The Network Garden - Mark Sigal's Blog

Ruminations on Apple's Keynote: Apple wants to be your little brother

"It’s a great day for dreaming...It’s a great day for dreaming...It’s a great day for dreaming."

If I told you the above was from the opening Theme Song at a recent Scientology festival, I’d only be half lying.

In actuality, it was the closing theme song to the Apple Keynote where iPhone 12 was announced.

Come to think of it, the #AppleEvent felt a bit like it was BUILT using Apple Keynote, Apple's presentation software.

Don't get me wrong, the actual content was quite good, the products announced were truly innovative and Apple has a terrific vision and a disciplined approach to execution.

But, Apple product descriptions have begun to sound like the medical safety disclaimers in pharmaceutical product commercials. 

Meanwhile, the Keynote cast and crew has grown, like literally, five-fold, and everyone demonstrates high adderall energy, unnaturally so, almost to the point of feeling like an episode of Big Brother.

So much so, in fact, that their (varying) aptitude as performers left me wondering how many of the presenters are going to get voted out of the house before the next Keynote?

The Rooster Strut

Unlike past Keynotes, because of COVID-19, the event was pre-recorded and there was no audience.

Apple's futuristic headquarters were richly showcased in the Keynote, and harnessed as an extended set (which it was).

While the lack of a live audience gave the event a hermetically sealed quality to it, let's be clear.

Apple was in full rooster strut mode, clucking with pride about Apple innovation after Apple innovation, crowing about the multiple technical disciplines requiring care and feeding to deliver the magic that Apple creates, not to mention the deep cohesion between its:

• Product lines
• The layers of its Software, Hardware and Service stack
• Apple organizationally
• Earth friendliness
• Gluten intolerance

Okay, I fibbed about the gluten part.

Time and again, Apple happily got into the weeds about its myriad of technologies, such as "wound wire coil" and "magnetic flux."

In fact, I practically buckled when Apple announced ProRaw, their new imaging format. Say Apple ProRaw three times, and seizures can't be far behind.

When Apple announced the MagSafe Ecosystem, I thought -- hoped -- that what they were talking about was a MAGA-free ecosystem.

No such luck, I guess, so MagSafe it is.

Apple is all about APPLIED technology 

I love the new HomePod mini, and the narrative around Computational Audio, which like Computational Photography, which Apple talked a lot about, just makes a ton of logical sense.

Think of Computational Audio as a real-time equalizer that course-corrects both from song to song and within the song itself. This is all about algorithms and silicon.

By contrast, Computational Photography enables not only algorithmic enhancement and optimization of imagery, but offers wholly new ways to create derivative versions of images.

Put another way, Apple doesn't build stuff for proof of concept purposes but to push the envelope forward.

Then again, I don't want to live in a world where CeramicShield is a verb, so I'm conflicted, as I like the functionally (it's a screen break-proof technology).

But the point, rendered over and over and over again, punch after punch after punch was this:

Apple products are designed to be easier to use, to work together better than the dis-integrated approaches of everyone else (whither Windows, Android), and more innovative and visionary because Apple develops the entire stack from hardwire to software, services, tools and marketplaces.

This is the same 'Halo Effect' that Apple has created for itself, which I wrote about over a decade ago ('Holy Shit. Apple's Halo Effect').

I won't spend any time writing about the iPhone 12 rollout other than to say that I am dubious about 5G near term, but that doesn't matter.

The build quality of Pro. The fact that better photography is a primary driver for me, and the enhancements there are really good.

Little Brother's Approach to Privacy

"At Apple, we put the user at the center of everything we do," so said Apple CEO Tim Cook, and for the most part, I believe him.

That a company the size of Apple actually stands for something is beyond refreshing, knowing that we are all chum for the sharks on Facebook, and to a lesser extent, within the Google universe.

This is where Apple's credibility serves it well when it comes to being the brand that has religion about Privacy.

Integration with your iPhone and HomePod is built on privacy integration. It fits with a now focused vision about tying your Home Automation into your HomePod (and by extension, iPhone, iPad and Mac).

Apple is the Hub, and by playing the long game, and not crossing consumers -- and because of Privacy -- they're more credibly a 'little brother' than a BIG Brother.

Learning to Take Inventory as Part of Your Life Discipline

Everyone should 'Take Inventory" as a basic part of their life discipline. 

I have been formally Taking Inventory for 20+ years, and am a huge believer in its simplicity, specificity & iterative nature in helping me to codify my personal truths. 

So, what is inventory and how do you take it?

At its most basic, Taking Inventory is “taking note” of your observations.

The decision to write an item down is the point when a moment of thought becomes inventory taking.  

(Sidebar: With the free Notes app that comes with iPhones and Macs, whenever a moment of insight strikes, regardless of where I am, I can jot down the thought, and it syncs to all of my devices, so I always have one master version. This makes it brain dead simple to take as much or as little inventory as comes to me.)

The types of thoughts that you can Take Inventory on are limitless. 

1. Observations about people
2. A statistic or fact that gets under your skin 
3. Beautiful images that made you happy
4. Something you ate that doesn’t agree with you
5. Something you read that inspired you

From these raw nuggets, many will be written down and forgotten, but the ones that stick, that bubble up again and again for you, these ideas can be categorized into buckets, such as:

1. Work
2. Sports
3. Relationships
4. Self
5. Ideas
6. Topics of interest

Over time, you can develop these categories as areas of focus, change or growth. 

This can be items like writing down, or Taking Inventory of, the specific things that another (such as a partner) does that:

1. Pleases you
2. Frustrates you
3. Confuses you

This takeaways can a simple calculus expressed in the form of:

1. Do more of this
2. Do less of this
3. Do something different here  

From such a natural progression you can codify and cultivate your Primary Life Narratives that you want to amplify and sharpen in your life.  

What makes Taking Inventory so powerful is that when coupled with how growth and change occurs means you are literally one year from getting into some new space, three years from truly belonging, and five years from being an expert in that domain.

So write it down. Start Taking Inventory. It will change your life. 

Ruminations on Memorial Day, Coronavirus and the Parable of Hershel

With Memorial Day upon us, and no clear end in sight to the global pandemic, America finds itself facing numerous existential decisions that will shape its future. Our future.

As we straddle the razor’s edge between optimism, growth & transformation, and cynicism, stagnation & entropy, the story of Hershel comes to mind. 

Hershel was a devout man of God and a pure soul who lived his life according to the good book. 

When the storm came, he was confident – no, he KNEW – that he would be kept safe.

Because he’d led a good life, God would take care of him. God would protect him.

When the torrential rains and gale force winds hit, one of his neighbors implored Hershel to leave with them before things got really bad.

“No, no, no. I’ve lived a good life," said Hershel. "God will take care of me. God will protect me.”

When the flooding waters swallowed up his neighborhood, a passerby on a boat begged Hershel to get out with him now.

“No, no, no. I’ve lived a good life. God will take care of me. God will protect me.”

Soon, the only thing standing between Hershel and certain death was that the roof of his home remained slightly above water.

By the time that the helicopter spotted Hershel, the waters had risen further, and his head was the only part of his body not fully submerged.

“Hershel. Hershel. Please, take my hand, or you perish,” implored the helicopter pilot.

Undaunted, Hershel said, “No, no, no. I’ve lived a good life. God will take care of me. God will protect me.”

But, those were to be his last words.

Because nature would not be denied, Hershel did die.

Having lived a good and pious life, Hershel went directly to heaven.

But, Hershel was bugged, hurt and confused.

“Father,” he said to God. “I don’t understand. I’ve lived a good life. I prayed everyday, I read the Talmud, and always did right by others.”

“I thought you’d take care of me, God. I thought you’d protect me.”

But, it was God now who was undaunted.

“Hershel, what are you talking about. I sent you a neighbor, a boat AND a helicopter to rescue you. What more did you expect?" 

God then reminded Hershel that "God helps those who help themselves.”

We’ve Become a Nation Full of Hershels

As we ponder this point in time, it helps to take a moment to think about what Memorial Day is about.

It helps to look back to the generation called the Greatest Generation.

The Greatest Generation came of age during the Great Depression, a global economic collapse that lasted a decade.

Yet, when called upon to save the world from the horror of Hitler and the Nazis, America's Greatest Generation put their collective cards to the center of the table, and dedicated their lives to winning World War II.

They endured years of rationing, large swaths of the economy being re-directed to support the American War Effort, and four hundred thousand would sacrifice their lives for a battle greater than themselves. Talk about backbone and shared sacrifice.

Contrast this narrative with the sad, pathetic whiners who call anyone “Hitler” who stands in the way of their “rights” to get a haircut, and get one now.

These are the same people that threaten lawsuits and WAR when asked to wear a mask before entering a store because their “rights” supersede science and shared sacrifice.

Compared to the Greatest Generation, we are a nation of Dwarfs when we could be Giants.

We’ve become like Hershel. The hard facts are staring us in the face, yet the notion of sacrifice has in itself become anti-American.

Thus, we are ripe for the aphorisms of false prophets whose only god is profits, be they our clergy, Fox News, the GOP, or the most godless one of all, Donald Trump, a serial liar and cheat who implores us to stick out heads (rational thought) in the ground because God will take care of us, God will protect us.

After all, how many times has Trump stated emphatically that, “I alone can fix it.”

Let us be clear, though. It is only our vanity to AVOID sacrifice, our lack of reason, and our elevation of financial wealth as our true god that makes us ripe for such false idols.

But, know this. God is protecting us and has been for years, first by revealing the hard science and observable truths behind Climate Change, and giving us decades of advance warning.

Sadly, that was not tangible enough for the Hershels among us, so now we face not only the COVID-19 pandemic, but the global financial crisis it has fostered, and we see firsthand how quickly and devastatingly our way of life can fall apart.

In less than ninety days, we’ve gone from zero to 100K deaths in the US, with over a thousand people dying every day.

And yet, scenes like this are legion.

“What Have You Got to Lose?”

We face a moment of truth as a nation. Just as the years of disregarding the science of Climate Change foretold the existential risk we’re facing now, so too does our ease of looking the other way as our institutions, rule of law and the very notion of a UNITED states was under attack.

I get it. The very real wanting for institutional change lead to a Trump victory, and give Trump credit. He speaks to people’s hearts and understands the power of engagement politics.

But that should not obscure the fact that Trump has proven to be an incredibly inept leader, averse to planning or process, a malignant narcissist with zero self-awareness of his limitations and even less humanity when it comes to thinking about others.

When Candidate Trump was running for President, one of his common arguments was, “What have you got to lose (by voting for me)?”

The subtext of such an assertion was that Trump couldn’t possibly be worse than Obama, Hillary, or any of the Republicans that ran against him.

When he started calling them nasty names, “Crooked Hillary,” “Fake Birth Certificate,” “Low Energy, Jeb,” that was just Trump being Trump, as opposed to the markings of an unstable lunatic.

As it has become obvious that his response to the pandemic has been a disaster, his strategy, like all things Trump, has been a combination of vindictiveness, cover-up, resistance to accountability, and attacking the messenger.

On this Memorial Day, with so many Americans seemingly incapable of sustained sacrifice, we must remember that even Hershel had his day of reckoning for not owning the essential truths of personal responsibility.

On Memorial Day, we must also remember that Trump is a Draft Dodger who knowingly, willfully canceled the deployment of the National Guard literally ONE DAY before they were due to receive benefits.

That’s cold, inhuman and hostile to our armed forces, doubly so as it’s intentionally done in the middle of a pandemic.

We must remember the malevolence of Trump’s recent threat to withhold medical funding to Michigan if the state government didn’t back down on mail in ballots.

“What have you got to lose?”

In a word, everything.

This is our Hershel Moment. It’s time to step up, and remember that God protects those who protect themselves.

Testing at Scale: A Return to Normalcy with COVID-19

There is a saying that you Manage What You MEASURE.

But in the case of COVID-19, you CAN manage if/when you can measure (test) at scale.

Case in point, think how quickly could we return to quasi-normalcy if we had "quick diagnosis" COVID-19 testing at scale.

People could go to work or school, or an event needing only a DAY PASS to get in.

Those who were validated positive and now are cleared, could get a SAFE PASS. Those diagnosed, could get Quarantine & Care.

I bring that up because last week, the FDA approved testing of a COVID-19 test that yields results in 45 minutes. This week, the FDA has authorized review of a 15-minute Coronavirus test. Last night, I read about Abbott launching a portable test that diagnoses in FIVE MINUTES.

On this front, Epidemiologist Larry Brilliant, who warned of coming #pandemic in 2006, says in the XLNT Wired article, “The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming,” that there is nothing endemic in this particular virus that stands in the way of developing prophylactics to prevent, vaccinations to kill, and curatives to minimize symptoms & speed recovery.

But first, we need lots more testing to identify the infected.

Through ubiquitous testing, we can manage until we can mitigate.

State of the Restaurant Industry as a Proxy for Understanding Covid-19 Economic Impact

While the "eye test" gives a clear view of how deep the impact of #covid19 is to our #economy, especially #retail, I thought this #dataset from OpenTable on the state of the restaurant industry was jaw-dropping.

Filterable by City, State and Country, it shows the dramatic drop in Year over Year seated diners in the OpenTable network.

This underscores the notion put forth by Michael Leavitt, our Secretary of Health and Human Services under George W. Bush, that, “Everything you say in advance of a pandemic seems alarmist. Anything you’ve done after it starts is inadequate.”

Check it out.

State of the Restaurant Industry (OpenTable): https://www.opentable.com/state-of-industry

What’s Your Success Formula? Ruminations on Quality of Life and Measuring What Matters

At my company, Datex Property Solutions, we were talking about “quality of life” issues in building & deploying our Real Estate Portfolio Management software platform, Datex BI Portal, without compromising on our religion around surrounding Clients with engagement & support.

By quality of life, I mean that there are certain activities that recur on an ongoing basis across the lifecycle of building, deploying, configuring, reconfiguring, adding users, pushing system updates, and maintaining uptime across all system layers of a SaaS software stack.

In this domain, the most basic of activities that place a "tax" on quality of life are those that require human interaction to get done.

One specific (and NOT infrequent) example of the tax in our world is the requirement to “Backdoor” Data and System Configuration updates in Client Environments, a set of tasks where human interaction is typically required.

The first step to improving quality of life in the above scenario is to “take inventory” of and formally document the activities, steps and scenarios that play out, and where practical, isolate the elements that would benefit from instrumentation.

Then, based on the learnings across multiple Clients, build interfaces to reduce and simplify those steps to drop-downs and clicks.

Over time, these sequences can then be scripted, turning what today is a high touch process into an automated one.

The mantra I embrace for achieving such goals is "ship the idea," "fix" and "iterate." This reconciles the notion that perfect is the enemy of good (enough), while avoiding the all-too-common All or None trap.

More importantly, it allows a focus on smaller bites, binary wins, and rapid course correction, so as to learn (and perfect) by DO-ing.

Measuring What Matters

Case in point, at Datex we have built a type of business intelligence tool that we call SURF that enables us to systematically surface User and Usage Patterns.

Needless to say, this seriously golden data that helps us make better products, better support our Clients, train better, and also educate Clients on what the data is telling them.

SURF started as a set of queries maintained on a spreadsheet, and grew into a standalone piece of software that not only do we use religiously, but we now expose to Datex clients as well.

In a similar, vein, we recently rolled out an ROI Calculator based on the learnings from SURF Data to help clients (and prospective clients) better understand their human capital allocation in time and dollars, and the resulting impact that systems, data and automation can offer their business.

Netting it out: Light is the best antiseptic, which is especially important in a market like Real Estate, which despite being: A) The biggest asset class on the planet; and B) A massive generator of data remains a technology laggard.

What’s Your Success Formula?

A final thought. The exercise of thinking about quality of life brought me back to a board game I used to play as a kid called ‘Careers.’

Careers was built around the notion of players having their own personal “Success Formula,” where the Success Formula was defined as a player's allocation of the 100% pie across three domains:

• Fame 
• Happiness
• Money

What struck me about this is how apt a metaphor the Success Formula is for internalizing the notion of taking a deterministic approach to one's life and one's professional choices by really codifying a "plan of record" with respect to:

• Time and Attention Allocation
• Expected Outcome "Yields" for the Focus
• Resulting Behavioral Concentration Points (and Not)

It's a simple, specific and directed way of thinking about life, and one's path.

So, what's Your Success Formula?

Related: Datex ROI Calculator - Calculate YOUR Datex ROI Now

Eternal Gratitude: Kobe is Bono, James Dean and Picasso in One

My mother once told me how the country basically shut down when JFK was assassinated.

The loss was just too much for America to deal with.

Such, for me and millions of others was the tragic loss of Kobe Bean Bryant.

Many tears were shed the other night listening to Lakers #RickFox talking with the Inside the #NBA Crew about being initially listed as on the Helicopter with #KobeandGianna.

This is beyond surreal, and, yet it's real life.

Derek Fisher observed that it was unfortunate that it took this event for us all to appreciate the total person that was #Kobe. His depth, his commitment beyond basketball.

But make no doubt that his Shrine was on the Court.

Dwayne Wade noted that #NBA is a Brotherhood, and Kobe was the leader of this Brotherhood.

"We were trying to make him proud of us. " Believe it.

InsideTheNBA is like church tonight. It’s cathartic. #MambaForever

The legacy of KobeBryant is that he is destined to become the Icon to beat all icons.

His brand and influence will live on forever.

He'll never grow old, he'll be fully realized, a champion, a parent, someone who was great, who never settled for 2nd place.

Two distinct personas in #8 and #24.

A global icon with so many iconic moments ALL on tape. Forever.

Add to this the fact that there will be thousands of deeply felt vivid testimonials and remembrances from all walks of life about the #Mamba.

Again, ALL on tape (actually, digital bits).

#KobeBryant is more than James Dean. He's Bono, he's Picasso, James Dean and JFK.

He is a meme, hero, artist, inventor, legend, truth and more than that.

For time immemorial.

 

Real Estate Business Intelligence: It's About Big Data, Machine Learning and Analytics

If you are in the Real Estate business, and trying to make sense of the applicability of Big Data, Machine Learning and Analytics to how you run your business, check out my podcast with MRI Software's Nick Frank. 

Repetition is a FEATURE, and not a BUG of Effective Communications

Communication is all about achieving clarity and alignment. One of the biggest learnings I have had over the years is that most people treat communication like a scarce resource that is doled out sparingly. Part of this is conflict avoidance, part of this is organizational hierarchical thinking and part of this is just poor communication skills.

My experience is that the opposite is true. If you haven't communicated your point clearly, with specificity AND with validation on what the other side has heard, and what the plan of record and going forward actions are, then you haven't communicated effectively.

This may take ten times to get the message across, and multiple back and forths to ensure clarity and alignment on the takeaways.

Bottom Line: Repetition is a FEATURE, and not a BUG of communication.

