Robots, Education and Sports – Digital CxO Podcast EP64

Hello and welcome to the digital CXO podcast. I'm Amanda Ani, and excited to be here today again with Mike Baard. How are you doing today?

I'm doing great. How are you? Doing well.

We have a lot of interesting topics today to cover, and uh, with that I'm gonna pass it to you. Let's geek out for a minute. And I know it's the top of the show and we don't usually geek out right away, but I'm gonna go there.

com. It's not even on digital CXO, and it's talking about how they have a, what's called an observability platform, and it's for tracking, uh, anomalies and, and, and issues that would occur in your IT environment. And it kind of provides those insights and they added this ability to detect any kind of anomaly, not just an IT anomaly, but things that, um, might be indicative of a business event.

And I'm bringing this up because we've been talking about digital transformation for a while and it, and it bridges the business in it, or at least it's supposed to, but I feel like we don't always have the right tools in place, right? And it has got a bunch of tools that they use to manage IT operations and the business folks are using, I don't know, everything from analytics to Salesforce CRMs and whatever it is, and never did the two seem to ever meet. And it was interesting to me to see this announcement because, well, you know, I've seen maybe Cisco app dynamics talk about monitoring business transactions within the context of, um, application development.

But the, the divide between IT and the business feels like even after all this talk of digital transformation is far gone as ever. And I don't really feel like, I mean, maybe in certain instances it's been closed in certain use cases, you'll see, um, you know, we have a friend of ours who, um, is an IT guy who's running product for Caesar's Media and Entertainment, but that's the exception rather than the rule. Um, and I'm wondering, you know, what are you seeing out there, man, in terms of the closing of that gap and what is the relationship between digital CXOs, the business and IT people?

Sometimes I wonder if the digital CXOs, all they're really doing is providing some therapy for these two groups. Well, you know, that is an important job, uh, you know, providing encouragement and empathy. Uh, but I think there is quite a bit of silos that still exist between these departments and we talk about it all the time, um, that we really need to break those barriers down and have better, um, forms of communication and better visibility.

So, um, I think it's really great that they're also trying to catch these anomalies in real time so that they can make adjustments and, um, fix things before there's a real big problem. I'm hoping that all of this is gonna get better in the age of ai. Uh, one of the challenges with observability is you have to know what you're looking for in the IT environment's a little too complex.

And I think what we gotta get to with AI is more of a model that kind of feels like, you know, danger will Robinson an IT event has occurred and this IT event is indicative of something that is about to adversely impact revenue. And you know, here's your heads up because if you don't do something about this in the next 36 hours, you're probably looking for a new job. We don't quite have that level of visibility yet, and that's pretty much what we need.

And it looks like the AI ops folks are slowly but surely moving in that direction. And we see a lot of machine learning algorithms now can identify, um, questions you should be asking and make suggestions about, Hey, you might wanna look into this. And, and I guess that's what we mean when we start throwing around the phrase copilot, which is just about everywhere in anywhere you can find these days.

I don't think we're gonna get to the point where it's, you know, on autopilot, but I feel like, um, we can all start talking about the same thing at the same time for a change. Uh, a lot of the issues are it people show up and start talking about something and the business people have no idea what that means. There's no correlation.

Um, there's a bad joke that has been going around for years about, you know, how can you tell whether an IT guy agrees with you or disagrees with you if, um, if if he agrees with you, he will look at your shoes and if he disagrees, he looks at his shoes. But, you know, um, it's gotta be, you know, more of a proactive conversation. And I know there are tons of it people out there that are actively engaged in the business and wanna be more engaged in the business, but still feels way old school.

I mean, and, and I remember talking about this stuff when I was at Computer World 20, 30 years ago, but it persists and and I just feel like we gotta be better than this. Yeah, it's interesting the way you phrase that. 'cause just last night we were watching a movie called Margin Call.

I don't know if you ever saw that movie, but you know, these anomalies were occurring and this data analyst starts looking into him and then he gets fired right as he's about to find something. And, you know, all crap hits the fan and they realize that, you know, three weeks ago, this has already started and they've gotta unload all these mortgage deals. And this was all like the 2008 financial crisis.

