Book review - With Folded Hands - Where is AI taking Us? Where is Today's Bob Dylan? Roudup of Events, and 2024 takeaways

Audio links for original podcast:

·      Here, on the dedicated Watch This Space website

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

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Jon Arnold

Welcome to Watch This Space, the podcast about future of work. Every month, we bring you insider perspectives on how digital transformation, emerging technologies, and generational change are shaping the future of work. We are two analog guys, binding 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

And I'm Chris Fine. I'm an independent consultant and strategist specializing in workplace technology, IoT, and security. My company is Integrative Technologies. Hello, everyone. Hi, Jon. Welcome to another episode of Watch This Space. It's been a busy month, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, it's fall. We're going into the, I guess, we're getting into the colder weather. So it's really feeling like the seasons are changing. And we are heading into this being our really our December edition. This is going to be the last podcast for 2024. We'll talk about December highlights, but that won't come out till January. So this will kind of take us out of our season 7. And just like we've had a lot over the years we've been doing this, every year there's interesting stuff. No shortage of fun things and interesting ideas this month, too. I'm sort of at the end of my busy run for travel for industry events, and we'll get to that soon.

So I think, Chris, you know, we're going to set things up maybe in a little bit more of a structured format We're kind of following what our listeners are asking about. Also, we're going through some updating folks to our format, our look and feel. So a bit of a teaser. Starting in January, the podcast itself is going to have a few modernization fresh ups and look and feel. So watch for that. I think you're going to like it. And we're definitely looking to make this endeavor a little more accessible and digestible for our listeners.

So with that, Chris, I'm just going to maybe outline the flow of what we're going to get to today. And we're going to start with a book review, folks, which we've never done before, but I think it's very apropos and you'll see why when we get through it. And then we're going to talk about where we've been the last month, where you've both been on the road with a bunch of things. And as we go into our last month of the calendar year, we'll maybe just recap with some takeaways for the year itself. What were the big stories and themes? So how's that for a starting point for today, Chris?

Chris Fine

That sounds great. So let's dive in.

Jon Arnold

Okay, so here we go. Topic #1. We have never done a book review and it may seem like an odd thing to do on a podcast, but stick with us, folks. That's why we call it Watch This Space. Got to keep it interesting and different every now and then. So today we are going to talk about a short story from the sci-fi genre. that is a classic in its own right. And Chris, I think I'm going to get you to do the setup of this, but it's a story that I didn't know about and didn't know about the writer. Chris, you sent me, you told me about this and sent me a PDF of the story to read.

You have a long history with this story, as with many others in the genre. But it was new to me, and I've just finished reading it. And boy, oh boy, is it on point for what's happening in the world today. And that will certainly be validated by our last section of the podcast, our takeouts for 2024. So over to you to set the stage, Chris, and we'll talk about it in our own way.

Chris Fine

Okay, Jon, great. I've been a fan of golden age, it's so-called golden age. science fiction short stories for a very long time. And if you want to think about golden age science fiction, it stems back to essentially a revolution in the genre that happened in the late 30s and 40s, mostly under a man named Campbell. And Campbell edited a magazine called Astounding Science Fiction, and his guidance to his authors was it can't just be like a space opera. It has to be treating current themes or eternal themes in a context of a science fiction environment, i.e., you have freedom to change the planet, change the people, change the technology, but you need to talk about human themes.

And it resulted in an incredible outpouring of great science fiction for years. And in fact, if you even go back to Star Trek, that is effectively a later generation version of this, where Star Trek was a framework of science fiction with a lot of human themes. And so they could go to a planet where something was different and use that to emphasize some sort of a point. Anyway, today we're talking about a story called With Folded Hands, which is absolutely classic science fiction. It was written by a man named Jack Williamson, who wrote a lot of other great science fiction too. And he taught at the University of New Mexico for a long time. He died not too long ago.

Jon and I talk a lot about the potential impact of AI. And so we started talking a while ago and we said, well, what would be a short story or a very digestible piece of science fiction that was really on point of what might happen? And With Folded Hands is very much that. And With Folded Hands was published, if you could believe it, in 1948. It's about an Earth of the future where it's a combination of space travel, so other planets have been reached and colonized or whatever, but  Earth is still not super futuristic.

It opens up in a very typical town with a very typical guy who's in the household robot business. And these robots are just not that good. And he's not doing very well. And he's on the way home and he sees this new building that owned by something called the Humanoid Institute. And there are these super humanoid robots that are coming to Earth, have come to Earth. And they make everything that is here at the time look like garbage, literal garbage. And their motto, the humanoid's motto, is to serve and obey and guard men from harm.

And so the little robot salesman is on his way home, and he detects that his wife has taken in a boarder who's this guy that nobody's heard of called Sledge. And Sledge is telling this yarn that he invented the humanoids. And he's there to stop them because they've become very bad, even though he designed them to save his own planet, which was on the verge of complete destruction because of war based on a new technology that was literally destroying the planet. But once he built the humanoids with the directive not to hurt people, the humanoids took that far enough where life has absolutely no meaning.

And so the rest of the story is about the humanoid takeover of Earth and how Sledge tries to stop them. And then what happens to him at the end when he becomes assimilated. So Jon, is that a fair synopsis of the story? But it's really AI thought about in 1949 or 48. And so thus very entertaining, but also very thought provoking, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, it sure is. And yeah, the town was two rivers, right? They don't tell you where it is. And what was the name of the planet he came from? Something District 4.

Chris Fine

Wing 4.

Jon Arnold

Wing 4.

Chris Fine

And he had fled because when Sledge built the built the humanoids, he provided a certain immunity for himself that they couldn't stop him. They couldn't brainwash him. They couldn't He had immunity, so he was able to escape. And he had devoted his quest of staying just ahead of them so that he could try to fight them. And the story is about how that ultimately becomes something of a futile endeavor. But the humanoids are based on this planet, Wing 4, and they could, but because of the power source that was invented on that planet and almost destroyed it, they can be anywhere. And it's as if they're just there. They don't need separate power. And they're basically invincible.

And, you know, when you think about the intent of artificial intelligence and how it could very easily go awry in a design that's supposed to be good for people, that this is your story. And in fact, I found a quotation on Wikipedia that kind of sums it up. And so I'll read it. It says, in 1977, Williamson's good friend, Frederick Pohl, who was another giant of science fiction, reported that a few years ago, the founder of MIT's AI laboratory, computer scientist, Marvin Minsky, one of the original pioneers of AI, asked to meet Williamson. Jack was surprised, if not pleased, to hear from Minsky's own lips that the humanoids was Minsky's personal candidate for the best non-technical description of the way artificial intelligence was likely to operate that had ever until that time been written.

Williamson reported as of 1980, the story was still being taught at MIT to graduate students in the artificial intelligence department as an example of where computer science might lead. So that's how relevant this story is when somebody like Minsky had it taught at MIT and quoted it as the most accurate potential outcome if things go awry. Thought that was interesting, right, Jon?

Jon Arnold

Oh, yeah. And we are so in the moment with this, like right now in 2024, because we've gone from generative AI and ChatGPT to kind of like the next level of AI, which is really taking over as we speak, right? I mean, all of this, these new advances in AI that are transforming everything now, like we're filtering almost everything we do through the latest iterations of AI. And it's becoming the default for so much, and we're investing so much, obviously, money and resources into mastering speech, mastering language. And just like in 1984, the only thing left that it can't do is thought, right? And as soon as you share any thoughts, speaking, writing, it's tracked by AI.

So at that point, they know what you're thinking. And as long as your thoughts stay inside your head, you like in this book, this novella, you can't do any harm. Your thoughts only stay within you. And it just strikes me that this is so much, you know, it's a bit of a Tower of Babel story, right? Where he or Sledge tries to invent the perfect technology, thinking it will make the world better, but in fact, it turns out to be exactly the opposite. So we, lesson #1 is, we're, there's only one God and humans can't do what God did. And, efforts to do that will end badly, which is exactly what happens here.

But also, it's just the unintended consequences, right? he talks about how These, all these wonderful labor saving devices, you make life so easy and wonderful, but it does everything. And like you say, do no harm. It takes everything away. So all of a sudden we have nothing to do or aspire to. Art has no purpose. There's nothing to strive for in your life because, you know, it's the humanoids have become so advanced. So like my thing with AI is we call it artificial intelligence now. because we're still in charge.

But as soon as AI becomes much more sophisticated and is really, we're working for AI, so to speak, we're gonna call it advanced intelligence because that's what it's moving towards. And like he says in the story, you know, there's no point, like the daughter, what is it? Aurora's the wife. The daughter I think is Gay, I think the name. And she decides, she gives up trying to learn how to play violin. She's like, because there's no point, because the humanoids do it so much better than me.

Chris Fine

I'm going to be better. They're better.

Jon Arnold

They're better. So there's nothing to strive for in life. So there's no meaning. And so there's no, what he thought would create, you know, happiness and bliss turns into the, I think he uses the word futility, is the state of mind that everyone.

Chris Fine

Yes. And the humanoids also have perfected brainwashing and brain surgery so that if you don't like them and you make too much noise, they, in the spirit of calming your troubled soul, will just operate on you. So it's not only the daughter with the violin lessons, the humanoids insinuate themselves. At first, everybody's thrilled to see them because, you know, things like chores disappear, hard, heavy work disappears, you know, the Aurora, the wife, loves the humanoid because they can prepare any kind of food. They can, you know, and they're perfectly mannered and they, but then, you know, they take down your old house that you love and they put up a plastic house that has soft walls that you can't bang into and toys that you can't hurt yourself with.

And, you know, you can't do violent play and, you know, even, even sex is supervised and it's all in the, you know, there's just all of this in the idea of, of guarding people from harm. And the difference between this and a lot of sort of AI stories, classic example being the Terminator movies, is a lot of times, you know, a story will be about some sort of a machine intelligence that really is fundamentally malevolent, right?

So like the world of the Terminator, where that was all invented to fight wars, which is, of course, a very big danger, even in our current day. But With Folded Hands really talks about something that was genuinely built to try to make people's lives better. And you've seen other stories and television and Twilight Zone episodes and things like that that have kind of, you know, echoed this theme after With Folded Hands. But this was one of the original versions of it. And it's just extremely well written and it's not that long, so we can recommend it.

Jon Arnold

Exactly. It's only about, I think the PDF is only about 28 pages, so you could read it. probably an hour or two tops. But I'll find, you know, as the writer in me, I also find it very interesting that it's told in the third person, which I think a lot of science fiction is done that way. So we're not getting the narration from the protagonist, whose name is Underhill. So it's that the story is told kind of from a distance, right? It's just describing everything that's happening.

But we don't get a window into the soul other than through their discussion, the dialogue, right, through the whole story. So it's an interesting perspective. It's kind of got this feeling of detachment because it's not, there's no first-person narrative in it. Here's another maybe unintended consequence to this, Chris. You know, I find it interesting right off the top that his name is Underhill.

Chris Fine

Yes.

Jon Arnold

And all I thought about, of course, is the typewriter, which has been obliterated, but I think at the time it was too early to predict what would come to replace a typewriter. This was in '48, I think, '49, when the story came out. So I don't know if that's just a coincidence or not, but that's what came to mind right away.

Chris Fine

I think it meant buried.

Jon Arnold

Under a hill.

Chris Fine

Under a hill, buried. That was my interpretation of it. But you're right. However, if you want to read another story that was preposterously ahead of its time and predicted the whole internet, you can read A Logic Named Joe, which came, I guess, a couple of years later, maybe 1950. And that's a whole other story. So maybe we'll have another book review one time for A Logic Named Joe. But some of these stories are really worth reading. Like if you can get an anthology and go back and read those short stories from that era. First, they're hugely entertaining, and they tend to be extremely well-written. and really open your mind. I started reading these when I was a kid and I would say it's been really influential in my life and I think a lot of other people too.

Jon Arnold

So I have, yeah, I've got the whole collection of Arthur C. Clarke short stories. That's a retirement project to read them all. Coming out of the end of the Second World War, the Cold War, I mean, there's a lot of like understanding the milieu that they were in at the time. So there was certainly the post-war prosperity in America and, there were all the rise of suburban households and, convenience, everything was there to make our domestic lives easier. So it's easy to understand the appeal, especially to his wife at the time of having all these things done for her.

And that would have been like miraculous at the time for that. So I could understand where that's coming from. But you know, this is also right around the time, Chris, that 1984 was published. And actually, Orwell did not live to see. He died just before it came out. And I've talked, this is my benchmark for all this stuff - has always been 1984. And the parallels are like unbelievable. I don't know if Williamson followed Orwell or read him or had a relationship with him, but the ending is almost identical.

Chris Fine

Yeah, that's right. That's right. I mean, with folded hands is a little more mechanistic, but remember the technology was an absolutely key part of 1984 too.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, but at the end, when he gets lobotomized, basically, and he comes to accept Big Brother, and like this, he sees why the humanoids are good, and he's had the, they take the bandage at the back of his head, so he knows he's been done, and now he's happy. And all they want is happiness. And that also ties into the contrast to Orwell is Huxley with Brave New World, where everything is run on the idea of perfection and happiness, that's the state we're striving for and how boring life was and pointless life was in that book.

But that was written in the thirties. But still, the parallels to these are all really, really interesting. And as I said, coming up, 'cause the big term, and we'll get to this for our next episode, I think we'll wanna talk a bit about 2025 outlook and AI agent or agentic AI is gonna be one of the big themes.

And that's the reason you should read this story, folks, because Agentic AI is all about, AI has reached a point now, like literally now, where it's being trusted and used enough. And the big guys, the big tech players are investing heavily in it to create capabilities that can be autonomous and done without human intervention. And that is a real sea change for how we've used AI in the past. We're getting it to trust it to a point where it can do its own decision making. And you can see it's not a big leap from that point to the kind of things that happen here with the humanoids.

Chris Fine

Agreed. And I guess my final thought about this, I guess, because we could talk about this all day, but I'll offer this up, is that I don't think with folded hands is really anti-technology. but it's anti-thoughtless technology that gets a lot of power, right? It shows you how you can go into something with very good intentions, and then have it turn out to be really not good. And so the thing with AI is it just has so much potential power that you really wonder, whether humanity is going to do better than its classic track record of understanding the malevolent effects of technology when a new one comes along.

Jon Arnold

Yeah.

Chris Fine

Right? Because every new technology really has more and more power. And you wonder what battles might be fought because of mistakes that are made with this and what we might lose because of that, you know?

Jon Arnold

Yeah. Well, he talks about the central directive, right? And how he said, he even said himself, my logic was too perfect. He created such a perfect mechanism that all the intelligence is controlled centrally. So those humanoids can multiply endlessly and they all have the same capabilities. And he talks about them being naked, but have like, they don't even have eyes, but you know, they can sense everything. And they have, like I say, there's no point in trying to read or write because it, the humanoids do it better. And, but in the name of what, like you say, in the name of happiness, that's, the driver for all of this?

Well, we want to be happier for sure, but are we that unhappy that, we want to give all this up? No. So, one last idea too, Chris, from this is you mentioned, reading this whole kind of class of writers and this whole genre of sci-fi. I also, what I find so interesting about that style of writing is that it's done free tech, so to speak, right? It's done before any computers or Internet came along, and our mentality, the way we thought about technology. was completely humanistic. We didn't have any technology, you know, narrative in our DNA to compare against that.

So we only could think about what we understood as humans. And so the approach to technology was very much about, you know, be wary of it, it's got limitations, it can't really do a whole lot, but we're still in charge. But yet, when it turns against us, it's like, oh, what have we done kind of thing. But their perspective on technology is very different from a contemporary sci-fi writer who was born in the era of the internet and sees that relationship between man and machine very differently. So I just love that era because it's totally unfiltered. It's totally pure. It's not driven by any technology references that we have today, but they didn't have them.

Chris Fine

You know, I think if I went back to school and I was going to get like a master's degree in some sort of liberal arts, like one of my sort of fantasy projects, I think I would write about that era of science fiction because those so many excellent stories were written and so many of them really proved to be quite, quite predictive of event because they really, as you say, they wrote from a humanistic point of view. So a lot of the stories kind of, used human characteristics and imbued the technology with relation to those characteristics, right?

So if you thought about, if you really understood sort of human instincts and then you looked at the direction of technology and you were just very good at putting the framework together, you could actually predict, you could build a world that was very plausible. And one of the rules of the editors back then is you really had to be believable. you couldn't just go so far into fantasy, although there was a counter movement that was dragons and fantasy and all of that, which was became very big too, obviously. But this had to be something that related to human themes and thus very relatable to people. And so you read Some of the stories and the technology is really way out there, but it's about people.

Jon Arnold

Yep. Yep. And emotions.

Chris Fine

And nature and the earth.

Jon Arnold

Yeah.

Chris Fine

But you're right. It's like when all of that was written, and if you grew up on that, writing science fiction today seems like a little bit like composing classical music in that you can, but you really have, you got a lot less material to mind that's original.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, and it's a lot less unknown now compared to what it was back then. We know so much more about technology and so we can, you know, we have a frame of reference to talk about it. Then it was all just hypothetical what we think could happen. But also the undertones of the Cold War, because again, the contrast of the richness of freedom in America after the war and how, you know, we could be very, our emotions could live authentically compared to the Soviet Union, which is, at the time, which was totally based on reason and rationale, logic, no emotion, the whole soulless, Soviet, mentality, that kind of thing.

So those extremes were kind of that driven, drove most of what we lived through in the West in the 50s. and 60s. So there's an element of that, too, that even within our own Earth environment, yes, we have these two competing kind of narratives of how to build an or how to build a civilization. But he didn't get into that and there was no need to. I think there was just enough there talking about what the humanities could do.

Chris Fine

Well, I think it was I think you could describe the Soviet Union as a type of tyranny. And so a lot of these stories were about tyranny of one kind or another.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, again, 1940.

Chris Fine

Right, and the dystopic effects of tyranny. And so whether it was fascism or Bolshevism brand of communism, it was considered to be tyranny. So that thread actually, you're right, that got to be more so in a whole lot of stories that were written like in the early 50s. But it's just really interesting. And I personally believe that you could write a story, you could write a book, one could, that would be a modern interpretation of some of the way that these thoughts were done. And it would be really good and you don't really see it and it wouldn't be derivative. So maybe that's another project.

Jon Arnold

Yeah. All right, we're going to segue out, but just last on this, just to remind the listeners again, the name, the writer and the story name.

Chris Fine

Sure. The story is called With Folded Hands, and it's by Jack Williamson. And it's in most classic sci-fi anthologies, but you can also probably Google around and find a copy online.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, and I've got the PDF that came from you. And also, as I read up a little bit, and this too, that it was also extended into a novel as well, right? But was it ever given a screen treatment? Do you know?

Chris Fine

I don't think it was, but it was, if you like With Folded Hands, there's a novel that was actually a sequel to it called The Humanoids, which built a lot of the themes. And also, it also spent a lot more time on Williamson's interest in the potential superpowers of normal human beings and how the superpowers of normal human beings could fight this and who won and who lost. So it's a good book, The Humanoids.

Jon Arnold

Noted. All right, here's the segue, folks. Our analog guys here, fellow listeners, we grew up in a very different time and, you know, music had a lot more social relevance and they were voices. And when you talk about pushback, there is a lot of hurt in today's world, of course, a lot of inequality. And certainly the way things are going in terms of how technology is changing our lives, the way politics is going, the way our economy is going, a lot of unhappy corners of the marketplace. But where, yeah, so Chris, where are the Bob Dylans of today?

Chris Fine

Look, music, it's hard to make blanket statements, right? So let's try to break this down just a little bit, right? And you can agree or disagree. So don't forget that Bob Dylan, he became a very successful guy. And sold out in an old way too. Yeah, to some degree. But I just think music has a different role to a lot of people now. I think it's really, and it's just hard to say this because you're going to have people who are going to say, well, we disagree with you. I think there's still a great potential for protest music, but as it was back in the day that people don't really remember, for a long time, protest music was not in the big business world of music. It just became, it became successful enough that big business noticed, the big labels noticed.

But you know, when you, even when you think about Bob Dylan, you know, Bob Dylan became where he got where he got to because one of the most famous legendary impresarios, you know, talent finders in music. John Hammond discovered him and was able to get him into a studio and get him a contract with Columbia. So I don't think protest I don't think protest via music is a dead thing. I just think that the big mechanism of it is not aimed that way, because why would it be?

I mean, I just listened to an anthology of bubblegum music. And I discovered through one of my favorite magazines called Shindig, which is all about a kind of old garage music and everything. Yeah. And, you can't forget that the Monkees were like the biggest thing for years, that kind of music. But I do think that there's a potential for a protest in music, and you see it on the fringes with folk music and other types of music today. But it's all on the Internet. It's all on, you know, Bandcamp or streaming. And you don't see it as visibly. But if you wanted to compose more socially relevant music, you could and you would have a way to distribute it. It's just not the core of big music, if you want to call it that. I mean, that's my two cents.

Jon Arnold

Yeah. But I mean, the spirit of rock'n'roll, I mean, is what, drove our generation. But it brings me back to Neil Young because, you know, he did it in his own way in the 70s, in the 80s. And then, but he reinvented it. with Pearl Jam, with Rockin' in the Free World in the 90s, just to show, hey, this is how it's done. And there are voices out there who can, you know, who can do what Neil Young did, but there's just less and less of it now. And it's, anyway, it takes me back to the story with folded hands. Like I said, there's no need, there's no role for art or music or personal expression.

Chris Fine

Yeah, With Folded Hands world.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, in that world there's no place for it. And so this makes me think about, you know, I see, and just how everyone feels happy, which is exactly what the humanoids wanted us to do. And so I just feel the contrast there are a little jarring. And I also compare, you know, Taylor Swift in some ways, her popularity is like what the Beatles were at their height. And the Beatles were unstoppable, you know, '65, '66 when they were on top of the world. And as you, I'm sure you remember too from the film, Pennebaker film, Don't Look Back? Don't Look Back, that's it. And there's no apostrophe in the word don't, by the way. I love it.

When he met the Beatles, do you remember this story? They were at the top of the world, like the Monkees, doing pop music, boy meets girl, happy stuff, nothing to be worried about. And he said, remember he said to them, I like what you're doing, but you're not saying anything. And that forever changed the whole dynamic for what the Beatles became. And at that point, they realized he was right.

The times they are changing, as they said, and they started to change the tenor of their music. And they spoke more about, you know, real issues of the day, and they got more psychedelic, blah, blah, blah. But it took just that one thing, that observation from Dylan to say, Look at what I'm doing and how I'm reaching the youth of today. Very different from what the Beatles were doing. And, you know, but there's no one out there, there's no Dylan to counter that. that I can think of that might say, not that we need to change it, but I'm just saying that, the music is of the times and our times today are just as disruptive and chaotic as they were back in the 60s.

Chris Fine

I guess people, musicians and artists have different roles depending on who they are.

Jon Arnold

All right, we're gonna.

Chris Fine

We have to stop. We have to stop.

Jon Arnold

I hope you're liking this stuff.

Chris Fine

Oh my goodness. All right. So let's get back to the future of work, right? So.

Jon Arnold

Okay. All right.

Chris Fine

So what are we going to say at this point?

Jon Arnold

You have two minutes. Where have you been in November?

Chris Fine

Hey, we're supposed to run longer. People say we should run longer. You know.

Jon Arnold

We're already running long. Okay.

Chris Fine

Yeah, I know.

Jon Arnold

Where were you in November, Chris?

Chris Fine

I went to two trade shows in New York, CRE Tech, which is CRE Tech, which is corporate real estate. and ISC East, which is one of the bigger security, physical security kind of show. It's the smaller one, the ISC West is the big one in April in Las Vegas, which is pretty fascinating. And you know, the thing I took away with all of these is just the growing use of video. And we've talked about this. You know, video that started out with surveillance, right? So looking at a door to make sure that nobody broke in and looking outside and make sure nobody's loitering around has gone so far with AI that you really have eyes wherever you want them. And they're getting used for more and more things.

Everything from occupancy analysis, like how many people are there in the space and what's the traffic flow to facial recognition, which really has become eerily good at what it does. both to, it's for use, to replace like a badge, so it verifies your identity, or to detect somebody that's like on the no admit list, or any other thing you could think of with facial recognition. And then correlating that and bringing it all back into an AI backend.

If you looked at kind of the leading-edge products in both of these spaces, That's what you saw. And I think that's going to be open for a big debate, and it's going to depend on what company or organization chooses to adopt it and how they adopt it. But even if you look at some of the products around real estate occupancy analysis that aren't related to security, you're seeing the use of video, even if video isn't what comes out of the back of the camera, even if it's just data that was derived by analyzing the video with technology in the camera, it's still video and you have to wonder where that's going to go.

But to me, the biggest takeaway was video input. Video is a sensor being fed into an AI backend. So that was that was my takeaway from the two shows. Generally interesting to go to if you're into this space. Oh, and also there's just the ongoing debate about back to work, which I want to talk about as a theme of the year. So I'll stop there.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, we talked about video, I think last episode as well. Yeah, for the UC Expo in London, the prevalence of AV exhibitors there. Yeah, I totally agree. And again, it's, you know, comes back to, you know, folding hands a bit, you know, this surveillance thing that they're all seeing, all knowing, and you don't know if it's going to be used for, you know, you know, for good or evil, whatever.

For me, I only had one event travel wise, which was the Talkdesk analyst event, which was just last week in Charleston. Never been to Charleston before, very highly recommended, a lot of history, especially if you're from the East Coast, pretty interesting stuff. And there, just I'll say very briefly, a good example of a pure play contact center vendor that has gone All in, again, here we go with AI and doing very interesting things with, again, agentic AI being a big focus for them and how they're using, you know, all the language capabilities to help agents better understand customer intent and mood and just kind of predicting behaviors and, you know, obviously streamlining processes and workflows.

All in the name of improving CX customer experience, of course, but it's very much, you thought we were doing AI last year, now it's just leaps and bounds ahead of that. So, but one interesting takeaway is, we assume that the market is keeping up with the vendors and it's not. A lot of contact centers are still not stuck with, but they're still invested in premise-based legacy technologies. And they're at risk of, falling way behind because it's hard for them to. to migrate to the cloud, and they have good, valid reasons to stay on-prem otherwise. But companies like Talkdesk also have capabilities that integrate with legacy technology.

So I think a story that maybe not have been told, I think, loudly enough there is that, yeah, you don't have to be cloud-based to get some of the benefits of AI. I think that's a good story for companies that are, you know, for all kinds of reasons, very heavily invested still in premise technologies. And I think That's a good thing. But clearly, there's AI and there's really nothing else right now. I think it's the only story pretty much all the vendors are focused on. So that's my takeaway for being away in November. And otherwise, you know what, I'm not the only analyst. We were happy as some of us at the event there to say, yep, this is our last event for shows for the year. So I'm very happy to be done with that for now.

Chris Fine

So you're done? No more crazy traveling around?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, so I'll be home for a while. Yay.

Chris Fine

That is great. I have to take one quick trip out to California and back in a couple of weeks for a meeting, but I'm looking forward to the meeting. I would've normally wanted to stay a couple of more days, but I gotta get back for a bunch of stuff. But that'll be nice to get out there again, I do like to visit Silicon Valley when I can. You know, I actually had a question. I had a question for you about Talkdesk. Is what do all these contact centers feel is the ideal that they're trying to establish with this AI? Don't, that's too big a question, right? But the reason I'm asking it is I think it's similar in the, you know, moving into the themes to, you know, what are, the operators of the workplace trying to establish, like what's their goal?

And my theme would be for 2024, at least in my world, is it really has been a year of transition. And I don't think that a lot, I think everybody's trying to figure out what the new normal is with respect to work. It's just not there yet. And there's a lot of uncertainty and it's really interesting how different perceptions you get talking to different organizations about what they're trying to accomplish with new technology and new design and new work rules and new job structures and everything else. It's just not really there yet. And so it's gonna be interesting to see in 2025, but coming out of 2024, I see a lot of uncertainty, but a huge amount of interest in, you know, smart building, smart workplace sustainability, all the HR elements of the workplace and how it's laid out and how you divide remote and on in-person work. So it's going to be a good watch this space. That's kind of the number one I came out in my space. But what about you?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, I do agree there, Chris. You know, this is kind of a bit of our 2024 look back and maybe a little look ahead. A lot of this ties to what we're going to be doing in February at the Future Work Expo in Lauderdale as part of the IT Expo. And I've been remiss to this point, Chris, to mention that TMC is our media sponsor here for the podcast. I got to do a quick shout out for that. But everything you've been just saying now, yeah, this is beyond, this is kind of on the table for what we're going to be looking at during that event.

So if that's your cup of tea, folks, we'd love to see you at the event February 11th to 13th. And we've got, speakers are lining up now for the program and we've got a lot of good topics and it's much along the lines of what we've been saying here. And so that for me, Chris, as a 2024 takeaway, it's much the same. Another comment from Talkdesk event, which echoes what I've heard as well, is that yes, we know where we are as vendors with the technology and we're showing that it works, that it can deliver benefits. But a lot of the market isn't ready yet. They can't adapt it fast enough. And this ties into, like you say, the transition to what the future of work is going to look like. We haven't figured out hybrid work yet. Yes, the pendulum is going more towards the back to office thing. And so we're struggling.

And I think we said this last time, too, that a lot of the focus on video is to help make that in-office experience better and richer in different ways, not just for virtual meetings, but for in-office experiences. And then the other thing too is, yeah, the AI advances have really come a long way, just like they were very radically different last year. We're going to go into even more, you know, more, I'd still call it disruption into 2025. We just don't know, again, coming back to folded hands, we don't know what the intended and unintended consequences of these technologies are really going to look like. we talk about hallucinations with AI, right?

Whatever inputs you give it, that's what the outputs are based on. But now these language models are getting so advanced. They can really just take the utterances, just two or three sentences that we say is enough for them to produce an entire likeness of you, the way you speak, the way you look on video. And it's going to get harder and harder to tell the difference between human-generated content and AI-generated content. And content is just the easy part, but eventually that's going to be ideas. And whose ideas are really going to be setting the tone for how we approach future work. Is it going to be AI-generated ideas or human-generated? We don't know. We don't know.

But that's my big takeaway for 2024 is, yeah, just the higher level kind of, I don't know, table that's being set with AI now. The expectations are getting higher and higher. And it's just the lead. Almost every company I talk to seems to be pretty much at this point all in with AI. And I couldn't say that last year, but at this point in 2024, I think it's pretty clear.

Chris Fine

Yeah, I agree with you. I think at the end of 2024, what we're seeing is much more of AI kind of woven into ordinary life. Like when you look at the latest version of iOS and all of Apple's other software and also what Microsoft is doing. It's just much more likely that in a given day, you're going to have contact with it. It's assimilating itself into every aspect of interfacing with technology and becoming much more of an ordinary part of the picture. And it's done this in a relatively short period of time.

Jon Arnold

Yeah.

Chris Fine

You know, when you go into 2025, you can just see that really continuing, but being more and more involved in more and more aspect of life.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, and it's benign, and we don't even realize it as it's going along. And again, coming back to With Folded Hands, in the workplace, the way AI, this is my last thought for the year, but the way AI is moving, as I said, with this automated form of AI. This agentic AI, remember that term, folks, AI agent, agentic AI, these are gonna be the big drivers next year. As these autonomous applications come in, they're gonna be doing more and more of our everyday tasks at work, right? Meeting summaries, writing emails, responding to emails, planning meetings, you name it, all the day-to-day tasks that we spend time doing.

Well, when you're basically, your bot, your personal bot is doing all of this, just like in With Folded Hands, Chris, it's like there's nothing left for us to do. So you won't even have to go to meetings anymore because the automated agent is going to attend on your behalf, take the notes. So you won't actually have to do a lot of work. So then what are we going to do? And again, this is a big existential kind of future work issue, but we're kind of going down that path. And again, as a closer here, Chris, it takes me right back to the story. It's like, that's exactly what happened.

Chris Fine

Yeah. And where's the imperfection that generates meaning?

Jon Arnold

It's human nature, right? To me, it's the vagaries of language that this is why AI keeps getting it wrong, because it doesn't quite know the intuition and the nuances of dialect and slang and intent and humor and sarcasm. It's got a long way to go to capture all that. Right. And I hope it never does, frankly, because there'll be nothing left for us.

Chris Fine

I don't know, Jon. I just don't know. I don't want to. make a prediction one way or another. I think it could very easily get away from us. It may not. It seems kind of benevolent right now, but don't forget that even in areas like information, like search retrieval and where people go to seek information, I'll sort of put that in air quotes, information, AI is having more and more of a role. Every time you Google something, right, every time you want to look something up, what comes up first. It's the AI digest of it.

In fact, I was working on a document a while ago with a team. I wrote two sections of it and I submitted it and somebody said, let's see what the AI says. I'm going to ask ChatGPT to come up with a, and you know, maybe we can tack that along to what we've written, you know, or maybe we can take something out of it. And that was not something you would have heard a year ago. And that's, I think, where things are going. I mean, at some point, maybe ChatGPT, right, or its successors writes that entire document. Exactly. So that's what we're going to need to think about, I think, going into 2025.

Jon Arnold

Single source for truth. There'll be nothing left for us to do and we won't be trusted anymore. Okay.

Chris Fine

All right. Oh, gosh. Well, happy holidays.

Jon Arnold

Exactly. Thanksgiving is coming.

Chris Fine

Happy Thanksgiving. We're recording this a little bit before Thanksgiving. You'll listen to it after. So I suppose we hope that everybody had a nice Thanksgiving holiday if you celebrate that. And best wishes going into the holidays at the end of the year from us. And thank you always for listening.

Jon Arnold

Exactly. Okay. With that, We hope you'll continue to stay with us as we explore the future of work here and watch this space. As a closeout, I'll just say, as we always do, you can access our episodes at www.watchthisspace.tech or wherever you subscribe to your podcasts. And if you like what you're hearing, we'd love to hear from you. On the website, there's room to make comments or rating or review, whatever. And also, yes, future work is coming. Our Future of Work Expo, futureofworkexpo.com. if you want to check that out. And we'll be there. And with that, I am Jon Arnold.

Chris Fine

And I'm Chris Fine. Thanks for another great discussion, Jon. Thanks, everybody, for bearing with us and listening. And we look forward to having you join us again in a month for another episode of Watch This Space.

Companies mentioned:

Google, Talkdesk

Takw Aways from Fall Conferences - AI Evolution fro EX and CX, Getting Workers Back to the Office, and Future of Work Updates

Audio links for original podcast:

·      Here, on the dedicated Watch This Space website

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

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Jon Arnold

Welcome to Watch This Space, the 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

And I'm Chris Fine. I'm an independent consultant and strategist specializing in workplace technology, IoT, and security. My company is Integrative Technologies. Hi, Jon. Hi, everybody. Welcome to another edition of Watch This Space. Jon, I know you've been scrambling, a lot been going on. So why don't you kick it off today in the where in the world is Jon Arnold and what's he doing segment.

