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17 December 2018 — When you have the brain power in attendance at an event like DIGITAL2018 (held at the Cologne Fair, an excellent venue), you cannot help but have some “deep dive” conversations … at exhibitor booths, at the sessions, in the food queues, at dinner, at the bars … about the cultural aspects of media, politics, trade and social interactions vis-a-vis digital technology and digitization.
Digitization and digitalization are often used interchangeably, rightly or wrongly. Technically, digitization means the process of converting data or information into digital format. But the point here is basic: we are talking about using digital technologies to change a business model and provide new revenue and value-producing opportunities; it is the process of moving to a digital business.
These are subjects you tend not to address at other conferences which are “all-trade” focused. But Deutsche Telekom managed to create that atmosphere with its new digital summit for business and politics. So you need to grab this time given these wonderous communication channels.
The event is an initiative of Deutsche Telekom as part of the Digital Congress for Business, Science and Politics at the Cologne Trade Fair. It was a brilliant meshing of industry leaders, innovators, political decision-makers, techies, experienced executives and start-ups who all discussed the progress of digitalization.
No surprise. They had major corporate partners like Microsoft, Samsung and SAP. Plus celebrity speakers like: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak; the expert on artificial intelligence Chris Boos; Telekom boss Tim Höttges; Neil Harbisson (the first person recognized by a government as a “cyborg” with a cybernetic implant in his head against color blindness); motivation coach Vladimir Klitschko; and DFB (German Football Association) manager Oliver Bierhoff. To name but a few.
It all created a fireworks of topics for two days on four distinct presentation/performance stages.
I was intrigued by the new format which was aimed at business and politics. The event certainly brought in the crowds (there were 7,500+ in attendance). For two days we had major companies, SMEs, start-ups and municipalities discussing the trends and topics of digitization. The four presentation/performance stages I mentioned were based on:
1. leadership
2. innovation
3. technology, and
4. practical examples
In addition there were scores of workshops and “best-practice” examples from start-ups, SMEs and corporations … a wonderful exchange of ideas.
As Hagen Rickmann (Managing Director of Telekom Deutschland’s business customer division) put it:
With the new digital summit, we are seeking to lead a dialog at eye level. We want to connect start-ups, entrepreneurs from SMEs and corporations, politicians, associations, the media and scientists.
That’s the thing. Digitization needs more than technology and infrastructure. You need a combination of digital competence, entrepreneurial expertise and the innovative power of the technology pioneers out there. I met with both new and old companies, the latter being entities that had the courage to reinvent themselves. I can say that DIGITAL2018 offered impulse … and inspiration. And I added scores of new contacts through some very productive networking.
And might I add that this approach is brilliant. Because in the real world, knowledge is not separated into neatly defined boxes. Topics overlap and bleed into one another. All knowledge is interconnected. The most useful insights are often found at the intersection of ideas.
It is impossible to cover everything at an event like this (and I was alone, without my media crew, so even more difficult) but herein some highlights of my two-day adventure. Each of these bits really requires one of my now famous “video chats” and I will endeavor to schedule a few in early 2019:
The key element: partnership
“Win with partners” is one of the key elements of Deutsche Telekom’s strategy. This underscores the importance of cooperation for Deutsche Telekom’s future success. In addition to various units of Deutsche Telekom, I met scores of companies that were either a spin off of Deutsche Telekom and therefore had an existing partnership with them, or were just a straight out partner. Deutsche Telekom obviously will continue to develop its own ideas, but is also open to outside innovations and is increasing its emphasis on collaboration. The objective is to offer a wider range of products and services together with partners. Major, global corporations as well as small startups can become partners on equal terms. It is an interesting approach, the use of “smart combinations”. This way, in-house ideas can be enhanced by developments of external partners. Intelligent approaches can often be cleverly combined – so that the blend gives the customer an even greater experience.
SoftwareBoost: getting into the cloud
To see some of this brainpower in action, I spent some time with Nicole Griesbeck, Program Manager and Commercial Manager in the Portfolio and Product Management unit for business customers of Deutsche Telekom:
Nicole Griesbeck
Nicole summarized her role neatly:
Let’s say you are an independent software vendor with a unique solution in the market. So how do you actively shape the course of digitization or start to shift your business model to the cloud? Well, you turn to us. Because you benefit from an exclusive partnership with unique advantages in the safe and agile IaaS [Infrastructure-as-a-service]. I like to call it “digitization made simple”.
It’s called “SoftwareBoost” and it is quite brilliant because, simply put, you get “more bytes for your business”: you access the market fast, inexpensively and safely. You set up your software as an SaaS (Software as a Service) solution within a state-of-the-art environment and in a very cost-efficient way. As a Softwareboost partner it includes technological and marketing support, at reduced costs. And as Nicole reminded me:
We can scale your business according to your needs. And add to that Deutsche Telekom’s extensive data protection and security standards. You will, in effect protect your business and benefit from future-proof technology.
We had a great chat about the advantages of the open Telekom cloud which is the the European alternative for the public cloud. It is data protection according to German law, certified at enterprise standards. And what I really liked was its simplicity: quick access, easy use and support from the initial assistance until the operation starts. And thanks to OpenStack, based on open source technology, you profit from having no vendor-lock-in, with simple integration.
Cloud computing has created a paradigm shift in IT as data, processing power and IT applications are increasingly moving onto the net. IaaS is an attractive source of low-cost and flexible on-demand IT resources; and public-cloud solutions have proved very popular.
For Deutsche Telekom this presents an area of strategic focus which offers significant opportunities for competitive differentiation and profitable growth. And they nail it.
I merely skimmed through the stuff Nicole Griesbeck told me (she is such a bright spark; I will definitely follow up next year with a video chat) and space limitations forced me to omit a riveting conversation about the GDPR and German data protection. But as the recent spate of data breaches have reminded us, cloud services will retain their appeal, but only in combination with robust data privacy and security. For this reason, many businesses continue to use private-cloud solutions, even for highly standardized infrastructure resources – and miss out on the many benefits of public clouds.
Now, to completely switch gears … digitization and its impact in the area of textiles & fashion
The stunning and brilliant team from Fashion Fusion at DIGITAL2018
Years ago, when we were living in New York City, my wife worked for the Versace fashion house. I became fascinated by the fashion industry. I attended numerous “handbags at dawn” events (the phrase borrowed from the UK football idiom) to learn about fashion economics, marketing and consumption. I still do work for several fashion industry clients.
Of late I have been intrigued with “design by algorithm”. And you probably see where this is going but let me start with what a fashion insider told me:
We analyze so much and we know too much about buying habits and likes, and we profile people to the max. The result is an insidious bias toward giving people what they have already indicated they want. It may be safe, and easier to sell, but it’s antithetical to the whole point of fashion, which should be about giving people what they never knew they wanted — what they couldn’t imagine they wanted — until they saw it.
So how is all this “profiling” done? It will come as no surprise that identification of what we will want, and what we will be eventually given and shop, owes a great deal to our own social media activity, that is the “likes” we give, whom we follow, and the content that we share ourselves.
And so a whole technology sub-industry has arisen from mining fashion social media content. I got involved earlier this year when I did some research for a client who was looking for applications of text and data mining techniques (TDM) in the fashion industry. The work took me to New York where I had the opportunity to work with a data scientist who knew TDM techniques. We were able to mine 100 million photographs (mostly from Instagram) and devise patterns on how clothing styles vary around the world, and tackle the frequency of use of certain garments and colors. By training a machine-learning algorithm, he was able to identify a set of visual themes and study how these would vary by time and place, and also identify the preference for certain colors.
I know, I know. This deserves a detailed blog post and perhaps after I interview the team at Fashion Fusion (the delightful folks in the photo above) I can offer some perspective.
As we all know … and certainly it was the focus at DIGITAL2018 … in times of digitization, technology gets to be a larger part of our lives. From health care to fitness/sport, over to fashion and textiles, on to interior design, even within the automotive industry – everything is getting smart. And you know what? Deutsche Telekom is helping to shape that digital society and it is driving digital lifestyle trends.
The goal of the Fashion Fusion program is to use digital technologies to connect apparel, accessories, and devices together intelligently in ways that provide their users with new and innovative benefits. I spoke to Claudia Hesse of Fashion Fusion and she framed the conversation as follows:
I think our mission is to turn visionary concepts into lifestyle reality. We are an enabler and a strong partner for the movers and shakers from the fields of smart textiles and technologies. With Fashion Fusion, we are making the customer experience more complete, more tangible – personal, mobile, sustainable and always close to the body.
I cannot describe all I learned and saw with the Fashion Fusion team. And let me add that hanging out with some very, very brainy fashion models (and yes, they were stunning, too) is a great way to spend an afternoon, quite frankly. There were live demos of how this embedded technology worked.
Let me show you just one clip. And apologies: I shot this with my old iPhone (I had left my XS Max back at my hotel!) so it does not do justice to the actual demo. Plus the sound is a bit tinny so you may not get the full explanation so see my text summary below the clip:
The product is called “KeyPod” and what it aims to do is add interactivity to any apparel. It is quite the revolutionary embedded unit. You can see on the sleeve of the jacket it is small, light, washable and has years of battery life. With such smart clothing, people can activate their favorite running application, change playlists, order a taxi, push-to-talk and do so much more, without having to touch or being distracted by their smartphones.
This is all fascinating stuff. I will close with an emphasize on the strategic focus: this really encourages creative minds to team up, it engages and challenges the status quo with groundbreaking concepts and prototypes. And polymath (and opsimath) that I am I could quickly see that they are establishing an international ecosystem with strategic partnerships and premium partners within the fields of smart textiles, technology and retail.
Cogia intelligence: social-media-monitoring-and-measurement.
With almost two billion users on Facebook alone, social media has become the most important branch for public discourse. So companies are quite eager to collect and transform the relevant information into business success. It is natural. There is a lot of traffic in this area … scores of companies have technology for social-media-monitoring-and-measurement.
The key, though, is to have intuitive and well-designed technology so you can analyze in detail the positioning of your company … and your competitors. Because the key is to increase the visibility of your brand/company and thereby raise the level of awareness with the right social media strategy.
Cogia Intelligence (founded in 2010) is one of the leading providers of media monitoring technology and AI-based solutions in a field we hear of … ad nauseam … “Big Data Analytics”. Their technology is used in web monitoring, competitive intelligence, text mining and customer satisfaction.
Why is this important? I had a brief chat with Christian Schwirtz, the Key Account Manager at Cogia, and he summarized it as follows:
-Consumers increasingly rely on online research when considering a purchase. Studies show that 88% of buyers research products online before making a purchase (online or in-store); and 86% will hesitate to purchase from a business that has negative reviews.
-Leaving brand reputation to chance can lead to a crisis. Monitoring your reputation and reacting promptly will help you avoid crises and full-on disasters, and prevent negative news about your business from spreading.
-Your brand’s online reputation can affect your we site’s rankings: Google uses an algorithmic solution designed to de-rank sites that offer poor customer experience.
-Monitoring your online reputation will give you valuable customer insights: what people love about your product, what they wish they could change, and what they feel is missing.
What Cogia seems to have done is make an art form of qualitative and quantitative analysis of internal data. They use text mining … the automatic analysis of text with regard to the topics, the relevant keywords or conceptual relationships as well as their tonality … to detect patterns and conspicuous differences in the answers of the surveyed respondents and also identify “weak” signals which otherwise would be lost in random noise. This helps to achieve hypotheses for future surveys and provides important reference points with regard to a company’s strategic planning.
It also delivers a structured overview of heterogeneous data and visualizes the results in intuitive understandable graphs. Here is just one example:
There are a lot of social media analytic tools out there. Cogia seems to be one of the best.
Cognigy: conversational AI software 
Cognigy was a company I have known simply because it had been a “Cool Vendor” in Gartner’s “Cool Vendors in AI for Conversational Platforms” 2018 report. In brief, the report evaluates emerging vendors from the field of Conversational Platforms “that application leaders should watch in order to take advantage of the disruption they will bring to all markets”.
One of the more interesting topics I have written about this year has been voice commerce. Such major blogs as Axiom and MediaVillage and TechCrunch and ZDNet now devote separate columns to deal with this topic. As I have noted, the German consulting company valantic has seen significant interest in showcases and webinars about this topic and they have done some implementations using Cognigy, a conversational platform that was created in 2015.
Apart from the positive user experience that voice bots can deliver, one of the main reasons for them to become more prevalent is the increased ease of development and deployment. Platforms like Cognigy are essentially low-code platforms that allow iterative cycles that lead to very fast success.
Essentially, Cognigy is a digital assistant that helps AI bots pick up information from their conversations with real people, making responses more natural and human-like over time. The company benefits from voice-controlled digital assistants developed by Siri, Alexa, Cortana or Google Assistant. These chatbots – programs capable of conducting conversations through text or audio – are given the ability to memorize customer preferences and product information. As explained to me by Konstantin Garbe, Cognigy’s Inside Sales Lead :
They’re channels – but we’re the brain behind it. Alexa or Siri have their own systems to tell the user for example what the weather’s going to be like. Artificial intelligence operates using systems called skills, which Cognigy provides to company chatbots. Cognigy works with companies to develop an information system that is hooked up to their corporate database. The customers talk to a chatbot which converts the message into text and sends it to the system developed by Cognigy, which then delves into the company’s database to answer it. That enables the chatbot to recognize customers, access product information and store the conversation for future interactions.
Voice will change how brands go to market and interact with consumers, but it will be a slow roll out. In fact, a report by “The Information” rocked a few boats when it revealed practically no one was buying via voice. But Alexa is conquering the world through the very popular Echo devices, and of course you need to be able to target your customers on these devices. What I liked about Cognigy was that it integrates seemlessly with Alexa, enabling you to define your intents and slots in Alexa while creating your conversation in Cognigy.
