Land Sakes Alive! AI is Coming… Hard

AI is unlike technology advances that have come before.

Yep. Sounding the alarms.

Like most tech professionals my age, we lived through every remarkable step-change and wonderful advancement in tech over many decades. I literally learned computer programming on keypunch card decks we had to feed to the County mainframe overnight. (Fortran IV, thank you.)  As a side note, I was one of the only female students in my high school class to take the inaugural class in “computer programming.” That was 1977. It was a milestone in our high school’s history.

From there, I lived through the IBM-dominated mainframe computing era to the client/server revolution, to the more disruptive PC revolution.  Tech advances continued to the shift to mobile, SaaS, and both Internet revs 1.0 and 2.0. Everyone my age in tech lived through these transitions.

Although these shifts always move chess pieces on the game board, they were not viewed as dangerous or lethal. They simply realigned roles and positions. People employed in old skills, retooled and learned new skills.

But, dear friend of the ITSinsider blog, I’m telling you…as a friend, AI is different. It’s not the same as what’s come before.

This blog has been always been subtitled, “What’s Next in Tech.” I stopped writing here a few years ago. I’m rethinking that decision now with the pace and scale of AI advancements.

According to the research firm, CBInsights, there are 117 AI startups right here in Austin in various stages of growth. Yesterday’s “duty to warn” letter from leading tech, political, and academic luminaries probably won’t stop progress, but it shot an important red flare distress signal out to the world.

I’ve been checking in with friends around the techosphere, to take their temperature on how AI is sitting with them.

Yesterday, for instance, I caught up with my old  friend, colleague, and thought leader on Future of Work, Dion Hinchcliffe.  I’ve always known Dion to be a techno-optimist like I am. Dion has been experimenting with GPT-4 on his own and has been unsettled with the results.  “I tested it using knowledge it can’t possibly know, and it does what I asked.” he said. “I will say to myself, ‘It will never pass this [test],’ and it does– in a couple of seconds.”

He told me there’s no putting AI back in the can. He shared that he’s most concerned about the Python runtime AI that is fully firewalled. The AI can not only write the code to answer questions, but it can execute that code as well. The fact that the AI can reason with fully working knowledge of a subject is what’s most alarming, he said.

Net, net

The era of AI is upon us. As someone who’s been openly optimistic about using technology to improve life on the planet, this has my full attention. I will be checking in with more friends around the globe, and looking into some of the companies making moves in this space. Feel free to tell me your thoughts here or on social channels where we are connected.

The ITSinsider Blog is now a Series of Books

I had a great career before the Internet blessed me with a second career. This second career was paved with a free tool we now know as blogging. The 300 or so posts that constituted the ITSinsider blog tracked my progress, and enabled me to emerge as a leading voice in the Enterprise 2.0 community of thinkers and activists.

I wanted to preserve the names, dates, the history of this era so we created a book series of these blog posts. You can buy them on Amazon. They’re available in paperback or on Kindle.

It might be useful some day for some researcher or grad student, so the link to the Amazon page is here.

It was an exciting era to be involved in tech– an optimistic and positive decade where a large, connected network of passionate individuals were interested in making a difference in the world. I was thrilled to be part of it.

 

 

Orlando is a Perfect Showcase for a 5G Infrastructure Future

Last spring, I attended the inaugural Connect X conference in Charlotte, N.C. Connect X is the annual conference held by the Wireless Infrastructure Association (WIA). It was a merger of two conferences: HetNet and WIA’s Wireless Infrastructure Show. The emphasis for Connect X is its exclusive focus on connectivity.

This year, the show is nearly 100% centered on the 5G opportunity. Considering the event is going to be here in Orlando in May 2019, I raised my hand early and asked if I could be involved in some way. There is so much talent and innovation here in Central Florida that I’d like to see have more visibility on the national scene, I couldn’t help myself.