So if you had some real time, uh, analytics running all the time and catching these anomalies, uh, it would be great as far as, um, reducing all these incidents moving forward. Well, I think it's all there in the data. We just gotta go find the tools and, and to extract it.

And maybe it's more complicated than, um, anybody cares to admit, but I feel like progress is being made, so maybe we should just raise the bar in terms of expectations. 'cause right now I think we're settling and that's just, that's never a good thing. Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, so next up we're gonna go into our next topic, which is robotics. And I love anything about robots. So, uh, Toyota Research Institute just announced it's, um, I think it's pronounced peo I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.

Um, it's peo robotic platform. And um, the really cool thing is a lot of robots have solid metal, um, arms and bodies. And this one is a soft robot that has, um, more abilities like, um, dexterous abilities where it can grab, they're working with it to grab a hold of things and sense things so that it can do a lot more tasks.

Um, and you know, if they continue, uh, improving this robot, maybe we will all have amazing robot assistance in our houses soon. Could be, um, we've been using robotics, you know, in, in stationary ways, right? I mean, what's really interesting to me about these robots is they move and they perform tasks.

We've been using robots to build cars, but they just kind of sit there on the assembly line and they don't really move. And heck, I mean, doctors have been using robots for surgery, at least some of the more delicate surgery, and they can do things with a level of precision that humans cannot, I don't know if I'm ready for this, you know, big giant lumbering robot that's gonna be walking around my living room performing various tasks for me. And, um, that's the part where I'm just kinda like scratching my head going, well, I get that we could use robots for all kinds of interesting things.

Uh, clearly I'd rather have a robot go into a burning building than a firefighter any day of the week. But, um, that said, uh, just not quite. Maybe my kids have a different attitude and maybe for them it'll just be, you know, their digital buddy.

But I'm wondering, you know, what the cost of that may look like. Of course, you know, the Chinese are talking about building armies of robots for both, uh, consumer purposes and all kinds of stuff. But, um, I don't know, maybe in my old age, uh, the robot's gonna keep me company and play backgammon with me.

Is that how this is all gonna play out? I, I think that's certainly more the gimmicky side and uh, the more practical side is in, um, use for protection, use for, um, you know, rescues, um, maybe environmental uses. You know, uh, when people get stuck in those caves and they can't, you know, they're risking their lives trying to go down and save them.

Maybe we could use some kind of robots for that. So I, I see a lot of more practical use cases and, and the, you know, those use cases could be afforded by companies to buy them and use them, whereas I think personal robots in that capacity would be very expensive and kind of only for an elite group of people at the moment. Yeah.

And I guess once you start giving things a name, then it becomes highly personalized. So if my, you know, robot suddenly is, you know, Steve, I mean, what happens when I wanna upgrade Steve, right? Do I get a new model?

Am I too personally attached with Steve to kind of upgrade him? I mean, I'm a little curious how this might play out at the end of the day. 'cause uh, we're humans and we tend to ascribe our emotions to both inanimate inanimate things, right?

But then who's to say what's anime and who, what's inanimate these days? Right? Yeah, that's very true.

And you know, I've posted some articles about robot companions and robot friends, so yes, there does become that, um, I guess psychological issue as well. All right. Well I'm not sure I'm gonna be around to see how it all plays out at the end of the day, but I'm certainly gonna be around to catch the beginning of it.

So we'll see how it comes together. Okay, well next up, let's move into the education sector. And there was a recent study showing that students, especially since, um, the COD era, our really preferring digital learning and, uh, they expect to be able to learn at their own pace, on their own timeline and, um, to have a, a great omnichannel presence of help and assistance as needed.

And so, um, studies show that there are some students a little unhappy with the universities they've picked because those universities aren't very digitally transformed or don't offer a better customer experience to the students. I dunno, I had two sons home from school during covid. One was in college, the other was in grammar school.

