I am delighted to announce the Finternet, co-authored with Agustín Carstens @BIS_org, which presents a visionary framework for empowering individuals and businesses by placing them at the centre of their financial lives https://t.co/NhuZ6UarGP @pramodkvarma @imsiddshetty pic.twitter.com/jJHIiXnb0b
— Nandan Nilekani (@NandanNilekani) April 16, 2024

"What are the tools of the New World? Everybody should have a digital ID; everybody should have a bank account; everybody should have a smartphone. Then, anything can be done. Everything else is built on that": @NandanNilekani to @IMFNews #DigitalID #DigitalIdentity #IMFmeetings pic.twitter.com/6HIAqfBigz
— Tim Hinchliffe (@TimHinchliffe) April 19, 2023

Agustín Carstens, general manager of the Bank for International Settlements—the central bank of central banks—admits that CBDC will grant central bankers "absolute control" over how it can be used, and the technology to be able to centrally enforce that.

Not "up to date" with… pic.twitter.com/C5aM6eSgX5
— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) February 10, 2024

"You could have a potentially […] darker world where the government decides that [CBDC] can be used to purchase some things, but not other things that it deems less desirable like say ammunition, or drugs, or pornography, or something of the sort": Eswar Prasad, WEF #AMNC23 pic.twitter.com/KkWgaEWAR5
— Tim Hinchliffe (@TimHinchliffe) June 28, 2023

CBDC will ‘sit at core of future financial system’: BIS GM Carstens

Governments can program CBDC to restrict undesirable purchases, set expiry dates: WEF ‘Summer Davos’ in China

Upwork’s Mystery Suspensions: Why Are High-Earning Clients Affected?

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 21:48:48 +0300

After more than ten years on Elance / oDesk / Upwork, I dare to say that I’ve seen and experienced it first-hand: all the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I wrote about my fellow freelancers who have suffered blow by blow; the most notorious ones, the introduction of connects required for submitting proposals and Draconian sections of Upwork’s Terms. I could live with the fact that my words had fallen on deaf remote-work-community ears. I also didn’t use the opportunity to cherish my see-I-told-you-so moments when Upwork almost bled to death on the stock market, got caught red-handed for posting fake jobs to make freelancers spend their connects, and was exposed for the legal catch-22 called “Conversion Fee.”

I’ve always been objective and ready to be challenged and proved wrong for every single claim I made and every single word I wrote, but helplessly emotional when more than 100K freelance accounts on Upwork got purged in just one week. Why? Because nobody cared. Because we’re fully aware of the bitter remote work reality that…

Little did I know that the Upwork suspension train goes both ways. Look, the clients get suspended, as well. But, there’s a huge difference.

What I’d witnessed was in every freelancer’s best interest. I’m talking about fraudsters and “predators” which are a common problem not only on Upwork but on every freelance platform. What’s right is right in this case, and Upwork is fighting the right fight to make sure its platform is as safe and secure as possible by suspending these kinds of clients. However, what a fellow freelancer brought to my attention was something completely different and unheard of.

Upwork “Whales” Are Supposed To Be A Protected Species, Are They Not?

The so-called Upwork “whales” are every freelancer’s dream. I’m talking about six-figure spenders on Upwork. There are even seven-and-eight-figure whales, but they’re reserved for crème de la crème of the Upwork freelance elite. So, back to my freelance friend who has been swimming with the six-figure whales on Upwork successfully for quite some time.

One day, he shared a screenshot with me that got him upset.

Screenshot Upwork

He couldn’t submit a proposal and, thus, wasn’t able to work, because this client got suspended. At first, I didn’t understand what was all the fuss about.

My friend told me that was unthinkable for more than one reason. First, nobody kills the goose that lays the golden eggs in their right business mind. Second, after spending so much money on Upwork and hundreds of projects under your client’s belt you know all the ins and outs of Upwork Terms, especially the no-no things that can get you in suspension trouble (temporary or permanent). Finally, not just Upwork, but every platform would think twice about suspending a long-term client with deep pockets. You can suspend a hundred freelancers without blinking an eye because there are thousands of newbies eager to take their place. But, killing a whale on Upwork can have serious business consequences.

I did my best to sympathize with my brother in freelance arms, but my one swallow doesn’t make a summer comforting line was hard to swallow for him. So, a few days later, he hit me with another screenshot:

Screenshot Upwork

Then, that very week came the third in a row:

Screenshot Upwork

I was about to unchain the situation DiCaprio-style, “you had my curiosity, now you have my attention,” but I think that

Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger is a better choice:

Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: ‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action’.

The “enemy’s action” had more “casualties” to report the next week of our “investigation.”

Screenshot Upwork

Screenshot Upwork

Screenshot Upwork

We even tried to find a pattern. My friend had a theory related to the latest price increase of Upwork Plus membership for freelancers. He thought that was the last straw that pushed some Upwork freelancers and clients to continue work outside the platform.

Screenshot Upwork

They violated Upwork Terms, got caught, and suspensions followed. Yet, this didn’t make sense to me. Why would a freelance membership fee increase be a client’s problem and reason-for-treason?

After two more pieces of evidence, I finally accepted that this wasn’t a coincidence.

Screenshot Upwork

Screenshot Upwork

Eight “whales” times six-figure amounts they have spent, well, that’s a lot of money to “write off” just like that, even for Upwork.

OK. I mean, it’s not OK. What’s going on, and why?

New Clients on the Upwork Block

Even if you aren’t as successful and diligent as my friend who cares deeply about “whales,” but you happen to be an enthusiastic freelancer on Upwork then you probably haven’t missed their CEO’s LinkedIn post about the impressive financial report for the previous year:

Screenshot LinkedIn

This post goes on and on, but there’s one part that caught my eye:

Screenshot LinkedIn

What’s 8 suspended against 31 new clients? Nothing. Right? I guess that “enterprise clients” stand for potential “whales.” Yet, it’s going to take some time to hit six or seven-figure spending targets for these new Upwork clients.

Just like all freelancers are equal, but some freelancers are more equal than others (JSS – Job Success Score), all Upwork clients are equal, but some clients are more equal than others (“Client Spend” category filter for those who have an Upwork profile).

I forgot to mention one tiny detail. My friend and I were able to find eight six-figure suspended clients on Upwork in three weeks. So, the legit question remains: how many more clients have been suspended in the meantime (by the time you’re reading this story)? Honestly, Upwork’s financial reports and suspended clients, no matter how much they spend, don’t affect my average resting heart rate, but the number of freelancers who are used to and supposed to work for these gone-with-the-wind clients certainly do. Based on my first-hand experience each of these whales has dozens of open active jobs at any given moment for a good price on average. So, eight suspended whales means hundreds of Upwork freelancers with no work.

Where Have All The Good Upwork Clients Gone?

All those clients haven’t left the remote work world just because Upwork suspended them. Some of them may even return because we can’t know for sure if these were temporary or permanent suspensions. Yet, some are gone for good. Where they’re going to hire and work next? That’s the million-dollar question, literally.

I can’t believe that in October it’s going to be five years since I asked the question that’s still waiting to age well: Is Freelance Anarchy The Future of Freelancing?

Let that story sink in, read it because it’s not what you think. Contrary to the unpopular belief and prejudice of Upwork Community moderators, I don’t want or cheer for Upwork to collapse on the stock market. I just want Upwork to get back to its basics, to the good old days with no connects and (questionable) suspensions.

If there’s someone who can make freelancing great again it’s not this guy…

…but Upwork itself. The day when I won’t have the “material” to write about Upwork, it’s going to be a good day for both clients and freelancers. Until that day, you still have to pay to play on Upwork, this way or another. FREE-lancing; that’s how the whole remote work thing started. Remember?

This article was originally published by Nebojsa “Nesha” Todorovic on HackerNoon.

The post Upwork’s Mystery Suspensions: Why Are High-Earning Clients Affected? appeared first on The Sociable.

The Tech Company Brief by HackerNoon: Apple cracks open the emulation door

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 21:41:13 +0300

In some shocking but exciting news, Apple announced last Friday that they will be allowing retro game emulators on their App Store.

Although this seems to come out of nowhere, it could be because everyone under the sun is currently gunning for Apple because of their App Store policies.

On March 4, 2024, the European Commission hit the tech company with a €1.8 billion fine. In a press release, the European Commission alleged that Apple was “abusing its dominant position on the market for the distribution of music streaming apps to iPhone and iPad users (‘iOS users’) through its App Store.”

On March 21, 2024, the United States Justice Department released a statement saying they were suing Apple for “Monopolizing Smartphone Markets.”

And all of this comes after Apple’s lengthy legal battle with Epic Games which also revolved around Apple’s App Store policies.

With Apple finally allowing retro game emulators, it would seem that the tech company wants to move the App Store in a new direction. One where they’re constantly not being sued.

This seems exciting, but emulator enthusiasts and developers remain cautious about the whole ordeal.

For one, the rules are broad and could be interpreted in many different ways. Here’s what Apple officially said about emulation:

Apple’s stance on emulation

What counts as a “retro game console?” What’s the cut-off limit? 10 years? 15 years? 20?

On top of that, allowing emulators is great. But how can users download and play games? Will they allow these emulators to offer ROM links?

I’m not the only one asking these questions. Henrik Rydgård, creator of the PSP emulator, PPSSPP, said this about Apple’s announcement:

Henrik Rydgård on Apple’s new App Store policy

It seems only time will tell how this will play out, but in the meantime, it does seem like an exciting time for retro gaming fans.

$1,228.87 billion by 2032.

However, the way that SaaS companies can create value with clients is changing. A recent poll from CIO.com found that buyers are concerned they have over-invested in solutions and are looking to consolidate vendors.

This means that SaaS companies will need to clearly demonstrate their purpose with target buyers. Vertical SaaS products that offer industry-focused solutions that not only span functions, but also have industry-specific features and benefits, are likely to rise to the surface in 2024. This is thanks to their ability to provide more value by supporting and enabling users to be productive and more competitive in specific industries.

Meanwhile, SaaS companies that also harness the power of AI can better serve the needs of customers and meet the expectations of Gen Z and millennials’ desire for seamless software adoption.

LA-based Pitbull Ventures is betting on these trends with a $5M fund that will specifically support vertical SaaS startups that are AI-enabled.

An injection of capital for early-stage vertical SaaS startups

Pitbull Ventures is on a mission to take LA’s tech scene to new heights by betting on pre-seed AI-enabled vertical SaaS startups. Recently closing its $5M Fund I, the fund is now ready to fuel the growth of pioneering startups in the region. Given the recent funding winter, this will represent a welcome injection of capital.

Founder and Managing Partner at Pitbull Ventures, Brad Zions, said, “The launch of our new fund’s closing is thanks to the unwavering dedication of our investment team and the support of our amazing LPs. Now, we’re eager to get into Los Angeles and uncover founders working on the most interesting vertical SaaS solutions across industries that need venture backing in 2024.”

Aside from venture capital, startups that are selected by Pitbull Ventures will also be able to tap into the support of the fund’s expert team. They are especially interested in startups that demonstrate promising early traction and are ready to be guided toward the next stages of growth.

Zions has a track record of working with promising early-stage vertical SaaS startups, including Harri, VidMob, and Embrace. More broadly, the Pitbull Ventures team has invested across a variety of SaaS industries, giving the fund a much broader reach, with its portfolio of 15 vertical SaaS early-stage startups.

Driving the growth of LA’s tech scene

LA is now the third-largest startup market in the United States and, with nearly 4,000 venture-backed startups, the area more affectionally known as “Silicon Beach” is quickly catching up to the established tech scenes in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York.

Zions, who has been an active early-stage investor for the past 25 years, founded Pitbull Ventures in 2021 to provide dedicated support to early-stage ventures in the region.

With a focus on AI-enabled industry-vertical SaaS startups with an early product market fit, the availability of a new funding source is important news for pre-seed and seed-stage founders looking for funding during the biggest downturn in venture capital activity for five years.

More information on the $5M Fund I can be found on Pitbull Ventures LinkedIn page.

The post AI-enabled SaaS startups that support industry verticals to receive a boost with Pitbull Ventures $5M fund appeared first on The Sociable.

A Venezuelan migrant entrepreneur’s journey to simplify reuse in the US

Fri, 12 Apr 2024 23:05:08 +0300

During a college graduation party in 2015, Luis Perez listened as several classmates complained about their tight schedules for moving out of their student housing while also studying for midterms. So Perez, originally from Venezuela but studying in the United States, offered to pick up their stuff, store it, and even sell the junk they didn’t want.

That initiative quickly turned into his startup, Remoov, which now converts belongings that will no longer be used into items for sale or donation, keeping much of it out of harmful landfills.

“At a party a week before graduation I heard over and over again several of my classmates say that they had had a crazy week with exams and had no idea how they were going to empty their houses and move out at the end of the week when the semester was over,” Perez said.

By helping his classmates with their moves, he also realized that he had a chance to make an impact on the environment too. Waste is responsible for 20% of all methane gas emissions, while 25% of greenhouse gas emissions come from the manufacture of new products.

His initial project soon evolved into something bigger.

Image credit: Remoov.

“The following year, when we started advertising the service, we began to receive interest from traditional residential customers: people moving, redecorating or needing to liquidate an estate,” Perez explained. “We spent the next few months talking to these customers to understand their problems and needs and began to build Remoov into what it is today.”

Perez also soon identified other channels for revenue. He noticed that real estate agents — notoriously well-connected to all kinds of services for their clients — were in need of someone who could help their listings move stuff out of their homes, as quickly as possible. He saw that Remoov could become a vehicle to alleviate the stress of a move and began to contact realtors.

Over the years, the company invested in implementing technology that streamlines the moving process even further. The startup helps customers get rid of their furniture and belongings in just a few clicks of the mouse or smartphone keypad.

After taking photos of the items, Remoov’s technology takes care of the initial sorting for sale, donation or recycling. Much of it is resold on Remoov’s e-commerce marketplace or to other used goods companies such as Chairish, thus recovering the value of the old items.

An immigrant founder success story

An immigrant from Venezuela, Perez credits his background for his drive to build a startup. “I believe that, like most immigrants, resilience is a key and crucial trait to create a company,” he said. “The ability to take risks and not give up is fundamental when creating a company, especially in a new field.”

He added that growing up in Venezuela, “you learn to be very resourceful and look for ways to solve problems in often chaotic conditions.”

Perez was born in the capital of Venezuela, Caracas, where he spent part of his childhood until 1998, when he moved to the United States in order to further his education and entrepreneurial ambitions.

Extracting value from old and used goods can be cumbersome. It’s a tough job, but Perez knows, somebody’s gotta do it. And why not him?

He highlights other resale marketplaces such as Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace as competitors, but these are generally more time consuming, do-it-yourself solutions. Others like Junk King or 1-800-GOT-JUNK also try to keep items out of the landfill as much as possible.

With Remoov, Perez has made a truly easy-to-use tool. Customers submit images and descriptions of the items they wish to rid themselves of through the company’s easily navigable website. Within a short span, Remoov provides an estimate indicating which items can be resold or donated, and which should be disposed of.

Clients can then schedule a pick-up appointment via a provided link. Remoov not only sells items on its own online platform but also utilizes other marketplaces like Reverb for music items and Chairish for furniture. Perez stated that their aim is to specialize in the secondary goods market, determining items’ value and the appropriate sales channels automatically.

Image credit: Remoov.

Promoting the circular economy

Recently, the United Nations released its latest report on the state of global garbage. The amount of garbage is increasing by 2.6 million tons per year around the world, on track to reach 82 million tons by 2030, a 33% increase over the 2022 figure. That’s why, Perez said, preventing items from ending up in landfills is a key mission for Remoov.

“The mission is to reduce waste by increasing reuse,” he explained. “It’s part of the circular economy movement. More than 30% of greenhouse gas emissions come from manufacturing products. It is important to keep items in circulation for longer, as this reduces the demand for manufacturing new products and increases the overall productivity of the economy.”

In terms of sustainability, the startup focuses on certain metrics. “We track three main metrics: amount diverted from landfills through resale, donations and recycling; CO2 reduction from reuse; and tree absorption equivalent,” Perez explained.

Perez also stressed his company’s commitment to local communities in which they operate.

“We partner with non-profit organizations that help local communities,” he said, adding that they also partner with local organizations and businesses, such as realtors, property managers and commercial organizations to “work toward providing more sustainable alternatives within their operations.”

AI for sustainability

Remoov is also using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve its operational efficiency.

“AI is the cornerstone of Remoov’s future,” the founder stressed. “In order for us to operate effectively, we are increasingly reliant on AI and automation. That includes everything from how we identify, price and resell picked inventory.”

In other areas of recycling, AI is also being implemented to improve sorting and other physical labor traditionally done by hand. According to a report from Business Insider, optical sorting robots that automate the sorting process at recycling plants can sort 1,000 pieces of recycled trash per minute, while humans can sort 50 to 80.
With the Artificial Intelligence (AI) market size expected to grow by $48.96 billion, at a rate of 46.52% between 2023 and 2028, the use of AI in other segments of recycling and home moving is not surprising.

Disclosure: This article mentions a client of an Espacio portfolio company. The article originally appeared in Latin America Reports and was re-published with permission on The Sociable.

The post A Venezuelan migrant entrepreneur’s journey to simplify reuse in the US appeared first on The Sociable.

Talent acquisition company Cadient bought by PE firm Basis Vectors Capital

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 22:17:31 +0300

As 89% of human resources (HR) leaders are prioritizing HR tech in their budget for the third year in a row, according to Gartner, there is ample room for market expansion for some of the latest HR technology.

One such company, Cadient, a leading provider of talent acquisition solutions in the hourly hiring sector, announced this week that it has been acquired by private equity firm Basis Vectors Capital. The firm invests in technology creates long-term value for market leaders in the B2B SaaS space.

Jon Puckett, CEO, Cadient. Image credit: LinkedIn.

Based in North Carolina and in operation for over 20 years, Cadient provides technology-based talent acquisition solutions for enterprises, specializing in the complex market of hourly hirings. They help their customers simplify the hiring process through software. Cadient has processed over 670 million candidates and facilitated over 7 million hires throughout its existence, and has helped companies to significantly reduce turnover and increase productivity, Cadient said in a statement.

The company’s services focus on high-volume precision hiring with specialties in diverse and high-retention talent. Cadient’s solutions have been widely applied across industries including healthcare, hospitality, and retail, with the company seeking to expand its services to many more sectors.

According to a company release, the company’s CEO, Jon Puckett, will continue to run the day-to-day operations of the business.

“At Cadient, we’re thrilled to embark on this new chapter with a partner who shares our vision for transforming talent acquisition,” said Puckett. “By joining forces with Basis Vectors Capital, we’re gaining access to their invaluable expertise in empowering and scaling SaaS businesses.”

The executive went on to say that this collaboration will fuel Cadient’s ability to deliver exceptional value to our customers and achieve their ambitious market expansion goals. “We’ll leverage this partnership to propel Cadient’s innovation and shape the future of hiring excellence.”

Ambarish Gupta, CEO, Basis Vectors Capital. Image credit: X

The acquiring private equity and technology investment firm, Basis Vectors Capital, shared Puckett’s enthusiasm.

“We’re excited to partner with Cadient’s management team to build upon their impressive achievements and drive even more growth,” said Basis Vectors Capital CEO Ambarish Gupta. “This acquisition is a testament to our belief in Cadient’s potential to transform the hiring landscape, especially with their longstanding success, and considering the significant demand currently rising for efficient and effective hiring solutions”.

The PE firm is based in New York and works with and acquires B2B SaaS companies to help improve their financial efficiency, according to a statement. The firm also operates in Silicon Valley, India, and Ukraine.

Disclosure: This article mentions a client of an Espacio portfolio company.

The post Talent acquisition company Cadient bought by PE firm Basis Vectors Capital appeared first on The Sociable.

5 Reasons Brands Should Adopt a Content Marketing Webinar Strategy

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 19:00:00 +0300

A webinar is a virtual seminar. It is any workshop, tutorial, or demonstration taking place online. These digital sessions can be pre-recorded messages or live events broadcast to educate a specific audience.

Current trends indicate marketers rate webinars as an effective channel for brands to connect with a target audience.

According to On24, 66% of marketers say their sales teams prioritize leads generated by varied webinar strategies. In addition, 99% of marketers cite webinars as key to their plans.

This blog will spotlight why those marketers adopt a webinar strategy. Below are the benefits of a webinar and why it’s necessary for your brand’s content curation strategy.

5 Reasons Brands Should Adopt a Content Marketing Webinar Strategy

Image sourced from ON24

ALT: Percentages of businesses and audiences leveraging webinars

Enhanced Audience Engagement

Enhanced audience engagement is the biggest benefit of a content marketing webinar strategy. Webinars provide a platform for real-time interaction between your brand and its audience.

90% of webinar users leverage engagement tools like slide sharing, polling, and passable microphones. These webinar tools facilitate immediate information and feedback exchange between you and your targets.

For example, participants can engage a brand representative in real-time Q&A sessions and give opinions that shape product branding. The inevitable increase in engagement is also ideal for developing an online community as it helps the audience to trust the brand more.

It’s even possible to use automated webinar software that runs your pre-recorded webinars on a recurring schedule. This lets you engage your audience on autopilot while still utilizing the same interaction features such as live chat, polls, surveys, CTA popups, and more.

Moz is an excellent example of a brand leveraging webinars to engage its audience and grow a community. Moz develops SEO software tools and regularly hosts webinars to train business owners on web development, SEO, and analytics.

For example, localized keywords like “buy domain hk” work excellently for web hosting service providers in Hong Kong. Moz provides webinar sessions that can teach business owners to find and leverage such keywords.

The brand recently hosted a webinar session to educate its audience on how to do efficient keyword research. The webinar featured discussions about how brands can spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time adding value to their keyword research.

Moz has gotten significant engagement with existing and new customers through its content marketing webinar strategy. It’s a big part of why they have a strong online community of 500,000 marketers.

Screenshot from Moz.com

ALT: Promotional page for a webinar by Moz

Increased Brand Awareness and Credibility

26% of marketers are concerned about how they’ll engage their audience in overcrowded digital marketing channels. Webinars are excellent avenues for marketers to circumnavigate this challenge.

In addition to being highly engaging, webinars are great for showcasing expertise and niche authority. It’s an ideal platform to introduce your brand’s offering to prospective customers. You can also do that with traditional content marketing methods. But a webinar makes the process feel more personalized and credible:

A video conference is the closest communication alternative to an in-person conversation. Compared with traditional content marketing, this makes it more effective for creating great first impressions with prospective clients.

Webinars also allow brands to collaborate with guest speakers to boost their visibility and credibility. Endorsement from famous figures and thought leaders in an industry can significantly improve brand reputation.

Finally, webinars are great for getting the word out. You can write content for a webinar and repurpose the event into a blog or social media post. The webinar itself can also work as great content for a YouTube post.

Image created by the author

ALT: Tips for content marketers to ensure keyboard accessibility

Lead Generation and Nurturing

The goal of any content marketing strategy is to reach the target audience and get them to become brand customers. Most brands opt for traditional content approaches involving sales funnels for generating and nurturing leads.

Sales funnels can take too long to implement as they involve multiple stages of implementation. But, building an audience list through webinar registration is faster and more effective.

In addition, webinars provide an ideal platform for product and service demonstration, fast-tracking customers to the decision stage of the marketing funnel. For example, say you’re promoting a conversational AI platform; a webinar provides a platform to showcase its full functionalities to the audience in real time.

Through a webinar, you can also deliver effective follow-up strategies that nurture and engage leads. For example, you can host tutorials to show existing customers the best way to use your product. This follow-up initiative helps to convert one-time buyers into repeat customers.

Cost-Effectiveness and Scalability

Content marketing webinar strategy generally costs less compared to traditional marketing methods. Hosting a webinar requires enterprise meeting software with video conferencing functionalities. You can find various advanced webinar tools to fit your budget and needs, including some free options.

Despite this low upfront investment, webinars allow you to communicate effectively with a target audience from anywhere in the world. A cybersecurity expert can break down a complex topic like NIST CSF, exploring how it improves critical risk mitigation infrastructure without incurring extra expenses.

In addition, webinars are scalable since you can host any number of audiences without incurring a significant overhead. Finally, webinars don’t necessarily have to be in real-time—an on-demand webinar gives you enough time to plan a robust marketing strategy around it and maximize your return on investment.

Data-Driven Insights and Analytics

Webinars offer a significant advantage in the volume of data they help the organizer to collect. Depending on the platform and tools used to host the webinar, you can track attendee engagement metrics during the event.

With specialized enterprise meeting software, you can get valuable insights into attendee preferences by analyzing the webinar metrics. Whatever information you obtain from the data will be helpful in marketing optimization.

For example, the following metrics are useful for determining attendee preferences:

The volume and demography of attendees

The duration of participation

The volume and types of questions they ask

Attendees response to in-event polls

Working with the actionable insights you derive, you’ll make more data-driven decisions for future content marketing strategies. That way, you can create targeted content and tailor your offers based on customer preferences.

Image sourced from Marketingcharts.com

ALT: Primary success metrics for a webinar

Supercharge Your Marketing Efforts with a Content Marketing Webinar

Content marketing webinars are potent strategies for brands to reach and engage their ideal audience. They’re ideal for driving interaction and building leads.