Lessons from Customer Support: The Goodness of Simple + Process Orientation

I can not tell you how many technical support conversations I sat in on when I first got into tech twenty five years ago (we are talking Pre-Web). The company that I worked for, Tribe Computer Works, made packet switches and internet routers, and so a lot of the support incidents were about connectivity issues.

Some poor customer would be calling in frantic because some leg of the network connection was not working. Alice, in Technical Support, would ask a handful of questions that 95% of the time ended with:

1. Unplug the cable and re-plug it back in.
2. Replace the ethernet capable with a different ethernet cable.
3. Turn the switch off for 30 seconds, and then turn it back on again.

The customer getting support would invariably get agitated with this line of “support,” say this was obvious, and they had a DIFFERENT problem.

The support person was very calm, and said, “I am sure that you are right, but we have a specific process that will save you a bunch of wasted time by allowing me to isolate the basics, before moving on to the more surgical interventions. 

Literally, 95% of the time, it was that basic; one of those three cases would solve the problem, and the client would sheepishly apologize, saying they had tried that before, didn’t work last time, etc. etc.

One moral of the story that it taught me is start with the most basic scenarios before getting sucked into complexity.

You can always go complex. But, it’s harder to navigate to simple when you begin with complexity.

Two, there is no substitute for good process.

Literally EVERY one of these calls support would have gotten sucked into surgery for seemingly good reasons because the frantic client demanded that they needed surgery.

Good process forced them to take temperature and weight, and re-assess the vitals before moving on.

Is Morality an Essential Component of Capitalism?

“Night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That’s pride fucking with you. Fuck pride! Pride only hurts, it never helps.” — Marsellus Wallace

It feels like we are at a Crossroads, where Money is the One True God, and the Transaction ‘trumps’ all.

In such a place, the HOW matters not, giving rise to a Systemic Amorality that metastasizes in infinite ways.

We see this occurring right now, where the calculus has become sell your soul to a wanna-be dictator through unquestioning fealty, and willingness to stick a shiv in your countryman, the poor, the disenfranchised and the suffering.

Democracy, Openness and Unity over Division, gives way to Winners and Losers, and a reflexive attack on “The Other.”

A general ethos of this thinking is to diminish our commitment to the broken, the sick and the failing in our society.

The sad truth is that if tightening of immigration laws, conservative judges, gerrymandering, gun rights, anti abortion, white power, financial markets, oligarchical privatization & unfettered corporatism is at the top of your policy hierarchy, you are willing to put your head in the ground for EVERYTHING ELSE. Humanity and optimism is for suckers.

Warren Buffett, the Sage of Omaha, once said that until the tide comes in, you don’t actually know who has been swimming naked. This is true about racism and hate, too.

But, we have to ask ourselves. If failing and losing in society exists in such large numbers — 90,000 unsheltered homeless in California alone — doesn’t it actually make the need to feel the pain of others even more essential?

I say yes it does, and that this is the true "Exceptionalism" that made America the greatest country when compared to all others.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” is written on the Statue of Liberty for a reason. That’s the America I know

But, we need Connective Tissue. We need to build a new Social Fabric that binds us.

It begins with having a Genuine Purpose. When we figure out what that is, we’ll be on the road to getting healthy again.

Product Management - Finding the Balance Between Power and Simplicity

I read something the other day that I think captures the "razor's edge" that must be navigated in terms of finding the balance between Power and Simplicity when building new technology solutions for non-technical users:

Option 1: Hide the Complexity. Downside - That means users have less control.

Option 2: Provide Maximum Configurability. Downside - That means more complexity, and less inherent usability.

Option 3: Productize Training and Support. Downside - Training takes time, dollars, repetition and organizational "religion."

These are not mutually exclusive constructs, but they do provide framing for thinking about Users, Usability and Utilization.

Successful Platform Strategy is a Never-Ending Political Campaign

Successful Platform Strategy is akin to a never-ending Political Campaign, where the platform provider is fighting to win the hearts and minds of the platform consumer and the key platform adoption influencers, such as integration partners, sales channels, analysts and media.

