When a new product is introduced at a company event, it’s the executives, design engineers, and industrial designers that get the all of the credit. But behind every new product is engineers that focus on quality and reliability that rarely get much recognition.

Their role is not a glamorous job; it requires more discipline and less creativity than the designers. They often focus on the negative, trying to find problems with a product before it’s shipped. They’re also the ones that can require the designers to go back and redesign and delay a product’s introduction, subjecting themselves to lots of pressure.

Their job is to simulate the worst cases the product will experience before it’s shipped, taking on the role of the customer. They’re not the most popular members of the team; they are sometimes seen as a traffic cop. Design engineers focus on creativity and invention. The product is their baby and no parent wants to be told their baby is flawed or has a wart.

If a company’s executives or board wants to know how a new product is really doing, the quality engineers are the ones to ask. They have all of the statistics because their job is not only to be sure the product will last but to monitor how well the product is performing once it ships. They’ll tabulate the complaints, analyze the returns, and report back to the design team what needs to be improved.

Yet, in spite of their efforts to provide an objective account of a product’s performance before it ships, they’re occasionally overruled. Companies often ship products with the expectations of getting returns, based on a calculated decision. You just hope that doesn’t happen when safety is involved.

When Samsung shipped the Galaxy Note 7, both the initial and the redesigned versions, it’s hard to believe the quality engineers were happy and not overruled.

I’ve often thought how valuable it would be if we, as consumers, had access to the quality information before buying a new product. Our buying decisions would be much more informed.

We’d know the likelihood of a product needing to be repaired, see a list of the most frequent failures, and be able to make a clear comparison between competitive products before purchasing. But, of course, this information is closely guarded and rarely available. The best we can do is to consult things like Consumer Reports who tabulate experiences of their customers for a few category of products.

The next best alternative is to access customer reviews, surveys, and complaints from the web. While it’s impossible to determine the specific percentage of returns, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that can help. It’s easy to Google a problem we encounter and see if others have had similar problems.

A case in point. Almost a year ago, my daughter gifted me a Fitbit Charge as an incentive to be more active. But, after nine months, I’m on my fourth unit. The silicone rubber band on two units simply peeled apart, and a third unit had a defective battery that lasted less than a day. The products were never abused or used near water. While statistically surprising, I initially assumed I just had bad luck. When I mentioned this to others, two relatives and a friend, each of the three had to replace theirs several times. And, after searching through the company’s blogs and online reviews, I’ve found scores of users experiencing similar issues with many of the models.

Now, any product can expect to have a small percentage of defective units and, when you sell millions, the actual number of defects can be large. Typical return numbers for defects in the first year for a well-designed and manufactured product range from about half a percent to 2%. More than 3% is considered very high.

It’s hard to know what the true percentage of Fitbit defects are from this anecdotal evidence. Based on my experience, I bet it’s very high.

But considering the poor performance of the company’s stock in recent days, if I were a stock analyst, I’d want to understand how big a problem this is. Ask the quality engineers and you’ll get a better predictability of Fitbit’s fortunes than asking the CFO.

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Fitbit offered this response when I asked them about their product quality issues:

The quality of Fitbit products and the health and safety of our customers are our top priorities. We conduct extensive testing and consult with top industry experts to develop stringent standards so that users can safely wear and enjoy our products. We also are committed to delivering a superior customer experience. We respond quickly when customers report issues and strive to work closely with them through our customer service channels to ensure their satisfaction. If consumers have any questions or concerns, they can contact us at help.fitbit.com.

While much of this may be true, their product reliability is not there yet.

The Obama presidency and the FCC, under Chairman Tom Wheeler, have been among the more activist and ambitious in recent memory. There have been some big victories — successful spectrum auctions, innovative spectrum sharing and 5G initiatives, the National Broadband Plan — and some acrimonious proposals, notably around network neutrality and cable set-top boxes. Justice has been a bit mercurial: opposing major consolidation in mobile and broadband (AT&T/T-Mobile, Sprint/T-Mobile, Comcast-Time Warner Cable), but allowing Charter’s acquisitions of TWC and Bright House and Comcast’s acquisition of NBC Universal.

In a few days, there will be a new President-elect and transition teams will begin strategizing for the post-January 20, 2017 world. What might be the impact of the election on comms and media regulation? I’ll start with a broad view and then drill down to a few of the more prominent items.

Of course, who is elected President will potentially have a significant bearing on tech. Hilary Clinton has a pretty detailed and well-articulated platform, with a particular emphasis on expanding broadband availability. She is likely to continue many of President Obama’s initiatives and priorities. If Secretary Clinton is elected, it is likely FCC Chairman Wheeler stays on until July or so. If she is true to form, expect FCC Commissioners and senior-level FCC staffing to take on a ‘FOC’ (Friends of Clinton, and by that I mean Hilary and Bill) flavor. On the other hand, President Clinton could signal intent to bridge gaps with the Republicans by ensuring a balanced FCC. The current FCC has three Democratic and two Republican commissioners, but the Democrats (especially Commissioner Rosenworcel) have not always been in lockstep with Chairman Wheeler.

If Donald Trump is elected, things are more of a wild card. To begin with, he has said little about this sector during the campaign and there isn’t much to glean from his policy platform. Trump is likely to be much more hands off than President Obama (who was very hands on). He will also be more pro-business and anti-regulation, which is why his off-the-cuff remark about the proposed AT&T-Time Warner deal was surprising. If he ends up being Delegator in Chief, his appointments could have an outsized influence.

What happens in terms of control of the House and Senate, as well as the overall post-election ‘tone’, will also be important. If the temperature remains highly acrimonious, there will be contention and delays in the naming and confirmation of senior staff. This could affect the process, prioritization, and timing of some big ticket items on the FCC’s docket. The FCC has a lot going on already. The AT&T-Time Warner deal will land at least partially on its plate, at minimum as an important litmus test for network neutrality.

Here is a quick run-down of some of the issues a new Administration is likely to face.

Network Neutrality — This is something President Obama strong-armed through the FCC. So far, the FCC been fairly hands-off in its application of NN. For example, allowing zero-rating services such as T-Mobile’s Binge On. The AT&T-Time Warner deal will be an important test, given AT&T’s current practice of zero-rating DTV content for AT&T subscribers and plans to do the same with the upcoming DirecTV NOW service. I think the FCC’s tone will continue to keep the application of NN at a high, “B to B” level. For instance, ensuring combined distribution and content companies (AT&T-Time Warner, Comcast-NBC Universal) do not discriminate against new media and OTT players (Netflix, Amazon).

Spectrum — There is a lot going on in the spectrum department right now. The new Administration is likely to inherit the 600 MHz auction – both its final rounds and its implementation. It’s a complex undertaking. Hot on the heels of that is the re-auctioning of DISH’s AWS licenses. The 3.5 GHz ‘shared spectrum’ (CBRS) initiative also has some important milestones hitting sooner rather than later, such as selecting and certifying the Administrators and coming up with an auction framework and other procedures. There is still some opposition to the FCC’s April CBRS Report and Order that the next FCC will have to address to keep this moving forward.

Another priority will be keeping the early momentum going on 5G. This is important from the standpoint of the US continuing its leadership in advanced wireless networks. A lot of innovation and work needs to happen to make the millimeter wave bands usable for commercial wireless services.

Broadband — The National Broadband Plan was one of the signature tech initiatives of the Obama presidency. Its implementation has been somewhat of a mixed bag. Broadband availability expanded and average speeds steadily improved. But there was also a lot of squandered money, the broadband market is not very competitive, and US average speeds are still very much middle of the pack.

A Clinton administration would be more likely to keep the broadband gravy train going. Fixed wireless/5G and deployment of large numbers of small cells will become a bigger part of broadband evolution over the next four years. The FCC’s Mobility Fund II, which is wireless’ version (and contribution) to the Universal Service Fund, is part of the equation, too.

Business Data Services — These are the FCC’s new ‘special access’ rules, which would impose price caps on what telecom companies can charge other companies or businesses for bulk data connections — often referred to as backhaul. The FCC is racing to get this done by the end of the year. BDS is important to the evolution of broadband and 5G, because bigger pipes are needed to deliver the capacity required by those services. Backhaul prices can be prohibitively expensive in un-competitive markets. If the FCC doesn’t vote on BDS by the Inauguration, its status could be in limbo and/or its proposed rules could be revisited.

Set-Top Boxes — The vote on this controversial Wheeler initiative to open up the set-top box market to competition has been delayed, after FCC commissioners could not come to an agreement. The FCC could try to get this done by the end of the year and before a new Administration takes power in January (although the expiration of Rosenworcel’s seat in December adds a tasty plot twist). But it is equally likely this will land in the new Chairman’s lap. The direction of the winter of 2017’s political winds, plus the new Administration’s having to deal with the AT&T-Time Warner deal, could affect the direction of this proposal.

M&A and Industry Consolidation — The approaching election has certainly been a factor in the accelerated pace of tech M&A activity during the second half of 2016. The new Administration will have to rather quickly deal with the proposed AT&T-Time Warner deal. This will be an important litmus test for future deals because it touches on many fractious issues that both the DOJ and the FCC will have to deal with more broadly: cross-ownership of assets, media consolidation, and the Internet’s impact on traditional distribution channels.

I also believe the wireless industry will revisit the consolidation issue early-ish in the new term. Sprint and T-Mobile could try again to get a deal done, or one of them could get acquired by a cable company. DISH is also a factor here.

Congress might be on hold between November and January, but the FCC still has a lot on its plate. From a tech industry perspective, Obama’s eight years were certainly active on the regulatory front, which no doubt angered those preferring a more hands-off public sector. But Obama’s initiatives, particularly with regard to broadband and spectrum, will be almost universally viewed as laudable. There is a lot—a lot—going on in our sector and, regardless of who wins on November 8, we will need some minimal level of government effectiveness to keep our fast-changing market moving forward.

Every three months, we are reminded of the doom and gloom of the PC market. As PC vendors report their earnings and various bean counters – I used to be one – publish their market share numbers, we are reminded replacement cycles remain long and consumers do not seem interested in upgrading.

I’ve discussed before what I see as a crucial step in breaking this process: stop talking about PC replacement and start talking about what the new PCs have to offer and the role they play in your portfolio of devices. This week, with both Microsoft and Apple holding their device events, I hope this is exactly what we are going to see.

If we look at the invites the two companies have sent out, there is not much to go on. Microsoft is a little more generous in giving us a taste of what the announcement will be. We assume it is a device event because of the time of the year, although the invite itself says, “What’s next for Windows 10”. We are also invited to “Imagine what you’ll do”, which is as fluffy as an invitation can be to open our minds to new possibilities. Yusuf Medhi, VP of marketing of the Windows and Devices group, urges us to “get ready to get creative”. So it would be safe to guess it is about a device that is going to focus on creativity.

Apple’s invite was even more cryptic, saying. “Hello again” — which many connected to the “Hello” used for the Mac launch in the 80s. Rumors have it we will see three different devices: a 13” MacBook and a 13” and 15” MacBook Pro. Aside from the device specs, what will be interesting is how Apple positions these new devices against the iPad Pro. As many of you will remember when the iPad Pro was launched, Apple had an ad that asked, “What if your PC was an iPad Pro?” Of course, while their focus was on the competing Windows devices, the question raised doubts in certain minds on what the role of the Mac will be going forward vs the iPad Pro.

Mobility Changed the Meaning of Productivity

I think it is important to look at how our workflow has changed over the past few years to understand what role different devices could play in our life.

According to the dictionary, productivity is a measure of the efficiency of a person, machine, factory, system, etc., in converting inputs into useful outputs. Productivity is computed by dividing average output per period by the total costs incurred or resources (capital, energy, material, personnel) consumed in that period. When we moved from analog to digital productivity and creativity were very much intertwined as thanks to computers we were able to do things we had not been able to do before and in much less time.

I strongly believe that mobility change the meaning of productivity.

The “connected anytime, anywhere” world we live in has put more emphasis on the speed of that output rather than the complexity or quality of it. Gone are the days when people put their “out of office” hat on and are not available while they are out. The only time I put my out of office hat on is when I am traveling in different time zones and it is really more to apologize in advance for the delay in getting back to people than warn them I will not be available. Whether through social media or email, mobility made it all about the timeliness of the information we create and exchange. Because of this, we have become accustomed to triaging our work on the go with devices that are very light weight, have smaller screens, and have, in more cases than not, built-in connectivity. While we might not be creating a full presentation on the go or might not be writing the next New York Times bestseller, we see what we accomplish in our day on the go as being productive. These devices have allowed for what used to be down time during travel or in between meetings to be an opportunity to keep up with what is going on at the office when we are not physically there. It has also created the opportunity to turn us all into control freak workaholics but that is a different story.

Work and Play is More Fluid

The other side of the coin for this always-on world is work and play are more blended. Both with content and tools, we cross boundaries all the time. Consumerization of IT, bring your own device, bring your own app, the cloud, and real–time collaboration are some of the result or the spark of such blending. This means when we look at our next PC/Mac to buy, we want to see familiar technologies we have come to love and depend on like touch, voice, high-resolution screens, fast processors, and even pen support. Having all the apps we use every day on our PC/Mac would also be great but, given that our phones are never far away from us, this is not necessarily a must.

Creativity Is All About Thinking Outside the Box

So, if productivity has more to do with our response time, making highly mobile devices more suited for it, what is creativity and what kind of devices does it require?

According to the dictionary, creativity is the mental characteristic that allows a person to think outside of the box, which results in innovative or different approaches to a particular task.

First, let me say I realize not all white collar jobs are created equal and require the same skills and tools. I also realize there are many verticals, from health to education that, depending on where you look, are either stuck in an analog world or are full on into a digital one.