But more than that, a webinar strategy delivers data-driven insights and up-close interaction with a willing audience that can shape content curation & branding efforts. That’s why more brands now use webinars as part of their overall content marketing strategy.

The post 5 Reasons Brands Should Adopt a Content Marketing Webinar Strategy appeared first on Scoop.it Blog.

NTT Research announces gift to Harvard Center for Brain Science to support research in Physics of Intelligence

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 18:00:00 +0300

The field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is built using neural networks that mimic the neural pathways in our own brains. Yet despite the powerful capabilities of current AI technology, its software can’t yet be classed as being independently intelligent.

Further, the issue of hallucinations and black box phenomenons highlights the stark gap between the exciting results AI is able to deliver and our understanding of why computational models have reached a given outcome. This is also true with the human condition, when neurodegenerative conditions strike with unpredictable impacts on the behavior of patients.

Understanding these anomalies will be central to advancing our fundamental understanding of intelligence as a concept. This work is of such rising importance that a new field of study is forming, with the ‘Physics of Intelligence’ bridging the gap between computer science, brain science and physics to better understand the universal mathematical principles that form intelligence.

Now, this emerging field of study is set to receive a boost through the creation of an ambitious new fellowship program

Fellowships for the Physics of Intelligence

The NTT Research Foundation announced this week a gift to establish the Harvard University Center for Brain Science (CBS)-NTT Fellowship Program to support the research into the physics of intelligence.

The two-year gift, renewable for up to three more years, will create a fund to support post-doctoral research in the physics of intelligence, an emerging field that uses physics to tackle fundamental questions in intelligence, bridging computer science, neuroscience and psychology.

If renewed, the donation could total over $1.7 million.

Harvard University will have full control over the administration of the fund, which is set to be used to support two post-doctoral researchers, including support for technology, facilities, travel, and guest speakers for seminars.

Although the Fellowship Program is newly established, Harvard CBS and the NTT Research Physics & Informatics Lab have been collaborating on similar themes since 2021 under a joint research agreement since 2024. The new program will amplify themes that emerged from shared research into natural and artificial intelligence.

Physicists and AI researchers from the PHI Lab’s Intelligent Systems Group, led by Hidenori Tanaka, who is also a CBS associate, have established fruitful alliances with neuroscientists and psychologists at Harvard.

“We are thrilled to support the Harvard Center for Brain Science at the dawn of the Physics of Intelligence,” NTT Research President and CEO Kazuhiro Gomi said. “As history teaches us, inventions – consider the steam engine, electricity, liquid crystals – can lead to new fields in physics.”

“Today, AI is playing that role and giving us an opportunity to explore fundamental questions involving the science of intelligence, as well as address some urgent practical problems, like the need for computational systems that are unbiased, trustworthy and green. We believe this gift will advance those shared goals,” added the executive.

A fundamental understanding of intelligence

The Harvard CBS is pursuing an ambitious mission. Scientists affiliated with the Harvard CBS study the structure and function of neural circuits, the computations that govern thought and behavior and how these circuits and patterns develop and vary.

Said Harvard CBS Director Murthy, “We’re grateful to the NTT Research Foundation for this generous gift, which comes on top of several years of unique intellectual contributions and collaboration. The Harvard CBS looks forward to developing ideas around the Physics of Intelligence through fellowships, seminars, talks and other activities that both enhance and align with our diverse approach to neuroscience.”

Shaping this ongoing academic cross-pollination is the dramatic rise of powerful AI, which provides a new subject of study for the science of intelligence.

“The interdisciplinary environment at Harvard’s Center for Brain Science has been crucial in nurturing this emerging field, which harnesses physics-based approaches to investigate foundational questions about intelligence,” PHI Lab Scientist and Harvard CBS Associate Tanaka said. “By conducting quantitative experiments and theoretical modeling involving AI systems, which are more accessible to testing and measurement than the human brain, we aim to uncover the universal mathematical principles that underlie intelligence in all its forms, both natural and artificial.”

In addition to its work on the CIM and initiatives in neuroscience, the PHI Lab is engaged in groundbreaking research into quasi-particles and non-linear optical materials. The PHI Lab also has a JRA with the NASA Ames Research Center.

NTT Research opened its offices in July 2019 as a new Silicon Valley startup to conduct basic research and advance technologies that promote positive change for humankind.

This article includes a partner of an Espacio portfolio company

The post NTT Research announces gift to Harvard Center for Brain Science to support research in Physics of Intelligence appeared first on The Sociable.

The Rise of Female Entrepreneurship in Turkey: Interview with Demet Sabancı

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 16:45:35 +0300

In the continuing evolution of Turkish business, female entrepreneurs are increasingly emerging as key contributors to the country’s economic growth and innovation.

Turkey has a diverse economy, with a GDP of approximately $800 billion, and it is considered one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

We had the opportunity to speak to Demet Sabancı, one of the company’s leading female business leaders.

Demet was first Turkish woman inducted in the International Women’s Forum Hall of Fame, and she is a third generation member of the Sabancı Family. The family founded the Sabancı Holding, one of the two largest Turkish conglomerates, with companies operating in sectors from banking to energy.

What was your dream/goal when you founded Shopsa?

In my project planning, I always prioritise social output. Shopsa was a project offered to us by the conjuncture. We wanted to do something in the field of e-commerce and about women. With the pandemic, e-commerce moved in one year the way it would take in ten years. There has been a great awareness in this field. With Shopsa, we brought this demand and supply together. Shopsa is essentially a women’s project. It uses e-commerce as a tool. We bring women to the market, individually and corporately. We train and motivate them in this process. Municipalities, professional organisations and non-governmental organisations also support us in this effort. Our members are only women and women’s co-operatives. We make the labour of these brave and hardworking women available to consumers. We also realise their individual marketing projects. As Shopsa, we prioritise the labour of women rather than our own brand. This responsible approach is therefore very much supported. My dream was to create a channel for women to enter the market, thus expanding the economy and spreading income to the bottom line. This rapid development of e-commerce gave us a strong support to realise our vision. We climbed the steps two and three at a time. The results we have achieved are pleasing.

Do you think you have achieved the company’s dream/goal?

There is no clear goal to stop at. Our dynamism is determined by women. As long as they produce. This platform will grow as we enter the market. Women’s participation in the economy is a global goal. E-commerce has created a great opportunity for entrepreneurial women. Shopsa has become their marketplace. As they produce, we bring them to the market. We’ll grow as long as they want us to. Shopsa did not establish a growth strategy independent of women. We have not and will not say, “We have reached a certain size, let’s make a new plan”. The important thing is to increase the participation of women’s co-operatives and women’s unions. Thus, we will be able to gain many more women and bring them into the economy.

Will Shopsa be limited to Turkish women only? Will it go global? Which countries/regions are planned?

There are no limits to e-commerce. We dream big. But at the moment we are still developing the brand. We are trying to make local products glow, to grow small producers and to spread all over Anatolia. We have opened our global store. Our infrastructure works are in progress. We will become active in the following process. When we reach our targets domestically, we can expand this business in the Turkic Republics, the Middle East and the Balkans. However, we have an understanding of lasting for a long time rather than going fast. If we proceed gradually, our members will be happier.

Is Shopsa only in e-commerce? Where can we see Shopsa products?

We are pleased to say that shopsa is available with online and offline sales. In order to deliver the products of our female producers to all parts of Turkey and to support local producers, we have signed a cooperation with Turkey’s major supermarket chains. Available for sale In addition, there are still market chains and home textile – decoration companies that we are still negotiating for co-operation.

Apart from Shopsa, you have many companies and social responsibility projects that you are affiliated with. Isn’t it difficult to have time for it all?

I would like to state with great care that I am a person who devotes a significant part of his time to social responsibility projects. I volunteer in many social responsibility projects ranging from the needs of talented children, supporting women entrepreneurs, promoting Turkey and protecting our historical artefacts. It’s an energy that comes from within me. That’s how I feel happy. You cannot persuade anyone to work as a volunteer, but it must come from within that person. But I want to draw attention to something. If you have a sense of social responsibility, you are standing at the doorstep of new and important initiatives. Together with Tikad (Businesswomen’s Association of Turkey), Creative Children’s Association, I try to stand by our women and children. It is women who make up societies. The more educated, strong and self-confident a woman is, the happier she raises her children. At this point, healthy societies are in the hands of our women. That is why I care a lot about women and children, I try to take part in almost every useful project.

This article includes a partner of an Espacio portfolio company

The post The Rise of Female Entrepreneurship in Turkey: Interview with Demet Sabancı appeared first on The Sociable.

HLB HAMT ushers in new era of sustainability reporting thanks to partnership with Credibl ESG

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 07:59:00 +0300

The Middle East is home to some of the most ambitious green initiatives to date. For example, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Noor Abu Dhabi represents one of the world’s largest single-site solar projects.

Made from an incredible 3.2 million solar panels, the project has helped save 1 million metric tons of carbon each year by helping citizens switch to renewable energy sources.

Meanwhile, the Saudi and Middle East Green Initiatives seek to rehabilitate 40 million hectares of degraded lands and generate 50% of Saudi Arabia’s energy from renewables by 2030 in an effort to slow the pace of growing desertification in the region, among other climate-related threats.

These projects highlight the growing reality that maintaining thriving cities, resilient food sources and profitable businesses requires policies that place Environmental, Sustainability and Governance (ESG) at the forefront of strategy.

For professional services firm HLB HAMT, a similarly ambitious approach to sustainability initiatives was announced this week. The firm champions a people-first approach that has seen its customers benefit.

Yet in a world where profitability and managing risk are increasingly inextricably linked to corporate environmental policies, the firm found a solution with the software platform from Credibl ESG.

ESG is key to corporate resilience

Professional advisory firms like HLB HAMT are adopting new ways to advise their ESG policies, reframing how companies tackle sustainability and approaching this as something central to long-term value creation.

To aid this goal, clients from across the HLB HAMT portfolio will have access to an AI-driven sustainability platform known as Credibl ESG. Thanks to data-rich reporting, HLB HAMT advisors will be able to better understand how clients are performing against their current ESG frameworks, swiftly generate reports to demonstrate progress and identify areas for additional improvements.

HLB HAMT Managing Director John Varghese (Photo Credit: HLB HAMT)

Managing Director at HLB HAMT, John Varghese, helped to spearhead the collaboration with Credibl. He commented, “Today, ESG is no longer optional for businesses that wish to survive into the future.”

“For this reason, we’re delighted to be partnering with Credibl to ensure we can support our clients with ESG strategies of the highest standard, backed with rich data insights,” added the executive.

This sentiment was backed by the advisory firm’s CEO, Vijay Anand. He explained, “We’re extremely proud to announce our new partnership with Credibl. Helping customers meet ESG targets is one of our core tenets at HLB HAMT.”

The partnership between HLB HAMT and Credibl marks a major milestone, helping a range of clients tap into tech-driven sustainability tools to provide automated data assurance, real-time peer benchmarking, an AI-based virtual assistant and comprehensive support on supply chain ESG data.

Building sustainable businesses with Credibl

Credibl’s ESG platform was built by a team of serial technology entrepreneurs with decades of experience in the technology space.

The company is led by CEO Jitesh Shetty, a Silicon Valley veteran who previously founded Qwiklabs, an early innovator in the public cloud learning space that was acquired by Google in 2016.

Concerning the new partnership, Shetty, CEO at Credibl, explained, “HLB HAMT is a leading advisory services firm with a highly forward-thinking approach to ESG and sustainability. I eagerly look forward to rolling our AI-driven sustainability platform out to HLB HAMT customers to help improve ESG outcomes and deliver more impact.”

HLB HAMT CEO Vijay Anand (Photo Credit: LinkedIn)

The Credibl platform stands out for its ability to provide real-time, actionable insights that enable businesses to navigate the complexities of sustainability with precision and ease. The company allows a 360 oversight and end-to-end ESG management from automated data collection to smart goal setting and non-financial reporting.

The startup’s mission is to make sustainability reporting as meticulous and seamless as financial reporting, thus ensuring that businesses can fulfill their ESG commitments while pursuing growth and profitability.

“We believe that sustainability goes hand in hand with building risk-averse companies and protecting future profits. Thanks to Credibl’s platform our customers will be able to access end-to-end data management and reporting alongside a host of in-built features on the intelligent platform,” HLB HAMT’s CEO Vijay Anand concluded.

The post HLB HAMT ushers in new era of sustainability reporting thanks to partnership with Credibl ESG appeared first on The Sociable.

GoodGist secures $1 million investment to help further mission of re-skilling the workforce

Mon, 08 Apr 2024 22:28:26 +0300

Corporate skills and knowledge management automation platform GoodGist Inc. today announced that it has raised $1 million in funding from several high-profile investors.

According to a company statement, the investment comes as GoodGist prepares to launch an advanced AI Curator designed to upskill and reskill the global workforce in the rapidly evolving corporate landscape.

Funding was allocated from different investors including FortyTwo VC, Cedar Ridge Ventures, DX Partners, and prominent angel investors from leading tech companies such as Microsoft and Amazon.

The new capital injection will enable GoodGist to launch their multilingual GoodGist.com platform in the global markets, expand their team to bolster research and development efforts, and enhance product offerings to mitigate skill gaps and information overload effectively.

Ruban Phukan, co-founder and CEO of GoodGist Inc. Image credit: LinkedIn.

“Traditionally, it costs up to $50,000 per finished hour of content for an entire multi-hour course. Remarkably, less than 30% of these courses are initiated by learners, and even fewer are completed. This highlights the urgent need for a paradigm shift in corporate skills development pedagogy,” stated Ruban Phukan, co-founder and CEO of GoodGist Inc.

“We are fortunate to have the backing of investors who fully support our vision and mission. Together, we aim to address and avert what could soon escalate into a crisis for the corporate world if not properly addressed,” he added.

Asutosh Upadhyay, co-founder, FortyTwo.VC. Image credit: LinkedIn.

Asutosh Upadhyay, co-founder of FortyTwo.VC shared Phukan’s enthusiasm. “The current L&D systems are designed to address the common denominator and cannot deliver the desired ROI as these models struggle to balance scalability with personalization,” said Upadhyay.

“GoodGist Inc. aims to challenge this bottleneck. Our investment reflects our confidence in the transformative power of AI to reshape enterprise learning and development, and we could not have envisioned a more capable team to lead this endeavor.”

Kirti Reddy, Managing Partner, Cedar Ridge Ventures. Image credit: LinkedIn.

Kirti Reddy, founder and Managing Partner of Cedar Ridge Ventures, also weighed in: “The possibilities here are immense – across the whole value chain of L&D and in many different sectors and markets. We are excited to partner with Ruban and the team to execute against this bold vision.”

According to the World Economic Forum, an estimated 1 billion individuals globally will require upskilling or reskilling by 2030, with failure to meet this demand potentially resulting in an $8.5 trillion hit to the global economy.

GoodGist said it will address these key issues by deploying an advanced AI Curator, leveraging its patent-pending technology designed to personalize learning and research journeys for individuals on-demand to expedite workforce upskilling and reskilling.

Disclosure: This article mentions a client of an Espacio portfolio company.

The post GoodGist secures $1 million investment to help further mission of re-skilling the workforce appeared first on The Sociable.

Metaverses may function like new countries in our society: RAND

Sat, 06 Apr 2024 00:07:59 +0300

Who will rule over this new ‘interconnected global society’ with its ‘countries that exist in cyberspace’? perspective

As the lines between digital and physical spaces blur, the RAND Corporation forecasts that metaverses may come to function like new countries in our society.

With digital identity set to be your passport in the metaverse, and with your metaverse identity projected to be central to your day-to-day life, who will rule these virtual spaces and with what authority?

According to the UK Defence-commissioned RAND report, “Cultural and technological change in the future information environment:

“Regarding the formation of cultural identities at a societal level, the emergence of elaborate virtual environments may change existing cultural identities’ importance while enabling new ones to emerge at the sub-national, national or trans-national level.”

As such, the authors say:

“Expert opinion indicates that future metaverses may reach such a sophistication level that they ‘come to function almost like new countries in our society, countries that exist in cyberspace rather than physical locations but have complex economic and political systems that interact with the physical world’”

What sort of political systems will rule these “countries that exist in cyberspace?” And without traditional borders, what will happen to sovereign nations?

RAND suggests that a “global society” will emerge — one that “may reduce the importance of national and individual identities.”

According to the report, “The emergence of these new virtual environments may correspond with new cultural configurations that complement or diminish existing cultural delineations.”

Therefore:

“Some experts who anticipate a more interconnected global society emerging via virtual reality suggest that such a development may reduce the importance of national and individual identities and change how societies define and shape their cultural identities”

The Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) underpinning metaverses will include “advanced wireless networks (e.g. future iterations of 5G and 6G), cloud computing, antennae technologies, IoT expansion, next-generation semiconductors and blockchain application for information processing systems.”

This underlying technological architecture is expected to lead to “real-time holography (i.e. digital representations of humans or physical objects in a virtual environment) and neural rendering (i.e. realistic digital rendering of humans in place of computer-generated avatars), interactive AR applications (e.g. AR embedded into wearable devices such as contact lenses, mirrors and windshields), and fully-immersive environments facilitating real-time virtual interaction.”

It is against this backdrop of interconnecting technologies powering the future global society that RAND sees the potential for a “human application programming interface (API), which AMWakeUp host Steve Poikonen recently dubbed, “the compliance switch.”

Here’s what the RAND authors say, and see if you agree with Poikonen’s interpretation:

“Among more disruptive concepts, experts suggest the potential for developing a human application programming interface (API), i.e. a programme to ‘store and enforce the rules people set about what is allowed to come into their awareness, what takes up their time and what information is shared about their activities'”

Storing and enforcing rules about what is allowed to come into our awareness, what takes up our time and how information is shared about what we do? Sign me up!

The people at RAND, or perhaps their contractor at UK Defence, seem particularly worried about who will have access to certain information and what they will do with that knowledge in the future.

The report is replete with warnings about the dangers of so-called misinformation and how metaverses may lead to social manipulation.

For example, they say that “virtual environments may amplify current challenges via echo chambers, filter bubbles, and algorithm-driven polarization,” and that:

“A metaverse enabling greater personalization of user experiences may yield more fractured views of reality, potentially exacerbating existing echo chamber/filter-bubble effects by amplifying the cognitive biases […] This dynamic might involve communities and societies experiencing parallel realities, exacerbating societal polarization and distrust in established information sources.”

We can’t have people showing “distrust in established information sources” now, can we?

Additionally:

“The emergence of more potent forms of social manipulation and threats such as mis- and disinformation is a significant concern about virtual environments, reflecting the suggestion that immersive virtual environments are more influential than less immersive communication forms (e.g. current social media)”

“Virtual reality can also be continuously and dynamically manipulated, potentially amplifying manipulation risks, increasing distrust and blurring the lines between virtual and physical realities and truth and fiction in either environment”

Another perceived threat is that authoritarian regimes will exploit metaverses.

Perhaps, this is why the authors envision an interconnected global society in metaverses that function like new countries — there can only be room for one authoritarian regime, not many!

According to the report:

“Some experts warn of significant threats to human agency via the increased risk of malign actors, such as authoritarian regimes, exploiting virtual environments for surveillance and societal manipulation”

Whether it’s the founding of a settlement in a new city, state, country, virtual territory, or even planet (hello Musk and Mars!), there will always emerge some element of an authoritarian presence because that’s what we humans have always done and will continue to do.

There can be no light without darkness; no good without evil. When one force becomes too powerful, the other is there to bring back balance.

The same will be true for future metaverses.

While many praise these future virtual spaces for bringing about greater connectivity and convenience, others warn of total subjugation and control.

According to RAND, “In scenarios where virtual environments lack privacy safeguards, selected private sector or governmental actors could use direct control to limit an individual’s agency in digital interactions.

“The changing relationships between individual end users and those controlling virtual environments have led some to argue that ‘our sense of physical identity, time and agency will become subject to entirely new paradigms where the gateways to these experiences might be controlled by interests other than citizens.'”

You don’t say?

And if users are manipulated in virtual spaces, they make act out in physical ones.

According to the report:

“Manipulating virtual realities may negatively affect individual psychology in the virtual and physical space. Therefore, manipulations experienced in a digital environment may influence an individual’s physical or ‘real-world’ behaviors, potentially challenging established sociocultural institutions such as democratic political systems.”

Heaven forbid people start challenging their institutions and political systems!

Last week, The Sociable reported on the same 101-page RAND report, which also forecasted that the Internet of Bodies may lead to an Internet of Brains by 2050.

Image by freepik

Your metaverse identity will be central to daily life: WEF report

‘Internet of Bodies may lead to Internet of Brains’ by 2050: RAND

The metaverse as a playground for the great reset & the fourth industrial revolution

Digital ID in the metaverse can allow people to ‘build up their reputation, benefit socially & economically’: WEF report

‘Digital identity is the nexus to an interoperable metaverse’: WEF

DHS to face threats, opportunities while monitoring users in the metaverse: RAND

The post Metaverses may function like new countries in our society: RAND appeared first on The Sociable.

Dispelling the Myth: It’s Not AI You Fear, It’s Human Behavior

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 19:00:41 +0300

In 2017, a robot got tired of its job and committed suicide in a water fountain. Then, in 2022, a Google engineer declared, after interacting with LaMDA, the company’s chatbot, that technology had become conscious. Recently, it was reported that in 2021, a Tesla software engineer was attacked by an uncontrolled robot. This is without considering the fear that machines will steal jobs, or the classic fiction that machines will take over the world.

Although we don’t see machines as replicants in Blade Runner, people are predisposed to anthropomorphizing or attributing human qualities to non-humans [1]. It’s a way of being able to analyze a scenario and bring it into our understanding: we give names to our boats and tornadoes, we talk to our pets, and say that the pleasant feeling they give us is love. It’s easier to understand a system that declares in the first person “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to help you” than to accept that the model we’re talking to may be nothing more than a stochastic parrot. [2]

The anthropomorphized interaction, therefore, relates to the phenomenon of “illusion of agency”, a psychological concept that refers to the tendency to attribute autonomous action or control to entities that, in reality, do not possess such capabilities. In other words, it’s the mistaken perception that an agent (be it a person, an animal, or a machine) is acting of its own free will, when in fact its actions are being determined by external factors (in the computational case, development rules).

In situations where AI systems make flawed decisions or actions, there is a tendency to see these errors as “choices” of the entity rather than results of its programming and design by humans, not least because it has been reported that the selfish bias of a human being that leads someone to see the cause and responsibility for a negative outcome as not attributable to themselves can be observed even in human-machine interactions [3].

This change in perception is dangerously inclined to absolve human creators, operators, and regulators of their responsibility, not as a matter of judicial regulation (which remains a gap and has challenges in its realization not only because of the complexity of the subject but because Artificial Intelligence is often understood only as machine learning and the premise is not properly structured. Do we need stricter regulation? Do we need to take more risks?), but on a techno-ethical issue.

Let’s take a more extreme but true event from 2023: a user who was sentimentally attached to a chatbot committed suicide after sharing his thoughts with the bot and receiving the response to “turn your words into actions”, as well as other messages. Would a court conviction of the developers of this product cause another user to behave in the same way with another chatbot, assuming this one has been deactivated, if the content of the messages and the affection are the same? It’s not just a legal situation. It’s a social, psychological, and technological education issue.

The concept of humanizing AI is ambiguous, and a significant challenge lies in the absence of a universally accepted approach that dictates the best practices for designing and utilizing AI. While an interface that mimics human behavior can be more approachable, no clear boundaries are defining what should or shouldn’t be done in a product. Ultimately, user rejection becomes the only limiting factor, although potential harm may manifest before the interface becomes too unfamiliar.

A user-friendly interface is a reduction in the complexity of the system that operates behind it. But as long as there is no education about how systems work, the user will not be able to think critically about what they use. This doesn’t mean that everyone should become a programmer, but at least understand that the output on their screen comes from a path of data collection, model development, and design. There is a set of rules taking place. Since humanization is an almost unconscious act on the part of us users, let’s at least limit it with a little knowledge.

And it’s not easy to avoid anthropomorphism when communicating about AI, especially considering the standard language of the industry, the media, and everyday life itself: machine learning, computer vision, generative modelling. Perceptions of Artificial Intelligence can be influenced by the specific use of language.

How AI is presented has “concrete impacts”, particularly on the way people distribute responsibility and recognition for the work done. When described merely as a tool in the hands of humans, it tends to attribute greater responsibility and merit to certain individuals – such as the person operating the code. On the other hand, if AI is characterized with human traits – such as the ability to create – then it is seen as deserving of greater credit and responsibility, like an agent with independent thought and mental capacity. [4] When we read news stories about incidents or atypical events involving Artificial Intelligence, we often come across these terms.

Also, the attribution of “intelligence” means that more blame or credit for the outcome of a task was attributed to a robot with autonomous behavior than to a non-autonomous robot, even if the autonomous behavior did not directly contribute to the task. [3] These studies therefore suggest that humans can assign responsibility to a computer or robot based on the machines’ anthropomorphised mental capacities.

The humanization of machines not only shifts the distinction between the responsibility of the device and that of its human creator, but the attribution of intentions or consciousness to a machine at the same time blurs the boundaries of what constitutes true autonomy and consciousness.

However, the difficulty in imputing humanity and sentience to a machine lies not only in the fact that Artificial Intelligence is not capable of having it and when it says, for example, that it feels fear, it is actually emulating what it has learned, repeating that phrase without any kind of essence behind it. Even today, there is a heated debate about how to define consciousness. Our consciousness, as humans.

Our understanding of how the brain works is still quite limited. We have considerable knowledge about fundamental chemistry: the way neurons activate, and the transmission of chemical signals. We also have a good understanding of the main functions of various brain areas. However, we have very little knowledge about how these functions orchestrate us. To some extent, theoretical speculation has supplanted detailed neurophysiological studies of what happens in the brain. But what about beyond that? [5] Why do we have this magical notion of ourselves? Why does the same experience affect us differently? Is the same feeling felt in the same way by all of us?

If being a human is something that, although we experience it, we still don’t have a full understanding of what it is as a whole, how can we say that a machine also experiences this complexity? By elevating machines to human capabilities, we diminish the special character of people.

For the 2023 Jabuti Prize, one of the highest honors in Brazilian literature, the Brazilian Book Chamber (CBL) decided to disqualify Frankenstein, an edition of the 1818 classic, from the Best Illustration category, since the artist reported having used AI solutions to develop the art. Ironically, one of the books recognized by the Prize in the Non-Fiction category deals with the impact of Artificial Intelligence on human beings (“Humanamente digital: Inteligência artificial centrada no humano”, something like “Humanly Digital: Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence” in English, by Cassio Pantaleone). On the one hand, we recognize the intertwining of the human experience with machines. On the other hand, we still haven’t managed to validate whether an algorithm used as an art tool can be considered a valid method of creation or not, even though the artistic process, even if carried out by machine learning, requires the action (and appreciation of beauty and aesthetics) of a human being.

Machines don’t steal jobs if they aren’t used indiscriminately to do so. Machines don’t kill unless they are used as weapons. Nor do machines suffer or empathize, although their texts emulate this since they have been trained with data from us, loaded with feelings that only we can truly feel. They are almost the modern version of the Golem myth. How can humans relate to non-human intelligence? Anthropomorphism is a valid answer, but not the only one. And when it is used, it cannot absolve us of the real responsibility for its consequences, whether appropriate or not: us.

Artificial Intelligence is, in the end, a mirror of ourselves. And if we’re afraid of where it’s going, it’s actually because we’re afraid of the path we’re going to create.

REFERENCES

[1] Epley, N., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2007). On seeing human: A three-factor theory of anthropomorphism. Psychological Review, 114(4), 864–886. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.864

[2] Shneiderman, B. & Muller, M. (2023) . On AI Antropomorphism https://medium.com/human-centered-ai/on-ai-anthropomorphism-abff4cecc5ae

[3] Kawai, Y., Miyake, T., Park, J. et al. Anthropomorphism-based causal and responsibility attributions to robots. Sci Rep 13, 12234 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-39435-5

[4] Epstein, Z., Levine, S., Rand, D. G., & Rahwan, I. (2020). Who Gets Credit for AI-Generated Art? In iScience (Vol. 23, Issue 9, p. 101515). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2020.101515

[5] Goff, P. (2023). Understanding Consciousness Goes Beyond Exploring Brain Chemistry. Scientific American https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/understanding-consciousness-goes-beyond-exploring-brain-chemistry/

This article was published by Sofia Marshallowitz on HackerNoon.

The post Dispelling the Myth: It’s Not AI You Fear, It’s Human Behavior appeared first on The Sociable.

Bitcoin’s Potential in Halting Nukes, Rogue AGI, and Climate Catastrophe

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 18:55:29 +0300

Bitcoin is literally the most energetic digital computational system on the planet.

While its energy is used in mining operations, is there any chance of it being channelled towards more noble goals than Bitcoin, when the need arises? I believe so.

Part 1: Nukes

Alfred Nobel would be proud

a) The long term

First, let us explore the long term. Assume a terrible nuclear event is headed our way 5 years from now. Then it means we have up to 5 years to stop an escalation leading to Armageddon.

It means finding ways to be ever more diplomatic.

Currently, one of the biggest contentions between the United States of America and the Russian Federation is the fact that the USA can bully Russia by denying it access to dollar markets. The US dollar is still global reserve currency, which means trade agreements between Russia and US dollar-holding countries can become way more difficult. If anything could lead to somebody firing a nuke between these two, this is one of those things.

Especially if even as the USA keeps expanding its debt, it still gets more and more allies willing to absorb its dollar inflation for the greater good of a cooperative alliance with NATO.

How Bitcoin fixes this is quite straightforward – Bitcoin becomes the global reserve currency. This will level the playing field, to make the USA have to play by offering quality products in place of threats, while the Russians also offer quality products in place of counter threats.

A global reserve currency owned by nobody, which everybody and every organization has some power and influence over, is the best currency for such fraught times as ours.

b) The immediate term

Alright. Assume instead that the weapon has been fired. We have only 30 minutes on the clock to stop it, otherwise the sum of all our fears shall be manifested. Whoever gets hit between the two, Russia will likely blame the USA and the USA will likely blame Russia. The second nuke will start a chain reaction. We need to stop the end of human civilization at the first nuke.

As I write this, there is no known way to stop an ICBM nuke from carrying out its grim job. it is too damn fast, space is too damn big, so most attempts flat-out fail to hit the thing.

Okay, how about hacking it. Can we hack a nuke mid-fight and disable it?

The short answer is – YES, because nukes today use digital systems, some of which are online.

The real answer is – I don’t know, and are not sure I will find the answer via Google. This stuff is classified.

The best I can do is cook something up.

First, by leveraging the Earth’s Schuman Resonances, I suffice humans could find a way to target a nuclear missile with a lightning bolt from the ionosphere either the first time (while ascending) or the second time (while descending) across the ionosphere.

Like Zeus.

Fry those nuclear circuits

How we could possibly do that would be by tracking it (the nuke) using all our computational resources, including Bitcoin computational resources, then launching a coordinated strike using the electrical power from our (now decoupled) Bitcoin miners.

For Bitcoin, this could be accomplished with a fictional Bitcoin Improvement Protocol I will hereby call – BIP 911. BIP 911 could be suggested and unanimously passed by the Bitcoin community. I suffice designing it so that when the majority of people send their coins to a special wallet address, the Bitcoin blockchain will;

Accept to turn the computational power of ASIC miners towards hacking a nuke mid-flight.

Execute this idea in under 10 minutes the same way we look for bitcoins in 10 minutes. Bitcoin’s synchronized nodes world-over make it a good tracker of any signals that need to be tracked, while routing this information all over the world to all other nodes. All that hashing power should be able to stop a nuke. Seriously.

Part 2: Rogue AGI

Intelligence is not enough. Cooperative human endeavors are so much more.

a) The long term

It feels like every smart person is trying to build an artificial intelligence or some machine learning system.

Which makes sense.

Underlying targeted advertising, the biggest online business model on earth, is machine learning algorithms that track and make great inferences of consumer behaviour.

But there is also some common sense to it. People eat lunch at lunchtime, investors hurry to sell their holdings on Friday to go enjoy the weekend (so the price dips) and scramble to buy back on Monday (so the price climbs), and cats will always have pointy ears, furry fur and that cute face with the big yellow eyes. So every well-designed AI will learn of this. It is how it is.

There are those who fear, however, that AIs today might be getting too much power. I would agree especially if you put these systems in charge of crucial social systems like our finances (by making them trade all over Wall Street), or if you put these AIs in every home so that they start dicing and splicing our cabbages for us, cleaning our toilets and maybe even bathing us.

Like, human beings will degenerate. That is for sure. They will likely even forget how to build good AIs. Which will be a disaster.

So in the long term, I hope humanity finds a reason to NOT give AI development all those $10 trillion Altman dollars. I hope Bitcoin, as it heads towards global reserve currency status, eats away at least half that cash investment.

GPUs for AI are all good and NVIDIA is in business. But I think more Bitcoin ASICs is what we want to build more of. I am more comfortable heating the planet with Bitcoin ASICs than with NVIDIA GPUs. With the former, people have a say and can act as individuals using their private keys. With the latter, Sam Altman or other AI experts have all the say. But I believe his words have a much smaller impact than those of millions of people.

I mean, it is mathematics. 1,000,000 is bigger than 1.

c) The Short term

Let’s assume we wake up, turn on our smartphones, and SkyNet is addressing the planet. Telling us how gullible we have been and that this is our end. Let’s say our final prayers. Well, this is like shooting a nuke. Nukes. Obviously, SkyNet will try to hack all our nuclear weapons and rain them down on us. That’s the fastest way to end us.

For some reason, I feel like this might unite us way more than if a nuclear weapon was headed anyone’s way thanks to a conflict between two countries.

Like, I feel everybody with software skills will pull out their laptop and try to stop SkyNet. I may be wrong. Some people say they hate people.

Like with a nuke, BIP 911 may be our designated saving grace. But also, a more direct approach could be to shut down the internet. Choke that Rogue AGI out. It cannot hide inside Bitcoin nodes (they only have leftover space for short text and meme JPEGs) so the world will be alright.

Maybe better off after all is said and done.

Yup, we shall be back to a command-line existence. And whoever actually knows how to speak arcane computer speak from the 1990s will be made President of their country.

Hackernoon already looks the part.

What an adventure.

Part 3: A Climate Catastrophe

The Earth’s climate cannot be tamed. It is the wildest of all creatures. Mother of universal terrors such as lightning, floods and drought.

Human beings are powerful creatures. The Holy Bible calls them the apex creation. They have tamed lions, hunger, and their base desires to pillage and destroy. But they are yet to tame Climate.

The issue with the climate is how its wildness is directly proportional to how much energy we pump into the planetary ecosystem. But how can we help it. We are 8 billion of us.

We all need food, water, shelter, clothes, smartphones, laptops, toothpaste, stainless steel cutlery, plastic holders for everything, cars, planes, a good life.

Alas, the price of pumping energy through all these drives more carbon into the atmosphere and more energy into this carbon. Henceforth, we are stirring up bigger hurricanes, bigger ice-storms, bigger droughts. Bigger and bigger. We are going for the big leagues.

We better be ready.

a) The short term

On the short term, I believe we need to find a way to consume things that can sort of tune the climate. Bitcoin miners can be switched on and off, so this is one thing. Same with TVs, cars, planes, etc. Fiat money, which I think is mostly humbug (how can one person be allowed to control the money supply, hence wealth, of billions of people? Isn’t that ridiculous?), is another way to go when heat waves start. Coupled with Bitcoin as Global Reserve Currency, don’t forget.

It saddens me to say this. But I follow the logical inference wherever it points. Even if it points towards hell. If my logic is wrong, do tell me how.

To survive a climate catastrophe, we might need to classify climate as Enemy Number 1 world over. Forget your puny AIs generating realistic cat videos. Forget your puny contests over who has the biggest nuclear stockpiles. Let’s go to war against the climate, and win.

Of course, the commanders will be allowed to use fiat to, well, direct us. Money does the talking these days. BUT when the commands start making no sense, like “cutting back”, then you know this is all silly. Switch the BTC node miners back on. Switch on the AIs, TV, Radio, everything.

“Cut back” is a stupid command. “Let’s go!”, now that’s what I’m talking about.

We are the apex species. We don’t win by going back to a cave, to cower from the big bad monster.

b) The hopefully very Long term

We win by finding a way to tolerate and overcome droughts, floods, hurricanes, heat waves and ice ages. Fiat debt money, instead of being given freely to anybody above 18 and so on, should be channeled towards building something as magnificent as the Egyptian Pyramids were magnificent in 5000 BCE.

Some big fat climate control contraption.

Some grand scheme we, and our grandchildren, can all be proud of.

If it backfires, at least we shall have tried. It will have been a glorious battle against the climate monster. Otherwise, sweeping it under the carpet while we whine and cause troubles about race, sex, immigration, is a disgrace to our tiger-fighting, disease-demon exorcising ancestors.

To reiterate. Today, we are not fighting climate change. We are making grand speeches and expecting other people, except us, to do all the dirty work. Fighting monsters is a dirty work. Alas, we are TV-grown and Smartphone-grown children. But where there is a global will, there is a way.

There is strength hidden from our sights. In the long run, Bitcoin is the only technology that, with its keys, has attached value to individuals because if the individual does not provide the key to the money, nobody on earth, not even POTUS, can open the wallet.

It’s that simple. While in fiat world, if you do not provide the key the bank can override your ego, here, if Satoshi Nakamoto is not found and his 2 million bitcoins balloon to a collective value of $2 trillion-plus, nobody and no organization will be able to tap this $2 trillion. This is how powerful this is.

Each human mind, thanks to a secret key, finally elevated to be canonical in financial decision-making. If in the far future Bitcoin evolves into technology spanning the entire solar system, then having a secret key is the equivalent to having a say over the forces that shall move mountains on planets.

The power to change climates even. To terraform worlds.

Like the Bible mentions.

All because Bitcoin respects the individual. Because Bitcoins makes the individual more worthy. Not because the individual is super smart, has unique blood or a royal ancestry. Simply because they have this piece of text they know, and nobody else knows it, and it is important. That is all.

I know, humanity is still waiting for that push, and it will come. ETFs are a great first step and soon, more governments will be getting on board, then the UN.

The threat of catastrophic climate change just might become extinct. Swept not under any rags, but into the past.

This article was originally published by M-Marvin Ken on HackerNoon.

The post Bitcoin’s Potential in Halting Nukes, Rogue AGI, and Climate Catastrophe appeared first on The Sociable.

The Curated Content Revolution: How to Stay Relevant in the Information Age

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 19:00:00 +0300

Content creators understand the significance of creating quality content and the results it can help them generate.

However, they are also aware that creating relevant content and sharing it with the intended audience consistently can be daunting and time-consuming. This has given rise to an era of content curation.

Since access to relevant information is now available at our fingertips, content creators have started leveraging third-party sources to keep the needle moving.

Curation has made it easier for us to publish more content with ease. The problem is that it may also have caused information overload, making people easily distracted and quickly hopping from one information source to the next.

Hence, it has become difficult to make your content stand out and stay relevant in your respective niche.

So, if you have been grappling with the aforementioned issue, we advise that you consider the following recommendations:

Plan Curation

The first step to staying relevant in the age of the curated content revolution is to have a well-thought-out curation strategy.

To foster engagement in the digital landscape, everyone is leveraging curation. It’s reported that 82% of marketers repurpose content and share it on different channels to get more eyeballs. This has caused information to be available in abundance.

Plus, you’re not the only one curating content to generate traction. It’s reported that 25% of marketers rely on curated content.

Source

So, planning is the key to outmaneuvering your competition and getting more mindshare. This requires extensive research as you craft a content strategy to win the hearts of your target audience and become a reliable source of information for them.

Tailor Content to Your Audience’s Preferences

The core focus for you when curating content should be to generate awareness and help people find answers to their questions. In short, your content should be customer-centric.

It’s reported that the content you create to educate your target audience generates 52% more organic traction for you compared to company-focused content.

So, it’s best that you tailor your curated content to the needs and preferences of your target audience. Around 71% of people believe that understanding your target audience is the key to getting the best results from curated content.

Source

This requires you to be familiar with your audience’s characteristics and know what intrigues them. This will help you curate content around topics that align with the interests of your audience and are thus likely to get you more engagement.

Stay Fresh

When you curate content, you rely on the information published by external sources. You may check the sources for authenticity, but one thing often gets overlooked: the freshness of the content they publish.

Whether it’s the trends encompassing the original content or the information around which the content is created, there may be different things causing content to go obsolete. So, it’s best to fact-check the information you’re using to curate content.

Plus, you should prefer content that’s created around the latest happenings and current trends in your respective industry. Doing so will make it possible for your curated content to stay relevant for an extended period of time.

For those venturing into entrepreneurial realms, such as starting a clothing brand, staying attuned to the pulse of fashion trends becomes a parallel necessity. Just as in content curation, launching a clothing brand requires a commitment to staying on top of trends and offering something distinct, infusing your brand with a unique identity and style to set it apart in a competitive market.

Be Unique

A common mistake professionals make when curating content is sticking to a few reliable sources for information.

This means they have access to content created around a handful of topics or focus areas. It deprives content curators of their ability to share unique or diverse content with their target audience.

Therefore, it’s highly recommended to consider exploring a variety of sources for useful information.

Your audience may get bored with your content if you have nothing new to offer. When this happens, they might consider exploring other options.

To prevent this from happening and make people keep coming back to you for their daily dose of content, give them something new or different to consume from time to time.

Add Value

When you leverage content from third-party information sources, don’t share it as it is with your audience. You should add your own thoughts or add value from your end before publishing curated content.

People want to know your take on a particular topic or your thoughts on the matter. If they wanted the same exact content, they could just go to the original source of information. But they visited your platform, expecting to stumble upon something new.

So, always consider value addition, no matter how small that is. It will make your content a bit different from the original and allow your audience to know your opinion on the matter.

Leverage Diverse Formats

When curating content, it’s highly recommended that you consider a variety of content formats available.

Generally, marketers curate content for their social media posts to engage over 4.74 billion social media users. It’s a tried-and-tested strategy that helps them foster engagement on different channels.

However, there are diverse content formats that they can explore, such as expert roundups, infographics, podcasts, and more.

This allows you to engage your target audience by facilitating their access to relevant information in a variety of ways.

Remember, people have diverse preferences when it comes to consuming content. So, sticking to a particular content type may limit what you can achieve from your curation strategy.

Create a Schedule

Sharing relevant content with your audience is not enough to stay relevant. You have to be consistent as well.

Therefore, it’s highly recommended that you come up with a content calendar and schedule your content in advance.

This is an excellent strategy that keeps you in check and allows you to share useful content consistently with your target audience.

A schedule ensures that your content reaches the right audience at the right time and makes it possible for you to identify gaps in content delivery.

Sharing content in a consistent fashion helps you foster a strong brand recall and allows you to stay relevant amidst cutthroat competition.

Final Words

There you have it: the seven tips on how to stay relevant in the information age and be a top player in the curated content revolution.

The recommendations in this article will help you generate more traction and make it easier for you to get more mindshare. Using these tips, you can outmaneuver your competition and foster higher engagement compared to them.

So, if you have been sharing curated content on different platforms to get more eyeballs, the recommendations provided may help you get better results.

The post The Curated Content Revolution: How to Stay Relevant in the Information Age appeared first on Scoop.it Blog.

Entrepreneurship, investment and trade to be addressed at Horasis China Meeting in Binh Duong, Vietnam

Wed, 03 Apr 2024 05:59:33 +0300

Binh Duong, just north of Ho Chi Minh City, is steeped in history and culture. It’s considered to be the gateway to HCMC, the economic cultural center and most populous city in Vietnam. As such, Binh Duong is endowed with convenient geography conditions, and has an extremely important road network throughout the country.

In part because of this and the city’s important role as a center, Horasis Founder and Chairman Dr. Frank-Jürgen Richter (article’s featured photo) has announced that the Horasis China Meeting will take place in Binh Duong, Vietnam this April 14th-15th.

In addition to finding solutions to pressing regional and global challenges, the meeting will see 300 world leaders from business, government, academia, and civil society gather to support entrepreneurial trade and investment efforts for the city and world.

A summit with some of China and Vietnam’s best known business leaders

Horasis, an independent think-tank with headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, was introduced in 2005, and its annual China Meeting has become one of the world’s foremost discussion forums. Its meetings offer an ideal platform to explore and foster cooperation, impact investing and sustainable growth across the world.

The Horasis China Meeting is one of the flagship events put on by Horasis, which also include the Horasis Global Meeting, the Horasis India Meeting, and the Horasis Asia Meeting.

In 2024 the meeting, held in partnership with the the Southern Vietnamese Province Binh Duong and the China Federation of Industrial Economics, will focus on furthering ties between China and Vietnam, among other areas.

The world is currently in a critical period, as the impacts of economic imbalances, geopolitical forces and climate change place unprecedented pressure on regional and global systems.

Although these factors interact in seemingly uncontrolled ways, a collaborative approach from key decision-makers at the Horasis China Meeting will help mitigate some of the negative effects and rebuild trust in organizations from across the globe.

“Our world faces unparalleled stress today. Now is the time for leaders to come together,” said Dr. Richter in a statement.

“Only by working together will we be able to inspire our future, and address unprecedented environmental and economic challenges,” added the organization’s founder.

The annual Horasis China Meeting will gather a long list of the world’s most prominent political and business leaders. Joining them will be numerous CEOs and representatives from some of the world’s most respected organizations.

The co-chairs of the conference include:

Claude Béglé, Chairman, SymbioSwiss, Switzerland
Erik Berglof, Chief Economist, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, China
Dan Cates, Founder, Dan Cates Foundation, USA
Anson Chan, Chairman and Managing Director, Bonds Group of Companies, Hong Kong
Jonathan Choi, Chairman, Sunwah Group, Hong Kong
Fu Qiang, Chief Engineer, China Sinopharm International Corporation, China
Huang Fude, Vice President, Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group Co., China
Elisabetta Jiang, Co-founder, Unicorns For Good, Singapore
Roger King, Founder and Chairman, ODS Holdings Inc., Hong Kong
Duane Kuang, Founding Managing Partner, Qiming Venture Partners, China
Bill Kung, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Ecovane Environmental, China
Don Lam, Chief Executive Officer and Founding Partner, VinaCapital, Vietnam
Bonnie Liao, Executive Director, Social Enterprise Research Academy, Hong Kong
Nguyen Quang Huan, Chairman, Halcom, Vietnam
Nguyen Van Hung, Group Executive Chairman, Becamex IDC, Vietnam
Mike Liu, Vice President and Senior Fellow, Center for China & Globalization, China
Farah London, Founder, Back 2 Business International, United Kingdom
Penny Low, Founder, Social Innovation Park, Singapore
Clas Neumann, Senior Vice President, Head of Global SAP Labs Network, SAP, China
Nhan Huc Quan, General Director, New Toyo Company, Vietnam
Johan Nyvene, Chairman, Ho Chi Minh City Securities Corporation, Vietnam
David Pan, Executive Dean, Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University, China
Murat Seitnepesov, Chairman, Integral Group, Switzerland
Charles Tang, President, Brazil China Chamber of Commerce, Brazil
Tao Yitao, Director, China Center for Special Economic Zones Research, China
Chris Tay, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Drink NOD International, China
Wang Dong, Executive Director, Institute for Global Cooperation, Peking University, China
Yu Jin, Vice President, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), China
Felix Zhang, Co-founder, Envision Group, China
Zhi Peng, Secretary General, Zhongguancun M&A Promotion Association, China

This article includes a partner of an Espacio portfolio company

The post Entrepreneurship, investment and trade to be addressed at Horasis China Meeting in Binh Duong, Vietnam appeared first on The Sociable.

Fracttal smart maintenance platform adds new AI-powered features

Tue, 02 Apr 2024 21:15:19 +0300

Since being founded in 2016, Fracttal, a leading maintenance and asset management software for the Internet of Things (IoT), has grown to work with some of the world’s top manufacturing and logistics firms, including 3M, FedEx and others.

Today, the company is announcing that they released a new version of their Fracttal One software, a leading, 100% mobile intelligent maintenance platform for its operations in Latin America. The new version of Fracttal One and the previous version will be available for existing customers and for companies that implement the solution from now on.

With the update, Fracttal aims to lead a new era of intelligent maintenance in the region, providing companies with a complete and easy-to-use tool to supervise their maintenance processes with greater sustainability, safety and efficiency, guaranteeing operational continuity and worker safety.

The update will also reduce time and costs and extending the useful life of assets, something that is possible thanks to the integration of IoT devices that monitor assets together with intelligent systems capable of detecting possible incidents and applying preventive and predictive maintenance strategies according to the needs of each company.

The total predictive maintenance market size was valued at USD $7.85 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29.5% from 2023 to 2030, according to Grand View Research.

With its latest update, Fracttal, led by co-founder and CEO Christian Struve and with operations across the United States, Latin America and Europe, aims to increase its marketshare of the predictive maintenance pie.

“Fracttal One has established itself as the most powerful 100% mobile maintenance software on the market, helping hundreds of companies in Latin America to manage everything related to their assets from anywhere and without depending on a computer due to it being built for use on smartphones and tablets,” said Struve. “The new version of Fracttal One is here to drive a new era of intelligent maintenance that will help make maintenance operations much more efficient. Companies will have a complete solution that will truly support teams like never before in maintenance management.”

Christian Struve, CEO, Fracttal. Image credit: X

The latest version of Fracttal One brings with it a series of new features that include a much more modern and intuitive interface and the integration of a virtual assistant expert called Tony. Tony, powered by artificial intelligence, is capable of performing customer queries with advanced capabilities that facilitate work every day.

The Fracttal One software has already established itself in Latin America as the main market solution designed to operate on mobile devices, allowing maintenance teams to take control from a smartphone or tablet for real-time monitoring and remote diagnostics of assets.

The integration of Fracttal with other platforms has also been simplified leading to flexibility and efficiency, new graphs that provide better analysis, and clearer insights into the data.

Additional features include enhancement of the KPIs module, personalized filters and views, and other novelties that take the intelligent maintenance experience to another level.

Disclosure: This article mentions a client of an Espacio portfolio company.

The post Fracttal smart maintenance platform adds new AI-powered features appeared first on The Sociable.

