Smart Port Visit to Tianjin, China - Redux, Now the Video

This is the third and final post about Smart Port visit to Tianjin, China back in September. Since then, I’ve posted here on my blog and wrote a guest article about it for Silverlinings.

During the visit, I took some video (one clip was shared on my blog post), but I was also interviewed by Silverlinings as part of a video segment they produced to document the story. That finally got published, and if you want to see what state of the art looks like when combining 5G, AI and IoT at scale, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better example anywhere.

The segment runs about five minutes, and is really well-produced - I encourage you to check it out. Here’s the link for the post, which includes both the video segment (posted on YouTube), and a full transcript of the narrative. If you just want to watch the video, it’s here below.

New Guest Post - Tianjin Port: Leading Edge of 5G, AI and IoT

I recently blogged here about my visit to Tianjin as part of a media tour to China in late September. Since then, I’ve also done a guest post for Silverlinings that goes into more detail about what makes their smart port so special.

My main focus as an analyst is communications technology, but interestingly, the world of Industry 4.0 makes use of the same core technologies - 5G, AI and IoT - but in very different ways. If you want to learn more about what that looks like for the smart port space, I think you’ll find my article a good read, and to see it in action, I posted one of my video clips on the above-cited blog post.

Adtran Connect - Quick Take and Photos

Another week, another industry event. This time it’s for Adtran Connect, a company I have some good history with. Not my core focus, but enough pieces that touch on things I follow, so it’s definitely time well-spent. I’ll have more to say soon, and for now, here’s my usual quick-take post with photos before I move on to the next thing.

Day 1 keynotes from Curtis Knittle of CableLabs, and Matthew Hare of UK-based Zzoomm. Adtran’s Gary Bolton keeping things moving along.

Fireside chat just with analysts and press with CEO/Chairman Tom Stanton. Here’s an updated photo that I’ve posted in recent years - their wall of patents - pretty impressive. After the sessions, you do what one does in Alabama - blues and bbq. My kinda town.

Day 2 keynote - my highlight - Dr. Deborah Barnhart of the US Space and Rocket Center. What a great time to be in Huntsville, on the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, and of course how the space program came to Huntsville. She told the story well, and had some pretty strong messages about how space exploration can help us save the planet - more on that later.

Toronto - We're Number 11!

It's not every day that I get to say Toronto, Dell and Harvard in the same sentence, but we were all in the room together earlier this week, and am doing my civic duty here.

I've been developing some good relationships recently with Dell, and the stars lined up for me on Tuesday to participate in a panel as part of a Dell Canada event here in Toronto. This was a new event for me - Power To Do More - but it included a session with analysts, press, Dell Canada customers, and most notably Prof. David Ricketts from Harvard.

For background, Dell sponsored the 2015 Strategic Innovation Summit, which was convened by Harvard, with Dr. Rickerts serving as the summit's General Chair. Briefly, the summit focused on harnessing the forces of change - mostly tech-related of course - to drive the "innovation-based economy" of tomorrow.

Lots of good insights came out of this summit, and Dr. Ricketts was on hand to discuss them in a group setting. The newsworthy highlight came in the form a list of top 50 global cities that the research deemed as being most "future ready". I'm not going to break down the methodology or full listing here, but you can get all the key takeaways in the press release issued by Dell Canada in support of this event.

I find this research fascinating, and Toronto certainly comes out looking good, ranking at #11. We all love to shout "we're #1", but San Jose has a lock on that spot, and #11 is not too shabby. I'm not alone among Toronotians who can effortlessly spout all our shortcomings, but as liveable cities go, TO is pretty hard to beat.

Given that I also wear a smart grid/smart cities hat, I'd be remiss if I didn't give a hat tip as well to Austin, which came in even higher in the global rankings at #7. Having just served as the Community Advocate for last month's Energy Thought Summit in Austin, I can tell you first hand this is an up and coming city - looks like the next San Francisco to me - and they are doing some very cool and smart things, especially in the energy space. For a taste of that, here's my blog post with some highlights from ETS16, and for our broader thought leadership on energysmart cities - including mine - feel free to check out the News tab here.

Coming back to Dell/Harvard, what the research is really focused on is the extent to which leading cities have the right mix of attributes to sustain economic growth, and the authors break this down into three core dimensions - human capital, infrastructure and commerce.

There's lots more to explore here, but for now I'm just doing a shout-out to share TO's good news. As well, kudos to Dell for sponsoring this research, and as I get more involved with their IoT practice, I'll have to more to say about what cities need to do to be globally competitive, as well as how best to use technology to help make that happen.