Category Archives: Technology

CES 2020 | Las Vegas

Posted on by

Wednesday, January 8, 2020 | 2020 Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas. ( #CES2020 )

Spent the morning hearing about Quibi, the new short form video platform designed to operate only on mobile devices. Quibi is short for quick bites.

Quibi plans to create quality and compelling video content to be viewed on the go. The company’s technology will feature content that can be viewed either in landscape or portrait orientation on a user’s mobile device. While in landscape, the picture will show wide screen video image. In portrait, the view narrows allowing viewer to see the content from an alternate perspective that’s optimized for portrait.

Meg Whitman

Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has garnered significant attention and discussion during CES 2020. The prevailing premise regarding CSR is that it has become a must do mission by corporations. Even major corporations are embracing the call for action.

‘The Look‘ is a short video created by P&G, which is intended to shine light on unconscious bias prevalent in American society. It conveyed a powerful message about a problem the culture that unfortunately persist in America.

Yet, many tech companies from all appearances are only giving ‘lip service’ to diversity and inclusion of people of color.

In a session yesterday discussing corporate values and purpose, the moderator commented “don’t read people’s lips; watch their feet”. The words mouthed by corporate executives regarding CSG appear transformative, yet the associated actions for the most part by corporations have been lacking and plagued with excuses and lack of accountability.

Unconscious Bias in Technology

An unconscious bias that most senior managers and executives of color have witnessed first hand is the blatant inequality in the hiring process. A classic example is when a majority male candidate can be hired for a position without the prerequisite skills or experience under the assumption that they can learn the job and acquire the required skills and experience for the position.

In stark contrast, women and people of color must possess the prerequisite skills and experience for the prospective position in order to land on the final hiring slate. In short, this unconscious bias is a leadership problem and issue. Basically, organizations can come up with a million reasons why they’re not achieving diversity and inclusion.

One hope is that the seemly sincere CSG conversations occurring among corporate executives at CES 2020 will result in observable and measurable action on diversity and inclusion by CES 2021. And, ‘unconscious bias’ and ‘blaming the pipeline’ will no longer be excuses for lack of action and progress. Instead, corporate executives will accept that diversity and inclusion are deliberate choices and are ultimately good for their business’ bottomline.

CES 2020 | Las Vegas

Posted on by

Tuesday, January 7, 2020 | 2020 Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas. ( #CES2020 )

The #CES2020 day was kicked off by Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian and several dozen employees of Delta.Ed Bastian, CEO, Delta Airlines[/caption]

From the dark days following the 2001, 911 terrorist attacks, Delta has strived to become the best in Class for innovation and service.

During the keynote, Ed informed the assembled CES attendees that Delta interacts with 600K customers every 15 minutes. Additionally, Delta has worked to cancel cancellations and eliminated involuntary bumping.

Their objective is to reduce or eliminate the moments of stress flying to CES, especially if attendees flew on Delta.

During the address, he discussed the importance of the “Fly Delta app”. Delta’s intent is to evolve the app into a true digital flight concierge. When the app is fully enhanced, it will be able to track bags real-time.

Aspirational, Delta intends to alleviate the stress of travel and in the near future in the future provide a service to pick up bags from a passenger’s home and delivered them to their hotel.

Another Delta initiative is to provide virtual queueing that informs you when it time to board. It alleviates the necessity of passengers congregating an clogging in the gate boarding area.

Research shows people enter an elevated emotional state when traveling and flying. Delta’s goal is to effectively reduce the level of flying stress.

Two partnerships that Delta has pursued are with John Zimmer, co-founder of Lyft. They partnered with Delta since the future of travel will be multimodal…offer self-driving vehicle, bikes and scooters. Additionally, Wheels Up – democratizing private aircraft travel. Replace 1/3 of main line fleet in five years.

HBO Max

Snap shot, or initial, at launch, HBO Max will have double the content than currently available HBO Now and will continue to grow contest offerings. It is not a direct competitor with Disney or Netflix.

Measure of success will be 50M subscribers in five years. Non measurable metric is to create a streaming service that matters to global audience. Non ad supported viewership does not have a standardized measure. If you want to sale advertising, will need a standardization.

Walking

The one reality regarding CES 2020 is that you walk and you walk a lot . Today, for example, I walked over 8.8 miles in the exhibition halls and attending key nite addresses.. Also, I played spent a few minutes on a high tech self-powered treadmill.