Episodes

I LIKE IT. NO I HATE IT. IT FITS, NO IT DOESN’T FIT. I’M RETURNING IT! The Buzz 1: Retailers expect 17.8% or $158Bn of merchandise sold during the 2022 holiday season will be returned, according to the National Retail Federation. Returns have become a major headache in ecommerce, cutting into profit and straining resources. [www.digitalcommerce360.com] The Buzz 2: 37% of American households' financial situation is worse than last year. But consumers will cut non-essentials to give gifts and soci...

Looking ahead to 2030: How will we work? How will we travel? What will we eat? How will we dress? Will we have ANY privacy? Will we all be space travelers? What old and new challenges will we face? The Buzz: The top 7 emerging future technology booms that will redefine the future and the world we live in – from https://unboxingstartups.com: *** Per Statista, 2,028 AI companies in 2018 were working in the US. The number of AI startups could reach 9,000 by the end of 2030. *** The growth rate of s...

The Buzz 1: Drones have been around for more than two decades, but their roots date back to World War I when the U.S. and France worked on developing automatic, unmanned airplanes…The last few years have seen significant drone adoption by individuals, commercial entities, and governments: Aerial photography for journalism and film; Express shipping and delivery; Gathering info or supplying essentials for disaster management; Geographic mapping of inaccessible terrain; Building safety inspections...

The Buzz 1: Dozens of song titles have “Edge” in the title, including: Darkness on the Edge of Town by Bruce Springsteen, Edge of Seventeen by Stevie Nicks, and Living on the Edge by Aerosmith. But what does EDGE mean in our tech-driven world? The Buzz 2: Edge computing reduces the volumes of data to be moved and the distance that data needs to travel for quicker movement of data and a reduction in transmission costs. [theceomagazine.com] Now imagine your own connected home, car, and energy prov...

Buzz 1: For some, a ‘smart house’ is chock-full of gadgets that automate or monitor almost every conceivable part of a house. For others, a smart house is extreme simplicity with only the slightest of technological intrusions as necessity demands…Apple’s Home app, Google’s Nest, Google’s Home app, Airthinx air quality monitors, myQ smart garage doors, Dyson app, Wemo app, Nanoleaf, a Govee Home app. [forbes.com] Buzz 2: Managing smart home is hard. “You do need an ecosystem, fundamentally, becau...

The Buzz 1: “Reading and ‘riting and ‘rithmetic – taught to the tune of the hick’ry stick.” School Days, song written in 1907 by Will D. Cobb and Gus Edwards, is about a couple looking back sentimentally on primary school. The Buzz 2: “In the past, financial literacy has been pushed aside within K-12 schools. There has been a lack of agreement about how and what to teach.…Because financial education prepares students for the realities they’ll face in the real world and contributes directly to th...

The Buzz 1: Women in technical roles are less likely than men to win promotions early in their careers, and many are exiting the field. Only 86 women are promoted to manager for every 100 men at the same level…in technical roles, only 52 women per 100 men. Diversity is crucial to help de-bias the technologies in our modern life. [McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2021 report, coauthored with LeanIn.org] The Buzz 2: The label 'woman in tech' seems redundant…how many women would refer to themselve...

The Buzz 1: “What will be the most coveted skill of the future?…Creativity…A computer lacks imagination or creativity to dream up a vision for the future.…the emotional competence a human being has… We must embrace and develop our creativity, and then use technology creatively to solve problems of the world.” [forbes.com/sites/annapowers] The Buzz 2: “When you think about old masters of art such as Pablo Picasso, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, you can clearly understand why their paintings are valued at a...

The Buzz 1: “NFTs are not just for digital art—and their popularity is growing. Now The Economist is experimenting with an NFT, to raise money for a good cause. – One candidate for the Oxford English Dictionary’s “Word of the Year” for 2021 will surely be “NFT”. Non-fungible tokens—cryptocurrency chits which represent digital images or videos—have been around since 2014, but took off in popularity in March [2021] when Christie’s, a British auction house, sold an NFT of “Everydays—The First 5,000...

The Buzz 1: “The science of social selling actually originated from academia. In a 2009 paper…'The Persuasive Role of Incidental Similarity on Attitudes and Purchase Intentions in a Sales Context,' researchers concluded that a purchase is more likely to take place when the buyer and seller happen to share things in common…sales practitioners began putting the science into practice and thus became the ‘social selling’ approach.” [Tony Restell, social-hire.com] The Buzz 2: “To stand out today, you...

The Buzz 1: In 1440 – 600 years after The Diamond Sutra, the world’s oldest printed book – Gutenberg invented the wooden mass-printing press. In 1845 Richard Hoe invented the rotary press and first paperback. In 1993, Peter James published the thriller Host on 2 floppy disks – the first electronic novel – and BiblioBooks launched a website to sell eBooks. Along came the 2gb Kindle, able to hold 1,100 books. Today, print books still make up 65+% of sales in the $113Bn annual book market. To be co...

The in-person experience of car buying has always been alluring, letting you inhale the new car scent, examine the shiny power under the hood, literally kick the tires, ask questions of a human salesperson, and feel the road in a test drive. Now online car sales are offering a new experience: click it, order it, pick it up, keep-or-return it – and the automotive industry mostly isn’t ready. The Buzz 1: Nearly 30% of U.S. new car sales in 2020 were completed online, compared to 2% of vehicles pre...

