President, & CEO, LlamaZOO
CanadianSME sat down with Charles Lavigne, the President and CEO of LlamaZoo, earlier this year to discuss his entrepreneurial journey. Charles tells us how his team is combining digital twinning with several other technologies to create groundbreaking 3D visualization solutions for clients to help them comprehend difficult data and make vital choices. We also discussed his main motive behind accomplishing the work he is doing, as well as how his robust software can help Indigenous communities. He also shared how his software can be used effectively when it comes to land management and negotiation scenarios as well as the impact of technology in this particular field. Together, we explore Charles’ vision and his advice to aspiring Indigenous entrepreneurs during such a difficult time.
Charles Lavigne has over 18 years of experience as a technology developer, designer, and leader, including 12 years with some of the world’s biggest video game companies. Today, he is President & CEO of LlamaZOO. LlamaZOO is a big data fusion, analysis, and visualization company focused on enabling ESG through cleantech, by making complex data more understandable and accessible to any stakeholder.
Charles’ visionary leadership drives LlamaZOO’s mission to “be the leading solution provider of Spatial Business Intelligence, and change the way the world sees data.” To achieve this, he has formed a multi-disciplinary team that generates millions of dollars of value for clients and partners in manufacturing, lands management, and built spaces.
He has spoken at forums including SXSW, AWE, CVR, OCIO, PDAC, and iVentures about interactive AR/VR and mixed reality solutions for enterprise and industry 4.0.
During his spare time, Charles loves to spend time with his family and his new daughter, hike with his dog, and camp.
What was the inspiration and motivation behind the launch of Guardian, the preservation software tool? And what are you hoping to accomplish through the work that you doing?
Over the years LlamaZOO has worked with a number of industrial companies in forestry, mining, and land management including the B.C. government. What we found was through all of these interactions, First Nations themselves did not necessarily have the resources at their disposal to have equal footing to access the data needed to engage in conversations and negotiations. It’s through those series of interactions that we effectively started working with First Nations and collaborating to better understand how the tools can be applied, changed, and modified to support their respective use cases and really unlock the value of big data for them.
We’re excited to continue to iterate Guardian, working closely with First Nations as more use cases are uncovered, and plan to expand its reach to support other Indigenous Peoples. With Guardian, we hope to help protect and enable many Nations throughout Canada as they navigate land management, cultural preservation, knowledge sharing and more.
What are some of the unique challenges that come with preserving indigenous cultures and land? How does your software help indigenous communities?
A unique challenge that comes with preserving Indigenous cultures and land is that each nation has its respective traditional knowledge of the land and heritage, and in most cases, that traditional knowledge is sacred. It’s not always available in a shareable or digitized format so that poses some unique challenges. When developing the software we wanted to surface that data, integrate it, and make it available while also respecting the information and data sovereignty of that Nation, as it may not be suitable to share with everyone such as industry or even regulators. But, it is important to have and retain that data.
By having a tool that visualizes the land and all of the data-related projects, activities, and the culture and heritage of the land, the visualizations make it more accessible. Communities will now have an accessible repository or common operating picture that can be used for education, land management, or even traditional knowledge training and language retention in their community. Some communities only have one or two speakers of the traditional language so it’s really critical to capture that while we can and make it available to everyone in their community.
What are your thoughts on the impact of this technology on land management and negotiations?
The impact of this technology is about creating transparency and equal footing by making the same data accessible between industry, landowners, and regulators.
When coming to the table to have those conversations, everybody can be talking about the same thing from a data-driven perspective. It really removes the question of are we talking about the same thing, the same place, what data or version each group has. Creating that common repository, evens the playing field for everyone, making transparent discussions and negotiations possible.
Charles Lavigne – Transforming the Way World Views Data via Spatial Business Intelligence Share on X
Can you walk the readers through an example of how this technology would be used in a negotiation or land management scenario?
First Nations typically have a referral process, supported in some cases by the government, so when a project or an activity is being proposed on the land a referral needs to be done. Engagement is sometimes not possible at the deepest level that everyone would like. Whether it’s because of things such as the pandemic limiting our access to one-on-one in-person engagement, limiting our availability to one another, or the remote nature of such activities.
We live in a fairly diverse geographic part of the world; we have mountains, glaciers, deep forests, wetlands, and coastal lands. Because of the diversity of the land, it is sometimes quite difficult to access so our tool facilitates those conversations from the perspective of accessing the land virtually. We can visualize the process and the referral by encouraging the exchange of data related to the referral and bringing it into Guardian, and we do so from a very hands-off perspective. By using Guardian, First Nations are able to bring in data that are given to them by the regulator or industry itself and can visualize and make those assessments on their own in context to their own data.
What is your advice for indigenous entrepreneurs during this challenging time?
I think the time is now; to pursue passions and dreams. If you have a mark to leave on the world, go and do it. There’s a lot of support out there so when facing challenges, which you will as all entrepreneurs do, it’s about perseverance, so make sure it’s something you can be passionate about, and surround yourself with the right people who believe not only in just your vision but in you as an individual. Go find those people, build that network, and get out there and do it.
