New Florence. New Renaissance.

The next-gen technology analyst and AR

This is one in a series of posts with excerpts from our new fiction mystery book, The AI Analyst (click on badge on left to go to the Amazon page with description, sample download, reviews etc.)

I previously excerpted about next-gen vendors like Polestar and next-gen buyers like Sheldon Freres from the book. Lots of ripple effects from these changes are also causing technology analysts and AR to evolve.

Oxford Research is headquartered in Cambridge, MA but has recently opened a new executive briefing and research center on the waterfront in St. Petersburg, FL. It is hosting an analyst offsite there and lots is discussed about the past, present and future of the analyst world and how they are now using LLMs and copilots and have their own labs for product testing.

A fireside chat between Tucker Newberry, the CEO; Martha Weingarten, the Head of Research and Patrick Brennan, the Chief Analyst sets the stage

“After the golf, the beach, and the Dali, the guests got changed in their rooms at the Vinoy and proceeded to dinner. The group included all the analysts and research staff, as well as six client executives—three from vendors (including Polestar) and three from user organizations. These executives each sat at the head of a table and chatted with Oxford folks about their IT projects and market intelligence needs. There was lots of chatter about Generative AI in particular though most shortened it to GenAI

After dinner, Tucker kicked off the proceedings. He had founded Oxford Research almost 30 years ago and had watched it grow to its present dominating position of helping IT professionals making technology decisions…. “Boy, did we have executive access!” Tucker exclaimed. “I spent many weekends working with CEOs of the largest corporations in the world—often at their beach houses.”…

Martha: “I have mentored a number of analysts throughout my career. Good analysts have two qualities—they are both curious and skeptical...One of her favorite expressions, even today, was “Sacred cows make the best hamburgers.” She described how she once tore apart a vendor presentation: “You are allowed to be stupid or lazy, but not both.”

Tucker and Martha discussed the Gartner IPO in 1993 that literally made hundreds of analysts, overnight millionaires. It led to a glowing New York Times article, from which Martha read a quote: “Gartner may well be the richest publishing house in the world—a ‘mini-Microsoft’ in its field.”

Patrick had been worried that the audience would be bored with this walk down memory lane. Then he saw that even the youngest analysts were listening closely. Few of them knew much about the history and evolution of the technology analyst profession.

Martha said, “But that was decades ago. If you put today’s enterprise applications on a grid of industries and countries, Gartner today barely covers 25 percent. And they have nowhere near the access they once enjoyed to the technology buyer. They make vendors fill out long surveys for their Magic Quadrants (their equivalent of Oxford’s Golden Circle). Vendors, in turn, use a cottage industry of ‘analyst relations’ advisers who coach them how to game their responses. It’s become formulaic—and analysts still cling to application categories which have been around for decades.”

Tucker summarized, “So we need to catch up to the velocity of change in business, not just technology. Clients don’t want to merely read our research and talk to us on Zoom calls. They want customized advice. They still want it in bite-sized chunks, not long projects. But they want us to present it coherently. Nothing annoys them more than being handed off from one analyst to another. They have complex problems and they want us to respond accordingly. We also need to recognize that there are other critical markets we should be analyzing. The Russian invasion of Ukraine showed us we will be dependent on hydrocarbons for a long time. How do we use fossil fuels while neutering their emissions? We should be able to talk authoritatively about carbon capture and storage, and about the total cost of ownership of electric vehicles. Honestly, if I was starting my career today, I would join an energy research firm. Or a healthcare research firm. In the US, nearly a quarter of our GDP is spent on our health and yet our outcomes are miserable. Or look at how the world is changing. So many emerging countries are becoming the ‘new world.’ They’re growing much quicker than the US, EU, China, and Japan. We have an opportunity to help multinationals rebalance their global portfolios and help customers in those fast-growing economies. I don’t want to steal his thunder, but Patrick will talk more about these new horizons tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong. IT, especially AI, will keep us busy for a long time. But it was such an invigorating time that Martha and I experienced in the ’80s and ’90s. There’s no reason we cannot recreate that excitement again, in a variety of new directions. The technology world today feels like it did back then.”

Patrick discussed several new markets

“COVID, the Ukraine war, climate change, and massive digital transformations have made many vertical edge applications viable—telemedicine and personalized medicine in healthcare, EV battery management and billing in utilities, intelligent returns and reverse logistics around eCommerce, direct-to-consumer and related last-mile, small-lot logistics in consumer sectors, CPQ for industrials to handle complex outcome-based pricing which bundles products’ spare parts, all kinds of monitoring and maintenance services . . . the list is virtually endless.  There’s also a growing number of application areas aimed at rapidly growing economies around the globe—they must factor in unique business practices, local languages, scripts, currencies, taxes, customs, payroll, and other nuances. Beyond these new vertical and geographic applications, we’re seeing a new generation of AI and data-enabled applications. The vertical and global data sets of most enterprise vendors are skin deep. Given how expensive GPUs and good AI talent is likely to be for the next few years, enterprises will prioritize unique products and market-insight projects, like drug discovery, mineral insights, product design advantages, trading patterns, etc. Smart customers will protect that data for themselves, train their own large language models, or LLMs, and commercialize that data asset. Vendors will continue to generate proposals, job descriptions, demand forecasts, etc. with their AI—clearly useful stuff, but not deserving significant premium pricing. We need to be associated with the first group of customers, the smart ones.”

Patrick next invited Henry Novak, the head of Oxford’s labs, to show off the AI copilot named Curmudgeon that Oxford analysts were busy developing. It would access tools like OpenAI and Google Gemini to gather news, reports, and press releases about vendors. It would also tap into Wall Street and other proprietary databases for more vendor analysis. In addition, it would access Oxford’s own client query database to see how corporations were using vendor capabilities. Finally, analysts would enter details from vendor briefings, vendor events, their own observations on each vendor, and their competition. The human expertise would validate and enrich the machine learning. The tool would help generate first drafts of Oxford’s twice-a-year Golden Circle report foreach market category. The analyst group clapped loudly when Henry finished describing the multifunctional tool. Several analysts offered to be guinea pigs for the project.

Next up was Irene Kaplan, an “AR consultant.” Raised in the public relations world, she now helped vendors make themselves more coherent to analyst firms like Oxford. She had the audience in titters as she shared anecdotes and “inside baseball” stories of what vendors thought of individual analysts. She highlighted “Bill Lou”—the analyst who spoke with a pronounced Southern drawl like the senator from Louisiana, but with devastating impact. And Megan Lewis—Ms. Multitasker, who was physically at one event while tweeting about another on the other coast. And Jean DePasquale, who asked softball questions but made sure he announced his name and company, so it would become part of the event transcript. And “Vinnie Vertical,” who managed to squeeze in a healthcare, banking, or automotive sector question at every event. All super sharp, all quirky.

Talking about quirky, she shared with them that she, too, had built an AI tool, called Gideon—presumably out of respect to the late founder of Gartner—to keep track of analysts with details on their spouses and hobbies, links to their latest research, and more. “It’s fascinating how many analysts are good musicians. One of you has amassed a giant collection of mobile devices, covering the last couple of decades. Another has a collection of soda cans from around the world. A couple of your peers have been to over 100 countries. It is amazing how many of you know the byzantine rules of the game of cricket.”

Patrick made a note to talk to Irene and compare Gideon, Curmudgeon, and Sherlock, a law enforcement digital agent that Henry’s team had developed and which Polestar was now enhancing and commercializing.

Irene then changed tone. “You analysts are under the delusion vendors want your intelligence. They may pretend to, just to stroke your ego. The vast majority of them want you to take their slides and just include them in your research reports. They seem to forget if they can convince you to do that, so can every one of their competitors. Honestly, they should use you more for intelligence. It should bug the heck out of them their customers have 100, 400, or 900 application vendors. Each of them is just a small piece in the customer’s jigsaw puzzle.”

A vendor executive in the audience raised her hand and said, “Irene, not a question, more of a suggestion: Don’t spill our secrets to all these analysts.” Everyone laughed."

There are plenty more angles in the book about analysts and vendor AR.

Don’t worry - it is a fast paced read with plenty of SV glamor and settings, not a geeky book. But read it to see why a buyer like Sheldon Freres or a vendor like Polestar is no longer fiction. And why we need next gen analysts like Oxford and next gen AR to keep up with rapidly changing technology markets.

Stunning Book Settings

This is another in a series of posts with excerpts from our new fiction mystery book, The AI Analyst (click on badge on left to go to the Amazon page with description, sample download, reviews etc.)

My previous books have followed a basic principle – places and products are as good storytellers as people. While much of this book is set in the two Bay Areas – San Francisco and Tampa Bay, there are scenes set in China, India, Michigan and elsewhere.

So, it has been nice to get feedback like

• “As a native Californian who spent 35 years living in the Bay Area, in Palo Alto and Woodside, working at Stanford, SRI and IFTF, this was a fun read. I enjoyed the story, in between a ton of memories, memes and tropes.”
• “I feel like I was in the room with some of these people during some of these events”
• “There are plenty of insider nuggets about the rarified world of the upper echelons of the Bay Area.”

Here are just a few of the images

In N. California
At a Polestar Analyst Summit at Pebble Beach, a charity event at Half Moon Bay, a wildfire which starts at the Uvas Canyon County Park and a tour of the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose.

In W. Florida
Oxford Research opens a new office on the waterfront in St. Petersburg. There is an Analyst offsite with guests staying at the historic Vinoy hotel, meeting at the James Museum which has spectacular Western art including a sculpture of the Native American principals at Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, and socializing at the world famous Dali Museum.

In other parts of the world
Other settings include Chongqing in Western China, Grosse Pointe in Michigan, a mehndi ceremony at an Indian wedding and Lugers, a historic steakhouse in New York.

There are plenty more settings. They provide color to all the human characters and non-human AI, robotics and drones in the story

Image credit to respective owners

 

The next-gen technology buyer

This is another in a series of posts with excerpts from our new fiction mystery book, The AI Analyst (click on badge on left to go to the Amazon page with description, sample download, reviews etc.)

I recently posted about a next-gen technology vendor called Polestar in the book. We often forget to recognize technology buyers, but the annual CES event in Vegas usually reminds us that many of them are actually technology “switch-hitters", excellent both at sourcing technology and creating/selling tech-enabled products.

A decade ago, I observed several F500 consumer, financial and industrial companies with booths at CES. That led me to a book, The New Technology Elite. The description read “Their zip codes are far from Silicon Valley. Their SIC codes show retail, automobile or banking. But industry after industry is waking up to the opportunity of "smart" products and services for their increasingly tech-savvy customers. Traditionally technology buyers, they are learning to embed technology in their products and become technology vendors. In turn, if you analyze Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and eBay, you marvel at their data centers, retail stores, application ecosystems, global supply chains, design shops. They are considered "consumer" tech but have better technology at larger scale than most enterprises. The old delineation of technology buyer and vendor is obsolete.”

This week at CES, the trend continued with lots of auto, fintech, health and other non-IT focus. But the real showcase was Delta Airlines.

CEO Ed Bastian had an hour’s keynote at the Sphere with its stunning multi-media capabilities. He talked about GenAI, tech facilitated connections on the ground and via eVTOLs, enhanced in-flight entertainment with Sync, Sustainable Aviation Fuel and more and was joined by execs from Qualtrics, YouTube, Uber and plenty of his own colleagues. Very well done. There was much more tech on display at their large booth at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Our new book has a next-gen technology buyer in a NYC financial institution, Sheldon Freres which knows how to monetize its mountains of unique vertical industry data. The tensions and shifts in economics between buyers and vendors of technology are brought out quite vividly in the book. As Patrick, one of the key characters in the book, summarizes at an analyst offsite
“Given how expensive GPUs and good AI talent is likely to be for the next few years, enterprises will prioritize unique products and market-insight projects, like drug discovery, mineral insights, product design advantages, trading patterns, etc. Smart customers will protect that data for themselves, train their own large language models, or LLMs, and commercialize that data asset. Vendors will continue to generate proposals, job descriptions, demand forecasts, etc. with their AI—clearly useful stuff, but not deserving significant premium pricing. We need to be associated with the first group of customers, the smart ones.”

