The EPAM Continuum Podcast Network

Last time on *Silo Busting,* Dr. Alexandra Diening, EPAM’s Head of Research & Insights for EMEA, introduced us to the concept of the responsible metaverse. This time, she turns the virtual tables and interrogates Jonathan Lupo, EPAM Continuum’s VP of Experience Design, about his own experience as a responsible designer. Lupo, who was in Covid quarantine during the recording of this episode, says that the metaverse provides “distraction therapy—I need to escape the bedroom” and then reaches, empathically, beyond his own experience: “But there are patients who need to escape a hospital.” He says that being trapped in his bedroom with VR has been “both a blessing and a curse,” but this made him realize that “our point of origin is kind of all messed up when it comes to metaverse thinking and really dissimilar to how we envision great customer experiences. Which is: We start with a problem.” Another issue: The metaverse requires designers to evolve to a 3D mindset. Lupo talks of the presence of 2D paradigms in contemporary VR experiences, adding that these “screen-based paradigms shoved in there don't feel right.” Of course, because we’re bringing humans into deeply immersive experiences, a lot is at stake, and this is reflected in Lupo’s general ethos: “To me, the guiding experience principle when designing for VR or 3D is: How do we keep people safe?” He’s rightly concerned with making sure people are guided properly and carefully through virtual worlds, how to avoid making them sick, how to ensure that they feel in control of their own movement. “How do we provide a set of physics that the user understands?” Listen and learn about the new skills involved in designing the metaverse—and when organizations can do quick upskilling or when they need perhaps to think about acquisition. Often, Lupo says, companies are focused on creating the ideal future state, but when it comes to the metaverse, he suggests the responsible thing also requires companies to “envision the worst experience that could happen, what could go wrong” and then “safeguard around that.” The metaverse is a brand-new, brave new world, and Lupo sums up his honest feelings here, saying that it’s “exciting, exhilarating, thrilling, and terrifying to me.” Host: Alison Kotin Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

“I rebel, therefore we exist,” wrote Albert Camus in 1951. Céline Schillinger, Founder and CEO of We Need Social, writes in her new volume, *Dare to Un-Lead. The Art of Relational Leadership in a Fragmented World:* “This phrase could sum up the essence of this book.” In this episode of *The Resonance Test,* Schillinger and Producer Ken Gordon talk it through. Schillinger believes conventional leadership’s day is over and that relational leadership is the way forward. “I think we've lost sight of just very basic values that make people thrive and excel, which are related to freedom and equality among people and a sense of chosen togetherness,” she says. She understands what it’s like to operate in corporate culture. Schillinger was a self-propelled change agent at Sanofi (“My entry point into active positive rebellion was the fight for a greater diversity in the workplace”) and has taken her experiences, mixed them with some wide-ranging reading, and developed a philosophy of leadership structured on the famed Gallic triumvirate of *liberté,* *égalité,* and *fraternité.* In the conversation, Schillinger talks about the challenges of making her kind of change in big organizations. It isn’t, interestingly, a business issue but a cultural one. “It's very easy to make the business case. That's the easiest part, I would say.” The truly difficult part? Getting leaders accept the risk, she says. The conversation is lively and anything but stiff. Schillinger is as happy talking about how people have misread W. Edwards Deming as she is criticizing... performance evaluations. “You don’t like them; I don’t like them,” says Gordon of evals. “I hate them,” says Schillinger, adding: “No one ever questions the fundamental idea at the core of this.” She suggests that a company’s time and resources would be much better spent “if instead we got together as a team and evaluated our system [asking]: How do we work together? What is the quality of our collective work, and how can we make it better?” Schillinger talks about both the value of networks and her skepticism toward today’s social networks. She even gives some useful career advice to all the change-agents and would-be change agents out there. We’re pretty sure that you’ll relate. Host: Alison Kotin Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

The metaverse business is booming! Companies are scrambling into the virtual world to claim a space of their own and set up shop as fast as they can. Dr. Alexandra Diening, Head of Research & Insights for EMEA, says they need to slow down. She introduces our Jonathan Lupo, VP of Experience Design, in the latest episode of Silo Busting, to a powerful and relevant idea she calls the “responsible metaverse.” Diening talks about the metaverse “opens new pathways for potential risks” and what we can do to close them off. Learn about the new vulnerabilities the metaverse creates (social, psychological, data and more) and Diening’s plan to gather a diverse community to co-create the necessary guardrails. “I always say that it takes a village to build a responsible metaverse.” If you’d like to be a virtual villager, let's talk. Host: Alison Kotin Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

Nowadays, everyone in healthcare is talking telemedicine… except for maybe Dr. Bryan Vartabedian, Chief Medical Officer of Texas Children's Hospital North Austin, founder of *33 Charts,* author of several books, and a previous *Resonance Test* guest, who prefers the term “remote care.” He finds it a flexible term because it encompasses more than the conventional idea of care through a screen. One can certainly provide remote care via phone call, text, or email. “It’s important to think about the different modalities of remote care because different circumstances call for different modalities,” Vartabedian tells our Jonathon Swersey on the latest episode of *The Resonance Test.* But the challenge is not just about the varieties of treatment—there’s also the matter of training. Vartabedian says “We have this embarrassment of riches of technology,” adding that much of this tech is doled out to providers “without any real instruction or discussion or dialogue about how we're going to use these tools.” Problems arise when providers use “the wrong tool for the wrong problem” and “things get really kind of challenging and difficult.” And let’s not get started on the data! “There's this constant stream of information, and the challenge for us is: How do we harness that? How do we consolidate that to certain times of the day? It's almost a design problem,” Vartabedian says, sounding very much like a designer. This fine conversation skis around the idea of data governance, training patients to use MyChart messaging, the difficulty of setting universal standards for communication tools. They talk about what’s been gained (access) and lost (human connection) in a remote-first world. They talk about being sensitive to the interests of the end user. They talk about the importance of touch in the examination process: “It's a form of communication,” says Vartabedian. It's a deep, informed, and at times personal conversation about how going remote has changed the face of healthcare for practitioners. Get close to their dialogue by clicking below. Host: Kenji Ross Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

The smartest designers understand the importance of diversity. It’s not about signaling openminded-ness but about achieving the deepest levels of innovation. We’re talking about truly heterogenous, multidisciplinary teams, which is a familiar concept to us. “Imagine if our future teams were just as representative as the beautiful tapestry of people making up this world,” writes Kevin G. Bethune, author of *Reimagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation,* in his recently published volume. But when it comes to investing in such diversity, Bethune, who is our guest on *The Resonance Test,* tells Producer Ken Gordon: “The business community at large has a long way to go.” Bethune knows whereof he speaks. He’s been around all kinds corporate and design cultures. He studied engineering at Notre Dame, business at Carnegie Mellon, and design at ArtCenter; worked on nuclear generators at Westinghouse; designed shoes at Nike; lead design at BCG Digital Ventures; and most recently became the Founder and Chief Creative Officer of dreams • design + life, a think tank for design and innovation. His book is, in fact, an interesting hybrid of professional autobiography, an argument for inclusion, a little philosophy of multidisciplinary design teams, and a career guide. And in it, and in this conversation, he uses his lived experience to showcase how an incessant willingness to learn, to stretch, are necessary for a successful career. “Careers are made by really leaning into your curiosity,” he says. But Bethune also says, in his book on this conversation, that this individual experience needs to be blended into a strong multidisciplinary team. “The collective *we* is better,” he says, because it creates “a greater sense of resilience, greater sense of flexibility, and a greater sense of future foresight than if I didn't have these experiences to offer in the team room.” In fact, Bethune talks about so much relevant things, such as the important role education played in his career, collaboration during a pandemic, and how to create a network of your own, among other salient topics. Much wisdom here, for those who click. Join us. Host: Alison Kotin Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

Virtual confusion has been wafting through the 21st century c-suite. Leaders are asking: *Web3? Metaverse? What’s the relationship between the two… and how will it affect our business?* They are frantically trying to sort out the nuances. Are you perhaps such a leader? If so, you’re in luck: We’ve captured a conversation between Alexandra "Sasha" Pitkevich, EPAM’s Blockchain Lead, and Cristina Garcés, CEO of Optiva Media, an EPAM company, that will put the issue into a proper context for you and your organization. In this episode of *Silo Busting,* Producer Ken Gordon put some queries to our experts and their answers, delivered in clear, human-centered language, provide an inside look into what clients know, and need to know, about Web3 and the metaverse. For Pitkevich, much of the confusion is a matter of “bad timing, coincidence, because both terms appeared in the market at the same time.” Part of it is a lack of digital and technological experience. Many people, says Garcés, haven't ever pulled on a VR headset and don't understand the metaverse as “somewhere where they're going to explore, experiment, socialize.” Pitkevitch says that it may be a literary issue, citing Neal Stephenson’s use of the term “metaverse” in *Snow Crash.* For some sci-fi fans, the concept “came not from the reality but from the books.” Plug into their conversation and you’ll learn why a virtual standalone community is not a metaverse, hear about the new vulnerabilities of the metaverse, and consider the issues around data sharing and intellectual property rights. You’ll ponder the central concept of interoperability and dare to think of the pivotal role of community managers (Pitkevitch says of metaverse use cases: “They lace in between brands, they lace in between business units, and they're powered by the community interaction”). This bold, borderless episode will get you ready for a bold, borderless future. Don’t fret; just listen. Host: Kenji Ross Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

Passwords are a hassle. But what would it take to live a secure online life without them? This is what Sam Rehman, our Chief Information Security Officer and SVP, and Shaked Vax, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Anonybit, talk about in our latest #CybersecurityByDesign conversation. Listen as they jam on the topic of zero trust and identity as it relates to relevant and tricky ideas such as passwordless technology and biometrics. There are some issues, says Vax, explaining that relying on the biometrics enrolled on one’s smartphone “creates a bit of a false sense of security, in my opinion.” Those biometrics, he says, are “not validated against who they belong to.” Because one can store other fingerprints—those of, say, one’s kids—on a smartphone, this creates “a gap there between the account holder and the biometric on the phone.” There are flaws, Vax says, when the system is not fully connected to a centralized authentication and relies too heavily on phone biometrics. “You truly want to identify and bind that to the end user,” says Rehman, meaning a very specific person and “not just somebody who can unlock the phone.” The big question for Vax is: “How do you do a multi-factor authentication that addresses this gap, this vulnerability around the new phone or the account recovery?” Some fascinating talk here about decentralized data storage and protection, the user experience of passwordless, and the importance of having multiple modalities for different populations. You’ll want to listen—and you’ll be glad that no password is required. Host: Alison Kotin Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

Are you SME paring? That is, are you matching up external cloud subject matter experts with your engineers, architects, and security people to deliver a common goal? That’s what Jim Wilt, Distinguished Architect of Digital Strategy & Technology Innovation at a Fortune 100 retailer, does—and it works. Superbly. “The rate at which you increase expertise at that level is tenfold greater than an encompassing program of certification and training,” he says. If you’re curious about the cloud, you should attend to the wisdom of Wilt, Miha Kralj, EPAM’s VP of Cloud Strategy, and Norm Judah, EPAM Advisory Board Member, who are all here on *Silo Busting* for the second installment of our series on cloud mastery (hear the first part here: https://www.continuuminnovation.com/en/how-we-think/blog/you-only-realize-when-you-finish-the-marathon-that-its-actually-a-triathlon). It’s a wisdom, says Judah, that is *evolving*—and one that leaders shouldn’t keep to themselves: “One of the key measures of wisdom is your ability to share the wisdom that you've got and update the wisdom that you have.” And it’s one that requires specific measures of success. When Kralj asks about defining the cloud native mentality approach and results, he gets an interesting answer from Judah: “What is the *consequence* of mastery?” adding: “A consequence of mastery is actually a clearly articulated technical strategy on which we actually land up building and running a series of systems in a fairly broad way.” Listen in to this episode and you’ll walk away with all sorts of cloud-based wisdom including advice on identifying and encouraging technical leaders within one’s organization, some insights into investment strategy, and a deep consideration of the role of the CTO in the complex process of cloud mastery. Host: Kenji Ross Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

For many organizations, the cloud is shrouded in mystery. It doesn’t have to be. Cloud mastery isn’t out of reach, but achieving it requires clear thinking, a tolerance for systemic complexity, and a willingness to invest and test. Our latest episode of *Silo Busting*—the first in a two-part series—will help prepare you to scale the cloud’s intimidating edifice. To ascend to a higher level of understanding, listen to the informed but easygoing back-and-forth between experts Jim Wilt, Distinguished Architect of Digital Strategy & Technology Innovation at a Fortune 100 retailer promoting cloud-native solutions via empowered DevSecOps teams; Norm Judah, EPAM Advisory Board Member; and Miha Kralj, EPAM’s VP of Cloud Strategy. Know first that humility is required. “It is absolutely impossible to know everything about everything in the cloud,” admits Judah. “You can know something about everything, and everything about something, but knowing how all the components work is a task that's sort of intractable to normal humans.” And yet, normal humans—particularly those on the IT side of things—need to explain to their business counterparts that, as Kralj puts it: “Cloud is not just a cheaper data center in the sky but actually provides, on its own, an additional business value through greater agility, greater speed, better access to business innovation.” Part of the reason we can move so quickly in cloud is that today’s technology enables rapid experimentation and fast learning. Says Wilt: “I'm learning one hundred ways to not do something so that when I find the two ways to do it, I can go into that with high confidence because I'm an expert at failing at it.” The trio riffs on how the cloud got so complex, the need for continuous education, the importance of aligning technical and business mastery, and more. If you're curious about cloud, get listening! As Judah says, cloud mastery “isn't static—you either get better or you get worse, but you never stay at the same level.” Host: Kenji Ross Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

“Zero trust to me is a set of principles, and the degree to which you operate those principles is very much a risk-management exercise,” says Mike Gorman, Head of Security and Compliance at NetFoundry. This remark set the tone for the informed dialogue Gorman recently had with Boris Khazin, our Global Head of DRM Services, in our latest #CybersecurityByDesign conversation. The environment that requires zero-trust networking, Gorman says, is complex. “The more we advance the information age, the more we are struggling to get ahold of our security and the more we are struggling to reach the kind of business agility that we want and all of these competing factors.” Listen to Gorman-Kahzin back-and-forth as it ranges from GDPR and CCPA, to improving the implementation of private networks, to including GRC within the software development lifecycle and the *solution* development lifecycle. These are essential topics that all businesses need to address, whether they recognize the need or not. “Vulnerabilities always exist,” says Gorman. “If you don't know about them, then there's a zero-day out there [and] some security researcher, good or bad, is gonna find it for you.” One way to combat the bad guys: Get into the network early and protect it. “By getting the networking piece right, you can reduce the threat actor space by literally orders of magnitude,” says Gorman. Want to start making your organization less vulnerable? Hit “play.” Host: Alison Kotin Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon