Is Not for Wimps! was published in February 2020 and is the author of Inspired Talks Volume 3, an Amazon International Bestseller. He's spoken on different stages, including at TEDXGrandviewHeights in December 2021. Skip's true claim to fame is his five independent and gainfully employed children, his four amazing grandchildren, and especially his wife Sherry. She's a fellow author and a tough Army wife. Sherry has endured raising teenagers on her own, a variety of moves to new duty stations, and far too many of Skip's idiosyncrasies for forty-one years of marriage.   Skip can be reached at: Email: skipmondragon@transformedtoughguys.com Website: www.transformedtoughguys.com Book: www.amazon.com/author/skipmondragon LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/skip-mondragon-66a-2b436 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SkipWNW/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/SkipWnw   About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is an Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes* Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson  01:21 Good morning or afternoon wherever you happen to be and welcome to unstoppable mindset. Today, our guest is Donald  “Skip” Mondragon. I met Donald not too long ago, actually at podapolooza. And we've talked about that before. It's an event where podcasters would be podcasters. And people who want to be interviewed by podcasters all get together. Sometimes one person has all three at once. But I met Skip. And we talked a little bit and I said would you be interested and willing to come on the podcast? And he said yes. So now he's stuck with us? Because here we are. Skip. How are you?   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  01:58 I am doing great. Michael, delighted to be here.   Michael Hingson  02:02 Now where are you located?   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  02:04 I am in the Dallas Fort Worth area.   Michael Hingson  02:06 So there you go two hours ahead of where we are and any fires nearby? Hopefully not. No, sir.   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  02:14 Thank you, Lord,   Michael Hingson  02:15 right now us the same way. And we're, we're blessed by that. But it is getting hot in both places, isn't   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  02:22 it? Oh, yes, indeed.   Michael Hingson  02:25 Well, tell me a little bit about you, maybe your early life and so on. And you know, we'll kind of go from there.   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  02:31 Yes, sir. And the third of eight children born of Hispanic parents, but meager means but born in Denver, Colorado. My father went to the Korean War, and came back a broken man. The man that went to war was not the man that came home. He suffered, I'm convinced with bipolar disorder, PTSD, and he was an alcoholic. And when my dad drank, he was violent. My sister, my eldest sister, Roma tells us that when my dad would come home, we would run and hide, because we didn't know which dad was coming home. The kind, gentle, fun loving dad for the angry mean, violent dad. So this was my early childhood. I actually don't have memories before the age of seven, other than a couple little fleeting memories. So I don't remember a lot of that I get history really from my sister, my older sister,   Michael Hingson  03:33 I help that because he's just blocked it out or something worse.   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  03:37 Yes. It's it's gone. Those I just don't have those memories are not accessible. But that was my early childhood. It was chaotic. It was. It was chaotic. It was traumatic. But I came from very loving family. Eight, you know, seven siblings were all close in age. 10 years separate us. We're still close to this day enjoy being together with one another loud, boisterous. Or they're very affectionate. No. My siblings are in Texas. I have a brother in the Baltimore area, Maryland, one in Raleigh, North Carolina. I'm here in Texas. The others are all in Colorado.   Michael Hingson  04:20 So I guess with a number in Colorado, that's the meeting place.   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  04:25 Yes, sir. Between my wife and I, my mother is the only living parent. And so we go back home as we call it to his in Colorado. Yes.   Michael Hingson  04:36 Well, there's nothing wrong with that. Indeed. So you grew up? Did you go to college?   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  04:45 Yes, sir. tended start my college career at the University of Notre Dame ROTC scholarship, left there, in my fifth semester confused, not quite sure what I was going to do. There's this tug, am I going to go into ministry or says medicine I was pre med at the time I left school I was out of school for three plus three and a half years trying to decide what I was going to do. And then I transferred into all Roberts University where I finished my undergraduate work for Roshan first in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And their I went to medical school and it's there for you that I met my sweetheart sherry. And this year we celebrated our 41st wedding anniversary,   Michael Hingson  05:30 Pierre just ahead of us by a year and a half, I guess because we will, our 40s will be in November. No congratulation, which is great. Now, we knew the marriage was gonna last I'm, I'm gonna get shot for this, I'm sure but we knew our marriage was gonna last because the wedding was supposed to start at four in the afternoon on Saturday, the 27th of November of 90. Yes, and the church was not filled up like it was supposed to be at four o'clock. And it got to be an I remember it well for 12 Suddenly, the doors opened and this whole crowd of people came in. And so we started although it was 14 or 12 minutes late, or 15 by the time they got in chair. And it wasn't until later that we learned that everyone was out in their cars until the end of the USC Notre Dame game. Being here in California, my wife getting her master's from USC, oh my gosh, we knew the marriage was gonna last when we learned that not what USC want the snot out of Notre Dame that   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  06:45 we took some weapons from USC, I'll be it you back. I was at Notre Dame that year that we we beat them and went on to win the national championship and 73. So that that was a turn of events, if you will, after taking some real whippings the years preceding that from USC.   Michael Hingson  07:07 I you know, I gain an appreciation for football and all seriousness. When it was a couple of years later, I was in Los Angeles and I had a meeting. And somebody was listening on the radio and keeping us apprised the fact that at the end of the first half Notre Dame was leading USC 24 to nothing. And then I got in the car and we started going home. And USC started scoring and scoring. It was with Anthony Davis and man who know about that game, and by the time it was over was 55 Switch 24 USC. But it's a great rivalry. And I'm glad it exists.   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  07:50 Right. I think the next year is when they came to South Bend. And they hug hug him in effigy. So I remember they had this thing there. And it's   Michael Hingson  08:00 like the USC, USC, don't let him run against us like that again.   Michael Hingson  08:09 What makes it fun? And as long as it's a game like that, and people view it that way. It's great.   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  08:16 There you go. It's a game. That's all it needs to be. Don't   Michael Hingson  08:19 take it too seriously by any means. No, sir. But it's a lot of fun. So, after Oral Roberts and so on you you went off and had some adventures?   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  08:32 Yes, sir. What kind of happen next? Well, I went to do further training, internship and residency and Canton, Ohio. And there was a turn of events I had expected I was going to do a military internship and go on and complete my residency with the military. But I received this Dear John letter, approximately six weeks before the interview season was going to close the army telling me I did not receive an army internship and I had to pursue a civilian internship, I think and are you kidding me? I was supposed to be in the Army next year, I hadn't even looked at civilian internships. And so I was scrambling. This was a day maybe days before the internet. You had to go to the library, look up programs, phone numbers, call them find out what they needed. So you could apply to that program what documents they needed send to each program individually, the documents the letters, arrange a flight. Now they have a centralized application system. So you complete one application, your letters of reference are all uploaded there. Then you decide which programs you want the sent to wait. So I'm doing this video post taste. Making this application season is ending Christmas is going to be approaching and then there's nothing going to get done. So I gotta get this done. And it was it was hectic ended up in Canton, Ohio. And it was fabulous. I had the best of both worlds great academics, fabulous clinical teaching. And it just so happened. The new program director was retired brigadier general Andre J. Augmentee. And he scared the snot out of us.   Michael Hingson  10:22 What year was this? What year did this take place?   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  10:26 I arrived there in 1985. Got it.   Michael Hingson  10:29 So he scared the snot out of you. Oh   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  10:31 my gosh, we call them Dr. Rowe, the big O or the Oh. And when he was when he was coming, we were like, Oh, no deals coming Fall, we'd be at Morning Report, we'd be talking about new cases that were admitted the night before. And he'd asked me to present the case or ask questions. And I would feel like I I felt like the voices on Charlie Brown. Go home and I tell my wife, oh, I can't seem to answer one interview. Question intelligently. When he is around, he must think I'm the stupidest intern he has ever seen. I I just get so flustered when he was around. I went down in a few months them because I was planning on doing physical medicine rehabilitation. But I had really fallen in love with internal medicine. Because my first few months were on the general internal medicine wards, and then a month in the internal or the intensive care unit. And I really fell in love with internal medicine, went to them and talk and said Dr. Rowe, I I'd like to talk to you. I am interested in drone medicine. But I don't know that I could be a good internist, I remember him looking at me and say, Skip, you could be a good interest. In fact, you could be a very good internist. And we'd love to keep you in the program. I could write letters that are permanent, so you can stay on the program and train here. That was a turning point for me. You away. He actually became very good friends. My last year, he actually asked me to be the chief president. I didn't accept because we were expecting our third child at that time preparing to move to join the army and I just couldn't put that pressure on my wife at that time. But we're still good friends to this day. Yes, wife. So it went from being that Bumbly Ugg boots, intern to a competent senior resident to friendship as the years went on.   Michael Hingson  12:49 So he figured you out and obviously saw something you and you kind of figured him out a little bit it sounds like oh, yes,   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  12:57 sir. Yes, sir.   Michael Hingson  12:59 Where is he today?   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  13:01 He is here in Texas. He is outside of San Antonio. He and his wife Margaret. A little   Michael Hingson  13:06 bit closer than Canton, Ohio.   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  13:09 Oh yes sir.   Michael Hingson  13:11 Well, that's great that you guys are still friends and you can see each other that is that is the way it ought to be. In the end, it's it's always great when you can establish a relationship with the teacher. You know, I wrote thunder dog the story of a blind man his guide dog in the triumph of trust at ground zero when I talked in there about Dick herbal Shimer, my geometry teacher. And to this day, we are still friends and chat on the phone on a regular basis.   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  13:41 That reminds me of my junior high wrestling coach John Gregerson. We were great friends to this day. And we hadn't seen one another for almost 1015 plus years. I'd seen him at the I think it was the 1992 1994 NCAA Wrestling Championships division one in North Carolina, and hadn't seen him to till 2000. Approximately 2015, something like that, when seen one another, but got in touch with him because he had moved back when he retired from teaching there in Colorado. He moved to Wyoming, then moved back to Colorado, gotten in touch with him said to get in touch with you, John, we met when another talks just just like we hadn't been apart. And I remember upon leaving, talking Adam say, John, I love you. And he looked at me and says, I love you too. And a great man, great relationship. And there's so much affection in my heart and appreciation for that man. The things he taught me.   Michael Hingson  14:56 So wrestling is a part of your life, I   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  14:58 guess. Oh my goodness. It's in my blood.   Michael Hingson  15:03 Well tell me about that a little bit.   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  15:05 Please. Oh, yes, I, I was miserable at sports any sport. Growing up, I didn't know how to throw I didn't know how to catch. I don't know how to kick. I didn't know how to run. I failed that tetherball. Okay. So I didn't know the skills, I wasn't taught the skills. So wrestling was the first sport that went out for an eighth grade that I thought after if you practice, I think I can be good at this. And IBM think i think i could be really good at this. That was the first time that I wasn't having to compete against boys that were a lot bigger than I was. Because I was typically the smallest kid in my class. And so I was wrestling in the 85 pound weight class in eighth grade, good lowest weight class. I was having good success. Only eighth grader on the varsity team. I didn't win a match that year. But I learned lots I gained a lot of confidence. The next year come in and the rest of the room. I'm the best wrestler in that wrestling. But I get so worked up before a match. I couldn't sleep a wink all night long. So I'd go into that match utterly exhausted mentally and physically. underperform. However, the summer afterwards, I won my first tournament I entered was a state freestyle wrestling tournament, one of the Olympic styles. When my first match, my second, my third match, win my fourth match. Now I'm wrestling for the championship. And I went after that my coach asked me, you know who this guy was you're wrestling have no idea coach. And he said that guy won this tournament last year. And that further cemented my love for this sport went on. He was a two time district champion in high schools, state runner up and honorable mention All American. So I had a lot of success. Moreso in freestyle wrestling a lot of state tournaments I won many state tournaments placed into Nash national wrestling tournaments as a high schooler and then after. After that, I've wrestled some in college and some in freestyle also. But last time it competed was in 2012 and 2013. In the veterans nationals.   Michael Hingson  17:33 How did that go?   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  17:35 Oh, how did that go? It went great. I had been wanting to compete again. At ba I still had that bug. Oh, I'd like to do this. The dates the training. I couldn't work that in. But I'm sitting up in the stands watching the state finals of the of the Georgia state finals with my youngest son Joey, he had completed his wrestling career had he not been ill and injured. He would have been wrestling on that stage that night. He was one of the best hunter and 12 pounders in the state of Georgia, but being ill and injured, he wasn't there wrestling that night. So we're watching this I had this wrestling magazine. I think it was USA Wrestling and I'm looking at these dates. Veterans national so it's gonna be held in conjunction with the senior nationals and I'm looking at this. Tucson, Arizona, May 5, and sixth I say Joey, she'll train with me. I'd like to compete. Well, my 18 year old son looks and he goes, Okay, Dad, you're gonna have to do everything I tell you. So Joey became my training partner, my trainer and my manager retrained hard, very hard. So this was mid February. And at first week in May, we're going out to Tucson. Those first six weeks and I was in great shape. I mean, I trained worked out like a fanatic, but those first few weeks, you know, oh my gosh, you know, I'd come home from practice. Oh, my wife and go Have you had enough old man. I think I'm gonna go soak in the tub, honey. I'd sit on the couch with ice on a shoulder or knee or elbow or sometimes all of those week. By week, my body toughen and there was the day I got up. Because I added an early morning workout in addition to my afternoon workouts, bring my weight down help a little bit with the conditioning. And my feet hit the floor. I got out to do my workout. I thought Oh, am I feeling good? I thought Joey, you better bring your A game today because your man is feeling good. So we went out to Tucson won a national championship. And we're sitting there taking this picture with the stop sign of a trophy. Now that I got here, it's big that Joey asked me Dad, was it worth it? All those hot baths, all those ice packs? And I look at him and grin. I say, Yes, it was worth. I had a blast. The next year was a national runner up. So those were the last times I competed, but I've coached I've been around the sport. My sons all wrestled my four sons, my brothers. For my four brothers. They're all younger. They all wrestled my brother in law wrestled my father in law was a college wrestler. Wrestling is in my blood. In fact, my kids call me a wrestling groupie. Because I collect wrestling cards. I get wrestling card sign, I get poster side I mug with all these wrestling greats have friends with World Champions and Olympic champions. That's my blood.   Michael Hingson  20:56 What's the difference between the Olympic style wrestling and I guess other forms like freestyle wrestling, and so on?   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  21:02 Okay, so freestyle and Greco Roman are the two Olympic styles. primary difference in those two styles is in Greco Roman, you can't attack the legs. That's the difference in those two. Now, the difference in our style, whether we call school boy or sometimes it's called catches catch can is you also have what we call a a Down and up position that are done differently the way that is in the scoring. To score for instance, a takedown when you take them to the mat, you have to have more control in freestyle is much faster or in in Greco you don't have to show the control, you just have to show the exposure of the back. Plus, you can get a five point move with a high flying exposure, the back or if you take a patient or a an opponent from feet to back in freestyle Aggreko, you can get four points for I said, if it's high flying five points, potentially. Whereas in freestyle, our in our style Americans out, it's two points for a takedown doesn't matter. Take them straight to the back, you could get additional points by exposing the back, if you help hold them there long enough, we'll call a nearfall. And then there's writing time. So if you're on the top position, and you control that man for a minute or longer, you're getting writing time. So there's those factors that that you have. So it's it's and the rules are, are somewhat different. So those are the basic differences in our style and the freedom and the Olympic styles.   Michael Hingson  22:41 But wrestling scoring is pretty much then absolutely objective. It's not subjective. It's not an opinion sort of thing. There are specifics,   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  22:51 there are specifics, but then you get into those subjective things. Yeah, it's a caution. It's a stall. It's it's this and you're saying, Are you kidding me? Or they say that's not a takedown you're going What? What do you mean, that's not a takedown? You gotta be blind not to call that thing. So there's still some subjectivity to it. Sure. There is, you know, are they miss? They miss something, the ref misses something in your thing. And you got to be blind dude, you know, that was   Michael Hingson  23:17 a tape. That's an answer. No, no, no. No, here's, here's my question. Is there ever been a time that both wrestlers go after the riff? You know, just check in?   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  23:29 I have never seen I have seen some, some, some come off there and give up. You know, escaping something. Yeah, you do to me, your GP and we have to say though, never leave it in the hands of the ref. Never leave it in the hands of the ref. And you you don't want to leave a match in the hands of the ref that don't let it come down to that. Wrestle your match. So there's no question.   Michael Hingson  23:55 Well, so you have wrestled a lot. You went from Canton then I guess you joined the army.   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  24:02 Correct? joined the army. Uh huh.   Michael Hingson  24:05 Well, if you would tell me a little bit about about that and what you did and so on.   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  24:10 1989 Our first duty station, Lawton, Oklahoma Fort Sill out there on this dreary day, January 3, I believe is gray, dark, you know, overcast, cold, only new to people. My sponsor and his wife. They were the only people we knew when we arrived. I had gone earlier to rent a home for us. And then we were waiting. We our household goods were arriving. Got there. We had three young children. Adam was for Christmas too. And Anjali was four months old. We get there we're moving in. getting settled. I'm in processing to the arm mean, everything's new to us. And then I start practicing as a doctor had two colleagues and internal medicine, within six months of me joining the army or if you will come in on active duty, I shouldn't say joining I had already been on inactive status in the army, going through school and training, but getting their report sale, they turn around and say, well, you're one colleague, like Keith conkel, was named. He's going to do a fellowship, infectious disease. And then my other colleague, Lee selfmade, or senior colleague in internal medicine was chief of the clinic chief of the ICU, he decided very abruptly to get out and do a nephrology fellowship, civilian fellowship, so he was getting out of the army. Now they say, well, you're now the chief of the internal medicine clinic, you're the medical officer, the chief of the intensive care unit. And guess what? You're the only internal medicine physician we're going to have for the summer. Have a good summer. Well, it was worse summer I've ever had in my life. Miserable Oh, it was horrible.   Michael Hingson  26:20 So I was so   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  26:21 busy there with with patients and care and responsibilities there and having to tell some patients I'm sorry, we don't have capacity for you're going to have to be seen in the civilian sector. Now, mind you, when my two new colleagues came, we had all these patients screaming back saying please, please, please, may I come back, because they knew the care we rendered was superior to what they were getting the care they were receiving in the civilian sector. But it was it was such a demanding physically and emotionally and timewise. spending enormous amounts of time at the clinic and hospital.   Michael Hingson  27:06 So what does Internal Medicine take in   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  27:09 internal medicine, we are specialists for adults, you think of the gamut of non surgical diseases. We take care of adults 18 to end of life. And so our training entails taking care of the common cold, a community acquired pneumonia, that you can treat as an outpatient, to taking care of a patient that's in the ICU, hooked up to life support. That's the scope of what we're trained in. So if you think of the common diseases of adults, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, arthritis, gastrointestinal problems, this is the Bailiwick of an internal medicine physician.   Michael Hingson  27:59 Our biggest exposure to that for Well, first of all, my sister in law was a critical care unit and ICU nurse for a lot of her life. And, and then retired. But anyway, in 2014, my wife contracted double pneumonia, and ARDS, ARDS, oh my gosh. And she ended up in the hospital on a ventilator. And what they were trying to constantly do is to force air into her lungs to try to push out some of the pneumonia. They actually had to use and you'll appreciate this, a peeps level of 39 just to get air into her lungs. They were so stiff. Yeah, they were so stiff. And no one at the hospital had ever seen any situation where they had to use so much air pressure to get air into her lungs to start to move things around and get rid of the pneumonia. Everyone came from around the hospital just to see the gauges.   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  29:02 And your they probably told you this risks injuring her lungs because the pressures are so high. But without the weather, we're not going to be able to oxygenate her.   Michael Hingson  29:15 Right. And what they said basically was that if she didn't have pneumonia, her lungs would have exploded with that kind of pressure. Exactly. Because what the average individual when you're inhaling is a peeps level of like between two and five. So 39 was incredibly high.   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  29:33 Oh, yes, absolutely. But she's glad she recovered.   Michael Hingson  29:37 She did. We're we're glad about that. She was in the hospital for a month and and she was in an induced coma using propofol and when my gosh when she came out of all that I asked her she dreamed about seeing thriller and bad and all that. I was mean. But but no she ordeal, wow. Well, and that's what eventually caused us to move down here to Southern California to be closer to relatives. But I really appreciated what the doctors did for her. And we're, we're very grateful and fully understand a lot of what goes on with internal medicine and she has a good doctor now that we work with, well, who I both work with, and so on. You're very pleased with that. But you say you're in charge of Internal Medicine. And how long did that last at your first station,   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  30:39 first duty station, we arrived in 89. We were there till 92 till summer of 92. So arrived in January 89. I graduated off cycle. And Canton, arrived in, left in summer of 92 went to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. But while I was at Fort Sill was first time I deployed to Operation Desert Shield Desert Storm, my first deployment and it was found out just days, like the week before, that my wife was expecting our fourth child or son Jonathan got home in time, for 11 days before his birth. Thank you, Lord. But that was my first deployment. And that was harrowing in that we were the first major medical group in theater, 47 filled hospital. And we knew that Saddam had chemical weapons, and that is Scud missiles could reach where we were at in Bahrain. So it was it was some harrowing times with that, getting our hospital set up. And knowing that we were well within range of Scud missiles, the alarms that go off and we'd be throwing on our protective gear we call our MOPP gear, our masks and our other other protective gear and these outrageous high temperatures. You know, within a couple of minutes, you were just drenched with sweat pouring off of you. In those those heat in that heat until you'd hear their alarms go off again and all clear. Thankfully, we never were bombed with the Scud. But we were well within the range. And we knew we had used chemical weapons, and we knew they certainly were in this arsenal. So we that was my first deployment. And then Walter Reed where I did a fellowship two years there in Washington, DC, and then we are off to Brooke Army Medical Center. And that was San Antonio, one of my favorite cities, that Fort Sam Houston. And we we were there for four years. And on the heels of that, I was deployed to Haiti for seven months, the last months that we live there, so I've gone I'm just redeploying returning home. And we're in the process of moving. Now we're moving to Fort Hood, Texas. There we spent, actually eight years at Fort Bragg. And there I was, again, chief of the Department of Medicine at Fort Hood, had amazing staff, great people that I worked with wonderful patients everywhere I went this wonderful patients to take care of. And then I was deployed during that time to Operation Iraqi Freedom was, Oh, if one Operation Iraqi Freedom one 2003 2004, stationed up in Missoula, treating caring primarily for the 100 and first Airborne Division aerosols. Major General David Petraeus was a division commander at that time, I got to work closely. My last few months, I was the officer in charge of the hospital, 21st combat support hospital and got to work closely interact with John Petraeus and his staff. Amazing man, amazing staff. incredible experience. Then from there after fort Fort Hood, we went back to Fort Sill, which was an interesting experience because then I was the deputy commander of Clinical Services, the Chief Medical Officer of the hospital. So first time I was there, I was a newly minted captain, new to the army, you know, expect you to know much about the army. Now I go to back to Fort Sill, I'm in the command suite on the Chief Medical Officer of the hospital now as a colonel, they expect you to know air everything. So it was it was interesting. Now, one of the first few days I was there, they give me a tour around to various places and the record group and we're talking and the the records lady, one of the ladies talking to us, telling us about different things and that she She says, You remind me of you remind me of Dr. Longer God, Dr. Monder. God, she had been there the first time I had been there, because we'd have to go down and review our charts and sign our charts on a regular basis. It was, it was amazing. But just some great people that I got to work with over the years, and that our last duty station was in Augusta, Georgia, at the Eisenhower Army Medical Center, where I was again, Chief of Department of Medicine, worked with great people helped train some amazing residents and medical students, PA students.   