Tech Talks Daily

Bode Miller, two-time overall World Cup champion and six-time Olympic medalist, recently announced his new tech venture, SKEO. The concept for the digital ski platform concept was pioneered by Martin Kawalski—CEO of Snowcookie Sports and European physician with a Ph.D. in neuroscience.

Intrigued by the idea of a smart connected ski and recurring winter ski injuries seen during his orthopedics rotations, Kawalski shifted his focus to hone in on education and preventability measures. Using a proprietary algorithm to fine-tune body position, edge control and improve safety like never before, SKEO will enable skiers of all levels to go farther and faster while mitigating risk.

Meet the physician-led Swiss startup, Snowcookie Sports. I wanted to learn more about how they invite every user to analyze and improve their skills, exchange stats, embrace safety, and enjoy their time on the slopes. I also learn more about the tech behind the digital ski platform that measures, coaches, and ranks your skiing to level up.

Martin Kawalski shares his story and talks about the free app, optional wearable sensors, and how the proprietary algorithms can propel skiers further, and faster.

Greg Miaskiewicz is a security expert, product designer & serial entrepreneur. Previously, founded and sold a bot detection startup (Swarm) in 2016 to Integral Ad Science, then led R&D into advertising fraud at Integral, leading up to Integral's $850mm sale to Vista in 2018.

Miaskiewicz is currently CEO & Co-Founder at Capbase, a venture-backed fintech startup, and advisor at Golden and Mobius Acoustics. Capbase is a digital back-end for your startup: Incorporation, cap table management, stock issuance, corporate governance and compliance in one single platform.

Today, Miaskiewicz joins me on the Tech Talks Daily Podcast to share how to avoid pitfalls when dealing with equity, contracts and compliances. We also discuss fundraising for a startup in the middle of a pandemic and the lessons learned he from selling a startup in Silicon Valley.

According to AppAnnie, fewer than 3000 apps are making more than US$1,000,000 a year from paid downloads, in-app purchases, and subscriptions. This reality has given rise to a whole ecosystem of mobile marketing tools to help app publishers focus on growing audiences, not creating a sustainable business. Dan Burcaw founded Nami because the marketing tools built for the mobile industry's growth era didn't help app developers succeed in the subscription era.

Dan has founded companies on the forefront of profound technology waves: open source software, smartphones, and cloud computing. He describes himself first as a serial entrepreneur, a repeat startup founder, and CEO. His startups have built or powered world-renowned products used by millions of people around the world. Dan's career has also been shaped by wisdom attained from tenures at two technology giants: Apple and Oracle.

After two decades of entrepreneurship, Dan took a year-long sabbatical to innovate himself. This startup-like effort to elevate all aspects of his performance is the foundation for his next entrepreneurial endeavors. He's now ready for the next wave.

In today's episode, Dan shares how he wrote code that ended up on a submarine when he was 17 and an incredibly cool Steve Jobs and Apple story. I also learn how Nami is the smartest service to help you launch, scale, and optimize your mobile app subscription business.

On the Tech Fusion Podcast, we explore how technology empowers employees and organizations to unlock innovation, engage customers, and be productive—anytime, anywhere. We talk with Citrix and their partners to learn more about how they are collaborating to solve real-world problems.

At Star2Star Communications, they are on a mission to help organizations to overcome the reliability and quality limitations of other communications technologies. The company has built its reputation around unifying customers'​ voice, video, fax, instant messaging, and presence management into a single, easy-to-use system.

In today's episode, Mick Miralis from Star2Star and Citrix's Nitin Sharma discuss the future of intelligent workspaces and how they are evolving for connected workers. The guests also talk about building a cohesive environment that enables connected workers to be effective and productive while removing complexity and friction between applications. We also learn more about how Citrix and Star2Star are collaborating to bring this vision to life.

The world has changed. Retailers are experimenting with augmented technologies and virtual reality, robots are moving from factory floors to front-line response, and 3D printers are being used to manufacture masks en masse.

Mark Hughes, regional VP for UK and Ireland at Epicor, the ERP cloud solution provider, joins me on the Tech Talks Daily Podcast. Although everyone is talking about 'Industry 4.0, Mark reveals how factories have undergone a revolution, with manufacturing and supply chain industries already moving from the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) to the fifth.

We discuss how manufacturing leaders have also increasingly valued the benefits that automation can bring to their business. For example, companies including GE and Merck have rolled out RPA to automate back-office elements.

We also talk about how developments like nanosensors and CRISPR gene-editing technology are driving change among grocery retailers looking at how it could potentially impact the products they sell. Mark what he thinks the future of factories will look like. Finally, we explore the radical redefinition of how organizations use technology, people, and processes to fundamentally change business performance.

Rick Hall is a software entrepreneur focused on the analytics market. He has led the development of over a dozen software products and taken several companies from the early stage to an eventual sale. Rick led a group in the purchase of Aginity in March of 2020 and has taken over the CEO role as a result.

Aginity was an early innovator in Analytics Management and launched Aginity Pro early this year. The product is off to a fast start attracting 13,000 subscribers in the first nine months, and is set to grow by more than 250% through 2021.

Rick joins me in a conversation about how companies can effectively manage their analytic initiatives and the role tech should play. We also discuss the processes and technology companies need to succeed with analytic programs and the evolution and current state of analytics technology.

For over 200 years we Wiley has been helping people and organizations develop the skills and knowledge they need to succeed. They develop digital education, learning, assessment, and certification solutions to help universities, businesses, and individuals move between education and employment and achieve their ambitions.

By partnering with learned societies, Wiley supports researchers to communicate discoveries that make a difference. Its online scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly journals, books, and other digital content build on a 200-year heritage of quality publishing.

At the recent Dynatrace Perform event, I got chatting with Wiley's CIO and CISO, Sean Mack. The visionary technology executive has extensive experience in DevOps, infrastructure, security, enterprise applications, development, and program management.

As an innovative leader driving global business strategy and transformation, I wanted to learn more about how Wiley is bridging the higher education gap by delivering content solutions in new and innovative ways to enrich the learning experience.

Wiley is an education-focused platform that takes companies from dysfunctional models to mature, globally scalable, world-class organizations, aligning business strategy and execution. We discuss the changes in their customers' usage since the pandemic and how the shift to remote learning has impacted the company.

We also discuss why they adopted the Dynatrace platform and what benefits they have leveraged.

Spin provides dockless electric scooters in more than 60 markets in the US, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Charlotte, and Miami. Their regulatory team led the nation's first stationless mobility permit system with the Seattle Department of Transportation.

It's also the micromobility arm of Ford. The company prides itself on putting riders' safety first, working closely with local governments, and scaling its fleet responsibly.

Head of Spin Europe, Felix Petersen returns to the Tech Talks Daily Podcast to discuss the launch of e-scooter trials across the UK. Almost six months have passed since the trials were announced, with Spin successfully launching several public-hire e-scooter schemes around the country. Felix also discusses Spin's European e-scooter strategy, Key learnings from the successful e-scooter trial, E-scooter usage trends in the US and Europe. We also talk about how to build a genuinely sustainable transportation solution and the future of micro-mobility.

I also learn more about Spin Valet that allows people to call a micromobility scooter from their phone, in the same way, they would an Uber or Lyft. In combination with Spin S-200's front and rear cameras, GPS technology allows Spin to precisely locate each scooter. If needed, Tortoise's team of remote operators can safely relocate the vehicle at a slow rate of speed (2–3 mph).

NICE surveyed over 1,000 global contact center decision-makers in UK, US, Australia and Canada. Findings show rapidly growing role of digital channels for customer interactions, increasing investments in digital channels, artificial intelligence, and contact center technology for seamless omnichannel experiences for customers.

I invited Paul Jarman, CEO NICE inContact to learn more about the NICE inContact 2021 Customer Experience (CX) Transformation Benchmark.

About NICE

When the world's leading companies want to improve their business performance, increase their operational efficiency, prevent financial crime, ensure they're fully compliant, or enhance their safety and security, they talk to NICE.​​ The company prides itself on leveraging technology not only to transform experiences but ensure they are also extraordinary and trusted​

About Paul Jarman

Paul Jarman holds the position of NICE inContact CEO​. Mr. Jarman is responsible for the enterprise, ​midmarket, government organizations and business process outsourcers (BPOs) who operate in multiple divisions, locations and global regions.

​A pioneer of the cloud movement, Mr. Jarman was instrumental in guiding inContact from its roots in telecommunications to its strategic offering of cloud-based contact center solutions and has been a part of every major enhancement the company has made since 1997.

​As part of inContact's strategic shift to a contact center software provider, he spearheaded four software acquisitions and two telephony acquisitions. He led inContact's successful addition to the NASDAQ ​and under his leadership, inContact has experienced strong compound annual growth rate in software revenues over the past three years.

​Mr. Jarman has spent his career building a service-driven business focused around both customers and employees, resulting in a strong corporate culture with high retention rates of both groups. Prior to joining inContact, Paul was an executive with HealthRider, Inc.

Paul has a contagious energy and is always pushing the limits to grow the company and drive market leadership. He follows the mantra of Abraham Lincoln, "Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle."

Biometric technology allows companies to uniquely identify a person based on one or more characteristics deemed unique to a particular individual, such as their face or physical fingerprint.

However, in a pandemic world, both your hands and face end up covered by gloves and masks, so relying on those traditional second-factor authentications (2FA) methods could increase friction and hurt the end-user experience.

UnifyID helps identify and authenticate individuals based on how they move and walk, leveraging machine learning algorithms and sensors in smartphone devices.

Common use cases:

• Contactless payments
• Physical access to a building
• User authentication
• Fraud reduction on payments platforms

UnifyID Founder and CEO John Whaley shares how biometric technology is shaping the future of authentication.