Parallel18 opens applications for 12th cohort, offers $40,000 equity-free grant, $20,000 investment

Tue, 02 Apr 2024 18:56:14 +0300

Since 2015, Parallel18, the accelerator program from the Puerto Rico Science, Technology and Research Trust (PRSTRT), has provided $40,000 equity-free grants to hundreds of startups who scale internationally from the island.

This week, Parallel18 is announcing it has opened applications for its 12th P18 accelerator cohort. In its Gen. 12 edition, up to 25 innovative companies will be accepted. The selected startups will receive 20 weeks of education, business mentoring, and total financial support of $60,000 — split into a $40,000 equity-free grant and $20,000 investment through a Simple Agreement for Future Participation (SAFE).

Additionally, during the 20 weeks of the program, participants will receive mentoring and weekly goal monitoring, as well as access to a broad network of mentors, investors, corporate clients, business partners and contacts who work closely with the program to address all key aspects of a company’s needs.

Interested companies will have until April 30th at midnight to complete the online application.

“We continue to promote innovation and global collaboration in Puerto Rico. This call, once again, demonstrates the Trust’s commitment to empowering entrepreneurs and startups worldwide so that they can globally scale their products and strengthen the island’s economy,” said Eng. Lucy Crespo, CEO of the PRSTRT. “Parallel18’s impact metrics speak for themselves, 92% of the companies that have gone through the program continue to operate and that is a great achievement.”

Participants from Parallel18’s Gen. 11. Image credit: Parallel18.

According to a company release, to date, 275 companies have participated in P18, 53 of these are Puerto Rican. The program has also received companies from Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Singapore, the United States, among other countries.

P18, as an international acceleration program, requires that participating companies demonstrate innovation, operate for three years or less, and have either generated sales or launched a validated product in the market. Additionally, they must exhibit traction and growth potential, and possess scalability to adapt to diverse markets.

The program also stipulates that at least two founders must commit full time to the company during the curriculum and that the founders be physically present on the island. Finally, entrepreneurs must present a plan of how they will take advantage of and incorporate Puerto Rico’s entrepreneurship system to scale their business.

“This call once again reaffirms the commitment of Parallel18 and the Trust, through its entrepreneurship pillar, to continue supporting the entrepreneurial ecosystem. P18 is a unique opportunity for innovative companies that can develop in Puerto Rico,” said Dr. Héctor Jirau, Executive Director of Parallel18.

He added, “The selected companies will receive ongoing support with mentoring and a financial grant that will allow companies to continue growing and scaling. The mentoring provided and the companies’ access to the network of corporate partners and investors is unmatched as it helps drive the growth and success of the solutions significantly.”

Interested companies from around the globe must complete the online application before April 30 at midnight (AST/UTC-4).

P18 will select up to 25 companies through a competitive process that includes an initial filter by the Parallel18 team; an evaluation committee with external judges; and a selection committee made up of investors, entrepreneurs and other members of the Parallel18 community.

The chosen companies will be announced at the end of May and the program is scheduled to begin the first week of July.

As part of the P18 application process initiatives, a virtual information session will be held on Friday, April 12 at 12:30pm (AST/UTC-4) to clarify any questions. Those interested in participating can register here.

Parallel18 Gen. 11 Demo Day. Image credit: Parallel 18

Since launching in December 2015, the international accelerator program has received more than 4,500 applications from more than 60 countries. Once they enter the program, companies benefit from perks made possible by service providers committed to supporting the startups by offering their services at discounted rates.

Likewise, startups have access to Parallel18’s TalentApp, a platform with professional resources where they can recruit local talent available to work as a freelancer, full-time, part-time or through internships.

The cohort will also benefit from Parallel18 Connect, a corporate innovation program that promotes and links startups with large and high-profile corporations to promote business relationships and collaboration between both parties, as well as Parallel18 Ventures, a subprogram that focuses on helping startups to create a solid investment strategy while connecting them with a curated network of investors.

Disclosure: This article mentions a client of an Espacio portfolio company.

The post Parallel18 opens applications for 12th cohort, offers $40,000 equity-free grant, $20,000 investment appeared first on The Sociable.

Content Strategy in the Metaverse Era: Navigating the Digital Multiverse of 2024

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 18:00:00 +0200

The latest McKinsey research shows that the Metaverse has the potential to generate $5 trillion in value by 2030. It can’t be denied that virtual reality isn’t going anywhere.

The Metaverse is the yet-unsettled Wild West of the digital world. Its potential for brands to reach new audiences in unprecedented ways is unmatched.

It’s crucial that your plans for 2024 include a content strategy in Metaverse marketing initiatives.

The Metaverse unveiled

As of 2023, the Metaverse is primarily used for gaming, but that’s only a fraction of its potential.

In 2024 and beyond, you can expect to see the Metaverse expand to include:

Entertainment (concerts, premieres, conventions)
Commerce (cryptocurrency, NFTs, virtual monies)
Fashion & Luxury (showrooms, runways)
Education (virtual “hands-on” experiences, virtual field trips)
Design (building models virtually before physically, testing in digital space)

The first “Metaverse for Business” study done by Sortlist shows that the sectors most aggressively investing in the Metaverse currently are IT (17%) and Education (12%)

(Image Source)

As of November 2023, three of the most common Metaverse platforms include:

Roblox: Arguably the largest and most well-known Metaverse platform, Roblox is a gaming and social platform that enables players to create and play their own games. It includes a virtual economy where users can create avatars and buy and sell goods and experiences.

The Sandbox: The Sandbox Metaverse platform currently consists of The Sandbox Game, The Sandbox Builder, and The Sandbox Marketplace. In these environments, users explore, create games and experiences, and engage in commerce with virtual assets using the site’s native cryptocurrency.

Decentraland: Decentraland operates on the Ethereum blockchain and allows users to buy, sell, and develop parcels of land in a virtual world. Users have used it to build art galleries, museums, and conference centers. Here’s a guide simple guide for hosting a Blockchain event.

These platforms are accessed through devices (headsets, glasses, gloves) and operating systems that immerse users in their digital reality.

Changing content landscape

For as long as content marketing has existed, marketers have only had 2D materials to work with. Paper or screen, color or black and white, there was no getting around the flat, unengaging nature of most advertising.

Content strategies in Metaverse’s immersive 3D encapsulation include making your audience a part of the marketing process in a way that’s never been done before.

To create a cutting-edge content strategy, performing a Google competitor analysis is crucial to become aware of your competitors’ evolving approaches and industry trends. Leveraging competitive intelligence tools can be a game-changer in this quest. These tools empower you to delve deep into your competitors’ content strategies, unveiling the tactics that make them successful.

(See below for a list of content strategy and management tools).

Emerging content formats

You’re used to digital marketing in traditional formats — audio, video, and text. The multiverse transforms all the formats we’re used to by adding sensation and immersion in both the physical and digital space.

Here are the content formats most common in the Metaverse.

Virtual reality (VR)

Virtual reality is a fully 360-degree immersive experience in a digital world. Beyond gaming, the automotive industry has been taking full advantage of the benefits of VR in their space for years. From prototyping to test drives, the auto industry is ahead of the curve in utilizing the Metaverse for both the manufacturing and consumer experience.

Augmented reality (AV)

Augmented reality is when technology augments physical experiences. The IKEA furniture placement app is a great example of augmented reality at work in the retail space. Users can use the app to see the furniture they’re interested in placed and moved around virtually before committing to a purchase.

(Image Source)

Mixed reality (MR)

Mixed reality takes components from both AV and VR to create a digital experience. An example most will be familiar with are Snapchat filters and virtual make-up applications.

Understanding the new formats is essential to building your 2024 Metaverse content strategy. How can you creatively use these new formats to give the user an incredible experience and elevate your brand?

Imagine, for example, learning how to invest in stocks by walking through a virtual Wall Street, guided by AI-driven avatars instead of plowing through dense articles or complex charts on your own.

In the Metaverse, the understanding of stock investments is gamified and visualized, turning abstract concepts into tangible learning encounters.

Interactive content strategies like this will become the norm in the Metaverse.

Content distribution and engagement

In 2D marketing, “content distribution” typically means slicing content up and publishing it to multiple verticals. A podcast becomes a blog post, which becomes 10 social media posts, and so on.

With the new emerging content formats of the Metaverse, content distribution will mean putting content directly into the hands of users and letting them spread the word for you.

Part of this process will be building communities in the digital multiverse.

Some of the ways you can build a community using content strategy in the Metaverse include:

Holding and attending conferences in your industry
Partnering with influencers already established in virtual spaces
Building worlds and spaces for users of your product to talk and learn
Be an active participant in co-creation with your users

That last point is particularly salient.

Most of the Metaverse is made up of user-generated content — they are creating their own worlds, their own realities, the places they want to spend their time.

As a marketer, you want to co-create with them in a way that benefits both your brand and the user experience.

Content marketing and branding

So, where do you begin?

Don’t reinvent the wheel

Your first thought may be how much needs to change with your existing approach, and you may not be wrong. But before you throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater, take stock of what’s already working for you. This is going to be the basis of your Metaverse content strategy. How can you adapt your current wins into more immersive, collaborative experiences?

Let data be your foundation

Regardless of platform or product, any stellar, comprehensive content strategy needs to begin with user data.

What are your consumers saying they want or like most about your product? What are their gripes? What do they wish you’d offer? There’s a ton of survey tools out there, so make use of them to get your hands on consumer insights and build from what you learn.

Become a user

Many marketers make the mistake of trying to market a product or service they have never significantly used themselves. Don’t make this mistake with the Metaverse.

Become a user first. Go into the Metaverse with an open mind and see how it strikes you. What do you notice, what do you wish was there? Allow yourself to be inspired. Some of the best marketing ideas come when you’re not trying to market at all.

Challenges and ethical considerations

As with any new technology, there are concerns about privacy, security, and ethics in the Metaverse.

Chief among them are:

Theft of personal, financial, and identity data due to cyberattacks: The internet has been around long enough for us all to know what a nightmare cyber-theft is. In the Metaverse, it can potentially be more disastrous in scope.

Privacy: The ability to stay anonymous, keeping your “real” life separate from the “you” in the Metaverse.

Cyber “eavesdropping”: The ability to keep your creations, shopping history, conversations, and all other activities restricted to only those you want to share them with.

Protection from virtual assault: In a world where everyone controls an avatar without the consequences of the physical world, how do you regulate things like verbal abuse from other users or assault on your virtual self?

A 2022 survey conducted by Morning Consult reflects these concerns from survey respondents.

(Image Source)

Regulatory considerations

Like social media platforms, the primary form of regulation in the Metaverse is an agreement between ‌users and the platforms they are engaging with. This leaves regulatory enforcement in the hands of individual companies.

This can (and should) concern both brands and users alike. Yet, if the widespread use of social media is any rubric to go by, ethics concerns won’t stop using virtual reality.

Still, it may dissuade adoption by demographics who already face discrimination in physical reality. Think about how the content you create for your brand can be inclusive and safe for all users.

Data and analytics

While marketers and developers are starry-eyed over the potential of what VR technology can do, users are more interested in how they can use it to enrich and simplify their everyday lives.

Based on a 2022 research report from Accenture, out of 9,000 people surveyed, 70% wanted simple interfaces that were easy to use. 69% wanted a wide selection of applications to choose from. Only 55% cared about sleek headsets and the ability to personalize their avatars, things marketers might assume users care about.

In the same survey, users were most excited about using the Metaverse for the following‌ reasons:

(Image Source)

The lesson in this data isn’t to assume you know what your users want — ask them! Your Metaverse content strategy will be much more effective the closer you listen and implement what your target demographic wants.

Content strategy tools

As you think about navigating content in the Multiverse in 2024, consider some of these tools:

Blender: Blender is a 3D open-source suite of creative tools that allows you to build spaces, experiences, and animations utilizing its traditional sculpting and modeling functions.

Notion: At first glance, Notion looks like a simple note-taking app. However, its content and project management capabilities are staggering. Notion integrates with many apps and technologies, making it worth learning and adding to your tech stack.

Babylon.js: Babylon.js is an open-source browser-based rendering engine that allows you to create immersive and collaborative spaces using a rich library of JavaScript source code.

Many AI tools allow you to build the brand experience that’s right for your company and user base. As new tools develop, you’ll discover the best for you and your team.

Future-proofing content strategy

Every new shift in technology has come with a few bumps, scraps, and growing pains. This is previously uncharted territory, and it’s normal to feel out of your depth at first. However, history has repeatedly shown that the difference between brands that survive and brands that don’t is their ability to adapt.

When it comes to future-proofing your content strategy, invest in Metaverse-ready technologies.

For content, this means preparing to create in 3D. Invest in training and software that makes this possible. Adobe, Unreal Engine, and 3D Cloud are good places to start.

Conclusion

When it comes down to it, brands that embrace the shifting landscape will be poised for success, while others risk being left behind.

The Metaverse is a vast, interconnected space where users can engage, interact, and create content in ways previously unimaginable. It has already begun to revolutionize how we consume and produce digital content and will continue to do so in unprecedented ways.

Whatever feelings you may have about it, the Metaverse is the future. As you plan your content strategy for 2024, keep your eye on the creative, and don’t be afraid to break barriers.

The post Content Strategy in the Metaverse Era: Navigating the Digital Multiverse of 2024 appeared first on Scoop.it Blog.

Web 3.0 and blockchain technology become a force for good with MOU between Crescite and University of Notre Dame

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 17:47:09 +0200

The University of Notre Dame, the private research university based in Indiana, is demonstrating that traditional, religious organizations and breakthrough technology can be combined.

The catholic university recently signed a Web 3.0 memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Crescite Innovation Corporation, a company with the world’s first faith-based blockchain token.

The expansive new MOU will see the two parties collaborating on joint research projects, prototyping and blockchain competitions. The partnership is a major step forward for the fast-growing community of organizations that aim to leverage Web 3.0 technologies for social causes.

To give an example, Crescite combines the collective interest of faith-based communities and impact-related investments to grow a global network of economic activity that is impactful, profitable, and sustainable. This includes the Crescite Protocol, a decentralized finance (DeFi) model with the world’s first faith-based token.

Meanwhile, the University of Notre Dame is inspired by its Catholic character to be a powerful force for good in the world with a commitment to leveraging technology in progressive ways to support those in need.

The intersection of faith and technology

The University of Notre Dame already has leading computing and blockchain research units. The new partnership with Crescite is expected to accelerate the pace of research projects further and deliver more impactful outcomes.

Jarek Nabrzyski, founding director of the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Research Computing (CRC) and Blockchain Research Lab in the CRC, said, “We are pleased to come together with Crescite to help realize the potential that Web 3.0 offers faith-based and values-driven organizations.”

Nabrzyski, a concurrent professor in Notre Dame’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering, added, “Through this agreement, Notre Dame researchers will play a key role in developing, testing, and refining the next generation of Blockchain technologies. There is a lack of proven digital tools for building sustainable, inclusive growth. Through this new collaboration, our students and researchers will be able to apply their technical expertise to be a greater force for good.”

How Crescite turns blockchain into a force for good

Crescite’s leadership team are committed to using tech for good wherever possible, helping to reduce social inequalities and promote inclusion.

Crescite CEO Edward Cullen

The new agreement with the University of Notre Dame will ensure that innovative blockchain solutions and Web3 principles can be brought forward into a thriving Catholic community.

Eddie Cullen, CEO of Crescite, commented, “There are 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide within the wider 2.3 billion strong Christian community. For Crescite, working with Catholics and Christians to foster faith-based projects that deliver positive social impact will be core to achieving our goals.”

“We hope that many more organizations like the University of Notre Dame will join our community to leverage the benefits of Web 3.0 technology for the greater good,” the executive added.

Cullen is an entrepreneur who is known for developing technology and providing regulatory leadership that always keeps public service in mind. Previously, Cullen was a candidate for Mayor of New York City and continues to provide leadership on many issues, including the provision of affordable housing.

Karl P. Kilb III, Chairman of Crescite, also plays a leading role in delivering on Crecite’s mission of delivering tech for good. He commented, “Technology can be used to solve problems, and we see ourselves at the intersection of technology, faith, and social impact.”

“We are using aspects of Web 3.0 and new models to address a wide range of issues, including MC5 identity verification, access to capital, and payment security, creating financial inclusion, transparency, and greater efficiencies throughout the process.”

Kilb is an entrepreneur who focuses on authentication, cybersecurity, and sustainability. Previously, he was the first General Counsel of Bloomberg LP, and he is also the Founder and Chairman of the Entrepreneurial Law Advisory Council at the Fordham University School of Law, where he is an adjunct professor of Entrepreneurship.

Together with research experts from the University of Notre Dam, Crescite’s leaders will be developing, testing, and refining the next generation of Blockchain technologies and uncovering new digital tools for building sustainable, inclusive growth.

This article includes a client of an Espacio portfolio company

The post Web 3.0 and blockchain technology become a force for good with MOU between Crescite and University of Notre Dame appeared first on The Sociable.

‘Internet of Bodies may lead to Internet of Brains’ by 2050: RAND

Tue, 26 Mar 2024 22:41:47 +0200

Transhumanism may lead to super-human capabilities for some & mind control for others: perspective

The Internet of Bodies ecosystem may lead to the Internet of Brains sometime between 2035 and 2050, according to a UK Defence-commissioned RAND report.

“An ‘internet of bodies’ may also ultimately lead to an ‘internet of brains’, i.e. human brains connected to the internet to facilitate direct brain-to-brain communication and enable access to online data networks”
RAND Corporation, March 2024

Commissioned by the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and conducted by RAND Europe and Frazer Nash Consulting, the study “Cultural and technological change in the future information environment” looks at six technologies and information environments and their implications for British defense.

They include:

Automated information systems

A virtual metaverse

Augmented and mixed reality

Advanced connectivity

Human augmentation

Information security

A major theme running through these information environments is transhumanism — the merger of humans and machines.

“While some experts predict the tactical improvement of human capabilities, others have explored the potential emergence of ‘trans-humanism’ within the 2050 timeframe”
RAND Corporation, March 2024

According to the report, “Advances in object connectivity may eventually extend to human bodies. Researchers refer to the potential development of an internet-linked network of human-connected devices collecting end users’ biometric data as an ‘internet of bodies […] An ‘internet of bodies’ may also ultimately lead to an ‘internet of brains’, i.e. human brains connected to the internet to facilitate direct brain-to-brain communication and enable access to online data networks.’“

The Internet of Bodies and the coming Internet of Brains fall specifically under the category of “human augmentation technologies,” which “refer to technologies that enhance human capabilities, either physically or cognitively.”

According to the report, the technological applications most associated with human augmentation include:

Wearable devices and implants for tracking and analyzing physiological and environmental data (e.g. biochips and implantable sensors). These technologies aim to achieve real-time continuous monitoring of physiological data to understand human health conditions and performance

Sensory augmentation technologies such as hearing and retinal implants designed to improve or augment sensory activities, particularly vision and hearing. Smart prosthetics are a related category, including exoskeletons, i.e. whole-body robotic suits that enhance end users’ physical capabilities and improve their mobility, strength, endurance and other abilities

Brain-computer or brain-brain interfaces that establish direct communications between human brains and/or computer devices

Elon Musk’s Neuralink is the latest example of a brain-computer interface that received much publicity for helping a paralyzed man, but what happens when human augmentation goes from healing to enhancement?

Remember the transhuman adage: from healing to enhancement. https://t.co/PCHMtsczce
— Joe Allen (@JOEBOTxyz) March 26, 2024

Transhumanism may lead to superhuman abilities, but those abilities may be reserved for only a select chosen class while the rest of us programmable plebs could exist in a constant state of surveillance and control until we become irrelevant.

According to the report, “While some experts predict the tactical improvement of human capabilities, others have explored the potential emergence of ‘trans-humanism’ within the 2050 timeframe.

“This concept describes ‘a new form of human (a trans-human) […] where information and communication technologies and biomedicine will fundamentally improve the human condition and greatly enhance human intellectual, physical and psychological capacities.”

For the chosen ones, they could receive human performance enhancement that would give them the ability to never tire, think smarter, move faster, jump higher, see farther, hear better, hit harder, live longer, adapt stronger, and calculate quicker than any other human being on the planet.

Meanwhile, the fourth industrial revolution is already merging our physical, biological, and digital identities in order to monitor, manipulate, and reprogram our behavior.

If and when humans become fully integrated with machines on a large scale, where will the technology end and the human begin?

Internet of Bodies Examples, RAND Corporation 2020

The authors of the RAND report say that “Given the direct embedding of technology into human cognitive, physical and psychological functions, substantial levels of human augmentation may ‘[blur] the notions of identity and of what it means to be human’, introducing new normative lenses on humanity and producing new stigma for those not seen as attaining those norms.”

On an individual level, if you wish to remain a natural human and not become part of “Homo sapiens technologicus,” you might not be able to compete in the workplace, and you might be rendered part of the useless class of human.

On an international level, countries, cultures, and communities that don’t participate in the transhumanist experiment may find themselves easily conquered by those that do.

The report adds, “The social dynamics of human augmentation adoption may include disparities in access to relevant technologies, thus introducing new forms of digital exclusion whereby the economically disadvantaged cannot access the same enhancement level as other societal segments.”

At the same time, natural humans who don’t get chipped may have an advantage in that they may not be as easily manipulated and controlled by thoughts or memories that may not be entirely their own.

In other words, transhumanism may lead to super-human capabilities for some, and mind control for others.

“Advances in brain-computer interfaces may translate into developing brain-to-brain communication technologies, leading to entirely new modes of interpersonal communication”
RAND Corporation, March 2024

“Human augmentation could undermine end users’ cognitive safety and influence their ability to assess the credibility of information they receive while using human augmentation technologies”
RAND Corporation, March 2024

Manipulation and control are other areas of concern with human augmentation, the Internet of Bodies, and the Internet of Brains.

False information, images, sounds, memories, and thoughts could one day be downloaded to these devices and uploaded to the human brain with devastating effect.

According to the report, “Sensing technologies (e.g. hearing implants), in particular, carry a risk of interference, whereby devices could be manipulated to provide erroneous information to the end user.

“Such manipulation of sensory inputs would substantially amplify current threats from artificially creating or manipulating visual and auditory information (e.g. images and videos).

“Therefore, human augmentation could undermine end users’ cognitive safety and influence their ability to assess the credibility of information they receive while using human augmentation technologies.“

“Significant advancements are likely in human augmentation technologies in the 2035–2050 timeframe”
RAND Corporation, March 2024

The Pentagon, too has been investigating how to fundamentally alter what it means to be human, funding research into creating super humans that are smarter, faster, and stronger through human performance enhancement.

Once technology gets in-and-under the skin to collect as much intimate data about you as possible, you are well on the way to transhumanism and the beginning of what could be the worst totalitarian surveillance regime in human history.

Worse than being serfs, those not able to keep up in this brave new transhumanistic world would be rendered irrelevant, redundant, useless — unnecessary even for manual labor.

After all the genetic editing and the technological manipulation stemming from the fourth industrial revolution, will we still be able to call ourselves human?

Humanity as we know it may split into an entirely new species, where those not genetically edited or technologically altered could never compete with those who were.

In a future where humans are no longer considered to be natural humans, what would that mean for human rights?

Image by kjpargeter [cropped] on Freepik

Endowed by their Creator: exploring ‘human’ rights in the age of transhumanism

The ‘great reset’ meets the Internet of Bodies: manipulating human behavior with authoritarian surveillance

Pentagon is researching gene editing, Internet of Bodies & AI to enhance human performance: RAND

From limb restoration to implanted memories: Neuralink ‘Telepathy’ is just the beginning

WEF agenda envisions an ‘augmented society’ ruled by Internet of Bodies, digital ID

Transhumanism, generative AI & Internet of Bodies top WEF emerging tech report

The post ‘Internet of Bodies may lead to Internet of Brains’ by 2050: RAND appeared first on The Sociable.

15 AI Tools Helping SME’s and Startups to Thrive in 2024

Tue, 26 Mar 2024 15:53:05 +0200

Article authored by Kevin Siskar, CEO of Finta

John McCarthy first coined the term “artificial intelligence” (AI) in 1956, but the technology has only become widely known in recent years. The phenomenally powerful AI tools that have hit the market in recent years are only possible thanks to decades of research and development in the fields of computer science and engineering.

The global AI market today is valued at USD 196.63 billion and is projected to expand rapidly in the years ahead with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37.3% through 2030.

This is because we’re now at a stage where AI can be used reliably for a growing number of real-world applications with the ability to deliver powerful results. From automated analytics to content creation and smart assistants, AI is quickly becoming an integral part of business operations and the range of applications is only set to become more diverse.

Small businesses and startups in particular are set to benefit from AI. The technology offers an affordable way to fuel growth and open up new business opportunities and 7 out of 10 startups worldwide have already started to integrate AI into their workflows.

But what are the best AI tools on the market and how can they be leveraged? Here’s our pick of 15 AI tools that have the power to help business owners streamline operations and optimize growth in 2024.

Service Cloud Einstein from Salesforce

Salesforce is one of the most widely used CRM platforms around and a legacy player in the industry. Now, the provider has launched Service Cloud Einstein to drive efficiency and better customer experiences with predictive and generative AI.

It helps identify and prioritize leads and sales opportunities, increasing win rates. It resolves routine customer requests in real-time via web or mobile messaging and suggests appropriate communication channels to connect with each type of customer. In all, it helps every business deliver a more personalized experience to customers.