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  35:39 Just some great experiences. And while I was at Eisenhower Army Medical Center, I deployed for the last time to Iraq for another year 2010 to 2011.   Michael Hingson  35:50 How did all of the deployments and I guess you're 26 years in the military in general, but especially your deployments? How did all of that affect you in your life in your family,   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  36:02 it gives you a much greater appreciation. Well, a few ways. Certainly a much bigger appreciation for your your family and your time with your family, I lost over three and a half years, 37 months out of the life of my family. And you don't get that time back. No, you don't get that back. So all major these major events that go on your life, seeing things with your children happening. There are no do overs with that that's time last. So you get a better appreciation for that, you also get a better appreciation for the freedoms, the opportunities we have in this nation, when you go to some of those countries realize, you see what poverty can be like, you see how certain citizens are treated, you see women who are treated like cattle, in some cases like property, that the lack of rights, you see these people who want to be able to vote, that it's not just a rigged election, but they actually have a say, in their country's democratic process. The appreciation, and one of the things that was so poignant to Michael was the fact that these so many people, every place I've been whether that's on a mission trip to Guatemala, whether that's in Iraq, whether that was in Bahrain and other places that have been there, how many people would come and say My dream is to go to the US and become a US citizen, I heard that over and over and over again. And when I would get back home, I would feel like kissing the ground. Because I realized, by virtue of being born American, the privileges, the opportunities that I have, are so different than so many people around the world. So gave me appreciation for that. But being deployed, you get to see Army Medicine, practiced in the in the field, because Army Medicine is world class medicine, but you get to see it in the field practice again, in a world class way. It's, it's really mind boggling. Some of the things that we do in a field setting in a combat zone, taking care of soldiers, taking care of other service members, the things that we do, literally world class, not just back in brick and mortar facilities. But they're in the field. Unbelievable. And again, working with great colleagues, amazing staff that I had there, the 21st cache and other places that I've worked. So that appreciation and that idea that you're working for a cause so much greater than yourself, that brotherhood that you have. Now, when you've deployed with people and you've been in combat zone with people, let me tell you, you build some strong bonds.   Michael Hingson  39:15 And it's all about really putting into practice what most of us really can only think about is theory because unless we've been subjected to it and need medical help, or have been involved in the situations like you, it's it's not the same. We're not connected to it. And it's so important, it seems to me to help people understand that connection and the values that you're exactly what you're talking about.   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  39:46 Yes, yes. You were asking about the impact on my family. Well think about that. My first time employee My wife has three young children. Adam was six Chris was four. Anjali It was too, and she's expecting our fourth. We're deploying to this war zone that's very uncertain knowing he's got Scud missiles, he's got chemical weapon arsenal, that he's used this. And you're going into this very uncertain war zone. Not knowing when you're coming back home, or even if you're coming back home, all of this uncertainty. The night they announced that, okay, the war had started, that that officially had kicked, kicked off there, that hostilities it started, it was announced on TV. And the kids were at a swimming lesson at the pool, I believe. And somebody came running through some young soldier or something,   Michael Hingson  40:59 the war started, the   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  41:00 war has started. And the children all started bawling. And so Sherry's trying to gather them up and she's thinking, What are you doing, you know, trying to gather up the the kids and get them home. But she didn't allow them to listen to any reports do anything. Thankfully, we didn't have a TV at that time by choice. We didn't have a TV for many years. But she didn't allow him to listen to any reports, because she didn't want them to hear these things. But you can think about the uncertainty, you think about missing the events, you think about a spouse having to manage everything at home, taking care of the family, taking care of all the other things there that are involved in managing a household. That's what's left with that, that spouse and then them carrying on without you. So adjusting without you. And then as those children are a different ages, again, all of that, your spouse taking care of that. And your family, adjusting without you. Now if people don't realize they see these idyllic, idyllic reunions, oh, it's great look at they're coming home, and they're hugging and kissing and crying and looking at how wonderful that is. Well, yes, it is wonderful. It's magnificent. You can't believe the elation and the relief. But there's a short little honeymoon phase, if you will. But then the real work begins reintegrating into your family, finding that new normal, how do I fit back into this, they've done with it. They've been without me for several months, or even up to a year. My kids have changed. I've changed Sherry's changed, our family has changed. So how now do we find that normal? And I think that's what a lot of people don't understand that there is that work that needs to be done. And there's a lot of work that needs to be done after it. service members returned home from a deployment, that it's not easy. And it takes its toll. And I don't think that people realize the sacrifice when service members been gone. for months and months at a time years at a time, the sacrifice of that service member the sacrifice of their fam, with every promotion, every award that I received, I used to tell people, my wife, and my kids deserve this a lot more than I do.   Michael Hingson  43:50 And another thing that comes to mind in thinking about this back in the time of Desert Storm, and so on and maybe up into Iraqi Freedom, I would think actually is how were you able to communicate with home.   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  44:07 Oh, with your family. And in Desert Storm is primarily snail mail. We did have the occasional call that we can make. Now, as the theater matured and they moved us out of living in tents. We got to move into hardened structure in there. I could make a regular phone call when we got to if there we could, I could send e mail and that became snail mail. And e mail were the primary ways that we connected. The last time I was in Iraq 2010 and 2011. Again, it was email but I could also I had a car that I could charge minutes to that I can Make through an international calling system that I can also place telephone calls. But the primary way became again, snail mail and email to communicate with my family. Today, is   Michael Hingson  45:13 there additional kinds of ways of communicating like zoom or Skype? Yeah.   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  45:18 Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Now you're right. They can do face to face zoom. FaceTime there they have, they have their cell phone. So if they're not restricted from using their cell phones, and can even get the international plan and call, we weren't able to do those kinds of things. Yeah. There. Now we did have one thing when I was in Haiti, where it could go into a room. And you could do a as via satellite, it was on a monitor that I could speak to, and they were in this special room there that it was big monitor. But it was a very limited time. And that when that time ended, boom, the screen would just freeze. And the first time it ended like that the kids action starts, started crying because I'm in mid sentence saying something, and I freeze on the screen. And the kids didn't understand what was going on. Yeah. And they was so abrupt that Sherry told me later, can start crying when that happened,   Michael Hingson  46:25 cuz they didn't know they didn't know whether suddenly a bomb dropped or what?   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  46:29 Right, right. Yes. It's shocking to them.   Michael Hingson  46:33 Well, all of this obviously takes a toll on anyone who's subjected to it or who gets to do it. And I guess the other side of it is it's an honorable and a wonderful thing to be able to go off and serve people and, and help make the world a better place. But it eventually led to a depression for you, right?   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  46:55 Yes, yes. I ended up with major depression. And it culminated on April 17 2014, where I was curled up in a fetal position under the desk in my office. They're laying on that musty carpet. I had gone to work as I normally did, like, get to my office that day early, as was my custom. Nobody else on the whole floor. I locked my office turned on the lights, step inside. And everything just came crashing down on me. I was beat up, beaten down and broken. Should behind me lock the door, turned off the lights, close the blinds. And I crawled under that desk. And then for four hours. I'm asking myself skip, what are you doing? Skip? Why are you here? What happened? You're a tough guy. You're a colonel. You've been in combat zones for over 18 months. Your National Wrestling Champion, you're a tough guy. What happened? Then very slowly, looking at that, and scenes and memories colliding, looking at things, promise, difficulties, and I began to put the pieces together. And finally began to understand the symptoms I was having the past nine months, insomnia, impaired cognition is progressively moving these negative thoughts it just pounded the day and night. You're a fake. You don't deserve to be a colonel, you let your family down. You left the army down, who's gonna want a higher loss of confidence in decision, loss of passion and things that I normally have no interest in resting. Joy, no joy in my life. It's like walking through life in black and white. My body old injuries. Overuse injuries, the osteoarthritis body just a make it even worse. My libido my sex drive was in the toilet. Now you talk about kicking the guy when he's down. And I finally began was able to put those pieces together after four hours. Now I was finally able to understand, said scale. You're depressed? Go get help. And I crawled out from under that desk with a flicker of hope. And later that afternoon, I've seen a clinical psychologist to confirm the diagnosis of major depression.   Michael Hingson  49:25 How come it took so long for you to get to that point? Do you think   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  49:30 it was my tough guy mentality? This idea that you just keep pushing through that tough guy identity is like a double edged sword. That tough guys just keep pushing through. There was a lot of things colonel, combat that physician wrestler. So I took on this tough guy persona. And we even have a term for it in wrestling. We call it gutting it out. No matter how hard your lungs and what your lungs burn how much your muscles say, no matter how hard this is, you're just going to keep pushing and pushing. So that was my, that was my modus operandi. That's what I how I operated in my life. You just keep pushing hard and hard and pushing through these difficulties. With it, I couldn't see step back far enough to see what was going on. I knew it felt horrible. I couldn't sleep. I felt badly. I didn't want to be around people. I was withdrawn. But I couldn't step back even as a physician, and put these together to say, Oh, I'm depressed. It's just Oh, keep pushing. And the harder I push, the worse I got. So it was that blindness from that tough guy identity. That there probably some denial going on perhaps. But even as I look back retrospectively, that tough guy mentality just didn't help me. Allow me to see that until it got so crucial where I was just totally depleted. Ended up under that desk.   Michael Hingson  51:11 So how would you define being a tough guy today, as opposed to what you what you thought back then?   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  51:20 Yes, yes. Well, there are two sides to a tough guy, Michael, I see a tough guy. Certainly one aspect of the tough guy as that provider protector, that decisive individual, that decisive man that can do things that need to be done now, and can make those tough decisions, no matter what. That's one aspect of so yeah, but that other aspect to hit balances is. So we think of that one tough guy, you might say that's your impart your rugged, individualistic guy that you see that module, tough guy, that the screen portrays at least aspects of that. But then you see this other aspect of that tough guy, this is the individual that has, can be in touch with his emotions, can understand and able to dig there into that and say, Oh, I'm feeling sad. You know, what, somebody what you just said, really hurt. That's, I'm disappointed with that. I'm able to shed tears open, I'm able to show that tenderness that love very openly, but to balance it between the two sides appropriately. That's what I see as a true tough guy. It's not just the one or the other. It's that blend of both that we need in our lives to make us a tough guy. And if you have only one or the other, you're you're not a tough guy. You only have the tenderness and the warmth, and the gentleness and the ability to share your emotions. Well guess what? You're going to be a tough time you're going to run over people can take advantage of they're not going to be much of a protector for those you need to protect. But if you only have that other side of you. You're very limited. You're not going to be able to function in the full array of what we're meant to function in as men or women. Nor women. Absolutely. It's not just restricted to one sex. Absolutely. You're right, Michael.   Michael Hingson  53:51 So you wrote a book wrestling? Depression is not for tough guys. Right? Not for wimps. Yeah, not for wimps. I'm sorry. Wrestling. Depression is pretty tough guys. Wrestling depression is not for wimps. Tell us about that and how it affected you and your family writing that?   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  54:11 Well, that book, the genesis of that book came about about six weeks into my recovery, but still struggling. And throughout the time that I was sinking down deeper and deeper into the depression and the first several weeks in my recovery. My prayers had been lowered lower, please, please deliver me from this darkness. But six weeks into my recovery. My youngest brother Chris calls me he had been at a Bible study with Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham. In Franklin talked about the suffering of Christ. And the gist of what was if Christ suffered so brutally upon that cross why as Western Christians do we think we should be immune from suffering. And over the next two days, the birth that kept coming to my mind was from Philippians. To 13 Paul writes, oh, that I know him, and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings. I knew that verse I knew well, I'd prayed that verse hundreds of times in my walk with Christ, but in the midst of my suffering, I wanted deliverance. But over two days, my prayer shifted from Lord, please, please deliver me, the Lord. What would you have me learn? And how might I use it to serve others. And at that point, I knew I was going to have to share my story. I didn't know how, when but I knew I must share my story. So I began to note what lessons I had learned and what lessons I was learning with the intent of sharing those first time I got to do that was at a officer Professional Development Day, there at the hospital at Eisenhower Medical Center, our session, the morning, our session, the afternoon, and the hospital auditorium. And that became the genesis for my book, I want a writing contest in 2015, your have to retire from the army. And with that came a contract to have my book published. And then it was the process of going through the whole process of writing the book, editing the book, selecting the book, cover, all the things go into book, writing, that book was life transformed. It was transformational to me. And so I learned so many things about myself writing this book.   Michael Hingson  56:41 Did you have fun writing it,   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  56:43 I had fun at times. Other times, it was a grind, almost chickened out at the point where we had everything finished. It was ready to go to the publishers and I was I was I was on the cliffs, so to speak. i The book midwife as we called her, the lady is working with Carrie to read love the love with the lady with the company, their Confucian publishing is now called used to be transformational books. I called her and I said, Carrie, I don't know. I think I need to scrap this whole book. I think I need to start over. I can write a much better book. And she goes, No skip. This book is ready. We need to get it birth, we need to extend it to the publisher. And I'm thinking oh, no, no, no, I, I just can in Nice, I need to rewrite this whole thing. I can do a bunch better. This after working. You know, we've been working on this thing for two and a half years getting this thing ready. And I prayed about I'm talking about and then later I called her back in a day and a half and say, okay, Sherry talked me off the cliff. We're gonna send this book forward. But with that, learn things about yourself, going through that access some memories that I hadn't thought about, and some things, some promise that occurred that affected me in profound ways that I didn't realize how much of an impact that had on my life, and for how long that have an impact on my life. Case in point. I lost the state wrestling championship as a senior in high school by two seconds of writing time. Meaning my opponent, Matt Martinez, from greedy West High School knew Matt. There. He beat me by controlling me when he's on the top position for two seconds. He had two seconds more writing time controlling me on that map that I escaped from him three seconds earlier, you wouldn't have any writing time. And we had gotten into overtime. And I believe I would have beat Matt in overtime because nobody, nobody could match my conditioning. But it didn't get to them. So I really that that match. That was probably 10s of 1000s. But what it did is it it really devastated my confidence. And that carried on into my first couple years of college, the College wrestling. Just a lot of things about me. And what I didn't realize it took three and a half years. No, actually five, five years 73 It was 78 and spring of 78 when I was finally healing from that, regaining my mojo. And I didn't realize that until I was writing this book, that profound impact that loss had and the RIP holes, the effects that went on for those successive years there, the profundity of that. And there were other things that I came to light. So there'd be times I'd be laughing. There'd be times I'd be crying. There'd be times I'd be like, Whoa, wow. So it was an amazing experience.   Michael Hingson  1:00:23 So what are some tips that you would give to anyone dealing with depression today?   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  1:00:29 Yep. Thank you for asking that. Michael, first and foremost, men, or anybody if you're struggling, don't struggle. One more day in silence, please, please, please go get help to remember, you're never, never, never alone. Three, keep your head up. And wrestling, we talk about this, keep your head up, instill this in our young wrestlers. Why because if they're on their feet, and they drop their head, and get taken down to the mat, if they're down on the mat, the opponent's on top of them and drop their head, they can turn over and pin. But that's also figurative, and emotional, keep your head up. Keep your head up. And I needed people speaking into my life, like my wife, my family, my friends, my therapist, others speaking into my life, it's a skip, keep your head up. Psalm three, three says the Lord is our glory, and the lifter of our heads. So I tell people, you're never ever, ever alone. third, or fourth, I would say attend to the basics, sleep, healthy nutrition. And some regular activity. Those basics are the basics for good reason. And I call them the big three. And probably the most important of all of those, if you're having dysregulation of your sleep is get your sleep back under control. The last few that I'm sorry, go ahead. And then the last few that I would say is make sure you've got a battle buddy. Make sure you have somebody that you can turn to somebody that you can confide in somebody that, you know, would just listen and walk this journey with you and a prescription. And there's many other things that I talked about in my book, but a prescription that I have left with 1000s and 1000s of patients. I've written this on prescription pads. And I've shared this with patients and I say this medication has no bad side effects. This medication has no drug to drug interactions, and you cannot overdose on this medication. So I want you to take this medication liberally each and every day. Proverbs 1722 says A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine. broken spirit. Drive up the boats. When I was depressed, I had a broken spirit. So lack is good nets. So I say each and every day, laugh and laugh hard to find something that you can laugh about. It's goodness.   Michael Hingson  1:03:40 Oh, whenever I want to laugh, all I have to say is I wanted to be a doctor but I didn't have any patients. See?   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  1:03:55 Oh, that's great.   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  1:03:59 Well, I tell people, in retrospect, I say, gee, if I had only been my own doctor, I would have diagnosed myself sooner. See, well wait, I am a doctor.   Michael Hingson  1:04:15 Or you know what the doctor said Is he sewed himself up Suit yourself. Yeah. I got that from an old inner sanctum radio show. But anyway. Last thing, because we've been going a while and just to at least mention it. You have been a TD X speaker.   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  1:04:33 Yes, sir. I was a TEDx speaker. Indeed.   Michael Hingson  1:04:36 I got it that went well. Oh,   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  1:04:39 it was amazing. Was a TEDx speaker in Vancouver, in December of 2021. My talk is entitled tough guys are an endangered species. And standing up there on the TEDx phase and stage was a common addition of almost nine months of preparation, our mentor, Roger killin tremendous in helping prepare, myself and some colleagues for this, with the help of his sidekick, Dorthea Hendrik, just lovely, lovely people. But to stand on that stage, and deliver my talk, which is about 12 and a half minutes, started off in about six and a half 17 minutes, get cutting down, cutting it down, cutting it down, but stand there and deliver this message directed to tough guys talking about emotions, and the inability that men often have an accessing our emotions because of the way we've been conditioned, the way we've been raised the expectations placed on us. In fact, there's a medical term that was coined, that's masculine, Alexei timea, which means he leaves without words, and how that then sets men up, that I don't, I'm okay, I don't need help. I don't need to share my feelings and we lose contact with our feelings. Men don't seek medical care as often as women in general, much less when they're struggling with mental health issues, that denial, that tough guy, and now they seek it in maladaptive behaviors. I talked about that. But the ultimate behavior becoming suicide,   Michael Hingson  1:06:39 which is why you have given us a new and much better definition of tough guy. Yes, sir. In the end, it is very clear that wrestling depression is not for wimps. So I get it right that time. There you go. Well, I want to thank you for being here with us on unstoppable mindset. Clearly, you have an unstoppable mindset. And I hope people get inspired by it. And inspired by all the things you've had to say if they'd like to reach out to you. How might they do that?   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  1:07:14 The easiest way for them to reach out Michael is go to my website. w w w dot transform, tough guys.com W, W W dot transform Tough guys.com. And there, you could send me a message.   Michael Hingson  1:07:35 Send you a message looking at your book. Are you looking at writing any more books?   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  1:07:39 Yes, sir. I am looking to write another book. And still in the making. But I think the next book, maybe wrestling movies is not for wimps.   Michael Hingson  1:07:53 There you go. Well, we want to hear about that when it comes out. And so you have to come back and we can talk more about it.   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  1:07:59 Yes, sir. Well, thank   Michael Hingson  1:08:01 you again, skip for being with us on unstoppable mindset. I appreciate it. I appreciate you. And it's easy to say you inspire me and and all that. But I seriously mean it. I think you've offered a lot of good knowledge and good sound advice that people should listen to. And I hope that all of you out there, appreciate this as well. And that you will reach out to www dot transform, tough guys.com and reach out to skip. Also, of course, we'd love to hear from you feel free to email me at Michaelhi at accessibe.com or go to www dot Michaelhingson.com/podcast or wherever you're listening to us. Please give us a five star rating. We appreciate it. We want to hear what you think about the podcast. If you've got suggestions of people who should be on and skip Same to you if you know of anyone else that we ought to have on the podcast would appreciate your, your help in finding more people and more insights that we all can appreciate. So again, thank you for you for being on the podcast with us   Donald G. “Skip” Mondragon  1:09:08 there. My pleasure, Mike. Thank you.   Michael Hingson  1:09:10 Pleasure is mine.   Michael Hingson  1:09:16 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Aggreko, which set its own net-zero target, helps oil and gas operators achieve sustainability goals by providing power solutions and energy services aimed at improving the efficiency of the operations. Haugan, who serves as sector manager for Aggreko's North America oil and gas group based in Houston, recently sat down with Hart Energy's Emily Patsy to discuss what operators can do in the field to boost their ESG scorecard plus how Aggreko can help. During the interview, Haugan noted the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), which publishes specific accounting standards to help companies navigate ESG reporting goals. To align with the industry standards, he said producers could focus their sustainability efforts where they have the greatest impact on the SASB metrics including greenhouse-gas emissions, air quality, water management and biodiversity. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/hartenergy/support