The plot in the book involves data theft. A character in the book describes a data breach which is fraudulently used to train a vendor’s AI. He leads off with “Did you know I was in the Service? Spent a fair amount of time in the Middle East. I used to hear the expression often, ‘Who put OUR oil under THEIR sand?’ Sounded funny most of the time. Idle talk, but sometimes it sounded ominously hostile. We are going through something similar in the technology world: ‘Who put OUR data in THEIR data centers?’ There is zero respect for customer data. There’s a land grab happening. Sure you have heard The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for the unlicensed use of Times articles to train GPT large language models.”

There is a character who presents to procurement execs “For too long, technology vendors have kicked us around and gotten away with obscene margins and poor service levels. We will help you renegotiate your contracts. We will help you lobby for “right to repair” laws so you are not dependent for life on vendors you buy technology from. Even better, we will help you monetize your data assets. You deserve the status of a salesperson with a proprietary asset, not just a powerless, back office executive.”

There is plenty more “oil under our sand” metaphors in the book. There is discussion around LLMs, narrow models, KV cache in GPU RAM and robots and drones.

Don’t worry - it is a fast paced read with plenty of SV glamor and settings, not a geeky book. But read it to see why a buyer like Sheldon Freres or a vendor like Polestar is no longer fiction.

Next, I will excerpt some sections about Oxford Research and why it is a prototype for a next-gen Analyst Firm necessary to keep up with and indeed, lead next-gen buyers and vendors.

The next-gen technology vendor

This is one in a series of posts with excerpts from our new fiction mystery book, The AI Analyst (click on badge on left to go to the Amazon page with description, sample download, reviews etc.)

At CES this week, Jensen Huang of NVIDIA showed his vision of the evolution of Digital Agents. Satya of Microsoft and Benioff of Salesforce have been talking up Agentic AI quite a bit, Jensen is thinking of the next evolution where agents don’t just focus on white collar tasks but also physical, blue collar and trade related.

I would like to introduce you to Barry Roman, a key character in the book and his company, Polestar. That is a next-gen tech vendor which combines agentic AI with humanoid robots, drones, UAVs etc. Not just a software or silicon focus.  Polestar has an expansive definition of its verticals as each of the 800+ occupations the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks. Their solutions automate limbs, eyesight and other human faculties, not just cognitive skills.

In a scene, before Barry presents, there is a slick video which show Polestar products on shop floors, hospitals, labs, delivery trucks, and warehouses. Barry then enters the stage led by one of his robots doing backflips, and another walking menacingly next to him as his bodyguard. Four drones they make fly into the audience, with two of them dropping music boxes at a couple of tables. When the boxes were opened, they played Lumiere and friends singing “Be Our Guest” from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. One of the drones with sensitive mics amplifies the music, and the other with a high-resolution camera projects Barry and the bots on stage onto a large screen.

In a scene which did not make the final cut in the book, Barry becomes convinced about a focus on micro-verticals when he asks his team to bring in his father, a retired fireman, as an adviser while working with a fire and rescue customer. “Barry, all they have bought from you is some crew scheduling software. Give me a team for a week and I will show them technology a modern fireman uses and you could be selling in addition” That opened their eyes to wearable sensors, augmented reality, thermal vision glasses to allow firemen to see through smoke and fire, drones with sonic fire extinguishers to create acoustic boundaries to prevent wildfires from spreading, using AI to monitor imaging feeds from fires and so much more.

There is a scene where Barry visits the GE Global Research Center in Upstate New York and at lunch, he finds himself surrounded by chemical engineers, astrophysicists, and nuclear scientists. This was, of course, back in GE’s glory days, and the Center had over 1,500 technologists, many with PhDs covering every STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) discipline. He challenges his executives to build him one of those centers. He tells them: ‘I want us to be able to boast about Nobel Prize winners on our staff too.’ Of course, they had to manage his expectations—GE had 30 to 40 times more revenue than Polestar at that point.

Polestar is easy to do business with. Barry never fails to point out to his sales team how easy he had made it for retailers to contract their warehouse bots. “Not everyone is an Amazon and needs large distribution centers. We saw a growth in smaller warehouses located close to customer demand. I told Swanson (the CFO) to offer our bots as-a-service, and deliver as few as five as a start. Then seasonally we would deliver five or 10 or 15 more bots, as their customer demand spiked. Customers loved this flexibility, and it was one of our most successful product introductions.”

There is other discussion around LLMs, narrow models, KV cache in GPU RAM and other AI lingo. There is plenty of cyber crime in the book.

Don’t worry - it is a fast paced read with plenty of SV glamor and settings, not a geeky book. But read it to see that something like Polestar is not just fiction. Companies like that are being imagined and funded as we speak. Jensen, Marc and Satya’s vision is being given real life business context and ROI by someone like Barry.

Celebrating Technology Analysts and AR

This is one in a series of posts with excerpts from our new fiction mystery book, The AI Analyst (click on badge on left to go to the Amazon page with description, sample download, reviews etc.)

The 2 page Prologue excerpted below describes the world of technology analysts. I am glad we led off the book with that. While all the book reviews so far have been very positive, I have been particularly impressed with how many have focused on the coverage of the world of analysts.

As one commented “it shines a light on the activities and dynamics of technology analysts – an interesting and impactful milieu which most people are unfamiliar with. These analysts/consultants work closely with technology producers to evolve the markets, hone the offerings, inform the public, provide a feedback loop to industry, and much more. One of them, whom the title refers to, is central to attempting to solve the mystery.” A long-time PR practitioner observed “At the heart of it is the analyst – that unique individual who sits in the eye of the hurricane, making sense of what is real and what is not.” An Analyst Relations coach commented “I Inhaled it in about 2 days. So fun to see our industry up in lights.” A CIO wrote “Most of us use analysts work without any understanding of their world. In this enjoyable read the author conveys a deep understanding of the analyst’s universe against a rich and entertaining mystery.” An Analyst commented "I have to admit that the industry analyst in me was living a bit vicariously through the lens of the main character, Patrick Brennan….I can't wait for the movie adaptation, as I'm sure there is a script in there somewhere! "

Having said that, the book also describes the history of technology analysts and profiles a next-gen analyst firm, Oxford Research. Oxford doesn’t just produce “Golden Circles” (their version of Magic Quadrants) which a copilot called Curmudgeon helps generate. They also have labs which test products and their security vulnerabilities. Their focus is not just IT, but energy and other STEM disciplines and they have a global reach. The book describes one of their offsites and their ambitions. It also highlights the Analyst Relations role in vendor marketing.

The book also profiles a next-gen technology vendor, Polestar and buyer, Sheldon Freres. Analysts and AR will need to rapidly evolve to catch up to Oxford, Polestar and Sheldon if they want to stay relevant to the many changes coming to business and tech world over the next few years.

Click on each image to enlarge.

 

Best of 2024 – Analyst Cam episodes

GenAI and broader automation, along with verticals and opportunities in global markets dominated the episodes in 2024. See also Burning Platform episodes here.

rtZen – Optimizing Finance Operations

Zoho IoT

Zoho Enhanced Analytics

Workday Office of the CFO solutions

SNP Group – automating ERP migrations

Unit4 Success4U

Rimini Street – support for SAP and Oracle

Integrity Resource Management

smartShift – all about SAP custom code

CXO Connect – Certifying CIOs

LeapGreat – automating SAP migrations

Salesforce – Automotive Cloud

Deal Architect – 2024 Research Agenda

Best of 2024 – Burning Platform episodes

GenAI and broader automation, along with verticals and opportunities in global markets dominated the episodes in 2024. See also Analyst Cam episodes here.

Behind the scenes of "The AI Analyst" fiction book

with Paul Greenberg on his "Talking Headless" show

Upskilling for the new AI Market
With John Santaferraro, Paul Byrne, Anders Green and Donald Farmer

Salesforce Dreamforce Sneak Preview
With Michael Maoz and Ed Thompson

Workday Extend Platform blossoms
With Jay Wieczorkowski

Turning Strategy into Reality with business architecture
With Whynde Kuehn

SAP Sapphire 2024 Sneak Preview
With Clare Henry

Analyzing the Analysts
With John Taschek

Workday’s Rapidly Expanding Ecosystem
With Matt Brandt

Reframing the Concept of Aging
With Chip Conley

Workday Verticals – Service Based Organizations
With Patrice Cappello

The Massively Changing World of Work
With Jason Corsello and Thomas Otter

Zoho Finance and Operations
With "Siva" Iswaran

Software Trends in Asia-Pacific
With Gibu Mathew

The Year Ahead for Entrepreneurs
With Ton Dobbe

GenAI – a benchmark study of early projects
With Frank Scavo and Dave Wagner

 

Best of 2024 – Instagram posts

I continued my tradition of Instagram posts with 10 photos each from various trips and events. This one was even more varied than other years - crossing the Atlantic on water after hundreds of times by air, time in the one of the counties in Ireland I had never been to - the stunningly beautiful Donegal, first visit to Portugal and the Azores, surviving three close calls with hurricanes and plenty more.

Don’t forget – each gallery has 10 photos. in  each, you can swipe back and forth across the photos.

Bay Crest Park Santa Visit

Christmas Cheer

Fort Lauderdale on the Jungle Queen

The AI Analyst - book launch

Colorado Springs, CO

Bayfront Gardens, Ringling Museum, Sarasota, FL

Celebrity Ascent – even more photos

Celebrity Ascent – more photos

Celebrity Ascent – foodie haven

Celebrity Ascent – cruise ship as museum

Bermuda

Ponta del Gada, Azores

Gibraltar

Barcelona – foodie capital

Evora, Portugal

Porto, Portugal

More Hurricane Milton

Hurricane Milton

Hurricane Helene

Workday Rising

Lakewood Ranch, Selby Gardens – Sarasota, FL

Madison Hotel, Morristown, NJ

Ocala, FL – Horse Capital of the World

Hodson Bay, Athlone, Ireland

Ardagh Village, Ireland

Ashford Castle, County Mayo, Ireland

Glenveagh Castle, County Donegal, Ireland

County Donegal, Ireland

Western Ireland assortment

Maire and Ronan wedding, Ireland

St. Petersburg, FL from 37th floor

Dali Alive 360, St. Petersburg, FL

St. Petersburg Pier

Historic St. Petersburg

American Café evolved

Wildlife art, James Museum, St Petersburg, FL

Western Art, James Museum, St Petersburg, FL

More Workday Innovation Summit

Workday Innovation Summit

Riverwalk, Tampa, FL

Clearwater Beach, FL

Sugar Sand structures

Pier 60, Clearwater Beach

Total Solar Eclipse

Ringling Museum, Sarasota, FL

St. Armand’s Circle, Sarasota, FL

Selby Botanical Gardens, Sarasota, FL

St. Petersburg Waterfront and Pier

River O’Green, Tampa, FL

Year of the Dragon, Las Vegas, NV

Death Valley National Park, CA

Gasparilla Pirate Invasion, Tampa, FL

Farmers Market, St Petersburg, FL

Jupiter Island, FL

Orlando Wetlands, Christmas, FL

Our fiction thriller: The AI Analyst

You may have read one of our innovation centric books – The New Polymath, The New Technology Elite or Silicon Collar

Or thought leadership books we have helped tech executives write – Business as Unusual with SAP, The Digital Enterprise or Moment of Service

Or one of 3 in the SAP Nation series

Our 10th one is a different genre – it is a mystery with an AI angle. Also differently, it is a collaboration with a lady co-author.

Patrick Brennan is a technology industry analyst who knows the key players in Silicon Valley, what they're working on and with whom. His former boss and longtime mentor, Barry Roman, charismatic billionaire CEO of Polestar, a major AI/automation firm, is missing. Patrick offers to use his industry knowledge and history with Barry to assist FBI and local detectives on the case. The investigative team quickly finds that Barry has as many enemies as friends. Suspects include his estranged wife, a disgruntled former executive, Chinese intelligence, the Mob, and many more.

Amazon today opened pre-ordering for the eBook version of the book – click on the badge on left to read more about the plot and to order. The book will be released next week in time for your holiday enjoyment and for Santa's deliveries . It will be available across other digital and paper channels in the next few weeks.

I had shared advance copies with a fairly diverse group of your peers. The early reviews have been excellent.

"As a veteran of the tech industry, I was delighted to see the intrigue that has long been a part of our industry woven into this exciting thriller. It’s captivating for both those interested in technology as well as the twists and turns of every good story."

Bill Hewitt
6-time CEO and technology industry executive, advisor and investor

"Ooh! I got an early Holiday gift... an advance copy of Vinnie Mirchandani and Kimberly McDonald Baker's new book, The AI Analyst. It's about an industry analyst who solves a crime with his sharp as a tack analytical skills. Inhaled it in about 2 days. So fun to see our industry up in lights."

Robin Schaffer
Founder, Schaffer AR

"The book weaves an intriguing mystery through an accurate and insightful description of the past, present and future of the high-tech sector."

John Wookey
Long time enterprise software executive at Accenture, Oracle, Salesforce and SAP and adviser to a number of startups

"What a romp. What a re-education. As a native Californian who spent 35 years in the Bay Area, mostly living in Palo Alto and Woodside, working at Stanford, SRI and IFTF, this was a fun read. You reminded me of my daily drive up Redwood Gulch when you mentioned Bear Gulch, a favorite hiking area. I enjoyed the story, in between a ton of memories, memes and tropes. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about the future with AI, space mining, personal medicine, next gen foods....as well as current foods popular in Silicon Valley. What's your recommendation for great Indian take out? I'd also recommend this for anyone wanting to know how marketing works at a tech company -- all facets of marketing and sales with every acronym soup mentioned from MQL and SQLs. Or anyone who is an analyst wanting to know the latest and greatest analyst tools and processes. And, I loved being reminded of all facets of the Winchester Mystery House as well as Hindu wedding traditions. Lots of details that delighted. My only criticism is that few would use Kaiser for medical care -- maybe maternity, but not for trauma or any other specialty. Not when they could use UCSF, UC Davis, Stanford, or even Good Sam."

Lexy Martin
Long time Californian HRtech researcher

"A tale of digital heroism straight from tomorrow's headlines. Tech industry prophets, Silicon Valley wunderkind, overseas hackers, and today and yesterday's organized crime, motivated law enforcement combine in a mix of deftly portrayed characters. The story both educates you on what the AI age brings in terms of benefits and peril. Concealed in a thriller format is a primer on AI and the tech industry, where you can be entertained and learn at the same time."

Tim Tow
Former Gartner Analyst

"The plot is so close to real life! If we want to know how this world works, we have to step back and understand it. This gives us a good opportunity. I believe one day soon this is going to be a movie... can really feel it."

Judith O’Callaghan
Global ERP Advisory, Brisbane, Australia

"The book is an intriguing mystery that perfectly captures the nuances of the technology industry. The vivid characters, the corporate dynamics, and the portrayal of evolving technology were spot on. It's a page-turner that I couldn't put down, and I appreciated the mix of humor and drama. Well done."

Benjamin Beberness
Veteran utility and energy sector technology executive

As I have done with previous books, I will be regularly excerpting portions of the book on my 2 blogs and on Instagram. To not ruin the plot, I will be a bit more selective in what I share from this mystery. Still there is plenty to share about the wide range of global locales in the book, how Polestar is a next-gen vendor for the coming world of agentic AI and humanoid robots, how Oxford Research is a next-gen analyst firm with its labs, copilots and digital agents and with uber-smart and courageous analysts like Patrick Brennan and other tidbits from the over 300 pages which got left on the cutting table.

The Evolution of the Cruising sector

I did my first cruises in the mid-80s in the Mediterranean – around the Greek Islands and on to Istanbul. I did them courtesy of Marriott. They had an award which not only included hotel rooms but also airline tickets, a week’s car rental and a week’s cruise. They are not so generous anymore😊

Fast forward to this year. We just returned from a Barcelona, Spain to Fort Lauderdale cruise. It tied in nicely with a family wedding in Portugal the week prior. Not only does the cruise sector appear to have recovered from the body blow of COVID starting in 2020, this trip showed me how much the ships, the ports of call, the culinary choices, the customer demographic – literally everything has evolved. In the interim, we had done cruises around the Caribbean islands, to Central America, in Alaska. Even compared to those, the sector has leapfrogged.

To start with, this was what’s called a “repositioning” cruise. Cruise lines chop the world up into various high frequency zones - Caribbean, Mediterranean etc. At the end of the busy season in each they reposition ships across zones and those are sold as one way trips from one regional hub to another. They do it twice a year in each direction across the Atlantic, across the Pacific, north and south from Europe to Argentina, Vancouver to Australia etc.

We found one on Celebrity with 4 stops in Alicante in Spain, Gibraltar, Ponta Delgada in the Azores and Bermuda – all new ones for us other than Bermuda we had flown into when it hosted America’s Cup in 2017. Each has a well maintained cruise port. No tendering required in any of these stops though I would have enjoyed that as it involves using the ship's Magic Carpet feature. In each link, you can click through to my Instagram gallery of 10 photos each. Each in different ways brought out how the English, Spanish and Portuguese navies once dominated the oceans. In the Caribbean we have additionally seen the Dutch, French and other European influence.

The Celebrity Ascent is less than a year old. Check out the video below and 4 other Instagram galleries of 10 photos each which showing various aspects of the ship. We signed up for two Inside Access tours which took us through the massive pantry, the laundry room with industrial scale washers, dryers and ironing appliances, the bridge, the engine control room and commentary on the spectacular ship design and hundreds of pieces of art on every deck.

See more of our photos on the Ship as Museum in this Instagram gallery.

The ship has over 30 restaurants and bars. We had dinner at the Cyprus and a sitting of Le Petit Chef, which is as much digital entertainment as fine dining, but mostly patronized the Oceanview Café which had buffets throughout the day. I had a salad breakfast, lunch and dinner with smoked salmon, boiled egg or grilled chicken, followed by a huge bowl of fruit. I got my 10,000 steps each day on the multi-deck jogging trail but still gained some weight. I should have used the gym and the plunge and other pools more😊 Margaret never gains any and had a broader repertoire of food.

See more of our photos on the Ship as Food Haven Instagram gallery of 10 photos.

The ship rotates between 2 brothers as Master Captains - Dimitrios and Tasos Kafetzis. Our cruise had the younger brother, Tasos who is imminently approachable (I saw him out and about every day of the cruise), has a wonderful sense of humor and has his own TikTok channel. He did presentations in the theater on tight maneuvers he has made in many a port which require very skilled usage of the azipods and thrusters (he joked he has done donuts with the ship which is rated at 140,600 gross tons and can carry nearly 4,700 passengers and crew) and showed a time lapse of the ship’s construction, the stabilizers and other innovations on the ship. He also shared the weather forecast which showed rough seas on the way to Bermuda and provided daily updates via the ship intercom which made it easy to understand the diversion he made along the way.

See two more of our galleries of photos of the ship

Other ship angles

Even more ship photos

Celebrity is positioned as a “premium” cruise line for adults. Most on this two-week cruise were in their 50s, 60s and 70s. I was impressed how seasoned most of them are with 25 to 75 cruises under their belt. It gave the cruise a relaxed and spacious feel. On previous cruises, I have been turned off by crowds rushing for food and other scheduled activities. Also in talking to many of these travelers we got a feel for the explosion in cruise formats - river cruises, those aimed at families with kids, theme cruises like those around music, even round the world cruises lasting months.

The ship had Starlink connectivity and I had planned several Zoom and Teams calls and other work. That turned into a sore subject. Celebrity throttled the speeds to 4 mb down and 2 up. Seriously. For a king’s ransom we paid for a laptop and two mobile phones. And the WiFi support in the lounge was disingenuous – “Speedtest does not work at sea” “We don’t know why our parent, Royal Caribbean supports 2 to 3 our speeds on their ships.” “You are not at home and should not expect those speeds” “Most of our customers switch off during cruises”.

Whatever. I have sent my feedback on the poor WiFi to their corporate execs. I cannot wait for Satellite to Cell service to mature and become more affordable.

Overall, it was a fantastic experience and importantly, gave me a chance to reflect on how nicely the sector has matured and evolved over the last few decades, and nicely bounced back after the deep COVID slump.

 

 

“The world’s single largest act of journalism”

Given the intensity of this year’s elections, I knew the results would likely trickle in all night long and I did not want to watch the TV on all night in the cruise cabin. I periodically checked the AP News coverage as they made calls, state by state.

Not only did that work well, I had a chance to explore their history and the level of effort it takes them to cover Election Night.

“Since long before the advent of the internet, smartphones or social media, The Associated Press has delivered the results of elections in the United States. Our fundamental role in the American democracy – the single largest act of journalism in the world -- dates back to 1848 when we called the White House for Zachary Taylor.

Today, nearly two centuries later, the AP remains the gold standard for trusted information on election night.”

And the complexity has grown exponentially with modern elections allowing for mail-in ballots and early voting. 

The level of effort it took them to cover the 2024 US elections calls for the title of this post

7,000 state, local and federal election races the majority of which (roughly 5,000) has more than one candidate on the ballot.

• It will make as many as 21,000 race updates per hour. Those race calls include ballot measures, which will be analyzed in real time to show national trends etc.
• Roughly 5,000 people will be working for AP on election night. That number includes full-time employees, vote count reporters and contractors.

 

US Passport in Google Wallet

 

Starting soon, we’ll begin beta testing a new type of digital ID in Google Wallet, giving more people in more places a way to create and store a digital ID, now with a U.S. passport. This new ID pass works at select TSA checkpoints, saving you time and stress at the airport when you’re traveling domestically.

Creating an ID pass is easy: Select the prompt in the Google Wallet app to “create an ID pass with your U.S. passport” and follow the instructions to scan the security chip in the back of your passport. You’ll be asked to take a selfie video to verify your identity, and Google Wallet will notify you when your ID pass is ready (typically within a few minutes). While ID passes are accepted at select TSA checkpoints today, we’re working with partners so you can use digital IDs in even more situations — for example, in the future we believe you should be able to use digital ID for things like account recovery, identity verification and even car rentals.

Google blog

Image credit ZDNet

 

Next-gen hyperscaler data centers

“Microsoft, announced a 20-year deal with Constellation to re-open Pennsylvania's shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant to provide a new energy source for data centers powering AI development and other technologies. But even if that deal is approved by regulators, the resulting energy supply that Microsoft could access—roughly 835 megawatts (0.835 gigawatts) of energy generation, which is enough to power approximately 800,000 homes—is still more than five times less than OpenAI's 5-gigawatt demand for its data centers.”

“While energy demands for AI data centers continue to spike, there is a possibility that the companies could update AI software and hardware to operate more efficiently over time. But that will take time, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang doesn't think demand for AI computing will slow down any time soon, estimating that the world will need about "$1 trillion worth of new data centers in the next four to five years," The Information reported.”

ARS Technica

These next-gen data centers will dwarf today’s – most of which dont even scale to 100 megawatts. Graph of biggest concentrations from Visual Capitalist

 

Sweetgreen Infinite Kitchen

The $450,000 to $500,000 per-unit incremental cost of the Infinite Kitchen system is equivalent to the yearly starting wage of approximately 14 full-time kitchen workers at one Washington, D.C. Sweetgreen, based on current job posting listing the hourly rate for back-of-house workers as $16.63. That cost is also equivalent to about 23 employees working the average weekly hours for a restaurant production worker based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data. 

Neman said the robotic makeline has the capacity to make 500 bowls an hour, and that it hasn’t reached that level of demand in the current test markets. But Neman believes “some of the places that we’re going to be testing this year are going to be those heavy urban environments where it does have that [level of demand]. So we do expect a sales lift in those restaurants.”

Restaurant Dive

 

The Apple Observatory

The Observatory is the most significant building to be completed on the campus since the Steve Jobs Theater opened in 2017.

Designed "as a contemplative space", the subterranean building will be used for launch events and to showcase the brand's latest technology.

"When we built Apple Park, we wanted the entire campus to be seamlessly integrated into the landscape, and this building follows that same approach," Apple global head of design (real estate and development) John De Maio told Dezeen.

"With its stunning views of the campus greenery and the mountains ringing the horizon, The Observatory truly is an extension of Apple Park, showcasing the best of California and the best of the natural environment around us," he added.

"The building brings in the natural stone, terrazzo and wood elements that are featured in The Steve Jobs Theater and across Apple Park. It's a design that complements both the landscape and its neighboring buildings on campus."

DeZeen

Photo credit

 

The TIME AI 100

If the world of AI was dominated by the emergence of startup labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and their competitors in 2023, this year, as critics and champions alike have noted, we’ve seen the outsize influence of a small number of tech giants. Without them, upstart AI companies would not have the funding and computing power—known as compute—they need to propel their rapid acceleration.

This year’s list offers examples of the possibilities for AI when it moves out of the lab and into the world. Innovators including Zack Dvey-Aharon at AEYE Health and Figure’s Brett Adcock are showing the real-world potential for AI to improve how we live and work. Many industries, including media companies like TIME, are now partnering with leading AI companies to explore new business models and opportunities. The consequences of those moves will likely determine who appears on next year’s list.

TIME

 

 

The 24x7 Costco store

You may only be able to shop at your local Costco for 10 hours a day, or pump gas a few hours longer but the store is a beehive of activity 24x7

From Costco Connection

“Keeping the warehouse stocked for members is a complicated, never-ending game of Tetris. At the same time, the Food Court, Bakery, Service Deli and Meat Department prepare and stock items daily. And it all must be managed with incredible attention to detail, and with regard for safety, cleanliness and timeliness. There’s a rhythm to this constantly changing flow of activity: Mornings (4 a.m. to 11 a.m.); days (11 a.m. to 3 p.m.) and nights (3 p.m. to 11 p.m.). The warehouse employees who work these shifts depend on one another to maintain the immaculate shopping experience members have come to expect from Costco.”

The article details activities in many parts of a typical store

The Polaris Dawn and the first private space walk

“Despite the U.S. space agency playing host, none of the crew are from its astronaut corps. And the private aerospace company SpaceX is providing the mission’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft—as well as new spacesuits, operational protocols and upgraded life-support systems. All of these innovations will be put to the test in a daring bout of extravehicular activity (EVA), more commonly called a space walk, that will be the first ever for a commercial mission. During the five-day flight, the spacecraft will reach altitudes as high as 1,400 kilometers—surpassed only by moon-bound Apollo astronauts in the 1960s and 1970s—and the crew will conduct nearly 40 science experiments, as well as laser communications tests with SpaceX Starlink satellites.”

Scientific American

This long video goes through many of the features of the spacecraft, spacesuits, space walk and more

ExxonMobil view of energy in 2050

This forward-looking analysis from ExxonMobil is thought provoking and a reality check, especially the expectation that 50% of energy demand in 2050 will still be met by oil and natural gas.  

I like the fact that they look at hydrogen as an industrial fuel, and that we will need to invest considerably in carbon capture and storage. I would have liked more analysis of next-gen nuclear in particular, but also next-gen geothermal and hydroelectric. However, it it tough to argue against "all energy types will remain in the mix.

“There has been enormous progress, yet more work is needed.

When considering the world’s energy future, keep these truths in mind:

1. All energy types will remain in the mix.
2. Renewables will grow the fastest.
3. Coal will decline the most.
4. Under any credible scenario, oil and natural gas remain essential.
5. Lower-carbon technology needs policy support to grow rapidly but ultimately must be supported by market forces.”

Apple Glowtime event

There was a lot to unpack – four new iPhones, one new Apple Watch, two new AirPods models, and a bunch of clever Apple Intelligence features. But there were also several notable absentees that had been heavily rumored before the event, and some notable updates to existing devices.

More at TechRadar

Here is the full launch video

 

Heat stress sensors

Dressed in head-to-toe coveralls and fitted with respirators, the crew members toiling in a building without power had no obvious respite from the heat. Instead, they wore armbands that recorded their heart rates, movements, and exertion levels for signs of heat stress.

Stephanie Miller, a safety and health manager for a U.S. government contractor doing cleanup work at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, watched a computer screen nearby. A color-coding system with little bubbles showing each worker’s physiological data alerted her if anyone was in danger of overheating.

Fast Company

Biometric sensors from SlateSafety

Automation at an Airbus assembly line

More than half of the A320s produced by Airbus are assembled here in Hamburg, which produces more than 30 aircraft per month. There are several assembly lines working in parallel on different planes, but the most innovative part of the operation here is in Hall 245. Since it began operations in 2018, this hall has been one of the most advanced manufacturing environments in the global aircraft industry. Two gigantic robots that move on seven axes drill holes in the fuselage, while a series of mobile tooling platforms move around the aircraft to complete other elements of the assembly, their positions controlled by a laser-guided automated positioning system.

Wired

 

Emphasizing the M in STEM

Shalinee Sharma, CEO of Zearn,  a math learning platform writes in Fast Company

When I shared some statistics with a business executive about the poor job we are doing teaching math to kids, he responded, “This is why people are getting cheated out of their money.” He was referring to people being scammed by investment fraud and other schemers, and he was right. With broad-based numeracy, we can build a society of people who are capable of protecting one another. Financial literacy lessons are shown to help as well, when they are additive to widespread numeracy, not a substitute for it. For example, lessons on how insurance or a mortgage works requires a strong working knowledge of rates and percentages—ideas that should be mastered in seventh and eighth grade.

A range of problems that might seem disconnected are the result of undereducating our kids, specifically in  the world of mathematics. Conversely, a lot of problems will be solved when we build a numerate generation. The greater the numeracy, the more likely that we’ll produce a population capable of solving environmental, technological, health, and other societal problems. Unlocking everyone’s potential wouldn’t just increase the proportion of engineers coming up with answers to our most pressing problems—it would break down the wall between STEM and other fields of expertise, and produce a society where everyone has the ability and power to engage with the technological and quantitative questions around them, so that different domains of knowledge can work together.

Here she is discussing her book Math Mind

Project Astra – Google’s vision of AI assistants

Hassabis called Astra "a universal agent helpful in everyday life." During a demonstration, the research model showcased its capabilities by identifying sound-producing objects, providing creative alliterations, explaining code on a monitor, and locating misplaced items. The AI assistant also exhibited its potential in wearable devices, such as smart glasses, where it could analyze diagrams, suggest improvements, and generate witty responses to visual prompts.

Google says that Astra uses the camera and microphone on a user's device to provide assistance in everyday life. By continuously processing and encoding video frames and speech input, Astra creates a timeline of events and caches the information for quick recall. The company says that this enables the AI to identify objects, answer questions, and remember things it has seen that are no longer in the camera's frame.

Ars Technica

 

Reinventing the fridge

The new approach (from Whirlpool)  is called SlimTech, and it replaces the thick polyurethane foam and plastic that form the walls and doors in almost every refrigerator on the market. Instead, SlimTech is a vacuum insulation structure that contains a thin layer of compressed and proprietary powder sealed inside walls of steel.

Doors using SlimTech will be up to 60% thinner than the typical refrigerator door, and will increase the interior capacity by 25%. In another configuration, slightly thicker SlimTech installations could improve the internal temperature control so much that energy use would drop by 50%.

Fast Company

 

 

A “hellscape” to defend Taiwan

It has become conventional wisdom among the halls of the United States government that China will launch a full-scale invasion of Taiwan within the next few years. And when that happens, the US military has a relatively straightforward response in mind: Unleash hell.

Speaking to The Washington Post on the sidelines of the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ annual Shangri-La Dialogue in June, US Indo-Pacific Command chief Navy Admiral Samuel Paparo colorfully described the US military’s contingency plan for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan as flooding the narrow Taiwan Strait between the two countries with swarms of thousands upon thousands of drones, by land, sea, and air, to delay a Chinese attack enough for the US and its allies to muster additional military assets in the region.

Wired

The largest LED orb

At 366 feet tall and 516 feet wide, the towering orb is not only the world's biggest spherical structure, but also the largest LED screen, according to a press release issued by Sphere Entertainment Co. The exterior of Sphere consists of approximately 1.2 million hockey puck-shaped LEDs, each of which contains 48 individual diodes capable of emitting 256 million different colors. And it only cost $2.3 billion.

EDM

more of what's inside Las Vegas 'latest spectacular attractions

The cult of Costco

There is method to the madness here. Warehouses (a.k.a. stores) that seem haphazard and chaotic are in fact run with military precision, and virtually every detail of merchandise selection, store layout, and pricing is designed to turn wary first-timers into loyalists. Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s late lieutenant and a longtime Costco board member, famously said that he wished everything in the U.S. ran as well as Costco. Indeed, the company has nailed the science, and art, of retail like virtually no competitor.

Costco’s eclectic sales assortment—Shrimp cocktail! Khakis! Coffins!—has helped embed it firmly in pop culture. Costco obsessives throng dedicated groups on Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and X to trade information on a great find, or discuss which celebrity was spotted in which of its 600 U.S. stores, or just to bemoan leaving a store after spending $300 more than they’d intended

Fortune

An interview with the former CEO, Jim Sinegal which explains more of the corporate philosophy

Wall Street, meet Y’all Street

Goldman Sachs is building a massive office complex near downtown as part of its expansion plans beyond New York City. The hub is expected to bring 5,000 jobs to Dallas.

• JPMorgan Chase has more employees in Texas than in New York. Nearly 13,000 people work at its campus in Plano, which has doubled its employees since it opened in 2017, per the Wall Street Journal.
• Also expanding in the Dallas area: Wells Fargo, Deloitte and Charles Schwab, which moved its headquarters from California to Westlake five years ago.

By the numbers: In January 1990, there were 324,600 Texans employed in finance and insurance. By June of this year, that number had grown to 658,600.

Axios

More on the “Texas Stock Exchange”

Chick-Fil -A turbocharges the drive thru

Chick-Fil-A opened near us a new store concept with a drive thru delivery door rather than a window. Associates can simultaneously walk out from the kitchen and deliver food to multiple customers who drive in on 2 lanes.

They also equipped team members to greet vehicles a tablet to enter orders and scan mobile payments, a device to tap and stripe credit cards and with two pouches to handle currency and coins.

Pretty cool.

However, they were just prepping for their next concept – an elevated drive through - see video below

USA Today - “it features four drive-thru lanes and an elevated kitchen with a "unique meal transport system" described by the company as a "sophisticated conveyor belt" that streamlines food delivery by "quickly moving the meal from the elevated kitchen above to a Team Member on the ground below."

The kitchen is double the size of a typical Chick-fil-A restaurant kitchen and the conveyer belt allows for a meal to be delivered to a Team Member every six seconds, according to Chick-fil-A. There is no dining room or dine-in services at this restaurant, Chick-fil-A noted, but the four-lane drive-thru has the capacity to support "two to three times more vehicles" than a standard Chick-fil-A restaurant drive-thru.”

Waymo starts to scale robotaxis

Alphabet's Waymo units has doubled its paid rides to 100,000 per week in just over three months as the autonomous ride-hailing firm expanded its areas of service and allowed more people to ride its robotaxis.

Waymo, which has about 700 vehicles in its fleet, is the only U.S. firm operating uncrewed robotaxis that collect fares. The company opened its service to everyone in San Francisco in June without joining a waitlist while expanding its operations in metro Phoenix. This month, Waymo extended services to the San Francisco Peninsula and to certain parts of Los Angeles.

"People still think of autonomous vehicles as the faraway future, but for more and more people they're now an everyday reality," Chief Product Officer Saswat Panigrahi said in a statement, adding that Waymo's expanded "deliberately" and by "optimizing costs".

Reuters

Take a ride below....

 

Billions of Humanoid Robots

This next generation of AI-driven robots won’t be one-off demo units show-boating for the media, or hyper-specialized logistic bots scurrying around Amazon fulfillment centers, but a mass-manufactured cohort of mechanical humanoids numbering in the tens or hundreds of millions, walking and working side by side with all of us in our homes and places of work.

However, the real game-changer will be the surge in home-based market demand. She draws a compelling parallel between cars and humanoid robots, equating the transformational impact of cars on commute times to humanoid robots' potential to revolutionize housework and daily chores.

An even more compelling prediction comes from serial entrepreneur Brett Adcock, founder of the robotics company Figure. According to Adcock the world might soon be home to a whopping 10 billion humanoid robots—potentially during our lifetime. Which is rather a shocking number, especially when you recognize that the total number of cars on Earth is only about 1.5 billion as of 2023.

Abundance Blog

Here are some of the robots available today

Startups target the military sector

Allen persuaded Simoni to leave DoorDash earlier this year and work with him at his new company, Allen Control Systems, to build a gun turret that uses computer vision to blast drones out of the sky. The goal was to create something affordable that could stop the HESA Shahed-136 drones Russia was sending to attack Ukraine’s infrastructure. “Right now, cheap drones like that are a weapon without a countermeasure,” Allen says.

The former restaurant-tech entrepreneurs are among a new breed of founders bringing the startup playbook to the staid defense industry. With wars raging in Europe and the Middle East, the need—and opportunity—for innovation are on display every day as drones, AI, and other commercially available technologies reshape reality on the battlefield.

Fortune

Dedrone, featured below, is another startup which sells to the military and to law enforcement agencies

OceanXplorer

Once they settled on the 10-year-old Volstad Surveyor, the team asked Norwegian marine engineering expert Skipsteknisk to redesign the fabric of the ship to their ends. That meant laying the foundations for an imposing new A-frame crane on the stern, which could launch and recover the twin Triton subs, used for manned exploration down to a depth of 1,000 metres. Similarly, the new sub hangar had to be hollowed out of the superstructure, and equipped with a hydraulic arm to launch the Argus ROV and Remus autonomous vehicle (both of which are rated down to 6,000-metres’ depth). The existing crane on the aft deck was actually too capable so it was replaced with something smaller and lighter. Similarly, the boat’s existing moon pool for launching divers and subs inside the boat was closed to improve buoyancy.

But if this project had been simply a case of changing the structure of the boat, it would have been simpler by far. Damen also had to install an IT backbone to support the high-end science as well as the 8K video editing and production facilities. It had to allow visiting scientists to bring their own machines and servers, for simply slotting into a dedicated rack – all without compromising the security of the ship’s vital systems. Then there needed to be an interior suitable for guests on decks three and four. “As Damen, we have fitted all these things to boats before,” Ekkelkamp continues. “We’ve got all these different disciplines within the group, but it was the first time that we’d brought it all together here into one project. That was the challenge. There is no yard in the world that has done all these things together.”

Boat International

 

NVIDIA Blackwell GPU Platform

“With it usually taking an additional three months to get large clusters of GPUs off the ground, the delay scuppers plans from hyperscalers to operate new AI data centers in Q1 2025.

Google, Meta, and Microsoft are among those betting billions on Nvidia's GPUs amid an AI arms race. Google has ordered more than 400,000 GB200 chips, The Information reports, in a deal valued well north of $10 billion.

Meta also has a $10bn order, while Microsoft was expecting to have 55-65,000 GB200 GPUs ready for OpenAI by the first quarter. That now seems unlikely.

The production issue was discovered by manufacturer TSMC, and involves the processor die that connects two Blackwell GPUs on a GB200.”

Data Center Dynamics

You can see the leap in performance and the complexity in the video below when NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, first unveiled it in March

2023 Burning Platform episodes

Generative AI – LLMs, GPUs, use cases, economics etc - dominated Burning Platform this year. But there were plenty of vertical, global, cloud migration and other topics we covered with lots of very smart folks.

Workday Rising – Healthcare Vertical w Yolanda Redmond and Keith Lohkamp

New Frontiers for Enterprise Applications – Part 2 (w Brian Sommer)

New Frontiers for Enterprise Applications – Part 1 (w Brian Sommer)

The economics of Enterprise AI w Larry Dignan

Raise the Bar for AI = Aim at COGS, not just SGA w Malcolm Frank

Insights from Fall 2023 events w Jon Reed and Pete Tiliakos

Another inflection point for SAP customers w Geoff Scott

All Things GenAI w Tamas Hevizi

Enterprise Architecture and Communities in SAP World w Paul Kurchina

Platform Wars turbocharged by GenAI w George Gilbert

Zoho’s Transnational Localism w Carla Garcia, Suvish Viswanathan and Ali Shabdar

Globalization and Zoho’s next milestone – a billion users? w Carla Garcia, Suvish Viswanathan and Ali Shabdar

The Urgency of Thinking of Business as Unusual w Pater Maier and Geoff Scott

A tour of enterprise software world in 30 minutes w John Wookey

Operational Excellence at Bergen Logistics w Keith Cooper

The changing world of work w Thomas Otter

Global Payroll and HCM trends for a turbulent world w Pete Tiliakos and Brent Skinner

Business as Unusual for HCM w Meg Bear and Trish Steed

Inflection Time for Enterprise Software w Tim Crawford

A pivot point for Enterprise Software w Bob Evans

Zoho: humble beginnings, ambitious future w Tony Thomas

Org agility, global talent and GenAI in HCM w Steve Goldberg and Pete Tiliakos

Even more Business as Unusual w Peter Maier and Tilman Goettke

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times w Dion Hinclifhcfe

A 360 degree perspective on the Truly Zoho event w David Fauser and Rebecca Wettemann

 

2023 Analyst Cam episodes

Once again, this year Analyst Cam profiled many verticals, global vendors, startups, authors and thought leaders

Transmute – Verifiable Data Platform for Global Trade

The exponential power of tiny habits

Salesforce Industries and Revenue Excellence: -A post-Dreamforce-update

SAP AI: across Consumer Industries verticals

SAP: Farm-to-consume walkthrough

SAP:-Industry convergence perspectives

Workspan: Ecosystem Cloud

SAP Verticals: Public Sector

SAP Verticals: Aerospace and Defense

SAP Verticals: Semiconductor

SAP Verticals: Chemicals

SAP Verticals: Partner Ecosystem

SAP: Enable Now

SAP: Think Global, Act Local

Visier: Workforce Analytics

2023 Instagram Galleries

I started posting galleries of 10 photos each in 2020 most under the title of “West Coast on the East Coast” reflecting the relative openness of Florida while most of the world was shut down to travel.

This year the world got back to some travel normalcy and I posted several from a trip  across India and to UK/Ireland/Germany/France – several by rail. I also traveled for the first time to 4 US states – Maine, Vermont, Nebraska and Iowa. I can now say I have been to all 50 US states. Several other galleries come from trips to California, New York and Texas, a FL hurricane and baseball games and continued Florida travel.

A new Tucson Hybrid, especially all the “smart” safety and convenience features, filled several galleries

All of them continue the tradition of 10 photos each

Sweet Water Rescue and Rehab, Williston, FL

Manatee Viewing Center, Apollo Beach, FL

World Equestrian Center, Ocala, FL

Christmas at Appleton Museum, Ocala, FL

Channelside,Tampa, FL

Christmas Cheer – Tampa, FL

Christmas Boat parade, Tampa FL

Thanksgiving – Tampa, FL

Morristown, NJ

Cricket World Cup, India from NJ

New York, NY

Lewis & Clark Gallery, Omaha, NE

Workday Rising, San Francisco, CA

Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, Felton, CA

CA-1 Beach Towns, San Mateo County, CA

Sunnyvale, CA

Workday Rising, Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA

Dreamforce, Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA

Dreamforce, Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA

More Tucson poetry

More Hurricane Idalia

Hurricane Idalia

Tucson Commands and Messages

James Museum, St Petersburg, FL

Church Park, Tampa, FL

UK/EU – interesting food and drink

More Tucson features

UK/EU – waterfronts

London by water

UK/EU more rail

UK/EU trains

Kilronan Castle, Ireland

SAP HQ, Walldorf, Germany

Longford, Ireland

London parks

Harrods, London

British Museum, London

London transit

More Tucson

Tucson Hybrid

Acadia National Park, Maine

More Maine magic

Vermont Venues

Calvin Coolidge Historic Site, Vermont

Coastal Marine Botanical Gardens, Maine

Tropicana Field Accessible facilities, St Petersburg, FL

Clearwater Marine Aquarium, FL

USF Botanical Gardens, Tampa, FL

Sebastian Inlet State Park, FL

Rays Baseball, St Petersburg, FL

Tampa Riverwalk, FL

St Andrews Church, Tampa, FL

Mobility in Tampa Bay, FL

Lake Morton, Lakeland, FL

Lake Dora, FL

Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive, FL

Lake Nona, FL

Sebastian Inlet, FL

Orlando Wetlands Park, Christmas, FL

Cypress Point Beach, Tampa, FL

SAP Sapphire, Orlando, FL

Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, FL

SAP Sapphire Show Floor, Orlando, FL

Sunflower Maze, Masaryktown, FL

Zoho Ranch, Austin, TX

Mobbly Bay, Tampa, FL

Walter Fuller Green Thumb festival, St Petersburg, FL

Lake Seminole Park, Seminole, FL

Vinoy Park Art Festival, St Petersburg, FL

Historic Ybor City, Tampa, FL

Tropicana Field, St Petersburg, FL

Kerala by boat, India

Rajasthan, India

Along the holy Ganges, India

Taj Mahal, Agra, India

Old Delhi Spice Market, India

Gasparilla Pirate Invasion, Tampa, FL

Tampa River Walk at night, Tampa, FL

Boat Show, St Petersburg, FL

Sponge Docks, Tarpon Springs, FL

USF Riverfront Park, Tampa, FL

 

Will the Future be Abundant?

I was invited yesterday to a live taping of an hour-long debate and audience Q&A on the topic “Will the Future Be Abundant?”. The debate will be released in December via public radio, video and the Open to Debate podcast.

Arguing “YES” was X Prize Foundation founder and Singularity University co-founder Peter Diamandis, co-author of the best-seller Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think and a forthcoming sequel Scaling Abundance. Arguing “NO” was geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan, author of the best-seller The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization. Xenia Wickett moderated.

If you follow my books and the New Florence blog, I tend to be an optimist about how technology continues to improve how we work, live and play. So, I am usually more aligned with Peter D, but Peter Z made some great points why we should not continue to project based on the prosperity of the last few decades. Below are some of my rough notes from Peter Z’s points

• At the end of WWII, our bribe to the world was globalization. We used our Navy to open the seas so that anyone could go anywhere and interface with any partner and access any commodity. Selling to any market if In exchange you would join us against the Soviets and it worked, and it generated the greatest prosperity and security the world has ever seen. But the Cold War ended in 92.
• We're now aging whether it's Spain, or Italy or Germany or Japan or Korea or Taiwan or China or Thailand. We now have mass retirement and we have to come up with something that works without investment or consumption or production.
• China is a country that exists because of globalization and demographic change. It's utterly dependent upon globalization for access to raw materials, and access to markets, but it's also the fastest urbanizing country in history, which means it's the fastest aging population in history. They've already aged so quickly and so far that consumption led growth or cost competitive production has already faded into memory.

I expected each to fall into neat optimist v pessimist camps but actually both of them in different ways came across as STEM-driven innovation optimists. Unlike so many of us who just focus on information technology (and especially AI), the two touched on health, energy, agriculture, education, transport, access to water among other challenges. They mentioned nuclear fusion, mental acuity, large scale desalination, GMO and hacking genomes, flying cars, next-gen education and more. They also talked about silicon and AI, and Peter D actually used a bot to summarize his positions.

Sounds like more abundance if we can only keep politicians at bay. In fact, my favorite line from the debate came from Peter D when asked about the political mood in the country

“I count on entrepreneurship and capitalism to solve problems. I never depend on the government. Period. End of Statement.”

Amen.

Please make a point of watching the show when it is publicly available next month.

The CASE for a new vehicle

We are not car fanatics. We drive compact SUVs 5 to 7 years. My previous vehicle was approaching EOL by our definition. It also had “skin cancer” – peeling paint. In the crazy auto market we live in, the dealer wanted a king’s ransom to fix that.

So we hired Deal Architect for his negotiation skills and gingerly walked in the new vehicle market. He somehow got us a great trade-in and a nice manageable net price. We did hear him cussing quite a bit😊

So we are accidental owners of a 2023 Tucson Hybrid Limited. It must have every feature the auto industry has been dreaming up in the last few years – panoramic roof, smart cruise control, connectivity via every channel, all kinds of safety sensors, wireless charging, a fob with as many buttons as your TV remote and lots more. It is a good looking car ripped with lots of lines which make it look pretty muscular.  The inside has a very comfortable feel for a tall family like ours.