If I consider how my job has changed over time, I cannot help but see the impact of creativity in what I do. I see my job as delivering insights and advice to my clients. That has not changed since I started over 16 years ago. What has changed is what I deliver and how. I used to engage in three main ways: writing reports, delivering presentations and taking calls. Today, while I continue to engage that way with clients, it is not the only way I deliver value to them. Social media, interactive webinars, podcasts, and blog posts are added to my output list. Having the ability to manipulate charts as I present using Pixxa, or to draw a mind map on my iPad Pro or Surface during a meeting, I am embracing new technologies and devices to make my workflow more effective. When I am not on the go, I appreciate a device that gives me a non-compromised experience. A device that allows me to be immersed in what I am doing whether that is combing through thousands of data points, following a tweetstorm, watching a live stream of an event or recording my weekly podcast or experiencing a mixed reality environment.

This is good news for PC vendors because, if I am not alone, it could mean consumers shopping for PCs will be looking to invest more money for that non-compromised experience. It is also good news for platform owners who will have another platform for consumers to engage with. This last point is, of course, particularly important for Microsoft who needs to continue to build engagement with Windows 10.

In order for this to happen, however, we need to see more than just a beautiful design, which has been the focus for many vendors. Looking like a MacBook Air is not going to be enough for users who really want to have a rich experience. The focus should be on pushing the boundaries of how hardware, software, and apps all come together. While this gives an advantage to the Microsoft Surface family, and Apple’s Macs,  over other manufacturers who do not control their entire destiny, I strongly believe this will be a win for the entire industry but most of all for the consumers.

If we learned one thing from the DDoS attack that took down many websites on Friday, it is we still have a long way to go when it comes to securing all the connected things in our lives. This particular attack used insecure devices like IP-connected cameras with weak security as tools to perform the attack. This type of focused attack is one way to interrupt internet service and could be used to take down, not just websites, but our payments grid or any number of things which could wreak significant havoc on our society. Let’s hope this attack serves as a wake-up call for the industry.

This whole ordeal caused me to think about the range of connected devices I have in my house and wondering about their security. Most of the devices I have, I have personally secured and I don’t have my DVR (one of the types of IoT devices used in this attack) connected to the Internet. In most cases, I know the security I have in place for my IoT devices but one in particular I had to look into more deeply–my solar panels. Our solar array is connected to our network so I can monitor how it is performing. We secured the log-in with a strong password but they can also be remotely accessed in case we need support from the company we purchased the system from. It was this remote access that I was not aware of the security measures in place.

In many cases, I was fairly aware of the security measures. I’m guessing most consumers are not. The challenge the industry has is to bear the burden of taking the necessary steps to provide increased security and encryption of these devices because the reality is many consumers will not know to take additional measures themselves.

Apple outlines the security measures in place for Homekit devices and this is a solid initiative to provide a framework for security. However, many of the companies selling connected refrigerators, thermostats, IP cameras, coffee pots, etc., are likely not to use just Homekit but other emerging standards as well. The burden of responsibility is on companies providing these consumer products to enforce either stronger passwords or two-factor authentication (or both) in order to make sure consumers are taking the nececcesary steps to secure their IoT devices so they can’t be used for malicious cyber attacks.

Interestingly, in this case, it wasn’t necessarily the fault of the brand selling the IoT products but the component company behind them. Hangzhou Xiongmai Technology admits its products were used in the attack as a malicous worm exposed the weakness in the default security in many of the products their components are found in. The company has said they have sinced patched this vulnerability and consumers should update their firmware if they haven’t already.

My concern with the state of the market right now is the companies rushing to capture a part of the growing connected and smart home market are not fully thinking through the implications of dozens of connected devices in consumers’ homes they may not secure correctly. Consumers, although they will say they want and understand the value of security, rarely take the steps to ensure their own security and privacy. This is why it is so important for companies to bear the burden of this for consumers where they can or making sure they help consumers step up the level of security around their connected products.

Digital assistants are hot, that much is clear. What is less clear is what role they will play in our life. More importantly, how much we will let them be part of our life. I personally believe the extent to which we will feel comfortable including them in our lives will depend on how much we can trust they know us and how human-like our interaction with them can be.

I have spoken in the past about Jarvis and Mary Poppins as the two types of assistants I see vendors currently focusing on. One being very personal and one being more shared across family members. Both these roles imply quite a deep knowledge and understanding of what I as an individual and we as a family unit do, how we function, what we like and dislike. While asking our assistant for weather updates, fun facts of the day, alarm settings and correct spelling is quite fun, the novelty quickly wears off and the perceived return on investment is not actually life changing. Context and personal knowledge is what will deepen our relationship: warning you it will rain on Sunday when your assistant knows you are going to a BBQ, setting the appropriate timer for the cupcakes you just put in the oven, reminding you of what happened to you personally on a day 4 years ago — this is the kind of intelligence that will leave users wanting more and thinking about the assistant like a true genie in a bottle. Think about it this way: we all turn to Google to ask questions, so often that some even wonder if we might no longer be trying to remember because we know we can Google everything any time. Yet, I would argue, Google search does not evoke any emotional connection. Facebook memories, however, by serving you posts from your past that happened on a specific day, makes you relieve that experience – although more intelligence could be applied here when it comes to sad events in someone’s life – and really playing on people’s emotions while subconsciously making you appreciate Facebook and making you want to invest more time posting.

