WeWork’s gaff and the opportunity for LinkedIn

Just released: I was a honoured to be a guest on Kadia Francis’ podcast, The Digital Jamaica Podcast. You can get more details on Kadia’s blog here.

Digitalising meetings and conferences is something that is becoming evermore useful for businesses and individuals alike, I explore a couple of examples here.

On to the update.

Virtual Island Summit

As previously mentioned that I had attended a few sessions of the Virtual Island Summit, and as a general comment, the content was very thought-provoking and very much geared to the context here in the Caribbean. However, despite being relevant to the Caribbean, much of the content drew on ideas and experiences from around the world.

One of the first presentations was entitled Digital Social Innovation To Empower Democracy. The title intrigued me, so I put aside some time to follow the session with a little more attention than I would normally. Several things struck me as attractive from a perspective of Digital Transformation and how they weave with local contexts.

The talk presented by Audrey Tang, who is the Digital Innovation Minister from Taiwan. Which immediately got me thinking about our Islands and territories, and which have specific jobs, ministries and elected officials in that capacity.

Spending, admittedly, a short period researching, there appear to be few positions in local Government dedicated to digital, let alone devoted to topics concerning digital that directly affect the population. Most Ministers and authorities are trying to wrangle digital change in their countries and are leveraging either traditional utilities or education-focused bodies. Some have taken to promoting ICT departments, as they are "digital".

I believe this to be wrong for the reasons I've been discussing in this newsletter for months now. The element that is most important in Digital Transformation is not the "Digital"! This fact couldn't be stated clearly enough in the presentation from Audrey Tang.

Let's go back to the title, Digital Social Innovation To Empower Democracy, and break that down a little.

Democracy is not just your right to vote, or criticise your Government (quite a relevant topic currently based on what is happening in Hong Kong at the moment - avoiding that one for now though!), but it is a means by which all citizens can participate in some way towards the collective benefit of all citizens within their town, region or country.

Some things are small, others are large and have a more significant impact, but they are all crucial for democracy, in that they form part of the whole that shapes Society into what it is. I'm not going to lecture you on whether or not you should vote, but what I would say is that you should at least take some responsibility for the outcomes of your own country based on your participation.

As for Innovation, I've discussed Innovation previously in the context of Digital Transformation:

When we talk of innovation, we tend to think of the finished product, like when the initial iPhone was unveiled. It was a stunning “innovation” and completely trumped what the market at that time had to offer… in some ways. Interestingly, it is best explained by Disruption Theory, by entering a market with less features but doing the JTBD brilliantly, so brilliantly in fact, that it quickly ate up market share to the dismay of all the incumbents in the market at the time.

But innovation isn’t the product, innovation is the process. And, innovation doesn’t have to produce a physical product at the end of the process, it can simply be a better way an organisation works internally, for example something as simple as better stock management in the warehouse. To cut it down to its basics, innovation is any change in a business process, or product/service that adds value. Innovation is similarly, not limited to the development of something new and exciting, it can be an incremental change that produces better outcomes for the organisation. Lastly, innovation is a continuous process. Once you have innovated, the work doesn’t stop there. Remember, the new new becomes the new old very quickly in these times!

Lastly, I think the essential element in the title is Social. Although it goes hand in hand with democracy in this context it was necessary, in my view, to single out this aspect in the sense that what the title actually says is that Taiwan was using digital transformation tools and technologies to help society as a whole, through participative projects, contribute to the development and betterment of the country. And when you listened to some of the projects presented, it is precisely what happened.

Take some time to watch some of the debates and presentations on the YouTube channel; I think you'll find them valuable to your own Digital Transformation. I'll be writing up the others over the coming weeks too.

WeWork’s gaff and the opportunity for LinkedIn

LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, has announced that its platform is to receive several new features this year, most notably features designed to help recruiting and job seeking. But one features caught my eye as it is a Job To Be Done already filled by several platforms and social networks, that of event planning and organising.

LinkedIn Events, the new tools from LinkedIn, allows users to create and participate in professional events around the globe when it is fully rolled out. Currently, it is on trial in NYC and San Francisco but should be rolling out to more cities around the world in the future, with English speaking countries first. Slated to work similarly to Facebook events, LinkedIn Events is more focused on professionals and associations, focused on helping them organise and plan an event for both local and remote participants using the segmentation tools of the platform, Industry, Company for example.

