New Florence. New Renaissance.

20 from 20: It took a village

This is the last episode in my "20 from 20" highlights series.

It took a lot of work to review, edit, splice, comment on 3,000+ minutes of video I uploaded in the last few months.

But in doing so, I realized I was excerpting less than 10% of videos, images, notes I accumulated across the 5 series I ran

• 75+ executives shared their heroics and industry perspectives in the Acrobatics during the Crisis series
• 60+ vendor executives and analysts presented on new products and surveys in the Analyst Cam series
• 50+ folks proudly described their hobbies, charities, personal pursuits in the Technology and my Passion series
• 20+ analysts and influencers commented on industry trends in the Burning Platform series
• 25+ Florida towns are profiled in the West Coast on the East Coast series

So many people stepped up to share stories in the midst of so much doom, gloom, fear and anger that defined 2020.  Some of them participated across several of the series. Others came back and updated earlier comments. I felt like I was in an oasis of positive people. I have heard from so many readers and viewers they went wow after many of the episodes.

Some day, someone will discover these archives in a time capsule and say "Wonder why mainstream media never talked about these amazing and positive people in 2020?"

What's up for 2021?  In some ways, I hope we don't have to lurch from one crisis to another like we did in 2020 and deliver heroics for each. I hope I hear more about innovation and drive in calmer times in the Acrobatics series. I hope many more vendors present in the Analyst Cam series. I hope to invite many more tech industry observers in the Burning Platform series. Similarly, I hope people write about ice fishing, jigsaw puzzles and so many other activities which surprisingly no one has over a decade of the Passion series. 

So, thank you again to every one of the 2020 contributors.  Somebody once told me I can make a brown paper bag sound interesting. Not sure he meant it as a compliment - but I strive to improve the message of anyone who shares with me. I will take it in any format. Some shared from their mancaves. Others shared their passion in hand written notes. Good enough for me. Please keep sharing - especially positive, inspirational stuff.

In the meantime, here are the links to the 20 highlights if you want to revisit.

1. The Passion Play 
2. Resilience during the crisis 
3. The year HR finally turned strategic? 
4. Business Heroics 
5. Not your Dad's verticals 
6. Diversity in Tech 
7. Inspirational quotes 
8. Digital Acceleration  
9. Humor in tech 
10. A small, proud accomplishment 
11. The 20 minute digital pitch 
12. The World is still round 
13. Mega-trends affecting IT 
14. More for "Vinnie Vertical" 
15. Never bet against America 
16. West Coast on the East Coast 
17. My Rock  
18. Small (biz) is beautiful 
19. No industry untouched 
20. It took a village

20 from 20: No industry untouched

This is the 19th post in a series of 20 highlights from the Acrobatics during the crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform  and other series I ran last year.

2020 turned most industries upside down. I posted earlier about conversations in four industries here and another four here 

Here's another dozen. 

Jason Blessing, President and CEO of Model N, describes the intensity when 24 out of 25 of his largest customers like Stryker and Gilead have worked on some life-saving COVID-19 related products or services. The longer interview is here 

At 2.52 is Mark Galloway, Chief Commercial Officer at GrandPad which offers a simple and secure tablet computer that digitally connects a senior to their family and friends. Mark describes the speed at which they rolled out the device to nursing homes and elderly care facilities. The average user is 82 years old and technology which most readers of this blog use on a daily basis is a big challenge for these seniors. The longer interview is here 

At 5.54 Phiroz Darukhanavala, who goes as "Daru" is the ex-CTO of BP and points out the oil and gas industry has faced other "shocks" before, usually on the supply side. The sector in the past has bounced back and has been more efficient each time. The longer interview where he discusses industry changes is here 

At 9.48 is Bill Berutti, CEO of Plex talks about the auto industry. He and CTO Jerry Foster cover global manufacturing trends and the effect of COVID lockdowns in the longer interview here. 

At 12.99 is M.R. Rangaswami of Sand Hill Group. He talks about sustainability efforts at the members in the Corporate Eco Forum he runs. He also points how the definition has extended beyond renewables and climate issues to also cover diversity and inclusion. The longer interview including coverage of other communities he runs is here 

At 16.00 is Associate Dean Bill Moncrief at the Neeley School of Business at TCU. He describes the complexities of moving from campus to on-line education in under 2 weeks and the challenges of teaching in hybrid mode - some students in-class and some on-line. I am on the school's advisory board and the longer presentation to the board is here 

At 19:33 is Bob Ferrari of Supply Chain Matters. He describes how supply chains - PPE, global, food etc - came under a lot of pressure but responded amazingly. In the longer interview here, he talks about adjustments most industries are making to their supply chains. 

The sports world had never seen this much disruption since WWII. Yet, it bravely kept us entertained with its bubbles, empty stadiums and shortened seasons, At 22.06, you get a glimpse at the maneuvering from Max Mueller, CEO and Christian Nilson, COO of Daimani, a unique marketplace for VIP experiences in sports, rock concerts and other events. The full interview is here 

At 25.52 Vittorio Viarengo of VMware shares how he brought to life COO Sanjay Poonen's desire to record a rendition of "This little light of mine" using a group of musically talented employees around the world. These are amateurs and the result is amazing - you can see how Taylor Swift and others in the music world managed to do even more with their virtual productions. The longer session with Vittorio is here 

At 31.21 is Rod Johnson, President of Infor. He points out how the TV and entertainment industry has an opportunity to help refine tech and other events in a virtual format.  The longer conversation is here.

Apple, in reverse, promises to reshape physical events and the TV and movie industries with its iPhone 12. At 32.56 is an excerpt of the stunning imagery recorded from the back of a truck and from a drone. The longer coverage of the launch of that device is here.

Sector after sector saw massive changes. Yes, Toto we are not in Kansas anymore. 

 

20 from 20: Small (biz) is beautiful

The pandemic was especially tough on small business - this post is about their heroics and what so many have done to support them like Zoho did with their ESAP program for customers with less than 25 employees.

This is part of a series of 20 highlights from the Acrobatics during the crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform and other series I launched last year.

Starting off is Michael Pinckney, founder and operator of a gourmet, hand-made cookie store based in Kirkland, WA. He was my colleague at Gartner, and had a long technology career which included stints at Microsoft, IBM and startups. He now makes wicked cookies including some infused with bourbon. He gives us a tour of his "plant" and recounts his heroics. He was squarely in the epicenter of the first outbreak in the US. He had to decide whether to shut down his business. Lockdowns made selling at the Farmer's Market unattractive. He had to switch to on-line selling. For various reasons he describes in the video, business has taken off and meeting the backlog of orders has required more heroics with distancing and talent constraints. See the fuller interview here 

At 4.58 I describe some of the support I provided to small businesses in our community. I have heard of similar from many other colleagues. Not that we ourselves had great years, it comes from a belief that society is better when consumers have plenty of choices especially from entrepreneurial small businesses. I am pleased to report the businesses I profile have survived - some have even thrived - during the last few months.

