The Tech Blog Writer Podcast - Inspired Tech Startup Stories & Interviews With Tech Leaders, Entrepreneurs And Innovators

The world has changed. Retailers are experimenting with augmented technologies and virtual reality, robots are moving from factory floors to front-line response, and 3D printers are being used to manufacture masks en masse. Mark Hughes, regional VP for UK and Ireland at Epicor, the ERP cloud solution provider, joins me on the Tech Talks Daily Podcast. Although everyone is talking about 'Industry 4.0, Mark reveals how factories have undergone a revolution, with manufacturing and supply chain industries already moving from the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) to the fifth. We discuss how manufacturing leaders have also increasingly valued the benefits that automation can bring to their business. For example, companies including GE and Merck have rolled out RPA to automate back-office elements. We also talk about how developments like nanosensors and CRISPR gene-editing technology are driving change among grocery retailers looking at how it could potentially impact the products they sell. Mark what he thinks t

Rick Hall is a software entrepreneur focused on the analytics market. He has led the development of over a dozen software products and taken several companies from the early stage to an eventual sale. Rick led a group in the purchase of Aginity in March of 2020 and has taken over the CEO role as a result. Aginity was an early innovator in Analytics Management and launched Aginity Pro early this year. The product is off to a fast start attracting 13,000 subscribers in the first nine months, and is set to grow by more than 250% through 2021. Rick joins me in a conversation about how companies can effectively manage their analytic initiatives and the role tech should play. We also discuss the processes and technology companies need to succeed with analytic programs and the evolution and current state of analytics technology.

For over 200 years we Wiley has been helping people and organizations develop the skills and knowledge they need to succeed. They develop digital education, learning, assessment, and certification solutions to help universities, businesses, and individuals move between education and employment and achieve their ambitions. By partnering with learned societies, Wiley supports researchers to communicate discoveries that make a difference. Its online scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly journals, books, and other digital content build on a 200-year heritage of quality publishing. At the recent Dynatrace Perform event, I got chatting with Wiley's CIO and CISO, Sean Mack. The visionary technology executive has extensive experience in DevOps, infrastructure, security, enterprise applications, development, and program management. As an innovative leader driving global business strategy and transformation, I wanted to learn more about how Wiley is bridging the higher education gap by delivering content soluti

Spin provides dockless electric scooters in more than 60 markets in the US, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Charlotte, and Miami. Their regulatory team led the nation's first stationless mobility permit system with the Seattle Department of Transportation. It's also the micromobility arm of Ford. The company prides itself on putting riders' safety first, working closely with local governments, and scaling its fleet responsibly. Head of Spin Europe, Felix Petersen returns to the Tech Talks Daily Podcast to discuss the launch of e-scooter trials across the UK. Almost six months have passed since the trials were announced, with Spin successfully launching several public-hire e-scooter schemes around the country. Felix also discusses Spin's European e-scooter strategy, Key learnings from the successful e-scooter trial, E-scooter usage trends in the US and Europe. We also talk about how to build a genuinely sustainable transportation solution and the future of micro-mobility. I also learn mor

NICE surveyed over 1,000 global contact center decision-makers in UK, US, Australia and Canada. Findings show rapidly growing role of digital channels for customer interactions, increasing investments in digital channels, artificial intelligence, and contact center technology for seamless omnichannel experiences for customers. I invited Paul Jarman, CEO NICE inContact to learn more about the NICE inContact 2021 Customer Experience (CX) Transformation Benchmark. About NICE When the world's leading companies want to improve their business performance, increase their operational efficiency, prevent financial crime, ensure they're fully compliant, or enhance their safety and security, they talk to NICE.​​ The company prides itself on leveraging technology not only to transform experiences but ensure they are also extraordinary and trusted​ About Paul Jarman Paul Jarman holds the position of NICE inContact CEO​. Mr. Jarman is responsible for the enterprise, ​midmarket, government organizations and business process

Biometric technology allows companies to uniquely identify a person based on one or more characteristics deemed unique to a particular individual, such as their face or physical fingerprint. However, in a pandemic world, both your hands and face end up covered by gloves and masks, so relying on those traditional second-factor authentications (2FA) methods could increase friction and hurt the end-user experience. UnifyID helps identify and authenticate individuals based on how they move and walk, leveraging machine learning algorithms and sensors in smartphone devices. Common use cases: Contactless payments Physical access to a building User authentication Fraud reduction on payments platforms UnifyID Founder and CEO John Whaley shares how biometric technology is shaping the future of authentication.    

Tomer Afek is the CEO and Co-founder of Spacemesh, a fairly-mined programmable cryptocurrency platform powered by a novel proof-of-space-time (PoST) consensus protocol. Spacemesh is free open-source software that aims to become a core Internet protocol for blockchain computation. Previously, Tomer has more than 20 years of experience across the tech, digital, and finance industries. Tomer also spent seven years as an Investor at Evergreen Venture Capital, one of Israel's oldest and largest VCs, where he led the company's Internet and New-Media investments. Tomer shares the story behind Spacemesh and the social meaning at the heart of the company. I learn more about precisely what Spacemesh is, why they are building Spacemesh, the implications for future generations, and why it will be more decentralized than current currencies.

