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Gopher basketball player Isaac Asuma joins host Justin Gaard to talk about his first season playing at the U, the changes in his role as a leader and the floor, growing up in Cherry and what it means for him to play for his home state team. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
The Go Gopher Podcast with Mike Grimm - Episode #181 originates from Big Ten Football Media Days in Las Vegas. We hear from Big Ten coordinator of officials Bill Corollo and former Gopher player Carlon Burt, who now lives in Vegas From Aquarius Home Services Studio (https://aquariushomeservices.com/) Sponsored by: (https://www.sunbeltminnesota.com/ & https://www.tnma.com), Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union (https://www.affinityplus.org/gogophers) OnX (https://www.onxmaps.com/)
The gentleman John Kriesel headlines this stacked quarterfinal alongside HGTV's Matt Muenster, Gopher great Tommy Olson, FanDuel Sports Network & Twins.TV's Audra Martin, and former Vikings linebacker Chad Greenway in a battle of brains and bold personalities.
The gentleman John Kriesel headlines this stacked quarterfinal alongside HGTV's Matt Muenster, Gopher great Tommy Olson, FanDuel Sports Network & Twins.TV's Audra Martin, and former Vikings linebacker Chad Greenway in a battle of brains and bold personalities. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The gentleman John Kriesel headlines this stacked quarterfinal alongside HGTV's Matt Muenster, Gopher great Tommy Olson, FanDuel Sports Network & Twins.TV's Audra Martin, and former Vikings linebacker Chad Greenway in a battle of brains and bold personalities.
The Go Gopher Podcast with Mike Grimm - Episode #180 originates from Big Ten Football Media Days in Las Vegas. Gopher defensive end Anthony Smith joins Mike Grimm and Darrell Thompson From Aquarius Home Services Studio (https://aquariushomeservices.com/) Sponsored by: (https://www.sunbeltminnesota.com/ & https://www.tnma.com), Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union (https://www.affinityplus.org/gogophers) OnX (https://www.onxmaps.com/)
Chip Scoggins, Ryan Burns and Justin Gaard are back after a short summer break and dive right into the recent news out of Dinkytown regarding the Athletic Department's projected budget deficit and new student fees. The guys also recap Gopher Football's local media day and discuss the first in-depth conversations with new quarterback Drake Lindsey before they give their thoughts on the Big Ten Preseason Poll.
Journey back to the summer of 1980 through a recently listened to hour of WPLJ radio from July 18, highlighting the soundtrack of that era and the memories it evokes.• Exploration of a genuine hour of WPLJ radio from July 18, 1980• Discussion of Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again" from the movie Honeysuckle Rose• Reminiscing about my Top 5 Favorite All-Time Live Album, The Kinks "One for the Road"• Connections between Caddyshack's release and Kenny Loggins' hit "I'm Alright"• Memories of seeing the B-52s perform in Atlanta in 1990• Jimmy's special segment on This Is Spinal Tap's enduring comedy legacy• Reflection on "Teach Your Children" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young “Music In My Shoes" where music and memories intertwine.Learn Something New orRemember Something OldPlease like and follow the Music in my Shoes Facebook and Instagram pages Contact us at musicinmyshoes@gmail.comSend us a one-way message. We can't answer you back directly, but it could be part of a future Music In My Shoes Mailbag!!!
Andy Greder covers the Gophers and Loons for the Pioneer Press. The Loons are out in Portland to face the Timbers. Andy gets into the tough loss the Loons suffered the other night at home at the hands of LAFC. They also get into the University of Minnesota charging students a fee to help supplement paying the school's athletes. Andy gives his thoughts on the new era of college athletics. They also discuss how Gopher football is trying to balance out their offense for the upcoming season.
It's the Sports Weekend with Steve Thomson. In the second hour of the program we are first joined by Andy Greder who's covering the Loons out in Portland and touch on some Gopher football. Then, Lindsey Brown talks about what she's seeing on WNBA social media channels during All Star Weekend in Indianapolis. Finally, an update from Jimmy Lonetti who's in Denver watching the Twins/Rockies series.
Guest Include: - Cory Provus, Minnesota Twins PXP Broadcaster - Brad Schlossman, Grand Forks Herald - Olivia Kortan, Moorhead SR F; committed to Gopher hockey
92Noon! Darius Taylor Dawn Dawn Plitzuweit
92Noon! Darius Taylor Dawn Dawn PlitzuweitSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Coach Amanda Gaines has been a part of the Gopher dance team for 19 years. First as an athlete from 2005-2009, then as an assistant coach from 2009-13, and then as the head coach. Gaines became the head coach in April 2013 and held that role until March 2017. After taking some time off, she resumed that role in 2020. During her tenure, Gaines helped the Gophers to a national championship as an athlete (2006), eight national championships (2010, 2011, 2012, 2013) as an assistant coach, and 10 titles as the head coach in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2023, 2024, and 2025. In all, Minnesota has won 23 dance national titles with Gaines a part of 20 of them. Under her watch, the Gophers also represented Team USA for the 2025 International Cheer and Dance Competition, where the team won gold in the Pom and silver in the Jazz division. It was the third time that Minnesota represented the US National Team, having also done so in 2010 and 2014, under Gaines' leadership. Today, James and Amanda discuss the psychological frameworks and principles she operates from that help her navigate the pressure, tension, chaos, and the mindsets & behaviors she instills within the team so they can go on the floor and be at their best. The post 303:Leadership Under Pressure with Amanda Gaines | University of Minnesota Dance appeared first on .
92Noon! Darius Taylor Dawn Dawn Plitzuweit
PJ Fleck extended through 2030, Gopher hoops announces a neutral site game with a historic opponent, Ty McDevitt makes a splash in the transfer portal and Gopher alums begin the NBA Summer League season.
This week, we're joined by John from the awesome YouTube channel RetroBytes - a creator who dives into the obscure corners of computing history. From his childhood memories of a flaming Spectrum, to restoring Unix workstations, the beauty of operating systems that time forgot, and why Gopher might've beaten the web, if not for one fatal mistake. RetroBytes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@RetroBytesUK Contents: 00:00 - The Week's Retro News Stories 40:03 - RetroBytes Interview Please visit our amazing sponsors and help to support the show: Bitmap Books - https://www.bitmapbooks.com Take your business to the next level today and enjoy 3 months of Shopify for £1/month: https://shopify.co.uk/retrohour We need your help to ensure the future of the podcast, if you'd like to help us with running costs, equipment and hosting, please consider supporting us on Patreon: https://theretrohour.com/support/ https://www.patreon.com/retrohour Join our Discord channel: https://discord.gg/GQw8qp8 Website: http://theretrohour.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theretrohour/ X: https://twitter.com/retrohouruk Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/retrohouruk/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/theretrohour.com Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/theretrohour Events: The Amiga at 40: https://tinyurl.com/4wu2866h NottsVGE: https://www.nottsvge.com/ RetroMessa: https://www.retromessa.no/ Show notes Xbox Mass Lay Offs: https://tinyurl.com/47t45sum New Jazz Mag: https://www.supercellphonegamer.com/ GameCube to Switch 2 Dock: https://tinyurl.com/5k32x59t Flipping Good Game: https://tinyurl.com/bddecmvz 3D Print with Accuracy: https://tinyurl.com/37t6zwsz
Gopher athletes are getting a big payday thanks to NIL - so we talked to Chris Pham, local attorney with Fredrickson and Byron joined Adam to break down some of the specifics of NIL and the details of Minnesota Golden Gopher athletes receiving this money with the total amount being distributed being $20.5 million
A crazy weekend at one of the best tracks on the circuit with tons of Track Drama, a bit of TV Drama (Gauldy's fault) and some last second Protest Drama. Get all the details from the boys that were on property and part of it all! Thanks to our great sponsors Race Tech!!! CJR Suspension KTM, Husqvarna and GasGas Heavy Metal Equipment & Rentals Hall race Fuels and Renegade Gopher Dunes Yamaha Motor Canada Matrix Concepts Canada AMO Walton TransCan As always, the best way to support us, is to support them!
