Tech Talks Daily

Omnitracs helps drive the transportation and distribution industries through innovative software and SaaS fleet management solutions. Companies of all sizes trust them to improve visibility into real-time action for back-office and dispatch teams. Their tech creates a more efficient driver experience through intuitive workflow and compliance tools that enable streamlined communications. I wanted to explore how tech is helping leadership teams make improved business decisions through actionable insights into fleet data. Ashim Bose, Chief Data and AI Officer at Omnitracs joins me in a conversation about transportation intelligence and the growing need for accelerated delivery services in a post-pandemic world. We also discuss insights gained from the Omnitracs Delivering on Demand: Consumer 2021 Insights Survey. Consumer preferences and needs have shifted during the pandemic, putting more pressure on fleets to deliver on these promises. With consumers becoming more dependent on delivery services during lockdowns, stay-in-place orders, and times when leaving home was simply not safe, trucking (and the drivers behind the wheel) became their lifeline. We discuss how the survey found patterns in the growing usage of—and dedication to—deliveries as a primary mode of receiving goods (vs. in-store experiences) and, subsequently, consumers' wants moving forward.

Danish game developer Bright Star Studios was founded in 2018 by games-industry veterans. Their goal is to reinvent the usual pay-to-win mechanics and loot boxes common to free-to-play games and instead develop a player-driven economy that allows gamers to earn rewards through in-game activities, including creating unique, tradable NFT items. Through the blockchain, gamers from across the world can build their own world and create tangible income from the game. The company also recently announced that videogame veteran Randy Breen has joined the Ember Sword development team as an advisor. With over 18 years of industry experience at Electronic Arts and LucasArts, Breen will help the Bright Star Studios team deliver on its vision of creating an immersive MMORPG with a true play-to-earn economy. Breen has an illustrious career in the games industry. His career began at Electronic Arts, where he grew from Assistant Producer to Executive Producer and Creative Director before becoming the head VP of Development at LucasArts. During his time there, he guided many beloved Star Wars games to PC and console, including Star Wars Battlefront, MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies, and BAFTA award-winning RPG Knights of the Old Republic. Bright Star Studios will harness this wealth of experience and expertise to help bring Ember Sword to life. Bright Star Studios recently announced that it secured over $2 million in funding from multiple investors to help deliver on its vision for Ember Sword. Last week also saw the successful completion of the game's first land sale that sold out in just six hours, with all of the regular plots being purchased in under an hour. The sale of 12,000 in-game plots of virtual Solarwood land generated a total of over $1.5M. Bright Star Studios intends to use these funds to further the title's development, enabling the team to create a high-quality and immersive player-first gaming experience supported by an innovative play-to-earn economy powered by the blockchain.

Today's guest is Callum Adamson. Despite growing up in the shadow of a rockstar father Big country musician Stuart Adamson), Callum was actually raised in a household with little money. After dropping out of an Aeronautical Engineering degree, he worked unpaid at a friend's startup and slept on his floor. During this period, Callum considered the broken tech talent model. Businesses big and small now need to change at such speed that they cannot find the skilled workers to do this quickly enough without paying extortionate fixed costs for large consultancies. To address this issue, Callum founded Distributed using profits from Bitcoin investing. From a London HQ, Distributed uses its AI-enabled platform to project manage a global community of on-demand, highly skilled software developers. This connects skilled tech workers with customers such as Capita and the Ministry of Justice. They can tap into the community and use as much or as little resource as they like at any one time – for simple or complex projects – offering the time and cost flexibility of freelancers with the capacity and quality assurance of consultancies. As a result of these trends and efforts, Distributed just completed a Series A funding round and continues to grow rapidly, expand its freelance community and deliver projects for more businesses. We discuss why the tech skills gap is an illusion and how the world is full of undervalued and poorly organized resources. We also talk about why freelancing will become the preferred profession. With the advent of remote workforces and increased flexibility, people will realize they can work for multiple clients and get paid more than traditional employment. I learn how Distributed aims to provide its community with perks and career development you wouldn't usually get as a freelancer.

Shane Neman, the founder of Neman Ventures, joins me in a conversation about PropTech. We also discuss how COVID has pushed more investment into property technology. Shane also shares what emerging technologies he's excited about. Shane Neman has always been a problem solver and a consummate optimist, which are traits that have been significant advantages in his life as a serial entrepreneur. His experience and expertise in business span many industries, from technology and telecommunications to real estate and hospitality. After earning a computer science degree from NYU, he started three tech startups (two of them – EZ Texting and JoonBug – were acquired) with hundreds of employees and tens of thousands of customers. He's a prolific backer of startups including Impossible Foods, Convoy, Prose, and Universal Standard, Apostrophe, MeetMindful, MapAnything, VinePair, Smylen, Hyperice,, Teamflow HQ, ResiDesk, Symmetry Systems and more. He's also a real estate investor and developer with more than two dozen large-scale properties across the US ranging from commercial shopping and industrial centers to residential buildings.

Rackspace Technology CTO, Jeff DeVerter joins me on the Tech Talks Daily Podcast to discuss the changing face of digital transformation. In previous years - digital transformation was relegated to a corner or department of an organization. This is largely fueled by a few key factors: · The changing/expanding IT buyers within an organization. · The rising digital fluency of businesses. · The adoption of RPA and low-code / no-code solutions. · The transformation to cloud-native development techniques within organizations. These four trends are driving a dramatic amount of transformation within organizations which are resulting in greater agility, productivity, revenue, and profits for those who are willing to embrace change. Now for those who aren't, they are actively being left behind. Each of these results is occurring in every industry - in every geography today.

