Battery Insiders Reflection - Battery Related Events

0:00Transcript

0:00Hello, Simon. Welcome back, everybody. Thanks for joining us to all of our listeners. And well, Simon, how's it going? Going pretty well. It's extremely sunny over here, which is lovely. The weather is beautiful. You're in proper summer now here in Munich. How about yourself? Oh, it's a very proper summer here in New York. It is swampy, muggy, but also hot. And today it's sunny, but I've heard that August is what I should really prepare for mentally. But I find myself often on the move these days. So if fate will have it my way at all, I'll get a break from that muggy summer in New York in August, but time will tell. We'll see. You will know in the next episode. Yes, I know. Check back. Check back on that. That's not the cliffhanger. Cliffhanger for episodes. Who knew? What will the weather be like? What will the weather be? Oh, man. Well, some of that travel has involved some battery conferences, actually for both of us. How funny. The conversation with our crew on Clubhouse was, you know, focused on the European Battery Show. So please tell us what were your highlights from that conversation?

1:34It sounds like it was an incredible time. Battery associates folks got together. That's really exciting. Always. Maybe one day we'll be able to do that. LOL. Have yet to meet. Have a nice working relationship in the works. But yes. Well, how was it? Yeah, it's been great. You know, who doesn't know about this or hasn't listened to the full recording, the European Battery Show. You know, it's one of these really big flagship events, I would say, in European batteries. It's kind of in the name. But yeah, it's been one of my personal favorites. I was fortunate to attend last year as well. It just brings together lots of different, you know, suppliers and stakeholders around the battery space. So from exhibition, and there's also quite a big conference, which you can also attend, which I personally didn't attend. I only attended exhibition, but this was enough for me. Because it's, you know, for me, it's just a great opportunity to meet lots of people who you only have seen on Zoom for the rest of the year. So that's just really, really nice. And, you know, you meet familiar faces, but also meet many new people. So I think this is my personal highlight. I think from topics, it was quite interesting to see just, you know, some of the, I think one thing we observed was the Battery Associates team. I was fortunate to attend with two of my colleagues, Barreth and Maiano.

2:50One thing we observed was a lot of new, you know, companies from other industries moving to the battery field, which makes sense, you know, looking at pharmaceuticals, for example, and others. So now you find maybe some of these, you know, names, you know, from other industries or other domains and also getting active in the battery field. So that's interesting. You know, there was quite a bit of a presence from the UK, this British Ford, Thumberland, et cetera, Amte. That was interesting to see that, try to push there. But yeah, I mean, of course, lots of other stakeholders. And also maybe just to comparison to last year, I think last year, November was the last one. So not that long ago, and this one has definitely has been much more busy. So last time there have been stands, which were empty because of COVID and restrictions and things. And this time, I think everyone was there, wanted to be there. So this was really, really great that this could happen.

3:43And then I think we were just a really quick one. There was also another conference in Hanover, which Mariam attended and she was there and presenting there. She shared a bit more. I'm not sure if there's anything you want to share from this, Bavia. Otherwise you can maybe also share from your conference you went to in the US. Yes. Benchmark Mineral Intelligence hosted a US-based conference on battery gigafactories, which I was, it was really interesting. By the end of 48 hours of that, I was like, dang, I can really talk about anode and cathode a lot. But it was really, you know, in the name minerals. So the focus was a lot more on the granular level of literally like, here's a session on nickel. Here's the session on cobalt and lithium. Speaking of which, I know Mark attended one in Arizona that was focused on lithium specifically. This one was also interesting. We didn't have the same diversity in terms of like, you know, as far of a range, you know, like pharmaceuticals there, there were a few companies that, you know, who are kind of networking and introducing themselves as, yes, we work on X. We don't really, this may not overtly seem so relevant to batteries, but this is what we're doing. But that, so we had a little bit of that, but a lot of suppliers, a lot of focus on sourcing. You know, I think one thing our, our clubhouse crew really drove home was that there's a big emphasis on talent and that did come up at the conference as well. But I will say, I think our biggest takeaway was supply chain. You know, just, and I'm, it's curious to talk about, I'm curious about this very, like yours was in Germany. Miriam went to one in Hanover. Mark went to one in Arizona. There, you know, how, what's that conversation like in the UK? You know, these conferences are global, but I mean, in the case of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, they were definitely US focused and, you know, just where do, where do our gig or gigafactories stand relative to, you know, like Asian gigafactories, specifically those in China in terms of like just output and like scale. So really interesting, fun or interesting, I think a specific tidbit here is that this is one of the few, few issues in the US that is that truly requires and receives bipartisan support.

6:17And so we actually had senators from both sides of the aisle participate in this, whether it was through an in-person or a video visit, which I thought was really interesting and just, you know, kind of telling that, okay, that where priorities about this may go, of course, both sides' priorities may be different. But we did have representation from Michigan, from Nevada come through big, big mining state, big lithium state, big opportunity for a workforce to engage, to engage a workforce there, as well as a few other regions. But I would say Michigan, Nevada came up. And then, of course, leaders in our in the US Senate who focus on this or lead the committee on energy matters. So that was really exciting to see. We also had government and policy officials from a lot of big companies, whether, you know, GM, Audi, like OEMs, and of course, Tesla was there as well. So that was really exciting to have insight from. And yeah, I think like, overall, a really fantastic event that got people together. You're so right. It's finally feeling. I mean, we're not post I know don't mean to say we're post pandemic. It's it's a thing COVID but, but it was nice to be able to get people together. It was really big, I would probably say, I don't, I don't know what's really big, but a good few hundred people for 500 at least. And so, fantastically done. And just a bit ironic, I will end on this that I wrap my point up that it was it was a UK organization hosting a conference on US gigafactories and telling and us realizing we need to figure a lot out. So that was just a bit funny whenever that did hit throughout the, throughout the event.

8:11That's great. No, thank you for sharing that. And yeah, it's, it's interesting. I'll see the different focus, right at different events and different regions. And I think, yeah, as you said, there's many to come and maybe just one kind of a bit of a plug as well to talk about the, the battery day we have coming, which of course our flagship event once a year, you know, we're hosting another third time, which that's really also how battery associates started in some way, right through this event in September, 2020. And yeah, it's just really, really exciting to have another one of these. We have been growing quite a bit. I just looked at numbers here. I think in the first year we had about, what is it? I think we had maybe about 300, a bit less, I think registrants, maybe about 200 or so. So yeah, I think 200 in the first year, then about 300 or something, but more the last year. And this year we're looking at, you know, we already have over a thousand, I think, registered people on LinkedIn, et cetera, for the event. So quite a few people. So yeah, very excited for that. And lots of interesting panels and discussions to come. So I just want to invite everyone to mark the 23rd of September to not miss out and see us there in video as well, not just on audio. Yes, please do join us. Mark your calendars, September 23rd.

9:23Share this podcast, rate this podcast. We're on Spotify and would love any support that we can get. We know that we have gathered a good number of people. But as we all know, the more you listen, the more you'll be curious about batteries, the more you'll want to learn. And so we'd really just love to pull more people in to get these conversations going. Just because as we've discussed in this session alone, it's not just a battery industry. It's very cross-industry, intersectional, and requires support from multiple sectors. And so we're hoping that we can help push forward the button and gain traction in that area. And with that, we'll wrap it up for today and we'll look forward to next time. Simon, any inklings on what our topic might be? Simon Sorgers No, but we have some exciting, something exciting in the works, but I think we cannot announce it yet. But yeah, hopefully one of these other great conversations start us on a really exciting topic in the battery space. So yeah, looking forward to bringing more speakers for the next session.

10:32Perfect. Well, if you're listening, keep an eye out and we hope you'll join us next time on Clubhouse and later on, on Spotify. Sounds great. See you then. And anywhere else you listen to podcasts and please don't forget to follow and rate us on these different platforms to really help psych with them.