It comes at a very opportune time, as the giant of the meet up social networks, Meetup, made a strategic error that may cost them their business entirely.

From Forbes:

WeWork-owned Meetup, an app that allows anyone to create and attend events, may start charging some attendees $2 per event, a change that’s already drawing criticism from event organizers who say the pricing model will force them to ditch the app and shut down their groups.

• The policy, introduced as a test for some groups in late September, requires anyone attending a Meetup event to pay $2 when they RSVP. Organizers have the option of covering the cost of each attendee themselves if they don’t want to charge participants.

• Event organizers already pay a membership fee to list their events on Meetup. The policy would also lower that fee to $24 per year from up to $200 per year.

• Meetup is positioning the change as a reduction in costs for organizers, but some say if they choose to cover the $2 themselves, they’ll end up paying more than $240 per year, making the app unaffordable.

• Some groups have upwards of 200 members, and organizers say they don’t want to exclude people who might not be able to afford a fee, especially if that group meets multiple times per week. 

• Meetup users slammed the changes as an effort to squeeze more cash from the app as its owner WeWork faces financial challenges following the cancellation of its IPO. WeWork may also be looking to sell off Meetup altogether.

WeWork subsequently did an about-face, "clarifying" that this was simply a limited-reach test and that no final plans to change the current pricing structure. But this announcement highlights the dangers of digital platforms where, once they become all-powerful from the network effects, they can attempt to dictate the rules of the game. Users were quick to remonstrate, and it was this dissent that promoted a statement from Meetup CEO David Siegel to that effect.

But the damage has been done. And many of Meetup's members are already looking toward other platforms, which is where LinkedIn slots in nicely and in some respects, LinkedIn is a better platform for this type of offer. Not only does the platform have rich information on the professional lives of people, but the value of being seen to participate in the community, regardless what that community is, is increasing as a differentiator to potential employers and a value proposition for prospective employees to display.

The Future is Digital Newsletter is intended for anyone interesting in learning about Digital Transformation and how it affects their business. I strongly encourage you to forward it to people you feel may be interested. If this email was forwarded to you, I’d love to see you onboard. You can sign up here:

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Had a great time recording this. I hope to do it again soon. You should check out the work Kadia is doing and follow her on all the channels.

We talked about the human side of Digital Transformation and the issues and fears surrounding change in a changing world.

Enjoy!

Episode 13 – The Human Cost of Digital Transformations with Matthew Cowen

Is it just me?

Am I alone?

The only one that thinks that the way the BBC writes it's articles is awful to read?

They have taken to writing one sentence per paragraph.

Perhaps to break up the text.

But it makes it more difficult to read.

And mentally, the associated parts of the text that should be in one paragraph, are disconnected.

Making your brain work harder to rejoin what's related.

I do hope they stop doing it.

It's distracting and frankly l, looks awful too.

My opinion.

14 October 2019 — French West Indies

Libra ite domum

I recently attended the OECS’s Virtual Island Summit. I’m currently ploughing my way through the sessions and will be writing about that in the short term. There were a lot of fascinating presentations over the few days, and much is of direct use to us in the Caribbean.

On to the update.

Buses, Data and the Value of Data

The 1st of October witnessed the introduction of a structured and timetabled bus service in the north of the Island of Martinique. The project had been long discussed but had had plenty of difficulties along the way due to structural and operational challenges - read, people!

The North Caribbean coastal and inland towns served by the coastal road had until that point been serviced by taxicos, operating with few restrictions. As a daily user, you were either unconcerned or had no choice but to wait and pay. The taxicos were always late, disorganised and too expensive for the service offered. Safety was secondary; no seat belts, doors that had long past their usable life span, as examples.

I’ve written previously about the state of public transport in the Caribbean and how users are often in a “suck it up” or nothing situation:

When we look at the end users and their relative power in the value chain of the public transportation business, and I'm specifically talking about the Caribbean as I know its not the same in London or New York, we see that they are relatively powerless — essentially they are in a take it or leave it situation. With no powerful central public transportation organisation with a solid offer, users are powerless to exercise pressure upon that organisation in order to obtain better service. With no organisation of users as lobby, they relinquish the right to exercise pressure on abusive pricing of poor to bad services. Yes, they can just choose not to use the buses and Taxicos, but what alternative do they have?

The news of this new service piqued my interest obviously, and particularly as I hoped the service would have digital technologies natively integrated from the get-go.

Remember, Digital Transformation is hard and much harder for companies that have years and sometimes decades of culture built up in the business. Culture is hard to modify and align with new objectives which is why we see Thomas Cook happening.

Thomas Cook is additionally the victim of its decision not to transform into an agile, Internet-savvy business with consequences that run into thousands of job losses around the world and an estimates 150000 British holiday makes stranded unless the UK government can step into charter planes for the rescue, an estimated cost of £100m.

Founded 178 years ago, Thomas Cook is a giant in the tourism industry, with a breakdown of its sales as 67.8% for flights, holidays, accommodation and insurance and 32.2% in airline services. At the end of September 2018, they owned 186 hotels and had a fleet of 100 aircraft. Its sales breakdown is split between the UK at 24% and the rest of Europe at 66% with Germany alone counting for 37.8%.

As you are no doubt acutely aware, the Caribbean is one of the group's leading destinations and many companies in the region are exposed to the risk of Thomas Cook's impending failure.

Thomas Cook failed to seriously take its business in the direction of digital, instead strategically opting to open and run 563 high-street sales shops, financing much of the expansion in debt that was in-part attractive due to historically low-interest rates in Europe, but servicing that debt, now at around £1.7bn, is expensive, even if it is relatively low, running at around £150m/year.

While the world was transforming digitally, Thomas Cook took the opposite route and is now paying the price with an impending doom unless they can finance their way out of the current hole.

When you are a nascent enterprise, you have a responsibility to build in digital services as a default, not an afterthought. Why? Because it is going to be harder, more expensive and take a lot longer to retrofit digital into your operations if you don’t do from the outset.

I’m disappointed to learn that Martinique Transport (the body set up to operate public transport in Martinique) have no such digital technologies in view.

A pdf timetable exists on the website, but some of the most basic technologies that are available on the market for over 20 years are not present. You can’t see when the next bus is arriving (there’s no indication of time to the next bus), there’s no app you can use to look up the routes, timetables and bus times. You go to the stop, and you wait. When the bus arrives, you get on comforted by the fact that at least it’s a regular schedule compared to the previous service.

Anecdotally, I’ve noticed more people at bus stops that ever before, so the service is having an impact on mobility, and as I mentioned in my interview with Greggar Deterville of RIDE Caribbean:

One thing is for sure, mobility provides fuel for growth in an economy, the more we can do to make that easier, more efficient and cheaper, the better it is for the country.

Besides this, implementing these services could have benefits for Martinique Transport as well. I’m talking about Martinique Transport specifically, but the same argument can be applied across the Caribbean, so I hope you don’t feel I’m targeting them intentionally.

In implementing digital services, each bus would need a device that reports back in near-realtime their location. At the datacenter, that report would then be integrated into the database and rationalised as required. Data rationalisation is the process by which the data collected is audited for inconsistencies, duplicates and potential errors, treated and committed to the database in its final form. This data is then exploitable by anyone wishing to use it for other purposes. And a few seconds delay on the location of a bus is not particularly significant.

The database then becomes the basis for the development of simple tools that are valuable to Martinique Transport and possibly open up the potential for monetisation.

An app for Android and iOS wouldn’t necessarily have to be developed by Martinique Transport; it could be independent with Martinique Transport charging a reasonable annual fee for access to the database via simple APIs. That would promote third parties to develop apps, a few rivals competing to provide a unique take on presentation and usability would be a healthy thing, and Martinique Transport would benefit from simultaneous revenue from the developers.

The devices required on the buses have a cost, it is non-neglige, but a simple prototype solution would be very cheap to implement. What do we all carry that has GPS builtin and an always-on data connection? The Smartphone!

Give a couple of drivers a cheap android smartphone with a data plan, lock the phone down to prevent abuse and ensure that the GPS application is fired up and reporting back through the APIs. This quick and dirty solution would, in a short period, prove the value of collecting that data, because not only would that data be valuable for users of the services, but Martinique Transport itself could benefit.

Data, as I’ve written before, is crucial for business in Digital Transformation and that we’re often data-rich but usage sparse:

Data is the new oil in the digital economy

Although there is some dispute in the reality of the phrase, with some reasoning that it’s not, the phrase holds true for many businesses looking towards digital transformation. Businesses produce data all the time, but it is mostly lost, stored but not accessed or downright under-exploited. We are data-rich but analysis-poor, and it’s to our detriment.