While there will be an estimated 40 billion connected devices by 2025, a big limitation to fulfilling this technology's potential is that 90% of the world's surface doesn't have access to cellular service or WiFi. While existing satellite data services like Iridium and Starlink are rapidly growing, these services are prohibitively expensive for IoT device users and manufacturers who don't require high-speed, high-cost connectivity. A new Silicon Valley satellite technology startup, Swarm, is addressing these issues by developing a low bandwidth, low-cost service that commercially launched in February. The service is ideal for a wide range of IoT use cases in industries ranging from agriculture to logistics to maritime to transportation. Founded in 2016, Swarm is committed to making data and communications accessible to anywhere on the planet for just $5/month. Swarm's combination of uniquely small satellites (think the size of a grilled cheese sandwich) and user hardware deliver low bandwidth (think 90's modem speed) data services at the industry's lowest cost (1/10th the cost of traditional data services) and highest value to customers. Ben Lomgmeir, co-founder and CTO of Swarm, joins me on Tech Talks Daily to share the potential impact the company's data services could have on the IoT market.

YouGov and Auth0 recently published their new global research, 'The Login Experience Customers Want', revealed that most organizations fail to meet consumer expectations around login technology. Steven Rees-Pullman, SVP International at Auth0 joins me on Tech Talks Daily to share more insights from the research. Auth0 and YouGov's study consisted of two surveys, questioning more than 8,000 consumers and 1,200 IT and marketing decision-makers who work for businesses that offer an app/online service to customers (excluding sole-traders) across six global markets: the UK, France, Germany, Australia, Singapore, and Japan. The study found that consumers around the world want greater choice in login technologies, and actively seek them out. However, many businesses are still falling short on consumer expectations and risk frustrating their users, losing sales, increasing churn and opening themselves up to credential stuffing attacks as a result. As an example, the statistics show that consumers are more likely to sign up to an app/online service if they can use MFA (47%), biometric logins (48%) and passwordless (30%) login technologies. Yet only 27% of UK businesses currently offer MFA, biometric logins (14%) and passwordless (13%). The research goes on to explore a widening gap in expectations – with consumers wanting to use digital services but prepared to take their business elsewhere if the login process is clunky or frustrating. Steven discusses the report's findings in more detail and shares what it means for the identity management landscape and how the desire for ease and security is driving consumers to seek out modern identity solutions for a better UX.

Technology and language are eerily similar, and if you learned how to code then you've also learned a language. When Megan Miller was living in Madrid, her host mom would always tell her to aprovechar la experiencia: to take advantage of her time there. Now, she wants to help people take advantage of the tech tools available to learn and incorporate Spanish into their daily lives, without needing to invest thousands on expensive immersion trips abroad. Megan shares her story and tech background and how it led her back to her "roots" of Spanish. I learn more about how it has allowed a series of shifts in perspective; whether it's a right-brain, left-brain thing, or just plain worldly experience. One of the most inspiring aspects of this conversation is how she didn't fit into the typical IT stereotype and didn't fit in with the huge educational conglomerates: so she created her own bubble. Megan now offers professional and certified IT and business translation services from Spanish to American English. Using her CSM and PMP certifications, she manages the scope, timeline, and translation using agile methodologies to make sure the words, tone, and intent translate to a professional technology-based audience

Ash Finnegan, digital transformation officer at Conga, joins me on the Tech Talks Daily to share insights from the company's latest study regarding the current state of digital transformation across EMEA. Drawing upon over 20 years of experience in the digital space, Ash argues that companies need to rethink how they transformation their teams, processes, and technology to ensure they maximize revenue yield, align teams and truly connect the customer experience Often initiatives are rushed or short-sighted, and COVID-19 has only accelerated this issue. According to Conga's latest research, only 36 percent of all projects relating to the transformation of commercial operations are considered somewhat successful, with 95 percent of leaders citing that their organization needs to improve its revenue operations. On the podcast, Ash discusses how companies should approach transformation initiatives as they begin their post-COVID recovery plans. Drawing upon Conga's recent study, we explore: Conga's Digital Maturity Model: how Ash approaches a customer's transformation programme, establishing clear objectives. The state of DX: why COVID-19 has proven commercial transformation is critical, but not necessarily easy to implement. Future of work: streamlining workflows and enabling further collaboration will be the key drivers to the post-COVID economy and hybrid workforce

Erich Joachimsthaler, founder and CEO of Vivaldi, as well as a renowned strategy consultant and author of The Interaction Field, joins me on Tech Talks Daily. His consulting firm has helped companies such as American Express, Samsung, and Coca-Cola transform their customer and marketing strategies to enhance their business models. The firm frequently achieves $1.2BN in revenue growth in 6 months for one client. In his book discusses his take on the future of business, culture, and tech. In the pages, he addresses hard-hitting questions such as: how do you create a culture of innovation? How did Sony miss what Apple captured? Today, Erich shares his insights on why today's companies fall into three categories and why. We talk about what it takes to become an "interaction field" company and why it's imperative and discuss the future of business in a pandemic era and what big tech companies should look to drive innovation. Erich also shares how John Deere, Alibaba, Amazon, and other tech companies are getting it right… or wrong. Finally, we explore the fundamental change in mindset that all business leaders need to embrace for success