At 9.10 Stephany Lapierre, CEO of TealBook shares how during the BLM crisis and for diversity initiatives since customers have leveraged their 800,000 certificates for black and minority owned businesses. More impressively they have helped a number of smaller businesses self-certify (she says 95% of them find formal regulatory certification too cumbersome or too expensive) and become more visible to prospective customers. In the longer interview here she also describes how in the first few weeks of the pandemic the UK government and a number of companies desperate for PPE supplies and looking for choices beyond China, leveraged TealBook for information on 60,000 ISO certified PPE makers.  

At 12.43, Sue Fellows, Chief Customer Officer at Workfront describes how their customer, John Paul Mitchell Systems re-purposed their 40 year anniversary celebration budget to create a fund for hair care salons which were particularly hurt by the pandemic. The longer session with her is here  

At 13.48, Jack Barrett, CEO of First Citrus Bank, describes the herculean effort to get SBA PPP loans for small businesses and the outpouring of gratitude that resulted. Many community banks stepped up to help the SBA process these loan applications  - the bigger banks in many ways fumbled the ball. The longer interview is here 

20 from 20: My Rock

This is the 17th post in a series of 20 highlights from the Acrobatics during the crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform  and other series I ran last year.

In many ways, this is the most memorable highlight.

Margaret and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary last year. Importantly, I got to spend 360 days with her. In none of the other 30 years, I approached even 250 days given my frequent travel.

She continued to work in her psychiatric role, though I am glad she reduced her hours. I was blown away with her bravery. Her trips to the clinic and the surveillance she got from her medical colleagues about the COVID virus gave us all more courage to not stay cooped up. It allowed us to navigate cautiously and ignore much of media which created so much anxiety.

Her art of the day trip allowed us to take many one gas tank trips. That gave me fodder to launch the West Coast on the East Coast series.  It also allowed me to get on a streak of 10K steps a day.

The time at home also allowed me to appreciate the museum and botanical garden she has created. At every turn, we have collectibles and flora from around the world. And they keep evolving. I have mostly been using the library for all the videos I have been recording. I should be using all the other natural backgrounds she provides. Fortunately we have used them as "restaurants' for our meals together.

She has been a wonderful mother having home schooled the kids when they were young and counseling them along the way. She helped Rita launch her coaching business this year, and played games with Tommy in Colorado on Zoom. We are foster parents to a neighbor's beagle, Sophie and to another neighbor's cat, Shadow, and we saw plenty of both of them at our place this year.

The travel restrictions and lockdowns in 2020 definitely had a silver lining. I had a chance to spend more time with Margaret and made me appreciate what a rock she truly is.  How could I not include that in my highlights for 2020?

20 from 20: West Coast on the East Coast

This is the 16th post in a series of 20 highlights from the Acrobatics during the crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform,Technology and my Passion and other series I ran last year. 

While most of the other series involved video footage, one only profiled images posted on Instagram.

As she wrote in the Passion series, my wife Margaret is a packing pro - as in lots of activities on a day trip. Over the last few months, on weekends, she has used it to great advantage navigating all the lockdowns. We have gone up and down the West Coast of Florida mostly between Cedar Key and Marco Island - roughly 300 miles of Gulf coastline.

They have been day trips, with masks and distancing precautions. Most were one gas tank trips. FL roads are excellent, and access to many of these places costs only a parking ticket. One of the best investments we made was annual memberships to local museums and botanical gardens. They have opened up access to many other places with their reciprocal arrangements.

Most folks think of Florida as Orlando or Miami. The West Coast of the state is way better - not that I am biased. Some of the places here are still rustic, some are swanky, most offer plenty of history, almost all of them have stunning scenery with the water in the Gulf, in springs, lakes and rivers.

Come visit the West Coast of FL in 2021! In the meantime, enjoy this gallery of 10 photos from each visit.

Caladesi Island

Cassadaga

Cedar Key

Christmas

Clearwater Beach

Crystal River

Dunedin

Eureka Springs

Ft Myers

Ft Myers - Edison and Ford Estate

Gainesville

more Gainesville

Key West

Lake Apopka

Naples

Oldsmar

Osprey

Plant City

Punta Gorda - Babcock Ranch

Ruskin

Sanibel Island

Safety Harbor

Safety Harbor

Sarasota - Celery Fields

Sarasota - Ringling Museum

Sarasota - more Ringling Museum

Sarasota - even more Ringling Museum

Sarasota - Selby Gardens

Sarasota - more Selby Gardens

Sarasota - Tibbals miniature circus

St. Petersburg - Christmas 

St. Petersburg - Dali Museum

St. Petersburg - Edge District

St. Petersburg - James Museum

St. Petersburg - New Pier

St. Petersburg - Sawgrass Lake Park

Tampa - Channel A

Tampa - Cypress Point

Tampa - Historic District

Tampa - Lettuce Leaf Park

Tampa - River Walk

Tampa - River Walk at Christmas

Tampa - Upper Tampa Bay

Tarpon Springs

Thonotosassa

Thonotosassa - Hillsborough River State Park

Tierra Verde

Treasure Island

Venice

20 from 20: Never Bet against America

This is the 15th post in a series of 20 highlights from the Acrobatics during the crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform  and other series I ran last year.

Given the scary COVID-19 stats in the US, the bitter politics, the high unemployment you may snicker at the title of this post. Well, you would be laughing at Warren Buffett.

I excerpted from the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in May, where Buffett turned historian and talked about the "American Tailwind" ...how we have bounced back many times, usually much stronger after the stumbles we have had. The longer post is here including a video of the full meeting - fair warning, it is over 4 hours long and mostly procedural given it is a shareholder meeting. 

At 2.37, Ray Lane of GreatPoint Ventures provides more contemporary history. He talks about US dependence on foreign oil in the early 2000s, and how our innovations in horizontal drilling and fracking changed that. He also points out the funds which raised money last year and this will likely be the best performing this decade. It's largely about the quality of the entrepreneur he is seeing. You should hear his reasoning in the longer interview here.  

At 5.24, it is Paul Wright, CIO of Accuride Corp, a major supplier to the truck making world. He discusses how the country is likely to pivot back to "making" more right here and what that would mean to the education system. We cover a lot of ground in the longer interview here 

Finally at 7.08. it is Jeremy Bloom, CEO of Integrate, a B2B marketing software company. Impressively, he is the only athlete in history to ski in the Olympics and be drafted into the NFL. He was also a founder of Wish of a Lifetime foundation, which recently joined forces with AARP. Listen to him talk about how he learned from his parents who had a "healthy disrespect for the impossible". The longer session with him is here

I am an immigrant who has always been grateful for the opportunities the country has given me, but it is reassuring these and so many other business executives I have profiled in the last few months say the best is still ahead for the US. In spite of a very challenging 2020.

