New Florence. New Renaissance.

Fun Zoom backgrounds

We are going through a period of wild experimentation with so many working from home and presenting/conversing over Zoom, ON24, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and other platforms. I like to ask folks about their virtual backgrounds and related fun facts.

I interviewed Jason Blessing, CEO of Model N and he is a drone photographer in his spare time. He told me his background is of the west span of the Bay Bridge, shot on his Mavic 2 Pro launched from Yerba Buena Island.

Another Bay Area resident, Dave Watson of Health2047 fessed up that his Golden Gate Bridge is a stock Zoom background. But he has tricked others that it is the view from his office in the Marin headlands. He says "It took them awhile to figure out I was spoofing because it was a morning video call but the background shows an evening sunset..."

Alex Shootman, CEO of Workfront, does not need drone or satellite imagery. He routinely bikes up mountains in Utah. This is what he presented at his LEAP conference this week.

No heights for Paul Wright, CIO at Accuride. He has been working from his red barn in Michigan. I can report no farm animals Zoom bombed our session, and the connectivity was excellent!

Brent Leary of CRM Essentials has a real-life office background from his place in Atlanta. I have been on a few calls with him and the rotating fan never fails to mesmerize me. One way to stand out in a Zoom gallery with 200 other participants! More importantly, he is also what he calls a "bedroom DJ". He has a nice following of his virtual shows.

Paul Greenberg of The 56 Group is the Master of Disguise. No, not of the fact that he is a rabid Yankees fan. More in masking tens, may be even hundreds of Smart Home sensors and Alexa pods in his Virginia home. See how many you can spot.

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce recently did a joint presentation with Aneel Bhusri, CEO of Workday. In a nice touch, he used the background of a Workday facility.

Aneel Bhusri, in turn, used the background of his favorite pizzeria in San Francisco in a session with me. He hopes the publicity will help them survive this tough patch for restaurants.

HPE had a burst of color in its virtual Discover broadcast this week.

But even better,  it was nostalgic to see an industry veteran, John Chambers, former CEO of Cisco talk about leadership during a crisis. He was interviewed by HPE CEO Antonio Neri and John was extremely generous to his predecessor, Lew Platt. The background? Even more color.

Technology and my Passion: Nick Hortovanyi and Self-Driving Cars

Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade 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 Nick Hortovanyi, from Down Under. He wrote 6 years ago in this guest series about his cycling. This time he writes about his new passion - self-driving cars. No, not just turning on Autopilot on a Tesla, he is coding, working with more precise GPS, LiDAR etc. Get ready for some geek talk, but hey, that's his passion. And we can all benefit from how much he has picked up long distance from online courses:

Sitting down one day, having a latte, I had one of those fateful decisions where I’d decided that my cycling startup idea just wasn’t going to work. It was time to start thinking about something new to do. But what? I had decided a while ago, I wasn’t going to get back into the corporate IT world. It was mainly consulting and sales. Most of it had to do with recording data then reporting on the data.

I like to get my hands dirty with technology, I like to code, I like to see the results of own hypothesis & analysis. More importantly I could see that the focus of the future would be analyzing tons of data from sensors using Artificial Intelligence. This data would be collected in real-time, enabling agents to interact with their environment.

The main reason I’d given up on my previous startup idea was that I couldn’t find a large enough market to warrant further investment. So after a European holiday, while I was contemplating what to do, I received an email about the new Self Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree (SDCAR ND) from Udacity. I applied and luckily, I was accepted. The acceptance email arrived on my birthday. So, I was really happy with that present.

The global market size for self driving cars will be likely be in the trillions of dollars. When that generation of car arrives, they will have the most disruptive effect on society, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the arrival of the first automobile. Some say we are today at the same stage as when the auto started to disrupt the horse-centric world of the early 1900s. To me this is really exciting. It represents a lot of potential at so many different levels.

So yes, I have found a massive market. But first I needed to brush up my skills, starting with math. I spent time going over trigonometry, calculus, matrices and Euclidean geometry via the Khan Academy.

When the Udacity course started, I jumped online and joined the Slack & Facebook groups. Everyone was really supportive and vocal on Slack. I loved it. I had found a whole group of people that wanted to learn about using the latest technology. I was in techie heaven. Later I found out that the first few classes were all the over achievers, and the communication died down in later groups. However, I met some amazing people online.

The Udacity Nanodegrees are about learning practical skills through hands on projects. So first off we learn a bit about the theory, and then do a project. Self driving is a really complex area but to get us started, we created our first lane detection algorithm.

After about a year, and three terms, I finished the SDCAR ND degree in the first cohort. It was such a great feeling. I ended up going over to the Bay Area for the graduation ceremony and met people like Sebastian Thrun (founder of Udacity, but more importantly the Stanford Professor whose team won the first Autonomous DARPA challenge and then later formed Waymo, a spinoff from Google). He is the one in blue jeans. David Silver of Udacity is also in the frame.

Encouraged by the SDCAR ND, I wanted to be more involved in this area. So I set up a little side project [sdcar.ai]. Its aim is to use a simulator to train the car's brain. The environment inside the simulator is created from vehicle sensor data. Some of my friends joke that that I’m creating my own Google Maps car ... well I am :). 

I knew I needed to know more about AI, Robotics and Sensors. A self driving car, is really just a robot that can carry things like us humans and freight. So in the years since I’ve also completed the Robotics Software Engineer, Deep Reinforcement Learning (think DeepMind and AlphaGo) and recently the Sensor Fusion Nanodegree.

My quest to learn more grows as I learn more.  What is frustrating is when you think you are 80% through you realize your are have likely only defined what needs to be done. I’ve heard that this is the time to spend 10x the amount of effort. In this regard it is very different from corporate IT projects.

You can expect to fail often and to have to reapply what you learned to the next iteration. This might involve throwing out a lot of code, and rewriting things when you’ve used the wrong sensors (I started with cheap Chinese ones) or the wrong technology framework. Sometimes things don't move as fast as you thought they would. So you might need a new programming approach and/or hardware. I attempted at first to capture data on a Raspberry Pi. That was a mistake for images (its IO constrained so could only write two to three images per second).

My current in-vehicle data collection system can collect images, with header and nanosecond timestamps at 30 HZ. Following is an example video, where I’ve used a YOLO Object Detector to classify what can be seen in each image.

YOLOV3 Object Detection Surfers Paradise Traffic Lights from Nick Hortovanyi on Vimeo.

Another example - not all GPSes are the same. Most are not very accurate. If you plot their data, you often end up on the sidewalk or the other side of the road. Other issues arise about providing live error correction data from a known base station. I have now moved to the much more accurate UBLOX ZED-F9P .

I have now done close to 30 projects via various Udacity Nanodegree courses. I have learnt so much. The majority of my work is available from my github repository.

Recently, I splurged and bought a 16 beam 360 Degree LiDAR from Robosense (LiDAR uses light waves from a laser similar to how Radar and Sonar use radio and sound waves). It is capable of reaching an object at a distance of up to 200 Metres (roughly  650 feet). The Sensor Fusion Nanodegree has given me the confidence to play with that. So that's what I working on next... 

   

Baseball - with a big, fat asterisk

Baseball is back. With a 101 page operations manual for the COVID-19 season.

The LA Times says

The 60-game regular season, during which players will receive full prorated salaries, is scheduled to start July 23 or 24 and end in late September before a standard postseason is played. The usual six divisions will remain intact and interleague play will be limited to the corresponding geographical division in the other league (i.e. NL West vs. AL West). So, yes, that means the Dodgers will face the Houston Astros.

The New York Times says

Coronavirus testing every other day for players and coaches. Wet rags for pitchers’ pockets to prevent them from licking their fingers. Masks in the dugout and bullpen for any non-players. And no public transportation to the stadium, communal food spreads, saunas, fighting, spitting, smokeless tobacco or sunflower seeds.

Here are just a few of the many guidance images from the manual. You can download the whole doc here - registration required.

Photo Credit below = MLB

 

Technology and my Passion: Charlie Bess and Woodworking

Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade 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 repeat contributor to this series. 11 years ago, he wrote about another of his passions - mentoring youth in STEM disciplines. Here the Polymath writes about woodworking, just one of his passions today: 

I have been a technologist for over 30 years, leading large groups of technologists at companies like GM, EDS, HP and most recently Raytheon. I was the Chief Technologist for a number of organizations, a fellow at EDS & HP and a licensed professional engineer.