Post-race interviews brought to you by Pro Circuit.
The Go Gopher Podcast with Mike Grimm - Episode #178 features a visit with former Gopher signal caller Tanner Morgan, who is helping develop quarterbacks through his unique and intentional QB Motion camps and more From Aquarius Home Services Studio (https://aquariushomeservices.com/) Sponsored by: (https://www.sunbeltminnesota.com/ & https://www.tnma.com), Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union (https://www.affinityplus.org/gogophers) OnX (https://www.onxmaps.com/)
The Go Gopher Podcast with Mike Grimm - Episode #177 features a tremendous trip down memory lane from senior associate athletic director Marc Ryan, who has retired after 36 terrific years helping lead the Gophers From Aquarius Home Services Studio (https://aquariushomeservices.com/) Sponsored by: (https://www.sunbeltminnesota.com/ & https://www.tnma.com), Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union (https://www.affinityplus.org/gogophers) OnX (https://www.onxmaps.com/)
On this episode of Ski U Pod, we cover the latest Gopher football commitment news and we predict over/unders for several key Gophers for this upcoming season. Let us know what you think in the comments! Go Gophers!Please Like and Subscribe!!
Sports reporter Regan Guirguis covers a powerful lineup of Gopher sports stories and an inspiring push for inclusion in marathon racing.
The Go Gopher Podcast with Mike Grimm - Episode #176 features conversations with Gopher assistant track and field coaches Ibrahim Kabia and Peter Miller on the team's seventh-place national finish From Aquarius Home Services Studio (https://aquariushomeservices.com/) Sponsored by: (https://www.sunbeltminnesota.com/ & https://www.tnma.com), Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union (https://www.affinityplus.org/gogophers) OnX (https://www.onxmaps.com/)
The Go Gopher Podcast with Mike Grimm - Episode #176 features conversations with Gopher assistant track and field coaches Ibrahim Kabia and Peter Miller on the team's seventh-place national finish From Aquarius Home Services Studio (https://aquariushomeservices.com/) Sponsored by: (https://www.sunbeltminnesota.com/ & https://www.tnma.com), Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union (https://www.affinityplus.org/gogophers) OnX (https://www.onxmaps.com/)
Dan covers a lot of topics in the second hour and spends considerable time discussing a recent anniversary on the Calendar of Calamity that involves Dave Winfield and the Gopher baseball team in the 1973 College World Series. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dan covers a lot of topics in the second hour and spends considerable time discussing a recent anniversary on the Calendar of Calamity that involves Dave Winfield and the Gopher baseball team in the 1973 College World Series.
Dan covers a lot of topics in the second hour and spends considerable time discussing a recent anniversary on the Calendar of Calamity that involves Dave Winfield and the Gopher baseball team in the 1973 College World Series. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Feels like a Father's Day episode what with weaponry gone awry, novelty shirts made from petroleum products, and Caddyshack references. PCA hits them high and low, and Woody hits them where they don't usually go. Cutch passes Clemente, Manny sneaks up on 2000, and we've got more bfs on the IL than the bench. The Contreras brothers (Contrarians?) do something rare. Kiké speaks out even though the LAD do not, and we note how women's leagues do not hesitate to take a stand. And we crosstrain by buying Immigrant City FC shirts. MLB players speak out about how sports betting has changed fan interactions for the worse. Those nice BOS newlyweds give the Pope a CWS cap and now you know what the regulation Pope headgear is called and why there's a sunroof in the Popemobile. We say, “levity instead of enlightenment, maybe both,” “scratch in inappropriate places,” and “It's going to be a great time at the hotel bar.” Fight the man, send your game balls to Meredith, get boosted, and find us on Bluesky @ncibpodcast, on Facebook @nocryinginbball, Instagram @nocryinginbball and on the Interweb at nocryinginbball.com. Please take a moment to subscribe to the show, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to NCiB. Become a supporter at Patreon to help us keep doing what we do. We now have episode transcripts available! They are available for free at our Patreon site. Say goodnight, Pottymouth.
Love - it's exciting and new. Come aboard, we have reviews for you!The Captain Stubing and Gopher of podcasts Dan Barrett & Simon Foster have two reviews that are both heavy on the romance.Mix Tape (Streaming on BINGE)Materialists (in cinemas now)
@JeffreyTheGreek is having a blast w/ these summer interviews and we have another fun one today: @RyanBurnsMN of the @GopherRadio pod (and many other Gopher ventures). Ryan & Greek have a quick House Settlement convo, and then it's onto the 2025 Minnesota Golden Gophers. Fan expectations. Offense. Defense. And of course, Ryan's fave topic: Gopher Special Teams! Take A Listen! #AskForAmador
The Go Gopher Podcast with Mike Grimm - Episode #175 features a visit from Gopher football recruiting expert Ryan Burns of Gopher Illustrated, who tells us about the most recent recruiting news in the month of June From Aquarius Home Services Studio (https://aquariushomeservices.com/) Sponsored by: (https://www.sunbeltminnesota.com/ & https://www.tnma.com), Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union (https://www.affinityplus.org/gogophers) OnX (https://www.onxmaps.com/)
On this episode of Ski U Pod, we cover the latest Gopher football commitment news and discuss the big targets left on the board that the staff really wants. We also discuss Greg Sankey/SEC's argument for more teams in the playoffs, revenue sharing, and more!Let us know what you think in the comments! Go Gophers!Please Like and Subscribe!!
The Go Gopher Podcast with Mike Grimm - Episode #175 features a visit from Gopher football recruiting expert Ryan Burns of Gopher Illustrated, who tells us about the most recent recruiting news in the month of June From Aquarius Home Services Studio (https://aquariushomeservices.com/) Sponsored by: (https://www.sunbeltminnesota.com/ & https://www.tnma.com), Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union (https://www.affinityplus.org/gogophers) OnX (https://www.onxmaps.com/)
Join Jordan, Commish, Pitt Girl and Beth, along with VP of Podcast Production Arthur. We begin with Arthur unboxing something, we break down the College World Series Super Regionals with live now two days old LSU and Oregon State updates. Shirtless Louisville fans, the Beaver Dam of Beer Cans, an Arkansas giant potato, Congrats to Texas Women's Softball and playing 3rd base without an ACL? Villanova to the Patriot League, FCS realignment continues, we read Matt Brown's thoughts on the House Settlement, Flava Flav, brainstorm New Orleans Bowl sponsors, pay to play as your team for EA Sports CFB 26, Bowl Schedule dropped, praise the CFL for football being back, Goldy the Gopher at a wedding, and guess higher or lower wedding mascot cost and much, much more!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
The Go Gopher Podcast with Mike Grimm - Episode #174 features a visit from Mark Boyle, the talented radio voice of the Indiana Pacers, who grew up in Minnesota and who is enjoying an incredible run through the NBA Playoffs From Aquarius Home Services Studio (https://aquariushomeservices.com/) Sponsored by: (https://www.sunbeltminnesota.com/ & https://www.tnma.com), Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union (https://www.affinityplus.org/gogophers) OnX (https://www.onxmaps.com/)
Episode Summary: It's National Donut Day on The Coffee Club, and things get sticky—in the best way possible. Janae and Ronnie kick off the show munching on Sandy's doughnuts and sliding into a hilarious mix of small-town charm, wild skincare experiments (hello, snail secretion cream), and heartfelt community events. The duo chat about everything from accidentally texting your boss about diarrhea (oops!) to the powerful patriotism behind a multi-city flag exchange motorcycle ride across North Dakota. You'll also meet Macy, a rising star in the station, and hear all about a food truck fest with a mission to feed more than just your belly. Sprinkle in some Rod Stewart updates, fish-related frisbee golf incidents, and pumpkin-carving smack talk, and you've got a fun, flavorful Friday episode.
From standout track and field performances to the Lynx's undefeated start, Ceci Heinen and Megan Davis break down the highs, lows and future prospects for Gopher athletes and Minnesota pro teams.