20 from 20: More for "Vinnie Vertical"

Another post in a series of 20 highlights from the Acrobatics during the crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform and other series I launched last year.

I have been called "Vinnie Vertical" because I am constantly asking vendors about industry specific capabilities. In 2020, countless businesses asked them the same question as vertical edge applications from telemedicine to distance learning to eCommerce/automated fulfillment allowed many companies to survive or even thrive. I posted last week about changes in 4 industries.  Here are four more.

Bob Stutz of SAP kicks it off with commentary on grocery stores and related eCommerce. What used to be a routine, boring shopping experience has become a lifeline for people. He points out how much volume has moved to eCommerce - "every day has been like Black Friday" (SAP's commerce engine handles 561 GMV - Gross Merchandise Volume - that's larger than at Amazon and other online retailers). We talk plenty of other CRM in the fuller session here. 

At 2.41 it is Marty Groover, Partner, C5MI. C5 in the company name comes from his background in the Navy. He also spent years at Caterpillar and is now a big advocate for Industrie 4.0 - digital factories and the industrial Internet of Things. The fuller interview is here 

At 5.35, it is David Watson, an Executive in Residence at Health2047, the innovation and venture arm of the American Medical Association. He describes the explosion in telemedicine after being "in experimental mode" for two decades. During this crisis, the UC San Francisco health system saw 50% of outpatient visits move to telemedicine. It was 2% prior to that. The fuller interview on other big changes in US healthcare are here 

At 7.30 it is Sarvesh Mahesh of Tavant. He talks about seismic changes in real estate as the market moves to virtual home tours, and the mortgage process becomes increasingly digitized. The full session is here

 

20 from 20: Mega Trends affecting IT

This is part of a series of 20 highlights from the Acrobatics during the crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform and other series I launched last year.

For most of 2020, CIOs and IT teams performed heroics moving millions to work from home, scaling up or down massive volumes, helping their companies pivot to new business models. In background, massive changes have been affecting the IT landscape. Here's what I heard from multiple conversations:

Leading off is Bob Evans who authors the Cloud Wars site. He talks about every company is becoming more of a software company and what that means to tech industry. The SaaS, IaaS etc definitions of the last few years look increasingly dated as we discuss in the extended session here 

Next at 3.23 is Holger Mueller of Constellation Research. He points out that hyperscalers are pulling away with their platforms and why application vendors should refocus on next-gen business processes which take advantage of contemporary ML, IoT and other capabilities. The longer conversation is here. 

At 7.01 it is Tamas Hevizi who talks about the growth of citizen programmers and why "shadow IT" is not unhealthy, it is inevitable, especially in small businesses. The longer conversation with him about Digital Acceleration is here 

At 10.17, Brad Feld, co-founder of Foundry Group talks complex systems thinking he explores in his new book and looks at the recent crisis from that lens. The longer session is here 

At 12.37, Brett Hurt, who is the CEO and co-founder of data.world says "data is one of the least networked resources" as we explore "single source of truth" in the explosion of data streams we saw around COVID-19, polling, the census. The longer conversation is here 

At 18.30, it is Grant Halloran, CEO of Planful which describes its Continuous Planning platform as "marrying finance’s need for structured planning with the business’ need for dynamic planning," We discuss what it would take to make pandemic modeling less chaotic than what we saw in 2020. 

20 from 20: The world is still round

This is part of a series of 20 highlights from the Acrobatics during the crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform and other series I launched last year.

Over my career I have been to or worked in 70 countries. One minor disappointment in 2020 was I did not extend my tally. Also given the severity of our COVID19 crisis and the rancorous politics it was easy to forget there is a big world outside the US. So, I was pleased to do a number of calls with executives about what was happening elsewhere

Starting off is Peter Maier, President Industries at SAP. SAP has the image of a lumbering giant whose projects take forever. In this excerpt he describes a project where they built a registration portal (Rückholprogramm) within a couple of days for the German Federal Foreign Office (Auswaertiges Amt) to help airlift stranded German citizens around the globe as commercial air travel came to a standstill. He describes another 2 week project to help manage capacity across 25 hospitals in the Heidelberg University system. In the fuller session here  he describes SAP and customer heroics in other markets.

At 3.00 is a very different perspective from Amit Shah, who is CIO of Excelitas Technologies, a spinoff from PerkinElmer. As he describes it, they are "light people" with products which "create light, sense light and bend light". Since they make components for avionics, imaging, temperature sensing and many other applications considered essential, the majority of their global locations remained open. Full interview here 

At 6.17 is Andre Blumberg, Senior IT Director at CLP Power. Based in Hong Kong, he was one of the few executives I talked to last year who was in his corporate, not home, office. In the longer interview here he describes how energy consumption patterns have evolved over the last few months - consumer v. commercial, across Asia-Pacific. He also describes the 3 Ds driving their business - decarbonization, decentralization and digitizing - and how the crisis has influenced their thinking. 

Darren Roos, CEO of IFS, describes from London starting at 9.40 heroics in his UK and European customer base. He pays them tribute with the term "challenger mindset" and calls them "beacons of light in the darkness". Full interview here 

At 11.56, Kevin Parikh, CEO and Chairman of Avasant takes us down memory lane to the evolution of global outsourcing. In the fuller interview here I liked his optimism about using maturing technologies to re-imagine the world as we recover from the crisis.

At 15.03  Phil Fersht, Founder, CEO and Chief Analyst of HFS Research provides a contemporary look at global outsourcing as he contrasts how India and Philippines have handled the crisis. Full session here

Finally, to reassure us the world is still round, at 20.49 Rob Enslin of Google Cloud describes his "round the world" trip of virtual client calls in one day. Full session here

20 from 20: The 20 minute digital pitch

This is the eleventh post in a series of 20 highlights from the Acrobatics during the crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform and other series I launched last year.

I launched the Analyst Cam series based on an inspiration from Rob Enslin of Google (starting at 1.08) describing his round-the-world trip of virtual client visits in one day!

The goal is to try to excerpt 20 minute segments from vendor briefings and events. I share the progress in the series.

More coming in the series in 2021.

20 from 20: A small, proud accomplishment

This is the tenth post in a series of 20 highlights from the Acrobatics during the crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform, Technology and my Passion and other series I launched last year.

This one celebrates a small personal accomplishment during the year - a streak of 100 consecutive days with 10,000+ FitBit certified steps. Doing that was not easy in year of COVID restrictions and navigating around hours and hours of video recording and editing.

I spend most of the time thanking those who helped me accomplish the milestone.

Not surprisingly, there is a technology angle - I thank a number of vendors including SAP, Google and Amazon who helped. And plenty of sports teams and movie makers.