George Whyte is the Aggreko Managing Director, Australia Pacific and Global Mining Sector Leader. Joining Aggreko 22 years ago, he has had roles such as Sales Manager, Temperature Control Manager, Sales & Marketing Director & Area General Manager. We learn about George's journey in the equipment rental industry, the history of Aggreko, the challenges of running a true global organization, some of Aggreko's initiatives such as their Net Zero Target & Reconciliation action plan and the process to Aggreko winning the 2021 HRIA Rental Company of the Year.This podcast episode was sponsored by Arrow. Tired of manual data entry into your CRM? Does your current CRM slow you down? It's time to build and close deals from anywhere. Remove the manual data entry, create and send quotes in 3 clicks with Arrow. Finally, a powerful way to close deals on your phone.Learn more about Arrow @ http://try.rentalarrow.com/Get in contact with The Rental Journal PodcastWebsite: https://www.therentaljournal.com/contact-usEmail: mark.simonsen@therentaljournal.com

Charlie Pidcock has over 30 years sales experience, and first got exposed to the equipment rental industry in the early 2000's with National Hire. Going onto work at companies such as Coates Hire & Aggreko, Charlie would later find his passion in training & coaching of sales teams. A number of equipment rental businesses now enlist their sales teams into Charlie Pidcock's B2B Selling Series course.Learn more about Charlie Pidcock & the B2B Selling Series: https://charliepidcock.com.au/b2b-selling-series/This podcast episode was sponsored by Arrow. Tired of manual data entry into your CRM? Does your current CRM slow you down? It's time to build and close deals from anywhere. Remove the manual data entry, create and send quotes in 3 clicks with Arrow. Finally, a powerful way to close deals on your phone.Learn more about Arrow @ http://try.rentalarrow.com/Get in contact with The Rental Journal PodcastWebsite: https://www.therentaljournal.com/contact-usEmail: mark.simonsen@therentaljournal.com

Anna Foli is a Senior Director in the Power & Renewable Energy practice at FTI Consulting, a $4.8 billion global management consulting firm, where she leads business transformation initiatives focused on performance improvement and Mergers & Acquisitions. Ms. Foli has held various senior strategic and operational roles in private equity-held and publicly traded international companies, where she's driven $40 million of revenue and profit growth through comprehensive business plans for countries, local markets, and global product lines. Ms. Foli has completed over $100 million of M&A ventures across all phases of a deal cycle and built enterprise M&A programs. Ms. Foli was recently the VP of M&A Integration at United Site Services, a $1 billion privately held US market leader in portable sanitation, as part of a private equity turnaround. Previously as VP of Customer Experience with the firm, Ms. Foli transformed the 250-employee customer service, inside sales, and order support teams through a full organizational redesign. Prior to United Site Services, Ms. Foli spent 8 years at Aggreko, a global £2.2 billion public organization in the temporary power generation and temperature control rental space. She served as a strategic advisor to multiple Managing Directors for large business units and global product lines. Ms. Foli began her career as a Continuous Improvement Black Belt leading global operational excellence initiatives. Ms. Foli holds an M.B.A. and a B.S.B.A from The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business. She is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. She is also part of the Project Management Institute (PMI) and an honorary member of the International Women's Forum (IWF). Ms. Foli was born in Poland, grew up near Paris, France, speaks three languages, and is an accomplished world traveler. She is a former elite international volleyball athlete, Team Captain of The Ohio State Women's Volleyball Team, and French National Team where she competed in 16 International Tournaments in 10 countries including the University Olympic Games in Bangkok. In this episode, we discuss: - Anna's journey to the French national volleyball team and Ohio State - How she handled captain duties at Ohio State while obtaining a dual degree, including her MBA - How focusing on giving back and focusing on others will help you during your toughest moments - The importance of a strong support system - Why it's all about getting better every day - Why feedback needs to be objective and immediate vs. in 6-month chunks - How can leaders increase accountability by owning up to mistakes

AMONG the headlines for Tuesday, 13 July, 2021, Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin says Malaysia's daily vaccination rate of more than 420,000 doses on Monday was among the highest in the world. Muhyiddin said he has also ordered National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) Coordinating Minister Khairy Jamaluddin to purchase any available vaccine supply, in the bid to achieve herd immunity before year-end. Also, two Americans and two British nationals who work for Aggreko Event Services Japan have been arrested on suspicion of violating drug laws by using cocaine. The company is contracted to work for the Tokyo Olympics , which provides electrical-power services for the Olympics, Tokyo 2020. Aggreko confirmed the arrests and said the four men have been suspended from their posts. Listen to the top stories of the day, reporting from Astro AWANI newsroom — all in 3-minutes. We bring you the headlines, weekdays at 5 pm. Stay informed on astroawani.com for these news and more.

Loren Sands-Ramshaw: https://lorensr.me/The GraphQL Guide (coming soon): https://graphql.guide/TranscriptLoren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:00:00] So welcome Shawn to the GraphQL Guide interview with Shawn Swyx Wang. Is that swyx: [00:00:04] it? I pronounce that, right. It's it's my Chinese and English initials. And it's just a branding that I'm leaned into because it's unique. Yeah. I think it's great. Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:00:11] Yeah, definitely unique. So for those of our readers who don't yet know you, swyx: [00:00:15] Who are you, what do you do?Cool. I'm Shawn. I guess I work on developer experience at Temporal. I should be more assertive. I am head of developer experience at Temporal.io. It's a Small startup that does microservices orchestration, which is a very, very fancy name that basically runs an open-source framework spun out of Uber that we can go into more details, but really, I've done.I sort of migrated from finances, which is my first career. Then I went into Front end. So I did a JavaScript bootcamp then went into front end D started doing some speaking and writing in 2017 and got noticed by Netlify. And that's how I got into developer education, which is what we're here to talk about, I guess, and then started getting into graph QR because it was all tied into the react world.At the time. You could not ignore graph QL and Gatsby and Apollo and all the other ecosystem in, in, in place. I did. Then I then went to AWS to do the same job, essentially where they have amplify an app sync apps think is AWS has graph QL gateway as a service, which we can talk about. And I recently left to join Temporal.Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:01:18] Going back to when you were getting noticed you were like writing blogs and doing talks and getting out a spot Netlify how did you decide to get into developer education? swyx: [00:01:25] I didn't, there wasn't actually a decision. It was just like, let's just try this. And see what happens. So that the context was that the boot, the first job I got out of bootcamp was at Two Sigma, which is a well-known Quant hedge fund in New York.The problem was that I was in a, I didn't know it, but I got into a bad part of Two Sigma where they were severely underusing their engineers to the point where four days out of five, we were not doing anything like specifically not standing on our desk. Cause we had stand up desks. And.Explicitly given to have the okay. To do whatever we wanted, whatever because we just didn't have work. And that was, it's a, it's an enviable position, right. For for a lot of people like, Oh yeah. Paid around and do whatever you want. That's that sounds like a great job, but I don't think it's a very good job for a junior.Like someone just starting out. Right. You're not going to grow up very much. So it's like frustration. Really that I was like, okay, I'm not getting any learning at work. My, my team lead was like not doing his job. So I just started blogging and, making my own mentors, like, externally New York city has a pretty vibrant meetup scene.So I just, started doing my own talks, even though I didn't feel like an expert. And then I started doing blogging and I think the first one that really picked up for me was. When react announced that it was working on async react like concurrent mode as it is known today, but back then it was async react.So it was announced at a conference in JS conf on March in March, 2018. And I remember that night because it was a big shock to the react ecosystem and it was like a sweeping change. They touching every single part of react. So I just stayed up all night to write a walkthrough of the talk, the demo, and just really like went through everything at it.And that was the first blog post that. We've got really some notice for me and that really still bald since then. And since then I've kind of enveloped everything into this principle I've learned in public. Like when you find something interesting write it up in your own words and share it with people.And at least the people involved in working on the thing will probably read it. And if you're saving some work and if you have some unique perspective than other people will find it helpful as well. Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:03:26] Was there a moment where you were like, I'm going to write my own blog posts instead of reading other people's.swyx: [00:03:32] I've been doing it, unsuccessfully for like the two years prior. So there was no one single moment. It was just like focusing it on something that people actually cared about. It turns out that, you want to write things that people want to read. And that's that was a pretty big insight for me.It's not, it didn't seem like that big of an insight until you look at it. The vast quantities of developer blogs out there. And a lot of them are sort of very inward facing. They don't really answer the question of why should you care? And so I, I definitely had my mentality changed around like, okay.Like it has to be an intersection of things you're very interested in and things that other people are interested in and you can't just have one or two. Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:04:07] Speaking of things that people are interested to read, you have a great book on the coding careers. That's called the coding career handbook.One of your first. Customers really like the parts of it that I read. What was that like coming with the idea of the book and writing it and swyx: [00:04:20] publishing it. So there's a fun story for the reason the name is so awkward. I still don't like the name, but I just had to go with it because I didn't have anything of anything else.The reason was the original name was cracking the coding career because there was a successful technical interviews book called cracking the coding interview. And the whole point was that it w I wanted it to be apparent in the title that once you're done with the interview, once you landed the job.There's a huge gaping hole of what's next. And this th this book is targeted at the what's next. Unfortunately, Gail McDonald, the author cracking Cody career actually got in touch with me and mentioned lawyers. So I had to change the name before lunch. So, by the time, like I already had my Twitter handle up and all that, and I was just like, all right, I'll just stick with this thing.But it is an acronym. Yeah the. Point I think is that people, I think my most successful writing, like it or not has been my non-technical writing which the learning public essay has reached, hundreds of thousands of people. And I constantly get shout outs every single day about people starting to own journeys.And it's something that I really. Believe it, even though I hate, I'm not like the Tony Robbins type, I don't want to be like a lifetime life coach or anything. I just think that this worked for me and it will work for a lot more other people. So I was like, okay. I just, I should probably just write down some more advice on, on, on what I think that people need, because.I think what really crystallized it for me was when you look at career ladder. So I did a study of every public career ladder out there. So career ladders are these things where it's like, all right you're junior, you're expected have these qualities or senior, you expected these qualities, staff, principal, whatever.And and everyone has some version of these in some companies are actually brave enough to publish them. And so if you just study all of them and you realize something really interesting, which is that when you look at the way that people are promoted and graded about 75% of the grading criteria is non-technical.Seventy-five right. It's like, all right, you can call it. Great. But what about your communication? What about your business impact your mentorship and all that, which is like surprisingly not the type of thing that you learn in college or bootcamp. And no one tells you to do it, but suddenly it's 75% of your evaluation, like, well, okay.And I think that just reflects the reality that we are less coders and more code enabled humans and we can code, but we're humans first. And so we need to apply all these sort of soft skills. I hate the word soft skills, but that's the common commonly accepted terms. So I use it Two two, we need to teach each other, lessons from these things.I am not saying I'm the world's foremost expert at them. I have things to work on myself and it's a very difficult thing to, to come on and say like, I have something worthwhile for you, even though I'm imperfect. But I don't base my advice on myself. I also base my advice on.Hundreds of other people that I've interviewed and collect collected the book has like 1400 references to people smarter and wiser and more accomplished than I have. And that, that's just what research does for you. And hopefully you can decide yourself which of these ideas you agree with and which are not.And that's all I ask really, I think it's really hard to write a soft skills book. Because your sort of character has to be impeccable. Like the moment you're like, Oh, I had a bad interaction with this person. Therefore, the entire book is wrong. Like, I'm sure, if you want to take that view that's fine for you.But I view ideas as sort of independent, you can sort of pick and choose. And if this book, has 40 chapters and three of them make sense for you then that, that would be a good investment of time for me. Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:07:39] I liked it like the field of life coaches and career coaches and therapy and stuff.And I really appreciate the knowledge that you've put into the world with that book. So thank you swyx: [00:07:49] for writing. Well, yeah. Thanks for asking about it. It's kind of, it's still awkward that you can hear me like being very hesitant about like, talking about this thing, but people like it.I think that, everyone wants to hire seniors. That's the truth. There's a huge glut of bootcamps producing juniors. There's lots of people self-teaching. And then from junior to senior, somehow you magically, hope to. Find something that works. And then once you're seeing her every once a hi, everyone wants to hire you.So I guess if I had to narrow it down, like I need to make it. Easier for people to up-level whether or not they can use the book as a guide or they can join the discord that I have and interact with me directly and ask me questions and all that. These are all passed into upscaling, more people from junior to senior.And I think people don't do it. It's just, it's a very awkward thing to do. But that's an interesting challenge. I really Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:08:37] liked the boot camps. There were like nine months. You can go really deep. It'd be cool if I was like a graduate school version of boot camp. So you go to the bootcamp one, and then later on you go to the boot camp two.swyx: [00:08:46] Oh, there is a Recurse center, which is the self guided one in New York. Yeah. A lot of pretty famous people have come out of the recur center because they do it's essentially like graduate school. Like you propose your topic and then you sit in a room with a bunch of other people who are very self motivated as well.And you produce something to impress each other and the kind of people that actually self-select to go there are very intellectually curious themselves. So they work on pretty cool stuff. And it turns out that once they graduate, they will actually go on to do some pretty interesting things as well.So, that's a comparison, but like the thing is that doesn't scale. Like they, they admit like maybe a few dozen people there's tens of thousands who will never do it. Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:09:23] Also. There are a couple more ideas in that area that I have where like, Having it be more of a norm for companies of like even medium size to have like a junior teaching mentorship program.swyx: [00:09:37] Yeah. Yup. More apprenticeships, especially for people from non-traditional backgrounds. I find, I see so many companies that have, Campus recruiting for colleges. But actually, what about everyone else? So, yeah. And then in the mentorships, it, th the thing is like, it's perceived to be a cost.And we need to turn that around and turn the tenant equation around and say like, actually you're getting. To upskill talent, there's that cheap, that becomes very valuable once you put, once you invested in them. And I think some companies are getting into this mindset. So Stripe is having direct integration with the university of Waterloo.And I think shop, sorry. Stripe is integrating with the university of Limerick, I think in Ireland. And Shopify is. Has a has a degree offering with the university of Waterloo. And it's just amazing to see all these innovations, but they're just sort of piecemeal. And then, they'll improve a few dozen people, a few hundred people at a time, but it's a slow process for sure.Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:10:28] I would think of it makes sense for there to be like a lower part of the market where like, like the, maybe under the entry-level for expected junior does, there's like a gap where people can do like. Traditional apprenticeships where it's more of a stipend or like an internship kind of thing where you're not being paid like a normal dead salary, but you are learning a lot.Yeah. And maybe like that would be low enough that it would be profiled. swyx: [00:10:52] They are doing that at they are doing that at Lambda school, which is the online bootcamp. The problem is Whenever you talk about paying people perhaps less than an average developer salary the, there people online who get very angry about that.And I, it's not my place to say. Who's right and who's wrong. I defend the right of consenting adults to agree to whatever contract they want, even though, some, some of them may be exploitative in retrospect, but we have to let people make mistakes. And we have to let people experiment with new forms because all we know is the current system.Doesn't work well in, in some way we need to try new ideas. We need to make it safe to try new ideas. And and so Atlanta school was really trying. And I think what they have right now is they'll guarantee you they'll give you a student for a month.And they'll pay the full month of it. So it's totally cost free to you, except that you have to give them, stuff to do. And I think that's a really beautiful experiment. So I don't know, some people get angry about that. I'm like, you're, you don't know what it's like to be a bootcamp student.I would've killed for that. When I was a BlueCat student, Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:11:51] I have friends who haven't found a job after boot camp. So, hope that swyx: [00:11:56] system works fine. Yeah. Nothing is better than sort of just getting into a real work scenario and like, stop jumping on the artificial hoops with like in video binary or whatever.And just get into the real work. And after three months, six months, nine months, you're a dev. And. You know that w yeah. Every, everything else is just gate keeping. So whatever. Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:12:14] So you think of algorithm, coding interviews? I had an interview with Toptal, and I didn't know they were going to do data structures and algorithms.So I didn't study and like, I haven't studied it in over 10 years. And I got an a in my courses at Dartmouth, so like I knew it at one point. swyx: [00:12:30] But I totally did you burn, did they give you a grade? Did they give you a number? Like how bad? I know they just like stop Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:12:35] asking your questions. swyx: [00:12:36] Yeah.Yeah, yeah. So tail, the reason that'd be so stringent is the marketing, right? They're like we, they have to have a rejection rate to, to show off. Because that's part of the marketing appeal. I totally get it from their angle, but then also, like you don't need them. So, whatever.Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:12:49] What are your thoughts around different education mediums? Like how did you decide to do a book versus a video course? And do you have any plans for doing books or courses or. swyx: [00:12:59] Inefficient. That's an interesting question. The reason I did a book was because the MVP of a book is a blog post, and I already done like three, four years of blogging prior, and people already knew me from my blogging.So it was very natural progression. So I didn't really question it. I also know that I take a lot more time to do video than I do writing or, yeah. No, let's just put it, let's put it the other way. Like, I don't think I'm ever on the world's most natural speaker. I have a lot of false starts.I've thought I'm sinners and I'm still working on it as you can probably tell. But yeah. And so when it comes to writing, it's SEO, searchable, it's you can edit it anytime and reformat things, and it's not it's super cheap. You can add hyperlinks, which I love dropping references.Right? Like when I. Have references in a podcast or a talk. I can't drop a hyperlink in my mouth and you can click on it and it just leads you right to the source. I really liked that. And it annoys me when podcasts say, like, we'll put it in the show notes on any deal. They don't it's really super annoying anyway.So writing solves all of that. It's it's perfect. Medium. It's very scalable. In fact, I have a whole chapter on why writing is great. Everyone, every developer should write. So yeah, I mean, no, no contest on mediums. That's it. One of the downsides of writing is that the moment you call anything, a book, what's the normal price of a book it's nine to nine to $59 or something like that.Like you can go to maybe 99 or whatever, actually, I don't know how much theYeah, got it. Yeah, there's a range. Right. And it's basically constrained by the format rather than the value of the knowledge contained in the book. So if my book happens to. Yeah. Increase your the slope of your career by $10,000 a year. The Mexican charge is 59, which is what I charge that's absurd.Right. And other formats, like video courses, that's automatically like 200 to $300. Irrespective of like the actual value of the delivers to you. And so that's a really bizarre way to do things. So that, that was one, that's one argument for why you might want to do other formats.So apart from this book, I actually considered doing a reactant types, of course, because my other one of my other side gigs is that I run the react and TypeScript cheat sheet, which is. The de facto community docs for react and TypeScript. And it's a, it's a much bigger deal now with them back when I started.So I teach, a thousand people a day react to TypeScript and it's been a completely volunteer behavior volunteer activity. And if I, sold 1% of those on a video course, I probably make a living.It's something that I thought about. Th the only reason I don't do it is because I don't want to be a teacher. I don't think I'm a, I've a very ever temperament to be a good teacher. I don't think I have the patients. I want to do other things with my life apart from teaching.So I think I'll just leave it to someone else, or maybe collaborate with someone. Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:15:44] Let's move to the backfield topic. What is your swyx: [00:15:47] take on evacuation? Greatest thing since sliced bread. Is that what I'm supposed to say? So I had a talk about this Hawaii where like kinda compared it to like, I hate I wish that people would start comparing graph QL to risk.Like we have to, because that's kind of what we. What the paradigms are and how people mentally place them. But rest doesn't go away at Graco has a protocol over rest. And so it was like, it's, it's not either, or it's like one and the other. That's it. My sort of galaxy brief summary of graph you all is that instead of creating a dozen different end points that are all kind of dumb you create one smart end point and then you have contracts that can specify whatever that end point does sort of on, on request.And I think that's a really simplified take, but it really. You were there at Apollo day. And I think the Apollo folks have a really good present explanation of this. It really starts to come into its own when you start having multiple devices to support. So you have mobile and desktop and web Sr and, and Sorry.Well, mobile native and desktop and mobile web and on whatever other devices that you may have, these are all have the different data requirements. And there's a combinatorial explosion. They have all these lines crossing over from different services, into different devices that you could simplify by just having one single sort of smart endpoint.And everyone connects to that one smart end point. It speaks to the right contract and that smart endpoint has. The means to resolve all the data from each individual data source then that's essentially graph QL. Like you could do this in a bunch of different other ways as well. And there have been many, many other attempts like graph QL is, is, it's not new.They're there. And I think the creators of graph you all are pretty upfront about like the inspirations that led to. Craft you are like all data, which I never really tried any of these. So outside, I don't have much sympathy. All we know is that graph QL is successful. Now it has the network effects now, and therefore it's a much better bet than the other formats.Which is an argument by like it's success, it's popular. Therefore it should be more popular like that kind of argument, but it's true. There's some amount of validity to betting on things because the ecosystem is better. And so, so that's really smart.I have another take, which kind of combines into one of the questions that we prepped for is what I dislike about it. So, I think that it's very, very easy for front end developers to wax poetic about graph QR, because it makes their lives a lot easier. And the people that we kind of leave behind, or we sort of punt all the tough questions too, are the backend developers for whom It turns out it's not true.It's not always true, but net, it turns out that it's more work for them, whatever it is from like, figuring out how to do off figuring out how to do like rate limiting or like query complexity, limit limitations and like, Inserting all the validation steps or like joining schema is, and the federating them, these are all the tough work that was maybe sometimes shift done on the client side has all been shifted onto the backend.That's really unfortunate for graphical adoption. Like the main bottleneck of graphical adoption is backend. That's it there. And I wish we would stop. Okay. I wish front end developers would stop selling graph QL based on how easy it makes their lives, because it's totally unsympathetic to graph to back in people back.And people are just like, you guys are not thinking about the security risks. They're not thinking they're not talking to them in terms that they are thinking about. And I wish that more evangelism, more graphical individualism was more sympathetic to the backend perspective. Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:19:08] What are your personal swyx: [00:19:10] favorite parts?Oh, graphical. I, this is the common answer, right? Like it's I feel like graphical is kind of like the common ground of all of them. Cause like, you can, it's a raffle or it's a postman or whatever it is. It's the common tool and it's so good and actually got a lot better. We graphical Explorer sorry, graphical Explorer.And that's the little side tab that the added and I think, their plans were a graphic for 2.0 in graphical. And it. It's just such a introspective tool that has embedded documentation in it. Like, it's just, it's everything you want out of a documentation tool and of API documentation that  rest never really got to, like the best you got.It was open API and even that's kind of like a sprawl and it doesn't have embedded like try this, it, it does, but like it, it's just not as smooth as graphical. So yeah not really galaxy brain take here. But I think, yeah once you make experimentation and modification a lot easier than you, you move the pace of development faster, at least on the front end.So, I definitely like that a lot. The errors kind of bother me a little bit with, areas being 200. Okay. That's a common sort of gripe among people who don't like graph QL, but you'd learn to deal with it. You just, yeah. Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:20:16] Any advice for swyx: [00:20:16] people learning Graco?Nice. We're learning people that are in graph. Y'all I think the thing that you do in the book where like you explain the validation and set it, set things up from scratch you should do that. You should go through the exercise. Actually even set up a server using just pure graph LGS without all the fanciness that maybe Apollo server does for you.And just, yeah. Fundamentally understand like, or, so like, I guess the advice would be like stripped down the tooling as much as possible and build your way back up instead of just starting at the tooling and never going down the stack a little bit. So, did you know that you can query Aggreko end points just with fetch?Do you know how to do that? If so then great. Then what's the next step after fetch? What does caching actually do for you? So on and so forth, like these are all this, these are the steps that you knew you need to sort of work through to, to build up to a complete understanding of graph you are so that when things go wrong, you know how to fix it.And that's one thing which I really encourage because graphene is a complex system. It's client side is service side and there's like, This complex chain of events that go through it. And sometimes the errors can be a bit too loose. If you don't really know what's going on under the hood.Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:21:19] Yeah. I don't a friend who I was a junior dev working at a company that like had a Apollo in place and like their view of craft kill was if I add this like fragment or this query to this component, then. I'm going to get the data. And so they don't have the understanding of like what's happening, how it's all getting collected, where the cash is doing.Which is definitely helpful. When things go wrong. swyx: [00:21:47] Yeah. Yeah. Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:21:48] What are your, yeah. So you had a chance to read parts of the guide. Thank you so much for being here. I really valued your feedback. What swyx: [00:21:55] were your favorite parts of the book? So I noticed that you do something unique, which I don't see a lot in a lot of other books, which is every code sample has like a good tag.Is that what you do? And you can just view the defer or go straight to the, get, get tag from that sample. And I actually really liked that. Sorry. So this is really tiny detail, but then like, I appreciate that. Cause I read a bunch of other books as well. Like I got another, a book here.And on top of this monitor that I'm looking at you on, I have a bunch of other techniques as well. I really enjoy reading technical books as a way to level up. And so like when you can actually follow through on the code and download it and run it yourself, that's a really nice detail.Overall, like, I think it's, I think it's a very comprehensive, like 500 something pages, which is huge guide, and it's the kind of detail that you would take months to really pick up on. And, you get it within a Yeah. Within a few days of just reading this book.And so I just really appreciate it, like all the research and all the piecing together of things. Obviously you had to make some tough choices, like, picking on picking Apollo. But I don't think these are controversial at all. These are just like, the industry standard things that, that you would at least expect people to be familiar with.Even if they go with the alternative. And then going into like each individual client and framework, I don't use react native sorry, I don't use Vue or react native, or I think you have some other native iOS, even that you went into there. I don't use any of those platforms. I'm just a web person.But I know that, when the time comes, I can just pick it up and start there. So that's a really good perspective as well as like the broader ecosystem, right? Like, Apollo Federation, which is like a fair, fairly new thing. And then talking a little bit about history as well, which I think is one of the most significant graph your companies out there.So, so yeah, it really like combines, condenses a lot of research that's done by you and John Resig and that's pretty well, this very much worth the sticker price. Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:23:36] Thank you. So the tags is particularly difficult because I have a tag for each section of each coding chapter.And those are chapters six through 11, and then for each version of the book has a different tag of version. So it's like the react chapter is maybe 40, 40 tags with each, with a version number. And then each time I changed the code for the next version of the book, I can make another 40 tags. It's a big process.Yeah. swyx: [00:24:05] I was thinking about, is react the best pear to graft you all like, does it, is it an accident of history that it just happened to also come out of Facebook? That's. Which is why we use it together. I always wonder that because, we act it's very weird with its effects and all that.It's kinda clunky to, to use. So you basically have to use a third party library, like, or goal, or Apollo client to wire to that. I don't, I'm not sure how I feel about that. Like I was just like, Ugh. Anyway, we can talk the frame, talk about frameworks in a day, but yeah, I appreciate it that all the guys are in there and you took pains to, to cover other devices.Like, like I said, like, one of the main benefits of adopting graph is that you can support multiple devices, multiple frameworks in paradigms pretty easily. Okay. Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:24:47] Any visions swyx: [00:24:48] for the future of death off? OhLoren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:24:51] well just probably like, having the backend story be. More developed. I think it was both pitching them and then swyx: [00:24:56] also the software supporting them. I have a pretty good coverage of this in the book where you talk about differ and idea, the two directors, which I never remember stream yes.Street. So like all these spec level things are very important because once it's in the spec then multiple, different parties can implement them. And we because right now everyone's kind of haphazardly kind of. Hacking their way around it if they need it. And once it's standardized we can really build some rails around it to make it a lot more reasonable and, things like the, for like, they need to be in there just cause once your graph gets big, like you, you need to, query things at different paces and have them all in one quick one single query. Yeah. So, so more standardization of stuff. Like I even, I don't know. I don't know how you feel about this, actually. I should ask you a do, but I think that graphic, I wish that graph y'all had a date time. Standard type. Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:25:41] Definitely. I think it's a, swyx: [00:25:43] some stage in the spec. Okay. Super annoying. It doesn't happen.Yeah, so, I think Lee Byron has had arguments for why did kept it out. And definitely simpler is better for the initial success of graph. You would prefer would not be where it is today. If it had done all the things it had to really, really scope down and just solve a specific problem for Facebook and the early adopters.Then it got big and then people want more out of it. This is the natural way of things is how it always goes. That's it. It's super annoying to work with the time in in graph QL and everyone has their own really weird spec. And we should probably standardize on that. I think relay seems to, relay seem kind of dead for a while.And then it had a little bit of resurgence and people really like the the cursor format which which I think you briefly touch on as well. There's, there seems to be some amount of need for standardization of like, the way we do pagination, the way we do a bunch of things like even authorization as well.I don't think it's really it's too. Left to influence that it's too hand-wavy. And so, yeah, which is, which kind of goes back to the solving backend developers, pain points, like having best practices that are sort of, well defended and in production at well-known companies that really gives a lot of assurance to the rest of us who are just trying to figure this out and trying to evaluate like, Oh, Hey, I have this thing that has worked for 15 years.That's that happens to be rested. I can ship faster with that, or I can deal with this cutting-edge thing, which like I might make a critical mistake on. Sorry, my cat and my Comey. Exactly. So, nine times out of 10, the, I was going to say no, because it's just like, are you a dev just trying to play it a new toy or are you trying to ship, do you know how to ship things, which I've always worked in, nothing's broken about it.So you really need to pave the path, which is something that obviously I do for a living, but Graffio has a lot of smart people working on that. Yeah. Did I answer the question about the future?Well, Federation used to be a big sticking point and then they actually, came out with it. So I think it's less of a talking point now. And hopefully I, I haven't used it in any sort of work setting, so I don't know how actually people feel about it. All I know is that it was there were multiple competing solutions and now there's an official one.Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:27:48] So, I guess the last thing on graphica was app sync. I'm curious. But what kind of companies you see you saw using it? I guess I quick over here for people. swyx: [00:27:57] Okay. Absolutely. So graph yall tends to end up as a gateway meaning that it starts to wrap around other rest API starts to wrap around your other data services.And then you start to that's as natural. In my view, state of where it should lie in your stack and then your front end sort of starts to query against the graphical gateway rather than your rest or API gateway. In Amazon's terminology, it is literally called API gateway, the most unimaginative name possible.So, the graphical version of that is called app sync. Not graphically I'll get waived for whatever reason. And it really does essentially the same thing. You can define resolvers and resolve against data sources, whether the rest or a third party, or even then I can include a dynamo DB database, which there's a specialized schema for that.We can, which is really intuitive to set up. And I, I think so, people are using that Amazon music, 30 million monthly active users, it's is based on that think there, there are some clients, I, big sort of consumer brand clients. And then there are a bunch of smaller smaller of a well-known names.Like, orange theory is another one that, which we talk about a lot which is a gym that converted to like an online fitness training company during COVID that has like, that does like 2 million, monthly subscribers a month or something like that. And. And yeah, I it's used in production by the kind of companies that use AWS and they may not necessarily be, well-known names to developers, but they are successful businesses in an off their own.Right. We also have a bunch of non-profits, which I really enjoy because it helped them get to market quicker. I feel like I, I still am still performing my role as AWS spokesperson here, but like, it really, I really enjoyed this cause like during COVID, a lot of people had to go online and a lot of nonprofits actually built out their apps using app sync and they got to market in like three weeks and, started serving people.Like some of them were like homeless shelters. Some of them were like sort of critical medical care facilities and and. When you see the pace of development solve by, by, by this, by the service like you, you can get naturally very excited by them. And sorry. So let me get to the point.The point is that you want a service, a graph, your service and either someone at your company is going to build it and it's going to be. Weird and funky and kind of, custom to your company or it's sort of, specked out and developed and scaled by someone like AWS or her Sera or Apollo, w whoever else does the graphic as a gateway service?Because I, it could, because I just said like the backend stuff is the hard part. So when on, let someone else do that for you, that's the SME pitch. So yeah. Sorry. I feel really weirdly passionate about this just cause like it's a really fascinating investment. It'll be, this is the only big cloud to invest in graph you off.As you're in Google and awareness on this and now Facebook is in the cloud. So, so, I feel like it, it has, maybe it doesn't get enough credit for like the amount that is really investing in making graphical a thing and making graphical easier for people to, to put it into production. I would say it's not the easiest thing in the world because it still has to encounter a lot of AWS hurdles, like, how do you deal with IAM policies and billing and all that which has its own sort of nightmares and EWS.Nothing's perfect, but it's a trusted brand and it serves people who are familiar with AWS. It serves them well enough. Oh. One example. I think I really liked was a Yan tweet on Twitter. I don't know if you, if if you come across him he's actually done a bunch of tests and actually helped to help a bunch of clients build with ASIC.And one of the interesting things is that graph Jaan natively has his subscription sort of. Paradigm association method, method which you can implement it with like long polling, whatever. But yeah, the high thing was serverless has been using has been developing serverless, which with WebSockets like having the scalability, serverless with the persistent connections or web sockets absent has this built in.And so it's much easier to to develop sort of live apps, w. With the live reaction functionality that that website has give you with seeing them without, and to go pure serverless with API gateway. I'm sorry, I'm throwing a lot of jargon at you, but if you're in the AWS ecosystem, you know what that means?Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:31:42] No, I've. I've used it on one or two. What did they call it? Consulting gigs. And I swyx: [00:31:48] remember not understanding the UI Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:31:51] very well, like you're not feeling intuitively, but then being able to do most with like CloudFormation via the amplify CLI. swyx: [00:31:58] So I liked that.Yeah, that's a that's the common starting point which is like, if you just have a pretty common use case, I definitely recommend using a CLI then the more. Custom you get I would recommend checking out co CDK, the CAGR development kit where you can programmatically create confirmation resources to attach onto your API gateway.And that's the migration path. You start with the CLI started out, building something simple, a proof of concept get familiar with the graphical schema definition, language that maps onto your resources. Like. And that's ultimately what you want. Right? You want your, the graphical, SDL SDL that you write to to do as much work for you.So that means provisioning infrastructure in the backend and doing Kojin and the front end. Right. That's what, that's the ultimate dream of like do one thing, one source of truth. And it flows both ways. Right. And that's what I think, is. Building towards I'd definitely say it's not perfect.Like, like exactly AWS will never win any awards, but the bar is very low for AWS. Like, all you have to do is to be in better than existing services that AWS has is not trying to win the world's best API for, compared to all the other startups out there. It just has to serve existing AWS customers.Very well. So, so yeah that's kind of my perspective on that. Like, and like the core gen goes all the way down to the front end. So, EDSS has this sorry. Amplify has this idea of the data stores, which is on-device cache of your remote data, which is powered by your graph, your schema.I remember Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:33:16] When Twitter figured out that JB amplify a client was based on a public client, but also had a lots of added things like offline. swyx: [00:33:25] Data. Yeah. And th this kind of thing is only possible with strong typing, right? Like w which is essentially what graph provides for you, strong typing of your backend schema.And so once you have that, you can produce a front end replica of that, and then it works offline which is the kind of thing that you basically only possible by vertical integration. And if you don't, if you piece things together yourself, then you're on the hook for building all of that.Which is pretty rough. So like, I just think it's amazing that they want an investment that's going into this. I feel like it's really rough to make easy and get right, because the surface area is massive, but but I think that the vision is correct. I think the vision of like, let's make this graph, Gail schema do everything.Drive make it the source of truth and drive the whole app. And when you do migrations it's very easy to see what to regenerate the clients regenerate the backend infrastructure. That's the way you want to do things. Because if everything's disconnected, then you're essentially doing a lot of things twice.Like, you change the schema. All right. Then you write the resolver then. Alright. Provision the infrastructure, the backend. These can all be done in one step. If you had tight integration any Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:34:25] final message you'd like to give to the readers in the graph? Yoga. swyx: [00:34:28] Enjoy the book and ask the authors for coverage of relay.Cause I feel like there's a lot and no fault to you. Like I think graphic equals ecosystem is big enough and you already did a fantastic job of covering all of these things. I just feel like, Apollo is one perspective on what graft Cal could be. And there are very, very smart people that I really, really respect that love relay and I don't know anything about it and I wish I could read more about it.Loren Sands-Ramshaw: [00:34:51] I planned on adding at least a little bit about relay pursuant to your feedback. So thank you for that. And thank you for joining us today, Shawn.swyx: [00:34:58] Yep. Likewise.

Steven Faull is part of the Technology Leadership team at William Grant & Sons and a bit of a veteran of the Scottish data & tech world. He's a huge proponent for the value data and analytics can add to an organisation, successfully implementing a data strategy at Aggreko and being a real champion for data at William Grant & Sons. Steven is a great example of someone who understands how to marry the potential of data with the needs of a business. I hope you enjoy! As always, we're brought to you by the wonderful people at Cathcart Associates. Music by https://icons8.com/music/author/noisyfilter (Noisyfilter) from https://icons8.com/music (Fugue)

Episode 265: Mike Mayers - Aggreko by SHALE Magazine

In episode 23, I talk with Elizabeth Hollinger, Director of Insight for Aggreko. A great conversation as Elizabeth is one of the most eloquent leaders I've had the pleasure of interviewing. As with other guests, we explore her career history (across Insurance, Management Consultancy & now working in Manufacturing). We also focus on how Elizabeth developed their Data Vision. She shares lots of proven tips to secure engagement & achieve progress on challenges like data governance, innovation & collaborative working. You can also learn how she is still developing as a leader. Well worth a listen, especially if you have responsibility for data leadership or transforming your organisation to embrace insight-led decision making.

This week Tim Fleming's guest is Walter Davis, Head of talent and learning technology at Aggreko and technology thought leader and strategist. Aggreko is a supplier of temporary power generation equipment and of temperature control equipment. They Power everything from large events to whole geographic areas that do not have the suitable infrastructure. How is Aggreko deploying VR and AR training? Tune in later today and find out.

Elizabeth Hollinger heads up insights, data and application development with Aggreko. They provide mobile and modular power, temperature control and energy services across the globe.

Amicarella ‘Demystifies' the Role of CEO for Women. The power generation industry has historically been a male-dominated industry, but today there are a number of women who have risen through the ranks to positions of leadership. Ana Amicarella, CEO of EthosEnergy, is one of them. EthosEnergy is a leading independent service provider of rotating equipment services and solutions to the power, oil and gas, and industrial markets. Amicarella was appointed CEO last December after spending 22 years with GE and eight with Aggreko, where she was managing director for its Latin America business prior to taking on her latest role. Speaking as a guest on The POWER Podcast, Amicarella explained how her career evolved. “I started in engineering. I moved to sales. I did strategy. Then I did operations roles,” Amicarella said. “For the past 18 years, I've been running different businesses, which is what I love to do and likely will continue to do,” she said. Amicarella's first seven months at the helm of EthosEnergy have been interesting to say the least. In December, COVID-19 was not yet a major concern to most people around the world, but that quickly changed. Amicarella was forced to deal with the situation. “We reacted swiftly and decisively,” she said. “We built a plan—a strategic plan that we developed as a team—and we just accelerated the execution of the plan, and adapted to the new environment and the different working rules that we had to face.” EthosEnergy has 20 facilities scattered throughout the world, and the company was able to keep them all open, even during the height of the pandemic. Amicarella said keeping people safe was a top priority, so new protocols were created and workplace adjustments were made. “We essentially sent our office personnel home, but we were already users of virtual technology, so our IT team made sure that we had the proper infrastructure to support remote workers,” she said. Concerning women in the workforce, Amicarella said, “All the companies I've work for, I think they valued women, and I think they really tried to do the best they could to retain and develop women.” Still, she suggested there's a lot more work to be done. “We need definitely more diversity in our industry,” Amicarella said. “I think a lot of it starts at home. We have to encourage girls to do more problem-solving, more involvement in sports to develop that competitive spirit, and then take it into schools and encourage girls to get into math and sciences. Make it fun—hands-on—demystify things,” she said. “When you start seeing that women are in powerful positions then it demystifies the role,” said Amicarella. It allows other women to say, “If she can do it, I probably can do it!” When recruiting personnel, Amicarella looks for the combination of diversity and talent. She suggested the key is to have a diverse slate, and then pick the top candidate. “My leadership team from seven months ago to today is a very diverse leadership team, and it's not by accident,” she said.

Welcome to the Great Women in Compliance Podcast, co-hosted by Lisa Fine and Mary Shirley.  Six years ago, Mary met Scott while the two New Zealanders were working in the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait respectively for generator hire company, Aggreko. As the global Head of Compliance, Mary was Scott’s Compliance Officer and headed out to Kuwait to conduct Compliance training. Not only was Mary thrilled to meet a fellow Kiwi expat at the company, but she was very impressed by how welcoming Scott, then head of the Kuwait business, made her and went to extra effort to ensure that her business trip went smoothly. Scott obviously took Compliance very seriously and a few years later, after both Kiwis had moved on from Aggreko, Scott reached out to Mary to let her know that in his new role as a Commercial Director, he would also be taking on the Compliance portfolio. We hear how Scott has transitioned from being solely in a business role and into a newly fledged Compliance professional. Mary considered Scott to be an ideal GWIC guest because he was fully supportive of Compliance and entirely respectful of a woman running the function and additionally has been very vocal about singing the praises of capable women in Compliance and making introductions to connect women in the field to enlarge their networks. As a bonus, during this episode we get a chance to hear about leadership from someone who is truly a servant leader and breaks down hierarchical barriers to be fully inclusive from the top. Join Mary and Scott as they re-live experiences in the Middle East and Scott shares his number one tip for men to best support female colleagues in the workplace. Join the Great Women in Compliance community on LinkedIn here.

A practical use case for Just-In-Time Inventory through Microsoft Azure Synapse. See how Aggreko is evaluating Azure Synapse to increase operational efficiency with just-in-time supply of their specialist equipment. Aggreko is a global leader in the supply of temporary power generation and temperature control systems, providing backup energy and power supply during times of crisis. Join Jeremy Chapman, as Elizabeth Hollinger, Director of Data Insights at Aggreko, shares how Azure Synapse is now part of their data modernization strategy by bringing inventory to just-in-time and increasing operational efficiency. If you are new to Azure Synapse, it's Microsoft's limitless analytics platform that brings enterprise data warehousing and big data processing together into a single service, removing the traditional constraints for analyzing data of all shapes and sizes. Watch an introduction to Azure Synapse at https://aka.ms/mechanicssynapse Check out other early adopters on our How We Built It series at https://aka.ms/AzureSynapseSeries If you are unfamiliar with Microsoft Mechanics, we are Microsoft’s official video series for IT. You can watch and share valuable content and demos of current and upcoming tech from the people who build it at #Microsoft. Subscribe to our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MicrosoftMechanicsSeries?sub_confirmation=1 Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MSFTMechanics Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft-mechanics/ Follow us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/microsoftmechanics/ 

Andy McMahon is the Analytics Team Leader of Glasgow headquartered Aggreko. Aggreko provide temporary power solutions to a whole host of industries and events - like the Football and Rugby World Cup and Edinburgh Festival. Andy and his team work on some really interesting data problems and have provided the business with some invaluable insights. He was also awarded with the accolade of Data Scientist of the year in 2019, which is pretty cool! As well as being one smart dude, Andy is a great guy to talk to and I really enjoyed this episode! As always, we're brought to you by the wonderful people at Cathcart Associates. Music by Fugue (https://icons8.com/music)

Nick Frayser, Technical Sales & Account Manager at Aggreko, joins host Kym Bolado on the latest episode of ITOP. Also featuring a quick check in with SHALE Magazine editor David Blackmon.

Aggreko's in the business of temporary power - you need an outdoor installation set up for electricity? They're who to call. But that means that the less time to train, the better. Walter Davis explains how AR is helping trim some time off a new employee's intake. Alan: Hey, everybody, welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we're speaking with Walter Davis, head of talent and learning technology at Aggreko. We'll be learning about how they're using XR to train technicians and speed up their time to competency, for new and existing employees. All that and more on the XR for Business podcast. Walter, welcome to the show. Walter: Thanks, Alan. Glad to be here. Alan: Really excited. Why don't you start by telling us your role at Aggreko and how you started working in XR in this role? I think first thing to do might help to paint a picture of maybe what Aggreko does, which will help in then showing how we're applying augmented reality to our services. So, Aggreko is the largest provider of temporary power and cooling solutions. We work in over 100 countries and we power things like Super Bowl here in the US, which many of you might know, or the Olympics that are coming up in Japan. That's another project we're doing. We also work everywhere, from remote parts of Africa, to powering up a data center that needs some backup power. So we're sort of everywhere in the background, if you would. Just ensuring that major events and operations run smoothly. And with that, obviously, we need to ensure that we are providing an expert service and minimize any potential downtime. We need to have expert staff to support that. Alan: So basically, if the lights stay on, you guys are there. Walter: Exactly. That's a great way of putting it. We make it a point to ensure that we have a highly reliable service. Alan: So I was reading, Aggreko specializes in seven key areas, oil and gas, manufacturing, mining, petrochemicals, construction. And then events, the live events thing almost seems like an add-on to this, but it seems to fit perfectly. Walter: It does, yeah. So events are really what we're known for, right? I mean, that's where we will pop up on occasion. Actually, I could say that we are actually in one-- we're in a recent country music video in the background, because we are powering the stage that they recorded the music video at. But yeah, like I said, keeping the lights on, making sure that entertainment can happen, events can happen, and everybody has a comfortable experience. Alan: So how does VR/AR/XR relate to temporary power? Walter: With the nature of our business -- as we operate in over 100 countries -- we operate very broadly but very agilely. And one of the challenges that we tend to sometimes have is ensuring that we can bring new hires and products together really in that introductory period of time, when someone is just joining the organization. We don't always necessarily have every type of fleet available for them to familiarize themselves with and educate themselves on, to start developing those competencies. And where we're seeing AR in particular, is in allowing those individuals to gain that knowledge really right when they join the organization. They're able to go through an immersive experience in full scale, so as if the product was right in front of them. Going-- both familiarizing themselves with the key components and aspects of the product, but also going through a key service procedures th

This episode was recorded during the Coronavirus lockdown and Valerie and Kevin spend time addressing the challenges that it has brought to organisations, like the difficulties of remote working for teams - "it's a huge behavioural and educational piece for line managers". However, when done correctly, Kevin points out that 80% of remote workers feel more engaged. Listen in for their tips. Like all of the HRDs Kevin interviews, Valerie has many stories and much experience to share, like the real story behind the media headlines of working on the G4S Olympics project for 2012. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to leave us a review.

Aggreko’s in the business of temporary power - you need an outdoor installation set up for electricity? They’re who to call. But that means that the less time to train, the better. Walter Davis explains how AR is helping trim some time off a new employee’s intake. Alan: Hey, everybody, welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we're speaking with Walter Davis, head of talent and learning technology at Aggreko. We'll be learning about how they're using XR to train technicians and speed up their time to competency, for new and existing employees. All that and more on the XR for Business podcast. Walter, welcome to the show. Walter: Thanks, Alan. Glad to be here. Alan: Really excited. Why don't you start by telling us your role at Aggreko and how you started working in XR in this role? I think first thing to do might help to paint a picture of maybe what Aggreko does, which will help in then showing how we're applying augmented reality to our services. So, Aggreko is the largest provider of temporary power and cooling solutions. We work in over 100 countries and we power things like Super Bowl here in the US, which many of you might know, or the Olympics that are coming up in Japan. That's another project we're doing. We also work everywhere, from remote parts of Africa, to powering up a data center that needs some backup power. So we're sort of everywhere in the background, if you would. Just ensuring that major events and operations run smoothly. And with that, obviously, we need to ensure that we are providing an expert service and minimize any potential downtime. We need to have expert staff to support that. Alan: So basically, if the lights stay on, you guys are there. Walter: Exactly. That's a great way of putting it. We make it a point to ensure that we have a highly reliable service. Alan: So I was reading, Aggreko specializes in seven key areas, oil and gas, manufacturing, mining, petrochemicals, construction. And then events, the live events thing almost seems like an add-on to this, but it seems to fit perfectly. Walter: It does, yeah. So events are really what we're known for, right? I mean, that's where we will pop up on occasion. Actually, I could say that we are actually in one-- we're in a recent country music video in the background, because we are powering the stage that they recorded the music video at. But yeah, like I said, keeping the lights on, making sure that entertainment can happen, events can happen, and everybody has a comfortable experience. Alan: So how does VR/AR/XR relate to temporary power? Walter: With the nature of our business -- as we operate in over 100 countries -- we operate very broadly but very agilely. And one of the challenges that we tend to sometimes have is ensuring that we can bring new hires and products together really in that introductory period of time, when someone is just joining the organization. We don't always necessarily have every type of fleet available for them to familiarize themselves with and educate themselves on, to start developing those competencies. And where we're seeing AR in particular, is in allowing those individuals to gain that knowledge really right when they join the organization. They're able to go through an immersive experience in full scale, so as if the product was right in front of them. Going-- both familiarizing themselves with the key components and aspects of the product, but also going through a key service procedures th

In this Episode, Gerard has a fascinating conversation with Alex Voigt, the legendary Cleantech innovator. Over the past two decades, Alex Voigt, hailed as one of the Founding Fathers of the solar industry, has embodied Germany's Energiewende. Alex has created two solar companies, Solon and Grips, a battery storage company Younicos (acquired in 2017 by Aggreko), and now develops Lumenion, a breakthrough in thermal storage about to revolutionize and decarbonize the district heating sector.A dense, witty and savvy dialogue covering all topics: Solar, Li-Ion batteries , Hydrogen, resistance to innovation, carbon pricing, disruption in district heating through thermal storage … and a meeting with Elon Musk in 2008 on the road to Pasadena. Reference:https://lumenion.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-voigt-65392045/

Prior to his appointment as CEO of Aggreko plc in January 2015, Chris was Managing Director at Centrica plc, where he was the Executive Director responsible for the Group's largest division, for both British Gas in the UK and Direct Energy in the USA. Chris has been a client of mine for over 20 years and here he shares some of his most inspirational leadership insights. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we have four interviews on the podcast.

This week, we have four interviews on the podcast.

ITOP - Episode 227 - David Dickert - Aggreko Three 12 - 14 - 19 by SHALE Magazine

Episode 226 of "In The Oil Patch" This week on "In The Oil Patch": host Kym Bolado welcomes David Dickert, Head of Field Operations for North America at Aggreko. Kym is also joined by David Blackmon, Editor of SHALE Magazine. Listen to In the Oil Patch on AM/FM following this schedule: Saturdays from 8am-9am KSIX 1230 AM, 95.1 FM & 96.1 FM Corpus Christi Saturdays from 1pm-2pm KWEL 1070 AM & 107.1 FM Midland / Odessa / Permian Basin Sundays from 2pm-3pm The Answer 930 AM San Antonio / New Braunfels / San Marcos / Austin Sundays from 8pm-9pm KTRH Newsradio 740 AM Simulcast on the iHeartRADIO app Houston / Worldwide Let us know what you think about our shows on our Facebook page - Facebook.com/intheoilpatch and be sure to share, follow and like us on Soundcloud, Twitter and LinkedIn too! "In The Oil Patch" is brought to you by SHALE Oil & Gas Business Magazine. Stay tuned for more great episodes every weekend! For our full schedule, please visit our Radio Show Schedule page and if you have any questions for our experts, please email them to radio@shalemag.com.

Episode 225 of "In The Oil Patch" This week on "In The Oil Patch": host Kym Bolado welcomes David Dickert, Head of Field Operations for North America at Aggreko. Kym is also joined by David Blackmon, Editor of SHALE Magazine. Listen to In the Oil Patch on AM/FM following this schedule: Saturdays from 8am-9am KSIX 1230 AM, 95.1 FM & 96.1 FM Corpus Christi Saturdays from 1pm-2pm KWEL 1070 AM & 107.1 FM Midland / Odessa / Permian Basin Sundays from 2pm-3pm The Answer 930 AM San Antonio / New Braunfels / San Marcos / Austin Sundays from 8pm-9pm KTRH Newsradio 740 AM Simulcast on the iHeartRADIO app Houston / Worldwide Let us know what you think about our shows on our Facebook page - Facebook.com/intheoilpatch and be sure to share, follow and like us on Soundcloud, Twitter and LinkedIn too! "In The Oil Patch" is brought to you by SHALE Oil & Gas Business Magazine. Stay tuned for more great episodes every weekend! For our full schedule, please visit our Radio Show Schedule page and if you have any questions for our experts, please email them to radio@shalemag.com.

-Originally aired on 9/21/19-9/22/19- Episode 217 of "In The Oil Patch" This week on "In The Oil Patch": host Kym Bolado welcomes Josh Haugan, Business Development Manager at Aggreko! Kym is also joined by David Blackmon, Editor of SHALE Magazine. Listen to In the Oil Patch on AM/FM following this schedule: Saturdays from 8am-9am KSIX 1230 AM, 95.1 FM & 96.1 FM Corpus Christi Saturdays from 1pm-2pm KWEL 1070 AM & 107.1 FM Midland / Odessa / Permian Basin Saturdays from 2pm-3pm FREEDOM 1160 AM San Antonio / New Braunfels / San Marcos / Austin Sundays from 8pm-9pm KTRH Newsradio 740 AM Simulcast on the iHeartRADIO app Houston / Worldwide Let us know what you think about our shows on our Facebook page - Facebook.com/intheoilpatch and be sure to share, follow and like us on Soundcloud, Twitter and LinkedIn too! "In The Oil Patch" is brought to you by SHALE Oil & Gas Business Magazine. Stay tuned for more great episodes every weekend! For our full schedule, please visit our Radio Show Schedule page and if you have any questions for our experts, please email them to radio@shalemag.com.