In the mobility chapter in the Business as Unusual book we recently helped SAP write, we talked about how the auto sector has been evolving with the CASE acronym = Connected, Autonomous, Shared and Electric. This vehicle has traits of each.

And bonus after bonus – like AWD, which would be handy if we ever go see Tommy in Colorado in the winter. The hybrid version has 40 more hp than the regular version and delivers 37 mpg. We did not look at plug-in EVs. We believe we are a few years away till utility grids support at-scale mass home charging and BEV prices drop significantly.

One caveat – the documentation of all these features is spread around the fat user manual, a slimmer quick reference guide, a sales brochure, in the BlueLink mobile app, in several YouTube videos and in the instrument cluster in the car. Nate, my really nice sales guy gave me a tutorial and has been helping me navigate the documentation via text messages.  I have a feeling Margaret is going to wait a while before she drives it.

I wish I could tell you to run out and get yourself one. Hyundai took the Limited branding seriously and did not ship enough of these to the US and most dealers wanted a premium over the sticker. If you do go looking, call Deal Architect for negotiation assistance.  

But if you get one, text me and let’s help each other enjoy the gorgeous look and feel and the zillions of features.

Photo Credit: Mostly Hyundai

SAP Sapphire 2023 Galleries

Three of my Instagram galleries of 10 photos each from the SAP event in Orlando. Google Drive has at least a couple of hundred more photos. Credit to Jennifer Pisani of SAP for some of the photos.

The Farm to Consume centerpiece on the show floor

Some of the people I spent time with at the event – a very small sample

My “FitBit Cam” – some of the views from the 40,000 steps (about 18 miles) it logged over 2.5 days in and around the Orange County Convention Center

More West Coast on the East Coast

Instagram galleries of 10 photos each of places and events on the West Coast of Florida

St. Petersburg – Pier Boat show

St. Petersburg – Tropicana Field and the Rays

St. Petersburg – Vinoy Park and Mainsail Art Festival

St. Petersburg – Walter Fuller Park and Green Thumb Festival

Seminole – Lake Seminole Park

Tampa – Old Ybor City

Tampa – Gasparilla Pirate Invasion and Parade

Tampa – Downtown bridges lit up at night

Tampa – USF Riverfront Park

Tarpon Springs – Sponge Docks

 

India trip - top 10 experiences

As we approach the end of our month long visit to India, Margaret and I took advantage of a WiFi-free day on a ‘Kettuvallam’ - a houseboat on India’s longest lake, Vembanad to discuss our top 10 experiences - intense, spiritual, picturesque, humorous - during our trip. Not an easy task from a very long list of candidates which included visits to tea plantations and spice farms and are cataloged in hundreds of photos and videos.

If Margaret had made the list by herself it would likely include many Shiva, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, Baha’i and other temples and churches, mosques and synagogues we have seen. If I were to do the list alone it would include spectacular fruit buffets (mounds of papaya and muskmelon) and much more humble meals served on banana leaf and some of the wind farms and other technology we saw in our travels

Here they are in no particular order

Old Delhi spice market - the wild cycle rickshaw ride through narrow streets. The sinus clearing walk through lanes of red pepper and other spices. The admiration of workers who carry heavy bags while politely dodging the vehicular and tourist traffic

Taj Mahal under a full moon and next morning we saw its remarkable Makrana marble gleam as the sun shone at it from different angles

A boat ride on the holy Ganga along the ghats in Varanasi, supposedly the oldest city in the world. The steep climb down and up, the cremation fires and jostling with other boats to participate in the aarti - the fire ritual made for an intense experience

A visit to the spot In Sarnath where Buddha gave his first sermon after reaching his enlightenment

A ‘drivethru’ meal - on the way to Tenkasi the Zoho bus stopped for what looked like a traffic jam. Next thing we knew folks boarded and handed each of us a choice of packaged veg or non veg meals. Bags with very filling lunches.

A langur - long tailed monkey - hitched a mile’s ride on our vehicle in Rajasthan

A visit to the Zoho village in rural Tenkasi. Kids during traditional dances, songs and martial arts. A guided tour of schools, farms, local architecture  and more from Sridhar Vembu, the CEO of Zoho and his team

A room In Haridwar where you could walk into the Ganga. Margaret took a dip in the fast moving holy river and was glad she could hold on to the metal cage

A room overlooking Munnar - rightfully called “God’s own country”

A pedestrian bridge in Rishikesh. The 1st and 3rd lane are for two wheelers but the walking humans opportunistically take advantage of them and the cows use all three. Brought home the hustle and bustle which defines India. Everybody is on the move all the time!!!

Bonus - the gentle houseboat ride through the Wetlands at 3 knots with room and board included. We went by countless snake birds and snake boats. On a busy Sunday the lake has over a thousand of these boats. At times, we felt an armada was coming towards us and headed to and from one of the ten rivers which feed the lake. 

Technology and my Passion: Dave Truch and Ice Hockey

Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. A couple of hundred have contributed since 2009 on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.

This time it is Dave Truch, a polymath who I have known for over 20 years and profiled in my books. His career has progressed from academic, to management, to digital technology to robotics, to futurist and beyond.  He has been keynote, panelist, white paper author, and consultant on many topics. He currently dabbles in 3D passive technology.

He has a deep passion for all the above but adds hockey, music and humor to the list.  First and foremost, he is a family man. He writes about hockey – the ice, not the grass, version:

I’ve had a passion for ice hockey from the age of three.  I grew up in a small coal mining town, Coleman, in the Crowsnest Pass, Alberta, Canada.  The major sport during the long winter months was hockey.

I learned to skate on old CCM hand me down tube skates.  The “ice” was an old slough behind our house which froze over in the winter.  All the neighborhood kids there would go to play hockey and we often used the tufts of grass poking through the ice as our ice markers including goal posts!

As a youth, I played league hockey until the end of Bantams.  The price of equipment became too expensive and although I continued to skate extensively, and play in University intramural games, I didn’t play in any league hockey until I moved to Anchorage Alaska. 38 then, I obtained my coaching certificate and coached my four sons, the two youngest of which inherited my passion for the game and along with myself, continue to play to this day.
Now a lot of people are going to laugh at this but hockey, if played well, is a cerebral game!  Sure, sure there’s body contact and yes, occasional fights, but think of this:

1)         Skaters are extremely fast.  Average speed is 10 mph, with accelerated bursts exceeding 20-25mph.

2)         The puck is moving extremely fast.  Wrist shots generally are 80+ mph while slapshots can exceed 100+ mph.

3)         Passing and scoring are based on 3D geometry.  The puck is often sliding on the ice, but when taking a shot on goal, the puck is most often moving in the air.

4)         Not counting the 2 goalies, each team has 5 players and only one person is controlling the puck at any given time.  So essentially, 90% of the time you are moving without a puck.  The average time an individual holds the pack before shooting or passing is around 2-3 seconds.  This translates to only handling the puck for a little more than one minute for an entire 60 minute (3 periods of 20 minutes each) game!

What this all translates too is that you have very little time to think of where the puck is, where you are and what is your next move!  The best hockey players in my opinion, think of where you need to be rather than where you are.  This in coaching is often called the “open ice” concept.  Your object is to find the open ice where in a few seconds and with a good pass from your teammate, you can pick up the puck and not have the opposing players around you.  This ability to “see the future” of the movement of everyone on the ice is a skill possessed by the most talented NHL players at the those speeds.

Thankfully, for us not talented enough to be in the NHL, we find that most people are considerably slower, and not talented enough to see where the puck is going to be so that we can enjoy the game thoroughly even at our snail pace compared to the pros.

When I lived in Chicago, BP had an internal company event called the BP Torch Classic.  Employees of the company would get together and participate in sporting events.  This quickly blossomed to become a way to pay back the communities where we worked.  Employees would contribute time, money and effort into helping local community charities, local parks and recreation upgrades.

My favorite event was the hockey game played against the Blackhawks (the Chicago professional team) Alumni.  Employees would earn a slot on the BP Dream Team by obtaining “donations” from themselves and respective supply vendors who would contribute to the AHIHA (American Hearing Impaired Hockey Association).  This association was founded by Irv Tiahnybik, a Chicago businessman and Stan Mikita of the Chicago Blackhawks (he has been named one of the 100 Greatest NHL players).  Irv had a son named Lex who was hearing impaired but loved the game.  This became a school to teach hearing impaired children how to play the game.

I was fortunate to play in two of those games, one in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and one in Anchorage, Alaska, USA.  I was even allowed to take the ceremonial opening face off against Keith Magnuson!  The second game also included my two youngest sons on the Dream Team.  Importantly. I was able to raise $25K for the association.  I treasure to this day the friendship I had with Stan Mikita who served me beer and pizza from the Blackhawks alumni room at the Chicago Arena!

Technology has dramatically changed the game.  Stan Mikita actually was part of that technology change.  He was the first to introduce the curved stick to the NHL.  They didn’t have rules for what he did so that first season he was able to lift the puck underneath the cross bar.  The wrist shot became a dramatic new weapon.  He told me that the only problem with his curve was that he couldn’t then do a backhand!

After that season, the NHL had rules on the size of the curve and that has continued to this day.  From the early days, technology has changed in skates, sticks, goalie equipment and even the puck.  New materials, including carbon fiber has been incorporated into the boots of the skate, the stick itself and much of the material in goal pads and other padding for the skaters.  Helmets and hockey protective gear have been modified with new materials, made lighter, and most importantly made safer for hits and concussions.  High tech tracking technology is implanted into the pucks and the jerseys of players; the data related above regarding speed, etc. is verified with this new technology.

My passion for the game continues to this day and surprisingly, even here in Houston, I can play ice hockey.  I joined my team, the Ice Dragons, in 2008 when we moved here with BP.  I am now retired but continue to enjoy the team camaraderie, teammates, game excitement, post-game beer consumption, and overall feeling of being a part of something wonderful. 

We have even managed to win a few championships in our league and even though this year I will be 70, I am still able to contribute a few goals, especially those in a shootout.

 

The team I play on consists of individuals from all part of the globe and from all walks of life.  The members are professors, engineers, construction workers, teachers, students, business owners; you name it we’ve had someone on our team who’s done that.  Our post-game conversations in the locker room, of course accompanied by consumption of ice cold beer, varies from the scientific and relativistic discussions, mathematical challenges, energy related stories, fun facts from our past, etc.  My mind is constantly stimulated both on and off the ice and I have maintained some very long-lasting friendships and relationships through this passion.

I wear the number 77 on my jersey as I wish to still be able to play league hockey at that age.  As we say at the start of the third period -  there’s still plenty of hockey left!

Connect with Dave at  [email protected].

SAP Business as Unusual blog posts

We are running a series of posts on the Deal Architect blog which

1. Excerpt from the text and graphs in the SAP Business as Unusual book. On average, they reflect about 10% of the content in each of the 10 chapters.
2. Take snippets from the video conversations we had with SAP, customer, partner executives and market observers. On average, they reflect about 2% of the videos we recorded for each chapter but should allow you to listen directly to many of the really smart executives quoted in the book.

Keep coming back - we will be updating this every few days. 

Text and graph posts

Front matter and author bios

Ch.1 The end of business as usual

Ch.2 Megatrend 1 Everything as a Service 

Ch.4 Megatrend 3 New Customer Pathways 

Ch.5 Megatrend 4 Lifelong Health

Ch.6 Megatrend 5 The Future of Capital and Risk

Ch.7 Megatrend 6 Sustainable Energy

Ch.8 Megatrend 7 Circular Economy

Ch.9 Megatrend 8 Resilient Supply Networks

Ch.10 The Road Ahead

Video posts

Ch.1 The end of business as usual

Ch. 2 Megatrend 1 Everything as a Service 

Ch. 3 Megatrend 2 Integrated Mobility

Ch. 4 Megatrend 3 New Customer Pathways 

Ch, 5 Megatrend 4 Lifelong Health

Ch.6 Megatrend 5 The Future of Capital and Risk

Ch.7 Megatrend 6 Sustainable Energy

Ch.8  Megatrend 7 Circular Economy

Ch.9  Megatrend 8 Resilient Supply Networks

SAP’s massively extended ecosystem 

#sapmegatrends

Technology and my Passion: Joe Little and Producing Studio Music

Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. A couple of hundred have contributed since 2009 on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.

This time it is Joe Little who is an emerging technologist, Honorary Professor at the University of Stirling Management School and a qualified Futurist with a 36 year career in BAe, BP and as an independent consultant at Ouijo Consulting based in Surrey, England. He writes about his passion for not just listening to or playing music but also producing it:

Throughout my career, I have always been impressed by folks, who if asked, shared their secret creative passion. To me, they also tend to be ones who have the biggest business impact.

I turned sixteen on January 23, 1980. The day after, I caught a bus into Glasgow city center and there, flush with my birthday cash, I started an obsession. I bought 4 albums played by bands that most excited me back then. Since then, I have purchased an average of 1.5 albums a week. But what also started that day was intense curiosity about how those albums were recorded, the technology and the people involved. What does a producer do? How about an engineer? And what the hell are synthesizers?

I guess being a technology geek that shouldn’t have been a big surprise but it was the creative element that most fascinated me.

Fast forward to 1985. Having spent 2 years as a radio DJ, I saw an opportunity to get time in the adjoining studio. A 4 week producer’s course gave me the opportunity to book time and play with the 16 track mixing desk and tape deck. I learned how to mix, overdub and tape loop and create fairly interesting (at least to me) sounds and fundamental musical pieces - all with very basic equipment. It was a welcome escape from the pressures of studying and the stresses of the world. Music creation would become my most satisfying cure.

It was around that time, that I realized that having a immersive, creative output not only provided me with a distraction but ultimately kept that side of my brain active when the rest of my world was routine and plain. Being an obsessive workaholic, this became an essential element in “my mix”. It also meant that side of my brain was activated and ready when called upon in a work situation to be innovative, to generate ideas, and to make projects more appealing in the eyes of the business.

In 1994 I was looking for a new project to channel my musical interest. I visited the music industry technology fair at the Olympia in London. I saw an exhibit by Akai where they showcased their kit in little home digital studio pods. I took photographs and notes and set about building the elements of my own digital home studio. In that initial instance, my configuration included a Roland D5 keyboard, Gateway PC with a sound card, outboard Casio keyboard, a little mini mixer and a Marantz DCC deck (remember DCC, as in digital compact cassette?).

Music software was prohibitively expensive back then but as luck would have it, I managed to get a license for a short-lived new comer. SeqWin v2 was undercutting the competition and for their sins quickly went out of business when no one would distribute it.

It was with this little MIDI studio that I set about recording a CD purely for my own pleasure. “Digital Delay” had a limited edition of 2! One for me and one for my mother. It was pretty much rubbish to be honest aside from a song or two but it was the start of a huge learning curve.

A year later, having played in an office band and been tutored in time signatures and essential rhythms by a work colleague, Steve Croston, I tried again. This time I deemed “Deep” worthy of sharing with friends and colleagues (it was still a limited edition of 100 cassettes). It was mastered at Royal Oak studios in West London. Hearing my own music played on other people’s hi-fi systems and not getting a thumbs down was a thrill.

For the next 3 years I continued to record with ever better equipment (synthesizers, V-drums, guitar synths) and moved to limited edition CD releases with “Destiny” (recorded in Madrid and Hamburg) and “In The Wake of Apollo”. I started to share these with New Age record labels. In 2000 I caught the attention of a producer at BMN who was looking not only for collaborators but material for their record company launch. This led to sessions in their High Barn studios in Essex and songs that were later to appear on several albums by their artists including a Ghanaian drum group, Aklowa.

BMN Music very kindly released my album called “Difficult Listening Hour”. At its core it had sample based technology using Sony’s Acid and Cubase DAW (digital audio workstation) that I used to mix orchestral, electronic and world music sounds. It was inspired by a small band in a market in central Japan triggering samples and thumping out compelling bass rhythms. At the time it felt very fresh but soon that trend became more popular and mainstream so its follow-up “Moving on Then” was less well received.

But with the advent of podcasts and platforms such as Podshow that year, led by MTVs Adam Curry, my music found an unexpected digital channel and audience. Songs from that album made it onto radio in New York, Israel and even made the top 10 on a Swedish Radio station for the summer of 2006.  All of sudden my songs were being mashed together with poems, with Latin American superstar music and integrated into tech podcasts.

For the next 9 years. my creative brain was awash with new technology and futures in the day job and the little studio got packed up and unpacked many times but without any fresh music. Then, of all things, on a Daddy day, my kids demanded I write a song with them. I was toying with a refresh of technology anyway and had some ideas kicking around. But time was an issue, especially with excessive work travel. If I was to write new songs they would have to start on the road, in hotels, trains, airplanes and airport lounges. The iPad was fresh and new and the software on the device was conducive to making that happen. So I set about recording bits and pieces on the iPad that would then get assembled at home on a MacBook Pro using Logic X Pro.

I loved writing songs to themes and this one, “Hidden Meanings”, was an idea that had gestated for a while. Using archive recordings of presidents, priests, actors, dictators, explorers and radio friendly colleagues I layered an album of songs about saying things and meaning something totally different. My kids wanted to record “Jelly Donut” - it used JFK's Berlin speech with my kids having fun with his words. I released it on SoundCloud and quickly found a brand new audience interested in the novelty.

Using that method over the next few years “Chronicles of an Analogpunk" and “Between Two Worlds” got quickly assembled and released.  By this time there were plenty more streaming channels available for distribution. And for once, they yielded  some income. Not too much. but enough to meaningfully donate to local cancer care and palliative charities.

It also meant that if there was a need for a license free music sound track on a website, music for a virtual world installation, for a video or commercial ad, Joe became the “go to guy” for something that would fit.

Like most folks, the first few months of the COVID pandemic presented something none of us had much of before…TIME. Writing upwards of 50 songs was my savior. Spending an hour or two each day gave me an outlet that distracted from the world outside once again. “Cloud Formations” gave me a chance to mix video footage for a combined video/audio experience for those looking to remain calm in an anxious world.

“A Life Erased” then provided an even bigger opportunity to write for an imagined futuristic movie. This time I combined voices of friends and work colleagues also pinned down by the pandemic. It also afforded an opportunity to work with a professional singer, Ainsley Hamill, for the first time with the resultant song “I Thought I’d Find You Here’ a launchpad to a new project with her. 

The pandemic also opened up a further collaboration with a former BP colleague, Martin Ingram. We have had the same weird taste in music and using pieces started during the lock-down created a new project called “The Unnatural Science Orchestra”. The resultant EP and CD “Zen Gardening on Ganymede” and “Unnatural Chemistry” with their early stage Midjourney AI generated imagery creating new and weirder soundscapes and a new audience.

My message in all of this is that there is value for all business men and women to create not only a physical well-being but also a creative well-being that naturally enriches the workplace brain. So never be afraid of having that secret creative channel - in fact, embrace it.

Follow Joe and enjoy his music on Apple, Amazon,  Spotify and SoundCloud

Technology and my Passion: Charlie Bess and Polymath life

Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. A couple of hundred have contributed since 2009 on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.

This time it is Charlie Bess, a serial contributor to this series with a long-time technology career at GM, EDS and HP. His LinkedIn profile says “Primarily retired - but always busy doing something”. No kidding –  he is always tinkering with some gadget or another – as “IT support” for his kids, woodshop club or just to learn something new. The photo has his 3D printer and CNC on the table. His laser is directly behind him.

Here he writes more about lasers. Actually he used the hot new generative AI technology – ChatGPT to generate a post about lasers and wood working. You can see his Polymath penchant for tinkering with all kinds of technology.

"I’ve known Vinnie for a very long time and have collaborated and shared posts with him numerous times over the years. Here is a post on my recent passion for woodworking. I also have a blog that I occasionally post about my recent activities in CAM, ham radio, software development, electronics and whatever else comes to mind. Since one of my areas of interest is also Artificial Intelligence, where I worked at GM’s artificial intelligence group back in the 90s, I thought I’d have ChatGPT try at a blog post about lasers. ChatGPT generated 90% of this post (the portion in italics) and I just added the pictures and links to build context:

As a technologist for over 30 years, I've always been fascinated by the potential of new technologies to change the way we live and work. And one technology that has caught my attention in recent years is the personal laser.

When I retired back in 2018, I had the opportunity to explore new hobbies and interests, and I stumbled upon the world of personal lasers. I quickly realized that these devices have the potential to revolutionize the way we work on projects at home, from woodworking and engraving to cutting and marking materials.

I started off by experimenting with a small laser cutter and engraver, which I purchased for my home workshop.

I then moved to a larger model that could burn models into cutting boards…

 

I was amazed by the precision and versatility of the device, and I quickly began using it to create all sorts of projects, from custom signs and plaques to engraved gifts and home decor.

One of the things that I love most about working with personal lasers is the level of creativity and freedom it allows. With a laser cutter and engraver, I can create intricate designs and patterns that would be impossible to achieve with traditional tools. And because the laser is so precise, I can create projects that are perfectly finished and polished, with no rough edges or uneven surfaces.

In addition to wood, I've also started experimenting with other materials, such as plastics, leather, and even fabric. I've used my laser cutter to create custom coasters, wallets, and even clothing. The possibilities are truly endless when it comes to working with personal lasers.

One of the biggest advantages of using personal lasers at home is I can work on projects in the middle of the night if I want to, and I don't have to worry about traveling or waiting for my projects to be completed. This allows me to work at my own pace and to really focus on the details and nuances of each project.

Something that always puzzled me is that some people view woodworking and the user of lasers as craft, not art. If they knew how much imagination and creativity went into the design process, they would have a more enlightened view. The issue parallels the same discussions I had back in the working world of soft skills and hard skills. I always thought of this as: “If they can’t understand it, it must be a hard skill. If they can’t explain it, it must be a soft skill.”

While personal lasers are relatively new to the consumer market, they are becoming increasingly popular, accessible, and reasonable.

Whether you're a woodworker, a designer, or a DIY enthusiast, personal lasers are a powerful tool that can help you take your skills and creativity to the next level. I highly recommend becoming enlightened about this tool.

That was the end of the ChatGPT created content. Before I started, I fed ChatGPT a few posts from my blog, so it could understand my style. I then asked it to generate a post on how I valued a personal laser. Once I got the result, I read through and eliminated any incorrect content from the result generated.

Remember that even though the content was generated by an AI tool, the adage of GIGO - garbage in, garbage out - still applies. Phrasing and asking refining follow up questions can also help you significantly shape the content generated. I could have asked it to generate the result in the form of a Seinfeld script and it would comply.

Follow Charlie via his blog. 

The 2023 Passion Series

Every few years, starting in 2009,  I have invited folks to write about their hobbies, interests and charities and how STEM keeps evolving that passion

Here are the entries so far in the 2023 cohort  

High-Performance Cars – Bruce Cleveland

Ukuleles – Pete Howlett

Armenian International Women’s  Association – Dr. Patti Fletcher

Cuisines of all kinds – Dennis Howlett

Horses - riding, polo, dressage, breeding - Marne Martin

Mentoring - Jeff Stiles

Making Music - Ed Maguire

Positive Transitions - Kate Murphy

Artisanal Scissors - Maggie Fox

Polymath Life - Charlie Bess

Producing Studio Music - Joe Little

Technology and my Passion: Maggie Fox and Artisanal Scissors

Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. A couple of hundred have contributed since 2009 on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.

This time it is Maggie Fox, a former marketing and operations executive who has spent most of her career in technology and software, often in ground-breaking spaces. She's also a two-time startup CEO who is passionate about small, sustainable family businesses and heritage crafts. Introducing consumers to the concept of "luxury scissors" (your scissors should be as good as your knives!) under the Ciselier e-commerce brand is a natural culmination of her years in digital and social media marketing, love for brand-building, collaboration and exploration. Maggie’s passion is to help celebrate Ciselier's traditional scissor makers and help them find new markets globally:

Have you ever stared for a while at a humble scissor? I mean, really considered it? When I was growing up, we had (what seemed at the time) a massive pair of old black-handled carbon steel shears. They lurked in the junk drawer, always at the ready to help in opening packaging, wrapping gifts or making crafts. My mother still has them; they’re called “the good scissors”.