Jon Arnold

Hey, that's a great, we need a sponsor for that theme. I think we should get American Airlines or someone like that or a Hilton Hotel chain.

Chris Fine

I think you got to go big, get a private jet company to sponsor you.

Jon Arnold

Even better. Yeah. Well, we did talk about Lear last month, right?

Chris Fine

No, exactly.

Jon Arnold

Different context, but that's okay.

Chris Fine

I think they still make them. They may not be called Lear anymore, but they still make them.

Jon Arnold

Yeah. if you're selling, I'm buying, folks. So let's go. All right. So we are, yeah, we're certainly in the midst of the busy season for industry events. So for us who are pretty rooted in the technology, really the communications technology space, and you know, the big buzzwords in our world would be things like digital transformation, obviously, you know, AI, intelligent, advanced. Well, it is advanced. Artificial intelligence. We can talk later about advanced intelligence. That's something else. But yeah, these technologies are shifting everything around. And that's why we have this big future of work theme on the podcast.

So to stay current, we get taken and go to a lot of industry events, as you probably all know out there. So I guess I'll start off with kind of pick up from the last episode where we kind of talked about where we're going to be going. And now we can talk a little bit about where we've been. And then after that, where we're going next time.

The main events that I have been to since last podcast would be, that would be Verint, which would be their Engage event, which was back in September. I was also scheduled to go to Sprinklers event. in New York, but last-minute hiccups, put that aside. So the Verint event was very good. This was a customer focused event as opposed to an analyst only event. So these kind of events are where the vendors really kind of put on their best clothes, so to speak, and try to, you know, show their customers all the wonderful things that they're doing and, you know, to get their prospects to feel a little more comfortable with what they're doing. And they're kind of a really good example of a company that has put itself at kind of the leading edge of where AI is going and being used in the whole customer experience contact center space.

Every vendor out there is kind of struggling to do this. And as we see, Chris, this is a short aside, AI is quickly becoming commodified in some ways, much like the whole UCaaS space has become and the whole CCaaS contact center as a service space has become. And this is the reality of all of these SaaS, you know, cloud-based business models. But I just want to say quickly, LLM is kind of one of the big buzzwords in this space, right? Large language models. And these days, it seems in the last few months only, it seems like every vendor has an LLM. There are several major LLM players out there and everyone's kind of using these platforms. So there's getting a sameness to this as a differentiator very quickly about this with AI.

This is again part of the AI is going ahead of where the market really can absorb. But that aside, and I'll stop on that in a sec, Chris, where Verint is going, they are leveraging kind of the best of AI technologies to create these bots. And their approach, rather than having a kind of umbrella all-in-one platform that handles all of your customer service needs, they've gone the other direction where they are building specific purpose-built bots that only do one thing. So eventually, if you go all in with them, you're going to have a little army of these specific bots that each does a different thing. And their focus is kind of this ground up approach where do one task and do it very well.

Bots have to be trained just like your dog. When your dog is well trained, it does what you train it to do very, very well. And that's kind of an anomaly. That's kind of a, sorry, a parallel here with what bots are being trained to do. And It may sound a little bit clinical, but when they share the results of the impact that these bots are having with their customers, it's a pretty good validation that they're on the right path. And for all the negativity about AI and the cautions of it, when it's done right and done well, it is not yet, it is now making a difference. It's not something that's going to happen a year or two from now.

Chris Fine

That's really interesting. I mean, I guess if the customers are starting to say that it matters and it's making a difference, then it's really made a lot of progress. I think your comment about commodification is a really interesting one, though, because I do think a lot of these engines, there aren't that many of them, the really top-notch LLM systems, right? And so then it's a question perhaps of how well they do the training, right? So, it's like you might have five of the same breed of dog in the dog show, but one of them is trained better and wins the dog show, right? It's back to your analogy about dogs. So I think it's going to be that way in a lot of different sectors that basically they're relatively rare fundamental breakthroughs and they immediately get applied to all the engines, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, exactly. So I think it's just a good example of As I said, when you kind of do AI in a manageable way, like in, digestible pieces, I think it's good. you can't go too far wrong with this stuff. chatbots have had such a bad reputation, but that's only one part of the story. So I think there's, they're a company to keep an eye on, and they're a public company, by the way. I did go over the pond as well to British Telecom's analyst event. and to the UC Expo.

Those were both in London and I got to do them back-to-back. So that was an entirely different experience. But I will say, when we talk about AI, Chris, right, we're generally about what the vendors are doing and where it makes sense in the business or office or enterprise setting for the users and the IT folks who have to deploy it. But when you look at it from the other side of where the carriers are coming from, for them, so at BT's analyst event, which was my first time attending their event in person, there's, you know, they're all in on AI as well.

But most of what they're doing with AI is kind of, you know, beneath the covers, right? It's all about developing their more efficient, more intelligent forms of networking, right, to manage and move traffic around, do it in a way that makes money, but also brings, really, the connectivity that their enterprise customers need to do their own applications of AI. But it's another indication to me, you know, of just how AI has become so pervasive that, you know, different audiences you need it and use it in very different ways, right? The carriers are a whole other side of the equation, right?

Chris Fine

Yeah, but your point is well taken. I think there's a very generic use of AI, which is effectively the concierge you couldn't have otherwise on whatever it is, right? Supervising and optimizing any kind of activity, right? So in a network, you think about the economics of it as networks have evolved over the last 20 or 30 years to where every bit is just about the same as every other bit in terms of the value of the bit. they evolved from where some bits are more valuable than others to kind of bit, just bits.

In that environment, the more cost you can lower the price per bit, That's the key statistic, right? And the price per bit involves everything involved from generating it and then moving it from one place to another and then delivering it somewhere. And so you can imagine that if the network, it's almost ironic because the network's becoming more intelligent again, but in a different way, right? They used to claim that networks were intelligent. Then they got to be kind of, dumb's the wrong word, but kind of vanilla. And now they're trying to put some different kind of intelligence back in the network.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, well, they have to. I mean, the network, well, again, I guess there's two types of networks, right? The carrier networks that they need to deliver to deliver services or manage services for their customers. And then, of course, the enterprise has its own network, which is once they have the connectivity, how do they internally manage all that traffic? But their needs are pretty similar. And the big game changer that I see with AI being in the center of everything now is that, as you say about bits, maybe they all have a similar value now, but the point is that there are now so many more bits, the volume of data now is so exponentially big compared to what it was in the past.

There's huge pressure on internally within enterprises for AI to kind of show an ROI on all of that data, because they're kind of like the spigot that has everything coming through them. And every line of business has its own needs and priorities for what the data that's pertinent to their line of business means to them. So they're putting all these demands on IT now to get analytics right and reporting about different forms of data that matter to each line of business.

So the pressure on IT now is not just to provide optimum network performance, but it's actually, that's the meta level, but the actual data itself It's creating, all these new forms of intelligence that AI is harvesting for all its learning models and stuff. There's so much more kind of new value that's created from all of these data streams. So whoever can harness it the best and, you know, pull out the insights that are actually valuable to the organization, That's kind of, to me, like the IT 2.0. That's a very different kind of requirement that they need to be managing now. And it's just very, very different. And the AI demands are just going to keep getting bigger and bigger.

Chris Fine

Yeah, well, if you look at the investment in AI by Cisco and HPE and the other networking companies, you can see how they're bidding on it too, right, to do just that. But there's also a ton of AI that can be applied to applications that come out of, that can derive from network data. Like for example, a lot of the work I do in smart workplace, where it's, network data can be used for occupancy analytics, network data can be used for compliance and security, and a lot of other things. It's been there all the time, but without some kind, but trying to use traditional logic to really analyze it has been challenging.

Whereas if you apply AI to it, learning models to it, you really start to understand what the norm is, what the normal behavior is, and you can identify the anomalies. And you can also find patterns that you wouldn't used to be able to find. And there's many, many, many examples of that. But to your point, it isn't even just the network itself in terms of intelligence about the network. It's also what all that data can do other than that.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, this is a whole other topic.

Chris Fine

We got pretty far away from. But you said you had a one-day trip to New York too, right?

Jon Arnold

I did, but let me just, I'll just finish off the London side. So BT, so what the carriers, their perspective on all this AI stuff is very different and interesting in its own. And then I was at the industry event, and then we'll get to your industry events, UC Expo, where I think this is my fourth time there. This is the UK version of Enterprise Connect in the US. So this is like the big show for enterprise communications in the, I would say UK for sure, and probably all of EU. So it's a very Eurocentric crowd. And it was pretty good. I was involved on three different panel sessions, and I did a bunch of interviews on the floor. So if you're interested in that event, folks, there are a few examples of it up on my website, if you want to check that out.

But the main thing is, you know, this is, it's a trade show first and foremost. So there are a lot of vendors there. And then various tracks for different, you know, breakout talks. And demos and stuff like that. But anyways, what was really interesting about this show, Chris, is that, when you go to enough of these events, you kind of know the lay of the land and the types of vendors you expect to see. But at this one, it was, I was surprised to see how many vendors were from the AV space. And it's both audio and visual.

So the way we think about collaboration, you may not expect to see guys like Bose, Yamaha, I think Sony was there. Guys who you associate with video components and certainly high-fidelity audio. And I did get a really good demo at the Bose booth, and they use a beam forming technology. There's all, you know, there's so many granular layers of how they try to make audio better in the workplace. And I just find it's really interesting that you don't normally think of brands like that in the enterprise space.

But it tells me that what we talked about last time, for example, with return to office for this, again, folks, this is a big future work thing. How do you get people back? And you know, the bottom line is you got to give them a better experience. And when you have more kind of tools and toys like this, especially from brands that we identify with as consumers, I think this all kind of ties into how you make that, trinket, that little shiny ball you're waving a little more attractive for people to come back and say, look at this cool technology we're using here, right?

Chris Fine

Yeah. Well, what I think is interesting about that is that those vendors have always participated in what you might call really high-end AV and conferencing room installations, but there's two things going on right now that are relevant in that space in my mind. One is that there's just more AV in the office in general. There's more audio playback in open areas. There's even some degree of noise masking technology used. There's more different types of spaces where you may or may not just use the kind of standard base or middle level conferencing type of gadget to do it. And then the high-end rooms are going even higher. and you need better service in more rooms because of the hybrid participants. Like you can't have dead spots, and you can't have the remote participant feel that they're not involved in the discussion,

And so some of the more high-tech vendors are, I would argue, getting inserted into more places in the workplace. And that's all related to exactly what you say, better experience, hybrid work where not everybody's on site and not making people feel that they come to the office and they're doing exactly the same thing they could be doing in their living room, except they got to put on all their good clothes.

Jon Arnold

And by the way, this isn't just about making it a better experience for the employees. So, you know, yes, you get excited, oh, I got a Bose headset or it's a Sennheiser headset, the ones we all know. Yes, the headsets are part of it, but it's also the audio quality that happens like in a conference room as well. But with the audio and with the video, it's as much also about capturing as much data as accurately as possible to feed your AI engines. This is as much about that. So we're all working for AI. That's where this is going.

Chris Fine

Boy, that's a great point, right? Because the AI is going to have to parse all the audio and video. And so the higher definition you have and the better the system picks up everything, I guess, the more the AI likes it, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, because you leave out the extraneous, the background noise and the crinkly wrappers and the tapping on the keyboard, that gets filtered out. So it's pure, you know, voice. So nothing gets in the way of that. And of course, with the smart framing that they have in the, you know, in the conference rooms with the video, you hear this term meeting equity where everybody is fairly represented, whether you're in the front of the room, or the back of the room, where the lighting is good or bad, or you're at home, or you're in the room itself, to make sure that everyone who's participating needs to get captured in the stream for the automated summaries and all the other AI things that happen post-meeting.

And then, of course, you also have to have it clean so you can accurately identify. There might be 3 guys in the room named Mike. How do you know which Mike is speaking, right? So again, when the audio and the video feeds are clean and there's no distractions, it's much easier to accurately attribute, right, who said what, that kind of thing, right?

Chris Fine

And to be able to pick up precise direction so you can identify sort of which Mike was talking, right, and get enough clarity on the voice so that once Mike #1 identifies himself as Mike, and Mike #2 identifies herself as Mike. You kind of know which ones are talking, right? And you need clarity for that.

Jon Arnold

Right. Because also AI will generate profiles, right, of each meeting participant. So they know the mic who speaks like this, they know his audio profile, that person, you know, aligns with the image we have of this mic as what he looks like. right? So it's all kind of validated that way, which again is another kind of security feature to make sure no one's impersonating somebody else, right? Authentication. There's so many layers to this stuff. But again, it's about the AI. That's to me the main idea here. It's about as much the AI as it is for the employees themselves.

Chris Fine

And even the conference, right, Jon? Even the event, right? Yeah, It's all the post-event analysis and capture.

Jon Arnold

Yeah. Okay, we could go on, but let's move on to other stuff. I mean, you've been at events as well, and you did mention I had a one-day New York stop, but let me quiet up for a bit here because you've been to places too. So let's shift over to you.

Chris Fine

Well, I want to actually cover one thing though before I do, because you had a couple of podcast related things you were going to talk about. And I don't know if you want to do that at the end or we jumped into, we usually do that stuff sort of at the beginning, we kind of jumped into the events. But do you want to talk about that now or you want to hope we have some time at the end?

Jon Arnold

I'll bank on having time because I've been doing a lot of the talking here, but because you've got events too to share some stuff. So why don't we go there first?

Chris Fine

Okay. Well, I've got two to talk about. One was VON Evolution up in Boston. It was at the end of September. That's, we've talked about Jeff Pulver, who organizes the events before. Jeff's a friend of both of us, a visionary, and has accomplished many things in the transition of technologies and evangelizing new ideas. And this particular get-together was super interesting because Jeff's gotten involved with a new initiative called V-Cons. And this is completely tied into what you were saying, because what VCONS are, is basically a way of, it stands for virtual conversation. And it's a computerized way, a data-centric way of encapsulating everything involved with a conversation or a transaction in a kind of secure container that keeps all the data lumped together.

That may sound kind of basic, but believe it or not, the scattered and unstructured data with very little security around it is the bane of enterprises, right? It's called unstructured data. And what the VCons allow you to do is basically, so Thomas McCarthy Howe, the creator of this, calls it robot food, right? Because essentially these nuggets of encapsulated data are perfect to feed it to AI, because the AI doesn't have to randomly search and try to correlate different components of the same thing. Like for example, a slide deck that was projected or versus the audio versus the video versus the metadata. And then this can all be encapsulated in a secure container.

So like if you think of a comparable, it's a little bit like what they do with like Blu-ray video. If you digitize it, put it on a computer, it'll be encapsulated in a container. It has all the video titles, the subtitles, the metadata, like what's the name of the movie, let's say. And that's common in multimedia environments, but it really hasn't been applied. MP3 has a basic version of that, even though it's one file. There's a whole bunch of different sections of the file that have different types of data.

VCONS are a way of keeping track of all that in one place that you can track the provenance of, and that has huge implications. And so there's a request for comments out about this in front of the Internet Engineering Task Force and a whole bunch of work going on. And in parallel with that, there's a protocol and a system called Skit, which is a little bit like, it's not a blockchain, but it's a distributed, credentialized way of authenticating that all of this is what it purports to be. as a way of describing it. It's a little bit like a distributed ledger, but optimized for this type of content.

So I had two days of absolutely fascinating discussions about that. And I think this is definitely a watch this space. I'm not sure how this business is going to grow or who's going to be the breakout or exactly what direction it's going to go in. But it feels a little bit like the early days of voice over IP. And so I think it's definitely a watch this space. Does that make any sense, Jon? I tried to describe it.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, So when you hear about distributed ledger, you start thinking blockchain, right? And I know Jeff has certainly kind of dabbled in that. What is it, fungible NFTs and all that stuff. That's not my world.

Chris Fine

This isn't the same though, by the way. There was a whole session about how blockchains per se are not. optimized for this kind of content.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, I can see that. But certainly, for those of us who've been there to know what the Vaughan vibe and the VoIP vibe was, you know, 1.0, knowing just how almost once in a lifetime that kind of change comes along and to be part of it, It's always great to come along again and see it, that we're going to see another movie like this one. And you kind of know a lot of ways how this could unfold because you've seen it before. So it's kind of, that's a benefit, I think, of having us been doing this for so long. You know, we've, and the same players, by the way, it's worth saying that a good chunk of Jeff's core, right, have been there from his very beginning days, right?

Chris Fine

There were some familiar faces, but some new people too. But I think when you compare this, for example, to voice over IP, there are some differences. It's not quite as clear, at least to me right now, what the evolution is going to be. But it's early, right? Because you don't have the equivalent, I think, of like a multi-gazillion dollar telephone hardware market that you can steal, you could ****** whatever the word is. That's probably the wrong word. I have to point that out. But you're not going to grab. And it's, more a better way of doing things, but it's not clear where the multi-zillion dollar TAM is right now, the total addressable market. But it's the kind of thing that can take off really quickly when the right killer app is found for it. And so that was kind of what occurred to me from the conference.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, And we've seen this before. So it's, kind of, it's kind of cool to have a front row seat to this stuff, right? And yeah, for, yeah, and I'm glad you pointed out with Jeff, by the way, we don't want to sound like we're some, you know, closeted group that doesn't talk to the outside world. Yes, there was a core of us who've been there 20 plus years who kind of been there from the dawn of creation when it came to VoIP and how important that was to everything that's come since.

Also, you're right, Jeff also does attract a lot of people who are 1/3 of our age, right, who are like the next generation. And it is very, this is one thing that's special about Jeff, folks, if you ever can get to his events, is he brings the young and the old together like nobody else. And I think it's great because the younger generation is totally digital. They see this in very different terms than we do, but they're just as smart as we were when we were their age and their stuff just moves a lot faster than it did when we were learning about all this stuff.

Chris Fine

Yeah, and there's a whole new team ready to grab the ball and run, to get fired up and start companies and do investments and stuff like that. So that was number one. Number 2 conference was, I think, one of the best in the real estate and real estate technology world, which is work tech. And that's actually a series of conferences throughout the world in different cities. It tends to be sort of global plus local content. So it's run by a group out of London called Unwired Ventures. This time I was just a spectator. I wasn't speaking or talking about future of work at the VON Evolution.

But this was all really senior, what you might call workplace experience people, right? They had titles like that, or workplace transformation, or real estate and workplace, you know, head of all of this. And so it was fascinating to hear their perspective on where we are with hybrid work and return to office and how the workplace has to evolve. And so my headline there was it was really not very technical. It really was, there was more focus on architecture, you know, layout, interior design, new buildings that are being repurposed from traditional office space. And then, what the head of personnel or the head of real estate feels about where the office has to go and how they, they're concerned with occupancy analytics and all the stuff we talk about all the time.

It was striking to me how qualitative this stuff can be in addition to all the quantitative that you're always talking about, like how exactly much space per square foot are you going to save by making things smarter. I thought there would be more sensor vendors there - only one or two. There were a few companies I know pretty well on the workplace application side. The one sensor vendor that was there came up with a great presentation with a lot of data in it, and people devoured that presentation that was data centric as though it was the wonderful dessert they'd never tasted before.

So it was a really good day. And if you're interested in workplace thinking and future of work, these things are good. They're not super expensive. It's very manageable time. They usually throw in a second day where you can go on some fabulous tour of a really leading-edge space. And there's probably some other program as well on the second day. So that was where I was a couple of weeks ago. I've been thinking about it ever since. It was pretty interesting, right?

Jon Arnold

Oh, for sure. And you know, that's going to be one of our topics for Future of Work Expo. So we may have an offline discussion there, but maybe some potential speakers we could approach?

Chris Fine

Yeah, I will say that the, how do we get people back to work and retain them and make them like it? was the number one priority - the whole discussion. And companies are taking very different approaches to it. And it's just interesting to see what they're doing. But it was the lack of, I mean, lack is not really the right word because that would imply there should have been, but there wasn't. But the very high-level focus that then ultimately, sort of the IT levels that we think about sometimes are just, they're going to be the implementers and successful creators of what is requirements driven by this higher-level group of people.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, well, that's important for our listeners because, the vendors, are adapting to, right, all the collaboration vendors who are, who they're selling to now, right? It's not just IT. And from what you're saying, it sounds like some of these decisions are being made, higher up, right, about, because the priority is about managing the expense of having all this space and how to best use it.

And that, in turn, I think dictates maybe the IT some of the technologies that they're going to have to look at to accommodate, you know, what the folks upstairs need. And that just speaks to, I think, to the vendors, the need to, and they are doing this, of course, to broaden their net in terms of who the buyers and the influencers are for them to sell their platforms, right.

Chris Fine

Yeah. And by the way, to your earlier discussion, there was a pretty reasonable amount of discussion about AV. and collaboration technologies and how you fit that in with architectural design and where that's all evolving and how do you instrument different types of spaces to be really top-notch in that area to make it easy for people to plug in or to connect wirelessly or, you know, just basically make it less painful with the idea that you're going to be, you're going to be in some AV-enabled environment more often, right?

So how do you avoid that standard 10 minutes of fiddling with the cables or whatever you're doing, right? When the leading-edge architects think about this and IT and designers think about this, this is what they're thinking.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, And a sidebar to this earlier today, Chris, and this might give away the date we recorded this, but I was on an analyst pre-brief call with Cisco for Webex. And this was a preview of what they're going to be sharing at their Webex One event later this month. And I have to be at a different event, and we'll get to that shortly. But one of the, they're really investing heavily in both the audio and visual pieces to make office-based collaboration, especially office-based, really, really good. And one of the things they showed today, which is hard to do on a virtual presentation,

But they're trying to make the office meeting experience so immersive and engaging and almost cinematic. And they do use words like this, that they are demonstrating a basically a visual of being in a conference room with a video presentation that is on a regular screen, but it's a 3D effect. But you don't need the glasses. And this has come up in the metaverse space as well. And we've talked about this before, but it doesn't come across in a virtual demo.

I've seen this a couple of years ago at a Huawei exhibit at Mobile World Congress, where they have this 3D effect on a computer screen. that you just look at it and it's like, how the hell are they doing this? But this is again how this technology is evolving. But again, you can't get that at home, folks, right? So when they can make those experiences that immersive and, you know, it's just a whole other level aside from just being, you know, 8K quality, whatever, it's just that visual impact to say, wow, that's, you can't not look at it, right?

Chris Fine

Should be an interesting event for sure.

Jon Arnold

Yeah. So, okay, let's move along because we have other things to talk about. I'll just have a short outlook for what's coming. I've mentioned before, one of my events in the next couple of weeks is with a NICE contact center vendor and they're hosting their analyst event in Livingstone, Zambia of all places. And that's about as exotic as it gets for me, folks, and probably for most of us. So let's just say I'm going through a lot of logistics right now with getting the last-minute travel details and, you know, vaccination shots and stuff in place to do this. But that's a pretty exotic place to go for a conference. And but it's going to be good. And we will be. Boy, that should be great.

Chris Fine

That should be great, right? A real adventure.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, for sure. So they'll give us a little taste of the local. culture and of course, all the wildlife and the nature and the water, the Victoria Falls. I mean, it's, world renowned for really spectacular scenery. And that's terrific. Yeah, that's going to be pretty good. So yes, you can watch this space a little bit on that one, folks. And anyone who wants to follow the play by play, as best I can, I'll certainly be posting on LinkedIn while I'm there. And otherwise, afterwards, I'll be writing and sharing photos about it. So stay tuned.

Chris Fine

Great.

Jon Arnold

Yeah. I do want to touch briefly, you mentioned I had this short New York trip, and this was more of a not an industry event. It was more a client event, but it was for a Toronto-based company called Vidyard. And it's kind of worth mentioning because they have me come lead a roundtable talking about basically some of the AI evolution that we're seeing. And what they're doing is that they have developed these AI avatars that are focused on the sales function. So they're trying to show these options where instead of a salesperson just cold calling people all day long from their phone, that they can develop these highly personalized and very realistic avatars, but they're very lifelike looking videos of yourself talking and in a very personalized way for each prospect or customer that you're trying to communicate with.

This is the power of AI. You know, you hear this term mass customization, but when you can get all the tools in place and now folks, you can create a video or yeah, a video or a photo representation of just about anything with just a few lines of text. So for example, these avatars can be created, I think, with less than 90 seconds of hearing or seeing you speak. It can get your language down just about right and your facial movements and look and feel and all that stuff. And it just shows you how incredibly powerful some of these AI tools are becoming.

But when you think about, how I can help automate the sales process and do it at scale with personalization, that's a pretty attractive option. I think one of these vanguard type of companies that are getting into this space, because when you talk about where enterprises are going to deploy AI, they generally want to do it where they're going to have the best business impact. That's why customer service gets so much attention with AI, because you're solving really big problems that affect your brand, your sales, your market share, all this stuff. And what's more important to an organization's top line than sales, right? So if they can do a good job and help the salespeople be more productive and effective, that's going to get AI funding every time, right?

Chris Fine

Yeah, I don't know what I would buy from an avatar, but then again, as we always say, we're analog guys, right.

Jon Arnold

Yeah. Now, you may not actually buy from the avatar, but the avatar might move the sales process along far enough that by the time you speak to a live salesperson, you've already got them, just like in a contact center, and that's the analogy I used in my talk. By the time you talk to a live agent, all the heavy lifting's already been done. At that point, the sales agent is actually moving more into closing mode than opening mode, right? Because you've done all the other stuff already.

Chris Fine

You bring in the closer.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, yeah, right. Well, we can be very direct about it, but that's how sales works, right?

Chris Fine

That's true. Ask for the order.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, exactly. I do have an update for the podcast to share, and we did want to talk about some podcast stuff that came out of some of the metrics that we get on Watch This Space.

Chris Fine

Well, an interesting one anyway. An interesting data point.

Jon Arnold

This won't take long, folks, but for Watch This Space, I track my stats and everything. Anyways, on a Sunday recently, I had a big spike. We had a big spike in traffic that's well above what normally we get. And also, who does this on a Sunday, right? Anyways, it turns out that almost all of this activity, as we found, was coming from likely one person who looks like they were doing a click on every episode. And I think what they were trying to do was to download, a chunk of our archive. And we don't know yet who this person was, is. We don't know what their motivation was, what they're going to do with this, if it's going to be for good or for evil. Are they going to like hold our bank accounts hostage now? Because now they hear our voice. They can impersonate us.

Chris Fine

Don't give any ideas here, Mr. AI is great.

Jon Arnold

Yeah.

Chris Fine

Don't give any ideas here.

Jon Arnold

We're getting a little worried about it. I'm just kidding. I don't think it's going to be to that, but it just shows you it's interesting when you pick up these, what are to us, anomalies. There's so much stuff that goes on under the covers that we don't even see, right? Maybe you can talk about that agent and what it's actually about.

Chris Fine

Well, this is what the theory is, that it shows up as a browser called LAVF, which is a format used by a system called FFMPEG, which this all sounds like jambers, but basically the long and the short of it is this is the engine that underlies a lot of software that processes media. It's an open-source engine. FFMPEG is a great program. And so some of the podcast programs on Android phones apparently use FFMPEG under the covers. And you can set your browser, or you can set this program to download everything. Like you can do that in iOS too, on an iPhone.

Say, I want to download everything if I subscribe to a podcast. And so we think that's what that was. I started doing more Googling on it - there's a lot of Reddit and other traffic out there from other podcasters who said, we see these spikes where like suddenly somebody downloaded our whole archive. And It doesn't seem to be malicious. It seems to be just a function of this program and how you said it, but it's intriguing, right? It just was, and we see it because, we're not exactly top of the pops, although we want to get there in terms of massive numbers. And so it makes more of a difference. But I bet if you dug into traffic streams and download streams for podcasts with bigger numbers, this is a lot of this there too. It just shows up less, you know?

Jon Arnold

Yeah. And again, it might be pretty benign for the most part, but it's not that big of a shift to the earlier conversations we had about AI, where all data is fair game that feeds these LLMs. And it's an issue for all of us in the content creation field, whether you're writing, speaking, doing video interviews, but everything that you put out there that's public, you know, is fair game, right? And so whether they're doing it to kind of build their own models, steal your ideas, whatever, we don't know what form these things could take.

But there is a much kind of bigger kind of cloud that there's other things going on. So, you know, it used to be going back to our analog days, Chris, when I would use my rotary phone to make a call and call you and you pick up your rotary phone. That's the circuit switch, which is still, I think, one of the most underrated things about analog telephony, right? Because it was a dedicated switch, a private connection between two parties. Nothing can get in between it. That's the ultimate form of security. And when that call ended, there was no trace of it. came, it went, it was ethereal. And that was it. There was nothing more to it than the call. Now everything we're doing is, that's just the first step of what is actually happening. Now it's digital matter that can go in any direction, right?

Chris Fine

Well, I agreed. I mean, everything is inherently public. You know, if you're going to be out with any information, you have to believe that you could see it on the front cover of whatever is the equivalent of a front cover of the newspaper tomorrow or today. So you just have to bear that in mind, right? Everything is public, is super public. I think going back to the era of the telephone, you probably get a different point of view from somebody who lived in those days in countries where there's a lot less Rules and regs to prevent wiretapping. Like if you spoke to somebody who lived at the time in East Germany, for example.

CALEA was a law that came in this country in the 90s and then amplified after 9-11 that basically put automated tapping in every central office that's out there. So yes, it was great when it was great, but I'm not even sure if you had two landlines, you'd be that safe today.

Jon Arnold

No, for sure. And there's lots of ways, of course, to game the system. But anyway, the point is, I think that whatever we put out there, folks, is really out there now. It just is. I don't think there's any getting around it. You know, how do we copyright? How do we protect what we're doing? You know, we shouldn't even have to think about it. But that's the reality of these technologies now.

Chris Fine

Yeah, if we have a guru in our listenership who really understands LAVF and exactly what it means, feel free to weigh in.

Jon Arnold

So, if you're that guy, if you're trying anything, we're the one who did it.

Chris Fine

We got our eyes on it.

Jon Arnold

We'd love to hear from you. OK, so with that, we got one more thing, a short one to add, and I think that'll probably take us out. If you don't know, folks, TMC has recently become a media sponsor for Watch This Space for good reason, because we're about the future of work. And as you know, we also do our Future of Work Expo, which is part of TMC's IT Expo coming up this February. I want to certainly acknowledge and thank them for being a media sponsor. It gives us more exposure, which we are happy to have.

But also just as a news item, in case you're interested in our event, and we are looking for speakers and sponsors, we just recently announced the agenda. So that's a fairly new thing that's been out for maybe a week, week and a half. So if you want to see what our program is looking like, it's up on the website, which is futureofworkexpo.com. And certainly if you make your way to my website, you'll easily be able to find it.

Anyways, that's a good news item from our last podcast - the program is up. And as we round out the speaker roster, we'll add those names as they come. In case you're wondering, yes, Chris and I are going to be the keynote speakers doing the opening talk about some of the research that we're following for trends in the space. So that's a watch this space item about Watch This Space.

Chris Fine

Well, I'm just color commentary. You're the main person, I think, but I'm happy. But thank you for that. And I'm very looking forward to sharing it with you.

Jon Arnold

Great. Okay, but let's call it on time for today. I think we've covered a lot of ground, and we hope you don't mind us going long from time to time. We do know from some of our listener feedback, by the way, that a lot of consumption of these podcasts favors long form format, because people are often doing other things while listening to us, not just sitting, staring at a screen while they're doing their work.

We're going to be doing some other things with this podcast to make it a little bit more accessible and more interactive. So that is coming. Okay, we're at time for today, so we'll thank you very much for listening, folks. Hope you enjoyed it and that you'll continue with us as we explore the future of work here at Watch This Space. And you can access our episodes at the dedicated website, watchthisspace.tech. You can also find them on my website, jarnoldassociates.com. And if you poke around on the TMC site, you can see it there. In the UK, in the EU, you can also find the podcast on em360.com. I thought that's worth mentioning. That's another new development for us. And with that, I'm Jon Arnold.

Chris Fine

I'm Chris Fine. Thanks again for listening to another episode of Watch This Space. Have a good month and we will see you with another episode next month.

Companies mentioned:

Bose, British Telecom, Cisco, HPE, Huawei, NiCE, Sennheiser, Sprinklr, Verint, Vidyard, Yamaha

Fall Conference Preview - VON, VERINT, BT, UC EXPO & NICE - Along with Amazon's Full Return to Office Mandate

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, the 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

And I'm Chris Fine. I'm an independent consultant and strategist specializing in workplace technology, IoT, and security. My company is Integrative Technologies. Hi, everyone. Hi, Jon. Welcome to another episode of Watch This Space. As you said, I know we've both been busy. We were comparing notes. In fact, we're recording a little bit early this month because we both got stuff going on next week, which we can talk about. But right, we're actually a little bit early.

Jon Arnold

Yes, and that's just the way it rolls. The main thing is we need to bring timely, breaking news, not so much breaking, but news and ideas, thought leadership, provocative, you know, insights. That's our game, we hope, and bring it to you on a timely basis. And as you probably know, as a follower, we try to publish on the first Tuesday of the month, and this will bring us to our October edition. So we continue. Chris, we are getting to the tail end of our 7th season. So yes, folks, we've been at this a while. We are not household names yet, but we don't need to be. We enjoy doing what we do. And I think we've got a pretty distinct rapport here with our perspectives. And I think by the support we get from listeners, I think we've got our support base.

Chris Fine

Yeah, and I think you're about to talk about it. We've decided that the podcast is popular enough and we think we like it enough, the feedback's good enough, that we're going to make some, you know, we're going to upgrade a little bit, make some changes, right, Jon?

Jon Arnold

Yes, Some of it, I think, by necessity and some of it by choice, because I think we have established our voice pretty well, Chris, in terms of what we talk about, how we talk about things. There's always ways to do it different and better. But aside from the content that we produce as speakers and insiders, so to speak, it's also the production of the podcast itself. So we have been audio only since the beginning. We have not had guests by choice.

That's not to say it couldn't change, but we are going to do some things to make it easier to find and certainly easier to consume because right now we're just giving you basically a standalone, 30-ish minute recording, but we're going to have to add some things like, chapterizing it so you can index and find segments more easily if you don't want to listen to the whole thing or just jump to 1 hot topic that you really want to hear what we have to say about.

So there'll be things like that to really be more, you know, more engaging for our listeners, whether that includes moving to video or adding some more visual elements, hopefully some music, things like that will up the production value of what we do. And there's always room to do a spin-off podcast as well that might have guests that follow maybe a different format. So things like that, Chris, we're always open to ideas and want to hear our listeners' ideas as well, what they would really like to see us be doing too.

Chris Fine

Yeah, I think we've historically just kind of analog guys that we are, even though we use all the digital technology, we kind of just said, roll tape, right? And so we're sort of in the cassette age of podcasts and that, you know, it's hard to find where a particular song is. You listen to the subtle side, that's great, but maybe you want to cut to a specific area of discussion or whatever. So we're at least going to get to the point where vinyl is, where you could drop it on a specific track, right? And then maybe one day we'll get to the 21st century, right?

Jon Arnold

Or go back to 8-track.

