Crunch Report | GoPro Cuts 15% of Workforce

Hanging out with former TechCrunch writer and current editor in chief at Mattermark, Mr. Alex Wilhelm, GoPro cuts 15% of its workforce, Amazon can move your data by the truckload and now you can download Netflix for offline viewing. All this on Crunch Report. Read More

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/30/crunch-report-gopro-cuts-15-of-workforce/?ncid=rss

AWS Greengrass brings Lambda to IoT devices

 Amazon today announced the launch of Greengrass, a new service that will be built into IoT devices to bring them better and smarter compute capabilities. As AWS CEO Andy Jassy noted in today’s keynote at Amazon’s re:Invent developer conference, Amazon expects that the majority of on-premises hardware will soon be IoT devices as enterprises move their servers into the cloud.… Read More

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/30/aws-greengrass-brings-lambda-to-iot-devices/?ncid=rss

Amazon launches Amazon AI to bring its machine learning smarts to developers

 Amazon today announced the launch of its new Amazon AI platform at its re:Invent developer event in Las Vegas. This new service brings many of the machine learning smarts Amazon has developed in-house over the years to devs outside the company. For now, the service only makes three different tools available, but the plan is to add more over time. Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy… Read More

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/30/amazon-launches-amazon-ai-to-bring-its-machine-learning-smarts-to-developers/?ncid=rss

Amazon Web Services is rolling out a way to use to use just the GPU power you need

 Amazon is rolling out a new tool for users of its Amazon Web Services that will allow them to essentially use just as much GPU power as necessary without using up a full cluster on Amazon’s EC2 instance types. That means companies can tap into just a sliver of GPU power, or a larger amount, on demand as they need it and pay for that amount. GPUs can run a ton of tasks in parallel and have… Read More

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/30/amazon-web-services-is-rolling-out-a-way-to-use-to-use-just-the-gpu-power-you-need/?ncid=rss

AWS announces FPGA instances for its EC2 cloud computing service

 Amazon’s AWS cloud computing service today announced that it is launching a new instance type with field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The promise of FPGAs is that they are essentially chips that you can reprogram on the fly and tune them for your specific applications, making them faster than traditional CPU/GPU combinations. These new instances will be available in preview today… Read More

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/30/aws-announces-fpga-instances-for-its-ec2-cloud-computing-service/?ncid=rss

Plasticity

It's possible that you're the way you are, that you do what you do, that you react as you react, and that it can never be changed.

Believing this is incredibly sad, though.

Each of us is capable of just a little more. A little more patience, a little more insight, a little more generosity.

And if you can do a little more, then, of course, you can repeat those changes until you've done a lot more.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/236035548/0/sethsblog~Plasticity.html

Amazon begins reselling Frontier’s internet service on its site

 Earlier this year, Amazon launched a new storefront dubbed the “Amazon Cable Store,” which focused on reselling Comcast’s internet and television service from the retailer’s site. Of course, the generic name “Cable Store” seemed to hint that Comcast wouldn’t be the only company featured on this site in the future – and that has turned out to… Read More

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/29/amazon-begins-reselling-frontiers-internet-service-on-its-site/?ncid=rss

Your data project is going to fail Eric D. Brown

I hate to be the bearer of bad news….but your data project is going to fail.

Maybe not the one you’re working on today. Maybe not the one you’re starting next month. Heck, maybe not the one you don’t even know about yet…but at some point in the future – if you stay in the data world long enough – your data project is going to fail.

There are may ways your data project could fail. Martin Goodson shares his thoughts on Ten Ways your project could fail, and I’ve seen failure’s driven by each of Martin’s “ten ways” during my career. The most spectacular failures have come from the lack of clear strategy for any data projects.

It should be common sense in the business world that if you don’t have a strategy and plan to execute that strategy in place, you are going to have a hard time. When I use the word ‘strategy’, I don’t just mean some over-arching plan that somebody has written up because they think ‘data is the new oil‘ and by ‘doing’ data projects they’ll somehow magically make the business bigger / better / richer / strong /etc.

Data projects are just like any other project. Imagine you need to move your data center…you wouldn’t just start unplugging servers and loading them into your car to drive to the new data center, would you?