One user, one vote, every day moving forward or backwards in terms of opinions, outlook, engagement and leverage.

This is why most platform strategies fail...so much has to go right and so much has to be synchronized for the platform to succeed and continue to succeed over time.

Measuring What Matters: What's All of this Real Estate Data Good For? (Shopping Center Business)

(This article was published as part of Shopping Center Business’ Retail Insight series.)

The great paradox of the real estate business is that, on one hand, it’s the single largest asset class on the planet with a global estimate of $228 trillion, and it generates tremendous amounts of operating, financial and market-level data. On the other hand, real estate is an industry where too much of the decision-making process is done by gut, too much of the reporting process is done by spreadsheet and too few of the recurring processes leverage automation. Unfortunately, many still opt to throw humans at problems that systems have mastered.

But, the real estate game — and retail real estate, in particular — is changing. Data-driven systems are shifting the industry from the “Excel Hell” of spreadsheets to automated decision support tools based onyour data, and automated tracking and reporting systems based onyour business rules for recurring activities, including:

• Rent collections
• Retail sales tracking
• Leasing, lease renewal and deal flow analysis Proof of insurance compliance
• Consumer sentiment tracking
• Consumer location intelligence
• Portfolio acquisition and disposition analysis

When Information Scarcity Becomes Surplus

Futurist George Gilder once noted that when a formerly scarce resource suddenly becomes a surplus commodity, tremendous wealth is created through the innovation and industry transformation it fosters.

A good example of this is the role that the convergence of big data, cloud computing and mobile broadband played in the rise of Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix and Uber. In each instance, these companies were not only able to create high-margin, global-reach businesses that generate tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue, but they changed our very concept of what media, communications, search/discovery, retail and transportation could be.

In the retail real estate space, these same dynamics are driving massive innovation in formerly sleepy market segments, such as property management, construction management, portfolio management, facility management and real estate agent tools. Innovation drove capital investment from venture capital and private equity to the tune of $20 billion in 2018 alone across commercial real estate segments ranging from property management and analytics to Internet of Things (IoT), construction management and real estate agent tools, according to market analyst Venture Scanner.

Extending the Reach of Property Management and Accounting Data

A common industry driver is the fact that forward-thinking shopping center owners and operators want to extend the reach of their existing property management and accounting data to all of the folks outside of accounting. These personnel need access to the data inside of MRI or Yardi, but are unlikely to log into those environments themselves. This group typically includes executives, asset managers, property managers, leasing, lease administration, legal, analysts, marketing, development, due diligence, and third-party clients and investors.

The “win” associated with embracing a data-driven system is three-fold. First, it levels the playing field inside a company so everyone has access to the same information, meaning the company can deliver better service, make fewer errors and operate at scale with one voice. In this regard, such systems become the corporate memory ensuring best practices don’t walk out the door when key employees leave. These systems also provide a path to onboard new hires systematically.

Secondly, information, such as rent, merchant sales, occupancy, budgets vs. actuals, NOI, property type, tenant type, region and key lease provisions, can be standardized and then “warehoused” in databases where it accrues over time.

Data-driven systems become push-button simple to spotlight key trends, track variances from prior periods and better benchmark performance relative to peers — both inside the company and cross-market.

Lastly, these systems are designed to ingest multiple data sources. This doesn’t simply include property management and financial data, but extends to consumer sentiment (think Yelp), location intelligence (think Google Maps or shopping center wi-fi data), marketing event data and merchant credit rating data, meaning that for the first time it is now possible to run analysis using “consolidated” data.

This approach enables portfolio owners and operators to better understand:

1. Which retailers and retail categories are the healthiest or at greatest risk based on multiple factors, including timeliness of rent payment, occupancy cost percentages being within historical ranges, credit ratings, and consumer satisfaction based on quality, service and perceived value (which can be measured to track net promoter scores).

