geordee

Decentralized Data

Data mesh became too popular too quickly. I was listening to the recent ThoughtWorks podcast on revisiting Data Mesh.

The essence of data mesh is decentralized management and value generation using data.

The essence of data mesh is decentralized management and value generation using data. This is an important differentiation. It affects how we describe data using analogies.

One of the commonly used analogies is that “data is the new oil”. This might help to describe large AI-driven initiatives, where large-scale data is mined, sourced, transported, stored and consumed constantly to build AI engines capable of producing...

What is Digital?

How long does it take to fuel your car? It usually takes 4-5 minutes to fill the gas, and depending on how busy the gas station is, there would be some wait time too. Is it possible to bring digital experiences during the time spent at a gas station? That depends on what digital really means.

I often refer to the 2015 McKinsey article by Karel Dörner and David Edelman to describe the characteristics and capabilities of a digital product or solution. The authors list four core capabilities to describe a digital business - Journey-focused Innovation, Contextual Interactivity, Proactive...

Shape Up

A while back I read an article about poverty in The Conversation. There was a hypothesis that poverty is the result of lack of self-control. The author refutes it by adding more context to poverty. Poor people live in a “permanent now”, one day at a time. We often describe self-control as choosing long-term over short-term outcomes, or delayed gratifications. Worrying about tomorrow is a luxury if you don’t know how you’ll survive today!

That got me thinking about organizational poverty. It is a good thing to have self-control, discipline, predictive timelines, and product quality. But what if we are...

Jobs to be Done in Digital Transformations

The Apple iPhone was released in June 2007. I bought a Nokia E71 in October 2008. It was one of the best Nokia phones ever! It served my needs perfectly. It was solid, compact, durable, and fast. It had a comfortable keyboard and integrated with Microsoft Exchange seamlessly. It had the best maps in my opinion, and decent features for Internet and VOIP calls. That’s all I wanted in the late 2010s. If you had asked me to improve it, I would have asked for better VOIP apps, and a better integration with Google ecosystem. They did deliver a better...

Zero UI

“And it improved the effectiveness of decision-making”, quipped my friend. He was talking about how a few event-based notifications improved the speed of data-driven decisions. The program monitors patterns and deviations in various business metrics (such as lead times and stock-levels), and proactively informs the concerned party.

“We have seen it before”, I mentioned. The whole premise of business events and business activity monitoring in 2000s were built on this concept.

“With newer and better capabilities in technology, we re-invent parts of the car, or even change its field of engineering!” Business activity monitoring was part of application integration and...

Data, a First Class Citizen

When computers were born data was on the “peripherals”! We programmed arithmetic and logic into computers, and we had inputs and outputs for data. Applications and services implemented logic in maintainable and programmable units – functions, modules, and libraries. These applications produced data as a result of executing the logic and functions, which were stored into disks, transferred over networks, and displayed on screens. Later, we developed technologies to extract data from storage or while in motion, transferred, transformed, persisted, and analyzed. We designed data warehouses, data marts and efficient modelling techniques to efficiently store and analyze these data. Business...

Content and Contracts

During the lockdown due to pandemic, I discovered Gunhild Carling in YouTube. She, an amazing multi-talented musician, posts her jazz sessions with her family and friends. Some posts are from her archives, and some live sessions. She has a strong presence online with around a thousand videos in YouTube. She has found a way to engage her audience in the digital world. And she is not the only one. There are many YouTubers who are excellent musicians, engaging the audience through creative covers, serious music lessons, detailed critiques, gear reviews and humorous takes. Entertainment and show business seem to quickly...

The World Builder

Jane wakes up in the morning. It is 6:00 AM in the X8A32@M291K. Today the work for Section 28 must finish. She has been improving the render quality of Section 28 for 16 weeks now. She expects a reward once the section is complete. A decent increase in her experience points, eighteen points on her savings, and a power-up on her health insurance. That should help her to acquire the entitlement to a few old videos. She is an avid collector of legacy media and technology. Then, she can take some time-off, logout of the metaverse, and go for a...

Data Products and Monetization

The Gap

Data is the new gold or oil. Data can be stored in a reservoir and has the potential to generate value. Such are the analogies on data and its uses. The value of data is real, but the realization is hard. Oftentimes, the attempts to monetize data end up in spending more money with little tangible results. In fact, the answer might be there in those analogies, if we are willing to extend those a bit more.

Data is produced through transactions - buying and selling goods, performing services, or documenting facts. Transactions store data for reasons...

A Meta-Commerce Story

I picked up my Kindle during this vacation. Browsing through the Kindle library for unread and partly read books, I downloaded a few that I must read. And then it just dawned on me. My Kindle library is just some images of books I own, or I have the right to read. I download it only when I need to read, to consume. What if I could own other things in the similar way? What if I could digital own things and consume on demand, and possibly store the rights back digitally, for future consumption or resell or trade?

A...