Tamara McCleary - The RelationShift® Expert
Watch Tamara McCleary discuss the science of optimizing content, and harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) & machine learning to meet key performance indicators with Dell at SXSW 2018!
Video originally posted on Dell Technologies YouTube channel.
Onalytica named Tamara McCleary a top global influencer in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Ranking 8th, and the second highest woman on the list, Tamara was joined by other luminaries such as Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, at #7 and Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, at #10.
Onalytica’s method is as follows:
Artificial Intelligence is an immense topic on its own, but we were interested in seeing which other topic were mentioned the most around it. We analysed tweets and blogs from the top 100 influencers, brands an publications between 1st January – 18th May 2017. We measured the frequencies of all the words used by the influencers in our programme related to “AI”.
You can read the report at Onalytica’s site here.
In the latest article Call 911! Healthcare Needs a Tech Resuscitation by Brian Buntz at The Internet of Things Institute. In the article Tamara shares her perspective of how The Internet of Things will radically transform healthcare in coming years. You can read an excerpt below:
Imagine you just got a cancer diagnosis. You speak with four highly-regarded physicians and get four conflicting recommendations: chemo, radiation therapy, surgery, and one opinion that recommends a combination of allopathic and complementary medicine. “It would be confusing and hard to make a choice because faced with a cancer diagnosis, if you choose the wrong treatment, you might die. It’s scary,” says Tamara McCleary, the CEO of Thulium.co and futurist who began her career as a registered nurse.
“When you and I get sick, we rely rely on doctor’s memory, their education, their personal biases and their emotional state. We are even relying on whether they got enough sleep last night,” McCleary says. “There are all these human variables that can cause any of us to not be top of our game at any point in time—night or day. It is not a criticism. We are human. Human beings make errors.”
Now, picture a world in which doctors are trained in data science. Armed with machine learning, big data, and artificial intelligence, they can consider clinical research from across the globe, weighing the latest research and clinical data in each decision they make. Physicians could consider the likelihood that every possible treatment modality would work for each individual. And they can use technology to base each medical decision on the latest research data available, a patient’s genomics, lab results, and clinical history.
Machines could also weed out ineffective but expensive treatments and help detect the earliest signs of disease. “We can head off problems if we can intervene earlier,” McCleary says. “We know that early intervention is the key to staying healthy, as well as, the key to saving healthcare dollars.”
To read the rest of the article, click here.
Blog post co-written with Angela Ngo, Manager Professional Services, @Zuora
As part of the annual Subscribed conference, Zuora hosted a talk with four panelists of profoundly successful Women in Technology. The discussion wasn’t focused on the old “us vs. them” mentality, but rather was a celebration of inspiring, successful technologists who happened to be women.
The opportunities for women in technology today abound. Appreciate the groundwork we’ve made, not just for women, but also minorities in technology. The consensus from the panel was: 1. You don’t need to act like a man to be successful in technology, and 2. You don’t have to be afraid to use your skills to influence progress. Ask questions that get under peoples’ skin and allow yourself to shed that armor every once in a while.
Coco Brown, Founder and CEO of The Athena Alliance, shared her perspective that the challenge of getting equal representation of men and women at the Board level was less driven by overt sexism, but more lack of awareness and connections between senior, competent female professionals and individuals who are most often charged with creating boards of directors. This includes mainly the Venture Capitalists, Private Equity and lead investors.
Brown encouraged women to leverage and develop their professional relationships with both men AND women, and leverage those relationships and mentorship opportunities to progress throughout their careers.
Alvina Antar, CIO Zuora opened the panel discussion by observing all the men in attendance at the standing-room-only crowded Inspiring Women in Technology breakfast and exclaimed, ”We love men! Men, we need you!” Antar reminds us of the importance of men to uplift, promote, and support women. She added, “The majority of my mentors, whether they know it or not, have been men and I never let being the only girl in the room be an issue – it never held me back and only gave me more reason to prove that I belonged.”
For women to assume their role in leadership positions they need to continue taking initiative, involve themselves in networking, and positioning themselves for leadership opportunities.
Carey Butler, CTO of the Seattle Times Company, shared two golden nuggets of wisdom—be smart in your family planning and be rigorous and intentional about the time you spend with your family.
If there is advice she could give to young women who are planning to have families, it would be to be aware of the resources it takes to have a family and the importance of factoring resources into your timing. Secondly, she shared that despite working extensively, she and her husband made a commitment early on to be home and recreate with their children every weekend without fail. She extorted, “Don’t save weekends for housework!”
Antar offered, “Women shouldn’t ever feel that they have to sacrifice their crazy career aspirations to have a family. My father inspired me to be passionate and fearless in everything I do and “be an 800 lb. gorilla.”
Antar also chimes in with respect to the unique challenges that women face in juggling career, home, family, and community: “Marrying my husband was truly THE best decision of my life. He encourages me, supports me and challenges me to strive for more. We are blessed with 3 beautiful children, twin 6 year old boys and a 3 year old girl. We have an incredible support system that allows both my husband and I to find that balance and focus on the quality of time spent and not dwell on the lack of quantity of time. I continuously remind myself that this is what’s best for me and that I am setting a great example for my kids, especially my daughter. Having my husband, Ramy, watching me in the audience during the Inspiring Women in Tech was beyond emotional and comforting. I felt on top of the world!
An interesting question was posed to Magdalena Yesil who immigrated to the US on her own at age 17: “You’ve a heritage in a culture where women are marginalized at a deeper level than we experience here in the US. You have put a significant emphasis in your career on international diplomacy, what can you tell us about your view on women globally and specifically the Turkey T20 Summit?”
Yesil reminded the audience to be grateful for how much progress for women had been made in the US. “Imagine a world where you are not allowed drive or go to school, a world where you might be forced to marry the highest bidder at age 12, or can’t leave your house without covering every part of your body. We have so much to be grateful for here, in America, and in Silicon Valley.”
Alvina added, “Being an Assyrian from Iraq and spending my childhood in Kuwait, I have seen first-hand the fear and chaos in the Middle East. I share whole-heartedly with Magdalena’s message on being utterly grateful for the progress and opportunities we have as women in the United States. I saw first-hand the fear and and chaos in the Middle East before the Gulf War and it is depressing to know that we haven’t made much progress to date. That is the sole reason my father decided to sacrifice his own career to move the United States and give his 2 daughters and son a whole new life with every opportunity to dream big.”
Magdalena Yesil was asked how she decided to be the first investor in Salesforce and she regaled us with the story of how Marc Benioff called and invited her to lunch one day when SFDC was just a conceptual idea. Yesil listened to Benioff share his idea, and believed in this idea. She stressed the importance of recognizing a good idea with a tangible market, and sticking with it until you’ve absolutely decided that you’re ready to walk away.
“There’s too much pivoting in the world today,” said Yesil. “Believe in your idea and stick with it.” Yesil closed by saying “I believe in Zuora, and I’m also an investor. I’m looking forward to the day when someone asks me ‘How did you decide to invest in Zuora.”
The event was closed with a surprise visit by astronaut, Scott Kelly. An incredible example of inspiring, Kelly is a former International Space Station Commander and holds the United States record for the most logged hours in space.
The Inspiring Women in Tech panel, moderated by Zuora‘s CIO, Alvina Antar, hosted:
Magdalena Yesil, founder of Broadway Angels and founding board member and first investor in SalesForce.com—seeing it through IPO. Yesil spent the last few years working on international peace diplomacy and refugee issues in the Middle East. She is an immigrant to the United States and is an Armenian from Turkey.
Coco Brown, Founder and CEO of The Athena Alliance which works to create key connections that promote qualified women to board of director opportunities and help them excel as they serve in that role.
Carey Butler, successful technology and business executive and current CTO of the Seattle Times Company (STC). Butler’s leadership roles extend beyond STC into the broader technology and nonprofit community, where she advocates for STEM education and workforce development.
Cathy MacDonald, senior technology leader with many years of experience covering all aspects of IT, billing, collections and extensive program management and current EVP IT at Xplornet Communications Inc., a rural high-speed service provider.
(In the desire for full disclosure, Zuora invited me to their Subscribed 16 conference, though I was not paid to attend.)
In Onalytica‘s most recent 2016 analysis and ranking of influencers on social media, Tamara was ranked the #22 most influential individual on the subject of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Machine Learning. In addition, Tamara was only one of five women listed in the Top 50, and second highest in ranking to Hannah Wallach (#21) of Microsoft. Onalytica explains their methods for the ranking below:
We were keen to see which Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning brands and individuals were leading the online discussion. So we analysed 1.1M+ tweets from 30 November 2015 – 24 February 2016 mentioning the keywords “#AI OR “Artificial Intelligence” OR ArtificialIntelligence OR “Machine Learning” OR Machinelearning” and identified the top 100 most influential brands and individuals leading the discussion on Twitter. What we discovered was a very engaged community, with much discussion between individuals and brands.
To read the entire report from Onalytica, download it here.
Whether you like the term, the Internet of Things (IoT), or not, it’s the term that seems to have been the stickiest, (other terms used have been Machine to Machine (M2M), Internet of Everything, and Industrial Internet.) IoT is not new, it has been around since the beginning of the Internet, think routers for instance. We’ve been hearing an increasing buzz around IoT as more business sectors, public, private and government deploy IoT. It’s more than small chips implanted into an NFL player’s shoulder pads, chips monitoring the wear and tear on the tires of your car, or your remote connectivity to the thermostat in your home. IoT is everywhere, and never more exciting than it is in deployment into the energy sector.
Recently, I attended the largest energy and utilities conference in the United States, DistribuTECH 2016. It was fascinating to see, touch, observe, and participate in lectures, as well as, panel discussions on the future of energy and utilities. Certainly renewable energy was a big topic, but of particular interest to me was how IoT is projected to be utilized in the energy and utility sector.
When you think energy and utilities you think power plants with large smoke stacks generating energy. You might even think of your local meter reader who stops by to read the meter thereby generating a bill for your energy usage. Now enter the 21st century and smart technology. Simplest reference? Think of a smart phone and then you’ll grab an instant understanding of smart technology. In the energy sector we hear smart meter, smart grid, smart cities for example.
So what’s a smart grid? You’ll find the smart grid at the corner of power grid and communications technology. The “grid” essentially refers to all the networks that carry energy from the power plant, solar, geothermal or wind farm to the consumer. This grid includes wires, substations, transformers, switches and much more. So add “smart” to the grid equation and you get computer-based, remote controlled, and completely automated technology. Ponder how slow the systems are employing a human labor force to physically monitor the grid, collect data on the grid, and make necessary changes. Smart meters thereby would have chips that monitor and collect data and can be read and interfaced with remotely. No need to send out a human labor force to manage the meters…an operational savings including labor force, fleet management, insurance, gasoline, maintenance and repair.
The smart grid increases efficiency in not only data collection measures, but also responding to malfunctions, outages, and customer-related issues. Having near real time data enables a time sensitivity and efficiency not possible with a human-monitored system. The smart grid’s ability to adjust usage based upon almost real-time need is unmatched in looking at saving resources, and conservation efforts.
Having an almost real time response to issues also increases customer service thereby elevating the all-important customer experience, (cx). When deploying smart technology there’s also the added benefit of two-way communication, a critical component changing the game entirely. The future of smart grid technology and the expanded applications as technology continues to evolve are absolutely endless, even mind-blowing when you consider the future of smart grids enabled to directly connect and communicate with electric vehicles.
Another cool technology I had the pleasure of playing with at Distributech is, Verizon Enterprise Solutions, Intelligent Video. Intelligent video brings surveillance technology into the 21st Century by achieving near real time results. I took the video above on my iPhone of what happened one afternoon when I experimented with the technology. Edge analytics has the capacity to spot unusual or abnormal behaviors and triggers alerts. As you can see from my short video clip above, I was tagged for unusual and abnormal behavior (any surprise?), and so I went from having a green box around my image to a red box.
Intelligent video gives security personnel, or law enforcement, almost real time visual information. Video surveillance of the past was a laborious search and assessment of previous capture that had an inefficient lag in time to deter crime, not to mention storage and networked issues, etc. Can you imagine the potential with almost real time video capture? Think of crime abatement through immediate alerts about perimeter breaches, or something as simple as being alerted when someone is present in an area they should not have access to? Interventional measures could be taken prior to an event occurring, thereby reducing crime and enabling a heightened sense of security. Or I could use this incredible technology to monitor my teenagers or perhaps my husband? 🙂
There’s nothing juicier to me than taking a peak into the future and also learning what we have at our fingertips today due to new innovation and technological advances. The future is being written now, and this year at DistribuTECH I experienced a few very riveting new chapters.
(In the desire for full disclosure, I attended DistribuTECH on behalf of Verizon Enterprise, one of my clients.)