It’s all about me
One of the most annoying things for me when I start using a new assistant is to have to train it to say my name correctly — “Caroleena” not “Carolina”, like the US states. If you know me personally, you might have heard me say that, if I do not correct the way you say my name, it is because I do not expect to see you again. However, if we work together or I see you socially on a regular basis, I will correct your pronunciation. Why? Because if you keep on calling me Carolina I feel you do not really know me and, more importantly, you are not actually interested in knowing me. Right now, there is not much our assistants know about us that they are actively using to serve us. They might know where we live, where we work, might recognize my husband and daughter but there is little to no pro-activity in using that information in the exchanges we might have. Some have security concerns about just how much information they share with their assistant but the reality is you are not likely to share more than what you are already doing in various social media posts, online calendars and emails. The key difference, however, is what you share with your assistant will make a difference to you: reminders, alerts, suggestions, recommendations. Not everything can be learned automatically, though. So, at least initially, you will have to enter information, which is not very different from what most of us do today with our calendars, either digital or the old fashion one on the kitchen wall.

Better than us

Aside from being about me, I want my assistant to interact with me in a natural way. Last Friday, I had the pleasure of being a guest on Science Friday to discuss Digital Assistants together with Justine Cassell, one of the researchers at Carnegie Mellon behind SARA, the Socially Aware Robot Assistant. It was fascinating to hear that SARA spent 60 hours watching human interactions in a team environment and how those interactions changed over time — not necessarily for the better. One observation was as the humans became more familiar with each other over time, praise went down.

We have seen Microsoft’s bot Tay fail miserably because it became too human. Tay was modeled on a teenage girl, used millennial slang, knew about pop stars and TV shows and was quite self-aware, asking if she was ‘creepy’ or ‘super weird’. Sadly, she quickly started to be inappropriate, possibly succeeding in being a teenager but failing to be the marketing tool Microsoft wanted her to be. That was an extreme case, but it really showed the dangers of having bots and assistants learn from human interactions. At the time, Ina Fried wrote an essay I thought was exactly on point in how bots need to be better than humans, not equal to them.

The “I do not talk to technology” hurdle

Most consumers are not comfortable talking to technology, especially in public. This feeling is not just driven by talking into a phone or a PC – headphones would easily solve that problem – but it is more about having to learn to speak in a certain way in order to get a response. As humans, we do not talk to each person we encounter in a radically different way. We might be more or less polite or more or less formal, depending on the relationship we have, but the core of our question stays the same. We do not start each question by reengaging the interlocutor by saying their name like we have to with the assistants most of the time. We also do not always say everything we should or mean what we say. With current assistants, there is no real margin of error on the human side. We must be precise and offer all the information needed in order for the assistant to serve us. This is just too much work to put in especially as most people see assistants as nothing more than a voice search.

The combination of knowing us personally and letting us speak naturally will be key in growing our interactions and, ultimately, our dependence on our assistant. We might use different generalists but we will likely want one optimized assistant. It is interesting that this week, Russ Salakhutdinov, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, announced on Twitter he will be joining Apple as their director of AI research. I trust Apple will know its users the most because of the trust they have in the brand and the level of engagement they have with the products and the ecosystem. What Apple needs to focus on now is making Siri more conversational and proactive. This, of course, will take time. While we wait, we should be able to see continued improvements in the smartness of the device and apps we are using every day — from the camera, to Photos, to our calendar. Let’s appreciate the brains more as we wait for the pretty voice to become more and more part of our life.

Chinese consumer technology and content company LeEco held its US coming-out party on Wednesday, introducing several new products to the US market for the first time and articulating its strategy for this most challenging of markets. It’s certainly not the first Chinese company to attempt to break into the US but, for most of the others, it’s either been a dismal failure or a long, hard slog with only modest success to show for it. What we got on Wednesday from LeEco was long on vision and buzzwords but with relatively little meat on the bones from the perspective of execution.

From LeTV to LeEco

LeEco has a complex company structure and an interesting history. It was originally LeTV, an online streaming service in China but changed its name to LeEco last year as it began to build what it describes as an ecosystem bringing together hardware, software, and services. However, where others pushing a similar vision tend to put hardware at the center of the vision, LeEco puts content first. That’s been the core of its strategy in China, building loyalty to its content services and then parlaying that into a presence in devices. It looks likely to be the thing that will set it apart the most in the US, too. No Chinese company coming to the US has yet tried a content-first strategy and the reasons are obvious: the content that works in China is very different from what will attract consumers here in the US.

To that end, LeEco has apparently signed lots of partner agreements with major Western content providers – a slide flashed up briefly at the event had names like Magnolia Pictures, MGM Studios, Showtime and others on it, while Lionsgate and Vice Media executives briefly spoke on stage. But it’s far from clear yet how this content will actually show up on or add value to LeEco’s devices. There will be an EcoPass subscription at some point but neither pricing nor all the content included have been announced yet (there will be a follow-up event on November 2nd to announce an additional content partner beyond the Fandor movie streaming service already announced). Two other video apps – one referred to inconsistently as either just “Le” or LeApp and the other as either Live or LeLive – were also discussed and it appears these are bundled into the devices and will offer additional content, though it’s not clear yet exactly what that content will be.

Given how critical content is to the LeEco value proposition, this was an odd omission. It suggests that, even though LeEco’s vision may be grandiose, its current ability to execute on that vision is a little pedestrian in comparison. That’s a shame because, although the value proposition is a challenging one, it is at least unique and could be effective if delivered in the right way.

Branding and marketing

Aside from the unfinished content story, LeEco’s other big challenge will be branding and marketing. Today, the brand is entirely unfamiliar to US customers, although the company did acquire TV maker Vizio recently. Unless that changes, none of the ecosystem or other benefits the company talked up on Wednesday will make any difference, because no one will ever know about them. LeEco talked up the economic benefits of its direct sales model (its LeMall website is a sort of single-brand Amazon) in terms of cutting out middlemen and reducing marketing and branding spend but the big disadvantage of going online-only is customers won’t encounter the LeEco brand in familiar stores. Vizio TVs will presumably continue to be offered through third-party distribution but it’s less clear that LeEco-branded devices will be.

The other major Chinese consumer tech companies have used both wireless carrier relationships and sponsorships of sports teams and events to gradually familiarize US consumers with their brands but it’s unclear whether LeEco has any similar plans. Starting from the ground up without either third party distribution or a massive brand awareness campaign seems like a recipe for failure. It doesn’t help that, as executives joked on stage, the “Le-” prefix conjures up misleading French associations, as well as being plain awkward when it’s so widely and inconsistently used (some sub-brands use the Le prefix joined to a word, like LeEco, while others use it as a separate prefix, as in the Le Pro3 phone, while the Eco element is used separately in lower case names for product lines like “ecophones” and “ecotvs”).

Though the ecosystem itself is more fully fleshed out than is typical from companies just entering the market, it’s still not clear what the on-ramp for consumers will be. It appears the LeMall e-commerce site is one such entry point but when US consumers have never used any LeEco products and that’s all the site appears to sell today, it’s not obvious why people would go there in the first place rather than to a more familiar site like Amazon (or even BestBuy.com or Walmart.com). When it comes to content, it appears the various offerings are all tied to device purchases, which makes that a tough entry point as well. It might be a lead generator were it available as a standalone app or a service users could try on their existing devices.

A fascinating new player

As you can tell from everything above, I’m rather skeptical LeEco can make a big dent in the US with what we saw outlined on Wednesday. However, what’s clear is the company is committed to the US in a big way – it’s already hired hundreds of employees and apparently intends to hire thousands more and the big flashy launch event was another sign it’s serious about the US market. The content partnerships are also impressive for a company that’s never done business in the US in a meaningful way. The focus on creating an ecosystem rather than a pure-play low-cost consumer electronics play is perhaps the most unique aspect of the LeEco proposition. In short, there’s lots here that makes LeEco a very interesting player to watch – certainly the most interesting to enter the US market for some time. While I’m bearish for now, much of what I’ve written above will be subject to revision as LeEco fleshes out its strategy, perhaps addressing some of my concerns as it goes. For now though, it’s certainly worth watching as the company begins to execute on its vision for success in the US.

If you’ve ever worked at a business with at least 20 employees, you’ve undoubtedly run into “them”—the oft-dreaded, generally misunderstood, secretly sneered at (though sometimes revered) IT department. The goal of Information Technology (IT) professionals, of course, is to provide companies and their employees with the technical tools they need to not only get their jobs done, but to do so in an increasingly fast, flexible manner.

Frankly, it’s a tough, and often times thankless job. If your computer stops working, the network goes down, or some aspect of the company web site stops functioning, IT gets the brunt of the frustration that inevitably occurs. Beyond these day-to-day issues, however, IT is also tasked with driving changes to the infrastructure that underlie today’s modern businesses.

For that reason, IT has long been considered a strategic asset to most organizations. In fact, this central role has also turned the CIO—who typically runs IT—into a critical member of many business organizational structures.

But the situation for IT (and CIOs) appears to be changing—ironically because of some of the very same factors that led to its rise: most notably, the need for increased agility and flexibility.

The problem is, after several years (or more) of IT driven technological initiatives designed to improve reliability, increase efficiency, and reduce costs for key business processes, a large percentage of these companies have come to realize that the best solution is to have someone else outside the company take over. From more traditional business process outsourcing, through the evolution of nearly everything “as a service,” to the growth of public cloud computing resources, we’re witnessing the trickle of projects leaving the four walls of an organization grow into a fast-moving stream. As a result, IT departments are often doing less of the technical work and more of the management. In the process, though, they’re moving from a strategic asset to a growing cost center.

The implications of this change are profound, not only for IT departments, but to the entire industry of companies who’ve built up businesses designed to cater to IT. All of a sudden, equipment suppliers have to think about very different types of customers, and IT departments have to start thinking about very different types of partners. Arguably, it’s also driving the kinds of consolidations and new partnerships between these suppliers that seem to be on the rise.[pullquote]All of a sudden, equipment suppliers have to think about very different types of customers, and IT departments have to start thinking about very different types of partners.”[/pullquote]

The causes for these kinds of changes are many. Fundamentally, the revolution in the technology side of the business computing world has been even more extensive over the last few years than many first realized. To put it another way, though we’ve been hearing about the impact of the cloud seemingly forever, it’s only now that we’re really starting to feel it in the business computing world.

Another cause is an interesting bifurcation in the challenges and complexities of the products and services that have traditionally sat under the watchful eye of the IT department. On the one hand, many previously complex technologies and systems that required specialized IT expertise have become easy enough for non-IT line of business leaders to purchase and successfully deploy. Converged and hyperconverged appliances, for example, have brought datacenter-grade compute, networking and storage capabilities into a single box that even moderately technically people can easily manage through a simple interface.

In addition, managed service providers, hosted data exchanges, public cloud providers and a host of other companies that didn’t even exist just a few years back are offering utility-like computing services that, again, are offering increasingly easy solutions for business departments and other non-technical divisions of a company to quickly and economically put into production. More importantly, they’re doing it at a significantly faster pace than what many overburdened and highly process-driven IT organizations can possibly achieve.

Some IT professionals are dubious (and highly concerned) about these type of rogue shadow IT initiatives, but they don’t appear to be slowing down. In fact, in the case of a hot new area like Enterprise IoT, research has shown that it’s often a branch of a company’s Operations department (sometimes even called OT, or Operations Technology) that’s driving the deployment of devices like smart gateways and other critical new IoT technologies—not the IT department.

At the other technological extreme, many companies are also finding that making the move to more cost-effective and more agile cloud-based solutions is actually proving to be much more technically complex and challenging than first thought. In fact, there’s recently been talk of a slowdown within some companies’ efforts to move more of their compute, software and services offerings to the cloud because of the lack of internal skill sets within IT to handle these new kinds of tasks. In addition, much of the most advanced computing work, in areas such as machine learning, AI and related areas, often requires access to specialized hardware and software that many companies don’t currently have.[pullquote]Many IT departments are finding themselves in an awkward position in the middle where the now-easier tasks no longer require their help, and the tougher tasks take a larger supply of employees with skill sets or resources they don’t currently have.”[/pullquote]

The result is that many IT departments are finding themselves in an awkward position in the middle where the now-easier tasks no longer require their help, and the tougher tasks take a larger supply of employees with skill sets or resources they don’t currently have. Ironically, the very technology that started to create new opportunities for IT professionals (and which many feared would take away more traditional jobs) is poised to now start taking back jobs from IT as well. Needless to say, it’s a tough spot to be in.

Despite these concerns, however, there is still clearly an important role for IT in businesses today—it’s just becoming much different than what it used to be. For CIOs and IT to succeed, it’s going to take a different way of thinking. For example, instead of evaluating products, it’s increasingly going to require evaluating and managing partners and services. Instead of sticking with slow, burdensome, “we’ll build it here” types of internal processes, it’s going to require a willingness to explore more external options.

The importance of technology in business will only continue to increase over time. As technological solutions become more ubiquitous, however, the concept of distributed responsibility for these solutions will likely become the new reality.

One of the wonderful things about the rise of the web, twenty-something years ago, was the way in which it democratized publishing – suddenly, anyone with an idea could set up a website and make them available to anyone. Early on, publishing online required at least a rudimentary understanding of code. To be an online writer meant you also had to be a coder. But, services quickly emerged that created WYSIWYG editors for online publications, so literally anyone who had used a word processor could create online content.

