Audio links for original podcast:

· Here, on the dedicated Watch This Space website

· Here, on the Podcast section of my J Arnold & Associates website

Jon Arnold

Welcome to Watch This Space, a podcast about future of work. Every month, we bring you insider perspectives on how digital transformation, emerging tech, and generational change are shaping the future of work. We are two analog guys finding the groove for all of this in today's digital world. I'm Jon Arnold, and these trends are my focus as an independent technology analyst in my company, J Arnold and Associates.

Chris Fine

I'm Chris Fine. I'm an independent consultant and strategist specializing in workplace technology, IoT, and security. My company's integrative technologies. Hi, Jon. Hi, everyone. Welcome to another month of Watch This Space.

Jon Arnold

I'll echo that too. It's good to be back as always. And we are into season seven now in case anybody is keeping score. And it's probably a safe bet to say, Chris, that probably aside from you and me, I'd be surprised if anybody has taken in or checked out all episodes we've ever done. That's probably a big ask, but it is possible if you really had the time, because all of the episodes are archived in case you're wondering, and you can find that on my website. not that hard to access. And if that piques your interest and you forget what I'm saying right now, just drop me a line anytime. So we would love that, of course, Chris, right? Who wouldn't want to have lifelong fans savoring everything we've ever said?

Chris Fine

Well, I'm afraid they might find that we'd sound like a broken record to use an analog reference, but we try to keep incorporating new thoughts and new ideas. So yeah, the old episodes are there if you want to go listen to them. That's great. And we always welcome feedback, right, Jon? I mean, we're always happy to get input from our listeners too.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, exactly. Our format, in case you're wondering, folks, has always been Chris and I in conversation. That's not to say we couldn't have guests in the future. And in fact, we did one live broadcast at Jeff's event in New York a few months back. That was a little off the cuff. But as a matter of course, yeah, it's generally just us, but that's another thing we're always interested in. I will say that I do get pitched fairly regularly for people who want to be who want to be either guests on the podcast or want to promote our podcast. And you have to be careful because the online marketplace, as we all know, is a danger zone for a lot of reasons. So everyone's trying to sell you something. But when the situation is right, Chris, yes, we're always interested in ideas. So that's part of keeping it fresh too. We don't have to do it this way all the time. But so far, I think it's working pretty well.

Chris Fine

Yeah, I agree. And I'm always somewhat doubtful about offers to promote. I get them all the time. Unfortunately, it's a side effect of having a LinkedIn account, not to pick on them. There's a pretty constant parade of people who want to take me to the next level. But so far, nothing that I've taken up on, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, that's true. It comes with the territory. And increasingly, you know, if you've been following recent episodes, AI just seems to be a constant theme. And as with anything that we don't understand, it's rife with bad actors. Open any page of a newspaper or scroll through any online portal and you'll find these, deep fake things - happening all the time. You have to be careful. The risk that we all know is when we put our podcasts up for public domain on the podcast platforms, et cetera, that content is out there. And anybody who wanted to deep fake us, I'm sure they could, and have us saying all kinds of awful things.

I'm not aware of anything that's happened yet. But, you know, talk about the analog world, Chris. I'll just have one quick aside that was actually in the news here in Toronto today. It just shows you how fearless people are in terms of doing things they shouldn't be doing. The internet makes it easy, but in the analog world, you ready for this one, Chris? There's now the latest hot story there's a kind of a glut here in Ontario of people who are using license plate clones. In other words, you can legally get, they call them novelty plates. You can order them online and there's no restrictions on what you can put on the license plates.

There are people who are taking other people's license plate numbers and using these fake plates and incurring all kinds of traffic violations that are going to the legitimate owner of the car and getting hit with all of these things. You know, this is like an analog world form of what we see in the world of telecom fraud. It just shows you like people can get very imaginative when they want to really mess with the system.

Chris Fine

That actually seems like a pretty low tech, but ingenious, in a bad way approach, right? So I don't understand why that software, whatever takes the order, doesn't check to see if the license plate exists already.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, it's just so ridiculous, but it just shows you if you do things thinking people are going to not abuse it, you don't have anything to worry about. But clearly people see that crime pays. And it's an interesting fallout because a couple of years ago, the government that we have here decided to give us, give their potential voters for the next election a break by abolishing the annual license fee that we have to pay to keep our license valid. When you buy a new, when you renew it, you would get a sticker, physical sticker. Talk about, again, Chris, the analog world. You have to have a sticker that you physically place on your license plate that shows the date that it's valid till. And that has always been an indicator of the police about tracking and tagging drivers who have had with expired plates, right?

So if they see that your plate expired six months ago, they can pull you over, check your records and issue a ticket or a warning or whatever. Well, you get rid of that sticker, that physical artifact that you put on your plate, well, you wouldn't be having this problem because there's just no way you would get issued a second license plate number if you had to get a sticker to renew it, keep it valid every year. So I guess this is unintended consequences, but you know, it keeps coming back, Chris, to this analog physical world, you know, a lot of the safeguards and guardrails that we've always had for things, that we never think twice about. But when you take them away, it opens up these avenues for the bad guys, and they know exactly what they're doing, and they know the loophole, and they may only be able to get away with it for a few months, but they can get away with it.

Chris Fine

Yeah, there's all kinds of things that slip through the cracks. You're right. I mean, we got a letter not too long ago from the state where my late father-in-law lived, and he passed away when he was 99. And they'd given him a 10-year license to drive with no questions asked when he was like 95. All this conducted, no in-person, right? And then they just said, it's time to renew your license. And we're thinking like, you know, he would have been like 106 or something. You know, it really? I mean, I guess he could still drive, but I would feel that that's taking a risk. So once it gets into the systems, I think anything could happen, right? And that's just the kind of thing that does.

Jon Arnold

Okay.

Chris Fine

Let's launch into the main topic. Okay.

Jon Arnold

Yes.

Chris Fine

Jon Arnold's signature event, the Future of Work. And so why don't you tell us about what's coming up soon? I'll be delighted to be there with you. I appreciate the chance to moderate a session and be on a panel. It's always great, but why don't you tell us something about it, Jon?

Jon Arnold

Okay, good setup, Chris. Thank you. So everything is with a purpose, folks. So when I talk about license plate abuse in the analog physical world, there's a reason too, because when we talk about the future of work, and this show is called The Future of Work Expo, you think ahead to what the workplace is gonna be like and the nature of work itself. And, you know, again, the physical artifacts of maybe, I wouldn't say pre-internet, Chris, but, you know, going into a physical space, having a dedicated workspace with a desk and a phone on the desk and a computer, maybe it's a company computer, maybe it's your own, but there are these physical elements in the workplace that kind of define a place of business, a space, a purpose, all of that stuff.

Now that we have been working from home, part-time or full-time, those artifacts aren't really there. It's kind of like work becomes almost a virtual concept in the sense that if you are totally isolated and not in the presence of coworkers very much, if at all, your physical space doesn't really matter. And then you pare that back a little bit and say, then, so what does matter, right? Because we're not doing, I mean, as we talk, Chris, this is mostly about offices, knowledge workers, not working in a factory or in retail or places like that.

But you know, what is work then, right? If there's nothing that ties you to your output, it's really difficult to, not just for the employee to sense about, well, what does it mean to say, I've put in a really good day of work today? And as well, of course, for the organization, how do we evaluate your contributions, your productivity? How do we remunerate you on what basis? And how do we view you as, are you just simply an input for our machine here, or are we here to cultivate a career track for you, to develop you professionally, to bring you along the ranks in our organization and be a driver of our culture and our values? These things are all really, kind of up in the air when you move into this world where it's more virtual than physical, right?

Chris Fine

Yeah. And it also varies by different types of jobs. Sorry, my voice is a little rough. I'm getting over a cold here. But, you know, Jon, I think that organizations are feeling pretty challenged because addressing all these questions is pretty new. And I actually believe that it takes a lot of work to invest enough to really put in a set of processes and culture and every measurements and everything else that work in this new hybrid environment where it isn't just coming to the people tank every day, and how do you coach people and how do you, as you say, how do you evaluate them and compensate them? I think that there's a lot of work necessary to do a good job on that and it's a learning experience. that's in place right now. I think it'll come out okay, but just as many organizations are finding out, just trying to order everybody back to the office for three days a week is not enough, you know?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, none of us went to school for this to learn about it. We're all figuring it out as we go. And it's a topic for our listeners that we've been covering and prognosticating on for quite a few years now. And I always like, when I look at this event in particular, the Future of Work Expo, I kind of roll my eyes a little, Chris, because we've been, if we've been doing this for so long, this is actually the sixth year I've been chairing this event and putting the programming together and bringing all the speakers in. Do we, at what point should we stop calling it Future of Work? Or do we have to? Is it just one continuum that just, doesn't ever stop evolving or hasn't much of this future already occurred?

Chris Fine

I get your point, but I think there's at least one more wave. There's always another wave, but there's certainly one more that's coming pretty shortly. And if you're already seeing the lapping against the shore, it's the effect AI has yet to really play out. I think there's many aspects of these challenges that we just talked about, like measuring compensation, collaboration, all this, where there's yet more to be done. And I'm not sure the future's yet been written. So I think we're good for another couple of years, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, I hope so. Everything is so atomized. When we talk about work and so many people in isolation, and this is part of the, I think, what you lose when you don't have that office environment. But when you go outside, when you are in more collective spaces like retail and warehouses and factories, where the workers are actually in a common space, it's not surprising that that's where you see the greatest impetus to have unionization to protect workers and, give them at least a fair shot against, kind of unilateral moves for management.

When you talk about AI, Chris, coming into the picture, the big driver for organizations, a lot of it comes down to cost savings. And the more we work in these isolated environments where we're totally atomized, the opportunities for some forum, you know, they're going through this in the Uber world now, the whole rideshare experience thing, where they're trying to find ways to collectively protect themselves against ultimately what is coming is automation that's going to put them all out of work.

That's going to be, as you say, the next wave. AI does pose a very real, I don't know if a threat is the right word, but you know the more management falls in love with AI and sees how it can automate things and reduce the need for physical workers, that's going to become the dominant issue as opposed to the actual job. Jobs that we do and the skills that we need. But how are you going to protect or organize people who are so atomized in this new environment?

Chris Fine

I'm somewhat optimistic that there's ways to do it, but as I said before, maybe this is something we can talk about at the conference. You know, organizations have to invest in this stuff and they have to think different. And it's a tough challenge, but I think if they really have an interactive and good relationship with their folks, with their people, then the dialogue will happen. You know, it just takes time. And there's so much upheaval and so much else going on that it's going to work itself out, but everybody's going to have to work on it. Does that make any sense?

Jon Arnold

As you say, if the better nature of people rises to the top and we have, cooperation and two-way dialogue and shared interests and stuff, yes, the outcomes will be good, right? But what I'm hoping we don't move to is a complete gig economy model that becomes the way everything is done. I sure hope not. I'm not a fan of it. But, you know, when you talk to the younger generation, like our kids, a lot of them don't see a bright future for them as far as, beyond what I'm going to do for the next year or two in my current job. And, I don't know how long you do that.

Our generation was much more career oriented. We had a roadmap. We kind of invest in our education for, not a lifetime of work, but certainly something that has an end game or, a path. But so many jobs now are being outsourced and contracted and checking this more temporary form. It's really hard to see how you get motivated for long-term development of any kind.

Chris Fine

I don't know. I think some organizations are pretty good at this. They recognize the need for a career, for a trajectory. They realize that they've invested in people. And so just driving them away is not a really good approach, but it's not universal. And I think that there are so many, well, let me put it this way. I believe that when it comes to the overall tension, which is a real historical theme between, for lack of a better word, labor and management or labor and capital, that ultimately, if there's a trend that's too damaging to either one of them or both, eventually there's a swing back.

But the question is how much damage gets done in the meantime and what are the costs that every person or organization involved pays to start to get it right? And what I'm hoping is that there'll be some proactive thinking about this so that it doesn't end up being, you know, the outcome of settling something bad, you know, rather than just trying to figure out what's better. But I do have my doubts. I think there's tension building. I do think a lot of younger people feel the way that you say, and something's going to end up happening about it. And the question is, how much silverware, not silverware, how many glasses are broken along the way and plates, you know?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, like a bad marriage, you know. It was getting pretty bleak. Let's move on.

Chris Fine

Let's talk about this event. Where is it? When is it? What should people know? What are you trying to cover, et cetera?

Jon Arnold

What to wear? Yes. So, these existential topics, you know, I think we both feel the same way, Chris. These are big questions that are not easily solved, and we're not going to answer them here at this show, but we'll get the essence of this will come out because it's just that it has to. So the event itself, as I mentioned, this is the 6th year running it. And I'll kind of just get for context, explain.

I've probably done this before, but the Future of Work Expo is what we call a sub-event. So it's actually under a big tent show called IT Expo, which is run by TMC, which is led by Rich Terrani, who has been in the industry for, 20 plus years. Well, longer, and probably more like 30, and is, of course, it's a family business that his father started in the 70s. So they've been in this game a long time. And IT Expo is one of the longest running tech events, and it's a pretty big event. It will draw upwards of 8,000 attendees. They have a big show floor.

So it is a true trade show. There's a lot of people there as buyers and sellers, but there's also a lot of content. There are many tracks with lots of great speakers. The IT Expo has its own programming, which is fairly high-level stuff. And then to provide a little more depth, there is a kind of grouping of sub events of which mine is one. There are several others as well, and they're all pretty good. And it's another reason to come because aside from hearing about future work, which I'm going to be running, there is a there's an IOT themed event. There's an MSP theme event for the managed service providers. There's A 5G track. There's another track on the metaverse and a new one, oh, there's a generative AI one, but there's also a new one which follows more out of my world directly, which would be CX, customer experience. So that's a topic that I do cover in my set of tracks for Future of Work because it is part of future of work.

But this year, a new track has started up called Future of CX Expo. So it's kind of like a cousin to what I'm doing. And I'll give a short plug. The people who are wearing my hat are the folks from Metrigy, which is one of the independent analyst boutique firms, and I know all the players there for a long time. So they're all colleagues. And it's great to see adding that focus because CX is a world unto itself. But there are future of work implications for CX customer experience and the broader contact center space. I will be addressing that in a few of our sessions as well.

So there's a lot of reasons to come. And it's in Fort Lauderdale, folks. The dates are February 13th to the 15th, so it runs from Tuesday to Thursday. And the TMC website is kind of like the landing page for everything. So tmcnet.com. And once you're there, you can start looking at the different sessions and shows. Mine is simply futureworkexpo.com, so that's the sub event within it.

Florida in February, for anyone in the north, to me, that's all you need to know to be there. But it's familiar territory, because a lot of these people have been going to this event for a long time. It's kind of like an annual thing people plan for. And yes, the weather will be better there than it is certainly in our part of the world, Chris. Good reason to go. It is fairly, you know, business casual. You don't need to wear a suit and tie, that's for sure. And there's plenty of people there who are going to show up in shirts and shorts and whatever.

So that's the gist of, you know, the where and the when, Chris. And then the sessions themselves, I'll just talk for a moment or two about that. But I'll pause here because I'm kind of doing a little bit of the housekeeping here about the event itself. You have been with me there a couple of years now and maybe just add your take for a moment and then I'll talk a bit about some of the sessions people should be watching out for.

Chris Fine

Okay, just briefly, this is really worth going to, I've found. Not only because of Jon's excellent program, but because of what he said. It's actually multiple separate conferences. And it's really interesting to check out the rest of what's there, which you get for one admission. I do a lot of work with IoT, as I say, with my info, just for example, and it's really interesting to see some of that program. And, you know, adding customer experience is great too, because I think that actually pervades many different areas, not just contact centers.

So you sort of get a whole bunch of conferences for one place and one time. And the sessions are such that generally you can divide yourself up to go see more than one track. I usually find it to be pretty interesting conference and Jon's future of work program, he's got a really great lineup which he's going to talk about now and it should be, it's going to be useful to me and others who are involved in that space.

Jon Arnold

Thanks, Chris. Yes, well said. So, It offers a lot for everybody and it's a bit like a buffet, I suppose, right? You can pick and choose. And that's also a challenge because if you see a session on my track that you want to catch like whatever, Tuesday at 11, but at the same time, there might be three other sessions. There might be something on IoT you'd want to see or on the 5G stuff. Yeah, you're going to have to make some choices. And I should preface all this by saying the sessions, at least in these sub-events, as far as I know, are not recorded. They're certainly not live streamed.

Again, coming back to analog world, Rich and his team are pretty old school about it. They want you there because if you just go to a live stream and experience it virtually, you don't get the benefit of the networking, being on the show floor, and all the stuff that comes with being at a live event. So that's their call to make. So you got to be there basically to catch it. In terms of the program itself, folks, we have 11 different sessions running over the three days. And for all the sub-events, our programming has to conform to the overall model of the whole IT Expo experience, which means we only run sessions at certain times. So you have to follow the program to see what's there.

But once you're onsite, it all falls into place pretty quickly. So it's not a huge venue. And within the building itself, it's all in one building. and our particular sessions are running in room 209B, not hard to find. And we've got a variety of topics that are all relevant to this future of work idea. So just very quickly, we'll be talking about things like security, particularly cybersecurity, looking at things like privacy and identity. That's definitely part of the future work story because, as you say, Chris, with that AI wave coming, with so much data flowing around the organization, there's a lot to protect and a lot of identities to keep private.

Related to that is the evolving role of IT. When you think about all this data, again, what they've got to deal with to manage it properly and provide intelligence for just different audiences who need that data to run their, you know, their lines of business, et cetera, and for management to make decisions. There's a lot there. We also have to look at things and are looking at things like, of course, the emerging technologies. So a big one is metaverse and that whole AR/VR space where you have virtual environments, immersive experiences. I've been advocating for a little while now that 2024 is going to see some real traction happening in the enterprise space with these technologies. We've got a great session coming on that one.

Then in terms of what AI itself means, we're going to be examining LLMs, large language models, which I think is the big kind of move for AI in 2024, especially for enterprises. So that's going to be a very good topic as well. Coming back to the physical world, we're going to look at the role of endpoints because that's where the communication happens, right? You have to use some kind of a physical device, right? A handset, a mobile phone, a headset, whatever. Those devices have a lot of intelligence going over them. So there's a lot to think about there in terms of what future work is going to start to look like, what types of devices are we going to be needing?

Then in terms of the closer to my everyday world, it's collaboration. How do you support working from anywhere? You know, that kind of whole storyline. How do you engage employees? How do you provide knowledge management capabilities from all the data that employees have access to? Those kind of things in the contact center, I want to look at the role of the future work implications for contact center agents, for example. Why are they, you know, their employees just like anybody else, they have needs. And if you are an organization that is trying to become more customer centric, you'd better learn how to treat your agents right because they're the front lines for that customer experience, which means so much to organizations these days. What else, Chris?

We've talked about hybrid work being in there, and then we're going to have a few kind of future looking sessions towards the end, and you're going to be moderating one of those sessions, and you're going to be speaking on one. And that kind of takes us to the territory of the organization itself, right? How does an organization evolve to address what future work is starting to look like? What types of, you know, not just organizational structures do we need, but also physical spaces, right? And we've talked about that off and on here, Chris. What does that office of the future need to look like? That's a pretty good, I think, in a nutshell, the big idea is there. And maybe you could just tag on to those last couple of sessions since you're going to be front and center with those.

Chris Fine

I think you covered it pretty well, Jon. As usual, we're running longer than we thought. So I think it should be a good program for sure. And we would hope that some of you could join us there. It's only in-person, so you miss it if you're not there. But we will certainly talk about some takeaways next time we get together.

Jon Arnold

Very good. And you're right, we are definitely ready to go. So, by the time this runs, Future Work Expo will just be a few days away. And as Chris said, we hope to see you there. There'll be more to come afterwards as well. So on that note, we are at time for today's episode, and we'll thank you as always for listening, and we hope you enjoy the podcast and that you'll stay with us as we explore the future work here on Watch This Space. I should also say you can access our episodes, as I mentioned before, you can find the archives on my website, but you can also get the most recent episodes on our dedicated website, www.watchthisspace.tech. And of course, you could subscribe on all the major podcasting platforms. Otherwise, as we always say, if you have a comment or ideas for future episodes, please let us know. And with that, I am Jon Arnold.

Chris Fine

And I'm Chris Fine. Thanks again for listening this month. And we look forward to joining you next month for another episode of Watch This Space.