Granted, this is tricky stuff. Voice can help foster brand loyalty, but there are potential risks. At present, when customers type in a search term for a product such as a yoga mat, they get a list of brands and all those brands at least have a chance to appear on the first page. But with voice-activated assistants, it’s going to be different. As Scott Grayson of MediaVillage put it:
The aim must be to get customers to ask the question: “Google, show me Stranger Things on Netflix” or ‘”order me Adidas shoes on Zalando”. If the brand isn’t in the customer’s mind and explicitly mentioned in the search with intelligent systems it won’t even be searched by Alexa or Google Home.
I made the analogy of talking on an iPhone, not to it. Customers have to understand one thing: it’s the brand that talks to the user. In the end the assistant is just the channel.
Neuro Flash: neuropsychology to measure consumers’ opinions
I wish there was more time to chat with the folks from Neuro Flash. Their booth was always packed and I had to keep swinging back by. I did have some time with Henrik Beuning, a co-founder of the company. They seem to have captured the power of neuromarketing strategy, and by that I mean the importance of primal instincts. As a company, they have helped brands (Beiersdorf, Ben & Jerry, Diageo, E-On, Volkswagen and many more) to develop marketing material that connects with consumers on a subconscious level. Because people’s feelingsare impacting sales much more than what people thinkthey think. We had a brief chat about a study that showed 85% of people rely on virtually anonymous online reviews as much as they rely on their friends’ opinions.
Neuro Flash is using AI and Big Data and the newest neuropsychology methods to go beyond conventional marketing studies and measure consumers’ unconscious reactions and opinions. They combine implicit association tests and Big Data to determine the real motivations behind consumer decisions.
I have only skimmed over the key points. But my AI program at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology has served me well. I grasped enough to know that what Neuro Flash is doing is to help companies to understand their value and communications based on knowing what their customers really think.
NeXenio: collaboration world-wide, digitally
NeXenio is a German cloud computing company headquartered in Berlin and they focus on the future of the daily working-life … to work safely through distances.
We all know the drill. Collaboration across the world is difficult. On-site workshops are cost intensive and those analog whiteboards we all love have to be erased before other meetings. And information on whiteboards cannot be rearranged. Conference calls? How many of us have endured the inaudible call. And you get no history of the conference call.
What I learned from Harald Fladischer … NeXenio’s Head of Sales and Marketing … is they have developed “digital whiteboards”. And I know I am simplifying this but very quickly … and excuse my bullet-point approach … what you get is:
- Easy collaboration across thousands of kilometers in real time
- You are not “lost” in endless mail chains
- You can actively engage with customers or project partners
- You can write on digital whiteboards with “moving” sticky notes and you can cluster sticky notes (very cool)
- And you probably realize the obvious advantages: joint brainstorming, all interactions synchronized to all devices in real time, all whiteboards can be stored at any time, etc. etc.
What I really liked was the platform and integration: whiteboard client for desktop computer, SaaS (runs in every major browser), the use of mobile devices, mobile digital whiteboards.
And for me the real “biggies”: no need to create meeting minutes because everything is already stored, and no misunderstandings during calls.
And any conference that ends with a concert by “Black Eyed Peas” is A#1 in my book
Besides the live concert, Deutsche Telekom also showed the performance in a free live stream plus in 360 degrees in the MagentaMusik 360 app, on the associated website and on MagentaTV and on the associated social media channels.
Note: earlier this year I wrote about the MagentaMusik 360 app when I was at Cannes Lions, the annual advertising conference in Cannes, France. They partner with Samsung and offer an ideal solution for the 360-degree concert experience with the Galaxy S9 smartphone in combination with the MagentaMusik 360 app and Samsung Gear VR.
And a really nice touch: all the food and drinks at DIGITAL2018 were free. There were massive buffet bars spread around the venue for both breakfast and lunch with amazing choices:
Or you could take a break and read or play a video game in one of the lounge areas:
The point was to make it very “attendee friendly” … and keep you at the event. They also had large communal tables where you could network, and some vendors even had private eating areas.
CONCLUDING POINTS
The massive job layoffs announced earlier this month by the U.S. automaker General Motors was initially reported as a conventional “business-cycle adjustment”. As a sailor I was amused by a phrase used in the press announcement … “a trimming of the sails”. But it was most revealing about a broad technology trend that is shared by many industries, not just the auto industry. The GM layoffs are not just incremental but existential: the aggressive transition from analog products to digital products. It is the “digitalization of everything”.
And that’s why DIGITAL2018 was so refreshing. Deep perspective by those “doing it”. The entire event was very much a cross-sector initiative that explained so much. It wasn’t one of those events that “chases” digitization but has the people and companies actively shaping it. Deutsche Telekom is to be commended.