The Data Binge

Today's episode features Anuj Bhatia, and solving problems is his wheelhouse - he's a problem solver, and we learn a lot about his approach and framework for this during the discussion.

Anuj is currently a principal architect for cognition & AI at Microsoft, with a tenure exceeding 3 years. Anuj came into Microsoft with the Xamarin acquisition, where he spent 5 years in customer success for their strategic accounts, if you're not familiar with Xamarin, they were a marquee Microsoft partner that sold tools to help developers who use Microsoft products, build apps for Apple's iOS and Google's Android mobile OS - helping to establish a stronger Microsoft presence in all kinds of different devices, not just those that run windows. So as you can imagine, some tremendous experience in mobile app development. He was Lead Architect for MCS Group, for some time, where he developed mobile app strategies for iOs and web applications used by emergency services responders. Anuj has experience in bioinformatics engineering, and brings with him a BS in Microbiology and Virology from the University of Texas at Arlington which is super interesting, and you'll definitely here why this is important to how he solves problems.

Across the episode, we talk about what he and his team are hyper focused on today, which is helping customers accelerate applications of AI, and not just the modeling, but the translation into edge technologies (sensors and autonomous objects), including applications such as mixed reality, to every additional use case in the mobile space and beyond.

Key themes in the discussion include:

-Code as leverage, which has been the crux of innovation in the software world for the last 10 + years, and the incremental and compound effects of how problems can be solved through iterative software development

-How to break apart a problem in digestible pieces for a more realistic opportunity for solution, and the importance of clarity in communication and how good mental models lead to a more empathic solution workflow

-Culture in big cities, and how this applies to this topic of problem solving, why the bay area is a hot place to be right now, and what additionally may change in the future based on the most top of mind needs for human kind

-Leading edge capabilities in AI, and the world of computers that can see, hear, and touch - generally what this means for business in the scope of data generation, the fidelity of machine teaching, and the democratization of AI

-How to utilize every moment to engage with others, as an opportunity to extract value, and to empathically create a deeper connection with your fellow human, by being less like a robot, and more like a genuine human thinker

Thank you for listening!

How to connect with Anuj:

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anujbhatia1/

Resources:

https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/gartner-top-10-strategic-technology-trends-for-2019/

https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2016/02/24/microsoft-to-acquire-xamarin-and-empower-more-developers-to-build-apps-on-any-device/

https://www.esmartsystems.com/

https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/heilmeier-catechism

https://www.econtalk.org/

https://youtu.be/3qHkcs3kG44

https://www.bons.ai/

Learn more at www.thedatabinge.com

Connect with Derek on LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter

Today I'd like to introduce you to Ben West. Ben was diagnosed with Diabetes Type 1, at 21 years of age, and if you or any of your friends or loved ones have a similar diagnosis, you are definitely going to learn so much from Ben.

Ben is currently a Staff Product Engineer at Dexcom, a global leader in diabetes care transformation and management, where they design, and manufacture continuous glucose monitoring devices (CGM), and you'll hear a lot more about that technology in today's talk. He spends his time today at Dexcom helping to prioritize where investments in innovation are spent, and which ideas to accelerate into the concept funnel that will yield the most impact for the organization and its customers.

Ben spent the last 5 years, as part of his personal mission to reduce the burden of living with Diabetes Type 1, reverse engineering the open loop system of the insulin pump and has done a tremendous amount of work there, and is also a co-founder of the NightScout Project, an open source cloud based system that provides the availability of CGM information to web browsers, smartphones, and other devices, to help people with the diseases, manage the condition in real time and even predictively based on their bio metrics, activity, and glucose levels. Ben has also spent some time doing engineering work with Tidepool.org, which is a software that is helping to take the DIY capability of addressing both the data on the insulin pump and the data on the CGM, merging this data into a closed loop system, and providing prescriptive suggestions on ongoing therapy. Currently the software is up for approval with the FDA, and is looking to be democratized and provided within app stores for easy consumption. Ben also spent some time as a Cloud Networking Engineer at Cisco, and you'll see some of his experience in these capacities play out in the talk. Ben has a wealth of experience in software engineering and networking all up, and is a very reliable resource to follow and listen to as he discusses some big themes around the value of high fidelity solutions in healthcare.