After a few weeks off Chip Scoggins, Ryan Burns and Justin Gaard are back for more college football talk! The guys recap Burnsie's epic Alaskan cruise, discuss the news out of SEC Meetings including the fight over the next College Football Playoff format and recap the first big summer recruiting for PJ Fleck and the Gophers.
The reality of knowing the wild animals on your land is knowing that they generally live on an accelerated timeline. The new crop of Mojave cottontails and rock squirrels each spring will shrink to one or two lucky buddies by late summer, with the rest succumbing to reckless road crossings and red-tail hawks and rattlesnakes . . . the local ravens feasting on the remains, if there are any. Soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver. Hosted and written by Ken Layne. Broadcasting Friday nights on KCDZ 107.7 FM in the High Desert, from Amboy to Zyzxx. Thanks for supporting this show at Patreon.com/DesertOracleSupport the show: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracleSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Go Gopher Podcast with Mike Grimm - Episode #173 features an update on the Golden Gopher football program with the head coach PJ Fleck, who makes his second-ever appearance on our podcast From Aquarius Home Services Studio (https://aquariushomeservices.com/) Sponsored by: (https://www.sunbeltminnesota.com/ & https://www.tnma.com), Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union (https://www.affinityplus.org/gogophers) OnX (https://www.onxmaps.com/)
The Go Gopher Podcast with Mike Grimm - Episode #172 features a visit with four-time Big Ten champion hammer thrower Kostas Zaltos, who broke the all-time Big Ten Championship record with his throw last weekend From Aquarius Home Services Studio (https://aquariushomeservices.com/) Sponsored by: (https://www.sunbeltminnesota.com/ & https://www.tnma.com), Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union (https://www.affinityplus.org/gogophers) OnX (https://www.onxmaps.com/)
Who's building the ultimate 2010s Gopher squad? 3 teams, 1 winner. Tune in to see who picks the best team
Our guest this time, Dario Valenza, is all that and more. Dario hales from Australia where he grew up and went to high school. He then attended two years of college but then left academia to work on working on designing yachts for, among events, the America's Cup races. Eventually he did return to college to finish his degree. He does tell us that he has a passion for design thinking and designing. As you will discover he has designed yachts, aircraft including innovative drones and even automobiles. We talk about how his over-arching passion for design thinking also helps him design functioning and successful teams. Dario is a team leader by any standard. He founded and owns a successful design and implementation company, Carbonix. Much of the work in which he is involved today is around having designed and now manufacturing long-range drones that can stay aloft and travel up to 800 Kilometers before needing refuelling. His products can and are being used for major surveying jobs and other projects that take advantage of the economic enhancements his products bring to the table. Dario and I discuss leadership and how his design-oriented mindset has helped him be a strong and effective leader. I will leave it to him to describe how he works and how he helps bring out the best in people with whom he works. About the Guest: I have a passion for design and design thinking. This is the common thread that has led me to build yachts, planes, and cars - as well as create the teams and company structures to turn visions into reality. I believe that beautiful design, as well as enabling and inspiring, is inherently valuable. Testing a new design it in the real world, particularly in competition, is a way to interrogate nature and understand the world. I spent the first decade of my career working on racing yachts as a boatbuilder, designer, construction manager, and campaign manager. My treasured achievements include being part of several America's Cup teams and pioneering full hydrofoiling for World Championship winning boats. I applied the lessons learned to other fields. This trajectory diversified into aerospace applications including drones. I work to create products that bring joy by being desirable, aesthetically pleasing, and ergonomically correct, while always adding value through effective and efficient performance. I'm always keen to share my experiences and tackle new challenges with like-minded teams. Ways to connect Dario: Main point of contact is LI: https://au.linkedin.com/in/dario-valenza-a7380a23 Carbonix URL: www.carbonix.com.au Personal website: www.dariovalenza.com 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 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 subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . 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 ** 01:20 Hi everyone. This is your host, Michael hingson, and you are listening to another episode of unstoppable mindset. And today our guest is Dario, if I'm pronouncing that right, Valenza, how do i pronounce it? Oh, good. Oh, good. I can sometimes speak the King's English really well. Dario is a person who has a great passion for design, and he's going to tell us about that. He has been involved in designing many things, from yachts to aircraft to other kinds of things, as well as teams in companies, which I think is very fascinating, that make products and bring things about. So we're going to get to all of that. Daro is in Australia, so it's early in the morning. There for you right now. But welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here. Yeah, my pleasure. Glad to be here. So what time is it over there right now? About 11am Yeah, and it's little after three here. So, yep, you're 20 hours ahead Dario Valenza ** 02:27 of us. No, here, it's Saturday, I assume. There it's Friday. It is to the confusion. Michael Hingson ** 02:33 So, so, as it's always fun to do, can you tell us about the future over the next 20 hours? 02:40 So, so far so good. Yeah, there you are. Well, Michael Hingson ** 02:43 thank you for being here and for being a part of unstoppable mindset. Let's start, if you would, by maybe you telling us a little bit about kind of the early Dario, growing up and some of those kinds of things, so that people listening and watching can get to know you a little bit better. Dario Valenza ** 03:01 Yeah, absolutely. I think the interest in how things worked was there as long as anyone can remember being exposed early on to different mechanical things and from household appliances to looking at trains and busses and cars outside. I think that all piqued my curiosity. But I remember the first time I came across the concept of a sailboat. Something clicked, or something about the way an aerofoil works, the way it can generate motion out of wind, the balance of forces, the structures, the things that all need to work for a sailboat to work. That sort of got me hooked, and then I spent every waking moment I could reading about it, doing research, making models that I'd sail across the pool, getting involved at the local sailing club, and just being hands on. And I think that's really where the passion started. So certainly, there's a general wanting to see how things work, and there's a specific aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, structures, just, I find it endlessly fascinating. And you're always learning, and Michael Hingson ** 04:10 should always be learning. I think that's one, of course, the real keys is always learning, which some people think they don't do, but and some people try very much not to do, but that's not the way to really progress in the world. So I'm glad that you do that. You've always lived in Australia. Dario Valenza ** 04:27 No, actually, born in Italy, moved here probably 10 years old, went to high school and uni here. Michael Hingson ** 04:37 Yeah, you do seem to have a little bit more of an Australian accent than an Italian one? Dario Valenza ** 04:41 Yeah, I think I was young enough when I moved that I learned the language pretty quickly. I did spend few years in New Zealand and a few years in Europe, so I think my accent is probably a little bit of a hybrid, but mostly Australian. I'd say, do you speak Italian? Yes. Funny, you get rusty at it, though, like when I go back, it probably takes me a few days to get used to speaking it, yeah, but it is in there Michael Hingson ** 05:08 which, which makes some sense. Well, so you went to high school, and did you go on to college? Dario Valenza ** 05:15 Did the first couple of years of an engineering degree, dropped out to go and do the America's Cup. Eventually went back and finished it. But really haven't spent more time working than started. Putting it that way, the things I was interested in, particularly the the advent of carbon fiber in in racing yachts, hadn't found its way into any curriculum yet. It was it was happening on the frontier in that environment. And so my judgment was you could learn more by doing it and by going to uni. Well, Michael Hingson ** 05:49 yeah, on the one hand, with school, to a large degree, it's theory, and putting it into practice is something that always brings you closer to it, which which makes sense. Well, so you, when you went to your first America's Cup, what did you were you just an observer? Were you involved in designing a yacht, or what? Dario Valenza ** 06:10 I was a boat builder. I was hands on, on the manufacturing, and that was the way in that was the the opportunity I had to actually be part of a team and prove myself over the course of the campaign, I obviously showed an interest in design, and I became more de facto part of the design team. But I really always like to sit at that interface between the designing and the building, so that there's a practical element to yes, there's a theory, yes, there's a design, there's a bunch of analysis you can do having that practical mindset of, is it easy to build? Is it practical? Is it possible to then tune it and modify it and improve it? And that actually led me to a lot of the logistical challenges of, how do you plan a build? How do you allocate time towards the things that make the biggest difference towards performance. So the journey was really from hands on boat builder to sort of logistics, to design Michael Hingson ** 07:08 well, and design is clearly been your passion overall. So that makes some sense. When did you do your first America's cut? Dario Valenza ** 07:17 So I was involved in the 2000 event in Auckland, which was the first time the Kiwis defended after winning in 95 right? Then I did 2003 also in Auckland, 2007 in Valencia. And then there was a bit of a hiatus after Valencia, because of the deed of gift match. And I was involved in a couple of teams as that transition happened. And eventually 2012 I peeled off to start my own business. Michael Hingson ** 07:44 So let's see the New Zealand won in 2000 right? Dario Valenza ** 07:48 They defended successfully in 2000 so they they won in 95 in San Diego against Dennis Connor, and it took them five years to basically set up a defense. So from 95 to 2000 and then they won, and they rolled straight into 2003 they lost in 2003 Michael Hingson ** 08:05 that was to Italy. Was it to the Swiss or to the Swiss? Right? Okay, Dario Valenza ** 08:11 even though the core of the sailing team was the former New Zealand team, the basically flag of allegiance, but yeah, the lingua team. Now, Were you successful challenger, which is amazing. Were you Michael Hingson ** 08:25 living in New Zealand in 2003 Dario Valenza ** 08:29 Yes, yeah. So when you become involved in a team, basically the whole operation camps out at a at a base in the lead up to the event. At the time, the yacht still had to be constructed in country. So in 2003 for example, I was with a Swedish team. I actually spent a little bit of time in Sweden during the construction of the yacht, and then traveled with a yacht to New Zealand, and stayed there for the duration. I asked, Michael Hingson ** 08:58 because I went to New Zealand in May of 2003 the Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind, or of the blind, asked me to come and do some speaking. It was, of course, after September 11, and I was pretty visible, so I went down and actually helped them raise something like close to $300,000 by giving a bunch of speeches around New Zealand, but I remember listening to the radio and hearing all the irate people because New Zealand lost. The government didn't put enough money into it, and we shouldn't have lost it was pretty fascinating to to to hear all of that. Dario Valenza ** 09:38 There was a campaign called the loyal campaign, just basically trying to reprimand the Kiwi sailors that affected at the end of the day. It's a professional sport. There were nationality rules, but it was really residency, so as long as they signed on with the Swiss team within a certain time. Period, it was like two years or something, and basically set up a residence in Switzerland, and they were eligible to compete. And I think there's been a history of that since the New Zealand government having Lisa supported in New Zealand, because it's certainly an investment in the national industry and tourism, everything that comes with it. And I think they did walk that back, particularly for the last event. And the latest result of that is the Kiwis defended in Spain last time around, which is again, unusual. Michael Hingson ** 10:35 Well, it was, it was fascinating to watch the races, and we watched them was before I went to New Zealand. But that's why my wife and I watched, because we knew I was going there, and it was, it was all being defended in New Zealand. And of course, they were using sails, and the yachts were just going at normal sailboat type speeds. But I know then later, so much redesign took place, and the boats started traveling significantly faster, right? Dario Valenza ** 11:08 Yeah, absolutely, there's been a change in that respect, just on the atmosphere in Auckland again, with my perspective, having, as I said, obsessed over sailing, worked my way up, got involved in campaigns, helped to put sponsors together with skippers, to get funding to build boats, and arriving in Auckland with the prospect of trialing with a team, you walk out of the airport and there's the actual boat that won the copy, 95 was sitting in The car park. There are posters. You can really see, like they called it the city of sales. And as I arrived the round the world race was stopping by in Auckland, so there was a sort of festive atmosphere around that. And you could really see people were getting behind it and getting involved. And it felt, you know, they had parades at the beginning of the event. So it was really special to be there at a time when there was maybe 12 teams. It was a big event. And to your point, they were symmetrical ballasted monohulls. So they were fairly conservative, you know, long, narrow, heavy boats. And the competition was really to eke out a one or 2% gain to have better maneuverability for match racing. And it was really down to that kind of refinement. And what happened after 2007 I mentioned a sort of hiatus, basically, two teams took each other to court, and they went back to what they call a deed of gift matches, which is the default terms that they have to abide by if they can't agree to a mutually agreeable protocol. And that deed of gift match ended up being in multi holes. So there was a catamaran and trimaran, and they were big and fast. And I think then, when the Americans won out of that, they they sort of got seduced by, let's make this about the fastest sailors and the faster boat in the fastest boats. So they went to multi holes. The next evolution was hydrofoiling Multi holes. And then once the boats are out of the water, the drag drops dramatically, and now they can go really fast. They ended up narrowly the Kiwis ended up narrowly losing in San Francisco. The Americans then defended Bermuda. The Kiwis eventually won in Bermuda. And then they in in sort of consultation with the challenge of record. That was Italians. They wanted to go back to monohulls, but they wanted them to be fast monohulls, and so they came up with this concept of a hydrofoiling monohull. So the boats now are certainly the fastest they've ever been, and the nature of the racing has changed, where it's more of a drag race than a sort of tactical match race. But it's still fascinating, because it's all about that last bit of technology, and it's all about resource management. You have so much time, you have so much budget, how do you get to the highest performance within that time that you can access, that the Sailors can get the best out of? So it's all a balance of many variables, and it's certainly tactical and strategic and very fascinating, but Michael Hingson ** 14:18 hasn't a lot of the the tactics, in a sense, gone out of it, because it's now so much, as you put it, a drag race or a speed race, that a lot of the strategies of outmaneuvering your opponents isn't the same as it used to be. Dario Valenza ** 14:37 Yeah. So if you imagine, the way you think about it is, it's a multi dimensional space. You've got all sorts of values that you can dial in, and the weighting of the values changes depending on the boat and the racing format and the weather so on a traditional monohull maneuvers are relatively cheap because the boat carries momentum. So when you tack you go. Through the eye of the wind, you lose drive for, you know, a second, three seconds, but your speed doesn't drop that much because a boat's heavy and it just powers along. And so if you have a three degree shift in the direction of the wind, it's worth tacking on that, because you'll then get the advantage of having a better angle. Similarly, if you're interacting with another boat, tacking to get out of their dirty air, or tacking to sit on top of them, is worthwhile, and so you get that the incentive is, I can spend some energy on a maneuver, because I'm going to get a gain when you have boats that are extremely fast, and we're talking three, four times faster than the wind, if the wind direction changes by three degrees, it's almost immaterial. And so it's not worth tacking on it. If you go through the dirty air of another boat, you get through it really quickly. And on the other hand, when you maneuver, you're effectively, you go from flying on the hydro force to gliding. You only have, like, a few boat lengths that you can do that for before the hull touches the water, and then you virtually stop. And so basically, the aim is you minimize maneuvers. You roll with the wind shifts. You roll with your opponent. And hence they've had to put boundaries around the course to force the boats back together, because otherwise I'd go out to a corner, do one tack and then go to the top mark. And so it's a different racing. It's still there are tactics involved, but the trade offs are different, that the cost versus reward of different tactical choices is very different. Michael Hingson ** 16:31 But the race obviously goes with the newer designs, goes a lot faster, and it isn't hours and many hours of racing as it used to be, is that right? Dario Valenza ** 16:42 It's also shorter course, so the format is kind of optimized for television, really, for, yeah, broadcast. So you have many short races, and it's it does mean that if you have a big disparity, like if one boat makes a mistake and falls a long way behind, it's over pretty quickly, because it did happen in the past where you get a boat that was outmatched or did something wrong and just spend three hours following the leader with no chance of catching up. So there's certainly a merit to having short, sharp races, but I think it's probably more physical and less cerebral, like, if you look at, yeah, the way the old boats worked, you had 17 people on there providing all the mechanical power, maneuvering, putting spinnakers up and down, dip ball driving, moving their weight around the boat. He had a tactician. They would have conversations about what's happening and react, you know, in a matter of seconds, not in a matter of milliseconds. Now you have eight people on the boat, four of them are just pedaling bikes, basically to put pressure into an accumulator to run the hydraulics. You have a helmsman on each side, and you have a trimmer on each side, and they don't cross the boat, because the boats are so fast that it's actually dangerous to get out of