QA6 - Reflecting on 2023 and Igniting the Future

Hello there, friends, and welcome to the Fire Science Show. The end of the year is a good time to make some summaries and reflections on what has been happening over the last year and, I must say, 2023, for the podcast myself was pretty brilliant yet, to be honest, and it needs to continue. For this podcast episode, let's chill down a little bit. I'll tell you how did it look from my perspective and I'm gonna introduce you to some really exciting things that will happen in 2024. Three big things really the launch of the Book of Fire, the launch of Fire Science Show community and a series of really nice special episodes that are gonna come next year. Actually, two of those things are happening today. That's even better present for the next year for you. Anyway, in this episode I've decided to chill down a bit. Let's reflect on what's happening. I'll take you to the Kitchen of the Fire Science Show. I'll tell you how it looks from my perspective and what you can expect in the near future and also, as always, if you have reflections of your own, if you know how to make Fire Science Show a better place. I'm always listening. I'm always reading your emails and I'm happy to get any feedback. And with the coming thing. I think the distance between us has just shortened to the shortest possible ever, so it's gonna be good. So let's spin the intro and jump into the episode. Welcome to the Fire Science Show. My name is Vojty Wigzynski and I will be your host In 2023. The Fire Science Show podcast was brought to you in collaboration with all of our consultants, a multi-award winning independent consultancy dedicated to addressing fire safety challenges. You probably already know by now that OFR is the UK's leading fire risk consultancy and its globally established team has developed a reputation for preeminent fire engineering expertise, with the fire science show Working across the world to help protect people, property and environment. I could read the rest of the advert, but I would simply like to express my huge gratitude towards OFR consultants for helping me with the show, but also for their attitude towards the science and engineering. I had the privilege to work with them a lot and it has been a pure pleasure. And that was for 2023, and the good news is that collaboration continues and it seems that Fire Science Show will be delivered to you for the entire 2024. Once again, thanks to this brilliant collaboration. So thank you. Thank you, ofr, for helping me complete my mission delivering the fire science free to everyone, without dumbing it down, without simplifying it too much, showing it as it is and hopefully making a difference in the world. Thanks for believing in my mission and supporting me in this pathway. And now let's go back to the review of 2023 and some nice things to happen in 2024, some of them even today. So what a year that was. If you look only at the numbers and many people would start revision like that with some statistics I see the numbers. I see the downloads. You know, every time someone presses play in their Apple or Spotify, or you go to my website and click the play on the podcast, the file gets downloaded to your computer and I know about that fact. Well, I don't know who downloaded it and for what purpose, but I know that download has happened and by those downloads I am capable of measuring the podcast. That's the way how podcasts are being measured, not by minutes, not by completion rates, although those are also important statistics. The number in podcasting is downloads, and for the fire science show, when we've opened this year, we were at something like 55,000 downloads after more than one and a half year of running the show. Today it's not even the end of the year and we're already at 115, which means 60,000 downloads over the course of this year. That's more than 1000 downloads a week. This is mind blowing. You know I've anticipated growth. I project things, I expect some things. That's kind of obvious. But to see it be consistent, to see the curing all the time, to see that the interest in the show is not diminishing it's kind of growing is really something brilliant because it makes me believe that what we are doing here in the fire science show really matters for you out there. And besides the numbers, you know I had opportunity to finally leave the home, leave Poland, travel around the world and meet dozens of you, hundreds of you, really Like. It's mind blowing how many people have reached me, called me out and said they thank me for the podcast. I have not had a single person attack or violate me because the podcast is horrible. It's also a good sign. But being able to meet you and talk with you and listen to your feedback, your gratitude, your enthusiasm towards the show you know I was capable of having very in depth discussions with some listeners about some particular episodes. That was really brilliant. I was in an elevator on the International Conference of SFP at Lubliana, we were taking 20 stories downstairs on an elevator. There were eight people in the elevator and six of them were the guests of fire science show. That was crazy moment of realization. This podcast is something that surrounds me now. When we were at the FSS in Japan, people were taking the photographs of their groups on the stage during the banquet dinner and now all the groups from different countries, from different universities, people were gathering up and taking the pictures on the stage. Someone told me maybe you should go and do a photograph with all the fire science show guests on the stage and quickly figured out that the stage is not big enough. That was ridiculous. I feel so overwhelmed by how the community has taken, appreciated and helped me build up this project. This is fantastic and I thank you. Thank you so much for that. Going back to the numbers, there was an episode with Rory Haddon at the beginning of the last year, like literally a year ago. That was the first episode in 2023 where we've opened a new series, fire Fundamentals, where I figured out we need something to put us all on the same level, understanding some fundamental principles, fundamental things in the fire science. So perhaps people can even benefit more with the podcast because they are on the same page. We've opened that up with Rory and, wow, that series was killer. We only did four episodes of that series in 2023, which I regret. We need to do more and I'm already online with Rory. We were scheduled to record like three times in December but life happened and hopefully I'll be able to capture him somewhere early January and we will be able to continue this series because it's very popular. I thought it's because he forces his students to listen, but it seems that's not the case. The episode it's almost 2000 downloads. Almost 2000 people have listened to that one episode and all of them in the series. All of them are well above 1000 downloads, so that's great. I had some amazing episodes. Peter Ström on batteries and tunnels I was one of your favorites, absolutely so an episode that will very soon reach the top three in the podcast. Overall, I really enjoyed the episodes with Ricky Carvelle. I have no idea why it took me so much time to get Ricky to the podcast and my sincere apologies to everyone, but yeah, seriously, having him and hearing his enthusiasm on the air, I was amazing. In this year, I was able to connect with legends like real legends. You know James Quintery, david Perser, the legends of firefighting. So many great people went through the show and it was fantastic because I finally felt that fire science is one community and we can reach to anyone in it. So, yeah, what a year. Now we are approaching 2024. Some things will remain as they are. So I'm still producing this show. I am still working as hard as I can, even though life is overwhelming at times, for and that is also sometimes reflected in the podcast quality, for which I must sincerely apologize you but I'm really doing my best. This will all continue as it is. I am reflecting on the topics done in the last year. I'm reflecting on the statistics. I'm reflecting on the listener feedback on the episodes. I'm trying to craft the podcast proposal for you for the next year in a way that it reflects more what you like to have on the show. Of course, the easiest way is for you to tell me what you like on the show, then I'll bring it. But I'm also trying to figure that out on my own and I hope I'm doing a better and better job on that, and my plans for 2024 are to really top the game. I understand that the novelty has worn off. Fire science show is nothing new to the fire community. Still there are people discovering it, but it's something that is a part of the fire community nowadays. It's the part of the fire science nowadays, and I'm not going to get any points for being the first podcast. Now I have to earn your trust and prove that I'm bringing value to you with every episode and that's what I truly intend to bring to the show. I've spoiled in the intro that there are three big things happening to the fire science show. So all the good things that were about the show in the previous year hopefully will remain, but there are some great things happening. Two of them are happening today. So I have strongly advertised my online course for beginner fire safety engineers the book of fire and that was something that was supposed to be a podcast episode, then it turned into an online course and then it turned into literally four hours of videos processed and published in the internet. That's like tenfold of work that I've expected it to be. But I finally managed to complete the general idea of what the book of fire could be and the course is actually fully functional. It's fully functional. It's uploaded. The beta phase is ongoing, but let's say it's closing right now, because from today, everyone is welcome to access and check it out and use it and benefit from that and give me your feedback so I can improve it for the future. So if you go to thebookoffirecom, it will take you to a landing page where you can leave me your email and I'll appreciate that because I'll add you to my mailing list and if I have new interesting things to share with you, I can do that directly. And on that webpage you will also find a direct link to where the book of fire lives and where it lives. It lives in the fire science show community. This is something I have not announced before. I have not advertised. It's something that I've truly planned for like one and a half year ago. I've planned that this podcast could really benefit from having a community, a real community, and now it is now there it is. If you go to communityfirecienceshowcom, you'll be taken to the space that's called Circle. This is the service that I'm using to host this community. Community is something like a private Facebook, private LinkedIn sort of a thing. It has channels where you can message. It is an open forum. You have capability to send direct messages to each other. There are spaces to chat and interact. There is possibility to host live events in the community space, which I hope to use next year, and there's also a full, powerful functionality of online courses in the community. So I've developed it to build the Book of Fire. But the nice side effect is that we also have a community site now. So, once again, communityfirescienceshowcom, and you can find the community there. It's open access, anyone can access. You only have to register an account with Circle to be able to use it. It's free to do that. You can also get an app for a phone or tablet or whatever device you're using. It's actually quite useful to use it through an app. And, yeah, in there you will have access to me, access to other fans of the show, access to other fire safety engineers, access to the Book of Fire and currently also a nice bonus is that Professor Gilmourain has granted me his permission to also post his introduction to fire online course, which he has posted on YouTube as well, so you can also access that course to the community at firescienceshowcom. So hopefully that's a nice addition for you. So here you are. The Book of Fire and community are up for 2024 starting with today. Hope you will enjoy that. And the third thing I've kind of gave a brief intro to that in my interview given for the Pat Flynn for a smart passive income, and if you didn't hear that one, I'll just tell you right now. So I am planning. When I was recording the interview with Pat few months ago, I was in middle of negotiating a very interesting project with a company, hollywood Fire Research, and we have came to agreement of some sort and it seems the project will go for the next year. It's not yet signed but we're almost there with the paperwork and if it goes live it will be a mini series of episodes something like 1012 episodes perhaps more we'll see about that episodes that are focused on fire investigations, the cases that Hollywood Fire Research or previously fire research group was investigating, some big and well known fires that happened, all given in a little different perspective than the fire science show gives, because it will not be simply interviews, it will be narrated episodes giving an overview of the what happened, how it happened, the fire science behind what happened, the fire safety engineering side of what happened and consequences. We gave it a code name like CSI, fire crime scene investigations or fire scene investigation will see where it ends up. So that's something that's gonna go out Perhaps at the end of the first quarter, maybe in the second quarter of the next year. We will be airing those at, it seems, bi-weekly as additional episodes to the fire science show and also as a separate feed for those who are all interested in that. We will see where we get with that series. I think it sounds really exciting to me. I'm seriously excited about this series because it's something I have not tried yet. It's something that I've thought a lot about for a very long time. We never had good fire investigations in fire science show, so the topic is absolutely virgin. It's the novelty factor that we perhaps need in here and, yeah, I think it's gonna be an opportunity to share some really exciting fire science with you. So those three things are my exciting new additions to an already well-going and time-tested product that you're receiving every Wednesday, because I'm on the mic and I enjoy it. I used to do those yearly summaries in LinkedIn Perhaps you've seen one of those sometimes ago and I used to summarize all the good and bad things that happened during the year every year. I thought that this year I'm just gonna summarize this in the podcast episode, instead of spamming on LinkedIn. I don't like this bragging thing in the internet or creating a false image of what life looks like or pushing people into depression because someone else has achieved something. I hate this part of social media and I really don't need that for myself. But I also know a lot of people are interested in what's happening around and I simply like to stay in touch with you. That's my promise to you that I'm not just a voice in radio. I'm a real person, your friend, and I want to stay connected. So, for the summary, for Wojciech not in the show, but outside the show 2023 was a pretty overwhelming year. It was the first year when we were fully enjoying life after the pandemic, like like before the pandemic all the conferences, all the traveling. I've spent probably a month at least in the plains or in different places of the world, highlights being obviously IFSS in Japan, about which you've heard so much in the podcast already and you're gonna hear even more because I'm about to bring David Perser once again, this time covering his keynote from Japan. Anyway, sfp Berlin what a magnificent conference. I really enjoyed that one. Sfp in Ljubljana that was most unexpected one. It was really good, like really really good event and I appreciate invitation for that one, but not just that, many, many local events. I was even at some tiny conference of chemists, chemical students, in the woods outside of Poland and that was also fun. Anyway, a lot of traveling this year, which made the year quite hard because I still have my day job in the office. We are still consulting projects. This year We've done at least 50 smoke control projects that I was really busy year with really large tunnels in design, large commissioning project in Świnoujścia that that took a big chunk of the middle of this year for us. In general a lot has been happening in the office. I have failed a grant. That was annoying. I'm really done with writing grant applications. We've written perhaps the best grant we've ever written about tunneling smoke control and it was simply destroyed in the process. We're nowhere close to getting money from that one and I've just wasted three weeks of my life writing that application. If you're a student, please turn down the volume. You don't need to hear this rage, god, this. Sometimes science makes me question like why I am doing this. Why are we doing science like this? It's kind of ridiculous and but I'm not gonna resend that one, we will just do it with our own funds at ITB and it's gonna be glorious anyway. Yeah, the game of grants this year we've lost it completely. The stack of unfinished papers is significantly larger than the last year's stack of unfinished papers. Unfortunately, the stack of finished papers and published papers is not that huge, and that's also something that is very disturbing to me. We really need to up this game and finalize, because there's so much science to come from our team that I really find fascinating and I really would like to get in front of you. But the writing process is difficult and there was just some periods of absolute overwhelm over the year. However, many good things happened, of course, the ones that I mentioned about the podcast. That was the highlight of the year. I've also became very active on LinkedIn with my friend, grunty Umas, who's my social media coach. He hates when I call him that, but so yeah, grunty, you're my coach. We've been delivering some really decent content with Grunty LinkedIn and we have created quite an audience in there and quite a noise in there, and I also like that part. I like bringing fire science to people. In that perspective, my team is getting stronger and stronger. That's a highlight. I've sent my students to Hong Kong for half a year. He just came back, jakub, and he had a great time in Hong Kong at HK Poly with Sin Huang and his team. Thank you, guys for hosting Cuba. I hope he was nice. It was a dream of mine, you know, 10 years ago to go to a nice place. Well, stop university, do a half-year study there, come back with a head full of ideas. Never happened to me 10 years ago. I was in a different place, same institution, but a totally different place, and this was out of reach. Today, I am super happy that I could give this experience to my students and I hope we will all benefit from that. The amount of ideas that we have that come from that stay and from other projects that were done around is tremendous and they are all sort of coming all together. Now and in 2024, I hope to have some really big things to show to you, because the research done in clusters for many, many years starts, you know, merge and join together, creating a very nice, interesting, big image related to smoke control, ai, use of CFD, performance-based engineering, risk engineering. All of those things are coming together in one coherent package and I would love to tell you all about it next year. We've also kind of won on the topic lottery, you know many times to science and you never know which topic will be the great one and for us the research on the green walls, on the living walls, was definitely a banger. It's something that also Cuba inspired and we've done a lot of experimental work last and previous year. We've published five safety journal paper. We've went to Japan with the paper. We've went to multiple numerous conferences with that paper. We had a piece in Fire Protection Engineering Magazine on green walls and we're continuing that work. It's great topic. It's a lot of interest from all ends of fire science and engineering and we hope to continue. We hope to be on the cutting edge of this technology and deliver as much knowledge as the engineers and designers need to create safe systems with this solution. So that's something we really nailed last year and I'm really proud of, and that that would be it really. There are a lot of things that that were happening, but there's no point for me to continue on that. I would really love to hear about your year and what did you win? What did you fail? How can we help you win in the next year? Can the fire science show be a tool that will help you create success in year 2024? Come on there's community site. You can go there and tell me and we'll do it. So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for the brilliant year 2023. It was a pleasure, a pleasure to serve you, a pleasure to be the voice of the fire science for you, pleasure to meet and talk with so many of you, and I look forward to 2024 to get the same and deliver much more. Deliver some innovative things, keep up the standards high and keep pushing the fire science forward every Wednesday and perhaps on Friday. So thank you very much for being here with me. Have a great time till the end of the year. If you're in holiday season, it's too late to wish you Merry Christmas, but I hope you're having great time with your families and you're chilling out, just like I am. If you're not celebrating Christmas, then I hope you have a very nice period of perfection and celebration at the end of the year and you enter into 2024 with new concepts, new ideas and new powers. Thank you, cheers for that and thank you for being here with me for this year, and I really hope to see you in the Fire Science Show in the year 2024. Cheers bye.