Some key topics we cover in the talk:

-the journey, the community, and the people that have been working really hard on effectively creating high fidelity therapies to treat Diabetes Type 1

-The definition of creating some high fidelity technology: the ratio of effort and the output of some external good from that effort

-approaching the development of new tech, and some basic philosophies around capitalistic vs open cultures of development and innovation as they pertain to solving important problems

Thank you for listening!

How to contact Ben:

Twitter: @bewestisdoing

[email protected]

Github: bewest

People mentioned:

https://twitter.com/danamlewis

https://twitter.com/loudnate

https://twitter.com/scottleibrand

https://twitter.com/danamlewis

https://twitter.com/AliMazaheri

Helpful resources and items mentioned:

https://www.dexcom.com/

https://peterattiamd.com/kevinsayer/

https://openaps.org/

https://loopkit.github.io/loopdocs/

https://www.tidepool.org/

http://nightscout.github.io/

https://www.tidepool.org/blog/tidepool-loop-medtronic-collaboration

https://professional.diabetes.org/?loc=bb-dorg

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-ai-redefining-manufacturing-wendy-curcuri-bauer/

Today, we have Dean Bethke on the show. Dean is a Director of Sales and Business Development for Azure IoT in the West, US. As part of an elite team that serves to help businesses with specific capabilities, the Global Black Belt team. Internally he's considered a hyper specialist in the area of all things connected. Dean has been with Microsoft for a little over 20 years, celebrating his 20th anniversary just this last December.

This episode is the 4th and FINAL segment of a special series focusing on Industry 4.0, which has concentrated around the capabilities, technologies, and realities of today's digital era of AI and Cloud computing, and most importantly, the collaborations with the worker, and how this is impacting all types of industries from automotive all the way to dairy production and cattle herding - which you'll hear more about today.

Some big items we discuss:

-the infamous 3 letter word, IOT, and how this ambiguous technology has evolved - Dean simply perceives this genre of tech today as "making dumb things smart, and smart things smarter"

-the hidden challenges in connecting devices and pulling insights off of them and the importance of data , and why any IoT effort must be anchored into a well thought out data strategy

-importance of stories in the world of technology, and why it helps people explore their own journey and the challenges to innovation and change management

-the emerging divisions and collaborations between IT (information technology), and OT (operational technology), and why the current state of technology mandates that these two entities must work together

-ideas about privacy and security in the realm of all things connected, from ambient sensors to cameras, and how these can be easily misused

Thank you for listening!

How to contact dean:

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deanbethke/

Additional resources mentioned:

https://www.networkworld.com/article/3322517/a-critical-look-at-gartners-top-10-iot-trends.html

https://news.microsoft.com/features/connected-cows-help-farms-keep-up-with-the-herd/

Ginni Rometty keynote: CES 2016

https://www.networkworld.com/article/3322517/acritical-look-at-gartners-top-10-iot-trends.html

https://www.gizbot.com/news/number-connected-things-use-will-go-up-25-billion-2021-055276.html

https://go.forrester.com/blogs/predictions-2019-iot-devices/

https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS43722418

Learn more at www.thedatabinge.com

Connect with Derek on LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter

Today we have Nick Fratello on the show. Nick is one of the most well-known thought leaders in Microsoft's US Sales Subsidiary, and he's been with the company for 6 years. His background is in data storage and cloud, with some familiar logos like Dell EMC and PTC , and today in the Microsoft organization, Nick is currently a Dynamics 365 Technical Specialist. Which means, he helps big enterprise business leverage the power of the Microsoft (3) cloud platform (Office 365, Dynamics 365, and Azure), to enable a data and analytics fabric that broadly allows customers to use their disparate data systems and applications to create a more consolidated ecosystem that helps them develop better customer-centric experiences.

The conversation revolves around the concept of the common data model theme, and the common data fabric needed across systems, that bring data together for analysis, action ,and automation.