The Buzz 1: “Privacy and security are those things you give up when you show the world what makes you extraordinary.” [Margaret Cho, comedian] The Buzz 2: “Millions of people are unaware of and uninformed about how their personal information is being used, collected or shared in our digital society.” [staysafeonline.org/data-privacy-week] The Buzz 3: “Digital freedom stops where that of users begins... Privacy is not for sale, it's a valuable asset to protect.” (Stephane Nappo, Société Générale ...

The Buzz 1: “There is such a thing as a glass ceiling…the invisible barrier which prevents women from advancement in their profession. Do we have an unacknowledged barrier that is an obstacle for women in Tech who are indeed skilled and experienced but can’t get a promotion?” [huddle.eurostarsoftwaretesting.com] The Buzz 2: “The label 'woman in tech' seems redundant these days – how many women would refer to themselves as ‘a female engineer’ or ‘the company’s female CTO’? However, there still ex...

The Buzz 1: While the majority of solo parents are single mothers, up to 2.6 million families in the US are headed by single dads…The research on single fathers is limited. [healthline dot com] The Buzz 2: As a single dad, keeping a strong relationship between you and your child after a divorce is essential for your child’s wellbeing.…children are less likely to engage in delinquent behavior if their father is actively engaged in their upbringing. [Licensed psychologist Robert Goldman, pittsburg...

The Buzz 1: “85% of the women I interviewed make money in ways that really aren’t any different from how women made money in 1980: a third have jobs that pay salaries and bonuses, perhaps with a bit of a twist; about a quarter make money off of direct drive sales (a business model I remember well from selling photocopiers for Xerox in 1986!) and another quarter provide some sort of fee for service. A mere 15% have the “many sources” model for money making.…” (Barbara Stewart, Rich Thinking® glob...

The Buzz 1: “Coming up with a great name for your characters is one of the hardest tasks you’ll ever complete as a fiction writer… going too ‘creative’ with your name choices can distract or even confuse your reader.” (nybookeditors.com) The Buzz 2: “Instead of calling the pizza delivery guy ‘Bob,’ if you give him an interesting ethnicity, a cowboy hat and a name like Galveston Ngyen, readers will remember him when he shows up dead 50 pages later. But beware. There can be pitfalls.” (Anne R. All...

The Buzz 1: Sustainability is no longer just a buzzword, but an environmental, economic and social driver that's changing our day-to-day lives… committing to sustainable practices is no longer a "nice to have" but a "must do"…. [forbes.com] The Buzz 2: Technologies shaping the sustainability agenda: Public electric transport. Electric trucks. Cheap energy storage. Plastic recycling. LED light efficiency. Accessible solar power. Carbon capture and storage. Hydrogen in the energy transition. [mcki...

The Buzz 1: ** “If you want to be a rock star or just be famous, then run down the street naked, you'll make the news or something. But if you want music to be your livelihood, then play, play, play and play! And eventually you'll get to where you want to be.” [Eddie Van Halen, songwriter and musician] ** “Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.” [Maya Angelou, memoirist, poet, playwright] ** “Every song is like a painting.” (Dick Dale,...

The Buzz 1: Sustainability is no longer just a buzzword, but an environmental, economic and social driver that’s changing our day-to-day lives… committing to sustainable practices is no longer a “nice to have” but a “must do”…. [forbes.com] The Buzz 2: Technologies shaping the sustainability agenda: Public electric transport. Electric trucks. Cheap energy storage. Plastic recycling. LED light efficiency. Accessible solar power. Carbon capture and storage. Hydrogen in the energy transition. [mcki...

The Buzz 1: There’s no telling what the futuristic inventions of the world hold, but we can start by taking a few wild and speculative guesses: Robot butlers – Fully immersive VR – Cryonics – Exo-skeletons – Flying Cars –Artificial gravity – Fusion power – Self-sustaining space colonies. [bigthink.com] The Buzz 2: The U.S. patent system is detailed in the Constitution. A patent’s assurance of the protection of inventions is a key reason why companies invest billions of dollars in research and de...

The Buzz 1: Headlines: Drones are helping to restore power in Puerto Rico. A drone attacked targeted the U.S. electrical grid. Google’s drone service will deliver library books. Submarine drone can swim for months and then fly away. Drone waiters will take your restaurant order. ESPN shot the X Games with drones. A bouncy search-and-rescue drone could save your life. The military wants a dancing drone that can fly through windows. [popularmechanics.com/the-future-of-drones] The Buzz 2: In the fi...

Remember the TV sitcom “Who’s The Boss?” (ABC TV 1984 – 1992) It’s time to ask the question again! The Buzz 1: Everyone will be a leader in the workplace in 2030. Work will thrive in teams, not with dictators. The Chief of Work will set the culture in the organization. All workers at all levels will use robotic helpers like Siri or Alexa, for incoming email, scheduling meetings, creating spreadsheets. [simplilearn.com, studies by CBRE and Genesis, WSJ report] The Buzz 2: Being a leader rather th...

The Buzz 1: Retailers expect 17.8% or $158 billion of merchandise sold during the 2022 holiday season will be returned, according to National Retail Federation. [digitalcommerce360.com] The Buzz 2: Retail returns jumped to an average of 16.6% in 2021 versus 10.6% in 2020, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation and Appriss Retail. That adds up to more than $761 billion of merchandise…in unwanted purchases that come back to retailers’ stores and warehouses and become a headache fo...