When Jonathan Baktari, M.D., was arguably at the peak of his medical career as a triple board-certified physician, he saw an opportunity to try something new. Taking everything he'd learned as a doctor, medical director, and educator, he launched two businesses—a vaccine clinic and a drug-testing enterprise—that are driven by technology and designed for fast, customer-centric service. Now, as those businesses grow, he's continuing to write his second career chapter as a health care CEO. Dr. Baktari's company e7 Health was named the best technology company in the healthcare space in 2019. e7 Health could best be described as "the Uber of preventive medicine" in that it is a systems company that has invested heavily in developing their own electronic cloud-based software to leverage technology for the benefit of their operation, patients, and clients. In addition to vaccines, antibody testing, and many other medical services essential to employers around the country, e7 is now providing at home COVID-19 tests f

Mark Cusack from Yellowbrick Data joins me on the podcast to talk about Real-time data warehousing and the future of faster, more flexible cloud data warehouses and why it's a must for data professionals and IT leaders from all industries. We talk about how 2020 has challenged enterprises to find new ways to succeed and grow. I learn how data warehouses will become a critical capability for enabling real-time business decision-making and why the separation of data warehouse compute and storage will become standard. About Yellowbrick Yellowbrick is the world's fastest data warehouse for hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Enterprises rely on Yellowbrick to power critical business outcomes and get answers to the hardest business questions for improved profitability, better customer loyalty, and faster innovation in near real time, and at a fraction of the cost of alternatives. Yellowbrick offers superior price/performance for thousands of concurrent users on petabytes of data, along with the unique ability to

Karim Marucchi, CEO at Crowd Favorite, a global firm that specializes in digital strategy and web development for companies like Starz, Salal Credit Union, Lexus and National Geographic. Karim has more than 20 years of experience in specializing in enterprise-grade digital strategy and has taken many companies public, managed M&As We discuss: Digital transformation trends that enterprises must be in front of in 2021; What the future holds for data collection, the benefits of WordPress, and the role of open-source software in 2021; The latest digital transformation experience platforms (DXPs) trends and happenings; and What tech leaders need to know about open-source software in 2021. We discuss how Crowd Favorite has elevated enterprises' website experiences for each site visitor and helped accelerate enterprises' digital transformation. - Optimization for the new Google update and what this means for enterprises; and much more About Crowd Favorite Crowd Favorite's mission is to connect the digital expe

Handprint a tech platform that is looking better to bridge the gap between business activity and sustainability initiatives. They do this by tapping into consumer action. Handprint strives to ensure that every sale is climate-positive and assures transparency in all financial transactions by leveraging blockchain. To date, Handprint works with NGOs such as Worldview International Foundation (WIF) and Yayasan Gajah Sumatera (YAGASU), some of the world's leaders in reforestation and mangrove conservation and counts the likes of leading Swiss-born F&B firm SaladStop! as one of its earliest partners. Mathias Boissonot, Co-founder and CEO at Handprint, shares his insights on how businesses can better integrate their sustainability investments into each consumer interaction. In the age of digital shareability, we also discuss how companies can leverage novel technologies to maximize the visibility of their sustainability initiatives to appeal to a social-media-savvy generation.

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, with offices in Toulouse and Tokyo, Airbus Ventures is a fast-moving, early-stage venture capital company that independently funds and supports startups impacting the aerospace industry. Airbus Ventures has helped aspiring innovators reach new dimensions of achievement since 2015. From its founding, Airbus Ventures has embraced the heritage of its mothership Airbus in adaptive innovation, system, thinking, and international mindset, 'Building on this heritage, 'Airbus Ventures closely supports its portfolio of companies to better understand, team, and promote their founders' businesses – and now, with new Japanese investors alongside, they are confident that we can add to global scale and system play for all their entrepreneurs' growth worldwide, I invited Lewis Pinault on to today's episode of Tech Talks Daily to learn more about their story and mission to accelerate humanity's ascent of the Z-axis, from the ground to deep space. Dr. Lewis Pinault is an Airbus Ventures Partne

Prequel is a photo and video editing app with unique effects and editing tools. The product regularly reaches the top 10 in its category. The app has 30m iOS downloads and on Android. Over 2M prequels are created every day, and the company has around 2.1M followers on Instagram and 1.7M on TikTok. In Prequel, art and technology meet together to bring unique effects and editing tools to their users. They don't follow trends but invent them. To fulfill that goal, their team turns to various fields of expertise. They have created a technological laboratory where their experts, from graphic and product designers to software engineers and R&D specialists, work together to develop and grow the product. Headquartered in New York City and with offices in Moscow and Kaliningrad, They believe in thinking outside the box and expanding the boundaries. Timur Khabirov Co-founder, CEO at Prequel, shares the story behind the company and how the technology that enables everyone to enhance their creativity.

Many brands are starting podcasts and are then disappointed by the number of downloads. One way to maximize your podcasting is by live-streaming the recordings to your existing social communities like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. Other channels to consider include Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces, and Amazon Live. In his fourth book, "Going Live", Christoph Trappe covers how any brand can make live streaming part of their content strategy and integrate it into Create Once, Publish Everywhere. I invited Christoph on to the podcast to talks about his book and his authentic storytelling project. We discuss why and how live streaming can give your brand a competitive advantage and how to show your brand's authenticity and humanness. We also talk about the technologies and strategies that will help you build your success.

The Esports industry has exploded in recent years and is not slowing down, but the industry remains extremely top-heavy and built around sponsorship and advertising revenue, rather than consumer revenue and participation. Challengermode is looking to turn the current industry model on its head - creating value for all esports stakeholders from the bottom up as well as the top down. After major success in Europe, running millions of competitions for millions of players, Challengermode is currently gearing up to expand into North America this year, and is currently valued at over $40m. I invited: Robel Efrem from Challengermode onto the podcast to find out more. Robel himself, has an incredibly impressive resume; he speaks four languages, has been nominated for the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award three times, and has founded two companies in the last 10 years - the first which resulted in a successful exit and the second which is Challengermode, which received a $12m investment from Alibaba, with other inv

Next-gen air purifier CEO Christoph Burkhardt sees the current HEPA filters as outdated 70-year-old tech that move the air not clean the air. That is why he is creating more sustainable purifier products with OneLife, a company backed by German engineers to produce the world's most efficient air purifiers. They are launching revolutionary plasma filter technologies that will protect us unlike any other purifier on the market. We discuss the outdated air purification technology being used in public spaces such as subways, elevators, offices, etc and why he is concerned about the air we are currently breathing."

Real estate is the largest expense for most companies. More than a trillion dollars is put towards unused (but leased) space. But for buisness leaders paying expensive leases, how much office space do they need? And how do they know how many people are in the building? The second challenge is how space used in a world of hybrid working? Are certain amenities empty while others are always crowded? Some businesses even have entire floors occupied by five people. This year, two of the most significant opportunities are optimizing real estate during a pandemic and designing real estate spaces, so employees/customers have exactly what they need and need it. When COVID hit, Density Founder and CEO Andrew Farah realized that bringing people back to the office safely, it would require new types of real-time data to ensure social distancing. They created go/wait screens for customers that gave people the necessary information to know when it was safe to enter and launched new sensors that gave even more insight into u

Eric Adler is the CEO and founder of Flume, a smart device that wraps around your water meter and detects leaks and water usage across your entire property - inside and out. He was studying chemical engineering in hopes of designing a product that would have a positive environmental impact. Flume is a purpose-driven business that came about because in 2014, California was experiencing its worst drought in 1,200 years. Officials encouraged ways to reduce consumption, but no one really knew how much water they were using. Eric designed Flume when he was a grad student at Cal Poly to provide a better way to share high-definition water data with people and the communities they live in. Now, Flume puts the power of water consumption and conservation in consumer's hands, protecting their home, and improving their relationship with our most precious resource.

Over the last twelve months, people worldwide sheltered in place to stem the spread of COVID-19. As a result, video gained a new level of prominence in a wide variety of fields – from online lessons to virtual business meetings to streaming content. Tom Livne is the CEO and Founder of Verbit, the world's leading AI-powered transcription and captioning platform that recently raised $60M in Series C funding. Verbit leverages Natural Language Processing technology to provide over 99% accurate transcripts and captions to diverse customers in the education, legal, media, and enterprise sectors. Verbit harnesses the power of artificial and human intelligence to provide a smart transcription and captioning solution. Built on adaptive algorithms, it is the only technology that generates the most detailed speech-to-text files to provide over 99% accuracy, delivered at record-breaking speed. Smart AI technology supports on-demand CART services for real-time results. Verbit's customized solution helps organizations maxi

The switch has been flipped - and there's no going back. In today's episode, Heath Spencer, CEO of TraitWare, and Anil Kumar from Citrix join me in a conversation about the importance of cybersecurity. With remote work and hybrid working here to stay, I learn how Traitware and Citrix are working together to help companies adapt to their new digital surroundings. As we approach the first anniversary of COVID-19 lockdowns, the enterprise has seen enormous change. Experts say that remote and hybrid working is likely here to say. According to a recent Upwork survey, by 2025, 36.2 million Americans will be working remotely, an 87% increase from pre-pandemic levels." One area hugely affected by remote work is cybersecurity. As cybercrime increasingly tops the news, it is critical for all enterprises to ensure that solid cybersecurity plans are in place. But where do we start? Fortunately, there are solutions that drastically reduce the risk of attack and make life easier for the entire company while also saving on