2/19/18
By Peter High, published on Forbes
Larry Sanger founded Wikipedia with Jimmy Wales in January 2001. He set many of the early policies of Wikipedia. He ended up leaving the organization the following year, and has been a critic of it for, among other reasons, its narrow definitions of credible sources, and the fact that so few people ultimately are responsible for the creation and editing of content on Wikipedia.
In the years since, Sanger has been involved in a number of encyclopedia projects, including Citizendium, which he founded in 2006.
Roughly two years ago, Sanger began to informally advise a new startup called Everipedia, a for-profit wiki-based encyclopedia. Theodor Forselius is a co-founder of the company and its chief executive officer. The core of its content is that of Wikipedia, but it has built more content on top of that base, making it the largest English language encyclopedia. Sanger officially joined the company as chief information officer in December of 2017, lured in part due to the company’s commitment to blockchain technology, which was announced on December 6. They indicated it would convert to using blockchain and a cryptocurrency token called IQ to encourage content creation. The IQ tokens are intended to be exchangeable for Bitcoin. Forselius believes this model will create incentives for broader content creation while also fostering access in countries that currently block Wikipedia such as Iran and Turkey.
I recently spoke with Forselius and Sanger about all of the above and more.
Peter High: Theodor, could you talk about the genesis of Everipedia as well as an overview of the business model and the company’s mission?
Theodor Forselius: Everipedia started a little over two years ago as a project between my co-founder Sam Kazemian and myself while he was still studying at UCLA. Originally, we wanted to build a more modern and inclusive version of Wikipedia because we were both editors and huge fans of Wikipedia. However, we felt like there was a lot that was outdated and that we could do better.
For example, their editing interface, talk pages for discussions, citations, their community guidelines and policies were all things that we liked but that we wanted to improve. That is why we started Everipedia.
We decided to implement blockchain technology because we are a for-profit startup, not a non-profit like Wikipedia, so we had to find ways to monetize. Originally, we partnered with companies and we started running adds on the site. However, it didn’t feel right saying that we were better than Wikipedia while we were running ads, so we started looking at other monetization models. Wikipedia’s model of running massive donation banners did not feel like an innovative solution either. We started looking at other venues of monetization and my co-founder Sam came up with the idea of tokenizing the entire knowledge base and decentralizing it. That way, there is no central entity that needs to run ads to be able to monetize because the whole system will be completely peer-to-peer.
High: Larry, in 2001 you co-founded Wikipedia. As of a few months ago, you joined Everipedia as the Chief Information Officer. Could you share your thoughts about the differences between the two businesses?
Larry Sanger: The co-founders of the company contacted me and told me that Everipedia was moving to blockchain, which is a major difference in its own right. This shift to the blockchain got me interested because the blockchain enables something that I have been wanting to do for a long time.
To read the full article, please visit Forbes
Peter High
8/15/2016
Earlier this year at Facebook’s F8 conference, the company revealed three innovation pillars that make up the company’s ten-year vision: connectivity, artificial intelligence (AI), and virtual reality (VR). Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer is responsible for leading each of them. Despite the fact that the vision is ten-years in duration, the company has made significant progress in each.
Facebook’s progress in AI can been seen in everything from the company’s news feed to the way in which people are tagged. The virtual reality innovations are best demonstrated through the Oculus Rift, which I demo’d last Thursday. More recently, the company made a great flight forward on the connectivity pillar as Acquila, a long-endurance plane that will fly above commercial aircraft and the weather, took flight in Arizona. The goal is for this v-shaped aircraft that has a wingspan longer than a Boeing 737, but weighs under 1,000 pounds to bring basic internet access to the developing world.
I met with Schroepfer at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, and we discussed these three pillars and a variety of other topics, including the company’s recruiting methods, how the company maintains its innovative edge, and the logic behind its headquarters – one of the largest open-space offices in the world.
Peter High: Earlier this year at F8 2016, Facebook’s developer’s conference, you introduced three innovation pillars. Could you take a moment to highlight each of them?
Mike Schroepfer:We have been, I think pretty uniquely in the industry, very public about our ten-year vision and roadmap, and we have broken it down into three core areas:
High: With the abundant resources and brain power at Facebook, how did you choose those three as opposed to others?
Schroepfer: A lot of this derives directly from [Facebook CEO] Mark [Zuckerberg], and comes from the mission, which is to make the world more open and connected. I think of this simply as using technology to connect people. We sit down and say, “OK, if that is our goal, the thing we are uniquely suited for, what are the big problems of the world?” As you start breaking it down, these fall out quite naturally. The first problem is if a bunch of the world does not even have basic connectivity to the internet, that is a fundamental problem. Then you break it down and realize there are technological solutions to problems; there are things that can happen to dramatically reduce the cost of deploying infrastructure, which is the big limiting factor. It is just an economics problem. Once people are connected, you run into the problem you and I have, which is almost information overload. There is so much information out there, but I have limited time and so I may not be getting the best information. Then there is the realization that the only way to scale that is to start building intelligent systems in AI that can be my real-time assistant all the time, making sure that I do not miss anything that is critical to me and that I do not spend my time on stuff that is less important. The only way we know how to do that at the scale we operate at is artificial intelligence.
So there is connectivity and I am getting the right information, but most of us have friends or family who are not physically next to us all the time, and we cannot always be there for the most important moments in life. The state of the art technology we have for that right now is the video camera. If I want to capture a moment with my kids and remember it forever, that is the best we can do right now. The question is, ‘What if I want to be there live and record those moments in a way that I can relive them twenty years from now as if I was there?’ That is where virtual reality comes in. It gives you the capability of putting a headset on and experiencing it today, and you feel like you are in a real world somewhere else, wherever you want to be.
High: How do you think about those longer term goals, the things that are going to take a lot of stair steps to get to, versus the near-term exhaust of ideas that are going to be commercialized and commercial-ready?
Click here to read the full article
by Peter High, published on Forbes
3-8-2016
Kim Stevenson has been the CIO of Intel for the past four years. As I have noted in the past, she has dramatically increased the value derived from IT by adopting the practices of the more traditional revenue centers of the company. One of the best examples of this is the development of an IT annual report that mirrors that of the company as a whole. (Check out her latest IT annual report here.) The theme of her latest annual report is “Intel: From the Backroom to the Boardroom.” This refers to IT’s becoming more relevant to the board of the company, but it is also a good summation of her own career in recent years.
Since becoming CIO, Stevenson has been on the boards of multiple companies including her current appointment to the board of Cloudera. Many CIOs wish to join boards these days, and Stevenson offers sage advice on way sin which others might follow in her footsteps. It begins by performing well internally, being transparent, and, if you truly wish to be a board-level CIO, making that known with anyone who might aid you in that process.
(To listen to an unabridged audio version of this interview, please visit this link. This is the 17th interview in the “Board-Level CIO” series. To read past interviews with CIOs from P&G, Biogen, Kroger, Cardinal Health, and the World Bank Group, among others, please visit this link. To read future articles in the series, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: I thought we would talk a bit about some of your priorities in the year ahead, which I know include adoption of Big Data analytics to find opportunities and to solve challenges faster. Could you explain some of the ways in which IT is going to do that, and also some of the other priorities that are on your roadmap for the year ahead?
Kim Stevenson: Analytics is at the top of my pyramid because it is a transformational initiative around Intel. I have shifted from a technology view for 2016 to a leadership problem. We are bringing our entire Intel leadership team forward to think about shifting using Big Data predicative analytics versus traditional statistical methods. The reason I say it is a leadership problem is because often you will find in a predictive model that you will get answers that are inconsistent with your historical experience. We use regression analysis a lot here at Intel. If you look at a regression analysis line, you effectively get a mean and you drive towards that regression line. If you use an isobar analysis, what you get is the personalization of hot spots and you would maybe take three or four different actions than what a regression line would tell you. You get good results with traditional statistics. You can get outstanding results if you switch to the more predictive models. And that takes a shift in a leadership mindset as much as it does a technology mindset. We have been working on that with our most senior leaders at Intel. The receptivity is really high, but the cultural shift is also really difficult.
