AXSChat with Rob Brougham, Co-Founder & Director, Braided Communications

As co-founder of Braided Communications, where we develop communication tools for astronauts on deep space missions and use the same technology to provide better team collaboration on Earth, I am enjoying putting my passion and expertise for astrophysics, telecoms and healthcare to good use.


Rob completed a degree in astrophysics and then worked in commercial leadership positions across the telecoms and technology sector nationally and internationally. Moving into digital health, he gained expertise in physical and mental health care. With the creation of Braided Communications, Rob has been able to blend his experience in technology and communications with his passion for healthcare and astrophysics. Rob has long been a passionate advocate for workplace inclusivity and feels extremely fortunate to be part of a neurodiverse founding team.

Transcript

0:00

This is a draft transcript produced live at the event and corrected for spelling and basic errors. It is not a commercial transcript.

Axschat: 0:04

Rob Brougham

NEIL: 0:05

Hello and welcome to Axschat. I'm delighted they are joined today by Rob Brougham, who is from Braided Communications and we'll learn a lot more about what braiding is in a moment. Rob, it's great to have you with us. I was introduced to you by a colleague of mine who said, you really need to meet Rob, he's doing something rather interesting with space communications technology and it may have an application for neurodiversity and I thought, well, this sounds too interesting to pass over. So, I hit Rob up and we have been looking at braided communications. So, Rob welcome.

ROB: 0:44

Thank you.

NEIL: 0:45

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and then explain a little bit about space braiding, it sounds amazing. I'm sure people will be fascinated to understand the concept.

ROB: 0:58

Sure, well, thank you. Really great to have a chance to be here today. I'm Rob, my background, a long, long time ago, academically, I was an astrophysicist but that was first degree level only, I never had any intention of becoming an academic. I then spent large parts of my career in Telecoms actually, small companies, large companies, that was where I met your former colleague we are talking about, Neil. Really enjoyed that but I eventually ended up moving into digital health, which I enjoyed a lot more. So, that's the field where you've got people being able to help patients remotely with diagnostics and monitoring and stuff. So, I spent a long time working in there and eventually found myself working in a mental health company, where we were providing cognitive behavioural therapy for patients. That's where I met my co-founder in braided. What we are working on in braided is two things, obviously, it's the inclusive meeting stuff that we'll come to. But what we started working on is a tool for a very particular problem in deep space and really exciting, it's a problem that most people just assume was impossible to solve. And it's a problem that when humans go into space, further than they are at the moment, when humans go back to the moon, as hopefully they'll do in the next few years, you'll have all see the cover of the Artemis launch recently, back to the moon, they are so far from Earth that it takes the radio signals a couple of seconds to get back to Earth and when people go then beyond the moon and deeper into space, those delays get bigger and bigger. We have all seen delays as we are trying to have various virtual calls over the last few years, but when those delays are in the order of several minutes, it's impossible to have a conversation at all. So, you have to revert to asynchronous ways of communication. That's kind of okay, if you're just sending information backwards and forwards. But what if you want to have a chat with your Mum, if you're lucky enough to be one of the first people to be on a mission to Mars and it's your mums birthday, how can you have a chat with your mum and the answer is you can't because of the delay. Everyone's known that this is impossible to solve because it's basic physics. We came along, we thought about it a bit differently. We haven't changed the laws of physics, very disappointingly we weren't able to do that. But what we realised was that human beings inherently are very adaptable and plastic in the way they communicate and we were able to invent a new methodology for communication that structures communication in a different way and disguises that latency. So, Neil, if you were on Mars and I was on Earth and we were having a communication, even with a delay of many minutes, it would feel to both of us like a natural synchronist communication. So, that's what we built. We've been able to work with the European Space Agency and Nassau and the UK space agency a whole bunch of projects around that. And that's where we started and that evolved into braided meetings as well.

NEIL: 3:59

Yes. So, people do say I'm on a different planet. So, maybe this is the method of communication for me. I was fascinated by your story the first time I heard it and you also said that you blagged your way into Nassau and ended up working, convincing them, I'd love to hear about that a little bit before we get into the braided meeting part.

