The three engineers are on a mission to supply a book to every Primary school in the UK and encourage readers and children to join Scout’s team (the book protagonist) to help better the planet.
Let me introduce you to the 3 Engineers. They are:
Nick – Chartered Senior Systems Engineer - 10 years at Babcock International
Matt - Chartered Assistant Chief Engineer – 14 years at Babcock International – Lead Technical lead for several large programmes
Jon – Chartered Project Engineer – RWG Renewables
Katherine Ann Byam 0:00
Have you heard about the adventures of scout? The three engineers have applied the science and the tools and technology of engineering to their process of creating a children's book, I interviewed the three engineers and I asked them what they would change about the education system. Here's what they said.
Matt 0:17
I think the first thing we have to do is figure out what's important, we'd have to identify what's really important, is it that children need to be able to spout off facts in a about a specific subject in a exam, or is it that we need to teach our children how to live their lives as best they can.
Katherine Ann Byam 0:43
The Adventures of scout is one of the most interesting and engaging children's books I've had a look at recently. And it really encourages positive action positive momentum for the planet. Tune into this really insightful episode, and give the three engineers and the Adventures of Scout a follow, make sure to go download or buy your copy of The Adventures of Scout today. This is season five, the great debates of our times, Season Five will be centred around the great debates. And we will be comparing and contrasting different viewpoints on various topics that are consuming the public discourse at present. The reason I decided to take this approach is because we or at least many of us, are losing the skill of debate. And I think this is an essential skill for us all to practice once more. I don't see how we get to the point of saving the world and saving our planet. If we don't know how to discuss our differences. I also think that the solution to most of our challenges is somewhere in the spectrum of views, but never a type of extreme. I will be working with guests to curate the content and discuss beforehand, I will understand their positions their areas of genius, and navigate my questions around that so that the conversation is challenging and stimulating. Without being combative. I hope you enjoy season five of where ideas launch the Sustainable Innovation podcast. The three engineers are on a mission to supply a book to every primary school in the UK and encourage readers and children to join scouts team, the book protagonist to help better the planet. Let me introduce you to the three engineers they are. Nick is a chartered senior systems engineer at Babcock International. And Matt is a chartered Assistant Chief Engineer, also at Babcock International. John is a chartered project engineer at RW G renewables. John is not currently available with us today. But the rest of the team is here. So Welcome guys to where ideas launch. Hello, nice to meet you, Katherine, great to have you both. So let's get started. So can I just say this is the first time I'm interviewing a group of men doing a sustainable project. So typically, I get groups of women or I get women who are really trying to make change happen. But I don't often get recommended men who are making changes in this space, and doing it as a side gig. So what are your thoughts on that?
Nick 3:09
I think from our perspective, we've done it just independently, we didn't really consider too much beforehand what we were going to do we got together as a team to do something different. And what happened was we quickly realised that what was important to us and our values, were the environment, health and well being and technology. And then we looked at the amount of time that we had and resources to be able to dedicate that to this idea. And that's how the book was born.
Katherine Ann Byam 3:39
So tell me a little bit about the project and what drove you out of your niche. So you're both working in sort of big engineering type operations? What made it happen if I direct my question to Matt, perhaps,
Matt 3:54
Our work, we were all working together in the same place at the time. And on Friday afternoons, we used to have Friday afternoon off, so we didn't have to work past 1230. Normally, we'd just all meet up and hang out and go to the pub or something like that. And one day, we sort of said, Oh, we should probably do something more important with our time other than just sink a few beers. So I set up five meetings, basically I said, right, instead of, we're still gonna go to the pub, we'll have a purpose to it other than just socialising and try and figure out whether we're going to do something different and meaningful with that spare time that we've got. And yeah, that's just out of those five meetings. That's how Nick, John and I sort of formed together as the three engineers.
Katherine Ann Byam 4:39
And do you guys have kids?
Nick 4:41
Yep, I've got a 13 year old.
Matt 4:44
Yeah, I've got a six year old and a three year old.
Katherine Ann Byam 4:49
And what sort of stimulated you from doing this project from that perspective. What were you seeing in terms of the kind of material or curriculum that your kids are experiencing that made, you want to do something a little bit different. Maybe I go to Nick this time,
Nick 5:06
We didn't really set out, like we said, to come up with books, we came up with lots of different ideas. And as engineers, we've got lots of processes and tools. So we've decided that whatever we do, will stick to those processes and tools, and we'll basically map out an idea. So we came up with lots of ideas, scored them in a matrix. And I think each of us had individual sort of ambitions. So I wanted to improve career advice to school because mine wasn't as good as I had hoped, Matt really liked tech stuff. So he really liked the idea of having forums or websites and blogs and things like that. And John came from a different angle where he wanted to design sustainable products. And combining and merging all of those ideas together, I think Matt came up with the idea of having how can we have the biggest impact. And we all decided that with the time that we had, if we could pull it off, if we could write some kids books, about some of the topics that were personal to us. So for example, I particularly don't like litter, I pick up litter, and Matt is from sort of from the countryside down south. So he really remembers his childhood as like with bees so we kind of tried to link them all to our sort of personal touches. So yeah, so
Matt 6:13
At the time, when we formed back in 2018, my three year old daughter, she wasn't even born, my son, we were in the midst of like, he was just consuming literature, like reading stories to him. It was like dozens of stories every day. And I think that's where one of the ideas that well, we had a couple of ideas in our Scoring Matrix were to write children's stories. One that it's about solving problems, one that was for promoting women in engineering. They were the two ideas. Yeah, that sort of they say it sort of came about because my, I could see how my son was just consuming information, and really thinking about what was being told in these stories. And like Nick said, we wanted our project to make the biggest impact. And by, like, sort of feeding in those messages at such an early age, you can have an impact, not just at that age range, but like a three year old is more than happy to tell an adult to pick up litter because it's bad. So teaching their parents, their teachers, their siblings about this message. We just felt well, why wouldn't we focus on that area. And so that's where it did influence from my kids anyway,
Katherine Ann Byam 7:35
I've just recorded an episode with Susan Krumdieck. She's a transition engineering specialist, she's based out of Heriot-Watt in Scotland, in Orkney. And one of the things that she talks about in her work and in the book that she's written, actually, is that engineers are really the engine room of the of the economy, even though probably engineers don't even see it that way. And she applies this to sort of past major shifts that we've had to make. So things like I don't know, solving water problems, or different types of solutions that we've had over the time of our evolution, and how engineers are actually the ones who make stuff happen, who apply certain methodologies, certain scientific principles, etc. Whereas economists operate more like sharman. It's a really interesting episode. And I thought she was really funny. But I wanted to tap into this, because you mentioned that you have a Scoring Matrix, and you had this sort of discipline of how you were going to tackle this problem. Tell me a little bit about those tools that you've been using.
Nick 8:48
Matt is a pure systems engineer, he's got lots of experience. So he brought to the table Venn diagrams and kind of mind mapping exercises where we could really hone down on a particular idea, but also really expand and understand how wide a range if we're looking at our environment, everything that we could possibly think of regarding the environment to make sure that the stories, made sure they link consistently back to what we wanted to do. I suppose moving a bit forward on from once we captured the idea, we had no idea how to write books. We are all engineers, we prefer maths over English. I'm sure Matt will agree. And we decided to try and design it. So we had no idea how to rhyme. So we went to some bookshops. So we spent four months basically writing up all the books that we could find the best rhyming books. And then we did some pattern analysis and sort of book structure and syllable counts on all of the rhyme such that we could then try and find our own winning formula. And yeah, that was a really fantastic way for us to learn because we were then able to sort of critique our work as we went along with some form of confidence that if we kept that formula, we will have something at the end we'd be happy with.
Katherine Ann Byam 10:01
Oh my god, I've never heard of someone writing a book using a mathematical algorithm. You sound like my partner who's a data scientist. Let's go into a bit about the journey. So in terms of conception to production, you talked about the four men sort of doing the research and background. But I think doing an illustration and children's book takes a bit longer than that. So tell us about that journey from conception to production.
Matt 10:24
Yeah, so the illustrations were a funny one. Really, the original plan was to do everything off of our own backs. If we needed to learn a new skill, learn a new piece of software, find something new, we would do it ourselves. illustrations, when we first tackled illustrations were like, right, okay, let's, let's have a go ourselves. So we did actually do some drawings ourselves. And I think I bought like digital, like art pads that you can get to plug into your computer for, I bought two of them, one for me, and one for Nick and John sort of share between them. So we could have a go at digital artwork, and we produce some pictures. But it takes so long, it's such a like if you haven't been doing it and the hours that you have to put in to master it and to get great at it just weren't good enough. And it didn't really live up Nick, did it to our expectations, we had a picture in our head of what it should look like. And then when we tried to draw it, it was appalling. It was abysmal. So we went through like looking at different illustrators. So we just sort of, we wanted to choose a style. So we had a couple of friends who are into illustration. And I have a friend of a friend that I talked with, and we did a couple of sort of meet and greets, and, oh, here's our idea. Draw, what do you think this would look like? And it didn't quite work out, letting the artist sort of just finding an artist and letting them create it. So we decided to trawl the internet basically for styles that we liked. So we almost did a bit of a, not a Scoring Matrix, but we assessed and evaluated what it was we liked about different types of illustration, and different colour palettes and things like that. And we we came together and we sort of chose, it's really difficult to find a common style that we all liked between the three of us. But we had some like ideas that we thought yeah, it needs to be bright. It needs to be detailed. We like the detail it needs to be digital art not sort of natural art, like drawn. And then, Nick, through hours of trawling the internet, found a lady in Georgia, in the country, Georgia. And we reached out to her, we had a look at her website. And it was fantastic. And then I don't know how many months you spent Nick trying to bend her arm into taking on our project.
Nick 12:57
Six months, got turned down four times.
Matt 13:01
So yeah, we were persistent. And we finally got her on contract to do the first one. And, yeah, we couldn't have been happier in terms of how she visualised Scout. Lots of what you see in the illustrations is actually in the first book, especially is coming from us. So we have designed what it should look like in the perspective. And then we sort of do a really naff pencil sketch, and then send it to the illustrator. And then she does a better pencil sketch, we sort of back and forth on that. And then she does a colour digital image that's sort of blocky, so we know what colours she's going to use. And then when we're happy with that, she will then do the full detailed drawing like, over 40,000 brush strokes per picture. Basically, there's hundreds of 1000s of brushstrokes digital brushstrokes in the book. The second book, we've let her have a bit more creative flair, let her do her own thing a bit more. We've got our working relationship going. But the interesting thing is we've never physically spoken to her. So Nick does it all through Facebook Messenger. So yeah,
Nick 14:18
Hundreds and hundreds of texts a day. But we we do also to add to that we've got a really detailed kind of storyboard description. So down to almost exactly what the characters are kind of like doing, their kind of like expressions, easter eggs, and because we design and wrote all three books first, we were then able when we came to the illustrations to think we're way ahead and be able to basically make references to each book throughout each book. So hopefully when we have our second book out, people will certainly see and start spotting those kin of easter eggs and kind of correlations between them.
Katherine Ann Byam 14:55
That is brilliant though and the illustrations are absolutely wicked. So for my listeners, if you really want to go check out these books, they are awesome. They're fantastic visual content as well as, you know, reading content. So let's move to some of the critical reviews you've received so far. So I know that you're working with schools, and you're having some some different types of collaborations with with education facilities and buddies. What has been sort of the feedback you're getting and what's garnered the most interest?
Nick 15:25
We've had, we've had a bit of a yeah, getting feedback from, our perspective, who are not authors is quite tricky. And it's kind of hard to take, I think we first sent our scripts out to some librarians who literally tore them apart. And said they didn't rhyme, said, why have you got a poison dart frog as a friend and kind of really hit us back and we were going like, we just kind of too close to this. And maybe we can't see that it's any good. But then we tested it a lot with schools and kids and fundamentally, like kids love it. They love finding Vinnie, they love rhyming. And that's kind of why we chose rhyming, because we it's such a powerful tool when it's done right. And yeah, and obviously, you've seen the illustrations, they're just, you know, so essential to have good illustrations, like I've just actually applied for the Guinness World Records to see if they will actually take it as a, or consider it as a world record for the most digital brushstrokes in a book and trying to credit Ann. And because I couldn't see it on their website. So I thought we have to go for it because it's, yeah I think there's 483,000 brushstrokes, in it and it took 11 months full time to illustrate. It's just a piece of absolute stunning work.
Katherine Ann Byam 16:32
Yeah. Wow. That's incredible. And what have been the reactions from kids? So let's, let's ask Matt, this one,
Matt 16:39
They've been really good. In general, we've done quite a lot of virtual book readings, to schools. And we've started doing like physical book readings, now we've been to a number of schools physically. And we were down in Plymouth a few months ago, or a couple of months ago for Plymouth children in poverty, where that charity donated our books to all the schools. And we went round for World Book Day and read to various schools and then did a litter pick at the end of the day. And we read to different age ranges as well. Year one, two and three normally, are the classes that we read to in primary. But yeah, generally the children have had positive feedback, especially if you engage them on the pictures like if they find they've got Vinny to find on every page, like the poison dart frog, and also the message we've got in the back of the book. And each book will have like a glossary. It's like a description of questions that you can ask about the topic of the book. So it allows after you've read the book to really explore the message and the action that Scouts trying to get everyone to take. My own children personally, have been fantastic. Before we had the book, like physically, they liked it, and they went along with it. And then as soon as you have a physical book, it's great to have them say, like I said, on our bookshelf at home, and it's great when I pick it.
Nick 18:00
We also want to add further to that we've had a number of kids basically dress up as Scout for World Book Day, which was incredible. And we get basically sent posters all the time and pictures of basically kids, you know, taking action and actually joining Scouts team and and actually litter pickingin. And yeah, we've got from an educational perspective, we've got so much like material coming in from schools. It's just fabulous to see.
Katherine Ann Byam 18:21
That's incredible. So is Scout going to become a Disney character anytime soon, Nick.
Nick 18:27
Yes. I basically, I think, from our perspective, we wanted her to be as world widely recognised as Dora the Explorer, but also kind of had that Captain Planet feel, which was kind of a cartoon back in the day, that really sort of was a positive role model. Instead of all the stuff we see now just we just kind of like always fighting and sort of we want we want to see some more positive action. Yeah, once the three books are out, we've got great ambitions. And we'll certainly be pushing it under the noses of people to see if they would like to consider it as cartoons, hopefully, or other things like that.
Katherine Ann Byam 19:02
Now, this is great. I do think you have that potential. So like, really good going, guys. So how are you juggling all of this with your day jobs?
Matt 19:12
Not gonna lie. It's quite tough. We both work full time. So five days a week, we don't work four days a week and have the odd day to dedicate to it. Obviously, I have two small children. I've also moved into a house that was empty for 11 years before we moved in. So it's got a lot of work that needs doing to it. So Nick does a fantastic job at keeping the momentum on the project going his energy is what what keeps us going really, I only step in when Nick's energy drops a little bit and he needs a little help himself. I try and step in to help with that. But yeah, it is tough is tough. We used to every We used to meet up every Friday afternoon. And then when the pandemic happened, obviously we couldn't meet physically and then meeting virtually just isn't quite the same. And then now I've moved out of Bristol. I am not as close to Nick to just, on an odd evening, just meet up. So, yeah, we're looking to meet up physically more, but it's yeah, dedicating that that time really don't know if you've got anything to say on that, Nick.
