What's the best way to go to market? It's by capturing people's attention. And to do that, you need to solve for interesting. In this episode of the Impact Podcast, Jon Prial welcomes Alistair Croll, the Founder and Content Chair of Fwd50, to the show for a discussion about go-to-market and product strategies,  market alignments, market adjacencies, and some of the different challenges that B2B versus B2C brands face in these areas. You’ll learn about the: - Importance of focusing on go-to-market strategy to complement product - Critical thinking required among managers for data science and decision making - Role of innovation in go-to-market models Check out the show notes to learn more: http://bit.ly/2LnaWUP

With GDPR behind us, maybe you’re breathing a sigh of relief. On the other hand, maybe you see it and all of the changes it’s brought about as just another hassle — just another regulation to comply with to help keep people’s data secure. But does it have to be that way? What if your company recognized that there’s strategic value and differentiation in data privacy and in becoming a company that people actually trust. A company that values privacy as much as they value you being their customer. In this episode, Jon Prial talks with Ann Cavoukian, one of the world's leading privacy experts and the former former Information and Privacy Commissioner for the Canadian province of Ontario. Together they dig into trust, privacy by design, and how businesses can turn this perceived hassle into an opportunity. You'll learn about: - Consumer awareness of privacy issues - The benefits of privacy by design - Privacy in public versus private domains - The principles of privacy by design - What it will take to get privacy embedded into company operations - Taking a user-centric approach to privacy - How companies should earn trust To learn more, access the show notes here: http://bit.ly/2MpbCtm

We all have our own personal biases. The question is how do you keep them out of your data so that you can create better products for your customers? In this episode of the Impact Podcast, we welcome renowned mathematician and author Cathy O’Neil to the show. Cathy has long called for an end of conditional trust in big data, and shares her views on why data is so vulnerable to bias, the massive implications this can have and what your business needs to do to avoid it. You’ll learn about: - How personal bias affects data - Developing a data strategy to avoid bias - How to communicate bias to end users - Creating a data Bill of Rights - The risks to companies of having biased algorithms Access the show notes here: http://bit.ly/2lzzD5m

In this continuation of their earlier conversation (see Episode 79), Jon Prial and Alistair Croll, the Founder and Content Chair of Fwd50, discuss GDPR, the critical role of trust and how computing will evolve in the months and years ahead. You’ll Hear About: - Personal data and trust - The economic interests of smart agents Learn more by checking out the show notes: https://bit.ly/2NFD8Db

A few months ago we talked to Bill Adler, the Founding President and CEO of True Fit, a data-driven personalization platform for footwear and apparel retailers that's using machine learning to push the fashion industry forward. In a follow-up conversation with Chris Moore, the company's Chief Analytics Officer, Jon Prial digs into how that company aggregates and works with its massive data sets.  You'll hear about: - The importance of normalizing data - Some of the best practices True Fit uses to manage all of its data - How to overcome the challenges of working with thin data - Generating features To learn more about this episode, check out the show notes: http://bit.ly/2MlkbcD

In this episode, Jon Prial talks with Jana Eggers, the CEO of Nara Logics, a company with an AI platform that works as a matching engine, helping companies connect their data. They talk about the realities of artificial intelligence, including what it’s actually good for, where to use it, and how to run a successful AI project. You’ll hear about: - The work that Nara Logics is doing to aggregate data - How the company’s synaptic network works - Whether or not AI is a panacea - The key components of a successful AI project - How to think about AI tools and teams For more information, see the show notes: http://bit.ly/2NPwQED

On October 17th the Scale Tech Conference (www.scaletechconf.com) is happening in Toronto. Georgian Partners is co-hosting the event as part of our annual portfolio conference and Jon Prial, host of the Georgian Impact Podcast, sat down to chat with some of the speakers to hear a little more about them and what they’ll be talking about at the event. In this episode we meet Chris Amen-Kroeger, the VP of Ads Engineering at Twitter. Over the last several years, Chris has led world class engineering teams that focus on advertiser value by building machine learning driven multiformat (Display, Video, Search) monetization platforms such as Pinterest and Yahoo. Prior to joining Twitter, Chris served as the Head of Ads Engineering at Pinterest where he focused on building Pinterest's Search, Display and Video advertising products. While at Pinterest, Chris successfully spearheaded an overhaul of the ad platform which enabled a much more personalized and relevant ad experience for Pinners. Before joining Pinterest, Chris led the Display and Video Ads Engineering teams at Yahoo, which build and run the Yahoo DSP (BrightRoll DSP+), Exchange (BRX) and Premium Ads platforms ($1.6B revenue in 2016). In late 2014, Yahoo acquired BrightRoll, the premiere programmatic video platform, for $640M where Chris led the technology teams (Product, Engineering and Operations).

Differential privacy is a technology that's quickly moving from academia into business. And it’s not just the big companies that are using it. With the intersection of trust and AI a hot topic right now, differential privacy is well on its way to becoming an integral part of the conversation. In this episode, Jon Prial welcomes Chang Liu to the show. Chang is an Applied Research Scientist at Georgian Partners and an expert on differential privacy. In the episode, they talk about what differential privacy is, why it’s important, and why every company needs to think about having it as part of its product and technical strategy. You'll hear about: - The limits of data anonymization - What differential privacy is and why it's so important - Ways to protect your data and be differentially private - What epsilon is and what its role is - Differential privacy's potential to solve the cold-start problem - Implications for trust To learn more about this episode, check out the show notes: http://bit.ly/2MTjjLR

On October 17th the Scale Tech Conference (www.scaletechconf.com) is happening in Toronto. Georgian Partners is co-hosting the event as part of our annual portfolio conference and Jon Prial, host of the Georgian Impact Podcast, sat down to chat with some of the speakers to hear a little more about them and what they’ll be talking about at the event. In this episode we meet Susan Etlinger, an Industry Analyst at Altimeter Group. She is a globally recognized expert in digital strategy and has authored a series of reports and frameworks on topics including artificial intelligence, big data, analytics and digital ethics. Susan was named one of the “Must Know” Top Writers in Technology by LinkedIn in 2016. Her TED talk, “What Do We Do With All This Big Data?" has been translated into 25 languages and has been viewed more than 1 million times. Susan’s research is used in university curricula around the world. She is a frequent keynote speaker, and has been quoted in numerous media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, The New York Times and the BBC. Susan works with global clients to evaluate emerging technologies and incorporate them into organizational culture and practice. She also works with technology vendors to refine product roadmaps and strategies based on her independent research. Susan is a published translator and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric from the University of California at Berkeley. Find her on Twitter at @setlinger.

Everything is going digital. Why should restaurants be an exception? In this episode, Jon Prial talks with Ray Reddy, the Co-founder and CEO of Ritual, a company that has built a fascinating consumer-facing social app that allows people to order food for pickup. And while that may seem simple enough, there’s much more to the story. In their conversation, Jon and Ray talk about rise of the digital restaurant and how technologies like artificial intelligence are changing the way that we purchase food. You’ll hear about: - How Ritual uses AI to assist users with their interactions - The social retail space - Designing a platform people will want to use every day - Approaches for bringing data together - How Ritual has approached scaling - How restaurants will evolve over the next few years For more information, check out the show notes: http://bit.ly/2Q7QZEd