ROB: 4:29

Yes, well we were very fortunate to be able to meet a gentlemen called Professor David Alexander, who is actually the Professor of Astrophysics, at Rice University, over in Huston, where the famous, send a man to the moon speech was, back in the day and he managed to arrange for us to attend a conference back before lockdown because we told him about the fact we'd solved this challenge and being an astrophysicist he didn't believe us because he knows about the laws of physics as well. When we talked about what we had done and how we were doing it, he was like, this just might work, he said, you need to come over to this conference and you need to be able to share this idea with all of the people that were there. So, we were lucky enough to do that. It was a bit of challenge for us, not least financially because in those days the company didn't have any money at all, now it's got a tiny bit. We didn't have any money at all, so we were definitely at the back end of the plane staying in the cheapest Air B&B's, we could find. But we got there, and we were in this conference, which was amazing, there were astronauts, there were flight surgeons, there were mission controllers and we were able to say to them, hey, we have solved this problem of latency in deep space and most of them said, very nice, no you haven't, very sorry, with the law of physics, you haven't done that. That's impossible. But one or two of them just said, you guys have come a long way right. I think we were the only Brits in the conference. You guys have come a long way. You must have something, so what have you got and we kind of had some slide at the time, this is the idea and we showed it to few people and one of them in particular, a flight surgeon, who has now became a good friend of ours, said that could work, that really could work. So, he then introduced us to a couple of academics, who were working for a couple of universities in different parts of the States, who had already done some research into this whole issue of time delay and understanding, almost quantifying how much of a challenge this would be in future missions by doing experiments and so, they had this level of expertise in that. And when we showed them then our idea and they were saying that solved the problem that we quantified. So, we teamed up with them, applied for some research projects and that's where we started the journey of proving that what we had had, had some level of credibility, working with them through a Nassau grant with them and then through European space agency in the UK space agency as well. So, you know, it's one of those fortunate occurrences, you know, you make your own luck if you work hard enough but it was very much a lucky break to be able to speak with that chap, Professor David Alexander in the first place.

NEIL: 7:13

When I say blag, I didn't mean that you.

ROB: 7:16

It almost was a blag, right.

NEIL: 7:17

Almost, but you talked your way into the opportunity.

ROB: 7:21

We were invited but we talked our way into the invitation.

NEIL: 7:26

Yes. So, that then got the traction and everything else and then you said that you came about this idea of how you'd use it for meetings and so on. And so, yeah. You then talk about how it came to be something that you thought, well this could also be useful in a different context and also, around how it might be useful for people who communicate differently.

ROB: 8:02

Yeah, absolutely. So, what we done from there, we got this momentum and this keenness to investigate the idea and at that point the idea was pretty much slideware. And so, then we said okay, well we need to now build a version of this that works, because we are about to get this funding to test it. We knew we had designed it all on paper but we had to get the software created. So, we started to do that and doing that process, I live near London, my co-founder Drew is up near Glasgow in Scotland and so, we were going through an iteration of testing the software because of course, you know, you've got to test it and debug it etc. So, we went through a whole series of sessions, where each of us had two laptops, one of which was running like a Zoom session and one of which was running space braiding. So, we were just testing it. Pretty soon what we realised was we weren't using the Zoom anymore. We were doing all our communication on this new space braiding thing, which at one level wasn't a huge challenge or a huge surprise because hey, it's a communication tool right, so, that's what it was designed for. But we were designing it and we built into it the delay, to make it feel as if one of us on Mars and one on Earth. So, we were making communication more challenging and yet we realised that the meetings we were having, using space braiding, were actually really effective. They were actually more effective they were more effective for the two of us than having a Zoom call. And what we've come to realise now, we began to sort of understand at the time, that is driven in large part, by the fact that we are very different people and we communicate in very different ways and we have very different communication tendencies. So, for example, at one simple level, I'm quite extravert, one of the common things for people who are extrovert is that they talk to think. So, I will stand like I'm talking now, to think. People talk to think. My co-founder Drew is really quite introverted. So, he's the other end of that scale. So, quite often in the meetings with each of us even though we know each other so well as co-founders, it will be mostly a monologue from me and the occasional question from him, which is not a hugely efficient use of time. So, that was one of the things that braiding prevented me from talking too much and interrupting him and allowed him the time and space to give his thoughts. Drew is also autistic so that also changes the way he prefers to communicate. And so, we ended with this idea that actually maybe this could be a tool that would provide a level of equity of meetings that hadn't previously existed what we have done since is we've been out and we've explored that with many, many individuals and actually what we've also found is research that shows, this research dates back quite a few decades, hasn't been refreshed until relatively recently but it's still valid. In most meetings, a small number of people do the majority of the talking. Now, if they had all the good ideas, that would be fine but, of course they don't have all the good idea. So, if you can create an environment in which people who are currently suppressed in their contribution can bring their contribution to the surface, then you have got a more effective meeting environment and that's what we realised that we had with braided meetings. So, we took space braiding, we took away the latency that made it harder to use and we created a version that now is out there being used by individuals to have meetings that are more efficient and more inclusive and it's inclusive in a very broad sense of that word. So, people who are currently suppressed in their contribution because there might be neuro diversion, or because they night be more junior or because they might be less confident in some way, shape or form, all of that becomes democratised in braided meetings.

