Facebook to Fix Security Issue in iOS App

Partner, Sensei Marketing
Partner, Sensei Marketing

Sales & marketing veteran with almost 30 years’ experience and now 1800 digital projects to his credit for clients including Morgan Stanley, AOL, Hyatt Gaming Management, Snyder's of Hanover, Hitachi, the Home Depot, Kraft Foods, Drees Homes, American Idol, and hundreds more, including leading agencies around the North America.     ...

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So, the downloading and use of a Facebook App could create security threats? Who'd have thunk it? Oh, wait...I could, and did right here on Huffington Post.

Last December I posted an article calling out the Android permission settings on the Facebook Messenger app and others like it. I highlighted the threat that the "without your permission" stipulation, among others, could open the door for malicious third party software or hackers to gain access to your smart phone.

The article created quite a stir when it went viral last month when Facebook began removing the IM function from within its social networking app. For the most part, readers shared my concern; however, a select group of self-proclaimed tech geeks suggested that I was misinforming people and that I was just paranoid. Others pointed to the fact that the permission settings were specific to Android and that the sandboxing offered on Apple's iOS would prevent such unauthorized access from occurring.

Was I really paranoid? Are security issues only possible on Android apps thanks to the manner in which it manages permission settings? Well, earlier this week Andrei Neculaesei, a developer at Copenhagen-based Airtame, discovered a dangerous bug in the Facebook iOS app's programming that might cause potentially expensive calls to be made with your iPhone, without requesting your permission.

Neculaesei shares how the bug works on his blog where he explains that there's a potential for your iPhone's calling function to be hijacked when you click on a web link. He calls the bug "some sneaky-beaky-like JavaScript," which makes the links embedded in websites click themselves.

The threat could be even bigger. Neculaesei predicts that the vulnerability in theses apps could automatically transmit a video feed to attackers when clicking on a link within Facetime, for example. Facebook has announced that it has already developed an update to address the security threat; however, a release date has yet to be listed as of the date of this post.

Are We Right to be Paranoid?

My security concerns over our increasing use of mobile apps, for which we rarely read the permission settings or terms of service, were met with harsh criticism by some who said I was wearing a tinfoil hat and breeding paranoia.

I hate to say "I told you so" but, well, there it is. One of the potential threats I feared has come to life.

Will there be others? Of course there will.

Should you delete all your mobile apps? Of course not.

What we should do is start taking the time to read the fine print before we download apps that request access to our phone's data and functionality, and really consider if the app's utility is worth the potential security risks that may come with using it.

Next, we must put more pressure on app manufacturers to be clearer and more specific about how and why they need to access certain data and functions on our phones, and offer limitations on how that data will used once collected.

Finally, we must start to insist that they add greater safeguards to protect our data or we'll stop downloading them.

What say you? Are you at all concerned about the increased threat posed by the permission settings and/or terms of use we accept when downloading modern apps?

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Event Report - VMware makes a lot of progress - but the holy grail is still missing

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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I had the chance to attend VMworld in San Francisco this week, blogged my Day 1 takeaways here, time to blog on the overall impressions of the event. 

 

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SuperNova Awards Finalists to be Announced August 28, 2014

This year's SuperNova Award finalists will be announced on August 28, 2014.

We intended to announce the SuperNova Award finalists today, but the volume of applications combined with the fact that we extended the application submission deadline meant that the judges had less time than they would have liked to thoroughly evaluate all applications. We're extending the judging deadline so the judges can give your applications the attention they require for thorough review. 

We're sorry for any inconvenience this has caused. 

Please check back on August 28 when we will announce this year's SuperNova Award finalists!

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Who’s on first?

Brian Katz

fill

Brian Katz is a director at pharmaceutical company Sanofi, where he manages mobile initiatives, including mobilizing the salesforce, building best practices for developing apps, handling BYOD initiatives, enabling new devices and form factors for success, and looking at ways to innovate in the mobile space for Sanofi. He started his career working with a multi-national New York financial company as an email architect, designing and maintaining their email and communications systems, which also involved supporting their mobile computing platforms. ...

