TechFirst with John Koetsier

When you plunk a $100 million wind farm down on 98,000 acres of varying terrain, you want to know a few things. You want to know that you’re optimizing the location of your multi-million-dollar turbines. You want to know that the turbines you source can handle the gustiest gust of wind they will ever encounter without shattering dramatically in a viral video. And you want to test potential uses cases and changes in software, which is cheap and changeable, rather than in hardware, which is expensive and hard to edit. Which is why Siemens Gamesa, the global renewable energy company, is working with NVIDIA to generate AI-powered digital twins of its turbines. In this TechFirst, I chat with Dion Harris, Lead Product Manager of Accelerated Computing at NVIDIA and Greg Oxley, Siemens Gamesa. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

Everyone wants privacy. Most of us also care about an environment in which businesses can grow too. But can both of these be reconciled? If you are in the mobile app or marketing spaces, you know that over the past year there’s been a great disturbance in the force. Apple increased privacy regulations for apps, and that essentially killed how apps measured their growth, discovered new audiences, or sent you a reminder that those shoes you were going to buy are still in your cart. Facebook complained this would hurt small business, took out big ads in the WSJ, and then life sort of went on and most of us forgot about it. But not those in the business. Growth slowed and profitability went down: 40% down. Now one company says they’ve solved it: figured out a way to drive growth via advertising that’s completely privacy-safe and Apple-compliant, but almost as good as the old days of abundant data. In this TechFirst, I chat with Singular CEO Gadi Eliashiv. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

We desperately need more housing that is affordable, sustainable, and mass producible. Geoship thinks they've created exactly that, and have now actually built a full-scale prototype using their advanced materials science and construction methodology. In this TechFirst, we chat with CEO and cofounder Morgan Bierschenk. Way too many can’t afford homes right now, especially young people, and the homes we do build are generally horrible for the environment. Plus, the isolated wood boxes we build for people don’t tend to bring us closer together. Geoship is building sustainable bioceramic domes. They're non-toxic, have a near-zero carbon footprint, are and designed to last 500 years. They’re also intended to be affordable, mass producible, and maybe even to be deployed in communities where people can live together, not apart. Sounds idealistic? Maybe. But the company has completed its first full-size prototype, has 500 orders, and is looking to enter full-scale production. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

Mojo Vision has been working on smart contact lenses since years. Recently the company announced its most advanced prototype ever, which VP Steven Sinclair told me has "all the elements that we need ... in a working system so that we can really push forward what we hope is the first product." That includes: - 14,000 pixels per inch MicroLED display - 5GH ultra-low latency radio to stream AR content - continuous eye tracking via custom-configured accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers - medical-grade in-lens batteries - eye-controlled user interface In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, I chat with Sinclair about the technology, uses, augmented reality, timeline to purchasable product, and the fundamental breakthroughs Mojo had to make before achieving this latest prototype. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

What if the very things we want big social platforms to do to stop the spread of extremism, racism, propaganda, and lies is actually causing more problems than it solves? Many of us want YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter to manage and moderate what people say. Others, who value free speech higher than social harms that its exercise might cost, say that muzzling people is unethical and in some countries illegal. The big social platforms are in the crosshairs either way, and that's one of the reasons Elon Musk is buying Twitter. But where do people go when they get kicked off the big platforms for spreading covid misinformation or saying unacceptable things? According to some, they go places that just make things worse. In this episode of TechFirst, we chat with Daryl Davis, a black musician who has convinced 200 KKK members to stop being racist, and Bill Ottman, the CEO of alternative social network Minds.com.  Our questions: - why are we so divided? - aren't we seeing more racism lately? why? - should any speech be censored? - should social platforms open source their algorithms? - what's the solution to the division and anger we're experiencing? - how do we bridge our reality bubbles? Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

Who's winning in the media and entertainment battles? We are currently seeing an epic battle in the mobile space for consumer time, attention, and dollars. Two of the biggest juggernauts are short video versus long ... think Netflix vs TikTok, Disney+ vs Reels, with many more combatants and some like YouTube and Facebook with stakes in both sides. What’s happening here … and who’s going to win? And why did Tiktok just have the biggest quarter of any mobile app ever? In this TechFirst, we chat with Data.ai CEO Ted Krantz. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

Catawba Indian Nation in Rock Hill, South Carolina has established a new Special Economic Zone where the tribe will provide space and regulatory certainty for crypto and fintech companies. It's called the Catawba Digital Economic Zone, and the Catawba Corporation says it "can be prosperous thanks to the ability of Native-American Tribes under US law to have their own commercial code, regulation-making and administrative capacities." Catawba is a sovereign jurisdiction under U.S. law, allowing it to built a regulatory framework that is friendly to fintech, blockchain, and crypto companies, says Ronnie Beck, CEO of Catawba Corporations. The closest similarity? Estonia's eResidency program. In this episode of TechFirst we chat with the CEO of the CDEZ, Joseph McKinney, and Thomas Trimnal, a VP at Catawba Corporations. Our focus: what will the enable, who will come, and how will this generate value for both companies and the Catawba themselves. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

BMW sells 2.5 million cars and 194,000 motorcycles annually, almost all in a traditional car dealership. But the 100-year-old car brand wants to sell cars online, just like Tesla. Now BMW is embarking on a major project with Adobe to get "phygital" ... to be able to do business seamlessly across apps, websites, and physical car dealerships, however its clients prefer. That means data, insights, software, and a complete rethinking of how its thousands of car dealerships interact with customers. And, of course, how customers interact with BMW ... including before they buy, when they buy, and for years of owning their vehicles. In this TechFirst, we chat with BMW SVP Jens Theimer. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

Will super-smart artificial intelligence be the ultimate cheat code for beating the market? Probably not ... but its could ensure you retire with 25% more than you otherwise would. In this TechFirst we chat with the CEO of Qraft USA, Robert Nestor. Qraft is an AI company focused on investing. The company has a billion USD "assets under AI" in Korea and is expanding to the US. While the AI is active in crafting the strategy and execution, humans still make the final decisions. The result, so far, is about a 1% improvement on what financial advisors would otherwise get. While that doesn't sound huge, that's significant over your earning and investing lifespan. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

Digital retail giant Amazon has over 200,000 robots helping deliver more than 350 million different products in an unceasing flood of billions of deliveries. Its fulfillment machine with both free and fast shipping has become a key competitive moat against other retailers: free shipping and 1-day or 2-day shipping is why Amazon customers chose Amazon. So how can other retailers, whether giants like Walmart or smaller brands, compete? One way is by stealing a march on the e-commerce behemoth and automating themselves.  In this episode of TechFirst, we chat with Locus Robotics CMO Karen Leavitt. Locus Robotics robots-as-a-service will pick more than a billion items in warehouse, fulfilment centers, and logistics hubs ... and the company just added more. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier