Tech Talks Daily

While the number of female CEOs increased to over 25 percent in 2020, there are still many industries where women leaders are under-represented, including industrial lighting/manufacturing. Dialight is the world leader in industrial LED lighting technology, and its solutions are supporting over 2 million LED fixtures globally. But this tech company wanted to change the narrative when it comes to the gender gap. In 2020, the company announced the permanent appointment of its first-ever female CEO, Fariyal Khanbabi.

Fariyal Khanbabi has already demonstrated great success in her early months in the C-Suite. One example is the creation of the Dialight Foundation, the nonprofit arm of Dialight aiming to transform the lives of people in need in local communities where the company does business, focusing on supporting children and youth causes. In 2020 alone, the foundation raised over $61,000, more than tripling its initial fundraising goal. Fariyal attributes much of her leadership skills to her early childhood years, where she lived on a shipping vessel as the only eight-year-old amongst a crew of primarily adult men. Through this unique upbringing, she learned to thrive as the "only" woman in a male-focused workplace, but also where she experienced her first of many C-level management lessons that have made her the business leader she is today.

About Dialight Dialight is a global leader in improving sustainability, safety and operational efficiency for its customers by providing high-efficiency, long-lasting LED lighting technology for industrial applications. With over a million fixtures installed worldwide, Dialight's class-leading technology reduces energy use, cost and environmental impact for customers and is certified to a broad range of international standards. The company's operations are headquartered in the U.S., and it is listed on the main market of the London Stock Exchange under the ticker DIA.

Muzik is a disruptive innovation lab and technology company specializing in wearable devices built for culture by culture. It currently works with icons across the worlds of sports, music, fashion, and technology to create products that empower you to listen, create and share in exciting new ways.

When I heard that they were building the first camera/headphone, which allows users to merge sound, photos, and video, utilizing voice and touch, I had to find out more. Muzik CTO Kevin Calloway joins me on Tech Talks Daily to discuss the announcements and share more details on VISION's SDK for developers. I learn more about what this might mean for the future of video streaming and connectivity.

Like the GoPro, VISION's camera offers POV-style video that can be live-streamed, and thanks to the SDK, it can be customized to individual or enterprise needs. For example, a real estate agent can easily operate a POV-style virtual tour of a home using the headphones and incorporate it into their own branded applications. Another key differentiator is that the camera will stream at the eye-line level, allowing for a realistic user-experience unlike anything else on the market.

Corey Nachreiner, CTO at network security company WatchGuard Technologies, and Marc Laliberte, a senior security analyst at WatchGuard join me on the Tech Talks Daily Podcast. Corey and Marc discuss the state of the security market and share their security predictions, including prominent attacks and infosec trends that the WatchGuard Threat Lab research team believes will emerge this year.

I learn more about the tidal wave of automated spear-phishing campaigns, how hackers are infesting home networks with worms, and how attackers are swarming VPNs and RDPs as the remote workforce grows. We also discuss the key steps organizations can take to improve their security posture.

About Corey Nachreiner Corey Nachreiner is the CTO of WatchGuard Technologies. A front-line cybersecurity expert for nearly two decades, Corey regularly contributes to security publications and speaks internationally at leading industry trade shows like RSA. He has written thousands of security alerts and educational articles and is the primary contributor to the Secplicity Community, which provides daily videos and content on the latest security threats, news and best practices. A Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Corey enjoys "modding" any technical gizmo he can get his hands on and considers himself a hacker in the old sense of the word.

About Marc Laliberte Marc Laliberte is a Senior Security Analyst at WatchGuard Technologies. Specializing in networking security protocols and Internet of Things technologies, Marc's day-to-day responsibilities include researching and reporting on the latest information security threats and trends. He has discovered, analyzed, responsibly disclosed and reported on numerous security vulnerabilities in a variety of Internet of Things devices since joining the WatchGuard team in 2012. With speaking appearances at industry events including RSA and regular contributions to online IT, technology and security publications, Marc is a thought leader who provides insightful security guidance to all levels of IT personnel.

About WatchGuard WatchGuard Technologies, Inc. is a global leader in network security, endpoint security, secure Wi-Fi, multi-factor authentication, and network intelligence. The company's award-winning products and services are trusted around the world by more than 18,000 security resellers and service providers to protect more than 250,000 customers. WatchGuard's mission is to make enterprise-grade security accessible to companies of all types and sizes through simplicity, making WatchGuard an ideal solution for midmarket businesses and distributed enterprises. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, with offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America.

Today, with massive numbers of connected devices and as industries transform to deliver truly innovative services and experiences all connected to the web – from voice assistant devices and video streaming platforms to connected and autonomous cars – the delivery and protection of data over the internet to offer a seamless experience is more critical than ever. In light of this, I invited Michael Gooding from Akamai Technologies on the podcast. Akamai is the world's largest cloud delivery platform. It is crucial for many companies, from gaming and mobile networks to tech firms and manufacturers, as a result of its Edge platform and Content Delivery Network, which ensures customers and businesses are agile, fast, and secure.

With its vast network, Akamai has unique security and web performance offering. Its experts can view and defend businesses from the growing attacks against armies of bots around the globe. Michael Gooding joins me in a conversation about the importance of edge computing (Scalability & performance).

We also talk about the history of edge computing, bandwidth restrictions at the core of the internet, and the exponential growth of devices.

What would happen if technology built a bridge between famous people and fans? Imagine your favorite footballer, actress, comedian, reality star, or YouTuber to wish a family member or friend a personalized video message. Meet memmo. An app that is using technology to creating personal connections between fans and celebrities.

After thinking for a long time about the positive and emotional effect that occurs when you have personal contact with inspiring people, the idea of memmo came to Gustav Lundberg Toresson and Tobias Bengtsdahl, when they sat each night as guests at different wedding dinners.

During many lengthy speeches, often a little too internal for everyone to appreciate, the evening suddenly stopped. A video clip featuring the bride's main idol was presented, with some playful lines about how it could have instead been the bride and he - with a big congratulations to the lucky groom. A few miles south on a similar event outside Paris, all of the wedding guests suddenly sit in unified laughter.

A French football player has been shown via video clips during dinner, and the mood is quite different from what it was before. The same questions arose in both Gustav and Tobias' minds - how had they managed to get hold of the videos, and is there a way to share these positive experiences more often?

One answer led to the other. Getting hold of these profiles was not a simple story. Personal contact with agents or the profiles themselves was just the beginning, and the implementation of the video was another process. A complicated gift, which nevertheless was more than worthwhile. The reactions to these clips were unbeatable and something that more people should be aware of - at least Gustav and Tobias thought so, and the idea of memmo was born.

memmo is a platform that offers personalized video messages from well-known profiles to their fans and followers. As a customer, you send a request for a specific message - a greeting, an internal joke, or some fancy words for a big speech - and the profile decides what videos they want to perform for the predetermined price. The video is recorded, sent, and paid for directly via our platform.

Gustav Lundberg Toresson joins me on Tech Talks Daily to share the story behind memmo and his vision of leveraging technology to create personal connections between fans and their idols.

Today, I want to explore the world of connected dental space with a Brooklyn-based technology company called Toothpic. The company is minimizing the risk of major dental work with an approach that it's calling Smart Dental.

Smart Dental is based on applying new technologies like Teledentistry, 3D Mapping, IoT-connected toothbrushes, and augmented reality. It shifts care from treatment to prevention with the enablement of new diagnostic approaches such as AI pattern matching to guide dentists' diagnoses. It heralds an era of ultra-personalized oral care for patients.

Through an app, users upload pictures of their teeth which are then assessed by a network of dentists on an ongoing basis. Patients no longer need to wait for appointments and have up to the minute access to their dental records. The improvements in dental health are significant. Toothpic was founded by Mark Moore, an Irish-born former physicist, back in 2016. Mark started developing the concepts around Smart Dental after his father (a dentist) diagnosed a dental issue from a picture Mark sent him while studying Nanotechnology at Trinity College, Dublin.

If it was possible to accurately make a diagnosis from an iPhone picture, what could be possible if IoT, AI, and Data Analytics could also be applied? Toothpic now numbers around 50 employees in Brooklyn (HQ) and Dublin, counts Mark Zuckerburg's father as a senior advisor, and works with a number of the major insurers in the US (inc Blue Cross) and oral care providers (inc. Phillips).

Mark joins me on the podcast to talk about the rise of smart dental for patients, making dental practices dental secure and the role of technology in the evolution of dental insurance polices.

Hear.com, the largest online retailer of medical-grade hearing aids, is launching a new line of hearing devices that features next-gen technology in a sleek and nearly invisible design. The global health-technology company starting its journey in 2012 and has since helped over 100,000 customers get on the path to better hearing using the latest technology.

The company is also introducing new features, including speech boost and Zen mode to their devices, including the must-have components found in today's top-of-the-line hearing aids. Speech boost amplifies the clarity and volume of voices during conversations, and Zen mode provides an ambient soundscape for ultimate relaxation.

Rick Rutter joins me on the Tech Talks Daily podcast to discuss the hearing aid tech revolution, how hearing aid tech isn't what it used to be, and the recent launch of next-generation hearing tech from ⁨hear.com⁩

Feargal O'Neill is the CEO of Gamma Location Intelligence Services, a company that has offices in Dublin (Ireland), Manchester (UK), and Bilbao (Spain). The company integrates software, data, and services to help clients reduce risk through location intelligence. Gamma Location Intelligence works with insurance companies, delivering location intelligence data through its Perilfinder platform to better support risk assessment across areas, including subsidence and flooding. At the end of last year, Gamma carried out research that found climate change is to put 1.2M GB properties at flood risk by 2050, while subsidence will affect 1.9M. The company also provides data insights to the retail industry via its Storecast solution to enable network planning and the measurement of convenience. Such data could prove valuable to retail businesses in the recovery period following the pandemic as they plan to analyze their store locations and target market behaviors. Feargal has 25 years of experience working in the location intelligence sector and has great ambitions for the company, including expansion into even more markets. Today, he shares his insights about the value that location intelligence can deliver for businesses and how Gamma Location Intelligence′s technology solutions are innovating for their clients.

Order-to-cash is often neglected, but there are clear benefits to digitizing this process – you can increase efficiency, adopt remote working, and optimize cash management and working capital. Artificial Intelligence is no longer confined to science fiction; finance professionals are already using AI in their daily lives to automate processes successfully and increase efficiency.

As technology gets smarter, a company called Sidetrade is leading this digital revolution. For 21 years, Sidetrade has pioneered O2C automation technology. Their innovative use of AI, intelligent automation, and collaboration technologies can help companies accelerate cash flow, reduce bad debt, resolve disputes quicker and optimize working capital.

This week, CFOs and senior leaders from top global organizations are gathering online to attend Sidetrade's 2-day virtual summit on 15th – 16th March. Before hitting the stage, I sat down with Sidetrade CPO Rob Harvey to discuss what new innovative digital technologies can help streamline the O2C process.

Sign up for the virtual sessions at the summit of your choice and explore ways in which you can leverage the challenges of the current environment in order to accelerate cash generation.

Insight Partners recently released a report highlighting the resilience of software ScaleUps and research around how software ScaleUps, graduates of startups, are catalyzing economic growth and fueling job creation amid widespread economic hardship.

The report surveyed 300 global software leaders on scaling and the factors enabling rapid business growth. Lonne Jaffe, Managing Director at Insight Partners, joins me on Tech Talks Daily to discuss the report findings.

I learn how the the majority (71%) of software leaders are highly focused on scaling, with most expecting to scale within 3–5 years – showing continued plans to prioritize growth iIn the near future. Elsewhere four in five (80%) Scaling Focused companies forecast that their investment in scaling activity will increase through 2021.

ScaleUps displayed their resilience through quick pivots amid the pandemic, shifting to policies aimed at securing revenues. Most ScaleUps introduced concession strategies to retain customers (55%), and nearly half (48%) made premium product features free to all users during the pandemic. Insight Partners is a leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth technology and software ScaleUp companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 1995, Insight Partners has invested in more than 400 companies worldwide and has raised through a series of funds more than $30 billion in capital commitments.

Insight's mission is to find, fund, and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with practical, hands-on software expertise to foster long-term success. Across its people and its portfolio, Insight encourages a culture around a belief that ScaleUp companies and growth create opportunity for all.