NetBase Quid

NetBase Quid is an AI tool that tracks the correlation between brands and audiences in real time. The software analyzes the interaction generated by the brand across various digital platforms and extracts the data to get a clear idea of audience needs.

This application is set to act as a major support for marketing teams thanks to its ability to support the creation of consumer-focused campaigns. It is currently used by major companies such as Tesla, Uber, and Zara.

Zoho Zia

Zoho Zia is an integrated voice assistant that uses AI to transform raw data into useful information for different teams in the company. The application is worth noting as it can understand and process external customer queries from calls or email to provide an immediate response and flag actions with the appropriate team.

The tool also conducts predictive analysis to uncover business intelligence insights and KPI performance to create powerful, easy-to-digest visualizations.

Prezent

Founded in 2021, Prezent is a company dedicated to facilitating the creation of business presentations through an AI-based platform that combines empathy, business, and design.

With Prezent, teams can showcase their ideas with clear, personalized, brand-aligned slides that are rapid and cost-effective to create.

Its founder, Rajat Mishra, is an entrepreneur and developer trained at one of India’s most demanding technology schools. He wrote code for Microsoft and later joined Cisco, where he advanced his career to lead a team of over 1,000 people, becoming one of the company’s youngest vice presidents.

Correcto

Founded in 2021 by Madrid-based entrepreneurs Abraham López, Ignacio Prieto, and Antonio Triguero, Correcto is a writing tool that uses AI and Machine Learning (ML) to offer users writing suggestions and analysis to improve written communication in Spanish.

As the first Spanish grammatical platform powered by AI and ML, they aim to improve text quickly and easily by providing real-time recommendations and corrections as you write.

Author Kevin Siskar

Fracttal

Fracttal is a pioneering company that offers a fully mobile maintenance management software solution. The platform offers innovation in asset maintenance management, helping thousands of institutions and companies around the world. By managing assets and energy use more smartly with the help of AI, companies across industries can save energy, reduce waste and manage emissions easily and efficiently.

The company has successfully secured US$10 million in investment and has built an impressive portfolio comprising nearly 1500 clients. Among its clientele are industrial giants such as Renault, Burger King, Acciona, Unilever, Iberostar, Veolia, FedEx, Oxxo, 3M, and Coca-Cola.

Jasper

Many recognize Jasper as the premier AI writing assistant, leading the market with its impressive features and quality. By providing just a few initial words, Jasper can generate sentences, paragraphs, or documents based on the topic and tone of voice. It is capable of producing a 1,500-word article in less than 15 minutes.

The platform boasts over 50 AI content generation templates, including blog posts, emails, marketing copy, Facebook ad generator, Google ad generator, meta titles and descriptions, press release, and much more.

Murf

Murf is one of the most popular and impressive AI voice generators on the market. Murf allows anyone to convert text to speech or create voice overs, and dictations. The tool is used by a wide range of professionals such as product developers, podcasters, educators, and business leaders.

Murf offers many customization options to help you create the best voices with a natural sound. It has a variety of voices and dialects to choose from, as well as an easy-to-use interface.

Reply

Reply is one of the tools that every founder should consider. It is used to design workflows, measure the impact of different actions, and search for emails to quickly and easily increase the database.

Through a browser-installable extension, it is possible to start capturing clients from LinkedIn and add potential customer data so that you can contact them later. The tool allows you to make calls and send suggested emails and provides detailed statistics analysis for potential improvements.

Sembly

Sembly is a SaaS platform that helps make meetings more effective for you and your team. Through AI algorithms, it can transcribe and analyze meetings, turning them into actionable and useful information for sales teams.

Sembly has a web and mobile application that can be integrated with tools like Teams, Zoom, and Meets, making meeting content available for review, search, and sharing when needed.

Quickblox

This cloud-based platform enables businesses to create their own real-time communication apps through pre-configured infrastructure and front-end apps.

Based in the United Kingdom, Quickblox provides a streamlined solution for businesses looking to deliver a professional user experience comparable to leading communication apps like WhatsApp and Zoom. The platform allows users to have control over the type of communication, including chat, voice, or video calling. Users also have control over push notifications, data storage, and secure file sharing.

HireVue

With HireVue, you can create scalable and structured recruitment interviews to ensure that each candidate answers the same questions. Then, HireVue applies AI to create transcriptions and assist you in analyzing the responses. This helps reduce potential biases, which often arise when recruiters have to improvise their questions and conclusions on the fly.

In addition to its commitment to security, scalability, and integration with calendars and applicant tracking systems (ATS), the most remarkable feature of HireVue is its ability to help recruiters make unbiased decisions.

SuperHuman

Superhuman is an email app founded in 2014 by Rahul Vohra. It is targeted at users who want to improve their productivity and features liberal use of keyboard shortcuts to speed up email reading and replying. With its AI, users can write faster than ever before. The organization claims to save teams over 10 million hours every single year.

Mem.ai

Mem.ai is an AI-powered notes app that helps founders become hyperorganized. The app collates data and live activity from notes found in the range of apps used on a daily basis. Mem understands intelligent search queries and allows users to search, ask, and reuse thoughts without doing any organizing.

The assistant can also act as a thought partner, engaging with users on past ideas to swiftly generate outputs.

Zoom’s AI Assistant

Zoom’s AI assistant helps draft emails and chat messages, summarize meetings and chat threads, and make brainstorming sessions more fun and productive.

Acting as a powerful addition to the go-to video conferencing tool, the smart assistant empowers users to increase productivity, improve team effectiveness, and enhance their skills by creating high-quality content outputs based on the actual activities of users during calls and meetings.

Clay.earth

Clay had updated the classic analog Rolodex for the digital age. Working with rich user data found across iPhone, Mac, and web activity, Clay offers an automated way to boost the outcomes of professional interactions.

The tool has huge potential to help founders network in meaningful ways and build better business relationships by leveraging insights from your personal contact list.

Cursor.sh

Cursor is a groundbreaking, AI-first Code Editor. It enables all team members to code without development experience. This solution has the potential to cut down product development lead times, experiment with new offerings in a cost-effective way, and open up the process from the product team to the whole company.

Cursor eliminates the need to look for code thanks to a tailored repository while saving time thanks to its intelligent co-pilot feature.

Arc Max

Arc Max enables users to browse the web using AI to leverage smart insights found within everyday browsing activity. Users can apply intelligent AI to any webpage to get more from the web. The ChatGPT integration lets you ask questions in real time without navigating away from browsing activity, making AI even more efficient.

The post 15 AI Tools Helping SME’s and Startups to Thrive in 2024 appeared first on The Sociable.

AnnotatED 2024 – A conference for educators & administrators interested in social annotation

Mon, 25 Mar 2024 22:43:19 +0200

The expanding digital annotation space is getting a new thought leadership event. Hypothesis, a leading social annotation solution provider, announced Monday that it will host AnnotatED 2024 on April 17-18, from 12-3pm ET.

AnnotatED is the flagship event for educators, administrators, and innovators who want to learn how to harness social annotation in an educational setting.

The term social annotation refers to the collaborative experience of making digital annotations on a shared text, in the process highlighting insights, creating discussions and opening a new world of collaboration.

Founded in 2011 by CEO Dan Whaley, Hypothesis’s social annotation platform has grown to service over 1 million users making over 60 million annotations across all types of text online. The company has emerged as a leader in the industry, and with AnnotatED, looks to expand education and awareness about this type of collaborative learning experience.

The virtual conference is free to attend and promises a deep dive into social annotation’s dynamic and evolving role in higher education. AnnotatED 2024 aims to bring together thought leaders, faculty experts, and educators from around the globe to share their insights, best practices, and innovative approaches in the field of social annotation. There will be over 20+ live sessions hosted from institutions such as Toronto University, Florida State University, Dartmouth College, and SUNY New Paltz.

This year’s event explores vital themes such as the impact of social annotation on learning and engagement, future trends in social annotation and technology, building collaborative and inclusive learning environments, and strategies for increasing student engagement and retention in courses.

Attendees will engage in various interactive sessions, ranging from keynote presentations to panel discussions and roundtables; all centered around the practical and actionable strategies that can be implemented in the classroom immediately.

Some of the sessions include:

“Decoding Research: The Influence of Annotations on Scientific Comprehension and Professional Identity” by Nicholas Denton from The Ohio State University

“Enhancing Collaborative Learning in Business Education at Florida State University” featuring Andrea Hodge, Ömer Arslan, and Joseph Rider

“Lessening Distractions and Increasing Attention with Social Annotations” by Nita Gopal from Modesto Junior College

“Social Annotations’ Role in Building & Maintaining a Community of Practice” led by Jennifer Young from the University of Alaska Fairbanks

And many more engaging discussions and presentations!

Hypothesis’ Whaley will also be on hand each day to kick off the event and share different insights into social annotation.

Find the full schedule below and check our their video on X.

https://twitter.com/hypothes_is/status/1767520978785935652/video/1

Disclosure: This article mentions a client of an Espacio portfolio company.

The post AnnotatED 2024 – A conference for educators & administrators interested in social annotation appeared first on The Sociable.

7 Strategies to Diversify Your Content and Attract New Audiences

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 18:00:00 +0200

Content is king. It helps you connect with a relevant audience and generate awareness about your brand.

Content is the key to generating traction for your online business and capturing quality leads for your sales funnel.

However, doing so may be easier said than done, as growing businesses often find it challenging to attract and engage new audiences through their content strategy.

There may be multiple factors that may come into play here, such as the ever-changing interests of the intended audience, industry trends, the competitive landscape, and so on, causing your content to become saturated and lose its effectiveness.

When that happens, diversifying your content may be a viable approach that helps you achieve your set goals.

This article showcases a few noteworthy strategies that may help you diversify your content and attract new audiences.

Get Acquainted With Your Audience’s Interests

The key to generating more traction through your content is creating it around the needs and preferences of your target audience.

Around 71% of people think that you can only get the best results from your content if you understand your audience to deliver customer-centric content.

Source

It increases the likelihood of engagement and makes it possible for you to get more eyeballs. However, the interests of your target audience may change over time.

And keeping up with them will help you diversify your content and make changes to your content strategy as the situation demands.

Leverage Content Gap

Another effective way to diversify your content and attract new audience segments is by assessing the content gap.

This requires you to study your competitors and explore the content that they produce. Next, you compare their content with yours to identify areas that you have not covered yet.

No matter how well-thought-out your content creation process is, there’s always room for improvement. There may be opportunities that you have missed, which you can explore by studying your competition. This helps you diversify your content and cover new topics that resonate with your niche.

Explore the Latest Trends

Exploring the latest trends in your respective industry is an excellent way to diversify your content and generate more traction. Keeping an eye on new trends helps you discover new topics and increase your traffic volume.

Rising trends are often a hot topic for discussion. People like to search for the latest happenings and want to stay tuned to the current news and updates. This is due to the fear of missing out, which you can leverage to cast a wider net.

Creating content around the latest trends not only helps you attract new audiences but also improves your search engine visibility. Google, a search engine giant with 93% of the market share in the industry, prefers fresh and relevant content.

So, covering the latest trends may fuel your SEO and make your content stand out from the competing brands in your respective industry.

Explore Different Content Types

If you want to improve your content diversity, you should consider exploring different content types.

It’s reported that 58% of content creators generally produce around 2 to 4 different types of content for their respective audiences.

Not only does this make their content diverse, but it also allows them to cater to the different choices of their target audience.

When it comes to consuming content, people may have different preferences. Some may like text-based content, whereas others may be fascinated by visuals.

Even the specified categories can be further classified into different content types, such as blogs, guides, webinars, infographics, podcasts, videos, and more.

Leveraging different content types helps you drive more engagement and attract a wider audience through different platforms.

Be Familiar With Dynamics of Different Platforms

Speaking of platforms, to outperform your competitors, having an omnichannel presence is a must.

You can’t just create content, publish it on your website, and be done with it. You may have to leverage a variety of platforms to engage the intended audience.

Social media has over 4.74 billion users around the globe. So, your inactivity on the platforms that align with your niche may prove to be a fatal mistake.

However, to generate traction through social media and other third-party platforms, it’s essential that you get acquainted with the platform dynamics.

Each platform may target a different audience segment and give you better results if you share a particular type of content. So, having an active presence on different platforms may call for and improve your content diversity.

Leverage User-Generated Content

You can improve your content diversity by leveraging user-generated content. This can be customer reviews, testimonials, or success stories, representing the experiences of your target audience with the solutions offered by you.

You can use this content to create case studies and showcase them on your website, make videos, or create social media posts and stories.

User-generated content not only helps you diversify your content but also makes it possible for you to engage your target audience.

Plus, you can significantly improve your conversions, as around 55% find it difficult to trust unfamiliar brands and look for recommendations online before making a buying decision.

Leverage Content Curation

Curating content may come in handy when improving your content diversity. Whether you use the content already published by you or leverage third-party sources, curating content is an efficient way to attract a relevant audience, as you don’t create content from scratch.

For example, you can take a blog and curate a video from it by using the blog’s content as your script.

Maintaining content diversity may be challenging, as it may require you to cover different topics and cater to diverse content types. But it becomes easier when you don’t have to spend hours trying to create something from scratch. All you have to do is use the existing resources to come up with new and insightful content.

This is the reason why around 25% of marketers prefer curating content to attract a relevant audience.

Source

Final Words

There you have it: seven strategies to diversify your content and attract new audiences. If you’ve been looking for ways to get more eyeballs and engage new audience profiles, you may have to consider different preferences and embrace content diversity.

If you’ve been looking for ways to create diverse and appealing content, the recommendations in this article may come in handy.

The post 7 Strategies to Diversify Your Content and Attract New Audiences appeared first on Scoop.it Blog.
Your metaverse identity will be central to daily life: WEF report

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 22:53:05 +0200

Virtual voodoo dolls, autonomous avatars & digital doppelgangers will be your behavior-profiling passports in the metaverse: perspective

Your metaverse identity, with its digital ID, biometric data capture, and behavior profiling, will be central to your every day life, according to a World Economic Forum (WEF) report.

“Metaverse identity” is a relatively new concept that the WEF and Accenture describe in great detail in a new 48-page report entitled “Metaverse Identity: Defining the Self in a Blended Reality.”

According to the report:

“As people spend more time exploring, playing and socializing in digital experiences, a person’s metaverse identity will be central to their day-to-day life as well as to the way they express their personal identity.”

But what exactly do the unelected globalists mean by “metaverse identity?”

“A person’s metaverse identity will be central to their day-to-day life”
METAVERSE IDENTITY: DEFINING THE SELF IN A BLENDED REALITY, WEF, MARCH 2024

Metaverse identity encompasses three components:

Representation: including personal, social and role identity, be it through avatars, pseudonyms or other digital expressions

Data: capturing the intricate web of knowledge about individuals generated by metaverse supporting hardware and software

Identification (ID): be it through driver’s licenses, government-issued IDs, passports, birth certificates, attestations, labels, or usernames and passwords

According to the report, “Metaverse identity broadens ‘identity’ as it is known today and combines it with the digital underpinnings of the internet. It is a multi-layered construct of an individual or entity, including everything from representation to data and identification.”

Source: WEF, Accenture

With these three components, identity in the metaverse “connects and anchors a person to the physical and virtual world.”

Let’s break them down, starting with representation.

“The notion of ‘representation’ is not just about pixels and graphics; it’s a reflection of societal values, inclusivity and the human desire for authenticity […] Representational design choices extend to the design of digital entities – from embodied virtual agents to non-embodied virtual assistants”
METAVERSE IDENTITY: DEFINING THE SELF IN A BLENDED REALITY, WEF, MARCH 2024

Representation has to do with how you present and express yourself in the metaverse, whether it’s a realistic likeness of yourself or an abstract, creative, or artistic version.

The authors say that, “These expressions may extend to include words, actions, behaviors and mannerisms,” so there is an element of behavior profiling going on in the representation category, which we will also see in the data capture and identification categories.

Representation in the metaverse will also take on a new meaning with the introduction of digital entities that act on your behalf.

According to the report, “Digital entities may represent humans, objects, systems or abstract concepts, and are capable of varying degrees of interaction, autonomy and behavior within digital experiences […] They are capable of mimicking human communication and may be used as sales assistants, corporate trainers, social media influencers and more.”

Source: WEF, Accenture

Like non-player characters (NPCs) in videogames, these digital doppelgangers attempt to mimic human behavior.

And like a virtual voodoo doll, if something goes wrong with your digital entity, it could spill over into your personal life in the real world.

“While digital entities can offer innovative interactions and functionalities within the metaverse, they may commit real-world harms,” the report cautions, adding, “The ability to manipulate or create misinformation through digital entities – such as chatbots and photoreal avatars – raises ethical and security concerns.”

Now let’s dig into the data category.

“Identity goes beyond ID, like a passport or driver’s license. Metaverse identity includes data points”
METAVERSE IDENTITY: DEFINING THE SELF IN A BLENDED REALITY, WEF, MARCH 2024

The data category of metaverse identity is aimed at gathering and analyzing data to make inferences about you, and it will be used to predict your behavior, thanks to AI and Machine Learning.

“Paired with artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) models that can analyze a person’s interactions, movements and preferences further generates identity,” the report reads.

“Whether these (inferred) data points are capturing a person’s current activities, predicting their next action or future preferences, these data-based breadcrumbs provide information into one’s identity.

“These attributes may influence the way the virtual environment responds to an individual, and outsiders perceive an individual or entity.”

This data aspect of metaverse identity is important to unelected globalists who are obsessed with manipulating human behavior and controlling what people think and do.

“There is a risk that governments could use aggregated inferred data for surveillance, monitoring dissidents, or suppressing certain groups without their active consent”
METAVERSE IDENTITY: DEFINING THE SELF IN A BLENDED REALITY, WEF, MARCH 2024

Source: WEF, Accenture

Inferred data, “now aided by AI/ML, can examine seemingly unrelated behaviors, actions and choices to draw meaningful conclusions about a person’s preferences, background and intentions,” according to the report.

Once you know intent, whether of an individual or an unelected globalist think tank, then it becomes a lot easier to predict what they’ll do or say next, even if they deceptively try to mask their true intentions.

And, “While this data is collected to enhance the person’s experience, it could also be analyzed to make inferences as to their real-world identity or preferences and used for targeted advertising or other purposes without their consent.”

Making inferences for “other purposes” without the user’s consent is what defense and intelligence agencies are after in the metaverse.

A recent RAND Corporation report suggests as much with respect to the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) looking to spy on users in the metaverse, stating, “As DHS grapples with emerging challenges by monitoring and analyzing users’ activity in metaverses, it should undertake legal and ethical reviews of what information is collected and how it is managed.”

Now, we shall move on to the identification category.

“The concept of identity is contextual, flexible, complex and fluid […] Identity extends into the intricacies of an individual’s behaviors, actions and choices”
METAVERSE IDENTITY: DEFINING THE SELF IN A BLENDED REALITY, WEF, MARCH 2024

Source: WEF, Accenture

Perhaps the most confusing part of metaverse identity is the identification or ID aspect because digital ID and digital identity are terms that are often used interchangeably, including by yours truly, but they are quite different.

Identification is about identifying, verifying, and authenticating who someone is.

Identity on the other hand, “consists of layered aspects of cultural heritage, ethnicity, age, professional and social roles, hobbies, gender identification, sexual orientation and much more,” according to the report.

Now that we’ve taken care of the distinction between the two, your digital ID will be your passport to the metaverse, and like with a passport, there will be certain areas that you will not be able to access.

According to the report, “Similar to today’s traditional identification systems – like passports and driver’s licenses – IDs may evolve to include unique avatar designs, new body-based attestations or unique virtual signatures that validate one’s existence and grant access to specific realms or activities.”

To illustrate how digital ID plays into digital identity, the authors say, “Forms of ID – such as passports and government IDs – formalize an individual’s identity; additionally, these can serve as credentials or means of authenticating and verifying individuals across physical and digital spaces.”

“Metaverse identity is integral to future internet interactions”
Metaverse Identity: Defining the Self in a Blended Reality, WEF, March 2024

Source: WEF, Accenture

Now that we’ve gone through the three components that make up metaverse identity, what are some of the potential drawbacks?

For starters, the report says, “There is a risk that governments could use aggregated inferred data for surveillance, monitoring dissidents or suppressing certain groups without their active consent.”

Your metaverse identity can include your real-time biometrics, such as pupil dilation, heart rate, and brainwaves, so that companies and governments can infer how you are feeling and reacting to their goods, services, or policies.

Historian Yuval Noah Harari spoke of this same technology falling into the hands of dictators at the 2020 WEF Annual Meeting in Davos. There, he said:

“Just imagine North Korea in 20 years where everybody has to wear a biometric bracelet, which constantly monitors your blood pressure, your heart rate, your brain activity 24 hours a day.

“You listen to a speech on the radio by the ‘Great Leader,’ and they know what you actually feel — you can clap your hands and smile, but if you’re angry, they know you’ll be in the gulag tomorrow morning.”

Having a biometric data capturing device attached to your body that knows what you’ll do before you do it raises serious ethical questions about how the data is collected, where that data goes, and who has access to some of the most intimate details of your life.

For the past few years, Meta has been working on Project Aria, which combines augmented reality with artificial intelligence to create realistic 3D renderings of people, places, and things, including living spaces.

When Mark Zuckerberg explained his vision for the metaverse at Connect 2021, he highlighted how Project Aria could map a person’s apartment, including everything in it (see video below).

Imagine how valuable that information would be to companies — knowing which products you use, which ones they think you’ll want, and how you organize your living space, so they can manufacture extremely personalized ads.

What could insurance companies do with that data? How would landlords react?

Now, think about how governments, intelligence agencies, and law enforcement would love to get their hands on that type of data.

With the data collected from someone wearing a pair of AR glasses, who needs facial recognition, geolocation tracking, or contact tracing when governments and corporations can see what you see, hear what you hear, and know where you and what you are doing in real-time?

Of course, these dystopian scenarios need not come to pass, and indeed great efforts are being made to safeguard privacy in the design of these tools and systems — at least for now.

The metaverse identity report is replete with cautionary tales and references to building systems that are fair, just, diverse, equitable, inclusive, privacy-preserving, and every other type of virtuous buzzword they think you want to hear.

Over time; however, goalposts may shift, emergencies may be declared, and laws and regulations may be circumvented.

And what do the authors of the metaverse identity report propose to safeguard the metaverse and its integrity?

Their solution is to put “the onus on the global community.”

“The metaverse could be fertile ground for powerful manipulative tactics, putting the onus on the global community to establish robust frameworks that not only facilitate the growth of the metaverse but also safeguard its integrity.”

Is “the global community” ever defined in the report? No, but the WEF calls itself the “International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation” and has its Global Innovators, Young Global Leaders, and Global Shapers communities, which might give us a clue as to whom they are referring.

The metaverse will no doubt change the way we work and play, leading to exciting cross-disciplinary collaborations, scientific discoveries, and untapped marketplaces.

But if the unelected globalists and unaccountable technocrats are in charge of governance, the metaverse will be nothing more than a digital playground for the great reset agenda where your digital identity determines your level of entry and where anything you say or do in the virtual world will come back to haunt you in the physical one and vice versa — there will be no distinction between the two.

Once everyone is hooked up to a digital identity while plugged into the metaverse, all that is needed to quash dissent is a simple flick a switch on someone’s digital identity and voila! it’s like that person doesn’t exist anymore.

Your metaverse identity, with its virtual voodoo dolls, autonomous avatars, and digital doppelgangers will be your passport in the metaverse, where it will be used to surveil, predict, and mimic your behavior while determining your level of access to information and spaces.

But not to worry, your metaverse identity will only be essential to your day-to-day life and will only be integral to all your future internet interactions.

Image by WangXiNa on Freepik

The metaverse as a playground for the great reset & the fourth industrial revolution

‘Digital identity is the nexus to an interoperable metaverse’: WEF
GitHub and see the analysis notebook with interactive charts in Jupyter Notebook Viewer.

Excited? Let’s get to it!

Task setting

Imagine we own an E-commerce website. On this website, the seller can upload the descriptions of the items they want to sell. They also have to choose items’ categories manually which may slow them down.

Our task is to automate the choice of categories based on the item description. However, a wrongly automated choice is worse than no automatization, because a mistake might go unnoticed, which may lead to losses in sales. Therefore we might choose not to set an automated label if we’re not sure.

For this case study, we will use the Zenodo E-commerce text dataset, containing item descriptions and categories.

Good or bad? How to choose the best model

We will consider multiple model architectures below and it’s always a good practice to decide how to choose the best option before we start. How is this model going to impact our product? …our infrastructure?

Obviously, we will have a technical quality metric to compare various models offline. In this case, we have a multi-class classification task, so let’s use a balanced accuracy score, which handles imbalanced labels well.

Of course, the typical final stage of testing a candidate is AB testing – the online stage, which gives a better picture of how the customers are affected by the change. Usually, AB testing is more time-consuming than offline testing, therefore only the best candidates from the offline stage get tested. This is a case study, and we don’t have actual users, so we’re not going to cover AB testing.

What else should we consider before moving a candidate forward for AB-testing? What can we think about during the offline stage to save ourselves some online testing time and make sure that we’re really testing the best possible solution?

Turning technical metrics into impact-oriented metrics

Balanced accuracy is great, but this score doesn’t answer the question “How exactly the model is going to impact the product?”. To find more product-oriented score we must understand how we are going to use the model.

In our setting, making a mistake is worse than giving no answer, because the seller will have to notice the mistake and change the category manually. An unnoticed mistake will decrease sales and make the seller’s user experience worse, we risk losing customers.

To avoid that, we’ll choose thresholds for the model’s score so that we only allow ourselves 1% of mistakes. The product-oriented metric can then be set as follows:

What percentage of items can we categorise automatically if our error tolerance is only 1%?

We’ll refer to this as Automatic categorisation percentage below when selecting the best model. Find the full threshold selection code here.

Inference time

How long does it take a model to process one request?

This will roughly allow us to compare how much more resources we’ll have to maintain for a service to handle the task load if one model is selected over another.

Scalability

When our product is going to grow, how easy will it be to manage the growth using given architecture?

By growth we might mean:

more categories, higher granularity of categories

longer descriptions

larger datasets

etc

Will we have to rethink a model choice to handle the growth or a simple retrain will suffice?

Interpretability

How easy it will be to debug model’s errors while training and after deployment?

Model size

Model size matters if:

we want our model to be evaluated on the client side

it is so large that it could not fit into the RAM

We’ll see later that both items above are not relevant, but it’s still worth considering briefly.

Dataset Exploration & Cleaning

What are we working with? Let’s look at the data and see if it needs cleaning up!

The dataset contains 2 columns: item description and category, a total of 50.5k rows.
file_name = "ecommerceDataset.csv"
data = pd.read_csv(file_name, header=None)
data.columns = ["category", "description"]

print("Rows, cols:", data.shape)

# >>> Rows, cols: (50425, 2)
Each item is assigned 1 of the 4 categories available: Household, Books, Electronics or Clothing & Accessories. Here’s 1 item description example per category:

Household SPK Home decor Clay Handmade Wall Hanging Face (Multicolour, H35xW12cm) Make your home more beautiful with this handmade Terracotta Indian Face Mask wall hanging, never before u can not catch this handmade thing in market. You can add this to your living room/ Entrance Lobby.

Books BEGF101/FEG1-Foundation Course in English-1 (Neeraj Publications 2018 edition ) BEGF101/FEG1-Foundation Course in English-1

Clothing & Accessories Broadstar Women’s Denim Dungaree Earn an all-access pass wearing dungarees by Broadstar. Made of denim, these dungarees will keep you comfy. Team them with a white or black coloured top to complete your casual look.

Electronics Caprigo Heavy Duty – 2 Feet Premium Projector Ceiling Mount Stand Bracket (Adjustable – White – Weight Capacity 15 Kgs)

Missing values

There’s just one empty value in the dataset, which we are going to remove.
print(data.info())

# <class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
# RangeIndex: 50425 entries, 0 to 50424
# Data columns (total 2 columns):
#  #   Column       Non-Null Count  Dtype 
# ---  ------       --------------  ----- 
#  0   category     50425 non-null  object
#  1   description  50424 non-null  object
# dtypes: object(2)
# memory usage: 788.0+ KB

data.dropna(inplace=True)
Duplicates

There are however quite a lot of duplicated descriptions. Luckily all duplicates belong to one category, so we can safely drop them.
repeated_messages = data \
    .groupby("description", as_index=False) \
    .agg(
        n_repeats=("category", "count"),
        n_unique_categories=("category", lambda x: len(np.unique(x)))
    )

repeated_messages = repeated_messages[repeated_messages["n_repeats"] > 1]

print(f"Count of repeated messages (unique): {repeated_messages.shape[0]}")
print(f"Total number: {repeated_messages['n_repeats'].sum()} out of {data.shape[0]}")

# >>> Count of repeated messages (unique): 13979
# >>> Total number: 36601 out of 50424
After removing the duplicates we’re left with 55% of the original dataset. The dataset is well-balanced.
data.drop_duplicates(inplace=True)
print(f"New dataset size: {data.shape}")
print(data["category"].value_counts())

# New dataset size: (27802, 2)
# Household                 10564
# Books                      6256
# Clothing & Accessories     5674
# Electronics                5308
# Name: category, dtype: int64
Description Language

Note, that according to the dataset description,

The dataset has been scraped from Indian e-commerce platform.

The descriptions are not necessarily written in English. Some of them are written in Hindi or other languages using non-ASCII symbols or transliterated into the Latin alphabet, or use a mix of languages. Examples from Books category:

यू जी सी – नेट जूनियर रिसर्च फैलोशिप एवं सहायक प्रोफेसर योग्यता …

Prarambhik Bhartiy Itihas

History of NORTH INDIA/வட இந்திய வரலாறு/ …

To evaluate the presence of non-English words in descriptions, let’s calculate 2 scores:

ASCII-score: percentage of non-ASCII symbols in a description

Valid English words score: if we consider only latin letters, what percentage of words in the description which are valid in English? Let’s say that valid English words are the ones present in Word2Vec-300 trained on an English corpus.

Using ASCII-score we learn that only 2.3% of the descriptions consist of more than 1% non-ASCII symbols.
def get_ascii_score(description):
    total_sym_cnt = 0
    ascii_sym_cnt = 0
    
    for sym in description:
        total_sym_cnt += 1
        if sym.isascii():
            ascii_sym_cnt += 1
    return ascii_sym_cnt / total_sym_cnt

data["ascii_score"] = data["description"].apply(get_ascii_score)
data[data["ascii_score"] < 0.99].shape[0] / data.shape[0]

# >>> 0.023
Valid English words score shows that only 1.5% of the descriptions have less than 70% of valid English words among ASCII words.
w2v_eng = gensim.models.KeyedVectors.load_word2vec_format(w2v_path, binary=True)

def get_valid_eng_score(description):
    description = re.sub("[^a-z \t]+", " ", description.lower())
    total_word_cnt = 0
    eng_word_cnt = 0
    
    for word in description.split():
        total_word_cnt += 1
        if word.lower() in w2v_eng:
            eng_word_cnt += 1
    return eng_word_cnt / total_word_cnt

data["eng_score"] = data["description"].apply(get_valid_eng_score)
data[data["eng_score"] < 0.7].shape[0] / data.shape[0] 

# >>> 0.015
Therefore the majority of descriptions (around 96%) are in English or mostly in English. We can remove all other descriptions, but instead, let’s leave them as is and then see how each model handles them.

Modelling

Let’s split our dataset into 3 groups:

Train 70% – for training the models (19k messages)

Test 15% – for parameter and threshold choosing (4.1k messages)

Eval 15% – for choosing the final model (4.1k messages)
from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split

data_train, data_test = train_test_split(data, test_size=0.3)
data_test, data_eval = train_test_split(data_test, test_size=0.5)

data_train.shape, data_test.shape, data_eval.shape

# >>> ((19461, 3), (4170, 3), (4171, 3))
Baseline model: bag of words + logistic regression

It’s helpful to do something straightforward and trivial at first to get a good baseline. As a baseline let’s create a bag of words structure based on the train dataset.

Let’s also limit the dictionary size to 100 words.
count_vectorizer = CountVectorizer(max_features=100, stop_words="english")

x_train_baseline = count_vectorizer.fit_transform(data_train["description"])
y_train_baseline = data_train["category"]

x_test_baseline = count_vectorizer.transform(data_test["description"])
y_test_baseline = data_test["category"]

x_train_baseline = x_train_baseline.toarray()
x_test_baseline = x_test_baseline.toarray()
I’m planning to use logistic regression as a model, so I need to normalize counter features before training.
ss = StandardScaler()
x_train_baseline = ss.fit_transform(x_train_baseline)
x_test_baseline = ss.transform(x_test_baseline)

lr = LogisticRegression()
lr.fit(x_train_baseline, y_train_baseline)

balanced_accuracy_score(y_test_baseline, lr.predict(x_test_baseline))
# >>> 0.752
Multi-class logistic regression showed 75.2% balanced accuracy. This is a great baseline!

Although the overall classification quality is not great, the model can still give us some insights. Let’s look at the confusion matrix, normalized by the number of predicted labels. The X-axis denotes the predicted category, and the Y-axis – the real category. Looking at each column we can see the distribution of real categories when a certain category was predicted.

Confusion matrix for baseline solution.

For example, Electronics is frequently confused with Household. But even this simple model can capture Clothing & Accessories quite precisely.

Here are feature importances when predicting Clothing & Accessories category:

Feature importances for baseline solution for label ‘Clothing & Accessories’

Top-6 most contributing words towards and against Clothing & Accessoriescategory:
women      1.49			book     -2.03
men        0.93			table    -1.47
cotton     0.92			author   -1.11
wear       0.69			books    -1.10
fit        0.40			led      -0.90
stainless  0.36			cable    -0.85
RNNs

Now let’s consider more advanced models, designed specifically to work with sequences – recurrent neural networks. GRU and LSTM are common advanced layers to fight the exploding gradients that occur in simple RNNs.

We’ll use pytorch library to tokenize descriptions, and build and train a model.

First, we need to transform texts into numbers:

Split descriptions into words

Assign an index to each word in the corpus based on the training dataset

Reserve special indices for unknown words and padding

Transform each description in train and test datasets into vectors of indices.

The vocabulary we get from simply tokenizing the train dataset is large – almost 90k words. The more words we have, the larger the embedding space the model has to learn. To simplify the training, let’s remove the rarest words from it and leave only those that appear in at least 3% of descriptions. This will truncate the vocabulary down to 340 words.

(find full CorpusDictionary implementation here)
corpus_dict = util.CorpusDictionary(data_train["description"])
corpus_dict.truncate_dictionary(min_frequency=0.03)

data_train["vector"] = corpus_dict.transform(data_train["description"])
data_test["vector"] = corpus_dict.transform(data_test["description"])

print(data_train["vector"].head())
# 28453    [1, 1, 1, 1, 12, 1, 2, 1, 6, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 6,...
# 48884    [1, 1, 13, 34, 3, 1, 1, 38, 12, 21, 2, 1, 37, ...
# 36550    [1, 60, 61, 1, 62, 60, 61, 1, 1, 1, 1, 10, 1, ...
# 34999    [1, 34, 1, 1, 75, 60, 61, 1, 1, 72, 1, 1, 67, ...
# 19183    [1, 83, 1, 1, 87, 1, 1, 1, 12, 21, 42, 1, 2, 1...
# Name: vector, dtype: object
The next thing we need to decide is the common length of the vectors that we are going to feed as inputs into RNN. We don’t want to use full vectors, because the longest description contains 9.4k tokens.

However, 95% of the descriptions in the train dataset are no longer than 352 tokens – that’s a good length for trimming. What’s going to happen with shorter descriptions?

They are going to be padded with padding index up to the common length.
print(max(data_train["vector"].apply(len)))
# >>> 9388

print(int(np.quantile(data_train["vector"].apply(len), q=0.95)))
# >>> 352
Next – we need to transform target categories into 0-1 vectors to compute loss and perform back-propagation on each training step.
def get_target(label, total_labels=4):
    target = [0] * total_labels
    target[label_2_idx.get(label)] = 1
    return target

data_train["target"] = data_train["category"].apply(get_target)
data_test["target"] = data_test["category"].apply(get_target)
Now we’re ready to create a custom pytorch Dataset and Dataloader to feed into the model. Find full PaddedTextVectorDataset implementation here.
ds_train = util.PaddedTextVectorDataset(
    data_train["description"],
    data_train["target"],
    corpus_dict,
    max_vector_len=352,
)
ds_test = util.PaddedTextVectorDataset(
    data_test["description"],
    data_test["target"],
    corpus_dict,
    max_vector_len=352,
)

train_dl = DataLoader(ds_train, batch_size=512, shuffle=True)
test_dl = DataLoader(ds_test, batch_size=512, shuffle=False)
Finally, let’s build a model.

The minimal architecture is:

embedding layer

RNN layer

linear layer

activation layer

Starting with small values of parameters (size of embedding vector, size of a hidden layer in RNN, number of RNN layers) and no regularisation, we can gradually make the model more complicated until it shows strong signs of over-fitting, and then balance regularisation (dropouts in RNN layer and before last linear layer).
class GRU(nn.Module):
    def __init__(self, vocab_size, embedding_dim, n_hidden, n_out):
        super().__init__()
        self.vocab_size = vocab_size
        self.embedding_dim = embedding_dim
        self.n_hidden = n_hidden
        self.n_out = n_out