For instance, off the top of my head, all these initiatives will benefit from the evolving wireless ecosystem driving the future of our communications:

I know there’s a lot more too. I’ve heard about the SunTrax out at Florida PolyTech too, and other initiatives underway with teams from the University of Central Florida (UCF) working on National Science Foundation (NSF) proposals on Smart City funding.

We’re working on putting together an Orlando Technology Pavilion in the showcase exhibit hall. I’m trying to recruit a few great speakers too, like Chris Castro, who’s become a leading voice for change on all things sustainability and smart city planning.

The show is international; it just happens to be in Orlando this year. At the event last year, the FCC Chairman, Ajit Pai, was one of the keynote speakers. It will draw over 3K attendees from every corner of the vital infrastructure community involved in delivering on connectivity solutions.

I’ll be writing more about who’s speaking and what to expect in future posts, but I wanted to get this conversation started because I am eager to start filling up that Orlando Tech Pavilion!

Ping me on Twitter or leave a comment if you want to know how to get involved. You can follow the conference on Twitter at @ConnectX_USA.

Faster, Further, Flashier, and more Fun– 5G: It’s Coming

This update is a follow up to our holiday greeting card. As promised, I alluded to a new direction we’re taking with SoCo Partners. Generally speaking, my partner and I are still focused on innovation and innovators in every tech sector. Yet, over the past few years, I’ve increasingly become fascinated with the massive step changes in increased speeds, bandwidth, and low latency coming with 5G. If you’re not familiar, 5G is the fifth generation of cellular mobile communications. It will ultimately replace where we are now at 4G LTE. Carriers began rolling out 5G in a handful of cities in 2018, and mobile 5G is starting now in 2019 in U.S. cities. By 2020, everyone will be familiar with 5G.

Last week at CES, everyone was talking 5G. The vision speak by the super groovy Verizon CEO was one of the best. It kicked off the massive event. You can watch the entire keynote here:

Growing up in N.J. and majoring in computer science, the goal for most of my fellow student grads was to secure a highly coveted job offer from the famous N.J. research facility: Bell Labs. Before the “phone company” was dismantled by the federal government, Bell Labs was its world-renowned research arm. Perhaps this is the attraction now for me– to circle back to the telecommunications sector– as I wind out this final phase of my tech career. I’ve always been drawn to tech creators and invention, and the Cambrian explosion of invention that is coming in every industry as a result of this next wave of infrastructure backbone is awe-inspiring. 

To that end, here is what I’ve been up to. My longtime friend Keith and I started a communications strategy firm where we are using the power of storytelling to connect to audiences. It’s an interesting mix of what we both love to do (write), coupled with the savviness of years of understanding how innovation cycles work in tech. We created this Story Cube Method as a guide to help clients get started. Our goal is to capture real-life stories in this fast-growing sector as these innovations begin to emerge.

While we’re at the early stages of planning for this 5G-inspired future, there are many adjacent areas of interest that have captured my attention. Because of exploratory work I did working on big data while working on Big Mountain Data, I was fortunate to join the University of Central Florida’s (UCF’s) Master of Science Data Analytics program board. As a result of that work, I’m now contributing to the UCF Data Science Board, as well. Massive data is at the heart of the currency of the “everything” that 5G will connect, as explained by Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg. As such, all these areas of interest are converging for me. 

Daphne Kis, CEO WorldQuant University

One of the initiatives I’m pleased to be help bring to UCF again this year is the Women in Data Science 2019 (#WiDS2019) program. UCF will be one of the Ambassador hosts for the event, along with over 150+ other locations throughout the world, led by the team from Stanford University. I was able to recruit Daphne Kis, CEO of WorldQuant University, to be our keynote speaker for this event. Daphne is an icon in the women in tech and investor community. It’s a tremendous honor to have her travel to Orlando for our event, and we are pleased to have her join us on campus. We are in the process now of planning a terrific agenda for the students, faculty, and local employers.

I’m also assisting the producers of the Wireless Infrastructure Association (WIA) who will be hosting their annual spring Connect X conference here in Orlando get to know the innovators on the ground here in Central Florida. It’s a great opportunity to put our local teams in front of these national audiences while they’re in town and to showcase our local talent. A special thanks to Rob Panepinto for the introduction to the Orlando Economic Partnership that got the ball rolling out at CES.

Finally, I’ve been kicking around the idea of starting up another new and improved “Adoption Council.” This time, for enterprise customers* interested in understanding how they can prepare for the oncoming opportunities and challenges associated with the 5G transformation. I’ve been reaching out to former Council members and have received interest in this idea. If you want to be part of the exploratory group looking into this, sign up here. It feels like deja vu all over again. But in a really good, really fun way.

The future is so bright, I gotta wear VR goggles…

*Just like The 2.0 Adoption Council, this is an early adopter community for large enterprises. No vendors, consultants, media, analysts, etc.

 

Oh Hello 5G; I Didn’t Expect You So Soon

Well, I guess the future is already here.  I saw a headline today that announced 5G is even launching in Florida here too. For a couple years I’ve been reading about how 5G is going to transform connectivity and mobility as we know it, but I always felt it was somehow in the distant future. If you’ve not heard of 5G, it’s the next evolution of signal after 4G and LTE. But, it’s more than just a minor technology upgrade.

When 5G is fully implemented, it’s going to enable the underlying infrastructure we’ll need to build the smart cities, homes, autonomous vehicles, robotics, virtual and augmented reality systems everyone’s been designing and daydreaming about for the past decade. Think of it as one of the magic ingredients needed to bring the Internet of Things  (IoT) market– with its estimated projected 21 billion devices– to life.

Today, I listened to the AT&T 3Q earnings call.  Haven’t done that in years, and it was pretty interesting:

John Donovan, CEO of AT&T Communications said, “AT&T’s on track to be the first wireless carrier to introduce mobile 5G services in the United States in the next few weeks.”

He went on to explain that the company would introduce 5G in parts of 12 cities by the end of the year. He also talked about how “fiber is the backbone of 5G” and that “we have one of the nation’s largest fiber networks.”

On the business side, Donovan said the company plans “to be in more than 400 markets by the end of this year with nationwide coverage by mid-2019.” He reported customers are seeing a “dramatic lift in speed with theoretical peak speeds reaching 400 mbps.”

Well, all that sounds exciting, no?  I think I will leave you with this dancing robot to anticipate the future now at your disposal.

 

 

 

The Smart Infrastructure of the Future Hinges on Smart Partnerships

Last week I attended a Data Science Summit at the University of Central Florida (UCF).  The day merged two of my favorite topics: Smart Cities and Data Science. It was the final event in a series held by the Southern Data Science Conference.

The event opened with a partnership announcement by longtime partner Siemens. The technology company committed to over $1 million in in-kind hardware, software, and expertise to build out capabilities to the UCF Smart Infrastructure Data Analytics Lab and will incorporate the existing Siemens’ Digital Grid Lab.

“There’s a definite synergy between buildings and the grid, as seen with energy becoming more decentralized and buildings assuming more of a prosumer role,” said Mike Carlson, President of Siemens Digital Grid – North America. “The opportunity to take what we are already doing with UCF related to grid digitalization and combine supply and demand in coordination with technology for building automation will make this a benchmark program for Siemens.”

Through the Smart Infrastructure Data Analytics Lab, Siemens will leverage data through machine learning, real-time analytics and artificial intelligence to help automate certain processes to be initiated by building systems whenever possible.

Dave Hopping, President, Siemens Building Technologies and Dr. Michael Georgiopoulos, Dean, UCF College of Engineering and Computer Science

The UCF students and faculty will have the opportunity to experiment with various aspects of smart building infrastructure with real-world implications. For Siemens, the benefits are abundant in research, application, and ready-made talent pools.

UCF is known for its partnerships with industry. The relationship with Siemens goes back three decades, and has been a successful partnership resulting in Orlando’s national reputation as a leader in sustainability.

In the fall of 2017, Siemens provided UCF with an in-kind grant of product lifecycle management software with a commercial value of $68 million, one of the the largest grants in university history.