Once collected and aggregated the data would provide insights for Martinique Transport about the efficacy of the timetable, provide information to help tweak the schedule. Adding user numbers would afford a more meticulous analysis of the appropriate bus types to use on the various lines (peaks and troughs in usage, for example). A plethora of value is available if the data is there.

I hope I’m wrong and that this is in progress already throughout the Caribbean.

Libra eunt domus(1)

In an ever-crumbling house of cards that it Facebook’s Libra project, not only has LINKPaypal publicly pulled out, but yesterday saw the announcements from eBay, Stripe, Mastercard and Visa that they will no longer be part of the project.

Remember, Marc Zuckerberg is set to testify on the 23rd of October to the House Financial Services Committee in a hearing set up to investigate the project and its implications to financial stability.

It is looking increasingly likely that Libra is to become a cryptocurrency just like Bitcoin and the others, albeit famous and very popular.

The Future is Digital Newsletter is intended for anyone interesting in learning about Digital Transformation and how it affects their business. I strongly encourage you to forward it to people you feel may be interested. If this email was forwarded to you, I’d love to see you onboard. You can sign up here:

Sign up now

Visit the website to read all my articles and continue the discussion in the Slack group.

Thanks for being a supporter, have a great day.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_ite_domum

Why we’re unlikely to see it in the Caribbean anytime soon

I’ve had a bit of eye strain recently, and decided to rest my eyes a little which is why this email comes out only now. Appointment with eye doctor duly booked!

On to the article.

As the victim of a pretty violent road traffic accident earlier this year — one that could easily have killed us — I am very attentive to road security and the way that technology improves it. The world of autonomous vehicles fits squarely with that and the theme of this newsletter: digital technologies and their impact on lives and business.

Today’s title gives the conclusion away far too early, but I thought it worth writing an issue on the subject.

What is vehicle autonomy? It’s complicated

When we talk about humans, often related to the subject of children or those with handicaps, autonomy is a relatively simple concept to assess; can my son wake up and then go for a shower without any other intervention (I’ll not talk about the teenage years that seem to affect autonomous capacity severely 🤷‍♂️), or can a physically impaired person live and work autonomously such that it affords them freedom to control meaningful outcomes.

When we discuss autonomous vehicles, we’re talking about a much simpler autonomy. Tell the car where we’d like to go then start the engine. Very simple, nothing at all like the scale of processing required for a human to be autonomous, yet it seems like science fiction currently.

At the start of the year, CES in Las Vegas has become an institution for technology enthusiasts to glimpse “the future”. Much of what is on-show is pure fantasy and at best, half-baked prototypes putting on the glams to get funded into reality. Notwithstanding, one such demo that was highly entertaining, if still a little too scripted for my liking, was the Yandex autonomous car driving on real roads, in real traffic. It shuttled real passengers around the Strip expertly. This video shows it better than I could explain.

You’ve no doubt noticed the safety driver in the passenger seat and the big red panic button, but it was, nonetheless very impressive.

The 5 Levels of Autonomy

You’ve no doubt noticed the safety driver in the passenger seat and the big red panic button near the hand, but it was nonetheless quite impressive.

The 5 Levels of Autonomy

In 2013, the US Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) defined what has subsequently become accepted as the definitive list of vehicle autonomy levels. It ranges from 0 (none) to 5 (full autonomy).

Level 0: This one is simple, and it is virtually every vehicle produced and sold since Henry Ford’s Model T first rolled off his now infamous production line. The car controls nothing, nothing! The engine, brakes, steering, gears and all the accessories like lights and indicators are all human-driven, decided and executed.

Level 1: Level 1 is described best as driver-assistance. Some functions, such as breaking, speed regulation, are controlled under supervision by the bag of meat in the driver's seat: nothing fancy, just a few helpful gadgets to make life on the highway a little more bearable.

Level 2: At this level, at least one driver-assist system controls the experience. It could be acceleration or breaking. However, the critical aspect is that the car makes the decision based upon its understanding and awareness of its environment. The driver is “disengaged” from operating the vehicle, using the NHTSA terminology. If you’ve used lane-assist in a car, this is what Level 2 autonomy is.

