Zag To The Zig #31 :: Driving through Wuhan, E-gaming FTW & local coins
⏳ Hi there. Time is slipping, don’t you think? Assuming that you’re all setting your clock to the release date of your weekly dose of ZTTZ & realising we all need a little routine, I will do my utter best to revert to the original Monday-Tuesday publishing time. Priorities. 😂
Have a lovely (long) weekend.
In the Tech Basement this week
Police in Dubai are wearing smart helmets to measure people’s temperature from a distance. Wow.
photo: reuters
Facebook bought a 10% stake in the Indian telco Jio. To be continued, no doubt, as the Indian government has repeatedly asked Facebook to change its encryption on WhatsApp (which they refused) and Facebook has applied for a payment license for WhatsApp (which the government refused).
Similar vibe between tech and government on the Covid-19 apps, straddling that fine line between privacy and efficiency. France and Germany are requesting Google and Apple to lower privacy standards - and now the tech companies are saying ’nope’. The world upside down.
In the Economy Room
The people behind Ocean Protocol launched a podcast on the Data Economy (plus, summaries in blog format, hooray). The first episodes look promising, with Andrew Trask of OpenMined digging into AI, privacy and Corona.
Balanced article on the the resurgence of local community coins. The core theme = Circulate money locally. Strangely, no mention of anything blockchain related.
🎮 In the Gaming Room
This week two interesting pieces on e-gaming and its business model. The first one from a VC who outlines the challenges with translating the business model of sports and sports broadcasting to the gaming world. Powerful stakeholders, difficult right management issues,…
Quite the opposite is this new web3-decentralised initiative of MetaClan, who seek to challenge that centralised model of value distribution and move to co-ownership, in-game (crypto)-rewards,… Obviously an experiment, but worth keeping an eye on, methinks.
In the Office
I enjoyed this simple piece about the 5 different levels of Remote working, with most companies at level 2 right now.
On that note, one thing I learnt this week - two things actually. One, the technical aspect of giving talks and workshops online is pretty decent. Mural for group work, check. Zoom or Webex for presenting, check. And I was impressed with Zoom’s breakout room function.
However, it made me also realise that what I sell in my workshop and lectures is not so much knowledge, or facilitation - it is energy. I’m an energy supplier. And transferring energy over an Ethernet cable is a whole lot more difficult than through the proximity of airwaves. ⚡⚡
A simple explanation of the Pyramid Principle in Business Writing: “Start with the Answer”.
Random ZTTZ
I did waste/spend a bit of time on this. Driven + Listen is just that: video footage from a host of major cities shot from a car, combined with local radio streaming. Strangely mesmerising.
Wuhan, anyone?