 

20 from 20: Humor in Tech

This is the ninth post in a series of 20 highlights from the Acrobatics during the crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform and other series I launched last year.

2020 was a year of so much doom and gloom that it was nice to have periodic humor and I usually found some in conversations with my analyst friends.

Brian Sommer always has a corny virtual background and we usually share wisecracks. I include 3 snippets from our Burning Platform episodes.  

At 2.20 it is Paul Greenberg and Brent Leary who run an entertaining CRM Playaz show. I invited them to talk about their other passion - Sports. That is not spared by their humor - especially the Patriots and their alumni!

Us analysts travel way too much, so 2020 required a bit of adjustment. At 7.04, Ray Wang of Constellation takes us down memory lane when I ask him if United has a plane named after him.

At 8.36, I share excerpts from a Curmudgeon Christmas get together with Frank Scavo of Avasant and Dennis Howlett of Diginomica. Our memory lane goes back 15+ years. You definitely don't want to miss the ending.

20 from 20: Digital Acceleration

This is the eighth post in a series of 20 highlights from the Acrobatics during the crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform and other series I launched last year.

I heard about acceleration of digital transformations from multiple perspectives. Here are a few

I talked to Jerome Dubois and Rylan Hamilton, co-founders and co-CEOs of 6 River  - they were pioneers with Kiva (now part of Amazon), and now with their smaller, more agile Chuck warehouse robots. Jerome describes how more companies are moving to "micro-fulfillment" to accommodate new models like flash sales, order on-line, pick-up in stores, regionalized inventories, last-mile delivery expectations and constraints. The full interview is here

At 1.45 is Ben Pring, a futurist who leads several thought leadership initiatives for Cognizant. He discusses how the "Future of Work" has rapidly become the "Present of Work" during the COVID-19 crisis. The full interview is here 

At 6.19, Emily McEvilly, Chief Customer Officer at Workday describes how her SI ecosystem is tooling/automating their efforts, how many customers are actually accelerating their projects and often insourcing many project tasks. Fuller discussion here.  

At 9.46, Bill Hewitt, President and CEO of Aternity describes the need for IT agility like how IBM managed to get 100,000 employees working from home over a weekend and how WestPac compressed a 3 month rollout into 5 days. Full session here

At 11.41 Tamas Hevizi, Global Head of Private Equity at Automation Anywhere describes the interest in the 7 C's he is seeing in investor circles - commerce, cloud, collaboration, cybersecurity etc. The fuller discussion is here 

At 17.46, Ton Dobbe, Chief Inspiration Officer at Value Inspiration provides a perspective from Europe on startups in what he calls his 'Tribe" The full session is here

20 from 20: Inspirational Quotes

This is the seventh post in a series of 20 highlights from the Acrobatics during the crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform and other series I launched last year.

While most of my conversations I have shared are about business acrobatics during the crisis, there have been countless snippets focused on humanity, kindness, charitable behavior which also deserve to be highlighted.

Starting off is Charles Phillips who many of us know from Oracle and Infor. I interviewed him when the country was at the peak of political rancor as the political conventions were in progress. He volunteers a comment his son makes as he returns from a deployment in Japan, away from all the doom and gloom on US media. The fuller session where he talks about racial trends, helping New York City recover and several other issues is here. 

At 0.43, Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho shares his personal philosophy "Pain is real, suffering is optional". He makes the point that humanity has recovered from far worse calamities than the pandemic. In the longer interview here he talks about rural revival and many other perspectives you don't hear from too many tech executives. BTW, he did this session from rural India on a 4G line. Not a great connection but his humility comes through loud and clear 

At 3.35, Cindy Jutras of Mint Jutras was talking about how gender and ethnic equality has evolved over her 45 year career in tech. I liked that she invoked the NASA ladies from the movie Hidden Figures. The full session is here. 

At 5.05, Bruce Bond of Common Ground Committee shares the episode of a remarkable musician, Daryl Davis, a Black man who has spent the past 35 years on a quest of speaking with, and at times befriending, members of white supremacist groups. He has helped more than 200 KKK members renounce their racist ideology. The whole interview with Bruce where he describes the amazing work they have done to try and reduce the political polarization in the country is here.

At 6.13, Brad Keywell, CEO of Uptake talks about mentorship. Brad is a very successful serial entrepreneur and I like the modesty he displays when he says he uses 'curiosity as a growth edge". The whole session where he also discusses how Uptake has helped customers in many asset intensive industries is here.

At 7.50, Brett Hurt, CEO of Data.world talks optimistically about how tech will help solve humanity's biggest challenges - climate change, cancer among others. The much broader conversation with him about Austin (where he was born and raised and which has gone from success to success), knowledge graphs, Certified B Corporations and many other topics is here. 

At 9.29, Ray Wang of Constellation Research talks about his parents, the work ethic their immigrant mindset instilled in him, leading by example and staying positive during the pandemic. I had a two-part conversation with him here.

At 12.56, M.R. Rangaswami of Sand Hill Group talks about how the Indian-American community stepped up with charitable efforts during the pandemic. The fuller interview where he also talks about heroics in his tech and sustainability networks is here.

2020 brought out the best out of so many, and I am glad I had a front row seat to hear from a few of them. Keep on inspiring!

 

20 from 20: Diversity in Tech

This is the sixth post in a series of 20 highlights from the Acrobatics during the crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform and other series I launched last year.

Diversity and Inclusion was a hot topic in most sectors during the year, particularly in tech. I excerpt below some of the conversations I had on the topic.

Leading off is Tony Prophet, Chief Equality and Recruiting Officer at Salesforce. Tony has had a remarkable career. I profiled him in one of my books optimizing HP's supply chain. He had also described China's meteoric surge in the early 2000s. I then profiled him in another book at Microsoft helping digitize the education sector. Now he is in an even more influential role at Salesforce, especially with the recent focus on BLM and other diversity issues. The full interview is here 

Next, at 5.48, is an extract from a presentation by Barbry McGann of Workday of their new VIBE product. VIBE is acronym for Value Inclusion, Belonging, and Equity. What is striking from her presentation is the concept of  "intersectionality" so you can filter employee data, for example, by "Native American, Male, Veteran, Frontline Worker". It's no longer sufficient to focus just on individual attributes or just ethnic or gender based diversity. Her fuller presentation is here.

At 9.37 Dr. Patti Fletcher of Workhuman provides some sobering input on how ladies, especially minorities, have slipped significantly in their diversity and equity progress during the pandemic. She quotes a BCG study that women are putting in 15 more hours a week than men on "unpaid labor" as they work from home. She says 1 in 4 are thinking of leaving their jobs. I had reviewed her book Disrupters couple of years ago. More of the conversation with her and Grant Beckett is here 

At 13.08, Rich Karlgaard of Forbes Media, drawing from his book, 'Late Bloomers" discusses ageism in Silicon Valley. He thinks enterprise software, as different from consumer tech, should continue to leverage "grey hair". He brings out how our skillsets evolve as we age. The full session where we also discuss public policy, baseball and lots more is here.

20 from 20: Not your Dad's verticals

This is the fifth post in a series of 20 highlights from the Acrobatics during the crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform and other series I launched last year.

I have been called "Vinnie Vertical" because I am constantly asking vendors about industry capabilities. Well, in 2020 countless businesses asked them the same questions as vertical edge applications from telemedicine to distance learning to eCommerce/automated fulfillment allowed many companies to survive or even thrive as consumers did everything from home, as the SBA issued 5 million emergency PPP loans to small businesses and so many industries got disrupted during the pandemic. And these projects needed to be done quickly, not over multiple years and done with a light SI footprint.

I have been impressed with the growing number of industries Salesforce and its Force partners have targeted with point solutions. In the excerpt below, Neeracha Taychakhoonavudh, EVP, Industries talks about how they helped community banks, in particular with PPP loan processing and several manufacturers as they pivoted to making PPE, sanitizers and other COVID-19 related products. In the longer interview here, she covers many more sectors. 

At 3.22, Ed Abbo, President and CTO of C3.ai describes their work at asset intensive companies like oil and gas, utilities and manufacturers. They apply ML and other digital tech to specific pain points - hundreds of bite size but highback areas without the pain and cost of replacing existing applications. Longer session here. 

Even in the more traditional ERP space we are seeing differentiating wrinkles

At 6.19, Mike Ettling, CEO of Unit4 talks about his people v product centric ERP processes with examples from higher education and nonprofits. The longer interview is here. 

At 8.11, Mark Brewer of IFS does not talk as much about core ERP but more of his field service, asset management, maintenance and support for outcome based pricing at their customers. More of the presentation here and a demo here 

More verticals to come in a later episode.

20 from 20: Business Heroics

This is the fourth post in a series of 20 highlights from the Acrobatics during the crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform and other series I launched last year.

We have all heard and seen amazing healthcare heroics in the last few months. Just as impressive have been the business acrobatics with massive scaling up and down, rapid innovations and business pivots in various industries. I had the opportunity to go wow many times a week as I heard executives recount their acrobatics. Here are a few:

To start off, it is Lou Von Thaer, who is President and CEO of Battelle which is a major force in science and technology discovery. You can feel the intensity as he describes how quickly their vaporized hydrogen peroxide-based Critical Care Decontamination System came together and how it scaled when N95 masks were in critically short supply in March. In the 4 months when I talked to him, they had already disinfected and extended lives of over 2 million masks. (he mistakenly said 2 thousand in the interview). In the fuller interview here he talks about other work they have done during the crisis. 

Next at 5.54 is Rahul Samant, CIO at Delta Airlines. We have all heard other execs talk about massively scaling up. This is a remarkable story of rapidly scaling down. As a road warrior, I was in awe of all the heroics he describes as traffic fell off a cliff (like retiring their MD-88s and 777s years ahead of schedule, reducing cash burn of $100 million a day, refunds of $1.5 billion). He discusses the massive compute cycles to reschedule flights, crews and operations. I did not realize they continued to fly a thousand flights a day with medical cargo, personnel and volunteers, repatriating US citizens from around the world, and other essential traffic. In the fuller interview he describes all the activities to make passengers more comfortable about returning to the air (with electrostatic foggers, touchless check-ins, empty middle seats, high energy HEPA filters and other measures). 

At 12.45 is Ray Lane describing pivots at a couple of his portfolio companies at his fund, GreatPoint Ventures. I was particularly impressed with his story of Farmer's Fridge. They sold fresh salads and snacks via kiosks in corporate cafeterias and airports. That market evaporated as travel dropped to near zero and everyone started working at home. The CEO could have furloughed most of his employees. Instead he started delivering food to hospitals and schools, which have struggled to find wholesome food as their cafeterias and meal services have shut down. The revenues are back to near prior peak. See the fuller interview with Ray here.

Finally, at 14.36 is Jack Barrett, President and CEO of First Citrus Bank, a community bank based in the Tampa Bay, FL area. His staff worked nonstop for weeks to get 1,180 SBA PPP loans approved for local businesses. That is several years worth of loans in under 2 months! Many other community banks did similar for their regions. In contrast, many of the larger, national banks fumbled the opportunity. He also shares the outpouring of gratitude he has seen from his customers as a result. See the full interview here. 

Wow - hope you are impressed. I will have more of these heroics to share soon.

 

20 from 20: The Year HR finally turned strategic?

This is the third post in a series of 20 highlights from the Acrobatics during the crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform and other series I launched last year.

Remember the scene in the movie, Dirty Harry where the Clint Eastwood character is told he is grounded and being transferred to Personnel? His response is (still) not very flattering to HR. It has been 50 years since that movie came out and we have come a long way. But at the midway point I was a Gartner analyst covering HR processes and started to hear "HR needs to become more strategic". I have continued to hear that since, but HR has mostly continued with more tactical, compliance oriented tasks. The phrase "employees are our most important asset" was glibly thrown around

2020 truly allowed HR to blossom and for executives to treat employees as essential assets. Josh Bersin does a nice job explaining in the excerpt below. My full interview with Josh is here. 

But don't just listen to us analysts - starting at 4.59 is Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri who describes the lengths they went to protect the employee base during the pandemic. He is very generous to his long time mentor and partner, Dave Duffield. (In a nice touch he did his interview with a Zoom background of Giorgio's Pizza. Every mom and pop restaurant could use that kind of endorsement given the impact lockdowns have had on small businesses).  The whole interview with Aneel is here 

And at 6.54 is Jeff Roberston, COO of Maxar, who added "Mr. COVID" to his job description. He describes various people-related protocols in his space tech company which does sensitive work for many government bodies. The fuller interview is here 

I conducted many more interviews about people issues with other C level execs and industry analysts last year. I would say HR has finally earned the right to be called Strategic. While Harry Callahan may still disagree, I doubt he would quibble with at least the designation of Essential after how the function stepped up in 2020.     

20 from 20: Resilience during a Crisis

This is the second in a series of 20 highlights from the last year, documented more fully in a series of posts on my two blogs during the wild year that was 2020.

Acrobatics during the crisis - C level executive interviews across industries and geographies

Analyst Cam - vendor briefings, research, demos 

Burning Platform - conversations with fellow analysts and industry observers 

Technology and my Passion - guest columns about hobbies, charities, personal pursuits 

West Coast on the East Coast - trips up and down the West Coast of Florida

This episode is meant to thank Alex Shootman, CEO of Workfront (which has since been acquired by Adobe.)