the cockpit. So it's very much more, I guess, closer to sort of Formula One in terms of it, you've got you've got speeds, you've got the reaction times are shorter. Everything happens more quickly, and there's certainly less interaction between the boats. Do you have Michael Hingson ** 18:19 a preference of whether you like more the old way or the newer way of doing the races and the way the boats are designed. Dario Valenza ** 18:28 If pressed, I would say I'd prefer the old way. But that's probably the bias, because I was involved more back then. Yeah. I think it's equally fascinating. And that sort of brings me to Yeah. So even you know, we'll get into how it applies to business and things like that, and it's the same problem, just with different variables. So my view with the cup was, whatever the rules are, you've got to try and win within them. And so they will change, the boat will change, the venue will change, the weather will change, budget limitations, all these things play into this multi variant problem, and your job is to balance all those variables to get the best Michael Hingson ** 19:10 outcome right in the rules. Exactly. Dario Valenza ** 19:12 Yeah. I mean, the teams do have a say. So I was, for example, in the committee that designed the rule for the catamarans that went to San Francisco, having said that what we thought we were encouraging by the rules, and what actually happened was nothing to do with each other, because once you set the rules, then the fascinating thing is how people interpret them, and they'll interpret them in ways that you can't possibly imagine, hence unintended consequences. But yeah, you have a say, but ultimately they are what they are, and the point of competing is to do well within those rules. Having said that, if they get to the point where you're just not interested anymore, then don't compete. But it is what it is. Yeah. Michael Hingson ** 19:54 So how long did you do yacht design and so on, dealing. With the cup, Dario Valenza ** 20:02 probably 15 years altogether, was 12 or so in the actual America's Cup, and a few years before that, working up to it, doing various different projects, and that's sort of in a professional capacity, getting paid before that as a passion. It's pretty much my whole settling my teens, maybe a few years before that as well. Michael Hingson ** 20:21 So what did you do after that? 20:25 I started my own business. Michael Hingson ** 20:26 There you go. Well, tell us about the business and what you what you started with. Dario Valenza ** 20:36 Yeah. So it the the aim was what we call long range aerial data capture. So fancy way of saying drones with a long range that can carry out surveys effectively. So whether it's taking photographs, video, LIDAR scans or combinations thereof, the sort of underlying motivation was the importance of data. So having come out of the America's Cup and seeing the way you develop is you interrogate what's happening with the boat and the boat and the crew and the conditions, and the more channels of information you have, the more informed decisions you can make about improving now, applying that to real world problems, to things like linear infrastructure, to mining to land management. It seemed like to me there's a gap where if you could have better aerial data, you could make better decisions. And I happened to have a tool in the design and manufacturing processes that came out of the America's Cup that would allow me to create a lightweight airframe that would have that efficiency and be able to give that range. And this was at a time when, you know, people were already starting to think of drones as a solution, though there was a lot of hype around them, but it was really all around the electronics, around multi rotors, around things that you could effectively buy and put up in the air and do a short mission wave and then land. The idea of a long range drone, other than in the military, was pretty much unexplored, and I think largely because to make it work commercially financially, you needed the range you need to be able to cover in the order of hundreds of kilometers in one flight, so that you're not having a ground crew, effectively driving the line relocating from point to point as the surveys carried out. So initially it was fairly conservative in the sense that the main focus was to set up that manufacturing capability. So basically, copy or transfer those process out of the America's Cup into a commercial setting. So making molds, curing carbon, the way you document or the way you go about it, that design process, and I was open to doing custom work to subsidize it, basically. So doing stuff again, for for sailboats, for racing, cars, for architecture, just with that composite manufacturing capability as a way to prove it and refine it. And whatever money was coming out of that was going into developing a drone airframe. And then I was fortunate enough to have a collaboration with a former colleague of mine in the cup who set up a business in Spain doing computational fluid dynamics, and he alerted me to a contract over there for a military surveillance research drone. We, by then, had an airframe that more or less we could demonstrate, and we could show that it was lighter and was more efficient, and then fly further and it had a more stable flying path and all of that. So we won that contract, we supplied that, and then out of that came the commercial offering, and it basically grew from there. Michael Hingson ** 23:50 But when did you start dealing with the drone design, the airframe and so on, 23:57 probably to 2015 Michael Hingson ** 24:00 Okay, yeah, I think I had started hearing about drones by then, and in fact, I know I had by that time, but yeah, they they were still fairly new. So how far would your drone travel? Dario Valenza ** 24:16 So we have two versions, the old electric one will do a couple of 100 kilometers, the petro hybrid one will do up to 800 and so we're really squarely in the territory of crude helicopter, smaller, small fixed wing planes like Cessnas, and we're really going into that same way of operating. So we're not so much selling the drone to a utility to do their scans. We are providing the data that comes out of the scan, and we're using the drone as our tool to get that data. And by effectively mirroring the model of the traditional sort of legacy aviation, we can offer, obviously, a lower cost, but also better data. Because we fly lower and slower, so we can get a higher resolution and more accuracy, and there's a obviously carbon footprint reduction, because we're burning about 2% of the fuel, and it's quieter and it's safer and all of that stuff. So it's really doing that close in aerial survey work over large distances the way it's currently being done, but with a better tool, Michael Hingson ** 25:21 the electric drone, you said, only goes a couple 100 kilometers, is that basically because of battery issues, Dario Valenza ** 25:27 absolutely, especially power density. So not so much energy density, but power density really how much energy you can store in the battery in terms of mass, and obviously the fact that you're not burning it off, so you're carrying the empty battery around with you. Right? Michael Hingson ** 25:45 Any interest in, or has there been any exploration of making solar powered drones? Dario Valenza ** 25:52 We've certainly looked into it, and we've developed relationships with suppliers that are developing specialized, conformal, curvy solar panels that form part of the structure of the wing. There are a couple of considerations. Most prominent is the trade off that you're making. Like if you take add solar panels to a wing, even if they're integrated in the structure, and you minimize the structural weight, they will have a mass. So call it an extra kilo. Yeah. Right now, if I were to take that extra kilo and put it in battery or in fuel, I would be better off, so I'd have more energy by doing that than by having the solar panel Michael Hingson ** 26:36 dealing on efficiency yet, yeah, Dario Valenza ** 26:37 yeah. So obviously, on a hot day, when you're flying with the sun directly above, you probably would be better. But over the course of the day, different locations, banking, etc, it's just not there yet. Net, net, particularly considering that there'll be a degradation and there'll be a maintenance that's required as the panels deteriorate and the various connections breakdown, etc. So it's not something you'd rule out. Then the secondary consideration is, when you look at our aircraft, it's fairly skinny, long, skinny wings. When you look at the area from above, there's not a lot of projected area, particularly the wings being thin and very high aspect ratio, you wouldn't really be able to fit that much area right when it comes to and then you've got to remember also that if you're generating while you're flying, your electronics have to be very different, because you have to have some way to manage that power, balance it off against the battery itself. The battery is multi cells, 12 S system, so you then have to balance that charging. So there's some complexity involved. There's a weight penalty, potentially a drag penalty. There is a Net Advantage in a very narrow range of conditions. And overall, we're just not there yet in terms of the advantage. And even if it could extend the range by a few minutes, because we have an aircraft that can fly for eight hours, doesn't really matter, yeah. Michael Hingson ** 28:04 So dealing with an electric drone again, have you ever looked into things like fuel cells as opposed to batteries? Or does it not make we have, Dario Valenza ** 28:14 and there's a company in France that we've been collaborating with, it's developing a hydrogen fuel cell, yeah? Michael Hingson ** 28:21 So I was wondering, yeah. And Dario Valenza ** 28:23 again, this is about, sort of, maybe sounds a bit conservative, but you know, during these lessons from the Americas capitals, talking about being seduced by the latest shiny thing can come at the detriment of achieving what you need to achieve today. So we're very conscious in the business in carbonics, of having this roadmap where there's a lot of nice to haves, there's a lot of capability that we want going forward, and that's everything