2. Which center marketing events generate the high customer “lift” relative to non-event days at the lowest “cost per lift,” which events tend to lead to the most loyal customers and, as identified by massive mobile data patterns, which trade areas a given shopping center draws from.

3. Which properties are the greatest acquisition or disposition targets. This can be analyzed based upon relative NOI performance to the center’s peers in a given region, or by merchant health scores (for key tenants and as a composite property), co-tenancy default exposure, and the impact of consumer shopping patterns and trade area reach.

“Intelligent, Actionable Data — when coupled with Automation — changes the game.”

The above examples are based on actual applications utilized by clients and partners that work with BrightStreet Ventures portfolio companies, representing tens of billions of dollars of asset value across thousands of retail properties and tens of thousands of retailers.

Netting it out, Intelligent, Actionable Data — when coupled with automation — changes the game, and the future is here today.

The Terrible Truth About Amazon Alexa and Privacy

Adam Clark Estes of Gizmodo has written a terrific article on what the Amazon Alexa represents as a backdoor into the personal privacy of consumers.

The "money shot," which should give every Amazon Alexa owner pause is the notion that there is a microphone in your house, and you do NOT have final control over when it gets activated.

Let me repeat that. Amazon is on record as stating that they have a team of thousands that listen into excerpts of user sessions to better improve the product. That control is bound by a Terms of Service, written by Amazon, which gives Amazon a lot of latitude, which can be updated at any time, and which, by virtue of the United States having no meaningful federal protective policies when it comes to privacy, largely trusts the industry to self-police.

Also, as the article notes, and as any Alexa owner can attest, Alexa is subject to false positives where the user said something that was not intended for Alexa, but Alexa interpreted differently and recorded anyway.

This is bad, and let me tell you why. If you've been paying attention to Facebook's numerous transgressions, obfuscations and outright lies when it comes to (mis) appropriating and failing to protect consumer data (e.g., a recent $5B fine), you should know that:

1. Facebook is just an easy and obvious example of how economic self-interest can lead to some really heinous outcomes.
2. As Cambridge Analytica's mis-use of Facebook data in the 2016 election shows, it takes very little data to build a powerful profile on a consumer that is exploitable in numerous ways.
3. Security is the other side of the privacy coin, and as the joke about security breaches goes, there are two kinds of people. Those that know they've been hacked, and those that don't; the point being that most everything is hackable in some form, and the hackers are more sophisticated than those protecting against hacks, especially in the realm of the Internet of Things. Just imagine a bad actor securing programmatic control over every Alexa device, searching for certain incriminating key words, which accrue in your personal file in the cloud, and the bad outcomes that can yield (blackmail, self-incrimination, robbery, etc).
4. As a sanity check, ask yourself this. Were it the federal government wanting to a put a smart speaker in everyone's house, most people would (rightfully) lose their shit. But call it Alexa, and market it as a humanizing, pithy consumer device, and it's suddenly a stocking stuffer.

Listen, I love Amazon as much as any consumer, but I also know this indelible truth:

Digital lasts forever - like, literally - but Terms of Service only last until there's a Regime Change or a Business Model Change, and that's an asymmetry that should give every consumer serious pause.

Put another way, we all have a responsibility not to put ourselves in a place where just by living our lives as we are, we could encounter “existential risk,” and however low a probability you may attach to this calculus, it's certainly non-zero, and the potential risk is indeed existential.

Food for thought.

UPDATE: There is a new story that Google employees are eavesdropping in customer's homes via Google Home Speakers. I say it again and again. The difference between an Apple device, and a Google Home/Amazon Alexa/Facebook device is that the former does not make its money by monetizing better forms of surveillance. You have to see people and businesses in terms of their motivations. What you incent is what you reap. 

Related: Is Facebook a Brand you can Trust? (O'Reilly Radar)