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I spend a lot of time talking about organizations enabling their employees through the use of mobile. It’s truly the only way to ‘win’ at this game. When you enable your users to be more flexible and agile they become more efficient and productive. What more could you ask for? The question always turns to how do you actually enable your people. You start with the FUN principle (Focus on the Users’ Needs) and you build apps that enable them to do what they need to do, when and where they need it. There are many issues with building apps and if you focus on their needs you get most of the way there. Yet, there is still the fundamental issue when building an app that someone can use anywhere and at anytime. How do you know who that somebody is?

This is one of the fundamental problems of mobile. You need to know who the person is using the app and you have to make sure it’s them when they are using it. While it sounds simple, it’s not like you can actually be there in person and watch them press the buttons. Hence the practice of identity and access management (IAM) is born.

One of your jobs as the keepers of mobile for your company is to protect their data assets. This used to be somewhat easy. People sat at their desks and were given IDs and Passwords to login to their machines. You knew who was accessing what data at any time since the computers were too heavy to move and so between their ID and password and what computer they were using you were all set. That became harder when laptops were rolled out but you enforced VPNs and gave out RSA tokens to make sure you had a second factor of authentication for your user.

This all went out the window when the iPhone came out. All the sudden you had devices that could go anywhere and at the same time could always be connected. Not only that, but in the beginning they didn’t even have the ability to connect via VPN. That didn’t stop people from wanting to get their email on these devices and then start to do real work on them. Information Security (Infosec) just wasn’t ready for this to happen. It immediately became a no that was overridden by every single person who had one of the devices (another example of shadow innovation). A solution had to be found.

Hence, you now hear the term identity and access management being thrown around. This isn’t a new concept but one that, to be honest, wasn’t ready for the user revolution that mobile brought into the work environment. The first response to mobile enablement was not to allow anything on the device, and the second response was to make people use a VPN to connect to work. It was following the same path of legacy thinking that led to MDM becoming popular. The only issue was that none of these ideas were really good solutions, mostly due the fact that they weren’t implemented well. These solutions didn’t sit well with users because they were using consumer apps and saving their data and keeping stuff confidential and it was easy. They didn’t need to know a different password for each app and enter it every time they opened the app. They just clicked on an app and did what they needed to do.

The question is though, how does Infosec solve this Abbot and Costello problem for most companies. Abbot saying who’s on first and Infosec responding, yeah, who’s on first? The whole point of Infosec is to protect the data and make sure only the right people (identity) are able to get to the right data (access). The problem, which has yet to be addressed in most companies, is how to do this while following the same FUN principle that we used to design app experiences. As any Infosec person will tell you, they want to enable two-factor authentication (independent means of identifying you) on your device and apps and yet they don’t really care about the experience (not all Infosec is this way). In order to get user buy-in, the experience of using work apps has to be transparent and easy, not something that gets in the way. Otherwise users will find another way/app to get their stuff done and that is guaranteed to be insecure.

The two pieces leading the way here are single sign on (SSO) that is integrated across all apps and a second simple form of authentication (2FA) besides your login. SSO means that once you sign into one work app that same credential is used for other work apps you may use in that same session. You no longer have to sign into each one individually as you switch between them. 2FA means that a second way to authenticate you, which may be a certificate on the actual device or biometrics like your fingerprint among others are used to assure you are you. These pieces need to be explained to your app developers and have to be easy for them to setup and use. Only when they are planned well and made simple to integrate into any app will they help to solve the IAM problem that all companies face. In the end, it means that you have to involve your Infosec folks when you are designing your apps to enable your users, not when you are done and want to deploy the apps. Infosec, at the same time, has to adopt design thinking and realize that it’s all about the user experience. When those two things happen, you are well on your way to securely enabling your users while protecting your data.

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Market Move - Skillsoft announces agreement to acquire SumTotal - Creating a(nother) HCM vendor

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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On August 21st – during the usually more quiet summer months – Skillsoft announced that it has agreed with the SumTotal owners to acquire the company, bringing together its Learning capabilities with SumTotal’s talent management capabilities. 

This marks the 2nd capital transaction in a few months for Skillsoft – that only in March was acquired by London based private equity firm Charterhouse (the deal valuated Skillsoft at $2.3B+). Charterhouse acquired SumTotal from Vista Equity Partner, who acquired SumTotal in July of 2009. SumTotal itself acquired GeoLearning (Learning) and Softscape (Performance Management, Compensation, Learning and other HR Core functionalities) in 2010 and in 2011 Accero (Payroll and HR Core / from Vista Equity Partners, who owned it since 2008) and Cybershift (Workforce Management and Expense Management). Confused? There are more acquisitions in both companies and different capital holders. I am waiting for Bill Kutik to write a post with a longitudinal perspective he provides so much better than me.
 

Cultural Aspects

This is one of the few acquisitions of a North American software company by a European software company – even with a European financial backer. The good news is, that Skillsoft has a long term experience with the North American market, where it probably earns most of its revenues. Charthouse however has mainly European holdings, pretty much all of them not in the software space. Even more remarkable Charthouse decided to help with the acquisition. So SumTotal must have been either an opportunity that was too attractive not to pass by (it was with Vista since 5 years, when in some private equity shops the clocks point towards ‘Sale’) or part of an overall plan of Charthouse, not to stop with Learning but see Skillsoft as a step stone into forming an overall HCM player.

Ironically I had been probing Skillsoft executives at the last SuccessConnect conference in fall of 2013 how long the road for Learning was still for the company. No surprise, they re-assured me that there was still plenty of potential in Learning. Well that’s history now.

Overall it will be interesting to see how well the European and North American management teams will work together. One off the pertinent questions will be who will run Products, especially with SumTotal CEO Gulati being a former product guy background wise. Certainly Skillsoft CEO Moran could opt for a ‘licensing’ model – leaving product roadmaps untouched and SumTotal quasi ‘license’ the Skillsoft products for Learning. But that would not leverage too many synergies, something Charterhouse certainly is after.
 

Product Aspects

The Skillsoft products are generally very solid and proven. The company’s early strategy to adopt an embedding strategy made for its Learning capabilities into other applications made it an early pioneer of web services. So Skillsoft knows standard based integration. SumTotal on the other hand had to bring together a plethora of acquired applications, something it executed with its elixHR platform. Probably benefitting of Gurlati’s experience building Hub products at Oracle, elixHR uses a Virtual System of Record and Hub Technology to bring together the different SumTotal products and 3rd party systems. How standard based is an open question. When talking last to SumTotal at HR Tech 2013 the company was in process of moving products to elixHR, difficult to say where the company is with that effort now, in summer 2014.

In the short term the product strategy needs to address redundant Learning capabilities in both products, more medium term Skillsoft needs to decide if it wants to provide identical functionality sets to all its consumers – SumTotal and all the 3rd parties – or if there will be some ‘special’ features in the combined capabilities that will be exclusive to the new company and its customers. But that will pose a certain risk as large parts of Skillsoft revenue are licensing revenues. The good news for Skillsoft is that for now – its partners have very few alternatives where to go and get a learning catalogue of the dimensions of Skillsoft.

It will be key to see how the new company will address this and many more key merger questions (we are staying away from Sales, Marketing, Service and General Administration synergies here).

 

Implications, Implications

So let’s look at what this acquisition does to the market place and its participants. With the leading Learning provider acquiring a complete HR vendor, this has not surprisingly implications on the whole market.
 