from the remote one to many operations, detect and avoid fail safes, additional comms, all stuff that will enable us to do what we're doing today, plus x, y, z, but we need to be able to do what we can do what we have to do today. And most of the missions that we're doing, they're over a power line in the middle of nowhere. They're in relatively non congested airspace. The coordination is relatively simple. We have the ability to go beyond visual line of sight. We have the range, so it's really let's use what we have today and put all the other stuff in time and space. As the business grows, the mission grows, the customers get more comfortable, and that's a way to then maintain the advantage. But it's very easy to get sucked into doing cool R and D at the expense of delivering today. Michael Hingson ** 29:42 Yeah, it's R and D is great, but you still gotta pay the bills. Yeah, so you have worked across several industries. What's kind of the common thread for you, working across and designing in several industries? Yeah. So Dario Valenza ** 30:00 I think it's a high level problem solving is having an outcome that's very clearly defined and a rule set and a set of constraints. And the challenge is, how do you balance all those elements to deliver the best value? So whether it's, how do you design a boat within a rule to go as fast as possible? How do you develop a drone to fly as long as possible, given a certain time and budget availability? You're always looking at variables that will each have their own pros and cons, and how do you combine them so things like, you know, team size versus burn rate versus how aggressively you go to market, how do you select your missions? How do you decide whether to say yes or no to a customer based on the overall strategy? I see that as you have all these variables that you can tweak, you're trying to get an outcome. How do you balance and weigh them all to get that outcome? Michael Hingson ** 30:58 Yeah, well, you've I'm sorry, go ahead. Dario Valenza ** 31:01 I was gonna say, I mean, I have also, like, an interesting motorsport and when you look at a formula, one strategy, same thing, right? Did you carry a fuel load? Do you change tires? Do you optimize your arrow for this? It's a similar type of problem you're saying, I this is my aim. I've got all these variables. How do I set them all in a way that it gives me the best outcome? Yeah, Michael Hingson ** 31:23 and in your design and and as you construct and look at what you're doing, you decide exactly what the parameters are, and you know when you're going to change the tires, or, you know when it's time to put in more fuel or whatever. And then, see, you've got to really know the product very well, Dario Valenza ** 31:42 absolutely. And again, in the case of salvo racing, it's almost exemplary, because the rules are spelled out, and you have, it's a very artificial set of constraints, and you have a race day, you'll have your budget, and obviously you can work to increase that, but the time is what it is. And then in the rules, you actually get to trade off length versus width, versus mass versus sail area. Do I make my boat more powerful so it goes faster in strong winds, or do I make it skinnier so it goes better in light winds? You look at the history of the weather in the venue, and the teams that win are the ones that get all those mostly, right? So it's not necessarily the latest, fastest, more, most extreme solution, it's the one that best balances all these variables. Yeah, you transfer that into business, and it's a similar thing. You've got, you've got funding, you've got burn rate, you've got people, you've got customers, probably more variables, and it's a little bit more fuzzy in some cases. So you need to work harder to nail these things down. And it's a longer term. It's an open ended prospect. It's not I've just got to race on Sunday, then I can have a break for six months. It's you do it today and tomorrow and tomorrow. So it's going to be sustainable. But I the way you think about it in the abstract, it's the same, Michael Hingson ** 33:00 and you also have to keep evolving as technology grows, as as the industry grows, as demands change, or maybe better than saying as demands change, as you foresee demands changing, you have to be able to keep up with it. And there's a lot to all that. There's a lot of challenge that that someone like you has to really keep up with. It's Dario Valenza ** 33:23 a balance between leading and listening. So there's a classic Henry Ford line that if I'd asked the customer what he wanted, he would have told me a faster horse. We've fallen into the trap sometimes of talking to a customer, and they're very set about, you know, we want to use this camera to take these this resolution, at this distance, because that's what we use on a helicopter, because that's what used on a multi rotor. And you have to unpack that and say, Hang on, what data do you actually like? Because we have a different payload. We fly in a different way. So let us tell you how we can give you that solution if you tell us what we want, and I think that applies across various sort of aspects of the business. But to your point about the continuous evolution, one of the most fascinating things out of this experience of almost 10 years of sort of pioneering the drone industry is just how much the ecosystem has evolved. So when we started out, the naive assumption was we're good at making airframes. We can make really good, lightweight, efficient aircraft. We don't necessarily want to be an electronics manufacturer. It's a whole other challenge. Let's buy what we can off the shelf, put it in the aircraft for the command and control and go fly. And we very quickly realized that for the standard that we wanted in terms of being able to satisfy a regulator, that the reliability is at a certain point, having fail safes, having programmability. There was nothing out there when we had to go and design. Avionics, because you could either buy hobby stuff that was inconsistent and of dubious quality, or you had to spend millions of dollars on something out of the military, and then it didn't work commercially. And so we went and looked at cars, and we said, okay, can seems like control area network seems like a good protocol. Let's adopt that. Although some of the peripherals that we buy, like the servos, they don't speak, can so then we have to make a peripheral node that can translate from can to Rs, 232, or whatever. And we went through that process. But over the years, these suppliers that came out of hobby, came out of consumer electronics, came out of the military, very quickly saw the opportunity, and we were one of the companies driving it that hang on. I can make an autopilot module that is ISO certified and has a certain quality assurance that comes with it, and I can make it in a form factor under the price where a commercial drone company can use it. And so it really accelerated the last maybe three, four years. There's a lot of stuff available that's been developed for commercial drones that now gives us a lot more options in terms of what we buy rather than what we make. Michael Hingson ** 36:13 Well, now I have to ask, since you brought it up, does anybody use Rs 232, anymore? I had to ask. I mean, you know, Dario Valenza ** 36:21 less and less, yeah, at one point, like we use it for GPS parks, because we didn't have anything that ran on can right slowly we're replacing. So the latest version of the aircraft now is all cap, but it took a while to get there. That's Michael Hingson ** 36:37 gonna say that's a very long Rs 232, cable you have if you're going to communicate with the aircraft, that'd be I still have here some Rs 232 cables that I remember using them back in the 1980s and into the 1990s but yeah, Rs 232 Dario Valenza ** 36:57 horrendous ones was, there was a, I think it was a light LIDAR altimeter. Someone will correct me, it ran on I squared C, oh, which is the most inappropriate possible thing. And it is what it is. So all we, all we could do is shorten the wire length as much as possible and live with it until we found something better, and Michael Hingson ** 37:18 then we also had parallel cables. Yes, of course, one connected printers, Dario Valenza ** 37:26 and we have ethernet on the aircraft for the comms. Well, yeah, there's a lot of translating that we need to do. And again, I'm not an electronic engineer, but I understand enough of it to know what's good and what's not. Yeah, Michael Hingson ** 37:38 yeah. The days have gone by with all of the RS, 232, and parallel ports and all that. Now it's all USB and Ethernet and cams and other things like that which making kind of fun. Well, what other industries have you been involved in besides the drone and the boat or yacht world? Dario Valenza ** 37:56 So I've done a little bit in cinemable Things which was kind of pituitous. The last of the Star Wars prequels was filmed in Sydney, and I happened to be here for a few months between America's Cup campaigns. And there's a few boat builders that were asked to go and do fiberglass work on the set, and they recommended me to do some of the structural design work for some of the sets. I don't think I was credited, but it was fun. Again, not something I planned to do long term. It just happened to come up, and I did it for about three months. As I said, a little bit in motor sport, more as a hobby, but as an interest. But we've made in the early days of carbonics, we made spoilers and wings and bits and pieces for cars when we were getting going, but mainly the sailing of the drones, really, because I've been in the drones now for 10 years. So right? Michael Hingson ** 38:51 What? Why did you switch? Or maybe, why is it the wrong answer? But what made you switch from doing yachts to drones, and how did the drone story come about? Dario Valenza ** 39:05 Yeah, so I mentioned the angle of the importance of data, looking for a real world problem where data was going to make a difference, and having the right so that not a solution in search of a problem, but the right solution for this problem, saying, if we can design an airframe that can do this, there's an obvious advantage and an obvious saving that that would make a difference to the world that has a big market. Now