Nick 20:22
Yeah, it is extremely tough. I'm sympathetic with Matt and John's sort of situations with the young kids. We've all got really busy jobs with, you know, big teams, that some of us lead I even had to move home for two years, back to my parents to fund the project, which has been extremely difficult. But yeah, ultimately, like all things, for persistence, you've got to just find energy. But like, if things don't work, like it's acceptable to sort of have those low moments, I'll be sprinting and then the mat sort of bolster me up or when I'm on my lows. But we're certainly looking to sort of get people more involved we're sort of looking to get, let's say, a third engineer back involved a new drummer, let's say the ambition sort of project manage and give me that energy that I need. Yeah, I suppose when you reach a goal, when you've actually published something, it's fantastic. And it kind of the wheels come off then. And it's, it's just trying to make sure that you grind out it's so tough with the day job.
Katherine Ann Byam 21:16
I know what you mean, you touched on this probably before we started recording, but I just want to, you know, put that in front of my listeners as well. But you started as three and and now you're sort of two and a half. Tell me a little bit about that.
Matt 21:29
Yeah. So like I said, when we started in 2018, there was the three of us, Nick, John and I, and we all had the same energy, the same input, we were still, we were keen to make this project a success and make it happen. And we were having a lot of fun. I can't remember what year it was, Nick. But we, it was getting to the crunch point of having to form a business rather than just do it as a as a hobby. And that commitment. And like Nick had a real drive and ambition to make this go, to make this go really far. I was sort of in between John was just happy coming up with ideas and dreaming, that it could be a big thing, but not actually necessarily doing something to make it happen. That sounds a bit harsh, but he'll own up. It's like the commitment is high. And it was we had a lot of discussions together when we were forming the business about how are we going to split it who's going to be responsible for what, what are we going to do. And John was just honest with us and said that he was happy to be involved in helping write books and be part of the story. But in terms of the other stuff around it that we were doing. He wanted to do other things with his time. And he was just had a newborn baby as well. And similar sort of house renovation things. He's now gone part time as a stay at home dad. So who knows? He might find some time, but I doubt it.
Nick 22:57
Yeah, I think we actually had, so there's multiple times where we sort of had to sort of reflect on how we were driving it forward. It's hard to sort well, with one person having a vision, bringing everyone along equally. And it caused not any not resentment, but it kind of did cause some form of resistance, because as we were trying to sort of take this forward, we had to have a look kind of like my leadership style to see whether if it was my leadership style, which was causing it say energy to sort of like lower, and whether or not other guys could step up. And I've really like, take my hats off to the guys, we've done really well to be able to manage those conflicts and come out the other side. And, and like Matt said, John, pretty much was just being fantastic and honest, you know that he understood what he wanted from the project, which made things super easy in our first objective was always, whatever we do, we must remain friends after the end of this. And that sort of still is embedded in us really, we need to make sure that that's the last reller.
Katherine Ann Byam 23:58
That's brilliant. And thank you for sharing. And I know that, you know, it's probably tough to sort of experience this and go on the journey that you're going on with so many big dreams and goals. And you know, working with friends, it's there's always tension. There's always creative abrasion, as they call it when you're coming up with creative projects as well. And yeah, so kudos for learning how to manage that. And you know, bringing everyone along till the end. So my next question is going to be what does growth look like for you guys? So we've already touched on sort of the Disney books. So what's immediately next in line for Scout?
Nick 24:36
So we've got three books. So that's where the second book is almost published. And then we've got, we've managed to secure the illustrator for the third book, which is just amazing. What we started, what we wanted to try and do as each book was designed such that we could have this educational resource but also trying to encourage taking action. And we then decided that we wanted to partner with people that were taking action. And to make sure that that message was coherent throughout. And what we want to do is we want to set up charities, that the books can actually fund and we can apply for different funding to the charity that we then can support those kinds of causes that are in the books. There's so many amazing people out there dedicating their time and volunteering to litter picking. They're inspirational for me. And same with with bees with partner colonise, they pitcture dreams where we want to get the book into every school in the UK. So that's number one priority. And we're sort of talking to lots of big organisations to understand whether they would like to participate in that for their social sort of responsibilities within the communities, I really wouold like the idea of basically creating resource sheets that are free for schools to download, because we're currently encouraging STEM because Scout's a problem solver, what we really want to do is be able to use the imagery of Scout as a scientist, as an engineer, as a mathematician. So when the kids see that positive role model, they might then look at maths and go, Oh, wait a second, I could do this too. So we're working with STEM quite closely around the country really, and basically trying to look at different opportunities where we can create different resource sheets. And then globally, I'd love to be able to do that and tailor like curriculums in different countries with those kind of resource sheets. And really grow with partnerships, really. So there's so much to do. There's so much to do.
Katherine Ann Byam 26:21
If for some reason I had a really important listener on this programme, in terms of a big company that you might want to collaborate with. Who would that be?
Nick 26:31
Oh, we've approached quite a few friends of the earth we wanted to sort of approach them to start off with because they had a fantastic bee saver kit. And it was a kind of everything that we wanted to create, which they already had. So we would love to partner with them, especially with the book that we've got which is about the bees, that would just be the perfect partnership. Yeah, well, I suppose we're not really focused on any particular one. It's kind of like, you know, how can we work with, you know, create a good relationship that sort of promotes Scout but also helps other people with their organisation? So, Matt, have you got any?
Matt 27:05
Well I don't know if, like Chris Packham from Spring watch, or David Attenborough foundation would listen to your podcast. But our third book is about loss of habitat of like animals, specifically UK, endangered animals, and how we can help take action to improve the habitats of local animals and recognise the problems that with having astroturf grass and things what that brings to, to our local wildlife. And yeah, it'd be great to be able to have even a testimonial from, from any of those guys, I'd love to go on spring watch.
Katherine Ann Byam 27:50
That's brilliant. So I want to ask another question. And this is more to do with our education systems as a whole. And like, I know, this is a really fun project. And it's a very engaging one. It's very problem solver oriented as well. Do you think that the way we educate kids today needs to radically change? And would you like to see more sort of problem solving and sort of situation creation in the classroom?
Matt 28:16
Wow, that's a really tough question. Because we are not teachers. And we have friends like my next door, neighbours, both my next door neighbours are both teachers. And they work incredibly hard at their jobs. And I know how tough it is to be a teacher of the schools that we've been in as well, in terms of what education are they getting, from what I've seen, there's quite a lot of red tape for teachers to be able to, before they actually get round to teaching. And the message, I think the messages are really good in most schools at the minute and they're tackling lots of different issues. And there's so many things that need to be looked at, when you're educating young people, diversity and inclusion, religion, the environment as, health and well being. I don't think it needs to change the actual structure, because I don't know as much about it. But I think more funding needs to go into it to help it be as good as it can be.
Nick 29:11
Yeah, and I think, from what I've seen in schools is there's certainly a really large commitment by schools to sort of have eco committees and get kids engaged early with the environment, which is fantastic. And I think most schools then try and aspire to join eco schools and the green flag sort of award system. And I think I might have to just basically err on what Matt said, and I think it just comes down to funding you know, when we have more funding and more publicity and marketing focus around those subjects. I think that's when you'll start seeing a bigger commitment level and then change hopefully in schools.
Katherine Ann Byam 29:44
If this scenario was that we could not do schools the way we do them. And we had no more funding, you guys are problem solvers, remember that? What would you do, what would you change, how would you reshape it? What would you do? a radical question?