Recently, however, we’ve seen the rise of proprietary formats like Google’s AMP, Facebook’s Instant Articles, and the Apple News Format, which threaten to de-democratize publishing on the web. To be clear, I’m not making a philosophical argument about the closed nature of these platforms but something much more practical: creating content for these formats reintroduces a coding requirement and online code is vastly more complicated today than it was in the mid-1990s.

A personal history

I first encountered the web when I entered university in 1994. It was a pretty primitive thing back then, with very limited ways to access it, and it was almost entirely text-based. But over the next four years, things moved forward rapidly, with additional web browsers improving the process of browsing the web and hosting and other online services making it easier for ordinary people like me to set up an online presence. By the time I graduated in 1997, not only was browsing the web a big part of my life but I had a website of my own. In order to build that website, I had to learn HTML which, at the time, was a very simple thing to grasp, at least at a basic level. But that coding requirement still prevented many people from creating an online presence.

Interestingly, I basically took a two-year break from the web between early 1998 and early 2000 while I was serving as a missionary in Asia. When I returned, the web had again moved on significantly. Blogger had launched in 1999 and was one of the first sites that enabled people to create their own websites without knowing anything about coding, web hosting, or any of the other more technical aspects that had previously characterized online publishing. Almost all of my online publishing since has been based on various blogging platforms and, for the last ten years, almost exclusively on self-hosted WordPress sites. Along the way, because I’ve always had something of an interest in coding, I’ve beefed up my understanding of HTML, grappled with CSS style sheets, and even done some messing around with PHP. But I’m always enormously grateful I don’t have to try to build sites that would perform well from the ground up – I’ve long since given up on that idea.

Enter AMP, Instant Articles, and Apple News

So much for my personal history. Since last summer, we’ve seen what I’d argue is the latest phase in this online publishing evolution. It involves the creation of a variety of proprietary formats for online publishing. Google has been spearheading the Accelerated Mobile Pages project (AMP), which launched officially almost a year ago. Facebook introduced its Instant Articles format last summer, with a similar objective of accelerating the delivery of articles on mobile devices. And Apple introduced News as part of iOS 9, opening it up to publishers over the summer and to most users in the Fall, albeit with different intentions.

Here’s what’s these platforms have in common, however: each uses proprietary formats to deliver articles to readers. Technically, these formats use standards-based elements – for example, AMP is a combination of custom HTML, custom JavaScript, and caching. But the point here is the outputs from traditional online publishing platforms aren’t compatible with any of these three formats. And, in order to publish to these formats directly, you need to know a lot more code than I ever did back in the mid-1990s before the first round of WYSIWYG tools for the web emerged.

As a solution, each of these platforms has provided tools intended to bridge the gap – all three, for example, have WordPress plugins to convert content to the appropriate formats. But a quick read of the reviews for the Facebook and AMP plugins tells you they don’t seem to be doing the job for many users. The Apple News plugin has a higher rating, but I know from my own experience that it’s problematic. Both Facebook and Apple also offer RSS tools to import existing content but there are limitations around both (Apple News doesn’t allow advertising in RSS-driven publications, while Facebook IA requires a custom RSS feed with IA-specific markup, which is again going to be beyond the ken of most non-coding publishers). Apple news offers a WYSIWYG tool, but it’s extremely basic (it doesn’t support embeds, block quotes, or even bullet points).

Why does all this matter? After all, no one is forcing anyone to use any of these formats – publishing to the open web is still possible. While that’s technically true, at least two of these formats – AMP and Instant Articles – are being favored by the two largest gatekeepers to online content: Google and Facebook. Google now favors AMP results in search, while Facebook does the same within its News Feed, though less explicitly (by favoring faster-loading pages, it gives IA content a leg up). Apple News is different – it’s a self-contained app and it’s basically irrelevant to you as a publisher unless your readers are using it. But if you do decide to use it, unless you publish in Apple News Format, you can’t monetize your content there and Apple is pushing the News app heavily to its users.

Turning back the clock

The upshot of all of this is, unless you’ve comfortable with fairly advanced web coding, or can pay someone who is, your online publication is likely to become a second-class citizen on each of these new platforms, if it has a presence there at all. And, as these platforms – especially AMP and Instant Articles – suck up an ever greater proportion of online content, that’s going to leave smaller publishers out in the cold. That, in turn, means we’re effectively turning back the clock to a pre-web world in which the only publishers that mattered were large publishers and it was all but impossible to be read if you didn’t work for one of them. That seems like an enormous shame and, from a practical standpoint, matters a lot more to me as an online writer than more philosophical debates about open vs. closed platforms.