Originally aired on 6/16/2018 - 6/17/2018 Episode 160 of "In The Oil Patch" This week on "In The Oil Patch": host Kym Bolado welcomes David Dickert, Head of Oil & Gas for the Americas with Aggreko onto the show! This is a partial rerun of the second show in a special six part series with Aggreko. Be sure to catch In The Oil Patch every weekend following this schedule: Saturdays from 8am-9am KSIX 1230 AM, 95.1 FM & 96.1 FM Corpus Christi Saturdays from 1pm-2pm KWEL 1070 AM & 107.1 FM Midland / Odessa / Permian Basin Saturdays from 2pm-3pm FREEDOM 1160 AM San Antonio / New Braunfels / San Marcos / Austin Sundays from 8pm-9pm KTRH Newsradio 740 AM Simulcast on the iHeartRADIO app Houston / Worldwide Sundays from 8pm-9pm KFXR 1190AM Simulcast on the iHeartRadio app Dallas / Ft. Worth / Worldwide Let us know what you think about our shows on our Facebook page - Facebook.com/intheoilpatchradioshow and be sure to share, follow and like us on Soundcloud, Twitter and LinkedIn too! "In The Oil Patch" is brought to you by SHALE Oil & Gas Business Magazine and proudly sponsored by the South Texas Energy & Economic Roundtable (STEER). Stay tuned for more great episodes every weekend! For our full schedule, please visit our Radio Show Schedule page and if you have any questions for our experts, please email them to radio@shalemag.com. Photo courtesy of Aggreko

Originally aired on 6/30/2018 - 7/1/2018 Episode 162 of "In The Oil Patch" This week on "In The Oil Patch": host Kym Bolado welcomes David Dickert, Head of Oil & Gas for the Americas with Aggreko onto the show! This is a partial rerun of the fourth show in a special six part series with Aggreko. Be sure to catch In The Oil Patch every weekend following this schedule: Saturdays from 8am-9am KSIX 1230 AM, 95.1 FM & 96.1 FM Corpus Christi Saturdays from 1pm-2pm KWEL 1070 AM & 107.1 FM Midland / Odessa / Permian Basin Saturdays from 2pm-3pm FREEDOM 1160 AM San Antonio / New Braunfels / San Marcos / Austin Sundays from 8pm-9pm KTRH Newsradio 740 AM Simulcast on the iHeartRADIO app Houston / Worldwide Sundays from 8pm-9pm KFXR 1190AM Simulcast on the iHeartRadio app Dallas / Ft. Worth / Worldwide Let us know what you think about our shows on our Facebook page - Facebook.com/intheoilpatchradioshow and be sure to share, follow and like us on Soundcloud, Twitter and LinkedIn too! "In The Oil Patch" is brought to you by SHALE Oil & Gas Business Magazine and proudly sponsored by the South Texas Energy & Economic Roundtable (STEER). Stay tuned for more great episodes every weekend! For our full schedule, please visit our Radio Show Schedule page and if you have any questions for our experts, please email them to radio@shalemag.com. Photo courtesy of Aggreko

Originally aired on 6/2/2018 - 6/3/2018 Episode 158 of "In The Oil Patch" This week on "In The Oil Patch": host Kym Bolado welcomes David Dickert, Head of Oil & Gas for the Americas with Aggreko onto the show! This is the final show in a special six part series with Aggreko, so don't miss it! Be sure to catch every show each weekend following this schedule: Saturdays from 8am-9am KSIX 1230 AM, 95.1 FM & 96.1 FM Corpus Christi Saturdays from 1pm-2pm KWEL 1070 AM & 107.1 FM Midland / Odessa / Permian Basin Saturdays from 2pm-3pm FREEDOM 1160 AM San Antonio / New Braunfels / San Marcos / Austin Sundays from 8pm-9pm KTRH Newsradio 740 AM Simulcast on the iHeartRADIO app Houston / Worldwide Sundays from 8pm-9pm KFXR 1190AM Simulcast on the iHeartRadio app Dallas / Ft. Worth / Worldwide Let us know what you think about our shows on our Facebook page - Facebook.com/intheoilpatchradioshow and be sure to share, follow and like us on Soundcloud, Twitter and LinkedIn too! "In The Oil Patch" is brought to you by SHALE Oil & Gas Business Magazine and proudly sponsored by the South Texas Energy & Economic Roundtable (STEER). Stay tuned for more great episodes every weekend! For our full schedule, please visit our Radio Show Schedule page and if you have any questions for our experts, please email them to radio@shalemag.com. Photo: Aggreko.com

Originally aired on 5/26/2018 - 5/27/2018 Episode 157 of "In The Oil Patch" This week on "In The Oil Patch": host Kym Bolado welcomes David Dickert, Head of Oil & Gas for the Americas with Aggreko onto the show! This is the fifth show in a special six part series with Aggreko, so don't miss it! Be sure to catch every show each weekend following this schedule: Saturdays from 8am-9am KSIX 1230 AM, 95.1 FM & 96.1 FM Corpus Christi Saturdays from 1pm-2pm KWEL 1070 AM & 107.1 FM Midland / Odessa / Permian Basin Saturdays from 2pm-3pm FREEDOM 1160 AM San Antonio / New Braunfels / San Marcos / Austin Sundays from 8pm-9pm KTRH Newsradio 740 AM Simulcast on the iHeartRADIO app Houston / Worldwide Sundays from 8pm-9pm KFXR 1190AM Simulcast on the iHeartRadio app Dallas / Ft. Worth / Worldwide Let us know what you think about our shows on our Facebook page - Facebook.com/intheoilpatchradioshow and be sure to share, follow and like us on Soundcloud, Twitter and LinkedIn too! "In The Oil Patch" is brought to you by SHALE Oil & Gas Business Magazine and proudly sponsored by the South Texas Energy & Economic Roundtable (STEER). Stay tuned for more great episodes every weekend! For our full schedule, please visit our Radio Show Schedule page and if you have any questions for our experts, please email them to radio@shalemag.com. Photo: Aggreko.com

Originally aired on 5/19/2018 - 5/20/2018 Episode 156 of "In The Oil Patch" This week on "In The Oil Patch": host Kym Bolado welcomes David Dickert, Head of Oil & Gas for the Americas with Aggreko onto the show! This is the fourth show in a special six part series with Aggreko, so don't miss it! Be sure to catch every show each weekend following this schedule: Saturdays from 8am-9am KSIX 1230 AM, 95.1 FM & 96.1 FM Corpus Christi Saturdays from 1pm-2pm KWEL 1070 AM & 107.1 FM Midland / Odessa / Permian Basin Saturdays from 2pm-3pm FREEDOM 1160 AM San Antonio / New Braunfels / San Marcos / Austin Sundays from 8pm-9pm KTRH Newsradio 740 AM Simulcast on the iHeartRADIO app Houston / Worldwide Sundays from 8pm-9pm KFXR 1190AM Simulcast on the iHeartRadio app Dallas / Ft. Worth / Worldwide Let us know what you think about our shows on our Facebook page - Facebook.com/intheoilpatchradioshow and be sure to share, follow and like us on Soundcloud, Twitter and LinkedIn too! "In The Oil Patch" is brought to you by SHALE Oil & Gas Business Magazine and proudly sponsored by the South Texas Energy & Economic Roundtable (STEER). Stay tuned for more great episodes every weekend! For our full schedule, please visit our Radio Show Schedule page and if you have any questions for our experts, please email them to radio@shalemag.com.

Originally aired on 5/12/2018 - 5/13/2018 Episode 155 of "In The Oil Patch" This week on "In The Oil Patch": host Kym Bolado welcomes David Dickert, Head of Oil & Gas for the Americas with Aggreko onto the show! This is the third show in a special six part series with Aggreko, so don't miss any of the shows in this series! Be sure to catch every show each weekend following this schedule: Saturdays from 8am-9am KSIX 1230 AM, 95.1 FM & 96.1 FM Corpus Christi Saturdays from 1pm-2pm KWEL 1070 AM & 107.1 FM Midland / Odessa / Permian Basin Saturdays from 2pm-3pm FREEDOM 1160 AM San Antonio / New Braunfels / San Marcos / Austin Sundays from 8pm-9pm KTRH Newsradio 740 AM Simulcast on the iHeartRADIO app Houston / Worldwide Sundays from 8pm-9pm KFXR 1190AM Simulcast on the iHeartRadio app Dallas / Ft. Worth / Worldwide Let us know what you think about our shows on our Facebook page - Facebook.com/intheoilpatchradioshow and be sure to share, follow and like us on Soundcloud, Twitter and LinkedIn too! "In The Oil Patch" is brought to you by SHALE Oil & Gas Business Magazine and proudly sponsored by the South Texas Energy & Economic Roundtable (STEER). Stay tuned for more great episodes every weekend! For our full schedule, please visit our Radio Show Schedule page and if you have any questions for our experts, please email them to radio@shalemag.com.

Originally aired on 5/5/2018 - 5/6/2018 Episode 154 of "In The Oil Patch" This week on "In The Oil Patch": host Kym Bolado welcomes David Dickert, Head of Oil & Gas for the Americas with Aggreko onto the show! This is the second show in a special six part series with Aggreko, so don't miss any of the shows in this series! Be sure to catch every show each weekend following this schedule: Saturdays from 8am-9am KSIX 1230 AM, 95.1 FM & 96.1 FM Corpus Christi Saturdays from 1pm-2pm KWEL 1070 AM & 107.1 FM Midland / Odessa / Permian Basin Saturdays from 2pm-3pm FREEDOM 1160 AM San Antonio / New Braunfels / San Marcos / Austin Sundays from 8pm-9pm KTRH Newsradio 740 AM Simulcast on the iHeartRADIO app Houston / Worldwide Let us know what you think about our shows on our Facebook page - Facebook.com/intheoilpatchradioshow and be sure to share, follow and like us on Soundcloud, Twitter and LinkedIn too! "In The Oil Patch" is brought to you by SHALE Oil & Gas Business Magazine and proudly sponsored by the South Texas Energy & Economic Roundtable (STEER). Stay tuned for more great episodes every weekend! For our full schedule, please visit our Radio Show Schedule page and if you have any questions for our experts, please email them to radio@shalemag.com. Photo: Aggreko.com

Originally aired on 4/28/2018 - 4/29/2018 Episode 153 of "In The Oil Patch" This week on "In The Oil Patch": host Kym Bolado welcomes David Dickert, Head of Oil & Gas for the Americas with Aggreko onto the show! This is the first show in a special six part series with Aggreko, so don't miss any of this exciting series! Be sure to catch every show each weekend following this schedule: Saturdays from 8am-9am KSIX 1230 AM, 95.1 FM & 96.1 FM Corpus Christi Saturdays from 1pm-2pm KWEL 1070 AM & 107.1 FM Midland / Odessa / Permian Basin Saturdays from 2pm-3pm FREEDOM 1160 AM San Antonio / New Braunfels / San Marcos / Austin Sundays from 8pm-9pm KTRH Newsradio 740 AM Simulcast on the iHeartRADIO app Houston / Worldwide Let us know what you think about our shows on our Facebook page - Facebook.com/intheoilpatchradioshow and be sure to share, follow and like us on Soundcloud, Twitter and LinkedIn too! "In The Oil Patch" is brought to you by SHALE Oil & Gas Business Magazine and proudly sponsored by the South Texas Energy & Economic Roundtable (STEER). Stay tuned for more great episodes every weekend! For our full schedule, please visit our Radio Show Schedule page and if you have any questions for our experts, please email them to radio@shalemag.com. Photo: Aggreko.com

Problems with government outsourcing are never far from the headlines, and the collapse of Carillion and woes of Capita have brought the issue into sharp focus. Yet some contracts are a success, with companies and charities delivering high quality services. The question is under what circumstances outsourcing is likely to work and whether government has the skills to do it effectively? To discuss this issue our expert panel included Joshua Reddaway, Head of Practice, Commercial & Contracting VFM at the National Audit Office; Gareth Rhys Williams, Government Chief Commercial Officer; Rupert Soames OBE, CEO of Serco and former CEO of Aggreko; Ed Welsh, Managing Director of Greenhill and former Executive Director in the Cabinet Office The event was chaired by Bronwen Maddox, Director of the Institute for Government.

Hear the discussion on the changing role of the finance professional and how Aggreko established CCH Tagetik as a platform for financial reporting as well.

The view from the top of business. Presented by Evan Davis, The Bottom Line cuts through confusion and spin to present a clearer view of the business world through discussion with people running leading and emerging companies. This week, Evan's three guests discuss the challenges of doing business in and out of Africa. It consists of 54 countries and has more than a billion people but the continent was a sleeping giant for decades. Now it's woken up and could it be on the verge of becoming the economic powerhouse of the 21st Century? Evan is joined in the studio by Andrew Rugasira, CEO of the Ugandan coffee company Good African Coffee; Herman Chinery-Hesse, co-founder of the Ghanaian software company SOFTtribe and Rupert Soames, CEO of the temporary power specialists Aggreko.

Power supply firm Aggreko was hit hard by a profit warning on Monday, as it set out a gloomier forecast for 2013. Will emerging markets help to offset lost contracts in developed countries, or has the current rally lost power?

The view from the top of business. Presented by Evan Davis, The Bottom Line cuts through confusion, statistics and spin to present a clearer view of the business world, through discussion with people running leading and emerging companies. The programme is broadcast first on BBC Radio 4 and later on BBC World Service Radio, BBC World News TV and BBC News Channel TV. Evan and three top executives discuss the curiosities of selling their expertise, knowledge the customer doesn't have. If consumers are in a state of relative ignorance, how can they shop around? What stops them getting ripped off? They also swap thoughts on religion in the workplace. Joining Evan are Heather McGregor, managing director of headhunters Taylor Bennett; Rupert Soames, chief executive of mobile energy company Aggreko; Gavin Oldham, chief executive of retail stockbroker The Share Centre. Producer: Ben Crighton Editor: Stephen Chilcott.

The view from the top of business. Presented this week by Stephanie Flanders, The Bottom Line cuts through confusion, statistics and spin to present a clearer view of the business world, through discussion with people running leading and emerging companies. This week, Stephanie's top executive guests hail from the worlds of mobile energy, sanitary fittings and business services. They discuss how businesses cope in a "slow growth" environment. Could years of slow growth be more challenging than a short sharp shock? And not so long ago, the slow coach economy in Europe was Germany - now it's steaming ahead of everyone. What's gone right for Germany - and what lessons could other countries learn? Stephanie is joined in the studio by Rupert Soames, chief executive of mobile energy group, Aggreko; Neal Gandhi, chief executive of international business services company Quickstart Global; David Haines, chief executive of German bathroom fittings company Grohe. Producer: Caroline Bayley.