Tag: Culture

AI Isn’t Magic. It’s Just Math.

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NewCo Shift Forum 2018 — Signal P&G Talks

Jana Eggers on why AI shouldn’t be feared, and must be understood.

Jana Eggers, CEO of Nara Logics, during NewCo Shift Forum 2018

Jana Eggers, CEO of AI startup Nara Logics, wants everyone to understand AI. In her five minute Signal P&G talk at Shift Forum, she explains that in the end, it’s just math and a lot of data — and that data increasingly will be coming from businesses of all stripes, not just the big tech platforms.

Jana Eggers: Wow! What a day it has been. I’m nervous to stand up here in front of you all because of all the greatness that has been shared on the stage. Thank you for taking a few minutes with me.

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The Power of Community

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NewCo Shift Forum 2018 — P&G Signal Talks

Aaron Walker’s Camelback fund uses community to level the playing field for entrepreneurs of color

Aaron Walker is founder and CEO of Camelback Ventures.

Aaron Walker runs Camelback Ventures, a new kind of fund based on the insight that “genius is equally distributed, but opportunity is not.” Below is the transcript and short video of his Signal P&G talk at Shift Forum this past February.

Aaron Walker: Thank you. Good afternoon. The question that I’ve been asking myself is, what do entrepreneurs of color need to be successful? This is the question I’ve been asking myself for the last five years.

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This Mayor Runs A Trillion Dollar Economy

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NewCo Shift Forum 2018

Eric Garcetti, Mayor of Los Angeles, is not pleased with our President — or his own party. His policy successes in LA may lay the foundation for a White House run.

Mayor Eric Garcetti (left) with John Heilemann

If you want to see the future of our national politics, you’d do well to study Los Angeles, one of the largest cities in the world, and the third largest metropolitan economy after Tokyo and New York. Eric Garcetti, the “melting pot mayor” of Los Angeles joined John Heilemann for a deep dive into policy, technology, and politics at the NewCo Shift Forum this past February. Below is the full 30+ minute interview, plus a transcript edited for clarity.

(video plays prior to conversation)
John Heilemann: We were looking for a video to play to introduce Eric Garcetti. First of all, this is probably the biggest crowd you’ve ever spoken to, right?

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Can Government Be Nimble and the State Be Quick?

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NewCo Shift Forum 2018

Fixing government services isn’t rocket science. But it does require a fresh perspective and courageous public servants. Fortunately, Jennifer Pahlka is on the case.

Jennifer Pahlka from Code for America

Complaining about the government is easy. Doing something about it? Much, much harder. But that’s exactly what Jennifer Pahlka, founder of Code for America and former Deputy CTO of the White House, has managed to do. In this “High Order Bit” — a short, impactful talk laddered to Shift Forum themes, Pahlka explains her life’s work. Take the time to watch this video or read the transcript, edited for clarity below. It’s both maddening and inspiring, and will leave you rooting not only for Pahlka, but for the kind of systemic change her work reveals.

Jennifer Pahlka: I’m going to jump right into a story. It in fact also covers a little bit why the California model might be a model for the rest of the country.

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The Future of Work: Four Generations Working At Once, Plus Machines

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Newco Shift Forum 2018

Responsible for driving Dell’s global brand and purpose, Liz Matthews kicks off the Future of Work dialog at Forum last month.

Liz Matthews, Senior Vice President, Global Brand and Creative ,Dell Technologies

The Shift Forum is driven by “Pillars,” core themes that we explore over three days of conversation, debate, and provocative presentations. Our partner in our Pillar on “the Future of Work” is Dell Technologies, who presented the findings not only of its own research in the space, but also of five table moderators who reported out their conversations about the topic during lunch at the event. In this video and transcript below, meet Liz Matthews, who runs Dell’s brand globally, and the five moderators, who are all extraordinary in their own right.

Liz Matthews: I am Liz Matthews. I run Brand and Advertising for Dell Technologies. We are thrilled to be here with all of you. We’re actually very, very excited to support the Future of Work conversation here at the Shift Forum.

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It’s Not the Platforms that Need Regulation.

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Money Quote March 14 2018

Platforms are simply acting the way you’d expect given the norms of financialized capitalism. That’s where reform must focus.

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Every few days my browser tabs overflow, and I feel the need to summarize why I’ve kept those stories lingering in my digital consciousness. Here are stories I’ve been reading and thinking about for the past few days.

Tim Berners-Lee: we must regulate tech firms to prevent ‘weaponised’ web

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Deep Inside the Mind of Donald Trump

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Newco Shift Forum 2018

John Heilemann’s no holds barred interview with Anthony Scaramucci covers, well, just about everything you’d want it to.

Anthony Scaramucci with John Heilemann during NewCo Shift Forum 2018

One of most controversial figures to emerge from Trump’s ascendance to the White House is Anthony Scaramucci, whose brief tenure as White House Communications Director provided fodder for months of late night punchlines. But Scaramucci has known Trump for more than two decades, and in this unvarnished, on the record interview with storied political journalist John Heilemann, “the Mooch” offers fascinating insights into Trump the man, Trump the leader, and Trump the political operator. This is riveting political fare, folks. And while the Shift Forum is held under Chatham House Rule, Scaramucci thankfully waived that privilege so we can all take a peek behind the curtains of power. Enjoy.

John Heilemann: Mr. Scaramucci, it’s good to see you. Last night we had Chris Christie at dinner. I was going to try to get him to attack you. I did not, just as a matter of pure courtesy.

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We Love Fake News

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Money Quote, Friday March 9 2018

So clearly, this real news round up won’t get shared much.

Hello NewCo Shift Readers. It’s been a week, forgive us for the down time. The Shift Forum really swamped us, and we’ve been both recovering and preparing videos and transcripts for release beginning early next week. Oh, and our editor in chief (that’d be me) has been stoned on opioids all week, thanks to shoulder surgery (it’s harder than I thought to write on this shit, turns out). Anyway, on to today’s news round up, and we hope to return to regular columns starting next week.

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The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News

We love fake news, as if we didn’t already know. This MIT study proves it. MQ: “The massive new study analyzes every major contested news story in English across the span of Twitter’s existence — some 126,000 stories, tweeted by 3 million users, over more than 10 years — and finds that the truth simply cannot compete with hoax and rumor. By every common metric, falsehood consistently dominates the truth on Twitter, the study finds: Fake news and false rumors reach more people, penetrate deeper into the social network, and spread much faster than accurate stories.”

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Stop Waiting for the Singularity. It Started 200 Years Ago.

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The Industrial Revolution is the most transformative event in human history. It is the true Singularity — and you’re living through it.


In recent years a bunch of technologists have pushed a once fringe idea into the mainstream. That idea is the Singularity.

For most in Silicon Valley and beyond, the Singularity has come to mean one thing: a future event in which humankind merges with artificial superintelligence, sparking a new era for us as a species that is definitively different from anything that has come before.

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Work of Art

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Esko Kilpi photo

Ancient societies took it for granted that skills would be handed down from generation to generation. Developing one’s talent as an artist or a craftsman depended on understanding and following the principles of earlier masters. Art and craftsmanship may suggest a way of life that waned with the birth of industrial society, but this is misleading. The future of work may resemble the history of work, and this is because of our newest, most advanced technologies.

The corporate system is transforming into a maze of fragmented tasks and short-term gigs. Although the modern era is often described as a skills economy, most companies have a short-term focus, which means for a worker that when her experience accumulates, it often loses institutional value.

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