North Carolina Cooperatives Utility Technology Conference - Quick Pix

I’ve been meaning to share some photos from last week’s NCEC conference in Wilmington, NC. This was my first visit to that part of the US, and really liked it - next time I’ll go back for fun.

The back story about the rural utility market was covered in this earlier post, and for this post, I’m mainly just sharing some photos for the vibe of the event. More analysis and takeaways can be found in my latest No Jitter post - here - and I’ll be talking about it as part of our next Watch This Space podcast episode, which will publish just after Labor Day.

For more background, here are my takeaways and photos from last year’s conference.

A follow-on writeup is also in the works, focusing on two pressing security issues for utilities - both cyber and physical. The conference had very interesting sessions on each topic - stay tuned.

In short, this is the world of utility co-ops, which basically serves the non-urban population, and just like everyone else, they’re struggling to modernize and adopt new technologies, especially AI.

Customer service is an important vector for this, and I presented on the role of AI for making CX better. Later in my session, I was joined by Hardy Myers from Cognigy to talk about real-world examples where their AI technologies are being used now to improve CX.

This is a very interesting vertical that I’ve been involved with for over 15 years, and I find that many of their challenges are similar to what we experience in the communications technology space.

Below - opening panel session with industry execs talking about making the grid more resilient and reliable; view from the show floor

Casey Werth from IBM talking about the role of AI for modernizing utilities; signage for my breakout session with Cognigy on Conversational AI in the contact center; from the show floor - I believe this is a current transformer - utilities are very hardware-intensive, just like telcos used to be

Two fascinating keynote sessions and speakers. First, Jesse Tuttle - “Hackah Jak” - talking about the dark side of hacking and cybersec - yeow. Second is two speakers from CACI - Lance Manthey and Chuck Jackson. Both are ex-Marines, providing a very sobering, military perspective on how vulnerable utility infrastructure is to attacks, along with how they conduct threat assessments. More on both of these sessions later.

My breakout session on Conversational AI and CX for utilities (photo: Josh Conner, NCEC), and a selfie with Jesse Tuttle and his off-the-charts sharp daughter/protege, Reese.

Next Stop - North Carolina Cooperative Technologies Conference

Around this time last year, I spoke at this conference on a couple of sessions about the growing role of AI, with a particular focus on the utility sector. In some ways, utilities are leading adopters of tech, but in others, they lag, so I was there to bring them up to speed on AI. The audience was rural coooperatives, who provide power throughout much of North Carolina, and their organizing body is the NCEC - North Carolina Electrical Cooperatives.

Well, they’ve asked me back for their 2024 conference, which runs next week in Wilmington, NC, and am very much looking forward to it. The format will be a bit different this time, where I’ll be providing an update on the AI landscape, along with specific use cases for customer service - an area where they definitely lag. To make things even more interesting, my session will also include a fireside chat with Cognigy, where they’ll share real-world successes in this space.

I’ll share what I can on social while there, but follow-on takeaways will be coming for sure. Until then, to get a flavor for this event, here’s my blog post with some highlights from last year’s conference.

North Carolina Electric Cooperatives Conference - Quick Take and Pix

NCEC - that’s the acronym of the day, and it’s for the North Carolina Electric Cooperatives. That’s a mouthful, but they speak my language, and represent 26 co-ops across the state - basically the customer base that Duke Energy doesn’t serve directly.

You may not know that I have a long history in the smart grid space, including my own Smart Grid Summit event some years back, and a good run being quite involved with Zpryme’s Energy Thought Summit - which is still going strong in Austin. With a bit of searching on my blog, you’ll see all kinds of posts and videos about that, but for this post, I’m just talking about where I was last week.

That would be Myrtle Beach - first time there for me - where I was invited to speak at NCEC’s 2023 Technology Conference and Expo. Turns out this was their largest attendance to date, and as a speaker, it’s always great to have a full house. I did presentations for two sessions, and the rooms were full each time - with lots of audience engagement. That checks a lot of boxes for me.

I’ll just share some high-level takeaways here - mainly because it was a closed event - no media, and I was the only analyst there. I could go on at great length about the parallels between telecom and energy providers, and while both are utilities by nature, they’re at different stages of adopting all the new technologies that are in my orbit. Energy providers have lagged here, and what happened with telcos is happening here now.

This event was a great way to learn about the current state of energy, along with what’s on tap technology-wise. There is definitely a lot of new tech being adopted here, mostly for operations, and AI is very much in the mix. The exhibit hall had plenty of that on display, including vendors who would be familiar in the comms world, such as Fortinet, Cradlepoint, Cisco, Carousel, Calix and SAS.

Cybersecurity is a big deal here, as utilities are very attractive targets, both for network-based and physical plant attacks. Pretty scary stuff, actually, and comms technology has a big role to play in protecting all this.

AI is starting to carry the day here, and the use cases for smart grid are similar - and complementary - to what’s needed in adjacent spaces like smart home, smart factory, smart cities, smart vehicles. All things considered, this is actually a great time for energy providers to leverage these technologies to re-think the whole value chain. These co-ops definitely see the opportunity, and just need some support to help catch up and make a similar transition to what telcos have gone through.

In case you’re wondering - as I now put on my contact center/CX hat - yes, customer service is a big pain point here, just as it is in other sectors that have lagged with cloud and AI adoption. I see this being a huge part of the value chain that needs innovation, not just because the bar for CSAT is low, but also because supply-demand dynamics have changed so much. Energy customers - both residential and commercial - do have some choice now in providers, and with the rise of renewables, they can actually be both buyers and sellers of energy. Lots of opportunity here to uplevel the customer experience.

I got to play a small part in raising their knowledge base via my two sessions talking about AI. The content is for attendees only, so all I can say is that there’s a strong appetite for this, and my role was to provide an industry-based perspective on the trends and use cases. One session was focused on Generative AI, and I made it interactive, using an ask-me-anything format. I had three of these platforms running, and we input various questions and requests, both from me and the audience to see what responses would come back. It was a fun way to experience Generative AI first-hand, and if you want to do this with me at your next event, drop me a line!

That’s my quick take, and will close by sharing a few photos - mostly mine - from the event.

Below - Don Bowman from Wake Electric kicking things off. What you don’t know is that he’s the bandleader for their community, and his group played to close out the event - very much like the SIPtones, yeah. Didn’t work out for me to be part of their gig, but maybe next year. Next - full room for my presentation about the impact of AI on future of work and opportunities for utilities. Photo credit for me speaking - Katie Hochstedt from NCEC.

Exhibitors from the show floor - NCEC, Fortinet and Cradlepoint.

Some of the event sponsors, then a colorful shot from a fiber exhibitor. Last photo - sure looks like a switchboard - it’s a training tool used for linemen. If you’re of a certain age, you’re probably smiling, thinking hey, this is just like the Operation game we used to play as kids. Correct! I was not alone in thinking that, and it probably says a lot for the age demographic of this industry.

More ETS Thought Leadership - GIS and Smart Grid

I blogged yesterday about a session I hosted at the Energy Thought Summit in Austin. It included a video of the full session that Zpryme has posted on YouTube, and am glad to see that my post is getting a lot of readership. So, to keep the ETS vibe going, here's more content.

As Community Advocate for the summit, another hat I've been wearing is doing a series of thought leader interviews. Many of these were posted prior to the event, and can be accessed from the News section of the ETS16 site. Other interviews were done later, so I have a series of those coming soon. One was published while I was away last week, and am sharing it here now.

This one was done with Bill Meehan of Esri, a company that has been pioneering the use of GIS since the 1970s. The applications go well beyond energy, so my UC/collaboration followers will also find this of interest. Bill explains this quite well in the interview, and you can see him in action on the above-mentioned video from my session - he gave a very colorful presentation!

So, here's the interview, and will update the blog as the remaining interviews get posted.