Key themes:

-Nicks’s world of intelligent interoperable "Legos”, that help businesses utilize signals from application and system graphs to cull customer centric insights

-Bridging the value of legacy investments in technology, and reasoning through novel AI tools and capabilities for impactful business outcomes

-What businesses are struggling with, the importance of data hygiene, and why the backbone of many businesses (their data), is just not as modern as it should be - and how that impacts end customer experiences

-The power of valuable experiences vs features and functionality in technology

-The value of stories, and how these stories have helped nick have fun in his role

Thank you for listening!

Ways to contact Nick:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickfratello/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NickFratello

Nick's Content:

Microsoft Business Applications TV

URL: https://aka.ms/MSBizAppsTV

Subscribe: https://aka.ms/SubscribeMSBizAppsTV

Microsoft Business Applications Lunch and Learn: https://aka.ms/LunchAndLearn

Additional fun resources:

AI Builder is now available

Learn more at www.thedatabinge.com

Connect with Derek on LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter

Today, Wendy Bauer joins us on the podcast. Wendy currently leads the strategic activities for global business and go to market for manufacturing and resources, at Microsoft. The areas she covers would include: discreet manufacturing, process and chemical manufacturing, agrochemical, power and utilities, oil and gas, and mining.

Wendy brings with her 20 years of experience in manufacturing and automotive, and has worked at all capacities of the heavy industry and manufacturing life cycle, from the shop floor, to product development, sales, finance, procurement, vehicle development, quality engineering and everything else you can probably imagine that makes a business run.

The big topics discussed will include everything from accelerating human ingenuity with inclusive technology, the tenants of ethical AI and the implications of sharing and creating principles that are widely adopted and designed for good, and the big disruptive forces that are impacting industry and manufacturing all around the globe.

Key areas of the conversation:

-Top disruptive forces in manufacturing: 1) workforce transformation related to a skills gap 2) Connected products 3) Operational effectiveness and improvement 4) Sustainability and the circular economy

-How to overcome the challenges to become a modern manufacturer - tying together the end to end story, while putting people at the center of all strategies

-Diversity and inclusion with AI: priority, adoption, strategy for implementation, and how to build teams to enable and develop

-The importance of ethical AI: fairness and inclusiveness, and the guiding principles of augmenting humankind for greater impact, for the greater good of humankind

-Overcoming complexity in the manufacturing life cycle: the commitment to a customer's goals and vision

Thank you for listening!

Ways to contact Wendy:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendycurcuri/

Resources:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-ai-redefining-manufacturing-wendy-curcuri-bauer/

https://youtu.be/pHK5LUOXSS0

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6519598399044485120

https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/hannovermesse/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/today-technology-top-10-tech-issues-2019-brad-smith/

https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/data-and-analytics/publications/artificial-intelligence-study.html

https://www.capgemini.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/smart_factories-how_can_manufacturers_realize_the_potential_of_digital_industrial_revolution.pdf

Learn more at www.thedatabinge.com

Connect with Derek on LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter

Ali Mazaheri joins us on today's episode. Ali is currently the Chief Architect at the Microsoft Technology Center in Irvine, California, specializing in application development and open source software. He's spent the last 14 years at Microsoft in various customer facing technical roles, and spent his early career developing software in various industries including financial services and banking. Ali has been writing code since the age of 19, and as you'll see, his love and passion for technology bleeds through both technically and philosophically through the talk. Ali is also a thought leader and technical contributor in bio medical industry and community, through his work with continuous glucose monitoring solutions, and we talk about the organizations and solutions that he helps to contribute to and represent, including NightScout, Tidepool, and Loop.

Ali, in every bit of his ethos, represents the current landscape of communal open source culture, where opportunities for interoperability, sharing vulnerabilities, learning from others, and contributing strengths in a pay it forward model, is helping him make meaningful impacts across to his customers, his community, and as you will hear, his family.

Big themes covered in the talk:

-A personal journey of Ali's family experiences, through his son Sam, with Diabetes Type 1, a genetic auto-immune disease: the hard human moments, and the communal evolution of open source technology

-How the ethos of interoperability, sharing vulnerabilities, learning from others, and contributing strengths in a pay it forward model, has helped to make meaningful impacts across to customers, community, and family.

-The real challenges of epidemics and disease to families, and why waiting cannot be an option.

-How to teach big businesses to be more communal: sharing data, processes, innovations, and breakthroughs to empower each other for accelerations in human health and progress.

-Re-coding your mindset to turn "being bitter", into "being better", the power of positivity and mental resiliency in the wake of life's challenges.

Thank you so much for listening!

Ways to Contact Ali:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AliMazaheri

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alimazaheri/

People mentioned:

https://twitter.com/shanselman

https://twitter.com/bewestisdoing

https://twitter.com/danamlewis

https://www.linkedin.com/in/edraskin

Resources:

https://vimeo.com/user64743589/openaps

https://youtu.be/kv2S2f_C37A

https://openaps.org/

https://loopkit.github.io/loopdocs/

https://www.tidepool.org/

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/mtc

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Student-Developer-Blog/Meet-the-2019-Imagine-Cup-World-Champion-team-EasyGlucose-from/ba-p/533238

What is Open Source explained in LEGO

Learn more at www.thedatabinge.com

Connect with Derek on LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter

Brian Galicia, joins us on the podcast today. And if you were to meet Brian, or listen to any of his many keynote talks, you would walk away with his infinite expertise and passions around "turning relationships into revenue", and Brian is very serious about this. He's spent nearly 13 years here at Microsoft, working in roles and areas all around and pertaining to business applications (which are technologies such as ERP/CRM, and other business automation and integration platforms and tools), he's currently a Global Sales Leader for Sales Automation and LinkedIn, he comes from a sales engineering background, but brings with him experience in sales management, sales and pre-sales roles, both technical and specialist focused. He's also collected a number of performance awards, the most recent being Fiscal Year 2018 Circle of Excellence - Platinum Club, which is Microsoft's most premier award program for top contributors.

We talk about an entire host of provocative sales/technology/culture related topics including:

-How to turn relationships into revenue by driving modern selling conversations

-Why Microsoft purchased LinkedIn and the value offerings that these organizations are creating for customers across products

-The power of using social selling platforms to deliver commonalities in an exchange of dialogues - and the best practices for managing these conversational work flows

-The properties of a successful seller in a growth minded organization and the evolving roles that sales managers should be playing in this new ecosystem

Thank you for listening!

How to contact Brian:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briangalicia/

Resources:

https://blog.hootsuite.com/linkedin-statistics-business/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/henrydevries/2018/11/16/the-best-social-media-for-lead-generation/#3be0a97046ab

https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/audience?#

https://business.linkedin.com/sales-solutions/blog/sales-tools/2018/why-inmail-is-replacing-email-for-lead-generation

https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/surprising-statistics-on-social-selling-that-all-salespeople-should-know

Learn more at www.thedatabinge.com

Connect with Derek on LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter

Priya Gore joins us on the show today. Priya is currently a Sales Lead for the Americas at Microsoft, for a global specialist team "the Global Black Belt Team" is the name of that organization, and she's focused specifically around the domain of AI.

We dive quite deeply into some very core themes around how businesses should be thinking about their AI Strategy.

Items Discussed:

-The critical components that are involved in the AI Strategy process, from stakeholders, to builders, engineers and UI architects, within the system level, all the way down to the users.

-What is unconscious bias? How to mitigate risks and biases in the reasoning through of data by thinking deeper about people and team building before getting too deep into the tech.

-The importance of the business culture and the change management aspects of accepting new AI workflows.

-Why there can't be an AI strategy without specific business challenges that it addresses, and what the process looks like behind developing a scope and remediating through fast failures with fast learnings.

-The future of education and parenting in the evolving world of data driven automation

Thank you for listening!

