4FRONT

Education Leader Says Hybrid Learning Is Here to Stay

4Front — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 17:35:13 +0000

For Nathan Lang-Raad, there’s no going back to education’s “old normal” in the post–COVID-19 pandemic world. A noted author and Chief Education Officer at WeVideo, Lang-Raad will bring his views on the future of education to 4Front 2021. In a 4Front podcast, he discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic is helping to form a new lesson plan for education.

Lang-Raad’s résumé includes stints as a K-12 chemistry teacher, school principal and school district coordinator of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. He also worked at NASA’s education office. He has become a champion of creativity and flexibility education, including recent trends toward hybrid in-person and remote learning that have arisen during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As Chief Education Officer at online video-editing technology provider WeVideo, Lang-Raad is working with educators to develop video-creation tools to enhance student learning. Those tools have taken on new focus during the pandemic, as students have shifted to Internet-centric, home-based learning. “I’m trying to figure out how we do education when we aren’t in class with them,” he says. “How do we keep students engaged? And that’s a difficult and challenging venture.”

This fall, some students have remained home-based while others are back in class. Schools and districts are grappling with the very challenging learning scenarios the pandemic has created. One of the most challenging environments teachers are being asked to teach in are concurrent or “hyflex” classrooms. The name suggests hybrid or a high-flexibility approach, but ironically it’s not as easy as the name connotes. In this environment, teachers are responsible for simultaneously teaching students in-person, in a brick and mortar classroom and remotely online. Lang-Raad acknowledges the extremely tough situation this is and also offer some support for teaching in a concurrent classroom using a mixture of asynchronous and synchronous learning structures. Attempting to explain a concept or model a math problem presents a challenge while doing both in-person and online. The online students feel disadvantaged while not being able to have equal access to the teacher. To ensure both in-person and online students receive equitable instruction, consider creating an instructional video that would be viewed by all students outside of the synchronous classroom setting. By creating an instructional video, you’re able to create equal opportunities for both in-person and online students to engage. Additionally, instructional videos work well if you’re doing a flipped classroom model. By recording the direct asynchronous instruction portion for students to watch prior to the synchronous meeting (online or in-person) teachers are better able to provide equitable experiences for students as they are all receiving the same content in the same manner. This also allows teachers to focus synchronous time (in-person or online), on SEL connection, application of concepts, creativity time and collaboration in small groups.

But looking further ahead, Lang-Raad believes that even when the pandemic lifts, education might not return to 100 percent traditional teaching and learning; it may become a hybrid mix of in-classroom and online sessions. In particular, he thinks asynchronous learning, where students access on-demand online coursework, can become a more effective part of the education picture.

A recent study involving university students supports that idea. In the study, 18 students were enrolled in a five-session course with options for in-person, synchronous live online and asynchronous on-demand online options. Prior to the course, the students said they favored in-person classes. But during the course, they used asynchronous online options more than expected. Eight of the 18 students (44 percent) participated in all five class sessions in asynchronous online mode, whereas only three of the 18 (17 percent) chose to attend all five classes in person. The remaining students chose a mix of in-person and on-demand sessions—and none of the students chose to attend live online classes.

Lang-Raad thinks that asynchronous learning gives students more choice about how they want to access learning—and that it will become part of the new education normal post-pandemic. “That’s the opportunity we have,” he says. “Even if we go back to a brick-and-mortar environment where we’re doing everything synchronous again, I think teachers will incorporate the best of the best lessons from the pandemic. If strategies worked really well asynchronously, they’ll continue to use those.”

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Medical Director Sees Promising Diagnosis for Telehealth Technology

4Front — Thu, 05 Nov 2020 17:32:23 +0000

For Dr. Aditi U. Joshi, the phrase “The doctor will see you now” is taking on new meaning as the COVID-19 pandemic accelerates the use of telehealth technology.

An emergency medicine physician at Philadelphia’s Jefferson University Hospital system, Joshi has been an early adopter of telehealth technology. She is a telehealth fellowship director, chair of the telehealth committee of the American College of Emergency Physicians and co-director of the Digital Health Scholarly Inquiry Track at Sidney Kimmel Medical College. Joshi will bring this expertise to next year’s 4Front Conference.

During a recent 4Front podcast, she talked about how the pandemic is making a strong case for telehealth technology—a field she didn’t originally intend to enter. “I like to say that my career is a series of accidents, because I can’t say that I made a concerted effort to become an early adopter of telemedicine,” she says. “I just stumbled upon it. I really liked the model, and then I joined a startup company in 2013 and I enjoyed it—and so I kept on with it.” She moved onto Jefferson in 2016 which had created a telehealth program in 2015. Initially, there were barriers with engagement and utilization of this modality like most new technologies.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. With concerns about spreading the virus in crowded medical offices and emergency rooms, doctors across America turned to telehealth platforms to safely treat patients. The period starting March 9 “was probably the two busiest weeks of my life,” Joshi says. “We’ve screened thousands of patients for COVID over the platform since then.”

The numbers back up Joshi’s experience. A recent U.S. Health and Human Services report that analyzed claims data from January to early June found that prior to the pandemic, just 0.1 percent of all Medicare primary care doctors’ appointments took place via video telehealth technology. By April, the rate rose to 43.5 percent and leveled off in late May at about 30 percent—but that’s still a 350-fold increase compared with pre-pandemic levels.

Joshi is hard at work evaluating telehealth’s effectiveness during the initial pandemic outbreak. She’s also writing a medical school curriculum and a manual for converting practices into virtual offices. With the arrival of fall and an expected rise in COVID-19 cases, Joshi’s diagnosis is that telehealth is not going away. The Jefferson Hospital system is still staging 28 percent of patient appointments via telehealth. “We are continuing to do it,” she says, but she adds that “there has to be an understanding of what its utility is and how we ensure it’s used effectively.”

By next summer, she hopes discussions at the 4Front Conference will focus on how telehealth technology can give a booster shot to healthcare, particularly in reaching vulnerable populations. “It’s been very clear during this pandemic: How do we use the technology? What is our plan to use the technology to help fill gaps in health access and equity?” she asks. “Because we want to recognize the challenges we have in our system, and now we have technology as a possible solution. What are we going to do about it?”

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Education Innovator: Creativity and Technology Need to Be Part of the Lesson Plan

4Front — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 15:16:24 +0000

According to Ai Addyson-Zhang, education needs to get a lot more creative—and technology can help.

A professor of education and founder of the Classroom Without Walls alternative school for entrepreneurship, Addyson-Zhang will be a featured speaker at the 4Front Conference, which will take place June 15–16, 2021, in Denver, Colorado. She talked about the disconnect between education and critical thinking during a recent 4Front podcast.

Addyson-Zhang knows all too well how an education system that emphasizes rote memorization and testing can inhibit actual learning. Growing up in China, she didn’t have a good education experience in a Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM)–oriented system because it wasn’t as enjoyable as her other classes. That changed when she enrolled in an undergraduate program jointly supported by the Chinese government and the University of Colorado at Denver. The program introduced the idea of critical thinking as part of the learning process, and it was a revelation for Addyson-Zhang. Inspired, she moved to the United States, obtained a master’s degree from Syracuse University and embarked on a career in education that focuses on teaching creativity and innovation.

“I think we’re kind of missing the bigger picture, because when you look at the future, traditional skills such as memorization—a lower cognitive skill—will be replaced by AI and technology, and we need more students to be creative, to be innovative, to think outside the box, to create,” she says. “I think those are the things that we need look at.”

There’s ample research to back up Addyson-Zhang’s argument. A 2019 Gallup study found that K-12 teachers who make assignments that require creativity see more of their students demonstrate better cognitive skill, resulting in a bigger learning payoff. In addition, teachers who use technology—including multimedia, augmented reality and other digital tools—are more successful in engaging their students. As a result, these students are better at creatively solving problems, retaining what they’ve learned and even making connections between various subjects.

Addyson-Zhang also notes that kids already use technology to consume content, but the trick is to teach them how to use technology to create content. To that end, she suggests adding an additional “M” to the STEM model: Media. Teaching students how to create digital media is “a learned skill,” she says. “That has to be taught.”

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Media Guru Sees Bigger Role for Digital Storytelling

4Front — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 14:46:38 +0000

For Liz Giorgi, pictures tell a story—and in a pandemic-impacted society, the need for connections through digital storytelling is becoming more important.

Giorgi is an Emmy award–winning media entrepreneur who has founded two successful digital marketing and content companies, and she will bring that expertise to bear as a featured speaker at the 4Front Conference June 15–16, 2021, in Denver, Colorado. In a recent 4Front podcast, she talked about her views on content creation and the need for humans to tell stories.

Her own story is one of evolution. After graduating from the University of Minnesota, Giorgi dove into a successful career in media production and strategy before deciding to strike out on her own, with a focus on content geared for smaller screens. She founded Mighteor, a production company that specializes in Internet video advertising. But after 5 years, she found herself looking for the next wave of change, and with business partner Hayley Anderson she hit upon the idea of “fast casual” content production. After 18 months of software development, Giorgi and Anderson launched soona, a company that offers businesses a quick and affordable way to develop images and videos to better tell their story to potential customers.

Such stories are becoming more sophisticated, spurred in part by the COVID-19 pandemic. Giorgi points to a trend toward longer-format content such as podcasts and video features, as consumers confined to the home look online for entertainment and information.

“We’re finding that the folks who are investing in 8-minute, 9-minute, 11-minute pieces of content are seeing much higher lift in contrast to those who are doing just the traditional 30- and 60-second pieces of content,” Giorgi says.

In fact, a recent Pew Research Center study found that the average YouTube video has expanded to about 12 minutes. The research also noted that for users who spend more time browsing content, YouTube’s video recommendations algorithm tends to suggest increasingly longer videos, lengthening on average about 5 minutes during a typical viewing session. Moreover, the study found that about 73 percent of U.S. adults say they use YouTube, and about 81 percent of YouTube users watch videos suggested by the platform’s recommendation algorithm.

Giorgi attributes this longer-format video trend to Internet information overload and the fact that browser algorithms are getting better at serving up content that will interest online viewers. So when choosing from a greatly expanded list of suggested content, “you are even more committed to it,” she says. “There’s a psychological commitment that you make.”

But at the same time, there’s even more of a need for the content to tell the story in a way that makes the production process disappear.

“When you’re sitting in a movie theater watching an incredible, magical story about a faraway land, there isn’t any friction for you,” she says. “You aren’t thinking, ‘Oh, I wonder what visual effects they used,’ or ‘I wonder if that was on a green screen or they used a different technology.’ You’re immersed, and it feels easy—and that’s what’s so magical.”

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Founder of Blind Institute of Technology Says Technology Opens Doors in the Workplace

4Front — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 16:24:27 +0000

For Mike Hess, innovative technology will literally help open the door wider for disabled professionals.

Hess— the founder and executive director of the Blind Institute of Technology (BIT)—will be featured speaker at the 4Front Conference June 15-16, 2021 at the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center in Aurora, Colorado. In a recent 4Front podcast, he talked about the role technology can play in helping people with disabilities to gain a stronger foothold in the workplace.

Hess knows the landscape first-hand; he’s been blind since his teens due to early-onset macular degeneration. After overcoming multiple challenges to earn a degree in computer programming, he then spent 20 years in the tech industry, including stints at Cisco Systems and Level 3 Communications. Succeeding in the technology world was a matter of “will versus skill,” Hess says, but those challenges also inspired him to found BIT and become an advocate for disabled employees.

Advocating for the disabled is challenging work. Despite passage 30 years ago of the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) – which prohibits discrimination based on disability–the unemployment rate for disabled employees has remained stubbornly high. When ADA was passed in 1990, about 70 percent of disabled adults were unemployed. However, 30 years later, the number has stayed around 70 percent, Hess says.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t helped matters either. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, between March and April 2020, nearly a million people with disabilities lost their jobs, representing 20 percent of the total disabled workforce. At the same time, 14 percent of employees without disabilities lost their jobs. As of July, just 33 percent of disabled employees age 16 to 64 held jobs, compared with 76.4 percent of employees in this age range without disabilities.

“We’re not going to legislate our way out of this challenge,” Hess says.

Indeed, according to the National Organization on Disability’s 2020 employment tracker survey, only 13 percent of companies have reached the target of 7 percent disability employment set by the U.S. Department of Labor. But the survey also found some encouraging signs, as 70 percent of companies in the survey offered employee resources to address the needs of disabled employees, up from 63 percent in 2019. And 57 percent of companies have a budget to provide ergonomic upgrades for disabled professionals, compared to just 52 percent a year ago.

For Hess, the key is using technology ranging from automatic doors to voice-controlled devices to giving disabled employees crucial support and access in the workplace. “That is the narrative that we need to shift, and we shift that by recognizing that it’s a technology solution that helps me as a blind person, or people who are deaf, or people who are on the [autism] spectrum,” he says. “It’s a technology solution every single time that will allow us to be productive and deliver.”

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4Front Climate Expert Says Policy Needs Diversity

4Front — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 14:28:48 +0000

For human-environment geographer Dr. Lauren Gifford, climate change policy is a tale of two peoples: those contributing the most to the problem and those most impacted by it. A featured speaker at next year’s 4Front Conference (taking place June 15–16, 2021), Gifford is a Visting Researcher at the Environmental Justice/Climate Justice Research Hub at University of California, Santa Barbara, and she teaches at Metropolitian State University of Denver. Her research focuses on the complex interplay of climate science, technology and social issues—and how these forces shape environmental policy.

In a recent 4Front podcast, Gifford said that environmental policies often overlook marginalized low-income groups and people of color. On top of that, “the people who contribute least to climate change are impacted the most,” she said. Evidence of this reality can be found in the recent research examining the rise in greenhouse gasses—such as carbon dioxide (CO₂)—that are produced from burning fossil fuels and are linked to the worldwide increase in temperatures. A study released last fall by the United Nations Environment Programme found that China, the United States and the European Union were the top producers of greenhouse gasses, followed by India, Russia and Japan. All are developed or emerging nations; absent from the list are what the UN defines as least-developed nations such as Afghanistan and Angola, where poverty rates are high.

The disparities become more apparent when you consider the greenhouse gasses produced per capita across a wider range of countries. A 2018 report on world fossil CO₂emissions issued by the European Commission put the United States at the top of the list, churning out 15.74 megatons per year of CO₂per capita; by comparison, the annual per-capita output for Angola was 1.04 megatons, Afghanistan and Haiti both emitted 0.32 megatons, and Burundi produced just 0.03 megatons.

People in these less developed countries rely more heavily on agriculture, fishing and forest use for their livelihoods, and as greenhouse gasses drive climate change, they face greater loss of income and impacts from crop failures and food shortages. It’s a big challenge. But Gifford maintains that awareness of these issues is growing, and innovative technologies in the renewable energy sector are offering new tools to strengthen environmental policy. Check out the 4Front podcast to learn more about Gifford’s outlook on environmental regulation.

You can also connect with Dr. Gifford in person and explore the future of technology and climate change by reserving your spot at the 4Front Conference today.

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See the Future Now With 4Front: Register for Our 2021 Event

4Front — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:39:22 +0000

Mark your calendars now because 4Front 2021 is coming next June! Thanks to work behind the scenes, the event’s visionary lineup is coming into even stronger focus. A unique cross-industry event that will bring together leaders and innovators from around the world to exchange ideas and explore how technology will shape the future, the inaugural 4Front conference was scheduled June 23-24 in Aurora, Colorado. However, because of health safety concerns stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, CableLabs decided to postpone the event until June 15-16, 2021.

The 4Front 2021 event has already gained two notable recommitments among thought leaders, including artificial intelligence pioneer Rana el Kaliouby, founder and CEO of MIT-spinoff Affective. Under el Kaliouby’s guidance, Affectiva has developed a technology that analyzes faces for emotional nuances. The technology is being used in a wide range of content testing, video recruitment and mental health applications.

Also joining 4Front 2021 is Shoshana Zuboff, a noted author and futurist who predicted in the 1980s that computers would revolutionize the workplace. In her latest book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, she proposes that technology users are raw materials for manufacturing and sales systems, as part of a new surveillance economic order.

Meanwhile, 4Front’s futuristic conversation continues in the present, through a series of podcasts available on Spotify, Google Podcasts and Apple Podcasts starting July 28.

The podcasts will feature 4Front visionaries who will reveal how they envision technology’s role in building a better, safer and more connected future. Imagine holographic displays that drive workplace productivity and literally bring a new dimension to education in the classroom. Or immersive virtual reality games the whole family can play. Or new video applications that will allow patients to see specialists a thousand miles away.

The first trio of podcasts will explore the future of education and the workplace.

Education innovation expert Ai Addyson-Zhang will discuss her passion for incorporating social media and creative technologies to drive student remote learning.
Mike Hess, founder and executive director of the Blind Institute of Technology, will talk about his mission to bring blind and visually impaired IT and tech professionals into the workforce.
Spark Mindset CEO and Founder, Lawrence Wagner, will discuss what he sees in the workplace now, and what could change in the future.

More podcasts exploring entertainment and healthcare innovations will follow in the coming weeks so make sure to tune in and stay in the forefront of innovative thinking so that you’re prepared for the 4Front conference next June.

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Must Reads Before 4Front’s 2020 Conference

4Front — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 18:54:57 +0000

Bookworm alert! Many talented speakers and podcast presenters are coming to 4Front in June, and several have written powerful, thought-provoking books that you’ll definitely want to put on your reading list before the event. Here’s a list of the authors and their books, which are waiting for you to pick up and read:

Shoshana Zuboff is the author of three books, each of which has signaled the start of a new epoch in technology. Her latest masterwork, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, synthesizes years of research and thinking to reveal a world in which technology users are neither customers, employees, nor products. Rather, they’re the raw material for new manufacturing and sales procedures that define an entirely new economic order: a surveillance economy. She also wrote the decade-in-the-making In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power, which became an instant classic that foresaw how computers would revolutionize the modern workplace. Check out Zuboff’s website and see her talk at 4Front about unveiling the fact that technology users are “no longer customers but the raw material for an entirely new economic order.”

Jean Twenge is a professor and an author of more than 140 scientific publications and three books. Her book Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before uses findings from the largest intergenerational research study ever conducted “with data from 1.3 million respondents spanning six decades” to reveal how different today’s young adults are from previous generations. She reveals controversial predictions about what the future holds for the current generation and society as a whole. Twenge’s light-hearted, eyebrow-raising stories about real people “vividly bring to life the hopes and dreams, disappointments, and challenges of Generation Me.”

Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist and VP of New Technology Discovery at AgeX Therapeutics, has cowritten a book called Advancing Conversations: Aubrey de Grey—Advocate for an Indefinite Human Lifespan. Advancing Conversations documents conversations with artists, authors, philosophers, economists, scientists and activists whose works are about the future and progress. Aubrey de Grey is involved in a biomedical research charity that performs and funds laboratory research dedicated to combating the aging process. Specifically, he’s interested in the self-inflicted cellular and molecular damage that constitute mammalian aging and seeks to intervene to repair that damage.

Veronica Belmont, yet another talented academic, cohosts a podcast called Sword & Laser. This podcast covers the latest news in science fiction and fantasy, features author interviews and showcases monthly book picks. As a podcaster, Belmont also previously hosted Mozilla’s IRL: Online Life Is Real Life, in which she spoke to people around the world about how technology and the Internet are shaping their existence—from the relationships they embark upon to the policies that are changing the ways they access the web. She is also a product manager at Adobe and evangelist on the Adobe Spark team, where she works to help social media creators, marketers and influencers bring their brands and creative ideas to the masses.

Nathan D. Lang, Chief Education Officer at WeVideo, is the author of Everyday Instructional Coaching: Seven Daily Drivers to Support Teacher Effectiveness, about “instructional coaches who play a crucial role in helping educators meet the ever-changing demands of effective teaching and learning.” This practical guide shares seven drivers that coaches can use to support teachers in their daily work: collaboration, transparency, inquiry, discourse, reverberation, sincerity, and influence. Each chapter offers instructional coaching strategies, daily practices, research, and examples to help readers evaluate, refine, and implement these drivers. Lang is also coauthor of The New Art and Science of Teaching Mathematics.

Maxwell Luthy is Director of Trends and Insights at TrendWatching and head of its North America office. He is the author of Trend-Driven Innovation, in which the TrendWatching team shares a powerful, counterintuitive truth: To discover what people want next, we need to stop looking at customers and start looking at businesses. That means learning how to draw powerful insights from the way leading brands and disruptive startups—from Apple to Uber, Chipotle to Patagonia—redefine customer expectations. Sharing the secrets that have led thousands of the world’s most successful brands and agencies to rely on TrendWatching for over a decade, Trend-Driven Innovation is the book that will reconfigure your view of the business world forever.

Larry Magid, EdD, is a technology journalist and an Internet safety advocate. He has written several books, including the best-selling The Little PC Book and Cruising Online: Larry Magid’s Guide to the New Digital Highways. Entering the realm of PCs can be quite intimidating for the newcomer! The Little PC Book is the friend that every beginning PC user needs, considering that new hardware, software, programs and operating systems are appearing on the market almost weekly. Magid’s second book, Cruising Online, describes the three major commercial online services and discusses email, bulletin boards, games, information sources and the Internet. These books are perfect for new PC users and those who want to learn more about the Internet on a basic level.

CableLabs’ very own CEO, Phil McKinney, shares his rule-breaking approach to innovation and creativity in his book Beyond the Obvious. McKinney helps the reader dig deeper and begin asking the right questions—the ones that all organizations must ask to survive. Full of real-world examples, this book will change the way you operate, innovate and create, and it all begins with battle-tested questions that Phil has gathered on notecards throughout his career and shares in the book for the first time. Phil also heads up Killer Innovations, an award-winning podcast and nationally syndicated talk radio show that looks at the innovations that are changing our lives and how their innovators used creativity and design to turn a raw idea into a game-changing product or service.

Amy Webb is a quantitative futurist and the author of three award-winning books, each of which has been translated into 19 languages. First up is the recent The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity, which is a call-to-arms about the broken nature of artificial intelligence, and the powerful corporations that are turning the human-machine relationship on its head. Her previous book, The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream, explains Webb’s forecasting methodology and how any organization can identify risk and opportunity before disruption hits. Finally, her bestselling memoir Data, A Love Story is about finding love via algorithms. Webb presented a TED talk about this book that has been viewed more than 7 million times and has already been translated into 32 different languages. Data, A Love Story is currently being adapted into a feature film.

Rana el Kaliouby is co-founder and CEO of MIT spin-off Affectiva, the pioneer in artificial emotional intelligence (Emotion AI), the next frontier of AI. In Rana’s captivating memoir, Girl Decoded, an Egyptian-American visionary and scientist provides an intimate view of her personal transformation as she follows her calling – to humanize our technology and how we connect with one another.

After earning her PhD at Cambridge, el Kaliouby, now the divorced mother of two, moved to America to pursue her mission to humanize technology before it dehumanizes us. To combat our fundamental loss of emotional intelligence online, she co-founded Affectiva, the pioneer in the new field of Emotion AI, allowing our technology to understand humans the way we understand one another. Girl Decoded chronicles Rana el Kaliouby’s journey from a “nice Egyptian girl” to a woman carving her own path as she revolutionizes technology. But decoding herself – learning to express and act on her own emotions–would prove to be the biggest challenge of all.

Although we may have just extended your book-reading (and podcast-listening) list by a few pages, you will be able to meet all these brilliant authors and speakers at 4Front. As a special opportunity, some of our speakers will be participating and facilitating our workshops, where you can work side by side, not just audience to speaker. You can add these highly interactive sessions to your agenda after registering for the 4Front conference at no additional cost, but be sure to apply now! Seats are limited!

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CommScope’s John Ulm Sees the Past Playing into the Future at 4Front

4Front — Thu, 20 Feb 2020 17:17:57 +0000

CommScope has contributed more than a few chapters to cable technology’s history, and it is now helping to write the industry’s future. That’s a big reason the cable networking provider stepped up as a sponsor for CableLabs’ 4Front Conference this June, according to John Ulm.

As an engineering fellow at CommScope, Ulm—like his company—has been a longtime player in cable technology covering the last three decades. He was in on the ground floor of broadband, helping to develop the first cable modems while at LANcity, and he was a primary author of the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) 1.0 and 1.1 releases. His résumé also includes stints as senior technical consultant with YAS Corp, an engineering fellowship at Motorola’s Broadband Group and later ARRIS. Last fall, he was inducted into the Cable TV Pioneers as part of the inaugural DOCSIS class.

These days, his work at CommScope focuses on the future, developing advanced technologies for broadband systems that range from next-generation distributed access architectures (DAA) and CableLabs’ 10G initiative to deep-fiber applications for cable modem networks and IP video innovations such as multicast Adaptive Bit Rate (ABR).

Ulm will bring that past and present work literally into play as a keynote speaker for the Play track at 4Front. The Play sessions will offer plenty of fun envisioning the future of gaming, wearable technology and fitness gadgets, but don’t assume that participants will be simply playing around. Ulm sees 4Front as an opportunity to share ideas about how to implement technologies from 5G to 10G, DOCSIS 4.0 and beyond.

“As cable pioneers ourselves, we know that progress depends on supporting an environment for innovation and collaboration,” he said. “This meeting of minds allows CommScope and other leaders to share our expertise in the most important areas impacting the cable industry. From global connectivity to health and education, we’re determining the future technologies for how we live, work, learn and play.”

So, what exactly does that future look like for Ulm and CommScope? Here’s the short answer: Communications networks will be not only speedy but also available everywhere, mixing wired and wireline connectivity. That will support a widening array of experiences such as 4K/8K video, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), cloud gaming and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. In short, future connections such as fiber to the home (FTTH), hybrid-fiber coax (HFC) and wireless will power our play in the next decade as the cloud gets pushed closer to the edge.

“We see the future of connectivity as seamless and deeply rooted in our daily lives,” Ulm said. “When our industry looks at the many pathways to that future, and asks whether we should embrace FTTH or HFC, wired 10G or wireless, 5G or Wi-Fi 6E—our answer is: all of these.”

That philosophy is shaping CommScope’s product lineup, and it will probably figure heavily in the conversations at 4Front.

“At 4Front, we’re making the case for this customized approach to the future of connectivity, and we’re demonstrating the many ways that we all can get there,” he said.

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For Work Expert and 4Front Ambassador Joe Thurman, it’s all about the human element

4Front — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 16:57:52 +0000

As founder and CEO of People-First Management Consulting firm Jobber Group, Joe Thurman is literally a people person.

He has more than 10 years’ experience in the human resources sector, with the past six years focused on talent strategy, scale up, HR tech and building inclusive cultures. Working with hundreds of technology firms, he has helped tech companies identify and hire effective leadership and align their workforces to drive business success. He also sits on the board of the Colorado Technology Association.

Thurman will bring that experience to bear as 4Front’s Work Ambassador. So we caught up with Joe to talk about this role, and how the human element drives technology innovation.

What made you interested in becoming an ambassador for 4Front?

When I think about the future of work, it’s the space that I live in – it’s what I eat, sleep and breathe. The future of work is something I’m extremely passionate about and that crosses into building inclusive cultures, understanding how people can be aligned with work that really matters to them. When people are aligned from a mission and vision and a passion perspective, that’s when people will do their greatest work. For a lot of things that we’re talking at 4Front, that’s really important.

How do you think an event like 4Front could create a positive future?

4Front is different because we are bringing together different industries, different verticals, different people from different stages in their careers. Once we put those all in the same room we can really begin to come up with new ideas and create what I like to call a collective impact to solve real world challenges. When we see competing organizations come together with diverse mindsets and thinking styles innovation can truly take shape, I think that’s what 4Front is bringing to the table.

What unique perspective do you hope to bring to 4Front?

The human element. When we talk about work, sometimes we get into the function or the tactical thought of human capital. I think when we talk about work in particular, it’s really important to understand that human element from every side, culture, impact, mindset. Innovation is needed, technology is everywhere and changing the world through the next latest and greatest truly is amazing. But it’s not amazing if we leave people behind in the workplace. And that is a big part of what I want to bring to the 4Front conference, is the human-centric people-first view of that.

Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself than what’s on the current site? What are your passions? What makes you tick?

I believe everyone should have the opportunity to go after something they care about. We spend a lot of time at work. It’s a majority of our time, and I think life’s too short to just have a job. Everyone has the ability to have an impact on something bigger. At Jobber Group we focus our work on using technology to augment and amplify human impact, not removing the human element. Amplifying our ability to make better decisions when it comes to people is my person passion. In that space we are dealing with unconscious bias training one day, leadership strategies another, and interview amplification technology all in the same conversation. I’m very passionate about people having purpose in life, and that’s not above anybody’s pay-grade. Everyone can have purpose. That’s what keeps me up; that’s what I’m passionate about, what makes me tick.

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