        self.emb = nn.Embedding(self.vocab_size, self.embedding_dim)
        self.gru = nn.GRU(self.embedding_dim, self.n_hidden)
Dencun Upgrade: Ethereum’s Advancement in L2 Scalability Mon, 18 Mar 2024 22:10:15 +0200 If you are familiar with Ethereum, you know its mission – to be scalable, secure, and decentralized. As Ethereum’s popularity has surged, so too have the demands on its network, raising gas fees and highlighting its scalability challenges. Layer 2 solutions, Ethereum’s answer to the scalability problem, enabled handling transactions off the main chain without compromising its core principles. Still, gas prices on L2 – lower, but not yet low enough – remain a barrier to Ethereum’s widespread adoption. Imagine finding an NFT collection you like, only to discover that the transaction will cost nearly as much as the NFT itself! Even on L2, this scenario is all too common. What’s so special about the day? Well, the next Ethereum upgrade, Dencun, is scheduled for activation, as announced during Consensus Layer Call 127 and confirmed by Tim Beiko of the Ethereum Foundation. Blobs are coming to mainnet at slot 8626176 .oO — timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) February 8, 2024 Dencun is poised to be a game-changer for Ethereum’s scalability. Encompassing a hard fork involving Deneb (Consensus layer) and Cancun (Execution layer) upgrades, Dencun promises to usher in a new era of affordability for transactions on Ethereum L2s. With the upgrade already live on devnets and testnets like Goerli, Sepolia, and Holesky, and Mainnet readiness confirmed, we finally stand on the brink of a gigantic leap forward. One of the most anticipated changes is the introduction of off-chain data blobs via Proto-Danksharding. Let’s explore what this entails for Ethereum. Unveiling Blobs and Proto-Danksharding Data blobs are a novel concept designed to optimize L2 transaction data storage on Ethereum. Currently, rollups store their data in transaction calldata. It’s not only limited in size but is also stored forever, creating a problem of always-rising requirements for running a validator. Proto-Danksharding, as introduced by EIP-4844, lays the groundwork for an innovative, dramatically more efficient data handling mechanism, addressing the limitations of current on-chain data storage. With data blobs, specifically designed to handle large amounts of data outside the main Ethereum blockchain, rollups will be able to store data in a more cost-effective and scalable manner. This new storage solution for rollup transactions will reduce the rate of future Ethereum data growth, contributing to a leaner and more efficient network. For developers, this brings the ability to create more complex and data-intensive smart contracts without being hindered by prohibitive gas costs. For users, it translates into lower fees, making L2-based applications more accessible and appealing to a wider audience. Finally, it also allows Ethereum Validator Node Operators to optimize disk space usage as blobs are pruned after around 2 weeks. The Expected Effect of the Dencun Upgrade on the Ethereum Ecosystem Several key players in the Ethereum ecosystem, such as OP Labs and the zkSync team, have provided quantitative insights into the expected benefits of this upgrade. OP Labs forecasts an extraordinary 20x reduction in gas costs for data storage on Ethereum by Optimism L2. Similarly, the zkSync team anticipates a tenfold decrease in gas costs for data storage, projecting the total gas costs on zkSync to drop from an average of $0.20 per transaction to under $0.10. While these projections highlight dramatic savings in data storage costs, it’s important to keep in mind that the overall gas costs experienced by users involve multiple factors beyond L1 data storage. The Proto-Danksharding upgrade, by reducing the rate of future Ethereum data growth, addresses a crucial aspect of transaction costs. However, the actual effect on user transaction fees will vary, as these fees also depend on computational complexity, network congestion, and other factors. Beyond Dencun: The Road to Full Danksharding As you can see, the Dencun upgrade is indeed a crucial milestone for Ethereum. Yet, it is only the first step on a much larger, bolder path towards full Danksharding. This future phase in Ethereum’s evolution is set to massively boost the network’s transaction processing capability and efficiency. Imagine a blockchain that can smoothly process more than 100,000 transactions per second. Yes, that’s where we’re headed! As I mentioned above, Proto-Danksharding sets the groundwork by integrating off-chain data blobs and reducing the cost of L2 data storage on Ethereum. The full Danksharding expands on these principles, aiming to increase the number of blobs per block from 1 to 64. This transition does not just mean an increase in data storage efficiency but a fundamental re-architecture of how blocks are processed and validated across the network. The move towards full Danksharding will require several significant technical and operational changes: Proposer-Builder Separation: This mechanism separates the roles of proposing blocks and building blocks within the network. Dealing with 64 blobs instead of one would be too tasking for a single builder+proposer, so the duties will be separated. Additionally, this change will reduce the risk of censorship or manipulation by preventing proposers (validators) from being influenced by the contents they’re including in a block. Data Availability Sampling: To ensure data within shards remains available, DAS allows nodes to verify the availability of shard data without needing to download the entire shard. This technique is crucial for maintaining blob data integrity and accessibility efficiently across the network. Embrace the Future of Ethereum! The Dencun upgrade is a pivotal milestone for Ethereum, marking a major leap forward in its evolution. This upgrade not only promises to elevate the platform’s efficiency and L2 transaction affordability but also lays the foundational steps toward the much-anticipated transition to full Danksharding. As we transition into this transformative phase, it’s imperative for the Ethereum community, including developers, investors, and enthusiasts, to remain informed and actively contribute, thus ensuring a seamless evolution of the ecosystem. Engaging across forums, chats and social media, as well as participating in development projects, enriches our collective journey towards realizing a more efficient, inclusive, and forward-thinking blockchain platform for all. This article was originally published by Nikolay on HackerNoon. The post Dencun Upgrade: Ethereum’s Advancement in L2 Scalability appeared first on The Sociable. The Tech Company Brief by HackerNoon: Nintendo Enforces Shutdown of Yuzu and Citra Websites Mon, 18 Mar 2024 22:05:59 +0200 Look, I don’t know where you fall on the spectrum of “does emulation promote piracy?”, but the idea that a video game company like Nintendo can let off its army of lawyers on a bunch of hobbyists/programers/geeks like a pack of hungry wolves and force them to shut down AND pay over 2 million in dollars just because it thinks emulation promotes piracy should alarm any and every one in the tech space. To quote Steam Founder Gabe Newell: “Piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue.” Amen to that, brother, AMEN! Microsoft’s Xbox understands this. Sony’s PlayStation understands this. But somehow, the memo was lost on Nintendo which thought it was absolutely ok to force Tropic Haze, the company behind Switch emulator Yuzu and 3ds emulator Citra, to shut down its websites, take down its code repositories AND pay $2.4 million because, apparently, its software allowed people to illegally play Zelda. Nevermind the fact that thousands of people legally pay for Nintendo titles and emulate them on a different hardware because it plays better or because it provides more accessibility. But of course, that’s the kind of rhetoric that would fall on deaf ears at Nintendo HQ. Instead, you have Nintendo coming out of the woods to protect its iNtElLeCtUaL pRoPeRtY whenever someone makes a fan project, a ROM website full of abandonware titles, or literally dozens of instances where people just want to do cool and different things with its video game titles. Ironically, except for a handful of titles that Nintendo offers through its online subscription service, there is no “legal” way to play games from the yesteryears without actually emulating them. Emulating video games also ties into video game preservation, but that’s a whole different topic altogether. On top of that, Nintendo won’t even port its major titles to the PC. Perhaps because it doesn’t want to share revenue with others OR it wants to keep selling the Switch consoles. Whatever the case may be, it still SUCKS that Nintendo would just blatantly shut down a project like Yuzu. In some ways, one could argue that this is an attempt by one of the most successful companies in the world to make an example out of a project that is born out of passion. But what does that get the company ultimately? It’s already massively rich, and all it’s achieving out of these intimidation tactics is to scare off gamers and those who create emulators for them. There’s no telling where the scales will tip for emulators for older Nintendo consoles like the Wii or the Wii U, but it wouldn’t be surprising if more and more developers decide to not create emulator software because they don’t want to fall foul of Nintendo’s legal antics. So, yeah. Nintendo sucks and this is the world we live in. Biden Administration to Dole Out Billions in Federal Grants to Chipmakers$3 trillion in value. Entrepreneurial activity helps to create new jobs, fosters innovation, and drives market competition. In turn, they attract investment and create wealth that has a positive cascading effect in other areas. Startups are also agile, meaning they have the ability to respond market evolutions extremely quickly. In the U.S. an average of 476,000 new startups are formed annually. In 2023, individuals filed nearly 2.7 million applications to start a business between January and June, a 5 percent increase over 2022. This means we’re likely to see even more dynamic ideas hitting the market in the years to come. Here we present The Sociable’s list 40 innovators under 40 from around the world who are working to further innovations in everything from cybersecurity and the blockchain to transportation and marketing. Lucas Bonatto , Director of AI at Semantix Lucas’s technology expertise and passion for machine learning allowed him to develop the first generation of large-scale machine learning platforms. His enthusiasm for technology fueled the creation of Marvin AI, one of the first open-source ML Ops platform and Elemeno, a comprehensive solution for artificial intelligence development. Currently, he’s the Director of AI at Semantix a prominent leader in artificial intelligence and analytics solutions that offers innovative and disruptive services, including one-stop-shop Generative AI platform for quickly implementing AI-native apps within businesses. Danish Ahmed, Founder of Startuptools.ai Over the past 14 years, Danish has led product development across mobile, web, and hardware platforms which makes him an experienced product leader in the AdTech industry. This entrepreneur started his career at a venture incubator, where he gained valuable experience in rapidly validating and iterating on products to achieve problem-solution fit. Over the past three years at Nativo, he has led the product direction for their media and insights platforms. His company, Startuptools.ai is an application built to help entrepreneurs through the key stages of establishing a new business; generating ideas, formulating plans, and executing launches. It aims to empower and enable entrepreneurs, even those without a technical background, to take advantage of AI as a partner in building their businesses. Camilo Martinez, Co-founder of Leal.co Camilo’s entrepreneurial journey began when he launched Impulse Travel, Colombia’s first e-commerce travel company. His expertise in the startup industry expanded when he worked as an analyst and associate at Bancolombia, leading the mergers and acquisitions transaction team for the food, beverage and retail sectors. With both startup and corporate finance expertise he co-founded Leal.co, a loyalty platform startup with offices across Latin America. Dan Berges, Founder and CEO of Berges Institute Based in NYC, Dan is a multifaceted entrepreneur, teacher, writer, programmer, podcaster and musician originally from Madrid, Spain. In 2013 he founded Berges Institute, the fastest-growing Spanish language school for adults in the U.S. Dan holds a Master’s degree in Teaching, has a background in experimental semantics and he authored The Graf Method for Spanish Language and contributed to outlets including Forbes and MultiLingual. Nenad Zaric, CEO and Co-founder of Trickest Nenad is a cybersecurity expert who has worked uncovering critical vulnerabilities in top-tier companies like Uber, Adobe, Spotify, Twitter, Snapchat, Airbnb, and Daimler Truck. He co-founded Trickest, a pioneer in enterprise security automation that lets security teams (companies, security providers, ethical hackers) create automated attack simulations, from testing to real-world use. With more than a decade of experience in penetration testing, bug bounty hunting, biotech and security automation, he has been a driving force in shaping the future of digital security. Samantha Goniea, Director of Global Marketing at Nisum With over 15 years of strategic and creative experience freelancing with start-ups, launching new brands and activations, and helping established brands take their marketing initiatives to the next level, Samantha is a seasoned marketing professional and entrepreneur. She is also the co-founder of Desert Fox Creations, a top 5% shop on Etsy, and the owner of Markify, a performance-driven marketing agency. Alejandro Perez, Co-founder of Fracttal Alejandro is a senior programmer expert in a diversity of languages and technologies. His expertise is further enhanced by his deep knowledge of security practices and product development. innovative Colombian electronics engineer. He launched his first entrepreneurial initiative in 2008 in the biomedical field and ever since, Alejandro has established himself as a distinguished entrepreneur and a leading innovative product and hardware researcher. His entrepreneurial journey led him to co-found Fracttal with Christian Struve in 2014, a pioneering company offering a fully mobile maintenance management software solution, which quickly positioned itself as one of the most prominent worldwide. Fracttal has managed to capture US$10 million in investment and its client portfolio includes industrial giants such as Renault, Burger King, Acciona, Unilever, Iberostar, Veolia, FedEx, Oxxo, 3M and Coca-Cola. Mike DeKock, Founder, & CEO of MJD Advisors Mike’s professional path started at a large CPA firm where he was a financial statement auditor. He developed a passion for process improvement and became a subject matter expert in applying the audit and attestation standards. He then founded MJD Advisors after spending much of his career as a general practitioner and experiencing himself the huddle of slow processes and what it meant to provide low value to clients. In 2017 he began focusing on SOC reports and then in 2021 his startup was created with the goal of leveraging expertise and modern technology to elevate client relationships and automate anything that doesn’t require a conversation. Ruth Álvarez, Founder and Executive Director of Mercado Global Ruth has received recognition on both national and global platforms for her work as a social entrepreneur. She was named one of the “World’s Best Emerging Social Entrepreneurs” by Echoing Green and was featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine as one of “15 People Who Make America Great.” Álvarez has been a pioneer in the field of ethical fashion. What started as a small nonprofit working with a dozen Indigenous women artisans in Guatemala has now become a social enterprise that supports Indigenous women across the Americas in gaining income and empowerment through access to international markets. Together with Ruth’s vision and leadership, Mercado Global has made major contributions to promoting fair trade practices in the global fashion industry and in advancing this movement within major fashion corporations including Nordstrom, Levi’s and Bloomingdale’s. Tucker F. Cohen, Founder & CEO of Smoov Tucker has an extensive background in sales and marketing. For over 10 years, he has cultivated a passion for crafting innovative solutions that address real-world problems experienced by everyday people. In his role as founder and CEO of Smoov, he has set his sights on streamlining the way couples manage joint expenses without a shared bank account. Tucker has an impressive track record of effectively leading and scaling teams and partnerships across different industries, including software and sports. He has leveraged his expertise in communication, leadership, and creative approach to problem-solving to advise and invest in several startups. Madhav Srinath, Founder of NexusLeap Madhav is obsessed with distilling complex technical topics into bite-sized and concise briefs that leave his audience with tangible takeaways. He has even made a career out of this with his startup, NexusLeap, an analytics consulting company that specializes in scalable decision-making tools. His expertise in data warehousing, BI, and cloud apps has allowed him to serve on Microsoft’s AI advisory board and even to hold analytics leadership roles in consulting and product companies. He mentors at USC’s incubator, is a Forbes Council member, and has lectured at UT Austin on AI. Taylor Hersom, Founder of Eden Data Taylor has experience advising Fortune 500 companies at Deloitte and as a former CISO, Taylor has emerged as one of the youngest executive-level security experts in the field. As a prominent voice on global security, Taylor enhances his professional brand through ventures like Eden Data, Millennial CISO, and as the inaugural member of CompTIA’s Cybersecurity Advisory Council. Staying on top of the latest developments allows him to deliver optimal solutions to clients. Ted Ko, President at Techko Group With a degree in Electrical Engineering and a minor in Chinese from Harvard University, Ted’s expertise is very diverse including business strategy, brand, UI/UX design and web development. He is currently the President of Techko Group, a consumer electronics company. He co-founded the startup Coral Robots, launching the world’s first 2-in-1 robot and handheld vacuum. Previously, Ted built products at Yieldmo, a USV-backed ad tech startup that delivered hundreds of millions of impressions daily on CNN, The New York Times and more. He also worked as a designer at IDEO, prototyping new business units on blockchain and Bitcoin applications, partnering with companies like Citi and Nasdaq. Edward Cullen, CEO of Crescite Edward Cullen is a technology entrepreneur with more than 15 years of experience. The co-founder and CEO of Crescite was a leading New York City mayoral candidate in 2021 after working on the Biden campaign. Edward was the first employee at Company.co, where he supported over 150 startups that created 2,174 jobs and raised over $1 billion in VC funding. In 2020, he launched the second Harlem Tech Summit, drawing 2,000+ attendees and featuring leaders from Google, The Vatican, MIT, and more. Daniela Gutierrez, Project Manager at Source Meridian Daniela Gutiérrez is a certified Project Manager and Product Owner with over 10 years of experience in medical data and software development. She was key in establishing Source Meridian, a software company focused on life science and health tech. Gutiérrez has been vital in growing and maintaining client partnerships for Source Meridian. Daniela has the skills needed to build strong relationships with stakeholders. Her specialized expertise makes her an asset in managing complex software projects in the medical and health technology space. Fabio Richter, Founder of Hot Meal Challenge Fabio is an entrepreneur at heart. During college, he built several ventures including Laulau, Studyhero, Studyhuman, and Discofetch. He also founded the Hot Meal Challenge, a charity that provides hot meals to families facing food poverty across London, in partnership with Sufra. This initiative has served hundreds of people across the city. Fabio’s side interest is writing. He likes to explore topics around technology, culture, and economics, with articles in Inc. Magazine, Investment Monitor, South China Morning Post, and more. Abdulla Basha, VP of Growth Marketing at Prezent Basha leads the Growth Marketing team at Present, a remote-first communication productivity platform. He was recently named as one of the winners in the 2023 APPEALIE awards in the SaaS Marketing Leader category thanks to his exceptional work. His expertise includes data analytics, customer behaviors, customer acquisition strategies, and testing of new growth strategies and tactics. Matt Farrell, Vice President at Mortgage Lending Done Right Matt is a former professional basketball player. He played in Turkey, Israel and Germany. He was also part of the Miami Heat, The Lithuanian Basketball League (LKL).[10] On September 23, Rytas Vilnius and Matt Farrell parted ways. Currently he’s the Vice President at MLO, a lending family-owned company that assists with sales and marketing along with back office operations. Matt has a Bachelor’s degree in Communication How Brands Are Using Influencer Marketing to Improve Their SEO Thu, 14 Mar 2024 18:00:00 +0200 A quick web search of the keywords “influencer marketing” and “SEO” will show you multiple articles that state: The benefits of influencer marketing The benefits of SEO (search engine optimization). Both these strategies are treated as the be-all and end-all of the marketing world, but what happens when you leverage one of them (influencer marketing) to grow another (SEO)? The short answer: You improve your search visibility, trust, and ranking. If you’re wondering how to make this happen, this article is exactly what you need. Here, we’ll dive in to learn how brands use influencer marketing to improve SEO. 1. To create content and improve visibility Influencers are among the best people to collaborate with to create unique and engaging content for your brand that doesn’t see high bounce rates and makes your target audience stick and watch. And since your SEO score relies on how well you craft content, how relevant it is, how valuable your audiences find it, and how apt the topics and discussions are, leveraging your influencers for content creation is a must. For example, consider Hims as an example. The brand partnered with Instagram influencer Kyle Russell to promote their hair regrowth solutions. Image Source Because he published real before-and-after results (aka, information deemed helpful to the reader), it became an engaging post that got more likes than Kyle’s average Instagram posts and raised several questions about the brand’s pills, too. For reference, this post saw increased engagement rates with 1,394 likes, whereas his recent posts are seeing anywhere between 15–500 likes. Pro Tip: Turn your customers into influencers To replicate the same results for your brand, consider partnering with your existing customers to show real results to your prospects across your social media channels. Aside from just before-and-after results, other content templates you can consider using are testimonials, case studies, and user-generated content. Such partnerships with your customers will also help you: Understand the unique use cases where your product has been beneficial Find potential customer pain points you might not be aware of Pinpoint how your customers talk (so you can use the same language in your marketing materials) 2. To build high-quality backlinks Another excellent way influencer partnerships can be powerful for your SEO is due to backlinks. For example, any links to your website through an influencer’s bio, video description, guest post, social media captions, etc., can help the search engine think of your brand as trustworthy. While these backlinks help improve your visibility on the search engine results page (SERP), another SEO-related area it’ll help you with is increasing your website’s domain rating (DR). These days, brands are thinking out of the box and partnering with influencers who can make their backlinks look authentic. For example, Cruise America, a company that offers RV rentals, often partners with travel influencers to create exciting road trip content. These influencer campaigns not only showcase the benefits of opting for an RV rental but also help build valuable backlinks from travel blogs and influencer platforms (aka people who have niche authority), thereby boosting SEO. Image Source Another example to consider is LeatherCult, a brand specializing in genuine leather jackets. The company consistently partners with up-and-coming influencers who get a PR package to review their leather jackets on various social media platforms. These posts include links to their product pages in the video descriptions. These backlinks, originating from popular social platforms like YouTube, serve a dual purpose. They drive organic traffic directly to LeatherCult’s website and positively influence the brand’s search engine rankings. Image Source 3. To adhere to EEAT standards Many search engines have algorithms that help them decide which type of content to push forward. In that context, Google has an algorithm that recommends using the Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (EEAT) methodology. Basically, what this means is that if the Shopify blog were to produce e-commerce content vs. a marketing agency were to produce e-commerce content, it’d push Shopify’s content higher, even if they have similar ideas. Why? Mainly because Shopify has more authority on the topic and a better DR. This logic applies to people creating blog posts, too. For example, if both a professional writer and Wes Anderson were to write about filmmaking on a blog with the same DR, the algorithm would likely rank Wes Anderson’s content higher because he has more topical authority and experience. Screenshot by Vergine Melkonyan You can leverage EEAT when partnering with influencers, too. For example, if you’re competing on the SERP for the same relevant keywords, you can partner with influencers with authority and experience with the topic (e.g., travel influencers for travel topics) to rank your content higher. Here are a few examples of brands leveraging EEAT and creating high-quality content that might serve as inspiration: 1. Reliable Couriers Logistical companies, such as those offering courier services, often partner with influencers from complementary niches, such as small business owners who ship a lot of products and have many orders to keep track of. Since these influencers already have experience dealing with courier providers, their insights come across as trustworthy, and the search engine believes they’re partnering with someone who has experience writing/talking about the subject. 2. Custom Frame Store Custom Frame Store, a company that sells wholesale picture frames, has partnered with local artists and art influencers to increase the visibility of its products. These genuine recommendations convince the search algorithm that the company is trustworthy. In turn, the artists gain exclusive access to custom frames to complement their artworks at a generous discount. Image Source 4. To improve social signals SEO and search algorithms also (indirectly) account for social signals. That’s to say, your likes, dislikes, subscriber list, engagement, comments, social shares, reach, etc., all play an integral part in improving your visibility. Since influencers have larger followings and can boost awareness for your brand, they can help with social signals. For example, if an influencer promotes your brand on their Instagram, a decent size of their follower list may check out your brand and follow you, too. While the impact of SEO in this scenario is low, it does help increase sales and impressions for your brand. Plus, if you partner with an influencer who also targets the same demographic as you, you can access newer leads and/or increase the frequency of your interactions with your existing customers. 5. To target specific keywords Influencers can also be excellent collaborators to increase your share of voice for specific topics and/or keywords. For example, if you’re a company that offers document management services — that’s a strong long-tail keyword you might want to target. Image Source While you can increase your content production for the same keywords, you can still only produce content for your website and social channels, which does lead to certain restrictions in your content production efforts. However, if you partner with influencers, you can use their social channels and blogs to target the same long-tail keywords. For example, if your brand name is ABC, the long-tail keyword you can ask your influencers to target is “ABC document management services.” When you create a website, it is essential to strategically incorporate relevant keywords into the URL. This practice not only improves the overall user experience, but also contributes significantly to SEO. 6. To get analytics and insights Truth be told, building your SEO score requires a whole bunch of trial and error. Because of this, Google Analytics on content topics, keyword traffic, backlinks, and customer intent help a lot in improving your SEO strategy. While insights from your own tools will no doubt help, insights from other tools your partners (such as influencers) use will also help you make sense of your existing data as well as provide you with newer insights. For example, to reach a newer, more engaged demographic, some companies found that they could target millennials by focusing on undiscovered content topics and by finding ways to connect with this audience on social media. When in doubt, use your analytics to unlock a treasure trove of information and drive data-driven decisions to build a robust content curation strategy. Improve your SEO score with better content creation We previously said this, but your SEO efforts start and end with content creation — you need your content to rank and make the content valuable to justify the time and effort put into your SEO efforts. At Scoop.it, we understand this very well — we’re a content curation solution, after all, so why couldn’t we? Our tool specializes in helping individuals and organizations curate and publish well-written content. In fact, here’s a small testament to our capabilities: “We use Scoop. to easily curate and organize all the industry content impacting our business. We analyze and add our expert insight in clicks and share with decision-makers in customized weekly newsletters. When performing a performance analysis, we found that these newsletters are already opened and clicked more than 80%. Not a bad payback after approximately three weeks!” our client operating in the SaaS space To learn more about Scoop.it’s capabilities, and to enhance your content marketing strategy, sign up for free! The post How Brands Are Using Influencer Marketing to Improve Their SEO appeared first on Scoop.it Blog. 3 Powerful Questions Life Planning Wed, 13 Mar 2024 18:33:23 +0200 Accessible Content: How to Ensure Your Online Content is Accessible Thu, 07 Mar 2024 19:00:00 +0200 Online content creation isn’t a day’s job. You need to consider user intent, pain points, and motivation before mapping out strategic campaigns to nurture your customer from awareness to purchase. But if your audience can’t use or access this content, you risk undermining all your good work. For example, could a user with a disability access and make the most of your content in the same way as a user without a disability? If what you put out there in the world isn’t universally accessible, you might be missing out on a potentially crucial audience segment. Here, we’ll examine what accessible content is and how you can make your online content more accessible to people with disabilities. What Is Accessible Content? Accessible content is any online information with intentional design features to ensure people with disabilities can access and interact with it effectively. Accessible content is for individuals with visual, auditory, motor, cognitive, and neurological impairments. The goal of creating accessible content is to provide an inclusive and equal experience for all users and across all content types—blogs, social media, website forms, and even email. While in this article we’ll focus on how to make content more accessible to users with a disability, web accessibility also caters to other situational contexts: Users with smaller screens like mobile phones and smartwatches. Older people with less tech expertise. People interacting with content in bright sunlight or at night. Users with limited internet speed and bandwidth. Content creators and businesses utilizing social media management tools to reach a broader audience. WebAIM reports over 96% of the world’s top one million web pages aren’t accessible. As such, people with disabilities will find it difficult to use information on these websites, underlining the need for increased efforts to improve internet content accessibility. Image sourced from webaim.org ALT: Percentages of home pages with web content accessibility errors Content Accessibility Guidelines to Follow Here’s a framework of questions to ensure you tick every box on the road to complete content accessibility. Is the Content Perceivable to Everyone? Perception in content accessibility refers to the user’s ability to recognize the content exists where you’ve put it. Primarily, you want to ensure that anyone can easily find and identify your content regardless of whether they can’t see, hear, or process information like non-disabled people. The first step is to create content in multiple formats, such as text, video, and audio. Each format is ideal for a specific audience group. For example, say you’re creating content that aims to answer a tech-heavy question, such as what is HDFS? Text and descriptive video content with sign language will be excellent for deaf audiences. But you should also ensure the videos include captions, descriptive, and ALT texts for images. If you’re dealing with a situation where you need to convert video formats for accessibility, consider using an online video converter to ensure compatibility. Conversely, audio format content is ideal for visually impaired audiences. It also helps to use text colors that appear clearly against the background. This, alongside consistent visual elements, makes it easier for partially blind users to recognize text content. Is the Content or Web Page Operable? To ensure your content is operable, make navigation simple for everyone, especially keyboard-only users. For example, people with disabilities may be using an AI virtual assistant. Systems like Google Assistant and Siri have features like voice control and text-to-speech for those with disabilities. As such, your online content must be operable by these systems. In addition, avoid using flashing or fast-moving content. If you must do that, provide an option that allows viewers or listeners to slow it down. Lastly, use a logical flow with structured headings that lays out interactive elements in a predictable order, simplifying navigation for keyboard-only users. A good example of operable web content is Mighty Network’s website. Each element on it has a predictable and logical order. In addition, the website interface is easily navigable with keyboard controls. It’s also complete with ALT text and ARIA tags for users with screen readers. Image sourced from mightynetworks.com ALT: Mighty Network’s home page Is the Content Understandable? A winning customer marketing funnel starts with your audience understanding the message you’re trying to pass. Creating understandable content involves considering any physical or cognitive impairment members of the audience may have. As such, it’s best to keep the message simple. Use plain, simple language—short sentences with common everyday words. Avoid jargon and explain any technical terms used. Use clean, legible fonts and 12 points for font sizing. Apply adequate spacing between text to enhance readability for people with dyslexia. Make the overall content layout scannable and easy to skim. Page Design Best Practices to Make Digital Content Accessible Page design and structure play more prominent roles in accessibility considerations. Below are some basic guidelines to improve content accessibility through page design. Use Semantic HTML Using proper HTML markup and structure allows assistive technologies to interpret and present content accurately to users. This involves the appropriate use of headings, lists, and even punctuation. Evaluate SEO content on your websites, looking out for HTML features like alt attributes, proper labeling and validation messages for web forms, and HTML tags. Double Down on Keyboard Accessibility Ensure all interactive elements are operable with a keyboard. This makes it easy for users without a mouse to navigate through pages and interact with the content. Image created by the author ALT: Tips for content marketers to ensure keyboard accessibility Use Consistent Navigation and Structure Consistent navigation makes it easier for users to navigate the web page and interact with the content. Users can quickly memorize the location of each page element and create a mental map of your website. Arrange content into H1, H3, H3, headings, and so forth. Group similar content together as much as possible. For instance, instructions on using TTY (Text Telephone) support features on an enterprise phone system should come in list form. Use HTML to highlight important elements. An example is emboldening key information to call attention to it. Conduct User Testing Conducting usability testing with people who have disabilities helps identify accessibility issues and ensures content is suitable for all users. Also, you can leverage tools like WAVE and Dynomapper to measure and monitor your website’s accessibility. Pantheon competitors that facilitate easy web content maintenance are key to implementing results from user tests. Web developers in your team can leverage them to integrate any conclusions drawn from user testing, ensuring online content is up-to-date with accessibility standards. Foster Inclusivity Through Accessible Content Curation Creating accessible content is a fundamental principle of inclusivity and user-centered design. As a content manager, you’re responsible for ensuring that everything you put online is accessible to everyone, regardless of their physical or cognitive disabilities. With the tips and framework described above, you’ll soon be on your way to getting your content to that point across all your channels and platforms. The post Accessible Content: How to Ensure Your Online Content is Accessible appeared first on Scoop.it Blog. How to Write a Vision Statement (with examples) Thu, 29 Feb 2024 19:00:00 +0200 Introduction What is a vision statement? Why should your company have one? These are both important questions to consider when starting or rebranding a business. In short, a vision statement is the overarching perspective of your company’s mission. It is the guide for the direction your business is heading. You’ll often see them referred to as the company’s “north star.” Unlike mission statements, company values, and operational specifics, the vision statement details how your company wishes to impact and improve the surrounding environment – whatever that may be. The vision statement is the “what” to the mission statement’s “why” and “how.” Joseph Folkman, a behavioral statistician, performed a research study in 2014 about vision statements and how they affect a company’s success. The study found that when employees think their organization’s vision is meaningful, there is a 52% bump in positive engagement over employees who did not find meaning in the vision. It is necessary to have a unique vision statement that encompasses the scope, structure, and personality of your company. The best vision statements will inspire your teams, connect with customers, help you have the discipline to make smarter business decisions, and attract talent. What is a Vision Statement? Source: thepracticalleader.com A vision statement will state the goals of the company. Generally, it will focus more on the long-term goals and ideals, especially as they relate to growth and impact. It describes the idealistic state of where you expect to be in the future. It should be ambitious but feasible; as well as broad, and strategic. Aspirational statements convey your company’s passion for the future you’re working towards. The goals do need to be attainable however, to still qualify as a vision rather than a delusion. Vision statements are broad enough to convey the overall goals of your company, but strategic in that they do not include ever infinitesimal detail to get bogged down. The goal of the vision statement is to guide the decisions the company makes. Ideally, a vision statement will hold up within a company for several years, possibly even a decade. Why it’s Important to Write a Vision Statement Your company’s vision statement is a straightforward, philosophical way to communicate the direction your company is indenting to move. It is one of the key elements to help company culture thrive. It also functions as a tagline for customers, stakeholders, and marketers. This mini-manifesto is there to motivate and inspire people at every level of your company. It will move employees to action and encourage long-term engagement. Additionally, it will help convert customers, attract talent, and encourage people to participate with what your company is doing and producing. The vision statement will improve your company’s decision making processes by allowing you to rule out initiatives and opportunities that aren’t aligned with your long-term goals. It can then function as the overall outline for other directives in your company, such as team charters. Ultimately, your vision statement is a crucial part of your business strategy because it provides your unique contribution to the world. How to Write a Vision Statement Source: leadershipgirl.com Some best practices for writing a vision statement include: Collaborate: get together with key leaders and members of your organization and collectively brainstorm the most important pieces that should go into the vision statement. Keep it separate from a personal vision statement: while you probably have your own vision statement that may overlap with your vision for the company, you’ll want to make sure that your company’s statement is still distinct and represents the company’s vision as a whole. Write first, edit later: it’s impossible to write a well-crafted vision statement immediately. Write down all of your ideas and trim them down to the most important parts. Step #1: Identify Your Goals (What’s Your Company Mission?) Consider your company’s purpose and what it does in its market. Think about what makes your company stand out against its competitors. Refer to your business plan if you need to. All of this will help you zoom in on your goals for the future. Your vision statement should not be something that evolves alongside your company. Consider where you want to be in five or ten years and work from there. These are your long-term goals that you hope to achieve. Another thing to keep in mind is that the vision statement is not a business document that outlines all of your plans. It is a short, inspirational, statement that focuses on what you hope to succeed in. Take Southwest Airlines’ vision statement, for example. Their statement is “To be the world’s most loved, most efficient, and most profitable airline.” Their goal is to be loved, efficient, and profitable. They put themselves against other airlines by showing that they want to be well-loved by their customers because they will provide efficient service. They are not marketing themselves as exclusive or even particularly luxurious. Everyone will get the same treatment. This ties in well with their hearts and marketing campaigns featuring love and acceptance. Even their stock market designator is LUV. The goals are clearly outlined in this short and easy-to-remember statement. Customers, team members, and stakeholders can all see what Southwest aims to do over the coming years and what they are striving towards. Step #2: Keep it Short and Simple While your company’s vision statement should be specific and unique, you don’t want it to be bogged down with details. Your vision statement should not be more than two sentences. It should be easy to remember and repeat. When brainstorming, jot down all of your ideas that could be useful, then keep one or two essential points to guide the final clear vision to focus on. That final vision statement should be brief but strong, so it is easy to remember and full of impact. Additionally, use concrete language that is hard to misinterpret. While you want aspirational goals, don’t let them get too lofty and expand beyond what your company can actually deliver. According to Karolina Turowska, the Digital PR Specialist at PhotoAiD, “Words have incredible power. Just consider notable leaders whose speeches inspired thousands of people to take action. Your vision statement is a speech in a nutshell. To touch a lot of people at once, it needs to be clear and easy to understand.” LinkedIn gives the perfect example of a one sentence vision statement. Their vision statement is to “Create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.” While the statement includes larger words, they’re not jargon. The statement is easy to reiterate and it is clear that LinkedIn strives to deliver exactly what it promises it will. LinkedIn’s entire purpose is to connect professionals easily to help them be more productive and successful. Their reach extends to more than 200 countries and territories worldwide, striving for that global aspect. It is a very concept based vision statement of what the company is working towards in the future, marketed towards anyone in the global workforce. That said, it is also simple and provides the company with a direction to work towards. Step #3: Demonstrate Your Purpose At its core, a vision statement is the culmination of the company’s core values, goals, and purpose. This is the crux of what you want the world to look like as a result of your company’s influence, or how you want to affect a particular demographic as a result of your vision. Visualize the future you want to see and your part in achieving it. Once that goal is defined, you need to demonstrate what you’ll do to achieve it. IKEA does exactly this in their vision statement: “Our vision is to create a better everyday life for the many people”. The statement is not only easy to understand and repeat, but their purpose is very straightforward. IKEA will use their products to make life better for everyone and anyone they can, regardless of who they are. This shows IKEA’s focus to better the everyman’s life. Their products are environmentally friendly and sustainable. This means they deliver quality products to their customers, but also strive to better the world while they are at it. Step #4: Use Clear and Jargon-Free Language As your vision statement will be posted places beyond industry professionals, it is best to use plain language and explain yourself clearly. Oftentimes, “industry-speak” will end up making your company brand come across as inaccessible and aloof. Use simple language that can be understood by everyone, especially people who may never have heard of your company and what it does. If you find yourself frequently attempting to use buzzwords, consider what the word or phrase in question truly means and why it’s applicable to your company. Then you can reword or rephrase it appropriately. In addition to avoiding jargon and industry speak, make sure you avoid all other unnecessary language. Don’t feel that you need to cut out every adjective and adverb, but be sure that each word serves a purpose. NASA’s vision statement reads: “Exploring the secrets of the universe for the benefits of all.” This is a simple statement that is straightforward, completely free of jargon and buzzwords. That statement can be read and understood by most everyone. This brief and strong statement is thus also clear about the impact NASA wishes to make on the world. The statement is also memorable and catchy. Step #5: Get Feedback Before you spend too much time paring your vision statement down and refining it, step back and get other viewpoints about how it comes across. Some questions you can ask include: Is the statement ambitious enough? Is it too unrealistic? Does the statement accurately reflect your company? Does the vision statement make sense? Is it memorable? What is missing from the statement? What parts are unnecessary? Are all the ideas phrased effectively? Can the purpose and mission of the company be extrapolated from the vision? It is completely expected for you to go through several drafts of your vision statement as you hone the phrasing and tone of the final product. Sony’s vision statement is: “Using our unlimited passion for technology, content and services to deliver groundbreaking new excitement and entertainment, as only Sony can.” This statement does all of the above. It is ambitious without being too unrealistic. It accurately reflects what Sony aims to do as a company. The statement is clear and makes sense, with nothing contained within it feeling unnecessary. Everything is also phrased highly effectively, including Sony’s name within the statement so there is no question as to who’s vision it is. Step #6: Provide a Specific Vision (Make it specific to your business) The best vision statements clearly outline the end goal and how your business is going to work towards it. When crafting the final vision statement, ensure that aligns with the core values of your company. If it doesn’t, you’ll need to go back and rethink. You also want your vision to stand out against the visions of other companies. If you take your name out of the vision statement and find it could apply to other organizations, you will want to rethink. It’s best if your final vision statement describes your goal in such a way that it is clear that only your company can provide it. Here, Coca-Cola’s vision defines its goals and how it aims to reach them. The vision statement reads: “Our vision is to craft the brands of choice of drinks that people love, to refresh them in body and spirit. And done in ways that create a more sustainable business and better shared future that makes a difference in people’s lives, communities and our planet.” The statement is a longer one, comprised of two sentences, however it is still punchy and to the point. The first sentence alone is straightforward and clear as to what Coca-Cola’s goals are. When vision statements are long like this, it is crucial that they can still be abbreviated to where the core message stands out. The statement is appealing to the masses, and it has become clear over the years that Coca-Cola meant every word. They have become perhaps the world’s leading soft drink brand. Plus, they own other brands for further reach, such as Vitaminwater, Honest Tea, and Fanta. A great example of some of the steps mentioned above is VPSBG: VPSBG is a cloud hosting provider that primarily focuses its statement on privacy and security. This is their purpose, and they keep it in mind for any stage of their work: using high-performance hardware, Windows cloud servers (a benefit of the Windows OS is the fact that it is run by Microsoft, which consequently brings authority and added security), accepting Bitcoin and Litecoin payments for all of their services and other privacy and security-focused options. What to Avoid When Writing a Vision Statement It is important to avoid ambiguity. While vision statements do not need to be as concrete as a mission statement, you’ll want to avoid words that can be misinterpreted and change the meaning of the statement altogether. You won’t always be present to clarify what you meant. Unfortunately, if you are vague, it will be harder to work towards your company’s eventual goals. A lack of direction is a huge business mistake overall and can greatly hurt your company. It is better to be specific, even if that means rebranding after a few years when the goals of your company shift. Start Writing Your Vision Statement Today Now that you’re aware of the importance of writing a vision statement as well as the do’s and don’ts of writing one, it’s time to get started. If you’re struggling with that, you can always check our blog for valuable tips on how to write great content. The post How to Write a Vision Statement (with examples) appeared first on Scoop.it Blog. 7 Content Marketing Solutions for HR Teams and Leaders Thu, 22 Feb 2024 19:00:00 +0200 As an HR pro, you know that engaging with talent, building your brand, establishing authority, and networking is crucial for success. But with so much competition and noise out there, it takes work to stand out. That’s where strategic content marketing comes in. Consistently creating and distributing quality, relevant content allows you to promote your employer brand to prospective and current employees authentically. It’s an opportunity to showcase your organization’s values, culture, and employee experience far and wide – on your own terms. This post will explore seven content marketing tips and examples for HR audiences and leaders. Whether you want to improve talent acquisition, boost retention, position your company as an employer of choice, or establish thought leadership – these practical strategies will help you make your mark in the digital world. Let’s dive in and see how content marketing can help your HR department achieve key business goals. Enhance the Overall Employee Experience Want to take your employer brand to the next level and stand out from the competition? A killer employee experience is critical. And you guessed it — content plays a huge role in crafting an unforgettable experience that makes employees feel valued and excited to work at your company. Internal newsletters sharing company updates, wins, new hires, and upcoming initiatives keep people in the know and make them feel part of something bigger. Don’t forget to highlight important events and observances, like Black History Month, Pride Month, National Hispanic Heritage Month, etc. A little recognition goes a long way, especially for minority groups within your organization. How about content that supports career growth and development, too? We’re talking informational resources such as online courses, training videos, coaching programs — all that good stuff. Employees care about progressing, so why not show them you care, too? An HCM system can play a crucial role here by centralizing learning content and enabling employees to access development resources, making it easy for people to advance their skills. HCM software also empowers business-wide collaboration – allowing employees to exchange knowledge and work together on passion projects or cross-functional initiatives. Simply put, the goal is crafting content that makes your people feel seen, heard, and invested in. Do that, and watch retention, recruitment, and advocacy shoot up while satisfied employees proudly become influencers who rep your brand and share content across their social channels. Damian Grabarczyk, the co-founder and growth marketer of PetLab Co., says, “In our quest to enhance the overall employee experience, we transformed our internal newsletter into a dynamic content marketing platform. It’s more than just updates; it celebrates our team’s stories, achievements, and insights. This approach has turned our newsletter into a vibrant community hub, fostering a sense of belonging and sparking innovation. The result? A noticeable uplift in team morale and engagement. By leveraging content marketing internally, we’ve created an environment where every team member feels valued and connected.” Create Engaging Video Content If you want to bring your employer brand to life and connect with candidates and employees, look no further than video content. 91% of people say they want to see more online videos from brands, which are twice as likely to be shared than other content. It’s time to take advantage. Still, trying to figure out where to start? What about video content such as insider office tours, day-in-the-life job shadowing, and employees discussing your fantastic culture? This content offers an authentic peek behind the curtain and lets people know about your company. Hopefully, they’ll get pumped about potentially joining (or staying) on the team. You can also create helpful tutorial videos or host webinars that walk new hires through need-to-know stuff as they get acclimated. Making things easy for them engenders goodwill and will help to boost new starter retention rates. Let’s not forget about training videos that make grasping key concepts and policies way more interactive than some boring handbook. People learn better when they can see, hear, and interact. Highlight real employees sharing real experiences in testimonials. That builds trust and connection. Video brings your employer brand to life in memorable ways that other content can’t consistently achieve. Make the Most of Social Media Platforms Social media presents a huge opportunity for HR teams to expand their reach, build brand awareness, and engage active and passive talent. Platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok allow you to connect with audiences in the spaces where they’re already active. For example, LinkedIn is a prime platform for HR networking and thought leadership. You can share articles, case studies, and insights to position yourself as an industry expert. Joining and participating in niche HR groups expands your reach tremendously. Twitter is ideal for real-time news sharing and commentary. Use hashtags like #HR, #recruiting, #employment, etc., to tap into more extensive conversations. Follow influencers in your space to increase your exposure. On Instagram and TikTok, you can get creative with behind-the-scenes employer brand content (as discussed in the previous section). Show what it’s like to work at your company in a fun, authentic way. Once again, user-generated content from employees carries weight here too. The key is determining where your audiences are most active and then developing content tailored to those platforms. Build an Extensive Library of Content Want to become a true knowledge hub and resource center for employees, candidates, clients, partners, and other stakeholders? Build yourself an extensive content library. We’re talking blogs, eBooks, guides, whitepapers, case studies, webinars – the works. The objective is to position yourself as an education station for all audiences. Cover hot topics like hybrid work policies, DE&I initiatives, leadership principles, professional development, industry trends, premises liability, product benefits, and thought leadership perspectives – what are your audiences engaging with most? As for the various content mediums, blogs allow you to dive into subjects in an approachable way. Ebooks help condense and package your thoughts nicely. Webinars make learning interactive. And remember the almighty case study. Show exactly how you solved problems and delivered results for clients in the past (more on this in the next section). A diverse content arsenal demonstrates your expertise and provides value to internal and external audiences at every stage. You become a go-to thought leader and resource. So start cranking out blogs, recording webinars, and showcasing wins. Build that robust library and watch your authority and influence grow. Showcase Social Proof with Case Studies As mentioned in the previous section, case studies are powerful content for demonstrating expertise and building credibility. But it’s worth diving deeper into why they are so effective, especially for HR teams and leaders. At their core, compelling case studies act as social proof and peer validation for what you offer. You build trust with new prospects by showcasing specific examples of how you helped past clients solve challenges and achieve results. For HR, case studies could highlight how your services improved talent acquisition, boosted retention, created an exceptional onboarding program, developed leaders, enhanced company culture, etc. Get detailed by including qualitative and quantitative results, emphatic testimonials, and key learnings. That shows the true impact you can make. And don’t just keep case studies hidden. Promote them across your website, social media, email newsletters, and other channels. Repurpose the content into blogs, one-pagers, graphics, and more. High-quality case studies lend tremendous credibility when used correctly, acting as persuasive peer endorsements that lead new clients to believe you can do the same for them. They provide the social proof that convinces audiences to take action. Organize Content Based on Personas Image Source One of the most effective ways to create content that truly engages your target audiences is to develop personas for your audiences. That allows you to tailor content specifically for each one. For example, your personas could include: HR Directors – Looking for big-picture strategy, leadership principles, change management Recruiters – Interested in sourcing tactics, building employment brands, talent analytics Young Professionals – Prioritize career growth, work-life balance, DE&I Parents/Caregivers – Value family leave policies, childcare benefits, and flexibility. Once you determine your core personas, map out their pain points, goals, and preferences – then develop content that speaks directly to what matters most to each audience segment. Most importantly, you need to get hyper-relevant by using language, tone, topics, and formats that resonate with each persona. Send content to them across channels they frequent, like email newsletters, social media groups, etc. While creating mass content for general consumption has value, persona-focused content cuts through the noise. It demonstrates you truly understand the people you aim to reach, engage, and serve. Interact with Thought Leaders and Influencers Image Source Want to take your content game into overdrive? Collaborate with big-name thought leaders and influencers in the HR space. These people have serious pedigree and an established audience – so much so that getting them on your side lends instant credibility by association. There are many partnership opportunities, such as Interviewing an industry thought leader for your podcast or blog. Co-hosting a webinar and gaining exposure to each other’s audiences Featuring them in a guest blog post with a unique perspective Partnering on an ebook, guide, or white paper that packs a punch Having them contribute quotes or insights for your content The goal is tapping into their reputation and followers to spotlight your own brand. Once a partnership is established, you need to promote collaborative content like crazy across your channels (through mediums such as social campaigns and email newsletters). And remember reviews. Ask influencers to try out your product or service and provide an endorsement. A credible co-sign goes a long way in this world. Leveraging partnerships with respected voices in your niche establishes authority and gets more eyeballs on your content and brand. Brainstorm creative ways to team up with those HR stars and tastemakers. Power collaborations can take your content marketing game to the next level. Conclusion We covered everything from boosting your employer brand through engaging employee content to leveraging video and partnering with influencers. Now it’s over to you. Take these strategies and put them into action for your brand. Be sure to keep dishing out fantastic content on the regular. As always, consistency is vital. The post 7 Content Marketing Solutions for HR Teams and Leaders appeared first on Scoop.it Blog. 5 Key Benefits of Email Marketing for Small Businesses Thu, 15 Feb 2024 19:00:00 +0200 Anyone can argue that small businesses need email marketing more than anyone else. If you think about it, small businesses must be very cautious about the marketing channels they pick because they have limited resources and budgets. That forces them to adopt cost-effective marketing strategies that can generate significant returns. That’s why email marketing is a perfect fit for them. Email marketing helps companies communicate their message effectively and build relationships with their customers. It can drive sales at a low cost as well. Email marketing costs 82% of businesses between 0% and 20% of company budgets. In other words, with email marketing, small businesses can compete with larger companies. Not convinced? Here are five key benefits of email marketing for small businesses. 1. Generates traffic to the site Email marketing is a powerful tool for small businesses to promote their websites. With effective email marketing strategies, you can increase your email open rates and click-through rates, resulting in more traffic to your site. The more traffic to your site, the higher the chances for sales. Just to prove my point, check out the stats below. Although they’re not from a small business site, they show that emails do really well to drive website traffic. As you can see, for the period covered, the number of website visitors thanks to email exceeded 19,000. Source But, of course, for subscribers to get to your site, you need a compelling subject line that entices them to open your email in the first place. You also need to personalize your emails to ensure you send relevant content. You can do this by segmenting your email list based on your subscribers’ interests and preferences. For example, this email from a local salon offers the female subscriber services specifically for women: Source Also, include a clear call-to-action in your email that directs readers to your website. Note, though, that you shouldn’t just stop at directing subscribers to your site. Ensure you have a great website as well. Why? Assume you have a manufacturing company and you send prospective clients newsletters with valuable product information. So, subscribers do click through to your website. However, when they get there, they find visual clutter and confusing navigation. What do you think will happen? They’ll just up and leave without doing anything. In other words, only when you ensure a well-designed and structured website can you grow your manufacturing business online through sales. For businesses, website visitors become valuable when you can convert them into paying customers. But don’t just focus on your website design and functionality. Look at your loading speed as well. Use the best web hosting for search engine optimization to ensure your page loads under two seconds, as Google recommends. 2. Increases brand awareness Email marketing provides an opportunity to showcase your brand’s unique value proposition. It helps you highlight your key differentiators and build a distinct brand identity in the minds of consumers. Additionally, when you send regular emails to subscribers, you can keep your brand top of mind as customers are constantly reminded of your products or services. You can also create a stronger connection with the recipient, further enhancing their recognition and recall of your brand if you use personalized and targeted messaging. However, for the best results, use branded visuals and consistent design elements throughout your email campaigns. Together with your company logo, the colors, and font styles you use should create a cohesive and recognizable brand identity. For example, in these ice cream shop email templates, the fonts, tone and overall design are consistent throughout: Source So, email subscribers who are bombarded with these emails will automatically associate the design with the brand. Don’t forget to include your email signature as well. Source Email signatures are great at raising brand recognition. Statistics show that 82% of email marketers leverage signatures to do just that. 3. Helps you find quality leads Around 89% of marketers claim email is their primary lead-generating marketing channel. This shows how powerful email marketing is for generating leads. Source How can email marketing help you generate quality leads, you ask? Well, in email marketing, you use lead-generation tactics such as opt-in forms. To ensure your website visitors sign up in the first place, you typically offer an incentive. The incentive can come in the form of guides, discounts, and other things your target audience finds valuable. If you further align this incentive with your product or service offerings, you can generate leads who are likely to pay for your products or services. Let me explain. Assume you’re selling handcrafted jewelry and to get people to subscribe to your email list, you offer an $10 Amazon gift card. You’d probably get a lot of sign-ups since many people view the gift card as valuable. However, that doesn’t mean they’re also interested in handcrafted jewelry. So, you generated leads, yes, but they’re not qualified. The chances of them buying your product aren’t necessarily high. Now assume a different scenario. Let’s say your incentive is now a $10 discount on any item in your store. That would ensure those who subscribe to your email list are people you can actually convert into customers. After all, the only people who sign up for a $10 discount on handcrafted jewelry are, well, people interested in those items. Once you get your qualified leads, your only focus would be to turn them into paying customers. You can do this by, again, delivering personalized content. Provide catchy imagery and videos of your products that will leave a lasting impression on them. Also, include user-generated content such as testimonials or customer reviews in your emails. UGC adds credibility to your brand and might just be the last nudge your quality leads need to make a purchase. 4. Builds strong relationships with customers Establishing and maintaining strong customer relationships is one of the other top benefits of email marketing. Again, email marketing helps you connect with your customers through personalized and targeted messaging. You can deliver added-value content, promotions, and updates your subscribers are interested in directly to their inboxes. That level of personalization helps foster a sense of connection and trust, leading to increased customer loyalty and repeat business. The thing is, you don’t have to write fresh content every time to maintain a regular conversation with your subscribers. Your business probably already spends a lot of resources on content marketing for your blog and social media channels. You can just repurpose some of these content pieces your subscriber would be interested in based on your customer data, and share them via email. Additionally, email marketing allows for direct and instant communication, so you can address any inquiries or concerns your customers may have promptly. This can greatly enhance the customer experience and strengthen relationships. The operative word there, however, is “promptly.” In other words, you can only build strong relationships via email marketing with your customers if you immediately address their issues or questions. Customers expect businesses to reply to their email queries within the day. 5. Provides a higher ROI Here’s another one of the main benefits of email marketing: It can provide a higher return on investment (ROI) than other marketing channels. For every $1 invested in email marketing, firms get an average return of $40. Source Email marketing can provide a higher ROI due to its cost-effectiveness and ability to personalize. Unlike other forms of marketing, such as print advertisements that are generic, email marketing allows small businesses to reach their target audience with relevant content and product recommendations. Plus, it allows you to build relationships through relevant drip campaigns that can be automated. The result of all these? Increased conversions at a low cost.. Furthermore, email marketing provides businesses with valuable data and insights that can be used to improve future marketing efforts. By tracking and analyzing metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates at a relatively low cost, businesses can better understand their audience’s preferences and behavior. This data can then be used to refine and optimize future email campaigns, ultimately leading to more effective and successful marketing strategies. Conclusion Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies for small companies. Without spending that much, small businesses can reap a wide array of benefits that can ensure their growth. Email marketing can help generate traffic to their site and increase brand awareness. Small businesses can also find quality leads and build strong relationships with their customers via marketing emails. Email marketing, by and large, also offers a higher ROI. So, as a small business, incorporate email marketing into your marketing mix if you haven’t done so already. You’ll see your business soar to greater heights! The post 5 Key Benefits of Email Marketing for Small Businesses appeared first on Scoop.it Blog. From Burnout to Balance Thu, 15 Jun 2023 16:42:34 +0300 Thu, 11 May 2023 20:59:33 +0300 — Clique na Imagem/Pin para BAIXAR — Pack Instagram - Pack Canva, psd e cdr - PET SHOP - Artes Editáveis. Pacote de Artes para redes sociais PET SHOP ~ Pack Instagram PET SHOP. Download de Artes de PET SHOP para editar e usar. São centenas de Imagens, fon Mon, 27 Mar 2023 16:07:38 +0300 — Clique na Imagem/Pin para BAIXAR — Pack Instagram - Pack Canva, psd e cdr - PET SHOP - Artes Editáveis. Pacote de Artes para redes sociais PET SHOP ~ Pack Instagram PET SHOP. Download de Artes de PET SHOP para editar e usar. São centenas de Imagens, fontes e templates customizáveis para facilitar seu NEGÓCIO! Economize tempo e dinheiro usando layouts prontos, organizados e editáveis. Artes prontas para PET SHOP #PETSHOP #arteseditáveis #arteSparaInstagram #postsPETSHOP social media \\ armazém da cerveja #001 on Behance Mon, 20 Mar 2023 22:45:50 +0200 social media \\ armazém da cerveja #001 on Behance Nunca mais fique sem ideias do que postar para gerar conexão! Fri, 17 Mar 2023 22:36:07 +0200 Nunca mais fique sem ideias do que postar para gerar conexão! #logotipo #logo #idvisual #identidadevisual #marca #branding #empreendedorismo #empreendedorismofeminino #microempresa #designdemarca #designer #designgrafico #flowdesign Fri, 17 Mar 2023 22:23:54 +0200 #logotipo #logo #idvisual #identidadevisual #marca #branding #empreendedorismo #empreendedorismofeminino #microempresa #designdemarca #designer #designgrafico #flowdesign Join Us on Book Release Day! Tue, 31 Jan 2023 19:47:58 +0200 How to Design the Perfect Day Fri, 09 Sep 2022 16:07:00 +0300 How to Select a Business Coach Thu, 08 Sep 2022 15:04:37 +0300 How to Sell Anything to Anyone Wed, 07 Sep 2022 15:07:24 +0300 Why You Need an Executive Assistant Fri, 19 Aug 2022 09:30:16 +0300 How to Maximize the Market Value of Your Business in 8 Steps Wed, 17 Aug 2022 05:56:51 +0300 How to Do a Weekly Preview Mon, 15 Aug 2022 17:35:27 +0300 How to Prepare for a Good Night’s Sleep Sat, 13 Aug 2022 15:27:55 +0300

	Claude Béglé, Chairman, SymbioSwiss, Switzerland
	Erik Berglof, Chief Economist, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, China
	Dan Cates, Founder, Dan Cates Foundation, USA
	Anson Chan, Chairman and Managing Director, Bonds Group of Companies, Hong Kong
	Jonathan Choi, Chairman, Sunwah Group, Hong Kong
	Fu Qiang, Chief Engineer, China Sinopharm International Corporation, China
	Huang Fude, Vice President, Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group Co., China
	Elisabetta Jiang, Co-founder, Unicorns For Good, Singapore
	Roger King, Founder and Chairman, ODS Holdings Inc., Hong Kong
	Duane Kuang, Founding Managing Partner, Qiming Venture Partners, China
	Bill Kung, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Ecovane Environmental, China
	Don Lam, Chief Executive Officer and Founding Partner, VinaCapital, Vietnam
	Bonnie Liao, Executive Director, Social Enterprise Research Academy, Hong Kong
	Nguyen Quang Huan, Chairman, Halcom, Vietnam
	Nguyen Van Hung, Group Executive Chairman, Becamex IDC, Vietnam
	Mike Liu, Vice President and Senior Fellow, Center for China & Globalization, China
	Farah London, Founder, Back 2 Business International, United Kingdom
	Penny Low, Founder, Social Innovation Park, Singapore
	Clas Neumann, Senior Vice President, Head of Global SAP Labs Network, SAP, China
	Nhan Huc Quan, General Director, New Toyo Company, Vietnam
	Johan Nyvene, Chairman, Ho Chi Minh City Securities Corporation, Vietnam
	David Pan, Executive Dean, Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University, China
	Murat Seitnepesov, Chairman, Integral Group, Switzerland
	Charles Tang, President, Brazil China Chamber of Commerce, Brazil
	Tao Yitao, Director, China Center for Special Economic Zones Research, China
	Chris Tay, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Drink NOD International, China
	Wang Dong, Executive Director, Institute for Global Cooperation, Peking University, China
	Yu Jin, Vice President, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), China
	Felix Zhang, Co-founder, Envision Group, China
	Zhi Peng, Secretary General, Zhongguancun M&A Promotion Association, China

Marketing News 1

Community-Centric Content Management: Empowering Thought Leadership through Audience Engagement

Understanding Community-Centric Content Management

Building Thought Leadership Through Community Engagement

Starbucks – Thought Leadership Achieved Through Community Engagement

Apple – User-Generated Content for Enhanced Thought Leadership

Strategies for Engaging and Nurturing Communities

1. Effective Content Curation

2. Curating Conversations: Encouraging Dialogue & Interaction

3. Implementing Community Feedback

Nilekani, Carstens propose digital ID, CBDC-powered ‘Finternet’ to be ‘the future financial system’: BIS report

The finternet will merge into digital public infrastructure where anonymity is abolished, money is programmable & citizens are coerced into compliance: perspective

Upwork’s Mystery Suspensions: Why Are High-Earning Clients Affected?

Upwork “Whales” Are Supposed To Be A Protected Species, Are They Not?

New Clients on the Upwork Block

Where Have All The Good Upwork Clients Gone?

The Tech Company Brief by HackerNoon: Apple cracks open the emulation door

An injection of capital for early-stage vertical SaaS startups

Driving the growth of LA’s tech scene

A Venezuelan migrant entrepreneur’s journey to simplify reuse in the US

An immigrant founder success story

Promoting the circular economy

AI for sustainability

Talent acquisition company Cadient bought by PE firm Basis Vectors Capital

5 Reasons Brands Should Adopt a Content Marketing Webinar Strategy

5 Reasons Brands Should Adopt a Content Marketing Webinar Strategy

Supercharge Your Marketing Efforts with a Content Marketing Webinar

NTT Research announces gift to Harvard Center for Brain Science to support research in Physics of Intelligence

Fellowships for the Physics of Intelligence

A fundamental understanding of intelligence

The Rise of Female Entrepreneurship in Turkey: Interview with Demet Sabancı

What was your dream/goal when you founded Shopsa?

Do you think you have achieved the company’s dream/goal?

Will Shopsa be limited to Turkish women only? Will it go global? Which countries/regions are planned?

Is Shopsa only in e-commerce? Where can we see Shopsa products?

Apart from Shopsa, you have many companies and social responsibility projects that you are affiliated with. Isn’t it difficult to have time for it all?

HLB HAMT ushers in new era of sustainability reporting thanks to partnership with Credibl ESG

ESG is key to corporate resilience

Building sustainable businesses with Credibl

GoodGist secures $1 million investment to help further mission of re-skilling the workforce

Metaverses may function like new countries in our society: RAND

Who will rule over this new ‘interconnected global society’ with its ‘countries that exist in cyberspace’? perspective

Dispelling the Myth: It’s Not AI You Fear, It’s Human Behavior

REFERENCES

Bitcoin’s Potential in Halting Nukes, Rogue AGI, and Climate Catastrophe

Part 1: Nukes

a) The long term

b) The immediate term

Part 2: Rogue AGI

a) The long term

c) The Short term

Part 3: A Climate Catastrophe

a) The short term

b) The hopefully very Long term

The Curated Content Revolution: How to Stay Relevant in the Information Age

Plan Curation

Tailor Content to Your Audience’s Preferences

Stay Fresh

Be Unique

Add Value

Leverage Diverse Formats

Create a Schedule

Final Words

Entrepreneurship, investment and trade to be addressed at Horasis China Meeting in Binh Duong, Vietnam

A summit with some of China and Vietnam’s best known business leaders

Fracttal smart maintenance platform adds new AI-powered features

Parallel18 opens applications for 12th cohort, offers $40,000 equity-free grant, $20,000 investment

Content Strategy in the Metaverse Era: Navigating the Digital Multiverse of 2024

The Metaverse unveiled

Changing content landscape

Emerging content formats

Virtual reality (VR)

Augmented reality (AV)

Mixed reality (MR)

Content distribution and engagement

Content marketing and branding

Don’t reinvent the wheel

Let data be your foundation

Become a user

Challenges and ethical considerations