Kyle "KMo" Moschetto: No email, no problem | Turn the Lens #08

ChatGPT busted into our consciousness less than 18 months ago, and has since vacuumed up all the headlines, sucked all the oxygen out of the room, pick your metaphor, $Billions of new investment adding fuel to a raging fire.

Continuing on our exploration of the virtual, digital, and augmentations, and inspired by the very creative Yadin Porter de León, I decided to take some of my questions, right to the source, and interview OpenAI ChatGPT-4.

And the specific context? I like many of you, signed up and started training our own custom version of ChatGPT, just like Sam Altman said we could at the OpenAI Developer’s conference Sept 2023.

‘Introducing GPT’s - You can now create custom versions of ChatGPT that combine instructions, extra knowledge and any combination of skills’

https://openai.com/blog/introducing-gpts 

I got mine, loaded it with data, and to double-check my work, asked what it remembered learning, and the answer was…..can you say statelessness? Needless to say, I have questions.

So I went to the source and interviewed ChatGPT. Full disclosure, recorded the day of the AT&T issues, for whatever reason, was having connectivity issues, so I edited out most of the ‘can you hear me now?’

But I got some great answers, and now have a better understanding of terms like Influence, Nudge, Direct, and Tune, on top of the heavy lift that goes into training one of these in the first place.

An Interview with
OpenAI ChatGPT 4: Influence, Nudge, Direct, Tune | Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick podcast Ep28

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Transcript and Show Notes - Click Here 

Dave Cairns has chosen paths less traveled, since leaving university. He was a pioneer of sorts in digital spaces, and digital communities, and has tasted personally, a small slice of digital expansion possibilities. Taking full advantage of digital tools, he’s living his values with his family in the ‘why vacation only, let's move there full time’ home east of the eastern time zone, on Prince Edward Island. His day job, SVP Office, CBRE Canada.

So what do Dave and Eric Yuan, Founder and CEO of Zoom have in common? More than you might think. One of Dave’s most recent endeavors is building a community around Inspired People, Inspired Places, in a web3 virtual world, in a platform called Virbella. Dave was telling me one day how some people can feel more comfortable participating as an avatar, without the pressure of turning on the camera for whatever reason. 

I passed this ‘feature request’ information on to Eric at Zoom, to which he quickly replied
‘Jeff, we already have it. Try it out, let me know what you think’

So I called up Dave, who has hosted over 20 events in Virbela, and we conducted the interview in the virtual world, as Zoom avatars, as Virbela avatars, and un-animated face to face. 

We can all benefit from Dave’s experience, all he asks is you keep an open mind.

‍YouTube - Click Here 

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Drew Palos: Community, eBikes, Collaboration, Mobility | Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick Ep26

In business school, we learned about competing, by being the best in one product attribute. Highest technology, lowest cost, pick a parameter to win.

I don’t recall learning to beat the competition with the community. We’ve seen it to a degree in the tech world with companies like Red Hat, competing with with open-source community, but even those are rare.  That said, everyone’s trying to strengthen their relationship with developers, and an extended ecosystem, to be more of a platform than application, play. 

And that’s why I wanted to have Drew Palos, Community Creator Extraordinaire, join us for a very special episode, to share his experience on what it takes to create, build, and sustain a community, that not only strengthens the brand among its various constituents (customers, partners, etc.) but become a core pillar aside culture and design, to set this brand apart from a sea of competitors selling very similar products. The thing is, Super 73 does sell products too, but it’s much bigger than that.

And community sits squarely in the center, with Drew at the controls and the face of the franchise at events around So Cal, the USA, and around the World. 

Full disclosure, I’m a customer and fan, have led group rides, and was the subject of a short Super Squad profile. That said, Drew’s lessons can be applied far and wide.

I’m excited about more ‘e’ in our future, and the easiest place to start is an eBike. 

And with Super 73, it’s a LOT more than a frame, motor, battery and wheels and a great way to get around and run errands, it’s a community.

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Phil Simon has published over 14 business books over the last 20 years, on everything from data science and visualization to platform company domination, to zoom for dummies, and most recently, a focus on the future of work.

In Phil's latest book, The Nine: The Tectonic Forces Reshaping the Workplace, he focuses on what I might call the mega-trends, like sunlight, they impact everything on the planet, and dives into the impact on work, workers, and the workplace, in this 4th book in the in a mini-series on the future of work.

We didn't touch on all nine, but we explored a few of my favorites in detail, as their impacts reach beyond the work into everything we do. Automation, digitization, dispersion, factions, and more. With the accompanying law of unintended consequences.

Phil is well read, and well written, a huge fan of Breaking Bad and pushing barriers. If you enjoy quotes, laws, power dynamics, and the difficulty in assessing talent, come for employee empowerment, and stay for the unhealthy analytics. Nick Bloom to Goodhart's Law, Mark Twain to Darko Miličić, GenAI, Blockchain, we traveled.

And with all that, what it's like to be an author in 2023 when 43% of people don’t read a single book in a year, while Amazon has to limit author submissions to 3 books per day. Three books a day? Can you say generative AI.

Phil's a fun conversation 
Laughs and Seinfeld quotes are generally in the making.

Transcript and show notes 

https://www.turnthelenspodcast.com/episode/phil-simon-nine-tectonic-shifts-steer-into-the-skid-turn-the-lens-with-jeff-frick-ep25#Episode-Transcript 

YouTube - 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw_uumogyiw&list=PLZURvMqWbYjk4hbmcR46tNDdXQlrVZgEn  

What does the future look like? How long til we get there? 
What models and assumptions will get flipped on their head?

Thrilled to share this conversation with Derek Kerton, Founder and Principal Analyst, Kerton Group in the latest episode of the Turn the Lens podcast with Jeff Frick

Derek and the team have created a unique process to bring the speed of Silicon Valley innovation, to three of the largest industries supporting our world, Telecommunications, Transportation, Energy, and all the ancillary industries that orbit the core.

The Cleantech Council Council connects cutting-edge technologies focused on sustainable, circular, and greener energy alternatives, to the largest multinational players on the planet. From SAF (sustainable aviation fuel), to pulling energy out of recycled aluminum through an almost reverse manufacturing process, to smart microgrids and the critical role EVs will play in an extended, modern, software-defined grid.

Derek and the team have done it before with the Autotech Council, and the Telecom Council, connecting auto manufacturers and their ecosystem of partners, to the latest technology breakthroughs..

Many megatrends are aligning to accelerate the move to energy alternatives, reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, and increasing our quality of life, from the air we breathe to more people-friendly urban centers.

From Silicon Valley to Paris, from micro-grids to alternative aviation and marine fuels, to electric cars’ role in softening supply and demand spikes, from government influence to Adam Smith’s invisible hand, to eBikes, we covered it all, or at least as much as we could in a fifty-minute conversation.

As Derek concluded, the future’s a lot closer than most people know.
Thanks again Derek.

The future is already here — it's just not evenly distributed - William Ford Gibson

Melody Meckfessel has been focused on the human side of software engineering productivity since before we met in 2015. She was already building the tools and teams powering some of the largest applications in the world on Google. In 2019, Melody followed an entrepreneurial calling to Co-Found Observable, the serf-described collaborative data platform and canvas. Of course, it’s Open Source, with all that implies, from transparency to best practices, code base to community ethos.

Melody has a number of missions, two of the most important being: Giving more people access to the opportunities afforded in the technology industry, regardless of current technical level. And: Democratizing data-centricity, access to the attitude, tools, training, data, and interactivity to empower more people, as groups and individuals, to make better data-driven decisions. 

Fun to have her back on Turn the Lens 
My conversation with Melody Meckfessel

Episode Page, Notes, Links, Transcript, etc. - Click Here

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The Dean of Big Data needs no introduction.

When intelligent life forms in distant galaxies pick up the electric signals from this planet, no doubt one signal of a particular density will spark their attention, the Dean discussing decision-making, design thinking, and the economics of ethics, across media platforms, channels, and communication forums. His podcast appearances, lectures, keynotes, workshops, presentations, and books are too plenty to mention. Google 'Dean of Big Data.'

Thrilled to have him back on Turn the Lens.

My conversation with Bill Schmarzo.

Episode Page with Transcripts, Shownotes, and links - Click Here 

YouTube - Click Here 

When Casey Neistat announced that he, Candice and the family were moving back to Manhattan, you might have heard a collective cheer from his many fans and followers, rising just above the distinctive 'bzzzz'ing' sound of his beloved Boosted Board motors. What many don't know, is the impact Casey had on my life, along a number of tangents, Boosted Boards being one, but more importantly, the lessons learned about content discovery in an asynch content consumption world. These are lessons I've try to incorporate in my content strategy, and teachings. And while I should have recorded it on my board or OneWheel, let me invite you to join me on a morning coffee walk, a bit less precarious, and less wind noise. Shot on my Samsung S21 for something different. I also read somewhere that most podcasts don't get past episode 20, so what better way to celebrate moving past that post, and doing something special for 21, on S21, like we did something special for Episode 13. So without further delay, and with my B2B marketing, product, and communication pros in mind, Lessons from Casey.

Martina Lauchengco is a fantastic B2B tech marketer, who learned from some of the brightest in the business, on a few of the most important software products ever. She's worked for Bill, Marc, and Ben, and splitting early career time between Microsoft and Netscape provided an early graduate-level experience in two very different methods of delivering software. Microsoft's rigorous methodology and process, Netscape's focus on speed, speed, ship, course correct, and ship again. In her new book LOVED, Martina meticulously sets the table, then works through the details, of laying a solid product marketing foundation, significantly increasing the probability of success for sales, engineering, and the entire company. Marketing is a function, not a personality type. It takes work, not magic, and Martina lays out the concepts in easy-to-follow detail. In this far-ranging discussion, Martina shared her insight on some core marketing concepts like framing, storytelling, product-market fit, pricing, packaging, and bundling. Martina's guidance on content, has a point of view, perhaps provocative, to break through the noise. The desired goal of modern marketing is to work into the day's attention and conversations by incorporating education, entertainment, and emotional connection. The target response (less specific than a CTA link), have the people discover your content that matters, excite the audience so that a) their intellectual curiosity is sparked & they need to learn more, and b) intellectual curiosity sparked and a burning need to share with someone. Lots more in the book and the interview. Martina is always fun, educational, engaging, and thought-provoking. A great teacher with fantastic work-life lesson stories. Thanks again Martina, Congratulations again with LOVED, quite an undertaking.

Transcript and Show Notes 
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I used to see Jon Fortt at all the big tech events, sitting under lights, earpiece in and connected, waiting for the throw from CNBC New York for the latest in technology from The Sands, Moscone, or Javits Convention Centers. Jon has interviewed most of today's technology leaders, including Andy Jassy, Shantanu Narayen, Sandy Speicher, Satya Nadella, and many more. In this far-ranging discussion, Jon shares his take on a number of topics, from leadership, culture, authenticity, and other observations time with some of today's top leaders. We covered the evolution of media, and Jon's personal experimentation in varying content formats, structure, and delivery, stretching the limits inside, and outside the formal confines of CNBC. After recounting a career journey of from newspapers to magazines, national to local to national again, print to television, and adding successfully adding LinkedIn, YouTube & WordPress to the mix. I'm sure fans will enjoy getting to know another side of Jon, being on the other side of the questions. And for those who don't follow Jon, let me introduce you to a positive force in journalism, innovating in delivery, and leveraging his platforms to help others through education. Thanks again Jon, really enjoyed our conversation

Transcript and Show Notes 
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LinkedIn Article