Podcast appearances and mentions of andreas weigend

Everyone wants data these days, and they want it fast! What does that mean for the business? For you? Which kinds of technology can deliver data at blazing speed? Check out this episode of DM Radio to find out! Host @eric_kavanagh will interview several experts, including industry veteran Dan Everett, plus Bill French of Stream It, and Sanjay Agrawal of Revefi. And the podcast bonus features world-renowned AI guru, Dr. Andreas Weigend, former Chief Scientist of Amazon, and data coach for both Jack Ma and Angela Merkel!

Inés talks to our CEO Stefan Oschmann and Big Data expert Andreas Weigend about how Big Data is influencing the future of science and technology.

阿里巴巴前副總裁傳授車品覺曾以一小時3000 美元，上德裔美國大數據專家安卓亞斯．韋斯岸（Andreas Weigend）的課。在車品覺眼中，韋斯岸頭腦簡直靈活得可怕。摘自天下雜誌出版《數據的商戰策略》

Inés talks to our CEO Stefan Oschmann and Big Data expert Andreas Weigend about how Big Data is influencing the future of science and technology.

The Sunday Times' tech correspondent Danny Fortson takes a "Monks to Metallica" tour of the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco before sitting down with Andreas Weigend, Amazon's first chief scientist, to cover five big questions: 1. Is china's social credit score a glimpse of the future? (12:30), 2. Is privacy dead? (24:55), 3. Is the concept of data being used for rather than against every people a realistic prospect? (33:45), 4. What does Amazon do that other's don't that makes it so successful? (38:00), 5. Does the rise of AI signal an epochal shift for humanity, or is this just another false dawn? (47:15). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Host Ali Nazar interviews Shaun Tai, Executive Director for Oakland Digital, on the organization's innovative approach to bringing tech and design jobs to underserved populations in the East Bay.Transcript:Ali Nazar:You're listening to KALX Berkeley, 90.7 FM, University of California and listener-supported radio, and this is Method to the Madness, coming at you from the Public Affairs department here at KALX, celebrating the innovative spirit of the Bay Area. I'm your host, Ali Nazar, and today with me I have Shaun Tai on the phone. He's the Executive Director of Oakland Digital. Hey, Shaun, how's it going?Shaun Tai:Hey, what's up, man? How are you doing?Ali Nazar:Pretty good. Really appreciate you joining us today.Shaun Tai:Oh, man. I'm happy to be here, man, and spread the knowledge. Spread that inspiration. I'm ready.Ali Nazar:Okay. Great. I always start this program with the same question, because you are a founder of an organization, and founders usually come to the decision to put so much energy into something like starting an organization, and dedicating their blood, sweat, and tears to it because they see a problem in the world. Tell us, what is the problem statement that Oakland Digital is trying to solve?Shaun Tai:Communities of color, specifically community college students, lack the same opportunities afforded to privileged communities. We focus specifically on artists of color, predominantly women of color, that are looking to break into a design career. Our problem really stems from, honestly, my own story of not quite the community college level, but the state level, of Cal State-East Bay, which I love. The teachers are doing a great job. They're teaching software. But they don't have the resources, and to be honest, the time, to be like, "Yo, check this out. Here's what they do at Twitter. Here's what they do at Facebook. Here's what they do at the local agency level." That's what Oakland Digital does, is we take those students and get their foot in the door, of not just tech, but business, non-profits, and some really cool creative agencies.Ali Nazar:Cool. Okay. You alluded to a little bit about your background and how you got to this. Can you tell us a little bit about you and where you come from?Shaun Tai:Man, well I come from the Bay Area, man. As anyone listening knows, the Bay is super real, authentic, dope, to be honest. It's just real. I've always wanted to do something real with my life. My dad passed away when I was two months old. I was raised by a single mother. Very small family. Born and raised by an entrepreneur. A woman entrepreneur of color. That was just the ultimate inspiration, from a work-ethic standpoint, of seeing my mom work seven days a week in Oakland, running a furniture design studio. Just seeing that work-ethic of not just her going to work, and showing up early, but coming back home and cooking for me and my brother.Then, after she cooked dinner, sketching, so 10:00 p.m., 11:00 p.m., and faxing those designs to a factor in Hong Kong to just create some dope furniture. Create things. That mix of creativity, that mix of hard work, really passed on to me, and that's what gave me that spirit of not just creating, but doing something with meaning and purpose.In my mom's case, it was making her customers happy with some great furniture. For me, it was how do I give back to the community with things that I love? Creativity, technology, community, social good, social impact. Really, my mom gets full kudos and credit for being my inspiration.Ali Nazar:Nice. She sounds like an amazing woman.Shaun Tai:She is.Ali Nazar:She put that idea into your brain, and that spirit into you, but what about your training. Did you go have another job or a career before starting Oakland Digital?Shaun Tai:Yeah, man, I'm, dude, I'm glad you asked. I know we were talking offline about music, and how powerful music is. In 2006, my partner Ray Luv, who's actually a Bay Area rap legend ... I grew up on Mac Mall, [inaudible] Tupac's music. We got together and created a YouTube channel when it wasn't hot. YouTube was cool in 2006, but it wasn't what it is now, with people getting billions of hits.We created a show called Pushin' the Bay TV, where we chronicled the Bay Area hip-hop and rap history. Interviewing people from Shock G, Dru Down, Spice 1, Too Short, E-40, The Jacka, rest in peace, and all of these Bay Area rap legends who did not have an online presence, right? But we were the first to say, "Hey, why don't we do this and celebrate the beautiful rap history in the Bay?"Ray Luv and I, we would just go around and interview people. We went down to L.A., East Coast. What I found was how powerful technology was. Specifically the YouTube platform. In one year, we received around 14 million views, and for that time, that was groundbreaking, and ground-shattering. What I found from talking to the young people was how influenced they were by these videos.But what I learned about the game were some of the things that were, I don't want to say negative, but definitely not the things I wanted to promote. After a year of success, and things were going up, I actually decided to give it up, and to cancel, because I wanted to do something for social good. Not that it wasn't powerful. Not that it wasn't getting impressions, but I thought, "How do we use tech for good?"That very simple core of "tech for good" is what birthed the Oakland Digital spirit of tech for good, and then, of course, myself being a designer and a creative, "creative tech for good," right? Those concepts birthed the idea of how do we help artists become professionals? Just like that young 13 year-old watching that YouTube video, how do I not just consume this technology, but create something cool, too, and then take those skills to get a career?That's the birth of OD. Oakland Digital.Ali Nazar:Wow, man. That's such a powerful story. Thank you for sharing it. We're speaking to Shaun Tai, who is the Executive Director of Oakland Digital, here on Method to the Madness on KALX Berkeley.Not a lot of people would have the guts to leave a burgeoning career like that, and take a left turn and follow their passion, so that's definitely commendable. I'd love to hear about, after you got to that point of understanding that, "Okay, I want to do something for social good? Creative tech for good." How did you then formulate the idea of how Oakland Digital would actually be an organization pursuing that goal?Shaun Tai:Yeah, I mean, I did gloss over a few details, like one of the biggest things that I learned while doing Pushin' the Bay TV was, there was an event at Stanford. I know you guys are rivals, but Stanford. Shout out to them, too. I met MC Hammer, Chamillionaire, and Mistah Fab, and Quincy Jones III, with Ray Luv and Mac Mall. They're friends. Everyone in the rap industry is friends.When I met MC Hammer, that day, he was introducing this crazy idea called Twitter. This is 2006, 2007. It was this thing that, in 140 characters, you could write about what you're doing. The whole crowd was confused, because here are effectively three rappers that are using this thing called Twitter, and in the crowd, I think very few people were.That's when I learned like, yo, tech doesn't have to be disseminated by the top-down. It can be actually by the community-up. After that day, actually, that same day, I went up to MC Hammer, and I'm like, "Yo, I'm here with Ray Luv and Mac Mall, who you know. Much respect. I love everything from your music career, but also your entrepreneurship. How do I get in touch?" Because he's like, "I love Oakland. I love the A's. I love technology."I tweeted him that night, ironically, I tweeted him, and from that year exchange, back and forth, we became friends. He's still an advisor to Oakland Digital, to this day. Between finding mentors, advisors, early on, to finding people that believed in the vision. Board of directors, co-founders, people that just believe in what you're doing.Then, of course, here's the big thing. Legal. After MC Hammer's like, "Yo, I'm with that idea of tech for good." I was walking down, and this is a true story, I was walking down Broadway, and I see City Hall, in Oakland. I literally said, "I'm just going to walk into City Hall and find out how to start a non-profit."I remember going up inside, checking in with the security guard, going up to the ninth floor, I believe. I met with this lady named Kathy Littles. I don't know if she's still around, but shout-out to Kathy Littles. I said, "I want to start a non-profit that's tech for good." She was like, "What is tech?" She literally said, "What is tech?" Because you have to remember, at this time, '08, right? "Tech" didn't exist in Oakland the way it does now. That was 10 years ago. Nobody even understood the word "tech."I said, "Well, it's these companies like Google, and Facebook, and how do we use that for good?" She was like, "Oh, okay. Well, here's a stack of contacts." Literally probably 10 pieces of paper, front-to-back, of non-profit people. "Contact all of them, then get back to me." Literally, I looked at it like, "Yo, this is crazy." I asked, "Well, how do I get paid?"She laughed. She said, "Non-profits, you've got to fundraise." I was like, "How often?" She laughed again. She said, "You've got to fundraise every day. Every week." I just didn't get the concept, coming from a for-profit background. I literally took that stack of papers, but I found one piece of paper where I started. I just called everyone. I just called everyone. Some had phone numbers, some had e-mails.Then I finally e-mailed one person. She's an artist. She's the only person that got back to me from probably a week of phone calls and e-mails. She said, "I have an art non-profit. Now it's defunct, but a guy named Don Tamaki, who is the," I think she used the term "godfather of Asian law. He helped us get started, but he's too big for you, Shaun. He won't get back to you."I remember cold-calling this law firm, Minami Tamaki LLP, shout-out to them. They're still in the SF. The receptionist picked up, and I said, "Hey, I'm Shaun. I'm just doing a cold call. Could I talk to Don Tamaki?" Just like wide-eyed, didn't know what the hell I was doing. He didn't pick up, but an assistant picked up and said, "Okay, I just shared that you want to start this non-profit. He said come in." On this date and that time, and I go in, and I think I'm wearing jeans and a shirt. I pitched this. There was two gentlemen next to him, who I found out later is his son and his son's friend, who go to Cal, by the way. They were interning with him for the summer.I threw this pitch about "tech for good." Completely vague. It was so bad, I don't even know what it was, but it was really bad. But he saw that passion of helping people with tech for good, and with design. Just taking everything that I cared about and presenting that, right? At the end, he was like, "Shaun, I'm going to help you get incorporated. Get your bylaws. Build your board. I'm going to put my son on this project."Really, that combination of passion, that combination of timing. There's a huge one for your listeners. Things have a time period and time relevance. You know what I'm saying? You can't come up now and start the next Snapchat. That's already over, right? Timing-wise, Oakland was not hit with tech yet. Timing-wise, Don Tamaki had his son interning, right? All of this things had, timing-wise, MC Hammer's talking about Twitter. You know what I'm saying? All of these things just were like a storm of positivity, and just relentlessness, to do something very positive for the community. Right?After that, he helped get us incorporated. We got incorporated July of 2009. And yo, now we're in Downtown Oakland, and we have benches, billboards, bus ads, helped almost 5,000 people to-date. We're just doing big things.Ali Nazar:That's awesome. Well, it's a great story, and I think a really great example of there is a serendipity to the formation of an organization like this. There's the timing, but there's also the passion. The passion that bubbling up from things that have happened in your life, is another thing that depends upon timing, and so-Shaun Tai:Right.Ali Nazar:We're speaking with Shaun Tai today. He's the Executive Director of Oakland Digital, on Method to the Madness here on KALX Berkeley. July 2009, and we're sitting here in 2018. It's been almost 10 years, so just tell me about that journey. You got some momentum there. You got your organization set up. But it's not a clear product or service yet, so how did you get to where you are today, with all of those numbers you just quoted. 5,000 people helped.Shaun Tai:Oh, yeah. I'm so glad that you said that there's no clear purpose yet. I think what's wrong with now is that there's almost an abundance of resources. Speaking about UX and UI. You can download a mobile-UI kit and build a start-up right now, right? But I think what's so dope about that time is there was so much exploration to be done. Right? There weren't solutions, there were questions.Think about that. There were questions, not solutions, at that time. The fact that people believed in the vision, at that time, says something. We had no product, and I talked to one of my advisors at the time. He was only 19 or 20, but he had worked at HP and AOL at 14 years-old. He's just a genius dude. His name is Jordan.I was like, "Jordan, yeah, we're a non-profit now. What should we start doing?" He was like, "Shaun, what are you doing today?" I'm like, "Nothing." "Let's go downtown. Let's pick one block in Oakland." I think it was 14th Street in Oakland. "Let's just go up to every single small business there and ask them what do they need with design and marketing." Right?I remember going to our first business, a small business owned by a Black woman, and she was like, "Oh, my God. I was praying to God, like literally, that someone would come and help me." She was like, "I can't find my phone line." Out of everything in the world, right? "I can't find my phone line." And we [crosstalk]-Ali Nazar:You guys were a gift from God, huh? [crosstalk]-Shaun Tai:No, no. I mean, it was like, she just was like, you know how it is, you're sitting there every day, no one comes through the doors. It's desperation, right?Ali Nazar:Yeah. Yeah.Shaun Tai:We did that, and we were like, "How do people find you?" She was like, "Yelp." That's it, it was like, "Yelp." We literally claimed her business on Yelp. We hooked that up, took photos of her studio, helped clean up the room. That was our first client. Then word of mouth, just going to businesses, talking to students.Really, between helping these small businesses, predominantly women-owned businesses, just like my mom, and then helping local students, Laney College, we were like, "Great. We're helping these two different groups of people. How do we connect them?" Right? Get those young people skills, build up their resume, their portfolios.It's not just pairing them with non-profits and businesses, but solving problems, right? What we ended up doing was start building out programs. One's called Inspire Oakland, where we go to community colleges, and state-level colleges, and we say, "Do you want your artwork on a billboard?" The whole room says, "Yes." Right? We're getting them inspired to have a professional career.Right? Because at school, you're like, "Okay, I know PhotoShop. I know Illustrator. But how do you apply that to anything real?" We, effectively, with Inspire Oakland, are the clients for these students. They're designing billboards for us to spec. Literally, commercial-spec billboards, bleeds, color, visual hierarchy, following the creative brief, going through multiple revisions, iterations of designs. That's what gets the students really, really excited about their careers.We only pick six winners, and those are the winners you see up all over Oakland right now, buses, benches, and billboards. But the question that we ask all of the students is, "Do you want to be an apprentice at Oakland Digital?" Once the billboard competition ends, while the billboards go up, we select, from around 70-80 students, a cohort of 10-12 apprentices. Those are the students that, yo, once they get through Oakland Digital, they're ready for hire. That's what we're doing right now. We have 10 apprentices learning UX. These are raw artists that are super talented with pencil and pen, but not so much the digital space, right? The reason we pick the tech space as the formats and the learning environment is that those are the highest-paying jobs. Now, here's the thing, brother: we're not telling them to get tech jobs. In fact, I'm very proud that a lot of them don't want to get tech jobs. However, the mindset of design-thinking, the mindset of design sprints, the mindset of creating products, of launching [tings], notice I said "tings," not "things." Those are the same tings you need to be successful in the non-profit world, opening a small business. I was so proud when we were at eBay with the UX designers, and we have super-exclusive events. We're at Twitter, Salesforce, Google, Google.org every Wednesday. They're in the tech world, and these professionals ask, "What do you want to do after this apprenticeship?"I'm so happy to say 80% are like, "Do my own ting. Help our community." That's the answer I want, right? We're using tech as an educational platform, as a learning platform, to get those skills to game up, to level up, but the goal for us is how do we give back to our communities? Tech for good. Oakland Digital. Holla.Ali Nazar:Wow. Wow. So much going on there, what you just said, and really impressive how it's come from that. You founded it with passion, with not necessarily the concrete of what the programs are going to be, and now you have so many different programs. I have a couple questions about that. One is, in a cohort of, what is it? 70 or so students-Shaun Tai:Yeah.Ali Nazar:... and they're getting to be up on billboards, and whatnot, where's the funding sources coming for the non-profit right now? Is it all through, is it earned income from you guys selling services?Shaun Tai:Yeah, and I actually, I want to touch upon that, for anyone listening. What I hear from students a lot is, "I want a work-life balance." That's one. The second thing is, "I want to start my own business." My honest answer is, "If you want a work-life balance, do not start your own company." I want to make that very clear.Ali Nazar:[crosstalk].Shaun Tai:If you want a work-life balance, do not start your own company. Work for someone, go there at 10:00, go home at 5:00. You know what? Props to anyone that wants to do that. But just don't get it twisted that you can do both. I think you need to make that decision early on in your career, not later.Ali Nazar:[crosstalk].Shaun Tai:If you are ... How do you feel about that, brother?Ali Nazar:Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. You can't have everything. They're all good things, but some of them are mutually exclusive. That's what you're saying, and I agree.Shaun Tai:Absolutely. I'll start there, and I will say that for the first three, four years at Oakland Digital, I received zero dollars. I had a six-month gig at Facebook. I had a five-year gig doing marketing for the former Chief of Science at Amazon. Shout-out to Andreas Weigend, who teaches at Berkeley. I had all of these part-time jobs to pay the bills, but I realized that if I don't give up everything for one, I'll be good at few things, terrible at most of them, and not really great at one. Right?I found that what's the one that I would call my baby? I was like, "That's OD. Oakland Digital." What happened was, I dumped everything, kept OD, and that next year, which was 2015, Google funded us. To your point, Google.org funded Oakland Digital, because they saw us as one of the only groups in the Bay Area really using tech in creativity to empower overlooked talent, specifically communities of color. I was really proud that Google saw that vision.When we got that three-year grant from Google.org, shout-out to Justin, Adrian, [inaudible], and Chelsea. They saw that we were talented. We were raw. We were grassroots. We were making an impact, but we just needed some funding to make big tings happen. The question that we were addressing that they wanted to fund, the solution, was Bridgegood.com. It's a platform called BridgeGood, that connects talent to amazing opportunities.Right now, if you're an artist, you don't have an online portfolio, you can go to Bridgegood.com, you sign up. By the way, we don't sell your data. We're not making profit. It's a completely not-for-profit platform. You can sign up, get a free portfolio. You can attend VIP events, including working out of Google every Wednesday, going to cool places like LinkedIn, design studios, even small businesses. That's the way that we wanted to scale Oakland Digital, in a very organic way, because everything that you sign up for, we'll be there. We'll also introduce you to some key connects. That's our biggest funding partner, is Google.org, but I would say the majority of our funding, in terms of year-round, is just ordinary people. Like, "Yo, I just saw your bus ad. I think it's dope. How do I make a contribution?" Things like $50. $100.Another thing I'll say is, if you're trying to start a non-profit to make a living, or get money, I would also say don't do that. It's not necessarily rewarding financially, and I would say do it because you actually care about that, the mission, the impact. The non-profit world is equally as cutthroat as the business world. Everyone's fighting over the same funding. I just happened to be very lucky to have an amazing team around me that really cares deeply about the art community, but also about successful designers, and really getting involved in the tech world in a meaningful way. When I say "successful designers," I mean "making money from doing something you love," right? We all say that. We all hear it. But it is possible, but you do need to feel uncomfortable in the sense that you might hate tech. In the Bay, a lot of people do, but you still need to understand it, explore it, and break it down. Right? You don't want to just be ignorant towards it. You want to actually understand it, and see what makes it tick. Because we can take those same concepts and make non-profits blow up. I think that Oakland Digital is one of those examples of how do we use tech for good, and utilize those resources? Not just money, but talent, too. We have a lot of volunteers from the tech world. And give back to the community in real, deep, meaningful ways?Ali Nazar:Wow, so that's awesome that you guys had Google as a benefactor, and I'm sure not just the money that they gave you, but the other doors that are opened are plentiful. We're speaking with Shaun Tai, he's Founder and Executive Director of Oakland Digital, right here on Method to the Madness on KALX Berkeley.Give us a little bit of a taste of what is the scope of it now? You went on this journey, it sounds like, almost 10 years ago.Shaun Tai:Yeah.Ali Nazar:How many employees? How many students have you had? Give me some of the breadth of this thing.Shaun Tai:Yeah, no. One of the things that I learned about the non-profit world, I sit on the grants panel for the Cultural Arts Program, and we just distribute money to artists, and we distribute money to non-profits. Last year, so I've been doing it two years in a row, for the City of Oakland. I've been noticing how much non-profits are struggling. A lot of the non-profits were in debt. What I noticed was non-profits are paying staff full salaries, because they should get paid full salaries. However, it's hurting their impact, right? Let me give you an example. Those four years that we were figuring out what we were doing, and making an impact, I don't think I deserved pay at that time, because I was still learning, right? I think that it's keeping that lean, agile methodology of how do you run as lean as possible, with as much impact as possible? I feel that the non-profit world needs a shake-up to think that way. Because if non-profits are just, quite honestly, fundraising to pay staff, that doesn't equate to community impact. You know what I'm saying?Ali Nazar:Yep.Shaun Tai:I don't have the answer, other than what I said earlier about "How do we take some of the things that start-ups do?" Right? Contractors, and paying people per-project. Compensating them what they're worth, but maybe on a contract or project basis, to get goals accomplished, right? And build some cool products, launch some cool things, the same way a start-up would do in the tech world.That, to me, I think that mindset, the growth mindset, is what the non-profit world may be lacking right now. But I do see things improving. I do see non-profits using design-thinking methodologies, and design sprints, and things that we in the tech world normally do to launch cool stuff.One example is, on BridgeGood, we actually give our students the experience of working with engineers and becoming UX designers by working on the platform itself. They gain, because they don't have to spend $15,000 for a boot camp, and they have a portfolio piece that's actually tangible. That's a way where both sides can win, right? The student can gain experience, build a cool platform, but at the same time, they can build their own career, and impact the community.Long story short, I think the non-profit world just needs to rethink how they spend money. Rethink, this is a good example, when we as non-profits apply for a government grant, which we don't even do that, you're tied in. Let's say you get a $1 million grant. Sometimes, you'll be doing more work than that $1 million, in terms of you'll run out of money. I've seen non-profits go under that way.How do we just rethink non-profits? How do we rethink and re-imagine the way non-profits run? Grants? Grant cycles, you're applying for a grant a year in advance. I don't know about you, brother, but every month for us changes. Do you know what I'm saying?Ali Nazar:Yeah, I mean-Shaun Tai:How can you apply a year in advance? These are the things that, about the non-profit world have, these confuse me. I don't understand why they do things the way they've been doing them for 100 years, when society's changed.Ali Nazar:Yeah, I think you're right on to something there. I have participated in the non-profit world, as well. That's why I asked the question around earned income, because that's ultimately what gets you sustainability as an organization, is that you don't have to rely on anybody else.Shaun Tai:Right.Ali Nazar:But you guys are in an interesting position, because you do have a product or a service you can provide, but monetizing that's a different question. It's a very challenging, I think, question, and one that I think many people are trying to answer right now.Shaun Tai:Right, and so, the impact that we've generated from BridgeGood is, we have a calculation of how do students get a job in design and/or tech? We've boiled it down to these three things: education, whether it's a BA or an AA. Two, some sort of apprenticeship or internship, and then help with their resume or portfolio. The portfolio is like 90% of getting a job in design. We figure if we can help a student build all four of those, it's a 90% likelihood that they'll get employed in some entry-level design position. What is the impact of that, right? Times, right now, we have 5,000 users on BridgeGood. We calculated roughly 300 have obtained some type of entry-level work. That times between 20,000 and 30,000, that's a lot of impact. But now to your point about-Ali Nazar:[crosstalk].Shaun Tai:Yeah, I know. It's super dope. It's super dope. When we just did a study of going back seven years on LinkedIn, of all of the students that have been through our program. We've had people get jobs at Yahoo!, Apple, YouTube, local non-profits, which I was super happy to see. That's really the impact. There's no quick solve.I mean, think about your career, right? You're like, "I've been in this for eight years." You and I, we're kind of a rare breed, where I think people growing up now, they just expect jobs right away. If there's one thing that I have learned, there's no free handouts. You've got to pay your dues. I feel-Ali Nazar:Wow. Shaun, I ... Sorry. Go ahead.Shaun Tai:Yeah. Nah, nah. I just feel like that's what we've got to get organizations to understand. Be committed. Stay committed, and keep doing things for good.Ali Nazar:Yeah, and I think following your passion, which you've certainly done. Oakland Digital is a great asset to the community. We have about a minute left, and I always like to close organizational founders, like you, with the same question. If everything went perfectly for Oakland Digital over the next five years, where will it be?Shaun Tai:Yeah, where would we be? We'd have a 15,000 square-foot building, with the ground space leased out, for some revenue. Then we would have a designer residence program, where we could facilitate, and make sure that the artists going through our program would actually be employed. 100%. 100% success rate, and really seeing the whole Bay Area respect artistry and creativity. Also, also be the Mecca of non-profits for the rest of the world. To be like, "Yo, the Bay Area has the best non-profits. BridgeGood Oakland Digital. Holla."Ali Nazar:Nice. Nice. All right. I'm so behind that. It's very interesting, also, that you added real estate to that vision, because it's like with-Shaun Tai:You've got to.Ali Nazar:... the housing costs the way they are, non-profits have to own a piece of the land, or else they're not going to be able to survive. [crosstalk]-Shaun Tai:I'm telling you, brother. I'm telling you brother, hey, and I appreciate what you're doing, because a lot of people behind-the-scenes do not get that credit. Thank you for what you're doing for the community. Let's keep pushing this, inspire the Bay Area together, man. Let's do it.Ali Nazar:Thanks, Shaun. Well, you've been listening to Shaun Tai. He's the Executive Director of Oakland Digital. To learn more about them, you can go to oaklanddigital.org. Any other ways to contact you, Shaun?Shaun Tai:Bridgegood.com. If you want to get a free portfolio and kick it, we can hang out. Let's do it.Ali Nazar:Cool, okay. That's how you get ahold of Shaun. This has been Method to the Madness on KALX Berkeley, 90.7 FM. I'm your host, Ali Nazar. Thanks for listening, everybody, and have a great Friday.Shaun Tai:Peace. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We asked you guys to send us photos. Then we gave them to Andreas Weigend, veteran of Xerox Parc, former chief scientist at Amazon, to see what he could deduce. A lot, it turns out. A little Google image search, a little metadata, and we can find where you are. Maybe who you are. What color phone you’re using to take the shot, and how many SIM cards you have. Reading photos is more than a digital parlor trick. It’s the future of commerce, marketing, policing, lending, and basically everything else.  

We asked you guys to send us photos. Then we gave them to Andreas Weigend, veteran of Xerox Parc, former chief scientist at Amazon, to see what he could deduce. A lot, it turns out. A little Google image search, a little metadata, and we can find where you are. Maybe who you are. What color phone you’re using to take the shot, and how many SIM cards you have. Reading photos is more than a digital parlor trick. It’s the future of commerce, marketing, policing, lending, and basically everything else.  

We asked you guys to send us photos. Then we gave them to Andreas Weigend, veteran of Xerox Parc, former chief scientist at Amazon, to see what he could deduce. A lot, it turns out. A little Google image search, a little metadata, and we can find where you are. Maybe who you are. What color phone you’re using to take the shot, and how many SIM cards you have. Reading photos is more than a digital parlor trick. It’s the future of commerce, marketing, policing, lending, and basically everything else.  

We asked you guys to send us photos. Then we gave them to Andreas Weigend, veteran of Xerox Parc, former chief scientist at Amazon, to see what he could deduce. A lot, it turns out. A little Google image search, a little metadata, and we can find where you are. Maybe who you are. What color phone you’re using to take the shot, and how many SIM cards you have. Reading photos is more than a digital parlor trick. It’s the future of commerce, marketing, policing, lending, and basically everything else.  

We asked you guys to send us photos. Then we gave them to Andreas Weigend, veteran of Xerox Parc, former chief scientist at Amazon, to see what he could deduce. A lot, it turns out. A little Google image search, a little metadata, and we can find where you are. Maybe who you are. What color phone you’re using to take the shot, and how many SIM cards you have. Reading photos is more than a digital parlor trick. It’s the future of commerce, marketing, policing, lending, and basically everything else.  

Jason Jaynes: @jasoncjaynes Jeff Wilson: @ProfDumpster Show Notes: 00:53 - “Professor Dumpster” and Founding Kasita 05:33 - The Startup Industry 07:45 - Building the Kasita Team and Creating the Design 12:25 - Integrating Devices 16:33 - Challenges of Building These Ecosystems 24:36 - Controlling the Ecosystem: Will there be third-party developers and applications? 30:16 - Device Cohesion and User Experience 33:23 - Privacy Resources: Data for the People: How to Make Our Post-Privacy Economy Work for You by Andreas Weigend Kasita is hiring! Transcript: CHARLES: Hello, everybody and welcome to The Frontside Podcast, Episode 78. My name is Charles Lowell, a developer here at The Frontside and your podcast host-in-training. With me today are Jeff and Jason from Kasita. Now, Kasita is one of the most exciting products that I think we've gotten to work on here at Frontside in the last five years. We're going to be just talking about it because, I think it touches on a lot of the aspects of what makes software development and startups and just the emerging economy exciting. I'm really thankful that we get to have you all on the podcast. Welcome Jeff and welcome Jason. JEFF: Thanks for having us. JASON: Excited to be here. Thanks, Charles. CHARLES: Now Jeff, you are the founder of Kasita, the CEO and I believe your official title over there is 'Professor Dumpster.' Maybe you could actually unpack for us a little bit of what does that title mean? How did Kasita come about and what is it today? JEFF: A couple of years ago, I did a radical, social experiment around housing. I went and sold everything I own for a dollar an item out of a 3000-square foot house and moved into a 33-square foot used trash dumpster for a year. The idea of that project was to live in 1% the size of an average American home and try to use 1% the energy and water of the average American home. The project took a little bit of a twist, you might say and about part way through it when the dumpster started getting tricked out, I started thinking about the whole nature of housing and how we need to do something different and how that grand future probably would not be a gated community of dumpsters. CHARLES: Now, I assume you cleaned out the dumpster before you actually went to live in it. JEFF: Yeah, it was a fixer-upper. We give it a bit of a scrub and did some testing to make sure there wasn't anything nasty left in there. That went for about a year and a couple of months after that, I actually first set down with Jason because he was the only person that I knew in the entire startup scene, in the entire world. He said, "Wilson, you had some crazy ass ideas like this dumpster thing you told me about. This one might actually work, this Kasita thing." Here we are today, we're working together. CHARLES: Wow. This was something you just did on a lark. You didn't have the idea of starting this business but it was actually through the process of actually living in this dumpster for a year that the idea emerged or was there a master plan going in? JEFF: I don't know, Jason do you remember any kind of master plan when I first told you about the dumpster? JASON: No. When we first met to talk about the dumpster, it was an early morning, I believe in 2010 or 2011 and you're incubating the idea. At that point in time, there was nothing on your mind or you aren't looking towards the future of housing at all. You were just trying to figure out how you were going to move into a dumpster and people thought you would be crazy. Of course, I've validate it and I thought people would think you would be crazy. CHARLES: That is a pretty radical idea, the future of housing being 1% of what it is now. How do you see that playing out? How is that possible? How do you shift people's mindset away from that? JEFF: One of the bigger things we're trying to do with Kasita, there needs to be a massive shift in the wider way that we live in our homes. As everything else is moving towards on demand and as a service and as everything's being sort of productized, those are some of the core ideas behind Kasita. We think about Kasita a lot more like an iPhone or a Tesla than we would think about it as a single family home or an apartment block or even a micro-unit. That's why Jason and I are standing together here today is I represent a lot of ways, a kind of vision and origin story of Kasita but in a lot of ways, Jason represents the future of the software and integrated IoT that's going into these things. CHARLES: There is definitely a lot going into these things. I remember when Jason first started telling me about it because it is like an iPhone or a Tesla but, I think especially the Tesla is a great analogy because you have not just like a normal software or even really a hardware project, you've got architectural concerns. You've got manufacturing concerns. You've got, I assumed geopolitical concerns in terms of the politics around zoning and housing and real estate, all rolled up into a big startup. When I think startup, I think let's get a web application up and running and we're providing some service. This is cross-cutting at least five industries, it feels like if not more. I'm curious, what's been the experience in terms of wrangling that aspect because I think it is very unique in a startup today but it got me wondering is this going to be the normal in five years? JEFF: We've seen a movement recently in the venture community. Even a few years ago when we first started raising money was highly-regulated industries are hard, hardware is hard, "Thank you very much. We're going to go looking for our next two Stanford computer science dropouts to shove into a wee work and not have to deal with all of this kind of stuff." I think I've seen a shift to where people from the individual level up to the folks funding these things, see the massive opportunity in highly-regulated complex problems like housing and you're right. Jason and I are looking out over our shop floor here where we've got guys out there that are plumbers or traditional electricians all the way upstairs here to folks that have been mayor pro tem of large cities with PhDs. Bridging all of those individuals into a startup culture and then looking at the complexity of the landscape from a regulatory standpoint, autonomous cars are a breeze relative to the kind of complexity we're dealing with. CHARLES: Did you know this complexity walking in or was it a classic overoptimism? JEFF: No, it wasn't classic overoptimism. I'm always asked, "Are you a designer? Are you an architect? Are you a real estate developer? Are you a technology guy?" and I think if I would have been any of those besides a guy living in a dumpster, I wouldn't ever been crazy enough to try this. It's one of our core precepts as well. Jason had never worked with IoT stuff before. Our head of manufacturing used to build LEDs for Philips. Our quality guy inspected Cadillacs. Our manufacturing engineer built Boeing jets. The ideas that we're not pulling a lot of people from these traditional industries, we're pulling smart people that are passionate about our mission and to solve this, what is really a Rubik's Cube of a problem. JASON: Yeah, I think the other thing to add to that that Jeff is not getting himself enough credit is that from very early on, Jeff always looked at Kasita as a product that was going to incorporate multiple disciplines. He was very careful in how he orchestrate it and built the team to make sure that he was bringing the right expertise and the right areas together and then forcing those different disciplines to figure out how to meld and work together to build the Kasita. But the Kasita was from the beginning just about building a micro-urban home. It was about building a product of which part of that was a home, where people live obviously, but there's a whole lot more to it that we're working towards. I think even go back and Jeff, it might be relevant for you to talk a little bit about the approach that you took to just create an initial design for Kasita, which I think is revolutionary in itself. JEFF: A big part of our DNA was product from conception. When I was living in the dumpster, I recruited a couple of the top architects in the country really to help me turn that dumpster into a home. The way you're trained in architecture school, I think a lot of folks come in there with Buckminster Fuller kind of dreams and you're told pretty quick that you better bring things up to code and you better make things that sell or you're not going to eat when you get out of here. The idea was that we would start off with a product designer and not design a home. The kind of struggles in the dumpster taught me that we needed to go at a different approach so I went and recruited an industrial designer. One of the requirements for that person that he or she had never designed a home. This person had lived under a staircase and never designed a home so I said, "You're perfect." CHARLES: I like that and I'm curious, Jason from your perspective, what was it like to have gone through this? It sounds like what you're doing is asking people to bring their expertise but not their set of expectations like the industrial designer. What was it like for you coming primarily from the software development world to step into this pan-technological realm and what was that experience like and what were the things that stretched you and you found surprising? JASON: I think early on, I realized that it was going to be a bit more challenging maybe than I thought. Really, what it required was me to think outside of my discipline. Obviously, not only from the perspective of what we were doing on the IoT frontend, how we were melding software and hardware together but then going all the way over to the physical building structure and thinking about on a weekly, daily, hourly basis on how we are interacting with the other disciplines. An early example was, and this is one that I remember that's quite funny is one area that we wanted to make sure that we had covered in our research and understanding from IoT perspective was smart locks and how we were going to provide a smart locks for the data. We went out and did a lot of investigation, brought a number of leading smart lock solutions into the lab and tested them and narrow our list down. Then I recall vividly walking over to the architects to excitedly tell them we had selected our smart lock that we were going to use. They very quickly inform me that that lock wouldn't work because we needed a mortise lock and not a standard door lock. I realized that you can't work in a vacuum and just solve your problems. You have to be working together to make sure the solutions and the products you're selecting at work in accord with the overall design. That's continued to manifest itself. Every day, I'm down on the manufacturing floor, working directly with the electricians and others to make sure that our equipment is placed properly, where are we going to place our equipment, how are we routing around plumbing and pipes and other things that exist there and how are we locating things properly. It's an ongoing experience, which has definitely taken me out of my traditional software role but it's done so in a very exciting way and I've enjoyed it. It's just realizing that you have to actively be communicating across the organization with all groups and really, you can't take anything for granted. CHARLES: The number of different disciplines and technologies is really staggering, even if you limit it to just considering the set of devices that you're integrating. I was actually hoping we could talk a little bit about that. Now inside each Kasita, at least the ones that you're building right now, how many different devices do you have? How do you take all these different devices and turn them into a product or integrate them into something that itself is one product? JASON: If you were just to look at the technology bill of materials, what the products are that we're incorporating into our current Kasita design, there is around 50 different products and product parts that we're bringing together to build out the technology solution. If you narrow that down to what the end user is actually seeing and looking at, there are about seven noticeable products that the end user would see or they would recognize everything from a Sonos connecting amplifier to an Amazon Dot to a Nest Thermostat. Obviously, getting to that list of bill of materials and deciding on that 'subassembly of technology pieces,' took us quite some time in a number of iterations and a lot of outside engagement and talking to experts and trying to decide what were the best devices to bring in. But the other side of the equation was something that we kind of decided very early on in the process and kind of thinking the world of first principles was that, we wanted to make sure that Kasita was the primary interface to the user. We didn't want somebody else sitting between us and the end user. We wanted to be able to work with other products but we still felt at the end of the day that the end user, when they were living inside of a Kasita, when they were controlling the Kasita, when they were changing the state of the Kasita, they needed to go through our interface. With that as an initial first principle, you can begin to imagine that all the other parts of the system architecture and the way that we design things, the way that we select products and built things, it begin to derive themselves. Everything from that, immediately we needed an app and lo and behold. We were able, fortunately to work with you guys, the Frontside, to help us get our initial app concept up and going. It went from there and I can talk more about it. CHARLES: I think I really like that as a first principle. I really just want to inject a vigorous sense of agreement because I think it's so important, especially when this is the place where you're living. You want to imbue that inhabitant with a sense of ownership and control. I don't know if you would be able to do that if there were a bunch of different touch points and it didn't feel integrated under one product. In other words, this is my home, this is my Kasita. Is that the idea behind making sure that there was really only one interface? JEFF: We prefer to say 'Mi Kasita.' CHARLES: I love it. JASON: Absolutely, that's the idea. I think from a consumer perspective, if you've ever personally gone out and ventured through the halls of Home Depot or Best Buy and purchased some smart products off the shelf and brought them into your house and try to get them up and running, you very quickly learn that. It's not only challenging to get these devices connected in a way that you can control them but there's also this notion of there's an app for that. Every physical device you ended up putting in your how, has its own app for control and that becomes very overwhelming in a very short amount of time for the user. We did not want that to be the case with the Kasita. We wanted them to walk in the door from day one and immediately feel at home and feel like they have complete control of the Kasita, in much the same way when you go purchase an iPhone or you purchase a new Garmin watch or you purchase a new Android device, you're up and running with that ecosystem and you're interacting with that interface. We wanted people to be interacting with the Kasita interface to control their home because that's part of the product. CHARLES: I like that. It must present some unique challenges because I think you said it best. Every single device that you have comes with its own ecosystem and that ecosystem has its own APIs, its own web interfaces, its own applications and though there are walls around those ecosystems, what are some of the challenges you encounter in trying to punch holes through those walls so that you can hand information and control from one ecosystem to the other while providing a seamless experience to the user? JEFF: When you're talking about that, Jason one of the things that is often left out of this equation is at this specific point in space-time, it's very difficult to do that. But then to have any sort of semblance of planning for the future and future-proofing the system as developers usually call it, one of the reasons why you don't see a lot of Nest thermostats in multifamily development is because a developer knows that they're not going to ever have to replace a normal light switch. If it's a Lutron switch or if it is a Nest thermostat at some point, it's going to have to be replaced. Not only the physical replacement of the stuff but from a software side, making sure that we can continue to communicate with these devices in the future, I think is a big problem to solve. JASON: That's absolutely right. I think very early on, we recognize and realize that we were going to have to build software and a component that acted, if you will as a gateway for sitting between the end user and the end devices and facilitated the control of the end devices. Obviously, being able to accomplish that, one of the challenges is and I think, Charles you've seen this in your world because I know you've got experience with IoT is this whole proliferation of standards and protocols like if we're going to talk to the lightbulb or we're talking via Z-Wave or ZigBee, or do we have to go through a Philips Hue hub because that's the only way to actually communicate with it. Is there a separate way via Thread or Bluetooth you communicate with this device? In a very quick fashion, you get to this point where you can imagine that you've got a physical hardware controller that has four different radios in talking to four different device types. One for talking to Z-Wave, one for talking to ZigBee and it becomes overwhelming. We did a lot of research across the protocols that were available, mapping them across the devices. Early on, we were excited about the potential of Z-Wave but more recently, where we've shifted our attention quite honestly is looking for devices and device manufacturers who see the opportunity and Wi-Fi enabling their hardware devices and then providing either direct control of those devices in an IP-centric way over a local area network or even through the cloud. What that affords us back to Jeff's future-proofing concept is if you have Wi-Fi up and running and the device can get on the Wi-Fi network and there's a way to communicate with it, then it makes it a lot easier for us to sit between the user and that device and send commands and control that device. The other side of that, which I think continues to be a challenge and will be a challenged for the foreseeable future is a lot of the device manufacturers to the point that you brought up are still forcing you to go through the cloud to communicate with their devices. They don't allow for a local area network communication directly with the device and there's good reasons for doing that. But what that means is if you lose internet connectivity, you no longer have control of that device. CHARLES: Obviously, you've got probably pretty strict criteria about what it takes for a device to be integrated with Kasita. Is that a nonstarter right there? JASON: It's actually not. A nonstarter with be the device communicates via protocol that we can't interface with or the device works over a Wi-Fi network but has no API for controlling cloud or local. The third piece of that equation and fundamentally is the final nonstarter and really probably should be the first one and it's one that we take into consideration every time is that there should be a physical override for the user if internet connectivity is lost. What I mean by that is if we select a smart switch and the smart switch goes offline and there's no more connectivity, the user has still be able to walk to the wall and press the power button and the light should come on. There always has to be an ability for the user to fall back to the same old fashioned physical control in the absence of Internet connectivity or local area network connectivity. But the primary things are ability to fall back to physical control, ability to communicate over Wi-Fi or standard IP-based protocol, then the third one would be some form of API access, either remotely via the cloud or locally via the local area network. CHARLES: Wow, that's actually a great list. It's got me wondering, obviously you've encountered devices that have fallen on both sides of that divide. Do you feel like that's just a blip and we're going to be trending more towards devices that are happily and easily integrated or are we still seeing some moving and jostling as people maybe try and corner little parts of the market and make their device deliberately make it not easy so that you'll try and force people into that ecosystem? JASON: The latter, however we have two guerillas in the market right now that I think are helping drive the other direction in the way of Amazon and Google with Google Home and Amazon Echo. What they're doing is they're saying, "If we sit in the center and one of the interfaces for voice control for the user to control their home, then we're only going to work with devices that we can communicate with and that we can control through the cloud," and quite frankly, what that does is it puts the burden back on the device manufacturer. You could actually say three if you threw Apple in there. I don't want to leave Apple out with HomeKit. But my point is that the device manufacturer now has to find a way that the end device can either communicate via standard TCP/IP network-based connectivity that we all know and love from a developer community perspective or they have to insert a hub into the equation that can handle that form of communication and then communicate over its own proprietary wireless connection, which is in the case of Philips Hue, it's exactly what they do. JEFF: I would draw analogies here to some people get really tired of this, particularly the real estate people of me talking about the iPhone but that kind of leap into and integrated piece of hardware and software. There were certain things happening in 2007 that didn't make the iPhone or something like it, something that might happen but something that had to happen. This kind of cold death to the universe that we could see with all of these walled-off ecosystems, go in their directions and iterating into a space to a nobody owns anything and nothing talks, I think Kasita is a solution to that to where we're looking like combine all this stuff under one roof and build a single user experience, much like not having to pull your Palm Pilot out of one pocket, you're Rio MP3 player out of another and you're your Razor or whatever it was out of the other like integrating into a single experience, rather than a sort of convenience, which is what a lot of the IoT spaces right now in these walled-off ecosystems. CHARLES: That actually makes a lot of sense and clarifies it in my mind quite a bit. It clarifies one thing but then, immediately raises new questions. When the iPhone first came out, you had a set of basic integrations between your MP3 player and your web browsing and your calling and calendaring, so and so forth. Then, I don't know what was it like, a year and a half later, they actually came out with an SDK so that you could actually develop apps -- third-party developers could actually develop. Sell and distribute in apps -- to the iPhone. We're all really happy with the way that worked out. I guess my question is does this analogy carry forward then also for Kasita? Is there a future where you have third-party developers who are actually selling integrations or apps that would run on this integrated IoT product that is Kasita or am I stretching the analogy too far? JASON: I think the analogy is good with the exception that we're not looking to control the entire IoT ecosystem in a way that Apple maybe had look to control the mobile phone ecosystem with providing all of that in one box and the iPhone. We want to work with numerous hardware providers and even from that perspective, numerous folks that want to provide interfaces into our system. As we develop an architected Kasita technology system, we've taken an API-first approach and that's allowed us to build our user application layer right on top of that API but in the future, we see the opportunity to work with third-party developers to extend that, up on that and build their own interfaces to the end user. Then on the other side of the equation, if you think about what's actually controlling the devices, we're architecting that system in a way that a hardware manufacturer could take an SDK and add Kasita support for their product directly in and make it plug and play when it gets to the Kasita. We definitely see the opportunity, Charles to reach out and allow everybody to be part of this. We consider it quite frankly, a necessary thing. But we don't also want to pretend that we would look to control the whole ecosystem because we just don't have that level of scale, if you will. JEFF: And you know -- CHARLES: Not yet. JEFF: Yeah, and we try to keep our ego in the dumpster, so to speak as well. CHARLES: What would a third-party app even look like in the context of Kasita? Have you thought of like what are some things that you might be able to do? JEFF: If you don't want to call it directly an app, I think the first stage -- Jason and I haven't talked about this -- maybe more like an Alexa Skill to where you can have the Kasita do certain sets of tasks around a particular experience, which we're already building into the system the idea of moods but I don't know in terms of apps. JASON: Yeah, it's actually a really good idea. Even though we haven't talked about it, it always scares me a little bit when my boss is coming up with ideas on the fly that we have to implement but -- JEFF: But actually we will have our first -- we're going to call it a skill app, a Kasita skill app. We'll be releasing that say, October 1st. CHARLES: You heard it here first, folks. JASON: To take Jeff's idea a little further, I think that is an interesting concept when you think about the Kasita as being an end product and you provide interfaces whether it's the ability for people to write skills that tie into the Amazon Echo or an IFTTT-type capability. The Kasita, as a whole can be controlled -- all the lighting, the sound, all the different temperature, etcetera -- so now you're asking end users to write skills, to control the entire state of the building or of the home and not just doing it on a one-off basis writing skill to turn this light on and off or set the thermostat to this level. You basically box all of that together and make it much easier for people to get from Point A to Point B through our system. JEFF: Could you say that we're turning the entire Kasita into a board for people to play with, like treat the Kasita as your breadboard? JASON: I think there is some opportunity for that to the degree that will allow the user to have that much flexibility on the hardware side. I think it is still up for question but I think there's a lot of opportunity there, Charles and not only inside of the Kasita but then you can begin to see other applications as Kasita begin to multiply and people use them from many purposes. Let's take a sample of somebody owns 10 Kasitas and they use them as Airbnb properties and they allow users that live in Kasitas to come in for a short period of time into their Kasita and bring their Kasita profile with them. Immediately, they can make the Airbnb Kasita feel exactly like their Kasita feels when they're at home. Those are some interesting opportunities and ways that we see this technology potentially evolving. CHARLES: So it will have the same moods, the same behaviors. Any customizations or third-party extensions would also be in effect provided they were software-based? JASON: Yep. CHARLES: That would actually be quite amazing. I guess the other question I have in terms of hackability of Kasita is we're very interested in the IoT space and very interested in these products and we have some side projects here at Frontside also like I do a bunch of hobby stuff at home, where I try to integrate a bunch of these things. But one of the things that I really like about what you all are doing is that it's very much 'omakase' in the sense of there's an option of 10 smart locks, there's an option of this thermostat, there's an option of a million different devices but what we've done or what you've done is selected ones that we know are going to work well together. We've built the software, the control systems, both computer control systems and human control systems to get them to work together as a cohesive product. I would love to do is say, "I would just like to buy that product for my house," even though my lame tinkerings with smart switches, smart locks and audio controls and lighting, which are fun and gratifying the first few times but they don't really play nice together, give you that super sweet feeling. JEFF: This goes to the overall philosophy of Kasita. We want a turnkey, one-click housing solution. Not only for finding you a place to rent so that you're not fishing around on Craigslist for roommate or having to pay some outrageous fee in New York. You don't have to go mattress shopping. At some point, you should just have to show up with your iPhone and your toothbrush. When you start thinking about the technology inside, it's almost like folks don't really care what kind of Foxconn chip is in their iPhone or even if it was Foxconn that put it there, they just want it to work and they want it to be seamless and turnkey. It sets up a whole philosophy around, not only our smart kid in the Kasitas but it shouldn't even be a smart kid anymore. At some point, it should just be an experience so ultimately, what sort of UX inside of the Kasita are all of these things bringing you. I shouldn't have to really look at a blue glowing dot that lights up every time I walk by it to be at a comfortable temperature in my house. I shouldn't need a black tube over on my desktop that I yell commands at. I just talk or it should anticipate those actions. That's a future that I look forward to in Kasita to where we move away from having to tinker with devices and even knowing what those devices are to a true-like depth of experience. CHARLES: I like that a lot. Now, one thing that we haven't covered. We touched on it a little bit at the very beginning of the show when we talked about people feeling in control and feeling like they're truly the owner of the space is the issue of privacy. Obviously, there's a lot of a user's behavior that's going to be passing through software channels as their intentions move through the devices in the Kasita. Of course, all of these devices, they have their own ecosystems, their own vendors so how do you ensure that people's data is going to be protected, especially as it moves through potentially a bunch of different public clouds. JEFF: Yes, we gave a lot of thoughts to this. Actually, Jason put me on to this book called 'Data for the People' by Andreas Weigend. We took some inspiration on that, from that and set out on what we call it the four cornerstones of this future of the connected home. Those are agency, transparency, security and then the actual benefit that you get from this home. I gave a talk at South by called, 'The final frontier of AI is in your living room.' If that isn't black mirror, creepy enough to attract enough people, I don't know what is. In that talk, I won't take them out of order. First, we need to make sure that we're focused on transparency. Do people know what's actually being collected on them? I've been toting around my iPhone for 10 years. I'm pretty sure they know everywhere that I have been since then. I'm not really all that sure. Second, agency. Can I actually do something about it? Are we allowing people the ability to switch off, switch on, control where that data goes? Then third, security. Are we providing another level of security above what you would get out of the box? I'll let Jason talk about that in a minute. Then, the last is benefit. Am I getting ads? Am I getting a slightly better news feed focused on ads or am I getting my rent subsidized? Am I getting a better user experience, better sleep within the connected home? Those are the ways that we think about that in a bigger level. CHARLES: Is the idea that there's no benefit than it's exploitative? You want to make sure that there's benefit? JASON: Yeah, I think that onus is if you taking individual data and using it, then the onus is on you as a data collector to try to provide benefit back to the end user. If you can't do that, then I think the question should be why are you collecting the data in the first place? our goal is really looking at it from the perspective of if we know when users are turning lights on and off and what they're setting the temperature in their house to and when they're going to sleep at night, when they're waking up because we know when they turn everything off and turn it back on -- JEFF: Or where this things on the floor are from the vacuum robot. JASON: Yeah, exactly. If we have insight into that information, how are we taking that information and combining it in a valuable way that benefits the end user? I think that's the first question that we have to ask when we start looking at the data that we're collecting. But at the same time as Jeff said, that data collection really has to be based on this notion of agency, transparency and privacy or security. An agency is simply I have control over whether my data is collected. Transparency, from the perspective of I understand how my data is being used and where it's being sent and then of course, security, I know that my data is being securely transmitted and stored. When you think about security, we spend a lot of time thinking about not only the data at rest -- once it's been collected is it properly being stored and encrypted and protected -- but then how is that data being transmitted and are we putting the proper fail safes in place to make sure that somebody else can easily gain access and take control of my home and of the things that are important to me by finding back doors into the system and ways to breach them? Those are the cornerstones that we think about and we put first and foremost in our mind as we build out our architecture, build out our system and as we begin to take that data and to turn it back in useful and interesting ways for the end user. CHARLES: I think that's really important. I think it's a great comfort to hear that you all have a framework for thinking about this so that it's going to be integrated into every aspect of it. I think it's just so important, especially when it's something as critical as the space in which you're living. It's good to hear that it's not just an afterthought but that it's something that's been integrated from the start. Well, Jeff, Jason thank you guys so much for coming by and talking with us. I really think that Kasita is an exciting product and I think that it was an exciting project, certainly for us to get to work on, even though we were only seeing a very small sliver of it. We still got to perceive the whole enchilada that you guys were working on and see that just what a unique startup that really is, not just you're moving outside of software, integrating a bunch of different devices, integrating that with a unique home that's going to be designed, architected, manufactured and then thinking, then even rolling it up a degree further about how is this going to be integrated into the urban spaces in which we live. I hope that we see more startups that really engaged all those different disciplines. I think that with the technological changes that are happening, that's more and more a possibility. The price on software, the price on materials, the price on these smart devices is all coming down so it really enables people to take on scopes that might have been just completely impossible, even with someone who's overly optimistic. I hope that people look to it as an inspiration and it really was a great project for us to work on. I also understand that if someone does want to jump into this space and get involved, you all are hiring. JEFF: That's right. We are hiring for a broad range of positions. We're expecting to be doing a lot, more hiring soon. You can go to Kasita.com/Work and at the bottom of the page, you can also see that we have an open house here in Austin every Thursday morning from 9:30 to 11:30. The folks can come in and check out the crib. CHARLES: All right. Fantastic. I certainly really enjoyed getting the tour the space, what was that? Back in March? When you revealed the baby units? JEFF: Yeah, it was March at South by. CHARLES: Yeah, it's really something to see. If you are in Austin or you live here, take the time, go see it. It's really cool. With that, I guess we'll wrap it up. Thank you everybody for listening and as always, you can get in touch with us at @Frontside on Twitter or Frontside.io or send us an email at Contact@Frontside.io. Thank you all and see you next week.