Level 3: This is the level at which responsibility for safety rests in the hands of the vehicle and not the human, but only under certain circumstances. The driver must remain aware and capable of capturing full control at a moments notice. This level is what the latest Tesla cars can do on major highways in the US. Many people believe we are likely to skip this step, precisely because this blurring of responsibility between human and machine is already creating more problems than it solves, and judging by the YouTube videos I saw researching this article, that’s not unreasonable!

Level 4: Level 4 is, for all intents and purposes, fully autonomous, in that the vehicle can fully control the trip from start to finish with no human intervention. Under the level 4 definition, however, it is limited to full autonomy under the ODD, the Operational Design Domain. It refers to the fact that in some situations, the vehicle fails in autonomy when operated outside those parameters — for example, driving in a massive snowstorm or rain deluge. This issue becomes important when we look at the situation in the Caribbean.

Level 5: If the vehicle is indistinguishable from, or better than, human drivers, then Level 5 is attained. The vehicle becomes Driverless. Note that Autonomous is now Driverless!

What are the problems for the Caribbean?

Sadly for us here in the Caribbean, the reality is that too many issues exist on our roads for autonomy to be a significant prospect for the foreseeable future. A few examples serve to highlight this.

Take, for example, the weather. Blessed as we are with all-year-round sunshine and warmth, we are bathed with heavy rain (seemingly from nowhere at times), that often floods roads within minutes. For you, the human, much information is inputted and processed; you intrinsically understand the flooding of the road and slowing down is necessary to avert an accident. You see the rain, you know it’s raining. You know the road, you can no longer see the tarmac or concrete, you see lots of water.

LIDAR and other technologies currently in autonomous vehicles are sadly lacking in this perception and intelligence.

I was lucky enough to have a VW Golf for a couple of years that featured lane-assist, but our islands are small, and our roads are even smaller. The technology just wasn’t built for those scenarios. Few are the multi-lane straight-lined highways that allow this technology to work well. Our roads twist and turn, undulating more like the opening sequence to Ridge Racer than the perfect Autobahnen of Germany, forcing operation outside the ODD, resulting in the disabling of the feature after a few hundred metres or so, of poorly lined tarmac.

The technology is coming, but it takes a long time before becoming useful in the Caribbean and universally. Getting the technology to Level 4 in Los Angeles is a very different prospect than getting it to Level 4 in Dominica!

Paypal is no longer pals with Libra

Paypal, one of the 28 founding members of the association pledging $10 million in investment, have announced they are walking away from the project after much backlash had been felt around the globe. In France and Germany, governments have openly stated that Libra would be forbidden in those territories as it is seen as a threat to sovereignty.

I’ll keep beating the drum, it’s annoying I know, but Cryptocurrencies are condemned to remain as a reasonably anonymous (although not 100%) way for you buying your drugs and other illicit goods. Unless they legitimise themselves and are governed and regulated, and most importantly, protected by laws in each state in which they operate, they will remain marginal in both senses of the word. From Blockchain ≠ Cryptocurrency:

I’m an on-the-record sceptic of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, and so far, nothing I’ve seen has led me to believe differently. They are almost all, a waste of money. They are all, without exception, a huge waste of energy in a time when economising energy should be a priority not just for governments but individuals alike, and at the very worst end of the scale, some are downright fraudulent. That being said, the underlying technology of these currencies is actually quite interesting and has place for use in Digital Transformation

Visa, MasterCard and Stripe are all said to be getting cold feet and are feeling the adverse effects of being associated with Facebook, and it is only a matter of time before they pull the plug too. However, Paypal’s decision also has business strategy wrapped up in it.

Paypal is the owner of Venmo, a digital wallet-type app and a whole ecosystem of payment tools that would, it seems, compete with Calibra, the Libra-based wallet. I’m guessing Paypal took stock of the risk (being linked to Facebook’s negativity) and the potential for being squeezed (see Stories, a shameful ripoff from Snapchat, designed to elevate Instagram at the expense of Snap that worked incredibly well) and said that it just isn’t worth it.

The Future is Digital Newsletter is intended for anyone interesting in learning about Digital Technologies and how they affect business. I strongly encourage you to forward it to people you feel may be interested. If this email was forwarded to you, I’d love to see you onboard. You can sign up here:

Sign up now

Visit the website to read all my articles and continue the discussion in the Slack group.

Thanks for being a supporter, have a great day.