Chris Fine

8-track.

Jon Arnold

I mean, that was, in its day, was a superior.

Chris Fine

It was revolutionary.

Jon Arnold

It was a superior technology because you could go from, if you only wanted to hear Taste of Honey by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, you could just hear that song. Well, not entirely.

Chris Fine

Not entirely, but you could get down to like 3 songs. But you know that was just invented for cars so that you could play with hands off. They were relatively easy to reproduce, not all very expensive cartridges. They were invented by Bill Lear, the founder of Learjet. because he also sold auto parts. And so he had a way to get it into all the manufacturers. Fascinating story of eight tracks, but yes, they were a little bit easier to access the tracks.

Jon Arnold

Well, so here's, so here's my big disappointment. I was telling you just before we started recording, I'm buying a new car. It's been a long time, like 13 years. So I've conceded that there's no cassette decks in the car anymore. We've moved on. CD player, I've had that forever. The new cars, I'm getting a 2024 model. It was like the last thing I realized about this when I sat in the front seat to check out the layout and everything. No CD player.

Chris Fine

They've been gone for a few years. Yeah, I know, right?

Jon Arnold

Do I have to have an external drive attached to the car? You know, I'm laughing at myself, folks, don't worry, not with you, although I'm doing that too. But yeah, it just shows you, obviously, yeah. And we're going to talk about, that's really about how we consume stuff, right? So of course, everyone's on streaming. I'm still sticking with my CD collection. I just won't be able to use it in the car. But you can stream anything and everything now at a moment's notice. And it's the same, like we're saying, with the podcast. We need to make it a little more accessible, give you a little more control over how you enjoy it. So it's really no different than that level, right?

Chris Fine

That's what we're trying to make it more consumable. What else is in the hopper? I know you're also working on some other initiatives. relative to the podcast.

Jon Arnold

Yes. So just a couple of news flash items. This is where we have to have the drum roll with the big music.

Chris Fine

Yeah, they used to call it a stinger on radio.

Jon Arnold

Stings, exactly.

Chris Fine

Stinger, right? So the way home.

Jon Arnold

Breaking news.

Chris Fine

Yeah.

Jon Arnold

How many times a day do you hear that on CNN? Like every 15 minutes is breaking news of some kind. It's not breaking if it keeps coming. But so we have two things that are making the podcast as of now more discoverable for some anyways. So one is a partnership I have with a UK based publisher, EM 360. It stands for Enterprise Management 360. It's targeted mostly at CIO type of people, but it's, you know, enterprise oriented, mostly UK. audience, but also North America. And I am a regular contributor to them. I do podcasts with them and other things as well. So I'm featured on their website as an analyst. And they are now going to, they are now carrying the podcast there. So if you are using that website, em360.com, it might be em360tech.com, but anyway, it's not hard to find, Enterprise Management 360.

On my profile page there, you can see where the podcast is. There's a dedicated website on their site for our podcast, where the 10 most recent episodes are there. So if you are a visitor to that site, that's another place. You can just find it directly instead of using a podcast partner, right, to just subscribe. So this is just another way. And because this is an audience a little outside of my everyday core, it opens up, it's just another channel for us to be discovered by a broader audience in our space. And a little more international too, so that's good. Great.

Then the second one is with TMC, who are the hosts of IT Expo, which is the annual event that runs in Florida every February. And tied to that is where we do the Future of Work Expo that you hear Chris and I, we talk about it here regularly. And we'll talk about it a little bit more because with our podcast, having a core theme about Future of Work, it's naturally aligned with the Future of Work Expo that I Chair and Chris and I are both going to be speaking at this coming February.

So we are now discoverable on three of the TMC websites. Future of Work Expo has its own website. They also have a monthly newsletter called Future of Work News. That's another place that the podcast, there are banners running on that site to find it. And third will be the TMC website itself, which is the mothership, which has millions of page views every month. So that's a very large reach. And because TMC has many different events and sub-events and publications and all kinds of things. So it really opens up our audience again through another channel. And anyone who finds our podcast on any of those three TMC websites, they will be taken directly to our dedicated website, which is watchthisspace.tech.

So again, more ways for people to access the website other than signing up for podcast platform. I'll take those as a good development. You will hear us talk a little bit more about TMC just to recognize that yes, they are a media sponsor now for our podcast. And also, as you may amplify, Chris, that doesn't have any implication for our content and how we do things. It's really just a barter where they're just making our podcasts more available. And we'll talk a little bit about the show, which we'll be doing anyways, because we're doing the Future Work Expo, which is in their court, but we're the ones creating the content and running it. So there you go.

Chris Fine

It sounds good to me, Jon. I mean, to have a sponsor that is hands off on content, that sounds like a really good thing. So thanks for putting that together.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, you're welcome. Gotta keep trying things, folks. And so here we are. And so that's probably the news segment or update for the moment. I know we've both got stuff to talk about that's coming up over the next couple of weeks, I guess. But it might be a good jumping off point for you.

Chris Fine

Good, Well, thanks, Jon. I'm going to be in Boston next week for Jeff Pulver's VON Evolution conference. And I'm going to be talking about future of work on a fireside chat, probably with Jeff, which is always nice. You and I have done that. He's always asking good questions and he's a good listener. And typically it's a pretty engaged audience. I think it's going to be a pretty good event. He's got some good sessions lined up.

And there's also another interesting angle to this next week. I'm there for a day before the main show, which is this whole idea of the VCon effort, right? So VCon, we haven't really talked about it here, but it's a super interesting initiative to add security and encapsulation to communication sessions. It provides a lot of protection against deep fakes and fake audio and fake sources. as well as packaging everything up in a way so that it's easily identified and tagged and all of that. So I'm actually really looking forward to that. It's in the process, I think, of becoming an internet RFC.

There's a bunch of companies working on this initiative, because right now, if you think about the media involved with things like UC and like this session that we're doing today. There's no real rhyme or reason or encapsulation of the entity that we produce. There's not really much of a way to protect it or to make sure it only goes to the right place or anything without a whole lot of extra weird layers of crypto and blockchain and all of that, you know? And so this is incorporating that. So we'll see how that works out.

Meanwhile, tomorrow I'm going to the Kutztown Antique Radio Fair, which is always fun. This time I don't have my table. I'm not really selling. I'll have that back again in May when I go through another layer of stuff that I have, but always enjoy going and seeing all the regular characters. seeing what great old equipment might be available for me. So that's a little bit of an update here. What about you?

Jon Arnold

I love it. Well, I just want to add to what you're saying. You've got a little bit of a peek into the future with Jeff's show and keeping the past alive. So you got a foot in both worlds there, right? Again, analog and digital, that's what we do, right?

Chris Fine

Exactly. Although I really can't bring anything bulky home. So it's taking so much of my time to go through my layers and layers of collections of retro technology that it really would be defeating the purpose to bring more of it home. But I'll try.

Jon Arnold

I don't think your wife is going to like that.

Chris Fine

I don't think so.

Jon Arnold

It's what we do, folks.

Chris Fine

We'll see.

Jon Arnold

Exactly. What am I going to do with my CDs, Chris? I can't play them in the car.

Chris Fine

Digitize them, put them on a digitizer, rip them and put them on a USB drive and put that in.

Jon Arnold

I have done some of that as well. Yeah. Again, the media is very versatile, folks. It's very good. Just don't leave a magnet around a cassette tape. That's not a good idea.

Chris Fine

We spent months digitizing all our CDs a few years ago. We would just have it running all the time, no matter what we were doing, pretty much, and feeding them in. And the programs will generally identify what's on them, so you don't have to type all that in.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, and the album covers sometimes, right? Or can be downloaded.

Chris Fine

Yes, although we could have a whole episode about how bad metadata is. I keep waiting for somebody to invent an AI that you could aim at media metadata. And if I think if somebody invented that and I had to pay a few bucks a month for that, I would totally do it.

Jon Arnold

That's worth it. So when you're when you're uploading or digitizing a one of those like compilation albums that's got very VA, various artists, that won't get captured in the metadata. They won't pick out the specific songs and artists through the whole collection. It'll just say various artists.

Chris Fine

Well, without getting down too much of a rabbit hole or network more of rabbit holes, there actually is at least one program that I'm told that will apply a Shazam type of thing to the content and identify each song at a time by listening. If it's like a mixtape or a mixed CD that you made that you don't want to type all the titles in or you forgot what they were. I actually did a pile of these for my daughter and I like, I don't have that tool to be able to listen. So there was a bunch of more like rock'n'roll four, you know? And then it's like title one, title two, title three.

Jon Arnold

What is it called? Pebbles. Yeah, but those are all on the 60s.

Chris Fine

Nuggets and Pebbles.

Jon Arnold

Nuggets.

Chris Fine

They're both great. But Nuggets just celebrated its 50th last year. It was a great concert in New York.

Jon Arnold

Oh, you Gen. Zers have no idea what we're talking about, but that's okay. That's why you keep coming back, I hope.

Chris Fine

Yeah, no, that's right. But look up Nuggets collection. It's a lot of great music.

Jon Arnold

Music was fun.

Chris Fine

Whoever's still around could play was at the Nuggets 50th last year. It was a blast. There was a lot of young people there too. So anyway, now we've completely digressed off everything we might ever want to talk about.

Jon Arnold

We have to turn off our boomer elite vibe here. It's fun.

Chris Fine

I don't think we're elite.

Jon Arnold

We're not old.

Chris Fine

We're not elite.

Jon Arnold

It's fun. The music was good. Okay, so where are we going now? I just want to mention, yeah, with Jeff's show, we go when we can. I'm great hearing that you can go. I would have been there too, but I've got another event, a vendor event that I have to be at next week. It seems this is when the travel ramps up for people like me, September, especially October, November. It seems that every event I have on my calendar right now, there's one or two others that are like the same dates that overlap.

That’s the heavy, busy season, there's only so many slots of time you can get, and there's just more events than there are slots to take. So there's always going to be conflicts. Yeah, I feel bad I can't go to Jeff's. That's just the way it's going to roll. But yes, he is, as always, reinventing and moving along. I know Thomas Howe is playing a big hand in how he's shaping the program. with all this stuff and very always smart, visionary, leading edge people. And anyways, from my end, I would certainly recommend to anybody. It's at the BPL, right? Boston Public Library.

Chris Fine

Yes.

Jon Arnold

So it's very accessible. And yeah, it's not far from Fenway Park, but that's not important this year. Next year, maybe. My Red Sox. Okay, and then yes, you got the radio show.

Chris Fine

So what are you doing?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, so I travel next week to a vendor called Verint, and they're having their customer event, so it's called Engage. Most vendors in the communications tech space folks that they generally have two types of events that analysts get to go to. The customer event is like the big one, where it's all customers and partners, and they tell success stories, they share roadmaps and all that stuff. So it's very good, and it's a way to show appreciation for the customers and the analysts. typically come as well.

So I'm going to that event next week. And they will also run smaller scale analyst-only events where we get more kind of deeper dive meetings, one-on-ones, and all the exec team is there. So very accessible. And so this is how we build our relationships with these companies. And of course, we learn from what they're doing and that informs our view. But anyways, Verint is a player in the contact center space. They're very big on chatbots and automating customer service, applications. They talk about automating CX, which is kind of trying to orchestrate the whole thing rather than just one element of customer service. So they have a whole collection of bots - every bot is designed to do a different thing to automate. So they break down all the tasks, right, that happen within a customer service interaction, and many of the other vendors do similar things. But they've been at it a long time. And Jeff Pulver should smile. This is the last thing I'll say about it, because they're based in Melville, New York.

Chris Fine

Oh, isn't that something?

Jon Arnold

Which is where Jeff's organization, I use that term loosely, but yes, that's where the Pulver organization was based in Melville, not far from where he lived on Long Island. So yeah, small world. Small world.

Chris Fine

Definitely so. And what else? Anything you anything else on your calendar? Because I want to bring up my Amazon.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, let's get to that in a second. So the last, yeah, coming up there. That's the late part of September, which of course will have passed by the time we air here. But then coming up in October is the UC Expo in London, England. I'm going to be there October 2nd and 3rd. And I'm on a couple of panel sessions, moderating and speaking. Anyways, so that's the big UC event in Europe. And they've been doing this several years now. So I'll be going to that.

And the day before, BT, British Telecom, is having their analyst event in person. So because I'll be in London at the same time, I'll get to attend BT's analyst event for the first day and then two more days at UC Expo. And that's also just a small tie-in to what I mentioned earlier about EM360, the UK-based publisher, who is now another way to find our podcast here. They are a media partner at the UC Expo, so I'll be doing on the floor interviews with them. during the show.

So you'll not just maybe hear me a little bit here on this channel, but also see me on some of these other channels at that show. That will be coming up in early October. And then I have a couple of other ones coming later in the month. I'll just quickly mention the big one for me, for regular listeners, last year, one of the vendors we are very involved with, NICE, they're a leader in the contact center space. They took us to Machu Picchu, which is like ridiculously exotic for their analyst event. And every year they keep trying to up-level. This year, they're taking us to Zambia. And that is a whole other level of experience. So let's just say, Chris, I've spent two full days at clinics getting my vaccination shots and tablets for all the potential risks I could be facing going to that part of the world. So I'm preparing myself because at our age, we can't afford to take chances, right?

Chris Fine

Boy, they also, I don't think will let you in or let you out unless you have the shots. So, but wow, that's some amazing stuff. That's pretty exciting.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, definitely. The busy season, so I have to be ready. I've got to be in good shape, but it's going to be great. So stay tuned, folks. You'll be, we'll share what we can here, on the podcast. And of course, I write about it and speak about it in other places too. So just watch this space and others as well. That's the calendar for the time being. But let's get on that big tech track, Chris, because it means a lot of things, especially in our world of future of work.

Chris Fine

Yeah, so there was an interesting bit of news last week that probably most people have seen because it was covered by all the mainstream outlets about Amazon mandating a five-day return to work. And I would say that they're not the only company that's done that. But they did it in a very public way. And this is in the presence of what seemed to be quite disappointing statistics across all companies as to how many people returned for more days after Labor Day. Because a lot of companies were thinking, well, another summer's come and gone. People are going to come back just naturally.

There have been some articles about how younger people in particular really are enjoying the workplace. One person discovered that they actually do have free coffee there, that's great, and a comfy chair and all of that. So, none of that's bad. But the problem is that none of the senior people are necessarily coming back in. And then so there's a lack of mentorship and there's all kinds of teleconferences where you're in the office, but you still have to be on Zoom, right? So why are you there?

All these types of complaints. But in the midst of all of that, the idea of mandating back to work five days a week seems kind of risky to me. I don't know. What do you think? I mean, I understand the rationale for it, but there's a lot of pushback, apparently, if you read the coverage. And I feel that a blanket declaration like that is probably, while perhaps justified in its reasoning, going to be tough to do. What do you think?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, I totally agree. before the pandemic, for the most part, there are certain job functions like sales, right? They're not needing to be there. But for most employees, obviously, and as you'd like to reiterate on our podcast, Chris, yeah, we're talking mostly about white collar, right? Office workers.

Chris Fine

Yes, not frontline workers, right? People who don't need to be in a specific... location. And thank you for reminding us of that.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, because we were so like focused on this, right? Well, no, it's not everybody. It's a segment of the workforce, but the knowledge workers get all the attention and whatever. So, but yeah, it used to be, of course you worked in the office, like where else are you going to go? But now that this pendulum swung the other way, well, now the workers have all the, I wouldn't say power is the right word, but it's interesting because these jobs are generally not unionized. And we've talked about this before as well. So workers do not have much of a voice when it comes to stuff like this. And it really makes you wonder, Chris, you know, in this day and age, the role of, you know, manager to worker is, you know, the relationship is still very much in management's favor.

Yes, the workers kind of had the last say with the pandemic, and now that they've had it, they don't want to give it back. And that's understandable, but it raises all these existential issues because the reasons to be in the office from their management's point of view are very valid. But as you say, this is again, without any union representation, you know, one against many, it's easy when you have all the power, but when you don't, workers, you know, what are they going to do? I guess the disaffected ones will just try to leave and go someplace else that will let them work that way.

But it's going to create a lot of, as you say, unrest and bad will. I don't think anybody's got an easy answer for it, but you have to feel for them too. I mean, the organization needs certain things from workers that they're not going to get if they're home all the time. And so I don't know what the middle ground is and there's no there's no mediators or negotiators to bring, workers and management together. And so I don't know how it gets resolved. It seems it's only one side talking to the other, trying to convince each other that this is the way it's got to be. But there's nothing in the middle.

Chris Fine

Well, I mean, hybrid work was supposed to be in the middle, right?

Jon Arnold

As a solution, yes. But I mean, as an agent of change, there is no middle ground unless you start talking about lawyers and regulators, workplace, legislation.

Chris Fine

I agree. I mean, I don't have an answer to this either completely. The headline I would take away from all of this is, you know, it's still very much a situation in flux, even when mandates are given. I don't think it's anywhere near a done deal. I think that that there are just certain facts that are hard to fight if you're trying to get everybody back into the office. One is the technology really has evolved to where you don't need to be there for a lot of jobs. And so you can't argue that there's  like the typewriter isn't in the office anymore, you know what I mean? Like you had to be there to use it, or you had a computer there that you couldn't get at home. It's all gone.

So, you could really do a lot of jobs from just about anywhere and people have. On top of that, there had been multiple years of demonstrating that in fact this works because the technology had been around for years before that, but management and organizations have been able to say, well, it doesn't really work, right? Just like we've talked about with telephones and VoIP, that it took some awful disaster like an earthquake or 9-11 to prove that you could have a phone at home and it would work exactly the same way that it works in the office, right? And to switch to voice over IP from the old kinds of telephones. And computers have been over this line for a long time and collaboration software and a reasonable level of security.

It's hard to argue that there's any specific task-oriented reason for a lot of positions that you really need to be there. So it comes down to kind of the nebulous culture. And I think a lot of organizations basically were able to ride for a very long time on the fact that people basically needed to be in the office to do their jobs. And it was such a long tradition of it. But they have to now think of a new reason to attract people and they're working on it and there's some good work being done, but it's still in flux.

And then I think finally, there are just a lot of logistical considerations for people working that are not easy, like commuting, right? The cost of that, the pain of that childcare, you know, being able to be home when something needs to be done to your house or to take your car in or to go to the doctor, right? People have realized the freedom of not having to be commuting every day. So when you look at cities like in Europe, and this came out in the Leesman data, they're always talking about this. is when you have neighborhoods that are walkable and bicycle friendly and where workers can actually raise a little bit of a family and yet get to work very easily without the commute, there's a higher attendance level.

Also in those countries and cities, the lodgings tend to be, you know, the apartments are a little smaller, so you do get more space when you go to work. But when you're in a suburb where a lot of the population's concentrated, in this country, or a good number of workers are concentrated. And you've got to commute through horrible traffic and underdeveloped infrastructure to get to where you want to go. And your only choice is a car. And you've had four or five years of not having to do it. It's kind of hard to get you back. So that's the end of my rant. And it's definitely a watch this space. But it's interesting that a behemoth like Amazon will put that mandate on.

Jon Arnold

But even for them, as big as they are, how thoroughly can you make it stick? You can be like Musk and just say you're fired if you're not coming in, but okay, that's a hard practice to keep going. It just kills all the morale and everything. But you raise a really good point there, Chris, like in the EU, you know, or even here, they talk about the 15-minute city, right, where everything you need in your existence is within a 15-minute walk of where you live. And think about how different that environment is for creating that balance of work and, work and home life.

I do know that some cities are trying to evolve that way instead of densifying and, growing vertically with just taller, taller buildings and centralizing everybody, start to have more decentralized hubs in your urban kind of fabric, where those, city, those neighborhoods or whatever you want to call them, that are a little too far from the core, that they themselves can support local businesses and infrastructure and things that make it accessible for people.

So you don't have to go to the core to get your work done. And so there are ways of doing this, but these are bigger picture solutions that really aren't about technology. It's just really the way things are changing. But yeah, you're right. This is a watch this space thing because there's so many angles to this. I think we will talk a bit about this, by the way, at the Future of Work Expo in February. I know we're going to do at least one session on the concept of the office and also how spaces are evolving to accommodate. And like you say, to incentivize workers, is what is different or better about that space that I can't get at home. And you're right, in small apartments in Europe, you know, the office is a bigger, more spread-out space. It's pretty attractive because now you know, you're not living in a cooped-up place all day long. And who wants to work in a 400 square foot apartment all the time and be home all the time? That's just insane.

Chris Fine

No, it's true. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on. We haven't got time for today, but we should cover like about the all the changes in real estate and mixed-use development and social investment here and there about creating these kind of mixed-use, walkable, you know, finite sized places. They're not even all in the cities. You see developments, for example, where I live, there are some developments in my state, where they'll take what was sort of a traditional urban office building or a suburban office building, I should say, with a big parking lot. And they'll start to figure out how they can develop condos and, apartments around that so that, and retail, so it becomes more mixed-use.

They're doing that with malls too. They're repurposing some of the malls and, you know, to provide more working environment. with mixed-use housing and retail around it. So I think when you get past this real estate cycle, which I think is going to take a few years, you're going to see a lot of changes, which probably are for the better for all sides. But like many things, I think it's hard to take the old and try to mandate it when you're in the midst of a major revolution of change. You know, I think you have to let the cycle do its business. and you will ultimately have things that are more aimed at where things are going. And real estate and offices and organizational culture and all of that is not a fast-moving thing. It's very cyclical. And so that's the watch this space is to watch where the cycle's going.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, there's more concentric circles to this conversation, because these ideas you're mentioning, point to a less car-centric model of urban living. And then from there, if you start reducing the need for cars and to be greener, less fossil fuel, carbon neutral, zero emissions, you start moving into other kind of parts of society that are affected by this, it becomes a much bigger conversation about, again, not so much what's good for me as a worker, but it's also my organization, the whole industry that they're in, then it's the environment that they're locating their workspaces in.

And it just keeps going further and further. And then it becomes a bigger story about, oh, well, how do we be more climate-sustainable? How do we have a cleaner environment for us to work in, a safer environment, and one that allows us to be productive in better ways than we could before because we're not wasting time commuting and all the stress around that? And then, of course, the government gets involved and has to step in with policies and, as you say, like with childcare, and ways of offering continuing education for upskilling. So yeah, very much a watch this space. You know, the germ of an idea suddenly becomes very big and interconnected, right?

Chris Fine

I'm actually kind of optimistic on the longer term. I think we're going to go through some bumps and fits and starts. And right now it's a bit of a tug of war. And I don't think it's being handled very adroitly by a lot of organizations. They're trying their best, but it's a tough nut. But I really think it's almost an infrastructural kind of question, you know, like the whole way that work and life kind of integrate physically and non-physically, you know, and that's not something that changes overnight. But I think, as you say, there may be a lot of side benefits to considering it, right? I mean, The model we're in a lot of places really is kind of a mid-century, 20th century kind of model still, even though the cars are newer, most of them, right? But the whole way that the whole way the relationship of office space and work is just not really changed. And I think it's inevitably going to change. So the question is to take advantage of that opportunity and realize some of the benefits, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah. And how have we got this far in the podcast without even mentioning AI? How do we do that? Wow. AI could potentially make all of our jobs redundant anyways, and then we'll never leave our homes. That's a whole other thing.

Chris Fine

No, I think it's got to get better than it is. I mean, just a bit. Right. So I had my AI anecdote of the week. A good friend of mine used it to make a spreadsheet because he wanted to figure out what files to copy for me on a various exchange of music and stuff. And it didn't really get that good an answer. He had to tweak it himself. So that's just to make me a spreadsheet, which should be, kind of not that hard. But I digress. So I think that's I think that's the end of it right now.

Jon Arnold

I think so. And there's no bot popping up to tell us that. We did it all by ourselves. Aren't we resourceful?

Chris Fine

Well, we could have a stopwatch. I mean, we are looking at the clock.

Jon Arnold

Yeah.

Chris Fine

A clock? What's a clock?

Jon Arnold

What is time anyways? Okay, we are on time, at time. Okay, folks, that's it for today. And we will thank you now for listening. Thank you, listeners. So we hope you've enjoyed it and that you'll continue with us as we explore the future of work here on Watch This Space. You can access all of our episodes online at www.watchthisspace.tech or wherever you subscribe to your podcasts. And if you like it, please leave us a rating or a review. And otherwise, we'd love to hear your thoughts on what we're talking about. And if you have ideas for future topics, we'd love to hear that too. And with that, I'm Jon Arnold.

Chris Fine

And I'm Chris Fine. Thank you, everyone, for bearing with us during a somewhat rambling discussion with hopefully some interesting content. And we will catch you next month for another episode of Watch This Space.

Companies mentioned:

Amazon, British Telecom, NiCE, Verint

The Joys Of Summer - How Streaming Found Its Voice At The Paris Olympics, And How Conversational AI Is A Game-Changer For Utilities In Their Contact Centers

Audio links for original podcast:

·      Here, on the dedicated Watch This Space website

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

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Jon Arnold

Welcome to Watch This Space, 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

And I'm Chris Fine. I'm an independent consultant and strategist specializing in workplace technology, IoT, and security. My company is Integrative Technologies. Hello, everyone. Hi, Jon. Welcome to another month of Watch This Space. How are you doing?

Jon Arnold

Yes, okay. Yes, I'm doing fine, Chris. And I worked that in there. And you are Chris Fine doing okay, right?

Chris Fine

Oh my goodness.

Jon Arnold

You've never heard that before, right?

Chris Fine

Never, ever. That's completely original. Okay.

Jon Arnold

All right. I'd like to think, folks, we are sitting dockside. It's the height of summer in our Algonquin, as you would say, and in Canada, as we would say, Muskoka chairs, having some beers, looking out at the sun and recording our podcast. That would be the way to do it in the summer. But here we are stuck in our home offices working like we always do, right?

Chris Fine

No, it's true. Well, I can't see the sun out the window. And if I tried to record outside, there'd be the leaf blower factory here in the suburbs. But yes, you're right. So we're in the home offices as usual.

Jon Arnold

That's okay. It's a cinema verite, right? We're in the moment, we're in the elements, and that's just part of the experience. But yeah, so this is a little more scaled back, but it's how we do things. And here we are. So it's August and we're heading into September. So the summer still feels great, but we know it's not going to last, at least in this part of the world. But that's okay. And we keep doing what we're doing. And I think for both of us, Chris, we're a little on the chill side right now because we have been light on travel and that is okay. It is summer. And we don't have to work 24-7 all the time.

And it's also been good, I find, for certainly recharging psychologically and mentally and as we both have been talking, getting stuff done around the house. But that doesn't stop the wheels from turning in tech as we know. So there's always things happening. But I don't know, maybe before we kick things off, this will be our last summer edition. Maybe just out of the blue, Chris, any like highlights worth noting that has been good for you during the summer? And I'll do the same and then we'll move on to the world of tech.

Chris Fine

I've had a pretty good summer, Jon, I would say. Been able to work on some of my retro tech projects. There has been a fair bit of work. I've been able to spend some time with the family and by the pool without quite as much traveling since June. So I can't complain. I'm sure that we'll pass Labor Day at the beginning of September and get fired out of the cannon as usual, right? But it's nice to have a relatively quiet summer, get some stuff done, as you say, and have a little bit of time to think, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, exactly. I've certainly been going at a bit of a slower pace and have had some short getaways throughout the summer and we've got one coming up later this week. We're going up north to Halliburton, which is kind of the hinterlands in Ontario here and just a total change of pace and getting off the grid for a bit. It's always good. And I've done that a couple of times this summer. And it's funny how when you are off the grid and you get into a groove, you don't miss it. And it makes you wonder sometimes, you know, we're so saturated with around the clock tech and connectivity and stuff. And And I don't know, we morph into this more relaxed state of being zen about things not so scheduled and rushed and feels pretty damn good.

Chris Fine

Not bad. So since you asked me the question, I actually have something technological to bring up and I had forgotten about it earlier and it's not a long thing. But you know, I think this is the summer where streaming broadcasting of events really got good finally. And the example that I would cite would be the Olympics, which was a nice highlight of the summer. I think they did it really well. But they streamed it in the States on Peacock and NBC owns the franchise, right? And it was edited so that you could really watch what you wanted to watch. If you paid up, you really didn't get commercials. And it was organized so you could kind of find things relatively easily, which has been a problem in the past with streaming.

So it felt like a threshold was passed. And of course, now we're having the Democratic National Convention and it's all on YouTube, on a YouTube channel that's specially designed for this where it's cut up into very consumable pieces and easy to find. Like you want to hear a particular speech or you want to see highlights. It just reminds you where things have advanced since the old real-time network type of media. And I felt like there was an inflection point for the first time, really, that real professional techniques that were developed for this new medium were really used effectively. And so to me, that's kind of a milestone that happened this summer.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, I totally agree. And I'm glad you brought it up too, because yeah, Olympics is just, there's nothing bigger or better in terms of drawing a big audience across the board, which of course, that's what the US TV networks lost when cable came along and it became narrow casting instead of broadcasting. And it just reminds you that we can live in our silos, but there are things that bring everybody together. And It's the technology that makes it possible. And DNC is the same example. Yes, it is just the Democrat kind of vibe and audience, not the whole of the country, but it's accessible to anybody who wants to watch. And I think that's really cool.

So to me, that's to me a bit of a pendulum shift back to the broadcasting concept, where it is something that everybody can take part in. drop in or drop out. And again, when you think about the old days of having three networks and everybody watched the same shows and everybody was connected to everything that everyone else was doing. And now a big event like this, now it's come and gone and we've gone back to our little shelves. But it was a nice, it was a good moment that way.

Also, Chris, too, fair to say, all of these advances in technology and as you say, the professionalization of the whatever you want to call it, the viewer experience. Most of it is not really driven by AI. It is there in the background and it's doing other things, but for a change, it is nice to talk about where tech is actually making things better that isn't a story about AI.

Chris Fine

That is correct. I agree with that 100%. But you know what it reminded me of? It reminded me of other things we either happened before us or we saw during our lives, like the adaptation that companies and publishers made to the web when that came out, right? Like for the first few years, it just was basically whatever the prior type of medium was, just published in web format. It was kind of crude or it looked like a newspaper on the screen. wasn't really taking advantage of the technology. The technology hadn't advanced quite to a certain inflection point.

What really struck me, and has over the past year or so really, but it culminated this summer, was that the forces that design and create and manage and direct programming have adapted to the new medium. Right? Like if you look at the first television shows, they were really radio shows with pictures. Very static, it was like kind of a fake set. People didn't move around much. There was a microphone hanging above, but it might as well have been just in front of them like it was in radio.

Again, you look at the early days of the web and you look at all these years of streaming where if it was like a real event that would have been broadcast in a traditional way, it was usually really botched up on streaming. It didn't take advantage of the streaming. the potential of what that can do with the metadata and the way to divide things up that felt natural in a streaming medium. And I feel that over the summer, particularly with the Olympics, they kind of passed that threshold. And I'm sure there are other examples I'm not citing here, so I'm not trying to just focus on what I watched. But it felt like it was the web in 1997 before versus the web by like 2008. You see what I mean?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, And this is like for all to see and experience and it's going to come into its own and find its voice. And I'll take it a step back further from TV and radio to the invention of what we now call the movies. It used to be called moving pictures and the very first kind of productions that were created. This is back in the very early 1900s, even late 1890s. But All those, they didn't have a vocabulary. They didn't have a way of telling stories

All they did was basically recreated theater and just did moving picture adaptations of Shakespeare and opera and all the things that people were used to seeing because that was the entertainment of the day. and they didn't have to worry about sound or music or any of that stuff. And it was all, as you say, kind of corny sets and costumes and stuff and wasn't very sophisticated, but at the time it was, cutting edge.

Eventually, cinema found its voice, created a whole new way of storytelling and entertaining and immersion and all that stuff. And TV's gone that route as well. And here we are - I'm totally with you, Chris. Streaming is kind of maybe we're watching the early days of the movies in the streaming world. And I think that's going to, it's finding its voice now. And when you can do it on scale with a big global audience like the Olympics, that goes a long way, I think, to validating that model and that way of communicating, entertaining, informing, et cetera. And yeah, certainly for the digital generation, we're going to see a whole lot more of that. And that to me is a good story for how tech is making our lives better.

Chris Fine

I mean, it's a watch this space, right? But if I look at that, I think starting now, but certainly going forward, that the days of the anchor people commentary, you're forced to watch the commercials, whether you pay or not. You know, they own everything. There's no other perspective kind of watching events. is limited, right? It's just, this is just another hit on that, I think.

Jon Arnold

And well, I'll tell you in our space, and this is the long-winded tie-in folks, vendors like Cisco and RingCentral have in recent times made acquisitions of platforms for events. And they recognize there's an opportunity here for businesses, for enterprises, to do not just conference calls with one or two people or 10 or 20, but they're talking about being able to run events that are for 10s of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. So they have these event platforms now that run off the same platforms as UCaaS does. and they're all about organizing end-to-end experiences, but on large scale.

When you have large organizations that have 10s of thousands of employees and obviously global footprint, these event platforms are actually a new way and probably a better way in some ways of engaging large populations. And we're just talking about internally for employees, but when you start extending that to partners, suppliers, and of course, customers, and yes, prospects, the capability to have these like mass scale, almost like broadcast quality capabilities gives them another way to engage. This is not about collaboration and meetings and stuff like that, but this is really probably more like brand level, corporate level stuff. But the tools, again, are there now for them to do this. And the more I'm learning about what these vendors are doing there, I kind of get it and say, at first I thought, well, who the hell needs to broadcast to 10,000 people or 100,000 people?

But, there are use cases for this. And it's not just purely for marketing and branding purposes, but you know, when executive teams need to make big messages, to employees or maybe it could even be like product recall updates for your customers. There are occasions where using video-based forms of communicating. Yeah, they're there. And again, it will create new opportunities to engage - I think that's the interesting part for them. And they are getting traction with customers. So people are seeing the possibilities here.

Chris Fine

I think there's just going to be more of it because it's advanced to the point where it works reasonably well. I mean, it's not perfect, but this kind of mass broadcast, I think it's a great point that private sectors emulating some of the developments that are happening in sort of commercial media sector because technology is getting more broadly available. It's not as though there hasn't been examples of this that have been around for a long time, like quarterly earnings broadcasts, for example.

Jon Arnold

Exactly.

Chris Fine

But look how expensive they are, right? And look how many people are involved and the specialty platforms. And it's not sort of the equivalent of corporate social media, right? It's not like social media, like a TikTok where you hit the record button. There's a huge, had traditionally been a huge infrastructure around it. And now I think it's going to be sort of more mainstream.

Jon Arnold

And just to maybe raise an eyebrow or two, and this is just only one area of this private enterprise for-profit sector, but governments can use this, municipalities can use this. When you think about education, the globalization of university experience. There's a lot of use cases when you have these large kind of scale needs, when you think about what governments could do for more citizen engagement, making government services more accessible to certain segments of the population.

Now, there are tools for that already, yes, but this is just another way of doing things. And because of the quality and the accessibility and affordability of video, it's just a more interesting way of doing things. who knows, maybe down the road, like the RNC or DNC won't even be in-person events. I'm sure they will be, but you could replicate almost anything there on some of these large platforms.

Chris Fine

Well, I just feel that the transition from kind of DVR or some long YouTube of the whole evening, which is basically a DVR, to be able to say, I want to see speech X, or I want to see, the volleyball match that was this, and not to have to be doing the equivalent of fast forwarding and rewinding or trying to, or getting the other, the curse of streaming used to be just little chopped up garbage that didn't really convey, like it wasn't divided up into the way people would naturally think of events. Like this is the game, right? You play three sets of volleyball. This is a broadcast that comprises the two or three games that you play, depending on who wins the second one or the first one, right?

And you start it and you stop it and that's what you're going to see. so it's kind of like the ultimate, the way that you would wish that DVRs had worked. it's not just a serial medium, it's a random access medium, but the random access makes sense. Enough on that, I guess. But I just felt like, you asked about kind of what made anything make a transition this summer. I felt that Olympics was really television of the future.

Jon Arnold

What a point on that. Well said. Okay. All right. On that point, let's get back into what happened, at least in my world last week.

Chris Fine

Yes. Where in the world was Jon Arnold?

Jon Arnold

So of all places, Wilmington, North Carolina, which was a new one for me. And that may not mean much to anybody, but as soon as I say it's on the Cape Fear River, All of a sudden, the first thing that's going to pop in your mind, of course, is the movie, Cape Fear. And we're both movie guys. And it's so, oh, that's all I was thinking about while I was there. But I did not run into Max Katie anywhere. But I was thinking about it. So yeah, but that's what it was.

Chris Fine

But we had a good time anyway.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, I really enjoyed it. First time being in that part of the world. It's I don't really, I haven't been in the Carolinas a whole lot, but it was a little challenging to get there with connecting flights and stuff. But the reason for being there was an event I was actually at last year as well, which is the NCEC, which is the North Carolina Electrical Cooperative Utilities kind of industry group.

This is the power sector, the smart grid space. And this is where the rural utilities in North Carolina do their thing. So in that part of the world, for anyone who lives near there will know that Duke Energy is the mega utility that services the big urban markets. And everything else is what is that's kind of the domain of the rural guys. And so they're called cooperatives - they provide power to the rest of the state. So they cover a lot of territory.

There are some really interesting parallels, as I know you would seek to, Chris, between the, obviously the telco space and the power space. Both the utilities, largely for the same reasons, they're providing essential services that everyone needs to have. And so there has to be some regulation, of course, and oversight to make sure that happens and it's done safely and blah, blah, blah. Anyways, it's a very interesting history and they are as much a prisoner of the need to be in the AI space as anybody else, not surprisingly.

So, there are really very interesting use cases there for AI, mostly on the operational side. When you think of all the physical assets, they have to, manage and service and all that stuff. But also, of course, for us as consumers, businesses and residential for getting power. And, if I was imagining our audience sitting in a big room and I said, how many of you have had your power go out recently? I think every hand in the room would go up, right? So we all know what it's like to have the power drop on us and you wouldn't want to be on an operating table in a hospital when that happens. But, they do have generators. So there are backups for these things.

Anyways, Chris, it was an interesting space and I was there and I'll just stop in a moment, particularly talking about the opportunities and the use cases for AI, particularly conversational AI in the contact center for utilities, because this is a space like the old days of telco and you can, you can imagine Lily Tomlin commercial, right? Of being in a business where customer service really isn't that important because your customers are kind of captive to you. But it's a more competitive market now, and there's more reasons to communicate with customers. So they have a big gap to close in terms of raising the bar for customer service. It's one of those like, high leverage use cases to say, this is a vertical that really needs to kind of uplevel what they're doing.

Chris Fine

Absolutely. I can think of a couple of things there. One is that in a deregulated world of power, one threat in a lot of states almost independent of the size of the utility is that some marketing organization goes and becomes the face of the customer rather than the utility gets wholesaled, just like the carriers that they worry about that, the telecom carriers, right, where the face that the customer sees is, Friendly Joe Energy, but it's really being supplied by the co-op. So the co-op essentially gets all the blame loses the relationship with the customer, right? Because then the actual producer has to depend on how good friendly Joe's relationship is with the customer and also takes a hit on margin, you know, since the utilities were deregulated. And the other thing I think is there's a couple of low hanging fruit there. Like for example, you mentioned interruption of power. The biggest frustration I think that utility customers have is I don't know anything.

Jon Arnold

Exactly. Exactly.

Chris Fine

Right. So I can't imagine it would be pioneering rocket science to put an AI based monitoring system in there that would do all kinds of good things, including have a very good way to talk to customers. Like, you know, the utility that I have, which is not a co-op, has a pretty good way of telling you what's going on, but you got to go look for it. They actually have a map. that will tell you where they think the source of a problem is. if a tree was down on this block or that block, but it's not like they're going to come to you and offer that information. It's like pulling teeth.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it's like when power goes out, it's a whole chain reaction of anxiety. especially if you think about, seniors and disabled people and whatever, there's all kinds of scenarios where it's a shock. And as you say, you're literally there in the dark. You don't know. So that level of anxiety just gets higher and higher because sometimes outages are only a few minutes, but they can be days.

You know, here we had an ice storm several years ago. We lost power on our street for 9 days in the middle of winter. Think about that, okay? I mean, all the food that gets, spoiled and the whole domino effect of when you don't have power, especially in a cold climate, what happens?

On the tech side of things, I did a presentation, as I did last year there to kind of update people on what's happening with these technologies. So it's very, you know, educational for this audience. And then I also had at the back half of my session, I had a speaker, Hardy Myers from Cognigy, who we did a fireside chat where he talked a bit about the use cases and successes that they're having with their utility customers to show this audience that this isn't fantasy.

This is actually happening today and talking about the benefits that come when you do this stuff right. And the key message for a lot of this stuff is this kind of iteration of AI, what we call conversational AI, is basically good enough now that you can trust it more and more to handle self-service inquiries. So you don't have to put all the burden on the agents to handle more calls than they can possibly do. And part of my presentation was explaining and breaking down the typical reasons why customers call utilities for service.

You go up and down the line, most of the inquiries they have are, like in other industries, are fairly routine, simple things. So they can all be, many of them can be automated, right? AI has a role to play here to, you know, to explain things like, you know, my meter reading, what is it? I'm changing, I'm moving, I have to change my address, I have to port my bill over. endless variety of these routine things. So what we're trying to show is AI as an automation tool can help you manage the call volumes you're getting without having to hire more agents and let the agents handle the more personal kind of inquiries. So this is all new for this audience because they're not used to having to be customer centric. So it's, I know as it was last year, very well received messages and they're just good examples of here's a sector that is in the early days of looking at these technologies and the time is right for them to get serious about this stuff. So we're bringing a good message to that audience.

Chris Fine

Yes. And also, I suspect, I mean, you know more than I do. So you tell me that your average co-op doesn't have like a giant customer service budget. It's hard to scale that, right? Unless they do it, but if you could provide an automated service that really worked and didn't impact their customer satisfaction scores, that'd be pretty attractive, right? Because you just basically pay for some kind of SaaS product to do that, right? then you just factor that into the rates.

But I imagine with utilities, they're going to be really interested in this because if they really start suffering in an event like that they really mismanage something like a power outage, that actually affects their bottom line, not only the cost of that should be higher of repairing it or that should be lower of repairing it. But if they really get people mad, people start writing in and the next time there's a hearing in front of the Public Utilities Commission to get a raise in rates, there's going to be a problem, right?

Jon Arnold

Oh, for sure, because they cannot just pass on costs to the customers on their own, right?

Chris Fine

They can't randomly raise rates. It's a whole process.

Jon Arnold

The whole business model is affected by this. And when you start looking at the bigger picture, like handling outages is one thing and routine inquiries. But bigger picture is when you start getting into, leaning into, well, where is all this going with this whole drive to, you know, zero emissions, green energy, sustainable energy, the rise of electrification of vehicles, it's changing the dynamic because now there's more than one source of power. So they're trying to push renewables.

So, there's so much education that's needed. And so that customer service kind of role is also kind of like an educator in chief. Customers need to learn about, well, should I have solar panels in my home? Should I get an electric vehicle? How much is it going to cost me to have a charger in my home? You know, all of these fundamental patterns are changing now and they're trying to obviously move away from fossil fuels. There's all these existential things because the utility market is so unique because it's the only business I know of where they're encouraging their customers to consume less of what they produce. It's the only business I can think of that's like that. But they have this issue of we're here to give you efficient and affordable energy, but at the same time, we don't want you to waste energy.

And, the big challenge in this industry is that energy cannot be stored. So you have to be very efficient in your production level. So matching supply and demand is the name of the game here. That's where AI comes in at a different level to help them with predicting patterns and even like weather cycles that could impact the grid. And there's so many things. It's very, very complex world that way. And I'm just looking at a very simplistic side of it with customer service.

But you can see the dynamics of this space. This is just not stodgy, we provide power and that's all we do kind of business. There's a much more involved. And now you have consumers who are more like have a more of an activist mentality about climate change and conservation and sustainability that they look to their power provider through those lenses and say, what are you doing about it? You know, how can I be part of the solution? So it's huge opportunity here for sure.

Chris Fine

Agreed. That's a whole separate broadcast, right?

Jon Arnold

And, related topic just quickly, Chris. Outages is one problem where weather events trigger things. There was a whole other side to this event that we do need a separate episode on about cybersecurity threats and physical attacks on the infrastructure itself. We had, there were speakers there that just like, just blow your mind about how you have to think about these threats now that are also very kind of existentially focused on disrupting, again, from bad actors who view soft targets like utilities and water supply and ways to disrupt our life here. That puts them in a whole different mindset of how they run their business, protect their assets, all those kind of things. And AI has a very central role to play in a lot of this stuff.

Chris Fine

It's fascinating.

Jon Arnold

And that's where we should leave them hanging.

Chris Fine

As they used to say, the old clock on the wall is tinging pretty loudly right now.

Jon Arnold

The one you're building, right? The clock. Sidebar.

Chris Fine

Well, whatever it is, you know, the five or ten clocks behind me on my retro tech display rack. But they're all saying we need to say stay tuned for the next time, right?

Jon Arnold

Yes, there will be a next time and there'll be more to talk about. But yeah, folks, if you find this space interesting, I do have an article running about it on No Jitter. And also, oh yeah, I shared some photos of the event on my blog. And yeah, this is a really fascinating, as you say, space that we must watch, Chris.

Chris Fine

Okay. Jon's a very modest guy, but let it be said that he's been involved in thinking about smart grid for quite some time, even hosting a couple of his own programs about it. So this is definitely a topic where you have knowledge, and we can talk some more about it in the future.

Jon Arnold

Okay, good outro, Chris, for the future. So we are on time, as Chris said, so that's going to bring us to wrap. So we want to thank you all for listening today. Hope you enjoyed the podcast and you continue with us as we explore the future of work here on Watch This Space. You can access our episodes at www.watchthespace.tech or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. And of course, we'd love to hear from you with a rating, a review, ideas for future episodes, all of that stuff. We are here for you. And with that, I am Jon Arnold.

Chris Fine

And I'm Chris Fine. Thanks, Jon, for another opportunity to work with you on Watch This Space. And thanks, everyone, for listening. And we will see you again or hear you again or broadcast again next month for another episode of Watch This Space.

Companies mentioned:

Cisco, Cognigy, NBC, RingCentral

Workplace Strategy - It's A Thing, And Why It's An Opportunity For UCAAS And CCAAS Vendors

Audio links for original podcast:

·      Here, on the dedicated Watch This Space website

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

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Jon Arnold

Welcome to Watch This Space, the 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're 2 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

And I'm Chris Fine. I'm an independent consultant and strategist specializing in workplace technology, IoT, and security. My company is Integrative Technologies. Hi, everyone. Welcome to another Watch This Space. Hi, Jon. Hope it's been a good month for you. Lots of stuff happening, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, thank you. Same here. Good to be back on for another episode. And yes, we're in the midst of summer, but we keep working and the news keeps happening, and new research keeps coming out, and new hiccups keep happening, right? I mean, we had the recent tech outage with CrowdStrike, shutting down half the world. That just says another one of those wake-up calls about how dependent we are on all this big tech stuff. And another interesting one is certainly in the AI realm about how one of the vendors in our space, Talkdesk, was a provider for one of the big brands, I think Patagonia, who was basically recording all the conversations with customers and perhaps taking it a bit too far in terms of feeling it's like it's eavesdropping and of course, using everyday conversations to train AI models and raises issues of consent and privacy with consumers.

It just shows, how disruptive and transformative new technologies can become. And when they hit, much like these outages and security compromises, they happen big and fast. And it's kind of like, now how do we react to this? Because we're in so deep with these technologies now. It's not something we can just walk away from, right? So it's never dull, but right, you just can't shut it off.

Chris Fine

No, the CrowdStrike one's particularly interesting, and I'm hoping that Microsoft and some others really think about this, because when you've got a bazillion computers out there and virtual machines and servers, there really ought not to be something like a module of software that would prevent them from booting that way. So what I'm hoping is that Microsoft thinks a little bit more about AI and finally in Windows, they really have something studying the logs so that every time you boot up, If there's been some module that's caused more than three or four crashes in a row, you can temporarily quarantine it and take it out because that's really what they're trying to get people to do right now.

That's the only way you can fix this is to essentially go in and do a bunch of manual steps and get the system going again. Because they can't, from headquarters, they can't really fix this. They could do it on servers and virtual machines by just tapping the storage that the virtual machine is using before you actually start the virtual machine.

But if you got a laptop out there, you're kind of out of luck unless you follow these not so easy if you're not a geek steps to get it to reboot in safe mode and then you got to take this module out and It's pretty nasty, and you hope that when something like this happens that they come out of this and, make some investment in making it less likely to happen in the future. Because if you can get the particular kind of failure this was, if you have one, there's probably 100 in there that could fail that way, and you're relying on all these third-party companies. It's a lot of risk, right?

Jon Arnold

And of course, we don't know what we don't know. When it happens, we're totally blindsided because it's not something we're trained on and really feel it's our problem. That's, I think one of the biggest issues with a lot of the cybersec stuff, and unfortunately, corporate executives can be the worst offenders of all because they have the most sensitive access to data or sensitive sources to at their fingertips. And I think they just presume, IT's on it - it's not my problem. And here they go.

Before you know it, state secrets are out and it's too late. But it sure made a household name out of CrowdStrike, a company that I have followed because it kind of ties into some of the things I watch on the telecom fraud front. And there's a few of them. Orion is another one, you know, these cybersec companies, this space is, I think, Chris, just as highly concentrated as any other in the IT space, right?

Chris Fine

Yeah. I also think it's not. I mean, this is a company that you probably know them better than I do, but didn't strike me as being a fly by night or shoddily run kind of company. And apparently, as they found out more details effectively, what happened to them was some defective testing software. So you just think to yourself, you could have a really reliable company and you could have them executing probably reasonably disciplined steps, although I mean, they'll probably find, but it's tough to be in that business if you don't have some discipline.

And they're going to find, some vulnerability 3 layers in that, process couldn't have remedied and you wouldn't have suspected. So, to me, it's like they just keep adding complexity, particularly to the enterprise computing landscape. They just keep adding complexity to try to avoid things. And every level of complexity that you add adds some other kind of risk as well. So where's the right trade-off? Where's the right balance? And what could you do overall to try to mitigate this kind of class of risk?

That's where I think the opportunity is. But I don't think that's really been done. And I think that's probably at the Microsoft kind of level to do that, to allow yourself to be less vulnerable, to a mistake, a legitimate mistake or something less benevolent that could attack you in the way that this particular thing attacked machines.

Jon Arnold

Yeah. And this is what makes this story to me the biggest scare and takeaway from this that I don't hear much being said about is this was, as you say, this was a, this is human error. This was internal breakdown of, executing updates. This had nothing to do with a security breach, which is the stuff we're all, of course, really hyper-focused on, because that's where the bad stuff happens. But could you imagine if this was coupled with a security breach? Like right now, the only damage is really inconvenience. I mean, if we freak out over this, and we should, imagine how bad it could be when something really bad happens.

Chris Fine

It's just fortunate in a way that CrowdStrike isn't really a consumer program. Because if something like this happened to like a Norton, right? Or a McAfee or Malwarebytes, that would be an even bigger problem because corporations and operators of servers have a lot of central administrative capability. But if you went out to the mass of consumers on consumer machines, it would be worse, right? And as you say, suppose this wasn't just a mistake.

Suppose it was more malicious, you could probably brick a computer worse than this happened, right? Because at least if you erased a file before you started up in full mode, it would not have the problem, right? But suppose it was more malicious. You know, any kind of code that's running in kernel mode, as most security stuff does, essentially you can damage, you can make it impossible to boot up because of where you're operating. And there's just a lot of that runs on Windows and third-party code, because in Windows you need that level of privilege to do what they do. So end of sermon, but it's definitely a canary in a coal mine, right?

Jon Arnold

Well, yeah. And then you think about the recent, you know, the Ticketmaster, you know, issue as well. You talk about hundreds of millions of customer records and payment information, et cetera, being on file and potentially exposed. As I say, when these things happen, they happen big and they happen fast. And that's why, it doesn't take much in these situations to create a lot of damage. But again, we're in too deep. We can't just walk away from this. It's just, I don't know the answer.

Chris Fine

No, you can't. You got to just try to mitigate it and you just hope that. You hope that the powers that be, the big companies that are in the space, see an economic justification for working on it, right? Economic, regulatory, are you going to, because if there isn't some kind of incentive for them, they're not going to do it.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, that's the dark underside of this stuff, right? So, well, for all my competing priorities and limited resources, I got to put out the biggest fires first and doesn't leave much left.

Chris Fine

I don't even need to do that. I need to maintain my share price, which if I have to put out a fire to do that, I'll do it. But normally I have to focus on growth and market share and margin and all the other things that help drive share price. I mean, if I'm CrowdStrike, I don't want to make a mistake like that. But even so, there's probably a lot of people going in and buying on the dip with CrowdStrike, right? Because otherwise they have quite an apparently good reputation. So I don't know if the incentives are there, but certainly one would hope over time that this stuff gets to be less of a problem.

Jon Arnold

Hope so. Well, let's talk about some bigger problems.

Chris Fine

Let's do.

Jon Arnold

As if there are bigger problems. Okay. So we're going to talk about a company we have here on this podcast a few times before, Leesman. And it's one that I know, Chris, you've had particularly good history with your HPE Aruba stuff. And maybe I'll let that kind of be the lead in for it. We're going to talk about some findings from a recent what they call their corporate real estate poll and some of their reporting on what's kind of what's on the minds of top executives in terms of making their organizations. work more effectively. But Chris, why don't you talk a bit about your thread into this and what of and have taken away from your Leisman exposures?

Chris Fine

Well, Leesman Index, they're an interesting company. They're a research company. They've been around for a long time. And their forte is worker surveys and manager surveys about workplace experience. They have millions of data points that go back probably 20 years, something like that, of surveys that the employer or the organization or somebody who wants the information pays for, right? So it's not done by trying to incentivize the survey respondents. which adds to a certain level of bias.

It's more about how the company wants to find out how the workplace experience it's providing sits with its workers. And then what Leesman does is they take that and aggregate it over, or traditionally what they did is they would take all these detailed questionnaires about everything from the furniture to the atmosphere to the layout, to the day-to-day experiences to the technology and aggregate it all up so that they could create an index and then give a given company or organization and their facilities a score that had all these different components to it, but added up to how good a workplace is this. And this wasn't historically something that companies would necessarily go out and publicize.

For example, the environmental or sustainability lead LEED index in the United States of how green the facilities are. But it was super helpful to know internally and whatever level what needed to improve, what was good, et cetera. So they had about a million of these. But when going into the pandemic, they started to also focus more on what needed to change, and especially coming out of the pandemic. And as part of the work with HPE, we commissioned them to do a study at the beginning. It was published in 2023, and we've talked about it here, about workplace trends coming out of the pandemic.

Leesman started to do more and more of this work on their own and for other customers. And Jon, the particular report you're talking about is one that they published recently about what's on management mind balancing the different requirements and pressures in the workplace today in a hybrid work. What I found interesting, and we could talk about it in more depth, is that management, according to Leisman, is still very much juggling a bunch of different priorities and the answer of the future of hybrid work and the workplace is still far from clear.

And that's not a bit different from what you and I have said on a number of podcasts from different perspectives. But that was my essential takeaway of what the newest Leesman survey of corporate real estate managers, which is the other group survey they do, was showing. It's like there's a lot of unknowns and there's a lot of need to understand better on senior management part of what's going on and what workers are thinking and where they need to be to get ahead of things, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, there's a lot there, Chris, for sure. And let's start this conversation with two big picture ideas here that I think will come into play. Offline, you noted in some of this recent research that identifies a lot of these issues that corporate management is dealing with. The first thing is, they're not talking about AI, right? This report is not about AI. It's not looking for solutions that are AI-based. They're just raising this idea that there's a messy mix of priorities that they're trying to manage. So when we talk about, you know, in our focus as future of work, thinking, well, what does it take to make that workplace really attractive? How do you balance work from home, return to office and motivation and retention and training and all the things you need to do to make an organization effective.

Those are real issues. They're not necessarily AI solutions per se, and this report isn't talking about that. But another underlying theme to all this, Chris, I know we've known this for a long time, is that when it comes to making decisions, top management in particular wants data. They've really, I think, for some time now, have adopted this model that decisions have to be data based to justify them. So there's a lot less of that. here's what I think we should do, guys. It's more like, what do the numbers say?

And this isn't just in the corporate world, of course, you can see it just about in every facet of our lives that we have metrics for everything now. I'm a sports guy and analytics has kind of taken over the way sports are done now. All the coaching and training and performance issues around how athletes do their jobs, so to speak, are driven by numbers, right? There's so much instant information available and it's tracked from every possible angle. And the workplace isn't quite there yet. But management is still very much in that mode of the more data we have, the better the decisions we can make. And frankly, around these issues, and we'll talk more about them, that they call workplace strategy in the study, there's not a lot of data.

So my thesis for all of this is, well, that's exactly what AI is built for. Maybe there is a way to look at this problem set that AI can be part of the solution here because it certainly is tailor made for the kind of things that management is looking for but doesn't currently have. And it doesn't seem to be a model in place that helps them manage all of these priorities and balance all of these needs. So there's obviously a need here for something. And I'm just putting forward the idea that the kind of AI we're seeing in the worlds of collaboration and contact center, et cetera, which are very effective, you know what? When you start looking at what's important to management, it's not that far off. It's not that big a leap to say, you know what? These platforms that we use in contact centers and workplace might have a higher purpose or can help with these higher purposes. That's kind of my thesis of all of this.

Chris Fine

Well, you have to start from the business problems and work down, right? And so business problems are things like how much real estate do I really need and what kind in order to function properly? And then how do I get people productive? How do I increase or maximize or measure productivity? How do I retain good people? How do I manage the scheduling and mechanics of hybrid work? So again, productivity and efficient use of facilities. And the whole idea of this, which I agree with you, would be a great subject for some AI analytics.

Part of the problem is it's just in a very emerging space of even getting the data. And the other part of the emerging space is to help articulate the problem in a precise way, right? Because for all of these things, you can't just wave your hands and kind of say, I wish things were better. I don't know what's going on. And what I find in a lot of conversations with different organizations is spend a fair amount of time just helping them get to where they, what are they really trying to analyze?

I think that if you ultimately were to have better source data and more coordinated and integrated data, AI could help you with that too, right? Because you could point out, hey, you know, people aren't using the space, it looks like at ABC, what do you think, right? Whereas, you know, if you're normally, if you're the person in charge of thinking about these problems or the team in charge, you first have to do a lot of work to articulate just how do you want to think about the problem of work and the workplace and what data do you really need and what's that going to tell you?

One example of that is, let's say you're trying to do utilization or occupancy analytics, which is basically where are people working and what's the traffic patterns and how are they using different kinds of spaces and what's the overall occupancy, day one, day two, whatever, days a week, hours, et cetera. Well, there's a whole bunch of different ways you can try to get data for that with different levels of cost and complexity and technology. And it's easy to either under engineer or overspend if you don't try to figure out what you're actually trying to ask yourself. And what data do you really need? And that's a huge challenge just in itself. And when you have management kind of orbiting around the conflicting priorities that Leesman talks about, it makes it even harder to just say, okay, here's a plan of attack. This is what we're going to do, right? It's not like building a new plant or a new factory or something. You need to understand what problems you're trying to solve, right?

Jon Arnold

That's a good point, Chris. I haven't thought of before that we're just talking about the current situation. Work with what you got. What are your current problem sets? What you just mentioned though about, yeah, it's not like building a new office. That is a whole other scenario, right? For maybe new companies, how do we think about what a company that's totally digital today from the ground up has got to look like?

That's a different scenario because you can truly engineer your entire organization around data that you can readily track and you can start fresh, clean slate. But the real world doesn't work like that. We're talking about big, clunky organizations. And when I look at one of the charts from their summary report shows the priorities and when we talk about the business problems, like what's the most important thing and all the things they're trying to balance. So just to very quickly cite 3 examples and you just touched on one of them, Chris, is optimizing office space utilization. That's a real thing and it's clearly about a lot of metrics.

Another big one is employee experience. How do we measure that? How do we take steps to make that experience better and keep those people retained and motivated, et cetera? And another big one, of course, every organization struggles with is cost reduction, cost management. Again, that's all numbers. And if I just even just talk about those 3 examples, and there are several others in their summary report, when you think about you know, certainly closer to my everyday world of communications, collaboration, you know, the world of unified communications and to some extent contact center.

But you see in particular where it's all about productivity and workplace environment, those platforms are already capturing a lot of this data. So when we talk about, well, where's the data going to come from? Well, you actually have it, but It doesn't address every need, but it addresses some of the big ones. And it might, what I'm trying to get to is to think about, well, you have already, you're already partway there with a solution that could help you that yes, it's AI driven, but what it's really about, it's covering the areas that are important to making your organization run more effectively. And the problem, of course, that we see, Chris, and it too, is so much of this is siloed, right?

When we think about UC, it's kind of like, I call it a point solution in effect, that it addresses a particular set of problems, but it's not an organic part of a bigger strategy. So the Leesman report talks about workplace strategy. How do we formulate a better strategy? And that's a real Gestalt kind of thing that encompasses everything, but you can't have a strategy so what the pieces are and getting data on those pieces. So contact center does what contact center does.

There are different buying groups within organizations and budgets that manage these things. So they're not deploying these solutions in ways that really work into this bigger strategy that organizations are struggling with. And this is part of where I think AI coming into the picture can help them rethink some of this stuff and say, you know what, there are tools that you're using today that I think can go a long way to helping you manage the strategy need that you have because clearly they're struggling with this and they don't seem to have the tools or know how to look for where they might be.

Chris Fine

Yeah, agreed. But there's another element to it that is related to what you said. I agree with what you're what you put forward, but there's also the ROI element. And that's an interesting one, right? Because they have to look at all of the, one of the ways that you traditionally analyze a business case for one or more of these priorities that are, you know, the ones you ticked off are basically juggling with each other, right? Customer experience is fundamentally an expenditure, right? Whereas cost saving is cost saving. And so how do you find a happy medium where you do what you need to do to make meaningful impact on things that are hard to measure, they're not that quantitative, like experience versus cost, which is very quantitative.

But what you also need is like, what is my fundamental rationale for making investment? And one thing that's I think been a struggle in the past has been to find that, right? Like how do you measure the ROI on some of this stuff? You can certainly measure the ROI on reducing real estate. So that's a pretty straightforward. But a lot of this other stuff is fairly soft.

What's happening is kind of interesting is there's an increasing correlation between actions that you can take to understand your environment better and know your data better and act on that data and then sustainability, energy costs, health and wellness. And if you, in my mind, if you want to look what's going forward, look at Europe and look at how much instrumentation and analysis is being put into buildings with a good ROI based on legal requirements for sustainability and actual cost savings. And so I see that as somewhat of a unifying force, but I think in the absence of that, and that's not quite as advanced in the US market, but it's getting there. It's starting to move toward more climate awareness, workers want sustainability, health, wellness, post-pandemic.

That could be an actual business case for doing some of these things. And I think that's interesting for the field, But without that, you've got all these priorities to juggle that Leesman has laid out in this report. And if I remember, there's probably eight or nine of them. And like what business analysis and traditional strategic analysis case method do you use to find which direction you're actually going to go? And that needs to be clearer. And also the approaches need to be more straightforward, less box of Legos, as I always say, and more straightforward technology that rolls up to stuff that very senior people can look at, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, more complicated case studies in MBA school around this stuff than we ever had to deal with in our academic days, I'll tell you that. But what really struck me about this analysis is that yeah, if I'm in the shoes of a corporate executive tasked with this bigger picture, what's our workplace strategy going to be? It's clear to me from the Leesman data that this is a really difficult set of priorities to manage. And I, again, coming back to, well, you got to have data. I mean, you can't just make this stuff up and run it off the cuff because it's just too many, as you say, too many Jenga pieces here that you get them out of sorts and then you make things much, much worse. and really hard to fix.

I realized, Chris, for our listeners, it's hard to visualize this stuff. So I haven't mentioned yet that I did write an article recently in No Jitter that kind of tries to articulate this with a couple of visuals and link to the Leesman summary report. So you can certainly explore that on your own. And another piece that we haven't touched on yet, Chris, is this is what brings the AI piece into the story that I feel is important is I drew from another recent study.

This is from McKinsey, and it's actually tied to a massive study that Stanford University does. It's like 500 pages. It's really insane. But they're looking at kind of the bigger picture of AI use cases and how it's evolving. And it's global and it's really fascinating. But one piece that stuck out from that is some of the McKinsey research that they showed. And in particular, I included a chart in my No Jitter article about this, that looking at the priorities, what organizations are investing in for AI? Where are they spending their money? Talk about ROI, right, Chris, and the metrics.

Well, virtually all the top use cases they're investing in for AI are pretty much customer facing external applications that are really about driving basically top line. Maybe a little bit about cost reduction, but it's about customer acquisition, improving the experience of your products, innovation for your products, stuff that makes the sales numbers go up basically. And nothing there in terms of where they're spending their money about these internal strategy needs of the organization, stuff that, as you say, affects employees, impacts your culture, your morale, things like that.

So when you talk about where the dollars are being spent for AI, it's not about that. They're trying to get to the biggest impact and the least amount of time, and that's, of course, how do you drive sales and damned about how your organization responds to keep up with that. That's what that says to me. Again, it's telling me that I don't see solutions coming here that are obvious, that says, okay, well, where are the IBMs and the Accentures of the world coming up with these AI platforms that tie all of this stuff together, the ones who should know about these things? I'm not seeing that yet.

That's not to say it isn't coming or isn't out there, but it's not evident to me at the moment. So my final takeaway for all this, Chris, is that so for the UCaaS and CCaaS vendors out there who are trying to up-level and sell up into the organization and be more strategic with their offerings, might want to start thinking about workplace strategy as something that they're already have a few irons in the fire already that they're addressing. To me, they're in just as good a position as anybody else, if not to be the solution, to be part of the solution that I think management would be very receptive to.

Chris Fine

I agree. So you're more of an expert on this stuff than I am, but I'm going to throw forward two things that in my work I think would be hugely helpful for you to keep on working on. One is I really think that this idea of communicating an inclusivity of participants in a collaborative experience who are in all kinds of different places is important. And to keep working on this hybrid, are you in person, are you not in person kind of empowerment of everybody to be treated equally in collaboration, I think is one of them.

The second one is how much data can you aggregate from your products and put it out on an API that can be tapped by workplace analytics, right? Because typically collaboration, AV, UCaaS equipment is expensive and it's really learning a lot about what's going on. So how much without abusing any kind of privacy or providing at least a customer of choice of levels of disclosure, how can you then feed into an overall integrated system to get a sense of what's going on in the workplace?

You know, how do you become a sensor platform as well as just a communication enabler? Because then that immediately increases your value, and makes you more strategic. So I think those two things would be really good to see more of out there.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, exactly. But again, it comes back to, do you see yourself as essentially what I would call a point solution? You're very good at contact center, customer experience. Okay, that's great. But you know what? You're not that far away from being a higher, potentially being a higher value piece in solving bigger problems that organizations are really struggling with.

Chris Fine

You also have to cope with different groups of buyers, and that's another proper conversation. the enterprise person whom you sell to, who buys conference room collaboration equipment, is that person aware of some of the larger strategic things? historically not, but I think that's changing.

Jon Arnold

It is, because I've heard that from some of the recent vendor events I've been at, is that they're thinking bigger. that in other words, we're not just trying to make communications more efficient. We're trying to change the whole way you work. And when you have that kind of conversation, it's a little closer to what the Leesman study is talking about than just how do we do more video calls.

Chris Fine

Right, and how to, you know, now that you can, I mean, you still have to do all the engineering and the quality of service and the security and everything else, you absolutely have to do that. But I do think there's now a table with more senior people around it that's thinking about some of these things, past IT. And this stuff is no longer the modern-day equivalent of phones, if you put it sort of in a crude way. And I think inevitably, once that table is established, where this type of workplace issue gets into a strategic level of discussion along with overall business strategy and everything else, then it's a different dialogue than it used to be.

If you're going to be a participant in the workplace technology or workplace facility ecosystem, I don't think you can proceed any longer without participating in that some way. and not being a silo. You just can't. And as that increases, then you can add the AI because all of the data is more presented in common ways. And thus you can analyze it, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah. So term of the day, folks, workplace strategy. It's not entirely clear what it always means, but I think it's a thing.

Chris Fine

I think it's always been a thing, but I think it's more of a thing because there's more of the aspects of organizational life that are around it, like money and resources and facilities and capital expense and operating expense and regulation, these larger kind of phenomena are getting more and more associated with an element of organizational life that when I first started a zillion years ago, it was like, was my PC working or not? Even before that, and that was a very tactical kind of thing. And it's just gotten more and more strategic over time. Now it's actually tied into big strategy, and I think the vendors and all the ecosystem stands to benefit from understanding that.

Jon Arnold

And we're here to help you solve that problem. All right, okay, so the first one's free. So we will call it a day for now. But I think folks, I hope you've stuck with us this whole time today because it is an interesting topic that I think has more legs to explore. And I just hope maybe we've opened up some new dialogue possibilities and we'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

But that's time for today, folks. So thank you for listening and hope you enjoy the podcast and you'll continue with us as we explore the future of work here on Watch This Space. You can access all of our episodes at www.watchthisspace.tech, or wherever you subscribe to your podcasts. And of course, we'd love to get a review, a rating from you, and of course, ideas. If you have themes you want to see us explore, we're right here for you. So with that, thank you again for listening, and I'm Jon Arnold.

Chris Fine

I'm Chris Fine. Thanks, Jon. Always great to be with you on the podcast. Thanks, everybody, for bearing with us and listening. And we'll see you next month for another episode of Watch This Space.

Companies mentioned:

CrowdStrike, HPE, Microsoft, Talkdesk

HPE Discover And Nice Interactions - Reflections On Latest Industry Events

Audio links for original podcast:

·      Here, on the dedicated Watch This Space website

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

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Jon Arnold

Welcome to Watch This Space, the 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 tech analyst in my own 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. Hello, everybody. Hi, Jon. Welcome to another month of Watch This Space. It's been a busy month, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, sure has. And aside from the world burning up, I mean, it was just as hot in Las Vegas as it was in Toronto. And I'm saying that facetiously when we were both at events recently in Vegas. That's how hot it was in Toronto. And it's not something you're normally getting at this time of year. But we don't control the weather. We just go to cool events, right?

Chris Fine

That's right. The weather was hot. The event was cool. I find that the heat in Las Vegas and desert places like that doesn't really bother me as much. I mean, I wouldn't want to be baking out in a parking lot or something. Maybe, you know, like if it was a flea market and I was at my old radio equipment table, I'd want to have a tent. But when you're going to events, even though you end up walking in Vegas, as everybody knows, you don't spend that much time outside. And it seems a lot cooler walking in that desert heat than it does with the soaking humid heat we've been having on the East Coast and maybe up in Toronto too, right?

Jon Arnold

Exactly, And you know, as hot as it does get, you know, 105, 110, As you say, you can walk outside in that weather for a little while. But flip side of that is inside the hotel, at least where I was, they had our room at like 65 degrees. I mean, it was just so cold. It's just ridiculous. It's just such a waste of energy and effort to fill these empty hotel rooms with really cold air for nothing. But that's how they do it. If anything, maybe it's to freeze you out of the room so you go to the casino. Maybe that's the strategy.

Chris Fine

I think that's it. I think that's it. They were known in the past for doing everything to try to keep you out on the floor or keep you, know, spending money someplace, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah. No windows, no clocks. Just, you know, why spend time in your room when you can be playing cards and crops? So.

Chris Fine

Or going to a corporate event, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, that's what we do.

Chris Fine

Yes, we were actually ships passing in the night because you were out there a couple of weeks ago and I was out there last week, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, so we were both Vegas guys for a little while and I have not been there, I don't think since the pandemic actually. So it's been a while and like all big cities, not that I would call Vegas really a big city, but the construction just never seems to stop. And I just can't get over, I know they're, obviously they've demolished a lot of the older hotels to make room for the new ones. But in this day and age, it's incredible to think about in this, especially when you think about climate implications, how they just keep growing this city in the middle of a desert. And I can only presume that they have locks on their contracts to keep the water flowing because that place becomes a desert if the water goes away.

There's no reason to be there if you don't have water. But they still, it's just, you'd never know there were any issues. It's just a full speed ahead, just keep building more hotels and bigger and bigger. And I know people are moving there now to live a gamble. So it's a destination in itself, which is, that's cool, I guess. But anyways, I just find it like since the last time I was there, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. So either they must know what they're doing or they just don't care and just keep it going at all costs. I'm not sure.

Chris Fine

I don't know. I mean, I'm pretty certain that when you think about the revenue in Las Vegas today, gaming, as they call it, is really not the majority anymore. It's all the events, right? It's the restaurants, it's the other form, it's the shows, it's the other forms of entertainment. But I read a while ago that had all eclipsed gaming as their primary revenue source, and the casinos are still there, obviously. But there are so many other activities that have been built up that it's pretty much all the other stuff adds up to more than the gaming.

And it's also the perfect, just to squeeze one more thing in, to me, it is the best place to have a conference or a corporate event anywhere, especially if it's large. You know, you can have a small event pretty much in any city and find a good place. But if you're going to bring in a large number of people and move them around and have all kinds of presentations and everything and house them for three or four days. I just don't think you can beat that city. It's just great. You fly into the airport, you're in your hotel, whatever it is within 10, 20 minutes, and then it's a lot of walking, but it's pretty convenient, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, for sure. In that regard, they definitely know what they're doing. And everybody says, they kind of dread, to Vegas again, it's like Vegas or Orlando or kind of like the conference towns. But as you say, you can dread going there. But as you say, the experience you do have, it is pretty, pretty hard to beat it's just certainly in tech space, people like to try different things and it's a young crowd becoming a younger crowd anyways, but that's where the fun is. it's hard to beat, Yeah.

Chris Fine

Speaking of attractions, I was out at the Hewlett Packard Enterprise HPE. Discover Conference, which is also the HPE Aruba Networking Atmosphere Conference. They're all one thing now. Atmosphere used to be a separate physical event, but now they've all combined. So it was super exciting because I usually came in on the networking side, but to see all of HPE was a real eye-opener. It was fascinating.

The main theme was really AI, which is always interesting, as we've talked about before, to see where that fits in a particular company and their ecosystem. And this was, HPE, all their partners, all their vendors, all their channel partners, their technology partners, as well as their own people. And Antonio Neri, the CEO, gave the keynote at the Sphere, which for anybody that doesn't know is a huge one amazing venue there that just came online last year where it's incredibly high tech. Basically, if you've ever seen an IMAX movie where it's all surrounded on the ceiling and you put that to almost 360 degrees, that's the sphere. And it's millions of LEDs in a very, very high-resolution display. So if you've ever been an AV guy, right, I mean, I was the person who worked the projector around during classes when I was in elementary school because I knew how to run the film. If you ever grew up in that thread and all of our collaborative technology and conference rooms, AV and everything else, this is like the ultimate dream you would ever have.

So the keynote was about AI primarily. And it was very interesting because sometimes HPE has a lot of different parts to it, because it split off from the original HP, the big HP. And HP for many years, big HP, was a fairly innovative company. But then they started, you know, more or less in the time when Carly Fiorina was there CEO back in the early 2000s, they started to just kind of be cranking out products.

They had innovated so many things and they owned so many markets, like for example, printers and on the consumer side and computers and laser printers and all that kind of stuff. But it got to be where they found some bread-and-butter products and they just have been selling them over a period of years. But underneath that, and Antonio Neri has really pushed this in his tenure as CEO after the former CEO, Meg Whitman, really set the whole thing up and managed the separation from the rest of HP and all of that. It's getting very innovative again.

And what was interesting to me about the keynote, and which by the way, featured as a guest speaker, Jensen Huang from Nvidia, the most successful company out there right now, was how much with its various acquisitions and various pieces and parts and its tradition of R&D that HPE actually had to bring to the AI world, particularly in terms of infrastructure. And I'll give an example because they talked about it in the keynote. So Jensen and Antonio were talking about the need for supercomputers, you know, really, really concentrated computer resources.

It turns out that HPE is a longtime leader in liquid cooling technology because of their acquisition of Cray going back years, supercomputers and all the research they've done since then. And so they have a lot of expertise and knowledge to create these supercomputing centers that then add technology like Nvidia to do this AI-specific network and graphic processing. And so it's an interesting combination in addition to all of their position as a server and storage vendor and a networking vendor to enterprises. You know what I'm saying? It was a sort of a look forward that was very interesting.

Jon Arnold

There's a lot there, Chris, right? And wasn't there also talk of them merging or partnering with Juniper?

Chris Fine

Well, that hasn't closed yet, so there's not much to say, but yes, I mean, The acquisition was announced that Aruba and Juniper would combine. And so that has not closed yet. So there's not much to say. But eventually, if that all goes through, yes, those two entities will be combined. And if you look at the analyst reports on it, they're generally pretty positive. I mean, Aruba has a really good position in enterprise networking. I've done work for them over the last few years, and they're really innovative. They're head of the game on Wi-Fi 7, which is the new standard. They're incorporating AI all through the network, and they're also very advanced with IoT, which is, as you know, the area that I tend to work in for smart buildings and smart workplaces. So yes, that that combination in theory is going to happen and they've announced a close hopefully by end of 24, early 2025.

Jon Arnold

So the big get bigger and consolidation like in other spaces. So who's that going to leave in that space? I mean, Cisco.

Chris Fine

Cisco, of course, who's the biggest player, but if it were to happen based on numbers of the past and just what you would combine in a pro forma analysis, Aruba is already a pretty strong second and the combination would make an even more market share for the two companies combined versus Cisco. And then I think you have Extreme, I think, still in there. And you have then you have a lot of companies that are sort of the next layer down, more SMB oriented, like Ubiquity. Although Aruba also services a lot of SMB and even high-end home integration with their instant on portfolio. But I definitely, it's going to be more of a chunk of share going to if the combination goes through, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah. Well, I mean, as we talk about big tech pretty regularly, and this is just, I think, another example of that. You know, these, again, the giants and Nvidia is one of them that are kind of charting the course for, how AI is going to go, right? I had this call, I had a call the other day with someone, we were doing a podcast comparing the disruptive nature of VoIP when it first came out to the disruptive nature of AI today and how it's different.

You know, when VoIP came out, it was like Vonage, it was VocalTec, the real pioneer companies who brought this stuff to market to get it beyond being a hobby technology. And those are the ones, they created the market from nothing, but they were still small disruptors. AI is probably going to be way more impactful than VoIP ever will be. But we're going through a similar kind of like cycle where this technology is kind of coming to market now. It's so transformative and impactful. But this time around, it's not the startups. who are doing it, right? It's the Googles and the Microsofts and the HPEs and the big tech guys who are setting the agenda. So I just find this level, this era of innovation and transformation is going to go a lot differently.

Chris Fine

I think you're right in some respects because there are some big companies who not only produce innovation AI, but also consume it and, you know, to serve their customers, right? Somebody like Meta or Google. But there's also another co-revolution, and I think this is, HPE and some of the other companies, IBM, are involved in a revolution in the infrastructure, down to the chips with Nvidia and some other companies where, we've seen transformations in the core computing slash storage, infrastructure platform over the years, going back to the invention of microprocessors and ultimately what that did, and then the invention of RISC and ARM processors that are in phones, right, and could be miniaturized to produce essentially really powerful computers in tiny form factor.

But the revolution that's going on right now is just an incredible ability to process information in new ways. And in order to do that, you need a revolution in infrastructure. And after probably 40 years of 50 years of sort of, I would say, Intel, AMD, ARM kind of computers, now you're getting these specialized AI processing machines based on essentially GPU technology and even new directions like quantum computing, where the amount of information and calculation that they can do just dwarfs prior platforms. And so when you combine that with all the software and then the enormous market to consume it, is a gigantic thing. That's kind of how I see it. I don't know if that matches what you think.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, it's not my native territory, but I definitely perk up about quantum because I did get to do a little bit of work in that area a couple of years ago. And this arms race that we're in with China to see who can make it viable is a really big deal because once you have that computer capability, to do quantum calculations, et cetera. And in everything that comes with that, it renders all forms of cryptography useless. Whoever wins the race first is in a position to basically checkmate your opponent in terms of saying, we can crack any code you have. Nothing you have is secure. And that's a really scary thought if the bad guys want to really be the bad guys, right?

Chris Fine

There was a fair amount of talk about governance too. how do you create a structure of ethics and all that? But fundamentally, and that's of course, key to the whole thing. But I just feel as though, and as you've said, you've been to a few more AI focused conferences than I have lately. And as you say, it's just, it's running forward at an unbelievable speed. And what's happening is AI is creeping into so many things and you don't even always see it, like all the stuff that Google is doing with Gmail and search.

For example, Google added a folder under Gmail and didn't really seem to tell anybody called important. And how they decide what's important is they read all your mail, which we already knew, and they apply AI to it and say, well, based on all your reading preferences and based on subject matter we've deduced from this e-mail and who's sending it and a million other parameters. This is important to you, which is in my mind fairly creepy, although you can turn it off.

Jon Arnold

Yeah.

Chris Fine

And they added AI to their search and it's gotten mixed reviews.

Jon Arnold

Yeah. The prompts are everywhere now. Like anytime I'm doing an e-mail or a text or whatever, you know, the option pops up, you know, do you want AI to write this for you? Right. And so it's, they're just putting it in front of you to make it very kind of digestible and user friendly and stuff. And, you know, everything to me comes back to, you know, Orwell in 1984. We're basically Big Brother knows everything about you. The only thing it doesn't yet have access to is thought. And that's the last frontier. And I don't want to get too dystopic about it, but let's leave it alone for now. But it just seems like we are trudging along in this direction, whether we like it or not.

This is why I keep bringing up the big tech thing because as you say, it's becoming invasive in everything we do. Like you say, that's just come out of nowhere recently. We're not even being asked, but they're pushing it to you and it's making it much easier to kind of get everybody to conform and do things the same way and follow the AI lead, et cetera. And so I got mixed feelings about it. It's one thing to talk about the technology for all its wonderful capabilities, but how it's being used and brought to market.

Again, with the market power that the big guys have, we've talked every now and then about the regulations, like you say, Chris, the guardrails. So I know EU is just brought forward a case against Apple. And I think they've already done it with Meta about, because they call them gatekeepers in the EU, that they have this disproportionate market power. And so now the penalties start to kick in. And let's see if it has teeth. But we're still in charge of this thing if we do the right things. Anyway, that gets a little dreamy for where we're going. But let's stick to the knitting. And so let's wrap up on the HP things. And what were the big takeaways for you that you felt?

Chris Fine

The AI, the focus on AI, number one. And I just wanted to mention on the networking side, I think Wi-Fi 7 and its capabilities are going to be a pretty big leap in terms of the capabilities of networks. I think we're already well along the way, but I think certainly the wireless workplace is a reality, and this is just going to make it even better and also add more capability, things like outside coverage.

At least on Aruba's side, they keep adding more IoT capability, which is fantastic, so that now those of us who work in that area can add IoT processing and sensors in a very secure way that's easy to add. I also just wanted to mention that we talked a little bit about this, but I think that the whole idea of indoor GPS and what that's capable of doing is just going to continue to grow. I think it's moving more and more toward not having to run some app on your phone to make it operate, like to show a map or something. It's just going to be like it is everywhere else, all just inside.

And if you think about what that can do on a floor plan or in analyzing the utilization of space, I think that's just going to continue to grow as an attractive thing for many different applications. I think also security in the network, of course, always gets more and more important. So the idea of applying AI analytics to the traffic over the network and who's connecting is just more and more important because you can't really make an infinite number of if this, then that kind of rules to protect against marauders and misuse and rogue devices and things like that. So I just see that continuing to advance.

That was a few takeaways, at least for me. I did two sessions on IoT that was privileged to do that. Audience was very engaged. I did one on return to work and where that's going. And there was more, I didn't even need to use my list of questions. There was so much dialogue with the audience. And I did one more generally on the power of IoT and smart workplaces. And that audience was very engaged too. So overall, it was a good event and I'll wrap up with that.

Jon Arnold

For our broader themes here, that's very relevant. And you know, when you get a peek at the leading edge of what's coming, like you say, with the, GPU and, inside these workspaces, I think about things like going the other way, with what we call telephony POTS replacement with the carriers being able to walk away basically from copper infrastructure. And now anyone who wants to keep using it has to pay exorbitant costs to keep any form of analog telephony going. And when you get into the building maintenance stuff and all the operations things around elevators and, alarm systems, et cetera, et cetera, where you need a POS connection somehow to reach emergency services.

I can see a growing role here, like for AI, when you talk about space utilization and potentially even like wayfinding for if there's, say, an emergency in a building, it could probably identify the safest route for employees to leave or exit the building, that kind of thing. So I can see there being some advanced capabilities that, as good as POTS is for what it was built to do, this is another layer where it can actually be better in terms of safety, right?

Chris Fine

Well, I think along those lines, one of the few limitations of a completely non-traditional telephone system, a complete voice system has always been E911. So to your point, with indoor GPS and precise location, that makes things a lot safer, which is a big concern because in the world of hybrid work, the offices aren't as crowded and you want to be able to detect with a combination of location and AI, because people can't watch monitors all the time. You want to be able to detect anomalies, but that's a whole other topic. It's one of my favorites. We could talk about in another time.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, good stuff. Okay, so let's shift gears because I know we're going to, we tend to run longer as we always like to think we are, but here we are. So I'll stay in Las Vegas on that vibe and I'll talk a bit about the nice interactions event that I attended in. You were at, you said you were at the Venetian but some of the talks were at the Sphere, right?

Chris Fine

There were only two events at the Sphere, was the keynote and then there was a concert, which I am really sorry I missed. I've been having some back issues. But Dead and Company is the resident band there right now, so I would have loved to see that. But the rest of it was at the Venetian Conference Center. Yeah, the giant Venetian Palazzo complex there.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, ride the gondola.

Chris Fine

You had to ask a gondolier where one of the restaurants was, but fortunately he was pretty helpful.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, they can make anything in Vegas. Yeah, it's pretty incredible. So our event was at the Fontainebleau, which is up the road towards the very end of the strip. And yes, I had a view of the Sphere, but did not get to there. Yeah, it's just the city, as I said before, just keeps getting bigger and bigger. But for this event, it was a customer event primarily. So there were about, I think, 2,500 people there. It was pretty big, good size event for certainly our space. And for those of you who don't know, NICE, and that's in caps, N-I-C-E, they are one of the leaders in the contact center - now we call customer experience space.

And, you know, their story is very much about AI and how it's being used now to transform the whole CX, the whole customer experience thing to get, to basically get smarter, faster, better experiences for customers when they have to reach a contact center. So NICE has been pushing, I think, the edges in the AI space for quite a while now. They are certainly one of the best examples of how they're taking it to the next level - that's what this event was largely about.

They walked the walk really well, Chris. They demonstrated through, they had several customer keynotes who talked about, where their starting point in the journey was and how they were getting results from AI. Whether you look at the numbers, in terms of, the success metrics or just the impact on the way they think about things, the way they do things. It was pretty impressive.

What also stands out for me is how some of their key customers, such as in the insurance industry and in the hospitality space, I think it was Hyatt. These are big brands. and talking about how the challenges in particular for hospitality coming out of the pandemic when people were not traveling, the hotels were sitting empty for a large degree, and then all of a sudden people want to travel again and they want good experiences. And so they talk about, yes, customer service, but also how these technologies help make the brand experiences even better.

So helping basically people, customize their travel plans and to kind of tailor it to what their lifestyle kind of preferences take them to. It just points to brands, and I say brands rather than businesses. They're getting much more sophisticated now in the area of marketing and really getting at what consumers really value. And it all comes from having the data. You talk about having the data for the networking inside an organization, physical space, which is very important as well. But in the marketing and sales world, when it talks about brands growing and really maximizing their potential with their customers, this data thing is really big and companies like NICE really understand this very well and they are, when they partner with these guys, they really are taking it to that level, right?

So it's not about how do we get your problem solved 10 seconds faster. You know, they're way beyond that. This is much more about creating these longer-term relationships with customers and really getting inside their heads about what what's important to them. And then the power of AI, like you say, Chris, with these super fast capabilities here, it's more about the scale of being able to capture data from their entire history with you.

And not just getting the numbers around, you know, how much you spent with us last year, but also more about AI kind of anticipates like sentiments with customers and they kind of like envision they can on the fly create these scenarios for agents to work with that are pretty likely to work. So just given the entire history of a customer, their preferences, their highs, their lows, all that stuff, they can put in front of agents offers to the customer that are really tailored to what their needs are or even their unanticipated needs.

They come on to a call saying, I want to fix my reservation and they end up being sold a whole vacation package, all because it's anticipated from their history, things that they're likely going to want to be doing and with whom and when and where, because it has all the digital crumbs and it can put together these scenarios that have a pretty high likelihood of success.

All of a sudden, now the agent, they talk about having superpowers because now the agent can bring them these proactive, really kind of smart kind of offerings and forms of engagement that are just light years ahead of what typical traditional contact centers do when they engage with customers. So it's really opening up your eyes to a whole new kind of range of things you can do. Really interesting. Yeah, a little scary at times too, right? But it shows what's possible when you start channeling AI with a very specific purpose.

Chris Fine

That's fascinating. You would think there would also be another application where they could aggregate all of the data from all the customers that called with a specific question and they could optimize how they respond to it, right? For example, we've all had that experience where let's say you get some message that makes you think that somebody was trying to bang into one of your accounts, like they asked for a passcode or something and it wasn't you.

So if the agent, wherever he or she may be, had access to all of the ways that question was best answered and all the data that was needed and what made customers satisfied, you'd think they could cut the interaction time and increase the satisfaction rate. by a lot, and I'm taking that example, but it could be a question about a product, right? So it's kind of like the agent doesn't have to try to assess the individual customer plus the nature of the question in real time in a really short time while they're talking, right?

Jon Arnold

Exactly. And in fact, up till AI kind of driving all of this, agents are largely guessing. They don't really know. Like, CRM will tell them a lot. They'll get all these screen pops, right? But they're kind of like isolated pieces of information. They're not like stitched together to tell a narrative and get to a particular outcome with a high degree of success because they can aggregate the data, as you say, in real time.

They already know what works. because they've done it over millions of transactions. It doesn't matter what it is you're calling about; there's thousands and thousands of customers who have probably had the exact same situation as you. So no agent can have that collective knowledge, but AI kind of puts it at their fingertips and like, holy crap, look at now. You know, it's like, I know everything about you, but you can't say that, but you can now interact with a higher degree of like intelligence and confidence.

And now, the customer starts to relate to you in a very different way. It says, yeah, this is really good. And it's not like, well, how do you know that? People already know, digital natives already know that companies have everything about them. They already know that. So it's not a surprise. And that's where it gets really interesting because so there's a level here too, you know, it's just more subtle, Chris, I think, but I wouldn't call it acquiescence, but they did a great demo of, they profiled a typical consumer who would have been like a 20 something person. And they actually are going along with this because they already know that you have all this information about them.

And so there's that little level of, when we talk about privacy is dead and that's a whole other topic, but there's a certain level I think of acceptance that they just realized that that's just how it is now. And as long as you're not trying to defraud me, so if there's a level of trust there that you're trying to actually do what's in your best interests, you can go to some very new places with AI that you couldn't do before as a contact center agent, you know, when you're interacting with customers.

Chris Fine

That's really interesting. I was thinking while you were talking that I agree about acquiescence with limits on the part of most people. They're kind of used to it. But the thing that's really frustrating is that we know the companies have the data, but they just use it so little to help us. You know what I'm saying? I know when I call one of these help desks or whatever, that they know all about me. And yet, even if it's displayed to them kind of on a screen, it doesn't all funnel into making them help me better, right?

So the comparison I'd make is like if I know a local store, let's say, or a local vendor, and I get to know the people and they know everything about me, just like the big guys do or the IT world does, But there's an additional element in that I feel that they're really using that to help me. And maybe this technology you're talking about can help with that.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, and that's what establishes the trust, right? Because to date, a lot of those pieces of information have always been there, but they've never been able to be used kind of in an aggregated way that is kind of tailored for the customer or tailored for a particular situation you're calling about. So we're starting from this low bar of this contact centers have never been able to get it right because they've never had this kind of like unified view of the customer that kind of mirrors what the customer sees, right?

And so that's where this is with AI now. I mean, we didn't have these capabilities even two or three years ago. So that's why this is so new and it's exciting, you know, in the right hands for the right reasons. It really showcases what's a very attractive use case of AI. I also just want to add, as a last point here, the keynote from their CEO, Barak Eilam, who has been leading NICE for 10 years, he recently announced he's stepping down, which is a huge shockwave in the industry because he's kind of like one of the real visionaries that's taken this company to be like one of the top players in this space.

Also, his keynotes, Chris, are as original and creative and inspiring as they come. This guy makes use of the visuals on stage and holographic images and weaving narratives that are just like, John Chambers kind of level stuff, but a whole other level with the visuals and the way it's orchestrated. Really impressive. His keynotes are like the thing you wait for. Like you say, seeing Antonio at HP speak - you want to see what his keynote's going to be. And I feel lucky to be there because this would have been his last one at this event because he won't be back for next year unless he changes his mind.

So I feel lucky to be there, and I did write a fairly detailed  takeaway from my thoughts of his talk in my current No Jitter article, which is running now. So if you want to see and read more about it, folks, you can do it there. But on that note, Chris, yeah, we are definitely on time. We are at the end. This has been a really good talk. Problem is when both of us go to big events, we got a lot to talk about, right?

Chris Fine

Absolutely. Or even if we don't, we still have a lot to talk about.

Jon Arnold

We always do.

Chris Fine

I need to get an egg timer, I think.

Jon Arnold

Yeah.

Chris Fine

But that goes ding.

Jon Arnold

We need AI. Okay, that's it, folks, so thank you all for listening. Hope you enjoyed it and that you'll continue with us as we continue to explore the future of work here on Watch This Space. You can access all of our episodes at www.watchthisspace.tech, or wherever you subscribe to your podcasts. And that's it. So this is me saying goodbye for this episode.

Chris Fine

And I'm Chris Fine. Thanks again for listening to us. Thanks, Jon, always for co-hosting with me and or letting me be a co-host. And we'll see you all next month. Have a nice month and we'll see you again on Watch This Space.

Companies mentioned:

Aruba, Cisco, Extreme Networks, HPE, NiCE, Nvidia, VocalTec, Vonage

The AI Revolution - Are We At The Beginning Or The End? Reflections On Analyst Events From Zoom And Verint

Audio links for original podcast:

·      Here, on the dedicated Watch This Space website

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

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Jon Arnold

Welcome to Watch This Space, the 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

And I'm Chris Fine. I'm an advisor and strategist specializing in workplace technology, IoT, and security. My company is Integrative Technologies. Hi, Jon. Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Watch This Space. I hope you've had a good month. Jon, I know you've been traveling. You got back to something like your frenzy travel regimen. So what have you been up to?

Jon Arnold

Well, yes, from our last podcast, Chris, I was hobbling around recovering from foot surgery. So there was no travel for me last month, last month being April, for which I had several events I could have gone to. But I had to kind of just, basically say no to all of that to get this once in a lifetime thing done. And I'm glad I did. And I'm much better off now for that. And yes, back to travel. So that's, we all got to do that as analysts to stay in the game. And also over the month of over the month of May, Chris, I actually was away for, as for about two weeks in Israel, and I was more on a personal trip. So I wasn't fully in work mode for most of May.

So from April, without travel, I've been kind of below the radar for quite a while, but that's passed now and I'm here and I had two events to trap that I traveled to during the month of May. They were both the same week, so it was back-to-back. So after... Israel for the better part of two weeks, getting acclimatized to the time zone change there. Then I had these two events to get to and that took us out to May and here we are. So yeah, a couple of reasons to talk about these two events in particular, Chris.

Always learning new stuff, especially from companies that are really being innovative. And these in particular were Zoom and Verint. And the Zoom event was New York, the Verint event was in Dallas. And these are two companies doing interesting things in their spaces. There is some overlap, but they're doing different types of uses of basically, you know, yes, technology, but more importantly, AI. And what I've just coming to realize as we're talking, Chris, what's interesting about these two companies is that they are both kind of all in on what AI brings to the market.

I think more so than most of the companies that we talk to, mainly because they don't have a lot of the legacy baggage that the older vendors have. So they have a clean slate when it comes to cloud. And that's a short jump from cloud to AI these days and what they're betting on. And I want to get to that because I know We're going to talk also, Chris, a little bit about workplace realities that you have been keeping tabs on as well. So before I talk a bit about those two events, I'm just going to pause so everyone knows that there are two people in the room here, Chris.

Chris Fine

Well, thanks, Jon. First of all, you were in New York, and it was such a frenzied schedule that we couldn't even get together, right? We couldn't even go to one of our usual diner haunts and have breakfast or lunch, but we'll catch each other the next time or I'll be in Toronto or whatever. But I'm glad you had a good event.

You know, for me, it's been a pretty busy month, mostly getting ready for HPE Discover, which is a big event they put on for clients and vendors and partners. And I'm giving a couple of speeches there, actually leading a couple of panels. One is on the power of the smart workplace, more of a little technical panel and more on IoT. And then the other one is actually on return to work and how that relates to re-instrumenting the office place and how a smarter office might make the workplace more attractive. So there's a little bit of overlap, but it's two sessions and I think I've got some good panels and ultimately that'll probably get published so folks can see it. But that's basically what I've been up to other than all the usual stuff, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, it's always good to get out. If we're home all day in our little home offices, the world gets pretty small pretty quickly. And we're used to it, of course, but not all workers are. And we're going to get to that a little later. I know the isolation from working and doing so much in our lives virtually. You think you feel good about having a virtual crowd around you 24-7, which seems to be how most millennials and Gen Zs actually function. But face to face is a whole other thing. And I think that's the magic that keeps us sane in this kind of always on world.

And that takes me a little bit to Zoom, Chris, because arguably no company benefited more from the pandemic than Zoom, because they had the right product at the right time to enable virtual working and distributed workforces. So organizations could keep the lights on, and people could keep their jobs, and video became the must-have app - and they just did it better than anybody.

They more or less and captured a big chunk of the market and came, in some ways out of nowhere, even though the company's been around 10 years, they went kind of chugging along and then the hockey stick hit with a pandemic and, sometimes right place, right time. And that's what happened with these guys. And that would be, I would argue, Chris, the way most people think about what Zoom is, wouldn't you say?

Chris Fine

Yeah, and I'm very curious to hear what they think about going forward. Like where's the cutting edge, right? What would they feature? Because I mean, I'm definitely a Zoom fan. I've been using it for years. I think they've done some amazing work. I actually think they were one of the companies that helped people get through the pandemic.

Glad they were successful. Much credit to them for being in the right place at the right time. But I do feel that a lot of Zoom-like functionality as we know it is being commoditized. You can argue whether Teams is better or WebEx is better or Zoom is better or Google Meet is better, whatever it is you use, but a lot of the features overlap now. So I'm very curious to hear what they were talking about is what their vision is going forward.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, so it is definitely grander. The thing people need to know about Zoom is that they are, you know, their founder, Eric Juan, is kind of one of those guys, as soon as you hear him talk, you kind of get a good feeling about him, that he has a vision, he has the creative process and the drive to be successful and to make change. So, he's never really talked about Zoom as a video company. He's always talked about, he has this like shtick about, you know, making happy, right? He wants the world to be a happier place. And he feels that with video, you create that personal one-to-one connection or group connection when you can see people, you can read the body language. And that goes a lot further to that idea of making people happy than just a static phone call or certainly anything, any form of text-based communication. So I think there is something to that.

But they've gone all in with AI, as has just about everybody else, but I think they've really effectively pivoted and transformed their kind of mission around AI in, I think, in a very effective way. The messaging we got throughout the day, the number one takeaway is we are not a video company anymore. We're way past that. And because AI has kind of been in their genes from day one, they feel that they're not interested in just providing a better video experience. They want to help businesses solve bigger problems than just making it easy to have meetings online. It's really about trying to transform everything about the way we work.

So Zoom has evolved way past being a video application to being more of a productivity, platform, right, to compete with the likes of, yes, Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex and Avaya and all the big platform plays. They have a platform called Workplace and it's built all around how we work. The whole mission is to say we're going to run, like rethink the way we work now and build it from the bottom up. In other words, that clean slate approach to saying with today's tools and the AI capabilities we have, we can kind of question and rethink everything about workplace, the nature of work and how technology can drive a lot of that. And that vision seems to be, I think, working pretty well.

They certainly cited enough of the numbers, the success metrics that you would want to see from a public company. Also the reality, Chris, the business side of it, they did cite that UC, UCaaS, Unified Communications as a Service, that platform, those revenues aren't growing in a huge number anymore. I think it was only maybe 3% annual growth. It's not huge because the market's so saturated. They also know they have to get to other things that are going to drive growth.

That's where AI comes into the story where they're trying to AI enable all of the applications to make them more intelligent and to basically pull data from across the organization in ways that will help transform how we work and just do more than just have better meetings. They get into the area of, yes, productivity and collaboration, yes, but they made a recent acquisition of a company called WorkVivo. Their platform is very much about employee experience. So rather than just like collaboration, WorkVivo is focused more on how to make virtual and distributed workforces more engaged, more feeling part of the team, accessible, inclusive, all that stuff.

You can argue it's a lot of the soft stuff, but it is relevant and clearly this more simplistic sounding vision of we want happy, we want a happy workplace, happy people, happy world. Well, you can't be happy unless you feel part of something and valued and all that kind of thing. On that plane, this WorkVivo concept seems to fit nicely into the way they want to be seen as a transformative kind of company that is able to change so much more than just making meetings better. So it's a lot to kind of bite off and kind of get your head around.

But the overall performance of the company is still really strong and they're getting the right kind of traction in the right ways. And probably just as importantly, Chris, they have learned how to sell deeper into organizations because now their platform is more inclusive than just meetings and collaboration. They're becoming a little bit more of an, you know, I wouldn't say a Swiss Army knife, but certainly a more pervasive value proposition. And I should also say this is something that we in our wearing our future work hats would be happy to hear. One of the reasons that they're succeeding on this front and figuring out how to make AI work in the way they go to market - this really stuck with me.

One of their execs, Mahesh Ram, talked about how what they hear from customers is to be successful with AI, you've got to show transparency. You've got to have end users with control over what information they share, what they don't share. So you've got to kind of give them the reins and they get that. But also, Chris, this is what I found so interesting is he says the customers are asking better questions about how to use AI. Like anything else, any market is going to succeed when supply and demand are kind of in balance. Here now on the demand side, you've got the customers starting to come to grips with what AI could possibly do for them. And so now that they're thinking about it a little more, getting more comfortable with it, this idea that they're asking better questions means They want to know more. They want to do more with AI. And that opens the door now, again, to being this AI-driven platform that's gone way beyond video and meetings.

Chris Fine

That sounds interesting. So I'm more confused than I was when you started. And excuse me, I'm just an analog guy. But can you give us an example of some concrete thing that maybe they demonstrated to show you what they thought would be better. You see what I'm getting at? Like, is there an example? Is there something concrete of things that have been, that are past what they traditionally did that include AI and seem to have received positive results?

Jon Arnold

So a good example would be the way they're using AI to provide virtual coaching. Now this applies really both in contact center, which is another space that they're in now, which they have been for a little while now, but also in the workplace where their use of large language models with speech technology, certainly it's getting good with everybody. It's not just them. But they're using it in ways, and they're not the only vendor doing this, by the way, but the idea is that the virtual kind of assistance or coaching applications are being used in a more productive way.

In other words, they can give better guidance to employees about things like, you know, what to say. Say you're writing an email response, and you may be a junior employee and you're writing something that's going to be for someone higher up the food chain than you. You've got to use different language to communicate your message than you would be if you were communicating downward to someone who's below you on the pecking order. And so people may not be comfortable with saying it the right way. This is where a virtual coach would come in and help craft the message for the worker to do.

The same thing would go like in a contact center where, again, the agent may not quite have the vocabulary to communicate something. It might be a specific feature of the product the customer is asking about, but it may also be in a more difficult situation where the customer might be upset or anxious about something and call is running risk of falling off the rails quickly. So the coaching application, this is all AI-driven with large language models that says, okay, well, we know the right phrases to use at the certain times to help, basically remove some ambiguity about trying to explain something.

Because if a customer gets an unclear answer, this is going to make things worse. The idea here, of course, with machine learning is that it may seem simple at first, but the more you use these applications, they learn. So every time you have a virtual coaching session, you can also track how effective it was. And so now machine learning algorithms help make it better each time around. Next time it'll be a little more refined, a little clearer than it was the last time. The idea that you just keep, the intelligence keeps getting stronger the more you use these things. Those are reasonable examples to talk about what we're trying to get to. I have other examples with Verint. We'll get to them in a few minutes. But does that, is that kind of get at what you're looking for?

Chris Fine

Those are some good examples, and I can see how that would prove to be popular, especially you've got a whole group of folks entering the workforce that never had the training. Well, because coming out of the last five years between the pandemic and everything else, and the most crucial up and coming ages and experience levels in the workforce had very little training in the dynamics of this stuff. And so I could see how that might be really helpful. So thank you, that's good.

Jon Arnold

And that's an important point, Chris, by the way, with so many people coming out of the pandemic, they may have only worked virtually. This is again where this WorkVivo acquisition makes more sense because now, okay, we need to make these remote employees feel part of the team and more engaged. So you can also provide them, not just virtual water cooler experiences, but also you build a knowledge base about your organization's culture. And so now you can help, like in training for HR policies, you can guide them a little more intelligently.

What's the mix of our organizational culture here? What kind of varieties of people and backgrounds do we have and ages? And then they may have questions like, well, I'm a 20 something. How do I interact with someone who's, you know, 50 plus? And there might be some knowledge base like articles or explainer videos that they can tap and say, hey, this generation prefers this style of communication. Here are some tips to be more effective. Little things like that make them feel part of it.

And again, the AI piece is what pulls this knowledge together from all these sources and they can have these queries. This is where the conversational AI capability comes in, right? Because it's all automated. right? So they can ask the, ask the application, how do I communicate to an older person? Oh, well, okay, we'll give you some tips along the way. Now, the flip side to this, Chris, I'll just quickly mention one of the things that you get a little worried about where the eyebrow starts to go up is, for example, when talking about WorkVivo in particular, they have this element called the employee listening suite.

In other words, they're trying to pull information from all your conversations that will help basically better understand what your issues are in the course of your workday, how you're working, how you're engaging with other people. But then it starts to get a little darker because now what the organizations are also looking for is, especially for customer facing employees, They may have a certain kind of set of values and aspirations and outlooks of the world that define the culture they're trying to build in the organization. So this sounds a little bit like Big Brother, because now if you're expressing views that might run contrary to that, it's going to pick up on it. So this idea of a listening suite sounds a little scary to me.

Chris Fine

It does, yeah.

Jon Arnold

Right? So all of a sudden, well, this happiness concept only applies by, in the sense of how the employer is defining happiness. You'll be happy as long as you're toeing the party line, so to speak. So, whoa, wait a minute, that's not what I signed up for. As we know, there's things you've got to be mindful of as well, right?

Chris Fine

For sure. Well, I don't want to get dystopic here. So why don't we talk about Verint? But yes, thank you. That must have been an interesting session.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, and I got to tell you too, in terms of market momentum, I mentioned UCaaS growth is kind of flat, but they have been, this is another example of how they're getting it right. Over the past few months, Very recently, there have been two major players have made moves to back out of the market in terms of what they're doing. The first one is Twilio, who had a video SDK kind of capability that was not getting a lot of traction in the market. And Twilio, of course, has gone, has kind of, they hit a wall last year. They had their share of big layoffs and stuff and they've kind of scaled back their focus. They were spread it out too thin. So video is one of the kind of pieces of the pie that they've kind of backed out of. And the beneficiary of this is Zoom.

Twilio, you know, big player in a lot of ways, but now for any Twilio customer who is using their video SDK, it's now switched over to Zoom. So if they want to keep doing that, they have to now Zoom is the default for that application. So one, you know, where one pulls out, someone pulls ahead. And in this case, Zoom has been the beneficiary of that change. But maybe more importantly was a more recent announcement from Meta, which is, you know, Facebook, They have made their kind of moves into the business environment and the workplace. So they had an offering called Workplace, and it's been recently terminated and just abruptly dropped. And guess where that traction is going to?

Chris Fine

They just signed up for Zoom, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, so WorkVivo is kind of the equivalent of what Meta Workplace was supposed to be. Didn't get the traction, And guess what now is coming in Zoom's way is this, again, this kind of like exit becomes their entrance. So these are signs, Chris, I think that you know, where the chips are falling, the strong get stronger, so to speak. But when the big names like Meta back out, you know, that potentially opens up a lot of opportunity.

Again, Zoom is getting the traction in ways you might not have expected. So, they acquire WorkVivo. You wonder, well, why is this in the picture? Now they get this little bit of a potential windfall out of this exit. And so good for them. I think these are just more validations that Zoom is kind of getting it right to evolve past being a video player, right?

Chris Fine

Yeah, well, to me, being a video player now or what you might call standard video conferencing, which again, an analog island is amazing, right? Because how many years did we wait for it? But now it really is commoditized. Like any device you get is likely to be able to do it. But I do have one maybe concluding thought on Zoom so we can get to the other stuff.

One thing that I find very interesting about Zoom versus Teams is that Teams - and I'm sure Microsoft would dispute this - but I feel as though Teams is more suited for, not suited, but more entrenched in larger enterprises, because there are not many larger enterprises that aren't paying Microsoft for Office 365. And, you have a site license with Microsoft. It is what it is. You get Teams with it. So you're kind of already there and it's tied into all the other products that you're likely using all the time every day for all kinds of production work, unless you're totally one of the few, relatively few that are totally on like a G suite.

Whereas Zoom to me seems to be much more lightweight. Like I have a Zoom account we use for these, right? We record these on Zoom for, and it's great. It doesn't cost a whole lot. It's super powerful. And so I feel like this whole market that isn't just the Fortune 50 is a gigantic market and Zoom's very well positioned for that if you want something professional, but you don't necessarily want to sign on to all of the stuff with Office 365. Does that make any sense?

Jon Arnold

Well, yeah, And of course, you know, Microsoft Teams has kind of become the dominant productivity suite, especially as you say, in larger enterprises. So certainly, there's an ongoing kind of arms race with these big players to add more and more features to make their platform stickier. So Zoom is certainly, going up against that, but they also, of course, can integrate very well with Microsoft too. So they have this mentality about, Zoom is successful because it just works and they want to apply that same logic to the workplace where the workplace just works.

For that to happen, everything has to be really seamless and very intuitive and user friendly and all this stuff. And that seems to be very much their DNA. And you compare that to Teams; I think it'd be hard pressed to find anybody who says Teams is like that. And you could argue similar for other big platforms as well. So, you know, that simplicity, that user experience thing, Clearly, Zoom has got that part of the equation right. And that's paying off.

Chris Fine

You got to keep running though, because you know how it is with Microsoft. They take like three times to get anything right a lot of the time, but when they get it right, they just completely take over. And so, but I was trying to say that I think there are different market segments, forgetting about which one might be better or not better. I just think there's a lot of markets where Zoom is pretty natural for it. it's just taking on less. it's not like just free Google Meet, let's say, but it's not taking on all suite. And it just works really well. Even if you don't have an IT department, it works really well. It's kind of like Slack. Slack works that way too.

Jon Arnold

Yeah. they did a really good job outlining different buyer personas that they have to sell to and educate. Because if you just think of Zoom as a video platform, you're going to be kind of under selling what's possible. In other words, it's not just about technology, but the business side of how they go to market, how they engage with buyers, how they, how they bring the value also through the channels, right, to educate them about how to get into this kind of value proposition because it's much richer than just selling meetings, you know, that kind of thing.

Chris Fine

Okay.

Jon Arnold

So yeah, you know, interesting. It is, because I think again, a company that has, they're not, it's all in on AI and I think they're executing it pretty well. And I would say it's very similar here for Verint, which is a company that has been around for quite a while. They had their roots in WFM, you know, it's just strictly within the contact center space, but they've kind of retooled their whole offering again, around AI. And now their positioning is this idea of what they call CX automation. So CX is customer experience, and that is the kind of the, it's kind of like the Nirvana state you're trying to get to in the customer service space, where if you have a good customer experience, that's what's going to drive happiness back to Zoom again, but you know, customer satisfaction.

For contact centers, that requires them to do things differently because they have to be much more customer-focused rather than operationally focused. So all of their AI applications, it's all done by bots. So you have to buy in to get the Verint story, you have to buy into the idea that chatbots are an important part of the CX equation. If you can't bring yourself to that, then Verint isn't going to do much for you. So that is kind of one of the, I guess, one of the risks of going all in on AI and in particular this kind of aspect of AI of developing these bots.

So the whole notion is that the more of the customer experience you can automate, the happier the customer is going to be. I don't know if that's 100% true, Chris. I do know the more you can automate, the more efficient your operations will be, and that's a no-brainer. But I don't know yet how well that translates to customer satisfaction. I think that may take a little time to bear itself out. They certainly have their share of customer successes, but the premise of what they're doing, I think, totally makes sense, in that chatbots, again, through machine learning, they're continuously improving, right?

Every time you put a bot into your kind of workflow, it does a specific, every bot that they have has a specific function. Like it only does one thing. It doesn't automate everything. They have specific bots for specific needs. It could be things about transcription of, for call summaries, bots for coaching, like I mentioned, digital assistant earlier to help basically agents get through their calls faster, right? And you have bots about, routing self-service queries to an agent when the self-service guy or the self-service bot can't do anything more for the customer. Now, this may all sound like everyday stuff if you're a contact center vendor, and to a large extent it is.

But what's really interesting is much like a lot of the marketplace still thinks of Zoom as a video company, a lot of the contact center decision makers and buyers still think that the only way that they can improve their customer service is to like, what they say, rip and replace. In other words, to get all, take out all the legacy stuff and make a big mega investment in AI and all the new cloud capabilities. And because that's such a big chasm to cross, they don't do it. And so they just kind of bolt on things to try to like muddle through and that's not really a good way to go. So what they're trying to show these guys is that no, you can deploy these bots, and you can still have a premise-based infrastructure and still get the benefit. And as we heard, that's kind of a revelation for a lot of companies because they're not thinking enough in terms of what AI is about.

Because a lot of people assume that to use AI, you have to be cloud-based and have all the modern stuff in place. And that's not true. So they're another example of a company that's kind of a little ahead of the curve, trying to get the market to see the capabilities. But they have to walk the walk. That's why they view themselves so heavily into AI to deliver what these capabilities are. And then the market's got to kind of catch up and see, oh, that's what you mean by CX automation. I get it. But they're old school enough.

Just one more thing to say, Chris - they're old school enough to say, we need to prove it to you. So they have in their pricing model, their offer to the marketplace is, you have 120 days to see time to value. If you don't get the results that we think you should be getting by then, you don't pay. So they're kind of putting their money where their mouth is. That's how confident they feel in their AI capabilities. And again, you can do this when you're a little ahead of the curve and let the customer deploy and see for themselves what kind of results they get.

Then obviously, because they have enough success stories to share that it's working, once they know, because they know once the customer gets that, they're going to want to try more bots because they have dozens and dozens of them that are all-purpose built for specific things. So you start building up a portfolio of these bots then that cumulative impact of AI starts to really show up.

Chris Fine

It's interesting what you're saying, Jon, because I always listen and think while you're talking. And I think that the world of CX and contact centers is actually quite different and becoming more so than in the sort of regular collaborative workplace. And specifically, I think when you call a contact center, the definition of CX is almost how quickly and how accurately did they solve my question, right? I mean, you certainly don't want to be treated rudely, but the experience is how long did I have to wait? How long did, you know, how much did they hear what I said about my problem is? How little canned spam did I get in response, and how quickly was the problem actually solved?

Does that make sense? Because if that's true, then I look at and I think, I've experienced that bots can actually do the job, right? I was just thinking about two experiences I had not too long ago, one good and one bad, where the bad bot is just insufferable, terrible. They're pumping out the same crap that no matter how you ask a question, they didn't even understand the question. So that is disastrous for that company, whoever owns that bot.

But then on the other hand, I had another experience where I thought, you know what, that really saved me time. I didn't have to wait in line to talk to somebody and I could tell it was a bot and it just understood what I was asking a lot faster than I think most agents would be that were connected to the chat. So that is actually an area that I think has a lot of potential. That's my two cents or five cents there.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, maybe seven.

Chris Fine

Maybe 10?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, well, you know, it's a long-winded way for both of us to talk about what they've just boiled down into two words, CX automation.

Chris Fine

Yes.

Jon Arnold

Right. So I think that's a good branding thing, right? If you can clearly articulate what that means. But again, just like I talked about that listening capability for WorkVivo earlier that, oh, that sounds a little potentially could be creepy. This is all built on the premise that you are ready to use bots and not everybody is, but clearly, they're having enough success that does, you know, they're past that. But also this idea that you feel that the key to success and yeah, customer happiness is automation.

I always feel that to me a good experience is because it feels personalized, right? That whether it's a bot or an agent, you feel like they're listening to you, they know something about you, they're not just giving you off the shelf, you know, lip service. So can you get that from automation? I don't know. And maybe that's part of how we're, our demographic is becoming more and more digital, right?

More and more, that younger generation, that's how they think and relate to things. And maybe for them, that's what automation really is all about. And they're the future. So if that's what's working, that's what's working. But, off the top, maybe for us analog folks, that idea of automating everything in customer service seems a little, sounds a little clinical, right? But if you get the right balance, it can be great.

Chris Fine

Automation has two sides to it, right? Whether it's a factory or a call center or anything, right? There's one side of it that makes you think, well, they're just trying to save money on having more humanized interactions or whatever the more human-oriented version, the more custom quality of building, let's say a car or whatever, right? But the other side of it is if you just want something that is a repetitive process with a little bit of variation on each one, then automation is not necessarily a bad thing. It kind of depends on how you look at it.

And I would take a point of view, let's say, that personalization, I'm just not sure whether it's the main thing with CX. Now, I don't mean that they shouldn't have all your information, right? So if you mean like when you call a pretty high level kind of company and say, like a luxury goods or something and you say, it's me, Jon Arnold, Chris Fine, they're going to know all about what you bought and where you bought it and when you bought it and exactly what it is, and they're going to have a trained agent and all this kind of stuff. So yes, that kind of personalization, but if you could automate that, I'm not sure that has to be a person. I'm not sure.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, I agree. And the more these interactions become normalized - and they are becoming normalized - we won't think twice about it, right? It'll just, that's just going to be the way it is. But the underlying premise to all of this, and Verint does a very good job explaining this, they call it the gym. The idea that bots, again - you can get skeptical if you think bots are static. It's the same experience every time because they're trained to only do one thing.

No, these bots with machine learning, I keep using that phrase, but the bots continuously are trained because the more data you have and collect about the customer and in the contact center, the better you can train that bot to keep improving and getting a little more laser focused and being very situational specific, it understands the context of every scenario better than it did before. Well, okay, so that means that the bots get just like agents who are properly trained and want to learn, they're going to get better and better, just like the agents. So there's no reason why they couldn't deliver a fairly personalized, albeit automated experience. There's absolutely no reason why that couldn't happen.

Chris Fine

Right. And the automation could also help the agent. Like you could be in a situation where you still need that extra little bit of human intuition or whatever else that the agent would give a customer. But the more the agent has at their fingertips from the coaching, from the automation, the better the metrics on the call center, in every direction.

So I'll give an example, okay? There's a company that I deal with all the time to get parking spaces in New York City, which, you know, in a garage, which as you know, is a somewhat challenging thing. They're great. And there's about three companies that do this, but one of them has really good customer service. And when you need it is because when you get to a garage and they tell you they're full - even though they're not, right? Or they are, but they never bother telling anybody who made a reservation. All that kind of stuff just happens all the time. So this company, I'm not sure what they have connected to customer service. You do end up talking to a person, but they know everything, including what to tell you like, okay, here's the next place over. We're going to give you the same price. It's exactly here. We can send you a map. You'll be in there in 2 minutes. It's 5 minutes away.

They just have everything, which is critical when you're behind the wheel of a car and you're in the middle of traffic and all you want to do is what to do. So you could probably take that to any industry. And if you have that combination of the AI and the tools and the trained agents, or in a case where somebody doesn't have to talk to you in person, proper interface of some other kind, I think that really does improve the CX.

Jon Arnold

Good note.

Chris Fine

Yes, I think we have to. We have to.

Jon Arnold

Coming back to Eric Yuan, it's happy.

Chris Fine

Yes.

Jon Arnold

It's a good outcome.

Chris Fine

You know, he's right about that. I mean, we can argue what causes that or what helps to promote that, but I think he's right about that. And I think there are so few interactions one may have with various types of things that one has to accommodate in life that if it is happy, it's differentiated. And you get pretty loyal as a customer.

Jon Arnold

It never gets old. Okay, that takes us to time, folks. Thank you all for listening and hope you enjoyed our podcast and you'll continue as we explore the future of work here on Watch This Space. You can access our episodes if you don't know by now at www.watchthisspace.tech, or wherever you subscribe to your podcasts. And if you like what we're doing here, we'd love it if you leave a review or a rating and comments about how we're doing or topics you want to see in the future. And with that, I am Jon Arnold.

Chris Fine

And I'm Chris Fine. Thank you for staying with us on a bit of a longer discussion than we had planned, but we hope it's helpful to you. Thank you, Jon, as always. And to all, stay tuned next month for another episode of Watch This Space.

Companies mentioned:

Avaya, Cisco, HPE, Microsoft, Twilio, Verint, WorkVivo, Zoom

The Future Is Digital - Exploring Innovation For Workplace Security And Visual Collaboration

Audio links for original podcast:

·      Here, on the dedicated Watch This Space website

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

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Jon Arnold

Welcome to Watch This Space, the 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

And I'm Chris Fine. I'm an independent consultant and strategist specializing in workplace technology, IoT, and security. My company is Integrative Technologies. Hi, Jon. Hi, everybody. Welcome to another edition of Watch This Space. Great to talk to you again, as always. How are you doing? What's new?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, doing well. You know, business as usual, busy as usual - except that I'm not traveling at all during the month of April because I had some minor foot surgery, which has kept me sidelined and I had five different events actually I could have gone to in April, but I've been home working and being busy that way. So I got nothing this month, Chris, for events as I usually do, but there'll be plenty of new stuff coming up in May and June - and we have something else we're going to talk about today. But as a lead-in, you got to go to an interesting event during April. So maybe we'll start off on that front and see what you had to bring from what you saw there.

Chris Fine

Sure. I want to be sure I give you your time to talk about what you want to talk about. So, I went to a conference called ISC West, which is one of the signature trade shows for the security business, not so much cybersecurity, more physical security, which as you know, is an interest of mine. And I've spent time in my career working in that field. And I view that as being very adjacent to other stuff that we talk about, like, you know, smart buildings and IoT in the workplace.

And I have to tell you, this was a huge show. It seemed to be more crowded than ever, bigger than ever. And I'm really seeing a lot more. It's like when we go to the communications trade shows where you talk about them, where you're seeing more and more AI. And this is an area where there's just such low-hanging fruit to get more modern and to merge with other sources of building data and to help measure the occupancy and analytics on a workplace, but also to use AI for things like what is called in the field anomaly detection, which is basically what's not right at this moment.

Because if you think about, there's a lot of security where it's like forensic sort of stuff, right? Where you go back and you look at video footage or you do stuff like that. And there's definitely a role for that. But what you always want to do is try to get situational awareness of what's going on through various inputs that you have, whether it be access control, whether it be video or whatever it is. And you're starting to see products now that are much more advanced in doing that, because the way you had to do that in the past was you really had to create essentially a huge number of individual integrations to all these non-standard technologies. And then you had to put that into a huge sort of if this, then that logic engine to figure out where the anomalies might be.

Now you can use AI to automate a lot of that. And that's a big breakthrough. The other thing that's happening in that business is just more and more of the emergence of standards in areas like identity. You know, there are companies where they're starting to make identity that just flows across everything. Everything from getting in the building to logging onto a computer to doing everything else. And that's like a huge thing in terms of the user experience and the overall level of security. So it was a pretty fascinating show. I hadn't been in a few years. I was supposed to go last year, but I ended up getting sick. But it was good to be there. And it's just an area that we don't talk about all the time.

Jon Arnold

You know, Chris, I wish I could have gone. I love the idea of going to events in spaces that are not as, current with the technologies as the world we live in, which we just take it for granted. Everybody has, cloud and AI and 5G and everything. And, it's like, well, what do you mean you don't have it? But you get out in the real world, and of course, the vendors, the Ciscos, the Avayas, the Microsofts of the world, the reality is they'll tell you that a lot of the world, is still premise-based. They're still using hardware. You know, it hasn't gone away entirely.

So if you're a millennial or a Gen Z who only knows digital, you haven't taken over the world just yet. And you know, I think that kind of is a nice bit of an extension from what we talked about last month, if you remember, Chris, kind of us coming out of the analog physical world where now everything seems to be virtual and online and can't see it, can't touch it. And things like, you know, just the term, right, physical security, you know, it's like bolts on doors, right? It's bank vaults and banks. I mean, things that are reminders of a time when everything was brick and mortar and you got to keep the goods safe. You got to keep the building safe. And those spaces have every benefit to gain from new technology as the things in the native digital world, right?

Chris Fine

Yeah, I agree with you, Jon. And when you think about what is traditionally known as physical security, it's a multi-tens of billion-dollar business. It's huge business. And they're going through a lot of change right now like everyone else because For a long time, it tended to have certain underlying assumptions, like so many other of the spaces you and I talk about of hard physical perimeters, this company has this lease in this part of the building.

And then the second is that everybody comes in every day. And that's where most of the work is done, that if you're out of the office, you're traveling, you're going to a trade show or something, you're not just like working on a regular basis outside the office. So when you have a whole technology that's designed around securing the perimeter, it gets to be more complicated when the perimeters aren't as hard as they used to be. But it's still a challenge. You still want to keep, you know, if you're going to have an employee or any other person in a facility, even if it's part time, you still need to find a way to secure it and to make it safe and to respond to events that happen.

It's a whole new world of having to do that without hard perimeters and where not every big tenant is investing in a completely replicative security system, where it's more shared services and things like that, like we talk about all this other stuff. So it's just another multi-billion-dollar business that's on the cusp of a lot of change, you know?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, it just makes you rethink almost everything, you know? the more things become virtualized and software-based and application-based and cloud-based, there's probably going to be in a way kind of less things to actually steal physical things, right? I'm wondering, does that change the need for certain types of physical security? you think like, digital generation, they don't, they don't, they don't buy records, they don't buy books, they don't, they don't have, they don't collect things.

So it's, like bad for business for, break and enter people, right? There's nothing to steal if they go to these people's condos. In our homes, there's lots to steal because we accumulated things in our generation. It's just a very, it's just another kind of way of looking at how technology is really reshaping everything and what's the value anymore? And how do you protect your possessions or curate what you have? We never went to school to learn about stuff like this. It's just the way the world is evolving.

Chris Fine

Well, you could argue that in commercial facilities, like an office building, theft is really only a very minor part of physical security, right? It's also, it's mostly about not letting unauthorized people in and then safety and only letting people go where they're really authorized to go and then keeping an eye on everything with surveillance and a few other things as well. And, tracking certain kinds of building events that are security threats like fire.

But I'm telling you that even like if you look at businesses that have sprung up that didn't exist, when before, 10 years ago, before the whole wave started, digital lockers, right? Digital locks on doors, which is now a multi-billion-dollar business, right? Where you just have a locker and you come in, you use that unified ID. So in the three days you're in the office, you just put your stuff in there. You don't have to keep a key. We know where you put your stuff if we need to, if we're security, right? And there's all kinds of other stuff you can do with this combined with IoT that makes things safer because people do bring valuable things like laptops in. And if not everybody's in and you don't have guards around as much, you need to protect it even better.

So it's like you think of it and you think, well, there's fewer tangible assets around - people are around less. But if you set up a home office, that's usually, even in your own residence, that's a few $1000 worth of stuff. Very often, if you really think about it with the computer, somebody's paying it, whether it's your employee or you, and you don't want that stuff taken. And you want to be safe when you're at home working. Forget about taking anything - you just don't want any intruders. You want cyber safety. You don't want somebody breaking in there and logging into your computer and causing and extracting information. So there's just a whole lot of dimensions to this that were simpler at least when it was just all workplace, when it was all office buildings, but it's a fascinating area.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, sure is. Makes me think of when you talk about digital locks as opposed to using, you know, keys or even combination to get in, you get into biometrics and all the other forms of authentication to unlock things. Just very briefly, this reminds me of my buddy Dave Michels, who I think you know. He's in New Jersey, by the way, for now. Anyways, he's an early buyer of Fisker, which is a model of an electrical car, electric vehicle, an EV, that has run into some issues financially. They're not sure the company's going to make it, but he's in this small cohort of first-generation buyers and he had an issue. He loves the car, but the company is, you know, that's another story.

But the issue he had is the car was sitting in his garage because he also lives part-time outside of the US. It sat in his car so long and his garage so long that the battery died, and he was not able to even open the door because everything is connected. So if you don't have connectivity or battery life, your devices are useless. He had no way to enter the vehicle. He had no way to start the vehicle, to charge it or anything. Eventually he had to get a guy from Fisker to come out and do a software update and get it going again. But that's also the, there's upsides and downsides to going from that analog model that we know so well to the digital world where it's the only way of doing things.

Anyway, this kind of takes us into what I want to also talk about today. Yes, of course. It isn't an event, but it builds on what you've been saying, Chris, and what you saw at ISC about physical space. So we're going to shift gears, folks, and we have to use our imaginations now for the next 10 minutes or so. I did a briefing recently with a company called Welo. which is W-E-L-O, and it's a bit like Second Life for business meetings. So it's not quite immersive, it's not metaverse, but it's kind of a couple of steps away from that, where it's a 2D environment, and they really call it 2 1/2 D, because it's a little more than just a flat screen, where they have done these physical recreations in a virtual environment of an office space. So it's a way to visualize, to bring the visual element into virtual working and virtual collaboration.

So the screenshot that I have that I will include in my newsletter, which is a companion to the podcast when it comes out in the beginning of the month to see this. And if you really want to know, folks, just drop us a line. I can get you the screenshot. Anyways, I took that during my briefing with his name is Chance Myers from this company called Welo. And they've been working in this space for many years. And it's kind of coming to life now a little bit more.

You know, there's been a lot of shift towards these virtual environments, of course, from pandemic. And the social network kind of vibe to this hasn't quite caught on yet. You hear about these legless avatars, right? And these kind of virtual meeting room spaces, but they're only like, these are the ones that exist in the markets today are largely specific to what you're doing in the moment. So it's a meeting room and that's where the group meets.

What Welo is showing here, there's a lot of variations on this, but it's more like the whole office environment. So you can see in one shot all the spaces, the layouts, and then when meetings are happening for those who are registered. So when your organization members are all on this, you can see where everybody is and you can see where the meetings are happening and who's with who. And there's ways to join meetings, to leave meetings. Each person has an avatar that you can move around and say, okay, I'm done with this meeting. I'm going to go to this next meeting. So you can take your avatar, and you can do a virtual knock on the door, and they'll let you in and then you join their group. And then, while this is all going on, you can view multiple, you know, simultaneous sessions going on, but you only hear what your session is.

So we're having like we're talking now, we hear each other, but say there's a meeting happening next door. We don't hear what they're doing. But if we go into their meeting and join it, then of course we're part of the audio and video stream. So it's very much collaboration based. When you're using this platform, you can bring in the collab tools, whether it's Teams or WebEx, and have all the apps with you. So it's just adding a visual dimension to what you're already doing when you're collaborating. But it really helps, especially the younger generation that's kind of already very video savvy, this is a natural extension of just adding the visual element to how we work, where you can not just see what's going on in your group, but you can see everything else that's going on in the organization, the physical space itself.

For example, Chris, if you were in an office tower and you had multiple floors, you could have visual representations of each floor. And you can have this in a generic way, or you can customize it to show what your actual space looks like, right? You can virtualize that into this environment. So it looks and feels very much like you're in the office, as if you were at your place of employment.

So there's a lot of possibilities here to kind of make it feel more engaging for people who aren't physically in the space, right, to make that virtual work experiences a little more real, a little more relatable to everything around you. And of course, you can add all the warm and fuzzy stuff, you know, the plants and the furniture and, you know, in the outside spaces, you know, you can see some green space and sunlight and stuff like that. It's trying to check a lot a lot of boxes here and I don't really know where this is going. It's a bit of an open book concept right now, but it is definitely starting to find an audience. So I'm going to stop and give this over to you, Chris, because you're looking at the same visual, I am for ideas.

Chris Fine

Well, Jon, I would say it's super interesting. I mean, it would be nice to try to get a link or something to put in the comments on the podcast or something to be able so people could see this, but let me just try to describe it a little bit, for our listeners. So it looks a little bit like what we call in architecture a dollhouse view, right? It's like looking down into a dollhouse, but it's very advanced in terms of showing the layout of the space. And it's a very comfortable view. And the participants, the people who are active in the space are not, as Jon said, they're more like tiles or icons. They're not fake figures. So it doesn't look hokey. It's more like a really friendly map of the space.

I could see as being super useful is in several areas. One is to replicate the physical space that you have. And not only does that allow people to feel that they're in the space with the other people who might physically be present, but also that allows I think it's an incentive for them to look at some cool space and say, hey, maybe I'd like to be there the two days that they want me to be in there. It doesn't substitute for it, but kind of makes it pretty enticing.

The other thing is it's going to allow you to play with new arrangements of space or just create a virtual conferencing center or collaboration floor. And this is actually super useful to an enterprise because It allows the facilities and real estate and their architects that they work with and everything else to start to get how people feel about different kinds of space without necessarily making all the physical investment in it up front because it's very expensive to reconfigure space. So I think, I mean, my positive reaction to it, I'm usually not that keen on virtual environments, but my positive reaction to this is it seems like a happy medium between nothing and full-on cartoons, I think.

Jon Arnold

That's a good way to kind of sum it up, right? Because if it looks too cartoonish, like it's been built by a gamer, it's like it's not relatable to people who want to have a serious workspace or maybe have more of an enterprise mindset as opposed to a startup mindset. But yeah, the whole configuration of the physical space, I think is really important. And this is a good way to also see, well, what spaces are people using? and how are they configuring maybe the setup of the room and what peripherals are they using in the space? And it also, yes, it could borderline on surveillance, of course, right? You can see, well, why, you know, hey, Chris, you're supposed to be in this meeting now, but you're over here at your desk. So it could be a little bit intrusive that way or you're giving away a little too much information that might not reflect well on your work habits or whatever, that's possible.

So there's elements there that you have to be, I guess, a little more mindful of and also, of course, to make everyone in the workplace know what the boundaries are for how this is going to be used and privacy concerns, that kind of thing. But it's definitely getting, they're finding use cases where they weren't expecting it. So they're finding, for example, community centers. Not an enterprise per se, but more like in, cities and towns as ways for people to, for the public, for citizens to kind of maybe join a public hearing or something like that, where they could be invited into the space like that. I think it could be very good for distributed workforces over a large geographies, right, where you can just physically, I'm sorry, virtually have your presence in the space regardless of where you're physically located.

And it's not that we don't have these tools, but I like the approach that they're taking here to it, that it's a very modular setup, right? You can reconfigure it very easily. For listeners who are interested in learning a little more, and I realize we're just talking and you're not seeing anything, so the company is Welo, W-E-L-O. So if you want to check out the website to see what they have on tap. They are also, by the way, in the Zoom marketplace. So that's one place where they have got partnership in the collaboration space, right? So if you look in there, you'll find them as a way to add that visual dimension to what, you know, to what Zoom customers are already doing.

So a lot of this is trial and error for sure, seeing what's going to stick. But I think they're on to something here. And there's really, no boundaries here for what you can do with this or kind of the experiences you can create. And I just like this idea that you can combine this visual, even though it is virtual, but the visual element to the collaboration that we're already doing. We’re already using text, we're already using voice, right? These are all real-time modes. And I think this just helps to make it feel more, personalized than just, talking to people on a Zoom call is okay, like we're seeing each other, nothing wrong with that. But this is, I think you'll agree, Chris, it's a more kind of holistic experience.

Chris Fine

I agree, Jon. And I think we probably need to add a little disclaimer that this isn't an ad. We're mentioning this because we think it's representative of an approach that we think we're going to see more of, which is different ways of visualizing remote participants along with physical participants in space. And we think that that's generally a positive trend. I think we're a little bit skeptical about being in a cartoon world. But this is essentially placing people onto a sophisticated visualization of a floor plan, and then providing several capabilities.

And as far as security goes, I'm sure there's several levels you could think about this, right? You could just not be able to see people outside of your gathering, depending on how they set the settings. You could block a room off, you know, put a mask on an area if it's being used, and you just don't necessarily see everybody who's in it. Exactly. But I do believe that we need to look at all approaches that allow remote and local participants to have equity in participation and feeling involved.

This is also a way that's kind of light that doesn't require VR glasses or anything like that, but it gives you a way to visualize where everybody is. So it's kind of subtle, but I think it's an interesting approach. I don't think they're the only ones who are going to do it. There are other companies who could if they had the vision, but it's an interesting approach. I think it's definitely a watch this space, don't you?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, well said. And I'm glad you brought up the inclusive element to this that, you know, if you required goggles, forget it, right? It's just, that's a luxury a lot of people can't afford, don't want to use, aren't interested. So this way, as I mentioned, this 2.5 D experience dimensional is a little better, as you say, in the cartoons, but it's not the metaverse. We don't need that for this, right? And you don't need a ton of computing power to do this.

So I think it works on a lot of levels. And yes, I'm glad you mentioned that this is not an ad for Welo by any stretch. We're just saying this is a pretty cool example of where we see things going and how collaboration is a future of work theme of how the workplace is evolving. And yes, you just have to take our word for it to visualize what we've been talking about. But you'll find all this stuff when you do get the next episode.

And if you get my newsletter, you'll have this image as well to look at. with that, we are on time, Chris, so we're going to leave it at that for today. So thank you all for listening. This is basically the end of our May edition, and we hope you enjoyed it and will continue with us as we explore the future of work here on Watch This Space. You can access our episodes at www.watchthisspace.tech, or wherever you subscribe to your podcasts. And if you like it, leave us a review or rating suggestions for future topics. We're always interested to hear your thoughts. And with that, I'm Jon Arnold.

Chris Fine

And I'm Chris Fine. Jon, great to talk to you as always. Whoever's listening, thank you. And we appreciate your listenership. And as Jon said, we're always happy to hear from you. And we do act on suggestions and comments that we get. So with that, we'll say goodbye till next month. Stay tuned for another edition of Watch This Space and have a good month. We'll see you again soon.

Companies mentioned:

Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft, Welo, Zoom

Takeaawys From Enterprise Connect, And How Did We Get Here With AI From The Days Of PBX And Legacy Telephony?

Audio links for original podcast:

·      Here, on the dedicated Watch This Space website

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

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Jon Arnold

Welcome to Watch This Space, the 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 is Integrative Technologies. Hi, Jon. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Watch This Space. So what is new? You've got a big story this month because you've been to the mecca of enterprise communications, Enterprise Connect. Sounds like it's a really exciting event.

Jon Arnold

Yes, Chris, that is the story. And just so folks, the way we do our podcast is we record it a little before the end of the month and then it's ready to go for when our newsletter goes out, JAA's Communications and Collaboration Review. And we release them usually on the first Tuesday of the month. This is a month where the dates line up nicely for me to just get back off the plane at 1:00 in the morning yesterday to record today. So we have it ready to go.

This will be a very timely podcast to talk about, while the highlights of Enterprise Connect are still fresh. So for those of you who do not know, as you heard off the top, I'm an independent tech analyst, and communications, collaboration, contact center are the themes that I touch on in my work as an analyst, and Chris is not that far off that either, right?

Chris Fine

That's right. I mean, my topics tend to be workplace technology and the tie-in between technology and real estate and things like that, which is a major area of which is communications and collaborations technology.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, so not only do we follow these things closely, but we've been living it for the past 20 plus years. So there is definitely a large cohort of people who have been in the tech industry a long time. And where we're at today, it is really all about AI, but the pace of change and innovation now is so much faster than it was in the past. So for example, this show, which is called Enterprise Connect, used to be called, I think, PBX Connect or something like that in the early days when the field of communications technology was largely about phone systems. The PBX and right, Chris, that's so much out of your DNA, right?

Chris Fine

Yeah, absolutely. And people who don't remember that or didn't experience it got to remember that was a huge business and it imploded. The traditional PBX business imploded within five years with the advent of IP technology, internet technology. But when you go back, if you think about enterprise IT, you would have a whole group that was basically in charge of running, installing, maintaining that equipment, right? I mean, that was a distinct group. And it's now all just blended into the other aspects of networking for the most part, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, it's like what you take for granted - I mean generally our listeners, but especially anybody under 40 - you can very easily take things like click to call, web chat on your PCs and your phones for granted. I mean, who dials a phone number anymore? But that's how big telephony used to be. It was such a fundamental industry. And interestingly, Chris, because so much was tied up into that technology, and as you say, the manpower and resources required to support it was really extensive. Interestingly, this is a technology that basically remained totally static from the day you installed it to when it basically died 20 plus years later.

Chris Fine

Certainly in terms of the fundamental way it worked. I mean, you could argue that there were generations of the equipment that went from electromechanical essentially to purely electronic, but it was still basically doing the same thing, which was what we would call circuit switching. It would connect one endpoint with another endpoint by essentially directly connecting it wires became digital forms of this for sure, but it was still basically doing that direct connection as opposed to using a generic type of network like IP networking to convey this kind of information versus any other kind of information.

I don't know if that's clear, but that's a basic change that it went through. And when it was dedicated equipment, it was always expensive and that's pretty much all it did. Whereas today, the equipment, with the exception of literally a telephone on your desk, such as that remains, is not always dedicated. It's, you know, the equipment you and I are using right now to record this, could be the equivalent of a telephone, or it could be recording a song, it could be recording a podcast, it could be doing anything, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, it's just digital inputs. That's all it is now.

Chris Fine

But it's still a big industry, right, Jon?

Jon Arnold

I mean, the footprint is still so large. And yes, there are Nortel phones out there that are still working as they should. And this is kind of the, you know, the double-edged sword of when back in the day when hardware was built so well, it really was built to last. And that, of course, is one of the reasons why it was such an expensive form of investment. But of course, that is totally out of line with how things work today. And honestly, Chris, and we've said this before, I can't think of any other form of technology today since then that has remained so static for so long. Nothing stands still anymore, right?

Chris Fine

Maybe electric power.

Jon Arnold

Well, I'm talking about communications.

Chris Fine

No, I think that's true. I think that's true. Although it's funny about communication. Sometimes it has a very long tail on it, you know, but this is the classic example. Like it takes a long time to go away, like fax machines, right? And teletype machines, which believe it or not, there are still banks out there that communicate that way, like for wire transfers and things like that, although they get less every year, but it's like a really long But when you were talking about the phones, I'm thinking, yeah, they're out there, but I see less and less of them. Sure.

Jon Arnold

And used less and less even when they're there. That's a lot of generational changes there. But this is just a bit of a long preamble to what was going at Enterprise Connect this week, which is now this show has become increasingly defined by AI - and forget about a product that lasts 20 years or an application that is basically unchanged over that amount of time. That whole concept is so unthinkable with today's technology. And more than ever before this year, AI has been the story. And it's very clear now that so much so that my understanding is that the producers of this event, Informa, are looking to do a standalone AI event in the West Coast later this year.

And so it just shows you as we started off, Chris, saying how this used to be a show just about the PBX. And I say it's not just about AI, but it's AI through everything now. We're so far beyond telephony being enough to build a business around. I mean, it's like a third or fourth string concept today - there are so many other layers of communications that are driving the workforce today. And when we talk about, future work and hybrid work and all that, you got to communicate. I mean, this is why this industry is so important because at the heart of everything we do is communication. You know, what we do is important, but communication is what is the glue that allows us to work independently and of course, in groups and teams. And that's why shows like this are so important.

Chris Fine

This is intriguing. So for the listeners, when you say, a separate AI show and it's all about AI, can you help us understand what is so big that's transforming this particular industry? You know, that's what you said about, they want to do a separate show, and it was the main theme of the show. That says to me, there's a lot of market cap in this. There's a lot of revenue in this that; there's a lot of competitive necessity in this. So what is the this for AI in communications? It doesn't have to be one thing, and I don't want to put you on the spot, but that's a big thing to say that this show is basically about AI. So what is that really?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, it's the way that AI is transforming how communications applications are built, what they do, and how they're used. So AI, as we've talked about in other, earlier episodes, AI is about data, right? So the more data you have, the more you can basically build and fine tune your models that are built on machine learning and natural language understanding, all the building blocks of AI that allow you to basically, at the heart of it is the idea you're allowing human communication to interface with machines and machine-based communication. And ultimately, this is really driving organizations to do more things with AI to automate. That's really at the heart of everything.

So when you ask, what is the this in AI, I really think it just comes down to automation. And I hate to be cynical, but cost savings is a big part of it. And this is the kind of double-edged sword of AI because a lot of people see that and say, oh, this is about cutting jobs. In the end, for certain functions, that is what's going to happen. But on the other side of it, of course, is when you're using AI in a more effective way, you're allowing more things to be automated so people can do their best work without being weighed down with all of the mundane things that really can suck up our whole day, whether you're a worker inside an office, whether you're a frontliner in a hospital, or of course, whether you're an agent in a contact center.

That's really the central message for what AI is being viewed as. I hate to say it, for some people, it's a big silver bullet idea. It's going to solve all our problems. But the smarter people are looking at it very strategically, but also tactically to say, there are specific use cases, things we want to automate to make our workflows better, to make our employees burn out less, that kind of thing. So there are very good, practical use cases where AI can really help.

But you know, the gap between reality and expectations, you know, is still a thing. We haven't got to the top of the mountain yet by any stretch. But clearly this is where the vendors are going with this. And when I say the vendors, when it's we're talking Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, that's you want to swim upstream against that. Good luck.

Chris Fine

I don't think you can, but I also think there's two main branches of AI that are involved in this picture. Interested what you think. One branch is a better version of what AI has been doing for a while, which is essentially responsive, I call it, where it's going to allow you to look up information better. It's going to correlate things better. It's going to do all of the things that, you know, as a radically improved statistical machine, which it is underneath, probably people disagree with that. But, you know, this traditional form of just connecting information better and, for example, in a contact center, helping solve problems better, that's one.

But then the other is generative. which is, in most other fields considering AI today, that's the huge area of interest and where people think it really is going to be a breakthrough. And did you see that at Enterprise Connect? Like was it had vendors and products made the breakthrough to having AI generate the communications as opposed to just better respond to things? Do you see the difference?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, that was one of the core messages. I do an annual talk on the state of speech tech in the enterprise. And that is one of the big trends or kind of shifts that's happened now. We've gone from what you'd call a first-generation model of AI, where it is about what you've just described, Chris. It's actually giving the inputs that the machines can understand and do something with. Now that it's improved to the point where it can now give us stuff back. So rather than feed the machine, which is what we've been doing, now it has enough, whatever you want to call it, critical mass, intelligence, quote unquote, to do feedbacks. And that's the generative part of AI. And that part gets to be interesting because now, yeah, not only do you get literal transcriptions and translations of real time communication, but now it comes back to you with summaries.

This is one of the big features that all the collaboration vendors were touting. Now you get meeting summaries, right, where it will distill the most important things that came out of a meeting that are relevant to you. And it uses AI to, it gets to know your work style, your needs, your team members, all the things that it knows to look for that apply to your job and your milestones and whatever. So there's a lot of efficiency that comes from that. And of course, you're using the generative aspect of this to write memos for you to dictate, you don't even have to write them anymore, the emails. You can just give a few cues to an engine and it will write your emails for you in a certain tone or style.

I talked about this yesterday, actually, where if you have upward communication to your boss, you need to say things a little differently than maybe to a junior who you're just training now, right? So tone, intent, all of these things that make communications a very human thing, AI has to understand how to do that. And that's going to take a lot of training, a lot of horsepower, a lot of money, but that's the road it's going down. So I agree. It gets very interesting outside of workplace stuff when you get into the areas like medical research, where you're looking to solve diseases and things.

AI can be very, very effective in terms of aggregating information from all kinds of sources and identifying those patterns and picking out the few pieces and then generating knowledge from that. That's kind of the ideal where we're trying to go with this. But boy, Chris, we could mine this a long time. But I just hope our listeners get a sense of why AI has kind of been taking over everything now.

Chris Fine

Maybe here's an example that, I mean, you cited, I think, a very good use case of taking notes and summarizing meetings, which I'm starting to see as well, meetings that I'm in. So if you think about it, if the generative AI understands what's going on enough to create a summary, then I think a day is coming very soon where you're going to have attendees at meetings that are not people, more like the computer on Star Trek or I mean, not a good example, but an evil example, HAL 9000, right?

Where from 2001, where computers listening to everything. And you could be in a meeting in Star Trek and say, computer, find out anywhere in the galaxy that we found these two coincidences. And maybe that relates to the situation we're in. And It will have been listening the whole time, so the computer knows exactly what context you mean, and it's going to come back with an answer. And I think if I were to predict the next step here from what you're saying, I think that you're going to have some helpful presence in a meeting that is not a human being. And the other aspect of what you said, which I thought was really interesting, is taking notes on meetings is incredibly onerous and it's notoriously unreliable. And nobody likes doing that.

And it's been probably 40 years since the loss of the kind of staff you used to have, like they would take notes in shorthand and then type them up and send them out. We haven't had that for a really long time. So it's up to the hapless participants to try to take notes while they're trying to participate at the same time. In this case, the AI really does help and it probably increases the accuracy and it helps for people who couldn't come to the meeting and it helps memorialize follow-ups from the meeting, right, which is a key aspect of notes. So it hasn't really taken anybody's job away there. It's made things better, but the next step is where the computer is actually going to be in the meeting

Jon Arnold

Yeah, for sure. We're going to have my bot talk to your bot and, we'll have bot farms and all this stuff. And each one, by the way, will be infused with whatever persona you want to give it, right? So this is where we're edging into the metaverse territory here, Chris. I'm going to I want to cut that off because we're never going to get out of this.

Chris Fine

So what else do you need to say? I'm going to shut up at this point.

Jon Arnold

No, this is all good. And we, you know, listeners, this is just scratching the surface, but it's very interesting stuff, even for people like me, and we've been doing this a long time. I will just say very quickly that, because Enterprise Connect is what I call the Super Bowl of our industry, this is where all the vendors make their big announcements, and there is a definitely kind of an arms race going on with everyone, all the big guys trying to match each other with feature for feature. So, you name it, all the big players, both in collaboration and in contact center, all had, this is where they make their big announcements.

So, Microsoft, their big thing is Copilot and that's their kind of, they used to have the paper clippy guy right in your Outlook and all your Microsoft applications. Very annoying, right? But this is like paper clippy 2.0, but far more advanced, I think far more intrusive. And the messaging that Microsoft is pitching, it's very compelling, but it's like they're trying to make AI kind of, they're trying to infuse it in everything you do. They want Copilot, like tracking everything in your workday and your workflow.

The other vendors aren't going quite that far, but interestingly, Microsoft is charging $30 a month per user for this capability, whereas a lot of the other vendors are giving it away at this point. We'll have to see on the business level how this all plays out. But Cisco, Zoom, they're all the big guys. Amazon are kind of keeping pace with all of their announcements. which is all interesting to see. The contact center space is absolutely no different with Nice and Genesys and even Talkdesk and RingCentral. I can't overlook these guys. They're still very much a key player in this space. All of them, Five9, it's like go up and down the line. They all made very big announcements at the show and they're all more or less along the same lines, Chris.

The common thread is they're all trying to show you how far along the curve they are with AI enablement. And that's the story people want to hear. But the flip side is, how much of this AI messaging can you absorb? And do you really want to hear? Because we all know AI is still a work in progress. It hasn't conquered the world yet. So it's back to many other generations of tech innovation where the vendors are kind of leading the charge. And frankly, at this point, I can't imagine how customers have little alternative to do this.

Yes, there's a lot of prem-based customers out there and that doesn't go away. Avaya had a very interesting announcement partnering with Zoom and that's a great example of how prevalent premise-based technology still is because what Avaya is seeing that a lot of their customers who have not gone to Teams already Zoom is kind of becoming the second, I wouldn't say the consolation prize, but they're certainly becoming like the second mainstream alternative. So when their customers go to Zoom, what they've done is they're partnering now with Zoom where they have some kind of a hybrid offering that their Aura platform for desktop, for prem-based telephony can stay integrated with the desktop applications that Zoom is running.

That allows their install base of customers, of course, to migrate to cloud, but also, they're not going to get rid of their prem-based infrastructure just yet. So this is kind of a bridge to kind of keep it all going. Like you were saying before, Chris, when they've built up these really expensive, complicated premise-based deployments that need a lot of care and feeding, well, you can't innovate off of that anymore, but you can't throw it away yet either when it's still working.

Chris Fine

Yeah, I agree with you, Jon, but I would go one step further. I'm thinking about what I see out there in my world. I see a lot of companies really struggling to understand the role of the office and how to get people in it and what do people really want to do and what's the most effective use and how much do you need. And I got to tell you, one of the most common things that comes up in these discussions actually is what is often called AV. Which is how do you really manage communication collaboration when anybody could be any place and where some people are together and some people aren't?

I still think that that's a big frontier. And I think AI can be applied to that, for example, in working to promote more of what is called meeting equity, like where the remote people get the same presence as the local people. And I'm not necessarily talking about metaverse because I don't think the answer is necessarily to just throw everybody into a cartoon universe. Because that's not going to help people get back to premises and to the office. If they can put the goggles on anywhere, they are, it's kind of what's the point of being there.

Jon Arnold

Yeah.

Chris Fine

You know? But I feel as though, you know, it's everybody's talking about the cloud and AI, but you just, when you're trying to actually do this, if you're a designer or an architect, or workplace technology manager or a subject matter expert, you're very often just dealing with what's happening in the physical space where people are supposed to work, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, a lot of that. And I was on another panel as a panelist instead of the leader where the topic was employee experience and how AI is impacting that. And that's exactly the kind of thing we were talking about, Chris. How do you create an environment that brings people together? And it's really, really hard. One of the things I was pushing back on, they were asking about productivity, how you use these tools to keep people more productive.

I'm becoming more and more of the mindset that measuring personal productivity, the way you measure effectiveness of agents in a contact center with KPIs, I think it's really, really almost impossible to do now because there's such a non-standardized environment for work now, whereas contact centers are very kind of controlled, strong set of metrics that everybody uses and adopts. It's very easy to measure performance for contact center agent, but workflows are so fluid, it's so hard to standardize. I'm just wondering if it's a viable concept to keep kind of building solutions around this idea of personal productivity. This just speaks to how the whole concept of work and workplace is really being impacted big time. And AI is, you know, kind of facilitating to make it happen faster.

Chris Fine

Yeah, I think it's a tough question because, there are some personal productivity, as you mentioned, is a different flavored question depending on the nature of the job, right? A lot of call center productivity, I would argue, is similar in nature to factory productivity. It was the idea of Taylorism and scientific measurement of throughput on an assembly line, which caused a massive rebellion ultimately and was proven not to be that effective, right? Measuring individual operations, and it led to a lot of mind-numbing jobs. that were just, you're in charge of tightening this nut on a transmission, for example, and you just like you could go completely insane if you have to do that.

And in manufacturing, the Japanese and some other leading voices really revolutionized a lot of that and led to different productivity measurements that were not just about how many bolts did you screw on in an hour. And I think there's some of that in knowledge work too, right? There's one question about operational measurements like call centers where you really need a lot of them, but you don't want to make them like Taylorism was.

But I think when it comes to more work process, white collar type of jobs, knowledge worker kind of jobs, you're right. You need to have some idea of how things are going with people because otherwise you could get surprised in a negative way. Like if you just said, all right, go ahead, do whatever you want, do however you have to do it within guidelines, and then you have to deliver objective X in three weeks, right?

You probably need some ability to monitor how that's going. There are some people where you know that if you send them, they're going to do it and you're not going to have to worry, but that's not always the case. But you don't want to do that in an onerous way. I think it's a tough thing to get just right. but I think to your point about productivity, it probably does get more goal-oriented versus individual action-oriented over time when you're not all in the same place and nobody can look over your shoulder, you know?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, and the response I gave with Microsoft with Copilot and the other vendors have similar capabilities, they're saying, you know, here are the tools. We can measure everything, right? How many meetings you attend, how much time you spend on the phone, how quickly you respond to emails, how engaged you are with your teammates. So the two pieces are there, thanks to AI, I guess, to capture all of that in very fine detail. If you use those as your criteria to define productivity, much like as in the contact center, the tools are there and the pieces are there to do that. Now, but is that what we really want to be doing?

And is that really how we want to leverage this these wonderful new capabilities? We're bordering into sowing the seeds of mass rebellion and, of course, surveillance and privacy considerations. This is a whole can of worms here, but we're gonna have to cap on time here, so will leave this as food for thought because there's so many avenues here to explore.

Chris Fine

Yeah, but I think the headline I'm taking out of what you've been saying, tell me if this is right or not, is that AI is really becoming an integral part of communications and communications technology. It's going to be everywhere, including consumer, you know, your phone or your smartphone or whatever. But when you look at the world of enterprise connectivity, and collaboration. What I'm hearing is that you just see AI driven developments as being really where the main focus is in that industry right now. Is that right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah. And what we're hoping for is that not far behind will be more push on, you know, responsible AI and the guardrails and all the vendors say the right things about that. A big takeaway I took from Google, both in seeing their keynote and getting a personal briefing with their team, they make it very clear that they do not use workplace data, they do not use customer data to build their models. So they're putting some lines in the sand that if you take it at face value, that's what you should be doing. Every vendor with an AI story, that is part of the story about being transparent and accountable. And so you have to hope they have the right intentions for this, but we still don't really have a well thought out regulatory framework yet.

We've always talked about this, the balance between innovation and regulation, but clearly, we need some guardrails and we're moving that way. As usual, Europe is ahead of the pack and I've been looking closely recently at the EU AI Act. And there's some very good pieces coming out of that I'm going to be writing about. The US is a different environment altogether. And I don't know if we're really going to be getting anything like that here in the near future. But we have to have something there because if we're just saying, oh, AI is running the show now and that's sure what it looks like, do we really want to give the keys and everything, the car, to just leave it to the AI vendors to do this.

Nobody really wants to see that happen, including the AI companies. I mean, that's the issue, some of the stuff with OpenAI and all the dissent that they had there and, they're not, it's not alone. That's not isolated. So everybody is thinking about this. How do we do this right? Because we're only going to get one shot at it.

Chris Fine

So Jon, do you think, this is my final question, because I know we're going to run out of time here. Do you think there's a product cycle coming? We talked about how long some of the product cycles had been and technology cycles had been in communications, although there have been disruptive ones, as we mentioned with IP. Where do you think the industry is right now? Like if you were going to put your hat on and say, do you think in three years or five years that we'll be communicating very differently, do you think? Enterprises are going to spend on new stuff that really works differently in this area. Is that where we are or are we just improving kind of what we have but no fundamental changes?

Jon Arnold

Definitely improving what we have. I do believe there's got to be a point where the enterprises and IT, I'm sure new divisions or new layers of management are going to emerge that are strict or simply about AI. But the investment, getting an ROI on AI, I think it's still pretty early to demonstrate that. Contact center is a space where you can show an ROI. And so that's always why it's been like the hot area for AI, because you can generate a tangible return. But in the workplace, I think unless AI really performs well in a short period of time, I think organizations will hit a wall in terms of how far they want to go with this because you've got to spend a lot of money and resources and find the expertise if you start getting into this area of building large language models and extracting value from it and actually finding a way to transform what you're doing to truly be a better, more competitive business.

I still think that's a little ways out because organizations don't move fast enough to keep pace with how AI is moving right now. I think the more digital-based businesses that have maybe only have a five-year history, they're probably much more agile and digital friendly to pick this up and run with it. So it's very possible we could see some new, you know, unicorn type of successes for businesses that really figure this out and go to that, you know, they don't have a lot to lose by going all in, but most businesses are not in that situation.

So they're going to have those hard decisions, as you said earlier, about keeping, labor components going, paying fair wages to people and having working conditions that people are happy with. You know, and AI can't solve all of that. It can force a lot of change, but do you really have a better organization because of it? Those are tough questions and I don't think we're going to solve those anytime soon.

Chris Fine

So maybe we haven't found the killer app yet.

Jon Arnold

But it's out there.

Chris Fine

It's out there.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, it will come. And like a lot of these new technologies too, we only know about the use cases that are obvious or are becoming obvious. But once AI starts to filter down into the masses and all the layers of the workplace, there's no doubt all kinds of new applications are going to kind of emerge right from the people who are living it day to day. And I think there could really spark a lot of innovation for sure.

Chris Fine

Well, there's a long history of combination of overhyped and underhyped transformative technologies, right? I mean, the famous prediction of 10 computers in the world and all during the growth of the phone network, everybody said there'd only be like a million more phones. or 100 more phones from where you were, right? And they're right for a certain period of time because exponential growth takes a while to really get going.

But if it's transformative, you do reach the point where you've got an iPhone on your hands, right? Or you've got what Polycom did to speaker phones. Let's take a smaller example, right? And what Zoom did to teleconferencing. So maybe that's where we're headed, right? And what I'm hearing is we're definitely heading in some direction. We haven't identified what this killer app is yet, but this is a classic watch this space writ large.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, good way to end it. And as often happens, there's no guarantees it will come from the usual suspects, right? A new company could emerge out of nowhere. It could be a company that's maybe in another part of the world that is just ahead of the curve. And all of a sudden, it lands here and we can't get to it fast enough. Very possible. So yeah, and the global implications of this are a whole other thing, by the way, but another time.

Chris Fine

Looking forward to the next one, Jon.

Jon Arnold

Okay, me too. Me too. So with that, by the time you're listening to this, you will probably have seen or hopefully seen my newsletter, which will have more recap of Enterprise Connect, both in written form, and I was posting constantly during the event with commentary and photos on LinkedIn. So, lots to follow. And yes, even for Informa, the company that puts on the show, they have all kinds of day-to-day coverage. So easy to find out what you missed, but just as you say, Chris, watch this space.

That brings us to end of time, and we want to thank you for listening as always. We hope you enjoyed the podcast and that you'll stay with us as we explore the future of work here on Watch This Space. You can access all of our episodes at the dedicated website is www.watchthisspace.tech, or wherever you subscribe to your podcasts and all the kind of the usual platforms. If you like what you're hearing, we'd love to hear a review, a rating, suggestions for future topics. We'd love to have that input from you as always. Comments are very welcome. And that's it, so I am Jon Arnold.

Chris Fine

And I'm Chris Fine. Thank you, Jon. Always a pleasure. Thanks everyone for listening and sticking with us. And we will return next month for another episode of Watch This Space.

Companies mentioned:

Amazon, Cisco, Five9, Genesys, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nice, Nortel, Polycom, RingCentral, Talkdesk, Zoom

Takeaways From The Future Of Work Expo, And Where's The Fit For AI, Apple And The Metaverse?

Audio links for original podcast:

·      Here, on the dedicated Watch This Space website

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

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Jon Arnold

Welcome to Watch This Space, the 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 is Integrative Technologies. Hello, everyone. Welcome to a new month of Watch the Space. Hi, Jon. Been a busy month, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, sure has, Chris. And welcome everybody to our podcast. It's one of those rare occasions, Chris, where we can talk about having just seen each other - which is not the norm, but that's what happened for us at the IT Expo last, well. I shouldn't say last week, just say last month by the time this podcast was published in Fort Lauderdale, the regular home of IT Expo. And yeah, we'll talk about some highlights from that.

But you know, straight off the top, there's always new stuff happening in our lines of work and things tend to kind of go in bunches, at least for me as an analyst.  I'm going through a stretch of five industry events in four weeks that I'm traveling to. So it gets to be a bit of a blur after a while. But when you see how various companies are messaging things about technology, you get an appreciation from a distance of just how, you know, Chris, how dominant AI has become for everything now. And it's taken such a short amount of time to kind of take over everything, but it doesn't matter.

You just spin the wheel and whatever it lands on, that vendor is leading with an AI story. It's getting hard to think now of who isn't talking about AI. And that's a little bit worrisome, I guess, for something that has captured our imaginations and our wallets in such a short amount of time in something that's so fast moving and so unregulated and so unproven. But here we are.

Chris Fine

That's true. Before I comment on that, I just also wanted to say that the reason we were down there was really for your Future of Work Expo track. as well as the overall IT Expo conference. I just wanted to extend my compliments to you for organizing that. It was a super helpful program. Very, very interesting. I think you got a lot of good speakers. So, you know, props to you for doing that. I just wanted to put that out there.

But on AI, you're absolutely right, because what's going to happen is even if the company doesn't or the speaker or the panelist doesn't lead with AI, at some point they're going to get asked about, you know, how does it relate to you? What it reminded me of was another time when there was a buzzword that was that way, which was internet, right? There was a huge amount of actual value created out of the internet. But there was a time when no matter which business you were in, they would ask you about the internet. Are you going to sell online? How are you connected? What's going to happen when the internet grows to what you do? If you're an enterprise technology company, let's say, if you're a carrier, what's the internet going to do? And I think that's the same now with AI. So it's something that is a gigantic thing, but you're also, it's such a huge context that no matter who you are, you're going to get asked about it. Do you think so? Yeah, I do.

Jon Arnold

And for our loyal listeners, if you've been with us since day one, which is probably not a lot of people, but the common thread to our conversations here on the podcast is this perspective of us, two of us are being coming out of the analog world and looking at the digital world through that lens. And when you mentioned the internet, Chris, I'm glad you connected that dot because the internet boom, I guess you'd call that what, mid 90s, early 90s?

Chris Fine

Up through 2001, really.

Jon Arnold

That was the great leap forward for kind of, I don't know, our whole evolution into the digital world. Whereas you say, everyone's got to have a pets.com, cars.com, the mania around that was this gold rush about, oh, once you get online and go into the digital world, it's everything is new and different and this is the future. And yeah, you're right. I mean, everybody had that feeling of inevitability about it and who's going to get there first and who's going to make the most money and all this stuff. And it's largely borne out, right?

We are completely dependent on the internet now and mobility has a big role to play in that. But I think AI is just as big and profound of a shift that is just really cementing this almost like, I wouldn't call it the break from the analog world, but within five years, AI is going to just redefine everything. And I think it's going to be pretty damn hard at that point to find real vestiges of the analog world at that point.

Chris Fine

I agree. I also was thinking about what influence the internet had on the infrastructure. I don't remember all the companies we used to cover who were either positively or negative impacted by the growth of the internet. So it wasn't even just software. It wasn't even just end user businesses or e-commerce or anything else. It was just all the way down to the chips, and down to router chips and ASICs and all of the things that ended up powering the internet. And now if you look, like if you looked at the NVIDIA blowout on quarterly results just the other day, unbelievable. You know that now this is drawing infrastructure too. It's not just the software and the algorithmic techniques and the potential end user applications, but now AI really is going into the hardware as well, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, just everything is going to be AI from the ground up. I mean, it will be virtually, I say virtual, that's a good one. There'll be just no connection to the analog world. it won't be relevant. And much like the way cash is disappearing, we're doing everything digitally, electronically now, all those physical artifacts of the pre-internet world, are, unless you go to a museum, they're going to get harder and harder to find.

Chris Fine

Well, there is a funny thing about cash. Cash is coming back because people have started, merchants have started charging the 4% if you use a credit card. I wouldn't say like it's a gigantic, massive rebellion yet, but I definitely see people going for the cash. And there was a funny article I read about two weeks ago that like younger people don't always know other than just the ATM, like how to get cash. And they hardly ever even go to the ATM to get cash. And now if they decide they don't want to be paying the surplus, the premium on this, the tax, they really actually have to manage cash. So I don't know. I mean, I don't think it's, maybe it's like the return of vinyl, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah.

Chris Fine

You know, it's going to be bigger. It's going to be way bigger than it was for the last 40 years. But cash is not dead, is all I'm saying.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, I don't want it to go away. But I think that blowback is going to last as long as until the banks decide, what, getting cash from us is going to be a privilege now, so you're going to have to pay for it. And I have no doubt it's going to go that way because they're, it's much like, the PSTN, right? I mean, the telcos want to get out of that business, so they're just going to make it so expensive for you to have a landline, you will just, the economics just won't work and you'll just have to capitulate and go digital and VoIP and wireless and everything else. If they don't want you, remember that episode we did when customer service is bad?

Chris Fine

Hit customer triage. Yeah.

Jon Arnold

I think it's going to be, we'll see strands of this. If it's not worth their while to have you doing things the analog way, they'll just make it expensive and difficult and you won't have much choice at that point.

Chris Fine

Yeah, I was thinking about the effect of Hurricane Sandy in this part of the country where that was the gigantic catalyst that really caused the abandonment of the copper phone plant in this region. They just didn't rebuild it. They just joked it because it was cheaper for Verizon and some of the other companies to just run fiber or run some digital technology to replace it. And they just literally abandoned many, many, many thousands of endpoints and just said, no, you can't have it anymore. Or they'll give you something that seems like it, but it isn't really.

Jon Arnold

Well, everything works well until it doesn't. When electricity goes out, power goes down, we are totally paralyzed. There's nothing we can do.

Chris Fine

Yeah, there was an interesting outage of AT&T yesterday.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, that was a big story, right?

Chris Fine

It was a pretty big story, but it looked like it was some kind of failed software upgrade. At least that's what you're saying now. It doesn't look like it's something malicious, but it certainly caused a lot of concern.

Jon Arnold

Keep those backup batteries charged, folks, and keep cash stashed away somewhere in your basement, because there's going to be a time when you won't be able to do anything, you know, and that, as you say, that's when it really comes back. And then we'll be, you know, we'll be reduced to being a barter-based economy, just like the good old days.

Chris Fine

You think so? I mean, that's even before analog. I mean, I hope not, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, these Mad Max scenarios may not be that far off. Who knows?

Chris Fine

Well, there were a lot of postings on the, I saw from the amateur radio operators, the hams that said, you know, we'll get a license and you could communicate.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, the whole underground economy will just boom, right? Yeah, just boom. All right, let's get back to Florida.

Chris Fine

Okay, we're switching back to IT Expo. So go.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, let's go. So this is, I think, 6th year for doing Future Work Expo that I've been a Chair of. It's been around a little longer than that, but, you know, it's kind of come into its own as a pretty, I think, a pretty well-defined show. The future work concept is always a moving target, so we have to keep coming up with new things to cover. But under the big house of IT Expo or one of many sub events and anybody who attended there would know that.

The first thing I'd say right off, Chris, is it was good to see a lot of new faces in the crowd. Our event is pretty much geared to thought leadership. Our panels are all moderated discussions. So there's no pitches, no real selling going on. And it's just talking about the topics that are defining future of work. We covered a fair bit of ground as we always try to do, and I think the audience took some good input away from that. We had good conversations and questions during the talks, which is always a good sign. And the rooms weren't totally full all the time, but there was enough traffic in there to keep it, keep the energy good. And all the speakers were great.

I thought, as you mentioned earlier, Chris, about having the good variety of topics and speakers, and that does make for a good program. And then when people get going and we have our sessions in play, it takes a life of its own. There were definitely highlights I think that both of us saw. My key role once the show started was to just keep it all moving. I moderated most of the sessions, but definitely had help. And so thanks to you, Chris, you moderated one of those panels. It was the second last one. And so why don't I hand off to you and maybe share some of your takeaways and I'll throw in a couple more and then we'll move on.

Chris Fine

Thanks, Jon. I think we definitely need more input from you because I got stuck in a snowstorm or I got my flight bumped and I missed the first day of session. So you definitely have to comment on those. I was really sorry to miss them. But my two sessions were basically the one I moderated and the one I was on the panel were about the workplace and kind of the macro future of work. And it was a super, you really got some great speakers for my panel. So, thanks for that.

I kind of jotted down 3 takeaways that came out of both discussions, none of which is necessarily new. My point to make here would be that these just kind of keep getting reinforced. And so people need to think about it this way.

One is that the forced return to office is not the way, right? It may work occasionally, but fundamentally it's a coercive policy when companies just say you have to return and they don't do anything to make it worth your return. Again, we always have to emphasize that we're not talking about every slice of the workforce. We're talking mostly about office workers of various kinds and subject matter experts and, professionals and all of that. But within this segment, you got a lot of people saying, I'm perfectly able to do my work at home, you know, two, three days a week. And It's a bear of a commute to get wherever I'm going. So why am I coming back? And companies have kind of pulled back a little bit about the culture argument. You know, culture requires togetherness kind of stuff. You still hear it, but they've started to take a bit of a harder line. And I think the view of most of the speakers was that, yeah, this is happening, but this is not really the way to go. So that was #1.

Number 2, the real estate cycle that you and I have talked about a lot, where it's measure, reduce, and refactor or reformat the space is happening. It's going to take some time to play on and to play out, but it's definitely happening. And when you look at the number of leases that are coming up over the next two, three years, it's going to be a really interesting picture as to how that gets renewed or replaced.

My third point is that this is going to produce some real opportunities. We had some panelists from areas like next generation interior architecture, redecorating, and also for flexible space, who were quite positive about all of this. And this is a point that we've also made before, but just continue to reinforce, which is in the midst of change, there really is opportunity, and especially for technology vendors, because technology just gets to be more and more important, the more distributed and virtual work is. So every aspect of the technologies that we cover, if you try to keep playing the old way, you've got a problem. But if you try to take a look forward and utilize some of the new technologies that are coming out, whether it be augmented reality or AI or whatever, you do have an opportunity. So those were my three. I mean, what did you think?

Jon Arnold

Yeah, those sum up a lot of the messages that came out of those sessions. The other thing I wanted to touch on was in terms of the specific topics, the idea here with the programming is to show future work is more than just about technology, right? We addressed other things too when it comes into like, employee engagement, what it means on a human level for what the next kind of generation of work environment is going to be. So much of it's about not just AI, but the data.

We looked at the implications for cybersec, which just continues to get more and more challenging. And that's a problem that just never goes away, and AI is just redefining everything. Just as you can use AI to kind of up your profile, not your profile, your posture for authentication with biometrics, right? With video, like facial biometrics and voice biometrics, you'd think, okay, this is a pretty good way to make sure you are who you say you are. But then the bad guys are always a step ahead and they're using this technology, you know, to defeat it. The same technology we're doing to make our security perimeter stronger; they're taking the same advantage.

So, using deep fakes to imitate who your identity says you are, because they only need a little snippet or two of your voice to now create synthetic variations that can sound very credible. And so it just never stops. They're always gonna be one step ahead trying to come up with something even more nefarious, whatever. You can just never rest on to say we have two factor authentication now. We don't have to worry anymore. Well, no, you just have to make it harder and harder over time. It just doesn't end.

That's, as you say, opportunity, Chris, it's certainly opportunity for the vendors to get people up to speed. Another related idea, of course, is that we're talking mostly here mid-market and some SMB. This is not a large enterprise show. So you're dealing with an audience that is probably not as sophisticated, doesn't have the resources that enterprise IT has. You always have to be mindful in your vendors how far and fast you can go with this stuff in terms of getting it introduced for what future work is going to have to mean for these organizations. Some of the small ones, of course, are very agile and they're great. They adapt very fast, but a lot of them are still just coming to grips with these technologies. And when you start thinking about, you mentioned, Chris, you know, AR, VR, you know, Metaverse, we had a really good session on that, I know you didn't get to. It's just showing you what's possible and what's coming.

Like I, always say, you know, the consumer leads, and enterprise follows. When you see Apple and Meta making very big bets on immersive experiences, when these big consumer brands start to push these things out there further into our consciousness, we start to ask more questions now, well, why can't I work this way at work, right?

It's going to seed demand, even though like the Vision Pro is a very expensive, headpiece, there'll be workarounds for these things. The important thing is to show that there are lots of use cases and good experiences you can have in a work-related environment. And when the big guys like this get behind it, it's coming. You know, it may not be this year or next year, but it's definitely coming. And we had some really good examples of that at the sessions.

One last thing I'll mention, Chris; it came actually in the last session that you were on with Jeff Pulver and a few others. One of the comments from the audience, I can't remember if you remember this guy, Chris, but what he was getting at is what does this do for productivity? We were talking about how organizations can adapt. And I think he kind of opened up a theme that we will probably explore more next year, but it became very clear to me as we worked through it, that session, that the idea of personal productivity has been the benchmark that businesses look at when they evaluate your worth in the organization.

As you said before, Chris, you can't force people back to the office. There's so much flux around the hybrid work model. I'm really starting to think that we've got to move off of this concept of personal productivity. I think there's just so many variations of how we work now. Coming up with a universal standard or a metric that allows us to be fairly evaluated in our jobs and our contributions, I think it's going to be just a losing battle.

It came out on the panel, one of the people said, probably a better indicator of productivity is your stock price, of your collective productivity rather than your individual employee-based outputs. And I think there's something to that; organizations are going to have to rethink what's important, what matters, how do you create true value How do you keep your employees happy and engaged, all that stuff. So I just want to throw that out there as a bigger idea that I think has merit to this moving target we call future of work.

Chris Fine

Well, I agree with part of that. I think that we do need to reconsider how we measure the impact of people's contributions in a world where you're not supervising them all the time. or where it's, they execute in different environments, more virtual. I don't think that stock price is as conclusive an indicator as it might be because there are just so many factors around that. It's not just productivity. I mean, that's an absolutely true, you know - productivity is one of the variables and an important one, but it's not the only one with stock price. But what I do think is that historically, a lot of organizations have had a very functional view of productivity, right? You're sort of an F of X. I used to joke about this when I was an engineer, you're kind of an F of X. And it's like, how good a function are you, right? So if you were a math function, you know, minimal distortion, maximum gain, you know, right?

And that's just not that applicable to a lot of jobs. When you look at a more modern way of evaluating, you sometimes see 360-degree reviews and you'll see more about like, well, let's agree we're going to try to do X number of things this year. So it's kind of outcome based, right? You could work standing on your head, but if you achieve what we've agreed you need to achieve and if you play this role with the team that enables and enhances the team and the firm, then okay, right?

That's really kind of what you're rated on. And I feel like that's the overall trend. You can't do it in every job, obviously, right? If you're going to be a call center person, then there's all kinds of very fixed metrics that could be applied to you, which part of how efficient an F of X are you because you're answering input all the time, generating output.

Jon Arnold

Everything is measured. Everything in their job is measured. So it's easy to do that.

Chris Fine

Yeah, but if you think about the many other jobs, you can really get a sense of what people are doing without focusing on, potentially, an outdated version of productivity. But that's a big change in thinking. The other comment I had on what you're saying is that I do think that one thing that came out of what I heard, and sounds like you did too, was the importance of immersivity, if you want to call it that, right? Like we do immersive, where by whatever means, wherever they are, everybody pretty much sees the whole picture. It could be a real breakthrough.

Because it doesn't mean that everybody's sitting in the office wearing glasses, right? It could be that the people who are in the office have an immersive room with displays and other technologies getting so cheap. And then maybe the remote people have a smaller version of that, potentially with glasses or whatever, to be able to participate and not be cartoon characters, but just everybody kind of seem the same holodeck, if you want to call it that. I do think there's a future in that.

Jon Arnold

Yep, And again, having 2D versions of immersive working where you do not need an interface, again, makes it a more amenable way of doing things that aren't clunky, don't require the expertise of manipulating a headset and of course the fatigue that comes with wearing those headsets for long periods of time. So there's a lot there. And when I mentioned the big brands earlier, by the way, Chris, I just mentioned Vision Pro in passing. We did one surprise nice thing that we did see on the show floor was a small tabletop there from Apple. who was, I'm sure, never been to IT Expo before. And we never see Apple at events. They're very guarded. That's their culture. And it was kind of cool to see them there.

Chris Fine

It was, it was. They were trying to build their Apple Consultants Network to give more help to, I think in that case, small and medium businesses who wanted to go with Apple Enterprise technology, where they wanted to go with Macs and iPhones and whatever else is involved with going Apple. And that's extending the kind of support or looking for partners to extend the kind of support that they historically have given to larger businesses.

But when you look at Apple retail, Apple stores have taken over almost all of the Apple retailing out there, a very big chunk of it. And the old, there used to be stores, particularly in markets like New York City where you had a lot of Apple customers that gave a higher level of support. My takeaway from talking to them was that they want to extend more of that out there in a network of VARs and integrators and consultants to try to enable small, medium businesses to adopt an Apple IT environment. Was that what you felt?

Jon Arnold

Well, yeah, So, you know, I mentioned earlier when the big vendors get behind these things, I hate to call Apple a vendor, but that's kind of what they are. They all have designs on the enterprise market. Meta, Apple, they're not players in these spaces in a big way, but they have kind of avenues. There are pathways for them to do that. And when we talk about getting immersive into the future work conversation, it's a different experience that people have to kind of, get their heads around and it's got to be a good experience. It's got to be easy to use. It's got to be better somehow, and who creates better user experiences than Apple, right?

They have that kind of DNA going for them to say, if we can only find a value proposition here that will resonate somehow, there's no reason why they could not be an enterprise player. If we're going to define enterprise as immersive virtual experiences as one slice of future of work, there's no reason why they couldn't be successful doing that.

Chris Fine

I think their market share is growing anyway, to be honest, with end devices. Maybe they're not part of sort of the core IT. You know, IT is much more friendly to Apple than it used to be, but they're still kind of like the end users want them, so we support them, as opposed to, we've taken a strategic decision to go with Apple.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, because so much of it's closed and controlled, right, by Apple. It's not friendly.

Chris Fine

Yeah, and for a long time, Apple really was actively not courting the enterprise market. It's been relatively recent, but I think they woke up and noticed that it's a multi-billion-dollar market that they could have more of a play in, and so they're doing it.

Jon Arnold

Yeah. And I mean, and the iPhone is a very mature product. I mean, how much more can you do with a phone now? I mean, what hasn't it conquered? If you're thinking longer term, much like my view of Microsoft getting into Meta, sorry, into getting into Metaverse and going down this road in such a big way, because I think they're looking to what I call the post-PC future where the PC is going to basically go away.

To keep their dominance, they have to be at the front of the next interface, and the next generation is going to succeed the PC. That's where the immersive worlds are going to really come into their own. So their investments in metaverse are very expensive, but it's a big bet. But I think they're thinking about their future too.

Chris Fine

I agree with all of that. I think, though, that in the world of hybrid work, arguably laptops are more important than ever. I don't know how the sales figures are; I should probably look at that before I say that. But if you're really working on the go, you still need one. I wouldn't go out with a Chromebook, although a lot of people do go out with iPads to work, right? I've just never been in a job where I didn't have to do some level of production, a PowerPoint or, something that involved you needed the keyboard and you needed the other things that, or you're working where you're not connected to the network all the time.

But I know there's a strong argument on both sides that, you know, the lighter weight devices, the iPad being basically an iPhone with a big screen, and the Google equivalent, maybe that's where it's going. But anyway, I do think it was interesting to see Apple there. And it was just a little booth with, a couple of Apple logos pasted to the felt and back. Yeah, brought back a lot of memories about Apple, you know, really far back.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, and doing it very much on the quiet. So I think it was just an experiment for them. I'm trying to connect with one of their people on LinkedIn now, so we'll see. Okay, I know we're running a little long here, so I think we'll just wrap up with a little bit of what's coming, because I know we've got stuff on the go, both of us, for the rest of, certainly the rest of February and going into March. So Chris, you've got one big event for sure coming up.

Chris Fine

Well, it's a one-day Worktech that's focused on financial services, which is a segment that I spend a lot of time with and I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be in New York next week. The Worktech events tend to be pretty interesting. They have a lot of content. They do these worldwide. So the team that runs them gets a lot of input from a lot of different markets. It tends to be a combination of real estate and technology focused, which is also an area that I find fascinating right now. So that's what's coming up next for me. And then there's other stuff, but I'll talk about that next month. But what about you?

Jon Arnold

When this podcast runs, I'll have gone through my run of travel for February, so at this point I'm 3 down, two to go. I'll very briefly mention I was at Cognigy's Customer Experience Summit in Dusseldorf, Germany, which is their headquarters. I got back last night, and they're showing the way with the really purpose-built AI applications, mostly for contact center, but the advances companies like this are bringing with conversational AI are pretty impressive, and not so much because of the technology, but the proof points that they show when they bring tier one airlines, insurance companies, car makers, I don't want to name the names, but they're all household names and they're all showing tangible results because of the way they've been deploying AI to make processes more efficient, to make agents more productive, all the things you want to do with AI.

These models keep getting better and better and smarter and smarter. While the concerns for AI don't go away, when the focus is on the good things, you have an easier time making a business case for it. We could go on longer about this, but one of the customers, one of their presenters, I should say, gave a very interesting presentation about the other side, which are the challenges of getting large enterprises to embrace change. And just because the technology comes out as really great, someone's got to advocate, someone's got to build a business case, someone's got to sell it internally.

When you're in a large organization with all kinds of layers, the realities, the complexities of all the politics and the competing priorities, you realize just how complicated it can be. And with new technology like AI that no one really owns, this is part of the future of work too, since it's not the using of the technology, but how do you sell it? How do you support it? How do you get it into enterprises? And that's a whole other layer of this stuff, but I thought it was a very good way to kind of make it real.

AI can be for good or for bad, but on the business level of how you get it sold into organizations and actually get it used where it can make a difference because it's a threat for a lot of people, right? You're displacing jobs, you're displacing processes, So there's a lot to it, the deeper you get into the kind of analysis of what it takes to be effective.

Chris Fine

Here's my suggestion, Jon. I think we need to do a whole episode about enterprise adoption. So let's hold that for a whole episode of Watch the Space because that is actually a huge thing. You bring up a very good point. But are there any last-minute things you want to say about what's coming up the next few weeks?

Jon Arnold

For what’s next, I'm traveling to RingCentral and 8 by 8's analyst events, which are both the same week, same location. So it's a back-to-back deal. And after that, Enterprise Connect is the next big one for me and for many listeners out there. That's like what I call the Super Bowl event for enterprise communication. So that's late March and I'll be out there. I do an annual talk on the state of speech tech for enterprises. So I'm working on putting that panel together and it's always good. It's always good.

Please don't ask me about taking a meeting there because my dance card is pretty full. That's the craziness of this type of event. Everybody wants to meet with the analysts and there's only so many time slots available. But with that, yeah, that's my story for now, Chris. So, we'll have lots to talk about coming up next episode, right?

Chris Fine

Absolutely.

Jon Arnold

Okay. So that is time for today, folks. So thank you for listening. Hope you enjoyed it as we continue here exploring the future of work on Watch This Space. You can access our episodes at www.watchthisspace.tech or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. And if you like it, as we always ask, leave us a review, a rating, suggestions for future topics. We'd love to hear from you. And with that, I'm Jon Arnold.

Chris Fine

And I'm Chris Fine. Thanks again, everyone, for listening to another episode of Watch This Space. We'll be back again next month. So see you shortly.

Companies mentioned:

Apple, Meta, Verizon

What Constitutes Work In A Digital World, And The Future Of Work Expo Preview

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.

2024 Outlook - How It Leads To Think About Deploying AI - An Analog Perspective

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, the 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 at my company, J Arnold and Associates.

Chris Fine

Chris Fine. I'm A consultant and strategist specializing in workplace technology, IoT security, and a few other areas. My company is Integrative Technologies. Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode. Hi, Jon. Great to be with you again. How was your month?

Jon Arnold

Pretty good, and it is great to be back. No travel for me, which has been great. I got to tell you, Chris, as we all know from recent podcasts, I've been on the go a lot and it's great to be home for a while and kind of get back to regular routines. You know, coming out of pandemic when we were just doing all virtual stuff, you're really boxed into your place of work. But nothing beats being in front of people real time for sure. But travel is tough when you're doing it ongoing. So that's that. And you've been happily ensconced in the New Jersey, New York vicinity, right?

Chris Fine

Yes, I've had a couple of times to go into New York City, which I've enjoyed and work related, but basically, I've just been working, Zooming and Teamsing and everything else from my usual home environment, working in a virtual team. It's always a good, it's pretty good experience overall, thanks. And now it's winding down a little bit toward the end of the year. And you won't hear this broadcast until after the turn of the year, right? So we need to be thinking 2024.

Jon Arnold

Exactly. So, yes. So happy 2024 to our listeners. And that means, Chris, we are going into season seven. Still looking for those elusive sponsors. And we're just a phone call away. But we keep doing what we're doing, Chris, because as we say, we are analog guys, and the digital world gets more and more complex, compressed, faster. And I like to think we bring some levity and perspective from maybe a slower, more reflective time where you can actually absorb what you're doing and kind of look at the bigger picture, right?

Chris Fine

True. And it's funny, the more digital it gets, sometimes the more analog trends you see too. Like in the hipper areas of this area, there's the record cafes, right? Where it's actually taken from Japan, where there's some amazing places in Tokyo where you can go. It's really high-end stereo equipment and an amazing record collection. And you have super great whiskey and listen to listen to music on this amazing stuff. And they're a little bit less high end maybe here, but starting to see more and more of them. So that's for every digital, there's a little bit of analog.

Jon Arnold

That is my retirement project right there. I will open a salon and yes, that's what we're going to do. Okay.

Chris Fine

We're done. All right. Plans in place, right?

Jon Arnold

Yeah.

Chris Fine

But yes, yes, the digital world does seem to be more and more complete in a way, right? Or, I don't know, pervasive all the time, you know, inevitable. You know, I think that it's just grown that much more with hybrid work too, right? Because basically everything involved with hybrid work has some digital aspect to it or some technological aspect to it.

Jon Arnold

You know, I think I might have found one of the few remnants of our analog world, Chris, and you'll relate to this, and I'm sure all of our aging listeners will too. I just got my Will and powers of attorney updated, been meaning to do this for a long time. And to kind of like finalize, I have to go into a lawyer's office and all the docs have to be signed and witnessed. All the process that is the foundation of our legal system and verifying identity via your personal signature. And it's kind of something you have to do. The digital generation may not think along these lines.

I had to ask my lawyer, like, for people who can't read or write cursive, what do they do now? I mean, some worlds move faster than others when it comes to going into the digital realm. And law is one of the holdouts. They're going that way, obviously. It's been, but slower. And you go into any legal office and they're always awash with paper files, and of course, all the law books in their library that they have to have. It just reminds you that the whole world isn't quite digital all yet, but it's getting close. But it just takes you back to say, yeah, there was a time when everything was this way.

Chris Fine

Well, yes, I mean, you had to get everything done with a witness or signed or whatever. But what I find very ironic is that sometimes I run into processes that really shouldn't require anything like that do. Like, for example, I went to go apply to my, get my aging person discount card for the transit system, for the PATH system, which people may know runs from New Jersey to New York. And I had to go get that notarized. I had to go get that affirmed and I had to send in a printed application to get that just so they were sure I was as old as I am, right? Whereas I can do bank transactions all day with, in my mind, relatively, any of us could do this, but relatively not the same level of affirmation for things that are much more meaningful and impactful. It's funny because sometimes you see it, sometimes you don't. It's very irregular.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, for sure. I think that sets us up nicely for what we talked about ahead of recording today. And that's what are we going to look for and our listeners to be watching for into 2024 in this world of communications technology. AI is always I shouldn't say always, but it is now at the front edge of everything. And comms, communications, whatever you want to define that as, is definitely being driven by AI, probably far more ways than we realize, right?

Chris Fine

Possibly. I think there's a huge frontier for it, opportunity. And I think that you could pick use cases that you could apply AI to all over the place. in communications and networking. I think we'll start to see more and more of it. And I think in also in related areas like cybersecurity, that this may bring, I am, as people may know from listening to this podcast, I am not a full-throated AI enthusiast in all cases, but I do think that communications is a process where it could actually be very useful. I'm hoping to see that done in a good way that improves the quality of service, right?

Jon Arnold

I mean, some of the applications that are becoming fairly routine now, which would have been miraculous not that long ago, real time transcription, real time translation in the workplace, right, for the collaboration world. And now the layering on that would be meeting notes, meeting summaries, basically almost to the point of having a digital assistant tell you what the highlights of the meeting were that you missed, that kind of thing. In other words, things that are very, you know, positive for productivity purposes. And you could say, hey, you know what? Yeah, I had to step out for 10 minutes during the meeting, but I got updated the second I got back to my desk. I read all the notes. I knew who said what.

That's pretty good. Like, those are good applications, I find, of AI. But I guess when you step back and say, well, how is all this magic happening? Then you have to think, it's because everything I'm saying, touching, looking at, right? Using my fingers on the keyboard for every single element there is digital, which means it now becomes a data stream, which now means it's being tracked and monitored and ultimately converted into new forms of, you know, for sake of a better word, business value that the organization can use to monitor productivity, but also other things too, like how attentive you are, whether you're at your desk, how long you're working, who you're talking to, what is being conversed about, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So it's double-edged, right, as we know, as we know. But it's becoming more and more real, right?

Chris Fine

It is. I think we've kind of touched on two things here, right? One is AI and one is information privacy and the whole idea of your rights to your data. And I think both of these are topics we really want to look for even more activity in 2024. And you brought up something interesting when you mentioned all the applications you were thinking of related to productivity and collaboration, the transcription, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that's going to go a lot further. And if you look at things like Microsoft's Copilot, which was part of their original involvement with OpenAI, and the same sort of technology that led to ChatGPT, I think that that's going to start playing a really big role.

People make fun of it. They think it's going to be like Clippy the paper clip, if you remember that horrible, annoying thing, right? But it's not. It's going to be much more anticipating what you're trying to do and helping you do it. And I think so in those instances, I think it could definitely help. Not to have to be an Excel maven to use Excel, for example, or you want to format a document, like it needs to look like this, you give it a brochure and you say it's got to kind of look like this.

And it just kind of does it based on raw input of text. That just that kind of stuff, it just takes so much time to do. Or if you say I want a PowerPoint presentation to have a certain look and feel, you know, that stuff, that really adds up. That's a productive use of the technology. But I was also talking about things like network management and anomaly detection and optimization of flows in a network and optimization of service and all kinds of stuff like that, where it's actually really difficult for people to do. And it's always a problem, you know, anticipating an outage, right? Seeing things that are going to lead to an outage much faster than people can recognize them. I think that there's a huge opportunity for that and it's going to increase, it's going to make that, again, not being a full-throated AI proponent, but those are two more applications where I think we're going to see it and I think it's going to help.

Jon Arnold

Absolutely. And you go up and down the line for any vertical sector and there's a really good use cases for this. We may have talked about this before, Chris. I was at a utility conference in August speaking to them about how to think about AI and what is this ChatGPT thing. Getting exposed to these newer technologies in what are relatively traditional spaces, highly regulated utilities are not known to be the leading-edge adopters of technology. But when you start talking about that bigger picture, you know, their networks are really no different than data networks inside an organization, right? They are connecting all of these endpoints together, in this case, you know, the generation and distribution of power.

And yes, we always have to keep in mind, folks, what AI is really, really good at, which is kind of why people are using it and should be using it, its ability to detect patterns at scale as you say, better and faster than humans can, when you start thinking about the use cases of that, say, in medical research, right, for drug discovery, it's far more than what humans can handle. And that's a good use of this, for utilities that can detect or anticipate conditions that are arising in this node of the network where we could see an outage. Now you can take preventative steps and remote diagnostics and, of course, remote analysis to treat it or prevent it or minimize. Those are really good use cases for sure. But they're the same use cases that, authoritarian governments, have no hesitation to use to identify people who are outside of the bounds. And the scenarios there can get pretty dark pretty quickly, which that's a whole other level of concern with these technologies.

Chris Fine

There's always two faces to it, right? I don't think you can stop the development of technology. So I think you have to try to apply policy and investment to make sure that the good applies more than the bad. Let me put it that way. Right. You know, for example, on the power grid, it's a great example. So If you look at every blackout, major blackout, as a kid who grew up near New York, I've been fascinated with blackouts since 1965.

Jon Arnold

1965, right?

Chris Fine

And so, and I've been in all of them, 1977 and 2003, I had to walk down 47 flights of stairs. So I'm fascinated with them. And if you look at any one of them, you'll see that there was some activity where, because it was too fast for human beings, Because of the limited amount of logic available in the network, it was inevitable that it was going to happen. Something happens somewhere, and the only thing they can do is basically cut off the lines. That's what they do in order to prevent the damage from spreading. And yet you can imagine, and you can't program computers really to do that in a traditional sense to deal with that because there's too many what ifs. right? It has to be learning.

You need a system that can learn what normal is. And that's true with any kind of network flow. I think the need for this is going to get greater and greater because where it's all going with our utilities is micro grids that are connected together. If you think the complexity of managing some big thing that's kind of the electrical equivalent of the old telephone network where you control everything and it's just a question of where a squirrel falls or where a lightning bolt strikes, that's nothing compared to having a grid in every neighborhood with solar and electric cars that discharge back into the grid and charge from the grid and local areas of control. It's just not even in the same ballpark. You need a whole different kind of technology to apply to manage all of that, and that's where AI comes in among other places, you know.

Jon Arnold

I want to tie this to communications in a sec, but I also just wanted to mention the things you're saying there, Chris, is for, again, for our listeners to be watching for in 2024. These things are happening, A, they're happening quickly and B, on a large scale. It's part of, you know, we've talked off and on about this concept of digital transformation, how pervasive it's becoming. But it's also bringing us to this state of what is called hyperconnectivity, which is something I'm sure most of us are familiar with. But our world is becoming so connected now. And this also kind of takes us into the world of IoT, Internet of Things, where it's not just humans who are interconnected. connected, we've actually kind of done that already. There aren't too many people who cannot somehow get connected over internet channels anymore. For the most part, of course, there are lots of emerging markets not, but for our large part of the world, we are very connected at this point.

Now, of course, with digital transformation and AI, excuse me, AI has a lot to do with it. The development of, more powerful, cheaper, more ubiquitous sensors that get put into everything now means all these devices are now part of what is becoming hyperconnectivity. When you layer in 5G, which is going to become 5.5G, and then ultimately 6G over the next few years, adding the mobility layer to this of the kind of speeds that we've never seen before, that extent of hyperconnectivity gets so massive. There isn't anything that we can pretty much say or do or look at that won't be captured and go into this gigantic pool, these data lakes that they call them, et cetera, et cetera. That's where hyperconnectivity takes us. And as you say, Chris, these things get really, really powerful very quickly. Once these kind of super networks are in place, there's really no going back, right? When you think about analog inputs or analog outputs, they just don't even fit into this world.

Chris Fine

It's true. I mean, I look, I think if we were to put a 2024 prediction on it, I think both AI and IoT are just going to become more and more part of the fabric. You know, they're not going to be like the 1st 50 computers were back in the day, right? It's they're going to get tied into more and more of kind of the day-to-day. I think IoT has a huge role to play in the future of work in the office. And it's, you know, today and going into 2024, IoT and integration with software, and whether it be AI or not, is too much of A tinker toy type of project. It needs to be packaged and made standard so that it can be rolled out almost like building any other part of a building and then connecting it up. And so I think my prediction for all of this is it's just going to become more and more part of the fabric and more and more normal to see it.

Jon Arnold

Yeah. If you're an IT decision maker or leader or influencer, to me, this means you're going to be needing to have, if not already, very different conversations with your networking vendors, Extreme Networks, Cisco, Juniper, HP, Aruba, right, Chris? Because this is not about routers and switches anymore, right? This is managing these massive data flows that your organization now has to somehow, not just manage, but this is where the AI comes in, but actually extract intelligence and value, et cetera, et cetera, that your organization can actually utilize, right? It's not just keeping the network running. It's how do you get the most out of the data that's running over your systems, right?

Chris Fine

Yes, and if you're the IT person and you're not thinking about it, rest assured your boss is. So I think also it's incumbent on the vendors who are customers or our lawyers or whatever to think this way too. You know, if you sell some gizmo to IT, whether it's computer, server, storage, networking, software, whatever, you have to make the business case for it. You got to understand how it impacts the functioning of the customer's business and what sort of macro corporate processes it's related to and what transformations it enables. Not just is it a slightly better flow or, you know what I mean? So it's got to be done on both sides. And I think Again, a 2024 trend, I think more and more of the enterprise, certainly, but most of the kinds of institutional technology conversations are going to be more about use cases and business processes that technology enables versus just the technology itself.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, so optimizing network efficiency, resource management, those are important. Those are operational things. But it's that underlying value that you have to make accessible to people who need it in your organization. You start thinking about R&D requirements, training, new product development, and of course, customer service near and dear to our hearts. How do you support your customers? And of course, managing the HR piece to this and managing your employees. All of this pushes us into the worlds of privacy and cybersecurity. These are big picture things that are very tightly tied to making all of this work.

Chris Fine

And are going to be more and more front and center as if they aren't already, with the world being as it is and the vulnerabilities, the vulnerabilities that systems have and networks have and data has. So I think that's just going to be more and more of a focus of concentration. It's going to be tied more and more into the legal and regulatory framework. It may not start in the US. It may be more and more Europe and elsewhere, and then the US may follow. But I think the issue of privacy and security are going to become just even more important than they are right now.

Jon Arnold

Again, coming back to AI, which is creating and enabling, on the darker side, of course, all of the deep fakes and things around that are so easy to manipulate. As we see, ransomware is huge. Corporations are being targeted when those vulnerabilities are detected, and you start seeing it in not just corporate world, but, you know, hospitals, education systems, governments, when they become compromised, It's so messy when you start to have to deal with these attacks. Not only is it just coming directly through your networks, but again, with this digital transformation that we're all living with, this also means that your employees are doing more and more of their work as we want to get to, Chris, remotely, working from home, potentially with less secure environments there.

Doing more and more of their work over that or touching on social media channels, even things like LinkedIn. These are all entry points outside of your domain that can very easily turn into breaches and data compromising of all kinds that corporations, organizations, profit or nonprofit all have to be wary of because as we know, there's a lot of bad actors out there. There's a lot of things we're seeing in the political realm that tells you a lot of bad actors have no compunction to go wherever they can make money and they'll find the vulnerabilities. So no organization is immune from these things. I just think we're at a stage where in 2024, these things are just will continue. Just they are real now, but I think the scale of the threats become bigger the further AI and these technologies are pushing into and reshaping organizations of how they do things.

Chris Fine

I agree with you. I also think there's a related concept that's super important, which is trust, right? For 2024, I think trust in general is going or lack thereof, or how do you define it and how do you maintain it? It's going to be even a bigger theme than it's been. it's really going to come to the fore, because there's going to be more and more processes that revolve around real crises of geopolitics, of economy, of people's lives, where a lot of formerly kind of analog world elements of trust are gone. And the question is, what and how can you trust I think is a very, very ripe area for opportunity and contemplation in 2024.

Jon Arnold

Yeah, So many things are going to be needed to verify and validate. I've mentioned in earlier podcasts an initiative called CAI, Content Authenticity Initiative, that a lot of big American media institutions have gotten behind, and I think Adobe is a big player there. Microsoft, and just the idea that we have to have better tools to validate and protect digital content as it's being created. Doesn't matter whether it's audio, video, text-based, they're all vulnerable to the bad actors. I think people are generally in their consumer lives, they have been very trusting, of course, over the years, giving over so much of their privacy without realizing it.

When you're working from home and you're not in an office environment much of the time, you know, those habits can extend to workplace. And before you know it, you're making so many things accessible, vulnerable, whatever you want to call it, to bad actors, et cetera, et cetera. So you're right, Chris, we've got to have a better handle on trust and what it really means. If you're an IT guy making these decisions, governance, all these issues, it is a big new world for sure. And we don't really have the regulatory framework in place yet that you can feel comfortable with. Europe, EU is further ahead, of course, in this area. And if I was you, I'd be trying to steal some best practices for what is going on in more advanced digital economies.

Chris Fine

Agreed. And I think the other thing we mentioned, because you noticed that we avoided going into a conversation about customer service, and we're now going to shave 10 minutes off this podcast. But the last thing we were talking about was future of work. I'm very interested in your thoughts about this, but I would throw out, I just think that the pre-pandemic world is now conclusively gone. 

I think that some of the consequences of that are really going to sink in the real estate market and in the way organizations are governed and the way HR is done and a lot of other resources are applied, technology is designed. I think that it's been long enough that even the holdouts are likely to declare that the 100-year history of the five day a week people work is dead. Unless you need to be there five days a week because you physically have to perform some kind of task, you're not going to be there. And it's such a big thing that I think it's only really taken till now to start to have people believe that it's not going to go back to what it was. I think you're going to start to see even more impact from that in 2024.

Jon Arnold

I'm with you there. For our listeners, if you wonder why we don't argue very much, it makes good copy, I guess. But we are pretty like-minded, Chris. And I think what we're really interested in is providing our listeners with practical, grounded, insights that we see in our everyday work. So it doesn't bother me that we have a lot of concurrence on this stuff.

Chris Fine

Sometimes we'll disagree, but generally, I mean, we also travel in similar worlds. And so we kind of see the same kinds of themes. But I did want to mention, just as a footnote to what to the future of work thing is that I do think full-time remote work is going to continue to be a minority. And I don't think most, a lot of people really want that. I think people are very happy to be in a two, three day a week hybrid world in most jobs. And again, the usual disclaimer, this does not apply to many, many, many other jobs where you do really need to be on site. And we shouldn't believe, we shouldn't make blanket statements about work without saying that. But I do think that it's going to be, for most people, two, three days going somewhere. And it's going to be not so, not necessarily a long somewhere, like not a long commute, someplace closer, because any place can be equipped to serve as an office.

You don't have to have dedicated space. And I think corporations will learn how to manage virtual teams even better, come together two, three, four times a year, whatever they need to do. That will all work itself out. The comparable that I could draw was really when automation started to come to change work, when computers were introduced to the workplace and other, even back to the industrial revolution, seismic changes. But at some point, the prevailing interests realize that this is the way it's going to be and they will ultimately, all the stakeholders will adapt. I think we're just now at that point where everybody's saying, yeah, this is what it's going to be.

Jon Arnold

I think that'll take us out nicely here for today, Chris, because we're a lot of the stuff is going that we're seeing more and more of is the technologies themselves as they quickly evolve are making more scenarios for remote work possible. Stuff that we couldn't have done maybe two years ago, we can do today. And six months from now, there'll be more advances that will make more elements of the workforce able to work remotely. So I think that pie will continue to grow.

I had intended to talk a bit about metaverse and AR, VR stuff. Those are part of the families of technology that are making these virtual environments. And the big word here is immersive environments, you know, very practical and engaging, especially for the digital generation. I think that arc is just going to continue to move towards making those remote environments more effective, more comfortable, and just part of the bigger picture.

Chris Fine

When you combine all that with AI, they're not going to look like cartoons either.

Jon Arnold

We hope not. Yeah. Getting into these 2D and 3D renderings, it's better than just looking at legless little avatars bouncing around. And I think the tie in there, Chris, to where we're going, of course, is the Future of Work Expo that I'm chairing coming up in Florida in February. And you'll be there. Jeff Pulver will be there. And many companies that are in this space I've got a few dozen of them. They're going to have speakers there.

So if you're interested out there, folks, it's futureofworkexpo.com, if you want to find out more about that. Of course, you can read more about it on my blog or newsletter, whatever. I think with that, Chris, we are on time for today and we are putting a close to our first episode of season seven in 2024. With that, we'll thank you for your listening time and interest, and we hope you'll continue with us as we explore the future of work here on Watch This Space. You can find our episodes at www.watchthisspace.tech or wherever you subscribe to your podcasts. And if you like what you're hearing, we'd love a review or a rating and certainly suggestions for future topics. With that, I'm Jon Arnold.

Chris Fine

And I'm Chris Fine. And before I say goodbye, I have to tell you that modest Jon Arnold does an amazing job curating the future of work. Very happy to be part of it. He brings in a really impressive array of speakers and topics. So it's definitely worth looking into. If you sit through these and listen to us, you'll find a lot of the same themes in-person at that event. And so I'm Chris Fine, and I wish, I hope everybody had a nice New Year's, which you will have had by the time you hear this. We appreciate very much our listenership, and we will be back next month with another edition of Watch This Space.

Companies mentioned:

Adobe, Aruba, Cisco, Extreme Networks, HP, Juniper, Microsoft