The Mr. Beacon Ambient IoT Podcast

What does it mean to ‘modernize your supply chain’?To Digimarc, it involves moving beyond the conventional barcode to an imperceptible data carrier, the Digimarc barcode, that can be repeated many times on packaging without spoiling the appearance. Digimarc is helping businesses across many industries solve for brand protection, sustainability, and traceability. Their digital identity can be applied to material and media of all kinds, including packaging, labels, audio, fabric, and more. We welcome Sprague Ackley, Principal R&D Engineer at Digimarc, back on the Mr. Beacon Podcast to learn about the technology behind the invisible barcode and how it works. Tune in to learn about the use cases that are driving leading retailers, brand owners, packaging suppliers, and even all of the currencies of the world to adopt the Digimarc Barcode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How is it ‘that virtually every person on the face of the earth has the ability to scan a barcode in their pocket’? Success in IoT depends on understanding how the ecosystem operates. Auto-ID is a building block at the heart of IoT and AIM is the industry group that defines auto-ID standards. It does the things that companies on their own, even giants, can’t achieve. This week we have a peek inside AIM. For ‘nearly half a century, it has provided unbiased information, educational resources and standards to providers and users of these technologies’, Barcodes, QR Codes, RFID, and Bluetooth, to name a few. Sprague Ackley, Principal R&D Engineer at Digimarc, a contributor to AIM for much of his career, points out the many parts of our lives that auto-ID enhances: think of getting packages to your door just in the nick of time, making sure your COVID vaccine has been accurately tracked and traced, or the military receiving the materials they need under incredibly difficult conditions. Now that auto-ID is well established, AIM focuses on making it better, less expensive, more efficient, and deployed more broadly. Tune in to learn how you can leverage its resources, how it works, and its relationship to other groups like RAIN RFID, ISO, and GS1. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The next time you buy a product, a purse or a pair of shoes, imagine the capabilities that could be unlocked if it were really a platform.The purse could digitally verify its own authenticity, your shoes could seamlessly share the story of their design and origins. ‘Product to Platform’ is the transformation Blue Bite have been enabling: A new way of engaging customers throughout the entire product lifecycle to protect the brand, tell its story, and enable new product commerce opportunities. Blue Bite plays in many industries and has worked with many notable brands like L’Oréal, Bulgari, Adidas, Moët Hennessy, and Samsung. They have helped these brands digitize their products with connecting technologies like QR codes and NFC, which are managed by their ‘Experience Studio’ platform. Tune in this week as we chat with Mikhail Damiani, CEO of Blue Bite, to hear about which applications are driving each of these technologies and the new experiences that Blue Bite are bringing to market.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why is it that decision makers should care about data science? The simplest answer could be that some of the biggest businesses are leaders in data science. Think of Netflix, Amazon, Google, Facebook. Their content is all curated by artificial intelligence. Tune in this week to hear a fascinating episode with Dr. Stylianos Kampakis about data science in our world today and to dive into his book “The Decision Makers Handbook to Data Science”. We double click on all the buzz words: artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning - demystifying and providing context to these subjects that are important for leaders to understand.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

 You’ve heard about the Amazon Go Store and all the big box retailers implementing technology to transform the way we shop, but are we seeing the same advancements in the luxury sector? This week we talk to Inspify, a technology company that is ‘reinventing the art of retail in luxury boutiques’. Thorsten Walther, CEO of Inspify, sits down with us to talk about their product: a customer experience platform as a service. Currently, their focus is creating custom experiences for luxury brands in the boutique and online for jewelry and watches. Tune in this week to catch a glimpse of Inspify’s exceptional work turning the offline to online with the creation of virtual boutiques, equipped with the ultimate live chat feature with a sales representative. Coming full circle, we learn about how Inspify are using beacons on time pieces to engage with customers as a tool to enable social sharing and immerse them into product storytelling. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why would you want Near Field Communication, or more commonly known as NFC, technology in soccer balls, hand bags, and COVID testing kits?After this conversation with Avery Dennison’s Head of NFC business, Amir Khoshniyati, you’ll be asking ‘Why not?’. To name a few uses that Amir mentions, the unique ID that NFC provides can enable authenticity, consumer engagement and loyalty, and supply chain visibility. Avery Dennison, who recently acquired Smartrac, are a company whose products are used in almost every industry. These include ‘pressure-sensitive materials for labels and graphic applications; tapes and other bonding solutions for industrial, medical, and retail applications; tags, labels and embellishments for apparel; and radio frequency identification (RFID) solutions serving retail apparel and other markets.’ NFC technology falls under the RFID umbrella, of which they are the world’s largest provider. Tune in this week to learn about the use cases NFC are enabling today, uniquely in COVID times, and the upcoming opportunities in the IoT landscape. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Even with the obvious benefits of illuminating your supply chain with IoT technology, assembling all the pieces of the solution puzzle can seem like an onerous task. Who best to shed some light on the topic of scaling IoT than Bob Proctor, CEO of Link Labs. Bob used to be a McKinsey consultant and his company works with the largest wireless carriers, hospitality providers and eCommerce providers. Link Labs is an end to end solution provider for asset tracking and monitoring – a true expert at bringing the puzzle to life, both with ease and affordability. In this episode, we dive into what makes up a solution, starting at the product level to discuss performance, data efficiency, and networks. All the way to through the layers that lay above: operations, financials, training, and support, to name a few. Tune in to hear an interesting discussion about the best drivers that scale projects and to hear Bob’s thoughts on the state of the Internet of Things Industry. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

IoT insiders know that Bluetooth is not just the wireless technology that we know and use on a daily basis, but also the nick-name of the late Danish king and great communicator, Harald Bluetooth. Forkbeard, Bluetooth’s son, known for his navigational expertise is a perfect name for the company we are talking with today. Forkbeard combines the best of Bluetooth and ultra-sound technology enabling the centimeter-level accuracy needed for useful services and movement insights in indoor environments. Join us as we sit down with Wilfred Booij, CTO of Forkbeard, to learn how they are achieving thier mission of taking the GPS revolution indoors. We will talk accuracy, latency, size, and functionality of ultra sound, as well as a side by side comparison to other positioning technologies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What could possibly go wrong when huge businesses try to engage with startups? What should startups expect when they try to sell to much larger companies?  How would a partnership between companies like Bissell, Steelcase, and Whirlpool help avoid the issues that occur when entrepreneurs penetrate large enterprises?  Join us this week with Dana Lowell, Co-founder of Seamless, to find out the answers. Dana’s extensive experience also leads us to an exciting conversation about the future of automotive and IoT. We find out how the industry is transforming and how connectivity and the cloud are changing the automotive supply chain and vehicle functionality. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Where are the dark spots in your supply chain?How could your business transform with digital twin of your supply chain? We are talking about continuous, real time location, condition, and contextual data, when you need it. In 2014, a team of Silicon Valley veterans built a cloud system that bridges the physical and digital worlds. Cloudleaf’s vision is to ‘take a radical new approach to unlock the massive value within supply chains, and transform them into more powerful, data-driven strategic assets’ using IoT, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and advanced analytics. This week we sit down with Mahesh Veerina, CEO of Cloudleaf to learn how continuous visibility leads to continuous intelligence. All this allows you to move faster and make more informed decisions. Tune in to get the inside scope on the business justification for investing in real time visibility and sensing – what the ROI is on tagging everything, adding in the reading systems, and all the changes in processes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.