I’ve known Vinnie Mirchandani for well over 10 years. We even attempted to collaborate on a chapter for one of his books – unfortunately, the lawyers at the company I was working for at the time had other ideas, so that effort could not continue. The material did end up as a Green IT chapter in another book though. Now that I am no longer encumbered by lawyers, I jumped at the chance to contribute in a small way to Vinnie’s blog on pursuing personal passions.

I retired back in 2018 and although I still play around with computers, my focus moved on to ham radio and maker activities like design, computer numerical control and 3D printing. Some people worry about how they will consume all that ‘free’ time when they retire. I have not had that issue since my days are packed learning to accomplishing new things.

Part of the reason for these new development opportunities is that my focus shifted to a creative, tactile and satisfying activity -- woodworking. If you have never had the chance to hand make an object in wood, you may not understand the limitless possibilities to dedicate yourself to the freedom, creativity and skill development required. Whenever you run into a limitation, it is a chance to try something new!

I grew up on a poultry farm in Indiana, so I have always had to figure things out and ‘do things’. As I used to tell folks, “When the tractor breaks down at the far end of the field – you are the only one who is going to figure it out, so just get at it.” Although I had the opportunity in junior high to take woodshop, that and 4-H were about the only experience I had using power tools with wood. I hate to think how the kids today are missing out on even that opportunity.

One thing that helped me shift my focus away from the rigor of work when I retired and develop my skills at woodworking was that I moved to Sun City Hilton Head. That has one of the larger woodshops of any over 55, active adult community. My wife and I are part of a woodworking and model making guild that has over 900 members. Like everywhere else, COVID has had its impact here and we were down for a few months. Our shop just started back up this week.

When I came to this community, I had a basic, ‘hammer and nails’ understanding of woodworking. This woodshop had all the hand and power tools I could dream of, with people ready, willing, and able to help tackle projects of nearly any size and complexity. I started by making some of the ‘standard’ projects that were required to get certified to use the shop – they have a real focus on safety. I then moved on to some furniture, like this joggling bench (a type of bench native to the Lowcountry of South Carolina) that sits on our front porch – I did take some liberties with that design and added cup holders.

Eventually, I moved on to art-oriented projects. The one pictured here is based on an Escher print – Reptiles. I designed the piece in a CAD system and used my CNC to cut the lizards out of bloodwood, curly maple and Peruvian walnut and then used epoxy to add a protective finish. Now I need to determine if I am going to make a tray or a wall hanging out of it.  Six months ago, I likely would not have known how to tackle something like this. I’ve made other tessellations resembling sea horses and turtles as well.

Something that always puzzled me is that some artists view woodworking as craft, not art. If they knew how much imagination and creativity went into the process and the design, 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.” :)

I had the revelation as my skills developed that process and skill development can be more rewarding than the end result. Most of the designs I create I make myself and I model them in CAD tools. This focus on technique would be a valuable asset later on.

After I was here for a few months, tragedy struck and the leader of advanced training at the shop had a fatal sports accident. The woodworking guild needed someone to take over, become  involved and help modernize the advanced training process, so with my background I stepped into the breach. I have been learning myself and trying to develop others ever since. Though I came to the group with a solid understanding of computing and computers, merging that background with CAD and computer-controlled machines in the woodworking space led me to develop numerous classes in 3D printing, CNC and other areas related to woodworking for our guild. Granted today almost every topic is covered on YouTube or the Internet somehow, it is not the same as being available to answer questions when they come up. The development of others eventually led to the creation of a technology-oriented special interest group and the investigation of creating a maker space in our community woodshop.

Keeping your passion fueled is not all about process, though. For me, it is about learning new things and expanding your horizons. All my hobbies have nearly infinite development possibilities, with dimensions of capabilities that you do not even know exist until you run into them. My passion is enabled by the exploration of the new, not the reiteration of things I have done before. To me that is part of the joy and responsibility of retirement – to keep expanding and sharing with others.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Life is a journey, not a destination.”

One area I have recently started to develop is lathe turning. This involves spinning wood along an axis and cutting away material using various sharp tools. I have started to make bowls and pens, accenting them with epoxy and other finishes. Unlike most of my other woodworking projects, I can create a pen in just a few hours, so this relatively instantaneous gratification has added an incentive to continue to expand my lathe work. The pens shown on left are made out of acrylic, spalted maple and Padauk.

I have mentioned several different types of exotic woods (the end table above is made from the more common oak). In a global economy, it is relatively easy to get almost any species, it just takes time and money since no one can stock everything. Most of what I have shown in this post was actually made from scrap, the leftovers from my or someone else’s projects. A good woodworker knows there is no such thing as scrap. It is just a piece of wood you have not found a use for -- yet. Below is a Christmas display cut into a poplar board with a purpleheart base

Though I do not blog as much as I used to when I was working, I do try to continue to share my experiences when I get a chance on my personal blog so take a look if you are interested in these topics.

Technology and my Passion: Eric Dirst and Quarantine Cocktail Nights

Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade 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 Eric Dirst, a repeat contributor to this series. 6 years ago, he wrote about his real passion - hockey. He is a technology and operations executive who figured out how to enjoy the quarantine by teaching his drinking-age sons how to make a few of the classic cocktails.This also allowed him to keep his family and friends entertained. And I mean entertained - check out this three minute video where they concocted the Painkiller. He generously embeds the recipes and images of many of their masterpieces throughout the text.

When Eric isn’t crafting cocktails, he advises small and medium size businesses on their technology strategy, product roadmaps, security and risk mitigation, and talent development. Eric also enjoys his board of director roles at Carrington College, Brent Sopel Foundation, and ThingLogix

The quarantine in March had started to really sink in and the food bills had started to skyrocket from having my three sons back home due to college closing, furloughs and work-from-home requirements. I was thinking how we could inject just a bit of ‘fun at home’ into our family life, while also sharing some of that ‘fun’ with others.  Now, my sons had expressed interest in learning more about cocktails, because they were tired of consuming craft (if they could afford it) or cheap beer (really, Natty Light?).

I had recently read an article in Bon Appetit (no I do not subscribe, but somehow got on their email distribution) about the 25 best cocktails you should learn how to make. I suggested we have a Family Quarantine Cocktail Night to try these out, and everyone agreed.  Of course, to make it more social, I initially decided to post pictures of the finished drinks on Facebook, along with the recipes.  I was quite amazed at the positive feedback I received from friends and family.  People told me they looked forward to seeing the posts, and got upset if I skipped too many days in between postings. 

Here's the Whisky Smash 

Soon, other friends started their own cocktail posts along with drink shot and food pairings.   Certainly, leveraging social media and pictures was easy.  However, after a couple posts I was asked to up-my-game and add videos showing how we made each drink.  I conscripted my sons to help with video prep and sometimes the actual preparation. They also helped me pick out background music for the videos…to match the theme of the drink (e.g. smooth jazz for Manhattan).  

I have not moved to FB Live yet, since pre-recording and uploading seems to work just fine.  The only challenge was how to upload 450 Meg video files recorded on your phone to FB.  If you use the phone-native ‘send to Facebook’ feature it does not usually work with files this big.  So, thanks to cloud drives I was able to save it to Microsoft OneDrive from the phone and then upload it easily from OneDrive to Facebook. 

Here's the Tequila sunrise.

Gladly (ok, sadly), due to my profession, I have access to many cloud storage options. I could have saved it to Box.net, iCloud, Google Drive, or DropBox, since my customers use all of these options. Of course, any cloud drive would have worked just fine, since they all integrate well with your iPhone or Android phone.  

On a separate topic, I received quite a bit of feedback on how stable the videos were and questions about whether we used a tripod to create the videos.  Nope, thanks to technology in the iPhone X we were using, the non-jitter and stabilization tech made it seem as if we were using a tripod. Actually it was my oldest son filming…and he shakes a bit because he is a high-energy young adult.  No one ever noticed his shaking, which he certainly thought was cool. 

So, overall, it was a fun way to learn new things, share a topic I enjoy with family and friends, and use the power of video and social media to quickly get feedback from the community…even when we had to stay quarantined for our safety. 

Finally, here's one that some of you may not have heard about - the Boulevardier. 

Cheers!

Not just Digital. Think Omni Transformation

Plenty of software vendors and systems integrators have amplified their digital transformation messages during the COVID-19 crisis. Understandable - cloud applications have made work-from-home easier, eCommerce has exploded, video has become the killer app.

In the interviews I have been doing with various C level executives and presentations I have recently seen there are plenty of use cases where digital technologies have significantly changed the rules for many sectors

- Dave Watson of Health2047 says during this crisis, the UC San Francisco health system saw 50% of outpatient visits move to telemedicine. It was 2% prior to that. 

- Doug Belden of Hillsborough County talks about how driver testing has been transformed by mobile and thermal technology 

- Listen to Christian Klein of SAP and Lutz Meschke, Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board at Porsche describe in the SapphireNow keynote how the auto industry (more broadly, mobility now) is being electrified and digitized. 

- Daru Phirozkhanavala, former CTO of BP had talked about how digital technologies have been reshaping the energy giant.  The new BP CEO, Bernard Looney talks extensively in this interview about how digital technologies have allowed for more remote drilling at significantly lower economics (see starting at 28:30) and also about zero-carbon efforts and electric vehicles.  

Emphasize digital, de-emphasize brick and mortar would appear to be the path forward. Starbucks has launched a new store format: "Starbucks Pickup is tailored to customers who prefer to order ahead and pay through the Starbucks mobile app for pick-up, or those who want their Starbucks delivered to them by placing an order through Uber Eats".  A concern is accountants will see the lower real estate costs (and related hygiene costs) and over emphasize this format.  Starbucks could risk damaging its "third place" brand. If all you compete on is your product, the barriers to entry your music, your wifi, your social gathering place, your digital nomad workplace concepts have given you in the past will be reduced. I have already seen it in the behavior of my daughter as she scopes out other coffee shops which allow for dine-in with appropriate distancing. I can see my wife disappointed as Barnes and Noble opens up but does not allow for people to linger or re-open their cafes.

I see, however, plenty of companies which are also re-imagining the physical, brick and mortar experience (some would add the spiritual and social experience) - for customers, employees, suppliers and others. We are already seeing an explosion of experiments blending CX, SCM and HCM disciplines, and adding to that mix medical and automation expertise.

Drive-thrus and store pickups

Drive-thrus have been a fixture of American fast food since they were first introduced in the 1930s. But look how they keep evolving. Today, they are tech savvy with digital displays, intercoms, conveyor belts, bar code scanners and credit card readers.  Chick-fil-A is one of the chains that already moved to two lanes of drive-thru at some of its stores. During this crisis, they have taken drive-thru to another level. More of their order takers are "outside" the store. They go up to cars to take orders and process payments. That of course, means much of the hygiene and the technology has also moved out.

A variation of drive-thru is in store pick up technologies. Walmart has giant Pickup Towers in its bigger stores which scan barcodes on your mobile app and deliver boxed products.

Walmart also has a grocery curbside pickup service - you order through the Grocery app, then select a pick up time. There are multiple lanes where they bring your order to the car. The towers and the curbside pickup have helped Walmart's eCommerce efforts significantly during the crisis.  

I have tried both options. The Tower is easy enough, but in one case a pack of Starbucks Via could have easily been delivered via the Tower, but I was told I should have ordered it through the Grocery app and picked it up outside. So I had to reorder it, and when I went to pick it up the order had been cancelled. However, while waiting curbside I spoke to a couple of customers and they said they loved the service as they could plan a drive around the pickup time.

Banks and pharmacies adopted drive-thrus a while ago. Now the reach may be spreading.  Valvoline allows you to stay in the car for your oil change, and not go to the waiting room. The techs don't come into your car or touch the keys. You can pay via mobile phone. In reverse, Carvana is making the used car purchase and delivery experience much more digital. I have written this post two years ago, but the experience is even more relevant today

Home deliveries

Every time I have left home in the last couple of months I have seen an Amazon Prime truck in the neighborhood. I talked to one of the drivers. He told me his first delivery is often at 5:45 am, his last one at 9 pm. Another driver allowed me to look inside his vehicle - a marvel of using every square inch. Their mobile apps help then navigate, organize their delivery manifest, take photos of delivered items. In many ways, they are remarkable in their simplicity compared with massive investment UPS and Fedex made in the past in automating their trucks. The Prime truck is, however, a small cog in the Amazon distribution network which includes nearly 50 cargo planes, over 20,000 tractor trailers, and 75 massive distribution centers, I had written about the impressive automation at one of the fulfillment centers here.  Amazon is spending billions on hygiene in its physical infrastructure during the crisis - see details here.

We have long been used to pizza deliveries. Papa John's and other chains have taken the concept to the next level - contactless delivery

Services like Instacart which shop for you and make home deliveries have been on a tear during the crisis. Their CEO told BusinessWeek “In a matter of a couple of weeks, we were already ahead of our end-of-year goal (of shopping volume). A week later, we were ahead of our 2021 goals, and a few days after that, we were ahead of our 2022 goals. And so, at a certain point, we stopped counting.”

We are starting to see increased interest in drone and autonomous deliveries. 

In the meantime, human delivery has to navigate a new set of challenges. With so many people working from home and kids not at school, a postman told me his biggest worry used to be people's dogs - now it is kids playing and people bicycling in their neighborhoods.

Physical work places

As communities start relaxing their lockdowns, offices, plants and warehouses are starting to open up. That is requiring its own version of careful planning. Some providing essential services never completely shut down. 

Jeff Robertson of Maxar Technologies described in this interview the reopening protocols he has been factoring as they reopen physical sites.  Cushman and Wakefield has come up  with their concept of a "six feet" office with temperature checks, distancing, disinfectants.  Designers are re-imagining work spaces and surfaces to be anti-microbial and easy to disinfect.  Salesforce describes its elaborate office re-opening plans here. They also have a new offering called Work.com to allow customers to formalize their own re-opening protocols.

As someone pointed out - decades ago, the big question used to be whether men should take their hats off if there was a lady in the elevator. Now, Disney's FastTrack concepts and mobile apps are being used to ensure appropriate social distancing in that cramped space.

Vendor virtual events

Most technology vendors have moved their events to a virtual format. Apple's WWDC next week will be one of the largest (over 23 million registered across 150 countries), and likely one of the most innovative.

We are going through an intense period of experimentation. Either as presenter or participant I have been used ON24, Zoom, MS Teams, Google Meet and StreamYard. Facebook Messenger Rooms, Zoho Meetings and many others will soon join the party.

On the CRM Playaz show last week, there is a section starting at 55:00 which discusses how vendors events will likely evolve. Paul Greenberg comments they will move from "theatric" to "cinematic"). 

Continued physical world experiences

Rahul Samant of Delta Airlines described to me contactless check-in, HEPA filters, electrostatic foggers, empty middle seats, masks and other changes in the flying experience. 

Sarvesh Mahesh of Tavant described how the mortgage refinancing market has been on fire.  But that notoriously paper intensive process refuses to be completely digitized. It has led to notaries using side by side cars in the homeowner's garage and in "porch signings". 

Mobile banking app usage has rocketed during the crisis but has led to a FBI warning about fake apps. Don't give up on your coins and notes yet. 

Unlike Amazon or Walmart, Costco is still very dependent on brick and mortar and it has been fascinating to watch the subtle and not so subtle changes at the store. Carts being disinfected after every use, signs outside showing out of stock items, masks required inside store, no dine-in allowed in the food court, Plexiglass dividers everywhere including the restrooms, distancing markers on the floor and fobs to pay for gasoline.

Finally, need to point out many tech vendors screaming digital transformation had offices which used to be playgrounds for millennials and many had Michelin quality buffets for them. I hope they now don't end up with a nursing home vibe. If for no other reason than that, I hope folks make re-imagining brick and mortar and omni-channel experiences as important a priority as their digital transformations :)

My first appearance on CRM Playaz

Thank you to Paul Greenberg and Brent Leary for inviting to me part of their weekly show this week.

My section starts around 23:00 - I compliment them during my comments for keeping the show light-hearted and positive. Much needed during this crazy time.

I talked about the various Zoom interviews of C level executives I have been doing - the growing list is here and I talk about likely impact on the enterprise software market. I also mention the Passion guest series. The Topsy Turvy blog post I mention is here. 

Nice to be introduced to yet another video platform I have used in the last few weeks - in this case StreamYard. Others have included Zoom, MS Team, Google Meet, ON24. On that point, it was nice to hear Tom Libretto, CMO of Pegasystems talk starting around 55.00 about virtual vendor events like Pegaworld and have everyone on the show discuss how those events are likely to evolve. 

Topsy-Turvy Day - or Decade?

I was talking to a neighbor who owns an RV and he told me Kampgrounds of America (KOA) bookings have bounced back. I did not believe him at first, but yes bookings are far outpacing cancellations. So are new RV sales. People can use them for their summer holidays without having to worry about social distancing on planes or hygiene at hotels and restaurants. But wait - look at the interviews I have done in the last few weeks indexed here. 

Hear Jack Barrett, CEO of a community bank tell that local hotel bookings are picking up (btw as impressively his bank grew 25% in a couple of months). So does Joseph Rajadurai of Cognizant Travel. Hear Rahul Samant, CIO at Delta talk about new hygiene at airports and on planes.

Used car sales are up. AutoNation had a good quarter. Why? Hygiene again. Avoiding mass transit and Uber hygiene in that scenario. And gas prices are down. Why is traffic going up on the roads, when so many are working from home and when there are so many stories about downtowns and shopping malls dying?   Well, WFH only works for digital, white collar employees. Even there, people are competing for bandwidth with their kids and their spouses. Millennials miss the social interaction. Doug Belden, a County official told me we have not even begun to appreciate the costs of social isolation - suicides, domestic abuse, delayed chemo and other therapies. I have seen in my Zoom interviews and vendor virtual events the reality of spotty bandwidth, basic laptop cams which barely produce 720p resolution. Companies will have to think about souping up and fortifying WFH infrastructure. Telecoms will have to upgrade last mile infrastructure - in most neighborhoods they are already 10-15 years old. Don't get carried away yet with WFH projections.

My conversations have provided me fascinating, contradictory data  Aneel Bhusri told me Workday saw a million person payroll. Million paychecks at a private company - let that sink in. In contrast, Brian Sommer told me he saw a recent survey at a HR conference where 0% of virtual attendees said talent acquisition was a priority. (BTW you will hear more from Brian and me about the New Normal for HR - see his column here as a start).  While there are all kinds of doomsday scenarios about commercial real estate, Parvesh Mahesh of Tavant tells me residential real estate is on a tear. Home closings have continued with innovative ways to get paperwork signed even during lockdowns. Every Starbucks and Chick-Fil-A we have driven by in the last few weeks has had long drivethrough lines. Our local Costco has a whiteboard outside showing which items are out of stock - a month ago there were 20 items on that list. This weekend it was down to 5. Regular Gas at that Costco was down to $ 1.55 a gallon at its lowest. This weekend it was up to $ 1.75.

William Gibson, the science fiction author, is said to have first said in 1993 "The future is already here - it is just not evenly distributed." That future is definitely here now. And it it is definitely unevenly distributed..

People were amazed the BLS jobs report was so positive last Friday (even after a negative adjustment they had to make the next day). I was not shocked - only a bit surprised that it was a month earlier than I expected. I estimated the July report would show an improvement, then steady gains over the next few months. Lots of reasons for my thinking - partly because I think most media and analysts keep focusing on the ends of the wealth curve and ignoring the middle. I have been collecting a bunch of data for a book on what I call the "invisible middle" - it is alive and well and just needs calming down after the initial shock of COVID-19. I say invisible because it is all around us. Costco has nearly 100 million members. Their annual household income is over $ 90K. That's middle class right there. They were the biggest buyers of 50 million cars sold in the US in the last 3 years. Their retirement and housing assets exceed $ 50 trillion in my data.

And a few more trillion that have been pumped into that with PPP emergency loans and stimulus checks. Protests and concerns of COVID flare ups are keeping them nervous.  Protests are needed but let’s do them nicely and cognizant they may contribute to the flareups, then get to some serious work, not keep making consumers nervous.

In the Disney movie, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, there is a sequence which goes

Topsy turvy!

Everyone is acting crazy

Most vendor executives I have interviewed realize the world has turned. In contrast, many proposals and presentations I am seeing in the field still reflect a yearning for business as usual. How much vertical functionality written a few years ago is still relevant as is? How many CFOs are likely to sign off on 2-3 year projects? See a perspective from Ed Abbo of C3.ai starting around 16:30. I have a conversation coming up with Brad Keywell of Uptake who has been saying similar for years now. How many companies will allow teams of on-site consultants? See the answer from Sarvesh Mahesh of Tavant starting around 18:14 about newer models likely around delivery of projects. 

Could the US economy bounce back like a bungee? Maybe, but even then the gains will be unevenly distributed. It's already clear many agile companies across industries have done well and will likely expand their advantage.

Much better to be prepared for any scenario. As the Disney song goes

Once a year we turn all Paris upside down

Every man's a king and every king's a clown

The problem is it may not just be a day - it could be a year or even a decade.

This is where my analyst training kicks in. Challenge clients to look at multiple scenarios and assign likely probabilities. Not easy - but how often do you find yourself positioned for so much success or risk as much failure?    

Topsy turvy!

Everything is upsy daysy