Would you go and spend $20 million to hire a brand new sales team without building a thorough strategic plan for how that sales team will do what they need to do?  You wouldn’t hire the people, on-board them and then say ‘start making phone calls’ without planning sales territories, building ‘go to market’ plans and building other tactical plans to outline how the team will execute on your strategy would you?  Scratch that…I know some companies that have done that (and they failed miserably).

Data projects require just as much strategic thinking and planning as any other type of project. Just because your CEO (or CIO or CMO or …) read an article about machine learning doesn’t mean you should run out and start spending money on machine learning. Most of you are probably nodding along with me. I can hear you thinking “this is common sense….tell me something I don’t know.”  But let me tell you…in my experience, it isn’t common sense because I see it happen all the time with my clients.

So we agree that if you don’t have a strategy, your data project is going to fail, right? Does that mean if you do the strategic planning process correctly, you’ll be swimming in the deep end of data success in the future? Maybe. Maybe not. The strategic plan isn’t everything. If you were successful because you planned well, then every company that ever hired McKinsey would be #1 in their industry with no hope of ever being surpassed by their competitors.

After you’ve spent some time on the strategy of your data project(s), you’ve got to spend time on the execution phase of your project.  This is where having the right people, the right systems / technologies in place to ‘do’ the data work comes into play.  Again, every one of you is probably nodding right now and thinking something like “sure you need those things!”  But this is another area that companies fall down time and time again. They kick off data projects without having the right people analyzing the data and the right people / systems supporting the projects.

Take a look at Martin’s “Ten Ways” again, specifically #3.  I watched a project get derailed because the VP of IT wouldn’t approve the installation of R Studio and other tools onto each of the team member’s computers.  That team spent three weeks waiting to get the necessary tools installed on their machines before they could get started diving into any data.  This is an extreme case of course, but things like this happen regularly in my experience.

Hiring the best people and building / buying the best systems aren’t enough either. You need to have a good ‘data culture’, meaning you have to have people that understand data, understand how to use data. Additionally, your organization needs to understand the dichotomy of data – it is both important and not important at the same time.     Yes data is important and yes data projects are important, but without all the other things combined (people, strategy, systems, process, etc), data is just data.  Data is meaningless unless you convert it to information (and then convert it yet again into knowledge).  To convert data, you need a company culture that allows people the freedom to ‘convert’ data into information / knowledge.

So…you think you have the best strategy, people, systems, process and culture, yes?  You think you’ve done everything right and your data projects are set up for success. I hate to tell you, but your data project is going to fail. If you have the right strategy, people, systems, process and culture in place, you aren’t guaranteed success but you will be in a much better position to recover from that failure.

from Eric D. Brown http://ericbrown.com/your-data-project-is-going-to-fail.htm
http://ericbrown.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/failure.png

The FLASH drives

Fear, loneliness, anger, shame & hunger.

They drive us. They divide us. They take us away from our work, our mission, our ability to make a difference. And yet, sometimes, they fuel our motion, leading to growth and connection.

When a variety of FLASH shows up, it almost never calls itself by name. Instead, it lashes out. It criticizes what we’ve made or done. And mostly, it hides behind words, argument and actions, instead of revealing itself.

As you’ve guessed, correcting the false argument is futile. Logic doesn’t work either. You can’t reason with FLASH because it is, by definition, unreasonable.

Worth repeating that: We’re rarely reasonable. Most of the time, we’re afraid, lonely, angry, shameful or hungry.

Sometimes, we can address those emotions by seeing that reason can help our problem, but mostly, we start and end with the emotion.

Recognize it.

Pause to allow it be seen and heard.

And then, if we’re willing, we can dance with it. We can put the arguments aside, the demands and the expectations and sit with the emotion. Not get defensive, because the emotion isn’t about us or our work at all.

Then, maybe, we can begin to bring civilization back into the conversation, the story of us, the opportunity for growth and connection, and ultimately, the power of thought and reason and forward motion.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/235437218/0/sethsblog~The-FLASH-drives.html

Amazon expands its online gift shop “Interesting Finds,” adds human curation

Following its debut earlier this year, Amazon quietly launched a revamped and expanded version of Pinterest-like feature called “Interesting Finds,” which is also now available on mobile. Tucked away inside the “More from Amazon” section of its mobile app as well as on the web, the Interesting Finds section offers shoppers a curated feed of products across a number… Read More

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/28/amazon-expands-its-online-gift-shop-interesting-finds-adds-human-curation/?ncid=rss

Welcome to the future of work

 With advances in information technology, robotics, and artificial intelligence developing at a rapid rate, workforce dislocations are happening now and are here to stay. As existing trends accelerate and irreversibly change the workforce as we know it, the question to be answered is–what will we do to broadly share the gains and alleviate the challenges? Cities often lead trend cycles… Read More

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/28/welcome-to-the-future-of-work/?ncid=rss

PayPal says mobile shopping accounted for a third of Thanksgiving & Black Friday sales

 New data from PayPal further confirms mobile’s contribution to e-commerce retailers’ bottom lines over Thanksgiving and Black Friday. According to data from its network, mobile devices accounted for a third of all total payment volume on both of these top shopping days this year – figures that back up earlier reports that mobile accounted for roughly a third of online… Read More

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/28/paypal-says-mobile-shopping-accounted-for-a-third-of-thanksgiving-black-friday-sales/?ncid=rss

Sort by price

Imagine a supermarket (or any store, for that matter), where the items are arranged by price. At one end is the salt and the chewing gum, and at the other end are mops and steaks.

We always think about the cost of an item before we buy it, but we don't buy it because of what it costs.

If you find yourself acting like you sell a commodity, saying, "this is category X and the price is Y" then you've ceased doing any sort of marketing. You're a commodity provider by choice, which is fine as long as you're okay with competing in a race to the bottom.

The alternative is to do the difficult and risky work of earning attention, earning a reputation and mostly telling a story that takes your product or service out of the commodity category and into a space defined by connection, meaning and possibility instead.

Low price is the refuge for the marketer who doesn't have anything more meaningful to offer.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/234875436/0/sethsblog~Sort-by-price.html

Hobson's choice, Occam's razor, Wheeler's which and the way we decide

Hobson's choice is no choice at all. Take what's offered, or walk away.

Occam's razor is a rule of thumb: the simplest explanation is often the best one.

Wheeler's which teaches us that the answer to "one egg or two?" is usually 'one', while the answer to, "do you want an egg?" is usually zero.

Occam, Hobson and Wheeler were all scholars of something humans are fabulously bad at: deciding among multiple options.

Getting good at this is a skill, something we can do better if we choose to. That might be the first decision.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/234159750/0/sethsblog~Hobsons-choice-Occams-razor-Wheelers-which-and-the-way-we-decide.html

On demand vs. in stock

"You can have any color car you want as long as it's black."

Henry Ford made cars in black because black paint dried four hours faster than any other color. That fast drying meant that the line worked faster, which made them cheaper. Just as important, he didn't have stockouts--with only one color, the color you wanted was the color he had.

Ever since then, there's been a move to on-demand, built to order and custom work. In everything we do. Freelance work, shoes, baked goods, kitchen cabinets, software, travel plans. And it seems like a cost-free progression. The thing is, it's not.

Most of the cost of everything we buy is in the risk, the starting, the stopping, the waste, the breakage, the planning.

A pair of mass produced shoes can be made for $3. A pair of custom shoes might cost $200 once you count all the associated costs.

McDonald's hit a peak moment of productivity by getting to a mythical scale, with a limited menu and little in they way of customization. They could deliver a burger for a fraction of what it might take a diner to do it on demand.

McDonald's now challenges the idea that custom has to cost more, because they've invested in mass customization.

Things that are made on demand by algorithmic systems and robots cost more to set up, but once they do, the magic is that the incremental cost of one more unit is really low. If you're organized to be in the mass customization business, then the wind of custom everything is at your back.

The future clearly belongs to these mass customization opportunities, situations where there is little cost associated with stop and start, little risk of not meeting expectations, where a robot and software are happily shifting gears all day long.

But if you're not set up for this, if you're hustling your coders or your production line or your painters or whomever to go faster and cheaper, you're fighting the wrong side of the productivity curve. It's like the diner that sought to be a friendly, custom-order place but also promised to be as cheap or as profitable as a fast food place.

These traditional businesses, the small ones, the non-automated ones, can sell custom, sure, but not at the price they used to sell the thing they make in bulk. And too often, organizations undercharge for the custom work and find themselves trapped between the productivity of doing things in batches and the challenge of delighting each customer, who carries his or her own dreams of what perfect looks like.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/233343088/0/sethsblog~On-demand-vs-in-stock.html