High: I know you have talked about the need for IT to be an advocate driving this change. What are the methods you are using to communicate this and provide a vision of the value that the organization will garner for this journey?
2-29-2016
Excerpt from the Article:
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) exists to improve people’s lives throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Since its foundation in 1959, the bank has been working with countries throughout the region to help them address their economic and social development challenges and provide them with solutions that are tailored for their own unique situations. In partnership with 26 borrowing member countries, the bank works to reduce poverty and inequality by not only providing financial resources to bring to life sustainable, practical and in some cases innovative solutions, but also conducting cutting-edge research across a wide range of development issues as well as providing policy advice.
Nuria Simo has been with the IDB for nearly two years, having joined the company after many experiences around the world in private industry. She was excited about the opportunity, but was curious if the pace of the organization would match that of AirBus and Cargill (two of the major companies she had worked with previously). Simo discusses with CIO Insight contributor Peter High how tech can improve lives, why adding connection points between IT and the business makes sense and what the future holds for CIOs.
CIO Insight: How large is your IT department, and what is within your purview as CIO?
Simo: Our IT department is almost 100 staff strong, plus an ecosystem of partners and contractors that complements the talents of our team. Together we work towards meeting the mission of the bank by providing infrastructure and business support to colleagues in 29 countries around the world.
Beyond the day-to-day services we provide to ensure our IT infrastructure is running smoothly to meet the needs of our staff, our team is charged with looking for new and innovative ways to facilitate the work of development. In these times, being an enabler of innovation and digitalization goes far beyond the IT department, so we have the responsibility to reach out outside our teams to find better solutions.
My job as CIO includes ensuring we recruit, retain and develop professionals who are not only specialists in their field, but who want to apply their skills to contribute to improving the quality of life of people in the region, but I’m also co-responsible for ensuring compliance with our institutional strategy, promote teamwork with other IDB leaders and employees, and support the management of organizational change.
CIO Insight: You have led a digital transformation at the bank. Can you describe what this has entailed and some of the value derived so far?
Simo: The IDB intends to become a digital leader in the development sector by evolving the way we think about the use technology and changing the way we work. We see digital innovation as a critical success factor to help Latin America and the Caribbean move forward in enhancing the quality of life of its citizens. But, we need to start inside the organization first.
Our digital transformation has included a bank-wide understanding of the importance and value that digitalization and the use of technology, such as open data or business intelligence, can have in identifying and shaping development opportunities.
To read the full article, please visit CIO Insight
10-21-2015
NES Rentals is in the business of renting aerial lifts and related high-reach equipment to companies in the commercial and industrial construction businesses. The company is a privately held midsize company with revenues of about $400 million, 1,200 employees and 75 branches operating in the Gulf Coast, South, Southeast, Midwest and the Northeast. NES Rentals buys equipment from OEMs and sells its used equipment at auction every four to five years in order to keep its equipment fresh. The company maintains its own equipment at the branches or dispatches mechanics to job sites to attend to breakdowns.
Ananda Rakhit has been CIO at NES Rentals for more than nine years, after having served as an IT leader at ADP and United Airlines, among other companies. In this interview with CIO Insight contributor Peter High, he shares what he’s learned across his long tenure in IT, his focus on predictive analytics and managing a large, virtual workforce.
CIO Insight: What are some examples of strategic imperatives you are driving for the foreseeable future?
Ananda Rakhit: Pricing, equipment allocation, predictive analytics for maintenance and security of our systems are strategic initiatives for NES IT. After two years of painstaking work, the pricing system has now entered a continuous improvement phase.
The ecosystem for price setting at NES is extensive. A sophisticated analytical engine based on statistical and operations research techniques is at the heart of the system. Past company data including seasonality and industry forecasts are combined with latest data gathered from the field. Utilization data is collected daily by scanning bar codes on each piece of equipment at delivery and pickup. Price sensitivity data is gathered daily via inputs from field sales via a smartphone app. A forecasting model and an optimization model generate prices by branch and by equipment category which are delivered to sales via desktops and iPads. Every morning a newly calculated set of rates based on the latest information shows up in a pricing app to guide sales.
Equipment allocation is another strategic problem we are working on to go beyond spreadsheet analysis. In a nutshell, this problem entails buying the right mix of equipment, allocating them to the branches where it will deliver most to the bottom line, moving them from one branch to another as demand patterns change and identifying the equipment to send to auction. While some modules, such as demand forecasts are common, the mathematical model is more complex than pricing. A decision support system can allow the user to carry out repeated runs by changing input parameters.
We are in the early stages of predictive analytics for maintenance. We are looking at data on mean time between failures of various parts and exploring how we can gather engine performance data via GPS devices. We hope to build a statistical model that could enable our mechanics to make proactive repairs at customer sites before the equipment breaks and customers have to call us. Customer service benefits are obvious but, in addition, managing repairs on a systematic basis instead on-demand basis, would save maintenance dollars.
We have put a large focus to ensure our systems are secure from external threats as well as we have adequate disaster recovery solutions in place. We have upgraded our backup and data retention systems and procedures and are now working towards rapidly recovering our business-critical systems from failure to minimize business impact. We are also developing clear incident response procedures and shielding our systems from potential attacks and breaches which include implementation of secure coding practices
08-27-2015
The newly formed organization, Jefferson, encompasses Jefferson Health and Thomas Jefferson University, representing both clinical and academic entities. Under the leadership of president and CEO Dr. Stephen K. Klasko and his four-pillar model of Clinical, Innovation, Academic and Philanthropy focus areas, the people of Jefferson (19,000 strong), provide quality, compassionate clinical care for patients, educate the health professionals of tomorrow and discover new treatments and therapies that will define the future of health care.
Praveen Chopra joined the company as executive vice president and CIO in March of 2014. In May of this year, his responsibilities aggrandized, and his new title is EVP and Chief Information and Transformative Innovative Environment Officer. As Chopra explains to CIO Insight contributor, Peter High, he has overarching executive responsibilities for creating innovation-driven ecosystem towards the organization’s “health is all we do.”
CIO Insight: Your title is Executive Vice President, Chief Information and Transformative Innovative Environment Officer. I am quite confident you are the only one in the world with that exact title. What does it mean, and what is within your purview?
Praveen Chopra: You are right, I may be the only one. Frankly, this is a new role, which certainly highlights the boldness in our vision of reimaging and creating unparalleled value in “health is all we do”—and is a direct reflection of the way Jefferson values technology and innovation in health care. I oversee areas such as technology innovation and consumer experience, data sciences, business partnering and portfolio management in addition to traditional information technology functions. In this role, I see us building a health care organization of the future. This forward-thinking organization leverages the power of the digital enterprise in a fundamentally different way and creates an innovation driven ecosystem. For example, instead of a siloed, facility-centric functionality, we are focusing now on a creating consumer centric model through creative use of technology. How about starting the care and learning experience with patients and students in their pajamas at their homes holding a mobile device!
Overall, this role is about reinvention—how do we constantly look beyond traditional IT capabilities and services for our clients and focus on the creation and use of technologies that will help our patients, students, community and other various affiliates.
CIO Insight: What are some examples of innovations that your team has developed or are working on?
Chopra: Our Telehealth program, known as JeffConnect, is accomplishing those things I just talked about. Today, a patient has ongoing health-care needs but they can’t always physically get to us—so we have created an on-demand platform and app, now available in the Apple and Google Play stores, whereby any patient can go and request a physician appointment. That physician will be quickly available through video conferencing capability. We’ve rolled this out to our employees and have gotten an overwhelmingly positive response. We have also created a program for family members of our patients who are not able to be at the hospital to participate in physician rounds. The program, known as Virtual Rounds, allows a patient’s loved ones to join a video conference and listen to the care team so the experience is personal and convenient.