In March, I was traumatized like so many as the world started to shut down. But I had a revelation. From the New Florence blog, I was already seeing plenty of healthcare and other innovation coming out of Asia and Europe as they fought the earlier onslaught of the COVID-19 virus. I am constantly interviewing C level executives for case studies for my books. Those take weeks to schedule. Perhaps the lockdowns had freed up their schedules a bit more? Would they be willing to talk to me near real-time about their leadership style and innovations they were working on to combat the crisis? And would they allow me to record them on Zoom and quickly share their perspectives with the world? 

One of the first executives I reached out to was Alex. I wanted him to talk about resilience traits from his book, Done Right where he had interviewed several business, military and other leaders. I had reviewed the book here. 

He readily agreed. So did several others like Aneel Bhusri of Workday.

Below is a 2 minute excerpt from the session with Alex. He is excellent - watch the whole interview on April 10 here.  BTW, while excerpting this, I was reminded I had to do the session with Alex on my iPad. My order for a high-res webcam was backordered given all the supply chain issues we were already starting to experience way back in April!

I am grateful to Alex not just for sharing his wisdom, but also for kicking off the Acrobatics series which has led me to profile 75 executives and counting across industries and countries. I cannot begin to say how often I have gone wow while hearing from these executives about massive scaling up or down, pivots, rapid innovations and other heroics. Certainly helped me and my readers stay positive in a dreadful year. 

20 from 20: The Passion Play

I am kicking off a series of posts for this new year. I will share 20 highlights from the last year. It brings out excerpts from these series of posts on my two blogs during the wild year that was 2020, which I captured in a fair amount of detail in over 20gb of videos, images, diaries on Google Drive, YouTube and Instagram:

Acrobatics during the crisis - C level executive interviews across industries and geographies

Analyst Cam - vendor briefings, research, demos 

Burning Platform - conversations with fellow analysts and industry observers 

Technology and my Passion - guest columns about hobbies, charities, personal pursuits 

West Coast on the East Coast - trips up and down the West Coast of Florida

The first episode today celebrates the 50 guest columnists who wrote in the Technology and my Passion series on the New Florence blog. They shared what keeps them happy, I enjoyed working with them to craft their columns, readers enjoyed their positive pursuits during the doom and gloom of 2020.

Thanks so much to each of them!

Look forward to more contributions - contact me for column guidelines.

"The year that hope endured"

National Geographic has a special issue with the Year in Pictures (sub required)

I particularly liked the section "The year that hope endured" and this photo by Charlie Hamilton James of the annual Serengeti migration

"Every year more than a million wildebeests rumble north across the Serengeti in a migration that is one of the world’s great spectacles. In 2020 it was no different. Herds followed seasonal rain from northern Tanzania to Kenya’s Masai Mara. During one summer sunset several thousand wildebeests gathered at the edge of the Mara River and spilled down its banks. Crocodiles awaited them in the water and hyenas on the other side of the river. Fresh green grass did too, and so they pushed forward, as they always do."

Merry Christmas, all!

The mRNA revolution

It's still early days for the Pfizer, Moderna and other vaccines, and the COVID virus keeps mutating, but it's still worth celebrating the progress to date.

First, a layman's primer on mRNA

a more technical discussion with virologist Shane Crotty

Next, the logistics of distributing the vaccines, especially the challenges posed by the Pfizer COVID vaccine which needs to be stored at below -70 F throughout the cold chain

Finally, here is CBS 60 minutes episode last night about how Pfizer and BioNtech developed the vaccine so rapidly

West Coast on the East Coast

Many of my readers have been following along with 4 series of blogs/videos I have run over the course of the pandemic - Acrobatics during the crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform, and Technology and my Passion.

There is a fifth series which has mostly shown up on Instagram and in my notes squirreled away on Google Drive. As she wrote in the Passion series, my wife Margaret is a packing pro - as in lots of activities on a day trip. Over the last few months, on weekends, she has used it to great advantage navigating all the lockdowns. We have gone up and down the West Coast of Florida mostly between Cedar Key and Marco Island - roughly 300 miles of Gulf coastline. A couple of destinations like Christmas (yes!) and Gainesville, are a bit inland. (Some of these posts are pre-pandemic.)

They have been mostly day trips, with masks and distancing precautions. Our roads are excellent, and access to many of these places costs only a parking ticket. One of the best investments we made was annual memberships to local museums and botanical gardens. They have opened up access to many other places with their reciprocal arrangements.

Most folks think of Florida as Orlando or Miami. The West Coast of the state is way better - not that I am biased. Some of the places here are still rustic, some are swanky, most offer plenty of history, almost all of them have stunning scenery with the water in the Gulf, in springs, lakes and rivers.

Come visit when you are comfortable getting on the road again. In the meantime, enjoy 10 photos from each visit. I will be happy to share my notes when you are ready. And many more photos.

In the meantime, I think I will donate a copy of my photos and notes to a time capsule of the pandemic of 2020. Hopefully, in posterity, someone will find them and contrast them to all the doom and gloom they will read about this year in the media clippings.

Caladesi Island

Cassadaga

Cedar Key

Christmas

Clearwater Beach

Crystal River

Dunedin

Eureka Springs

Ft Myers

Ft Myers - Edison and Ford Estate

Gainesville

more Gainesville

Key West

Lake Apopka

Naples

Oldsmar

Osprey

Plant City

Punta Gorda - Babcock Ranch

Ruskin

Sanibel Island

Safety Harbor

Safety Harbor

Sarasota - Celery Fields

Sarasota - Ringling Museum

Sarasota - more Ringling Museum

Sarasota - even more Ringling Museum

Sarasota - Selby Gardens

Sarasota - more Selby Gardens

Sarasota - Tibbals miniature circus

St. Petersburg - Christmas 

St. Petersburg - Dali Museum

St. Petersburg - Edge District

St. Petersburg - James Museum

St. Petersburg - New Pier

St. Petersburg - more of the Pier

St. Petersburg - Sawgrass Lake Park

St. Petersburg - Sunken Gardens

Tampa - Channel A

Tampa - Cypress Point

Tampa - Historic District

Tampa - Lettuce Leaf Park

Tampa - River Walk

Tampa - Upper Tampa Bay

Tarpon Springs

Thonotosassa

Thonotosassa - Hillsborough River State Park

Tierra Verde

Treasure Island

Venice

Smart garage

The trial project is being led by U.K.-based Fetch.ai and Munich-based blockchain company Datarella and was just launched at one of the central Munich offices owned by Connex Buildings. The goal is to control the pricing and use of the building’s parking spaces dynamically, and to disincentivize people from driving to work by rewarding them with public transit passes for all the time they aren’t using the parking garage.

FastCompany

 

50 years of gaming history

Console makers like Microsoft and Sony are launching cloud-based subscription services even while they continue to develop new consoles. Meanwhile, Amazon and Google are launching their own services that work on multiple devices, mobile included.

