Notes from Don Brancato on IoT, millennials and Big Data

What I learned today — 11 May 2018

Today I attended a breakfast event with Don Brancato at IoT.nxt. It was a fascinating talk. Here are a few notes I took during the session with Don.

IoT is about collecting the “Missing Data™”. Collect data in order to build service offerings with that. A library of capabilities that a person can draw on.

Millenials are changing how the world works. They expect fairness and openness. They baulk at propriety data and expect data to be shared for everyone’s benefit.

A data strategy must move through three phases of maturity: 1) Describe. 2) Predict. 3) Prescribe.

IoT devices can generate petabytes of data daily. This is too big. There is a need to curate data that can be used to inform decisions.

According to Gartner only 0.5% of data that’s saved delivers business value. Only save data that’s traceable to business value!

Nepal story: It’s not enough to inform operations, IoT must inform executives! It must inform, or even prescribe, strategy.

Kenya water story: IoT is about solving real-world problems.

Auckland story: The real power comes from a data-mess. That is, overlaying something like weather-data on traffic-data. A lot of sensors are being installed and there are going to be many broken smart-cities. Applied Big Data is using Machine Learning to answer citizens’ questions. It’s about empathy. Smart cities need to be designed around empathy with their citizens.

Regarding blockchain in Africa: It will only be viable once the transaction cost is dramatically reduced. Then IoT will also really take off.

3 Key factors for IoT (and blockchain):

• Cost
• Latency (proximity of sensors to data centres and users)
• Interoperability (this is what IoT.nxt is solving)
  Standard: Open Data Element Framework (ODEF)

How to avoid mistakes with IoT:

• Show empathy
• Listen
• Don’t start with the tech, start with the needs
• Focus on value
• You don’t need so much stuff
• “Don’t buy a thing until you have a need and a strategy for the thing.”

Empathy: There is a growing need to inform the ethics for those programming the things. Things are becoming more and more autonomous and need to make ethical decisions.