How to contact Priya:

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/priyagore/

Resources:

https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insight-ai-industry-growth

http://fortune.com/2019/04/23/artificial-intelligence-diversity-crisis/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/03/21/why-every-company-needs-an-artificial-intelligence-ai-strategy-for-2019/

Fun fiction mentioned:

https://www.amazon.com/Woman-Window-Novel-Finn/dp/0062791451

Learn more at www.thedatabinge.com

Connect with Derek on LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter

Today, Sawyer Kelly joins the discussion. Sawyer is currently a Workplace Analytics Consultant at Microsoft. If you haven't heard of workplace analytics, it is an analytics engine that runs on Microsoft's proprietary office 365 - that captures behavioral understanding of how people work in organizations - to help these organizations realize the bigger trends, to guide healthier and more productive workplace environments. Sawyer and his team, then take this data, and make recommendations for how organizations should change their cultures from meeting optimizations, to staffing models that limit off hour work times, all the way to cross department collaboration that drive additional creativity for the benefit of customers, business impact, and more distinctly, the protection of the businesses most important asset, it's people.

Here are some highlights of the talk:

-Top use cases that businesses are interested in around workplace analytics: creating capacity, growing mastery, orchestrating networks

-Drilling down on collaboration overload: harnessing data to improve work life balance and harmony

-Meeting sizes and lengths, the harbingers of engagement death

-Top habits of high performance workers, and how to utilize extraction points in the analytics to apply across organizations - learning from within

-The maturity curve of the Future of Work

Thank you for listening!

Resources:

https://products.office.com/en-us/business/workplace-analytics

https://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/ey-implementing-behavioral-analytics-to-drive-customer-value/%24FILE/ey-implementing-behavioral-analytics-to-drive-customer-value.pdf

https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/technology-and-the-future-of-work/redefining-work-workforces-workplaces.html

Books:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393061310/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_laXZCbZ84CKSH

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062316095/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_-aXZCbTAAYZKY

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300122233/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_ZgXZCbKBKAN62

Podcasts:

https://www.ted.com/podcasts/worklife

https://samharris.org/podcast/

http://freakonomics.com/

https://wondery.com/shows/business-wars/

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/econtalk/id135066958

http://revisionisthistory.com/

Learn more at www.thedatabinge.com

Connect with Derek on LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter

Today, a conversation with Jeff Bennett. Jeff is an IoT Cloud Architect out of San Diego, California on the Global Black Belt Team at Microsoft. Jeff's a notable speaker and writer, a highly knowledgeable practitioner at the intersection of business and technology in the IoT space, and brings with him over 20 years of experience helping businesses overcome very specific challenges at the core to how they operate.

Jeff flexes his geek muscles throughout the talk with some great stories and advice for businesses that are struggling with planning, adoption, and strategies around how to plug in play across their bigger digital initiatives regarding IoT and beyond. We'll cover things from hybrid compute in the world of industrial and manufacturing, and how customers have now the option of deciding where to leverage their machine learning models (it doesn't have to be in their data center, in the vendor data center (the cloud), but possibly at the shop floor or at the location of interest itself - we call this, the EDGE. We talk about where the rubber meets the road with these complex IoT projects and how to get started (which is one of the toughest things about all of this, how/who/when to start) We focus on how to stay relevant as a technologist or visionary in the field, and discuss some things he's struggled with and overcome in his career and advice for others with similar experiences and goals.

Specific key-Takeaways:

~13:00 - 20:00 - The power of thinking creatively, about a future that does not exist

~20:00-30:00 - Starting NOW with IoT: Understand your business criteria/vision, choose top workloads that map to these, and "figure out at quickly as humanly possible" how to execute on these

~33:00 - 40:00 - Upskilling on the building blocks of IoT: Devices and machines, Connectivity, Edge processing, downstream workloads (machine learning, and data visualization)

~44:00 - 55:00 - How to stay relevant, and the danger of becoming too much of a Micro Specialist

Thanks for listening!

Resources:

Blogs: https://blogs.arubanetworks.com/spectrum/your-company-and-customers-are-doubling-down-on-iot-are-you/

IoT Statistics

Books: Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play

Favorite Science Fiction Character: Serenity

How to reach Jeff (LinkedIN): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jefferyrbennett/