ANTONIO: 11:52

So, Rob, I've been looking to a lot of data and information that relates with the onboarding of new people when they enter the workforce and particularly those who joined the workforce during the pandemic and were straight away sent to work from home. So, in the past, you could know, you had a chance to go to an office, meet people at the water cooler, engage with other colleagues to create that kind of a bond. Today people just here you go, get a laptop from via the post. This is your workplace. And then, they are struggling to communicate, to engage internally within their organisations and they feel disengaged. So, how do you feel that the solution that you have built can help somehow to help, to address this issue and redesign the ways that we collaborate in the more inclusive way?

ROB: 12:59

So, great question. I'm going to pick on one sort of aspect of that, Antonio, if I can in the answer and perhaps we can explore more deeply afterwards. But, the point about recruitment and onboarding we think is really important and most people watching this will be aware that there has been significant increase recently in companies that are looking to recruit a broader neurodiverse workforce and that's fantastic. And then, people who have looked at that have then started to say, how can we how do we bring more neurodiverse talent in, why do we have so many people in already and one of the first things they look at is the recruitment process and they say, our recruitment process is a barrier. It's not neuro inclusive itself. So, can we do anything about that. And the answer is, well, yes, you can, there are several things you can do. You can make that process more inclusive, actually you can use braided meetings as an interview tool but that's as an aside almost. There are things you can do but because that's a standalone discrete process, you can change that relatively easily, but then people who then go through that process then land in a company, as the new employee and they could be perhaps the first person who is being open about their neurodiversity as they've come in. They land in, they know they can do the job because they've been through a robust and thorough recruitment process and they've succeeded and they are the best talent, the best candidate for their job. But they then land in a company where all of the processes are entirely optimised for the neurodivergent people who are there already and so that person coming in will struggle. Now there are things that you can do, of course and great things that happen to support individuals when they come into companies, one of my favourite examples is if a flexi desk type of environment is there, some people struggle with that, so you can allocate a specific desk to those individuals. That's great. All of those things that get done, tend to be things that help an individual, whilst they are working on their own. There is almost nothing that helps with them when they are engaging with other people and so we are really keen to work with if you adopt braided meetings for some or part of meetings then you've got a meeting environment where these people can then contribute. So, that's a really important use case we are seeing emerging for braided meetings where we think we can genuinely help to change the game and you can also think about that to come back to your specific question which was much broader because actually you need to think about the people you have in your company and especially as your company may have evolved during COVID and since COVID. You need to be very aware about the different communications of those individuals. For some of them, your particular point there about the meetings around the water cooler, some people, they really struggle if you haven't got that. So, you know, I know companies that are spending much more time, effort and money now on having away days and physical get together for the staff don't see each other so much. Equally there are some people for whom that is much less of an issue they actually being their own and working but they still want to work effectively. So, for them you need to find a method of communication or multiple methods and attitudes internally that embrace everyone's different communication styles and we think braided will be a path of both of those. That was probably a longer than you expected, Antonio. Sorry.

ANTONIO: 16:17

Yes.

DEBRA: 16:21

Rob, first of all congratulations. I love when somebody says, it's not, you can't solve it and then people go and solve it so, thank you, that's so cool. I also love that we are talking about space in this conversation. I know we've talked about space before, John Kepp, who we have had on the show before, was actually one of the first people with disabilities to go into space. So, I've loved that Nassau and others are involving our community more with involving us and testing and things like that. So, cool, cool, cool stuff, yeah, love it. Also, hear what you are saying about the neurodiversity. I find that fascinating. I am a person with neurodiversity, I know that Neil also identifies. But I would say, that I think this is much bigger than neurodiversity because I've a lot of employees that work with me and colleagues and stuff that, as you are saying Rob, they communicate differently. I have one employee, for example, who is brilliant Rosemarie, who is nonverbal. But she is brilliant and adds so much to the conversation if you bother to use communication styles that work for her. And so, it seems to me that as I hear you talk about the opportunity for this, the opportunity is really much bigger I think, than even you're saying right because we are talking about, often from these lenses of communications difference and in reality difference is all the way across the board. So, you're not going to be included because you're a woman, you're the wrong-coloured skin. All the different reasons that we don't include people. But I also am fascinated this conversation because we've stalked a lot about the Metaverse here on access chat and it was so funny and amusing to us, oh the new Metaverse, which is nothing about the Internet. We are just continuing the Internet. But, at the same time when we were talking to leaders, often if feels like we are bringing accessibility up for the first time. We know how to make things accessible now. So I'm fascinated with the work that you are doing with braided technologies and how we can blend it into every aspect of what we are doing here in the disability community and I'll give you an example, Ernst & Young, I've worked with Ernst & Young, Laurie Golden, I know that ATOS is a partner with Ernst & Young, but years ago, Laurie told me about this individual, very talented individual, CPA I believe, that was deaf and they were having team made meetings which in this particular position, they always have team meetings, they have a group of experts, maybe a Tech expert, all the different players. And so, you constantly have to have team meetings and you have to constantly be sharing information so that you are doing the right thing by your customers, okay. Well, they really struggle, how are they going to do this because this person was deaf and so, they came up with a really, I forget now. But they came up with a clever solution that actually, innovated the entire team became much more productive and so and that was years ago. But, it seems to me that what you have done with braided technologies can solve some of those issues that we are still struggling within our society of true, if we are looking through the lens of including 1.3 to 1.7 billion people. I just think that what you're talking about sounds like we have an even bigger opportunity. But I don't know if everybody ton the call is agreeing with what I'm looking at because I haven't looked at what you're doing yet. But I can't wait to see what you're doing, it sounds wow. So, okay.

NEIL: 20:08

So, I think there's and I know Rob can talk more about this, but it is a very simplistic technology. So, it's not using voice. It's using text and it's using typing and the way that this, the thing works is that it has a number of topics and they rotate round on a timing, so that you get answers to stuff in what feels liken conversation but actually there's a gap in between because you're engaged in another topic before it comes around again. So, when you're running one of these meetings, you set up a number of participants and then you set up the timings and the questions and the topics you want to cover. And so, someone like Rose, who using a head pointer might struggle with this because you would have to set the timings right to include Rose. It doesn't mean that you can't. But you would have to set the timings to a different length to enable her to use her to use her assistive tech to be able to participate. One of the things that I think it will do really well is for feedback sessions and consensus gathering or rather, opinion gathering, because you might not get consensus, but actually, what passes for consensus in meetings is actually people staying quiet and letting the boss talk or letting the extroverts talk. So, what it will do, it will gather everybody's opinions because everybody has an opportunity to put their input. So, I think that from that point of view, it has the potential to be extremely use in that context. And you know, I really want to be looking at this for feedback sessions and stuff like this because, we have a habit at the moment of using things like Miro and other sort of online things where you know, it's the online equivalent of putting your sticky note, post it notes on the white board and I find that it's overwhelming for me because of all of the visual stimuli. So, you have got eight or ten people, all moving stuff around, all at once trying to write stuff, zooming in and out, moving the objects on the Miro board or whatever and essentially, I sort of just shut down. So, I can't then participate. Whereas what this does is everybody focused, it's quiet, you're not talking. You're doing it in silence and it's a sort of calm. It's almost bear interface, right, Rob?

ROB: 23:17

Yes, I was very conscious I hadn't explained what it was yet and I was looking for an opportunity to do it. So, Neil, thank you for doing it.

NEIL: 23:22

Sorry.