After seeing the success that games like Pokémon Go had on smartphones—reaching more than $1 billion in yearly revenue—and Grand Theft Auto V’s record breaking haul of $1 billion in just three days, companies are targeting as much of the market as they can.

Visual Capitalist

click on image to enlarge

 

A "vertiport" in Orlando

The Tavistock Development Corp. said it was constructing a Jetsons-like aviation facility in Orlando's Lake Nona area, the mixed-use planned community it built. Lake Nona already is home to several medical and research facilities.

The aircraft will be supplied by Lilium, a Germany-based aviation company that manufacturers the industry’s only five-passenger “electric vertical takeoff and landing" aircraft. At the moment, the Lilium Jets can travel up to 185 miles (298 kilometers) on a one-hour charge.

Fortune

 

The year of the cold chain

At the start of the pandemic, it became clear very quickly that the cold chain was a priority.

Manufacturers and distributors committed to ensuring the food supply chain would continue working as an essential industry. The focus later expanded to figure out how the cold chain would also be used to successfully deliver a temperature-sensitive COVID-19 vaccine to billions across the globe, once a viable option was ready.

Supply Chain Dive

Video below of the massive logistical challenge around COVID-19 logistics

COVID-19 Contact Tracing evolves

Covid-19 contact-tracing apps from Apple Inc. and Google are coming to more states, along with evidence that they can help slow infections as long as enough people use them.

Fourteen states and Washington, D.C., have recently adopted the “exposure notification” technology the companies built into their smartphone operating systems—Big Tech’s most significant contribution to the fight against Covid-19. California, and other states are piloting the technology and could release it soon. It lets people who have tested positive for Covid-19 alert others they have previously been in close contact with that they should take precautions or get a test.

WSJ (sub required)

The future of the MBA?

In recent years the trend has been for MBAs to become shorter with more offering one-year compared with two-year degrees.  Demand for a one-year MBA rather than a two-year degree is again highlighted in this year’s Tomorrow’s MBA report.  The future is likely to find not just growing demand for one-year MBAs, but also for part-time, executive, blended, online and stackable degrees, potentially with the stackable MBA being delivered by different schools at different times in a student’s career.  Just over two-thirds of respondents (69%) in this year’s study also indicated that they would consider a specialist master’s degree such as a Masters in Finance.

CarringtonCrisp

 

Herman-Miller B2C foray

Office furniture company Herman Miller Inc. is trying to expand further beyond selling large orders of expensive chairs to employers with a new bid for individual at-home workers.

Herman Miller this month will open its first stores designed for consumers in Century City in Los Angeles and New York City’s Hudson Yards, and plans to open two more next month in Austin, Texas, and Tokyo. It previously relied purely on large showrooms aimed at business-to-business customers, e-commerce and a presence in consumer outlets such Design Within Reach, a sibling under parent company Herman Miller Group.

WSJ (sub required)

Image credit

The 15-minute city

Taken together, the new trees and cycleways, community facilities and social housing, homes and workplaces all reflect a potentially transformative vision for urban planners: the 15-minute city. “The 15-minute city represents the possibility of a decentralized city,” says Carlos Moreno, a scientific director and professor specializing in complex systems and innovation at University of Paris 1. “At its heart is the concept of mixing urban social functions to create a vibrant vicinity”—replicated, like fractals, across an entire urban expanse.

BusinessWeek

 

The two-liter bottle evolves

First designed in 1970 by PepsiCo and improved into the 1990s, the two-liter bottle is an imperfect mainstay of the soft drink industry. But today, after 30 years of being unchanged, the two-liter is getting a complete makeover. PepsiCo is beginning the rollout of a curvier new bottle that’s easier to grip and balance in your hand, while consuming slightly less plastic in the process. The update will come to all its major soft drink brands.

FastCompany

Image credit

 

If you are missing your daily commute

Microsoft Corp. is developing an update to its Teams package of workplace collaboration tools to replace one of the less-mourned losses of pandemic living: the commute to and from work.

The daily commute may have caused its share of headaches, but it at least helped workers define a start and end to their workday while offering a set time to think away from the demands and distractions of the home and office. That positive side of the commute is what Microsoft hopes to re-create.

WSJ (sub required)

Vaccine Vial Monitoring

While Zebra’s products have been used for tracking samples from mass tracking sites, the company is also being counted on for vaccine distributions in what’s known as cold chain, a temperature-controlled supply chain.

“Our vaccine vial labels,” which can also be used on boxes and pallets “will change color based on the temperature exposure,” Gustaffson said in a “Mad Money” interview.

The labels come from Temptime, a manufacturer of temperature monitoring solutions for the health-care industry that the Lincolnshire, Illinois-based company acquired nearly two years ago.

CNBC

Math education for the data age

The gathering grew out of an ongoing collaboration between (Jo) Boaler (of Stanford) and Steven Levitt, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and co-author of the best-selling Freakonomics books, which apply data science to a variety of topics in contemporary culture. The pair recently co-authored an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times that called for putting data science at the center of high school mathematics. 

Levitt, a father of four teenagers, became interested in the issue when he saw the mismatch between his own experience of mathematics and what his kids were learning. They came to see math as “voodoo,” said Levitt, who cofounded the nonprofit Center for Radical Innovation for Social Change (RISC) at the University of Chicago. “They were taught by teachers that these sets of things work, without any real understanding of why they’re doing what they’re doing.”

Stanford Graduate School of Education

Medical transcription evolves

Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have all created software to this effect and are increasingly creating tools for healthcare settings, likely in a quest for new sources of recurring revenue.

Even Nvidia, which has traditionally focused more on its imaging technology, has started offering medical transcription. Earlier this year, Nvidia launched a service called BioMegatron, which is built to recognize conversational speech. The data set is trained on over six billion medical terms and is 92% accurate. There are also a host of smaller companies like Dragon, MModal, Suki Ai, and Saykara providing transcription for doctors.

FastCompany

Video of Nvidia's vision for AI in healthcare

 

Venmo personalizes your credit card UX

If approved, your card will be printed with your unique QR code on the front, creating a distinct card design for each customer. When it arrives, you can scan the QR code via your mobile phone camera to easily activate the card, or have your friends scan in the Venmo app to access your profile and send a payment or split purchases. And with five vibrant, colorful designs, you can choose the card that fits your style.

Venmo blog

The Apple M1 Chip

For now, Apple's new M1 chip — fast, power-smart, and literally cool — is just a major hardware upgrade that's winning rave reviews.

But down the road, the M1 will pave the way for new Apple devices that could bridge the divide between Mac and iPhone/iPad computing and transform the devices we use every day.

Axios

 

Zelle in cash-strapped Venezuela

There’s a big impediment to digital dollarization in places like Venezuela. The U.S. Federal Reserve doesn’t issue a digital version of the U.S. dollar.

So, Venezuelans have cobbled an innovative way to digitally dollarize. They are using  Zelle, a U.S.-based payments network run by Arizona-based Early Warning Services, to conduct Venezuelan commerce. Early Warning is owned by Bank of America, BB&T, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo.

Coindesk

Image Credit

Holiday Trends during the pandemic from Google

"We’ve analyzed Google Maps data before and during the pandemic (for the purposes of this post, we analyzed data from March to October 2020) to see how people across the U.S. are getting ready for the holidays. Read on for top trends on how people are navigating, how they’re spending their time and what type of food they’re craving."

Google Blog

The year of the cold chain

At the start of the pandemic, it became clear very quickly that the cold chain was a priority.

Manufacturers and distributors committed to ensuring the food supply chain would continue working as an essential industry. The focus later expanded to figure out how the cold chain would also be used to successfully deliver a temperature-sensitive COVID-19 vaccine to billions across the globe, once a viable option was ready.

Supply Chain Dive

Video below of the massive logistical challenge around COVID-19 vaccine distribution

The pothole hunter

“Our waste vehicles are out and about every day, so we thought why not tap into this network to get the latest information on the status of our roads.

“By equipping waste trucks with videoing technology and using AI to identify potential issues, we’re able to collect up-to-date information and get to fixing our roads quicker”.

The program began in early 2019 with Council’s Asset Management team and ICT department working together with tech suppliers to fit a Council garbage truck with a consumer-grade dashcam, GPS and 4G modem.

Video footage captured by the camera is then transmitted to the cloud, where AI methods are used to identify potholes, cracking, line markings, and signs while also protecting privacy.

Moreton Bay Regional Council

https://fb.watch/23_jLTuOEC/

 

 

Japan, China and Maglev trains

On one side is Central Japan Railway Co.’s 9 trillion yen ($86 billion) maglev that’s expected to connect Tokyo and Osaka by 2037. On the other is China’s 100 billion yuan ($15 billion) on-again, off-again project that will run between Shanghai and the eastern port city of Ningbo. After several false starts, it’s now forecast to be completed by around 2035. Japan’s is more expensive largely because of the amount of excavation that will be required to tunnel through the mountainous countryside. If Japan and China are able to unveil their long-distance projects successfully by their due dates, it should give them a leg up when they look to export the next-generation technology, rail experts say.

Bloomberg

 

McKinsey's State of AI Survey

Overall, half of respondents say their organizations have adopted AI in at least one function.   And while AI adoption was about equal across regions last year, this year’s respondents working for companies with headquarters in Latin American countries and in other developing countries are much less likely than those elsewhere to report that their companies have embedded AI into a process or product in at least one function or business unit. By industry, respondents in the high-tech and telecom sectors    are again the most likely to report AI adoption, with the automotive and assembly sector falling just behind them (down from sharing the lead last year).

The business functions in which organizations adopt AI remain largely unchanged from the 2019 survey, with service operations, product or service development, and marketing and sales again taking the top spots.

McKinsey

 

Apple iPhone 12 teardown

No chance I am tearing down my new 12 Pro. It has Belkin Ultraglass to shield the screen and a clear case to protect the body. However, I am glad there are others who have torn theirs down.  

The teardown from Fomalhaut Techno Solutions shows a bill of materials of around $406. It shows the most expensive components of this iPhones models are undoubtedly the Qualcomm X55 5G modem which cost around $90 (estimated). After this, it’s the OLED display from Samsung. The estimated price for this Samsung OLED display is around $70. around $90. Deep in the report, we got the production cost for the A14 Bionic chipset is said to be around $40. 

The iFixit video shows the teardown of the phone with an updated 3 camera system that includes Lidar, a new flat-edged design, an updated processor and 5G network support.

AeroNabs

“Far more effective than wearable forms of personal protective equipment, we think of AeroNabs as a molecular form of PPE that could serve as an important stopgap until vaccines provide a more permanent solution to COVID-19,” said AeroNabs co-inventor Peter Walter, PhD, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at UCSF and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. For those who cannot access or don’t respond to SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, Walter added, AeroNabs could be a more permanent line of defense against COVID-19.

UC San Francisco

 

The Great Reboot

Arnobio Morelix, Inc.'s chief data scientist and chief innovation officer of San Fransisco-based Startup Genome, from his forthcoming book

"Over half of Fortune 500 companies were created in a recession, an impressive number. And even if you look at the Great Recession, we had over 50 unicorns created during that time. So there's a ton of opportunity during periods of adversity. In the present moment, this specially helps digital businesses.

There are a lot of new, tech-enabled markets and products that will dominate our daily lives in the future. For example, we're seeing new technological implementations these days that probably would have taken years to roll out without the the pandemic, including touchless and cashier-less transactions at stores, automated toll booths (a technology that existed for years but has just now been completely implemented in the Bay Area, for example), small family restaurants and stores with digital interfaces for ordering. (Don't expect to be given reusable menus at your favorite neighborhood cafe any time soon.)"

Inc

Digital autopsies

A medical examiner puts on a pair of augmented-reality goggles and brings up a computer simulated image of a body that appears to hover steps away. Nearby on a metal autopsy table lies the body of a person brought into the lab after a fatal shooting. Instead of cutting into the victim, the examiner slices through the 3-D image, mapping the bullet’s trajectory and determining the cause of death without making a single incision.

This is one vision of the virtual future of autopsies, based on interviews with forensic and digital health-care experts: Using digital reconstructions and machine-learning algorithms to diagnose the cause of death, identify a victim, and even triage battlefield or motor-vehicle injuries in live patients by analyzing images of victims who died in similar incidents. It would mark a step change for the field of forensic science, where the standard methods of autopsy have remained nearly unchanged for a century.

WSJ

 

New security jobs for the digital world

WSJ highlights 5 new jobs for the digital world

• Deepfake analyst
• Driverless-Car Security Specialist
• Implanted-Device Guardian
• Anti-Cheat Referee (for video games)
• Chief Digital Identity Officer

Video on Trend Micro's threat research

Mathematical Library of the Future

Digitizing mathematics is a longtime dream. The expected benefits range from the mundane — computers grading students’ homework — to the transcendent: using artificial intelligence to discover new mathematics and find new solutions to old problems. Mathematicians expect that proof assistants could also review journal submissions, finding errors that human reviewers occasionally miss, and handle the tedious technical work that goes into filling in all the details of a proof.

But first, the mathematicians who gather on Zulip must furnish Lean with what amounts to a library of undergraduate math knowledge, and they’re only about halfway there. Lean won’t be solving open problems anytime soon, but the people working on it are almost certain that in a few years the program will at least be able to understand the questions on a senior-year final exam.

Quanta

More on Lean and the future of mathematics below