We asked you guys to send us photos. We got a photo of a woman on the beach. A giant fish statue. Teeth. Yes, really.  We gave them to Andreas Weigend, veteran of Xerox Parc, former chief scientist at Amazon, to see what he could deduce. A lot, it turns out. A little Google image search, a little metadata, and we can find where you are. Maybe who you are. What color phone you’re using to take the shot, and how many SIM cards you have. Reading photos is more than a digital parlor trick. It’s the future of commerce, marketing, policing, lending, and basically everything else. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.     

We asked you guys to send us photos. We got a photo of a woman on the beach. A giant fish statue. Teeth. Yes, really.  We gave them to Andreas Weigend, veteran of Xerox Parc, former chief scientist at Amazon, to see what he could deduce. A lot, it turns out. A little Google image search, a little metadata, and we can find where you are. Maybe who you are. What color phone you’re using to take the shot, and how many SIM cards you have. Reading photos is more than a digital parlor trick. It’s the future of commerce, marketing, policing, lending, and basically everything else. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.     

We asked you guys to send us photos. We got a photo of a woman on the beach. A giant fish statue. Teeth. Yes, really.  We gave them to Andreas Weigend, veteran of Xerox Parc, former chief scientist at Amazon, to see what he could deduce. A lot, it turns out. A little Google image search, a little metadata, and we can find where you are. Maybe who you are. What color phone you’re using to take the shot, and how many SIM cards you have. Reading photos is more than a digital parlor trick. It’s the future of commerce, marketing, policing, lending, and basically everything else. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.     

We asked you guys to send us photos. We got a photo of a woman on the beach. A giant fish statue. Teeth. Yes, really.  We gave them to Andreas Weigend, veteran of Xerox Parc, former chief scientist at Amazon, to see what he could deduce. A lot, it turns out. A little Google image search, a little metadata, and we can find where you are. Maybe who you are. What color phone you’re using to take the shot, and how many SIM cards you have. Reading photos is more than a digital parlor trick. It’s the future of commerce, marketing, policing, lending, and basically everything else. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.     

We asked you guys to send us photos. We got a photo of a woman on the beach. A giant fish statue. Teeth. Yes, really.  We gave them to Andreas Weigend, veteran of Xerox Parc, former chief scientist at Amazon, to see what he could deduce. A lot, it turns out. A little Google image search, a little metadata, and we can find where you are. Maybe who you are. What color phone you’re using to take the shot, and how many SIM cards you have. Reading photos is more than a digital parlor trick. It’s the future of commerce, marketing, policing, lending, and basically everything else. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.     

In 1949, Andreas Weigend’s father was imprisoned in East Germany by Soviet occupying forces who thought he was an American spy. A decade later, when Andreas tried to find the Stasi file on his father, he instead found one about himself. In his new book “Data For the People: How to Make Our Post-Privacy Economy Work for You,” he works to help people understand how they can use their personal data to their benefit.

In this StartUp Health NOW! episode, Andreas Weigend of Social Data Lab discusses the future of big data, the refining of this data to alter market decisions and his advice to startups about using social data in the context of health or healthcare to improve their business. GUEST: Andreas Weigend, Social Data Lab HOST: Unity Stoakes, StartUp Health LOCATION: Wearable Tech + Digital Health Conference, San Francisco, CA Click to Tweet Check out @aweigend of Social Data Lab on this week's episode of @startuphealth NOW! bit.ly/1TzKKFx IN THIS EPISODE: Biggest Lessons Learned The New Reality of Social Data Five Rules When Thinking About Data