Remaining Human in a Technology World

The AppsJack crew gathered to continue their discussions on causality.  This month, the topic was about humans and we talked about benefits.  Benefits accrue to entities whereas outcomes are higher level.  David talked about their being only two types of jobs: service jobs and design jobs.  Service jobs directly interface with customers and design jobs do not.  There seems to be quite a gray area between these distinctions and most jobs are probably a mix between service- and design-related tasks.

In the house we had Berry Zimmerman leading us, a new attendee named Louis Sweeny who was smart and awesome, Susan Stringer, Reba Haas, David Slight, Jean Bishop and AppsJack founder Eric Veal.

Reba recommended the Humans are Underrated book and was telling us about Amazon getting into the real estate market with a new set of services.

Someone made the claim that, "People are informed but don't care." ie they are often apathetic.

The group talked about the influence that marketing and other people's designs has on us on a daily and unconscious level.  People need to be aware and alert of their environment and recognize what kinds of messages they may be receiving from the designers of their environments. An example of this is our "feeds" online and how they may be curated and presented.  Clearly the tech services providers have a lot of power over our perceptions and what inputs we receive for processing.  We need to be conscious of what we are processing and mindful.

Louis mentioned some innovation that Uber is doing in helping its riders find drivers and vice versa.  They are releasing a flashing colored light called Beacon.  With Simbi.com, users can barter skills and services online.

Eric made the point that being 'humane' is far more easier to understand and think about than being 'human'.  Being human includes everything, whereas being humane is only a subset of the features we would value and want from an individual.

Berry shared several human-defining traits with us: choice, a belief of control, unique experiences, independent, social.  Berry also dropped big questions on us like, "What is the purpose of humanity?"  The group thought the question was perhaps a bit too broad but it definitely got them thinking.

Louis mentioned the 2016 feature film Arrival and others agreed it was a good one.  "Linguistics professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams) leads an elite team of investigators when gigantic spaceships touch down in 12 locations around the world."  And he also shared that he likes the book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

The movie The Perfect Human Diet was also cited as an interesting watch by Berry.  "Filmmaker C.J. Hunt searches for a solution to the obesity epidemic using dietary science, historical findings and ancestral native diets."

Also mentioned were Esther Perel's TED talks.  David is a fan of Jeremy Rifkin who stars in the 2017 film The Third Industrial Revolution and also really likes what he sees from organizations that follow the Holocracy practices of self-organization.  The group talked about Dunbar's Number which states that a human can't scale beyond 148 meaningful relationships.  Humans on BBC was recommended as was the Seattle Liberating Structures group and Crucial Conversations book.

Join us in May to contribute to the fun.

Lindsey Coen-Fernandez of Advantage Performance Group Shares Some Wisdom

We just caught up with Lindsey Coen-Fernandez of Advantage Performance Group.  Lindsey is an inspiring entrepreneur and leader in the area of organization development.  I went to one of Lindsey's workshops just before Christmas and had a great time.  Here's our follow up items based on the call with her:

Lindsey has an upcoming workshop she'll be putting on around the May time frame and stay tuned for that.  She believes the will likely be "The Neuroscience Behind Decision Making".  I had never heard of an "analytic network coach" and that's her specialty.  Sounds good.  I can see how helping people with decision making is a very key skill for facilitators.  I typically list options with pros and cons and a recommendation or argument, for example.  David Slight's BDN model and our causality conversation topics for this year sound similar as well.

Lindsey's target market is $100M to $500M businesses: not yet enterprises but rather well established.  She is seeking more business in the NW and has traveled extensively, globally for years.  She also produces webinars.

I plan to connect her with my friends John and Toni from the US Forest Service who run the National Facilitator Cadre when I worked with them back in 2012.  Also, I will connect her with the new Environmental subgroup that formed out of Indivisible Eastside.  Check out IE!  

Lindsey recommended a meetup to me (I shared my involvement in the Corruption subgroup for IE) called "Let's Talk About Race" from DNDA.  I commented to her how Race and Security topics coincide a great deal.  I have a list of local Security experts that I maintain it would be fun to get them together and involved.

Lindsey also recommend Andy Storch who has a podcast called Entrepreneur Hot Seat and a company called "The Hustle", which produces a daily newsletter about the latest tech and business info for millennials and are making good money with their business model.

Thanks to Lindsey to all of her great wisdom.  Check her out! 

Successfully Marketing Your Internet of Things (IoT) Idea

Recap of the 9/27/16 Kirkland, WA AppsJack Business Services Meetup

Last night we held the September AppsJack Business Services Meetup.  The meetup was held at the Big Fish Grill in Kirkland, WA and we had a good turnout.  The topic was Successfully Marketing your IoT idea and we had a great discussion on the topic.  Below are the highlights from the night.

We had a great turnout. At the event were:

• Berry Zimmerman
• Eric Veal
• Richard Webb
• Rex Chen (First time attending.  Welcome, Rex!)
• Mike Pritchard
• Christian Harris (First time attending.  Welcome, Christian!)
• Andrew Sengul
• Dominic Wong 
• Steve Kubacki

Richard shared about three IoT products he uses (Tile https://www.thetileapp.com/, Cocoon https://cocoon.life/, Amaryllo http://www.amaryllo.eu/) and Rex told us about his home automation IoT business.  Eric talked about his past IoT experiences with InKlood.  We talked about BlueTooth beacons and entrants from players like facebook https://placetips.fb.com/beacons/ to make this technology ubiquitous.  Also mentioned were local IoT companies like Pebblebee https://pebblebee.com/ and Footmarks https://www.footmarks.com/.  Richard complained about the data from these devices being stored in China and joked about how these would be perfect tools for the government to monitor people.

Security and Privacy come up a lot in the conversation about IoT because they are such concerns.  There was a belief that the younger population had less concern about privacy.  But when it comes to security, surely we all have a concern there and want to be safe.  Some people might not know (perceive) what is and isn't safe.

We came up with five pillars of IoT.  They are:

1. Sensors/Instrumentation
2. Analytics and BI/Insights
3. Data/Big Data/Storage/Persistance
4. User Experience (UX)/Software/Telemetry
5. Trustworthy Computing (Choice, Control, Notification)

Some of the best quotes from the evening were:

"Mind reading is a very good thing." ~ Steve Kubacki

"People want mediated relationships." ~ Christian Harris

"IoT is dead.  We have figured it out.  The next big thing is Augmented Reality.  And Pokemon Go." ~ Richard Webb

"We are seeking connection.  And meaningfulness." ~ Steve Kubacki

"I worry that IoT is selling drills, not holes." ~ Mike Pritchard

"Consciousness has changed." ~ Steve Kubacki

"What about an intranet of things?"  ~ Mike Pritchard

"My experience is not a thing." ~ Steve Kubacki

Mike P. brought up the idea about Ludites and Luditism; that they are actually a constant on the planet.  There will always people be behind the curve who want to go back to the way things were or keep things they way they are.

Dominic wondered which country was the leader in IoT.  Richard believes it is Europe.  Three of the devices that Richard has were created in France, for example.  Dominic also wondered which organization (company) was the farthest ahead on IoT.  Richard and Christian thought the government (intelligence) and also institutions like NASA where the space shuttle has IoT capability "down to the screw level".

Eric raised that he sees IoT doing a great job of providing "Just in Time" capability for many scenarios. Andrew raised the point of things NOT showing up just in time (just a bit too late).  There is risk in systems like this.  He raised the idea of Complementary vs. Competitive Technologies which was talked about on the Tim Ferriss Podcast.  The idea is that complementary technologies help humans be better even when they are not in use, whereas competitive technologies actually take some thing away (reduce our capability) after use (dependency).

"Visual Reality" as a category to include Augment, Virtual, drug-enduced and "real" reality.  The concept is probably best considered as "Sensory Reality" to encapsulate the various human senses.  The idea is that there are many channels / senses and ways to override or modify themm through technology.  So we need an abstract construct (Sensory Reality) to talk about the human's experience and the associated dyanimics / channels of that experience.

The practice / capability of "Airgapping" an environment.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_gap_(networking)  In information technology, this is when information can go into an envrionment but cannot leave it.  Of course there are workarounds and ways areound this but it's an interesting concept for security at even micro scales.

The question "What are the things of IoT and what things are not the things of IoT?" was asked. The group concluded that pretty much all things were things in IoT at macro and micro scales.  Eric said that IoT is like an easy to use design tool / pattern that many people could employ by just talking about things (the world) and technology (the internet) and what's possible.  It changes, perhaps, focuses / normalizes the conversation in many ways.  Especially now that we have a platform of big data to support these ideas and scenarios.

Steve shared that there are two forms of perception: Direct and Constructive perception. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_perception

Possible topics for the next meet that were floated were "Risk, Compliance and Resiliency" (the scheduled topic), Cloud Computing (requested by Dominic), a follow up on Marketing IoT (requested by Rex), and something that ties into the pattern "Successfully Marketing your ______ idea."

For the next meetup, I will plan to capture the sound so it is possible to go back and pick out some of the great moments, exchanges and quotes.