They both passionately hated the digital experience. And, um, part of the issue with, um, the oldest was, you know, he actually went away to school and then they locked him up in a dorm. And that'll happen because of Covid.

But he was like, the digital experience that, uh, was provided as a substitute was atrocious. And so he didn't wind up, you know, making any buddies there. And he kind of like mentally just checked out 'cause he wasn't engaged.

And frankly, going to school, it's more than just learning, right? It's all about the experience and it helps you grow up and it helps you to become a better person. And my other son who was in grammar school at the time, um, you know, basically the minute anybody wasn't looking, he was on a different webpage altogether.

I mean, he was just like clicking on this, that, and the other. And he was all over the place because he was bored out of his head. Now, you know, he's a, these are smart kids, so, you know, he's just scanning the web and the internet doing everything and anything but what they were talking about during the classroom sessions.

So, um, yeah, I know there's probably some controls that prevent that from happening, but, you know, kids are smart and they work their way around those controls. So I'm a little dubious about this whole thing unless the whole experience gets better. So are you seeing the digital experience get better?

Well, yes. And, and I wanna clarify what you said there. So this article was talking about how that human element and the personal element was very important, and that's part of the reason why, um, the students were unhappy, um, with the, the digital offerings.

Because even if they're going on, um, to school on campus or online, they just expect the omnichannel presence and the digital offerings and to be able to work online easily. Um, and, but they want that human element and they're not, they don't feel they're getting it. They feel it's hard to access teachers, it's hard, um, to access some of the learning platforms.

So, um, it just needs to become more streamlined as they expect more and more from their online experience. Yeah, I think there's a, there, there, right? It has to be more fluid and more natural in terms of how you do those handoffs.

But I know some of the teachers, they don't take to these platforms too easily either. They're kinda used to that highly personal and interaction with somebody who's in a room with them and they're sometimes, you know, the younger ones maybe get it a little bit more, but the, there's a generational issue here, I think, at play. Um, and, and they're not all comfortable with it either.

So I don't know what's, what's your take on this? Is it, is this something that is gonna be become standard soon or is this gonna be more, more of an evolutionary kind of thing? And it's gonna take a while?

I think it's already becoming a standard, uh, where, where not all universities are meeting that standard, but I think it already is a standard that just isn't being met by a lot of universities that they're trying to catch up. And I think it involves better, um, teaching and training because it is the teachers, you know, a lot of the teachers are hesitant or they're just not knowledgeable. They don't have that skillset to use the technology.

So I think providing, uh, training opportunities, um, to level up the skillset of the, the teachers would be helpful. All right, so who do I call when my kid doesn't have a great experience and doesn't get a job and I want my money back? Moving on.

Okay, I'm gonna kick this one off to you, Mike. Um, this, this has to do with your interview with Salesforce, um, yesterday and about AI app development. Yeah.

And we talked about this in our other show that we have talking about AI issues, but we had, we didn't really mention this interview because, well, this end of it really talked more about the digital implications, right? So we were chatting with Alice Stein Glass, who's executive VP and general manager of platform and Salesforce, and she was talking about how low code, which is kind of the default tool for digital transformation, is gonna be infused with all these gen AI capabilities. And you're gonna have all these prompts that will come out of the box with the platform and you'll be able to automate specific tasks, but you can also build your own prompts and inject them into the platform.

And there's a debate, though, in my mind about, well, to what degree will we have this kinda dependency on developers in these tools versus how much of all this will get democratized? And business execs will just change stuff on the fly using Gen AI and prompts because they're closer to the business and they don't know how to code and they don't wanna know how to code. So I'm trying to figure out, you know, where all this comes together at the end of the day.

Because if we are truly democratizing everything, we may not need these developers to drive a lot of processes. Could be, you know, we still wanna have a pretty user interface for something, but ultimately I think the focus is more on just getting the job done. So, um, how do you think this is gonna play out as we look at AI's impact on digital transformation?

Yeah, well, it certainly has a large impact on digital transformation, but as we were discussing yesterday, I think, you know, all these, uh, you know, efficiency tools that we're putting out there, it's still, um, the high level, um, skilled professionals that are using it just as shortcuts and to make their jobs easier. So are these tools all really needed? How many tools are needed for this job?

We will see, uh, I, I don't think I'm ready to become a prompt engineer though. I think that's more of a skill that everybody involved in digital transformation is gonna have. ai.

So by all means, go check out the site and look for that podcast on, uh, other podcast channels like Spotify and all those good places, but it's where we're doing the heavy duty talking about AI these days. Yep. And then last off, this is a fun one.

We're going into sports and digital transformation. So the Boston Celtics have improved, they're data analytics by adding Mission Cloud, which is real, um, allows them to get real time data and it's saving them a lot of money and they don't have to focus on managing the infrastructure. So I'm gonna kick that to you.

All right, well, full disclosure, this article was written by the brother, none other than Frank. And so, um, and, and I gotta say, you know, he's not really a, a hardcore IT guy, but he did a credible job on this thing. It was very well read.

And I, I was looking at it and I was going, it described very neatly the four phases that any company goes through as they migrate to the cloud. Um, we, this just happened to be the case around the Boston Celtics, but uh, who were moving most of their workloads into the Amazon Web Services Cloud, and they did it just like everybody else, right? They lifted and shifted, then they migrated, then they modernized, and now they're kind of building their next generation of applications natively.

Um, so I commend it to digital transformation execs about it gives you a kind of a, a sense of a playbook, this being basketball. Um, and you know, most organizations are following that playbook, right? I mean, you just can't suddenly throw a switch and say, we're all gonna be in the cloud all at once.

It takes phases. I think in the article they identified four different phases, but, um, I wonder if we just need more patience as we think our way through these migrations and what they mean for digital transformation. Because I don't know, maybe too many business magazine covers, but it feels like we expect everything to turn on a dime.

So what's your sense of what's, what's the realistic assessment about digital transformation in the cloud era from your perspective? Well, I think that's the way more and more companies are going because they want real time streamlined processes and you can't get that from monolithic atmospheres. So I think we're just gonna see more and more of that.

I think we'll see that as well. Although some folks are pushing back 'cause the cost is high in the cloud, much higher than they thought. And I don't know.

I'm starting to feel the world's gonna be a lot more hybrid. And I, and I, and I bring this up 'cause we've talked about this on the show in the past, where I need to process and analyze the data closer to the point where it is being created and consumed. And that's not always in the cloud.

There's this thing called a network that sits between the endpoint and the cloud and there's this other thing called the laws of physics. And so we're gonna have to process more data locally to give people the sense of immediacy and then maybe cache the result of that and ship that back up to the cloud for further analytics. So these digital processes are becoming more nuanced now, you know, does that mean the Celtics are gonna put a chip in a basketball so they can collect data that's gonna go back up to the AWS cloud for analysis?

I don't know. I've seen chips put in, you know, hockey sticks and pucks. I'm not quite clear if that ever got past, you know, the, the theoretical stage.

But you know, we were talking about a 3D printed basketball I think on a previous show. So, you know, the technology is there. Uh, it has to be applied in an interesting way.

But I know that, um, when we were talking about that before in the context of sports, the athletes were like, no, you're not collecting and measuring that cape stuff on my jersey. Or, you know, you can put it on the stick 'cause you own the stick, but you can't collect my health data to use in, in my forthcoming next contract negotiation that because of what you collected during the game. So there's a lot of subtlety in this whole thing.

So I would argue that, uh, the article describes the Celtics cloud migration in four phases. There might be four more phases to come. So hopefully, you know, we can revisit this in another year or so and see where they are.

Absolutely, there's always what's next, but there needs to be, um, a clear reason for it, not just doing it to, you know, have the next amazing, you know, data collected. All right. And also full disclosure, I am not a Boston Celtics fan and neither is Frank.

All right, well thank you so much for tuning in today, and if you haven't, um, seen last week's show catch up, it's posted on our podcast. All right. Thank you all for listening.

See you next time.