They are a tool from another time – hot-forged and oil-hardened, not even in the same category as the scissors most people have today, which are cheap, plastic-handled and cold stamped. You can’t sharpen these mass-produced scissors, and when they dull or break, they’re thrown away. They’re literally garbage.

But how did that shift happen? And can you still buy really good scissors, serious tools made by skilled craftspeople?

This is a question I’d idly asked myself a few years ago. It was entirely random, and yet it stuck with me in a strangely persistent way. Until one day I decided I needed to know the answer.

If there’s one thread I can draw through my life, it’s exploration. I’ve taken on every new twist or turn based on one thing, “Well, that sounds like fun!” One person’s fun might be another’s torture, so a definition is probably helpful: if it’s never been done, no one can figure out how (or they tell you it’s “impossible”), I want to do it.

From my “first career” as a television writer and producer to starting Social Media Group (the world’s first social media consulting firm) in 2006, to joining the Senior Executive Team at SAP as head of digital marketing, I have always been drawn to technology, innovation and transformation. Most recently, that’s been at Smile.io, an ecommerce loyalty software platform in the Shopify ecosystem, where I sat on the board and spent a year running the business.

In August 2021, I decided I was ready to launch a startup again. I came up with a list of ideas, white spaces where I thought there could be opportunity for creativity and growth – for making something new, much like Social Media Group. Research and exploration narrowed the list, until I came to that very small question mentioned earlier: “Where can you buy really good scissors?” I thought I’d see if I could find out.

I was shocked to discover what felt like a secret: there are a small handful of heritage makers producing amazing scissors - as good as the best knives. Often in regions known for swords, many of these firms have been making household blades for centuries. But they are dwindling – fast. In Solingen, Premana, France, Spain… makers were practicing their craft in the traditional way, but their scissors were not making their way to global markets. These companies were closing, one by one.

Here's one of the artisans in Italy

I became instantly obsessed. High-quality household scissors did not exist as a consumer category, and there was virtually no content available on the history or making of scissors available online. I started looking for more makers, turning to export manifests and other documents in the public domain to track down company names and contact information. It was like a treasure hunt, and I began ordering samples. Google Translate was my very good friend.

By the fall, gorgeous scissors in hand – unlike anything I had even owned - I knew I was on to something really, really fun. So, of course I obviously (?) decided to start an e-commerce company, importing only the finest handmade scissors, with the tiny goal of creating awareness about this dying craft and hopefully saving the industry from oblivion. Ciselier (French for “Scissor Maker”) was born.

For the first time in a long time, Ciselier has given me the chance to make something net new from end to end: product selection, branding and positioning, packaging, systems and processes. After years of training myself to delegate to people far smarter than myself, it’s been an education and a re-education in marketing. And e-commerce software, metal forging, supply chain logistics, copywriting, packaging design, vendor management, importing… the list is overwhelming when I look back at it). Not to mention the rush of founding a company with a mission to help our heritage makers (who craft such beautiful scissors). They’re under huge economic pressure from low-cost, low-quality products; it’s truly an industry that could be gone before most people even hear about it, which would be a terrible loss.

I’m still obsessed with technology, but this time it’s very, very old technology! Scissors are a tool that are used almost universally; everyone has a pair. Our point is that your scissors can - and should be - as good as your knives. It takes up to five years of apprenticeship to learn how to assemble a pair of high-quality scissors, and the number of people who can do so is fewer than 100 globally. Everyone instantly appreciates the difference when they handle a pair of hot-forged, hand-assembled scissors, but sadly, most of us never get the chance.

We decided to keep our focus narrow, on just four categories of scissors: kitchen, embroidery, paper/craft, and left-handed use. Kitchen are by far the most popular. We find that anyone who appreciates a fine knife or cooks with any serious intention immediately falls in love. Scissors are an incredibly efficient kitchen tool, but not as commonly used in North America as abroad. To that end, we've started publishing a video series about uses for kitchen scissors. Truly - once you have a pair, you simply cannot go back. Similarly, our other categories offer the finest quality tools specific to the tasks at hand: tiny, deadly-sharp embroidery snips, powerful slicing fabric shears and a great selection for lefties. Here are the Pallarès Primera Everyday Kitchen scissors, made in Solsona, Spain:

Ciselier was founded to raise awareness of the world’s heritage scissor manufacturers and make it easier for quality-minded consumers to find them. We had the great good fortune to visit our heritage makers last year, and we plan to make another trip this coming May. We’ve had incredible uptake and coverage in the media, and now we’re more concerned about our supply than demand. At the moment we sell only within North America, but we’ll eventually expand to Europe.

We're extremely active on Instagram as well as Twitter and in order to fill the huge void of information about scissors (there are literally only three books available in English on the topic, and they are extremely slim) we have also been doing a lot of research and conducting interviews with makers, publishing articles on our blog and via our email newsletter. We've been building up a good library of information, but there's much more to document.

It's been an incredibly fun startup to build – creative, innovative, challenging and meaningful. When I tell my acquaintances in the technology space what my new company does, they often give me an odd look. They must think I’ve lost it or wonder what the software angle is. But then I show them a pair of hand-assembled, hot-forged and oil-hardened stainless steel kitchen scissors… and that look instantly disappears.

 

 

Technology and my Passion: Kate Murphy and Smooth Transitions

Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. A couple of hundred have contributed since 2009 on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.

This time it is Kate Murphy who calls herself a lifelong learner, change leader and communicator. Her career has centered in the tech/software sector. Her motto is “I focus on what is, and what can be - not what is not or can't be”. She writes about her incredible organizational skills and passion to transition people, places and things to a better place.

"Along life’s journey I became adept at making positive change happen. This realization inspired me to dig into the structural and cultural aspects of organization design and change management. I spent a chunk of my career in roles where I led transformation and change initiatives and/or served as an internal practitioner helping teams across the business landing changes into practice.

Once I saw the power of systems thinking and how simple tools and solutions enable change management, I was hooked! My knowledge of how to make change stick eventually spilled into my personal life where it has helped my life’s journey and serves my passion to help people.  

We all have moments that call for us to reflect and revise our 3 Ps: purpose, priorities, and practices. It might be due to a major life event like getting married, becoming a parent, getting divorced or the death of a spouse. You know, the big stuff that has us rethink and reset how we live.

I now regularly reflect and revise, but for a time I did more floating and reacting than planning. For years. my husband Dennis and I made unconscious, daily decisions which eroded our financial outlook and slowly sabotaged our health. We both spent way too much time working (and caregiving) and too little time focused on healthy eating, exercising, and keeping up positive daily rituals. For me years of unconscious practices resulted in compounded weight gain and diabetes. Years of paying for outside services led to overspending and saving less money for the future and fun experiences. We talked about saving more, having more fun but the reality was – we had no structured life plan. Our conversations lacked direction on how we spent our time and money. When the kids were growing up, it felt like we too frequently navigated life on automatic pilot and based on their lives.

As I became professionally adept at translating strategy and change management, I started to bring key aspects of strategic planning, change management, and communication into our home. We took a step back and built a life plan. We discussed and I mapped to key changes across all aspects of our lives. We were not perfect – some old habits die hard. Over time we increased focus on health, how we made decisions together and our future. Progress was made! We had a framework to make life decisions.

Nearly 30 years in, life threw a curve ball (as it will) – Dennis was diagnosed with terminal cancer. After two years of working and caregiving, he passed away and I was widowed. Those two years and the aftermath were tough. But we were thoughtful about our decisions. We prioritized health, seeing family and friends over our professional roles. We slowed down. We both liked to keep commitments, so we upheld our professional responsibilities – but not above other priorities. And when work became too much for Dennis, I managed my career and caregiving, but not at the detriment of my priorities!

When Dennis passed, I recognized an opportunity to transform my identity and life as a single woman in her 50s. I defined what that meant to me. But before I launched “Kate plan #1”, I needed to make the emotional and physical transitions – I needed to grieve and literally undertake the legal (loathsome) processes when a spouse passes away. It may sound crazy, but I scheduled time to grieve. I treated my transition strategically. I whipped out MS Office tools to plan out immediate, midterm and long-term goals. I planned, I made timelines, lists, I tracked, and I adjusted along the way. The structure and focus on execution served me well. I was focused on making progress, not achieving a certain date. I celebrated all wins – small to large.

I hired a financial planner, revised my will and other legal documents. Over time I cleaned out closets and reimagined how to use the space in our home. I leaned into making the changes (big and small) and I role modeled a mindset of reinvention for my adult children.

My parents’ finances and health declined. I helped them until each passed away. And my daughter’s disabling health conditions brings with it responsibilities and a housemate! I realized that my role as a caregiver needed to become more ingrained with my life and financial planning. Another “ah ha” moment which required a revision in my plan.

It has been seven years since Dennis passed away. And the Kate plan has been revised seven times based on life’s curveballs and opportunities. During 2020, my daughter Jill and I made a move to the coastal city, Newburyport Massachusetts. The main driver for the move was to serve Jill’s health and healthcare. It also moved us closer to some family and closer to Boston sports. I wanted to live in a coastal community where I could slow down, be close to water, walk more and drive less.

A downside, besides the cold winters, is the cost of living. Both are brutal and required a revision in how we spend and save money. I started following Shang and her story and advice: at Save My Cents. Her advice serves as reminder to be conscious about where every cent is going. And she draws some tight boundaries to achiever her goals. Her life is different from mine, yet she offers ideas and inspiration.

Professionally speaking, my work “Kate plan” aligns with my personal plan. I added spending additional time to help colleagues, friends, and family to my list of priorities. It is time to give back more.

I have always been an active listener. When I take a step back, what I hear are things like “I am stressed”, I am overwhelmed”, “I have no idea what I would do if…”, “I have no time for me”, “How do I do more of what I love to do?”. I can relate. Sometimes people just want acknowledgement. Sometimes they want practical help to change their circumstances or get started. I have started to be more attuned to help others in practical ways.  

Over the few years, Jill and I created and/or use systems of work (spreadsheets and apps) to live more efficiently. I have moved 19 times (I don’t recommend it). The upside is we know how to move – the budget, logistics, timing, services, gotchas and all. We designed a system that scales for interstate moves. Jill coded each box. We tracked all contents using a spreadsheet and colored/numbered labels. Our project management was managed tightly.

Before the move, we sold and donated a ton of stuff using multiple storage units over time. We prepped for an eventual move for many months. So, when the opportunity arose, we needed a week to list our home and six weeks to make an interstate move (during COVID-19 pandemic)! The logistics were complex given a temporary apartment in the mix. I factored into the budget external moving help twice.

Real estate, house and space upgrades, simplification and designing rooms are side passions of mine. I love the process of prepping to put a house up for sale including letting go of stuff, upgrading, de-personalizing and staging a home.

Making a career change is another area where I help friends and family. At work my “side hustle” (as I jokingly say) is helping colleagues develop and evolve their careers. I have reinvented my SAP career several times. I have been a strategy auditor in Corporate Audit. I led a transformation and change team in HR. I ran point on various aspects of corporate communications including M&A, financial, crisis and internal comms. Today I am running integrated storytelling for our Global Sponsorships organization in Marketing. It is a mix of digital marketing and communications based on stories told with our sports and entertainment partners.  

Big transformations and life changes like career changes and moves can be successful with the right mindset, a plan and daily attention to choices and practices. If you want to be a marathon runner, poor eating is counter intuitive. Turning intentions into daily practice can sometimes feel like building a sandcastle during a sandstorm!

I find that starting small helps. One of my daughter Jill’s (and my) go to books is called Atomic Habits: an Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. After reading this book, Jill vowed to read a chapter a day. At year-end she has read 30+ books, far beyond a chapter a day. Reading is now a part of her daily practice. This is monumental for someone who, amongst her many maladies, suffers from multiple types of headaches daily.

In 2023 I will turn greater attention towards helping people make smooth [life] transitions. I will focus where my passions lie: homes/real estate, career development and reinvention. I am a geek at heart. I will continue to use tools, apps, and the wisdom of others as inspiration to enable smooth transitions.  

Follow Kate at Instagram and LinkedIn