The Human Side of Digital Transformation with Kamales Lardi – Tech.Strong.Women. EP 16

Hi everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of tech strong women where we feature amazing women doing amazing things in Tech. I'm Jody Ashley executive producer here at Tech strong, and I'm here with my co-host Tracy Reagan Creator and CEO of deploy Hub and you know because she has so much spare time.

She also does a lot of work with the Linux Foundation where she sits on the boards of open ssf and the CD technical oversight committee. Before I introduced today's guests. I want to give you a quick update about what's happening here at Textron.

Be sure to register for Tech strong con 2023 virtual event on March 16th speaker admissions submissions are still open and we always love sponsors Tech strong will also be hosting our annual devops connect devsecops day at rsac in San Francisco on April 24th. Be sure to look for us on broadcast alley all week stop by and say hi and you can register for all of our events by going to text strong events calm and be sure to tune in every day to text wrong TV for great shows and interviews. Okay, Tracy what's on your mind today?

So at one of our open source contributor meetings, one of the contributors said hey, have you guys seen the the dev containers that you can now create off of use off right off of GitHub? I'm like what the heck is he talking about? And then I started looking into it and somewhere along the line between Thanksgiving and now GitHub announced something called code spaces.

It's actually pretty cool especially for open source projects because it allows you to create fairly easily right from GitHub a development environment. So if you've ever tried to work on an open source project, it can be hard to get started because you have to set up your development environment. But code spaces now from GitHub allows you to do that.

Super super easy. I really think it's going to At a time that we're trying to get control of Open Source packages and security I think code spaces is going to make it so much easier for new contributors of Open Source projects to get involved because allows the open source projects to kind of put together what they're development environment needs to look like and then Bingo you can start developing so check out github's code spaces, especially if you are managing an open source project or you want to be an open source contributor. It might help that process kind of cool.

That sounds really great. All right. Well, thanks Trace.

All right. Well, I would like to introduce Our Guest today Commerce lardi and I hope I didn't Hatchet her name. It's a beautiful name.

How much tell us a little bit about you? It is a pleasure to join you here today Tracy and Jodi. Thank you for having me.

So let me just pronounce my name again combination Rd. Um, it's part Malaysian and heart Swiss. The lardi part is Swiss.

So that being said, I'm actually from Malaysia, but I've been working and living here in Switzerland for about 18 years now and my career really started in the area of tech development. I did my degree in Computing and information systems. I was actually, you know from the very beginning pushed more into women friendly areas from the side of my family as well as the you know, the community that I grew up in they were taking that I should go into topics like nursing or medicine or even marketing and communication but somehow I just I feel technology was the area to be in back in the 90s.

And so I joined this University program and found out that I had an affinity for programming and everything Tech which I absolutely loved and as you both will know programming back then was not like you know what Tracy just describ For instance. It's fairly easy to get into coding these days. And I think that's absolutely amazing because it's democratized and knowledge around it.

But back then it was real hardcore basic coding and I found my love for tech at that time and over the years. I actually went into management consulting. I was with companies like Accenture for a couple of years at the time.

They were Anderson Consulting and then I went into Deloitte came over to Europe to do my MBA because I really wanted to get more into the space of business and Tech the conversions of business and Tech and application of tech for business. And met my very Swiss husband and ended up settling down here in Zurich. So he's anything but Tech.

So it's a it's been quite an exciting Journey. The one thing I have to say though. I'm a big advocate for technology.

I'm a tech Optimist and a business strategist. So I see huge potential for emerging Technologies, especially in business applications and over the past 23 years of working in this space. What I've really found was companies Business Leaders tend to underestimate the one factor that could make or break digital application in companies, which is the human factor.

And all of this knowledge and experience and observations, I brought them together and basically that triggered me to write my recent book called The Human Side of digital business transformation. I like that the the kind way you put it women friendly. Actually not that technology is women unfriendly.

It just doesn't common right. It's just not common enough. This is back in the 90s, right?

So yeah, we would not exactly encouraged into the field. You know, that's a running theme on this show that people are like, um, my parents said I should you know, do are these things or we had the opposite parents who threatened no College, if you don't go into Tech or stem that was wise experience and you know, we have to read we have to recognize that women initially were primary contributors to the technology to computers. You know the what are the most popular language still today was written by a woman my mother and she was born in 1922 was brought in by IBM to be an analyst of for a hospital because who knew this chart system filing more than she did no one right so easy there were a lot of women in technology in the 60s and 70s and even 80s and then I believe in the 90s.

We started seeing a decline of women going into technology and we are now pretty outnumbered when I when I first started I was not that unusual to see to see other women even in college, but now I know I have a niece who is studying computer science and she says, you know, sometimes she's one out of you know, 50 students. There's one female in the class. So we there's something we've got to change about that.

It definitely and you know, I I think it's absolutely right what you're saying that there were so many women who actually pioneered the field but they were kind of hidden Heroes. They were not given the spotlight and the name and the recognition that they should have been given what I find today is many of the young women and I do Mentor younger women in underdeveloped areas as well as women in aiming to go into leadership positions here in Europe as well. What I find is the knowledge around Tech is what gives them the edge so getting into a tech feel for or a stem area of studies gives them an advantage or being in a corporate environment and knowing technology understanding emerging Tech and how it could be applied gives them an edge towards promotions in the next step in their Career Development.

So I find this quite exciting because the knowledge of you know, this technology space is giving more opportunity and it's giving a competitive Advantage for many women as well. And you know you talk about well, let's say I'll start it this way. I often talk about finding your voice.

And women sometimes are much older before they find their voice. I always say I didn't find my voice until I hit 50 and finally I found it. It was almost like I was like if I don't start speaking up it's going to be too late.

So is necessary and when I found my voice, I began I became more authentic. I became more of my authentic self. Now I know that's a topic that you're that you also talk about is how how you must be more?

Authentic? Why don't you speak to us a little bit about you know, how you see that? I am absolutely passionate about that.

So I'm really glad you brought it up Tracy. I think being authentic. Yes.

It is incredibly hard. It takes it takes someone to go on a certain Journey before they can find their true authentic self. And I have to say I've been pretty lucky in that sense because ever since I was young even though I was brought up in an environment where there were traditional roles for male and female.

I had a pretty strong sense of authenticity. I had a pretty strong strong sense that I was going to go into this corporate environment wearing high heels and suits and I was going to be one of those, you know, American Psycho type Haha, I had a very slotted not that you know that I am that way today, but I had to go on this certain journey and I think everyone goes on a journey to find the authentic self and it doesn't matter what age you find it. It doesn't matter how long that Journey takes authenticity to me is really being able to stay true to your values having a strong understanding for what your purpose is and what what you believe in and what you're working towards and that includes not just your purpose in life, but perfect purpose in profession as well.

We're seeing quite a lot of people especially the younger generation wanting to have meaningful work work that's providing something towards a bigger a higher purpose in life a higher purpose in in the world. And I think this is where this sense of authenticity will come from understanding your purpose having a strong set of values and Having the courage and boldness and passion to speak to that and this isn't something that so easy. It does exclude you or As make you stand out sometimes in the wrong way in the business environment being an authentic leader is something that's very important to me.

I do try to embody that Ability where I want to represent myself in the most honest way in the way. I lead which means sometimes being vulnerable sometimes accepting the fact that I might not be the smartest in the room, but I know how to bring the best out of people who are smarter than me and I think this sort of vulnerability this sort of you know, having empathy for your your team having empathy for the people around you. This is something where traditionally in the corporate world and coming up in the 90s.

I I recognize this or I was told and you know was communicated fairly loudly to me that these things were weaknesses that you have to be a lot stronger that you have to be almost masculine as a leader whether you're a male or a female and I think these perceptions have shifted now quite a bit in the corporate world where we're looking for different types of leaders and these new types of personalities. These authentic leaders are the ones standing out. It's hard.

It's really hard and it's I think. It's harder for women because we don't have as many role models that has shown us that you can be a state, you know, stick with your authentic self be true to who you are and move forward and progress. You know, I think sometimes women feel like they just slapped down for being their authentic self.

A really good documentary to watch on this topic is Netflix did a series on Hillary Clinton regardless of your political, you know persuasion which side of the you know, which side you're on it's a interesting very interesting. Chronicle on her staying authentic. In fact at one point she talks about being on the campaign trail that she calculated how much time that they were putting makeup on her and doing her hair was 23 days and it irritated her because she was like, I know my competitors, you know people I'm running against they're not doing that.

They're just out there being who they are. And why is it that women can't do that? So it's very interesting and she talks about what her voice she talks about being authentic through her entire career from being in college all the way to today.

And he's very excited. Sorry go on. Don't go ahead you go I was gonna say this is a it's it's really interesting to see that there are people do tend to take and this is I'm generalizing but it is to sit an extent true people do tend to take the Liberties in commenting about women, especially women in the workplace women leaders, and I've been in that situation as well a couple of times where you know, I dress very I do dress in a feminine way, but I do like to wear suits and I like to stand out I like colors and I've been told in the workplace, you know, you shouldn't wear such bright colors or you shouldn't wear suits you should wear pants, you know, and why are you wearing makeup or if my hair is is curl that day?

Why is it curly? Why don't you tie it up and somehow there's a certain Comfort where people feel you know, they can make these comments and I think this is where the mindset shift has to come we need to away from that and I I do feel in the tech space we do. See a lot of that as well.

There's a perception of what a programmer should look like and the number of times I've had to convince people that I'm speaking to in, you know, whether their colleagues or clients. I have a background in coding. Yes, I do code and you know when when I started developing blockchain Solutions, I went and learned solidity.

I developed hyperledger. Why is it so difficult to believe because they have a certain mindset about what attack leader should look like and I don't fit that that box so that perception and I find this quite fascinating to be honest. Sometimes it's quite fun to break those perceptions and provoke the thought you know in a different direction.

I think that's that's an exciting space to be in well and a man would never be told any of those things. bright or early or Are any of those kind of things what I think? People fun men as well because they're they're kind of told not to to be vulnerable or to show emotions.

Exactly and they're they're kind of on the Other Extreme right where I've had during the covid period I do digital mindset coaching and I've spoken to people who've run organizations and Senior leadership teams board members to coach them around how they can lead in this new kind of hybrid space one of the senior leaders who had been running his organization or he's been in a leadership position for over 30 years. He broke down in tears because he had never let in an environment that was fully digital. He had a secretary that was signing him up into his email or responding to email someone who was running all of his meetings by the, you know, running the tech around him while he just showed up and all of a sudden he's had to get used to this new space where he can't he doesn't know how to lead people in a hybrid space.

So he broke down crying and I think you know, he felt comfortable enough because It put the person that I managed to show him the authenticity that I had. He felt comfortable enough to show me his authenticity and this was quite exciting because then we moved into a virtual space and had our meeting there and it was a wow moment for him because he suddenly realized there's this whole immersive experience that I would never have tried. If not for this this environment that I'm in right now the difficult uncertainty that I'm in right now.

So I think they face a different challenge in the corporate environment. And so I'd like to see these perceptions and you know, all these boundaries broken down and I feel like Tech is going to help us do that. So I have a question back to the authenticity having all of us not grown up in social media land.

Do you feel like the generation of kids that are coming up the young people they have very low and I'm going to just say it. They have very little b******* meters. They don't they are very authentic.

I feel like sometimes to the opposite extreme like you want them to put a little filter on saying but do you find that that being authentic as a leader is even more important given The the environment that younger people grew up in that we didn't. Absolutely. I think the the whole element around social media social Technologies beyond the fact that you know, it's become it's grown so quickly and it's adopted across the world.

I think the one thing that social technologies have been able to do is it's been able to trigger new behaviors in people new behaviors in a new generation of people and my daughter is 12. She's an absolute gen Z, she's fully into, you know, tiktok Roblox and and all of the such and it comes so easily for them, right? It's like, you know, she log into a tiktok account and within a couple of hours.

She's got a thousand foot new followers, you know, it's it's ridiculous how easily comes for them, but it's also quite exciting to see this generation of people and this is something I do address in the book this generation of Gen X. Sorry the Genesis and the alphas are starting to demand a new way of doing things right the millennials. This shift but the next generation are demanding it.

They don't want to work with organizations that don't align with their values and purpose. They reject people, you know, they call it the cancel culture. They reject people that don't align to that sometimes a little bit too quickly, right?

There's always something to be said about exploring topics and giving people Second Chances and so on everyone makes mistakes mistakes today are exponentiated on these channels as well. So these are things I think I find it quite encouraging the environment that we're heading into because the values are shifting. The focus is Shifting.

I see my daughter and her her friends being very focused on things like climate change. They are very much focused on social issues that are existing, you know when Ukraine when the war and Ukraine happened there were so many young people who, you know, very invested in it who decided to take action and not just watch the news and so I find this very exciting and they have the ability to trigger change with social Technologies to mindsets and Trigger Behavior change. So this for me is quite exciting.

I think that the companies are struggling to keep up with these shifts. They're still trying to force fit people back into the traditional environment. For example, many companies are now going back to full five day physical presence in the office.

You know and this generation of people have gotten a taste for hybrid it they're not going to shift back so easily because they know now there's another model. I think it would make more sense to shift towards a hyper personalized working model rather than going back to the traditional but this is a concept that companies won't be able to implement. Yeah, and I think the shiniest and brightest will be the one saying yeah, I think I'll stay home now find a job that will allow them to do that.

Let's talk a little bit about shift now we or you know, your book is on digital transformation, but the humans of it but let's just start by defining what digital transformation is and what's really driving it this idea of businesses needing to be more agile. Not in the terms of Agile development, but being able to respond to the Gen Z's who are being more demanding. So talk just a little bit about what's happening in digital transformation.

like to Define digital transferably broad space and as With digital transformation has actually been around for a while ever since we started using Tech in the business World in 70s and 80s. We've been doing digital transformation in business. It's gotten quite a lot of focus over the last couple of years the last decade or so because technology advancement has accelerated.

So rapidly that the rate of change that's happening is significant and so it's become all the more important for companies to take notice of transformation. I like to Define digital transformation as an organization-wide change that looks at new ways of doing things and new ways of running your organization new ways of delivering value to the market leveraging technology in order to do that. So this means that you are able to do things a lot quicker a lot more efficiently and a lot more in terms of, you know, exponential growth and scale.

You can achieve a lot more with a lot less. What I find very interesting in the market though. And the one of the reasons I decided to address this in the book as well.

There's a lot of focus in the business landscape around the digital part. So what technologies are we implementing? And you know the hype around new tech blockchain.

There was a lot of focus on the metaverse last year this year. It's all about check GPT and AI so every year there's shiny new thing that companies promote themselves or very loudly claimed to want to implement but there's very little focus on the transformation part and the transformation part the part where you take your organization and it's people on this journey towards the future. That's the part that creates the solid foundation for your Tech to accelerate without this transformation piece.

The tech will not provide you the outcomes that you're looking for. It will fall short. And so this is one of the things I try to address in the book a core element of this transformation piece everything that you touch within an organization has something to do with people and this isn't about culture change or change management, but it's really about looking at the ecosystem that you're building around.

Business no one single company is going to be successful on its own in the digital future. You need to build an ecosystem around your business which are your ownership of the company the leadership teams and management teams the employees as well as your customers from the external your partners and suppliers and your service providers all of these different players working in cohesion towards Mutual success for the digital future and this is where digital transformation can really be successful. Yes, and it is the one thing I've recognized over the course of my career.

Is we as technologists are change agents? However, some developers are the most resistant to change them. You know I have to admit I was there.

I I carried brief around with me forever because I didn't want to learn a new idea. I totally understand that. But with what we're seeing now, in terms of you talked about the acceleration of technology and did in this digital world.

We have never seen this big of a change going from these monolithic applications to these decoupled applications using kubernetes and microservices in the past oftentimes. The chord change didn't impact developers. Yes, we've learned new languages and languages have gotten easier, but still programmers pretty much did the same thing.

Now what I see is that microservices have changed the way our culture is we have feature teams. Not necessarily application teams. You may have one team that's working on the front end or the UI and the jar file and they're consuming other parts and there's a trust issue there.

There is more, you know, everything is decentralized. How can organizations help facilitate this cultural change and help developers learn something as simple as maybe you don't need to create one-off scripts for everything you do automation's not scary and consuming other pieces and parts that you didn't write is okay. I think there's a couple of elements there firstly developers will need to recognize that the way they used to do things is Shifting very quickly, you know, you mentioned at the very beginning there are now platforms that allow us to code differently to automate code.

There are AI based platforms that I've been using over the last couple of weeks that allow me to type in text and convert the text to code. Based on the language that I want to select. So there's there's a lot of changes that's happening in one of the key elements that we need to recognize is these new emerging Technologies ai-based systems and so on they're able to automate a lot of the Redundant repetitive work things that you know coding and development work that used to be tied to individuals who had this knowledge.

Those things are getting automated and very quickly automated they're more efficient. They're even cheap to access. So what happens then to the developer what happens to their role in this whole construct?

I think the the strength comes in understanding the connection between the business or the business use case the business user the needs. To the technology and that will never be automated that's an element that technology will never be able to replace. So developers roles are shifting towards being this Connecting Point between the people in the business side what their needs are and the technology that needs to be built in order to meet those needs and I think this shift of mindset has to happen, which is it's it's really tough.

I even had a conversation today with one of my clients around, you know. How do they interact with developers and why is it in Project has been delayed for so long and it is really because there is a certain way of working in the tech development space that hasn't shifted in a very long time. Whereas the business environment around us has shifted.

Absolutely and in your book you talk about a framework of manageable parts. I unfortunately haven't did not get a chance to read your book before this interview, but I'm very curious about those manageable parts. Absolutely.

I think one of the things I experienced with companies over the years one of two things happens with digital transformation. You either make it such a small manageable scope. It becomes a project with a start date and an end date for implementation, which doesn't work.

Right? Because you limit the potential outcome and benefits you can get from any Tech implementation that way or you make it such a big massive transformation piece that you know, you kind of go into an analysis paralysis and you go into an environment where it never actually gets executed and you don't see outcomes. So what I try to do when I started developing, you know Frameworks the Frameworks will basically a way to communicate to organizations.

You know, how do we how do we go through this process? How do we simplify the process and make it structured step by step so we can any organization can be guided through it and I decided to break it down into four building blocks that companies can focus on So the first building block is around customer experience design, which really looks at. Any kind of transformation that you're working on towards your customer base right touch points to customers.

It could be even application of new tech like ai-based systems or even virtual reality or mental reality and so on but any kind of touchpoint, you have to the market the second building blocks are products and service digitization, which really looks at. Do you have the right products for the digital space can your current portfolio of products and services be shifted into the digital space. Do you have to create new products to fit the future needs of your customers and so on the third element is people process and operations which looks at your internal organization environment.

Are your people up skills. Do they have the right skill sets for the future. Are your is your organization structure in the right way.

Do you need to reorganize for example, implementing agile teams and things like that and then operation optimization, which is really, you know, Automation digitization and so on and the fourth element is Business model Innovation, which looks at how else can we make money in the business world? Can you check enable new ways of making money new revenue streams New Opportunities and we did see quite a lot of creative outcomes during the covid times as well companies can address any one of these areas, they can zoom into these areas based on, you know, the quick outcomes that they want to achieve or where the biggest problems lie within their business but digital transformation really does involve eventually addressing all four of these building blocks over time. And this is kind of you know, the manageable pieces.

So you break it down you focus in your identify where and what you need to be doing and then over time you can shift, you know, and any one of these quadrants impact the rest if you create a new touch point to your customer, you would need to still optimize the people the processes behind it. You might need a new business model for it and so on so these are kind of they're all interrelated at some point. Yeah, and I think that two and three are spot-on, you know take inventory of your your current tools.

Are they still serving you are they just now become Habit to use and are they actually slowing you down? And of course number three making sure that your personnel is trained. It is hard to keep everybody up to speed on the new technologies.

And then when we want to consume then we don't have the the head count. They can consume them. Yeah, so really continuing to, you know, develop your your developer base develop.

Your developers is critical and and that inventory we were on a another call for we're talking about testing. And how how does what does testing look like in a monolithic World versus a microservices world? And I had to point out to everybody.

Hey pentastic and load balancing is going to be drastically different. You have to start looking at those tools. Even before you start going down this road because those underlying tools have to be updated for this for the the new technology that we're building software on now and you know, I don't know if all upper management really understands that so I think you're four Frameworks are really important.

There is a section in the book where I address best practices for transformation. And one of the first things that I address in there is around dual transformation, which you know really talks about and it's a real life challenge for many organizations where they have the existing environment it existing Tech infrastructure, existing tools and applications that they use and some of that could even be 20 30 years old or even older and then they're trying to force fit this new emerging Tech into that environment, which doesn't really work and it doesn't connect it. Doesn't that the interoperability just isn't there and so how do you manage this space?

How do you upgrade or update your existing core environment and then still at the same time develop new tech. So this is a challenge that many companies are facing. So you said something earlier about Ai and using it?

To write code and do stuff like that. And obviously it's we're just being inundated with all this AI stuff over the last bit of time. Do either of you this is a good question for both of you guys you both run companies.

Do you see that? The AI environment will discourage people from choosing certain Tech Fields thinking they're just going to be replaced by AI. Well, I I mean, I think there are some professions that will be replaced by AI.

I think the coding world people who are doing software development. It's not that they'll be replaced. They're going to learn to use new tools.

So two and three of her framework. But there are there are professions I think have will be disrupted. I think that accounting and finance will be seriously disrupted.

I mean really we should be able to just pump some numbers through a system and our taxes should be done, right? The law law will be disrupted lawyers are going to probably be relying on more and more pattern matching just like doctors. So I think there'll be a lot of disruption, but I'm hoping that nobody gets replaced.

We just get really much better at doing our jobs. And that is really the intent of AI, you know? I'm assuming that some of these AI systems will.

See a time that they'll be really popular and then they'll fade away. Because we'll realize that humans are probably better at doing things or we can catch things that shouldn't be done that way kind of like the chat whatever. It is GPT.

I think professors will get really good at recognizing when a term paper has been written by an AI system. I know my grammar was so bad when I was in college that if I had to turn anything over that perfect grammar, I would have been busted me. So I do think that we'll see disruption.

I don't know if we'll have complete replacement but they'll be disrupted in in almost everything that we do. We'll see disruption. I just wonder if it will discourage people comma what do you think about that?

Do you think it'll discourage younger people from wanting to be coders are being developers being because they're seeing how AI is being used. I think it actually is going to encourage more people to enter the tech field one of the biggest barriers to entry for the the tech field particularly, you know in programming and in hardcore Tech Was the difficulty right back in the 90s if I was doing SQL cobal and so on it was hard to learn. It was like learning a whole new language and getting one piece of the code or one element or one semicolon wrong would drive us crazy for days.

You don't have those issues today because the barrier to entry is so low, the the tech has made it so easy for people to enter the field. My daughter has this this kid called. Oh, what's it called?

It's a little computer that you can build from scratch at home and you can pretty much just build the entire computer and then you can start learning to code in Python and you have little games that you can play and you know, this is amazing because she now knows how to build a computer that works and you can even plug in the house the speakers and everything and it's it's in a wooden box, but it works and it's it's amazing. It's absolutely amazing. It's it's a Days work and you've built your own computer, if I look at what I'm doing now over the past couple of weeks.

There's been a lot of chat around chat GPT, but they're not like numerous other tools out there that that do so many things. I don't do my own taxes because there's a platform for that. I have an accounting system an online cloud-based system that you know, pretty much produces all of the reports and everything that I need and I have now recently discovered an ai-based system that allows me to pick my team of people my team of employees who are actually AI systems.

They have their own avatars and so on but I have a legal person. I have an accountant I have you know, and I'm testing it. I don't absolutely need them.

But I'm testing these environments. I have a social media manager and I have a marketing manager and a lead generation manager. So I pick my team and I can ask them questions and they provide me pretty intelligent responses on things that I can execute.

So I think the role in the mindset and the Of use is Shifting. We've seen companies in New Zealand for example called. Soul machines I don't know if you've heard of them, but they produce digital humans Avatars that company can companies can use we've seen them being used in hospitals in Banks and basically they're able to communicate, you know on screen with people with natural language as well as they can read official expressions and they have pretty lifelike human-like Expressions as well.

So this is really incredible because they're able to interact with people say for example, someone who is in a remote location and physically disabled unable to go to the hospital. The first point of contact for triage is with this digital human to interact with them in a banking space. They're using these digital employees as the customer service people with up to 90% success rate or customer satisfaction rate.

So I think that the roles are shifting and as I said earlier, we're looking at the things being automated the Redundant work the repetitive work the less complex work very quickly going into this automated environment and the species the elements that need human touch points that need human connection. That's where people are going to be needed a lot more and I think the younger generation are more in tune with that. And we have to build all of this software.