ROB: 23:23

One of the things that I always say because I love saying it, partly because it's true and partly because it just makes me giggle is, this is like nothing else on Earth because it was originally built for use in space. So, it's really quite simple, but it's not obvious. It's not like anything else you have ever seen. It's quite hard to tell people what it is, it's much -- what we do normally what we do is we show people what it is. So, to come back to your comments earlier, Debra you know, we think it can be helpful in many different environments. With a small company, we have to focus on a few. We are particularly passionate about neuro inclusivity. You know we've seen the power ourselves of a neurodiverse family teams has given us, that is one of our start points. Neil, there is absolutely do make sense, it's a web app so, it's designed signed to be used with an inclusivity and accessibility tools, that people already use. So, you can do speech to text and things like that for certain individuals. But this primary objective is exactly what you said Neil, it's about creating an efficient and effective and equitable environment for everyone to contribute. And so, to things you said there, we've had feedback from people where they have said, you know, I have team meetings where only you know one or two of the people in the team ever contribute and the others just sit there and wait and if asked myself, I agree with Neil and they don't agree with you, they just don't feel comfortable contributing, whereas in a braided environment, they have the opportunity and space to contribute. They also, in a way, if you like are nudged to avoid hiding. So, in a braided meeting, I can't just say, I agree with Neil, well, I could type that but I've got a bit more time and space, so, I tend to give more contributions. So, you have that environment in which everyone contributes and also, a kind of a strange factor of it is because of the way it's designed, everyone contributes continuously, so, it's very efficient use of time. So, one of the things I often say, is there are four of us here, if we had a half hour meeting, with four of us, ten we'd have half an hour of linear output, probably dominated in large part by me talking too much so sorry, but if we had a half hour braided meeting, all four of us would be contributing continuously and we'd you'd have two hours of output. So, you've also got a magnification of the output as well as a significant improvement in the quality because everyone else get a chance to get a word in edgeways and so, you get better ideas coming out. So, yeah, Neil, you're absolutely right those kinds of environments. Those kinds of challenges, it lends itself to very well.

DEBRA: 25:51

Rob, as you talk, and I'm fascinated with it and I wish you could give us a demonstration on here. But maybe you can give us a demonstration that we can share with our community whenever we are marketing your appearance. But, I was just thinking as you were talking about, another thing that it could solve. So, I'm one of those obnoxious people that I'm always interrupting in meetings, yeah. You see my co-host. If you all can't see them, they are smirking they are like, yeah, we know, we try to mute her. But one time I, for example, I was teaching, I was training in Singapore and so what I did was, I was doing what I do all over the world. I was asking the class for questions and I was waiting for responses and I was used to, if I do this in the States, they are going to be obnoxious people like me tripping over themselves to try to take the floor and tell you what we know. I'm not really like that. Anyway. But what happened was, I was asking these questions and I was getting zero response. And I was getting a little confused and I'm thinking okay. And then finally, the woman that had brought me, she interrupted and she said, Debra, in Singapore, we actually find it rude to be fighting for the mic and interrupting. We don't do that, we find that it is actually culturally rude to do that and I thought oh. So, I adjusted the way I was doing it so they could feel more comfortable. But I also just want to tell you Rob that this also is going to help with cultural issues like that.

ROB: 27:25

It absolutely is in that, I'm very lucky I've lived in several different parts of the world, including in living in Asia and I've worked a lot across the States and Europe. So, I've certainly seen the impact of cultural differences on meetings and conversations. So, yeah, I absolutely agree with you that there is going to be some opportunities there. Certainly, you can obviously see that when we have got people with different cultural backgrounds working in perhaps a UK or the US or whatever each of us might be. Then, of course an environment in which there is cultural differences can be, not ignored but they don't became a barrier, that's a great step forward for many things. So, we see that, this is a written tool and actually, it works with real time language translation as well. So, again it can help there because one of the things that I'm sure everyone's seen plenty of translation tools, they work pretty well. If you translate word by word, they don't always get it right, because each language has got a different fundamental structure. If you translate paragraph by paragraph or phrase by phrase they tend to be more effective and because that's the way braided meeting work, you give a contribution on the topic and then it rotates to the next person. I could be typing that in any language I choose and then it could go around to you Debra or Antonio or Neil and you could then read and reply in whatever whichever language you choose as well. We are a really small company and all of these things are exciting and we are going to do them at some point. We have got to make sure that we get the word out to as many people as possible so, hence very grateful for the chance to be here with you guys and from our point of view, you know, we are pushing a couple of key use cases at the moment because we don't have enough bandwidth to do more than a few. But if they get taken up and people give us feedback that other ones are better, that's where you go.

DEBRA: 29:17

And Rob, just real quick, and then I' going to turn it back over to Neil. One thing, and you sort of started talking about it already, what can we do to help you? What can the community do to get behind you because obviously this is why when Neil found you we were like, okay. We try to bring these conversations into the global consciousness, but one thing I would be is what can we do more to help and I'm going to be quiet.

ROB: 29:39

Great question. Thank you, that's a fantastic question. What we, I mean we'd love more people to go and buy our product, you can buy it on our website. There is a free trial there as well. So, people can try it free of charge, with a slightly limited functionality. The more people who use it and give us feedback the better, so please try it and please give us feedback and I want to say, one of the things we often say, I said before, this is like nothing else on Earth but it is so different, I've got an analogy, which is, around riding a bicycle, so I don't know if anyone else here can ride a bike? I learned to ride a bike when I was a little child. And I was hugely motivated at the time because I wanted to be able to get in my bike and cycle to the park to play football or soccer with my friends and if I could cycle a bike, I could get there quicker, but the first time you get on a bike you fall off. It's really weird, it feels different. So, initially, I would think well, I'm going to run to the park or walk to the park. But a little tiny pit of perseverance and I learned to ride a bike and then I could get to the park a lot quicker so, because braiding is so different it's a bit like that. So, I would say to people out there, please try it, you know you can go and try it now. Please try it, please try it more than once because the first time you try it will be different, it will be unusual. And you'll go what? I don't understand this because you have never done it never before. A bit like riding a bike. The second and third time you'll start to realise that this potentially could be helpful and if it is, let us know and if it isn't, let us know as well.

DEBRA: 31:02

Right.

NEIL: 31:04

Yeah, thank you Rob. Anyway and I can, as I said, where can see you know particular scenarios where I think it's going to be helpful for me. So, definitely looking forward to playing around a bit more. Are there any other things that you're, you know, any other space technologies that you are thinking of applying to the working environment should we know, have we got lasers for when we get board in meetings or are we just sticking to --

ROB: 31:43

I wish we had, Neil. I wish with we had. But no, this is, at the moment this is the only space derived innovation that we have got for the market. If we can think of another one, Neil I promise you, you'll be the first to know.

NEIL: 31:56

Excellent. I mean I really, I think it's such a great story and such a great angle of from the left field of where the innovations come from. I think it's been a delight to talk to you about it and bring this to our audience. I think they are going to enjoy chatting with you later. I know Antonio has got one final question before we close?

ANTONIO: 32:25

Rob, I would like you to tell us, that in the current format, how can people access the system and how can they start using it and following that, how do you see your journey going through an independent app, To an API, what integrations are you foreseeing in the future in terms of development?

ROB: 32:58

Great question, Antonio. So, in terms of how to access us, we will share the link and stuff. The website is super simple, it's braided space and you go on to there you'll see a bit of information about it. There's a little explainer video and there's obviously a sign-up button up there which you can click and register for an account and sign up there so, that's hopefully super easy. Integration and stuff, there is loads we want to do, so yeah, we want to get to the point where we have got integration. You know, there are tools out there that are really powerful in their own way, like the slack and the teams and things like that and over time, we want to the get to the point where people can spin up a braided space from within some of those other environments. So, you could for example, one of the visions I had in my mind since we pretty much started is, you're in a discussion on Slack, you're in a Slack channel. Obviously Slack is an asynchronous tool. So, someone has gone off to make a cup of tea if you're British or a cup of coffee, if your Italian or whatever it might be and it's like we are getting nowhere here. Let's spin up a braided space, bring people together for a proper meeting, asynchronous meeting but in an environment that we can all contribute for 20 minutes or so and channel. So, we see integrations like that over time as well. So, yeah, at the moment it's a standalone product simply because we are a small, early stage business, but those things are going to change over time.

NEIL: 34:24

Excellent. Thank you. I'm looking forward to seeing that progress. So, it just remains for us to thank MyClearText for keeping us captioned and accessible and also thank our friends at Amazon too. So, looking forward to you joining us on Twitter. Thank you very much, Rob.

ROB: 34:42

Thank you very much guys. Thank you.