Matt 30:02
How would we change the educational system? Right? Okay. (Not a biggie!) I think the first thing we'd have to do is figure out what's important, we'd have to identify what's really important. Is it that children need to be able to spout off facts about a specific subject in a exam? Or is it that we need to teach our children how to live their lives as best they can, whilst exposing them to focus areas and like maths or science to allow them to go into those subjects, if they choose? I, that's what I would do. There's so many graduates and things that we see at work as well that come out. And some of them, they can do so many sums and integrate these crazy formula. But can they boil an egg? I don't know. But life skills, I think are so important. And teaching those in schools needs to be something that changes I think.
Nick 31:10
That was a great answer. Yeah, it's leading towards to problem solving, I think problem solvers. And being able to physically basically recreate and learn through activity, I think that's such a big thing. And I think we are actually seeing that in schools, a lot of that, instead of us just creating sort of standard resource sheets, like colouring in, but they're not that teachers are far more open to activities where the kids are getting involved by building sort of spaghetti bridges and trying to work out whether they're gonna hold them or marshmallow spaghetti towers, and it's that creative hands on approach, which I think is definitely more beneficial for children, rather than, like Matt said, you know, having to sort of study for exams, I'm trying to think that's where I would naturally sort of lean towards, but it comes down to again, what matters is what is important.
Katherine Ann Byam 31:57
Yeah, perfect. Thank you. I had to squeeze that out of your story. So how can people engage with Scout and your work,
Nick 32:05
We've got a number of social media platforms, we've got our Instagram account, which is called Stop underscore dropping underscore litter. And that really showcases how incredible our talented illustrator is you can see almost, her penwork and how she does it on an iPad, which is just crazy. Like, I saw pictures of her doing some work. And she's just sat there at a football pitch with her son doing work, which is just crazy. So definitely worth a look there. Our website is where you can basically get the book. And that kind of gives a good overview of who we are, the project and things to come, let's say, and I think we might have some long term kind of ambitions to get the book on other platforms as well, to make it more accessible to people globally, because we've had a huge amount of interest globally, through Facebook groups. But we don't currently send the books abroad. So yeah, we'd certainly love to do that.
Katherine Ann Byam 33:02
Much Any closing words from you?
Matt 33:04
I'd just like to say, thank you very much, Katherine, for having us on. It's, always great to talk about our project and reflect on it. I think we've achieved so much in the time that we've had; been able to dedicate to it. We really believe in the message in our books. And we get so much fulfilment out of like visiting schools and like teaching kids and things like that. It's great. So anything like this, I absolutely loved it. Thank you very much.
Katherine Ann Byam 33:32
Okay, so I'm gonna do something that I that I didn't tell you about before. So it's rapid fire questions. So I'm gonna ask you a question. And you just tell me the first thing that comes to your mind as quickly as you can favourite animated movie,
Matt 33:44
The Little Mermaid?
Katherine Ann Byam 33:45
Would you choose a car or a bike?
Matt 33:48
Bike.
Katherine Ann Byam 33:49
Wind or solar?
Nick 33:51
Wind
Katherine Ann Byam 33:51
Book or audio?
Nick 33:54
Audio
Katherine Ann Byam 33:55
Why do you choose Audio? You have a great illustrated book. Tell me about this one,
Nick 34:00
I just Yeah, like Matt loves reading books. And I've never been someone to read books I've always like, had a different way of learning through audio and visual so that it was more alien for me to write some books. It really was compared to other people. I just generally read textbooks. And that's about as far as my literature sort of aims and ambitions go,
Katherine Ann Byam 34:20
Which really explains why this is going to be a Disney movie at some point. Great, thank you so much, guys.
Matt 34:28
We get asked that question a lot in schools, what book are you reading at the minute and Nicks says; I don't read
Nick 34:36
Systems functional engineering.
Katherine Ann Byam 34:39
That makes sense. Thank you so much, guys, for joining me today.
Matt 34:42
ckThank you very much, Katherine.
Nick 34:44
It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much.
Katherine Ann Byam 34:48
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