Implications for Skillsoft customers

Certainly the more immediate event of impact was the acquisition of Skillsoft by Charthouse in spring this year. As it now becomes clear Charthouse has bigger plans with Skillsoft. Immediately there should be no risk for the training catalogue and the product itself. Longer term Skillsoft may bring its products to the elixHR platform – at the core of the training business is a massive learning item hub. Even longer term Skillsoft customer may be offered complimentary Talent Management and other HR functionality – the only problem being that they have these covered with other products already. But products get old – and need to replaced. To postulate a ‘higher ground’ from a Learning proposition will be a unique value proposition we look forward to see the company develop.

As with all acquisitions, customers should see contractual re-assurance of support of products, capabilities and if necessary even APIs.
 

Implications for SumTotal customers

As with all customers of acquired vendors, Constellation recommends to quickly get contractual re-assurance from the new owner in regards of product capability and roadmap. Especially for pending roadmap items. Consult contracts in regards of legal clauses for material events.

Even if the SumTotal elixHR platform will become the overall Skillsoft platform, the combined engineering teams should have enough bandwidth to not neglect roadmap items. Longer term SumTotal customers will get access to Skillsoft’s extensive course library.
 

Implications for Skillsoft

This is a completely different market and game for Skillsoft now. The company will need SumTotal executives and professionals to play immediately in the overall HR market. And it will have to calm any concerns of customers – some of them HR system vendors – that it will remain the ‘Switzerland’ of Learning – no matter of the acquisition. We will see how well customers and partners will buy into the future.

Implications for Skillsoft and SumTotal competitors

Skillsoft competitors can now hope for some distraction of the Skillsoft team. Coming from an alternate MooC and self-creation of courses direction may help here. But to build a similar training catalogue like Skillsoft’s, takes a long time.

SumTotal competitors may hope for some distraction, especially of executives head to the door. But in the grander scheme, the standardization on Skillsoft for Learning is only a smaller challenge in comparison to the overall challenges SumTotal has to master on the product side.

Short term other pure players of single HR functional building blocks – of which Skillsoft was one of the largest – have to ask themselves if they can thrive with mastering a single HR function. We know HR executives are tired of nothing more than integration – and vendors like the new Skillsoft will be able to address much of that potential headache.

On a larger scale “talent only” vendors (like e.g. Cornerstone and Halogen) need to reconsider if the exclusive focus on Talent Management is a sustainable business, for the same integration consideration as mentioned before. On the higher end of the market customers will see SAP and Oracle coming together on single platforms at some point in the future, and the integration message as value proposition will only get stronger.

 

MyPOV

A bold move by Skillsoft. Credit to whoever realized that in the long run even a leading position in Learning is not enough in the overall HCM market. In the short term Skillsoft needs to address a lot of questions and execute well. Starting with the new company name, as an obvious point of consideration. Longer term Skillsoft needs to issue roadmaps for clients and partners and then earn their trust that it will deliver to them. But a bold move, and it’s better to have tried than not. The market is big enough and the merged company has the skills and resources to succeed. We will be there to watch.

 

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First Take - VMware's VMworld Day 1 Keynote - Top 3 Takeaways

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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I am attending the VMware VMworld user conference held at Moscone Center in San Francisco, with 22000 other participants. 

 

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Ikea Targets Millennials, Combines Sitcom and Reality TV Themes

Partner, Sensei Marketing
Partner, Sensei Marketing

Sales & marketing veteran with almost 30 years’ experience and now 1800 digital projects to his credit for clients including Morgan Stanley, AOL, Hyatt Gaming Management, Snyder's of Hanover, Hitachi, the Home Depot, Kraft Foods, Drees Homes, American Idol, and hundreds more, including leading agencies around the North America.     ...

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Forsman & Bodenfors, Ikea’s Swedish agency, has turned to boxed themes to support the distribution of the retail giant’s latest catalogue (pun intended). However, like the popular Ikea Hacks generated by its loyal fans, Ikea’s new marketing effort has combined standard reality TV and sitcom themes to create innovative and captivating YouTube videos targeting Millennials.