that's the theory, then to take the plunge. It was a bit of a combination of things. It was being beholden to the unpredictable movements of the cup, where your career depends on who wins and where it goes, and as a young single man, that's fantastic once you're trying to get married and have a family, becomes a little bit more of a problem. So again, starting your own business doesn't exactly give you stability. Cheap but more stable, I guess. And really that combination of an opportunity, being able to say I can actually see if I can make this work, and see what happens, wanting to be located in one place, I guess, looking for variety as well, and knowing that, you know, I still could have contact with the Americas Cup World, because I said I was doing custom work, and we had people from the cup working in carbonics. But it's really that point where you say, Do I want to keep following the circus around the world, or do you want to try and do my own thing and see how that goes? And I can always go back. And the aim is, you know, once you're committed, then you sort of tend to try and make it work no matter what, and it becomes the new aim, and that's what you put your energy into. Michael Hingson ** 40:52 I had a guest on unstoppable mindset named Dre Baldwin, and Dre was a professional basketball player for nine years. He went to high school, was on the bench the whole time, went to college, played in college pretty well, but wasn't really noticed until he went to a camp where people could try out and be scouted by professionals who wouldn't come and see you because you weren't famous enough to be seen just by them coming to look for you. But he got a video, and he got some good suggestions, and anyway, he eventually made that into a nine year career. And I asked him, when we talked, why did you end the career? Why did you leave and start a business? And the business he started was up your game LLC, and it's all about helping people up their game in business and so on. And of course, he does it all in the sports environment. But I asked him why he left, and one of the things that he said was it, what people don't know is it's not just the games themselves and the basketball that you play. It's all the other stuff. It's all the fact that if you're going to really do it and be reasonably well, you need to go to the gym a lot, not just when they tell you to practice, but you got to take the initiative and do it on your own. You have to do other things. And he said, I just got to the point where I didn't want to do that, all that invisible part of it anymore. And so he left and started his own business, and has been very successful, but it was an interesting answer. And in a sense, I hear, you know what you're saying. It's really where you're going to go, and what is, what's really going to interest you, which is what has to be part of whatever you do? Dario Valenza ** 42:34 Yeah, that all makes sense. I think, in my experience, I've never not had an obsession, so to speak. So yeah, with the sailing absolutely like, if you want to be in the America's Cup, it can't be a day job. You have to be committed. You have to be able to concentrate, innovate again, if you're I wasn't an athlete on the boat, so it wasn't necessarily about going to the gym, but certainly doing research, doing testing, working on the boat overnight before I went out the next day. It is a competition, so that the longer, the harder you work, assuming you still keep your performance up, the better you're going to do. So it was an obsession. I accepted that I never it never occurred to me that I don't want to keep doing it right. It was really the logistics. It was thinking, because of the cup had gone to court, we'd had the deed of gift match. Everything had been on hold for a while. It got going again, and the rules changed and there were fewer teams. I'd actually spent a bit of time fundraising for the team that had come out of Valencia to keep it going until the eventual San Francisco cup. So that was interesting as well, saying that, you know, is it getting the reception that I hoped it would, in terms of people investing in it and seeing the value, and kind of looking at it and saying, Okay, now I've got to move to San Francisco the next one, who knows where it's going to be, the format and all those things, you just sort of trade it off and say, Well, if I can make a go of something where I can do it in my hometown, it can be just as interesting, because the technical challenges is just as fascinating. And it's really about, can I create this little environment that I control, where I can do the same fun stuff that I was doing in the cup in terms of tech development, but also make it a business and make a difference to the world and make it commercially viable. And that was really the challenge. And saying that, that was the motivation, to say, if I can take the thing that interests me from the cup and apply it to a commercial technological challenge, then I'll have the best of the best of both worlds. Michael Hingson ** 44:44 What? What made you really go into doing drones after the yacht stuff? Dario Valenza ** 44:52 So yeah, certainly that aerial data capture piece, but also the it's very announced. I guess. So most of the work that I was doing in the cup was around aeroelastic optimization, lightweight structures, which really dynamics, yeah. And so, you know, a yacht is a plane with one wing in the water and one wing in the air. It's all fluids. The maths is the same, the physics is the same, the materials are the same. If you do it well in the cup, you win. If you do it well in drones, you win also. But you win by going further and being more efficient and economical at doing these missions. And so it's sort of like having this superpower where you can say, I can make this tool really good that's going to give me an advantage. Let's go and see if that actually makes a difference in the market. Michael Hingson ** 45:44 Well, I mean, as we know, the only difference really, between water and air is that the molecules are further apart in air than they are in water. So why? It really isn't that much different? He said, being a physicist and picking on chemists, but you know, I do understand what you're saying. So when did you actually start carbonics? Was that when you went into the Drone Dario Valenza ** 46:05 World? So the business itself early 2012 and as I said, those are a few years there where we're doing custom work. And as it happened, I ended up supplying to New Zealand because we built an A class catamaran, which is effectively a little America's Cup boat for the punters, kind of thing that did well in some regattas. It caught the attention of the team New Zealand guys. They decided to use them as a training platform. We did a world championship where they were skipping the boats the carbonics built did really well in that sort of top five spots got a bunch of commercial orders off the back of that, which then brought some money into subsidize the drones, etc, etc. So by the time we were properly so the first time we flew our airframe would have been, you know, 2015 Michael Hingson ** 46:55 but nobody has created an America's Cup for drones yet. So there's a project for you. Dario Valenza ** 47:01 They're all sort of drone racing, so I'm not surprised. Yeah, and I think again, it's really interesting. So when you look at motorsport and yacht racing in the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s it really was a test bet, because you had to build something, go compete with it, learn from it, repeat. And you'd get, you know, the case of motorsport, traction control, ABS, all that stuff. In the case of sailing, that the use of, you know, modern fiber materials for ropes and structures, that was really sort of the cauldron where the development happened. And I think that was sort of the result of an analog world, so to speak, where you had to build things to know. I think now, with better compute and a more sophisticated role that simulations can play, it's still there is value in competition, but I think it's done in a different way. You're doing it. The key is to iterate virtually as much as possible before you build something, rather than building as many things as possible and doing the development that way. Michael Hingson ** 48:13 Well, here's an interesting Oh, go ahead, yeah. Dario Valenza ** 48:16 So I think that affects, certainly, how sport is seen in terms of there's probably more emphasis on the actual athletic competition, on the technology, because there are just other areas now where that development is happening, and SpaceX drones, there are more commercial places where control systems, electronic structures are really being pushed well before it was mainly in sport. Michael Hingson ** 48:45 Well, here's a business question for you. How do you identify value that is something that you uniquely can do, that other people can't, and that here's the big part, people will pay for it, Dario Valenza ** 49:01 cost per kilometer of scan is really my answer in the case of carbonics, saying you want to get a digital twin of a power transmission line over 800 kilometers. You can do that with a helicopter, and it's going to cost 1000s of dollars, and you're going to burn tons of fuel, and you can only get so close, etc. So you can only do it in visual conditions, and that's sort of the current best practice. That's how it's done. You can do it with satellites, but you can't really get in close enough yet in terms of resolution and independent on orbits and weather. You can do it by having someone drive or walk along the line, and that's stupendously inefficient. You can do it with multi rotor drones, and then, yeah, you might be able to do five kilometers at a time, but then you got to land and relocate and launch again, and you end up with this big sort of disparity of data sets that go stitch together by the time you add that all up. It's actually more expensive than a helicopter. Or you could do it with a drone like. Fly for 800 kilometers, which is making it Yes, and making a drone that can fly for 800 kilometers is not trivial, and that's where the unique value sits. And it's not just the airframe that the airframe holds it all up, but you have to have the redundancies to command and control, the engineering certifications, the comms, the stability, the payload triggering and geo tagging. So all of that stuff has to work. And the value of carbonics is, yes, the carbon fiber in the airframe, but also the the team ethos, which, again, comes out of that competition world, to really grab the low hanging fruit, make it all work, get it out there and be flexible, like we've had missions with stuff hasn't gone to plan, and we've fixed it, and we've still delivered the data. So the value is really being able to do something that no one else can do. Michael Hingson ** 50:54 So I assume that you're still having fun as a founder and the owner of a company, 51:02 sometimes, Michael Hingson ** 51:05 more often than not, one would hope, Dario Valenza ** 51:07 Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean, obviously there's a huge amount of pride in seeing now we're 22 people, some of certainly leaders in the field, some of the best in the world, the fact that they have chosen to back the vision, to spend years of their professional life making it happen, according to the thing that I started, I mean that that's flattering and humbling. There's always a challenge. It's always interesting. Again, having investors and all that you're not it's not all on my shoulders. People that are also invested, literally, who have the same interests and we support each other. But at the same time, it's not exactly certain. In terms of you're always working through prices and looking at what's going to happen in a day a year, six months, but you sort of get used to it and say, Well, I've done this willingly. I know there's a risk, but it's fun and it's worth it, and we'll get there. And so you do it Michael Hingson ** 52:10 well, you're the you're the visionary, and that that brings excitement to it all. And as long as you can have fun and you can reward yourself by what you're doing. It doesn't get any better than that. Dario Valenza ** 52:26 So they tell me, yeah, how do you absolutely, how do you Michael Hingson ** 52:31 create a good, cohesive team? Dario Valenza ** 52:36 Values, I think, are the base of them would be very clear about what we are and what we aren't. It's really interesting because I've never really spent any time in a corporate environment, nor do I want to. So keeping that informal fun element, where it's fairly egalitarian, it's fairly focused, we're not too worried about saying things how they are and offending people. We know we're all in it together. It's very much that focus and common goal, I think, creates the bond and then communication like being absolutely clear about what are we trying to do? What are the priorities? What are the constraints? And constantly updating each other when, when one department is having an issue and it's going to hold something up, we support each other and we adjust accordingly, and we move resources around. But yeah, I think the short answer is culture you have to have when someone walks in, there's a certain quality to the atmosphere that tells you what this team is about, right? And everyone is on their page, and it's not for everyone. Again, we don't demand that people put in their heart and soul into 24/7 but if you don't, you probably don't want Michael Hingson ** 53:56 to be there. Yeah, makes sense. So what kind of advice would you give to someone who's starting out in a career or considering what they want to do with their lives? Dario Valenza ** 54:08 Where do I start? Certainly take, take the risks while you're young and independent, you don't have a lot to lose. Give it a go and be humble. So getting my experience going into the cup like my approach was, I'll clean the floors, I'll be the Gopher, I'll work for free, until you guys see some value, like I'm it's not about what am I going to get out of this? It's how do I get involved, and how do I prove myself? And so being open and learning, being willing to put in the hours. And I think at one point there was a comment during the trial that he doesn't know what he's doing, but he's really keen, and his attitude is good. And I think that's that's how you want to be, because you can learn the thing you. That you need to have the attitude to be involved and have have a go. Michael Hingson ** 55:05 Have fun. Yeah, you have to decide to have fun. Dario Valenza ** 55:14 Yeah, absolutely. You have to be interested in what you're doing, because if you're doing it for the money, yes, it's nice when you get the paycheck, but you don't have that passion to really be motivated and put in the time. So right by this is that the Venn diagram right, find something you're interested in, that someone is willing to pay you for, and that you're good at, not easy, but having that openness and the humble and saying, Well, I'm don't try and get to the top straightaway, like get in, prove yourself. Learn, improve, gain skills, and probably, in my case, the value of cross pollination. So rather than sort of going into one discipline and just learning how it's done and only seeing that, look at the analogous stuff out there and see how you can apply it. Yeah. So again, from from boats to drones, from cars to boats, from really racing to business, abstract the problem into what are we trying to solve? What are the variables? How's it been done elsewhere, and really knowing when to think by analogy and when to think from first principles, Michael Hingson ** 56:23 that makes sense. And with that, I'm going to thank you. We've been doing this for an hour. My gosh, is life fun or what? But I really appreciate it. Well, there you go. I appreciate you being here, and this has been a lot of fun. I hope that all of you out there watching and listening have liked our podcast episode. Please let us know. I'd appreciate it if you'd email me. Michael h i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I B, e.com, or go to our podcast page, which is w, w, w, dot Michael hingson, that's m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, O, n.com/podcast, and I would ask you how, how can people reach out to you? If they'd like to reach out to you and maybe learn more about what you do, maybe join the team? Dario Valenza ** 57:09 Yeah, probably the easiest way would be LinkedIn, just Dario Valencia. Otherwise, my email is just Dario D, A, R, I, o@carbonics.com.au.au, Michael Hingson ** 57:21 being Australian, and Valenc spelled V, A, Dario Valenza ** 57:25 l e n z, A, but the email is just dario@carbonics.com.au You don't need to know how to spell my last name, right? Yeah, sorry for the LinkedIn. It'll be Dario Valencia, V A, l e n z A, or look at the carbonics profile on LinkedIn, and I'll be one of the people who works. There you Michael Hingson ** 57:43 go. Well again, this has been fun, and we appreciate you, and hope that people will reach out and want to learn more. If you know of anybody who might make a good guest, or if any of you watching or listening out there might know of anyone who would be a good guest for unstoppable mindset, I sure would appreciate it if you'd let us know, we really value your help with that. We're always looking for more people to be on the podcast, so please don't hesitate. And also, wherever you're listening or watching, we sure would appreciate it if you give us a five star rating. We really appreciate your views, especially when they're positive, but we like all the comments, so however you're listening and so on, please give us a five star rating and let us know how we can even do better next time. But Dario, again, I want to thank you. Really appreciate you being here with us today. This has been a lot of fun, and I'm glad I learned a lot today. So thank you very much. 58:37 My pleasure. You **Michael Hingson ** 58:43 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. 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Last week we started our tale of Pizza delivery man turned bank robbing hostage, Brian Wells. We ended at his ending and asked the question WHO WAS BEHIND THIS HEINOUS ACT? Brian?? We think not ! SO after watching "Evil Genius" on Netflix and critiquing multiple podcasts , here we are this week to delivery you ALLLLLL the messy details of the group of people who put this plot together and WHY they chose our boy brain to be the "GOPHER" if you will As always follow us on the stuff Merch Store- http://tee.pub/lic/doEoXMI_oPI Patreon- https://www.patreon.com/Artandjacobdoamerica Website- https://artandjacobdoamerica.com/ Network- https://podbelly.com/ Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/artandjacobdoamerica YouTube Channel- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0rT6h3N2pWtlkxaqgIvaZw?view_as=subscriber Twitter- https://twitter.com/ArtandJacobDoA1 Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/artandjacobdoamerica/ ALSO! Make sure you're checking out our sponsor https://cavemancoffeeco.com
The Go Gopher Podcast with Mike Grimm - Episode #171 features a preview of the Big Ten Track and Field Championships with head coach Matt Bingle, and a visit from all-time Gopher great Darrell Thompson on Bolder Options From Aquarius Home Services Studio (https://aquariushomeservices.com/) Sponsored by: (https://www.sunbeltminnesota.com/ & https://www.tnma.com), Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union (https://www.affinityplus.org/gogophers) OnX (https://www.onxmaps.com/)
Chip Scoggins, Ryan Burns and Justin Gaard continue their Gopher Legends series with former quarterback great Adam Weber! Adam talks about growing up with football, what brought him to the U and his career that saw more coaching changes than perhaps any other time in Gopher history. Adam and the guys also discuss some career highlights and his time back on the sideline coaching before moving into a "normal career."
The Go Gopher Podcast with Mike Grimm - Episode #170 features a visit with former Gopher tight end Ben Utecht, a Super Bowl winner who released his new book "The Champion's Creed" this week From Aquarius Home Services Studio (https://aquariushomeservices.com/) Sponsored by: (https://www.sunbeltminnesota.com/ & https://www.tnma.com), Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union (https://www.affinityplus.org/gogophers) OnX (https://www.onxmaps.com/)
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