To read the remainder of the article, please visit CIO Insight
08-10-2015
The mission of Word & Brown is to simplify access to better health insurance choices. Privately held for 30 years by entrepreneurs John Word and Rusty Brown, the organization connects businesses to industry-leading solutions in every area of health insurance and employee benefits.
When Allen Fazio joined the company in May of 2014, as Fazio tells CIO Insight contributor, Peter High, the team had a lot of talent, but it was not a high performing team. He embarked on a major transformation that continues today, and Fazio has helped technology bring value to the enterprise.
CIO Insight: What role does IT play in driving Word & Brown’s business?
Allen Fazio: As with many successful 30-year-old organizations, at The Word & Brown Companies, IT plays a critical role on several fronts: transforming current operations by providing technology solutions to streamline operations, move traditional products and services to a Web/mobile consumption model, and manage higher transaction volume at marginal cost; modernizing the legacy systems that have been the backbone to the success of the business; reducing technology operating costs; and leveraging the technology portfolio to gain greater levels of value from technology assets.
CIO Insight: You are not a “back-office only” CIO. Across your career, you have focused on delivering customer-facing technologies, as well as helping to run the operation of the company. How have you inspired your teams to follow your lead to become more cognizant of customer needs?
07-14-2015
Capriotti’s is a fast-casual restaurant chain founded in Delaware in 1976. In 2004, Ashley Morris and Jason Smylie became franchisees of the business in Las Vegas. Four years later, they would lead an investment team to take over the company. Morris was installed as CEO and Smylie as CIO. Smylie would add the role as CMO a bit later. They have more than doubled the number of restaurants and revenue in the interim between then and now.
In the process, Smylie has become incredibly influential in the CIO/CMO communities, as he has accrued roughly 25,000 Twitter followers. In this interview with CIO Insight contributor, Peter High, Smylie talks about the growth of Capriotti’s, his career path and how he has developed his personal brand online.
CIO Insight: Could you please describe Capriotti’s business, and the role of technology in the company?
Jason Smylie: Capriotti’s Sandwich Shop is a fast-casual chain based in Las Vegas. We pride ourselves on having really good sandwiches that are often described as “life-changing.” Technology has three roles in our company. One: Efficiency. Making it easier and less costly to run our day-to-day business. Two: Growth. Helping drive frequency and spend among our customers. Three: Transformation. Making sure we’re relevant in a rapidly evolving marketplace.
CIO Insight: You were part of a team that acquired Capriotti’s. Can you describe how that idea occurred to you?
Jason Smylie: My best friend Ashley and I were huge fans of the food in college. We invested in a few Capriotti’s franchises after getting established in our careers. The shops were doing so well and we were so passionate about the business that we started to wonder what we were doing spending a majority of our time in our day jobs. Our initial plan was to build out a territory and be franchisees, but the founders of Capriotti’s weren’t on board for selling a large area development agreement. After a brief period of frustration, Ashley called me up after he had an epiphany, “Why not make an offer to buy the whole company?” The offer was entertained, and a month later we had the company in escrow and began feverishly raising the capital to close the deal.
CIO Insight: You are both the chief information officer and chief marketing officer of Capriotti’s. How do you divide your time between these sets of responsibilities?
Jason Smylie: There’s no clear cut division. These days most marketing projects have such overlap with IT that it just makes sense to have someone strategically overseeing both departments.
6-22-2015
As interim CEO of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), Andre Mendes sits atop a broadcasting enterprise with as broad a reach as any in the western world. Unlike some other organizations that you might think of among leaders in this space, the BBG operates in the corners of the world that tend to be most inhospitable to the dissemination of unfiltered media. What makes Mendes even more interesting is his path to his current perch. He was a chief information officer before his further rise. As Mendes notes, however, with so much of media being dominated by new media, much of it of a social variety, his background as a technology executive are quite suitable to the times. In this interview, Mendes describes the mandate of the BBG and its various brands such as Voice of America, the traditional and new media methods he and his colleagues use, and his own unique path to become interim CEO.
(To listen to an unabridged audio version of this interview, please visit this link. This is the 20th article in the Beyond CIO series. To read the prior 19 articles, featuring interviews with executives at HP, Schneider National, Marsh & McLennan, Symantec, and Allstate, among others, please visit this link. To read future articles in the series, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: Andre, for those who may not be familiar with your organization, you are the Interim Chief Executive Officer of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. I wonder if you could take just a moment to describe this organization and its mandate.
Andre Mendes: The Broadcasting Board of Governors is the agency of the federal government that is responsible for all of the United States’ civilian broadcasts throughout the entire world. We have a very clear mission: to address populations that live under regimes that have no freedom of the press and freedom of information, and to address those populations in any platform in which they choose to consume news and other information. We are about a $750 million agency that comprises five different networks of brands that disseminate information. The largest one is our flagship: the Voice of America, which is an organization with tremendous roots going back to the 1940’s with preponderant roles in World War II, and also during the Cold War in addressing the issues in Eastern Europe. Our other brands include Radio Free Asia, which addresses some of the freedom of the press issues in Southeast Asia; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which also has a strong role associated with disseminating information in the former Soviet Union and satellite countries; the Middle Eastern Broadcasting Networks, which is comprised of Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa and targets the Middle East in Arabic; and, finally, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which has been broadcasting into the island for a couple of decades, which has had a tremendous impact in the dissemination of information in what is one of the most restrictive systems in the world.
High: And in terms of methods, since you’re broadcasting in areas where the government often does not welcome the broadcasts, what methods are used?
Mendes: It’s actually an interesting proposition about this agency. We have what is likely the widest distribution portfolio of any western media organization. We range from operating very large short-wave stations throughout the entire world– some owned and operated, some via leases—to medium-wave stations running some of the largest AM transmitters, along with a large FM distribution network. We utilize satellites for direct-to-home for both TV and radio and data. We also have substantial presence on the web, on social media and through mobile dissemination, including Twitter. So from short-wave to Twitter, it is a lot of different steps. But the truth is that we operate in areas where short-wave is still a very viable mechanism. For example, in rural Afghanistan or North Korea or in parts of Africa, like Nigeria, where there is still a huge population numbers consuming short-wave, to medium-wave because it allows us have a very powerful signal from outside the borders of a country—it’s what is called a cross-border transmission methodology. For example, in Iran, we have a very large transmitter in the United Arab Emirates that covers the entire country. We are constantly expanding our FM network, some of it being operated in some of the most dangerous, and to a certain degree, chaotic places in the world.
4-15-2015
Increasingly, a key differentiator among chief information officers is how well they communicate. This is not a historical strength of CIOs, who in the past, traditionally led support organizations who awaited “orders” from their colleagues. Today, IT’s must be supreme networkers, collaborating with their colleagues in IT, their colleagues outside of it, establishing partnerships with vendors that will generate new value for the enterprise, and increasingly engaging customers, who are much more tech savvy today no matter the industry. A proxy for one’s ability to do each of these well is one’s engagement in social media.
Most CIOs have some combination of accounts on Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook, but these channels are used to varying degrees of success. There are many layers to the value a CIO can derive from better social media engagement, including:
Developing a personal brand and enhancing the brand of the company’s IT department: Social media is a wonderful opportunity to establish one’s voice and personal brand. This is something that was not deeply contemplated in the past, but now is increasingly a foundation that every executive needs to develop. As one establishes a strong personal brand, it should also shine a light on the good work of the IT team as a whole. Therefore, when one leverages social media to talk about IT’s successes, better to use the pronoun “we” than “I”
Networking: This has become a primary way for leaders to connect. If you are not active on social media, chances are you are missing opportunities to collaborate in way small and large with peers. This means that there are insights that could be gained that are not accessible.