Here’s the scenario: The show’s host welcomes a millennial couple as they enter an Ikea store and has them hypnotized into parenting their future children (played by actors) through various life dramas. The scenes support this year’s catalogue, which is titled: Where the everyday begins and ends. Each scene occurs in the future bathroom or bedroom of the customers being hypnotized – two rooms that Ikea merchandisers are paying particular attention to this year.

It is an interesting experiment. The target audience is clearly Millennials, to whom Ikea is subtly introducing the concept that Ikea furniture will be part of their lives as they age and have kids. It’s like the company is hypnotizing its audience with a show about hypnosis.

What They Did Right

Millennials have a much wider interest range and behavioral traits than the common theories that categorize the group would have us believe. Advertising to Millennials isn’t formulaic. In a recent study, Vision Critical surveyed 1018 Americans ages 18+ to determine viewing patterns. What may surprise many marketers is that the group followed many genres, ranging from awards shows and network sitcoms to reality-competition shows and MLB playoff games. One thing was clear however: Regardless of the 18 different types of programming marked as popular among the audience, most reported watching less live programming than either Gen-Xers or Baby Boomers.

Millennials are turning to streaming services and social media to satisfy their entertainment and news needs. On that note, this Ikea campaign hit all the marks to successfully target this audience.  Its format mimics popular television programs among Millennials, which include half-scripted scenarios and reality show-style interviews. More importantly, it was a made-for-YouTube production.

Millennials don’t watch programming as much as they “follow” programming.   For example, studies have shown that 60% more Millennials than Gen-Xers (and 129% more Millennials than Baby Boomers) watch highlights/clips of late-night TV talk shows after they’ve originally aired.   Made-for-YouTube commercials have become requisite marketing for brands reaching out to this audience, if not exclusively, as an integral part of the engagement.

The other critical element of this campaign is its use of humor. We cannot undervalue the effect of humor in brand-consumer communications, be it general content marketing or produced commercials.

Lastly, the brand and products are used as background players, not the stars of the production. One of the first rules that has evolved from social media marketing is the concept of not selling through social channels, and it’s a notion that many sales and marketing teams continue to struggle with. Community, entertainment, and education are the pillars of modern social advertising and this effort hits the second element well.

Sensei Debates

Are made-for-YouTube commercials requisite marketing for brands targeting Millennial consumers?

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

The post Ikea Targets Millennials, Combines Sitcom and Reality TV Themes appeared first on Sensei Marketing.

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Disruption from the Medieval to the Digital World

Gavin Heaton

Founder
Disruptors Co

Gavin is the Founder of Disruptors Co, one of Australia’s leading independent strategy and innovation companies. Gavin advises firms on strategy, marketing, product development and innovation. He is also a member of the Orbits program, the influencer network of award winning analyst and advisory firm, Constellation Research. Gavin advises boards and leadership on innovation strategy, marketing, data-driven product development and corporate venturing. Gavin is on the board of Vibewire, a youth-led social enterprise based in Sydney, Australia and on the Technology Advisory Group for Good2Give – the workplace giving platform. ...

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One of the most exciting and interesting projects I came across during my time working with IBM was the digitisation of the Vatican Library. A great humanist project, the Vatican Library was created during the Renaissance when books were literally hand crafted. Scribes, illuminators, binders and printers would work together to create objects that were as beautiful as the content.

It was Nicholas V (1447-1455) who decided that the Latin, Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, which had grown from 350 to around 1,200 from his accession to the time of his death (March 24 1455), should be made available for scholars to read and study.

On his death, Pope Nicholas V (1447-55) gifted his extensive personal library to the Vatican. Containing Latin and Greek codices as well as secret archives of the Popes, these three collections formed the basis of what would become the Palatine Library under Nicholas’ successor, Sixtus IV. A dark and damp space accommodating shelves, desks, benches and a growing collection, the knowledge contained in these spaces soon burst forth.