All right. I mean right now, you know what I really believe that we have to encourage as much stem as possible. Especially computer science.

I mean I'm a fan of it obviously but there's a lot of software out there to build and as we get better at our the infrastructure of software software that actually can now do this kind of massive pattern matching that AI requires now that we have that we have a whole new set of a whole new kind of software to create and we need those young people coming up from college to help create it. Because it's going to create a better world and it's all we also have to have them up there to figure out. The Bad actors and how to identify a video that's actually not the real person right?

It's just been a new face put on a body. Those are the kinds of those are the kinds of jobs. That will be the future.

I think there will hit a point where technology will be able to build and reproduce. You know with the kind of building the tech part may not be the focus. I think the ethics bringing in that human element the empathy around it and the diversity aspect as well.

You know, we are what we build and we build what we are and at the end of the day what we're building today is still very very limited because we don't have these diverse teams and I have to say though, this is something I'm very very passionate about diversity isn't just about gender diversity. It is about diversity of thought and diversity of thought really comes in from having people from different ethnic backgrounds and different genders different sexual orientations and different education as well. We need to have more non-tech people helping to build the tech.

And I think this is where you have people coming in with the right questions and you have people kind of challenging in environments, right if you think about things that are happening with FTX and all of these different scandals that are going on. The fact that there was not enough diversity of thought and no one in their questioning decisions questioning the way things are done because everyone kind of agreed with each other and just went along this unethical path. These are some of the challenges that we're definitely going to face with with the tech that's being built in the future.

Well kamalash. I think that you have shown to us why you are have been recognized in so many ways as you know the in the top women to watch in this field because you really have given us an amazing sort of high level overview of what's happening in digital transformation and how people are going to be impacted. Thank you so much.

I hope our audience has gotten a really good look at it because you know, this is one for the this is one for the memory banks because it will see in the future that you've predicted quite a bit. I I really hope that I do get some of the right and some of it. I hope that I'm wrong because I do predict that if we don't change and shift it in things it might be quite challenging for us as people particularly around, you know the tech that we're building for the future.

oh, I you know I we've got to be able to build tamper-proof Tech too are the security issues the the vulnerabilities and software is truly a problem right now and some of us must get prepared before we really jump down this AI road because you know, we don't want We don't want to rely on a medical system that's been tampered with Right medical insurance Finance. It's it's everything. Yeah, so I'm actually but as I said, I'm I'm a tech Optimist and you know, I believe in in people's value and purpose and I do believe that we we find a way to make things good and right for ourselves, so I'm very excited about the future.

It's you mentioned this in your summary of your book that it's gonna be important for competitors to be to work together. We have and and that really describes open source, you know, I'm part of the open ssf. I'm on the on the board and you know, I on a regular basis.

I meet with literally competitors who are talking together and trying to solve some of these core problems and it's it's really refreshing to see that because before there was always a wall between competitors and open source. The Linux Foundation has done a great job of this. Has created a platform for competitors to have a conversation and to have a common goal of solving some very core problems at the industry in general has to face.

And historically we've seen that as well with any Tech development, especially, you know blockchain Ai and so on when you have the the teams of people from different backgrounds working together, it doesn't matter which company you're from or which organization and so on that's when the Breakthrough Technologies come out we saw this even with with the vaccine development when you had crowdsourced Solutions, the rapid outcomes that we could see that could benefit mankind. That was very exciting and I think this is where the human element comes in as well machines are not going to collaborate on their own. It's going to be people that collaborate.

Absolutely, and AI I don't think we'll ever get to that point. Maybe it will but You know really identifying the problems on the outside world not the inside AI world and it requires people to collaborate and to identify them and solve them. Yes.

Well, it's well ladies. We've come to the end of our time together. Um, I agree with Tracy.

This was amazing. I'm just really impressed, and I'm so grateful that you came and joined us today. Thank you so much for for being part of our our show, and I hope to see you back on some other Tech drawing TV stuff that we do here because we would love to have you.

Thanks again and everybody tune in to Tech strong TV and see all these great interviews that were out there doing. Thanks a lot Judy. Thank you.

Thank you. Hi. Bye.