Under successive popes, the collection grew. Sixtus V rebuilt the library, adding frescos, large bright windows and benches. Of course, as was the custom of the time, each volume was held fast by a solid chain. There were strict rules about reading and copying but books were also loaned. The records of these loans are still in existence. They’d make fascinating reading in their own right.

But the flow and accumulation of knowledge could not be stemmed. This new, beautiful library was soon flooded, with books washing out of the main rooms and into hallways and adjoining rooms. The torrent could not be stopped. In fact, it was bolstered by the Pope himself. Pope Clement XI (1700-21), for example, actively acquired manuscripts and volumes from all parts of Asia, effectively establishing the Oriental Collection.

But not all these acquisitions were completely free of drama or controversy. One of Nicholas V’s first contributions to the library was the secret archives of the Vatican. Now covering over 1000 years of history, the Archivum Secretum Vaticanum separately houses  a treasure trove of precious documents on 85km of shelving. Furthermore, some of the acquisitions have raised eyebrows over the centuries:

For example, the first 6 books of the ‘Annals of Tacitus’ were known to have been stolen from the Monastery of Corvey. In the early 16th century Pope Leo was able to acquire them, and fully knew the circumstances. In 1515 he made printed copies of the manuscript, and ‘graciously’ sent a set of the ‘printed’ books, specially bound, to the Abbot of Corvey. [You can now see translations of these on Wikipedia.]

This, of course, raises questions around ownership, copyright and ethics. But it goes deeper – to the root of power, knowledge and human experience. It impacts identity and community and touches our foundational institutions no matter whether they are educational, political or cultural in nature. Understanding the flow of this far reaching impact is how we identify the fact that we are living in a state of disruption. Elizabeth Eisenstein, in her discussion of the impact of the invention of the printing press outlined five impacts of this “new media”:

1. Experts coming under pressure from new voices who are early adopters of new technology
2. New organisations emerge to deal with the social, cultural and political changes
3. There is a struggle to revise the social and legal norms — especially in relation to intellectual property
4. The concepts of identity and community are transformed and new forms of language come into being
5. Educators are pressured to prepare their students for the newly emerging world

Today, we face this same torrent of disruption. This time, instead of hard, physical and space-consuming books, the disruption is driven by the accumulation of data. But we don’t have the hand-picked curatorial power of the Vatican Librarians. We don’t have a carefully crafted, focused collection. We have a vast sea of bits and bytes loosely connected by strings of relevance, some social cohesion and meaning and an electricity and data grid that spans the planet.

Eric Schmidt from Google famously stated that we now create as much information in two days as we did from the dawn of civilisation up to 2003. A princely figure worthy of any Pope. The Vatican Library pales by comparison:

In September 2002 the new Periodicals Reading Room, where the most important material is available to readers on open shelves, was opened to the public. At present the Vatican Library preserves over 180,000 manuscripts (including 80,000 archival units), 1,600,000 printed books, over 8,600 incunabula, over 300,000 coins and medals, 150,000 prints, drawings and engravings and over 150,000 photographs.

The Vatican Library was conceived as a vast humanist initiative. And it is one that has stood the test of time. But in this push to digitise every aspect of our lives, I wonder whether we are missing something important. As Ben Kunz suggested, there is somethind deeply personal and decidely human about our relationship to books and knowledge.

@servantofchaos What worries me about tablets-cloud is will my Amazon account still be here in 20 years when I want to revisit Kevin Kelly?

— Ben Kunz (@benkunz) August 24, 2014

After all, our memories are deeply tied up with these dusty old objects that haunt our lives. And no matter how many blog posts or videos we produce, they never have as much impact as a table thumping tome. Just think, for example, how many businesses have disappeared or merged over the last 20 years. How many of them will still be here in 1000? Amazon may rise and fall, but I’d lay money on the fact that the Vatican Library will still be there in 3014.

Marketing Transformation Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Future of Work IBM Chief Marketing Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Operating Officer

Meet the SuperNova Award Judges - Matrix Commerce

Part V of our "Meet the SuperNova Award Judges" series. Let's meet the group of commerce and retail thought leaders that are judging this year's SuperNova Awards. For the latest news on the digital commerce revolution, follow these folks on Twitter! 

The SuperNova Award Judges are are an elite group of thought leaders and journalists hand-selected for their futurist mindset and keen ability to separate substance from hype. Right now they're hard at work evaluating the SuperNova Award applications against a rigorous set of criteria to identify the applicants worthy of advancement to the finalist round. 

MATRIX COMMERCE

R "Ray" Wang (@rwang0)
CEO & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research, Inc.

R "Ray" Wang is the Principal Analyst and CEO at Constellation Research, Inc.  In addition, he is the author of the popular enterprise software blog "A Software Insider’s Point of View". With viewership in the millions of page views a year, his blog provides insight into how disruptive technologies and new business models impact the enterprise. Ray is a prominent keynote speaker and research analyst working with clients on engagement strategies, social business, customer experience, and decision management.   He advises Global 2000 companies on business strategy and technology selection. Ray also blogs at Forbes CIO Central and for Harvard Business Review. Prior to founding Constellation, he was a founding partner and research analyst for enterprise strategy at Altimeter Group and one of the top analysts at Forrester Research for enterprise strategy.

Steve Wilson (@steve_lockstep)
Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research, Inc.

Steve Wilson is Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc, focusing on digital identity and privacy. Wilson has over twenty-five years experience in ICT innovation, and research and development. Wilson is credited with numerous breakthroughs in difficult areas of identity infrastructure and governance, including national and industry level authentication frameworks, PKI systems, smartcards, digital credentials, fraud control, and privacy engineering. 

Divina Paredes (@divinap)
Editor 
CIO New Zealand & www.cio.co.nz

Divina Paredes is the editor of CIO New Zealand and www.cio.co.nz, the premium leadership and management resource for information and communications technology (ICT) executives and members of the CXO suite. She also organises and moderates CIO community events such as the CIO roundtable discussions and CIO leaders’ luncheons. Divina has been covering the information and communications technology sector for 15 years. She has postgraduate degrees from the University of Sydney (international studies) and New York University (journalism). You can reach her via email[email protected] and Twitter @divinap.
 

Debbie Hauss (@dhauss)
Editor-in-Chief
Retail TouchPoints

In her role as Editor-in-Chief, Debbie manages the multi-media components of Retail TouchPoints, including a weekly newsletter with an audience of more than 28,000 retail executives. She has covered retail for almost 10 years and worked as an editorial manager, writer and editor in various industries for more than 25 years. Debbie has served as the Managing Editor for Retail Information Systems News, the Chief Content Editor for Parentgiving.com, and a Project Manager and Copy Editor for a Lexis Nexis web site called lexisONE.com. In her spare time she runs marathons.

Agency Lead

Special thanks to our wonderful agency lead, Melanie Duzyj!

Melanie Duzyj - Agency Lead
Senior Account Executive 
LEWIS PR

Melanie is a senior account executive for the global PR communications agency LEWIS PR, where she leads media and analyst strategies for integrated campaigns. She specializes in B2B technology and works with organizations focused on business intelligence, healthcare IT, HR technology and telecommunications. Prior to her role at LEWIS PR she worked in New York City on the PR teams for healthcare, management consulting and commercial real estate finance organizations. Her client base has included startup, pre-IPO and Fortune 500 companies.

Previous posts: 
Meet the Technology Optimization Judges
Meet the Next Generation Customer Experience Judges
Meet the Future of Work Judges
Meet the Digital Marketing Transformation Judges

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Future of Global UX – Cross Cultural Robotics

CEO, Institute of Customer Experience
Institute of Customer Experience

Apala Lahiri Chavan is Chief Executive Officer of the Institute of Cutomer Experience (ICE). Apala's world is about discovery, invention, creation and she feels that maintaining balance between polarities is where everything becomes possible. She feels that the future of UX will be about individuals creating their own user experience and that experience will involve blurring the lines between the real and the virtual. ...

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It was the summer of 2040. Cross cultural robotics was the hottest discipline on Earth and Mars. Robots had become very much part of the human ecosystem by 2025. They played a variety of roles, ranging from housekeeper, drivers (nah..the driverless cars in the past were not successful, other than with early adopters, because people did not feel confident about being driven with no clear demonstration of who was in control…that gave way to the hugely successful robot drivers !) heavy equipment operators , waiters, soldiers, security guards, gardeners, caregivers, news aggregators, cabin crew, pilots, delivery staff , travel agents, customer service agents, cleaners, etc.

BINA48 – humanoid robot

It was, however, since 2035 that Google and Amazon had formed the new genre of corporate political parties that played an international role in the politics of both planets. And THAT is when cross cultural robotics started to become a much sought after discipline.

Robots were an important differentiator between the corporate political parties. Which party had better localized robots to interact with the citizen consumers across the 2 planets made a lot of difference to the outcome of the planetary citizen consumer satisfaction polls.

Cross cultural robotics involved designing robots such that the user experience of the ‘end user’ citizen consumers when interacting with the robots mimicked the exact interaction they would have had with another citizen consumer from their own ecosystem.

User Experience professionals with knowledge of cross cultural design from the ancient ecosystem that existed at the beginning of the 21st century had become celebrities in this shiny new world.

With life expectancy averaging 150 years now, many of the cross cultural UX professionals from the ancient world of ‘wisdom and slow speed’ (as the history chips described that era!) were still very active and amongst the very best!

Cross cultural robotics involved deriving the best algorithms based on brilliant combinations of various cultural dimensions by Hofstede, Trompenaars, Hall, Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck, Bigoness & Blakely , Schwartz’s universal values AND values from the current local ecosystem.

Google’s humanoid robots were considered the most brilliant…it was most often quite impossible to tell them apart from a human being… whichever part of the world they may be in.

A humanoid robot HRP-4C, developed by Japanese institute AIST, is a singer

In order to understand the shifting values in each culture and therefore to constantly update the algorithms embedded in the robots, cross cultural robotics experts had to be very highly skilled in terms of sense making , social intelligence, novel and adaptive thinking, computational thinking and new media literacy in addition to their cross cultural user experience design competency.

Continuous Big data and nano data streams based on data being collected from the networked world of ‘everything’ had to be made sense of, in order to understand what was changing in terms of people’s behavior. The better and faster the understanding, the quicker the updates to the robotic algorithms.

BUT, very recently, something seemed to be afoot. The Cross Cultural robotics groups’ hive mind had decided it was time to embed some compensatory values into the robotic algorithms.

Robots that were part of a highly collective culture needed to now be embedded with rising individuality. Those who behaved in accordance with a high power distance culture and respected hierarchies would now start to speak their mind IF they thought the ‘hierarchy’ was being unjust (whether it was to do with shielding corrupt people, unfair treatment to any specific demographic etc). Masculine cultures would be surprised to find their humanoid robots more balanced in terms of gender roles and expectations.

Whatever was skewed in terms of cultural values in each ecosystem, would be corrected by the humanoid robot population with their new cultural balance algorithms…

At long last , cross cultural experts felt powerful …almost god like. They had never really been recognized in the old world…technology had always ruled…but NOW…everything was going to change.

This was a stealth operation since the group was not sure that either of the corporate political parties would approve of this.

So, they delegated different tasks amongst them selves and decided that August 15th would be the day the new algorithms would be updated.

There was much celebration by the group for this impending change they were going to bring about to the evolution of not just robots BUT also humanity!

Everyone waited with bated breath for D DAY…

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer